Hacker News Reader

Comment by topherPedersen | Hacker News Reader

I wish the United States would follow the EU on this. It's insane that 1 company has near complete control over what software can and cannot be published, and they get to take a tax on all software sold. Absolutely insane. Obviously there's web, Android, Windows, Linux, gaming consoles, and smart tvs, so there are some work-arounds to avoid the evil empire, but most consumers here in the United States use iPhones and probably have no idea that Apple is taxing all of the app developers and exercising complete editorial control over all software published for the iPhone. Do you think consumers know that Apple literally reviews all software companies products and then decide whether they will allow that company or product to exist? Even worse, its not even high level executives making these decisions, it's $20 an hour employees on their App Review Board making these decisions to kill entire companies.

View on HN

Go back in time 20 years and tell someone that the most popular personal computer taxes every transaction that runs on it for 30% and has absolute control over what software runs on it including banning any programs it doesn't like, and they'd look at you like you were crazy. And then be like, "Fucking Bill Gates! How'd he pull that off?"

They’d snap your hands off for distribution and marketing costs as low as 30%.

Retail markups were much higher on physical software.

For retail software yes, but distributing for next to nothing over the internet was also common (depending on the target group) 20 years ago.

You mean distributing .mob files on xda-developers and needing to speak with carriers to distribute your app?

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.

> People just feel today that everyone should get access to a marketplace with billion users for free

Exactly

> often forgetting what it took to build this market in the first place.

Don’t give a fuck

> 30% was never an issue to begin with

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%.

Well there was no real mobile market 20 years ago, but for desktop software there was a huge industry of software you would download from websites.

>30% was never an issue to begin with.

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.

"Micro$oft amiright"

Appl€ as well now.

What Apple does is bad but they don't tax 30% of every transaction. Apple isn't taking a 30% of your Uber or DoorDash, they charge 30% for sales made on their platform for digital goods and services redeemed on that platform.

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.

> Either how Apple extracts fees is legal and how much is up to the market, or it isn't.

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?

> Saying "it's legal as long as the percent is small enough" is silly.

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.

Should Google Chrome ask for 30% of web purchases?

I think it's funny people argue this when Google already does extract a massive pound of flesh from web purchases and uses Chrome to push "the web" where they control the market.

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?

> massive pound of flesh

Technically, all pounds of flesh are the same mass :)

Love that, I fully expect "pound of flesh" to soon have an entry in the dictionary for "an unspecified amount of flesh" to annoy language prescriptivists.

Not in an interplanetary society. If you're on Europa, your entire body weighs approximately one pound.

In modern times, the pound is defined in terms of kilograms, so it's a unit of mass.

> Do you care that a tech company is extracting huge sums from digital markets or do you just care how?

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.

And the EU should look into Google's unfair practices from its domination of web search and ads. I suspect it will.

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 a link to my website, no Google required.

I can send you my Android app, no Google required.

I can’t send you my iOS app without relying on Apple.

They already do, you can't survive in ecommerce without google ads.

That was the case 5-10 years ago, but many e-commerce businesses are surviving solely on TikTok and Instagram ads. Look at most of the Google Shopping results for small items, all Amazon and Temu who have bigger pockets.

> What Apple does is bad but they don't tax 30% of every transaction. Apple isn't taking a 30% of your Uber or DoorDash, they charge 30% for sales made on their platform for digital goods and services redeemed on that platform.

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.

Subscriptions are 15% after the first year. Apps from small developers also pay 15%. Given the prevalence of subscriptions and the large number of indies on the app store, I really doubt 30% is close to the average. At any rate, 15% is still sizable, but it doesn't help the conversation if we are substantially overstating the fee percentage.

> it's not going to be without consequences because Apple will extract their pound of flesh somewhere, can't have profits go down.

You write this as if Apple is the authority figure here.

Profits can very easily go down.

> I think it's harder to argue that Sony shouldn't be allowed to take a cut of game sales on the PS5

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...

Apple didn't develop a "general purpose computer" either, they developed a cell phone. They entered into an established product market, with a product that was even more locked down than the current competition (remember, Palm Treos and Blackberrys?). Even "dumb" phones had apps and games (though if you think Apple's fees are ridiculous, you should look up the cost of developing a bejeweled clone for your old sony ericson, "Qalcom BREW" would be a contemporary starting point). Within this market, 3 different competitors (Palm, Microsoft and Google) also threw their hat into the ring, with far more open platforms. Palm and Microsoft eventually gave up, and Google is the majority player with the fully open platform. Yet Apple is somehow so dominant that we're crafting entirely new rules around them doing the same thing they and many other highly integrated hardware/software manufacturer has done for ages. Why?

Because like it or not, it has become a general purpose computer. For millions it’s their primary (for some: only) gateway to banking, payments, education, government services, personal relations, keeping in touch with family, navigation, healthcare and emergency services.

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.

It feels to me like the problem here is the government and large institutions only providing access via a single manufacturers single platform, rather than the existence of the platform. That is to say, if education, government services, health care, emergency services, ID and voting are all only accessible via having an iPhone, the solution to that is to mandate that those things be accessible via other options too, not to mandate opening up the iPhone ecosystem. Aside from the fact that the government needs no new laws to actually make its services available on open platforms, there's also the "single point of failure" problem, and the "government services only available to people with $400+ electronic toys with expensive monthly subscription services" problem. Regulating banking vs phone app store markets might be more of a toss up, but it seems like again the "single point of failure" problem should argue much more strongly in favor of forcing banks to not limit access to iPhones, rather than forcing iPhones to change to be something the iPhone consumers don't actually want.

No, the problem is that a critical mass of a market is dependant on a single operator of that market, and that operator is not providing equal access to it but considers itself the owner AND a privileged player there which everyone has to pay to compete with.

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"

>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

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.

My comment about government services, banking, education and so on was in response to your general assertion that an iPhone is no different than other electronic devices and therefore shouldn't be treated differently by regulators. For the reasons I listed, that's kind of ridiculous. Smartphones are just as important to modern economies/societies as the automobile, air travel, public libraries or news organizations (at least in my opinion).

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.

> None of those things really affect the banking, government services, education, ID, health etc apps that the OP was concerned with.

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)

"Thanks for doing the risky work of proving that potential"

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.

You raise good points about making sure that all those services are always available through multiple means, but the argument I'm making isn't that all those services are limited to a smartphone - they aren't... I think everything I mentioned (except for emergency calls) are available in a web browser.

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.

I guess my question is what part of the various laws being passed is addressing some "public need" that's not currently being met for these apps, or by the entire rest of the market place. I've said it before but every single thing every advocate of regulating Apple's iPhone and App Store is already available on Android. And unlike in the 90's when Windows literally dominated the market, even in the markets where Apple is doing the strongest, at best they have half of the market. Which means every single "necessary" application and resource is equally present on both iOS and Android.

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.

> Apple didn't develop a "general purpose computer" either, they developed a cell phone.

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.

> The EU commission is a hair away from just telling Apple what they're allowed to charge which I don't love

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 doing its best to be a monopoly

Apple is quite literally a minority player in the EU.

Rather than going in to details why that doesn't matter, with relation to monopolistic power, I'll just let you extrapolate your reasoning to the following:

The EU population is quite literally a minority of the world population.

Apple has less than 30% market share globally.

Meanwhile the EU—a minority of the world population—levies fines based on global revenue.

Of course the fines are punitive, that's because the fines aren't supposed to be a revenues source for the EU they're supposed to deter behaviour (To the point the first round of them are often dimunitive or waived entirely before ramping up steeply if the behaviour doesn't change).

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.

Gave me a good laugh.

To be clear I don’t think this is an acceptable practice, but the concept wouldn’t be completely unfamiliar because Nintendo did this with the NES and their lockout chip/seal of quality system

I agree. Though to be fair Nintendo's NES is a gaming console (not that they are right, just contrasting the use-cases).

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.

The differences are scale and utility. A company that has control of such a large market gets different rules because of the power they weld. Apple's market is 1-2 billion people and affects 100,000+ companies. Nintendo's market is 2-3 orders of magnitude less and the number of companies affected is similarly much much smaller.

Plus a gaming console is for entertainment only while a smarphone is becoming almost a requirement for participation in modern society.

>Apple's market is 1-2 billion people and affects 100,000+ companies.

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.

Is it? If there’s an effective duopoly on the entire market is that truly choice?

I don't think users are fully aware of the extent these platforms control the devices. The same thing happened with cigarettes; eventually, the government required a warning. Perhaps a similar approach is necessary here.

I still think if you own a device you should be able to run whatever software you want on it, even if it's a game console from a somewhat smaller (but still huge) company

I don't agree with it for games consoles as well, but a NES back then is completely different to a phone these days.

Everybody uses a phone, for everything now.

>and has absolute control over what software runs on it including banning any programs it doesn't like

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.

> Apple has done this so many times, and it's completely abusive.

Interesting

I must be living under a rock....

Have you some examples?

Sherlocking:

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.

Keyboard on Apple Watch

https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/09/14/flicktype-develop...

Also stealing ideas from the jailbreak community https://ios.gadgethacks.com/how-to/60-ios-features-apple-sto...

Directly copying the licensed design of the Swiss railway clock: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_railway_clock

> gaming consoles

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.

Banks and train companies don't try to run payment apps on them.

Even if technically they could, the fact that they don't is to me the crucial difference.

Seems like a different problem.

It is, but it's intertwined in the Apple vs other platforms issue.

Regulators make a difference between general purpose platforms and dedicated/single purpose platforms.

Game consoles are not general computing devices. Apple has aggressively and repeatedly marketed iOS devices as being for general-purpose computing. (Remember the "what's a computer" ads?)

If Apple wants to claim their devices are computer replacements, they should be regulated like it.

What regulations exist on computer devices that Apple is evading?

According to this article, Digital Markets Act (DMA).

Okay, wasn't sure that was the reference thanks.

> If Apple wants to claim their devices are computer replacements, they should be regulated like it.

> aggressively and repeatedly

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.

> none of the big three consoles allow you to install anything you want on them.

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.

Saying Nintendo are tolerant of users doing anything on their hardware the company doesn't approve of is stretching the truth beyond recognition.

Sure, but that being said the 3DS, Wii, Wii U and Nintendo Switch all have enormous homebrew communities. It's nowhere near Sony's OtherOS levels of support, but the board does have functioning CPU/GPU drivers and can run pretty much "anything" you'd expect from an Aarch64 Linux target.

It's more of a technical nuance in the Switch's case, but homebrew on Nintendo consoles is a time-honored tradition.

Last I checked you could only exploit Switches manufactured in the first couple years of its lifespan without going the hardware mod route.

XBox is/was so open it spawned a very popular media platform: XBMC (XBox Media Center)

That required circumventing its protections via a hardware or software mod.

"Do not cite the Deep Magic to me, Witch! I was there when it was written."

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.

Except they only have very limited use. Smartphones are now ubiquitous.

Only because the garden walls are so thick.

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.

This is why I choose GNU/Linux phones (Librem 5 and Pinephone).

Free the consoles, too.

Prepare for the PS6 to cost $1200 then. The hardware is sold at a loss, which I think justifies them being able to recoup their costs through selling software.

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)

My steamdeck certanly didn't cost that much. It also runs arch btw and I can install anything I want on it.

The Stem Deck is a perfect device.

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)

https://www.amazon.ca/Beelink-Computer-Desktop-Display-2-5Gb...

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.

The one big (to me) advantage of the Steam Deck is that it's a static system, this way many games have a preset specifically for the deck, usually automatically applied on boot.

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.

That's how the market used to work, but hasn't been the case for generations. Nintendo has sold every platform from the Wii on at a profit.

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.

Sure, go for it. Price points won't change, consumers are only willing to pay so much for game systems, so we'll see just how close to the FUD price the market will get. I doubt prices will change much if at all.

Could you just not buy their products then?

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.

Like a lot of anti-monopoly laws, the harmed party is not the consumer but other businesses.

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.

> if you want access to their huge and very lucrative market.

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.

Competition laws

Apple does not hinder any developer from selling their software on competing devices or operating systems. I don't see how an honest person could claim that they're doing anything anti-competitive. I see how the EU politicians can claim that, because they are dishonest and expected to support parasitic actions.

> Apple does not hinder any developer from selling their software on competing devices or operating systems

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.

No, I don't think "most of us can agree" that a manufacturer setting the conditions for distributing plugins for the hardware and software system that they produce and sell is "monopolistic" in nature. That's why we're having these discussions in the first place.

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.

> Every store, market place and mall has conditions for being able to sell your wares in their space.

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.

>But it's not a store. It's software; Apple ... requires you to pay the surcharges in their mandatory App Store.

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 don't see how an honest person could claim that they're doing anything anti-competitive."

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.

Perhaps you should inform yourself by reading the DMA. You won't find in it anything about Apple or anyone else hindering developers from selling elsewhere.

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.

So are you accusing of most of the readers and participants in this comment section of being dishonest?

Do you commonly just assume that people who disagree with you are dishonest?

When money enters the conversation, honesty usually goes out. I would say that most people, almost all people, will bend things in a dishonest way when they think they can have the slightest monetary benefit.

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?

To be clear, I am not an Apple user and do not have a dog in this fight. But it is abundantly clear to me that iPhone users cannot easily swap between competitors the same way that McDonalds customers can eat every meal at a different restaurant if they so wish (in fact, McDonald's is usually right next door to numerous competitors, making this maximally easy).

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.

Apple have managed to get themselves into a monopolistic position. Actually it's a duopoly. It doesn't matter if there are alternatives to Android and iPhone, those are the majority of devices to something like 99%. If you want to access that marketplace you need to go through one of those 2 gatekeepers and they have similar rules. This is the exact kind of situation that monopoly laws are there to address. Apple have been hugely successful. No-one is proposing to take the success away from them, but they are taking away some of apple and Google's ability to control the market they've captured.

> It seems parasitic in a kind of way to demand that right.

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.

Parasitic? My God, the Kool Aid has been depleted.

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.

It's parasitic because if you want to participate in the market, you need to use their platform.

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.

You've misread the original comment.

It wasn't calling Apple parasitic, it was calling the app DEVELOPERS parasitic which is crazy talk.

Oh. Wow. Yeah, calling devs parasitic is wild.

People who are demanding benefits for free (ie selling your products in somebody else's store), are parasites. Those who cooperate, or set up their own shop if they don't want to cooperate, are not.

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.

Windows was the most successful platform in IT history for about 30 years without this BS.

And they still are, when it comes to enterprise. But consumer software spending was something very niche before Apple expanded the market.

> But consumer software spending was something very niche before Apple expanded the market.

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).

30 years ago was 1994. Most people did not even have a personal computer. Consumer software was a super niche product.

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?

> don’t buy their product if you don’t like it

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?

I like a product from Ford, if I own it I have the right to install whatever I want right? Except Ford has no obligation to make their products compatible with other car makers. If I wanted to LS-swap an F150 it would require a lot of technical knowledge, time, and help but it can be done. You can develop your own jailbreaks for iOS it just requires a lot of technical knowledge, time, and help.

Apple products are general purpose computers while Ford is not.

iphone is absolutely not a general purpose computer, nor has it ever purported to be.

Would you mind providing your definition of general purpose computer.

Very conveniently so, because if anyone ever discovered that so-called "apps" are no different from "software" we would accidentally realize that the iPhone is in fact a computer.

I think a better analogy would be swapping tires instead of an engine. Engine swaps are rare, most people understand there are physical complications to using an engine from one car in another, even from the same manufacturer. Tire swaps are common, most people expect that if the tire is the right size you can put it on your car, regardless of who made it or where you got it.

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.

Ford did not go out of their way to make LS swaps particularly difficult on the F150. Apple has gone to very great lengths to make something that is VERY simple (installing software in an OS) very difficult.

1) In fact, there are laws that prevent Ford from taking too much advantage of the situation, such as how they wouldn't be allowed to deny warranty service on a car with third party parts.

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.

I think the analogy would be Ford demanding a 30% each time you put oil, gas, or pay a toll road. Their (Apple’s) stance then would be “somebody is making money out of the existence of my creation, hence I am entitled to a share”

On second thoughts, I better delete this soon in case BMW gets some ideas

Are you read the software licenses for the whole software ecosystem in an Apple shop at purchase time?

This so tiring. The issue is not about whether you as a consumer can buy a different phone. The issues is about whether you, as a company, can do business with half the world with one company gating access to those customers. No company should have that level of power. That's why its called the Digital "Markets" Act. It's not some consumer choice act.

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.

A part of this issue is that said company intentionally cripples their web browser (and all browsers in their platform because they run on the same engine) to prevent progressive web apps from competing with their App Store.

This may not be the biggest issue but really grinds my gears because it holds back a whole ecosystem of possibilities.

> 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.

Nothing stopping apple from implementing more and better APIs in their browser to match Chrome.

Maybe security/privacy of the APIs?

Not at all, no such issues where these are implemented.

You point out that there's actually a lot of competition, but that consumers prefer Apple. Isn't this contrary to your greater point?

It's hard not to prefer the ecosystem that is designed to make it as painful as it can be to switch to a competitor.

I found switching off Google to be as hard as I imagine switching off Apple will be.

I just did that switch having been on iphone since the 6s. It is amazing how much choice there is on the Android platform. Having switched to Samsung immediately I get two software stores for a start. I'm not beholden to a single file service; Apps will integrate with multiple different options not just iCloud. I can download multiple browsers, with adblockers. I can download torrent clients without having to jailbreak.

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.

But how did they get people into the ecosystem to begin with? iOS has ALWAYS been this locked down. Heck it didn't even have an app store to begin with. The apps you got were what Apple decided you could have and that was it. Cell phones before the iPhone (Palm, Blackberry and even dumb phones) had some form of software market capabilities, and certainly phones after and their larger competitor (Windows Mobile, Palm again and Android respectively) have had far more open platforms. So how did Apple manage to get all the developers and users locked in when the better options were – perhaps with the brief exception of June 2007 - Sept 2008 (if you don't count Palm and Blackberry) – always there?

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"

>Obviously there's web, Android, Windows, Linux, gaming consoles, and smart tvs, so there are some work-arounds to avoid the evil empire

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?

Good questions.

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...

So ultimately, I guess the conclusion is despite the amount of chatter it gets in tech circles and among high profile software developers like facebook and epic, the answer is Apple is in the position its in because it's selling what people actually want and care about.

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.

I think it's similar to what I describe as my "Kardashian Problem" - that I don't understand why the Kardashians are famous. Not their problem, obviously; they are wildly successful, rich, famous, etc. They clearly understand their market very well and know how to address it. I have no idea why their market likes them, and that means I should never try to build a mass-market product.

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.

Something that tickled me occasionally was much of my extended family assumed Apple was paying me to make the point of sale app, so restauranteurs would buy iPhones/iPads to use at their restaurant.

everybody has their own battles to pick.

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 problem here is that the EU law is "whatever the bureaucrats say it is". The DMA rules are not specific enough for Apple or anyone to know a priori if a feature or product is going to cross the line. Thus Apple is now announcing new features won't immediately be available to EU customers.

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.

We literally had an elction for the technocrats in brussels (and strasbourg) two weeks ago.

I have an app on the App Store and honestly the review sometimes helps me catch some pretty big bugs. I consider it free basic QA. Having said that, I don’t like the principle of having a gatekeeper either. I also don’t mind the commission they take from in app purchases as the App Store is the main distribution channel that my customers find the app, and it’s only 15% under $1m annual revenue.

What do you mean? This is literally how Apple advertises their store: "a big part of those experiences is ensuring that the apps we offer are held to the highest standards for privacy, security, and content". Maybe you want Apple to advertise more effectively?

https://www.apple.com/app-store/

It depends, it's just different viewpoints, I'm glad Apple reviews all software and decides if it's worth it and a lot of action from the EU tends just to make things worse/annoying for most users, while collecting big fines for themselves.

Google also taxes for transactions on their Play store, but yes, Apple takes it to the extreme. You don't have to buy into the walled garden though.

Neither of these companies should be allowed to control both the hardware and the store. Having a duopoly here ensures that there will be little to no price competition, especially because the stores are full monopolies on their platforms, and developers have no choice but to use both to cover the full market.

I honestly don't think it's insane at all. Middlemen are everywhere, and if a government body wants to complain about taxation, glass houses...

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.

Why would the US do that? Europe has no issues when a European corporation has market dominance. It would be dumb for them to do so in a global market. Do you see any push for diversifying the european market by breaking up corporations like SAP or ASML? If anything those two have an even tighter control over their respective markets than apple could ever have over their own.

Nobody is ever going to break up ASML. Apple is, in the grand scheme of things much less important. Much less.

Yes, but the US or the EU could've pushed for a break up when most of its EUV research was in the US. Market dominance wasn't built overnight.

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.

> what ASML does is very important and shouldn't be left to a single corporation.

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?"

Microsoft wasn't seen as a strategic asset back then, and the US wasn't in a semi cold war.

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.)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com