EU opens Apple antitrust investigations into App Store and Apple Pay practices
theverge.com
theverge.com
I understand Spotify's complaint about competing with Apple Music, and that does have merit, but at the same time I kind of just don't really care. Spotify is also in the process of ruining podcasts by making them exclusive to their platform, so no real love lost here for me.
W.r.t Apple Pay and NFC - for the love of god don't fuck with this. It's a perfect implementation as it currently is.
Don't complain Apple is an asshole in category A, when you yourself are an asshole in category B.
Sorry but I don't think that is a good idea for customers.
But asshole companies complaining that other companies are assholes is very hypocritical IMHO.
It matters that we create reasonable and sane policies and enforce them evenly and fairly across all market participants. We don't apply them selectively based on whether the company is "a nice guy." None of them are nice guys. They're not people, and folks need to stop anthropomorphizing them.
An anticompetitive market may, in the long term, serve as the demise of the platform you currently really like as it is. Spotify (or especially smaller players) may be forced to abandon the App Store or might stay in it but go bankrupt, increase prices, or somehow degrade or modify their offering to keep afloat if they are so dependent on App Store customers.
As for Apple Pay: yeah, I hope it stays the same. I hate 99% of banking apps and the less I have to interact with them the better. I'm already annoyed by iOS apps for loyalty card schemes which absolutely refuse to implement Wallet support for fixed barcodes present in their apps, presumably either due to incompetence or some tracking purpose.
A "monopoly" is not actually required for this. They can have their store and impose their restrictions even if there are competing stores. If users actually prefer those restrictions, they can still choose to buy apps only from that store, or only from stores that impose restrictions they like. That doesn't require the store to be tied to the hardware or to have a monopoly.
But notice that users have no reason to prefer a store that takes a 30% cut or prohibits apps that compete with Apple's or rejects apps based on opaque and arbitrary reasoning or political pressure. So the store could still do all the things you want, but the competitive pressure would keep it from doing the things that only Apple wants, because then another store could impose the restrictions you want but not the bad ones.
You're being highly disingenuous here. It doesn't mean you're wrong in what you want, but you're not honestly addressing the counterpoint and tradeoffs involved. What you should have noticed is that your logic works 100% equally in the other direction: "If developers actually prefer those freedoms, they can still choose to develop apps only for stores without them." There are full stack OSS phones in development, Android forks and alternate stores like Amazon did are possible, etc. Would you accept that as an argument in turn?
Obviously there are much more complicated dynamics here then your oversimplification. If a critical mass of key developers went to a forked store, users would face extreme pressure to follow regardless of whether it was horrible for privacy. Windows itself, brought up above, is the most direct example! It was totally open to any development, yet gained so many network effects that many users felt compelled to run it (if only in a VM) even if they hate it. This isn't some weird thing, in fact if anything it's Apple that's new for a general purpose platform. They've essentially been able to serve to some extent as a "union for certain consumers", in the sense of labor unions. Developers, platforms, and users all have a constantly shifting balance of power. By coordinating a lot of user power through a single point of leadership, Apple has shifted that. It is perfectly reasonable to purposefully "join the Apple Union" precisely because an individual wants more bargaining power vs Developers.
Just like management dislikes workers having more power, developers dislike users having far more bargaining power of them. And sometimes they're absolutely right! Users aren't always correct, and further just like union leadership can have its own goals, incentives, lockin/regulatory capture efforts, etc., that don't always align. Apple is using its position both in good and incredibly valuable ways for its customers (opposing not merely lazy/bad developers but certain kinds of government overreach as well), and for unnecessary, selfish and restrictive ends. Some of those are Apple's fault as a matter of choice, some are the inevitable result of a centralized point of failure/control (which still are Apple's fault, to the extent that the whole scenario is their choice).
I'm more then sympathetic to wanting to make tweaks and being really scared of a future where owners don't have any sort of choice for root on their own hardware. At the same time we should recognize that things got to here in large part because THE TECH INDUSTRY FUCKED UP. It was us, the tech experts and elites in particular. I remember damn well the jokes about PEBKAC and "lusers" and enjoying good reads of the BOFH etc. But Apple had the balls to actually confront a lot of our bullshit head on with a revolutionary message of "it's not your fault." We were telling users not to install random crap off the web, or install anything that looked interesting, or browse to shady sites, etc etc. "Users are so dumb argh!" Apple dared to ask
>"well, why shouldn't people just be able to browser literally anywhere, and look through a selection of software and install literally anything that catches their fancy at all, with as few as possible concerns that it'll hose their system or sneak them into some payments bullshit or even fuck with their privacy."
and rather then just dismissing it instead figuring out the stack necessary to try to achieve it however imperfectly. We, the collectively industry and HN-types for a decade before, could have done that but with a better balance of freedom. We could have had full crypto trust chains, but still the ability for experts to load their own root keys. Apple's idiotic decision to eliminate upgrade pricing has nothing at all to do with the goal there. Etc etc. Instead a void was left and Apple stepped into it, and it's been popular because it's providing a huge amount of genuine value to hundreds of millions of people.
So I'm suspicious about selfish calls by techies and competitors and devs to try to roll it all back without acknowledging the strengths, and particularly without respecting the people making a conscious choice to opt into it. It stinks of the same old smug thinking about "users are dumb, we know better for them." Why shouldn't their desires matter? I'd like to see much more fine-grained approaches tried FIRST before bringing out big anti-trust hammers. For example, the law could require a choice at order time (but unalterable after) to let people load root keys for hardware, software, both, or neither. Then consumers could still choose fully locked down devices when it made sense and different degrees of openness otherwise. Vastly improving warranty law would be another path to examine.
I think the situation is also worth examining from the other angle: why do both Apple and developers desire control over users? I think it's mainly the profit they can extract, directly by developers or indirectly by Apple, inserting itself as a middle-man.
I'll leave you with one of my favorite quotes, from Ender's Shadow:
> "If he's this good at making people love him, why didn't he do it before? Because these fools always look up for power. People above you, they never want to share power with you. Why you look to them? They give you nothing. People below you, you give them hope, you give them respect, they give you power, cause they don't think they have any, so they don't mind giving it up.
And then users won't trust apps from those stores because they're full of spyware and garbage so developers will still have to use a store the user trusts in order to get the user to install their app. The stores themselves, meanwhile, have to worry about their own reputations in allowing shady apps, because allowing crap into the store causes users to not trust the store itself and that costs the store more than they gain from distributing crap.
This is free market competition 101. It's the thing markets are good at. The thing where markets fail is where you have a monopoly that can then abuse everybody else because they lack competitive pressure.
> There are full stack OSS phones in development, Android forks and alternate stores like Amazon did are possible, etc. Would you accept that as an argument in turn?
Developers distribute their apps to multiple platforms. Apple's store isn't an alternative to Google's or Amazon's because it doesn't reach the same customers -- to reach the entire population you need to reach each platform, not one or the other. To be a real competitor it has to distribute apps to the market of people with iOS devices.
> If a critical mass of key developers went to a forked store, users would face extreme pressure to follow regardless of whether it was horrible for privacy.
You're treating developers as a monolith. The entire point is that you could use multiple stores at the same time. If Mozilla uses another store because it allows them to use their own browser engine in Firefox, you might install Firefox from that store and not Apple's, but still refuse to install the Facebook app from the same store because you trust Mozilla and not Facebook. Firefox being in the other store buys Facebook nothing even if users install Firefox from there, because they still won't install Facebook from there, because they don't trust them without a chaperone.
> bargaining power
Apple is not your union. It's not just a principal-agent problem (though that exists) -- they have no duty to you at all and they're in it for themselves. The bargaining power accrues to them, not you, and it comes at your expense as much as anyone's.
> opposing not merely lazy/bad developers but certain kinds of government overreach as well
The fact that they're even in a position to do this is a cost. If you had alternate stores then you only need one to resist bad requirements and you can still install the app. If you have to use Apple then it's a single point of control and in cases when they fail to resist government pressure[1], the user has no alternative.
[1] https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/11/21287436/pocket-casts-cas...
Windows. Full of spyware and garbage, but it's where critical apps were, so users had to go in turn. You talk a lot about basic market 101 or even pre-101 stuff, but you'd better served by actually considering some more advanced concepts here, not least of which is that software is full of non-substitutable goods. There is are a great number of mutually reinforcing cycles which form the core of network effects. Exclusives for a platform will drive people to that platform, which then can help drive more exclusives.
>The thing where markets fail is where you have a monopoly that can then abuse everybody else because they lack competitive pressure.
But "monopolies" are everywhere in software, and necessarily so because nobody has come up with a better general way to solve the resource allocation problem for information generation. That's what copyright is. If someone's work depends on specific proprietary applications, those can well be more important then anything else. One way to counter that is other monopolies. This has happened repeatedly in the last few decades.
>Developers distribute their apps to multiple platforms. Apple's store isn't an alternative to Google's or Amazon's because it doesn't reach the same customers -- to reach the entire population you need to reach each platform, not one or the other. To be a real competitor it has to distribute apps to the market of people with iOS devices.
This is just your own entitled arbitrary view. A walled garden has always been an extremely explicit part of the iOS package. Why shouldn't iOS users be able to actively choose that?
>You're treating developers as a monolith. The entire point is that you could use multiple stores at the same time.
No, I'm treating them as individual self-interested entities operating within a system, which has all the potential for a variety of local minimums favoring different actors within it. Multiple stores would dilute the power of any given store, which would favor the power of developers. That is what you are directly arguing for.
>but still refuse to install the Facebook app from the same store because you trust Mozilla and not Facebook.
And if Facebook, or (since I don't use Facebook) Adobe or whomever decide to only support said less restrictive store and use that freedom to collect more data and demand location access and crappier payment systems and so on and so forth, now what? Under the current system, they can either comply with restrictions, or give up on the entire iOS market. On your suggestion, they can do as they wish and users that want to use them will be forced to go along with it. For Mozilla that might be a good thing, but for Facebook it probably wouldn't.
It's very strange how you completely ignore that there are all sorts of powerful actors who can command audiences independently of platform to one degree or another.
>Apple is not your union. It's not just a principal-agent problem (though that exists) -- they have no duty to you at all and they're in it for themselves. The bargaining power accrues to them, not you, and it comes at your expense as much as anyone's.
Utterly childish bollocks. Apple has interests, and I have interests. To the extent our interests align there is every possibility for a win-win, that is the market functioning at its best. Apple makes most of their money directly from their customers, via hardware and (at a higher rate in recent years) subscriptions to their services within their platforms. Apple makes almost nothing from government contracts or direct enterprise services, nor from advertising. We're not friends, but unions aren't friends either. It's all a spectrum of interests. Apple can be useful. Hence why I'd like to see careful, surgical legislation that addresses specific weak points or externalities.
>If you had alternate stores then you only need one to resist bad requirements and you can still install the app.
Incorrect. Every alternate store must resist bad requirements, or else every app & service must be fully substitutable. Because if there are apps that users must use, or that are so valuable that there are powerful incentives to put up with a significant amount of downside, then they themselves can drive stores if there are options not the other way around.
>If you have to use Apple then it's a single point of control and in cases when they fail to resist government pressure[1], the user has no alternative.
Indeed, like I said a centralized point faces censorship risks too. Hence why I'd like the option for root key control for hardware, software, both, or neither. Apple's centralization is why there is a great deal of content censorship on iOS and restrictions in many countries without great workarounds. Apple's centralized power and incentives also gave them a powerful reason and position to tell the FBI to fuck off. None of this is simple, which is why I'm opposed to broad stroke big hammers.
Thank you by the way for your detailed reply much later. I don't agree with you in all aspects, but I do appreciate the time you took!
Windows is full of spyware and garbage because of path dependence. Software direct from the developer was the way it was for MS-DOS in the 1980s, Microsoft cares about backwards compatibility, so it's still the same way today. And since that's the default way of getting Windows software, users don't exercise caution for software distributed in that way, and then they get spyware and garbage.
Compare this to Linux, where you have a functioning package manager that has the large majority of the software you'll ever need, even though it has no monopoly at all and nothing stops you from installing software another way. But since that's then unusual, it raises a red flag if something has to be installed that way, so you don't have a huge malware problem because malware relies on people being credulous and running on autopilot.
You're also confusing the platform with the store. Many people need Windows because it's the only decent implementation of the Windows APIs. If you want to play games, good luck getting them to run on macOS. So you need Windows, but you don't inherently need to download games from random shady websites, because you can use Steam. Meanwhile there is now WSL, which allows you to install software through the Linux package managers. And now Microsoft is only taking a 5% cut for apps in its store instead of Apple's 30%, which is causing more things to use it even though it doesn't have a monopoly on Windows. So even there the market is at work solving the problem.
> But "monopolies" are everywhere in software, and necessarily so because nobody has come up with a better general way to solve the resource allocation problem for information generation. That's what copyright is. If someone's work depends on specific proprietary applications, those can well be more important then anything else. One way to counter that is other monopolies. This has happened repeatedly in the last few decades.
Copyright isn't inherently a monopoly in the market sense. Winzip and 7-zip each have a copyright "monopoly" on their own code, but they don't have a monopoly on zip programs because they compete with each other along with Winrar, gzip, bzip2, etc.
Facebook is more or less a monopoly, but that isn't from copyright, it's from the network effect, and from a single company owning the network instead of using open standards and protocols. This is a classic case for some kind of antitrust action to either break them up or require adversarial interoperability. And nothing about it is inherent -- email is a network in the same class as Facebook but nobody has a monopoly on it because it's federated.
Countering monopolies with other monopolies is some kind of feudalistic dystopia.
> A walled garden has always been an extremely explicit part of the iOS package. Why shouldn't iOS users be able to actively choose that?
They can choose that. Even if other stores exist, you don't have to use them. Nobody ever died from not installing the Facebook app. Use the website, or quit Facebook. Then, when everybody does that, Facebook will have to go crawling back to Apple, or some other store the users are willing to trust.
Meanwhile, if so few people do that that Facebook can fob them all off, that shows how many people actually want the "walled garden" -- so few that it doesn't actually work unless you rope in huge numbers of unwilling participants.
It's also evidence that Facebook could already do that. If their app was so important it could get people to switch to an untrustworthy store then it could also get a lot of people to switch to another platform. Which gives them leverage over Apple, which lets them get away with privacy-invasive things like uploading your contacts to Facebook without getting kicked out.
And in either case, the better solution is to address the Facebook monopoly and the Apple monopoly, rather than neither of them.
> Multiple stores would dilute the power of any given store, which would favor the power of developers. That is what you are directly arguing for.
Multiple stores would dilute the power of any given store, which would favor the power of developers and users. Which is what I am directly arguing for.
The amount of power developers give up to Apple is not inherently less than the amount of power users give up to Apple. On top of that, not everything the developers lose to Apple is a gain to the users, some of it is only a gain to Apple. But everything the users lose to Apple is a loss to the users, and some of the things the developers lose are also a loss to the users. This is not a net favorable arrangement to anybody but Apple.
> Under the current system, they can either comply with restrictions, or give up on the entire iOS market. On your suggestion, they can do as they wish and users that want to use them will be forced to go along with it.
The only difference here is the number of people who will not install the app unless it is in Apple's store. If you give people a choice, that number may go down, but that doesn't mean it's still not high enough to force the developer's hand, or that if it isn't it still would be even at the level of the entire iOS market. Meanwhile if you granted Apple a total monopoly over all apps on all platforms then the number would go up, but the reasons that isn't worth the cost are the same reasons it isn't in the current case. The costs of giving them that much power exceed the benefits, and the problems you want to solve can be solved in a different way.
> It's very strange how you completely ignore that there are all sorts of powerful actors who can command audiences independently of platform to one degree or another.
I'm not ignoring them, I'm saying apply antitrust enforcement to them too, so that they too are subject to competitive pressure and can't do that anymore.
> Apple has interests, and I have interests. To the extent our interests align there is every possibility for a win-win, that is the market functioning at its best.
A monopoly isn't a market. Having a shared interest with a monopolist is luck, not market forces, and meanwhile you're then still facing an adversarial monopolist on all your other interests.
> Every alternate store must resist bad requirements, or else every app & service must be fully substitutable.
You're assuming the same app can't be in more than one store at the same time, or move to whichever one will resist government pressure. The thing you substitute isn't the app, it's the store.
> Because if there are apps that users must use, or that are so valuable that there are powerful incentives to put up with a significant amount of downside, then they themselves can drive stores if there are options not the other way around.
We're talking about things subject to government pressure. If you have a podcast app that lets the user receive arbitrary podcasts including ones China doesn't want you to hear, that doesn't mean you have an important monopoly on podcasting -- they banned more than one app. Another store that accepts those apps isn't beholden to them, if anything it's the other way around. The apps need the store that will resist pressure more than the store needs those apps.
> Apple's centralized power and incentives also gave them a powerful reason and position to tell the FBI to fuck off.
That didn't really have anything to do with centralization -- it didn't even really have anything to do with apps. That was Apple, as a hardware manufacturer with root keys that they maybe ought not to have had to begin with, refusing to use them to remotely unlock somebody's phone.
They couldn't have even been asked to do that if they hadn't retained for themselves the power to push code to your phone without your permission, and having multiple stores wouldn't inherently require any of the others to be able to do that. It's completely possible to have stores that only install new code at the user's instruction, which requires the user to first unlock their phone, no matter how may stores there are.
Apple have been impeccable stewards too. Except for the thousands of times they manually-approved predatory offer walls, predatory IAPs, predatory data collection, predatory subscriptions, malware etc.
The only thing I could nitpick, Apple are also buying podcasts and making them exclusively available to the Podcasts app, so they're also chasing the Spotify business model:
https://www.macrumors.com/2020/05/21/apple-exclusive-origina...
Anyways, none of that excuses how Apple is forcing developers to pay them 30%. It's particularly egregious in a case like Spotify, where that 30% directly limits Spotify's ability to match Apple Music on price. But it's unacceptable even outside of that. Apple 1) Demands 30% of payment made with their in-app-payment system 2) Disallows alternative payment methods presented in-app and 3) Disallows sideloading, so there's no alternative for companies who can't compete under the terms of 1) and 2). At least one of those 3 need to change, and I hope the EU will manage to force that to happen.
The kind of change the EU is primarily pursuing is of the monetary sort. They're looking to use fines against the US tech giants as a golden pot to raid to fill their $81 billion post Brexit budget hole. [1]
This will continue for many years. The EU will attempt to extract tens of billions of dollars in fines from US companies, as much as they can by any means they can for as long as they can.
The proper US response is to begin targeting prominent EU companies to damage financially. The US economy will recover much faster than the EU economy - as with the great recession - and that should be used to maximum advantage.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-budget/eu-leaders-to-c...
Versions 2: evil EU is trying to 'extort' the poor tax-dodging multinationals.
* No more downloadable exes or installers, or stores like Steam. The only way to install software is via the Windows App Store. If something is not on there for whatever reason: though luck.
* Microsoft can delete all programs from your PC remotely if they feel like it.
* You have to pay Microsoft every year for the privilege of developing on their platform.
* If you charge for your app, Microsoft takes 30% of your revenue. You don't have any other option, except to only provide your app on Linux, losing a large market.
* If you want to support payments inside your application, you have to use the Microsoft Pay service, which also takes a hefty cut, or you have to inconvenience users with side channels like ordering via a website. Which might still get you banned.
* Your app may be rejected or removed from the store at any time. Maybe because you broke some arbitrary rules, because it is politically inconvenient, or because you compete too closely with Microsoft software. Oh, and Microsoft also may mandate to see your source.
* The only way to use private/internal apps is to pay Microsoft for the privilege of using their distribution mechanism.
Ask yourself: in this world, would you happily use Windows as a developer? Would you welcome these restrictions as a consumer?
This is increasingly important as phones and tablets become the primary device for many.
I appreciate that a curated ecosystem has many advantages for users, but most of the above concerns are orthogonal to a well-maintained app store.
Apple makes crazy amounts of money off the backs of developers - on top of being paid for their devices and software by consumers. They are highly incentivized to keep it that way.
(Android has some similar issues, and shows that even with a somewhat more open system there is still plenty of monopolistic potential, but that's a longer topic)
Apple's (and Google Play's) operations are predatory and they need to change. Period.
If you just want to use the damn thing and not spend time pissing about with sorting out the constant problems, incompatibilities, each app doing whatever it pleases, Windows is a nightmare right now
> Ask yourself: in this world, would you happily use Windows as a developer? Would you welcome these restrictions as a consumer?
Without a doubt, on both points
And saying incompatibilities on Windows obviously means you know nothing about Windows.
Even vb6 applications still run on the platform and that's 30 years old!
Note: I also use Ubuntu desktop and Ubuntu server ;)
Apple doesn't have anywhere near the market share in the phone world that Microsoft has or had in the PC world. There really is another option: Android; and, if you don't trust the standard Android or Google, I hear there's alternatives you can put on your phone for the more privacy conscious.
You really can vote with your wallet, still. I don't think that's the case for a product that doesn't even control 50% of the marketshare of devices in its main space.
> No more downloadable exes or installers
So it's harder for a user to get a virus or some malicious App? Great. If Apple allows a service, it means they back it in a sense and people trust Apple. Would you really back a bunch of different stores with content you can't verify?
> Microsoft can delete all programs from your PC remotely if they feel like it
And lose their customer base? Sure? That's so unrealistic.
> You have to pay Microsoft every year for the privilege of developing on their platform
Grocery chains charge for shelf space. Also the fee is $99. There's also some fee waivers available.
> If you charge for your app, Microsoft takes 30% of your revenue
So you don't want to pay to be on the store and you don't want to pay to make money off their platform. They're just supposed to maintain a curated and near seamless platform for free? Are you suggesting users just pay more?
Also, I'm seeing 30% thrown around a lot. It's 30% for a year and 15% after that, let's be clear about that.
> Your app may be rejected or removed from the store at any time
If theres a random app on my phone discovered to be malicious, PLEASE delete it.
> Apple makes crazy amounts of money off the backs of developers
Ok then how much money would YOU be ok with them making? What's the cutoff? Would you be ok with your app being capped in how much money it could make? I don't think so.
> ..being paid for their devices and software by consumers Consumers pay directly for devices, not software. The only software they indirectly pay for is the 30%/15% fee that devs have to take into consideration.
Let's stop pretending that 95% of users have any degree of technical literacy and that there's no value in what an App Store provides. I'm glad my non-technical friends and family don't have to worry about viruses or phishing as much after switching to Apple.
If you really don't like these things as a user, then jailbreak or use Android or the Ubuntu phone or something. There's alternatives.
Also, if using iOS/OSX was like using Windows, I wouldn't use it.
> If theres a random app on my phone discovered to be malicious, PLEASE delete it.
Yet they also do it if the app competes with them or their functionality. Both google and Microsoft have gone to court for way less.
>Grocery chains charge for shelf space.
Grocery chains buy the product for resale. A notable difference. Grocery stores also have plenty of competition that can offer the same product. Consumers aren't locked into choosing one grocery store to buy from after purchasing a membership or some shit. Grocery stores aren't one of 2 viable options and generally can't dictate pricing of the seller and their cut. Grocery stores don't often pull anticompetitive shit like this: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-requires-s...
>Ok then how much money would YOU be ok with them making? What's the cutoff? Would you be ok with your app being capped in how much money it could make? I don't think so.
Perhaps they could make money of value of the service they provide that being the hosting of apps and curating a nice app-store rather than you know being a monopsony.
Is this about the screen time apps? Not all apps were targeted and there was a legitimate reason for that: that they could be malicious...
A more likely narrative is that Apple wanted to offer a safer version of these apps so they let it slide until they could get around to it. If you have a different/counter example, please share.
> Grocery chains buy the product for resale. A notable difference.
The shelf space fee is analogous to the $99 yearly developer fee and the the markup the grocery store charges is analogous to the 30%/15%. I don’t see a significant difference here.
> Grocery stores also have plenty of competition that can offer the same product
Yet all but the smallest grocery stores do this making this fact irrelevant since for lots of products you don’t have a choice anyway.
> Grocery stores don't often pull anticompetitive shit like this
Bad of course, but also not relevant here either.
> Perhaps they could make money of value of the service they provide
You underestimate the extent of the service they provide.
They develop all the hardware/software and built a powerful brand attracting the wealthiest customers to spend money in the store. There’s much more to selling apps than just App Store infrastructure.
Arguably they accomplish that by bundling (i.e. the problem that Microsoft in trouble with Explorer). https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/19/17999366/google-eu-andro...
You have to pay $40 to be able to launch your phone with GMS (Play store, Maps, other 1p Google apps not part of AOSP) and where until recently it looks like waiving that fee if you also preinstalled Chrome as the default browser. That's literally the bullshit Intel & Microsoft did that got them in trouble as monopolies. Google & Apple have pointed to each other as reasons neither is a monopoly so that their BS practices don't get them into trouble. The EU has been taking a harder stance than the US. In general I think we should be banning these kinds of practices once the company size exceeds some point (revenue, # of customers, something). It doesn't matter if you're a monopoly. You're throwing your weight with dominance in once area to artificially improve your reach in another (i.e. the customer isn't getting to make that choice).
Your complaints could very well apply to things like Sony's Playstation and Microsoft's Xbox systems. They have operated under these constraints since the 90s.
If Apple were forced to allow NFC access, third party stores and real side-loading, then nothing would change for you. You could continue to use their app store [0] and their payment app just like you are doing now.
Choice isn't bad for anyone.
> I'm just not interested in change here.
You didn't say why or what change specifically would have a negative effect on your usage.
[0] I prefer to use "app store" and not "App Store" since it's a generic term.
Not necessarily, if banks pull out of Apple Pay you might end up having to open each banking app every time you want to use that card, rather than having easy access to all your cards in one app (Apple Pay).
Also: Android has their Card Emulation API that allows banks (and other developers) to implement their own apps that do what Google Pay does, and yet banks broadly support Google Pay, suggesting that's maybe not as much of an issue as you'd think.
Yet it is not working with every bank out there. We already had a solution that let us pay using QR Codes, send money to contacts, and pay online stuff, and was integrated with every single bank operating in this beautiful country since 2014.
I'm talking about MB Way.
How about fixing the appstore instead? there are apps that do not even function anymore ranking far higher.
Not to mention, if you app does well keep an eye on the next iOS, it may just steal your idea and integrate it with the OS to kill your business over night.
Absolute scumbags, 1.5$ trillion and its still not enough. Atleast if we had Windows Phone or some other alternatives for high-end consumers we could have some competition. But its just abuse of monopoly as it is.
There is no fair ranking system, and expecting it is just unrealistic.
Spotify isn't a person. I don't care about their feelings or their hypocrisy. It's a matter of policy, which ought to be applied evenly and fairly. Monopoly behavior is harmful, and should be curbed when reasonable - whether it's being done /by/ someone we (dis)like or /to/ someone we (dis)like.
It’s not just you, they’ve distorted the evolution of the internet and likely contributed to the current fake news issues we have.
But that made me think also: what if they decided it was not worth publishing? I mean, there was not very much I could do to make it "less simple" really. I would have given up. But why should patients be denied of a useful service because one company has complete control of what goes and what does not go onto their phones? See it like you want to see it, but it's unacceptable.
Re: Spotify vs. Apple Music, do understand that if Apple decided to pull Spotify from the App Store because it’s a direct competitor to Apple Music that would be devastating to Spotify.
There should be laws against anti-competitive behaviors when you run a platform that hosts other people’s businesses. Otherwise that is way too much power for one corporation to wield.
(My iPhone users have to use a web app because I refuse to give Apple money)
Not really. The curation and verification of the App Store is a feature. I don’t want to have to download a must-have sideloaded Google app for work that snuzzles up all my data to Mountain View.
This word is a treat, thanks :D
There are multiple ways to allow sideloading without your grandpa getting infected.
Everything isn’t. Just one device among many.
It puts pressure on the App Store to not be so restrictive and greedy with royalties.
Also vendor decides kickback commission fees which may also be anti competitive.
Same for payment services nfc access.
Also sometime vendor makes similar function from an app IOS battery health. Blocks Native Battery api access, makes it hard to sell battery analytical apps.
The Apple App Store is clearly a lot different from the Play Store; since almost all Android devices (and all Play-capable devices controlled by Google) support sideloading and alternate app stores.
1) I am able to, by default, download apps from other app stores and marketplaces (albeit at my own risk) 2) The Play Store is valuable to me because I know that the apps I download there have been verified and are safe to use (at least in theory).
In Apple’s case, I think the argument is that their operating system is not open to other hardware vendors, so they don’t need to allow alternative app stores. I don’t think it’s anti-competitive that Mazda doesn’t allow me to choose the navigation software in my car’s HUD. If I wanted different navigation software, I should have considered that before purchasing a Mazda.
Though I guess in the EU this amounts to “basically anything the court wants”. Much as I don't feel much for these companies, I also feel like these suits are often just shakedowns.
Anyone who thinks an open store is important can simply buy an android phone.
I'm going to side with Richard Stallman on this one: I own the car - it's my property - why can't I install my own firmware onto the stock Qualcomm ARM computer powering the the car's infotainment system?
My dad's books on car maintenance from the1960s-1970s have guides on installing your own tachometer as cars back then were often sold without them - why should I be forbidden from installing a custom widget to an LCD dashboard today?
From an ethical perspective: I fully agree this should be easier.
You're free to install an alternative infotainment system that allows customization.
Mandating that manufacturers develop a way for you to safely/securely flash their devices to run your own software just doesn't seem like a good idea. The small percentage of people who want this force everyone else to pay for it due to the increased operational costs to develop it.
And it's not trivial. I've shipped consumer electronics. We thought long and hard about how to make it possible for users to run their own software. It's hard enough to figure out a method that doesn't sacrifice user safety somehow (can you RMA the device after? Can we validate you voided the warranty? Can you resell your device and tarnish the brand? Can you resell devices with malware? Can you exceed regulatory limits (e.g. radio broadcasting power)?)
Not to mention the effort to actually develop and maintain this method of updating, exposing it (adding a USB port?), testing it, etc. It's a huge cost.
Now, companies like Apple are interesting because they're actively spending to prevent that from happening -- it might be operationally cheaper for them to leave the flood gates open.
(Also, ironically, Mazda's firmware is rather easy to hack :) )
Remember that Apple restricts the content you're allowed to see on the device via many channels.
Can you have a successful app business in the US without being in Apple’s app store? I doubt it.
The rules are different in the EU and so is Apple’s market share over there, but since I live in the US I’m hoping that the Apple monopoly will be broken up over here as well.
Apple doesn't integrate Pythonista into their apps, as far as I know.
No it cannot. That's anti-trust.
To be clear, the problem here is not that Apps can only be installed via the App Store on Apple devices. That is ok, and not very different form having, e.g., and "Installer" package format in your OS.
The problem here is how Apple is using its App Store to gain an unfair advantage.
If I want an open gaming device I take a PC. If I want a more open phone, I take an Android.
Is this different than the situation with iPhone? (Sidenote: I can put whatever I want on my iPhone using Xcode)
I am all for forcing the manufacturers of the gaming consoles to allow running of arbitrary unsigned code in a different sandbox than their DRM.
Also I believe in the right to have root on all devices you have.
Gaming consoles aren't single purpose devices. They're still general purpose computers. The only thing that makes them "single purpose" is the manufacturer restrictions on what you can install on them, which shouldn't be allowed any more than it is for Apple.
In practice I think there’s a significant difference between the restrictions on smartphone software vs entertainment system software making your point part of a slightly different (but related and important) conversation.
Such as?
Apple is being investigated here because:
- Spotify and Rakuten formally complained about the store;
- some banks formally complained about Apple Pay;
- they are the biggest.
A condamnation of Apple here would most likely have significant implications for app publishing as a whole. Something I personally applaud.
As long as things don't get worse for some, I am fine with it getting better for others. I am not sure that can be the case though.
There's a staggering difference of scale and thus influence on free market when Apple throws its weight around. They decide to kill of whole companies of dozens of economic sectors and curbing such power is why anti-monopoly laws were created.
The Xbox is a closed system that will only run approved and signed code. Whether it is on a disc or a digital download is irrelevant. You can only publish Xbox discs if you are approved by Microsoft, go through their system and pay their fees. If you somehow found a way to circumvent the DRM and published discs with Xbox compatible games 1) you would be sued into oblivion and 2) Microsoft would immediately push updates to the OS that would disable your games from working.
Spotify buys intellectual property (a podcast) and proceeds to sell access to that for a profit.
Apple invents intellectual property (the iOS ecosystem, App Store) and proceeds to sell access to that for a profit.
Even worse, Apple has taken successful apps from their Store and offer their own one. Same as Amazon but for apps.
You could argue mega corporations doing it is worse than small companies because they have way more resources to outbid competitors.
I love you Spotify but I don't want your ads, I don't want ads on my phone period.
I'm currently using Android, and it's just ridiculous how much my phone is demanding my attention with notifications of "Rate us!" or "Look at this emergency news! Joke, it was just an ad". They even have "let me upload all of your contacts or I wont start"-apps. Android really lets the users decide, and the app-companies sure tries every foul play they can get away with, and to be frank, giving those app-companies a smack on the back of their head from time to time as Apple is doing can be a good thing.
That said, 30% is... hefty especially when some companies don't have too.
"Does Uber pay it? No. Deliveroo? No." [1].
However, I also hold the EU's atttude to anti-trust in fairly high regard, so I'm happy to see them scrutinise this.
Apple is best in class in marketing.
The walled garden can stay, but users should have a simple way to opt-out. Like for example SIP on macOS which you can (temporarily) turn off with a terminal command, if you accept the risks of degraded security.
Apple (or Google/any company) should not have the power to dictate which software we may use. Like for example any banking app that wants to use NFC for wireless payments being rejected. It has taken way too long for the EU to step in and forbid this in my opinion.
Once I used Apple Pay from my phone to pay on a third-party website, it showed a nice popover on Safari and it automagically used my address from my info as the SHIPPING address. Neat but the address was my old address, so I edited and changed the SHIPPING address to my new address. I press OK. Then Checkout.
I see that order was shipped to my old/incorrect address. The vendor said this is the address they received. I remember changing and updating the address on the APPLE PAY popover.
I called Apple as I had entered the correct address on APPLE PAY popover, they said may be the website vendor implemented it incorrectly, there are millions of websites using Apple Pay and they CANNOT/DO NOT check those integrations. This was a breach of trust. I entered my information on a pop-over shown on Apple iPhone by Apple iOS and not the third-party website.
Bottomline: Either Apple takes full responsibility of the data entry or leave it to third-party. Else consumers are stuck in limbo
As for the NFC chips, I am facing a quandary here. I am leery of apps getting this access unless all such usage is challenged and very obvious who is attempting to use them
On Android the NFC can be either used by current foreground app (so you're looking at it), or by the default payment provider (which you set globally and more importantly - you have to set it yourself).
Seems like a good tradeoff.
And please don't tell me they won't be shit, I know how their web sites work :)
On the other hand, it's annoying from a "hey that's an evil monopoly" point of view that Apple makes money on every payment I make.
Cannot win i guess.
Also, I can pay contactless directly with my credit card instead of using Apple Pay.
The merchant gets to pay for that, and indirectly it means the people paying cash are subsidizing credit card users, since the prices are identical.
Again, cannot win.
Furthermore, credit cards linked via Apple Pay (e.g. a Mastercard credit card) are afforded the same legal protections in the UK as using the physical card itself in person or online.
I don't really know how to feel about it.
My bank has yet to implement Apple Pay support. However, they've had a payment application on Android for a while, since they can access the NFC directly. So while Apple Pay might be really nice to use, it might also mean that you don't get anything if your bank doesn't want to play with Apple.
I'm now using Curve (curve.com) to circumvent my bank in order to use Apple Pay. Maybe even if the NFC access was opened up, applications like Curve would still provide an option to use Apple Pay for the people who want to use that.
On Apple device, you have no such option or competition.
I suppose I'd be okay with a 30% fee if Apple didn't charge us $99 to maintain a developer account... I thought the $99 was meant to cover the costs of curating the Apple App Store, so what added-value does the 30% cover then?
On the other hand the 30% fee would stop me putting my software in an app store. I know the usual argument is they will deliver extra customers however that argument seems dubious when there are 2 million other apps fighting for attention.
People are willing to pay for those 30%, as long as iOS has an healthy supply of apps, apple will keep it.
$99 per year seems quite a lot, if you are not planning on making money with the apps.
But with Apples Duo-/monopoly, in 20 years we will have same 30% fee.
Those two things aren't remotely equivalent. $100 for a dev account is peanuts. It's there to support the iOS dev ecosystem and isn't unreasonable. It should be a non-issue. 30% of app revenue, on the other hand, equates to thousands or millions of dollars depending on how popular your app is. That actually makes a material difference.
The web is our common , open platform that nobody owns. We should be protecting it in the mobile market
Let apple own their app store, but not to the detriment of the web
The worst experience I've had on Android is a free guitar tuner had ads, I uninstalled and moved on.
Epic Games has already stated they'd like to be able to launch an app store on iOS just as they intend to do on Android, so competitors will be lining up if Apple is forced to tear down the walls.
And after switching from other platforms, I always found it a bit of a shock when I'd be on an app like Vudu, and find myself unable to buy things, unless I popped over to the website.
Amazon can use your seller data, wipe you out and slaps you with a automatic reply that you have now to deal with stranded inventory they no longer want in their warehouses.
Not to mention the classic demanding proof of oficial supplier, just so you do the work for them and tell Amazon who the supplier is, and cut you as a middle man.
They don't even abide by their own guidelines regarding product listings.
Sounds they will do great as a phone app distributor.
I get that Epic has earned a bunch of butthurt from gamers because they... offered developers money... but this is fundamentally opposite to the behaviors of Apple and Google, where their 30% app tax is compulsory, and use of their services is mandatory.
Maybe Spotify could spend of their billions to make their own device and platform instead of going through a "criminal" organization pretending to care about people but just caring about business interests because their consumer tech startup just amount to tiny square but slightly rounded cornered icons on devices made in Japan, Korea, China and the U.S.