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" Modern cars regularly send basic data about vehicle components, their safety status and service schedules to car manufacturers, and mobile phones work in very

" Modern cars regularly send basic data about vehicle components, their safety status and service schedules to car manufacturers, and mobile phones work in very similar ways." -Google This is a beautiful quote because it is an example of one industry's bad behavior leading to another industry's bad behavior, upon which the first industry then users the second's similarity to justify themselves. Cars only started doing this because phones made it normal. It's wrong in both cases. It's similar to when Apple defended it's 30% store cut by claiming it's an "industry standard"... specifically, an industry standard that Apple established.

AlexandrB 6y ago
This may be pedantic, but Steam was collecting its 30% long before the App Store opened. Thought maybe that was inspired by Apple's cut of music revenues in the iTunes Store.
- astrange 6y ago
  Older app stores and especially physical retail collected a lot more than 30%.
- adamsvystun 6y ago
  And just to be complete, there is little preventing other people from creating their own Steam (many do) or not using Steam at all (developers can publish their apps directly to users). This is not the case with the App store.
- grishka 6y ago
  You pay 30% for all the hosting and listing and payment processing. But then you aren't required to use Steam to distribute your game — you could as well set up your own website. There's nothing preventing you. There's no predatory code signing on desktop OSes. On the other hand, you can't sideload apps onto iOS devices. You HAVE to go through Apple. You either publish on the app store, or you don't have an iOS app. That's different. That's very different. That's antitrust-can't-happen-sooner different.
  - jodrellblank 6y ago
    You aren't required to use the Apple store to distribute your product. You can sell to Android users and desktop/laptop users. > "That's different. That's very different Is it? Why is it? You can't sell software to run on Kindle Paperwhite even though it's a full computer inside. What's the specific difference between that and iOS, other than "Apple's ecosystem and customers are desirable, so I want to use it" and "I don't want to pay for it"?
    - threeseed 6y ago
      There is no difference. Just like I can't run third party, unapproved apps on a Tesla, SNES, Gameboy, Samsung TV etc. Or even every website that has a marketplace and supports plugins e.g. Shopify.
    - pessimizer 6y ago
      Your argument rests on the strange assumption that people who are against IOS restricting apps on the iPhone would for some reason support Amazon's restrictions on Kindle apps.
      - yellow_postit 6y ago
        I can also easily load PDFs and other formats to a Kindle even if I didn’t go through the Amazon store.
        threeseed 6y ago
        And you can load content and view websites on your iPhone as well. We are talking about apps.
        jodrellblank 6y ago
        And you can easily load PDFs and music onto an iPhone/iPad without going through the Apple store or iTunes store. So they're even and that's good enough for Kindle therefore it's good enough for iOS, right? Oh wait, on top, iOS has an app store so you can do more, so that's a win for iOS? And the app store can have free apps on it where Apple take no money, but still review and curate for some minimum standards of quality, which is nice.
- heavyset_go 6y ago
  I could walk into Best Buy and buy the game I want off the shelf. I have no such option if I want to buy an iOS app from a store or the developers themselves. Steam also don't engage in anti-competitive behavior and prevent billions of people from using alternative game distribution methods like Apple does. What we need is real competition in the mobile app distribution market to determine whether or not that 30% is actually fair, efficient and competitive. As it stands, there is no competition in mobile app distribution.
  - simonh 6y ago
    That's simply not true, Android outsells iOS, it has multiple App Stores and allows sideloading. Plenty of phones come with 2 or 3 different app stores from the network, vendor and Google. The fact is consumers like app stores, they like consolidation because it makes it simpler for them and a lot of them like the benefits they get from a walled garden. Developers like consolidation too, which is why they have converged on the Play Store en masse on Android. These things benefit them, and the vast, vast majority appreciate those benefits more than they appreciate the benefits of managing multiple competing stores and side loading downloaded APKs. You can't magic those preferences away. Even if you forced iOS to become an Android clone with multiple app stores and sideloading you can't force people to like those things. You'd just be giving an extra option to a very small subset of techies who have Android now to do that on already anyway. The market has spoken and it likes nice simple well managed choices because that's what the people want. Why is it that Apple have to make the solution a small subset of people want. Why is that their problem to solve? Maybe these stores converged on 30% because it's a nice round number and a roughly 1:2 split makes intuitive sense. Consoles, music stores, Steam, mobile app stores, they've all circled around about that number for a very long time. Some have tried around 20/80 to grab market share but it never worked, Nintendo tried 35/65 for a while before going to 30/70. In the end it's natural that competitive forces will tend to a convergence.
    - amelius 6y ago
      > Why is it that Apple have to make the solution a small subset of people want. Why is that their problem to solve? Because otherwise they are a populist company. Imagine a company making clothes in sizes S..XL, but not XXL. Don't you think a company owes it to society to also offer the XXL size? Instead of thinking "what is better for us?", a company should think "what is better for our customers?"
- addicted 6y ago
  Steam charges that amount because it brought a customer to you. If I did my own marketing to gamers and they downloaded the game from my website I would have to pay 0% to any intermediary.
rdw 6y ago
The 30% cut was considered very good at the time. It was way better than the 50-90% cut that traditional publishers would take. A sibling comment notes that Steam charged 30% at the time (though some had better deals) but it's worth noting that Steam was not an open platform that anyone could publish on. Much like for consoles, to put a game on Steam you had to have a preexisting relationship with Valve, or try to develop one with no certainty of success. This was also considered a very generous cut because getting on Steam was almost a guarantee of financial success.
- mikestew 6y ago
  The 30% cut was considered very good at the time. No, it wasn't. I'm not going to dig up links, but one could pop a web site storefront and Fastspring for payment processing (as one example of a company I used) for less than 10% (Fastspring would take something like 6-7%, IIRC). Discovery has always sucked on Apple's store, so no value-add there. In fact, I'd argue that the only value-add one gets out of Apple's store is access to their closed garden. And "50-90%"? Is that in reference to putting software in physical boxes and on CompUSA shelves? Because no mobile publisher charged 90% before Apple's store came along.
  - lallysingh 6y ago
    IIRC 50% (60%) was the rate for the app distributor I used for selling my PalmOS app. It was digital download, too. For the Apple case: access to the walled garden is the majority of the benefit. But still, setting up payments, customer service, chargebacks, fees, etc., is nice to have taken care of. 30% nice? Who knows. But more than just the raw payment processor overhead, surely. AFAIK physical boxes are way above 50%.
    - addicted 6y ago
      There were a couple of stores that were more expensive. But there's 2 reasons the comparisons aren't valid: 1) The revolution Apple brought to mobile phones was making them personal computers. So the relevant comparison really should be with personal computers and I doubt any of them had stores that took as much of a cut. 2) More relevant, the vast majority of such app stores which charged 40-50% were optional marketplaces. A customer didn't need to go through them to install an app on their phone (I believe Palm was like this. I'm pretty sure the likes of WinMo allowed many different ways to install apps). So if a marketplace was charging 40-70% it was entirely for the fact that they were bringing a customer to you. If you were able to acquire a customer by yourself, you didn't need to pay anyone any cut. The big problem with Apple's 30% cut has always been that they charge you that amount just for having a user, even if you did all the work to get that user to use and pay for your app. Outside of the maybe 3% credit card fees, Apple provides 0 value. One may argue (as many Apple folks do) that they charge for the frameworks, etc., but that argument is absolutely backwards. Apple creates the frameworks and APIs because they need the apps, not because the apps need them. If Apple was to get rid of its 3rd party APIs and frameworks, so there were no 3rd party apps, it's not the app developers who would suffer because all those users would migrate to Android. It's the iDevices and Apple that would basically disappear. In fact, App developers would be thrilled because now they only need to support 1 Operating system.
gumby 6y ago
> It's similar to when Apple defended it's 30% store cut by claiming it's an "industry standard"... specifically, an industry standard that Apple established. I thought Apple chose that figure as game developers were already used to it from consoles and Steam.
- geerlingguy 6y ago
  It goes back much further than that—the mobile phone 'app' market was a lot worse (50%? And not a fun developer process) and was pretty poorly saturated by Java-based games and lightweight apps. It all depends on what software / 'app' stores we're comparing to.
swiley 6y ago
>cars regularly send basic data My car doesn't and I absolutely would never buy one that does even if that meant walking/taking the bus.
- fapjacks 6y ago
  Which makes it weird that we accept this bullshit from our phones, considering that you have your phone with you whether you're driving or walking or taking the bus.
  - swiley 6y ago
    I think it's because you have to pay money to access the cell network; You need an identety to clear billing with. Until we have enough spectrum for WiFi to have longer ranges you will never be able to use a portable device with internet access like cell phones have without being tracked. The extra data exfiltrated from our devices is often only a little more precise than what the carriers in many places are already selling.
  - chasil 6y ago
    I don't accept it on my phone either. My Oneplus runs Lineage, and I explicitly omitted Google services. I had previously run the MicroG rewrap of Lineage, but the maintainer dropped maintenance for six months, so I found ways to do without the GMS emulation.
    - fapjacks 6y ago
      I also use microG on my phone.
    - oarsinsync 6y ago
      Alas, your cell carrier can and probably is still tracking everywhere you go, as well as who you call / text / calls you / texts you, and sniffing your packets unless you VPN
beforeolives 6y ago
The more concerning thing about the car data is that the manafacturers resell it to third parties and those third parties have the right to resell it again. It's a mess. As a comparison, I don't know if much of Google's data ever leaves Google.
- marshmallow_12 6y ago
  i'm getting the impression that iot providers have far, far lower privacy standards vs dedicated tech providers. This to me indicates that they don't take the internet capability of their kettles/cars seriously enough. It's just a gimmick. This is not a constructive way to advance iot.
  - xnx 6y ago
    Every data broker out there says a prayer every night that we (as a society) continue to focus our attention on Google (an absolute saint by comparison) and ignore what phone companies, cable companies, browser extensions, gaming apps, smart tvs, etc. etc. do with our data.
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    > This to me indicates that they don't take the internet capability of their kettles/cars seriously enough. It's just a gimmick. Of course it is, and of course they don't. There are exactly two reasons why stuff like cars or kettles get connected to the Internet: 1) A value-add gimmick to justify a price hike on what's pretty much a commodity product; 2) A way to lock you into paying (with money or data) for a cloud service, using a physical appliance as an anchor. Actual utility of an Internet-connected appliance doesn't even enter the picture.
2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago
I honestly don't mind information about crashes being sent as long as it is very sanitized and easy to disable- similar to how Fedora reports issues. They send only a list of functions on the stack without any of the arguments or data. Example: https://retrace.fedoraproject.org/faf/problems/bthash/?bth=39a21a16fdf75a0f2a7536fd8dd8dd6a2d61c56f&bth=2028d669804553141f239c56c6721219d8aa61ab&bth=ba74de90c50013a5d313b22fbe5511a2fe77f0c9&bth=3d41088a958952e9d4885747aab4a54a8a54fa2a&bth=8440834238b661cd2e006b5e411f5aa24d14d768 https://retrace.fedoraproject.org/faf/problems/bthash/?bth=3... Where Google goes too far is sending everything in the name of security or better yet to "serve" the user.
- fiddlerwoaroof 6y ago
  IMEI and serial number make sense, I think too: Apple’s activation lock is a big reason why I bought an iPhone and as far as I can tell, it requires interaction with the server on every boot to work.
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago
    I disagree on IMEI. It never changes and is unique.
tchalla 6y ago
> It's similar to when Apple defended it's 30% store cut by claiming it's an "industry standard"... specifically, an industry standard that Apple established. Apple established a standard for the Apple app store. There was a lot of complaint about "Apple Tax" and Apple merely pointed out that it wasn't a "Apple Tax". Sure, Apple started it but others which are not even connected to the Apple ecosystem simply followed. They could have not decided to but they did (Re:Table 1) [0]. Microsoft, Samsung, Google and Amazon all have the same 30% tax. Heck, even commission rates for Xbox, Playstation, Nintendo have the same rate (Re : Table 2). I am sure Apple is not forcing them to have those rates. Somehow, this conversation turns into an "Apple" vs rest conversation. There's no conversation had upon the charges on a digital distribution store. I'd say - let's have that conversation and come up with a number. Currently, the number is decided in a "free market". I would be open to come up to an alternate number. Most arguments against the 30% is that it is too high. Well, every penny that goes out from the developer's pocket is too high. The cost of an iPhone might be too high. Something, being too high is not an argument to not have that rate. [0] https://www.analysisgroup.com/globalassets/insights/publishing/apples_app_store_and_other_digital_marketplaces_a_comparison_of_commission_rates.pdf https://www.analysisgroup.com/globalassets/insights/publishi...
- issamehh 6y ago
  I have an android phone and there is one clear difference: I can go elsewhere to get apps other than the official channel. For Microsoft I can go as far as installing a whole different OS on the device. You can do neither with iPhones. Sure, you can buy a different phone but it isn't as simple as that
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- clairity 6y ago
  this is a classic example of how companies collude without direct communication. it's a type of game theoretic outcome that's actually taught in business school - how to read your competitor's intentions from public information (like pricing intentions) and legally act and counter-communicate publicly your own intentions to not compete (in many cases by not lowering price). this can practically only happen in oligarchic markets (those controlled by a few large players) who can safely assume a smaller competitor won't undercut them. unfortunately, most major markets in the US are oligarchic, if not downright monopolized (e.g., cellular service).
grishka 6y ago
> cars regularly send basic data I'm still terrified by the fact that some cars now apparently have network interfaces for some reason.
- retube 6y ago
  Got a courtesy call from BMW the other day to let me know my brake fluid needed changing and would I like an appointment made at my nearest garage? I get that there are privacy concerns, but also that's pretty cool. It also has GPS and will automatically alert BNW if air bags are deployed. Has saved lives.
  - wmichelin 6y ago
    Ideally some of that data can be aggregated and acted upon locally to the car computer, so that once an arbitrary car manufacturer closes shop, you can still retain the value provided by that telemetry. Sending it off to their servers and having them manually call you up is nice, but I'd hate for that to suddenly go away because of some business that is outside of your control as a consumer.
  - kuratkull 6y ago
    We can save a lot of lives if we monitor everyone/everything. I'm sure there was very little early death in the Matrix universe.
    - minsc__and__boo 6y ago
      Except there was a lot of death, hence the line about rejecting uptopia. Also robots used human brains as batteries (or processors, in the original script) which is not quiet the same.
  - grishka 6y ago
    > Got a courtesy call from BMW the other day to let me know my brake fluid needed changing and would I like an appointment made at my nearest garage? That's only marginally better than it popping up an alert on the dashboard, which many modern cars most probably do anyway, but imo it feels like something of a privacy invasion. > It also has GPS and will automatically alert BNW if air bags are deployed. Has saved lives. Aren't there systems that automatically call an emergency number and send GPS coordinates when they detect a crash? I think I read somewhere that some countries are even going to mandate them on new cars. (Disclaimer: I'm not much into cars. I do have a driving license, but I don't own a car and don't drive very often.)
dralley 6y ago
>Cars only started doing this because phones made it normal. It's wrong in both cases. I don't know that this is true, planes have been doing it for quite some time now, although obviously they existing in a totally different bracket of price and complexity.
- userbinator 6y ago
  although obviously they existing in a totally different bracket of price and complexity. There's a whole world of difference between a plane operating commercial service in a highly-regulated industry and one's own car. At least there is an expectation of personal privacy - and some semblance of freedom - with the latter.
Spooky23 6y ago
It’s way worse. Google is the pioneer in that type of analytics. Apple took the existing model and automated it. They didn’t invent it, it’s been around since RCA/Victor. Retail takes bigger cuts (Walmart used to get 60% from AV vendors). Enterprise software resellers and distributors take a similar share to Apple, and do other shenanigans as a financing mechanism. When you hear about “shipments” that’s what that means.
wmichelin 6y ago
I disagree that telemetry is inherently bad. As product engineers, telemetry is often our only visibility into whether or not a system is functioning healthily. How else can you detect difficult-to-spot bugs in production?
- mlindner 6y ago
  Once upon a time fixing bugs in production didn't happen because the product got all the bugs out before production. If it had bugs in production, the product failed.
  - shard 6y ago
    You used the phrase "once upon a time", a common opening for fairy tales, which seems apropos for describing a magical land where products achieved a 100% bug detection rate before release. I suppose this might have been true 50 years ago, at the dawn of the electronic calculator, but that is now an age of legend...
  - tracker1 6y ago
    When that was true, several decades ago, products generally had upwards of 2 years of design/architecture/engineering effort and definitions prior to another 3-5 years of development. It still (sometimes) happens for medical, aerospace and other transportation software that interfaces with hardware where safety is a concern.
  - Gene_Parmesan 6y ago
    I've often wondered about this commonly repeated belief that software of ~30 years ago was less buggy than software today, because it doesn't really line up with my memories. There's definitely part of it that comes from a standard "back in my day", rose-tinted glasses sort of thing. But I actually think a lot of it comes from the fact that modern software can be easily patched, whereas older software couldn't. It is easy to believe that software today is buggier because of just how many patches we get for it. But back in the day, any bugs that existed in the product were not as visible, because we weren't getting weekly updates where the patch notes say "Bug fixes." How many massive vulnerabilities existed in major products of the day, and continued to persist unnoticed by all of us because of the relative impossibility of patching them out? On top of that, modern software is simply more complex -- often times an order of magnitude more complex. (Whether this increased complexity is always needed/appropriate is a separate question.) I'm not sure what metric you would use to be able to do a "bugs per complexity unit" sort of comparison between then and now, something that attempts to control for increased complexity, but my intuition is that it would be pretty flat.
TYPE_FASTER 6y ago
I read Steven Levy's book "Hackers" recently. One interesting insight was that developers for Sierra On-line and other early publishers had deals for the developer to get a 30% royalty on the games they wrote, with Sierra collecting 70% as the publisher. Over time, as there was some market saturation in the early 80s, this number decreased.
charcircuit 6y ago
Telemetry allows people to make better decisions. It's not a bad practice. Information deserves to be free.
- userbinator 6y ago
  Let's not forget that "better" is from the viewpoint of a giant corporation whose primary reason for existence is to suck as much profit out of you as it can...
  - charcircuit 6y ago
    Often the benefit is mutual. A better product is good for both the business and the users.
wunderflix 6y ago
I seriously don’t mean this in an offensive way. But isn’t bringing Apple now into this, “Whataboutism” in disguise?
beastman82 6y ago
It's called the "tu quoque" logical fallacy
boring_twenties 6y ago
OT, but since you mentioned it, does anyone happen to know what the most recent model years without any kind of cellular radio might be? In a similar vein, can the radios be physically removed from any newer cars without the car complaining about it?
- thatcat 6y ago
  Depends on the package you opt for, but I'd guess up to 2011 for cars without onstar
  - boring_twenties 6y ago
    Wow, that's disheartening. Was hoping to hear at least 2014, heh.
userbinator 6y ago
I suspect that statement was to placate people with "your car does it too", but mine certainly doesn't --- it doesn't even require a computer to run --- and the statement had the exact opposite effect, namely to revalidate the reason I don't drive a "modern car". That said, I do have an Android, but it is rooted and spends most of its time off. As I type this message, it is on the other side of the room.
- PartiallyTyped 6y ago
  Out of curiosity, how old is your car?
  - userbinator 6y ago
    Close to 50 years.
joshspankit 6y ago
Such an important point. And, as with most things, there’s an XKCD for that: https://xkcd.com/978/ https://xkcd.com/978/
hnburnsy 6y ago
It is like I tell my kids, "pointing to bad behavior does not justify your bad behavior" Cities frequently do this when they want to raise fees or taxes, 'Hey look at City B and City C, our fees are still lower even with this unneeded and uncalled for increase'
m463 6y ago
I wonder if they figured out the perfect "benign phrases" using a/b testing.
ogre_codes 6y ago
Apple didn’t establish the 30% cut. They kited the idea from console makers and other walled garden industries that came before them. This doesn’t make it more defensible, but they didn’t create it.

AlexandrB 6y ago

This may be pedantic, but Steam was collecting its 30% long before the App Store opened. Thought maybe that was inspired by Apple's cut of music revenues in the iTunes Store.

astrange 6y ago
Older app stores and especially physical retail collected a lot more than 30%.
adamsvystun 6y ago
And just to be complete, there is little preventing other people from creating their own Steam (many do) or not using Steam at all (developers can publish their apps directly to users). This is not the case with the App store.
grishka 6y ago
You pay 30% for all the hosting and listing and payment processing. But then you aren't required to use Steam to distribute your game — you could as well set up your own website. There's nothing preventing you. There's no predatory code signing on desktop OSes. On the other hand, you can't sideload apps onto iOS devices. You HAVE to go through Apple. You either publish on the app store, or you don't have an iOS app. That's different. That's very different. That's antitrust-can't-happen-sooner different.
- jodrellblank 6y ago
  You aren't required to use the Apple store to distribute your product. You can sell to Android users and desktop/laptop users. > "That's different. That's very different Is it? Why is it? You can't sell software to run on Kindle Paperwhite even though it's a full computer inside. What's the specific difference between that and iOS, other than "Apple's ecosystem and customers are desirable, so I want to use it" and "I don't want to pay for it"?
  - threeseed 6y ago
    There is no difference. Just like I can't run third party, unapproved apps on a Tesla, SNES, Gameboy, Samsung TV etc. Or even every website that has a marketplace and supports plugins e.g. Shopify.
  - pessimizer 6y ago
    Your argument rests on the strange assumption that people who are against IOS restricting apps on the iPhone would for some reason support Amazon's restrictions on Kindle apps.
    - yellow_postit 6y ago
      I can also easily load PDFs and other formats to a Kindle even if I didn’t go through the Amazon store.
      - threeseed 6y ago
        And you can load content and view websites on your iPhone as well. We are talking about apps.
      - jodrellblank 6y ago
        And you can easily load PDFs and music onto an iPhone/iPad without going through the Apple store or iTunes store. So they're even and that's good enough for Kindle therefore it's good enough for iOS, right? Oh wait, on top, iOS has an app store so you can do more, so that's a win for iOS? And the app store can have free apps on it where Apple take no money, but still review and curate for some minimum standards of quality, which is nice.
heavyset_go 6y ago
I could walk into Best Buy and buy the game I want off the shelf. I have no such option if I want to buy an iOS app from a store or the developers themselves. Steam also don't engage in anti-competitive behavior and prevent billions of people from using alternative game distribution methods like Apple does. What we need is real competition in the mobile app distribution market to determine whether or not that 30% is actually fair, efficient and competitive. As it stands, there is no competition in mobile app distribution.
- simonh 6y ago
  That's simply not true, Android outsells iOS, it has multiple App Stores and allows sideloading. Plenty of phones come with 2 or 3 different app stores from the network, vendor and Google. The fact is consumers like app stores, they like consolidation because it makes it simpler for them and a lot of them like the benefits they get from a walled garden. Developers like consolidation too, which is why they have converged on the Play Store en masse on Android. These things benefit them, and the vast, vast majority appreciate those benefits more than they appreciate the benefits of managing multiple competing stores and side loading downloaded APKs. You can't magic those preferences away. Even if you forced iOS to become an Android clone with multiple app stores and sideloading you can't force people to like those things. You'd just be giving an extra option to a very small subset of techies who have Android now to do that on already anyway. The market has spoken and it likes nice simple well managed choices because that's what the people want. Why is it that Apple have to make the solution a small subset of people want. Why is that their problem to solve? Maybe these stores converged on 30% because it's a nice round number and a roughly 1:2 split makes intuitive sense. Consoles, music stores, Steam, mobile app stores, they've all circled around about that number for a very long time. Some have tried around 20/80 to grab market share but it never worked, Nintendo tried 35/65 for a while before going to 30/70. In the end it's natural that competitive forces will tend to a convergence.
  - amelius 6y ago
    > Why is it that Apple have to make the solution a small subset of people want. Why is that their problem to solve? Because otherwise they are a populist company. Imagine a company making clothes in sizes S..XL, but not XXL. Don't you think a company owes it to society to also offer the XXL size? Instead of thinking "what is better for us?", a company should think "what is better for our customers?"
addicted 6y ago
Steam charges that amount because it brought a customer to you. If I did my own marketing to gamers and they downloaded the game from my website I would have to pay 0% to any intermediary.

rdw 6y ago

The 30% cut was considered very good at the time. It was way better than the 50-90% cut that traditional publishers would take. A sibling comment notes that Steam charged 30% at the time (though some had better deals) but it's worth noting that Steam was not an open platform that anyone could publish on. Much like for consoles, to put a game on Steam you had to have a preexisting relationship with Valve, or try to develop one with no certainty of success. This was also considered a very generous cut because getting on Steam was almost a guarantee of financial success.

mikestew 6y ago
The 30% cut was considered very good at the time. No, it wasn't. I'm not going to dig up links, but one could pop a web site storefront and Fastspring for payment processing (as one example of a company I used) for less than 10% (Fastspring would take something like 6-7%, IIRC). Discovery has always sucked on Apple's store, so no value-add there. In fact, I'd argue that the only value-add one gets out of Apple's store is access to their closed garden. And "50-90%"? Is that in reference to putting software in physical boxes and on CompUSA shelves? Because no mobile publisher charged 90% before Apple's store came along.
- lallysingh 6y ago
  IIRC 50% (60%) was the rate for the app distributor I used for selling my PalmOS app. It was digital download, too. For the Apple case: access to the walled garden is the majority of the benefit. But still, setting up payments, customer service, chargebacks, fees, etc., is nice to have taken care of. 30% nice? Who knows. But more than just the raw payment processor overhead, surely. AFAIK physical boxes are way above 50%.
  - addicted 6y ago
    There were a couple of stores that were more expensive. But there's 2 reasons the comparisons aren't valid: 1) The revolution Apple brought to mobile phones was making them personal computers. So the relevant comparison really should be with personal computers and I doubt any of them had stores that took as much of a cut. 2) More relevant, the vast majority of such app stores which charged 40-50% were optional marketplaces. A customer didn't need to go through them to install an app on their phone (I believe Palm was like this. I'm pretty sure the likes of WinMo allowed many different ways to install apps). So if a marketplace was charging 40-70% it was entirely for the fact that they were bringing a customer to you. If you were able to acquire a customer by yourself, you didn't need to pay anyone any cut. The big problem with Apple's 30% cut has always been that they charge you that amount just for having a user, even if you did all the work to get that user to use and pay for your app. Outside of the maybe 3% credit card fees, Apple provides 0 value. One may argue (as many Apple folks do) that they charge for the frameworks, etc., but that argument is absolutely backwards. Apple creates the frameworks and APIs because they need the apps, not because the apps need them. If Apple was to get rid of its 3rd party APIs and frameworks, so there were no 3rd party apps, it's not the app developers who would suffer because all those users would migrate to Android. It's the iDevices and Apple that would basically disappear. In fact, App developers would be thrilled because now they only need to support 1 Operating system.

gumby 6y ago

> It's similar to when Apple defended it's 30% store cut by claiming it's an "industry standard"... specifically, an industry standard that Apple established. I thought Apple chose that figure as game developers were already used to it from consoles and Steam.

geerlingguy 6y ago
It goes back much further than that—the mobile phone 'app' market was a lot worse (50%? And not a fun developer process) and was pretty poorly saturated by Java-based games and lightweight apps. It all depends on what software / 'app' stores we're comparing to.

swiley 6y ago

>cars regularly send basic data My car doesn't and I absolutely would never buy one that does even if that meant walking/taking the bus.

fapjacks 6y ago
Which makes it weird that we accept this bullshit from our phones, considering that you have your phone with you whether you're driving or walking or taking the bus.
- swiley 6y ago
  I think it's because you have to pay money to access the cell network; You need an identety to clear billing with. Until we have enough spectrum for WiFi to have longer ranges you will never be able to use a portable device with internet access like cell phones have without being tracked. The extra data exfiltrated from our devices is often only a little more precise than what the carriers in many places are already selling.
- chasil 6y ago
  I don't accept it on my phone either. My Oneplus runs Lineage, and I explicitly omitted Google services. I had previously run the MicroG rewrap of Lineage, but the maintainer dropped maintenance for six months, so I found ways to do without the GMS emulation.
  - fapjacks 6y ago
    I also use microG on my phone.
  - oarsinsync 6y ago
    Alas, your cell carrier can and probably is still tracking everywhere you go, as well as who you call / text / calls you / texts you, and sniffing your packets unless you VPN

beforeolives 6y ago

The more concerning thing about the car data is that the manafacturers resell it to third parties and those third parties have the right to resell it again. It's a mess. As a comparison, I don't know if much of Google's data ever leaves Google.

marshmallow_12 6y ago
i'm getting the impression that iot providers have far, far lower privacy standards vs dedicated tech providers. This to me indicates that they don't take the internet capability of their kettles/cars seriously enough. It's just a gimmick. This is not a constructive way to advance iot.
- xnx 6y ago
  Every data broker out there says a prayer every night that we (as a society) continue to focus our attention on Google (an absolute saint by comparison) and ignore what phone companies, cable companies, browser extensions, gaming apps, smart tvs, etc. etc. do with our data.
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  > This to me indicates that they don't take the internet capability of their kettles/cars seriously enough. It's just a gimmick. Of course it is, and of course they don't. There are exactly two reasons why stuff like cars or kettles get connected to the Internet: 1) A value-add gimmick to justify a price hike on what's pretty much a commodity product; 2) A way to lock you into paying (with money or data) for a cloud service, using a physical appliance as an anchor. Actual utility of an Internet-connected appliance doesn't even enter the picture.

2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago

I honestly don't mind information about crashes being sent as long as it is very sanitized and easy to disable- similar to how Fedora reports issues. They send only a list of functions on the stack without any of the arguments or data. Example: https://retrace.fedoraproject.org/faf/problems/bthash/?bth=39a21a16fdf75a0f2a7536fd8dd8dd6a2d61c56f&bth=2028d669804553141f239c56c6721219d8aa61ab&bth=ba74de90c50013a5d313b22fbe5511a2fe77f0c9&bth=3d41088a958952e9d4885747aab4a54a8a54fa2a&bth=8440834238b661cd2e006b5e411f5aa24d14d768 https://retrace.fedoraproject.org/faf/problems/bthash/?bth=3... Where Google goes too far is sending everything in the name of security or better yet to "serve" the user.

fiddlerwoaroof 6y ago
IMEI and serial number make sense, I think too: Apple’s activation lock is a big reason why I bought an iPhone and as far as I can tell, it requires interaction with the server on every boot to work.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago
  I disagree on IMEI. It never changes and is unique.

tchalla 6y ago

> It's similar to when Apple defended it's 30% store cut by claiming it's an "industry standard"... specifically, an industry standard that Apple established. Apple established a standard for the Apple app store. There was a lot of complaint about "Apple Tax" and Apple merely pointed out that it wasn't a "Apple Tax". Sure, Apple started it but others which are not even connected to the Apple ecosystem simply followed. They could have not decided to but they did (Re:Table 1) [0]. Microsoft, Samsung, Google and Amazon all have the same 30% tax. Heck, even commission rates for Xbox, Playstation, Nintendo have the same rate (Re : Table 2). I am sure Apple is not forcing them to have those rates. Somehow, this conversation turns into an "Apple" vs rest conversation. There's no conversation had upon the charges on a digital distribution store. I'd say - let's have that conversation and come up with a number. Currently, the number is decided in a "free market". I would be open to come up to an alternate number. Most arguments against the 30% is that it is too high. Well, every penny that goes out from the developer's pocket is too high. The cost of an iPhone might be too high. Something, being too high is not an argument to not have that rate. [0] https://www.analysisgroup.com/globalassets/insights/publishing/apples_app_store_and_other_digital_marketplaces_a_comparison_of_commission_rates.pdf https://www.analysisgroup.com/globalassets/insights/publishi...

issamehh 6y ago
I have an android phone and there is one clear difference: I can go elsewhere to get apps other than the official channel. For Microsoft I can go as far as installing a whole different OS on the device. You can do neither with iPhones. Sure, you can buy a different phone but it isn't as simple as that
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clairity 6y ago
this is a classic example of how companies collude without direct communication. it's a type of game theoretic outcome that's actually taught in business school - how to read your competitor's intentions from public information (like pricing intentions) and legally act and counter-communicate publicly your own intentions to not compete (in many cases by not lowering price). this can practically only happen in oligarchic markets (those controlled by a few large players) who can safely assume a smaller competitor won't undercut them. unfortunately, most major markets in the US are oligarchic, if not downright monopolized (e.g., cellular service).

grishka 6y ago

> cars regularly send basic data I'm still terrified by the fact that some cars now apparently have network interfaces for some reason.

retube 6y ago
Got a courtesy call from BMW the other day to let me know my brake fluid needed changing and would I like an appointment made at my nearest garage? I get that there are privacy concerns, but also that's pretty cool. It also has GPS and will automatically alert BNW if air bags are deployed. Has saved lives.
- wmichelin 6y ago
  Ideally some of that data can be aggregated and acted upon locally to the car computer, so that once an arbitrary car manufacturer closes shop, you can still retain the value provided by that telemetry. Sending it off to their servers and having them manually call you up is nice, but I'd hate for that to suddenly go away because of some business that is outside of your control as a consumer.
- kuratkull 6y ago
  We can save a lot of lives if we monitor everyone/everything. I'm sure there was very little early death in the Matrix universe.
  - minsc__and__boo 6y ago
    Except there was a lot of death, hence the line about rejecting uptopia. Also robots used human brains as batteries (or processors, in the original script) which is not quiet the same.
- grishka 6y ago
  > Got a courtesy call from BMW the other day to let me know my brake fluid needed changing and would I like an appointment made at my nearest garage? That's only marginally better than it popping up an alert on the dashboard, which many modern cars most probably do anyway, but imo it feels like something of a privacy invasion. > It also has GPS and will automatically alert BNW if air bags are deployed. Has saved lives. Aren't there systems that automatically call an emergency number and send GPS coordinates when they detect a crash? I think I read somewhere that some countries are even going to mandate them on new cars. (Disclaimer: I'm not much into cars. I do have a driving license, but I don't own a car and don't drive very often.)

dralley 6y ago

>Cars only started doing this because phones made it normal. It's wrong in both cases. I don't know that this is true, planes have been doing it for quite some time now, although obviously they existing in a totally different bracket of price and complexity.

userbinator 6y ago
although obviously they existing in a totally different bracket of price and complexity. There's a whole world of difference between a plane operating commercial service in a highly-regulated industry and one's own car. At least there is an expectation of personal privacy - and some semblance of freedom - with the latter.

Spooky23 6y ago

It’s way worse. Google is the pioneer in that type of analytics. Apple took the existing model and automated it. They didn’t invent it, it’s been around since RCA/Victor. Retail takes bigger cuts (Walmart used to get 60% from AV vendors). Enterprise software resellers and distributors take a similar share to Apple, and do other shenanigans as a financing mechanism. When you hear about “shipments” that’s what that means.

wmichelin 6y ago

I disagree that telemetry is inherently bad. As product engineers, telemetry is often our only visibility into whether or not a system is functioning healthily. How else can you detect difficult-to-spot bugs in production?

mlindner 6y ago
Once upon a time fixing bugs in production didn't happen because the product got all the bugs out before production. If it had bugs in production, the product failed.
- shard 6y ago
  You used the phrase "once upon a time", a common opening for fairy tales, which seems apropos for describing a magical land where products achieved a 100% bug detection rate before release. I suppose this might have been true 50 years ago, at the dawn of the electronic calculator, but that is now an age of legend...
- tracker1 6y ago
  When that was true, several decades ago, products generally had upwards of 2 years of design/architecture/engineering effort and definitions prior to another 3-5 years of development. It still (sometimes) happens for medical, aerospace and other transportation software that interfaces with hardware where safety is a concern.
- Gene_Parmesan 6y ago
  I've often wondered about this commonly repeated belief that software of ~30 years ago was less buggy than software today, because it doesn't really line up with my memories. There's definitely part of it that comes from a standard "back in my day", rose-tinted glasses sort of thing. But I actually think a lot of it comes from the fact that modern software can be easily patched, whereas older software couldn't. It is easy to believe that software today is buggier because of just how many patches we get for it. But back in the day, any bugs that existed in the product were not as visible, because we weren't getting weekly updates where the patch notes say "Bug fixes." How many massive vulnerabilities existed in major products of the day, and continued to persist unnoticed by all of us because of the relative impossibility of patching them out? On top of that, modern software is simply more complex -- often times an order of magnitude more complex. (Whether this increased complexity is always needed/appropriate is a separate question.) I'm not sure what metric you would use to be able to do a "bugs per complexity unit" sort of comparison between then and now, something that attempts to control for increased complexity, but my intuition is that it would be pretty flat.

TYPE_FASTER 6y ago

I read Steven Levy's book "Hackers" recently. One interesting insight was that developers for Sierra On-line and other early publishers had deals for the developer to get a 30% royalty on the games they wrote, with Sierra collecting 70% as the publisher. Over time, as there was some market saturation in the early 80s, this number decreased.

charcircuit 6y ago

Telemetry allows people to make better decisions. It's not a bad practice. Information deserves to be free.

userbinator 6y ago
Let's not forget that "better" is from the viewpoint of a giant corporation whose primary reason for existence is to suck as much profit out of you as it can...
- charcircuit 6y ago
  Often the benefit is mutual. A better product is good for both the business and the users.

wunderflix 6y ago

I seriously don’t mean this in an offensive way. But isn’t bringing Apple now into this, “Whataboutism” in disguise?

beastman82 6y ago

It's called the "tu quoque" logical fallacy

boring_twenties 6y ago

OT, but since you mentioned it, does anyone happen to know what the most recent model years without any kind of cellular radio might be? In a similar vein, can the radios be physically removed from any newer cars without the car complaining about it?

thatcat 6y ago
Depends on the package you opt for, but I'd guess up to 2011 for cars without onstar
- boring_twenties 6y ago
  Wow, that's disheartening. Was hoping to hear at least 2014, heh.

userbinator 6y ago

I suspect that statement was to placate people with "your car does it too", but mine certainly doesn't --- it doesn't even require a computer to run --- and the statement had the exact opposite effect, namely to revalidate the reason I don't drive a "modern car". That said, I do have an Android, but it is rooted and spends most of its time off. As I type this message, it is on the other side of the room.

PartiallyTyped 6y ago
Out of curiosity, how old is your car?
- userbinator 6y ago
  Close to 50 years.

joshspankit 6y ago

Such an important point. And, as with most things, there’s an XKCD for that: https://xkcd.com/978/ https://xkcd.com/978/

hnburnsy 6y ago

It is like I tell my kids, "pointing to bad behavior does not justify your bad behavior" Cities frequently do this when they want to raise fees or taxes, 'Hey look at City B and City C, our fees are still lower even with this unneeded and uncalled for increase'

m463 6y ago

I wonder if they figured out the perfect "benign phrases" using a/b testing.

ogre_codes 6y ago

Apple didn’t establish the 30% cut. They kited the idea from console makers and other walled garden industries that came before them. This doesn’t make it more defensible, but they didn’t create it.