The only thing I feel is sympathy for users who continue to buy Apple products.
Apple rejecting applications which use Dropbox
231–240 of 361 posts
Re: Apple rejecting applications which use Dropbox
#232Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can't have a monopoly on a portion of a market. The clue is in the first two syllables.
It depends on how you define the market. When Sirius and XM merged, did it become a monopoly on the 'satellite radio' market or did they just become a larger player in the 'radio' market?
This is all getting very murky.
Apple has a monopoly on the "market" (portion) that pays for apps. That's not as clean a definition of market as you would want. The defining characteristics of this market are also (arguably) inconveniently dependent on the offending practices. IE iphone user pay because it is easy, because there is a single payment provider, because users don't have to worry about a cheaper option some roundabout way, etc. etc.
Then there is the problem that any platform, regardless of overall marketshare is something like a little local monopoly. Our definitions of monopoly don't really work here but platforms can still exhibit a lot of what anti-monopoly rules are trying to prevent.
Re: Apple rejecting applications which use Dropbox
#233Perhaps I'm the only one who thinks this way (sorry, grew tired of all the arguing about Apple's villainy), but the bigger problem here is yet another app attempting to make money by building itself on top of another third-party app/service that is trying to make money and then crying when things go awry.
Nearly all the complaints I see bubble up here on HN regarding Apple's App Store seem to come from devs who, rather than build a valuable service or app in its own right, think they have some great idea for leveraging other people's products/services/apps/APIs, etc. in some less-than-novel way. There is little innovation, little creativity, little in the way of building an app that is valuable on its own merits.
This is lazy.
Fuck everyone else's APIs and this lame practice of building whizbangs atop someone else's. Build a damn app that is worth something. Don't build shit that depends on your users creating accounts anywhere outside your control.
Honestly, dislike Apple's guidelines all you like (I dislike plenty of them), but take a page from Apple's book and start to think about your app with the users first--think about how annoying it is to start up an app and then have to go through all the hassle of signing up or logging in with other people's/companies' services just to use your app.
Think about your product the way Apple thinks about theirs: depend on yourself as much as possible to deliver an experience you control end-to-end.
Re: Apple rejecting applications which use Dropbox
#234The sudden rejection of dropbox apps is blamed on 'bad user experience' by Apple, most of us know that its due to iCloud . So, in future if apple makes a games or buys a game company expect your games to be rejected from the app store as they 'are bad user experience' for IOS users or third party games are just not interesting enough. Don't let someone else make your choices , make it yourself.
Re: Apple rejecting applications which use Dropbox
#235I'm surprised it took Apple this long since launching (the relatively overpriced) iCloud before they started acting like they always do: anti-competitive and monopolistic. In the name of UX ofcourse. It couldn't possibly be because unethical market grabs tend to generate money. Remember: Apple doesn't really care about money. They care about you and all that money they make is just accidental.
This is not a new thing. Apple have been clamping down on any revenue generating activity linked to from an app for at least a year now. They are forcing developers to pick between giving Apple a 30% slice of revenue, or don't charge for it, or don't link to it.
Most developers seem to be opting for the third option. The only one that doesn't impact usability is the one that involves giving Apple 30%.
Re: Apple rejecting applications which use Dropbox
#236Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm fairly sure that a comment on this thread by an Apple employee would result in a pretty quick firing. It's a pretty tight ship over there.
This shows just how differently Apple works. I've seen people from Google and Facebook commenting here whenever issues come up.
You sound surprised.
Re: Apple rejecting applications which use Dropbox
#237Earlier quoted context omitted.
But in this case, the town is not 90% of the geography. Last i heard Google's town is bigger and there is also RIM Town (mass exodus happening there), a new WP7 town (lots of airport signs) and a few others around.
I don't think you need a certain percentage of a market for this to start becoming a antitrust issue. And it could be argued that they have a strong monopoly on Tablets at this time. If this doesn't feel like anticompetitive behaviour, I don't know what does. They are using their rather large position in the smartphone/tablet market to enter another market (in this case storage) and snuff out the competition. And the…
Anti-trust law (where "trust" is an antiquated term for "cartel") is all about preventing multiple companies from conspiring to price-fix or monopolise a specific market via non-compete agreements and the like. For example Microsoft's famous agreements with OEMs to bundle IE and not Netscape. Having a monopoly is no sin, and Apple are no more obliged to sell non-Apple software for their phones as they are to sell non-Apple hardware in their stores.
Re: Apple rejecting applications which use Dropbox
#238Earlier quoted context omitted.
The 30% "apple tax" on their App Store is not a major way that Apple makes money (more on this in paragraph 2). This leads to the conclusion that Apple is not attempting to hobble stores that undercut them: they simply like using their control of the store ecosystem to maintain the quality, simplicity, and consistency of the experience that allows them to provide to their customers, with the nice side effect of givin…
The point is not whether Apple makes money on its "apple tax", but how that affects us developers. In fact it is a pure transaction fee, and if you compare that to paypal or credit card, or even affiliate commission payments, it's way too high. In the long run where does the App developer get to make any money? On app sales alone? You cannot survive by making a one off sale to your customers, and apps that seek to ge…
No, the point was, quite specifically in fact, determining what "Apple's thinking" was and whether it included "we'll add more to our bottomline" as a concern, primary or otherwise, for why they are choosing to "squeeze every 3rd party service to adopt our 30% cut".
Please read the post to which I was responding to undersand the context; the only way in which we care how it affects developers is if that effect is one Apple wants (enough to have caused them to effect such an affect): the primary question is precisely whether Apple makes money.
Re: Apple rejecting applications which use Dropbox
#239Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think you need a certain percentage of a market for this to start becoming a antitrust issue. And it could be argued that they have a strong monopoly on Tablets at this time. If this doesn't feel like anticompetitive behaviour, I don't know what does. They are using their rather large position in the smartphone/tablet market to enter another market (in this case storage) and snuff out the competition. And the…
Hmm... Be careful what you wish for. If antitrust laws can be applied even when there is no monopoly, indeed, not even a majority market share, you are basically giving the government a green light to do a WHOLE lot of bad things.
Anti-trust covers attempts to gain monopolies too (though I don't think Apple are in violation of either, as mentioned above).
Re: Apple rejecting applications which use Dropbox
#240Perhaps I'm the only one who thinks this way (sorry, grew tired of all the arguing about Apple's villainy), but the bigger problem here is yet another app attempting to make money by building itself on top of another third-party app/service that is trying to make money and then crying when things go awry. Nearly all the complaints I see bubble up here on HN regarding Apple's App Store seem to come from devs who, rath…
What you're suggesting sounds like re-inventing the wheel.