3 ms·

You notice Epic never picks fights with XBox and Playstation stores, which have identical costs and monopolies over their products.

enos_feedler 5y ago
Yes because their fight is not grounded in principles but in bottom line.
cookingmyserver 5y ago
The key difference is the product. What a company has a monopoly over is important and is a factor in whether the government takes action and what kind of action they take. Heck, the government even enforces temporary monopolies of specific technologies to promote R&D. A video game console is marketed and used as a video game console by most people. Mobile phones and tablets are used as mobile general purpose computing devices. I know many people who only have mobile phones and tablets as their computer. This means everything they do online and in their cyber lives is through their phone. That means two companies have complete control of communications, banking, emergency alerts, voting information, dating/relationships, political discussions, job functions/searches, photo storage, shopping, education, entertainment, identification cards, health care, physical access credentials, schedules, location data, IoT device control, password managers, news, navigation/travel, religious apps, etc. If gaming consoles begin to be used for most of these things.. then maybe we should look at it as a monopoly that needs to be broken or regulated, but until then its apple and oranges.
- mullingitover 5y ago
  > This means everything they do online and in their cyber lives is through their phone You make a great case for an absolutely locked-down device, especially given that it's something that's bristling with microphones/cameras/accelerometers/GPS and logged into the most sensitive services in your life. The market agrees with this stance - Google offers sideloading, and vast armies of people are lining up to never use it. Apple's locked-down product is so successful with consumers that we're complaining about their monopoly power. You can buy a general-purpose computer for cheaper than a cell phone. The fact that people choose the locked-down pocket computer over the general-purpose device tells me that the locked-down experience is the one the mass market prefers. The people who I hear complaining about this aren't the regular users, they're the companies who aren't making the maximum profit they feel they're entitled to.
  - lern_too_spel 5y ago
    People who never buy a device they can install their own applications on tend not to be technologists and fall easily for marketing that is obviously disingenuous and intended to scare the general public away from software freedom.
    - mullingitover 5y ago
      Feels like a pretty big stretch to claim that only technologists use Android devices.
      - lern_too_spel 5y ago
        I didn't claim that. I said that technologists and people who are not easily influenced by marketing prefer Android devices.
  - SahAssar 5y ago
    > The people who I hear complaining about this aren't the regular users, they're the companies who aren't making the maximum profit they feel they're entitled to. The people I hear complaining about this are generally normal users who have given up. If I mention google's tracking or apple's walled garden they say that they dislike it, they would prefer something else but there is no other choice.
  - cookingmyserver 5y ago
    You can have a locked down and secure phone without a monopoly controlling your device. Apple is good at marketing security via security theater. Look at all the 0 days coming out. Hell the thing that probably embarrasses Apple the most about the Epic saga is that their justification for their 30% and not allowing sideloaded apps fell on its face when Epic's in app payment waltzed right through app review. I have a hard time buying that the same users we struggle to convince to not use the same 7 character long password for every site care about security. They don't even know what sideloading means. They don't care about a secure experience, they care about the native experience. Ya click the blue icon with a white triangle and press Get on whatever catches your fancy.
- pjmlp 5y ago
  Gaming consoles are also used like this as well, given the web browser, app store and media device that they are.
WorldMaker 5y ago
I think they are just going after the "easier" [1] prey first. Give it time and enough existing victories to use as precedent to fight the harder battles. XBox and Playstation will be next if they manage to win in appeal against Apple and win against Google. I think Microsoft is actually scared that they are on exactly that warpath with some of the things they've been saying about Fortnite and the big exceptions they seem to be making already in advance to Fortnite IAPs in the Microsoft Store, at least on the PC. Still remains to be seen if they plan to make similar gestures on the Xbox itself which for now is relatively a stronghold. [1] One of the obvious reasons it is "easier": Given the average age of a US Federal Judge they are far more likely to know and use a mobile phone than to know and use an Xbox or Playstation. So less to explain to Judges.

enos_feedler 5y ago

Yes because their fight is not grounded in principles but in bottom line.

cookingmyserver 5y ago

The key difference is the product. What a company has a monopoly over is important and is a factor in whether the government takes action and what kind of action they take. Heck, the government even enforces temporary monopolies of specific technologies to promote R&D. A video game console is marketed and used as a video game console by most people. Mobile phones and tablets are used as mobile general purpose computing devices. I know many people who only have mobile phones and tablets as their computer. This means everything they do online and in their cyber lives is through their phone. That means two companies have complete control of communications, banking, emergency alerts, voting information, dating/relationships, political discussions, job functions/searches, photo storage, shopping, education, entertainment, identification cards, health care, physical access credentials, schedules, location data, IoT device control, password managers, news, navigation/travel, religious apps, etc. If gaming consoles begin to be used for most of these things.. then maybe we should look at it as a monopoly that needs to be broken or regulated, but until then its apple and oranges.

mullingitover 5y ago
> This means everything they do online and in their cyber lives is through their phone You make a great case for an absolutely locked-down device, especially given that it's something that's bristling with microphones/cameras/accelerometers/GPS and logged into the most sensitive services in your life. The market agrees with this stance - Google offers sideloading, and vast armies of people are lining up to never use it. Apple's locked-down product is so successful with consumers that we're complaining about their monopoly power. You can buy a general-purpose computer for cheaper than a cell phone. The fact that people choose the locked-down pocket computer over the general-purpose device tells me that the locked-down experience is the one the mass market prefers. The people who I hear complaining about this aren't the regular users, they're the companies who aren't making the maximum profit they feel they're entitled to.
- lern_too_spel 5y ago
  People who never buy a device they can install their own applications on tend not to be technologists and fall easily for marketing that is obviously disingenuous and intended to scare the general public away from software freedom.
  - mullingitover 5y ago
    Feels like a pretty big stretch to claim that only technologists use Android devices.
    - lern_too_spel 5y ago
      I didn't claim that. I said that technologists and people who are not easily influenced by marketing prefer Android devices.
- SahAssar 5y ago
  > The people who I hear complaining about this aren't the regular users, they're the companies who aren't making the maximum profit they feel they're entitled to. The people I hear complaining about this are generally normal users who have given up. If I mention google's tracking or apple's walled garden they say that they dislike it, they would prefer something else but there is no other choice.
- cookingmyserver 5y ago
  You can have a locked down and secure phone without a monopoly controlling your device. Apple is good at marketing security via security theater. Look at all the 0 days coming out. Hell the thing that probably embarrasses Apple the most about the Epic saga is that their justification for their 30% and not allowing sideloaded apps fell on its face when Epic's in app payment waltzed right through app review. I have a hard time buying that the same users we struggle to convince to not use the same 7 character long password for every site care about security. They don't even know what sideloading means. They don't care about a secure experience, they care about the native experience. Ya click the blue icon with a white triangle and press Get on whatever catches your fancy.
pjmlp 5y ago
Gaming consoles are also used like this as well, given the web browser, app store and media device that they are.

WorldMaker 5y ago

I think they are just going after the "easier" [1] prey first. Give it time and enough existing victories to use as precedent to fight the harder battles. XBox and Playstation will be next if they manage to win in appeal against Apple and win against Google. I think Microsoft is actually scared that they are on exactly that warpath with some of the things they've been saying about Fortnite and the big exceptions they seem to be making already in advance to Fortnite IAPs in the Microsoft Store, at least on the PC. Still remains to be seen if they plan to make similar gestures on the Xbox itself which for now is relatively a stronghold. [1] One of the obvious reasons it is "easier": Given the average age of a US Federal Judge they are far more likely to know and use a mobile phone than to know and use an Xbox or Playstation. So less to explain to Judges.