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Epic, Spotify, and Tinder form advocacy group to push for app store changes

appfairness.org

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Re: Epic, Spotify, and Tinder form advocacy group to push for app store changes

#451

Post by tshaddox »

panragon wrote: post #271
sneak wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If users didn’t want these things, users wouldn’t buy them. For the vast majority of people, and iPhone is way, way better than a computer that can run any app, precisely because it can’t run any app they click on. I’m a hacker, so I would love to be able to install any software I want on my iPhone, and introspect it in other ways. Most users, however, would have a way worse experience using their phone if they were…

I have this discussion nearly daily when talking with Android users. The iPhone is not a modular unit that can be tampered with at all, but despite even being a software developer, I do not actually care about my phone being modular. I want it to work and I want it to work well across the entire platform. Not only does iOS severely limit your options for changing your phone's UX, something a lot of people lament abou…

> The iPhone is not a modular unit that can be tampered with at all, but despite even being a software developer, I do not actually care about my phone being modular. I want it to work and I want it to work well across the entire platform.

I'm precisely in this boat. I enjoy playing with electronics, but I want my microwave to just work. I also enjoy fiddling around with PCs with total freedom, but I want my phone to just work.

Re: Epic, Spotify, and Tinder form advocacy group to push for app store changes

#453

Post by lotsofpulp »

nostrademons wrote: post #422
lotsofpulp wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience is analogies are erroneously as supporting arguments to jump from premise to conclusion of an unrelated topic. I saw them a lot at my family's various religious/cult gatherings when I was a kid. The preacher would state something and then "prove" it with an analogy. Analogies don't accomplish anything in basically all of the uses I've seen. People want them to serve as proof, but it's a lazy way of gett…

That's assuming a level of critical thinking that exists on HN and a few other forums but isn't really common to the general public. Most people go into a new topic or new issue area with a basically neutral stance. They aren't looking to disprove the argument, nor do they even view it as an argument. Rather, they're thinking "OK, show me how this is relevant - tie it into my life and how it affects me, then I'll mak…

Or bad actors can use analogies to mislead people. Or a neutral actor erroneously uses them and the result is still misinformed people. My opinion is analogies do more harm than good, at best wasting people's time, and at worst, resulting in people coming to the wrong conclusions.

Re: Epic, Spotify, and Tinder form advocacy group to push for app store changes

#454

Post by asou »

damnyou wrote: post #408
asou wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't subscribe without an IOS Device , Mac or Windows PC. If your in some strange edge case where your subscribing to services and then discarding your IOS devices before canceling , that's on you. In a worst case scenario you could borrow a friend's Windows PC. As much as I love Linux I can't imagine most Linux users don't have at least one windows PC or Mac. If we really want to get technical, spin up an AWS i…

No, what the fuck? It's not "on me". It's on Apple to make it easy to cancel even if I no longer have an Apple product or Windows PC on hand. Borrow a friend's PC? Spin up an AWS Windows instance? Seriously, WTF?! I can cancel my Android subscriptions from anywhere with a web browser.

It's not an intentional trick to force you to keep paying.

The vast vast majority of people have access to a Windows PC or Apple product. How you ended up in this edge case I'll never know.

To take this to it's logical conclusion, what if you don't run JavaScript on your browsers. Would they also need to give you a cancelation page which doesn't require JavaScript.

Re: Epic, Spotify, and Tinder form advocacy group to push for app store changes

#455

Post by larme »

tombert wrote: post #378
clansimus wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because "great for developers" just shouldn't matter. It should be about what the consumers want.

A worse time for developers means worse apps, worse apps means less-happy consumers. They aren't mutually exclusive.

"Developers" nowadays (except some indie shop) are just the enemy of user. They try to squeeze money out of users as much as possible.

On the other hand Apple try to squeeze money by asking consumer to pay the apple tax, but at least they try to be reasonable on the privacy issue.

Choose which side you like, or just use open source software.

Re: Epic, Spotify, and Tinder form advocacy group to push for app store changes

#456

Post by starbugs »

nemothekid wrote: post #339
starbugs wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is a happy delusion preferable to a miserable reality? The App Store has become a virtual Truman Show. As long as you don't look beyond its simulated reality, it's a happy place. Developers have the perspective and ability to look behind the curtains. And what they find there is a truly miserable reality of unfair practices, deceptions, and even censorship. The philosophical answer to the question above has long been…

> Is a happy delusion preferable to a miserable reality? Your miserable reality is one where: * Nation-states have full access to location data to many Americans * Ad companies abusing user data to push questionable products * Moneyed interests spreading disinformation through hypertargetting. This isn't hyperbole. Snowden already showed the length the USG was willing to go (1). Facebook is currently under fire for (…

Your logical fallacy is to believe that you will retain your everyday life freedoms that way. The lines between digital and real life are already blurring. You will lose freedom in both this way.

I hope for you that we utopians won't have to rescue you one day with our ability to build from source. If enough of your kind would exist, we might all be working for the FANGS and nobody will be there for you anymore.

Re: Epic, Spotify, and Tinder form advocacy group to push for app store changes

#457

Post by Aldo_MX »

zepto wrote: post #421
actuator wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have also been really surprised with the whole debate on this saga here. For developers, this looks like such a no brainer because they should personally relate to what these companies are asking for.

None of this would be great for developers. Having to deal with a multitude of stores run by companies that are even shadier than Apple is not good.

Then don't install the other stores.

(That's how people who say "then don't use Apple devices" sounds like).

Re: Epic, Spotify, and Tinder form advocacy group to push for app store changes

#458

Post by seahawks78 »

Correct me if I am wrong but the advocacy group is essentially arguing that let me use your platform (marketplace) services and get a free ride doing so. Kind of like taking an Uber where at the end of the ride the driver just says: "you know what, lets ditch Uber, pull out your credit card and settle between the two of us. And I will charge you much lower!!" Aha.

Re: Epic, Spotify, and Tinder form advocacy group to push for app store changes

#459

Post by pb7 »

matsemann wrote: post #413
pb7 wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why isn't Epic forced to make it a platform? They have a large captive audience with money and I want a cut of it. Opening it up to everyone will drive competition to the digital skin market, and as we all know from this thread, that's a good thing. Why does Epic get to monopolize their game's monetization?

Don't argue in bad faith.

It may seem that way but I am 100% sincere. Of course, those questions are rhetorical because I know what the answer I will hear is and I believe the same answer applies to Apple. If you believe that rules apply to one multi-billion dollar company but not to another, I want you to at least sweat a little bit in defending it because it sounds absolutely ridiculous to me. The conclusion I'm seeing is that if you want to be a consumer-hostile monopoly, you better do it in a market that's bigger than all other forms of entertainment but isn't critical to day-to-day life like, say, video games.

Re: Epic, Spotify, and Tinder form advocacy group to push for app store changes

#460

Post by ornitorrincos »

bobbylarrybobby wrote: post #233
dlubarov wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The government can not compel two companies to engage in a contract. It seems like there ought to be exceptions to prevent certain gatekeeping behavior. As a very extreme example, suppose a company bought up a set of private roads in such a way that without their roads, people in a certain area could not access the rest of the country. One would hope that the government would compel the gatekeeper to do business wi…

But apple didn't buy up anything preexisting -- they created the smartphone market from scratch and grew the user and developer base organically. You could argue that they leveraged their Mac developer base for this, but 1. the first iPhone didn't support third party apps and 2. there was nothing to leverage this developer base against because there was no smartphone market when the iPhone was released. Also, if we a…

You make it sound as if there was no market for phone applications before the iphone, which at least in europe is not true.

And the punishment would not be because a company succeeds, but because a company abuses its success position to stiffle competition and artificially placing their other offerings in a better place.

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