App stores, trust and anti-trust • Hacker News Board

Re: App stores, trust and anti-trust

#61

Post by bhupy » Thu, Aug 20, 2020, 9:05 PM UTC

amelius wrote: post #47

bhupy wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This article is just repeating the same Apple messaging points they've given us. Unrelated, but this is just about my least favorite criticism of an argument. "Messaging points" are used/reused because they're usually the strongest arguments. By pointing this out, you're just saying "this person is just repeating the strongest arguments". Attack the argument, not its provenance!

> Attack the argument, not its provenance! Eh, it seems you didn't read past GP's first sentence.

I had no issues (at least procedurally) with the arguments past GP's first sentence, hence why I prefaced it with "unrelated". I was strictly attacking the first sentence. It is entirely possible to have targeted criticism of something...

Re: App stores, trust and anti-trust

#62

Post by danudey » Thu, Aug 20, 2020, 9:07 PM UTC

panpanna wrote: post #53

alex_t wrote: post #36

I am trying to understand why is this business model from apple not acceptable, from my point of view the way apple makes money on the apple store is with the 30% fees on transations. In exchange they give out tools, libraries and services for free. Do i get that wrong? with that in mind isnt the request of Epic something like: "We want access to all your platform and tools for free?"

> Do i get that wrong? Yes. > We want access to all your platform and tools for free? Well, they do pay the $99 annual fee + cost of a Mac required for submitting to the store :) More seriously, you are wrong because Epic/Spotify/etc don't mind giving apple money when they use their payment infrastructure _but_ want to be able to also use their own infrastructure and sell things 30% cheaper. And yes, for companies wi…

> which means in-game item prices are artificially increased by up to 30% on _all platforms_.

Or means that Epic takes a 30% hit on revenue on the App Store and Google Play Store in exchange for the services provided.

Do you honestly believe that this is about Epic trying to lower prices for their users? It's not, it's about Epic getting all of the pie instead of just 70% of the pie. If Apple had caved before this stunt then prices would have stayed the same, but Epic would be taking it all themselves rather than having to pay Apple the 30% cut.

Re: App stores, trust and anti-trust

#63

Post by izacus » Thu, Aug 20, 2020, 9:08 PM UTC

alex_t wrote: post #56

panpanna wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do i get that wrong? Yes. > We want access to all your platform and tools for free? Well, they do pay the $99 annual fee + cost of a Mac required for submitting to the store :) More seriously, you are wrong because Epic/Spotify/etc don't mind giving apple money when they use their payment infrastructure _but_ want to be able to also use their own infrastructure and sell things 30% cheaper. And yes, for companies wi…

but how is this different from, for example, me selling stuff on amazon? i want to access the amazon customer pool, so i pay amazon a fee to do it? what would be apple alternatives that would not imply giving away services for free? i still have an hard time understanding this part: i understand that 30% cut i a lot i am not defending the 30% tax.

Amazon itself is in hot waters for antitrust, so perhaps you shouldn't use them as an example.

Still, there's a giant difference - Amazon's "customer pool" isn't forced to buy only on Amazon and Amazon doesn't force YOU to ONLY sell the same item to that "customer pool" (I like how you use a term that makes people seem like inanimate objects.) via Amazon.

This is a massive difference. All the benefits of free market (as opposed to command economy) are derived from customers being able to freely choose another vendor and product to purchase. Monopolized integrated services are just a corporate version of command economy where a single actor dictates pricing and eliminates competition leading to severe lack of innovation and worse products for everyone.

Re: App stores, trust and anti-trust

#64

Post by danudey » Thu, Aug 20, 2020, 9:09 PM UTC

panpanna wrote: post #55

alex_t wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I have an ebook store and want to give iOS users a nice experience when buying books Apple will make the books more expensive with 30% and on top of that if I want to give my users information that they have the option to buy cheaper from my website I can't , Apple is preventing their users to get informed/educated on how to get cheaper stuff because this information costs Apple money. Well i go back to my argum…

How about the $99/yr app store fee they already pay?

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that Epic's $99 doesn't cover the cost of Apple actually hosting and distributing Fortnite and its updates to users.

Re: App stores, trust and anti-trust

#65

Post by izacus » Thu, Aug 20, 2020, 9:09 PM UTC

3pt14159 wrote: post #35

I'm generally for more tech regulation, but I don't want to see Apple's position of power degraded. What may be needed is regulations to limit Apple's take, because 30% of a $2 app is fine in my eyes, but 30% of an app that goes for $50 is a bit much. To me it's the amount of work involved. Apple does more work for more complex apps, but it doesn't really scale with the investment involved. I really don't want to go…

Apple is a giant 2 trillion dollar company, one of the richest in the world. I think they can recover from allowing other companies in this world to compete with them on equal footing.

Re: App stores, trust and anti-trust

#66

Post by panpanna » Thu, Aug 20, 2020, 9:14 PM UTC

alex_t wrote: post #56

panpanna wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do i get that wrong? Yes. > We want access to all your platform and tools for free? Well, they do pay the $99 annual fee + cost of a Mac required for submitting to the store :) More seriously, you are wrong because Epic/Spotify/etc don't mind giving apple money when they use their payment infrastructure _but_ want to be able to also use their own infrastructure and sell things 30% cheaper. And yes, for companies wi…

but how is this different from, for example, me selling stuff on amazon? i want to access the amazon customer pool, so i pay amazon a fee to do it? what would be apple alternatives that would not imply giving away services for free? i still have an hard time understanding this part: i understand that 30% cut i a lot i am not defending the 30% tax.

The $99/yr fee is supposed to cover apples costs for the store. Google asks for $25 and they have 6 times more devices to serve...

At this point the 30% is basically free money they get on someone elses hard work. And there is no consistency, some companies pay much less.

This is even more wrong in case of Spotify which is a direct competitor to apple music. Apple basically makes their competition 30% more expensive hence less competitive. (And you can by no means claim Spotify is big because of app store so the fee is fair, they exited before the first iPhone)

Re: App stores, trust and anti-trust

#67

Post by scarface74 » Thu, Aug 20, 2020, 9:18 PM UTC

dariosalvi78 wrote: post #59

scarface74 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which one are you more likely to do, install a random app on your phone from an untrusted author or your computer?

In my case none or both, depending on the need. The point is, you could allow lower security if people need it and it's not necessarily that catastrophic as the author suggests.

Why are people acting as if three decades of malware, ransomware, and toolbars haven’t happened on PCs?

Re: App stores, trust and anti-trust

#68

Post by scarface74 » Thu, Aug 20, 2020, 9:18 PM UTC

tempsy wrote: post #54

scarface74 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, since a large part of the compensation is RSU’s why wouldn’t an employer of big tech want the monopoly to grow? On the other hand if the company behind Candy Crush were complaining about not making enough on coins, no one would be taking their side.

given that the average tenure for a rank and file at a tech co is like 3 years, no i don’t think a significant number of them really think they want to see a tiny number of big tech cos maintain their monopoly so their RSUs go up 15% a year

Amazon’s stock doubled in a year.

Re: App stores, trust and anti-trust

#69

Post by panpanna » Thu, Aug 20, 2020, 9:20 PM UTC

danudey wrote: post #62

panpanna wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do i get that wrong? Yes. > We want access to all your platform and tools for free? Well, they do pay the $99 annual fee + cost of a Mac required for submitting to the store :) More seriously, you are wrong because Epic/Spotify/etc don't mind giving apple money when they use their payment infrastructure _but_ want to be able to also use their own infrastructure and sell things 30% cheaper. And yes, for companies wi…

> which means in-game item prices are artificially increased by up to 30% on _all platforms_. Or means that Epic takes a 30% hit on revenue on the App Store and Google Play Store in exchange for the services provided. Do you honestly believe that this is about Epic trying to lower prices for their users? It's not, it's about Epic getting all of the pie instead of just 70% of the pie. If Apple had caved before this st…

I am fine with epic getting a bigger piece of the pie, after all they are doing the work and apple is just taxing them. We are talking about 30% of hundreds of millions of dollars. The yearly developer fee Epic pays Apple should cover apples costs more than enough.

Apple and google already allow certain companies (uber, netflix,... ) to pay much less which by itself is anti-competitive.

Re: App stores, trust and anti-trust

#70

Post by drdaeman » Thu, Aug 20, 2020, 9:21 PM UTC

novok wrote: post #11

mrtksn wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>First off, the article's biggest point, the security sandbox, is not the issue at all with the App Store. The entire internet runs inside of a sandbox. The web has become one horrible user experience. When left alone, developers apparently don't play nice, they hog bandwidth and user resources left and right. A few tabs on a web browser easily saturates the machine resources these days, be it internet bandwidth, RAM…

Good behavior on an iOS device is not enforced by the app store, but by the OS. Background processing is limited on a timer, the OS throttles processes that use too much background processing & networking depending on context, etc. The OS also suspends background apps fairly aggressively compared to the foreground app. Mobile apps also give you more tracking variables to do fingerprinting with than browsers do and it…

> Good behavior on an iOS device is not enforced by the app store, but by the OS.

Unfortunately, both.

It shouldn't happen, but in practice (on another OS, but I doubt there's a correlation between cognitive capabilities and preferred mobile device vendor, lol) people were installing those "brightest" flashlight apps mindlessly granting them every single permission they ask for.

The machines can't yet analyze appropriateness of the request. That's where human moderation comes into play.