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Apple’s App Store fees are ‘highway robbery’ – House antitrust committee chair

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Re: Apple’s App Store fees are ‘highway robbery’ – House antitrust committee chair

#71

Post by rydre »

bad_user wrote: post #53
rydre wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The leaders elected by the citizens or a different way of governance of other sovereign countries have the right to decide what is best for their citizens. American companies should not try to impose their moral values on others. Many eastern cultures do not value privacy as much as you guys do, and it's fine.

If you don't like it, then don't buy their products, it's that simple. Sovereign countries are sovereign of course. But that's a truism that's irrelevant in this discussion. Such countries can ban Apple products if they don't like it. Choose your own values and build your own products. --- > " Many eastern cultures do not value privacy as much as you guys do, and it's fine. " Actually it's not fine at all, in my opin…

> And yes, I avoid products from Chinese companies for that reason and I'm always skeptical of US products too. Sorry, but I'll never buy stuff from companies like Huawei, not until I'll see a strong commitment to privacy, especially when the administration of the host country sees human rights as an existential threat and targets activists from other countries.

Stop buying stuff from Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft because these companies are a part of a surveillance program called PRISM. IF you really value privacy, you wouldn't just abandon Huawei, but you'd do the same for these companies too. Unless you have a double standard of course.

Re: Apple’s App Store fees are ‘highway robbery’ – House antitrust committee chair

#72

Post by gear54rus »

ageitgey wrote: post #21

I don't think the pressure on Apple is going to let up. Smart phones are no longer a tech toy and have become a literal part of government and commercial infrastructure. Apple's arbitrary power over the platform is pissing off and embarrassing governments in the COVID era. During COVID, governments around the world have been making major decisions based on mobility data from Apple and Google which shows trends of whe…

It's about time they got hit.

This will show people the fact that apple is not going to protect them from the government (dispelling bullshit marketing). In turn, it will make people adopt truly open and ownable (?) tech, because for some reason people are way more negative about govt control than about apple control.

So it's a win in my book.

Re: Apple’s App Store fees are ‘highway robbery’ – House antitrust committee chair

#73

Post by propertymagnate »

rydre wrote: post #39
treebornfrog wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't agree that Apple should bend over backwards. IMO contact tracing opens up a new can of worms and is a doorway to more draconian measures that will erode privacy for private citizens.

The leaders elected by the citizens or a different way of governance of other sovereign countries have the right to decide what is best for their citizens. American companies should not try to impose their moral values on others. Many eastern cultures do not value privacy as much as you guys do, and it's fine.

It's rather broad to speak for many eastern cultures and are we talking of the citizens or their governments? And if it is their governments whom do not value privacy you are referring to those that have leaders are "elected by the citizens" or have this "different way of governance" that you allude to?

Your statement can be re-interpreted as "whoever has the power not only makes the rules but has complete moral right to do so". That is clearly not correct. I'll just quickly violate Godwins law by pointing out this would mean the Nazis were correct, as they were the leaders elected by their citizens and thereby had the right to decide what was best for their citizens. And this is from the "elected leaders" part of your statement, not even the "different ways of governance" portion. Your statements can also be used to support slavery, etc.

If you believe in any kind of society that is not selective by ethnic or ideological group, there are universal human rights that must be adhered to. If you don't, then obviously your opinion becomes less relevant because we may not be in the same ethnic/ideological group and so one or the other us may not have the right to speak and to discourse in whatever society this is.

We can debate whether privacy is one of them, but knowing where everyone is and following them every moment of the day and being able to locate them down to a meter and follow all of their interactions enables and very strongly supports a lot of what we would call bad behaviour by a government - selected secret police apparatus, suppression of journalism, other cultures, and dissent, ideological control, restriction of movement, slavery, genocide, etc.

Re: Apple’s App Store fees are ‘highway robbery’ – House antitrust committee chair

#74

Post by rydre »

AsyncAwait wrote: post #64
rydre wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Just because the government wants to violate its citizens’ privacy doesn’t mean its citizens want that. If the majority of the citizens want that, then they can outvote their leaders. If the minority of the citizens want that, they either convince the majority to agree, or they keep quit. I haven't bought the iPhone for the privacy stance. Apple is a part of PRISM. There is ZERO % chance that their privacy stance is…

So assuming I do not want my privacy violated, I am simply at the tyranny of the majority?

No, you convince the majority. If they don't agree then maybe the really are right until you convince them otherwise. Imagine if you want to employ slave labor. The majority today disagrees. Would would still call it the tyranny of the majority?

Re: Apple’s App Store fees are ‘highway robbery’ – House antitrust committee chair

#75

Post by gear54rus »

AsyncAwait wrote: post #64
rydre wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Just because the government wants to violate its citizens’ privacy doesn’t mean its citizens want that. If the majority of the citizens want that, then they can outvote their leaders. If the minority of the citizens want that, they either convince the majority to agree, or they keep quit. I haven't bought the iPhone for the privacy stance. Apple is a part of PRISM. There is ZERO % chance that their privacy stance is…

So assuming I do not want my privacy violated, I am simply at the tyranny of the majority?

You are to research encryption and other privacy-enabling tech instead of listening to marketing. Majority will never have your back in this, forget it.

Re: Apple’s App Store fees are ‘highway robbery’ – House antitrust committee chair

#76

Post by perryizgr8 »

0xy wrote: post #9

If you could choose between a fee decrease to 15% or the ability to sideload apps bypassing the store, which is more important? To me, the only reason I avoid iOS is specifically because I cannot install my own apps without using the store.

I think the fees percentage should not be capped. Apple should be free to charge whatever they want. The main problem is the second issue you mentioned. That way apple controls devices without the owner of the device having any say in the matter. That should not be allowed. It is my phone, I paid for the hardware and software. So either let me install whatever app I want, or open source the whole thing so I can flash my own ios compiled from github.

Re: Apple’s App Store fees are ‘highway robbery’ – House antitrust committee chair

#77

Post by saagarjha »

kjakm wrote: post #56
ageitgey wrote: post #21

I don't think the pressure on Apple is going to let up. Smart phones are no longer a tech toy and have become a literal part of government and commercial infrastructure. Apple's arbitrary power over the platform is pissing off and embarrassing governments in the COVID era. During COVID, governments around the world have been making major decisions based on mobility data from Apple and Google which shows trends of whe…

>> Yesterday, the UK announced it was abandoning its own COVID contract tracing app and moving to the Apple model because they couldn't figure out how to make iPhones wake up via bluetooth (because that's a private API only available to Apple). A major western government is facing huge public embarrassment in a public health crisis over what comes down to not having permission from Apple to use a specific API in an a…

Making an iPhone do work in the background is fairly non-trivial, and not launching for that platform is suicide for a contract tracing app.

Re: Apple’s App Store fees are ‘highway robbery’ – House antitrust committee chair

#78

Post by greggman3 »

sooheon wrote: post #40
altacc wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That choice isn't a real choice though, as it's the consumers' choice to buy an iPhone not the businesses. Businesses only have a real choice about who their customers are when there is free access to the market. The issue here is precisely that you cannot set up your own internet corner shop and ignore Apple, as that means you have no access to consumers who use Apple. Internet distribution channels are inherently o…

> The issue here is precisely that you cannot set up your own internet corner shop and ignore Apple, as that means you have no access to consumers who use Apple I don't understand why businesses are entitled to have access to consumers who use Apple. If you don't want to pay to play on their platform, imagine a world where Apple doesn't exist, and position your business accordingly. Nothing is actually forcing you to…

Are you really saying you'd be okay with the same idea in any other part of you life? How about a neighborhood where you're not allowed to bring in any products except those offered by the company that build the neighborhood? How about car that you're not allowed to carry any items inside or any people that are not officially blessed by the car manufacture? How about a fridgerator that only allows food designated by the makers of the fridge.

It seems like your argument is people opted into buying things with those restrictions therefore it's ok but many things have been banned in the past along similar lines.

Re: Apple’s App Store fees are ‘highway robbery’ – House antitrust committee chair

#79

Post by sjwright »

Apocryphon wrote: post #67
sjwright wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Where was the game publishers' outrage? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_v._Accolade > Gaming console makers and game developers have way better relations Let's set aside the unproven assumptions; so your logic is that if you're a nice platform monopolist, you can charge arbitrary platform access fees. But if you're a bunch of meanies, different laws shall apply to you. I'm sorry, I was under the misapprehension…

> Let's set aside the unproven assumptions; so your logic is that if you're a nice platform monopolist, you can charge arbitrary platform access fees. But if you're a bunch of meanies, different laws shall apply to you. I'm sorry, I was under the misapprehension that you were making a serious point. You're not entirely wrong: https://www.ign.com/articles/2019/10/07/report-steams-30-cut... > One source explained that…

FWIW, I completely agree with everything you wrote. I'm not opposed to new laws that set a limit on platform access fees—but such laws can't be targeted at Apple exclusively. They have to be applied to any company which charges fees for access to an exclusive market.

Re: Apple’s App Store fees are ‘highway robbery’ – House antitrust committee chair

#80

Post by bad_user »

rydre wrote: post #71
bad_user wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't like it, then don't buy their products, it's that simple. Sovereign countries are sovereign of course. But that's a truism that's irrelevant in this discussion. Such countries can ban Apple products if they don't like it. Choose your own values and build your own products. --- > " Many eastern cultures do not value privacy as much as you guys do, and it's fine. " Actually it's not fine at all, in my opin…

> And yes, I avoid products from Chinese companies for that reason and I'm always skeptical of US products too. Sorry, but I'll never buy stuff from companies like Huawei, not until I'll see a strong commitment to privacy, especially when the administration of the host country sees human rights as an existential threat and targets activists from other countries. Stop buying stuff from Google, Facebook, Apple, Microso…

Why are you jumping to conclusions on the double standard? Classic whataboutism.

No, I don't use Google or Facebook either. And I've been avoiding Microsoft since the '90-ties.

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