Interesting that services revenue growth (+14% YoY) is less than overall revenue growth (+16% YoY).
It really shows the reliance on the iPhone for revenue growth remains, with iPhone giving 23% YoY revenue growth, while Mac and wearables declined YoY.
So what? Google has been plugging its phone with AI features blah blah. The vast majority dont care about AI to the extent its going to hurt Apple at all. They know that too. Hence they continue going-on and not dumping hundreds of billions into chasing AGI.
This is one of the better articles I've read that clearly articulates the motivations of social media companies (and state variants) and the devastating impacts these apps are causing to individuals (anxiety and depression) and society through misinformation. I'm not yet convinced effective regulation can be enacted, but I respect one of the conclusions that we need to "encourage transparency and accountability in how content is disseminated and moderated on social media platforms".
As someone who works for one of the large “social media” platforms, I see a tremendous amount of the content, both positive and enjoyable and informative, and the negative and sometimes dangerous.
It’s difficult to find productive forums on this topic, but I’m definitely interested in hearing what others think beyond the emotionally-charged “BAN TIKTOK” or “YouTube is full of misinformation and must be censored” dialogue, that is, in many cases, politically motivated.
Personally I think any form of broadcast and amplification requires guardrails, balanced to be protective of people as well as rights, yet many of the debates seem to land at extremes.
I think the main conversation to be had is about incentives.
As operators of app stores, Google and Apple have no incentive to remove shovelware, as they earn a healthy share of every buck made by their creators, at almost no cost.
Similarly, ad networks have no incentives to remove harmful ads, as long as nobody complains enough to cut into profits.
And above all, social media platforms have little to no incentive to remove emotionally manipulative content. It's effectively a symbiotic relationship between the content and "the algorithm".
How do we change the incentives without resorting to censorship? I think the government bodies have in part failed to address these things, because the product to be regulated is information. It's always a slippery slope towards censorship, which makes for a perfect target for lobby work.
Some really interesting pieces. I particularly like Super Discount (1998), where a temporary retail space was established to sell supermarket goods below regular prices. It mentions the "entire budget of the exhibition" had been spent on importing these products.
"A garage-sale alike supermarket was established in the exhibition space, which among other goods offered salami, cleaning products, biscuits, canned food, pasta, cheese, cat food, cakes, and sweets. The goods were purchased in France, taxed at the border and imported to Switzerland. Hereby it was made possible for the visitors of the exhibition to shop 35% cheaper than in Swiss supermarkets."
Completely agree. I can't see them reviving the Xserve brand with their own silicon, but I could see them introducing cloud hosting services. Ideally with differentiation in something like environmental credentials (reduced, renewable power, etc.) to try and gain market share whilst maintaining margin.
Besides a deliberate paucity of knobs to tweak, what exactly is the difference with AWS S3 as far as the target market (app developers) is concerned? This is a cloud hosting service in all but name.
"That uncertainty reached a new high this week, as Google announced that 56.1% of ads served on the internet are never even “in view”—defined as being on screen for one second or more. That’s a huge number of “impressions” that cost money for advertisers, but are as pointless as a television playing to an empty room."
I don't understand the issue here. Unless things have changed over the years, the vast majority of Google advertisers would be paying "per click" (CPC) rather than "per impression" (CPM). When I was advertising it was quite difficult to pay on a "per impression" basis, and the offers to enable this were after considerable data had been calculated using the "per click" method. Switching to "per impression" was optional and appeared to average your existing "per click" spend rather than some program to hide your underlying click spend.
As a "per click" advertiser I don't care if my ad is only "in view" half the time it's displayed. I care that a person is clicking and they intended to click.
While it doesn't appear to be malicious (I got a redirect to here), it also doesn't have the same WHOIS information as the official website. I guess that means it is probably owned by a nice person helping us when we fumble keystrokes, but as it has the potential to become less benign in future, the official domain should remain the preferred option for access.
A looming price increase should help convert reservations into sales, swiftly, while simultaneous rewarding early adopters. I wonder how much of an increase it is, and how long before it drops back?
Having worked in starting up new communities anything that makes the prospect more "real" tends to work as you described for one portion of the population but is usually offset by a spike in withdraws as well. Once people are faced with a final commitment point the end result seems to trend words a small decline. How much of that applies to the car market I do not know,
The early adopters are already "ahead" (pricing wise) on this decision for now, and most new car buyers seem to accept gradual depreciation as a fact of life. I also don't think Tesla could unveil a radical price cut like the iPhone scenario (~30%) without some serious red ink and damaging their price anchor against German luxury cars.
I'd assumed costs gradually decreasing over time - especially in the (currently) very expensive battery technology. I'd guess they'd want to pass these savings on to increase market share as quickly as possible, rather than try and squeeze some extra margin by maintaining prices.
I use ServerTastic (https://www.servertastic.com/) for VeriSign certificates - cheaper than buying from VeriSign directly and it's the same "end product".
It really shows the reliance on the iPhone for revenue growth remains, with iPhone giving 23% YoY revenue growth, while Mac and wearables declined YoY.
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