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Comment by sp332 | Hacker News Reader

I'll bite - what's the difference between a movie-streaming app and a game-streaming app?

Netflix is bigger than the nascent game streaming market and more apple users (including me) expect to be able to use it. If they told netflix "we have to approve each movie and tv show on your service, and possibly take revenue from you on a per-video basis", then netflix would walk and would be smart to do so because it's pretty likely apple would come up the loser in that fight. Again, huge number of users, existing expectation of the status quo (i can stream from netflix on my device) from those users. Game streaming is new and not yet established to the general user base. Apple is in a huge position of power relative to game streaming and is using that to get the best possible deal.

As a devoted apple product user, these kind of behaviors really worry me. I understand that this is normal behavior for powerful organizations, but apple is making the user experience worse for money. I don't see how that ends well.

Your argument is that majority consensus overrides individual freedoms and that is preposterous.

That seems like a reductive interpretation. Can you explain which individual's freedoms are being overridden? And why is the argument preposterous?

I, the individual, cannot decide what content is allowed on my own Apple device which costs more than half a thousand dollars.

Yet the collective can decide at my expense: Netflix gets a free pass via the argument that Netflix's movies are somehow more important than the content I wish to experience.

It's great to see collective bargaining in action, for sure. I don't blame the people, and I don't blame Netflix. I blame Apple.

I think you’re kind of conflating what I believe is the ideal versus what I perceive to be reality.

We are one of billions of people. The fundamental nature of existence is that our sum ability to affect the world around is generally quite small in comparison to the sum of the consequences of others as a whole.

More people use Netflix, ergo Netflix has more leverage in negotiations with Apple. I don’t think that’s a particularly controversial conclusion?

The controversy is that this is an artificial phenomenon brought upon by Apple's blatant disregard of inalienable digital rights by refusing to allow a user to do as they please with their mobile personal computing platform.

There should be no leverage, and the fact that Netflix uses this privilege without taking a stand for others left behind is also controversial.

It's not an argument, it's an observation, and it's something we have to deal with.

I deal with it by not owning Apple products and online activism against their increasingly anti-consumer policies.

How do you deal with it?

So if an entirely new Netflix were to be created, with its own content and all, it shouldn't be allowed to be hosted on the Appstore..... because it isn't Netflix?

Sometimes I wonder how an industry that relies on logical thought ends up with folks who think the extreme opposite.

This isn't normal behavior for powerful organizations. Microsoft isn't stiffing me now, is it? Heck, even Google hasn't gone full retard. Would you like it if your car only allowed you to use gasoline from Shell and no other company, simply because Shell is "big"?

There is none. Either can have content that would offend Apple's conservative American sensibilities, though I'd wager that more movies would than games.

If Apple thought they could get away with content policing movies, they surely would.

The difference is that a movie streaming app streams fixed content while game streaming essentially streams arbitrary apps, albeit limited to gaming in this situation. From Apple's perspective, this sort of precedent could lead to entire app ecosystems bypassing the app store via streaming. It would be a workaround to Apple's refusal to allow third party stores on iOS. The same risk doesn't apply to more constrained and static content like video, books, and music.

I feel its important to mention that the issue is not quite as clear cut as this, since we have interactive Netflix movies and an ecosystem of web-based apps via Safari, but this seems to be Apple's rationale.

Fair point. But the more likely explanation is simpler, Apple can do it with little risk of losing customers. Then they can justify it with flimsy arguments like 'quality control' if/when challenged.

Netflix has plenty of obscene and naughty content that Apple doesn't insist on policing.

Officially, the web is where things that aren't allowed in the app store are supposed to go. Anyway, can't you buy videos and games from the Amazon app?

I assume the difference (to Apple) is that movies generally don't have varied accounts and in-app purchases. You can't buy MTX to reskin the Avengers in Endgame (yet) or unlock extra DLC chapters (well Disney+ is trying I'm sure). You log into one provider (Netflix) instead of potentially an account/provider per game, plus the streaming app. So, money.

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