The only way forward is to avoid Apple products. Some are truly great but if you care about freedom and the open web we must avoid Apple.
Apple apologizes to WordPress, won’t force the free app to add purchases
181–190 of 387 posts
Re: Apple apologizes to WordPress, won’t force the free app to add purchases
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 ba…
> 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.
How exactly does Apple "coerce people into paying more for their phones via a mechanism other than actually offering a better product or service", and what is that mechanism?
> But if a firm is able to drive up prices with impunity for any reason, it's likely they possess market power.
How is Apple actually able to "drive up prices with impunity for any reason"? It seems to me, the more Apple raises iPhone prices, the more people are priced out and decide to switch to a cheaper phone instead.
Re: Apple apologizes to WordPress, won’t force the free app to add purchases
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ok so when was 49% considered a “monopoly”. Can you name one incident in case law where that was the case?
it is a defacto 'duopoly', or an informal cartel... plenty of laws around it if you are not too lazy to google them...
Words Mean Things.
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/cartel.asp
“ A cartel is an organization created from a formal agreement between a group of producers of a good or service to regulate supply in order to regulate or manipulate prices. In other words, a cartel is a collection of otherwise independent businesses or countries that act together as if they were a single producer and thus can fix prices for the goods they produce and the services they render, without competition.”
Do you have any evidence that Apple and Google are conspiring illegally to set prices? Are they talking to each other to agree on price?
“Informal cartel” has no legal meaning.
Re: Apple apologizes to WordPress, won’t force the free app to add purchases
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
How does developing for iOS impacts your personal choice of phone hardware? I develop windows and MacOS software, but I am running Fedora.
A freelance iOS developer that doesn't use an iPhone is going to raise a lot of eyebrows.
Re: Apple apologizes to WordPress, won’t force the free app to add purchases
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
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. A cartel implies collusion and unless you have evidence that Apple is colluding with Google and all of the console makers this is irrelevant. But if a firm is able to drive up prices with impunity for any reason,…
OK, from the last part of the comment there, you demonstrated that my good faith belief was wrong, so I'm not going to waste more time with you. Have fun stewing in your own juices. In your community of one you'll always be right.
Yeah silly me for looking for relevant “precedents”. I’m going by your own definitions.
Re: Apple apologizes to WordPress, won’t force the free app to add purchases
#186Earlier 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”?
> So can I define Epic having a monopoly on being able to buy things in Fortnite?
If price increases for Fortnite IAP don't, empirically, drive people to stop buying them in favor of alternatives of some kind, yes. Or, rather, you can't define the market that way, but if there is no substitution effect a US court considering an anti-trust claim is likely to see that as the relevant market, not some broader, say, battle royale game IAP market in which price-driven substitution does not occur.
Re: Apple apologizes to WordPress, won’t force the free app to add purchases
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
If I have to choose between a flawed platform and a broken ecosystem I'll take the former any day.
No browser quirk is anywhere near as annoying as having a bug fix update to your app rejected for some new random capricious reason.
Re: Apple apologizes to WordPress, won’t force the free app to add purchases
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
How did that work out for a Fortnite?
Badly. Google needs to be regulated too.
Because Google had scary warnings that downloading Fortnite from outside the App Store my lead to security vulnerabilities. Where did they ever get that idea from?
https://www.cnet.com/news/just-as-critics-feared-fortnite-fo...
Re: Apple apologizes to WordPress, won’t force the free app to add purchases
#189I 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…
What Apple and Google is doing is in many ways effectively price control and inhibits free market dynamics.
For example Apple demand that app developers price their apps in the app store similar to the same service in other stores (website, Google play store, etc), even though they are taking a huge 30% cut. So Spotify can't price their product 30% more expensive in the app store, which makes the app store appear competitive and effectively kills incentives for the app store to reduce their fees, while devaluing products sold through the app store.
I do agree with you though about the political side of the matter.
Re: Apple apologizes to WordPress, won’t force the free app to add purchases
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
You might be able to do just that after this Apple/Epic ruling. That's kind of why NFTs/digital ownership is so exciting. You might be able to buy or sell your dances on any store you want to and use them in the game.
I wish I could be on the other side of a bet against most of HN, betting against all of the wannabe lawyers who don’t understand what a “monopoly” is and posting examples of market collusion showing how Apple/Google could be charged based on the App stores.
You can. Buy Apple stock.