Apple’s “monopsony” power, and the woman who named it • Hacker News Board

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

#351

Post by mcv » Thu, Jan 16, 2020, 3:56 PM UTC

simonh wrote: post #333

mcv wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 h…

> "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."

Exactly my point.

Yet these companies do want to dictate exactly that.

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

#352

Post by Karunamon » Thu, Jan 16, 2020, 4:16 PM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #316

Karunamon wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could make the signing APIs available to something like Jetbrains' AppCode. No porting necessary.

Because most companies are willing to give out their signing keys willy nilly... Would you expect the same from the console makers?

Users authenticate to access that API with their developer credentials.. username and password on infrastructure owned by Apple. There is no need for them to give out their signing keys.

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

#353

Post by Zenst » Thu, Jan 16, 2020, 4:22 PM UTC

viklove wrote: post #251

Zenst wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you have that choice at purchase. Hence this aspect does feel akin to somebody buying a Tesla and the customer expecting the ability to switch to diesel, petrol instead of being stuck with electric. Also remember how long that Microsoft rulling took and what it actualy ended-up being in the end - which for most was an annoying popup for those who already knew how to change web browsers. These days what happens is…

It's more like only being able to use Tesla rims and tires if you want to replace the stock ones. Or only being able to put Tesla coffee in the cup holder.

Maybe, but it is a case of aftermarket expectations post point of sale. So more like buying a car without aircon and complaining it don't have aircon as the seller don't sell aircon and had they asked when they brought it, they would of been told clearly they don't offer that.

So if anything we get the term of mis-buying as nothing was mis-sold with such expectations the customer later acquired after the sale.

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

#354

Post by thekyle » Thu, Jan 16, 2020, 5:03 PM UTC

dpkonofa wrote: post #273

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…

>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.

Google Voice doesn't use the SIM card in the phone to send SMS so it can bypass any of Apples API restrictions.

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

#355

Post by mrr54 » Thu, Jan 16, 2020, 8:53 PM UTC

BlueTemplar wrote: post #340

mrr54 wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In my experience they aren't different at all. Steam Workshop is just a distribution platform for mods. It's a mod installer and manager. It doesn't stop you doing it manually.

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

#356

Post by magduf » Thu, Jan 16, 2020, 11:27 PM UTC

redwall_hp wrote: post #241

braythwayt wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Monopsony is a slippery concept. If I tilt my head just right, we could be discussing the way WalMart purchases products. They sell a product in their store, they decide they want a certain margin, and then they tell suppliers to meet a certain price target if they want their products in WalMart.

The difference is you don't purchase a Walmart store first. Neogreekisms aside, I personally think the iPhone ecosystem smells like a new kind of monopoly that the people who set down existing antitrust law couldn't have foreseen. Imagine buying a nice desk to work on, and being told you could only buy paper and pens from the manufacturer of the desk. Maybe other vendors could be considered if 30% of their revenue we…

>Maybe other vendors could be considered if 30% of their revenue went to the desk manufacturer. Preposterous, right? That's the world be live in and accepted as the norm for smartphones.

To be fair, on Android, you at least have the ability to sideload apps or use different app stores. Of course, not many people do, but the option is there.

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

#357

Post by dpkonofa » Fri, Jan 17, 2020, 12:57 AM UTC

thekyle wrote: post #354

dpkonofa wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Google Voice doesn't use the SIM card in the phone to send SMS so it can bypass any of Apples API restrictions.

How does that matter? Signal doesn't have to use the SIM card either.

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

#358

Post by dpkonofa » Fri, Jan 17, 2020, 1:00 AM UTC

CoolGuySteve wrote: post #326

dpkonofa wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you're misunderstanding what's happening. If you unregister your phone number from iMessage, then that's the end of it. People sending messages to your phone number will get SMS messages. It is impossible for a de-registered phone number to receive iMessages on an iPad. What's actually happening is that the people who are sending you messages are sending them to your Apple ID instead and iMessage is always regist…

I'm not misunderstanding anything. I want to opt out of iMessage being bound to my Apple ID. I don't give a shit what address or phone number people think they're sending to, when they see my name on their iPhone, it's the wrong address. The only reason my iPad even has iMessage installed is because people were sending me messages that got disappeared by Apple's abysmal policy. Why is this so hard for you to understa…

Yes, you are misunderstanding. I don't see how that's not obvious to you. iMessage is tied to an Apple ID. Unregistering your phone number from that Apple ID doesn't turn iMessage off. The fact that you think it does is where you misunderstand. The only way to turn off iMessage from an Apple ID is to turn off iMessage for the devices that are set up to receive those messages.

It's literally impossible to send an SMS message to someone's Apple ID and it's not possible to send an iMessage to a phone number that's been unregistered from iMessage. Just because you don't understand how it works doesn't mean Apple is at fault. You cannot delist an Apple ID from iMessage, you can only sign out of iMessage on a receiving device. That's it. Anything else above that is your fault.

If you don't want to receive iMessages at all and don't want people sending them to you, sign out of iMessage. It's not that hard.

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

#359

Post by scarface74 » Fri, Jan 17, 2020, 5:27 AM UTC

Quarrelsome wrote: post #350

scarface74 wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does that not fit in “auto build arrangements”? You have a Mac as a build server to build Mac software just like you need a Windows Build server to build a Windows app. If your business can’t afford a $700 Mac Mini, you’re not running a business. Besides, are you not doing any local testing in the simulator?

You don't need a windows build server to build a windows app, its just an executable that targets a given cpu architecture or run-time. Its not about affording a Mac Mini its about being forced to do IT on some build servers when the rest are visualised in the cloud. Having your cloud servers ping back into your physical office to do the Mac build is stupid. For context, this is an online service where we wanted to b…

You don't need a windows build server to build a windows app, its just an executable that targets a given cpu architecture or run-time.

Have you tried building a native or .Net Framework app on a Linux machine? How did that work out?

Its not about affording a Mac Mini its about being forced to do IT on some build servers when the rest are visualised in the cloud. Having your cloud servers ping back into your physical office to do the Mac build is stupid.

Because no one ever pushed code to Github that “pinged” to another server located somewhere else or pulled dependencies from yet another server like Nuget or npm...

I’m all for “the cloud”, but a VM in the cloud is no harder or easier to manage than one in a local server room. Especially since with most build systems, the orchestration is happening on one server with build agents hosted on different servers.

You want to build the product on a dev box? That's not good CI. You want these environments to be clean and preferably spun up fresh each build.

I never said that. But with most build systems it doesn’t matter where the agents are or where the orchestration server is. The agents register with the orchestration server and you can “visualize” where the agents are.

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

#360

Post by anon98356 » Fri, Jan 17, 2020, 9:54 AM UTC

GeekyBear wrote: post #14

Next up: Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony's game consoles?

While their consoles still support physical media they aren't monopsonies. A monopsony is a single buyer. As a game developer you have the choice to sell on the xbox store or get physical discs printed and sell them either through a retailer e.g. amazon, or directly from your own site if you wanted.

If/when they produce a generation of consoles that don't support physical media things will probably start to get a lot more questionable