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Apple’s “monopsony” power, and the woman who named it

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Re: Apple’s “monopsony” power, and the woman who named it

#321

Post by m463 »

olliej wrote: post #30
m463 wrote: post #2

so: - monopoly: the only seller - monopsony: the only buyer So app store customers can only buy from apple. And the app developers can only sell to apple.

PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo, sega, ... are the same: You can only sell for those devices with manufacturer licensing (that includes profit sharing and mandatory annoyances like “achievements”), and consumers can only buy games licensed by those manufacturers. The only difference is that PC developers haven’t experienced that before. It seems like this would have been established in the 80s/90s, so I’m surprised we’re…

Although things are changing (platforms have app stores), did't gaming systems traditionally decouple the box manufacturer from the distribution? ie sony made the playstation, and publishers made and distributed the disks?

Of course, everything is changing now. I think the apple app store might have led the way starting ~ 2007 or so.

Re: Apple’s “monopsony” power, and the woman who named it

#322

Post by unishark »

ldoughty wrote: post #117
braythwayt wrote: post #67

Amusingly, there are two sets of people arguing about why Apple is bad, and each have their own argument: 1. Android sells more, and offers more variety of mobile and wearable devices than Apple. And here’s the data to prove it. 2. Apple is a monopoly/monopsony and should be forced to allow more user choice of apps, allow sideloading, lower their prices, lower their app store cut, &c. Which one is is? Apple is like T…

Kinda miss the point of the article, which focused on monopsony -- sole buyer. If your want to sell on the east coast (Apple), you need to put your product in wooden boxes no larger than X and documentation must be written in French, and you must have 10 employees that speak French. If you want to sell to the West coast, you put your product in plastic bags, and everything is in Spanish, and your employees need to sp…

I see no problem here until you also presume the firms are a monopoly (or oligopoly). Otherwise there are still customers served by someone else. There are thousands of stores in the US, maybe millions. As for as I know each may make whatever silly demands they want of me (perhaps aside from some racial/religious/safety constraints)) in order to stick my products on their shelves for their "unique customers". Further I see the prospect of govt regulation of this decision as a bad thing for the customer. Who do you think will end up writing those regulations?

Re: Apple’s “monopsony” power, and the woman who named it

#323

Post by manicdee »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #195
braythwayt wrote: post #67

Amusingly, there are two sets of people arguing about why Apple is bad, and each have their own argument: 1. Android sells more, and offers more variety of mobile and wearable devices than Apple. And here’s the data to prove it. 2. Apple is a monopoly/monopsony and should be forced to allow more user choice of apps, allow sideloading, lower their prices, lower their app store cut, &c. Which one is is? Apple is like T…

> 1. Android sells more, and offers more variety of mobile and wearable devices than Apple. And here’s the data to prove it. > 2. Apple is a monopoly/monopsony and should be forced to allow more user choice of apps, allow sideloading, lower their prices, lower their app store cut, &c. > Which one is is? It's both, because they're two different contexts. There is no monopoly on phones; Android phones are direct compet…

And then you find that people are buying Apple specifically because Apple does all this stuff to control the iOS app marketplace.

The whole point of a walled garden is that it’s walled, and you don’t have to learn about gardening to enjoy it. Your experience with the garden is to simply walk through it chat with friends, and never think more about it.

Allowing side-loading means suddenly you as the customer have to learn how to identify legitimate visitors to the garden apart from miscreants and pickpockets. How do you know who to trust?

Why are people so keen to remove the gatekeeper from the walled garden?

This is only about forcing Apple to provide a backdoors to their Secure Enclave. I am not falling for it.

Re: Apple’s “monopsony” power, and the woman who named it

#324

Post by dpkonofa »

CoolGuySteve wrote: post #278
dpkonofa wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iPads don't have phone numbers so the person sending you the message is sending it to an Apple ID, not a phone number. This is working exactly the way it's supposed to.

No, it's really not. If I unregister from iMessage the last thing that should happen is my Apple ID swallowing messages from people's iPhones. Return an error or redirect to SMS, it's not that fucking hard. The one thing you are right about is that it's an intentional dark pattern on Apple's part to obsfucate Apple IDs and phone numbers. It's an illegal anticompetitve strategy.

No, you're misunderstanding what's happening. If you unregister your phone number from iMessage, then that's the end of it. People sending messages to your phone number will get SMS messages. It is impossible for a de-registered phone number to receive iMessages on an iPad. What's actually happening is that the people who are sending you messages are sending them to your Apple ID instead and iMessage is always registered to an Apple ID so the messages are delivered to your iPad. It's not swallowing anyone's messages from people's iPhones because that's literally not possible.

It's not a dark pattern. It's not an illegal anti-competitive strategy. It's a successful delivery of a message to the recipient address it was sent to that you're simply misunderstanding.

Re: Apple’s “monopsony” power, and the woman who named it

#325

Post by dpkonofa »

dpkonofa wrote: post #273
logfromblammo wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once heard my spouse complaining about Signal, and how they only had it loaded on their iPhone so they could talk to me. I asked why Signal was not their default SMS application, like it is on my Android phone. And that's when I discovered that Apple hoards certain core phone features for itself. Signal for iOS cannot send or receive ordinary SMS messages. This is a significant impediment to adoption of end-to-end…

>Signal for iOS cannot send or receive ordinary SMS messages. That's not an iOS limitation, though. I can send and receive SMS messages through Google Voice on iOS without any issue.

I don't really understand why I got downvoted for a 100% accurate and truthful statement.

Re: Apple’s “monopsony” power, and the woman who named it

#326

Post by CoolGuySteve »

dpkonofa wrote: post #324
CoolGuySteve wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's really not. If I unregister from iMessage the last thing that should happen is my Apple ID swallowing messages from people's iPhones. Return an error or redirect to SMS, it's not that fucking hard. The one thing you are right about is that it's an intentional dark pattern on Apple's part to obsfucate Apple IDs and phone numbers. It's an illegal anticompetitve strategy.

No, you're misunderstanding what's happening. If you unregister your phone number from iMessage, then that's the end of it. People sending messages to your phone number will get SMS messages. It is impossible for a de-registered phone number to receive iMessages on an iPad. What's actually happening is that the people who are sending you messages are sending them to your Apple ID instead and iMessage is always regist…

I'm not misunderstanding anything. I want to opt out of iMessage being bound to my Apple ID.

I don't give a shit what address or phone number people think they're sending to, when they see my name on their iPhone, it's the wrong address.

The only reason my iPad even has iMessage installed is because people were sending me messages that got disappeared by Apple's abysmal policy.

Why is this so hard for you to understand?

Apple is the richest company in the world but for some reason their process for delisting your Apple ID from iMessage is a huge fucking joke.

There's no way this is not an intentional decision on their part.

Re: Apple’s “monopsony” power, and the woman who named it

#327

Post by baddox »

jonahx wrote: post #95
brennebeck wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In that case wouldn’t it make sense to try to get your friends to use another group chat? I get people love to use the iMessage groups, but every friend I have on Android create a WhatsApp group, etc. and it’s pretty trivial to use and maintain, especially with close friends.

> In that case wouldn’t it make sense to try to get your friends to use another group chat? This greatly underestimates the power of habit and default choice. I can tell you for sure that if I tried to mount such campaign among my (non-techie) friends, there would be a lot of pushback and annoyance.

But this doesn't seem at all relevant to market competition and antitrust laws. It's not much different than disagreements over which coffee shop your friends are going to meet at (maybe you're the only one that lives really far away from the group's most convenient location), or who gets invited to a group of friends' parties.

Re: Apple’s “monopsony” power, and the woman who named it

#328

Post by baddox »

braythwayt wrote: post #73
ksec wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree on most if not all points but the article didn't argue against any of that. It did point out two things. Companies don't have to literally be the only buyer in a marketplace to wield "monopsony power." If competition isn't perfect — like when there are only a few companies in a market and they aren't undercutting each other's prices — companies gain some ability to lower the price on the stuff they buy. Sellers…

Monopsony is a slippery concept. If I tilt my head just right, we could be discussing the way WalMart purchases products. They sell a product in their store, they decide they want a certain margin, and then they tell suppliers to meet a certain price target if they want their products in WalMart.

There's nothing slippery about that, because Walmart is already commonly given as a textbook example of monopsony.

Re: Apple’s “monopsony” power, and the woman who named it

#329

Post by jkestner »

CoolGuySteve wrote: post #326
dpkonofa wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you're misunderstanding what's happening. If you unregister your phone number from iMessage, then that's the end of it. People sending messages to your phone number will get SMS messages. It is impossible for a de-registered phone number to receive iMessages on an iPad. What's actually happening is that the people who are sending you messages are sending them to your Apple ID instead and iMessage is always regist…

I'm not misunderstanding anything. I want to opt out of iMessage being bound to my Apple ID. I don't give a shit what address or phone number people think they're sending to, when they see my name on their iPhone, it's the wrong address. The only reason my iPad even has iMessage installed is because people were sending me messages that got disappeared by Apple's abysmal policy. Why is this so hard for you to understa…

What happens if you go to Settings > Messages > Send & Receive, tap on your Apple ID and sign out of the iMessage account for your Apple ID?

Re: Apple’s “monopsony” power, and the woman who named it

#330

Post by nhumrich »

ubermonkey wrote: post #211
julianozen wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple has lied to us to make us believe that in order to have a secure device, we have to allow them to hand review every app that goes into the store. This is a false dichotomy. We can have alternate App Stores run by other trusted/neutral entities or app side loading or certificates and tools like gatekeeper for iOS. We can have an App Store where Apple does not censor things that don’t meet its curation preference…

They haven't lied. They've said that this is HOW they're keeping the platform secure. Perhaps there are other ways, but this is the path they've chosen. >We can have alternate App Stores run by other trusted/neutral entities or app side loading or certificates and tools like gatekeeper for iOS. You could, if Apple wanted. Apple doesn't want to. If you want that, use another platform. I'm 100% fine with the phone bein…

But you get to choose who to trust and who not to. If you dont trust "3rd party app store" then dont use it. The whole point of monopoly (or monopsoly) powers and why they are bad isnt because of now, its because of tomorrow. You buy a device, fully trusting apple. Its your device, you own it, you trust apple. Tomorrow, you find out that company-you-dont-trust is a partner with apple, and the entire app store is potentially compromised because of it (according to your values). You now have no option to change you are stuck. Forced into their system which you no longer want. They changed and you dont have another option.
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