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Comment by madeofpalk | Hacker News Reader

You can feel however you want about Apple's rules and EU regulation, but I think it's pretty indispuitable how wrong it is that Apple prevents developers from explaining these rules to their users. Apple prevents developers from saying that Apple takes a % cut of the sale. Apple prevents developers from saying its available cheaper elsewhere. If Apple feels these rules are so just and fair and indispuitably correct, why does it go to such measures to hide them from its consumers?

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.

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Have they ever specified any reason why they prevent users from finding this out? I read somewhere (I think Epic v Apple) where the judge surmised that App store model was not just payments but the whole mechanism of tracking subscriptions, cancel and refunds, and standard pricing for purchases. I can understand the viewpoint that Apple customers might expect the same functionality if they purchase directly on site. But then, let the developer explain that too. "You can get this cheaper on website, but will no longer be able to cancel via App Store" is a fair enough line that can be mandated just like they mandated everything else. Think they will have to do away with it eventually, though from the outside it looks like they think if they drag their feet on this, maybe regulators won't come for other things.

> they think if they drag their feet on this, maybe regulators won't come for other things.

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.

EU's single biggest win is free and open Single Market and it will fight to keep it so. It doesn't matter where companies come from – if you look at e.g. GDPR enforcement tracker you'll see they're as eager to keep internal EU companies in line.

Yea, but that's not so true for the DMA. They're only targeting foreign companies using it.

Any evidence for this? Which big domestic company is a gatekeeper and not being targeted by the EU?

Fool me once shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

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'".

This just sounds like you don't have any examples.

>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.

Initially all companies that were defined as gatekeepers under DMA were foreign, but on 13.5.2024 Booking.com was designated as one as well. They are a Dutch company.

Let's not make it some sort of agenda out the EU: these companies are out just for themselves and however much someone likes their tech/philosophy/ecosystem, their practices are bullshit and unfair.

If Apple gets to have an nefarious agenda, then the EU may have one as well.

One is a for-profit company known for anti-competitive and cut-throat techniques, as well as expert in tax dodging over the world.

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.

The EU at the cutting edge of competition law, which is to say it is looking actively at the competitive landscape and saying "what are the problems?" then moving doctrine along to solve them. There's a lot to be said for the approach.

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.

I know it might be not be an obvious difference for people living in US these days, but there's in fact a massive difference between a megacorporation and elected government.

Who did you vote for in the EU? When were those elections?

We vote for the parliament, which was only like a week ago. Each country also votes for their government, at times specified by their constitutions. Those governments then form the Commission and the Council.

The EU parliament has a quite limited role. That's not the center of EU power.

Sure. But every institution is elected one way or another.

Just last week was one of them.

> Who did you vote for in the EU? When were those elections?

2024 European elections: https://elections.europa.eu/en/

Includes topics such as: results, how the elections work, and what comes next.

forget not the stick is also levied towards domestic to EU companies. starting with Booking.com

> EU politicians and EU voters want the EU to crack down on foreign tech companies

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.

There is plenty of competition in Spotify's market.Music is a commodity and the market is working Just fine.

Btw Netflix also isn't a gatekeeper and neither are Disney, salesforce or Oracle to name a few.

> 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.

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?

How is Spotify a gatekeeper? There's iTunes, Deezer, YouTube Music, Tidal and many, many, many other music providers.

It’s one of the few benefits of EU being a complete backwater when it comes to software and consumer tech products.

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.

The only reason is that they don't want the public to realise how greedy they are. They know the value they add is not worth the price difference to a lot of customers.

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.

Having been so close to bankruptcy seemed to have tainted their behaviour, that now anything goes to protect what in the end saved them, moreso than in other companies.

No, not “moreso than in other companies” — maximizing profits is something that effectively all companies do.

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.

Do you know any other marketplace / reseller who puts a message: "By the way, if you book directly with the provider and cut us out, it will be cheaper"?

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.

> I can fully understand Apple's position

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).

It's repeated again and again among hackers that Apple is a monopoly. While selling less devices than their biggest competitor. While having a much smaller install base for their OS than Android.

> 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?

> While selling less devices than their biggest competitor

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.

> Because they have more money?

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.

> I think this quote illustrates > 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

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.

My apologies for reading something into your words that wasn't there. It just sounded so dismissive to say that they spend more money because they have more money, which is an attitude I've often heard, and which isn't true.

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.

No, most people still do not know about how onerous the App Store rules are.

Nor how dangerous first-party services like iMessage still are, for zero-click exploits like Pegasus. The average iPhone user knows almost nothing about their device outside of what Apple directly markets to them as true.

Do you mean they don’t wan the public to know that they take 30% of sales?

Or perhaps that prices are 43% higher as a result of Apple taking their cut.

I would expect such a claim to be backed with facts.

I would expect someone who wants something from someone else to formulate a polite, specific request, and to then submit the request in a manner somewhere on the spectrum between respectfully and deferentially.

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!

Where did you get the 43% number is that specific enough?

If Apple's fees cost 30% of the price, then the actual developers who make the software must raise prices to make up for Apple's fees. How much, though?

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

They could also provide developers some APIs to register external subscriptions and purchases, and thus make cancellation and refunds available through centralised user interfaces within iOS, but they don't, because their goal isn't actually to create great products for their customers, it's to create value for shareholders, and they can more easily do that by locking users into their model.

As a user I really like the fact that Apple is the only one with my payment informations. I can safely install any app that I want, get subscription, in-apps etc without ever having to wonder where my payment informations are going.

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).

> 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.

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? Lol. Like bigger part of the world cares.

> Laws. Existing laws prevent developers from doing that.

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.

My bank gave me a $10 refund, no questions asked, for a service that wouldn't answer cancellation requests. I don't think they even dinged the service, since they tried to bill me again the next month.

> Laws. Existing laws prevent developers from doing that.

Whose laws? The US's laws? Many app developers aren't in the US.

> 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.

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.

> paying the payment processing fees

Was that ever an option? I thought you always had to pay 30% when selling digital goods

Not a single payment processor in the world has a 30% fee while also having a competing product in which they can have the prices arbitrarily low (because they don't care about the 30% fee they pay to themselves).

The egregiously high processing fees from AmEx are at 3.30%.

> The current system allows Apple to control 100% of the process and to be fully responsible for everything.

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...

> 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.

I like seatbelts but that doesn’t mean I’ll drive into a truck… I still use critical thinking when I buy stuff. But when I forget to cancel a subscription I can ask for a refund and 99% I get it back from Apple. Like 20-30% when I haven’t used the App Store and went directly to the merchant.

The worry is that after asking apple for a certain amount of refunds they flag you as a troublemaker and block you from using any of their services. This happens all the time.

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.

I just wonder why it matters to you.

Why does any of it matter to anyone? We're all just shooting the breeze with opinions on a public forum.

most of your comment is irrelevant because you assume Apple would be calling a external API, while parent means is external calling Apple API to register subscriptions. Then if you have concerns like yours you can stay within Apple ecosystem.

How would that be helpful if you want to cancel the subscription using a third party payment processor from the app store/settings(current workflow)? Apple would still have to call a third party API, otherwise it doesn’t seem particularly useful (i.e. you just get to see the status and that’s it?)

That only works if the external API is handing off the entire subscription to Apple, up to and including payments. But the entire premise is to move away from being forced to use Apple for these elements, which makes it a non-sensical interpretation. In fact, that particular interpretation is the current status-quo -- apps use APIs to create subscriptions entirely managed by Apple.

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.

> I will hold Apple responsible for the execution of the action.

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 mean, canceling a check costs money, and a charge-back (or perhaps more accurately rephrased, the request for a charge-back) on a credit card can be declined by the financial institution if they don't believe it's the correct action, and they'll usually ask you to work with the merchant first.

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.

I think youve missed the parents point.

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.

Oh, point taken certainly. But I have a feeling if a credit card issuer believes you are abusing their charge-back system, they might well nuke your account there too.

The difference is there are many thousands of credit card companies to go and get another one from.

There are no other companies you can go to to get an app on your iphone.

If the charge back is approved, by definition it's not abuse, and the issuer makes money on successful chargebacks. They also make money on you having an account there. And they have the responsibility to give your money back if they close it. Plus you're ultimately, if indirectly, backed up by the full power of the civil justice system, courts and judges and all that. It may be very flawed but let's buy pretend it's as nearly as bad as the whim of one underpaid Apple intern with no real incentives or accountability.

If a credit card issuer drops your account, you don't lose access to things you paid for with the card.

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)

On the other hand, those middlemen gatekeepers also make it a big part of their value addition to me, as a customer, to throw their weight around in my favor against all the other companies I can’t be arsed to argue with. For example, one of the reasons people pay for that AmEx Platinum card or Sapphire Reserve is specifically because you can call in the lender to do chargebacks, and the merchants themselves know that if they get too many complaints filed against them the financial institution will visit consequences on them.

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.

Google threatened to end my access to their payments system, which at the time would have caused my Google Fi phone plan to be unpayable, because they refuse to acknowledge a fraudulent charge through some Google Wallet apparently/maybe physical card at Forever 21's Indian affiliate for like $20 or $25. I have never, ever shopped at Forever 21 and didn't ever have a physical Google Wallet card. The charge was obviously fraudulent, but Google refused to help (and I also couldn't get anything particularly useful from Forever 21 other than to confirm that they hadn't integrated Google's payment method directly, so it must have been a physical card).

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.

This is why I got rid of Google Fi... Google can't be trusted with mission critical systems (I consider my phone mission critical in my life)

And if a company keeps charging you unconsented fees on your credit card and you keep complaining to your bank, the CEO goes to jail.

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.

The behaviour of a credit card company would vary enormously around the world though, for example in the UK credit card providers are jointly and severely liable for any action brought against the merchant (ie if they won't do anything you take both them and (eg) Apple to court) so they tend to be far more responsive to consumer complaints.

It's different because you only have to figure out how to deal with Apple rather than discovering a new process for every app you want to install. Far lighter mental load.

Apple doesn't legally deserve a privileged position there, because they are legally equal to any other payment processor that wants to be the "only one". Apple has no more right to be the "only one" than a competitor does.

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.

My comment isn't addressing whether they deserve anything or whether this arrangement is beneficial overall - I'm only recognizing that it's easier to deal with a single supplier rather than a multitude of them.

My wife received over a thousand dollars in mystery credit card charges from the App Store over a period of about 6 weeks. Apple couldn't explain it or provide any insight whatsoever. Nothing.

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.

As a user I really hate that I'm forced to give Apple my payment information when I want to do business with a third party on an iPhone, including the possibility that the 30% fee they take gets factored into the price I pay.

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.

This isn’t true. You can do business through Safari all you want and Apple takes nothing. Indeed I have bought Kindle ebooks on my iPhone that way.

Not for music, video streaming, games, etc. There are limits to the kinds of experiences that can be built through a web browser (especially Safari).

Do the business through the browser, view the content in the app. Netflix is happy to sell you a subscription through Safari.

Why do I have to jump through hoops but not you?

Feels like a solution to an American problem, cancelling things isn't much of a problem in EU.

> As a user I really like the fact that Apple is the only one with my payment informations.

Apple pay provides the exactly same functionality without the lock in. Same with Google pay and even Samsung.

> Have they ever specified any reason why they prevent users from finding this out?

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)

> where the judge surmised that App store model was not just payments but the whole mechanism of tracking subscriptions, cancel and refunds, and standard pricing for purchases

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.

But that’s how they decided to fund other areas like having iOS free. I still don’t understand the logic behind the complaint. If the developers don’t want to pay, why not just drop support for iOS? If the answer is because customers are on iOS then… idk respect that this is the decision of the user. Don’t force me to install another App Store or give you my card data so you can charge me the same amount and keep more profit while compromising my privacy and security

> that's how they decided to fund other areas like having iOS free

Isn't that funded by iDevice and Mac sales? Because Mac sales sure as hell aren't going to MacOS development...

> idk respect that this is the decision of the user.

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!

Apple, being part of a duopoly, should not have that power. That's all. I don't care about protecting their business or whatever the fuck else.

> But then, let the developer explain that too.

This is a bit like banning free speech because sometimes not the whole story is told.

> Have they ever specified any reason why they prevent users from finding this out?

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.

> Have they ever specified any reason why they prevent users from finding this out?

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.

Could just show "Apple transaction fees" as a separate line item instead of just the total. Everyone should be more accustomed to that than a possibly sketchy looking message.

Yeah making it itemized on the payment screen would be fine. As long as the stated amount and the final total weren’t different, like sales taxes in US stores. No “$10… just kidding now it’s $13”. But listing it on the “bill”, yeah, wouldn’t mind a bit if they were forced to do that.

> "You can get this cheaper on website, but will no longer be able to cancel via App Store"

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.

> 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

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.

They’re already playing that game through App Review anyway though. This just gives them more granular sets of punishments they can dole out beyond just “accepted” or “rejected.” It also discourages seedy developers from just opening up chains of fly-by-night developer accounts to upload scams, since they could gate a lot of these elevated API privileges behind needing to have a good reputation.

> "You can get this cheaper on website, but will no longer be able to cancel via App Store"

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.

It's close to that, and if Apple was forced to advertise the cheaper price, or the product seller themselves was then it would be.

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.

Walmart isn't a gatekeeper because it doesn't make one of the most popular platforms on the planet.

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.

My point was that the idea of anti-steering in retail is old and the idea of "gatekeepers" is new. Apple isn't unique. They are behaving exactly how you would expect if a regulator suddenly tries to stop them from doing something that was previously routine.

AppStore is not Target. At best it's a mall.

> The reason is that every major retailer has anti-steering or most favored nation agreements with their suppliers

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.

Fair or not, but it is very good business model. Smart people realised, that in open market profits will go to zero as competition increases.

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.

And who will win? Those "smart people"(I hate this word, being nefarious is not smart, and stop gaslighting us by humanizing an evil multi trillion corporation doing illegal things, as "people") creating their own market monopoly, or the regulatory bodies of large governments that can regulate those monopolies in their regions?

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?

> I hate this word, let's stop being gaslighted humanizing an evil multi trillion corporation as "people"

It's not gaslighting. People work for the company, and they decided. You're dehumanising them by saying they aren't human.

I never said people aren't human, I said apple aren't human they're a corporation.

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.

I get what you're saying, but Apple are a group of people, so they are human.

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.

Apple is more than the sum of its parts.

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.

Your way of thinking advocates for no accountability by employees. The company did it?

Agreed, there's definitely the emergence principle at work when looking at how groups of people function.

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 decision makers still have agency, but structures exist to prevent those who would make un-profitable decisions from reaching the top of the corporation in the first place. Once they’re there, their choices are constrained somewhat and (with nuances) profitable decisions are incentivized over others. The consequence is that, while individuals possess agency, we can also observe that the average individual’s behavior is predictable and in service of the corporate machine in aggregate. You can punish the ghoulish person who decided, along with a few others, to dump toxic waste into the river, while still recognizing that their actions were an inevitable result of the incentives we created for them. The most productive thing, of course, would be to change the incentives, but baby steps.

Ship of Theseus. If you replace every single human at Apple with someone different, it's still Apple. Apple is, at this point, a separate entity, under control by a given group of humans at a given time, but that can change.

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.

Looking at a corporation as a single entity from the outside it seems more like some sociopathic, mildly superhuman ai than a group of people. Of course it’s composed of people, but is that really the most useful frame to view it through? It’s nothing like a book club.

Agree entirely on principle, but nobody should be dehumanized, if nothing else because it is a very ineffective way to model your opponent.

And hurting other for greed is surely not humane, but it is very much human. Big difference that e at the end.

Modeling a group of people, answerable to yet another, even larger group of people, as “a person” is what I would call even worse modeling.

It's not that a company is a person. It's that it's multiple people, some of whom make decisions.

Exactly, and groups of people behave differently from a single person in many important ways.

Yes - they have more legs. But what they are not is a homogenised mass, all as equally guilty or innocent of issues as the other. If 3 executives do something bad, those 3 executives are to blame. And not some nothing-to-do-with-people corporation.

I agree! That's why I didn't say "are culpable differently" but "behave differently".

One of HN's biggest intellectual blind spots is mistaking explanation with justification. Looks like your comment was caught up in that.

> People work for the company, and they decided.

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.

The CEO has to answer to shareholders when it comes to keeping his job and to legislators when it comes to abiding the regulations in every market. It's a tough act to follow if you try to maximize shareholder returns while also trying to stay out of prison.

I don’t see the future, but argument for Apple could go like this:

- 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)

Did the US attack China over all the regulations Apple and Google have to fall in line with to be compliant over there?

The US might have less of a leg to stand on vis-a-vis Bytedance absent China's examples of how to do it.

The US has filed an antitrust case against Apple, which pretty much denies this whole argument.

https://www.theverge.com/24107581/doj-v-apple-antitrust-mono...

There is a deep misunderstanding here of US politics and foreign policy.

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?

> History tells us that the institutions with laws, guns, judges and a monopoly on violence rules over "smart people" who just make phones.

The real problem is that some of these mega-corporations can drag things out so long legally that the end result barely matters. :(

Governments have a shot at this fortunately. But it seems that some US people have such an ingrained anti-government that they reject anything, even if it helps.

This is forum with a lot of top1% earners who can afford to pay Apple premium. And entrepreneurs who only dream to build the next apple and be able to abuse market power the same way.

Government regulation are kind a opposite side of that coin.

Europe represents ~25% of Apple's revenue (https://www.statista.com/statistics/382175/quarterly-revenue...)

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.

The EU is a subset of “Europe in that report. Pretty sure Gruber also mentioned that the Middle East is also lumped in there as well for some reason.

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.

> the nordics

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.

Nuclear option? Looks more like a fart to me.

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.

Americans already install alternative messengers on Apple and always have. That's not a real risk. I work in Europe and the people I know commonly switch between WhatsApp, iMessage, and Signal. I still use the Apple messenger by default because it is a noticeably superior product to the other two.

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 already install alternative messengers on Apple and always have.

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.

According to Apple's CFO [1] it's more like 7%, at least for the app-store, but it's hard to see how that wouldn't correlate to overall profits just as it does elsewhere. The regions are ... creatively named.

[1] https://daringfireball.net/2024/03/more_on_the_eus_market_mi...

I'm not sure I'm getting it - what does that figure, which talks about the AppStore revenue, have to do with sales in the EU?

Indubitably it would hurt Apple a lot if they lost a quarter of their revenue, would it not?

> Smart people realised that in open market profits will go to zero as competition increases.

This has been observed and written about since at least the 18th century

Parent didn’t say when smart people figured it out.

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.

Rather, the goal was to lower ("subsidise") the purchase price (initial barrier) of the NES/SNES and then recoup it on licenses for cartridges. It makes each purchase of a console cheaper. It's the rational way to maximize revenue.

But Apple is not subsidising phones in any way.

I'm not sure how you're framing that as a subsidy. It's a killer app that gets people over the threshold to purchase the platform (console). And then once the install base is established, everyone else wants to make their own games and has to pay you (a lot) for the privilege.

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.

Parent commenter meant subsidizing the actual hardware costs. The same is true of pretty much every other console, they can also sell the hardware cheaper for this reason

Nintendo is a funny example here though, since they are notably the one major player which actually makes a profit on their hardware sales directly. They do also make a cut on the other games still, though.

So, is that good or bad in your opinion?

> Apple will do a lot to keep this cash cow at peak performance.

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.

Yes it's called a monopoly and this is precisely what the EU is trying to avoid.

actually the rules apply to everyone monopoly or otherwise, anti-competitive rules are not applied/enforced when there is a dominant market position only.

Exactly, the rules are meant to prevent monopolies from forming in the first place.

In some cases a monopoly is needed or wanted, like in credit card cases you don't want a million credit card types that all work in different subsections. In such cases regulations are to prevent such companies from having too much influence and bottlenecking everything else with high prices or forcing their own other products. EU already did this with credit cards.

Or you force and open standard and now you have different companies using the same system but with competing pricing.

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.

Credit cards need to have personal connections with businesses since it is about mutual trust. A business doesn't want to deal with a shady credit card and credit card providers doesn't want to deal with shady businesses.

So you are talking about a technical solution to a social issue, that wont solve it.

Mutual trust doesn't scale. You really think that either Visa or Mastercard has a personal connection to every grocery store that accepts credit card payments?

Online pay providers show that it is very well possible. There are tons of payment providers which are widely supported. The only difference is that some of them have a physical presence while others do not.

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.

That’s arguably not a great example, since there are both more than one international credit/debit card networks, and even these have been subject to constant regulatory scrutiny.

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.

> That’s arguably not a great example, since there are both more than one international credit/debit card networks, and even these have been subject to constant regulatory scrutiny.

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 card issuing banks, absolutely not. Visa and Mastercard compete for their business.

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.

Not sure I understand, what has the EU done to encourage a credit card monopoly? That there's basically a world wide Visa/MC duopoly isn't something the EU has actively encouraged as far as I know, only regulated as you mentioned.

For banking transfers there's SEPA so assuming a similar system could be set up for credit cards.

> what has the EU done to encourage a credit card monopoly

I didn't say they encouraged it, just that they didn't end it but instead added laws to cap the fees.

In that case it should be owned/regulated by the govts. In India's UPI has multiple banks talk to multiple consumer and vendor apps in one ecosystem standardized by govt agency. and it is damn good compared to other systems.

What your describing is accomplished by standards, not monopolies. Monopolies can create standards but that's a horrible trade-off for society.

HTML is a standard, not a monopoly

If you're from the USA maybe you're used to effectively a single payment system (or a small number that all use the same card reader)

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 DMA very much does not apply to everybody and was revised and tailored to exclude EU companies, by making sure the definition of “platform” includes the Big Tech firms + TikTok while excluding Spotify and Booking.

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.

> excluding [...] Booking.

????????????????????????

https://digital-markets-act.ec.europa.eu/commission-designat...

Wow, had not seen that development. Would love to know how the Dutch lost that fight. Thanks for the updated info.

It's more than monopoly. It's monopoly combined with strong lock-in.

Maybe not as much in the EU, but in the US it's completely insane:

"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.

This was similar when the Bell Telephone company was running things, but at some point the regulator said no and other telephone operators were allowed on the same network.

That's actually a great comparison.

The core raison d'etre for the EU is open markets. They'll do a lot to keep their fundamental core principle.

The billions in agricultural subsidies, strict regulations, and non-tariff barriers that make it difficult for non-EU companies to compete suggest otherwise to me.

Open markets != unregulated markets.

EU is not about “open for all”, but “open among members”.

Whipping homeless people until they do the work you demand of them is also a very good business model. Just not exactly ethical or legal.

Why the homeless qualifier?

Not arguing with general point.

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.

Smart people realized that you can operate in antisocial manner and benefit at the cost of others by creating a monopoly?

Do you also think drug peddlers are smart for entering an under supplied market?

> in open market profits will go to zero as competition increases

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.

If Apple had any competitive ground to stand on, it would not bother banning other app stores.

Customers would love to pay the 30% Apple tax for security and the great selection of apps.

i dont think apple is too concerned with the end user using a 3rd party store but the large companies having the ability to host their app on a 3rd party store sidestepping apples fee entirely. thats what truely scares them.

MacOS is a great example of what happens when that competitive ground does exist. Most Mac apps are distributed outside of the app store, some aren't even notarized.

Yes because developers don’t want to pay $100 to then go through a super annoying notarization process to distribute their FOSS app.

Yes, it is! Look at how much smaller MacOS market share is compared to iOS in their respective markets. Stated preference vs. revealed preference.

US and Japan are the two unusual countries where iOS has more market share than Android. In the rest of the world, iOS is maybe 20%. For computers the situation is exacerbated by the fact that many people own one mostly for gaming, which means it's going to be Windows. Whereas an iPhone is considered a status symbol.

> In the rest of the world, iOS is maybe 20%

If you count the number of devices. By app store sales, the figure is maybe 50%, probably higher.

MacOS also isn’t connected to a cellular network.

And what difference does that make with regard to software distribution models? It can easily be connected to a cellular network using one of those USB modem sticks btw.

Being connected to a cellular network puts different responsibilities on the platform vendor due to the global reach of a software problem.

What "software problem" are you talking about?

I’m talking about the carrier network requiring protections. The carrier like to verify devices on their network. There was a time when booking up a fax was illegal. Apple is responsible for the activity of the devices they create on the carrier network.

> Apple is responsible for the activity of the devices they create on the carrier network.

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.

Eveyone can interpret the various rules and regulations. I think you should do more research and reflection on how easy it is to be in cellular network.

The "being in cellular network" is done by the modem. It's a separate CPU core that doesn't run any user code. If you jailbreak the user OS, you can send AT commands to it, which is still harmless as far as RF interference is concerned.

But I really struggle to understand how any of this relates to the distribution of apps that run in sandboxes.

Are you implying that macOS has a smaller market share because of the lack of restrictions? Cause its competition, Windows, is less restricted if anything.

Android is the more closer to iOS example though. They have alt store and you can also download app through chrome, yet most users only use Google's play store.

* Most users only use Google's play store, except for apps not available there

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.

Also, Fortnite isn't available on Google's store. Which is what that Epic case was about.

Also, there are many apps from sanctioned Russian companies that can't be published on Google Play, so they only exist in alternative app stores like RuStore and/or as self-updating apks.

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.

The desktop is kind of a different space, though.

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.

People assuming this is a competitive posture exclusively are missing the point.

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.

Said customers who care about privacy would therefore continue to use the App Store.

Why should Apple divert resources creating a secondary environment?

Because it's the law in a region Apple wants to do business. Simple.

Apple did what they thought was best. The EU said no and the next step is the court system. When that result is known Apple can decide what markets to operate in.

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.

Except important products will be pulled from the App Store because they will become exclusives in 3rd party stores.

What if Apple presented better deal terms on a level playing field?

These "important products" are already getting out of the Apple Store, but instead of moving to the competing App Store alternative (which currently doesn't exist), they are moving to another ecosystem

which is about brand marketing, which is about making more money. without the differentiation of the app store, they are that much closer to being android.

> 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.

3rd party app stores will still be subject to GDPR, which apply to all European customers, so calling it a wild west is a weird claim.

The App Store rules are mostly about making more money. So what, it's not a charity.

Anti-steering rules are completely normal in contracts between cooperating commercial entities. We sell on Amazon and we’re not allowed to steer Amazon’s customers off of Amazon. Amazon disables hyperlinks in the messaging system for communicating with customers. They rejected our PDF spec sheets for having links to our website. They will de-list our products if they’re available for a lower price on another site.

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.

I understand why Amazon won't allow you to link to your store directly but

>They will de-list our products if they’re available for a lower price on another site.

This sounds pretty shady

We don’t have a right to sell on their site. If we want access to their customers and exposure for our products, they want to make sure they’re not being undercut on pricing (since they know customers will price shop).

If even after stopping you from linking to your own site Amazon still fears their customers will price shop by their own accord then:

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"

Sorry, but you just have no idea how valuable Amazon is at enabling customers to discover that your product even exists. 100% of the customers who have ever bought from our website have discovered us on Amazon. We know this because we don't do any advertising outside of Amazon.

Not only are they shady, but these most favoured nation deals are incredibly anti competitive. Amazon is using its market position to dictate what price other stores are allowed to sell at.

Not only they do that but they also give out deals and rebates without asking the merchant.

I would automatically give the clients a rebate equal to the Amazon fees if they purchased through my site.

They're just not. The thing they're trying to avoid is a customer discovering a product on Amazon, then immediately finding it for less on the manufacturer's website. And this happens. We do it! So do plenty of other sellers we're aware of. Of course, we have to hide it behind a login or offer a 10% discount on first order or whatever.

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.

> They're just not. The thing they're trying to avoid is a customer discovering a product on Amazon, then immediately finding it for less on the manufacturer's website.

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?).

I don't know what your product is, but this feels like it tremendously undervalues the hard work you've done to create a good product:

> 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!

> "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!

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.

So what? All large retailers do this. They're called house brands. And they're actually beneficial to customers, since there's a well understood quality floor. If your product can't compete with a house brand, then your product isn't bringing any value to the customer or the marketplace.

I say this as an Amazon seller that competes with Amazon Basics.

> They’ve done all the work of furnishing a customer who is ready to purchase.

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.

The developer could probably sell them same app service directly through a webpage and use that in the advertisement link instead of the App Store link.

No they haven't? An app can sell a customer access to their app outside the App Store, give them an account that they can use to access full functionality, direct them to the App Store to download the app, and Apple doesn't take anything. Apple gets a cut when they facilitate the sale, which they absolutely do when a customer is directed to the app in the App Store and then can buy the app with a single tap (knowing it has undergone some degree of vetting and that they can get a refund if they're not happy). If you don't think that is providing immense value, then just consider the difficulty of selling software outside of the App Store. To an approximation, it basically doesn't happen except with B2B SaaS (which notoriously requires a very expensive sales and marketing function).

I remember hearing stories of customers flicking through physical books in bookstores and then buying them off Amazon. Can't do anti-steering in that direction.

> 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".

It's important to get the analogies close.

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.

Wasn't this literally a feature of the Amazon app? You could scan a book's UPC and have it pull up the Amazon listing.

Sure, but that's _still_ customer brand loyalty. The _book_ isn't advertising "Go to Amazon for the cheapest prices" on the cover.

> Why should they then have to allow us to steer that customer off of their site to complete the sale?

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.

I wonder if everything would have been simple if the regulation itself was something death-simple like:

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.

How would it play out? A scenario is that I could buy an iPhone for 1000 Euro, use it for one year, return it, get my 1k back and use it to buy a newer model. Basically they would be working for free or they'd have to increase the price of 1k per year, with huge discounts for whoever swaps an Android for an iPhone.

It would be up to them to choose their models. If they want to keep the closed model where you can't use the device you purchase in absence of Apple, they will have to charge accordingly for the device and services and do the refunds if the user no longer want the device. I guess people would like yearly updates, so Apple will have to operate drastically differently to keep the closed platform model.

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.

So, the device is sold at a loss at 100 Euro but it doesn't work without mandatory services that cost 500 Euro per year?

Maybe, I don't know. Its up to the companies to do the math, who would like to pursue this model. If it's not feasible, the shouldn't be doing it though. AFAIK BoM is usually no that high, so it can be viable.

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.

That would be very bad for customers and Apple will love it. Instead of buying iPhone you'll subscribe to it and pay $99/m for iphone+one+Apple telecom

What’s stopping them from doing it now then?

They do (or did for some time).

That's literally the original iPhone sales model.

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.

> If Apple feels these rules are so just and fair and indispuitably correct, why does it go to such measures to hide them from its consumers?

Because if would harm shareholder value. You don't need a more complicated explanation about the whole situation.

If customers being informed about your business practices will result in harm to shareholder value, you've got a problem.

But they will ride high in a pile of money until the curtain is drawn back. It's worth it to them

I think visa and Mastercard have the same behaviour even supported by the governments. You can’t add the visa fee to the checkout.

And yet several places do. “Menu reflects cash prices” and “tuition payment via credit card will be subject to a 3.5% fee” are 2 I got this week.

The EU regulates credit card fees caping them at 0.3% [1]. That is roughly a fifth of the fees charged in the US and roughly two orders of magnitude smaller than Apple app store fees.

[1] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/EN/legal-content/summary/fees-for-...

I think that’s a different fee. As a merchant accepting credit card or debit card payments is going to cost you the same 2-3%. At least that’s what Stripe or local payment processors charge

Stripe charges 1.5% + €0.25 ($0.27) in the EU to accept EEA cards [1]. Stripe charges 2.9% + $0.30 for processing domestic cards in the US [2].

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...

It varies state-to-state.

https://www.bankrate.com/credit-cards/business/can-a-busines...

What? Basically every store I go to adds a fee for credit transactions.

The typical way stores get around it in Canada is with a "discount" if you pay cash.

> indispuitable how wrong it is that Apple prevents developers from explaining these rules to their users

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.

Add to that the fact that the App Store only supports certain kinds of payment and subscription formats. Paid major upgrades, volume discounts for apps with IAPs or subscriptions , etc. - not possible at all.

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.

No paid upgrades is the huge issue. By fiat they eliminated the mechanism by which small developers survived for decades before the app store. It couldn't be any harder for them to support than the crazy IAP dance they make you do instead or the subscriptions they foist on everything.

They also implicitly prevent businesses where the margins are less than 30% unless it relies on ads.

Apple without Steve Jobs is

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.

Is there any marketplace that allows a seller to advertise a cheaper alternative within their marketplace?

Nobody is asking for the ability to put a label on their App Store listing that shows the price of the same software or subscription on the web. What they're doing is akin to dictating what the creator of a product could put in the manual or paperwork that comes in the box - you know, where you'll often find manufacturer's coupons and adverts for registering your product with their website.

Ok, guess I'm out of the loop then, I thought they already allowed that

> why does it go to such measures to hide them from its consumers?

Because the ripped off customers must keep paying. Why pay 30% more ?

You think this is indisputable, but I don't see why there needs to be a law against these anti-steering rules.

Imagine if Steve Jobs was starting today, that famous super bowl advert from 1984 would allude to Apple, instead of IBM...

... Ouch.

Not wrong.

It's the cycle of most companies that are successful.

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.

Apple is happy to deliberately create social strife among kids by blocking it's most social app from cross-platform use, just to eek out a few more phone sales. That would be bad enough if they weren't the market leader. The fact that they are brings it to the level of grotesque cruelty.

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.

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