Comment by calsy | Hacker News Reader

Comment by calsy | Hacker News Reader

Obviously these types of features are welcome, even though they are apply to an incredibly small group of people. I cant help but feel the 'personal security' push from Apple and its marketing is rather self serving.

Apple is under more legal pressure than ever for its apparent 'anti-competitive' practices. They have on many occasions pushed the line of user privacy and security to defend their business. Features like this benefit a small group of people, but help Apple enormously in defending itself from litigation.

Edit: Downvote? Why are companies given the benefit of the doubt as if they were human and caring when they are clearly not! Large listed tech companies like Apple will ALWAYS act in their own interest first. User privacy is the advantage Apple has over its competitors who rely on free services and advertising. It is in their OWN INTEREST to pursue this path which in turn impacts others ability to compete. Must we continue to be so grossly naive?

I buy Apple devices specifically because the value proposition is simple. I give Apple money and they give me goods and services. Their interest are aligned with mine.

If competitors that depend on tracking and advertising due, nothing of value is lost.

The issue isn't about personal preference. It's about the anti-competitive practices of large tech companies that remove competition, stifle innovation and allow monopolies to set the value of their own product rather than the market.

'Privacy and security' allows them to justify taking a cut of 30% from developers for simply allowing their apps to be installed on an Apple device, which is then passed onto you.

'Privacy and security' is why you need to update your perfectly capable phone after X amount of years because Apple stopped releasing updates for it.

'Privacy and security' is why they removed ad tracking on devices used by competitors, forcing developers into Apple's payment streams where.. you guessed it, they take a cut. They then created their own App Store advertising model in the process. No alternative payment methods are available on Apple devices because 'privacy and security'.

The 30% cut talking point is way overblowned. It came out in the Epic trial that 80% of in app revenue comes from games. Most of Apple’s “competitors” don’t even allow you to pay for services within the App Store. For instance Netflix and Spotify have been forcing you to pay outside the App store for years

Way overblown... tell that to a game developer. The privacy and security argument was used time and again by Apple in court as a reason for booting Epic's Fortnite off the App Store for not using their payment system.

Let’s not make this about the poor indy game developer either. Most of the game revenue comes from in app purchases from pay to win games and loot boxes where the “whales” are making the money. They are just as sleazy as the ad supported industry.

Epic in fact tried to convince Android users to side load. It was not only a horrible failure, it introduced a security vulnerability.

https://www.itpro.co.uk/security/31787/vulnerability-spotted...

Epic also lost its case against Apple. The judge explicitly said that Apple wasn’t a monopoly.

Apple isn't deserving of a slice of revenue from game developers because of questionable gaming practices. If anything it makes them complicit. Like a mafia syndicate, they will allow these types of gaming practices if they are given their share.

The whole point of Epic side loading apps was to avoid the gatekeeping of the primary stores and their ‘review’ process. Was it a terrible failure because Epic is incapable of creating functioning software? Or was it a failure because it's near impossible to circumvent the limited developer 'sandbox' with APIs that all run through Google services? Are apps listed on Google Play free of security vulnerabilities? Who’s to say this information wasn’t disseminated throughout the public and media by Google or Apple themselves attempting to sway opinions against the so called evils of installing your own software.

As far as Epic vs Apple, whether the judge ruled Apple a monopoly or not isn’t of great concern. What’s more important is that she ruled Apple must provide other payment options to developers. It's in the user's interest that alternative payment methods are made available as it (in theory) will decrease the cost of app purchases. Apple's not in any hurry to implement it through.

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