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Comment by multimoon | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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?

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