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The audacity of Apple Podcasts

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Re: The audacity of Apple Podcasts

#171

Post by howinteresting »

MBCook wrote: post #170
tomxor wrote: post #102

> That’s right: if you host your show with Apple, the only listeners you can have are folks with the Apple Podcasts app. This feels like an absolutely wild choice from a product perspective; it’s the mindset of a company who still thinks that they have dominance over the podcasting world. It’s ludicrous to assume that it’s a good thing for listeners to have to have specific hardware in order to listen to a podcast. I…

Apple has controlled the podcast industry through the iTunes podcast directory since day one. They’ve been benevolent and haven’t cracked down on things. They let basically any podcast in for free. They let 3rd party clients use their directory for free. They ARE the podcast industry. And they’ve been open. I see this purely as a reaction to Spotify and Google and others trying to grab and control the industry with p…

This is the same set of excuses trotted out for why you can't use Firefox's Gecko engine with uBlock Origin on iOS.

Re: The audacity of Apple Podcasts

#172

Post by janalsncm »

SllX wrote: post #80
janalsncm wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can’t agree that signing an agreement means Apple gets to behave however they want within the confines of the law. A contract should not be something that one hides behind, but something that someone holds up as enshrining a shared, common sense understanding of an agreement. The fact that an Apple Podcasts user tried to do something that is 1) not unreasonable given other podcasting platforms and 2) not clearly un…

If you’re a hobbyist, you might go “oh no, this won’t work out, Overcast users can’t see my podcast” and switch hosting providers. If you’re going into podcasting as a business, don’t skimp on having a lawyer review the things you’ll be signing up and paying for, and if you skimp on that and get unlucky, expect to be doing the work required to move providers if what you signed up for isn’t satisfactory. It’s really t…

> If you’re going into podcasting as a business, don’t skimp on having a lawyer review the things you’ll be signing up and paying for, and if you skimp on that and get unlucky, expect to be doing the work required to move providers if what you signed up for isn’t satisfactory. It’s really that simple.

There’s a comedic version of this in I Think You Should Leave where a party planner hires an impersonator but fails to read the fine print that says the impersonator can hit anyone he wants to.

The issue is that people who get into podcasting don’t know ahead of time that it will become a business. That’s not “skimping” on hiring a lawyer, that’s just going about life as any reasonable person does. I’m sure even Jesus himself wouldn’t have read all of the terms and conditions for every service he used.

Re: The audacity of Apple Podcasts

#173

Post by MBCook »

howinteresting wrote: post #171
MBCook wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple has controlled the podcast industry through the iTunes podcast directory since day one. They’ve been benevolent and haven’t cracked down on things. They let basically any podcast in for free. They let 3rd party clients use their directory for free. They ARE the podcast industry. And they’ve been open. I see this purely as a reaction to Spotify and Google and others trying to grab and control the industry with p…

This is the same set of excuses trotted out for why you can't use Firefox's Gecko engine with uBlock Origin on iOS.

Not exactly.

Apple has been basically been providing a public service with their free podcast directory since 2012.

There is nothing comparable in the case of the Safari on iOS situation.

Re: The audacity of Apple Podcasts

#174

Post by CharlesW »

bastawhiz wrote: post #133
CharlesW wrote: post #100

> Here’s what’s fucked: once you’ve started using Apple for hosting, you’re stuck. The fundamental misunderstanding is that Apple is not hosting the source RSS feed or media. As someone who operates a podcast hosting service, it's bizarre to me that the author doesn't understand this. > This customer was pasting their Apple listing URL, but the import tool was not getting a feed back. Of course, because it's not an R…

> The fundamental misunderstanding is that Apple is not hosting the source RSS feed or media. As someone who operates a podcast hosting service, it's bizarre to me that the author doesn't understand this. Please Google the Apple Podcasters Program, launched in 2021. This absolutely exists and is distinct from shows that they only list in their directory. They absolutely host the source material. I signed up for it my…

> They absolutely host the source material. I signed up for it myself to test!

Technically you're right, which everyone knows is the best kind — the transcoded and DRM encrypted audio has to live somewhere.

If you want to call that "hosting" that's fine, but "podcast hosting" usually means what you presumably do — RSS feeds pointing to standards-based, unencrypted audio (and even video) files.

What Apple "hosts" is a transformed, proprietary distribution format, which enables the kinds of use cases that Apple Podcasters Program unlocks.

Re: The audacity of Apple Podcasts

#175

Post by janalsncm »

SllX wrote: post #117
janalsncm wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. To me the “is-should” gap is the only thing worth talking about. Everything else is just a matter of fact. I’m not a lawyer anyways so I don’t feel like my opinion on what the law is will be very helpful. Apple is going to do what is best for Apple, and when that is contrary to our interests we should talk about it. Laws of Man are not laws of nature, they are a perpetually shifting body of agreements tha…

You don’t need to be a lawyer to have opinions on what the law should be, but if you’re going to propose a legal reform you’re going to come up against the existing values that caused the existing laws to be formed. Contract law is about one of the oldest forms of law there is and it persists because it is fundamentally two or more parties coming to and being bound by an agreement. It is an age old tale at this point…

Yes, contract law is as old as the Garden of Eden but there can also be too much of a good thing. The reality is that each of us enter into contracts all the time that we don’t read. And even if you read it the first time, you’ll get periodic updates to terms and conditions in your inbox. If everyone had to read the terms and conditions each time, society would grind to a halt.

Given that fact, the only reasonable way forward in my view is that contracts do not hide what should be plainly known to other parties in the contract.

Re: The audacity of Apple Podcasts

#176

Post by sneak »

TylerE wrote: post #148
sneak wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To wit: you can't use the new hardware 2FA passkeys on iOS unless you opt in to iCloud and all of the surveillance that entails.

Why is that surprising since the keys are specifically for logging into iCloud? Do you complaine your gasoline car doesn’t have a diesel tank?

Passkeys are Apple's branding for using a iOS device as a WebAuthn authenticator, and it is for logging into everything on the web that supports WebAuthn. You can't use it unless you are using iCloud Keychain.

I'm not talking about security key support for iCloud logins.

Passkeys(tm) != security keys

Re: The audacity of Apple Podcasts

#178

Post by hot_gril »

tomxor wrote: post #102

> That’s right: if you host your show with Apple, the only listeners you can have are folks with the Apple Podcasts app. This feels like an absolutely wild choice from a product perspective; it’s the mindset of a company who still thinks that they have dominance over the podcasting world. It’s ludicrous to assume that it’s a good thing for listeners to have to have specific hardware in order to listen to a podcast. I…

I don't use enough tech stuff to care. I have an iPhone and a Mac, and they go together in a few ways like iMessage, but that's not the reason I have both. They're just good products. I would swap one of them out if I didn't like it. The deeper integrations are just toys; why would I even remotely need a Homepod or an Apple Watch? Why would I use the crappy News app on my Mac instead of a web browser?

The scarier thing they have is other users' loyalty on phones. Android has the same. I feel like nobody switches between the two anymore like the older days, and there was a distinct time when they switched from making what the user might want to deciding what the user wants. So both players do anti-consumer stuff in lock-step like removing headphone jacks to sell more accessories. I don't mind holding onto an old phone to avoid that, but there's a limit. AT&T stopped serving my iPhone 5.

Re: The audacity of Apple Podcasts

#179

Post by Trumpi »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #160

Spotify podcasts don't have RSS feeds either. And have massively expanded their podcast program over the past few years, such that they know serve more podcast listeners than Apple. But this is the play several big players are involved in make to try to convert podcasts into walled gardens. The OP is really sniping around the edges of a major thing that's going on, which Apple is actually playing catch-up on. https:/…

Well, the old-timers (such as me) don't really like what Spotify are doing either. A "podcast", in our view, conforms to a de-facto standard, the RSS feed. This is what ensures its openness. You have choices about where to host it. Your listeners have choices of where to consume it.

Re: The audacity of Apple Podcasts

#180

Post by jrochkind1 »

Trumpi wrote: post #179
jrochkind1 wrote: post #160

Spotify podcasts don't have RSS feeds either. And have massively expanded their podcast program over the past few years, such that they know serve more podcast listeners than Apple. But this is the play several big players are involved in make to try to convert podcasts into walled gardens. The OP is really sniping around the edges of a major thing that's going on, which Apple is actually playing catch-up on. https:/…

Well, the old-timers (such as me) don't really like what Spotify are doing either. A "podcast", in our view, conforms to a de-facto standard, the RSS feed. This is what ensures its openness. You have choices about where to host it. Your listeners have choices of where to consume it.

Of course, I agree, I don't like any of it. And it's going on with or without Apple, they are playing catch-up not driving it.

I am not saying this to "excuse" Apple, I'm interested in no such thing. My point is that stopping Apple wouldn't stop it.

I don't know how to stop it. It's sad.

But I don't listen to spotify podcasts, even when some of my favorites get absorbed by them.

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