Comment by cschneid | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cschneid | Hacker News Reader

The Hey saga emphasized that Apple has multiple products interacting in a single app store.

* 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".

> 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.

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.

Target is across the street from Walmart. But if someone has an iPhone they cannot shop at the Google Play store.

And Android, the only other realistic option, has effectively the same policies. Technically you can side load or use an alternative app store, but that means you don't get Play Services. And it's pretty impractical to develop apps without using those services.

Sure, in Mountain View, but otherwise the parent comment is correct. Charles Fishman’s book The Wal-Mart Effect[1] goes into great depth about how Wal-Mart suffocates smaller stores across America and turns around to arm-twist their suppliers.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wal-Mart_Effect

Even a frequent walmart buyer can still order online. On the other hand most people only own 1 phone and thus are a captive audience which limits the ways developers can reach them.

Because you can buy the same exact item on Zalando and put it on fire if you want to

Imagine if you could buy shoes only at Walmart because you bought the shoe rack there.

That's some Ai-powered "Smart Shoe-Rack" with blockchain technology, running on some kubernetes clusters with 5G connectivity right there!

> Because you can buy the same exact item on Zalando and put it on fire if you want to

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.

We are talking about the same exact item with the same exact features, just a different brand

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

Because Walmart owns the physical space but apple doesn’t own the physical device.... Apple has set up shop on the real-estate (the device) that it sold over to the user. I’ve seen this argument plenty of times and it rings hollow to me every time.

So, if they started renting the phone to you and everybody else, having a single Apple-controlled App Store would be acceptable?

(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)

This is how apps on phones worked for a really long time, each carrier ran its own App Store and in many cases you were renting the phone from them or getting it for free with your plan. Mobile carriers have begun merging into megacarriers over the last decade, but for a while you had a choice of at least 4 real carriers in the US.

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

I don't own a Walmart. I do own a phone. I'm largely restricted with what I can do on my phone.

Then why did you buy that phone knowing you had dozens of other alternatives?

Suppose Apple and Google started making cars and put every other car company out of business. Both made the rule that if you bought their car, every product or service that went into the car also had to be purchased through them. You preferred the Apple car world to the Google car world. (All Google cars streamed your location and live video of you and your facially recognized passengers back to Google for analysis of who you did what with where and when, for your "convenience", and Google was the only alternative to Apple.)

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.

This is the first good analogy I’ve read for understanding Apple’s power in a way that non tech people can understand.

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.

I bought my cash register at Wal-Mart and I happily send in 30 percent of my profits there every month.

> In order to sell goods in a place like Walmart

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.

A $1000 fee, or fees per download, gets rid of hobbyists, passion projects, and open source apps. For example [Bookplayer.](https://github.com/TortugaPower/BookPlayer)

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 apps

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.

As a user I'd much rather pay for a service used on my phone through Apple Pay and not have to worry about how the service is handling my card details/personal information. If I want to cancel any subscriptions I can easily do it from the one place inside my iPhone as well. I agree it's probably not worth paying 30% extra for though.

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