711–720 of 1001 posts
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Just a slight clarification. The first Apple iPhone did not have an app store.
I think what they meant could be rephrased as, "for as long as there's been an App Store, it's been part of the OS. "
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When someone comes to your store and says "I'll wreck your store unless you cut me 30% of your revenue" that's the mafia. When someone comes to your store and says "I made the streets and regulate the power, water supply, sewer, and everything else in this place, cut me 30% of your revenue in taxes" that's the government. And you'd do well to not confuse those so haphazardly. Apple didn't come to your app and with no…
I don't think likening Apple's stranglehold on users to the authority of a government helps your case.
Am I doing this right?
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I think a company going around saying "we are a open system you can do what you want with our product" and then making secret deals to limit that openess is worse than a company from day one saying we are selling a 100% locked down solution, take it or leave it.
It really doesn't matter who is worse morally here, just both situations are bad for consumer choice. I find it amazing that Apple things it is okay to attempt to take 15% of Audible revenue if they allowed you to buy books in the app, for example.
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Apple doesn't need to strike secret deals to keep out alternative app stores because they've made alternate app stores completely impossible. If the result of this case is "you can have a monopoly as long as your device and ecosystem are 100% locked down", that's terrible!
Apple offers the same kinds of deals (see Netflix discussions) though there the rationales are different, which leads to sweatier "Apple has to offer deals because their value add is so bad, and having alternative app stores would help"-style arguments... I don't really know of a good legal argument there.
> Netflix stops offering in-app subscriptions for new and returning customers on iOS
https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/28/18159373/netflix-in-app-...
Apple allows companies that have a free app used to access subscription content to sell the subscriptions on their own website without giving Apple a cut.
Netflix used to allow you to pay though Apple to reduce the sales friction of needing to set up billing through the Netflix website, but they stopped letting users pay through Apple years ago.
I wonder what the remedies will be -- sideloading is already allowed, so allowing third party in-app billing? That seems to be the actual thing the juries said -- that Google used their dominant position to do anticompetitive things, among which is taking their 30% cut on everything. Hope that this happens to Apple eventually too.
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AuroraStore is very close, using a ton of reverse engineered stuff from the play store It should all totally be open though
Google Play is not just app store, but also the only way to efficiently deliver push notifications on Android devices. And latest modifications to Android OS make it very rippled without push notifications, all background apps unload from memory very fast. The result is that it makes many types of apps impossible to implement without relying on push notifications - and lock in to Google Play services. Same is true fo…
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Monopolies are not illegal. It’s leveraging the monopoly to exert force on adjacent markets that is. In the case here googles foul play is making side deals for preferential treatment against other app stores given their control over the handset operating system. Apple doesn’t offer an App Store market and never has nor ever represented otherwise, the app store is and always has been part of the operating system. Thi…
> Apple doesn’t offer an App Store market and never has nor ever represented otherwise, the app store is and always has been part of the operating system. "Apple doesn't offer an App Store market" is just assuming the conclusion. Nobody expects you to get competing app stores from Apple -- you get them from Apple's competitors. What Apple ought to be in trouble for is interfering with their operating system customers…
This isn’t illegal. Equivalent to a “No outside food and drink” sign or not letting randos sell things in your own storefront
It’s not illegal just because you don’t agree with the philosophy of a closed ecosystem
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> If the result of this case is "you can have a monopoly as long as your device and ecosystem are 100% locked down", that's terrible! Monopolies aren’t illegal. Only the abuse of a monopoly position to advance your interest in other markets is illegal. E.g. It’s not illegal to be the only seller of gasoline in the country. It is illegal though to bundle laundry powder with gasoline sales to corner the laundry powder…
>E.g. It’s not illegal to be the only seller of gasoline in the country. It is illegal though to bundle laundry powder with gasoline sales to corner the laundry powder market. I mean, it's far more than that. Most importantly: >Historically they have been held to include exclusive dealing, price discrimination, refusing to supply an essential facility, product tying and predatory pricing. While IANAL - even as a pleb…
Do you own an iPhone? I suspect that the vast majority of people complaining about Apple's "lock down" are people who don't even use an iPhone.
If you do own an iPhone ... why the heck did you buy one knowing its limitations. It's like buying a pink shirt when you hate pink, despite the availability of shirts of other colors, then going to the manufacturer to complain about the color.
Couple of thoughts for HN as a lawyer: 1. The fact that Google lost here doesn't bind or affect apple. Jury verdicts aren't binding on any party other than those in the lawsuit. Apple may or may not be found to violate the law in a separate case. 2. Interesting no one has mentioned Epic's Chinese ownership. I could see Google complaining to us govt that it's unfair for Chinese tech to win these court cases against US…
while they do have pretty deep ties to tencent and are 40% owned by them, they’re not really chinese-owned since Epic is majority-owned by Tim Sweeney, a billionaire programmer on the Forbes 500 who mostly escapes criticism from programmers and game devs by branding himself as a savior for indie devs, which people accept uncritically because he likes to go on twitter and affirm their priors. He’s a highly effective n…
He gets plenty of criticism too.
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I clearly stated “I’m not an expert on this” and publicly corrected my mistake to not mislead readers. Don’t fulminate, my brother, see comment guidelines on HN for more info. There’s need to act like this and your comment doesn’t contribute anything to the discussion.
> There’s need to act like this and your comment doesn’t contribute anything to the discussion. Does yours? I mean that in earnest, not as a dig. You're posting legal analysis without even rudimentary legal knowledge, and I think that's worth noting and responding to. It's also worth noting you only admitted you were not an expert once your initial post was debunked, and that in your corrigendum you manage somehow to…
No, that was in the original comment. I added only the paragraph prefixed with EDIT.
My friend, you are just picking a fight on the internet. You don’t actually know what the comment was and yet you say you do. Please do not.
Alternatively, please tell me how my comment is misleading now, if there truly exists an argument in your comment beyond an ad hominem. That would be more useful.