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Apple vs the Law

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Re: Apple vs the Law

#191

Post by humanpotato »

xandrius wrote: post #173
nntwozz wrote: post #147

I dream of an alternate reality where Steve Jobs makes snide remarks about politics, sets things right with the App Store (worldwide), Siri, Ai and the lackluster UI and quality control of software lately. Steve would get on top of things and speak his mind and we were all better off for it. There's a severe lack of character in Tim Cook, I think the best thing to come out under his reign is the M-series hardware and…

Sane computer design, in what way? I still see unopenable devices, batteries glued to death and even more closed systems. Next they reverted to liquid glass UI, is that sane?

I have no idea, as the two dumbest Macs, the Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh and the "Trashcan" Mac, were before and after Jobs, respectively.

Re: Apple vs the Law

#192

Post by FirmwareBurner »

pjmlp wrote: post #120
FinnLobsien wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The EU has basically said that it's better to have a handful medium-sized companies in competition for customers than one or two mega-corps owning and dictating the market. And to resolve that they employ two things, one is the DMA/DSA and similar laws which mostly takes effect when your company reaches a certain large market penetration, the other is standardisations such as the Radio Equipment Directive (think "U…

SAP, Spotify, Sitecore, Roche, Airbus, CERN (the ecosystem powers its research), CodePlay, SN Systems, BAYER, Roche,....

Since when is Airbus a small company and not part of the large state supported corp monopoly gang? Same with SAP, Roche and Bayer. These are all masive corporations that swallowed entire sectors. Same with Spotify having used its monopoly status to screw over smaller artists. I feel like I'm taking crazy pills when I read such comments.

Let me ask you guys something else, if EU hates large monopolist companies so much as you claim, then why are all its car companies monopolistic mega conglomerates that rule the world like Volkswagen, Stellantis, Daimler Benz, BMW, and Renault? Where's EU's equivalent of Tesla if they supposedly hate all these big companies?

I'll tell you why: Just like the US, the capital controlled EU also supports its domestic monopolies and only bitches about foreign monopolies in sectors they don't control and threaten their economic hegemony. That's the cold hard truth, everything else is just political hot air and virtue signaling for brownie points, and I'm pissed people are not only buying it but also parroting it when the goal to monopolize business sectors is as strong in EU corporations as it is in US and Chinese ones.

Europe is just more stricter now with controlling large (mostly foreign) corporations since its own economy lost a lot of ground to the US and Chinese ones (it has now half the real GDP it had 2 decades ago), and since it can't create new large companies, all it can do now is protecting what it has left from foreign companies taking over their turf. The upshot being that a lot of those rules are congruent with the consumer protections which also end up globally favoring consumers abroad.

Re: Apple vs the Law

#193

Post by elric »

cm2012 wrote: post #116
FinnLobsien wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The EU has basically said that it's better to have a handful medium-sized companies in competition for customers than one or two mega-corps owning and dictating the market. And to resolve that they employ two things, one is the DMA/DSA and similar laws which mostly takes effect when your company reaches a certain large market penetration, the other is standardisations such as the Radio Equipment Directive (think "U…

Yes. As someone who has worked with 100+ funded start-ups, roughly 85 in USA and 15 in EU - the EU ones have such a harder, trudging climb due to regulations.

You say that like it's a bad thing. But it's not. It's a good thing.

Re: Apple vs the Law

#194

Post by strogonoff »

pmontra wrote: post #96
isodev wrote: post #53

As a developer for apple platforms, it's extremely difficult to keep a positive mindset to all this. Year after year, Apple finds ways to continue unbounded fuckery. Making apps for iPhones is not that profitable anymore either, at this point is more about addressing a painful necessity - Apple is the phone company and you have to make it work if you want access to that "unmovable" infrastructure.

All iOS and Android developers I know don't write app that they sell themselves. They work for customers that more often than not give away their apps for free because they make money from the service the app gives access to. And they don't sell the service on the app store. Think about banks, insurance companies, TV broadcasters, train timetables and services, cars management, etc.

Making quality software is usually a business, and if you distribute it in walled gardens even more so. That said, I have a number of iOS apps installed that I know are developed and sold by specific individuals or small businesses: myNoise, NetNewsWire, The Iconfactory (Bitcam, Tapestry), Sun Seeker, Rarevision VHS are some examples. I am sure there are plenty more, but there are reasons someone would not want to publish an app under own name—same as why you would create an LLC: liability, not having people stalk you personally if they did not like what you make (especially true if you distribute it for free or for a very low price), appearing more professional, etc.

I believe iOS App Store has been groundbreaking specifically in how it allowed a solo developer to start distributing work to millions of people across the entire globe with very little friction, taking care of things that are not just boring but actually not in reach of an individual—pricing in different currencies, accounting under different legal and tax systems, zero friction installation, discovery (at least before it, thanks to the aforementioned qualities, became ultra competitive and overwhelmed by businesses who outsource development and/or by less than scrupulous people wanting to earn a quick dollar), etc.—and just getting you paid. If there was a comparable precursor that I am not aware of, I would be keen to know.

Re: Apple vs the Law

#195

Post by bzzzt »

madeofpalk wrote: post #157
bzzzt wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First they have to enable competition, you're saying they have to support it but seemingly you want to enforce it. Where does it stop? Should Apple just pay out a part of their profits to their competitors? If a competitor wants market share they have to build a better service. Forcing users to go with a bad deal gets the incentives all wrong and is actually bad for consumer choice.

> If a competitor wants market share they have to build a better service. Except when Apple ensures that it always comes out ahead when competing. It's not a level playing field. Look at Apple Music vs Spotify - ignoring the self-preferencing iOS does to Appke Music, the App Store ensures that Spotify will always make less money than Apple Music. Spotify either has to hand over 30% to its competitor, raise its prices…

Not offering in-app signups doesn't seem to make Spotify less dominant. I'm in the Netherlands, almost everybody I know has a Spotify subscription, I know just one guy using Apple music.

The 30% fee also drops to 15% after one year, and there are companies that negotiated lower fees. Also, 'doing it yourself' won't be free, you still need some party to do payment processing, customer service and returns which also can come close to that 15%.

The argument you need to make your own phone seems a bit far-fetched. There are multiple music apps making money on iOS.

Re: Apple vs the Law

#196

Post by FinnLobsien »

Tainnor wrote: post #156
FinnLobsien wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True! And I generally empathize with this. The core point of the EU and its member states' governments should be to enable high quality of life. But that model you describe is cracking: Cost of living is going through the roof in Europe, taxes/social contributions going up every year, etc. The problem is that Europe is like an old, rich person who now lives off of the principal of their wealth. For a person that's fi…

> But that model you describe is cracking: Cost of living is going through the roof in Europe, taxes/social contributions going up every year, etc. Cost of living is increasing in the US too (in large part due to geopolitical reasons), and social contributions are rising because of demographic factors. I'm not sure how market liberalism is magically going to fix that latter issue.

Fair point re: US! Though that doesn't mean it's not a problem.

Re: demographics. It's relatively straightforward: To keep contributions constant while supporting more people, you need either:

-more people via immigration (which is extremely tricky to get right) who are net contributors, not beneficiaries of social systems -massively increased productivity through innovation/technology -cut benefits from social programs

If you do none of those things, the systems will either collapse or you need to raise taxes/mandatory contributions which are de-facto taxes.

Re: Apple vs the Law

#197

Post by Tainnor »

Y-bar wrote: post #166
Tainnor wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are all huge companies in my view. In addition to them there are also countless small to medium sized companies that nobody's ever heard of, that don't experience hypergrowth but have slow and steady growth - especially in the B2B sector. I've worked at some such companies.

I agree actually, my use of "medium-sized" was not best, in my personal view a medium-sized company is in the 200-500 employee range. These are definitively larger than that, however I assumed the person I replied to took "medium sized" to mean "significantly smaller than Apple/Google/Amazon/… …but not unknown". Because if I were to pull up a list of thirty unknown actually medium-sized companies pretty much nobody w…

These companies may be smaller than FAANG, but I also feel that if BASF disappeared overnight it would have a larger impact on the world than if Facebook disappeared.

HN is sometimes incredibly biased towards consumer tech.

Re: Apple vs the Law

#198

Post by lapcat »

rTX5CMRXIfFG wrote: post #179
nntwozz wrote: post #147

I dream of an alternate reality where Steve Jobs makes snide remarks about politics, sets things right with the App Store (worldwide), Siri, Ai and the lackluster UI and quality control of software lately. Steve would get on top of things and speak his mind and we were all better off for it. There's a severe lack of character in Tim Cook, I think the best thing to come out under his reign is the M-series hardware and…

I admire Steve Jobs as a visionary as much as everyone else, but I never thought it was fair for people to keep discounting Tim Cook as the “lesser” man between the two. He was the one who took the company to a trillion dollar valuation. He took on the operations and supply chain work that no computer nerd or product visionary ever wants to take. He did the hard, unsexy work that no one wanted to do and yet people se…

> He was the one who took the company to a trillion dollar valuation.

Are you comparing Cook to Jobs as an Apple investor or as an Apple customer? As an Apple customer, not an investor, I don't care at all about the company's stock market valuation.

Investors seem to love Tim Cook. Warren Buffett recently said that Tim Cook made more money for Berkshire Hathaway than Buffett himself did. But as an Apple customer, I don't give a crap about Buffett or Berkshire either.

The difference between Cook and Jobs is that Cook is a money person and not a product person. According to his biographer, Jobs lamented that Cook was not a product person. And IMO the products have suffered under Cook: not in terms of profit, but in terms of design and functionality, the things a discerning customer cares about.

I think what's special about Jobs was that, ironically, he had no special training. Of course he was smart, ambitious, and charismatic, but he wasn't an engineer (before Apple, Jobs outsourced some of his work to Woz and took credit for it), wasn't even a professional designer, and he certainly wasn't an MBA. He had no qualifications whatsoever to start a tech company. Jobs was simply a computer enthusiast who had the great luck of meeting a computer genius, Steve Wozniak. Since Jobs was ordinary in many respects, he was able to empathize with ordinary computer users; that was one of his primary roles within Apple. Jobs cared deeply about the user experience, from a first-person perspective. Few if any other massive tech companies have been built by such a founder.

Re: Apple vs the Law

#199

Post by bzzzt »

grishka wrote: post #143
bzzzt wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would be nice if everything instantly became better with a bit of explanation, but I'm just a bit to cynical to trust that. Most people using tech need guard rails.

Yes, guard rails are good. I'm not denying that. They are an important part of user education. But only when they can be overridden. MacOS around 10 years ago is a good example. It came out of the box in a foolproof state — only apps from the app store or registered developers would run, and SIP is enabled. But if you know what you're doing, you could disable both those things without any loss of functionality.

You can see the problem by browsing old help forums and see how often people suggest 'disable SIP' as a solution to some problem instead of really fixing the problem. Also, the clueless user will -at best- just follow instructions and disable all kinds of security features making them more vulnerable to malware.

Re: Apple vs the Law

#200

Post by alt227 »

mschuster91 wrote: post #140
alt227 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More people are getting annoyed with Apple over these issues, and they are bleeding into the mainstream media more frequently. I have a few die hard Apple friends (Non-professionals) that have recently got so frustrated with being pushed into corners that they have given up the fruity ecosystem altogether. In no way am I suggesting that Apple are on the way out, but they have definitely started to turn the same corne…

As long as MS keeps making Windows worse and worse each release (and no one willing to develop decent ARM SoCs) and Android smartphone manufacturers keep releasing utter dogshit, Apple will have customers. They already market themselves as the privacy-friendly, "just works" alternative - and that's legitimately hard to fight. Apple isn't in the position it is just because they make factually good hardware or because…

IMO Apple have started to do the same. Their software is consistently getting buggier with worse user experiences, along with their reputation.

Tech savy windows users that are trying out Apple are finding that it very much doesnt 'Just Work' anymore, and that sentiment is starting to creep out more and more.

Take a look at Linuses recent evaluation of macOS by using only a Mac for a solid 2 months. His conclusion is that it is no better or worse than windows, and definitely doesnt 'Just Work'.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOgRmw1atFU

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