7 ms·

>It's a bit anti competitive, yes, it limits what app makers can do, but it makes iOs secure. There's no other way to do it, and that's what many people don't u

• scarface74 8y ago
  Anti competitive how? Apple doesn’t make money from their solution. On the other hand, they would make 30% on third party solutions. Wouldn’t it be in their financial interest to allow third party spyware?
  • wayneftw 8y ago
    Microsoft didn't make money on their free Internet Explorer web browser but they lost an anti-trust case for giving it away free with Windows. And before anyone says Apple isn't a monopoly...well they are in certain markets. For instance, among the younger generations they have like +80% market share and in the US they have close to 50%. There's also an anti-trust case pending against them in the Supreme Court right now.
    • scarface74 8y ago
      They didn’t “lose” because of bundling. They lost because they forced exclusive third party OEMs not to bundle Netscape. Do you notice that MS never stopped bundling IE? Have any of the console makers or smart TV makers been told what they can and can’t put on their own devices? Has any physical store been fined for limiting what they sell in their own store? And that’s not how monopolies are defined.
      • wayneftw 8y ago
        Not allowing users to put competing third party apps on their own devices is exactly what Apple is doing. Should users have less rights on their devices than OEMs do e.g. in the Microsoft case? And market percentage is too one major metric of how monopolies are defined.
        • scarface74 8y ago
          So you want Apple to allow spyware on their phones? Should Smsrt TV makers be forced to allow any third party app? What about console makers? Should Nintendo be forced to allow adult oriented games on their platform? What exactly is Apple’s business motivation for not allowing third party spyware but allowing third party music streaming, video streaming, office apps, book stores, etc? When they make money off of their own services in the other areas? Next question. What if this app with the same capabilities - to record the apps and activity used on another phone - was marketed to husbands who suspected their wives were cheating. Would you be okay with that too? Should Apple allow it?
          • will_brown 8y ago
            >Should Smsrt TV makers be forced to allow any third party app? What about console makers? Should Nintendo be forced to allow adult oriented games on their platform? I think the argument is Apple has a little more market dominance (both smart phone hardware and OS) than a single smart tv maker or even Nintendo in the console market. Keeping the market dominance point in mind, Apple isn’t just deciding what is and isn’t allowed...you had a number of developers with successful apps not just have to contend with a copy cat app created by Apple but because of their control over the marketplace Apple killed their developers apps and took the entire market (rightly or wrongly). So yeah if you change your facts and the smart tv or Nintendo allowed apps/adult games, saw developers create a market and then the hardware maker launched their own software competitors and disallowed the initial apps/games...there would be blowback.
            • scarface74 8y ago
              You also had a number of developers who successfully were marketing fake “virus protection” including Kasperky that were kicked off the store. Should Apple have kept those on the store? Facebook bought a “successful” VPN product that it used to spy on users and figure out that WhatsApp was popular before it bought it. Should Apple have kept that? Would you be okay if apps with the same capabilities were marketed as a way to catch cheating spouses? If Apple decides they wanted to ban loot boxes in games, would you be opposed to that?
    • addicted 8y ago
      MS did have to stop bundling IE in the EU.
      • scarface74 8y ago
        Not for over a half a decade.... https://www.extremetech.com/computing/196170-microsoft-is-finally-allowed-to-once-again-set-ie-as-the-default-browser-in-windows https://www.extremetech.com/computing/196170-microsoft-is-fi...
    • briandear 8y ago
      Having a market share if 80% among a demographic doesn’t make a monopoly. Even 100% market share among a demographic isn’t a monopoly. I might suggest a review of the definition of the term “monopoly.”
  • ada1981 8y ago
    The argument is they want you to use less effective anti-addiction tools so you stay on your phone more.
    • scarface74 8y ago
      And since they aren’t an advertising supported business, what financial motivation do they have by keeping you on your phone more?
      • saagarjha 8y ago
        Not that I agree with this argument, but Apple does have services that they could earn money off of.
        • scarface74 8y ago
          And Apple services that they earn money from are all subscription based. It would be better for Apple if people subscribed and used them less...
          • saagarjha 8y ago
            Not all of them. For example, you can still pay for apps and music.
            • scarface74 8y ago
              And you’ve been able to block iTunes and the App Store through parental controls forever.
      • ada1981 8y ago
        You honestly can’t imagine why a company would want you to use their product more and how increased use would have a direct financial benefit?
        • 8y ago
• lotsofpulp 8y ago
  All I know is I spent a considerable amount of time dealing with malware on Windows and bad video call quality on apps on android, as well as android’s problems with updating phone software, difficulty backing up and restoring data. Ever since moving everyone in my extended family to Apple’s ecosystem, I no longer field any calls about uninstalling malware, computer running slow, video calls are crystal clear, and the devices work forever. And if there’s a problem, they can take it to the Apple store and get it fixed, and restore from iCloud backup and they’re up and running in no time. If Google or Microsoft want to re-create that convenience, I’m all for it. I know I sound like a shill, but I think it’s well worth whatever extra it costs in terms of time I saved troubleshooting.
  • miki123211 8y ago
    Friend of mine told me a story that he has set up a Windows computer for someone, and one week later that same person goes back and is like "oh, my computer is broken". The guy asks what happened, and the person explains that she was trying to get that new game for her daughter, but it's so expensive so she wanted a crack. The antivirus complained, like it always does, so she just turned it off and installed anyway. The guy immediately recommended to stay far away from Windows and get an iPad. She did and never came back.
    • Volundr 8y ago
      While I'm not a Windows fan, I feel like Windows isn't the problem in this story.
      • automatoney 8y ago
        It's clearly user error, but I think the point is that it's less of a headache to change the OS than the user.
        • EpicEng 8y ago
          I wonder if that game exists for MacOS? Probably not.
• miki123211 8y ago
  I've already explained it in the parent comment. Before screen time, there was no other way to achieve parental control, so they probably decided to go with those solutions, for the lack of a better option. Screen Time changed the situation and there's no reason to keep those privacy nightmares in the App Store any longer. You can achieve the goal of parental control via less privacy intrusive means, which you couldn't do before. Whether you actually should is an entirely different matter IMO.
• floatingatoll 8y ago
  If you’re building something and you lift up a rock and find a lot of weird solutions to a problem you’d never really thought through crawling under it, what would you do? 1) Ban them immediately, no matter how necessary to parents, as the risk of tracking/stalking of all iPhone users is unacceptable 2) Build a safer solution that can’t be harnessed for tracking/stalking, and then ban all solutions that can be used for tracking/stalking Seems like they chose the latter. It’s easy to construct a case for why it is technically inappropriate to allow third-party apps in this space, that I personally boil down primarily to “a frequently-abused chance for corporate entities to monetize the user data of minors”. Apple took years to implement content filtering, and did so in a way that prohibits applications from knowing whether their filters are ever exercised, as otherwise Facebook and other malicious entities would long ago have added a filter for ^(.*)$ to transmit every request to third-party servers. Is their refusal to permit otherwise anti-competitive, security-forward, or both? Apple, if I understand correctly, prohibits third-party keyboards in certain password-type dialogs on iOS because keyboard apps are allowed to send network requests. (They are allowed to do so because e.g. GIF search.) Is this prohibition anti-competitive, security-forward, or both? We as a community need to become a lot more careful with use of the phrase “anti-competitive”, as many industry-standard security practices that we would demand of any product we build and use are then labeled “anti-competitive” solely when they interfere with us doing anything we like, or when they’re done by an organization that doesn’t share its internal discussions with us when making decisions on our behalf. Is it appropriate to stifle the competition for my personal data, even if that is, in a literalistic interpretation, anti-competitive? I sure hope so.
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  • JadeNB 8y ago
    > If you’re building something and you lift up a rock and find a lot of weird solutions to a problem you’d never really thought through crawling under it, what would you do? > 1) Ban them immediately, no matter how necessary to parents, as the risk of tracking/stalking of all iPhone users is unacceptable > 2) Build a safer solution that can’t be harnessed for tracking/stalking, and then ban all solutions that can be used for tracking/stalking Surely the correct answer, if the solution is really so valuable that it cannot be done without in the time it would take to come up with a safe solution, is 3) tell the programmers of the potentially privacy-violating solutions that they'll be banned once you do (2), then do (2); or arguably even 4) do (3), and, in the meantime, display a hard-to-ignore dialogue on installation that warns "this app may violate your privacy, and will be automatically uninstalled once Apple's safer solution is available. Do you wish to proceed?" ?
• citrablue 8y ago
  Not all that strange -- the decision was more "we have a security issue, but banning these apps would create a screen time issue". Framed that way, it made perfect sense they waited until they had a long term solution finalized.
• rimliu 8y ago
  iOS only runs on Apple devices, same for macOS. This is not the case for Google and Microsoft.
• briandear 8y ago
  They don’t sell ScreenTime or the parental control apps. They aren’t generating revenue from it. They do, however, make money from other people selling apps from the App Store. Also, if you have an iPhone, you already bought the phone, so what’s the incentive for banning outside screen time apps? How does Apple win? They win because their device and the apps on it are more secure. Calling that anti-competitive makes no sense unless Apple was selling competing ScreenTime apps. Not letting users unknowingly compromise their own privacy isn’t anti-competitive. And in the case of Google, it would be different because Google’s business model is all about “targeting” you. Apple’s model is simply to sell you stuff.
• dontbenebby 8y ago
  >Doesn't it seem weird to you how they only cared about "making iOS secure" once they had their own product? Not really - there's a big difference between banning an insecure app when a secure solution has been added to the OS, and banning an app when no secure solution yet exists.
• morpheuskafka 8y ago
  Screen Time does not make Apple any additional money. They have no financial reason to care if customers used it or not, they get the same money as soon as you buy the device. In fact, paid parental control apps could earn them more money because of the 30% cut on app revenue.
  • sokoloff 8y ago
    Screentime makes Apple money if it's the deciding factor between someone buying an Apple device vs not. The inclusion of Screentime in iOS sold my family an additional two iPads for my kids to use.
  • EpicEng 8y ago
    Just like MS made no money from IE?
• z3t4 8y ago
  It's really thought to compete when you have to compete on your competitor's platform.
• busymom0 8y ago
  This whole thing started when Apple banned Facebook's enterprise certificated because they were using them for consumer directed apps + directing the user's data through their own VPN. This was clearly an abuse of the enterprise certificates and not what they are meant for. This happened around January - the same time when this article's developers were also notified that they will be removed because they were using MDM profiles for something they are not meant for. I don't think this has anything to do with their own product. Apple's product is also 100% free, I don't see how they have any incentive to ban others. Apple doesn't ban other podcast, music and other competitive apps.
• tinus_hn 8y ago
  This kind of ban happens all the time. It just makes the news now because there’s a way to spin it into a conspiracy.
• notSupplied 8y ago
  The conspiracy doesn't add up in this particular example given that Screen-Time does nothing for their bottom line. Don't get me wrong, I would definitely perk up my ears if there is a story about how Apple competes with Spotify as there is a lot to gain/lose on that front. But Screen Time? What is there to "win"?