<story><title>Apple’s Social Network</title><url>https://stratechery.com/2018/apples-social-network/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>ethagknight</author><text>I don’t think he mentioned it, but the easy way for Apple to grow to a $2T company is to get my household, a typical locked-in Apple household with an iPad or iPhone for every person and a computer for each adult and an AppleTV at every TV, to start paying for ever more services through those Apple devices. TV service. Ubiquitous internet service. Financial services like payments but grow into banking. manage all my regularly scheduled bills like utilities, rent or mortgages. I would love for a trusted intermediary to handle these things.&lt;p&gt;I was recently taken aback by the amount of money I was paying for high-quality subscriptions “oh my god, I’ve paid $20&amp;#x2F;month for the last 12 months to subscribe to high quality streaming to Phish concerts via their app?!?” I signed up for it thinking I would only do it for a month. I forgot. I spent $240 on Phish audio, more than I spent on my Apple Watch. Apple’s real social network could be just getting started. Imagine if those “luxury” expenses were intermixed with a dozen other large, more legitimate bills? Apple could be processing $1000s a month per household, taking a hefty fee from some of them. And then launch a loyalty program :).&lt;p&gt;If I had to guess, I’d say this comment resembles Buffet’s view of Apple’s opportunity.</text></comment>
<story><title>Apple’s Social Network</title><url>https://stratechery.com/2018/apples-social-network/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>oflannabhra</author><text>I appreciate that Ben took the time to read between the lines of what Apple has been saying, to tease out how Apple is thinking about Apple. It&amp;#x27;s clear that&amp;#x27;s why he has a successful business.&lt;p&gt;This article made me stop and think about Apple&amp;#x27;s future, and to be honest, the future of computing. I think it is clear that in 10 years mobile computing has reached maturity (which is astounding). There is no broad use-case advantage that iOS has over Android (ie, I can communicate on both of them, I can get directions on both, etc).&lt;p&gt;It seems as if we have reached a valley of sorts, in which the use-cases and potential businesses that can be built on top of a computing platform that is always connected, always with us are mostly tilled ground. Discovering and inventing new ones takes an enormous amount of effort and ingenuity. It would be easy to think that most of the disruption has already happened.&lt;p&gt;However, what surprises me is that Apple is doubling down on performance. The processing capability of iPhones continues to rise, even when we see that the software that uses that capability has diminishing returns.&lt;p&gt;My best guess is that Apple is playing the long game, and that they see the investments that they are making in performance will pay off greatly in the coming years, because suddenly our phone will be more powerful than our desktop. And, while it is easy to scoff at that as being unnecessary, I think it actually will begin to unlock new use-cases that will lead us out of the current &amp;quot;valley of diminishing returns.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;The obvious candidate here is AR, but I think it actually is broader than that. It is clear that Apple is moving towards a system in which the iPhone is a computational Sun, around which multiple accessories &amp;quot;orbit&amp;quot;. I think such a system, taken into consideration along with cloud computing is actually incredibly exciting, and I think (as much as this audience might dislike it) that desktops and laptops truly are the current past.</text></comment>