Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've only heard of this happening in the US and Canada. Outside of North America, everyone uses Whatsapp, which supports group messaging on every platform. I'd be curious to know why it hasn't penetrated into those countries.
I don't really know anyone that uses Whatsapp in Finland. Most of my friends use Telegram these days.
Apple’s “monopsony” power, and the woman who named it
131–140 of 369 posts
Re: Apple’s “monopsony” power, and the woman who named it
#132Re: Apple’s “monopsony” power, and the woman who named it
#133Having Apple take a 30% cut of sales in exchange for not having to run an e-commerce operation is far less odious than having to pay $5,000 for a MacBook Pro which has less RAM, a smaller SSD, and less powerful processor than $2,500 worth of Dell, Lenovo, HP, or Acer gear. The hardware is the real rip-off to me. I would gladly pay a reasonable fee if I could write my apps in VS Code on Debian and then ship the code t…
I just can't get my head around this argument. To write software for a computer platform, shock horror, you need to develop and test it on that platform. To develop software using Apple's OS, services and libraries, you need to buy that OS, those services and those libraries that Apple sells. I don't get why that is a contentious issue, or even a question.
We never had this problem Mac and Windows. Those are also created by companies and providing a platform for all sorts of applications, but anyone can develop for them. You don't need anyone's permission to install apps on your laptop. But for your phone, somehow you do.
Re: Apple’s “monopsony” power, and the woman who named it
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've only heard of this happening in the US and Canada. Outside of North America, everyone uses Whatsapp, which supports group messaging on every platform. I'd be curious to know why it hasn't penetrated into those countries.
I think it has to do with the fact that the US (and Canada) very early on had unlimited texting plans, and iMessage would make use of that (iPhones just send texts for iMessages in absence of a data connection). WhatsApp can only use data, which is cheaper and used to be unlimited (that's gone) in the EU. In contrast, texting was and still is insanely expensive in the EU (per byte it is staggering even, compared to n…
You need to specify where in the EU, because it doesn't mirror my experience in France for instance. Data used to be very expensive while there were no shortages of plans with near-unlimited texts. It also isn't the case in many other countries in the world in my experience. AFAIK the advantage of WhatsApp over plain texts isn't that it's cheaper per-se, it's that it works over wi-fi which means that as long as you find a hotspot anywhere in the world you can use it. No need to worry about roaming fees, no need to worry about how many texts or MB of data are in your plan.
Re: Apple’s “monopsony” power, and the woman who named it
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
> They aren’t Facebook. Nobody has to buy an iPhone to keep in touch with all their friends who have iPhones. I have a different perspective. Many of my different friend groups use the "group messaging" feature on their phones. If everyone is using an iPhone in that group, it defaults to using iMessage. I switched to Android about 18 months ago, and it broke all of the group text message chains I had because some of…
I've only heard of this happening in the US and Canada. Outside of North America, everyone uses Whatsapp, which supports group messaging on every platform. I'd be curious to know why it hasn't penetrated into those countries.
Re: Apple’s “monopsony” power, and the woman who named it
#136Having Apple take a 30% cut of sales in exchange for not having to run an e-commerce operation is far less odious than having to pay $5,000 for a MacBook Pro which has less RAM, a smaller SSD, and less powerful processor than $2,500 worth of Dell, Lenovo, HP, or Acer gear. The hardware is the real rip-off to me. I would gladly pay a reasonable fee if I could write my apps in VS Code on Debian and then ship the code t…
The only way to sell iOS software is through the Apple App Store.
Re: Apple’s “monopsony” power, and the woman who named it
#137In the EU we had a ruling that forced Microsoft to offer choices for web browsers when installing Windows for the first time. I.e. IE wasn't set as the default browser by default. They were forced to do this for 5 years, I think so people become aware that there are other choices out there besides IE. They should do the same for the AppStore. When you set up your iPhone, it should give you an option of AppStores, not…
Also remember how long that Microsoft rulling took and what it actualy ended-up being in the end - which for most was an annoying popup for those who already knew how to change web browsers. These days what happens is EU will start the long process and before it hits court some agreement is made.
But the difference for Android and Apple is that Android is `open source`, IOS is not.
Buy an android phone and change the app store - kinda entails rooting the phone in most if not all cases in some way and that for most phone sellers does void the warranty.
So say Apple did offer you to change app store - but in doing that voided your warranty, which would be fair from their perspective. May even be case of, well you have non Apple app store - no Apple services for you as we do not trust your device as you have modified it - enjoy. Again, something that they could justify and in a way which would be fair from their perspective. After all, nobody wants to open up a system in a way that may expose it to outside security or stability issues now. Remember Apple is more about reputation than the products, though they do go hand in hand, it is the reputation that carries them as much if not more than any individual product.
Another way to view this is a hotel has a nice inhouse restaurant, should they be forced to allow McDonalds to open a store in their hotel or leave that choice to the guests who can go to another hotel if they want that experience.
Re: Apple’s “monopsony” power, and the woman who named it
#138Amusingly, there are two sets of people arguing about why Apple is bad, and each have their own argument: 1. Android sells more, and offers more variety of mobile and wearable devices than Apple. And here’s the data to prove it. 2. Apple is a monopoly/monopsony and should be forced to allow more user choice of apps, allow sideloading, lower their prices, lower their app store cut, &c. Which one is is? Apple is like T…
Apple uses vendor lock-in for software used by one customer across devices, and for software used by multiple users (iMessage)
Re: Apple’s “monopsony” power, and the woman who named it
#139Amusingly, there are two sets of people arguing about why Apple is bad, and each have their own argument: 1. Android sells more, and offers more variety of mobile and wearable devices than Apple. And here’s the data to prove it. 2. Apple is a monopoly/monopsony and should be forced to allow more user choice of apps, allow sideloading, lower their prices, lower their app store cut, &c. Which one is is? Apple is like T…
> 1. Android sells more, and offers more variety of mobile and wearable devices than Apple. And here’s the data to prove it.
> 2. Apple is a monopoly/monopsony and should be forced to allow more user choice of apps, allow sideloading, lower their prices, lower their app store cut, &c.
> Which one is is?
Well, these aren't mutually exclusive. Apple can sell less variety, and still exert too much control over their platform--in fact, the first is caused by the second. I'd argue that "monopoly" doesn't really apply to the second situation, so that's sloppy use of the English language, but if you try to actually figure out what people are trying to communicate, rather than being pedantic, you'll have a more interesting conversation with those people.
Re: Apple’s “monopsony” power, and the woman who named it
#140Having Apple take a 30% cut of sales in exchange for not having to run an e-commerce operation is far less odious than having to pay $5,000 for a MacBook Pro which has less RAM, a smaller SSD, and less powerful processor than $2,500 worth of Dell, Lenovo, HP, or Acer gear. The hardware is the real rip-off to me. I would gladly pay a reasonable fee if I could write my apps in VS Code on Debian and then ship the code t…
That is just not true and an exaggeration like that has nothing to do on a board like this. In Europe the prices are even higher for Apple hardware, but because I'm in the market now for an upgrade I can tell you for sure that a 16" MBP is at around 500 Euros more expensive than a similar XPS15 (and I'm not even going into the actual components and the speed of the SSD or others). There is a market for everyone, just…
Dell: £2,349.00
Apple: £3,339.00
It's not as though Dell is a worse option for many uses either - there are plenty of strengths e.g. Linux compatibility, nvidia gpu, support for pens, repairability, on-site support.