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EU approves legislation to regulate Apple, Google, Meta, and other tech firms
251–260 of 930 posts
Re: EU approves legislation to regulate Apple, Google, Meta, and other tech firms
#252Earlier quoted context omitted.
Pretty sure 30% commission is not an Apple-exclusive thing. Google Play, consoles and Steam have the same rate.
Switch has 30% with a 5% rebate to consumers. Steam has a regressive 20%/25%/30% tiered commission structure. There are sweetheart deals we have no knowledge of, like Apple's deal with Amazon to get Prime Video onto their devices.
And AFAIK Apple charges 15% if you earn less than a million in your net revenue, yet noone mentions that. Which, by the way, could be considered a sweetheart deal of its own, just like Steams tiered system. As for the Switch it's still 30% and to the developer it doesn't matter whether there's 5 percent going to the customer or not.
Re: EU approves legislation to regulate Apple, Google, Meta, and other tech firms
#253Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Every single app creator out there will now want their own "app store" and it's going to be a mess. This is such an oft-repeated argument, yet overlooks that Android already allows sideloading and alternative app stores. If everyone-creating-their-own-app-store hasn't happened on Android, why would iOS be different?
Full devils advocate here, but the argument I've always heard is that the play store is a lot less arbitrary and restrictive than the App Store, so there's less reason to want to go outside of it. Apple locks out so many useful kinds of software that there actually may be enough momentum for real alternate app stores to proliferate.
Apple locks out so many useful kinds of software
For someone who doesn't have a personal Android phone, what useful software is out there that I can get on an iPhone?
Related: What mass-market software is out there that isn't available on the iPhone? I don't mean *nix tools and niche game emulators. Things that would make many people actually care about alt stores?
Re: EU approves legislation to regulate Apple, Google, Meta, and other tech firms
#254Earlier quoted context omitted.
And now you'll be able to choose WHILE still keep using iOS which is much better for you as a consumer. This being bad for "regular people" is typical monopolistic corporate scaremongering. Apple has proven that they're more than capable of providing secure devices that provide choice with their MacBook series.
Kind of. So the primary issue is that Apple collectively bargains on behalf of customers against developers. So if you take something like privacy rights, Apple can say "hey, we've got all of these users and if you want to participate in the ecosystem you have to not track their data" - as an example. Now what happens is that companies like Facebook and others who really want to get your data without that pesky Apple…
It absolutely blows my mind that people are rallying the pitchforks around Apple for "monopolistic corporate scaremongering"
Meanwhile it blows my mind that on a site called Hacker News, people are not only enthusiastically handing control of their computing environments to a megacorporation, but insisting that everyone else should do the same.
Re: EU approves legislation to regulate Apple, Google, Meta, and other tech firms
#255Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apple has benefited fabulously for well over a decade. And I’m sure the EU will remain a profitable market even with these regulations in place. With these changes, Apple will go from being one of the richest companies in the world to… still one of the richest companies in the world.
Yes sir, I get that. My point was they’re there for a reason. They must be doing something right.
The point I’m making is that the argument “Well they built it, shouldn’t they benefit” would make sense if these regulations posed any sort of existential threat to their success. But Apple is already so entrenched that regulation like this won’t. The “doing something you right” you speak of is apple making a great product, and they can make a great product without their monopolistic practices.
Furthermore, I don’t think these regulations apply to new/non-entrenched players either, so I don’t think they will stifle innovation.
Re: EU approves legislation to regulate Apple, Google, Meta, and other tech firms
#256Earlier quoted context omitted.
They aren't a payment processor, they are a payment provider . You are correct that most banks have deals with Apple and thus cards are available, but Paypal, Venmo, Cashapp, Google Pay, etc. can't be used as a default payment provider for purchases on the iPhone. Apple reportedly makes about 0.15% of each purchase through Apple Pay[1]. [1] http://www.macrumors.com/2014/09/12/more-apple-pay-details/
Of course they can’t, because they’re not credit/debit cards. What’s the PoS going to do with a PayPal NFC? Nothing. It’s like complaining they don’t support bitcoin - neither do the stores!
This is incorrect. Paypal DOES issue virtual cards that can do NFC through your phone, the same as Google Pay.
Re: EU approves legislation to regulate Apple, Google, Meta, and other tech firms
#257There's several very good provisions in this legislation (3rd party payment processors, non-preferential treatment for 1st party apps), there are several that have a mix of upsides and downsides (sideloading is one--I personally like knowing that Facebook can't ask people to sideload some privacy destroying crap on iOS). Then there's: - Allow developers to integrate their apps and digital services directly with those…
> Allow developers to integrate their apps and digital services directly with those belonging to a gatekeeper. This includes making messaging, voice-calling, and video-calling services interoperable with third-party services upon request.
I would think this requirement is satisfied merely by providing a public API / protocol documentation for your protocol, to allow for third-party access and integration, not some weird backend integration that everyone has to support. This would have effects on business models of running chat services for free and it would have an effect on how they handle spam and abuse, but I honestly think both of these changes are likely to be for the better...
Now, I (importantly) have NOT read the actual law text yet, but given the high-level summaries I feel like a lot of people have been worried about this over nothing: having the ability to write a third-party iMessage client would ALLOW someone to build a server-mediated client for it, but I think that SHOULD be allowed, I don't think that in any way destroys the ability to create or use end-to-end clients and services, it would also allow people to build alternative e2e clients and even integrations (imagine a Samsung Android device shipping with iMessage support in their local client) without hurting the existence of end-to-end encryption.
Re: EU approves legislation to regulate Apple, Google, Meta, and other tech firms
#258Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a regular user I’m looking forward to all the same!
As a regular user, I have no intention of side loading anything! Don’t feel like I’m missing out on anything! Enlighten me.
It's great for pirating mobile video games. My Android-using friends' only use of this feature is to turn their phone into a Gameboy Advance.
Which is pretty great, to be fair, but nowhere near enough to tempt me back to putting up with Android the entire rest of the time I'm using my phone.
Re: EU approves legislation to regulate Apple, Google, Meta, and other tech firms
#259There's several very good provisions in this legislation (3rd party payment processors, non-preferential treatment for 1st party apps), there are several that have a mix of upsides and downsides (sideloading is one--I personally like knowing that Facebook can't ask people to sideload some privacy destroying crap on iOS). Then there's: - Allow developers to integrate their apps and digital services directly with those…
Developers are end users too
Re: EU approves legislation to regulate Apple, Google, Meta, and other tech firms
#260Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apple's greed (in maintaining the egregious 30% commission for so long) is going to undermine their entire ecosystem. If Apple moved voluntarily to 10% or 15% for all, there never would have been the industry pressure for this sort of regulation. The EU would have been better to just mandate a maximum % commission for all digital marketplaces above a certain level of revenue. This new solution will get poked full of…
I see this, and it just makes me think that if they had, we'd be seeing posts that say, "Apple's greed (in maintaining the egregious 10% commission for so long) is going to undermine their entire ecosystem. If Apple moved voluntarily to 5% or 3% for all, ...".
30% is an insane amount.