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Apple, Epic, and the App Store

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Re: Apple, Epic, and the App Store

#191

Post by colejohnson66 »

gsich wrote: post #177
gtsteve wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Sure you can. Just look at arbitration. It’s not right, but it’s incorrect to say that a contact can’t remove your rights.

Re: Apple, Epic, and the App Store

#192

Post by philwelch »

farisjarrah wrote: post #116
darkwizard42 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Me for one. I don't want to deal with several different terms of service, different ways of payment, lack of clarity on if an app is trustworthy or not. Apple is simple. I trust Apple to protect me and honestly based on the stories I read about Google's Play Store I feel more confident in Apple to do the right thing for consumers in the long run. Their incentive is aligned to my needs (good safe hardware that protect…

Is Apple's app store actually protecting you from anything, or do you just get the illusion that its protecting you? Although the situation has gotten much better the past couple years, its still not uncommon to find apps on the app store that charge like 10$ a month for some wallpapers or something of a similar nature. Furthermore, every few months there are new news articles coming out about how ""XYZ"" app is coll…

“Apple does an imperfect job of delivering that value proposition, therefore it should be illegal to even try” is quite the take. Keep in mind that there are huge confirmation biases here; when Apple blocks scammy or insecure apps before they even come out, nobody notices, but if they miss a single one, everyone notices.

Re: Apple, Epic, and the App Store

#193

Post by philwelch »

braythwayt wrote: post #32
baby wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? Who?

Not my sole reason, but since you asked, here I am. I give my children iPhones. I like having certain family controls over what they use, and further controls over what appears in the app store to begin with. I like having a single vendor for all my software purchases, that I can trust to issue refunds and discontinue subscriptions promptly. I spend all day thinking about computers, I don't want to also be my own IT…

To your point, and more to the dispute with Epic:

I’m sure you also want to make sure your kids aren’t spending all your money on dumb in-app purchases. Having a controlled mechanism for that provides an actual value to you, and letting companies circumvent it would make things harder for you. Are the fees for that mechanism fair? That’s a business negotiation.

Re: Apple, Epic, and the App Store

#194

Post by unchar1 »

jagged-chisel wrote: post #176
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.

The same way that GMail isn't really "free", that 30% tax doesn't come from Apple or the Developer's pocket, it ultimately comes out of your pocket.

Re: Apple, Epic, and the App Store

#195

Post by haunter »

People don't get the console difference

I have a PS4

I can buy the game digitally from Sony

I can buy the digital code which activates on PS4 from Amazon or sometimes even straight from the publisher

I can buy a physical copy from countless retail stores both off and online from Walmart to BestBuy to Amazon to Gamestop

I can sell my used physical copy on Facebook Marketplace, Ebay, or Craigslist

This is the difference. And it's much bigger than people realize.

Re: Apple, Epic, and the App Store

#196

Post by lotsofpulp »

zepto wrote: post #84

Epic has billions of dollars and a lot of customers. Microsoft has billions of dollars. There are a wide range of other parties that dislike Apple’s policies. Why don’t they build their own platform with their own exclusive and attractive content? I can see two options: 1. A full blown phone. Hard to do? Perhaps, but if Apple and a Google really aren’t competitive, then it should be possible to take customers away fr…

>Why don’t they build their own platform with their own exclusive and attractive content?

They don't want to spend their cash to do the R&D, and build up the network of stores and customer support required to be able to compete with Apple.

Re: Apple, Epic, and the App Store

#197

Post by barefoot »

baby wrote: post #26
noncoml wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Really? Who?

Me.

For some background, I’m a longtime hardware and (more frequently) software developer. I also do quite a bit of ML consulting.

I was gifted a MacBook Air many years ago. I was an avid Ubuntu (and, to a much lesser extent, Windows) user and developer at the time so I didn’t know what to make of it. I certainly didn’t expect to be blown away and switch to all Apple devices.

Eight years later and I’m solidly in the Apple ecosystem. I have an open mind about switching but I love the reliability and consistency of the user experience. I can count on the core apps that I frequently reach for to just work. And if they don’t work there’s almost always an obvious, low-time, solution to fix them. I still do a great deal of development in Windows, but it’s exclusively in a Parallels VM on a MacBook and I’ve long since abandoned my desktop for development.

The Apple ecosystem has built up enough trust with me that I also use it when flying (Foreflight on an iPad). You couldn’t pay me to switch to an android tablet as an alternative for that use case.

My largest complaint is python development is not great on OS X out of the box. But that’s easy enough to work around.

Re: Apple, Epic, and the App Store

#198

Post by jagged-chisel »

eyesee wrote: post #149
nemothekid wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume their costs are just, Credit Card Fees, Infrastructure Fees (Bandwidth, Storage), Reviewers Salary. Not sure this adds up to 30%. I think the real reason is that when the Apple store was started, they looked around at the current prices for "software distribution". Retail was like 70%, and other app stores; for example the Danger Hiptop / T-mobile Sidekick charged 60% for their apps store, and the carriers w…

CC processing fees may exceed this. Just using Stripe [1] as an example, 2.9% + 0.30 per transaction means $.329 for retail CC pricing. Surely Apple gets a discount, but it's price of competitive alternative that matters. Part of the problem with this whole market is that we're talking about zero marginal cost goods. Taking away frictional costs of transaction, distribution and support, the economic argument is for p…

$0.329 for one dollar.

$0.59 in CC fees for ten dollars. That's 5.9%

$0.735 in CC fees for $15: 4.9%

Re: Apple, Epic, and the App Store

#199

Post by rowanG077 »

ericmay wrote: post #188
rowanG077 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hardware is a physical product you buy. You don't buy Amazon or Facebook. They are a service not a product. The meaningful distinction is that you should OWN the hardware you buy and thus it shouldn't be limited by the manufacturer except for things that are vital for product function.

We're mostly talking about the App Store, but even so I don't think there's much of a meaningful distinction. I can't choose to get a 12 pack of cola that's half Pepsi, 1/4th Mountain Dew, and 1/4 Cherry Coke either. I can't choose to use iMessage with my non-existent Facebook account either. Why? Why are they allowed to lock in their software? Same argument.

But I can choose to make myself a 12 pack of half Pepsi, 1/4th Mountain Dew, and 1/4 Cherry. That's the entire point. There is no artificial restriction that mixing Pepsi with some other soft drink results in a toxic mixture. But that is essentially what's happening on the App store/Phone hardware space.

IMessage facebook messenger case is not an artificial lock. They are fundamentally different protocols. It's not like IMessage supports facebook messenger and Apple just say no you can't use it. There is a real difference here.

Apple is artificially restricting usage of it's phones for no other reason then greed. If the app store would actually protect against malware I would agree that it might have some value but it really doesn't. The app store is filled with mountains and mountains of malware. But since it's malware that makes Apple money it's completely fine.

Apple mobile hardware is really amazing. The best there is in the world I think. But the software locks it down so much that it's essentially a paper weight compared to its potential.

Re: Apple, Epic, and the App Store

#200

Post by gsich »

runako wrote: post #115
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…

> closed hardware (that owns its entire stack) even be legal to sell? Two thoughts: 1 - As software goes into everything, keep in mind that the universe of devices to which this applies will grow to include the set of "non-organic physical objects." 2 - And this will means that surprising outcomes could come of requiring everything to be open. Who do you trust to verify the software in your used car/refrigerator/ligh…

>Closed systems implicitly provide some level of assurance here.

No they don't as I can't verify any of that. A perfect counterexample is the VW dieselsoftware.

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