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EU approves legislation to regulate Apple, Google, Meta, and other tech firms

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Re: EU approves legislation to regulate Apple, Google, Meta, and other tech firms

#411

Post by wmeredith »

_the_inflator wrote: post #120
superb-owl wrote: post #5

This is huge. Forcing Apple to allow app side-loading, third-party payments, etc is going to wrest away control of the iOS ecosystem (and eat pretty heavily into their revenues [1] [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/10/apple-implies-it-generated-r... I hope some of these regulations spill over into the U.S. and the rest of the world.

Never underestimate the creative genius of Apple. They will come up with new solutions to keep their walled garden. "Allow users to install apps from third-party app stores and sideload directly from the internet" I bet this is going to be a horrible user experience. "Are you really sure?", "Apple takes no responsibility not warranty" whatsoever. What sound usually easy on paper...

> "Are you really sure?", "Apple takes no responsibility not warranty"

Sounds good to me. As a techie who maintains several phones for several family members at a variety of tech-literate levels, I certainly hope this experience sucks and is difficult to figure out.

Re: EU approves legislation to regulate Apple, Google, Meta, and other tech firms

#412

Post by dijit »

criddell wrote: post #367
dijit wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Has there ever been a console where, over the life of the console, the hardware was sold for a loss? All of them. Speaking about PS5 specifically: there's quite a few advancements in there that you're not thinking about, the kraken decompressor that can run at native NVME speed in hardware and load assets directly into video memory has no PC equivalent. Though PC vendors are trying to do NVME GPUMem these days, it…

>> Has there ever been a console where, over the life of the console, the hardware was sold for a loss? > All of them. Are you serious? The Wii has sold more than 100 million units over the past ten years and you think it's been a net loss for Nintendo? PS5-to-PC comparisons are hard to do in a meaningful way. It's like saying a Toyota Camry is sold at a loss because if you build one part-by-part it's going to cost $…

I mean, it's conventional wisdom that Consoles are the _poster child_ for what "Loss Leader" means. https://www.makeuseof.com/games-consoles-sold-at-loss/

Re: EU approves legislation to regulate Apple, Google, Meta, and other tech firms

#413

Post by jorvi »

cycomanic wrote: post #273
hyperpape wrote: post #175

There's several very good provisions in this legislation (3rd party payment processors, non-preferential treatment for 1st party apps), there are several that have a mix of upsides and downsides (sideloading is one--I personally like knowing that Facebook can't ask people to sideload some privacy destroying crap on iOS). Then there's: - Allow developers to integrate their apps and digital services directly with those…

Can we stop pretending that Apple has the users best interest in mind? They just want to be the gatekeeper for lucrative applications/functions so they can charge for it. That they somehow convinced apple users that it's somehow in their interest just shows how good their marketing is.

A big case in point is Apple Music.

Apple turning the Music Player app in Apple Music allowed them to catch a huge part of the market that had never interacted with music streaming before. Extremely anti-competitive. IMO when they did that they should have immediately been forced by the EU to instead show a pop-up that also gave the option for Spotify, Deezer, Tidal etc.

Re: EU approves legislation to regulate Apple, Google, Meta, and other tech firms

#414

Post by hamandcheese »

caramelcustard wrote: post #374
Closi wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t have to be the market majority for your actions to be anti-competitive.

That's not the point. "Anti-competitive practices are business or government practices that prevent or reduce competition in a market.". The point of me mentioning that Apple is not the market majority was to emphasize that even with their current positions, Apple isn't capable of effectively reducing competition in the market of electronic devices, as is already proven not by legislative bodies but the market.

Just because there is someone with more market share than you does not mean that your actions can't squeeze smaller players than you (or, more commonly for apple, squeeze players in adjacent markets. See: Spotify vs Apple Music).

Re: EU approves legislation to regulate Apple, Google, Meta, and other tech firms

#415

Post by judge2020 »

saurik wrote: post #257
hyperpape wrote: post #175

There's several very good provisions in this legislation (3rd party payment processors, non-preferential treatment for 1st party apps), there are several that have a mix of upsides and downsides (sideloading is one--I personally like knowing that Facebook can't ask people to sideload some privacy destroying crap on iOS). Then there's: - Allow developers to integrate their apps and digital services directly with those…

> Allow developers to integrate their apps and digital services directly with those belonging to a gatekeeper. This includes making messaging, voice-calling, and video-calling services interoperable with third-party services upon request. I would think this requirement is satisfied merely by providing a public API / protocol documentation for your protocol, to allow for third-party access and integration, not some we…

They already do this to an extent[0], but maybe they're trying to make iMessage interop with RCS by force.

0: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/callkit

Re: EU approves legislation to regulate Apple, Google, Meta, and other tech firms

#416

Post by jachee »

stale2002 wrote: post #403
baxtr wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this pre 30% or after? Also: how much does it cost to run the App Store globally? Do have the numbers?

> how much does it cost to run the App Store globally? Do have the numbers? I think that anyone who thought about this for even a second would come to the conclusion of "It almost certainly doesn't cost anywhere near the amount of revenue that comes from it". So the answer is, probably not a lot, compared to revenue.

I dunno… I figure just the bandwidth costs, not to mention data center/cloud costs, for the constant stream of apps being deployed/updated is pretty significant.

I could expect them to be moving multiple terabytes of data per hour.

Re: EU approves legislation to regulate Apple, Google, Meta, and other tech firms

#417

Post by n8cpdx »

vivegi wrote: post #365

I love this just for these three rules: > Allow users to install apps from third-party app stores and sideload directly from the internet. > Allow developers to offer third-party payment systems in apps and promote offers outside the gatekeeper's platforms. > Ensure that all apps are uninstallable and give users the ability to unsubscribe from core platform services under similar conditions to subscription. and restr…

People don’t choose iPhone because they want those things, they choose iPhone because they want to be protected from them.

Look at the Lumenate app that was just on hacker news yesterday:

- Android users are complaining about having to create an account to use it

- iOS users just pushed a button and didn’t even have to share their email or make a password

- iOS users who subscribe have one place to manage their subscription, know that Apple will remind them _before_ the subscription auto renews, and know that they won’t be trapped or tricked into continuing to pay.

I don’t know why people on HN think somehow third party payment services are going to be better for Apple’s users than Apple has been. And I don’t know why HN users are so eager to ignore the disaster that the install-exe-from-internet computing mode has been for security.

If you hate Apple so much, use an Android, but once again, keep your grubby hands off my iPhone. I hate that Europeans are trying to make my quality of life worse, like they have been for years with cookie popup bullshit.

Re: EU approves legislation to regulate Apple, Google, Meta, and other tech firms

#418

Post by vorpalhex »

nonrandomstring wrote: post #360
cercatrova wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. Bailouts were loans, not free money. The US government made money on those loans due to interest.

That's a nice comforting story to believe in. I hope for you it's true. Over here the bailouts were a massive transfer of public to private wealth that led to a decade of "austerity", closed hospitals, collapsed pension schemes and general misery for the poorest people in society.

Belittling someone - especially over a fact that has a clear true/false outcome - is silly. At best it makes you look like a jerk.

At least google the fact before doubting it.

Re: EU approves legislation to regulate Apple, Google, Meta, and other tech firms

#419

Post by kecupochren »

Hamuko wrote: post #88
sph wrote: post #6

Happy that I might be able to install something else than Safari. I want the Gecko engine on iOS. Sad that being in UK probably means we'll ignore it because "Brexit." I got a text the other day telling me that, since we've left the EU, roaming charges are back. Hurray! Without making this about politics, this is a great step forward. Still unsure how Apple & co. will make their proprietary video and messaging platfo…

> Still unsure how Apple & co. will make their proprietary video and messaging platforms "interoperable". I doubt they'll be writing an RFC any time soon. I'd be pretty happy if I could integrate iMessage and Signal together, since I hate the fact that iMessage is the only messaging platform with a native macOS app.

Telegram is also native on macOS

Re: EU approves legislation to regulate Apple, Google, Meta, and other tech firms

#420

Post by vorpalhex »

Nasrudith wrote: post #368
vorpalhex wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much warehouse space does it take to sell 3,000,000 copies of fortnite? How much shrink did they have?

The shrinkage is called chargeback and processing fees.

Great so that's 3.5%

Where is the other 26.5% coming from?

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