Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

EU tells Apple to open everything up to its rivals

appleinsider.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 1001 posts

Re: EU tells Apple to open everything up to its rivals

#151

Post by andersa »

robertlagrant wrote: post #139
andersa wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People already use their phones for everything in our modern society, so they have simply declared them to be that, regardless of what Apple thinks about it. Even if I'd personally like it, I don't think the same argument makes much sense for a PS5 - when have you last used it to order groceries or new furniture? Apple would love to get a cut of those purchases, by the way. Starting by dealing with the devices that h…

> Starting by dealing with the devices that have the highest impact on the largest number of people, due to a runaway capitalistic empire trying to add an additional tax to everything that vaguely gets near it, has a higher chance of actually succeeding. This is the worst approach, I think. Lawmaking shouldn't work where a juicy fineable target is spotted, singled out, and milked for all it's worth. Laws should set o…

The point of the law isn't to fine Apple. The point is to ban their tax collection entirely, relieving society of this pointless money drain. Most people currently don't have a choice to not pay an extra fee to Apple - we'll see how many will once it's optional?

Once the device has been sold to you (for a profit, even!), Apple has no business interfering in relationships between you and a separate business trying to sell you additional software for it, much less to collect a tax on entirely unrelated things like streaming video subscriptions.

Re: EU tells Apple to open everything up to its rivals

#152

Post by fragmede »

theshrike79 wrote: post #122
andersa wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Protections against malware are the job of the operating system not an app store. And I don't understand the point about ads. The vast majority of apps currently available on the app store is already plastered with ads?

What apps are you using? Not a single one on my iPhone has any ads.

App Store is the biggest offender, personally. At the top of every query is an ad.

Re: EU tells Apple to open everything up to its rivals

#153

Post by andersa »

ribosometronome wrote: post #119
andersa wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People already use their phones for everything in our modern society, so they have simply declared them to be that, regardless of what Apple thinks about it. Even if I'd personally like it, I don't think the same argument makes much sense for a PS5 - when have you last used it to order groceries or new furniture? Apple would love to get a cut of those purchases, by the way. Starting by dealing with the devices that h…

>when have you last used it to order groceries or new furniture? Apple would love to get a cut of those purchases, by the way. You can, though. There's no particularly convenient way to do most of those things, but that's largely because of manufacturer limitations. Nothing stopping you from using the browser on your Switch to go do instacart.com, tho. >Starting by dealing with the devices that have the highest impac…

> Why would this need to be addressed so singularly?

I don't know, I didn't write the law. They must have thought this is the better approach to start with. Perhaps they consider fighting one gigacorp at a time to be easier. After all, Apple has been left to grow unchecked until became larger than many countries.

Sure wish the US would just handle Apple the same way China has handled Alibaba growing too large. One can dream, right?

For context, they basically just said "you had your fun, it's over" and forcibly split the company in many smaller ones under new leadership.

Re: EU tells Apple to open everything up to its rivals

#154

Post by mcphage »

twayhn893249 wrote: post #147
yreg wrote: post #73

My opinion won't be popular. I think it is nice to have a choice of a walled off platform. If I wanted a "more open" platform, I would get an Android phone. There are plenty of amazing Android phones. I choose the tradeoff of Apple's curation. Yes, I cannot run arbitrary software and sometimes it is a disadvantage. Yes, I don't agree with all of the App Store rules all of the time. Yes, I don't think the App Store re…

>I don't want to download apps from alternative app stores. I want them to be available in App Store and to be submitting to all of the curation rules. Even if alternative app stores were allowed you'd more than likely never be forced to use them. Alternative stores are available on Android and yet the overwhelming majority of apps are still on the play store. The idea that Facebook, Amazon, Google or whoever would p…

> The idea that Facebook, Amazon, Google or whoever would pull their apps and force you to use their store is complete FUD that ignores that the overwhelming majority of users wouldn't tolerate an app not being on Apples store.

I think you're right, but won't that defeat the purpose of opening the stores up? For instance: right now, you can't buy Kindle eBooks through the Amazon app. You need to do it through the web browser, so Amazon doesn't need to pay Apple 30%. But if Amazon continues to list their Apple in Apple's App Store, how will that change? Would they have 2 versions of their App—one in Apple's store that disallows eBook purchases, and one in Amazon's App Store that allows eBook purchases? Or will they still just disallow eBook purchases?

Re: EU tells Apple to open everything up to its rivals

#155

Post by smoldesu »

johnzim wrote: post #126
smoldesu wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We'd 100% still be using Flash if Apple hadn't refused to support it I mean, that's hyperbole. Even in a flash-dominated web, there was still tons of non-flash technology being developed and distributed. In 2023 it would definitely be obsoleted, if for no reason other than Adobe having no incentive to keep it around. Apple's decision feels tangential relative to the progress of internet bandwidth, delivery technolo…

I take your point that it's been a long time - in the intervening 17 years that particular technology would probably have died out on its own, but the primary complaints about the modern web stack on desktop aren't dissimilar from those that pertained to Flash in the day: memory hungry, power inefficient etc. We're _still_ pumping out solutions that are easier for us and worse for customers on desktop and that's with…

> and give people a choice to buy entry into the walled garden.

No, that's Apple's decision. The garden plays by Europe's rules, or people don't get a choice at all.

De-facto monopolies are not inherently justified. Feel any way you will about it as a consumer; Apple uses their power to exercise anti-competitive control over their ecosystems. Governments will now step in to regulate the market Apple has failed to make competitive.

Re: EU tells Apple to open everything up to its rivals

#156

Post by bryan_w »

mcphage wrote: post #154
twayhn893249 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I don't want to download apps from alternative app stores. I want them to be available in App Store and to be submitting to all of the curation rules. Even if alternative app stores were allowed you'd more than likely never be forced to use them. Alternative stores are available on Android and yet the overwhelming majority of apps are still on the play store. The idea that Facebook, Amazon, Google or whoever would p…

> The idea that Facebook, Amazon, Google or whoever would pull their apps and force you to use their store is complete FUD that ignores that the overwhelming majority of users wouldn't tolerate an app not being on Apples store. I think you're right, but won't that defeat the purpose of opening the stores up? For instance: right now, you can't buy Kindle eBooks through the Amazon app. You need to do it through the web…

Perhaps in this case they would be able to go to Apple and negotiate a more reasonable 5 or 6% cut and stay in Apple's store. Amazon gets discoverability in the safe, Apple app store and Apple gets a cut of the revenue, win win.

Re: EU tells Apple to open everything up to its rivals

#157

Post by mcpackieh »

ROFISH wrote: post #35

Good! I'm looking forward to having to uninstall a crypto miner on my mom's phone because it told her the only way to play a slots app is to allow third-party apps.

Of all the arguments in support of Apple's prohibition against third party browsers, your mother's gambling addiction is the saddest, most bizarre, and by far the least convincing.

Re: EU tells Apple to open everything up to its rivals

#159

Post by threeseed »

aaomidi wrote: post #140
threeseed wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except this is a disingenuous argument. Because there will be many applications you may need to use e.g. banking which will be on an alternative App Store purely so they can skirt Apple's privacy restrictions. Finance is one sector where they would love to siphon all of your user data in order to better promote products and reduce risk. And so I would be forced to use them.

You can switch banks? Trust me if these banks are only following the rules because of Apple, I can guarantee you their backend is definitely not following these privacy rules. Also, OS level permissions don’t need to go away for third party apps.

Switching banks can often mean changing home and personal loan products which is non trivial to say the least.

And Apple can’t properly enforce OS level permissions due to Objective-C dynamic dispatch.

Re: EU tells Apple to open everything up to its rivals

#160

Post by smoldesu »

theshrike79 wrote: post #117
smoldesu wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We'd 100% still be using Flash if Apple hadn't refused to support it I mean, that's hyperbole. Even in a flash-dominated web, there was still tons of non-flash technology being developed and distributed. In 2023 it would definitely be obsoleted, if for no reason other than Adobe having no incentive to keep it around. Apple's decision feels tangential relative to the progress of internet bandwidth, delivery technolo…

It would most definitely still be alive. Source: I worked for a company whose web UI was 100% Flash/Shockwave. If Steve Jobs hadn't publicly come against Flash and by extension forced the hand of everyone else, I'm pretty sure they'd still be using Flash just because change is hard. The company went so far as to ship a specific browser to customers that could still run Flash instead of spending resources to rewrite t…

> If Steve Jobs hadn't [...] forced the hand of everyone else

Steve Jobs called where puck was going. Everyone knew the problem; clients were falling behind in capability, and web content was getting more advanced and bigger. 99% of the things we use the modern web for have solved this problem with HTML5 and Javascript. The other 1% got locked behind a novel invention called "The App Store", a new way to pay 30% of your digital revenue to support APIs you ought to have access to in the first place. That sad fact is the reason why every Mac is loaded with Electron apps and WebViews for basic messaging and music players. Apple might even try to fix it if they didn't make so much money selling memory upgrades.

If Apple's goal was to build on the web instead of gimping it for their own exploitation, they would have a leg to stand on.

Post reply on HN