Google collects 20 times more telemetry from Android devices than Apple from iOS • Hacker News Board

Re: Google collects 20 times more telemetry from Android devices than Apple from iOS

#211

Post by simonh » Tue, Mar 30, 2021, 10:57 PM UTC

esclerofilo wrote: post #204

simonh wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The situation on Android shows us that consumers like consolidation and they like walled gardens and simple choices. These things benefit them. Plenty of Android phones come with 2 or 3 app stores. One for the carrier, one for the vendor and Google Play Store. There plenty are others as well, but the market has spoken. Even Epic had to fold and move to Play Store. Maybe Google played dirty, but I think it's perfectly…

Fragmentation and walled gardens are a false dichotomy. Steam is actually a great example of this, there are many other stores (Humble Bundle, Fanatical, GMG, whatever) that sell you Steam keys so you can keep your game library in one comfortable place.

Yes Steam are still perfectly comfortable staying at 30% as I said it's clearly a market driven level.

Re: Google collects 20 times more telemetry from Android devices than Apple from iOS

#212

Post by threeseed » Tue, Mar 30, 2021, 10:58 PM UTC

rOOb85 wrote: post #144

threeseed wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please provide evidence of this because Apple's official documentation says otherwise: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203033 They do send nearly WiFi hotspots for crowd sourcing purposes but it is never in conjunction with your local IP address (which is an identifying piece of information).

Did you read the OP article? The researchers clearly outline what apple is phoning home. They even made a nice clean table showing what apple and google are sending back to themselves.

I read the article and it's wrong.

Apple does not explicitly "send" the user's IP address. It naturally is accessible on their end as a result of the TCP/IP protocol. But Apple has made quite clear that it does not use that information in any way.

Re: Google collects 20 times more telemetry from Android devices than Apple from iOS

#213

Post by heavyset_go » Tue, Mar 30, 2021, 10:59 PM UTC

simonh wrote: post #172

heavyset_go wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could walk into Best Buy and buy the game I want off the shelf. I have no such option if I want to buy an iOS app from a store or the developers themselves. Steam also don't engage in anti-competitive behavior and prevent billions of people from using alternative game distribution methods like Apple does. What we need is real competition in the mobile app distribution market to determine whether or not that 30% is…

That's simply not true, Android outsells iOS, it has multiple App Stores and allows sideloading. Plenty of phones come with 2 or 3 different app stores from the network, vendor and Google. The fact is consumers like app stores, they like consolidation because it makes it simpler for them and a lot of them like the benefits they get from a walled garden. Developers like consolidation too, which is why they have conver…

> That's simply not true, Android outsells iOS, it has multiple App Stores and allows sideloading.

It's very true. Google acts in an anticompetitive manner to prevent competition in the mobile app distribution market, as well.

Google prevents mobile app distribution competitors from competing with the Play Store on feature parity because user installable 3rd party mobile app stores cannot implement automatic upgrades, background installation of apps, or batch installs of apps like the Play Store can.

Also, iOS has 60% of the market in the US[1], which is the highest in the world. Apple's App Store is responsible for 100% more app store revenue than the Play Store[2].

> Maybe these stores converged on 30% because it's a nice round number and a roughly 1:2 split makes intuitive sense

Instead of guessing, we should let real competition in the mobile app distribution market increase efficiency and drive costs down to their true values instead of letting a cartel decide what they are.

[2] https://www.businessofapps.com/data/app-revenues/

[1] https://deviceatlas.com/blog/android-v-ios-market-share

Re: Google collects 20 times more telemetry from Android devices than Apple from iOS

#214

Post by minsc__and__boo » Tue, Mar 30, 2021, 10:59 PM UTC

kuratkull wrote: post #159

retube wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Got a courtesy call from BMW the other day to let me know my brake fluid needed changing and would I like an appointment made at my nearest garage? I get that there are privacy concerns, but also that's pretty cool. It also has GPS and will automatically alert BNW if air bags are deployed. Has saved lives.

We can save a lot of lives if we monitor everyone/everything. I'm sure there was very little early death in the Matrix universe.

Except there was a lot of death, hence the line about rejecting uptopia. Also robots used human brains as batteries (or processors, in the original script) which is not quiet the same.

Re: Google collects 20 times more telemetry from Android devices than Apple from iOS

#215

Post by jodrellblank » Tue, Mar 30, 2021, 11:01 PM UTC

pessimizer wrote: post #124

jodrellblank wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You aren't required to use the Apple store to distribute your product. You can sell to Android users and desktop/laptop users. > " That's different. That's very different Is it? Why is it? You can't sell software to run on Kindle Paperwhite even though it's a full computer inside. What's the specific difference between that and iOS, other than "Apple's ecosystem and customers are desirable, so I want to use it" and "…

Your argument rests on the strange assumption that people who are against IOS restricting apps on the iPhone would for some reason support Amazon's restrictions on Kindle apps.

My "argument"[1] rests on the idea that they don't care about restrictions on Kindle apps because there's no valuable market of buyers on the other side, and so it's not about "anti-competitive" as claimed.

The famous and expensive London shop Harrods has a reputation for a wealthy customer base, and it's like saying it's unfair that you have to convince Harrods to stock your products and then they take a cut of all sales for doing so, and that you should be able to sell to their specific wealthy customer base and use their trusted environment for doing so, using the reputation they've developed, without them getting anything in return, and their shop should be an open street market.

[1] in which I ask why it's different, which was no argument at all.

Re: Google collects 20 times more telemetry from Android devices than Apple from iOS

#216

Post by amelius » Tue, Mar 30, 2021, 11:01 PM UTC

swiley wrote: post #84

papaf wrote: post #13

Smartphones are personal tracking devices that also allow you to browse the web and make phone calls.

I've always thought of them as "endpoints for deploying cooperate software into your life" but this is also a pretty good description.

The iPhone is basically a vending machine for entertainment, owned by Apple and paid for by you.

Re: Google collects 20 times more telemetry from Android devices than Apple from iOS

#217

Post by insert_coin » Tue, Mar 30, 2021, 11:02 PM UTC

svara wrote: post #65

rdw wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 30% cut was considered very good at the time. It was way better than the 50-90% cut that traditional publishers would take. A sibling comment notes that Steam charged 30% at the time (though some had better deals) but it's worth noting that Steam was not an open platform that anyone could publish on. Much like for consoles, to put a game on Steam you had to have a preexisting relationship with Valve, or try to de…

I can't help but feel like having it this way is breaking one of the huge reasons that made computers so absurdly exciting and enticing in the past. The fact that there was this wide open field, where, sure, maybe you paid Microsoft for the OS, but then the rest was up to you. Trade shareware CDs, install stuff from the internet, type in code from a book or whatever, it felt like an infinite open field of possibiliti…

> I can't help but feel like having it this way is breaking one of the huge reasons that made computers so absurdly exciting and enticing in the past.

We live in a bubble, so it was exciting for us.

The iPhone was exciting for everyone, for the whole world, and in no small part because normal people finally felt confident enough to try all that sweet sweet software that became available thanks to people like you who don't need a safety net to tinker with stuff.

Re: Google collects 20 times more telemetry from Android devices than Apple from iOS

#218

Post by jodrellblank » Tue, Mar 30, 2021, 11:02 PM UTC

yellow_postit wrote: post #164

pessimizer wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your argument rests on the strange assumption that people who are against IOS restricting apps on the iPhone would for some reason support Amazon's restrictions on Kindle apps.

I can also easily load PDFs and other formats to a Kindle even if I didn’t go through the Amazon store.

And you can easily load PDFs and music onto an iPhone/iPad without going through the Apple store or iTunes store. So they're even and that's good enough for Kindle therefore it's good enough for iOS, right?

Oh wait, on top, iOS has an app store so you can do more, so that's a win for iOS? And the app store can have free apps on it where Apple take no money, but still review and curate for some minimum standards of quality, which is nice.

Re: Google collects 20 times more telemetry from Android devices than Apple from iOS

#219

Post by harry8 » Tue, Mar 30, 2021, 11:03 PM UTC

insert_coin wrote: post #208

harry8 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The 30% cut was considered very good at the time." Let me fix this. There was a full range of views. Some considered the 30% cut to be good at the time, some didn't consider it much at all, some considered it to be a criminal abuse of market power. I remember commenting myself that microsoft would be crucified for attempting to tax everyone who wanted to write software for windows 30% of revenue. I don't recall anyo…

Let me fix this. Microsoft did worse, they did charge more than 30% to everyone that published software for the xbox. People with skin in the game, game publishers, game developers, mobile app developers for nokia, blackberry, samsung, motorola, etc, considered Apple taking "only" 30% to be an excellent deal at the time. It was so good in fact, almost all other store splits collapsed shortly thereafter to the same 30…

You don't think there was a range of views. And anyone who disagreed with your view had no skin in the game and so can be ignored. I disagree with that.

Re: Google collects 20 times more telemetry from Android devices than Apple from iOS

#220

Post by grishka » Tue, Mar 30, 2021, 11:06 PM UTC

jodrellblank wrote: post #202

grishka wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You aren't required to use the Apple store to distribute your product. You can sell to Android users and desktop/laptop users. You aren't making much sense. You won't have any semblance of adoption if you don't have presence on iOS. Except maybe in India where iOS market share is tiny. > You can't sell software to run on Kindle Paperwhite even though it's a full computer inside. It's an appliance. It's marketed as…

Apple devices aren't crippled by it, they're improved by it. By curation and restriction. Users don't buy Apple gear to pay the lowest possible price for software, or to sideload software, users buy Apple to get something that works. The whole point is that Apple is selling an Apple experience, not an overwhelming flood of "fix it yourself" freeware. Users who want that can get it elsewhere, they shouldn't be forced…

> The whole point is that Apple is selling an Apple experience

Once you bought a thing, you own it. That's it. It's cool to have a curated app store for those developers who want it. It's uncool for Apple to retain control of devices after they've been sold.

> This is like a restaurant demanding smart shoes for customers

You can't make this comparison. You don't get to choose what kind of mobile device other people use. You do get to choose which restaurant you visit.

> Apple is successful by building a curated, restricted, "exclusive" (by perception if not fact) experience.

Apple is successful by building great hardware and mostly good UX. Macs have had no app store for most of their history, and even though presently do have restrictions by default, there's a manual override to allow running unsigned or self-signed code.

> You want access to the customers and their money, without upholding the reasons the customers are using that platform.

I'm having issue with there being a gatekeeper AT ALL. I don't give a crap about "their customers" and "their money". I just want to make an app and distribute it straight to my users. That's it. Apple forcibly inserting itself in between me and my users doesn't do any good to either side. Especially if it's a free app and I'm doing my own marketing. It's simply a rent-seeking prude intermediary that creates more problems than it solves.

People buy smartphones because you need one to function in the modern society. They choose either Google or Apple. Neither of these corporations deserves all the credit they feel entitled to.

> Apple never marketed or set expectations that you could sideload apps on iPhone or iOS, did they?

Apple set expectations that you can do pretty much anything on an iOS device.

> You can easily list your app on Apple's store and compete, what it's about is you want more money.

I don't give a crap about money. I despise intellectual property and proprietary software. I'll never sell a byte.

I'm simply sick and tired of how relentlessly Apple wants to eradicate sex and piracy form the internet, for example. Even if you have a free app, Apple literally dictates you how you should change your ToS to be approved on the app store. Is that acceptable? I don't think so. No one should have this kind of power. If the web was invented today, a web browser would be rejected from the app store for allowing the user to view any content without restrictions.

Meanwhile they approve all sorts of scam apps, like a bunch of wallpapers with a $20/week subscription on it. Because they take a 30% cut on those. This is hypocrisy.