Hacker News Reader

Comment by Aaargh20318 | Hacker News Reader

Aaargh20318

> Use existing hardware and software features without competitive prejudice. E.g. NFC

What this will mean for me as an iPhone user: instead of using Apple Pay which is seamlessly integrated in my phone, watch and desktop OS, I will instead have to use my bank's terrible HTML-based 'app' to perform contactless payments, making it 100 times less convenient. This probably will make me switch back to using my bank card.

But hey, my bank makes a little more profit at the expense of UX.

Thanks EU!

View on HN

If that's such an important issue for you, why don't you just switch to a bank with an app with good UX? There are so many banks out there, one will surely either support Apple Pay or have a decent app.

Apple Pay will not just die, Android has no restrictions on NFC and Google Pay is still supported by banks.

What you do is fear mongering that's not based on reality. Android shows that it works and Apple just wants their cut, as always.

So use Android? I don't get the reason to force all companies to be the same when customers clearly have preferences.

I've bought mostly Apple products because I prefer their system to Androids. People who disagree can buy something else.

Competition is better than these father knows best overarching regulations.

Isn't the point of this to create more competition?

Android already is a huge iOS competitor, in fact, the majority player in the space. So competition clearly exists without this heavy handed regulation.

Legally requiring companies to degrade customer experiences is frustrating.

So, the competitor of one major tech monopoly that controls half of the people's online lives is another major tech monopoly that controls the other half. And they implement almost the same policies. And that is, 'somehow ok'.

Man, you Americans are SO taken in by your corporate landscape that you seem to have literally forgot what it is making your own choices.

Companies needing to be compelled by law to treat users as adults is also frustrating.

Frustrations everywhere, I guess we should just not do anything about it and go back to the stone age? Someone else in this thread was suggesting that.

I’m an adult, and I want Apple to sell a product that doesn’t comply with these regulations.

“You can opt out” doesn’t help, because I want Apple to leverage its market power to force other companies to act in my interest, such as by banning unnecessary location harvesting from the App Store. Today, if someone wants access to the iPhone market, they have to comply with a pile of requirements that benefit me. If Apple loses the power to force policies on developers, for example by being required to allow sideloading, developers won’t have any incentive to offer non-user-hostile apps, and the the product “a smartphone where apps are available that are not user-hostile” will be gone from the market. The only options will be “a smartphone where user-hostile apps are available” (if you succumb to sideloading), and “a smartphone where apps aren’t available” (if you refuse to sideload), because given the opportunity app developers will only make user-hostile apps.

The EU is making my life worse and I’m annoyed about it. People who want an Android can already buy an Android, why is the EU banning the product I want to buy?

Apple only loses power to force policies if developers AND users move off the Apple App Store. If you believe that people want to stay on Apple's App Store with all that it entails, then anything not on Apple's App Store will be irrelevant right?

Otherwise if you're saying that users WILL move off the App Store, then that's how Apple's monopoly is anti-consumer and anti-competitive.

If users choose to continue to use Apple App Store only, then Apple can continue to enforce policies while also not being (as) anti-competitive since they wouldn't be actively stifling competition.

I want to continue using Apple’s App Store, but most people are less aware of things like location harvesting, and are less privacy-sensitive than I am. Today, Apple can set policies that benefit users without those users having to be aware of those policies or understand why those policies benefit them. In a world where Apple’s policies can be sidestepped simply by asking the user to sideload the app, many, even most users will likely agree to do so without any awareness of what they’re giving up. The shady app developer certainly won’t tell them!

Users unambiguously benefit from most of Apple’s App Store policies (the payment rules less so, but even then there are benefits such as mandatory subscription cancellation support), but often in ways they can’t or don’t see. Apple’s policies are obviously negative for app developers, but I don’t care and nobody should care that Apple chooses to benefit its consumers at the expense of its third-party corporate partners. That’s just normal business behavior.

I don't disagree with the benefits, but there are also negatives to me as a consumer with Apple's App Store policies that do nothing but benefit Apple. And as long there's no competition, Apple have no incentive to change that because it benefits them.

Look at Fortnite's removal, all because they added an additional payment method that bypassed Apple's. You could still use Apple's method if you wanted to for all those benefits, but Apple want their cut. Apps like YouTube increase prices to make up for Apple's cut. Others like Netflix and Spotify not only do not allow you to pay for it via the app, but also aren't allowed to tell you how to pay for it, making a worse user experience.

Or how about the blocking of streaming gaming apps like Stadia and Xbox Cloud Gaming? Who benefits from that? Only Apple.

>In a world where Apple’s policies can be sidestepped simply by asking the user to sideload the app, many, even most users will likely agree to do so without any awareness of what they’re giving up.

This doesn't happen with any kind of frequency on Android so I'm curious as to why it would happen on iOS. Do you have ideas on what it would be like? Why would it be so different than android or windows?

Facebook tried successfully to do this in 2019 by misusing their internal corporate app certificate, and only stopped because Apple noticed and revoked their certificate. So we already have proof that in the absence of Apple’s ability to punish and ban companies for asking users to sideload to bypass tracking restrictions, they will ask and users will accept.

https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/30/18203551/apple-facebook-b...

As for Android, many Android app stores (especially ones in China) impose no restrictions or barely any at all. The only one that imposes meaningful restrictions is Google’s Play Store, and the restrictions are much less than in Apple’s App Store, so the incentive to bother circumventing them is much lower. For example, unnecessarily harvesting user location is not a blocker for access to the Play Store.

>given the opportunity app developers will only make user-hostile apps

Can you give examples of this? Android has plenty of non-user-hostile apps...

I have an Android phone and have every single one of my credit and debit cards from 7 different banks in Google Pay. Don't need to use the bank app for any of them.

EDIT: to be clear, currently on Android any app can handle NFC payments, not just Google Pay. Banks could easily force people to user their apps, but that's not happening.

Counterpoint: here in Israel we had (only) the bank apps on Android for 2+ years, and they were a combination of "okay" and "awful". My bank's app required to unlock your phone (with biometric auth), an app-specific pin code, and had a 30-second window. It then didn't work 30% of the time and required turning NFC off and on again to work. It took them over a year to change to "just unlock your phone".

Then Apple Pay launched here, contactless adoption on iOS became triple of Android's (despite Android having more than double the phones), and a few months later Google Pay launched in response with their better implementation. I'm guessing it was a combined "in response to Apple" from Google and "maybe this will increase adoption" from banks.

A possible consequence of the current legislation is that instead of a system-wide service where Apple Pay or Google Pay can work with different banks, each bank now demands to handle NFC payments within its own app. You may find that Google Pay is no longer supported by banks.

Sorry if it wasn't clear, that was actually my point - on Android even though banks have the ability to handle NFC payments within their own apps, the vast majority still support Google Pay and don't force you to use their app.

Most banks I know of only started supporting Google Pay after they deployed Apple Pay. Basically, Apple Pay showed consumers how good the UX can be which more or less forced the banks to Google Pay support so they can also have a good UX on Android. Without Apple forcing the use of Apple Pay I doubt it would ever have taken off.

NFC payments were possible through the banking apps on Android for years before Apple Pay launched in my country. Note that contactless payment had also been around here for years and pretty much all payment terminals supported it. Technically, everything was in place for it to be adopted, yet no one used it. Only after introduction of Apple Pay did it take off. Google Pay support followed the success of Apple Pay.

No one is forcing you too do that. But they are forcing apple to give anyone using apple devices the option to use the banks shitty ui app.

Maybe the ui app will stop being shitty as the usage goes up? That is the point

> No one is forcing you too do that.

The bank will by discontinuing Apple Pay support. They have every incentive to do so.

Then why isn't that happening on Android with Google Pay? Banks are able to handle NFC payments through their own apps if they want, but the vast majority support Google Pay and don't force users into their own app.

I suspect that is largely due to the success of Apple Pay. Banks used to have their own apps on Android for years and only grudgingly started to support Apple Pay since they couldn't use their own apps. They only started migrating from their own apps to Google Wallet/Pay after Apple Pay became a success and Android users started to feel left out. They would never have supported Apple Pay if they hadn't been forced to do so. In fact, even though there was no alternative they kept dragging their feet and complaining about it for years.

Why would you use apple pay if you are planning to use a banking app? Isnt the point of having a banking app so you dont have to completely depend on apple pay?

Of course you can use Apple Pay, but if you don't like it you could also use Google Pay or Samsung Pay instead. But Apple Pay could also be used on Androids if Apple chooses to offer it.

So your bank can have more funding, instead of Apple shaving it off up to 50%, and it is able to develop a neat React-based UI instead of the simple HTML ui you so strongly disdain...

How about they just make a native app ?

sure they will..

PS: It's 0.10-0.15%, don't know where your 1/2 come from

You can also use another bank.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com