Apple’s profit is always the priority–no matter the cost
macworld.com
macworld.com
It feels like there is so much work that goes into the Apple ecosystem working so cleanly, that most take it for granted without considering what is really an 'alternative' and its costs.
> Pretty much no company, big or small, can afford to do these things. Yes, Apple has done a great job building many of these products and yes, consumers have come to love many of these difficult-to-manufacture features. But you are not Apple
Which makes it a bit easier to acquire / pre-book the relevant manufacturing capacity, when you know you're going to make a surprise announcement of it as a major feature in the future.
After which, everyone else eventually ends up at the same upstream manufacturers, or trying to duplicate the technology...
Apple is a machine that is fueled by cross subsidizing new platforms (Apple Watch) with their already significant capital investments in the iPhone.
They don't see software as an ecosystem, as the actual product that the user interacts with, as their brand differentiation. They see it as a costly problem that they must solve by finding the cheapest viable bag of bits they can throw on devices and not have customers return it the first day. I swear that's the quality bar for some of these companies.
That's how we get TVs that take 5 seconds to recognize a button press, and have UIs that look like they were made from clipart. Proper font kerning? Forget it, they use 16x8 bitmap fonts from the '90s. That's how we get IoT devices that are 0wned the second they connect to the Internet. That's how we get car stereos that display "����������" when you try to play a media file with non-ASCII characters in the name. Many hardware companies don't give a single shit about their software's quality--only that it's cheap and barely works and it keeps the BOM cost low.
For the longest time touch display and navigation software in cars were terrible. Low resolution, small screens, laggy interfaces, and software not connected to the vehicle in the sense where OTA updates can end up fixing and improving aspects of the car.
Why can’t another company build better laptop enclosures ?
Zune vs Ipod Galaxy Tab vs Ipad Android wear vs Apple Watch
Hard to reason all those away as just better components
This is a vicious cycle for newcomers, and at the same time a virtuous cycle for the incumbent(s), further cementing their dominant position.
Why couldn't anyone compete against Bell by building a second phone network?
[1] https://financesonline.com/number-of-smartphone-users-worldw...
Companies have a limited output of the materials needed to make a computer. If Apple tells one of these companies you now have an exclusive relationship with us, or else, what is that company going to do?
Anyway, Apple has a monopoly of platform, which is measured between its own base, rather than as an absolute number compared of what % devices are iPhones.
Apple does have a monopoly on the markets running on all their devices, from apps to media, for ~900 million phones. When Apple doesn't completely own the only available market service to it's hardware (that it exclusively gives itself), it still charges a 30% fee to it's competitors for access to it's markets while actively blocking everyone else.
I'd argue that monopolies should be judged on country and not worldwide. As each country has different iMessage popularity, apps restricted by region, earning power, phone availability, etc.
Their software moat with IOS is everything.
Software itself is innately a hugely monopolistic industry.
IOS is Cisco's router OS. Apple did license it though, to prevent any potential lawsuit...
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/06/house-antitrust-subcommittee...
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/02/eff-appeals-apples-mon...
So sure. Not a monopoly. But also not far from a monopoly as you claim.
The only real issue I have with Apple Silicon is that since it isn't open hardware that anybody can buy, I can't run my own software on A-series chips. At least M-series chips are opening up slowly to Linux, though.
1. I'm not sure I'd describe an ecosystem where Netflix and Amazon get sweetheart reduced revenue cuts while small devs have zero negotiating power is one I'd describe as working "cleanly" FOR USERS. Again, forget the devs here for a second, let's just think of the users. The AppStore is not just a "monopoly", it is a monopoly enabler. New platforms are traditionally one of the best places to disrupt the old big players -- and as a user, I'd love a place that let small upstarts be nimble against the likes of Amazon or Netflix. But if Apple specifically lets Amazon compete at reduced revenue cuts, this becomes impossible. No one can compete in an already difficult space like a Music app (or even a Comic Book app!) if Apple is giving the world's largest corporations better deals. Forgetting Apple's dominance in phones, they are also helping me have less choice in terms of these other services.
2. And consider this, 30% revenue split for a small app shop can mean the difference between being able to afford a new dev on your team, or a full time QA person, or full time support person, etc. Literally, if you are a 2 person team, getting that extra 30% would allow you to roughly afford one more hire at the same wage. Those are bug fixes, features, and support I'm missing out on as a user. I sure as hell don't "feel" that 30% from Apple. I already paid them $1000+ for my phone, why do I have to pay them a 30% markup on my ToDo's app? It sure as hell isn't going into writing the 3 lines of code to make even exact string matching work in AppStore search, so I'm fairly certain that money would be better spent by the devs, again, purely from a selfish user perspective.
3. Which brings us to the larger "ecosystem" and store. They suck. It's hard to find anything on the store, it's full of scams, to the point where I am terrified of my kids someday being given any access to it and the casino-like games they allow. An equally "tyrannical" Apple that was values-based and tried to stop both overt scams but also was more opinionated about the subscription-addiction junk they allow to get sold to children, would be far more defendable in my opinion. I might be like "well, philosophically I disagree with this, but you can't argue with results!". Currently, it's "well, I disagree with this philosophically, and wow is this mismanaged. Like, I think you'd have a hard time finding someone that could have less pride in what you see when you scroll through the charts." I think Apple's own Phil Schiller put it best in 2012: "Is No One Reviewing These Apps?"
4. None of the "security" on iOS comes from the 30% cut, or even the AppStore review process. It's all stuff that's built into the sandbox model. If anything, there's an argument that the AppStore makes iOS more insecure since it puts the "Apple Review Seal of Approval" on a bunch of apps that just rip you off.
5. The apps themselves are pretty meh. I don't even know how anyone could hold any opinion on native vs. web anymore, unless you're big into games, at which point, sure, some native thing is going to have better graphics. All the things "native does better" these days are mainly because the browser isn't allowed to do those things, and Apple doesn't allow any competing web engine on iOS. And some things the iOS "wild west web" still does better: like having Picture-in-Picture work everywhere. To be clear: I 100% believe iOS apps used to be clearly better, and they could 100% still be clearly better, but Apple's dropped the ball on their tooling/frameworks/resources and there's just not much exciting taking place there anymore. The Apple Pencil was a big watershed moment with this: they shipped the thing with barely any developer docs so you had the few key players making some cool apps (like Adobe of course), but otherwise nothing really revolutionary was enabled on the iPad. I think the Pencil could have been a game changer, but Apple was more content with selling a couple $150 trinkets to iPad die-hards vs. really expanding their lead in the tablet space by doing something bold (like just including a Pencil with every iPad to create huge incentives to make every Apple developer make their apps "Pencil-ready" just like with all the "in device" features like 3D touch or whatever), or by even just integrating the Pencil more meaningfully in their own OS to lead by example. We didn't get the ability to have the Pencil "just work" in any text field until 6 years after its initial release.
iOS is increasingly just something I kind of have to use. Or else lose iMessage or whatever. I think the opportunity cost that more interesting is what if things were different than this. For the record, I think ironically the result would be that Apple would act more like the old Apple, and be forced to make a compelling case for being on the Store and not using a third party to process payments (and I think there's lots of interesting stuff Apple could actually do there, as opposed to... nothing). Again, I'm not arguing about whether they have the right or not to do any of this, just what the consequences would be if they stopped doing it.
I think most of arguments against what Apple is doing are based on an incomplete picture of Apple's product. They are based on someone not appreciating an aspect of what Apple is doing. Maybe they don't like the price. Maybe they don't like a lack of complete control over their hardware. The rest of it is always a rant to justify that position.
There is provable value in what Apple is doing, or the app store would not be a success. Some people just want to have their cake and eat it too.
There is provable value in what Apple is doing, by curating a higher quality and better integrated ecosystem than Google/Android offers. Polish which is funded by profits from the App Store.
On the other hand, the App Store's success also benefits from full capture of all iOS users and network effects of releasing when it did.
> Some people just want to have their cake and eat it too.
Some people think you shouldn't be allowed to put cocaine in soda, even if it's tasty. (To use a 1920s metaphor)
btw, you can do nfc beyond payments on ios and have for years; https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guideline...
The fact that nobody can attack Apple IS the proof that Apple is a monopoly.
Looking at a similar example, it took a lot for Vanderbilt to build and buy up all the railroads. Once that was done, however, the system was locked in place and nobody could dethrone him.
This is not exactly accurate. Everyone speculated about an SDK (like for the Mac). When it was finally announced, the locked-down “App Store” aspect of it was a surprise.
And it was generally greeted positively; after all, at the time it was pretty hard and expensive to go to market with new client-side software. Websites were way easier, and in fact that is one reason Apple initially were all-in on web apps for the iPhone.
(There were also honest concerns whether Apple had the chops to adequately secure a phone SDK so that calls would always work.)
The bad feelings about it built over time. One could say that people have started taking the existence of the iOS ecosystem for granted. But the world has changed around Apple. It no longer looks hard to go to market with software, so people no longer think Apple’s cut is fair.
And I think the article is correct that Apple has increasingly viewed it as a tax, not pass-thru expense.
The iPhone today is so much different to the iPhone in Steve Jobs era. iPhone 4 only had a 3.5" Screen. All the decisions during early iPhone era make sense. It was a phone like an appliance with some apps, and an internet communicator. It wasn't a Gaming platform that makes more money than console, nor a content consumption devices that exceed even TV, or a security or payment system used in everyday modern society. Or in every other scenario in our society which increasingly "assumes" you have a Smartphone.
I think they are applying the same rules on iPhone in a completely different situation and scenario. Which is why all the bad feeling built over time.
Well if you get to add money to your bottom line for all the great stuff you do, you should also have to subtract money for all the crappy things you do.
Off the top of my head:
- Developers should get a “cut” whenever Apple makes arbitrary changes that completely break 3rd-party apps. If the app’s code doesn’t change but Apple does change something, their behavior is literally creating problems for developers with no cost to Apple. Let’s charge them!
- Developers should get a “cut” whenever Apple is literally the reason for delay when trying to deliver things like critical fixes to customers. Let’s charge them!
- Developers should get a “cut” whenever their reputation is completely trashed by users because Apple refuses to acknowledge their own mistakes. In other words, Apple is perfectly happy to let users think apps are trash, even if the reason for the problem is Apple. Let’s charge them!
Apple doesn’t get to have only the good parts. I personally am sick and tired of all the ways they get to hide their awful behavior, and forcing developers to take the brunt of it.
Apple's decision to break apps that don't update is a user-centric decision. Just like deciding against GC and forcing automatic reference counting for more consistent UX performance is a user-centric, developer-hostile decision.
Is it really though? Users are then stuck with their favorite apps being broken and unusable.
We're not talking just about mandatory security updates here, some of the breaking changes are mundane.
Just compare the cluster-fuck that Windows on Arm is to the great experience of running x86 apps on an Arm Mac.
> Users are then stuck with their favorite apps being broken and unusable.
Yes, and they get mad at developers and the developers have to fix it when they otherwise wouldn't have. That means Apple can credibly roll out new APIs and features that are _better_ and force developers to adopt them. That's incredibly positive for users in the long run. Things like HW accelerated machine learning (still not available on Windows!), ARKit (Android equivalent is garbage), GPU accelerated UI (a dumpster fire on Android that no developer uses), etc.
Think about this: if you're an AR app developer and Apple suddenly rolls out a new update that massively boosts performance IF you use the new API, are you going to use the new API and spend time porting over your existing functionality? Hell no. But if Apple forces you to, in the long run users get a way faster app, in exchange for some short run inconveniences because the app broke.
A famous example that the Android community gripes about is Google's Camera2 API. It gives much better image quality but Snapchat refuses to use it. So Android image quality in Snapchat continues to suck because Google doesn't have the cajones to outright remove old APIs and force app developers onto new ones.
No actual changes to your fees - we've been thinking of our precious developers and giving you that 10% discount since the very beginning."
So when Apple introduces new features and frameworks, should developers then pay Apple? This doesn't seem to make sense.
They already do, in the form of a couple subscriptions. A fixed one of $99/year and another one which is a tax of 30% on their revenue.
> So when Apple introduces new features and frameworks, should developers then pay Apple? This doesn't seem to make sense.
I thought so too at first but that brings back one idea I had that most independent software vendors will probably hate and puts more control in Apple's hands but here it is anyway:
Apple can add a way for developers to submit source code, assets, and machine readable build instructions in an Apple supplied format. Apple then builds the bits that goes on the App Store. Developers already pay USD 100 a year for the privilege of being on the App Store anyway, right?
This way, if Apple introduces new features and frameworks, they can automatically update the code as needed and push updates to the users?
Instead of posting anecdotal evidence of mine to the contrary, I ll ask the following. If cartels are unstable in practice, then why do states need competition authorities to punish price fixing, and similar practices?
I 'd say cartel's are unstable in theory but not necessarily in practice.
Even things like commodities have hidden cartels and monopolies. Oil may be a commodity, but the refining facilities are most certainly cartel-owned. Agriculture is seemingly not a cartel, but ADM and Cargill dominate certain aspects of the supply chain and processing.
Instead I would argue that iterative game theory of free market economics would stabilize to a cartel or monopoly. Once one of the open competitors determines an advantage, and/or has substantial access to near-free capital (um, what's the interest rate of the last two decades?), then they can acquire their competitors.
Then they can apply barriers to entry such as regulation and lockin contracts with equipment suppliers and the like. Look at the practices of Intel to lockout AMD. Look at how Microsoft exerted power on PC makers. Once you are big, you can influence the suppliers and distributors to lockout competitors.
As long as size is an intimidator (and it almost always will be except to extreme examples of markets), it will be effective. The only time it helps is when it slows response until an upstart using an entirely different supply chain and technology (like Tesla) gains such a fundamental advantage they can't stamp it out.
Nobody will a join a union just to strike ( a.k.a pull the apps) however making collective to better negotiate with someone with lot of control over your revenue (salary) is not inherently a dumb idea.
App Store developers are sprinkled all over the world, so not too much is consistent between them. Getting enough of these varied people to collectively pause their income, and allow their competitors to flourish, long enough for Apple to even notice/care, is probably much harder. I think it would be even harder to present the applications failure in a way that an average consumer would sympathize with or even understand.
You only need really apps with say 10-50M downloads to join together, most of them know each other and many of them are made by rival companies who have an interest in keeping Apple in check.
Indie developers could of course be invited to join such action, but apart from PR and other aspects they won't move the needle either way with Apple.
Is no value assigned to the truly amazing custom silicon that sips power while efficiently supporting an instruction set that, in turn, supports developers external and internal?
Is no value assigned to the work that goes into evolving with the wireless network standards? Those are internal people, generally with decade+ hardcore engineering backgrounds.
It's because the developers are secondary. Apple is the primary, the key to it all.
One, you would never get the complete boycott that it would require to have an impact—-very few app publishers relying on app profits would risk a profitable app just to prove the point, especially if the publisher is a publicly traded company. You would have to rely on activist super small (single dev or two) app studios for your strikers and, no offense to those smaller studios, those apps generally are not the ones that people will miss beyond a mild irritation.
Two, for every app participating in the boycott, there would be a similar app that didn’t participate that could backfill. The non-participating apps would be well known within a day or two and would start displacing striking apps pretty much immediately.
Of course, this is a hypothetical because the app developers are fragmented while Apple is a single entity. The blog argues that to be fair, Apple should donate 30% of its iPhone revenue to app developers as an iPhone without 3rd party apps is fundamentally crippled. The meta argument is that Apple taking a 30% cut of app revenue is fundamentally unfair.
Apple has set a new precedent with the 30% cut. Operating systems such as windows, macOS and unix that came before iOS never demanded a 30% cut of app revenue installed on the device.
Would you also be supportive of Microsoft and Unix vendors demanding 30% of revenue generated by applications on their operating system - starting 2022?
I disagree that the device is crippled without 3rd party apps. It may not be quite as useful or perhaps fun, but it would still be a far more useful device than a Motorola Razr phone or a Blackberry.
Yes it’s a new premise. Apple provides an app market to 1.65B devices to app developers with little entrance risk to the devs much beyond the elbow grease they spent creating the app. How much more money and effort would a developer have to spend to get their app that level of exposure without the App Store? A lot, and all of it amounting to real dollars at risk with no guarantee of payoff. What’s truly at risk publishing at the App Store? Nothing but a publishers time. Even the 30% you pay to Apple only hits if you are making money. It’s a commission, they marketed and sold the app for you, handled the transaction, distribution, and dropped some cash in your bank account. 30% in my mind is pretty cheap for what you get. Any other business that relied on third parties services to handle the marketing, sales, shipping, and finance transaction of the product would not bat an eye if those costs ran to 30%.
As for Unix and Windows deciding to charge a fee? That wouldn’t bother me a bit if they were marketing, selling, and handling the transaction for my app. Do it.
Then developers started jailbreaking the phones, adding their own apps to them.
The Appstore wasn't obvious for Apple, and it was only after developer backlash that they changed their tune.
So you can say that Apple did everything but the truth is that the success of the iPhone is from the COMBINED effort of Apple, and the work of developers in the community.
This is not “remembering history correctly” at all.
Apple didn’t have an SDK ready, and tried to sell the shit sandwich of Web Apps as a stopgap.
And how exactly do you know that it always was their intent to make an SDK for third party developers?
From https://9to5mac.com/2011/10/21/jobs-original-vision-for-the-...
"The App Store came later and apparently as a reaction to jailbreakers and developer backlash."
At the end of the day, these developers are still competing with each other, and rational actors will break from the coordination to profit off the users for themselves.
I'm sure I'm atypical, but I do wonder how much an app-developer rebellion would really affect folks. I can't imagine my wife or parents switching to Android even if all of the non-Apple apps were to disappear tomorrow.
That seems surprising. Do your wife and parents not use Uber/Lyft/etc.? Do they not use any banking apps? Do they not use any social media apps? Yelp? Food delivery apps? Messaging apps aside from iMessage? Video streaming apps? And that's just from looking at one of my home screens!
Do you really believe they'd be happy with a phone that suddenly couldn't do all that anymore? I very much doubt that.
[1] https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/06/apples-app-store-ecos...
[2] https://www.statista.com/outlook/cmo/hot-drinks/coffee/world....
AFAIK, it was not in the mainstream media. Perhaps The Information credibility is an issue?
There are constant articles on HN about why <insert big company> is doing <terrible monopolistic thing>, and we inevitably talk about how these companies are doing horrible things, while others then go on to say “well look at all the value they’re bringing”. As if both can’t be true at once. It’s an embarrassingly reductive back and forth.
These companies have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders to maximize the stock price. This inevitably leads to this behavior.
Of course, everyone on this site secretly wants to build the “next big thing” so they can get famous and incredibly wealthy. You can only become that rich under the current system, so instead of just understanding the fundamental reasons why we see this behavior again and again and again, we bicker about the finer points of governance of these corporations. It’s like arguing about what size bandaid to put over a gaping chest wound.
This site is full of smart people, but our collective greed makes us seem pretty damn stupid
Does it "basically work" though? You are, for example, aware that profit motives have driven things like:
- the water crisis in Flint, Michigan;
- the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan by the United States and its allies in the early 2000s;
- the ongoing destruction of the Amazon rainforest (and the genocide that continues to go hand in hand with it) by ranchers seeking to increase their bottom line;
- the instance by airlines to continue flying completely empty planes all over the EU "to keep takeoff and landing times";
- the refusal to pass a TRIPS waiver for the mRNA COVID vaccine that prevents much of the world from accessing the most effective vaccines in a timely manner (or at all);
- the ongoing exploitation and perpetuation of underpaid or outright slave labor in many parts of the world by countries proped up by western colonial powers intent on delivering luxury items to their citizens at relatively low costs (while still reaping massive profits off those sales);
- etc, etc, etc.
I don't disagree that we need some intermediate solution like enforcing existing anti-trust legislation, repealing anti-union restrictions that outlaw effective labor organizing techniques, actually enacting harsh and swift consequences on companies that continue to destroy the environment (and the people who live in it).
But those are only short term solutions to immediate harms being perpetuated by a system that has for well over a century brought death and destruction to the earth and its people... not to mention what capitalism's ancestors did in the never-ending, blood-thirsty western colonial expansion throughout the globe.
So yes, let's enforce anti-trust laws... but let's not do that and think that alone will solve the myriad problems that have been thrust upon the peoples of the earth by a small number of extremely rich, profit driven people. And let's definitely not claim that the system that props up and perpetuates that behavior "basically works" when for most of the people of the world it patently does not "basically work".
I don't know what the ideal system is. I have my own utopian visions but I acknowledge they'll likely never come to pass. But we _have_ to try something different than what we're doing now. The current global economic trajectory is a deathwish that most people have not consented to.
(Edited to fix list formatting)
This was government not putting the effort in, not capitalism.
> the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan by the United States and its allies in the early 2000s;
Does the Communist invasion of Eastern Europe and Afghanistan count?
> the ongoing destruction of the Amazon rainforest (and the genocide that continues to go hand in hand with it) by ranchers seeking to increase their bottom line;
They are doing that because people want to eat steak.
> - the refusal to pass a TRIPS waiver for the mRNA COVID vaccine that prevents much of the world from accessing the most effective vaccines in a timely manner (or at all);
Your idea is that without getting paid, people will just provide public health work for free, because they .... ?
> the ongoing exploitation and perpetuation of underpaid or outright slave labor in many parts of the world by countries proped up by western colonial powers intent on delivering luxury items to their citizens at relatively low costs (while still reaping massive profits off those sales);
OK at this point it's clear that your problem is with material consumption , not capitalism.
Because it’s the right thing to do, and people like helping each other and doing the right thing. There are other motivating factors for most people over money. Human beings are generally good and generally do the right thing.
I like the Baha'i view that breaks it down into 3 components: the individual, community, and institutions, and then works on gradually reforming each of them, and recognizing their interactions. Here's my summary; there are undoubtedly better summaries out there too:
* Individual: Empower people to act on ethics first, and material benefit second — by emphasizing the inherent value of ethics, based on the view of humans as intellectual/spiritual as well as physical. Educate them to be good electors (see Institutions, below).
* Community: This is the one I understand least, but I think it's about the emergent behaviors of groups of people who interact informally. Like a neighborhood or interest group.
* Institutions: Reform their selection process & functioning. There are plenty of people who would make great public servants, but they are precisely the people who avoid our current electoral processes which are so poisonous and dumb. So have elections that focus on the qualities that are good for office — caring for the well-being of the whole, wisdom, appropriate skills & abilities — and prohibit all campaigning or discussion of individuals. You'd think it's impossible, but the Baha'i electoral process actually works in practice and people love it.
All of these need reform. A good place to look at current Baha'i thinking is the "Baha'i International Community" website: https://www.bic.org/ which is kind of a public policy outreach site.
Apple won't have had the resources to develop something the Apple Silicon or most other products, if they aren't ruthless about their profit.
Is it worth the cost for society ? Depends on the POV, it sucks to be the handicraft producer when a big factory opens up, but more people do get product and benefit from it.
R&D is only part of taking a product to users. There is a lot of steps in between , marketing , support , distribution , manufacturing, packaging a new tech into viable a value proposition and so on.
Research is important , but purely research or even better tech alone is insufficient, there are plenty of examples of companies who have great R&D but failed to make useful products used by real people at scale (aka commericalize) .
If we start talking about terrible things done by collectively or state owner endeavors we find things just as terrible like the holomdor, the 5 Year Leap. I mean don't get me wrong Apple is doing some seriously terrible things with their power grabs and monopolies, but I don't know if equates to 5 million dead of famine in 5 years, and although Google is violating my privacy and sucking up everyone's data I would prefer that over being loaded on a train to a concentration camp.
My point isn't to exonerate capitalism, because Nestle is a truly despicable company and have committed crimes of close to the same magnitude, but to believe that just changing the system is going to magically make everything better is in my opinion naive, because no matter how great you try and make your system if you fill it entirely with bad people it will result in bad outcomes.
Additionally we often find that during times of large scale change in "systems" it is more often than not the most ruthless, sociopathic, despotic individuals rise to the top because they are most willing to do whatever it takes to retain power. In contrast it seems like the activist investors that amass capital and attempt to force changes in company through monetary means is much less disruptive for the vast majority of people's lives.
EDIT: For some line breaks and missing word.
Those other governments had high concentrations of power at the top. They also stifled freedom of speech and freedom of assembly.
Too much power concentrated in one place is what causes horrible stuff. Serfs and Kings, Bureaucrats and common people, 1%’ers and poor people, etc.
It all comes down to concentrations of power.
"Manage the top line: your strategy, your people, and your products, and the bottom line will follow." - Steve Jobs
Most managers or CEOs just dont get it. They are always looking at their bottom line.
Edit: I just notice this quote has the word strategy in it, which is strange because Silicon Valley VC BS suggest "execution eats strategy for breakfast".
You can always choose not to participate if these things are a problem for you. They are not a monopoly in their sector nor are they required to participate in society.
Not always. Consider what would happen in the US if Uber decided they didn't want to participate anymore. Uber fails, and Lyft wins. This holds for companies like Spotify, Yelp, any messaging platform, food delivery, video streaming...
Sure, if you're an indie developer whose revenue doesn't depend on being on mobile platforms, this might not be a problem for you. But anything where a mobile experience is important to your revenue (or even your continued existence), you must be in the App Store (and the Play Store).
Lots of people stay in business because they just like it AND it gives enough money for a reasonable life.
For example, Zynga's leadership eventually realized they were salting the earth and ensuring that in the future their genre/model wouldn't work anymore. They did it anyway. They've owned up to this
The full sentence is maximize profit no matter anything else, like profit first , honesty later, family later, friends later, happiness later , health later.
Not everyone gets off by increasing some numbers, sometime there is enough.
So, if a majority of Apple's shareholders feel a different way from just maximizing profits then changes could be underway.
Just because it's legal doesn't mean it's the right thing to do, you know? Or perhaps I'm just naïve and everyone should be out for themselves, the community/society be damned.
My parent comment got downvoted but I don’t know why - just because you disagree with me doesn’t mean it’s grounds for downvoting, as I’m only trying to facilitate a discussion.
I think some regulations and enforcement is sorely lacking in these areas.
Unrelated: "Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading."
You may want to research the growing trend of measuring companies against their impact, sustainability, etc., as well as increasingly popular indices that track companies based on that.
Long term profitability that involves thinking ahead of time of what would become unsustainable is, logically, speaking not maximizing for profit NOW. Honesty (ethics in business) will become increasingly important for the next generations. The current generations, however, don't care that much just yet.
This means that the brands of traditionally maximize-profits at all cost at least have to make efforts to demonstrably align with consumer ideals, if they want to continue to profit. It's far from perfect but still a far cry better than before.
For these, it's the employee taking the stance of "profits at all cost".
For example I can maximise profit by firing all the staff, but continuing to collect subscription revenue for a couple years. Lots of profit, perhaps even "more profit", but a dead business.
We spend money on all sorts of things, at the cost of immediate profit. Staff bonuses, end-of-year lunch, social donations, R&D, all come off the bottom line.
Now, you can argue that we do it to stay in business, and a business that exists infanitly creates infinite profit, in which case the goal of business is to stay in business. Or perhaps profit is best served by keeping staff forever, in which case the odd benefit increases profit.
Profit is important, without it a business will fail - but if that's the _only_ metric then its a very cold unpleasant place to work.
In moderation — for example if you take a wholistic view that incorporates benefit to the society at large as well, then it can be very good.