Why are you people defending Apple?

Mostly benign monarchies may seem very attractive at first glance, but over time abuse of power is inevitable and then it's too late.

> Not to mention the fact that users have built up libraries of dozens of applications and DRM-laden content that won’t transfer between devices.

What you say is (emphasis added):

> The article makes another great point about people not being able to leave iOS devices for a competitor because all their music, movies, apps, etc are in Apple's DRM format and won't transfer to other devices.

Music is DRM-free on iTunes and has been for some time. TV shows and movies are another matter and have other issues (such as only one download), which is why I won't buy them from there.

But it's not Apple demanding DRM. It's the content producers, who are still until the woeful delusion that DRM prevents copying. In reality it simply annoys customers. The only reason music is DRM-free on iTunes is because Apple extracted that concession as part of a deal that gave the RIAA three pricing bands for songs ($0.69, $0.99 and $1.29, which basically means $1.29 for anything new) over the previous model, which was $0.99 for everything.

Music on iOS devices isn't DRMed and hasn't been for some time. If your new device can't play m4a files this is a separate issue and you can transcode them just like if you had a pile of drm-free WMAs.

Apps are DRMed but even if they weren't it'd be irrelevant unless a WINE-analogue for iOS came about (and consider the time-scale this would take and performance issues, etc. UIKit is non-trivial). I can't move an Android app onto my iPhone either, despite its lack of DRM, and whether the blocker is legal or technical is irrelevant. The real problem isn't that a user can't move their 99c iOS whatever-app to their new android phone, it's that they can't find or don't know how to find or can't be bothered finding equivalent app(s) for their new phone. Leaving aside the whole question of relative top-tier application quality on the platforms.

Movies, I don't know the behaviour here. Do people collect big libraries of apple DRM-ed movies, enough to keep them stuck to a phone? TV episodes I could see, but those strike me as more disposable in any case.

What is the 'etc' in "music, movies, apps, etc"? It's not your photos. It's not your emails. It's not your calendars or your contacts. It's not even the data saved in your applications - there's a trivial API now for transferring files from an application to your desktop via iTunes; if you can't export the data from your favourite applications to transfer to a different platform, that's on the application developers, not Apple.

I suppose it could be your alarms, preferred weather cities and stocks app choices. Or your SMS database, which I bet most people don't even consider as something that should easily transfer from phone to phone (though obviously it should).

whoa. first time I heard this. if this is true, it's probably straws[final+5] for me. goodbye native iOS app development, hello mobile multi-platform web apps and Android apps.

Also, as a reminder in case you live in a country where it isn't so: Contracts prevent most of Apple's customers from jumping platforms, and sunk costs in iOS apps tighten the lock-in.

Also let's not forget about early termination fees from carriers, or getting another subscription just to get another phone.

For some people moving to another platform can be a significant expense. And for most people it's not really clear what else you might be missing on the other platform, that you were accustomed to using now.

These things weren't difficult for me, but they're a pretty big hurdle for 'normal' people. If Amazon pulls the Kindle app, a user is probably more likely to "just switch" to iBooks as opposed to a different platform that supports Kindle. Which is apparently what Apple is counting on.

So yes, move to Android and stop being such miserable worms. Ditching an iPhone is not like ditching $5,000 worth of IBM PC-XT, especially because Apple have sync'd all your contacts, emails, and other personal data with your computer.

They ban pop-up's or redirects outside.

Both of these are good for end users, and user experience. The 30% cut is only going to affect the providers, not the end users, (at least not directly). They are in turn offering a large user base to these providers, in essence acting like a distributor.

If this somehow leads to providers leaving, I'm sure that Apple will back off some of these rules.

Also, which industries are you thinking of where the employees do not use some Google service or another every day? Even industries where I hear people constantly cursing Google often get a lot of value from their offerings.

But Google has had that impact on the entire web, both by providing visibility and a revenue stream via advertising.

There's no need to defend every one of Apple's decisions, sometimes people do stuff that sucks, or even brings Google to the discussion just to defend Apple.

EDIT: That said, your points were good, I liked the articulation of your comment, I upvoted you.

HTC seems to be doing well for itself tooling their machines with Google android.

Consider the potential revenue business generates from Adwords. Or freeing small businesses from having to run and manage their own email systems.

My favorite example is the benefit a myriad of startups gained from having access to Google API's like maps, and the benefit business gets from being easily found on a map, a bar for instance is a business too, i find them with Google maps.

You also dont seem to qualify having the most advanced search engine in the world a benefit for businesses, talk about a tremendous impact on the entire ecosystem.

I could go on, with ease. but i think you might get the point, your view of business benefit is too narrow, your sharp dichotomy between business and consumers is false as well, businesses are consumers of other businesses too.

You've never heard of Google Ads, I suppose.

The idea that Apple's gouging is somehow a boon is completely shortsighted. Android's Market offers a much more lucrative path to the future plus it's possible to create verticals in Android that don't rely on a centrally planned store for approval and distribution. Mobile is young and my guess is these verticals are going to be big. Apple's store won't scale in the long term.

For myself I agree with the good points you raised about Apple, but this article and all these comments are much more about the specific issue at hand. I feel like you're not seeing the context in quite the same way as other commenters myself included.

Considering you didn't mention compulsory In-App price matching at all, you actually haven't defended Apple over this issue in these comments at all. It just kind of reads like you didn't read the article and are just responding to the headline.

Yeah, some people seem to be very downvote-happy. Sorry. I appreciated hearing your opinion, though I did think it was very weird. Weird is interesting.

Just remember that with as many users as HN has nowadays, there will always be some people who feel the need to downvote anything they disagree with. I've found that, in general, it's not the same people you're talking to.

I think the best policy is to ignore the downvotes unless they're accompanied by a comment with a good reason why, because jerks who downvote frivolously are not worth your time.

http://blog.opendns.com/2009/12/03/opendns-google-dns/

Yes, people do not understand the purpose of voting. It's not to express agreement or disagreement but rather to rate the validity of the points made in the comment.

Anyway. I did disagree with you, but I upvoted your comment and I would have liked to continue the argument. Now I can't because you removed your comments.

Apple comes along and says that anything you want to use on the device you bought and paid for needs to go through their infrastructure. That's where it becomes a huge problem. Not that they're charging for using their services, but because they're charging to let people do things with their property.

Apple's service looks worthwhile and valid for certain use cases. But to insist that it must be used for any IOS Native app that has a monthly fee is a draconian change.

Reasonably Serious Case: I've been looking at building an app for my wife to offer to her fitness bootcamp clients.. By my understanding of the new rules - I need to allow people to sign-up / renew contracts from within the app. And give Apple 30% of the $200 or so fee.

Wrong. Please don't misunderstand this new policy as something that is in addition to the existing rules.

The Kindle App currently in the app store (which doesn't offer in-app purchase or subscription) is now probably in violation of the app store guidelines in light of these new terms. They have forced companies that offer any subscription service outside the store to also offer it in the store and with a hefty 30% commission.

But screwing your customers is not an antitrust violation: it’s capitalism as usual. :-)

Apple does not have a monopoly in mobile devices. Apple is acting as a distributor and asking for a cut for being that distributor. There are other equally viable distributors - web apps, Android, maybe even WP7.

I'm sure the Angry Birds or Pixelmator people don't begrudge Apple taking a cut for giving them a massive amount of marketing and promotion - as well as an ultra-simple way of receiving payment (still a major stumbling block in the online world).

The key thing is how they enforce the external restrictions. It does make sense to say you need to offer the same terms externally as inside the App Store - to the consumer. The problem is that this can appear totally unreasonable to the developer. It all depends on enforcement - if they go after 30% of Highrise revenue because 37Signals have a native client we will know things are wrong.

This was already addressed in the article. iBooks has a significantly smaller variety of books than Amazon. By becoming the sole gatekeeper for content, Apple is ruling out larger distributers. Users don't gain from this. Only Apple.

But consider services like last.fm, Netflix, or Pandora - where there is a significant value-add on top of merely distributing content. They are providing consumers a valuable service but yet also cannot afford the steep cut that Apple is now demanding.

The "they're distributors and deserve to get cut out" argument is a fallacy, because some distributors actually do provide consumer value - and they're all getting taken to the cleaners with Apple's new move.

Besides, a diverse crop of distributors competing with each other is a far better situation to be in than exchanging all of that for a monolithic monopoly of another distributor. Make no mistake, this isn't some populist uprising where the producers make their work available to the consumer and bypass the middleman - the middleman still exists, it's now Apple, and now Apple has all the cards.

Look at what percentage of revenue that net income is, and count how many are above 30%. Now, isn't it a bit more difficult to make money on a product if your 30% margin is gone? Sure, Apple deserves some money for payment processing and distribution, maybe something for acquiring a new customer but certainly not 30% of all revenue.

Yes, you may say you can just raise price, right? Well, to compensate you would have to raise price over 40%. Meanwhile, the customers have already demonstrated the prices they are willing to bear, so that doesn't quite work.

So now, if you've started a business of developing iOS apps, you're severely hampered by this 30% revenue cut you're giving to Apple. The small guys will probably deal with it because they won't know better, but think of it this way: Apple has just taxed 30% of the value you have created for your users. That's 30% of your income.

You can argue this is a retail model and they should get a margin the same way you do if you sell something through Best Buy, but it becomes anticompetitive when they've blocked off any option you have to sell directly to a customer or through any other channel. The companies on that list do very little business through retail, and they would suffer if they had to give up 30%. Moreover, Apple's own margins would take a hit if they had to sell everything through a retail partner.

(Also don't get why it matters that Rhapsody, Netflix, Amazon don't create content. Apple doesn't create most of the stuff that goes into an iPhone, but that doesn't mean they don't add value and shouldn't be able to make money)

It's pure evil, but that really shouldn't surprise anyone at this point.