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Apple’s “monopsony” power, and the woman who named it

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Re: Apple’s “monopsony” power, and the woman who named it

#91

Post by keawade »

simonh wrote: post #88
mikece wrote: post #77

Having Apple take a 30% cut of sales in exchange for not having to run an e-commerce operation is far less odious than having to pay $5,000 for a MacBook Pro which has less RAM, a smaller SSD, and less powerful processor than $2,500 worth of Dell, Lenovo, HP, or Acer gear. The hardware is the real rip-off to me. I would gladly pay a reasonable fee if I could write my apps in VS Code on Debian and then ship the code t…

I just can't get my head around this argument. To write software for a computer platform, shock horror, you need to develop and test it on that platform. To develop software using Apple's OS, services and libraries, you need to buy that OS, those services and those libraries that Apple sells. I don't get why that is a contentious issue, or even a question.

The platform in this case would be iOS, not Mac OS. But you can't work with iOS without a Mac OS machine which are particularly expensive.

In comparison, Android allows a lot more flexibility of cost when picking a development machine by allowing you to develop from Linux, Windows, or Mac OS.

Re: Apple’s “monopsony” power, and the woman who named it

#92

Post by mns »

mikece wrote: post #77

Having Apple take a 30% cut of sales in exchange for not having to run an e-commerce operation is far less odious than having to pay $5,000 for a MacBook Pro which has less RAM, a smaller SSD, and less powerful processor than $2,500 worth of Dell, Lenovo, HP, or Acer gear. The hardware is the real rip-off to me. I would gladly pay a reasonable fee if I could write my apps in VS Code on Debian and then ship the code t…

That is just not true and an exaggeration like that has nothing to do on a board like this. In Europe the prices are even higher for Apple hardware, but because I'm in the market now for an upgrade I can tell you for sure that a 16" MBP is at around 500 Euros more expensive than a similar XPS15 (and I'm not even going into the actual components and the speed of the SSD or others). There is a market for everyone, just like some people like you prefer to pay less for a Dell, Asus or something similar, I would also not go back to a Windows machine or some sort of wobbly inferior built laptop (at least from my point of view).

Re: Apple’s “monopsony” power, and the woman who named it

#93

Post by pcr0 »

friendlybus wrote: post #72
BlueTemplar wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The non-standard features like Steam multiplayer and mods Workshop that lock out non-Steam users pretty much forever are IMHO even worse than the 1-year exclusivity (as long as it's not retroactive).

Steam multiplayer? You mean the friends list? Steam doesn't provide hosted mp servers for games. Mods are made by community members that can be released anywhere. Workshop is just a distribution channel. Battle.net and origin are lock in services. Nothing about them is open to the public or accessible. Steam is pretty open and reasonably successful at it.

Steam doesn't host multiplayer servers, but it does offer services for match making, lobbies, voice chat and P2P networking (including the use of Valve's network as a relay).

https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/multiplayer

Re: Apple’s “monopsony” power, and the woman who named it

#94

Post by joefourier »

hkhanna wrote: post #86
braythwayt wrote: post #67

Amusingly, there are two sets of people arguing about why Apple is bad, and each have their own argument: 1. Android sells more, and offers more variety of mobile and wearable devices than Apple. And here’s the data to prove it. 2. Apple is a monopoly/monopsony and should be forced to allow more user choice of apps, allow sideloading, lower their prices, lower their app store cut, &c. Which one is is? Apple is like T…

> They aren’t Facebook. Nobody has to buy an iPhone to keep in touch with all their friends who have iPhones. I have a different perspective. Many of my different friend groups use the "group messaging" feature on their phones. If everyone is using an iPhone in that group, it defaults to using iMessage. I switched to Android about 18 months ago, and it broke all of the group text message chains I had because some of…

I've only heard of this happening in the US and Canada. Outside of North America, everyone uses Whatsapp, which supports group messaging on every platform. I'd be curious to know why it hasn't penetrated into those countries.

Re: Apple’s “monopsony” power, and the woman who named it

#95

Post by jonahx »

brennebeck wrote: post #90
hkhanna wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They aren’t Facebook. Nobody has to buy an iPhone to keep in touch with all their friends who have iPhones. I have a different perspective. Many of my different friend groups use the "group messaging" feature on their phones. If everyone is using an iPhone in that group, it defaults to using iMessage. I switched to Android about 18 months ago, and it broke all of the group text message chains I had because some of…

In that case wouldn’t it make sense to try to get your friends to use another group chat? I get people love to use the iMessage groups, but every friend I have on Android create a WhatsApp group, etc. and it’s pretty trivial to use and maintain, especially with close friends.

> In that case wouldn’t it make sense to try to get your friends to use another group chat?

This greatly underestimates the power of habit and default choice.

I can tell you for sure that if I tried to mount such campaign among my (non-techie) friends, there would be a lot of pushback and annoyance.

Re: Apple’s “monopsony” power, and the woman who named it

#96

Post by danaris »

mikece wrote: post #87
rimliu wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a more to laptop than just raw numbers of RAM, SSD and CPU. Paying six-digits for the car that has same number of wheels as Tata — outrageous.

The inability to augment the MacBook Pro is a bigger pain. With my 3 year old Lenovo P50 I can swap BOTH NVMe slots, upgrade the RAM, etc. With the MacBook Pro I can only buy USB-C cables and adapters. Your point about six-figure cars is a good one. I can either spend $90k to $120k on a car to drive to work that's super quiet on the inside, or spend $12k on a used Accord and another $400 on the top-flight Bose noise-…

You can use the same Bose headphones with your MacBook, y'know, and they aren't any more a modification of the MacBook than they are of the Accord. You can also plug in external Thunderbolt SSDs that are effectively indistinguishable from an internal in terms of speed. Your analogy kinda falls apart there.

But if upgradeability and replaceable parts are your #1 concern, then...yeah, you're not in the target market for a Mac laptop. So that means that it's unlikely you'd ever have been looking at having a Mac be your primary machine in the first place—if you needed one to do development on, it would be a secondary machine, where you'd probably set up your dev environment, check out the code, compile it, and test it, then go back to the computer you actually enjoy using for the rest. Maybe look into a Mac Mini?

Re: Apple’s “monopsony” power, and the woman who named it

#97

Post by teekert »

joefourier wrote: post #94
hkhanna wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They aren’t Facebook. Nobody has to buy an iPhone to keep in touch with all their friends who have iPhones. I have a different perspective. Many of my different friend groups use the "group messaging" feature on their phones. If everyone is using an iPhone in that group, it defaults to using iMessage. I switched to Android about 18 months ago, and it broke all of the group text message chains I had because some of…

I've only heard of this happening in the US and Canada. Outside of North America, everyone uses Whatsapp, which supports group messaging on every platform. I'd be curious to know why it hasn't penetrated into those countries.

I think it has to do with the fact that the US (and Canada) very early on had unlimited texting plans, and iMessage would make use of that (iPhones just send texts for iMessages in absence of a data connection). WhatsApp can only use data, which is cheaper and used to be unlimited (that's gone) in the EU. In contrast, texting was and still is insanely expensive in the EU (per byte it is staggering even, compared to normal data). Since data coverage was poor in the US in the 2G days (is this true? In the EU 2G was GPRS, meaning available when normal voice was available... I think it differs for US networks?) and texting was often included in a subscription, iMessage made a lot if sense and was very reliable.

I remember early iPhone users complaining here in the EU that their iPhone unpredictably would sent iMessages either for free over wifi or for 50ct/message over sms/text (us EU citizens avoid sms/texting like the plague, allthough unlimited plans are now more commonplace, it's just too late). I recently set Signal to deal with my sms/text messages. Boy was that an expensive mistake when I accidentally texted my friend in Curacao instead of sending a normal Signal message.

Re: Apple’s “monopsony” power, and the woman who named it

#98

Post by p49k »

braythwayt wrote: post #67

Amusingly, there are two sets of people arguing about why Apple is bad, and each have their own argument: 1. Android sells more, and offers more variety of mobile and wearable devices than Apple. And here’s the data to prove it. 2. Apple is a monopoly/monopsony and should be forced to allow more user choice of apps, allow sideloading, lower their prices, lower their app store cut, &c. Which one is is? Apple is like T…

Apple is not like Tesla; iPhones are often touted as a “luxury brand” but the truth is that they offer products of quality that are roughly in proportion to their pricing, and their high margins are due to better/more efficient operations than their competitors. A phone is such an essential tool in one’s life and priced low enough that it makes sense to invest in a product that is of good quality. Most people can afford iPhones and even poor people can afford used ones. Not many people can afford a Tesla.

Unlike a Tesla, you don’t lose a lifetime of app purchases, movies, songs and books when switching products; you don’t lose a major set of functionality between other Tesla owners which would hamper your ability to use your product. I think the “monopsony” is an excellent way to frame the problem. There should be regulation requiring companies like Apple to allow users to sell the apps and other digital content they’ve purchased to others, to allow people to set their own default apps on their own devices and to not hamper the efforts of others to provide interoperability with other devices. These should be common sense consumer rights issues, although at present the only consumer rights-focused entity strong enough to make any of this actually happen is the EU, and I hope they manage to do so.

Re: Apple’s “monopsony” power, and the woman who named it

#99

Post by [deleted] »

jonahx wrote: post #95
brennebeck wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In that case wouldn’t it make sense to try to get your friends to use another group chat? I get people love to use the iMessage groups, but every friend I have on Android create a WhatsApp group, etc. and it’s pretty trivial to use and maintain, especially with close friends.

> In that case wouldn’t it make sense to try to get your friends to use another group chat? This greatly underestimates the power of habit and default choice. I can tell you for sure that if I tried to mount such campaign among my (non-techie) friends, there would be a lot of pushback and annoyance.

[deleted]

Re: Apple’s “monopsony” power, and the woman who named it

#100

Post by avip »

joefourier wrote: post #94
hkhanna wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They aren’t Facebook. Nobody has to buy an iPhone to keep in touch with all their friends who have iPhones. I have a different perspective. Many of my different friend groups use the "group messaging" feature on their phones. If everyone is using an iPhone in that group, it defaults to using iMessage. I switched to Android about 18 months ago, and it broke all of the group text message chains I had because some of…

I've only heard of this happening in the US and Canada. Outside of North America, everyone uses Whatsapp, which supports group messaging on every platform. I'd be curious to know why it hasn't penetrated into those countries.

WA solves a problem that doesn't exist if all your contacts use an iphone.

And it hadn't exactly "not penetrated" NA, there are probably tens of millions of users. But it's definitely not "the default mode of communication" as in Brazil or India (+ lots of other countries).

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