[jeroenhd]

Apple is a digital services company that happens to sell hardware. Their big money maker is their app store, and no Linux user is ever going to buy apps from the app store.

They still have the Darwin kernel open,but more and more of the open core is moving to closed components, a recipe for what Google started doing to Android. Now that they're no longer the hipster underdog, I don't think they care much about the brand marketing. You already believe they make the best laptops by far, what more marketing do they need?

[mft_]

AFAIK Apple’s “services” revenue is a little over a quarter of their total; everything else is hardware, dominated by the iPhone. Mac hardware is <10% of total revenue.

iPhones are largely locked to their App Store so no risk there. Macs (currently) aren’t locked to the App Store - and I’d guess that Mac App Store usage is middling as a result.

Which is to say, I doubt that a marginal Mac App Store revenue hit from a small proportion of users switching to Linux over MacOS is the driver for not supporting Linux development. I’d guess it’s more about an inflexible company culture and maybe not wanting to extend their area of responsibility and risk.

[jeroenhd]

Revenue wise, the services part is not that large. Profit-wise, though, I don't believe the same is true. Their 30% cut is barely costing them anything compared to manufacturing hardware and physical logistics.

I don't think the Mac App Store is going to get to iPhone levels of lock-down soon, but Apple thinks in ecosystems, not just in laptops. If you have an iMac, you probably have an iPhone, and you're probably going to buy an iPad should you ever want a tablet.

If they wanted, they could open source all of the drivers necessary to boot an OS as part of their Darwin core, but they choose not to. That actually breaks with their older, more open development style. I guess they just don't see the benefit of being open any longer.

[LtWorf]

Yeah probably they want to be free to bork it, but if they released some documentation or patches, they'd be expected to keep them up to date and working at the very least.

[xoa]

>Apple is a digital services company that happens to sell hardware. Their big money maker is their app store, and no Linux user is ever going to buy apps from the app store.

You do realize that Apple is a public company and one can just go look at their financials like their latest 10-Q [0] right? For the most recent 6 month half (ending March 28 2026) I'm seeing $194 billion for product sales and $61 billion for service sales. The gross margins are certainly higher on services, at 77%, but 40% product margins are nothing to sneeze at either, and the disparity in absolute sales means the absolute dollar gross margins are $77 billion for products vs $46 billion for services.

So I don't see how you can assert that their "big money maker is their app store" from those numbers. Hardware matters a lot, and furthermore Apple sells services (like AppleCare+) that are specific to hardware and thus even a Linux user might still be interested in.

And without their hardware, their services would evaporate. There is a much tighter link there than with many companies. So they're on the hook for continued R&D and capex on that no matter what, you can't really separate that out, and in turn it's always going to be useful to have more volume to amortize it with.

I think primarily it comes down to corporate DNA, which is powerful. There are plenty of Mac hardware, software and service markets in pro/business/enterprise Apple has neglected or abandoned over the years, including ones making oodles of money, not out of any 4D chess but just because it doesn't fit them as an organization.

----

0: https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0000320193/37f5e9c...

[Mashimo]

> Their big money maker is their app store

That said, their AirPods division could be a Fortune 500 on its own.

[trueno]

why do people just make stuff up ? apple is a hardware company with supply chain excellence that eclipses most pc manufs giving them entire verticals of control, that joined the services game later on. their services don't even come close to the offerings of other tech giants and they're largely okay with it. the bulk of their revenue has always been and continues to be hardware and the bulk of their r&d war chest funds the development and advancement of hardware.

[cromka]

> Apple is a digital services company that happens to sell hardware.

That's just your made up opinion, completely not supported by their financials.

[sneak]

I think Apple sees the writing on the wall with hardware feature increases and hardware longevity.

Sell a phone that is good for a few years, or get sell a phone and also get monthly 100% margin payments indefinitely? Given that phones are going to be useful for longer and longer periods, the replacement/upgrade cycle is definitely going to slow. They’re running out of compelling reasons you MUST have the new phone, falling back on dumb shit like making it stupid colors so you can wield it like a $1400 status symbol. It already does all of the camera and video stuff any normal person could ever ask for, which was previously the main way of differentiating smartphones.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the internal mandate/goal is equal services profit to hardware profit. It is a LOT cheaper and easier to vibe code new services than to design and build new features into the best phone in the world that has already been aggressively iterated on for two decades. Additionally, new signups are all profit as the marginal cost of additional subscribers is zero. Apple’s future is in subscriptions, that’s clear.

Are they there now? No. Does almost every single product decision they have made in the last 10 years point to this future? Absolutely. This “sign up pretty please” user-hostile bullshit (which now everywhere in all products, or nudged toward by all products) is the most un-Apple thing that I have ever witnessed in my 30+ years spent watching hawk-eyed at every single product, accessory, product variation, and service they have ever released.

I sometimes wonder if Jobs would have reached the same conclusion and pulled the company into the same direction in service of profitmaxxing vs spending the company’s time and resources producing and selling things that are insanely great. Can you name one Apple service that is insanely great? (iMessage’s uptime comes to mind, but that doesn’t directly generate subscriptions, and certainly doesn’t generate a single shred of the unalloyed glee in customers that was the characteristic phenomenon that originally put Apple on the map for decades.)

(Unrelated to this topic, the closest I get to that feeling anymore mostly gets caused by DJI and Anker.)

[speed_spread]

If there was a Linux Apple App Store, I would buy stuff from it. I already buy from Steam. OSS doesn't have the answer to everything. Boutique software has value that people are willing to pay for.

[jeroenhd]

Linux applications are being sold. In fact, GPL-licensed applications get sold, so it's not even the OSS part that's holding you back. ElementaryOS even has its optionally-paid app store: https://appcenter.elementary.io/ Autodesk and other industrial software providers are quite happy to sell you software, though unfortunately not through a unified app store.

In practice, I expect a paid Linux app store to go down about as well as the Microsoft Store has. Especially now, in the age of vibecoding.

[Koshkin]

> If there was a Linux Apple App Store, I would buy stuff from it.

I believe you.

> I already buy from Steam.

I believe this even more.

[tuna74]

flathub.org ?

[mmcnl]

This is just plain wrong. Apple generates most revenue and profits with hardware and it's not even close.

[jeroenhd]

Apple's profit margins on many services are at 76% (according to Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonmarkman/2026/01/13/apples-de...), over twice that of their hardware sales. Margins are higher on reselling licensed content (their Spotify and Netflix alternatives), but their customer base for those is still rapidly growing according to their 2025 report.

Tim Cook said it himself: Apple is not a hardware company (https://www.businessinsider.com/tim-cook-apple-is-not-a-hard...).

[cromka]

> Apple's profit margins on many services are at 76% (according to Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonmarkman/2026/01/13/apples-de...), over twice that of their hardware sales.

That's not what you said. Their margins on software and hardware are irrelevant to what they, as a company, make most money off on — which was your original claim on which you are wrong and got called out on.

So annoying when people can't just admit they're wrong and instead gaslight people with their changed narrative.

[mmcnl]

Hardware revenue is 3x the services revenue, even with half the margins it still generates more profit than services. I get that Apple would like to increase service revenue but they are a hardware company at heart and their financial statements show it too

[scarlehoff]

If you read the last link you'll see he just means Apple could slash its hardware margins (if needed) and still make tons of money.

As we saw recently, they decided they are, after all, a hardware company, since they decided not to slash their margins...