[toyg]

There is another type of stock: immaterial social capital. As long as Apple products are status-symbols, owners gain social relevance from their ostentatious use. This is why brands promote themselves way beyond what is necessary to just sell widgets: to build identities that people will invest in, binding themselves into enough social stock that they will feel compelled to campaign for a brand just to protect that investment.

It's all incredibly sad.

[whstl]

Nah, Apple was WAY more of a status-symbol when it wasn't the current penny-pinching entity addicted to "services" and IAP.

There's nothing "high status" in having advertisements in the Settings app.

[toyg]

I don't disagree, Apple's brand was built before the current shenanigans were even possible. "Think different", am I right? I'm just saying that the previous investment in brand-building can now be leveraged into defending the indefensible.

[whstl]

Yep, exactly. IAP and advertisements in settings is the opposite of "Think different".

Apple Music and Apple TV+, sure.

But the 30% from Spotify and Netfix, and other shenanigans... not so much :/

[brookst]

Kind of ironic that social capital on HN is earned by being being pro-regulation, anti-big-tech, isn’t it? Your point holds but there is more than a little irony in the post.

[toyg]

I think it just shows that large tech companies have lost all credibility even among early-adopting, tech-positive nerds.

New technology, unbridled, inevitably reaches a point where its negatives become clear to society at large. The printing press is regulated, cars are regulated, nuclear energy is regulated - because society recognized that we can't just let anyone build reactors in their sheds. Internet tech has probably reached that point.

[fennecbutt]

The difference is motive. Some of us don't give a fuck about our fake Internet points.

Nor do I care about greasing up anybody on here; you're all strangers to me and I'd like to keep it that way.