Apple apologizes to WordPress, won’t force the free app to add purchases
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The idea here is: if you have a substantive point to make, make it thoughtfully; if you don't, please don't comment until you do. "Boo $BigCo", "yay $BigCo" fan-v.-antifan cage matches are not curious conversation. We want curious conversation.
They should create legislation to control access to all app stores to prevent this rent seeking - force app stores to treat all apps equally according to store defined guidelines (including store owners apps) - any submissions have to be reviewed in a reasonable amount of time and if declined must receive specific violations of the guidelines on which the denial is based. Also make the "no outside payment inside of apps" illegal.
Suddenly the value add of the store streamlined experience has to be justified vs. other payment options - and you'll see the fees drop significantly closer to market level (and it will still be profitable for store owners and they will still invest money in developing/maintaining it).
This is so incredibly developer-hostile that the fact developers keep using the play store pretty much helps make the case they're acting in an anticompetitive manner.
It certainly is interesting to note Google removed the title "Non-competition" from clause 4.5 of their developer agreement some time ago. It's still in the archived version on archive.org though, from back when it was called the Android market... Removing the title but leaving the clause intact doesn't mask the anti-competitive behaviour!
As users and developer, that's a side that we don't really get to see, so it's hard to judge how justified these techniques are. What alternative solution do you propose that would help developers without at the same time making bad actors lives easier.
Also it’s possible that specific clauses in the guidelines are anti-competitive. Fir example a guideline that simply disallows any app that competes with one of Google’s Apps might be seen this way.
So those are coherent arguments I think, I just don’t agree with them. The Play Store is a google product, with features developed and maintained by a Google. Other stores exist that compete with it, with features developed by other companies. The reason customers went with Google Play is simply because it had momentum and scale, and customers don’t want multiple stores. They want one store with one set of rules where all the Apps are, that will be on their next phone. Customers benefit from a one stop shop.
If someone wanted to develop a better store, with libraries better than ‘play services’, what stops them? If you want to inter operate with and use the services of the Play Store, you need to make a deal with a google, and the terms of that deal are standardised by Google. There’s nothing obviously illegal or a abusive about any of that, as long as the contractual relationships are fairly administered under the law.
The reason customers went with the default is mostly because it's the default. Given the choice, we'd see a lot more competition.
>If someone wanted to develop a better store, with libraries better than ‘play services’, what stops them?
The anti-competitive google behavior where they forbid you to sell any android phone with Google Play if you sell any android phone without it? IIRC there was a lawsuit/fine in EU a few years back regarding this.
Which is debatable but not as absurd as you make it out to be.
Competing app stores solves this 100% because there would definitely be a market for a developer friendly app store.
One that occurred with certifying agencies in the financial crisis of 2008.
In a world with competing app-stores, if a store does its scrutiny properly, and is seen as too strict, then the apps will flock to get listed in other less-strict app-stores. Thus all stores are incentivised to relax the scrutiny to retain apps for their own survival. Sometimes to the point of simply rubber-stamping their approvals on crappy stuff.
Thus the end-users lose the benefits of proper curation.
But your comment really points out that not everybody wants that. So your scenario won't happen on practice.
But Apple are obviously not doing proper curation. They might be good at keeping viruses out, but what they have done to Wordpress and HEY was not proper in the least.
You have a lot of faith in 60+ year old (mostly tech-illiterate men) to fix technology they don't understand. Government isn't the solution to this problem. Developers leaving the app store is probably only what will get Apple to change.
Developers leaving won't happen, Apple and Google will cut a deal with big guys (Netflix, Amazon) and ignore smaller players (even Epic in this case)
Should the developer spit in the face of those users and refuse to develop the app? No. They might not like apple. Might not support what apple is doing. The app might be horrible crippled and overpriced. Sadly the choice will still likely be to develop an app for the iphone because the small signal it would send to apple is microscopic compared to the major harm to your users.
Linus tech tips had a nice discussion around.
Developers leave the app store for which alternative on iOS?
I agree that the situation is really bad, but I do not trust that governments would be able to set laws and regulations to control such specifics of app stores.
Side note: my iPhone autocorrected app store to App Store, which I think is another example of overreach.
Thinking a bit wider, the same legislation should affect e.g. how Amazon can treat people who sell on their platform. They are all monopsonies:
“In economics, a monopsony is a market structure in which a single buyer substantially controls the market as the major purchaser of goods and services offered by many would-be sellers.”
Are FAANG (well possibly not 'N') about to face nationalisation? Or United-Nationalisation given that they're all global organisations and having them run by the completely dysfunctional US government isn't a result anyone wants?
Can government really step in to control the workings of the Apple Store and change the rules without drastically effecting Apple's business? If so, what responsibility does government have if that drastic effect stops the business from being profitable?
Can government enforce fact-checking on Facebook (or Google) without affecting its advertising business? Again, if so, what responsibility does it bear if that business collapses?
Can government ignore it and allow the tech giants to continue uncontrolled? That doesn't seem to be working either.
If the business relies on anti-competitive behavior to stay profitable, then any regulation that improves the situation will necessarily affect that business' bottom line.
I wouldn't be surprised if FAANG and their dominant positions in the market are considered important to "national security", in an economic sense of the term. (And perhaps from surveillance/intelligence perspective, and control of information access.)
In that case, it would be in the national interest to support - or at least let continue without disruption by pesky regulations - their anti-competitive behavior that ensures that dominant global position.
I assume by "they" you mean "each of the 175+ countries that the app stores operate in, most with slightly different rules that a software developer would need to understand?"
To have a good App Review system, there are going to be mistakes made. Having actual people there the developers can appeal and talk to is critical.
as long as there are alternatives, it's the user choice to get into the walled ecosystem. people enjoy the ease of mind of it, and while I'm not among them, I can say I find the play store and the 'apk downloaded from somewhere' experiences both grating compared to the apple store.
a curated store has it's appeal, and it's value. is it 30%? that is for the customer to decide, not the legislator.
Coercive bundling should warrant anti-trust scrutiny, whenever it occurs. It may only seldomly warrant action, but the very ability to coerce counter-parties appears to be a strong indicator that the traded good is not inherently fungible with another offering.
> that is for the customer to decide, not the legislator.
It's not clear to me what basis this claims factual authority beyond your personal understanding of the world.
Alternatively, and equally glib,
That is for society to decide, not the individual.
likewise. that why you argue the argument, not the authority behind for a healthy discussion on anonymous forums.
> and equally glib
except I provided an argument for the benefit to the individual, while the whole of your post hinges on appeal to (un)authority
another case in point: all the pc stores exclusives. imagine having to have to install 5 different stores for accessing this or that publisher games on a phone. how can you argue that is pro-customer?
we already know that it is what is going to happen, because it has already happened. and it was not for the better; there was no reduction of prices (if anything, aaa went from 49$ to 69$) and a constant fight for user attention by undercutting each other stores with exclusives. so the price cut reduction did not materialize, and we have to fight against a tide of software spying each other on top of it.
> Coercive bundling should warrant anti-trust scrutiny
fair enough, but it still doesn't mean it has to be incorporated in law, where it gonna stay for a long time and likely used as hammer in all kind of unexpected ways.
> the traded good is not inherently fungible with another offering
or the consumers are happy with the locked platform. those who aren't, after all, can already sideload to their android. this seems more of a case of a minority wanting a cake and eat it too, not a real issue with predatory behavior.
The same could be said by taxi drivers about Uber.
It's the exploitation of the platform-economy that is the problem, really.
An extra problem is that this platform-economy is a pretty new concept. I don't even know if economists have good models for it. From this, it's no wonder that governments are lagging far behind, and we shouldn't expect much change in the near future.
At one point not too long ago, Microsoft controlled everything. They didn’t control retailers, but they would put ISVs out of business regularly. You could charge what you wanted, but were always at the risk of a “predatory pricing” attack when Microsoft would clone your feature for free in the latest version of their products.
There was a consent decree formed about product tie-ins to stymie this activity circa 1994.
Then the Web Browser came along and threatened Microsoft’s regime. We had a way to run software anywhere without Microsoft’s involvement!
And of course they tried to tie their own Browser into Windows, because that’s how they competed in the past. They were found guilty of violating it with in their 1998 trial, forming a new consent decree with penalties in 2001.
Did this actually matter when mobile took over in 2007? Google Chrome also now has vast majority browser share. Did this help there too?
What Apple and Google are doing is nowhere close to this in terms anti-competitive behaviour, it’s not even in the same league. You throw terms around like “rent seeking” without understanding what that means. Rent seeking is about expanding one’s share of wealth without also broadening the base of wealth. A retail cut is ... not that.
But even more so... why are people so devoid of knowledge of tech history or imagination that we must reach for legislation rather than building a better mousetrap?
This isn’t about consumers, it’s about ISVs wanting higher margins without putting any of the work in. It’s not likely going to be successful.
Granted, 30% would be low for retail, but surely digital marketplaces would charge less if competition was allowed. To get a sense of what pricing would look like in a competitive market, we can look at Steam, Epic, etc. for app distribution, or Stripe, Braintree, etc. for in-app purchases.
Regulating retailers because you don’t like their cut is price controls, which is completely contrary to a free market, and ultimately undermines the end user experience of having a trusted, secure store. Perhaps Google or Apple’s power is so strong as to warrant regulation - but It must be applied fairly, or else it’s just politically corrupt wielding of power against a successful corporation because a part of the supply chain wants a bigger share of the pie.
Apple’s behavior is not anti-competitive by any historical measure, as the courts will show when Epic loses both their Google and Apple cases.
Antitrust law is always political. Do you really think the Trump or even Biden administrations will punish their most successful company, given the other problems in the economy? Convince them this will lead to more growth and you’ll get your wish. Right now it just seems like grousing.
Edit: I could see Europe doing something more intrusive, as is their tendency. However I still think it would have to be legislative and not legal, the arguments are too weak.
For example Apple demand that app developers price their apps in the app store similar to the same service in other stores (website, Google play store, etc), even though they are taking a huge 30% cut. So Spotify can't price their product 30% more expensive in the app store, which makes the app store appear competitive and effectively kills incentives for the app store to reduce their fees, while devaluing products sold through the app store.
I do agree with you though about the political side of the matter.
With software it’s of course easy to say that it’s a different product in different platforms. Which is why Apple used legal licensing to make Apps feel more like traditional products.
Arguably this makes easier for consumers to compare platforms and make a buying decision based on the underlying platform and not transitory deals on top of it. We can assume that all smartphone platforms are equal for their 3rd party software prices. Competition therefore isn’t on partner discounts or formations of cartels, it’s on the strengths of the underlying platform itself.
This does stop a form of competition, but I’m not sure price opacity is a form that has traditionally been viewed as a net positive.
Perhaps this leads to a legislative regime similar to US auto sales where dealers/shops and manufacturers must have separate ownership. To me Apple’s policies aren’t directly trying to emulate some aspects of this to avoid having to give up running the store.
Lets stick to the ‘no lower pirce than apple store’. This is very and clearly anti competitive tactic. Only side (apple) with significant leverage can use it. In every other situation it is not possible.
And to make it clear: this point is anti competitive, while you re completly skipping this topic concentrating on apple vs developer, because it harms (increases of price) consumers.
Multiple datapoints on this available, the best one is the very own of apple: mac os store. It is a ghost town.
Ios store would be instantly the same ghost if there existed even one ios app store alternative.
P.S. reminder: im addressing your mistake of ‘this is not anticompetitive’.
“No lower price” is not anti-competitive, it’s a common retail policy, and traditionally has been viewed as pro-competitive as it stops predatory pricing tactics.
It also implies the existence of a marketplace of dealers for iOS apps: there is none. The marketplace is among two different platforms vying for users.
ISVs are free to exclusively support one platform or the other. Google could lower their cut to 15% as incentive. The fact that they don’t do this is testament to Apple’s platform ability to attract customers that actually spend money.
Fundamentally this is about retailer policies and a reseller has every right to reject your product if it doesn’t want to represent it. 30% markup isn’t unreasonable when looking at actual retailers with a mix of products that have markups that vary from 5-100%.
What you want is Google and Apple’s platforms to be declared utilities where their platforms are state-regulated businesses that are forced to create a marketplace of retailers and are forced to have a 3rd party agency determine app admission guidelines across stores. This is far beyond the reach of antitrust law and will require legislative solutions.
Two tiers of completion would now exist: among retailers and among platforms. The cut % in some cases will go down. It is however debatable this will lead to overall lower consumer prices or a better consumer experience. The platforms are now entrenched for a generation and can’t make major changes except by 3rd party permission. All these new agencies need to be funded, and this raises the supply chain cost. The new admission guidelines might be worse or better. The retail experiences will be confusing as none will be default. The MSRP of software will be confusing (unless it’s mandated that ISVs publish one).
All of this to solve the problem of ISVs that want to build and sell the same product on two platforms and want to be able to take more of the retail margin for themselves?
Hard pass. I’d much rather see time, energy, and capital be allocated to entrepreneurs that may topple this regime by making a better alternative.
False. You can price your app/IAP higher, you just can't tell the user it's cheaper elsewhere.
Information asymmetry exists in most markets and I don’t think that creates a justification for antitrust action under current law.
I don't think anyone should be allowed to use their market position to do that.
With regards to typical retail, I think that's a bit of a wonky analogy as it's not a competitor in this case, it's the company themselves. That being said, things like that have been done. Not exactly the same but in the same spirit is printing the "retail price" on the box to prevent 3rd party sellers from just charging whatever they want.
Where did you read that? I don't think that's true; for example YouTube Premium costs more through iOS IAP compared to the website. And Spotify did the same for years too.
That's not the point though
The point is that if Apple Store (or Play Store) is the only way to ask for money to users, Apple cannot decide who's in and who's out on their whim, they have to allow anybody and only act post-facto on the apps that misbehaved
In real life you are not arrested for attempted homicide because you carry a knife with you 'cause knives can be used to kill people
They have two choices: relax the rules of the store or accept other stores that can apply different rules, giving more choice to developers, publishers and users
The other point is that Apple cannot control what's inside an app, if the developer wants to promote their own product, website, other ways of buying a subscription, they should be allowed, in the same exact way the manufacturer of the blood pressure monitor I bough on Amazon have put inside the box a 5 euros coupon to buy OTC drugs online on their e-store.
Amazon doesn't have a say on that.
> I could see Europe doing something more intrusive, as is their tendency.
As European I love that Europe protects me as citizen of Europe instead of Apple, which is not even European and evades taxes using tax heavens
Amazon absolutely has a say of what they carry in their store, and most consumers hate the terrible curation of their marketplaces lately.
If what Apple runs is not a product, it’s a utility. I think people underestimate what it means to declare the App Stores a utility: freeing up the App admission rules likely might not be one of the outcomes.
> They have two choices: relax the rules of the store or accept other stores that can apply different rules, giving more choice to developers, publishers and users
Or they have a third choice: status quo. It is currently a fantasy to think otherwise.
The HW device is not theirs.
> Amazon absolutely has a say of what they carry in their store
They have no say of what's inside the box.
If inside the box there is a sticker that says "buy from our store, it's cheaper" they can't be forced out
Maybe Amazon can find other ways of kicking products out, but not that one
Apple wrote that rule inside their agreements
Which is clearly unfair competition
Apple competes directly with publishers on the store, being both entities that make the software that people can buy on the only store available, Amazon does not compete directly, they don't manufacture what they sell, they simply resell.
> It is currently a fantasy to think otherwise.
again: EU exists and take this matters seriously.
China could find itself in a digital war with US and it's the third most important market in the World for Apple.
Things can change very quickly
> most consumers hate the terrible curation of their marketplaces lately.
Considering how many posts I've seen about broken or fake products sold on Amazon, it's quite clear that the real fantasy is thinking that a marketplace where only one decides what's good and what's not doesn't produce a better curated and more secure experience
The software is theirs. It’s already been legally established that they’re allowed to create HW that only runs their software.
> [Amazon] have no say of what's inside the box.
That is untrue. If amazon doesn’t like a supplier, or what’s in a suppliers box, they can and will cut that supplier off from being able to sell on their store. They have done this before at their own whim.
> Apple wrote that rule inside their agreements... Which is clearly unfair competition
No. It’s simple contract law. Their software, their rules.
There is no competition here to be anticompetitive, there is only a singular retail channel to a singular platform. Anyone is free to walk across the street to Google, or any one of the Non-Play-Store Androids. Taking a cut of retail sales isn’t rent seeking, its normal business practice.
As soon as a government decides it doesn’t like private contracts and wants to create a disintermediated market - which is the most logical way to get close to what you’re asking for, a free market of stores and suppliers where it’s more likely that ISVs will be less restricted , that’s interfering with the market arrangement and the iOS platform’s approach to security and quality control.
It is almost unimaginable that the government would force Apple to lift all admission restrictions on the platform due to security and quality concerns , but even if they did, they couldn’t force Apple or any other retailer to resell software they don’t want to, short of heavy regulatory injection. So let’s say they they found a way to make this work. It’s either via a market of many app stores, or its by making Apple an agent of the government Itself in curating the App Store.
My overall point is “Be careful what you wish for“. The unintended consequences of this interference are vast. The likely outcome is entrenching Apple and Google as an extension of government, rather than just removing restrictions for ISVs. Apple gets regulated, but now keeps making trillions of dollars/euros by law.
You are wrong
The case against Apple is based on three principle
- first sale doctrine: when I buy something I have the rights of redestributing it. Apple disallow it
- Any dependency on the future versions and upgrades for a proprietary software package can create vendor lock-in, entrenching a monopoly position.
- they have the rights to make software that only run on their hardware, the opposite is not implied, hardware is not theirs, they have no legal framework to make hardware that only runs their software. To be more explicit: iOS can be Apple only, but there's no right to make Apple HW iOS only. The hardware is not theirs.
> Their software, their rules.
False, again
Rules are not above laws.
If I make you sign a contract that in exchange for goods and services asks you for a testicle, I can't enforce it, even if you triple signed it with your blood.
> “Be careful what you wish for“. The unintended consequences of this interference are vast
I'm usually very careful
I'm sure they would be for Apple or for US economy
But I am Italian and don't rely on Apple existence, I don't care if they both burn into flames
(spoiler: they won't, they will be just fine, psychological terrorism don't work on me)
In my country many companies already make billions by law, that means they are forced to supply the service at a reasonable price and can't refuse it for any reason which is not approved by a judge
It would be a very welcome improvement regarding US companies behaviour outside US
What's more interesting for me is that if I say "in Italy we all pay for public healthcare so it's almost free for everybody" they scream "communists"
If I say "the State should own a sufficient number of public buildings to give homes to those who can't afford it" they scream "communists"
Same when I say that in Italy insurance companies can't make their own prices and prices can't be discriminatory
These are all traits of modern welfare state that is widespread in Europe, despite not being communists
But when a company abuse of its powers acting like a real communist dictator, showing those behaviours that in US they imagine as being a communist, making rules and forcing everybody to obey them, even when they are debatable, many in US applaud
You partially addressed it in your edit, but I'm pretty doubtful that the legal systems of every major state support Apple forever. It's really just a matter of time before some country gets the critical mass of popular opinion and legislative support for the idea that app stores should be treated as public goods and require regulation as such.
Many locales have regulated interchange fees for payment processors, or have threatened regulation to force voluntary reductions and caps on interchange fees. The legal arguments here are similar - I'd place Visa/Mastercard/Amex on a similar level as Apple/Google app stores in terms of competition.
1. People are suggesting there is no need for new legislation, that current antitrust law covers Apple’s behavior. I think this is, politely, wishful thinking.
2. People really underestimate the consequences of government intervention in the form of a consent decree or industrial regulations. They can be very good or very bad, and it usually takes many years of tinkering to figure it out.
Like: once you regulate the app stores, you’ve effectively enshrined them as a state-sponsored enterprise for a generation or longer. The %cut might get lowered, but now adjusting it is like fighting over taxes, and is wrapped up in all the other ideological problems of the day.
3. People underestimate the unintended consequences of breakups or forced arrangements.
Say the stores are forced to be spun out of their parents. How do we know this will lead to a lowered cut%? If you regulate that cut, what does the company get in return? Indentured servitude isn’t generally looked upon with favor. What about mergers and acquisitions, like, could the spun out google and Apple stores eventually merge, creating an actual monopoly? If not, why not, and for how long? Now we are back to enshrining a business as a state-sponsored enterprise.
Of course I’m sure that some kind of regulatory arrangement in the public interest could be dreamt up, but let’s remember that the AT&T split took 8 years to sort out into a consent decree. Microsoft’s trial and second consent decree took 3 years - finalized in 2001. If the antitrust law isn’t enough to tackle Apple and Google (and I doubt it is), crafting the legislation alone could take up to 5 years or maybe longer. The US communications act took 60 years to get revisited. Are we so sure there’s not some kind of alternative on the horizon that will disrupt Apple and Google in the next 10 years? The web browser disrupted Microsoft once, maybe some successor with WASM and other goodies will make native apps a moot point? Doesn’t seem that way now but 10 years is a long time.
This is the trouble with antitrust law or new industrial regulatory law: unintended consequences, or being too late to be effective. The better way is to promote entrepreneurs to topple this regime. It’ll take 10-15 years either way, but I think the latter approach has the chance of a better overall consumer experience.
There's actually a good case to be made in that favor.
Letting Apple strangle thousands of app developers and prevent business cases that would actually find customers from being implemented because of restrictive app store rules does not result in a single additional employment at Apple, but only in a few more billions of revenue at Apple and maybe a few more billions of fantasy market cap.
However, doing the opposite would strengthen these thousands of market participants, allow them to implement business cases that aren't feasible with a 30% Apple tax or due to other arbitrary store restrictions, and to do that, lots of people must be employed. High-skilled people with high salaries.
If the primary goal is to strengthen your actual, real economy, not pushing the stock market, I would root for the latter approach, not the former.
Apple has built a vertically-integrated flywheel. Customers do not have choice. Their choices are between iOS and Android, which isn't much choice at all.
And if you already have bought into either ecosystem, you have even less choice without resulting in significant cost to you, the consumer.
As a former Atari, Commodore, and IBM user, I find this to be an argument that doesn’t understand the history of tech platforms and the dynamics of competition.
People really forget that the world existed prior to 2008, and are convinced “this time is different”. It really isn’t.
Be careful what you wish for.
1. The complete control over the ecosystem, which is gated and opaque. No alternatives to bypass the App Store.
2. 30% is fine for single app sales, but when you're an app that sells monthly subscriptions or tons of in-game content, it just doesn't scale the same.
For subscriptions, Apple changed the rules a few years ago to only take a 15% cut of renewals after 12 months.
The argument against that is then generally "but what about free apps?", to which I say: unmonetized apps get distributed by Apple for free. Monetized ones pay for distribution + a fee (maybe 30%).
So if it costs Apple $300 to deliver your app + updates to X devices every month, they charge you $390.
GOOG and APL most likely will lose this one.
This is completely different from the #1 and #2 smart phone marketshare players charging a 30% cut as the exclusive software reseller to their own platform.
The original At&T was allowed to be a monopoly for 80+ years because it was in the public interest. The 1982 breakup was 8 years in the making due to poor management decisions in the 1960s and eroded that trust. Unfortunately the breakup was a failure. The Baby Bells maintained their regional monopolies, grew massively, and got their restrictions removed in the 1996 communications act, and now we have Verizon (2 of the 7 baby bells), AT&T (which is the original monopoly plus 4 of the 7 baby bells) and CenturyLink (the remnants of US West and other independents). The only real competition has come from foreign entrants like T-Mobile.
I think you need to take a closer look at the history of antitrust cases. It hasn’t been particularly successful.
MSFT “lost” the case but the remedies amounted to a slap on the wrist. Meanwhile the market in its broadest sense innovated in ways that no court or legislator could have reasonably predicted in the late 90s. Not just innovation in terms of superior technology, but in intellectual property (open source), culture (the web standards movement amongst devs), and organization (W3C getting its act together).
Beyond browsers Microsoft’s expected dominance on internet server business ran up against Linux, which like gecko and webkit, won out not because some Kommissar deemed it worthy, but because competitors to Microsoft were incentivized to think way outside of the box.
If App Store policies truly are as untenable as half of the people posting in this thread believe them to be, then the desire to solve the problem by bringing the coercive power of the state to redistribute some revenue seems more like a lack of imagination than anything else.
That is true, but there is the argument that some of this innovation was possible because Microsoft restrained its behavior while the case was pending.
Nope, they have been accused and sentenced of abusing their dominant position by forcing OEMs to pre install IE on Windows, before the integration started.
The way MS force them was with restrictive licenses that practically threatened OEMs to do what MS ordered or face legal consequences and risk to go out of business.
The second accusation was that MS used internals secret API for their product not available to third parties giving MS an unfair advantage.
Those API were also shared among few OEMs that helped MS secure its dominant position.
> Law professor Eben Moglen noted that the way Microsoft was required to disclose its APIs and protocols was useful only for “interoperating with a Windows Operating System Product”
The third of their anticompetitive behavior was to pay some OEMs to not install (or offer to customers) other operating systems on their hardware (including BeOS, for example)
"Microsoft's true anticompetitive clout was in the rebates it offered to OEMs preventing other operating systems from getting a foothold in the market."
Does it sound similar to what Apple does today?
The cases are not even close to being in the same league.
Microsoft didn’t force OEMs to preinstall IE: it came with the Plus! pack in Win95 which was optional. IE shipped preinstalled on the OSR1 distributions in late 1995. OEMs couldn’t uninstall it. MS saw IE as a feature, nor a product. The DOJ disagreed. And yes, the API arguments were the other factor of the consent decree violation.
Apple:
- has no consent decree to violate
- is not being anticompetitive by taking a retail cut on a store for its own platform (ISVs are free to go exclusively Android); Google is free to drop its retail cut, 3rd party stores on Android exist, and also the browser exists and is arguably completely unrestricted.
- should be allowed the freedom to admit apps on its platform to better the consumer experience.
Interfering with this collapses the whole security and curation value add of the App Store, or relegates it to a 3rd party with different incentives, or declares that Apple’s store is the only one where ISVs make money and therefore must become a utility because ISVs want more margin.
Good luck with arguing this. It will take 5+ years or more to legislate properly, and I suspect parliaments have bigger problems to deal with.
If one wanted to chase Apple for anticompetitive behavior it would be to do some amazing stuff in-browser with things like WASM, streaming, etc. and argue that Apple is blocking those innovations with its Safari mandatory policy to force people to use its App Store and native APIs. That’s the closest where I can see this argument holding water.
- MS was sentenced for making the software, not the hardware
- MS was abusing the dominant position to be the only OS on the HW, just like iOS is the solely possible OS on Apple HW and Apple store is the sole possible distributor of iOS apps, because Apple is abusing of its dominant position in the Apple ecosystem market (which is IMO a separate market from Android). If there were OEMs there would be at least competition in the HW space, like there was in the pc that drove down the prices for end users.
> Microsoft didn’t force OEMs to preinstall IE: it came with the Plus! pack in Win95
I firmly believed on HN arguments were not thrown around without backing them up with facts
It all started before Win95 was even around...
> In 1993, Novell claimed that Microsoft was blocking its competitors out of the market through anti-competitive practices. The complaint centered on the license practices at the time which required royalties from each computer sold by a supplier of Microsoft's operating system, whether or not the unit actually contained the Windows operating system. Microsoft reached a settlement in 1994, ending some of its license practices.
> The DOJ disagreed.
That's the US case
You know Europe has over 700 million citizens, you should remember that thing happens over here as well sometimes...
> - is not being anticompetitive by taking a retail cut on a store for its own platform
nobody has said that
Apple is a monopolist on a closed platform that they refuse to open up to third parties while at the same time acting as gatekeeper by allowing or disallowing apps on the store at their whim
that's clearly an unfair advantage for Apple the software company exactly like MS using secret OS Apis of their operating system to write their software had an unfair advantage (and was sentenced for that)
> argue that Apple is blocking those innovations with its Safari mandatory policy
It's the same circular argument
[1] Apple is blocking third parties from distributing their software freely AND [2] is hindering user's freedom by not allowing to replace certain parts of their system (like for example the browser) even though they allegedly are a source of vulnerabilities because [1]
That's the same thing MS did by making IE undeletable
On iOS I guarantee that if the App Store had even one alternative, many apps would do the same and bail on Apple, and you’d see a similar ghost store.
Also, since Apple loves to compare its grand scheme to how physical stores used to behave, let’s examine that: there isn’t a single physical store that demands to have complete control over everything in the boxes on their shelves. If you open a product box and it contains a card with information, such as a link to the company web site or other stuff, then that’s what you get. If apps followed this sane model, Apple would just let apps put whatever they want “in the box”, including sensible things like INFORMATION about account sign-ups and other products, and links.
In any locality other than rural towns served by a single Dollar General, consumers have a choice between multiple retail outlets. If they don't like the choices at one store, they're free to shop at another.
"But Android!" one might say, and once again, the analogy falls completely flat. The switching costs of going between iOS and Android are obviously not remotely comparable from the switching costs of going between Walmart and Target. When you move into iOS town, the only store within a thousand miles is the App Store.
The analogy actually works quite nice, and you already hinted at how: the Android alternative is akin to permanently moving from one place to another because that one place you were in did only have one store with very restrictive rules and opening others is forbidden. Accepting such a monopoly and arguing that "people are free to sell their houses, leave their friends and family behind and move elsewhere if they don't like it" doesn't really make it a monopoly is ridiculous.
See also: certificate-of-need laws. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Certificate_of_need
> Accepting such a monopoly and arguing that "people are free to sell their houses, leave their friends and family behind and move elsewhere if they don't like it" doesn't really make it a monopoly is ridiculous.
If only. CON laws and their analogues form monopolies in the true sense - businesses who are protected from competition by law. But hey, what's wrong with that?
Comparing a hypermarket selling all the physical stuff for everyday needs and a virtual store on a smartphone selling all the apps for everyday needs though...
CONs are a tool - and they can be used for good, or used for bad. Obviously cases where they're misused will attract media attention and no-one thinks about why CONs exist in the first place:
I understand that CONs exist to prevent over-supply of medical services in one area to the detriment of another, or to prevent the inefficient - or inhumane - distribution of medical resources given the US' healthcare system and hospital builder's and operators motives.
In an economic sense: in poorer and rural areas you'll find higher rates of people being uninsured, which means the hospital will have to deal with more indigent patients which can be very expensive - without having enough wealthy patients effectively subsidizing the poorer patients. In the case of emergency care, federal law requires ER departments to treat everyone regardless of ability to pay or insurance which will be hugely expensive - and in non-emergency care you'll simply have fewer paying patients overall - meaning less revenue for a hospital - this means that even the most altruistically run non-profit hospital would rather set-up shop in a wealthier area than a poorer area. This then leads to poorer areas being under-served, which then leads to greater disparities in socioeconomic and quality-of-life outcomes. This is not good for a well-functioning society.
The other reason concerns the negative consequences of having hospitals competing with each other. I assume we all know that (and why) having two hospitals in the area will not result in lower sticker-prices for services or will necessarily improve the quality of the patient-experience (besides bigger marketing budgets...) - competing for patients is one thing, but when they start competing for staff, doctors, specialists - and competing for limited resources (e.g. Covid-19 test kits, medical supplies, etc) that pushes expenses up sharply. This is also not good.
So yes - just like the New York Taxi Cab Medallion system, the Certificate-of-Need system can also be used to artificially restrict supply for the worst reasons - but it has its place, and provided it's well-administered it will be essential to ensure certain efficiencies until the US gets its act together on healthcare like most of the developed world already has.
(If my understanding of the nature of CONs is incorrect, please let me know in a reply - I understand there's an increasing general consensus in academia and public-policy against CONs lately, but I'm also suspicious that people may conflate CON systems in some states that so-far appear to be working well with CON systems in states with a history of regulatory-capture and legislative abuse. Obviously I'd prefer non-CON to a poorly-run CON system, but from what I can tell a well-run CON system is better than non-CON).
True, but you knew that very well when you bought iOS device (and it might've even been exactly because of the strict review). Same if you moved to that town with the single Dollar General - you knew what you were getting into.
Don't get me wrong - I don't like the situation. But people buy iPhones (at the very least) despite the strict guidelines and developers still put apps in the store despite the strict rules. If either of those components would miss, Apple would not be one of the highest value companies in the world right now. And Apple does not have the market force to simply crush everyone else.
i believe the EU has a law for interoperability, it only applies to API's as far as i know, but one could see the phone as a device with an API that allows apps to run on it. it could therefore be considered that now allowing any app to run on the phone is a violation of that law.
this also includes that apple can not disallow duplication of existing features.
// FWIW, I wish I could play Horizon Zero Dawn on that Xbox, but it’s not in the Xbox store.
for each case we need to look at how that store is managed and who gets access to it under what conditions.
it is my impression though that microsoft acts like a publisher for the games on the xbox, iaw they take responsibility for the games being published, picking carefully who they work with, whereas apple simply sells access to the market for a 30% cut. so xbox is a private club that you need to get invited to, whereas apple store is claiming to be an open market, except that it isn't.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/06/streaming-laying-bare-...
discussed here:
Third party iPhone and iPod touch applications must be approved by Apple and will be available exclusively through the App Store.
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2008/03/06Apple-Announces-iPh...
I have exactly one - Overcast. Even with that I can export to OPML (?).
(I'd be willing to pay a subscription fee to have them on Android. As is, I just do without, and deal with ridiculous workarounds like having my Android phone save my photos to OneDrive and them manually copying them over to Photos on my Mac.)
Maps: Google Maps is drastically better from a POI standpoint, particularly for reviews, as it's become the de facto standard for restaurant reviews in my locale, while Apple Maps just imports the graveyard of Yelp reviews, and GMaps is mildly better for routing. That being said, Google Maps has ads, which is enough for me that I'd preferentially pay for Apple Maps to avoid ads for anything other than restaurant reviews. As is, I use a Garmin GPS in my car in large part because of my annoyance with Google Maps.
Photos: For desktop software, Photos on macOS is fine for my use, and significantly improved over the past few years. (I abandoned Lightroom after Adobe's previous macOS file-deletion snafu a few years ago.) I have no interest in a web-based photo editor/management software rather than a desktop one. Apple's photo recognition stuff is generally done on-device, which is preferable to me over a cloud service.
Voice assistants: They're pretty much all equivalent in terms of accuracy for my use. (Setting timers, setting alarms, controlling my lights and music.) The killer feature of Siri/HomeKit is that it processes commands locally, so my lights respond instantly rather than needing to bounce my requests to Amazon/Google HQs for processing.
And Apple has generally better privacy policies.
Having agreed with you, there is a non-insignificant switching cost (in time) for photos, especially if something is your primary photo store.
[0] https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.zdnet.com/google-amp/articl...
Having to chose between only AT&T and Comcast for cable because they are the only providers to your area is not a fair choice. Sure, nothing stops me from moving. I can get power, water, and commute from elsewhere too. But it’s a pain and sucks.
A thousand miles?
I've switched between iOS and Android multiple times over my smartphone life (Android to iOS to Android to iOS). The switch is trivial. Yeah, it is like going between Walmart and Target, and not knowing the aisles layouts or having the loyalty card, but it's a pretty easy barrier and you'll figure it out quickly enough.
All of this moping and crying speaks as if Apple drew everyone in and then suddenly changed the rules of the game -- some master bait and switch -- and now everyone is finding the gates locked. Yet it has been the same rules for the entire ascent. Everyone who has bought an iPhone in the past decade+ knows that there is one app store, it's curated, etc. None of this is new. Every developer who made an app knew the way the store works, the rules, Apple's cut, etc.
Apple is on the wrong side of history with some of their current positions (cloud gaming as a big example of Apple being wrong), but this whole thread feel like people who want to force their way by grossly exaggerating their grievances and opposition. Many of these comments read like an absurd parody.
No one is asking for Apple to give up control of their store. We just want to use a different store, or none at all.
This earned a serious out loud laugh. Are you actually being sincere?
An app store that is widely trusted, and that has been the most successful, most profitable venue for independent developers in history (by a magnitude) is going to be abandoned because you, the developer, find it a hassle? Epic Games, as one example, has made far more from the App Store than any other platform...yet it's their target? LOL.
Uproarious stuff. Reading through these various absurd, fully detached from reality comments (I most like the highly upvoted fan fiction nonsense - "I have a super successful app on the App Store and I'm abandoning it because the Android Play Store is such a greener pasture" -- everyone pretends that the Play Store doesn't have virtually the same policies)
Some developers of fringe stuff might abandon it, and every other developer would welcome your departure. The rest of us will enjoy a trusted, lubricated, very successful platform.
Sidenote - everyone always goes on about the 30% cut. Right now my Costco has iTunes cards for 85 cents on the dollar (e.g. $85 for $100 gift cards, and clearly Costco is getting a cut of that amount). This deal is fairly regular, and gives buyers a sense of "value", and fills up lots of grandparents storage until birthdays and Christmas roll around. And then another few billion appear in developer accounts. What a crime.
Yes, I certainly would, and the only reason I haven't already is I have no other way to get my app into the hands of users who own only Apple phones and tablets.
This definitely resonates with me. If you want to see what a good app store could look like, check out SetApp [0]. They charge a monthly fee for access to a curated list of paid apps, they offer a 7-day trial IIRC. I initially subscribed for their two email clients, then stopped using them as they were both shit (slow, glitchy, poor UX, etc.). I am still subscribed just because I like the idea and just how many apps they offer.
“App” inventory: https://formulae.brew.sh/formula/
That's more on the nerdy side, I was thinking more in the sense of the fancy/fun/quality feeling the Mac app store selection should evoke, instead it's just a ghost town with expensive bullshit and ass UX (at least based on what I remember - I haven't opened that damn app in ages lol).
This is a very subjective policy because popular b2b apps such as Slack, Zendesk, etc which have a wide reach are allowed, but more industry specific b2b apps are rejected even if our theoretical user base spans 10s of thousands of people simply because only clients of the business are able to use the app.
And btw this policy is not actually encoded in their rules[1] but 3.2 is the code they cite when rejecting your app. The rejection wording is as follows [2]:
"During our review, we found that this app was designed for a specific business or organization and not for general distribution on the App Store. Business apps available on the App Store are meant for use by a wide variety of external customers around the world.
As this app is not intended for general distribution, it cannot be made available on the App Store. We encourage you to review the other ways to distribute your business app and choose one that better meets your business needs."
[1] https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/
[2] https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/122473 (not actually my thread but same rejection copy)
Which is an app specifically for Honda internal employees and it still passed review.
But yes, this is exactly why Apple's subjective enforcement of invisible policies is so enraging - it's like you need to negotiate some secret backdoor deal just to get your app into the store.
Rhetorical question, we know why.
At least that won't take long. Lol.
I've also given up on the MacBook line, tired of the touch bar, the slate-like keyboards, and (now) the transition to ARM. My next laptop will be a Thinkpad or Dell. Most of my development these days is done under Windows using WSL2, and my primary focus is on Android.
It used to be that my apps made more money on Apple devices, but now I actually make more on Android. The Google Play review process is a breeze compared to Apple's laborious and stifling rules (although it is not perfect either by any means), and at some point, it's just not worth the hassle.
It's sad, I was an enthusiastic endorser of Apple products just 7 years ago, but can no longer recommend them. This is the first year I won't be buying a new iPhone, iPad, or Apple Watch, too - I'm looking to switch to the Pixel or Samsung Galaxy line and Wear OS.
I'd like to see regulation that forces Apple and Google to allow any and all app stores on their devices, and the process of installing apps through those stores must be, by law, equally easy and straightforward as through their own stores (i.e., no security warnings or other jank). The law should make illegal restricting developers to any specific payment processor(s), too.
I'm pretty sure that will have massive opposition, because they are deathly scared of opening their devices back to the general-purpose computers they actually are. However, I remain hopeful that people may finally wake up to the "security" excuse and stop sacrificing their freedom.
Who's the opposition coming from? Apple? They can fart around and waste time and money on appeals, but if they get hit with an antitrust ruling there isn't much they'll be able to do about it.
50% of what is the issue, though. Some arbitrary descriptive market the target company preferred to be used for the antitrust analysis, or the actual market in which substitution, and thus actual competition, occurs as found by the court hearing the case?
Because defining the relevant market is not infrequently a contentious point in antitrust.
https://www.justice.gov/atr/antitrust-case-filings-alpha
Most antitrust cases are for things like price fixing, bid rigging, and mergers.
I love my choice of AT&T over Comcast. $70 all fees included gigabit up and down.
Instead of using an OS (iOS in this case) with 25% market share that forces you to go through their AppStore, you can choose to use Android (which has 75% market share) and side load apps to your hearts content.
reference: https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/worldwide
Yeah, you can opt to target only one of them, but you're (usually) going to get out competed by a company that targets both.
There are plenty of markets and Technologies I won’t touch with a ten foot pole.
You're right that there is little difference between a corporation that one is de facto forced to interact with, and a bona fide government. For example, one can easily reframe USG as a corporation that you form a contract with by owning land, renting, or being on a public way. This does not mean that our current society is a libertarian paradise.
Turing completeness shows us the ouroboros of expressivity with programming languages. It's unfortunate people let their guard down in other areas.
Similarly, I can't give up on owning a Mac because you need one to develop for iOS.
On one hand, it's super annoying whenever Apple rejects an update for some arbitrary reason. But on the other hand, making a living by writing and selling my own apps has been a dream of mine pretty much forever -- and something that I didn't think would be possible before the app stores came along.
Of course, Apple would like to have us all believe that app developers couldn't make a living by writing and selling apps before the Invention of the App Store, and that they have done us all a great favor, one that warrants us paying them 30% of our income.
However, the reality is, this has always been possible. As early as the beginning of the 80s, indy developers made millions writing games for the ZX Spectrum, the BBC Micro, the Amiga, and so on. You just had to work with a publisher or distributor, of which there were hundreds and it was a free market. In the 90s millions could be made from DOS and Windows apps in the same way. In the early '00s, it became possible to self-publish on the web and our apps would be indexed and marketed for us by search engines; we didn't even need a publisher, but could still choose to go through one if the value add merited the cost.
So there has been no radical innovation, no Invention that has changed what is possible for us to achieve as app developers. It's arguably a little bit easier to get our apps to market than it used to be, but given how onerous Apple's "guidelines" have become, I'm not even sure that is true. Writing websites serving apps and integrating with checkout engines just isn't that difficult... and most apps still need marketing to succeed because being listed in the App Store is not by itself sufficient.
The only thing that has changed, now that the mobile computing revolution has almost reached saturation point and the majority of screen time by consumers is on mobile devices, is that we are now all forced to publish through a single store on each platform, and we are permitted no alternative if we want to reach our customers. Equally, our customers are permitted no alternative way to obtain our products. There is no competition between publishers on Apple's platform, because there is only one publisher, Apple, by fiat of Apple; and we are now forced to pay a 30% tax, a figure which is not challenged by the usual mechanisms of competition, and supply and demand, which make markets efficient.
Isn't that more a result of mobile devices opening up a new market? I agree the app stores made a lot of difference initially when they provided a lot of visibility (ie: free advertising) to small developers, but those days are over aren't they?
I wonder how many apps actually are ramen-profitable on the App store. I often think that the dream of becoming rich (or even making a living) through the App store is just a myth perpetuated by Apple to attract developers; and nonsense from a statistical point of view. Do we have any numbers?
As developers I think we should all do what we can to nurture the open web. It’s the last truly developer friendly platform.
As a last resort (e.g. if all you have is an Arduino), they advise you to contact Apple support.
I'm pretty sure it would be unlawful to have no way to cancel other than with an Apple device.
Then you go through the same thing each time you push an update, even for a minor bugfix like amending some foreign language strings, get a different reviewer who hasn't read the case notes (I'm guessing these must exist) and decides to do a deep-dive, or maybe a quick rubberstamp in a matter of hours. It seems like a total lottery from my experience. Maybe they just suddenly added a new clause that requires something being done differently and you aren't up on the latest app store guidelines... It really is so frustrating from a developers mental health perspective.
This is why Mozilla's recent layoff is extra painful.
Right because no one ever complained about browser inconsistencies, the inherent limitations of a browser runtime, etc.
No browser quirk is anywhere near as annoying as having a bug fix update to your app rejected for some new random capricious reason.
If any of it was all sunshine and lollipops they wouldn't have to pay us to do it because people would be queuing up to do it for free.
Of course, you could always have a personal Android device and an iPhone solely for development purposes. Apple tries to force you to own a Mac and at least one iOS device (be it iPhone or iPad) to develop apps for the App Store. This is yet another example of their corporate greed. You can develop Android apps on Windows, Mac, or Linux, and there's no need for a physical device.
This applies to all platforms. I wouldn't want to do business with a developer that doesn't own the device they're developing for, we learned that lesson with Blackberry thank you.
https://9to5google.com/2013/03/21/google-chairman-eric-schmi...
Not the same kind of regulation you describe, but still one that may solve a big chunk of your issues was covered here roughly a month ago[1], In which the EU plans to make those kinds of platforms more transparent, especially concerning bans and sudden refusals. But I see how that may not go far enough.
(a). WSL is just a Linux VM. You can do this on any desktop OS. If you're not using WSL, you can even do it with multiple hypervisors at once if you so wish.
(b). macOS isn't, and has never tried to be, "Linux". It's POSIX.
It's not like that, it literally is that, because to enable WSL2 you end up running Windows itself on top of Hyper-V, and the Linux VM as a parallel VM.
> It's lighter and partially integrated.
I don't know what you think it's "lighter" than - it's a VM running on Hyper-V.
Do you think Android app development can be monetarily worth the time investment for individual developers who would be just starting out?
I made two apps years ago and greatly enjoyed it, much more than any development I've done since. At that time, the markets were dominated by the big players. Only the big apps made any $$. Is that still the case making individual development a hobby with the occasional bit of $$?
You need to get in contact with your customers in another way and then let them know where they can download your app.
Which apps are those? Genuinely interested in seeing the numbers.
Why haven’t you switched yet? Competition is not that good unfortunately.
I've looked at the Windows laptops extensively though, and will likely get a ThinkPad X1 Extreme G2 or G3, or a Dell XPS 15, when the time comes. They both seem very good, with superior keyboards, displays, performance, and value compared to Apple's current lineup.
You can also take a look at linux vendors like System76. Check their line-up here: https://system76.com/laptops
Among Windows laptops did you consider the ASUS Zephyrus G14?
HN has proven to be outrageously gullible time and time again, and this one takes the cake.
Their fees are not so high as to be extortionate. They're not close to being deserving of that hyperbolic label.
The Apple and Google fees are a dramatic improvement over the model that they gradually replaced over the past decade.
Want to get on a retail shelf? Nope, you can't. One in a zillion odds you find someone to publish your box to retail - congratulations, now you get to keep less than 20% of the sale price.
If Apple's fees were 1/2 what they are, developers would be saying exactly the same thing about them. That's because the fees will always be too high unless they're close to zero, and in that scenario Apple is carrying an unfair burden.
And if you forcibly open up more app store competition, and then Apple decides to drop their fees below other competitors, it'll kill the store competition and Apple can sustain that indefinitely thanks to their device margins. They don't need to make money on the market. Then everyone will bitch about that being unfair competition, despite Apple serving up the low fees that were demanded. And on the complaining will go forever until we have a hyper regulated market with pricing set by bureaucrats. Why? Because Apple is really big, that's the real reason why. People hate big corporations almost universally, Apple is in the can do no right group; no matter what they do, a lot of people will bitch about their choices. The end result will be massive, stifling regulation, which everyone will then bitch about the consequences of.
> now I actually make more on Android. The Google Play review process is a breeze compared to Apple's laborious and stifling rules (although it is not perfect either by any means), and at some point, it's just not worth the hassle.
You should be making more on Android, it's a larger market. It's good that that former imbalance has corrected itself. Fortunately you're not entitled to an easy review process. It's a great thing that Apple adds friction to their store. It's their market, they should be able to set the rules. If it's not worth the hassle, then it's not worth the hassle, you've solved your own problem: give up on the Apple store.
iOS owns 25% of the market. How is that a monopoly? You might not like their policies, but as you mention, you have a choice to move to a competitor with a vastly larger market share.
> I'm better off turning to the Play Store or one of the many other app stores that can be used on Android devices.
Doesn't this demonstrate that the Apple AppStore isn't a monopoly? That you have a clear alternative with 74% market share.
> I'd like to see regulation that forces Apple and Google to allow any and all app stores on their devices,
...but why would they do that? There is healthy market competition between Apple and Google. I'm old, so I remember when Windows dominated everything. That was 2007 (or '98 if you wanna talk IE anti-trust case). 13 years later and Microsoft has 0 market share in mobile devices. In another 13 years it is likely a new competitor could supplant the Google and Apple dominance.
reference: https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/worldwide
b) Apple makes up the plurality of all store revenues, despite having a smaller install base both globally and in the US.
c) You can display monopolistic/duopoly behavior without having 100% of the market.
b) source?
c) But can Apple be a monopoly with 58% of the market and a trillion dollar competitor with 41% of that market...and 75% control of the global market?
A question for the courts, for sure, but it certainly isn't obvious to me.
reference: https://gs.statcounter.com/vendor-market-share/mobile/united...
https://fueled.com/blog/app-store-vs-google-play/#:~:text=Ap...
https://www.statista.com/chart/14590/app-downloads-and-consu...
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/cartel.asp
“ A cartel is an organization created from a formal agreement between a group of producers of a good or service to regulate supply in order to regulate or manipulate prices. In other words, a cartel is a collection of otherwise independent businesses or countries that act together as if they were a single producer and thus can fix prices for the goods they produce and the services they render, without competition.”
Do you have any evidence that Apple and Google are conspiring illegally to set prices? Are they talking to each other to agree on price?
“Informal cartel” has no legal meaning.
To even get approved we had to make sure the App doesn't offer any sign-up or even billing info at all. And still went round and round for approval explaining how paid services, if any, are completely outside Apple realm.
Hopefully this logic is enough to get Apple in bother during their antitrust suits and Investigations - it seems quite ironic they are getting into scuffles 2 days before the first hearing in the epic case is scheduled (iirc - for the restraining motion).
It would be nice if small businesses and innovators could get on with innovating, rather than ensuring they comply with arcane rent seeking behaviour by a giant that won't let you distribute your app without offering them their cut.
Google is little better though here - their old Android market terms even titled a clause "non-competition". Unsurprisingly this has disappeared - I assume this doesn't comply with their "avoiding antitrust" dictionary of banned phrases.
If you host the app yourself on your website then how are people going to discover it. For most developers they would buy ads or invest in content or influencer marketing. Those marketing costs are your channel to market and obviously aren't a tax.
It's hilarious watching so many people on HN discuss this topic who are completely naive and ignorant to the realities of customer acquisition. Apple and Google hand you customers on a silver platter for the bargain, consistent price of 30%. Whereas as a startup I have to pay much higher to Facebook and Google for PPC ads.
But that's only a problem because customers are used to searching in that app store (and that's because it's the only one on the platform).
If there was no app store, customers would search on the web, and it turns out that Google Web Search and Bing don't refuse to link to sites that don't give them 30% commission on sales.
Of course PPC ads cost money, but obviously app stores don't let you be a top result on arbitrary searches for free (since obviously that's a limited resource, so it's impossible to do that), so that seems a spurious comparison.
Because it doesn't work by you creating a web page and then it instantly appearing in the 1st SERP. It requires significant amounts of capital in content marketing and SEO. And for competitive categories e.g. most apps you would need tens to hundreds of thousands of investment to rank.
And Apple and Google publicise a lot of the well made apps either via their promotional articles or via app groups. And their search is just for apps so you aren't competing with all of the non-mobile apps like you do with Google.
30% is not a bargain, particularly when you're a small developer. And just because your app is approved doesn't mean that they're handing you customers on a silver platter either. There have been complaints for years over Apple's App Store search functionality, which they also have complete control over. It's wild to see someone cast so many passionate developers as naive and ignorant to the reality that 30% doesn't leave much room for any kind of profit. And all Apple did was give you as a developer permission to run your code on their devices. They're not guaranteeing you customers. They're just playing gatekeeper and adding little value beyond access to the market.
It they charged 3% for customers you bring and 30% for customers they bring, your point would be more valid.
There are millions of app developers and you are saying that most of them are doing customer acquisition external to the App Store ?
Because I just did various searches for note taking and productivity apps on my phone and no one is buying ads. From my experience only the larger app developers invest in their own customer acquisition whilst the rest all rely on app discovery.
They can't do customer aquisition external to the App store because Apple prevents them from doing so.
Thats the very problem. Apple won't allow other app stores to compete, and you can't just download an app from someone's website, and install it.
Apple prevents you from doing so. They don't even offer some hidden setting which says "Allow 3rd party apps, warning, warning, warning, this could make your device less secure".
> If you host the app yourself on your website then how are people going to discover it. For most developers they would buy ads or invest in content or influencer marketing. Those marketing costs are your channel to market and obviously aren't a tax.
How can you distribute an app for iPhone on your own website?
Although what's not being discussed are negative consequences of allowing multiple App stores vs Apple's single unified curated UX. The UX for searching, purchasing, managing payments/subscriptions would be more fragmented & confusing. Being able to bypass curation by installing Apps from another App store which could install malware, scams, privacy violating & other undesirable Apps would hurt Apple's brand as a simple, secure & safe platform parents are confident in using themselves & giving to their kids (which for example allows us to manage/disable IAP's).
At 2M+ Apps your App isn't going to magically appear in front of all consumer devices, you still have to do the majority of the marketing yourself, unless you're lucky enough to be listed in editor picks or some curated list, but you're not paying for exposure or discoverability as the % royalty is the same regardless.
With that said 30% seems fair & standard across most platforms [1]. I don't really understand why 30% is unfair for iOS which has created the most lucrative & accessible market for ISV's. It's simply a cost of participating in a market. Just like you don't get free shelf life in shops (virtual or physical) if you make a product, free access to Game consoles if you make a game, free top search placement if you make a website, etc.
[1] https://www.ign.com/articles/2019/10/07/report-steams-30-cut...
Oh cool! I didn't know that, that's really great! I'll just use the other channel to the iOS market then. How do I do that?
https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-loses-key-mobile-payment...
https://venturebeat.com/2018/05/10/apple-pay-credit-card-is-...
Individual retailers do not form an agreement with Apple. Hell, retailers often don't even explicitly and individually support Apple Pay, it just comes through accepting standard contactless payments.
You can sell a paper book, but an e-book gets 30% Apple tax. You can sell a CD, but an MP3 gets Apple tax. You can sell Carcasone game on cardboard pieces, but an app version must give Apple a cut.
i can envision a scenario where apple legal, in preparation for their battle with epic, gave that statement a critical look. after realizing the myriad of exceptions and omissions they have in app store enforcement, they decided they need to run a clean up campaign immediately and the WP app simply ended up a casualty of this process.
> What’s more, Mullenwag told us that he had previously offered to strip other mentions of the paid plans out of the app (even workarounds like when a user views a preview of their own WordPress webpage and then navigates to WordPress.com), only to have those suggestions rejected by Apple.
Having to remove those kinds of work-arounds is part of what bugs me about apples control over the app store.
That said, there is no comparison: forcing a developer to add features to an app is nothing like enforcing the TOS the developer agreed with and is trying to subvert.
And the non-malicious explanation for that is simple. The majority of the million apps in the app store are small fry to them, and they can't scale support to that level in any empathetic rational manner.
My wishlist for legislation is:
1/ Apple has to allow side loading of apps (make it an advanced developer setting, with plenty of warnings and periodic reminders, that's fine).
2/ Apple cannot force usage of Apple pay and apple sign in.
3/ Apple cannot force developers to hide any options or even information about alternative mechanisms to pay for content, or sign up to a service.
I am conflicted about Sign In with Apple. It’s heavy handed, but I clearly benefit by not having to trust Google or Facebook for this. There should be a standard with several providers, like FIDO, but somehow I don’t see this happening as long as Facebook and Google are utterly dominant.
I completely agree with your third point.
We've seen dozens of situations like this over the years and often we find out that Apple and the developers were discussing behind the scenes way before it was public.
My test is fairly simple: are you generating value and capturing some portion of it at the point of generation, or are you doing something else? Anything that is "something else" should at the very least be questioned. Questions 10x if the party doing "something else" is trying to encourage information asymmetry as part of this. e.g. Apple telling app developers that not only can they not integrate another payment option in their apps, they can't even inform users that such an option exists elsewhere.
Arguably the main issue in this case is that Apple is not just requiring themselves to be the payment gateway in transactions where they are involved (getting an app onto your device), they also want to insert themselves into transactions where they provide no value (e.g. subscriptions). In the case of my Spotify subscription, Apple is not paying for bandwidth, payment processing costs, or anything else, but they still get a cut.
If you're capturing value from a transaction you're not directly involved in, I think that's a problem. Apple's argument is that they are enabling such things by building the device/operating system, and historically that has been a valid argument, but I think we've come to the point where that just isn't enough anymore. You need to either directly be providing value in that particular transaction, otherwise it's problematic. You just end up with too many cases like this.
Is running the App Store expensive? Then charge for actual costs. But this sort of bait and switch of "we're providing distribution but are inserting ourselves in subscriptions we have no hand in" is only possible due to their market position.
https://www.cnet.com/news/just-as-critics-feared-fortnite-fo...
And have an Emacs based interface?
Just want the process to be sane.
Like being able to install other apps on the Mac. They make it very hard to install non Apple signed apps. But it’s possible.
In iOS, it’s not possible. It’s my device, let me do what I want with it. Let me create things with it, not be just a content consumer.
I imagine that app store issues prevent these publishers from publishing to this platform. That's pretty sad especially since there are working builds for iOS for these applications.
It would be nice if Apple supported open source a bit more than it has on these platforms.
iPads and iPhones are fairly powerful devices. My iPad would replace my laptop for many usecases if I could download a CSV file and edit it in a text editor without safari blocking the download and if I had a bash terminal and the ability to download and build source code without jumping through hoops.
We need protocols not platforms. The longer this goes on, the more they will ratchet up the pressure. The open internet has always won out in the past, but this round of walled gardens has a strangle hold. More people conflate Facebook with the internet than ever did AOL or CompuServe.
This behavior looks like anti-developer in many cases.
On one hand, Apple will lose some ability to say they are protecting consumer privacy if they open their phones to any software, android is proof of that. Someone else’s freedom is always someone else’s constraint.
I know many consumers benefit from being able to hand their grandparents a phone that will work smoothly and be updated for 5 years.
i was buffed at that statement. its a disgrace. my app had 120 k downloads in a year and people were loving it because no ads and useful. this is the state of app development. how long will we tolerate this!
5 years from now we'll likely see Apple Silicon powering Apple's entire new product lineup, and Swift developers will be deploying software across the entire product lineup with minimal effort. Swift is both quick and safe, so we can hope these new softwares will be both fast, secure and free of critical bugs.
This to me is a really interesting and appealing alternative to the frustrating world of slow web apps that invade your privacy and fill your computer with bloat. I don't see Apple's previous stance as being greedy about obtaining a 30% cut, rather it is about trying to bring to fruition a vision of the future where users can perform their computing needs with fast and secure native apps. I hope we don't legislate away such a reasonable opportunity for people to be freed from Google and Facebook invasion.