The growing pains of Apple’s subscription addiction

Apple will have to make controversial decisions to reach their goal of becoming the first quadrillion-dollar company after first reaching that sweet trillion-dollar valuation. Jokes aside, Apple is changing a lot as it grows mega-scale. The company is trying growth strategies that could be seen as aggressive and bold or as too conservative.

Apple is starting to push harder than ever to diversify its business. Instead of merely getting customers to buy new iPhones, they are trying to get them to buy Apple products and lock them into subscription software services.

Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney criticized Apple for placing advertisements in its Settings application for its own services. He also argued that Apple was not playing by its own rules. Although his complaint was likely to focus more on Apple's anticompetitiveness, my first reaction after seeing an Apple Music advertisement in the Settings app was "Damn Apple, isn't that a bit gauche?"

It seems embarrassing for a $2 trillion company to encourage consumers to purchase something in the same section of their app that they use to solve problems. It's only one ad slot and one slip-up, but spam and crapware have been a hallmark feature of the Apple device ecosystem for years. It was possible that you did not like their stock app or standard calculator over the years, but it wasn’t too worrying. But as Apple pushes paid subscription after subscription with a variety of services, including Music, News+ tv+ and Fitness+, one starts to wonder where all this leads.

Apple is now building more complicated subscriber products that are not limited to a single app. Its iCloud+ service, which combines backups with advanced privacy features in Safari for paying customers, is starting to make these products more complex. Different levels of Apple One memberships offer different services at discounted prices that can be shared with loved ones. This is true, Sweeney says, and it will be frustrating for developers trying to compete against a product with home court advantage for perpetuity. However, it also makes Apple One less appealing to consumers who want devices that connect them objectively to all the web's stakeholders and services.

A general disclaimer: Apple is often criticized for seemingly small things. They have done a great job streamlining positive user experiences with their devices. Consumers have also become accustomed to other companies allowing these little things to snowball into misplaced incentives that gradually erode a product. It's important to be aware of red flags when you see promotional push notifications that are more frequent than usual, or an ad that is not placed correctly or too many introductory offers for new devices.

While Apple's move to become a service business is not illegal, it is important to recognize that this will likely require a change in how they relate with customers. These changes are only beginning to be visible today, but may be more prominent down the line.

In other news, the Twitch hack causes future problems for game streaming kingpin. Amazon’s gaming-centric streaming platform had a very bad week. Hackers released a lot of source code, creator payout data and other information. This is a huge loss for Twitch, and it leaves Facebook Gaming and YouTube Gaming with a list of data to lure exclusive streamers to their platforms. It's likely demoralizing to the streamer base as streamers can now see how much their competition is earning from streaming giants.

Due to YouTube and Facebook's efforts to attract viewers, Twitch has lost its lead in the streamer wars. Although Twitch is still the preferred choice for early career streamers, YouTube and Facebook are far behind. Their success has largely been due to dumping money into paid partnership programs to bring in popular content creators. The data that was just leaked is quite priceless to them.