231–240 of 482 posts
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Just because you aren't having all your desires perfectly catered to does not mean that there is not real choice. It means that, like everything else in life, you have to make tradeoffs.
Since apple management is 0.000001% of the population why can't we just abrogate the trade off by making them do what we prefer in the name of consumer choice.
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I don't quite get the last sentence. > who could look at how Europe treats Android and come to the conclusion that Google made the right decision by being open? Google was fined on antitrust grounds. I don't see which direction to leap to make that sentence relevant to them being fined. From the EU’s competition commissioner > Fine of €4,34 bn to @Google for 3 types of illegal restrictions on the use of Android. In t…
Android is free, which unequivocally is a net positive for consumers and smartphone manufacturers. Google places some terms of use to their software and suddenly they're being "anti-competitive." Had they made Android a walled garden like Apple, they wouldn't have been fined.
It's unequivocally a positive if they play by the rules. They fell foul of Europe(who was protecting it's consumers).
Google's not a charity and made the choices they made to get to where they are. Making Android free ensured they quickly became relevant in the emerging mobile market without having to invest massive amounts in designing/making/manufacturing devices (alongside the risks), if doing Apple way. Or if they went the MS way and tried to sell a closed source OS to device manufacturers, those device manufacturers may instead have chosen a different, more polished OS from a company who had more experience/better reputation in that field.
> Google places some terms of use to their software and suddenly they're being "anti-competitive."
You can drop the scare quotes, it's not "anti-competitive", it's just anti-competitive.
I worked on an app that is in the same category as Netflix. A week before launch, Apple chose to reject us in spite of months of meetings and reviews with their app teams and assurances we were in-bounds since we were working with them for launch featuring. It came down to the fact we required an email address and password for IAP so you could bring your subscription to the web or other platforms. While everyone else…
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There are two problems with this: Both these types of users can't co-exist on the same device type or ecosystem. Grandma might not invent the next internet on an iPad but your kid is also never going to get that opportunity. And secondly, since you can't install the next internet on the iPad, Grandma is never going to get to use it.
> Both these types of users can't co-exist on the same device type or ecosystem. That's my point though. One size fits all doesn't work all that well in practice. As a technologist you seem to prefer the freedom of general compute. As a fellow technologist, I agree. We are a minority though. The vast majority of people don't seem to want much more from their devices than a working browser. (and maybe Instagram). To t…
You're already seeing it. Most people under 35 have likely spent most of their "computing time" by playing games on game consoles, which are precisely black boxes of consumption. And this is the result: walled gardens.
Apple and Google not only created the device and funded the R & D for the features, but also created the APIs, the tools, the infrastructure, and attracted the (hundreds of millions of) users. The 30% cut they ask of developers is more than reasonable. Want to bypass that cut? Build a web app and make it play well on mobile. If you want to run it on Android and iOS devices, then I don't really see how anyone can say…
> The 30% cut they ask of developers is more than reasonable. If only we could prove this. Ie, is Apple honestly selling $1,200 phones for a loss such that they need to recoup money from the App Store to turn a profit? If they didn't take the %30 cut, would they still be profitable? I'm not proving a point, simply asking questions I'm curious about. Would be neat if we knew these answers.
There's two arguments: Apple/Google developed the device, support the platform, built the api, maintain the infrastructure, and market the experience. The other is that app developers have a symbiotic, probably synergistic relationship with the phone makers. Apps are a huge part of the draw of a good platform. My take is that until we decide that a given platform is a monopoly, we let the platforms fight for a larger…
While locking their devices and users to that experience, or forcing those users to make large-scale security compromises just to avoid it.
> My take is that until we decide that a given platform is a monopoly
They seem like they are. Is there another app store that iPhone users can use? Android users? Does the operating system on these phones let you easily change your "app store" preference?
> we let the platforms fight for a larger market share by attracting high quality apps using this "tax" as leverage
How does that benefit consumers? Is it impossible to achieve these same benefits in any other way than the somewhat draconian system we have now?
> Microsoft tried (and failed) to improve their platform by offering developers a larger share of the take away and hoping they'd improve the ecosystem.
Microsoft had more problems with their platform than just the price. There's already a workable distribution channel for third-party software on their systems. Their "app store" really didn't add any benefit to people already familiar with their software. Plus, they never really sold a volume of phones that puts them close to Apple or Google so their Monopoly position in this regard was severely hampered.
> My hope is the market gets more competitive so that app makers get a larger share of the profit.
How is that going to happen when you only have one app distribution mechanism to choose from per platform?
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There are two problems with this: Both these types of users can't co-exist on the same device type or ecosystem. Grandma might not invent the next internet on an iPad but your kid is also never going to get that opportunity. And secondly, since you can't install the next internet on the iPad, Grandma is never going to get to use it.
> Both these types of users can't co-exist on the same device type or ecosystem. That's my point though. One size fits all doesn't work all that well in practice. As a technologist you seem to prefer the freedom of general compute. As a fellow technologist, I agree. We are a minority though. The vast majority of people don't seem to want much more from their devices than a working browser. (and maybe Instagram). To t…
But that's how every generation since computers existed has mostly viewed them; tinkerers have been a small minority, even if young tinkerers-of-computers were an iconic image associated with the first generation in which that was a possible thing. That wasn't because they were common, but because it amazed (mostly older) people that they existed at all.
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> We're never going to have average users fully technically aware. OP is establishing that there are different types of users with different usage requirements. You and Grandma are very different users. Grandma is probably much better served by an iPad and App Store than a true general computing device. Grandma is also not going to invent the next internet. Maybe we should embrace this dichotomy instead of pretending…
At this point in time "Grandma" could have been involved in the creation of the internet and working on the next big thing. Maybe use the word expert or techie or something. Edit: :)
I worked on an app that is in the same category as Netflix. A week before launch, Apple chose to reject us in spite of months of meetings and reviews with their app teams and assurances we were in-bounds since we were working with them for launch featuring. It came down to the fact we required an email address and password for IAP so you could bring your subscription to the web or other platforms. While everyone else…
I am a developer of a dozen very popular apps and I couldn't disagree more with your position.
Developers having a wonderful experience or sustained livelihood isn't the goal here. It's to make sure consumers are protected and cared for. As Tim Cook would put it that's their North Star.
I worked on an app that is in the same category as Netflix. A week before launch, Apple chose to reject us in spite of months of meetings and reviews with their app teams and assurances we were in-bounds since we were working with them for launch featuring. It came down to the fact we required an email address and password for IAP so you could bring your subscription to the web or other platforms. While everyone else…
I actually just let my membership to their developer program lapse after 4 years. In addition to having to pay money to develop on their platform, the return I get is questionable. The straw was that they're forcing me to republish old programs, just to force them through their new compliance tunnels. Frankly, I'm sick of their hoops and their walled-garden. I'm ok with forcing users to the browser now. Amazon does i…
The point of republishing old programs is to make sure they are running against the latest SDK. This is an important aspect for the ecosystem. It forces apps to work properly on the latest OS as well as support technologies like App Thinning.
It's not just to mess you around for compliance reasons.