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App store bill sails out of Senate Judiciary Committee

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Re: App store bill sails out of Senate Judiciary Committee

#361

Post by clusterfish »

LexGray wrote: post #333
clusterfish wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bunch of FUD. OS features and permissions aren't going anywhere. Even if coercing users into providing permissions became a real problem, Apple could have the OS provide fake data to apps not whitelisted by the user. If you don't want to be tracked, don't use Google, Facebook, and other ad techs. Doesn't matter whether you installed their apps or not. Even today Apple can't meaningfully shield you from their tracking…

That complex legislation is not going to happen because ad-tech has the money to stop it. Facebook is right now taking a huge loss due to the fact the walled garden is working. People compromise their privacy because they didn’t have a choice. Apple is providing that choice until you let Chrome only be installed from the Google store and web sites suddenly say “best with chrome”.

> Facebook is right now taking a huge loss due to the fact the walled garden is working.

Facebook is hitting a huge loss right now because they saturated the world, ran out of markets to expand to. Not because of Apple's minor restrictions on cross-app tracking, jeez. Their growth in US stalled long ago.

> That complex legislation is not going to happen because ad-tech has the money to stop it.

And tobacco companies had the money to prevent anti-smoking regulations, and the oil industry had the money to deny climate change, and big tech had the money to keep their app store monopolies. Well some of those are WIP but it's clear that things do improve despite the money, albeit slowly.

> People compromise their privacy because they didn’t have a choice.

Nobody's stopping you from using DuckDuckGo and Mobile Safari, not today, not if this legislation goes through. Nothing that Apple does will change that, and nobody will code websites for mobile without supporting the default browser on their target platform, unless that browser is IE-level terrible, which Mobile Safari is not, despite its many deliberate shortcomings.

If you're all about choice you should stop telling other people that they should pay for services with money rather than with ad impressions, and that they should pay Apple's 30% tax for your privilege to see one monopolist shove it to another in a superficial way.

And if you think "don't use Apple" is valid advice for these people, then it's also valid advice for you for when this legislation passes, if you really can't live on a platform that isn't completely locked down.

Re: App store bill sails out of Senate Judiciary Committee

#362

Post by Andrew_nenakhov »

tomjen3 wrote: post #327
Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an extremely limited way of thinking. Do you want WhatsApp to deliver a message to you from your mom or special one that they urgently need help? Or should they wait till you will want to check the app?

I can maybe see a prioty system for contacts. Not sure how much it would help. My family is at least an hour away and I might not see the notification anyway. That is a far cry from permitting it for all apps though.

You may disallow app access to notifications if you want to check it only on your schedule. But not having access to notifications hinderes main function of messaging apps - delivering messages to you.

It is frankly shocking to me how many people fail to understand that.

"I don't like push notifications, it means nobody needs them"

Re: App store bill sails out of Senate Judiciary Committee

#363

Post by Gareth321 »

tmpuser123 wrote: post #259

To those who say that if I don't sideload then this change won't affect me, I don't think this is true. Just because there aren't many alternative app stores on Android doesn't mean it won't happen on iOS. Developers will do this if there is a financial incentive. This is a forced fragmentation of the App store and will do absolutely nothing to improve the experience of a normal, non-HN-reading end user. This will in…

>will do absolutely nothing to improve the experience of a normal, non-HN-reading end user.

I look forward to:

* Torrent apps.

* xCloud (Game Pass game streaming app).

* Emulators.

* Adult themed apps.

* The Steam store.

* All the millions of apps which are blocked for any and no reason at all, since the approval process is arbitrary and broken at best.

Re: App store bill sails out of Senate Judiciary Committee

#364

Post by shaky-carrousel »

yalogin wrote: post #92
shaky-carrousel wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, my user experience is my problem. Other people dictating how should I experience my devices is hugely condescending.

Who is “you” here? A end user or app developer?

That distinction is way outdated because a developer is not inherently more savvy than an end user. You could have a web developer who has no idea about how a smartphone works internally.

Re: App store bill sails out of Senate Judiciary Committee

#365

Post by dskloet »

nerdjon wrote: post #110
nerdjon wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As it stands all of the apps I have subscribed too are only available to subscribe too this way. So I assume given the price that the extra 30 (or 15) is calculated into the price. So my answer would be yes, if they said I could lower it by going through their website I would continue to do it through the app. If they removed the option completely I would stop using it and find an alternative. I will not support shad…

I just decided to do some quick number crunching to see how much this actually would impact me. Not including Apple One, I spend $432 a year on subscriptions on the App Store. All of those are not available via any other means. So if I saved 30% I would be paying $302 a year... Yeah I would happily continue paying $432 to be able to easily drop something if they start a behavior I don't like and feel like I am in con…

Thanks for your answer. I agree making it difficult to unsubscribe is bad, but I honestly cannot imagine myself paying extra recurringly for saving myself 10 minutes once at the end. So it's interesting to see people making different trade-offs.

Re: App store bill sails out of Senate Judiciary Committee

#366

Post by Kbelicius »

no_wizard wrote: post #189
mdoms wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But a strong benefit to the App Store for me is being able to manage and cancel my subscriptions from a central place. No going through 5 screens, no being forced to call, no any of that crap. If it's as strong a benefit as you believe then developers will keep offering it.

its a strong benefit for the end user. There is prior to this little to no incentive for companies to do this, and arguably most don't want friction-less cancellation, or they would have built it from day one in the first place. I don't bet on this sticking around if it can at all be broken.

> There is prior to this little to no incentive for companies to do this

There are huge incentives to do this in California and EU. They have the legislation that says that if one can subscribe to a service with one click of a button then one must be able to unsubscribe with one click of a button.

Re: App store bill sails out of Senate Judiciary Committee

#367

Post by dskloet »

Spivak wrote: post #227
dskloet wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just curious, would you pay 40% more for the convenience of being able to cancel in one place?

Of course not, I also wouldn't pay 20-40% more for free two day shipping or 30% more for free food delivery over $12, but nonetheless Amazon and DoorDash are able to take that much of a cut from sellers and restaurants. You miss the fundamental thing which is that the charge is specifically for publishers for a reason. It's because it absolutely is worth 30% to every business who wants to reach a lucrative market.

There is no difference between the customer paying extra and the seller paying extra. There is an amount the customer pays and an amount the seller receives, and the difference is what is paid extra.

Re: App store bill sails out of Senate Judiciary Committee

#368

Post by Kbelicius »

tomjen3 wrote: post #325
Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #239

The main question is: What about push notifications? WHAT ABOUT PUSH NOTIFICATIONS?!! Even if we sideload an app, with modern mobile OS architecture many classes of apps will be almost useless if sideloaded apps will not be able to use push notifications provided by an operating system.

Strong disagreement. Push notifications are so annoying and really should not exist except for calendar, todos and other time sensitive things. The idea that apps just get to notify me whenever they want is insane. This is especially true in games. Heck theses days a website gets to buck me about it just by me visiting it.

As a person that has never used an android or ios device I must ask, are you unable to disable push notification per app?

Re: App store bill sails out of Senate Judiciary Committee

#369

Post by tomjen3 »

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #362
tomjen3 wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can maybe see a prioty system for contacts. Not sure how much it would help. My family is at least an hour away and I might not see the notification anyway. That is a far cry from permitting it for all apps though.

You may disallow app access to notifications if you want to check it only on your schedule. But not having access to notifications hinderes main function of messaging apps - delivering messages to you. It is frankly shocking to me how many people fail to understand that. "I don't like push notifications, it means nobody needs them"

Yes, I do not want to have to disable them per app or even being asked if want to enable them.

Re: App store bill sails out of Senate Judiciary Committee

#370

Post by asah »

roughly wrote: post #97

If anyone actually thinks we’re going to be in an objectively better spot in 2 years because of this bill, I encourage you to take a real good look around at the actual world we actually live in. Things I guarantee you will see because of this: 1. You will have six different app stores on your phone. The Apple one, the Facebook one, the Google one, the Epic one, and at least two more, probably one from Disney and one…

...then let the app store compete on these merits - users can come to trust the app store if that's what they prefer.
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