Apple really is asking for trouble here. First off, they say that in order to get out of the requirement that everyone give Apple 30% of income, they say that those using an alternative payment method still must give Apple 27% of income. Then they say that app developers have to produce an entirely new app. In effect they are trying to create a situation where it is irrational for any developer to try to escape their payment system, which is exactly what the courts have already ruled that they must allow.
They are risking having the EU as a whole slap them down and impose tougher restrictions.
This seems like not only a boneheaded move but also a very user hostile one. Not the one I would have expected Apple to do. The obvious approach imo is to require apps to offer Apple payment as an option, while optionally offering other payment options. That way users who like apple payment can always use it.
Having apps that don't integrate with apple's payment system but still charges the huge revenue tax is both greedy and bad looking for apple, but throws the customer to the dogs.
> This seems like not only a boneheaded move but also a very user hostile one. Not the one I would have expected Apple to do.
Apple defines user hostility. They just get away with for reasons I have never understood. Apple doesn't want pictures or videos or any use of a mouse plugged in while being used? Put the charging port on the bottom of the mouse. Doesn't want to adopt the industry standard USB-C? Puts several different permutations of ports on devices, often incompatible without highly marked up dongles. Wants users to buy into wireless headphone ecosystem? Removes audio jack from all devices except laptops and desktops and the lowest end iPad. They refuse to fix longstanding issues with their Bluetooth and wireless cards. They refuse to cooperate and support third-party external monitors. They significantly break backwards compatibility and apps with every OS update, often intentionally.
Apple has done whatever the hell they've wanted to for a very long time. They just hide it behind what I see as inane marketing but nonetheless marketing that has been very successful.
The Lightning port preceded USB-C by many years. And it was a huge improvement in every way over everything else available at the time.
Apple didn’t invent Thunderbolt or USB-C. Intel did. Apple is the biggest adopter, but most blame for all the crazy shitty problems with USB-C should be laid at Intel’s feet, just like they should take the blame for all the crazy weird shit with older USB standards.
I’m still pissed at the loss of a 2.5mm physical jack. Don’t get me started on this one.
Bluetooth is a big bag of shit, and way worse than Blueray. At least Apple is trying to fix some of these problems with their U1 and W1 chips.
As for external monitors, HDMI works everywhere HDMI works. And USB-C or Thunderbolt to DisplayPort adapters are easy enough to get. Apple has done nothing wrong there.
Apple works harder at maintaining backwards compatibility than any other major vendor in existence. Your extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, of which you have provided none.
Looking back at this post, your score appears to be one for six, so far. That’s not great, but you could improve on it if you were to provide adequate evidence of your claims.
Most monitors don't support more than 60Hz, so 120Hz is still is bit iffy sometimes. Apple can't help some monitor vendors take their time to get their stuff together.
None of the 64 bits versions of Windows run 16 bits code. And lots of games are broken because the DRM used a kernel driver or some other stupid assumption.
I've got no dog in this series, but consider LCD monitors greater than 60hz have been around for I'd estimate at least 13-14 years
I had a 2233RZ in 2009 - one of the first at 120hz. Prior to that 75hz was commonplace.
The modes are presented by the display through EDID.
This is messy at times, but they [Apple] simply need to look there. Windows/Linux respect these just fine.
This is more on Apple than it is the vendors. The only mistake the vendors made was marketing these to the gamer niche. Office work benefits from high refresh rate too
You had a 3d monitor for gaming. You need a high refresh rate for 3d with shutterglasses since you only get half or it for each eye.
Office work benefitted in the CRT time when <85Hz would cause perceptible flickering giving you a headache. Since TFT's are slower there's no flickering anymore. Scrolling benefits slightly with higher refresh, and of course the top 10% of gamers will care about the latency, but I don't think I'll be typing any faster on a gaming screen ;)
> None of the 64 bits versions of Windows run 16 bits code.
Because it's impossible due to how x86-64 CPUs work.
And the statement does nothing to refute my point - that code compiled for Windows keeps working 4 times as long as it does on MacOS. It's an empirical fact, that can be measured in the real world, denying it is like denying gravity.
Backwards comparability is a priority for Windows because all the line of business apllications must keep chugging along. Corporates don't upgrade their office PCs if it breaks their terrible software.
> Apple can't help some monitor vendors take their time to get their stuff together.
Whats is wrong with them? They work fine on Windows, Linux and Android(!), sounds like an Apple problem
> code compiled for Windows keeps working 4 times as long
That might have been true in the NT/XP days but how long will 'the new Microsoft' that decided '10 would be the last Windows version' and now decides it will be phased out in 3 years keep that promise?
Corporates are going all-in on terrible cloud offerings now so the best move for MS is to lock down their desktop OS.
> Whats is wrong with them?
There are lots of monitors with incorrect EDID information or buggy behaviour. Yesterday I crashed a Dell monitor's firmware while trying to find the optimal displayport settings. That's not a macOS problem...
I think these 200 IQ tech CEOs have lost their minds and don't realize that their power is like that of an ant next to a lion when compared to the power of the 89 IQ politicians that run governments. Except for Satya Nadella they are all headed for a massive beatdown.
The subtext to all of the changes mega corps are making is that they are slaves to their investment pipelines and now that profits are not showing growth, they're turning towards even more unreasonable tactics of squeezing money out of exactly what makes them an ecosystem... They're milking their user base, they're milking developers, they're milking everyone to stay on top.
Only companies that start to really evaluate how they can free themselves from the pipeline of dependency will survive. It means going back to browser-based apps and services, not in creating apps that need to be deployed through gatekeeping app stores.
Yes! I have been speaking about this for a long while now. I felt I was a lone voice from among various left-libertarians here and there who criticize capitalism.
The model of VCs buying shares and then selling them to Wall St. in an IPO leads to exactly this, across the board:
Closed source software
Siloed data
Limited interoperability
Extracting rents
That last one is an economic term that requires a power imbalance to occur. Apple is just one of many Big Tech companies and, frankly, it is far more pro-consumer and pro-producer than say, Facebook and Google.
The proliferation of ads on YouTube, the increasing attempts at surveillance capitalism, all point to diminishing returns from the ads. The system of funding “public utilities” privately and then dumping it on Wall St is eating itself. When something becomes that big, it should be turned into an open source project, and monetized using utility tokens.
Open source, science, wikipedia, in the end unlock way more wealth than their closed counterparts based on the profit motive, private ownership and recouping investment.
Take DisneyWorld for example. It is owned by Disney Coep which is owned by shareholders, who want DisneyWorld to extract profits at the expense of both its customers and vendors. Disney Dollars are the utility tokens that customers buy, while the vendors need to unionize to get $15 an hour minimum wage (or get Bernie to help LOL). The wall street shareholders are almost just a parasite class, who are just trying to push the company to give them profits ar the expense of its customers (eg Uber riders) and vendors (eg Uber drivers).
There is a reason co-operative housing complexes in the USA don’t need rent control imposed by the city: the tenants ARE the landlord, so the prices of eg Mitchell-Lama housing in NYC is 2-5x smaller than its neighboring landlord-owned building.
Private property works for small scales. For larger scales, open source gift economies work way better. Wikipedia is far bigger than Britannica, etc. We need the same approaches for news — and, I would argue, all public discourse.
Corporations have co-opted many idealistic movements, including women’s liberation, and freedom of speech. We the people are being told what to argue about — deplatforming — rather than discuss how people got a platform in the first place.
Having an unfiltered megaphone to tweet to 5 million people at 3am doesn’t help society, it hurts and divides it. Whether it’s Donald Trump or Elon Musk, the fart tweets don’t add much value to society but they can surely move markets and drive the population nuts, too.
Science has peer review in journals, Open Source has review of pull requests, Wikipedia has talk pages, before publishing. And notice how much more balanced wikinews is, than the for-profit corporations that had to become clickbaity outlets that can only afford to report one side of a story, to pander to their readers (yes even the NYTimes and CNN have had to do this, forced by the market competition).
Having an audience is a form of capital, which is why Republican arguments about Citizens United make sense: money and “speech” in favor of candidates are both very effective because the “speech” is really a top-down centralized ORGANIZATION where some owners set the agenda and the peons have to parrot it or get fired:
Please see the Sinclair script here and the solution for freedom of speech:
Depends on what region we're talking about. In the EU, it does seem like politicians have the upper hand, but in the US, neither of our two major political parties (Democrat and Republican) have taken any concrete steps to regulate the tech giants despite a bunch of rhetoric. There are several reasons:
- A non-trivial number of lawmakers are holding stock investments in tech
- Good luck getting re-elected if said regulation affects growth and crashes the economy
- Good luck getting re-elected if you get on the wrong side of the largest advertising companies in the world. What are they going to do, run campaign ads in the newspaper?
> In the EU, it does seem like politicians have the upper hand, but in the US, neither of our two major political parties (Democrat and Republican)
I don't think in the EU the politicians have "the upper hand", they work exactly as in the US. The difference is that all those digital giants pay taxes (and employ people who do so) mostly in the US, so you can't touch em. EU politicians are free to impose restrictions since we don't have this industry on our side of the lawn.
Another difference is that most European countries have multi-party systems. One of the key divisions is between the establishment (social democrat, christian democrat, etc.) and the activists (green, liberal left, populist right, conservative nationalist, etc.). While the establishment pays more attention to corporate interests, the activists are often ideologically opposed to them. If the establishment pays too much attention, it may lose seats to the activists.
In US politics, the establishment/activist division occurs within parties rather than between them. The first-past-the-post system makes it difficult for the minority faction to gain a significant number of seats, until there is phase shift and the minority suddenly becomes the majority. That's arguably what happened to Republicans, but it's too early to say if the shift has had an effect on their stance towards corporations.
As a German, I don't buy into that. No matter what party, no one ever touches the automotive industry, as it would be detrimental to your next election results.
Probably a mix of not having much to loose, trying to gather some good publicity and fear that the regulators would see them as some kind of "repeat offender" and punish them harder than Apple, Google et. al. if they dragged their feet.
If we assume they considered this angle, I think there's an even more interesting inference to be drawn: that they're only move is to extend and delay and pray that something in the landscape changes. Or, at the least, that they collect their rents for as long as possible.
Not to mention that Apple would probably just close The Netherlands appstore before fully implementing the change.
> First off, they say that in order to get out of the requirement that everyone give Apple 30% of income, they say that those using an alternative payment method still must give Apple 27% of income.
That's not exactly the trade here – Apple is letting people use alternative payment providers, which does carry a lot of benefits besides not paying the fee, including better customer management and support
They also added a bunch of requirements. Example (besides what was already mentioned): You have to report every single transaction to them. Apple is making it practically impossible AND they put a 27% fee on top. This behaviour might really come hunt them. The EU is already set to add gatekeeper legislation. Apple‘s behaviour might lead to even stricter regulation or forcing them to split the app store off into a new company. They don‘t even try to mask what they are doing. A big middle finger to the EU regulators.
New EU legislation makes it mandatory to add a prominent button to cancel your subscription! It‘s not allowed to force you to give a call or, in Germany, even login.
That article seems to say that it's sufficient to identify (but not authenticate) yourself as the subscriber who wants to cancel. So anyone can cancel any other subscribers they want? OK, German lawmakers, whatever you say...
> If sufficient data to identify the subscription to be cancelled
> is entered by the consumer, the submission of the form will itself
> be a valid cancellation, the effect of which cannot be made subject
> to further steps such as logins or second factor (e.g., email, app)
“we got a request to cancel your subscription. We did that, but if it wasn’t you who made that request, or you accidentally unsubscribed, click here to revert that cancellation within X days”.
And if you're unlucky, you're going to get one of these every day for every one of your subscriptions. All it takes is someone who doesn't like you and who knows your email.
True, you'd be in for some more clicks. I'd still prefer to take that risk, as it is way more work to find out cancellation procedures for the ever-growing list of paid/subscription services, employing more and more dark patterns to extract "value" out of you.
One problem app developers now have is that they can’t refund any purchases even if they agree that it is justified. They tell customers that only Apple can do that and customers tend to not believe them but that is how Apple set it up.
Which can be resolved by a consumer awareness campaign around card disputes & chargebacks. You can dispute any transaction even on a debit card if the merchant is being uncooperative or you haven't received the goods/services promised.
The key statement there is "if" - you have to try to contact the merchant first before you issue the chargeback. And even a successful chargeback doesn't prevent the merchant from reporting the missed payments on your credit record or sending it to collections.
In contrast, with Apple Pay it's a quick subscription cancellation via one simple interface.
Regardless, Apple could still mandate use of their own payment system alongside optional 3rd-party systems, and let all options compete on their merits - ease of cancellation being one of them.
Laws differ on that subject internationally. You can’t assume that your American-centric views on that subject are universally applicable. They’re not.
My point is that it's not just laws - it's rules enforced by the card networks. Laws may strengthen these protections under certain conditions, but the basic card network rules are enough to fight against malicious merchants.
Yes you can, worldwide with a Visa, MasterCard or Amex. Most of these card networks have consumer-friendly rules that merchants have to abide by if they want to process payments.
Each country can have its own laws on top of that (such as Section 75 protection in the UK for credit cards only) but the basic dispute scheme is managed by the card networks.
Most of the benefits of credit card networks don't apply in the EU. Like the purchase insurance and easy chargeback are not easy at all here. My bank stopped the insurance a few years ago.
I think it's just that they don't make any money (their profits mainly evolve around interest and late fees), as mostly everyone here pays their CC bill on time and has only one card. There's also hardly any loyalty programs to speak of. I've never seen anyone do cashbacks and with the loyalty points you'll be lucky to get a towel set a year :P The whole situation is very different from the US.
Most people only even have the debit version of the card but even for the credit version it's like this. I still have both because some US companies don't accept the debit version of my card. Though it's becoming much less of a problem and I haven't used the card in years, will probably cancel it as it counts as an active loan.
Credit cards have some protection by law in some countries. But any Visa or Mastercard will have some sort of protection against fraud and malicious merchants. That protection is as far as I know universal regardless of where you are located and will be more than enough to deal with merchants who don't honor cancellation requests, grossly misrepresent their products/services or outright don't provide the product/service you paid for.
Perhaps, but there are several advantages those payment networks provide me:
1) Security. I'm not using my money when I use a credit card. If someone stole a credit card, my bank account is not at risk in the same way if I lost a debit card or a check.
2) Fraud protection. On top of not using my own money, if someone does spend with a credit card, I'm protected much better than if it was my own money. Disputes and fraud on bank-issued debit cards tie up my money, meaning I can't pay my bills. Fraud and disputes on credit cards tie up some of my credit, and is not interest-bearing while it's under review.
3) Grace period. I basically have 45-60 days from when I purchase something to when I have to pay the statement balance that charge is part of. This gives me 45-60 days of cash that _if I needed to use_, I could. Granted, that would typically be in an emergency-type situation. That means if I have a flat tire, and my rent is due, and I didn't happen to have the cash ready that second, I don't need to make a decision (yet) or get a payday loan. I can figure out what to do over the next 45 days while not missing rent.
4) Interest. While almost every credit card out there has predatory interests, you can get low-interest credit cards, which can help in a tight squeeze. While it might be worse than a personal loan (depending), other options, such as a payday loan or even lay-away, are very much worse.
5) Cashback & rewards. I can easily get 4% cash back average for purchases I make, without paying any more or facing any inconvenience. Sometimes you run into a 3% credit charge, which I'm okay with if I'm getting similar cash back or the above protections.
If you can figure out a system that gives me all that and can be used nearly everywhere, then I'm all ears. But any new system needs to address the above.
The fraud is only a problem because of an ancient model where snooping on a bunch of numbers printed on a card can be used to verify any random transaction.
Cashback is only a thing because those payment providers are taxing all transactions in the US to an unreasonable level, which just raises overall prices. Great business model though, take 5% to give back 3% and the customer is happy about that.
> The fraud is only a problem because of an ancient model where snooping on a bunch of numbers printed on a card can be used to verify any random transaction.
No, there are plenty of fraud models that affect all payment methods, such as "hand over a box that's full of bricks instead of the product". Settling the payment exactly when the goods are delivered is often not practical.
As a consumer, that sounds less good than what a credit card provides: I can't chargeback if a fault develops after I've already received the goods. I have to figure out whether to trust this OLX, which is better than having to figure out whether to trust the individual seller, but less good than only having to trust my card provider - particularly when it presumably involves learning their dispute-resolution processes, which are going to be different from everyone else's.
For a seller it sounds more cumbersome too. Having to lock up all the payments you receive is significantly worse than receiving it upfront and paying back in the case of a dispute, and makes some kinds of business completely impossible (think travel agents). It's hard to do usage-based billing - you'd have to figure out how much to ask for as a deposit up-front instead, which is awkward if usage levels differ by orders of magnitude (think cloud providers).
And fundamentally this OLX is taking a very similar role to a credit card network and most of the downsides of them still apply. They're presumably taking a cut of most transactions that they do this for (either directly or through other fees). They presumably make judgements about what you are and aren't allowed to sell on their platform, and at the point where they're big enough to be useful to the consumer they're also big enough to be subject to political pressure about those judgements.
The issue is not what they can provide, just like the issue is not what Apple brings to the table. The problem is that both are too big and overwhelming dominance poses risks of anti-trust/deplatforming depending on which side you believe in.
I'll be in favour of throwing out card processors (who take low single-digit percentages of every transaction) after we've thrown out Apple and their 30%.
They will take the fine, deduct it from their huge profit, and carry on. The EU will be happy to pocket the fine, they need the money. It worked in the past, what new thing could make it go wrong for Apple?
> those using an alternative payment method still must give Apple 27% of income
While 27% is higher than expected, everyone knew Apple would (and had the right to) impose a fee for alternative payment methods. There isn't a magic flag you can wave to avoid paying Apple if you are accepting payments in an iOS app.
> app developers have to produce an entirely new app
This is the part the Dutch court slapped down. The development concerns in the press release are overblown, though ("must develop a completely new app") since it's more like you must submit a new app that uses the new entitlements.
I’m not sure where you’re getting the idea that a commonly agreed upon legal fiction has “rights”. “We the people” are the ultimate arbiters of what companies can and cannot do, in this case the government of the Netherlands acting on behalf of the people of the Netherlands is going to say what Apple can and cannot do in the Netherlands.
Apple has no “right to profit”… no company does. They are *allowed* to profit.
>I’m not sure where you’re getting the idea that a commonly agreed upon legal fiction has “rights”.
He's not describing how things ought to be, just how it is right now, given the current laws. If you really want to boil things down, the "rights" you have (guaranteed by the constitution or whatever) are a "legal fiction" as well. The ultimate arbiters of what you can and can't do are the Men With Guns working for the government. They can go away the next day if there's a coup.
This is a pretty bad argument, because it conveniently omits that antitrust regulation is also extremely open-ended. Sure, Apple has the right to profit however they see fit. The government also has the option to smack them down however they please; just a few months ago the DOJ and SEC demanded that Apple started unloading their liquid cash or risk a lawsuit. Why? They simply made too much money. That's all it was.
I think the simple explanation is this: if Apple continues to make money with the insane software margins they have today, they're going to face regulatory action. The cat is out of the bag, developers are pissed off, and more than half of the states in the US have come forward in opposition to Apple's monopoly over iOS app distribution. Just short of incorporating in another country, there's very little Apple can do to maintain their status quo without some kind of regulatory action coming down the pipes.
Irrespective of App Store rules and such, the idea that people acting through a company lose their rights has to die. A company is simply an organisational structure the owners, managers and employees use to exercise their rights and freedoms. We exercise our legal rights, in the context of our employment, all the time. Owners of companies also have a reasonable expectation to use the companies they own to exercise their rights too.
The same arguments used to attack the activities of companies could be used to restrict political parties, or undermine the activities of charities. It’s a dangerous road to take. Commercial groups have been recognised as legitimate vehicles for the exercising of rights for hundreds, even thousands of years. There’s nothing new about it, and it’s been recognised in legal systems throughout history across the globe.
"Owners of companies also have a reasonable expectation to use the companies they own to exercise their rights too."
This seems neither logical nor to have any legal basis. You have many rights related to privacy and sexual reproduction that can not and should not be exercised through companies.
There is also laxk of responsebility, if you commit crimes individually you will be in jail for the rest of your life, but companies get away with it regularly. Both due to power of money and diffusion of reaponsebility
It makes sense to exercise some rights though a company or similar organisation, such as a charity, NGO or political party, and not others.
>This seems neither logical nor to have any legal basis.
As I said, it has a long history and sound basis in common law jurisprudence in the west going back at least to medieval law, and in other cultures going back even further. The very word corporation, or incorporation (corpus being Latin for body), expresses the principle of representing and acting on behalf of a body of people.
If we're talking about how things ought to be, I think the power that "we the people" can have over peaceful transactions between private entities ought to be much more limited than it is now. The sledgehammer of government intervention should simply not be used to mediate private, voluntary interactions.
Apple basically created the entire idea of a mobile app marketplace, transforming the entire industry with sheer innovation. They did this in an environment where they were not protected by regulation from market incumbents (anyone heard of RIM lately?) the way it is proposed to do now. Where is the justice in taking this thing that Apple has built, to all our benefit, and forcing our terms on it. The App Store is Apple's. It should be allowed to charge whatever it wants, set whatever terms it pleases, and burn it to the ground if it sees fit. Seeing Apple's creation as somehow collective when we have done nothing but queue to pay for the privilege of using it is monstrously entitled and unjust.
You speak of Apple as if it were an individual or a small company run by a tight group of friends.
AAPL is not a courageous pioneer being oppressed by "The Man". AAPL is a trillion-dollar institution that by design exists only to pursue profit and enrich its shareholders, the overwhelming majority of whom can take exactly zero credit for the innovations from which they profited. It is "The Man".
Apple was at one point in recent history a small company run out of a garage by a group of friends. At what point exactly did it lose the rights it was entitled to then? If 3 dudes in a basement are entitled to sell goods/services on their own terms, then Apple should be as well. Where is the line? Apple is still a private company, not a public service, and the case I'm making is explicitly against socializing its services simply because it is big,
Instead I'm advocating that, in the interest of long-term (say 50-100 year) public good, we maintain the relatively unregulated environment that allowed Apple to succeed in the first place, and tolerate the relatively small inefficiency that environment produces.
> At what point exactly did it lose the rights it was entitled to then?
At some point between becoming a publicly-traded company and becoming the sole gatekeeper of a significant chunk of the world's personal data and apps.
To provide a precise specification of which exact antitrust regulations should take effect at which threshold of growth is, I hope you will concede, a tiny bit beyond the scope of a HN comment.
> If 3 dudes in a basement are entitled to sell goods/services on their own terms, then Apple should be as well.
I see no reason why that should be the case a priori.
"Apple" does not refer to the free actions of a few individuals, but to a particolar kind of profit-seeking contract called a "public company".The capabilities of such contracts can and do get restricted all the time, often with good reason.
> Apple is still a private company, not a public service, and the case I'm making is explicitly against socializing its services simply because it is big
Whereas the case I am making, conversely, can be summed up as: once a company becomes so big and/or powerful that it can prevent competition from arising outright, it should be either broken up or socialized, preferably the former.
Apple cannot prevent competition from arising outright, just as RIM could not, just as Microsoft could not. That's my whole point. Antitrust itself is a violation of fundamental liberty. There doesn't need to be an authority that tells free people how to interact peacefully. This authority diminishes the liberty of the people subjected to it, regardless of whether it came to power democratically or otherwise.
Do you really think that failing some public intervention Apple will be around in a century, undiminished? If it is, wouldn't that mean it is continuing to provide valuable goods and services people want?
"Apple" does indeed refer to the actions of a group of individuals, simply because there are no other agents in the system. It's individuals making decisions all the way down. "Publicly traded" doesn't mean "public service".
The tech giants have such warchests that they can afford to simply buy out any competitor that has a chance to compete with them. And unlike Cronus, they're unlikely to be deceived into swallowing an omphalos.
> Do you really think that failing some public intervention Apple will be around in a century, undiminished? If it is, wouldn't that mean it is continuing to provide valuable goods and services people want?
Is that belief of yours even falsifiable?
Is there any observation that would make you conclude that a given company, despite being profitable in a free market, is nevertheless representing a net negative for the world?
Or is it an article of faith for you that an unconstrained free market always leads to an eventually optimal equilibrium?
It is trying. Yahoo tried to acquire Google too, remember? Why take millions when you can make billions? Plenty of orgs refuse to be acquired because they see more money on the table by competing.
> Is that belief of yours even falsifiable?
Not per se, but history shows that even the most entrenched monopolies are very prone to disruption. I don't see any non-banks in the Fortune 100 that are over a century old. This almost proves my point since there is hardly any industry more entrenched by regulation than banking.
> representing a net negative for the world?
First we would have to agree on what "net negative" means, agree that our vision of what to do about it would improve the situation, and agree that we have a right to take such an intervention. Do you see where the problem is?
> unconstrained free market always leads to an eventually optimal equilibrium
Of course not, only that we the people do not have the right to dictate to other free people how they can peacefully, consensually, interact. Nor do we have the right to dictate to others the meanings of words like "negative" and "positive". All this does is diminish the freedom of everyone involved.
> It is trying. Yahoo tried to acquire Google too, remember?
The success rate doesn't need to be 100% for my point to be valid.
WhatsApp and Instagram could very well have eaten Facebook's lunch. Now FB is being threatened for the first time by TikTok, why? Because they're a Chinese company and FB can't simply buy them due to Chinese regulations!
Also consider this: in an idealised, perfect free market, every company is just barely breaking even, because as soon as they're making a profit it means it's possible to undercut them. (Bezos: "Your margin is my opportunity").
The existence of massive liquidity in the hands of some companies is itself evidence of inefficiency.
> Not per se, but history shows that even the most entrenched monopolies are very prone to disruption. I don't see any non-banks in the Fortune 100 that are over a century old.
Poor evidence, since antitrust action was very strong in the USA for most of the 20th century.
> First we would have to agree on what "net negative" means, agree that our vision of what to do about it would improve the situation, and agree that we have a right to take such an intervention. Do you see where the problem is?
Yes, people can disagree on what their preferred society looks like. That's the fundamental problem of politics. But that disagreement can include the exact value of freedom.
I personally rate freedom very high, yet the restraint "if you manage to build a trillion-dollar company, you must not make it unnecessarily hard for others to develop better products than yours" sounds like a slam-dunk kind of sacrifice for the sake of a more efficient innovation-oriented market.
> The success rate doesn't need to be 100% for my point to be valid.
Yes it does. You were arguing that Apple can prevent competition from ever arising. This isn't the case, clearly.
Yes of course there is inefficiency, I never said there wasn't. It would take a long time and a lot of money to build a mobile device as capable as an iPhone. That amount of time/money basically dictates how Apple can behave in the marketplace. If Apple triples its prices, for instance, competitors will become much more appealing both to users and investors.
All of this profit is Apple's return on the initial investment of developing the iPhone and App Store. This was an existentially risky thing for them to do, and we should not hinder the profits brought about by its success, lest we discourage others from attempting the same.
It's not at all clear that these regulations will create a more innovation-oriented market. It could well be that they will hinder innovation. Do you have any ideas on how we can tell for sure? I think we should be pretty confident before using regulation, don't you?
> Yes it does. You were arguing that Apple can prevent competition from ever arising. This isn't the case, clearly.
Ok, fine, it can only reduce the effectiveness of competition by a large amount. See the last point in this reply.
> All of this profit is Apple's return on the initial investment of developing the iPhone and App Store. This was an existentially risky thing for them to do, and we should not hinder the profits brought about by its success, lest we discourage others from attempting the same.
Why? Do we not want to discourage others from attempting to build rent-seeking platforms?
(a) "I want to design and sell a great device: a new kind of smartphone, with radically improved UX and capabilities"
(b) "I have a great device that everybody wants. Instead of directly raising its price, I want to make money by getting a 30% cut of all business ever done on this device, forever"
(a) is a perfectly fine business plan, and it doesn't hamper anyone else's competitive efforts. The follow-up (b) however _only_ works as a monopolistic plan. If the device isn't very successful, the rent-seeking will further drive away app developers. But if the device becomes incredibly popular, app developers will have to suck up the extortionate price because I've locked down the market.
Peter Thiel said "Competition is for suckers", and this is a good example of it. The benefits of the free market come from competition, but companies will naturally strive hard to avoid competition. Therefore, the rules should make it hard for them to do so, and easy for competition to arise.
> It's not at all clear that these regulations will create a more innovation-oriented market. It could well be that they will hinder innovation. Do you have any ideas on how we can tell for sure? I think we should be pretty confident before using regulation, don't you?
On the one side: hundreds and hundreds of promising startups whose products only ended up raising the existing giants' moat even higher, when not cancelled outright.
On the other side: gosh, what if someone in the future had the next iPhone-level innovation in hand, but the idea of having to turn it into a semi-open platforms after a paltry fifteen years of obscene profits turned them off the idea?
I'm not so much saying that the benefits will be massive, as much as I'm saying the 'deterrent' risk is hilariously negligible.
I don't think Apple needs to be socialized to solve this problem, in fact saying that obfuscates a simple and practical solution. It should be illegal for a company to actively prevent you from running code on a device that you own.
We need something like Right to Repair but for software, if I own a phone, I should be able to run whatever I want on it. You shouldn't be able to charge money for the privilege of installing my own software, just like an auto maker can't charge me for the privilege of repairing my own car. Companies will use all sorts of weasel words and scare tactics but at the end of the day it's simply anti-competitive.
This is nice idea, but it falls flat. In this case Apple's advantage, the actual reason consumers prefer Apple's devices, is because they restrict what code can be run on them, in order to provide a safe, trustworthy, optimized user experience. Why do you want to rob Apple (and the market) of this advantage?
> the case I'm making is explicitly against socializing its services simply because it is big
So what is that case? If we gradually socialize organisations that get too big (based on judgements that will ultimately be somewhat vague, sure), what's the actual downside? The 3 dudes in a basement will still have the promise of literally more money than they can consume in their lifetimes. Maybe the amount of VC money sloshing around the system would drop a bit from current levels, but that might be no bad thing.
> If 3 dudes in a basement are entitled to sell goods/services on their own terms, then Apple should be as well.
Where did you get this idea? Lets continue this line of thought:
If 3 dudes are entitled to piss in the ocean then Apple is entitled to route the human waste from their corporate HQ directly to the ocean without any treatment facilities
If 3 dudes are entitled to have racists discussions in the privacy of their home, then Apple should be fine to do the same in their HR policy in their HQ
If 3 dudes are entitled to hunt 1 deer, then Apple should be as well entitled to hunt 1 million deer.
If 3 dudes can build a shack without having to deal with fire inspections, then Apple should be able to build an office or a million shacks without fire inspections.
If 3 dudes are entitled to piss in the ocean, then yes all of Apple staff can march to the shoreline and do the same.
> If 3 dudes are entitled to have racists discussions in the privacy of their home, then Apple should be fine to do the same in their HR policy in their HQ
Yes actually, I think people should be able to discriminate based on whatever criteria they see fit. Why is discriminating based on height/attractiveness OK but race not OK?
> If 3 dudes are entitled to hunt 1 deer, then Apple should be as well entitled to hunt 1 million deer.
I'm not aware of any restriction on Apple employees applying for deer permits.
> If 3 dudes can build a shack without having to deal with fire inspections, then Apple should be able to build an office or a million shacks without fire inspections.
I think zoning restrictions apply to locations, not people.
> Yes actually, I think people should be able to discriminate based on whatever criteria they see fit.
Now that I am clear we are discussing your personal fantasy, not the real world or moral consensus, this thread makes more sence.
"I'm not aware of any restriction on Apple employees applying for deer permits."
Are you unable or unwilling to distinguish between employees individually hunting in their free time and Apple the corporation getting a permit to kill 1 million deer and handing their employees rifles?
You seem very keen on blurring the line between corporate and private life. Should we also extend this logix to sexual relationships and reproductive rights, see what kind of distopian nightmare we will arrive at?
This isn't my personal fantasy, this is liberty as it was set out in the declaration of independence, and the french revolution after it. This is how America lived until the late 19th century with antitrust and the reinterpretation of the general welfare clause.
Corporate life is private life, since it is not public life. Anyone can start a corporation - I can start one to manage a dining club, appointing a treasurer, secretary, etc. from among my friend group. Does this mean that I now have to be non-discriminatory in whom I admit to dinner? Isn't that a bit... tyrannical? There isn't any strong legal boundary between my dining club corporation and Apple.
If our government issues Apple a permit to kill 1m deer, then by golly do they have the right to do so.
Yes indeed we should allow people to participate in their private and sexual lives at-will and consensually. I'm making the point that one is no more entitled to a particular kind of app store from Apple than they are to a private relationship.
"how America lived until the late 19th century with antitrust"
Yeah, nothing screams 'this is liberty' like holocaust of Native Americans and burning alive anyone who disagrees with you for 'witchcraft'.
"If our government issues Apple a permit to kill 1m deer, then by golly do they have the right to do so."
Ah I see, so because reproduction is a human right, you have to apply for a breeding permit? Because 'freedom of speech', you need a 'talking permit'?
"Yes indeed we should allow people to participate in their private and sexual lives at-will and consensually."
So Apple should be able to put out an official job ad "HR assistant - skills: punctual, good with emails, excellent blowjobs, doesn't mind anal"
"Does this mean that I now have to be non-discriminatory in whom I admit to dinner? Isn't that a bit... tyrannical? There isn't any strong legal boundary between my dining club corporation and Apple."
I think the number of people who have finished school in the last 30 years and are confused whether "our restaraunt doesn't allow black people" constitutes discrimination is 0%.
> Yeah, nothing screams 'this is liberty' like holocaust of Native Americans and burning alive anyone who disagrees with you for 'witchcraft'.
Yeah, we denied lots of people their liberty; it doesn't mean the definition was wrong.
> Ah I see, so because reproduction is a human right, you have to apply for a breeding permit? Because 'freedom of speech', you need a 'talking permit'?
I'm not sure what this has to do with anything. Our government issues permits to hunt deer.
> So Apple should be able to put out an official job ad "HR assistant - skills: punctual, good with emails, excellent blowjobs, doesn't mind anal"
Actually yes? What business is it of yours? What's wrong with someone wanting a job like that and taking it?
> I think the number of people who have finished school in the last 30 years and are confused whether "our restaraunt [sic] doesn't allow black people" constitutes discrimination is 0%.
It clearly is unlawful discrimination, but my point is these laws are arbitrary and authoritarian. Why is it OK to discriminate via height, figure, or beauty, but not race? All of these are rather immutable characteristics. The whole idea of some authority dictating which criteria I use to admit people to my shop/restaurant is tyrannical, just like it would be tyrannical to outlaw racial discrimination in dating. Let people choose for themselves whom they associate with in all aspects of their lives.
Yes I agree - but the whole idea of "liberty" and the US declaration as originally intended does. Indeed most of the world is content with a high degree of authority/tyranny. That doesn't invalidate the concerns of those who wish to be free.
Neither the Declaration of Independence nor the Constitution provide any provision for the existence of corporations, which are entities that reduce individuals' liabilities for their actions while running a business.
In exchange for the privilege of limiting your liability for your actions, you agree to follow a set of rules when forming and running a corporation. When acting on the behalf of a corporation, you are never engaging in "liberty" because any and everything a corporation can do is a privilege granted by the government.
Since we are taking jabs at countries for 'liberty', most of the world is not running a spying machine that would make Soviet Union green with envy.
Back to the practical problems, conflating personal liberty and rights of giant corporations to spy on your and sell your private information is rather unhelpfull. I don't think anyone is buying it.
Capitalism is beneficial as long as profits aligns with increasing productivity. However capitalism is harmful when profit incentives encourages creating bottlenecks. The appstore is currently a bottleneck and Apple has no incentives to fix it, removing their profit incentive from keeping that bottleneck around is good for everyone. If it really benefits the user to have everything running in the Appstore then it would still keep it there even if it had a 5% fee, just that Apple would no longer try to make everything go via the app store even when it doesn't make sense for it to.
Yes and the way it's supposed to go is that a competitor creates their own devices that entice users away from Apple, just like Apple did with RIM. Why 5%? why not 4? Why not 6? Who are we to decide what Apple charges for Apple services? How do you know what it costs Apple to maintain the review process and to continue to innovate in mobile space? Why is it any of our collective concern what apple over/under charges for?
What do you mean doesn't work? Didn't it produce Apple to begin with? Where was the regulation on RIM in the late aughts?
> just like they did for VISA and Mastercard when they capped card transaction feed.
And in so doing they significantly increased the barrier to entry in the space, effectively cementing VISA and Mastercard into market dominance. This happens everywhere everything is regulated - incumbents shape the regulation so it's easy for them to comply with and difficult for new entrants, creating all sorts of disfunction.
Let me ask, what is the cost of doing nothing here exactly? Why are you so certain that that cost is higher than the cost of intervention?
> And in so doing they significantly increased the barrier to entry in the space, effectively cementing VISA and Mastercard into market dominance
This isn't true, there are tons of alternatives to Visa and Mastercard in Europe today. Rather significantly reducing the profits and thus the warchest of these companies made it easier for small companies to compete, not harder. The same applies to appstores.
> Let me ask, what is the cost of doing nothing here exactly?
The cost is reduced innovation. Same with card fees. The future is electronic payments, they are much more efficient, anything that hampers that is hampering innovation. That includes card fees, or this tax on Appstore purchases. Many apps simply aren't feasible to make with such high fees, marketplace apps etc where you trade things with people for example.
Not to mention that the Appstore tax encourages advertisements over purchasing apps, since you lose 30% of any purchases but you don't pay anything on ads, making the advertisements effectively 40% more profitable in comparison. You'd have a more sane monetization ecosystem for apps if the appstore tax got reduced.
There are multiple "simple magic flags" you can wave - e.g. monetize using ads or make a "reader" app where users have to subscribe elsewhere. Apple doesn't make you pay them 30% that way. I hope governments force them to not take 30% elsewhere too, because neither devs nor users can do it.
> There isn't a magic flag you can wave to avoid paying Apple for the use of their platform.
If alternate App Stores and direct inatallation of IPA files off the browser was allowed, developers could have the ability to not even use any of Apple's plattform. Hell, I bet that a community-made FOSS SDK to create iOS apps would arrive. Then those devs wouldn't use or distribute any of Apple's IP while developing their apps (besides the Apple devices they already own and use for developement)
Apple does allow installation of IPA from the browser. There are a few different ways you can do it, from generating a special URL to App Clips. https://developer.apple.com/app-clips/
That's not the issue. The issue isn't the method of distribution. The issue is being able to get around Apple's sandboxing.
> you must submit a new app that uses the new entitlements.
That's easy to do. Simply change the SKU and Bundle ID, and set up a new app in iTunes App Store. Deprecate the old one. Lots of apps do this, anyway. It's sort of S.O.P. for new paid versions.
I've released a whole bunch of apps, over the years. I've retired most of them, and come out with entirely new versions of others.
It's a pain, but nothing too intimidating. I find the article to be a bit ... hyperbolic ... The process I just described would take me a day, and that's mostly because I'm fairly anal about hand-crafting a lot of stuff that many developers can integrate into their CD process.
I‘m sure the fee will be slapped down later too. It gives Apple unfair competetive advantages in the industries it operates in. (e.g Apple Music vs Spotify)
"Reader" apps, broadly construed, can already offer outside subscriptions. Apparently, Spotify does not pay a 30% fee to Apple, but only 15%, and that on less than 1% of its paid members, so only around 0.15%. That does not seem to constitute unfair competitive advantage.
Well I‘ve read that math many times and I don‘t understand the intention here.
Of course the number is very low - Spotify did not allow subscriptions through apps for a long time (do they now?)
Even if they have to pay 15% now (I don‘t know) that‘s still 15% of their margin (!). Apple is able to make much better offers because they don‘t have to pay that fee.
The 0.15% is math meant to distract, just ask Spotify.
They are risking having the EU as a whole slap them down and impose tougher restrictions.