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Dominance of Apple and Google’s app stores impacting competition and consumers

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Re: Dominance of Apple and Google’s app stores impacting competition and consumers

#391

Post by gonehome »

nisegami wrote: post #353
gonehome wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree - Apple needs the control to have the leverage that makes their ecosystem better. It's in the interest of their customers for them to have this leverage and it requires that their 'store' is the only available store so app devs can't bypass their requirements. I like Apple forcing use of in-app-payments, I like Apple giving me subscription control to make canceling easy. I like Apple blocking app tracking and…

There's always been a trivial fix here in my opinion - allowing services to charge Google Play and App Store users more. Let users decide how much the safety and convenience of billing through Apple/Google is worth.

Some do, YouTube does this.

Re: Dominance of Apple and Google’s app stores impacting competition and consumers

#392

Post by NorwegianDude »

hugi wrote: post #231
roody15 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Privacy from whom? Apple fully complies with all law enforcement requests and turns over all icloud data from a valid warrant. https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/law-enforcement-guidelin... Some it seems thinks Apple keeps data private and anonymous. In fact they do the opposite and encourage using an icloud account over and over (after ever update). All of this data is easily acquired via a warrant at any law enfor…

Are you seriously equating a legal warrant with the realtime harvesting of user data by applications (such as Google/Facebook and others)?

If you think Apple is collecting less personal data using iOS than Google is collecting using Android then you'll be disappointed...

Re: Dominance of Apple and Google’s app stores impacting competition and consumers

#393

Post by BiteCode_dev »

Elidrake24 wrote: post #42
encryptluks2 wrote: post #23

You can have third-party Android app stores. Can you say the same about Apple? While I agree that Google has market-dominance, they are not anti-competition or anti-consumer in the same sense as Apple. Android is open source, Chrome OS is open source, etc. Google is actually providing and contributing something back to the community. Apple intentionally locks people to specific hardware and to their app store.

As a user of iOS, this is precisely why I go with Apple, and why I push my family to do the same. Particularly for the more elderly in my family, Apple's setup (by and large) prevents them from doing anything that would screw themselves over. Removing Apple's control removes my desire to be apart of that ecosystem, and I know that is true for many others outside our insular little community here.

My GF has no idea how to administrate her phone, she has an android, and certainly doesn't side load apps, install them from websites or use an alternative app store.

She wouldn't know how to do those things, so this point seems kinda moot.

Re: Dominance of Apple and Google’s app stores impacting competition and consumers

#394

Post by gonehome »

modo_mario wrote: post #326
yossarian1408 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have to do business on the App store. You don't have to launch a startup on the App store. You can buy any device you want, and if there isn't currently one sold that meets your specific criterion, society might be better off if someone takes the initiative to meet this demand rather than force a company to roll out the red carpet for it's competition. Your liberty is not at stake here, nor any real detrime…

>society might be better off if someone takes the initiative to meet this demand rather than force a company to roll out the red carpet for it's competition. Would you say the same if the car market suddenly coalesced into a duopoly and the car companies become very restrictive? Would you defend only them being allowed to do basic repairs in the interest of safety? One going as far as saying you need to buy their tir…

I don’t totally agree with your analogy framing.

My take:

Car company requires third party manufacturers to adhere to its quality standards and pass review before being installed. The car company installs all of the third party parts for you and distributes them globally, handling payment, they charge 30% (or 15%) to the third party for this.

If you refuse to adhere to their quality standards they refuse to install your third party accessory.

Drivers can only get approved service from the car company.

Seems fine? Probably an exclusive benefit for owners of that car. I could see people choosing that car because of this.

Re: Dominance of Apple and Google’s app stores impacting competition and consumers

#395

Post by fragileone »

sichtlinkair wrote: post #314
fragileone wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, Android is open source. The operating system on your Android phone is not open source. What you’re refering to as Android, is in fact, Google Play Services/Android, or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, Google Play Services plus Android. Android is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another component of a fully functioning Google Play Services system. Many mobile users run a modified version of…

Interesting perspective > The core is an essential part of an operating system, but useless by itself though I think this is a bit exaggerated, no? AOSP gave me a perfectly fine, modern Android 10 experience

Not everything translated over exactly well from the original GNU/Linux copypasta, but I do agree here.

I've tested using microG in order to gain some functionality which is missing on pure AOSP builds (eg push notifications) and even with their FOSS minimal implementation of Google Play Services there's still subpar functionality like being unable to use many apps with integrated maps (Uber, Tinder, Google Maps).

Avoiding Google on your Android device results in an undeniably degraded user experience still. They additionally have abandoned many of the AOSP apps like the Calendar and Keyboard, to instead develop and maintain their own branded versions. F-Droid, LineageOS and microG in particular are picking up the slack, but we're still a good way from having the same level of functionality whilst avoiding Google proprietary software.

Re: Dominance of Apple and Google’s app stores impacting competition and consumers

#396

Post by NorwegianDude »

fnord77 wrote: post #46
encryptluks2 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may feel you're safer, but there is no proof that Apple implements better privacy practices than Google. There are a lot of different vendors that provide Android without Google services and you can also unlock your bootloader and install a custom ROM: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_custom_Android_distrib... Last, Google allows you to disable their activity history and other options that may be concerning…

there is proof - recently researchers showed google phones send an order of magnitude more data to the mothership than Apple does. Of course that's at this point in time. Tomorrow Apple could turn around and be worse.

Are you referring to this one that says Apple is collecting more personal details, but is communicating less than Google?

"Android sends 20x more data.."?

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/03/android-sends-20x-mo...

Take it with a huge grain of salt, but also note that Apple sends more personal data to themself than Google according to that article. Not in the amount of bytes, but in they amount of different data send, according to the article.

I think most people would agree that fewer personal details being shared is more important than the amount of data used to communicate. So in that regard Apple is worse.

All in all, I think this whole discussion is pointless. Both are collecting as much as they can get away with and both suck when it comes to privacy.

Re: Dominance of Apple and Google’s app stores impacting competition and consumers

#397

Post by snyp »

Apart from the article, I am pretty sure a lot of the arguments against the AppStore would disappear if Apple just paid more to the developers and reduced it's cut. I hope they find a good middle ground, we definitely need an App Store for the majority of the users out there, something that is relatively safe and allows for massive distribution but also keeps out a lot of malicious actors (its not perfect but its better than a lot of other options). It would be nice if developers also got paid a lot more.

Re: Dominance of Apple and Google’s app stores impacting competition and consumers

#398

Post by tgragnato »

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #393
Elidrake24 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a user of iOS, this is precisely why I go with Apple, and why I push my family to do the same. Particularly for the more elderly in my family, Apple's setup (by and large) prevents them from doing anything that would screw themselves over. Removing Apple's control removes my desire to be apart of that ecosystem, and I know that is true for many others outside our insular little community here.

My GF has no idea how to administrate her phone, she has an android, and certainly doesn't side load apps, install them from websites or use an alternative app store. She wouldn't know how to do those things, so this point seems kinda moot.

Only someone who never tried to compile AOSP can write seriously that "Android is open source". That the platforms are open source is a moot point too.

Re: Dominance of Apple and Google’s app stores impacting competition and consumers

#399

Post by leadingthenet »

edrxty wrote: post #116
hugi wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like you don't want an iPhone. So buy a different phone that does what you want.

I have several in fact, including the PinePhone which I quite like but isn't really ready for daily use. The issue is Apple is developing a monopoly on high end hardware and there are fewer reasonable options by the day.

And there’s a reason for that. You’re making the mistake of thinking Apple’s special sauce is the hardware. It’s not.

It’s the experience.

Re: Dominance of Apple and Google’s app stores impacting competition and consumers

#400

Post by devwastaken »

Elidrake24 wrote: post #42
encryptluks2 wrote: post #23

You can have third-party Android app stores. Can you say the same about Apple? While I agree that Google has market-dominance, they are not anti-competition or anti-consumer in the same sense as Apple. Android is open source, Chrome OS is open source, etc. Google is actually providing and contributing something back to the community. Apple intentionally locks people to specific hardware and to their app store.

As a user of iOS, this is precisely why I go with Apple, and why I push my family to do the same. Particularly for the more elderly in my family, Apple's setup (by and large) prevents them from doing anything that would screw themselves over. Removing Apple's control removes my desire to be apart of that ecosystem, and I know that is true for many others outside our insular little community here.

This is also why I don't let anyone else drive or have a bank account, or anything potentially dangerous at all. Free choice and the ability to make mistakes by ignorance means they can hurt themselves. Therefore the best solution is revoking that ability by force instead of putting the responsibility of learning unto them. It's perfectly acceptable that I get to control everything and crush businesses and users with anti competitive practices with my control. Or else - who's going to keep you 'safe'?

The idea of loving apples walled garden comes from a position of extreme privledge. You have to have lots of money to afford apples ecosystem. The hard reality is just like automobiles an iphone has become a societal requirement to participate in the common market.

You can't install 3rd party apps by default in android, you have to turn it on.

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