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You can feel however you want about Apple's rules and EU regulation, but I think it's pretty indispuitable how wrong it is that Apple prevents developers from e

You can feel however you want about Apple's rules and EU regulation, but I think it's pretty indispuitable how wrong it is that Apple prevents developers from explaining these rules to their users. Apple prevents developers from saying that Apple takes a % cut of the sale. Apple prevents developers from saying its available cheaper elsewhere. If Apple feels these rules are so just and fair and indispuitably correct, why does it go to such measures to hide them from its consumers? Consistently these anti-steering rules are what gets Apple in trouble all around the world. It's the one part Apple lost in the US Epic case, and it's the EUs first point on their breach. Apple has done this to themselves by being so stubborn and refusing to budge an inch on how they run their platforms. The tiniest concession years ago could have avoided all this regulation on them.

stoperaticless 2y ago
Fair or not, but it is very good business model. Smart people realised, that in open market profits will go to zero as competition increases. Solution: create your own alternative to open market - be the market (and write rules for it) Apple will do a lot to keep this cash cow at peak performance.
- malermeister 2y ago
  The core raison d'etre for the EU is open markets. They'll do a lot to keep their fundamental core principle.
  - izolate 2y ago
    The billions in agricultural subsidies, strict regulations, and non-tariff barriers that make it difficult for non-EU companies to compete suggest otherwise to me.
    - malermeister 2y ago
      Open markets != unregulated markets.
      - stoperaticless 2y ago
        EU is not about “open for all”, but “open among members”.
- Rinzler89 2y ago
  And who will win? Those "smart people"(I hate this word, being nefarious is not smart, and stop gaslighting us by humanizing an evil multi trillion corporation doing illegal things, as "people") creating their own market monopoly, or the regulatory bodies of large governments that can regulate those monopolies in their regions? History tells us that the institutions with laws, guns, judges and a monopoly on violence rules over "smart people" who just make phones. Apple's only retaliation is making life shit for EU users or pulling out of the EU market which they won't because that would leave a China style vacuum that Google or a local EU competitor will take after a period of painfull transition for the EU consumers. The EU consumers can live without iPhones. Can Apple's shareholders live without Eu's profits?
  - robertlagrant 2y ago
    > I hate this word, let's stop being gaslighted humanizing an evil multi trillion corporation as "people" It's not gaslighting. People work for the company, and they decided. You're dehumanising them by saying they aren't human.
    - Rinzler89 2y ago
      I never said people aren't human, I said apple aren't human they're a corporation. And people who knowingly leverage their gigantic corporation to make life worse for others in the name of shareholder profit can and should be dehumanized. There nothing humane in hurting others for greed.
      - nickserv 2y ago
        I get what you're saying, but Apple are a group of people, so they are human. Like the local book club, or Hamas. Anyway, you don't have to look very far to see the many horrible things done to humans by other humans. The word "humane", in my view, defines how we would like to be, not how we really are.
        chgs 2y ago
- haileys 2y ago
  > Smart people realised that in open market profits will go to zero as competition increases. This has been observed and written about since at least the 18th century
  - aikinai 2y ago
    Parent didn’t say when smart people figured it out. This is also why Nintendo (when they moved into video games) set up their business model as platform-holder, not just game developer. And their own games are primarily there to seed the platform.
    - yobbo 2y ago
      Rather, the goal was to lower ("subsidise") the purchase price (initial barrier) of the NES/SNES and then recoup it on licenses for cartridges. It makes each purchase of a console cheaper. It's the rational way to maximize revenue. But Apple is not subsidising phones in any way.
      - aikinai 2y ago
        I'm not sure how you're framing that as a subsidy. It's a killer app that gets people over the threshold to purchase the platform (console). And then once the install base is established, everyone else wants to make their own games and has to pay you (a lot) for the privilege. Developing first-party games costs more money, to both Nintendo and consumers, so it's the opposite of a subsidy. But they're compelling enough, they clear the purchase threshold and establish the platform on which the rest of the business is built.
        kaba0 2y ago
        Parent commenter meant subsidizing the actual hardware costs. The same is true of pretty much every other console, they can also sell the hardware cheaper for this reason
        2y ago
- madeofpalk 2y ago
  > Apple will do a lot to keep this cash cow at peak performance. The problem is if Apple's obstinance leads them to loosing much more of their cash cow than if they had just given up a little.
- nickserv 2y ago
  Yes it's called a monopoly and this is precisely what the EU is trying to avoid.
  - xxs 2y ago
    actually the rules apply to everyone monopoly or otherwise, anti-competitive rules are not applied/enforced when there is a dominant market position only.
    - nickserv 2y ago
      Exactly, the rules are meant to prevent monopolies from forming in the first place.
      - Jensson 2y ago
        In some cases a monopoly is needed or wanted, like in credit card cases you don't want a million credit card types that all work in different subsections. In such cases regulations are to prevent such companies from having too much influence and bottlenecking everything else with high prices or forcing their own other products. EU already did this with credit cards.
        DarkNova6 2y ago
        Or you force and open standard and now you have different companies using the same system but with competing pricing. If something "has to be a monopoly", there is a good case to be made that you are talking about a core public infrastructure piece which shouldn't be under control of a singular private entity.
        Jensson 2y ago
        Credit cards need to have personal connections with businesses since it is about mutual trust. A business doesn't want to deal with a shady credit card and credit card providers doesn't want to deal with shady businesses. So you are talking about a technical solution to a social issue, that wont solve it.
- beeboobaa3 2y ago
  Whipping homeless people until they do the work you demand of them is also a very good business model. Just not exactly ethical or legal.
  - lotsofpulp 2y ago
    Why the homeless qualifier?
  - stoperaticless 2y ago
    Not arguing with general point. But I strongly doubt that your business model would even approach #1 spot on S&P index. If you are looking for advice on your business model.. > Whipping homeless people On avg. homeless people are less competent part of the bell curve. Don’t limit yourself, toss the “homeless” restriction. You could reduce cost by mostly just threatening to whip, and to actually demonstrate the whipping only on Mondays, just to prove that it happens. Also, micro-management has serious downsides. It does not build trust, it eats away at initiative and motivation.
- samrus 2y ago
  Smart people realized that you can operate in antisocial manner and benefit at the cost of others by creating a monopoly? Do you also think drug peddlers are smart for entering an under supplied market?
- indoordin0saur 2y ago
  > in open market profits will go to zero as competition increases As they should. Innovators should be able to collect a profit for their hardwork. A decade later when your company gets captured by MBA grads it's not a great thing for the consumer or the economy as a whole if they just sit there and collect rent while lobbying for regulatory capture to keep any new talent from being able to do better than them.
ankit219 2y ago
Have they ever specified any reason why they prevent users from finding this out? I read somewhere (I think Epic v Apple) where the judge surmised that App store model was not just payments but the whole mechanism of tracking subscriptions, cancel and refunds, and standard pricing for purchases. I can understand the viewpoint that Apple customers might expect the same functionality if they purchase directly on site. But then, let the developer explain that too. "You can get this cheaper on website, but will no longer be able to cancel via App Store" is a fair enough line that can be mandated just like they mandated everything else. Think they will have to do away with it eventually, though from the outside it looks like they think if they drag their feet on this, maybe regulators won't come for other things.
- londons_explore 2y ago
  > they think if they drag their feet on this, maybe regulators won't come for other things. This. EU politicians and EU voters want the EU to crack down on foreign tech companies who abuse users data rights, use monopolies to push EU companies out of the market, and use accounting tricks to barely pay any taxes. Therefore, the EU has to be fining Apple and Google for something. If not this, then it'll be something else.
  - IsTom 2y ago
    EU's single biggest win is free and open Single Market and it will fight to keep it so. It doesn't matter where companies come from – if you look at e.g. GDPR enforcement tracker you'll see they're as eager to keep internal EU companies in line.
    - robertfall 2y ago
      Yea, but that's not so true for the DMA. They're only targeting foreign companies using it.
      - martimarkov 2y ago
        Any evidence for this? Which big domestic company is a gatekeeper and not being targeted by the EU?
isodev 2y ago
Add to that the fact that the App Store only supports certain kinds of payment and subscription formats. Paid major upgrades, volume discounts for apps with IAPs or subscriptions , etc. - not possible at all. Apple's restrictions are so deep as to dictate the very way we choose to monetize our apps. And all the fearmongering about choosing to publish to an alternative store. It needs to stop.
- cageface 2y ago
  No paid upgrades is the huge issue. By fiat they eliminated the mechanism by which small developers survived for decades before the app store. It couldn't be any harder for them to support than the crazy IAP dance they make you do instead or the subscriptions they foist on everything.
- strongpigeon 2y ago
  They also implicitly prevent businesses where the margins are less than 30% unless it relies on ads.
mrtksn 2y ago
I wonder if everything would have been simple if the regulation itself was something death-simple like: If you control the software of the hardware you sell, you must refund with the inflation adjusted sums the users at any time they return their hardware. This way, companies can choose if they are renting platforms they deliver their services like the TV boxes some cable providers will rent, or of they are selling products and the users can choose to do whatever they like with it. The makers can still provide and and sell services on devices they built but they will have to be good at it.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- pmontra 2y ago
  How would it play out? A scenario is that I could buy an iPhone for 1000 Euro, use it for one year, return it, get my 1k back and use it to buy a newer model. Basically they would be working for free or they'd have to increase the price of 1k per year, with huge discounts for whoever swaps an Android for an iPhone.
  - mrtksn 2y ago
    It would be up to them to choose their models. If they want to keep the closed model where you can't use the device you purchase in absence of Apple, they will have to charge accordingly for the device and services and do the refunds if the user no longer want the device. I guess people would like yearly updates, so Apple will have to operate drastically differently to keep the closed platform model. Alternatively, they can sell the devices as today and provide a method to install any software the user wishes and even to remove iOS from the device. I guess they will be required to produce a basic documentation on all this so others can create the alternative services but wouldn't be required to modify their own software and services.
    - pmontra 2y ago
      So, the device is sold at a loss at 100 Euro but it doesn't work without mandatory services that cost 500 Euro per year?
knallfrosch 2y ago
If Apple had any competitive ground to stand on, it would not bother banning other app stores. Customers would love to pay the 30% Apple tax for security and the great selection of apps.
- mrbigbob 2y ago
  i dont think apple is too concerned with the end user using a 3rd party store but the large companies having the ability to host their app on a 3rd party store sidestepping apples fee entirely. thats what truely scares them.
- grishka 2y ago
  MacOS is a great example of what happens when that competitive ground does exist. Most Mac apps are distributed outside of the app store, some aren't even notarized.
  - mgrandl 2y ago
    Yes because developers don’t want to pay $100 to then go through a super annoying notarization process to distribute their FOSS app.
  - burnerthrow008 2y ago
    Yes, it is! Look at how much smaller MacOS market share is compared to iOS in their respective markets. Stated preference vs. revealed preference.
    - grishka 2y ago
      US and Japan are the two unusual countries where iOS has more market share than Android. In the rest of the world, iOS is maybe 20%. For computers the situation is exacerbated by the fact that many people own one mostly for gaming, which means it's going to be Windows. Whereas an iPhone is considered a status symbol.
      - rmbyrro 2y ago
seventyone 2y ago
> If Apple feels these rules are so just and fair and indispuitably correct, why does it go to such measures to hide them from its consumers? Because if would harm shareholder value. You don't need a more complicated explanation about the whole situation.
- ang_cire 2y ago
  If customers being informed about your business practices will result in harm to shareholder value, you've got a problem.
  - seventyone 2y ago
    But they will ride high in a pile of money until the curtain is drawn back. It's worth it to them
toasterlovin 2y ago
Anti-steering rules are completely normal in contracts between cooperating commercial entities. We sell on Amazon and we’re not allowed to steer Amazon’s customers off of Amazon. Amazon disables hyperlinks in the messaging system for communicating with customers. They rejected our PDF spec sheets for having links to our website. They will de-list our products if they’re available for a lower price on another site. And, honestly, they’re completely justified, IMO. They’ve done all the work of furnishing a customer who is ready to purchase. Why should they then have to allow us to steer that customer off of their site to complete the sale? Of course, we’re still allowed to sell outside of Amazon, but we have to do all the legwork to get customers. And, being in the midst of an effort to do just that, it’s a huge amount of work, so I think they’re justified in not wanting us to poach their customers.
- poincaredisk 2y ago
  I understand why Amazon won't allow you to link to your store directly but >They will de-list our products if they’re available for a lower price on another site. This sounds pretty shady
  - toasterlovin 2y ago
    We don’t have a right to sell on their site. If we want access to their customers and exposure for our products, they want to make sure they’re not being undercut on pricing (since they know customers will price shop).
    - Mordisquitos 2y ago
      If even after stopping you from linking to your own site Amazon still fears their customers will price shop by their own accord then: a) Amazon is implicitly admitting that their shopping platform is not so special: if customers could find cheaper suppliers of your product that would be enough for Amazon to be outcompeted. b) Amazon is indisputably engaging in anticompetitive practices by forbidding you from even selling at a cheaper price with the only justification of "we do not want price competition to even exist"
thefounder 2y ago
I think visa and Mastercard have the same behaviour even supported by the governments. You can’t add the visa fee to the checkout.
- BooneJS 2y ago
  And yet several places do. “Menu reflects cash prices” and “tuition payment via credit card will be subject to a 3.5% fee” are 2 I got this week.
- bhelkey 2y ago
  The EU regulates credit card fees caping them at 0.3% [1]. That is roughly a fifth of the fees charged in the US and roughly two orders of magnitude smaller than Apple app store fees. [1] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/EN/legal-content/summary/fees-for-card-based-payments.html https://eur-lex.europa.eu/EN/legal-content/summary/fees-for-...
  - thefounder 2y ago
    I think that’s a different fee. As a merchant accepting credit card or debit card payments is going to cost you the same 2-3%. At least that’s what Stripe or local payment processors charge
    - bhelkey 2y ago
      Stripe charges 1.5% + €0.25 ($0.27) in the EU to accept EEA cards [1]. Stripe charges 2.9% + $0.30 for processing domestic cards in the US [2]. The reason it charges 1.4% more for accepting US cards is the US card fees (interchange fees). These fees are complicated and roughly five times more than European card fees [3]. [1] https://stripe.com/en-fr/pricing https://stripe.com/en-fr/pricing [2] https://stripe.com/pricing https://stripe.com/pricing [3] https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/small-business/credit-card-processing-fees https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/small-business/credit-car...
- criddell 2y ago
  It varies state-to-state. https://www.bankrate.com/credit-cards/business/can-a-business-charge-for-using-credit-card/#surcharge https://www.bankrate.com/credit-cards/business/can-a-busines...
hulitu 2y ago
> why does it go to such measures to hide them from its consumers? Because the ripped off customers must keep paying. Why pay 30% more ?
grecy 2y ago
> indispuitable how wrong it is that Apple prevents developers from explaining these rules to their users Absolutely. This is the same as giving Candy to a child and saying "don't tell anyone" or your boss saying you can't tell coworkers how much you're being paid. The fact they want to keep it a secret shows something fishy is going on, and they know it.
rmbyrro 2y ago
Imagine if Steve Jobs was starting today, that famous super bowl advert from 1984 would allude to Apple, instead of IBM...
- ThePowerOfFuet 2y ago
  ... Ouch. Not wrong.
- ChildOfChaos 2y ago
  It's the cycle of most companies that are successful. Start as the rebel/upstart being more bold, fighting the system, disrupting, until they become big enough to become the system. It's just different games, as a startup you can't behave like a big corporation, so you use that strength to your advantage, as you get huge, you can't act like a more reckless upstart.
ksec 2y ago
Apple without Steve Jobs is 1. Not very good at explaining itself. 2. Not entirely sure why things are done in a certain way, they their changes it and revert to Steve jobs's way, or they refused to change and did not understand why Steve decided on doing certain things in the first place. 3. Not a very coherent company. Still better than most other companies except may be Jensen in Nvidia.
biftek 2y ago
Is there any marketplace that allows a seller to advertise a cheaper alternative within their marketplace?
- sylens 2y ago
  Nobody is asking for the ability to put a label on their App Store listing that shows the price of the same software or subscription on the web. What they're doing is akin to dictating what the creator of a product could put in the manual or paperwork that comes in the box - you know, where you'll often find manufacturer's coupons and adverts for registering your product with their website.
  - biftek 2y ago
    Ok, guess I'm out of the loop then, I thought they already allowed that
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
standardUser 2y ago
Apple is happy to deliberately create social strife among kids by blocking it's most social app from cross-platform use, just to eek out a few more phone sales. That would be bad enough if they weren't the market leader. The fact that they are brings it to the level of grotesque cruelty. The point being, Apple is clearly willing to use every trick and scheme possible to maintain dominance and should be regulated as such. They are begging for it.
hot_gril 2y ago
You think this is indisputable, but I don't see why there needs to be a law against these anti-steering rules.

stoperaticless 2y ago

Fair or not, but it is very good business model. Smart people realised, that in open market profits will go to zero as competition increases. Solution: create your own alternative to open market - be the market (and write rules for it) Apple will do a lot to keep this cash cow at peak performance.

malermeister 2y ago
The core raison d'etre for the EU is open markets. They'll do a lot to keep their fundamental core principle.
- izolate 2y ago
  The billions in agricultural subsidies, strict regulations, and non-tariff barriers that make it difficult for non-EU companies to compete suggest otherwise to me.
  - malermeister 2y ago
    Open markets != unregulated markets.
    - stoperaticless 2y ago
      EU is not about “open for all”, but “open among members”.
Rinzler89 2y ago
And who will win? Those "smart people"(I hate this word, being nefarious is not smart, and stop gaslighting us by humanizing an evil multi trillion corporation doing illegal things, as "people") creating their own market monopoly, or the regulatory bodies of large governments that can regulate those monopolies in their regions? History tells us that the institutions with laws, guns, judges and a monopoly on violence rules over "smart people" who just make phones. Apple's only retaliation is making life shit for EU users or pulling out of the EU market which they won't because that would leave a China style vacuum that Google or a local EU competitor will take after a period of painfull transition for the EU consumers. The EU consumers can live without iPhones. Can Apple's shareholders live without Eu's profits?
- robertlagrant 2y ago
  > I hate this word, let's stop being gaslighted humanizing an evil multi trillion corporation as "people" It's not gaslighting. People work for the company, and they decided. You're dehumanising them by saying they aren't human.
  - Rinzler89 2y ago
    I never said people aren't human, I said apple aren't human they're a corporation. And people who knowingly leverage their gigantic corporation to make life worse for others in the name of shareholder profit can and should be dehumanized. There nothing humane in hurting others for greed.
    - nickserv 2y ago
      I get what you're saying, but Apple are a group of people, so they are human. Like the local book club, or Hamas. Anyway, you don't have to look very far to see the many horrible things done to humans by other humans. The word "humane", in my view, defines how we would like to be, not how we really are.
      - chgs 2y ago
haileys 2y ago
> Smart people realised that in open market profits will go to zero as competition increases. This has been observed and written about since at least the 18th century
- aikinai 2y ago
  Parent didn’t say when smart people figured it out. This is also why Nintendo (when they moved into video games) set up their business model as platform-holder, not just game developer. And their own games are primarily there to seed the platform.
  - yobbo 2y ago
    Rather, the goal was to lower ("subsidise") the purchase price (initial barrier) of the NES/SNES and then recoup it on licenses for cartridges. It makes each purchase of a console cheaper. It's the rational way to maximize revenue. But Apple is not subsidising phones in any way.
    - aikinai 2y ago
      I'm not sure how you're framing that as a subsidy. It's a killer app that gets people over the threshold to purchase the platform (console). And then once the install base is established, everyone else wants to make their own games and has to pay you (a lot) for the privilege. Developing first-party games costs more money, to both Nintendo and consumers, so it's the opposite of a subsidy. But they're compelling enough, they clear the purchase threshold and establish the platform on which the rest of the business is built.
      - kaba0 2y ago
        Parent commenter meant subsidizing the actual hardware costs. The same is true of pretty much every other console, they can also sell the hardware cheaper for this reason
        2y ago
madeofpalk 2y ago
> Apple will do a lot to keep this cash cow at peak performance. The problem is if Apple's obstinance leads them to loosing much more of their cash cow than if they had just given up a little.
nickserv 2y ago
Yes it's called a monopoly and this is precisely what the EU is trying to avoid.
- xxs 2y ago
  actually the rules apply to everyone monopoly or otherwise, anti-competitive rules are not applied/enforced when there is a dominant market position only.
  - nickserv 2y ago
    Exactly, the rules are meant to prevent monopolies from forming in the first place.
    - Jensson 2y ago
      In some cases a monopoly is needed or wanted, like in credit card cases you don't want a million credit card types that all work in different subsections. In such cases regulations are to prevent such companies from having too much influence and bottlenecking everything else with high prices or forcing their own other products. EU already did this with credit cards.
      - DarkNova6 2y ago
        Or you force and open standard and now you have different companies using the same system but with competing pricing. If something "has to be a monopoly", there is a good case to be made that you are talking about a core public infrastructure piece which shouldn't be under control of a singular private entity.
        Jensson 2y ago
        Credit cards need to have personal connections with businesses since it is about mutual trust. A business doesn't want to deal with a shady credit card and credit card providers doesn't want to deal with shady businesses. So you are talking about a technical solution to a social issue, that wont solve it.
beeboobaa3 2y ago
Whipping homeless people until they do the work you demand of them is also a very good business model. Just not exactly ethical or legal.
- lotsofpulp 2y ago
  Why the homeless qualifier?
- stoperaticless 2y ago
  Not arguing with general point. But I strongly doubt that your business model would even approach #1 spot on S&P index. If you are looking for advice on your business model.. > Whipping homeless people On avg. homeless people are less competent part of the bell curve. Don’t limit yourself, toss the “homeless” restriction. You could reduce cost by mostly just threatening to whip, and to actually demonstrate the whipping only on Mondays, just to prove that it happens. Also, micro-management has serious downsides. It does not build trust, it eats away at initiative and motivation.
samrus 2y ago
Smart people realized that you can operate in antisocial manner and benefit at the cost of others by creating a monopoly? Do you also think drug peddlers are smart for entering an under supplied market?
indoordin0saur 2y ago
> in open market profits will go to zero as competition increases As they should. Innovators should be able to collect a profit for their hardwork. A decade later when your company gets captured by MBA grads it's not a great thing for the consumer or the economy as a whole if they just sit there and collect rent while lobbying for regulatory capture to keep any new talent from being able to do better than them.

ankit219 2y ago

Have they ever specified any reason why they prevent users from finding this out? I read somewhere (I think Epic v Apple) where the judge surmised that App store model was not just payments but the whole mechanism of tracking subscriptions, cancel and refunds, and standard pricing for purchases. I can understand the viewpoint that Apple customers might expect the same functionality if they purchase directly on site. But then, let the developer explain that too. "You can get this cheaper on website, but will no longer be able to cancel via App Store" is a fair enough line that can be mandated just like they mandated everything else. Think they will have to do away with it eventually, though from the outside it looks like they think if they drag their feet on this, maybe regulators won't come for other things.

londons_explore 2y ago
> they think if they drag their feet on this, maybe regulators won't come for other things. This. EU politicians and EU voters want the EU to crack down on foreign tech companies who abuse users data rights, use monopolies to push EU companies out of the market, and use accounting tricks to barely pay any taxes. Therefore, the EU has to be fining Apple and Google for something. If not this, then it'll be something else.
- IsTom 2y ago
  EU's single biggest win is free and open Single Market and it will fight to keep it so. It doesn't matter where companies come from – if you look at e.g. GDPR enforcement tracker you'll see they're as eager to keep internal EU companies in line.
  - robertfall 2y ago
    Yea, but that's not so true for the DMA. They're only targeting foreign companies using it.
    - martimarkov 2y ago
      Any evidence for this? Which big domestic company is a gatekeeper and not being targeted by the EU?

isodev 2y ago

Add to that the fact that the App Store only supports certain kinds of payment and subscription formats. Paid major upgrades, volume discounts for apps with IAPs or subscriptions , etc. - not possible at all. Apple's restrictions are so deep as to dictate the very way we choose to monetize our apps. And all the fearmongering about choosing to publish to an alternative store. It needs to stop.

cageface 2y ago
No paid upgrades is the huge issue. By fiat they eliminated the mechanism by which small developers survived for decades before the app store. It couldn't be any harder for them to support than the crazy IAP dance they make you do instead or the subscriptions they foist on everything.
strongpigeon 2y ago
They also implicitly prevent businesses where the margins are less than 30% unless it relies on ads.

mrtksn 2y ago

I wonder if everything would have been simple if the regulation itself was something death-simple like: If you control the software of the hardware you sell, you must refund with the inflation adjusted sums the users at any time they return their hardware. This way, companies can choose if they are renting platforms they deliver their services like the TV boxes some cable providers will rent, or of they are selling products and the users can choose to do whatever they like with it. The makers can still provide and and sell services on devices they built but they will have to be good at it.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
pmontra 2y ago
How would it play out? A scenario is that I could buy an iPhone for 1000 Euro, use it for one year, return it, get my 1k back and use it to buy a newer model. Basically they would be working for free or they'd have to increase the price of 1k per year, with huge discounts for whoever swaps an Android for an iPhone.
- mrtksn 2y ago
  It would be up to them to choose their models. If they want to keep the closed model where you can't use the device you purchase in absence of Apple, they will have to charge accordingly for the device and services and do the refunds if the user no longer want the device. I guess people would like yearly updates, so Apple will have to operate drastically differently to keep the closed platform model. Alternatively, they can sell the devices as today and provide a method to install any software the user wishes and even to remove iOS from the device. I guess they will be required to produce a basic documentation on all this so others can create the alternative services but wouldn't be required to modify their own software and services.
  - pmontra 2y ago
    So, the device is sold at a loss at 100 Euro but it doesn't work without mandatory services that cost 500 Euro per year?

knallfrosch 2y ago

If Apple had any competitive ground to stand on, it would not bother banning other app stores. Customers would love to pay the 30% Apple tax for security and the great selection of apps.

mrbigbob 2y ago
i dont think apple is too concerned with the end user using a 3rd party store but the large companies having the ability to host their app on a 3rd party store sidestepping apples fee entirely. thats what truely scares them.
grishka 2y ago
MacOS is a great example of what happens when that competitive ground does exist. Most Mac apps are distributed outside of the app store, some aren't even notarized.
- mgrandl 2y ago
  Yes because developers don’t want to pay $100 to then go through a super annoying notarization process to distribute their FOSS app.
- burnerthrow008 2y ago
  Yes, it is! Look at how much smaller MacOS market share is compared to iOS in their respective markets. Stated preference vs. revealed preference.
  - grishka 2y ago
    US and Japan are the two unusual countries where iOS has more market share than Android. In the rest of the world, iOS is maybe 20%. For computers the situation is exacerbated by the fact that many people own one mostly for gaming, which means it's going to be Windows. Whereas an iPhone is considered a status symbol.
    - rmbyrro 2y ago

seventyone 2y ago

> If Apple feels these rules are so just and fair and indispuitably correct, why does it go to such measures to hide them from its consumers? Because if would harm shareholder value. You don't need a more complicated explanation about the whole situation.

ang_cire 2y ago
If customers being informed about your business practices will result in harm to shareholder value, you've got a problem.
- seventyone 2y ago
  But they will ride high in a pile of money until the curtain is drawn back. It's worth it to them

toasterlovin 2y ago

Anti-steering rules are completely normal in contracts between cooperating commercial entities. We sell on Amazon and we’re not allowed to steer Amazon’s customers off of Amazon. Amazon disables hyperlinks in the messaging system for communicating with customers. They rejected our PDF spec sheets for having links to our website. They will de-list our products if they’re available for a lower price on another site. And, honestly, they’re completely justified, IMO. They’ve done all the work of furnishing a customer who is ready to purchase. Why should they then have to allow us to steer that customer off of their site to complete the sale? Of course, we’re still allowed to sell outside of Amazon, but we have to do all the legwork to get customers. And, being in the midst of an effort to do just that, it’s a huge amount of work, so I think they’re justified in not wanting us to poach their customers.

poincaredisk 2y ago
I understand why Amazon won't allow you to link to your store directly but >They will de-list our products if they’re available for a lower price on another site. This sounds pretty shady
- toasterlovin 2y ago
  We don’t have a right to sell on their site. If we want access to their customers and exposure for our products, they want to make sure they’re not being undercut on pricing (since they know customers will price shop).
  - Mordisquitos 2y ago
    If even after stopping you from linking to your own site Amazon still fears their customers will price shop by their own accord then: a) Amazon is implicitly admitting that their shopping platform is not so special: if customers could find cheaper suppliers of your product that would be enough for Amazon to be outcompeted. b) Amazon is indisputably engaging in anticompetitive practices by forbidding you from even selling at a cheaper price with the only justification of "we do not want price competition to even exist"

thefounder 2y ago

I think visa and Mastercard have the same behaviour even supported by the governments. You can’t add the visa fee to the checkout.

BooneJS 2y ago
And yet several places do. “Menu reflects cash prices” and “tuition payment via credit card will be subject to a 3.5% fee” are 2 I got this week.
bhelkey 2y ago
The EU regulates credit card fees caping them at 0.3% [1]. That is roughly a fifth of the fees charged in the US and roughly two orders of magnitude smaller than Apple app store fees. [1] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/EN/legal-content/summary/fees-for-card-based-payments.html https://eur-lex.europa.eu/EN/legal-content/summary/fees-for-...
- thefounder 2y ago
  I think that’s a different fee. As a merchant accepting credit card or debit card payments is going to cost you the same 2-3%. At least that’s what Stripe or local payment processors charge
  - bhelkey 2y ago
    Stripe charges 1.5% + €0.25 ($0.27) in the EU to accept EEA cards [1]. Stripe charges 2.9% + $0.30 for processing domestic cards in the US [2]. The reason it charges 1.4% more for accepting US cards is the US card fees (interchange fees). These fees are complicated and roughly five times more than European card fees [3]. [1] https://stripe.com/en-fr/pricing https://stripe.com/en-fr/pricing [2] https://stripe.com/pricing https://stripe.com/pricing [3] https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/small-business/credit-card-processing-fees https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/small-business/credit-car...
criddell 2y ago
It varies state-to-state. https://www.bankrate.com/credit-cards/business/can-a-business-charge-for-using-credit-card/#surcharge https://www.bankrate.com/credit-cards/business/can-a-busines...

hulitu 2y ago

> why does it go to such measures to hide them from its consumers? Because the ripped off customers must keep paying. Why pay 30% more ?

grecy 2y ago

> indispuitable how wrong it is that Apple prevents developers from explaining these rules to their users Absolutely. This is the same as giving Candy to a child and saying "don't tell anyone" or your boss saying you can't tell coworkers how much you're being paid. The fact they want to keep it a secret shows something fishy is going on, and they know it.

rmbyrro 2y ago

Imagine if Steve Jobs was starting today, that famous super bowl advert from 1984 would allude to Apple, instead of IBM...

ThePowerOfFuet 2y ago
... Ouch. Not wrong.
ChildOfChaos 2y ago
It's the cycle of most companies that are successful. Start as the rebel/upstart being more bold, fighting the system, disrupting, until they become big enough to become the system. It's just different games, as a startup you can't behave like a big corporation, so you use that strength to your advantage, as you get huge, you can't act like a more reckless upstart.

ksec 2y ago

Apple without Steve Jobs is 1. Not very good at explaining itself. 2. Not entirely sure why things are done in a certain way, they their changes it and revert to Steve jobs's way, or they refused to change and did not understand why Steve decided on doing certain things in the first place. 3. Not a very coherent company. Still better than most other companies except may be Jensen in Nvidia.

biftek 2y ago

Is there any marketplace that allows a seller to advertise a cheaper alternative within their marketplace?

sylens 2y ago
Nobody is asking for the ability to put a label on their App Store listing that shows the price of the same software or subscription on the web. What they're doing is akin to dictating what the creator of a product could put in the manual or paperwork that comes in the box - you know, where you'll often find manufacturer's coupons and adverts for registering your product with their website.
- biftek 2y ago
  Ok, guess I'm out of the loop then, I thought they already allowed that

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

standardUser 2y ago

Apple is happy to deliberately create social strife among kids by blocking it's most social app from cross-platform use, just to eek out a few more phone sales. That would be bad enough if they weren't the market leader. The fact that they are brings it to the level of grotesque cruelty. The point being, Apple is clearly willing to use every trick and scheme possible to maintain dominance and should be regulated as such. They are begging for it.

hot_gril 2y ago

You think this is indisputable, but I don't see why there needs to be a law against these anti-steering rules.