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In trying to understand Apple's position on App Store policies, it may help to think of them as a retail store. For example, substitute "Best Buy" for App Store

by eyesee 6y ago

In trying to understand Apple's position on App Store policies, it may help to think of them as a retail store. For example, substitute "Best Buy" for App Store. Can I tell my customers that 30% of the price of their widget goes to Best Buy at purchase? No, that's privileged information in the contract. When my widget is on a shelf at Best Buy, can I advertise a lower price at Amazon.com on the box? No, of course not. They'd never place it on their shelves. If I have to redesign my packaging so Best Buy can put a spider wrap around it, do I get to bitch about that to my customers? Nope, just a cost of doing business. It's "irrelevant" information to the customer. I'm not suggesting this justifies their behavior. It's just an analogy that happens to fit Apple's world view of their App Store.

nexuist 6y ago
> It's just an analogy that happens to fit Apple's world view of their App Store. The problem with the world view, of course, is that there's more to the world than Best Buy. If I don't like a widget at Best Buy I can go look it up and buy it from Amazon. Or Target. Or Walmart. Or Alibaba. If I use an iPhone I am limited to what Apple allows on their shelves, full stop. If Best Buy dictated everything you were allowed to buy, that would seem rather problematic, right? I can't see any way that a corporate executive would justify not only not placing a certain brand on their shelves, but also physically blocking their customers from walking into any other store. Imagine the PR field day if an Apple store manager paid his or her employees to stand in front of the Microsoft store and physically assault any of their customers if they tried to walk inside! And yet that's exactly what they're doing virtually. We can't use a Microsoft app store, or an Amazon app store, or Google Play. We are beholden to the manager's personal preferences of what we can and can't buy.
- barkingcat 6y ago
  the other side of the equation is that you are free not to buy an apple device (for now) the collective amount of people buying apple devices is what gives them the power to implement these rules on their own. I forsee a time in the future when you are forced to buy an Apple product from birth, no options allowed.
  - toiletfuneral 6y ago
    You should probbaly spend some time outside
  - arvinsim 6y ago
    That is what antitrust is supposed to prevent
  - nexuist 6y ago
    > the collective amount of people buying apple devices is what gives them the power to implement these rules on their own. Generally whenever some sort of product or process gains a large level of public usage, it gets regulated. This has been true of every technology since the lightbulb. I think we as a civilization realized that just letting people at the top apply their arbitrary preferences to everyone else was hurtful and nonproductive.
- toiletfuneral 6y ago
  Can you explain how apple is paying employees to block / assault you from getting Microsoft apps on your iPhone? I'm not following this analogy
jonrimmer 6y ago
I don't think your analogy is valid. It's more akin to Best Buy telling me I need to visit the house of every customer who bought my widget and slightly break it, otherwise they'll stop selling said widget. And if I try to tell my customer "Best Buy is making me do this", that's "irrelevant".
- zepto 6y ago
  How is this a good analogy for them asking for the names and addresses of individuals to be taken down because they are worried that these might be a call to violence against those indivuals? Are we talking about a widget which contains a piece of paper with the names and addresses of some local policemen? The analogy just doesn’t work.
  - kelnos 6y ago
    > How is this a good analogy for them asking for the names and addresses of individuals to be taken down because they are worried that these might be a call to violence against those indivuals? Apple is making a moral judgment here, likely based on pressure from the Belarusian government. Let's look at it this way. Let's say you agree that the current Belarusian president is bad news, and is trying to maintain power by invalidating free democratic elections, and suppress other candidates by arresting them on trumped-up charges. If you don't agree with that, fine, but let's say for a moment that you do. In that case, Apple's requirement of Telegram is in support of a repressive regime. While I'm not a fan of violence, I will acknowledge that sometimes it is necessary to apply violence in order to achieve freedom. But the overall point is that what people say on Telegram is none of Apple's business. Strong-arming Telegram's CEO into complying with Apple's moralizing is an abuse of Apple's market position, based on their OS's DRM that requires all apps to be approved by Apple. That's not a world we should have to live in.
    - zepto 6y ago
      I get the general idea, but I just don’t think it’s that simple. “In that case, Apple's requirement of Telegram is in support of a repressive regime.” It’s possible that this is at the request of the Belarusian government, but it’s also true that Apple does have its own terms against promoting violence. Either way, it’s not obvious that preventing doxing supports the regime. If individual policemen are targeted, it’s not a given that this increases support for the the pro-democracy movement. I also believe that sometimes violence is necessary, but that doesn’t make it obvious that it’s the right thing in any particular case. There’s no abuse of Apple’s market position as far as I can see. Stores are generally restricted in what they can sell by the legal environment they operate in. Now, I do entirely agree with you that we shouldn’t have to live in this world. I do want a platform where no entity can control what I can install. I just don’t think that world has a lot to do with Apple. Apple isn’t going to build it, no matter what we do, and Apple isn’t doing anything particularly different from any other corporation that sells any good. If we want a freer platform we are going to need to build it.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
Closi 6y ago
The problem is Best Buy is just a retailer, while Apple is both a retailer, and a hardware builder, and a software developer, as well as a media company. This inevitably creates problematic situations that allows for market position abuse such as: * Apple is Spotify's biggest competitor. * Spotify has to pay Apple 30% of it's revenue purchased through iOS to Apple. * Apple has to pay 0% of it's revenue purchased through iOS to Spotify, and can use Spotify's profits to subsidize their own offering. * Spotify is explicitly not allowed to suggest alternative payment methods, and will be removed from user devices if this happens. * Apple owns the payment method, and uses iOS to further cement its market position with Apple Pay. * Spotify has limited platform control, and can't be pre-installed on the device. * Apple uses it's market domination of iOS to default to, and encourage users to, sign up for Apple Music during the device installation process. Is this a fair marketplace?
- ofou 6y ago
  Beautifully put. It is not, period.
- dkonofalski 6y ago
  By that same token, though, Best Buy owns certain classes and brands for products that they sell within their stores. Insignia is Best Buy's brand. That puts it in at least the same partial sphere and no one is arguing that their prioritization of Insignia is unfair.
  - jiofih 6y ago
    Best Buy is not one of only two players in the market, or require a years long commitment to shopping there, or stop you from walking out and buying somewhere else, or operates under commission. There is very little truth in this analogy.
    - dkonofalski 6y ago
      How do you figure? Just like you can leave the Best Buy marketplace and go to another electronics store, you can leave the Apple marketplace and go to Android. No one is forcing anyone to buy an iPhone.
mdoms 6y ago
> In trying to understand Apple's position on App Store policies, it may help to think of them as a retail store. For example, substitute "Best Buy" for App Store It may help their case to think of it that way, but that's not what the App Store is. So this is, excuse the terminology, irrelevant.
yyyk 6y ago
>Can I tell my customers that 30% of the price of their widget goes to Best Buy at purchase? >When my widget is on a shelf at Best Buy, can I advertise a lower price at Amazon.com on the box? Both of these are allowed using inserts inside the package. By comparison, Apple would review the app, demand removing any 'offending' inserts inside the app, to the point of even censoring the maker's web site address from the instructions if the web site also contains a 'buy' link. Most real-world makers would never pass Apple's policies.
- ficklepickle 6y ago
  You wouldn't be able to have your website URL anywhere on the product or packaging. Can't have people purchasing directly!
kelnos 6y ago
If you don't like Best Buy's practices or terms, you can sell at another store. If you don't like Apple's practices or terms, you don't get to sell an iOS app.

by eyesee 6y ago

nexuist 6y ago

> It's just an analogy that happens to fit Apple's world view of their App Store. The problem with the world view, of course, is that there's more to the world than Best Buy. If I don't like a widget at Best Buy I can go look it up and buy it from Amazon. Or Target. Or Walmart. Or Alibaba. If I use an iPhone I am limited to what Apple allows on their shelves, full stop. If Best Buy dictated everything you were allowed to buy, that would seem rather problematic, right? I can't see any way that a corporate executive would justify not only not placing a certain brand on their shelves, but also physically blocking their customers from walking into any other store. Imagine the PR field day if an Apple store manager paid his or her employees to stand in front of the Microsoft store and physically assault any of their customers if they tried to walk inside! And yet that's exactly what they're doing virtually. We can't use a Microsoft app store, or an Amazon app store, or Google Play. We are beholden to the manager's personal preferences of what we can and can't buy.

barkingcat 6y ago
the other side of the equation is that you are free not to buy an apple device (for now) the collective amount of people buying apple devices is what gives them the power to implement these rules on their own. I forsee a time in the future when you are forced to buy an Apple product from birth, no options allowed.
- toiletfuneral 6y ago
  You should probbaly spend some time outside
- arvinsim 6y ago
  That is what antitrust is supposed to prevent
- nexuist 6y ago
  > the collective amount of people buying apple devices is what gives them the power to implement these rules on their own. Generally whenever some sort of product or process gains a large level of public usage, it gets regulated. This has been true of every technology since the lightbulb. I think we as a civilization realized that just letting people at the top apply their arbitrary preferences to everyone else was hurtful and nonproductive.
toiletfuneral 6y ago
Can you explain how apple is paying employees to block / assault you from getting Microsoft apps on your iPhone? I'm not following this analogy

jonrimmer 6y ago

I don't think your analogy is valid. It's more akin to Best Buy telling me I need to visit the house of every customer who bought my widget and slightly break it, otherwise they'll stop selling said widget. And if I try to tell my customer "Best Buy is making me do this", that's "irrelevant".

zepto 6y ago
How is this a good analogy for them asking for the names and addresses of individuals to be taken down because they are worried that these might be a call to violence against those indivuals? Are we talking about a widget which contains a piece of paper with the names and addresses of some local policemen? The analogy just doesn’t work.
- kelnos 6y ago
  > How is this a good analogy for them asking for the names and addresses of individuals to be taken down because they are worried that these might be a call to violence against those indivuals? Apple is making a moral judgment here, likely based on pressure from the Belarusian government. Let's look at it this way. Let's say you agree that the current Belarusian president is bad news, and is trying to maintain power by invalidating free democratic elections, and suppress other candidates by arresting them on trumped-up charges. If you don't agree with that, fine, but let's say for a moment that you do. In that case, Apple's requirement of Telegram is in support of a repressive regime. While I'm not a fan of violence, I will acknowledge that sometimes it is necessary to apply violence in order to achieve freedom. But the overall point is that what people say on Telegram is none of Apple's business. Strong-arming Telegram's CEO into complying with Apple's moralizing is an abuse of Apple's market position, based on their OS's DRM that requires all apps to be approved by Apple. That's not a world we should have to live in.
  - zepto 6y ago
    I get the general idea, but I just don’t think it’s that simple. “In that case, Apple's requirement of Telegram is in support of a repressive regime.” It’s possible that this is at the request of the Belarusian government, but it’s also true that Apple does have its own terms against promoting violence. Either way, it’s not obvious that preventing doxing supports the regime. If individual policemen are targeted, it’s not a given that this increases support for the the pro-democracy movement. I also believe that sometimes violence is necessary, but that doesn’t make it obvious that it’s the right thing in any particular case. There’s no abuse of Apple’s market position as far as I can see. Stores are generally restricted in what they can sell by the legal environment they operate in. Now, I do entirely agree with you that we shouldn’t have to live in this world. I do want a platform where no entity can control what I can install. I just don’t think that world has a lot to do with Apple. Apple isn’t going to build it, no matter what we do, and Apple isn’t doing anything particularly different from any other corporation that sells any good. If we want a freer platform we are going to need to build it.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

Closi 6y ago

The problem is Best Buy is just a retailer, while Apple is both a retailer, and a hardware builder, and a software developer, as well as a media company. This inevitably creates problematic situations that allows for market position abuse such as: * Apple is Spotify's biggest competitor. * Spotify has to pay Apple 30% of it's revenue purchased through iOS to Apple. * Apple has to pay 0% of it's revenue purchased through iOS to Spotify, and can use Spotify's profits to subsidize their own offering. * Spotify is explicitly not allowed to suggest alternative payment methods, and will be removed from user devices if this happens. * Apple owns the payment method, and uses iOS to further cement its market position with Apple Pay. * Spotify has limited platform control, and can't be pre-installed on the device. * Apple uses it's market domination of iOS to default to, and encourage users to, sign up for Apple Music during the device installation process. Is this a fair marketplace?

ofou 6y ago
Beautifully put. It is not, period.
dkonofalski 6y ago
By that same token, though, Best Buy owns certain classes and brands for products that they sell within their stores. Insignia is Best Buy's brand. That puts it in at least the same partial sphere and no one is arguing that their prioritization of Insignia is unfair.
- jiofih 6y ago
  Best Buy is not one of only two players in the market, or require a years long commitment to shopping there, or stop you from walking out and buying somewhere else, or operates under commission. There is very little truth in this analogy.
  - dkonofalski 6y ago
    How do you figure? Just like you can leave the Best Buy marketplace and go to another electronics store, you can leave the Apple marketplace and go to Android. No one is forcing anyone to buy an iPhone.

mdoms 6y ago

> In trying to understand Apple's position on App Store policies, it may help to think of them as a retail store. For example, substitute "Best Buy" for App Store It may help their case to think of it that way, but that's not what the App Store is. So this is, excuse the terminology, irrelevant.

yyyk 6y ago

>Can I tell my customers that 30% of the price of their widget goes to Best Buy at purchase? >When my widget is on a shelf at Best Buy, can I advertise a lower price at Amazon.com on the box? Both of these are allowed using inserts inside the package. By comparison, Apple would review the app, demand removing any 'offending' inserts inside the app, to the point of even censoring the maker's web site address from the instructions if the web site also contains a 'buy' link. Most real-world makers would never pass Apple's policies.

ficklepickle 6y ago
You wouldn't be able to have your website URL anywhere on the product or packaging. Can't have people purchasing directly!

kelnos 6y ago

If you don't like Best Buy's practices or terms, you can sell at another store. If you don't like Apple's practices or terms, you don't get to sell an iOS app.