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Apple apologizes to WordPress, won’t force the free app to add purchases

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Re: Apple apologizes to WordPress, won’t force the free app to add purchases

#151

Post by stephenr »

cageface wrote: post #62
7tsfmCAusrQ wrote: post #36

As an app developer myself, with apps on both the Google Play Store and the App Store with over 250K monthly active users, I have become so frustrated with Apple's arbitrary and capricious enforcement of its App Store regulations, its bullying and coercion of developers, its extortionate fees, and its monopolistic anti-competitive practices, that I have stopped updating my apps on the App Store. I wonder how many oth…

Getting out of iOS dev was the best career decision I’ve ever made. My baseline level of stress and frustration has plummeted. I also enjoy using my Samsung Note much more than I ever did any iPhone. It feels like the training wheels have been taken off my phone. As developers I think we should all do what we can to nurture the open web. It’s the last truly developer friendly platform.

> It’s the last truly developer friendly platform.

Right because no one ever complained about browser inconsistencies, the inherent limitations of a browser runtime, etc.

Re: Apple apologizes to WordPress, won’t force the free app to add purchases

#152

Post by shagie »

asddubs wrote: post #120
scarface74 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So tell me again when an “antitrust” ruling has ever been applied to a company with less than 50%?

i think apple has more than 50% of the US market now actually

46% https://www.counterpointresearch.com/us-market-smartphone-sh...

Re: Apple apologizes to WordPress, won’t force the free app to add purchases

#153

Post by parasubvert »

I find the group think here to be incredible, and you all will likely be very disappointed when the legal system winds up supporting Apple.

Regulating retailers because you don’t like their cut is price controls, which is completely contrary to a free market, and ultimately undermines the end user experience of having a trusted, secure store. Perhaps Google or Apple’s power is so strong as to warrant regulation - but It must be applied fairly, or else it’s just politically corrupt wielding of power against a successful corporation because a part of the supply chain wants a bigger share of the pie.

Apple’s behavior is not anti-competitive by any historical measure, as the courts will show when Epic loses both their Google and Apple cases.

Antitrust law is always political. Do you really think the Trump or even Biden administrations will punish their most successful company, given the other problems in the economy? Convince them this will lead to more growth and you’ll get your wish. Right now it just seems like grousing.

Edit: I could see Europe doing something more intrusive, as is their tendency. However I still think it would have to be legislative and not legal, the arguments are too weak.

Re: Apple apologizes to WordPress, won’t force the free app to add purchases

#154

Post by shagie »

stephenr wrote: post #149
dboreham wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another shout out for WSL2. Feels good to have real Linux not Apple's kind of close but not quite, plus wide range of hardware to choose from and compatibility with commercial GUI apps.

... So many things wrong with this comparison. (a). WSL is just a Linux VM. You can do this on any desktop OS. If you're not using WSL, you can even do it with multiple hypervisors at once if you so wish. (b). macOS isn't, and has never tried to be, "Linux". It's POSIX.

macOS is UNIX too (Linux isn’t). https://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/

Re: Apple apologizes to WordPress, won’t force the free app to add purchases

#155

Post by amelius »

jonas21 wrote: post #121
7tsfmCAusrQ wrote: post #36

As an app developer myself, with apps on both the Google Play Store and the App Store with over 250K monthly active users, I have become so frustrated with Apple's arbitrary and capricious enforcement of its App Store regulations, its bullying and coercion of developers, its extortionate fees, and its monopolistic anti-competitive practices, that I have stopped updating my apps on the App Store. I wonder how many oth…

I'm an independent app developer too, and I share your frustrations. Sometimes I wish I had the luxury of walking away from the App Store -- but with ~80% of my revenue coming from iOS, I can't do that. Similarly, I can't give up on owning a Mac because you need one to develop for iOS. On one hand, it's super annoying whenever Apple rejects an update for some arbitrary reason. But on the other hand, making a living b…

> On one hand, it's super annoying whenever Apple rejects an update for some arbitrary reason. But on the other hand, making a living by writing and selling my own apps has been a dream of mine pretty much forever -- and something that I didn't think would be possible before the app stores came along.

I wonder how many apps actually are ramen-profitable on the App store. I often think that the dream of becoming rich (or even making a living) through the App store is just a myth perpetuated by Apple to attract developers; and nonsense from a statistical point of view. Do we have any numbers?

Re: Apple apologizes to WordPress, won’t force the free app to add purchases

#156

Post by donmcronald »

bloblaw wrote: post #74
userbinator wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to see regulation that forces Apple and Google to allow any and all app stores on their devices, and the process of installing apps through those stores must be, by law, equally easy and straightforward as through their own stores (i.e., no security warnings or other jank). I'm pretty sure that will have massive opposition, because they are deathly scared of opening their devices back to the general-purpose…

I'm a libertarian. I believe in personal choice and freedom. But you have tons of freedom here. Instead of using an OS (iOS in this case) with 25% market share that forces you to go through their AppStore, you can choose to use Android (which has 75% market share) and side load apps to your hearts content. reference: https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/worldwide

You don't get to choose if you're a developer. For mobile apps a prerequisite for success is to have an app for both Android (via the Play Store) and iOS. With iOS you're forced to deal with Apple. With Android you're forced to deal with Google.

Yeah, you can opt to target only one of them, but you're (usually) going to get out competed by a company that targets both.

Re: Apple apologizes to WordPress, won’t force the free app to add purchases

#157

Post by klyrs »

scarface74 wrote: post #139
klyrs wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article literally spells out the legal definition, summarizes numerous actual antitrust rulings, with plentiful citations to relevant laws and case law, many with full and well researched articles. Maybe give it a read. You might even find an example where 4 tobacco companies, each with less than 50% market share, were found to be abusing market dominance. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_antitrust_l…

You see the part about “collusion”? That’s why random HN posters make horrible lawyers. As far as IBM (the case was dropped after 13 years and nothing came of it) and MS, they clearly had more than 50%.

You're conveniently ducking that they 100% control the market of software for their phones. And anyway, I didn't say that case was equivalent. You asked for a case where a company with less than 50% was subject to an antitrust ruling and I provided one.

And I'll remind you, I'm not a lawyer. Technically, zero lawyers is a good number of lawyers, so I must insist that makes me a good lawyer. Just, I'd suck in court.

Re: Apple apologizes to WordPress, won’t force the free app to add purchases

#158

Post by amelius »

cageface wrote: post #62
7tsfmCAusrQ wrote: post #36

As an app developer myself, with apps on both the Google Play Store and the App Store with over 250K monthly active users, I have become so frustrated with Apple's arbitrary and capricious enforcement of its App Store regulations, its bullying and coercion of developers, its extortionate fees, and its monopolistic anti-competitive practices, that I have stopped updating my apps on the App Store. I wonder how many oth…

Getting out of iOS dev was the best career decision I’ve ever made. My baseline level of stress and frustration has plummeted. I also enjoy using my Samsung Note much more than I ever did any iPhone. It feels like the training wheels have been taken off my phone. As developers I think we should all do what we can to nurture the open web. It’s the last truly developer friendly platform.

> As developers I think we should all do what we can to nurture the open web. It’s the last truly developer friendly platform.

This is why Mozilla's recent layoff is extra painful.

Re: Apple apologizes to WordPress, won’t force the free app to add purchases

#159

Post by apatters »

scarface74 wrote: post #117
dragonwriter wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So tell me again when an “antitrust” ruling has ever been applied to a company with less than 50%? 50% of what is the issue, though. Some arbitrary descriptive market the target company preferred to be used for the antitrust analysis, or the actual market in which substitution, and thus actual competition, occurs as found by the court hearing the case? Because defining the relevant market is not infrequently a cont…

So can I define Epic having a monopoly on being able to buy things in Fortnite? What if I want to sell my cool “Scarface dance” next to the “Carlton dance” within Fortnite without paying the “Epic Tax”?

I upvoted your comments based on a good faith belief that you're open to learning more about how antitrust law works. It has little to do with market share, and everything to do with a concept called "market power."

Market power is the ability to coerce people into paying more for something via a mechanism other than actually offering a better product or service. A textbook example which most people would agree is bad is a trust/cartel situation where a few players artificially limit supply, and then can raise the price on consumers because there are no competitors. But if a firm is able to drive up prices with impunity for any reason, it's likely they possess market power.

When a firm possesses excess market power it's good for that firm, but bad for the market, consumers, and society. By definition a firm with a lot of market power has very little competition, so even as their margins grow, product quality will decline and price will increase. (Sound like Apple in 2020?) And new firms will find it difficult to compete in that market even as the firm with market power grows very rich, which exacerbates the problem of wealth inequality. (Sound like America in 2020?)

A society which doesn't place some sort of checks on a firm's ability to acquire market power ends up being a place where the way to get ahead is to find an unfair advantage, abuse it, and screw everyone else. (Again, sound familiar?)

At this point it's almost certain that Google is violating antitrust regulation by abusing its market power (proven in the EU, and the US looks poised to start filing lawsuits this year). Apple, Amazon and a few others are up for debate and it's also fair to say that antitrust regulations should evolve to address the tech industry more effectively. The antitrust problem isn't limited to tech however, anti-competitive behaviors of questionable legality have proliferated all over the US since the 80s due to a lax regulatory environment.

If you want to learn more about this topic, Matt Stoller's newsletter "BIG" on Substack is a phenomenal place to start.

Re: Apple apologizes to WordPress, won’t force the free app to add purchases

#160

Post by amelius »

rubber_duck wrote: post #5

Really at this point Apple control over app store is anti-competitive (and Google over play store), having to rely on community outrage to get stuff like this turned is ridiculous. They should create legislation to control access to all app stores to prevent this rent seeking - force app stores to treat all apps equally according to store defined guidelines (including store owners apps) - any submissions have to be r…

> They should create legislation to control access to all app stores to prevent this rent seeking

The same could be said by taxi drivers about Uber.

It's the exploitation of the platform-economy that is the problem, really.

An extra problem is that this platform-economy is a pretty new concept. I don't even know if economists have good models for it. From this, it's no wonder that governments are lagging far behind, and we shouldn't expect much change in the near future.

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