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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

#231

Post by hnick »

spicybright wrote: post #180
hnick wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard from a friend (in Australia) if you don't frequently buy placement you get bumped, and buying placement can be a losing proposition. They raise the price to squeeze all margin so it's just on the edge of making it affordable. You have to say yes to losing money during the promotion ("you'll make it up with brand awareness!") to claw it back by staying on the shelves in between. Otherwise another brand, or…

Does shelf height play that big of a roll in sales?

It's not just height, it's the positioning at the end of aisles too, and the large 'sales' stickers to draw attention. IIRC they would request an all-or-nothing for your product line, so if it was something like dog food or sauces where you might have multiple variations you had to pay the fee per SKU to be featured, you didn't get to pick and choose. They decided.

Similarly at least one large pharmacy chain supposedly made a significant chunk of profit from charging for catalogue placement.

I don't know about shelf height specifically though, I do know this is an important factor in sales but not sure if there is ongoing 'rent' to pay. There would be a lot of indirect negotiation around wholesale rates that would influence these decisions too.

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

#232

Post by etaioinshrdlu »

killjoywashere wrote: post #216
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.

You’re peeved by “ask” as a noun?! How the hell is “math” plural?! Why maths? The subject (singular) is math (singular). Do you study Englishes? Anthropologies? Medicines?

Yes, I'm also very peeved by "maths". And a million other things. Calling Universities "Uni". Horned-Rim glasses. A whole slew of grammatical oddities.

I guess that's why I ended up on this site.

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

#233

Post by saurik »

simondotau wrote: post #136
musicale wrote: post #49

Apple PR: > we do not advantage our apps over those of any developer or competitor Apple employee Debankur Naskar: > I think the Files app was manually boosted ... during last WWDC. We are removing the manual boost So which of these is true? Or is PR technically correct because they do not currently "advantage" their apps?

This inferred charge of hypocrisy would make sense if the Files app competes with Dropbox. I can see why that would be assumed. But while there’s certainly some overlap, Files isn’t a replacement for Dropbox, or vice versa. Perhaps controversially, I would argue that they do not compete. Files is a built-in app that ostensibly fills the role of Windows Explorer on macOS Finder, to the extent that the concept of a fil…

The entire concept of how the files app works and integrates indirectly with everything on iOS is effectively a stand-in replacement--maybe a better one for some use cases, for sure, but that seems besides the point--to Dropbox. This is because iOS ostensibly doesn't really want to have a file system, and so the concept of storing things into the Files app--which is the interface for and is largely backed by iCloud Drive, which is 100% a competitor to Dropbox--is about as weirdly indirect as storing something into Dropbox. I would thereby think that, in fact, a number of people looking for Dropbox's functionality--to share files between apps on their phone and store them in the cloud--might get tempted to use Files instead to accomplish that exact same core use case.

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

#234

Post by tempodox »

63 wrote: post #116
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…

>That defense helped Internet Explorer a lot. The past tense implies that battle was already won. Afaik, Windows still uses anti-competetive practices to support Edge (not uninstallable, and 'are you sure you want to change your default browser? Check out the New Edge first!'). The same defense still applies if they want it. I don't think it's right to speak about it like it's a thing of the past.

Privatezilla [1] helps with many nuisances. Among others, you can block Edge installation with it.

[1] https://github.com/builtbybel/privatezilla

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

#235

Post by rsj_hn »

stephenr wrote: post #229
rsj_hn wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"mathematics" may end in "s", but that doesn't make it plural. We say "Mathematics is a science" not "Mathematics are sciences" (replace with "art/arts" if you don't belive it's a science). We also say "mathematics is a growing field", not "mathematics are growing fields". Because it's singular, the fact that it ends in "s" doesn't naturally require shortened forms of it to carry the last letter at the end. I get tha…

I didn't say it's plural, I said it's the abbreviated form. Math and maths are both abbreviations of mathematics.

You changed the post I was responding to, which was something to the effect of "don't you know mathematics ends with 's'"?

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

#236

Post by saurik »

GeekyBear wrote: post #107
nexuist wrote: post #84

Does anyone else just…not care? Files is a system app like Windows Explorer. It’s not meant to “compete” with anything. Does anyone think Control Panel competes with Android’s Settings app? iCloud Drive is a cloud storage competitor that Files works well with, but Files also supports Dropbox and Google Drive and many other storage competitors (anyone who wants to implement the API gets to be in Files). Also, the argu…

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.

If they are harming you with it, you should sue them then? It isn't Epic's job--nor is it even their right--to sue everyone who does something bad to anyone: they sued someone who did something bad to them.

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

#237

Post by mrtksn »

saurik wrote: post #230
mrtksn wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it obvious? They say they don't give advantage to their own apps as a company policy but they made exception to this during an event. The follow up e-mails indicate that the upper management wasn't happy about this and demanded high level approval before this happens next time. So it's not really evil Apple caught doing something that they say they don't. Its more like corrupt Apple where someone did something…

The statement "we do not advantage our apps over those of any developer or competitor" is not about a policy, and is false even if you aren't only doing something "during an event"; eve more to the point: it is even still a lie if you have only done it as some kind of mistake, and even if everyone involved was fired over that mistake. It might be OK that it happened, but it did happen, and you need to explain it and…

I am not under the impression that it's a honest mistake. What I think had happen is that someone involved in the Files app let it happen, then boosted about the spectacular adoption rates of the app in their presentations.

The Apple's statement is technically correct as it could be interpreted about what's the current situation or what is their company policy. It doesn't say it never happen.

Think of it like the "muslims don't eat pork" statement. Although the general policy is that muslims don't eat pork, there are clear exceptions where they can eat pork(when no other food is available and they starve). Also, there are muslims that simply love prosciutto and they sin.

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

#238

Post by pg_bot »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #193
mhh__ wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking of anti-trust, surely Apple must be getting close to (or beyond) what Microsoft were? Total control over their users, hidden APIs, apparently biased store, rentseeking etc. My £0.02 is that if they aren't already over the line the line should be nudged against their favour.

They're nothing like Microsoft was; Windows was something like 97% of all PCs. I'm not aware of Apple having more than 50% of any market. You can't abuse a monopoly that you don't have. (Of course, collusion/duopoly and saying that they dominate some smaller market, say paid mobile apps, are valid arguments, but nothing like as cut-and-dry as peak MS).

They have more than 50% of the US smartphone market.

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

#239

Post by andybak »

MiscIdeaMaker99 wrote: post #208
darrenf wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“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.

Just out of curiosity, I looked it up in an American dictionary and it does have a noun form over here, as well, but it's noted as "chiefly British, informal". Although, the term "big ask" is something I'm certain I've used before, as well as others, but more in a business/corporate context. Or maybe I've just watched a lot of British television?

I remember that phrase appearing seemingly out of nowhere 10 years or so ago. (UK)

Very weird. Maybe it had been percolating in business circles earlier than that. I don't tend to mix much in those circles.

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

#240

Post by saurik »

oarsinsync wrote: post #227
simondotau wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, iCloud certainly does compete with Dropbox. But Files doesn’t. You didn’t use the Files app to upgrade your iCloud storage, you went to Settings or a web browser.

How do you use iCloud Drive to sync arbitrary files between iOS and macOS? Is there a dedicated iCloud Drive app that competes with the Dropbox app? I don’t think there is. I think the only first party interface for syncing arbitrary files in iCloud Drive is the Files app.

Yeah: this whole argument that Files isn't competing with Dropbox because it has some other functionality Dropbox doesn't have is absurd. One may as well directly copy someone else's product and then add a clock to it and claim "my app doesn't compete with your app because my app also has a clock and I imagine some people are using it just for the clock". If iCloud Drive were integrated with some other even more complex app (as honestly, almost everything people want to do with the Files app they can do with Dropbox: they are direct competitors if you reverse the order of comparison) like Safari or iTunes, then that would make that entire app compete with Dropbox. If iPhoto adds a filter that competes with some standalone photo effects app--maybe Prisma--and then when people search for Prisma they are directed to install iPhoto instead, that isn't somehow "not a problem" because iPhoto has a million more features than Prisma: that would be Apple abusing their App Store monopoly to nudge people to maybe (as nothing is 100%, and it doesn't need to be to be "a problem") use their software instead of Prisma.
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