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

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

#801

Post by kmonsen » Tue, May 25, 2021, 2:23 AM UTC

azinman2 wrote: post #432

kmonsen wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would more be like if food safety inspections were optional, but only restaurants that opt in would be allowed to show a sign they were inspected either physically or on their web page. It would be trivial to be able to check for this. Door dash would show a sign saying which restaurant is safe to avoid being sued after an incident. If you think restaurants and food safety is a good analogy it’s not a good argumen…

Except now there isn’t just 1 inspector, but many. And you have to figure out which you trust. Now imagine there’s a very popular restaurant, but it uses an inspector you don’t know if you trust. But you want to eat the food because all your friends are already there… so you’ll go. This is exactly what would happen— various companies once they reach a certain size will just want to have their own store because either…

To be clear I am not saying Apple are wrong here (and they are clearly my own views and not my employer's), but I don't think the food analogy is great.

People can still use the Apple app store if they want to, I guess the key thing here is they don't really though, they would rather save a bit of money. Or at least that is what everyone here (well at least Apple I guess) thinks.

And the want to eat with your friends argument is also not good I think, I can't see why crossplay would not work regardless of which store you bought the app/game in.

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

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Post by ineedasername » Tue, May 25, 2021, 2:28 AM UTC

bredren wrote: post #796

ineedasername wrote: post #795

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not like Amazon is crushing competitors trying to build inexpensive reasonable quality tablets. What would a competitor even look like? The average buyer is looking for a tablet that let's them consume content purchased through Amazon, a bit of web browsing, and buying things off the Amazon store. Amazon doesn't care about investing in the kindle ecosystem because because if another competitor came along that me…

I think kindle has ended up in this place but it isn’t where it was hoped to go. I remember when the Amazon App Store was first announced and there was no talk of the devices being these value oriented Amazon content consuming portals. There were a lot of competitors back then. This was still around the time Palm had just given up, BlackBerry was briefly hopeful with the Playbook but most importantly the Barnes and N…

I suppose they have an app store because that's a key desire for consumers. Amazon knows customers want to play angry birds or whatever, so they have an app store with the minimum selection necessary to make sure customers don't pass on purchasing one.

As for the development ecosystem, I really don't know. Even as a user, I side-load the normal Android app store.

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

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Post by josephcsible » Tue, May 25, 2021, 2:42 AM UTC

tmp231 wrote: post #768

josephcsible wrote: post #553

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Respecting private property? Whose property is an iPhone? Apple's or the end user's? Whose (intellectual) property is the Epic Store? Apple's or Epic's? Apple wants to use the only thing that's theirs in the equation (the App Store) to restrict an interaction between both of the other things that aren't theirs.

Yea, their OS, their store, their software stack. Sure, you own the device, so put whatever OS you want on it. But you can’t force Apple to write their OS however you want except by market forces. Well, you could try using extreme tactics like government regulation, but that’s a severe overreach and uncalled for just because you don’t like the way apple writes their software.

> Sure, you own the device, so put whatever OS you want on it.

Apple keeps you from doing that.

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

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Post by fastaguy88 » Tue, May 25, 2021, 4:02 AM UTC

tshaddox wrote: post #303

fastaguy88 wrote: post #194

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Pretty hard to know who the minority is in this case. Based on other HN opinions about Apple products, there seems to be a consensus that Apple customers are mostly not tech savvy. If they were, they wouldn’t buy Apple stuff.

Why is it hard to know? Apple has at most like a 20% market share globally, and around 50% in the United States. The overwhelming majority of smartphone owners have a non-Apple smartphone.

What is hard to know is whether Apple (iPhone) users are sophisticated enough to not be exploited by non-Apple App stores.

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

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Post by thayne » Tue, May 25, 2021, 4:40 AM UTC

Google234 wrote: post #700

Xevi wrote: post #563

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I don't know why you're getting downvoted, you're right. Besides, the cheapest Mac Mini M1 is $1000 in my country. Not everyone can afford that.

Apple is not obligated to make tools for every platform...

Apple does more than just not make tools for other platforms though. They make it impossible for anyone else to make tools on other platforms that can deploy to the App store. And after a certain scale, it isn't even the development machines that are the problem, it's your CI/CD pipeline.

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

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Post by NoPicklez » Tue, May 25, 2021, 4:47 AM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #173

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…

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…

One of the other things I keep thinking about, is that Apple created the iPhone and kickstarted the smartphone industry, they also effectively created the "App Store" way back when they first released the iPhone.

Therefore in my head when almost nobody was creating a decent App store and Apple did just that, there would not have been really any competitors at the time for Apple to consider opening up to.

If you create something that nobody else did, then years later when other industries create a similar product based on the success of yours. It seems silly to then be questioned about why you've never opened up to integrating with others. It is blatantly obvious that Apple have the better app store otherwise we wouldn't be complaining about the amount of leverage they have within the market. If Apple's app store was tiny and was filled with terrible ad ridden apps, we wouldn't be having this discussion in court, they would have gone out of business.

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

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Post by NoPicklez » Tue, May 25, 2021, 4:52 AM 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:…

Right, but I would argue that the Android Play Store is terrible. I've switched to Android multiple times and I cannot stand the poor quality of the Android store.

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

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Post by tmp231 » Tue, May 25, 2021, 5:20 AM UTC

stale2002 wrote: post #799

tmp231 wrote: post #786

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Of course you own it and should be able to put whatever OS you want on it. But you are confusing that with forcing apple to write their software in a way that suits you. Antitrust laws _can_ be good, but like I said elsewhere, we are a country swimming neck deep in regulation and seem to like our particular hammer. It has a cooling effect on innovation, and China in some ways has a freer economy than we do. I think i…

> when there is a perfectly good alternative There is very little cost in simply preventing Apple from taking so many intentionally anti-competitive actions. It is not about forcing Apple to write software. Instead it is about preventing them from spending so much effort and trying to remove other people's ability to install other app stores. Allowing other app stores, really would not be a huge burden on Apple, and…

I appreciate the back and forth, I really do.

> Instead it is about preventing them from spending so much effort and trying to remove other people's ability to install other app stores.

I think we are coming at this from 2 separate sets of foundational assumptions. I’m of the camp that companies are free to make devices and we are free to buy or not buy them. If we don’t like how they operate, we buy a competitor who does what we want. Hopefully enough people agree with us that a competitor will cater to us, or we can start our own. I know that some people start from a different set of assumptions that assumes we can just force the seller to sell us what we want. I don’t know that we can bridge that divide easily, but I wish you well. Thanks for the back and forth.

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

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Post by tmp231 » Tue, May 25, 2021, 5:28 AM UTC

josephcsible wrote: post #803

tmp231 wrote: post #768

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea, their OS, their store, their software stack. Sure, you own the device, so put whatever OS you want on it. But you can’t force Apple to write their OS however you want except by market forces. Well, you could try using extreme tactics like government regulation, but that’s a severe overreach and uncalled for just because you don’t like the way apple writes their software.

> Sure, you own the device, so put whatever OS you want on it. Apple keeps you from doing that.

Didn’t realize, I wish they wouldn’t. even more reason to not buy Apple (I’m typing this on an iPhone :) )

I agree with you that I wish they would allow it. I agree that I should be able to put windows 10 on my iPhone. Thanks for the back and forth, and we may not be able to get past our starting assumptions about the nature of trade/commerce, but I still wouldn’t want to legally force apple to do anything. People should definitely make a big stink about it, though. Thanks for the back and forth, but I’ll leave it there.

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

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Post by etherealG » Tue, May 25, 2021, 5:31 AM UTC

narrator wrote: post #797

matheusmoreira wrote: post #681

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It works like this: 1. Make the game require resources to play This has many names: food, energy, stamina, etc. The fundamental concept is virtually identical in all cases though. It represents how much fun players can have. Once they run out, they can't play anymore. 2. Use timers to rate-limit the player's progression Distribute resources periodically. These timers place an upper limit to how quickly players can pr…

I've tried to play a few games that do that. As soon as I see that dynamic, I think to myself... What idiot thinks this is fun? What am I a mouse in a Skinner box pushing a f*king lever? Then I stop playing and delete the game. It amazes me that people keep going with the game like they can't see the little mouse maze they're in. Is there a name in the psychological literature for this type of lack of awareness?

I liked one of the answers in another thread, “did you go to the arcade as a kid?”. I think as children we enjoy fantasy and are more able to suspend belief to take part in it. Games almost all have some fantasy wrapped around the mechanics. A part of the fun is maintaining that fantasy. For many people, the exploitation loop costs little enough that they don’t mind paying it to maintain the fantasy and enjoy the game. If it’s below some threshold of acceptable spending for them, they still take pleasure in playing.

You could take money out of the equation, for an example like amateur chess. To get good you have to practice. Practice takes time. Time is finite. Why does some crazy good amateur haches player bother to I c’est so much time to get that good? For some arbitrary score on chess.com, but why? Because they enjoy it, even if it’s another hamster wheel.