Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

appfairness.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

671–680 of 1001 posts

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

#671

Post by swiley »

danShumway wrote: post #11

Can we just link directly to the advocacy group's page ( https://appfairness.org/ )? I'm not certain the article is adding anything. ---- I'm generally supportive of at least some of Epic's arguments towards Apple, and I do believe that Apple (and multiple other FAANG companies) are engaged in anti-competitive behavior that's currently hurting the market. But a lot of the arguments I'm reading on the App Fairness sit…

Wow that site was disappointing.

It focused mostly on the 30% apple charges, which is both common and reasonable. It mentions the anti competitive behavior but mostly how it inflates prices, which is exactly how apple is trying to frame the debate.

Also they have cookies on an entirely static site and disable scrolling until you press accept in the cookie dick bar (something you should probably never do, certainly not on a static site.) The thing is only readable in w3m/elinks.

In my (unpopular) opinion almost all of these "apps" should really be sites anyway. App store curation doesn't provide any reall security (especially since the apps are never instrumented) so someone so incapable of measuring the safety of software that they need that level of infantilesation should really only trust software to the same degree a browser does (that is, not at all.)

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

#672

Post by nickysielicki »

pornel wrote: post #607
nickysielicki wrote: post #594

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The analogy works perfectly -- nobody has to buy an iPhone.

I bought an iPhone, and I'm not getting that 30% cut. Where's my money? Apple wants to get paid twice for the same thing. Apple sells me a device, and then they sell me (a device user) as their product to app developers.

No, you paid for an iPhone and the iPhone ecosystem. You might choose to pay for additional apps, at which point Apple takes 30% for acting as a payment processor and for quality assurance. No double dipping. The iPhone is perfectly usable without any third-party applications. It's your choice to spend more money.

The iPhone did not originally have an app store and was still highly sought-after. Apple chose to add an app store, and has every right to choose to do so under their own conditions.

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

#673

Post by gji »

sixstringtheory wrote: post #523
gowld wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that store isn't a monopoly and the decisions aren't for purposes of restraining trade.

We aren’t dealing with a monopoly, so that’s out.

Well it depends on what your bar is for a monopoly. E.g. I can only use Comcast where I live. Comcast is not technically a monopoly - I could move somewhere else where other providers are available. But the friction to change is high enough that they effectively are a monopoly to me.

No company is a monopoly if you are flexible enough. Where antitrust starts to become relevant is a bit of an arbitrary line. If you think "mobile phones" is the industry then Apple does not have a monopoly. But there are many people who would put up with a lot before switching from iOS to Android, because of apps, iCloud, iMessaging, or whatever.

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

#674

Post by bobobob2 »

pb7 wrote: post #463
stale2002 wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why does Epic get to monopolize their game's monetization? The answer to this question is quite obviously that the smart phone market is much much larger, and has a much higher impact on society, than an in game cosmetics market. This is what courts care about. They care about real life consumer impact. And anyone who is not stupid, or intentionally trying to mislead people, can understand than the smart phone mark…

How exactly are consumers impacted by Apple's App Store? Other than having a consistently good experience where they are safe from malicious actors, privacy violations, manipulative subscriptions, malware, etc.

Here are some examples: https://appfairness.org/issues/anti-competition/

> Apple has manipulated its rules and policies to disadvantage Tile, a popular Bluetooth finding hardware and app developer, in favor of its competing Find My App.

> if a Kindle customer wants to purchase an ebook from the Kindle iPhone app, they’re met with a confusing situation: consumers can search for books, even read samples, but there’s no option to purchase. I

Both are worse for consumers.

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

#675

Post by threeseed »

Aldo_MX wrote: post #457
zepto wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

So you've turned the situation into an anti-consumer one.

As a consumer I would then lose access to a significant proportion of apps.

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

#676

Post by sneak »

systemvoltage wrote: post #176
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…

Your style of thinking cannot be popular on HN, but we all know why this is good for the consumer - in this day and age, businesses will completely rip apart the consumer in every which way. They'll not miss a chance to fuck the consumer's privacy, financial state, psychology, innocence and addiction. HN crowd wants something they can run sudo on. But people here have not got a slighest idea of how to run a device fo…

> Your style of thinking cannot be popular on HN, but we all know why this is good for the consumer - in this day and age, businesses will completely rip apart the consumer in every which way. They'll not miss a chance to fuck the consumer's privacy, financial state, psychology, innocence and addiction.

Apple is among the worst offenders here, too. They expressly permit all sorts of embedded spyware in almost every single app in their App Store, and their view is that you agreed and consented to it when you accepted the iOS/App Store Terms of Service.

They could build platform security features like Little Snitch into the OS to allow users to prevent it, but they don't.

They could make App Store rules to keep apps from spying on you when you use them, but they don't.

They could end to end encrypt device backups, so the US military and FBI couldn't read all of your iMessage history whenever they want without a warrant or probable cause, but they don't. (In fact, they were going to, but then specifically stopped.[1])

The "Apple respects user privacy" story is just brand marketing, not reality.

[1]: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-fbi-icloud-exclusiv...

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

#677

Post by spideymans »

temp667 wrote: post #606
tmotwu wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the meantime, nothing stops a scammer from selling you a jailbroken device. App permissioning has nothing to do with the App Store and it's hostile policies towards developers. You can set the same permissioning rules on rival devices as well. The false narrative that the App Store exists to protect you needs to be dispelled forever. The trust consumers have to install any App in the App Store is far more terrifyi…

Apple as an ecosystem that emphasizes trust. They believe they can charge a premium for this. Whether you think this should be "dispelled forever" is up to you - feel free to market your carriers phone however you want. The app store, as the method that pricing, refunds, subscriptions etc are handled, is part of this story of trust or lack of trust. And yes - apple does review use of permission by developers upon sub…

>What is incredible is that developers on HN seem to have no clue why people actually like what apple does.

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." - Upton Sinclair.

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

#678

Post by sixstringtheory »

ThatPlayer wrote: post #665
sixstringtheory wrote: post #523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We aren’t dealing with a monopoly, so that’s out.

What other app store is there on iOS?

iOS is a product in a larger market. It is not the market itself. There are other products in the market in which iOS is a product, and there's nothing stopping more entrants (besides the enormous engineering/business effort, the likes of which have already been undertaken by current players like Apple/Google).

Your argument would be equally invalid if you were to say Uber is a monopoly because Lyft can't get a slice of the profits from Uber drivers, or that Pepsi is a monopoly because Coca-Cola receives no royalties from sales of Pepsi products.

Dominoes is not a monopoly. They make pizzas in a market that is larger than just Dominoes' pizzas. Nobody could reasonably argue that Dominoes is a monopoly just because you can't purchase Pizza Hut pizza at a Dominoes location.

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

#679

Post by lotsofpulp »

mattnewton wrote: post #641
lotsofpulp wrote: post #625

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Insurance is for minimizing losses you can't afford. Term life insurance is good if you have dependents and their life would be negatively impacted by the loss of your income. There is very little profit and commission in term life insurance, so life insurance salesmen will push whole life. Whole life insurance is rarely necessary, and extremely expensive compared to the alternatives. See links below. https://www.whi…

Also it's used as a part of a strategy to hide money from taxes in a term policy, where you can later "borrow" against your premiums to pull your money out later in a lower tax situation. That seems to be the main purpose of large life insurance policies I have seen among wealthy people.

That applies to so few people though. Most people who buy it are just wasting money. In my experience, immigrants with few assets who don't know better are targeted by immigrants of their own race (since they're presumed to be more trustworthy).

https://www.whitecoatinvestor.com/appropriate-uses-of-perman...

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

#680

Post by wcr3 »

sweezyjeezy wrote: post #634
pb7 wrote: post #602

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's probably because they care very little about consumer rights and are just doing what companies do: attempt to make the most money possible.

Do their motivations invalidate the argument?

"does the fact that mr. crocodile eats small, flightless birds invalidate his argument that he can get me (a small, flightless bird) across the river faster than i could do so alone?"
Post reply on HN