Comment by smoldesu | Hacker News Reader

Comment by smoldesu | Hacker News Reader

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The larger problem (as I see it) is that the general sentiment is that Apple is too big to fail. The engineers on Hacker News all take their marketing at face-value, and then come out en-masse whenever Apple is being investigated for something or accused of wrongdoing. Regardless of who you think is right or wrong in this scenario, it's impossible to deny that it has ruined any genuine discussion about the benevolence of the App Store. No matter who you are in the tech world, you simply cannot deny that Apple invests insane amounts of money maintaining their Reality Distortion Field. Making you think they're an extrajudicial entity is what they want, they need your whole-hearted trust so they can use your whole-hearted anger.

Without trying to sound too fatalist here, trusting any company is your first mistake. I feel like today's Apple users are the Microsoft pundits of the 90s, happily thumping their respective bible until antitrust regulation inevitably rains on their parade, or they all find out that $COMPANY has somehow been doing super bad things all along!

Bitten once, twice shy as they say.

I agree with most of what you said, but Apple is still one of the few big techies that is relying on making better products to increase revenue. All the others have gone down the path of "how do we trick people into transferring their money to us?". In that sense, Apple is exceptional. Their consumer grade hardware, for example, is still unmatched and try as they might nobody has come close.

If I had to bet on one big techie I'd choose Apple, which is probably why their stock has been so resilient. Simultaneously I hope regulators come down hard on the anti-competitive behaviour by Apple (and the others), but I think we're far more likely to see an increase in corruption than a decrease over time.

>All the others have gone down the path of "how do we trick people into transferring their money to us?". In that sense, Apple is exceptional.

Apple Computer? The credit card issuing, sharecropper mobile platform company? That Apple?

Yes, they also make very nice hardware and some decent software I happily use.

Technically Apple doesn't issue the card, Goldman Sachs does. It's also a pretty damn good product as far as credit cards go (and I've used them all). I ended up canceling all my other cards. The only feature the Apple one lacks is the ability to generate card numbers like privacy.com or whatever.

It’s got that. You can open Wallet, go to your card, hit the button in the top right with numbers and then there’s a button to get a new card number. I haven’t used it, so maybe it’s not instant or something.

So... should we let Apple white-label preexisting services until everything is sold with Apple as a services layer? I'm not trying to be reductive here, but that does seem to be what you're describing.

> Apple is still one of the few big techies that is relying on making better products to increase revenue

You can't be serious. Apple is playing every dirty trick they can to spill you down to the last cent. Developer fees, lock in, optional charger, dongle galore, star high device prices with modest hardware, the list is infinite

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