It’s CLV (customer lifetime value): the integral of the MRR. Something most companies mentioned on HN should understand though it feels like Apple is the only one that takes it seriously
(And with Apple’s new CEO, the early signs are that commitment is headed for the ash heap as well, but it seems the Mafia may have a longer horizon)
Yes, this is the problem I was referring to. There is internal opposition but the exec team will clearly turn over in the next few years (due to retirement) which will inherently bring in a team more aligned with the CEO’s objectives.
The services ads at the top of the Settings app (when you get a new iPhone or add another device to your account) have been there for years and long predate Ternus.
The Mafia may also have shorter horizon:
- Fantanyl 'customers' have munch higher risk of sudden-death
and then stop being customers.
- Fentanyl is a much more debilitating drug than heroin and much cheaper.
So Fentanyl customers are less able to gather the money for the next fix, and don't need as much (less revenue).
"The Mafia" is... many different things.
From self-defense post-war southern-italian village organisations to pure-evil predatory psycho-clans, to anything in between.
For starters:
- <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gomorrah_(film)" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gomorrah_(film)
- <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3o44Zv4DY64" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3o44Zv4DY64
More than simply being alive, they want customers who can stay employed and so continue to pay higher prices over a greater number of years. Cocaine and pot are horrible but their users can maintain a working life for years or decades, making them more profitable drugs in the long term.
Cocaine (in crack form) was found to be the third most harmful recreational drug overall, after alcohol and heroin. It also caused the most direct harm to users out of all drugs. Cannabis, not so much, mid-table. Non-crack cocaine was somewhere between the two.
The slope of addictive drugs with negative side effects starts with alcohol, then comes nicotine, pot, cocaine, crack, fentinal .... and then all the really exotic modern stuff. It is a spectrum. Some argue that there are upsides, and there are certainly uses for all these drugs, but no sane doctor would say they have no downsides, that unrestrained use is ever a good thing.
Alcohol has greater negative side effects than pot, and nicotine is more addictive than cocaine or pot. I’m not sure what you mean by “exotic modern stuff,” but if it includes hallucinogens (what people usually mean by modern/exotic drugs) then they’re not really addictive at all.
I ask because the scale reads more like a morality scale than anything based on actual negative effects, either in the individual or society.
Also if the family has some addicted to “normal” drugs it’s acceptable; but if they get fentanyl from you and die the next mafia family reunion will be spicy.
To be a bit critical, haven’t Apple software and hardware quality been getting worse for years even before the new CEO?
Apple Silicon was the exception, that was truly transformative. But other things, like how polished and snappy the OS feels, seems to have been getting steadily worse.
Hardware has been improving a lot since the low point of butterfly keyboards and no ports. Jony Ive went out the door and things improved. Then on the software side they course corrected recently after Alan Dye left. I have hope the software improvements will start to accellerate.
The ads show they are out of ideas and with everything enshitifying, and a duopoly, they don't need to serve customers. just be slightly less shitty than google.
This puts them at existential risk of disruption, because it will build huge unseen pressure for customers to flee.
We saw this with Opus 4.7 - 5, losing folks to Sol when it came out. But Anthropic delivered with 5.5
Honestly I don't think lack of new ideas is the problem, it's the bad execution/design of their existing products. Like look at Time Machine on macOS. The basic idea (backups) is almost not an idea at all, but the first implementation was amazing for its time, and the current implementation is a total mess and basically unusable. The idea is not the issue.
Or look at Spotlight. Same deal really, the idea is trivial but they've let it languish and slowly rot. With macOS 27 they've gone back and rebuilt it. That's what we want to see. Go back to the basics and make it work great not just work mostly.
When I switched to Mac in ~2020, the Mac users I knew all told me to avoid Time Machine – at least two had issues where they needed their backups, only to find that the entirety of their backups had been silently corrupted. (I used Arq then based on online recommendations, now I use Vorta on my Mac just because that’s what I use on Linux.)
Spotlight was near-unusable when I switched as well. Often 5+ sec delays from pressing Cmd-Space to the thing actually popping up, and it would sometimes reorder entries right before I clicked Enter, causing me to open the wrong thing. Alfred uses the same Spotlight index AFAIK, but lightning fast.
Those are both things that I agree should… Just work.
I normally can't start apps from spotlight. It literally has forgotten that the applications folder exists, so I have to open it up in finder and scroll to the app to start it.
I think the hardware has improved a lot over the past decade, not always in visible ways. I think this is true even if you disregard the replacement of the butterfly keyboard.
Ternus and Cue are full bore on increasing the number of ads shown in apps and otherwise scattered through their devices. This is explicitly the opposite of Apple’s philosophy until recently and Schiller is stepping back reputedly due to his opposition to this approach.
The idea appears to be to sell the devices as a vehicle for showing ads (incremental ARR) over selling them for their intrinsic customer value. You expect this kind of thing from shitty industries like cars or Google or Facebook. But this used to be an explicit “no go” for Apple.
That is too bad - how do you get the reins of a company that size with something antithesis to their product and identity? I hope he doesn't start trying to monetize privacy.
where do you get info that Ternus is about increasing number of ads? i've missed that evidently, I was at Apple engineering for several years, so for Cue i believe it just from observation, but no sense of such for Ternus.
This didn't happen under Ternus, but Apple really needs to undo Creator Studio. It's a bad idea. Not good. Keep iCloud+ responsible for generation limits across every app. Keep apps as a one-time purchase.
I think the “early signs” are a reference to this? <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/06/phil-schillers-app-store-exit-reportedly-driven-by-wariness-over-future-plans/" rel="nofollow">https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/06/phil-schillers-app-store-e...
gumby · · focus · HN ↗
(And with Apple’s new CEO, the early signs are that commitment is headed for the ash heap as well, but it seems the Mafia may have a longer horizon)
eightnoneone · · focus · HN ↗
Xenoamorphous · · focus · HN ↗
gumby · · focus · HN ↗
agos · · focus · HN ↗
satvikpendem · · focus · HN ↗
snazz · · focus · HN ↗
lostlogin · · focus · HN ↗
Both these make Apple worse.
Smalltalker-80 · · focus · HN ↗
shevy-java · · focus · HN ↗
The Mafia kills people directly. That's a sudden-death right there.
<a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c39mr81j2j1o" rel="nofollow">https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c39mr81j2j1o
alienbaby · · focus · HN ↗
camdenreslink · · focus · HN ↗
polotics · · focus · HN ↗
For starters: - <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gomorrah_(film)" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gomorrah_(film) - <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3o44Zv4DY64" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3o44Zv4DY64
IAmBroom · · focus · HN ↗
That's not what the Mafia is. It's an origin story. Was would be more accurate.
joinHNtheysaid · · focus · HN ↗
jjk166 · · focus · HN ↗
keeda · · focus · HN ↗
sandworm101 · · focus · HN ↗
sitkack · · focus · HN ↗
citation needed
WillAdams · · focus · HN ↗
>It made me feel like a new man. The problem was, the first thing the new man wanted was more cocaine. ---George Carlin
<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/04/us/cannabis-marijuana-risks-addiction.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/04/us/cannabis-marijuana-ris...
gnfargbl · · focus · HN ↗
<a href="https://bigfatgenius.com/2220%20Fall%202010/Nutt%20King%20Phillips%20-%20Drug%20Harms%20in%20the%20UK.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://bigfatgenius.com/2220%20Fall%202010/Nutt%20King%20Ph...
Cocaine (in crack form) was found to be the third most harmful recreational drug overall, after alcohol and heroin. It also caused the most direct harm to users out of all drugs. Cannabis, not so much, mid-table. Non-crack cocaine was somewhere between the two.
Note that this study is now over 15 years old.
weightedreply · · focus · HN ↗
I don't think these very different drugs should be compared equivocally.
And while both drugs have the possibility of abuse; most issues stem from legality - not the chemical effects.
hybrasian · · focus · HN ↗
Maybe that will help some people see how ridiculous it is to generalise like that.
sandworm101 · · focus · HN ↗
kaikai · · focus · HN ↗
Alcohol has greater negative side effects than pot, and nicotine is more addictive than cocaine or pot. I’m not sure what you mean by “exotic modern stuff,” but if it includes hallucinogens (what people usually mean by modern/exotic drugs) then they’re not really addictive at all.
I ask because the scale reads more like a morality scale than anything based on actual negative effects, either in the individual or society.
moralestapia · · focus · HN ↗
bombcar · · focus · HN ↗
throwawayffffas · · focus · HN ↗
ramblerman · · focus · HN ↗
boringg · · focus · HN ↗
setopt · · focus · HN ↗
Apple Silicon was the exception, that was truly transformative. But other things, like how polished and snappy the OS feels, seems to have been getting steadily worse.
boxed · · focus · HN ↗
sitkack · · focus · HN ↗
This puts them at existential risk of disruption, because it will build huge unseen pressure for customers to flee.
We saw this with Opus 4.7 - 5, losing folks to Sol when it came out. But Anthropic delivered with 5.5
boxed · · focus · HN ↗
Or look at Spotlight. Same deal really, the idea is trivial but they've let it languish and slowly rot. With macOS 27 they've gone back and rebuilt it. That's what we want to see. Go back to the basics and make it work great not just work mostly.
setopt · · focus · HN ↗
When I switched to Mac in ~2020, the Mac users I knew all told me to avoid Time Machine – at least two had issues where they needed their backups, only to find that the entirety of their backups had been silently corrupted. (I used Arq then based on online recommendations, now I use Vorta on my Mac just because that’s what I use on Linux.)
Spotlight was near-unusable when I switched as well. Often 5+ sec delays from pressing Cmd-Space to the thing actually popping up, and it would sometimes reorder entries right before I clicked Enter, causing me to open the wrong thing. Alfred uses the same Spotlight index AFAIK, but lightning fast.
Those are both things that I agree should… Just work.
boxed · · focus · HN ↗
gumby · · focus · HN ↗
gumby · · focus · HN ↗
The idea appears to be to sell the devices as a vehicle for showing ads (incremental ARR) over selling them for their intrinsic customer value. You expect this kind of thing from shitty industries like cars or Google or Facebook. But this used to be an explicit “no go” for Apple.
boringg · · focus · HN ↗
neutronicus · · focus · HN ↗
Convince shareholders that it's been leaving money on the table.
IAmBroom · · focus · HN ↗
Poor decision making exists everywhere. Size of a company is absolutely no insurance against it. See Tesla for a specific example.
swat535 · · focus · HN ↗
Everything is then run by excel people with metrics. Innovation dies, product suffers and company spirals downward.
jjtheblunt · · focus · HN ↗
happyopossum · · focus · HN ↗
There’s zero indication Ternus is onboard with that - Cue yes, but Ternus was not CEO when any of the stuff that is happening now was being developed
gumby · · focus · HN ↗
[deleted] · · focus · HN ↗
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happyopossum · · focus · HN ↗
He’s been CEO less than a month and everything that’s happening right now has been in the works for multiple years….
fsckboy · · focus · HN ↗
mrexroad · · focus · HN ↗
fsckboy · · focus · HN ↗
LoganDark · · focus · HN ↗
keeda · · focus · HN ↗