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Comment by lillecarl | Hacker News Reader

Quite naive take, you don't have to use any of your examples to deploy to Android, Windows, Linux or MacOS. It would be more like Microsoft charging a per-install fee on using the Win32 APIs which sounds outrageous.

Apple is using all power-plays to keep their market controlled firmly by them, and EU doesn't like it.

Having to pay 99$ per year to develop apps for your own devices that you've already purchased is also outrageous.

I get that Apple is doing a good job keeping app-store safe for it's users, but it doesn't make up being so actively hostile to user freedom.

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I like the walled garden but its a bit of an exaggeration to say they are doing a good job.

Just last week, while looking for a password app, they had a "validator" app with in-app purchases using the old google authenticator logo in the #1 position. Worse it was an ad; someone saw all of that, both as an ad and as an app, and let it go.

Sorry, Apple iOS is not a Wall Garden, it is a Prison Cell. A Wall Garden / Gated Community allows for the deployment of personal security such as a home security system with monitoring company, video surveillance, and personal security guards. Apple does not allow any if that. You cannot even preemptively block known Command and Control services, best C&C servers operate in plain sight, such as X-Twitter and Facebook on iOS.a

Seems a bad analogy. In a prison cell, it's deliberately made hard for criminals to damage each other, isn't it?

Apple's prison actively cooperates with criminals to run scams on you that you cannot avoid.

On second thought, it sounds exactly like a real prison. On second thought, great analogy!

>Quite naive take, you don't have to use any of your examples to deploy to Android, Windows, Linux or MacOS. It would be more like Microsoft charging a per-install fee on using the Win32 APIs which sounds outrageous.

"sounds outrageous" is a pretty weak justification for regulator action. Paying for a browser probably sounds equally as outrageous, but with the way anti-trust is going with Chrome/Google, that seems like a very real possibility. Moreover, why should the government should be in the basis of regulating business models? If Apple wants to charge for access to its SDKs, and it pays the price through less apps for its users, so be it.

Yeah sorry IANAL, the fact stands: EU thinks Apple is exploiting their market position to lock users down, EU doesn't like it and will make Apple comply.

If Apple wants to be on the EU market they will have to comply with EU regulations, and if regulations are lacking regulators will regulate.

Whether you suck up to Apple or the EU is your opinion. I live in EU and I'm happy to see the otherwise sparsely regulated megacorporations from USA be regulated to not exploit my fellow union citizens.

Apple has also shown repeatedly that they're unwilling to comply by implementing their own shitty interpretation of our rules (ship a fucking USB-C adapter with your phone when we're demanding USB-C in the device, this markets act notarizaton and "core fee" bullshit).

The most egregious behaviour is simply denying consumers the information they need to not pay ridiculous, even recurring, fees to Apple to use someone else's service. Fees they may have coerced the app developer into implementing, like Patreon, whilst simultaneously illegally depriving them of any alternative billing methods. Fees they testified are for doing nothing. Fees they testified carry 75% profit margin.

Yeah it completely slipped my mind, it's brutal and entirely inappropriate that they can force their recurring fees like that.

I don't know if developers are still not allowed to advertise alternative payment methods, but it's just one step too far.

>Yeah sorry IANAL, the fact stands: EU thinks Apple is exploiting their market position to lock users down, EU doesn't like it and will make Apple comply.

This is moving the goalposts. Both my comment and the comment you first replied to was making normative statements about government policy, not questioning whether they have the authority to make such laws.

You jumped in into a question asked to someone else, I won't go into a pie throwing contest over an insignificant detail you care to win about, I don't have the grey text.

"Pretty outrageous" is good enough for me, if Microsoft tried to start charging for access to Win32 it would not succeed in any way, legal or with customers (it would be abusing market power), but because Apple has a strong hold on their users already they're supposed to just fall over and be fucked by fees that completely ruin any kind of "not very monetizeable" app because of their made up business rules? Markets are regulated everywhere, why should Apple be treated differently because they started from a different position?

You can spare me the reply

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