Frankly, I do not understand why you care about how the Apple TV & Peacock bundle may somehow dilute Apple’s “premium branding” which allows the company to charge higher prices with a commensurately inflated net profit margin.
I would like to see Apple give consumers a break and reduce its prices so that its hardware and services are more affordable. The company will still rake-in billions in profits although its stock price may take a bit of a hit, at least temporarily. . . Of course, you and I may disagree about the real-world value of Apple’s much-vaunted ecosystem’s benefits.
Apple has tried that in the past. For example, Performa-series Macs. Offering “value priced” machines at Sears. iPhone 5c. In any case, I don’t think any of Apple’s attempts to move below its premium pricing (or “mass luxury”) position have worked in the past for a variety of reasons. Building products for price-sensitive customers—and marketing to them—just isn’t part of Apple’s DNA.
I agree. We are looking forward to to another 5 weeks of Grand Prix skating. We tend to set up recordings for all sporting events ahead of time and watch them at our convenience.
Pick contest. Click the yellow button (+ MY STUFF) at the bottom of the screen and the + plus sign changes to ( ✓ MY STUFF). The recorded file will be saved to the + My Stuff in the list to the left of the main display that is headed by the Search button
That feels different to me because it’s Apple that’s promoting Peacock as much as the other way around, whereas it was Starbucks promoting iTunes back then. Apple does lots of deals that get other companies to promote Apple, but you don’t see Apple regularly plugging other companies’ products.
I worry about it being a slippery slope that causes Apple to make ever more marketing and design decisions aimed at driving additional non-Apple purchases rather than the quality of the user experience. On the far end of that spectrum are Amazon’s Echo products, which are constantly trying to nudge users into buying things.
What’s ok by me is that, as an AppleOne subscriber (so, I already get Apple TV+), the only notifications I have received about this promotion are from external websites (like Tidbits) doing stories about it. There was no notification on my iPhone, iPad, any of my Macs, or any of my Apple TVs about this. As a separate subscriber to Peacock, I also never heard from them about this. It was all covered in the tech press.
What worries me (I guess) is that Apple is leaning more and more on services as new revenue / profit sources rather than new products. That said - after the iPhone, they will likely never see again another hardware or software product that fundamentally changes the company, so I guess you go where the money will come from.
Well, if anybody could foresee such a change and its effects—such as Intel moving from memory to microprocessors, Apple from desktops to mobile, or Amazon from retailing to AWS—they would be insanely rich!
;-)
Seriously now, I think Apple could be transformed in the future by an as-yet unknown product or service. Creativity and design are embedded into its corporate DNA deeply enough to enable it to move beyond its current incrementalism. It may take a new set of senior managers or a revolution of sorts somewhere in the organization but Apple has both the financial resources and institutional memory to allow it to be innovative if it chooses. In contrast, I have a hard time seeing companies like Dell or Meta ever being different from what they’ve always been.