241–250 of 482 posts
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Why can Netflix just use the mobile browser? Are they allowing downloads for offline viewing? If they are only online streaming I see no reason at all to even have an app. Just a mobile web page. Can somebody enlighten me?
User experience is better in apps
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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.
> Had they made Android a walled garden like Apple, they wouldn't have been fined....Android is free, which unequivocally is a net positive for consumers 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 emer…
That's my point. They chose the option where everyone wins the most, especially themselves. The alternatives would have set the smartphone industry back several years as Google would struggle to make phones and phone manufactures would struggle to make a halfway-decent operating system. Google's policies are "anti-competitive" in the same sense that charging money for their operating system or enforcing copyright is "anti-competitive." In one case, you're forcing companies to pay for your product. In the other case, you're forcing the companies to follow a set of rules to use your product.
I do think the Apple/Google cut has been natural. The phone and successful app stores aren't accidents, they're endpoints in a long chain of work to focus consumer attention in a way that sells software. That said, these benefits have an expiration date. I don't think the app store cut has been a ripoff for its entire history, but if the temperature of the room has shifted toward hostility, it might be that they've s…
But to negotiate that, you have to be able to threaten them with leaving. And there's no other way to get iPhone users, who are by far the biggest spenders. And if you're going to go this route of web-only transactions, you're going to have some user drop-off and missed sales, it's just a question of how much. Like, where does it make sense to switch. If its 30% drop off it doesn't matter either way. If its 15% or 5%…
Well, it's not like iPhone users can't simply buy Androids. I have mostly iOS household with a few Androids sitting around - mostly unpowered and gathering dust (kids use them mainly to watch Netflix on road trips).
I think Netflix has a strong position to negotiate with Apple over this.
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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: :)
The point is that certain parts of our society are not technical and will never be technical. Despite the expectations and wishes of a tiny minority of technical people.
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It would be interesting if Netflix decided to straight up call Apple's bluff on their revenue restriction. Would Apple risk losing Netflix on the iPhone to enforce their rule about web signup links? Netflix is a ubiquitous expectation, and if it got delisted, Google and Samsung would have a field day talking about how you had to get an Android to get Netflix.
The answer is yes. They already fought with Spotify over this. Spotify had to clean up their game quite a bit to pass App Store review. Apple still has plenty of leverage. Being the highest grossing app on the platform is a double edged sword - and Netflix needs to be on iOS even more than Apple needs them to. But it's very unlikely that Apple would go so far as to delist Netflix. Apple will just reject the new updat…
Many fewer folks use Spotify on desktop OSs, it's common for Netflix.
Netflix is well positioned to fight Apple over this, and if they call Apple's bluff, Apple will likely be forced to consider.
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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…
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.
Actually Playgrounds is pretty amazing. And you can definitely spin up a development platform in AWS and then Remote Desktop from your iPad or access via Coda or similar Terminal tools.
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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: :)
That claim could be made at literally any point in history. Even in 1983, any employee at ARPA could have been a grandparent. Old people have been involved in technology since the very beginning. I'm not seeing your point.
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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: :)
True. I just wanted a nice folksy metaphor.
But Apple (and Google, IMHO to a lesser extent) are starting to use their gatekeeper positions for their own advantage. And these markets are getting so huge and the potential damage to other companies so large that they're just inviting government action, probably by the EU first but I can also see the US getting to the point of taking antitrust action.
It's clear Apple has streaming and original content ambitions. They also have iTunes of course. If they're not careful they're going to trigger intervention when they arbitrarily start applying rules to Hulu and Amazon Prime Video that don't apply to others.
There are already some pretty silly contortions for these policies. Take Amazon. You can purchase items through the iOS app... except for anything digital like, say, Kindle books. But you can buy Kindle books elsewhere and then load them on the iOS Kindle app using your email and password. As others have noted, other companies haven't gotten these exceptions.
This is also why I think it's a huge mistake for Apple to get into the original content game. Their other businesses are so huge that original content will never be able to compete on a revenue basis. Yet they risk their own platform by favouring their own content. Government action could be ruinous for them. When Apple competes on their own platform against third parties it undermines faith in that platform and (IMHO) its long term health (even viability).
I don't know what the alternative is though. It's not letting anyone install anything as much as tech-savvy purists may think so. That's actually not what consumers want or need. Is it allowing competition in App stores? Maybe. There isn't just one domain registrar and just one root-level CA.
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The answer is yes. They already fought with Spotify over this. Spotify had to clean up their game quite a bit to pass App Store review. Apple still has plenty of leverage. Being the highest grossing app on the platform is a double edged sword - and Netflix needs to be on iOS even more than Apple needs them to. But it's very unlikely that Apple would go so far as to delist Netflix. Apple will just reject the new updat…
Why can Netflix just use the mobile browser? Are they allowing downloads for offline viewing? If they are only online streaming I see no reason at all to even have an app. Just a mobile web page. Can somebody enlighten me?
They do for quite a few items in their catalog - probably not even a majority, but quite a few nonetheless.