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Which customers do you think Apple cares more about, app developers or their actual iPhone customers?

by baddox 6y ago

alasdair_ 6y ago
Apple needs to hire Steve Ballmer. https://youtu.be/KMU0tzLwhbE https://youtu.be/KMU0tzLwhbE
- boogies 6y ago
  The lowest quality of comments and the highest quality comment. Take my upvote now and I might come back when I earn downvote.
harry8 6y ago
The correct question is "which do you think Apple cares about least?" They care about market power very deeply so they don't have to care. Where are you going to go? Google? Doing the exact same thing. Neither? Cabin in the woods territory. Oh for the Nokia N900, right?
- boogies 6y ago
  > Where are you going to go? Google? Doing the exact same thing. Neither? Cabin in the woods territory. Oh for the Nokia N900, right? The Pinephone is on the frontpage at the moment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24329900 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24329900, and the Librem 5 has been several times recently. Maybe not grandma friendly ATM but I wouldn’t call it “cabin in the woods territory.”
  - harry8 6y ago
    I look forward to the day I agree with you and hope it comes soon. The point is we had it. The N900 was it. 10+ years ago. Maybe pine or librem or open moko or whatever will get us back to where we were more than a decade ago. I really hope so.
    - boogies 6y ago
      I think there’s good reason to hope, there’s a variety of implementation: + 2 companies, Pine64 and Purism, making 2 lines of phones - Pinephones in various community editions, $150 and $200 with and without the convergence package - Librem 5s for $750 now that the crowdfunding campaign’s over, and a $2000 Made in the US version + Several GUI environments:
    - boogies 6y ago
      I think there’s good reason to hope, there’s a variety of implementations: + 2 companies, Pine64 and Purism, making 2 lines of phones - Pinephones in various community editions, $150 and $200 with and without the convergence package - Librem 5s for $750 now that the crowdfunding campaign’s over, and a $2000 Made in the US version + Several GUI environments: - Phosh, based on GNOME and GTK+, developed by Purism as the default shell for the Librem 5 - The KDE equivalent of that, that Purism has wanted as an option for the Librem 5 from early on - Ubiports’ community maintained Ubuntu Touch - Sxmo, a bundle of mobile adaptations of dwm, dmenu, etc. with a nice modular (Unixy/KISS/suckless) design eg. a gesture daemon made by the same developer with it but not exclusively for it This seems significantly better than the N900’s single (though great sounding) thing that couldn’t thrive independently after Microsoft bought Nokia out.
hellisothers 6y ago
Good call out, and something I’m not seeing a lot of discussion on here. I am an iOS developer but I want Apple to care about me as an iOS user first and foremost. A lot of the discussion around this sounds almost exactly like “we need pro-business anti-regulation, it’ll trickle down!”, ie “high taxes on business hurts consumers”. Just like in real life, these arguments would be easier to swallow if they weren’t coming from the businesses themselves who just want a larger slice of the pie.
- baddox 6y ago
  That's where I am too. I actually mostly agree (at least in principle) with a lot of the arguments about Apple's anticompetitive behavior and hostility towards their app developers, but I can't help but think that if app developers had their way, iPhones would be much worse products for the average iPhone customer and iPhone would have essentially no product differentiation from Android. Too often these discussions on HN center on the power dynamics between Apple and app developers, and occasionally mention in passing something like ("choice is good for the iPhone owner too; if they don't want X then they can just choose to not install X"), but the discussion rarely tackles the nuance of the power dynamics between app developers and smartphone owners.
- valuearb 6y ago
  App Review is both a burden and a hugely valuable service for App developers.
PakG1 6y ago
Well, I suppose I'd have to see the growth rate of how much that 30% cut adds to their bottom line to decide that. But even if it were huge, probably the actual iPhones still make way more money.

Which customers do you think Apple cares more about, app developers or their actual iPhone customers?

by baddox 6y ago

Which customers do you think Apple cares more about, app developers or their actual iPhone customers?

alasdair_ 6y ago

Apple needs to hire Steve Ballmer. https://youtu.be/KMU0tzLwhbE https://youtu.be/KMU0tzLwhbE

boogies 6y ago
The lowest quality of comments and the highest quality comment. Take my upvote now and I might come back when I earn downvote.

harry8 6y ago

The correct question is "which do you think Apple cares about least?" They care about market power very deeply so they don't have to care. Where are you going to go? Google? Doing the exact same thing. Neither? Cabin in the woods territory. Oh for the Nokia N900, right?

boogies 6y ago
> Where are you going to go? Google? Doing the exact same thing. Neither? Cabin in the woods territory. Oh for the Nokia N900, right? The Pinephone is on the frontpage at the moment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24329900 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24329900, and the Librem 5 has been several times recently. Maybe not grandma friendly ATM but I wouldn’t call it “cabin in the woods territory.”
- harry8 6y ago
  I look forward to the day I agree with you and hope it comes soon. The point is we had it. The N900 was it. 10+ years ago. Maybe pine or librem or open moko or whatever will get us back to where we were more than a decade ago. I really hope so.
  - boogies 6y ago
    I think there’s good reason to hope, there’s a variety of implementation: + 2 companies, Pine64 and Purism, making 2 lines of phones - Pinephones in various community editions, $150 and $200 with and without the convergence package - Librem 5s for $750 now that the crowdfunding campaign’s over, and a $2000 Made in the US version + Several GUI environments:
  - boogies 6y ago
    I think there’s good reason to hope, there’s a variety of implementations: + 2 companies, Pine64 and Purism, making 2 lines of phones - Pinephones in various community editions, $150 and $200 with and without the convergence package - Librem 5s for $750 now that the crowdfunding campaign’s over, and a $2000 Made in the US version + Several GUI environments: - Phosh, based on GNOME and GTK+, developed by Purism as the default shell for the Librem 5 - The KDE equivalent of that, that Purism has wanted as an option for the Librem 5 from early on - Ubiports’ community maintained Ubuntu Touch - Sxmo, a bundle of mobile adaptations of dwm, dmenu, etc. with a nice modular (Unixy/KISS/suckless) design eg. a gesture daemon made by the same developer with it but not exclusively for it This seems significantly better than the N900’s single (though great sounding) thing that couldn’t thrive independently after Microsoft bought Nokia out.

hellisothers 6y ago

Good call out, and something I’m not seeing a lot of discussion on here. I am an iOS developer but I want Apple to care about me as an iOS user first and foremost. A lot of the discussion around this sounds almost exactly like “we need pro-business anti-regulation, it’ll trickle down!”, ie “high taxes on business hurts consumers”. Just like in real life, these arguments would be easier to swallow if they weren’t coming from the businesses themselves who just want a larger slice of the pie.

baddox 6y ago
That's where I am too. I actually mostly agree (at least in principle) with a lot of the arguments about Apple's anticompetitive behavior and hostility towards their app developers, but I can't help but think that if app developers had their way, iPhones would be much worse products for the average iPhone customer and iPhone would have essentially no product differentiation from Android. Too often these discussions on HN center on the power dynamics between Apple and app developers, and occasionally mention in passing something like ("choice is good for the iPhone owner too; if they don't want X then they can just choose to not install X"), but the discussion rarely tackles the nuance of the power dynamics between app developers and smartphone owners.
valuearb 6y ago
App Review is both a burden and a hugely valuable service for App developers.

PakG1 6y ago

Well, I suppose I'd have to see the growth rate of how much that 30% cut adds to their bottom line to decide that. But even if it were huge, probably the actual iPhones still make way more money.