Earlier quoted context omitted.
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It does hurt when I can no longer purchase a product that I want because other corporations wish to use the legal system to make more money, yes.
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Proton joins suit against Apple for practices that harm developers and consumers
121–130 of 665 posts
Re: Proton joins suit against Apple for practices that harm developers and consumers
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm all for corporations "trying to get theirs" if it benefits the rest of society. iPhones are a premium product and they don't have a natural right to 30% of transactions going through it if the participants don't want Apple to know about it. > It’s the “if I can’t have it no one can” line of thought That describes what you and _benton are advocating. "If I can't have the phone be the way I want, no one can".
That's exactly backwards. I have no desire to limit the types of phones you can purchase, and you have an enormous amount of choices in phones outside Apple that provide essentially the same functionality, and can be as open as you wish. You wish to limit my ability to access a device that I want. I want a locked down phone, and third parties wish to intervene on a transaction between me and Apple so they can illegit…
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Re: Proton joins suit against Apple for practices that harm developers and consumers
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe if the iPhone was the only phone available to purchase this argument has merit. But it's not, there are no shortage of other phones that provide the same features which are "essential to (your) practical participation in society)". If anything, you are attempting to remove my ability to purchase a device I want to own. And I don't really like that.
> If anything, you are attempting to remove my ability to purchase a device I want to own. What about we meet in the middle and governments force Apple to only open 50% of the phones, for the same price. Would that satisfy you?
No, because that requires the development and maintenance of two different operating systems, the cost of which is then passed to the consumer (me).
Re: Proton joins suit against Apple for practices that harm developers and consumers
#124I'm not an Apple enthusiast—my rarely used iPad mini is my only Apple device—but let me play devil’s advocate. If a company invests billions in R&D to create hardware and its integrated software, shouldn’t it have the right to control who or what interacts with it? Why should I be forced to open up the carefully designed ecosystem I’ve built? If my pitch is premium, high-speed hardware and intuitive software so user-…
I think it's specifically anticompetitive for Apple to force app developers to go through Apple Payments (with a 30% fee to Apple) for all purchases, otherwise their app is disallowed from being sold on the App store. There's no technological reason for app developers to be restricted from using other payment processors - it's purely a strategy for increased revenue for Apple.
In antitrust terms, it is a form of Vendor Lock-In[0], and could be seen as a form of Tying[1]:
> Tying is often used when the supplier makes one product that is critical to many customers. By threatening to withhold that key product unless others are also purchased, the supplier can increase sales of less necessary products.
As an example, Apple was sued successfully in the early 200s for selling music in a format that could only be played on iPods. iTunes is a platform Apple controls and invented, yet still it was deemed illegal for them to unfairly lock in customers and prevent them from using competing portable music players.
Re: Proton joins suit against Apple for practices that harm developers and consumers
#125This is probably a controversial opinion but I actually use my iPhone because it's locked down with a curated app marketplace and secure payment system. I don't want alternative payment methods or app stores. So I find it distasteful that other companies are seeking to control Apple's product design through the legal system. They're essentially trying to make it impossible to purchase a product I want, which is more…
if all you want is for your apps to come from Apple's store and your payments to go through Apple's system, you would simply continue to use only those options and allowing other people to have other options would not impact you. what you actually want is to force all developers to use Apple's distribution and payment systems, so that you can have every app and service from any provider delivered via your chosen mech…
Developers are not forced into using Apple's distribution and payment systems because there are a multitude of other competing devices (with a higher market share mind you) they can and do develop for.
If users and developers prefer other systems they can simply use those.
Re: Proton joins suit against Apple for practices that harm developers and consumers
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are only two viable phone OSs and both have problems. "Vote with your wallet" is a BS argument in such a duopoly, because people care about other stuff.
There are many phones which let you flash your own OS and use with complete control. Please just purchase one of those and stop trying to interfere with my ability to purchase a phone that I want.
No.
In my opinion it is perfectly fine for society to order a company to hypothetically limit you on this minor thing (and let's be frank: this is super minor), because opening up iOS would benefit companies, countries, economies and other users of phones.
Re: Proton joins suit against Apple for practices that harm developers and consumers
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If anything, you are attempting to remove my ability to purchase a device I want to own. What about we meet in the middle and governments force Apple to only open 50% of the phones, for the same price. Would that satisfy you?
No, because that requires the development and maintenance of two different operating systems, the cost of which is then passed to the consumer (me).
In this case I hope you have sympathy when I state that I dislike when Apple charges 30% on transactions (but also apps), because this cost is also passed to the consumer: me.
And I 100% guarantee that the piece of this 30% pie is way bigger than the effort it would require them to divert their development like you're suggesting.
EDIT: Oh, and I also bet their lawyer bill for fighting this is bigger than that too. :)
Re: Proton joins suit against Apple for practices that harm developers and consumers
#128I don't think any big tech company has ever done anything as evil and predatory as Apple walling off iMessage, giving the impression that Apple phones were high technology, and interacting with peasant androids is what made group chats fragment and pictures and videos look like trash. Few things are more enraging than people being left out of chats with friends and family because they didn't bend over for Apple. Even…
> I don't think any big tech company has ever done anything as evil and predatory as Apple walling off iMessage I think you might be living in a bubble, if this is the "most evil" thing you have heard of a big tech company doing. Go read up on IBM's history, especially in the 30s and 40s. Or a more contemporary example, read up on Embrace, Extend, Extinguish. Or Amazon's mistreatment of workers in both corporate and…
> I think you might be living in a bubble, if this is the "most evil" thing you have heard of a big tech company doing. Go read up on IBM's history, especially in the 30s and 40s. Or a more contemporary example, read up on Embrace, Extend, Extinguish. Or Amazon's mistreatment of workers in both corporate and warehouse settings. Or Meta scraping data off your devices without permission to train AI.
I wouldn't count the IBM thing because I don't see it as part of the vernacular "big tech" of today; however I do think it's the most evil so far in this thread.
The others? They are mostly aggressive competition, especially the MS stuff, and altogether I don't see them as more evil than Apple's exclusionary UX. What's at the bottom of it for me is that it harms users directly, e.g. what others said about kids getting shamed for having a non-Apple phone. The one thing not mentioned yet that would qualify for me would be Meta's product altogether with its impact on teenagers; and various gambling simulators like Roblox.
Re: Proton joins suit against Apple for practices that harm developers and consumers
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
30% is a pretty big chunk of a market. There is no reason we have to wait until a company has 99% of the market to address anticompetitive behavior.
Samsung is sitting at 28% of the Western European market share with their Android phones. Should we be worried about anti competitive behavior there as well ?
If Samsung is using their market position to stifle competitors, then by all means yes.
Re: Proton joins suit against Apple for practices that harm developers and consumers
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're free to keep your own device locked down yourself and to only use Apple's own app store if you want.
Until your employer or government requires a side-loaded app for you to do something that you need to do.
Or you end up with companies (like Wal-mart) that decide that they don’t want to accept Apple Pay and become payment processors themselves, requiring you to install their app to do phone/watch payments. Congrats, you now need a whole boquet of payment apps and we’re back to it being easier to use physical credit cards. For some of these things, the consolidation was the whole point.