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Apple admits it ranked its Files app ahead of competitor Dropbox

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Re: Apple admits it ranked its Files app ahead of competitor Dropbox

#181

Post by dehrmann »

graeme wrote: post #128
yyyk wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Files is a system app like Windows Explorer. It’s not meant to “compete” with anything. That defence helped Internet Explorer a lot. Nope. At the very least searching for 'dropbox' should return 'dropbox' and not be overriden by Apple. >but for some reason its position in the App Store is a controversial topic? How many people even delete Files and search for it again? This makes Apple's defence for manually placing…

A filesystem and an internet browser are two very different things! Files = Windows explorer, the filesystem. Which is not internet explorer, the browser. Dropbox and Files indeed aren’t really competitors. I often use Files to browser my Dropbox files!

Nit: there was a time when Windows Explorer an IE were integrated enough that you could open http URLs in Windows Explorer.

Re: Apple admits it ranked its Files app ahead of competitor Dropbox

#182

Post by arvinsim »

smartbit wrote: post #170
nomoreplease wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For nearly a decade, they preferred to open addresses with Apple Maps instead of my preference of Google Maps. And they gave me no option to use Google Maps as the default. Apple defaulted to their own apps and I think they still do (I’m not sure if this changed)

At least you can now delete Apple Maps. That prevents it from starting inadvertently.

Didn't know this. Thanks for the tip.

Re: Apple admits it ranked its Files app ahead of competitor Dropbox

#183

Post by simondotau »

mhh__ wrote: post #177
simondotau wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the market is rigged, blame the market. I don’t like many of the accounting tricks Apple pulls either, but as long as Apple’s competitors are pulling the same tricks, singling out Apple doesn’t solve the problem. Yes Apple are a huge company, but they are utterly minuscule relative to the overall economy.

I'm not sure if Apple are utterly miniscule + they only have to lobby for a very select few.

Apple is, I think, the biggest company in the world. But they’re still minuscule compared to the market as a whole.

Re: Apple admits it ranked its Files app ahead of competitor Dropbox

#184

Post by GeekyBear »

bostonsre wrote: post #121
GeekyBear wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's particularly weird to target Apple in such a nebulous case when Selling ads that show up higher in the search results than the product you searched for is literally Google's business model in their only really profitable segment.

A market place and a search engine with ads are a little different. Apple is the market and also the vendor of the competing product in this case. They used their control of the market to benefit themselves. This type of vertical integration that is used to squash and out compete smaller competitors definitely smells like what anti trust laws were originally put in place to fight. Big tech lawyers should be terrified…

> A market place and a search engine with ads are a little different.

There is a difference here.

Google has a very definite profit motive in selling ads on searches for a given companies product name that ranks higher in their monopoly search engine.

I can't see how ranking Files higher than Dropbox has any such profit motive. It's a free system utility that isn't even ad supported.

Re: Apple admits it ranked its Files app ahead of competitor Dropbox

#185

Post by astrange »

vel0city wrote: post #169
astrange wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple is the largest taxpayer in the US. (and incorporated in California instead of Delaware, which presumably means higher fees)

Apple is incorporated in CA, they're incorporated in DE, they're incorporated in Ireland, they've got corporations all over the place. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/01/business/how-delaware-thr... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ireland_v_Commission

Rather weak tax evasion argument when Ireland doesn’t want the taxes and the shell company employs 10ks of people and runs a factory.

Re: Apple admits it ranked its Files app ahead of competitor Dropbox

#186

Post by vel0city »

astrange wrote: post #185
vel0city wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple is incorporated in CA, they're incorporated in DE, they're incorporated in Ireland, they've got corporations all over the place. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/01/business/how-delaware-thr... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ireland_v_Commission

Rather weak tax evasion argument when Ireland doesn’t want the taxes and the shell company employs 10ks of people and runs a factory.

> incorporated in California instead of Delaware

This was my main point. They're incorporated in Delaware as well as incorporated in California. That way, they can look all hoity toity when it comes to paying their CA taxes while still enjoying the DE tax status many other corporations enjoy. On top of that, their tax attorneys also are some of the best at using the Double Irish method for avoiding global taxes.

Pointing to Apple as an example as a company that pays their share of taxes is missing the forest for the trees. Sure they pay a lot in taxes in CA (they're a MASSIVE employer in CA, they do a ton in sales, they own a lot of property, etc.) they're also pretty much doing as much as they possibly can to avoid paying taxes.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to apply a moral stance to this either way in this comment. Its just disengenious to try and paint them as a company that willingly pays their CA taxes while they're also the leading example of the Double Irish tax structure.

Re: Apple admits it ranked its Files app ahead of competitor Dropbox

#187

Post by snowwrestler »

hattar wrote: post #174
JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When people say they grok something it hurts me deep inside.

Why?

Maybe because to truly grok a person, you have to eat them [1]. I’d imagine that could hurt that person deep inside if they were alive when you started.

[1] Per the end of A Stranger In a Strange Land

Re: Apple admits it ranked its Files app ahead of competitor Dropbox

#188

Post by somebodythere »

nicwilson wrote: post #99
etaioinshrdlu wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can also "noun" verbs. One I hear in SV is "an ask". I find myself a bit peeved by it but I don't know why.

With no context, that sounds like a trading term to me, like "a put".

You can "hit the ask" during a trade

Re: Apple admits it ranked its Files app ahead of competitor Dropbox

#189

Post by DaiPlusPlus »

darrenf wrote: post #134
etaioinshrdlu wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can also "noun" verbs. One I hear in SV is "an ask". I find myself a bit peeved by it but I don't know why.

“Ask” has had a noun form for as long as I can recall in British English. Phrases like “that’s quite a big ask” and “what’s the ask?” are commonplace IME.

I still want to believe it’s people dropping the “t” in “task”.

Re: Apple admits it ranked its Files app ahead of competitor Dropbox

#190

Post by arvindamirtaa »

simondotau wrote: post #152
rovr138 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People see that, don't understand the popup, get scared and stop using the app.

Do you think that all apps should have access to system events without asking permission? I sympathise with the frustration, and I agree that Apple could’ve done more to help less tech savvy users navigate the challenge of increased security. But every operating system is a series of trade-offs between developer convenience and having the system defend the user’s interests. But if I was in your position, my response…

It should have all that, when you install the app. And you should probably be able to see what apps are using what permissions when. Both of which you can do already.

A prompt at every instance is just fear mongering.

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