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Apple and Google Face Growing Revolt Over App Store ‘Tax’

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Re: Apple and Google Face Growing Revolt Over App Store ‘Tax’

#351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My GF and I recently moved from NYC to Los Angeles and an Uber driver once asked her "Are you from NY?", "Yes, why?", "Because your rating is so low and people from NYC usually have really low ratings." We checked her rating and it's 4.5 or so. But it's funny, she looks like a deadbeat here because of more discerning/critical NYC Uber drivers who gave her 4 stars 50% of the time.

Los Angeles has serious grade inflation across the board wrt social ratings. Their yelp reviews are completely unreliable, everything is 4 or 5 stars. I'm used to Chicago where even a great restaurant can have 3 stars because everyone is so picky, and the 4 or 5 stars are reserved for the truly extraordinary.

My opinion is that everyone should get rid of 1-5 stars in favor of "thumbs up/thumbs down" ratings... Wonder if there's any research to support this suggestion...

Re: Apple and Google Face Growing Revolt Over App Store ‘Tax’

#352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My GF and I recently moved from NYC to Los Angeles and an Uber driver once asked her "Are you from NY?", "Yes, why?", "Because your rating is so low and people from NYC usually have really low ratings." We checked her rating and it's 4.5 or so. But it's funny, she looks like a deadbeat here because of more discerning/critical NYC Uber drivers who gave her 4 stars 50% of the time.

Los Angeles has serious grade inflation across the board wrt social ratings. Their yelp reviews are completely unreliable, everything is 4 or 5 stars. I'm used to Chicago where even a great restaurant can have 3 stars because everyone is so picky, and the 4 or 5 stars are reserved for the truly extraordinary.

Do you find Yelp helpful?

I find Yelp so strange with complaints about how someplace that really doesn't do someone's favorite food style gets some stupid reviews.... or they wish a place was more like a place that is 3x more expensive (how is that fair?). I just have no clue where anyone is coming from.

We had a Neapolitan pizza place open up in in our neighborhood. Great ingredients, amazing Neapolitan pizza. It was inundated reviews complaining about how thin the crust was and floppy the pizza sometimes is. .... they were basically complaining it wasn't some fast food style pizza place where they could stuff their face.

Eventually their ratings did recover and they've got reasonable reviews now, but ... people are dumb. I need some elitist type review system I think ;)

Maybe yelp and other review sites have changed but I've given up on them for a while.

Re: Apple and Google Face Growing Revolt Over App Store ‘Tax’

#354
post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good chinese restaurants in London (like my old place) end up having less than 4 stars because of service. I find that raging since the food is the only thing that should matter.

I wouldn't make a blanket statement like "the food is the only thing that should matter"; but for some Chinese restaurants, bad service is part of the fun. My favourite is "Oriental Canteen" near South Kensington station. At lunchtime I would order takeway, and then go browse a neighbouring bookshop. One day, as I was heading back the manager (who was rude on the best of days) just wordlessly held the bag with my lun…

Push the ‘impoliteness and efficiency’ to the extreme and you get the Australia Dairy Company in Hong Kong, a restaurant where the service is so bad that tourists come to experience it...

And I agree with how you feel about the Oriental Canteen. A really inexpensive place to get a quick meal. Can’t expect much more from it.

Re: Apple and Google Face Growing Revolt Over App Store ‘Tax’

#355
post #325
post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Instead of rectifying this via monopoly abuse laws, there should be regulations applicable to all hardware providers for allowing alternative software distribution mechanisms.

You want to make it illegal for someone to make a piece of hardware that can only run binaries signed by the manufacturer? I can’t understand this at all. If I go through the trouble to create a product and I want to control the user experience for that product, that’s my right and privilege. The market will decide if they want to purchase my product or not. Consumers have spoken, and spoken extremely loudly, that th…

Whether this is your right and privilege is determined by laws and regulations. At the moment, it is. At the same time, there are clearly different opinions as demonstrated by this thread, and your 100% agreement may or may not reflect how society overall feels about this issue or whether it's a good idea.

Neither does my opinion, of course. And either way, the fact that people like the Apple user experience doesn't mean they like or are even informed about the benefits and drawbacks of the iOS App Store model. They may have spoken for that model, or they may hate that model but still buy iPhones because they communicate with the rest of their Apple devices, or because the hardware is innovative and superior, or because they don't want to be tracked by a much scarier surveillance machinery. Without separating the parts and letting each compete on its own, we'll never know what about it is something consumers want and what about it they'd rather pass on.

I'm not calling for an end to products like Apple's. I think it's great that people have access to devices that follow clear policies and security practices which are guaranteed by a trustworthy party.

I do think, though, that this decision should be made by the user in the end. The opportunity to set defaults is already an extremely strong lever for the first-party vendor, and people such as yourself who like it as is have no reason to change anything about it.

I also think that competition can and should happen on different levels, and that control of e.g. hardware or system APIs should not automatically translate to exclusive control over the third-party ecosystem, unless the user explicitly wants this. One possible approach to regulating this, without preventing actual highly integrated products, could be to require the vendor to allow third-party app stores if the product ships with an app store itself. If the iOS experience is actually better with iOS App Store compared to a third-party app store with e.g. lower fees, better search and less stringent controls, why not let them battle it out and let the consumer decide?

It's important to recognize that Apple has created world-class products. It's also important to recognize that the existing duopoly is an extremely strong detractor against competition. It's like the government inviting bids for a giant construction project - if they require the bidders to do everything and the kitchen sink, then only the largest consortiums will be able to apply, whereas if the project is split into several reasonably-sized parts then smaller companies can compete as well and the end result will be cheaper, better executed and more accountable. I think we all agree that competition is a good thing, the question is how large to draw the boundary of what constitutes an integrated product and what should be considered out of scope, to compete in a different market. I think we owe it to society and to future businesses to ensure that a superior product still has a chance of succeeding in the marketplace.

Re: Apple and Google Face Growing Revolt Over App Store ‘Tax’

#356
post #97

The 30% cut would have been reasonable after all this time if the platforms were doing anything useful with the money. Instead, we got: - Store APIs that to this day are stupidly complex to get right in all cases, making you wonder why it’s so hard - No support for very common, decades-old pricing schemes like “free demo, then buy” (except through convoluted means) - Stagnant app store designs (esp. Mac, for YEARS) -…

>Absolutely terrible search We have much more powerful CPU, In-Memory DB and SSD, Searching within a comparatively small dataset that is the App Store is a solved problem more than a decade ago and much more so now. Instead we got a appalling App Store search. It could simply mean one thing, Apple just doesn't care.

Note: I only have experience with android, I don't know what state the ios store is in.

My gut feeling based on how search and navigation is structured in the play store (a few broad categories, no option for sorting, seemingly arbitrary "algorithmic" surfacing of apps) is that crippling navigation in this way is probably better for their bottom line (in the short term at least) and for gathering ad revenue. It mirrors the way a lot of social media apps are displaying seemingly randomly ordered content mixed with ads (facebook, snapchat for a while but they seem to have given you back the ability to know you've seen all your friends stories for now).

From an end user perspective it's awful, but I assume whatever metrics they're using tell them it's a great idea.

Re: Apple and Google Face Growing Revolt Over App Store ‘Tax’

#357

Doesn't Valve take 30% from games on Steam? But they're complaining Apple taking 30% is too much? I also don't really think the Apple/Google fee is that unreasonable. Considering the resources, tools, marketplaces, tutorials, payment processing, all the other All dev stuff they provide in general. Yes if your app goes big, they make a lot of money. But for every big app there's something like 9 that fail completely (…

Does Steam take a cut for in game purchases? I think the major issue here is with companies having app stores inside app store. All the companies mentioned i.e Amazon, Steam seem to allow in-app purchases at a scale quite different than normal apps. It does seem weird that if I am purchasing an item through Steam's app store, Steam has to pay Apple. I mean it would be like Amazon paying Apple a cut, if I buy a TV fro…

> Does Steam take a cut for in game purchases?

Yes. That's why they cut out remote control purchasing feature from their iOS app, to avoid hypocrisy charges and to avoid the sticky situation where a steam app tried the same (letting you make microtransaction purchases by remoting in to your phone or something).

Same as why Epic dropped their marketplace cut down from 30% something like one week before their "30% is unfair" press campaign which in turn was used to take the spotlight off criticism of Fortnite's release on Android as a timed exclusive with Samsung's new flagship.

Re: Apple and Google Face Growing Revolt Over App Store ‘Tax’

#358
post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the scale Apple operate None of what you stated above is worth anywhere near 10%, let alone 30%. And for the last few points, they are covered by the Hardware cost which in Apple case cover the software as well. ( Where Windows and Android are covered by other means ) And I don't think you are actually disagreeing with your parents at all. Because all the services they provided and as you have listed are now consi…

Credit cards take up to 5% and they only cover the transaction.

The EU capped it at 0.3% for credit and 0.2% for debit cards.

Re: Apple and Google Face Growing Revolt Over App Store ‘Tax’

#359
post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Los Angeles has serious grade inflation across the board wrt social ratings. Their yelp reviews are completely unreliable, everything is 4 or 5 stars. I'm used to Chicago where even a great restaurant can have 3 stars because everyone is so picky, and the 4 or 5 stars are reserved for the truly extraordinary.

Do you find Yelp helpful? I find Yelp so strange with complaints about how someplace that really doesn't do someone's favorite food style gets some stupid reviews.... or they wish a place was more like a place that is 3x more expensive (how is that fair?). I just have no clue where anyone is coming from. We had a Neapolitan pizza place open up in in our neighborhood. Great ingredients, amazing Neapolitan pizza. It wa…

Yelp isn't particularly useful if you're dependent upon the average score. It's solid as far as locating local businesses (and drilling down into actual reviews to make a decision, assuming you're in a city where yelp has a presence).

Re: Apple and Google Face Growing Revolt Over App Store ‘Tax’

#360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to be suggesting the only alternative to the App Store is a janky Apple-run Open App Store. All Apple has to do to offer an alternative is let people install Apps on their phones outside the App Store just like they can do on their Macs. People will still trust the App Store, but maybe a competitor comes along and maybe Netflix/Amazon etc use them or maybe they don’t.

> All Apple has to do to offer an alternative is let people install Apps on their phones outside the App Store This exists now and is free. I’m not saying it’s a good user experience (especially the one week limitation), but it’s definitely possible and legit / legal / free.

Sideloading on iOS is a bad enough user experience to be effectively useless.
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