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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

#171

Post by toasterlovin »

kristjansson wrote: post #150
redwall_hp wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Relevant: Spotify already hands over 70% of their revenue to music rights holders to cover the various performance and mechanical royalties. All of their other operating expenses have to fit into the remaining 30%, meaning they often have quarters that report a loss. Apple trying to take 30% of subscriptions while operating a competing service as a value-add that can afford to be a loss leader is highly anticompetiti…

Even the most extreme Apple position isn’t trying to take 30% of all of Spotifys revenue, they’re trying to take 30% of each subscription originated on-device, for the first year of that customer. Which is still a huge cut, and still a problem that doesn’t encumber Apple Music, but the business question for Spotify is “do the incremental subscribers make sense (in quality and quantity), not “sell one subscription and…

The crazy thing is that Spotify has already proven that in-app subscription on iOS isn’t necessary to their business, since they’ve already succeeded in becoming the most popular music service without it!

But of course that’s not going to keep them from asking their government to give them more.

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

#172

Post by simonh »

robocat wrote: post #151
INGSOCIALITE wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what "correct thing"? i can text people who use android phones just fine. TBH this all boils down to the ridiculous blue / green bubble thing. that's the ONLY difference in texting between devices. i honestly have no clue why apple would be regulated in any way over this!

Costs me $0.5 to send an image or other MMS locally to Android. Even a txt costs me if the Android is overseas. I have a cheap plan in New Zealand. Blue/green might be irrelevant to you, but it is definitely not irrelevant to many people.

Sorry, you think Apple is charging you these carrier fees? Hilarious.

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

#173

Post by mopenstein »

gretch wrote: post #162
lynndotpy wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a take; it's simply a description, and it's accurate. There is a significant and undeniable social pressure for young people in the US to have an iPhone. If you can't use iMessage, you'll simply be excluded from group chats. Speaking exclusively from the cross-platform perspective, things are better nowadays with the expectation of Instagram and Discord, but you'll still be excluded from group chats for not…

I think it’s weird that governments would regulate a company on behalf of this reason. A bunch of teens got together and decided that some things were social stigma aren’t. I’m sure there’s some schools where you can’t be included unless you are wearing Abercrombie clothing, or have a MK purse. Is it time to step in there too?

When a person or entity doesn't do what you want, of course it's time to send in the goons to force them to behave.

What's the point of having the goons if you're not going to use them?

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

#174

Post by idle_zealot »

lamontcg wrote: post #136

In principle I like Apple being legally forced to crack open all their walled gardens, and I hate how far they've come from the open and hackable original Apple computers. In practice, I worry that they're going to imminently pivot to a more Google like model of selling their customers out to any third party with cash. Right now they have the means to do that, but they're selling privacy as one of their features and…

> I worry that they're going to imminently pivot to a more Google like model of selling their customers out to any third party with cash

No need to worry about that happening in the future; it's already happening! iOS collects user data and builds an advertising profile for each user. This is used to sell ad space in the App Store.

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

#175

Post by simonh »

stuartd wrote: post #141
INGSOCIALITE wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what "correct thing"? i can text people who use android phones just fine. TBH this all boils down to the ridiculous blue / green bubble thing. that's the ONLY difference in texting between devices. i honestly have no clue why apple would be regulated in any way over this!

It's not the only difference, at least where I live - I have to significantly reduce image sizes to send them to Android users..

Which is a limitation of the messaging protocol. Apple has announced they will add support for RCS this year, which should address these issues.

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

#176

Post by paulmd »

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.

> Lots of school kids who get mocked for being "Green Texters"

So, you decided to try solving a social problem with a technological solution?

Don’t make me tap the sign.

Open SMTP relays never made anyone not get bullied in the email days either. If the apple is a status symbol, then kids will use it to be cruel regardless of the internals or regardless of the services it uses on the backend. They will find something else to ostracize you over.

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

#177

Post by VelesDude »

hn_version_0023 wrote: post #43
api wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I summarize the second point as “the Internet is a dark forest.” If it’s bad and it can be done it will be done, and at scale.

You have neatly summarized why I feel strongly that the Internet has become a liability to humanity. I have no illusions that we can shut it down or walk away… but on a personal level I am trying harder than ever to remove it from my own life. If I can stay off Reddit, well, I can eventually remove it all I think!

I am down to Hacker news, local weather updates when I remember and the occasional wiki look up. A few podcasts . The local library is now more my jam.

I have been tracking my data use and last year it was only 70GB. And I have trimmed a bit more out of that since, especially on the podcast side which was the bulk of the data. It is getting to the point where I might just use my photo data plan which now has 120GB a year as it is more than enough.

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

#178

Post by VelesDude »

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #109
glitchcrab wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So to extrapolate, you're fine with your grandma being scammed via a new avenue because she's already being scammed in other ways?

I think the GP regards the scams as an acceptable price to pay for additional user choice, which is a reasonable position.

It is also possible to keep safe guard in. You have to explicitly enable side loading side loading for instance.

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

#179

Post by Teever »

sonofhans wrote: post #129
Teever wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right. They obviously have no motivation to do the correct thing, so the solution is government regulation. We live in a world where every landline telephone can dial another with no trickery or fuckery from your phone manufacturer. That is a good thing. We should extend that functionally to smartphones.

You’re going to have to be much more specific if you want to make any sense. All cell phones can already call other cell phones. All cell phones can already message other cell phones.

Yeah, exactly, and we should continue to see the regulated implementation of these kinds of interoperability at all levels of the stack.

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

#180

Post by doctorpangloss »

fidotron wrote: post #163
rezonant wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I'm not sure where you got this information. The Android Marketplace arrived with version 1.0 of Android on the T-Mobile G1. Side loading has been available since the very beginning. What you describe more closely resembles what iPhone did,…

> I'm not sure where you got this information. I was working in mobile games at the time and ended up working with Google on the Play Store launch, among other things. But what I mentioned was not some big secret. Everyone knew Android was supposed to be the response to google having to keep stashes of j2me devices in drawers, which is ironically what everyone ended up needing to do with Android devices. People have…

Windows Mobile phones had apps distributed by wherever, you could go get them on a CD from Bestbuy if you wanted.

> I was working in mobile games at the time and ended up working with Google on the Play Store launch, among other things.

Well, mobile games are distributed via ads, not the "stores."

I don't know. This distribution, network effects story. It's sort of, whatever. People were using chat apps then, and people are using chat apps now. The iOS App Store and Google Play are such shit shows, they are glorified installation wizards for 99.9% of people. Whether you have to install-wizard via sideloading or via a deep link or whatever, it's not super material nor revolutionary. I think this comes from conflating Steam with the App Store, ultimately Steam is a real, bonafide store, and the mobile app stores are more like technical restrictions that someone is using to take a 30% cut of revenues. Which is what everyone is saying anyway.

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