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Apple is selling this as defending privacy, which is fair. But their motivations aren’t entirely altruistic. It also plays to their business model. By choking

Apple is selling this as defending privacy, which is fair. But their motivations aren’t entirely altruistic. It also plays to their business model. By choking off in-app ad revenue, they force developers who want to monetise towards paid and freemium apps. That shifts revenue away from the ad networks (Facebook and Google) towards the app store, on which Apple can take their 15-30% share.

danielscrubs 6y ago
Are they choking off anything by being transparent? I kind of like to know what I put in my body, doesn’t mean that I will stop eating ice cream on sunny days.
420codebro 6y ago
No one fucking cares dipshit. Fuck off back to faggotbook.
diveanon 6y ago
I am totally in support of this shift in business model. Paying for the service you are using in a transparent and predictable way vs deceptively having your personal information monetized should be the norm. Google and Facebook have been hiding behind an army of lawyers writing opaque TOS and lobbyists defending their user hostile monopolies.
- s1k3s 6y ago
  This is wrong. Paying for a service does not automatically mean the service doesn't take your personal information. * You pay for Windows but Microsoft still tracks you. * You pay for iPhone & Mac but Apple still tracks you. * You pay for Android phones but they still track you. And so on.. I don't understand the shift from "usage tracking" towards "usage tracking for ads". The goal should be no tracking at all instead of "we don't track you to show ads".
  - addicted 6y ago
    It removes a huge incentive for usage tracking. But there is a huge difference between usage tracking and usage tracking for ads. Usage tracking of the kind Microsoft engages in (outside of Bing and their ad focused usage tracking that is), is largely telemetry used to change their product. Usage tracking for ads, however, is used to change your behavior both within the product and outside the product. Usage tracking for ads is significantly more damaging to humans as individuals as well as societies.
    - minot 6y ago
      Perhaps tracking ought to be opt-in only. I don’t remember ever installing Debian and not opting in to the popularity contest (popcorn). Angular CLI also asks if it may do some telemetry. I don’t buy that opt in means we are stuck with bad data. An exception is for testing. I use Firefox nightly and developer edition where I can. I think by installing a pre release version of Firefox I opted into telemetry. I’m volunteering for telemetry. However, I don’t consent to opt out tracking in the production version of Firefox or running nonsense marketing-driven “experiments”.
      - MereInterest 6y ago
        This is the basis of the GDPR, which requires explicit, freely-given, revocable, and opt-in consent before any tracking can be done. I wish the US would get its act together and pass something similar for us in the US.
        s1k3s 6y ago
        If you ever get that in US, I sure hope your people are more competent than ours and they come up with something that actually works. Because in EU, GDPR didn't actually solve anything. It's a pain in the ass both for businesses and consumers, and it only had one real (good) effect: it made (some) people aware of the fact that software tracks their lives. Nothing more than that.
- diggan 6y ago
  Of course anyone would agree that transparent and predictable payments are better than deception... But I don't think it's that clear cut or even about that. Usually we favour open markets, where companies can compete on features and price. The App Store has a monopoly on iPhones as it's the only App Store, and the only reason the fees are that high is because Apple owns both the market and the only player, and they can set the fee to whatever they want. If Apple wasn't the only one running the App Stores on iPhones, it's not as clear cut that they would act in the same way. But since they are, it makes sense they push people towards apps and paid apps from the App Store.
  - chrischen 6y ago
    The fees are high relative to what? Steam? Google Play?
    - random5634 6y ago
      Ps5 / Sony?
  - buran77 6y ago
    > the only reason the fees are that high is because Apple owns both the market and the only player The fact that Google enforces the same fees while allowing competing app stores and varied OEMs access to that market paints a different conclusion than yours. I agree with the "free market" point but in reality the market is just about as free as the biggest players (with the most capital, whatever that may represent) allow it to be. Sure, consumers have the same power as a whole to sway the market. Unfortunately it's fragmented among billions of people all veering in their own direction, uncoordinated. On the other side the power is concentrated with a few big players who just happen to have more or less the same goals and aim to achieve them almost single-mindedly. And unfortunately the free market comes at a cost even when it works: a sort of dictatorship of the majority. The free market will want cheaper and will accept the compromise of paying in other ways. You don't get something for nothing and since laws aren't keeping up with this it's up to the tech giants to police themselves. You pay with money and with your data, the ratio is up to each company. The reason this works to to the user's advantage (read: more money - less data) with Apple is because they saw the business opportunity of this policing. They wanted to compete with Google and Facebook at their own game but had to admit defeat so they realized a much better business model is to position themselves as the antithesis of those and cater to a different market Google and FB cannot target, by design. There probably are ways in which Apple can open up the store and still retain control on what is allowed or monetize on that but make no mistake, if an app is present on Apple's (spun out?) app store for $1 but free of any shady data collection, and also present on the Apps'R'Us store for $0 but encrusted with data collection modules we all know what most users will pick.
- vinay_ys 6y ago
  Just because an app is not free (it charges users) does not mean they are not harvesting their users personal data and selling it to data brokers etc.
  - AndrewDavis 6y ago
    Arguably your information is worth more, because you are someone willing to pay for an app or subscription
  - alibarber 6y ago
    Of course - but Apple here are working to make that much harder, to get to a state where harvesting and selling data won't really be an option regardless of if you're paying for it or not.
- JMTQp8lwXL 6y ago
  Practically speaking, even if you did pay for free services, I'd expect the data to be monetized. You pay your ISP, yet there's tons of data being sold, for example. When it's free, at least you don't pay twice. You always pay once with your data. You might pay twice with actual cash. There's no way to prevent the former, even if the latter occurs because they aren't mutually exclusive.
  - addicted 6y ago
    There are ways to prevent the former. In fact there are very easy ways to prevent the former.
  - jfk13 6y ago
    > There's no way to prevent the former Of course there is. Make invasive tracking and targeting practices illegal, and aggressively penalize violators, and the business model would change.
- amelius 6y ago
  Yes, but why do we need to depend on Apple to regulate this market? Regulation performed by a company sounds like to worst of two worlds.
  - addicted 6y ago
    We “need” it because governments in certain jurisdictions won’t do it. But wherever you may fall on the government regulation spectrum, there’s a simple response if you don’t like Apples action. Don’t use iOS. Go to Android where FB and friends are free to track and sell your data only constrained by your government policies.
  - ogre_codes 6y ago
    If the government would step up, it would be great. Until then, Apple "regulating" it is the least of bad option.
- krisgenre 6y ago
  If pay to use is the only model, lots of developers would only target developed countries.
  - Betelgeuse90 6y ago
    I don't see what's stopping these developers from lowering prices for users in less developed countries.
    - ogre_codes 6y ago
      App Store prices vary by region. Developers can have lower prices in less developed countries.
  - diveanon 6y ago
    A user on my platform costs me $0.02 per year. If you can't compete gtfo.
    - edoceo 6y ago
      Your cost calculation may be off but the point about competition is spot on
onlyrealcuzzo 6y ago
Isn't Apple getting ready to enter the advertising market also?
- Reason077 6y ago
  Apple already tried it’s own ad network (iAd). Success was limited and it was abandoned in 2016: http://www.techsnackbar.com/2016/06/11/apple-abandons-iad-unexpected-benefits-for-google/ http://www.techsnackbar.com/2016/06/11/apple-abandons-iad-un... Now days, they still sell ads on the App Store, but don’t place ads in third-party apps.
jwr 6y ago
That's great! That is exactly what I would like to see happen. Software comes at a cost, and nobody should expect to get software "for free", where "free" is actually a lie, because you pay by giving up your privacy.
- encom 6y ago
  "Free" is also not nickel-and-diming or bait-and-switching people with in app purchases. I'm not saying data mining my PI for profit is better, but the app store as a market place is an extremely toxic place.
- andybak 6y ago
  And I would like the choice of ad supported apps (albeit with better transparency around data collection)
  - madeofpalk 6y ago
    Glad to see they still exist!
  - ogre_codes 6y ago
    > And I would like the choice of ad supported apps (albeit with better transparency around data collection) This is in a nutshell exactly what Apple's changes do. They preserve ad supported options and increase transparency.
- duckfang 6y ago
  Unfortunately, that comment precludes the Free Software and the Open Source software side of things. In those cases, it is free code under a usually strong license of permissions. And tracking for the most part, has been a manner of "Do you want to allow tracking? Default:OFF" (thinking of Debian Popcorn)
  - ogre_codes 6y ago
    > Unfortunately, that comment precludes the Free Software and the Open Source software side of things. I don't think this precludes free software at all. Free software has always co-existed with paid commercial software. I suspect it always will. There are always going to be corners of the software market OSS developer aren't interested in pursuing. I doubt there are a lot of developers interested in building garbage collection routing software in their spare time. There are however plenty of developers who want to pay their rent who will.
piva00 6y ago
I've saved a comment I read on reddit that perfectly captures my point of view on this, I want to share because this way of thinking in either-or is what I believe is wrong when playing the card of "but Apple is not altruistic as well" as I'm very aware of that and think many others are: > Both Apple and Facebook are evil corporations that only care about profits, but Apple’s priorities benefit me and my desire for privacy while Facebook’s absolutely do not. I hope Apple’s new privacy controls are so effective that they put Facebook out of business. Fuck Facebook.
- wizzwizz4 6y ago
  Source?
  - ogre_codes 6y ago
    No idea what the source is, but it's exactly my perspective as well. Whether Apple is a "Good" megacorp or not is irrelevant. Their policies and their profit incentives are fairly well aligned with mine. Not always, they also do lots of shit which frustrates the hell out of me too. But more often than their competitors. That is about the best you can hope for.
    - wizzwizz4 6y ago
      Like most phone manufacturers, they're incentivised to exploit the people manufacturing phones. I'd pay money for iCloud, but never for their hardware (until they clean up their act, anyway).
      - r00fus 6y ago
        Honestly gotta ask why you use iCloud if you have no Apple devices...?
nojito 6y ago
>By choking off in-app ad revenue How did we let the world get this bad where we associate asking for consent as the same as "choking off" in-app ad revenue?
- _jal 6y ago
  You are noticing the manipulative use of narrative. Lots of ways to do it, but a very powerful one is the choice of whose perspective you use to frame the story. Here, you can imagine the focus on a scrappy young developer, trying to make their mark in a tough world, having their income choked off by a heartless Apple. [This narrative subsidized by FaceBook Likes(tm)]
matheusmoreira 6y ago
This is great and could actually help us get rid of advertising! If iOS delivers a completely advertisement free user experience, that's gonna be a huge reason to buy Apple.
- _jal 6y ago
  Yeah, about that... https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2020/08/07/apple-ad-network-gets-special-privileges-that-facebook-google-wont-on-ios14/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2020/08/07/apple-a...
  - kergonath 6y ago
    This is a load of rubbish. Apple does not have an “ad network”, they show some sponsored content in their stores. They have no way of tracking users across apps, because contrary to Facebook they do not distribute SDKs to do that to apps developers. That’s the main point; the rest of the post is just as wrong.
- AniseAbyss 6y ago
  With things like Blokada and YT Vanced you can already do that on Android. Amusingly, and much to Google's dismay I am sure, they have created an OS where you can make sure absolutely nobody ever gets payed.
Lio 6y ago
Apple are not choking off in-app advertising revenue. That option is still available, developers just have to tell people what they're doing up front and allow opt-in control of tracking. So if you want to give informed consent for targeted in-app advertising you still can. As an Apple customer I pay Apple to provide that, altruism has nothing to do with it. Facebook won't do it on their own because they don't want users to have the choice.
2muchcoffeeman 6y ago
I wish Apple would implement a reasonable method of selling upgrades to apps so that an app wouldn’t get pulled from e App Store if a dev produced a significant upgrade.
- zepto 6y ago
  “ an app wouldn’t get pulled from e App Store if a dev produced a significant upgrade” App’s don’t get pulled for significant upgrades.
  - ogre_codes 6y ago
    I suspect the above poster was referring to the fact that Apple doesn't allow developers to have upgrade pricing. Developers instead must either switch to subscription pricing or release a new app "Tweetbot 5" which resets the apps review count. It would definitely be nice if Apple allowed developers more flexibility in terms of pricing models. (I suspect you know this, just wanted to touch all the bases)
    - zepto 6y ago
      I was aware of what you just explained, and it’s a complaint I agree with. However the line I quoted was complete and utter bullshit. Apple does pull apps for very questionable reasons, but this is definitely not one of them.
      - ogre_codes 6y ago
        You are spot on. The original comment was so oddly worded, I'd assumed the other poster had mis-spoke.
    - crooked-v 6y ago
      I'm surprised I haven't seen more developers go for the 'Paradox DLC' model of putting large new features in IAP with a single ongoing base app.
karmakaze 6y ago
How does this play out? So ad companies' revenue gets shifted to Apple's app store, Apple gets even bigger than the biggest it already is. Then advertisers put their ads in-app. When Apple has all the marbles we willingly gave them, what's next or was that it: dominate, do whatever you want. The safest thing we can do as consumers it not give any one company all the marbles.
- ogre_codes 6y ago
  > So ad companies' revenue gets shifted to Apple's app store, This presumes that everyone who is currently using add supported apps will start paying for apps which is unlikely. There will continue to be ad supported software, it will just be less profitable. Likely at least some developers will shift to paid, but not nearly all.
naravara 6y ago
If you structure your company around an ethical business model, then changes to the marketplace to become more ethnical inevitably end up benefitting your business model. I'm not actually seeing the problem here. It's like saying Tesla benefits from there being high carbon taxes. Of course they do, but so does everyone else.
tcskeptic 6y ago
I see this response in almost every thread about Apple and privacy and it’s such a weird reply. Do things that are good only count as good if you don’t have a financial interest in them? I am much happier that they’re motivations aren’t altruistic. Absent appropriate regulation — I want to be able to support privacy with my consumer dollars and support a sustainable business model with them, I don’t want to rely on the altruistic grace of a company.
- AshWolfy 6y ago
  The only difference between apple and any other company is that apple wants a cut of the privacy violations
Fnoord 6y ago
Apple isn't altruistic, they're a business. However their business interests can be aligned with privacy. Back in the days, Microsoft was evil, and FOSS was good. That's what sprouted Facebook and Google. They contribute to FOSS, as does Microsoft. They have proprietary applications (including web applications), as does Microsoft. They're into advertising and profiling, as does Microsoft. Microsoft's software stack is partly FOSS (e.g. Edge), just like Google's (Chrome, Android, ...). I still prefer Unix/Linux over Windows but other than that its more of the same these days. I was one of these people who was happy with Windows 10 free upgrade. But thinking back of it, perhaps I'd rather pay and then keep my privacy (without hassle). The danger is that the poor are indirectly paying for devices and services with their privacy while those who are wealthy are able to afford privacy-friendly Apple. Its already more or less like that. The cost of privacy when it boils to Android devices, and how much profit it yields, isn't transparent.
ogre_codes 6y ago
> By choking off in-app ad revenue, they force developers who want to monetise towards paid and freemium apps. If you write software that is supported by advertising, you are selling your software to the advertisers. If you aren't paying for software, it's not written for your benefit. If you enjoy ad-driven software, it is, at best a happy coincidence or altruism on the part of the developer. What ad driven software has done is rob developers of good quality paid apps of the ability to charge a reasonable price for their goods. So we have a market place filled with mediocre to terrible ad supported apps. The few developers who do spend the time and effort make good quality software get constant complaints about pricing and charge more than $0.99 for software that actually does what people want.
rhizome 6y ago
Why is "not entirely altruistic" a good measurement? Nobody is saying that's what their motivation is, so isn't yours a criticism of purity, or the nirvana fallacy? Like 50 people have replied to this red herring!
summitsummit 6y ago
> their motivations aren’t entirely altruistic well obviously. who is going to expend the resources and headache to fight the powerful evil wraths of Google and Facebook on such a notion as altruism
- AniseAbyss 6y ago
  The government?
prostoalex 6y ago
Without third-party tracking advertisers buy specific audiences, so a bike helmet seller would buy ads in some outdoor magazine sites and ride-tracking apps. The incentive to pester the user with the same ad is minimal. With third-party tracking and retargeting that same advertiser just buys access to the same user via an agency which would pester the user with retargeted ads throughout their network in hopes that at some point, after X amount of views, the user will feel inclined to perform the monetizeable action (e.g. finally click on that abandoned cart and purchase the bike helmet). In this system each property on the network is relegated to showing as many ads as possible, since each ad is essentially a lottery ticket. You might resurrect the cart and finally buy that bike helmet on nytimes, instagram, Angry Birds - whoever commands your attention at that moment. Companies who complaint about Apple tend to hold a vast amount of such lottery tickets. Companies that do not, tend to have access to specific monetizeable audiences they can sell access to.
kergonath 6y ago
They don’t have to be altruistic, nobody sane expects them to be. They just have to align their interests with those of their customers and go roughly in the right direction.
mekster 6y ago
But who else could've turned down such a huge profit business model as Apple did? We could see Apple become as crazy as Google on advertising business, yet they turned it down. I like how they're "Kill the evil" than the well known "Don't be evil" from Google. Apparently, that's one giant step ahead of them.
zwaps 6y ago
The mere fact that Facebook is protesting that consumers get a choice on whether they are tracked, something that many countries have literally legislated to be a lawful right, shows that this is absolutely necessary. At that point, it matters very little what Apple's motives are, and it matters little what this change means for any business. What matters is that Apple is implementing a change that represents a technical necessity for consumer rights. All current measures do not work. These opt-out websites largely do not work and, besides, the law in most places legislates opt-in and not opt-out. Apps continue to ignore any privacy setting, including facebook. It is sad that we need to rely on Apple to make that change, but I am happy for any incentive Apple has to do so. I am sure it will take quite some time before we see something comparable on Android, if ever. Again: Our rights as consumers are blatantly ignored. All current methods that are supposed to implement these rights are useless and largely ineffective. Devices need to ensure that no one can grab data without consent. Apple does this. It is good.

danielscrubs 6y ago

Are they choking off anything by being transparent? I kind of like to know what I put in my body, doesn’t mean that I will stop eating ice cream on sunny days.

420codebro 6y ago

No one fucking cares dipshit. Fuck off back to faggotbook.

diveanon 6y ago

I am totally in support of this shift in business model. Paying for the service you are using in a transparent and predictable way vs deceptively having your personal information monetized should be the norm. Google and Facebook have been hiding behind an army of lawyers writing opaque TOS and lobbyists defending their user hostile monopolies.

s1k3s 6y ago
This is wrong. Paying for a service does not automatically mean the service doesn't take your personal information. * You pay for Windows but Microsoft still tracks you. * You pay for iPhone & Mac but Apple still tracks you. * You pay for Android phones but they still track you. And so on.. I don't understand the shift from "usage tracking" towards "usage tracking for ads". The goal should be no tracking at all instead of "we don't track you to show ads".
- addicted 6y ago
  It removes a huge incentive for usage tracking. But there is a huge difference between usage tracking and usage tracking for ads. Usage tracking of the kind Microsoft engages in (outside of Bing and their ad focused usage tracking that is), is largely telemetry used to change their product. Usage tracking for ads, however, is used to change your behavior both within the product and outside the product. Usage tracking for ads is significantly more damaging to humans as individuals as well as societies.
  - minot 6y ago
    Perhaps tracking ought to be opt-in only. I don’t remember ever installing Debian and not opting in to the popularity contest (popcorn). Angular CLI also asks if it may do some telemetry. I don’t buy that opt in means we are stuck with bad data. An exception is for testing. I use Firefox nightly and developer edition where I can. I think by installing a pre release version of Firefox I opted into telemetry. I’m volunteering for telemetry. However, I don’t consent to opt out tracking in the production version of Firefox or running nonsense marketing-driven “experiments”.
    - MereInterest 6y ago
      This is the basis of the GDPR, which requires explicit, freely-given, revocable, and opt-in consent before any tracking can be done. I wish the US would get its act together and pass something similar for us in the US.
      - s1k3s 6y ago
        If you ever get that in US, I sure hope your people are more competent than ours and they come up with something that actually works. Because in EU, GDPR didn't actually solve anything. It's a pain in the ass both for businesses and consumers, and it only had one real (good) effect: it made (some) people aware of the fact that software tracks their lives. Nothing more than that.
diggan 6y ago
Of course anyone would agree that transparent and predictable payments are better than deception... But I don't think it's that clear cut or even about that. Usually we favour open markets, where companies can compete on features and price. The App Store has a monopoly on iPhones as it's the only App Store, and the only reason the fees are that high is because Apple owns both the market and the only player, and they can set the fee to whatever they want. If Apple wasn't the only one running the App Stores on iPhones, it's not as clear cut that they would act in the same way. But since they are, it makes sense they push people towards apps and paid apps from the App Store.
- chrischen 6y ago
  The fees are high relative to what? Steam? Google Play?
  - random5634 6y ago
    Ps5 / Sony?
- buran77 6y ago
  > the only reason the fees are that high is because Apple owns both the market and the only player The fact that Google enforces the same fees while allowing competing app stores and varied OEMs access to that market paints a different conclusion than yours. I agree with the "free market" point but in reality the market is just about as free as the biggest players (with the most capital, whatever that may represent) allow it to be. Sure, consumers have the same power as a whole to sway the market. Unfortunately it's fragmented among billions of people all veering in their own direction, uncoordinated. On the other side the power is concentrated with a few big players who just happen to have more or less the same goals and aim to achieve them almost single-mindedly. And unfortunately the free market comes at a cost even when it works: a sort of dictatorship of the majority. The free market will want cheaper and will accept the compromise of paying in other ways. You don't get something for nothing and since laws aren't keeping up with this it's up to the tech giants to police themselves. You pay with money and with your data, the ratio is up to each company. The reason this works to to the user's advantage (read: more money - less data) with Apple is because they saw the business opportunity of this policing. They wanted to compete with Google and Facebook at their own game but had to admit defeat so they realized a much better business model is to position themselves as the antithesis of those and cater to a different market Google and FB cannot target, by design. There probably are ways in which Apple can open up the store and still retain control on what is allowed or monetize on that but make no mistake, if an app is present on Apple's (spun out?) app store for $1 but free of any shady data collection, and also present on the Apps'R'Us store for $0 but encrusted with data collection modules we all know what most users will pick.
vinay_ys 6y ago
Just because an app is not free (it charges users) does not mean they are not harvesting their users personal data and selling it to data brokers etc.
- AndrewDavis 6y ago
  Arguably your information is worth more, because you are someone willing to pay for an app or subscription
- alibarber 6y ago
  Of course - but Apple here are working to make that much harder, to get to a state where harvesting and selling data won't really be an option regardless of if you're paying for it or not.
JMTQp8lwXL 6y ago
Practically speaking, even if you did pay for free services, I'd expect the data to be monetized. You pay your ISP, yet there's tons of data being sold, for example. When it's free, at least you don't pay twice. You always pay once with your data. You might pay twice with actual cash. There's no way to prevent the former, even if the latter occurs because they aren't mutually exclusive.
- addicted 6y ago
  There are ways to prevent the former. In fact there are very easy ways to prevent the former.
- jfk13 6y ago
  > There's no way to prevent the former Of course there is. Make invasive tracking and targeting practices illegal, and aggressively penalize violators, and the business model would change.
amelius 6y ago
Yes, but why do we need to depend on Apple to regulate this market? Regulation performed by a company sounds like to worst of two worlds.
- addicted 6y ago
  We “need” it because governments in certain jurisdictions won’t do it. But wherever you may fall on the government regulation spectrum, there’s a simple response if you don’t like Apples action. Don’t use iOS. Go to Android where FB and friends are free to track and sell your data only constrained by your government policies.
- ogre_codes 6y ago
  If the government would step up, it would be great. Until then, Apple "regulating" it is the least of bad option.
krisgenre 6y ago
If pay to use is the only model, lots of developers would only target developed countries.
- Betelgeuse90 6y ago
  I don't see what's stopping these developers from lowering prices for users in less developed countries.
  - ogre_codes 6y ago
    App Store prices vary by region. Developers can have lower prices in less developed countries.
- diveanon 6y ago
  A user on my platform costs me $0.02 per year. If you can't compete gtfo.
  - edoceo 6y ago
    Your cost calculation may be off but the point about competition is spot on

onlyrealcuzzo 6y ago

Isn't Apple getting ready to enter the advertising market also?

Reason077 6y ago
Apple already tried it’s own ad network (iAd). Success was limited and it was abandoned in 2016: http://www.techsnackbar.com/2016/06/11/apple-abandons-iad-unexpected-benefits-for-google/ http://www.techsnackbar.com/2016/06/11/apple-abandons-iad-un... Now days, they still sell ads on the App Store, but don’t place ads in third-party apps.

jwr 6y ago

That's great! That is exactly what I would like to see happen. Software comes at a cost, and nobody should expect to get software "for free", where "free" is actually a lie, because you pay by giving up your privacy.

encom 6y ago
"Free" is also not nickel-and-diming or bait-and-switching people with in app purchases. I'm not saying data mining my PI for profit is better, but the app store as a market place is an extremely toxic place.
andybak 6y ago
And I would like the choice of ad supported apps (albeit with better transparency around data collection)
- madeofpalk 6y ago
  Glad to see they still exist!
- ogre_codes 6y ago
  > And I would like the choice of ad supported apps (albeit with better transparency around data collection) This is in a nutshell exactly what Apple's changes do. They preserve ad supported options and increase transparency.
duckfang 6y ago
Unfortunately, that comment precludes the Free Software and the Open Source software side of things. In those cases, it is free code under a usually strong license of permissions. And tracking for the most part, has been a manner of "Do you want to allow tracking? Default:OFF" (thinking of Debian Popcorn)
- ogre_codes 6y ago
  > Unfortunately, that comment precludes the Free Software and the Open Source software side of things. I don't think this precludes free software at all. Free software has always co-existed with paid commercial software. I suspect it always will. There are always going to be corners of the software market OSS developer aren't interested in pursuing. I doubt there are a lot of developers interested in building garbage collection routing software in their spare time. There are however plenty of developers who want to pay their rent who will.

piva00 6y ago

I've saved a comment I read on reddit that perfectly captures my point of view on this, I want to share because this way of thinking in either-or is what I believe is wrong when playing the card of "but Apple is not altruistic as well" as I'm very aware of that and think many others are: > Both Apple and Facebook are evil corporations that only care about profits, but Apple’s priorities benefit me and my desire for privacy while Facebook’s absolutely do not. I hope Apple’s new privacy controls are so effective that they put Facebook out of business. Fuck Facebook.

wizzwizz4 6y ago
Source?
- ogre_codes 6y ago
  No idea what the source is, but it's exactly my perspective as well. Whether Apple is a "Good" megacorp or not is irrelevant. Their policies and their profit incentives are fairly well aligned with mine. Not always, they also do lots of shit which frustrates the hell out of me too. But more often than their competitors. That is about the best you can hope for.
  - wizzwizz4 6y ago
    Like most phone manufacturers, they're incentivised to exploit the people manufacturing phones. I'd pay money for iCloud, but never for their hardware (until they clean up their act, anyway).
    - r00fus 6y ago
      Honestly gotta ask why you use iCloud if you have no Apple devices...?

nojito 6y ago

>By choking off in-app ad revenue How did we let the world get this bad where we associate asking for consent as the same as "choking off" in-app ad revenue?

_jal 6y ago
You are noticing the manipulative use of narrative. Lots of ways to do it, but a very powerful one is the choice of whose perspective you use to frame the story. Here, you can imagine the focus on a scrappy young developer, trying to make their mark in a tough world, having their income choked off by a heartless Apple. [This narrative subsidized by FaceBook Likes(tm)]

matheusmoreira 6y ago

This is great and could actually help us get rid of advertising! If iOS delivers a completely advertisement free user experience, that's gonna be a huge reason to buy Apple.

_jal 6y ago
Yeah, about that... https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2020/08/07/apple-ad-network-gets-special-privileges-that-facebook-google-wont-on-ios14/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2020/08/07/apple-a...
- kergonath 6y ago
  This is a load of rubbish. Apple does not have an “ad network”, they show some sponsored content in their stores. They have no way of tracking users across apps, because contrary to Facebook they do not distribute SDKs to do that to apps developers. That’s the main point; the rest of the post is just as wrong.
AniseAbyss 6y ago
With things like Blokada and YT Vanced you can already do that on Android. Amusingly, and much to Google's dismay I am sure, they have created an OS where you can make sure absolutely nobody ever gets payed.

Lio 6y ago

Apple are not choking off in-app advertising revenue. That option is still available, developers just have to tell people what they're doing up front and allow opt-in control of tracking. So if you want to give informed consent for targeted in-app advertising you still can. As an Apple customer I pay Apple to provide that, altruism has nothing to do with it. Facebook won't do it on their own because they don't want users to have the choice.

2muchcoffeeman 6y ago

I wish Apple would implement a reasonable method of selling upgrades to apps so that an app wouldn’t get pulled from e App Store if a dev produced a significant upgrade.

zepto 6y ago
“ an app wouldn’t get pulled from e App Store if a dev produced a significant upgrade” App’s don’t get pulled for significant upgrades.
- ogre_codes 6y ago
  I suspect the above poster was referring to the fact that Apple doesn't allow developers to have upgrade pricing. Developers instead must either switch to subscription pricing or release a new app "Tweetbot 5" which resets the apps review count. It would definitely be nice if Apple allowed developers more flexibility in terms of pricing models. (I suspect you know this, just wanted to touch all the bases)
  - zepto 6y ago
    I was aware of what you just explained, and it’s a complaint I agree with. However the line I quoted was complete and utter bullshit. Apple does pull apps for very questionable reasons, but this is definitely not one of them.
    - ogre_codes 6y ago
      You are spot on. The original comment was so oddly worded, I'd assumed the other poster had mis-spoke.
  - crooked-v 6y ago
    I'm surprised I haven't seen more developers go for the 'Paradox DLC' model of putting large new features in IAP with a single ongoing base app.

karmakaze 6y ago

How does this play out? So ad companies' revenue gets shifted to Apple's app store, Apple gets even bigger than the biggest it already is. Then advertisers put their ads in-app. When Apple has all the marbles we willingly gave them, what's next or was that it: dominate, do whatever you want. The safest thing we can do as consumers it not give any one company all the marbles.

ogre_codes 6y ago
> So ad companies' revenue gets shifted to Apple's app store, This presumes that everyone who is currently using add supported apps will start paying for apps which is unlikely. There will continue to be ad supported software, it will just be less profitable. Likely at least some developers will shift to paid, but not nearly all.

naravara 6y ago

If you structure your company around an ethical business model, then changes to the marketplace to become more ethnical inevitably end up benefitting your business model. I'm not actually seeing the problem here. It's like saying Tesla benefits from there being high carbon taxes. Of course they do, but so does everyone else.

tcskeptic 6y ago

I see this response in almost every thread about Apple and privacy and it’s such a weird reply. Do things that are good only count as good if you don’t have a financial interest in them? I am much happier that they’re motivations aren’t altruistic. Absent appropriate regulation — I want to be able to support privacy with my consumer dollars and support a sustainable business model with them, I don’t want to rely on the altruistic grace of a company.

AshWolfy 6y ago
The only difference between apple and any other company is that apple wants a cut of the privacy violations

Fnoord 6y ago

Apple isn't altruistic, they're a business. However their business interests can be aligned with privacy. Back in the days, Microsoft was evil, and FOSS was good. That's what sprouted Facebook and Google. They contribute to FOSS, as does Microsoft. They have proprietary applications (including web applications), as does Microsoft. They're into advertising and profiling, as does Microsoft. Microsoft's software stack is partly FOSS (e.g. Edge), just like Google's (Chrome, Android, ...). I still prefer Unix/Linux over Windows but other than that its more of the same these days. I was one of these people who was happy with Windows 10 free upgrade. But thinking back of it, perhaps I'd rather pay and then keep my privacy (without hassle). The danger is that the poor are indirectly paying for devices and services with their privacy while those who are wealthy are able to afford privacy-friendly Apple. Its already more or less like that. The cost of privacy when it boils to Android devices, and how much profit it yields, isn't transparent.

ogre_codes 6y ago

> By choking off in-app ad revenue, they force developers who want to monetise towards paid and freemium apps. If you write software that is supported by advertising, you are selling your software to the advertisers. If you aren't paying for software, it's not written for your benefit. If you enjoy ad-driven software, it is, at best a happy coincidence or altruism on the part of the developer. What ad driven software has done is rob developers of good quality paid apps of the ability to charge a reasonable price for their goods. So we have a market place filled with mediocre to terrible ad supported apps. The few developers who do spend the time and effort make good quality software get constant complaints about pricing and charge more than $0.99 for software that actually does what people want.

rhizome 6y ago

Why is "not entirely altruistic" a good measurement? Nobody is saying that's what their motivation is, so isn't yours a criticism of purity, or the nirvana fallacy? Like 50 people have replied to this red herring!

summitsummit 6y ago

> their motivations aren’t entirely altruistic well obviously. who is going to expend the resources and headache to fight the powerful evil wraths of Google and Facebook on such a notion as altruism

AniseAbyss 6y ago
The government?

prostoalex 6y ago

Without third-party tracking advertisers buy specific audiences, so a bike helmet seller would buy ads in some outdoor magazine sites and ride-tracking apps. The incentive to pester the user with the same ad is minimal. With third-party tracking and retargeting that same advertiser just buys access to the same user via an agency which would pester the user with retargeted ads throughout their network in hopes that at some point, after X amount of views, the user will feel inclined to perform the monetizeable action (e.g. finally click on that abandoned cart and purchase the bike helmet). In this system each property on the network is relegated to showing as many ads as possible, since each ad is essentially a lottery ticket. You might resurrect the cart and finally buy that bike helmet on nytimes, instagram, Angry Birds - whoever commands your attention at that moment. Companies who complaint about Apple tend to hold a vast amount of such lottery tickets. Companies that do not, tend to have access to specific monetizeable audiences they can sell access to.

kergonath 6y ago

They don’t have to be altruistic, nobody sane expects them to be. They just have to align their interests with those of their customers and go roughly in the right direction.

mekster 6y ago

But who else could've turned down such a huge profit business model as Apple did? We could see Apple become as crazy as Google on advertising business, yet they turned it down. I like how they're "Kill the evil" than the well known "Don't be evil" from Google. Apparently, that's one giant step ahead of them.

zwaps 6y ago

The mere fact that Facebook is protesting that consumers get a choice on whether they are tracked, something that many countries have literally legislated to be a lawful right, shows that this is absolutely necessary. At that point, it matters very little what Apple's motives are, and it matters little what this change means for any business. What matters is that Apple is implementing a change that represents a technical necessity for consumer rights. All current measures do not work. These opt-out websites largely do not work and, besides, the law in most places legislates opt-in and not opt-out. Apps continue to ignore any privacy setting, including facebook. It is sad that we need to rely on Apple to make that change, but I am happy for any incentive Apple has to do so. I am sure it will take quite some time before we see something comparable on Android, if ever. Again: Our rights as consumers are blatantly ignored. All current methods that are supposed to implement these rights are useless and largely ineffective. Devices need to ensure that no one can grab data without consent. Apple does this. It is good.