I noticed that there are web apps for iOS to get around Apple’s rules. Why couldn’t MS and Google do this.
Netflix and Hulu had the same deal from day one reportedly.
Do you think any business makes the same deals with other big players that they make with small players? If so, you’ve never been in the room when CxOs are making enterprise deals with companies like MS and Oracle.
“We worked with the Safari team to ensure that some of the things that weren't there are there, and that allowed us to kind of get to where we are today,” Luna head of engineering and technology George Tsipolitis said.
I don't know if these APIs are secret, so much as didn't exist before. I assume that Google and Microsoft are free to leverage these as well now.
And fair enough, I haven't been a part of larger enterprise deals in my career so far.
https://bgr.com/2020/09/17/fortnite-lawsuit-apple-epic-games...
Apple has also worked with Adobe, Microsoft and Amazon and given them pre-release hardware and access to software.
Last I looked at PWAs they would get you 95% of the way there for most things, but a number of issues made the use of them as an alternative to native apps untenable (namely the reliable persistence of any data). If Amazon can pull off streaming arbitrary content, full screen with low-latency touch streaming in a way that doesn't feel janky, that'd be a pretty exciting workaround to the App Store regime.
Unused web apps that have not been added to the homescreen will have their cached assets purged after 7 days. This is less of a problem than most think.
Also, iOS devices routinely perform better than Android devices with respect to web rendering and JS performance. Even the cheapest iPhone - the iPhone SE is more performant than any Android.
If the top of the line Android phones are slower than the $399 SE, can you imagine how slow the average Android phone is?
But I think this is all a moot point, there shouldn’t be any heavy lifting on the client and all phones have special hardware to handle streaming video.
I agree that iPhone SE is steal cheap for chip performance.
As a consumer, I hope they win. It’s my pocket computer, I paid for it and I own it, so I should be able to do whatever the fuck I want with it.
I thought Google was suppose to be a proponent of PWA’s?
Google didn’t do a mobile PWA for Stadia even on Android. I thought there was a comment about some technical limitations on iOS Safari in some previous thread but I can’t remember. They probably want the same experience everywhere.
> “If you look at the industry today, I think what you’ll find is increasingly you’re seeing app stores that have created higher walls and far more formidable gates to access other applications than anything that existed in the industry 20 years ago,” says Smith. “They impose requirements that increasingly say there’s only one way to get onto our platform, and that is to go through the gate that we ourselves have created. In some cases they create a very high price for a toll, in some cases 30 percent of all your revenue has to go to the toll keeper if you will.” - Microsoft’s chief legal officer Brad Smith [0]
[0] https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/19/21296657/microsoft-apple-...
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/08/as-epic-attacks-apple...
Also, game consoles aren't nearly as ubiquitous or important to society as smart phones. I'm all for treating them very differently!
We certainly don't treat matchbooks the same as we treat flamethrowers.
Do you really think that MS is naive enough to think that if the courts force Apple to change their policy with iOS devices, consoles won’t be next?
You seem pretty confident of the outcome. Are you a lawyer?
Seems to me that a lot of different things could happen. We certainly don’t regulate every mode of transportation the same just because they all transport people.
You are forcing an analogy between smart phones and consoles that is based on one facet of their operation. Someone could live their whole life without owning a game console. Meanwhile, smart phones are considered an absolute necessity by a vast, vast majority of people in the US.
A) do they need an iphone?
B) do they need any of the apps that Apple doesn’t allow?
C) in the case of Epic, why should Epic be treated differently by Apple than it is by consoles?
A) When we came up with rules for car manufacturers, why should any single one of them get preferential treatment?
B) Do people need third party car parts that car manufacturers originally wouldn't let anybody else manufacture? Maybe not, but we still have laws protecting those third party manufacturers to allow them to sell.
C) There is no reason to treat bicycles (consoles) the same as cars (smart phones) because smart phones are so much more important to society than consoles.
As a matter of fact - we have laws that inhibit car manufacturers from selling directly to customers. There's absolutely no reason why we can't have the same things for smart phone manufacturers.
I say take their "company stores" away altogether [0]. I'm confident that it's going to happen eventually - if not from this lawsuit then from another.
Can I buy digital currency for use with Fortnite and not give Epic a cut?
B) can I install a third party program on Teslas to enable features that they lock out?
C) there is no difference technologically between a Nintendo switch and a phone. If Nintendo added a cellular chip to the Switch, does it mean it should have to open up development? Could Apple be required to open up iPads with cellular and not those that don’t have one? Since phones are “essential” and tablets and smart watches aren’t, does that mean Spotify complaining about not having the same access to features on watch as Apple has is an invalid complaint [1]?
Could Apple just call the iPhone the “Apple Switch w/cellular”? Or more on brand “iPad Nano w/cellular”?
> As a matter of fact - we have laws that inhibit car manufacturers from selling directly to customers. There's absolutely no reason why we can't have the same things for smart phone manufacturers
Now you are in favor of laws passed only protect local dealers. Those laws are the definition of “regulatory capture”. They don’t help consumers at all. It prevents Tesla from selling in many states. Why shouldn’t we be able to order a car online directly from the manufacturer?
[1] Apple addressed every single one of Spotify’s technical complaints - opened up Siri integration to third party music streaming providers, added the ability to stream from the Watch and download music locally Tessa ago and Spotify is just now updating their app.
I've pointed out undeniable real life parallels where things might not go the way you're thinking. If you can't accept that reality, then I can't really help you.
I guess you can enjoy having that last word though!