This is the same old guard who has been steering the ship more and more directly towards world-wide antitrust issues as the years have gone on.
Maybe this isn’t the ideal strategy in their case?
Maybe this isn’t the ideal strategy in their case?
They’ve been going around demanding 30% of everyone’s revenue, no matter how tenuous the connection. And it’s getting them in trouble.
Sure 30% of smurfberries is fine. That’s their rule, who cares. And they have a rule it doesn’t apply to physical goods, which is why you can order stuff in the Amazon app.
But then they decided that people giving yoga lessons over the time during the lockdowns owed them 30%. And other apps that had been in the store for 15 years suddenly seemed to require 30% when they didn’t before. Want to sell e-books? You have to give Apple 30%. Now there isn’t 30% anywhere to give. But you have to. So saith Apple.
Instead of keeping their cut the same or even lowering it, they’ve been effectively increasing it by deciding their rules apply to more and more apps and services.
Which looks exactly like monopoly jacking up prices.
“Just don’t have an iPhone app” isn’t really viable at this point for a lot of businesses. It’s not 2008.
They didn’t actually need to do any of this. It’s not like they were going to collapse if they didn’t keep deciding to expand what was “theirs”.
And every single time they’ve gotten in a fight with a government they keep doubling down and getting in trouble. Instead of giving an inch they dig in until they’re ordered to give up 12 miles.
I like apple products. I’ve been using them forever. I do not like where the management has been going.
And if people consider American credit cards' 3% fees to be borderline usurious, think how much outrage a credit card with 30% merchant fees would create. And that's basically what Apple is trying to push now, a credit card with 30% merchant fees. No wonder they're desperate to prohibit apps from telling people "you can buy it cheaper anywhere but Apple."
The 30% fee is cromulent when it's stuff that's clearly related to the app store activity. I'm not even that upset about charging a 30% fee on video game microtransactions. But the 30% fee is being charged on purchases made within app for content consumed outside of the app, which really starts to look a lot more like a 30% credit card transaction fee.
Neither does Apple. They have a "review" process, but that's a far cry from actually providing real indemnity, and if they dont do that then its not worth the cost.
Interestingly, the 2008 Steve Jobs advice "Just make web apps and have people point their iP{hone's browser at your thing" is actually workable advice for an awful lot of iOS apps these days.
(I'm super pissed at Patreon caving to Apple and giving Apple 30% of every payment I send to support artists/creators just because Patreon think they need an iPhone app. )
You know, what a phone is for.
None of these things are technical limitations. They are purely political to extract more rent.
Sorta Apples vs Oranges, but you should see how high the cut is for selling goods via places like Walmart/Amazon/Best Buy/etc.
I say momentum.
What new products has apple come out with post-jobs?
(I think apple pay and airtags aren't compelling, and arm is not a product)
Jobs said not to chase money anyway.
AppleTV+ subscription based series, many of which have been extraordinarily well received, for another example.
For comparison the original (wired) earplugs were popular, but not at the level of being a massive business. Apple had to kill the 3.5 jack ("courage") and turn the proprietary integration knob to 11 to have the airpods fly off the shelves.
Is AppleTV+ turning profits ?
Wow, I had the reverse course where I jumped off the iPhone train mainly because airPods were doing nothing for me compared to the competition (mainly Shokz), and I also wanted the 3.5 jack (and NFC as a bonus).
I still get that people can enjoy their airPod as a good product, but don't see it as massively better than Bose or Sony's product for instance if set in a vacuum, which makes the difference in market size extremely artificial to my eyes.
It isn't even the bucket stopping at them, it's directly their high level decisions and strategy that created the issues.
Their high level decisions and strategy created a desirable situation: Apple is bigger than ever. That situation has undesirable side effects, but overall the tradeoff is worth it.
It's what we call "rich people problem"; those are real problems - that need to be handled - but they are problems that "you wish to have" because it also means you solved a ton of other - more pressing - issues. And people don't usually look for "blame" in these situations.
IBM got rid of it's computer division as one of the many results of the antitrust case and it's now basically a consulting company with researchers as a side gig.
For any of these companies there was a path to keep making tremendous revenue without getting regulators on one's back, though it requires keeping producing competitive products.
As an example, LVMH is an ultra profitable group with a tentacular hold on its markets, but you don't see governments constantly suing them.
I'm not sure why you see getting struck down by whole governments to be some desirable "rich people problem".
On the other side, if the successors are decent but go in a direction the old guard doesn't approve of, it creates an overly tense and conflictual situation.
I see very little upside TBH.
And they shouldn’t forget those.
But those same ideas and strategies may not work as well when you’re the biggest company in the world (or close). So I think either they’re in the tension you describe at the end of your comment, or they’ve taught the new generation the old ways so they’re not trying to change things enough.
Combining fresh ideas with experience is a bad idea?
They're of course good at collaboration as well, but they don't look to me like the type to enjoy someone watching over their shoulder and whispering advices to their ears.
Is there an old guard at Google/Alphabet, which is also getting antitrust scrutiny? How about Amazon:
* https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/09/...
The US healthcare industry in general:
* https://www.justice.gov/atr/HealthyCompetition
Perhaps there's more scrutiny in general since Biden appointed FTC folks that actually care about the topic?