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

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441–450 of 503 posts

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

#441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>In hostile countries the google play store is usually not present at all Isn't this a good thing? In countries like China you could force Apple to spy and censor users where Android users can side load applications from trusted sources. >If Google tried to enforce more policy app devs would use other stores/side load. What kind of policies ? Any example of such policies? GUI/UX stuff or you mean policies where you c…

Phones in China are owned at the network and software level - you can’t safely side load anything. I’m not sure Apple is safe here either, but I’d guess the security is better? Just guessing though based on reading what security people have blogged about the platforms. For the policies - things like requiring better ID auth or blocking tracking or requiring IAP. I agree that the tax is bad and stated so elsewhere. >…

Sorry but not sure how I can make my point more clear. You created an hypothetical situation like "If Apple devices were not locked then for sure all the developers will remove their apps from the store and offer them from their own webpage to get around the big tax" my argument is that Android exist and this does not happen, so you should stop inventing hypotheticals and look at the reality,

Then you invented other hypothetical, something about developers will lower the bar of quality because the only reason all those popular apps in the store are of quality is because Apples high standards. This is also something that you imagine, most rejections I read about were about Apples greed and other such stupidity.

Maybe you are not spreading FUD because you are really scared, then it means the FUD worked on you, I am sorry , hopefully the reality I shown will calm you down a bit, my family are running Android phones and they did no sideload any application, there is an exception of a Huawei phone I got where they were forced not to put Google Play on it, I had some issues getting Youtube to work but except that app it works OK for my son.

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

#442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really - it's 15% if you register as a small business and it changes to 30% once you hit $1M in revenue. That's probably technically 'most', but it's not the large sector that matters. Also 15% is still quite high.

And it's been 15% for recurring revenue after the first year. That 15% includes the 1-3% creditcard processing fee. They also take care of VAT and multi currency for your customers.

Plus providing the infrastructure for users to download the million of apps and updates. The tools Apple provides to even develop for their platform, like XCode and all the SDKs and APIs to even make apps. And many other things Apple provides.

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

#443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a user of iOS, this is precisely why I go with Apple, and why I push my family to do the same. Particularly for the more elderly in my family, Apple's setup (by and large) prevents them from doing anything that would screw themselves over. Removing Apple's control removes my desire to be apart of that ecosystem, and I know that is true for many others outside our insular little community here.

I agree - Apple needs the control to have the leverage that makes their ecosystem better. It's in the interest of their customers for them to have this leverage and it requires that their 'store' is the only available store so app devs can't bypass their requirements. I like Apple forcing use of in-app-payments, I like Apple giving me subscription control to make canceling easy. I like Apple blocking app tracking and…

Developers, or publishers already do play a yearly fee (~100USD ~100Euro) to Apple in order to publish apps to their app store.

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

#444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>society might be better off if someone takes the initiative to meet this demand rather than force a company to roll out the red carpet for it's competition. Would you say the same if the car market suddenly coalesced into a duopoly and the car companies become very restrictive? Would you defend only them being allowed to do basic repairs in the interest of safety? One going as far as saying you need to buy their tir…

I don’t totally agree with your analogy framing. My take: Car company requires third party manufacturers to adhere to its quality standards and pass review before being installed. The car company installs all of the third party parts for you and distributes them globally, handling payment, they charge 30% (or 15%) to the third party for this. If you refuse to adhere to their quality standards they refuse to install y…

Except in the real world Apple purposefully prevents you from getting your hands on replacement parts, they sue anyone distributing scematics, refuse to repair equipment that's 4 years old and repairable and refuse to do data recovery.

So no, there is no part of that thats fine.

When laws around cars were put together people actually cared about their liberty, and I have the right to open car repair tomorrow and BMW and Toyotas of the world wont interfere. And unlike iPhones,cars actually are dangerous.

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

#445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is not right at all! The world should not work like that. Your car, your choice. You want to install an aftermarket supercharger and fish fins? Your prerogative. Toyota and Apple have no right to tell you what to do.

Then you can buy a different car from the other company that doesn't have this policy. You can even still hack the fins on your car despite the policy, but it might be difficult to do yourself and it'll void your warranty.

Firstly, thats not how warranty work - if I add fins to my car that does not give you the right to void wrranty on the engine.

Secondly I vote to get laws passed that they make sure they can shove this policy. I've had enough of this corporate lawmaking and stockholm syndrome victims covering for them

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

#446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your liberty is not at stake here, nor any real detriment to your quality of life really. Yes it is. iOS controls a sufficient part of US revenue that wider ecosystem effects on what is permitted speech come directly from the app store terms, or at least in some cases about trying to second guess the inconsistently applied, arbitrary and vague as hell App Store rules. We've got direct testimony from all sorts of ap…

Except there are no negative rights being infringed upon here. You can hardly appeal to natural law for the right to publish what you want on someone else's platform. Liberty is defined as being 'free from', not 'free to'. > We've seen examples in China of Apple blocking apps that literally lead to people failing to escape authoritarian governments and them disappearing, quite possibly to their death. This seems very…

I want freedom from Apple controlling iPhone that is now my property. Where is my liberty?

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

#447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but why exactly do you want other users to be deprived of software choice on iOS? Like how is that enhancing your experience? I get that people want to use Apple only software, in which case I'd understand why they don't want other software on the Apple Store, but how the hell is your experience worse if there is another store available on the phone? Just never use it? It's like as if Microsoft locked down Win…

Apple can no longer force vendors who want access to iOS to play by the rules that I want them to be forced to play by, is the main risk of adding more stores. I bought iOS devices in part for the effects of that leverage—I chose that. It's also a choice.

"Apple can no longer force vendors who want access to iOS to play by the rules"

Yes, thank you for spelling it out thst you want apple to continie violating other people's freedom and perpetuating anticonpetitive practicea

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

#448
post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think they were making any kind of claim about Apple's "special sauce", only that Apple has a monopoly on high-end hardware, which is true.

It is a little weird though. - Apple has built a world wide empire selling these products in this way people seem to like - As a result Apple has funneled that money and made world class hardware that's better than everyone else and leads in security/privacy - Therefore we should force them to break their model because the others that didn't follow suit have hardware that sucks That's not the most charitable interpre…

Yes, thank you. That's the idea I wanted to express, but only managed to do so in a much less capable way.

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

#449
post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And there’s a reason for that. You’re making the mistake of thinking Apple’s special sauce is the hardware. It’s not. It’s the experience.

I don't think they were making any kind of claim about Apple's "special sauce", only that Apple has a monopoly on high-end hardware, which is true.

I'm always confused by this one. Every hardware company has a monopoly on their stuff. Sony with their PlayStation is a prime example of this. I've never seen anyone says they want to run their own game on it.

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

#450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really - it's 15% if you register as a small business and it changes to 30% once you hit $1M in revenue. That's probably technically 'most', but it's not the large sector that matters. Also 15% is still quite high.

And it's been 15% for recurring revenue after the first year. That 15% includes the 1-3% creditcard processing fee. They also take care of VAT and multi currency for your customers.

That 15% does not include VAT, it is taken out after.
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