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Dominance of Apple and Google’s app stores impacting competition and consumers

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Re: Dominance of Apple and Google’s app stores impacting competition and consumers

#201

Post by ehsankia »

madeofpalk wrote: post #50
encryptluks2 wrote: post #23

You can have third-party Android app stores. Can you say the same about Apple? While I agree that Google has market-dominance, they are not anti-competition or anti-consumer in the same sense as Apple. Android is open source, Chrome OS is open source, etc. Google is actually providing and contributing something back to the community. Apple intentionally locks people to specific hardware and to their app store.

Let’s not pretend they do these things as charity. Chrome is open source because, as a fork of WebKit, it has to be. For other things, they use open source to drive adoption.

This kind of logic is so annoying. If it's so easy / good for profit / advantageous / smart business, then why doesn't Apple do it?

The whole "they only do X for profit" is such a lazy argument, because it can be used to argue any side of the argument if you try hard enough.

Re: Dominance of Apple and Google’s app stores impacting competition and consumers

#202

Post by Spivak »

gonehome wrote: post #126
simonh wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Subscription services like Spotify only pay 30% for the first year of each subscription. After that they pay 15% and this has been the case since 2016. Apple has done a lot to revise the App Store charging policy over the last few years, and I think they deserve credit for that. Also their hosting of free apps for only a nominal developer registration fee is a huge boon to users and a lot of iOS developers. So I don’…

> "Subscription services like Spotify only pay 30% for the first year of each subscription. After that they pay 15%." That's still pretty extreme imo when you control the only store and you directly compete with them/undercut them. > "Also their hosting of free apps for only a nominal developer registration fee is a huge boon to users and a lot of iOS developers." They charge a fee for it, I wouldn't consider it nomi…

> That's still pretty extreme imo when you control the only store and you directly compete with them/undercut them.

Regulators don’t (yet I suppose) care about this because of opportunity cost. If I’m making $3/user/mo off your $10 subscription and I decide to enter the market and compete with you at then every user I steal and every user if not for me would have gone with you costs me $3/mo plus cost of providing them service. So if I’m able to still undercut you then either I’m ridiculously more efficient than you or you have fat margins.

Neither of these are true so something else is going on here. Either I’m bleeding money and this is some strategic play in which case it might be unfair for different reasons, or the market is segmented and we actually have two different customer bases with insignificant cross pollination.

Re: Dominance of Apple and Google’s app stores impacting competition and consumers

#203

Post by 8note »

laingc wrote: post #111

Why does half of HN seem intent on ruining the iPhone for the rest of us? The explicit selling proposition of the iPhone is that it is a closed ecosystem . I and my family buy it for precisely this reason. If you want a choice about what you install, you can have it! It's called Android, and hundreds of phone manufacturers are lining up to sell you a compatible handset. Leave us with the one phone manufacturer who ha…

That's not why my family bought iPhones; they shouldn't be stuck with anticompetitive app store practices because they have iPhones.

Eg. My mother can't use any apps because she doesn't trust apple with her credit card number, and since you can't use the app store for free apps without a credit card, she uses no apps on her phone

Re: Dominance of Apple and Google’s app stores impacting competition and consumers

#204

Post by hu3 »

meepmorp wrote: post #164
hu3 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The encryption keys are stored at Apple’ own servers" Thanks for confirming that there's no privacy in iCloud.

You should actually read the article, perhaps after first setting down the axe you're grinding. The details are interesting, and they discuss the Reuters piece you linked to.

I did read the article. It nitpicks on Reuters article but the point still stands. Apple has the keys to iCloud backups.

There's no axe to grind because the lack of end-to-end encryption is a fact. Your own link states that. Nitpicking Reuters won't change that. I don't understand this mentality of religiously defending something that's clearly wrong. It will only make the platform you use worse.

By the way you should read HN guidelines. Don't comment whether someone read an article.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Dominance of Apple and Google’s app stores impacting competition and consumers

#205

Post by harry8 »

imoverclocked wrote: post #117
harry8 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They'll flip the nanosecond it suits them. Their commitment isn't valuable or enforceable or anything other than a dodgy sales pitch. Really. They can encode it in contact in a second and choose not to.

There is a promise in the marketing that customers expect to be kept. Apple has done lots of research and work to create privacy preserving versions of services that competitors simply harvest lots of user data for. Apple has invested heavily in this vein.

It's the work of moments to put it in a contract that data sourced from you cannot be sold or provided to a third party without the law requiring it.

They choose not to do this.

Apple have invested heavily in their /marketing/

If you believe they won't flip on you the nanosecond it suits them I've got a bridge over here that might interest you...

Besides even if you believe the current people controlling Apple, all of them, you can't possibly know who will control it next year let alone in 5 or 10 years. This "I want to believe" garbage is just ridiculous. Seriously. You expect anything you like and Apple won't care a damn if your expectations are trashed for their profit or something else.

If they won't put it in a contract it only because they reserve the right to to flip you off. Hard and rough. No other reason.

Re: Dominance of Apple and Google’s app stores impacting competition and consumers

#206

Post by Abishek_Muthian »

hugi wrote: post #132
thombles wrote: post #120

Incidentally, if you have a business registered for GST in Australia you have to submit a quarterly activity statement. The tax office website had bizarre authentication requirements but the browser plugin was at least cross-platform. They now require you to use the myGovID app, which is - you guessed it - available only on the App Store and Play Store. You can't even run a business without being part of the duopoly.…

How is that legal? Isn't that just incompetent government?

> How is that legal?

You are forgetting the number of democratic countries which forced their COVID app from Appstore/Playstore on their citizens. They came short of calling it mandatory download but mandated the app as entry pass for several services.

You don't use a monopoly powered smartphone? You cannot afford a phone at all? Tough luck buddy(/s).

Only reason these COVID pass apps didn't stick around in the democratic countries is because the apps didn't do what's it's supposed to do; Ironically because the app couldn't be made mandatory download thereby not achieving the critical mass.

Re: Dominance of Apple and Google’s app stores impacting competition and consumers

#207

Post by 0xDEEPFAC »

encryptluks2 wrote: post #23

You can have third-party Android app stores. Can you say the same about Apple? While I agree that Google has market-dominance, they are not anti-competition or anti-consumer in the same sense as Apple. Android is open source, Chrome OS is open source, etc. Google is actually providing and contributing something back to the community. Apple intentionally locks people to specific hardware and to their app store.

Open source has nothing to do with it when it is difficult / impossible / highly unlikely that anyone actually has a free device. What kind of developer would make something for an alternative app store which would be installable on 0.001% of devices?

If anything they took more from the community in terms of the Linux kernel etc then they have given back with useful technology when it comes to phones.

Re: Dominance of Apple and Google’s app stores impacting competition and consumers

#208

Post by hugi »

Abishek_Muthian wrote: post #206
hugi wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that legal? Isn't that just incompetent government?

> How is that legal? You are forgetting the number of democratic countries which forced their COVID app from Appstore/Playstore on their citizens. They came short of calling it mandatory download but mandated the app as entry pass for several services. You don't use a monopoly powered smartphone? You cannot afford a phone at all? Tough luck buddy(/s). Only reason these COVID pass apps didn't stick around in the democ…

What countries were that?

Re: Dominance of Apple and Google’s app stores impacting competition and consumers

#209

Post by stanislavb »

partomniscient wrote: post #200
hugi wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that legal? Isn't that just incompetent government?

We're living in a time where if you don't have a mobile phone you can't complete the online form and therefore the transaction becomes impossible. This is even worse if you're on the phone and the person on the other end of the phone that works for the company is the one filling in the digital form. The fact that its now further embedded in an app. owned by international conglomerates is hardly suprising. They're slo…

"Governments are incapable of doing sensible things involving ever changing technology."

- I moved to Australia about 4 years ago. I'm pretty convinced that the Australian Gov is much ahead in regards to tech adoption compared to most places in EU and US. In my 4+ years in Oz, I had to visit an offline institution exactly 3 times (you can do almost everything online). Everything's been flawless, super easy and very well integrated - from procuring various docs to submitting a tax return.

- Yes, we can always find something that could be improved; however, if you compare how things are run in Oz to most other countries, you will find out it's much ahead.

Re: Dominance of Apple and Google’s app stores impacting competition and consumers

#210

Post by zmmmmm »

tracer4201 wrote: post #49
encryptluks2 wrote: post #23

You can have third-party Android app stores. Can you say the same about Apple? While I agree that Google has market-dominance, they are not anti-competition or anti-consumer in the same sense as Apple. Android is open source, Chrome OS is open source, etc. Google is actually providing and contributing something back to the community. Apple intentionally locks people to specific hardware and to their app store.

I specifically buy Apple products because I trust their App Store. I trust Apple with my information. I’m counting on these guys to get out software I download from the App Store. And I trust them to protect my privacy, better than anyone else. You’re calling them anti consumer. But that’s wrong. This is why I give them my business, and if they bowed to pressure so people can execute whatever software on my device, I…

the problem is you are presenting a false dichotomy:

> if they bowed to pressure so people can execute whatever software on my device

Who is proposing that? Nobody.

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