Japan enacts law to promote competition in smartphone app stores | Hacker News Reader

Japan enacts law to promote competition in smartphone app stores

english.kyodonews.net

474 pointspjmlp338 comments

The law will prohibit the providers of Apple's iOS and Google's Android smartphone operating systems, app stores and payment platforms from preventing the sale of apps and services that directly compete with the native platforms' own.

I'm not sure what this means -- does this just mean that Apple can't prevent a third party from selling an app that does something an Apple app does, or does it mean they have to allow third party app stores? Or is it more about opening the payment platform so an app can take direct payments instead of having to go through Apple?

I read this as Apple can't ban Spotify because they have Apple Music. The question is what happens when an app is competing with Apple but also is breaking Apple's TOS?

The answer is obvious, because you can’t fairly resolve a conflict of interest like that - alignment between publishers and distributors in the same vertical should be banned.

Realistically, no hardware manufacturer of a significant size (let's say 100k total devices) should be allowed to dictate what software can be distributed to users. It opens up all kinds of unfair business practices.

Careful: Before web apps were common, 3rd party applications on Windows would break all kinds of things.

The hardware manufacturer needs to ensure that software doesn't break the device.

Apple and Google are going well beyond any reasonable grey area, though. Demanding a cut if I buy a book through the Kindle app is absurd and has nothing to do with ensuring that Kindle doesn't break my smartphone.

> The hardware manufacturer needs to ensure that software doesn't break the device.

Preventing software from breaking a device is a solved problem. All you need is a CPU that supports memory protection, and an appropriately designed OS.

If you want to only run software that's been OK'ed by a third party, that's certainly a choice you can make for yourself or your organization.

I don't like that this choice is imposed on almost-all cellphone users by monopoly.

Windows 9x and classic Mac OS are extremely fragile compared to Windows NT, Darwin, or Linux. Doing anything non-trivial without breaking those systems required some skill.

I really don’t need Apple or Google protecting me, but thanks.

> Demanding a cut if I buy a book through the Kindle app is absurd and has nothing to do with ensuring that Kindle doesn't break my smartphone.

"Ensuring that Kindle doesn't break my smartphone" requires time and effort. That's funded by the cut they take.

> The hardware manufacturer needs to ensure that software doesn't break the device.

What about those of us who want to break our devices? (At least, according to the manufacturer's idea of what "broken" is.)

> Before web apps were common, 3rd party applications on Windows would break all kinds of things.

I use Windows since the 90's and would only agree with you in the context of buggy drivers or malware.

Even today I don't use the Windows Store (except for one time I when I installed a Bluetooth audio "bridge") and all the "apps" I install work just fine.

> The hardware manufacturer needs to ensure that software doesn't break the device.

The software manufacturer must make sure the software doesn't break the device, whatever "breaking the device" means (sounds almost like "don't brick the wifi chip").

I mean, it's also the responsibility of the user to not install shady software.

Realistically, including avionics and medical devices where the software is restricted by regulation (in theory) and where the manufacturer is legally liable for failure of their device?

More specifically, the radio in an iPhone can almost certainly be made to operate outside of licensed/compliant limits by tweaking the software. Should they be forced to allow that but still held accountable when their device is noncompliant?

> Realistically, including avionics and medical devices where the software is restricted by regulation (in theory) and where the manufacturer is legally liable for failure of their device?

Yes, absolutely. The responsible party is the operator of said equipment, and if they tinker with it, it's up to them to be compliant with FAA/FDA/HHS/etc. regulations or face proper legal reprecussions.

> More specifically, the radio in an iPhone can almost certainly be made to operate outside of licensed/compliant limits by tweaking the software.

See above. We can already do that today with WiFi chipsets that can be made to use frequencies that are illegal in a certain country. It's on the operator to ensure compliance. Alternatively, device manufacturers are free to use components that only work in a certain frequency spectrum - but that wouldn't prevent an operator from using them in another country.

We already solved those problems long ago.

>Should they be forced to allow that but still held accountable when their device is noncompliant?

no, because there's this weird concept that seems to be foreign to the modern software folk - Ownership.

Owner is held liable for that, not device manufacturer.

It is already legal to modify cars even though they are dangerous, so a working legal framework for that kind of stuff exists. I don't see why we shouldn't be able to handle the case where somebody chooses to run Doom on their pacemaker.

> It is already legal to modify cars even though they are dangerous

Not in places with regular inspection and mandated insurance. I.e. most civilised world.

>the radio in an iPhone can almost certainly be made to operate outside of licensed/compliant limits by tweaking the software. Should they be forced to allow that but still held accountable when their device is noncompliant?

I can see an argument for this. Nothing forced Apple to design their hardware this way: they could have built licensing/compliance limits into the hardware itself. But they didn't want to do that because they wanted to use the same HW for all markets, and different governments have different rules about which frequency bands are allowed. Of course, this then brings up the question: if they did make slightly different HW per-market (perhaps with 1-time fuses), what happens when someone brings their iPhone from one country to another and they've modified it to ignore any new region restrictions (Apple could still use SW to force new restrictions, though they can't allow anything new because of the HW restrictions) and it's broadcasting on an unallowed band?

My guess about roaming between different domestic and international regions: A handshake with the tower tells the phone what is the network type, then software (firmware) controls what frequencies to use. I just cannot believe in 2024 that this problem has not been solved many times over. What exactly is you qualm / concern?

Watch them start distributing their programs through cartridges (hardware) to circumvent this type of law, or something ridiculous like that.

> Should they be forced to allow that but still held accountable when their device is noncompliant?

I mean, routers have worked like this for ages. OpenWRT has an entire page about tweaking your radio settings, and what could happen to you if you do. Why would Apple be held liable for something you did to your device?

https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/network/wifi/transmit.po...

I think it is reasonable for them to decide what software is available officially, in order to check for compatibility, quality, etc. However, users should be allow to load software that has not been approved and to write their own software too; and the software provided officially should not be required (if it is documented, you can write your own; if it is FOSS, then you can modify it and provide modified versions of the software). This does not excuse unfair business practices though, but it does ensure that users can easily override it if they do not like some of their business practices. The number of devices is not relevant. Even on many Linux systems there is a package manager, although you can also write your own software instead of using that in the package manager if you wish, and that should also be working with Apple, etc, just as well.

From what I always understood, the argument for the App Store was to ensure the hardware remained stable. While it's easy to say, "it's mine, I can do what I want," when that device is a persons life line to emergency services in the even something happens to them, that is not a responsibility a company should take lightly. I like to think Apple takes that seriously and acts in accordance with that responsibly. They've said as much publicly, but of course one can choose to believe them or not.

Even if someone wants to ignore this concept, where is the line drawn? Should a hardware manufacturer, or OS vendor, be allowed to make a product that blocks malware on their systems (like Windows Defender)? Windows was seen as a poor product because of all the adware that infected it in the early 2000s. That issue has largely been resolved, thanks to efforts from Microsoft. Should they not be allowed to solve the biggest issue that plagued the public perception of their product?

I realize I'm move the goalpost slightly, from hardware to OS vendor, but ultimately, it isn't Apple's hardware that's creating these controls, it's iOS, the operating system. And in the case of Google, it's clearly an OS vendor issue, as Android is installed on a wide variety of hardware from many different OEMs.

Your Windows Defender argument seems like apples and oranges. It doesn't fully prevent adware infection anyway, but regardless, the discussion is about whether a hardware maker (or platform owner if you're going to try to extend this to OSes) should be allowed to prevent 3rd-party software selected by the user from running on their platform.

Defender doesn't do this: it's an optional security application by MS that's included with Windows. Users are free to disable it if they wish. Nothing is preventing Windows users from running whatever software on top of Windows that they like. Defender will prevent some malware from running, and many users like this for obvious reasons, and the fact that it's included for free unlike competing anti-malware software, but it's not so baked into Windows that you can't turn it off. An antitrust argument could possibly be made, along the lines of Windows including IE and putting competing software out of business, but that's a different issue than what we're discussing.

So you're right about this being really an OS vendor issue, but Microsoft doesn't force anyone to use Defender, and doesn't prevent anyone from using competing products. Google also allows using competing app stores (or even side-loading .apk files), though only a tiny fraction of users take advantage of this. Apple is really the problem here because it doesn't allow these things at all.

seems like a false dilemma to me. the platform owner should do all those responsible things that you mention. they should also offer an escape hatch for turning all those portions off, should the owner of the device so choose. I respect Apple's attitude much more than Google and Microsoft these days, but they really go too far with locking down iOS.

Movie makers shouldn't own cinemas.

Car makers shouldn't own dealerships.

Hardware makers of general computing devices (non-appliances) shouldn't make Apps.

This game has played out a few times. Lets see how this one goes.

Re: movie makers owning cinemas, Sony just acquired Alamo Drafthouse yesterday (until 2020, this wasn’t allowed):

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/sony-pic...

Yes, these are all good examples of things that actually shouldn't be done, under a certain interpretation of law.

They are perfectly reasonable under a certain interpretation of monopoly. It's just that the US definition and that in Europe (and elsewhere) differ quite profoundly.

United States anti-trust revolves around the idea of harms. You have to show that Mr Moneybag's empire causes material harm to customers - such as paying more than they could in a more efficient market.

The European (and it seems Japanese) take is directed at power. Even if it benefits consumers it's wrong to leverage dominance in one area to obtain power in another.

Car makers shouldn't own dealerships.

Not an example I'd use to back up the pro-consumer argument you're making.

Being against vertical integration is not an explicitly pro-consumer argument. It's an argument in favor of regulating market power. Consumers may well pay a bit more in some cases, but they will be rewarded with healthier, more resilient markets.

Yeah, the car dealerships are one of the more toxic interests in politics due to their legally-protected niche, and are in general a horrible leach on the economy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_zWFGOSD28

All of those are common in Japan.

Where is the line? Because what you describe would block any plugin system in any software: AutoCad maker should not make autocad features because there could be third party extensions instead, and they can not make extensions themselves…? Or microsoft can not add nee features to VSCode as it competes with extensions, and they can not make their own extensions because they already on VSCode as a platform?

People shouldn't be dishonest, yet we can't just outlaw lies.

But we can outlaw lying in advertisements and product information.

It basically comes down to the scale and context. Things don't need to be completely morally black and white for us to see that something is generally bad.

The question wasn't "should" but "can". Don't write inflammatory posts that don't answer the question.

The conclusion I think is they’d have to establish an independent arbitration panel and put them in charge. But they’ll lose control over their user experience then, so it’s full circle.

Thats the kind of regulation that inevitably fails for one reason or another, but usually capture. Ordering the break up the OS and App Store is a self-executing and relatively permanent solution that can’t be corrupted nearly as easily.

Apple's TOS does not have the same standing as a law, so whenever Apple's TOS is incompatible with Japan's law it probably will not be able to be enforced in Japan

Considering this is a law, Apple's TOS becomes about not worth the toilet paper you could print it on.

Contracts can't contradict existing law. Even in the US, I think.

I hate Apple's app store policies as much as the next guy, but does this mean I can make malware that plays music and Apple has to allow it in the app store?

No because Malware breaks the law.

Is filtering for malware forbidden by any law?

And btw, those apps that the app store is full of that trick you into a $80/month subscription aren't malware?

Yes, the law in question, which forbids Apple banning apps that share functionality with Apple's apps.

So Apple's apps are malware? :p

Presumably Apple could still legally restrict malware because they are not distributing their own versions of malware, yes?

But then they can restrict anything, on the basis that the software they're restricting does more than their software.

I was being a little tongue-in-cheek, but I find your premise very fun when thinking about how quickly it can be taken to extremes with criminal or civil damages.

Thankfully, our legal systems are much better equipped to deal with ambiguity like this than I think you are proposing.

I think Apple might have to enforce the ToS on their own apps, if they want to levy them on competition, with such a law.

But that's me thinking common law thoughts, not sure whst Japan's legal system is like.

(There are alot lf things like this, such as when you are a distributor selling to more than your own stores.)

Like every country that isn't Anglophone, Japan does not have a common law system, it's based on Germany's civil law system IIRC.

US is primarily English speaking and is not common law based. I assume the same is true for many Carribbean and Pacific island nations.

What universe do you live in? The US is absolutely a common law country.

Not Louisiana!

The issue that Spotify and others take with Apple is their 30% cut. So Spotify adds a payment processor that doesn't involve Apple, then what?

Then Apple will be forced to compete on merits

No, Apple will still have the advantage of not being restricted like 3rd party apps when it comes to running background activities, access to hardware features they haven't published APIs for, and integration opportunities via private Apple only APIs amongst their various apps and platforms that 3rd party apps can't replicate since Apple literally doesn't make those knobs available to them.

Why can't my non-Apple laptop start a tethering session automatically with an iPhone when I open its lid? What good reason is there that a 3rd party tool can't generate an auto-reply to a notification from a chat app with my consent? Lots of user experience niceties that Apple keeps only for their 1st party apps to the detriment of us all.

Google does similar things on Android, but at least you can get most of these features through 3rd party stores like F-Droid.

Yeah, but the only reason devs are not using those "private" APIs is because Apple owns the only distribution possibility. For now, the 3rd party stores are a joke because Apple still has too much control (and the fees are a joke) but I hope the EU runs its course and finally forces them to allow installation of any potential software without any limitations.

It is extremely dumb and uncompetitive that iPhones cannot install any apps under the guise of security or whatever. Apple has rested on its laurel and made some stupid choices that seriously limit the potential of their hardware. It's funny how they announced many features that people have wanted for years at this WWDC; they are starting to feel the pressure, I guess.

I think that is what you would like to happen but this would have to play out in court because Apple makes so much money from that 30% they would fight it tooth and nail.

The 30% fee is not (only) for payments. It's a royalty for the core platform.

Couldn't they argue that these royalties don't apply if payments aren't routed through the core platform? Such as saying "oh, well, the user paid through the web version of Spotify, not the iOS one"?

Why doesn't the same logic apply to MacOS? Perhaps because that "royalty" has already been paid by users who bought the device?

No, because people wont accept it in the "old system".

Apple certainly looks at it that way, but is not legally entitled to collect a royalty simply for making apps that run on its operating system. Instead, they have created a technical mechanism to do so.

The EU and Japan have decided that's unfair.

In all likelihood, some of the pro-competitive laws will render illegal those terms of the TOS which are anti-competitive. Any rule in a TOS that is illegal is effectively tossed.

It will have to go to court

Also wondering, since to be truly competitive (on iOS) developers would need access to APIs they can't currently use.

Like what?

JIT code execution, NFC access, ability to use microphone and webcam while multi-tasking, to name the ones I've encountered.

As a user, I don't want any apps to have direct access to sensing hardware without going through Apple's APIs that control prompt for access and respect user settings.

Of course, but that's not the issue that's being described here. The issue is 1st party APIs that only Apple or Google have access to, that 3rd party apps can't use, regardless of whether the use would like to grant them permission.

So apple are required to offer a stable API for everything their device can possibly do, from the get go?

That's fine. I sure hope nobody is asking for apps to be able to ignore the user's intent. Currently, there is no way for a user to grant applications these permissions, only Apple can bless apps with them.

But the apps by Apple and Google can do that. Why do you want their Apps to be able todo that and not others?

As a user no apps outside of Apple's will be on your iphone if you don't explicitely install them. Make sure to install no such app and you'll be fine for the forseeable future.

If you think this is unamanageable and there needs to be more provision to protect your consumer rights, you should talk to the consumer rights regulators to ban the behaviors you need protection from, Apple isn't a proxy for that.

Apple has been serving as a fairly effective proxy based solely on the fact that they have developed the software, the developer tools, the hardware and the APIs and the distribution platform that developers use. The same thing that makes the iPhone lucrative for third party developers is also he same thing that makes it lucrative to bad actors, and part of the iPhone’s appeal is precisely because it is more locked down than Android. I can try out an app, find out the developer is an asshole that wants access to all my contacts based solely off the fact that I’m getting prompted by a system UI and delete the app and know that it is gone.

So yes, there is totally a place for private enforcement of a comprehensive developer agreement (read: contract) backed by automated review tools and human review. It’s not perfect, but it is pretty good.

I think this is unmanageable, but I am happy with the status quo. If I want a device with an alternative marketplace, I can go go android. Instead I now have people who want to use the device that I bought under the terms and agreement that was available changing how I use the device because they think it impinges on their rights.

A technical solution that prevents the issue in the first place is better than a legal protection that slaps a company on the wrist if they are caught.

NFC is accessible through the API

Pretty sure normal apps can use the mic when multitasking

It's specifically the camera feed that cannot be used while doing split view or other multitasking modes on the iPad, unless the app has Apple's special blessing. This very clearly puts any new or small video chatting apps at a disadvantage compared to incumbents.

Yep. The Cornell University bird identification app listens for birds just fine while the user is doing something else.

The ability to sync data in the background with the screen off is one. For example, Google Photos and Spotify require the screen on and app open to sync, while the Apple apps sync anytime they need to.

Having the same APIs that Photos uses being accessible from any app on any platform would be as big of a leap in photography as the cellphone was.

Allowing people to choose an Apple News backend would save the news industry.

Apple’s P2P payments are a huge flop. Let any vendor do it.

Don’t even get me started on the App Store.

Come to think of it, almost every Apple app I use nowadays either sucks or is absolutely terrible. Notes might be the only thing I use that I would still choose to use despite alternatives, everything else is compulsory (or someone else’s compulsory thing). Like fuck Gmail for not blocking Promotions. So it’s all a win for consumers and producers alike.

It's rather dated, but https://github.com/nst/iOS-Runtime-Headers

Anything you’d be able to access on a general computing device. For example the Windows API.

I wonder if this compares to or will ever affect well known non-phone japanese platforms such as nintendo or sony

I would love to see Nintendo throwing a fit if they had to allow homebrew to run on their consoles.

And I think it would be good! Why don't they get a cut of every game sale and get to block other companies for producing software for their hardware.

An app store would be one of the cases where third parties might want to do what Apple does. Once that's done there's no case for payments to go through Apple.

I'm just waiting for someone to create a simple app (like notes perhaps?) that has the name "Japan sucks" or "overthrow Japan".

The problem lawmakers have (all lawmakers, not just in Japan), is that they don't understand second order effects. [0]

[0] - https://fs.blog/second-order-thinking/

Why shouldn't it be named Japan rocks since this is an extremely good law?

When looking at unintended consequences, you always go with the worst case when planning, not the best case. That's why.

This is sideloading mandate following EU regs. IANAL, details may vary, the spirit is the same.

That's not what it says at all though.

Translator skill/bureaucracy issue. Japanese in Japanese out(btw vice versa). Texts written by a monolingual speaker in Japanese don't translate well, especially if done by the book. There's original Japanese source not linked from the article[0], and longer NHK News source taken from TV news script[1] is available too if you'd like to verify through machine translators.

0: https://nordot.app/1173382143705366598

1: https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/html/20240612/k10014478361000.ht...

i suppose it means that apple+google can no longer ban third party stores too

> from preventing the sale of apps and services

I think the important keyword here is “services” which can mean a lot of things. App stores can be considered services. An alternative payment platform is fair game too.

Also, does this mean that you should be allowed to install different browser engines that compete with Safari?

Just waiting for Adobe Store, Amazon Store, Microsoft Store, Epic Games Store, etc. to be installed on every phones soon.

Current status isn't normal, but no one would complain about it if transaction fees weren't abusive.

> Just waiting for Adobe Store, Amazon Store, Microsoft Store, Epic Games Store, etc. to be installed on every phones soon.

Why would it happen with iOS when it has not happened in the 15 years or so since Android exists?

There's basically just one relevant alternative app store which is F-Droid, and it's just all around much better than Google's Play Store, although of course it doesn't have any proprietary, closed-source apps.

Android does have other appstores though. Samsung has one for their phones, and Amazon has had an openly available one for well over a decade (wikipedia says 2011, which tracks with when I remember first using it). Epic wants one, but pursued a court case because they argued Google made it an uncompetitive environment to work within.

> Current status isn't normal, but no one would complain about it if transaction fees weren't abusive.

This is an oft-repeated misconception.

Even if transaction fees were 0%, we'd be way better off with alternative stores.

You're just so used to how shitty things are that you can't conceive of a better alternative.

Consider that there are plenty of completely free games on Steam that are popular and help those creators find thriving communities. How? They have good discovery.

App Store and Google Play sucks in every way. Discovery is awful. Their approach is awful. Why even show download counts and top lists? Stupid, stupid stupid. But you have no choice as a consumer or developer. So the top developers will not complain. What's the point?

And anyway, you're complaining about a world where alternatives are viable. Why are alternatives being viable a bad thing. If EGS is paying up front for games and giving them away for free as cross-promo for Fortnite, better that than ad supported garbage.

What exactly is the bad thing here, for consumers? The negative aesthetic experience of having more icons? Everyone has to oppose this crushed-in-head line of thinking. One meaingless detail that impacts an extremely low brow part of the aesthetic experience - the fucking home screen icons - should not preclude the gain in meaning from 10k-100k more developers who could flourish in the mobile ecosystem if it were to have working discovery. It has the same energy as requiring Helldivers users to create PSN accounts - offensive only in a strictly aesthetic sense even though successful competition and cross promo benefits everyone. The users' fixation on meaningless aesthetics is wrong.

I mean Apple could make discovery pluggable too, all of it could be pluggable and have fewer "icons," this isn't even a real obstacle. There are many, many ideas in this space, and no permissions to do any of it.

As it is, the App Store and Google Play are glorified install wizards. Open, install TikTok, Google Maps, whatever. Never visit again. That is 98% of people. That's horrible and its Apple's fault. TikTok already does not pay any fees. This is just to show that you are not right in general, even if you are right about the one company you've heard of that went and took these people to court in this country for an outcome that you should be in favor of.

Free app stores like F-Droid are also great for stopping you from downloading crap software. Whenever I need "normal software" (music player, PDF reader, RSS feed, what have you) I search for it there and don't suffer through ads or microtransactions. It's like using Linux, free software is just what I default to now.

Using stock iOS and Android today, it feels like both sides have lost the script. The entire pipeline of "consumption" dominates both platforms, and demands you pay money or accept a competitor's inferior product. Google didn't even let F-Droid auto-update apps until recently, it's a racket on either side. We need to bring the hammer down and enable people to stop supporting shit businesses. The current loop of consumption is going to kill everything we love about computing with a long and painful extortion process.

Real question: How does F-Droid police malware?

By disallowing all proprietary software, building each application themselves, and then signing it with their key before the end-user receives it.

I was not aware. This is interesting to know. Let's go deeper about "malware". I'm sorry that I was not more specific. What about some dumb app that shows holiday calendars or "the weather", but actually uses your mobile to secretly mine Bitcoin? Does their process also stop that type of malware?

My fear is that if I want to download Skype or Teams, I’ll need to first download the Microsoft Store app, and then sign in, and then download the app I want. And the store will be slow and shitty and packed with ads. Likewise for Meta, Adobe, every big game publisher, etc. And my subscriptions will end up spread across multiple different stores rather than all in one place.

That feels like the natural direction App Store competition would take us. But, on the other hand, it doesn’t seem to have happened on Android, so maybe I’m being overly pessimistic.

>My fear is that if I want to download Skype or Teams, I’ll need to first download the Microsoft Store app, and then sign in, and then download the app I want. And the store will be slow and shitty and packed with ads

I'm not sure I see the problem here. If some apps are only available through shitty ad-packed vendor-controlled stores, then hopefully that'll push people to simply avoid them. I mean, if I want to video-chat with someone and to use Skype/Teams I have to download the Microsoft store app and suffer with all that, or I just could use Facebook Messenger on the regular Google Play store (assuming they don't force their own store like MS) and it's easy, I'm going to tell my friend, "let's use FB Messenger instead; these MS apps are a pain in the ass." And if someone insists on using some shitty MS app that I can only get through the shitty ad-laden MS Store, I might re-evaluate how much I really want to chat with them. Smarter app vendors are going to try to avoid putting their users through that experience.

(Also, this is just an example; for all I know, Meta/FB in this possible future would be the stupid one pushing an ad-laden store while MS might be the smarter one making it easier for users to install their apps.)

Plus, I'd add that this is only an issue for apps with a high network effect.

For everything else I'd expect publisher's to just put their app in my favorite place, or risk me choosing something else.

For example im not going to install a new store just to get a note-taking app, unless that app was in some definitive way superior to all the others. (Which seems unlikely for a note taking app.)

Yes, exactly: new stores means much higher friction for consumers, so they're much more likely to choose an easier-to-install alternative unless there's something about that app that either requires them to use it (e.g. work) or its reputation is so much better.

So if it doesn’t affect apps with low stickiness, and the network effect will ensure that large publishers benefit from it, what’s the benefit for me as a user?

The issue is many stores use dark patterns and you may not catch on until too late. - Subscriptions impossible to cancel - Silent auto-renewal - Silent price changes - Hidden Fees - Sales of purchase history - Apps released under known brand that are off brand knock offs. - Apps bundled with added cruft (think those download.com installers that installed toolbars and whatnot). - Pirate versions of Teams through off brand store causing licensing audits

A lot of dumber app vendors will just drain the suckers dry and rebrand and if Microsoft pulled their apps from the App Store some unfortunate souls would click the first Google hit and get sucked into the scam.

If my workplace says I’m using teams, then I’m using teams. There’s no way to change that.

> And if someone insists on using some shitty MS app that I can only get through the shitty ad-laden MS Store, I might re-evaluate how much I really want to chat with them.

It’s comments like this that show a huge lack of understanding of how the majority of people feel. I don’t give a shit if my parents like WhatsApp, but I still want to talk to them. And it’s hard enough to get them to use technology, never mind navigating whatever is to come here.

Are you honestly telling me that you think Meta are going to not use this opportunity to skirt around the limits placed on their apps by the apple App Store? If you believe meta, or byte dance are going to have your best interests at heart, I have a bridge to sell you

But it has sort of happened on Windows with gaming. I’ve got games on Steam, GOG, MS Store, and Epic. It’s annoying and I very much preferred the state of things a decade ago when it was just Steam.

Android has curated a market of users who don’t buy apps. I don’t know that we can extrapolate their alt-store outcome to iOS where the buyers are.

> I very much preferred the state of things a decade ago when it was just Steam.

Do you think you'd have all those sales every 2 months if Steam were still the only pc games store? :)

Steam was doing sales before the other stores popped up and I was acquiring games faster than I could play them even then. Increasing sales frequency means little to me, and is even a little annoying since I now feel like I should be constantly window shopping all the stores nearly year round to make sure I get the best sale price on something I'm after.

Epic has given a lot of free titles away, which is a big difference, but only because they're trying to buy favor and want to be the winner who takes all.

I very much preferred the state of things a decade ago when it was just Steam

Ok, but Steam is a third party store. The alternative isn't "just Steam", it's "just Microsoft". I'll gladly accept the occasional annoyance of multiple stores to avoid being locked into a monopoly.

Steam predates MS selling games within their first-party OS-bundled apps, so it's not the exact same situation to begin with.

> and the store will be slow and shitty and packed with ads.v

But both Apple and Googles stores are slow and packed with ads. Pretty much every search you do for an app even with the exact name gives you some ad supported shovelware as the first one or two results (ads).

So how is this meaningfully any worse? (outside of one more login you might need to setup).

The PC gaming industry is a perfect example of this. In the last 5-6 years I have had to install and use the following game stores:

* Epic's Launcher

* EA's Origin

* Ubisoft Connect

* Steam

* GOG

* Xbox Store

* Battle.net

I had a brief Gatcha game phase (before I realized how pay-to-advance it was) and that game had its own damn game-specific "launcher" as well.

Each one of these required creating an account, installs its own "overlay", background windows services, anti-cheat system (more background services!), has its own "social" system, and defaults to running at startup and minimizing (not quitting) when you click the window-close button unless you dig through the options.

Of course, each one of these games also has at least one type of currency unique to the game, which you can only convert in one direction, nor is there any way to move currency in the "store". Often that currency, and anything you bought with it, is locked to the particular platform on which it was purchased.

It's a complete mess, and nearly every single one of them is worse than Steam in terms of UX design and features.

Do we see any competition, resulting in lower prices, better terms of use for customers, or better quality software? Nope. Games are as expensive as ever, have even worse day-of-release bugs, more cheaters, and more microtransactions. Games are exclusive to one particular store either indefinitely or during the period after its release.

But according to Epic, why...if Epic can make its own app store for iOS, consumers will benefit! Bullshit. All that will happen is we'll have to install multiple app store apps on our phones, having each one collect data constantly about us...

> Of course, each one of these games also has at least one type of currency unique to the game, which you can only convert in one direction, nor is there any way to move currency in the "store". Often that currency, and anything you bought with it, is locked to the particular platform on which it was purchased.

On steam and GoG you pay with government issued currency. If the others have a currency system just hard pass on them. If you could cure yourself of Gacha, you can do it.

It’s actually worse than on PC imo. Apple have a set of standards (google do too but slightly less so) that means that every app has to support Apple Pay and login with apple. This means I’m not giving my details to random third party with popular game, and I can try it and even spend money on it. With this new order, you can bet that I now have three different subscription management platforms with different rules, for example

> Do we see any competition, resulting in lower prices, better terms of use for customers, or better quality software? Nope. Games are as expensive as ever, have even worse day-of-release bugs, more cheaters, and more microtransactions. Games are exclusive to one particular store either indefinitely or during the period after its release.

The gaming industry has enormous amounts of monetization and gameplay innovation, with the huge and vibrant middle that is disappearing from movies, books and music, so I have no idea what you’re talking about. It has never been a better time to find games.

> But according to Epic, why...if Epic can make its own app store for iOS, consumers will benefit! Bullshit. All that will happen is we'll have to install multiple app store apps on our phones, having each one collect data constantly about us...

Most of Epics arguments are that the developer will benefit by them taking a smaller cut then Apple/Google/Steam/etc so if they sell the game for the same price the developer gets to keep a couple percentage points more money.

I don't remember any argument they have made that has put the customer as the beneficiary though there probably are some.

You assume that just because Apple maliciously complied with the EU law by implementing alternative app stores, it means this is the solution.

The solution is to allow sideloading by the user (which incidentally Google allows you to do).

I think more likely: The app store would be embedded in the first app that you download. And could be seamlessly integrated like MS Teams or FB.

Do you expect it from being different from Windows with the average person having at least a dozen game launchers, update services and downloaders running in the background?

"Average" is doing a lot of work here.

Gaming is surely popular on phones, but I suggest that AAA games on on a tiny minority of phones overall. (My mom has literally no games on her phone etc.)

For Windows the proportion of games-machines to others is tiny. The number of people with "a dozen game lauchers" would be a microscopic percentage.

Yes, there are home PCs that are dedicated to gaming. Yes they will likely have lots of shortcuts, launchers, auto updates etc. And in some demographics (think male, under 25 etc) there will be proportionally more games installed.

But "average" ? I'm not sure.

> App Store and Google Play sucks in every way. Discovery is awful. Their approach is awful.

~30% of Apple's total value could be attributed to the App Store alone. That's a ~$1T company.

If you think the product is awful - I don't know what to tell you.

Next, are you going to tell me the iPhone is awful and Nvidia's GPUs, too?

Look, just because something isn't perfect doesn't mean it's awful.

The App Store could be better. It doesn't suck.

99% of people opening the App Store are not opening it to solve a problem with software. They’re opening it because it is the only way to install Disney+, ChatGPT or whatever thing they’ve heard of through a $10m-$1b of ad budget and ubiquity in the discourse. Compare to Steam where most people opening it are doing so to launch games and learn more about other new games. The App Store sucks.

Lots of things suck and make money, tons of money. OPEC absolutely sucks and makes tons of money, are you going to tell me “OPEC could be better. It doesn’t suck.” Monopolies and cartels don’t just suck, they are horrible, they are the biggest antagonists in our lives, because everyone’s income is someone else’s expense, and we don’t all work for Apple or OPEC.

Your first paragraph raises some very good points. I am concerned about this last point:

    > The App Store sucks.

Can you give some specifics? Do any other app store do it better?

So much about it sucks. I am actually amazed when an app I want is actually on the app store.

It needs an iCloud log in, so you can't install free software on a kiosk without a throw away account. Which is hard to set up.

Why do you first need to 'get' an app and then install it?

How many affirmations do you need?

The value is in the lock in, though. This absolutely sucks for consumers and the profit is just an indication of market inefficiency. We need to be able to force competition to bring the valuation of the app store and the value the hardware provides users in line with the potential of the technology.

If apple truly is bringing the market what it wants at a price folks find reasonable surely this competition wouldn't impact anything!

I would. The App Store censorship is abhorrent even if they charged nothing.

I should be able to install hacking tools, background apps that might kill my battery, sandbox breaking apps that allow adversarial interoperability, porn apps, protest apps that track cops, or apps that do legal things that nonetheless assist me in breaking the law.

Apple allows none of this.

app stores have been around for decades now, time to regulate them like they do banks or retail stores

Is this exclusively for smartphones (and I guess tablets too), or does this also take effect with other walled devices, like consoles (PlayStation, Nintendo Switch, Xbox, etc.), media boxes (Fire TV, Apple TV, etc.), ebook-readers and what else there is.

HA HA HA! As if the Japanese government would ever do anything to displease Nintendo or Sony.

It is as likely as the US doing anything to displease Google, Apple, etc.

The US government is currently suing all those large conglomerate companies for one thing or another. There is a conscious effort to shape those companies in better directions within large swaths of the Federal government.

The level of cozying between Japan and its large conglomerates is nothing compared to the relationship the US government has with its large companies.

As a Japanese, I hope this will challenge the dominance of those IT giants. They should be subject to anti-trust regulations in the first place, but I think it won't happen soon, so I'm glad they are taking action.

That said, I'm not particularly sure Japanese politicians can handle those complicated matters efficiently. I mean, our "cyber-security minister" was accused of never using a PC and not knowing what a USB memory stick is [0]. I can't help but think that this will end in disaster and IT giants will use these examples as evidence of how bad it is to make strict regulations against them...

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/nov/15/japan-cyber-se...

> They should be subject to anti-trust regulations in the first place

> I mean, our "cyber-security minister" was accused of never using a PC and not knowing what a USB memory stick is

From what I've read about Japan it was probably the usual small set of local megacorps that Japanese politicians protect heavily that seeded the regulations, not out of a genuine interest in the protecting or improving regular customers lives or opening up competiton to smaller players.

But regardless hopefully it is more than just the pipe dreams of the existing entrants and there really is upstart competition that is capable of operating in a meaningful way.

> Another joked that perhaps Sakurada was simply engaged in his own kind of cybersecurity.

> "If a hacker targets this Minister Sakurada, they wouldn’t be able to steal any information. Indeed it might be the strongest kind of security!"

I love this comment from your article.

> That said, I'm not particularly sure Japanese politicians can handle those complicated matters efficiently.

It's not as if this law was actually written by the elected politicians, and furthermore, it's based on an EU law. Japan is only one of the many countries that are now using EU laws as a model for their own legislation for issues like privacy and antitrust law.

Meanwhile Singapore’s prime minister knows programming and writes Python in his spare time.

Does that mean anything though? I don't want Slash to draft anti-trust legislation in the record label industry because he can play the guitar. Crafting correct market regulations is largely going to depend on whether people understand the economic dynamics and are free from corporate influence, not whether they do some coding.

Being a guitar player by itself does not qualify you to draft anti-trust legislation for the music industry.

However, someone who's deaf and doesn't know anything at all about music or the music industry would probably also be a poor choice. At least Slash has decades of experience working with major players in the industry and could probably advise on it to some lawyers who know about anti-trust regulation and at least understand the basics about the industry.

I still disagree. It's somehow weird to have a deaf person writing music industry regulations - but it's actually not at all important for them to hear music to regulate it.

Otherwise, do we regulate differently based on _sound_!? I hope not! We don't regulate based on music theory either! Do we need him to know chord progressions to be able to write laws? I hope not!

With tech it's a little different, we do regulate based on aspects that touch on fundamental theory, like manufacturing processes, cryptography, etc.

>We don't regulate based on music theory either! Do we need him to know chord progressions to be able to write laws? I hope not!

Yes, we absolutely do, and we already do this. That's why deaf people can't write these laws: they don't even know what music or chords are: they have no way of sensing them.

There absolutely have been court cases about plagiarism where the arguments were about whether certain chord progressions can be copyrighted or not.

It may not mean guaranteed signal that they can create good regulation, but the opposite is a pretty major red flag. If you don't understand technology, I have a very hard time trusting you to enact laws on the subject.

And has his gov't done anything to protect it's citizens from monopolistic foreign tech firms? No. So really, this comment means little in regards to the wider discussion.

That’s underselling Lee’s talents, like saying Carmack learned shell scripting in his spare time. Lee was Senior Wrangler at Cambridge, i.e. he came top of the class in one of the most competitive mathematics programs in the world.

He’s in the company of people like Ben Green and Kevin Buzzard: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senior_Wrangler#Senior_Wrangle...

While I agree I feel it's kinda poetic that Japan is notoriously ok with Nintendo and Sony putting people in prison and has done absolutely nothing about it.

Do you think the Agriculture minister drove tractors and tried out various fertilizers?

In a way, having a fresh mindset not bogged down by trends and status quo is actually a nice thing.

I think Japan should build software which competes with these “giants” rather than try beat them through regulation.

Building good software is still in reach. You don’t need to have an Apple or Google behind you to be competitive. Especially in Japan where just making a native Japanese <whatever> will lead to dominance. Look at Line. It’s atrocious rubbish. Everyone in Japan uses it.

Japan makes the worst software out of any developed nation I’ve ever seen. Even Nintendo stuff is mostly terrible. Sony is a joke.

Or we can do both? Encourage competition from smaller businesses while curbing the power and influence of these behemoth monopolies that control basically all of modern human civilization.

Apple, Google, Microsoft and all the rest of them should've been nuked into a trillion tiny little pieces years ago.

Knowing Japan. This regulation isn’t about making your experience as consumer better.

Then, what is it about?

Pleasing or protecting some mega corp.

The U.S. is about to put the hammer down on TikTok, eliminating a large foreign competitor to their social media empires. Protectionism is how countries develop local brands in the first place. Protectionism works for the U.S., it will also work in Japan (and has worked in the past).

There are some sweet spots where local tech companies can compete in markets even though their products are worse.

But there's nothing close to Google Search or iPhone.

This will not address the problem.

What will happen is here, a bunch of shady companies will sell gambling spyware and porn apps on a third party app store. Everyone who wants to make money will sell on the legitimate app store. DMM, for example, will have an app store, and it will be filth.

Japan has a massive elderly population who will just get sucked in installing shady crap on their devices.

I sympathize with the idea, but in practice, it won't work out the way people think it will.

Maybe this would be a good plan if it was more complete. For example, who moderates any new app stores, who vets the software, what government incentives are in place for better, more secure competitive software to emerge domestically?

This just seems like monkey see monkey do with Europe.

>DMM, for example, will have an app store, and it will be filth.

DMM already has an app store at least on Android, and as far as I'm concerned it's fine assuming you're there to buy the stuff DMM sells.

What happened to the incredibly futuristic basis in the smartphone space that Japan had with NTT docomo back in the mid-late 90's?

Was it motivated purely or mainly by a need for a workable kanji/kana interface for mobile texting, with no sense of the larger implications of such a capable system as a basis for a very comfortable head start 10 years later into the smartphone adoption cycle?

It feels like such a perfect textbook example of a culture that embraces "how" much more than it embraces "why," a culture that is not endemic to Japan but actually quite common at various scales globally, because most of the time its the right mindset. But when it isn't, it becomes an enormous handicap.

Docomo commissioned phone manufacturers to ship phones at half-year cycle. The idea was to sell it like women's clothing. But manufacturers didn't commoditize parts and optimize businesses for that cycle; instead they sped up and staggered development to match that cycle, in the process burning lots of cash and people's careers.

By the time iPhone came out, the tech debts and bureaucratic overheads had grown so much that nothing could be done to save the industry and platform. Everything from devices to institutional knowledge and existing moats all went down the drain until enough was shed off that reasonably usable Android phones could be manufactured, but not much points were left in making those.

> Was it motivated purely or mainly by ...

I'm sure Docomo execs had sane long-term plans, but ideological and hierarchical thinking isn't Japanese forte so executions were counterproductive and/or micromanagement mess. Kanji/kana interface has nothing to do with it, all Nokia phones handled Japanese language perfectly fine, certainly more than adequately for ... a dozen model or so sold over a decade.

I'm not familiar with that era, but I think cell phones back then were more focused on hardware and brute-force style development than sophisticated software. It's unbelievable how tough it was to survive the NTT Docomo's R&D center, YRP. Depression and suicides were sadly common, which caused a lot of Japanese to avoid the IT industry for years...

>What happened to the incredibly futuristic basis in the smartphone space that Japan had with NTT docomo back in the mid-late 90's?

Nothing, really. Remember that most advancements in computing still happened outside of Japan (Windows 95, Pentium, et al.), or in the case of NAND flash happened in Japan but was shitcanned only to be picked up by the US.

Japan never was great at tech beyond a certain point, but that only became really obvious in the 2000s when even their Galapagos phones were finally outdone.

Japan had a strong flip phone ecosystem back when iPhone happened. Contactless payment, lootbox microtransactions, music downloads, GIF emojis, TV broadcast, multicore CPUs, Linux-based OS, biometrics, >326ppi displays before iPhone 4, 3x mechanical zoom, literally everything. Sadly the industry was focusing razor sharp on political infighting and was just building up crufts, and so the UI/UX was beyond atrocious - it was not simply outdated, the entire ecosystem was user hostile. That and downright illegal quota enforcement from Apple wiped it out.

Two major mistakes made by Japanese phone manufacturers was that they didn't ship the phones globally from being scared to death with language barriers, and that no one cared about horrible organizational mess.

They had a decade and half to make MOAP(L) work out as a usable touchscreen OS that runs on Renesas SH processor with Toshiba DRAM and paired with a Fujitsu modem, they didn't take that route and instead spent that engineering man-hours on processing PDF file returned from payment gateway on a phone, and let it all bleed out.

IIUC, Korea was in an almost exact same situation. They managed to come out of it. Japan could not.

That's something wondering me as well. Japan had so much cool things way back in the 2000's (even late 90's I think?). Internet on mobile phones was thing (I think it was called iMode or so). Those flip phones were awesome and way more convenient then those bricks back then over here (I still have my international version of an NEC flip phone I bought in mid-ish 2000's somewhere around. It even had iMode access, albeit pretty useless here).

I still wonder what could have happened, if Japanese companies pushed their phones (and technology) more worldwide. Well, we will never know.

Don’t forget that the US had Internet on mobile phones in the 90s/2000s too. It was called WAP.

However it was expensive as shit.

I’m glad that both WAP and i-mode failed and we got the real Internet though.

WAP networks were basically same technology, but were way sparse and underutilized in content and market cap compared to i-mode/EZWeb/Yahoo! Keitai.

I think that content density disparity still exists today. The Western Internet is kind of content lean.

This is a pretty good article that talks about other reasons for everything going awry in Japan regarding software:

https://www.disruptingjapan.com/the-forgotten-mistake-that-k...

It's astonishing this comment is as heavily downvoted as it is because it hits Japan's problem at its core.

Apple and Google are dominant because Japan simply cannot do software (and tech in general). They have no domestic players, so this conclusion is natural.

Some amount of regulation might be necessary, but fundamentally Japan cannot break the US-held monopoly so long as they fail to bring their own players to market.

> Japan simply cannot do software

Wouldn't the counterpoint here be the games industry? Sony PlayStation and Nintendo seem to make globally competitive software.

That's a real flaw in this argument. Japanese software is at least okay and oftentimes good in gaming UI/UX, and at the same time hopeless anywhere else.

One thing I happen to know is Japanese dev type people loves to victim blame for usability and unintended path issues. It seems omission of subjects/actors in spoken Japanese make it hard for them to comprehend issues. Japanese stoicism certainly isn't helping too.

Maybe entertainment for its own sake is technical exception, as joy, ease, addictiveness, are clear goals rather than potential excess. Or maybe there are somthing else to it. But it's certainly an interesting inconsistency.

Look, you may have had a point when the United States wasn't investigating both companies. But how can you reasonably expect someone to break into a market that is reinforced by anticompetitive practice?

You're watching the fox leave the henhouse and asking why the chickens won't hatch.

I'm not on HN to make friends :)

I do spend a lot of time in Japan though. A lot more then most down voters that's for sure.

For most people visiting Japan, their first interaction will be buying a a train ticket for the NEX Airport express or the Shinkansen, it's a horrendous and confusing experience. Their interactions with Japanese software will only get worse from there however.

I think most of the confusing experience comes from the way that Japanese limited express paper tickets used to work. If you rode a limited express (like Shinkansen or Narita Express), you'd have to buy two tickets: the basic fare ticket and the express surcharge ticket. The basic fare ticket would also cover your non-express connections, so this was quite convenient in Japan's complex transit system.

Japan still has that system in place, but the basic fare is usually replaced by your IC transit card or integrated into an eTicket (which contains both basic fare + express surcharge and is tied into your IC card).

So if you buy a ticket to NEX on the Ekinet app you'll be offered a ticketless option, but you probably wouldn't know that means you still need to tap your Suica in order to pay the basic fare.

Shinkansen trains are generally using eTickets, which would be even more confusing for visitors, but many visitors are using JR Pass which is completely outside the fare systems (but does need reserved seats).

Most of this complexity is inherent complexity, not accidental complexity that comes from bad software. The main issues I've seen with the software in question are: Lack of English version (Ekinet), Complex registration flow (SmartEX) and flaky authentication (Ekinet). This is not a great UX, but the apps don't feel worse than train operator apps in other countries. These are not tech companies.

Hmm, I don't get anything in this thread.

What's so bad about Nintendo's or the Sony PlayStation's software? From my perspective they're like... almost perfect, except for the fact that there are updates sometimes, but they're fast.

What's so bad about JR's ticket vending machines? What could be improved?

>As a Japanese, I hope this will challenge the dominance of those IT giants.

Also Japanese(-American), this will not fundamentally change the situation of Japanese irrelevance. You cannot and will not win if you have no players to begin with, and Japan is by far the absolute worst country when it comes to tech now.

Once upon a time NEC was one of the biggest microprocessor manufacturers in the world, Sony was the world's boutique brand, Toshiba was bleeding edge, and Panasonic was the Samsung of the time, but it's the 21st century now and Japan hasn't been relevant for a looooooooong time. Top down government regulations won't solve this.

Only Hitachi has remained mostly unchanged, relevant then and still relevant now. Not much room for comfort, though.

After returning from a vacation in Japan, I must say that the word "irrelevance" is far too hyperbolic.

While it is true that unfortunately Japan is no longer a leader in the development of new technologies, like it has achieved to be in the past, when looking at its public infrastructure, at least in the big cities, and at the applications of modern technologies for solving various problems of the day-to-day life, which actually matter most for the majority of people, Japan is still well ahead of almost all other countries and I have very little hope that I will ever see any country in Europe or America matching Japan in certain aspects of the quality of life.

It is true however that Japan is facing some serious economic problems, with declining revenues for many people. However, this appears to have artificial causes, due to mismanagement at high levels that does not result in a meaningful change of the managers.

There are about 195 countries in the world (depending on how you count), I find it hard to believe that Japan is dead last on the list.

I'll be the first to complain about the bad state of software in this country, but it still sits very comfortably in the top half of that list.

Japan stopped being relevant predominantly because the US diplomatically bullied Japan into making itself irrelevant. Japan used to be what China is now: a megasupplier, protected by an artificially cheap domestic currency.

Top-down government regulations are necessary to curb big tech's power because big tech has subverted the normal mechanisms of market competition that are supposed to make dictatorial control unprofitable. The question is whether or not Japan denying market access to Apple or Google will be a sufficient punishment to get companies to comply.

>Japan stopped being relevant predominantly because the US diplomatically bullied Japan into making itself irrelevant.

No, Japan stopped being relevant because Japanese companies are legendary in their hostility towards each other. They themselves are their worst enemy. Not to mention Japanese society is more interested in looking in the mirror than out the window.

In fact, it's not even the US who really drove Japan into irrelevancy, it's South Korea, China, and Taiwan. All countries whose companies spent more time taking on the global market instead of squabbling amongst themselves and thus succeeded at out-Japan'ing Japan as a mere stepping stone.

Samsung, LG, and Foxconn killed off NEC, Panasonic, Sony, Toshiba, Sharp, Sanyo, and Elpida. Huawei and such cleaned up what remained. Renesas is basically on legacy life support, and who knows if Rapidus won't be stillborn.

The US dominance that is Apple and Google is a result of Japan loving to hoist petards, not because the US has power and has no qualms about using it legally or otherwise.

IMO, a compelling alternative to push more heavily is open source, because it's something different than just another corporation that places profit before substance and ethics.

>Japan is by far the absolute worst country when it comes to tech now.

No, it really isn't at all. It's better than the US in many ways:

1. Eating out. At many Japanese restaurants, you have a tablet computer at your table, or you get a QR code to order on your phone. You use the tablet/web app (which admittedly doesn't always have the greatest UI, esp when you switch to English) to order your food and maybe pay. It's not just big chains like Jonathan's; you'll even see this sometimes at small non-chain restaurants with 1 or 2 workers. This kind of tech is mostly unheard of in the US; you have to verbally tell your order to some annoyed worker and hope they don't screw it up, and then they expect a gigantic "tip" for simply doing their job. Partially thanks to the much lower staffing needed at Japanese restaurants, it's quite inexpensive to eat out.

2. Toilets: they all have electronic controls to spray your butt after you poop. You can select water pressure, activate seat heating, etc. These washlets as they're called are actually available in the US, but no one buys them except maybe Japanese expats. Even after the Great Toilet Paper Shortage of 2020, Americans steadfastly refuse to improve their hygiene and adopt this technology.

3. Public transit fare cards: in Japan, virtually every public transit system uses "IC cards" based on the Felica NFC chip. It's twice as fast as other NFC technologies, so it gets people through fare gates quicker, which is critical in the crowded Tokyo subways. These stored-value cards can mostly be used nationwide (tip: get a Suica or Pasmo card, they're good almost everywhere). In addition to train fares, you can also use them to pay for vending machines, many restaurants, and lots more. On top of this, the Felica chip is built into Japan-market smartphones, so you can do all this with your phone instead of a card. In the US, the NYC metro system still uses magnetic stripe cards, and while the DC system is more advanced (using stored-value cards that aren't as fast as Japan's), like all other transit systems in the US, the cards are only good on that one transit system in one city, and for nothing else at all.

4. Remote-control air-conditioners. Called "mini-split" in the US, the typical A/C units in Japan are only good for one room, but they come with a remote control and have many functions: cooling, heating, dehumidification, etc. You can control whether the vents are fixed in one direction or oscillate. I'm sure I've missed many other useful functions. Since the A/Cs are room-sized, you don't have to waste energy cooling/heating rooms you're not using at the moment, or you can set them differently. These systems have become increasingly popular in the US, especially for retrofitting older buildings that don't have ducts.

5. Interpersonal messaging. In Japan, everyone uses LINE. It's not perfect, but it has great privacy and lots of features. In the US, most people are still using telephone-number-based SMS from the 1990s. The US is decades behind on basic communications, easily the worst in the world. I don't think I need to go any further here.

6. Bullet trains. Japan leads the world, and will have the world's first serious maglev train between Tokyo and Nagoya in around 5 years. The US doesn't have anything to speak of.

7. Combination washer/dryers. Americans think this is a brand-new thing, but they've been here in Japan for many years now and are very common at the higher-end.

8. Chip manufacturing. The US only has Intel, and TSMC is trying to expand there with government subsidies but it's not going well at all. Japan has Renesas and TSMC is expanding here too, with far better success. Time will tell how this pans out, but given how dysfunctional US society and politics are these days, I wouldn't bet on the US doing well here.

> you have a tablet computer at your table, or you get a QR code to order on your phone

> This kind of tech is mostly unheard of in the US

Massively untrue. A large chunk of the restaurants I go to have extremely similar setups. Tons have Ziosk terminals at the table. Lots of others allow scanning a QR code and ordering at the table through a website/app. At least half the restaurants I frequent have some kind of digital ordering system. Some of these restaurants started implementing these systems over a decade ago.

> Remote-control air-conditioners

I generally greatly prefer central AC. Either way, remote controlled single-room AC units have been a thing in the US for several decades. It is not like IR remotes are some fancy new techology that only Japan could have figured out.

> Combination washer/dryers

They're great if you're space constrained, but with the two separate units I'm able to run multiple loads through faster. They've been for sale in the US once again for decades but have never really been popular outside of really space constrained spaces. And they're also often more expensive than two separate units meanwhile end up getting less laundry done in the same time period. So spend more money and have it take longer to do multiple loads of laundry. Great!

> Public transit fare cards

Everything I need to do can generally be done through NFC/Bluetooth on my phone these days. Payments, transit access, car keys, etc. Having to carry around a specialty payment card is a step backwards from my normal day to day.

>A large chunk of the restaurants I go to have extremely similar setups. Tons have Ziosk terminals at the table. Lots of others allow scanning a QR code and ordering at the table through a website/app. At least half the restaurants I frequent have some kind of digital ordering system.

What restaurants are these, Chipotle? I just visited the US for a few weeks and didn't see ANY of this.

>Some of these restaurants started implementing these systems over a decade ago.

I never saw it when I lived in the US, except for Panera.

>Either way, remote controlled single-room AC units have been a thing in the US for several decades.

No, they haven't. You're thinking of those shitty window units. They aren't the same; those are horrible. That's why the mini-split systems have gotten so popular, and they're all made in Asia (by companies like Daikin and Mitsubishi, rather than by the typical US brands like Westinghouse). So yes, apparently only Japan could have figured this out.

>but with the two separate units I'm able to run multiple loads through faster.

Sounds like you save up your laundry too much. Anyway, you can only do this if you're physically present to move the laundry between machines.

>They've been for sale in the US once again for decades

You're making the same mistake as with the A/C. No, they're brand-new, they haven't been available for decades. You're thinking of those shitty "over-under" units, with a dryer mounted on top of the washer. I'm talking about combo drum-style washer-dryer units with heat-pump drying: you put the clothes in, hit "start", and a few hours later your clothes are clean and dry.

>Everything I need to do can generally be done through NFC/Bluetooth on my phone these days.

Let's see you do that in NYC.

Washer-dryer combo units (sometimes called "laundry centers") have been around for a long time in the RV, marine, and apartment markets where space- and water-savings are essential. Coincidentally, most Japanese households also greatly value space-savings.

Splendide[1] has been in the business since 1984, and according to Wikipedia the first washer-dryer combo unit was invented in 1953 by Bendix[2][3]. Both are American companies.

[1]: https://www.splendide.com/index.html#faq

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washer-dryer#History

[3]: https://books.google.com/books?id=Dlpfw-9ikKAC&q=bendix+duom...

> I just visited the US for a few weeks and didn't see ANY of this.

You visited for a few weeks and feel you have a good sample size of one of the largest countries in the world. I've been to Cozumel, I take it the rest of Mexico is exactly like that. Everyone in Mexico just hangs out at the beach all day every day right?

Just one example restaurant from 2014:

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/06/chili...

> You're thinking of those shitty window units.

No, I'm definitely thinking the mini-splits. I grew up in Houston. You can't survive without air conditioning there. I've seen every kind of AC setup hundreds of times over. Mini-splits were pretty common for a DIY add to a garage or a backyard shed/studio even back then. I saw dozens of them in the 90s. I'd still take a central air system for my home.

And ooh, so fancy, an IR remote controller! So high tech. I guess I'll just throw out my thermostat that logs my environment data to my home system along with how often the unit and fan have run, its impact, outside weather data, its total energy usage, its pressure levels, and more. It'll also automatically adjust dampers to ensure proper airflow to help target whatever rooms I'm using. A basic IR remote and noisy shit tacked on the wall is way fancier.

And yeah, instead of just having ducts properly planned into the construction of my home I'll just have loads of copper pipes with highly compressed and often toxic/flammable refrigerants run to the dozen or so spaces that currently have vents. Seems so superior. Mini splits make a lot of sense when you only have a handful of spaces you're trying to cool, much less sense when it's a four bedroom two living room single family home in a place where it's 90F+ at 70% RH half the year.

> I'm talking about combo drum-style washer-dryer units with heat-pump drying: you put the clothes in, hit "start", and a few hours later your clothes are clean and dry.

Once again, I'm very aware of what you're talking about. Notice how I was suggesting two units is faster for multiple loads? Notice how an over/under is technically two units? See how I know the kind you're talking about?

> Sounds like you save up your laundry too much

Or maybe I've got a family with kids that make a lot of messes in my household.

They're not that new, they've been around for a while. Only recently popular in large full-size units. Once again, I saw them in the 00s in the US. People would often have them in a fancy big RV/camper trailer or on a yacht due to the fact you can have a single unit and still do laundry on the go. They're not new, you just hadn't seen them much before.

It turns out maybe you don't know everything and experienced it all before. Who would have thought?

> Let's see you do that in NYC.

Ah, so that's what it is. You lived in and visited NY and assumed that's life for the rest of the US? Turns out the entire US isn't just NYC, for better and worse.

>You visited for a few weeks and feel you have a good sample size of one of the largest countries in the world.

Well, before I moved out of the US 2 years ago, I lived there for over 40 years. Is that good enough for you?

>Just one example restaurant from 2014:

Interesting, that's Chili's. I stopped going there about 15 years ago because it was so lousy (and also seems to be absent on the east coast where I moved). Still, I've been to countless other places and didn't see such things outside of Panera.

>You lived in and visited NY and assumed that's life for the rest of the US? Turns out the entire US isn't just NYC, for better and worse.

There's only a small handful of cities besides NYC that actually have public transit systems, and NYC's is by far the largest and most famous, so I think it's a pretty important data point.

>Eating out. At many Japanese restaurants, you have a tablet computer at your table, or you get a QR code to order on your phone. You use the tablet/web app (which admittedly doesn't always have the greatest UI, esp when you switch to English) to order your food and maybe pay.

That experience is horrible, and not just because pecking at a small screen for ants is horrible. Quite often the thing flat out doesn't work and/or is laid out in the most incomprehensible way possible that it's just faster to call a waiter over.

Also, owing to this being computer hardware sitting right next to food, the things are almost always grimey. Proper menus at least are ostensibly cleaned between customers. This isn't a problem specific to Japan, though.

>Toilets: they all have electronic controls to spray your butt after you poop. You can select water pressure, activate seat heating, etc.

Yeah, they have that since at least the 90s or something. Nothing new. I appreciate the engineering that goes into them, but it's a case of Galapagos.

>Public transit fare cards: in Japan, virtually every public transit system uses "IC cards" based on the Felica NFC chip.

They're great, but the world is starting to move ahead of them with everything moving to smartphone NFC and in a way that is carrier and brand and network agnostic.

>Remote-control air-conditioners.

They're great, particularly with how quiet they are. If it wasn't obvious from the toilets, Japan is great at hardware engineering. The problem is this doesn't translate to software engineering and high tech in general.

>Interpersonal messaging. In Japan, everyone uses LINE.

LINE is a perfect example of Japan's irrelevancy in software. Why? Because LINE is a South Korean product.

>Bullet trains. Japan leads the world,

Yup, top notch engineering as mentioned. Bad news for the maglev since that's being held up in political power struggles, though.

>Combination washer/dryers.

They've become such a mundane commodity thanks in no small part to South Korean and Chinese mass manufacturing that Japan is hardly relevant there anymore.

>Chip manufacturing. The US only has Intel,

The US also has Micron and Global Foundries, along with old school guys like Texas Instruments and more. Though I agree it's mostly Intel (and Micron) pushing the envelope.

Japan has a very bad track record with chip fabrication ever since they lost sight of everything, Elpida and Toshiba by far being the most tragic examples. The jury is indeed still out on Rapidus, TSMC expansion, etc., but I'm personally not holding my breath.

Curious what you mean by “a case of Galapagos”?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gal%C3%A1pagos_syndrome

Basically, a market isolated from the world and left to develop on its own is compared to the ecosystem seen in the Galapagos Islands.

It's a way the Japanese came up for saying Japanese Exceptionalism without saying Japanese Exceptionalism.

>Also, owing to this being computer hardware sitting right next to food, the things are almost always grimey. Proper menus at least are ostensibly cleaned between customers. This isn't a problem specific to Japan, though.

This is Japan: if any place cleans things reliably, it's here. If you think most American restaurants clean menus between customers, I have a bridge to sell you. Many don't even bother cleaning the table, in my experience, and then get mad if you point out the table is dirty.

>it's just faster to call a waiter over.

American waiters absolutely hate this, but they still expect a huge "tip". But yeah, in Japan it's perfectly acceptable and normal.

>Yeah, they have that since at least the 90s or something. Nothing new.

It's not new in Japan, but the rest of the world still hasn't heard about them apparently (or just doesn't care about hygiene), so it might as well be new.

>They're great, but the world is starting to move ahead of them with everything moving to smartphone NFC and in a way that is carrier and brand and network agnostic.

I don't see that at all in the US. Transit systems there all have their own separate cards that haven't changed in 20 years.

> If it wasn't obvious from the toilets, Japan is great at hardware engineering. The problem is this doesn't translate to software engineering and high tech in general.

There's more to "high tech" than just software and microservices or whatever. Most software is pretty useless without hardware to run it on. Sure, if you're just focusing on stuff that's only online, you'll just use commodity HW and Japan has nothing much to offer here, but most of us have a little more to our lives than just sitting in front of a PC and surfing the internet.

>LINE is a perfect example of Japan's irrelevancy in software. Why? Because LINE is a South Korean product.

Sure, but that's irrelevant. What's important is what's actually used, which is what my whole post is about: what technology is actually used day-to-day by average people in Japan? Japan: LINE. US: SMS. (And it's just US/Canada that are dinosaurs here; all other countries use some kind of modern chat app.)

>Bad news for the maglev since that's being held up in political power struggles, though.

I haven't seen anything concrete here, just the one thing about Shizuoka prefecture (I think) complaining.

>They've become such a mundane commodity thanks in no small part to South Korean and Chinese mass manufacturing that Japan is hardly relevant there anymore.

They're relevant in Japan, where they're fairly common (and made by Japanese manufacturers mostly). Back in the US, they're almost completely unheard of.

> I don't see that at all in the US

How many US transit systems have you ridden on? Several? Dozens? There's 6,800 or so public transit systems in the US, you think you've ridden a representative sample of them?

Only a small number of cities in the US have real transit systems. No, a bunch of buses does not count as a "transit system" in the developed world.

One thing I'm curious about is the DOJ took specific aim at Apple Pay and how Apple was creating a monopoly by limiting third party apps from making payments. I'm personally a bit torn, because it seems like the preventing third party apps from accessing the secure enclave is a security feature.

There is no "accessing the secure enclave". Not even the iOS kernel itself can access the secure enclave. That's the point. It's designed to keep your biometrics and private keys safe even when the entire OS is compromised.

It's also not completely relevant to third party payment processors. They don't have to use the secure enclave at all. They could theoretically just ask for your credit card info every time. They're not allowed to do that currently for no other reason than Apple's bottom line.

For convenience, they'd probably want to store it encrypted on your device, using a private key from the secure enclave to decrypt it when you pass the biometrics test. That's the normal level of "access" to the secure enclave that all apps should have. It's in no way concerning because private keys and biometrics never leave the enclave, but can still be used to decrypt data elsewhere on the device when the biometrics test is passed. It's the whole reason why the secure enclave exists in the first place.

Apple could of allowed payment providers build payment services/plugins within their walled garden to preserve control and security. But they want their 30% so now the government is gonna come in and haphazardly create rules to enforce competition.

Secure enclave doesn't have to be single software locked thing. They don't have to give every app unconditional access to securely executing code either nor giving access to other apps' data. Users can choose just like they choose their camera permissions to access RFID / NFC and each wallet can get a prioritized access to those services.

Afaik, the security enclave is treated as if it was owned by the manufacturer, not the consumer. It's also used for DRM, which is arguably anti-consumer, and giving any app access to that would effectively reduce the strength of DRM.

I don't see why granting access to an app would grant full access to the whole thing. I.e. similar to how apps don't get full filesystem access. I also know nothing about how it's implemented though.

This comment, with the last sentence of it, deserves to be encased and shown in museums as the archetypical HN comment.

The commentator seems to understand enough. The secure enclave is still secure no matter what is using it. That's the whole point of it.

Yet at the same time, I can go to the 7/11 and open my wallet and use whatever form of payment I want, secure enclave be damned, and the sky doesn't fall. I can go on the internet on my macbook and use any payment form I want on any service, secure enclave be damned, and the sky doesn't fall. I would think everyone on this website is tired by the nanny state that Apple has created on iOS. If the argument is security that's fine, just let us power users who know what we are doing toggle this off and actually use our hardware to do what we'd like with it, short of waiting with baited breath for a teenager in eastern europe to give us a jailbreak that lasts for a week before patching.

I’d always thought “power users” toggled this type of stuff off by switching to Lineage or similar and having full control.

You can't install lineage OS on an iPhone. The answer to gaining control shouldn't be to buy different hardware when you have perfectly good hardware capable of also offering that control.

You can't install it on an iPhone and on Android it doesn't pass SafetyNet, IE. no more payments, no banking apps, no national ID apps, no drivers license app, etc.

If security is the only talking point ever, Apple is also lowering it's OS security by constantly adding new APIs (= more attack surface) or accepting third party apps in the first place.

It's a trade-off, and it can't be fine when it benefits Apple, but nonnegotiable when it benefits the others.

Generating and using keys held in SE is already a public API available to third party apps.

Security features are security features. Blocking interoperability and calling it a security feature is a marketing technique.

Can't each app have it's own section of it?

There are no bike thieves in a police state, etc...

you might want to look up bike theft statistics :)

If I were Apple and Google, I would be seriously considering what new revenue stream could replace app store revenue entirely.

Why would Google be affected? They don't restrict third party apps the way Apple does. Anybody can publish Android apps, you don't have to pay Google a cent to do it either.

That's true, but any app not on Google Pay has very limited discoverability by most Android users.

Right?

As an Android dev I'm growing tiresome of this "Google doesn't restrict anything" argument.

The number of Android users that even know what f-droid is is less than 1%.

The Play Store is the only option.

I'd argue Google doesn't owe you "discoverability". You're absolutely free to sell your app to users with no involvement from Google. If you want Google to help you advertise and distribute your app then I see nothing wrong with them imposing some conditions on that.

This is unlike how Apple does things where they literally block your app from running on your customer's devices unless you get Apple's approval (and pay them), and there's no option whatsoever to cut them out of that process.

Some of us Android devs would argue that literally blocking an app from running is little different than building an ecosystem designed to minimize non-Google Play methods of distribution.

Apple's approach in the EU has been to add a distribution cost if you choose to sell in a 3rd party store. The core technology fee demands that you pay Apple a small fee per-new-install-per-year. I don't know that that equates to the same kind of revenue streams, but it is income.

The pivot is probably “Apple Intelligence”. Apple has a treasure trove of information that could be used to train their models. All it takes is a few updates to the EULA and slowly wipe away the “privacy” stances from their corp site.

Anecdotally, have seen a few positions for their internal ad tech team; and have been pinged a couple of times by recruiters.

Maybe it will be lucrative for them, but I disagree that it requires them to wipe away their privacy stance for a few reasons:

1. Privacy makes them a lot of money right now; it's a huge part of their brand, and one the CEO talks about frequently.

2. Media coverage of Apple Intelligence talks a lot about how privacy is a core differentiator for Apple's AI approach compared to Google, Microsoft, or OpenAI. Apple's approach is on-device-by-default approach, going as far as to have an explicit opt-in per interaction if you want to talk to chatGPT.

3. Apple clearly spent a lot of time and money on their "private cloud compute" approach to larger server models -- why would they immediately squander that by switching to ad-tech.

4. If they were going to use that treasure trove of information, why would they spend so much time not doing that in the lead-up to their big launch of Apple Intelligence?

5. Apple has spent a lot of effort making that personal local context local-only, and designing APIs and training models on schemas for apps to provide local context & local actions to local Siri. That's part of their killer feature set.

Ad tech team doesn't really require any of this data. That's an entirely different business model, and Apple is a lucrative business because they didn't do what Google did.

It all comes down to this: Apple spent the past decade plus building up a brand based on privacy, and spending a lot of extra time, money, and effort doing things more privately than their competitors. It's now a compelling differentiator for Apple, and I have a lot of trouble seeing why they would squander a reputation they clearly spent a lot of energy building.

    > Privacy makes them a lot of money right now

Why do I see this repeated over and over again on HN? Can you offer any concrete evidence on the matter. It looks impossible to prove.

Most users do not care about privacy. They care about price and convenience.

If they care about price, why are they buying iPhones? Just convenience?

It’s a bit moot without surveying users, and I’m sure those surveys exist somewhere. But I don’t accept at face value that users don’t care about privacy.

    > why are they buying iPhones?

Because their friends and family also own iPhones. Also, you get higher social status from owning an iPhone. For normies, being part of the same mobile phone ecosystem is more convenient.

Maybe they will have to work on the App Store to make it competitive, rather than just being a monopoly. It already has a very privileged position being installed by default and highly integrated. They should be able to keep it the most popular option.

Of course that will still cut into their unfair monopoly profits. But they can likely maintain a huge chunk.

Would be tough and long road for alt AppStores to eat into Apples ecosystem. Apple first have default AppStore, second they have features like the tried and true in app purchase and revenue distribution system in place. Countries may eventually require apple to provide these features but it will be a looong and painful while

If the Facebook app became an app store tomorrow that would already be a huge step of the way. Add Amazon changing their app to be an app store and a few other big apps and boom, big hit for Apple. Which is a good thing IMO.

Apple needs to do the following:

1) Write an Android wrapper and integrate it to Xcode so swift/SwiftUI can run normally on Android

2) Release the App Store for Android, with full App Store purchase/subscription support

They could collect a TON of revenue on the Android platform doing this, and most developers would opt to re-release their iOS apps on Android to save on dev costs.

So would Apple have to allow browsers other than Safari to exist on iOS?

That's already happening in the EU: https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/25/24050478/apple-ios-17-4-b...

Pure evidence of malevolence on Apple's part. Though people have fuzzy feelings about Nestle, so it shouldn't be surprising that a company people have fuzzy feelings about can be downright nasty.

Already exists in US.

Last I heard, all the third-party browsers just wrap Apple's bundled webkit. No other browser engines allowed.

I use Firefox Focus for iOS.

Is that a wrapped Apple WebKit?

Also, to the downvoters to my original reply, the question I answered was about “browsers” not “browser engines”. I guess I missed the sub context.

Yes, it is webkit on the engine.

They also could be forced to open up their devices to be generic computers. In today’s world, devices and platforms are key to freedom.

They already are, they make bank on the fact that people live their lives in these things, skimming some money from all transactions in their stores which they've made default and hard if not impossible to replace.

We need regulation that recognises that these are general purpose computers and that as such it must be possible for users to supply their own software to run on them. Personally I'd like that to also include bootloader access to prevent planned obsolescence from rendering perfectly capable devices more or less useless.

Probably not a bad thing from a software pov, both have been giving dimishing returns to users since like 2017

Replace it with ? Toshiba software?

Nintendo Store

Playstation Store

https://www.pocketgamer.biz/playstation-eyes-new-investment-...

Just like with the EU, to me sounds like Microsoft is lobbying very hard, with the help of the DOJ, people didn't like/want their PC store tho, so i doubt they'll win mobile

Why replace? If it must be something, maybe something like the linux distros? They come with package managers.

Should have emboldened the ecosystem by providing incentives for web-based government services instead of forcing users to only depend on two primary entities in this space.

It's too bad this new law doesn't mirror the European Digital Markets Act. Then users would be prompted to choose their browser instead of having it selected for them.

Pretty simple fix for Apple might be a warning notice that some of these apps are unofficial and a user option that is part of the system setup where it says "Would you like to allow install of apps from unofficial sources? WARNING: you will get hacked if you do this it's a bad idea" and everyone will be like "no" and then the user is preventing it, not apple.

Of course everyone will be like "yes" and then the phone will get hacked and the user will blame apple.

* This is not an argument against it. *

I think it will be exciting to see what apps and use cases we have missed through the years

It's good that more and more countries are following the EU's lead here. I guess in a couple of years, maybe after North Korea has decided to also force Apple and Google to stop running app store monopolies, the US will also take action.

I know that everybody got used to this, but please remind yourself: You have BOUGHT the phone. It is yours. You own it. It's your decision, and your decision only what software you want to install on it. The current status is not normal.

What really blows my mind about all this is how long are we expected to give our computing over to corporation? 100 years? 200? A thousand? In 500 years will people be running some personal OS cobbled together from a shared heritage or will we be stuck with one mega-corp running it all. It's sort of dystopian what we have now.

Good on Japan. Please create lots of competition, I am utterly FED UP with Apple and Google and bloody American companies ruining all that is fucking decent with the world.

I’m just fed up with subpar and locked down hardware.

Give me hardware that I own when I buy it. Fully open it up to the end user. No need to hide or gimp it’s power behind proprietary APIs (ie, Metal, lack of OpenGL).

For me the worst is that everyone copies them and there is not a single one opting for openness as a selling point. Policies that are objectively batshit insane are now accepted as 'the norm' because they are 'good for shareholders' (but this only works for google + apple)

Just gotta keep grinding globally against these orgs. Lobby your representatives.

I'm not optimistic. Korea's Naver has added zilch to overall consumer choice.

None of these countries do software very well Japan included which makes no sense, modern manufacturing and speedrunning was invented there.

What's obvious is Japan's extreme care for privacy opting for the security of paper based document storage/retrieval.

Also don't like seeing the minting of tech bros that is prevalent in America not really creating value for consumers but wealth for a small group of people.

Because Sony phones were clearly excellent which is why everyone bought them, and made them the success they are today?

What exactly do you want out of “lots of competition”?

Sorry, I must have missed Sonys OS and App store platform. Please tell me what phones I can see these on?

The Xperia has/had a proprietary Sony-Ericsson OS.

But your point is moot anyhow; Sony can’t innovate. So they’ll regulate their way back to awesomeness?

> Violations of the new law will bring a penalty of 20 percent of the domestic revenue of the service found to have breached the rules. The fine can increase to 30 percent if the companies do not cease the anticompetitive practices

The delicious irony in forcing Apple to pay a fine identical to the totally normal and "reasonable" fees they charge their developers.

I can't imagine Japanese game developers will put up with paying a 30% platform fee to Nintendo. Uh, Apple I mean.

Related from 3 hours ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40660936

Looks like comments have been merged into this current thread

It was just a link to nowhere, the merges have mod comments.

I read the article, and I'm not sure if this opens up alternative ways to download apps in Japan or if just ensures that apps competing with the platform owner are not to be downranked or handicapped.

_Violations of the new law will bring a penalty of 20 percent of the domestic revenue of the service found to have breached the rules. The fine can increase to 30 percent if the companies do not cease the anticompetitive practices._

Cool, now they know by how much they need to increase prices in order to keep their monopoly. Just share profits with the government and you're gold.

It's on revenue not profit.

So?! I never said they could just bump by 20% and that's it. It's still a percentage. In the end of the day the 20-30% gets treated like tax, and could be offset by a high enough price point.

And then the fines will be 20 percent of the new value. It's leaving a lot of money on the table no matter how you slice it and your competitors can easily undercut you by a lot on price by playing fair and not getting fined.

And regulators aren't stupid anyway. If the regulation doesn't have the intended effect, then they can change the rules until it does.

Wow, fines that actually hurt. We here in the EU should take note.

The equivalent EU regulation (Digital Markets Act) allows for up to 10% of global revenue and up to 20% of global revenue for repeat offenses.

My first thought was this. EU regs will ultimately get more $ than JAPAN due to in country v global penalties.

Penalties based on the global revenue also prevent companies finding loopholes in the corporate and tax laws. They need to announce good revenue to have shareholders and they will be judged by the same standards by the law.

My concern with curbing Apple’s anti-competitive platform abuse is that they will pivot away from privacy into advertising/surveillance to make up for the lost revenue. Maybe as a consumer I’m better off leaving their ATM machine alone for now.

They sell your traffic to Google for many billions of dollars. Believe me, they are not leaving surveillance revenue on the table. They just launder it well.

A competent government will prevent those kinds of privacy abuses as well by enacting laws like GDPR and constantly updating them.

Apple is already doing this anyway. Their shtick is privacy, but they still locally collect data on you and use it to serve ads in the App Store, and I believe a few other surfaces like News and Stocks. The idea of the "if you're not the customer you're the product" dichotomy is fallacious. Any profit-motivated company will do everything it can to make money. Charge you upfront the maximum you're willing to pay. Spy on you to sell your attention to advertisers. Charge you in regular intervals the maximum the market will bear. If they're not already exploiting an avenue it's either because (a) they haven't gotten around to spinning up a business unit for it yet or (b) because their strategy is such that it would harm their revenue more than benefit it. Apple isn't going to shed its privacy marketing or privacy-oriented features. It is going to build richer user profiles and sell more attention to advertisers, whether they maintain control of app distribution on iOS or not.

> Their shtick is privacy, but they still locally collect data on you and use it to serve ads in the App Store, and I believe a few other surfaces like News and Stocks.

On mobile the only one that you need to interact with is the app store. On mac you don't need any of them

At the end of the day their appeal is their UX, if the ads are too invasive like what MS did with windows then they'd just be shooting themselves in the foot

Has there been any store in the history of stores that didn’t have advertising though? News has half the stories being corporate PR anyway, stocks app I’m not familiar with but it’s another version of a store.

I feel these are pretty benign uses of advertising on their platform(s):

- Apple TV shows ads about shows and movies

- iOS tells you about system upgrades to help battle the constant inevitable security issues

- Mac OS tells you about the latest Mac OS if you’re not running the latest Mac OS

And I can’t think of any other ads Apple has sent my way.

Apple uses your data in ways that they see fit to improve your user experience. The only material difference is that Google wants you to buy whatever from whoever pays them ad bucks, whereas Apple wants you to buy Apple products for Apple.

> (b) because their strategy is such that it would harm their revenue more than benefit it. Apple isn't going to shed its privacy marketing or privacy-oriented features. It is going to build richer user profiles and sell more attention to advertisers, whether they maintain control of app distribution on iOS or not.

You dismiss that, but that's the point.

No company has your best interests at heart, but I'll buy apple products until such time as their interests no longer align with mine. Then, I can just go buy cheaper things as they've lost their market advantage.

Apple's interest is in generating social angst among young people to marginally increase their already-massive market share through ostracization. I can't imagine how that supports your interests.

I don’t see that as an interest, as much as a method of achieving their interest (selling more iPhones). While the means are certainly questionable, in some sense the goal does align with that of their users - more people using iPhones will generally result in a better experience for existing users (partially due to the same decisions that generate social angst for others)

>Maybe as a consumer I’m better off leaving their ATM machine alone for now.

Or we can go after the surveillance side too. "As a consumer" IDGAF about lining Apple executives pockets.

Always amused by people complaining about "all these monopolies" in the computer sector.

If there is more than one of them, they're by definition not monopolies. Google and Apple definitely compete with each other.

You can still dislike them for something they actually are. But put in the effort to describe what that is.

Antitrust stuff isn't as simple as finding a monopoly. In fact, monopolies aren't intrinsically illegal in the first place.

If all the players present the same problem (in this case, giving in-house software an unfair advantage) then it might be cause for regulation.

This is a fair answer to something I didn't write.

I'm just making a "words have meanings" point. No hidden agenda about antitrust policies were intended.

At -4 points, I think this is my most downvoted post ever!

I think people use the term "monopoly" and "anti-competitive" somewhat interchangeably sometimes, even if the word is technically incorrect.

Technically the current smartphone stuff is a duopoly but there are definitely bits of anti-competitive behavior exhibited by the respective app stores.

I think it shows a distinct lack of imagination to think that Google and Apple can't compete in some areas of the market, while still being monopolies or engaging in monopolistic practices in others.

I dislike duopolies

Reply on news.ycombinator.com