> Because they want to hold people exclusively on their platform for
> upgrade & services revenue.
Yes, so would any vendor, if there's more money to be made by keeping people in your sphere. I mean, there's a reason that movie theaters and restaurants don't let you bring food from the outside. They want to be the exclusive provider of food and beverages in order to increase their revenue, so they can charge you $5 for a Diet Coke that might cost you $2 at the corner store.
But for Apple, it's a calculus: does Apple make more money at Thing X by keeping it open, or by keeping it closed and potentially reducing their customer pool? Where there's more money to be made in openness, in a way that aligns with Apple's other priorities, they'll be open. If there's more money to be made in keeping it closed, they'll keep it closed.
For example, I'm so glad you mentioned services revenue. Apple TV, at least the software portion, is now shipped _from_the_factory_ on smart TVs made by Samsung, LG, Sony, Vizio, and a handful of other vendors, as well as Roku and Amazon Fire TV. Apple Music has an Android app on the Google Play store that is kept up to date and integrates nicely into the Android OS, and actually holds a 3.7/5 rating (surprising considering how many Android fans review-bombed it in the early days simply for being an Apple app).
If Apple really wanted to "hold people exclusively" to their platform, none of those things would be available outside Apple products. There's more money to be made on services outside Apple hardware than there is in keeping those things exclusive to it.
> The more difficult it is either to use devices on various platforms, or
> to migrate away from Apple entirely, the better for Apple.
The better for any vendor if it's harder to migrate from that vendor to a competitor. That's what smart competitors DO, is make it difficult to leave. Your argument is that Apple should make it painless to switch away from Apple--so let me ask you, what _benefit_ does it incur to Apple to make it easier to switch away from Apple products or services?
If your entire argument is that Apple should do whatever it takes to make customers lives easier, then my response is, that's not a bad perspective to have, but it's unrealistic unless all aspects of the industry adopt the same attitude. If Apple makes it easy to leave, and the Googles, Amazons, and Microsofts of the world continue to make it easy to capture customers and difficult for them to leave, then there's zero benefit to Apple for being the pioneer in this new world order.
Yes, so would any vendor, if there's more money to be made by keeping people in your sphere. I mean, there's a reason that movie theaters and restaurants don't let you bring food from the outside. They want to be the exclusive provider of food and beverages in order to increase their revenue, so they can charge you $5 for a Diet Coke that might cost you $2 at the corner store.
But for Apple, it's a calculus: does Apple make more money at Thing X by keeping it open, or by keeping it closed and potentially reducing their customer pool? Where there's more money to be made in openness, in a way that aligns with Apple's other priorities, they'll be open. If there's more money to be made in keeping it closed, they'll keep it closed.
For example, I'm so glad you mentioned services revenue. Apple TV, at least the software portion, is now shipped _from_the_factory_ on smart TVs made by Samsung, LG, Sony, Vizio, and a handful of other vendors, as well as Roku and Amazon Fire TV. Apple Music has an Android app on the Google Play store that is kept up to date and integrates nicely into the Android OS, and actually holds a 3.7/5 rating (surprising considering how many Android fans review-bombed it in the early days simply for being an Apple app).
If Apple really wanted to "hold people exclusively" to their platform, none of those things would be available outside Apple products. There's more money to be made on services outside Apple hardware than there is in keeping those things exclusive to it.
> The more difficult it is either to use devices on various platforms, or > to migrate away from Apple entirely, the better for Apple.
The better for any vendor if it's harder to migrate from that vendor to a competitor. That's what smart competitors DO, is make it difficult to leave. Your argument is that Apple should make it painless to switch away from Apple--so let me ask you, what _benefit_ does it incur to Apple to make it easier to switch away from Apple products or services?
If your entire argument is that Apple should do whatever it takes to make customers lives easier, then my response is, that's not a bad perspective to have, but it's unrealistic unless all aspects of the industry adopt the same attitude. If Apple makes it easy to leave, and the Googles, Amazons, and Microsofts of the world continue to make it easy to capture customers and difficult for them to leave, then there's zero benefit to Apple for being the pioneer in this new world order.