[jedberg]

They're gonna need a huge internal cultural shift if this is going to work. Their entire company is built around hardware. Services are "just good enough". No one buys an iPhone because of the services offered -- you buy the services because you already have the iPhone and it works better than the third party services. But I don't know anyone who adores the Apple services.

Or to put it another way, even if they offered the Apple services on non-apple devices, I doubt many people who don't already have an Apple device would sign up.

Their services make money in spite of how they work, not because of it. If they want to compete on services, they actually have to make good services and prioritize them internally.

[hug]

On the other hand, if all of the services are “good enough” that they become the default option for every iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV, that’s a very healthy user base from which to progress.

That said, Apple service excel in certain ways: Apple Music with Sound Check, for example, is easily the best sounding mobile music streaming. iCloud Drive is the most seamless internet storage account for mobile devices.

[tootie]

Do they have any iconic software that wasn't appropriated from NeXT? Keynote is pretty good. Everything else is either awful or basic.

[verisimilidude]

Pages was excellent during the 00s.

Then it wasn't.

They removed much of its power in one of the annual updates. I think it happened in concert with the launch of their iOS version of Pages. Fortunately many of those discarded concepts found their way into LibreOffice.

I know a lot of people feel the same way about Final Cut.

[jedberg]

Keynote is fantastic. But it’s not an internet service.