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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

#201

Post by dang »

All: could you please not post to threads like this if you're hot under the collar and have passionate feelings for or against $BigCo? It leads to tedious flamewars with people snarking at each other, flaming each other, making generalizations about the other side, and making up accusations of astroturfing (for or against). All of that is against the HN guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

The idea here is: if you have a substantive point to make, make it thoughtfully; if you don't, please don't comment until you do. "Boo $BigCo", "yay $BigCo" fan-v.-antifan cage matches are not curious conversation. We want curious conversation.

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

#203

Post by commoner »

scarface74 wrote: post #200
commoner wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The matter under contention is the pricing of in-app purchases, not the pricing of phones. By disallowing app stores other than Apple's App Store, Apple is coercing users to pay an inflated price for in-app purchases, since it takes a 42.8% price hike to negate Apple's 30% fee.

So what’s the true value of those cool Carlton dance moves I can get on Fortnite? How much less would the coins and loot boxes cost? Just imagine the overhead that Epic has to charge to reproduce the $18 billion of virtual goods it sales.

This article is about WordPress, not Fortnite. For WordPress.com to cancel out Apple's 30% fee, its monthly prices for its paid plans would need to increase from $4 to $5.71, from $8 to $11.43, from $25 to $35.71, and from $45 to $64.29.

https://wordpress.com/pricing/

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

#204

Post by tspiteri »

bloblaw wrote: post #81
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 You have a lot of faith in 60+ year old (mostly tech-illiterate men) to fix technology they don't understand. Government isn't the solution to this problem. Developers leaving the app store is probably only what will get Apple to change.

They can legislate for example against app store exclusivity instead of legislating technical app store rules.

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

#205

Post by colordrops »

sn41 wrote: post #202

We should have a GNU like alternative for the mobile. Mobiles are the primary computing devices now, and we should give liberty to the developers to distribute their products as they wish.

Not exactly GNU like, but you could use LineageOS without the Google apps installed. There are other open app stores like FDroid, and you can sideload as well.

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

#206

Post by parasubvert »

ardit33 wrote: post #174
parasubvert wrote: post #153

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…

are you serious? Historically you are on the wrong side of the argument. MSFT lost their case in the 90s, of 'other' but not that much different reasons... to their core they are anti-competitive. Also we have the break up of the original Bell system and several companies were formed out of it. GOOG and APL most likely will lose this one.

Microsoft’s case was about parlaying their monopoly in Windows to the browser space by making Internet Explorer an intrinsic part of Windows.

This is completely different from the #1 and #2 smart phone marketshare players charging a 30% cut as the exclusive software reseller to their own platform.

The original At&T was allowed to be a monopoly for 80+ years because it was in the public interest. The 1982 breakup was 8 years in the making due to poor management decisions in the 1960s and eroded that trust. Unfortunately the breakup was a failure. The Baby Bells maintained their regional monopolies, grew massively, and got their restrictions removed in the 1996 communications act, and now we have Verizon (2 of the 7 baby bells), AT&T (which is the original monopoly plus 4 of the 7 baby bells) and CenturyLink (the remnants of US West and other independents). The only real competition has come from foreign entrants like T-Mobile.

I think you need to take a closer look at the history of antitrust cases. It hasn’t been particularly successful.

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

#207

Post by parasubvert »

hackingthenews wrote: post #189
parasubvert wrote: post #153

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…

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 com…

Those pricing tactics are standard retail practices when dealing with large chains (“we will not be undersold”). This is why most items have an MSRP: to provide transparency across all retailers.

With software it’s of course easy to say that it’s a different product in different platforms. Which is why Apple used legal licensing to make Apps feel more like traditional products.

Arguably this makes easier for consumers to compare platforms and make a buying decision based on the underlying platform and not transitory deals on top of it. We can assume that all smartphone platforms are equal for their 3rd party software prices. Competition therefore isn’t on partner discounts or formations of cartels, it’s on the strengths of the underlying platform itself.

This does stop a form of competition, but I’m not sure price opacity is a form that has traditionally been viewed as a net positive.

Perhaps this leads to a legislative regime similar to US auto sales where dealers/shops and manufacturers must have separate ownership. To me Apple’s policies aren’t directly trying to emulate some aspects of this to avoid having to give up running the store.

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

#208

Post by cameldrv »

dylan604 wrote: post #47
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…

The problem I have is that you make it sound like you have a right to release software for their platform. They opened their platform for devs to make apps. You accepted that offer, read their terms, agreed to those terms, and are now complaining about those terms? I get it that you want to make 100% of the price made from each sell, but that's not realistic. If you sell your product at a brick&mortar store, you don'…

Arguably Apple should have nothing to do with this. Someone buys a phone from Apple, and now owns that phone. He wants to use his property to run some software. What should Apple have to do with this decision any more than Chevy should tell me what neighborhoods I should drive my car into?

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

#209

Post by em-bee »

em-bee wrote: post #147
mortenjorck wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have an allergy to tech analogies in general, but Apple's brick-and-mortar retail analogy is one of the worst. In any locality other than rural towns served by a single Dollar General, consumers have a choice between multiple retail outlets. If they don't like the choices at one store, they're free to shop at another. "But Android!" one might say, and once again, the analogy falls completely flat. The switching cos…

the equivalent would be that you can only use an apple car to go shopping in the apple store, and you can't use that apple car to go shopping anywhere else.

so in fact what we have here is a vertical lock-in. lock-in is just as bad as a monopoly, as it removes the ability to choose competitors.

i believe the EU has a law for interoperability, it only applies to API's as far as i know, but one could see the phone as a device with an API that allows apps to run on it. it could therefore be considered that now allowing any app to run on the phone is a violation of that law.

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

#210

Post by innagadadavida »

donmcronald wrote: post #169
pb7 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is your computer; you have a right to that hardware. But they only licensed you the OS and the hardware only supports that OS (which you acknowledged and agreed to when you bought it) so you can call it what you want, but you can’t force another entity to do what pleases you. The courts will decide that and it will set a pretty significant precedent.

You're arguing for a future where you own nothing and rent everything. Look at how many industries are using the idea of software licenses to retain control over your devices after you buy them so they can render them useless, or at least less useful, unless you pay for a subscription of some type.

The answer to this is to build a better iPhone and better iOS and make it open. Not legislature - this is assuming all the users are for this (at best it seems they don’t care much about the developers). All this is difficult to accomplish. Epic should try this instead of feeding their attorneys the billions of revenues they collected from their users.
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