I love how brazen this letter is. > Apple’s approach has always been to grow the pie. Apple's approach has always been to grow it's own pie. They have never been even remotely interested in playing nicely with other companies. I don't fault them for it, but let's not kid ourselves here; the app store is largely an extremely profitable exercise in rent seeking. It's not like this is new for Apple; they've had propriet…
Xcode is now free: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/xcode/id497799835?mt=12 (although you still have to have a mac)
Addressing Spotify’s Claims
371–380 of 688 posts
Re: Addressing Spotify’s Claims
#372I thought about making a little automated system where it exposes my playlists as podcast stations. Like an AWS Lambda that runs Chrome headless and streams the output of Spotify web player.
Re: Addressing Spotify’s Claims
#373I love how brazen this letter is. > Apple’s approach has always been to grow the pie. Apple's approach has always been to grow it's own pie. They have never been even remotely interested in playing nicely with other companies. I don't fault them for it, but let's not kid ourselves here; the app store is largely an extremely profitable exercise in rent seeking. It's not like this is new for Apple; they've had propriet…
Apart from Lightning, which was created when no better alternative existed, I cannot remember a proprietary Apple connector in at least the past 10 years.
Re: Addressing Spotify’s Claims
#374> Underneath the rhetoric, Spotify’s aim is to make more money off others’ work. And it’s not just the App Store that they’re trying to squeeze — it’s also artists, musicians and songwriters. Uh, I seem to recall Apple being forced to reverse some brazenly greedy policies for their music service when a high-profile artist called them out and withheld content in protest. For Apple to characterize itself as a champion…
Since when have Apple's PR releases seemed so snarky? I haven't seen so many phrased like this, which underneath the layers of pseudo support for developers and artists, is basically a big "NO U".
Re: Addressing Spotify’s Claims
#375At the end of the day, almost literally everyone at Spotify fawns over Apple and Apple gear. And that's a problem.
If these companies are now finding out to their detriment just how precarious their existence is based on their dependence on Apple, then it might be a good idea to start championing multiple competing platforms instead of scoffing at any non-Apple related efforts.
Re: Addressing Spotify’s Claims
#376Earlier quoted context omitted.
Xcode is now free: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/xcode/id497799835?mt=12 (although you still have to have a mac)
Still proprietary though, right? With underlying free libraries and compilers?
Re: Addressing Spotify’s Claims
#377I love how brazen this letter is. > Apple’s approach has always been to grow the pie. Apple's approach has always been to grow it's own pie. They have never been even remotely interested in playing nicely with other companies. I don't fault them for it, but let's not kid ourselves here; the app store is largely an extremely profitable exercise in rent seeking. It's not like this is new for Apple; they've had propriet…
Xcode is now free: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/xcode/id497799835?mt=12 (although you still have to have a mac)
Re: Addressing Spotify’s Claims
#378Earlier quoted context omitted.
I currently subscribe to Spotify, use the iOS Spotify App, and do not make payments through in-app payments nor do I pay the 30% Apple tax. So it is circumventable, and Spotify is just "optimizing" their revenues here. So at least compared to Steam, Apple's platform is actually more open since you aren't required to pay through Apple's platform. Though I'm not sure on the current requirements for in-app purchases, so…
I buy Steam games from Humble Bundle all the time. The developers can actually generate steam keys and sell their game directly. https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys As far as I know you can't do that on iOS. There's also nothing stopping the devs from selling IAP themselves on their own website. So no, Steam is much much more open than Apple's App store. Not to mention the fact that Steam is completely o…
Not at scale, no, but you can generate promo codes (up to a limit - maybe 100?) to distribute your paid app for free.
Re: Addressing Spotify’s Claims
#379I love how brazen this letter is. > Apple’s approach has always been to grow the pie. Apple's approach has always been to grow it's own pie. They have never been even remotely interested in playing nicely with other companies. I don't fault them for it, but let's not kid ourselves here; the app store is largely an extremely profitable exercise in rent seeking. It's not like this is new for Apple; they've had propriet…
> they've had proprietary cables and adapters for as long as I can remember. Apart from Lightning, which was created when no better alternative existed, I cannot remember a proprietary Apple connector in at least the past 10 years.
Re: Addressing Spotify’s Claims
#380Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yep. > Spotify’s aim is to make more money off others’ work. And Apple's aim is to make more money off that more money. It's such an obviously, laughably stupid argument they're doing there.
Spotify pays artists a fraction of what Apple pays.