I think some of the chat around visionPro has been that people have seen it (zing) primarily as a way to consume video. An expensive way with a battery that barely makes it through a movie.
And there’s been a very fair assessment that it’s just not worth it for that for many. Which is why the news of some streaming apps skipping it dings it all the more. I can’t argue with that at all. I think that’s a shame and some chickens coming home to roost for Apple. Gaming is also not an obvious win.
@schwa@Gte The point is that the hardware isn't given away. The software drives the sales. No one is saying the hardware isn't worth something. It's that the profits from the sale of said hardware don't satisfy.
I mean, developers don't get a cut of the hardware THEY sell by making it useful, you know?
@schwa@Gte That R&D and marketing wouldn't help without the 3rd parties. And if you add up all the R&D of all the 3rd parties, and all their marketing…
@schwa@Gte A new platform required 3rd parties to do R&D to create products and then market them. I'm not conflating anything.
I'm not saying Apple is "freeloading”. I'm saying that it's a symbiotic relationship that is unacknowledged, where each benefits from the other's work.
3rd parties generally acknowledge that fact. Apple generally thinks of 3rd parties as a necessary evil…a platform can't be "perfect" without complete control.
@BenRiceM@schwa@dnanian@Gte the reality is the 15/30 cut feels ridiculous, since the things it provides are opaque & annoying (app review, store policy), intangible (the points @schwa makes in other replies), and perceived to round to zero on indie scales or double-paying at megacorp scales (cdn, tooling, regulatory compliance).
The App Store is not free to run. At all. At some scales, 15% doesn’t even cover the cost of retail CDN for widely-used apps.
@grork@BenRiceM@schwa@Gte Sure. But "at some scales”, if those apps were being sold direct by the developer, they would be priced in a way that was sustainable.
This is kind of what I've been saying in other posts: sure, these pressures benefit the consumer to some extent, right? But they do so primary on the backs of the developers, who face distorted market pressures due to the way the marketplace has been constructed with no alternatives.
@dnanian@BenRiceM@schwa@Gte the policy choices of the store that make certain models untenable (upgrade pricing, for example). I don’t understabd the 30% cut of IAP is restricting ‘sustainable business models’ from evolving for new or established platforms (outside of “market places” for digital content). The same cost base exists outside the store: https://www.codevoid.net/ruminations/2022/02/11/a-la-carte-app-store.html
@dnanian@BenRiceM@schwa@Gte also, to be clear, I think Apple should let you supply your own CDN, payments processor, et al. I just am tired of “30% is a rip off”
@schwa@grork@BenRiceM@Gte …the day I have to deal with the fact that I can no longer use a product I paid for because I can no longer download the program that used to be on the app store…even though it would work on my phone… >sigh<
@schwa@BenRiceM no argument here, and I’m not rooting for Tim Epic either. It’s just a bad time for Apple launching a new thing after burning a lot of goodwill in the past years.
@schwa@BenRiceM So, to be clear, what you're saying is that, say, refrigerator makers should charge milk producers who benefit from their sales, marketing and manufacturing teams, in order to maintain a fresh product.
Or, musicians should pay car companies for the privilege of being able to be played on entertainment system of the car the user has purchased.
After all, both enable things that are effectively unavailable otherwise, no?
I can understand and appreciate these concerns but I think they sort of miss the point. I don’t think they’re wrong but I do think it’s ok for a new thing to not be great at things that are already a decade or so into being tuned for other platforms. The expectations of prior platforms are being set as a baseline for something I think is quite different. Would being an amazing private video experience be compelling? Maybe. But it can’t be the goal. As the critics say—that’s not enough.
What I’m fascinated by is what new kinds of things can be done with such a device. Such a category of devices. I’m not sure we know. And I’m not sure Apple knows. And, while this may be anathema to anyone who wants to predict markets to develop for, to predict sales and success of the device, and to sift through some tea leaves (like it become a web-first platform) I am excited by that unknown.
It has become increasingly rare in tech for companies to just put into market new ideas they don’t actually know what they unlock. And there’s a part of me that just really loves tech that prompts you to rethink what computers are and how they work. Rabbit R1 and the Humane device are in a similar category though I’m less immediately intrigued by AI devices.
I admire a “fuck it, we’re putting this in the world and we’ll see what happens” attitude of anyone who takes a wrong at something new.
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