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Comment by benhurmarcel | Hacker News Reader

A big difference is that Apple makes money by selling me devices. Google and Facebook make money by manipulating me into buying their customer's products.

Incentives matter.

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Locked down devices. Then making more money from selling subscriptions, developer certificates, running "app stores", advertising services, etc.

To get the full functionality from the device, it is difficult to avoid obtaining an "AppleID". There is an "incentive" for users to sacrifice privacy and control to Apple. That appears to be intentional. Then the after purchase data collection and storage begins.

I am glad these practices have not spread across the entire hardware industry. Imagine buying an SBC and being asked to purchase an "RPi Developer Certificate" or register a "SiFiveID".

You cannot use 90% of the capabilities of most software-running appliances w/o agreeing to be individual-consumer-behavior tracked and resold to third party marketers. Try to turn on a new Samsung, LG, Sony, read the fine print. This model is not in Apple’s agreements.

Well…

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205223

Apple finds it increasingly difficult to convince people to upgrade their phones each and every year. I expect that hardware revenue will be declining over time and will be replaced with revenue generated from services like AppStore, Music subscriptions, iCloud, TV, games and more.

You can see this trend quite clearly already: in 2012 Apple generated only 6% of its revenue from services while in 2020 it was 20%. Services tend to be also more profitable compared to hardware.

Your thesis is 1/2 wrong, the hardware slice isn’t declining, they’re baking a bigger pie.

iPhone 12 was biggest super cycle since iPhone 7. It’s not that hardware revenue is declining so much as the flywheel is spun up for the ecosystem.

… [2021] a record-breaking year for Apple, beating the previous full-year record of 231 million units sold in 2015.

Apple is also benefiting from a higher average selling price, with ASPs said to be trending "higher on a positive mix" for the iPhone 12 Pro and iPhone 12 Pro Max.

https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/03/22/iphone-12-supercy...

Isn't it not entirely out of reason to wonder if Apple could also want to monetize their user data ?

No. Apple could change directions. The only way to guarantee data won't be used is to not put it on anyone else's computer.

They already are by selling privacy as a "feature".

As the ad tech person interviewed in the article called it, "privacywashing" (as in "greenwashing" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_washing).

Apple already hands your data over to the US and Chinese government.

We wouldn't know about it, but they were caught.

It's just marketing.

But Apple also makes money by selling you access to content. By extension, they are motivated to motivate you to buy said content. Having no goodwill left for any of them, I see no reason to assume that they would not resort to other forms of manipulation. In fact, from their own past, we know they are very happy to employ shady tactics as seen in for example the Apple-Google-Intel-Adobe Collusion case, the Batterygate lawsuits, ongoing right of repair cases etc.

Apple's biggest engine for growth is services. Even they are clear about that.

Incentives indeed matter, and incentives could change quickly once volume and value of Apple's collected data reach a critical point. But no one will be able to take their data back.

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