Dental and vanity surgeries aren't happening in a vacuum. There are baseline costs eg. anesthesia, recovery medications, medical machinery etc which are all bloated due to the rest of industry not being under price pressure (rising tide lift all boats)
It's similar to how AI data center buildout race is raising the prices for consumer electronics in 2026 and beyond. The suppliers have no incentive to sell lower cost products to tiny niche
Because insurance companies incentivize upward price momentum. The ones who innovate and bring the prices down are not rewarded for their efforts. Health inflation is higher than headline inflation because of this absence of price pressure
Even for Apple, the most profitable smartphone OEM, it took them many years and so much engineering effort to make it work. They started with iPhone 7 JP edition, next their "Global NFC" iPhone X,8 series was pretty much a failure[1]. I can see why Android OEMs don't want to pursue providing solution to a technology that isn't widely adopted, is expensive to implement and has minimal user base
NFC-F + Felica is truly one of those technologies that could have really made a huge difference in the world (imagine a no-internet, no bank/middleman payment system in 3rd world countries) but got ruined because of Japan's Galapagos Syndrome. Had NTT & JREast looked from a global POV and worked with OEMs to reduce hardware & licensing cost we could have seen Suica working all over the world today.
I think it's more of a X86 vs ARM battle and not particularly Apple vs Intel. AMD will suffer too. And Graviton, Nuvia, Ampere are all competing against X86 incumbents.
> The Beats division of Apple was already profitably selling headphones before Apple bought them.
It made a few billions in revenue, that's far cry from trillions a tech giant is expected to make.
> You act as if it would be a great technical hurdle to make the Watch work with Android.
That's exactly my point. They shouldn't be making such closed ecosystem, their products will be more popular if anyone could use them. This is why they caved in on Apple Music and TV like services which are available on Android, Roku, Fire TV etc.
> There is also the iPad that gets you another 10%. If just 10% of Apple’s revenue from the Mac puts it in the top 100, what does 30% do? If Apple created the “Mac company” it would still be the most profitable computer company in the world. It makes more selling Macs than any other company makes selling phones besides maybe Samsung.
Nobody cares about "Mac Company" or "iPad Company". They don't have any clout. Hundreds of companies come and go from the top 100 but only a few can last for decades. Microsoft is still standing today even after a failed Mobile venture only because of the money they made during desktop era and still cashing in on that success. If iPhones stopped getting manufactured it's pretty much the end of Apple today regardless of their Mac, iPad or Airpods business.
> But isn’t kind of silly talking about Apple being dependent on the iPhone when after two decades and billion of dollars, Google’s profit is still 90% from ads?
Since when did whataboutism became a valid rebuttal?
The Apple watch, Airpods and everything else except Macs are tightly coupled to the sale of iPhones. If you stop making iPhones, the rest is pretty much dead too.
Never understood this argument. My parents from a 3rd world country who barely understand English are able to use 3rd party apps like Whatsapp, Duo, Skype just fine. And Duo works directly from your contacts app too (at least in Pixel and Samsung phones), in fact you can see options like "Video call xxx Message XXX with a logo of the apps that support it right in the contacts apps.
The propaganda spread on Whatsapp is happening because of external issues. There are groups of people paid or motivated to spread it on that platform. Such a minor thing wouldn't make any difference in reduction of propaganda spread to people dedicated enough to spread it.
This has more to do with people who use whatsapp vs people who use iMessage. If all the people who use whastapp migrated to iMessage, the same problem will happen there.
Your argument fails when you consider Whatsapp - the biggest messaging platform, where you need to add people's number in your contact to be able to see their names.
I agree with power of defaults though. Only reason iMessage took off, and so did other Apple services.
Sure it does, but cross platform IMs are not so socially discriminating. You can easily download LINE and move on with your life in Japan. But getting iMessage is an economic barrier for many, for which they end up being socially ostraostracized
Yeah I mean there will little tiny things different on each app, but it's not a big deal breaker for many. Whatsapp is the biggest IM on the planet for a reason. People could easily ditch iMessage in favour of Whatsapp if they wanted to, but for some reason Americans don't do that.
Has nothing to do with the software. I use Whatsapp as my main IM and never had this issue. Pretty sure the same would happen on iMessage too if it targetted the same demographic.
So your parent comment wasn't really a fair comparison because you left out the biggest IM service which does actually compete really well with iMessage without the vendor lock-in.
> Why, though? Does your average iPhone user actually care if the bubbles they see in their chats are blue or green? If so, why?
They definitely do. Not sure what your age or demographic is, but young folks do care a lot about higher social status which is tied to blue bubble because of iPhone prices. It has nothing to do with privacy though.
It's similar to how AI data center buildout race is raising the prices for consumer electronics in 2026 and beyond. The suppliers have no incentive to sell lower cost products to tiny niche