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Apple is top funder of lobby group that says it represents small developers

arstechnica.com

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Re: Apple is top funder of lobby group that says it represents small developers

#91

Post by smoldesu »

dkonofalski wrote: post #75
smoldesu wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right. They're currently valued at over a trillion dollars, and the ones responsible for the suicide nets/child labor/political prisoner labor is their suppliers, not Apple. Crisis averted, right? Sources: - https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/apple-sends-tim-cook-t... - https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-knowingly-used-child-l... - https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/10/22428899/apple-suppliers-...

Apple is the only company that regularly audits their suppliers for exactly the complaints that you're saying are their fault. What would you have them do? And why aren't you this vociferous against Microsoft or Samsung or any other companies that use the exact same suppliers? All your posts come off as being just anti-Apple as opposed to reasoned complaints.

It's great that Apple audits themselves, but it doesn't mean much if they're repeatedly being called-out for bad working conditions. It would appear that they don't work very closely with their manufacturers, and if they do then the optics are that they're turning a blind-eye to their manufactures. You're asking me what I want them to do? I want them to stop working with people who hunt down religious minorities and keep them as political prisoners.

I particularly hate Apple because they contradict themselves more than any other company their size. They claim that privacy is a human right, but they sell out to every government who asks politely. They go to great length to make usable software, but none of that usability empowers the user. They've built a dumb-pipe for money in the same way Disney World is a high-margin playground for mildly affluent idiots. I hate it, and refuting their asinine "PR spin" is a personal vendetta of mine. Actually it's something I do to lots of companies, including a number of startups posted here. It's a miracle I haven't been banned for toxicity on that front, at least.

In any case, I'll gladly stop slamming Apple the day they develop a working relationship with their customers and drop their holier-than-thou act. Until then, it's open season!

Re: Apple is top funder of lobby group that says it represents small developers

#92

Post by omegacharlie »

saurik wrote: post #21
echelon wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know it's a lot to ask, but would you mind providing some additional background as to the different sides and the potential outcomes / ramifications of this case? You seem to have a lot of context in this area. Could this lead to a VCR/DVR future where we're once again able to record or download steaming content? Platforms and DRM have taken us a step back from the freedoms we once enjoyed. I would be overjoyed to…

Frankly--as someone at the front line of all of this stuff--none of these DMCA related arguments have much "practical" importance in the medium-to-long term :/. (This is not at all to say it is a waste of time or anything: the right to examine products and discuss what you learn is really really important and is the basis of security research, so these lawsuits are extremely important and this DMCA law--which likely…

I am not entirely pessimistic towards the landscape of device level exploits in particular when low-level hardware glitching attacks seem to be the next research frontier as reliable persistent software exploits get harder and harder.

Worth noting that certain people probably have means to dump streaming HD Netflix content but keep these methods private because presumably Netflix can change things around to break them. So the cat and mouse game continues.

Re: Apple is top funder of lobby group that says it represents small developers

#93

Post by majormajor »

int_19h wrote: post #54
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Next you'll tell me that the top funder of disease advocacy groups is big pharma, and that the top funders of YIMBY groups are huge property owners This is called coalition building. It's powerful if done openly. There is a natural alliance between small app developers and the App Store. That Apple was underhanded in its support is unsavory. But a legitimate, rational small-developer lobby wouldn't rule out working…

Why would small developers work to prop up a giant who already has so much power imbalance wrt them that they pretty much cannot do anything if it decides to, say, yank their app from the store for uncertain reasons?

Because trying to sell software online without a giant centralized app store seems much harder?

The smaller the dev, the more I think the risk-reward tilts in favor of wanting a big store, vs seeing it as either too big a risk or too large a cut.

Re: Apple is top funder of lobby group that says it represents small developers

#94

Post by kybernetyk »

majormajor wrote: post #93
int_19h wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would small developers work to prop up a giant who already has so much power imbalance wrt them that they pretty much cannot do anything if it decides to, say, yank their app from the store for uncertain reasons?

Because trying to sell software online without a giant centralized app store seems much harder? The smaller the dev, the more I think the risk-reward tilts in favor of wanting a big store, vs seeing it as either too big a risk or too large a cut.

It’s not. Before the app stores selling software was much easier. I’ve been doing it and I miss the old times.

Re: Apple is top funder of lobby group that says it represents small developers

#95

Post by [deleted] »

Aunche wrote: post #73
smoldesu wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right. They're currently valued at over a trillion dollars, and the ones responsible for the suicide nets/child labor/political prisoner labor is their suppliers, not Apple. Crisis averted, right? Sources: - https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/apple-sends-tim-cook-t... - https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-knowingly-used-child-l... - https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/10/22428899/apple-suppliers-...

It's convenient that this transitivity of evil always stops exactly when it comes to writing snarky comments on a device that inevitably has as questionable of a supply chain as any Apple device. As far as the suicide nets go, during their worst year of suicides, Foxconn had a suicide rate of 1.5 per 100,000, which is over 10 times less than the suicide rate of the US or China.

[deleted]

Re: Apple is top funder of lobby group that says it represents small developers

#96

Post by smoldesu »

newtritious wrote: post #74
smoldesu wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. It's "wrong" in the sense that Apple pays another company to deal with horrifying working conditions in their absence.

The working conditions are not horrifying. That’s the misinformation. The suicide rate at Foxconn when the suicide nets were installed was lower than the average at US colleges. Everything about this story is just sensationalism.

The horrifying working conditions are more of a reference to the children and political prisoners of China who are forced to work in factories for Apple suppliers.

Re: Apple is top funder of lobby group that says it represents small developers

#97

Post by duxup »

Bilal_io wrote: post #27
duxup wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there something about Steve that would indicate he wouldn't do this? I don't know of anything in his history that would lead me to believe that, but I'm hardly his biographer or anything.

Jobs wanted to create a system where you could use apps without needing an app store, similar to the idea of everything being a PWA, but that was before the success of Apple's App Store. I doubt he cared about it afterwards.

I don’t understand how that applies to this situation.

Re: Apple is top funder of lobby group that says it represents small developers

#98

Post by snowwrestler »

Tijdreiziger wrote: post #76
Bilal_io wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jobs wanted to create a system where you could use apps without needing an app store, similar to the idea of everything being a PWA, but that was before the success of Apple's App Store. I doubt he cared about it afterwards.

Well, that’s the charitable interpretation, with the uncharitable interpretation being that he needed an excuse because the App Store wasn’t done in time for the iPhone’s release.

It is well-documented that the original intention of Apple was to not have a 3rd party SDK aside from a browser on the iPhone, but they changed their minds.

Re: Apple is top funder of lobby group that says it represents small developers

#99

Post by majormajor »

kybernetyk wrote: post #94
majormajor wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because trying to sell software online without a giant centralized app store seems much harder? The smaller the dev, the more I think the risk-reward tilts in favor of wanting a big store, vs seeing it as either too big a risk or too large a cut.

It’s not. Before the app stores selling software was much easier. I’ve been doing it and I miss the old times.

"Before the app stores" covers a long time. Were you selling in retail stores? Collecting checks in the mail from shareware on floppies? Selling online with other third party managed stuff? Selling online with your own credit card processing? Other?

Re: Apple is top funder of lobby group that says it represents small developers

#100

Post by lern_too_spel »

saurik wrote: post #62
musicale wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The evidence on the Android side doesn't seem to support this line of reasoning. There are multiple app stores on Android (including Amazon's), and sideloading is permitted, yet there is still a dispute over the platform fee rate that Google is charging for Google Play. At the end of the day, it's a dispute over money, and specifically the platform commission rate: developers want a bigger cut of the retail app price…

The arguments on Android are sometimes even simpler to make (which I appreciate might not be intuitive at all), as there is a space where there SHOULD be competition and clearly CAN BE competition and yet there are arguments being made that Google is going out of their way to stifle this competition regardless, by such techniques as limiting the functionality of third-party markets (a big one was preventing them from…

You'll find me ranting about making a non-system permission for automatic updates on Android for years on this forum. Now it's there, and I credit Epic.
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