This is exactly why I moved from the iPhone to an Android phone about a year ago: I couldn't use Siri to play things on Spotify – that's pretty much the only thing that really bugged me about iOS.
Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair
321–330 of 865 posts
Re: Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair
#322Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Spotify feels aggrieved that Apple does not allow it to develop software for certain of their hardware lines, such as Homepod or Apple Watch. Why do I have to allow you to develop software for my proprietary hardware, just because it's technically possible? I see your point but you could flip that a 3rd way: "Consumers pay for their hardware - they own the device - so why should manufacturers tell consumers what th…
Here's the thing: consumers paid (voluntarily) for an iPhone that has the restriction that apps must be bought / acquired / loaded through the App Store . So, yes, they own the device that has this restriction. If they didn't want this device, they could have bought one of the many devices that doesn't, as approximately 75% percent of people do globally.
I've had both Android and iPhones and honestly they're much the same. Google gives you a little more freedom in app development but you lose a lot of privacy. Neither company champions jailbreaking.
Ultimately there isn't a single consumer handset out there that has the same principles of "now you own the device it's yours to do with as you like". Consumer tech just doesn't operate that way any more.
Re: Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair
#323Well I want to make a startup but dont want to to get wrecked by Facebook or Google or Apple. I guess I'll wait until lawmakers break them. Or else they dont deserve innovation.
Re: Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair
#324Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't that like saying a store has a monopoly over their shelves?
Except that if I don't like one store, I can always go to another. That's the case with Android, and at least to an extent with Windows (even store apps can be distributed and installed by package if you don't want to use their store, plus classic Windows apps are still a thing). With iOS, it's Apple's way or no way at all. There's no competition.
Then use an Android device. No one is holding you down
Re: Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair
#325Earlier quoted context omitted.
Spotify is available (on apple watch) now, for whatever that's worth... Took me about 2 minutes from reading the complaint to playing Spotify (already had an account) on my watch. That includes downloading from the store and then to the watch (which has in the past, with other apps, taken a while)
They state in their timeline that after many years Apple did allow Spotify.
Until last year there was not an API that allowed apps to download music to the local storage of the watch and play it back in the background.
Re: Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair
#326Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Imagine if Spotify offered a lower rate for Android users... Wouldn't that send a very clear message to Apple? I believe this is also against Apple's Terms of Service. IIRC, they have a "most favored nation" clause which prohibits you from offering a lower price on a competing platform.
I was just looking for this in the App Store review guidelines and I couldn't find it. https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/
How can they insist anything at all about pricing on another platforms? Even if somehow it was possible, what a about discounts; are you saying app sellers cannot have platform specific discounts? What about region sensitive pricing (I know about it on Steam where the same item is much cheaper in Bangladesh than it is in the USA, no reson why Play Store can't do it).
Re: Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair
#327Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you elaborate on why I am mistaken?
Antitrust covers in general anticompetitive practices, and has done so since the original Sherman Antitrust Act. So, for example, colluding with another business to fix prices is covered under antitrust, even if the sum of the businesses concerned do not constitute a monopolistic power in the industry. The other common category is the various rules around the preference of a company's other product lines over competi…
You _might_ have an argument here: "The other common category is the various rules around the preference of a company's other product lines over competitors". We'll see what the courts decide
Re: Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair
#328Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why unpopular? It's a rational decision. Diversity vs centralization.
diversity vs privacy. iOS is still much more secure and has much more protection for the typical user than android.
Why do you think that "iOS is still much more secure"? The fact it's a closed source system means only we are not aware of many potential security risks. Apple has really bad reputation because of serious security bugs discovered in Mac OS recently. It might be similar with iOS devices.
Re: Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair
#329Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is a fine line between reading between the lines and fabricating things. Can you point to what exactly in that website substantiates your implication?
Their timeline is a bit unclear. They claim that in 2015 and 2016, they were denied outright. In 2017 they say that "Apple continues to make it challenging for us to deliver a workable streaming solution for the Apple Watch". Then in 2018 they say that "Apple finally allows enhanced functionality for the Spotify app on the Apple Watch".
Until watchos 5, 3rd party apps couldn’t do lte streaming. That said, lte was new in watchos 4, the tslk was that apple wanted to initially restrict it for battery life reasons.
Spotify could have made a watch app that provided controls and had offline somgs. They didn’t, and kept shutting down spps that did, or buying them and shutting them. This was a major sore point against spotify on the apple watch subreddit. Even now they’re dragging their feet, iirc.
Re: Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair
#330Just as Microsoft were stopped from shipping a browser with their OS, vendors should be prevented from shipping an App Store with their OS. You cant move to another platform without losing access to all your "purchases" - there is no free market. They have monopolies within ecosystems they created. They should be FORCED to have an open platform, with users able to access multiple 3rd party storefronts on multiple pla…
> vendors should be prevented from shipping an App Store with their OS
The problem here isn't the quality of the App Store. The problem is that Spotify has no alternative.
Apple is a hardware developer, a software developer, and a software retailer. The problem is how tightly coupled those three roles are on the iPhone.
You can't run iOS on other hardware. You can't run another OS on the iPhone. You can't install apps on iOS except from the App Store. You can't use the App Store on other OSes.
Those are the underlying problems.
Users can't use part of the ecosystem. They have to invest in the whole thing, giving Apple more control and reducing consumer mobility.