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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

#711

Post by temp667 »

gpm wrote: post #653
temp667 wrote: post #619

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question from a principle standpoint is - can a company create an area where trust / safety / security are prioritized. T Developers no doubt disagree with this, they have created a web that is filled with crap. Let's be 100% clear about that. Spam calls via voip, spam into email, ddos floods of every sort imaginable, impossible to unsubscribe, cramming and slamming on subscription renewals and the list goes on.…

To keep the continuity of discussion, I assume that this comment was posted here because my top level comment was in part a reply to your (temp667's) comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24579860 I appreciate the attempt to connect this to the anti-trust suit, but I don't see this as a good justification for why your original critique is relevant for a few reasons: - Many of the practices in your origin…

You don't have to agree with apple, but they clearly think the halo effect of having just one reasonably fair app store on their platform increases their platform brand power and profits both. I think they are right.

Can I ask a question. When your elderly parents or kids ask for a phone (assuming they are not developers), does it give you no comfort that if its an apple from end to end including app store things will be a bit more reasonable?

And you do realize if things are unbundled, then EVERY phone company will dump their crap onto every users phone except for the folks who know enough to go uninstall / use the lockout thing you are talking about. And you don't think that will damage the overall apple brand?

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

#712

Post by tmotwu »

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…

And yet, all top 10 apps currently on the App Store are considered the worst repeated violators of data privacy.

There's no need to pretend to be naive, PII does in fact go beyond telemetric touchbar behavior or your fingerprint sensor. The rest of what you said continues to have nothing to do with App Store review processes.

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

#714

Post by [deleted] »

sneak wrote: post #76
candiddevmike wrote: post #62

Device freedom is a must. Any device should be completely controllable by the end user. There's two parts to this to me: app stores and the data collected by the devices. Users should have the freedom to install any software on their devices, period. Users should also have the freedom to stop all data collection by these devices. This applies to all electronics--video game consoles, TVs, printers, who knows what else…

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…

[deleted]

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

#715

Post by lern_too_spel »

zepto wrote: post #632
headmelted wrote: post #615

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"They want to be part of a small exclusive group of store owners who get to share in the benefits of Apple’s investments" False. Epic made very clear, early on, IN THEIR COURT FILING that their case was an attempt to legally force Apple and Google to allow for third party app stores to exist equitably on iOS and Android. Does that benefit Epic substantially? Of course it does. They want a mobile Epic Games Store on b…

Nothing I said is false. Third party stores will not exist equitably on iOS and Android because there don’t exist equitably anywhere else. I said a small group, not just Epic. That group would be made up of the usual suspects - Epic, Amazon, Google, Facebook, various other TenCent properties etc. Nothing about it would make it either developer friendly, nor consumer friendly.

Android is already both more developer friendly and more consumer friendly than iOS despite not having full automatic update support for third party app stores. If that were in place, it would be even better.

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

#716

Post by ghostwriter »

return1 wrote: post #347
ghostwriter wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was told in other threads that taxes, especially if they are progressive, are a good thing and that they help the society and the government to function, and that we pay them because we receive services in exchange, and that it doesn't matter how satisfied we are with those services. If you call Apple charges taxes, be consistent and respect them as any other tax in your life. Or denounce all of them. Or stop calli…

Taxation is theft. That said, i dont see how paying the apple tax for the apps i buy is benefiting me at all, since i'm in Europe.

> That said, i dont see how paying the apple tax for the apps i buy is benefiting me at all, since i'm in Europe.

Do you see how VAT benefits you when you pay it when buying almost any product/service (including the ones from Apple) in your country?

I agree with your taxation stance though, because taxes are not voluntary. AppStore is, I can either pay for it and use it, or jailbreak it and use it, or walk away to open platforms and enjoy their freedom. And if there isn't one, I am free to organise with others and to build my own.

Besides, Apple doesn't want you to pay for it, it wants to get a fee from the developers who use the platform to profit from it. It's either developers who consciously put this burden of their fees on your shoulders, or there's a ridiculous law in place that doesn't allow the developers to put different price tags on different platforms, which results in higher prices for end users.

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

#717

Post by lern_too_spel »

judge2020 wrote: post #626
bogwog wrote: post #608

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how that's relevant. Epic isn't suing Apple so that they can have exclusive rights to open a second app store, they're suing to allow third-party app stores in general. If Epic wins, they aren't going to be part of a small group of store owners; anyone would be able to open their own competing store.

So if Apple had entertained the original pre-lawsuit request, would epic have fought until Apple allowed app stores other than Epic and Apple existing?

What does it matter? They're fighting for something that benefits everybody (except Apple) now.

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

#718

Post by _qulr »

yazaddaruvala wrote: post #710
_qulr wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have built trust with Apple and prefer the centralized Apple (over the decentralized dev-houses of the world) IMO this is a false dichotomy. Epic and Spotify are not the size of Apple, but they're still giants compared to little indie developers. I trust indie devs way more than any of the BigCos. It's just natural: the fewer customers you have, and the less market power you have, the more you care, the more you…

I appreciate this sentiment, but I've lived through too many of these transitions to agree. e.g. Blizzard, Google, YouTube, Curse, Sun Microsystems, Zynga, Minecraft, Occulus. Indie developers / startups either become the size of Epic and Spotify, or get bought by companies the size of Epic, Spotify and Apple. Find me the indie developers / startups that cannot be "corrupted" (converted?) and I'll invest as soon as t…

Why do you conflate indie developers with startups? They're entirely different.

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

#719

Post by jVinc »

mthoms wrote: post #237
burlesona wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it means Sony has to add Steam to PS5 or else it is narrow and arbitrary. To me the iPhone is a console, end of story. If you like the console experience, it’s a great device. If you don’t, there are a million android and even alternative OS based phones out there which are more like a PC. If you want your phone to be a PC, you should do what most people around the world do and buy one of those. Instead we have…

>To me the iPhone is a console, end of story. I'm so tired of hearing this ridiculous analogy. From a purely technical stand point it may be true, but for a large chunk of the population, the smartphone is their one and only connection to the digital world. It controls their connection to their bank accounts, governments, news/discourse, family, friends, dating life, education (formal and informal), medical informati…

> But the smartphone has grown beyond a simple "nice-to-have" utility.

Lets frame the discussion accordingly indeed. Not all gaming machines are consoles and not all smartphones are iPhones. Why should we prevent Sony from providing a console just because the PC is much more than a nice-to-have utility and their console competes with PC's? Apple is not a monopoly, and they are not even the majority of smart phones. Why should they be forced not to deliver a console experience (that many even if not the majority enjoy) simply because the category as a whole is an essential utilty?

Why should we enforce through law what can be perfectly well accomplished by people voting with their feet and just buying the smartphone devices that aren't walled gardens?

I don't particularly like Pepsi, and rather enjoy coka cola, but I'm not going to go out on a mad rager about how "cola products are abundant throughout our society, so we desperately need to force Pepsi to change their recipe to align with coka-colas because otherwise our society is going to suffer from drinking bad cola!"

If you don't like iPhones don't buy them. If you don't like consol don't buy them. But trying to argue that the pc is such a essential utility and that it competes in some subset of functionality and that no-one should therefore be allowed to produce or own consoles is just absurd.

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

#720

Post by Apocryphon »

zepto wrote: post #687
Apocryphon wrote: post #655

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Developers would be forced to support any store that had more than a few percent of customers. Look at the Amazon Appstore for Android and you'll see an anemic limited app marketplace that while subpar, doesn't seem to be doing anything particularly nefarious to consumers nor developers alike. And it's precisely anemic and limited because it contains far fewer apps than the Play Store. We have the entire Android ec…

Your premise seems to be that the current situation on Android is a good model for what would happen on iOS. Epic themselves are suing Google because android doesn’t actually allow competing stores to operate in an equal footing. That’s really all that is needed to dismiss this like of argument. My extrapolation is not being borne out on Android because Android also doesn’t allow stores to compete on an equal footing…

If you're going to dismiss the majority of my arguments and points, as well as reality in favor of your own framing, then you're refusing to debate in good faith.

Epic's lawsuit is immaterial, imo. We don't know how the courts will decide. Rather, what's being debated is what a hypothetical open iOS will look like. Even if they lose the lawsuit, Pandora's box has been opened. Years of developer dissatisfaction and corporate strategizing has called Apple's dominance into question, and we are now examining potential futures if Apple opens up. I don't believe a forced opening on Epic's terms is inevitable, nor is it the only model for opening up.

One can even imagine a scenario where Apple opens up on its own terms. Perhaps they provide SDKs that allow the creation of third party app stores with stringent security mechanisms built in, and license that out to partners. They certainly have the resources to undertake such a process, and forcing such stores to pay a license fee would both allow them to recoup on lost revenue and allow them to maintain a level of control over their platform. Epic would scream but again they're neither the first to cry foul over the App Store monopoly, nor the last. If the bulk of the developer grievances can be sidestepped by Apple themselves, Epic would then truly just look like a litigious rent-seeker, rather than a company that's accidentally doing something that's helping the little guy.

> perhaps you can flesh out a realistic hypothetical about what developers can expect

How about the gaming market, especially over the past decade. The rise of Steam, the presence of somewhat niche alternatives like GOG.com, GamersGate, Humble Bundle, (I believe Blizzard was the major publisher with their own digital distribution store early on), then the sudden proliferation of other publishers from EA to UbiSoft and now Epic.

Does it require significant overhead for developers to support multiple stores? I'm sure it isn't free. But is it significantly detrimental to them? I'm not sure. Valve has been criticized over Steam's former near-monopoly of the gaming digital distribution market[0]. At least the present situation gives them alternatives to work with. The AAA publisher stores are often derided, but more from a consumer standpoint than a developer perspective. Having a ton of game installers and store accounts to manage is a pain. It's definitely not frictionless. But again, you're arguing on behalf of developers, and I'm not sure if they're unhappy with having more choices than just Steam.

> There will be exactly the same platform, but a whole load of additional predatory business to deal with.

Again, you have to provide examples in other segments where Facebook, Microsoft, et al have successfully created trouble for developers by offering them (and developers) more choices.

[0] https://www.polygon.com/2017/5/16/15622366/valve-gabe-newell...

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