Comment by danShumway | Hacker News Reader

Comment by danShumway | Hacker News Reader

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From the article:

> Target, for example, is a standard, old-school brick and mortar shop. You go to find specific products and walk up and down aisles. When you find something that interests you, you don’t purchase it through that product. Instead you bring it to the Target checkout clerk, and they will charge you for it. And believe me, Target gets their fair share of the purchase of that item. If Target finds that the product has stickers telling you to purchase this item from Amazon or another location for a lesser amount, Target will remove the item from the shelves, and rightfully so. It is their brand that is bringing in the customers, not the products.

It seems at first glance like this would largely contradict Apple's earlier arguments that purchases are between app developers and consumers, and that it's just an intermediary in the process[0]. Anyone willing to comment about a subtlety to this argument I could be missing?

[0]: https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/05/13/apple-app-store-lawsu...

I don't believe it contradicts it. Apple claims that it does not set the price, the developers do. That's what they mean when they are just the intermediary, they facilitate the transaction but are not part of it.

I think his example is poor because Target does set the prices on products, for the most part. I think something better would be a flee market. The flee market operators provide services to facilitate the sales of the vendors and they can also choose which vendors are allowed to sell in their market, but they do not control the prices the vendors sell at.

Just as a point of precision, Target does not technically set the price of any given manufacturer's goods. What they do when you get to that point in your talks with them, (and only if you're not ginormous), is to strongly suggest that you sell your product at such and such price. If you don't, they're gonna walk and sign on your competitor instead.

It's devilishly ingenious, because, as I found out the hard way, in a court of law, they don't consider that to be setting the price. You still have the power to set your own price. You just won't be in Target if you pick the wrong price.

Ok my mistake, I thought target purchased goods at wholesale price and then re-sold them at whatever price they wanted. So Target was a good example after all.

What do you mean? Target doesn't by wholesale and resell? They don't sell products for their own revenue, and pay for those products as an expense? Is the retail sale price a factor in the computation of how much the wholesale provider is paid?

The analogy sounds good, up until the product has stickers telling you to purchase this item from Amazon. That's disingenuous. The stickers in this analogy would tell customers that they can go to the product's own web site to register for a subscription. That's what Apple doesn't allow.

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