
Apple's Business Beyond the iPhone - taylodl
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-30/apple-shares-rally-as-company-outlines-life-beyond-the-iphone
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samspenc
Wow, Apple's services business (consumer focused) is $10 billion a quarter
now.

To put that in perspective, Amazon's entire AWS cloud business, which is
enterprise focused, is at around $7 billion a quarter.

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ksec
Not to mention Apple has a much higher Operating Margin than AWS. And yet
people are still not happy with it.

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mark_l_watson
I have bought myself and many in my family Apple Watches - a fantastic product
IMO.

As voice dictation gets better, answering email and messages on the watch lets
me often just leave my phone at home.

I can imagine a future when many people only have a watch as their personal
device but use other larger devices that are shared, instantly personalized by
a watch.

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wvenable
In the Apple world, everyone owns their own devices. No sharing.

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rhlsthrm
But if everything is powered by your watch, then all the external "devices"
become essentially dumb monitors. If you could walk up to a monitor and your
watch automatically paired with it through Bluetooth and all your stuff popped
up ready to be browsed in full HD, desktop sized, wouldn't that be awesome? Of
course the watch internals need to be capable of driving full-screen HD, but
we're not too far from that.

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wvenable
My watch is more powerful than my smartphone was a few years ago. _But_ my
phone is also now more powerful than my desktop was just a few years ago. And
my current desktop is just ridiculous.

Of course, my watch is good for mostly telling the time. My phone is good for
browsing the web and playing games. And my desktop is good for software
development.

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clairity
i don't think there's much mystery here. apple's strategy has been pretty
consistent with their apparent mission--ubiquitous computing for regular (but
not poor) folks--for years now, since the success of ipod revealed itself as a
foothold for apple to launch the iphone and set it on this path.

the iphone is a huge stepping stone to that future, and it will still be
relevant for a while (if no longer novel and sexy). carplay, home, airpods,
watch, even icloud--all that stuff now wraps around the iphone to create
pieces of a future personal computing cocoon. over time, the integrations
between them will be more and more seamless until the iphone disappears,
absorbed into those other devices.

apple's current services growth is part of this strategy, not the strategy
itself. it has to build out that part of the business (particularly video
content/entertainment) to set itself up to be competitive in that future
market that the other faang companies are also vying for.

(as an aside, the movie _her_ seems to be a neat extrapolation of apple into
the future, minus the clunky ending)

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tw04
They desperately need to port messages/facetime to windows and android. They
could very easily charge a flat yearly fee with the promise of secure
messaging. They're going to miss the boat just like blackberry before them if
they don't move sooner rather than later.

EVENTUALLY Google will stop dropping the ball, and then it will be too late.

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edmundsauto
What makes you think that Google is the big competitor to Messages in the US,
rather than FB Messenger? I know more (non-tech audience) people who use FB
Messenger than any of the google products. Does Google default to Hangouts
messages when using an android phone, if the recipient also has an Android
(vs. straight MMS)?

Personally, I use Apple's Messages, but that's because it's installed by
default and integrated with SMS. It's basically just enhanced MMS, so a really
really easy transition.

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wvenable
> Does Google default to Hangouts messages when using an android phone, if the
> recipient also has an Android (vs. straight MMS)?

No. Google does not integrate their messaging solution with SMS. The real
reason behind that is that Google doesn't want to piss off the carriers who
still see messaging (iMessage excluded) as a source of revenue.

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tw04
You realize hangouts supported SMS previously and they removed the
functionality to try to get people to use Allo, right?

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wvenable
...and Allo is gone to make room for the carrier implemented RCS.

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specialist
I want my Mac's Time Machine to use my iCloud storage. Then I'll be fully
migrated to the Apple ecosystem. What Scott Galloway calls a "monogamist
relationship".

I also want to send iCal invites via Message.

PS- Oops. I forgot about my personal email. I'm still using gmail for my
throwaway and official email addresses (eg specialist@specialist.com). Ya,
I'll want to migrate that to Apple too, some day.

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yvsong
iGlass.

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mikece
It would be _really nice_ if Apple went back to their roots and built INSANELY
AWESOME computers. With FULL keyboards instead of gimmicky touch-bar thingies.

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rhlsthrm
I think my MBP is pretty awesome and I love the Touch Bar.

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reubenswartz
I've heard people saying that they hate it, that they don't mind, or that the
find it somewhat interesting. Never heard anyone say that love it. Can you
give more details?

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IronCoderXYZ
I love the touchbar as well, because it allows me to easily change volume
(swiping a bar rather than tapping the same button) etc.

However, the ESC key is also on the touchbar, which makes using vim pretty
annoying.

