Devil’s advocate— 1.25gb additional storage for 2500 songs isn’t really with the effort to scam people, particularly when you’re already one of the most profitable companies in the world
Besides that’s not the only place they eat storage. Actually it’s so opaque you don’t really know what’s “really” happening.
I'm still using the charger I got with my 2008 (pre-unibody) MacBook Pro for my 2014 MacBook Pro, which is perfectly operational in 2021.
I'm using a Spigen 48W USB-C + USB-A charger (and a 60W, 2m Baseus USB-C to USB-C cable) to charge my Macbook Air M1 2020.
I'm using a Belkin wireless charging mat for iPhone X.
So, no.
> earphones (ensuring its wire gets dirty faster than any other)
Making rugged plastics requires a lot of nasty chemicals. Either be nasty and durable, or be less nasty and be less durable.
Also none of my Apple devices' cables have frayed (incl. a 30 pin connector cable for my now lost iPod Nano 2G). How come?
> extra storage
I think their 200G plan has good bang for the buck, and even I can't fill it up with normal usage.
> Actually it’s so opaque you don’t really know what’s “really” happening.
System preferences -> iCloud provides pretty good rundown of which application is saving what, including the ones you can't see in your drives (i.e. game saves, application stuff, whatnot).
So while Apple is not the best company out there, it's not that worse either.
P.S.: Repairability is a problem. I have nothing to say about that, but at least battery change program is very good. They've even found and changed some damaged parts in my phone, for free, when I sent it in just for a battery change.
> Either be nasty and durable, or be less nasty and be less durable.
In my experience apple cables are both nasty and less durable than most other cables I own. I have multiple old 30 pin cables that are frayed at the connector, my old ipod headphones had electrical tape on the cable where the rubber was breaking, and all my apple cables are a gross yellow color, while similarly old non-apple cables I own are all still perfectly white.
> I think their 200G plan has good bang for the buck
It's average at best. It's the same price as google for monthly payments, but google is cheaper if you pay yearly.
I'd argue, though, in my experience working at a large tech company, the impact of a particular decision on the company's overall bottom line rarely comes into play for a decision like this. Instead, it's a mid-level manager who has been given a goal to increase a particular number, and will be rewarded based on quarterly performance against said arbitrary number.
Which manager put in their OKRs for the year to grow usage of Apple's Music Library using a primary metric of total storage consumed? Now, they didn't necessarily cause the insertion of blank space into the files, but they'll be damned if they let some engineer make a change that makes it significantly harder to hit their growth goal for the year.
Organizations don't cause things to be the way what they are: the dynamics between people inside of organizations cause things to be the way that they are.
"When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all."
Personally, I think it is likely the padding was created for future use. Maybe tagging or some other meta data.