Apple's incentives appear aligned with their customers. Facebook's are completely opposed.
Apple makes money by selling more products which means they innovate by making Watches, Earpods, M1, etc. Facebook makes money by selling your attention and data, which meants they innovate by extracting data from every experience they can (Oculus, Whatsapp, ...), using more complex technologies (Facebook AI), and encouraging whatever behaviors create more ad spend (hint: outrage).
Add in the fact that Apple has made privacy a core part of their brand promise and it means that Apple has strong incentives to protect their customers in a way that most companies, especially Facebook, do not.
But regardless it’s not Facebook’s value prop to business that people have an issue with but ya know, how they actually deliver it.
On the other hand, it's argued that Apple doesn't care about their developers because they enforce draconian regulations on what iOS developers are allowed and not allowed to do, and don't hesitate even to shut down billion dollar apps (i.e., Fortnite).
I have mixed feelings about Apple's walled garden, both as a developer and a user, but when it comes to user privacy, I'm firmly in Apple's camp. I can't think of a single other large tech company that has a strong stand in favor of user privacy and acted on that. Basically, if Privacy is a killer feature for a consumer, then Apple is literally the only game in town.
Every other company would have been falling over themselves to unlock a terrorists iPhone.
Apple said no, hired Ted Olsen, and litigated (along with lots of other less well known cases).
This may have even hurt them in some consumers eyes (hard to understand them protecting someone who killed a bunch of people). So the PR risk was very significant.
So they do seem to have a pretty committed consumer focus (and now make money because of that).
It is virtually inevitable though that someone will go after them (anti-trust etc) because this is a game of billions and folks who for example do in-game loot boxes (fortnite) and marketing (facebook) etc are going to be in regulators ears and in ny times ads and op-eds calling for this horrible situation to be broken up.
It's fairly obvious that, given Epic was saying "you can pay $2 less to get the same amount of vbucks" that Apple was going to lose a huge portion of revenue from the App if they didn't pull it, and if they actually left it up, they'd have to allow every other app to institute third-party payment processors as well to not appear like they're playing favorites and the PR nightmare that would come from that.
It doesn’t mean anything at all.
https://www.epicgames.com/fortnite/en-US/news/the-fortnite-m...
Anyone who wanted to flout any rule could claim Apple was playing favorites with Epic.
It has nothing to do with being screwed out of $2 per purchase of in-game currency.
Saying that developers are "buying" users makes no sense. Devs are not a customer of apple. If anything, devs are a supplier to apple. Since the net money flow is from Apple to Dev.
As always, just follow the money.
Now, the legal view of Apple's ecosystem is being litigated right now. What I posted above might be how the court sees it, or what you posted might be how the court sees it. We won't get a definitive answer until either Epic or Apple go home with the key to processing payments on iOS and all of the other systems that are effectively an iPhone with a different form factor (eg PS5, xbox series).
(I’m not entirely opposed to this arrangement; I’m typing this on my iPhone. But I bought it knowing and accepting that I’m partly the product)
It’s not what people mean when they say ‘you are the product’.
What they mean is that if you aren’t paying, then the company is only interested in retaining you as a user so that they can satisfy their actual customers.
When you are paying, you are the customer
It’s also true that iOS developers are customers of Apple’s distribution service.
Buy Apple’s users are not a product in the sense that anyone uses this phrase.
You can think of it as a common. Blocking tracking essentially is a destruction of a bit of commons; the app developer will get less revenue. By systematically encouraging this block, Apple is making it comparatively less worthwhile to have an ad-supported app instead of a paid app, thus moving revenue to the app store (where Apple can tax it) instead of the advertising side (where it is monetarily free for the user.)
If we really wanted to find out what is right for the user[1], the correct thing is to see if users want to buy their way out of tracking. Offer the apps with advertising with tracking, with advertising without tracking, and without advertising - at different prices, representing the value of the advertising and tracking. My bet is that a majority of users would not want to pay the cost of non-tracked advertising - either they'll want to buy away advertising (and that will only be a small fraction) or they'll want the free variant. Basically, all data I've seen indicate that most people don't want to buy their way out of advertising - it's too expensive. I expect the same applies to tracking.
[1] Under the assumption that we've got an efficient market and will see an equilibrium of development that correspond to value created.
Not in China:
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2018/03/apple-privacy...
I doubt you would be arguing that, if Apple bricked basically every iPhone in China, it would be evidence that their "incentives are aligned with their customers".
Being a separate device, as you said, means the phones would still work independent of Apple.
The Chinese government would block updates and sales, hencecustomers would blame them, not Apple, because Apple was incentivized with customers instead of the government moving forward.
It is not "bricking phones" as you said. As much as you don't like this fact, Apple had a choice and decided to put the Chinese government before it's users.
An iPhone that cannot connect to Apple’s servers is essentially bricked. Not only do a significant number of critical features on the phone require reaching out to Apple to function, but IIRC, after a certain period of time without being able to contact Apple, the phone will require you to log in with your Apple ID. I believe this is to prevent activation lock bypasses by blocking network resources.
I remember reading about an issue a while back, where a person got locked out of their phone at sea, because they didn’t have network access for an extended period of time.
You're splitting hairs here about Apple choosing to share their user data with the Chinese government over their user's privacy.
... which is really no mystery, because Apple users are customers, and Facebook users are product.
Everything in it is structured around forcing you to pay Apple for access to things you want. Microtransactions, apps etc. All of it must go through Apple and they must have a cut of everything.
You can say they're more honest because they're taking your money up front as opposed to facebook selling you to advertisers, but I don't think it's in Apple's customers' best interests to be milked like cows
It's in Apple's short-term best interest to win over public opinion. It not only cools down anti-competitive rhetoric, but it also helps sell phones.
First the money flows from from end user to Apple, and then from Apple to developer.
The simplest way to model it is as a supply from dev to apple, plus a value-adding supply from apple to end user.
People here are arguing it is a supply from end user to dev, plus a supply from Apple to dev. That's obtuse way to model it IMO. Then again those are the kind of people who probably devising tax avoidance schemes and making big bucks so what to I know.
Will they put the consent pop up on App Store and News?