№ 79  12th August 2019

Apple Card Preview

On Tuesday, selected users got a preview of Apple Card, which resulted in plenty of articles describing Apple’s new product. For now, Apple Card is limited to the US; it is, however, interesting to observe the opinions of users after a few days of using it. Looking at the history of Apple Pay, how initially it was available only in the US and now - after almost five years - it runs in 52 countries, it is safe to assume that Card will follow the same path.

For me, the credit card isn’t something super attractive, as I prefer debit cards and spending what I actually have. However, automatic transaction categorization, something that my bank currently doesn’t offer, is interesting as it gives more control over your finances. For now, it is limited however - it is not possible to neither define your categories nor assign a transaction to a different category. It is also worth to mention that you can’t export Apple Card transactions for now.
Take a look at Juli Clover’s extensive review for more details about Apple Card features.

Finally, there’s one more thing to discuss. Will Apple Card become a product that enriches your experience as a user? Does Apple really need to enter the credit card market? Callum Booth makes a few interesting points about that:

Look at it this way. Apple has traditionally made things for people to use — life-enriching products, if you will. Whether it’s old school hardware like computers, or new-fangled streaming services, Apple made things that let its consumers experience. Its products put people at the centre, so they can control of their own world. Hell, even Apple Pay was built with this approach, as it allowed users access to their pre-existing bank accounts in a way they wanted.

Apple releasing its own credit card is not in that spirit one bit. It’s not a supportive mentality, it’s an exploitative one. If Apple had entered the market with a challenger approach, if it wanted to shake things up, I’d be intrigued. But it hasn’t done anything like that.

And here’s an interesting bit from Matthew Panzarino’s article:

The payments interface is also unique in that Apple is pushing very hard to help you not pay interest. It makes recommendations on how to pay chunks of your balance over time before you incur interest. It places 1-3 markers on the circle-shaped interface that show you how much you need to pay off minimum, minimum with no interest and in full. These markers are personalized a bit and can vary depending on balance, due date and payment history.

FTC Investigates Apple-Amazon Deal

In issue 71, I linked to The Verge article that describes how Apple’s agreement with Amazon affects small business and unauthorized resellers operating on Amazon. It affects a lot since it basically forbids to sell any Apple devices and the requirements to become authorized resellers are rigorous:

Companies that want to sell Apple products through Amazon now have to meet one of two requirements. The first is to purchase at least $2.5 million worth of refurbished inventory every 90 days from Apple itself or through a retailer with more than $5 billion in annual sales, like a wireless carrier or big-box retailers like Target or Walmart. The second is to reach out directly to Apple to become an authorized reseller. Apple has yet to make its reseller requirements known to the public, but to become an Apple-authorized provider of repairs requires a physical retail space for customers to enter.

Obviously „unauthorized” doesn’t mean „rogue”, that piece from May tells the story of John Bumstead who was selling old, refurbished MacBooks. Now, as Nick Statt reports, FTC will take a closer look at this practice.

Specifically, Hubbard believes the Amazon-Apple deal could be a violation of antitrust laws that deal with anti-competitive conduct like price-fixing and illegal market allocation. “You’re not allowed to agree with another firm to set a floor on your pricing,” she says. “When you have these brands and a dominant retailer like Amazon, and Amazon says, ‘We’re going to make sure anyone who sells below your prices can’t be authorized to sell on your platform anymore,’ it’s basically a price-fixing agreement between a dominant retailer and a brand. And that’s illegal under Section 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act.”

This is bad for the customers. One more interesting tidbit from Statt’s story(bolds mine):

Now, Bumstead says a significant amount of low-cost Apple products have disappeared from Amazon. “When they deleted those listings, they deleted consumer access to the majority of old MacBooks,” Bumstead says. “[Amazon] only created those renewed listings for newer machines.” In other words, the lowest price of a used or refurbished Apple computer on Amazon suddenly jumped by hundreds of dollars.

The investigation comes amid unprecedented antitrust scrutiny of Amazon for prioritizing its own products and by using proprietary sales data to target competitors. European regulators opened an investigation into those issues earlier this month. In Germany, the company has already changed its terms of service for sellers like Bumstead, possibly as a concession to local regulators.

Apple Digital Masters

Chris Eggertsen writes for Billboard:

On Wednesday (August 7) Apple Music announced the launch of Apple Digital Masters, a new initiative by the streaming giant that combines all of its “Mastered for iTunes” offerings into one global catalog. (…) Launched in 2012, Mastered for iTunes created a set of guidelines and software tools (distributed for free) that allowed engineers to optimize their music for the digital download service format by encoding from high-resolution masters. The goal of the program was to create studio-quality sound files virtually identical to the original master recordings (aka „lossless” audio), which were then placed in a special “Mastered for iTunes” section on the app.