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One of the worst aspects of this, to me, is when the platform company affords its own apps access to APIs apps from the platform aren't allowed. As an example
by droopyEyelids 9y ago
One of the worst aspects of this, to me, is when the platform company affords its own apps access to APIs apps from the platform aren't allowed.
As an example consider Apple Pay Cash. It grabs anything you send in the messages app with a dollar sign, and converts it to glittery text that prompts you to pay whoever you're talking to.
Aside from the question of whether that feature is useful to you, it's such a bullshit, cheating way to undercut Square Cash and Venmo.
They're exploiting their position to make an unfair playing ground. Feels so gross to me.
- SwellJoe 9y agoThe deck is stacked at every turn, which is dangerous. The sad thing is that I've always had sort of a belief that "more open wins in the end", but that hasn't really been borne out in the mobile space. Apple and Google have built walled gardens where they always have the advantage in any space they want to operate in (even moreso than Microsoft during its rise to dominance, though they're slightly more subtle about how they wield that advantage to kill competitors). It's pretty much a battle of good vs evil all over again, and evil is winning. It's alarming that new markets are even worse. I haven't looked into the voice apps market for alternatives to Alexa, but I assume if Amazon thinks they can get away with acting this way, the rest of them are the same or worse.