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The walls of Apple's garden are tumbling down

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Re: The walls of Apple's garden are tumbling down

#81

Post by aurareturn »

taxikabs wrote: post #79
aurareturn wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's just say that the government decided in the year 2005 that no private company can ship something that will replace SMS as the defacto messaging system because it wants interoperability. We would have never had iMessage, Whatsapp, Messenger, etc. Other countries would have far surpassed us in messaging communication tech. Regulations are a double edged sword.

That's a poor option to regulate from. They could just as easily have required messaging apps to make their protocols open, allowing for competition in the app space messaging over them and not facing lock in.

So what's the financial incentive for companies to develop & maintain open standard messaging protocols? For example, I'm sure it costs Meta a pretty penny to facilitate messages with central servers, store historical messages, and pay engineers to maintain and develop new features. If they have then be forced to open up Messenger for free, they might not have started Messenger in the first place.

Also, SMS is the open protocol so we have at least one interoperable standard for people to choose from.

Re: The walls of Apple's garden are tumbling down

#82

Post by layer8 »

cydonian_monk wrote: post #15
pavlov wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A quarter of Apple’s revenue is from Europe. (This number includes the UK and a few other smaller non-EU markets, but it’s close enough for comparison purposes.) I don’t see what would be “short-term” about pulling out of this market entirely. If they lost 25% of their revenue, they’d have to increase revenue in other markets by 33% to make up for it. Where is that going to come from?

This depends on how high the operating costs are in Europe. If their profits are approaching zero in the market, pulling out of it entirely would have less of an impact. Obviously that isn't the case, but operating costs for the market also aren't zero.

Apple gets 25% of their revenue from Europe, but only 7% of their app store revenue. This means that most of their Europe revenue is from hardware and AppleCare/services. Even if they opened up the app store completely, they would lose much less than when pulling out entirely. The fact that they work so hard at complicated solutions in order to open up the app store as little as possible shows that they think it’s worth it.

Re: The walls of Apple's garden are tumbling down

#83

Post by aurareturn »

manquer wrote: post #52
aurareturn wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's just say that the government decided in the year 2005 that no private company can ship something that will replace SMS as the defacto messaging system because it wants interoperability. We would have never had iMessage, Whatsapp, Messenger, etc. Other countries would have far surpassed us in messaging communication tech. Regulations are a double edged sword.

SMTP, IMAP and POP did not prevent gmail or outlook from launching products 2G/3G/4G/5g did not hinder the mobile industry it only fostered it . Standard payment interface like UPI did not stop apps for payments being built , India didn’t need a Venmo or WeeChat to innovate here before standardization Innovations happen despite or without regulations if there is market demand for it . FRAND patents exist for a reason…

Sure, and SMS is the protocol equivalent.

A lot of email protocol communication has been replaced by private, non-open solutions such as Slack, forums, Whatsapp, etc.

There should be open and closed protocols. If you want to use an open one, then go ahead, If a closed one works better for you, then go ahead.

Re: The walls of Apple's garden are tumbling down

#84

Post by 4ad »

da768 wrote: post #6
ukuina wrote: post #2

It was very surprising that Apple did not strong-arm the EU by threatening to pull out of the area. The short-term loss of revenue from leaving the EU is nothing compared to the long-term decline this is going to cause in Apple's services/subscriptions revenue if the iPhone is commoditized.

If Android becomes the only platform with a worldwide reach, no one's going to bother writing apps for iOS anymore.

There are plenty iOS-only apps already. Reach is worthless if you can't monetize it. iOS users simply bring in more money.

Re: The walls of Apple's garden are tumbling down

#85

Post by Jtsummers »

talldayo wrote: post #12
aurareturn wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The truth is, all businesses do what Craig suggested. AirBnB isn't opening up their platform to Expedia. Meta isn't allowing your Instagram data to be accessed by another platform. Your own company isn't voluntarily making it easier for its customers to leave.

Well, yes. It's a great reason to not let businesses decide on these things, because their petty interpretation will always override a communal solution. Once you reach Apple's scale, you shouldn't expect to start replacing stuff like SMS with a proprietary alternative and get away with it.

Apple didn't replace SMS. It is still there on every iPhone, and they expanded SMS reach for iPhone users who have other devices like iPad and macOs systems.

In what universe do you exist where SMS was removed?

Re: The walls of Apple's garden are tumbling down

#86

Post by nozzlegear »

layer8 wrote: post #77
ChilledTonic wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, and I’m trying to state that those practices are ancillary at best reasons when the end user just sees a functional phone. Joe Consumer doesn’t even notice the garden has walls.

Just wait a bit, you will encounter lots of stuff that doesn’t work, or that has you jump through hoops or buy a subscription, soon enough.

Can you name some examples, instead of being vague?

Re: The walls of Apple's garden are tumbling down

#87

Post by seanmcdirmid »

layer8 wrote: post #82
cydonian_monk wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This depends on how high the operating costs are in Europe. If their profits are approaching zero in the market, pulling out of it entirely would have less of an impact. Obviously that isn't the case, but operating costs for the market also aren't zero.

Apple gets 25% of their revenue from Europe, but only 7% of their app store revenue. This means that most of their Europe revenue is from hardware and AppleCare/services. Even if they opened up the app store completely, they would lose much less than when pulling out entirely. The fact that they work so hard at complicated solutions in order to open up the app store as little as possible shows that they think it’s wo…

A lot of the value proposition of owning an Apple device is that it doesn’t get bogged down by rogue software like other phones. So that 25% of revenue that doesn’t involve App Store revenue can still go down if they mess up the App Store too much. But I think as long as rogue apps is something you have to opt into with full knowledge of the consequences, it should be fine.

Re: The walls of Apple's garden are tumbling down

#88

Post by abaymado »

joecot wrote: post #72
cjk2 wrote: post #3

I’ve got to be honest while I appreciate the direction they are forced in, I have yet to find anyone outside the tech industry who actually knows or gives a crap. Also the only reason Epic and Spotify are after them is not some altruistic reason but they want to be the guys charging the 30% margin. It’s a bit of a grey victory but I’ll take it.

> I have yet to find anyone outside the tech industry who actually knows or gives a crap. Lots of school kids who get mocked for being "Green Texters" with crummy images and videos in their group texts. They really want their parents to shell out for an iPhone so it stops. Just because non-tech people don't know the cause, doesn't mean it doesn't affect them.

This is an outrageous take. Is iMessage the only group messaging app? If Apple was gate keeping all group messaging, I could see your point.

Re: The walls of Apple's garden are tumbling down

#89

Post by baby »

Dalewyn wrote: post #45
fidotron wrote: post #16

The thing people love forgetting is a huge part of the iPhone success is based on the North American cellular comms industry being a trustless disaster area. The deal Apple did with AT&T opened the floodgates. Android was initially designed so that operators could customise it. The idea was apps were developed (and sold) only by operators, and everything else would be via the browser. If you had used a Nokia device i…

>Android was initially designed so that operators could customise it. ... The exclusion of carriers from being able to make modifications to the phone was, and remains, an active feature for end users. Japanese Android phones bought from carriers are fucking horrible because they have modifications both from the manufacturer (eg: Sony, Samsung) and the carrier . I wonder if this is partially why Japan is among the fe…

If you think about it, this is one of the reasons I like macOS. Back then, buying a PC with windows meant having a lot of crap installed by default. Not sure if it's still the case because I haven't bought a PC in ages, but I remember that formatting my computer and reinstalling windows was step 1 when I was buying a brand new laptop/PC.

Re: The walls of Apple's garden are tumbling down

#90

Post by cjk2 »

joecot wrote: post #72
cjk2 wrote: post #3

I’ve got to be honest while I appreciate the direction they are forced in, I have yet to find anyone outside the tech industry who actually knows or gives a crap. Also the only reason Epic and Spotify are after them is not some altruistic reason but they want to be the guys charging the 30% margin. It’s a bit of a grey victory but I’ll take it.

> I have yet to find anyone outside the tech industry who actually knows or gives a crap. Lots of school kids who get mocked for being "Green Texters" with crummy images and videos in their group texts. They really want their parents to shell out for an iPhone so it stops. Just because non-tech people don't know the cause, doesn't mean it doesn't affect them.

I'm not in the US but this is not a thing anywhere in the UK at least. Everyone uses WhatsApp. Same with all my friends in Europe. Same with my kids and their friends, although they all seem to be on SnapChat more than anything.

Actually we don't even tend to bother even talking about which phones you have. It's just meh. My best friend doesn't even know what iMessage is as an example.

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