401–410 of 865 posts
Pretty annoying as an Apple Watch user to find out only Apple Music is allowed to store music on the device itself.
I don't see why other watchOS apps cannot store music on the watch itself. Don't apps get some local storage space? Why can't they use that?
Apple did the same thing to Kindle for iPhone back when it launched. We submitted the original version to Apple with a fully functioning store built into it—and were then stuck in submission limbo. Two weeks later, Apple announces their intent to build in-app purchasing. The kicker: Apple wanted a 30% cut of every book sold on the store …and at the same time, had negotiated with book publishers that the publishers MU…
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> By contrast, Apple is a minority player in the mobile market. Apple sold 47% of the all smartphones shipped in the US in Q4 2018 https://www.counterpointresearch.com/us-market-smartphone-sh...
1. "in the US" 2. 47% is not a monopoly
The claims in here are pretty wild, particularly around how Apple has favored its own products: - Apple blocked Spotify from working with Apple Watch - It blocked Spotify from building apps for HomePod - It blocked Spotify from building apps for Siri - It blocks Spotify updates on a regular basis - It blocked Spotify from using a podcasting API after it acquired 2x major podcasting companies I genuinely hope Europe t…
> Apple blocked Spotify from working with Apple Watch I'm not sure this is 100% true. From browsing the spotify support forums many moons ago, some guy had built a spotify playing app for the apple watch, but spotify squashed it. Given that some random dev could do this, it doesn't seem like apple prevented anything.
Did that guy's app make it on the App Store? He could have easily built it with private APIs which would work but wouldn't pass review (maybe, App Review is very inconsistent) or many other reasons why he could and Spotify couldn't.
As a user, I much prefer the Android model. For example I can buy and browse Kindle or Audible books directly in the app. I don't use Spotify but I imagine it's a similar experience. Apple policies do not really benefit anyone. Kindle iOS users will simply open Safari to buy their books, making their experience worse. Either Apple should really remain objective and not have horses in the App Store race, or follow the…
In all seriousness, when people say "iPads are better tablets because of software compared to Android tablets" I really do raise an eyebrow. If your use case for a tablet is to read books or comics (which I suspect it is for many people! A lot!), then the iPad is terrible because of this specific limitation, and Android tablets are much easier to use. Shame Google seems hellbent on destroying them - the Pixel C reall…
The claims in here are pretty wild, particularly around how Apple has favored its own products: - Apple blocked Spotify from working with Apple Watch - It blocked Spotify from building apps for HomePod - It blocked Spotify from building apps for Siri - It blocks Spotify updates on a regular basis - It blocked Spotify from using a podcasting API after it acquired 2x major podcasting companies I genuinely hope Europe t…
Is this talking about the Apple Watch-Podcasting issue? Until recently, podcast apps on the watch had issues saving where you are in an episode because they couldn't constantly run in the background; you could still play audio in the background without your app, you just couldn't watch the percentage played. Fitness tracking apps were allowed to run in the background forever, so some podcast apps told the API they were fitness apps to get around the restriction [0]. Apple later removed this loophole and created the APIs necessary for podcast apps to work on the watch [1].
[0] https://marco.org/2017/08/10/removed-send-to-watch#fn:pLK9h4...
Right now, Apple owns the moat. The fairness Spotify is asking for requires people to give up money on the table. Because of that, a well-intentioned public awareness campaign is no substitute for legal action.
PS - I'd love it if more news websites were structured like the simple timeline on this site. I'd like to see how the situation developed over time, rather than seeing a stream of articles littered with links to past stories. Just give me one timeline I can scroll through, and I'll decide which of the linked stories I want to click on.
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Spotify seems to focus on IAP, but if you purchased Spotify Premium outside of IAP, it works just fine with that app.
But how would you know Spotify Premium even exists if Spotify is prohibited by Apple to make any mention of it?
Utterly disagree. The problem isn't the amount of the Apple tax, and it buries the lead to make it about that. The contention here is that applying rules like this arbitrarily in a way that at least appears to favour your own products over your rivals is an abuse of your position. If the commission rules in Spotify's favour (which I would think is likely, given the dim view they've taken of such matters previously),…
For a long time I've been confused about the rules of monopolies. Microsoft got into a lot of trouble when they bundled IE into Windows so much so that the US threatened heavily to break up the company. Fast forward a decade later and apple, google and amazon bundle a crazy amount of unrelated services into their platforms without the regulators raising an eyebrow...
>Fast forward a decade later and apple, google and amazon bundle a crazy amount of unrelated services into their platforms without the regulators raising an eyebrow...
That's because the "sanctions" solidified that practice as explicitly legal. So now EVERYONE started doing it. The only thing you needed to do was to allow other people to put their unrelated services on your platform too. You could even charge other people for that if you wanted. (And you didn't even have to let unrelated services on your platform in certain cases. For instance, at the time, Windows was riddled with viruses and bugs, so where the safety or security of the consumer was concerned, you didn't have to allow or even have certain services on your platform. Little known loophole there.)
The problem was really that the issues on the face of it, to someone like me, a young developer activist at the time, were not really the questions dealt with when you finally get into court. The law is about the law, and there was no getting around it.
I became convinced that what we should be doing is trying to change the law. I'm just to old to put that kind of effort into agitating for changed laws any longer.
EDIT: It's probably only fair for me to add that the courts turned out to be right in the Microsoft case. History has shown that information processing paradigms can change on a dime. (PC to mobile). The law is there to provide reasonable safeguards to all actors in a market, and ensure that competition is fair. It's just that "fair" in the eyes of the law, looked a bit different than "fair" did in my own opinion.
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For a long time I've been confused about the rules of monopolies. Microsoft got into a lot of trouble when they bundled IE into Windows so much so that the US threatened heavily to break up the company. Fast forward a decade later and apple, google and amazon bundle a crazy amount of unrelated services into their platforms without the regulators raising an eyebrow...
Microsoft bundled IE for the express purpose of putting Netscape out of business and used their market power to kill netscape. It’s not illegal to be a monopoly, it’s illegal to abuse that monopoly position. Google can make Maps and chrome and whatever, but they can’t force Samsung to not bundle a competeing maps app.
I'm not familiar enough with Android to know if Google does this as well.