As a consumer, I am 100% in favor of the way run the app store. I don't want to give random apps my credit card. I don't want to have 18 accounts to keep track of. I don't want to have to call telephone support to cancel my account. I don't want malware in my apps. I don't want apps to have my email if they don't need it. I don't need another middleman for content companies license and distribute. Everything Apple is doing is helping make a better app store for me.
Pro-consumer behavior almost always looks like anti-publisher behavior.
Beyond the security of not giving our credit cards, and the convenience of not having 8 different game updater/launcher clients, Apple’s App Store policies also limit 3rd party software’s ability to fuck up my devices in a myriad of ways.
If they’re forced to open up to 3rd party stores, I hope they can do it in a way that prevents Adobe from running 8 background processes to make sure my license is current and there aren’t any font updates to download and to make Reader launch faster by keeping it in memory all the time, or whatever it is they do with their Creative Cloud client stuff.
An operating system that actually empowered you would give you the tools and options to prevent that, while also letting you run whatever software you desired.
I will never understand people's desire to be handcuffed by Apple. Give me control over my own device god damn it.
If you want to work on your ultimate phone environment as a hobby, there is Android. If you want things to work just the way they are with the fewest surprises and least amount of finagling use Apple.
I use macOS instead of Linux for this reason: last time I tried updating the production packages on a Linux box it took me hours to clean up the mess that X11 left behind.
Don’t criticise my walled garden just because you want to experiment with weed salad in your community garden.
Whether you take out your own garbage or Apple does it it’s still garbage for you to clean up. Some people want to throw money at Apple to take care of the garbage for them.
If you give apps the right not to do things like AppleID they’ll take it and the App Store would be a highly inconsistent experience for people who want to do no thinking about how their device works. There ought to be some middle ground but consumers are the ones who will have their boundaries encroached unless an entity ruthlessly minds the border...
For the degree of opening you leave companies will extract that much concession from your users.
Rest assured that despite the somehow surprisingly recent blind support for Apple here, there are people too that want to own our devices.
I can just hope that the EU is successful in stopping all of Apple's trickeries ranging from 2.5mm headset jacks, ports, OS slow downs, mysterious battery underperformance, app store, the list just goes on.
You want the EU to regulate whether a company wants to put a headphone jack in their devices?
> OS slow downs
iOS has gotten faster over time [1].
> mysterious battery underperformance
It's common knowledge that this was an honest engineering mistake because as a phone ages, the battery cannot support the max voltage of the processor. Apple now lets you enable full performance with the understanding that your phone might shut down on you when you need it most.
> app store
Which we've determined not to be a monopoly as Apple is a minority player in the mobile device space.
> the list just goes on.
So you've suggested 4 things, 3 of which don't apply and 1 of which (headphone jacks) would be gross governmental overreach.
It seems to me that you just want the company to burn and you want the EU to regulate the hell out of everything in your life.
For example, deciding whether I want to put a headphone jack on my next device is my choice, not the EU's choice, and it would be tyrannical and innovation-stifling to let them have a say over something like that.
It is very reasonable for you to just buy something else if you don't like an Apple device, since Apple is not a monopoly in the mobile space. However, neither you nor the government should have the right to force Apple to develop a product you like. Apple does not exist to satisfy your whims.
The problem with the battery thing is then Apple can give the appearance that their phones have some speed profile when in reality it’s more complicated, even if the complications are in their sum a calculated benefit to the consumer.
However, I’m not really sure that other companies are contextually more honest to consumers in their advertising, or that such standards in communication even exist for the American marketplace. It’s hard to criticize Apple for the details when the bigger story is their great relationship with customers.
I never said so. In any case, I don't need you to tell me what to do.
I vote with my wallet and I don't buy Apple products anymore.
The government does not need to regulate it, the market itself will do it just like it did with Microsoft. On the meantime, I'll let you keep finding excuses for Apple's shady practices.
In your first source: letting the EU regulate the charging cable would have been provably dumb and absurd. Lightning was years ahead of Micro-USB when it was released and served as inspiration for USB-C. Just another example of how government overregulation would harm innovation and industries.
The second source is Tile complaining about the privacy warnings in iOS 13. It’s laughable. Customers are turning off abusive always-on surveillance thanks to iOS 13 notifications and this is hurting Tile. Working as intended.
Regardless of the prudence of the EU regulating the cable, the very fact that they have weighed in on the subject shows that hardware decisions are within the court's purview, and so would headphone jacks, presumably. One's opinion of said prudence is up for debate, certainly.
The Tile situation is TBD, pending Apple's release of AirTags. Will iOS user location notifications pop up as frequently in Apple's first party Find My app as it does in Tile's app? Stay tuned!
Also, the letter mentions the matter of Apple removing their previous Tile store presence (presumably in favor of AirTags), which is within their power but brings up the matter of Sherlocking. Sure, Sherlocking is legal- but is it ethical? Is it right when Facebook scouts other apps to duplicate it in their app? Is it right when Apple does the same to preexisting apps in its App Store? At the very least, these legal cases- whether you think them prudent or not- bring them before the public for examination and discussion.
> I can just hope that the EU is successful in stopping all of Apple's trickeries ranging from 2.5mm headset jacks, ports, OS slow downs, mysterious battery underperformance
2.5mm jacks exist but iOS devices have never used them. I think some feature phones did that back in the day.
Personally I've only encountered them on a pair of headphones where they're a step up from a soldered on cable, but more annoying than a standard jack would be. It's also recessed really far in with a very narrow twist-lock connector, so isn't compatible with any cables except the special one it comes with.
I appreciate that iOS does not allow software to require this.
Yes you can avoid the giant mess of 3rd party launchers on Mac, but only by writing off huge swaths of the software market. Want to run Photoshop? You get to have the Creative Cloud client.
The current state of iOS software is that I never have to go into Task Manager and see what junk has inserted itself as a startup item, whether anything will break if I don't want its update/license client running in the background, or worry about whether it really quits when I quit it or tries to stay resident in the system tray.
Okay, and why is it your fundamental right to be able to do either of those? On what basis should a company be compelled to implement that functionality?
You can always buy a device that allows you to do those things, after all. It's not like Apple is the only device vendor out there, or even a majority device vendor.
Because if I own the device, manufacturer should not decide what kind of apps I can run.
See: a user in China owns the iPhone and wants to run the app.
Apps developer wants a user to run the app.
And only Apple doesn't let it happen, on the device that it doesn't own anymore.
Regarding your argument, "do not buy it", of course I don't buy it! But that doesn't make this position of Apple right, and I'm glad that lawmakers might put an end to this malicious practice.
Returning your argument, if Apple wants to control what users do with the iPhones, perhaps they shouldn't give up their ownership of devices and shouldn't sell them.
Then don't download apps from a hypothetical secondary iOS App Store. You literally have the same option as people in this thread who say "just don't buy Apple."
I'm aware that I can avoid installing a second store and not run any software that comes from it. The issue I'm pointing out is that software that's currently available through the App Store could move exclusively to alternatives if given the option.
Like that time when Epic Games said "We don't want to use the Google Play Store, so if you want to play Fortnite you have to install it from the Fortnite Installer". And then we immediately had this: https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/112630336?pli=1
> This vulnerability allows an app on the device to hijack the Fortnite Installer to instead install a fake APK with any permissions that would normally require user disclosure.
If they could switch to Fortnite Installer on iOS I assume they would. Would it have security holes? Would it do other annoying things that the App Store doesn't let them do?
Repeat those questions for a hypothetical Microsoft iOS Store, Google iOS Store, Amazon iOS Store, Steam iOS Store, Ubisoft iOS Store, EA iOS Store, Pokemon GO Installer, Nintendo iOS Store, iOS Minecraft Launcher, and I'd expect to see more security vulnerabilities and/or hostile behaviors that Apple doesn't allow.
It's a tradeoff. I know the current system isn't perfect, but I worry that forcing Apple to allow other stores to do their own thing will be worse in a variety of ways.
But then, simply don't run that software. Vote with your wallet. Use a competitor that remains on the App Store. Why deprive others of the choice, in favor of a single entity in charge- a single point of failure? I thought it was a truism in tech that monocultures are a bad thing?
I'm voting with my wallet to have an iPhone where there's no Fortnite Installer instead of Android where there is.
Believe it or not I had an Android phone before and decided I like Apple's system better.
If it were my only computing device and I needed to run a bittorrent client I acknowledge it would be a problem, but like I said elsewhere in the comments, it's a trade-off.
I agree there's a tradeoff. And that in the scenario where Apple allows alternate app stores, there would also be tradeoffs. But I disagree with your view that it would have to resemble the situation on Android. I feel that the Apple brand and the inherent security features of the iOS environment- which aren't simply the exclusivity of the App Store and the App Store Review process- could lead to secondary stores that are carefully curated and have a higher bar of security than the ones you see on Android. In fact, one could very well imagine companies entering into a new market and providing secure app markets that try to beat Apple at their own game (such as searchability). For one thing, there's more money to be made with iOS apps, and perhaps that could lead to greater investment and higher quality stores.
I view the dismissals of "secondary app markets will just be like insecure shoddy secondary Android app stores" to be both pessimistic and lacking in imagination at the potential for new businesses and innovation to be created if Apple just gives up a little bit of its dominating power.
Oh but see then third parties who's software _I_ want so badly and would sacrifice my ethical position to acquire might choose not to distribute on Apple's app store because it's anti-competitive. Well shit.
the convenience of not having 8 different game updater/launcher clients
Obligatory glance over at Steam goes here.
Apple’s App Store policies also limit 3rd party software’s ability to fuck up my devices in a myriad of ways.
It would be a much safer solution if Apple's operating system limited 3rd party software's ability to do things it shouldn't. Trying to filter malware at the app store level might improve your odds, but it's not a robust, scalable solution to malware and it never has been.
So why not build a standard mechanism to install and update 3rd party software into the OS? It's hardly a radical idea. There are plenty of solutions to that problem that don't involve monopolising the distribution of all software on the platform.
I agree in principle that this would be OK, except part of Apple's vetting processes is making sure apps aren't accessing private APIs.
I don't want to download a game and find out that it's secretly spinning up a background spyware process to monitor the screenbuffer and sending the screenshots off to god knows where.
Surely the solution to that is not to have your OS expose "private" APIs that allow abusive behaviour? It's not as if they aren't widely exploited even on the official app store today.
Once again, trying to filter malware at the app store level is not a viable strategy for robust, reliable security, and it never has been.
Presently, security researchers are already finding both major apps doing this on the Apple App Store (Facebook accessing the camera on the News Feed), and spyware apps happening on secondary Android stores (also on the official Play Store). Sounds like an opportunity for more security watchdog businesses.
The recent camera and clipboard things aren't private APIs, so the review process isn't looking for them being used in sneaky ways. I do appreciate iOS 14 adding a user-facing indication so we can tell when it's being abused though.
Most people are naive about how applications will coerce them into doing things against their best interest when given the ability, such as a request while installing, requesting access to parts of the system that reveal PII. Most people do not have the knowledge to evaluate how these things play out. Apple via the app store at least does some work to mitigate this and when they do fail, are able to fix it.
You are making the case for the app store to exist, not for it to have no competitors.
Let's suppose that Apple's store is infallible. Well then the availability of other stores won't matter, will it? Apple will approve everything good and reject everything bad and you'll know that anything not in their store is bad and have no reason to ever look at another store even if they exist.
But suppose they're not infallible. They reject something good when they ought not to. Well now you gain something from the other store, because now you have the option to install it anyway. You don't have to -- you only would if the other store has a sufficient reputation for not distributing bad things -- but you could. Or you could still continue to refuse anything not in Apple's store. It only gives you a choice.
And the existence of the choice creates competitive pressure. It makes it in Apple's interest to do a better job for you, because they don't want customers turning to other stores because they've rejected something they shouldn't have, or because they're charging monopoly rents to developers etc. So they spend more resources to reject only what's bad and not what's good. They charge lower fees, so that more money goes to developers and you get better apps. And then even if you still don't want to use the other stores, their existence makes Apple's store better for you.
I don't see this playing out on Android where other stores exist. And lets take this to the brick and mortar model. 30 ish% of the end user price is not a lot, when many products are at least 100% markup.
But first, we know the App store isn't infallible, but it has an incentive to have more false negatives than positives. It is able to correct past mistakes and does do so.
But as far as competitive pressure, that argument is mute as long as there is no way for the "normal" owner/user of a device to evaluate the market. By the time the bad actor is exposed, it is often too late. The other side is that one only has to look at the Play store to see that there are so many copies of original apps that it is obfuscating them. One cannot find the legitimate app. So until most people are able to be informed and evaluate the apps, it isn't in their favor to want alternative stores.
Also, one has a choice, buy or don't buy the device. Apple does not have a majority of sales in phones, not even close. Also, you can side load any softare you want. It's a service that is paid for , but for free it's 7 days per install.
There is a massive difference between 30% on sale price and 100% markup. The more important point is there is competition in regards to markup. The 30% is obligatory.
But the Play Store is a lot less likely to reject things it shouldn't, it doesn't try to extract a percentage of third party revenue from services like Spotify or Netflix, and there are useful and trustworthy third party stores like F-Droid. It's better.
> And lets take this to the brick and mortar model. 30 ish% of the end user price is not a lot, when many products are at least 100% markup.
Brick and mortar stores have expenses for in-town real estate and sales clerks that Apple doesn't, which is where that margin goes. It's unavoidable for that sales model, but that doesn't mean it's a good thing -- and it's the exact reason why online retailers like Amazon have been kicking their butts by cutting that margin down. And even they still have significant warehousing and shipping expenses for physical products that the digital products Apple distributes don't.
Margins like that are costs to be eliminated where possible, not excuses to impose the same costs where they don't otherwise even exist.
> It is able to correct past mistakes and does do so.
Right, so can you point me to the best BitTorrent app in Apple's store?
> But as far as competitive pressure, that argument is mute as long as there is no way for the "normal" owner/user of a device to evaluate the market.
If this were true then it wouldn't do you any good because then people would have no way to know not to buy an Android phone and enable a shady Russian app store full of malware. Fortunately it isn't (and people doing that is quite uncommon), because we have all the normal mechanisms to determine whether a store is trustworthy -- the reputation of the store operator, third party reviews, opinions from savvy relatives or your company's IT staff etc. And the store itself is still curated by the operator, so you only have to do this for the store operator when enabling one, not every individual app. And you would still have the option to use none but Apple's, if you like.
> The other side is that one only has to look at the Play store to see that there are so many copies of original apps that it is obfuscating them. One cannot find the legitimate app.
So the Play Store doesn't always do a great job. This is a pretty good argument that the level of competition there is pretty weak too -- other stores exist but not many people use them. Still, what stops Apple from doing better than that, competition or not? There is no consumer demand or competitive pressure to approve duplicate garbage apps that nobody actually wants, and Google only does it out of laziness.
> So until most people are able to be informed and evaluate the apps, it isn't in their favor to want alternative stores.
They still wouldn't be evaluating the other apps, only the other stores. It might be reasonable to consider F-Droid (and therefore the apps it distributes) trustworthy but not some store nobody has ever heard of operated by anonymous second world foreign nationals.
> Also, one has a choice, buy or don't buy the device.
That isn't a choice, it's more than one choice, anti-competitively required to be made together. I could want to use iOS on Apple hardware but install an app which is only in the Play Store, and that choice doesn't currently exist.
> Also, you can side load any softare you want. It's a service that is paid for , but for free it's 7 days per install.
This is obviously not a viable alternative or your entire premise would disintegrate because it would be a vector for malware, and then what's the point of excluding other app stores?
But why Mac OS still allows competent users to buypass the security restrictions? Is it because they can't screw over MacOS users ? Or for some reasons the people that use Mac OS can be trusted but when you give the same user an iPhone his IQ drops and we can't trust him.
Come on, let's be honest this is in the first place in Apple interest, if Apple needs to sell in China then they made sure they handed over Chinese users data to the government, now if they want to sell in EU they would need to also put a bit of effort into it(I have no idea if EU market is smaller but money is money)
The same could be said the other way around. Why force a private company to open its system? Apple built the entire ecosystem and you want to force them to open it up to your desire. Why is that ok?
How is Apple a monopoly? They own a system and manage the rules around it, that is not a monopoly. Will you force car manufacturers to let you install any system in the car? Why can't I install any app on my car?
Because it is acting against the interests of the users.
Would you still support Apple's position if, say, Apple would roll out update to iOS with new EULA, which would require you to give up your firstborn son for a Satan sacrifice?
Of course, you can refuse, but the device that you supposedly "own" would effectively stop functioning (obsoleted iOS devices lose their usefulness very fast: try doing anything with iPhone 5).
I would sell it and buy a new phone. Do you think Apple competitors would not pay you or accept the phone as part of payment if Apple did that? The problem is people think they are smarter than everybody and can tell you how to manage things. The market is smarter than anybody or any group of people. You cannot force a private company to cater to your beliefs of how a system should work. People buy iPhones knowing there is only one app store. And, as an iPhone user, is an advantage. I know that my grandparents and parents using an iPhone will not screw it up, or at least the possibility is smaller compared to the alternatives.
But that's how you get from one to the other. By refusing to use something else, the developer would have to sell through Apple in order to get your business. If they want your business, that's what they'll do.
Meanwhile other people may choose to do something else, e.g. because they would rather that more of what they pay go to the developer (where it's plausible that it be used to improve the software) than to Apple (which can't productively use any more money than it already has). And who are you or Apple to get in the way of this transaction between two independent and consenting third parties?
What happens when an app you use leaves the App Store? Now you’re stuck between purchasing it with a third party payment processor or not using the app. When every app must be on the App Store, this isn’t an issue.
Many apps, if not a large majority, would start doing this. That destroys the convenience and user experience. If every app does this there isn't any consumer choice about it.
Perhaps, but Apple would still have an edge on tight integration with the OS resulting in a quick and frictionless user experience. If that wouldn't cut it for some developers, so they would bother themselves building a separate processing, well, then Apple would probably have to lower their fees.
Personally for me, as a developer of applications, I could care less about 30% fee. I find it reasonable. What I DO care about is restrictions on owning the device and users' inability to run any app they need - even if it is not vetted by Apple. In part it is because I happen to live in an authoritarian country which government loves to block apps in the AppStore.
Anyone can get a developer license and run whatever stupid apps they want. That seems like sufficient opt-in that you are likely competent to assess the risk of the apps you're installing.
So you are suggesting users in China apply for a developer license and build their own build of Signal and Protonmail apps? Really?
And how would said users receive push notifications for their apps from Signal?
UPD: oh boy, and I forgot to mention that such users would also have to buy Macs - you can't build a 'stupid app' for iOS without XCode, which runs only on Macs that support the latest version of macOS.
What makes you think I'm suggesting that? I was simply ridiculing the idea of forcing users to acquire developers license.
The right way, of course, is to allow third party appstores and app sideloading. Just like we have it on macOS - and it doesn't look like someone was made unhappy because he can run Steam and buy Sketch directly from the developer.
Not forcing people to be a developer to sideload apps isn't addressing the elephant in the room that you need to have a Mac ($800+) to build them. Your solution would best be 'allow downloading and installing .app packages from websites'.
I don't quite understand why you are addressing this to me. I believe I was quite clearly against forcing users to build apps and to allow them installing apps from everywhere.
Exactly. Apple's market power derives from the consumers that trust it to represent them in negotiations with publishers. The decision to "not give every app your credit card" is made by consumers when they purchase an iPhone.
Purchasing an iPhone is an act of collective bargaining by consumers against publishers that otherwise would hoover up their private data. "If you don't like it, you can always live like it's 2004, before smart phones" is not an answer iPhone customers accept.
You mean the apps that Apple was fine hosting on their platform and taking their 30% cut from up until Apple decided to create a first party app that can control your phone and spy on everything you do?
That doesn't distract from the fact that analogous third party apps in this category was wholeheartedly permitted on the App Store until Apple decided they wanted their own app in this space.
Well, they should have cracked down on that spyware earlier, and their failing to do so until they had a competing app to push both casts their motivation behind banning those apps as suspicious, and calls into question the supposed "quality" of the review process. At worst, they did it to Sherlock competitors. At best, they were negligent, their review process is overrated and does not do enough to protect consumers against spyware. It is on them to justify their poor timing.
Apple should have cracked down earlier, simpler as that. The fact they didn't makes them look like hypocrites. I'm aware that it's impossible to go back to earlier and crack down then to not look like hypocrites. So it's important that going forward they are less capricious about enforcing App Store guidelines and don't make themselves look bad.
Yup, that's where I heard it from. Had this streaming in the background the other day. The amount of anti-competitive behavior they had on these companies that I hadn't even known about was astounding.
Apple makes an absolutely exorbitant amount of money from this, mostly from Google because Safari on iOS is essentially the only browser that matters on the platform and Google is willing to pay through the nose to get themselves in that prime spot. (We'll see if that amount lessens with iOS 14.)
Of course it does. Apple makes a huge amount of money from native apps. Apple also prevents web apps from competing with those native apps by restricting the capabilities in its browser and by not allowing anyone else to offer an alternative browser with more functionality.
You asked if there are a large amount of successful web apps on Android, I provided evidence that points to the likelihood of it happening on that platform over iOS, due to official first party interest and efforts and improving them. You're moving the goalposts, and arguing just for the sake of arguing.
If there were multiple stores, chances are that the app developer would choose the least restrictive App Store. So maybe Apple’s App Store rejects an app because it’s doing something sneaky, but some other App Store isn’t as rigorous and publishes the app. If you’ve ever been in the situation where you’re the IT person for your extended family, don’t be surprised when your grandmother tells you that she needs help with some weird problem with her phone and you track down that it’s some app that she got from an alternate App Store. That sort of situation is not a good user experience and isn’t good for the Apple ecosystem. The walled garden is a feature, not a bug. If you want a different experience with more choices, there’s Android - seriously.
Neil Cybart wrote this in a July 6th newsletter: “Billions of people use Android smartphones. However, the press views Android as so inferior to iOS that it’s not a viable alternative for Apple users. That ends up saying more about the competition failing than Apple users suffering from Apple possessing too much power and success.” I had a hard time believing that when I read it, but maybe it’s true.
> the press views Android as so inferior to iOS that it’s not a viable alternative for Apple users
It's not just the press: switching to Android would have very negative drawbacks to many Apple users, even if you don't consider it to be strictly inferior. It would be like pointing a sports car owner to a minivan and saying that they should buy that when they complain about their manufacturer removing buttons from the dashboard. (More accurately, assume that the only sports car available was from one manufacturer and you had to move over to the minivan or you have to ride a bike everywhere.)
If anyone could create their own store, someone would create a store that accepts anything with no review, no privacy and no security enforcements, making the whole idea of greenwalled platform pointless.
There are thousands of different restaurants to choose from.
There are only two pocket computers. And they're both beating people up over protection money.
Moreover, computing used to be free like water. These companies locked it down so you have to go through them.
Imagine if you had to pay McDonald's to open your own restaurant.
Imagine if every restaurant in the US had to do so.
Imagine if McDonald's gathered data about your customers.
Imagine if McDonald's saw what worked about your restaurant, copied it, and then hid yours from consumers.
It's not okay. This is one of the worst abuses of the American consumer and small businesses in history.
Edit: I think we're all being downvoted by corporate brigading. Every one of my posts is being downvoted. I made a compelling and respectful argument, and note the lack of rebuttals.
I'm not sure what the laws are in Europe, but in the US, there's nothing inherently illegal about being a monopoly. The illegality begins when one tries using the monopoly to gain an edge in other markets. Arguably, Apple has monopoly power in the market they built so nothing wrong there.
If you're trying to make the argument that maybe we should change the laws to make monopolies illegal, it would be easier to discuss if you define what the guiding principle is. Are you saying companies shouldn't own more than X% of a market? Companies should comply with a set of practices? etc
Here's why it's difficult when you just use anecdotes. Consider your example, restaurants. Restaurants are a local industry with lower barriers to entry so naturally you have thousands to choose from. Online marketplaces tend to be global marketplaces with very high barriers to entry. So comparing restaurants to the App Store is a stretch at best.
A better example might be a national every day low price store like Walmart. So let's try your examples with them.
Imagine if you had to pay Walmart to open your own store INSIDE Walmart ... sounds reasonable.
Imagine if every store that wanted to open a store in Walmart had to do so ... again, reasonable. Starbucks pays to be inside target, Wells Fargo inside Safeway, etc.
Imagine if Walmart gathered data about your customers. They do, and again reasonable.
Imagine if Walmart saw what worked at your store and copied it and hid yours from your consumers. This happens as well. Consider Equate, Walmart's private brand. Or Safeway select. Basically the same thing.
I think we fundamentally disagree about Apple's behavior.
> Arguably, Apple has monopoly power in the market they built so nothing wrong there.
Apple embraced the web and the internet, then extinguished it as a means of getting software to consumers.
> Online marketplaces tend to be global marketplaces with very high barriers to entry.
This is false. The web is a free for all.
A better analogy for iPhone and Android being marketplaces is x86 and ARM being marketplaces. Can you imagine having to pay to run your code and your commerce on CPUs?
Phones should be utilities.
> A better example might be a national every day low price store like Walmart.
I don't know. There's Target, Home Depot, Lowes, Whole Foods, Kroger, REI, Dick's, CVS, Dollar Tree, Dollar General, ...
Why don't Netflix and DHH try to sell their wares there?
> Apple embraced the web and the internet, then extinguished it as a means of getting software to consumers.
Not sure why this is relevant to EU regulation.
> This is false. The web is a free for all.
Somewhat. The web is a free for all and is part of the high barrier to entry for online marketplaces. I probably should qualify that as a serious online marketplace for third parties.
> Can you imagine having to pay to run your code and your commerce on CPUs?
Sure can. It was called the 90's. I remember paying per cpu/per end user licensing fees to run things on my own cpus.
> Phones should be utilities.
As an opinion, I can't really argue this.
> Target, Home Depot, Lowes, Whole Foods, Kroger, REI, Dick's, CVS, Dollar Tree, Dollar General,
These are great examples that continue to make my point.
* almost all have private brands that compete brands they sell
* many allow stores in their stores (which they charge for)
* they collect data on those stores (within their stores)
BTW, my intent is not to convince you. I normally wouldn't have responded at all, but since you seemed genuinely curious why you weren't seeing responses so I thought I would give you my perspective.
> There are thousands of powerful smartphones on the market, from many different companies and even countries.
You're being deceptive here. Apple App Store and Google Play Store are what we are talking about. There aren't many other avenues that can reach consumers.
> I'm okay with it.
You're okay with me having to pay hard earned money to Apple and Google? Having to work that much harder? To be unable to afford to lean into scaling? Because that's awful.
I understand that, but your original argument was disingenuous.
The central question at hand is the App Store monopoly, and your argument was:
> There are thousands of powerful smartphones on the market, from many different companies and even countries.
But that number willfully misrepresents the current state of the market as it pertains to the current discussion because all but one of those powerful smartphones only operate on one other OS, and by extension, one other App Store regime.
Whether this OS duopoly is acceptable is the whole debate.
1. The argument isn't that it's a monopoly, it's that it's arguably monopsony. The issue is less that users don't have the choice to buy the phone they want with the OS they want, it's that developers/suppliers are unable to access a huge chunk of the market without being forced to pay 30% of earnings.
2. While it's closer to a "duopsony" than a "monopsony", it gets a little more complicated when you look at the level of each regional market. In the US, Apple's market share is closer to 50%.
Maybe it's not anti-competitive for there to be only 2 app buyers on the market, but maybe it is. That's the debate, and it's by no means clear cut.
The MacDonalds its not yours, while your iPhone is.
There's a big difference between the two, and the key difference here is ... Property.
But i like your example because its shows the mindset that the iPhone you bought, is in the end the property of Apple, not really yours, and that you are "fine with it".
You can do already do whatever you want with your phone from the point you receive it in the condition Apple sell it to you.
But you cannot require that Apple do work to build support for third-party app stores. Property rights do not extend to forcing other people to do labour for you.
If your phone doesn't come with support for third-party stores when you buy it then I don't see how it would be your right to have that feature added.
> But you cannot require that Apple do work to build support for third-party app stores. Property rights do not extend to forcing other people to do labour for you.
You and I can't, at least not directly. But governments certainly can, if they deem it in the interest of the citizens they serve.
If you buy a home in a neighborhood with a restrictive homeowners' association covenant, you still own your home even though you're not allowed to paint it blue and put plastic flamingos in the yard. You may not like those restrictions, but they're the restrictions you literally bought into.
I really think this is a more accurate take than "Apple restricts what you can do to your device therefore you don't really own it." Yes, they restrict what I can do with the device, but yes, I really own it. And bonus: f I decide those restrictions are too much to bear, well, buying a new phone is way easier than buying a new house.
Using your analogy, there's is a boundary that can even be considered reasonable. In the example you gave, you know the limits, when you bought and you thought they were reasonable.
But suppose that they define which cars you need to have to live in that neightborhood? You would start to think that now they are being unreasonable..
The thing is, Apple can change those "ok, now this is unreasonable" things behind your back without you even being aware of it. How can you know that you would want that car that the "owners" of your neighborhood did not allowed that car seller to offer you? (And no, this is not a stretch, remember that your digital life is a whole big dimension of your life, imagine a centralized point of control)
You wont feel as you would if they forced you to a limited set of cars, but there are a lot of damages happening by allowing them to do as they please, and not only about your rights as a owner of the product, because there are developers and other technological, social and political issues happening with those decisions being made like that.
Unfortunately it cant be compared as just a house that you have not full control of it, because in that case it would most "damage" you in the end.
The decisions Apple are making hurting digital and material property rights have broader implications to the society in general.
I think this analogy would work if you think in terms of opening a Apple franchise, and being able to sell only Apple products.
The problem here is a centralized point of control, that basically controls, or can eventually exercise this control to define in the end how you experience your life in the digital realm.
As the subtraction, or whats left out, will happen before, people wont even notice whats being taken from them.
That's why its hard to compare to anything that happened before, because its unparalleled.
(a) no smartphone exists that is a perfect fit for my ideal requirements
and
(b) having some smartphone is now almost essential to function normally within society
I would say yes, I absolutely do want the government to intervene. Market competition is obviously not doing the job, and none of us individually is strong enough to force the issue with the suppliers. That is exactly the situation where regulatory intervention is appropriate to protect the little guy from the power of the big guy.
> I absolutely do want the government to intervene
Well I don't know what to say apart from this is incredibly selfish.
You can't find a product suited to your particular esoteric requirements so you want the government to force someone else to perform labour to build the product you want.
Can you see how wacky that sounds when you write it out like that?
By that argument, all consumer protection laws should be abolished. Clearly I don't agree with that position.
I don't think it's selfish to argue that government should protect the little guy from being exploited by the big guy who has much greater power, for each of the numerous little guys affected by a situation. Indeed, that is arguably one of the most important functions of any government.
I would have less of a problem with this if we were discussing some luxury item that people could easily do without. However, the reality is that many organisations -- including government entities at various scales in my country as well as other essential services -- now effectively require the use of certain technologies in order to function as a normal member of society. It is therefore reasonable to ensure that the technologies available are provided on an acceptable basis.
If a supplier doesn't want to play by those rules, they're not forced to perform any labour for me or anyone else here. They're perfectly entitled to simply exit the market instead.
> However, the reality is that many organisations -- including government entities at various scales in my country as well as other essential services -- now effectively require the use of certain technologies in order to function as a normal member of society.
But you can already access these Government services - the apps already work, right? You don't need a third-party-app-store to use them?
So that isn't a reason to change anything.
You want the iPhone to be changed so you can do other things with the iPhone, unrelated to these Government services.
You keep quoting a partial comment and then trying to shift the discussion away from the fundamental point.
The fundamental point is still that, for practical purposes, many people now have to have a smartphone. There are, for practical purposes, two types of smartphone available. If neither of those meets some reasonable conditions that many people would prefer to have -- for example, retaining control of your own device and data -- then this implies a lack of effective competition in the marketplace. Government regulation is the solution to that problem.
Arguing that people don't have to buy the product isn't helpful. Many people are effectively forced into buying one product or the other.
Arguing that people don't have to buy the Apple product isn't helpful. Buying an Android one instead is worse in other respects.
> You keep quoting a partial comment and then trying to shift the discussion away from the fundamental point.
When you try to give a concrete example I show how that concrete example doesn't make any sense to me.
If the fundamental point doesn't translate to any concrete situations then it's a dud.
> neither of those meets some reasonable conditions that many people would prefer to have -- for example, retaining control of your own device and data
But I don't think these are a reasonable conditions.
And I don't think many people want them - I think the number is probably absolutely tiny.
I think using legislation to force Apple to accomodate the unreasonable and abstract preferences of a tiny number of people from a group that isn't specially protected is morally unjust.
But I won't keep arguing it further as I think we probably just have different morals.
But I don't think these are a reasonable conditions.
So we can see. That doesn't mean they wouldn't be in the interests of owners of Apple devices, or that Apple shouldn't be prevented from exploiting its dominant position to restrict the market to the detriment of those owners.
I wonder whether you'd be OK with an electricity supplier saying you're only allowed to plug in equipment they have approved and they can change the rules or revoke approvals any time they like. If you don't like it, you can go to the other electricity supplier, who will give you their list of acceptable equipment instead. If you want to use equipment from both lists, don't worry, just buy two houses. And of course no-one makes any equipment that isn't on either list, because there is no possibility you'd ever want to power anything that wasn't approved by at least one electricity supplier.
Or you can buy Car A that goes only to one set of locations, or Car B that goes only to another set. Other locations might be happy to welcome you, but even if they build the roads to reach them, your car will artificially prevent you from driving that way.
Let say Apple is BMW, and when you buy BMW your gas tank has a proprietary connector that will work only on BP gas stations.
You can choose different gas there (different octane number, etc.), but you can't tank at e.g. Statoil.
As long as this is disclosed to the customer up-front and as long as you can buy a different car to a BMW, then I do not have any moral objection to this.
I admit I probably wouldn't buy such a car myself as I don't see any advantages. I do see advantages to the Apple model - simplicity and cleanliness. If you disagree then you should probably do as I would with the BMW - buy something else instead.
In general I agree, but once a business becomes powerful enough it may be able to reduce competition in what otherwise might be competitive markets.
Lets say at some point drivers of GM vehicles buy 60% of the gas sold. Gas stations must agree to use proprietary connectors to service GM cars. Because of GM's market share, the majority of gas stations decide to use GM-only connectors, which then sells more GM cars...
Such a cycle is great for GM but probably not good for consumers if you think competitive markets are pro-consumer. And it affects people who don't even buy GM cars, because it influences what 3rd party business are viable. I think that's a key difference between companies with enormous market share engaging in anti-competitive behavior and companies with minority market share (like BMW) doing it.
As another example, I think it would have been unfortunate if home internet service providers (of which many people have a choice of only one or two, and it's a big hassle to change) became a bottleneck for other types of services such as online streaming (perhaps by charging exorbitant bandwidth costs to competitors). Luckily I think that ship has mostly sailed, and even in the absence of regulation abuses are probably somewhat kept in check by the very real possibility that regulation will happen if things go too far.
I think there's an argument to be made that it would be bad for a duopoly in the mobile OS market (Apple/Google) to lead to a reduced level of competition in app stores, payment processing, and possibly computer software in general (because of the approval process). And even though Apple may not have an absolute majority on market share, the percent of software revenue is probably more important and Apple's share of that is probably quite high.
There's probably reasonable ways to address this too. Maybe by allowing other app stores (that follow the same sandboxing / security rules), which seems to work out fine on platforms like Windows with options like Steam. And maybe they could let Apple continue to require support for a common payment method, but not let them prohibit other payment methods or require that those other payment methods are the same price (when the fees on the other payment methods may be much less than 30%).
Would you agree that to be a monopoly means to have exclusive control of App distribution? Looking across the market Apple has exclusive control of only a small minority percentage of all App distribution.
> You're no entitled to a "feature" of my phone blocking functionality that doesn't affect you.
I respect that you would prefer other stores, but I would prefer a single store, that's all. I don't think I'm entitled to anything. I bought an iPhone with the expectation of a walled garden, but if that changes then I can re-evaluate my phone choice. BigCorp doesn't own me anything.
Also, a second store would affect me. I will have to make a decision on whether to trust a separate store or not use those apps. I'd prefer not to have to make that choice.
it can (on the official app store), it's just not an argument against letting other stores compete on the same platform. For all I care put a banner up that says 'this is not first party Apple software, you use it on your own risk!' and what is the problem? You're not being robbed of your safe Apple store at all, users only gain choice.
It's their product and they can do whatever they want with it. If anyone doesn't like that, they can easily not purchase iDevices. Apple doesn't force people to buy their products.
It's my phone, and I can do whatever I want with it. If Apple doesn't like that, they can easily maintain ownership by not selling the device. I don't force Apple to sell iPhones instead of leaving them in a warehouse.
Once I've bought it, it is mine. The entire idea that Apple can do whatever they want on a device that they have already sold is ludicrous.
> It's just that Apple aren't going to spend their time and money developing software to let you do things they aren't interested in. Why should they?
They are spending time and money to prevent that. Or you can create an app store as an app and expect Apple to allow your "app store app" to ship in iPhones?
The features are already there in the OS, they use them themselves. They dont need to do anything more.. but instead they work to cripple or prevent others from using it.
This is in essence the spirit of a monopoly.
Ok you personally dont mind for whatever reasons, but there a lot of other harms to the society and civil rights in general going on here. And that was the reason countries and laws exists.. To prevent people or companies in position of power to abuse their power.
But there's a specific consumer safety reason for it.
Not letting other browsers use their own JS engine (which is what it means to 'forcing them to use Internet Explorer engine on Windows' in your analogy) is because Apple want to disallow write|execute for people's safety.
Not letting other browsers use their own JS engine (which is what it means to 'forcing them to use Internet Explorer engine on Windows' in your analogy) is because Apple want to disallow write|execute for people's safety.
Perhaps you're right. Maybe it's entirely coincidental that Apple's policy also prevents owners of Apple devices from using a browser with modern features that would allow web apps to effectively compete with the native apps from which Apple gets a huge cut of the revenue because of its monopoly control over the app store.
Granting dynamic-codesigning exclusively to JavaScriptCore shows a lack of confidence in their platform sandbox and the app store review mechanism, and a (occasionally dangerous) overconfidence in the quality of WebKit's security.
But if its because of safety, why only JavascriptCore VM allow write execute flag?
If that was the real reason then, dont you think it should also be disabled in JavascriptCore?
Or the real reason, is as it was pointed out in the other comment, is to cripple other browser engines that offer a platform that could actually be competitive with AppleKit's turning their control over the App store (and what people are allowed to access according to their own taste) irrelevant?
And if that's the real reason behind it, its clear the end user best interests are not being taken into account, as in not having access to possible better options according to your own tastes, contrary to what a lot of people in the comments here are trying to make we believe its true.
I'm curious, if you didn't like the way it is, why did you buy one? None of these things are new. They've basically been the same since they came out.
You largely had a choice of two products. It sounds like one did what you wanted, and one didn't. You bought the one that didn't and now you're unhappy about it. I don't quite understand that.
We shouldn’t have to choose between one of two products, each of which is controlled by a giant, unaccountable entity which has its own type of anti-competitive stranglehold on consumers and engages in harmful behavior.
It’s pretty clear the only path out of this situation is to rethink antitrust laws in a society where companies have evolved to evade them, and to legislate.
It doesn’t matter why I bought one. Car manufactures can’t just do whatever they want. They have to follow rules.
What’s wrong with people wanting Apple and Google to follow some rules?
Having a rule that all smartphones should allow sideloading would not be the end of the world for people who like Apple’s app store. Those people would still have the choice to us it.
I'm sorry, I wasn't trying to be argumentative. I just truly don't understand it. It kinda feels like the people that move close to an airport and then complain about air traffic. You knew the deal going in, but you went in anyway. And now you're upset about the choice you made.
So what I'm really curious about is why is that? Regardless of the legality beyond it, why did you make a choice you're upset with?
I bought an iPad because mobile Safari is a compatibility nightmare and not available on non-iOS platforms, so I needed it just for debugging and testing. Telling 20% of my users to switch to another browser is not an option either, since the only alternatives are just Safari reskins.
> It sounds like one did what you wanted, and one didn't
Two products is not a huge number. It seems likely that neither product was exactly what they want, and this is just a particular thing they don't like about iPhones.
Should a private company be allowed to sell a secure locked down device, with people buying it knowing that you cant 1) modify the bootloader 2) modify the os 3) sideload apps?
To many people, the fault you find in the product is the added value that differentiates it from competitors.
This argument only works if there is sufficient competition. I would say that Apple has enough competition to agree with the argument that "you don't have to buy an iPhone".
Most people are “forced” to get internet through their cable company because there often isn’t a choice. How many people have to buy a phone that on average is twice as expensive as the alternative and then complain about it?
Funnily enough, the government-granted monopoly only came as a consequence of a sweetheart deal that AT&T cut with the federal government- after the gov't first tried to pursue antitrust to halt AT&T's monopolistic activities:
Microsoft had 90%+ marketshare in PCs. Apple has less than 15%.
How did that whole government intervention thing work out with respect to Microsoft? 20 years later they still have the same dominance in operating systems and productivity apps. No one cares about browser dominance except for Google.
Most people don't by Window's in a store, it's pre-installed on PCs and Microsoft did, in fact, force computer companies to buy Windows licenses for every PC regardless of what OS it came with and they threatened to pull their licensing entirely for any company that didn't abide.
Ironically, this is not what got them into trouble.
Actually what they were prosecuted for was mainly threatening to blacklist Compaq from buying OEM licenses. Thus they not only had a monopoly (with 90%+ of desktops at the time), but used that monopoly position to coerce another company, engaging in anticompetitive behavior.
That actually had a dominant market position on desktop/laptops and still do. Apple does not have a dominant market position in laptops, desktops or mobile phones.
i purchased one of their product ( an iphone), which now belongs to me. That doesn't mean i should be compelled to use all of their product.
What if tomorrow they decide bing is the only search engine available on iOS, or iCloud the only storage solution. Would you still be holding the same argument ?
iOS is an option among several, not the only game in town. Nobody forces anybody to buy iOS, and if they don't they don't need to use the iOS App Store either, problem solved...
Nobody forces you to buy a Ford or a Chevy either but both of those manufacturers have to follow very strict rules about how they make and sell cars.
If our country decides to make a rule about how smart phones should be created, sold or operated and Apple doesn’t like it, they can go and do business somewhere else.
And Tesla? Will they also have to allow third parties to “upgrade” their cars since many of the additional features are software controlled? Why stop there? Kindles? Roku sticks? WebOS TVs? TiVo’s? Cable boxes?
I think if any of those had paid app stores with extortionate rates charged to developers, then yes - there is a pro-consumer argument to be made in favor of allowing third party applications from other sources.
This is not pro-consumer behaviour. This is pro-Apple behaviour. They enjoy the lock in + fees that the app store generates. They're even stifling web apps to maintain this monopoly.
If they were so pro-consumer, why do they allow spyware such as Tiktok to exist on their platform at all?
>They enjoy the lock in + fees that the app store generates.
That only affects the developer, not the consumer. What does the consumer care about who gets paid the fees.
I keep seeing the App Store framed as a consumer issue rather than a developer one when it's not. The App Store is no question pro-consumer especially when you consider the fact that the "open" web has essentially devolved into using every available toolkit to track users across the web.
I'm not at all interested in giving Facebook yet another platform where they can run amok with native hardware. I'm not interested in cleaning off Bonzai Buddy off my parents and friends phones.
If Apple decided to implement the Push Notification API for Mobile Safari, it would be very beneficial to the users of my forum websites. Now I’m forced to build an app, while my forums users are all happy with the website as it is. They just want push notifications and I’m convinced Apple is holding that back on purpose. I bet there are internal emails about that issue as well.
Those were high-profile examples. But most apps implement some sort of telemetry even just basic product analytics e.g. MixPanel or Google Analytics. Both of which collect a wealth of user data.
So if I were you I would not use any app or search engine. Just to be on the safe side.
If you were me, you might've deleted that remark in shame after realising it is maximising snark at the expense of worthwhile advice.
What I actually do is: minimise the number of apps installed, run a pihole to misroute unwanted traffic, run a VPN tunnel between home and a VPS that I manage myself for location masking and additional egress filtering, install a nonmonetized content blocker for which the source code is available (and run in advanced mode, with assets manually unblocked only by need), and use DuckDuckGo as my search engine.
Neither MixPanel nor GA are in my good books, and if a website requires such spyware to load before it functions, I abandon it.
What's more, I don't allow anything of the sort to be installed on my own services. The only third-party assets permitted are the card-capture fields from our payment gateway.
Tiktok grabs your IMEI number, amongst numerous other things and sends them back to the mother ship.
Not saying that other platforms don't collect data, but Tiktok is known for being a whole other level spyware. If Apple was truly trying to protect consumers, there's no way it would allow it.
>Tiktok grabs your IMEI number, amongst numerous other things and sends them back to the mother ship.
Maybe I misunderstand you but the quick search[0] I did on Google says Apple iOS API doesn't allow programmer to fetch IMEI number. Did TikTok find a way to circumvent this and get the IMEI?
The only legitimate way is via private entitlements, which require you be either Apple or perhaps a carrier that works with Apple to be on the iPhone https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24014412
To be fair, stifling web apps sounds like an anti-google move, not a pro-apple move (unless they've explicitly stated otherwise, I'd assume this is the reasoning). That said, I have been able to install some of my own websites as apps on iOS after adding PWA support. I am not sure how much their support differs from the Android implementation.
> Everything Apple is doing is helping make a better app store for me.
I would prefer paying for Netflix right from the iPhone. It would be great to have torrent apps (they have legitimate use-cases). I would love to run qemu on my powerful iPad Pro.
Eh, I think this is one of the two points where the case against Apple's App Store model is the strongest. Not allowing applications to use third party in-app purchase systems is weakly defensible, but they not only don't allow that, they not only don't allow you to load an online store in a web view, they not only don't allow you to link to an online store that will open in Safari, the App Store terms literally do not allow you to mention the existence of other online stores.
There are arguments to be made -- and they're made in these comments -- that the App Store is a net benefit for consumers, but it is really, really hard to make the case that users somehow benefit from this.
I don't think that's a valid comparison in this case. You aren't advertising another place to buy the same item, you are telling people how to buy content for the item they obtained from Apple's App Store that is (a) necessary for the item to work meaningfully and (b) is not sold through Apple's App Store. Are you completely confident that if Walmart, for some reason, sold video game consoles but didn't sell the actual games for the console, they would maintain an iron-clad prohibition against telling their own customers where those games are available?
All of that can be done while also not being a monopoly. Apple steals apps and recreates their own versions. They can remove your app for no reason on a whim because you might compete with them.
That's what the anti-monopoly is about. Frequently, apples 'pro consumer behavior' is demonstrably false, both from their hardware to their software. It's about making you artificially pay more for less and creating a culture of privledged users that mistake revocation of freedom as 'design' because they have the money to ignore reality.
"Everything Apple is doing is helping make a better app store for me." - it is the benevolent dictator fallacy[1]. You cannot say dictatorship is good because one dictator seems to have done good things. In the same way, just because Apple has been nice so far (in you opinion at least) doesn't mean that the practice itself is good.
There's a certain amount of brainwashing I've come to expect from Apple users. My sibling uses a MacBook, but remotes into a Windows machine in order to use Excel and Word, as the native versions on Mac don't seem to have all the advanced functionality. As far as I can tell, there is no specific other use case for the MacBook for my sibling. Yet, they're convinced that their purchase was a great one (I only hear the occasional complaint about how scrolling feels a bit weird, and the lack of certain keys on the keyboard)!
This is a tendency when people buy luxury goods to feel good about and defend their purchases. On HN you alway see the most intense loyalty towards Apple and Tesla.
Quoting from the article,
"Apple attempts to justify these fees by arguing that the App Store is no different from a mall, where companies seeking to offer their products must pay rent to the owner of the mall (in this case, Apple). This argument conveniently ignores the fact that there is just a single mall when it comes to iOS and no possibility of a competing mall to rent space from. It is not illegal for Apple to own a mall and rent space, nor is it illegal for Apple to own the only mall. What is illegal, is exploiting the fact that it owns the only mall to charge excessively high pricing which harms competitors."
This is a recurring theme here on HN. The fundamental dilemma is whether or not it is a monopoly. The article is arguing that it is.
There is clearly an "alternative mall" on the market, it's called Android. With 75% global market share they are the ones that are much more likely to be a monopoly, yet for some reason all the accusations are instead being leveled at the minority player on the market.
I don't even know why people are getting hung up on this monopoly thing. You can make a perfectly valid argument against Apple's 30% cut or their overly restrictive App Store policies regardless of whether they have a monopoly or not. Those arguments stand up on their own.
Do you think you would lose any of those benefits if Google had an iOS app store too? What if you also had the option of Microsoft iOS app store? Would the competition likely to increase pro-consumer benefits or decrease them?
Pro-consumer vs anti-publisher is a false equivalence. This is not a zero-sum game, not at all.
> And when developers are forced to support all 5 big ones?
That is a big assumption. Who is the forcing agent here you are positing? The whole point of making app stores a multiagent game is to reduce the leverage of one to force things on developers and consumers.
> If the remedy for Apple picking winners is more stores, then it just means all of the big players will get to pick winners.
For this to happen as bad as today a) they all will need to see a benefit in picking winners b) they all will need to pick precisely the same winners.
The whole point of competition is giving power back to the end users (both app consumers and developers) in the form of choice. Any downside you mention is a competitive advantage first and app stores will have to synchronize hard and tight to forgo that to build a cartel against the users and developers (mind you they would also need to build precisely the same products with nothing to differentiate). And at its worst they still wouldn’t be worse than today’s single monopoly.
Developers are complaining that the 30% is a problem.
If this is true, then they will be forced to support any store that has 15% of the market or be worse of than they are today.
Some of the stores will just be bargain basement garbage with nasty policies and perhaps no less than 30% commission, but will have market power because they are owned by Facebook or google.
It will absolutely be worse than today’s monopoly.
If things are made even worse for developers, consumers will not benefit.
It’s true that there will be more ‘choices’ that everyone will be forced to make
The biggest reason I haven't jumped ship to Android over the years is that the App Store has always been inherently curated, and typically more secure than the Android store.
The iPhone has been pretty good for security / privacy as well - I remember an article that made the front page here about how an accidental usage of the phone's GPS was still stopped when not allowed in the user's settings, and still triggered the location use icon in the status bar.
Much like how Standard Oil actually lowered oil prices while it dominated the market -- sometimes, a monopoly is benign or even benevolent towards consumers. Meanwhile Amazon is an example of a more predatory organization, as evidenced by some of Bezos's responses in the recent congressional hearing.
Monopolies like Amazon should be torn down for the consumer. Monopolies like Apple should only be torn down if they are using their market dominance to extinguish competition that would otherwise force them to improve.
This is completely missing the point. It's not merely about how the store is run, but that there is no alternative. You could have exactly the same with a competing store.
You can't have competition in a single ecosystem and have all those qualities because some consumers will be tricked into using some app store that looks legit and isn't. And as you point out, Android is a competitor and the Android stores compete with Apple's store. Just buy a different phone.
No one is talking about taking away your choice of keep using the Apple appstore. It is ok to keep using Apple, if you prefer so. We wan't choices, we don't want to remove your choice.
We generally don’t think it’s a good thing when people are forced to work multiple jobs, and we call it a food desert when you have to hunt lots of different stores to get the basics.
The idea that more choices is always better is just ideology.
It is quite obviously possible to move from a situation in which there is no choice and where there are some problems, to a situation where there are multiple choices and none of them are as good as the be no-choice case.
I do think there are problems with Apple’s store.
I think law may be needed.
I don’t think antitrust law forcing ‘competition’ has any likelihood of solving the problems.
If we think there are rights vendors should have over stores - e.g. the right to describe their product however they like, we should establish that in law for all stores.
If we want to use law to force our cooperations to limit the practices they can use in other countries as a way to put pressure on other political systems, those are called sanctions. I’m fine with those being applied if our government decides to apply them.
Yes, because I want to be continue to recommend Apple products to friends and family who would definitely be scammed by fake payment mechanisms if Apple wasn’t preventing it.
There are ways to provide safety interlocks for naive users that don't require bowdlerising the entire platform.
What's more, Apple doesn't prevent those users entering payment card details into websites they reach by other means; this protection is patchy at best. Nor does it prevent apps using psychological tricks to maximise their revenue through the platform itself, e.g. as with many gambling and gaming apps.
So with the best will in the world I can't see that this security angle justifies the anti-competitive behaviour.
I'll also observe that in most card schemes, account holders aren't liable for fraudulent transactions. Although I would concede that many scams aren't technically fraudulent (merely egregious, unfair, and deceptive), and that naive users often don't understand their rights or how to assert them.
People know the difference between the web and apps, and the whole point is that people trust in app purchase app purchases more than they do entering their card details into browsers.
Clearly a browser that didn’t let you enter text would have been unacceptable and the iPhone would have failed as a product.
On the other hand, it’s clear that Apple does actually see this as a serious problem, which is why ApplePay for the web exists, and I know quite a few people who feel far safer with websites that use it.
The argument that Apple hasn’t yet made the web safe for their users even though they are working on it, therefore they should abandon the safety have managed to achieved on the store doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.
That’s a misrepresentation. The point is that they can achieve the same safety level for naive users without mandatory rules across permissible content in all applications. I can toggle privacy controls, for example, and manage advertising IDs, and relax (and strengthen) my online safety controls in many other aspects.
The web angle is simply demonstrating by contrast that the claim these hardline rules exist for online safety is horse shit. If they were prepared to irrevocably cripple one functional area for safety’s sake, why not another?
The answer is, because that was never the goal.
These rules are simply the protectionist use of market power, and by obliging other vendors to mislead consumers, become an abuse of market power.
How do you feel about them removing an app because it allows people from HK to circumvent censorship? And why? Just asking to understand your point of view on the article.
I think that part of the article is frankly intellectually dishonest.
I agree that there is a problem with them not allowing different descriptions in different countries, and I agree that they should add this feature to the store.
I wouldn’t have a problem with this being litigated on its own merits. I can see potential legal arguments.
I don’t see what this has to do with antitrust or the rest of the claims, which just seem like a tortured way to introduce an ethical dimension to the argument.
No proposed antitrust remedy has anything to do with challenging authoritarian regimens. If anything the remedies would make the situation worse.
One obvious pathological outcome is that if Apple is forced to create infrastructure to allow multiple stores, every authoritarian state will trivially mandate the installation of a state run store app, with all manner of tracking, privacy abuses, etc., even the ones which had previously had no leverage over Apple.
Using a website would mean browsing it through Safari (the only, artificially imposed browser on iOS), which notoriously doesn't support push notifications and other app-like features. One generally can not get the same functionality from websites and apps, and this is especially true for iOS.
As a consumer I love Apple's commitment to high quality apps - a side effect of their review process. As a seller on their marketplace 30% is extremely high. 30% of every sale! For context Amazons referral fee averages about 15%.
Not everyone made apps before Apple. In thoese times the developer got the 30% and the store keept the remaining 70%.
Of course often after download, and credit card fees.
I get it, everyone wants always more. And maybe there is more room. Many just view it from their own point of view.
You are assuming nothing else can be in place to solve all of those problems. If you and many other consumers want that then services will appear to solve those problems barring regulation and market barriers like a monopolistic app store and platform policies.
Yeah, I completely agree. I do feel conflicted because just a few companies control everything. It's that tough balance to be sure and I don't know what the right solution is
Android has the freedom of other app stores, but in practice very few even bother
There are successful alternative app markets for Android, for example in South Korea. They are rare, because running an app market is in fact difficult. App search and discovery is not simple, neither is pushing update notifications. But it is possible, and when done competently (South Korean mobile telecom companies are competent; unbelievable, I know), the result is good.
I see it the same way, even as developer. Every store is another task which takes resources to handle. Stores change and hence it never stops.
Further, Icwsnt customers to know tuey can trust the ecosystem to some degree.
As a fahter, the Apple App Store too is the only place I give my children access too. They started with Android phones but after I noticed the apps which are present in the Google Play Store we went on to switch to iOS. Passing on our used devices to our kids.
Google could have done amazing things, abd so could Microsoft. But both took a different parh. I am not a Apple fanboy, I fact I am very critical about them. Yet its simply the best ecosystem for normal consumers.
For apps that let you subscribe either in the app or on the web, do you voluntarily choose to pay 20~30% more for that convenience? For example, Dropbox is $12 in-app vs $10 on the web. Youtube Premium is $16 in-app vs $12 on the web. Spotify is $13 in-app vs $10 on the web.
Do you think most consumers would choose to pay 20~30% more for that convenience if they were informed of that choice? And isn't it anti-consumer to deny them this information?
That's fine, but why it has to be only app store? why not let other App Stores compete on the same platform, and let the user choose, as we do with browsers ?
Why not let consumers decide if Apple's 30% uplift is worth it? Clearly for yourself that is the case, but others may come to a different conclusion.
Most markets offer a variety of tradeoffs in price vs. quality. Consumers rarely pick the cheapest product. If Apple's app store is superior, they will have no problem in justifying their 30%.
It also proves the point that consumers don’t care....
We have decades of viruses, malware, ransomware, and toolbars on Windows PCs that prove that the average consumer isn’t that technologically savvy.
I’m not saying Macs are immune in anyway to the same exploits. It’s just that not enough people care to create malware on the Mac to make it that big of a deal.
As it proves that when people have a choice - ie can afford it - they would rather buy Apple walled garden and all over Android where you can sideload.
Let’s be precise here. You want to be able to choose.
If you can force thru a change to allow other app stores on an IDevice, and Apple still refuses to follow thru, then you can say you deserve it.
Wanting a thing is not the same as deserving it. Choice does not exist until you have options.
That said, I’m in favor of opening up other App Stores, so Apple can boot the all crapware and focus on a small number of high-quality, trustable apps, which they can market as such. Apple and the developers could charge a premium for being trusted and consumers would be able trust that they are actually receiving the best-in-class apps for their device.
Then, if consumers want to go to some cut-rate App Store and buy crap apps, that’s on them.
It's a bit pedantic, but okay. I philosophically believe that we deserve to choose - you are right that the reality is different. I would like to make it the same.
It may seem pedantic, but it’s a useful distinction. ‘Deserves’ implies that you’ll get something without giving up anything. If you want a thing, then you can negotiate for it, each party giving up something to get their desired outcome.
What would you be willing to give up so that Apple would support your desired outcome more?
ios has reached a critical mass that makes it impossible to avoid for a huge number of apps if they want to be profitable, especially in rich countries.
That’s very unfair. I believe in capitalism, yes, because I believe in individual freedom and personal property rights. That really all capitalism is. But I also believe in a caring society, as citizens were all in this together. Citizenship comes with obligations as well as rights and we should look after our own.
They'd have to write extra code compared to what they have now to do this, and then they've had to support that code. They don't want to. Why on earth should they want to spend time writing code to run other people's businesses that they aren't involved in.
Do you require that McDonald's will sell you a Pepsi, when McDonald's want to sell you Coca-Cola? Do you demand that you should be allowed to set up a Pepsi store inside a McDonalds?
They wouldnt need to write more code, theyd need to remove code. Third party app stores already exist for iOS with no assistance from Apple, they are just prevented from running unless the device is jailbroken.
Granted, they might choose to write some code to manage how these additional stores work, but theres no technical reason I can think of that they would have to.
There is spyware (that is, malware) in almost every single app in the Apple App Store. Apple asserts that you consent to spyware in your apps when you agree to the App Store TOS.
These apps track your location (both sensor and geoip based) over time, and aggregate and sell that data, along with other user data they glean.
Well they can do all that with a 10% fee too. The author is contending that by adding those restrictions and a high 30% fee, Apple is acting like a monopoly - it's their way or the highway.
What evidence do you have that a 10% fee is enough to operate the App Store at the scale Apple does?
When the App Store was launched, Steve Jobs said they plan to run it at break-even, no profit, and for quite a few years that was exactly what they did. Now they are profiting from the App Store and clearly could continue to run it as they do on a lower percentage, but I don't think 10% is that number. If they could run it on 10%, they wouldn't have operated it without profit for the first quite-a-few years at 30%!
I cant find any evidence in their financial reports of Apple breaking down sales and cost of sales for the App store in early years. I would be very, very surprised though if it was not profitable almost immediately (unless you creatively move around numbers and claim 100% of the iPhone's R&D was a cost of sale for the app store).
You are correct, I am taking their early claims at face value, but they never produced supporting numbers. I would be shocked if their claims weren't true, however.
Because of the lack of numbers, I'm not sure how long it was before running at break-even ceased to be a thing, though.
Suppose you make the argument that developers, not consumers, pay for the dev kits, language, development, improvement, apis of the os. 30% might appropriately reflect the amount of work in an app that is apples work.
Services net sales in 2019 was $46.2B, and the cost of those sales was $16.8B (source 2019 10-K). They dont specifically break out App store vs other services, but as a whole the services section of their business is very, very profitable, according to their accounting. It remains so even if you throw in the entirety of R&D ($16.2B).
> For apps and in-app products offered through Google Play, the service fee is equivalent to 30% of the price. You receive 70% of the payment. The remaining 30% goes to the distribution partner and operating fees.
[https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answ...]
And Steam (unless you have a very popular game) and GOG.
But it's easy to argue that many of these just derived their rates from what existing similar store fees were. Epic Game Store tried to disrupt this and they're still at it a few years later but for most developers publishing on Steam/GOG nothing changed.
Because you cannot opt for a different store if you don't like the fee. If you want to sell independently, you cant. If you want to sell alternatively, you cant. This excludes many devs and shops from access.
This is their platform... maybe the gov can make this a legal monopoly like the NFL. And, everyone gets the same % rate, same rules, and no apple competition in apps. Same for Google...
I think you are missing the social and political implications of your choices.
Its not just about being a monopoly in the economical sense, which is bad per-se, but to let a private company to control what you have access or not based on particular moral, political views.
To forbid you to access technology that can compete with what they offer on the basis of "security".
If you do not get it, they control the only app store allowed where they also control what you can or cannot access to. You are implying they are good actors somehow that are doing all this thinking on you, while in reality they will do whatever they can to maximize their profits, and as long as people like you are fine with it, nothing will change.
Your current government might yet be democratic enough as this can not YET represent a threat to your civil rights or the ones you love, but things changes constantly. (Who could have predicted that the 30's Weimar Republic Germany would fall like that?)
Once your government do not respect civil rights anymore the way it should, a private company with this amount of control on your digital life can represent a big threat that unlike in the past, would be pretty hard to get rid of.
What about the concept of digital property?
Should you have choices?
Can a private company bar your choices?
Can a private company own the things that were bought by you and are in a phone that you have pay for?
Imagine if after having bought a vehicle, Wolkswagen could tell you who can you transport: "We dont allow dogs in OUR cars".
Now imagine someone saying: "I like what Wolkswagen do, its for my safety, dogs will damage my car".. "Just buy a Mercedes then!"
Or what if Wolkswagen did also sell vehicle parts, and even if you know there are pieces for your cars that are better or cheap, you wouldnt be able to buy them because the stores would be closed for you.
But then you would say: "But apple dont bar me from buying apps, i have choices.." and its a illusion of choice, because the apps were not even allowed to enter the store in the first place.
So there's a real danger into letting any private company to choose things for you before you are able to choose them.
We should have by now a good legislation about digital rights, digital property, etc, that could regulate this source of thing.
Because as i've witnessed here in the comments, you cannot let people on their own, because they can be emotionally manipulated into want things that will harm them and their rights in the long run.
It should not be just about being good for you at this particular moment, we should always take into account the collective and social implications of our choices.
> You are implying they are good actors somehow that are doing all this thinking on you, while in reality they will do whatever they can to maximize their profits, and as long as people like you are fine with it, nothing will change.
Yes. Americans fully support their money going towards 2 trillion dollar companies as long as their device works well and they can upgrade to the fastest model every 2-4 years.
No problem about someone doing a good job in a product and making tons of money with it. With people wanting good things, this is also expected.
The big issue here is control of our digital life and all the implications that comes with it.
This looks a lot like people living in Leibniz "Best of all possible worlds" or living in a slice of that world not minding to the side effects.
I hate the fact the both Apple's App Store as well as Google's Play Store do not offer basic search filters. In particular for my kids, I'd love to be able to search for games without ads or in-app purchases. But Apple and Google do not offer this feature because it would hurt their revenues. That's why I'd love to have a good alternative to the App Store or Play Store.
I am a big Apple fan, but seriously, you guys are bending yourselves into pretzels to make up excuses for Apple.
we already know what a market without a mandatory App Store looks like because it is like that for the Mac. I still prefer buying apps through Apple’s store. Due to safety, ease of use etc. But I am happy alternatives exist when I need them.
They could follow a similar model for iPhone where non-Apple stores have to be enabled specifically with a security warning.
My most important apps are installed outside of the App Store (on macOS) simply because many types of apps are just not allowed in the App Store, such as Little Snitch. Same thing for Nix and VirtualBox.
Recall also how Apple forced out Tumblr, a blog reader app (simply a window to UGC) on iOS because they didn’t like the UGC.
I fear the inevitable end down that path lies people who bought an iDevice, enabled alternative stores, were duped/hacked/otherwise-invaded, visited a Genius only to be told Apple won’t help them, and then lawsuits against Apple for their trouble.
The rest of the software world hasn't collapsed into class action hell because people installed stuff they shouldn't have on their equipment, and it's had a few decades to try. Why would we expect the iDevice ecosystem to do so now?
The hypothetical lawsuits you describe don't seem very likely to succeed. No doubt a few people will complain, and then they'll discover the hard way that there is no technological cure for carelessness and whatever other platform they go to next will similarly be compromised if they are similarly careless about what they install on their equipment.
I hate the current situation where you buy a 1000$
pocket-computer and when you want to run your own software on it
they call it "sideloading" and it might not be even possible.
I applaud this. The manufacturer of the device must not control what apps I run on after buying it. Third-party appstores and app sideloading is a must.
(And do not forget third party push-notifications, iOS devices are next to useless without them)
> The manufacturer of the device must not control what apps I run on after buying it.
The manufacturer of the device is within their rights to ship the software/hardware experience they want it to have.
If you do not like it, then there is no obligation for you to buy said device.
You are not entitled to make the device manufacturer pour time and effort into developing support for features like this. It's quite simple - if you don't like the ecosystem, move on.
> The manufacturer of the device is within their rights to ship the software/hardware experience they want it to have.
This is the same logic people use to block modification of movies, music, books, video games, etc.
"The artist wants you to experience their art a specific way and the ability to [censor profanity/add zombies/change the ending/remix it] wrests control from the creator and allows people experience their art in a way they didn't intend, which is bad"
Curiously though, these people never mention altering food as destroying the experience the chef wanted them to have. For some reason consumers are allowed to have food preferences that modify art, but not preferences that modify other types of art.
And you would also hope the food doesn't come inside a bullet-proof glass bubble with a robotic arm as the only interface between you and the food to ensure you eat it exactly the way the chef intended.
And furthermore you would hope breaking the bullet-proof glass bubble so you can feed yourself and pick out the mushrooms won't cause the chef to send lawyers after you (especially if you teach others how to).
It's normal for restaurants to restrict what you eat and how, even if the food belongs to you. Have you ever tried to bring, say, a cake or a bottle of wine to dinner with you? Some places might just say no outside food or drink, but others will say you have to pay them per slice to cut your own cake, for instance. Or you have to pay them to uncork your wine[1].
So although you're presenting an analogy intended to be absurd, I think it's not far from how the normal non-tech world works, in terms of controlling your experience.
I actually do just that: I don't buy apple's devices, for precisely this reason. And I happen to actually like them.
This argument you make is actually done to the death. If you don't like Jenko's oil (ever read "The Godfather"?), you may just not buy it. It is a monopoly, and it hurts consumers.
I'm actually very surprised that this freedom-loving public here on HN is so happy be restricted by their shiny digital handcuffs. Good that EU and US lawmakers are finally waking up to this abuse.
Apple is a minority player in the mobile device space. If you don't want to use an Apple device no one is making you. It will not impact your daily life in any meaningful way whatsoever.
> I'm actually very surprised that this freedom-loving public here on HN is so happy be restricted by their shiny digital handcuffs.
I'm actually very surprised that this freedom-loving public here on HN is so happy let governments force private entities to do anything they want under the thinly-veiled guise of antitrust.
> I'm actually very surprised that this freedom-loving public here on HN is so happy let governments force private entities to do anything they want under the thinly-veiled guise of antitrust.
I don't want Apple and Google taking 30% of my profit. How hard is it as a startup to yield that much of your profit margin for such a stupid reason?
We regressed hard core since the 90s. Distribution was free. The web platform is accessible to anyone without an account or membership fee.
Anyone used to be able to write hardware drivers and innovate to the fullest extent with hardware, to get it to do whatever. Now you have to follow the distributor product roadmap and sanctioned API.
Google and Apple own compute. How the fuck did we let that happen?
The government needs to push these entities aside to ensure further innovation can continue.
Depends on what you're comparing against. With the web, as much as I enjoyed those days, your take seems a bit rose-tinted. Generally, finding official binaries wasn't too bad. "This website looks official" was the bar. But that was a crazy low bar then, and even worse today. It's essentially "the domain looks correct and the design looks polished". For some of the more obscure binaries, I recall downloading from the "wrong" sites a handful of times. Rare, but it happened. When I watched my parents use a computer then, there was no check of what was legit, because why wouldn't it be legit?
Comparing against consoles like Nintendo, Sega, and Xbox back then, it was definitely an improvement. No NDAs, no exorbitant upfront costs for dev hardware, no massive take by your publisher. 30% was not much compared to all that, where it likely would have been the other way around (you get 30 [if that], "they" get 70). Today, it does feel steep, and could use another realignment, but "the good old days" weren't exactly that.
What a ridiculous divide-and-conquer definition of “monopoly.”
Apple is one supplier out of many in the mobile device space. “iPhone users” do not constitute an industry any more than “Windows Store users.”
By your logic I could just divide every service and every industry over and over, until everything happens to be a monopoly over some small uniform subset of users.
HN is a monopoly over HN users! Nike is a monopoly over people in the Nike store! Whole Foods is a monopoly over people visiting grocery stores at this Whole Foods address! Government, please control and regulate all of these out of existence!
The problem (if you agree there is one) is that Apple is the only company that can sell many other companies products, because they use technical restrictions to prevent those companies from selling their own products independently. They then use that advantage to charge an unreasonably high fee to consumers.
The ability to communicate by smartphone is so ubiquitous in our society that it has effectively become a basic need on the level of electricity, water, natural gas, and internet access. The utility service that was land-line telephones is becoming obsolete, and it's becoming increasingly harder to participate in society without a smartphone and the ability to install apps on that smartphone.
In light of that reality, the duopoly of Apple and Google are effectively public utilities. They can no longer be considered solely as providers of discretionary consumer goods, and should be subject to additional scrutiny and regulation beyond that applied to ordinary commodity manufacturers.
If you support Apple and Google in their claims to 30% of the profit, then you support Comcast charging an additional fee for Netflix.
If you support Apple and Google having locked down authoritative control over the code run on their devices, then you support the Great Firewall.
The only choice of a free and open society, and one mindful of the great benefit of open source and open platforms, is to remove these companies from executive control of mobile platforms. They must become free and open, just like the web.
They're sucking all of the air out of the room. It kills freedom, diversity, and progress. It's rent-seeking.
I'm legitimately curious what your solution is to sign up for Netflix if you can't use your ISP (Comcast, likely a monopoly with no alternatives).
I can't imagine calling up Netflix and attempting to sign up via telephone is feasible, nor is explaining to the average consumer the price is different because they're on wifi instead of data (and only their wifi, or select locations that use Comcast).
Someone said that Comcast charges more if you buy Netflix through them. Comcast does offer Netflix as an add on. You don’t have to buy Netflix as an add on through Comcast.
Apple retaining 30% on the store is fascism, but the open web is a utopia? This argument completely ignores the reality of the situation. One of the greatest abusers of the open web is Facebook who tracks users on almost every site and infringes on the privacy of everyone despite whether of not you hold an account.
I'm not interested in Facebook, TikTok, or the next VC social media company, getting native, unfettered access to hardware on my phone or anyone around me where they would be free to run the GPS 24/7. That's the reality of the "open web" today.
> One of the greatest abusers of the open web is Facebook who tracks users on almost every site and infringes on the privacy of everyone despite whether of not you hold an account.
Another area where we should exercise legislative action to protect Americans.
> I'm not interested in Facebook, TikTok, or the next VC social media company, getting native, unfettered access to hardware on my phone
You're ignoring the great strides we've made, and continue to make, in sandboxing.
I'd rather these developments happen out in the open, too.
Apple doesn't just own the only app store on their platform: They also prevent apps that don't meet their personal moral standards on the store, arbitrarily. As a result, Instagram, tumblr, and many other sites are forced to censor and curtail content on their platforms because of apples perpetual moral consternation.
Apple should be able to do this - but they shouldn't be able to do it without those companies being able to represent themselves independently, through another app store.
> Apple should be able to do this - but they shouldn't be able to do it without those companies being able to represent themselves independently, through another app store.
I dont think they should. They should only do enough to comply with the law. eg. child pornography
Each human being has its own moral standards and should be allowed to choose and not let others choose for them, unless as stated before, its considered illegal.
It's as if they want to eradicate the very concept of sexuality from the internet. Even if you rate your app 18+, you still aren't allowed to have any actual 18+ content in it. This makes no sense whatsoever.
Also: you have any UGC in your app? Too bad, you'll have to hire a team of moderators to enforce Apple's rules because won't someone think of the children.
I'll put it on the first level , because most Apple defenders say exactly same thing: "Why should Apple who created the iPhone sell it like it prefers to? If you don't like it buy another phone".
In fact, there was a business in US that did just that. Hollywood's Studio System. Movie studios were vertically integrated with theater chains, and you could only see Paramount or MGM movies in the theaters that that owned. And you know what? Customers were really unhappy, because studios made all kinds of bad tricks like forcing to buy a week pass to see just one movie. Of course, you could refuse to watch other 15 crap movies that were bundled with High Noon, or, like Apple defenders here say, go watch some other movie.
I imagined some arguments that some HN commenters could make:
"It's not a monopoly if you can watch other movies in other theaters"
"Paramount movie chain is just 15% of total number of theaters"
"They made this movie and they should decide how you are allowed to see it"
It all ended with an court decision [1] that ended this monopoly abuse.
The local cinema has an exclusive right on selling popcorn within its own walls. Far from being the only game in town, this cinema represents only 25% of the market and thus does not qualify for the Sherman Act definition of "monopoly". Punters, however, believe that once they enter the establishment they are now in the clutches of the monopoly, and so demand competing popcorn stands and reject the suggestion of walking over to the competing theater.
Sorry folks, that's not how Sherman Act works. So long as there are enough movie theaters in town it's not a "monopoly", and a non-existent monopoly cannot be abused.
The US congress could, of course, rewrite the law (as they did to pass the Sherman Act in the first place), but until such day Apple is not a monopoly in the US.
This is not really an apt comparison because the commitment to a movie theater is pretty minimal. If you spend $1000 on a phone, you're stuck there for a while. Most of these issues don't become immediately obvious right when you buy the phone either, it's things that might take you a few years to realize are happening (if ever).
Additionally, the network/ecosystem effects might make it such that you are really disincentivized to switch.
- For a lot of people, the idea that they would show up as a "green bubble" means they will never consider moving off of Apple
- If you've purchased a lot of apps that you will now lose, you're not going to just move off of Apple
If you don't like a movie theater chain, you just go to another one, or don't go to the movies. Not having a phone isn't a realistic option for most people, and neither is switching (this applies in the Google -> Apple direction as well).
People are very narrowly focused on whether Apple (or Google) are monopolies, and the fact is that you can have very imperfect competition[1] in a market that can seriously harm consumers, without anyone being a monopoly.
Would a better comparison be a cruise ship? You pay thousands to board, and you literally can’t leave at will.
While you’re aboard you can only purchase food, drink and entertainment from the cruise company. I don’t think a cruise ship would ever allow competing companies to provide those services.
I’m personally a little mixed on the App Store. I don’t a have fundamental issue with the App Store model, and as an Apple customer I personally see it’s limitations as an advantage.
However I do agree that Apple using its App Store to harm competitors in other industries, like Spotify and Netflix, as very harmful. Although I don’t know how fix that without fundamentally changing the App Store, or banning Apple from competing with App Store services like Spotify and Netflix.
How is Spotify and especially Netflix being harmed? If I search for a movie on either my iPhone, iPad, or AppleTV and the movie is available on Netflix, I’m told that I can watch it for free instead of being guided toward Apple’s movie store.
Spotify whined for years that they couldn’t stream music to the Apple Watch or download music to the Watch. Apple allowed third party integration over a year ago. Pandora added the feature - Spotify didn’t.
Spotify also doesn’t allow in app purchases so Apple doesn’t get a cut.
> Spotify also doesn’t allow in app purchases so Apple doesn’t get a cut.
This is how Spotify and Netflix are harmed. They have to pick between funding their competitor, or not providing simple signups and subscriptions on one of the worlds largest computing platforms.
This directly harms either their revenue stream or cost-of-acquisition. Both to the advantage of one of one of their largest competitors who has artificially introduced this barrier.
So can we also regulate Spotify for taking a much larger cut from artists? Spotify has a much larger share in streaming music than Apple has in phones.
Also. I can’t sign up for a Netflix subscription on my Roku either.
Spotify isn’t using their market dominance in another industry to squeeze either artists or competitors.
Nothing is stopping another streaming service from offering a bigger cut to artists (indeed Tide purports to do exactly this).
If Spotify started pushing artist contracts that prevented artists from getting a better deal else where, then they should be regulated. But they don’t, and there’s plenty of artists that don’t sell on Spotify because they don’t like the deal they offer.
Spotify isn’t using their market dominance in streaming to give artist a pittance?
Nothing is stopping another streaming service from offering a bigger cut to artists (indeed Tide purports to do exactly this).
A bigger cut of a tiny pie? In the same vein nothing is stopping app developers from ignoring iOS or users from buying iPhones, using Google, FaceBook, or Amazon.
> Spotify isn’t using their market dominance in streaming to give artist a pittance?
What evidence do you have back this up? There’s every suggestion that Spotify are struggling to defend themselves against artists who demand bigger payments.
Additionally there’s every suggestion that Apple Music now have a larger portion of the market than Spotify, and if it hasn’t happened yet, it will soon.
All of that is ignoring other competitors like Google Music (or YouTube, wherever they’re calling it today) and Amazon Music.
Simply put, your assertion fails on multiple fronts.
> So you’re okay with Spotify “defending themselves” against artist who want more of a cut?
Yes, there’s no god given right to be paid for your art. Just because I put some tones together and throw it on the Internet doesn’t mean I deserve to paid significant amounts of money. Or indeed any money at all.
> Actually Apple Music pays artists more per stream than Spotify.
That only proves my point, competition is driving up payments to artists, the system works. Not only that but Apple Music may soon be the dominant streaming platform, and if they can do that would resorting to anti-competitive behaviour then is show that artists can make a living, and consumers can continue paying ~$7/month for music.
Yes, there’s no god given right to be paid for your art. Just because I put some tones together and throw it on the Internet doesn’t mean I deserve to paid significant amounts of money. Or indeed any money at all.
But there is a God given right for software developers to get more than 70%?
Not only that but Apple Music may soon be the dominant streaming platform, and if they can do that would resorting to anti-competitive behaviour then is show that artists can make a living, and consumers can continue paying ~$7/month for music.
How do you propose that Apple becomes more dominant than Spotify worldwide when Apple only has a 15% market share? Are people really signing up for Apple Music on Android or are the few Android users who use Apple Music doing so only as part of a Family Plan where the other member of the household is an iOS user?
That only proves my point, competition is driving up payments to artists, the system works.
It’s only “working” because Apple, Amazon, and Google don’t need for music streaming to be profitable - unlike Spotify. They can operate at break even. Artists aren’t choosing one over the other.
> But there is a God given right for software developers to get more than 70%?
No, but the market clearly values developer time significantly more than artist time.
If you wanna have a debate about the relative worth of people professions to society vs their pay. Then talking about the difference between a sports persons pay and doctors pay tends to make for a better argument.
> How do you propose that Apple becomes more dominant than Spotify worldwide when Apple only has a 15% market share? Are people really signing up for Apple Music on Android or are the few Android users who use Apple Music doing so only as part of a Family Plan where the other member of the household is an iOS user?
Apple own almost 20% of the streaming market to Spotify’s 35% and show no signs of slowing down. Apples hardware market clearly hasn’t been a limitation so far. But again that isn’t a surprise when you consider that core markets for streaming are mostly western. And Apple have very high HW market share there, such as almost 50% of the US mobile market.
> It’s only “working” because Apple, Amazon, and Google don’t need for music streaming to be profitable - unlike Spotify. They can operate at break even. Artists aren’t choosing one over the other.
That just shows that Spotify’s cut isn’t unreasonable, they’re barely making a profit.
Ultimately artists choose to make art, they aren’t forced into. They, like any small business owner, takes a gamble. They trade a stable income for the opportunity to do some they love, and do something that has unbounded upside. If they strike a cord with popular society then they stand to make millions, an opportunity that a software developer earning a salary doesn’t have.
If they don’t like that deal, they get a salaried or wage job like the rest of us.
I started my own business for the reasons above, it didn’t pan out, and now I have a salaried job. But you don’t see me gripping about how someone else should have paid me more to run my business.
Simple fact of the matter is that society just doesn’t value artists that much. Neither Spotify or Apple is gonna change that.
Ultimately artists choose to make art, they aren’t forced into. They, like any small business owner, takes a gamble.
You could say the same about app makers. In fact, I am sure that I made more as “mobile developer” in 2008 working for a company that developed Windows CE apps for field services than most indy app makers make in 2020.
I think most people agree with it not completely being an apt comparison, but any judgment on this would have to draw a line between ‘allowed’ and ‘not allowed’ (without saying “Apple and a Google can’t do X”, either explicitly or implicitly, because that, rightfully, would not hold up in court), and doing that is hard.
For example, taking your “If you spend a significant amount on a phone, you're stuck there for a while” as a requirement for ‘not allowed’, Apple could start renting out phones instead of selling them.
They also could stop selling third-party apps, instead opting to buy them from third parties and selling them on to consumers or renting them out, as they already do with Apple Arcade. I think any solution would have to keep that in the ‘not allowed’ category, but it would result in a situation similar to that of IBM, which used to (possibly still does) sell CPU upgrades ‘over the air’, disallowing others to do so, or Tesla, which sells software for their cars that way (and, likely, many other companies). Should those be disallowed, too? If not, why not?
And yes, you don’t need monopolies or cartels to get an imperfect market, but if you don’t have monopolies or cartels, you can’t use existing laws on monopolies or cartels to correct that, so what should you use?
For a lot of people, the idea that they would show up as a "green bubble" means they will never consider moving off of Apple - If you've purchased a lot of apps that you will now lose, you're not going to just move off of Apple
How many people are buying apps for the iPhone and not subscriptions that work cross platform or spending money on play to win games?
Yeah, I very much side by this view. It's not coming from a monopoly standpoint but from a ownership standpoint. I bought something, so artificial barriers to installing/tinkering with it must be removed.
All barriers in this case can only be artificial. Think of the court case where FBI tried to make Apple develop software to their specs: it's hard to justify this order even though it seemed like it had legal standing.
Apple doesn't have to develop what you want them to develop. But it could be in their interest to avoid being labeled as an abusive monopolistic power. In won't make them any less abusive or monopolistic, but it knocks out some detractors.
Right because giving the government more power can’t possibly have negative consequences. Did you watch the congressional testimony a few days ago? Would you trust this government to pass laws with regards to tech?
It's not "more power over tech," it's the job of government. Distribution of power, promoting competition, tweaking the rules as little as is deemed necessary.
Is it really so outrageous to consider there might be a consolidation of power in a way we haven't dealt with before, seeing Amazon crush partners overnight, or Facebook impacting elections?
The very same HN that longs for the early internet, with web rings and personality, doesn't have a problem with Google scrapping content from pages you would have otherwise visited, further limiting smaller website's revenue opportunity?
For those of you not seeing clear anticompetitive behaviors that warrant discovery -- where is your line?
Facebook impacted elections for conservatives - the same people that are complaining about an anti conservative bias.
What would you propose the government do? Force people not to use FB who willingly go to their site? Have the government say what is and is not allowed on their platform.
I don't care who's barking about what and if they're consistent about it. Either there is or is not an underlying risk we should aim to minimize.
As far as what I might want to see, since you asked: for one, I would like to see more rigor around the acquisition process to eliminate or even undo some of the consolidation. I won't pretend to understand the details of how or what needs to change, but I am more than open to taking a hard look at things like WhatsApp and Instagram being acquired by Facebook and what kinds of power centralization that enables. I hope smarter people than me will do that research and make intelligible cases so we can all hold evidence-backed positions.
Look at the valuation, never mind the societal impact, of these companies -- data is worth far more than your average consumer realizes, at least once it hits an inflection point, and our laws don't currently reflect that. Maybe they should, maybe they shouldn't. I welcome the discovery, and don't feel like we need to be anywhere near a solution yet.
Yeah, you’re right...Anybody should be allowed to do anything that they want like on the highway where you’re allowed to just ram your car into other drivers without any consequences.
It is honestly frightening that HN wants to give Apple more power over tech after what we've seen from their treatment of HEY, the butterfly keyboard, and the Magic Mouse 2 port.
Yes because Apple with 10% market share in computers has so much power over the computer market. I’m sure the same congress where one of the Senators asked Zuckerberg about why Twitter put Don Jr in time out could design the perfect keyboard and mouse.
Basecamp also restricts who can integrate with their platform.
Again, neither you nor the government get to force a company into making products you like. Apple does not exist for you or your whims. There are plenty of other mice on the market, and the Magic Mouse 2 isn’t harming you in any way.
Yes, very productive things have come out of the dog and pony show: tons of conversation and debate amongst voters as people familiarize themselves with the nuance of these topics.
Do I trust the politicians? Maybe not the ones you're describing but read through Elizabeth Warren's proposal around platform utilities:
Maybe you agree, maybe you don't - the point is that it's clearly a well-articulated position. Not all US politicians are idiots, but the loudest ones certainly make it seem that way.
Right because a representative who asked Zuckerberg about a Twitter policy is really smart.
The very first paragraph she used MS as an example of when the government intervened in tech. How did that work out? Microsoft is still one of the five largest companies in tech and still has the same dominance in PC operating systems and productivity apps.
I said "voters are discussing" and you said "representatives are idiots". I'm not sure you're hearing my POV. Stupid questions and ineffective historical decisions or not, are you suggesting we just throw in the towel based on a snapshot of our government? Can we not vote in better representation once the population tears into these issues and better understand the outcomes we want?
Yes because out of all the issues that voters care about. I’m sure “breaking up big tech” so you can put an emulator on an iPhone ranks above (hopefully my list equally hits conservative and liberal talking points):
- gun control
- health care
- unemployment
- “The War on Christmas”
- “those evil immigrants who are taking away your jobs”
- banning straws so we stop killing fish
- free college education
The fact is that the only reason $BigTech is $BigTech is because people voluntarily use their products - especially Apple that has a minority market share and charges a premium. Everyone knows how much money they give Apple/Amazon for their products - unlike Facebook and Google.
But everyone does NOT know how much data they hand over and how that's used to stifle competition, innovation, and has attributable impact to many of the other items you list - and that's what's being vetted right now. No one has issue with high revenue, that's the reward for winning. We're discussing HOW you win, and if that needs modification.
Most people I know are more than capable to read, learn, and form educated opinions on everything on your list as well as this topic.
We might be at a stalemate here since you won't be convincing me the discovery process into these issues isn't worth it, and I'm not sure I can convince you to not judge an entire nation by its lowest common denominator, be it extreme left or extreme right, which is what I'm drawing from your previous comment.
Where do you think the following issues rank in the list?
Facebook/Google collecting data. Especially in the case of FB where people willingly give it data.
Amazon - effects on small retailers (disclaimer I work at AWS)
Apple -
A) taking a 30% cut when most of the money comes from play to win games.
B) Or that you can’t sign up for subscription services in the app
C) you can’t sideload. People have been fine with buying through iTunes/App Store since 2003.
We know that many people on the right are single issue voters - religion, gun rights , abortion. There are probably many single issue voters on the left. The only one that I can think of is “not Trump”.
More lowest common denominator talk despite these issues being economic which was ranked as the #2 issue in the source you presented.
The three options you present are a completely different level of granularity, I'm not clear why you're ranking them. No one is a single issue voter down to Apple's 30% cut, that's just a piece being discussed to better understand the larger issue (or lack thereof, if that's your point of view).
And people concerned about “the economy” care about geeks not being able to sideload or having to go to a website to subscribe to Netflix. Out of the 5 major tech companies, the only one that has a negative image in the mind of most people is Facebook - and they still use it.
The issues that you bring up don’t affect most people. Most people willingly spend their money at Apple and Amazon. People spend more to buy Apple devices despite all of the drawbacks that geeks care about.
Besides that, Apple isn’t raising the ire of conservatives about being “unfair” to them or having a negative effect on the election by liberals.
You keep drawing me back in because you state the issue, but don't seem to see it as an issue - you're not seeing the forest but the trees are obvious.
It's not about the workarounds, those are symptoms and some of the reasons this is a thing in the first place.
The face that sentiment around Facebook is generally negative but most still use it is testiment to the monopolistic powers these discussions are all about. Could people migrate to Twitter or some other social network? Sure, maybe. Are they? No. Why? Everyone thought Facebook was a blip in a string of Friendster, MySpace, etc -- but boy they've had staying power despite the low switching cost we thought we had on the early internet. How is that not worth exploring to the fullest?
We don't actually know if these issues affect most people. What would Amazon be like without their Amazon products crushing their third party partners? What would Facebook be like without WhatsApp and Instagram? What would Apple be like if you could plug your weather app of choice in vs their acquisition and likely destruction of all current iOS weather apps? Will Apple nail the DarkSky integration and make a top notch user experience? Almost certainly -- that's not in question.
All of that has a ripple effect through the economy and right now there's purely discovery happening and I still haven't heard one good reason why this discovery process isn't worthwhile, outside of its lack of effectiveness, from the very people who seem to be against any kind of change.
Facebook is the least essential of all the companies. Most people know FB is creepy, if they willingly choose to use it, should they government prevent them?
The weather app has no special significance on iOS. You can delete it. Choose another weather app. Put it in the Notification Center. Add a Siri shortcut for it.
Would the founders of the weather app that Apple bought be better off if Apple had just added the functionality instead of acquiring them?
Would Instagram had grown as fast without FB ad network and social graph? Would the founders be better off if the government had stopped Instagram from buying them?
Apple and other large tech companies have obviously arrived at a dominant position that would trigger these sort of investigations. You could say it's an attack on their success, and it is ironic that: success obviously has to do with it.
What apple and other tech companies have are not natural monopolies so it's not always easy for everyone to understand why anyone could claim they wield monopolistic powers.
But the point of these "platform businesses" is and has always been about gaining quasi-monopolistic strength so you can extract value from the margins of everyone involved in the platform ecosystem.
Is a monopoly illegal or necessarily undesirable to society? It depends on how society sees and regulates it. Depends on what society interprets as a NET win or net loss to itself.
And I can definitely think of several aspects of this state of affairs (handful of platforms sitting at nodes of large chunk of digital economy) that present as triggers for society to question the value of the ongoing monopolistic powers of these companies.
But if anything is to be taken from Google's case with EU, Apple will just pay a headline-grabbing fine and continue doing whatever they are doing.
Some of the arguments here reminds me of "Unauthorized Bread" (https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-...) where, take a fridge. Why would any fridge be allowed to not accept certain brands of milk? But, it is the manufacturer's product and right to do so right?
You mean like how I can only play Sony approved games on a Playstation, install Tesla approved apps on a Tesla, watch TV shows that a cable company has approved etc. The standard for most products that have addons since the beginning of time.
Forcing companies to build an open ecosystem around every feature is a pretty unprecedented and unworkable concept.
Apple doesn't have to support other stores. If users don't like that idea, they can simply not use Apple products. Users have a choice.
If, however, you want to impose the support of other stores on Apple by the means of regulations, you're effectively supporting the use of the government's monopoly of force against a company that is building products that people are happy to pay a premium to buy products from (and therefore are perfectly fine with the app store).
As a customer, I am happy with the potential for greater consumer choice. And as an app developer, I am happy with the potential for greater 3rd party dev leverage over the platform. In this specific situation, I am okay with exploring options involving the government monopoly of force to bring about potentially beneficial outcomes, when used against the most valuable company on the planet, for what will likely cost them relatively little downside. This is from a practical standpoint, not one involving schools of ideology wrt government power.
Are you saying that you're fine to use the government's force against a company that is not causing harm to anyone just so that you benefit from that intervention (and in complete disregard to all users who are happy to pay for Apple's products and services exactly the way they are)?
Are you saying you are not fine to use the governement's force against a company that is removing podcast apps from their store because they talk about what's happening in China?
I mean, i thought everyone agreed across the political spectrum that what China is doing in Hong-kong is bad. Reading this thread, i stand corrected.
Users accept the app store EULA, which serves as a contract, and in which Apple states it can shut down content according to any standards they desire. That means users are fine with Apple removing podcast apps that talk about whatever Apple doesn't like. If you believe otherwise, you believe that users don't understand the nature of contracts and can't decide on what's better for themselves.
On the other hand, are you saying that because of your ideas on how the world should run that contract is invalid and that Apple should be forced to change it retroactively, despite the fact they are not causing harm to anyone?
China invading Hong Kong is an aggression, for sure, but so is the EU interference in the free market and private contracts under whatever justification.
EULAs are not legally enforceable, nor are they legally binding. Clickthrough EULAs are absolutely contracts that users neither understand nor deign to read, and to claim otherwise is to hide behind the threat of the government monopoly on force imposed by legal action.
Definitely not. Any government interference in the market will lead to distortions and malinvestments, not "increased competition" -- unless you believe that giving unfair advantages to Apple competitors is acceptable by any standards, and that this would lead to a more efficient market.
Apple made its brand and has a loyal customer base due to the quality of the products it delivers, therefore it's providing what the market wants.
> Any government interference in the market will lead to distortions and malinvestments, not "increased competition" --
This brand of laissez-faire sentimentalism is very predictable, but it is neither here nor there.
> unless you believe that giving unfair advantages to Apple competitors is acceptable by any standards, and that this would lead to a more efficient market.
Given that Apple's control of its platform comes with forcing of 30% fees on its competitors (such as ProtonMail, the OP), it would be less giving advantages to other competitors, than refusing unfair advantages that Apple itself has exploited and enjoyed under the current state of affairs.
> Apple made its brand and has a loyal customer base due to the quality of the products it delivers, therefore it's providing what the market wants.
Then it should rest its laurels on the quality of its products and not on restrictive anti-competitive behavior levied upon its competitors. After all the App Store would be nothing without 3rd party developers, and the world in which Steve Jobs had chosen to never open up the platform to such developers would be a much barer one indeed.
In fact, Apple charges more, so it makes it even more difficult to buy them than an Android phone -- which also has multiple app install options. Why not use that?
From a practical point of view, if you're a developer and you don't target iOS you're going to lose. It's a duopoly and Apple really controls the affluent segment (ie the users willing to buy apps or pay for in-app services) pretty strongly. And the user base is very sticky. If some big app owner like Facebook or AirBnb came out and said "We're only supporting Android now, so please switch phones to use our service" they'd just go out of business. That's the essence of monopolism.
So is it a duopoly or a monopoly? I'm fine with just throwing around words in casual conversation, but the closer the conversation moves towards the orbit of law, the more words will matter.
> If some big app owner like Facebook or AirBnb came out and said "We're only supporting Android now, so please switch phones to use our service" they'd just go out of business. That's the essence of monopolism.
I think that's just called bad decision making, which vendors are completely free to make. There are plenty of apps that are Android only, and I'm sure they fully realize their revenue will be less as a result. There are also plenty of third party game developers making exclusive titles for Playstation or Xbox all the time. They're roughly neck and neck outside of Japan, but in Japan, it's no contest, Playstation is completely dominant. Assuming we ignore Nintendo, would you then suggest that Sony has a monopoly on consoles there? One could claim that if you're a developer in Japan and you don't target Playstation in Japan, you're going to lose. But if the goal is maximum revenue ...that's just bad decision making. If the Xbox market in Japan just isn't coughing up dollars, how is that Sony's problem?
Rather than continuously trying to compare Apple to a monopoly, which it isn't, I think the more effective comparison would be with RAND and FRAND. I don't know what kind of legal hoops would need to be jumped through to make the legal justification work, but it seems like Apple has an essential technology (the App Store), and must be obligated to license it (arguably reflected via the fee it charges), but that is an extant example of government regulation where the fee could be legally managed.
So Apple created a very desirable platform for developers by enforcing a set of "arbitrary" rules and being in complete control of it. Now developers want Apple to open up those rules. That seems contradictory to me.
Now, don't get me wrong, as a consumer I do want to _own_ my device and have the freedom to do anything with it, even if I never exercise that freedom. And as a consumer I use my right to vote with my wallet by never purchasing iPhones and explain my decision to anyone that cares to listen. But in no way does that mean that I think what Apple is doing is wrong or illegal nor do I think they should be forced to change their business model because some people think they can have the cake and eat it too.
Once you buy an apple product you lose freedoms others have. So, while no one forces me to buy from apple, once I buy apple I'm forced to buy only what apple sees fit.
When you buy a Tesla you know you can’t go to a gas station. Is it the governments responsibility to keep you from buying a device that didn’t meet your needs?
If by anybody you include their own customers... Yes.
The case here is driven mostly by Spotify who claim (my paraphrasing) they cannot benefit Apple customers equaly because of Apple restrictive practices and fee model.
You may not have purchased a Apple device with intention to use with Spotify, but others may.
(Now extrapolate the Spotify story to any appmaker who wish to sell to Apple customers)
Spotify in fact doesn’t go through the App Store for purchases.
The better question is why hasn’t Spotify made a decent watch app that can stream directly to it and download music for off line use? Apple added the ability last year.
How much of a cut does Spotify take from musicians to be on its platform?
In my view, the percentages are not the biggest factors that lead to this situation (although it adds to the outrage when the monopolistic accusations are thrown around).
The problem is: all of these big techs want to be a platform, and all of them sell (to their investors) the idea that their platform will be very profitable precisely because it will lock the participants inside a ecosystem hard to escape from.
The rules only oblige app vendors if they agree with that contract. Users also only engage in doing business with Apple on a voluntary basis. That's not extortion, by definition.
I didn't say it was. It's also not illegal to have market power.
What is unlawful, at least in my enlightened jurisdiction, is abusing market power to mislead the consumer, and even more so obliging other parties to do so.
If you don’t put your product in Walmart is your product guaranteed to be a failure?
Tell that to all of the low end TV manufacturers, game systems (see Sega), toy manufacturers, and back in the day musicians who went out of their way to create an edited version just for Walmart.
So where else can toy manufacturers go in 2020 to sell their toys in retail? The music labels and movie studios knew they couldn’t be successful before digital without Walmart
You can’t walk into an Amazon store and buy toys. Retail is still a lot larger than e-commerce especially for kids who like to browse. Kohl’s is tiny compared to Walmart and doing distribution only in Kohl’s is a non starter. Not to mention the catalog is online - not physical stores.
Best Buy sells electronic games but there is far more to toys than that.
That's not what defines a monopoly. Ticketmaster can't just say "We're not forcing you to go to events - you could just sit at home if you want. Therefore we don't have a monopoly!"
I would have thought that is obvious to be honest.
And yet no one is forcing you to buy an iPhone. Unlike Ticketmaster's shady ticket-depletion tactics, you are not out of options if you decide to get something other than an iPhone.
In fact, the vast majority of people get something other than an iPhone.
I'm a iOS tweak developer and the way the App Store is ran is fantastic as it prevents people like me from posting our tweaks to the main store as in my opinion a regular person shouldn't be installing tweaks or jailbreaking their device as if they install a bad tweak or fuck up their device they should know how to navigate the command line to fix it. Jailbreaking is cool but if you don't know what you are doing you shouldn't do it.
There are plenty of 3rd party app stores for the iPhone/iPad that anyone can access with out jailbreaking, Ignition (https://ignition.fun), TuTuApp (https://tutuapp-app.org), TweakBox (https://www.tweakboxapp.com), I'm probably missing more but they do exist. But they're sketchy and ad filled. They do how ever allow anyone to install semi-untethered jailbreaking software like Unc0ver and Electra.
That being said Apple taking 30% cut in revenue is way too much in my view and the way it's set up could be better.
I'm guessing Apple's defense will be very similar to the author's own words, except a little less emotional:
> Apple is using its monopoly to hold all of us hostage
> Apple’s iOS controls 25% of the global smartphone market (the other 75%, is largely controlled by Google’s Android). This means that for over a billion people (particularly in the US where their market share approaches 50%), the only way to install apps is through the App Store. This gives Apple enormous influence over the way software is created and consumed around the world.
25% is indeed "enormous influence" but it's not a monopoly. It feeling like one isn't enough. The telcos in the States seem like a comparable example. There are three major players, so it's roughly 33% control for each (differs per region I'm sure).
With ISPs, it feels even worse. In most areas you can't even choose another provider with the same technology type (if you want fiber in my area, it's only Verizon. If you want cable, it's only Spectrum; DSL, AT&T; etc). But the rationale is, it's still internet at the end of the day, so I can technically choose.
The only monopoly here is Apple’s monopoly on designing its own products. The iPhone, iOS, it’s development tools and the App Store are all Apple products, so Apple gets to decide what features they have.
It’s also not unusual for companies to make deals with third parties to include their technology and software in their products, often as optional chargeable extras. That’s all the App Store is, it’s a way to add optional features to your phone, offered by the phone manufacturer. There is nothing illegal or abusive about this.
What’s the alternative. Are you going to mandate what features Apple, or any manufacturer of devices with embedded software, can or cannot implement? Are you going to mandate by law specific features for side loading that all manufacturers have to implement in all devices containing software? What features, who gets to specify them, how will this be enforced?
So now we’re going to have governments design the software in our phones, enshrined in law?
Finally, how does this serve my interests as an iPhone user or developer? Is fragmented app stores going to make it easier to find software, make it easier for developers to connect with customers and increase software revenues? I don’t see it.
Android has had tons of app stores over the years, the public converged on the Play Store because they want to go to one place to get apps and have one company to deal with. Users like consolidation, it serves their needs.
All this does not mean I’m against any regulation. I thing there’s a reasonable case for oversight of these things and a dialogue between law makers and tech companies about how they manage their products and customer relations. That’s fine, but chopping up the market and products arbitrarily does not serve the public interest.
> Are you going to mandate what features Apple, or any manufacturer of devices with embedded software, can or cannot implement?
In fact, yes. Just like we mandate cars have seat belts and third brake lights, airliners have emergency exits, automobile fuel contains no lead or added ethanol, houses use electrical wires per code, and so forth.
Government can simply mandate a maximum fee (like credit card interchange fee regulation in the last decade), or force the system to allow sideloading (like busting the AT&T attached device monopoly in the 70s), etc.
I think lumping this in with health and safety regulations is a super weak argument. In fact it’s no argument, the two are clearly not comparable at all.
I’ll accept the comparison to credit card fees though. As I said I’m not against all oversight of any kind. I just don’t think the 30% is all that high.
> What’s the alternative. Are you going to mandate what features Apple, or any manufacturer of devices with embedded software, can or cannot implement? Are you going to mandate by law specific features for side loading that all manufacturers have to implement in all devices containing software? What features, who gets to specify them, how will this be enforced?
If the government forces a platform open and hands it over to a consortium of industry leaders, as well as associations of independent developers and open source foundations... sure why not?
>If the government forces a platform open and hands it over to a consortium of industry leaders, as well as associations of independent developers and open source foundations... sure why not?
Because the platform only exists because somebody created it, somebody specific not some consortium.
I don't want my iPhone OS to be created by a consortium, I want it to be run by Apple...
And because if that happens I would promptly go find a phone with a curated locked down store again. If I wanted otherwise I would have bought an Android phone, with my _choice_.
And, if the unlocked store charges independent app developers lower fees, and if market trends favor the non-locked down store over the locked down store- say in the example of Android vs. BlackBerry OS- then the apps would flock to the former over the latter.
So the reward for developing a successful valuable product that hundreds of millions of people like and trust, is to take it away and give it to somebody else? Wow.
If that consortium is so great, why don’t they just make their own product. Let the public decide what they want.
Their reward is being the most valuable company in both the world, and perhaps much of human history. Their reward for restrictive anti-competitive behaviors is antitrust investigations.
Monopoly or anticompetitive regulation is intended to prevent behaviour enabled by market domination. Nothing Apple is doing is like that, they’ve been doing the same since they had 1% market share. The public chose them because this is how they do things. It makes no sense to punish them for that. Justifying punishment simply on the basis of success is morally unjustifiable.
You can say the same about Ma Bell, or Standard Oil.
The pre-edited version of the original post asked the ludicrous question "So now we’re going to have governments design the software in our phones", so he got a ludicrous answer in kind. But in theory, if Apple's control of the App Store platform constitutes a monopoly, it would not be gross government overreach to pursue antitrust, as it has done historically, even if it has been unfashionable in recent decades.
The OP article argues that it is a monopoly. You are free to agree or disagree with its thesis. However, my statement was that "if Apple's control of the App Store platform constitutes a monopoly", then the government should have free rein to do so, as it has repeatedly done so in the past.
Either the government can tell Apple how to run the App store, or the government can limit iPhones to < x% of the population.
I will say it's embarrassing that we've allowed one company's products to become such a status symbol that there is no alternative to the insecure masses, but such is the present world.
Then again, perhaps competition itself is obsolete, and we should just get on to centralized socialism already.
The iOS application frameworks are Apple products based on the libraries in OSX. In fact in many many cases they are the exact same libraries in OSX, and apps running in the iPhone simulator actually run against the OSX libraries under the hood, not iOS versions of them. To develop iOS apps on another platform, Apple would have to port their entire development tool chain, and their OS application frameworks and test tools to other OS platforms. Why should the be coerced into doing that? These are all their products, what gives you the right to demand that they spend millions of dollars adding features and doing all that work?
Should we coerce Microsoft into porting the Win32 development stack and tooling to OSX and Linux? It doesn’t make any sense. If you don’t want to use their products, don’t.
> This is virtually indistinguishable from a protection racket: It is a fee that developers must pay if they want to stay in business. And it is a fee which ultimately harms consumers because these fees are indirectly passed on to users, either through higher prices, or through fewer competing products in the marketplace.
I guess this would be great, if it were true. There are over two million competing apps in the market [1], and the vast majority are priced ridiculously competitively at less than a dollar each [2]. That's the average cost, not the median, which would be significantly lower.
I'm sure proton isn't happy about this, but considering the ridiculously high salaries app developers are able to command [3] but the market doesn't seem to agree with their assessment.
Now, this may be more true about app companies, but the numbers there tell a different story. Based on this analysis [4], the thing killing them isn't the developer fees, its that its ridiculously hard to make any sort of living if your only product is a phone app. The majority of apps simply make no money at all. Adding 30% to 0 doesn't do much for anyone.
Genuine question: Why does this matter? I see 0 problems with Apple having a "walled garden." It's their product and their platform so they should be able to decide what gets supported and developed for it.
I personally don't like how Apple conducts their business so I just don't use Apple products and that's that.
Well, you should hope that your country doesn't turn into a authoritarian regime. Cause then you'll be unable to use VPN or any kind of encrypted chats - only those that give access to comrade Major from the secret police.
If you think I'm overblowing things, try finding Signal in China's AppStore.
This is a fair point that I was overlooking and was more focused the part of the article that talks about Apple selling their own products and being the "only game in town" regarding selling apps.
I think the article explained that reasonably well. One example is that they also make their own apps, so you potentially have to pay your competitor 30% of your income which is more than your own margins. And then they surface their own app and hide your's. Cannot compete against that.
My issue with the article is that despite acknowledging that Android market share overall they are acting as if Apple is the only game in time. Maybe my thought process is just overly simplistic and I'm missing something because every time the app store gets brought up my general feeling is just don't use Apple. If enough developers abandon the platform they will be forced to change.
I'm curious how often this has actually occurred in the App Store? I can't think of too many apps that Apple has released that have many competitors. Sure, there are the built in apps (which you can remove) but I certainly haven't seen any lack of To Do or weather apps on the App Store.
It's an issue for Spotify vs Apple Music for instance. Apple wants a cut of Spotify's fee, and also had APIs for Apple Watch etc only they themselves could use.
If the apps become more expensive then people will stop buying them from the App Store and seeing people are not willing to pay for more expensive apps developers would probably stop developing for iOS which in the end would cause users to abandon the platform seeing as they cannot get the apps they need.
If apps being more expensive is really the only problem then it seems like the problem fixes itself.
It clearly doesn't fix itself, because both Apple and Google are taking a 30% cut.
You're assuming efficient markets. The App Store is a monopoly, i.e. the opposite of an efficient market. (Well, it's more nuanced, all markets are somewhere between efficient and monopolistic.)
Apple sells an experience, it's hard to find a common ground to those single store monopoly issues without compromising this experience and tarnishing Apple's precious image.
Suppose Apple standardizes jailbreaking: say they allow you to turn on a switch that creates a sandbox on your device for you to do whatever you want. Your device would then be running freestyle without warranty, fair enough for me as a first mockup. What's going to happen next is a handful of illiterate or unaccountable users will deface Apple's reputation by bombarding news sites with their misfortune. Apple would be cancelled overnight. I'm barely exaggerating.
Now I guess some EU negotiations could help to have some in-app purchases without fees (like buying a book in the Kindle app), avoid getting their app rejected for a shady reason (because rules can be changed whenever Apple sees fit) and, above all, allow me to set my morning alarm to some radio app (this one is ridiculous). The tragedy is that no "developers union" could ever succeed at this.
The last issue, about supporting authoritarian regimes, is probably the most difficult to solve. This is politics, there are no companies or governments that can have it all every time. China is a huge market: you cannot hope staying in business if you try to impose all your rules everywhere. That's the exact same idea behind having the EU make a stand on the single store issues. Also, the most intolerant wins [1].
> What's going to happen next is a handful of illiterate or unaccountable users will deface Apple's reputation by bombarding news sites with their misfortune.
Many Android phones already allow you to gain access to root or to replace the OS that the device ships with (and even more of them allow for indiscriminate sideloading, even without rooting). Has Android's reputation been "defaced" over this opportunity for users to run custom software on their devices?
I was being satirical with my wording but the issue with Apple is different. Android is fragmented by design, there is Google, Samsung, Huawei, etc. companies which sell a lot of other things, so Android image may be less of an issue for them. Apple literally is iDevice, it's more than 2/3 of their revenue.
But indeed "reputation" is more about marketing and at the end of the day the only thing that matters is the margin they can extract from aftermarket sales. As the recent antitrust inquiry shows, we were short of having 40% fee on app store sales.
I think 30% made sense back then when the platform was tiptoeing. Now it may look as an abuse of dominant position, the classical shareholders vs workers game. I wonder how the appstore operating costs and profit have evolved over time.
Macs have had the ability to run unsigned code with no hindrance for ages. There even were numerous software products that modified the system itself. None of this was "tarnishing Apple's precious image". Moreover, back before Apple started notoriously enforcing app signatures requiring a $99 annual fee, people used to love Macs more. They enjoyed the experience of being able to run whatever the hell they wanted on a device they own.
I am not sure why people continue to redefine the word "monopoly" to the point where it becomes meaningless.
Claiming that Apple has a "monopoly" on app sales on its own devices might be technically true but is not a meaningful statement when there are plenty of alternatives to Apple devices on the market.
It is about as meaningful as claiming a gas station has a "monopoly" on gas sales in a three block radius, or that a bar has a "monopoly" on cocktail sales in its own building, or that I have a "monopoly" on lemonade sales on my front lawn.
If you have to apply an arbitrary constraint to eliminate the consideration of meaningful alternatives that the consumer has access to, then you're not dealing with an actual monopoly.
Another poster already mentioned that legal definition varies. And not only that. It's not that it's "wrong" or illegal to be a monopoly. It's what you do with those powers.
Natural (and legal) monopolies exist and are regulated so that there's a perceived net benefit to society for having them. The EU will investigate is (to Europeans) Apple's monopoly is net beneficial to them.
And I imply to agree with labeling Apple a monopoly precisely because, unlike the gas station on your example, a iPhone user cannot drive 3 miles to buy Spotify without having to pay Apple's 30% fee.
Is Apple obliged to make their phones available to other app stores? No. But not doing so AND profiting from 30% AND having a large marketshare is precisely why the EU is investigating them for abusive monopolistic behaviour.
> And I imply to agree with labeling Apple a monopoly precisely because, unlike the gas station on your example, a iPhone user cannot drive 3 miles to buy Spotify without having to pay Apple's 30% fee.
They can choose a non-Apple phone. There is an alternative product on the market.
Spotify is no more entitled to Apple's customers than Nike is entitled to Walmart's customers. If Nike wants to sell shoes in Walmart they will have to accept Walmarts terms, or find another store to sell in.
I think you're confusing the common-usage meaning with the legal definition.
Generally in Europe the market share threshold for monopoly investigations is 25% - Apple's market-share for mobile app sales is well above that threshold.
> The Commission considers that low market shares are generally a good proxy for the absence of substantial market power. The Commission's experience suggests that dominance is not likely if the undertaking's market share is below 40 % in the relevant market. [1]
Historically the European Commission's antitrust cases against tech giants have largely been against companies with overwhelming market share:
European Commission vs Google: 90% market share in search [2]
European Commission vs Intel: 70% market share in x86 CPUs [3]
European Commission vs Qualcomm: 90% market share in LTE chipsets [4]
Apple's 25% is nowhere near the same level and I expect the Commission's investigation will conclude that they do not, in fact, have a monopoly in the EU.
There is no definition of monopoly. People complain about monopolies when they lose or don't get what they want so resort to the government to cheat their way to competitiveness/success.
You should not share articles like these on HN. Sacred things are not to be critized, and everything Apple is sacred :)
Just check the comments in this thread. As long as I get my "flawless user experience" it doesn't matter what happens and how Apple treats the backbone of its platform (independent developers) and forcing them in a feudal relationship, one might even call it a road to serfdom.
And I can see already that there will be people jumping out of the woods with the classic argument: "The devs are free to leave the App store"
You try to make a business and the first decision you make is that you abandon half of your potential marketshare (iOS is over 50% in the U.S.)
Yes, it's a monopoly, but that doesn't mean it's bad per-se. People are freely choosing to buy iPhones and there are alternatives. If the situation on the App Store was so bad, there wouldn't be enough good apps and perhaps people would choose other devices. No one is forcing any company to publish into the App Store.
Apple's cryptographic lockout of unsigned software and refusal to authorize any non-App Store distribution defacto forces people who want to publish iPhone software to agree to Apple's terms. I'd also argue that there are no practical alternatives here. Apple makes an industry-leading smartphone SOC and good operating system software designed to take advantage of it. If you want that, then you are also locked out of unauthorized third-party software unless you use an exploit to compromise the device's security.
Quite honestly, the software lockout business model has been deserving of government scrutiny ever since Nintendo put a lockout chip in the NES. If you own a device you should be able to run any software you want on it.
Good points. In fact, I'm guessing consumers ultimately want the App Store to be a monopoly. It gives us a central place where both devs and consumer can exchange with each other.
Break it up, and then you may hear people complain about how the mobile app marketplace is too fragmented (similar to how video streaming currently is).
Huh. I live in South Korea, and local Android app market is "fragmented", but approximately nobody complains, both users and developers. Local app market (owned by consortium of local mobile companies and local portals) takes less fee from developers, so developers love it. To let users use it, app developers do special promotion for the local app market, such as discount for in app purchases and special items for games, so users also love it. It is great.
> No one is forcing any company to publish into the App Store.
If I want iOS users to use my app, where can I publish it besides the App Store?
I like the Android implementation, allow users to install third-party apps but make them manually enable the feature, complete with warnings. Users don't have to enable the feature if they want App Store curation, but the option is there.
App Store is a two-sided market, which is known to persist even after it is extremely bad. Users go where apps are, and app publishers go where users are. The circular dependency can be broken by movement en messe, but that doesn't necessarily happen even if the situation is terrible.
I think the point is app developers can target other platforms to release their software, they don't have to target iOS.
Part of my confidence in the iOS app store is the fact that Apple controls it so strongly. If they were forced to allow third party apps I doubt I would install any. My phone is too critical a part of my life to risk it.
Well it's true isn't it? People make bad career choices all the time. And people also build failing business and we shouldn't save those companies because "they deserve it".
I think the important part is that they apply the same rules to all the apps in their app store so it's a fair playing field between companies. IE they should not be allowed to for instance get into the dating market, and start by blocking Tinder.
As an app developer, what bothers me is not so much the fact that you have to pay the 30% when going through the app store it's the fact that you cannot even mention the Android Play store AT ALL. Also I don't like that they completely force app developers to use IAP instead of supporting other purchasing flows (without Apple's cut)
Pre-smartphone era pretty much every hardware vendor didnt impose arbitrary restrictions on software like that (the notable exception being video game consoles). If you wanted to write a Mac app that said "also available on Windows" (or vice versa), no one cared.
Apple had the opportunity to lean on the web and elected not to.
With appropriate APIs, web apps can reach into devices and leverage GPU and CPU compute, multiple threads, microphone, camera, on-device storage, and more.
HTML and canvas don't have to be the only UI primitives available.
Both Google and Apple should be forced to fund the W3C and/or Mozilla in leading development of a cross-platform native experience. Other companies such as Microsoft and Amazon should join as stakeholders.
Yes, they should be forced to do it.
Edit: Downvotes already? What's wrong with wanting an open platform? Why do we have to expend effort developing for three different tech stacks (Android, iOS, web) when one is superior and wastes less human capital?
Edit 2: Wow, y'all really don't like this. My other suggestion is that we break up Apple and Google into separate companies so they're divested of their app marketplace from their hardware ecosystem/ad tech funnels. I think letting them work together on an open platform is less destructive and puts the world in a better place, but honestly if they can't do this then they should be broken up.
My representative, Lucy McBath, did a great job grilling the tech execs this week, and I continue to support her in breaking apart these unfair monopolies.
Edit 3: If you believe Apple is entitled to reap 30% from controlled access to their generic compute device, then you also should favor cable and internet service providers charging whatever they want for access to their pipes. It's the same thing. How many of you want Comcast to be able to charge you for your Netflix usage?
> Both Google and Apple should be forced to fund the W3C and/or Mozilla in leading development of a cross-platform native experience
Private entities shouldn't be forced into doing anything on a whim. You can arguably stop them from doing some things, but there is no reasonable basis for compelling companies to do things as you are saying.
> Downvotes already? What's wrong with wanting an open platform?
The downvotes is because what you suggest is wholly antithetical to every "open" movement in history. You don't get to tell people what to do simply because you want it to be that way. That's tyranny.
> I think letting them work together on an open platform is less destructive and puts the world in a better place
Again with this whole thing. You don't get to enact whatever policies you want because you think it would be nice. People have rights.
> Private entities shouldn't be forced into doing anything on a whim.
It's not a whim. They're being investigated by the EU and US Congress for being monopolies and suffocating smaller players. They're sucking all of the air out of the environment, making it incredibly difficult to gain traction on your own.
Don't trust me? Ask DHH.
> You can arguably stop them from doing some things, but there is no reasonable basis for compelling companies to do things as you are saying.
The government can absolutely tell them what to do. Apple wouldn't be where they are today if the US Government hadn't intervened against Microsoft and forced them to pay Apple.
Apple exists because of antitrust and the DOJ.
> You don't get to tell people what to do simply because you want it to be that way. That's tyranny.
I'm glad the tyrannical government put the FDA in place. And the FAA. Can you imagine if those industries could act however they wanted?
> People have rights.
Companies aren't people. Despite Citizen's United.
Saying stuff like "Google and Apple should be forced to fund the W3C and/or Mozilla" is absolutely a whim. This would be an absurd government overreach.
> They're sucking all of the air out of the environment, making it incredibly difficult to gain traction on your own.
You can absolutely succeed today without Apple. Apple is a minority player in the mobile device segment.
Perhaps Apple is more profitable for developers. But they are not a monopoly in this space yet and do not warrant anti-trust.
> Apple wouldn't be where they are today if the US Government hadn't intervened against Microsoft and forced them to pay Apple.
Microsoft, on the other hand, was a monopoly (and still is, in many ways).
> Can you imagine if those industries could act however they wanted?
Can you imagine what will happen if we keep giving the government more and more power to do what they want? See: Australia's government forcing encryption backdoors into every service.
Giving the government more and more power over companies that don't yet even constitute a monopoly is a recipe for disaster.
> Companies aren't people.
And yet companies are property, private entities, etc. Just because companies aren't people doesn't mean they are toys for the government to manipulate and control in any way they want under the guise of "antitrust regulation."
Both of these companies are already doing that: both are key participants in the WebGPU API development. Google has been particularly committed to this path for years. Apple is mostly going along, the big exception is that they don’t support web push notifications, though they do support app manifests.
Microsoft and Amazon are also seen in these processes, though not as often and their buy in is less important since neither develop their own browser at this point.
You just insulted the platform of an entire swath of developers. I'll take it you didn't intend to attack their work, because it sounded kind of close to that.
You're taking a very narrow point of view.
The web is the last free thing we have that keeps us from being eternally bound to rent seekers. You shouldn't attack it. You should be grateful for it.
It's because of things like the web and open source we have an incredibly vibrant industry where it's easy to get started from nothing. In the limit, if Apple and Google expressed complete and total control, we'd all just be employees and own none of it.
>The web is the last free thing we have that keeps us from being eternally bound to rent seekers.
On the contrary, ever since the web got hot, all we've had is rent seekers...
Everything is now a SaaS, closed code behind closed servers, and on the web everything major people would want to use (from Gmail to Basecamp, and from Notion to Slack), is either ad-supported (yuck) or requires a paid subscription.
I'd rather have the old native apps of yore: mine, forever after I paid for them (plus a freeware ecosystem, plus shareware, plus FOSS).
Pro-consumer behavior almost always looks like anti-publisher behavior.