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Apple admits it ranked its Files app ahead of competitor Dropbox

541 points by what_ever 5y ago

crazygringo 5y ago
These are exactly the kinds of issues antitrust legislation needs to be updated to handle. I have no issue with a company running a store and selling its own products within, but it has to provide a level playing field. It's good they fixed it -- that the VP in question didn't know it had been done and then nixed it -- but this shouldn't even be legal in the first place.
- Railsify 5y ago
  Would that extend to grocery stores, where would you force walmart to put their own brands?
  - donmcronald 5y ago
    > Would that extend to grocery stores, where would you force walmart to put their own brands? It's not a fair comparison if you're at a physical store since things are too different for an analogy. However, if I'm searching on their website and type in a specific brand so I can find which aisle it's in I would expect to get the brand I searched for, not a Great Value knockoff.
    - Spivak 5y ago
      I mean that is basically how I find the store brand all the time. Look for the brand name thing I know by heart because the logo has been seared into my brain since birth and then go from there.
  - mikestew 5y ago
    You mean the grocery stores that have many competitors who also sell groceries? How would you extend that analogy to the iOS App Store, which has no competitors whatsoever who sell iOS apps?
    - imNotTheProb 5y ago
      Web Apps? Apple users are used to lower quality products, making them visit a website should be no big deal.
    - gruez 5y ago
      >You mean the grocery stores that have many competitors who also sell groceries? google? >How would you extend that analogy to the iOS App Store, which has no competitors whatsoever who sell iOS apps? By that logic costco has no competitors whatsoever that sell kirkland signature products.
      - passivate 5y ago
        We need to re-evaluate what "rights" mean in a digital age. Apple should not have a monopoly on digital stores on iOS. "Apple made it so they can do anything they want. Take it or leave it" - is not an acceptable position (in my opinion). >By that logic costco has no competitors whatsoever that sell kirkland signature products. Can you explain how you came to that conclusion and what 'that logic' is?
        gruez 5y ago
        >Can you explain how you came to that conclusion and what 'that logic' is? Because the parent poster was applying arbitrary restriction on it (apps, but only ios) to make a point. I replied with the equivalent example for costco (grocery store products, but only kirkland signature).
        ksec 5y ago
        Because you have both Costco AND Walmart Stores selling their own brand within the same state which allows heavy Store competition within the State along with dozen of others Stores? The iOS state has 65% of users and 75% of App spending and it has one Store. You can perfectly have your own retail brand when there are plenty of competition within the market. If you argue there is still another state with diverse choices, you are either hit with a Duopoly argument, or a monopolistic power argument where iOS have too much power within market economy. People have been using these over simplify analogy with Xbox and Retail and there are not even the same. Either way, there should be no denying there is something wrong with the way things are currently being handled.
  - passivate 5y ago
    A grocery store has limited storage space, a limited amount of advertising space, limited staff, etc, etc. The amount of upkeep is also very different compared to a digital store. I think its not really an apt point for comparison.
  - crazygringo 5y ago
    I don't see any uneven playing field when it comes to grocery stores. The national brands and store brands are always next to each other on the same shelf. So there isn't any problem that needs solving. Also brands already pay for promotional positioning (like the ends of aisles), and when the store puts its own brands in those spots it loses out on those payments, and so is effectively paying equally. So the field doesn't need any evening out there. If grocery stores ever started putting the name-brand stuff in a back room that took twice as long to get to, then it might become an issue, but as of right now it's just not.
    - singlow 5y ago
      The brand names pay for their spot, so its moot. There is no meritocracy in grocery store product placement. For the most part the grocery store doesn't have a formula to decide where to put most things based on sales data. If you sell a cereal or soda or fancy mustard and you want premium shelf height, just pay extra for it. The store basically rents the shelf space out.
      - MiscIdeaMaker99 5y ago
        This is absolutely true in the USA. Frito Lay has done this for years, paying supermarkets for more and more shelf space, while the smaller, regional competitors were left with less and less room to sell. This happened to my father in the 1980s when he owned a distributorship for a regional potato chip company here in the Midwest United States.
    - bombcar 5y ago
      You don’t see the brands they don’t carry at all. Only the brands they carry get displayed and they often make more money on the name brands anyway.
      - hnick 5y ago
        I've heard from a friend (in Australia) if you don't frequently buy placement you get bumped, and buying placement can be a losing proposition. They raise the price to squeeze all margin so it's just on the edge of making it affordable. You have to say yes to losing money during the promotion ("you'll make it up with brand awareness!") to claw it back by staying on the shelves in between. Otherwise another brand, or sometimes a house brand, takes your place.
  - heavyset_go 5y ago
    I can go across the street to a dozen different stores. If I travel a little further, I can go to even more stores. No matter where I go, with Apple and Google, I'm have to use their payment systems and give each of them a 30% cut of my apps' revenue. They both have a duopoly in the mobile operating systems market and the mobile app distribution market, and Apple has the majority of the market share in both markets in the US.
    - judge2020 5y ago
      The difference is that Walmart didn't build the street or the city and doesn't have a right to take a cut of sales on other people's property. A more apt comparison would be the third-party hotels that, if they want to use some of Disney's 25,000 acres in Florida[0], literally have to lease the land from Disney and Disney can impose terms like a cut of sales (or a forced Disney merchandise store within the hotel). iOS is like the consumer choosing to live exclusively within the confines of Disney's property (with the difference being that, once you 'leave' iOS, you can't bring stuff back into the city - honestly this is the digital equivalent of what Walt Disney wanted with E.P.C.O.T.[1]). 0: https://dpep.disney.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/fact_sheet_walt_disney_world_resort_2020_Q4.pdf#page=7 https://dpep.disney.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/fact_sheet... 1: https://youtu.be/tKYEXjMlKKQ https://youtu.be/tKYEXjMlKKQ
      - shkkmo 5y ago
        You actually OWN your device and should have the right to do what you please with it. This analogy is poor.
      - vel0city 5y ago
        There are tons of resorts and hotels completely unrelated to Disney that exist right at the gates of Disnyworld that offer shuttles. There are even more resorts in Kissimmee that are just a short drive away. As someone who has been to Disneyworld over a dozen times and never once stayed in a Disney resort, there are a ton of places to stay and still visit Disneyworld.
        5y ago
  - vel0city 5y ago
    It costs me less money travel-wise to go to a non-Walmart grocery store. Within the same cost comparison of traveling, I've got about four different brands of groceries all within a similar price range. If I had an iPhone, it would be a several hundred dollar proposal (at least!) to shop at a competing store.
- GeekyBear 5y ago
  >selling its own products The Files app is bundled with the OS, but not installed by default. It's not exactly "sold" as it's free and isn't ad supported either. It's hard to find a profit motive here. Google, on the other hand, has long allowed you to bid on your competitor's product name so you will show up ahead of them in the search results. They also have a history of scraping other people's content and then more highly rating that scraped content on their own sites in their search engine. It's easy to find a profit motive there.
  - netizen-936824 5y ago
    The profit motive is keeping users in their ecosystem
  - webmobdev 5y ago
    > It's hard to find a profit motive here. Promoting the use of iCloud - when your space runs out, you will consider paying for it.
    - GeekyBear 5y ago
      >Promoting the use of iCloud The Files app transfers files back and forth between SMB shares, local flash drives, and any of the major cloud services. iCloud is not required at all. Try again.
      - webmobdev 5y ago
        If you are ignorant about it, iCloud support is integrated into the Files App and is the most promoted on its support documents too - https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203052 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203052 and https://support.apple.com/en-in/HT206481 https://support.apple.com/en-in/HT206481 ... If you use DropBox app, you are obviously going to prefer DropBox cloud service over iCloud - that not only means a potential loss of revenue in the future but also the fact that they aren't tied into Apple ecosystem and can abandon it. Additionally, anyone not using the Files app also denies Apple the means to collect file metadata which are valuable to profile you.
- vmception 5y ago
  So you would be fine if a separate "Apple Apps Inc" was required by law to exist, and it had created the Files app instead, and it had the same dropbox integration and it was therefore in the accurate metadata, and it surfaced higher than the dropbox app anyway? Congratulations, we did it guys.
  - zaptheimpaler 5y ago
    Makes no sense. The whole point is they manually boosted Files to make it surface higher. If it surfaces higher under a level playing field, that is fine.
    - vmception 5y ago
      “Makes no sense, makes sense” so at least you would be fine, thanks, I wonder what the person I replied to thinks we’re doing it guys!
- mhh__ 5y ago
  Speaking of anti-trust, surely Apple must be getting close to (or beyond) what Microsoft were? Total control over their users, hidden APIs, apparently biased store, rentseeking etc. My £0.02 is that if they aren't already over the line the line should be nudged against their favour.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
    They're nothing like Microsoft was; Windows was something like 97% of all PCs. I'm not aware of Apple having more than 50% of any market. You can't abuse a monopoly that you don't have. (Of course, collusion/duopoly and saying that they dominate some smaller market, say paid mobile apps, are valid arguments, but nothing like as cut-and-dry as peak MS).
    - xmprt 5y ago
      Anti-trust is more than just being a monopoly. You can have a 1% market share and still be caught up in an anti-trust case.
    - pg_bot 5y ago
      They have more than 50% of the US smartphone market.
    - ksec 5y ago
      >They're nothing like Microsoft was Anti-Trust is about Power. Not market share. I dont know how others that were there in the 90s thick about it. But I do think Apple today is way more powerful than Microsoft in the 90s. Your PC in the 90s were not the access point of anything in the society other than some games or spreadsheets. Not to mention most of the population dont even have a PC. PC in terms of reach to population is basically a niche. These days it is hard to argue that. Excluding child and grannies US literally has 100% smartphone ownership. And smartphone ( or more like a pocket personal computer ) is our access point for a lot of thing in our society, and increasingly for almost everything. And it has to go through App Store where Apple is the judge, jury and executioner.
judge2020 5y ago
> “We are removing the manual boost and the search results should be more relevant now,” wrote Apple app search lead Debankur Naskar, after the company was confronted by Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney over Apple’s Files app showing up first when searching for Dropbox. “Dropbox wasn’t even visible on the first page [of search results],” Sweeney wrote.
- judge2020 5y ago
  See the following image for the full email chain, by the way: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/20805886-epic-v-apple-internal-email-chain-re-tim-sweeney-and-app-store-search https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/20805886-epic-v-appl... Forwarded message from Tim Sweeney (not part of future conversations): - In fact, Dropbox wasn't even visible on the first page. Google bought the top search result, and Apple put its Files app ahead of Dropbox in line. For the search: "Dropbox". Matt Fischer (VP App Store): - Also, who green lit putting the Files app above Dropbox in organic search results? I didn't know we did that, and I don't think we should. Debankur Naskar (App Store Search and Recommendations product management): - I think the Files app was manually boosted on the top for the query "Dropbox" during last WWDC. We are removing the manual boost and the search results should be more relevant now (change will take effect in a couple of hours). Also, FYI, the quality of some of the keywords in our 1st party apps are not very relevant and hence search results are getting impacted. We are auditing those and will clean them up. Matt Fischer: - Debankur - I wasn't aware that we were boosting the Files app and would like to know how that happened and who requested it. In the future, I want any similar requests to come to me for review/approval.
webmobdev 5y ago
Developers of ios (and soon macOS) platform have no one to blame but themselves for situations like this. Alarm bells should have been raised among us developers when Apple suddenly asked everyone to shell out $99 for the "privilege" of making an app available on the "App Store", and treated it as something normal. And later, more so, when Apple demanded a percentage cut too on every sale you make from your app. It is like everyone chose to forget that it is we developers who bring additional value to any platform we support, and we readily allowed ourselves to be treated like fools by Apple (and others). (I guess this is what hapens when we forget our history in this industry - the Windows mobile platform died because it didn't find acceptance among developers. Mobile platforms like Sailfish OS / Tizen OS / webOS today all struggle because they can't attract developers to their platform. And yet, we now allow the dominating platforms to exploit and treat us with disdain - aren't we truly idiots?) We should never have condoned this totally unnecessary and greedy "Apple Tax" practice as it harms both us developers and consumers - our customers are forced to pay more, and we lose money too in the process! I urge all macOS / ios developers to see the warning signs. It is still not too late - please boycott and remove all your apps from the app store and stop paying Apple any money. No one should have to pay Apple even for signing apps - if they want it, we should have the freedom to get it signed by any CA. (Remember, open source software has essentially been already nearly killed on ios platforms because of this unnecessary annual fee bullshit. And Apple wants that because it knows free open source software is detrimental to making money from its App Store). We played a huge role in the success of Windows, Android and ios - and now, in their arrogance if they want to change the rules to screw us, all of us really need to organise and fight back. I fear we are at that defining moment now where if we do not do anything, this is going to become an accepted norm and standard practice. And this is going to be hugely detrimental to us, in the long run, as both developers and consumers.
- mensetmanusman 5y ago
  Who do you think could organize a guild of the app developers?
  - webmobdev 5y ago
    - To begin with existing open source foundations and activists. The Free Software Foundation easily comes to mind. - In a democracy, political parties - they already are behind most unions and merchant / business associations and even major non-profits. (Approaching a political party may be controversial for some, but remember that political parties are also an institution in a democracy. And we will need political will and legislative backing to assert some of our rights. And it doesn't matter if there are more than one such organisations - there is no one size fits all solution for everyone).
donmcronald 5y ago
> > the Files app had a Dropbox integration, so Apple put “Dropbox” into the app’s metadata, and it was automatically ranked higher for “Dropbox” searches as a result. I can smell the bullshit from here and I don't live in the US. Lol.
- samatman 5y ago
  I'm glad you quoted this because it's actually plausible. It's a given that Files is downloaded much more often than Dropbox: it's integrated with the rest of the iOS ecosystem and iCloud, I'm confident there are many more iPhone users with the Files app than with the Dropbox app. If they added a "Dropbox" metadata, that would organically return it on a search for "Dropbox", and being popular (and well rated presumably?) might float it up above the actual app named Dropbox. Although it bugs me in general that an App Store search for an exact name doesn't always put the app with that exact name first, app search has worked that way for awhile, and it isn't implausible to me that this specific thing happened as described.
  - bryan0 5y ago
    Apple’s statement is pretty clearly corporate BS because the internal email makes it clear the primary reason for the biased search results was the “manual boost” > “We are removing the manual boost and the search results should be more relevant now,” wrote Apple app search lead Debankur Naskar
  - saagarjha 5y ago
    > It's a given that Files is downloaded much more often than Dropbox I doubt it, given that it ships with iOS.
codesternews 5y ago
Apple has made life of small developers hard. Mac software and app industry has died. Even after notarising apps they show malicious popup to users. Same practices has adapted by apple like search ad etc etc. They make competing services and steal ideas of developers and those app dies. For eg screen time for Moments app. They have unfair advantage and small developers could not complete. Only handful of indie developers making money from appstore and rest apps have died. They killed the industry.
- Rubayo 5y ago
  Yet given all this, for a substantial cohort of customers, the Apple brand is still bought as a badge of "coolness".
  - nobodyknowsyoda 5y ago
    Slightly off topic, but I do love the translucent terminal on the Mac. It is very cool
    - rovr138 5y ago
      Pretty sure gnome-terminal and terminator both have this.
      - testific8 5y ago
        Quite a number of terminal emulators have this feature. Alacritty and xfce4 terminal as well.
      - edgyquant 5y ago
        As far as I know pretty much every Linux terminal emulator has an opacity setting so long as you have a compositor installed
      - keyb0ardninja 5y ago
        And konsole (And pretty much every Linux terminal)
wly_cdgr 5y ago
Platform owner gives its own content preferential treatment?? Incredible
neonate 5y ago
https://archive.is/JoZkj https://archive.is/JoZkj
musicale 5y ago
Apple PR: > we do not advantage our apps over those of any developer or competitor Apple employee Debankur Naskar: > I think the Files app was manually boosted ... during last WWDC. We are removing the manual boost So which of these is true? Or is PR technically correct because they do not currently "advantage" their apps?
- arthurcolle 5y ago
  Their use of ‘advantage’ as a word reminds me of this classic Calvin & Hobbes strip. https://www.languagetrainers.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/calvinverbing.jpg https://www.languagetrainers.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/201... Looks like the 80s/90s kids that were brought up on these skits are finally taking over!
  - etaioinshrdlu 5y ago
    You can also "noun" verbs. One I hear in SV is "an ask". I find myself a bit peeved by it but I don't know why.
    - mercer 5y ago
      Much as I tend to be in favor of language evolving, I react almost viscerally to 'compute' as a noun. It is a major irk.
      - etaioinshrdlu 5y ago
        Wait a minute, did you just "noun" irk? I'm irked.
        evv 5y ago
        Wait a minute, did you just "verb" noun? I'm adjectived
        toxik 5y ago
musicale 5y ago
I tend to think of Files as less like Dropbox and more like the macOS Finder. You can actually browse Dropbox in Files, much as you can in the Finder, although there are some limitations. https://help.dropbox.com/installs-integrations/mobile/ios-files-app https://help.dropbox.com/installs-integrations/mobile/ios-fi...
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- rchaud 5y ago
  I never had to go to the Mac App Store to download Finder though.
  - dawnerd 5y ago
    Oddly I had to on my new iPad Pro. Wasn’t there.
    - thies226j 5y ago
      iPad != Mac
      - dawnerd 5y ago
        Huge face palm!
  - simondotau 5y ago
    If you did have to download Finder from the Mac App Store, would that turn Finder into a competitor of Dropbox?
    - DaiPlusPlus 5y ago
      Only if it means that Finder doesn’t have any special system access privileges - or that Dropbox can do everything Finder can - so Finder and Dropbox would be on equal-footing.
MiguelX413 5y ago
Shocker
nexuist 5y ago
Does anyone else just…not care? Files is a system app like Windows Explorer. It’s not meant to “compete” with anything. Does anyone think Control Panel competes with Android’s Settings app? iCloud Drive is a cloud storage competitor that Files works well with, but Files also supports Dropbox and Google Drive and many other storage competitors (anyone who wants to implement the API gets to be in Files). Also, the argument that Files is somehow replacing Dropbox doesn’t even make sense because you need to have the Dropbox app installed in order to connect Files to Dropbox. It’s not a standalone integration, it depends on third party apps providing the correct extension to work correctly. It’s surprising, to me at least, that everyone accepted Files coming packaged with every new iPhone and iPad sold, but for some reason its position in the App Store is a controversial topic? How many people even delete Files and search for it again? Not to mention that installing system apps from the App Store doesn’t even install anything, because the app was never removed, just hidden from Springboard.
- jonplackett 5y ago
  Care about the principle not the individual case.
  - hahahasure 5y ago
    Ha ha We must apologize for the sins of Apple. We always apologize.
- tyingq 5y ago
  I care that searching for "Dropbox" doesn't give you "Dropbox" in the first page of results, because of some knob Apple is able to turn any time they want.
  - lilyball 5y ago
    When a “page” of search results consists of 1 ad and 1 result, it’s really not very meaningful to talk about “pages”.
    - 5y ago
helaoban 5y ago
> While Apple didn’t challenge the idea that Files was unfairly ranked over Dropbox, the company says the reality was a simple mistake: the Files app had a Dropbox integration, so Apple put “Dropbox” into the app’s metadata, and it was automatically ranked higher for “Dropbox” searches as a result. This seems to be the key argument, I've not seen this addressed anywhere. The Files app doesn't compete with Dropbox, if anything it promotes an interface to Dropbox.
- paulryanrogers 5y ago
  Even so, why would their ranking favor a metadata match (whose app name doesn't match) over an exact app name match?
  - xwolfi 5y ago
    In IT, there are edge cases, QA misses, design mistakes and ofc the almighty programming bug. Pick.
    - paulryanrogers 5y ago
      Possibly. Could be negligence if they're not already testing for such cases. Or could be they boosted their own app intentionally.
      - simondotau 5y ago
        I’m curious, what hypothetical scenario do you imagine where Apple got any real world benefit from having files appear above Dropbox when searching for “dropbox”? Setting aside whether Files is a competitor (which I’m honestly not sure it is) I would imagine that at least 99% of the time, a person searching for a specific product by name isn’t in a mind space to be conquered by a competitor.
        xmprt 5y ago
        You asked for a hypothetical scenario so I'll give you one. User starts using Files instead of Dropbox to view their file that are stored in the cloud on Dropbox. Apple wants to drive up iCloud usage so they add a one time prompt into their Files app asking if users want to upgrade their iCloud storage. It's not a massive deal on it's own but this would take users away from Dropbox and Dropbox has no recourse to convince the user otherwise because users are accessing Dropbox through Files (since that's the #1 ranked app they downloaded instead of Dropbox).
procombo 5y ago
I own one of everything, and yet I still haven't found what I want. Every day I'm reminded of my lack of options. This should scare Apple and Google.
canada2us 5y ago
Does Google do the same? From my experience, Google products almost rank top in the search results without Google in the keywords. Search "News", "Drive", "Calendar", et al. In Google chrome, all bookmarks are under auto-completed keywords in the address bar.
- crazygringo 5y ago
  No. If you Google "Dropbox" it doesn't return Google Drive as the top result. And if you Google "Firefox" it doesn't return Chrome at the top. Now it might sometimes show ads for competitors, but the actual organic search results show what you're actually looking for.
blondin 5y ago
just slightly off-topic. i have not been able to find a way to give ratings or review iOS stock apps on the app store. am i missing something or we just can't rate the stock iOS apps?
birthday 5y ago
Just another reason we need decentralization.
rock_artist 5y ago
This is an issue which is part of the problem. Whether it's cool or not, Product placement is very common practice in retail. Also Spotify has similar tools to promote music. The problem always comes back to the main issue, You got a platform where you have only one monopolistic way of use. While people can complaint about Google. you're allowed to install you apps. only if you'd like to use Google's services (location, In-App-Purchase, etc) you need to use the Google Play. With Apple not only I need to pay 99$ just to put an app with one year certificate (signed by Apple) on my device. (including the use of some basic OS APIs, aka "entitlements" not allowed without paid account).
yhoneycomb 5y ago
I'm sure nobody here will believe me, but somewhere around Oct-Dec of last year Apple literally replaced my Google translate app with their own translate app. Like it was literally in the same spot as my Google Translate app had been. I thought it was weird, but at first just chalked it up to Google changing the design. Only after I realized image translating was gone did I investigate more and realize it wasn't Google Translate after all.

541 points by what_ever 5y ago

These are exactly the kinds of issues antitrust legislation needs to be updated to handle. I have no issue with a company running a store and selling its own products within, but it has to provide a level playing field. It's good they fixed it -- that the VP in question didn't know it had been done and then nixed it -- but this shouldn't even be legal in the first place.

Railsify 5y ago
Would that extend to grocery stores, where would you force walmart to put their own brands?
- donmcronald 5y ago
  > Would that extend to grocery stores, where would you force walmart to put their own brands? It's not a fair comparison if you're at a physical store since things are too different for an analogy. However, if I'm searching on their website and type in a specific brand so I can find which aisle it's in I would expect to get the brand I searched for, not a Great Value knockoff.
  - Spivak 5y ago
    I mean that is basically how I find the store brand all the time. Look for the brand name thing I know by heart because the logo has been seared into my brain since birth and then go from there.
- mikestew 5y ago
  You mean the grocery stores that have many competitors who also sell groceries? How would you extend that analogy to the iOS App Store, which has no competitors whatsoever who sell iOS apps?
  - imNotTheProb 5y ago
    Web Apps? Apple users are used to lower quality products, making them visit a website should be no big deal.
  - gruez 5y ago
    >You mean the grocery stores that have many competitors who also sell groceries? google? >How would you extend that analogy to the iOS App Store, which has no competitors whatsoever who sell iOS apps? By that logic costco has no competitors whatsoever that sell kirkland signature products.
    - passivate 5y ago
      We need to re-evaluate what "rights" mean in a digital age. Apple should not have a monopoly on digital stores on iOS. "Apple made it so they can do anything they want. Take it or leave it" - is not an acceptable position (in my opinion). >By that logic costco has no competitors whatsoever that sell kirkland signature products. Can you explain how you came to that conclusion and what 'that logic' is?
      - gruez 5y ago
        >Can you explain how you came to that conclusion and what 'that logic' is? Because the parent poster was applying arbitrary restriction on it (apps, but only ios) to make a point. I replied with the equivalent example for costco (grocery store products, but only kirkland signature).
        ksec 5y ago
        Because you have both Costco AND Walmart Stores selling their own brand within the same state which allows heavy Store competition within the State along with dozen of others Stores? The iOS state has 65% of users and 75% of App spending and it has one Store. You can perfectly have your own retail brand when there are plenty of competition within the market. If you argue there is still another state with diverse choices, you are either hit with a Duopoly argument, or a monopolistic power argument where iOS have too much power within market economy. People have been using these over simplify analogy with Xbox and Retail and there are not even the same. Either way, there should be no denying there is something wrong with the way things are currently being handled.
- passivate 5y ago
  A grocery store has limited storage space, a limited amount of advertising space, limited staff, etc, etc. The amount of upkeep is also very different compared to a digital store. I think its not really an apt point for comparison.
- crazygringo 5y ago
  I don't see any uneven playing field when it comes to grocery stores. The national brands and store brands are always next to each other on the same shelf. So there isn't any problem that needs solving. Also brands already pay for promotional positioning (like the ends of aisles), and when the store puts its own brands in those spots it loses out on those payments, and so is effectively paying equally. So the field doesn't need any evening out there. If grocery stores ever started putting the name-brand stuff in a back room that took twice as long to get to, then it might become an issue, but as of right now it's just not.
  - singlow 5y ago
    The brand names pay for their spot, so its moot. There is no meritocracy in grocery store product placement. For the most part the grocery store doesn't have a formula to decide where to put most things based on sales data. If you sell a cereal or soda or fancy mustard and you want premium shelf height, just pay extra for it. The store basically rents the shelf space out.
    - MiscIdeaMaker99 5y ago
      This is absolutely true in the USA. Frito Lay has done this for years, paying supermarkets for more and more shelf space, while the smaller, regional competitors were left with less and less room to sell. This happened to my father in the 1980s when he owned a distributorship for a regional potato chip company here in the Midwest United States.
  - bombcar 5y ago
    You don’t see the brands they don’t carry at all. Only the brands they carry get displayed and they often make more money on the name brands anyway.
    - hnick 5y ago
      I've heard from a friend (in Australia) if you don't frequently buy placement you get bumped, and buying placement can be a losing proposition. They raise the price to squeeze all margin so it's just on the edge of making it affordable. You have to say yes to losing money during the promotion ("you'll make it up with brand awareness!") to claw it back by staying on the shelves in between. Otherwise another brand, or sometimes a house brand, takes your place.
- heavyset_go 5y ago
  I can go across the street to a dozen different stores. If I travel a little further, I can go to even more stores. No matter where I go, with Apple and Google, I'm have to use their payment systems and give each of them a 30% cut of my apps' revenue. They both have a duopoly in the mobile operating systems market and the mobile app distribution market, and Apple has the majority of the market share in both markets in the US.
  - judge2020 5y ago
    The difference is that Walmart didn't build the street or the city and doesn't have a right to take a cut of sales on other people's property. A more apt comparison would be the third-party hotels that, if they want to use some of Disney's 25,000 acres in Florida[0], literally have to lease the land from Disney and Disney can impose terms like a cut of sales (or a forced Disney merchandise store within the hotel). iOS is like the consumer choosing to live exclusively within the confines of Disney's property (with the difference being that, once you 'leave' iOS, you can't bring stuff back into the city - honestly this is the digital equivalent of what Walt Disney wanted with E.P.C.O.T.[1]). 0: https://dpep.disney.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/fact_sheet_walt_disney_world_resort_2020_Q4.pdf#page=7 https://dpep.disney.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/fact_sheet... 1: https://youtu.be/tKYEXjMlKKQ https://youtu.be/tKYEXjMlKKQ
    - shkkmo 5y ago
      You actually OWN your device and should have the right to do what you please with it. This analogy is poor.
    - vel0city 5y ago
      There are tons of resorts and hotels completely unrelated to Disney that exist right at the gates of Disnyworld that offer shuttles. There are even more resorts in Kissimmee that are just a short drive away. As someone who has been to Disneyworld over a dozen times and never once stayed in a Disney resort, there are a ton of places to stay and still visit Disneyworld.
      - 5y ago
- vel0city 5y ago
  It costs me less money travel-wise to go to a non-Walmart grocery store. Within the same cost comparison of traveling, I've got about four different brands of groceries all within a similar price range. If I had an iPhone, it would be a several hundred dollar proposal (at least!) to shop at a competing store.
GeekyBear 5y ago
>selling its own products The Files app is bundled with the OS, but not installed by default. It's not exactly "sold" as it's free and isn't ad supported either. It's hard to find a profit motive here. Google, on the other hand, has long allowed you to bid on your competitor's product name so you will show up ahead of them in the search results. They also have a history of scraping other people's content and then more highly rating that scraped content on their own sites in their search engine. It's easy to find a profit motive there.
- netizen-936824 5y ago
  The profit motive is keeping users in their ecosystem
- webmobdev 5y ago
  > It's hard to find a profit motive here. Promoting the use of iCloud - when your space runs out, you will consider paying for it.
  - GeekyBear 5y ago
    >Promoting the use of iCloud The Files app transfers files back and forth between SMB shares, local flash drives, and any of the major cloud services. iCloud is not required at all. Try again.
    - webmobdev 5y ago
      If you are ignorant about it, iCloud support is integrated into the Files App and is the most promoted on its support documents too - https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203052 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203052 and https://support.apple.com/en-in/HT206481 https://support.apple.com/en-in/HT206481 ... If you use DropBox app, you are obviously going to prefer DropBox cloud service over iCloud - that not only means a potential loss of revenue in the future but also the fact that they aren't tied into Apple ecosystem and can abandon it. Additionally, anyone not using the Files app also denies Apple the means to collect file metadata which are valuable to profile you.
vmception 5y ago
So you would be fine if a separate "Apple Apps Inc" was required by law to exist, and it had created the Files app instead, and it had the same dropbox integration and it was therefore in the accurate metadata, and it surfaced higher than the dropbox app anyway? Congratulations, we did it guys.
- zaptheimpaler 5y ago
  Makes no sense. The whole point is they manually boosted Files to make it surface higher. If it surfaces higher under a level playing field, that is fine.
  - vmception 5y ago
    “Makes no sense, makes sense” so at least you would be fine, thanks, I wonder what the person I replied to thinks we’re doing it guys!
mhh__ 5y ago
Speaking of anti-trust, surely Apple must be getting close to (or beyond) what Microsoft were? Total control over their users, hidden APIs, apparently biased store, rentseeking etc. My £0.02 is that if they aren't already over the line the line should be nudged against their favour.
- yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
  They're nothing like Microsoft was; Windows was something like 97% of all PCs. I'm not aware of Apple having more than 50% of any market. You can't abuse a monopoly that you don't have. (Of course, collusion/duopoly and saying that they dominate some smaller market, say paid mobile apps, are valid arguments, but nothing like as cut-and-dry as peak MS).
  - xmprt 5y ago
    Anti-trust is more than just being a monopoly. You can have a 1% market share and still be caught up in an anti-trust case.
  - pg_bot 5y ago
    They have more than 50% of the US smartphone market.
  - ksec 5y ago
    >They're nothing like Microsoft was Anti-Trust is about Power. Not market share. I dont know how others that were there in the 90s thick about it. But I do think Apple today is way more powerful than Microsoft in the 90s. Your PC in the 90s were not the access point of anything in the society other than some games or spreadsheets. Not to mention most of the population dont even have a PC. PC in terms of reach to population is basically a niche. These days it is hard to argue that. Excluding child and grannies US literally has 100% smartphone ownership. And smartphone ( or more like a pocket personal computer ) is our access point for a lot of thing in our society, and increasingly for almost everything. And it has to go through App Store where Apple is the judge, jury and executioner.

judge2020 5y ago

> “We are removing the manual boost and the search results should be more relevant now,” wrote Apple app search lead Debankur Naskar, after the company was confronted by Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney over Apple’s Files app showing up first when searching for Dropbox. “Dropbox wasn’t even visible on the first page [of search results],” Sweeney wrote.

judge2020 5y ago
See the following image for the full email chain, by the way: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/20805886-epic-v-apple-internal-email-chain-re-tim-sweeney-and-app-store-search https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/20805886-epic-v-appl... Forwarded message from Tim Sweeney (not part of future conversations): - In fact, Dropbox wasn't even visible on the first page. Google bought the top search result, and Apple put its Files app ahead of Dropbox in line. For the search: "Dropbox". Matt Fischer (VP App Store): - Also, who green lit putting the Files app above Dropbox in organic search results? I didn't know we did that, and I don't think we should. Debankur Naskar (App Store Search and Recommendations product management): - I think the Files app was manually boosted on the top for the query "Dropbox" during last WWDC. We are removing the manual boost and the search results should be more relevant now (change will take effect in a couple of hours). Also, FYI, the quality of some of the keywords in our 1st party apps are not very relevant and hence search results are getting impacted. We are auditing those and will clean them up. Matt Fischer: - Debankur - I wasn't aware that we were boosting the Files app and would like to know how that happened and who requested it. In the future, I want any similar requests to come to me for review/approval.

webmobdev 5y ago

Developers of ios (and soon macOS) platform have no one to blame but themselves for situations like this. Alarm bells should have been raised among us developers when Apple suddenly asked everyone to shell out $99 for the "privilege" of making an app available on the "App Store", and treated it as something normal. And later, more so, when Apple demanded a percentage cut too on every sale you make from your app. It is like everyone chose to forget that it is we developers who bring additional value to any platform we support, and we readily allowed ourselves to be treated like fools by Apple (and others). (I guess this is what hapens when we forget our history in this industry - the Windows mobile platform died because it didn't find acceptance among developers. Mobile platforms like Sailfish OS / Tizen OS / webOS today all struggle because they can't attract developers to their platform. And yet, we now allow the dominating platforms to exploit and treat us with disdain - aren't we truly idiots?) We should never have condoned this totally unnecessary and greedy "Apple Tax" practice as it harms both us developers and consumers - our customers are forced to pay more, and we lose money too in the process! I urge all macOS / ios developers to see the warning signs. It is still not too late - please boycott and remove all your apps from the app store and stop paying Apple any money. No one should have to pay Apple even for signing apps - if they want it, we should have the freedom to get it signed by any CA. (Remember, open source software has essentially been already nearly killed on ios platforms because of this unnecessary annual fee bullshit. And Apple wants that because it knows free open source software is detrimental to making money from its App Store). We played a huge role in the success of Windows, Android and ios - and now, in their arrogance if they want to change the rules to screw us, all of us really need to organise and fight back. I fear we are at that defining moment now where if we do not do anything, this is going to become an accepted norm and standard practice. And this is going to be hugely detrimental to us, in the long run, as both developers and consumers.

mensetmanusman 5y ago
Who do you think could organize a guild of the app developers?
- webmobdev 5y ago
  - To begin with existing open source foundations and activists. The Free Software Foundation easily comes to mind. - In a democracy, political parties - they already are behind most unions and merchant / business associations and even major non-profits. (Approaching a political party may be controversial for some, but remember that political parties are also an institution in a democracy. And we will need political will and legislative backing to assert some of our rights. And it doesn't matter if there are more than one such organisations - there is no one size fits all solution for everyone).

donmcronald 5y ago

> > the Files app had a Dropbox integration, so Apple put “Dropbox” into the app’s metadata, and it was automatically ranked higher for “Dropbox” searches as a result. I can smell the bullshit from here and I don't live in the US. Lol.

samatman 5y ago
I'm glad you quoted this because it's actually plausible. It's a given that Files is downloaded much more often than Dropbox: it's integrated with the rest of the iOS ecosystem and iCloud, I'm confident there are many more iPhone users with the Files app than with the Dropbox app. If they added a "Dropbox" metadata, that would organically return it on a search for "Dropbox", and being popular (and well rated presumably?) might float it up above the actual app named Dropbox. Although it bugs me in general that an App Store search for an exact name doesn't always put the app with that exact name first, app search has worked that way for awhile, and it isn't implausible to me that this specific thing happened as described.
- bryan0 5y ago
  Apple’s statement is pretty clearly corporate BS because the internal email makes it clear the primary reason for the biased search results was the “manual boost” > “We are removing the manual boost and the search results should be more relevant now,” wrote Apple app search lead Debankur Naskar
- saagarjha 5y ago
  > It's a given that Files is downloaded much more often than Dropbox I doubt it, given that it ships with iOS.

codesternews 5y ago

Apple has made life of small developers hard. Mac software and app industry has died. Even after notarising apps they show malicious popup to users. Same practices has adapted by apple like search ad etc etc. They make competing services and steal ideas of developers and those app dies. For eg screen time for Moments app. They have unfair advantage and small developers could not complete. Only handful of indie developers making money from appstore and rest apps have died. They killed the industry.

Rubayo 5y ago
Yet given all this, for a substantial cohort of customers, the Apple brand is still bought as a badge of "coolness".
- nobodyknowsyoda 5y ago
  Slightly off topic, but I do love the translucent terminal on the Mac. It is very cool
  - rovr138 5y ago
    Pretty sure gnome-terminal and terminator both have this.
    - testific8 5y ago
      Quite a number of terminal emulators have this feature. Alacritty and xfce4 terminal as well.
    - edgyquant 5y ago
      As far as I know pretty much every Linux terminal emulator has an opacity setting so long as you have a compositor installed
    - keyb0ardninja 5y ago
      And konsole (And pretty much every Linux terminal)

wly_cdgr 5y ago

Platform owner gives its own content preferential treatment?? Incredible

neonate 5y ago

https://archive.is/JoZkj https://archive.is/JoZkj

musicale 5y ago

Apple PR: > we do not advantage our apps over those of any developer or competitor Apple employee Debankur Naskar: > I think the Files app was manually boosted ... during last WWDC. We are removing the manual boost So which of these is true? Or is PR technically correct because they do not currently "advantage" their apps?

arthurcolle 5y ago
Their use of ‘advantage’ as a word reminds me of this classic Calvin & Hobbes strip. https://www.languagetrainers.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/calvinverbing.jpg https://www.languagetrainers.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/201... Looks like the 80s/90s kids that were brought up on these skits are finally taking over!
- etaioinshrdlu 5y ago
  You can also "noun" verbs. One I hear in SV is "an ask". I find myself a bit peeved by it but I don't know why.
  - mercer 5y ago
    Much as I tend to be in favor of language evolving, I react almost viscerally to 'compute' as a noun. It is a major irk.
    - etaioinshrdlu 5y ago
      Wait a minute, did you just "noun" irk? I'm irked.
      - evv 5y ago
        Wait a minute, did you just "verb" noun? I'm adjectived
        toxik 5y ago

musicale 5y ago

I tend to think of Files as less like Dropbox and more like the macOS Finder. You can actually browse Dropbox in Files, much as you can in the Finder, although there are some limitations. https://help.dropbox.com/installs-integrations/mobile/ios-files-app https://help.dropbox.com/installs-integrations/mobile/ios-fi...

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
rchaud 5y ago
I never had to go to the Mac App Store to download Finder though.
- dawnerd 5y ago
  Oddly I had to on my new iPad Pro. Wasn’t there.
  - thies226j 5y ago
    iPad != Mac
    - dawnerd 5y ago
      Huge face palm!
- simondotau 5y ago
  If you did have to download Finder from the Mac App Store, would that turn Finder into a competitor of Dropbox?
  - DaiPlusPlus 5y ago
    Only if it means that Finder doesn’t have any special system access privileges - or that Dropbox can do everything Finder can - so Finder and Dropbox would be on equal-footing.

MiguelX413 5y ago

Shocker

nexuist 5y ago

Does anyone else just…not care? Files is a system app like Windows Explorer. It’s not meant to “compete” with anything. Does anyone think Control Panel competes with Android’s Settings app? iCloud Drive is a cloud storage competitor that Files works well with, but Files also supports Dropbox and Google Drive and many other storage competitors (anyone who wants to implement the API gets to be in Files). Also, the argument that Files is somehow replacing Dropbox doesn’t even make sense because you need to have the Dropbox app installed in order to connect Files to Dropbox. It’s not a standalone integration, it depends on third party apps providing the correct extension to work correctly. It’s surprising, to me at least, that everyone accepted Files coming packaged with every new iPhone and iPad sold, but for some reason its position in the App Store is a controversial topic? How many people even delete Files and search for it again? Not to mention that installing system apps from the App Store doesn’t even install anything, because the app was never removed, just hidden from Springboard.

jonplackett 5y ago
Care about the principle not the individual case.
- hahahasure 5y ago
  Ha ha We must apologize for the sins of Apple. We always apologize.
tyingq 5y ago
I care that searching for "Dropbox" doesn't give you "Dropbox" in the first page of results, because of some knob Apple is able to turn any time they want.
- lilyball 5y ago
  When a “page” of search results consists of 1 ad and 1 result, it’s really not very meaningful to talk about “pages”.
  - 5y ago

helaoban 5y ago

> While Apple didn’t challenge the idea that Files was unfairly ranked over Dropbox, the company says the reality was a simple mistake: the Files app had a Dropbox integration, so Apple put “Dropbox” into the app’s metadata, and it was automatically ranked higher for “Dropbox” searches as a result. This seems to be the key argument, I've not seen this addressed anywhere. The Files app doesn't compete with Dropbox, if anything it promotes an interface to Dropbox.

paulryanrogers 5y ago
Even so, why would their ranking favor a metadata match (whose app name doesn't match) over an exact app name match?
- xwolfi 5y ago
  In IT, there are edge cases, QA misses, design mistakes and ofc the almighty programming bug. Pick.
  - paulryanrogers 5y ago
    Possibly. Could be negligence if they're not already testing for such cases. Or could be they boosted their own app intentionally.
    - simondotau 5y ago
      I’m curious, what hypothetical scenario do you imagine where Apple got any real world benefit from having files appear above Dropbox when searching for “dropbox”? Setting aside whether Files is a competitor (which I’m honestly not sure it is) I would imagine that at least 99% of the time, a person searching for a specific product by name isn’t in a mind space to be conquered by a competitor.
      - xmprt 5y ago
        You asked for a hypothetical scenario so I'll give you one. User starts using Files instead of Dropbox to view their file that are stored in the cloud on Dropbox. Apple wants to drive up iCloud usage so they add a one time prompt into their Files app asking if users want to upgrade their iCloud storage. It's not a massive deal on it's own but this would take users away from Dropbox and Dropbox has no recourse to convince the user otherwise because users are accessing Dropbox through Files (since that's the #1 ranked app they downloaded instead of Dropbox).

procombo 5y ago

I own one of everything, and yet I still haven't found what I want. Every day I'm reminded of my lack of options. This should scare Apple and Google.

canada2us 5y ago

Does Google do the same? From my experience, Google products almost rank top in the search results without Google in the keywords. Search "News", "Drive", "Calendar", et al. In Google chrome, all bookmarks are under auto-completed keywords in the address bar.

crazygringo 5y ago
No. If you Google "Dropbox" it doesn't return Google Drive as the top result. And if you Google "Firefox" it doesn't return Chrome at the top. Now it might sometimes show ads for competitors, but the actual organic search results show what you're actually looking for.

blondin 5y ago

just slightly off-topic. i have not been able to find a way to give ratings or review iOS stock apps on the app store. am i missing something or we just can't rate the stock iOS apps?

birthday 5y ago

Just another reason we need decentralization.

rock_artist 5y ago

This is an issue which is part of the problem. Whether it's cool or not, Product placement is very common practice in retail. Also Spotify has similar tools to promote music. The problem always comes back to the main issue, You got a platform where you have only one monopolistic way of use. While people can complaint about Google. you're allowed to install you apps. only if you'd like to use Google's services (location, In-App-Purchase, etc) you need to use the Google Play. With Apple not only I need to pay 99$ just to put an app with one year certificate (signed by Apple) on my device. (including the use of some basic OS APIs, aka "entitlements" not allowed without paid account).

yhoneycomb 5y ago

I'm sure nobody here will believe me, but somewhere around Oct-Dec of last year Apple literally replaced my Google translate app with their own translate app. Like it was literally in the same spot as my Google Translate app had been. I thought it was weird, but at first just chalked it up to Google changing the design. Only after I realized image translating was gone did I investigate more and realize it wasn't Google Translate after all.