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Apple, Epic, and the App Store

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Re: Apple, Epic, and the App Store

#171

Post by spanhandler »

liability wrote: post #148
FactolSarin wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I'm sympathetic to this idea, one thing that I get hung up on is game consoles. I enjoy multiplayer shooters, and I like knowing that none of my opponents are using bots. So the fact that the console is locked down is part of the value proposition for me. It's a pro, rather than a con.

Or you can just play with friends who don't cheat. Cheaters are only a problem if your friends are jackasses or you play with strangers.

So... we're gonna throw out the freedom to play with non-cheating strangers when your friends are all busy, in order that every computing device, instead of just lots and lots of them, can have arbitrary software installed on it?

This feels like losing options, not gaining them.

Re: Apple, Epic, and the App Store

#172

Post by johncolanduoni »

badsectoracula wrote: post #82
jasode wrote: post #6

In the spirit of this particular story, I'd like to ask HN the following question: Should closed hardware (that owns its entire stack) even be legal to sell? Yes, it's legal today but should we make it illegal? To try another example besides Apple iPhone, consider the $35000 Prima Cinema movie server to play 1st run movies at home on day of release: https://www.google.com/search?q=%22prima+cinema%22&source=ln... In m…

> Yes, it's legal today but should we make it illegal? IMO, yes. We make it illegal for someone to come into your home and take your stuff, which ends up with you losing control over it (you have no more access to your stuff), so it also makes sense to make it illegal for someone to decide to not allow you install or modify the stuff you have (again taking control away from you). The way most of these platforms run i…

The part of that argument I have trouble with is the “until all oven manufacturer were into the game” part. Do you have an example where an entire class of computer hardware became impossible to buy without firmware restrictions? This alarm bell has been sounded as “The War on General Purpose Computing” for over a decade for different pieces of hardware (laptops, desktops, routers, phones, etc.) but it still hasn’t really trended negatively (phones and routers in particular have many more unlocked options today that they did in the early 2000s), let alone come close to extinction for any of them. The broadest category you could make a case for is specifically x86 processors, but only the IME/PSP/SMM components.

I think the reality is there just isn’t as much business incentive to do these kind of things to computing devices as much as people imagine, and instead the arguments tend to paint the would-be oppressors as cartoon villains that want to remove these abilities from the world just because. Android phones that can root or at least sideload have been numerous forever; somehow nobody has bothered to create a halfway serious Google Play Store competitor anyway. Why would every business move to quash something which ultimately isn’t a universal threat? What Epic wants isn’t sideloading or rooting their way on to iPhones, they want Apple themselves to have to let users install Epic’s store through normal channels.

Re: Apple, Epic, and the App Store

#173

Post by esrauch »

liability wrote: post #148
FactolSarin wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I'm sympathetic to this idea, one thing that I get hung up on is game consoles. I enjoy multiplayer shooters, and I like knowing that none of my opponents are using bots. So the fact that the console is locked down is part of the value proposition for me. It's a pro, rather than a con.

Or you can just play with friends who don't cheat. Cheaters are only a problem if your friends are jackasses or you play with strangers.

That only works if you have friends to play both your teammates and the enemy team which is a very tall order. Most people play with strangers overall, and most people who play with friends just have them as teammates against stranger opponents.

Re: Apple, Epic, and the App Store

#174

Post by philwelch »

bluedevil2k wrote: post #85
noncoml wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some customers buy into the Apple ecosystem because of its walled garden. Not despite of it.

The "walled garden" isn't really the issue most at stake here, it's the in-app purchases. To me, it's hard to argue against the benefits of having a one-stop-shop safe-and-secure place to download apps on your phone which contains all your personal information. However, to me, it's hard to argue that Apple should keep getting money from you once you've established a loyal customer base and they are giving you money.…

The only people paying the cost of that are companies like Epic, and if their games aren’t available for iOS that will affect the popularity of the iPhone. Maybe Apple backs down on the in-app purchases, or maybe they don’t and that decision drives away developers followed by users. Until then, we’re just seeing them negotiate with each other via PR.

Re: Apple, Epic, and the App Store

#175

Post by Cederfjard »

liability wrote: post #148
FactolSarin wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I'm sympathetic to this idea, one thing that I get hung up on is game consoles. I enjoy multiplayer shooters, and I like knowing that none of my opponents are using bots. So the fact that the console is locked down is part of the value proposition for me. It's a pro, rather than a con.

Or you can just play with friends who don't cheat. Cheaters are only a problem if your friends are jackasses or you play with strangers.

So then the value add is that you can play with orders of magnitude more people than just the ones you happen to know and won’t cheat?

Re: Apple, Epic, and the App Store

#176

Post by jagged-chisel »

modeless wrote: post #103

It's a common meme that "With a free service you're not the customer, you're the product." Well, you may be Apple's customer at the beginning when you pay for the phone, but immediately afterward you become their product. You're being sold for the 30% tax. And to enforce that tax Apple maintains ultimate control over the hardware you supposedly bought, blocking you from doing things that would threaten Apple's revenu…

> "...immediately afterward you become their product. You're being sold for the 30% tax."

I don't understand the argument you're attempting. Apple doesn't sell my info "for the 30% tax." In fact, they charge app developers that 30% and then keep my data away from those same developers.

Re: Apple, Epic, and the App Store

#177

Post by gsich »

gtsteve wrote: post #124
badsectoracula wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, it's legal today but should we make it illegal? IMO, yes. We make it illegal for someone to come into your home and take your stuff, which ends up with you losing control over it (you have no more access to your stuff), so it also makes sense to make it illegal for someone to decide to not allow you install or modify the stuff you have (again taking control away from you). The way most of these platforms run i…

> We make it illegal for someone to come into your home and take your stuff It's not illegal however if you signed a contract to that effect, which is what you did when you started using the platform. A better analogy is that you're renting some furniture and the furniture is found to be unsafe. The company can come and take it away, either replacing it with something else or refunding you. In the software world nobo…

>It's not illegal however if you signed a contract to that effect, which is what you did when you started using the platform.

Contracts are not above the law. Or: you can't contradict laws with your contract.

Re: Apple, Epic, and the App Store

#178

Post by Abishek_Muthian »

jasode wrote: post #6

In the spirit of this particular story, I'd like to ask HN the following question: Should closed hardware (that owns its entire stack) even be legal to sell? Yes, it's legal today but should we make it illegal? To try another example besides Apple iPhone, consider the $35000 Prima Cinema movie server to play 1st run movies at home on day of release: https://www.google.com/search?q=%22prima+cinema%22&source=ln... In m…

No, Can you Imagine a consumer PC manufacturer demanding such fee for Softwares using their hardware 10 years back and getting away with it? But in the age of Appstore(s), it would not be that alarming anymore if the computer manufacturer suddenly decides to lock the computer for non-store softwares instead of what's happening now(Warning, having to right-click to open etc.).

But the thing is, Apple has been stomping little guys forever and these Billion dollar gaming companies got benefited from it and only when the 30% cut has become too big of a chunk of their revenue; they are now making it as a David vs Goliath story. I had a retro arachnoid type game in Appstore for years which was under 'Arcade' category, when apple branded its gaming subscription service as 'Arcade', it forced me to change it to an irrelevant category.

Re: Apple, Epic, and the App Store

#180

Post by ericmay »

diffeomorphism wrote: post #170
ericmay wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Should closed hardware even be legal to sell? I don't see why not. If it's a problem, then either a competitor will emerge, or people won't purchase the product. If it's truly a bad business practice, it'll lose out in the end. Besides that I actually love the closed system of the iPhone + App Store, we can't just go around banning things anytime we think we might not like them. Every time I see this story it just…

> I don't see why not. If it's a problem, then either a competitor will emerge, or people won't purchase the product. Aka "the invisible hand will fix it". We have been waiting quite a few years for this and it did not happen. Instead we got the complete opposite: a duopoly of android and iOS which nobody, not even Microsoft, can compete against. At this point, we have to acknowledge that simply waiting is not going…

It works most of the time, actually. I'm not against regulation (I argue that companies like Facebook and other social media companies shouldn't be able to merge or acquire each other, for example), but it needs to be sensible regulation.

I also don't think a duopoly is necessarily bad, and in this case I think it's not even a duopoly long-term. It is right now because Google and Apple are the leaders, but it's only a matter of time until other large companies (Samsung, Huawei, etc.) gain a foothold and market share. Being a local duopoly (in the US) is one thing versus being a global duopoly.

Further, I'm not really convinced that this duopoly we have is even bad. Why is it bad that we have a duopoly? Is it only acceptable if we have 3 large players? Why aren't we complaining about the Microsoft and Apple duopoly with computers? I think this is just arbitrary really and it won't be long-lived anyway.

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