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EU approves legislation to regulate Apple, Google, Meta, and other tech firms
521–530 of 930 posts
Re: EU approves legislation to regulate Apple, Google, Meta, and other tech firms
#522Earlier quoted context omitted.
Steve Jobs was an asshole who always put money first. But even if you disagree with that, he's been dead for more than a decade. It's time to move on.
Disney buying Pixar made Jobs more money than anything he ever did with computers.
And if anybody on HN actually read Apple's Annual report every single year before the iPod even came out, they would ( or should ) have know how Apple's money or profits works very differently from Steve to Tim Cook's era.
Re: EU approves legislation to regulate Apple, Google, Meta, and other tech firms
#523Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is what beats the heck outta me. A company that is sitting on nearly 150B in cash somehow feels the need to pinch 30% commissions from developers till date. I understand this as an initial business model. I mean a 15% reduction in app revenues is not even a rounding error in Apple's P&L. What the hell are they thinking. The goodwill that they'd earn from devs will go a long long way and if they signal that their…
So the people that can make the company more successful are sales and marketing people, and they end up running the companies. And the product people get driven out of the decision making forums, and the companies forget what it means to make great products. The product sensibility and the product genius that brought them to that monopolistic position gets rotted out by people running these companies that have no con…
Also called the Hewlett Packard special.
Re: EU approves legislation to regulate Apple, Google, Meta, and other tech firms
#524Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apple makes peanuts from the App Store relative to phone sales. After they upped the cut for developers to between 70% and 85% and CC companies still get their cut, add customer service and app reviews and it simply isn’t that profitable. What they benefit from is selling 1,000$ phones at a 30+% profit margin, because for the average consumer they simply work better. Which actually aligns incentives between customers…
A quick Google suggests Apple made 64 billion from the App Store in 2021 of the 378 billion in total revenue. Some fairly large peanuts! And that revenue is basically pure profit as it doesn’t require the creation of any actual physical hardware either.
The profit is more important than revenue.
Re: EU approves legislation to regulate Apple, Google, Meta, and other tech firms
#525Earlier quoted context omitted.
Some might try this move, but my guess is that sideloading will involve enough friction that user retention will drop and developers will be heavily disincentivized from relying on it for distribution. In particular I expect that every update will require user action to re-install the new version of every sideloaded app, which is the reason most developers don't go that route on Android today.
Funnily enough that's exactly the reason why Epic sued Google - having to confirm every update and install through a scary dialog box was too anti-competitive for them. Google responded by... actually, adding entirely new APIs in Android for sideloaded app stores to be able to update already-approved applications without extra permissions or approval. In fact, they even distinguish between "sideloaded app" and "insta…
> adding entirely new APIs in Android for sideloaded app stores to be able to update already-approved applications without extra permissions or approval
Wow, that sounds great! Does F-Droid make use of those yet? Having to manually install every app update gets tiresome.
Re: EU approves legislation to regulate Apple, Google, Meta, and other tech firms
#526Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't agree with the second paragraph at all. Apple sets a restrictive and privacy-centric set of rules for advertisers, which it then follows. The fact that this is a problem for other advertising companies is an indictment of those companies and their bleak surveillance-enabling business model. Contrast this with the "use WebKit or go home" rule, which, like it or not, is favoring Apple's product over others. It'…
Apple have repeatedly refused to confirm that their ad system is compliant with the ATT rules.
Which ad system? Their programmatic ad inventory does not support tracking, as anyone who has access to developer ads can confirm.
Re: EU approves legislation to regulate Apple, Google, Meta, and other tech firms
#527Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't agree with the second paragraph at all. Apple sets a restrictive and privacy-centric set of rules for advertisers, which it then follows. The fact that this is a problem for other advertising companies is an indictment of those companies and their bleak surveillance-enabling business model. Contrast this with the "use WebKit or go home" rule, which, like it or not, is favoring Apple's product over others. It'…
It's easy to play by the rules when you're the one writing them.
This is only a criticism if you enumerate the deficiencies with the rules you believe are only justified by self-interest.
Re: EU approves legislation to regulate Apple, Google, Meta, and other tech firms
#528I 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 subsc…
German politicians were discussing banning Telegram. With centralized monopoly App Stores, they easily can. With sideloading, they can't under current frameworks; and they're unlikely to mandate remote-uninstalls of "illegal apps" anytime soon.
Sure, central subscription management and "Login with Apple" are convenient, but I'd much rather governments not have the ability to block apps on my personal devices.
Re: EU approves legislation to regulate Apple, Google, Meta, and other tech firms
#529Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 subsc…
> People don’t choose iPhone because they want those things Your argument is ridiculous. People didn't choose iPhone because they wanted to deprive themself of an option to switch browsers engines or payment vendors either. People actually chose iPhones for a thousand other reasons.
No one chooses phones based on browser engines. Why anyone is upset with Apple improving security by only allowing executable pages in Safari is beyond my comprehension.
Re: EU approves legislation to regulate Apple, Google, Meta, and other tech firms
#530Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Its nothing compared to the piratebay.
Hosting torrents takes minimal bandwidth. Apple can’t offload bandwidth peer to peer to phones when people are on limited cellular plans.