Hacker Read top | best | new | newcomments | leaders | about | bookmarklet login

> Anybody saying this is a response to recent anti-trust headlines doesn't understand how a company the size of Apple works. When an announcement like this is made, it means this program has been in the works for YEARS.

Apple knows it has been skirting the line and likely has many programs in place to deploy if and when the time is right.



sort by: page size:

> Anybody saying this is a response to recent anti-trust headlines doesn't understand how a company the size of Apple works. When an announcement like this is made, it means this program has been in the works for YEARS.

They can perfectly build the program and keep it on hold/maintenance internally, and when the threat of legal action/bad brand image arrives, launch it.


> Anybody saying this is a response to recent anti-trust headlines doesn't understand how a company the size of Apple works. When an announcement like this is made, it means this program has been in the works for YEARS.

It's likely they have many pro-consumer and anti-consumer initiatives in the works at any given time. Public opinion can still impact whether those initiatives get accelerated or delayed.


> Anybody saying this is a response to recent anti-trust headlines doesn't understand how a company the size of Apple works. When an announcement like this is made, it means this program has been in the works for YEARS.

I know how companies of this size work. When they have regulatory/pr/legal risk, they can move really fast for their size. Don’t know if that’s the case here, but given it only covers subset of parts of few latest models, limited to USA initially, and will likely take a few years to properly expand, it could totally be rushed in timeline of under a year.


>I understand why Apple is doing it

Do you? It sounds like you're implying that they can't do it, despite also pointing out that they easily could.


> Is he saying these are unique to Apple?

Yes, they said:

> Of course, they can do this since it does not go against their incentives like other companies that make money on the time spent of the platform

The implication of that sentence being that other companies haven't done it and that other companies wouldn't do it.


>I expect Apple will take this very seriously.

It's been going on for years, when exactly will they start taking it seriously?


> Yeah, it probably is Apple.

Did any publicly evidence appear officially or accidentally on the internet that Apple is working on such a project (for Microsoft the situation is known)? I am just a kind of person who prefers strongly to look at the evidence instead of rumors, speculations and hopes.


>Huh? This seems totally backwards to me. Stripping down an acquisition to incorporate it into the acquiring company is the ultimate competitor crushing strategy;

It's not as if Apple lacks competition capable of doing the exact same.


> I'd say it's pretty obvious that this is a desired outcome on Apple's part.

I don’t see that. Why do you think it will happen?


> amazing for Apple and its shareholers

This only makes sense if you know nothing about Apple's business.

You really think they're doing this to save $50 from ~5m Macs? You really think all this upheaval is for a mere $250m a year in savings? It'll cost them 10x that in pain alone to migrate to a new platform.

Come on now....$250m is nothing at Apple scale. Think bigger. Even if you hate Apple, think bigger about their nefariousness (if your view is that they have bad intentions - one I don't agree with).


> It's just that in my perception Apple (or most any big business) is short sighted.

Ok, so let me restate what your position seems to be: you acknowledge that the move is in their long term best interests, but you assume that they must be doing this for other reasons, because you’ve already decided that.


> I'm not the biggest Apple fan around, but if this is meant to be some kind of expose of wrongdoing, I completely disagree.

Why would you think it is such a thing?


> This is Apple exploiting a very lucrative market position, one that they did invest quite a lot of money in – and took quite a gamble – to create.

What's wrong with that?


> That Apple is swimming in money just makes things like this more jarring.

This is a common theme. Big Tech Company X is rich therefore they should be able to do Y. But corporations don't really work that way, they build a monopoly around a few domains and then their organization is structured to maintain that monopoly. It's the exception, not the norm, for established companies to gain competency in a new domain, and it usually comes with an acquisition or a special initiative by senior management.


> So Apple doesn’t need to do this so much for business reasons. But I do think they should do this for other reasons.

It is interesting to know someone thinks that such a successful mega Corp like Apple has or even should have some other reasons besides business.


> Apple is engaging in this activity of their own free will for sake of their own commercial gain and are not being incentivized or coerced by the government in any way.

Honest question: how do you know this, for sure? Or is your comment supposed to be read as an allegation phrased as fact?


> but I don’t think you can argue that the system isn’t “functioning” as intended right now.

The only reason this can work is Apple having a dominant position and being benevolent--that's not competition generating better, fairer options.


> this is a fantastic workaround against one of the world's largest corporations extracting revenue from everything

Exactly. The idea that one looks at this situation and somehow concludes that Apple is good and the manufacturers are bad is absurd.


> but IMO this is a bearish signal for Apple--they're sitting on a ton of cash and can't catch up to OpenAI?

Nobody has caught up to OpenAI, it's absurd to expect Apple to have done it simply because they have the cash.

next

Legal | privacy