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Apple vs. the "Free Market"

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Re: Apple vs. the "Free Market"

#61

Post by [deleted] »

KolmogorovComp wrote: post #49
areoform wrote: post #39

> Tumblr still remains heavily moderated and heavily censored. Why? Because Apple kept kicking Tumblr out of the App Store on the basis that it contained sexual material, and without Apple users, Tumblr was dead in the water > Apple claims this is merely a matter of "editorial standards," no different from a bookstore deciding not to shelve pornography. The difference is that in this case, Apple can block you from pa…

Aren’t you free to load any OS you like? Not trying to justify anticompetitive behavior from Apple here, but tired to see people saying ‘do you own it?’ when they really mean ‘does the manufacturer help installing third parties apps on its default OS’.

[deleted]

Re: Apple vs. the "Free Market"

#62

Post by adesanmi »

MangoCoffee wrote: post #54
adesanmi wrote: post #31

If Patreon doesn’t like Apple’s rules, they should just take their app off the App Store. All these companies moaning about Apple yet aren’t doing the one thing they have the power to do which is just leave. If they refuse to leave, then they’re admitting that Apple’s platform is providing value to them and they should pay what Apple wants. I support creators on Patreon, what exactly is wrong with just doing everythi…

"If Netscape doesn’t like Microsoft’s bundled IE with Windows, they should just take their app off the Windows OS. All these companies moaning about Microsoft yet aren’t doing the one thing they have the power to do which is just leave. If they refuse to leave, then they’re admitting that Microsoft’s platform is providing value to them and they should pay what Microsoft wants." The irony is striking: Microsoft (Windo…

Again: you can literally go on Patreon.com on your iPhone right now and subscribe to any creator you want without paying Apple’s fees. The mobile web is literally a suitable alternative and competitor right now, but for some reason people on HN have given up on this concept and think every website needs an app. Patreon should just leave the App Store and invest in their already great multi platform website with no gatekeeping of distribution.

Re: Apple vs. the "Free Market"

#63

Post by brigadier132 »

haswell wrote: post #46
brigadier132 wrote: post #4

Apple's product is its users. All of the privacy changes are not to protect the privacy of their users, it's to ensure that there are no ways to access Apple device users without Apple being the middleman.

If Apple’s product is its users, who are its customers? > All of the privacy changes are not to protect the privacy of their users… This is reductionist, and multiple things can be true at the same time. There’s no doubt that Apple has realized privacy is a competitive advantage, and as a customer, it’s one of the reasons I give them money. Even if you could lay bare the deepest desires and true motives of everyone i…

> If Apple’s product is its users, who are its customers?

Anyone trying to sell something to an Apple user. And you are right that I'm being reductionist, Apple clearly makes significant profit from the devices themselves, but that revenue is not growing. The revenue that is growing is "services", "app store", and "advertising" revenue.

Apple's $20 billion a year deal with Google to be the default search engine accounts for at least 10% of its entire market capitalization. That's just revenue from one company and that's just to be the default search engine.

Re: Apple vs. the "Free Market"

#64

Post by knowriju »

AlexandrB wrote: post #2

What's the conceptual difference between Apple charging 30% for Patreon subcribers vs. charging 30% for purchases on Temu or the Amazon app? This distinction seems completely arbitrary to me. I suspect the only reason it exists is that adding a 30% Apple surcharge to every Amazon purchase would cause too much outrage. Disclaimer: I've never used Temu or the Amazon app, but I'm assuming they don't apply a 30% surcharg…

Playing the devil's advocate here, I believe the rational to take 30% cut for only digital goods is that, usually digital goods have zero marginal cost. To 'manufacture' an additional digital asset, the company doesn't need to spend anything extra.

This assumption starts breaking as internet becomes more ubiquitous and for anything really outside gaming coins. Example, for every additional Spotify subscriber, Spotify needs to pay music producers as well. The economics is now very close to physical goods being sold in Temu or Amazon.

Re: Apple vs. the "Free Market"

#65

Post by throw0101d »

api wrote: post #51
brigadier132 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Freedom to run the software you choose on your own device is the only way to have actual privacy. What you have right now is just a centralized store of all your data on Apple's servers.

iOS and macOS are not the same product. If you want a real computer you have to get a Mac, which is why I do not own an iPad. IMHO if you can't run anything you want on it it's not a real computer, it's a "console." This is how I think of phones. The iPhone does everything I want a phone to do, but that's not much: web, a few apps, turn by turn directions, texting, e-mail, etc.

> IMHO if you can't run anything you want on it it's not a real computer, it's a "console." This is how I think of phones.

You're of course free to define things as you wish personally (and I'm not necessarily disagreeing with yout), but it should be noted that we start getting into the realm of:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman

Re: Apple vs. the "Free Market"

#66

Post by talldayo »

add-sub-mul-div wrote: post #59
roenxi wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is a great pitch to use Apple devices. The software community seems to hate it but I have a theory that one of the reasons Apple commands such a premium is because regular users don't actually like the software people all that much. Apple protecting user privacy for selfish reasons is a wonderful thing . It means they are going to keep doing it for as long as they can manage until the legislators step in.

> Apple protecting user privacy It's amazing how successful they are at virtue signaling about privacy while selling your traffic to Google, the progenitor and linchpin of surveillance capitalism, for tens of billions of dollars. Laundering the reputation through the slightest bit of indirection is all it takes.

Don't forget Apple's super-safe ultra-private AI collaboration with security mastermind (and former interim Reddit CEO) Sam Altman. When your data enters OpenAI's servers, it's trusted with the same cryptographic geniuses that brought you Worldcoin.

Re: Apple vs. the "Free Market"

#67

Post by MangoCoffee »

adesanmi wrote: post #62
MangoCoffee wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If Netscape doesn’t like Microsoft’s bundled IE with Windows, they should just take their app off the Windows OS. All these companies moaning about Microsoft yet aren’t doing the one thing they have the power to do which is just leave. If they refuse to leave, then they’re admitting that Microsoft’s platform is providing value to them and they should pay what Microsoft wants." The irony is striking: Microsoft (Windo…

Again: you can literally go on Patreon.com on your iPhone right now and subscribe to any creator you want without paying Apple’s fees. The mobile web is literally a suitable alternative and competitor right now, but for some reason people on HN have given up on this concept and think every website needs an app. Patreon should just leave the App Store and invest in their already great multi platform website with no ga…

I feel like I'm talking to a brick wall.

Re: Apple vs. the "Free Market"

#69

Post by jhanschoo »

AlexandrB wrote: post #2

What's the conceptual difference between Apple charging 30% for Patreon subcribers vs. charging 30% for purchases on Temu or the Amazon app? This distinction seems completely arbitrary to me. I suspect the only reason it exists is that adding a 30% Apple surcharge to every Amazon purchase would cause too much outrage. Disclaimer: I've never used Temu or the Amazon app, but I'm assuming they don't apply a 30% surcharg…

While the blog post stresses the 30% fee, I read the Patreon post that it was responding to. I am subscribed to a couple infrequent but high-quality creators on Patreon who charge by deliverable instead of as a monthly subscription that won't make sense since months may go by without a deliverable. This will make monetization via Patreon unviable for them.

Re: Apple vs. the "Free Market"

#70

Post by throw0101d »

brigadier132 wrote: post #47
api wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple is the only big tech company left that even pretends to care about privacy and does even a half-assed job of it. If they're doing it in part for self-interested reasons, that's fine. It's better than nothing. Their cloud storage product even has on-device encryption. Nobody else offers that, and in fact AFAIK Google and some of the others even have it listed as against their ToS. They're also working on privacy…

Freedom to run the software you choose on your own device is the only way to have actual privacy. What you have right now is just a centralized store of all your data on Apple's servers.

> Freedom to run the software you choose on your own device is the only way to have actual privacy.

Given how many services are off-device I'm not sure how accurate that is.

If I'm running a Framework laptop with Linux, I can have very little privacy if I'm using Metabook and Gmail for socializing.

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