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Can we stop pretending that Apple has the users best interest in mind? They just want to be the gatekeeper for lucrative applications/functions so they can char

Can we stop pretending that Apple has the users best interest in mind? They just want to be the gatekeeper for lucrative applications/functions so they can charge for it. That they somehow convinced apple users that it's somehow in their interest just shows how good their marketing is.

hyperpape 4y ago
Apple is a company, and it’s interested in making profits. Right now, its methods of making profits are slightly more aligned with what privacy conscious users desire than some other companies’, and that’s good. Apple absolutely needs to be checked in other ways—-the fact that it’s selling advertising while setting policies that hurt other advertisers stinks to high heaven. Let antitrust rake them over the coals for that.
- samatman 4y ago
  I don't agree with the second paragraph at all. Apple sets a restrictive and privacy-centric set of rules for advertisers, which it then follows. The fact that this is a problem for other advertising companies is an indictment of those companies and their bleak surveillance-enabling business model. Contrast this with the "use WebKit or go home" rule, which, like it or not, is favoring Apple's product over others. It's not like these advertising policies are "be headquartered in Cupertino", it's "if you want to track our users you must ask them first".
  - judge2020 4y ago
    Exactly. This is the popup for app store personalized ads[0], which is a full-screen popup that forces you to choose one or the other before you can access the app. It's super transparent and easy to decline the personalization. 0: https://videoweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Apple-permission-1.jpg https://videoweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Apple-permi...
    - majewsky 4y ago
      I wonder how many people actually register that there are two buttons at the bottom? It's very obvious to power-users like us since we're used to [ Accept ] Cancel at this point, but I can only imagine the borderless design for the secondary button originating from a dark pattern.
      - samatman 4y ago
        The entire iOS operating system works that way now. I dislike it. I think buttons should be buttons. But this isn't a special case, so unless you consider every instance of two buttons looking this way a dark pattern, this one isn't either.
        ayntkilove 4y ago
        Personally I find it subconsciously mirrors how we interact with classic HTML. A button posts, a link gets. As a step in the device setup, the button infers some form of enablement or configuration while a link is perfect for skipping.
        samatman 4y ago
        That's a reasonable perspective that I hadn't considered, and probably makes even more sense to people who barely used/use desktops in the first place. I still don't like it! But I also never had any trouble using it. Except Apple Music. Don't get me started.
        account42 4y ago
        > unless you consider every instance of two buttons looking this way a dark pattern The entire point of this pattern is to guide the user into a "default" option so using it for anything where the user is suppposed to provide informed consent is a dark pattern. The only places where it is not a dark pattern is where default choice actually aligns with the interest of the average user and I think that is hard to argue for a choice whose purpose is primarily to be allowed to better manipulate the user into spending more.
  - robonerd 4y ago
    It's easy to play by the rules when you're the one writing them.
    - shuckles 4y ago
      This is only a criticism if you enumerate the deficiencies with the rules you believe are only justified by self-interest.
      - emn13 4y ago
        The linked article lists a bunch of those. Most of that bullet-point list of required or conversely prohibited behaviors apply to Apple. And all of those are justified only by self-interest. Incidentally, that doesn't mean the alternative has to be the wild west - that's a false dichotomy. Controlling access is fine; it's simply not fine that it's the platform that holds exclusive sway, especially if the answer is "only if we're the ones providing that app."
        shuckles 4y ago
        This thread is about Apple’s privacy rules for App Store developers, and it’s not plainly obvious which items in the EU proposal enhance those protections at all, but the person I was responding to was insinuating that those protections have self-serving flaws.
        emn13 4y ago
        Is that distinction really helpful? The App Store has _rules_ some of which relate to user privacy, and some of which are in a grey area, and some of which don't relate to user privacy. Is needing to use Apple's payment provider a privacy protection? If you squint just right it might be. I'm sure there are some subset of app-store rules that taken by themselves, without the context of the other app-store rules are not self-serving. But that doesn't mean the rules overall are - and that's the reality that competitors need to deal with. Unlike apple, they can't change the restrictions they need to comply with. Both in actually immediate sense, and in a more meta process sense Apple has an unfair advantage they can and do exploit to extract tolls from the interactions between users and third-party providers. The fact that some of those protections also protect user privacy to the extent the user stays in Apple's walled garden is almost akin to blackmail: rather than trying to protect the user's privacy regardless, they've tied the user's privacy to the Apple ecosystem. It's all or nothing. Would be a shame if anything happened to that privacy of yours - are you sure you want to leave our walled garden? There aren't any other curated gardens (we made sure of that!), and your device unfortunately has no way to safely and conveniently opt in to risks worth taking, so it's our way, or the wild west out there... oh, and if you really want the wild west, we'll take your hardware too, you'll need to use android, and we use obvious UI patents to ensure it's inconvenient to switch a lot. It doesn't take an evil, machiavellian plan to end up in a situation in which the rules are so slanted in Apple's favor. All it takes are lots of tiny by themselves reasonable features - but steps that are always tested against Apple's interests, since those get a voice in the decision-making process, and rarely tested against third-party interests. It may well be that Apple was well intentioned in its privacy rules, and that those rules truly do protect the user - yet still have those rules stifle competition in a way that also harms the user down the line.
  - disgruntledphd2 4y ago
    Apple have repeatedly refused to confirm that their ad system is compliant with the ATT rules.
    - shuckles 4y ago
      Which ad system? Their programmatic ad inventory does not support tracking, as anyone who has access to developer ads can confirm.
      - itsoktocry 4y ago
        Forgive my ignorance, but how do we know that Apple doesn't track more data than they provide to developers?
        svnt 4y ago
        This is a great point. You could probably sum up Apple’s strategy as “capture the most lucrative market through initial quality/vanity, learn more about it than anyone else, then ring-fence it and protect it.” They aren’t a monopoly as long as you don’t consider income demographics.
        account42 4y ago
        I think is whole platform-holder strategy is where antitrust legislation needs a significant update. We must recognize the inherent platform lock-in and the effective monopoly over the platform even if there are other platforms that the users could theoretically switch to and regulate the platform holders accordingly. Anything else would be akin to ignoring a monopoly just because alternatives are available in a different town or country.
        novok 4y ago
        If you ever interview apple developers for other companies, or just inspect what is being sent to apple's servers constantly from their devices, you'll realize that apple is recording A LOT of very private info about their users. Apple is very much a 'private from everyone but apple' company, they smartly just don't talk about it out loud. For their high level apps like TV and such, have things like privacy review. But their security, activation and map parts do record a lot of info.
- moffkalast 4y ago
- kevando 4y ago
  100%
ksec 4y ago
>Can we stop pretending that Apple has the users best interest in mind? Well they did, at least during Steve Jobs's era.
- robonerd 4y ago
  Steve Jobs was an asshole who always put money first. But even if you disagree with that, he's been dead for more than a decade. It's time to move on.
  - astrange 4y ago
    Disney buying Pixar made Jobs more money than anything he ever did with computers.
    - ksec 4y ago
      And if anybody on HN actually read Apple's Annual report every single year before the iPod even came out, they would ( or should ) have know how Apple's money or profits works very differently from Steve to Tim Cook's era.
- squarefoot 4y ago
  You probably meant Wozniak, not Jobs.
  - microtherion 4y ago
    It's not that Wozniak wished users ill, but, for all his technical skill, there's little evidence that he had a particularly good understanding of what users wanted or needed — his post-Apple career is basically marked by flop after flop. Now, of course, it's all different, and his blockchain surely is going to revolutionize the world: efforce.io /s
- kmeisthax 4y ago
  Jobs didn't want apps on the iPhone at all and later insisted on having the App Store being the only way to distribute apps. The only reason why we attribute today's Apple as "greedy" and not Jobs-era Apple as such is because you have fonder memories of him. Also, Jobs was a master of the reality distortion field and could explain things easier than today's Apple could. But none of that changes whether or not locked down devices are anticompetitive or not, just whether or not Apple's own fans are complaining about it. Furthermore, there are pro-consumer justifications for Apple's uncompetitive behavior. In fact, that's Apple's whole defense against the antitrust inquiries it faces: the digital warlord's walled garden is for the protection of its serfs, and if the serfs don't like it they can surrender all their property and swear fealty to another digital warlord.
caramelcustard 4y ago
"They just want to be the gatekeeper for lucrative applications/functions so they can charge for it."...on the platforms that they have developed, invested in and are maintaining, which also don't hold a market majority around the world. "...they somehow convinced apple users..."...by making a product that fits Apple users' needs in a market that always had lots of competition, meaning that those who for whatever reason didn't want to use Apple products could always pick anything else.
- Closi 4y ago
  You don’t have to be the market majority for your actions to be anti-competitive.
  - caramelcustard 4y ago
    That's not the point. "Anti-competitive practices are business or government practices that prevent or reduce competition in a market.". The point of me mentioning that Apple is not the market majority was to emphasize that even with their current positions, Apple isn't capable of effectively reducing competition in the market of electronic devices, as is already proven not by legislative bodies but the market.
    - hamandcheese 4y ago
      Just because there is someone with more market share than you does not mean that your actions can't squeeze smaller players than you (or, more commonly for apple, squeeze players in adjacent markets. See: Spotify vs Apple Music).
      - caramelcustard 4y ago
        True that. "See: Spotify vs Apple Music". Considering that Google has their own streaming services and takes same 30% cut, i truly wonder why Spotify didn't address their "anticompetitive practices".
Retric 4y ago
Apple makes peanuts from the App Store relative to phone sales. After they upped the cut for developers to between 70% and 85% and CC companies still get their cut, add customer service and app reviews and it simply isn’t that profitable. What they benefit from is selling 1,000$ phones at a 30+% profit margin, because for the average consumer they simply work better. Which actually aligns incentives between customers and Apple quite well.
- Negitivefrags 4y ago
  A quick Google suggests Apple made 64 billion from the App Store in 2021 of the 378 billion in total revenue. Some fairly large peanuts! And that revenue is basically pure profit as it doesn’t require the creation of any actual physical hardware either.
  - baxtr 4y ago
    Is this pre 30% or after? Also: how much does it cost to run the App Store globally? Do have the numbers?
    - Negitivefrags 4y ago
      Edit: Yep, I misread this
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - stale2002 4y ago
      > how much does it cost to run the App Store globally? Do have the numbers? I think that anyone who thought about this for even a second would come to the conclusion of "It almost certainly doesn't cost anywhere near the amount of revenue that comes from it". So the answer is, probably not a lot, compared to revenue.
stjohnswarts 4y ago
As a byproduct it does give a measure of privacy so what's it to you if apple users just don't care about your idea of freedom? I hope this European legislation at least lets apple customers opt-IN to these new features or choose the old way of doing business. I would prefer to keep access footprints to a minimum to stuff like NFC, contacts, hardware APIs, apple pay, etc on my phone.
- SiempreViernes 4y ago
  In the EU privacy is assured by actual legislation in the form of the GDPR, and I expect Apple can get away with demanding compliance with that set of laws before putting something in the appstore if they really worry about privacy.
  - Aerroon 4y ago
    And you think words on a piece of paper are going to be enough? You can't legislate privacy into existence if you're constantly broadcasting all the data yourself. It's better to not broadcast the data in the first place, but that's not the route we've chosen.
- sircastor 4y ago
  In theory you already have the choice of opting-in by choosing not to install apps that utilize NFC, hardware APIs, other payment processors, etc. But that's if nothing changed. My concern is that if companies are given the opportunity to have their own stores, and their own payment processors, we're going to end up with de-facto-forced-install of a store and acceptance of terms, and it favors companies that already have a strong presence in the marketplace. I might want to use WhatsApp, but now I need to install Meta's store, and I'm required to give it access to a blanket set of permissions. And guess who doesn't have the power/influence to get you to install a custom store: The small devs, the new entrants, the challenger apps.
  - account42 4y ago
    I absolutely agree that corporations and their apps need to be kept in check, but giving one for profit company with its own motives control over that is not a good solution. Better would be a) to give the user control over permissions in a way lets them deny ALL permissions without the app being able to know that it was even denied the permission wherever that is remotely possible and b) to restrict what what market leaders can get away with which should not just apply to Apple but also to hugely popular apps c) to require interopability from social networks and other communication platforms to counter network effects. The entire tech space is still a wild west in what corporations are allowed to get away with and eventually what will need to change if individuals are to retain any control over their digital lifes.
jorvi 4y ago
A big case in point is Apple Music. Apple turning the Music Player app in Apple Music allowed them to catch a huge part of the market that had never interacted with music streaming before. Extremely anti-competitive. IMO when they did that they should have immediately been forced by the EU to instead show a pop-up that also gave the option for Spotify, Deezer, Tidal etc.
- rekoil 4y ago
  And immediately cancel any revenue they take from competitors.
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- dumpsterdiver 4y ago
  While I agree that Apple had a severe advantage in the case of Apple Music, it's also pretty clear that the advantage manifested because consumers who would otherwise be unobtainable were enticed to buy into the offering. It was an uncaptured market.
colinmhayes 4y ago
That’s not what people are saying though. Whether or not apple cares about its users is completely irrelevant. The question is whether apples incentives align with its users better than other tech companies. The answer pretty clearly seems to be yes, apple makes most of its money by selling hardware, their incentive is to make a product people enjoy. Competitors make most of their money selling ads, their incentive is to lock users in while maximizing the number and effectiveness of ads served.
- saiya-jin 4y ago
  > their incentive is to lock users All good apart from this. Apple does this magnificently, ie closed hardware protocols. For example there are significantly better earphones than airpads pro (and some cost +-same), but good luck getting same level of integration over apple's proprietary protocols. While rest of whole universe at least tries to adhere to open things so we users have freedom in how we design & evolve our electronic setup, they have basic support for stuff like bluetooth and superb for their proprietary protocol. If some random chinese company can make seamless aptx hd integration with their buds, so can apple. But it won't. Thunderbolt vs USB. Again whole world vs Apple. It required... who else than our sluggish EU to come up with way to end this cable madness that would otherwise continue forever. Seen enough 40 euro frayed cables for one lifetime. For me this was a one of few breaking points between Iphone 13 pro max and Samsung S22 ultra. I am currently very happy user of the latter. That's hardware lock-in like hell.
  - dmitriid 4y ago
    > Thunderbolt vs USB. Again whole world vs Apple. WAT. Maybe you mean Lightning vs. USB? Well, it turns out that while a whole committee was designing 15 different and confusing standards over the past 20 years, Apple designed two, and they work. Now it's suddenly "Apple vs. the world" because the USB committee managed to spit out a semi-functional spec that ... Apple was the first to actually go full in with their desktop offerings, pissing so many people off.
    - kergonath 4y ago
Bud 4y ago
If you're going to level this accusation about what Apple supposedly "wants", you should at least have the common courtesy to support it. In any way. At all. Or just admit it: you're making it up, especially the part about what Apple "wants". And the part about what Apple will supposedly charge for.
denkmoon 4y ago
>Somehow Perhaps by creating products that their users actually don't hate using.
themitigating 4y ago
It's not binary, one company can be worse than another.

hyperpape 4y ago

Apple is a company, and it’s interested in making profits. Right now, its methods of making profits are slightly more aligned with what privacy conscious users desire than some other companies’, and that’s good. Apple absolutely needs to be checked in other ways—-the fact that it’s selling advertising while setting policies that hurt other advertisers stinks to high heaven. Let antitrust rake them over the coals for that.

samatman 4y ago
I don't agree with the second paragraph at all. Apple sets a restrictive and privacy-centric set of rules for advertisers, which it then follows. The fact that this is a problem for other advertising companies is an indictment of those companies and their bleak surveillance-enabling business model. Contrast this with the "use WebKit or go home" rule, which, like it or not, is favoring Apple's product over others. It's not like these advertising policies are "be headquartered in Cupertino", it's "if you want to track our users you must ask them first".
- judge2020 4y ago
  Exactly. This is the popup for app store personalized ads[0], which is a full-screen popup that forces you to choose one or the other before you can access the app. It's super transparent and easy to decline the personalization. 0: https://videoweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Apple-permission-1.jpg https://videoweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Apple-permi...
  - majewsky 4y ago
    I wonder how many people actually register that there are two buttons at the bottom? It's very obvious to power-users like us since we're used to [ Accept ] Cancel at this point, but I can only imagine the borderless design for the secondary button originating from a dark pattern.
    - samatman 4y ago
      The entire iOS operating system works that way now. I dislike it. I think buttons should be buttons. But this isn't a special case, so unless you consider every instance of two buttons looking this way a dark pattern, this one isn't either.
      - ayntkilove 4y ago
        Personally I find it subconsciously mirrors how we interact with classic HTML. A button posts, a link gets. As a step in the device setup, the button infers some form of enablement or configuration while a link is perfect for skipping.
        samatman 4y ago
        That's a reasonable perspective that I hadn't considered, and probably makes even more sense to people who barely used/use desktops in the first place. I still don't like it! But I also never had any trouble using it. Except Apple Music. Don't get me started.
      - account42 4y ago
        > unless you consider every instance of two buttons looking this way a dark pattern The entire point of this pattern is to guide the user into a "default" option so using it for anything where the user is suppposed to provide informed consent is a dark pattern. The only places where it is not a dark pattern is where default choice actually aligns with the interest of the average user and I think that is hard to argue for a choice whose purpose is primarily to be allowed to better manipulate the user into spending more.
- robonerd 4y ago
  It's easy to play by the rules when you're the one writing them.
  - shuckles 4y ago
    This is only a criticism if you enumerate the deficiencies with the rules you believe are only justified by self-interest.
    - emn13 4y ago
      The linked article lists a bunch of those. Most of that bullet-point list of required or conversely prohibited behaviors apply to Apple. And all of those are justified only by self-interest. Incidentally, that doesn't mean the alternative has to be the wild west - that's a false dichotomy. Controlling access is fine; it's simply not fine that it's the platform that holds exclusive sway, especially if the answer is "only if we're the ones providing that app."
      - shuckles 4y ago
        This thread is about Apple’s privacy rules for App Store developers, and it’s not plainly obvious which items in the EU proposal enhance those protections at all, but the person I was responding to was insinuating that those protections have self-serving flaws.
        emn13 4y ago
        Is that distinction really helpful? The App Store has _rules_ some of which relate to user privacy, and some of which are in a grey area, and some of which don't relate to user privacy. Is needing to use Apple's payment provider a privacy protection? If you squint just right it might be. I'm sure there are some subset of app-store rules that taken by themselves, without the context of the other app-store rules are not self-serving. But that doesn't mean the rules overall are - and that's the reality that competitors need to deal with. Unlike apple, they can't change the restrictions they need to comply with. Both in actually immediate sense, and in a more meta process sense Apple has an unfair advantage they can and do exploit to extract tolls from the interactions between users and third-party providers. The fact that some of those protections also protect user privacy to the extent the user stays in Apple's walled garden is almost akin to blackmail: rather than trying to protect the user's privacy regardless, they've tied the user's privacy to the Apple ecosystem. It's all or nothing. Would be a shame if anything happened to that privacy of yours - are you sure you want to leave our walled garden? There aren't any other curated gardens (we made sure of that!), and your device unfortunately has no way to safely and conveniently opt in to risks worth taking, so it's our way, or the wild west out there... oh, and if you really want the wild west, we'll take your hardware too, you'll need to use android, and we use obvious UI patents to ensure it's inconvenient to switch a lot. It doesn't take an evil, machiavellian plan to end up in a situation in which the rules are so slanted in Apple's favor. All it takes are lots of tiny by themselves reasonable features - but steps that are always tested against Apple's interests, since those get a voice in the decision-making process, and rarely tested against third-party interests. It may well be that Apple was well intentioned in its privacy rules, and that those rules truly do protect the user - yet still have those rules stifle competition in a way that also harms the user down the line.
- disgruntledphd2 4y ago
  Apple have repeatedly refused to confirm that their ad system is compliant with the ATT rules.
  - shuckles 4y ago
    Which ad system? Their programmatic ad inventory does not support tracking, as anyone who has access to developer ads can confirm.
    - itsoktocry 4y ago
      Forgive my ignorance, but how do we know that Apple doesn't track more data than they provide to developers?
      - svnt 4y ago
        This is a great point. You could probably sum up Apple’s strategy as “capture the most lucrative market through initial quality/vanity, learn more about it than anyone else, then ring-fence it and protect it.” They aren’t a monopoly as long as you don’t consider income demographics.
        account42 4y ago
        I think is whole platform-holder strategy is where antitrust legislation needs a significant update. We must recognize the inherent platform lock-in and the effective monopoly over the platform even if there are other platforms that the users could theoretically switch to and regulate the platform holders accordingly. Anything else would be akin to ignoring a monopoly just because alternatives are available in a different town or country.
      - novok 4y ago
        If you ever interview apple developers for other companies, or just inspect what is being sent to apple's servers constantly from their devices, you'll realize that apple is recording A LOT of very private info about their users. Apple is very much a 'private from everyone but apple' company, they smartly just don't talk about it out loud. For their high level apps like TV and such, have things like privacy review. But their security, activation and map parts do record a lot of info.
moffkalast 4y ago
kevando 4y ago
100%

ksec 4y ago

>Can we stop pretending that Apple has the users best interest in mind? Well they did, at least during Steve Jobs's era.

robonerd 4y ago
Steve Jobs was an asshole who always put money first. But even if you disagree with that, he's been dead for more than a decade. It's time to move on.
- astrange 4y ago
  Disney buying Pixar made Jobs more money than anything he ever did with computers.
  - ksec 4y ago
    And if anybody on HN actually read Apple's Annual report every single year before the iPod even came out, they would ( or should ) have know how Apple's money or profits works very differently from Steve to Tim Cook's era.
squarefoot 4y ago
You probably meant Wozniak, not Jobs.
- microtherion 4y ago
  It's not that Wozniak wished users ill, but, for all his technical skill, there's little evidence that he had a particularly good understanding of what users wanted or needed — his post-Apple career is basically marked by flop after flop. Now, of course, it's all different, and his blockchain surely is going to revolutionize the world: efforce.io /s
kmeisthax 4y ago
Jobs didn't want apps on the iPhone at all and later insisted on having the App Store being the only way to distribute apps. The only reason why we attribute today's Apple as "greedy" and not Jobs-era Apple as such is because you have fonder memories of him. Also, Jobs was a master of the reality distortion field and could explain things easier than today's Apple could. But none of that changes whether or not locked down devices are anticompetitive or not, just whether or not Apple's own fans are complaining about it. Furthermore, there are pro-consumer justifications for Apple's uncompetitive behavior. In fact, that's Apple's whole defense against the antitrust inquiries it faces: the digital warlord's walled garden is for the protection of its serfs, and if the serfs don't like it they can surrender all their property and swear fealty to another digital warlord.

caramelcustard 4y ago

"They just want to be the gatekeeper for lucrative applications/functions so they can charge for it."...on the platforms that they have developed, invested in and are maintaining, which also don't hold a market majority around the world. "...they somehow convinced apple users..."...by making a product that fits Apple users' needs in a market that always had lots of competition, meaning that those who for whatever reason didn't want to use Apple products could always pick anything else.

Closi 4y ago
You don’t have to be the market majority for your actions to be anti-competitive.
- caramelcustard 4y ago
  That's not the point. "Anti-competitive practices are business or government practices that prevent or reduce competition in a market.". The point of me mentioning that Apple is not the market majority was to emphasize that even with their current positions, Apple isn't capable of effectively reducing competition in the market of electronic devices, as is already proven not by legislative bodies but the market.
  - hamandcheese 4y ago
    Just because there is someone with more market share than you does not mean that your actions can't squeeze smaller players than you (or, more commonly for apple, squeeze players in adjacent markets. See: Spotify vs Apple Music).
    - caramelcustard 4y ago
      True that. "See: Spotify vs Apple Music". Considering that Google has their own streaming services and takes same 30% cut, i truly wonder why Spotify didn't address their "anticompetitive practices".

Retric 4y ago

Apple makes peanuts from the App Store relative to phone sales. After they upped the cut for developers to between 70% and 85% and CC companies still get their cut, add customer service and app reviews and it simply isn’t that profitable. What they benefit from is selling 1,000$ phones at a 30+% profit margin, because for the average consumer they simply work better. Which actually aligns incentives between customers and Apple quite well.

Negitivefrags 4y ago
A quick Google suggests Apple made 64 billion from the App Store in 2021 of the 378 billion in total revenue. Some fairly large peanuts! And that revenue is basically pure profit as it doesn’t require the creation of any actual physical hardware either.
- baxtr 4y ago
  Is this pre 30% or after? Also: how much does it cost to run the App Store globally? Do have the numbers?
  - Negitivefrags 4y ago
    Edit: Yep, I misread this
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - stale2002 4y ago
    > how much does it cost to run the App Store globally? Do have the numbers? I think that anyone who thought about this for even a second would come to the conclusion of "It almost certainly doesn't cost anywhere near the amount of revenue that comes from it". So the answer is, probably not a lot, compared to revenue.

stjohnswarts 4y ago

As a byproduct it does give a measure of privacy so what's it to you if apple users just don't care about your idea of freedom? I hope this European legislation at least lets apple customers opt-IN to these new features or choose the old way of doing business. I would prefer to keep access footprints to a minimum to stuff like NFC, contacts, hardware APIs, apple pay, etc on my phone.

SiempreViernes 4y ago
In the EU privacy is assured by actual legislation in the form of the GDPR, and I expect Apple can get away with demanding compliance with that set of laws before putting something in the appstore if they really worry about privacy.
- Aerroon 4y ago
  And you think words on a piece of paper are going to be enough? You can't legislate privacy into existence if you're constantly broadcasting all the data yourself. It's better to not broadcast the data in the first place, but that's not the route we've chosen.
sircastor 4y ago
In theory you already have the choice of opting-in by choosing not to install apps that utilize NFC, hardware APIs, other payment processors, etc. But that's if nothing changed. My concern is that if companies are given the opportunity to have their own stores, and their own payment processors, we're going to end up with de-facto-forced-install of a store and acceptance of terms, and it favors companies that already have a strong presence in the marketplace. I might want to use WhatsApp, but now I need to install Meta's store, and I'm required to give it access to a blanket set of permissions. And guess who doesn't have the power/influence to get you to install a custom store: The small devs, the new entrants, the challenger apps.
- account42 4y ago
  I absolutely agree that corporations and their apps need to be kept in check, but giving one for profit company with its own motives control over that is not a good solution. Better would be a) to give the user control over permissions in a way lets them deny ALL permissions without the app being able to know that it was even denied the permission wherever that is remotely possible and b) to restrict what what market leaders can get away with which should not just apply to Apple but also to hugely popular apps c) to require interopability from social networks and other communication platforms to counter network effects. The entire tech space is still a wild west in what corporations are allowed to get away with and eventually what will need to change if individuals are to retain any control over their digital lifes.

jorvi 4y ago

A big case in point is Apple Music. Apple turning the Music Player app in Apple Music allowed them to catch a huge part of the market that had never interacted with music streaming before. Extremely anti-competitive. IMO when they did that they should have immediately been forced by the EU to instead show a pop-up that also gave the option for Spotify, Deezer, Tidal etc.

rekoil 4y ago
And immediately cancel any revenue they take from competitors.
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dumpsterdiver 4y ago
While I agree that Apple had a severe advantage in the case of Apple Music, it's also pretty clear that the advantage manifested because consumers who would otherwise be unobtainable were enticed to buy into the offering. It was an uncaptured market.

colinmhayes 4y ago

That’s not what people are saying though. Whether or not apple cares about its users is completely irrelevant. The question is whether apples incentives align with its users better than other tech companies. The answer pretty clearly seems to be yes, apple makes most of its money by selling hardware, their incentive is to make a product people enjoy. Competitors make most of their money selling ads, their incentive is to lock users in while maximizing the number and effectiveness of ads served.

saiya-jin 4y ago
> their incentive is to lock users All good apart from this. Apple does this magnificently, ie closed hardware protocols. For example there are significantly better earphones than airpads pro (and some cost +-same), but good luck getting same level of integration over apple's proprietary protocols. While rest of whole universe at least tries to adhere to open things so we users have freedom in how we design & evolve our electronic setup, they have basic support for stuff like bluetooth and superb for their proprietary protocol. If some random chinese company can make seamless aptx hd integration with their buds, so can apple. But it won't. Thunderbolt vs USB. Again whole world vs Apple. It required... who else than our sluggish EU to come up with way to end this cable madness that would otherwise continue forever. Seen enough 40 euro frayed cables for one lifetime. For me this was a one of few breaking points between Iphone 13 pro max and Samsung S22 ultra. I am currently very happy user of the latter. That's hardware lock-in like hell.
- dmitriid 4y ago
  > Thunderbolt vs USB. Again whole world vs Apple. WAT. Maybe you mean Lightning vs. USB? Well, it turns out that while a whole committee was designing 15 different and confusing standards over the past 20 years, Apple designed two, and they work. Now it's suddenly "Apple vs. the world" because the USB committee managed to spit out a semi-functional spec that ... Apple was the first to actually go full in with their desktop offerings, pissing so many people off.
  - kergonath 4y ago

Bud 4y ago

If you're going to level this accusation about what Apple supposedly "wants", you should at least have the common courtesy to support it. In any way. At all. Or just admit it: you're making it up, especially the part about what Apple "wants". And the part about what Apple will supposedly charge for.

denkmoon 4y ago

>Somehow Perhaps by creating products that their users actually don't hate using.

themitigating 4y ago

It's not binary, one company can be worse than another.