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EU says Apple’s App Store breaks competition rules after Spotify complaint

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Re: EU says Apple’s App Store breaks competition rules after Spotify complaint

#761

Post by pmart123 »

nolok wrote: post #391

Lots of comments around the line of "ok maybe 30% is too much, but we can all agree they offer a valuable service, so what percentage should they take ?" Uhhhh, not a percentage ? Do you imagine AWS billing you a % of your revenue instead of a given price for a given service ? Give a price to be listed in store, to be reviewed, to be downloaded by a user, ... And let company pay what they owe you. Let them pay throug…

You could make the argument that features like Touch ID and Face ID were significant R&D investments by Apple with the benefits accruing to the companies with the most in-app purchases via lowering purchasing friction. Therefore, those apps should face a higher cost burden. Another way Apple could do it though is charge for each API interaction. For instance, each time a user accessed their camera through an app, it would cost the developer X cents. New features could have more expensive API's and older features perhaps would be free for developers.

Re: EU says Apple’s App Store breaks competition rules after Spotify complaint

#762

Post by FredPret »

daveidol wrote: post #712
FredPret wrote: post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "[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…

> 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 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 ph…

Jesus, calm down. No-one is forced to do anything. Buy an Android. My mom will use an iPhone. The device fits the person and their behaviour, not the other way around.

Re: EU says Apple’s App Store breaks competition rules after Spotify complaint

#763

Post by perfobotto »

indigochill wrote: post #620
AlexandrB wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently had a change of heart on this issue when the prevalence of fraudulent apps on the App Store was documented[1]. It's hard to argue that Apple is providing significant benefit to either consumers or developers for their 30% cut when they seem incapable of reigning in obvious fraud. In addition, I think Apple pushing subscriptions as a solution for long term app funding (instead of upgrade pricing or other op…

> Overall, Apple has not been a good steward of the App Store. But the question on my mind is: what precedent are we setting by legally mandating what a corporation can do on a platform they solely built? And are we pulling up the ladder after the incumbents have climbed it? It's one thing to mandate how much pollution a factory may leak into a shared water supply. But the Apple app store is not a utility or natural…

What about Microsoft and Windows then. People complained to death back in the day for anticompetitive behavior (and were right). The iPhone success is not only Apple’s success. Apple has to thank all the devs that supported its platform with their apps (yeah Facebook and google included) and without which the iPhone would be a gimmick. We can’t just ignore this and tell every developer after they get Sherlock ed to “suck it up and create your own platform you loser”.

Re: EU says Apple’s App Store breaks competition rules after Spotify complaint

#764

Post by musicale »

SllX wrote: post #547
GlobalFrog wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As said elsewhere, who was there first is not relevant, whereas having prefered treatment because of your monopoly at any stage is. Some are mentioning the App Store being the root of the monopoly, and that is probably true. But speaking from a legal EU point of view, especially as the EU is stating their case in the streaming music area only, wouldn't the simplest way for Apple to get away with it be to externalize…

> As said elsewhere, who was there first is not relevant You want to go back and re-read the comment I directly replied to where bullet point 1 was the EU (hypothetically at this point) making determinations about who was in what market and laid the foundations for bullet point 2 based on its own flawed presupposition and then tell me that the timeline is irrelevant? I didn’t point this out to make an argument agains…

> You might as well claim Google has a monopoly on YouTube channels or that Amazon has a monopoly on Whole Foods shelves; more accurately, that Nintendo has a monopoly on the eShop and Sony has a monopoly on the PlayStation Store. It was a bad argument 13 years ago, and it is a bad argument today that doesn’t even pass the sniff test.

Apple:iPhone:App Store :: Nintendo:Switch:eShop

Re: EU says Apple’s App Store breaks competition rules after Spotify complaint

#765

Post by perfobotto »

jpttsn wrote: post #724
username90 wrote: post #714

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Restaurants doesn't sell silverware. And even if they did they wouldn't have 10% of EU as customers. EU puts their anti trust laws for marketplaces at 10% instead of defining it as a monopoly, at that size you have to play fair.

Restaurants sell a bundled experience. The use of their silverware is part of what I buy. You could argue that the restaurant shouldn’t be a gatekeeper. Other parties could let me enjoy a cheaper meal, competing to offer the most discounted silverware. My $10 burger could be $9 if I could rent a paper plate from a third party and eat on the floor. After all, the restaurant shouldn’t abuse it’s monopoly, right?

What are you talking about. A restaurant doesn’t have the power to steer an economy of billions of dollars worldwide (the phone app market) . Apple and google do. Do you understand the risk for countries to allow one single private company to have complete control over the life/jobs of hundreds of thousands of citizens (app developers) that could be just destroyed by the whim of one of these two companies? It’s the price of creating a multi billion dollar business. You have to take responsibilities that go beyond your own revenue as you have worldwide power.

Re: EU says Apple’s App Store breaks competition rules after Spotify complaint

#766

Post by fiddlerwoaroof »

Orphis wrote: post #703
indigochill wrote: post #620

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Overall, Apple has not been a good steward of the App Store. But the question on my mind is: what precedent are we setting by legally mandating what a corporation can do on a platform they solely built? And are we pulling up the ladder after the incumbents have climbed it? It's one thing to mandate how much pollution a factory may leak into a shared water supply. But the Apple app store is not a utility or natural…

Don't forget, they built the platform, but 3rd party apps are what gives it value. Very few people would use an Apple device if they didn't have access to their games or productivity apps. Moreover, users pay a high premium for their device to access the platform. Why should companies also pay in addition to the annual subscription fee to their developer program?

I’m a bit curious about this. I’ve been developing an impression that my willingness to install an app on my phone is a bit anomalous and that, as a rule, the trend is to install a core group of apps and use the browser for everything else.

Even for my day-to-day uses there’s only one or two third-party apps that really “add value” for me (Slack, Taskmator and Signal)

Re: EU says Apple’s App Store breaks competition rules after Spotify complaint

#767

Post by musicale »

gamblor956 wrote: post #669
SllX wrote: post #547

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As said elsewhere, who was there first is not relevant You want to go back and re-read the comment I directly replied to where bullet point 1 was the EU (hypothetically at this point) making determinations about who was in what market and laid the foundations for bullet point 2 based on its own flawed presupposition and then tell me that the timeline is irrelevant? I didn’t point this out to make an argument agains…

Antitrust law focuses on the restraints of trade. Companies that are minor players in the market have been successfully pursued for antitrust violations, because it does not require a monopoly, or even market dominance. Monopoly law was the origin of antitrust law, but today is merely a subset of it. (For example, bid rigging, market allocation, and price fixing are all antitrust violations.) Antitrust generally requ…

I think it's interesting that Microsoft got into hot water in 2001 for (among other things) including Internet Explorer in Windows, thereby abusing its dominant position in the OS market to dominate the browser market.

Microsoft very sensibly argued that including (and indeed integrating) a web browser was a logical evolution of the modern operating system.

In 2021, Apple (Safari/iOS/macOS) and Google (Chrome/Android/ChromeOS) would presumably agree with Microsoft's position. Mozilla might take issue.

I wonder what would have happened if Microsoft hadn't been dissuaded (somewhat at least) from completely integrating Windows and IE in the early 2000s. Perhaps Windows would be a lot closer to ChromeOS. And I wonder if Microsoft would have been more competitive with Google, Apple, and other companies if they hadn't been the target of antitrust action.

Re: EU says Apple’s App Store breaks competition rules after Spotify complaint

#768

Post by simondotau »

malka wrote: post #498
simondotau wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet vertical integration is a big part of why Apple products are so loved. By denying the option of vertical integration, you’re forcing the totality of products we use to be incrementally a little bit more crap.

you can have vertical integration. But having an advantage at one layer should no be leveraged as advantage to another layer. Apple is free to make a music player. But its music player should abide by the same rules as other players in the market. Either Apple Music has its income cut by 30%, or no one does.

Personally I’d have no problem if Apple was forced to give all streaming music services like Spotify a sweetheart (below cost) percentage, say 5%, which wouldn’t cover the totality of merchant fees, gift voucher markups, and dealing with fraud.

Re: EU says Apple’s App Store breaks competition rules after Spotify complaint

#769

Post by toast0 »

pyrale wrote: post #692
indigochill wrote: post #620

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Overall, Apple has not been a good steward of the App Store. But the question on my mind is: what precedent are we setting by legally mandating what a corporation can do on a platform they solely built? And are we pulling up the ladder after the incumbents have climbed it? It's one thing to mandate how much pollution a factory may leak into a shared water supply. But the Apple app store is not a utility or natural…

> what precedent are we setting by legally mandating what a corporation can do on a platform they solely built? And are we pulling up the ladder after the incumbents have climbed it? We are setting no new precedent. In the US, internet provider are regulated as utilities and are stripped of any power on the content they serve, and the platform thrived as a result. What would Internet look like today if AOL had applie…

> In the US, internet provider are regulated as utilities and are stripped of any power on the content they serve, and the platform thrived as a result. What would Internet look like today if AOL had applied Apple's policies?

About the same as it looks today. AOL was a walled garden, and unregulated internet was so compelling that AOL was forced to offer it, or die, like so many other services did; of course, AOL still pretty much died, but it lasted the longest of the pre-internet national information services. Incidentally, that was back when it was easy to switch between competitive ISPs or set up your own and there was not much in the way of regulation. Now, we live under the threat of the cable and telephone companies pushing their products. Not a whole lot of clear regulation now, and not even the basis for local loop unbundling like congress provided in 1996, but the FCC watered down until it meant hardly anything.

Re: EU says Apple’s App Store breaks competition rules after Spotify complaint

#770

Post by AnthonyMouse »

jpttsn wrote: post #721
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You still don't end up at "percent of revenues" but rather some kind of AWS-like bandwidth charge for distribution. Which the developer should be able to opt out of by self-hosting.

Should they also be able to opt out of the font stack Apple licensed, and bring their own free font garbage? Opt out of the battery controller and encryption libraries, to roll their own for cheap?

You're now talking about things (software) that cause Apple to incur no marginal cost. It's not unreasonable at that point to expect that they choose between allowing you to decline the charge for them and do without or provide those things for free.
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