Apple’s defense of the App Store just shows how hard it is to compete with Apple • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple’s defense of the App Store just shows how hard it is to compete with Apple

#21

Post by balabaster » Wed, May 29, 2019, 4:33 PM UTC

zepto wrote: post #12

mcphage wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also allow apps to allow purchases inside without going through Apple's in-app purchases. Maybe they need to decide on a case-by-case basis, or maybe only for apps for companies with a large external presence, but not being able to buy eBooks through the Kindle app, because Apple wants it to go through their own in-app purchases instead of Amazon's own payment gateway, is frustrating.

If they allow enough In app purchases not to go through the store then they have no way to collect money from anyone, Since all apps could then just collect their money that way. If you limit it only to an anointed group of large companies then you have formed a cartel, which itself is likely illegal.

They could do something like Microsoft has with Azure where you have an Enterprise Agreement whereby you pay some licensing fee and then they allow companies to route through their own payment gateways to make for a better user experience.

People say Apple care about the user, but they don't, they care only insofar as ensuring lock in. They don't care if you hate Apple, just so long as you keep giving them your money. As long as you don't hate them enough to leave, they've done enough.

The only way to fix it is if enough companies make their user experience so much better on Android that having an Android device is a more attractive offering than an Apple one and enough users flee Apple for alternatives... but companies don't give a shit if you want Android or Apple, what they care about is how much they have to pay developers to win your money and your eyeballs on their products.

I've worked on a number of high value development teams for these types of apps across mobile platforms and this attitude has been common across all of them: If they can still win your money through a crippled user experience that it costs them a minimal amount to maintain across both platforms, that's what they do. They want Apple's market. They want Android's market. They don't want to maintain two applications and two development teams because that increases costs and they want similar user experiences on each device because brand fragmentation hurts their image. So in this sense Apple is also hurting Android and it's evidence they don't really give much of a fuck about the user as long as they're getting your money.

I say this as someone who has experience on the inside of development teams that provide the apps you love on the devices you love, and I say this as someone who loves my Apple devices but am by no means an iFanboy.

Re: Apple’s defense of the App Store just shows how hard it is to compete with Apple

#22

Post by tguedes » Wed, May 29, 2019, 4:43 PM UTC

danShumway wrote: post #18

alienreborn wrote: post #7

Relevant article by former App Approval Chief at Apple: https://medium.com/@phillipshoemaker/apple-v-everybody-59030...

From the article: > Target, for example, is a standard, old-school brick and mortar shop. You go to find specific products and walk up and down aisles. When you find something that interests you, you don’t purchase it through that product. Instead you bring it to the Target checkout clerk, and they will charge you for it. And believe me, Target gets their fair share of the purchase of that item. If Target finds that…

I don't believe it contradicts it. Apple claims that it does not set the price, the developers do. That's what they mean when they are just the intermediary, they facilitate the transaction but are not part of it.

I think his example is poor because Target does set the prices on products, for the most part. I think something better would be a flee market. The flee market operators provide services to facilitate the sales of the vendors and they can also choose which vendors are allowed to sell in their market, but they do not control the prices the vendors sell at.

Re: Apple’s defense of the App Store just shows how hard it is to compete with Apple

#23

Post by Tiktaalik » Wed, May 29, 2019, 4:44 PM UTC

adgasf wrote: post #3

Apple needs to allow you to change the default apps (similar to how you can change the keyboard) for this argument to hold up.

Also I'd need to believe that these competing apps are genuinely on the same playing field as Apple's.

For example, why is there still no Spotify app for the Watch that matches Apple's Music app? I can't believe Spotify isn't interested in making one...

Re: Apple’s defense of the App Store just shows how hard it is to compete with Apple

#24

Post by zepto » Wed, May 29, 2019, 4:51 PM UTC

balabaster wrote: post #21

zepto wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they allow enough In app purchases not to go through the store then they have no way to collect money from anyone, Since all apps could then just collect their money that way. If you limit it only to an anointed group of large companies then you have formed a cartel, which itself is likely illegal.

They could do something like Microsoft has with Azure where you have an Enterprise Agreement whereby you pay some licensing fee and then they allow companies to route through their own payment gateways to make for a better user experience. People say Apple care about the user, but they don't, they care only insofar as ensuring lock in. They don't care if you hate Apple, just so long as you keep giving them your money…

Your arguments rest on the idea that the independent software providers don’t care about the user experience and are simply going to try to minimize costs. You said as much.

Therefore, If Apple allowed alternative in app purchase experiences, there would simply be a race to the bottom to provide the cheapest user experience they could get away with on both Apple and Android devices.

Re: Apple’s defense of the App Store just shows how hard it is to compete with Apple

#25

Post by bearjaws » Wed, May 29, 2019, 4:51 PM UTC

woodgrainz wrote: post #2

Apple's market share is low enough that it may continue to be unchallenged by enforcing all its own apps to be the default apps. Antitrust will probably not apply to them, I suspect.

If Microsoft defaulting IE8 can result in a antitrust lawsuit, I believe we will see the same applied here when it comes to assistants, google maps, browsers and such.

Re: Apple’s defense of the App Store just shows how hard it is to compete with Apple

#26

Post by bitpush » Wed, May 29, 2019, 4:57 PM UTC

wayoutthere wrote: post #14

pwinnski wrote: post #4

> The message here seems to be that if companies don’t like Apple’s policies, they’ve got other options. Go find your riches on Android or make a Roku app. But developers have a huge financial incentive to be in the App Store. It’s often been reported that iOS users spend more money on apps than people with Android phones, and Apple leans on that advantage. Apple's argument would seem to be that this financial incent…

I tend to agree with this argument, and here’s why: Apple’s brand across the board is about controlling every aspect of the user experience so they can make it a cohesive experience the user enjoys. They do this at the expense of short-term monetary gains from things like advertising, and don’t give a damn about making life difficult for their business partners. This is not the result of their success but likely the…

Are we justifying potentially illegal behavior by saying "that's their brand" and it helps them get wealthy in the long run?

Monsanto does the same with seeds. They do RnD, develop seeds and force farmers to buy seeds directly from them, control end to end and probably produce higher-yield crops with lesser diseases. It is their "brand" but should we justify that behavior?

Re: Apple’s defense of the App Store just shows how hard it is to compete with Apple

#27

Post by bilbo0s » Wed, May 29, 2019, 4:59 PM UTC

tguedes wrote: post #22

danShumway wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the article: > Target, for example, is a standard, old-school brick and mortar shop. You go to find specific products and walk up and down aisles. When you find something that interests you, you don’t purchase it through that product. Instead you bring it to the Target checkout clerk, and they will charge you for it. And believe me, Target gets their fair share of the purchase of that item. If Target finds that…

I don't believe it contradicts it. Apple claims that it does not set the price, the developers do. That's what they mean when they are just the intermediary, they facilitate the transaction but are not part of it. I think his example is poor because Target does set the prices on products, for the most part. I think something better would be a flee market. The flee market operators provide services to facilitate the s…

Just as a point of precision, Target does not technically set the price of any given manufacturer's goods. What they do when you get to that point in your talks with them, (and only if you're not ginormous), is to strongly suggest that you sell your product at such and such price. If you don't, they're gonna walk and sign on your competitor instead.

It's devilishly ingenious, because, as I found out the hard way, in a court of law, they don't consider that to be setting the price. You still have the power to set your own price. You just won't be in Target if you pick the wrong price.

Re: Apple’s defense of the App Store just shows how hard it is to compete with Apple

#28

Post by hrktb » Wed, May 29, 2019, 5:01 PM UTC

zepto wrote: post #13

mcphage wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not a lawyer by any stretch, but I remember from conversations here recently about anti-trust, is that it all depends on how the "market" is defined. Apple has a non-monopoly share of the smartphone market, or even the app market, but they do have a monopoly share of the iPhone market. Sometimes, that's the relevant metric.

By that logic, any manufacturer who doesn’t produce a commodity is automatically a monopolist.

The metrics might be how far they are using their weight to one-up competition within their ecosystem.

The same point has been raised with Amazon using its platform wide vision to see market trends and enter profitable niches with its own brand.

There’s an effort to redefine anti-competitive behaviors within a platform, it might end up being called something else than anti-trust, but it’s a real effort.

Re: Apple’s defense of the App Store just shows how hard it is to compete with Apple

#29

Post by judge2020 » Wed, May 29, 2019, 5:04 PM UTC

Tiktaalik wrote: post #23

adgasf wrote: post #3

Apple needs to allow you to change the default apps (similar to how you can change the keyboard) for this argument to hold up.

Also I'd need to believe that these competing apps are genuinely on the same playing field as Apple's. For example, why is there still no Spotify app for the Watch that matches Apple's Music app? I can't believe Spotify isn't interested in making one...

Spotify says Apple didn't allow them [0]:

> When Apple launches their new Apple Watch, they dismiss our proposals and won’t work with us to develop an app for it.

Apple denies this[1]:

> When Spotify submitted their Apple Watch app in September 2018, we reviewed and approved it with the same process and speed with which we would any other app. In fact, the Spotify Watch app is currently the No. 1 app in the Watch Music category.

0: https://timetoplayfair.com/timeline/

1: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2019/03/addressing-spotifys-c...

Re: Apple’s defense of the App Store just shows how hard it is to compete with Apple

#30

Post by gowld » Wed, May 29, 2019, 5:09 PM UTC

bitpush wrote: post #26

wayoutthere wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tend to agree with this argument, and here’s why: Apple’s brand across the board is about controlling every aspect of the user experience so they can make it a cohesive experience the user enjoys. They do this at the expense of short-term monetary gains from things like advertising, and don’t give a damn about making life difficult for their business partners. This is not the result of their success but likely the…

Are we justifying potentially illegal behavior by saying "that's their brand" and it helps them get wealthy in the long run? Monsanto does the same with seeds. They do RnD, develop seeds and force farmers to buy seeds directly from them, control end to end and probably produce higher-yield crops with lesser diseases. It is their "brand" but should we justify that behavior?

> justifying potentially illegal behavior

No, that's putting the cart before the horse. The question isn't "is this (presumed) illegal behavior justified?"; the question is "this behavior is illegal if it is unjustified -- is it justified?". The illegality (should) be a result of answering the question "is someone hurt unfairly?" If the behavior in question is profiting from their own hard+smart work and not sharing the wealth as much as partners want, it shouldn't be illegal (or at most, the illegality is in keeping too high a share of the profits). If the behavior is bait-and-switch trapping people and ripping them off by hooking them with deceptively low onboarding price with high back-end "debt service", then it should be illegal.

This is the principle underlying anti-trust/monopoly law.