As the Alien vs. Predator tagline said: whoever wins, we lose.
But if you've ever tried to cancel an AT&T internet line or New York Times subscription, you begin to understand Apple's position. Consumers oftentimes have no recourse; Apple's (and, similarly Google's) subscription framework is the first time in history many of these companies have experienced the powerlessness their users feel when dealing with recurring payments. They don't like giving up power.
It should come as no surprise that the companies most vocal about the payments monopolies are the ones who want to abuse the freedom Governments will hand them, in the name of maintaining a healthy competitive landscape.
I think a balance needs to be struck; Apple needs to have its power reigned in, and I think that takes the form of a forced reduction in revenue share to 10% max (Visa maintains a global network of hundreds of thousands of diverse swipe terminals at ~3%; if Apple can't maintain some servers at 10%, they're incompetent and deserve to be driven into bankruptcy by this totally reasonable legislation).
I don't feel that allowing alternate payment methods / subscription frameworks would actually benefit users/consumers, across any length of time, in any fashion whatsoever. I think subscription/payment management needs to be delegated to user accounts outside of any control of the service providers taking payment, as its an intrinsic and irreducible conflict of interest. Maybe that means Visa or whoever should start a "subscription and payments portal" that service providers have to integrate with. I don't know. But the way we've done it for 20+ years doesn't work, and Apple's way is absolutely better; its just not the best it can be, right now.
What would California actually choose to do on behalf of consumers who are in this situation, even if there is a law on the books that supports the consumer?
With Apple, the company in question had to work to get on the platform in the first place, and if I as a consumer go to them and tell them I want to cancel that account, then Apple just cancels that account. I don’t have to go to the state of California and ask for assistance, I don’t have to wait for a lengthy trial that might be years in the future. With Apple, it’s just one click and done.
Laws don’t help you if they are never enforced. Laws don’t help you if they can’t be enforced against a party outside of their jurisdiction.
Apple’s solution works, and works well, for all customers who want to cancel their accounts.
If Apple allows external IAP, but _also_ requires strict dispute resolution and simple subscription cancellation, that would probably be deemed anticompetitive as well, even though it's thoroughly pro-consumer.
The problem here is that the regulatory scrutiny is only on one dimension, not the full picture. And in the full picture, Apple's policies are eminently reasonable—if their fees are a bit high.
Thus the looming changes: Apple requires account deletion within apps in AppStore starting January 31 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28776960
Why would that be considered anticompetitive?
However, the same people who say that it’s anticompetitive for Apple to control the payment flow are likely to say that _any_ impingement of Apple on the customer relationship is anticompetitive. These are the people who don’t actually _care_ about the customer relationship, like the NYTimes subscription department, or the companies that bank on customers forgetting to cancel their subscription for months at a time or not wanting to spend time on the phone to fight over a $1.29/month subscription fee.
IMO, antitrust/anticompetition investigations tend to be _far_ too limited in their scope (they look only at one or two aspects and not the big picture of what's happening). I remember a few years ago when Apple had worked with publishers to establish a new standard ebook contract for publishers and marketplaces. It was one that would have (slightly) raised the prices of ebooks, but replaced the unilaterally imposed contract that Amazon provided. Apple got in trouble over it, even the result would have been a _better_ and more _competitive_ marketplace and not one controlled by Amazon.
I have opinions on what should be done with the app stores that would _probably_ fix a lot of the issues, but any changes to the app stores need to look at whether it would be a _better_ situation for customers or just a more lucrative situation for publishers. And the customer impact would not just be measured on “choice”, but on overall price/privacy impact.
Measured by that, there’s no question in my mind that Apple’s doing a better job than people give them credit for.
Despite all the negative externalities that it also causes, I fail to see how they could outdo its positive aspects.
This is totally true. Unfortunately, it's also the biggest repository of misinformation in history as well.
> I fail to see how they could outdo its positive aspects
On a macro scale, you're likely correct. If you're one of the unlucky people that suffers a significant negative consequence, your view may differ.
That could be said for anything, though. There isn't a thing on this planet that hasn't hurt anyone during its creation.
It's just that all that other stuff came too. In addition to that web you love. Not pushing it away, but shadowing it in volume. Yet, there is no space shortage. The web is an infinite library.
Not one that has to remove those seventies sci-fi books to make place for the new Harry Potter section. But one that can keep both.
Well, there was altavista (and, ahh, the memories Astalavista.box.sk) and some other ad-loaded websites.
As long as Google says so. And they haven't been open to new old-school sites, just to old ones.
Apple might just remove dating apps from the app store for the Netherlands. Problem solved.