AAPL - Apple Inc.

[physdude]

Apple ad is complete FUD and one of the reasons I don't buy Apple products. Apple ads were fake news before there were fake news.

 

Credit card numbers being overshared? Please. Apple privacy solution for not sharing CC numbers? Buy through Apple app store and pay 30% more. Good job! Typical Apple milking their fanboyz.

 

#FreeFortnite

 

Apple touting CC security is utterly ludicrous given that the app store a lot of fraudulent charges in SE Asia and I have been a victim of this even though I don't use any apple products and detest their walled garden model. They are one of the few online stores here that doesn't require a OTP and apparently is an easy target for the fraudsters. Apple and security seem like a complete oxymoron to me even though I am not a security freak. If you are serous about security, you run OpenBSD or Kali Linux.

[rkbabang]

If you are serous about security, you run OpenBSD or Kali Linux.

 

Tell me what percentage of the population does that?

 

[Liberty]

Apple ad is complete FUD and one of the reasons I don't buy Apple products. Apple ads were fake news before there were fake news.

 

Credit card numbers being overshared? Please. Apple privacy solution for not sharing CC numbers? Buy through Apple app store and pay 30% more. Good job! Typical Apple milking their fanboyz.

 

#FreeFortnite

 

Apple touting CC security is utterly ludicrous given that the app store a lot of fraudulent charges in SE Asia and I have been a victim of this even though I don't use any apple products and detest their walled garden model. They are one of the few online stores here that doesn't require a OTP and apparently is an easy target for the fraudsters. Apple and security seem like a complete oxymoron to me even though I am not a security freak. If you are serous about security, you run OpenBSD or Kali Linux.

 

Paying with Apple pay, which uses tokens, is much more secure than what most Americans do, which is swipe cards or give them to waiters who go in the back and come back for them to sign a piece of paper. This is probably what the ad was about there.

 

Android is so full of malware and security issues, in good part because it's extremely fragmented and large portions of the ecosystem are still running many versions behind or can't even get patches, and each manufacturer puts its own, often crap software on top of Android (even if you trust Google, do you trust Samsung? etc). It's much easier to crack the average Android phone (which can mean getting at banking data or CC data) than the average iPhone.

 

The only reason why don't hear as much about it is because Apple is held to a completely different standard. We hear a lot more about every fake 'gate' scandal for Apple than we even heard about Samsung's exploding phones.

 

OS X/MacOS has generally been a pretty secure OS, in good part because of its UNIX roots and because Apple takes security seriously. Windows has had a horrible security track record historically, and its tendency to support every legacy thing forever and the high heterogeneity of the ecosystem has pros and cons, but one of the cons is that the attack surface for bugs and or malware is much higher.

[Guest longinvestor]

Apple ad is complete FUD and one of the reasons I don't buy Apple products. Apple ads were fake news before there were fake news.

 

Credit card numbers being overshared? Please. Apple privacy solution for not sharing CC numbers? Buy through Apple app store and pay 30% more. Good job! Typical Apple milking their fanboyz.

 

#FreeFortnite

 

Apple is much much better on privacy and security than its competitors. Much better. It's both a bigger focus, and a strategy benefit of not being primarily in the advertisement business.

 

Yes it’s a stunning $3 trillion + market cap on ads that is at stake. It’s going to be a ferocious fight and I hope consumers come out on the winning side.

 

Europe has Google and FB on the run, since GDPR. They went to Ireland and getting some heat. The fines are becoming more frequent.

[Liberty]

Yes it’s a stunning $3 trillion + market cap on ads that is at stake. It’s going to be a ferocious fight and I hope consumers come out on the winning side.

 

Europe has Google and FB on the run, since GDPR. They went to Ireland and getting some heat. The fines are becoming more frequent.

 

I think GDPR has actually entrenched the big players, because it's a lot more onerous for smaller competitors or new entrants to comply.

 

I think Apple isn't going to damage FB and Google much with privacy/security initiatives. IDFA changes in iOS 14 will mostly affect only a small part of FB's business.

[John Hjorth]

I just finished listening to & viewing the Apple presentation of the new watch & the new iPad, started now a bit more than an hour ago.

 

I would like to read your comments, please! [ ; - D ] [Personally, & right now, I'm [as a layman into this stuff] very much in doubt about what to think.]

[Cardboard]

Looks like freefall has begun. Down $5-6 by close? Then more tomorrow?

[John Hjorth]

Looks like freefall has begun. Down $5-6 by close? Then more tomorrow?

 

Well, I don't think much about what the market thinks about the new Apple innovations - I'm much more interested in hearing what the fellow CoBF members [especially those with a documented circle of competence in this topic by posts - long/short] think about these innovations & initiatives, medium & long term.

[longterminvestor]

I just finished listening to & viewing the Apple presentation of the new watch & the new iPad, started now a bit more than an hour ago.

 

I would like to read your comments, please! [ ; - D ] [Personally, & right now, I'm [as a layman into this stuff] very much in doubt about what to think.]

 

The services bundle is hopefully a monster - cash cow!  No directly correlated capex on the revenue, it was already expensed so top line services revenue dollars are providing a very nice enhancement to bottom line.  Apple always goes after the affluent customer and the bundle is pricey however the value is there.  I will sign up for the premium bundle.  The watch has become a very important part of the ecosystem and with more tech advances the watch could become the growth vehicle of Apple.  The health aspect of the watch will continue to grow a strong customer base and existing customers will want the upgrade. 

 

Apple is great at figuring out how to extract dollars from their loyal customers.  Buy a watch for $400, now you can get a new band for $50.  or buy a couple to change your style.  The other item regarding iwatch is the price points have gotten where older models are affordable to masses.  Those future customers who have held off due to price will now start considering older models and, cross your fingers, maybe the iwatch is the gateway drug to the apple ecosystem - they have android, love the iwatch, now they are looking at iphones. 

 

I am "watching" (hehe) the watch very closely with regard to cellular capability.  Will the watch ever get so good that customer can drop iPhone completely?  Watch only for everything and no iphone.  Never say never.  I think that is years away but something I think about. 

 

No disappointment from me on the holding off on new iphone for 2 reasons: #1 - they may do a sneaky launch closer to xmas and #2 Tim Cook himself has said 5G is not ready for commercial roll out.  Meaning even if iphone 12 is 5G compatible, there are not enough 5G towers to justify having a 5G product at this time.  I am not a 5G expert but I just don't see the coverage area when I look at it.

 

ipad will continue to do its thing, nothing there i really think about. 

 

what I continue to love about apple is the slow moving, very thoughtful, consistency from management.  I am so pleased to see them "honing their craft" so to speak.  Good in certain spots and stay in those spots.  With their balance sheet, they could buy anyone.  For example, future for apple is the "In Home" experience.  I can speak personally to that, I am building a home right now and we have chosen to purchase home automation from Control4 and lighting controls from Lutron.  This home automation world is highly fragmented and totally crazy from a customer buying experience if you dont know what you want.  If apple wanted to "own" the inhome experience they easily could just buying up a few of these players.  However they are strategically starting with you TV and will work from there.  Homekit in Apple will grow in time and maybe my Control4 system (probably cost $15,000) will be obsolete in 7-10 years.  Sucks for me but GREAT for Apple.  The point here is Apple is slowly getting an understanding of the market rather than just throwing product at people without a thought/care of the application.  I believe this to be intentional.   

[John Hjorth]

Thank you for your reply, longterminvestor,

 

I need days to process your input [to the best of my capabilities, hard stuff for me], but I'll get back to you, here.

[Liberty]

https://www.extremetech.com/computing/315186-apple-books-tsmcs-entire-5nm-production-capability

[johnny]

I think the 30% is simply not long for this world, despite your accurate read that there’s really no fundamental, nuts-and-bolts, economic reason why it has to disappear. Apple has already (as revealed, contrary to regular lies from management), caved in selective circumstances on the 30% rake. Now a lot of firms that perhaps didn’t realize they could push for it are going to (WSJ, NYT). The more they cave, the more unstable the 30% norm becomes, and the more political and brand vulnerability the firm has from only insisting on imposing that tax on the developers and companies least able to bear the costs.

 

And if Apple had not spend years backing themselves into the “look at YoY service revenue growth” narrative, they’d recognize that it is actually in the long-term interests of the company to have done this a year ago. But instead, they’re going to do an incredible amount of reputational damage fighting to keep it alive as long as possible.

 

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/25/apple-temporarily-reverses-decision-to-take-fees-for-facebook-events.html

 

Facebook said Apple temporarily reversed its decision to take a 30% cut of sales from businesses hosting paid events through Facebook.

 

So nice of Apple to grant special relief to Facebook during These Trying Times. I'm sure this temporary measure will be the last we hear of this unpleasantness.

[Jurgis]

So nice of Apple to grant special relief to Facebook during These Trying Times.

 

Yeah, Facebook is a poor small business that needs help and should not pay 30% fees unlike the huge rich tech behemoths.  ::)

 

So nice to see Apple stand up for a little guy.

[Liberty]

Good review of the iPhone 12 and 12 Pro. Rene's always smart and well-informed:

 

[DooDiligence]

The day they introduced the 12, the price of the 11 (with 256gb) got reduced by $100 & I ordered one.

 

It arrived within 2 days & I love it. Quite an upgrade from my 6+ which was 6+ years old.

 

The CarPlay display UI changed massively for the better.

[Liberty]

I wrote something here about Apple potentially getting into search (some speculation about that lately, partly because of the google antitrust which may stop the huge TAC payments google makes to Apple). I thought it may interest some:

 

https://libertyrpf.substack.com/p/45-my-thoughts-on-apples-search-engine

[rkbabang]

I wrote something here about Apple potentially getting into search (some speculation about that lately, partly because of the google antitrust which may stop the huge TAC payments google makes to Apple). I thought it may interest some:

 

https://libertyrpf.substack.com/p/45-my-thoughts-on-apples-search-engine

 

This is an excellent observation and one I've always practiced without really thinking explicitly about it.

 

"If you upgrade too often, you rob yourself of the positive experience of the really big upgrade jump in quality.

 

Our perception of quality is relative, we’re mostly comparing to something else, so it feels much better to go from a 10 year old car to a new one than get a new lease every 2 years even if to some it seems like in the latter scenario you “have more quality in your life so it should feel better”.

 

I've always kept phones at least 4 years and cars/TVs at least 10 sometimes much longer.

 

I still have my iphone X and will keep it at least another year, maybe two.  My TVs are 5 year old 65" 4K (not OLED or HDR) and I have no plans on changing them out, and this year I just traded in my 2007 Elantra for a 2020 Forester and my 2006 Sequoia for a 2019 Lexus GX460, both of which I hope to drive for 10-15 years.

 

[Liberty]

Apple just announced its first Macs with its own chips replacing Intel's. Here's some of my notes/reactions in a thread, for anyone interested:

 

 

Official specs here:

 

https://www.apple.com/mac/m1/

[Pauly]

Apple just announced its first Macs with its own chips replacing Intel's. Here's some of my notes/reactions in a thread, for anyone interested:

 

 

Official specs here:

 

https://www.apple.com/mac/m1/

 

WTF?! If these performance numbers are even close to what they're claiming in real world scenarios then this is going to be a massive leap. And they're delivering next week?! Well, my 6 month old Macbook Air just became a dinosaur.

 

[Liberty]

I wrote a fairly lengthy piece about Apple's ARM chips, it's under the 'Science & Technology' section of this:

 

https://libertyrpf.substack.com/p/50-my-thoughts-on-apples-arm-macs

 

I thought it may interest some here.

[Spekulatius]

^ This does not bode well for Intel.

[johnny]

Finally cutting App Store commissions from 30% to 15% for devs with $1M in annual sales or less:

 

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/11/apple-announces-app-store-small-business-program/

 

Pretty good timing for them to do this, since they need to lean on these devs to transition their x86 stuff to ARM and to transition their iOS stuff to Mac. Helps to get the relationship in a positive space first.

 

EDIT:

 

This will no doubt create a lot of interesting strategies for trying to get around the $1M cap--it's frankly difficult for me to imagine how they're going to be able to effectively enforce it. I think there's already some generic language in the dev agreements about not having multiple accounts, but it feels like a pretty trivial exercise to formally set up separate legal entities for each individual app. I guess the percentage of app developers who are in the "grossing 7+ figures, but on a portfolio applications that only gross 6 figures each" is probably not meaningful.

[Morgan]

I feel like if anyone can figure out those kind of gaming the system antics it’s apple. I wouldn’t worry about it too much.

[johnny]

I mean, it's not about "figuring it out" it's really about creating an enforceable contract to prevent it. I'm sure the FDIC can "figure out" that HNW people are having their bankers split up their multi-million dollar checking accounts into a bunch of $249,999.99 discrete deposits at dozens of different institutions, but the question is what they're going to do about it. Given how this account splitting is basically industry-wide now, I think everybody's landed on an answer: "absolutely nothing".

 

So, can Apple say "discrete legal entities owning different applications will be considered related entities for the purpose of our small business program, should they share n% beneficial ownership, and by the way we will have sending auditors to check your articles to figure out if you're gaming the system"? I doubt it.

 

My point is, a brilliant poster in this thread once said:

 

I think the 30% is simply not long for this world, despite your accurate read that there’s really no fundamental, nuts-and-bolts, economic reason why it has to disappear. Apple has already (as revealed, contrary to regular lies from management), caved in selective circumstances on the 30% rake. Now a lot of firms that perhaps didn’t realize they could push for it are going to (WSJ, NYT). The more they cave, the more unstable the 30% norm becomes, and the more political and brand vulnerability the firm has from only insisting on imposing that tax on the developers and companies least able to bear the costs.

 

And if Apple had not spend years backing themselves into the “look at YoY service revenue growth” narrative, they’d recognize that it is actually in the long-term interests of the company to have done this a year ago. But instead, they’re going to do an incredible amount of reputational damage fighting to keep it alive as long as possible.

 

They're doing the "right thing" here but they're still trying to bracket it and somehow maintain the notion that 30% is a reasonable norm and that any deviation from it is an act of generosity from Apple. My -guess- here is that people restructuring their app empires in order to maximize the 15% rate will be the norm, and tolerated by Apple. If anything, my suspicion is that this "small business" framing is about trying to make this seem like a more pro-social act than it is, and perhaps as a bonus softening the blow to the analyst/investor community, who might freak out about the implications of this change if it was presented more clearly as "Apple will be reducing its App Store revenues by about 50% starting immediately".

[Liberty]

https://sixcolors.com/post/2020/11/m1-macs-review/