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Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair

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Re: Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair

#831

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't sell in Idaho, you lose that market. If you don't sell on Apple's platform, you lose that market. The issue is a combination of the "tax" and the market dominance of these two companies.

...okay? I'm asking why oneplane completely disagrees with using the word "tax" here.

It kinda applies, depending.

If you consider the Appstore/iOS ecosystem to be Apple's "land", then sure that 30% is like the tax for having a presence in that land.

That's the classic meaning of "tax".

However, nowadays, in most civilised countries we expect more of "tax". We expect it to not simply flow to whoever holds power over the land (ecosystem), for them to use for profit, projecting power and keeping it. We expect the tax instead to largely be invested in things that benefit the people paying it (users). In fact, the more this happens, instead of going to the rulers, the nicer a place to live (in general).

Now one the one hand Apple is doing a pretty good job with things that benefit the users: they get security and some privacy. On the other hand, as a tax, it's fair to ask whether that 30% is really necessary for these benefits or just for lining Apple's pockets. An additional thing, looking at it pragmatically, whatever Apple's doing to Spotify doesn't seem to be in the user's benefit at all. But then, they don't pay tax. So that points to the 30% being significantly more than the tax required to benefit the users.

It seems to me that Apple should lower this tax to a rate that Spotify is willing to pay and put up with.

Thing is, Apple is not really like a modern government to its users. They are a "if you don't like it, just leave"-ocracy. So when they put up a "public" service (Apple Music), that undercuts commercial services (Spotify), it is NOT in the benefit of the people (users) like a public transport system would be. This is because the undercutting is purely based on the tax-cut, not because it's more efficient to do it as a public service rather than a commercial one.

Re: Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair

#832

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, you don't have to download apps through a website if you don't want to. It is everyone's full legal right to do whatever they want with their phone. Including downloading apps from websites.

Can I download apps for game consoles through a website?

No and that's a bad thing. Generally the ability to do so (or side-loading in general) has been to the public benefit. Think building a Playstation supercomputer cluster, debugging /modding games and of course the ability to use the things for general purpose (or media centre).

It's just that consoles never have been nearly as popular to make a stink about it. I never bought a console because of exactly this limitation: I can do anything with a computer, why would I buy a neutered computer as well? And that was fine. Because you don't need a console. But you do need a smartphone. And the choice is Android or iPhone, and the usage is about 50/50. So when the iPhone is shut tight, that's a much bigger deal.

Re: Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair

#833

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point is that we can get to a point where the only way Apple can actually enforce such a rule consistently is by forcing itself into the process of purchasing physical goods and dictating what physical goods can and cannot be sold. More importantly: the more Apple tries to react to these tactics, the more evidence in favor of Spotify's case. It's a classic case of squeezing sand so hard that it slips through your…

> My point is that we can get to a point where the only way Apple can actually enforce such a rule consistently is by forcing itself into the process of purchasing physical goods and dictating what physical goods can and cannot be sold. Okay, you forced them into having a rule about an exceptionally niche category of physical goods. They already ban the sale of firearms, so this isn't even new. It causes them no prob…

It's not that niche of a category, though. Any sale of a physical good with a warranty or separate registration process or "cloud" features or any other non-physical good/service that's tied to that physical good would be caught up in this. That's a pretty broad category.

Even if we wanted to stick to a narrow category of "subscription to a service that entails shipping physical media devices on a subscription", there are other apps in that category (though I don't know if they do let you actually sign up via the app): https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/dvd-netflix/id1169772776

Spotify could do something similar and pivot into the music rental business, kinda like an inverse Netflix. Whether that'd actually be better than just paying the 30% App Store tax is another question, of course :)

Re: Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair

#834

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, you don't have to download apps through a website if you don't want to. It is everyone's full legal right to do whatever they want with their phone. Including downloading apps from websites.

Can I download apps for game consoles through a website?

You have the legal right to do so, yes. You'd have to probably jailbreak your console, which is also your full legal right to do so.

Re: Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair

#835

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can I download apps for game consoles through a website?

You have the legal right to do so, yes. You'd have to probably jailbreak your console, which is also your full legal right to do so.

There is nothing legally stopping you from doing the same thing for iOS and you can become an iOS developer much cheaper than a Gabe developer.

Re: Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair

#836

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you feel that console makers shouldn’t be allowed to dictate what runs on their devices? Yes physical discs still have to be approved by the console maker. It’s been that way for 30 years. Yes of course. Either allow the user full control of the hardware they apparently own, or call it what it really is, renting.

So is that also the case for my exercise equipment, my TV, my car, my car radio, my cable box, my printer, etc?

[deleted]

Re: Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair

#837
post #29

This exemplifies some of the reasons proprietary app store lock-in is bad for consumers. Progressive Web Apps -- web apps that are installable and available offline without any app store -- are a viable alternative, and ultimately a threat to Apple's app store racket. It's likely why iOS Safari continues to drag it's feet on PWA support.

> Progressive Web Apps [are] ultimately a threat to Apple's app store racket Honestly, no, they're not. Even the Gold Standard of PWAs - the Twitter Lite app that Google (the patron saint of PWAs) helped them build - provides an inferior experience compared to native apps. People bring this up often - Apple refuses to improve Safari to bolster their App Store - which completely ignores all the valuable improvements S…

You conflate the current state of PWAs with their ultimate outcome. If web apps are as good as native for most people, there is no need for proprietary app stores. This does indeed conflict with Apple's app store business model.

And despite it adding certain CSS standards, mobile Safari on the whole remains the IE6 of the mobile browser world. Apple drags its feet on web app standards support for a reason similar to why Microsoft dragged its feet with IE6 web standards support.

Re: Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair

#838

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An important thing is that the Kindle walled garden is an abstract free program that can be installed into most devices. It doesn't try to push the customer around. There are very different types of garden out there.

Amazon very much tries to push publishers around. How is what Amazon does to publishers any different than Apple?

Publishers being bullied by Amazon can go somewhere else and reach the same consumers, for the most part. It's intertwined with how much the consumers are being bullied.

In the case of e-ink kindles it's sort of the same problem, but the kindle app is available on many platforms so it reduces the harm by a lot.

Re: Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair

#839

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And then every PAID app will switch to FREE and charge for PRO, to circumvent the 30%. Then make it 30% of the first 20 or 30 dollars, and 5% or less after. That more than pays for Apple's verification work without letting them gouge repeat payments.

How many apps on the store sell for over $5 let alone $30?

That's the point, yeah. For the vast majority of apps the 30% cut remains exactly the same, with no loopholes.

But if you're dealing with a $100+ per year subscription, the fee goes down to a modest processing cost.

Re: Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair

#840
post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm anti-electron as anyone (hello VS code waves ). But for spotify, it seems to make perfect sense. I'm not interacting with it in a way where the downsides of electron (latency, etc) really make a difference.

How about battery, cpu, and memory usage? Latency is hardly the main downside of Electron.

I run modern computers where I don't have to worry about these things.
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