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No, it does not make sense. Instead of trying to build a better service, Apple is just cutting the lifelines of competing services. That is the poster case of u
by andr 17y ago
No, it does not make sense. Instead of trying to build a better service, Apple is just cutting the lifelines of competing services. That is the poster case of unfair competition.
- veemjeem 17y agoI don't think it's cutting competition -- these seem to be consumer protection. Say the popular flurry analytics tool decides they're going to perform background services to track users, you probably wouldn't even be able to opt-out to the tracking... developers adding the Flurry tool probably wouldn't even be directly aware of the invasion of privacy.
- gyardley 17y agoFirst, I don't believe that's technically possible to do without an explicit user opt-in, even if we wanted to implement it. Second, I've never understood why people automatically assume the worst of analytics tools. No one assumes random web startups are selling their username, email and password combos to identity thieves, but if a startup collects some anonymous data for analytics, everyone's eager to assume it's both grabbing stuff that's personally identifiable and using it for some nefarious purpose. My pet theory ties this to our desire to feel important - everyone wants to believe their personal information's both valuable and interesting enough to be worth filching despite the obscene legal risks of doing so. However, it's not.
- tptacek 17y agoIt's really not a poster case for "unfair competition". It sounds more like "just plain competition" to me. There's no rule of business that requires you to make your platform available to competitors. You do it when it makes business sense, and you stop when it doesn't.