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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

#331

Post by pseudalopex »

bmarquez wrote: post #221
logfromblammo wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Another issue with Signal -- you can't backup your chat logs on iOS like you do on Android (chat logs are encrypted btw). I'm not sure if that's a Signal issue or an Apple restriction.

It's Signal.

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

#332

Post by perceptronas »

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…

There is a joke about similar topic. It goes something like this:

>If you sell too cheaply - antitrust laws break you

>If you sell at the same price as competitors - its a cartel or a deal between vendors

>If you sell at a price too high - its a monopoly

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

#333

Post by simonh »

mcv wrote: post #318
simonh wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It clearly is the issue raised in the comment I am replying to. Anyway we have always had this on games consoles, and had it on phones for many years before Apple even made a phone. We have it on some embedded platforms too. There is nothing at all novel or special about this business model, and braking it will kill the business model of a lot of companies, including all the console makers. In fact compared to them i…

I'm not big into consoles, but yeah, when I first heard that a developer needed to pay Nintendo to be allowed to make a game for their console, I thought that was stupid. The whole thing of consoles being sold at a loss because they make their money back on selling the right to make games for it, is a bad business model in my opinion, and I wouldn't mind seeing it die. Just sell your hardware for a fair price and let…

I just don’t see how you get to dictate to people what products they are allowed to develop, what terms they are allowed to sell them on and how they are or are not allowed to make money. As long as the customer has a range of choices and understands what the deal is, it’s up to them whether to accept it or not.

Im all for consumer protection from harmful or misleading, or abusive products but I just don’t see this here. It just seems like you are upset that someone didn’t develop their product the way you want them to, and resent how popular they are. Tough. Develop one that way yourself, or pay someone else to. I don’t get to tell Ford what kinds of car they are or are not allowed to make. As long as they are safe and perform as advertised, that’s up to them.

As fro consoles, even a $100 price difference in the price can kill a product, they are incredibly price sensitive. Trippling or quadruping the price of consoles would almost certainly kill the category, putting them beyond the financial means of huge swathes of consumers that can't afford such a steep up front cost. But apparently that's your decision to make.

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

#334

Post by simonh »

ShroudedNight wrote: post #314
simonh wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're both Apple products running Apple code, which you are free to buy if you so wish.

This is not my area of expertise, but from what I can gather, to develop apps for iOS devices one requires: - iOS device for testing => iPhone hardware => iOS - macOS device for compiling => Apple PC hardware => macOS - Apple developer account - Selling exclusively via the iOS App Store, yielding a 30% cut to Apple If each aspect sold on its own merits without further restrictions, one could easily imagine (at the ve…

iOS and MacOS are really just flavours of the same operating system. That includes most of their system services, core libraries such as graphics primitives, sound system, network stack, data persistence libraries, etc. Even the higher level application frameworks have a high degree of commonality.

When you run an iOS app in a simulator on a Mac it’s not like running a virtual machine under VMWare, it substantially uses the native underlying MacOS libraries directly, because they are the same.

To do that on Linux or Windows Apple would have to port almost all of their operating system services, application frameworks and GUI layers and XCode from the Darwin OS core to Linux or Windows. That would be a truly massive undertaking.

All they are asking is that if you want to use their software, as a user or as a developer, is that you buy it.

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

#335

Post by stubish »

teekert wrote: post #97
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 think it has to do with the fact that the US (and Canada) very early on had unlimited texting plans, and iMessage would make use of that (iPhones just send texts for iMessages in absence of a data connection). WhatsApp can only use data, which is cheaper and used to be unlimited (that's gone) in the EU. In contrast, texting was and still is insanely expensive in the EU (per byte it is staggering even, compared to n…

It is also that the penetration of iPhones is not as high in many regions. WhatsApp, WeChat, Line are all dominant in places, especially in regions where your peer group can't all afford a $300 phone. And people don't switch to the more limited iMessage when they do become wealthier, or when cheap second hand iPhones become common.

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

#336

Post by DagAgren »

pjmlp wrote: post #160
DagAgren wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You didn't get them from an app store open to the public like the Apple one, though, and neither did their developer get to keep a full 70% of the price.

How come it wasn't open to the public? Send SMS, get download link, done. Use the Web store from the phone provider, done.

Open for publishing, not buying.

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

#337

Post by DagAgren »

fenomas wrote: post #199
DagAgren wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, carriers had app stores, that were not generally open to anyone, and that took a much bigger cut than Apple.

> that were not generally open to anyone Apple's store isn't open to anyone. > and that took a much bigger cut than Apple. AFAIK Docomo (largest carrier in Japan) took 9%. Are you sure you know what you're talking about here?

I don't see a reasonable definition by which the Apple app store is not open to anyone to publish in.

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

#338

Post by DagAgren »

soperj wrote: post #233
e_y_ wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to give credit to Apple for taking power away from the telcos. They wanted to nickel and dime you for every app and feature. Getting even a dumb feature phone out the door required months of certification and the OS might get an update once in the device lifetime if at all. Sometimes it takes an 800 lb gorilla (with fresh iPod $$$$$) to take on the other 800 lb gorillas, even if it mostly meant we spent the fi…

>OS might get an update once in the device lifetime if at all. And some how the lifetime of those phones were much longer than the iPhones, until they had to stop forcing updates which degraded performance.

Apple's updates often improve performance, and very rarely degrade it.

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

#339

Post by Quarrelsome »

scarface74 wrote: post #247
Quarrelsome wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wait you can now finally virtuaise them but you have to do it on Mac hardware? Its like someone didn't give them the manual or something. I guess that explains why some companies can finally offer "macs on a rack" because they are literally macs. The point remains that its a bunch of hoops they force people to jump through, BECAUSE THEY CAN. Not for any good technical reason.

Yes. Apple is fully in its right to decide how to distribute its software. Just like an open source software license can dictate how their software is used. If you want to use MacOS you have to use a Mac.

You misunderstand. If you want to build a product for MacOS you have to use a Mac. That's what bugs me because it doesn't fit into typical auto-build arrangements, at least it was a needless, awkward pain to do that when I wanted to do it in 2012.

There was no technical reason to have to jump through those hoops beyond the typical Apple "fuck you because I can".

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

#340

Post by BlueTemplar »

mrr54 wrote: post #300
BlueTemplar wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Skyrim had mods before Workshop even existed. Things are very different for games released with Workshop support.
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