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>the most easily agreeable part of what the EU has been after It's also probably the most dangerous for Apple. It creates a cash incentive to push people outsi
by mrtksn 2y ago
>the most easily agreeable part of what the EU has been after
It's also probably the most dangerous for Apple. It creates a cash incentive to push people outside of Apple's walled garden and show them what's outside.
I really really hope Apple gets its act together, they are the greatest "the user experience comes first" company and they actually have great hard tech but they show signs of rent seeking behavior which can destroy them.
If Apple just play nice with EU, open up and focus on bringing the greatest experience possible they will keep winning. If not, they will have blunders and they will lose Europe since people are willing to look for alternatives as USA gets increasingly unpopular among the Europeans due to politics.
The Apple's AI blunder is mostly a blunder only because they insist to do it all by themselves so to have higher margins on the services revenues. IMHO those blunders will be more damaging as the Americans no longer have the higher moral grounds than Koreans or Chinese.
I hope Apple is treading carefully.
- Derbasti 2y ago> If not, they will have blunders and they will lose Europe since people are willing to look for alternatives as USA gets increasingly unpopular among the Europeans due to politics. But what alternative? There is no European smartphone OS. Windows and Steam OS and XBox are US-american, too. I suppose Linux, Playstation, and Nintendo, then?
- mrtksn 2y agoThe alternatives are Samsung, Xiaomi, Oppo and others. Already the dominant brands in Europe. It doesn't have to be European, it has to be good and those are pretty good at much cheaper prices. They also offer premium models that Apple doesn't have a match. People pay a lot extra for the feelings the brand invokes in them. Tesla was like that when it was about the values it used to represent, right after Musk dropped those values they had to start pricing their vehicles based on the specs to compete with similarly specced alternatives. If Apple goes into fight with EU and becomes the "anti-european tech giant" they will have to start selling 300 euro iPhones.
- reissbaker 2y agoAmerican brands should tread carefully: while America is willing to ban their (cheaper, sometimes better) competitors, Europe is much less willing to — especially now as America itself has taken a much more bullying tone towards its allies.
- bad_haircut72 2y agoAmerica overestimates its economic strength on the world stage because they have an unmatched military, but when all books are closed its only 300M people and most of em are broke. That's a market the same size as Brazil, Australia and the UK combined - it's a lot but it's not enough to start unilaterally declaring yourself the boss. USA is playing a losing strategy here.
- reissbaker 2y agoMost are not broke. The median household income is $79k; compare, say, to the UK where the median household income is $46k. However, it's true that 300M isn't enough to call yourself boss...
- xandrius 2y agoWouldn't be sad about a Linux smartphone.
- msh 2y agoThere is android. Works pretty well in China without any google services.
- kmeisthax 2y agoAndroid is Linux based, although you'd have to build a shitton of replacements for all the stuff Google took out of AOSP and locked behind GMS. And you'd probably have problems getting anyone to manufacture EUDroid devices given that they'd lose access to Google Play if they did. Alternatively, you could liquidate Apple. That is: confiscate Apple's EU subsidiaries, repeal DMCA 1201 equivalents in EU law, strip iOS of copyright protection, crack the DRM, replace iCloud's deep integration into iOS, set up a task force for cloning Apple's hardware, and put everything you steal online so other countries can steal iOS too. Do the same to Microsoft as well. Actually, that would be easier than stealing iOS but I don't think the EU wants to try to revive Windows Mobile as an escalation to a trade war. The core idea to keep in mind is that trade wars are stupid, but also that America's business tyrants will crumble easily if one were to happen. Globalized trade and supply chains mean that basically nobody is self-sufficient in everything; but in America's case, we're mainly self-sufficient in agriculture. Our comparative advantages in tech and cultural exports are a function of us convincing every other country to actually pay us whatever we want for our culture; which is a deal that countries can trivially reneg on.
- superzamp 2y agoI would imagine that getting the user out of the in-app purchase payment screen and attempt to redirect them at the website for payment, have them figure out how to enter credit card details etc would result in a drastically decreased conversion rate though.
- madeofpalk 2y agoSo it should! Then Apple's App Store and IAP could compete on its own merits, rather than restricting competition from existing at all.
- mrangle 2y agoApple does compete on its own merits. Its merits are that it built and controls the operating system and hardware that people choose to buy. If other companies have an issue, then they can build their own software, their own hardware, and compete.
- withinboredom 2y agoCompanies don’t make laws (unless you live somewhere like the US); people do. If the people say “stop fucking around and rent-seeking” then companies should have to do that. It’s pretty simple, really. Just because you build your own hardware and software doesn’t give you the right to do whatever you want.
- mrangle 2y agoGibberish. Also, you don't know what "rent seeking" means.
- chgs 2y agoApple is free to leave the European market if it doesn’t like the rules.
- mrangle 2y ago
- miohtama 2y agoThe money comes first (:
- mrangle 2y agoApple has its act together. Those, who are not Apple, do not in comparison. They are Big Mad that Apple does. You don't understand the term "rent seeking". Because in this case, it's Apple's competitors that are rent seeking by utilizing the force of the government to make Apple give competitors access to its private but non-monopolistic ecosystem. I think that Apple should call that bluff and leave the EU. Which in turn will increase public pressure on the EU, but not as functionally as it would in a democratic system. All hollow talk. It will lose all of its aggression the moment that Apple leaves the EU, and EU citizens are left with the remaining options.
- mrtksn 2y agoTotally, the Spaniards are on the edge against EU for forcing Apple to allow competing services on %25 of the smartphones they use. Madrid is pouring police force into Barcelona as we speak as the Catalans started burning cars on the streets against the unelected bureaucrats threatening them to give App Store alternatives to every 4th smartphone. Unjustified violence by the police is being reported against people who don't want to know about cheaper payment options. The situation is considered stable at this point but I don't think that EU will survive if Apple pulls out of EU. The president of the EU commission was caught mumbling at the mic "Ich hoffe, Apple ruft nicht an oder blufft, sonst ist alles verloren." which roughly translates to "I hope Apple doesn't call or bluff or all is lost" in Bavarian.
- vander_elst 2y agoInterested in learning more, do you have links to the sources?
- mrtksn 2y agoIt's joke :) It was impossible to give it a serious reply, so...
- fennecbutt 2y agoThey're being facetious. But here's a source for future readers: https://justpaste.it/jog4v https://justpaste.it/jog4v
- dehrmann 2y agoI know it would leave a lot of money on the table, but if Apple had set the app store fee at 5% (enough to cover credit card fees and running the service) and been content with a 50% margin on hardware, it never would have been in this mess.
- akaij 2y agoEven 15% would probably have been universally accepted.
- sabellito 2y ago"Show signs of rent seeking behaviour" seems like an extremely generous position. Forbidding your customers from even mentioning The Outside is full-on rent seeking behaviour, since its inception.
- tpmoney 2y agoTo steel man the policy, one thing it helps avoid is the free rider problem. Apples store terms are than free apps don’t pay a commission to Apple. But someone has to pay for the costs of developing the SDKs and the platform. We no longer live in an age where Apple or Microsoft gets away with charging for multi thousand dollar per year per seat developer license for their platforms, but that doesn’t mean those platforms don’t cost money to develop and maintain. So the idea is, if you make money on the platform, so does Apple. But free apps + in app downloads is a giant loophole in that plan. Sure we all think of Netflix or Kindle apps when we think of this, but without a policy that charges for IAP and discourages or outright forbids steering off the platform, we would see a new category of “freemium” apps where the app is “free” on the App Store, but is effectively just an empty downloader shell that you then have to buy the “real” app through. Unscrupulous devs steer you to their own outside store or put some ridiculous inside the App Store price (think 300x+ markup) with a link to the outside store with the cheaper price and all those customers are transacting, and Apple gets no money for funding their platform. And yes I know we can all scoff and say “oh poor multi-billion dollar Apple can’t get paid but getting paid is exactly how Apple is a multibillion dollar company. So if they don’t get it from IAP and app sales fees then they’re going to extract it either from hardware prices, or for charging those per seat per year dev licenses again. Personally I think Apple is big enough now and the App Store is popular enough now they can revisit this but somehow they are going to want to solve the free rider problem, and whatever they pick, people won’t be happy (see also core technology fee)
- idle_zealot 2y ago> solve the free rider problem This framing just doesn't register. You want developers to develop apps for your product, app availability is what makes users choose to buy the hardware/use the OS. They're not "free riding", they're what makes your product worth buying.
- recursive 2y ago> show signs of rent seeking They've been hard rent-seeking since iTunes and iPod. They aggressively eliminated and made inconvenient other ways for getting music onto iPods. Hardware was great, but hard dependence on iTunes killed it for me.
- masklinn 2y agoRequiring dedicated software available for free is not rent seeking, there is no rent, and it was not exactly rare in the more lifestyle pmp space.
- casey2 2y agoIt is the definition of rent. The cost is that I have to run your software on my device. I could create value for myself by running software of my choice, instead Apple destroys that value to create a percentage of it for themselves. Apple pretends to value user privacy and artist rights as these values often conveniently align with taking away user and partner control. The mask has slipped multiple times but their control over users never will until they are legally required to treat their users like humans.
- masklinn 2y ago> It is the definition of rent. In no sense of “rent”, or “definition”. > The cost is that I have to run your software on my device. I could create value for myself by running software of my choice This is an outright Orwellian redefinition of the term. > Apple pretends to value user privacy and artist rights as these values often conveniently align with taking away user and partner control. The mask has slipped multiple times but their control over users never will until they are legally required to treat their users like humans. Ah, so you have an axe to grind against Apple and could not care less about the stone, got it.
- trinsic2 2y agolol, you did quite some redefining yourself. They do the things the the parent said. They do the same thing with activation lock. Putting it all under the idea of protecting against theft, but it's real motive is to minimize after market parts.