Notes for Week 33, 2024

Song of the week:

Notes

  • I note below in my tabs that restaurants are under pressure which has resulted in a number of closures. While this is very likely true, the quoted restaurants are a bit at-odds with diners. Some of them are secondary restaurants where a chef/owner has decided a second location is necessary in the same, small, city. Others were just nothing to wrote home about. Some, also quoted, who are finding it tough, are places you can't get a booking for love nor money.
  • Another tab below notes an article about the app store, pricing, and policy towards devs. In effect, app store inflation has made Apple enjoy weird inflation. Sure, every WWDC they'll publish impressive figures on what they pay out to developers. But this number pales in comparison to their actual take home rate. And it hides some important truths.
    • Their post-Covid inflation is almost 50% margin on their app stores. Which is absolutely criminal. It's bad for developers that they do not get to enjoy that inflation. And horrific for consumers, who have been illegally blocked from enjoying competing stores.
    • During the Jobs era the margin was about 30%. Which is still an unfair margin on software services. But it's believable. Cook pushed it to about 40%. And now it's sitting at a ridiculous rate which covers the company for their poor performance on other software services. It's also being driven, apparently, by Phil Schiller, who could have just sat back and enjoyed the limelight as the guy who did the iPod ads. But instead he's basically turned into some sort of Ballmer character.
    • I know I've written this before, but this is the first time I've researched alternative operating systems for phones because I can't stomach handing my data to Google, but am increasingly sick and tired of Apple as it becomes 1990s Microsoft. And for what it's worth, Apple today is a far worse entity than 1990s Microsoft.

(via flickr)

Tabs

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Published on: 18th August, 2024

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