It’s sad to see companies not spending a bit more on design. Sure, ai will help you get something decent out fast. But there’s a threshold where design becomes an indicator of trust. Especially for b2b software that tailor to large corps. Good design, character, adds directly to the bottom line.
I agree. I didn’t mean to be too critical. But if they’d made something simpler, I think it would save them tokens and end up more likely to convince their target audience of developers.
(The series of ‘motherfucking websites’ comes to mind, they were all very readable and simple, even if satire.)
I wonder if there’s a breakdown of their top performing or fastest growing services. It’s interesting how they dont seem to promote the services that much yet are seeing tremendous growth.
Always remember that most of their “services” revenue is the App Store 30% tax on casino games for children, and the commissions for Safari default search engine coming from Google. These two are Apple’s twin licenses to print money, and both of them grow without Apple needing to innovate or really do anything.
App Store grows as the addictive game publishers improve their manipulation skills, and Google’s check grows as browser usage increases. Every time someone types, say, “Citibank” into the search box and doesn’t add .com, Apple earns a tiny payment from Google.
I’m sure they als make a decent chunk of money from iCloud as users who buy base models are almost certainly forced to make use of iCloud Photo Library to free up enough space on the device to even function; but I suspect it’s orders of magnitude less than that.
I pay $40/month for Apple One alone, not to mention my various AppleCare subscriptions. Surely they make more money from that kind of service than google search payments.
Sure, and I have that Apple One plan too. Certainly from you and me they do. But the sheer number of people doing "searches" (99% of the sites visited from every safari browser is probably doing a "search" to get there) makes the Google search commission so big -- $20 billion per year in 2022 when we found out the figure due to court filings. It would take over 526 million of us - half a billion users - all subscribing to Apple One $38 tier just to equal that number. And I don't think the shift from Google to LLMs for "question asking" has probably put a dent in it, because when I look at how people use their devices, I believe that most searches are done for navigation purposes (people don't like remembering URLs and don't use bookmarks).
The most annoying thing about llm’s is that your answer heavily depends on your prompt, less about understanding the question. This makes us all spend a lotnof time adding things to the question ‘dont donthis, avoid saying this again, etc’ and thus moving away from it feeling natural.
Will this mean that when cost is more important than latency that replies will now take longer?
I’m not in favor of the ad model chatgpt proposes. But business models like these suffer from similar traps.
If it works for them, then the logical next step is to convert more to use fast mode. Which naturally means to slow things down for those that didn’t pick/pay for fast mode.
We’ve seen it with iPhones being slowed down to make the newer model seem faster.
Not saying it’ll happen. I love Claude. But these business models almost always invite dark patterns in order to move the bottom line.
It’s actually a pretty big deal. I always wondered why they didnt compete with Adobe. Even when Steve Jobs was still around. 90%+ of Adobe users are on Macs.
Why though isn’t such a significant announcement on the Apple.com homepage?
I’ve tried just about every system for keeping my desktop tidy: folders, naming schemes, “I’ll clean it on Fridays,” you name it. They all fail for the same reason: the desktop is where creative work wants to spill out. It’s fast, visual, and forgiving. Cleaning it is slow, boring, and feels like admin.
Claude Cleaner, I mean Cowork will be sweeping my desktop every Friday.
Designer–engineer here. After 15 years building products [1] ,from
scrappy side projects to multibillion-dollar platforms, I’ve found the most productive way to think about design is as a growth accelerant. The OP reaches a similar insight but keeps it in the realm of product development. That framing is precisely where the friction between engineering and design tends to arise. Design isn’t about making the code look nicer... it’s the bridge between engineering execution and business growth.
Take Dropbox’s much-debated rebrand. Many on HN dismissed it as superficial. What they missed is that Dropbox’s growth had plateaued. The new visual language wasn’t meant to "improve the product" for existing power users. it was engineered to make the product feel approachable to an audience the company had never reached. It worked.
When designers focus on the measurable business impact of their work—and engineers stop treating design as a decorative afterthought—cross-functional frictions fade and growth compounds.
> When designers focus on the measurable business impact of their work—and engineers stop treating design as a decorative afterthought—cross-functional frictions fade and growth compounds.
Measurable business impact -> The dashboard becomes a battlefield and every team wants a modal for their feature release. Dark patterns come hand-in-hand.
I think the world would be better if individual designers focused less on business growth metrics and more on holistic User Experience.
Thanks for the feedback. Yes $50 = 1 logo (the one you end up liking/wanting to download). Im still figuring out the best business model that is the most fair while limiting potential abuse.
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