321–330 of 513 posts
Apple and Google are able to gatekeep what you can install on entire generations of devices, from smartphones to tablets. Their power to gatekeep billion dollar markets needs to be looked at through the lens of antitrust legislation.
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Good lord - on HN the monopoly comments are so crazy sometimes. What is the monopoly issue Apple has? Use android if you don't like Apple's product line. Apple is at 22% share.
From the FTC itself[1]: > Courts do not require a literal monopoly before applying rules for single firm conduct; that term is used as shorthand for a firm with significant and durable market power — that is, the long term ability to raise price or exclude competitors. That is how that term is used here: a "monopolist" is a firm with significant and durable market power. Courts look at the firm's market share, but ty…
I think there's a reasonable argument that users buy iPhones with the expectation of a market in the app store (I can get or buy apps from any company that cares to develop one), so when Apple charges a 30% fee (far above normal payment processing fees) on every transaction made through the app they are abusing a monopoly position.
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Businesses are legal fictions. There is no inherent reason shareholders should be the only constituency businesses serve.
There’s plenty of businesses that aren’t just motivated by profit. However the businesses that rise to the top are obviously going to be those who are more aggressively profit driven. This is why my previous comment made a distinction about company size rather than making a blanket statement about all companies.
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Game console to General computing device isn't exactly apples to apples. But yes, It'd be great if users could install unsigned apps on all the devices they own.
If by great you mean "great for malware makers" I guess so. HN has a big problem of pushing for changes hat benefit highly tech-literate people but in reality the majority of the market needs signed apps so they don't download harmful programs. I think people need to stop looking at their own immediate interests and start considering long term aspects of things. You can't just throw out technology now without underst…
Desktop software, for a long time, did not have the notion of specialized app stores or enforcing signed programs. Yes, Windows has loads of security issues. But surely this can be a problem that can be solved over time?
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are you suggesting they had any alternative if they wanted to pursue iPhone customers?
Epic doesn't need to pursue Apple iPhone customers they same way Epic doesn't need to pursue Sony Bravia customers. This is the same as Bungee not needing to pursue Playstation customers to make Halo what it is.
Apple does not get to decide how the market operates. Only government gets to do that. Your statement makes it clear that they are committing anti-competitive practices.
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But where is the line of lots of options vs not a lot of options? iOS isn't even the most popular mobile operating system.
For some market it is. Our users were 80%+ on ios
The feature/capability parity between the platforms means they are, in fact, both capable of serving these markets. But people want to vote with their dollars in the iOS ecosystem, and now the players want to change that ecosystem.
I'm not entirely convinced that this is Apple's problem, in as much as it is Google's fault for not fostering a properly competitive revenue delivery platform, even though it has the maturity and standing to do so.
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Businesses are legal fictions. There is no inherent reason shareholders should be the only constituency businesses serve.
Okay sovereign citizen. Have fun living in your fantasy world
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Apple takes 0.15% of every transaction that used Apple Pay, though- https://www.macrumors.com/2014/09/12/more-apple-pay-details/ They haven’t developed it to not make money off of it.
Mastercard, Visa etc all take a fee for transactions. There are serious costs involved in running an international payments system. But that's very different from a proper 30% style cut.
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It's not an "undeniable right" but it's also not like there are a lot of other options. You can say "just move to another platform" or "then make your own platform" but you also have to be a realist. This is why antitrust laws exist - sometimes the market realities make this nearly impossible.
> This is why antitrust laws exist Anti trust laws (or competition laws) tend to apply to players with an clear control over the market, monopolies that stifle competition. Apple has ~14% of the mobile market, compared to Android's ~86%. I'm curious about how this will play out as it might have an impact in other sectors where smaller players by market share exercise a bit too tight control.
Don't know about tablets, but I feel it's not different.
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It's not about using a different OS. The monopoly is that if you want to distribute through Apple, you have to go through their app store. There's not another app store that you can go through. At least with Android you can go through f-droid if you don't like the Play Store.
That’s not a monopoly though. No one is being forced into using an iOS device. A monopoly would be if Apple was literally the only smartphone manufacturer in the entire world.