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I also appreciate the discourse (: >Fundamentally, I disagree with the assertion that because a minor consumer purchase goes south and charges an unarguably il

I also appreciate the discourse (: >Fundamentally, I disagree with the assertion that because a minor consumer purchase goes south and charges an unarguably illegal processing fee (for interchange) now deemed legal for hardware providers that the usual moral justification for this, consumer welfare, is harmed as the BATNA is simple - get a different maker's phone. Varying qualities of substitutes are easily attainable. Honestly we may just have to agree to disagree. Both from my own personal experience helping friends and family as well as professional experience working in IT the act of switching away from apple is always an incredibly stressful and more often than not a significantly disruptive event for the user. A good example here is the elderly. The energy and effort that goes into learning how to use a new phone is significant for most people 70+ and a huge factor when they're trying to decide to upgrade or switch their current phone. Very often, this daunting task is legitimately not worth it for them even if it that means letting apple take advantage of them simply because they don't think or truly know that they don't have the bandwidth to take on learning another smart phone. Here you have a vulnerable class of people who just can't simply switch over to another OS even when they have the means, ripe for financial abuse. Apple is a multi-trillion dollar company and governments ought to be doing whatever needs to be done to protect the millions of people who are functionally stuck using their platform from being abused. In regards to the rest of your comment I don't feel knowledgeable enough to comment. All I really wanted to say is: (a) millions of people are negatively impacted by this to the benefit of a small few. (b) a huge majority of those people likely aren't aware that they're being taken advantage of and even if they did, a meaningful amount of them couldn't do much about it without some help and/or incurring considerable amounts of stress throughout the switch. (c) What Apple is doing here is exactly the behavior I believe governments ought to be trying to prevent.

robertlagrant 3y ago
> millions of people are negatively impacted by this to the benefit of a small few. Can you justify this? These sorts of phones were unthinkable only 20 years ago, even for a billionaire and now they're extremely affordable. That is a net positive impact all of this seems to be at best a tiny dip in. > a huge majority of those people likely aren't aware that they're being taken advantage of Let's wait until they are aware, and let them choose. We shouldn't assume other people's choices and "act in their best interests". > What Apple is doing here is exactly the behavior I believe governments ought to be trying to prevent. We have endless periods of time where the setup wasn't conducive to the sort of innovation that's happened over the last 20 years in phones. Governments are indeed great at that. It's just hard to notice until you see a country with a government that is conducive to innovation, and then they start creating entirely new industries, and you wonder what happened.
- MerManMaid 3y ago
  >Can you justify this? These sorts of phones were unthinkable only 20 years ago, even for a billionaire and now they're extremely affordable. That is a net positive impact all of this seems to be at best a tiny dip in. Perhaps I worded this poorly, but I was specifically talking about the 27%-30% apple tax. The tax burden inevitably is either absorbed by the developer entirely leading to less profits and funds for them to innovate or they off board some of that tax burden by bumping their app's cost for the customer. I don't see how anyone but apple benefits in either of these situations. >Let's wait until they are aware, and let them choose. We shouldn't assume other people's choices and "act in their best interests". I'm confused... when did I recommend removing someone's choice? All I want is for the millions of people who have chosen apple to be taken advantage of less. >We have endless periods of time where the setup wasn't conducive to the sort of innovation that's happened over the last 20 years in phones. Yes and often those times coincide with awful exploitation. Industrial revolution was great for innovation, bad for the children who died working 12h a day in factories. Ideally we can strike a balance here and when it comes to preventing apple from charging 27%-30% for developers to innovate on their platform, a reasonably strong argument(s) can be made that it wouldn't prevent innovation.

robertlagrant 3y ago

> millions of people are negatively impacted by this to the benefit of a small few. Can you justify this? These sorts of phones were unthinkable only 20 years ago, even for a billionaire and now they're extremely affordable. That is a net positive impact all of this seems to be at best a tiny dip in. > a huge majority of those people likely aren't aware that they're being taken advantage of Let's wait until they are aware, and let them choose. We shouldn't assume other people's choices and "act in their best interests". > What Apple is doing here is exactly the behavior I believe governments ought to be trying to prevent. We have endless periods of time where the setup wasn't conducive to the sort of innovation that's happened over the last 20 years in phones. Governments are indeed great at that. It's just hard to notice until you see a country with a government that is conducive to innovation, and then they start creating entirely new industries, and you wonder what happened.

MerManMaid 3y ago
>Can you justify this? These sorts of phones were unthinkable only 20 years ago, even for a billionaire and now they're extremely affordable. That is a net positive impact all of this seems to be at best a tiny dip in. Perhaps I worded this poorly, but I was specifically talking about the 27%-30% apple tax. The tax burden inevitably is either absorbed by the developer entirely leading to less profits and funds for them to innovate or they off board some of that tax burden by bumping their app's cost for the customer. I don't see how anyone but apple benefits in either of these situations. >Let's wait until they are aware, and let them choose. We shouldn't assume other people's choices and "act in their best interests". I'm confused... when did I recommend removing someone's choice? All I want is for the millions of people who have chosen apple to be taken advantage of less. >We have endless periods of time where the setup wasn't conducive to the sort of innovation that's happened over the last 20 years in phones. Yes and often those times coincide with awful exploitation. Industrial revolution was great for innovation, bad for the children who died working 12h a day in factories. Ideally we can strike a balance here and when it comes to preventing apple from charging 27%-30% for developers to innovate on their platform, a reasonably strong argument(s) can be made that it wouldn't prevent innovation.