Despegar

>It’s possible that this is a temporary situation. One source in the mobile marketing industry who requested anonymity said that Apple is using an “archaic” attribution engine they built years ago, and they are currently upgrading their code to comply with the new rules. The thinking is that Apple Advertising will eventually be compatible with SKAdNetwork, a framework Apple built for advertisers. SKAdNetwork enables completely privacy-safe advertising attribution, meaning that brands can know which ad campaigns worked, but they won’t have specific, granular data on which people viewed an ad, clicked an ad, or took action.

If they're going to use SKAdNetwork then they're tying their own hands as well.

This piece is interesting because Apple was saying this all along but no one really believed them because it sounded like excuse making. But here JG is basically saying the same thing:

>Yes, I understand this perception of bigger models in data centers somehow are more accurate, but it's actually wrong. It's actually technically wrong. It's better to run the model close to the data, rather than moving the data around. And whether that's location data—like what are you doing— [or] exercise data—what's the accelerometer doing in your phone—it's just better to be close to the source of the data, and so it's also privacy preserving.

A few years ago was when this narrative was at its peak and I believe it was mostly because Google (and to a lesser extent Facebook) were talking about machine learning and AI in basically every public communication. What came of it? Were all the people who claimed Apple's privacy stance would leave them in the dust proven right? For one, being "good at machine learning" is like saying you're good at database technology. It's a building block, not a product. Maybe Google and Facebook are doing cutting edge research in the field, but so was Xerox PARC.

Phil Schiller, and the whole marketing group, are an underestimated part of Apple's success over the past 20 years. It's why there's no company like Apple in the tech industry.

They can file complaints but that's not going to change much. If the EC decides to bring a case against Apple they will have the herculean task of arguing to the courts that Apple is dominant with less than 25% share of the smartphone market. I'm willing to bet it will be a repeat of the EC's state aid case.

It might not have been Amazon but HBO. This story related to the Apple TV was in 2015.

https://www.vox.com/2015/4/13/11561392/how-to-beat-apples-30...

>They could have done useful contact tracing at the press of a button, even historically, for every major event such as large concerts, churches, night clubs which we know were the most important situations to contact trace. They could have done this with the data they already have.

Apple definitely could not have done this because they don't have this data.

The most likely outcome for ARM is that it goes public again rather than being bought out.

Apple's lawsuit is about infringement of their copyright. And that gives them exclusive rights over their intellectual property without any conditions. Legally, their case isn't better or worse because of this program. The likely reason they announced it just before suing Corellium is to avoid giving the impression that they were attacking the security research community in general, rather than Corellium specifically.

My hope is that they'll settle the case and Corellium's assets go to Apple and the founders become employees and continue to work on their product, because clearly a virtualized service is better than a physical device. But perhaps there are other legal reasons I'm not aware of why they'd still want to do this program with physical devices.

It doesn't seem likely that this case will get past Section 230, which may be an argument to further chip away at it's broad immunity from liability. YouTube shouldn't be allowed to profit from Wozniak's likeness in scams.

In what way do they not "own it"? They've been owning the fact that it's a closed system for 40 years, when tech nerds complained about their products being "appliances".

It's not illegal for you to do security research and Apple is not attempting to make it so. You'd like it to be more convenient to do security research and that is what this program is designed to do. I don't see why it's unreasonable for Apple to have terms you need to agree to to benefit from this program.

>Apple is dictating what I can tell my customers in "general communications" where Apple is not involved. That's not a free market, it's abusive. If a customer comes to my site from a search I should be able to say "Here are the purchase options. Please note that Apple takes 30% if you purchase through their store. If you purchase direct, our processing fees are only %2.5".

Everyone that argues against the rule that says you can't advertise in your apps ways to bypass the App Store for payment are basically arguing that they should be able to free ride on the platform, something discussed in this study.

>In addition, for their business model to be successful, digital marketplaces often have to rely on rules that prevent customers from free riding on their services. Free riding involves buyers and/or sellers avoiding fees after the platform has helped connect them, which means that the platform is not compensated for the successful match and the use of the platform’s technology, tools, and services to facilitate and promote valuable transactions between buyers and sellers. A review of the policies and rules of large app stores and online marketplaces that distribute physical goods and services — marketplaces for which the risk for free riding is particularly high — shows that digital marketplaces routinely forbid behaviors aimed at avoiding fees.

>In addition to the commission on paid apps and in-app purchases of digital content, services, and subscriptions, Apple imposes guidelines that govern the use of the App Store. Among those policies are rules about in-app purchases to prevent users and developers from free riding on Apple’s App Store services and investments. Apps cannot explicitly steer app users away from in-app purchases — for example, by providing external links that bypass the App Store.

Your point was that smartphones would have existed without Apple making the iPhone but it doesn't make any sense as a response to what I said. I'm not making an argument about market definitions that would concern an antitrust regulator or court, but the nature of the relationship between the platform and sellers being materially different with Apple than GrubHub. And thus who does more work to actually earn their take rate.

>I'm pretty sure if Apple hadn't created the modern smartphone someone else would have

Whether they would have or not is beside my point. The app marketplace for Apple's platforms is inextricably tied to their technology. A restaurant and a hotel don't have the same relationship with the platform that a macOS or iOS app do.

That doesn't change the fact that you're able to do security research on Apple products without their permission.

When I say "tools and technologies" I'm not referring to just Xcode but all the SDKs and APIs as well.

>that they are even working right now on suing Corellium, a company which makes an iPhone emulator (which again, has strong legal precedent), in order to prevent anyone but a handful of highly controlled people from being able to debug their platform.

Anyone can debug their platform, as they have been. You just need to be approved for this specific program.

Apple's case against Corellium is about intellectual property, and it's frankly going to be a slam dunk in court. There's already established precedent with Apple v. Psystar with an almost identical set of facts.

No, but the market wouldn't even exist if not for Apple creating it. iOS apps by its nature depend on Apple's technology. It isn't the same as restaurants or hotels that acquire customers through GrubHub or Booking.

I think this is mostly a response to David Cicilline's comment that Apple's 30% is "highway robbery" [1]. It compares it to other marketplace take rates showing that Apple's 30% isn't "highway robbery", but also that Apple does much more to earn their 30% than say GrubHub given that iOS apps rely heavily on Apple tools and technologies to create and distribute apps.

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/18/21295778/apple-app-store-...

When people refer to "offsets" they're talking about buying renewable energy credits (RECs). Funding new renewable energy projects, and thus putting renewable energy onto the grid, is not that.

>We launched the Supplier Clean Energy Program in October 2015 to advance those goals through our manufacturing supply chain. Since then, we have made strong progress toward our initial goal of bringing online 4 gigawatts of new clean energy by 2020. Building on that momentum, we recently set a new, even more ambitious goal: to transition our entire manufacturing supply chain to 100 percent renewable electricity by 2030.

>We’re proud of the progress our suppliers have made so far. As of June 2020, 71 manufacturing partners in 17 different countries have committed to 100 percent renewable energy for Apple production. And Apple itself has continued to invest directly in renewable energy projects to cover a portion of upstream emissions. The Supplier Clean Energy Program now has 7.8 gigawatts of clean energy commitments, of which 2.7 gigawatts was operational in 2019.

They're funding new renewable energy projects all over the world, including in China [1].

>Secondly, electricity used in facilities is not the whole of their carbon footprint.

It's just the vast majority of their carbon footprint.

>Since 2018, we’ve generated or sourced 100 percent renewable electricity for all of Apple’s global facilities, driving our scope 2 emissions from electricity to zero. And we estimate that in our manufacturing supply chain, which itself makes up 75 percent of Apple’s overall carbon footprint, around 70 percent of emissions come from electricity.

[1] https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2019/09/apple-launched-china-...

Keep reading from page 18. The good news is that they're using the same strategy for all their suppliers, which is putting renewable energy onto the grid.

>The problem is, I'm sure "carbon neutral" means they're using carbon offsets to a significant degree.

They aren't. See page 18.

https://www.apple.com/environment/pdf/Apple_Environmental_Pr...

Apple is incentivizing ad networks to use SKAdNetwork [1], an API that lets you do attribution while preserving privacy. Guaranteeing that necessarily means they have to intermediate the relationship between users, apps and ad networks. They also proposed a similar API for the web [2].

[1] https://developer.apple.com/documentation/storekit/skadnetwo...

[2] https://webkit.org/blog/8943/privacy-preserving-ad-click-att...

>Apple was quite clever in their approach: instead of killing the IDFA, which could be construed as anti-competitive, particularly given Apple’s expanding app install ad business (which is expanding beyond App Store search ads), Apple is simply asking users if they would like to be tracked, and letting them render the IDFA useless.

The unstated implication of this is that when required to receive consent from users, the entire ad-tech complex falls apart.

I think Apple is actually smart to do it this way rather than just getting rid of the IDFA altogether, but only because of the political/regulatory environment right now. Any pro-privacy move will be spun as being anticompetitive by the affected parties, until Apple actually wins in court in their first antitrust case. After that the gloves can come off.

They can use the stamps.

The Federal Reserve should buy a bunch of stamps from the USPS if Congress won't bail it out.

I can see them doing that for big volume buys for education. I don't see why they wouldn't just pass on the entire Intel margin to them, getting students using Apple products young has value.

Nothing David Cicilline said amounts to anything more than talk. He frequently refers to them as a monopolist in that podcast, but that means a very specific thing in antitrust law. DoJ or FTC would have to prove in court that Apple has "monopoly power" in a relevant market. Since a court will toss it out when Apple moves for a summary judgement if their antitrust theory is that Apple's 45% of the smartphone market gives them monopoly power (based on precedent), they will try to define the market more narrowly to something like "iOS applications".

But again a court is unlikely to accept that reasoning. And if you think about it for 3 seconds it's obvious why: Apple's "monopoly" was established when the App Store was launched in 2008 when the iPhone was an insignificant share of the market. That would also mean that any future product (like the AR glasses, or from any other company) would have "monopoly power" in their platform as soon as they ship 1 unit. This is obviously an absurd outcome.

I mean lets be honest. Developers actually like the iPhone as a development platform. They like how much money they make from it. They like the products themselves. They just don't want to pay the Apple commission or be restricted in any way by their rules.

Unfortunately those things are tied at the hip. The very rules and product decisions about the platform is what made it the popular and lucrative market it is in the first place.