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U.S. Supreme Court to hear Apple App Store antitrust dispute

reuters.com

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Re: U.S. Supreme Court to hear Apple App Store antitrust dispute

#101

Post by threeseed »

samat wrote: post #73
threeseed wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple provides a service for that 30% though. They handle the payment processing, they build, moderate and curate the App Store apps and they provide a lucrative channel to market for app developers. So allowing Spotify et al to get all the benefits of the channel without paying for it is actually unfair to Apple.

This argument will easily hold if there were any way to have a competing store on iOS devices. Apple banning any competition in that field makes ‘buy they provide value for the money’ look like forcing consumers hand. Not sure if I want to have a second AppStore (APNS, etc, etc.)

No. The argument holds irrespective of whether there is 1 store or a million stores.

Spotify wants to use Apple's distribution channel without paying for it.

That's unfair and doesn't reflect what happens in the real world. If I sell my software through a retail store they still take a cut.

Re: U.S. Supreme Court to hear Apple App Store antitrust dispute

#102

Post by mitchty »

rickycook wrote: post #55
mitchty wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is their argument ultimately: Apple has seized upon a 1977 Supreme Court ruling that limited damages for anti-competitive conduct to those directly overcharged instead of indirect victims who paid an overcharge passed on by others. Part of the concern, the court said in that case, was to free judges from having to make complex calculations of damages. I'm no lawyer either but that seems to generally be t…

mentioned and expanded on in a parent comment, but the important part of the article related to that is right at the bottom: “The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last year revived the lawsuit, deciding that Apple was a distributor that sold iPhone apps directly to consumers.” the question is whether apple sells the apps, or the developer sells the apps.

Right but that seems to be the ultimate thing at question here not? Whether the ninth circuit's decision is correct.

I'll have to wait for this week in law to cover the case from a legal perspective, they're lawyers so they tend to have a more lawyery view of things and bring on experts in the field. There tends to be more nuance than most engineers tend to bring in "apple charging 30% is immoral" arguments.

Re: U.S. Supreme Court to hear Apple App Store antitrust dispute

#103

Post by zepto »

vatueil wrote: post #70
delinka wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"...an exclusive and default way to purchase and load apps on iOS" If the court allows the definition of 'trust' to include "a company gatekeeping developer access to their own operating system" when that operating system represents a much smaller share of the market than the next biggest competitor.

It's true that iOS has a smaller share of the market globally, including many parts of Europe, but this overshadows the fact that iOS is almost on par with Android in the United States (44.3% to Android's 54.5% as of May 2018), probably higher among affluent users, and the leading mobile operating system in other countries such as Britain: https://www.statista.com/statistics/266572/market-share-held... I feel this is…

10% lower than the next competitor, and less than half overall.

Not a monopoly.

Re: U.S. Supreme Court to hear Apple App Store antitrust dispute

#104

Post by ihuman »

lbacaj wrote: post #29

Unfortunately for Apple, I do think the App Store being an exclusive and default way to purchase and load apps on iOS is in fact causing prices of Apps, in many cases, to be higher than they should be. The perfect example of this is the subscription services, right now you can get a cheaper subscription to a service such as Spotify if you buy it off the App Store. That is a prime example of how much the 30% payment t…

How long have you been using the iOS app store for? IMO App prices now are lower than they were when the app store first opened in iPhoneOS 2, and way lower than they were before the iPhone. I remember simple games for Palm OS costing at about $20 [0] . Nowadays that game would either be [0] https://web.archive.org/web/20040418012411/http://astraware....

Re: U.S. Supreme Court to hear Apple App Store antitrust dispute

#105

Post by 43920 »

throwaway34241 wrote: post #93
vedantroy wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think its good to force Apple to allow non-WebKit web engines on iOS. Right now Apple can forcefully cripple technologies like progressive web apps by not supporting the latest web technologies. This allows Apple to force companies to develop native applications. Similarly, Apple has been slacking off on improving Webkit and making it as good as V8. By getting rid of Apple's monopoly on web engines, developers will…

As long as Safari remains the default or very popular, sites will probably have to support it anyway regardless of if other browser engines are available. There's also some conflict of interest if say Chrome were to come to be the dominant browser on iOS since they also control Android. Would battery life, performance etc be prioritized as highly on iOS as their own platform? I think it would be nice to be able to lo…

> As long as Safari remains the default or very popular, sites will probably have to support it anyway regardless of if other browser engines are available.

But if another engine supports additional features that Safari doesn't, you could still offer those features to users of other browsers, i.e. you could do something like "install Chrome/Firefox to use our PWA".

> Would battery life, performance etc be prioritized as highly on iOS as their own platform?

Maybe not, but in that case people could switch back to Safari or another competitor like Firefox.

Re: U.S. Supreme Court to hear Apple App Store antitrust dispute

#106

Post by ariwilson »

MBCook wrote: post #66
GeekyBear wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn't we already go through this in the courts when game consoles like Nintendo, XBox, and PlayStation put the same restrictions on game developers?

Back in the NES era with licensing restrictions, yes. I believe it was Tengen vs Nintendo? Also Atari vs Activision? But the Switch, PS4, and XBox One ALL have closed app stores exactly the way Apple does. If Apple loses a lot of people will have to find a new business model.

You can buy digital codes to redeem games on those stores from third party retailers. Often at a discount.

Re: U.S. Supreme Court to hear Apple App Store antitrust dispute

#107

Post by drawnwren »

threeseed wrote: post #101
samat wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This argument will easily hold if there were any way to have a competing store on iOS devices. Apple banning any competition in that field makes ‘buy they provide value for the money’ look like forcing consumers hand. Not sure if I want to have a second AppStore (APNS, etc, etc.)

No. The argument holds irrespective of whether there is 1 store or a million stores. Spotify wants to use Apple's distribution channel without paying for it. That's unfair and doesn't reflect what happens in the real world. If I sell my software through a retail store they still take a cut.

I suspect Spotify would prefer to have their app on iOS without using Apple's distribution channel if they could.

Re: U.S. Supreme Court to hear Apple App Store antitrust dispute

#108

Post by ash_gti »

vedantroy wrote: post #82
kitsunesoba wrote: post #67

Perhaps it’s an unpopular opinion, but I’m hopeful that this doesn’t go anywhere for the simple fact that I don’t want to have to keep 5 different app stores installed to have access to everything. It would be cool to have an iOS equivalent of F-Droid, but I’d rather that not come at the cost of scattering commercial iOS apps across stores. I’m not keen on the idea of non-WebKit web engines on iOS either because it w…

I think its good to force Apple to allow non-WebKit web engines on iOS. Right now Apple can forcefully cripple technologies like progressive web apps by not supporting the latest web technologies. This allows Apple to force companies to develop native applications. Similarly, Apple has been slacking off on improving Webkit and making it as good as V8. By getting rid of Apple's monopoly on web engines, developers will…

WebKit does support service workers now and they're working on support for Web App Manifests. Some web apps, like Kindle Web Reader work fine in offline mode on my iPhone, granted that site is using the older (deprecated) App Cache manifest.

Re: U.S. Supreme Court to hear Apple App Store antitrust dispute

#109

Post by MBCook »

belltaco wrote: post #98
MBCook wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plus at the time Netscape sold for $$$. MS basically dumped & devalued their market to $0.

And thus set off the internet revolution without a $$$ barrier to entry.

Other than the $2000 computer + ISP.

I wasn’t making a judgement on the move, simply pointing out ‘undercut your competitor until they’re broke’ strategy is a classic the government goes after. It wasn’t just that MS had a higher market share.

Re: U.S. Supreme Court to hear Apple App Store antitrust dispute

#110

Post by nothrabannosir »

threeseed wrote: post #45
lbacaj wrote: post #29

Unfortunately for Apple, I do think the App Store being an exclusive and default way to purchase and load apps on iOS is in fact causing prices of Apps, in many cases, to be higher than they should be. The perfect example of this is the subscription services, right now you can get a cheaper subscription to a service such as Spotify if you buy it off the App Store. That is a prime example of how much the 30% payment t…

Apple provides a service for that 30% though. They handle the payment processing, they build, moderate and curate the App Store apps and they provide a lucrative channel to market for app developers. So allowing Spotify et al to get all the benefits of the channel without paying for it is actually unfair to Apple.

> Apple provides a service for that 30% though.

Money is universally reviled, and rightfully so: it is a dark, vile, evil thing. It brings out the very worst in the very best of us. It brings entire countries to their knees. Money corrupts. Money is awful.

But there is one thing that money does better than anything else, bar nothing. No contest. No competitor on the horizon. Many have tried, all have failed. Money quanitifies value.

It is not up to you to defend how much money Apple should get. It is not up to us to contradict it. It is up to the market. This is the one and only thing it does well, so let's at least give it that.

Because allowing Apple to get all the benefits of determining the value of their app store, without letting the market give it a go, is actually unfair to Money.

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