Comment by simonh | Hacker News Reader

Comment by simonh | Hacker News Reader

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Hmm, I generally take the pro-Apple stance on this. I don’t want side loading or third party stores. It’s Apples product and they get to decide what features it has, IMHO. I don’t want government committees dictating the security model and software architecture of my phone, thanks.

However Marco’s argument is spot on. Apple is saying in Senate hearings that App developers are picking up crumbs from the App Store’s floor and should be grateful for what they get, while reassuring devs that they are what makes iPhone so great. Too many of Apples moves against devs on the store recently have bordered on the abusive. Yes they’re greatly trimmed charges for small dev shops, but the rules on that are awkward and are clearly about optics not substance.

To your questions.

1. Then Apple would have failed to offer a compelling product. There are other phones and app stores out there. If Apple can’t compete with Samsung on the quality of their phones, then they’re not the Apple I know and love anymore. It’s up to them to add value, not leech it off others. They do deserve fair recompense for their services, but that’s all.

2. We know very well what their hardware margins are. From their own filings, their phone hardware margins are over 35%.

I also "don’t want government committees dictating the security model", but IMHO it's a big leap from that to advocating against consumer choice within a general purpose product.

Why is it a big leap? Consumers also choose to buy Apple and the assumption is we're too stupid to know we can buy something else and do more with it. It's just as big an insult. If I can't get your app on iOS then I just won't use your app. I don't care if it's on Android because I didn't buy an iPhone to use your specific app.

If you want to legislate for consumer choice do so but can we stop pretending this is some battle for choice when it's literally about two behemoth corporations arguing over how they split our money.

We agree that, properly empowered, consumers will make the best choice for themselves.

We disagree about what constitutes "properly empowered".

Yes that's a fair break down of the situation. We're mostly not aligned on how to properly empower individuals.

I don’t think it’s a big leap at all. On summers have a choice if they buy a product. They don’t get to dictate what products a company is allowed to make. Safety and consumer protection, fine, but I don’t see this as about consumer protection. It’s about some people wishing Apple would change their phones to suit their preferences, but there’s no obligation on Apple to do so.

People have always wished Apple would sell computers with this or that feature, this or that peripheral or option. That’s not how it works though. If they don’t sell a device that suits your needs, you have the same recourse the rest of us have.

But do you really think they would stop with specifications for side loading and App Store APIs, security profiles and associated OS services? How about specs for police and security services back doors, tracking and surveillance. They won’t be able to help themselves. And if the US can pass laws demanding these things, that creates a precedent for Russia, China, Saudi Arabia etc to follow suit.

So you get Apple dictating both the security model and the commercial model, to developer detriment.

It's clearly monopolistic - exploitative, monolithic, controlling.

The app store is the biggest source of friction standing between app developers and their customers.

Now - this wouldn't be a problem if Apple did the job they claim they do, improved search so it worked well, provided easy visibility for relevant apps, and threw out the scams and the trash.

That isn't what's happening. And that is a problem.

The security angle is a non-issue. Returning the app ecosystem to some semblance of functionality and fairness would is an orthogonal issue.

Apple can keep its walled garden. But it needs to start treating it like a valuable garden, not like a pile of burning trash that happens to generate huge amounts of free money.

>That isn’t happening.

When Apple says they rejected 1 million app submissions in 2020 and cancelled 470,000 developer accounts for fraud in the same period, do you think they’re lying?

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/11/apple-rejected-nearly-1-mill...

This is definitely a case where our Senate is out of it's depths. Software licensing and the world of software distribution is still a remarkably new field in the political world, so it makes sense that our government is totally lost here. There is no precedent for what Apple is doing. This is the licensing nightmare scenario all of the BSD developers warned about when Sony sold the Playstation Linux Kit: we no longer own the hardware we buy, we simply lease it from someone who provisions us authority to it as they see fit. It's a harrowing paradigm.

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