If there is anything that represents a “services strategy” like the Apple of the Jobs era, it’s fitness+.
Just for starters, what if you have two people in the house who want to do a Fitness+ workout together? Too bad: even if they both pay for it, one gets the nice tracking and HUD and the other gets squat. This is an obvious and trivial feature, and it’s nowhere to be found. I could maybe see it getting cut for the launch checklist if people were behind schedule, but Fitness+ plus is more than five years old now, there is no excuse.
It’s total abandonware from a company trying to do the absolute minimum to get your recurring subscription.
They do support syncing up the workouts of people who're each using their own device: https://support.apple.com/en-us/101979
What? Abandonware? They are constantly posting new workouts that are thought out and well produced. The Fitness+ app is very well maintained. It works great. It has cool features. Honestly I don't know what you are talking about, here.
I've worked out together with one to three other people several times. No one cared that their heart rate wasn't shown on the screen. It's really not an important feature and a very niche use case.
It's just nuts peoples hatred of ads clouds their vision of this.
1) The user has never owned an Apple Device in their life. 2) They are trolling super hard.
There are complaints to be had that I definitely agree with, however, I see a TON of fiction for every single legitimate complaint.
No, not an Apple employee, shareholder, etc. (I am broke and dependent on my wife because I am disabled lol)
I am glad that they bought the rights to Brandon Sanderson's books, because I know Netflix wouldn't do them justice and Amazon prime would be far worse than that, but it also means that it will have a tenth of the available audience that a Netflix contract would have brought.
Compare to their much-ballyhooed exercise in lighting money on fire that was their LOTR series.
Same for the other big streaming services. Some of them (Netflix, Prime Video) are more involved in content production, up to and including having production facilities and an in house staff. But a lot of the “exclusive” branded content is made by semi-independent production companies.
And of course the device itself. I wish they would have distinct names.
However, I’ve been subscribed to it since its inception because it is the best way to have games that my kid can play without shady ads or engagement practices.
I know that is not going to last, as my kid is now a pre-teen and likes other types of games (like Hollow Knight) that are not available on Apple Arcade.
But the current state of the gaming industry is terrible, especially on mobile. Indy companies producing games like Dead Cells, Hollow Knight, and Stray are good, and there is the extremely rare case of Larian. But other than that, the market is full of dark-UX patterns to promote app purchases. Mobile apps are a minefield of gacha games that should be forbidden for kids.
Apple one is a steal IMO. Apple TV, Fitness+, 2TB, Arcade, and other smaller perks like News+ make it an easy sell. Compared to something like Netflix? Netflix is $25/mo for their top tier streaming alone. Apple TV consistently has higher quality content. So does Apple Arcade and Apple Fitness...then you get 2TB of storage to back your crap up to.
Ask Google or Samsung what they are doing for the cost of an Apple One subscription.
Not a fanboy or anything. I'm basically critical of all tech companies, however, Apple is doing something that is working well for them.
They raised it a while back to $7/month.
"user" is a worse term. It suggests that the "user" is simply utilizing the provider's products/services, and therefore they can't really complain about whatever the provider chooses to do in return, because the "user" can simply stop using.
It's also not a coincidence, IMO, that drug addicts are also called "users" since "user" implies a one way dependent relationship and that's what all the tech companies have been trying to create.
You're drawing a connection that's not there. It's indeed not a coincidence, but just because both situations fit the definition of the word "user" (and "to use").
People use drugs, whether they're addicted or whether they're taking a one-off dose given to them by a doctor. They are a customer in that situation if they're buying the drug from somebody (illegal dealer, pharmacy), but they're a user whether they paid or not.
Likewise, someone is a customer if Apple's if they paid for, or are expected to pay in the future, a device or service. But they're a user regardless of whether they're using a phone they bought, or a service that's being provided for free.
People can use services provided by charities, they can use skis on a mountain... there's absolutely no negative connotation to its general definition, it just happens that some things people use are bad and some are good.
In my mind, “user” stated to take over when we started having web based services that were used by people, but they were the ones paying. For example, Google and Facebook. Both got paid through ads, so they advertisers were the customers. The “users” were just the eyeballs the advertisers wanted to reach. So, you had to make your service compelling enough for someone to use for long enough that they’d see enough ads to make it profitable to provide the service.
It’s more akin to talking about “viewers” or “viewership” when talking about more traditional media.
For Apple, they are generally looking to get paid by the ultimate consumer of the product. So to them, we are the customers.
Maybe I'm just old, but we've called ... users ... 'user' since Unix or before. Perhaps it is just because Unix was integral to my early computing experience that I see it that way.
I'm the (super-)user of my Linux PC. I have total ownership and control over it.
Arguably "customer" makes the business relation to the provider of a service/device clearer.
The term I hate with a burning passion is "consumer".
"customer" represents a two-sided relationship, and I do feel that "user" is kind of one-sided, but gives agency, a user will use a product for their own purposes, presumably to help them achieve some kind of goal. A "consumer" is completely passive, their main goal is to do what the company tells them to do. A customer can walk out of the relationship, a user might complain about problems they have with your product, but the consumer will simply continue consuming whatever you want them to consume.
The worst part though, they seem to be mostly correct in their assessment.
One uses a hammer, one uses a microwave, one uses a computer, one uses a word processor. Nothing negative towards the user, they're being productive with the product.
If anything it's derogatory in the other direction, towards the manufacturer, reducing the fruits of their labour to that of a simple tool.
News+ is the only one of these that has poor quality.
Apple Music is extremely good, and pays artists better than many other platforms like Spotify. Unlike Spotify it isn’t enshittifying the product with AI music, video, and podcast distractions. The software is good quality, native code, not a web wrapper. Plus, there’s a classical music focused version that’s entirely separate.
Fitness+ is a premier product in the space. Have you tried it? The workouts sync with your watch and it has top tier video production quality along with a ton of thought put into accessibility.
Arcade probably does need to have more games added and more attention paid to it, but it’s basically the only place to get mobile games that aren’t stuffed full of gambling mechanics, pay to win, and advertisements.
Apple TV+ is literally the new HBO. They produce some of the most critically acclaimed shows on the planet, and broke the record for number of Emmy nominations by a single studio last year. The software is actually good, which is only really true for TV+ and Netflix. The production values, bitrate, and technology integration (Dolby Atmos/Vision etc) is second to none. MLS coverage by Apple is also top tier, again, with other sports networks regularly broadcasting mediocre quality (bad colors, muddy details, poor on-screen graphics). They’re also getting F1 for US viewers which is almost certainly going to be an improvement over the status quo.
The Play Store Pass? Which not only has games but utilities https://play.google.com/store/pass/getstarted
Yeah, I would say a big ad for a game that is literally THE textbook example of gambling mechanics and dark patterns, followed by 10 other ads for games of the similar genre, is exactly what the previous poster does NOT want from a service like that.
Oh and also from that page there's no telling at all what actual _games_ are included. The only slider on this page that lists anything is for different gambling slop "offers".
That's not even in the same category as Apple Arcade.
It used to be the case that if Apple wanted to build a walled garden / cathedral, then in order to compete in the hardware marketplace they had to provide software that didn't suck. You knew that if you bought an Apple product, there was reasonable assurance that everything was tightly integrated. If it wasn't, you'd go buy a market alternative (Android, PC). In my mind, this means that they spent a lot of time and dev resources (i.e. money) on their Frameworks. I think it showed. Time was spent on design. They focused on opening up capabilities "the right way."
Now that's pointless. If the iPhone is just an Android phone with a different coat of paint, then dev resources are going to be shifted to a place where Apple can distinguish themselves in the market, where they have platforms that they can control: Services.
Your argument essentially boils down to: If Apple doesn't get to do whatever they want without compromise, their execs get too discouraged and depressed to innovate. The obvious conclusion is that the only way we can enjoy the unrivaled genius of Apple is to give them a blank check to do whatever they want.
Every act of consumer protection and every form of pro-competitive regulation is twisted and exaggerated, no matter how insignificant it is to their bottom line or product functionality. The world is ending any time they don't get their way and when the world doesn't end, this decision becomes the scapegoat for all of their future faults, missteps, and bad performance. They can never do anything wrong and nothing is ever their fault, it's so so incredibly tiring to listen to this.
The company as a whole has changed across the board.
At least in North America - their biggest market I think? - the iPhone is still utterly locked down. Far more locked down than, say, their Macs were when OS X was at its best. Meanwhile macOS continues to get more locked down and yet still worse. Your theory just doesn’t match reality.
And getting rid of carrier apps was a positive but it was moving from one walled garden to another.
And that happened a very long time ago. It provides zero defense against accusations of apple changing for the worse.