711–720 of 825 posts
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Actually, yes, Spotify does have to be available on iOS devices if Spotify chooses to. Apple will be slapped with aggressive enforcement action if they pull something like that. Apple isn't a deity.
What? According to what rule is Spotify entitled a presence on Apple devices?
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> That fact is key to the advantage that the iPhone ecosystem offers. That's not an advantage - that's a disadvantage. Having an open ecosystem is a strict superset of the functionality of a closed ecosystem. If I can sideload, then I can sideload and use Apple's app store. If I can't sideload, then I can only use Apple's app store. It's a strict downgrade. > I, and millions of users like me, like the closed garden.…
> "[banning sideloading] is a strict downgrade" Nope, I can buy my mom an iPhone and know that it's not possible to totally brick it by clicking a link from a dodgy text/email > "Popularity does not make you right" I'm not saying that the closed approach is fundamentally better than the open approach, but it sure is for some use-cases. That's why we have a phone OS duopoly. Regarding Apple's garden walls not keeping…
If they add sufficient warnings about sideloading etc. then I don't see a problem.
If your mom is incapable of listening to these warnings and follows some guide to install some walware then I'm sorry but maybe she needs parental controls enabled or just a nice talking to about how to use her phone? Forcing everyone else to lose out on game streaming or Spotify signups seems like an overreaction to the problem and an oversimplification of the solution space.
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>> I doubt you even know the costs > You have no idea how much involvement I had You're absolutely right. I said "I doubt you even know," not "I know for a fact you do not know," and am willing to be proven wrong. I made an assumption that I'm confident would apply to most people commenting on this story. I don't think I misrepresented it as anything other than an assumption. Until you show me some receipts I'm going…
> I made an assumption that I'm confident would apply to most people commenting on this story Great, well, I'm not most people commenting on this story. If you've ever jailbroken an iOS device, there is a very high probability your device subsequently ran code that I wrote. I have distributed apps and tweaks to literally hundreds of thousands of users through the repos I've run. Don't make assumptions when you don't…
It's starting to sound more and more like you do not actually work on the Apple app store, as you've had a few chances now to correct me on that. So I believe my assumption was actually correct, despite your dancing around the issue. You may have many impressive accomplishments, but unless working on Apple's app store is one of them, I'm not adjusting how much weight I put in your opinion, and I'm certainly not going to feel bad for the assumption I made... which, again, sounds to be correct.
In fact, you being a jailbreaker and having built up all that infrastructure tells me that you are financially incentivized to get 3rd party app stores on the platform.
And just so you know, no, I have not jailbroken any iOS device I own, because I trust Apple more than I trust you.
> I said building an app store is easy.
And I told you why I think you're wrong. In order to bake an apple pie, first you must invent the universe. I'll quote myself too: "The app store does not exist in a vacuum."
> the devices themselves belong to the people they sold them to
That is true for devices, but the use of the operating system is _licensed_ to you. Apple retains control of iOS: "The software...are licensed, not sold, to you by Apple Inc" (https://www.apple.com/legal/sla/docs/iOS14_iPadOS14.pdf)
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Apple and Google have a duopoly in the mobile app distribution market, and they're abusing that duopoly in an anticompetitive manner to prevent companies from competing with them in mobile app distribution. Anti-trust legislation gives regulators the right to order and prosecute companies for abusing their market positions and for limiting the ability of the free market to deliver to consumers better, more efficient…
Can you think of any situation where bundling would be acceptable? Should e.g. a restaurant have to provide an open market for silverware providers?
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Apple and Google have a duopoly in the mobile app distribution market, and they're abusing that duopoly in an anticompetitive manner to prevent companies from competing with them in mobile app distribution. Anti-trust legislation gives regulators the right to order and prosecute companies for abusing their market positions and for limiting the ability of the free market to deliver to consumers better, more efficient…
Can you think of any situation where bundling would be acceptable? Should e.g. a restaurant have to provide an open market for silverware providers?
I'm not smart enough to make an argument about food pricing but some restaurants let you bring your own bottle of wine as long as you pay a 'corkage fee'
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There’s fixed components to the cost as well as variable ones. Storage/CDN distribution is relatively fixed. I would say so is access to developer tools and APIs. What’s variable are services that an app may take advantage of, such as push notifications, geolocation queries, iCloud access, and App Store approvals. More established companies tend to release new versions on a weekly or bi-weekly basis.
> What’s variable are services that an app may take advantage of, such as push notifications, geolocation queries, iCloud access, and App Store approvals. Cool, so let competition roll out implementations of these services, and developers can decide on their own if its worth using Apple's services or their competitors. Consumers will be able to reap the benefits of increased competition, as the free market delivers t…
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Don't build one, build good products that users want and not forced to use. But this is from the users point of view. From a capitalistic point of view I agree you need to screw the users and environment as much as legally possible.
How do apple "screw" users. Anyone buying Apple products is making choice: keep my money or spend on a thing I find beneficial. I think anyone would be forgiven for calling this a first world problem. Getting screwed usually means having money stolen. Here it just means demanding someone else's services cheaper.
Apple forbids you to put a link or a text message in your app to inform the users that they could pay for a subscription or product on a webpage.
So how can we spin "forcing developers not to inform users so users pay more and Apple makes more money" in such a way where this is not "screwing users". If I was a fanboy I would say that "most iOS users are poor old grandmas and to much information and options is too much for them AND for sure the grandma hit I agree on the TOS where Apple says that they force users to hide useful information"
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So you can receive notifications even when the app is closed.
Doesn't seem worth it.
Today I can trust that any apps I download will use APNS or nothing.
Alternatively, a horror show of cheap and broken push implementations from developers who want to save a dime.
Consumers would suffer a thousand cuts and the value of the platform would plummet, eventually hurting developers more.
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> What precedent are we setting by legally mandating what a corporation can do on a platform they solely built? This does not concern setting precedents. The antitrust laws are already there, this is just a case of them being applied. More broadly speaking, I'm not really sensitive to the argument "they built the platform, so they should get to choose to do with it whatever they want". Network effects are so large th…
> Network effects are so large... Then are these network effects worth paying 30% for or not? If yes, you've just conceded the price is fair. If no, then Purism's Librem exists (and will not be bought by Apple). > We need strong regulation to counter this, and to give small businesses a chance. The same way it gave small railroad companies a chance? Or small oil, or small pharmaceutical, or small telecom? National le…
EU forcing Apple to lower app store fees to 5% or something similar wouldn't remove the network effect though, there is no incentive for EU to allow Apple to extract that fee. Tell me this, what would EU lose by capping App store fees in general? App stores would still operate there, App store companies would still be very profitable, they would just be less of a leech on the economy.
> The same way it gave small railroad companies a chance? Or small oil, or small pharmaceutical, or small telecom?
Regulating those companies greatly reduced their ability to extract money from the market and therefore contributed to the plethora of small companies in other domains we see today. We don't see small companies in oil or pharma since those domains requires scale, which is why we instead of forcing competition force regulations on them to make them do the right thing.
I mean, imagine if we let the oil companies take 30% of GDP as revenue, it would totally ruin the economy and prevent us from progressing as a society. You could argue that those oil companies deserved to get that much money since without them how would we get to work? But, fact is that giving large companies that much money doesn't benefit anyone but their shareholders.
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FYI: Apple disallow you to redirect your users to subscribe outside of their app without their fee. You cannot tell your users "go to our website to subscribe by check for 30% less", that gets you banned. So yes, you are forced to use them. > 3.1.1 In-App Purchase: If you want to unlock features or functionality within your app, (by way of example: subscriptions, in-game currencies, game levels, access to premium con…
I paid for Spotify directly with a credit card on their website and then logged into my existing account inside the app. So, by definition, I wasn't forced to subscribe through Apple. It's true that you're not allowed to advertise that you can do this inside the app itself, but that's not the same as saying you're not allowed to do it at all.