Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google and Apple attacked on app store 'monopoly'

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 174 posts

Re: Google and Apple attacked on app store 'monopoly'

#161

Post by TheCoelacanth »

cblconfederate wrote: post #3

i think it's not productive to call it a literal/actual/effective monopoly, since it's designed to be monopoly. The problem is not so much that it's a monopoly but that it advertises itself to developers and to users as being an open more or less market, which it isn't since it's by design rigged and censored. There's a legal gap here probably because such situations are unprecedented (where a company builds a market…

> it's designed to be monopoly

How is being designed to be illegal a defense? If anything, that makes it worse.

Re: Google and Apple attacked on app store 'monopoly'

#162

Post by fastball »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #151
fastball wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same as everyone else's, I'd expect – less possibility (higher difficulty for attackers) of viruses / data exfiltration / etc.

How is that less possible? Did grandparent do a diff between the iOS and MacOS CVE list or is it a hunch based on which platform is more locked down?

This is architecturally speaking – specifically, more wholistic sandboxing.

You literally can't do a whole host of things on an iOS device without first jailbreaking it. Things which you can do on macOS by default.

Apple has added some limitations to macOS that do similar in the past few years (namely expanding the oversight of "Gatekeeper"), but it is still allows far more behaviors than an iOS device does.

A system with a smaller attack surface (made by the same company with fairly consistent engineering practices) is more secure. That is the assumption I am making here.

Re: Google and Apple attacked on app store 'monopoly'

#163

Post by toyg »

zepto wrote: post #114
toyg wrote: post #74

This will be round 2 in the fight for formalizing the role of OS developers versus App developers. Round 1 was the MS antitrust case, the outcome of which was clearly too weak to survive in the long run. The definition of general-purpose Operating Systems should be formalized, and there should be a clear separation of roles: if you make an OS you cannot make apps and services, end of story. Then force Apple, Google,…

Does that mean you can’t supply a notepad? How about Ubuntu? Would they be allowed to ship a terminal? What about smalltalk running on bare metal? Do environments that blur the line between apps and the OS become illegal to supply? Government regulated software will completely destroy all software freedom, forever.

You are being overly dramatic. Take the features that Windows 95 shipped with and codify them into broad legalese guidelines. That's all it takes.

Re: Google and Apple attacked on app store 'monopoly'

#164

Post by zepto »

toyg wrote: post #163
zepto wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does that mean you can’t supply a notepad? How about Ubuntu? Would they be allowed to ship a terminal? What about smalltalk running on bare metal? Do environments that blur the line between apps and the OS become illegal to supply? Government regulated software will completely destroy all software freedom, forever.

You are being overly dramatic. Take the features that Windows 95 shipped with and codify them into broad legalese guidelines. That's all it takes.

> Take the features that Windows 95 shipped with and codify them into broad legalese guidelines.

Well played! Very dröle.

Re: Google and Apple attacked on app store 'monopoly'

#165

Post by easton »

joking wrote: post #106
easton wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They weren't forced to do it, they did it so they didn't have to have a 17+ rating in the App Store. And then they decided not to. https://www.theverge.com/tech/2021/4/19/22391675/discord-ios...

has any a browser a +17 rating on the App Store?

Every browser used to, given you can look at porn on them.

Re: Google and Apple attacked on app store 'monopoly'

#166

Post by paulryanrogers »

kergonath wrote: post #158
paulryanrogers wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

30% on specialized game consoles, yes. On general purpose computers digital distribution was diversified among many websites. (At least apart from games or before Steam.) IOS and Android are increasingly marketed as general purpose devices which are needed for more and more parts of life.

You said exactly the same thing as I did. When the App Store started, the model was device-specific stores or Steam, all of them taking 30%. It was entirely unremarkable. Now, is there a law saying that you are allowed to take a cut only on non-general purpose computers? Where is the line between specific- and general-purpose? Is it defined anywhere? Why would app stores selling games be meaningfully different? Is a…

I'm not trying to make a legal argument. Just pointing out that before the IOS store and Steam it was common to buy from producers directly or from a variety of digital markets. Which could undermine the premise that a 30% cut was typical.

Re: Google and Apple attacked on app store 'monopoly'

#167

Post by sumedh »

Traster wrote: post #159
sumedh wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple and Google colluded to not poach employees from one another, why do you think they wont collude again?

Because they don’t need to.

They did not need to collude to suppress employee wages yet they did.

Re: Google and Apple attacked on app store 'monopoly'

#168

Post by thu2111 »

ksec wrote: post #98
username90 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EU law already handled the credit card duopoly, should work the same here. The changes didn't propagate to US though.

The Apple Apologist keep saying it is Apple's platform, Apple dictates the rules, if you dont like it go somewhere else. And yet when EU say it is their market their rules, Apple apologist keep saying foul. You then have half of the discussion about the term "monopoly" which half of them dont understand and refuse to understand. And another half of the discussions about Apple's BS that they took and state they have v…

Of course they cry foul, those two things aren't comparable at all.

Cost of switching to Android from Apple: walking down the street and buying a new phone. Cost of switching from the EU to some other jurisdiction: move to another continent. Additionally, it's not the eu's market, Apple actually created the app Store and did significant work to make it real. It is apples, due to the long-standing principle of private property rights. The EU has done nothing to create that, mostly just taking control of pre-existing markets and infrastructures, so it is dystopian to talk about a government as if it owns the people within it. That's not how government is meant to be

Re: Google and Apple attacked on app store 'monopoly'

#169

Post by thu2111 »

ksec wrote: post #100
RunawayGalaxy wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It does when you literally can’t operate your store in another mall. Android exists > I also don’t think this analogy scales very well since many stores operate both in and out of closed shopping centers. Including Apple’s stores. How is the scalability of the analogy relevant?

>Android exists So another Mall also charges 30%. Do I have a third mall to choose from? Or can I set up a third mall ? What is the market entry barrier for a third mall ? Are these Mall a necessity in the community? I wish people would stop using over simplified analogy.

For better or worse, yes other malls exist.

Firstly, there's the web. Secondly, Android allows you to create alternative app stores and install them, or install apps entirely outside app stores. Thirdly, there were and still are competitors to both Android and ios, the fact that they suck and nobody uses them is not Apple or Google's fault. Finally, many people live in places where there are only one or two large malls.

Re: Google and Apple attacked on app store 'monopoly'

#170

Post by thu2111 »

toyg wrote: post #88
easton wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much do you consider an OS? Because right now Apple could say “fine”, create “The Darwin and XNU Foundation”, and just keep their closed source window manager / core apps (SpringBoard/Finder calendar, mail, App Store). As long as they donated enough to the foundation to keep open builds coming for other platforms (even if you just get a shell with really old coreutils, although I bet it’d be better than that), th…

Nope, the definition of OS would have to cover at least the window manager and the equivalent of win32/cocoa libs, so that developers can build first-class “windowed applications”. I know it wouldn’t be a trivial effort to define it in legal terms, but even in imprecise terms it would lay the foundation for a body of law that could keep OS developers honest.

Ah great, so now smartphones never happen at all because regulations say general purpose computers must allow windowed applications? You seem to have a remarkable faith in government regulations! All the attempts to regulate tech I've directly had experience with were disaster zones of unintended consequences.
Post reply on HN