181–190 of 523 posts
Just makes me want to find iOS apps through other means than the App Store.
(Check out nice and simple it was in 2008: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xo9cKe_Fch8 )
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You should be able to explicitly bid on trademarks because you intend to compete directly with that business. Nobody should ever have a legal right to appear at the top of search rankings for anything. Laws restricting business competition are almost never a good thing.
I vehemently disagree. There used to be plenty of ways to get in touch with the owner of a brand directly. Now they're all being camped by rent extractors. Google is chief amongst those taxing businesses. They are not government anointed to perform this role. Google should not be allowed to do this. As a business gets more successful, Google extracts more money from them. Simply trying to access the business will sen…
This makes no difference, because I can’t remember the last time I installed an app other than for the occasional airline. From 2008-12 it was genuinely exciting to see what new apps were being released every day. Mobile games from that era had cultural impact. I bought $2 apps without a thought. But Apple incentivized monetization above all else and killed that excitement. Now you can’t find a tip calculator that do…
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But when you're forced to choose the App Store over the many many alternative .ipa distributors, it's perfectly logical and fair? Android is a hardware alternative - Apple needs upward pressure to make their services competitive. If you use a Mac this is already obvious, you can't buy industry-standard software on the App Store. They all avoid it like the plague when given the opportunity, and Apple deliberately clos…
The App Store is an integrated component of the iPhone experience. It's perfectly fine to have different preferences but doesn't mean you get to meddle in the UI/UX of something you didn't create. If you really want to sideload, that's what Android is for.
It's an App Store. The .IPA is an integrated component of the iPhone experience, the App Store is an optional storefront. Again, look at the Mac.
You're repeating the same limp defenses that Apple has already watched get torn down by the EU and Japanese courts. We've solidly moved onto the "beg Trump for help" phase, which is miles worse than the humiliation of allowing sideloading.
Do you still want to know why they're putting ads into the only integrated storefront on iOS? It's real simple from where I'm standing.
It recently occurred to me that it’s been years since it was possible to find some new and interesting app just by browsing the App Store, like it used to be when iPhone and Android were first introduced. Now I open the store knowing in advance what exactly I’m looking for and take care not to accidentally click on a lookalike.
It's a mature market. Maybe the age of new and interesting apps is over? I know I've pretty much settled into a small set of apps that I use on my iPhone, ThinkPad, and iPad and probably haven't installed anything new (ie not upgrades) for five or ten years now. The last new app I installed was either Fusion360 or Visual Studio Code. I guess I have had to install apps for other things I bought (like Christmas tree li…
it's a shame it really feels this way! i discovered some fun social apps recently like Bump and Retro that are a refreshing break from the big algoscrollers, but all my friends are either too locked into the existing big social apps or are determined to not mess with any social apps at all.
This makes no difference, because I can’t remember the last time I installed an app other than for the occasional airline. From 2008-12 it was genuinely exciting to see what new apps were being released every day. Mobile games from that era had cultural impact. I bought $2 apps without a thought. But Apple incentivized monetization above all else and killed that excitement. Now you can’t find a tip calculator that do…
I get where you're coming from and your examples are egregiously expensive, but do we really want to live in a world where software is valued at a $2 one-time payment? We shouldn't be engaging in a race to the bottom like that.
A few other apps that are only occasionally used support short-term paid activations, like Flighty and Oceanic+. I think that's a respectable business model, too.
On the less-reasonable end of the spectrum though are the $10/mo apps. Apple used to charge that much for the entire operating system.
I am pretty sure that if I tried to load up my phone with a handful of the kinds of apps I used to use (a word game, a third-party Twitter client, an SSH terminal, a calculator or to-do app with a trendy minimalist design) I would easily cross $100/mo for some marginally-useful features.
This makes no difference, because I can’t remember the last time I installed an app other than for the occasional airline. From 2008-12 it was genuinely exciting to see what new apps were being released every day. Mobile games from that era had cultural impact. I bought $2 apps without a thought. But Apple incentivized monetization above all else and killed that excitement. Now you can’t find a tip calculator that do…
consumer manipulation en masse does impact you even if YOU don't fall for it.
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> It ought to be illegal to host ads for registered trademarks (+/- some edit distance). This makes me a bit uncomfortable because of how close it comes to infringing on freedom of speech, and how specific a rule it would for search engines (and chat bots) - i.e. there's no real analogy of "can't target trademarked terms" for any ad format other than search engines. I think my preference would be to simply enforce la…
You're not allowed to use Pikachu commercially. Why should Google? They're taking advantage of every trademark to make money. Googling a trademark should activate a "no bids" mode. If Google wants to defend this action, then they should explain why they turned the URL bar into a search product and bought up 90% of the real estate. They've been incredibly heavy handed in search, web, and ads.
There are many uses of "Pikachu" that are reserved for the trademark holder, but by-and-large the point of trademark is to avoid consumer confusion by preventing people from passing off goods/services that aren't from the "Pikachu" holder as actually being from the "Pikachu" trademark holder.
Generally, I am allowed to use "Pikachu" if it's in reference to Pikachu and doesn't involve passing off non-Pikachu things as actually being Pikachu things. If I'm a former employed-by-Nintendo Pikachu illustrator, I'm allowed to advertise that. (Even if I can't provide samples of my work.) I can advertise that I'm the "#1 seller of Pikachu snuggies" as long as I am the #1 seller of non-counterfeit Pikachu snuggies. I can charge people a subscription fee for full access to a website where I review Pikachu (and other pokemon). If I work at Walmart and someone asks me where they can get a Pikachu plush, I'm allowed to direct them to the Digimon plush section, for which I receive a kickback on sales.
The consumer confusion happening when someone googles a trademark and gets ads for different things isn't due to trademark infringement, it's due to misleading ads, which shouldn't be allowed regardless of whether a search term is trademarked or not.