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Proton joins suit against Apple for practices that harm developers and consumers

proton.me

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Re: Proton joins suit against Apple for practices that harm developers and consumers

#321

Post by tomhow »

bitpush wrote: post #83
_benton wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Huh, the __user__ paid for the product, so they own it. After the user handed over their money, Apple has nothing to say about who I do business with on that product, or what the conditions are. But this is already the case. You own the device, you can do whatever you want with it (legally ofc). If I buy a fridge without a freezer, the fact that I can't freeze food with it doesn't mean I don't own the fridge. Furth…

[flagged]

> Aww, does it hurt when your favorite multi-trillion dollar company is taken to court?

Please don't sneer or mock like this on HN. It's not what HN is for and it destroys what it is for. Please read the guidelines and make an effort to observe them in future.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Proton joins suit against Apple for practices that harm developers and consumers

#322

Post by tomhow »

bitpush wrote: post #121
_benton wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does hurt when I can no longer purchase a product that I want because other corporations wish to use the legal system to make more money, yes.

[flagged]

This is a needlessly escalatory and inflammatory comment, and the kind of comment that's out of line on HN. It's fine to disagree and counter someone else's comment, but not by breaking the guidelines like this.

Re: Proton joins suit against Apple for practices that harm developers and consumers

#323

Post by sadeshmukh »

StrandedKitty wrote: post #265
briandw wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see people making the same arguments about Steam, Microsoft, Nintendo, etc, etc. Why is Apple special here? Other companies make stores that deliver application and developers don't get to tell them what to do. That's fine apparently, just not for Apple.

Maybe the reason is that the number of Apple users is an order of magnitude higher? Plus, they control both hardware and software. Apple is making very consumer-oriented products, and this comes with it's own downside of having to handle billions of users.

Steam has a near total monopoly on PC gaming and has an equivalent cut.

Re: Proton joins suit against Apple for practices that harm developers and consumers

#324

Post by _benton »

socalgal2 wrote: post #227
_benton wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This analogy makes no sense because you are not prevented in any way from purchasing the many other devices that provide almost identical functionality. It's like complaining that Walmart hiked their prices but ignoring the fact that the mom and pop stores still exist, at a higher number compared to walmarts, and are selling the same products for cheaper. You have incredible consumer choice for phones, you can't chos…

It has absolutely zero to do with your choice to purchase a different device. It has everything to do with hundreds of thousands of companies' right to do business with customers without Apple in the middle.

What right does a company have to piggyback off of another company?

Like think about this logically? Should a grocery store be forced to sell my products without receiving any of the profit? Can I force a cafe to let me serve customers on their premises without giving anything in return?

Re: Proton joins suit against Apple for practices that harm developers and consumers

#325

Post by x3ro »

andrewinardeer wrote: post #20

I'm not an Apple enthusiast—my rarely used iPad mini is my only Apple device—but let me play devil’s advocate. If a company invests billions in R&D to create hardware and its integrated software, shouldn’t it have the right to control who or what interacts with it? Why should I be forced to open up the carefully designed ecosystem I’ve built? If my pitch is premium, high-speed hardware and intuitive software so user-…

Ah finally someone coming to the rescue of criminally underrepresented multi-billion dollar companies and their inevitable tactics of building monopolies, because how else do you 10% revenue growth every year. I hear Shell is also in need of some help, maybe you can find a thread on them? /s

But seriously though: why do people argue that „investing money“ leads to „I can do whatever the hell I want to my client base“? Even if this argument were to hold for all future customers, companies change their TOS all the time. Can I ask for all my money that I paid them back, to exit their ecosystem?..

Re: Proton joins suit against Apple for practices that harm developers and consumers

#326

Post by Nursie »

lenkite wrote: post #264
BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's no technological reason for app developers to be restricted from using other payment processors But there is a customer experience reason. As an iOS user, I very much appreciate that I can ask Apple to cancel some bullshit subscription that used to otherwise try to lock me in behind a labyrinth of added friction and timewasting. Not every problem is technological.

You are free to pay ~30% extra for your preferred customer experience. The rest of us can leverage discounted pricing. Customer Choice for the win! Also, thinking that all businesses will lock one in using friction and timewasting is not a rational argument. There are a lot of honest businesses there forced to pay the Apple Mafia's tax.

> You are free to pay ~30% extra for your preferred customer experience. The rest of us can leverage discounted pricing. Customer Choice for the win!

People say this stuff, but recently I re-examined my subscription to a multi-platform VPN service through the App store and found that they priced it cheaper than getting the same package through their website or through their windows client.

No idea why.

Re: Proton joins suit against Apple for practices that harm developers and consumers

#327

Post by cess11 »

crazygringo wrote: post #56
cess11 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would any of these factors outweigh their dominant position in the market and the value of market competition?

Why wouldn't they? Apple isn't dominant in the market worldwide (Android is), and they are competing against Android. Apple often implements things Android did first. That's how competition works. Apple's global marketshare is 30% or just under.

Apple has around 60% market share. The US does not have global jurisdiction.

Competitive markets have enough similar suppliers that they are forced to adapt to customers instead of the other way around.

This happens to be incompatible with capitalism due to phenomena like the tendency of the rate of profit to fall and fascism (as well as other corporativist ideologies). Capitalism survives and reproduces through monopolies and oligopolies, i.e. undemocratic forms of rent seeking and price cartels.

Re: Proton joins suit against Apple for practices that harm developers and consumers

#328

Post by ewoodrich »

alexjplant wrote: post #171
Workaccount2 wrote: post #39

I don't think any big tech company has ever done anything as evil and predatory as Apple walling off iMessage, giving the impression that Apple phones were high technology, and interacting with peasant androids is what made group chats fragment and pictures and videos look like trash. Few things are more enraging than people being left out of chats with friends and family because they didn't bend over for Apple. Even…

> Even worse being a teenager and having to endure social shaming for it. It wasn't until the EU signaled it was going to bring down then axe that Apple capitulated to RCS. Regardless of the merits of Apple's actions as regards technical interoperability I feel compelled to point out that this in particular is a cultural problem, not technical malfeasance. RCS users still appear as green bubbles and even if the lack…

But that's what so insidious about it - by also actively degrading the chat experience it makes excluding non-Apple users not merely social signalling but also a rational decision even if you don't care about conspicuous consumption whatsoever.

So pick your poison, either you exclude them because of in-group signalling/conspicious consumption or exclude them because you want non-potato resolution, with Android users getting the blame for Apple's UX. Either way Tim Cook says the solution is to buy an iPhone.

Re: Proton joins suit against Apple for practices that harm developers and consumers

#329

Post by matkoniecz »

briandw wrote: post #240
andrewinardeer wrote: post #20

I'm not an Apple enthusiast—my rarely used iPad mini is my only Apple device—but let me play devil’s advocate. If a company invests billions in R&D to create hardware and its integrated software, shouldn’t it have the right to control who or what interacts with it? Why should I be forced to open up the carefully designed ecosystem I’ve built? If my pitch is premium, high-speed hardware and intuitive software so user-…

I don't see people making the same arguments about Steam, Microsoft, Nintendo, etc, etc. Why is Apple special here? Other companies make stores that deliver application and developers don't get to tell them what to do. That's fine apparently, just not for Apple.

> I don't see people making the same arguments about Steam, Microsoft, Nintendo, etc, etc. Why is Apple special here?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Corp._v_European_Com...

BTW, I wonder have they paid that €860 million in the end - and how can I check this.

> Other companies make stores that deliver application and developers don't get to tell them what to do.

AFAIK Microsoft users can install software not using Microsoft store, however it is called.

Re: Proton joins suit against Apple for practices that harm developers and consumers

#330

Post by matkoniecz »

sadeshmukh wrote: post #323
StrandedKitty wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe the reason is that the number of Apple users is an order of magnitude higher? Plus, they control both hardware and software. Apple is making very consumer-oriented products, and this comes with it's own downside of having to handle billions of users.

Steam has a near total monopoly on PC gaming and has an equivalent cut.

Steam is not making basically impossible to install games on PC in other ways, unlike Apple does for their devices.

Steam is not even controlling PCs as their fief so they cannot do this even if they would want to do it.

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