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Can we just link directly to the advocacy group's page (https://appfairness.org/ https://appfairness.org/)? I'm not certain the article is adding anything. ---

Can we just link directly to the advocacy group's page (https://appfairness.org/ https://appfairness.org/)? I'm not certain the article is adding anything. ---- I'm generally supportive of at least some of Epic's arguments towards Apple, and I do believe that Apple (and multiple other FAANG companies) are engaged in anti-competitive behavior that's currently hurting the market. But a lot of the arguments I'm reading on the App Fairness site in particular seem really poorly phrased, almost to the point of being incoherent. From their objection on "user freedom": > Think about this a little differently: A box of Cheerios costs about $3.00 at Kroger, but sometimes Cheerios offers a coupon which lowers the price to $2.50 at any store that offers Cheerios. What Apple is doing is basically like Kroger telling Cheerios that they’re not allowed to offer coupons, and if they do, Cheerios is at risk of being kicked out of the cereal aisle. Consumers wouldn’t stand for this type of monopolistic behavior over their cereal, so why should they allow it for the apps used on their mobile devices? I had to think really hard what they mean by this and how it actually relates to user freedom. Most resellers are allowed to choose their own prices for goods. I don't think this analogy corresponds at all to what Apple is doing. Apple is banning apps from telling consumers in app about other purchasing options. That's a totally different objection. I'm pleased to see developers banding together, but if this is the result then I wish they'd spend more time making more reasonable, understandable arguments. If this site was my first introduction to the debate over app store policies, I think I'd probably be on Apple's side.

chacha2 6y ago
Website's broken on my Firefox, won't scroll.
- nguyenkien 6y ago
  Same problem on Edge chromium.
  - dhagz 6y ago
    If you're not auto-accepting cookies, then the site won't let you scroll/do anything until you accept them.
- Aissen 6y ago
  Probably the cookie popup blocked by UBO preventing scrolling. Irony: you can't read the cookie policy without accepting it first.
  - gbil 6y ago
    Exactly. Which for me is a reason - no matter how much I hate Apple's tactics- to dismiss also this counter action. All of these entities just don't care for the users one way or the other
    - _qulr 6y ago
      Yes, I was thinking of joining, but the fact that the site didn't work without turning off my ad blocker was a turnoff. Why do they even need cookies? Terrible first impression.
      - danShumway 6y ago
        The amount of blindness I'm seeing from companies on both sides of this fight about how to handle their optics is kind of staggering. One of Apple's core arguments for why they need this kind of control is privacy. If someone is launching what is essentially a PR campaign against Apple, one of the first things to do is to make sure the website doesn't have any appearance of violating people's privacy. Make it work without JS, make it work without cookies. Be conscious of the target audience. Requiring cookies is a really tone-deaf decision for them to make.
        yazaddaruvala 6y ago
        This. The problem is regardless of it being either side of Hanlon's razor, malice or stupidity, I have built trust with Apple and prefer the centralized Apple (over the decentralized dev-houses of the world) to do its best to ensure neither malice nor stupidity in the product I use most throughout the day.
        6y ago
- NikolaeVarius 6y ago
  Works fine on 3 different versions of Firefox.
graeme 6y ago
Indeed, what is the cheerios example supposed to show? I don’t expect the discount coupon comes out of the store’s cut. Tinder or Epic are free to discount boosts or in game purchases, and spotify can give free months. The cheerios example probably involves a fair bit of negotiation between manufacturer and retailer. Whereas apps can discount whenever they choose, without permission.
- danShumway 6y ago
  Right. I'm honestly having a hard time thinking of situations where a seller like Cheerios would be able to say, "no, everyone is going to offer our products at $2.50 for the next week." I'd be tempted to call that anticompetitive in the opposite direction, of course a seller should be allowed to set their own prices and decide for themselves whether they want to participate in a promotion. It's not like there aren't at least somewhat better analogies they could have used. Imagine if you bought an Apple Phone from Best Buy and then that compiled version of iOS wasn't allowed to mention anywhere that you could get support from Genius Bars instead of Best Buy. Or imagine if you bought a vacuum cleaner from Walmart, and the manufacturer wasn't allowed to include any inserts inside of the box that linked to their own store for replacement parts. But even with a better analogy, why is this argument being brought up in this specific section? I expected their user freedom section to talk more about sideloading, or right to repair, or emulation, and they just can't stop fixating on the 30% fee. From the same section: > Here’s an example of how this problem manifests itself: Epic produces once of the most popular video games of all time, Fortnite. If a Fortnite player were to buy an upgrade in the App Store, that individual might be charged $9.99. However, that same upgrade costs only $7.99 when purchased directly through Epic. Cool argument, but that has nothing to do with user freedom; users are still perfectly free to buy upgrades from Epic directly. It feels like they came up with one objection and then poorly pasted it into 3 sections.
  - gowld 6y ago
    > having a hard time thinking of situations where a seller like Cheerios would be able to say, "no, everyone is going to offer our products at $2.50 for the next week." Because MRP (minimum resale price) is often illegal (bit it's complicated https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-antitrust-laws/dealings-supply-chain/manufacturer-imposed https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-a...) MAP (minimum advertised price) is more permitted, which is why Amazon often makes you put items in your cart to see the discounted price.
dpratt 6y ago
This is a flawed analogy. The correct one would be Cheerios printing "If you buy me at Costco, I cost $1 less" on the outside of the box. No rational retailer that isn't Costco would carry that product.
- kevincox 6y ago
  However the flaw in your analogy is that there is very little lock-in to particular retailers where is there is a huge lock-in to a phone you just bought.
  - realusername 6y ago
    And additionally there's dozens of supermarkets, thin margins and high competition. The mobile app market has exactly two companies with the exact same fees...
- danShumway 6y ago
  Eh. A better analogy would be Cheerios sticking an insert inside their box of cereal that said, "save $1 at Costco". That kind of behavior is pretty common with physical retailers; most boxed products I buy will contain inserts that advertise replacement parts and other products from other sources. Apple isn't just banning apps from mentioning competing stores in app descriptions, it's banning them from mentioning competing stores inside the app.
  - jonny_eh 6y ago
    This! Even better would be an insert in the box saying "buy future Cheerios from Cheerios.com at 30% off".
    - dingaling 6y ago
      I frequently receive inserts like that from sellers on eBay, promoting their own direct-sales site.
sithadmin 6y ago
Your cereal aisle analogy is a bad one, for two reasons. For one, everything about the merchandising of a particular product in a big box store is agreed upon in advance between the retailer and the manufacturer before the product is placed in the store: the product placement on the shelves; what kind of manufacturer incentives (e.g. coupons) the retailer will honor for the product and how renumerations will be made from the manufacturer to the retailer for them; what kind of sales volume is required to trigger volume discounts, etc. These agreements are highly bespoke in a way that couldn't be scaled with the sort of volume that's on app stores. Second - physical retailers are compensated by the manufacturer when they accept a manufacturer's coupon. The transactions are logged, summarized, and traditionally the physical coupons were collected and sent to the manufacturer. Barring a pre-negotiated agreement to accept less than face value in exchange for a coupon, the retailer isn't losing revenue on the deal. However, when an app publisher offers a means to circumvent the app store payment system, Apple/Google DO in fact face a loss of revenue.
- danShumway 6y ago
  It's not my cereal analogy, it's theirs. I brought it up specifically to showcase that a lot of the arguments I'm reading on their site don't map the current situation.
dgellow 6y ago
What I learned from past experiences is to never use analogies. They are almost always a source of distraction, people start to argue about the analogy itself instead of the topic at hand, which is almost always completely counter productive. Also it often only makes sense in the mind of the author...
- munificent 6y ago
  > They are almost always a source of distraction, people start to argue about the analogy itself instead of the topic at hand, which is almost always completely counter productive. My experience is that this is very true among a certain group of people, particularly literal-minded software enngineer types. But it is much less true in the general population where a single good analogy can accomplish more than pages of prose.
  - brendoelfrendo 6y ago
    See: further down this thread where literal-minded software engineers all try to "fix" this analogy but can't agree on how.
  - lotsofpulp 6y ago
    My experience is analogies are erroneously as supporting arguments to jump from premise to conclusion of an unrelated topic. I saw them a lot at my family's various religious/cult gatherings when I was a kid. The preacher would state something and then "prove" it with an analogy. Analogies don't accomplish anything in basically all of the uses I've seen. People want them to serve as proof, but it's a lazy way of getting out of showing the validity of a conclusion.
    - nostrademons 6y ago
      That's assuming a level of critical thinking that exists on HN and a few other forums but isn't really common to the general public. Most people go into a new topic or new issue area with a basically neutral stance. They aren't looking to disprove the argument, nor do they even view it as an argument. Rather, they're thinking "OK, show me how this is relevant - tie it into my life and how it affects me, then I'll make up my mind based on my feelings afterwards" (in a far more subconscious way - basically nobody actually goes through these thoughts consciously). Analogies are your chance to do that. Get the right one and people associate your issue with something they already hold a positive position on. Get the wrong one and they just ignore you.
sushid 6y ago
I'm guessing you don't have a CPG background. It's a horribly flawed analogy as retailer can and will demand special SKUs, kick brands off of aisle all the time, demand premiums for shelving units, etc.
dang 6y ago
Ok, we've changed the URL from https://www.wsj.com/articles/fortnite-maker-spotify-form-advocacy-group-to-push-for-app-store-changes-11600945246 https://www.wsj.com/articles/fortnite-maker-spotify-form-adv....
spullara 6y ago
When someone offers a coupon, that company pays the store the difference. I don't think they are asking to do that.
m3kw9 6y ago
There are 2 sides of analogies. I can also argue by saying Epic is analogous to a renter who doesn’t want to pay rent. It’s mostly because they can’t find any other point but to find something similar.
- jmccaf 6y ago
  There is 10e6 times more diverse supply in the rental market than for app stores, even though renting housing is a regulated market with high transaction cost.
teawrecks 6y ago
There's no way to deny or even read their cookie policy without accepting it.
swiley 6y ago
Wow that site was disappointing. It focused mostly on the 30% apple charges, which is both common and reasonable. It mentions the anti competitive behavior but mostly how it inflates prices, which is exactly how apple is trying to frame the debate. Also they have cookies on an entirely static site and disable scrolling until you press accept in the cookie dick bar (something you should probably never do, certainly not on a static site.) The thing is only readable in w3m/elinks. In my (unpopular) opinion almost all of these "apps" should really be sites anyway. App store curation doesn't provide any reall security (especially since the apps are never instrumented) so someone so incapable of measuring the safety of software that they need that level of infantilesation should really only trust software to the same degree a browser does (that is, not at all.)
- DeusExMachina 6y ago
  Common and reasonable according to which standards? One of the arguments of Epic in court is that Apple set the standard and other stores are simply following it.
  - nodamage 6y ago
    That's a pretty silly argument considering Steam launched with a 30% fee a full 5 years before the App Store was even a thing.
    - TYPE_FASTER 6y ago
      Yes. Also see https://www.ign.com/articles/2019/10/07/report-steams-30-cut-is-actually-the-industry-standard https://www.ign.com/articles/2019/10/07/report-steams-30-cut...
    - redwall_hp 6y ago
      I can also buy games from other places than Steam. I cannot install iPhone apps I download online. That little detail changes the situation entirely. I don't care what Apple charges if I can install a binary without dealing with their store.
bsder 6y ago
Normal people run on stories and analogies. Epic doesn't need the tiny number of technical people to win their case. Epic needs the vast number of users to be on their side in order to win their case. HN is not the target of that "manifesto".
redwall_hp 6y ago
A better argument about user freedom would be: * The social media companies that had to deal with having their apps blocked because of Apple's puritanical stance on nudity. * The recent rule change banning vaping and tobacco related apps. * The inability for FOSS projects to easily distribute to users without paying a $100/year fee for something they want to give away. Users can only acquire it through the app store, or compile themselves and go through an inconvenient signing process to load it on. And I believe that's very temporary. It's pretty offensive that a company thinks they can dictate what sort of software you run on your own device.
nodamage 6y ago
The original analogy is pretty disingenuous and conveniently ignores a crucial detail: in the cereal example Kroger (presumably) still gets paid when the discounted box of cereal is sold. Whereas what they're asking for is the equivalent of Cheerios demanding to be placed on Kroger's shelves while cutting Kroger out of the transaction entirely. Why would Kroger ever agree to that?

chacha2 6y ago

Website's broken on my Firefox, won't scroll.

nguyenkien 6y ago
Same problem on Edge chromium.
- dhagz 6y ago
  If you're not auto-accepting cookies, then the site won't let you scroll/do anything until you accept them.
Aissen 6y ago
Probably the cookie popup blocked by UBO preventing scrolling. Irony: you can't read the cookie policy without accepting it first.
- gbil 6y ago
  Exactly. Which for me is a reason - no matter how much I hate Apple's tactics- to dismiss also this counter action. All of these entities just don't care for the users one way or the other
  - _qulr 6y ago
    Yes, I was thinking of joining, but the fact that the site didn't work without turning off my ad blocker was a turnoff. Why do they even need cookies? Terrible first impression.
    - danShumway 6y ago
      The amount of blindness I'm seeing from companies on both sides of this fight about how to handle their optics is kind of staggering. One of Apple's core arguments for why they need this kind of control is privacy. If someone is launching what is essentially a PR campaign against Apple, one of the first things to do is to make sure the website doesn't have any appearance of violating people's privacy. Make it work without JS, make it work without cookies. Be conscious of the target audience. Requiring cookies is a really tone-deaf decision for them to make.
      - yazaddaruvala 6y ago
        This. The problem is regardless of it being either side of Hanlon's razor, malice or stupidity, I have built trust with Apple and prefer the centralized Apple (over the decentralized dev-houses of the world) to do its best to ensure neither malice nor stupidity in the product I use most throughout the day.
        6y ago
NikolaeVarius 6y ago
Works fine on 3 different versions of Firefox.

graeme 6y ago

Indeed, what is the cheerios example supposed to show? I don’t expect the discount coupon comes out of the store’s cut. Tinder or Epic are free to discount boosts or in game purchases, and spotify can give free months. The cheerios example probably involves a fair bit of negotiation between manufacturer and retailer. Whereas apps can discount whenever they choose, without permission.

danShumway 6y ago
Right. I'm honestly having a hard time thinking of situations where a seller like Cheerios would be able to say, "no, everyone is going to offer our products at $2.50 for the next week." I'd be tempted to call that anticompetitive in the opposite direction, of course a seller should be allowed to set their own prices and decide for themselves whether they want to participate in a promotion. It's not like there aren't at least somewhat better analogies they could have used. Imagine if you bought an Apple Phone from Best Buy and then that compiled version of iOS wasn't allowed to mention anywhere that you could get support from Genius Bars instead of Best Buy. Or imagine if you bought a vacuum cleaner from Walmart, and the manufacturer wasn't allowed to include any inserts inside of the box that linked to their own store for replacement parts. But even with a better analogy, why is this argument being brought up in this specific section? I expected their user freedom section to talk more about sideloading, or right to repair, or emulation, and they just can't stop fixating on the 30% fee. From the same section: > Here’s an example of how this problem manifests itself: Epic produces once of the most popular video games of all time, Fortnite. If a Fortnite player were to buy an upgrade in the App Store, that individual might be charged $9.99. However, that same upgrade costs only $7.99 when purchased directly through Epic. Cool argument, but that has nothing to do with user freedom; users are still perfectly free to buy upgrades from Epic directly. It feels like they came up with one objection and then poorly pasted it into 3 sections.
- gowld 6y ago
  > having a hard time thinking of situations where a seller like Cheerios would be able to say, "no, everyone is going to offer our products at $2.50 for the next week." Because MRP (minimum resale price) is often illegal (bit it's complicated https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-antitrust-laws/dealings-supply-chain/manufacturer-imposed https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-a...) MAP (minimum advertised price) is more permitted, which is why Amazon often makes you put items in your cart to see the discounted price.

dpratt 6y ago

This is a flawed analogy. The correct one would be Cheerios printing "If you buy me at Costco, I cost $1 less" on the outside of the box. No rational retailer that isn't Costco would carry that product.

kevincox 6y ago
However the flaw in your analogy is that there is very little lock-in to particular retailers where is there is a huge lock-in to a phone you just bought.
- realusername 6y ago
  And additionally there's dozens of supermarkets, thin margins and high competition. The mobile app market has exactly two companies with the exact same fees...
danShumway 6y ago
Eh. A better analogy would be Cheerios sticking an insert inside their box of cereal that said, "save $1 at Costco". That kind of behavior is pretty common with physical retailers; most boxed products I buy will contain inserts that advertise replacement parts and other products from other sources. Apple isn't just banning apps from mentioning competing stores in app descriptions, it's banning them from mentioning competing stores inside the app.
- jonny_eh 6y ago
  This! Even better would be an insert in the box saying "buy future Cheerios from Cheerios.com at 30% off".
  - dingaling 6y ago
    I frequently receive inserts like that from sellers on eBay, promoting their own direct-sales site.

sithadmin 6y ago

Your cereal aisle analogy is a bad one, for two reasons. For one, everything about the merchandising of a particular product in a big box store is agreed upon in advance between the retailer and the manufacturer before the product is placed in the store: the product placement on the shelves; what kind of manufacturer incentives (e.g. coupons) the retailer will honor for the product and how renumerations will be made from the manufacturer to the retailer for them; what kind of sales volume is required to trigger volume discounts, etc. These agreements are highly bespoke in a way that couldn't be scaled with the sort of volume that's on app stores. Second - physical retailers are compensated by the manufacturer when they accept a manufacturer's coupon. The transactions are logged, summarized, and traditionally the physical coupons were collected and sent to the manufacturer. Barring a pre-negotiated agreement to accept less than face value in exchange for a coupon, the retailer isn't losing revenue on the deal. However, when an app publisher offers a means to circumvent the app store payment system, Apple/Google DO in fact face a loss of revenue.

danShumway 6y ago
It's not my cereal analogy, it's theirs. I brought it up specifically to showcase that a lot of the arguments I'm reading on their site don't map the current situation.

dgellow 6y ago

What I learned from past experiences is to never use analogies. They are almost always a source of distraction, people start to argue about the analogy itself instead of the topic at hand, which is almost always completely counter productive. Also it often only makes sense in the mind of the author...

munificent 6y ago
> They are almost always a source of distraction, people start to argue about the analogy itself instead of the topic at hand, which is almost always completely counter productive. My experience is that this is very true among a certain group of people, particularly literal-minded software enngineer types. But it is much less true in the general population where a single good analogy can accomplish more than pages of prose.
- brendoelfrendo 6y ago
  See: further down this thread where literal-minded software engineers all try to "fix" this analogy but can't agree on how.
- lotsofpulp 6y ago
  My experience is analogies are erroneously as supporting arguments to jump from premise to conclusion of an unrelated topic. I saw them a lot at my family's various religious/cult gatherings when I was a kid. The preacher would state something and then "prove" it with an analogy. Analogies don't accomplish anything in basically all of the uses I've seen. People want them to serve as proof, but it's a lazy way of getting out of showing the validity of a conclusion.
  - nostrademons 6y ago
    That's assuming a level of critical thinking that exists on HN and a few other forums but isn't really common to the general public. Most people go into a new topic or new issue area with a basically neutral stance. They aren't looking to disprove the argument, nor do they even view it as an argument. Rather, they're thinking "OK, show me how this is relevant - tie it into my life and how it affects me, then I'll make up my mind based on my feelings afterwards" (in a far more subconscious way - basically nobody actually goes through these thoughts consciously). Analogies are your chance to do that. Get the right one and people associate your issue with something they already hold a positive position on. Get the wrong one and they just ignore you.

sushid 6y ago

I'm guessing you don't have a CPG background. It's a horribly flawed analogy as retailer can and will demand special SKUs, kick brands off of aisle all the time, demand premiums for shelving units, etc.

dang 6y ago

Ok, we've changed the URL from https://www.wsj.com/articles/fortnite-maker-spotify-form-advocacy-group-to-push-for-app-store-changes-11600945246 https://www.wsj.com/articles/fortnite-maker-spotify-form-adv....

spullara 6y ago

When someone offers a coupon, that company pays the store the difference. I don't think they are asking to do that.

m3kw9 6y ago

There are 2 sides of analogies. I can also argue by saying Epic is analogous to a renter who doesn’t want to pay rent. It’s mostly because they can’t find any other point but to find something similar.

jmccaf 6y ago
There is 10e6 times more diverse supply in the rental market than for app stores, even though renting housing is a regulated market with high transaction cost.

teawrecks 6y ago

There's no way to deny or even read their cookie policy without accepting it.

swiley 6y ago

Wow that site was disappointing. It focused mostly on the 30% apple charges, which is both common and reasonable. It mentions the anti competitive behavior but mostly how it inflates prices, which is exactly how apple is trying to frame the debate. Also they have cookies on an entirely static site and disable scrolling until you press accept in the cookie dick bar (something you should probably never do, certainly not on a static site.) The thing is only readable in w3m/elinks. In my (unpopular) opinion almost all of these "apps" should really be sites anyway. App store curation doesn't provide any reall security (especially since the apps are never instrumented) so someone so incapable of measuring the safety of software that they need that level of infantilesation should really only trust software to the same degree a browser does (that is, not at all.)

DeusExMachina 6y ago
Common and reasonable according to which standards? One of the arguments of Epic in court is that Apple set the standard and other stores are simply following it.
- nodamage 6y ago
  That's a pretty silly argument considering Steam launched with a 30% fee a full 5 years before the App Store was even a thing.
  - TYPE_FASTER 6y ago
    Yes. Also see https://www.ign.com/articles/2019/10/07/report-steams-30-cut-is-actually-the-industry-standard https://www.ign.com/articles/2019/10/07/report-steams-30-cut...
  - redwall_hp 6y ago
    I can also buy games from other places than Steam. I cannot install iPhone apps I download online. That little detail changes the situation entirely. I don't care what Apple charges if I can install a binary without dealing with their store.

bsder 6y ago

Normal people run on stories and analogies. Epic doesn't need the tiny number of technical people to win their case. Epic needs the vast number of users to be on their side in order to win their case. HN is not the target of that "manifesto".

redwall_hp 6y ago

A better argument about user freedom would be: * The social media companies that had to deal with having their apps blocked because of Apple's puritanical stance on nudity. * The recent rule change banning vaping and tobacco related apps. * The inability for FOSS projects to easily distribute to users without paying a $100/year fee for something they want to give away. Users can only acquire it through the app store, or compile themselves and go through an inconvenient signing process to load it on. And I believe that's very temporary. It's pretty offensive that a company thinks they can dictate what sort of software you run on your own device.

nodamage 6y ago

The original analogy is pretty disingenuous and conveniently ignores a crucial detail: in the cereal example Kroger (presumably) still gets paid when the discounted box of cereal is sold. Whereas what they're asking for is the equivalent of Cheerios demanding to be placed on Kroger's shelves while cutting Kroger out of the transaction entirely. Why would Kroger ever agree to that?