
Apple is a traditional business - Osiris
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-05-02/i-m-sorry-i-criticized-you-apple-you-win?cmpId=flipboard
======
oflannabhra
> ...this is a time when Amazon is pushing innovations that don’t solve any
> real-world problems but may create some: like smart speakers, with their
> threat of big brother-style surveillance in exchange for a minimal increase
> in convenience, or complex and expensive cashierless stores that won’t
> deliver much of an improvement to our shopping experience but may cost
> underprivileged people their jobs. This is a time when an entire driverless
> car industry is trying to convince the world that its products are safe
> before it can even come up with convincing stats – or prevent deadly
> accidents like the one in Tempe, Arizona earlier this year. This is a time
> when Google is trying to subvert new privacy regulations to turn them
> against content producers. A time when Facebook, blasted by media and
> regulators for ignoring people’s privacy concerns, starts a dating service
> which will collect people’s most intimate data.

That is a really pointed indictment of our current industry. Wow.

I don't agree with some of the assumptions, but it really points to how rarely
an innovation like the iPhone really occurs.

~~~
fhood
I occasionally loose sleep, wondering what products were lost due to Jobs'
early death.

Edit: Ok, fine. I loose sleep wondering what ideas were out there that
languished because Jobs wasn't around to see their potential and capitalize on
them. The argument "he wasn't that important because he didn't actually invent
X" is played out, and it fundamentally misses the point.

~~~
zer00eyz
Not worth it.

Jobs was, for all intents and purposes a phenomenal business person in spite
of the fact that many people early in his career didn't see it.

Name a product apple invented that was HUGE? Go ahead and think about that.
GUI & Mac was Xerox, the iPhone was Xerox and palm and...

Simply put he was a master at finding good things and refining them into great
things.

Lets look at the design side. MacBooks for all their glory are just advanced
machining (cnc + automation) put to work at scale (and thats "new" but not
groundbreaking). OSX is just *nix with a nice GUI (something open source could
learn from).

Jony Ive leaves apple, then I might start to worry.

~~~
Retric
> iPhone was Xerox

LoL what?

Everything that's built with computers can be traced back to the guy who
invented the transistor, but that does not mean innovation stopped then.

~~~
IncRnd
The first implementation of a smart phone was likely the LG Prada not the
iPhone.

~~~
abritinthebay
I mean... if you're playing that kind of naive equivalency then the first
"smartphones" were the early PDA/Phone hybrids like the HP OmniGo 700LX, the
pdQ, or the Nokia 9000 Communicator.

But that would be silly, because the modern "smartphone" era was _absolutely_
started with the iPhone.

~~~
IncRnd
You misunderstand. My answer was to refute that the innovation in smartphones
came about with the iPhone and not the LG Prada which was released the year
prior, market penetration notwithstanding. I was talking about smartphones in
the vein of the iPhone not of the technology that could be assembled to make a
phone.

HP OmniGo 700LX, pdQ, and Nokia 9000 Communicator didn't have touchscreens and
were like night and day compared to either the Prada or iPhone. You are
comparing apples to oranges.

~~~
abritinthebay
Nothing in the LG Prada was innovative - it's design was that of PDAs from a
_decade_ before. It's touchscreen did nothing that previous models hadn't.

Was it a nice industrial design? Yes. Wasn't very original though (and neither
was the iPhone's).

You're also shifting the goalposts - you said smartphone, not "had a
touchscreen". It was the first _capacitive_ touchscreen but not even close to
the first _touchscreen_ btw. The IBM Simon in _1992_ likely takes that win.

What the iPhone did that was innovative was in how it _improved upon and
combined the technology_. It also pushed forward a lot of things in those
technologies by several large leaps.

Long story short - the LG Prada is superficially visually similar to an iPhone
and, likewise, bringing it up shows a very superficial understanding of the
history of the mobile phone space.

------
ocdtrekkie
I probably now fall into this camp as well. I made fun of Apple for years, but
while I still hold an emotional and likely completely irrational dislike for
their products, if someone were to ask me for a recommendation on a phone
today, the only phone I could recommend in good conscience is an iPhone,
because it's the only option that takes privacy and security seriously right
now.

~~~
ekianjo
> because it's the only option that takes privacy and security seriously right
> now.

iPhones are a luxury. If you can recommend them it means you already belong to
the richest part of the planet. For the rest, they jut can't afford it, and
Apple was never interested in making anything cheap.

~~~
whatok
21% of Apple's quarterly revenue was from China. China is not well-known as
one of the richest parts of the planet.

~~~
antris
Apple is luxury in China too. Do you really think it's the average Chinese
that are buying iPhones?

~~~
monocasa
A worker at Foxconn has about the same discretionary income as blue collar
workers in the states; their food and housing is covered by Foxconn, but isn't
normally listed as part of their salary.

Now, albeit, they're slightly on the higher end of Chinese workers, but it's
not just the shitty aristocrat's kids spending money on iPhones. The people
making the things make enough money to buy one, just the same as my
hairdresser does.

~~~
antris
In that case Foxconn isn't an example of an average company paying average
wage. The disposable income per capita in China was 36396 chinese yuan in
2017, which makes a little over 400 USD per month. Median disposable income is
even lower. You're not even close to buying iPhones with that kind of wages.

~~~
monocasa
At $400USD/month after food, housing, transportation, and healthcare are taken
care of absolutely puts you into iPhone purchasing range.

------
pseudometa
Having been a fan of Apple for over a decade now, over the last year I've come
to the opposite point of view. Their iPhone and airpods are great products and
of course they can ride a long time on those, but in every other area from
Macs and accessories I feel they are falling flat on delivering great user
experiences. From FaceTime to Siri, to crappy Apple TV remotes, Home Kit...
there are just a LOT of mediocre products that sit idle for years. Of all
times, the company is at the point most worth criticizing. I do blame Tim Cook
for this stagnation in product development. And indeed their lack of ideas
means they have nothing better to do with their cash, that they are buying
back shares. Ehh, I'm so jaded these days on Apple.

~~~
__david__
Interesting you say that about the Apple TV remotes. I thought they were all
horrible but I really like the new one. The speed at which I can move around
and the precision of selecting things is really great.

~~~
ynniv
Why can't I tell which side is up without looking at it or accidentally
changing something? Why is the black IR sensor the same size, shape, and
location as the charging port, but on the wrong side? Why can't it decide that
a log press when it's upside down is probably someone sitting on it? Why is it
too small to comfortably hold?

Maybe this thing works for people without kids, but I'll take a boring remote
any day.

------
xmodem
(Disclosure: I hold AAPL)

Great article but a couple of points:

 _On Tuesday’s call, there was just one question about innovative offerings,
and it concerned health applications, an important driver of Apple Watch sales
but not a potential world-beating sensation. Apple appears to be happy to
think small and focus on its shareholders, not on pie-in-the-sky ideas, like
other tech companies, including industry leaders._

There's a key point I think the author is missing here. If Apple could spend
$50 billion on R&D and get a worthwhile return, I think they absolutely would.
Their below-par R&D is not from a lack of wanting. It's because they are much
more focused. They don't burn cash on new ideas just because they can.

And if I thought Apple's health aspirations were limited to Apple Watch, well,
I wouldn't be in the stock.

~~~
jxdxbx
Most of Apple's R&D spending is not categorized as R&D. R&D spending is for
basic tech research not product development.

~~~
snowwrestler
And my understanding is that companies have considerable latitude in
designating whether a particular activity is "R&D" or not.

R&D expenditures don't seem like a metric that can be precisely compared
across companies, or even reliably connected to future business success. It's
not like companies that report the highest R&D spending are always the ones
winning.

~~~
mercutio2
I agree with your second paragraph, but quibble with the first.

I don’t think there’s that much latitude. The IRS routinely questions
companies large and small, in detail, about whether they were really
developing new products, or just polishing/improving existing products. The
former counts as R&D (and gets favorable tax treatment), the latter is not.

The test is more complicated than this, but latitude is not a word I would
associate with this term of art.

~~~
snowwrestler
I get why the IRS would be interested in companies trying to hide operations
inside the favorable tax treatment of R&D, but do you think the opposite is
also true? Would the IRS (or SEC) care if a company _underreported_ its R&D
spending by choosing to classify new product development as a typical expense?

~~~
mercutio2
Point taken. I don’t know if the SEC would care, seems possible, but you’re
right, it hadn’t occurred to me anyone would deliberately under report R&D,
there probably is latitude in that direction.

------
deweller
The author of this opinion piece is praising Apple for its willingness to NOT
innovate.

I strongly disagree.

The best solution to privacy concerns is not to stop innovating. Surely there
are better solutions.

Apple is leading the way on some consumer privacy issues and I applaud them
for that. But surely if Apple halts innovation, it will die as all companies
do. Let us hope they are smarter than that.

~~~
gambiting
I think the point here is that Apple is not innovating in "stupid" areas(for
the author) - like cashierless stores, automated cars, surveillance speakers
etc.

In a way, yes, that is admirable - I think all other tech giants are going in
the "wrong" and harmful direction, while Apple still concentrates on making
good hardware with matching software(their abysmal attempts at MacOs fixes
notwithstanding).

~~~
0xcafecafe
Isn't it naive to criticize cashierless stores and automated cars as "stupid
areas"? Arguing that those will cost jobs is akin to saying a 100 years back
that the "iron horse" will cost jobs. Mankind has to continue to innovate and
it is disingenuous to argue that a cashierless store is a "minor convenience".

~~~
greymeister
My current experience with just about any cashierless option at a grocery or
department store is far from a minor convenience, it's almost entirely an
inconvenience. I now get to do what I did over 20 years ago and bag groceries,
except then I was paid for it.

However, it allows the store to place one minimum wage employee over multiple
lanes versus having to have one per lane (or even two if it was like the
grocery store when I grew up that actually had backers AND checkers).

So, like many innovations, it adds little to no convenience but is a very
effective way of cutting labor costs. By Grabthar's Hammer... what a savings.

~~~
0xcafecafe
To each his own, I exclusively use the self checkout line whenever I can
(especially at costco) and it saves me a ton of time. Besides the point here
was about innovation and working towards a better future, which the amazon
cashierless stores might be. Just because the current solution for self-
checkouts is bad doesn't mean we should stop innovating.

~~~
greymeister
Working towards a better future sounds like an admirable goal, but that's ad-
speak on top of actual goals of the innovation, which is more profitable
retail.

I don't personally think a robot grocery store is something I'm interested in,
but that's entirely subjective.

------
imjk
I read the whole article and I'm not impressed. The crux of the article seems
to be that he now admires Tim Cook and Apple because they don't spend money on
progressive technologies that have a potential for harm. His examples include
smart speakers, driverless cars, and cashierless stores that presumably
shouldn't be pursued because of their potential for societal harm. Look,
things like privacy, safety, and job opportunities for the underprivileged are
immensely important, but his arguments are flawed. By the same standards, the
iphone and a myriad of other important technologies should never have been
pursued.

------
michaelt
I've been an Android user for years; I recently decided to change to iPhone,
and this article really captures the reason why: Apple seems to be the only
company for whom a cloud backup of my phone book is a liability, not an asset
to be monetised.

~~~
greedo
Shouldn't that be inverted? Your iCloud Addressbook backup isn't a liability.

~~~
Clubber
From the perspective of the vendor, it would be a cost center rather than a
revenue generator (thus a liability). From the perspective of the customer,
it's an asset because he isn't selling personal info for backups (which would
be a liability).

------
_bxg1
Apple's main endeavor is to develop an actual product. They design and
engineer something in the hopes that people buy it.

The honesty - and arguably, quaintness - of that consumer relationship
separates Apple from the rest of the valley.

~~~
wmeredith
Eh, I think this argument is a bit glib.

 _Google 's_ main endeavor is to develop an actual product. They design and
engineer something in the hopes that people _use_ it. (Then they sell ads,
like the publishing industry has done for 200 years.)

~~~
_bxg1
The difference is where the exchange of money happens. Because Google's, and
Facebook's, Amazon's, and most SV startups' services are free, you get the
privacy problems and the ulterior motives and the trust issues. With Apple,
you paid for the product up-front. The transaction is done and in the open.
They don't have to do anything skeevy to make money off their product.

~~~
esrauch
Apple has plenty of non-aligned incentives, they control the store (+30%
subscription tax on Spotify, taking down apps that compete with "core
functionality"), they don't want you to repair your phone (and planned
obsolescence) where ewaste and their profit is connected.

~~~
thisacctforreal
Apple does not seem to want you to open the phone, but they are easily the
most repairable phones available. Most repair shops will repair any iPhone,
and you can stumble through it yourself using YouTube or iFixit.

According to this 2/3 Apple devices sold are still active today:
[http://www.asymco.com/2018/02/27/the-
number/](http://www.asymco.com/2018/02/27/the-number/)

I believe Apple gains directly from the longevity. People know that Apple
products last long and hold resale value; where I am the iPhone 5s from Sept
2013 is sold second-hand for ~$150CAD

Devices with high resale value mean customers can upgrade frequently.

------
fhood
It is kind of amazing how much the landscape has changed. I have always used
Apple computers and phones, and I used to view Apple as a vaguely sinister
company, but one that produced the best products. It is very weird to me that
they are now a model for non-evil practices among large tech companies.

~~~
cptskippy
> I used to view Apple as a vaguely sinister company

What about Apple gave you the impression they were sinister and what has
changed?

I've actually been going the opposite direction with my opinion of them. All
of their talk of "you are not the product" and "we respect your privacy" is
great but feels opportunistic given the current climate. The foundation of
Apple's products that they are touting as privacy focused were actually about
controlling the experience. They've cleverly spun happenstance into a platform
to promote their products.

None of that really strikes me as sinister though, when I say that they've
been going in the opposite direction I'm referring more to the way they
support their hardware and their shady tactics when it comes to device repair.
For Apple the profit is in selling you a new device, they make no money if you
don't upgrade. A repaired device isn't a profit, it's the burden of continued
support. So what we're seeing is products that look great but aren't designed
with longevity in mind and replacement focused support.

Apple shipped the iPhone 6 with a battery that degraded quickly and by most
would be considered faulty. Rather than issue a recall or some other pro-
consumer solution, they hid the fact that batteries weren't functioning to
specification by throttling the CPU/GPU and degrading performance. This also
had the nice benefit of coaxing users to upgrade because their device was
slow.

When Apple got called on this, their response was to claim it was a benefit to
the user rather than admit the batteries were faulty. They then graciously
offered to lower the price on a battery replacement. So instead of a costly
recall, they're profiting or breaking even on you having to pay for a
replacement. If that wasn't enough, many people are reporting that Apple is
refusing to replace batteries on devices without first fixing other faults
like cracked screens or "broken" microphones [0].

Apple is also using it's new found position as bastion of your privacy to
justify other shady practices like disabling components or bricking hardware
entirely if it isn't "genuine" and then claiming it's to protect the
consumer's privacy.

Their growth as plateaued and I feel like this is only the beginning of the
Comcastic abuses of the customer we typically see from the market leader
trying to find new ways to grow. That's why I think they've been becoming more
sinister anyways.

[0] [https://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/3031484/apple-
dema...](https://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/3031484/apple-demanding-
unnecessary-repairs-before-replacing-iphone-batteries)

~~~
dingaling
I'm not the OP but since the early 1990s I've had an uneasy feeling about
Apple, primarily due to their ability to sustain a cultish following.

It went beyond encouraging loyalty bymaking good products ( though that was
the era of the dire Performa ) and into mocking and belittling non-believers,
and rewriting history in a sort of Soviet-airbrushing style.

I don't know whether the company itself nutured that but it was unsettling.
Microsoft was explicitly dominating like a tyrant, but Apple was a cult leader
with a thin smile and an army of vehement adherents.

~~~
cptskippy
The cult like follow Apple has enjoyed has never really bothered me. From a
business sense it makes sense that they would cultivate it if the culture was
beneficial to them. You see the same sort of fanaticism with cars, guns,
televisions, cameras, watches, sunglasses, and a myriad of other products.

I think that understanding of marketing and brand, in addition to the value of
engineering, is what made Jobs such a great leader. He understood enough of
both sides of the business to make them work together cohesively where other
companies tend to favor one or the other.

------
konschubert
I wonder if the author likes Apple because Apple has, as he states himself,
stopped innovating. This means that Apple's offerings offer stability, which
means comfort.

That being said, I agree with the authors sentiment.

------
zeveb
I'm very fond of Apple's business stance; my concern is not with it, but with
their _technological_ stance. Apple products are built on lock-in; they are
proprietary and closed, not open. Frankly, at this point they're not even
really all that good (in fact, sometimes embarrassingly bad — something not
limited to Apple!).

I want the freedom to tinker, the freedom to review, the freedom to extend.
That's why I use Linux.

~~~
airstrike
I'd settle for iMessage and FaceTime being open...

~~~
pwinnski
In the case of FaceTime, it's VirnetX that's to blame. Apple's pledge to open-
source it ran hard into a lawsuit from VirnetX that required Apple to redesign
and still currently has them paying $439M to VirnetX for patent infringement.

------
SonicSoul
Here’s a naive question.

This all sounds noble and all , but doesn’t Apple know just as much or more
about you via phone / watch / iCloud / iTunes / Apple Pay / Apple TV?

Are we celebrating here that they’re not openly selling this information or
using as primary business model ? Or that it’s only used for internal
business?

~~~
r00fus
Apple has been criticized in the past for having an internal culture/dictates
to avoid "synergizing" this kind of info between their products/services -
criticized because it affects the quality of features like Siri.

Contrast to companies like Google (who don't directly sell your info but still
profit from it) or Facebook (who have had numerous exfiltration incidents over
the years and who sell very targetable info that could be used to isolate a
single person).

Meanwhile Equifax has horrible security and you aren't even remotely their
customer - they just collect your data and get passive income from that.

------
airstrike
I only wish the author hadn't forgotten to mention the quintessential non-
Apple company: SNAP[0]

Many say the current game of musical chairs is overdue for a pause. My money
(not literally) is on Tech stocks taking the biggest hit. But as the article
put it, Apple isn't a Tech company -- it's a manufacturer (and superb
retailer!) of products that are observably differentiated, as they clearly
command higher prices for virtually the same functionality as their
competitors.

[0] [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-02/snap-s-
sl...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-02/snap-s-slowdown-
stirs-doubt-on-redesign-triggering-share-plunge)

~~~
jmull
> But as the article put it, Apple isn't a Tech company

That's not what the article says. In fact, it says "Apple is the perfect tech
company..."

I'd like to hear a definition of "tech company" and doesn't include Apple.

~~~
rahulrrixe
I think Apple is a true tech company. How can you define a tech company? it
has got holds on both hardware and software for its ecosystem. Doesn't that
make it a tech company?

At this stage, if any company which can create an OS like iOS would be
considered tech company leaving aside the hardware part.

------
RyanShook
Apple’s market cap will keep rising for the next few years without any
innovation through buybacks and service revenue from existing devices. But the
fact that they’re not talking about new products or hinting at anything down
the line concerns me...

~~~
froo
> But the fact that they’re not talking about new products or hinting at
> anything down the line concerns me...

Why would they show their hand? There's little to be gained from it and it
would harm their brand when these technologies don't pan out how they would
want. See Google Glass - huge fanfare but no real substance.

Besides, we hear of technology that is supposedly being worked on inside
Apple. Project Titan, the AR headset that is looking at a 2020 release date.

------
catchmeifyoucan
> After Apple’s latest results announcement, one could knock it yet again for
> its stable dependence on a single mature product — the iPhone...It shows
> that a stage of useful progress is over and doesn’t tip over into overhyped
> uselessness

Stagnanation isn't acceptable for any company. Apple has always been about
"overhyped uselessness"(eg. Touch Bar, animoji). The article makes claims that
Apple "offers a fix" referring to the battery throttling, but any company of
that scale is obligated to. They were shamed publicly. I agree with privacy
commitment, but that alone, isn't enough.

------
jugg1es
His argument that Amazon is not innovating to solve real-world problems seems
grossly uninformed. AWS is putting out new features almost weekly that solve
lots of real-world problems across all industries.

------
Angostura
Why not go the whole hog and just reword the headline “a story about Apple”

------
scarface74
Bloomberg should be doing a retraction of their previous stories that were
factually wrong about "struggling iPhone sales".....

------
cbsmith
This article is _almost_ in a satirical voice.

------
dade_
Feed the masses and dine with the classes.

Apple is focusing on the 80%, and have developed a strategic advantage based
on privacy. This is not a new lesson.

Commercially this is smart and profitable, but it was at the expense of the
20%. The fact is that their products stopped meeting my needs. So instead of a
apology, I would like to thank Apple for the lock in that took over a year to
unwind before I could leave the Apple ecosystem. It was a harsh lesson that I
will never forget.

------
Clubber
What a strange article. He spent most of the time saying, "I could criticize
Apple for .." which seems like a criticism shrouded in something else or
backhanded compliment (if that). Also, what's this infatuation between good
and evil? Why does that even belong in a tech conversation?

~~~
dkrich
Because technological advancements are almost by definition poorly understood
and people tend to be scared or at least skeptical of what they don't
understand.

------
hungerstrike
Original title: "I'm sorry I criticized you Apple. You win"

~~~
kgwgk
One of these days I'm going to write a bot to keep track of title changes.
"Apple is a traditional business" is the current title, for the record. I
expect (I hope!) it will be changed again soon, because it doesn't make much
sense.

~~~
dang
We changed the title because the original one was arguably linkbait, and the
site guidelines call for changing those (see
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)).

When we do that, we try to find a phrase in the article itself that represents
what the author is saying. That's what we did here. If there's a better, more
representative phrase, we can change it again.

~~~
kgwgk
"Apple is a rock of common sense in an industry that’s gone rogue" (the
subtitle) would be better.

"Apple is the perfect tech company for this day and age, an example to the
rest of Silicon Valley" (the take-home message in the first line) would be
better.

The Apple "is a traditional business" remark refers to the main point of this
opinion piece, which appears right before that statement:

"This is a time when companies whose innovations are more intrusive than
useful, more gimmicky than problem-solving, operate with business models that
either burn investors’ cash or turn the users into products.

"At a time like this, Apple is a rock of common sense, sobriety, dignified
engineering supremacy, prudent financial and supply chain management,
effective marketing, and customer-oriented retailing."

Without the proper context, "Apple is a traditional business" could mean
anything and doesn't mean anything at all.

~~~
dang
"Apple is a rock of common sense in an industry that’s gone rogue" is too
baity, even more than the original title we changed. It's guaranteed to
provoke objections if we put it in there. Ditto with "perfect tech
company"—can you imagine the arguments that would lead to?

You're welcome to make a bot to track title changes. People have done this
kind of thing from time to time, e.g.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16018430](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16018430).
IMO the main thing it would show is how much work goes into getting this
right, and how hard it is.

Edit: Btw I agree with you that the title we changed it to isn't great; I just
haven't thought of a better one or seen a better suggestion. If someone has an
accurate, neutral title that preferably uses representative language from the
article, we'll happily change it again.

~~~
kgwgk
The problem with opinion articles is that they are not "objective" by
definition. A representative title cannot be objective. It's unfortunate that
interesting articles (they may be somewhat interesting, if they get to the
front page) are devalued by listing them under aseptic, uninteresting, click-
repellent titles.

------
ggambetta
Can the title be fixed to include the comma that was inexplicably dropped from
the original title?

------
cryptoz
Tim Cook made it clear be thinks that no industry should have any regulation,
especially his (technology, privacy, consumer hardware, should all have no
regulation, he thinks!). He thinks Facebook should have done what it did - no
regulation is best regulation he says.

No, Tim Cook is exactly as insane and rogue as the rest of them. He is just
doing what he can do make Apple the most money. He is not full of common
sense. On the contrary, he's basically insane.

Apple should be regulated. So should every industry. If you're a CEO and you
think you shouldn't be regulated, it's clear you're out for #1 and #1 alone.

Apple is not some saviour of the universe. They're just making money, and
_should_ be critized, not apologized to!

------
matte_black
Would anyone else like to say sorry?

------
karpodiem
Would be nice if iOS 11.4 did multi-room output via Airplay 2.

[https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/apple-seeds-third-
beta-...](https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/apple-seeds-third-beta-of-
ios-11-4-to-developers-public-beta-available.2117196/page-3#post-26026929)

The latest beta of iOS 11.4 / Airplay 2 does not work with multi-room output
at the moment.

