Apple, Epic, and the App Store
stratechery.com
stratechery.com
Reviewers? A staff of 10,000 fulltime reviewers paid $200k per year would cost $2 billion.
Sorry, I'm not buying this excuse. OSX/iOS is free for every piece of HW, and it surely has much much larger costs to staff.
A $1250 iPhone had a $450 cost to make, giving Apple a staggering 64% gross margin, and $800 gross profit.
The costs to run the Apple store should be included as a sunk platform cost of the phone just like OSX. The cost to run the store is marginal. The cost to serve up an additional developer app, to review an additional app, and to let someone buy one, is an insignificant fraction.
It should be free like the Web, or some extremely low cost to cover CC processing fees (~3%) and electricity to keep the lights on.
I'm shocked at the number of apologists who think this 30% cut is somehow necessary for poor little Apple, with a hole in the pocket, with living on their spare change. It's egregious and unnecessary, and exists for one reason only: rent-seeking behavior. iPhones are reaching saturation, and Apple can either find ways to raise the price of the phone even more, lower the costs more, or increase service revenues, in order to keep their stock going up.
That's why you see focus on service revenues, because they can't really lower costs much to make the devices, and they can't really increase the price much more.
[0] https://venturebeat.com/2020/06/15/epic-games-shareholders-s...
No one is saying that Epic are doing bad things in order to maintain their monopoly position.
Epic doesn't have a monopoly on any market.
People ARE saying that Apple are doing bad things to maintain their monopoly position, and others are justifying that by saying that "running a business is expensive" as if that justifies a monopoly or monopolistic actions.
The bottom line is that Fortnight can have practical competition (that for example offer 3rd party plugins or lower prices), while the iPhone only has Android as competition, which is taking the exact same 30% cut.
Oh no it isn't. There are very few successful (and even fewer wildly successful) MMORPGs and countless failed attempts.
Games are not really fungible. It's not like I'm going to go out of Fortnite to buy items in WoW instead and treat them as the same. They are two completely different markets.
> The bottom line is that Fortnight can have practical competition (that for example offer 3rd party plugins or lower prices)
No, unless things change, you need to use the Epic store.
iOS on the other hand has a single serious competitor, Android, and if you have an iPhone you can't install Android on it when you get mad at Apple - you need a whole new phone. From a developer's perspective, you would miss out on all the iPhone users if you ship and Android app and not an iOS one. In that sense, Apple has significant monopoly-like power over the app market; solidified by the fact that you can't just install Google play store and start downloading Android apps on your iPhone if you get fed up with Apple' App store. The switching costs are too high for most users to consider it, except when buying a new phone.
A lot of this comes down to what a meaningful market is. E.g. Border's and Barnes and Noble learned the hard way that they were in the same market as online book selling - you couldn't usefully look at their book store models and ignore Amazon in the last ~decade.
> the question as to what is anticompetitive and what is simply good business changes as a business scales. A small business can generally be as anticompetitive as it wants to be, while a much larger business is much more constrained in how anticompetitively it can act
The word “monopolize” is used in a specialised way in antitrust; it doesn’t encompass every exclusive right of sale, because that would disrupt many small businesses and law is intended to prevent huge businesses from dominating the economy.
Who are you going to buy from without giving Epic a cut? They're the only ones offering Fortnite items.
How is that argument any different than the one Apple is making?
The physical cards cost money to produce and the retail stores will insist upon a decent cut. And then the cards are often discounted by 10, 15 or even 20%.
So instead, people move the goalposts to an aftermarket of the product (iOS apps) and claim that Apple has a monopoly over that market instead. But every company has a natural monopoly over their own products, and by the very same logic you could claim Epic has a monopoly over the aftermarket of their product (Fortnite skins).
Size of the business is not relevant unless:
1) The business has a dominant market position
Or
2) The behavior of the business is likely to result in the business achieving a dominant market position
Neither of these apply to Apple. They are a minority player in the smartphone market and their market share is shrinking.
If Apple has a monopoly on their own App Store then Epic has a monopoly on their own game. Period.
Epic has a monopoly on selling items inside Fortnite.
The problem is that as soon as you allow narrowing your definition of words to whatever supports your argument, then they become meaningless.
3rd party artists can't create anything that can be used inside Fortnite, neither inside the v-bucks store nor outside of it. There's no 3rd party "market" at all.
Apple has a market where third parties can market their apps. Apple requires a cut of all purchases made through that store, which alone is not monopolistic. Apple also requires that you sell your iOS app and any iOS in-app purchases only in their marketplace. That's the monopolistic part.
No one can create 3rd party items for Fortnite at all, so there is no monopoly on where 3rd party items for Fortnite are sold.
It's not even illegal to have a monopoly; it's illegal to use your monopoly powers to keep other parties from competing, and that's exactly what Apple has done.
Come on - is this argument going to be used for all these too? Walmart has a monopoly on what sells in Walmart.
This is false equivalence
2. I have installed android apps from F_-droid/Samsung app store or even Vivo app store
3. I have directly installed apks which didn't appear on play store directly from the internet
Where is my false equivalence? Pray tell me?
Google makes it impossible for apps to run without play store but I've used 0 google apps on android for 1yr and lived easily with 0 issues
Remove apple's app store, I dare you and then tell me you can live for one year.
Apple has monopoly on app store.
Walmart can't be compared.
Google has technically enforced monopoly and which I oppose. I never said google play store isn't a monopoly.
Are you sure you know what false equivalence means?
If I buy Apple phone I can't sideload app. At all.
How ia this not a monopoly.
Also why you bring xbox into picture. It's a gaming console not a general purpose device ppl use 4+hrs in a day.
They can have their cut buthe issue that you're ignoring is that they don't allow side loading and that they can randomly kill any app they want. Like they have done in the past and small developers don't have the money Epic does
If there were basically only Wall-Mart and Target to buy stuff from, and you had to commit to one for 2-5 years every time, you bet they should be under heavy scrutiny.
Sony and Microsoft are a better comparison, but different because 1) their consoles are huge loss leaders, phones are not and 2) they are way less essential and used by an order of magnitude less people than phones.
Apple has become essential and trusted in part perhaps because it has exercised near iron control over almost all aspects of their platform.
That is the relevant comparison here, if Epic want to provide Fortnite on iOS they HAVE to use the app store and associated requirements. If they want to provide it on XBox, they pay a licensing cost for the proprietary tech they leverage from Microsoft. But they can choose to sell the game on Amazon if they want.
The amount of control console manufacturers exert over the games allowed on their platform is not dissimilar to the Apple and its App Store.
Look at the PS5: the ability to put a disk in is a legacy that's clearly going away by Sony making it an option you'll have to pay extra for. The entry level model is digital only, for better or worse.
1. The ability to install skins outside of the V-bucks store.
2. The ability to pay for Fortnite skins using payment methods other than V-bucks.
Alternatively, should Epic not be permitted to impose the following restrictions in their Fortnite store?
1. Skins must be approved by Epic before they can be sold. No x-rated skins, etc.
2. Epic will take a 30% cut of each skin sold.
What if I'm a skinmaker that wants to compete with Epic because I think I can provide higher quality Fortnite skins than they have made. Should I be able to demand to participate in the "Fortnite skin" market which is currently 100% controlled by Epic?
A monopoly by Standard Oil was pervasive in all of daily living because by the early twentieth century, they had control of more than 90% of the country's petroleum fuel production and logistics which they abused to keep any competition from ever gaining a foothold. By 1911, they were dissolved by the Supreme Court as per Sherman Antitrust Act.
VBucks and Fortnite are not pervasive in all of daily living, it is a tiny market and the monopoly is one which can easily be managed by society without breaking up the company.
The key point here is that 90% market share constituted monopoly power, whereas Apple's 46% share of the smartphone market likely does not.
I'm not sure why you think this? Sure, certain Sherman Act violations (e.g. price fixing) do not require monopoly power to be considered illegal, but the specific claims in Epic's lawsuit (unlawful monopoly maintenance) definitely require proof of monopoly power.
The average American spends some what, 4-5 hours a day on their phone? Is there any even remotely comparable precedent for a company to control all trade through everything? The best I can think of is cable, imagine if there were only two cable companies and they not only had unilateral ability to control which channels appear, but also charged 30% to every channels profit.
Further, how many different commercial activities do people do every single day on their devices? This is a far, far bigger thing than any platform before it. And it’s dominated by only two companies with a history of collusion. These platforms are nothing at all like “a market” and trying to argue from narrow historical frames is poor form.
They are far bigger things. It’s more akin to a world, people use them for literally every part of their lives. I don’t think narrow precedent should ever rule our thinking and especially when it’s clear there is no historical precedent here. We need to be “courageous” enough to use moral and logical thinking and not legalistic weaseling, we need to legislate them as new types of markets far bigger and more important to every persons life than any that’s ever existed.
Proving a conspiracy claim requires two parties to knowingly participate in the conspiracy. While you may believe Apple and Google are conspiring together there is a reason Epic's lawsuit does not make any conspiracy claims - their lawyers know they'd never be able to win such a claim.
At any rate that is irrelevant to my point: Epic made several claims in their lawsuit that will require proof of monopoly power.
Sure, Epics specific case may be the only strategy they can take - they won’t find any documented collusion when there’s only two players, that’s obvious. They already colluded to suppress wages. We can all see what’s happening. You’re arguing semantics on one side then arguing generalities on the other. But let’s call a spade a spade: theres no smoking gun, but they are colluding, it’s just a silent “don’t lower yours and I won’t lower mine” nod.
Edit: further, with the amount of lock in they each have, there’s not much pressure anyway. It’s just not comparable to anything really that has existed beyond Windows/Mac which were/are entirely open. And it goes even further. Mobile phones are on people at all times. They do way way more. You have accounts with hundreds of apps, services. It’s just not a comparable thing, it’s a world with big lock-in.
> Because it would be inappropriate to punish a firm for its natural monopoly in its own products, courts embraced a sweeping prohibition against analyzing alleged anticompetitive activity by focusing on single-brand relevant markets: "[A]bsent exceptional market conditions, one brand in a market of competing brands cannot constitute a relevant product market." [2]
For a much more thorough explanation see my linked comment below.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24193731
[2] https://casetext.com/case/metzler-v-bear-automotive-service-...
The argument is that Apple is using their market power to set prices that seems well above the marginal cost. And they also have created policies that prevent competition in their store. Imagine Windows not allowing any apps unless they give them a 30% cut.
Writing it in passive voice makes it look like there is some governmental force at play that made them license on FRAND terms. They voluntarily agreed to that in negotiations with a standards body/industry consortium which otherwise would not have agreed to utilize their technology in a communication standard. The trade-off is they benefit automatically by getting distribution and licensing the technology to a lot of people that need to implement that standard.
Isn’t this like allowing mods, custom maps etc? So CounterStrike, DoTA, etc shouldn’t exist?
Honestly I started off on the fence but now I’m 100% against Apple here, and I’m an iOS dev. This is kinda crazy.
If skins are what I imagine they are, Epic needs oversight over which ones players are allowed to use because they affect the experience of other players. And Epic provides Fortnite gratis specifically so that they can sell premium features like skins, so it seems completely reasonable that they would take a large cut out of third-party sales of those features.
To be analagous to IOS devices, Fortnite would have to be a single-player game that players bought a copy of. In that case, I think people would be right to be upset if Epic prevented them from getting skins through some other channel.
Apple has a monopoly on how those products are sold and licensed because they are Apple products, in exactly the same way that Fortnite and it's marketplace are Epic products. There's no requirement for Epic to open that up, and if they do it will be on their terms. Their house, their rules.
After all, it's their house so their rules...
Apple have carved out a significant market share of mobile users. They've locked down the OS so you can't install your own apps on it and they've crippled the browser so you can't build nice web apps. For businesses like Netflix, Spotify and Epic who's userbases arguably transcend the App Store, why should they pay the Apple Tax?
Apple doesn't "own" these users. But if you want to extend your services to them you have to pony up.
The iOS operating system, developer tools, platform libraries and the App Store and distribution system are all Apple products built by them on their own dime and at their own commercial risk. On what basis do you get to dictate to them what features they must or must not develop, what services they must be coerced to provide and what contractual relationships they are required to enter into? There's just no basis for that.
It all comes down to money.
If Epic was running their own platform, and 3rd parties didn’t want to abide by their rules, then Epic would give those 3rd parties the finger and tell them to F-off the same as Apple.
Each is trying to grab as much profit as they can while running into the issue of other hands grabbing from the same basket.
The classic case of one’s greed versus another’s desire to be greedy.
What exactly is your point here? If <entity> was in Apple's position, they would protect their interests exactly as Apple is. Thats why we need to regulate companies who are in Apple's position! The fact that its greed vs. greed is immaterial.
I don't see that as much of a win.
But I would refrain from investing much more into the platform since what Im seeing right now isnt going to sustain the platform in the long term.
Its one thing if the store has distinct feature like gog, but theyre not. In the end I(and many others surely) use it just to get free games.
It works in a different context ( platform exclusives ) because the lock in / costs to developing for a different platform are far different from that for different stores on a single platform.
And Epic is also competing with Steam by having lower cut (5 % versus 30 % IIRC) leaving more money for the developers. It's good for the developers and consumers both.
But even though is all about money, a legislation change is still necessary. As long as the result of this benefits the society, who's pushing it shouldn't matter that much.
At the end of the day, antitrust process are frequently started by people with a lot of money and power to catch people with more money and power. That's the game.
Who cares what their motivations are if they've mandated that the benefits should be distributed?
It's 12%. They also allow selling games made with their competitor technologies (e.g. Unity), and the cut is still the same.
Regardless of the context, this is so good and hilarious on so many levels. Meme worthy! I’m going to have to try to work this quote into a conversation.
Whether or not Epic charges for their store is immaterial to whether one of the largest and most important general purpose computing platforms in the world is performing highway robbery.
There is no reason to believe this will be true. Grand Theft Auto V is now 7 years old at this point and has seen 2 almost 3 console generations as generates an incredible amount of money for TakeTwo. The longevity of these platforms have clearly changed
Give it 10 years and there will be again another large social network. Teenagers won't be on the same network as their parents.
So it's entirely possible that Fortnite will stay.
It's similar to how slot machines require tokens, but I don't think that's quite gambling. The gambling part comes in with loot boxes, where you're essentially paying to roll the dice to get something of value.
Some casinos still have an aisle or two of coin machines for nostalgia though. People collect these tokens, but I'm sure that hobby is on the way out since new mint is pretty rare.
A microtransaction isn't gambling by default.
In fact, you can earn small handfuls of the premium currency every season, which actually allowed people to purchase premium skins or the "battle pass" with currency obtained for free.
There is no comparison to be made with Apple, who won't let you do a thing on the app store without giving them money.
Seems quite anticompetitive to not allow me to upload and sell skins to compete with the official ones.
This is the problem with making absurd monopoly arguments. If you redefine monopoly in such a ridiculous way, almost every company is a monopoly.
The customer is supposed to be the one who bought the phone and is using the OS in their best interest. Right?
This whole thing feels all wrong. Both Apple for "gatekeeping OUR customers" and Epic for "Apple's stealing OUR money" (or "Apple is making us pay 30% so we're going to charge you 30% more")
Besides, it's not as if the Apple App Store is full of quality apps. It's full of a lot of garbage. It's so full of garbage that I have a hard time finding anything worth buying - because almost all of it is ad-laden junk that tries to nickle and dime you with in-app purchases. lol.
You would have to charge $142.86 for something you otherwise could sell for $100 if it wasn't for Apple taking a 30 % cut. So ~43 % more, not 30 % more. Apple sure is milking iOS users for alot of money, without users knowing.
And you don't think that is anti-competitive? Apple is free to promote their own services on their platform that compete with others, require them to pay a 30% tax that their own competing service does, and the only escape hatch they give you is "you can use the web, but you can't tell your users"
Am I taking crazy pills, or do other people think this is absurd.
The first rule of alternative signup models on the App Store is, you don't talk about alternative signup models.
A large part of the internet is screaming "The evil Epic brought this upon themselves, if they don't want to pay 30 %, then don't use iOS!"
Apple increases costs for users, just because they bought an iOS device. Thats definetly not good for consumers.
But what are developers going to do about it? For some developers, over 2/3 of their customers are on a iOS device, so just not using the App Store is not a realistic option. Apple has also made sure that the App Store is the only possible way.
So, it's way to big to ignore, and there is definetly no competition. Clearly something has to happen. I would also love to be able to use a decent browser like Firefox or Chrome on iOS(not the current webkit crap apple forces mozilla and Google to use).
Apple being able to pull off such huge margins in markets where they have competition on every front I think paints a picture of just how ahead they are. The fact that the gap is so big and nobody has been able to step up and close it is mind-boggling to me. You can only blame so much on slick marketing because for 64% gross margins I think other companies would be happy to put up the marketing cash.
But that’s so different from the smartphone space. Like iPhones were really a status symbol like a decade ago but you can get one now at like every price point and flagship androids aren’t much cheaper. You have threads full of people on HN arguing that Apple is actually the budget pick if you can afford to frontload the cost. I’m typing this on a used iPhone X that cost less than $400.
Like have we all forgotten when Apple released FaceID and then Samsung responded with the lamest front camera picture match thing?
Like yes lock-in is a thing, lifestyle marketing is a thing, brand loyalty is a thing, and momentum is a thing, but that doesn’t explain how Apple is seemingly able to do it so much better than everyone else. Because we could name companies that have all of those but still aren’t Apple.
There's also the sunk cost for many people. If you've bought tons of content in the App Store, you'd have to rebuy everything if you switched to another ecosystem. For the same reason, if you own proprietary camera lens for Camera Body A, you are not likely to dump all your photo equipment even if a Camera Body B comes out that is cheaper and better.
Path dependency. We learned this lesson once with the Wintel duopoly. Then with the Web, from about 1994 to 2007, we had broke the shackles. And now, people are happy to enslave themselves again, and vigorously defend their servitude.
Apple makes great hardware and software. They don't need this.
From personal experience, yes. Easily. It's like comparing a Wal-Mart 'First Act' electric guitar to a Fender Stratocaster, or one of those awful Crosley turntables to a pair of Technics SL-1200s.
I have particularly sensitive feet, and ride a push scooter everywhere so cheap soles will wear quickly. I'll go through 4 pairs of $30 knockoff shoes a year instead of buying a pair of Nikes for $100 and enjoying them for three or more years. I live in Toronto and make my pilgramage to the actual Nike retail outlet in the Eaton's centre once a year to see what's new, try things on, and buy just one pair of shoes between $100-200. As a result, my closet is full of stylish, comfortable shoes that have lasted years and years. :)
YMMV, but honestly the same goes for Apple for me. I'm still using a G5 tower from 2005 with 16GB RAM and 2x1TB SSD's on the daily. I paid a couple grand for that back in the day (with about 4GB RAM originally and a 120GB HDD, I believe)...I don't have a single PC tower or laptop left except a hackintoshed Lenovo that's only a couple years old, despite buying a bunch.
Nike is not 'so far ahead' of every other shoe manufacturer, but, similar to Apple, they are only comparable in any way to similarly-priced manufacturers of their tier - Adidas, Reebok, or Microsoft Surface, Alienware.
The Surface is probably the only portable I've had the pleasure to use that is comparable to the build quality and feel of Apple's manufacturing.
Gucci, for example; is a company that represents true excess for the sake of excess. (What's that Lil' Pump line? 'Spent 10k on my Gucci bed sheets'?)
As an iOS dev for a living, I think the 30% is bullshit. But from what I've read/heard, it's based off something similar to retail margins.
The retail analogy is bogus. Software isn't a physical product these days.
This has not been the case with Apple.
Pretty much any luxury brand has high product margins, but certainly not for lack of competition.
Or get it from a cafe, and value my time at around 2-3€ per cup
Too many usinesses can't live without access to iPhone users.
Of course, software sales have much higher margin of production cost (every copy but the first is free-to-make).
If Apple/iOS is a minority that means someone else must be a majority. Who, exactly, do you think should be the target of that balancing, and why?
That is why it isn't 30% after the first year. It is 15% for subscription based software starting year 2. As I pointed out earlier, Apple also eats credit card transaction costs (~2.5%) and the costs of collecting and paying sales tax in 50 states and 155 countries, app store personnel, servers, etc...
Here on HN most of us probably feel that product manager at Apple licked their finger, felt the wind and said “Yeah 30% seems about the most we can get away with”
And what irks even more is once Apple set the precedent, as their we’re no outcries Google was like “Let’s copy that!”. Let’s hope there was no collusion ...
Additionally, there is related precedent in areas like publishing (ebook stores usually charge 30% or more commission).
I don't think 30% is outlandish, though I do think it would be nice if Apple reduced that cut, especially if they wanted to consider some form of graduated rate.
Yes, I know, the web is free...and the App Store search is broken so discovery isn’t what it was... but still. Market access is VERY significant and worth something and the incremental cost to Apple has no bearing on what it is worth.
As discussed, prior mobile cuts were far more one sided. We payed the carrier 50% and then Qualcomm 20% of what was left. Bottom line, we walked away with 40% and we were happy.
It's interesting that few people don't understand the difference between permission to distribute versus actual distribution.
If Apple was doing any distribution for you at all, you wouldn't need to pay Facebook and Google for distribution.
Note how this was different in the early days, where simply being on the app store would get downloads. That has not been true for 7-8 years now.
Not sure what distinction you're trying to draw here but in order for Apple to take their 30% cut, someone has to download the app, at which point Apple have de facto distributed it to someone.
> If Apple was doing any distribution for you at all, you wouldn't need to pay Facebook and Google for distribution.
This makes very little sense to me. Are you saying that if I pay Apple to distribute my app on the App Store then they should also distribute it on every app store? And that if they aren't then they're somehow failing me?
> Note how this was different in the early days, where simply being on the app store would get downloads. That has not been true for 7-8 years now.
The App Store is a shit-show in terms of discoverability, this is true. I'm not even sure what they can do to improve things at this stage.
More often than not, I can't find a named, non-popular app, even when searching for its exact name. The only way I can find it, is if they have a web-page and an direct link to their appstore entry on that web-page.
So ironically I have to search Google/DDG on the open web to find the apps I'm looking to install on my iPhone.
"Broken" doesn't fully convey just how mismanaged the AppStore is.
The challenge was to massage the numbers of the deal so he could see his 30% and approve it.
Also the 30% is often the budget for the Sales and Marketing operation in a typical organization.
They supposedly have a tiered cut, something like 30% off first X million, 25% of next X amount, etc.
Having worked with low-end shareware payment processors at the time, they charged between 15 and 30% and most of them are now out of business.
I remember people complaining about the 15% cut, too. No matter how fair you make it, people will scream that it's too much. Even when it's free. Just look at how people complain about open source software that they don't pay for and don't contribute to. Nothing is ever fair for some people.
Gawd I hope the web can remain competitive with the proprietary platforms!
The minimum price for an app was $0.99 as was the minimum in app purchase.
I am not saying it should scale as price scales to remain 30%.
And, IIRC at the time it was seen as a great deal. It may not be such a good deal now, though, and in-app purchases are really a whole other kettle of fish.
This is something that a commenter on Hacker News should understand!
All of those dumb cost breakdowns for what it "costs" to make iPhones or whatever always miss the fact that you actually have to design and build the software, hardware, and services that makes it all work. Not to mention shipping and other retail costs.
That's typically the normal number cited for the "manufacturing cost" of a product, regardless of the level of R&D and marketing that goes into it.
GP also said to cover cost of app store in the phone, despite only costing its parts.
I consider iOS to be one of the iPhone's parts. I don't understand why machinery engineered from metal is so different from that engineered from bits, that I must consider them two products instead of one. Metal, glass, silicon, bits: one PDA appliance.
Most of iOS's costs are fixed. Even if you amortize the cost of it across the number of phones sold each cycle, it will be insignificant.
Apple employs ~12,000 engineers. If all 12k cost $1million per year, it would cost Apple $12 billion a year. Apple revenue in 2019 was $260 billion, or 4.6% of revenues. Apple gross profit was $104 billion. So if Apple had to somehow cut some rent-seeking streams and eat $12 billion, their profits would only be reduced 12%
Now we know these figures are way overboard. Employee costs aren't $1 million per year for every engineer. All 12k engineers are not working on iOS or the App Store, etc.
People have been paying a premium for Apple’s goods for forty years. Instead of complaining about the evilness of Apple, maybe the problem is the incompetence of the rest of the market to make something compelling.
You're completely ignoring price signalling for a start, which provide information to consumers about price elasticity. You're ignoring asymmetries between producers and consumers, which hide information from consumers about price elasticity (and thus affect what people are "willing to pay"). You're ignoring things like decoy effects, in which manufacturers deliberately offer extra items at different price points because of the known impact on consumer psychology. Basically, you write as if consumers are driven by a rational and fully informed decision making process, when we know with absolute certainty that this is not the case, and that manufacturers/sellers have considerable ability to shift "what people are willing to pay for it".
Also, vastly more people buy those Android phones than iPhones, which makes it less clear if the market has failed to "make something compelling" to compete with iOS, or if there is a subset of the population willing to pay a premium for specific perceived benefits, real or otherwise, in the case of iOS devices.
Do you really think consumers don’t know they are paying Apple a premium?
Because there are hundreds of manufacturers of Android ones, and only one for Apple. Microeconomics states that in a competitive market, price will tend to the marginal cost, and this is exactly what happened in Android. It is not "what people are willing to pay", it's that Android phones have competitive pressures that are downward on price. At the high end, people pay as much for Huawei Mate P30s as they do for iPhones, because there are few phones at that tier.
Your rebuttal actually proves my point exactly. If Apple licensed iOS, and let clone makers sell iPhone clones, the price would plummet, even if all of the features were the same -- same OS, same HW performance, etc.
Apple's creation of their own little walled garden, complete with path dependency, and slick marketing, has created a premium that would not exist if independent manufacturers could sell clones.
This is why PCs were cheaper than Macs, when clearly PCs had WAY WAY better HW than Macs, way better CPUs, GPUs, et al, for much lower price points, yet people paid more for Macs. Even back in the pre-OSX days, the PowerPC days, the Motorola days, people paid more for less, again, because of the way Apple locks in a chuck of their market with incompatible path-dependency.
I mean, I had an Amiga in the 80s, it had 4-channel stereo sound, 4096 colors, multitasking, awesome games, on a great C= monitor, and the comparable machine at the time was this tiny 128k 9" B&W display machine, which was hideously slow because it didn't even have enough RAM, and cost well over 200% more. Amiga had vertically integrated all-custom chips like Apple brags about today. It was the premium machine, so ask yourself why some people paid 200% more. It could do substantially less, graphically, and in terms of software available for it. And before you say "desktop publishing", in college I used TeX to do all of my work, and the output quality was superior with less effort. For the home PC user, it was way way overpriced for underpowered hardware and a paultry software selection. This is what Apple was competing against in the 80s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7rKj0DU8Xs
I'm an iPhone user, I've owned every iPhone since standing in line in 2007 to get one of the first. I use a Macbook as my primary laptop. So I'm not anti-Apple, but frankly all of the things I use iPhone or Macbooks for have NOTHING to do with their locked down App Store, refusal to allow me to install third party browser engines, or specify default apps, or side-load apps.
I want Apple to stop locking down freedom and when they sell me a computer or phone, let me OWN IT an do what I want with it. If Apple's ARM OSX Macs turn into a locked down system like their ARM iPad/iPhone, then this Macbook Pro and Mac Pro I own will be the last Apple devices I own, and it's hello Hackintosh or Linux desktop.
There was no lock in with Macs - the same Software was available for Windows and more. Have you ever thought that it wasn’t just about the hardware?
Did Apple have a lock in on marketing that kept Microsoft and Google incapable of marketing their own devices?
Did Apple stop Commodore and Atari from executing?
Nope, the MS-DOS and Windows market was too big by then to introduce a new incompatible system. Ask OS/2 how it worked out.
> There was no lock in with Macs
Sure there was. Firstly, many schools across the country had been convinced to by Macs through the educational discounts Apple gave, and school bureaucracies like all government bureaucracies move very slowly, so aren't going to switch, but simply maintain and grow the bureaucracy. Secondly, if you had actually invested in a bunch of Mac software and a LaserWriter, the sunk cost fallacy would lead many people to stay in.
And then there's Cognitive Dissonance.
> Have you ever thought that it wasn’t just about the hardware?
Mac software and hardware was inferior until the Intel switch-over. Sure, MacOS was more consistent, but the software available for the platform was worse. And in some categories, practically non-existent compared to Windows.
Almost every single response I see from you in threads is like a paleo-libertarian response that "things are the way they are because they are what the market intended" without almost no insight into how consumers can be manipulated by corporations.
After everything you have seen the US government do with regards to technology, you still want more government power? I haven’t seen anyone on HN that supports the DMCA, laws trying to make encryption illegal, etc.
My fight against government control is because I don’t trust the government. I can more easily leave a company than I can a government.
Why was Apple able to survive the consolidation behind MS DOS and Atari, Commodore, etc. weren’t? They all started around the same place.
Don’t blame Apple for other company’s failures.
Due to Apple's extraordinary success and complete dominance of smartphone profits, I think it is safe to assume the vast majority of users love the App store model. They don't read Hacker News, they don't understand how computers work, and they don't care. What they know is find an app, hit a button, boom. No worries about payment security, malware, etc. (Ok, no malware is a slight overstatement, but not by much.) Software updates are handled automatically.
It is undeniable that people are willing to pay for the current experience. None of this other stuff is really relevant. If you want sideload capability, don't buy an iPhone. There is no deceptive marketing here. Everyone knows the deal with respect to software. The vast majority of users have no thought towards side loading or even what that means. I think any representative survey would find that the single app store model is a feature for the vast majority of their customers, not a detriment.
None of this means it is a consumer desire, and none of this says consumers want only one way to pay for something and don't want side loading. For almost every case of something Apple doesn't have, you can make the same argument. So consumers don't want big screens right? Consumers don't want small tablets right?
This is the always the excuse with Apple. Anything they don't have, it's obviously because consumers don't want it -- right up until Apple introduces it, and then all of a sudden, it's what they wanted all along.
Steve Jobs said consumers shouldn't be trusted to know what they want.
Also, all of this is a complete SMOKESCREEN for the fact that Apple could easily introduce something like WebPayments, a driver model for payment providers, and reuse the same UI for Apple Pay to delegate to partners who are vetted.
Likewise, they already allow 'side loading' in the enterprise, so the question is, why can't they allow THOSE WHO WANT IT to flip a switch, own their smart phone fully, and side load, even if it invalidates the warranty. Let people jailbreak the devices they paid >$1000 for without relying on exploits.
And when it comes to PC operating systems, it still does even though according to you Apple has this magical ability to keep the masses ignorant and uninformed about alternatives.
Also, all of this is a complete SMOKESCREEN for the fact that Apple could easily introduce something like WebPayments, a driver model for payment providers, and reuse the same UI for Apple Pay to delegate to partners who are vetted.
Does any retailer have a method that allows consumers to avoid payments? Can I buy imaginary money from Epic from another payment provider and use within Fortnite?
Likewise, they already allow 'side loading' in the enterprise, so the question is, why can't they allow THOSE WHO WANT IT to flip a switch
You are perfectly allowed to buy an Android phone like 85% of the rest of the world.
Long run marginal cost. Which will be higher than the cost per unit. You can’t sustain a market when you can’t cover fixed costs. Just look at what happened to Detroit.
Otherwise, hey, let's unbundle Mobile Safari, and Mail, and Maps, and when you buy an iPhone, the first thing you have to do is buy all the builtin default apps.
It pains me to see Computing, Tech, or Software Engineers that are the top paying job today and especially in Silicon Valley, are complaining about the cost of Hardware all while completely ignoring the Software Cost and Design Cost.
This left, free-ish mentality wasn't a thing 10 - 20 years ago. But has steadily getting mainstream. I have no idea why.
"A complement is a product that you usually buy together with another product. Gas and cars are complements. Computer hardware is a classic complement of computer operating systems. And babysitters are a complement of dinner at fine restaurants. In a small town, when the local five star restaurant has a two-for-one Valentine’s day special, the local babysitters double their rates. (Actually, the nine-year-olds get roped into early service.)
All else being equal, demand for a product increases when the prices of its complements decrease."
https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/
also, people should be speaking of monopsony: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopsony
price of jelly goes to zero, sales of peanut butter go up.
prices of software goes to zero, sales of hardware goes up.
when microsoft created the PC market it took the opposite approach -- commoditize pc hardware, drive the price as low as possible -- and OS sales will go up. It worked too.;
For some strange reason the term never really caught on, even having been reported and used multiple times in mainstream media.
I just wish more people understand and use it. Especially in discussions like the current issues.
We know that margins aren’t 64% - it’s right in their financial statements.
The costs to run the Apple store should be included as a sunk platform cost of the phone just like OSX. The cost to run the store is marginal. The cost to serve up an additional developer app, to review an additional app, and to let someone buy one, is an insignificant fraction.
Would Apple be in their right to charge $25K fee to use their SDK? We would they be within their right to charge a bandwidth fee like Amazon does with the Kindle?
Should all software companies only charge nominal fees because the cost of an additional customer is low?
The cost of credit card transaction is around 3% + $0.25/transaction. While of course that’s much less than 30% for anything over $1.00, most of the revenue from the App Store comes from crap like Candy Crush with in app purchases of gems. Especially since the major players like Netflix and Spotify don’t allow in app purchases.
Let’s not pretend that the money is coming from indy developers selling useful products - most of it is coming from the tokens and loot boxes bought by whales.
Apple's money is coming from where exactly ? At $1000+ price, in gaming terminology that is either "whales" or users who cannot afford it but are exploited/addicted to the "product". There are perfectly equivalent android phones for less than half that price. Ultimately apple and epic are lifestyle companies, you don't "need" either of them sure, that doesn't mean they are not providing value to the economy.
> Would Apple be in their right to charge $25K fee
I am sure Epic will gladly pay 25k or $250k fee which is exactly the point. $99 is great for indie developer not for large businesses. You may not want large businesses in the store, Many do, I want my apps not to stop working because the developer lost interest, I want the companies behind the apps not to go bankrupt .
> We would they be within their right to charge a bandwidth fee like Amazon does with the Kindle
Sure, the can charge reasonable or even cloud rates, or even better they don't need to provide the bandwidth at all or make it optional. Many developers I am sure are happy to host files with a CDN of their choosing, a provider they can negotiate their rate at scale .I am sure apple will object on user experience grounds. Google allows you to run your own store you can use your own CDN. Sure without playservices they make it hard, both Amazon and Samsung do deliver through it though.
> The cost of credit card transaction is around 3% + $0.25/transaction
That is the retail rate for a high end service provider like stripe. Apple (or any company doing $1M+/month) is not paying anywhere remotely close to that.
In any other industry price scales with usage. Enterprise/ high volume customers do not pay retail, retail rates have a big per unit CAC associated with it b2b sales have CAC but it is not any linearly correlated to units. Customers normally at decent volumes can negotiate, Apple will not give any volume discounts. They can get away with it because of their control over the market.
Epic does not care you and I are paying 30%. They care that they are paying the same 30%.
Apple also does not care small developers are paying 30% or not, they want 30% from epic size customers.
So people are addicted to iPhones? Apple sells a $399 phone that is faster than any Android phone at any price.
Apple will not give any volume discounts. They can get away with it because of their control over the market.
Rumors are that they did in fact negotiate with Amazon, Netflix, and Hulu. They actually offered something of value.
> Apple sells a $399 phone that is faster than any Android phone at any price.
Google Pixel 3A is similarly priced product , it has higher resolution(2220x1080 / 1337x750) better camera (12.2+8 / 12+7), lighter(147g / 148g), larger(5.6inch/4.7inch), larger battery, better processor, a headphone jack (like the jack or not, not having it means you need airpods headset easily another $150 compared to $20-30 I can spend on a wired headset.
And this is 2020 SE which Apple will typically for sell for next three years . Other competitors would have two more upgrades stretching the gap a lot more by 2022 when Apple will sell 2020 SE at the same price.
You can perhaps argue that form factor, processor or battery is actually better in Apple, but any objective reasonable metric Apple SE is not significantly better than similar android phones.
Apple is forced to deal with streaming companies, because they are not a large enough player, with big enough catalogue to dictate terms. Apple needs to license content from the same studios for themselves too, they screw over hulu, Apple TV is going to be screwed right back.
But again, we see the "love it or leave it" attitude. As in, you have no right to criticize the cherished totem that I have invested a huge portion of my self into.
> Services net sales include sales from the Company’s digital content stores and streaming services, AppleCare, licensing and other services. Services net sales also include amortization of the deferred value of Maps, Siri and free iCloud services, which are bundled in the sales price of certain products.
Undoubtedly, the App Store makes up a large chunk of that $46.291 billion, but not all of it. We don't know how much money Apple actually makes off of the App Store. For all we know, Apple attributes 50% of the iPhone's profit margin to "Maps, Siri, and free iCloud services" which would dramatically skew the numbers. Services also includes digital media, AppleCare, and licensing which are all non-trivial sources of revenue.
[0]: https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0000320193/1a91911...
Where do you even get numbers like this? Are you looking at the bill of materials cost and assuming that to be the cost of the device, ignoring the R&D, testing, iterations of development and tweaking, and many other factors (including marketing) that go into the price of a product (apart from profit margin)? If yes, that’s too naive an assumption and bordering on hyperbole.
This is like arguing that the ingredients for <your favorite dish> cost some low value whereas restaurants are selling it at several tens of times that cost. M
It's absolutely ignoring the overhead, R&D, etc; but I often also find iOS itself ignored in the built-in costs. I often find comparisons to costs of materials vs. MRSP bizarre at best, in any case.
https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/15/21292203/apple-app-store-...
Follow the link to the cited study. Another data point is Apple's release that they paid developers $34 billion in 2018.
https://fortune.com/2019/01/28/apple-app-store-developer-ear...
Since the 15% subscription model was relatively newer in 2018, let's put the 2018 developer number at 75% of the total, so Apple made about $11.3 billion in 2018.
Also, we should not forget the huge overall R&D spend Apple is making to keep growing the iPhone/iPad market. Apple makes money off sales of course, but it is still a huge investment in the platform and that creates market for developers.
They have also just announced a new platform for Macs that will allow iPhone and iPad apps to run unaltered on the new Macs. Again, big R&D expense from Apple with upside for developers. In general, there have been big R&D expenditures in software SDKs in recent years for developers to get to a write once model so programs can run on all the platforms.
Apple also eats the 2.5% (typical number) credit card transaction costs. In addition, they deal with collecting and paying local sales taxes in every state and in 155 countries.
For the user, they provide a trusted payment processor and software source so they don't have to worry if the software will have embedded malware or if their credit card data will be handled appropriately.
They provide cloud servers for notifications, file storage, all of the software update processing, payment processing, and many other services.
The app store team performs about 100,000 reviews every week. Somewhat automated, but a lot of humans involved too.
After the first year, Apple's cut is 15%, so after all the other expenses of the app store I'd be surprised if they are clearing 10% after that. Whatever the exact number, it is far less than 30%.
The 2019 net prior to R&D and other expenses is probably around $12 to $13 billion best case. Developers made about $47 billion. At any rate, Apple is making money, but we should keep the right numbers in mind when we have these discussions.
This is especially true as Apple consistently claims that the App Store is an integral, inseparable part from iPhone; so even if Apple loses a significant amount of money from the App Store it should be fine as long as iPhone can make ~$100B profit each year.
Of course, they could invalidate this logic by introducing some form of competing app stores, which would be just nominal in practice, but they didn't choose to do that. I don't know why; no one really can compete with Apple in the iOS ecosystem and this would significantly mitigate their legal risk.
It is easy to demand free shit from already established platforms since they don't strictly need it now, but it required a lot of capital and work to get to the point it is now and now you are expecting to get a free ride on top of that.
Then again this incident has nothing to do with Apple or Epic. This is essentially China vs USA case. Just another form of cyber warfare and comments like yours show that China is succeeding.
Apples audited financials tell us gross margins on services is 68%, and $9B of those services are from an annual payment from Google for search placement in Safari with a gross margin approaching 100%. So you can make up whatever numbers you want given your limited understanding of what services the App Store provides, but App Store gross margins are clearly likely to be in the 50-65% range, making its break even somewhere between 10-15% of developer revenues.
And lastly, gross margins aren’t net margins. Apple still has to pay for marketing, sales, admin, support, etc out of iPhone gross margins, and the App Store still needs to contribute to some if these as well.
Also, you are talking about the margins on all Apple's services, some of which are much more expensive than others. The margins that other digital software stores can charge suggest to me that they can be very profitable without the 30% cut.
Full disclosure: I am a longtime Apple shareholder.
Disclosure: I’m a long tine App Store developer.
There's zero percent chance the App Store is running at 50% margin. It's got to be closer to 80% than 50%, or they are doing something wrong.
So $50B in services at 68% margins equals $16B in expenses, deduct $4B in Apple Music expense and you have $12B left. Deduct $9B from revenues for Googles search engine placement, $5B more in revenues from Apple Music, and you have $36B in revenues left. That makes gross margins for the remaining services, which the App Store is 40%, 67%.
You are correct in that 67% is closer to 80% than 50%, but still a long way from it.
Apple dont booked their customer's revenue, only their receiving ( i.e ~30% ) end. So those are close to 100% Margin as well.
There are additional $10 per Mac, iPhone, iPad, Apple TV per unit to Services for their OS, Cloud, Siri and Map Usage. That is close to $3B revenue, and again Gross is close to 100% margin.
The only thing that aren't 100% Gross is Apple Music. Where it has a clear unit cost and margin are likely to be Sub 20%. ( You can take a look at Spotify for margins, and Apple also pay labels a little more than competitors because it isn't part of their profit making branches ) And Apple TV+ which is Apple giving away their Services Profits for something given out for "Free". ( Which is one reason I hate Apple TV+ )
Apple are now basically subtracting all of their Software and Cloud Services Cost from Services Segment. Apple could argue part of the reason why you get 5 years worth of iOS update are from those revenue stream.
And yes, none of these Gross Margin takes into account R&D, marketing, operation and other expenses.
Personally I have no problem with Apple charging 30% for Games like Fornite. Which is the industry Standard across all gaming platform. I just wish they lowered the Apps section in the App Store ( Gaming being already in a separate section ) to 15% rather than 30%. And 10% for Subscription.
Considering the cost of running the App Store, and Apple's promotion of App Store credit. I felt 15% is a much fairer deal.
Subtract $9B for Google safari payment, and you have $16B in expenses on $41B in remaining service revenues, or 60% gross margins.
Hosting and distribution of terabytes of data every hour costs money. Building and maintains hundreds of localized app stores costs money. Customer service costs money. App Review costs money. Developer support costs money. Maintaining Developer tools and store APIs costs money. Payment processing costs money, esp. on 99 cent purchases.
And why should Apple price these devices at a “fair price”? When you build a business from scratch that be ones far more successful than anyone thought possible, aren’t you allowed to keep the money people freely pay you?
Apple set the pricing at 30% day 1, and it hasn’t stopped a single developer from running to jump into the App Store goldmine. There has never been a more profitable software market for developers. I’d say Jobs clearly got the pricing right.
Yes, I don't get why they don't just hand out phones and everything for free, duh. I mean surely they could do that for a while with all that revenue instead of theoretically buying 50 new data centers per year every year? Why I am not getting free stuff from rich people? What economic wizardry am I missing?
Lots of entitlement here. Apple does not owe you anything.
If you don't like Apple's terms, just don't buy their products. It really is that simple.
Let's say that Australia wants to ban consumer encryption. This would currently be difficult to enforce for PC software. But on mobile, this is easy. Just make Apple and Google enforce it! Make them ban such apps from their stores. Now you've achieved perfect enforcement on Apple hardware. Even on Android, where people could in theory side-load the banned apps, this would prevent those apps from achieving any scale or network effect.
That's what I think people are missing here. No matter how much you trust Apple, once the mechanisms for this kind of power are in place, you won't be able to control what happens next.
It is a strong counter argument for requiring openness at the App store level.
If Australia bans encryption, you as a consumer who resides in Australia has a high switching cost (moving, new job, residence, etc.) and thus the consumer loses out.
If Apple starts to use that power badly... you can switch to a number of competitor feature phones with largely the same feature and app capabilities (Android being the most obvious)
In a market with 2+ competitors and where its low switching costs (moving contacts is quite easy these days, not a lot of deep 2-year contracts for phones/providers) this point doesn't hold true
There is only one real competitor: Android. Google would very much like to have the same degree of control that Apple does over their ecosystem, but they're holding back for now so that they can point to Apple as being worse when the congressional inquiries heat up.
Feature phones are not real competitors to smartphones.
>If Apple starts to use that power badly... you can switch to a number of competitor feature phones with largely the same feature and app capabilities (Android being the most obvious)
It depends, network are effects are strong on Apple (iMessage) and maybe you already bought tons of apps and software that you can't transfer to Android or Windows.
How much does that cost? How does it work if the apps you rely on are iOS only? How do I transfer my app and subscription purchases to my new Android phone?
A private company is already put themselves in plate to control software content that reaches millions of people without those people having the ability to choose anything else on their pocket computers.
This is true, which is why I surprised the other day when I found this app called "BLMovement" when I was looking around to see if anyone was making a completely distasteful joke...
https://apps.apple.com/uy/app/blmovement/id1517754969
As a "resource directory", it's not purely political but surely it skirts the line.
I'm certain that if some political movement had popular support Apple would forget the rules though.
(Although, I doubt they'd let this same app in the store if it was called AntifaMovement, QAnonMovement or NationalSocialistMovement.)
You could always use a website instead. Why is an app necessary?
> Whereas China needed to control country-wide Internet access to achieve its censorship goals, Apple and Google have helpfully provided the Indian government with a one-stop shop. This also, for better or worse, gives a roadmap for how the U.S. government could respond to TikTok, if it chose to: there is no need to build a great firewall — simply give the order to Apple and Google. Centralization, at least from a central government’s perspective, has its uses.
https://stratechery.com/2020/india-bans-chinese-apps-the-app...
Epic thought they were big enough and valuable enough that they could bully their way through ToS violations. All the hip thinkpieces were saying that no matter what happens here Epic comes out on top, because Apple has everything to lose and blah blah.
Turns out nope, Epic's customers do need the app store after all, so Apple has the leverage here after all.
This is exactly how Indian government has banned tiktok. They are never able to ban websites because the web is open. But apps they can ban easily because if Apple/Google say no, they will be squeezed.
But then again, I shouldn't be surprised since there are incentives to act this way.
* Screened apps - Apple only lets "safe" apps into the store. * Discoverability - Apple in theory lets users find apps that they didn't know about before. Customer Acquisition * Payments - Apple makes it easy to accept payments, for their 30% fee.
One or all of those are useful and great. Where I have an issue is when they use one (the required screened apps aspect) for force you into the others.
Hey wanted an app on the store, as an extension to their primarily web based experience. But they couldn't purchase just the rubber-stamp that says they're not malware and the app store hosting. They were being forced to buy into all 3.
That feels like using an existing monopoly (actually a duopoly w/ google's similar practices) to force developers to purchase products they don't want. Hey didn't want to accept payments via apple, but Apple's market power and decisions were focused on forcing them to.
If Apple had a yearly fee of $1000 (arbitrary number, maybe pay per download or device or whatever), for an app to simply be reviewed & hosted, that would be reasonable. They provide a service, businesses can opt into that. But they're taking their core value prop of "closed app store helps customers" and forcing their way onto "and now you have to pay us a portion of revenue".
In order to sell goods in a place like Walmart, a manufacturer is subject to onerous terms. Why is the app store different than a retailer limiting access to their shelf space? I personally feel they are different but I cannot put into words why.
Imagine if you could buy shoes only at Walmart because you bought the shoe rack there.
No you can't. Walmart often requires vendors to make a special Walmart-only version of their product. So there is nothing that's truly comparable.
There is no "vendor lock in" for t-shirts
You are not forced to buy walmart special editions using Walmart payment gateway and vendors don't have to pay Walmart a 30% cut, the opposite is true, Walmart HS to buy at least N items and pay in advance to be able to require a special edition, even though they don't know if they are going to sell all of them
(That may not even be 100% hypothetical. They have lots of money, so can afford getting delayed payment for phones. They might even be able to become a global phone company, too, and rent you a phone and a network subscription)
Plus, you could unlock your phone (in some cases) and move to another carrier, which theoretically meant a different store! True freedom.
Of course actually using these phones and putting apps on them was MISERABLE, mostly because they were symbian and/or j2me apps
Avoiding Google surveillance meant you could only buy an Apple car. You could then only buy gasoline at Apple gas stations. People in your town who wanted to change your oil had to pay an annual fee to Apple to even be considered, would have to pay 30% of revenue to Apple if approved, and could be put out of business at any moment with no recourse by whatever happened in secret behind the Apple fortress walls.
You as a car owner could not choose to buy tires or get "your" car painted or even get your car washed by anyone without going through Apple. You paid Apple for the car wash, because (no matter what you or the people washing your car would prefer) you were Apple's customer and the car you paid for was Apple's car.
For your "safety", of course.
A phone is as fundamental to the infrastructure of your life today as a car. Any company that could utterly control it would probably become a trillion-dollar company.
The problem with most comments shouting “30% is too high!” is that it’s impossible to throw out a better number that isn’t entirely arbitrary. The issue isn’t the number.
The issue is the mechanism by which that number can be enforced.
If we agree smartphones have become essential infrastructure, needed for the modern economy to function, we should not allow just 2 companies to have such power over it.
What makes people uncomfortable about this though, is that Apple has really done nothing wrong to get here. It’s just that their product and the App Store concept they popularized became so successful, that it’s now essential to modern life.
For the people arguing against regulation, I totally understand the uncomfortable feeling that creates.
This analogy only works if Walmart had a contract with 50% of Americans to buy everything from Walmart only and nowhere else. Those people would not be allowed to even grow their own tomatoes in their gardens, unless they pay Walmart $99 per year for that privilege.
It should be worth it to Apple to review and host these apps just to benefit the platform which leads to users purchasing their products. The current $99 fee I imagine covers their costs to review and host most of these types.
Screened, primarily to be in agreement with Apple's business interests. The user's concerns (privacy, functionality, avoiding other types of malware) are given far less (inadequate) consideration. Worse, they are lulled into a false sense of security due to such memes.
And yet, Apple runs their own digitsl bookstore... since there’s no way to remove 30% revenue from apple’s own venture, they’re using a monopoly position to monopolize another market.
Oh, but Apple isn’t a monopoly because there’s Android.
Why did we think Microsoft was a monopoly? You could always buy a Mac and avoid the MS tax. But in the end the courts decided that MS was a monopoly unfairly restraining trade. We’ll have to see how this turns out. But by not allowing other app stores, Apple has put themselves at risk here.
p.s. Right to Repair laws ought to make it illegal for Apple to prevent users from installing third-party software on the iPhone. This talk of them being some sort of "monopoly" is totally irrelevant.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor....
They had 94% market share in 1990's. They actually invested in Apple to keep them from going under.
By the definition of 100% market share, Microsoft wasn’t a monopoly, and they argued this in court. They argued that Netscape was on a level playing field because, like AOL, they could carpet bomb the country with install disks, while MS could include their browser on 90+% of new computers sold.
You can still buy Kindle books on iOS using Mobile Safari so there is that.
Buying games on PC now means that you have to install 5 different app stores which are usually slow, buggy and not that well written cross-platform code (pretty much like Fortnite itself).
Tencent is also 40% shareholder in Epic, and there has been criticism on Epic sending user data back to China.
> In early December 2018, Epic Games announced that it would open a digital storefront to challenge Steam by using a 12% revenue split rather than Steam's 30%.[20] Epic also said that it would not impose digital rights management (DRM) restrictions on games sold through its platform.[20] The store opened days later, on December 6, 2018, as part of the Game Awards, with a handful of games and a short list of upcoming titles.[21][22] The store was open for macOS and Windows platforms before expanding to Android and other platforms.[20] Epic aims to release a storefront for Android devices, bypassing the Google Play Store, where it will similarly only take a 12% cut compared to Google's 30%. While Apple, Inc.'s monopoly on iOS currently makes it impossible for Epic to release an App Store there, analysts believe that if Google reacts to Epic's App Store by reducing their cut, Apple will be pressured to follow suit.
Epic should sell App Store gift cards.
> I think Epic's real motivation here is to run their own App Store
Yeah, you're right. That is the outcome that we want. We want multiple stores on iOS. I thought advocates for this position had been really clear, but maybe we haven't been clear enough.
For the record, we want there to be multiple app stores on iOS.
> build a bigger moat and get the profits themselves
You're worried that Epic's store is going to eventually overrun Apple's and then Epic will somehow prevent other stores from being installed on iOS devices? You're worried that we'll get a bigger moat than literally not being able to run any code on the device that doesn't pass through Apple's review process?
What on earth would that theoretical bigger moat even look like?
> and get the profits themselves (12% cut, 5% if you use Unreal Engine)
I want to follow up on this in the context of your worry about moats. We live in a world where Apple has complete control over the app ecosystem, and you're frightened that another company might get control and... offer better terms than we have right now?
What specifically is the horror scenario that you're frightened of?
> They also make exclusive deals, where the games can only bought in their store for 6-12mo.
I can only imagine how upset you're going to be when you learn about how Apple Arcade works.
> Tencent is also 40% shareholder in Epic
Apple actively censors thousands of apps in China from the app store right now. You are worried about accidentally funding censorship through indirect means, and your response to that is to directly take the side of one of the censors.
Right, and the rest of us don't want that, and I also don't want games or apps that don't adhere to Apple's rules. You want another option of App Stores because you want don't want to pay for the user base that Apple created and maintains. You want to embed permanent location tracking in your apps, abuse user data, and not have to have your crappy practices out in the open when Apple shows the "nutrition scorecard" for your app.
That's not what I want on my iPhone. If your app doesn't conform to the App Store, then that's your problem, not mine. I'll vote with my dollars here. I want the iPhone just the way it is, even if that means fewer apps from bad actors.
> We live in a world where Apple has complete control over the app ecosystem, and you're frightened that another company might get control and... offer better terms than we have right now?
Yes that's exactly what I want. I want Apple to have complete control over the ecosystem. They've earned my complete trust.
Also, notice that FB has done everything possible to gather information. Frankly, the NSA should just hire FB to do their work - it'b be faster and cheaper.
Locking stuff down is hard. Doing it with multiple app stores will be impossible.
Honest question, what do you lose by other people having the option?
If developers have a choice of app stores, then users have to install ALL app stores if they want access to the entire market. This happened with streaming services as well: when Netflix was the only prominent one, only that subscription was enough. Now you also need Amazon, Hulu, etc.
Nobody forces anyone into interaction with Carnegie Steel. People want to use their steel because they know they can benefit from it, financially big. And they purchase it voluntarily by the most fair means of it, by trading their money in exchange for the steel under the rules that are mentioned prior the transaction takes place.
That isn't what a monopoly is.
You didn't have access to the entire market when Netflix was the only store. You had access to Netflix's market, and all of the other shows that are currently being funded by competitors didn't exist.
You could still use only Netflix today if you wanted to. The only difference is that now you are aware of what you are missing.
How many developers have consciously chosen to abandon the entire mobile market because of how toxic it is, because of how tailored the market is to a very specific sub-genre of mass-market apps and games? How many developers have abandoned iOS because their games touched on political or serious topics that Apple decided weren't suitable for their store? Many of us are not interested in creating the types of apps that thrive on the current mobile app stores, so we've abandoned the mobile market entirely.
When you can only see a tiny part of the world, you think that you have access to all of it. Once the walls get taken down and you realize how big the world is, then you realize how much of it you didn't have.
I completely sympathize with the frustration of not being able to get access to some of this stuff. I won't sign up for Netflix because of their DRM and anti-consumer practices. There are some shows I can't watch because of that. Trust me, I get the pain.
But having only one streaming platform forever would have been worse. So much of the original content that's coming out on Netflix only exists because Netflix had to compete. There are really good shows that are HBO/Hulu/Disney+ originals. I want that media to exist, even if I can't personally get at it right now.
Then you could personally keep using a single app store and enjoy the non-monopolistic prices.
Look at how Netflix is still raising prices even with less content.
If the only people arguing about this lawsuit fell into either my camp or yours (ericmay's), I'd be a lot less irritated about this whole debate.
I fundamentally disagree with you, but at least your arguments are relatively internally consistent. At least I understand where you're coming from.
Give me a hundred people saying, "I like Apple being a dictator", just get rid of all the awful arguments about how, "there is no right side, and both of them are in the wrong."
I couldn't care less whether or not people like Epic in particular. If you spend all of your time getting picky about who can and can't advocate for you, then eventually people will stop advocating for you altogether.
Then don't install them? But I fail to see why you (or Apple) should be in a position to tell other users what they can install or not.
>You want another option of App Stores because you want don't want to pay for the user base that Apple created and maintains.
lolwat Honestly, I don't even know what this is supposed to mean.
>You want to embed permanent location tracking in your apps, abuse user data, and not have to have your crappy practices out in the open when Apple shows the "nutrition scorecard" for your app.
This is a typical "think of the children" argument once more. Nobody forces you to install that tracking shit. You're free to not use apps that do that - e.g. get your apps from the Apple App Store, or make your own app if there is no such tracking free alternative. But those Apple App Store approved apps you seem to be so fond of... they do track you already ;)
>That's not what I want on my iPhone.
Then don't put use it on your iPhone.
>Yes that's exactly what I want. I want Apple to have complete control over the ecosystem. They've earned my complete trust.
Good for you. Nobody is stopping you from exercising your trust and only use Apple and/or Apple-approved software in the future.
Because it's their platform, they created it, they grew it, they paid for its development out of their pocket, and they offered it as a unique market proposition that satisfies millions of users around the world. Apple doesn't force anyone into their platform, everyone involved are there voluntarily and solely because they know that it's beneficial for them to be on the platform.
> Right, and the rest of us don't want that, and I also don't want games or apps that don't adhere to Apple's rules.
Why do you care? If you don't want to install a third-party app store, then don't. The games available on Apple's store will continue to adhere to Apple's rules, and if you want that curation, you still get it.
> They've earned my complete trust.
This blind devotion to the Apple Way is baffling, especially considering how Apple-approved apps are not free of the tracking and user-data abuse you (correctly!) rail against.
Apple users care because if non-App Store distribution methods are banned, then developers are forced to go through Apple's process to get access to them. You can see complaints around this thread about how bad Epic's store on PC is. On iOS, they're forced to use Apple's purchase UI, subscription rules, privacy rules, etc.
If Apple's goal was protecting their consumers, they could easily roll back the contested parts of their policy while protecting consumers AND still make a profit.
And if the only policies that these developers had to legitimately complain about were the ones that protect users, they'd be laughed out of town. But that doesn't seem to be the case.
I've been seeing this argument a lot and it makes the assumption that allowing alternative app stores has no impact on people who choose not to use them. I don't think this is true.
An app developer may decide to only list their app on an alternative store because they pay lower fees and they can handle payments themselves. As a user you now need to choose between not using the app or giving your credit card information to the app developer you may not trust.
If you get value out of the current App Store rules, like the person you replied to, then there is absolutely a cost to allowing alternative stores.
But then this is competitive pressure for Apple to charge lower fees and allow apps to handle payments themselves, at which point the app would be back in Apple's store because the customer prefers to buy it from there. Everyone benefits (except Apple).
Meanwhile if you don't want to give the app your credit card number, you still don't have to. Refuse until they use Apple's payment method. If most users share your unwillingness then developers will still have to use a payment method you do trust. If they don't, what right do you have to constrain the choices of the other users?
No it isn't. The next moment Apple significantly lowers its comission, the same people will start whining about Apple "dumping the market" "to sink its competitors", and that it should be prosecuted under the same flawed anti-trust legislation. Been there, seen that: if your rates are too high you are a monopolist; if your rates are low you are dumping; and if your rates are the same as of your competitors then there's a "collusion".
I’m not sure what your point is here. That antitrust litigation is futile or counterproductive? The threat of it seems to be having positive effects already, looking at the front page of HN: https://techcrunch.com/2020/08/17/apple-expands-its-independ...
> The threat of it seems to be having positive effects already, looking at the front page of HN
it depends on your reliance on that kind of services and varies greatly among the userbase. I'm using Apple since 2014, I've never needed to use any of these services, and I would prefer to have a device that is hard to disassemble and is cheaper to produce without a loss in quality.
We know it from history for sure, that "bigness" of an economic player is not a problem. There was no anti-trust legislation prior 1913, and Standard Oil was lowering prices for their oil and kerosine every year in order to compete with emerging oil wells developers, which kept popping up dispite Standard's dominance. [1] Customers, large and small, were benefiting along the way. But notice how governments-coordinated OPEC influences the prices and ability to enter the market:
The problem is, Apple isn't that -- it doesn't have a duty to the user, it has a duty to Apple shareholders, so what it does will be for their benefit and not yours unless they happen to coincide. Which they won't in enough cases that you don't actually benefit on net. It's not in your interest to have developers paying 30% and destroying the marginal developer and providing other developers with fewer resources to make better apps, or to have apps rejected just because they compete with Apple's, or deterred from being developed because developers become unwilling to risk their investment being wiped out by the opaque rejection process.
Meanwhile if you want the purchasing co-op, go set it up. So that it's using the market power of all the store's customers to get concessions from developers (and Apple), but is a co-op owned by and acting in the interests of the users instead of a for-profit monopoly acting in the interests of itself. Unless Apple is preventing anyone from creating that, right?
This is literally the point of allowing healthy competition. If Apple wants these games on their app store, they should offer terms that are competitive with the hypothetical third-party app stores.
You talk about developers if this is the only concern, but Apple is ultimately deciding it wants to not give money to certain social concerns or movements it doesn't like based on it's whim, and no corporation should have the power to do that for something as important as half of mobile telecoms.
You need to choose between not using the app, or buying a new phone and giving a developer you may not trust your credit card information
Furthermore, Walmart has placed restrictions on all keyboards purchased from their stores. All online purchases made using their keyboards will now funnel 30% of the payment to Walmart.
Thank you for your business and absolute trust in our secure business model that we operate for your benefit.
> You want to embed permanent location tracking in your apps, abuse user data, and not have to have your crappy practices out in the open when Apple shows the "nutrition scorecard" for your app.
How about stopping theses practice on the OS side of the device? Apple already do that there... I agree completely that it's crazy when an OS allow stuff that we don't want to allow, it's not curation that solve this, it's actually a secure system that does.
Please stop speaking for others. I would certainly like to have the ability to install other sources for apps. Since I am part of "the rest of us", for any kind of "us" that came to my mind while reading your posting ("iPhone users" or "Apple customers" or "HN readers"), your statement is patently false.
> That's not what I want on my iPhone.
Then don't install additional stores. I also don't want most of the apps currently available in Apple's app store on my iPhone, but I'm far from demanding that they are to be banned and other people who want to use them should be prevented from doing so.
Also it's too sad you conspicuously skipped over danShumways question regarding the "bigger moat" - because I indeed would be interested in what moat you are imagining there, too.
Same to you and the GP here. And last I checked there aren’t a lot of customers really complaining about the App Store. It’s just big companies who, although they could have done this years ago, are now going against Apple’s customer protection because it degrades their crappy business practices.
> Then don’t install additional stores
Then buy a different phone?
I want any app that doesn’t follow Apple’s guidelines to be completely banned. Goodbye Epic. Nice knowing you. Don’t care. I don’t want apps spying on me, engaging in shitty business practices, scamming customers, and doing bad things. Apple is working to protect my privacy and safety. They’re not perfect, but that’s why I buy an iPhone and I want it to stay that way. If I wanted another App Store I’d buy a different phone, like you should.
It would be like having to buy a different laptop to use Amazon or Ebay.
Ok. Now what if I were to tell you that you are perfectly capable of doing this, by simply not installing other app stores.
You dont need to metaphorically break into my house, and force me, at gun point to follow your rules as well.
You can do what you want with your phone, even if other people are able to do what they want with their own phone.
> If I wanted another App Store
Then just don't install the other app store? You have no said why you need to force me to do something, in order for you to get what you want.
While some people here might fall for this simple propaganda, I doubt the courts will.
It is totally expected of Epic that they will at the same time make the claim about "freedom" and "choice" while signing exclusive deals so that customers are required to install the Epic store if they wish to play certain games.
If the real issue is my freedom, then let me play Fortnite on the App store thanks. But it's not about my freedom. It's about your $$$.
You're certainly free to do so, and free to say whatever bullshit you think will help you, but you're not going to get a free pass from everybody here.
>What specifically is the horror scenario that you're frightened of?
Really? What sort of horror scenarios have happened with game installers on PCs and Android? Root kits. Spyware. Password capture. Camera activation.
And you know this, so all you are doing is letting us know that you think we are stupid.
A surprising number of people on Hackernews don't understand how Apple Arcade works.
This isn't just specific to the mobile market. As an Open advocate and critic of DRM, it's been frustrating to watch gamers suddenly get very concerned about store choice and exclusives over the past few years, after over a decade of watching them dismiss the same arguments against Steam.
I'm not going to read too far into that inconsistency, because I feel like doing so would skirt HN policies. But I will say that if you're worried about exclusives, giving more platform control to users and developers weakens exclusives, it doesn't strengthen them.
> then let me play Fortnite on the App store thanks
Epic didn't take Fortnite off of the App store. If it's about your freedom, then talk to the people who did take it off.
> What sort of horror scenarios have happened with game installers on PCs and Android? Root kits. Spyware. Password capture. Camera activation.
If you're going to try and argue to me that the games PC market would be better if we had fewer stores, then I need to see some seriously better arguments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24153897
I do not believe reality in any way backs up the argument that giving users control over what code runs on their devices has hurt the games market or made it worse for consumers -- even with the increased risk of bad actors.
If you hang around gaming forums you'll see this echoed plenty. If I could buy every single game ever through Steam I would without hesitation. I don't want Origin or the Epic store but I don't get the choice.
I mean this isn't a super uncommon sentiment. Everyone has a preference but not everyone agrees. But regardless fragmentation hurts everyone.
I would be totally fine with multiple stores on iOS devices on the condition that every app is available on every store for the same price-ish (like you can't snub a store by making it 1000x because that effectively takes away choice).
I know that some gamers feel this way, but I wholeheartedly disagree. Epic's entry into the market has been good for the PC games industry[0]. We have more games now from more developers covering more diverse genres. We've even managed to pull a few exclusives off of consoles and back onto PC.
As to your choice, I bring this up in another comment[1], but people should focus less on the percentage of the market they have access to, and more on the overall size of the market itself.
You do have a choice, you could buy all of your games through Steam and ignore the games on every other store. The only difference is that now you know what you're missing. Before, you couldn't see the games that weren't being made or ported.
Yes, it stinks to have some games exclusive to one storefront. I understand that, as someone who refuses to install DRM on my computers, I have been struggling to deal with Steam-exclusive games for a long time. I know the pain.
But having a diverse market of storefronts means that there are a ton of new games that exist that wouldn't otherwise exist. And even if you only get access to some of those games, that's still better than having none of them.
Now, if you want to talk about ending exclusives entirely, I'm not opposed to that goal. But a diverse market is a prerequisite for a federated market. How do you feel today about the Android games that don't come to iOS specifically because of Apple's terms? How do you feel about the exclusives Apple is signing for the Apple Arcade right now? Having one storefront doesn't get rid of exclusives; it just means you've traded an exclusive storefront problem for an exclusive market problem.
[0]: https://www.pcworld.com/article/3487735/a-year-in-the-epic-g...
Again, I understand the pain. I am currently only running Linux. If a game doesn't run in Linux without DRM, I can't play it. I know as well as anyone how bad it feels to see a game that I want to play, and can't, because the developer thought that Linux wasn't a big enough market to support.
Even so, it is better that there be a broad market where I can't access all of it, then there be a narrow market that only fits my criteria and can't grow. Some of the games that don't work on Linux will get ported later, or people will figure out how to get them working in Wine. I want those games to exist because eventually I'll get access to them.
> How is Epic Games going to afford doing projects like proton
They won't. Other platforms like Steam will do that. How is Steam going to afford to get old DOS games working on modern computers without DRM? They won't, GoG does that.
The market is better served when there are lots of people doing lots of different things. It's those conditions that force companies to innovate and find new market niches that were previously underserved.
This isn’t a good argument. Epic did something with the intention of getting removed from the store. Sure, Apple was the one who removed them, but Epic violates Apple’s TOS.
I personally don't enjoy the experience of managing my PC games in 5 different libraries which all log out almost every day, need to be updated every week, push ads, newsletters, free stuff, crashes etc. So I'm not worried how Epic store would somehow overrun App Store, I'm worried how it would degrade the user experience. If people want to side load apps, they can use Android. But even on Android, most people are happy using the Google Play. As a consumer there isn't much benefit for multiple app stores, since every app store will be essentially exclusive to another, so don't really have more choice, just more app stores to manage and get the apps from.
My point was that Epic tries to make this some kind of crusade of freedom and developer rights, while their clear intention is actually get in to kingmaker position themselves that they can strong arm developers and competition to play by their rules (which they're already trying to do on the PC market). This fight is different from Hey's fight, who just wanted to have their app in the store and criticized the rules and way Apple manages the store. So I have very little sympathy for Epic in this and I hope the fail.
But, do you enjoy having 5 times as many games? Do you enjoy having a ton of games from GoG updated and running on modern Windows? Do you enjoy having DRM-free options for many indie titles? Do you enjoy that it's at least possible now to buy some console-exclusive games like Journey for the PC?
People get really bent out of shape about the idea that sticking to one storefront means they might need to skip games. But getting rid of the storefronts doesn't mean you'll get all of the games. It means those games that were made possible because of the other storefronts won't exist.
You are already skipping games on iOS, because those games aren't being made.
> Epic tries to make this some kind of crusade of freedom and developer rights, while their clear intention is actually get in to kingmaker position
Correct, and my point was that these are not exclusive goals. Allowing multiple stores to fight over users is explicitly the outcome that we want.
It's not a surprise to anyone advocating for developer rights that Epic wants to make a store and compete with Apple, because that is what we want them to do. None of us care about whether or not Epic is going to make any money in the process.
> which they're already trying to do on the PC market
I know that gamers hate Epic right now, but understand that when you look at the overall market and you talk to the developers themselves, Epic has been unambiguously good for the PC games market.
You want to talk about kingmakers -- it is good that the entire success or failure of a PC game doesn't need to rely on Steam's decisions. It is good that Steam is being forced to negotiate better terms for developers right now. It is good that Epic is funding indie games that otherwise would not have been made.
I don't like the exclusives either, neither as a developer nor as a gamer. But the exclusives are nothing compared to the amount of good Epic is doing right now for the PC game's market. If you're an indie developer and suddenly you can halve the cut that storefronts are taking from you? That's huge.
But, to circle back around to my main point:
> So I have very little sympathy for Epic
You don't need to have sympathy, you need to have self-preservation instincts. You don't get the luxury of choosing who the champion is to take on Apple, nobody who fits your moral criteria is powerful enough to do the work.
But it doesn't. It makes it worse. I can't use cloud gaming services. I can't buy an ebook on Amazon or a comic on Comixology, without having to guess that I need to go to a website and buy it.
These are all bits of user experience that that are flat out better on Android, and the bad UI is directly caused by Apple's sole control of the app store.
But that pales in comparison to the rampant content censorship Apple causes (see Instagram admitting the clumsy, terrible policies that it implements are directly due to the Apple), or the geopolitical blocks that it causes on apps to help the populace of Hong Kong, or the apps that it permits (and blocks counter-software) to enable the misogynistic control of women's free movement in Saudi Arabia.
> As a consumer there isn't much benefit for multiple app stores, since every app store will be essentially exclusive to another, so don't really have more choice, just more app stores to manage and get the apps from.
There is a huge benefit to customers for multiple app stores - cheaper pricing, more competition on features and navigation, and most importantly editorial differences about what content will be allowed in the store. Don't agree with Apple's editorial censorship of code in the app store? Go and use someone else.
Apple will even be better off - without the coddling of the App Store being used to prop up it's poorer products it will actually have to make them good or have them die, much to it's long term benefit than turfing out poor quality software and the reputational damage that causes which has happened far too often recently.
Who is „we“? I know a lot of users that don‘t want or don‘t feel a need for other app stores. Of course, most developers would be glad to get alternatives or make more money.
> You're worried that Epic's store is going to eventually overrun Apple's and then Epic will somehow prevent other stores from being installed on iOS devices?
Not the original poster, but I would be worried that alternate app stores would as well lead to even more apps not honoring the user rights, spying on Location all the time, selling and monetizing user data and pushing even more IAP crap. Epic isn‘t really known as the Robin Hood of user rights and promptly, Spotify and Facebook, two other big players with black spots on their vests, called for the same. I have a hard time believing that everything Epic wants is just beneficial for the users.
No no no no no no!!!!!!
It's this type of thinking that has caused me to have more freaking messaging and video apps on my phone so I can talk to everyone: Zoom, Skype, Meet, Meetings, Facetime, Messenger, Chime,...etc, etc. etc.
NO. I ABSOLUTELY do not want that. Freaking nightmare.
When that happens I ditch my iPhone and buy a flip phone.
Seriously - stop the insanity. There is no "choice" when we need to have every alternative installed in order to do the things we need to do. That's not choice - it's insanity.
But actually, there is a big difference - I can buy jeans anywhere. I can buy Levi jeans anywhere.
If I had to go to Macy’s so that I could get a shirt (with no alternative), and then had to go to Nordstrom to get socks (with no alternative), and then..... then yeah, that would be crippling.
There is a reason amazon and Walmart are so powerful - you can get anything in one stop.
Bundling is important. It’s why people buy Comcast xfinity cable + internet or have all their family on one cell phone plan - it’s reduces effort, stress, and cognitive load.
Apple vs Android is good choice. Having to go to ten app stores to get my apps is not - it’s just a pain in the butt masquerading as “choice”.
It's not when they actually have to compete on price. Then you pick the one which offers you the lowest price for what you're looking for.
Both apps are free. Now you have to download another App Store to download the messaging app.
Price has no bearing here whatsoever.
I tell the friend to call, text or email me. Price doesn't have any bearing because the market on messaging apps has bottomed out, in part due to Apple's app store policies.
And nobody checks email frequently enough.
But the point was a simple example. Clearly you seem to enjoy complexity more than me.
That's a bit extreme. It's less of a nightmare, and more of an annoyance, that is paid in exchange for competition and innovation.
Imagine the former. No thanks.
I'm discovering a number of people here who see the world very differently than me. I would have taken it as a given that most people would agree that it would be healthy for the US market overall if we shook up the payment industry and got some new options.
A lot of Visa/Mastercard's terms for businesses are really bad. There are entire industries that are being pushed out of the market right now. Not to mention that these cards come with a tremendous amount of user tracking that's basically impossible to opt out of if you want to buy anything online.
That's why people are throwing everything at the wall from Bitcoin to GNU Taler trying desperately to find any kind of Open alternative that might work for online micropayments.
The problem is that if there are multiple app stores, it encourages a race-to-the-bottom for the app stores -- why go through Apple's store with all its vetting if you can release to the Epic store instead?
So, yes, the worry is exactly that another company might offer better terms to developers -- because sometimes, those terms don't matter to users (e.g. the cut between the app store and the developer), but other times, those terms are absolutely at a cost to the users.
If Epic has a way of offering multiple stores, while preventing that race-to-the-bottom from impacting the user experience, it'd be wonderful. But that doesn't seem to be what Epic is pushing for; Epic seems to be pushing for their own profit at a cost to Apple (which is fine, IMHO -- it's just business) and to the iOS ecosystem (which is much less fine, IMHO).
Another issue is trust - who knows what google does with your data, their business model includes exploiting your personal data, Apple has a vested interest in keeping your personal data secure and doesn't keep the keys to it - its their business model.
These two are enough for me, theres also a lot more reports of android apps with exploits - a google turns up a lot of them, less so with iPhone, and apple reacts if there is. Maybe these issues have been addressed in android, if so it's not something Google appears serious about, if they were then they'd be advertising how secure their phones are and how they don't touch your data - apple is very serious about keeping my data personal and has invested a lot of their business integrity in that.
Edit: tl;dr - googles business model is built around exploiting your personal data, apples is built around keeping your personal data secure
Unless you're Chinese, when it's not.
Absolutely not - that's the entire point of this action. Apple's "standards" are to block upgrade pricing and force developers down a path of microtransactions. Do we really want that to be carried over to other stores? Do we want other stores to have to live with Apple's decision to block apps to help dissidents in Hong Kong or the Middle East communicate?
A single point of decision-making on code always leads to terrible geopolitical outcomes. Always. That is the important part of what is happening here.
Apple is one half of a duopoly. People keep on bringing up these 'gotcha' arguments about, "how would you feel if Walmart was forced to stock everybody's stuff?" And that ignores the fact that it would be a serious problem if there were only two supermarkets that I could buy from. I would feel exactly the same way if one to two companies had the kind of stranglehold over physical supermarket goods as Apple has over the mobile app ecosystem.
A physical duopoly of that scale would very clearly call for either breaking up the owners or regulating them to ensure that everyone had equal access to the market. Scenarios like that are why we have antitrust in the first place, particularly around the kind of vertical integration that Apple advocates hold in such high regard.
I don't think the people who put forward these arguments have really thought them through. A duopoly is different from a house.
If we could travel back 35-40 years through history, I have no doubt there'd be no shortage of people arguing that Bell's vertical integration of the Internet was the very reason why their service was so good, and that allowing people to hook their own 'unapproved' answering machines to their phone lines would just ruin the entire network, and that allowing one company to own all of the railroads would just mean that shipping became that much simpler and reliable for consumers.
So be careful about making analogies to the physical world when you're supporting Apple, because people might just take them at face value.
There are more than two platforms out there. But even if there weren't, the fact that there's only N things in the world doesn't make your random claim on someone else's property any more valid. App Store is Apple's property. Build your own and host whoever you want there, but firstly you have to convince others that it is more valuable than the popular alternative. And if you fail to do that, it's not necessarily because the alternative is a monopoly, it may be and more likely is because your product is inferior.
> And that ignores the fact that it would be a serious problem if there were only two supermarkets that I could buy from.
Do you know the reason why it never happens though?
Your examples from the past just demonstrate that no monopoly exists without a government acting as a gatekeeper, like it was in the case of Bell and Union Pacific, and even then there was a place for successful competitors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Northern_Railway_(U.S.)
> So be careful about making analogies to the physical world when you're supporting Apple, because people might just take them at face value.
likewise, learn what you are advocating for, because mere quantity of stuff out there is never a justification for taking it over (and neither is your convenience), which my analogy was all about.
Such as? If I'm making a mobile game, what other phones can I realistically target other than Android and iPhone? You don't really think that the Librem 5 is a real competitor right now in this space, do you?
> because mere quantity of stuff out there is never a justification for taking it over
All of US antitrust law is based on the idea that the quantity of providers in a market matters. If you're arguing that we should get rid of antitrust entirely, fine. But be upfront about that, that's not a mainstream position to take.
> no monopoly exists without a government acting as a gatekeeper
I'm not going to derail things too much here, but I do have at least a few Libertarian bones inside of me. To the extent that I am sympathetic to your argument here, I would question why you think that Apple is different.
Apple's dominant market position exists in no small part based on its exploitation of copyright, the DMCA, import laws, and heavy lawsuits over trademark and cross-compatible app runtimes, all of which only work because of artificial government intervention into the market.
If you want to go full Libertarian, I'm not necessarily opposed to the idea, but then I'm also going to go full Libertarian and ask what your views are on abolishing copyright. Apple might not have such a stranglehold over the market if it was legal for other US companies to build iPhone emulators, hackintoshes, to distribute jailbreaks, and to build their own compatible phones that could run both iOS apps and apps from other markets.
If we're all OK with making that stuff legal, then I'm OK with dropping antitrust. If we're not OK with making that stuff legal, then I'm keeping antitrust. I'm OK with either having government regulation or not having it, but no halvsies.
Any phone that runs WebGL. Inconvenient? Tough life, why does Apple have to do anything about it for you?
> All of US antitrust law is based on the idea that the quantity of providers in a market matters.
US antitrust laws are deeply flawed and in no way serve the purpose they were enacted for. If your product (subjectively) costs too high you are a monopolist; if your product costs too low (hello IE) you are dumping the market; and if your product costs approximately the same as of your competitors then there's a "market collusion". You cannot win in this system if you are a successful economic player. The bottom line is this though - there was no time in history where monopoly existed without government's sanction and gate-keeping, and Union Pacific was a prime example of it.
> If you want to go full Libertarian
I don't as I'm not one of them, which doesn't negate the points that I've made before.
> Apple's dominant market position exists in no small part based on its exploitation of copyright, the DMCA, import laws, and heavy lawsuits over trademark and cross-compatible app runtimes, all of which only work because of artificial government intervention into the market.
Wasn't it the government that enacted them? Why asking for it from Apple?
> I'm also going to go full Libertarian and ask what your views are on abolishing copyright.
I'm not libertarian; if you are just asking, I'm for IP in principle, whether it's modern copyright laws or something else is another story.
> If we're all OK with making that stuff legal, then I'm OK with dropping antitrust. If we're not OK with making that stuff legal, then I'm keeping antitrust. I'm OK with either having government regulation or not having it, but no halvsies
with all respect, it really is a funny position. Everything you mentioned here is a product of federal legislature, yet you want to blame an economic player that acts according to the law, in a system that is designed to eventually punish successful.
Impossible. There's a difference.
There are no phones on the market where the web is a comparable platform to native mobile apps. There could be in a better world, but there aren't in this world. Talk to me in a couple of years when we have native storage ironed out and maybe that'll be different. Or talk to me in 5-10 years when Librem 5 has its issues worked out, and maybe things will be different then.
> why does Apple have to do anything about it for you?
It doesn't, not unless Apple enjoys the benefit of extensive government regulations that allow it to block and sue the competitors that do want to do something about it for me. Regulations like, for example, the DMCA.
Live by the government, die by the government. Companies don't get to pretend to be free-market Capitalists only when it's convenient for them.
> Everything you mentioned here is a product of federal legislature, yet you want to blame an economic player
No, I just want consistency. I want the government to get in the way or to get out of the way.
It is infeasible to get rid of antitrust unless we're also going to also get rid of the regulation and interference that keeps the market from working the way it was intended.
Getting rid of the regulations that protect us from the current smartphone duopoly while keeping the regulations that caused the smartphone duopoly isn't free market Capitalism, it's Feudalism. I don't have patience for an argument that it's a bridge too far for the government to stop Apple from exploiting developers/consumers, but perfectly fine for Apple to use the government to reinforce their market position.
I'm sympathetic to anti-regulation arguments and the people who make them, but I am not sympathetic to pro-monopoly arguments.
If I name you the companies that release WebGL games I would state impossible? Let's not get that low in this discussion.
> There are no phones on the market where the web is a comparable platform to native mobile apps.
Comparable based on what criteria? Oftentimes I wish companies stop bother me with their "bug fixes and performance improvements" every other day and provide a sleek Web experience instead. So far I just hear how you are saying that alternatives do exist, but they suck, hence Apple's ability to charge 30% on top of everything is a viable business model, because their platform doesn't suck that much. No issue here.
> Getting rid of the regulations that protect us from the current smartphone duopoly while keeping the regulations that caused the smartphone duopoly isn't free market Capitalism, it's Feudalism.
If you make this claim, then it's on you to prove that in the absence of regulations you won't be able to enter the market with your new competing platform. Apple with all its money is in no position to dictate the way you or anyone else establish a new ecosystem based on open standards and free licenses.
Apple is the reason why web experiences on iOS suck. They deliberately lag on web standards so that their browser experience is inferior to native apps. None of this accidental.
And no, it's not just inconvenience. There are things on iOS that are literally impossible to do in WebGL. Reliable, persistent offline storage on iOS is impossible to do from a web app. Reliable persistent login on iOS is impossible to do from a web app. Notifications are impossible to do on iOS from a web app. The APIs have not been added to the platform.
It's not inconvenient -- you literally can't do them. It is not a comparable platform, because Apple makes sure that it will never be a comparable platform. It's not that Apple made an amazing native experience and the web couldn't keep up. The reason the web can't keep up on iOS is because Apple deliberately hobbles its mobile browser.
> Apple with all its money is in no position to dictate the way you or anyone else establish a new ecosystem based on open standards and free licenses.
https://venturebeat.com/2019/08/16/apples-corellium-lawsuit-...
Imagine a world where I could build a phone that was compatible with every iOS app and Android app, where users didn't have to choose in advance which ecosystem they wanted to be a part of.
Imagine a world where I could build a competitor to iOS that allowed users to port the apps that they had already bought to their new phones outside of Apple's ecosystem, rather than spending hundreds of dollars buying all of them a second time.
Imagine a world where I could build and sell my own hardware that dual-booted iOS and Android.
Imagine a world where I could sell a TV/Phone that would play DRM-encumbered content from Apple devices and iTunes.
That would be a real free market. In the current market, any of those competitors would be sued into oblivion.
> If you make this claim, then it's on you to prove that in the absence of regulations you won't be able to enter the market with your new competing platform.
Give people a real free market, and then we'll find out whether or not in the absence of regulations they can compete.
You keep on repeating the exact same argument, that regulation is the problem. I'm not sure that you're following what I'm saying. All I'm advocating for is that we get rid of all of the regulation. If you have a problem with regulation, then fine, let's get rid of it, including the DMCA.
It doesn't sound like you have a problem with market regulation and interference though. It sounds like you have a problem with a very small subset of regulations.
I've never mentioned web experience on iOS, let's not add words into my replies for the convenience of your argument. Everyone is free to choose any other platform with a better web experience and to build on top of it, with all open standards and free licenses in mind. Apple won't be able to interfere.
> Imagine a world where I could build a phone that was compatible with every iOS app and Android app, where users didn't have to choose in advance which ecosystem they wanted to be a part of.
Build Linux phone instead and make it compatible with Android. Or a Windows-compatible phone on ReactOS. Why are you so fixated on Apple and iOS? At this point it just looks as a random wish that Apple implements your ideas. Sorry, no one is obliged to implement your wishes as you see them fit.
> Give people a real free market, and then we'll find out whether or not in the absence of regulations they can compete.
Just read how commerce existed prior 1913.
You don't understand what I'm saying, and I don't know how to say it any more clearly.
I'm not asking Apple to do anything. I want to be able to do things myself without Apple using the government to attack my business.
This is worse than the Right to Repair debates -- people accuse us of trying to force Apple to fix our phones for free when in reality we just want to stop Apple from suing everyone who imports a 3rd-party battery.
Just let people compete, that's all I'm asking. Apple doesn't need to lift a finger. Let other people build emulators, port apps, display content, and make compatible phones. Apple doesn't need to fix my problems, but they shouldn't be able to use the government to stop other people from fixing my problems.
> Apple won't be able to interfere.
Again, I don't know if this is on purpose or not, but I just listed a few of the ways that Apple can interfere with Open standards, including suing competitors that use adversarial operability to get around network effects in an entrenched market.
> I've never mentioned web experience on iOS [...] Everyone is free to choose any other platform
We're talking in circles, but just to repeat -- when you say "any other platforms", that means Android or iOS. Those are the only two viable mobile platforms that exist right now. And good luck building a third when users have invested hundreds of dollars into closed app ecosystems that it will be illegal for you to interoperate with.
If you know a way to get around the problems listed at https://whatwebcando.today/, by all means let me know, I'd love to build some offline webapps for my phone. If you know a way to get reliable disk storage from a website on any mobile platform, please let me know, it would open up a world of possibilities for me as a developer.
But don't pretend the web is an escape hatch when its mobile support depends entirely on the two companies who have the most to gain from keeping its capabilities behind those of native apps.
> Just read how commerce existed prior 1913.
You keep trying to phrase this like I'm secretly being pro-regulation in this conversation. I'm willing to concede literally every single antitrust point I've raised in the comments above, and my only condition is that we get rid of all of the regulations including copyright.
At this point, you're arguing that market regulation is bad to someone who's proposing that an alternative to antitrust might be... to get rid of all market regulation.
What is your position? Do you think market regulation is bad or good? If you don't like regulation, then what do you disagree with me on? What do you oppose about the idea of stopping the government from using copyright to interfere with the free market?
Here, how exactly does it attack your business? Is your business built around Apple ecosystem? Have you accepted their terms and conditions? there's no way to enter into any relations with Apple without accepting their terms of the services. Have you got warrants coming from Apple lawyers?
> Just let people compete, that's all I'm asking
You are free to compete, not on their platform at their cost though. For the same reason why you would refuse to give me access to your business (whatever it does) to compete with you. You cannot just freely re-interpret the definition of the market so that it fits your narrative. Market is never a private entity's platform.
> I don't know if this is on purpose or not, but I just listed a few of the ways that Apple can interfere with Open standards, including suing competitors that use adversarial operability to get around network effects in an entrenched market.
It's either open standards or inter-operability with a proprietory standard. If you don't want to get sued, either buy the license or build your own solution that doesn't require interop. There's hundreds of companies who do that regularly, they pay their fees and make money along the way. There are also businesses who do not interact with Apple in any shape or form yet are able to build their mobile solutions. Because Mobile is not "Applications for either Android or iOS", you can believe this but that doesn't make it anyhow true.
> Those are the only two viable mobile platforms that exist right now.
There was a time when they didn't exist at all, the fact that there are two now doesn't change anything. Again, all your points are about convenience to you, not about inability to create a new platform. And by the way, define "viable".
> people accuse us of trying to force Apple to fix our phones for free when in reality we just want to stop Apple from suing everyone who imports a 3rd-party battery.
are you elected to represent all of those who comment positively on that topic? I can play this game too, and "we" who oppose it neither do want any third-party battery to be presented as a genuine replacement for the original ones nor desire to have a device that is easily disassembled by third-parties. Had we wanted these features, we'd go and buy any noname Android phone.
> But don't pretend the web is an escape hatch when its mobile support depends entirely on the two companies
You have to prove that, so far it's an unsubstantiated claim. Another one, because you feel like it. The majority of people use these two platofrms not because there are no alternatives, but because it doesn't worth the effort to switch to anything else. The existing solutions already are convenient enough. Notice the difference. You may disagree with this, but again, it's just your wishes.
You will always be free to build 3rd-party products that work with and wrap around my products. I will never use the law as a cudgel to stop you from fairly competing with me. Users have an inherent right to control the devices that they own.
> You are free to compete, not on their platform at their cost though
Not asking to compete on their platform. I want to be able to compete on my platform, and I don't want Apple to tell me whether or not I'm allowed to build a platform that's compatible with iOS apps.
> If you don't want to get sued, either buy the license or build your own solution that doesn't require interop.
Why? Why can the government decide what I'm allowed to build? If I can build a solution by myself without a contract that interops with Apple's platforms, why should the government tell me I'm not allowed to do that? If I can build a device that runs iOS, why should the government say that I'm not allowed to do that?
What right does the government have to stop me from building and distributing products that solve my problems?
> [...]
This is ridiculous.
If you support regulation, then fine. Go argue about what the regulations are.
If you don't support regulation, then fine. Let's get rid of artificial government monopolies that allow companies to decide what is and isn't legal. Copyright is not a natural right.
You're taking a great many words to say that you selectively oppose regulation only when it's directed towards the protection of the consumer. If that's your position, then fine, but I'm not going to debate it, I don't think that position is logically coherent enough to debate.
No he is not. Because Apple will make a call to the people with guns (The government) Who will prevent them from doing so.
Why do you support government regulations forcing people to not do these things?
> It's either open standards or inter-operability with a proprietory standard. If you don't want to get sued
Why should Apple have these rights? Why should. the government be protecting them?
He was arguing that we should get rid of Apple's ability to sue people for these things.
Lets get rid of the regulations that allow Apple to sue anyone for any of this.
Why do you support big government regulation, that allows apple to use threats of legal violence against people?
It is notable that basically every functional democracy in the world disagrees with this statement.
If you were trying to remove the monopoly, I'd think you should start there, and then expand to other people who can prove they have their shit together. Epic let someone else use my email address to sign up for an account (and they only allow one account per email). That is serious amateur-hour territory. When they have figured out how to tie their own shoes we can talk about whether they should be in the running.
which is specifically the part that got Epic in trouble, they don't want to share revenue with Apple, and what's more they want to charge other developers a fee for the use of Epic's app store.
the thought that Apple was just going to let this hilarious ToS breach lay was all wrong, absolutely not
The Store application lets you buy games because you cannot consume them on the device, like how Amazon allows you to buy physical items but not Kindle books.
Instead of clicking icon A, I click icon B and if I get a cheaper game, all power to Epic.
I don't spend time in an app store. I spend time playing the game.
I keep all the games organized in Playnite. If I try to launch Epic games from Playnite, most of the time nothing happens. So I start the epic client and... oh look, it logged me out again. So now to play Maneater or whatever I have to log into my password manager with its complicated passphrase from a tiny HTPC keyboard, grab the password, paste it into Epic, wait for Epic to update, click the game icon again, and now it launches. Heaven forbid I actually set up 2FA, cause then I'd have to go through that too!
To say nothing of the fact that the Epic store runs like ass on a brand new third-gen six-core Ryzen CPU with an current-gen GPU and 16gigs of RAM.
Some of the other game stores behave just as bad as this... the only ones that actually seem to work reliably are Steam and GOG, and they've been around a while. Origin constantly nags about updates and "you logged in from another PC" bullshit, Rockstar can't seem to hold on to a session cookie to save its life, and the Twitch client is just a mess all around. XBOX kind of sucked in Beta but they finally fixed the worst issues there.
Multiple launchers is NOT ideal. We all have this fantasy idea that competition will make everything better but really what it results in is now we have a bunch of garbage launchers running on startup (and if you don't have fun waiting for them to update every time you launch them). Just like with streaming... competition is making everything worse
If you "don't spend time in an app store" you're either only using one or two of those launchers or you're lying. The last time things "just worked" was when Steam reigned supreme and unchallenged. (And that's not necessarily a good thing, nearly everyone knows that Valve is a good citizen solely because of management, and I have no doubt that one day that will change and Steam will suck.)
Absolutely agreed, but consider what would happen if only one of those game stores you mention were allowed to be installed on your gaming PC. Then you'd have to go through a single gatekeeper, and I bet you a bunch of the games you like just wouldn't be available at all, because they'd either have been capriciously rejected, or because their developers can't make the terms work to their satisfaction. But because this mythical single game store is the only game in town (heh), there's no recourse.
Or maybe most, or even all, of those games you play might be available on this single app store. But expect them to be worse, because their developers have to pay a middleman a larger fee for distribution, which leaves less money to build the game itself. Expect them to be missing features, because this gatekeeper makes it harder to build some features, even if it's through well-meaning policies.
It absolutely floors me that people on a site called Hacker News are praising the role of a gatekeeping corporation that locks down devices they own to the point that they don't even really own them.
The real answer is neither. Fuck all these proprietary launchers and app stores. There are other answers.... personally I feel like these platforms need to be run and controlled by a nonprofit, with a charter that holds customers' and business' needs equally without a primary duty to greedy shareholders. Either that or sideloading
edit- and I think most folks are OK with living under a good , just king. Steam is this, and many argue that Apple was this at some point in their past. Since we are all apparently too stupid to handle a truly distributed method of installing software like sideloading or old-school brick and mortar retail, we have to learn to live with a store of some kind, with all that entails. And in that case, we're OK if the platform is fair and just
> because they'd either have been capriciously rejected, or because their developers can't make the terms work to their satisfaction
edit2- this never really happened with Steam, amazingly enough. Surely there are edge cases, and there are certainly reports of Steam staff working with devs to ensure a positive release (which is a nice way of saying they have probably forced developers to alter their product), and Valve has certainly made some bad decisions (which they thankfully backed down on). But Steam was such an improvement over the old distribution model that its downsides were almost unfairly outweighed by its upsides. And now they own the market with such a large competitive moat that Epic has to give away boatloads of free games (and good ones too!) and a PR campaign of trashing competitors just to seed their userbase.
App Store has a natural monopoly on the iDevices. (And I would love to see this broken, a jailbroken iPhone in the old days was a wondrous thing) This is because Apple owns the platform and are heavily incentivized to use that integration to maximize their own profit and growth.
There are no such incentives on an open platform like Windows. Steam had to be better than the status quo and it seems they took that to heart, so much that entire ecosystems have built up around Valve's generosity -- ecosystems that compete with Steam itself -- and that Valve could pull the plug on tomorrow. But I bet they won't, because they seem to be interested in a vibrant and healthy ecosystem, and because their attitude of good stewardship is apparently quite rare these days, giving them a significant competitive advantage with mindshare.
It's a totally different ballgame. Google uses anticompetitive dealmaking and sheer force of will to try and achieve a semblance of what App Store does, and up until recently their success in that area was mixed at best. Google Play is closer to Steam in that regard, but their execution sucks.
But even if Steam was as vertically integrated as Apple something tells me they would be a lot more permissive and generous in how others sell on their platform. Steam offers a ton of value-add and, while I don't hang out in gamedev circles, the only bitching about price and Steam's 30% cut I've seen comes from Tim Sweeney and noone else
That is how it was several years back with Steam and everything was just fine. The new stores that popped up are, with the exception of GoG and Itch.io, in the service of large companies.
PC gaming wasn't a dystopia 5 years ago.
Indeed, it was glorious. Another golden age suffocated by business interests
Once the app is installed, it should be easy to start the app.
I'd like other stores on iOS too, but there's a qualitative difference between 1, 3, and 6 vendors that doesn't necessarily make 6 better than 1. In fact 6 is probably default worse than 1, and requires active management and cooperation to make it behave.
Sounds great to me. Truly. Who loses here, other than Apple, one of the biggest, wealthiest companies on the planet?
> Buying games on PC now means that you have to install 5 different app stores which are usually slow, buggy and not that well written cross-platform code (pretty much like Fortnite itself).
It sucks that there's so much slow buggy software (with Steam being, by far, the biggest offender), isn't it great that we have such a thriving competitive market on PC? I think it's awesome. I think the PC gaming market has never been better.
This sounds like one of those tinfoil conspiracy theories. Has there been any evidence whatsoever that confirms this?
Is it just because "they can"?
Apple could try something like giving "consumable" IAP a different cut, but I'm sure devs would still try to game that too (e.g. having a consumable that unlocks the app for a set amount of time, rather than a permanent unlock).
Would hardly even create a dent in Apple's revenue and they apparently don't know what to do with the money anyway except put it in a giant pile, so no loss for society.
Apple could take out credit card processing fees and then charge 5%, but up until now they haven't had a reason to change. Perhaps we will see change here, who knows?
I think the real reason is that when the Apple store was started, they looked around at the current prices for "software distribution". Retail was like 70%, and other app stores; for example the Danger Hiptop / T-mobile Sidekick charged 60% for their apps store, and the carriers were worse. At the time, 30% was actually a lot cheaper than everyone else. Then I assume Google just copied Apple.
Part of the problem with this whole market is that we're talking about zero marginal cost goods. Taking away frictional costs of transaction, distribution and support, the economic argument is for prices to trend towards $0. Hence the "race to the bottom" once the App Store made distribution "free" for free apps.
$0.59 in CC fees for ten dollars. That's 5.9%
$0.735 in CC fees for $15: 4.9%
The EU just limited credit card inter bank exchange fees to 0.2%.
Apple has to pay for these somehow. They can either get the money by charging more for each iPhone or they can get the money from the real end-users of these products: Developers.
What is Apple spending 7.5 billion USD on such that they'd have to raise the price of iPhones? They have multiple other revenue sources as well, like developer program fees. None of those cover their costs either? Are you suggesting they're selling phones at a loss?
But Apple are choosing to maintain XCode, not as a charity, but to make money selling phones -- $250 billion last year. It's not like they aren't getting paid for it…
30% is just rent-seeking opportunism. 3% shows something far closer to Apple's true costs for all this when faced with the fact that the Mac App Store is (for now) not required.
It absolutely shouldn’t add up to 30% unless you believe Apple should be using the App Store as a pseudo-loss-leader for the iPhone.
Why Apple doesn't switch to a 5% + $0.29 structure is anybody's guess, however...
If developers had a choice in payment processors, they could choose one with smaller minimum per-transaction fees, aggregate multiple payments from the same customer, try out subscriptions instead of microtransactions so the payment processor takes a smaller cut, etc...
- 24/7 worldwide availability, instant payment/app download
- Easy re-install after deletion, you still own the app even if deleted
- Region restriction
- Separate app pricing by region
- Revenues paid to developer from multiple region currencies without
conversion fees
- Tax calculation and collection
- Customer refunds
- User rankings and reviews
- App store advertising in category listings
- Video previews of the app in operation
- Packaging of media content allowing developers the ability to load game
levels as needed. This allows a user to start playing your game quickly.
- App sales statsIf Apple, Google et al want to have control over their digital domains honestly instead of breaking them up let's just socialise the economic rents, or cap it at 2% or whatever.
What do you call Steam, Xbox, Nintendo, Best Buy, Game Stop, Playstation, Microsoft...
I think it would probably be hard to argue, given the market structure now, that the return relative to risk is still reasonable. Normally other entrants would join and exert some degree of pricing pressure on theses fees. The Google / Apple duopoly means that this isn't working.
Are developers going to lower prices of in-app purchases if Apple’s cut goes down? Doubtful. But if they do I might buy more.
On a $.99 app, they still might not. I mean, they might, given economies of scale, but barely. Free apps incur costs with zero compensation. If all apps cost 99 cents, I don't think we'd be having this conversation. If Apple were still operating the App Store at break-even, I don't think we'd be having this conversation.
Apps with IAPs that are $9.99, that's a lot of extra profit. Apple might argue that they help offset all of the free apps, but obviously a company like Epic is going to feel singled out.
Apple is no longer only trying to break even with the App Store. They have openly stated that it is profitable, and that they want it to be more so. Epic and others with higher-than-99-cents sales don't like giving up so much, and I can't say I blame them.
It was true for a brief period of time, several publishers challenged Apple on it, and Apple relaxed that rule.
They still have several silly rules, but not this one.
I don't know if 30% is fair but there's value for sure in making tax returns easier.
If you have a small pub in the middle of nowhere you can be a selective as you want. If your pub chain feeds 50% of the people in the country you damn right will have to be heavily restricted in what you can do.
It doesn't matter if it's monopoly or not. After you cross a threshold the rules should be different and it's just amazing Apple has been allowed to grow so big with basically no oversight.
Apple saying no to people being able to bring their own payment provider feels akin to saying the road provider only allows cars they vet, and then charge 30% car manufacturers 30% of the price of the car.
I don't understand the argument you're attempting. Apple doesn't sell my info "for the 30% tax." In fact, they charge app developers that 30% and then keep my data away from those same developers.
To exclude other companies from accessing your wallet Apple must control the software running on your phone, which means blocking you from installing or modifying software on the device you supposedly own.
In particular, Fortnite is still available on Android with its new payment system after being removed from the Play Store.
If I want "complete control" I can use *BSD.
There are far more similarities than differences between the big tech companies. None of them offers the user anything approaching "complete control". Their employees must engage in no small amount of self-delusion to argue otherwise.
If Google is so different from Apple, why do they need a "Play Store" pre-installed on every mobile device. Where did they get that idea. Worse is that Google will use it to siphon more user data and feed its core business.
Of course running an Android phone without the Play Store is supported by AOSP.
Your bias is very clear, but even you have to admit the fact that Fortnite is still available to any Android user who wants it, thanks to features that Google intentionally develops and enables in Android for the explicit purpose of enabling alternative app distribution methods.
BSD bias, maybe. ;)
Show me a mobile device Google is selling that has no Play Store.
As I said, the differences between the companies are very small compared to the similarities.
But employees and fanboys on both sides love to try to make the differences seem profound. They're not.
Fortnite, nor any other software, should not even have to go through a company "store" approval to run on hardware the user bought. Even you have to admit that, since you are the one mentioning so-called "sideloading". Jumping through these hoops should not even be necessary and you know it.
I think Apple is right on the line. But I don't see a good argument as to what their doing is being anti-competitive. ~2 million apps are on the app store. Charging a fee for giving developers a huge market that spends money is not exactly unfair. And the rules of engagement are generally applied equally to everyone - the exceptions are noted by the guidelines.
What would make it fair? Lowering the fee? If that were the case, then the problem isn't anti-competitive behavior. If it's the rules, what would fair rules look like that don't harm the end user or the product?
What actual harm is Apple inflicting on the market by their behavior? Developers make less money? That isn't good enough.
I don't see any reason why a company needs to pay any percent of their revenue instead of a flat fee. You pay a % of revenue when someone is your partner or an investor in your company. Apple is neither. In fact, they've shown to be the opposite of a trusted investor/partner as they've copied successful apps and integrated them into their own platform.
The App Store should be a fixed fee, something like $19/month, for your app to be on sale there.
On another note, regarding your first comments, in the late 90's Microsoft went through DOJ depositions and demands for breaking up simply because they bundled Internet Explorer with their operating system. It didn't charge Netscape money for access to Windows and IE wasn't generating any income. But the furor at the time was huge and the anti-MSFT attitude has prevailed to this day. Why not the same feelings for Apple who's made this far more extreme and far more anti-competitive.
So what? All markets work like this. Food prices go up whenever there fuel prices increase, so the grocery store increases the cost to cover the higher cut taken by the supply chain. Apple created this entire market - they could've been far more anti-competitive than they are. Why should the free advertising, access to a market that has users that spend more on average, be free to anyone?
> I don't see any reason why a company needs to pay any percent of their revenue instead of a flat fee.
You're the one making the claim - you have to prove why it's wrong to charge a percentage of revenue first.
The Internet Explorer argument just doesn't apply. They had market dominance - Apple does not.
If it were a monopoly then anti-competitive practices, that would result in price increases, would be illegal .
> Apple created this entire market
It doesn't matter if they created the whole market. That is completely irrelevant to the legality of anti-competitive practices. Now, they are a monopoly, and they are no longer to allowed to engage in anti-competitive behavior.
> they could've been far more anti-competitive than they are
The idea that they could do worse, is not an argument against something as for why it is not bad.
Apple could do many things that are worse than what they are doing now. Maybe, in the future they will hire assassins to kill anyone who does not own an iphone. But that hypothetical world, does not make the current world any better. It is not an excuse.
> Why should the free advertising, access to a market that has users that spend more on average, be free to anyone?
Because the purpose of laws are to help consumers, not to protect apple. The reason why the law should force apple to allow competitors, is because by doing this, this helps consumers.
> They had market dominance - Apple does not.
Apple absolutely has market dominance over apps that are sold on the iphone. They prevent competitors from running app stores on that platform.
This is a huge market.
> Apple absolutely has market dominance over apps that are sold on the iphone.
This is just wrong. This would hold true if no alternative exists. There currently is not an app the iPhone offers that isn't matched in functionality anywhere else.
This doesn't pass basic legal sniff tests.
There is no alternative for buying apps on the iPhone.
> It's not a monopoly. There is an alternative which dominates the market share.
Yes it is. There is not a single alternative, for buying apps on the iPhone. They control that market, and have 100% market share over the iPhone app store market.
Which market? 3rd party software on a computing device? Sorry, that was dozens of years prior. Packaged apps on a mobile device? Sorry, I had those on my Treo in 2001. They haven’t really created any market, they just created a software monopoly on their hardware using existing ideas.
No one cares that a small handful of people owned a Treo in 2001. It wasn't relevant then and it isn't now. In any case, if it isn't a market, then there is no case here, so not sure what your comment means for you.
> They haven’t really created any market, they just created a software monopoly on their hardware using existing ideas.
The monopoly where the competitor has far, far higher marketshare. I'm sorry, I've never read about that in the history books.
There are no competitors on the iPhone. The iPhone isn’t the anti-competitive issue, the App Store is! No one has a market share but Apple on that front.
I think it will be hard to defend that argument in court, given the historical development of prices for apps.
Also, Apple will likely argue that prices could go down because they provide developers a huge market relatively cheaply, so that they can make up Apple’s cut with increased number of sales.
I also think one could argue Apple is your partner when you publish on the App Store (evil partner, maybe, but developers sign a contract with them)
Many customers and developers want the service the App Store provides and are willing to pay for it.
I.e. it’s not a shakedown, it’s a service just like any other.
But even if you argue that people should be allowed to have someone else provide a different service (which is technically problematic since they will still need to use Apple’s API’s), there is no reason to presume that more stores equates to lower prices.
It doesn’t in streaming for example, because of exclusive content.
It also means developers will need to support multiple stores and pass that cost on to the customers.
And it's absolutely a shakedown. It's not a service, it's a requirement. A service implies app developers have options. They do not. Apple could raise the price to 70% of the revenue and app developers would have no choice but to pay. It's not much different than the mob saying "it'd be a shame if this business went away for a while, wouldn't it" and demanded protection money.
Without the app store the iPhone is literally just a piece of hardware. The idea that the App Store isn't a product in and of itself is a falsehood.
> A service implies app developers have options. They do not.
They do - it's called Android.
Internet Explorer is as much the product as Windows.
Without Internet Explorer Windows is literally just a piece of software.
They have options - it's called a Mac
What did Internet Explorer have? DOMINANT MARKETSHARE. That was the problem - not that a program came bundled with software. Such a basic fact conveniently ignored because Apple Bad.
> Without Internet Explorer Windows is literally just a piece of software.
A piece of software that can do many things - an iPhone without apps just doesn't work. Apps run everything - from making phone calls to keeping notes. Windows without internet can still be used. Bad analogy.
> An iPhone without apps just doesn't work.
Sure, but an iPhone without an App Store works fine -- that was literally the way the first iPhone shipped, remember? -- so I'm not quite sure your analogy is a slam dunk here. :)
Remember - they originally said - just use web apps, but developers demanded a way to install software, and Apple developed the App Store in response to that demand.
Nobody is forcing developers to develop for iOS.
If Apple raised their rate to 70%, I’d build for the web or Android in a heartbeat.
It can be both a service and a requirement for iOS developers without being a shakedown.
There were multiple competing stores and sometimes even the developer's own site. The prices were ridiculous, partly because everyone had to implement their own payment and distribution systems. If the software didn't work or there was a problem it was rare to get a refund. Most of the time your contact info was readily sold to "partners".
Apple's cut of sales for the service they provide is pretty small compared to the costs of doing it yourself. There's many of thousands of developers that are enabled by the fact they don't need to host their apps, handle billing, or handle user accounts and PII.
If you seriously think prices to end users would decrease if Apple took a smaller cut you're deluding yourself. If developers are making sales at current prices there's zero reason for them to drop prices even if their overhead drops. Prices are set by what the market will bear and only have their lower bound set by the developer's overhead.
That's the entire issue right there. When Apple is the market, then they can make it whatever they want. If Apple has to legitimately compete with other "App Stores", then the market will find a lower price than 30%.
If that is exorbitant, what SHOULD the price be?
There basically is not a competitive market for either app marketplace right now, so an accurate price can't be determined. Allow 3rd party marketplaces to be installed as easily as any other app and I'm certain prices will come down from where they are today.
I'd argue the opposite -- one of Epic's allegations is that Google scuttled a deal Epic had reached with OnePlus to ship Epic's own Android app store.
I expect that number would drop to around 10%, for "premium" app stores, such as if Steam or the Epic app store were allowed on iPhones.
But also, I would expect there to be even lower priced competitors. Payment processors charge 3% of sales, so a competing app store could get pretty close to around 3%, if they wanted.
So the answer is 10% for "premium" app stores, and for the app stores that instead only doing payment processing, the price should be 3%.
Pretty small? I think Epic, who makes billions and billions of dollars in overall sales (though revenue is unknown specific to Apple devices, but fair to say at least $100M), would strongly disagree with this point.
Additionally, companies like Stripe have made integrating payments _way_ easier than it was back then. Hosting downloads is not difficult either. As noted in the Stratechery article, developers not only give up 30%, but give up a customer relationship and can't even issue refunds! They can't do upgrades, either. It's not just the 30%, it's the flexibility in payment models as well.
I don't know that prices would drop, but more developers would have a sustainable business.
Payment processors like Stripe aren't new, there was PayPal, Kagi, and others before 2008. Handling payments is a non-trivial task for a small developer, the same goes for handling user accounts/data. They're not insurmountable problems but they're a lot more effort than Apple or Google just sending you money when people buy your app.
Hosting is worse than payments as it costs the developer money and keeps costing money. If your app gets a popularity spike instead of getting a revenue spike you get a huge hosting bill.
I think you've got it entirely backwards, more developers have sustainable businesses because of the App Store than without. Payment processing, hosting, managing user data? That shit is easy for big companies or it's an extant expense so mobile app sales aren't adding real overhead. So for Microsoft, Adobe, and Epic those aren't problems. They could easily sell their stuff without the App Store/Play Store and in fact currently do so. For the many thousands of small developers that aren't Epic payment processing and hosting are big costs as is advertising they need to even be found. Before the App Store mobile app aggregators charged money to get listed and wanted bribes to be featured.
Epic et all might see their overhead drop from Apple's 30% to maybe 10%. They pocket the extra revenue and prices don't change for consumers. For many thousands of developers their overhead goes from Apple's 30% to 50-60% doing it in house. So Epic rakes in even more money and small developers get the shaft.
Out of all the arguments against Apple's App Store policies, this has always struck me as the weakest. I remember app prices for Palm Pilots, and for that matter, app prices in general before the App Store came along -- and they were way, way higher. In 2005, a program like Pixelmator for iOS would have at least been $40; on iOS, it's $5. And how much do you think LumaFusion, a multitrack video editor, would have gone for in 2005? If it had been under $200 reviews would have been calling it a steal. It's $30. And that seems insanely high.
So the problem with the "Apple's cut artificially inflates prices" argument is that prices have demonstrably been in free fall during the app era. We can argue that LumaFusion would be able to cut their price to $25, or Pixelmator to $4, and that somehow "proves" that developers have to increase their price, but it's not super compelling.
> I don't see any reason why a company needs to pay any percent of their revenue instead of a flat fee. You pay a % of revenue when someone is your partner or an investor in your company. Apple is neither.
Well, Apple is acting as a payment processor, and payment processors charge you a percent of revenue. I don't think anybody's gonna run credit cards for you for a flat $19 a month fee; if Apple charged only what Stripe did (30¢ + 2.9%), LumaFusion's fees would be over $19 on their 11th copy sold per month and Pixelmator would hit it on sale 65.
I don’t think so. When we determined our app’s monthly price we have A/B tested several price like $5/month, $8/month, $15/month. And we have chosen the one that we earned most (It was the expensive one). If the Apple’s cut will become 10%, we won’t change our price because would earn less. Therefore, Apple’s cut won’t change most of the apps’ price.
When we returned to iPhoneOS 1 era, all of us should just develop PWA websites without dealing with 30% cut.
> Why not the same feelings for Apple who's made this far more extreme and far more anti-competitive.
Because you can't abuse a monopoly when you don't have a monopoly. Apple isn't being anti-competitive. In fact by the very nature of your argument that they are hurting themselves by having high prices and are welcoming competition as consumers could chose cheaper alternatives, which most actually do as Apple only sits on like 14% of the market. Microsoft on the other hand tried to misuse their near 100% position one market to corner a different one in order to kill of competitors and take it for themselves.
The crucial point of the Microsoft case was that their operating system had 90% market share, which Apple does not.
if there is no monopoly, then little will change.
if there is, then consumers will win.
Having a large customer base is not an argument against them being a monopoly. Quite the opposite, it is evidence of it being a monopoly.
> Charging a fee for giving developers a huge market that spends money is not exactly unfair.
It is unfair if they are engaging in anti-competitive practices to prevent competitions from competing.
> What would make it fair? Lowering the fee?
Allowing alternative apps stores to compete against apple's would make it fair, and giving users the option and ability to do this, easily. So, specifically I should be able to install a Steam, or epic app store, on the iphone, without apple having any ability at all to stop me, or take a cut.
> What actual harm is Apple inflicting on the market by their behavior? Developers make less money? That isn't good enough.
Of course it is. If you have a monopoly, then the harm is on the customers of the market. That includes both buyers and sellers. That is how monopolies work.
And also, it is not just developers making less money. Instead, the monopoly place in the market, prevents developers from passing on the savings to the consumer.
So the fee would have to be literally 0%, for me to even accept the idea that consumers aren't harmed by it.
> It is unfair if they are engaging in anti-competitive practices to prevent competitions from competing.
Which has been proven untrue - because there are 2 million apps on the marketplace. The rules are out there. I haven't seen a case where the rules were violated and nothing was done.
> Allowing alternative apps stores to compete against apple's would make it fair, and giving users the option and ability to do this, easily. So, specifically I should be able to install a Steam, or epic app store, on the iphone, without apple having any ability at all to stop me, or take a cut.
This is a significant risk to the product. Opening it up means that the quality of the product and consumer suffers. The competing app store is the Play Store. Feel free to switch to that OS.
> Of course it is. If you have a monopoly, then the harm is on the customers of the market. That includes both buyers and sellers. That is how monopolies work.
Sigh. It isn't a monopoly, but I'll humor you. Go ask any iPhone user what they think about the app store. I highly doubt you'll find any significant figure upset.
Thats still a monopoly on apps sold on the iPhone.
You are just giving arguments as for why you support Apple's monopoly on the iPhone app store market.
> A monopoly needs to dominate the market.
Also, related, there does not even need to be a monopoly for anti-competitive practices to be illegal. Anti-competitive behavior can still be illegal, even if there is not monopoly.
> the competing app store is the Play Store
No, actually. The play store cannot install apps on the iPhone. That is the market that Apple has a monopoly on.
Not when they're different markets. Even EU's antitrust case against Google found that Google "dominant in the markets for [...] app stores for the Android mobile operating system." Which means Apple is the same for iOS app stores.
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_18_...
Thus, Apple music can be offered cheaper than Spotify. I'm not sure how exactly this applies to Fortnite, though.
Yes, it's legal today but should we make it illegal?
To try another example besides Apple iPhone, consider the $35000 Prima Cinema movie server to play 1st run movies at home on day of release: https://www.google.com/search?q=%22prima+cinema%22&source=ln...
In many iPhone debates, we throw around phrases such as, "unlike a game console, it's a general computer" and "I own the device so I should be able to put any software I want on it".
Understandable sentiments. So the question is, should consumers be able to knowingly buy restricted hardware such as Prima Cinema? They pay $35000 and own the computer but they know they can't sideload their own movies. They know can't pick another "movie store", or watch Youtube/Netflix on it, etc. The hardware has anti-tampering sensors so that it bricks itself if the owner tries to open it. The hardware is a "general pc". It runs Wind River Linux. I think the cpu is x86 but it might be ARM or something else.
You can't argue that Prima Cinema should not be locked down (claiming anti-competitive behavior) because the paranoid film studios wouldn't even license their content if it wasn't. If a buyer wants to have 1st run movies at home, all those restrictions in place is they only way to get it. It's more restrictive than iPhone in that sense.
I don't see why not. If it's a problem, then either a competitor will emerge, or people won't purchase the product.
If it's truly a bad business practice, it'll lose out in the end. Besides that I actually love the closed system of the iPhone + App Store, we can't just go around banning things anytime we think we might not like them. Every time I see this story it just annoys me. I want the iPhone and App Store to be a closed system. Opening it up is the bad idea here.
Philosophically, amazon.com and Facebook are closed systems too. As is Wal-Mart and UPS. I'm not sure why we're only focused on hardware systems here, what's the meaningful distinction?
Many bad business practices only lose out because they're made illegal. Protection rackets are great for the ones running them. Although one could quibble that the police is the cheapest universally available protection racket that pushes out all the competition.
And I'd argue with your example of Facebook that they should at minimum be compelled to enable universal linking so that other app vendors can intercept outbound links directly, and users can choose their web browser etc.
I can't choose to use iMessage with my non-existent Facebook account either. Why? Why are they allowed to lock in their software?
Same argument.
IMessage facebook messenger case is not an artificial lock. They are fundamentally different protocols. It's not like IMessage supports facebook messenger and Apple just say no you can't use it. There is a real difference here.
Apple is artificially restricting usage of it's phones for no other reason then greed. If the app store would actually protect against malware I would agree that it might have some value but it really doesn't. The app store is filled with mountains and mountains of malware. But since it's malware that makes Apple money it's completely fine.
Apple mobile hardware is really amazing. The best there is in the world I think. But the software locks it down so much that it's essentially a paper weight compared to its potential.
You can make a protocol then and Facebook won't allow you to use it. They're definitely artificially locking you in. It's no different.
> Apple is artificially restricting usage of it's phones for no other reason then greed.
Really? That's the only reason? Does it not seem odd to you that iPhones are considered safe devices, and that Apple goes to great lengths to protect them and user data and now companies are complaining about the App Store? Once they can circumvent the App Store, then can put all sorts of garbage tracking and malware into applications. iPhone and the App Store have been around for more than 10 years, and then over the last two years Apple requires no tracking, prompting of data usage, soon a data use "nutrition scorecard" and now just this year all of these companies are complaining about pricing? Give me a break. If you want to call Apple greedy, then it's just a case of pots calling kettles black. Notice how there aren't any customers complaining about this oh so bad and greedy practice? I don't care what developers want here. I want my iPhone the way it is, and changing the App Store is bad in my view. I'll vote with my wallet in this case. If that means fewer applications because they want to circumvent these things that I want Apple to do, then that's fine, good riddance.
These companies can partner with Samsung or something and make their own phones and app stores. That's fine. But this isn't about that. It's about them wanting money and to abuse user data on the platform that Apple built.
If the technical requirements are met and Facebook won't allow then it indeed is not an artificial lock in. But I doubt that Facebook messenger can talk to IMessage right now. It's not the responsibility of either Facebook or Apple to make those two apps work together. The only thing they should not do is go out of their way to not allow them to interface. I.e. It should be possible for a user to write a bridge between those two apps.
> Really? That's the only reason? Does it not seem odd to you that iPhones are considered safe devices, and that Apple goes to great lengths to protect them and user data and now companies are complaining about the App Store? Once they can circumvent the App Store, then can put all sorts of garbage tracking and malware into applications. iPhone and the App Store have been around for more than 10 years, and then over the last two years Apple requires no tracking, prompting of data usage, soon a data use "nutrition scorecard" and now just this year all of these companies are complaining about pricing? Give me a break. If you want to call Apple greedy, then it's just a case of pots calling kettles black. Notice how there aren't any customers complaining about this oh so bad and greedy practice? I don't care what developers want here. I want my iPhone the way it is, and changing the App Store is bad in my view. I'll vote with my wallet in this case. If that means fewer applications because they want to circumvent these things that I want Apple to do, then that's fine, good riddance.
I don't consider Apple safe devices because of the App store. Every single protection that is afforded by the app store is actually provided by the OS. With the exception of manual review and that is a subjective process full of holes.
Can you explain to me, since you believe Apple is actually not user hostile, why does it allow obvious malware in the app store such as apps that appear to be free but once you install them you end up in micro-transaction hell? Why do they allow micro-transactions at all? Micro-transactions are very rarely if ever beneficial to the user. What's up with the apps that promise a feature and don't deliver? I'm not joking when I say that the quality of apps I can download for free on my desktop is way higher then most stuff that is in the app store. App stores have brought down the quality of software significantly. It's so bad that my default stance on anything on the app store is that it must be trash because that's what it is usually.
Aka "the invisible hand will fix it". We have been waiting quite a few years for this and it did not happen. Instead we got the complete opposite: a duopoly of android and iOS which nobody, not even Microsoft, can compete against. At this point, we have to acknowledge that simply waiting is not going to fix anything.
I also don't think a duopoly is necessarily bad, and in this case I think it's not even a duopoly long-term. It is right now because Google and Apple are the leaders, but it's only a matter of time until other large companies (Samsung, Huawei, etc.) gain a foothold and market share. Being a local duopoly (in the US) is one thing versus being a global duopoly.
Further, I'm not really convinced that this duopoly we have is even bad. Why is it bad that we have a duopoly? Is it only acceptable if we have 3 large players? Why aren't we complaining about the Microsoft and Apple duopoly with computers? I think this is just arbitrary really and it won't be long-lived anyway.
There's an incredible amount of effort to prevent that - we can start with obligatory things like slavery, but there's a lot more - safety regulation in cars or airplanes, food safety, various environmental protections, employee protections, and so on.
"I want the iPhone and App Store to be a closed system." is kind of like saying "I want powerful car that doesn't have to follow emission limits." - I believe you that you want it, but you having it might hurt others, and that's why it's not allowed.
There's a common-sense argument that a person is only going to have one phone, one phone carrier, one ISP, etc. and thus those companies shouldn't hold their customers hostage. Turning that into a legal principle is left as an exercise for the reader.
There's nothing stopping an iPhone owner from also buying an Android phone, and the cost is trivial.
There's a common-sense argument that a person is only going to have one phone, one phone carrier
There are hundreds of thousands of people in the United States, maybe even millions, who have more than one phone.
iPhone is not an Android competitor, iPhone is a Samsung/Huawei/LG etc competitor
Android competes with iOS
If I could install iOS on a Samsung device or Android on an iPhone that would be different
But I can't
I'm with you there. I'm so mad that I can't install iOS on any device I want. My Android phone? Nope. My HP laptop? Nope. My car entertainment system? Nope. My TRS-80? Nope. My waffle maker? Nope.
I even tried to install iOS on my cat, and she rebooted all over the rug.
Clearly this is a massive conspiracy by the Apple industrial complex to control what I do with the things I bought and paid for with my own money.
Yes.
You could.
Hackintosh do exist, you know?
Buut it's illegal because Apple doesn't want to.
So blame Apple for your cat.
I like having a single vendor for all my software purchases, that I can trust to issue refunds and discontinue subscriptions promptly.
I spend all day thinking about computers, I don't want to also be my own IT professional and security team, especially for a slab of glass I hold in my hand. I accept that I have to do some IT and security thinking about my iOS devices, but the more the walled garden provides, the less is on me.
I understand that with this "safety" comes a loss of "liberty," but I find that an acceptable tradeoff for consumer hardware in my personal life. I don't automatically assume that the right tradeoffs for me are also the right tradeoffs for everyone else.
If someone wants to sideload apps and/or develop their own custom apps without some kind of special developer status, I have no problem suggesting they buy something else.
I accept that I am not the typical HN reader.
I question the validity of presuming this question has a correct answer for all parents under all circumstances.
Not your kids. Not your business.
Our school assigns every kid an iPad. In Kindergarten. Good idea? I kinda don't think so, though it's been useful this year, of course. But it happens.
Increasingly parents have trouble letting kids wander the neighborhood on their own without a tracker/communication-device on them, and a smartphone's really good at serving that role. There are other options but kids want to have their smartphone on them, and as soon as you want them to be able to do one other smartphone-thing any other option starts to look kinda pointless.
(just relating observations of parenting in the wild, not my own parenting approach)
I remember they got Samsung tablets and when I had looked at them to see if I would like to buy one... I saw they were completely full of - essentially - spyware and malware.
Okay.. then their opinion is what's relevant here, not yours.
> I like having a single vendor for all my software purchases, that I can trust to issue refunds and discontinue subscriptions promptly.
Weren't they in hot water recently for forcing developers to use their deceptive subscription trial system?
I’m sure you also want to make sure your kids aren’t spending all your money on dumb in-app purchases. Having a controlled mechanism for that provides an actual value to you, and letting companies circumvent it would make things harder for you. Are the fees for that mechanism fair? That’s a business negotiation.
This is a big one. I'm significantly more likely to subscribe to a service/app if I'm able to do so through iTunes, because it means the app developer can't directly reach into my wallet. If I hit "Cancel Subscription" in the iTunes subscription panel, it's canceled, no ifs, ands, or buts, and no hidden unsubscribe links or intentionally obtuse unsubscription processes to have to contend with.
This is a huge thing for consumers to give up for the sake of developer freedom. If Apple begins to allow third party payment systems, developers should be required to connect said payment systems to Apple-provided standardized subscription control APIs so strong user control is maintained.
I don't wanna have to worry about stupid computer shit when I'm just trying to use my iPad or iPhone as a tool to accomplish something else. Drawing, playing music, reading, writing, edutainment for the kids, very occasionally a game. Maybe the odd SSH session. If I decide I want some software to help me with any of those things I just want it to be in the App Store, and I just want it to use the App Store payment system. I don't want competing app stores because that might mean that sometimes what I want isn't on the Apple one, following Apple's rules about spying on my and otherwise behaving as badly as desktop software and webapps do these days. It means I have to search more than one store. Now we're veering into the stupid computer shit I don't want to have to worry about, again.
You don't lose anything if you don't want to.
You should have to keep doing what you already do.
Then buy any other general computing product on the market. I'd be more sympathetic to this concern if Android didn't exist. Meanwhile it does, and the users who picked Apple did it because they don't care about this, they don't care very much about this, or because they actively want the App Store restrictions and the ecosystem that they create.
> You don't lose anything if you don't want to.
I very well might, though. Changes to rules change how actors behave in a system. The way software developers and publishers behave on iOS could change in ways that I don't like if they're able to viably distribute software outside the App Store. That might be OK, except forcing developers and publishers to follow the App Store rules is part of the appeal of the devices. If that'd been a major sticking point for me, I could have bought Android.
That's not how free market works.
And it's a very silly objection.
Android is a licensed platform.from Google, but Google does not make the majority of devices.
Apple manufacturs the devices, but they sell them to me locked in the ecosystem they profit from.
Imagine being unable of refueling because your car does not work with standard oil pumps and you had to go to Apple licensed gas station whom Apple charges 30% to.
They would be prohibited from selling the car.
> I very well might, though.
But you wouldn't if you don't change your behaviour.
> Changes to rules change how actors behave in a system
That's exactly what many want from Apple.
Change the rules.
Nobody is asking Apple to relax their safety rules inside their walled garden.
If they can't allow sideloading, they're not as good as I thought.
> I could have bought Android.
I don't buy it.
If Apple sold Android powered iPhones you would still buy an iPhone, you're are buying the brand, not the product.
It... isn't? How not?
> Imagine being unable of refueling because your car does not work with standard oil pumps and you had to go to Apple licensed gas station whom Apple charges 30% to.
Then I'd probably buy a competing brand of car, if that bothered me? You know, one of my other choices on the market? Like how there are a bunch of Android device vendors and a couple Linux mobile vendors that I could choose if Apple's App Store model bothered me, rather than being something I actively want? I am 100% not following how this isn't a market working. The choices people are making may not be the ones you prefer—happens to me all the time with markets—but there are choices.
> That's exactly what many want from Apple.
> Change the rules.
Many developers and publishers, maybe. I'm very much unconvinced that's what the subset of users who are aware of this issue in the first place, want, for the most part. I think if it were a major problem for them they'd have bought an Android device, or something else.
> If they can't allow sideloading, they're not as good as I thought.
They do allow sideloading, it's just fairly inconvenient. They can't allow a form of it that's convenient enough to allow other app stores to thrive, without changing the character of the ecosystem for their users. I don't think any amount of being "good" at what they do would change that.
> If Apple sold Android powered iPhones you would still buy an iPhone, you're are buying the brand, not the product.
OK, cool, guess continuing this exchange is pointless.
But you also bought Apple approved tires, Apple approved child seat, Apple approved free miles on the highway and Apple approved breaking fluid
You can't use them anywhere else, maybe you can sell them, but you have to reset the car to factory settings
Whatever you bought cannot be used anywhere else, except another Apple car
That's how vendor lock in works, I'm European but I know US laws don't appreciate when a company locks users in
Probably most apps would still be on store and hopefully you would get a cheaper version from the developer website.
What is clear but you probably don't want to admit is Apple is not fighting here for your safety but for extracting mroe money, if they were not that greedy Epic,Spotify would not have started this wars and you would have been safe in the wallgarden and extremely satisfied that the other people inside can't escape either.
Why wouldn't I admit that? Of course the situation benefits them. I just doubt there's a way to give me all the aspects of their devices & ecosystem that I value, that doesn't also benefit them. I'd love to see them drop the cut they take, for instance. That being so high benefits me not at all, so far as I can tell.
... and if someone comes out with devices that actually compete with the specific sort of product they offer, including the integrated & closed app store and restrictions on what apps are allowed to do, and takes a lower cut of app store sales, then Apple might have to reduce their cut, too. Or this current scuffle might end up not changing the app store rules much, but dropping the cut they take substantially—personally, that's an outcome I'd love.
This is a completely false argument you're putting up - you can HAVE all of those protections while STILL having the option of replacing protected software with less safe one.
Please stop peddling this false argument.
If there's a way to allow easily & conveniently running one's own software without letting competing app stores work, I'm all for it. In fact there is a way to run your own software, it's just inconvenient, because time-limited so you have to re-install it periodically, which effectively kills any possibility of running a successful app store via that method.
Consider two vendors: A and G.
A provides a full walled garden. G provides a walled garden, but lets you side-load whatever you like, you can ignore the apps in the garden.
Everyone making apps for A puts them in the walled garden, so if you own an A, you buy an app from the garden.
For G, vendors decide for themselves whether to use the walled garden. Many choose to sell direct and avoid both the markup and the hassle of getting their apps approved.
They also get to make even more money by embedding surveillance capitalism into their apps if they sell direct. Or include completely unmoderated and unregulated adtech.
As a user, isn't G better than A, since I have the choice?
It is better than A, provided that every app in A's walled garden is also in G's walled garden. However, if in practice the apps I want to use are in A's walled garden, but sold direct on G to avoid the 30% hit, then in practice, as a user, I am better off with A if what I want are apps from the walled garden.
Of course, I can always do my research to figure out whether a side-loaded app on G is safe to use. But if what I wanted was to buy apps without having to think about them, then I can be better off with A in practice even though in theory, G provides everything A provides, and more.
Now, is there really a problem getting all the apps I use on A from G's walled garden? I don't personally know, since I don't want to go to the trouble of sorting out what is available in G's store versus what I have to sideload. So there's plenty of room to argue that in practice, G is superior to A.
But I do not think it is necessarily superior.
I don't like the complete lockout either. I like being able to run my apps on my device. But it is most definitely true that the ability to sideload apps results, in practice, in some developers opting out of providing App Store protected apps in favor of asking you to sideload.
Personally, this is so different from the way I think that I find it utterly surprising, much more so from the tech savvy audience of HN. But apparently preferring walled gardens and being willing to pay extra to obtain one and even more every time you buy something on it is not an uncommon opinion to have.
Seven billion people on the planet. It shouldn't be surprising to learn that not everyone thinks the way that you do.
I wonder if it's an age thing. When you're young and have more time than money, tinkering with the technical hassles of your phone is worth it to save a buck or two. When you're older and have more money than time, you happily pay $399 for an iPhone if it means getting hours or days of your life to spend on other things.
At some point I became acutely aware of every time I was doing something with a computer that was simply fucking with the computer, and not actually getting anything that I wanted or needed to get done, except to the extent that making my computer be not-broken is required for those things. Around that time I was exposed to macOS and iOS and finally had an actual choice to (mostly) not have to do that when I don't want to, and if I decide I would like to tinker then I can use... any other option on the market.
I'd probably be screwing around with trying to run NetBSD on Android phones and turn them into mobile computers I can plug monitors and keyboards into and embedding RPis and Arduinos in all kinds of crap around the house, if I were 16 again.
At the age I am now, though, you'd literally have to pay me to even think about doing any of that. Even when I screw around with getting allegedly set-it-and-forget-it RPi media projects (think: kodi, lakka) working I usually end up regretting it. I do know how to work with those sorts of things. I also very much don't want to any more, but do still want computer-things doing stuff for me with few or no hassles. Luckily these days you can pay to get that, in some categories at least. Largely from Apple, if you want them to last a while—I do wish they had actual competition in that sense. More options that don't spy (much) and Just Work (mostly), please.
Second, I very much argue that if there was no app store, consumers would pay 30% less. The app store and ecosystem provide something for developers, and if you remove the app store, the developers either do it for themselves, or pay somebody else to do it for them.
Of course, if there was meaningful competition, the fees might be less, or the value provided to developers might be more. But I doubt that prices would drop the full 30%.
I say this as someone who worked in tech distribution. Great things can happen when you cut out a middleman, but it's often surprising how difficult it is to replicate the middleman's distribution advantages.
All that being said, I'm not here to debate whether prices would fall 30%, 27.2%, or even 10%. I agree with your basic premise: tech-savvy people have less upside and more downside from owning locked-down devices.
Apple's rent seeking a bit with the App Store, but I have faith in their privacy protections, that they'll continue to support my devices for a long time after purchase, and that they'll be fairly prompt with security updates to all my devices.
And cobbling together the connections between ear phones, watch, phone, computer and TV would be quite tedious, probably no where near as smooth, and a pain in the ass to upkeep.
At the end of the day, besides my computer, I don't really give a hoot about side loading apps from different app stores, or I dunno... customizing things more I guess? I'm not really sure.
There is the possibility increased app store competition (say, if it was ruled anti-competitive to only allow Apple's App Store on Apple Products) would make Apple's App Store better though. Discovery can be kind of a pain in my opinion.
So, I'm not opposed to there being more app stores, but it'd probably take a fair amount of nudging to get me to actually try one.
Fast forward a decade (or maybe 2) and while I am still very pro open-all-the-things, I am happy to pay more for a controlled environment to run things I rely on but don’t care to spend time on maintaining and configuring.
I have 4 other people in my house, plus I'm the "tech guy" for maybe another dozen people. I appreciate how simple that job is when everyone has iPhones.
I have over a dozen and I really appreciate the ability to manage (or at least view) those in one place. Managing my non-app (website) subscriptions is quite a mess.
And it is only one advantage of the walled garden. I don't have to think much when I install an app - is it from the developer, or someone has tampered with it?
Apple is simple. I trust Apple to protect me and honestly based on the stories I read about Google's Play Store I feel more confident in Apple to do the right thing for consumers in the long run. Their incentive is aligned to my needs (good safe hardware that protects me from making potentially poor choices -- even as someone who is in the "tech" world)
Although the situation has gotten much better the past couple years, its still not uncommon to find apps on the app store that charge like 10$ a month for some wallpapers or something of a similar nature. Furthermore, every few months there are new news articles coming out about how ""XYZ"" app is collecting ""ABC"" data from iPhone users(like apps scraping clipboard data, or apps trying to access the microphone or camera when the user thinks there should be no recording going on).
The claim that the iOS is actually protecting users seems dubious at best. Apple tends to exert control over the app store, but it always seems to be in response to users finding out that some app is doing something evil rather then Apple protecting users up front to begin with.
Your point that some bad actors get through doesn't invalidate that Apple seems to be doing the best job of keeping the app store secure and consumer friendly.
The costs of Apple's walled garden have become so obscene at this point that I consider the pro-Apple position to be immoral.
I buy Apple products not because it's a walled garden per se, but because it's Apple's walled garden. Apple has been the only vendor to provide me with a consistently top-quality user experience, so I trust them to make decisions that benefit me. I don't have the same trust relationship with other software and hardware vendors, so their walled gardens I would protest against.
To me, a phone should work for me, not the other way around. I'd rather spend my time living my life than fussing with the technicalities of my phone. I'm willing to pay extra for it.
I also went with iPhone because I trust Apple to vet its apps better than any other vendor. When someone else does as good a job, I'll head over there. But for now, iPhone is where it's at.
The problem is that giving a choice to users is risky and not acceptable at scale because people are not smart, they do dumb things all the time; like pasting untrusted scripts into devtools console and getting hacked. Or replying to mail scams.
So I am happy I can hand an iPad to my parent and not be there to secure all activities they do online.
Users will give the installer root privileges.
History bore this out over and over and over again.
—
[1]: See also: Crapware-laden browser toolbars, Java runtimes, Adobe Reader, Windows crapware, Smart TVs, ...
It's not the only thing I care about, but it's not all just strict downside.
I also buy it for my parents for the same reason.
For some background, I’m a longtime hardware and (more frequently) software developer. I also do quite a bit of ML consulting.
I was gifted a MacBook Air many years ago. I was an avid Ubuntu (and, to a much lesser extent, Windows) user and developer at the time so I didn’t know what to make of it. I certainly didn’t expect to be blown away and switch to all Apple devices.
Eight years later and I’m solidly in the Apple ecosystem. I have an open mind about switching but I love the reliability and consistency of the user experience. I can count on the core apps that I frequently reach for to just work. And if they don’t work there’s almost always an obvious, low-time, solution to fix them. I still do a great deal of development in Windows, but it’s exclusively in a Parallels VM on a MacBook and I’ve long since abandoned my desktop for development.
The Apple ecosystem has built up enough trust with me that I also use it when flying (Foreflight on an iPad). You couldn’t pay me to switch to an android tablet as an alternative for that use case.
My largest complaint is python development is not great on OS X out of the box. But that’s easy enough to work around.
However, to me, it's hard to argue that Apple should keep getting money from you once you've established a loyal customer base and they are giving you money.
And as a not-so-crazy take on this issue, why isn't Apple insisting on taking a cut of, say, the check I'm depositing into Chase and just uploaded a photograph of it. It's revenue, it's in the app ... why isn't Apple taking a piece of that?
And I wonder what test the courts would accept (which the manufacturers would then build to): that the device can run arbitrary code? That each feature of the device is easily accessible via FOSS library or API? That access to each feature in the device could theoretically be reverse-engineered by a sufficiently motivated expert?
Interesting thought experiment.
And I really can't say the same about open platforms, which usually UX-wise are awful and for that I'm willing to give away the "freedom" some other platform might provide.
I am not sure whether this is sarcasm or not.
Since it seems like it is not, let me say that most closed platforms are absolutely garbage. Let us not think only of the iPhones and the Androids of the world, and instead focus on everything else. Think industrial control. Even the cinema stuff mentioned by the GP I'm sure contains software of the worst quality.
All of those things are true today.
The question was: >Should closed hardware (that owns its entire stack) even be legal to sell?
And the answer to that is: obviously it should be, if you care about competition and innovation. The only people that disagree with this are the tech people who have had problems with Apple's business on ideological grounds for decades (people like Richard Stallman and saurik).
But outside that one particularly small constituency, there's no good public policy reason to actually make it illegal, and plenty of reasons not to.
>The U.S. Librarian of Congress ruled on Monday that consumers who circumvent digital protections on smartphones to install unapproved applications—a practice often colloquially known as “jailbreaking”—for noninfringing reasons should be exempted from prosecution under the anti-circumvention section of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).
https://www.macworld.com/article/1152935/jailbreak_exemption...
This would not apply to something like Prima Cimea, nor a John Deere Tractor, or 1000's of other things.
Also the wording of the exception bu LoC was very open to interpretation and not as powerful as people commonly think
https://www.idownloadblog.com/2019/11/10/how-to-jailbreak-wi...
I'm not sure why you're putting this in terms of iOS, since many Android devices also ship with a locked bootloader.
>there is no reason why jailbreaking a device is inherently possible
Any iDevice with an A11 or earlier has an unpatchable bootloader flaw that absolutely makes it inherently jailbreakable. Apple cannot prevent you from jailbreaking those devices, nor can it patch the flaw with a future version of the OS.
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/09/devel...
Ahh, I see the problem - thanks Osiris - there are 2 questions, each of them opposite.
> Should closed hardware (that owns its entire stack) even be legal to sell?
and
> Yes, it's legal today but should we make it illegal?
Good thing I'm not a lawyer!
His answer: Nope.
From a regulatory standpoint, it seems easier than attempting to hand ‘closed’ hardware - less line drawing on what counts as firmware and more focus on what consumers need to properly use and maintain a device over a long period of time.
If this would be restricted then you should keep it legal to buy but illegal to sell. Making the purchase illegal would only further criminalize the consumer.
That last question is actually important - maybe "the market" (meaning whoever is positioned at time) should decide. Maybe "we" already have "decided" and the rest is just that decision playing out.
But I don't think this discussion is that useful without specifics. Imagine 10 years forward - Amazon, Facebook and Google all require locked down (you do not have root) hardware to access anything they store for you/to buy anything. Maybe you can still give your Raspberry Pi an IP and send packets, but interaction with any mainstream entity requires signing your traffic with a key on a chip. ("To solve identity theft" "for the children" "do you want the terrorists to win?")
Is that a world you want to live in?
IMO, yes. We make it illegal for someone to come into your home and take your stuff, which ends up with you losing control over it (you have no more access to your stuff), so it also makes sense to make it illegal for someone to decide to not allow you install or modify the stuff you have (again taking control away from you).
The way most of these platforms run is like buying something but by doing so you also give an implicit permission for the seller to come in your house and modify or even forbid you from using what you bought if they do not like what you are doing with it.
Imagine if you bought an oven and you could only bake specific recipes that the over manufacturer allowed. And when you complained you had others telling you "just buy another oven" (until all oven manufacturers were into the game because it made them more money - especially those who are also into selling ingredients - and you had no other options, except perhaps a few cheap models that had a tendency to explode every now and then and their only usefulness is to be used as skapegoats whenever "monopoly" is brought up).
And yes, i know the above comparisons aren't 100% fitting, software isn't a physical product, it is special, but it still feels very wrong to buy a device (be it a phone, gaming console, TV or whatever) and have no control over what you can install or even -in some cases- do with it.
It's not illegal however if you signed a contract to that effect, which is what you did when you started using the platform.
A better analogy is that you're renting some furniture and the furniture is found to be unsafe. The company can come and take it away, either replacing it with something else or refunding you.
In the software world nobody but the creators or IP holders of the software actually owns the software. They just provide you the license to use it.
It's illegal in many countries to modify the software so if you had a closed-source word processing application it would be illegal to mod it or to use it as part of a data transformation pipeline. You can only use it for the purposes stated when you bought it.
If there was a way to limit your oven to bake recipes the manufacturer allowed or to use specific approved ingredients, and would come with some sort of value-add to make consumers ignore that as a problem, I'm sure someone would actually do this.
(please note that I am stating facts as I see them and not necessarily agreeing with the state of affairs)
Also i'm not arguing about who owns the software, i never asked for ownership of the software, i ask for being able to be in control of the software that runs in the hardware i do actually own. This does not require me owning the OS that runs in my hardware.
And yes, i'm sure someone would do the oven stuff if it was possible and making that illegal would also be something that would be needed.
Contracts are not above the law. Or: you can't contradict laws with your contract.
And for your complaint that all the other ovens are crap and explode. Shouldn’t you take that up with the people making those ovens, not the one that made the locked oven? Maybe it’s very very hard to make ovens that don’t explode from time to time when people can cook whatever they want in them?
If someone came after you paid them and said, btw, you can’t make muffins in this oven, then I think it’s fair to be upset. But in the current situation, no.
I think the reality is there just isn’t as much business incentive to do these kind of things to computing devices as much as people imagine, and instead the arguments tend to paint the would-be oppressors as cartoon villains that want to remove these abilities from the world just because. Android phones that can root or at least sideload have been numerous forever; somehow nobody has bothered to create a halfway serious Google Play Store competitor anyway. Why would every business move to quash something which ultimately isn’t a universal threat? What Epic wants isn’t sideloading or rooting their way on to iPhones, they want Apple themselves to have to let users install Epic’s store through normal channels.
Technically, the Family Computer (Famicom) could run unlicensed software. It even had a BASIC interpreter and a keyboard controller. Nintendo realized their mistake very quickly, however, which is why the NES has a lockout chip and the disk add-on for the Famicom also locked out third-party disks. (Note that part of the system was the ability to buy blank disks and pay to download games onto them via a Disk Writer kiosk, hence why the disks were proprietary, not just the games.) A number of game developers in Japan found that to be a bit of a shock, from what I've heard.
This feels like losing options, not gaining them.
Freedom? No. Opportunity? Maybe. I think communities would arise to fill the demand though. Pseudo-anonymous reputation systems tied to matchmaking could fill the roll. I have a group of pseudo-anonymous friends/acquaintances I frequently play games with online. None of us cheat and if any of us did, we'd stop playing with them. We don't need big brother. We don't need technical solutions to social problems.
The issue here is that you're using "locked down" too generically. What you actually want is something like remote attestation. The device can assert with a signature that it's running a particular version of the OS and a particular version of the game and in so doing allows you to know that the user isn't cheating by using some other software.
That has nothing at all to do with whether you can install arbitrary software on the device or who gets a percentage of what. Even if you could install the Amazon store on your PlayStation and the install Cheat App from there, the device wouldn't then assert that you're running the official game (because you're not), and then the other players would know that and be able to boot you out. You don't need the other player's console to refuse to install an arbitrary app for that, only for it to be able to tell you when that has happened.
Of course you can now make the argument that any form of code execution increases the attack surface. And you're right but hypervisors can be quite effective. Also the XBOX One can be put in developer mode to run arbitrary UWP apps and has not yet had any major exploits (to my knowledge), where the PS4 has no similar features, but has had several firmware versions with significant security flaws.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/xbox-apps/devki...
Switching back and forth between retail and DEV mode is as easy as rebooting.
But just as a devil's advocate; what about rentals? You can't just put new wheels on your ZipCar. If we made locked platforms illegal, they would simply become rentals. But at least it would be explicit then.
Two thoughts:
1 - As software goes into everything, keep in mind that the universe of devices to which this applies will grow to include the set of "non-organic physical objects."
2 - And this will means that surprising outcomes could come of requiring everything to be open. Who do you trust to verify the software in your used car/refrigerator/lightswitch/water heater/etc? For devices where physical safety is at play, how do you verify that the (possibly aftermarket) software is up to code or other certification? Imagine every car sale or home inspection required a software assurance verification of every embedded system. Closed systems implicitly provide some level of assurance here.
No they don't as I can't verify any of that. A perfect counterexample is the VW dieselsoftware.
> perfect counterexample is the VW dieselsoftware
This is a great counterexample that inadvertently proves the point because in that case a) the software in question was exactly as delivered by the manufacturer so that b) consumers were able to receive compensation from rich VW for the faulty software.
If the software stack was open, a malfunction could be caused by aftermarket software (think: downloaded from Sourceforge) and therefore consumers would have no real remedy.
I suppose I could have been clearer on what's being assured. There is (obviously) value in being assured that you are buying what the manufacturer intended!
While there might be an incentive to restrict modifications (at least on a car, which is potentially dangerous), I don't see counterpoints to open-sourceing the software that runs on (the car in this example).
Devices like Kindle are one purpose devices. It is supposed to be a replacement for a book. The integration with Kindle Store for ebooks can be complained about, but Amazon gives you the freedom to use ebooks from anywhere, infact if you can live with the bad experience you can use the browser itself to download them on the device.
iPhone is a different ballgame, it is an ecosystem creating device. I have no problem with them restricting the APIs for third party developers if it improves security on the device, that's a good thing. But then the rent seeking on apps like Spotify is just bad for upcoming companies and would be for users in the end. This is not just limited to software, they can use the same leverage to even kill companies in hardware space.
Sure, Apple doesn't have a monopoly in terms of device share, but they absolutely are in a position to kill a company.
Yes I can.
> because the paranoid film studios wouldn't even license their content if it wasn't
That's fine by me.
I think people should have the freedom to consent to buy whatever products they like so long as the functionality of the product is not kept secret. They also should (and do) have the freedom to try and jailbreak it but not to the point of obligating the manufacturer to produce an open system. But even if there is some sort of law that you can’t sell closed-stack systems, you could just migrate everything to equipment leases. IMO this would make matters much, much worse for the consumer in terms of having control over their own equipment (though maybe some equipment would be made to last again).
if we agree as a society that the way the product work does not fit with our society ideals, then yes, definitely ? Especially when the person buying it will likely not have a lot of information / put a lot of thought in the issue. Laws are meant to protect people from that.
With a device that needs to be used in every day life (proof: smart phone penetration in many countries, more recently, access to certain locations only with a Covid app) it makes sense to have stronger protections for consumers and other businesses.
But the thing is, Apple has been stomping little guys forever and these Billion dollar gaming companies got benefited from it and only when the 30% cut has become too big of a chunk of their revenue; they are now making it as a David vs Goliath story. I had a retro arachnoid type game in Appstore for years which was under 'Arcade' category, when apple branded its gaming subscription service as 'Arcade', it forced me to change it to an irrelevant category.
You can have both ways. You can sell, but after 1 year (or 2) it becomes open.
Yes (practically), but with a small exception.
If you are the only provider of the hardware. For example if you own a single patent protecting any component of the hardware. You are the sole manufacturer of any reasonably unique component of the hardware. You are the only manufacturer putting components together in this combination. Etc. Then it should be illegal. It should be an anti-trust violation. You are using your monopoly on the hardware to create a monopoly on the software running on the hardware. Moreover attempting to do so should constitute patent misuse and invalidate any patents that you previously owned on the hardware [1].
If the hardware is completely commoditized, consumers have the option to buy practically identical hardware from a competitor, then it should not be illegal. It's hard to come up with examples of such hardware
[1] Patent misuse is a doctrine where if you attempt to use a patent to create a monopoly on something else, you lose the patent. It is rarely but not never used by the courts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_misuse
(I acknowledge this is a fairly extreme position, and that it is partially created by motivated reasoning. But it is the most principled position I can find to reach the conclusion that I want)
No.
> You can't argue that Prima Cinema should not be locked down (claiming anti-competitive behavior) because the paranoid film studios wouldn't even license their content if it wasn't.
You can actually. They demand this kind of DRM because they know the customer would sooner say yes to it than not get the movie. But that's only because they're in the better bargaining position as the only source for the movie -- it's leveraging the copyright monopoly into perfidious control over the device market. But they still, at the end of the day, want your money. Which means that if the thing they're insisting on is prohibited, they'll make it work without it.
Consider the general argument you're making. It's basically that if DRM was prohibited by law then Hollywood wouldn't distribute movies at all. But that's farcical -- they would have no revenue. Instead they would just distribute them without it, because they'd have no other option.
Okay, but what about your edge case, the really fancy one with the hardware anti-tampering. Wouldn't they at least not have that one? Still no, because it's still the same thing. The only point in having that is to try to push back the day when the movie is on all the pirate sites. But it's only to push it back while they're still distributing it using the higher margin distribution channels. If DRM was prohibited whatsoever then they couldn't use it there, so they would distribute it even there without it because otherwise there is no high margin early release market to protect.
Which leads me to the conclusion that the only reason why no one is ripping movies using Prima Cinema projectors and commodity grade hardware is the price. If they removed DRM it wouldn't make much of a difference, the limiting factor is already the price of the projector.
DRM is ridiculous because consuming the product is a side channel.
Crucially, this approach wouldn't trigger anything because all of the equipment would work outside of the projector. You would add the lenses and camera aligned and just after the projector. In effect, the system would take the place of the screen in the image path. I don't know of any protected image screen that can detect tampering.
I think the problem here arises not from the DRM (which I tend to believe is OK for clear cut cases like the above movie player), but from the universality of the smartphone device. Because of this universality, the phone is in a way "essential", so the "contract" you (as an end user) have with Apple is not able to encompass every use case of the device.
In this particular case, you might have bought the phone/tablet with the sole (or main - I know kids) purpose to play Fortnite on it. Now, because of politics, you can no longer use the phone for your initial intended purpose. Not because something you did, but because of something Apple and Epic did.
So it should be either forbidden for Apple, or they should be obliged to fully refund you, because the device is no longer usable for the original purpose you used it.
In an "ideal" world (with much less regulation), Apple would not be protected from such litigation (and now they are, because of the fine print) where users demand refund because of such things, but the world is not ideal. The regulation is there, so we should extend it onto Apple, who need to be "reduced" to something more like a utility company.
They maybe should have to say their product cannot be modified on the tin. That'd let consumers choose. It'd also let competitors advertise an advantage, if it is such.
I am in favor of right-to-repair, but that's a different concern than what you're asking about.
I was recently baffled by this on the Bandcamp app. You can't purchase music through their iOS app, and there isn't even a link to the website where you can purchase it. Instead there's just a "purchasing music is not supported on this device" message.
Likewise, on my own app, I had a blog post (webview) about our patreon (with a link, of course). And Apple flagged it during a random bug fix app update. So I had to edit the blog post and remove the link to our Patreon. And from what I could tell, there isn't even a way to use the proper Apple Pay/whatever system with Patreon subscriptions.
I feel this contradiction within me when I find myself promoting and praising the growth hacks and 'doing whatever it takes' mentality startups employ and then subsequently realizing that at the same time I would probably shame and criticize the same tactics if the same company got large.
Apple is under no obligation to behave fairly. Many (not me) would argue the opposite.
https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/8146/are-u-s-co...
It's pretty hard for an underdog or tiny startup to be anti-competitive because they simply don't have the leverage to do it. They can still be dishonest or immoral, it's just hard to be monopolistic when you're not anywhere close to being a monopoly.
Unfortunately, I don’t see this as being true. I’d be willing to bet they’re still breaking laws and ordinances today and we’re just not aware of it.
Part of it is the news cycle today, we’d never see a story about Uber breaking some municipal laws with the state of the world as it is. And after all, they have tons of cash, which is what breaking laws requires.
Until they suffer material operational pain from doing wrong, they’re not going to change.
Part of it is that business models are getting increasingly complex, and it’s getting harder for laypeople to really grok how a particular company makes money, especially when consumer data is involved.
The public tolerates quite a bit of unethical behavior by companies if they determine the value of the product to be worth it (i.e. Facebook). And some entrepreneurs see these examples and think that there are no consequences. There really is no concrete mechanism to assess morality in companies. Marketing gets to dictate most of that.
Size matters. If a child hits you, you scold them and tell them not to do it, but you're likely no worse for wear. If an adult hits you, they could kill you, we call it assault and it has legal consequences.
The contradiction you feel is like saying "well I don't think we should punish children the same way we punish adults, so maybe we shouldn't punish anyone?". I know that when I put it into this type of metaphor it seems obvious, I'm not trying to be insulting, merely that when you change the context we suddenly see that it does makes sense to weigh different situations with different consequences differently.
Trying to find a common legal framework to cover a 2 person ramen startup and the continent spanning wealth and power of Jeff Bezos and Amazon, or Tim Cook and Apple is something that seems fraught, and the consequences for the actions that each group takes are vastly different. I think we shouldn't be afraid to judge or regulate them differently as well.
A lot of the time, the only rule for healthy ecosystem is that players don’t get too big. Players getting too big means monopoly, cartel, etc.
OMFG. Is it just because I'm 56? Is it just because I've spent my entire adult life connected to the internet (barring a few early years where it was just Bitnet)? Is it because I helped start the biggest e-commerce company in the anglo/eurosphere? Is it that I spend all day in front of screens, connected to the entire goddam planet? Is it that I'm a grumpy old curmudgeon ?
The idea that the iPhone (or any network-connected portabl computing device) is the center of modern life just needs to die already.
If this pandemic didn't provide it already, just these few things are far more "central to modern life" than your goddam smartphone:
* a stable, diverse healthy food supply
* trash pickup
* a functioning, non-overloaded, sensibly priced and paid for healthcare system
* a mail/package distribution system
* fuel stations for your vehicle, if you have one
* investigative, non-suck-up journalism
* electricity (to charge your smartphone, naturally)
Your smartphone is not the center of your life. You have a variety of options for contemporary communication, and the fact that a bunch of you have decided that the most important one is the one that fits in your pocket and works anywhere there's a cell tower within range doesn't change the fact that it's the icing on top of the cake that is the rest of your life. It is totally amazing to be able to do what you can do with a contemporary smartphone, and no doubt they will get even more amazing.
But they are NOT the center of modern life, they are the black mirror-becoming-black hole sucking so many other components of human existence into their mundane, pedestrian and constrained vision of life.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/women-who-stray/2017...
Half the things you mention are oblivious to the younger population. They don't have a vehicle, don't use physical mail (paper letters), and couldn't care less about journalism.
Consider somebody trying to get a job in modern society. The phone is needed to apply. The phone is needed to do the interview. The phone is needed to take a picture of your id and receive the contract when you're hired.
That makes it a very useful tool in modern life. Not the center of modern life.
>They don't have a vehicle
Fuel for the bus or subway, then.
>don't use physical mail (paper letters)
and they don't vote? or participate in the census?
>couldn't care less about journalism.
doesn't match the young people I know.
I have a PS4
I can buy the game digitally from Sony
I can buy the digital code which activates on PS4 from Amazon or sometimes even straight from the publisher
I can buy a physical copy from countless retail stores both off and online from Walmart to BestBuy to Amazon to Gamestop
I can sell my used physical copy on Facebook Marketplace, Ebay, or Craigslist
This is the difference. And it's much bigger than people realize.
It is true, there is no physical media for Android or iOS purchases.
I can pay Sony to take a cut from the developer.
I can pay Amazon and Sony to take a cut from the developer.
I can pay retail stores to take a 50% or more cut, and then Sony takes a cut.
I can regain some of the cut that I paid to a retail store, so that the developer gets nothing, by selling it on Ebay or craigslist.
You are always buying the game from Sony, and Sony is always getting their cut. Your options are whether to involve other rent seekers or to just fuck over the developers completely.
It's pretty funny to look back and read the "whether or not apple backs down, Epic will have won a victory!" thinkpieces from last week.
Epic thought they could leverage their IPs into forcing Apple to play ball. Surely Apple wouldn't dare let Fortnite get deplatformed (as the game updates on without iOS). Surely Apple wouldn't dare let Unreal Engine get deplatformed as the OS updates onwards without it.
Turns out Apple does dare, and now third party developers are going to pay the price for Epic's arrogance. To be very clear: nothing is going to piss Apple off quicker than fucking with their cut of the revenue, this was eminently foreseeable and a blatant violation of ToS and there was no way Apple wasn't going to react. You should be mad at Epic here for trying to play silicon valley games with your products, not Apple.
The fact that Epic would then take cuts from third party developers in this app store is just the icing on this cake. They want to be the ones running the walled garden, nothing more.
Steam manages to get along with Apple just fine - they went ahead and made a revenue sharing agreement, and they haven't had a problem. Epic wanted to keep it all themselves, be the ones running the walled garden.
This is Epic trying to run the playbook that many of you have normalized, no different from Uber trying to bully their way out of background checks by threatening to pull out of Dallas, or threatening to pull out of California to bully their way out of paying for their employees' healthcare. Then cue the waterworks about those heartless regulators putting all those innocent employees at risk.
Only this time - it’s Epic who’s using your livelihoods as leverage for their power play. Very ironic!
All so that they can make $1 off a llama skin for bideo james instead of $0.92. Just like the Uber thing is so Uber doesn’t have to pay 20 bucks to run a background check. Playing games with people's lives so you can run a little fatter profit margin, that's the silicon valley way.
Epic complaining about being shut out of the App store is like Dominoes complaining about being shut out of that private university where all the rich kids go. They should just go over to Android where, if they want to, they can make their own app store.
> My preferred outcome would see Apple maintaining its control of app installation. I treasure and depend on the openness of PCs and Macs, but I am also relieved that the iPhone is so dependable for those less technically savvy than me.
This, I certainly don't agree with. Android has more app stores and is still quite easy to use and dependable for the less technically savvy. Apple getting more App stores won't change how "easy" the iPhone is to use.
And IAP, which is the subject under discussion, is 100% through Sony, and Sony still gets 30%.
[1] https://www.epicgames.com/fortnite/en-US/news/the-fortnite-m...
>[smartphones are] not a console you play to entertain yourself, or even a PC for work: it is the foundation of modern life
IMHO, this is a perfectly valid argument.
To be clear, I have no idea how that could be legislated, nor do I necessarily think it should be. I'm only saying that it's easy to see why they aren't the same thing.
Epic doesn't have a problem with Apple running an app store, despite what their marketing on this legal issue makes out. Epic has an app store and they charge ~12%. Given my experience with Epic, I am certain that if they had gotten here first, they would be charging the same 30% that Valve charges. Epic's problem is that Apple wont let them run their app store on Apple's stack. Epic wants to run their software everywhere, and commoditize the platforms/OS/hardware.
Apple wants to do the opposite.
IANAL, but I haven't seen any evidence that Apple should not be allowed to do so.
If Apple were the only mobile device available, then we might have a monopoly conversation. But it isn't, so we wont. It isn't even the majority platform in the US.
Where are these points coming from? They aren't from the perspective of a customer.
I am a customer, and I will continue to buy iPhone because of their total integration. Android is a shitshow and you are welcome to it. "Well, I want iOS, except for..." yeah that is Android.
So what is really underneath all this? The money. Epic wants to make more money from Apple's customers. And it wants to do so by destroying the value that Apple customers like me choose over Android.
Samsung makes phones that are at least as good as iPhone.
Android is an OS that lets owners do all of the things that people here are demanding Apple allow them to do.
Yet, strangely, rather than everyone here advocating that we all move to Android, instead, we are demanding that Apple become like Android.
Because nobody here is actually interested in what Apple customers want. They just want access to those customers, even if it means fucking those customers over.
0. Lower rate from 30% to 15% -Apple still has monopoly, nothing changes.
1. Side loading apps: Not good! malicious apps can run amok, eg. $BIG_CORP$ will say - you will get 20$ credits if you sideload our app, and then surveil everything that is possible on the device. Here, we expect an average user to give all the permission that the app requests for.
2. allow secondary app stores: -not good as it depends on the quality of enforcement in secondary app store. For Apple, it is in their interest to maintain app quality in their appstore to maintain overall good user experience in their device, but motivations are not same for secondary app store. May allow malicious apps which deteriorate the user experience/privacy similar to 1. And there will be a state where you will have to install 10s of app store just to install specific programs which is also not ideal.
3. Allow secondary payment methods: -Average user will have to give up their payment info to everyone who asks for it. Most of them will not be trustworthy nor we can expect all of them to maintain good security standards for saving payment info.
The biggest culprit of all this drama is Apple does not allow secondary payment inside apps AND also, if you have secondary payment outside of app, they do not allow that price to be lower. There is no competition, thus Apple can get away with whatever it chooses to. Thus the monopoly.
4. SOLUTION:
a) charge a flat fee for reviewing/serving apps. If necessary, linearly increase it based on daily active users if they need more resource to support that app.
b) allow secondary payment providers (whitelisted only).
c) allow secondary payment price to be lower than Apple.
With this solution, there will be competition between payment providers which will drive the price down. Only whitelisting few payment methods which are trustable eg applepay, googlepay, paypal, stripe, etc will maintain security of payment data.
Secondary payment method can be implemented along with apple's own payment system just like how it is for `Sign in with Apple` . If you have `Login with Facebook`, then there should be `Sign in with Apple`. The alternative payment option can be turned on and off in settings. If it is turned on, then no more Support from Apple
I disagree, I think the fact that so many developers built apps for iPhone supports my point. Apple gave developers everything they needed, users with dollars to spend.
I think people overestimate the importance/benefit of such level of control over instalation of apps. Yes, Wintel was plagued by malware viruses but Mac/Linux/Unix wasn't. I don't think the benefit (protecting users from threats) outweighs the drawbacks (not having control of device, not allowing ecosystem of paid thinkerers to help Muggles personalize their devices) of having such closed approach.
It should be clear to everyone that the smartphone will become more and more integrated into our lives to a point where at some point you cannot participate in society without a phone. Sure, many things have alternative options or are limited to tech enthusiasts but other options become less favorable more and more.
The alarm clock in the morning, communicating with friends and family, paying for things, doing your taxes, unlocking your door. Also unlocking your car is coming and there is even early talk of putting your driver’s license in your phone. Getting driving directions, some people use their phone as an artificial pancreas system. (https://androidaps.readthedocs.io/en/latest/)
The smartphone has become the personal computing device.
A gaming console is something completely different, there I'm perfectly fine if a company wants to control the environment. I would prefer an open system but Sony, Nintendo or Microsoft controlling the games I can play is not even close to the limitations apple creates with their ecosystems on society. Google allows for third-party stores on their Android system, I would be doable for Apple to allow the same.
There are a wide range of other parties that dislike Apple’s policies.
Why don’t they build their own platform with their own exclusive and attractive content?
I can see two options:
1. A full blown phone. Hard to do? Perhaps, but if Apple and a Google really aren’t competitive, then it should be possible to take customers away from Apple over the next few years, especially if your device has the games that teens want and can’t get from Apple.
2. Don’t start when a phone. Make a gaming handheld with exclusive content - Epic’s super popular titles, plus XBox streaming. Sell it for $200. Basically an iPod for games, done right. If Nintendo can sell handheld consoles it’s obvious Epic and Microsoft can.
Then just build this out with phone functions, and a great browser for SPA’s etc, leveraging flutter, and eat Apple’s lunch from the bottom up in classic low-end disruption style.
Bonus: have an open bootloader - bootcamp style so that enthusiasts can hack the thing.
#2 seems like they could have a product on the market next year if they wanted.
I could see this strategy easily forking the market into iPhones for productivity and Epic devices for fun, and causing both segments to improve at a greater pace.
Apple simply isn’t unassailable if people are willing to put in the sustained effort needed to compete with them, but to do so will take a similar sustained effort over a similar time period to what it took them to obtain their position.
They don't want to spend their cash to do the R&D, and build up the network of stores and customer support required to be able to compete with Apple.
Seriously, the game Apple/Google/etc have been playing has been pretty anti-consumer at times, and downright unjust at other times. That said, Epic's (cough cough tencent's) only move here is to turn this dumpster into a dumpster fire and I don't see that as a particularly helpful direction to go in.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/07/technology/more-iphone-fa... https://blog.trendmicro.com/trendlabs-security-intelligence/... https://www.wired.com/story/apple-app-store-malware-click-fr... https://crappygames.miraheze.org/wiki/Category:IOS_Games
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/04/remembering-case-estab....
You can read any book, watch any movie, listen to any music, but not run any code. That limits expression. Plenty of topics are off limits because the only way to run them is as apps and apple doesn't allow them.
Some of you would apparently be okay of Apple restricted movies, music, and books to only movies, music, and books apple sells and made it impossible to view/read/listen otherwise including removing the browser? Because that's effectively what they've done for apps.
There should be no distinction. Either the platform is open to all media or the platform is a form of suppression and control of ideas those in control don't approve of.
iPhones are getting more expensive to build considering all the tech their cramming into each iPhone and other products. eventually they might get so expensive that Apple would be forced to sell them at a price that will not work well wih consumers. If you think about how much apple has invested in services that only function on their devices, I think apple will start selling products at a loss, with the plan to make that money back and more through services they offer on devices. In the same way that Sony and Microsoft lose money with every console sold, but recoup those loses many times over with games purchase fees.
30% cut starting at $0.99 purchases. As mentioned this barely covers processing fees.
20% cut starting at $9.99.
10% cut starting at $49.99.
Not only does this fix the Epic, Netflix, Hey, etc issue where high value or high volume txns get unfairly middlemanned by Apple. It also incentivizes developers away from the "race to the bottom" effect that made everything a crummy $0.99 microtransaction in the first place.
I am happy to pay for a premium to have peace of mind. To give an analogy it’s kind of like gaming console vs PC gaming where I am happy to sacrifice a bit of performance in exchange of getting rid of all shady game-specific launchers
Also from customer prospective, I feel more comfortable knowing the payment will go through Apple.
But this is a good thing, not a bad thing. Literally the purpose of all this, is to get around this cut. It is better for developers and consumers, to take whatever actions possible, to support loopholes, that get around this 30% cut.
This is the explicit goal here, and the reasons why it is good. The loophole would be a good thing.
Basically figure out how to make mobile gaming available via Mobile Safari, Mobile Edge or Mobile Chrome browsers.
This is the investment Apple has to put in to make sure there are apps on their platform.
Their "funding" for this is iPhone and iPad sales.
Just think how much it would be worth to Epic to run their own Games store on iOS - literally billions.
This is big brain thinking from Tim Sweeney.
But, on the other hand, anti-trust was never my area of legal practice, it's a highly specialized area of US law (something I'm not familiar with in the slightest), and thousands of (billable!) man-hours would have already been spent researching, crafting and refining their argument.
In other words, my legal opinion is meaningless here. I'm interested to see how it plays out.
Do Microsoft, Sony or Nintendo allow other stores on their consoles?
How much % do they take from console game sales?
Epic's lawsuit alleges antitrust violations in two different markets: 1) the "iOS App Distribution Market" and 2) the "iOS In-App Payment Processing Market". Proving a violation in one of these markets may be a lot more challenging than the other.
A. Monopoly Power
The first step in proving a monopolization offense under the Sherman Act is proving the company possesses "monopoly power in the relevant market". In determining monopoly power, the courts start by examining market share, but "but typically do not find monopoly power if the firm (or a group of firms acting in concert) has less than 50 percent of the sales of a particular product or service within a certain geographic area." [1]
Obviously, with Apple's current market share of 46% [2] in the United States, they are unlikely to be considered possessing monopoly power in the smartphone market.
B. The "iOS App Distribution" Market and Aftermarkets
Since proving Apple's monopoly power in the smartphone market seems unlikely, Epic instead alleges Apple has monopoly power over a different market: "iOS App Distribution". Since Apple has complete control over iOS App Distribution, problem solved, right? Not so fast.
Much like razor blades and razors or printers and ink, "app distribution" would be considered an aftermarket of the smartphone market. Aftermarkets are very common in antitrust cases, and in general, the US legal system does not allow you to define an aftermarket in the context of a single brand's product unless very specific rules are met:
> Because it would be inappropriate to punish a firm for its natural monopoly in its own products, courts embraced a sweeping prohibition against analyzing alleged anticompetitive activity by focusing on single-brand relevant markets: "[A]bsent exceptional market conditions, one brand in a market of competing brands cannot constitute a relevant product market." [3]
A good summary on antitrust issues in aftermarkets can be found here. [4] Of particular relevance is that an aftermarket monopoly based on a customer's voluntary agreement to a contract is not considered a "relevant market" for antitrust purposes.
In Blizzard Entertainment Inc. v. Ceiling Fan Software LLC [5], Ceiling Fan Software attempted to argue that Blizzard held monopoly power in the market of "add-on software for WoW", and preventing them from releasing their own WoW add-on was a violation of antitrust law. Blizzard argued (successfully) that the "WoW add-on" market was not the relevant market because WoW users voluntarily agreed to a EULA stipulating they would only used Blizzard authorized add-ons when they initially purchased the game, and if they wanted to use third-party add-ons they could have purchased another game instead.
In Apple Inc. v. Psystar Corp. [6], Psystar Corp attempted to argue that Apple held monopoly power in the "Mac OS" market and used it to unfairly block competition in the "hardware that runs Mac OS" aftermarket. The court ruled that Apple's monopoly power in the "hardware that runs Mac OS" aftermarket was based on the EULA that customers of Mac OS agreed when they purchased Mac OS, and was again not a relevant market for antitrust purposes, because "customers knowingly agree to the challenged restraint". In other words, if they didn't like the restriction of not being able to install Mac OS on non-Apple hardware, they could have purchased an alternative operating system instead.
Circling back to the iPhone and its app distribution aftermarket, it seems the same reasoning would apply here. If the iPhone EULA specifically states that customers can only install apps via the App Store, and the customer knowingly purchases the product knowing such limitations are in place, it seems very unlikely that a court would agree that "iOS App Distribution" is actually a relevant market for antitrust purposes.
C. The "iOS In-App Payment Processing Market"
On the other hand, the antitrust claims Epic makes regarding this market are much more compelling because unlike the app distribution market, customers have no information about the restrictions in the relationship between the developer and Apple, and they certainly did not agree to any such restrictions when they purchased their phones. Without a contractual restriction in place, the determination of whether the "iOS In-App Payment Processing Market" is a relevant market depends on multiple factors which I won't go into too much detail here or this post will be even longer than it already is, but suffice to say they have a much higher chance of successfully making this argument.
Epic also has a strong argument here that Apple requiring in-app payments to go through the App Store and taking a 30% cut of each payment directly harms consumers by increasing prices, and lacks any justification other than to hurt competition. And the rebuttal that you can buy a different product without this restriction falls flat because the other major product on the market also charges the same cut.
The upshot of all of this is it seems unlikely that Epic will be able to compel Apple to permit third-party app installation on the iPhone, but they may be able to successfully argue against the restriction that all in-app purchasing must go through the App Store.
[1] https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-a...
[2] https://www.counterpointresearch.com/us-market-smartphone-sh...
[3] https://casetext.com/case/metzler-v-bear-automotive-service-...
[4] https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/attachments/us-submissions-...
[5] https://casetext.com/case/blizzard-entmt-inc-v-ceiling-fan-s...
If they win the lawsuit they will (probably) be able to have more control over how they want to distribute their iOS apps.
If they lose, they won't have to deal with iOS anymore. Free players cost money too, and it's possible iOS is not so interesting to Epic with the %30 Apple cut.
Also, since their business model is based on microtransactions, most of their revenue must come from whales. These are committed players who will most likely go get their Fornite fix somewhere else. Specially if Apple wins. Most gamers will always side with Epic here.
You think Epic would start a lawsuit without having done their math and willingly decide to lose millions daily plus the legal fees?
Plus, if you don't think Epic had already talked to lawyers and lobbyists in Washington DC and already been given a heads-up that they might win, then you don't know business that well.
It has always been a 30% cut, even when it launched.
Apple did not raise the cut when the iOS app market got bigger.
Apple pricing is not cost-based, it is value-based.
Why should their pricing be cost-based? Why should they try to do an Amazon by sucking all the air in the room?
If that value-based pricing strategy translates into billions earned, great for Apple.
It could also have translated into billions lost, if their app store had turned into a ghost town. I’m sure it happened to other platforms.
I can care less if Apple has high or low costs to maintain their platform. That’s their problem, not mine. If I buy something it is because I want it at that price. If the price point is above my perceived value, I will not buy and both Apple and Epic will lose revenue but again, that’s their problem.
Epic has the option not to use IAPs if that sales model is not profitable for them at any price point.
Apple shouldn't have to enable you to undermine their business with their own property. And no court would ever require them to.
The fact is that Apple hasn't changed the terms. It's been the same since the App Store began (technically it's become more generous to developers with the reduction in the fee for subscriptions after the first year). Meanwhile the iPhone installed base is magnitudes larger than it was in 2008, making it more lucrative for developers than ever. Apple would be well within their right to raise the fee, but the fee has only ever gone down.
That's addressing the moral argument of their business model. Legally, Epic has no case.