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> The message here seems to be that if companies don’t like Apple’s policies, they’ve got other options. Go find your riches on Android or make a Roku app. But

> The message here seems to be that if companies don’t like Apple’s policies, they’ve got other options. Go find your riches on Android or make a Roku app. But developers have a huge financial incentive to be in the App Store. It’s often been reported that iOS users spend more money on apps than people with Android phones, and Apple leans on that advantage. Apple's argument would seem to be that this financial incentive is the direct result of their policies, so forcing them to change those policies would reduce or eliminate this financial incentive. It's a reasonable argument, although I think it's unknowable whether it's true. Legally, it might not matter.

wayoutthere 7y ago
I tend to agree with this argument, and here’s why: Apple’s brand across the board is about controlling every aspect of the user experience so they can make it a cohesive experience the user enjoys. They do this at the expense of short-term monetary gains from things like advertising, and don’t give a damn about making life difficult for their business partners. This is not the result of their success but likely the reason for it. There’s a reason it was so culturally difficult for them to license “clone” Mac hardware in the 1990s; it’s just not in their DNA. They understand that the end user relationship is all that matters. For Apple’s brand to succeed, they have to own the relationship entirely so they can protect their users from bad actors. That is literally why a large segment of people choose Apple products. Do iPhones have malware problems on the scale of Android? No, because of Apple’s heavy-handed control of the App Store. I honestly think Apple would shut down the App Store entirely in favor of something more universal like WASM before ceding control of the user experience. General platform security / privacy also benefit from this approach.
- bitpush 7y ago
  Are we justifying potentially illegal behavior by saying "that's their brand" and it helps them get wealthy in the long run? Monsanto does the same with seeds. They do RnD, develop seeds and force farmers to buy seeds directly from them, control end to end and probably produce higher-yield crops with lesser diseases. It is their "brand" but should we justify that behavior?
  - gowld 7y ago
    > justifying potentially illegal behavior No, that's putting the cart before the horse. The question isn't "is this (presumed) illegal behavior justified?"; the question is "this behavior is illegal if it is unjustified -- is it justified?". The illegality (should) be a result of answering the question "is someone hurt unfairly?" If the behavior in question is profiting from their own hard+smart work and not sharing the wealth as much as partners want, it shouldn't be illegal (or at most, the illegality is in keeping too high a share of the profits). If the behavior is bait-and-switch trapping people and ripping them off by hooking them with deceptively low onboarding price with high back-end "debt service", then it should be illegal. This is the principle underlying anti-trust/monopoly law.
  - wayoutthere 7y ago
    I think we simply need to look at the iPhone as a platform on its own. Sure, they own a sizable chunk of the market, but so does Android. People are free to develop on Android, it’s just they don’t as often because Android made some platform decisions that for whatever reason caused people to not make App Store purchases. There is a choice in platforms — but the monetization situation on the Android platform makes it unattractive to developers for whatever reason. Why are users more willing to spend money buying apps on Apple’s store than Google’s? I suspect it is because of Apple’s stringent App Store screening process. Yeah, it sucks ass for developers but again, this is Apple’s MO. Apple takes care of their end users, Google takes care of their business partners (and this is a pretty consistent theme across both companies and apparent in their approach to product support). I often find this is useful if followed up with another question: Is there a market for tablets, or is there just an iPad market? Would the entire model have been as successful without Apple’s approach? Remember, Windows tablets and netbooks had hyped and fizzled long before the iPad. Would it have gotten off the ground before fragmenting the user experience into a thousand pieces?
kyle-rb 7y ago
>Apple's argument would seem to be that this financial incentive is the direct result of their policies, so forcing them to change those policies would reduce or eliminate this financial incentive. I think that Apple's policies are definitely what makes people spend more money through the app store, but that in itself is only really a financial incentive for Apple. Changing their policies would mean more apps distributed outside the app store, which would probably mean more money for developers (but less for Apple). For an example of this, see Fortnite being distributed outside of the Google Play store. Google didn't get a cut of all the Fortnite in-app purchases, but Apple did.

wayoutthere 7y ago

I tend to agree with this argument, and here’s why: Apple’s brand across the board is about controlling every aspect of the user experience so they can make it a cohesive experience the user enjoys. They do this at the expense of short-term monetary gains from things like advertising, and don’t give a damn about making life difficult for their business partners. This is not the result of their success but likely the reason for it. There’s a reason it was so culturally difficult for them to license “clone” Mac hardware in the 1990s; it’s just not in their DNA. They understand that the end user relationship is all that matters. For Apple’s brand to succeed, they have to own the relationship entirely so they can protect their users from bad actors. That is literally why a large segment of people choose Apple products. Do iPhones have malware problems on the scale of Android? No, because of Apple’s heavy-handed control of the App Store. I honestly think Apple would shut down the App Store entirely in favor of something more universal like WASM before ceding control of the user experience. General platform security / privacy also benefit from this approach.

bitpush 7y ago
Are we justifying potentially illegal behavior by saying "that's their brand" and it helps them get wealthy in the long run? Monsanto does the same with seeds. They do RnD, develop seeds and force farmers to buy seeds directly from them, control end to end and probably produce higher-yield crops with lesser diseases. It is their "brand" but should we justify that behavior?
- gowld 7y ago
  > justifying potentially illegal behavior No, that's putting the cart before the horse. The question isn't "is this (presumed) illegal behavior justified?"; the question is "this behavior is illegal if it is unjustified -- is it justified?". The illegality (should) be a result of answering the question "is someone hurt unfairly?" If the behavior in question is profiting from their own hard+smart work and not sharing the wealth as much as partners want, it shouldn't be illegal (or at most, the illegality is in keeping too high a share of the profits). If the behavior is bait-and-switch trapping people and ripping them off by hooking them with deceptively low onboarding price with high back-end "debt service", then it should be illegal. This is the principle underlying anti-trust/monopoly law.
- wayoutthere 7y ago
  I think we simply need to look at the iPhone as a platform on its own. Sure, they own a sizable chunk of the market, but so does Android. People are free to develop on Android, it’s just they don’t as often because Android made some platform decisions that for whatever reason caused people to not make App Store purchases. There is a choice in platforms — but the monetization situation on the Android platform makes it unattractive to developers for whatever reason. Why are users more willing to spend money buying apps on Apple’s store than Google’s? I suspect it is because of Apple’s stringent App Store screening process. Yeah, it sucks ass for developers but again, this is Apple’s MO. Apple takes care of their end users, Google takes care of their business partners (and this is a pretty consistent theme across both companies and apparent in their approach to product support). I often find this is useful if followed up with another question: Is there a market for tablets, or is there just an iPad market? Would the entire model have been as successful without Apple’s approach? Remember, Windows tablets and netbooks had hyped and fizzled long before the iPad. Would it have gotten off the ground before fragmenting the user experience into a thousand pieces?

kyle-rb 7y ago

>Apple's argument would seem to be that this financial incentive is the direct result of their policies, so forcing them to change those policies would reduce or eliminate this financial incentive. I think that Apple's policies are definitely what makes people spend more money through the app store, but that in itself is only really a financial incentive for Apple. Changing their policies would mean more apps distributed outside the app store, which would probably mean more money for developers (but less for Apple). For an example of this, see Fortnite being distributed outside of the Google Play store. Google didn't get a cut of all the Fortnite in-app purchases, but Apple did.