6 ms·

I don't get it, so no company can provide a walled garden? Or at least, not if they're successful? That doesn't make sense to me, why is that not an acceptable

I don't get it, so no company can provide a walled garden? Or at least, not if they're successful? That doesn't make sense to me, why is that not an acceptable and desirable feature for some people? You don't have to buy an iPhone, this isn't like a railroad or a telecom that owns all of the possible infrastructure. If you want a walled garden get an iPhone. If you want freedom with all that implies, go Android.

cyberax 3y ago
> I don't get it, so no company can provide a walled garden You can provide a walled garden. But that's not Apple does. Instead, Apple is a mafia that shakes down all the vendors for the right to sell in their semi-open market square. If Apple iOS were a walled garden, it would have contained only Apple applications.
- dantheman 3y ago
  The mafia shakes down people who don't interact with them, apple does not.
  - Wowfunhappy 3y ago
    How do I develop a mobile app which a majority of people in the US will be able to use without interacting with Apple?
    - spiderice 3y ago
      Figure it out lol. That’s what Apple had to do. Why are you expecting a free pass to do what took them decades?
      - smoldesu 3y ago
        Because decades ago, "figuring it out" entailed visiting a website and downloading a software installer. Why is Apple expecting everyone to forget about that and pay them the difference instead?
    - CharlesW 3y ago
      You create a web app or website.
    - vineyardmike 3y ago
      > a mobile app which a majority of people in the US will be able to use Even using Apple, you can't do this, because you need a separate Android and iOS app already. Big picture though, I don't think you really have a "right" or entitlement to just access everyone. You're not entitled to use someone else's business, even if it's a good one. You can't just go and sell your product in the AT&T store, you need to agree to their terms. Even if you make a phone that only works on the AT&T network, you still need to agree to their terms. You can't sell in Target or Walmart or Costco or even Amazon just because you want to. Oh and you may be quite disappointed to discover many of them take >30% cut too. Apple thinks of the iOS App Store as another storefront, and you need their permission to put your product on their "shelves". The courts agree.
      - wvenable 3y ago
        > Even if you make a phone that only works on the AT&T network, you still need to agree to their terms. Prior to the 1980s, AT&T, as the dominant telephone service provider in the United States, had a policy that only allowed customers to use telephones that were leased from them. This policy was rooted in the belief that non-AT&T equipment could harm the telephone network. Does that sounds familiar? Several legal cases (and the eventual breakup of AT&T) eventually opened up the AT&T network to third party phones and consumers rejoiced.
        EA-3167 3y ago
        Phones aren't infrastructure, the telecom network is.
      - kmeisthax 3y ago
        Part of Epic's argument was that they wanted Apple and Google to distribute Epic Games Store, which makes your argument valid. However, the commenter you were replying to likely isn't aware of this and does not care about how they install EGS, only that they are able to do so if they do not want to deal with Apple or Google. The sneaky part of Apple's counterargument is that they try to apply your argument not to their own App Store, but to the entire OS. This is a land grab - the App Store is their service, but I own the phone, so the OS should respect my decision to circumvent Apple's curation if I so choose. If I'm not allowed to sell in Target or Walmart, I'm allowed to open my own store and people can circumvent Target to go to me directly. This is how it works for every other form of computer except phones and tablets.
    - freejazz 3y ago
      Duh, develop it for Android, where the vast majority of smart phone users exist.
  - NicoJuicy 3y ago
    Nah, they shake down everyone they can. They can't shake down someone out of their reach. They can identify them though ( green icon... )
- EA-3167 3y ago
  I don't think stores have an obligation to carry your products, it isn't like supermarkets are breaking the law because they don't have an open-door policy on products. You don't have some intrinsic legal right to use someone else's infrastructure to sell your own stuff, on your terms. Framing this as a legal or ethical issue leaves me cold, when the reality is just... you'd PREFER higher margins. I get it! I'm not saying that's wrong, it just isn't a legally enshrined right.
  - Wowfunhappy 3y ago
    > I don't think stores have an obligation to carry your products, it isn't like supermarkets are breaking the law because they don't have an open-door policy on products. I agree. However, consumers have the right to go to a different supermarket, without selling their house.
    - nostrebored 3y ago
      And supermarkets have no obligation to build expressways to their competitors! We can take these analogy absurdities wherever — the harsh reality is that nobody is stopping someone from building an open ecosystem phone. But there isn’t enough demand. As a consumer, why should I care? As a company, unless I’m building my own walled garden for company phones, why should I care? What’s the market here?
      - Wowfunhappy 3y ago
        > We can take these analogy absurdities wherever — the harsh reality is that nobody is stopping someone from building an open ecosystem phone. But there isn’t enough demand. I don't think there's too little demand, I think there's too much profit incentive in the other direction. Only a tiny number of companies on earth have the resources to build a successful mobile platform. If you are lucky enough to be one of those companies, you're not going to leave money on the table.
      - wvenable 3y ago
        > the harsh reality is that nobody is stopping someone from building an open ecosystem phone. The harsh reality is that manufacturing capacity and network effects actually prevents building an open ecosystem phone. You will never be able to purchase the best chips and displays. I think we need to stop pretending that regulating competition is a bad thing. Competition is what makes capitalism work as an economic system. Without competition capitalism is inefficient and harmful. If we can inject more competition into the system as a whole, wherever possible, it's going to be good for consumers.
- 3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago
  When someone comes to your store and says "I'll wreck your store unless you cut me 30% of your revenue" that's the mafia. When someone comes to your store and says "I made the streets and regulate the power, water supply, sewer, and everything else in this place, cut me 30% of your revenue in taxes" that's the government. And you'd do well to not confuse those so haphazardly. Apple didn't come to your app and with no cause blackmail you to get your money. They created an ecosystem that did not exist before, and they have to maintain it. Paying for it is completely rational.
  - cyberax 3y ago
    > When someone comes to your store and says "I'll wreck your store unless you cut me 30% of your revenue" that's the mafia. That's exactly what Apple does. If you make a mobile app (for example, a presentation manager) you _have_ to support iOS, or you will go out of business. As a developer, you simply don't have a choice. You have to either support iOS, or get out of mobile apps entirely.
    - mcphage 3y ago
      > You have to either support iOS, or get out of mobile apps entirely. What? That’s not true. There are plenty of Android-only developers.
      - cyberax 3y ago
        Any example of a major Android-only app for the US?
        zappb 3y ago
        Beeper Mini, Fortnight, several Google apps.
        cyberax 3y ago
        Keyword: major. Fortnight is the only example, and it's on its way to SCOTUS. Google apps, which one?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- m463 3y ago
  > Instead, Apple is a mafia that shakes down all the vendors for the right to sell in their semi-open market square. I think they actually have a monopsony since you can only sell to apple. If there were other app stores, you could sell to them instead. "In economics, a monopsony is a market structure in which a single buyer substantially controls the market as the major purchaser of goods and services offered by many would-be sellers. The microeconomic theory of monopsony assumes a single entity to have market power over all sellers as the only purchaser of a good or service. This is a similar power to that of a monopolist, which can influence the price for its buyers in a monopoly, where multiple buyers have only one seller of a good or service available to purchase from." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopsony https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopsony (And they probably have a monopoly wrt iphone customers)
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
aprilthird2021 3y ago
Walled garden is fine. Charging exorbitant fees because you've strong armed any and all competition out of the game isn't. A reasonable fee with 0 competition would be fine. No fee, while hiking the prices of the devices would be fine.
- EA-3167 3y ago
  How can you seriously say "any and all competition" when Android and Google exist?
  - dns_snek 3y ago
    You're looking at it from the user's perspective, this case is about B2B. Imagine you're working on a hardware product that can communicate with your other devices over Bluetooth. How exactly do you avoid Apple in this scenario? You can't, or you won't be in business for very long. You need to develop an app because Apple intentionally gimps their browser, and to release the app you must agree to their terms. They're in a dominant position that allows them to dictate unfavorable terms to the rest of the industry which, among other things, stifles innovation.
    - skydhash 3y ago
      > Imagine you're working on a hardware product that can communicate with your other devices over Bluetooth. How exactly do you avoid Apple in this scenario? I can't think of nothing that is paired over Bluetooth that couldn't be done better with some other medium. Even Apple use a superset of Bluetooth to get its devices working properly together.
naremu 3y ago
I think a lot of this stems from "take backsies" on a long term subconscious level. The HN audience in particular is not just tinker-friendly, but the vast majority surely lived through the era of Apple where Jobs pitched the iPhone as more of a gateway to the internet in your pocket, web apps were even mentioned as being a major feature/philosophy. Not to mention the "old world" of premobile OSes which still have the basic understanding that I can install programs programmed for this platform, without "protection" and the "protection fees" associated with a centralized monopoly, an old world of which macOS could never shed in the name of profits, but iOS and beyond has become the battleground for redefining the computing experience to the mainstream: is it supposed to be a bladerunner 2049 esque experience of hitting the predetermined icons on my pocket vending machine, infantilizing and commodifying people's lifestyle for wealth concentration of a company that uses it's wealth to...hmm. It is, at the very least though, a bit of a betrayal to those used to the old ways. At the worst, it's part of a larger regression against individualism.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
bg24 3y ago
Having a walled garden is fine. I use iPhone and apple products from day 1. That said, charging 30% of subscription in the App Store seems ridiculously high if you put yourself in the 3rd party vendor place. For comparison, Amazon charges 15%. AWS marketplace charges <10%.
wraptile 3y ago
> no company can provide a walled garden? Or at least, not if they're successful? Yes. Why are we so ok on giving up our rights like this? "no company is allowed to inside trade/use slaves/have a monopoly" - yes!
thfuran 3y ago
>I don't get it, so no company can provide a walled garden? Or at least, not if they're successful? Framing things as you have leads to the impression that, by analogy to oppressing a person, restricting a large company is bad. But a company is not a person. Companies are legal constructs that exist because they are useful to society. A monopoly distorts markets and stifles innovation by disadvantaging potential competitors. This is not beneficial to society and so should not be permitted. So yes, a sufficiently large company should not be permitted to do things that might be permissible for a smaller company.
Animats 3y ago
> I don't get it, so no company can provide a walled garden? Or at least, not if they're successful? Exactly. If you take US antitrust law as written, once you're close to being the dominant player, you can't have a walled garden.
- HlessClaudesman 3y ago
  So the law says that once your city reaches a certain size you must let in the barbarian hordes? In this case the barbarians are the malicious apps that would have been stopped by app store vetting. Seems like a bad deal for the average citizen of that city. I think tech savvy users should be able to (after jumping through a few hoops) do whatever they want with their phones, without any fear of reprisal from software and hardware manufacturers. If Apple and Google insist on strangling this market then Tim Sweeney has the money to develop a competing phone ecosystem, it could be a great business opportunity if a large number of users and developers are actually not being well served. But he may find that this underserved population is a quite small slice of the total addressable market, and that walled gardens actually do a good job for the vast majority of users, protecting my oblivious grandma who clicks on everything from a horde of scammers.

cyberax 3y ago

> I don't get it, so no company can provide a walled garden You can provide a walled garden. But that's not Apple does. Instead, Apple is a mafia that shakes down all the vendors for the right to sell in their semi-open market square. If Apple iOS were a walled garden, it would have contained only Apple applications.

dantheman 3y ago
The mafia shakes down people who don't interact with them, apple does not.
- Wowfunhappy 3y ago
  How do I develop a mobile app which a majority of people in the US will be able to use without interacting with Apple?
  - spiderice 3y ago
    Figure it out lol. That’s what Apple had to do. Why are you expecting a free pass to do what took them decades?
    - smoldesu 3y ago
      Because decades ago, "figuring it out" entailed visiting a website and downloading a software installer. Why is Apple expecting everyone to forget about that and pay them the difference instead?
  - CharlesW 3y ago
    You create a web app or website.
  - vineyardmike 3y ago
    > a mobile app which a majority of people in the US will be able to use Even using Apple, you can't do this, because you need a separate Android and iOS app already. Big picture though, I don't think you really have a "right" or entitlement to just access everyone. You're not entitled to use someone else's business, even if it's a good one. You can't just go and sell your product in the AT&T store, you need to agree to their terms. Even if you make a phone that only works on the AT&T network, you still need to agree to their terms. You can't sell in Target or Walmart or Costco or even Amazon just because you want to. Oh and you may be quite disappointed to discover many of them take >30% cut too. Apple thinks of the iOS App Store as another storefront, and you need their permission to put your product on their "shelves". The courts agree.
    - wvenable 3y ago
      > Even if you make a phone that only works on the AT&T network, you still need to agree to their terms. Prior to the 1980s, AT&T, as the dominant telephone service provider in the United States, had a policy that only allowed customers to use telephones that were leased from them. This policy was rooted in the belief that non-AT&T equipment could harm the telephone network. Does that sounds familiar? Several legal cases (and the eventual breakup of AT&T) eventually opened up the AT&T network to third party phones and consumers rejoiced.
      - EA-3167 3y ago
        Phones aren't infrastructure, the telecom network is.
    - kmeisthax 3y ago
      Part of Epic's argument was that they wanted Apple and Google to distribute Epic Games Store, which makes your argument valid. However, the commenter you were replying to likely isn't aware of this and does not care about how they install EGS, only that they are able to do so if they do not want to deal with Apple or Google. The sneaky part of Apple's counterargument is that they try to apply your argument not to their own App Store, but to the entire OS. This is a land grab - the App Store is their service, but I own the phone, so the OS should respect my decision to circumvent Apple's curation if I so choose. If I'm not allowed to sell in Target or Walmart, I'm allowed to open my own store and people can circumvent Target to go to me directly. This is how it works for every other form of computer except phones and tablets.
  - freejazz 3y ago
    Duh, develop it for Android, where the vast majority of smart phone users exist.
- NicoJuicy 3y ago
  Nah, they shake down everyone they can. They can't shake down someone out of their reach. They can identify them though ( green icon... )
EA-3167 3y ago
I don't think stores have an obligation to carry your products, it isn't like supermarkets are breaking the law because they don't have an open-door policy on products. You don't have some intrinsic legal right to use someone else's infrastructure to sell your own stuff, on your terms. Framing this as a legal or ethical issue leaves me cold, when the reality is just... you'd PREFER higher margins. I get it! I'm not saying that's wrong, it just isn't a legally enshrined right.
- Wowfunhappy 3y ago
  > I don't think stores have an obligation to carry your products, it isn't like supermarkets are breaking the law because they don't have an open-door policy on products. I agree. However, consumers have the right to go to a different supermarket, without selling their house.
  - nostrebored 3y ago
    And supermarkets have no obligation to build expressways to their competitors! We can take these analogy absurdities wherever — the harsh reality is that nobody is stopping someone from building an open ecosystem phone. But there isn’t enough demand. As a consumer, why should I care? As a company, unless I’m building my own walled garden for company phones, why should I care? What’s the market here?
    - Wowfunhappy 3y ago
      > We can take these analogy absurdities wherever — the harsh reality is that nobody is stopping someone from building an open ecosystem phone. But there isn’t enough demand. I don't think there's too little demand, I think there's too much profit incentive in the other direction. Only a tiny number of companies on earth have the resources to build a successful mobile platform. If you are lucky enough to be one of those companies, you're not going to leave money on the table.
    - wvenable 3y ago
      > the harsh reality is that nobody is stopping someone from building an open ecosystem phone. The harsh reality is that manufacturing capacity and network effects actually prevents building an open ecosystem phone. You will never be able to purchase the best chips and displays. I think we need to stop pretending that regulating competition is a bad thing. Competition is what makes capitalism work as an economic system. Without competition capitalism is inefficient and harmful. If we can inject more competition into the system as a whole, wherever possible, it's going to be good for consumers.
3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago
When someone comes to your store and says "I'll wreck your store unless you cut me 30% of your revenue" that's the mafia. When someone comes to your store and says "I made the streets and regulate the power, water supply, sewer, and everything else in this place, cut me 30% of your revenue in taxes" that's the government. And you'd do well to not confuse those so haphazardly. Apple didn't come to your app and with no cause blackmail you to get your money. They created an ecosystem that did not exist before, and they have to maintain it. Paying for it is completely rational.
- cyberax 3y ago
  > When someone comes to your store and says "I'll wreck your store unless you cut me 30% of your revenue" that's the mafia. That's exactly what Apple does. If you make a mobile app (for example, a presentation manager) you _have_ to support iOS, or you will go out of business. As a developer, you simply don't have a choice. You have to either support iOS, or get out of mobile apps entirely.
  - mcphage 3y ago
    > You have to either support iOS, or get out of mobile apps entirely. What? That’s not true. There are plenty of Android-only developers.
    - cyberax 3y ago
      Any example of a major Android-only app for the US?
      - zappb 3y ago
        Beeper Mini, Fortnight, several Google apps.
        cyberax 3y ago
        Keyword: major. Fortnight is the only example, and it's on its way to SCOTUS. Google apps, which one?
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
m463 3y ago
> Instead, Apple is a mafia that shakes down all the vendors for the right to sell in their semi-open market square. I think they actually have a monopsony since you can only sell to apple. If there were other app stores, you could sell to them instead. "In economics, a monopsony is a market structure in which a single buyer substantially controls the market as the major purchaser of goods and services offered by many would-be sellers. The microeconomic theory of monopsony assumes a single entity to have market power over all sellers as the only purchaser of a good or service. This is a similar power to that of a monopolist, which can influence the price for its buyers in a monopoly, where multiple buyers have only one seller of a good or service available to purchase from." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopsony https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopsony (And they probably have a monopoly wrt iphone customers)

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

aprilthird2021 3y ago

Walled garden is fine. Charging exorbitant fees because you've strong armed any and all competition out of the game isn't. A reasonable fee with 0 competition would be fine. No fee, while hiking the prices of the devices would be fine.

EA-3167 3y ago
How can you seriously say "any and all competition" when Android and Google exist?
- dns_snek 3y ago
  You're looking at it from the user's perspective, this case is about B2B. Imagine you're working on a hardware product that can communicate with your other devices over Bluetooth. How exactly do you avoid Apple in this scenario? You can't, or you won't be in business for very long. You need to develop an app because Apple intentionally gimps their browser, and to release the app you must agree to their terms. They're in a dominant position that allows them to dictate unfavorable terms to the rest of the industry which, among other things, stifles innovation.
  - skydhash 3y ago
    > Imagine you're working on a hardware product that can communicate with your other devices over Bluetooth. How exactly do you avoid Apple in this scenario? I can't think of nothing that is paired over Bluetooth that couldn't be done better with some other medium. Even Apple use a superset of Bluetooth to get its devices working properly together.

naremu 3y ago

I think a lot of this stems from "take backsies" on a long term subconscious level. The HN audience in particular is not just tinker-friendly, but the vast majority surely lived through the era of Apple where Jobs pitched the iPhone as more of a gateway to the internet in your pocket, web apps were even mentioned as being a major feature/philosophy. Not to mention the "old world" of premobile OSes which still have the basic understanding that I can install programs programmed for this platform, without "protection" and the "protection fees" associated with a centralized monopoly, an old world of which macOS could never shed in the name of profits, but iOS and beyond has become the battleground for redefining the computing experience to the mainstream: is it supposed to be a bladerunner 2049 esque experience of hitting the predetermined icons on my pocket vending machine, infantilizing and commodifying people's lifestyle for wealth concentration of a company that uses it's wealth to...hmm. It is, at the very least though, a bit of a betrayal to those used to the old ways. At the worst, it's part of a larger regression against individualism.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

bg24 3y ago

Having a walled garden is fine. I use iPhone and apple products from day 1. That said, charging 30% of subscription in the App Store seems ridiculously high if you put yourself in the 3rd party vendor place. For comparison, Amazon charges 15%. AWS marketplace charges <10%.

wraptile 3y ago

> no company can provide a walled garden? Or at least, not if they're successful? Yes. Why are we so ok on giving up our rights like this? "no company is allowed to inside trade/use slaves/have a monopoly" - yes!

thfuran 3y ago

>I don't get it, so no company can provide a walled garden? Or at least, not if they're successful? Framing things as you have leads to the impression that, by analogy to oppressing a person, restricting a large company is bad. But a company is not a person. Companies are legal constructs that exist because they are useful to society. A monopoly distorts markets and stifles innovation by disadvantaging potential competitors. This is not beneficial to society and so should not be permitted. So yes, a sufficiently large company should not be permitted to do things that might be permissible for a smaller company.

Animats 3y ago

> I don't get it, so no company can provide a walled garden? Or at least, not if they're successful? Exactly. If you take US antitrust law as written, once you're close to being the dominant player, you can't have a walled garden.

HlessClaudesman 3y ago
So the law says that once your city reaches a certain size you must let in the barbarian hordes? In this case the barbarians are the malicious apps that would have been stopped by app store vetting. Seems like a bad deal for the average citizen of that city. I think tech savvy users should be able to (after jumping through a few hoops) do whatever they want with their phones, without any fear of reprisal from software and hardware manufacturers. If Apple and Google insist on strangling this market then Tim Sweeney has the money to develop a competing phone ecosystem, it could be a great business opportunity if a large number of users and developers are actually not being well served. But he may find that this underserved population is a quite small slice of the total addressable market, and that walled gardens actually do a good job for the vast majority of users, protecting my oblivious grandma who clicks on everything from a horde of scammers.