I don't understand what the screenshot is trying to convey.
This is a screenshot of the Apple Music app on Android. The point is that any music app on iOS with a screen like this would kicked out of Apple's app store.
Apple Music on Android requires its own payment details to avoid Google 30% cut
101–110 of 408 posts
Re: Apple Music on Android requires its own payment details to avoid Google 30% cut
#102People keep writing about businesses like they are surprised they aren't moral entities with consistent moral logic. Businesses take whatever action or position they can to maximize their results. The more power the business has, the more they can leverage that power to get what they want. This should just be the default assumption at this point and we should talk about if that is ok for society, not keep feigning su…
This faulty logic is deeply ironic, since it's an expression of irrational negative emotion, which is what it's accusing others of. It's so common and so unchanging, I can paste an old comment I wrote about it (just substitute "corporations" for "wealthy and powerful people"): The "why are people surprised" line is a huge red flag for me that a person is not arguing in good faith. Accusing people of being "surprised"…
> when people are defending something perceived by others to be immoral or otherwise harmful
well, i'd usually be just as surprised as the parent that people on this site are still getting surprised by it, and i sure as hell am not defending the company doing this.
all publicly traded companies should be considered amoral by default. if they take moral action, then they dont do it because of morality. they do it either because they wish to portrait themselves as moral for publicity or they have another way to profit off of it. the thing which would surprise me is that people still dont expect that.
in this particular case i'm not surprised though. hn readers are extremely positive of apple, no matter what apple does.
Re: Apple Music on Android requires its own payment details to avoid Google 30% cut
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
But the second doesn’t apply - you can’t listen to Apple Music with a different app, you have to use their app.
You can listen to it in a browser. You can use an iPad. There are many ways to use Apple Music that do not involve an Android app.
This, but to take this even further, MusicKit and the Apple Music APIs even allow for 3rd party Android apps to play back purchased content.
Re: Apple Music on Android requires its own payment details to avoid Google 30% cut
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
Obviously if Apple owns one platform, and Google owns the other platform, it is not actually the same situation. The law does not require that Google and Apple run their online stores the same way, or that Apple interact with Google's store the same way they choose to run their own store. In fact it's arguable that a free marketplace encourages and depends on different companies taking different approaches to meet cu…
Analogous != same. It means its very similar factually. The law does not require that Google and Apple run their online stores the same way, or that Apple interact with Google's store the same way they choose to run their own store. That's correct. But the law does require them to run the stores in a way that does not violate antitrust laws. Apple is violating antitrust laws by forcing companies to use Apple Pay as a…
If Apple is violating antitrust laws with their own store, it doesn't matter whether their use of the Google store is consistent with their own behavior. And if they're not violating antitrust law, that inconsistency also does not matter. I think you're mixing up legal concepts that are not dependent on one another.
Re: Apple Music on Android requires its own payment details to avoid Google 30% cut
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks. I'm familiar with the distinction between common and civil law, but that does not seem sufficiently specific to my question to be very helpful. The link to judicial estoppel is helpful, but seems much less broad than the gamblor956's claim. Judicial estoppel involves a party presenting contradictory arguments in separate court cases , not just hypocritical behavior by the party. (gamblor956: "if you take a po…
Judicial estoppel is a lot broader than the 3 paragraph Wikipedia page. It applies to the same court case, to separate court cases, and to actions occurring outside of a courtroom that would affect a court case if such actions have the effect of contradicting a legal position a party is taking in court.
But so far, you haven't advanced any theory of how Apple's behavior here ("we use external payment in Google's app store") contradicts any legal position that Apple is taking in any court case.
You can't be claiming that Apple takes the legal position that external payment handling is illegal in all app stores?
Re: Apple Music on Android requires its own payment details to avoid Google 30% cut
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wouldn't it all depend on the contracts/agreements in place? If Google has a different agreement than Apple, why would the same terms apply?
It's not about the TOS, it's about Apple taking the position that Google's requirement is anticompetitive in the Play Store but that Apple doing the same thing (actually worse, since Google allows third-party stores to be installed) in its own App Store is not. That can be used against them in an antitrust proceeding...in US courts. I don't know how the EU handles judicial estoppel since AFAIK it's only a feature of…
When has Apple argued that Google's Play Store is anticompetitive?
Apple's more likely to argue "Google's TOS lets us do X, our TOS doesn't" or something along those lines.
Re: Apple Music on Android requires its own payment details to avoid Google 30% cut
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
But Walmart isn't the only store to go to in meatspace. If you have an iOS device, you get the Walmart of apps and only the Walmart of apps. This is the problem.
But you're choosing a definition of the world that's too narrow -- "if you've already decided to go to Walmart then Walmart is the only store that can sell at Walmart." Why isn't "the world" the smartphone market where there are plenty of options?
> Why isn't "the world" the smartphone market where there are plenty of options?
At a certain point in debates like this everyone ends up over-examining analogies to a point where it isn't useful. To be a useful parallel you'd need a world where you can only buy two types of car and each one only lets you go to one type of shopping mall, or something like that. My point is, that isn't how either the real world works or how smartphone app stores work, so it's a debate over nothing.
Re: Apple Music on Android requires its own payment details to avoid Google 30% cut
#108Note to the people asking why this matters: Legally, if you take a position in federal court on X (i.e., that it's okay to ban external transactions by apps using your app store), and you are found to be doing not-X in an analogous situation (i.e., setting up external transactions to avoid fees in your competitors' app store), the court can rule against you in the original case...and then sanction you and your lawyer…
Obviously if Apple owns one platform, and Google owns the other platform, it is not actually the same situation. The law does not require that Google and Apple run their online stores the same way, or that Apple interact with Google's store the same way they choose to run their own store. In fact it's arguable that a free marketplace encourages and depends on different companies taking different approaches to meet cu…
>Obviously if Apple owns one platform, and Google owns the other platform, it is not actually the same situation.
Let's look at a situation where Google is seeking to protect it's own cut of the action.
>“After 18 months of operating Fortnite on Android outside of the Google Play Store, we’ve come to a basic realization,” reads Epic’s statement. “Google puts software downloadable outside of Google Play at a disadvantage, through technical and business measures such as scary, repetitive security pop-ups for downloaded and updated software, restrictive manufacturer and carrier agreements and dealings, Google public relations characterizing third party software sources as malware, and new efforts such as Google Play Protect to outright block software obtained outside the Google Play store.”
https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/21/21229943/epic-games-fortn...
This behavior is much more troubling from an antitrust perspective than "Apple is being a hypocrite".
Re: Apple Music on Android requires its own payment details to avoid Google 30% cut
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
But Walmart isn't the only store to go to in meatspace. If you have an iOS device, you get the Walmart of apps and only the Walmart of apps. This is the problem.
But you're choosing a definition of the world that's too narrow -- "if you've already decided to go to Walmart then Walmart is the only store that can sell at Walmart." Why isn't "the world" the smartphone market where there are plenty of options?
Because an iPhone is not the App Store. This seems fairly obvious?
"the definition of world is too narrow" is a pretty weak argument.
Re: Apple Music on Android requires its own payment details to avoid Google 30% cut
#110It's very relevant to note that Google Play's terms around in-app billing[1] are far more liberal than Apple's. > Developers offering products within a game downloaded on Google Play or providing access to game content must use Google Play In-app Billing as the method of payment. Developers offering products within another category of app downloaded on Google Play must use Google Play In-app Billing as the method of…
But the second doesn’t apply - you can’t listen to Apple Music with a different app, you have to use their app.
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/musickitjs
MusicKit JS lets users play songs from Apple Music and their Cloud Library inside your JavaScript app. When a user provides permission to access their Apple Music account, your JavaScript app can create playlists, add songs to their library, and play any of the millions of songs in the Apple Music catalog directly in a browser, with no ...