I wish one of the outcome would be to allow better web browsers than Safari on iOS.
Noooooo. I don’t want to live in another IE era.
EU says Apple’s App Store breaks competition rules after Spotify complaint
211–220 of 825 posts
Re: EU says Apple’s App Store breaks competition rules after Spotify complaint
#212Unpopular opinion: This was a no brainer. Apple wanted 30% (or was it less for subscriptions?) on any business that used apps, no matter if they used apple infrastructure or not. Just think about it: one company is in practice entitled to 30% of what any other business makes (in any industry)!! Also, I think apple brought this to themselves by picking a fight with Spotify (on Watch support).
The App Store, iOS and Apple's hardware are all Apple's infrastructure.
I'm sure they'd like to not use those if they could.
Re: EU says Apple’s App Store breaks competition rules after Spotify complaint
#213Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn’t Spotify benefiting from Apple devices? If not, then they can simply not be on Apple devices right? If they are benefiting, then is it unacceptable for them to pay for the benefit?
Is Apple benefiting from selling in the EU? If they want to benefit from Europe, they got to obey the rules.
Side note: Please stop using EU and Europe interchangeably, they are not the same thing. 100s of millions of people live on the continent of Europe, but not in the EU.
Re: EU says Apple’s App Store breaks competition rules after Spotify complaint
#214Earlier quoted context omitted.
Should add, the ruling is not really about the validity of the 30% fee. What EU seems to argue is this: 1. Apple is in phone business, Spotify music. So far so good... 2. Then apple wants to get into the music business too. Now they have an unfair advantage since Spotify must pay 30% to apple while apple music "pays" 0%. So apple use their dominance in one area (phones) to get an advantage in a totally different area…
Apple have been in the music business much longer than Spotify.
I guess he meant music streaming?
Re: EU says Apple’s App Store breaks competition rules after Spotify complaint
#215Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can’t you just buy another phone? I honestly don’t get it - did people not understand what they were buying when they purchased an Apple device? Did Apple ever advertise openness and reneg on that?
That's irrelevant. EU has already ruled previously that if you, as a company, reach more than 10% of EU's population(about 30M people) then no, you can no longer get away with just saying "my platform, my rules". The easiest way to think about it is - John wants to sell Mark a product that works on Mark's iphone. Currently, John cannot do that without a) getting explicit permission from Apple b) giving Apple a substa…
Apple holds a gigantic market in their grasp and by controlling it so tightly and by forcing everyone to use their billing, they give the customers what they want.
If iOS becomes the android wild west it'll kill the entire selling point of the iPhone.
To me, the iPhone is the equivalent of buying a games console instead of a gaming PC. Less flexibility, less to worry about.
'Its just a phone'.
Re: EU says Apple’s App Store breaks competition rules after Spotify complaint
#216Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Unpopular opinion: Only if you own Apple stock... or well hackernews is overall unfriendly for anything Apple related.
How is hackernews in any way unfriendly to Apple? Anything involving Apple Silicon goes straight to the top of the frontpage, comments are full of people absolutely gushing over just about anything - I personally don't really care other than that I find it subtly funny the number of times I see people saying "Wow my new M1 Mac is so much faster than [Different Mac that's almost a decade old, but I'm either not used t…
unfriendly as in "unfriendly to discuss"... not the company, itself - which tends to be favored. (this is why I said unfriendly 'for')
Just the topics. It's a download fest (on any side) for anything that doesn't fit their purpose. M1 is a prime example - it was top of the page and most of the comments were nothing about the technology, etc.
About M1 - I find nothing spectacular about it, given the amount of transistors it has.
Re: EU says Apple’s App Store breaks competition rules after Spotify complaint
#217Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's 30% for the first year of subscriptions and 15% thereafter. According to Apple in 2019 Spotify didn't actually pay 30% on any of it's subscriptions at that time, and only paid the 15% on 0.5% of the App's users. The rest are ad supported and Apple gets 0% of the ad revenue. So for every Spotify app user Apple get's a 15% fee for, there are 199 Spotify app users Apple is distributing the App to for which they get…
But I think the key here, and probably a big reason Spotify went after Apple and not Google, is that on iOS you have to use Apple's app store. You can't distribute your app using your own infrastructure, or an alternative app store even if you want to.
That fact is key to the advantage that the iPhone ecosystem offers. I, and millions of users like me, like the closed garden.
I’m effectively outsourcing the duties implied by caveat emptor to Apple. I don’t have the time/inclination to check the safety & honesty of each app developer.
Re: EU says Apple’s App Store breaks competition rules after Spotify complaint
#218Unpopular opinion: This was a no brainer. Apple wanted 30% (or was it less for subscriptions?) on any business that used apps, no matter if they used apple infrastructure or not. Just think about it: one company is in practice entitled to 30% of what any other business makes (in any industry)!! Also, I think apple brought this to themselves by picking a fight with Spotify (on Watch support).
Should add, the ruling is not really about the validity of the 30% fee. What EU seems to argue is this: 1. Apple is in phone business, Spotify music. So far so good... 2. Then apple wants to get into the music business too. Now they have an unfair advantage since Spotify must pay 30% to apple while apple music "pays" 0%. So apple use their dominance in one area (phones) to get an advantage in a totally different area…
Isn’t leveraging the market share with the iPhone/iPad for a lot of other things (Arcade, AirTag, ApplePencil, …) in the same category?
Re: EU says Apple’s App Store breaks competition rules after Spotify complaint
#219Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think this would be the best solution. Apples only (real) reason for forbidding sideloading is because then they could no longer force people to use their payments. If developers were free to use 3rd party payment solutions, then Apple would probably be a lot more lenient towards side loading apps. I believe that Apple generally wants to build what's best for their customers, except when money is on the line.
The (real) reason to forbid sideloading is that it opens your customers up to the malware sewer that is Android. If sideloading is allowed it would take about 30 seconds for Facebook to create their own 'store' where the only product is Facebook apps with tracking turned on and data pilfering turned up to 11. You would see similar fly-by-night 'malware r' us' stores pop up pushing casinos, lotteries, and whatever oth…
The malware on Android is mostly FUD. But if the OS would be competent enough then this would not be a problem.
OSX is not locked and there are not millions of daily victims, so maybe it is not impossible to have low malware problems and freedom.
Re: EU says Apple’s App Store breaks competition rules after Spotify complaint
#220Unpopular opinion: This was a no brainer. Apple wanted 30% (or was it less for subscriptions?) on any business that used apps, no matter if they used apple infrastructure or not. Just think about it: one company is in practice entitled to 30% of what any other business makes (in any industry)!! Also, I think apple brought this to themselves by picking a fight with Spotify (on Watch support).
> Just think about it: one company is in practice entitled to 30% of what any other business makes (in any industry)!! 1. No, this is limited to the AppStore, those businesses can operate elsewhere. 2. What's the alternative? How is any business entitled to free or low-fee access to a platform that Apple built and maintain?
> How is any business entitled to free or low-fee access to a platform that Apple built and maintain?
Since smartphones became essential to a functioning modern economy.
And it's not about prices, Apple is free to setup any price they want but they should have a choice to publish their app on their website without Apple if they want to.