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Apple’s “monopsony” power, and the woman who named it

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Re: Apple’s “monopsony” power, and the woman who named it

#271

Post by mikhailt »

zionic wrote: post #244
pornel wrote: post #132

Apple made themselves an exclusive payment provider for all iOS in-app subscriptions and payments for digital products. Merely mentioning anywhere that cheaper payment options exist is an AppStore ToS violation.

I generally support Apple but this is inexcusable. Regulators need to come down hard on this kind of payment monopoly.

It makes perfect sense to me.

If I was a businessman running a store, I definitely would NOT allow anyone that wants to sell in my store any mentions that they could be found cheaper elsewhere or get a discount somehow that could reduce my cut.

Re: Apple’s “monopsony” power, and the woman who named it

#272

Post by dpkonofa »

CoolGuySteve wrote: post #177
Angostura wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If anyone else is facing the issue, here's how to deregister your number from iMessage: https://selfsolve.apple.com/deregister-imessage/ Should be Job Done.

I deregistered my number and I still have messages that are delivered to my iPad instead of my android phone. If it wasn’t for that iPad next to my bed, I would have lost contact with some people entirely. What Apple’s doing should be fucking prosecuted by the FCC or FTC. It’s outrageous.

iPads don't have phone numbers so the person sending you the message is sending it to an Apple ID, not a phone number. This is working exactly the way it's supposed to.

Re: Apple’s “monopsony” power, and the woman who named it

#273

Post by dpkonofa »

logfromblammo wrote: post #175
hkhanna wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They aren’t Facebook. Nobody has to buy an iPhone to keep in touch with all their friends who have iPhones. I have a different perspective. Many of my different friend groups use the "group messaging" feature on their phones. If everyone is using an iPhone in that group, it defaults to using iMessage. I switched to Android about 18 months ago, and it broke all of the group text message chains I had because some of…

I once heard my spouse complaining about Signal, and how they only had it loaded on their iPhone so they could talk to me. I asked why Signal was not their default SMS application, like it is on my Android phone. And that's when I discovered that Apple hoards certain core phone features for itself. Signal for iOS cannot send or receive ordinary SMS messages. This is a significant impediment to adoption of end-to-end…

>Signal for iOS cannot send or receive ordinary SMS messages.

That's not an iOS limitation, though. I can send and receive SMS messages through Google Voice on iOS without any issue.

Re: Apple’s “monopsony” power, and the woman who named it

#274

Post by pflats »

CoolGuySteve wrote: post #226
Angostura wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect those messages mighty be using e-mail rather than phone number as the identifier.

So what, if iMessage is the default SMS app and it sends to an unregistered iCloud account, it should either translate to SMS or give an error. The last thing it should do is silently send a message to an inactive account such that it looks like I ghosted the person.

The process deregisters the phone number from the account; it does not shut down the entire iCloud account or disable iMessage entirely.

"iMessages" sent to your phone number will be translated to SMS.

iMessages sent to your email address will still be delivered to the account associated with that email address. They can be accessed on pretty much any modern apple device associated with that account.

It's rare that people intentionally iMessage an email address, but the interface is opaque enough that it's essentially impossible on an existing text chain to tell that you did (unless you're specifically looking for that information).

The behavior as implemented makes sense provided that every user made an intentional and informed choice when choosing to message a friend via phone number or email. That is, of course, not the case (and is not helped by Siri sometimes silently deciding to use a contact's email over their phone number).

Re: Apple’s “monopsony” power, and the woman who named it

#275

Post by scarface74 »

simion314 wrote: post #258
scarface74 wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Allowing third parties to intercept your SMS messages has been a security nightmare for Android. But yes you can install a third party app like Google Voice with its own phone number and send text messages through it. You would really trust any third party to intercept your sms messages? On top of that, the third party dialer integrates with the native dialer and call history.

>You would really trust any third party to intercept your sms messages? Not OP but I trust Thunderbird on my PC to access my emails so why I could not also trust a Mozilla or other trustworthy company to access my messages on my phone where in my case the SMS is used by companies to send me notifications about billing , I am the type of person that will call someone(people in my group don't send SMS)

So Apple should allow random third parties to intercept SMS messages because “people in your group” don’t use SMS?

Re: Apple’s “monopsony” power, and the woman who named it

#276

Post by amdavidson »

CoolGuySteve wrote: post #226
Angostura wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect those messages mighty be using e-mail rather than phone number as the identifier.

So what, if iMessage is the default SMS app and it sends to an unregistered iCloud account, it should either translate to SMS or give an error. The last thing it should do is silently send a message to an inactive account such that it looks like I ghosted the person.

It is not an unregistered account if it is being received on an iPad.

Further, if you are not logged in with the account on at least one device, it will not show as delivered.

Re: Apple’s “monopsony” power, and the woman who named it

#277

Post by overlyLogical »

braythwayt wrote: post #67

Amusingly, there are two sets of people arguing about why Apple is bad, and each have their own argument: 1. Android sells more, and offers more variety of mobile and wearable devices than Apple. And here’s the data to prove it. 2. Apple is a monopoly/monopsony and should be forced to allow more user choice of apps, allow sideloading, lower their prices, lower their app store cut, &c. Which one is is? Apple is like T…

If you want to provide services to 100 percent of the population, you need to bend the knee to Apple.

I don't, and it means 10 percent of the population can't use my free apps that save people time and money.

I suppose that's the cost of Apple being Evil and people buying from such a company.

Re: Apple’s “monopsony” power, and the woman who named it

#278

Post by CoolGuySteve »

dpkonofa wrote: post #272
CoolGuySteve wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I deregistered my number and I still have messages that are delivered to my iPad instead of my android phone. If it wasn’t for that iPad next to my bed, I would have lost contact with some people entirely. What Apple’s doing should be fucking prosecuted by the FCC or FTC. It’s outrageous.

iPads don't have phone numbers so the person sending you the message is sending it to an Apple ID, not a phone number. This is working exactly the way it's supposed to.

No, it's really not. If I unregister from iMessage the last thing that should happen is my Apple ID swallowing messages from people's iPhones.

Return an error or redirect to SMS, it's not that fucking hard.

The one thing you are right about is that it's an intentional dark pattern on Apple's part to obsfucate Apple IDs and phone numbers. It's an illegal anticompetitve strategy.

Re: Apple’s “monopsony” power, and the woman who named it

#279

Post by dwaite »

throwGuardian wrote: post #7
RandallBrown wrote: post #4

So, since Apple is the only company "buying" apps from developers, they could raise their cut as high as they want and developers can do nothing about it. Could Apple then argue that they aren't the only game in town because of things like subscriptions and web apps? (e.g. I don't pay for Netflix or Spotify through Apple, but the apps work fine)

Also, please omit webapps on iOS Safari as an alternative. Apple gives no explanations on why it cripples Safari's W3C compatibility, especially features around PWA, but everyone knows it's to drive developers, users and hence revenue/profits to the app store. Someone needs to sue Apple for this, and the truth will be revealed when the case enters discovery mode, when Apple internal communications on this are laid ba…

Progressive Web Apps aren't a standard but a Google web strategy term. Different browsers just have different priorities.

For example, Apple prioritized service workers over web app manifests (which BTW are not yet a W3C recommendation). I can only assume this is partly because there have been so many failed attempts at static web app manifests in the past. Them prioritizing other features for earlier release doesn't mean that Web App Manifest support isn't in active development ( https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=158205 ).

Re: Apple’s “monopsony” power, and the woman who named it

#280

Post by strbean »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #70
cjfd wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is more going on besides price. The review process is also completely arbitrary. I don't like the whole thing that the only place to get apps is the app store. I will never buy any apple device as long as that is in place.

That’s exactly what keeps me buying Apple for my family and I. I credit their locked down App Store with saving me from spending hundreds of hours of my time dealing with malware over the last 10 years.

I've used android phones for a decade now and never once been affected by malware. If the issue is kids installing shady apps, you should probably use a parental lock for that.
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