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I sincerely hope the service providers sue Apple (and win). This is blatant abuse of their market position. Better if the App Store gets broken up into its own

I sincerely hope the service providers sue Apple (and win). This is blatant abuse of their market position. Better if the App Store gets broken up into its own independent company.

graeme 6y ago
What does that even mean? If it has a clear meaning, can you point to a single example of the sort of arrangement you’re talking about?
- drusepth 6y ago
  Breaking up tech companies into smaller companies has been suggested a lot lately, probably most notably by Elizabeth Warren's recent pushes. A relevant quote on her approach is here: >Apple, you’ve got to break it apart from their App Store. It’s got to be one or the other. Either they run the platform or they play in the store. They don’t get to do both at the same time. So it’s the same notion. >If you run a platform where others come to sell, then you don’t get to sell your own items on the platform because you have two comparative advantages. One, you’ve sucked up information about every buyer and every seller before you’ve made a decision about what you’re going to sell. And second, you have the capacity — because you run the platform — to prefer your product over anyone else’s product. It gives an enormous comparative advantage to the platform. You can find a transcript of this full interview at [1], but she's mentioned it several times and other politicians have also made their own, similar suggestions. [1] https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/9/18257965/elizabeth-warren-break-up-apple-monopoly-antitrust https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/9/18257965/elizabeth-warren-...
  - graeme 6y ago
    That’s an expansion of the original proposal, but what does it mean? You’d have to in some way break the entire model of the iphone, which involves sandboxing apps. How else could you have an app store company separate from the device maker? Android can have different stores but that is done through rooting correct? You have a few game app stores on windows/mac, but no general purpose app stores. It just isn’t a business that I know of. Nor is the rationale explained. As long as there has been computing, OS makers have developed software that has competed with third party. This distinction seems like a slogan, rather than a solution. (There may be other solutions of course)
    - Feolkin 6y ago
      Any app can prompt you to install another app without root on Android (since Android supports installing app packages outside of the Play Store). So if somebody wants to make an app store, they just need to publish an app that provides downloads to other apps and that's it. New app store. It doesn't affect how individual apps are sandboxed either. How apps are installed doesn't change the security model of the OS. Now, Google's position is still problematic because they clearly use their position to push the Play Store on everybody, but it shows that separating the store from the OS actually is quite possible. And seriously, Apple is a hundred billion dollar company. I'm sure they can handle this if push comes to shove. People need to stop defending these companies as if they need the protection.
      - graeme 6y ago
        But how is that separate app store a business? The original proposal I replied to was: > Better if the App Store gets broken up into its own independent company. It sounds like the actual proposal would be “make apple allow the installation of arbitrary app packages without review”, since that would allow the app model from android you’re talking about. That isn’t making the app store a business, but rather changing os permissions. It’s not clear to me “the apple app store” is a business separate from apple. Btw, got an example of one of those android app store apps? I’d be interested in looking at one. I’m assuming google doesn’t review the apps you can install with those? > Apple is a hundred billion dollar company. A nit, but they’re near two trillion actually
        Feolkin 6y ago
        I'm not sure how it couldn't be a business. The App Store currently takes a 30% cut of every purchase. The business is running and developing an app store and we already know where its revenue would come from. It wouldn't be any different from Valve running Steam. F-Droid is an open source alternative. Amazon has the Amazon Appstore. Samsung has the Galaxy Store. A more complete list here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Android_app_stores https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Android_app_stores Google has nothing to do with the curation of any of these alternative stores, since they're owned and run by completely separate third-parties and Android as currently designed doesn't prevent a user from installing arbitrary app packages (apk's).

I sincerely hope the service providers sue Apple (and win). This is blatant abuse of their market position. Better if the App Store gets broken up into its own independent company.

graeme 6y ago

What does that even mean? If it has a clear meaning, can you point to a single example of the sort of arrangement you’re talking about?

drusepth 6y ago
Breaking up tech companies into smaller companies has been suggested a lot lately, probably most notably by Elizabeth Warren's recent pushes. A relevant quote on her approach is here: >Apple, you’ve got to break it apart from their App Store. It’s got to be one or the other. Either they run the platform or they play in the store. They don’t get to do both at the same time. So it’s the same notion. >If you run a platform where others come to sell, then you don’t get to sell your own items on the platform because you have two comparative advantages. One, you’ve sucked up information about every buyer and every seller before you’ve made a decision about what you’re going to sell. And second, you have the capacity — because you run the platform — to prefer your product over anyone else’s product. It gives an enormous comparative advantage to the platform. You can find a transcript of this full interview at [1], but she's mentioned it several times and other politicians have also made their own, similar suggestions. [1] https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/9/18257965/elizabeth-warren-break-up-apple-monopoly-antitrust https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/9/18257965/elizabeth-warren-...
- graeme 6y ago
  That’s an expansion of the original proposal, but what does it mean? You’d have to in some way break the entire model of the iphone, which involves sandboxing apps. How else could you have an app store company separate from the device maker? Android can have different stores but that is done through rooting correct? You have a few game app stores on windows/mac, but no general purpose app stores. It just isn’t a business that I know of. Nor is the rationale explained. As long as there has been computing, OS makers have developed software that has competed with third party. This distinction seems like a slogan, rather than a solution. (There may be other solutions of course)
  - Feolkin 6y ago
    Any app can prompt you to install another app without root on Android (since Android supports installing app packages outside of the Play Store). So if somebody wants to make an app store, they just need to publish an app that provides downloads to other apps and that's it. New app store. It doesn't affect how individual apps are sandboxed either. How apps are installed doesn't change the security model of the OS. Now, Google's position is still problematic because they clearly use their position to push the Play Store on everybody, but it shows that separating the store from the OS actually is quite possible. And seriously, Apple is a hundred billion dollar company. I'm sure they can handle this if push comes to shove. People need to stop defending these companies as if they need the protection.
    - graeme 6y ago
      But how is that separate app store a business? The original proposal I replied to was: > Better if the App Store gets broken up into its own independent company. It sounds like the actual proposal would be “make apple allow the installation of arbitrary app packages without review”, since that would allow the app model from android you’re talking about. That isn’t making the app store a business, but rather changing os permissions. It’s not clear to me “the apple app store” is a business separate from apple. Btw, got an example of one of those android app store apps? I’d be interested in looking at one. I’m assuming google doesn’t review the apps you can install with those? > Apple is a hundred billion dollar company. A nit, but they’re near two trillion actually
      - Feolkin 6y ago
        I'm not sure how it couldn't be a business. The App Store currently takes a 30% cut of every purchase. The business is running and developing an app store and we already know where its revenue would come from. It wouldn't be any different from Valve running Steam. F-Droid is an open source alternative. Amazon has the Amazon Appstore. Samsung has the Galaxy Store. A more complete list here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Android_app_stores https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Android_app_stores Google has nothing to do with the curation of any of these alternative stores, since they're owned and run by completely separate third-parties and Android as currently designed doesn't prevent a user from installing arbitrary app packages (apk's).