4 ms·

I don't think you get the essence of the defense. Take New York Times. Last I checked, you can sign up online, but to cancel your subscription, you have to cal

I don't think you get the essence of the defense. Take New York Times. Last I checked, you can sign up online, but to cancel your subscription, you have to call and subject yourself to a slick sales pitch and all sorts of questions. It's inconvenient and borderline immoral. One solution is, heh, the free hand / competition, but we clearly see that doesn't work all that well. A much simpler solution is to identify such behaviours and straight up outlaw that stuff. Which hasn't happened yet and probably won't for the foreseeable future. Here's the thing: __The app store is in some ways like a government, and brings laws__. As long as that subscription were to run via the app store, you _CANNOT_ hide cancellation behind a phone number. Apple won't let you ship an app that works that way; in fact, apple does the billing. I'm pretty sure that benefit pales in comparison to the problems that apple's sole ownership and onerous Judge Dredd-ian (judge, jury, _and_ executioner!) control over the fate of your apps on the apple app store bring. But you paint the argument as zero cost to allowing alternate app stores, and __that is not true__. Once alternate app stores or other enforced reduction in apple's abilities to enforce and police app store policy are in place, a bunch of apps WILL go sleazy on you where they wouldn't have otherwise. NB: Of course, in practice, netflix etc. just do signups online, you get the same total lack of protection against sleazy stuff, and now the apps you download from the app store don't even tell you what you're supposed to do because apple won't let you explain that you need to sign up online and not in the app. Apple's solution / the current status quo sucks; probably sucks more than having alternate app stores available. All I'm saying is that having alternate app stores, whilst it brings a lot of upside, does bring downside, and that is (presumably) what the defenders of apple are trying to warn you about: Those downsides.

ric2b 6y ago
> Once alternate app stores or other enforced reduction in apple's abilities to enforce and police app store policy are in place, We don't need to imagine that scenario, that's Android, and Google still definitely holds massive control with it's play store rules. > All I'm saying is that having alternate app stores, whilst it brings a lot of upside, does bring downside, and that is (presumably) what the defenders of apple are trying to warn you about: Those downsides. So go ahead and pick your examples from the Android world.
caycep 6y ago
I think perhaps the definition of a "platform", or perhaps even organized markets like a stock exchange, is a limitation/mitering/constraint/curation of choice, if that is the right term? Versus a complete free for all. The question is how much choice? I think a tentpole of Apple is that the billing should all flow through one source, clean and uncomplicated, along with a set guidelines of program coding/behavior. It happens to make Apple the gatekeeper, and there are deeper questions thereof, but that is the constraint inherent in the App Store. i.e. how civil rights/discrimination law identifies how all laws are discriminatory, but which categories (i.e. race, religion, sex) are "protected" categories from discrimination/differentiation.
tzs 6y ago
> Take New York Times. Last I checked, you can sign up online, but to cancel your subscription, you have to call and subject yourself to a slick sales pitch and all sorts of questions. It's inconvenient and borderline immoral. They asked me why I was cancelling. I said I don't really have time to get enough out of it to justify they cost. The "slick sales pitch" was to offer me a discount. I said I really don't have enough time for even that to be worth it. That was it. I then made sure to tell him I was only cancelling the paper, not my crossword puzzle subscription, and mentioned that I realized this means that when my crossword subscription renewed (it was out of phase with my newspaper subscription) the price would be doubling because I would not longer get the 50% discount that newspaper subscribers get. He informed me that this was not the case. Once you get the 50% of deal for the puzzle, you keep it as long as you maintain the puzzle subscription. I'd only lose it if I cancelled the puzzle, and later resubscribed while not having a newspaper subscription. I was pleasantly surprised.
- nojvek 6y ago
  It took months of calling to get someone to cancel. Even then I still got my credit card charged. I had to cancel my card. There is no law in US that companies need to have online cancellation if they have online signup. NY Times loves to abuse this.
zenexer 6y ago
I disagree with you, though you have my upvote for articulating that argument well. I don’t want Apple to act like a government. I want the government to act like a government. Why isn’t the government doing more to stop companies from employing shady sales practices? Why doesn’t the government do more to protect my 92-year-old grandmother? Why is it so hard to cancel a gym membership? We should be able to get together and say, “as a society, we want to forbid predatory sales practices.” The Apple approach has limited efficacy anyway. Sure, my grandmother can cancel subscriptions purchased through Apple—or she could, if she knew how to make them in the first place. But no, that requires a password. So she has free apps like Duolingo. Those apps have ads. She taps the ads. They bring her to websites. She enters her credit card number. Bam, new scam subscription that she can’t cancel. But Duolingo carries on, displaying the same scam ads, unimpeded by Apple or any government. Duolingo probably doesn’t even know about those ads. And if they did, “that’s the ad network’s problem.” Some people will argue that it’s difficult to write legislation that covers all the bases. Of course it is. But a private company’s contracts and guidelines are no different in that regard.
- maxgashkov 6y ago
  > I want the government to act like a government. That's a valid point, but: the US will probably require membership cancellations to not suck eventually. EU will too, maybe even earlier then US. Japan? Not likely. Here the enterprise is king and individual is not a priority. Russia? I don't even want to begin with this one. And that's only 2 localities I had experiences living in, Apple & App Store probably operates in dozens of completely different jurisdictions, brining more or less the same rules everywhere.
P4wl0w 6y ago
> The app store is in some ways like a government, and brings laws And just like the laws made by the government some of those laws are unjust or even stupid. Take the hemp prohibition as an example. It is as stupid and useless as Apple's "law" which seems to make it impossible to provide open source apps in the app store. Take a look at UTM: https://getutm.app/ https://getutm.app/ Why on earth do you have to side load such a useful app? It does not make any sense. The "we want your safety" statement is just useful for people who do not know any better. I do not want to be patronized like this as I am a professional user. As a person with some understanding about economics I know this is about money of course but I am very interested in the outcome of this behaviour towards professionals who will turn their back on Apple when they go on like this. Now they even managed to further decrease the value of their desktop OS - starting an app with internet connection takes literally seconds whereas they started in the blink of an eye on older versions because of their background checks. Awesome job @Apple :thumbsup:
d4rti 6y ago
Yup, I'd certainly agree that the App Store has various consumer utilities, and even in centralizing payment it has value as a consumer; I don't really want to give out my credit card to every app and I certainly want a central place to cancel subscriptions with no bullshit. That said, I do think that 30% is excessive. Job's original announcement [1] suggested that the App Store's 30% was the cost of running the App Store; I don't believe that it is really costing that much to run now. Reducing the payment premium and/or allowing customer choice of paying the App Store rate, or the outside the store rate is maybe the least bad option here. It's telling that there has been no substantive movement on margin from Apple or Google here. Steam is also 30% until you reach higher tiers, then it's 25%. Epic is only 12%. I think a lot of the current concerns would be allayed if the cut was only 12%. [1] https://youtu.be/xo9cKe_Fch8?t=212 https://youtu.be/xo9cKe_Fch8?t=212

ric2b 6y ago

> Once alternate app stores or other enforced reduction in apple's abilities to enforce and police app store policy are in place, We don't need to imagine that scenario, that's Android, and Google still definitely holds massive control with it's play store rules. > All I'm saying is that having alternate app stores, whilst it brings a lot of upside, does bring downside, and that is (presumably) what the defenders of apple are trying to warn you about: Those downsides. So go ahead and pick your examples from the Android world.

caycep 6y ago

I think perhaps the definition of a "platform", or perhaps even organized markets like a stock exchange, is a limitation/mitering/constraint/curation of choice, if that is the right term? Versus a complete free for all. The question is how much choice? I think a tentpole of Apple is that the billing should all flow through one source, clean and uncomplicated, along with a set guidelines of program coding/behavior. It happens to make Apple the gatekeeper, and there are deeper questions thereof, but that is the constraint inherent in the App Store. i.e. how civil rights/discrimination law identifies how all laws are discriminatory, but which categories (i.e. race, religion, sex) are "protected" categories from discrimination/differentiation.

tzs 6y ago

> Take New York Times. Last I checked, you can sign up online, but to cancel your subscription, you have to call and subject yourself to a slick sales pitch and all sorts of questions. It's inconvenient and borderline immoral. They asked me why I was cancelling. I said I don't really have time to get enough out of it to justify they cost. The "slick sales pitch" was to offer me a discount. I said I really don't have enough time for even that to be worth it. That was it. I then made sure to tell him I was only cancelling the paper, not my crossword puzzle subscription, and mentioned that I realized this means that when my crossword subscription renewed (it was out of phase with my newspaper subscription) the price would be doubling because I would not longer get the 50% discount that newspaper subscribers get. He informed me that this was not the case. Once you get the 50% of deal for the puzzle, you keep it as long as you maintain the puzzle subscription. I'd only lose it if I cancelled the puzzle, and later resubscribed while not having a newspaper subscription. I was pleasantly surprised.

nojvek 6y ago
It took months of calling to get someone to cancel. Even then I still got my credit card charged. I had to cancel my card. There is no law in US that companies need to have online cancellation if they have online signup. NY Times loves to abuse this.

zenexer 6y ago

I disagree with you, though you have my upvote for articulating that argument well. I don’t want Apple to act like a government. I want the government to act like a government. Why isn’t the government doing more to stop companies from employing shady sales practices? Why doesn’t the government do more to protect my 92-year-old grandmother? Why is it so hard to cancel a gym membership? We should be able to get together and say, “as a society, we want to forbid predatory sales practices.” The Apple approach has limited efficacy anyway. Sure, my grandmother can cancel subscriptions purchased through Apple—or she could, if she knew how to make them in the first place. But no, that requires a password. So she has free apps like Duolingo. Those apps have ads. She taps the ads. They bring her to websites. She enters her credit card number. Bam, new scam subscription that she can’t cancel. But Duolingo carries on, displaying the same scam ads, unimpeded by Apple or any government. Duolingo probably doesn’t even know about those ads. And if they did, “that’s the ad network’s problem.” Some people will argue that it’s difficult to write legislation that covers all the bases. Of course it is. But a private company’s contracts and guidelines are no different in that regard.

maxgashkov 6y ago
> I want the government to act like a government. That's a valid point, but: the US will probably require membership cancellations to not suck eventually. EU will too, maybe even earlier then US. Japan? Not likely. Here the enterprise is king and individual is not a priority. Russia? I don't even want to begin with this one. And that's only 2 localities I had experiences living in, Apple & App Store probably operates in dozens of completely different jurisdictions, brining more or less the same rules everywhere.

P4wl0w 6y ago

> The app store is in some ways like a government, and brings laws And just like the laws made by the government some of those laws are unjust or even stupid. Take the hemp prohibition as an example. It is as stupid and useless as Apple's "law" which seems to make it impossible to provide open source apps in the app store. Take a look at UTM: https://getutm.app/ https://getutm.app/ Why on earth do you have to side load such a useful app? It does not make any sense. The "we want your safety" statement is just useful for people who do not know any better. I do not want to be patronized like this as I am a professional user. As a person with some understanding about economics I know this is about money of course but I am very interested in the outcome of this behaviour towards professionals who will turn their back on Apple when they go on like this. Now they even managed to further decrease the value of their desktop OS - starting an app with internet connection takes literally seconds whereas they started in the blink of an eye on older versions because of their background checks. Awesome job @Apple :thumbsup:

d4rti 6y ago

Yup, I'd certainly agree that the App Store has various consumer utilities, and even in centralizing payment it has value as a consumer; I don't really want to give out my credit card to every app and I certainly want a central place to cancel subscriptions with no bullshit. That said, I do think that 30% is excessive. Job's original announcement [1] suggested that the App Store's 30% was the cost of running the App Store; I don't believe that it is really costing that much to run now. Reducing the payment premium and/or allowing customer choice of paying the App Store rate, or the outside the store rate is maybe the least bad option here. It's telling that there has been no substantive movement on margin from Apple or Google here. Steam is also 30% until you reach higher tiers, then it's 25%. Epic is only 12%. I think a lot of the current concerns would be allayed if the cut was only 12%. [1] https://youtu.be/xo9cKe_Fch8?t=212 https://youtu.be/xo9cKe_Fch8?t=212