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Apple, Epic, and the App Store

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Re: Apple, Epic, and the App Store

#591

Post by RyanShook »

nmfisher wrote: post #570
RyanShook wrote: post #567

The entire way Epic went about this has me scratching my head. Just looks like a lose-lose situation to me. They lose out on 70% of their revenue on iOS now and likely lose a lawsuit later.

I’m guessing they are very confident in their legal position. Just think how much it would be worth to Epic to run their own Games store on iOS - literally billions. This is big brain thinking from Tim Sweeney.

They’re definitely taking a gamble, rooting for them but I wouldn’t bet against Apple on this one. Also seems like you would have better odds if you took on only Apple or Google instead of both at the same time.

Re: Apple, Epic, and the App Store

#592

Post by cromwellian »

scarface74 wrote: post #576
cromwellian wrote: post #572

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"There are literally hundreds of Android phones, yet people are willing to pay more for iPhones." Because there are hundreds of manufacturers of Android ones, and only one for Apple. Microeconomics states that in a competitive market, price will tend to the marginal cost, and this is exactly what happened in Android. It is not "what people are willing to pay", it's that Android phones have competitive pressures that…

Every single one of Apple’s competitors in the PC market were better capitalized in the 80s through 2005. Especially when Apple was almost bankrupt. The other companies were incompetent. They could have done the same thing. There was no lock in with Macs - the same Software was available for Windows and more. Have you ever thought that it wasn’t just about the hardware? Did Apple have a lock in on marketing that kept…

> They could have done the same thing.

Nope, the MS-DOS and Windows market was too big by then to introduce a new incompatible system. Ask OS/2 how it worked out.

> There was no lock in with Macs

Sure there was. Firstly, many schools across the country had been convinced to by Macs through the educational discounts Apple gave, and school bureaucracies like all government bureaucracies move very slowly, so aren't going to switch, but simply maintain and grow the bureaucracy. Secondly, if you had actually invested in a bunch of Mac software and a LaserWriter, the sunk cost fallacy would lead many people to stay in.

And then there's Cognitive Dissonance.

> Have you ever thought that it wasn’t just about the hardware?

Mac software and hardware was inferior until the Intel switch-over. Sure, MacOS was more consistent, but the software available for the platform was worse. And in some categories, practically non-existent compared to Windows.

Almost every single response I see from you in threads is like a paleo-libertarian response that "things are the way they are because they are what the market intended" without almost no insight into how consumers can be manipulated by corporations.

Re: Apple, Epic, and the App Store

#593

Post by bob1029 »

vallavaraiyan wrote: post #590
cromwellian wrote: post #352

"But Apple needs to fund the App Store. XCode, payment processing, reviewers, it all costs money". Yes, very little in comparison. Apple made $50 billion in revenue from the App Store in 2019. $50 BILLION. The data centers costs to serve up this are miniscule in comparison. Apple could build 50 datacenters PER YEAR EVERY YEAR for that revenue. Reviewers? A staff of 10,000 fulltime reviewers paid $200k per year would…

There is also the $99/year subscription to apple developer program

$300/year for us, and each additional client we choose to work with. This is the cost of obtaining what is effectively side-loading capability.

Re: Apple, Epic, and the App Store

#594

Post by sjy »

scarface74 wrote: post #508
sjy wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you’re a seemingly unstoppable corporate juggernaut, you’ll make enemies who think (rightly or wrongly) that your business practices are unfair, and they may successfully sue you using the laws intended to stop huge companies from engaging in unfair business practices. I’m not sure what your point is here. That antitrust litigation is futile or counterproductive? The threat of it seems to be having positive effect…

Why is Apple unstoppable? Why can’t Google do better in the premium market? Why did Microsoft fail with a decade head start?

All very interesting questions, which Apple can raise in its defence to the lawsuit contending that the answer is “because of Apple’s unfair trade practices.”

Re: Apple, Epic, and the App Store

#595

Post by sjy »

ghostwriter wrote: post #518
sjy wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you’re a seemingly unstoppable corporate juggernaut, you’ll make enemies who think (rightly or wrongly) that your business practices are unfair, and they may successfully sue you using the laws intended to stop huge companies from engaging in unfair business practices. I’m not sure what your point is here. That antitrust litigation is futile or counterproductive? The threat of it seems to be having positive effect…

It's counter-productive, it aims at punishing successful where mere "bigness" is used as the proof of "unfair". We don't know how much cheaper Apple products could be if it hadn't have to spread costs of lobbying its interests in Washington DC across their device prices. > The threat of it seems to be having positive effects already, looking at the front page of HN it depends on your reliance on that kind of services…

It’s true that we can’t know how much cheaper Apple products would be if the antitrust laws didn’t exist, and that some people (and not only shareholders) benefit from or prefer a less competitive market. But conversely, we don’t know how much worse things might be if there were no laws to keep “bigness” in check. I am convinced by the history of antitrust that competition regulators do more good than harm.

Re: Apple, Epic, and the App Store

#596

Post by daed »

nodamage wrote: post #551
naikrovek wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Epic has a monopoly on selling items inside Fortnite. 3rd party artists can't create anything that can be used inside Fortnite, neither inside the v-bucks store nor outside of it. There's no 3rd party "market" at all. Apple has a market where third parties can market their apps. Apple requires a cut of all purchases made through that store, which alone is not monopolistic. Apple also requires that you sell your iOS…

So, let's say hypothetically Epic allowed the sale of third-party skins in Fortnite. Would a skinmaker would be entitled to demand the following concessions? 1. The ability to install skins outside of the V-bucks store. 2. The ability to pay for Fortnite skins using payment methods other than V-bucks. Alternatively, should Epic not be permitted to impose the following restrictions in their Fortnite store? 1. Skins mu…

> 1. The ability to install skins outside of the V-bucks store.

Isn’t this like allowing mods, custom maps etc? So CounterStrike, DoTA, etc shouldn’t exist?

Honestly I started off on the fence but now I’m 100% against Apple here, and I’m an iOS dev. This is kinda crazy.

Re: Apple, Epic, and the App Store

#597

Post by mr_toad »

cromwellian wrote: post #470
Terretta wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GP claimed iOS was "free". Can't be both free, and the phone only costs its parts. GP also said to cover cost of app store in the phone, despite only costing its parts. I consider iOS to be one of the iPhone's parts. I don't understand why machinery engineered from metal is so different from that engineered from bits, that I must consider them two products instead of one. Metal, glass, silicon, bits: one PDA applianc…

This is economics. The price of a product in a competitive market tends to its marginal cost -- the cost to produce one additional unit. The marginal cost of an iPhone is $450 in parts and labor. The R&D costs are fixed costs, not marginal costs, they don't vary whether you sell 1 million iPhones or 10 million iPhones. Most of iOS's costs are fixed. Even if you amortize the cost of it across the number of phones sold…

> The price of a product in a competitive market tends to its marginal cost

Long run marginal cost. Which will be higher than the cost per unit. You can’t sustain a market when you can’t cover fixed costs. Just look at what happened to Detroit.

Re: Apple, Epic, and the App Store

#598

Post by wmeredith »

projektfu wrote: post #426

I think it’s absurd that you can neither buy a kindle book from the iOS kindle app nor the Amazon app. How user unfriendly! And yet, Apple runs their own digitsl bookstore... since there’s no way to remove 30% revenue from apple’s own venture, they’re using a monopoly position to monopolize another market. Oh, but Apple isn’t a monopoly because there’s Android. Why did we think Microsoft was a monopoly? You could alw…

> Why did we think Microsoft was a monopoly?

They had 94% market share in 1990's. They actually invested in Apple to keep them from going under.

Re: Apple, Epic, and the App Store

#599

Post by nodamage »

nwienert wrote: post #585
nodamage wrote: post #578

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A monopoly by Standard Oil was pervasive in all of daily living because by the early twentieth century, they had control of more than 90% of the country's petroleum fuel production and logistics which they abused to keep any competition from ever gaining a foothold. The key point here is that 90% market share constituted monopoly power, whereas Apple's 46% share of the smartphone market likely does not.

Apple and Google have some >90% and are colluding to keep their cash cows fat. Antitrust needs no monopoly to enforce.

> Antitrust needs no monopoly to enforce.

I'm not sure why you think this? Sure, certain Sherman Act violations (e.g. price fixing) do not require monopoly power to be considered illegal, but the specific claims in Epic's lawsuit (unlawful monopoly maintenance) definitely require proof of monopoly power.

Re: Apple, Epic, and the App Store

#600

Post by nwienert »

nodamage wrote: post #599
nwienert wrote: post #585

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple and Google have some >90% and are colluding to keep their cash cows fat. Antitrust needs no monopoly to enforce.

> Antitrust needs no monopoly to enforce. I'm not sure why you think this? Sure, certain Sherman Act violations (e.g. price fixing) do not require monopoly power to be considered illegal, but the specific claims in Epic's lawsuit (unlawful monopoly maintenance) definitely require proof of monopoly power.

“Conspiracy in restraint of trade” would fit perfectly what Apple/Google are doing.

The average American spends some what, 4-5 hours a day on their phone? Is there any even remotely comparable precedent for a company to control all trade through everything? The best I can think of is cable, imagine if there were only two cable companies and they not only had unilateral ability to control which channels appear, but also charged 30% to every channels profit.

Further, how many different commercial activities do people do every single day on their devices? This is a far, far bigger thing than any platform before it. And it’s dominated by only two companies with a history of collusion. These platforms are nothing at all like “a market” and trying to argue from narrow historical frames is poor form.

They are far bigger things. It’s more akin to a world, people use them for literally every part of their lives. I don’t think narrow precedent should ever rule our thinking and especially when it’s clear there is no historical precedent here. We need to be “courageous” enough to use moral and logical thinking and not legalistic weaseling, we need to legislate them as new types of markets far bigger and more important to every persons life than any that’s ever existed.

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