Tim Cook’s Fortnite trial testimony was unexpectedly revealing • Hacker News Board

Re: Tim Cook’s Fortnite trial testimony was unexpectedly revealing

#581

Post by InvertedRhodium » Sun, May 23, 2021, 10:45 PM UTC

Thorentis wrote: post #557

fors wrote: post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comparison lags. There are food regulations yet there are a lot of stores where I can buy food. I trust the government to impose regulation on food manufacturers but I trust vendors with their selection of manufacturers. Why should the store landscape on iOS be any different where I put my trust in the store? This would actually mirror my food shopping as well. I trust my vendor, why would this not translate to…

This argument lends itself to constantly shifting goal posts. The moment Apple (the food safety authority) closes down a store for a breach of standards it has enforced, people will simply say that Apple is engaging in censorship, or not being open enough with its platform, or engaging in anti competitive behaviour. The issue is compounded by imagining that the food safety board ran its own restaurant. It then closes…

Sounds like a terrible position to be in, perhaps we should require the vendors and the manufacturers to be separate entities in order to avoid forcing anyone into it.

Re: Tim Cook’s Fortnite trial testimony was unexpectedly revealing

#582

Post by gbrown » Sun, May 23, 2021, 10:45 PM UTC

grey_earthling wrote: post #574

saurik wrote: post #24

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> If Apple let developers tell users about other payment methods, Cook said later, “we would in essence give up our total return on our IP.” Apple believes ("insists"?) that they deserve a cut of your app's revenue--however you might collect the money--because your app is using their "IP" in the form of all the libraries and tooling they nigh unto force you to use to build apps that run on their phone; like, to them,…

You're paying for access to their userbase.

... which is monopolistic rent-seeking, the like of which would have been shut down (and was) in the 90’s

Re: Tim Cook’s Fortnite trial testimony was unexpectedly revealing

#583

Post by stjohnswarts » Sun, May 23, 2021, 10:48 PM UTC

Zak wrote: post #578

crazygringo wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's nothing weird about it. If there were no food regulations, I don't know if I'd be able to pick restaurants and grocery store brands that were safe to eat. But I definitely know I want safe food to eat. Most people want safe food but they want the government to figure out what that means. Same thing here -- most people just want a safe app store. They don't want the work of having to figure out which app store…

There's an important distinction here in that Apple is a for-profit company, not a government. It responds to market forces, not democratic ones. Its motivation is profit and shareholder value, not some semblance of fairness or a good society. > most people just want a safe app store We already have an example of how users behave when there's a platform that has a default app store and the ability to install others:…

I would argue that the US government is also a for-profit government, don't give up your rights so quickly to them. At least with Apple you know what they want: money. With government it could be money, a power play, government official looking to get on the map (ambition), a policy lobbied for by a bought off politician, etc

Re: Tim Cook’s Fortnite trial testimony was unexpectedly revealing

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Post by bsaul » Sun, May 23, 2021, 10:49 PM UTC

permo-w wrote: post #399

remolacha wrote: post #240

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If there were two, or ten, food safety inspection groups, we could figure out which ones had trustworthy ratings. No need for end consumers to inspect every restaurant (every app) individually. That's what Epic is asking for - to have its own app store on iOS.

First of all, I don't want to have to download a different store every time a big app decides that they're too big for the App Store, a la that EA piece Origin, the Epic Store, the Curse Launcher - or whatever it's called this month - and the Ubisoft Store, all competing with Steam. I just want 1 and no more. That's the best user experience. Second, I shouldn't have to remind you how well competing regulators worked…

Funny reading this. it’s as if people installing games from steam on their laptop, and mac apps from the apple app store, then install adobe softwares from adobe installers are living an insufferable life.

They’re not. There are very easy ways to recognize a trustworthy store. We’re doing that every single day for things we actually ingest.

Re: Tim Cook’s Fortnite trial testimony was unexpectedly revealing

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Post by stjohnswarts » Sun, May 23, 2021, 10:51 PM UTC

tshaddox wrote: post #290

yosito wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a good illustration of the point. But at the same time, customers have multiple pharmacies to choose from. And I'm pretty sure that it's still more the government regulators' job (FDA, etc) to decide what's safe to sell or not, than it is the for-profit corporations'.

Customers have multiple smartphone choices too, and most people choose non-Apple smartphones. If people want a smartphone where they can easily install any software from any source, there are plenty of very good options.

Most people aren't buying Android because "they can easily install software from any source", they buy it because they've already bought (locked) into it because of experience/apps and because you can get cheaper phones.

Re: Tim Cook’s Fortnite trial testimony was unexpectedly revealing

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Post by bsaul » Sun, May 23, 2021, 10:52 PM UTC

s3r3nity wrote: post #350

fartcannon wrote: post #96

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Pretending to be ignorant of what is obvious to hold onto your power/money is pretty close to evil. If he believes customers genuinely value his curated app store, let him show us.

>If he believes customers genuinely value his curated app store, let him show us. They already did - they choose iOS over Android / other possibilities.

I value iOS hardware and operating system. I couldn’t care less about other apple software, and especially the app store which i only use as a package repository, and never as a recommandation or browsing tool (which is ideally what a store should be)

Re: Tim Cook’s Fortnite trial testimony was unexpectedly revealing

#587

Post by ineedasername » Sun, May 23, 2021, 10:53 PM UTC

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #568

gondo wrote: post #241

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Maybe it's time to start selling paperclips with an ebook (or any other digital goods) as a gift.

I can imagine the listings now. > Paperclips for rent, will ship to any location within 2 metres of my house, must be returned within five seconds. Complementary electronic copy of my latest book.

"Buyers may optionally choose to purchase paperclips for donation to a charity of my choice"

Just imagine the confusion at Red Cross as they're inundated with hundreds of thousands of paperclips.

Re: Tim Cook’s Fortnite trial testimony was unexpectedly revealing

#588

Post by stjohnswarts » Sun, May 23, 2021, 10:54 PM UTC

lucasyvas wrote: post #122

Hamuko wrote: post #2

Tim Cook's line of argument seemed a bit weird to me. On one hand he's saying that he doesn't know if Apple's customers would be able to distinguish between Apple's good and holy curated store and Epic's filthy shitheap of porn and blackjack, but he's also saying that Apple's customers definitely want Apple's App Store as-is. > Lawyer says, “if people really value Apple’s curation and Apple’s App Store, even if there…

This exchange appears to be open admission of unapolegtic, monopolistic behaviour. Also, the suggestion that customers want it to stay like it is is a flat out lie given his preceding statement where he admits they've never offered the choice, so can't possibly know.

I don't get the whole Apple thing though. I can see the prices as inflated, but there are literally dozens of other options to iphones if you don't like iphone. Do you just want government to step in and run Apple as it sees fit like corps in China?

Re: Tim Cook’s Fortnite trial testimony was unexpectedly revealing

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Post by stjohnswarts » Sun, May 23, 2021, 10:56 PM UTC

jrsj wrote: post #39

aero-glide2 wrote: post #3

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Why not give customers the choice to run other app stores? Imagine if all the software on your laptop must be downloaded from the windows store..

Because my grandma is clueless and I give her an iPhone so she doesn’t install malware like she managed to on her Android phone

So your Grandma installed apks? I find that hard to believe. The google store has a slightly worse history for malware than the Apple Store but not that much worse, especially relative to PC malware. Also anecdotes generally don't prove much in the greater scheme of "Android is a malware platform and your grandmother is going to get a virus"

Re: Tim Cook’s Fortnite trial testimony was unexpectedly revealing

#590

Post by hnlmorg » Sun, May 23, 2021, 10:59 PM UTC

Closi wrote: post #374

hnlmorg wrote: post #224

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AWS pricing is extremely thorough and not at all comparable with Apple's App Store: - AWS charge you on bandwidth used, Apple don't charge developers for the number of downloads - AWS charge you on compute time, Apple don't charge you for ongoing use of their services beyond one initial charge for app submission - AWS charge you for storage, Apple don't charge you for storing your app I'm not a fan of Apple's App Sto…

> - AWS charge you on bandwidth used, Apple don't charge developers for the number of downloads Their point is that Apple could charge based on bandwidth used, and that this could be more fair for some developers. > AWS charge you for storage, Apple don't charge you for storing your app I would be pretty happy with Apple charging for app storage if it was at S3 rates - it would amount to almost nothing.

> Their point is that Apple could charge based on bandwidth used, and that this could be more fair for some developers.

That is what the 30% cut is meant to cover (amongst other things too). Like with a high street retail store, the mark up is intended to cover the running costs of the store. Which brings us full circle to why Apple deduct it from transactions.

Sure you "could" have an App Store that calculates the operational costs and then charges it to the developer, but you then potentially destroy the free app market (and contrary to what people often say about the App Store, there are a lot of decent free apps on there).

Having a split payment and billing system also adds complexity to invoicing. Did you know that AWS and other cloud providers don't provide credits and refunds as payments into the customers bank accounts? No, what they do is they offset your costs against your credits and invoice the difference if owed to AWS. If Apple were to adopt that then we'd basically be back at deducting $n from transactions again. And once again we've come full circle.

There is so many arguments about what Apple "could" do but when you start to distil the requirements down to a workable operation you almost always end up right back at the status quo.

Now I'm not saying that Apple aren't taking advantage of developers either. The cost of development on a Apples ecosystem is ridiculously high and Apple are notoriously hostile towards their developers too. But charging a percentage of transactions is a reasonable approach to the problems outlined above and limiting transactions outside of Apple's payment channel does at least solve the problem of developers cheating by funnelling funds in via a side channel (as exampled in an earlier comment which discussed people selling items on eBay for $1 but with a $49 shipping fee before eBay clamped down on exaggerated shipping fees).