151–160 of 369 posts
Who writes like this: > If the idea of monopoly were Beyoncé, then monopsony would be Solange. They're close sisters, yet their styles are pretty different. And while only one of them has been famous for a long time, the other one seems to be getting a lot of attention more recently.
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What is the justification for the 30% in year one, Apple's costs don't halve after one year? Sounds like they are simply hurting competitors profitability.
Apple makes no distinction between companies on it's platform that compete with it and those that do not, they are all treated the same, so it's hard to see an argument that this is mainly targeted at their competitors holding water. Furthermore e.g. Apple does compete with Amazon kindle store on the Apple platform, but Google doesn't compete with AMamzon yet imposes almost identical terms on the Amamzon kindle store…
There was that story last year about them ranking their own apps above competing 3rd party apps when searching.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/apple-dominates-app-store-searc...
Who writes like this: > If the idea of monopoly were Beyoncé, then monopsony would be Solange. They're close sisters, yet their styles are pretty different. And while only one of them has been famous for a long time, the other one seems to be getting a lot of attention more recently.
People who try to make tech writing relatable to a wide audience. Is it really so bad?
Amusingly, 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 is not like Tesla; iPhones are often touted as a “luxury brand” but the truth is that they offer products of quality that are roughly in proportion to their pricing, and their high margins are due to better/more efficient operations than their competitors. A phone is such an essential tool in one’s life and priced low enough that it makes sense to invest in a product that is of good quality. Most people can aff…
That's a really alarmist (and counterfactual) way of framing this.
Yes, if you change computing platforms, you generally need to replace software. OH NO. I don't see a need for regulatory intervention based on that.
Deciding to ditch the iPhone for an Android has utterly no bearing on your ability to watch TV or movies purchased from the iTunes store. You can still watch those on an AppleTV, on a Samsung TV, or on your laptop. And obviously on your iPad if you have one of those.
Tracks purchased from the iTunes Music Store are yours, period. There's no DRM, so anything that can play AAC will play them fine. You don't lose those if you ditch the iPhone.
However, Apple Music is a distinct thing. It's a subscription service like Spotify. If you stop paying for it, you stop getting access to the music you acquired with it. This is neither nefarious nor exploitative. You need a device supported by Apple Music, but it works on Windows, so not seeing the problem here, either. (Though I should note that I wouldn't see a problem even if Apple Music worked only on Apple devices.)
Apple is a rounding error in digital books, and I know nothing about it (mostly a Kindle guy). However, if I decide to banish Amazon from my life, I'll lose access to Kindle books I "bought" from Amazon. That was part of the bargain at the time.
>There should be regulation requiring companies like Apple to allow users to sell the apps and other digital content they’ve purchased to others, to allow people to set their own default apps on their own devices and to not hamper the efforts of others to provide interoperability with other devices.
How far does that go? Would you insist on the right to do the same to any computer-controlled device you purchase from any vendor?
Because that seems bananas.
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If anyone else is facing the issue, here's how to deregister your number from iMessage: https://selfsolve.apple.com/deregister-imessage/ Should be Job Done.
It isn’t, though. Group MMSes are notoriously fickle, and doing something like sending a video to the group without it appearing in potato quality feels all but impossible at times. iMessage simply is better for group messaging.
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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…
In Poland at least, SMS costs 0 in almost all plans.
As for WhatsApp, I try to keep people away from it and show them Signal, as I do not trust Facebook with any of my data.
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It isn’t, though. Group MMSes are notoriously fickle, and doing something like sending a video to the group without it appearing in potato quality feels all but impossible at times. iMessage simply is better for group messaging.
The fact that SMS group messages suck isn't something that Apple can really fix without an oob protocol which would basically be iMessage again.
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While this is certainly true, computers and especially mobile ones need to allow consumers to run whatever software they want period. While in the US, it becomes a small inconvenience for us that companies like Netflix and Spotify are having their business sidelined by apple, Apples lock on phones becomes a human rights issue in places like Hong Kong, Russia and Saudi Arabia when Apple complies with local regulation.…
"computers and especially mobile ones need to allow consumers to run whatever software they want period." I should expect to be able to run Windows on my coffee maker? That's a bit of an exaggeration of course, but I do not think this is an important "need". It's Utopian garbage. A top down "simple solution" that is appealing on the surface but deeply flawed in the complex interconnected systems of reality. You can a…
Yes, of course. To satisfy your pedantry: You should be able to put whatever software you want on your personal property and expect the device to boot it rather than refusing because it isn't signed by the powers that be. It's about freedom, not omnipotence.
> That's a bit of an exaggeration of course, but I do not think this is an important "need".
You do not get to decide what's important to other people. If you don't want care about running custom software, just don't do it.
> You can already buy an Android device if you want more flexibility
If Apple's lock in tactics didn't work. Also it means you have to choose between the things that made you go with Apple to begin with and freedom – even though you could easily have both if not for Apple's artificial restrictions.
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Sure there were in Europe. I had plenty of J2ME and Symbian apps before iOS was even born.
You didn't get them from an app store open to the public like the Apple one, though, and neither did their developer get to keep a full 70% of the price.
Send SMS, get download link, done.
Use the Web store from the phone provider, done.