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Epic, Spotify, and Tinder form advocacy group to push for app store changes
911–920 of 1001 posts
Re: Epic, Spotify, and Tinder form advocacy group to push for app store changes
#912Earlier quoted context omitted.
Two choices for something as complex as a smartphone does not make a free market.
It’s far more than two choices since their are hundreds of Android manufacturers, many whom add their own software to the stack. It’s more like dozens of differentiated competitors, of which Apple is rate largest but still only a small minority of the market. There aren’t many freer markets. The automobile business was still a free market when Henry Ford refused to paint cars in your choice of color.
And how many of those phones don't run Google Play Services?
Right now your choices are "Google doesn't spy on me" or "I can sideload apps or use alternative stores".
Re: Epic, Spotify, and Tinder form advocacy group to push for app store changes
#913Earlier quoted context omitted.
So, let’s apply this same logic to accessibility. Let’s say the government says “devices must have voice over functionality”. Ok, great. Apple puts that as an option, and we’re done. The same applies for if the government said “you have a right to install apps of your choice”. Apple adds a setting in the settings menu. You still get your locked down device by default, and much like blind people, people who care about…
> The same applies for if the government said “you have a right to install apps of your choice”. I don't like the idea that the government can force you to build things you don't want to build. If I don't want to build a general purpose computing device, why should the government be able to force me to? There's a compelling argument for requiring building in handicapped-accessible features, but that is relevant to th…
> I don't like the idea that the government can force you to build things you don't want to build.
Oh but you do. Otherwise you'd choose to live in a country without a food code or electrical code or engineering standards for roads and bridges.
Re: Epic, Spotify, and Tinder form advocacy group to push for app store changes
#914Earlier quoted context omitted.
"It's awful that a $2 trillion tech company's price fixing conspiracy flatlined and consumers in 2020 pay really low ebook prices. What is American justice coming to?"
Do we, though? I feel like most ebooks on Amazon are priced similarly to their paperback counterparts, or at least not significantly lower to the point that it reflects the fact that they don't have to manufacture a physical good or get someone to drive a truck to bring it to me.
I mean you’re tying value to cost which is weird for art (which is the majority of e-books, novels)
This is like complaining a painting is too expensive because the canvas and paint only cost 100 dollars.
The major value of a book, to a consumer, is the words it contains not the paper it’s printed on.
Re: Epic, Spotify, and Tinder form advocacy group to push for app store changes
#915Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do we, though? I feel like most ebooks on Amazon are priced similarly to their paperback counterparts, or at least not significantly lower to the point that it reflects the fact that they don't have to manufacture a physical good or get someone to drive a truck to bring it to me.
I mean you’re tying value to cost which is weird for art (which is the majority of e-books, novels) This is like complaining a painting is too expensive because the canvas and paint only cost 100 dollars. The major value of a book, to a consumer, is the words it contains not the paper it’s printed on.
Forget art, they're a software developer working for a software company that produces software for other software developers. Zero physical items created. Sit around all day getting paid great money to produce nothing tangible and then thinks something dodgy must be happening for ebooks to be close to physical books in price. Very odd.
Re: Epic, Spotify, and Tinder form advocacy group to push for app store changes
#916Earlier quoted context omitted.
> How is iOS fundamentally different from the Xbox OS? If I have to explain in brief, because the intended use for it is to be a multipurpose OS just how Windows/OS X were. Xbox OS is about games and media streaming, while iOS/Android in addition to what Xbox OS does are about image editing, word processing, managing email, browsing web and much more. They are the spiritual successors to the laptop/desktop OSs. Platf…
>I think we are going around in circles on this. Even 14% worldwide is significant enough for me to ask for regulation but the right number to look at is, app revenue generated. This is such an absurd comment. Revenue has nothing to do with whether a company is a monopoly. Monopoly has to do with competition. Do you have a choice to use a company other than Apple? Yes, unequivocally yes. Apple, with their 14% market…
Quoting myself from one comment above
> I am not talking about my choice as an end user here, I am talking about my choice as a developer. If 50% of my revenue is from iOS, I really can't afford to not be there.
and as I said even in comments above, US share is 50% of devices, much higher of app revenue. If I have a product/service targeted at US, that becomes my main market.
My position is about developers here as I have stated above several times, you are conflating it with my choice as an user.
Re: Epic, Spotify, and Tinder form advocacy group to push for app store changes
#917Earlier quoted context omitted.
Let’s compare malware on Windows, OSX, Android vs iOS, shall we?
That's like saying "let's compare species of ants on Africa, Asia, America vs Antarctica", you would need to melt the ice first; iOS is uncharted territory.
No it isn’t. iOS have had malware problems as well as a result of people jailbreaking their device to install software from third-parties. Apple fortunately makes it increasingly difficult to jailbreak it.
We can also see that Apple were unable to protect their OSX devices as a result of allowing third-party app installations.
Re: Epic, Spotify, and Tinder form advocacy group to push for app store changes
#918Earlier quoted context omitted.
So you like having only 1 app store for convince. I get that. But there is an legitimate argument to be made by those who do want it. The lack of competition is probably hurting you too, in the form of higher prices for everything. If there were alternatives you wouldn't be forecd to use them. What if apple starts trying to monetize in ways you don't like? (like trying even more aggressively to get appleTV/ AppleMusi…
> If there were alternatives you wouldn't be forecd to use them. That's just not true. If App Developers choose to only release their app on one store then i am forced to use that store. Say this Apple loses this battle and are forced to let companies run their own Stores on iOS. What's to stop a company like Facebook moving their suite of apps to exclusively be distributed through their own Store, which conveniently…
> That's just not true. If App Developers choose to only release their app on one store then i am forced to use that store.
Which store they would use is obviously the developer's decision. Do you complain that you have to go to website X or the Steam Store to get some program instead of the Windows Store as well? Also nobody forces you to use that one app. You don't have a right to use the app, with a possible exception for you having bought the app in the past on that other store.
Re: Epic, Spotify, and Tinder form advocacy group to push for app store changes
#919Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Allowing third party app stores doesn't change the API or permissions system already baked into the OS. It does precisely that. Apple invests huge amounts of money into people and infrastructure to ensure that exploit code (that can subvert platform security) never makes it into the store or gets signed by Apple. If it does, they can immediately revoke it. Third parties providing app downloads would not invest the…
But you cant run any code you want. You’re still in a restrictive sandbox, and you still need to explicitly request the limited expansions to the permissions scope that the OS allows the user to grant you - neither of which is dependent on the App Store.
I don't believe you understood my comment. Third party app stores with more lax, less resourced app review procedures would result in arbitrary attacker code being run on end-user devices, that, given enough time, would escape the sandbox. It's a layered defense: signing/developer identity account, app store review, sandboxing, specific user-approved permissions.
No one part of it is bulletproof, as we saw with CVE-2020-3883.
Re: Epic, Spotify, and Tinder form advocacy group to push for app store changes
#920Can 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…
This is a flawed analogy. The correct one would be Cheerios printing "If you buy me at Costco, I cost $1 less" on the outside of the box. No rational retailer that isn't Costco would carry that product.
Your own change to the analogy isn't really all that accurate either: What you are saying would be closer to, saying "This game is cheaper in Android" in the Apple store's product description. I have no idea of what the courts will rule here, but if you are limiting this discussion to whether there's precedent to advertising a store the manufacturer themselves controls, there sure are examples.
This might not be all that popular a plan with Cheerios, but perfectly normal with all kinds of items available at retail stores: For instance, Simple Modern water bottles will come with a discount coupon for buying replacement caps at a discount on the manufacturer's online store. Some printers have, inside the box a leaflet for ink discounts. At least one major vacuum cleaners brand will point you to their website for replacement bags, with an online coupon. Or, back in software, if I buy a Nintendo Switch at GameStop, I will still get ads on menus for buying games online, even though my relationship with Nintendo started at GameStop.
All kinds of retailers carry the products I mentioned, even though there really is far more profit in habituating the customer to buying the consumables in your own store than in the original item. You could argue whether this is good or bad, legal or illegal, but the examples definitely exist.