Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair • Hacker News Board

Re: Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair

#511

Post by coldacid » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 5:04 PM UTC

sinnoh wrote: post #501

coldacid wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a developer, tell that to the users. Speaking of which, even just developing for iOS is a painful chore compared to Android. Unfortunately when the client and the users want iPhones, folks like us have to develop for them. In this world, it's fuck or walk.

it theoretically would be fine to dev for apple, if they added proper progressive web app support (or gave users the tools to build this out themselves) but of course that would hurt their interests by introducing competing (even if inferior) software distribution methods to the native effectively walled garden monopoly they have now.

It would help a lot if we weren't locked into their everything for anything. Store, dev tools, etc., it's all massively anti-third-party.

Re: Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair

#512

Post by graeme » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 5:04 PM UTC

Kesty wrote: post #418

graeme wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. E…

Their point is that Apple app could do that and it was unfair to block other apps to be able to do the same.

The watch is a new, battery constrained device. It doesn’t seem unreasonable to limit 3rd party apps for a bit while sorting out how to work with the size constraints.

I’m guessing apple will add lte support for 3rd party apps in watchos 6. Meanwhile, 3rd party apps have had the ability to make apps with offline support since June 2018. Most audio apps have added this.

Spotify....has not. What’s the holdup? Apple watch users are pretty frustrated with spotify: if all the other audio apps can do it, why haven’t they?

(Lte is an edge case: few watches have lte, and even fewer have an active lte plan. Offline audio is the main use case spotify still isn’t doing)

Re: Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair

#513

Post by oarsinsync » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 5:04 PM UTC

jetti wrote: post #419

volandovengo wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

The difference is that Netscape Navigator was a paid application. Microsoft was bundling their product, which was free, with their OS. They OS was dominating the market, which meant that majority of people didn't have to buy from Netscape. They were forcing out the competition. When Apple, Google and Amazon are releasing unrelated services into their platforms it isn't to starve out competitors but just expand their…

> They aren't, as far as I know, drastically undercutting the prices of their services to levels that aren't sustainable for other companies to compete.

Difficult to compete with free on a large scale, you can only compete on niche audiences at that point. Gmail feels like a good example here that effectively drove out most of the other competition's relatively limited free tiers for personal users, leaving only larger businesses and privacy-oriented individuals to continue to pay for email.

Re: Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair

#514

Post by JackFr » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 5:04 PM UTC

ppeetteerr wrote: post #198

iambateman wrote: post #184

Just because Apple can do as they please, doesn't mean they ought to be allowed to. Antitrust is a useful tool for when players end up controlling monopolies and using them in anti-competitive ways.

Antitrust would not apply here as Apple's share of the smartphone market is less than monopolistic. There is a stronger case against Amazon for selling Amazon-branded, well-moving products like batteries and diapers, even though they don't stifle the other brands.

In a more fitting analogy, Amazon is actually a model citizen compared to Apple.

Both Hulu and Netflix compete directly with Prime Video, and both 1) are available as free apps for Kindle and the Amazon Fire Stick TV and 2) literally rely on Amazon hardware to run through AWS.

Re: Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair

#515

Post by jdietrich » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 5:05 PM UTC

treis wrote: post #383

jdietrich wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Just as Microsoft were stopped from shipping a browser with their OS, vendors should be prevented from shipping an App Store with their OS. There's nothing wrong with providing an app store as long as that store offers fair and non-discriminatory terms to all vendors. Charging app developers for the costs of running a store and maintaining an ecosystem is perfectly reasonable; using those charges to stifle competiti…

>There's nothing wrong with providing an app store as long as that store offers fair and non-discriminatory terms to all vendors Setting aside the store issue for a moment, what you suggest is impossible if Apple is also making apps.

>Setting aside the store issue for a moment, what you suggest is impossible if Apple is also making apps.

No, it's very easy to implement and commonplace in all sorts of businesses. Apple need to treat their in-house app development teams in exactly the same way as they would treat a third-party developer - they get the same APIs, they get the same documentation, they go through the same approvals process and they pay the same fees.

Apple can hardly claim that they lack the expertise to compartmentalise information in this manner - prior to the iPhone launch, the software team had never seen the hardware and vice-versa.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_wall

Re: Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair

#516

Post by baxtr » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 5:05 PM UTC

K0nserv wrote: post #348

baxtr wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I said: These are the costs of the channel. You don't need to use the channel.

You do, that's the crux of the matter. Apple can happily claim that 30% is the overhead cost of providing the subscriptions service, that's within their right. Looking past how ridiculously high 30% is the fact that they are so hostile to apps having users pay via means that aren't the app store is the issue. For example Spotify aren't allowed to even tell people in the iOS app that they can subscribe with a credit c…

No, you don’t. Just don’t work with Apple.

Re: Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair

#517

Post by sinnoh » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 5:05 PM UTC

GeekyBear wrote: post #375

jdietrich wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's an interesting philosophical question there. Can a vendor who has 15% marketshare really be called a monopoly? Philosophically interesting perhaps, but legally irrelevant. EU competition law is primarily concerned with dominant market positions and the abuse of that dominance. As the junior partner in a duopoly, Apple are inarguably powerful enough to substantially manipulate the market. https://en.wikipedi…

The EU competition commission would be very unlikely to place restrictions on allowable behavior until you reach a 40% market share. http://ec.europa.eu/competition/antitrust/procedures_102_en.... 40% share is certainly a much lower bar than in the US, but would still not apply to Apple's share of EU smartphones. Smart watches, on the other hand…

and phones have [some fraction] marketshare on overall devices people buy, what's your point?

the argument is markets within the ios ecosystem, of which there's effectively one, and how it affects developers' ability to build on that ecosystem.

Re: Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair

#518

Post by Ardon » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 5:05 PM UTC

intellix wrote: post #487

When I'm on Spotify on macOS and press play on my keyboard, it always opens up iTunes instead. Am sick of this second party support for everything especially when the Apple versions are so dire

I had a similar frustration where the media keys would control videos in Safari instead of my music.

This little app lets you go back to the old behavior, or set a priority: http://milgra.com/mac-media-key-forwarder.html

Re: Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair

#519

Post by ac29 » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 5:06 PM UTC

jonhohle wrote: post #429

volandovengo wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

They bundled _while_ having a monopoly. They could have bundled or they could have had a monopoly, but doing both is where it crosses the anti-trust line since your customers are effectively captive. What does Apple have a monopoly on? What does Amazon have a monopoly on? Google arguably has a monopoly on search which could put them in an unfavorable position should an antitrust case be brought against them (maybe wh…

Apple clearly has a monopoly on the sales and distribution of iPhone apps, and as evidenced by Spotify, they are wielding that monopoly anti-competitively.

"Just use a different smartphone" isn't a real defense in my opinion, any more than "just use a unix workstation" would be to Microsoft's desktop computer monopoly in the 1990s.

Re: Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair

#520

Post by sinnoh » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 5:06 PM UTC

ppeetteerr wrote: post #198

iambateman wrote: post #184

Just because Apple can do as they please, doesn't mean they ought to be allowed to. Antitrust is a useful tool for when players end up controlling monopolies and using them in anti-competitive ways.

Antitrust would not apply here as Apple's share of the smartphone market is less than monopolistic. There is a stronger case against Amazon for selling Amazon-branded, well-moving products like batteries and diapers, even though they don't stifle the other brands.

no reason not to go after both. "Two wrongs" and all.