271–280 of 456 posts
I think it’s super unfair that I am not allowed to set up a lemonade stand inside of Walmart for free. Monopolistic, even.
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This is the same kind of response that used to be used when Google was discussed. "Google is clearly making the right choice for me. Their motto is literally 'don't be evil'". And in some respects it's true - A benevolent dictatorship is undeniably a great form of governance. The problem (and this is a problem) is that benevolent dictatorships never, Never, NEVER stay benevolent. At some point the guiding principles…
> I don't like not being able to run software of my choice on a device I (in theory only, in Apple's case) own. I just don't find this compelling and don't really care about it. There are lots of products to choose from, you can build your own stuff, buy a generic phone and load whatever you want on it, etc. > The problem (and this is a problem) is that benevolent dictatorships never, Never, NEVER stay benevolent. Th…
The ability to shop based on price. The 30% fee is non-negotiable which guarantees a certain level of price gouging.
Apple is also known for implementing various anti-patterns and tracking, mostly related to promoting their own apps and cloud services over their competitors, so you lose any leverage you would have in getting them to stop that. You would have a better argument in favor of an app store monopoly if there wasn't a huge conflict of interest with them producing the hardware and selling these other services.
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> all the apps that I need Correction: all the apps that Apple thinks you need, regardless of whether or not it aligns with what you need or want.
Please give me examples of apps I’m missing out on as an average consumer because I’m all for missing out on malwares
There is your list.
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One side benefits some customers, the other benefits other customers.
Competition benefits customers. There is no competition for pricing on the AppStore, ergo the pricing is more or less free (A monopoly). The store itself is so big as to be it's own market, and as such Apple shouldn't be allowed to use monopolistic practices even though they created the market themselves .
> Since then, Sweeney, an iconoclastic executive who owns enormous farms and dabbles in fast cars And overworks his employees to exhaustion, while stomping on their unionizing...
"Through twitter, Sweeney said that when the land was put up for sale, many were concerned that the state wouldn't be able to buy it quick enough.
"He said he will own the farm to protect the land's rare oak and pine ecosystem until a permanent conservation home is arranged, which would take two to three years.
"According to the Wall Street Journal, Sweeney has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to preserve more than 45,000 acres of forest throughout North Carolina."
https://wset.com/news/local/fortnite-ceo-buys-7000-acre-farm...
Not defending Sweeney on anything else, just clarifying this specific point about owning huge farmlands.
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> “As smartphones become more and more a part of the fundamental infrastructure of society” This perspective underpins a lot of the pushback against Apple & Google but I just don’t understand it. Any cell phone, and especially a smartphone, is not integral to modern society. Random usage by consumers is recreational. Businesses have a million ways to replace things they ask employees to rely on smartphones for. In fa…
17% of people in the US use their smartphone as their only portal to the internet [1]. Is your argument that as long as they can go use a computer at a library that their smartphone is a luxury item? Access to the internet (or someone to access it for you) is basically a prerequisite for existing in modern society and phones are how people choose to do it most of the time. This like saying "hey, if you don't like buy…
Just like there are plenty of Internet capable smartphones that aren't made by Apple.
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The Windows/Epic situation really is the "best case scenario". You can download and install software from anywhere. Plus, there's an "app store" from the OS vendor, plus a few specality competing ones for things like games, where both consumers and developers have the choice of where they download/publish. Epic competing with Steam has been a great success for everyone I think. Developers get secure funding for games…
Epic games exclusives are not the kind of competing I want, and they're not a win/win/win. I'm happy to buy games on GOG or the Humble store for instance, but I will never in a million years install the privacy and security nightmare that is the Epic Game Store on a PC I own. Sure, steam is not perfect but they've not had issues on the scale of Epics software. I've played thousands of hours of Rocket League, but stil…
It turns out that in a surprising number of cases, you don’t have to. Control, Journey, and Beyond Two Souls (as of this writing, it launched with Denuvo) are all completely DRM Free and will run without EGS. You can download them via the open-source “Legendary” unofficial client, or even in a Virtual Machine if you feel so inclined.
There are a tiny handful DRM-free Steam games but in my experience, it seems to be way more common on the Epic Game Store, particularly for AAA titles. I’m not sure if this was intentional of a happy accident, but it’s caused me to choose EGS for several titles recently. Mind, you still need to check before buying!
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Well of course you're going to prefer an anti-competitive approach if you view competition as burdensome. This has analogies in many industries. You should divorce your personal anti-competition desires from the non-personal discussion. Encouraging choice is often a better way to give more people what they want.
The competition is in the marketplace. I'm not sure what value there is in having an Epic store, an Apple store, a Google store, a Netflix store, a Microsoft Store... Having choice isn't always better. I think the Apple iOS store is a very clear example where choice leads to negative experience for users. As I've mentioned before, Apple collectively bargains on behalf of users against developers. They enforce (albeit…
Don't fight five enemies when defeating one will defeat all five.
It is an incredible lack of imagination that people actually think this is the end of history with regards to mobile device operating systems, and we should just declare Android and iOS And their ecosystems public utilities that should be regulated by the government. Because that really is the only recourse here to give people what they want. Markets aren’t created by god, they’re created by customers. If you want to…
Since when does any government anywhere on this planet care about "risk for malware and spyware" on operating systems? If they did, they'd turn up the heat on software developers in terms of responsibility for blatant security violations and security-related software bugs. The fact that no government does any of that tells us that they don't care about secure software. Some governments - I'm not calling names now - may even have active interest in insecure software due to their law enforcement and intelligence arms depending on security flaws for their work.
Apple's defense that they are not a monopolist in any traditional sense is correct as far as it goes. But a novel definition of monopoly may be warranted. As smartphones become more and more a part of the fundamental infrastructure of society, and remain relatively expensive and slow to replace, it's not crazy to say that iPhone users are a market in itself and that market should be protected from monopoly. In the sa…
They aren't relatively expensive. There's tons of cheap android phones out there which have 80-90% of the functionality in an iphone, just with a much crappier user experience and terrible cameras, but they work! Somehow people have come to the conclusion that if something is so good that they can't contemplate using anything else then it's a monopoly.