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Comment by equalsnil | Hacker News Reader

Marco seems upset because Apple, to whom he owes his livelihood, is about to ruin his business. I think he has a much bigger problem than the podcast producers, who might finally get a larger platform and more attention, especially if Apple thinks they can turn podcasts into a competitive weapon in the streaming wars.

Sorry Marco, you chose the wrong centralized OS platform for your vision of a decentralized podcast future.

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What decision is Apple making that is going to ruin his business?

If you're going to make a post calling Marco some sort of platform biased fanboy, you should refrain from being a platform biased fanboy.

AFAIK he does not owe his livelihood to anyone. He made his FU money from Tumblr, and a bit more from selling Instapaper, but since then his output (which, yes, has been iOS-focused) has been more like hobby projects that at worst keep him busy but at best may have made him a little extra on the side. The stuff he does now looks to me like someone following their bliss, not someone trying to make a living.

The way he talks on ATP, Overcast really is his primary source of income, and the Tumblr money is probably stashed away. If Overcast stopped making money, that would be a big deal for him.

It's not about Marco's business. He doesn't need whatever little money Overcast may make. His point is that podcasts as a medium are threatened _for everyone_ if Apple asserts more control over distribution and/or what shows up in the iTunes Store podcast directory.

It doesn't matter what OS your phone runs, the proposed changes are huge threats to today's podcast ecosystem and the opportunities it presents for small podcasts to get a foothold.

I think the bigger point here is that Apple's benign neglect has resulted in a vibrant, growing market for high quality podcasts.

Contrast that to the AppStore, which for the most part is a race to the bottom. The only people directly making money are the skinner-box game developers and Apple.

Podcasts are a great anti-Amazon weapon -- they displace Audible and radio. So it won't be ignored for long. I sincerely hope that Apple uses Podcasts as a model for a better AppStore, not another place to setup a toll booth for their 30% vig.

What is Apple about to do? If I understand you correctly it's something that will ruin Marcos's business and benefit some other people, but what is it?

His argument is perfectly sound economically. Right now there is a ton of competition. Apple is perfectly positioned to capture the majority of the market share and severely limit competition among platforms and clients. This would hurt the market long term.

As anti-trust in the EU is also focused on competition, I could imagine that the EU comission might also take an interest in Apple in such a scenario.

I also doubt that Apple actually is going to do anything. Whatever profit they might be able to gain is probably not worth the risk.

Hear hear. Marco is one of the more outspoken developers, at least when it comes to Apple's broken developer relations, but for all his well-founded critique he still remains an iOS-exclusive one-man shop.

Is this a choice based on the quality of the Android developer platform, the Android market realities, or simply a religious devotion to the Apple ecosystem?

Well considering that one of his major competitors has claimed 5x higher unit sales on Android vs iOS (and the Andriod price was $1 more at the time) [1], I think you can draw your own conclusions.

[1] See: https://blog.shiftyjelly.com/2013/02/20/why-android-first/

I think you're perhaps overthinking it. Is it so hard to imagine that maybe a) developing his app for multiple platforms requires more development effort than he alone is capable of and b) he chooses to allocate the effort he can produce towards the platform that he himself uses and has a preference for?

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