Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Apple admits it ranked its Files app ahead of competitor Dropbox

theverge.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 336 posts

Re: Apple admits it ranked its Files app ahead of competitor Dropbox

#61

Post by Blikkentrekker »

codesternews wrote: post #28

Apple has made life of small developers hard. Mac software and app industry has died. Even after notarising apps they show malicious popup to users. Same practices has adapted by apple like search ad etc etc. They make competing services and steal ideas of developers and those app dies. For eg screen time for Moments app. They have unfair advantage and small developers could not complete. Only handful of indie develo…

> They killed the industry.

A bit dramatic for an industry that is very much alive. — at best they damaged it.

Re: Apple admits it ranked its Files app ahead of competitor Dropbox

#62

Post by vmception »

zaptheimpaler wrote: post #45
vmception wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you would be fine if a separate "Apple Apps Inc" was required by law to exist, and it had created the Files app instead, and it had the same dropbox integration and it was therefore in the accurate metadata, and it surfaced higher than the dropbox app anyway? Congratulations, we did it guys.

Makes no sense. The whole point is they manually boosted Files to make it surface higher. If it surfaces higher under a level playing field, that is fine.

“Makes no sense, makes sense”

so at least you would be fine, thanks, I wonder what the person I replied to thinks

we’re doing it guys!

Re: Apple admits it ranked its Files app ahead of competitor Dropbox

#63

Post by webmobdev »

tracer4201 wrote: post #58
webmobdev wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "suddenly" is in the context of this new practice of charging all developers (big or small) annual fees and demanding a recurring cut of their profit. Before this unnatural practice became prevalent, any computer user and / or Linux / Windows / Mac / Android developer could create and distribute software on the respective platforms for free without any such financial consideration. My point is let's not normalise…

I don’t think you answered the ops question. Was there ever a time that you could develop software for Mac or particularly iOS and distribute it without paying the developer license fee? To be fair - the Unix market is different than iOS apps. And on Windows, anyone could run whatever program… which caused a lot of problems and financial loss. And just because Windows or Unix used those models, why are they the one a…

    Was there ever a time that you could develop software for Mac or particularly iOS and distribute it without paying the developer license fee?
As I have said in my original post, that's the point it started going downhill for us developers on the macOS and ios platform; and as Apple continues to further abuse its position, it's time to say a clear no to their regressive and exploitive practices. And as I have said elsewhere too, just because a particular practice has gained ground because the exploitive business model earns somebody more profit, doesn't mean that the exploited have to continue accepting it.

    And just because Windows or Unix used those models, why are they the one and only acceptable model?
They are more acceptable simply because they don't abuse and exploit the developers who provide a huge value to the platform. If you are fine with a corporate abusing their control over their platform to exploit money from you, both as a developer and a consumer, then we don't really have anything else to discuss because of our differing economic / political belief on this subject.

Re: Apple admits it ranked its Files app ahead of competitor Dropbox

#64

Post by smoldesu »

heavyset_go wrote: post #50
codesternews wrote: post #28

Apple has made life of small developers hard. Mac software and app industry has died. Even after notarising apps they show malicious popup to users. Same practices has adapted by apple like search ad etc etc. They make competing services and steal ideas of developers and those app dies. For eg screen time for Moments app. They have unfair advantage and small developers could not complete. Only handful of indie develo…

> Mac software and app industry has died. Even after notarising apps they show malicious popup to users. I maintain a handful of open source apps for macOS, and have for years. If I don't pay the $100 Apple tax, macOS will treat those apps as if they're radioactive, and it will trick users into believing the apps are either broken or malicious. In order to run them, users must know how to change arcane settings and d…

Absolutely this. Apple's holier-than-thou approach to every settlement they reach is starting to blow back in their face, as the rest of our economy starts to realize how parasitic and destructive this tax-collection model is. Now that Apple can effectively set their own margins, they have no incentive to treat their users or developers fairly, and recently have started to bring the hammer down. I had a few friends who also maintained open source apps for iOS, and they constantly lamented how impossible it was to get Apple to review their accusation that their open-source manual app was malware.

Re: Apple admits it ranked its Files app ahead of competitor Dropbox

#65

Post by rovr138 »

Rubayo wrote: post #38
codesternews wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am developer of mac app which rely on system events. From mojave each time I request for permission user see popup this app wants to control etc etc. I got it but every time? It killed lots of apps.

>>It killed lots of apps. how?

People see that, don't understand the popup, get scared and stop using the app.

Re: Apple admits it ranked its Files app ahead of competitor Dropbox

#66

Post by rovr138 »

nobodyknowsyoda wrote: post #43
Rubayo wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet given all this, for a substantial cohort of customers, the Apple brand is still bought as a badge of "coolness".

Slightly off topic, but I do love the translucent terminal on the Mac. It is very cool

Pretty sure gnome-terminal and terminator both have this.

Re: Apple admits it ranked its Files app ahead of competitor Dropbox

#67

Post by arthurcolle »

musicale wrote: post #49

Apple PR: > we do not advantage our apps over those of any developer or competitor Apple employee Debankur Naskar: > I think the Files app was manually boosted ... during last WWDC. We are removing the manual boost So which of these is true? Or is PR technically correct because they do not currently "advantage" their apps?

Their use of ‘advantage’ as a word reminds me of this classic Calvin & Hobbes strip.

https://www.languagetrainers.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/201...

Looks like the 80s/90s kids that were brought up on these skits are finally taking over!

Re: Apple admits it ranked its Files app ahead of competitor Dropbox

#68

Post by smoldesu »

donmcronald wrote: post #9
webmobdev wrote: post #5

Developers of ios (and soon macOS) platform have no one to blame but themselves for situations like this. Alarm bells should have been raised among us developers when Apple suddenly asked everyone to shell out $99 for the "privilege" of making an app available on the "App Store", and treated it as something normal. And later, more so, when Apple demanded a percentage cut too on every sale you make from your app. It i…

> Alarm bells should have been raised among us developers when Apple asked everyone to shell out $99 for the "privilege" of making an app available on the "App Store". And later, more so, when Apple demanded a percentage cut too on every sale you make from your app. I'm 100% against the way the app store works right now, but I don't have a problem with the idea of those two things if they were implemented in a better…

> My exact sentiment at the time was "there's no way developers are going to be dumb enough to give up control of distribution." Wow, was I ever wrong :-(

You were only one word off the truth if s/developers/consumers.

Re: Apple admits it ranked its Files app ahead of competitor Dropbox

#69

Post by samatman »

donmcronald wrote: post #7

> > the Files app had a Dropbox integration, so Apple put “Dropbox” into the app’s metadata, and it was automatically ranked higher for “Dropbox” searches as a result. I can smell the bullshit from here and I don't live in the US. Lol.

I'm glad you quoted this because it's actually plausible.

It's a given that Files is downloaded much more often than Dropbox: it's integrated with the rest of the iOS ecosystem and iCloud, I'm confident there are many more iPhone users with the Files app than with the Dropbox app.

If they added a "Dropbox" metadata, that would organically return it on a search for "Dropbox", and being popular (and well rated presumably?) might float it up above the actual app named Dropbox.

Although it bugs me in general that an App Store search for an exact name doesn't always put the app with that exact name first, app search has worked that way for awhile, and it isn't implausible to me that this specific thing happened as described.

Re: Apple admits it ranked its Files app ahead of competitor Dropbox

#70

Post by webmobdev »

dwaite wrote: post #59
donmcronald wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Alarm bells should have been raised among us developers when Apple asked everyone to shell out $99 for the "privilege" of making an app available on the "App Store". And later, more so, when Apple demanded a percentage cut too on every sale you make from your app. I'm 100% against the way the app store works right now, but I don't have a problem with the idea of those two things if they were implemented in a better…

> Imagine an ecosystem where apps were signed with domain validated certificates, which would be free (or very cheap), instant, and better than what we currently have, and it definitely feels like entrenched interests are working to keep things from improving. The goal is to validate and associate a legal entity with a developer account, not a domain name. In addition to being required to do such things in many juris…

    in event of subsequent abuse the stores want to ban an organization
A corporate shouldn't get to be the gatekeeper of anything - regulators / courts in a democratic system should decide such things so that the corporates can't abuse their position against a smaller entity. And CAs should be held accountable by the regulators too - a simple regulation like asking CAs to collect legal ID and certificate of registrations before issuing certificates to any person or entity can take care of this. Thus, if any illegal ill-practice is detected in any software, the regulators or the law can be informed and the developer / entity easily identified and necessary legal action can be taken.
Post reply on HN