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Apple admits it ranked its Files app ahead of competitor Dropbox

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Re: Apple admits it ranked its Files app ahead of competitor Dropbox

#141

Post by astrange »

intricatedetail wrote: post #71
codesternews wrote: post #28

Apple has made life of small developers hard. Mac software and app industry has died. Even after notarising apps they show malicious popup to users. Same practices has adapted by apple like search ad etc etc. They make competing services and steal ideas of developers and those app dies. For eg screen time for Moments app. They have unfair advantage and small developers could not complete. Only handful of indie develo…

They also don't pay the same taxes as small businesses. The market is completely rigged. Apple should be split and fined.

Apple is the largest taxpayer in the US. (and incorporated in California instead of Delaware, which presumably means higher fees)

Re: Apple admits it ranked its Files app ahead of competitor Dropbox

#142

Post by kwdc »

nexuist wrote: post #84

Does anyone else just…not care? Files is a system app like Windows Explorer. It’s not meant to “compete” with anything. Does anyone think Control Panel competes with Android’s Settings app? iCloud Drive is a cloud storage competitor that Files works well with, but Files also supports Dropbox and Google Drive and many other storage competitors (anyone who wants to implement the API gets to be in Files). Also, the argu…

If I search for something and its found, I expect it to be the first result. Not an ad for its competitor. I hate the manipulation of rankings that interfere in this way.

Re: Apple admits it ranked its Files app ahead of competitor Dropbox

#143

Post by Const-me »

heavyset_go wrote: post #50
codesternews wrote: post #28

Apple has made life of small developers hard. Mac software and app industry has died. Even after notarising apps they show malicious popup to users. Same practices has adapted by apple like search ad etc etc. They make competing services and steal ideas of developers and those app dies. For eg screen time for Moments app. They have unfair advantage and small developers could not complete. Only handful of indie develo…

> Mac software and app industry has died. Even after notarising apps they show malicious popup to users. I maintain a handful of open source apps for macOS, and have for years. If I don't pay the $100 Apple tax, macOS will treat those apps as if they're radioactive, and it will trick users into believing the apps are either broken or malicious. In order to run them, users must know how to change arcane settings and d…

Windows is getting close to macOS in that regard. Specifically, both browser and OS are arbitrarily marking installers as malware, scaring users. Even digital signatures don't help.

The only reliable workaround is publishing through Windows store.

Re: Apple admits it ranked its Files app ahead of competitor Dropbox

#144

Post by simondotau »

mthoms wrote: post #133
graeme wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A filesystem and an internet browser are two very different things! Files = Windows explorer, the filesystem. Which is not internet explorer, the browser. Dropbox and Files indeed aren’t really competitors. I often use Files to browser my Dropbox files!

I just uninstalled Dropbox and upgraded my iCloud storage. I’ll admit it’s an experiment to see if it meets my needs, but for my use case(syncing between my desktop and laptop), they are absolutely direct competitors.

Yes, iCloud certainly does compete with Dropbox. But Files doesn’t. You didn’t use the Files app to upgrade your iCloud storage, you went to Settings or a web browser.

Re: Apple admits it ranked its Files app ahead of competitor Dropbox

#145

Post by l33t2328 »

Nextgrid wrote: post #72
Rubayo wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet given all this, for a substantial cohort of customers, the Apple brand is still bought as a badge of "coolness".

The Apple brand is still where things mostly "just work". Sure, it's significantly declined in the last few years, but it's still ahead of Linux, and while Windows was great during the Windows 7 era and Microsoft definitely has the resources to compete, it seems like they're intentionally degrading the experience with Windows 10.

Why do you say they’re degrading the experience?

Re: Apple admits it ranked its Files app ahead of competitor Dropbox

#146

Post by shkkmo »

judge2020 wrote: post #123
heavyset_go wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can go across the street to a dozen different stores. If I travel a little further, I can go to even more stores. No matter where I go, with Apple and Google, I'm have to use their payment systems and give each of them a 30% cut of my apps' revenue. They both have a duopoly in the mobile operating systems market and the mobile app distribution market, and Apple has the majority of the market share in both markets i…

The difference is that Walmart didn't build the street or the city and doesn't have a right to take a cut of sales on other people's property. A more apt comparison would be the third-party hotels that, if they want to use some of Disney's 25,000 acres in Florida[0], literally have to lease the land from Disney and Disney can impose terms like a cut of sales (or a forced Disney merchandise store within the hotel). iO…

You actually OWN your device and should have the right to do what you please with it. This analogy is poor.

Re: Apple admits it ranked its Files app ahead of competitor Dropbox

#147

Post by JimDabell »

webmobdev wrote: post #40
eyesee wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Alarm bells should have been raised among us developers when Apple suddenly asked everyone to shell out $99 for the "privilege" of making an app available on the "App Store", and treated it as something normal. And later, more so, when Apple demanded a percentage cut too on every sale you make from your app. I'm not sure where the "suddenly" comes from. It's not as if there was a time before the fee where developer…

The "suddenly" is in the context of this new practice of charging all developers (big or small) annual fees and demanding a recurring cut of their profit. Before this unnatural practice became prevalent, any computer user and / or Linux / Windows / Mac / Android developer could create and distribute software on the respective platforms for free without any such financial consideration. My point is let's not normalise…

> Before this unnatural practice became prevalent

We’re talking about computer hardware and software. Complaining that it is “unnatural” makes no sense.

> any computer user and / or Linux / Windows / Mac / Android developer could create and distribute software on the respective platforms for free without any such financial consideration.

This isn’t true. The first Android device was launched to the public after the App Store was open for business. And you are ignoring all the platforms where this was a common practice beforehand, like consoles. Apple weren’t the first to charge for access to a platform, this was already a common practice. Nintendo have been doing it since the mid 80s, for instance.

Re: Apple admits it ranked its Files app ahead of competitor Dropbox

#148

Post by simondotau »

tyingq wrote: post #92
lilyball wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When a “page” of search results consists of 1 ad and 1 result, it’s really not very meaningful to talk about “pages”.

"Below the fold" doesn't have meaning? Is that not what he was effectively saying?

“Below the fold“ implies that the result wasn’t on screen. The second search result is always on screen, even if you have a tiny iPhone from six years ago. When you search for “dropbox“ and the second result is the Dropbox app adorned with the Dropbox logo, is anyone ever going to even notice the first result?

Re: Apple admits it ranked its Files app ahead of competitor Dropbox

#149

Post by simondotau »

rchaud wrote: post #120
musicale wrote: post #51

I tend to think of Files as less like Dropbox and more like the macOS Finder. You can actually browse Dropbox in Files, much as you can in the Finder, although there are some limitations. https://help.dropbox.com/installs-integrations/mobile/ios-fi...

I never had to go to the Mac App Store to download Finder though.

If you did have to download Finder from the Mac App Store, would that turn Finder into a competitor of Dropbox?

Re: Apple admits it ranked its Files app ahead of competitor Dropbox

#150

Post by JimDabell »

webmobdev wrote: post #63
tracer4201 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think you answered the ops question. Was there ever a time that you could develop software for Mac or particularly iOS and distribute it without paying the developer license fee? To be fair - the Unix market is different than iOS apps. And on Windows, anyone could run whatever program… which caused a lot of problems and financial loss. And just because Windows or Unix used those models, why are they the one a…

Was there ever a time that you could develop software for Mac or particularly iOS and distribute it without paying the developer license fee? As I have said in my original post, that's the point it started going downhill for us developers on the macOS and ios platform; and as Apple continues to further abuse its position, it's time to say a clear no to their regressive and exploitive practices. And as I have said els…

> that's the point it started going downhill for us developers on the macOS and iOS platform

The only developers on the iPhoneOS platform at that point worked for Apple, or jailbroke and used reverse engineered APIs, or built web applications.

You seem to be implying that there was some happy era of open native iPhone application development before Apple ruined it all with the App Store, but that’s simply not true.

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