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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

#291

Post by erichocean »

scarface74 wrote: post #263
simion314 wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the first case Apple knew about the tracking and said nothing until they had their own app - so we can defend Apple that protects the users privacy only if it benefits them. Spotify got access months alter after complaints to the EU were made so I am not convinced that Apple is still give equal opportunities to all developers especially when better browser engines exist and you can't use them.

You really think that it only took “months” for Apple to create the Siri Intent for third party audio? Apple had been opening up Siri for years by adding new intents. Apple has a long history of developing functionality and using it internally before releasing them publicly. The alternative is releasing a half baked API that it has to support forever. It’s a lot easier to change an API that is only used internally th…

> The alternative is releasing a half baked API that it has to support forever.

You owe me a new keyboard. Apple puts out half baked APIs constantly, and drops APIs constantly. Like literally, every release they do has APIs in those two camps.

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

#292

Post by 52-6F-62 »

JamesBarney wrote: post #22
oleganza wrote: post #3

"Merchants at Macy's can only sell at Macy's". There are many options for you as an app developer. You can enjoy the scale and tooling provided by Apple, at one cost. Or you can write apps for any other computer at some other cost. Or you may choose not to be an app developer at all and do something else useful.

Monopsony doesn't mean option-less. Just because you can take a horse doesn't make standard oil not a monopoly.

And that's where the argument is:

Standard Oil had a monopoly on oil itself.

Apple doesn't have a monopoly on phones. They've just dictated how their phone is going to work.

The options aren't Apple iOS ecosystem, or no phone dev at all. There are numerous other smartphone companies out there. Apple isn't even close to the largest share of operating systems used in the market—by far (https://www.statista.com/statistics/266136/global-market-sha...)

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

#293

Post by stjohnswarts »

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…

Mostly Apple and Facebook and Google are too big and need to be split up. They are huge monoliths who stimy innovation and competition.

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

#294

Post by stjohnswarts »

joefourier wrote: post #94
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've only heard of this happening in the US and Canada. Outside of North America, everyone uses Whatsapp, which supports group messaging on every platform. I'd be curious to know why it hasn't penetrated into those countries.

Because iphone is bigger here and I assume you understand momentum and iphone exercising their oligopolistic practices of keeping people on their brand entirely rather than opening up their iMessage protocol. I don't know about your country, but in the USA it pretty much takes the federal government to take on one of the biggest companies in the world.

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

#295

Post by stjohnswarts »

swebs wrote: post #111
joefourier wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've only heard of this happening in the US and Canada. Outside of North America, everyone uses Whatsapp, which supports group messaging on every platform. I'd be curious to know why it hasn't penetrated into those countries.

I don't really know anyone that uses Whatsapp in Finland. Most of my friends use Telegram these days.

Telegram has been criticized over and over for home grown encryption by people I consider experts so I skip it and stick with Signal.

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

#296

Post by stjohnswarts »

palijer wrote: post #105
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…

>They don’t tell developers that apps must be iOS-exclusive to be in the app store. Apple recently rejected our app submission as we mention our Android version within our app settings. They don't demand you be iOS exclusive, but they damn well try to make it difficult. That release was just a minor version with some fixes, the text had been in the app for years.

Tangentially :) I have a question as someone trying to get in to the app world (total beginner, old had a c/embedded though). How do you handle features that Apple say are preventing your app from getting approved at Apple? Say it goes through with flying colors at the Google Play store. Is everything modularized to the feature level?

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

#297

Post by stjohnswarts »

im3w1l wrote: post #104
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…

Apple is the smaller company in a duopoly market. There are not enough players in the market that dissatisfied customers can easily up and leave. The real harm we see Apple doing is that they allow the dominant groups in society to suppress anyone else. This became especially clear during the Hong Kong protests, where they banned apps protestors used after a request from Chinese authorities. Because of the lack of ch…

When you consider "monopoly" or "market unfairness" you have to look at it on the state level. I don't think anyone is complaining about Europe where Apple is in the minority of phones. I would assume we're talking about the USA where Apple does have outsized influence compared to other phone brands. We aren't talking about Apple vs Google. It's Apple vs Samsung/Google Pixel Line/Motorola/Nokia and their abuse of their status as the largest phone seller in the USA. Say iMessage policy being limited to the Apple platform as others have pointed out.

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

#298

Post by stjohnswarts »

overlyLogical wrote: post #277
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.

I assume you aren't in the USA? Imagine if that slice was 45-50% of the market. It's pretty bad here.

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

#299

Post by mrr54 »

synthmeat wrote: post #61
lilyball wrote: post #9

Something odd about this argument is the fact that 30% is pretty much an industry standard. Apple isn't jacking up the price.

I don't see it mentioned (at all), but my hypothesis for 30% is that it is because of money laundering. Otherwise, you wouldn't be able to provide gift cards, would have to limit spending per app, cap all the prices, monitor whale spenders, etc. Easiest just to make it unprofitable.

30% is a pretty small price to pay for money laundering.

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

#300

Post by mrr54 »

BlueTemplar wrote: post #120
friendlybus wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steam multiplayer? You mean the friends list? Steam doesn't provide hosted mp servers for games. Mods are made by community members that can be released anywhere. Workshop is just a distribution channel. Battle.net and origin are lock in services. Nothing about them is open to the public or accessible. Steam is pretty open and reasonably successful at it.

Mods can be released anywhere, but in practice, usually aren't ! Steam might not provide hosted MP servers for non-Valve games (are you sure it doesn't ?), but we've even seen older games having Internet multiplayer removed to the exclusivity of Steam's own "VPN" : Dawn of War 1, Civilization 4 (for which they also managed to break most mods for no seemingly valid reason)...

In practice mods are definitely released outside of Steam Workshop. I don't think I've ever used Steam Workshop for a Skyrim mod for example.
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