MacNCheezus

Hmmm yeah.. I know some of those words.

Honestly it has 1000x more content than lemmy.

So steal the content and post it here. At least the good stuff.

There aren't any laws preventing you from doing that.

Is this a joke about black people not being able to afford healthcare or something?

A mile is about 15 football fields, so if we did switch to using that measurement, we could all be going 1,000 on the freeway.

I studied statistics and the Law of Large Numbers is honestly mind boggling. I mean, I understand that it's true and I've studied the proof, but it's still enormously counterintuitive. It's not surprising that anyone who isn't familiar with it (which is the vast majority of people) to have no understanding of this phenomenon at all.

Oh boy, that's going to offend all the communists.

I prefer to measure speed in football fields per minute.

Yes, the terms are indeed extremely generous to their customers.

If I’m reading this article correctly, Apple as the payment processor earns between 1.55-2.6% per transaction, since the Apple runs on the MasterCard network. Likely this means they get 1.55% for regular transaction and 2.6% for Apple Pay ones. But since they pay 1% cash back on the former, and 2% on the latter, their cut is only about 0.6%, likely just barely enough to cover their own costs. On transactions made directly at Apple or one of their partners, they likely end up losing a little money, which is why I compared the card to a loyalty program.

Like I said, Apple doesn’t need to make any money on this, they already make more than enough on their hardware. This is simply a service they provide in order to make their customers happy and incentive them to stay loyal to the company. As long as their operating costs are covered, they’re good.

As far as Goldman goes, again, if I read the article correctly, they DO collect the interchange fees, so perhaps my initial assumption, that they only get to make money on interest, was incorrect. But if this is the case, them losing billions of dollars on this deal despite earning between 1.15-2%, plus 10 cents on each transaction would be even worse.

Either way, for Apple Card customers this was/is certainly a very good deal, so I do hope that Apple will find a way to continue this service. It’s by far the least problematic credit card I’ve ever used, and I had quite a few. Really the only downside of it is that the cash back comes on a virtual Discover card for some reason, so you can only spend it at merchants who accept Apple Pay AND Discover. While that’s still far more than you’d think, because basically every store that uses Square’s POS systems qualifies, as well as most (but not all) stores that accept Apple Pay, it can be a little annoying. I do think you have the option of transferring the reward balance to your bank account, but that likely takes a couple of days and there’s probably a minimum involved.

I feel the same way. Trying to be a moral person is quite time consuming, and people seem to love short circuiting it by relying on various rules of thumb. But once you start investing those, it’s like peeling an onion, there’s always another layer to it that you haven’t considered.

When is giving money to someone in need helpful and when is it enabling their helplessness?

How can you tell the difference between someone who needs your help and someone who just wants to take you for a ride?

Don’t forget that your time is literally the most valuable thing you can choose to give someone. If you had unlimited amounts of it you’d be a billionaire. Then again, perhaps it would just end up making it worthless because you don’t need to ration it anymore.

Well, just take a look at the terms of the Apple Card and compare them with any other offering out there.

There are literally zero fees. No annual fees, no transaction fees, no late payment fees, not even foreign transaction fees. None. And this isn’t just advertising. I’ve had the card for a few years now and I have indeed never paid any fees whatsoever.

On top of that, they give you anywhere between 1-3% cash back on your purchases, meaning whatever transaction fees the bank collects is likely all going straight to the consumer. Interest payments are literally the ONLY opportunity here for the bank to make any money at all.

Goldman likely made a bet that Apple customers wouldn’t be able to resist splurging on frequent purchases at Apple (since those get 3% cash back) and end up carrying a balance for those, but perhaps not enough of them did for them to make up for the cost of all their overhead (processing cost, support staff, etc.)

Again, that’s just a theory, I don’t have any proof that this is the case, but it seems to make more sense than the explanation given in the article, that too much of the debt became uncollectable, which seems to imply that either a lot of their customers went bankrupt or there was a massive amount of fraud.

Unless they were lazy on vetting the applications and did in fact hand them out like candy (probably not something they would like to admit in public), I don’t see how that could have happened. The stereotypical Apple customer is likely at least upper middle class and financially literate. If those people are going broke in record numbers, the economy might be in a worse shape than everyone thinks.

Goldman were greedy for access to Apple’s customer base, and they took a huge gamble by betting they’d be able to make their money on interest alone. Apple literally dictated the terms in this deal and insisted on this fee structure. They likely don’t care about making any money on it at all, for them it’s just a nice bonus they like to extend to their customers in lieu of a loyalty program (the card is the only way to get a consistent rebate at Apple, and yes you can charge your iCloud subscription on it). It’s free advertising basically, every time you use the card, you think of your friends at Apple for giving you such a sweet deal compared to the nonsense fees you have to put up with at other banks.

No, you're correct. It's the same video but with different timestamps, although the first two are virtually identical because the Spring Allegro is the first piece.