Apple found in breach of EU competition rules
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
While there are more consumer friendly ways to do it sure, I don’t see anything illegal or wrong here. You’re buying their hardware, with the software licensing understanding that comes with it - if you don’t like the terms you don’t buy the hardware.
There isn’t a moral calculus that is or needs to be involved here, it’s a simple flat “don’t buy their product if you don’t like it”. If enough people cared and did so, they’d change very quickly.
Apple isn’t a monopoly, there are plenty of alternatives that might suit your needs better.
No, you cannot simply refuse to give Apple their 30% (unless you are yourself big enough to negotiate an exemption; including waiving a 30% fee of your own for Apple's apps on your platforms) if you want access to their huge and very lucrative market.
Microsoft lost an anti-monopoly case because they bundled a free browser with Windows. Forcing your competitors to pay 30% and thus have higher costs and prices than your own competing services is a much more straightforward violation.
But what gives some third party the right to that huge and lucrative market? It seems parasitic in a kind of way to demand that right.
But Apple does hinder every developer from selling their software on Apple devices without using Apple's mandatory software distribution service. Which most of us can agree, is relatively monopolistic in nature and creates a captive market of Apple customers ripe for abuse.
Every store, market place and mall has conditions for being able to sell your wares in their space. Every single one of them will prevent you from using their space if you fail to meet those conditions. Malls will kick you out if you close your store during mall hours, denying you the ability to sell to those mall customers. eBay will shut your account if you try to get buyers to pay you outside of eBay, denying you the ability to sell to those eBay customers. Your local grocery store won't be allowing you to set up in the middle of the aisle with a laser light show selling your home made cookies, denying you the ability to sell to the grocery story customers. Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony will all very happily terminate your access to their markets for failure to comply with their development programs, denying you the ability to sell to those console customers.
But it's not a store. It's software; Apple charges developers to use their developer tools and then additionally requires you to pay the surcharges in their mandatory App Store. It is a racket that specifically relies on Apple's sole presence as a distributor on iOS and iPadOS; otherwise it will fail, as MacOS has shown us.
> Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony will all very happily terminate your access to their markets for failure to comply with their development programs
And every single one of those companies competes under fair pretenses with their publishing partners. Apple doesn't. That's why they're singled-out.
So is it a store or not?
>And every single one of those companies competes under fair pretenses with their publishing partners. Apple doesn't. That's why they're singled-out.
How so? What is Apple doing that those companies (Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony) don't do for their hardware platforms? The certainly "[charge] developers to use their developer tools and then additionally [require developers] to pay the surcharged in their mandatory [store]." So what's different? How are they competing under fair pretenses (a phrase which I admit I'm having trouble parsing the meaning of), but Apple isn't?
I, on the other side, very much see it, given how huge the market share of Apple is.
I would be with you if Apple had 5 per cent of the smartphone market. Nevertheless, their very size makes any of their actions that restricts freedoms of their customes at least suspicious of being anti-competitive.
What the EU is regulating is fair competition for very large platforms, defined as having 45m or more users. These benefit from network effects and may be operated in ways that inhibit competition.
Do you also believe that John D. Rockefeller never did anything anti-competitive? lol
If Apple wants to sell in the EU it will have to abide by EU rules decided by democratically elected politicians. The US has proven incapable and or unwilling to regulate big tech. The EU has been slow and won't always get it right first time but it's trying. This is why EU citizens have e.f., privacy rights Americans don't, why broadband costs way less in the EU than the US etc.
If parasitism is what interests you I suggest directing your attention to rentier capitalism and the never ending upward flow of wealth to the 1% and the extent to which US politicians are owned by billionaires.
Do you commonly just assume that people who disagree with you are dishonest?
Here, the perceived benefit is cheaper apps for their cellphone. So we call Apple a monopoly, though they clearly aren't. And if they are, then why shouldn't McDonalds be forced to let anybody sell fast food inside their locations?
Apple has an entrenched audience, as is unfortunately inherent with operating system and platforms, and that comes with certain legal responsibilities. If Apple doesn't like those responsibilities, they should get out of the OS/platform space.
But this is the same argument you have no doubt seen many times, which you dismiss as "dishonesty". That is your prerogative, but most onlookers are going to see this as an attempt to get out of having to present a convincing argument, most likely because you can't.
Third parties bring value to the platform. Try to remove all the third parties from the Apple Store and see how people react.
Apple's sales of iPhones benefit from the third parties, but they use their dominant position to take a huge cut of what the third parties sell.
One could say: either Apple gives access to third parties in a decent way, or they just don't. Apple needs the third parties (otherwise they would not give them access in the first place, obviously), so they should give them decent conditions.
The reason their "ecosystem" has any value is because of the "parasites". They're a f**ng platform.
Excuse me, but we should know better over here.
Their value is ideally keeping scammers out, but they don't do a great job of that and part of the reason they don't is because they also profit when the scammers do. For example, gambling for kids (loot boxes) is OK. The other part of the value is having a central place to list and promote apps, but also there they're double dipping as you need to pay them to get eyes to your app.
Their value absolutely does not equal 30% of your revenue.
It wasn't calling Apple parasitic, it was calling the app DEVELOPERS parasitic which is crazy talk.
Let me know when I can start selling stuff on Amazon without giving them a cut. Or put up a stand in the local supermarket where I sell my produce directly to customers.
If App developers made iOS such a profitable market, why haven't they made Android an equally profitable market? There's more users, more liberty, more potential money to be made.
What it comes down to is whether it's better to get a big piece of a small pie or a smaller piece of a big pie. Apple offers a bigger pie of user spending for developers, while cutting out a bigger chunk for themselves from that pie.
LOLNO :-)
The web is and was a major consumer "software" platform. We just don't have raw numbers for it because it's so distributed, my guess is that it's still bigger than these walled gardens combined.
The web would be even bigger if said walled garden makers wouldn't c**block it by not investing in progressive web apps & co (while they are investing like crazy in their walled gardens, of course).
Subscription online software for consumers was not a big market until pretty recently. As a matter of fact, from the top of my head I cannot think of any such software that is very popular for consumers. Or do you refer to subscription entertainment?
I like their product. If I buy it: do I own it or do I rent it from them? Obvious next question: If I own it, do I have right to install whatever I want?
The same is true for apps on a computing device. Installing new ones is common, not rare like an engine swap in a car. Most people expect that if the app is compatible with the hardware you can put it on the device, regardless of who made it or where you got it.
2) You make it sound as if it weee merely technically complicated to jailbreak the device, whereas the truth is the only reason it is possible at all is because Apple has thankfully sometimes made mistakes in their security. There is no reason to believe that this should be possible at all.
Then, these companies go further: they attempt to weaponize the DMCA anti-circumvention provisions against users to claim it is actually criminally illegal to take advantage of such implementation mistakes.
The problem here isn't Apple having to go out of their way to do anything... the situation is the exact opposite: Apple has gone super far out of their way to PREVENT people using third-party parts or modified software, and that can be, should be, and in some cases already is illegal.
On second thoughts, I better delete this soon in case BMW gets some ideas
Neither Apple, nor Google, nor anyone else, should be able to control so many businesses. It's the same reason Booking.com is in trouble. they're so big, they affect nearly every hotel in the world. That's too much power over too many business.
Retail markups were much higher on physical software.
There’s a reason most developers moved in droves to Apple ecosystem for amazing APIs, software and hardware, abandoned Symbian/blackberry/etc and had no issues with the 30% fee since they instantly got market access to millions of consumers.
30% was never an issue to begin with. People just feel today that everyone should get access to a marketplace with billion users for free, often forgetting what it took to build this market in the first place.
Exactly
> often forgetting what it took to build this market in the first place.
Don’t give a fuck
The confiscation of 30% of all revenue earned online has always been an issue for any company and developer here on planet Earth.
There are countless useful apps and companies that will never serve people's needs because it is not financially feasible to run a business where your total revenue is confiscated to the tune of 30%.
It has always been an issue. It's just better than the status quo before the iPhone.
> People just feel today that everyone should get access to a marketplace with billion users for free, often forgetting what it took to build this market in the first place.
1. It's not for free. Users (and developers) pay for it when they buy the iPhone. iPhone revenue is 3x Apple's R&D expenses. That is, iPhone sales alone cover the R&D on every single of Apple's products: from iPhone and iOS to Macs and MacOS, AppleTV, HomePods, Vision Pro, all of Apple's software running on those devices etc.
2. This market was built in no small part by the actual developers you now so snidely dismiss. iPhone is nothing without the app ecosystem.
I think it's harder to argue that Sony shouldn't be allowed to take a cut of game sales on the PS5 outside of "well we all decided collectively to make that illegal because we don't like it." And honestly that's plenty enough for legislation but it's not going to be without consequences because Apple will extract their pound of flesh somewhere, can't have profits go down.
> The commission says a fee for such matchmaking is justifiable but what Apple charges goes “beyond what is strictly necessary”.
The EU commission is a hair away from just telling Apple what they're allowed to charge which I don't love. Either how Apple extracts fees is legal and how much is up to the market, or it isn't. Saying "it's legal as long as the percent is small enough" is silly.
Whose market? The one that Apple controls?
Arguably PS5/Nintendo stuff is just as obnoxious... just in smaller scale. Do you really own that device you bought?
Credit card companies have had caps on their fee percentages in the EU for a long time, it's not unusual for the EU to set these limits.
I have to pay the Apple tax to reach my customers where they are, iOS.
I have to pay the Google tax to reach my customers where they are, the web dominated by Doubleclick and Google search.
Do you care that a tech company is extracting huge sums from digital markets or do you just care how? Does it make a lick of difference that with ad spend it feels like you're buying something or when you put ads on your site you never see the money they took off the top?
Technically, all pounds of flesh are the same mass :)
Everyone should care how! The how is the important part.
If there are alternative ways to access something then people are free to compete of product. That's a huge difference because competition is generally consumer friendly.
If Google starting charging site owners 30% of their revenues to index their website on Google Search, and there was no possible alternative, the EU would probably be looking at them pretty harshly too.
I can send you my Android app, no Google required.
I can’t send you my iOS app without relying on Apple.
You're mischaracterising the situation. Apple taxes 30% of all transactions made on apps other than exempt transactions. The food and tangible services you mentioned are exempt categories. Apple takes a 30% cut of all sales of digital goods and services transacted on apps on their platform, regardless of whether the goods are "redeemed on that platform" (whatever that means). Of course Apple has built a byzantine maze of carve-outs, exemptions and counter-exemptions that muddy the waters and give them great power if you're a small developer without the resources to fight them for your rights.
You write this as if Apple is the authority figure here.
Profits can very easily go down.
I agree, it's hard to argue that. Sony created a narrow-purpose platform (gaming + media) and is taking a cut for offering 3rd party games there. It's not a general purpose computer designed to be your main communication device and your key to connect you to any type of service or appliance in your world.
Sony didn't sell best-in-class TVs, then used their dominating position to demand revenue-share from broadcasters, then integrated a gaming console for the same price to crush console competitors, then created a custom plug and partnered with building companies that their plug shall be in all living rooms, then launched a watch which would only work if you also have their TVs, then started a bank and mandated that all products promoted on any TV channel must only be payable via their payment service,...
...and then when a commission started setting boundaries on its grip over the market, started complaining how the commission is preventing competition, how only Sony can ensure a secure living room and safe TV-experience, and started weaponizing its customers (with the custom sockets, watches and wallets all on Sony) against their own elected regulatory body...
Up next: digital ID and (possibly) online voting.
Those things are all pretty important for a society, right? In a sense, they are society.
Accordingly, a couple powerful entities controlling all those things ought to expect oversight from said society. It’s not hard to understand.
So no, Apple is not doing “the same thing” as other device manufacturers have “done for ages”. Not even close.
They are a victim of their own success in a way, but their shareholders have been rewarded handsomely. They’re hardly a victim like you’re proposing.
The audience of iPhone users are that market.
-
"You have something to sell on my market? Sure, here are the fees, the rules and I take a cut of all your sales"
--> "My data shows that people like what you're selling on my market, so I studied all details, decided to build it myself, provide it for less/free and compete with you. Thanks for doing the risky work of proving that potential."
"Feel free to stay if you like, your continued success will continue to educate/fund my competing product. If you leave, you have to end business with all customers, as I took measures that they are ONLY able to visit MY market"
>My data shows that people like what you're selling on my market, so I studied all details, decided to build it myself, provide it for less/free and compete with you. Thanks for doing the risky work of proving that potential.
>Feel free to stay if you like, your continued success will continue to educate/fund my competing product. If you leave, you have to end business with all customers, as I took measures that they are ONLY able to visit MY market
None of those things really affect the banking, government services, education, ID, health etc apps that the OP was concerned with. They're not selling their apps or even selling any services via their app (except for services which are incidentally forbidden from using IAP in the first place which means the 30% fees don't apply:
>3.1.3(e) Goods and Services Outside of the App: If your app enables people to purchase physical goods or services that will be consumed outside of the app, you must use purchase methods other than in-app purchase to collect those payments, such as Apple Pay or traditional credit card entry.
https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#goo...
Nor are they competing with Apple for their applications. At a stretch, you could argue that the banking apps sort of kind of compete with Apple wallet in the credit card space, but like I said, it's a bit of a stretch.
Accordingly... unlike an XBox (which only provides entertainment) smartphones need to have well considered legislation that maximizes the overall benefit to society (while still maintaining a financial incentive for innovation). There's a lot at stake.
So, I wasn't trying to cite specific examples where Apple has fallen short in these areas (though I'm aware of a few), I was making a generalization about the relative importance of the smartphone to modern economies and society. It's just not the same thing as other gadgets (even if the technology is similar). Not even close.
Of course they do. All those entities have to follow terms and conditions of Apple to reach THEIR customers/citizens, requiring them to share crucial information to Apple, the sole gatekeeper with a vested interest to maximize user-profit.
> At a stretch, you could argue that the banking apps sort of kind of compete with Apple wallet in the credit card space, but like I said, it's a bit of a stretch.
No stretch at all. The market operator also offers financial services directly, while having privileged access (as preloaded app) and a superior level of information (via user profiling) about the users needs and behavior. Other financial service providers have the choice between paying revenue-share to Apple to be integrated with Apple Pay, or have their services only surface if the customer explicitly searches for their app (all while a competitor may pay the rev-share and have higher integration/visibility from the market provider)
When people realise that Apple hasn't innovated any new technology pretty much ever (certainly for at least the last 30 years).
They always wait until something is proven in the market and then buy their way to it & lock the competition out. "Face ID" = Kinect, "we invented multi-touch" = blatant lie, vision= pre-existing AR/VR...oh sorry "spatial computing" Etc.
The argument is simply; the smartphone is the platform we have chosen because it makes our lives so much better. It does its job so well that it has become a critical part of the economic and social fabric of the country. Thus we need to make sure it's regulated (up to a point, obviously) so that the public's needs and that of the larger economy are met, while still maintaining the financial incentive for smartphone platforms to innovate.
Consider; it's possible to walk to work/banks/government offices for the majority of people but vehicles are convenient and time-efficient so that's what people choose. Accordingly, society accommodates and regulates vehicle use. Same thing for radio and television in the past... it was possible to get information and entertainment elsewhere, but people chose those mediums because they were better than the alternatives. It's because of the popularity of cars/radio/television that those things deserved regulation, nothing else.
So what is the need here? Who isn't able to access something they need access to and how is forcing Apple to open up their hardware and software platform the correct solution to that problem? And I'm asking honestly here, are there any actual necessary services that are only available on iOS? Not more convenient on iOS, unavailable anywhere else. If we accept the arguments against iOS at face value, it seems impossible for there to even be any necessary services that are more convenient on iOS. The major arguments are Apple is too restrictive, they prevent apps from doing things, they prevent PWAs from working, they disallow integrations that developers want. By all accounts, the iOS experience should be measurably worse for users in every single way for any 3rd party service. If removing Apple's restrictions was important to consumers, if it was actually harming them in ways that they didn't think was worth the benefits those same restrictions provide, Android should be mopping the floor with Apple. But they're not. And none of the arguments I've heard for regulating Apple have been because of failures of iOS users to be able to access critical government and economic resources.
The closest arguments that could be made are about things like blocking access to certain VPNs or other "subversive" applications in places like China and Russia. But of course, the proper way to regulate that would be to mandate wide open consumer access to strong end to end encryption that governments can not control or have access to. But mandating that sort of thing would be admitting that even "western" governments are untrustworthy and might need to be subverted. It would be mandating access to law breaking tools, which the EU and the US are not eager to do even here, let alone eager to step into that political battle on the world stage.
Yeah, like Sony did in the analogy above. They became best-in-class in TV and then started to dictate the rules for reaching every living room with their TV in, made trillions of dollars and then used that position to take control of other industries.
I see your point.
But there are trade-offs. Apple is doing its best to be a monopoly, and so tell them what to charge or break them up.
Or simply allow the monopolist practices to do what they do and eventually one firm will own everything.
Apple is quite literally a minority player in the EU.
The EU population is quite literally a minority of the world population.
Meanwhile the EU—a minority of the world population—levies fines based on global revenue.
Another reason the fines are based on global revenue are to get around all the income shenanigans tech companies play, or do you really believe google's most profitable country is Ireland?
>Apple has less than 30% market share globally.
The EU is less than 30% of the population globally, and only 10% of iphone sales. By your logic clearly what it does doesn't have an outsized effect on apple that needs to be corrected.
Consider Apple's very own Mac - another general-purpose computing device like the iPhone, only in a different form-factor.
Surely Mac developers must be tripping over themselves to throw 30% of their total revenue at Apple, as reward for their laser focus on privacy and security and for developing a nanny-platform that makes their users feel warm and fuzzy inside?
Surely Mac users must not be allowed to do business with literally any entity in the world without involving Apple as the gatekeeper?
Oh wait.
It's a bit disingenuous to use customer base and the number of people who develop for the platform as a excuse to bring legal action against the company. Customers know what they were getting when they bought the phones and companies knew the rules when they chose to develop for the platform.
Everybody uses a phone, for everything now.
Don't forget taking the idea from an app developer, implementing it themselves, and then banning the app from the developer that came up with the idea. Apple has done this so many times, and it's completely abusive.
Interesting
I must be living under a rock....
Have you some examples?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherlock_(software)#:~:text=So....
> The phenomenon of Apple releasing a feature that supplants or obviates third-party software is so well known that being Sherlocked has become an accepted term used within the Mac and iOS developer community.
https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/09/14/flicktype-develop...
To my knowledge none of the big three consoles allow you to install anything you want on them. They're "walled gardens" just as badly as Apple's ecosystem.
Even if technically they could, the fact that they don't is to me the crucial difference.
Regulators make a difference between general purpose platforms and dedicated/single purpose platforms.
If Apple wants to claim their devices are computer replacements, they should be regulated like it.
> If Apple wants to claim their devices are computer replacements, they should be regulated like it.
Proceeds to site one ad from 2018. Hyperbole really isn’t necessary here. And marketing determining how a product should be regulated is a sure fire way to encourage companies to get around regulation by changing your their marketing.
The Xbox kinda does: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/xbox-apps/devk...
And while unofficial, the Nintendo Switch has an exploit chain that lets you run native apps or mainline Linux/Android with Nvidia's Tegra drivers: https://github.com/CTCaer/hekate https://github.com/Atmosphere-NX/Atmosphere
So that's two of the big three consoles that technically do let you install anything you want.
It's more of a technical nuance in the Switch's case, but homebrew on Nintendo consoles is a time-honored tradition.
I used Xbox Media Player on my modded Xbox, it later turned into XBMC and to Kodi much later.
It was hardly "open". The console had to be modded to enable any of it.
There is no reason why I shouldn't be able to install Arch on either the Xbox or PS5, the hardware is 80-90% off the shelf stuff anyway.
Why can't I have a proper web browser on either? There are no technical limitations, only the walls of their garden we wilfully ignore.
Honestly I don’t know why people think they should be able to publish their software on anything anyways. I can see the iOS/android argument at least because they’re ubiquitous. But there is nothing wrong with how game consoles currently work. It’s a win for Sony/M$/Nintendo, game developers, and consumers. If it wasn’t, then games would only get released on PC (which already allows for exactly what you seem to be advocating for)
I want one with more power in a displayless box I can plug into my TV and make it my only console.
(they tried with the Steambox, but it kinda faltered)
I mean, you're basically describing the mini-pc form factor. I'm not sure exactly where the steamdeck lies but the last couple of years these laptop CPU based systems have been pretty amazing for what they pack.
No need to spend hours adjusting settings and scouring the internet for That One Setting that will make it run smoothly.
Even CP2077 runs great out of the box on it - and it's nigh-unplayable on PS4 level hardware.
The PS5 was sold at a slight loss at launch, Sony got production costs down enough to be profitable about a year later (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-04/sony-rais...).
I'm less sure about Microsoft, my understanding is that the Series X is profitable and the Series S is a loss leader. However, both of them can be put into a developer mode and you can run your own (or other people's) code.
Yes, it would now be very hard to do. But that goes back to my original point, Europe does not really care about market dominance and fairness as long as European corporations are the ones dominating. As you said, if competition and market health was the objective...what ASML does is very important and shouldn't be left to a single corporation. They have complete market control over a critical part of something that's foundational to our modern economy.
But I've never heard of a single European move to do something about that. SAP also has a de facto monopoly on entire parts of business processes and administration.
Also, apple is in many ways just as important to the US government. So nobody is going to break them up, in the US at least.
I'm not making a judgement here, I'm just saying that it's weird to expect the US to shoot itself in the foot, just like it would be weird to expect Europe to do the same. For the EU, the issue is more that Apple isn't European.
But that's not what market abuse is about. How is ASML impairing their competitors? What would breaking them up do, besides create a second ASML? You have to explain how separating ASML's IP helps the market or their customers.
> So nobody is going to break them up, in the US at least.
Didn't people say the same thing about Microsoft? "How would they get broken up over something as insignificant as Netscape?"
In any case, I was talking about the concept of breaking up large national corporations moreso than this specific case, since the comment I was replying to was talking about how the US should start looking into breaking up Apple too.
(Even then, I also gave SAP as an example, which perfectly fits the apple modus operandi of taking advantage of their closed ecosystem to destroy competition. but in a way that even apple couldn't ever dream of. And once you get into said ecosystem, you will start using the gigantic constellation of SAP products and be locked in to the extreme. Impairing competitors would be putting it lightly. Yet, no European probe either.)
Meanwhile I can't receive text chat integrated video above about 240p from iphone friends because Apple won't integrate with them. They're a shit company and I'll never buy their products again.
Additionally, how has Apple designed their ecosystem to make it "as painful as possible" to switch to a competitor? It's on the app developers whether they would charge for a replacement copy of their app on Android. Apple does nothing to prevent them from offering a "switcher" discount. All of your first party app data is syncable to your computer, and Google even offers a tool that says it can do contacts, photos, calendars, messages, apps and music. And if that's not enough, Apple will provide you with a copy of all your iCloud stored account data in the original format (for things like photos) and in standard format (for things like calendars and emails) https://support.apple.com/en-us/102208. So other than Apple themselves providing a first party tool to migrate your data directly to your new Android phone, what are they doing or not doing that qualifies as "[making] it as painful as can be to switch"
We should all want more competition but I'm not convinced "because the unelected technocrat in Brussels said so" is the way to do it.
This may not be the biggest issue but really grinds my gears because it holds back a whole ecosystem of possibilities.
One of the possibilities being total Chrome dominance everywhere. "This website only works with Chrome" situation.
So obviously, effectively all other forms of computing (including by the way, Apple's own general purpose computers). But this one single OS, distributed by one single company, for two (counting the iPad) hardware platforms, which are also manufactured and distributed exclusively and only by this same single company "has near complete control over what software and and cannot be published, and [gets] to take a tax on all software sold"?
Being kind and not dismissing this as outright hyperbole of the highest order, why is this the case? I'm a fan of open source software and hardware, so the fact that this is the case seems like a MASSIVE failure of the entire computing industry at all levels. How is it a company that was famously described as "beleagured" for decades, that supposedly needed a cash infusion by Microsoft of all companies to even stay alive, that has always and famously been singularly focused on their own vision of computing and never been particularly concerned with compatibility or openness, how have they become the single dominating player in the the computing world? How have they gained "near complete control", when the platform they supposedly wield all this control from didn't even have a software store to begin with, and their conditions are as onerous on developers as they always have been? Why did developers flock to this system? Why did consumers? It's not like this is a bait and switch situation. The iPhone was NEVER an open development platform. The 70/30 split has been there from the day the app store was announced. In app purchases weren't a thing to begin with, and when they were announced they too had that same 70/30 split.
So how in the world has Apple come to dominate and why hasn't the entire rest of the computing industry managed to come up with anything close to an answer? What is it that Apple is selling to consumers and developers that make their clearly marked and publicly restrictive ecosystem to enticing when the open options are sold right next door? And how have they managed this dominance without even being the majority? Android to the best of my knowledge as more installs, so why is Apple the one controlling the market? In what other industry does the #2 player control the field?
I can only point at [1] and say that this has always been the case with domestic computing. The parking lot giving away tanks for free never did as much business as the slick salesman selling the badly-engineered sedans with the easy UI. And that was 1999.
I guess people really like European luxury cars.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Beginning..._Was_the_Co...
Which then leads us to ask, why can't the open platforms sell the same thing? Unfortunately, I can only think of 2 answers to that:
1) They are technically unable to. It would appear Apple is right about the security and technical challenges, and making the trade offs they have is the only way to sell what they're selling. And no one can make enough money to fund developing both a fully open OS along with all the other benefits (security, streamlined payment systems, streamlined sync, tight platform integrations, whatever other things you think are part of Apple's "secret sauce"). Fundamentally "open platform" and "everything adheres to a single standard" are incompatible goals that can not be accomplished simultaneously.
2) They are unwilling to. Either none of the developers care, or they don't want to do the hard dirty grunt work, or none of the other players are willing to "share the glory" so to speak with their competition.
Tech geeks (of which I am one) don't understand what's important to non-tech-geeks. And we don't care. We're building Linux for us, and what we care about is choice, transparency, privacy, ease of configuration, etc. Clearly the general public don't give a shit about any of that, and have other priorities (e.g. does it look pretty?). So they look at Linux and see a shitshow of nasty tech, and look at Apple and see a beautiful shiny product. While we look at Linux and see a happy playground, and look at Apple and see a prison.
Before iPhone and Android, it was infeasible for small-time devs to sell apps pretty much at all. The two are in hot competition still. Nintendo etc aren't in trouble cause they just stuck to closed systems. If building platforms becomes less profitable, fewer platforms will be built, which so far has been the story in the EU.
it might be easy to blame the US and expect better when they are still struggling with lobbying against tax filing nonsense that impact every working-class person.
at the same time, the EU has been selective with these cases, and has been mostly around big tech from the US. they could do this for much more, like for printers for example. i wonder if they would lobby this hard against the domestic automotive industry, with their DLC heated seats and what not.
The reason Apple is still playing games with the EC is that they're waiting on an EU Court's ruling[1] on whether Article 6 (7), the provision that mandates free of charge iOS APIs for all developers, is "constitutional" within the EU framework itself.
Most people who call out the Core Technology Fee use that provision as one of their main arguments, and it's one of their strongest, because the "free of charge" language throws away the general idea that the law doesn't want to interfere with Apple's monetization strategies. Since Apple could very well have chosen to monetize certain local API access in the past, the fact that this provision put a stop to that effectively nullifies Apple's argument (to the courts) that the law could never have meant to actually control how they make money.
[1] https://curia.europa.eu/juris/fiche.jsf?id=T%3B1080%3B23%3BR...
[0] Intellectual property, in the Doctorowian sense of "thing that lets us tell our competitors what to do"
Absolutely do not support the US artificially limiting EV adoption by forcing prices higher to prop up a domestic auto industry that got caught with their pants down. If they're gonna sell us EVs below cost we would be stupid not to buy them all up and make them lose money. But there's the rub, they're not actually doing that, they are just able to make them cheaper.
Consumer products are only a subset of tech. ASML, Siemens, ABB, Bosch have been tech industry bellwethers for ages. Europe is also no slouch in consumers/web/apps either (Spotify, booking.com)
Face ID tech is old Kinect tech, Apple bought...an Israeli company for it (not EU, I know). But probably the biggest and most obvious example is ARM.
Spotify, Indeed, and Booking are maybe the only real examples of consumer web apps from the EU, there are literally hundreds larger examples from the US.
I’m not entirely sure how you say the DMA is badly drafted, what do think its objectives are? It’s not a “tech law” at all, it’s a market competition law that designed to deal with the unique imbalances created by large tech companies that historical competition law hasn't adequately dealt with.
And let's not forget that this standard is a de facto standard, not a regulatory one. Just because things have been done in this way, it doesn't mean they should remain like this forever.
The EU is one of the few parties which can actually bring some change.
It’s easy (and often deserved) to dunk on the trillion-dollar corporation. And regulation is good, actually. But the DMA isn’t good regulation.
I think it's abuse and I agree it should be forbidden as a class of behaviors. I would love to see Apple fined enough to deter anyone from trying what they did with Epic ever again.
No, just a sucker. They would get bankrupted so fast Airbnb wouldn't have to do anything.
Furthermore, all of the limits exist solely at Apple's discretion. Apple is essentially being benevolent, not saying they have no claim to the transactions.
There’s really very little holding people captive. The real problem with the EC’s attempts at regulation is that the vast majority of users aren’t worried about it and keep freely buying into the platform despite other viable options being available in a competitive market…
Or put another way, even though it’s free and plenty of smaller companies do, Netflix doesn’t make posts of Craigslist advertising their services. There’s obviously many reasons for that, but at least part of it I’m sure is no one should trust a random link in a Craigslist post to a Netflix sign up site.
If I didn't like AirBNB I could use VRBO/whatever else, or I could use both even.
I can understand Apple's cut for app developers who solely create apps and distribute them through Apple.
Where it becomes a problem is a large number of apps are just a way for the iPhone to connect to a larger product (Spotify, Basecamp, most SaaS companies), and I don't know why Apple should feel entitled to own the relationship with a businesses customers because they also use an iPhone when it's an ancillary part of the product.
Apple provides a custom operating system (frameworks, drivers, security updates, backwards compatibility, etc) to make that business's app function, and continue to function, at all.
You can write and maintain a website instead of an app to avoid that.
Shops could just build their own market stands to avoid their landlords owning the relationship with their customers.
Huh, that argument doesn’t seem as reasonable when applied to landlords and buildings.
And yes, many app developers don’t pay much or anything to Apple, and shops always pay rent. But here’s the thing, as an Apple customer I pay Apple when I buy my phone. Why should Apple be allowed to double dip? It never seems reasonable when ISP want to charge their customers and content providers for bandwidth, so why is it reasonable for Apple to do something similar with Apps?
I tried that route. You need an Apple developer account to get your web features only partially crippled, and the "sell your soul" part of the exchange doesn't happen till _after_ money has left your account (which is on a screen promising that you're done, and the payment is the final hurdle, not that it would make it much better if you _knew_ you were paying for the opportunity to perhaps complete the transaction if Apple deems you worthy and accepts your additional offerings).
Maybe that's fine in your world, but the status quo isn't as simple as "just write a website instead."
Perhaps you’re assuming I mean a PWA, Apple sign-in, or Apple Pay? I believe those are non-standard integrations with the OS provided by Apple, for the convenience of developers.
It would be great if everything was standardized from the start, but standardization can also hinder technological progress and creativity. It’s a trade-off.
Perhaps I’m in the minority here, but I don’t bemoan paying for development tools. I pay about $60/year for a JetBrains IDE because it makes my life easier and that’s how I make money. Devs pay for APIs and SaaS to make their lives easier too.
Other developers would love to provide these integrations (as they could on any of the more open platforms), but that option has been cut of by Apple as well.
And what does 'non-standard' mean here? We're talking about web standards that are about a decade old at this point.
Apple locks decade-old web features (say, e.g., web notifications) behind a contract wall and handles that contract wall exceptionally poorly, taking your money in exchange for goods and services only to later add additional terms and requirements and not refund your money without two court orders.
It leaves an especially sour taste in your mouth when you note that users paid a premium for devices which, at a minimum, ought to be able to do decade-old web things. Developers are paying for the privilege of maintaining that facade.
Separately, yu're not paying for development tools; you're signing a highly imbalanced contract (with a well-funded entity with a history of enforcing those imbalanced terms) and paying to give iPhone owners the sort of software they were implicitly promised when buying a top-of-the-line phone. "Apple Pay" is even worse since that same contract forbids you from using other options; it's not for your convenience, it's just obfuscated pricing with some legalese in the mix.
For the record, paying for development tools is fine. JetBrains offers actual benefits instead of abusing the courts for rent-seeking. Plus, their contracts are (comparatively) very reasonable (and also rarely enforced, so terms you don't like are less important). You could probably put together a financial argument against Apple's behavior here, but that's not their worst offense by a long shot.
Because if these companies would think there's even a remote chance of this being legal, I'm sure they'd not shy away from investing even more trillions in making some sort of digital enforcement system.
Would be fun. Your power outlet only providing power to certified devices! All in the name of protecting consumers of course.
> If I didn't like AirBNB I could use VRBO/whatever else, or I could use both even.
Read what you wrote again, and think about it. If you don't like AirBnB you can use one of the competitors, but there are no competitors to Apple? Would you consider that you might have a blind spot to something very obvious?
Phones, for many people, are something they will use for years so they're essentially locked in a lot of the time. It's more like long term rentals, where the renter usually gets stronger protections too.
If you say that the App Store is an extension of the iPhone and you're buying into that when you buy a phone, sure I can see the argument that the App Store by default has no competitors on the iPhone and people are agreeing to that when they buy an iPhone/develop for the iPhone, and so the competition is Google (and by extension the Play store.
I just don't think we should accept the tight coupling of hardware and software distribution by default though.
Even then if you do, the strongest argument for Apple gives us a duopoly that both exhibit strong anti-competitive behaviours.
I do have some sympathy for Apple here though. When Nintendo takes tight control over distribution on the switch is that also a monopoly? When your product essentially becomes a utility though I think some form of regulation ends up being good for society as a whole.
There isn't enough competition. Apple is in a monopolistic market position. AirBNB isn't, at least not yet. That's a contingent fact about the current state of affairs, but I think it's true - there's a lot of pressure to be on Apple, whereas there's not much pressure to be on AirBNB.
The effect of AirBnB on everyday life of people and the economy is in my opinion at least a thousand times larger than any effect that Apple has.
How do you figure? I'd say the effect of AirBnB is pretty much zero; they're an interchangeable provider in what's fundamentally a commoditised business. If you can't or don't want to go to an AirBnB then you go to OwnersDirect or Booking or Agoda or worst case someone's individual website, and you have a virtually identical experience. And if you're a property owner you also don't care and probably list your place on a bunch of different sites.
A normal worker today in the US or Europe could if they want afford to buy all top Apple devices or equivalent PC devices, as well as every paid app on the App store. That same normal worker in the US or Europe today can never afford to buy a home, unless he/she goes into lifelong debt, or gets help from family that owns real estate.
That has very little to do with short term rentals, and even less to do with AirBnB specifically. Much like "foreign investors", it's just a convenient scapegoat when the real problem is basic supply and demand: there simply isn't enough housing to go around.
> A normal worker today in the US or Europe could if they want afford to buy all top Apple devices or equivalent PC devices, as well as every paid app on the App store. That same normal worker in the US or Europe today can never afford to buy a home, unless he/she goes into lifelong debt, or gets help from family that owns real estate.
And yet Apple's annual revenue is about 30x AirBnB's, and the numbers are similar for profit. That should tell you something about how much of the device/app market Apple controls compared to how much of the housing market AirBnB controls.
Today, the heirs will instead keep the inherited home, rent it out seasonally on AirBnB to earn a little money, keep any mortgage they have on the place they live, and reap the value increase of their AirBnB unit every year. That value increase can be used as collateral for many things. In the industrialized world, your yearly salary (value increase) is much higher from earning real estate and doing nothing, than it would be from working any skilled job. AirBnB is an important piece of that whole equation, because it makes it much easier for people to hold onto extra property instead of selling it to somebody who needs a place to live. There is no shortage of housing.
> And yet Apple's annual revenue is about 30x AirBnB's
This has nothing to do with it. Real estate prices and values are much more important in the daily life of people than any consumer product such as Apple. AirBnB does not own the properties, but if you add up the value of all properties listed on AirBnB, that amount would dwarf not only Apple, but the entire stock market.
Money is fungible, finance people can do this kind of transformation with anything and do, all the time. Ever heard of a company or rich individual doing a sale-and-leaseback transaction? That's the same thing in reverse.
> In the industrialized world, your yearly salary (value increase) is much higher from earning real estate and doing nothing... There is no shortage of housing.
On the contrary, the shortage of housing is the underlying reality that makes all the flashy transactions on top work. Why does the value of housing keep going up? Because demand is going up and supply is staying approximately constant, or even going down. Everything else is window dressing.
> if you add up the value of all properties listed on AirBnB, that amount would dwarf not only Apple, but the entire stock market.
Maybe, but those properties are listed on a bunch of AirBnB competitors at the same time. AirBnB has very little market power over them; if they try to hike up the rates or anything they'll lose their customers. The real estate market is important. AirBnB isn't.
The same simply doesn’t apply to App on iPhone. AirBnB would only be equivalent if it was impossible for hosts to list their properties in multiple places and AirBnB customers where effective tied into the AirBnB platform where they would have do something ridiculous like change their electricity supplier to use an AirBnB competitor (because for some reason AirBnb have figured how to build a tightly integrated ecosystem of utilities and services that effectively force you to use them all together to get the most benefit).
And I say this as someone who’s fallen a long way down the Apple rabbit hole, and quite likes it down here. If multiple options for app stores and payment mechanisms existed, I would probably stick with Apple and happily pay a premium, because I value the convenience and peace of mind that comes from only having to trust Apple with my data. But that doesn’t mean that I think Apples behaviour is any reasonable or acceptable.
If you DO care about this, implementing this regulation as is will only make the software worse, not better. Apple did a good job so far keeping developers in check.
I think Apple users are underrepresented here, more developers here.
- Any case where Apple builds a competing product and charges a cut to the competitor that makes them structurally unable to compete is blatantly anti-competitive, i.e. Spotify vs Apple Music - Any case where the margins of the business do not support Apple's 30%, i.e. Kindle (let me buy my damn books in the app) - Any case where Apple has prohibited something for seemingly no reason, i.e. game emulators till about a month ago under regulatory pressure - Any case where Apple's unilateral control of pricing meant that certain business models couldn't be tried, i.e. subscriptions for a long part of the App Store's history, upgrade pricing today etc - Any case where Apple has prohibited anyone from competing with it. iOS Safari is bad and Apple has insulated it from competition by prohibited third-party browser engines. Note this hurts both users who'd rather use Chrome or Firefox and users who use Safari who don't benefit from Apple having to compete.
I don't disagree that there are benefits to Apple's approach. I just think that they should be heavily scrutinized because of iOS's import.
Allowing engines while sounds good, in today's reality will result in absolute Chrome (Google) domination. They will be setting web standards unopposed. And they are an Ad company. So again, this is good for me.
https://usa.visa.com/content/dam/VCOM/global/support-legal/d...
What they didn’t allow previously was adding a surcharge to credit transactions. But regulation forced them to allow that as well. So not the best example overall.
This is just one of conditions, being "allowed" is very limited.
Not a computer or operating system I paid for.
> Amazon doesn't allow suppliers to offer direct sales to potential customers.
Not a computer or operating system I paid for.
> Even Visa and Mastercard officially don't allow merchants to offer discounts for cash transactions (although many do anyway). Etc, etc.
Not a computer or operating system I paid for.
In fact in every single case you listed a free platform that makes its money by charging fees per use. This is radically different from Apple's model.
Apple makes computers. Apple iDevices are some of the most expensive computers on the market. Apple cloud services are some of the most expensive cloud services on the market. Apple's operating systems hardcode the software to the hardware, meaning neither phone nor laptop can be upgraded. In every single case these are expensive devices and services that people already own. They should be free to download whatever software they want without a monopolizer telling them what's allowed to run on them.
I think many users would continue to use in-app purchases as it is a convenient way to pay, but the actions from Apple are poor and heavily restrictive. To save yourself some money, if subscribing, always go to the website, you'll get a better offer than within the app and more of your money will go to the publisher.
As a user of some of these apps, I have always wondered whether there is some exception clause for, say, retailers of physical goods, utilities, and anything remotely to do with transportation. My anecdata suggests it’s more common in the EU and Asia, but a year and a half ago I was standing by the curb in Sacramento cursing the parking meter app for not taking Apple Pay.
> 3.1.3(d) Person-to-Person Services: If your app enables the purchase of real-time person-to-person services between two individuals (for example tutoring students, medical consultations, real estate tours, or fitness training), you may use purchase methods other than in-app purchase to collect those payments. One-to-few and one-to-many real-time services must use in-app purchase.
> 3.1.3(e) Goods and Services Outside of the App: If your app enables people to purchase physical goods or services that will be consumed outside of the app, you must use purchase methods other than in-app purchase to collect those payments, such as Apple Pay or traditional credit card entry.
Consistently these anti-steering rules are what gets Apple in trouble all around the world. It's the one part Apple lost in the US Epic case, and it's the EUs first point on their breach. Apple has done this to themselves by being so stubborn and refusing to budge an inch on how they run their platforms. The tiniest concession years ago could have avoided all this regulation on them.
Solution: create your own alternative to open market - be the market (and write rules for it)
Apple will do a lot to keep this cash cow at peak performance.
History tells us that the institutions with laws, guns, judges and a monopoly on violence rules over "smart people" who just make phones.
Apple's only retaliation is making life shit for EU users or pulling out of the EU market which they won't because that would leave a China style vacuum that Google or a local EU competitor will take after a period of painfull transition for the EU consumers.
The EU consumers can live without iPhones. Can Apple's shareholders live without Eu's profits?
It's not gaslighting. People work for the company, and they decided. You're dehumanising them by saying they aren't human.
And people who knowingly leverage their gigantic corporation to make life worse for others in the name of shareholder profit can and should be dehumanized. There nothing humane in hurting others for greed.
Like the local book club, or Hamas.
Anyway, you don't have to look very far to see the many horrible things done to humans by other humans.
The word "humane", in my view, defines how we would like to be, not how we really are.
Technically a person is just a bunch of cells, but those cells are interchangable, replaceable (indeed few last more than a couple of decades), and if you lose an individual cell nothing happens to the person, but the cell can’t function.
we don’t say the cells make decisions, we say people do. With a corporation it’s the corporation that makes the decisions, not the individual cells.
The population of a city or a nation is similarly greater than the sum of its parts, and there is an emergent property in both cases. Same as an ant colony.
2 things though.
The constituant parts of a corporation are human, unlike an ant colony. So in that sense they are human, and ant colonies are ant.
Regarding ourselves, we absolutely are an assembly of cells, it wouldn't be wrong to define us as such, although not terribly convenient. But interchangeable the cells are not, well not like a person to a corporation.
A cell can't move from one person to another, if it somehow disagreed with a decision of the central nervous system.
The human brain is made up of billions of cells, and decisions of the brain are heavily dictated by the digestive system and various hormones. A corporate board is at the most, what, maybe a few dozen people? There isn't the same level of responsibility of each component.
Finally, if the entire corporation decides as one entity, how to punish for wrongdoing?
Should every component of the corporation be put in jail if the corporation kills people (looking at you Boeing), or just the humans at the top that made those decisions?
Another way of looking at it: Is the entirety of the Palestinian population responsible for the decisions of the dozens of humans that are the Hamas leadership?
The problem is considering "Apple" itself a person, as corporate personhood does. Thinking of companies, even in limited contexts, as a "person" allows the individuals actually making decisions to be largely immune from liability on a personal level. Maybe that should change.
And hurting other for greed is surely not humane, but it is very much human. Big difference that e at the end.
I think you have an incorrect model of the incentive structure and actual power dynamics of publicly owned corporations.
Even the CEO has to answer to shareholders in the end.
- it is Apple vs EU
- US gov has guns and influence and various levers
- US gov will definitely protect Apple from guns of EU (so regulator with guns is a bit mute point)
- Apple is important to americans (I think they feel it’s their symbol or something), so officials in US gov might think it’s good opportunity to grab some political points.
- US gov might act to help out Apple in this dispute (Nothing like a war, but some slight nod or handshake; maybe via diplomatic backwater; maybe in exchange for something)
Though most probably apple will give “something” even if minor change in the rules, at least just so EU would not loose face, to keep relationship friendly. (But it will be move in the right direction)
https://www.theverge.com/24107581/doj-v-apple-antitrust-mono...
The US might act in various ways to protect American manufacturers, or oil industry, or other industries that are responsible for a lot of jobs in the US or are a strategic resource in some other way. See the 100% tax import for Chinese EVs. The US government doesn't care about Apple. Apple's economic impact is basically irrelevant for the US, because it doesn't provide a noteworthy number of jobs or any significant supply chain within the US. Apple's use as a strategic resource is completely irrelevant based on their antagonistic behavior towards the US government and they've shown themselves to be as eager to comply with Chinese laws as they are to flout US government policies.
I'd maybe see the US do something to protect Microsoft, with its deep ties to the military industrial complex, or Intel, which has both these ties and is clearly a strategic resource because of the advanced chips it provides, but really only if there were an existential threat that would also prevent Microsoft or Intel from performing their necessary roles in the US economy, the military and in US foreign policy.
But to suggest that US guns are in any way relevant, or that the US would bother trying to protect Apple, is frankly absurd.
The EU has smacked down Meta, Google and Microsoft already for things they felt were anti-competitive. The US didn't give a shit. Why would it be any different here?
The real problem is that some of these mega-corporations can drag things out so long legally that the end result barely matters. :(
Government regulation are kind a opposite side of that coin.
That's quite a large loss. Esp. given that there's another option - stay on the EU market while conforming to its rules. That will lower the profits, but not by that much.
Losing Europe as a market would have larger consequences, though. Software produced in EU would have worse support on Apple, people even in US having connections with Europeans would start installing alternative messengers etc. Apple's strength is in its network effect, cutting out a major part of it would be disastrous.
So yeah, the EU is bound to be a big number but it isn’t 25%. The biggest economies in the EU are Germany, France, Italy, Netherlands, Belgium? Big countries outside of it but included in Apple’s “Europe” catagory include the nordics, UK, Switzerland, Turkey, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and probably something else.
Even if the EU makes up half of what Apple calls “Europe.” A fine of 10% of worldwide revenues is way beyond what the EU contributes to the bottom line. There’s no way Apple wants to take the nuclear option but if the EU threatens them with big enough fines they might think about it.
This one is a big stretch. Sweden, Denmark and Finland are part of the EU, while Norway and Iceland are part of the EEA where the DMA also applies.
Most people in Europe use Whatsapp or FB Messenger, so they don't need Facetime or Apple Messages - major selling points of the Apple ecosystem. Alongside that, only 6% of people in the EU use macs, which further shows how Apple's ecosystem does not have a solid foothold in the EU.
Similarly, my experience is that software produced in the EU commonly has worse support on Apple, including at companies I worked for. Again, that's already the reality. This fact was sometimes raised as a reason the apps had difficulty getting traction in iPhone heavy markets like the US.
There are reasons for Apple to stay in Europe but these aren't the reasons. I've commonly observed that the iPhone is more of a status symbol in Europe than in the US (where it is usually just the phone most people buy by default), which creates different market dynamics. In the US good interoperability with other iPhones is more important because that is a primary reason people buy them.
Americans in Europe like you, or Americans in the US? Because for the latter, the statists would disagree, as in most use iPhones and just default to iMessage.
[1] https://daringfireball.net/2024/03/more_on_the_eus_market_mi...
Indubitably it would hurt Apple a lot if they lost a quarter of their revenue, would it not?
This has been observed and written about since at least the 18th century
This is also why Nintendo (when they moved into video games) set up their business model as platform-holder, not just game developer. And their own games are primarily there to seed the platform.
But Apple is not subsidising phones in any way.
Developing first-party games costs more money, to both Nintendo and consumers, so it's the opposite of a subsidy. But they're compelling enough, they clear the purchase threshold and establish the platform on which the rest of the business is built.
The problem is if Apple's obstinance leads them to loosing much more of their cash cow than if they had just given up a little.
If something "has to be a monopoly", there is a good case to be made that you are talking about a core public infrastructure piece which shouldn't be under control of a singular private entity.
So you are talking about a technical solution to a social issue, that wont solve it.
With a common standard, the available of card-based payment providers would indeed increase. In europe, you often can't pay with Diner's Club or American Express. If they would not all have proprietary systems and were compatible, then their adoption would in-fact increase.
Naturally, not every grandmother and their dog should be able to use this standard but there must be a well-respected authority behind it. Taken to the extreme and we couldn't trust anybody we couldn't have root certificates.
There was a time when common wisdom was that telephone companies and many other infrastructure businesses needed to “obviously” be monopolies as well (sometimes state-owned, sometimes private, which is arguably the worst of both worlds). I really wouldn’t want to go back to that.
The two cards are essentially interchangeable so it is a duopoly. And the fact that they are subject to constant regulatory scrutiny without adding laws to force new entrants is why it is such a good example, it shows how well regulations can work without adding competition. To me in Europe credit cards works really great with low fees and no fuzz, I don't think that anything needs to be done about that more than is already done.
To merchants, yes, since they can't reasonably only accept one but not the other, as that would turn away a large fraction of their customer base. This is why most regulatory action happens here.
> subject to constant regulatory scrutiny without adding laws to force new entrants
There are absolutely measures taken to encourage new market entrants or at least more competition among the existing ones. (Whether they are effective is a different question.)
As one example, in the US, every debit card issuer is obliged to add at least one other brand/network to their cards, so that merchants do in fact have some routing choice. In Europe, some countries also have a domestic competing debit scheme, such as CB in France, Girocard in Germany etc.
> I don't think that anything needs to be done about that more than is already done.
I think you underestimate how unstable the current equilibrium is. The interchange cap regulation is relatively new, and I doubt that the networks will fail to come up with other ways to grow their market share and/or revenue that will, at some point, require further regulatory scrutiny.
For banking transfers there's SEPA so assuming a similar system could be set up for credit cards.
I didn't say they encouraged it, just that they didn't end it but instead added laws to cap the fees.
HTML is a standard, not a monopoly
Many countries have far more payment systems. For example, Japan, 7/11 takes Line Pay, PayPay, Merupay, au Pay, R Pay, d払い, Smart Code, J-Coin, Bank Pay, QOU-Pay, WeChat Pay, Alipay, Nanco, R Edy, iD, QUICPay, 9 different train cards, Mastercard, Visa, American Express, JBC.
Some of them you insert the card, some use NFC, some you scan a QR Code, some you show a QR code.
Some have had big discounts or "points", probably to try to get market share. The discounts can go either way. Some are for the consumer (get 5% cash back for example). Others are for the merchant (zero fees for N months, etc...)
There's tons of competition.
The job of the EU is protect and benefit the EU, not American companies. The DMA is not a “general” regulation like the GDPR that applies to all, this is a tailored approach to help EU companies.
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https://digital-markets-act.ec.europa.eu/commission-designat...
"Stay in our ecosystem or else your friends/family will stop including you in group chats, stop sharing pictures with you, stop sharing video moments with you"
Apple leverages your personal social connections against you in the US...and by and large people don't seem to know or really care.
But I strongly doubt that your business model would even approach #1 spot on S&P index.
If you are looking for advice on your business model..
> Whipping homeless people
On avg. homeless people are less competent part of the bell curve. Don’t limit yourself, toss the “homeless” restriction.
You could reduce cost by mostly just threatening to whip, and to actually demonstrate the whipping only on Mondays, just to prove that it happens.
Also, micro-management has serious downsides. It does not build trust, it eats away at initiative and motivation.
Do you also think drug peddlers are smart for entering an under supplied market?
As they should. Innovators should be able to collect a profit for their hardwork. A decade later when your company gets captured by MBA grads it's not a great thing for the consumer or the economy as a whole if they just sit there and collect rent while lobbying for regulatory capture to keep any new talent from being able to do better than them.
This. EU politicians and EU voters want the EU to crack down on foreign tech companies who abuse users data rights, use monopolies to push EU companies out of the market, and use accounting tricks to barely pay any taxes.
Therefore, the EU has to be fining Apple and Google for something. If not this, then it'll be something else.
See, the problem is that if I name one as an example, you will just fall back to silly games like "but the EU defined the term 'gatekeeper' in such a way that your example does not count". It does not matter whether the market dynamics are the same as the defined gatekeepers, whether the market shares are similar, or anything like that. Your side will shut down any debate with logic such as that. So why bother engaging?
It's like arguing with a hardcore religious person about god. "Oh, but that's not what I meant by 'god'".
>It does not matter whether the market dynamics are the same as the defined gatekeepers
Perhaps then find an example where this is the case.
The other is a governmental group formed by 27 rather different countries, all having a wide range of philosophies, cultures, corruption and mentalities.
I know which one I am more likely to get some level-headed decision which might help me.
If the EU can be said to have an agenda, it is clear from the rules - their agenda is market fairness, and the ability of new entrants to successfully compete. The DMA is a key plank of that, but there will be others.
2024 European elections: https://elections.europa.eu/en/
Includes topics such as: results, how the elections work, and what comes next.
EU tech companies want the EU to crack down on foreign tech companies. The Digital Markets Act’s standards for considering someone a “gatekeeper” seems like it was specifically tailored to exclude Spotify while binding Apple, Google, and Facebook.
Btw Netflix also isn't a gatekeeper and neither are Disney, salesforce or Oracle to name a few.
A glance at that list of 4 companies will quickly lead a person to the intuitive observation that 1 of those companies is not like the other. It's hard to see how one would classify Spotify as a "Gatekeeper" in the sense that the others are, so perhaps your observation is by design: Why would we expect the legal definition of ”Gatekeeper" to include Spotify, if Spotify is not a gatekeeper even on a common-sense level?
There will be very little harm to EU’s economy since almost all of the profits are being sent to the US anyway.
Also this/GDPR/etc. is a form of protectionism (not that I see anything wrong with that to a limited extent) which will hopefully give at least some slight competitive advantage to EU tech companies (since they really do need it) and maybe a bit more crumbs to fight over.
As many have said for years. As long as Apple is not able to explain their value to the customer, they have to rely on shady business tactics to maintain the revenue stream they became addicted to.
The difference is that smaller companies can get away with anticompetitive behaviour but there are regulations for market leaders.
What Apple was allowed to do when they were a disrupter is different from what they are allowed to do with a dominant postion in the ecosystem.
PS Saying all companies are greedy and would abuse a market position is not a moral defense of Apple’s behaviour, it’s a defense of antitrust regulations.
I can fully understand Apple's position. They created the system that customers love, developers will have to pay something to get access to those customers.
Apple doesn't have to explain to customers the value. Anybody who is buying or using an iPhone today knows what they're getting.
They want to maximize their revenue, just like any other company and there is absolutely nothing else to it.
> Anybody who is buying or using an iPhone today knows what they're getting.
You don’t get to pick and choose which features do you want and most people don’t really care.
Anybody who is buying or using an iPhone today knows what they're getting.
That’s what allows Apple to abuse their position as a quasi-monopoly (as a platform for app developers adjusted by user spending they are effectively that in multiple markets).
> They want to maximize their revenue, just like any other company and there is absolutely nothing else to it.
Oh, I had no idea.
> You don’t get to pick and choose which features do you want and most people don’t really care.
What? Iphones have been around for more than a decade, it's well known among customers how they work and there are plenty of options from other manufacturers.
Any store that can will take a cut from producers, whether that is a physical store like your local supermarket, or a digital store like Apple's.
The question is why Apple users are so much more willing to spend money on software than users of other platforms, and why hackers hate that so much? How much money can an independent or boutique developer earn from Linux or Windows users, compared to Apple users?
That doesn’t matter that much (when taking about app developers) compared to how much money they are spending. A single iPhone user in the US and other rich countries is worth a dozen of Android users in India/African countries etc.
Also even if not literally a monopoly they can effectively behave like a monopoly and abuse their position because no tech company targeting consumers can afford to not have an iOS app.
> What? Iphones have been around for more than a decade, it's well known among customers how they work and there are plenty of options from other manufacturers.
Not what I meant and not how it works. I’m using an iPhone in-spite of their abusive practices and restrictions because their other features/advantages compared to Android outweigh that in my case. It’s basically a shit sandwich…
> why Apple users are so much more willing to spend money on software than users of other platforms
Because they have more money?
> How much money can an independent or boutique developer earn from Linux or Windows users, compared to Apple users?
Yes, that exactly what I’m saying. Apple won (clearly because of the merits of their products) and now they can squeeze developers and consumers to a very high degree without any negative consequences. That’s how monopolies (of course it’s scale, Apple is not literally a monopoly, for that matter neither was Standard Oil back in 1906, they had a comparable market share to Apple these days) work regardless of how exactly they became one, they get to keep all the market surplus that would go to consumers in a more competitive market.
I think this quote illustrates well your perspective and the general perspective of hackers here. Apple users spend more on software because they're just so dumb and don't know how to compile their apps and set up a self-hosted solution.
I can only speak for myself, but I'm very happy to spend money on quality software that I need to solve real world problems, instead of suffering with low-quality FOSS or ad supported software just to save a few bucks. I prefer saving my headache instead, so that I can tinker because I choose to, not because I have to. I think most non-enterprise software customers think the same way. They want something to solve their needs and are fine to pay a fair price for that. So they buy Apple products and later iOS/MacOS software.
If other tech companies cared at all about their product and their customers, they would do the same as Apple. But it's easier to sell to enterprise clients and spy on free users to sell ads instead.
Never meant anything even remotely close to that. Apple users tend to have higher incomes and therefore can afford to spend much more than average (globally) Android users. I see absolutely nothing wrong about people spending money on quality software (the opposite really and I entirely agree with your point about ad supported and OS consumer software).
> they would do the same as Apple
Well yeah, arguably that was one of the main reasons behind their success. However I don’t see how do these things contradict each other, Apple can continue producing great products while being less abusive towards developers who have much more limited bargaining power.
Most Android/Windows/Linux users in the developed world (and they are billions) spend less on software than iOS/MacOS users, even though they can well afford it. Small time developers on those platforms are left to beg for donations (that never come), or bundle their software with ads and spyware that some big company pays them for. If they want to make a living on their work.
Developers serving Apple platforms are as far as I know better off reimbursement-wise than developers serving other platforms. Apple takes their cut, but until somebody voluntarily offers developers something better I think it's misguided to go against Apple.
People say that Microsoft got hit with these kind of lawsuits in the 90s, but as far as I remember, they were threatening PC hardware vendors if they offered competitor's software – which is clearly an anti-competitive measure. Not a reply to you, just a general comparison.
Unless I totally misunderstood, and you don't want anything, and are just expressing that the universe failed to live up to your expectations. In which case: my bad, sorry for the misunderstanding!
One might intuitively guess 30%, bringing $1 to $1.30. But Apple will take a cut of this price increase as well: $1.30 * 70% = $0.91, so still losing money to Apple's fees.
The actual amount they must raise the prices is (1 - (1 / 0.7)) = 0.428, or roughly 43%.
Doing this math backwards to factor out Apple's fees yields a confirmation: $1.43 * 70% ≈ $1
You can't have that level of safety with API. Nothing prevents a dev from building an API that returns always "200 OK" when being called for a "terminate subscription" action, but that does nothing under the hood. If I unsubscribe from an Apple provided UI, I will hold Apple responsible for the execution of the action. Apple works really really hard to make sure that this trust we have in their system is warranted. As we know, trust is hard-earned, easily lost, and difficult to reestablish. So all it takes is a single bad experience to make me doubt everything else.
The current system allows Apple to control 100% of the process and to be fully responsible for everything.
That being said, Apple should allow users to perform all these operations outside of the iOS ecosystem if the developer allows it. I feel there is a clear communication here that "anything done outside of the Apple UI's is not the responsibility of Apple" (including payment / subscription management).
Laws. Existing laws prevent developers from doing that.
> As we know, trust is hard-earned, easily lost, and difficult to reestablish. So all it takes is a single bad experience to make me doubt everything else.
This is true.
> The current system allows Apple to control 100% of the process and to be fully responsible for everything.
However, that same system prevent me from buying Kindle books from the Kindle app on device, for example. Even though I can open the browser on that same device and buy them from Amazon.
Laws mean nothing to scammy developers trying to make a quick buck. Would you hire a lawyer to sue for a $4.99 refund? And even if you’re willing to spend that money, are you sure you can figure out who to sue? The scammy developer is likely using some shell company registered in some dodgy jurisdiction. Sure, what they’re doing is illegal, but the average consumer has no real recourse.
Whose laws? The US's laws? Many app developers aren't in the US.
I’m sure Apple would actually prefer that you buy the Kindle books on the app, even if they didn’t get a cut of the sale. It is actually Amazon choosing not to do it in order to dodge paying the payment processing fees.
Was that ever an option? I thought you always had to pay 30% when selling digital goods
The egregiously high processing fees from AmEx are at 3.30%.
Did Apple refund people who were scammed through apps, e.g. in bitcoin trading like [0] (first item google found)?
[0] https://www.imore.com/apple/apple-removes-scam-bitcoin-walle...
Wow thats really worrying, and all these people in here saying they love using Apple products becasue it keeps them safe.
Going directly to companies and merchants keeps this control in your own hands, nobody can block you from buying other software just because you had issues in the past.
If Apple does not control the actual subscription, but is only providing an interface for managing it, then Apple must then alert the actual owner of the subscription upon changes. There's then no guarantee that the code on the other side is properly handling that alert.
How do you think you'll do that? And then, how would it be different than with an app developer?
When this happens for example https://discussions.apple.com/thread/254901336 and you don't have another Apple device available.
I can dispute a card transaction, cancel a payment, maybe even send a nastygram to a developer. But if I dispute something with a middleman like Apple, Google, Steam, etc. I have to consider the possibility that they'll cancel my whole account if they think I'm abusing their system with any dispute.
I'm not saying the middlemen you mention there are beyond reproach, merely pointing out the alternative systems that are implied here to be more/perfectly effective aren't exactly that either.
They are saying the middleman gatekeepers are dangerous becasue if you push them too hard they can take away your access to everything. Whereas if your agreements are with the individual companies and developers then the worst they can do is take away that one app.
There are no other companies you can go to to get an app on your iphone.
If a DRM store drops your account, you often do. (I think some of them do have a limited account type, so they will no longet let you transact, but you can still use the content you didn't chargeback)
I view Apple in much the same way. I don’t trust most developers, and part of what makes me willing to go out on a limb and throw a bit of money their way is the knowledge that I’m not gonna have to go through a whole path of dark pattern bullshit when I want to modify or cancel my subscription.
So I disputed the charge with my real bank, which corrected the problem by refunding me.
Google told me that if I ever did that again, they would lock me out of not just my account, but any future account using Google payment methods that was linked to me. That would make my phone service and the Google Play Store unusable. That was the beginning of the end of my relationship with Google services. So yeah...I do not trust Google or Apple as intermediaries for every payment in my life.
Canceling a check is on you since if you didn't want to spend the money you shouldn't have written the check. CC Chargeback hits the merchant hard if approved, since they fucked up. And your chance of approval is similar as with Apple.
If it's an Apple-approved unconsented fee and you keep complaining to Apple, they remotely brick your phone and your computer along with deleting all your emails, your family photos, and your contact from everyone else's phone.
Their spite fee for alternative payment processors being almost equal to their own payment processor fee, though, kinda shows their goal is just money anyways.
Having said that, I don't think figuring out how to use Apple Pay and Paypal is that hard. My friends use all kinds of payment processors.
Apparently, the charges were on her credit card but associated with another Apple ID.
We did a charge back which was successful. Now, I'm just waiting for the inevitable locking of her Apple ID. Luckily, she has already created a new one, but if the same thing happened to me I'd be in serious trouble. In my case, simply creating a new Apple ID is not an option.
It's really scary.
I think the EU's solution will make us both happy: you don't have to do business with companies that don't offer Apple pay, and I don't have to do business with companies that do.
Apple pay provides the exactly same functionality without the lock in. Same with Google pay and even Samsung.
They haven't (and obviously won't), but the intent is clearly to eliminate any criticism of Apple from within apps, while also making sure that there aren't any "leaks" in the system from which money could escape that they want their fingers on.
(except for privileged companies like Netflix and Amazon)
Well, yeah. When it's your only goddamn choice it sure as shit becomes that. I can guarantee you it can be done for much, much less than 30%. But apple won't allow it.
Isn't that funded by iDevice and Mac sales? Because Mac sales sure as hell aren't going to MacOS development...
You have it completely opposite.
The argument is that the user should be given full power and permission over their own device that they own, and should be allowed to choose, on their iPhone, to install whatever they want.
If a user doesn't want to install an app, thats fine. But give them the choice to do so.
> Don’t force me to install another App Store
Then don't install another app store! Just don't do it!
This is a bit like banning free speech because sometimes not the whole story is told.
Surely because they think, "We're Apple, this is how we do things." But honestly, there's starting to burn through a lot of the consumer good will credit they have built up. They're just another "shareholders first" company now.
As a user, it’d just be irritating noise to have this start showing up in apps, unless buried in some little out of the way link somewhere like other unimportant things like the supposedly legally binding t&c all these apps pretend we’re reading.
Messages like this (“go subscribe somewhere else to get a lower price”) also confuse the hell out of e.g. my dad and prime them to fall for scam messages.
For one thing, nobody reads that stuff and secondary, after a few months people forget the details of where and how they subscribed to things.
So it absolutely would lead to an increase in support calls to Apple as people ask why they can’t manage a subscription through the App Store. Even me, who generally does keep track of this sort of thing, completely forgot through what service I first activated an HBO subscription and it was kind of a hassle to cancel it since, it turned out, I had set it up through Roku and I haven’t owned anything Roku in 6 years so didn’t think to look.
A blanket ban is overdoing it though, and is just a lazy (and conveniently profit maximizing) way to stop it. I’ve long felt that what Apple ought to do is maintain a codified standard of bad behaviors that address the specific dark patterns they are worried about and just hold that over developers’ heads to retroactively punish abuse rather than having a default posture of being adversarial.
The problem with doing that is that it likely results in a game of Whack-A-Mole with malicious parties. See for instance Google regarding SEO.
This seems like a reasonable compromise. Allow Apple to tell you what you won't get if you leave their store, but otherwise let consumers choose.
> Have they ever specified any reason why they prevent users from finding this out?
The reason is that every major retailer has anti-steering or most favored nation agreements with their suppliers, and Apple thinks they shouldn't be banned from it when everyone else does it. Applied to physical retail it does seem pretty absurd, e.g. The Cuisinart blender box at Target says it's 10% cheaper at Wal-Mart.
This is more like Target prohibits sellers from ever notifying you that there's a sales price at Walmart if you're looking for a deal. You're not allowed to push deals for you're own product during Black Friday or similar.
Frankly. I donno where the quote about the "do not tell about sales is at." I tried to read the legalese and got stuck on:
7.3 "You may also distribute Your Applications ... within Your company, ... on a limited number of Registered Devices (as specified in the Program web portal)" Wait. What? My own company has limited internal distribution on my own app?
7.6 "Except for the distribution of ... Licensed Applications through the App Store or Custom App Distribution, the distribution of Applications (using Section 7.3, 7.4, 7.5) ... and/or as otherwise permitted herein, no other distribution of programs or applications developed using the Apple Software is authorized or permitted hereunder. You agree not to distribute Your Application ... via other distribution methods or to enable or permit others to do so." IE, you cannot go out on the street and "share" this app with someone, or give it to them, or similar. And obviously not 3rd party portals.
9.2-9.3: "You agree to protect Apple Confidential Information using at least the same degree of care that You use to protect Your own confidential information of similar importance, but no less than a reasonable degree of care." ... "Apple will be free to use and disclose any Licensee Disclosures on an unrestricted basis without notifying or compensating You." Note: Licensee Disclosures include All Data. You agree to put Apple's data in a vault, Apple agrees to copy your app.
If apple want to give up platform ownership and be a retailer, the EU wont have any complaints about them not allowing steering in their app store. Meanwhile Apple's app store would become one of many options rather than the default and only, so steering is moot.
Obviously that's not going to happen, hence they are going to have to hash it out until it's not longer anti competitive or be broken up forcefully.
Well, I don't think that should be allowed either. Especially when the retailer has enough market power that they can bully the supplier into accepting unfavorable terms, like say Amazon or Wal-Mart.
If a retailer takes a bigger cut, it shouldn't forbid you from selling it cheaper elsewhere.
Apple's restrictions are so deep as to dictate the very way we choose to monetize our apps. And all the fearmongering about choosing to publish to an alternative store. It needs to stop.
If you control the software of the hardware you sell, you must refund with the inflation adjusted sums the users at any time they return their hardware.
This way, companies can choose if they are renting platforms they deliver their services like the TV boxes some cable providers will rent, or of they are selling products and the users can choose to do whatever they like with it.
The makers can still provide and and sell services on devices they built but they will have to be good at it.
Alternatively, they can sell the devices as today and provide a method to install any software the user wishes and even to remove iOS from the device. I guess they will be required to produce a basic documentation on all this so others can create the alternative services but wouldn't be required to modify their own software and services.
Anyway, maybe some depreciation calculations might be used to account for wear&tear but the core idea is that if you are selling something that works only on your other services by actively preventing competition you shouldn't be charging for the hardware that delivers that and the money you take upfront is just a fully refundable deposit to cover stuff like the consumer breaking the device or taking it but not using the services.
Early iPhones were sold only on special "iPhone plans", not because "special unlimited internet" (at least once iPhone 3G landed for sale outside USA and its shitty telecom market), but because there was a percentage paid from the plan to Apple.
Customers would love to pay the 30% Apple tax for security and the great selection of apps.
If you count the number of devices. By app store sales, the figure is maybe 50%, probably higher.
Where did you get this idea? You are responsible for what your device does on the network. It's in your contract with your carrier. If you interfere with others' ability to use their phones on the same network, that has a good chance of the communications authority getting involved.
But we're talking about apps. The worst thing an app can do is DDoS something. That would just make you run out of data very quickly. Or auto-dial numbers (Android allows that, with a permission for which the app has to ask you), you'll just rack up an enormous bill and will learn to never make this mistake again. Or spam SMS, same thing.
But I really struggle to understand how any of this relates to the distribution of apps that run in sandboxes.
Certain categories of apps aren't deemed acceptable by Google (e.g. apps with adult content, apps that circumvent copyright, some "hacking" apps, etc). If you want any of those they are easy enough to find and sideload.
There is also a big community pirating legitimate Android apps. According to some for every one purchase ten people use a pirated version.
On iOS, they just can't "legally" have an app any more, period. Some made their apps PWAs, some say "just use the website", and some (Tinkoff/T-Bank in particular) keep trying to get into the app store with those double-bottom apps and also distribute them signed with enterprise certificates.
Most of the paid apps I've ever used on MacOS are well-known and cross-platform -- the kind of thing where you'd go to the developers website directly by name. So, of course the developer is going to guide those people down a path where they get all the revenue.
And the users of FOSS apps are overwhelmingly the people who will download a DMG from GitHub releases, and change their security settings to install it -- so why bother?
But for everyone else -- the $4.99 apps that aren't household names -- the App Store is probably where these are most often purchased. Although I doubt this market is very large on the desktop -- most people just use a browser and maybe some well known software that would have come in a box 20 years ago.
The app store isn't just about making more money, it's about enforcing privacy and security guidelines for apps through the review process and through checks for unauthorized api usage.
Apple's product is privacy; they view privacy as a premium feature worth paying for, and 3rd party app stores that are the wild west for privacy are antithetical to this.
When Apple Kerberos all their services they essentially made it possible to granularly manage service availability by user, device, and region.
The EU fining schedule is so out of proportion that it creates a real business risk to Apple that may be greater than the EU market size.
I don’t think the EU efforts are as detailed or grounded in reality as the EU considers them.
As a spectator I can’t wait to follow the ups and downs of this.
> Apple's product is privacy
that's a large component of their brand, not their product.
for contrast, signal's product is privacy. (note: i'm no fan of signal)
consider that the facebook app is allowed, on the first party app store. i'm failing to see how the app store gates privacy.
Because if would harm shareholder value. You don't need a more complicated explanation about the whole situation.
And, honestly, they’re completely justified, IMO. They’ve done all the work of furnishing a customer who is ready to purchase. Why should they then have to allow us to steer that customer off of their site to complete the sale? Of course, we’re still allowed to sell outside of Amazon, but we have to do all the legwork to get customers. And, being in the midst of an effort to do just that, it’s a huge amount of work, so I think they’re justified in not wanting us to poach their customers.
>They will de-list our products if they’re available for a lower price on another site.
This sounds pretty shady
a) Amazon is implicitly admitting that their shopping platform is not so special: if customers could find cheaper suppliers of your product that would be enough for Amazon to be outcompeted.
b) Amazon is indisputably engaging in anticompetitive practices by forbidding you from even selling at a cheaper price with the only justification of "we do not want price competition to even exist"
I would automatically give the clients a rebate equal to the Amazon fees if they purchased through my site.
Amazon is giving sellers something of immense value (the opportunity to sell physical goods to a huge pool of customers who are ready to buy). Why should Amazon give that access to sellers who are trying to divert customers off of Amazon? They're not running a charity. It's their business, which they've built over decades of immense investment and effort. And the immense value of what they've built is evident in the difficulty other massive retailers like Walmart, Target, Kroger, etc. are having building similar online retail businesses.
So they are using most favoured nation deals? Whether you believe they have a good reason for it or not (I don't think they do) doesn't make it any less anti-competitive
> It's their business, which they've built over decades of immense investment and effort.
I don't care how much money and effort it takes. That's their problem, not the customers'.
They have also built it up by exploiting their workers, creating inferior knockoffs and then kicking the original off the platform, taking as much money from suppliers as possible, and introducing paid placements so that vendors need to advertise to show up even when searched for by name.
> And the immense value of what they've built is evident in the difficulty other massive retailers like Walmart, Target, Kroger, etc. are having building similar online retail businesses.
Perhaps that might have something to do with all of Amazon's best efforts to exert ever more control over suppliers. Or leveraging their success in other areas (looking at you AWS) to do things that would not be profitable otherwise in order to eliminate competition (Diapers.com anyone?).
> And, honestly, they’re completely justified, IMO. They’ve done all the work of furnishing a customer who is ready to purchase.
Amazon is just a dumb pipe for your product and for payments. Sure, they have world-class infrastructure, but it's still a replaceable service, other companies do it successfully. Some % of those customers would find you without Amazon, especially if you advertised or put your product on other marketplaces.
This mindset also allows Amazon to exploit you, because you've already decided you'll accept anything they decide to do.
"We can't link to our website" is INSANE. It means any other company can undercut you or impersonate you on Amazon because your customers have no relationship with you as a company! That's terrifying!
It's even better when Amazon undercuts you with an Amazon Basics product. As a bonus they'll give the Amazon Basics product a preferential position in search too.
I say this as an Amazon seller that competes with Amazon Basics.
But Apple aren't doing that, really. If I find a link to an App Store app on a website and install it via App Store (as that's the only option), Apple have put no effort into finding a customer. In fact, they've injected themselves into the process by requiring apps come via the App Store.
> They rejected our PDF spec sheets for having links to our website.
I miss the world wide web where you could link to sites.
> They will de-list our products if they’re available for a lower price on another site.
This is straight up cartelization and can no longer be called a "market".
The bookstore isn't the same. It would be if the book had a QR code on the back labeled "guaranteed cheaper here" - not just the UPC/ISBN.
The customer is choosing to price compare somewhere else, that's not steering, that's brand loyalty.
Because we live in a democratic society with laws that are voted on, and voters are perfectly able to decide what rules they want to live by.
If Apple doesn't like it, then they can shut down their entire company or move out of those countries that have the full democratic authority to decide how businesses run in their country.
[1] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/EN/legal-content/summary/fees-for-...
The reason it charges 1.4% more for accepting US cards is the US card fees (interchange fees). These fees are complicated and roughly five times more than European card fees [3].
[1] https://stripe.com/en-fr/pricing
[2] https://stripe.com/pricing
[3] https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/small-business/credit-car...
https://www.bankrate.com/credit-cards/business/can-a-busines...
Because the ripped off customers must keep paying. Why pay 30% more ?
Absolutely. This is the same as giving Candy to a child and saying "don't tell anyone" or your boss saying you can't tell coworkers how much you're being paid.
The fact they want to keep it a secret shows something fishy is going on, and they know it.
Not wrong.
Start as the rebel/upstart being more bold, fighting the system, disrupting, until they become big enough to become the system.
It's just different games, as a startup you can't behave like a big corporation, so you use that strength to your advantage, as you get huge, you can't act like a more reckless upstart.
1. Not very good at explaining itself.
2. Not entirely sure why things are done in a certain way, they their changes it and revert to Steve jobs's way, or they refused to change and did not understand why Steve decided on doing certain things in the first place.
3. Not a very coherent company. Still better than most other companies except may be Jensen in Nvidia.
The point being, Apple is clearly willing to use every trick and scheme possible to maintain dominance and should be regulated as such. They are begging for it.
It's very readable!
- None of these business terms allow developers to freely steer their customers. For example, developers cannot provide pricing information within the app or communicate in any other way with their customers to promote offers available on alternative distribution channels.
- Under most of the business terms available to app developers, Apple allows steering only through “link-outs”, i.e., app developers can include a link in their app that redirects the customer to a web page where the customer can conclude a contract. The link-out process is subject to several restrictions imposed by Apple that prevent app developers from communicating, promoting offers and concluding contracts through the distribution channel of their choice.
- Whilst Apple can receive a fee for facilitating via the AppStore the initial acquisition of a new customer by developers, the fees charged by Apple go beyond what is strictly necessary for such remuneration. For example, Apple charges developers a fee for every purchase of digital goods or services a user makes within seven days after a link-out from the app.
[edit] I will add one thing: right now, i'm rich enough that i wouldn't care about paying 30% less if it saves me the hassle of using a new payment processor, and i think this is the case for most people here, or even most people using Apple phones. But 10 years ago when i was scraping by, i had a phone that was given to me (not an iphone, but it could have been), and i would totally do everything i could to save 33% on anything (mostly food tbh). T=Not allowing link out and price discovery is not only anti-market, it's anti-poor.
What shops list their own markup? If I go to a supermarket I don't see what the markup is the shop adds. I just see the price here vs the price there. I did that when I didn't have any money as well. It seems to work.
Wasn’t the shop model what they copied?
These analogies break down real quick, but the center of the argument is that companies that grow too large can become "the market" and not "one actor on the market".
This is even more egregious when it comes to Spotify, which is unable to compete evenly with Apple Music. I wonder if Apple Music has to give away 30% of it's revenue to a payment processor....
If Netflix did offer in-app subscription (through Apple), and charged it at a higher rate to account for Apple's cut, it would be forbidden from telling it's more expensive because Apple takes a cut, or that it's available for cheaper on their website. Apple even forbids Netflix emailing their customer after signup telling them it's cheaper on their website.
I think that has changed now for Netflix in particular, but not for some other types of apps?
At that time I even went in different supermarkets to check foodstuff promos and sometime bought ham in a place, lettuce and mayo in another, and bread at another, on the same day. Not allowing to do that is anti-poor, I'll say it again.
Imagine that some people have only one way to access internet, and it's their phone on public wifi. What Apple is doing should be punished.
A mega corporation like Apple is much less likely to do this than a smaller company, though. Apple's quarterly dividend is literally the company communicating that they make so much money they can't think of anything better to do with it than just giving it away to the investors.
As long as the demand curve is downward sloping, there will be some pass through of Apple's cut to customers, though the fraction that is passed through will depend on price elasticity.
If you've got 10 overworked employees and you suddenly make 10-30% more money, you can hire another one or two people and the business runs better.
You can trivially find countless counter examples where prices are higher only on the app store like netflix[1], spotify, etc.. subscriptions. They don't make their web & Android users pay more just to cover for iOS users, why would they? That makes no sense. So of course the price would drop if they were allowed to steer as they already sell it at the lower price on the website, they just aren't being allowed to tell iOS users that.
And that is what Apple is getting hit for here. Not the 30% fee, but the rules forbidding developers from telling the user about alternative sign ups or purchasing locations.
1: well before Apple cut a special deal for Netflix anyway
Isn't that great for me as a customer, though?
And I wouldn't exactly call 30% + x an extremely thin margin!
Customers need a company that acts and reasons like an adult.
The EU regulations will require them to do insane amounts of custom work building a public API for Apple Intelligence. Imagine how hard it will be to make that interface secure, private, not terrible for users.
The other features like mirroring are much simpler, but still, is it worth making a public interface and taking the security and privacy risks just to offer the feature in the EU?
Every new feature in the EU is now a massive liability, so of course they’re going to be more cautious what they release.
Everyone rightly criticised Microsoft for providing such a capability and they would do the same with Apple as well.
EU would be insane to push Apple on this.
Such an app would be breaking GDPR.
Obviously not
GDPR has no bearing on what apps can and cant do, as long as they ask you permission for their use of personal data first.
No, where did you get that idea from?
Today we have decades of experience that the majority of users are not capable of making informed decisions when it comes to topics like app permissions. Especially the flow on implications e.g. allow the app to record the screen could mean your bank details are exposed.
Apple are the biggest company in the world. If they wanted they could hire 1000 developers to throw at this, and it wouldnt even dent a single percent of their profit.
Apple could very easily do this if they wanted to, heck they could do absolutely anything they want with their money and clout, but they dont.
However I believe Apple easily has the money, developers, and ability to do this if they wanted. Look at all the other amazing things they do, anyone who argues this is hard for them is delusional IMO.
Apple, as with most mega-cos, needs to be reigned in and corralled by the governments of the world. But let's be real that the EU in some of their actions has grossly overreached and offered up impractical demands, while strangely targeting only American companies.
They want to learn it won't work through their wallets.
Maybe it’s a win for both parties of Apple leaves the EU, though I’m skeptical any homegrown EU product would have any traction unless they also force Google to divest Android.
I’d love to know how much work it is for Apple to comply and deal with the EU regulatory environment.
Interesting times.
Anyone could come in.
Would be a nice enticement too.
Note how Apple doesn't leave China despite significantly stricter regulation than Google faced,
Approximately 7% of Apple's worldwide revenue: https://daringfireball.net/2024/03/eu_share_of_apples_revenu...
That's hardly "huge" especially when weighted against DMA's fines up to 10-20% of worldwide revenue plus the uncertainty risk of interpreting DMA.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/382288/geographical-regi....
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_pe...
look at the “by country” table. If sorted by mean, 2 countries in the top 10. If sorted by median, 3.
I agree that 7% of app store revenue seems low. HOWEVER keep in mind that the EU is tiny on a population level. Not a single county cracks the top ten. So maybe not so surprising…
That's a bit like saying that USA is tiny on population level because of states like Alaska.
Suddenly other governments (and people) would have a very real exhibit that life just goes on and that one company is not as important as previously thought.
In the long term this stance will become untenable if other regions come to the same conclusions. Anti-competition investigations against Apple are currently running in:
- US (https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-sues-apple...)
- UK (https://www.gov.uk/cma-cases/investigation-into-apple-appsto...)
- Japan (https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2024/06/bc2d7f45d456-japa...)
Australia (https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/new-competition-laws-n...) and India (https://www.reuters.com/technology/google-amazon-apple-lobby...) will follow soon.
It also underestimates the costs of leaving the EU or any country. In a lot of cases there are laws against leaving a countries market. I doubt the shareholders want Apple to go into such a fight.
Any extra work it requires to comply can be offset by price increases if Apple needs to recoup those losses.
I don't even think that Steve Jobs would be able to pull that one off.
Shame it's a pipe dream
"Move fast and break stuff" is very divisive, because of course 'stuff' could include optimal stuff, people, the environment, etc.
"Move fast and break monopolies" on the other hand, should, as a forum for startup aspirants, be pretty easy to agree on.
Developers are getting a very good deal for their small fee by SW industry metrics. Their apps gets displayed and sold by Apple, all things covered, no chargebacks, no running costs.
I feel threatened as a user by what EU is doing. Next thing to expect - many apps will require(!) always on location...
Some more discussion on the official commission release: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40773806
The same goes with iOS on iPad. I'm very happy that my parents can use those devices versus a Windows machine (or even a MacBook) and know that they are pretty much safe from malware.
Even now, I noticed that with the mandatory browser selection screen both my parents independently have moved on from built-in Safari to Chrome (independently), since that was the only browser name they know. And now they are in a much worse position privacy-wise than before. Which is certainly not in the spirit of the GDPR and DMA.
Simplest example would be 1st party apps only vs including 3rd party apps. Clearly there are implications around including 3rd party apps that would affect the operating system and thus user experience
iPhones can still come with Safari installed and used by default, no changes to anyones experience at all. But if I want to go to the app store, install a different browser engine, and set it as default, how does that affect any users that are just using the default device as supplied to them?
There is no reason at all to hinder this choice. It does not affect 1st party apps, or how the device works by default. It just allows choice for those who want to explore it.
No, this is not allowed and currently also not the case. When you're setting up a new iPhone, one of the questions during setup is which browser do you want to use.
Your argument would be equally true, you could just scroll and scroll until you find the app you’re looking for, but surely you’d agree the experience would be worse?
Depending on particular user design goals, the experience could be far superior at the expense of being limited.
For DMA specifically, see Apple withholding Screen Mirroring (a feature I would enjoy tremendously) from EU for fear (IMHO quite reasonable) that the vaguely written DMA could be interpreted as requiring them to open mirroring to 3rd parties.
It's been just a few months and already DMA impacted my enjoyment of my devices, no?
If you also don't care about yourself, it's worse for you but many others now have the chance to deny providers of their scummy way to make money off unwitting users.
There is a banner.
The European Commission on data protection https://commission.europa.eu/law/law-topic/data-protection_e...
There is a banner.
The press release for the current enforcement against Apple https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_24_...
There is a banner.
> the banners are absolutely not required and they are the band aid solution of websites who don't give a crap about their users.
If this is true, it says a lot about the organization running those websites.
3. Analytics cookies
We use these purely for internal research on how we can improve the service we provide for all our users.
The cookies simply assess how you interact with our website – as an anonymous user (they data gathered does not identify you personally).
Also, this data is not shared with any third parties or used for any other purpose. The anonymised statistics could be shared with contractors working on communication projects under contractual agreement with the European Commission.
However, you are free to refuse these types of cookies – either via the cookie banner you will see on the first page you visit or at Europa Analytics.
Given that analytics is used, and that has cookies that track information, they're required to have that notification somehow. That page doesn't appear to be a "developers following the crowd like sheep" but rather "the requirements of the law are followed to the spirit and letter and the easiest and most accessible way to provide that functionality is with a banner."
>the easiest and most accessible way to provide that functionality is with a banner.
I read that as 'the laziest way'.
The banner works for its requirements with GDPR and meets the requirements for accessibility.
Surely, one cannot expect that companies trying to save costs will go through great lengths to implement something that they don't know if it will work or not or if they'll get sued in the EU if they implement a different solution when the EU themselves implement it this way.
If there is a better way of doing it that doesn't lead to lawsuits, the EU's website should be the first ones to implement and demonstrate an easier and more accessible way to comply with the GPDR.
As it is, the websites of europa.eu are setting the standard for companies to follow when they want to make sure that they don't get sued for failure to comply with the GPDR for website notifications and accessibility within the EU.
I urge you to go and read it, and then come back and continue the conversation.
This is an issue I regulary face, people not being educated on what the damn thing actually is. A general catchall banner on intial website load is the laziest and most intrusive way to get compliance, but its the easiest for developers so they generally take that way out.
The way to ensure that you don't get sued is to copy the structure of the one website that you know is in compliance with the GPDR and follow their lead.
When reading the GPDR text from https://eur-lex.europa.eu/homepage.html I see a cookie banner. If it works there and that is the example of how to be in compliance with the obligations of a website for cookies? Would some other implementation that isn't done that way be risky in that the courts in Europe could decide that it wasn't done correctly?
Until the websites of europa.eu change to show an alternative way to be in compliance with cookie notification for the GDPR, banners remain the least risky (and yes, easiest and laziest) way to try to remain in compliance.
Nothing in the GPDR says "thou shalt have a banner" - but that's not the issue at hand. What is the least risky way for a company to implement the requirements of GDPR given that's the way europa.eu does it?
Honestly, I feel that Apple has completely brainwashed some people. Comments like yours abound, complaining about the dangers and disadvantages of freedom and choice. You're only a few words away from "freedom is slavery".
Then the matter of an informed browser choice. This is simply not a thing most regular people make or care about. Remember the Internet Explorer era? In this case, simply the most recognisable picture gets chosen (e.g. the only company that advertised their browser).
Anyway, OP can just inform their parents and fix this thing, if that was really the problem.
> Is Chrome really the best choice for them? Hard to know.
If you imagine this is a good argument for taking choice away from people, you are damaged. There is no freedom if you get to restrict people until they will make the choice you feel is perfect for them. Freedom means freedom to make mistakes. It's not like Chrome is explosive, and if handled incorrectly it may kill its user and some innocent bystanders to boot.
Really doubling down on the absurd arguments.
Isn't this basically what school is for children?
I don't think it's crazy that people might have a range of preferences for how "locked down" a device or ecosystem is. One end of the spectrum might be Linux phones and the other might be those Jitterbug (?) phones for old people that can only dial a few preset numbers. Android would be more towards Linux and Apple more towards Jitterbug.
But I do think Apple should be more transparent with their users, and has generally been "maliciously complying" with these regulations.
Yes, the little time we have in our lives, I really want to spend talking with my parents about topics like browser choices.
Have those discussions, educate them on choices, and it will make their lives much safer going forward.
People very often dont have a clue what things like app permissions are and just blindly accept them all. Aftrer educating and showing them, they are much more careful in checking what they are accepting.
Teach a person to fish is my motto, you should try it sometime! I dont see why that opinion deserves downvotes but there you go.
I have to explain on average once a month to family why some websites break on "the Apple internet app" (safari) and they should use Firefox or Chrome for critical stuff instead.
Had to explain again yesterday because Safari crashed to a white screen error on my wife's macbook while she was trying to buy plane tickets.
Firefox just worked.
Internet browsers are very present in 2024.
And nobody wants to destroy the ecosystem. Just make it default, but not mandatory.
Me too.
> The same goes with iOS on iPad. I'm very happy that my parents can use those devices versus a Windows machine (or even a MacBook) and know that they are pretty much safe from malware.
iOS (and Android) are very different position, security-wise, than desktop operating systems (Windows, Linux, macOS) because of the strong application isolation and permissions system. On a desktop OS ~any software you run has access to ~all your files (https://xkcd.com/1200/). Even as a die-hard desktop Linux user, we have to recognize that Apple leads in platform security, both in mobile and on the desktop. Take a look at Hector Martin’s (from Asahi Linux) thoughts on this.
> both my parents independently have moved on from built-in Safari to Chrome (independently), since that was the only browser name they know. And now they are in a much worse position privacy-wise than before. Which is certainly not in the spirit of the GDPR and DMA.
Two thoughts here: 1) the point of the GDPR and DMA is to give people the choice. In my opinion, choice is good. 2) people choosing things that hinder their privacy because they “don’t know better” is, well, an education problem.
Of course the GDPR/ePrivacy directive is notorious for lax enforcement (it’s ramping up, though) of illegal techniques and dark patterns like making it more difficult to reject unnecessary spyware cookies than to accept them. I predict the same will happen with the DMA.
Inconsistent enforcement is a feature of directives. The comment on the GDPR though is full-well valid.
You seem to be saying 'Look at all this infrastructure Apple gives you for free, of course you should pay them their cut'.
You could look at it the other way and say 'They made all this infrastructure in order to lock in vendors and monopolise the app market, thereby forcing you to pay them their cut'.
If posts on HN are anything to go by, it seems this perspective is decided simply by whether you like Apple or not!
People would rather the freedom to choose what they buy, who they buy it from, and where they buy it. This freedom of choice is much more important to a great many people than being locked in to a service 'because its good'.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=658691
The strength of Apple products and their ecosystem does not require apple forcing a monopoly on payments in their ecosystem.
If they stop abusing their position, their products will be just as good and as secure. I don't see the correlation between the article linked and that comment
I hope the EU sets a precedent once and for all with a maximum fine (10% of global revenue).
My guess is that Apple thinks this route could be used to circumvent the App Store.
Correction: then your apps will last a year before they expire. You'll still need to reinstall yearly.
I agree that the hardware requirement is bullshit and mostly unnecessary.
So if you want to develop an app for iPhone you can do it no problem, as long as you buy another apple device to code it on, pay Apple the subscription fee to join the developer program, and then you can install it on your Apple phone.
I hope they get hit hard.
In international laws there is no logic, it’s only about being strong enough to enforce your rules.
2. The fines would of course be enforced against the European Entity.
3. If they stick to the regulation there is no need to pay any fines. Taxes are not calculated this way.
4. There is an implicit "up to" whenever EU fines are stated.
This is easy to see if you want to. It's been discussed over and over. "I don't understand this thing that I refuse to understand!" is a really useless comment.
This isn't a situation where they do something unknowingly and then face some major consequences. This is a situation where they break the law, they're told to stop, they don't stop, they're told to stop again, they still don't stop. After that, rinse and repeat a few more times. 20% of global revenue sounds perfectly fair for this kind of stupidity.
No, what the EU wants is for Apple to comply with the regulations.
Nobody would have to be fined anything if Apple simply stopped playing these silly games, and followed the law.
Google's Play Store and Microsoft's Xbox charge the same as Apple's App Store.
Microsoft's Windows Store charges less, but nobody uses it store anyway.
There are lots of things worth criticizing about Apple's model, but I'll never understand the fixation on the 30% rule. They provide a distribution platform that is every bit as robust and has a much larger reach than the video game consoles, and if they want to charge the same prices as the consoles I don't see why that's the hill to die on when there are so many other things that are more obviously rotten.
Not the only one.
Meanwhile Apple forces their app store down their customers throat. And charges for the forced privilege.
Consoles are not general purpose devices. But I wouldn't mind if EU went after them as well
> Not the only one.
A) For the video game consoles this isn't true, they have full control just like Apple does.
B) Like I said, there are better hills to die on. App store monopoly is one that makes more sense to me (though I still actually disagree with the mainstream HN consensus on it).
You can still go to any physical retail store and buy a game developed by a 3rd party. Yes that 3rd Party company had to pay a license fee to release the game on the hardware but you can still choose where you want to buy that game from, including any sales or discounts that retailer might see fit to try to gain your custom.
Consoles get a pass for things that Apple gets raked over the coals for. There's clearly something more going on than just "these specific behaviors are unacceptable always", which is the simplified take that gets popular on HN.
Begrudgly and in a way that is very much viewed as malicious compliance, hence them now being investigated for it.
>but people flipped out when they announced you'd still have to pay the fee
I agree with them
When I buy an App from the app store, Apple should take a cut for providing the infrastructure, payment system etc, thats fair.
If I am buying something from a company directly from their website or marketplace, for a service they provide in that app, why should I pay Apple a fee?
Ok, but explain to me why it is ok for Sony to charge a license fee to release a game that is only sold in retail stores as physical copies, while it is not ok for Apple to charge a similar fee?
The parent's point is that HN goes all frothy-mouthed about the $0.50/download fee from Apple, and then uses pretzel logic to justify why it is ok for Playstation/Xbox/Nintendo to do the exact same thing.
No matter how hard you try to compare this to the console market, its apples and oranges. The amount of xboxes sold and the market they are sold to just pales in insignificance compared to Apples domination of the world.
Also the gaming world has a much shittier nemesis, gambling. The loot box and microtransaction scandals have overshadowed any issues with store fees. I feel if these things hadnt been so big over the last decade, there would have been much more focus on the payment issues of app stores.
As a kicker, I feel that the courts would probably argue that the console world is very specific to gaming, and therefore is a much more targetted audience. Phones have apps for everrything that run your life, hell you cant even get a bus ticket or do any banking where Im from if you dont have a smart phone. So it is much more of a lifestyle device which is required to live in the modern age, whereas consoles are purely entertainment.
It does not limit publisher in any way how they want to sell the physical copies, it does absolutely not apply to non-first-sale (depending on the structure of distribution, the box you see in a retail store might already be beyond first sale).
It also does not setup any limits on publishers activities that do not involve Sony licensed IP.
It's similar to how many vendors had revenue share licensing on their products in the past, which is legally distinct from flat percentage applied to distribution channel and limits on said distribution channel
n.b. Sony has, apparently, since PS4 sometimes been cheaper to develop for, in terms of non-revenue-share pricing, than Apple - often providing no-cost loaners for smaller teams.
source on Sony terms: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1821175/000149315220...
They have very positive mindshare with gamers but at the end of the day gaben's not your buddy either.
you'll note humble bundle isn't literally the only sales those publishers make on those games, or even a majority of their sales, and it's also something that's specially blessed by valve. if you pull that as a random shit publisher not through humble bundle you'll get kicked off.
Am I misreading this, or are you advocating for a monopoly? In what world is a monopoly better for consumers?
Not so with your average Apple device with access to the App Store, outside of maybe the TVs these days. The iPad ad that made all the headlines recently was clearly trying to bill it as a general purpose everything device with few if any such limitations. In terms of how the devices are marketed to consumers, it's night and day, and that does make a huge difference when trying to determine if consumers have been mislead by shady business practices.
Ah, this old chestnut of circular reasoning. It's not a general purpose computer because people think it isn't, so they don't use it as one because it's not a general purpose computer.
> The consumer is pretty well aware of what they're getting.
Is the consumer not well aware that iOS is a walled garden?
But regulators don't tend to write laws based on the actual tech, as much as how it gets used. That's the disconnect, but it still helps to try to understand the other point of view.
It's a platform for games.
With input devices targeted for games.
With an operational system target for games.
Primarily. Some can also play Blu-ray disks and all can stream music and movies from a bunch of different sources. The PS5 also has integrations with some social media sites and a built-in web browser. The PS5 Game Base application also lets you call and text other PS5 users.
> With input devices targeted for games.
But also bluetooth keyboard and mouse support.
> With an operational system target for games.
Did you have something specific in mind for this?
Sorry I wont indulge in this level of discussion.
Waste of time for all involved.
We know the OS is great for games. What I'm asking is why it's not good for other things (the OS kernel is FreeBSD 11).
The PS2 and 3 had full user Linux support so those were obviously general purpose PCs. They removed Linux support for the PS4 and 5 though and apparently that seems to be enough for many people here to no longer think of them as computers.
If the dividing line between general purpose computer and appliance is in how the manufacturer lets you use it, then what functionality would the iPhone need to lose to in order for you to stop thinking the iPhone is a general purpose computer?
Silly argument. All of the consoles support apps.
https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/apple-lowers-app-store-tax-...
Apple only makes concessions when it is under legislative pressure.
It's the fact that there's no alternative to get spotify, etc onto your phone that's the ultimate issue. The security of the app store in an enourmous advantage, but they're using it to extract huge premiums.
Like it or not, our phones have become the primary medium we use for news, entertainment, etc. If it were me, I'd allow side-loading of apps onto the app store, but they'd then have zero access to your contacts, unique phone IDs, and strict privacy rules. Apple could still enforce malware via the apple subscription. Essentially, they can make it like MacOS, but not allow any unsigned apps.
Yep, that's something that's better worth focusing on than 30%.
But digital goods? Thievery.
There's clearly something else going on than just the 30% number, and it's worth investigating what that is rather than fixating on the wrong thing.
The fee could be next-to-free and many would still be upset if they're not able to use their own payments infrastructure. Developers are not able to offer customers refunds on IAP or discounts or credits.
Steam demonstrates that it's not about the 30%. It shows how 30% is viable in a competetive market if it's what consumers (and developers) prefer.
I like your sibling comment's summation:
You can work for a year on an app for iPhone or iPad and then not be able to distribute it if Apple doesn't want to. This is not even hypothetical.
Apple owns 30% of your business but has 100% control of it.
Happened to my company.
At the time they had no guidelines on sending "tips" digitally, and when we asked for an exception (before building) we were granted it.
Submission day, rejected.
Cue 3 months of back and forth, which ended with "yeah, you gotta use IAP for that, and we're gonna take 30% from the tips."
So while the 30% take of the app store is likely too much, you can't really do an "imagine if" because actually prior to the software industry things were far far far more difficult.
Facing building out exactly this stuff myself using Stripe, a traditional website, building in licensing keys, etc etc. If something like the app store were multi-platform and had a bit more support around offline licensing and things like upgrade pricing, then honestly I would not immediately discount it even at 30% cut. Especially if I got some marketing out of it too.
You can argue wether 30% is the right number, but what the app store provides is definitely not "basically nothing".
Ummm. The whole discussion is that allegedly Apple is not compliant with DMA.
Smile!
♫ ♪ ♬ You're on candid camera~ ♪ ♬ ♫
Helle Thorning-Schmidt, one of the best friends of the current EU Commissioner for Competition, Margrethe Vestager, is currently on Meta's payroll. For this reason alone, the current EU Competition Commissioner should recuse herself from being involved in this role. There are other reasons, including direct conversations I have had with co-founders of Meta regarding EU commissioners, that cause me to have very little faith in these people to act fairly, or to do little other than carry out Meta's very long agenda to be able to ride on top of Apple's platform and deliver their own App Store with their own currency (remember Facebook Credits, anyone?) and completely replace iMessage etc for people who live within the mass-scale dystopia that is the Facebook-Instagram-WhatsApp Industrial Complex.
Meta is a total monopoly that causes daily harm to society, and yet this is what the EU finds itself obsessed with. These people should be ashamed of themselves. And, they should release the records of every meeting and every communication they have with Meta and its various lobbyists, and the children/spouses of these people (because they love using the family connection to avoid scrutiny, as evidenced by their hiring of various congresspeople's children in roles that make no sense).
[1] https://www.edpb.europa.eu/news/news/2023/12-billion-euro-fi...
[2] https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_24_...
Link: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_24_...