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Apple vs the Law

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Re: Apple vs the Law

#331

Post by burnerthrow008 »

thewebguyd wrote: post #302
alt227 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More people are getting annoyed with Apple over these issues, and they are bleeding into the mainstream media more frequently. I have a few die hard Apple friends (Non-professionals) that have recently got so frustrated with being pushed into corners that they have given up the fruity ecosystem altogether. In no way am I suggesting that Apple are on the way out, but they have definitely started to turn the same corne…

> I have a few die hard Apple friends (Non-professionals) that have recently got so frustrated with being pushed into corners that they have given up the fruity ecosystem altogether. I'm nearly there myself. The problem is, and what the EU in theory is trying to solve, is there's no real competition. My choice is Apple, which while an anti-competitive PITA, provides some real nice quality of life features and some pr…

> I mean more competitors that care about user experience, preserve your privacy to an extent, and aren't using the platform as just yet another way to serve ads and harvest data.

TANSTAAFL. User experience costs money. Privacy costs money. Not serving ads is an opportunity cost for more money.

Take away the app store royalties, and the obvious path forward for Apple is to compromise on the other legs of the stool.

Linux will never have the UX of macOS simply because a lot of what makes macOS great is boring and tedious work, and nobody does that for free.

Re: Apple vs the Law

#332

Post by neuroelectron »

woah wrote: post #303
mathstuf wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also find editing on an iPhone to be an exercise in futility. Is it no longer possible to place a cursor in the middle of a word? I end up having to go to a word boundary and erase from there and retype everything. The keyboard touch areas also seem offset from Android and I end up one row off too much of the time.

I do more writing on my iPhone (it's the one with the largest screen) than I do on a computer. I can do about 40wpm. To move the cursor you just hold down on the space bar. These complaints kind of sound like someone from the 90's saying that the close window button is on the wrong side

40wpm is 33% less than what a bad typist can do. Repeating "just hold down the space bar" doesn't make it behave any less erratically. We had Palm Pilots in the 90s and they ran on AAA batteries and editing text on them was certainly more consistent than the current state of iOS.

Re: Apple vs the Law

#333

Post by rcxdude »

drexlspivey wrote: post #159
isodev wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> regulatory environment so complex only massive companies like big tech or Europe's legacy players have the resources to comply This is a very inaccurate view. I’ve worked with multiple SMEs and no such “complexities” ever become operational challenges. Even as a indie developer, my compliance is a default provided I’m not trying to do something shady. Looking into the EU regulations, in most cases what they want yo…

This indie dev begs to differ https://x.com/levelsio/status/1833126426142179653

Most of that is adjacent to regulation, and it's more or less asking for exemption from regulation for smaller companies. Which the EU already does a lot of: generally smaller companies have much lower regulatory regulatory requirements. But the threshold proposed is silly: you do not need to be anywhere near a $10 million company for complying with the listed regulations to be a pretty trivial amount of work. I do suggest reading these things, for the most part they can usually be sorted with a bit of paperwork, the kind of thing someone who's reasonably on it can bang out in a day or so. (Especially software: hardware can be a bit more of a pain, but that's because of important shit like not starting fires or electrocuting someone)

Re: Apple vs the Law

#334

Post by burnerthrow008 »

lxgr wrote: post #276
itopaloglu83 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a very good and valid question but did they sell the device with the premise that anyone can run any app they want or only the apps Apple approved can run? We believe in the same thing, our devices should be free like speech. But the whole thing turned into a show because some rich software companies don’t want to pay Apple 30% while they have no problem with other platforms like gaming consoles.

> some rich software companies don’t want to pay Apple 30% while they have no problem with other platforms like gaming consoles Why would you think they don't have a problem with the cut game console manufacturers take? It's also different kinds of companies: Epic and Spotify have quite different concerns, for example.

> Why would you think they don't have a problem with the cut game console manufacturers take?

Because they haven't sued them in the US nor lobbied the EC to label game console manufacturers as "gatekeepers".

Re: Apple vs the Law

#335

Post by burnerthrow008 »

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #238
bzzzt wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not offering in-app signups doesn't seem to make Spotify less dominant. I'm in the Netherlands, almost everybody I know has a Spotify subscription, I know just one guy using Apple music. The 30% fee also drops to 15% after one year, and there are companies that negotiated lower fees. Also, 'doing it yourself' won't be free, you still need some party to do payment processing, customer service and returns which also ca…

The problem here is that Apple have a competing service that doesn't have to pay the money. That's the issue, and it needs to be resolved for Apple to be compliant with EU law. Or they can leave, if they think that makes more sense for their business.

> The problem here is that Apple have a competing service that doesn't have to pay the money.

On the contrary, Apple does pay the money... to the artists. Which is something that Spotify doesn't do as much.

https://virpp.com/hello/music-streaming-payouts-comparison-a...

Strangely, despite this rather obvious market power (monopsony) that Spotify has in negotiating below-market rates with their suppliers, the EC has not seen fit to label them as a "gatekeeper".

I'm sure it has nothing whatever to do with having their headquarters in Sweden.

Re: Apple vs the Law

#336

Post by burnerthrow008 »

pyman wrote: post #56
scheeseman486 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tim doesn't want open platforms, all he wants is EGS to be able to exist within a walled garden. As long as he gets that, he's golden. If he wanted to support truly open platforms he'd be putting more money and time into helping develop Linux into a stronger contender for desktop and mobile and fighting against things like Play Integrity API, which are just another form of vendor lock-in.

That's your opinion, and I respect it. But let's look at the facts: - He sued Apple and Google for monopolistic behaviour. He's been fighting for fair access and better deals for all developers, not just Epic Games Store. - His fight's not about open source or open platforms, it's about fair access, lower fees, and giving developers more control. - He speaks for millions of independent computer scientists who build g…

> - He sued Apple and Google for monopolistic behaviour. He's been fighting for fair access and better deals for all developers, not just Epic Games Store.

And yet he did not sue Sony, Nintendo or Microsoft. Each of whom represent a much larger share Epic's revenue than Apple or Google.

And he admitted in court that he was willing to throw all other developers under the bus if Apple had given him the discount he wanted for Epic.

Re: Apple vs the Law

#337

Post by mtomweb »

shuckles wrote: post #293
nicoburns wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple already implement everything needed. They just decided that they can clear client-side storage for PWAs whenever they like (deleting user data), making them useless for anything that needs to store data and isn't synced to the cloud.

The goalposts move every time Apple resolves some bug that PWA advocates promise is the one issue holding them back from taking over the world with crappy web apps.

Apple hasn’t resolved any of the main issues.

Install and discoverability is still hidden. Push is gated behind install. Safari’s scroll bugs haven’t been fixed despite us extensively documenting them, emailing to Safari’s leadership and raising them every year as the number one bug.

The number one thing we’ve asked for is third party browser engines on iOS.

What goalposts do you think have moved?

Re: Apple vs the Law

#338

Post by frollogaston »

amelius wrote: post #78
isodev wrote: post #53

As a developer for apple platforms, it's extremely difficult to keep a positive mindset to all this. Year after year, Apple finds ways to continue unbounded fuckery. Making apps for iPhones is not that profitable anymore either, at this point is more about addressing a painful necessity - Apple is the phone company and you have to make it work if you want access to that "unmovable" infrastructure.

I'm seriously at a loss about why people would support this increasingly developer-hostile ecosystem and essentially work towards their own demise and perhaps even the rest of their profession. I'd suggest switching to a different source of income while you still can, even if only out of self-respect.

I used to be an iPhone app dev before I ragequit around 2017. Took that skill off my resumé, got a new SWE job that paid more anyway. Besides Apple's rules, it wasn't enjoyable to develop for that platform. Everyone was constantly fighting the tooling.

The worst time ever was Swift 1.0 + Core Data, two broken things combined, that was like Dark Castle on CD-i.

Re: Apple vs the Law

#339

Post by Spivak »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #208
grishka wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because as a developer, you often don't get that choice, for example, if your product is an online service. Either you have an iOS app and play by Apple's stupid rules, or you don't, and your iPhone users go to a competitor that does have an iOS app, or at the very least complain quite loudly.

If your product is an online service, having a website seems like a slam dunk.

The darlingest of developer darlings—Linear, the PWA first lightweight website that was and still is blazing fast, caved and launched an iOS app. If they can't be web only you have zero chance.

Re: Apple vs the Law

#340

Post by Spivak »

saagarjha wrote: post #252

I attended the workshop remotely (one of my questions is in the recording, if you watched it) and IMO it was mostly a waste of time. I didn't even stick around past the App Store section. Partly because it was daytime CEST but mostly because the format was awful. Apple would spend half the time talking about how the EU was forcing them to make their OS worse and then the EC thought it was a good idea to make Q&A a ba…

And, honestly, if I was Apple and got dragged to a "workshop" that had no teeth and wasn't legally binding I would have even less decorum than Apple's lawyers. If you had the power to actually make me do "$wishlist" you would have sued or fined me already.
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