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HTML Apple loses UK App Store monopoly case, penalty might near $2B
lunias wrote 5 hours 9 min ago:
If they won't hold those deserving it accountable, then I guess they
themselves should become accountable. Failure to punish should be
punishable. Every single fine of this magnitude should also be
accompanied by at least one person going to jail. Or, if you send all
of those accountable to jail then maybe the fine could be waived for
the benefit of those who remain.
concinds wrote 11 hours 56 min ago:
> âThe CAT also ruled that app developers passed on 50% of the
overcharge to consumers.â
This is complete nonsense. App companies set price based on willingness
to pay. If Apple allows custom payments alongside IAP, you might get a
temporary gap (naturally <30%) to steer people towards in-house
payments, with harder refunds etc. But as soon as they're no longer
required to adopt IAP their own prices will go back up to exactly what
they were.
The vast majority of Apple's app/IAP revenue is from "mobile game"
companies. You think they won't enjoy a 42% increase in iOS revenue
(1/0.7=1.42) by keeping prices at a level consumers have already
accepted for years? There's no "lower sales" tradeoff, customers are
used to those prices.
thisislife2 wrote 13 hours 25 min ago:
> âdevelopers were overcharged by the difference between a 17.5%
commission for app purchases and the commission Apple charged, which
Kentâs lawyers said was usually 30%.â
> âThe CAT also ruled that app developers passed on 50% of the
overcharge to consumers.â
And that's why I stopped buying Apple products - ultimately it is the
end user that pays for everything. Apple exploits both developers and
its consumers.
nemo44x wrote 7 hours 25 min ago:
So then theyâre not a monopoly if you can just stop buying their
products and buy another. Another that also happens to have more
market share.
victorbjorklund wrote 10 hours 11 min ago:
You don't think that developers of Android apps pass on their fees to
Google Store to the consumers? Or the developers of web apps pass on
the fees of Stripe to the consumers?
theshrike79 wrote 10 hours 40 min ago:
Do you feel that Google is less bad in this, enough so that you would
rather use their products?
thisislife2 wrote 9 hours 49 min ago:
No, Google isn't less bad (and I avoid them using Sailfish OS and
non-Google ROMs (Lineage OS / Graphene OS). I don't believe either
Google or Apple (or any other BigTech) should have any role in
deciding what apps I install on my phone or how I choose to
purchase (not rent) an app. (I mean, they just act as an
unnecessary middle-man and gatekeeper to extort money). The
smartphone is just another computer. I don't pay Apple or Microsoft
to install software from other developers / companies on my desktop
computer. Why should it be any different for me on mobiles? Just
because they can abuse their monopolistic power?
freedomben wrote 3 hours 28 min ago:
Apple (and subsequently many other copy-cats in the tech
industry) have done a phenomenal job convincing people to think
of their fully capable mobile computers as "appliances", and this
really shows.
theshrike79 wrote 1 hour 19 min ago:
A modern smart phone is more like a gaming console and less
like a personal computer
vladvasiliu wrote 12 hours 53 min ago:
In which situation does the end user not pay for everything? Even a
fine or a tax on a company ends rolled up in the price paid by the
end user. Same thing with programs paid for by the government. Itâs
the taxpayers who foot the bill.
Iâm kinda split on the whole Apple situation. Iâm firmly in the
camp of âmonopoly badâ, but apparently people are fine with
appleâs practices. Itâs not like they have to buy an iPhone.
socalgal2 wrote 7 hours 17 min ago:
The cases are not about the consumer's choice to buy an iPhone.
They're about other companies' options to reach consumers of
iPhones. Apple (and Google) can not be in the middle of 2-3 billion
phone owners and every company that wants to access those phone
owners. Government are not going to allow it. No companies should
have that much power.
Nursie wrote 7 hours 32 min ago:
> In which situation does the end user not pay for everything?
In situations where the company needs to continue to compete, and
factoring fines into prices would push it out of competitiveness,
so it needs to find other ways to offset the fine.
Apple's unlikely to be in this situation, and probably has massive
buckets of cash just sitting around in various offshore places
anyway. I doubt a couple of billion are much danger.
> apparently people are fine with appleâs practices
I'm happy my mum has a phone that can only install apps and stuff
that are sanctioned by apple.
She's not savvy enough to know differently, she doesn't really do
apps, and frankly her best defence against any sort of tech-based
scammers is likely to be "Oh, well, I wouldn't know how to do
that", but otherwise extra-strong rails are a really useful thing.
Monopolies are bad but the current ecosystem is so good, and for me
other app stores aren't that interesting. And for some less savvy
users they would be an outright threat.
worble wrote 8 hours 33 min ago:
> Itâs not like they have to buy an iPhone.
I'm so sick of hearing this, the current smartphone market is an
american megacorp duopoly, both of whom are locking down their
phones to such a degree that you cannot even claim you own the
hardware anymore. There is essentially no choice.
And not buying a smartphone is not a choice either, if you want to
actually exist in the modern world.
Yeul wrote 7 hours 3 min ago:
Google is still held back by the fact that their Pixel line isn't
selling. They can't dictate terms to Samsung or Xiaomi.
Apple owns the hardware and software.
lopis wrote 9 hours 23 min ago:
> Iâm kinda split on the whole Apple situation. Iâm firmly in
the camp of âmonopoly badâ, but apparently people are fine with
appleâs practices. Itâs not like they have to buy an iPhone.
People don't necessarily choose the option that is better for them
long term. The existence of monopolies stifles innovation, so users
are worse off. For example, Apple's ecosystem works great if you go
all in, but what would have happened if Apple had opened the garden
to every one and embraced open standards?
AnthonyMouse wrote 10 hours 46 min ago:
> Iâm kinda split on the whole Apple situation. Iâm firmly in
the camp of âmonopoly badâ, but apparently people are fine with
appleâs practices. Itâs not like they have to buy an iPhone.
There are many things that now require you to have a phone that
runs iOS or Google-approved Android. They both monopolize their
respective markets and charge 30%, locking out competitors with
attestation systems etc.
Two incumbents that each divide up the customer base between them
while locking out other competitors is called a cartel and it's not
actually a competitive market.
jeroenhd wrote 10 hours 40 min ago:
Google-approved Android, at least for now until some judge
hopefully shuts down the idiotic "verified developers" programme,
has a range of app stores with different options. Unfortunately,
Amazon shut theirs down, but charging a 30% convenience fee is a
choice there.
Inside of the EU the same is true for iOS, of course, although
Apple still somehow charging developers per install makes it hard
to provide apps for free.
AnthonyMouse wrote 10 hours 21 min ago:
> Google-approved Android, at least for now until some judge
hopefully shuts down the idiotic "verified developers"
programme, has a range of app stores with different options.
In order for such a competitor to be viable for use by
developers, it has to be installed on the devices of customers,
which Google has acted to prevent. Google Play has over 90%
market share on Android and has constrained OEMs from shipping
devices with other stores installed and used other methods to
prevent any alternatives from establishing a network effect.
And now that regulators are getting after them about doing
those things, they've sprung this "verified developers" trap to
keep it going.
This has the simplest evidence of anything. If other stores are
a viable alternative, why do they have ~0% market share?
jeroenhd wrote 10 hours 8 min ago:
> has constrained OEMs from shipping devices with other
stores installed
Every Samsung phone comes with the Samsung Store. My Xiaomi
phone came with a Xiaomi store. I don't know about any
vendors that even wanted to ship app stores outside of their
own, but I don't recall Google preventing them from doing
that.
> If alternative stores are a viable alternative, why do they
have ~0% market share?
Because people like Google Play? All I ever read about the
app store alternatives that do exist is that people wished
they could get rid of them. Personally, I find Google Play to
be the best app store around, even compared to iOS' app
store, in terms of search functionality and responsiveness.
And that's a low bar to clear, given the absolute garbage
Google will throw at you with some searches.
With Amazon closing its app store, the only independent app
store that has the ability to charge people money has
disappeared. That doesn't mean Steam or Epic or Microsoft
couldn't set up their own stores if they wanted to. Hell,
even with the "verified developer" system, alternative app
stores are still possible.
AnthonyMouse wrote 9 hours 38 min ago:
> Every Samsung phone comes with the Samsung Store. My
Xiaomi phone came with a Xiaomi store.
Google got caught withholding search revenue from vendors
who installed third party stores and punishing them in
various other ways.
The phone vendor stores are all useless specifically
because they're from the phone vendors, which means they'll
be terrible because hardware vendors are notoriously bad at
software, and on top of that they'll only be installed for
people with that brand of phone, which again destroys the
network effect.
> All I ever read about the app store alternatives that do
exist is that people wished they could get rid of them.
Those are the phone vendor stores. Nobody wants those.
Actual competitors would be the likes of Amazon or Epic or
F-Droid, but Google's shenanigans have meant they all have
negligible market share to the extent that Amazon even gave
up.
> Because people like Google Play?
That wouldn't explain it. If they like Google Play and ten
other things then they would each have ~10% market share.
If they only like Google Play, that implies something fishy
is going on, because you'd otherwise expect there to be a
thousand bad ones and at least a dozen good ones since it's
not that hard to set up an app store. Unless it is that
hard, and then why is that?
jeroenhd wrote 9 hours 9 min ago:
> Google got caught withholding search revenue from
vendors who installed third party stores and punishing
them in various other ways.
Interesting, do you have a link for that?
> Those are the phone vendor stores. Nobody wants those.
They have the same problem Apple's app store has: they
lock you into a particular brand if you decide to spend
money. Annoying, I agree, but 99% of app downloads are
free anyway.
The real money is to be made with in-app purchases, but
because people don't give alternative app stores a
chance, they don't realize how much they're being
scammed: [1] > The phone vendor stores are all useless
specifically because they're from the phone vendors,
which means they'll be terrible because hardware vendors
are notoriously bad at software, and on top of that
they'll only be installed for people with that brand of
phone, which again destroys the network effect.
The network effect never existed on desktop and Steam is
doing just fine competing with the Microsoft Store.
As for software quality, 90% of smartphones is all
software. If they were as bad at software as you say they
are, smartphones would be unusable.
> Actual competitors would be the likes of Amazon or Epic
or F-Droid, but Google's shenanigans have meant they all
have negligible market share to the extent that Amazon
even gave up.
F-Droid is widely used but only a fraction of consumers
care about the things F-Droid cares about. Everyone who
cares about open source on Android is served either by
F-Droid directly or by another app leveraging the same
ecosystem. There's no money to be made selling apps you
can download for free elsewhere, though.
> you'd otherwise expect there to be a thousand bad ones
and at least a dozen good ones since it's not that hard
to set up an app store
But it is hard to set up an app store? The code for the
app store itself isn't all that exciting, but convincing
developers/publishers to use your app store is. Then
things like localisation, payment, distribution, and
in-app purchases pop up, which are technical challenges
that are much harder to solve.
There's a reason Steam and GOG are essentially the only
independent software stores left for video games other
than buying games from publishers directly.
The lack of a network effect does make it hard to compete
with the status quo, but part of that is that nobody
really tries. What the big companies really want is to
get the benefits of Google Play without having to pay the
price. That's why they sued to "open up" the Google Play
store rather than to force Google to make alternative app
stores possible.
There are stores that do have the network effect, as they
come pre-installed on billions of phones. But, as you
said, "nobody wants those".
Trust me, I'd love for Google Play to get a repository
feature where you can add and remove your own software
sources so I wouldn't need to deal with the laggy F-Droid
UI or the unmaintained Amazon App Store app, but the
technical hurdles for getting app stores on phones is
rather minimal.
For what it's worth, I think Netflix is the second
biggest OS-independent proprietor of software apps, as
their app comes with an Xbox Game Pass/Playstation
Plus/Apple Arcade-style games catalogue available with
your subscription. They use Google Play for binary
distribution, but payment itself happens through your
standard Netflix subscription. Again, a lot of people are
angry that this alternative even exists because it's
"bloat" but the network is there, ready to be leveraged.
HTML [1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheSilphRoad/comments/b...
AnthonyMouse wrote 8 hours 29 min ago:
> Interesting, do you have a link for that? [1] They
adopt the Google framing that they were "being paid" to
exclude third party stores, but that's a subjective
description. If you get paid X for search revenue and
you get Y less if you include third party app stores,
that's a penalty.
> The network effect never existed on desktop and Steam
is doing just fine competing with the Microsoft Store.
Stores inherently have a network effect. To get users
you need apps; to get apps you need users. That's a
network effect. Which is why, if you can keep alternate
stores off of most devices, you can suppress them.
Microsoft, for all their other faults, wasn't doing
that, which is why Steam on Windows is a thing but
Steam on Android is conspicuously lacking.
> F-Droid is widely used
No it isn't. It's good, but it has ~0% market share.
> convincing developers/publishers to use your app
store is.
This is exactly the issue. Google put up barriers to
getting people to use them.
> Then things like localisation, payment, distribution,
and in-app purchases pop up, which are technical
challenges that are much harder to solve.
None of these are that hard. Payments are the most
difficult and every company that sells something still
manages it somehow.
> There's a reason Steam and GOG are essentially the
only independent software stores left for video games
other than buying games from publishers directly.
Video games weren't traditionally sold through
"software stores" to begin with. You'd just buy them
directly from the publisher. Which is the other thing
Google suppresses on Android. Try downloading an
Android app directly from the publisher's website the
same as people do with games on Windows and see how
many hoops you have to jump through.
HTML [1]: https://www.theverge.com/2021/8/19/22632806/go...
bigyabai wrote 1 hour 57 min ago:
> No it isn't. It's good, but it has ~0% market share
Oh, I'll go tell my dad and brother who have been
happily using it to update NewPipe for years. They'll
be heartbroken but otherwise unbothered.
stale2002 wrote 11 hours 34 min ago:
> In which situation does the end user not pay for everything?
If you want to get technical about it the field of economics
addresses this question. Its called Tax Incidence. The short
story is that the side of the market that has the least elasticity
of demand (IE, they respond to price changes the least, and don't
buy more or less because of price changes) is the entity that
suffers the costs of taxes and gets the benefits of subsidies.
Intuitively this makes sense. Imagine if there is a luxury good
that you don't need. If taxes increase significant on it, you may
just choose not to buy it. That has a high elasticity of demand.
Meaning that the tax incidence isn't going to be on the consumer
and will instead be on the produce.
Whereas, think about food. People don't eat much more or less
based on how much it cost. You can't physically eat more than like
twice as much, and if you don't have any you die. Meaning that its
a low elasticity of demand, meaning that the consumer pays the
taxes.
eviks wrote 12 hours 31 min ago:
In a situation where profits decrease instead of price increase
vladvasiliu wrote 12 hours 19 min ago:
But that would only work if the end user refused to pay whatever
price the company asks for. In the specific case of Apple, people
line up to buy their product.
eviks wrote 12 hours 16 min ago:
Are you saying that every single person on the planet bought
/lined up to buy iPhones? Or did a lot of people refused to pay
whatever price?
somenameforme wrote 13 hours 59 min ago:
I find headlines like this much more appropriate when placed in terms
of days of revenue: "Apple loses UK App Store monopoly case, penalty
might near 2 days of revenue!"
For somebody that makes the median income, of about $50k, this is a
fine of $273 for years of largescale systematic abusive behavior, done
for profit.
nipponese wrote 7 hours 48 min ago:
Hey itâs at least 8 days of actual profit, ok? /s
jules wrote 7 hours 53 min ago:
For another comparison: this is about 4 years worth of UK App Store
net revenue.
basisword wrote 8 hours 20 min ago:
Anything framed in terms of revenue is pointless. Profit is what we
need.
AnthonyMouse wrote 10 hours 51 min ago:
> I find headlines like this much more appropriate when placed in
terms of days of revenue: "Apple loses UK App Store monopoly case,
penalty might near 2 days of revenue!"
I feel like fines aren't even an appropriate remedy for this. They're
both inherently arbitrary and not something that actually fixes it.
And that combination gives governments a perverse incentive, because
they get $2B to put in their own pockets while leaving the monopolist
to continue monopolizing so they can come back and extract more later
instead of actually solving it.
What they should be doing is breaking up companies that do this sort
of thing.
wkat4242 wrote 9 hours 43 min ago:
You can't jail a company. And breaking one up is pretty much
impossible considering the geopolitical pressures on huge companies
like this.
captainbland wrote 1 hour 39 min ago:
Yeah I guess the "fix" would be legislating that such platforms
require OS makers to provide an open market of software either by
allowing manual installation or third party app stores.
pessimizer wrote 2 hours 47 min ago:
> considering the geopolitical pressures on huge companies like
this.
This seems backwards. The reason they can't be broken up is
because of the pressure that huge companies like this put on
individuals in government.
No different than why a small town mayor can't jail the organized
crime ring that runs his town. If he tries anything, they will
shoot him; or at least put up posters all over town accusing him
of being a pedophile (and pay somebody to file charges against
him that will eventually be dismissed for lack of evidence.) He
wouldn't have become mayor in the first place if they hadn't
supported him and attacked his potential competitors.
array_key_first wrote 3 hours 6 min ago:
It's also not really desirable to punish a company or dissolve
it. It's mostly made up of laborers - you can bet your ass
C-Suite is gonna be A-Okay. Also, we don't really want to just
burn the IP. That stuff is useful.
wkat4242 wrote 1 hour 35 min ago:
> you can bet your ass C-Suite is gonna be A-Okay.
No but that's why it should be possible to hold them personally
accountable IMO. I think them getting away with everything is
what's wrong with the world these days.
Also, a company is a culture. Labourers will find another job.
But probably in a company with a better culture. Which is good
for them too.
archerx wrote 6 hours 11 min ago:
You can jail decision makers that work in the company. You can
also jail the CEO, if they are ready to accept those big salaries
they should also be ready to accept consequences.
RobotToaster wrote 7 hours 58 min ago:
> You can't jail a company.
You can, however, use the death penalty. I imagine a fine
equivalent to twice their market cap should suffice.
blitzar wrote 8 hours 55 min ago:
You can't jail a company, but you can jail a CEO.
IsTom wrote 8 hours 40 min ago:
Always talking about bigger pay because of bigger
responsibility. Might finally start making sense if they
actually start putting them in jails.
AnthonyMouse wrote 9 hours 24 min ago:
You can imagine things a country could do in this respect.
Require the devices they sell in your country to be completely
unlocked with respect to third party app stores and operating
systems, but also with respect to regions so that people can buy
the unlocked ones there and use them anywhere. Invalidate their
copyrights in your country so that third parties can ship phones
with iOS. It's punishment, they're not supposed to like it. There
are plenty of things they wouldn't like.
Also, putting aside whether the UK could actually break them up,
the US or the EU could actually break them up.
kvemkon wrote 7 hours 24 min ago:
> and operating systems
This must be an essential requirement for all PC-like devices.
> regions
People in different regions have very different average income.
As long as manufacturer scales prices accordingly, I think
locking to this region might be appropriate.
> buy the unlocked ones there and use them anywhere
In the case if the price is already the worldwide highest one,
you're right, no locking to the region is needed.
> EU could actually break them up
I think, EU could only achieve that a non-EU-based company
leaves EU.
wkat4242 wrote 4 hours 47 min ago:
> I think, EU could only achieve that a non-EU-based company
leaves EU.
Exactly, also, the US would prevent that geopolitically.
immibis wrote 9 hours 52 min ago:
Fines can work. We should continue fining them one day of revenue
every day until compliance occurs.
AnthonyMouse wrote 8 hours 48 min ago:
You believe that breaking them up is geopolitically infeasible
but a fine larger than the GDP of Finland would fly?
On top of that, giant bureaucracies are great at "compliance".
That isn't the same as doing the thing you actually wanted
though.
immibis wrote 7 hours 33 min ago:
The UK could give Apple a choice: Either pay a fine exceeding
the GDP of Finland, or stop being a monopoly, or every Apple
senior executive will have an arrest warrant and the products
will be seized on import.
To achieve the thing you wanted, word the law vaguely and have
a judge interpret it. You know, the same way the law is applied
to poors like you and me. Nobody gets off a murder by saying
"Your Honour, when I stabbed that man to death, technically I
didn't meet the criteria in point 3 subsection 12 and therefore
I am innocent." Why should corporations get that privilege? (I
note they may be found innocent of murder but guilty of
something like manslaughter - which is fine! Different degrees
of violation of the law can result in greater or lesser
sentences. Proportionality is a good thing. Apple should only
have to pay half the fine if the judge estimates they've done
half what they should)
pacifika wrote 10 hours 25 min ago:
Imagine the response if the uk tried to break up apple
AnthonyMouse wrote 10 hours 15 min ago:
> Imagine the response if the uk tried to break up apple
This right here is why they need to be broken up. Are we supposed
to have a company more powerful than a country?
ben_w wrote 8 hours 23 min ago:
I get the argument, but "country" spans many orders of
magnitude in size. I mean, deliberately extreme example, but
I'm fairly sure the smallest of the discount supermarket chains
near me is more powerful than the country of Tuvalu: [1] [2]
Also, one party being stronger doesn't mean fighting them is
worthwhile, e.g. Iceland threatening to withdraw from NATO to
win the Cod Wars: [3] And and, also why the People's Republic
of China hasn't taken control of the Republic of China after
all this time:
HTML [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuvalu
HTML [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norma_(supermarket)
HTML [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cod_Wars
HTML [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan
immibis wrote 9 hours 51 min ago:
Yes? In feudalism, kings control everything. In capitalism,
investors control everything. It's what the system is named
after - kinda hard to miss.
matheusmoreira wrote 6 hours 52 min ago:
This is feudalism. Technofeudalism, to be precise.
Corporations have created digital fiefdoms and reduced us all
to serfs.
impossiblefork wrote 6 hours 57 min ago:
Yes, but capitalism is just a name for the bad thing. We
don't actually say that we have capitalism, if we did we
would basically be saying 'capital ownership by some to the
exclusion of others is good actually' and that isn't
compatible with having society.
You say things like 'free markets are wonderful and efficient
and we don't believe that they lead to the kind of outcomes
that people who have come up with terms like "capitalism"
believe they will'.
sunderw wrote 9 hours 38 min ago:
Whether that behaviour is good or bad have nothing to do with
the economic system in place. Pure capitalism have obvious
flaws. To me, a company being more powerful than a country is
one.
AnthonyMouse wrote 9 hours 42 min ago:
Investors don't control Apple, the CEO of Apple does. The
investors are random people holding shares of it in their
401k. The company being so big is also they reason they can't
control it effectively, because the people holding it are so
diffuse that they have significant coordination costs.
immibis wrote 6 hours 58 min ago:
The investors with effective voting rights are not usually
people with retirement funds, but rather the administrators
of those retirement fund pools.
ben_w wrote 8 hours 8 min ago:
In the same way, one could say that the president, prime
minister, or similarly titled person controls a democracy.
Investors are "one share, one vote", rather than democracy
"one person, one vote". The recent thing with Musk/Tesla
and his trillion dollar options is being voted on, and
Apple face campaigns and have votes, too:
HTML [1]: https://apnews.com/article/apple-dei-shareholder-p...
londons_explore wrote 10 hours 21 min ago:
I'd love it if a government would decide that the hardware side
of the company needs to split from the software side.
Suddenly we could buy macos to run in a VM.
Or we could buy iPhones running android.
pacifika wrote 7 hours 8 min ago:
Or split Apple UK off. And then fine them.
ben_w wrote 8 hours 31 min ago:
We'd have to pay for iOS upgrades.
Which, given my feelings about iOS 26, might be a good thing. I
mean, if their revenue depends on the OS actually being good
rather than inevitableâ¦
amelius wrote 8 hours 55 min ago:
But that would be like a sudden outbreak of common sense.
manquer wrote 12 hours 59 min ago:
2 days of global revenue is not a good baseline for breaking a single
country.
Comparing against their UK revenue is probably a better metric ?
amelius wrote 9 hours 34 min ago:
Why? If a shoplifter steals from one shop, the judge will not take
into consideration all the shops they didn't steal from.
manquer wrote 5 hours 18 min ago:
Whatever they did could be quite legal in those other
geographies. What you are saying is like say a country in middle
east prosecuting you for smoking weed or drinking alcohol
somewhere else when you visit.
Laws apply to jurisdictions, there are no universal laws which
are legally binding.
Even if it is illegal, it is for them to collect their own fines
for that crime .
AlchemistCamp wrote 7 hours 19 min ago:
Charging devs a percentage App Store sales is very different from
shoplifting and equating the two is extremely misleading.
Devs voluntarily choose to publish apps on the App Store and
doing so gets them both another discovery channel and a
low-friction sales channel. Stores being robbed by shoplifters
don't voluntarily enter that arrangement and they get no benefit
from it.
array_key_first wrote 3 hours 5 min ago:
It's only somewhat voluntary, as there is literally no other
option to get your application on people's iPhones.
For most companies, the choice is: pay Apple, or dissolve your
company.
That's not much of a choice, and I think we all know it.
amelius wrote 7 hours 11 min ago:
Look I'm not going to say the analogy is perfect. No analogy
ever is.
But at a fundamental level, they are breaking the law to
extract money from people. You may not call that stealing, but
imho it's not a huge stretch of reality.
manquer wrote 5 hours 14 min ago:
UK government is just taking their cut, they aren't returning
the money to anyone.
So what difference does it make to the regular joe that the
loan shark got shook down by the mafia boss ?
amelius wrote 2 hours 56 min ago:
The difference is that the shark is now disincentivized to
do it again.
csomar wrote 13 hours 31 min ago:
I think profit is more appropriate. Still only comes at 4 days.
scarab92 wrote 13 hours 29 min ago:
Is that the profit for the App Store specifically, in the UK
specifically?
If not, youâre comparing apples to oranges.
isodev wrote 13 hours 15 min ago:
Why the UK specifically? The App Store monopoly is driven by its
world-wide presence, I think it should be global revenue, and a
fine to match.
philipallstar wrote 11 hours 14 min ago:
Because it's a UK fine. The "monopoly" is driven by Apple
making very good products for a long period of time and the UK
putting its money almost anywhere but into people who might
invent the next iPhone-like thing and make people's lives
better worldwide.
scarab92 wrote 13 hours 6 min ago:
Because the fine amount is specific to the harm done by one
product line, in one market.
Whereas Appleâs profit figure reflects their total profit
across all products and all markets combined.
Itâs meaningless comparing these, because itâs not an equal
basis of comparison.
hvb2 wrote 12 hours 31 min ago:
Why? You probably know just how long these cases take, so it
is not like all other countries are now going to do the same.
If that's the case then using their total profit seems the
only proper measure. What it says is that these companies
lose these cases but it's so infrequent that they can just
price it in. It's a cost of doing business.
If we were to fine Tim Cook 1000$ for doing something that
paid him 1M would that have the 'effect' of keeping him from
doing that again?
vidarh wrote 9 hours 33 min ago:
Countries with similar laws might very well consider doing
the same after reviewing the case and considering how well
it matches their own situation.
Other than that I agree with you - the fine doesn't make
much of a difference unless the risk becomes so significant
that it effectively threatens the jobs of people not to
address it, and it will only threaten jobs if it becomes
more expensive to continue ignoring these laws than paying
fines if/when individual countries take them to court.
antonvs wrote 13 hours 21 min ago:
Limiting it to App Store profit doesnât make sense. The App
Store is not an independent corporation (although itâd be great
if some regulator forced it to be!) Apple makes the decisions
about its behavior.
johnfn wrote 13 hours 37 min ago:
That's not really a meaningful comparison, either. If you assume
every engineer makes ~300K at Apple, perhaps a more meaningful
comparison is "Apple loses ~7K engineers for 1 year", which seems a
bit more than a slap on the wrist as you are suggesting.
captn3m0 wrote 1 hour 5 min ago:
Or 26 CEOs for 1 year. (Tim Cook earned ~$75M for 2024).
wiz21c wrote 10 hours 54 min ago:
except that the money doesn't go only to the engineers.
bravetraveler wrote 11 hours 40 min ago:
Assuming it's like every other large business, that's an
optimization.
kybernetyk wrote 13 hours 31 min ago:
Don't worry. They can replace those lost engineers with AI ;)
throwaway-0001 wrote 13 hours 37 min ago:
Yeah itâs good. Probably should be both days of revenue and days of
profit to account for low profit margin companies.
Or % of market cap would also be good.
haute_cuisine wrote 11 hours 41 min ago:
Still cheaper than giving up the monopoly position.
europeisdoomed wrote 18 hours 14 min ago:
how can I sue Google and Apple for not letting me change my deviceâs
MAC address (Pixel and iPhone) and internet companies for leaking my IP
addresses for tracking my internet activity or to track me. Does it
violate GDPR requirements?
jeroenhd wrote 10 hours 32 min ago:
For changing your MAC address, randomly generated MAC addresses are
the norm unless you change your settings to use a static one. You can
set up your phone to use the phone's MAC or to generate a new one
every time, but by default it'll generate a MAC address per WiFi
network.
As for tracking you and your internet activity, you can file a
complaint with your local DPA to hopefully spur them into action,
that's free. If they don't take action, or decide that your complaint
won't convince a judge, you can contact a legal professional and pay
them to take your case to court like with any other legal matter.
potwinkle wrote 12 hours 43 min ago:
What are you talking about? Both iPhones and Android let you spoof
your MAC address to a random or fixed value if you want, for privacy.
Also, "leaking my IP addresses" how the fuck do you expect a website
to talk to you without an IP address to send the data back to.
mikeiz404 wrote 19 hours 14 min ago:
The tribunal judgement documents are here...
HTML [1]: https://www.catribunal.org.uk/judgments/14037721-dr-rachael-ke...
giobox wrote 19 hours 1 min ago:
This isn't an EU judgement.
dang wrote 15 hours 22 min ago:
(I've taken the liberty of removing "EU" from the otherwise very
helpful GP comment.)
crims0n wrote 19 hours 39 min ago:
Honest question, what do people think is a fair percentage? The
platform development, app hosting, payment processing, and quality
control is surely worth something.
victorbjorklund wrote 10 hours 9 min ago:
I think the best thing would be if Apple just allowed other payment
providers so like Stripe and I'm not sure I haven't followed it
totally if they now kind of have been forced to do that but I think
then you have a free market where developers can choose whether they
want to use apples in app payments which are easier and probably
results in better conversion rates or they want to use an external
like Stripe or something like that. I don't think it's reasonable to
pay for the app hosting or development other than the $100 fee per
year that should certainly cover the cost of storing a few megabytes
of an app.
nake89 wrote 10 hours 11 min ago:
If apple made it easy to install other stores. E.g. when you open the
iPhone for the first time it would not prioritize the app store (like
I think it does with browsers, at least android does).
This would create a more fair market. This would allow for
competition. Which would allow prices to even out and be more fair.
Long winded way of saying, I don't know what the fair percentage
would be. But I know as it stands now, we cannot even begin to know
it.
realusername wrote 10 hours 21 min ago:
The platform development is seriously one of the worst in the market,
most apps would be fine with Stripe and what QC?
daveoc64 wrote 11 hours 32 min ago:
Free apps pay nothing, so Apple has already shown that everything
other than payments can be done for free.
eviks wrote 12 hours 28 min ago:
That's way y to find out - stop blocking the competition
mirzap wrote 13 hours 17 min ago:
The real issue isnât Appleâs commission, itâs the lack of
choice.
Allowing app installations outside the App Store, as on macOS, would
immediately subject Appleâs pricing to market pressure. The fee
would drop on its own, without regulation.
Macs have allowed apps from "untrusted" sources for decades - and
theyâre doing just fine. So no, this isnât about security. Itâs
about control and monopoly.
isodev wrote 13 hours 11 min ago:
Exactly this. There is no way not to choose the App Store,
regardless of the price. Apple goes further by making users believe
alternatives are "less secure" and what not (which is not true) so
it's not just about distribution, it's also a battle of perception.
Even if Apple's App Store tax is 0.00, it would still be unfair and
have negative impact on consumers due to the limited choice of apps
and experiences they can get.
timeon wrote 9 hours 53 min ago:
> making users believe alternatives are "less secure"
Meanwhile searching on Apple's App Store gives you unrelated
crypto scam app as first hit. Apple looks so off-brand these
days.
troupo wrote 13 hours 32 min ago:
> The platform development, app hosting, payment processing, and
quality control is surely worth something.
1. I didn't know iPhones are free. Or iPads. Or Macs. Or Apple
developer program
2. Apple could just... not host apps or provide payment services, and
allow people to install apps from alternatives and let devs use other
payment systems
imron wrote 11 hours 54 min ago:
> and allow people to install apps from alternatives and let devs
use other payment systems
Pre iPhone this is how all software was sold.
Not defending Apple, but independent developers ended up with far
smaller piece of the pie.
Thatâs one of the reasons devs flocked to the AppStore. At the
time 70% was exceedingly generous compared to other distributors.
troupo wrote 10 hours 30 min ago:
> Thatâs one of the reasons devs flocked to the AppStore. At
the time 70% was exceedingly generous compared to other
distributors.
It's quite ironic how the company that disrupted the frankly
predatory pricing model standard at the time is now itself
predatory.
Somewhat tangential:
It's also complicated by the markets changing: PCs used to be the
ubiquitous platform (where you could distribute whatever you
wanted however you wanted [1]), and the mobile phone was a
luxury-ish product (tightly controlled by distributors). Now
mobile phones are the ubiquitous platform everyone depends on...
and they are extremely tightly locked down and controlled.
[1] Has anyone paid for their WinRaR license yet? :)
orasis wrote 13 hours 49 min ago:
As a professional iOS app publisher, I feel 15% is fair.
nandomrumber wrote 10 hours 30 min ago:
Genuine question, is the App Store fee a tax deductible business
expense in your country?
heavyset_go wrote 14 hours 2 min ago:
How much should we be paying Microsoft when we buy Steam games on
Windows? 30%?
I'd be okay giving Microsoft whatever they wanted on the Windows app
store as long as they loosened their grip on being able to run what
you want, from where you want, without their explicit blessing.
Same applies to Apple. If their App Store is really that good, it can
compete on a fair playing field with other options (and no, 3rd party
app stores that still require Apple's blessing and taxes don't
count).
nandomrumber wrote 13 hours 56 min ago:
What software canât run on Windows without Microsoftâs
blessing?
heavyset_go wrote 12 hours 22 min ago:
Anything that isn't signed with certs from Microsoft-blessed CAs,
anything that is signed with certs that were revoked either by
Microsoft or their blessed CAs, and anything newly signed with
old certs that weren't renewed for a $100+/yr fee. That, or you
upload your app to Azure for cloud signing where Microsoft
decides to bless it or not, and you might pay less than going
with a full code signing cert from a CA.
Ran into this fun issue a while back[1]
HTML [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40815488
Dylan16807 wrote 11 hours 50 min ago:
Sorry you hit that bug but you can definitely run unsigned code
on windows.
heavyset_go wrote 10 hours 50 min ago:
Never claimed you couldn't, try distributing that unsigned
code and see if your users can figure out how to run it, or
if their OS will gaslight them into thinking they just
downloaded a virus, or if they get past that, if they can get
past the additional warning window that purposely doesn't
show[1] the "Run anyway" button that lets you run what you
want.
Running signed apps doesn't require you to know a cursed
arcane ritual to run the apps you want to run, you just
double click them. Having to travel through several circles
of hell, each time being urged to turn around immediately,
just to run unsigned code means the vast majority of users
are shit out of luck when it comes to running something they
want if it's not in good standing with Microsoft.
HTML [1]: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/...
Dylan16807 wrote 9 hours 1 min ago:
Well you did claim that, but thank you for correcting. So
that warning is bad for a developer because of confused and
annoyed users, but in terms of actual user restriction it's
not super bad. If defender is set to be too aggressive,
that's a one time change, so about on par with Android.
And for the normal (I think? Did the default change?)
setting you just use run anyway. That's far away from how
iOS makes it impossible.
Edit: Everything I can find says that taking away the "run
anyway" button is not default. If a user or their sysadmin
changes that setting I don't really blame Microsoft.
heavyset_go wrote 8 hours 10 min ago:
No, this is what I claimed:
> I'd be okay giving Microsoft whatever they wanted on
the Windows app store as long as they loosened their grip
on being able to run what you want, from where you want,
without their explicit blessing.
I am talking about their grip on what you're allowed to
run with or without their blessing, not that you "can't
run unsigned binaries at all". They have a tightened
grip, in that without their blessing, running what you
want is an exercise in futility for 99% of users.
> Edit: Everything I can find says that taking away the
"run anyway" button is not default. If a user or their
sysadmin changes that setting I don't really blame
Microsoft.
It's exactly what I experienced when running an unsigned
binary in a fresh Windows 11 VM with the default Defender
settings, which are all on by default. This is how
SmartScreen works by default with binaries it doesn't
like.
Dylan16807 wrote 6 min ago:
Okay, that new default is a significant worsening.
> what I claimed
Your first comment was fine. Your response to
nandomrumber was the problem. They asked about "can't
run" and you gave a big list of situations that are
interference but not "can't run".
wmf wrote 14 hours 46 min ago:
In the EU Apple is now charging ~12% just to be in the App Store or
20% for additional discoverability. Payment processing is on top of
that. These fees seem somewhat fair to me.
mrheosuper wrote 14 hours 52 min ago:
A Fair percentage is whatever the market decides, not Apple. That is
why they are monopoly
lmm wrote 15 hours 14 min ago:
If Apple thinks what they're offering is worth the price they're
charging, why are they so scared of having to compete in the market?
Their service is worth what people choose to pay for it, and
currently that's 0 since no-one is choosing it.
cyberax wrote 15 hours 35 min ago:
Payment processor fees plus a couple of percentage points. At most.
Apple _already_ gets its money from users of their overpriced
devices. They even get at least $300-$400 a year from developers in
hardware depreciation because you have to use pretty expensive Apple
devices to write software for iOS.
hansvm wrote 16 hours 17 min ago:
Even framing it as a percentage is a category error. If they're
providing services, we should be able to pay for the cost of those
services.
Beyond that, the app store is worth something in aggregate to app
developers, but it's worth _more_ to Apple. Without the app store the
iOS ecosystem doesn't exist. Without Apple, developers work on the
next best platform. Under that framing, shouldn't Apple be paying
developers to not leave the platform?
The fact that neither of those things is happening (total rent is
disproportionately larger than the services provided, and the net
flow of cash is toward the beneficiary of value rather than away from
it) points to a monopoly worth breaking down. Those aren't hard
rules, but they're suggestive facts.
Actually answering your question: Payment processors charge up to 5%
and do more due diligence and have more overhead than Apple, so if I
had to name a percentage on every transaction (a viewpoint I already
disagree with), 5% would be a hard upper bound. IME, the value Apple
provides from their "services" in that space is usually negative
aside from the fact that you have to do business with them, so I
think the actual price should be much less.
musicale wrote 16 hours 21 min ago:
> platform development
It's almost 100% platform development. The iPhone is a walled-garden
game platform and Apple treats it like one.
To answer your question, it probably isn't sensible to expect Apple
to charge a drastically different platform fee in its game store
compared to what is charged for other walled-garden game platforms
and stores like the Nintendo eShop.
It may be worth noting that Amazon's Luna game service can work on
the iPhone in a web browser, so game streaming isn't exactly an
Apple-enforced monopoly.
someNameIG wrote 16 hours 26 min ago:
What's Apples profit margins on their hardware? Just from that
they're already getting what all that is worth.
The 30% app store cut is just rent seeking.
ApolloFortyNine wrote 16 hours 58 min ago:
They can do whatever they want imo, if I'm allowed to install a third
party apps and app stores.
Reason077 wrote 17 hours 32 min ago:
> âHonest question, what do people think is a fair percentage?â
The UK's Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) believes it is 17.5%.
One issue, IMO, with this determination is the existence of Steam,
which reportedly also takes 30% yet operates in a competitive market
on open platforms. So there is a case to force Apple to open the
platform to other app stores, but the argument to regulate Appleâs
pricing is much weaker.
nradov wrote 17 hours 34 min ago:
There is no way to define a "fair" percentage. Fairness is entirely
subjective. Require Apple to allow alternative third-party app stores
and let the free market sort it out.
StopDisinfo910 wrote 17 hours 36 min ago:
If only there was a mechanism which would allow companies to offer
similar services then maybe as they try to get customers they would
fix prices so as to make money but gain market shares and the price
would emerge. That would be truly efficient. Surely we would then
fine companies which do their best to avoid that and not try to find
excuses for their practices.
bloppe wrote 17 hours 44 min ago:
Someone asks this every time, and the answer is always the same. Fair
pricing can only be discovered in a competitive market. The problem
is that Apple moves heaven and earth to prevent competitive markets
from doing their thing.
That being said, this is the UK, where even in a reasonably
competitive job market people can still sue their employer for
"unfair pay" [1], so maybe the thinking here is a bit different than
my silly classical liberal brain
[1]
HTML [1]: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj0817jd9dqo
Sophistifunk wrote 17 hours 54 min ago:
Thing is that's a question for the market to decide. Which is why we
have anti-trust / anti-monopoly laws in the first place. We don't
want the state setting "fair" prices for anything, it always
backfires. We want them ensuring the market is free to set prices.
Monopolies granted by the state (trademarks, copyright, patents) are
specific and limited, and ideally we want monopolies that arise
naturally to be similarly limited, or broken up if they are being
weaponised against the public.
stevage wrote 17 hours 55 min ago:
Payment processors like Stripe, Wise etc are typically taking around
1-2% so that's a good anchor.
radley wrote 18 hours 6 min ago:
They can charge whatever they want. But they can't force exclusivity.
Without that, terms and benefits would be equitable.
yupyupyups wrote 18 hours 7 min ago:
Allow developers to distribute their apps outside of the app store,
the cost apart for firmware maintenance and development will be 0.
Apple is not bringing its users value by prohibiting sideloading of
arbitrary apps. Rather, this is an extreme example of rent-seeking
which has affected almost all countries around the world. It needs to
be regulated away.
827a wrote 18 hours 13 min ago:
IMO: Any number, as long as it is not expressed as a percentage.
dreamcompiler wrote 18 hours 22 min ago:
So you believe quality control is part of the App Store review
process?
gt0 wrote 18 hours 53 min ago:
For me it's not about the percentage, it's that it is a monopoly. If
I make an iPad app, my only route to market is Apple.
That is before I get into my personal objection to having to ask
permission to put software on a computer I bought. I own an iPad but
I can't just install anything I want on it, Apple needs to approve
the software first. For me that's just anti-creative and
anti-everying-I-love-about-computers.
All I really want as a software developer is to be able to write
software and have people use it if they choose to. I don't want Apple
or any other company inserted as a middle-man.
brazukadev wrote 19 hours 10 min ago:
Whatever they want, but let me use MY phone to install whatever app I
want outside of the app store.
what wrote 16 hours 15 min ago:
You bought the phone knowing you can only install from the App
Store. Buy a different phone.
brazukadev wrote 7 hours 24 min ago:
That's not how the justice system works, kiddo.
glitchc wrote 19 hours 12 min ago:
10%. A finder's fee, like everything else irl. It should be regulated
as such for all platforms.
xboxnolifes wrote 16 hours 3 min ago:
I was unaware finders fee were universally 10%, or even regulated
to be so.
ASalazarMX wrote 18 hours 52 min ago:
Wholeheartedly agree. 30% fee feels like medicare in USA, an
excessive amount because it's as high as developers will pay
without giving up and leaving.
The Apple App Store sold more than one trillion USD in 2024, how
much of their 30% cut (300+ billion) covers operational costs?
¿10%?
gortok wrote 19 hours 16 min ago:
âQuality Controlâ?
Outside of the absolute bare minimum to check this box for a
plurality of observers, I canât imagine anyone actually saying the
App Store has a quality control process with a straight face,
especially not one that would be championed as acceptable as a market
practice.
Rohansi wrote 17 hours 49 min ago:
The App Store "quality control" does its job (or tries to) to make
sure developers aren't breaking their arbitrary rules. They would
never actually do quality control because they benefit from all the
junk being pushed to the App Store through their cut, search ads,
etc.
gpm wrote 19 hours 20 min ago:
As long as Apple requires they make use of those services for me to
install software on the computer I bought, and they prevent others
from producing equivalent competing devices via patents (i.e.
government granted monopolies), zero.
It's not that it's not worth something, it's that they're abusing
their patents and monopoly to extract further compensation after I
already bought the device.
BrenBarn wrote 16 hours 5 min ago:
> As long as Apple requires they make use of those services for me
to install software on the computer I bought, and they prevent
others from producing equivalent competing devices via patents
(i.e. government granted monopolies), zero.
Right, that's the thing. And zero should also be their revenue and
their asset value as long as they continue along that path. The
fines should continue to escalate, and should also be applied to
individual executives and board members, until they become high
enough that the behavior actually changes.
$2 billion is a good start. Apple's revenue in 2024 was about $390
billion. Fines in excess of that amount should be considered.
laughing_man wrote 12 hours 4 min ago:
That's a big enough number that the likely result is Apple would
pull out of the UK altogether.
TheCoelacanth wrote 4 hours 7 min ago:
That would be an amazing opportunity for competitors who chose
to continue operating in the UK.
BrenBarn wrote 10 hours 57 min ago:
Then good riddance.
kataklasm wrote 11 hours 38 min ago:
Does it matter? Apple paid around 300 million pounds of
corporation tax in 2024. If the UK poses a landmark penalty of
say 50 or 100 billion pounds, thats 167x or 333x the annual
corporation tax paid by Apple in the UK.
itake wrote 18 hours 7 min ago:
Mobile apps mobile app fraud empties life savings accounts. I agree
there should be personal accountability, but that clearly hasn't
been working. Installing an app shouldn't eliminate 30 years of
life savings.
pjc50 wrote 9 hours 45 min ago:
If a bank cannot secure their mobile payments app without
requiring the banning of all other apps from the platform, maybe
it's the bank that should be shipping their own secure device.
timeon wrote 10 hours 3 min ago:
More than decade I was and, surprisingly, still am able to
install anything on my MacOS (not for long - I know).
Maybe clever engineers at MacOS could help iOS engineers with
this?
bloppe wrote 13 hours 15 min ago:
How is this related to app store fees? No, paying a 30% fee on
all transactions does not make you 10x safer than paying a 3% fee
blackoil wrote 15 hours 52 min ago:
So you agree that government should take over the finances of the
people as they can't be trusted to lose it all in gambling, get
rich quick schemes.
kelthuzad wrote 17 hours 58 min ago:
This is the "think of the children" equivalent that is being
regurgitated ad nauseam. Anyone who pretends that Apple cares
about anything other than profit is lying to others and
themselves.
>I agree there should be personal accountability, but that
clearly hasn't been working.
It has been working on Android just fine. And if Apple is
supposedly so concerned with security, then why did it take them
so damn long to implement a simple mechanism to stop thieves from
simply changing your password using your pin? Only after
relentless pressure did they implement additional security, which
took them far too long. The "security" ruse is nothing but
propaganda to protect Apple's monopoly on app distribution.
[0]
HTML [1]: https://tidbits.com/2023/02/26/how-a-thief-with-your-iph...
itake wrote 17 hours 36 min ago:
Super confused. What do you mean its been working on Android
just fine? Google just announced they are closing their
ecosystem exactly for the reasons I stated.
Most of the fraud at my job comes from the android platform,
because the security model on android is much worse than
Apples.
Why is Google citing fraud as a reason to lock down android if
"its been working on android just fine"?
Apple is not a fast moving company, but they do have a great
product and have addressed many of the big issues the community
has raised.
jojobas wrote 16 hours 35 min ago:
Google is closing down because it saw what exactly Apple got
away with in previous lawsuits.
kelthuzad wrote 17 hours 1 min ago:
>Super confused.
You aren't confused, you just have a preferred narrative.
Hardcore Apple fans and Apple shareholders share a similar
bias with different variations of 'It is difficult to get a
man to understand something, when his salary depends on his
not understanding it.'
>What do you mean its been working on Android just fine?
Google just announced they are closing their ecosystem
exactly for the reasons I stated.
It has been working just fine and Google's claim about their
consolidation and its motivations are about as credible as a
Rail Robber Baron claiming that his monopolization practices
are actually about "security" and not profit, the response to
such propaganda was the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 and
today it is the DMA.
More elaborate articles regarding these bogus claims about
"security" and its refutation: [1] [2] >Most of the fraud at
my job comes from the android platform, because the security
model on android is much worse than Apples.
Your personal anecdotes are not credible evidence, especially
when they are coincidentally contrived to serve as
anti-competitive business practice apologia.
Apple's "security model" is supposedly so much better, yet
iPhone theft was absolutely rampant on iPhones due to an
Apple "feature" that literally helped thieves steal a user's
entire digital life. Androids were unaffected.
"A Basic iPhone Feature Helps Criminals Steal Your Entire
Digital Life" - The Wall Street Journal, [3] >Why is Google
citing fraud as a reason to lock down android if "its been
working on android just fine"?
For the same reason that Apple is using bogus claims about
"security", because they can hardly be honest and say "We
can't allow any competition, because it would threaten our
taxation funnel"
As Cory Doctorow writes:
"In the meantime, Googleâs story that this move is
motivated by security it obviously bullshit. First of all,
the argument that preventing users from installing software
of their choosing is the only way to safeguard their privacy
and security is bullshit when Apple uses it, and itâs
bullshit when Google trots it out: [4] But even if you
stipulate that Google is doing this to keep you safe, the
story falls apart. After all, Google isnât certifying apps,
theyâre certifying developers. This implies that the
company can somehow predict whether a developer will do
something malicious in the future. This is obviously wrong."
- [5] >Apple is not a fast moving company, but they do have a
great product and have addressed many of the big issues the
community has raised.
There is no "community" - there is Apple, its profit motive
and the consumers.
Apple was relentlessly pressured to deal with their reckless
"feature" that made a mockery of modern security practices,
gravely endangered its users and it still took Apple way too
long to introduce a basic fix. Apple is a trillion dollar
company, so euphemisms like "Apple is not a fast moving
company" won't cut it, especially when it comes to security -
you know, the thing they pretend to value above everything
else.
HTML [1]: https://makeuseof.com/androids-sideloading-limits-ar...
HTML [2]: https://infrequently.org/2025/09/apples-antitrust-pl...
HTML [3]: https://archive.is/oW0lD#selection-1872.0-1872.1
HTML [4]: https://www.eff.org/document/letter-bruce-schneier-s...
HTML [5]: https://doctorow.medium.com/https-pluralistic-net-20...
itake wrote 15 hours 23 min ago:
Your premise has the false dilemma: "If we can't perfectly
block fraudsters from by-passing security checks, then we
might as well have no security checks."
Another simple test is we can compare the amount of malware
running on closed ecosystems with open systems. Which
system hosts more malware: linux/windows or iOS?
I want to clarify that I'm not saying there are no
financial benefits for Google/Apple. I am saying there ARE
financial benefits to users and businesses on these
platforms.
kelthuzad wrote 10 hours 44 min ago:
There is no false dilemma. You're just arguing for the
sake of arguing at this point.
"In the meantime, Googleâs story that this move is
motivated by security it obviously bullshit. First of
all, the argument that preventing users from installing
software of their choosing is the only way to safeguard
their privacy and security is bullshit when Apple uses
it, and itâs bullshit when Google trots it out: [1] But
even if you stipulate that Google is doing this to keep
you safe, the story falls apart. After all, Google
isnât certifying apps, theyâre certifying developers.
This implies that the company can somehow predict whether
a developer will do something malicious in the future." -
HTML [1]: https://www.eff.org/document/letter-bruce-schnei...
HTML [2]: https://doctorow.medium.com/https-pluralistic-ne...
JustExAWS wrote 16 hours 20 min ago:
You realize in the very WSJ article you cited it said this?
> A similar vulnerability exists in Googleâs Android
mobile operating system. However, the higher resale value
of iPhones makes them a far more common target, according
to law-enforcement officials. âOur sign-in and
account-recovery policies try to strike a balance between
allowing legitimate users to retain access to their
accounts in real-world scenarios and keeping the bad actors
out,â a Google spokesman said.
kelthuzad wrote 16 hours 8 min ago:
I should have elaborated even further, because I already
suspected that someone would nitpick that phrasing. So
let me explain the difference:
"according to law-enforcement officials" - they are
clearly not experts in tech and are unaware of the
crucial difference between Apple and Android in this
scenario.
The most significant difference is that Google explicitly
stated their system includes "reasonable time-limited
protections against hijackers changing passwords or
recovery factors" - but only if users have properly
configured recovery options beforehand.
According to Google's official statement:
"Google Account Recovery flows also have reasonable
time-limited protections against hijackers changing
passwords or recovery factors set up by the legitimate
users - provided users have set up a recovery phone
and/or recovery email."
In contrast, the WSJ article describes how on iPhone:
- Thieves could immediately change the Apple ID password
using just the device passcode
- there was no waiting period or time-limited protection
mentioned
- Once changed, victims were instantly locked out with no
grace period
- Apple's Recovery Key feature could be enabled by
thieves to permanently lock victims out
Android users on the other hand could proactively:
- Set up recovery email and phone numbers that would be
retained for 7 days after changes
- Enable Google's Advanced Protection Program, which
specifically blocks PIN-based password resets entirely
- Configure multiple recovery options that created
additional barriers
Apple users had limited options, the article mentions
security keys could be added, but testing showed
"security keys didn't prevent account changes using only
the passcode, and the passcode could even be used to
remove security keys from the account". This made
Android's vulnerability more preventable and recoverable
for users who had properly configured their security
settings in advance, whereas Apple users were stuck and
vulnerable to the pin-hijack until fixed, because iOS did
not offer any similar protections such as time-based
safeguards.
JustExAWS wrote 15 hours 48 min ago:
Well you realize itâs not a good look to post a
citation and then immediately say the article is wrong
only about the part you disagree with? See âGell-Mann
amnesia effectâ.
But Apple implemented features to block that over a
year ago.
HTML [1]: https://support.apple.com/en-us/120340
kelthuzad wrote 15 hours 38 min ago:
> Well you realize itâs not a good look to post a
citation and then immediately say the article is
wrong
I did not say that the article is wrong, don't
misquote me. You are also still failing to understand
what the crucial difference is:
An iPhone was vulnerable to the pin-hijack, because
of its limited security options - a security aware
user was as vulnerable as an amateur.
An Android phone was only vulnerable if it was NOT
properly secured.
So 100% of iPhone users were vulnerable, while
Androids were only vulnerable if misconfigured.
So I was and I am still 100% correct, but you simply
decided to nitpick that one sentence of mine that was
prone to being nitpicked without bothering to
understand what the significant difference between
the systems were.
>But Apple implemented features to block that over a
year ago.
Yes they did, after a lot of time and pressure. And
if you read my comment again, you can see that I have
already stated that they have implemented it. So
what's the point of you telling me something that I
have already mentioned several times?
nandomrumber wrote 14 hours 2 min ago:
If youâd just said all of this upfront, it
wouldâve come across as more honest / less
confrontational.
kelthuzad wrote 10 hours 49 min ago:
>If youâd just said all of this upfront, it
wouldâve come across as more honest / less
confrontational.
"I should have elaborated even further, because I
already suspected that someone would nitpick that
phrasing . So let me explain the difference:" [1]
After me clarifying what I've meant, the response
wasn't "Oh I see now what you intended to say,
thanks for elaborating", but misquoting me and
making hostile and snide comments. That is
someone who wants to be confrontational and lacks
honesty in trying to understand what was meant in
the first place.
HTML [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=456...
cedws wrote 19 hours 17 min ago:
You had the choice to buy another phone.
timeon wrote 10 hours 8 min ago:
Since Google is also moving to this direction can I ask you which
phone can I buy that is not part of this cartel and works with
banks and public services?
lozenge wrote 12 hours 15 min ago:
As a developer, you have to offer your app on both phones
otherwise your business won't get anywhere. There's no choice
there.
heavyset_go wrote 13 hours 59 min ago:
Google has successfully boiled the frog and implemented all of
the App Store's same fees and its most draconian features and
policies.
A duopoly is not a choice.
bloppe wrote 17 hours 27 min ago:
This (1) ignores the extremely strong network effects purposely
engendered by Apple's chronic refusal to implement interoperable
standards in any of their products and (2) this is as much about
app developers as it is about app consumers, and developers
clearly have no choice but to meet their users where they are,
which is on Apple devices. The other choice is going out of
business.
echelon wrote 18 hours 16 min ago:
There are two phones on the market. Android and iPhone.
The Government needs to break up this duopoly.
Mobile should have hundreds of choices, three or four OS options,
and free web-based installs without a gatekeeper or taxation.
Mobile providers shouldn't be able tyrannically set defaults for
search, payments, or anything else either.
fruitworks wrote 18 hours 26 min ago:
not really. I have two options: android or ios. And android is
following ios lockstep with practices like the recent changes to
play integrity.
furyofantares wrote 18 hours 36 min ago:
We also have the choice to make different laws.
makeitdouble wrote 18 hours 59 min ago:
And Apple now have the choice to change their business practices.
bitpush wrote 19 hours 13 min ago:
When you plug in a non-Apple USB cable to charge your iPhone, or
use a third-party phone case, or use Anker power bank .. do you
wish you had none of these choices, but only use whatever Apple
branded cables, and phonecase and power banks existed?
If you want to buy Apple cables because you think it is better,
sure - that's great. But preventing ugreen cables from working
makes no sense.
You shouldnt say 'buy a different phone' if you want to use
ugreen cables.
If you're a consumer, you should be on the side of more choice
and more competition. If you're a Apple/Apple employee, you
should 100% say what you just did :)
aydyn wrote 18 hours 7 min ago:
What if im on the consumer's side but I dont like britbongs
cedws wrote 19 hours 9 min ago:
Being on the side of the consumer means being on the side of
the free market. If you donât like the charging options of an
iPhone, donât buy an iPhone. If you donât like the OS of a
Pixel, donât buy a Pixel. If the consumer is choosy and
doesnât like the options available then there is a market
opportunity for new entrants.
freedomben wrote 3 hours 23 min ago:
I personally think this is a reasonable argument in theory,
though in practice it's not a free market when governments
and large mandatory institutions (like banks) put in place
things that force your hand (Digital ID on your attested
device, banking apps that require attestation, etc). It also
falls down when you realize the barriers of entry are
absolutely enormous. Even Amazon and Microsoft couldn't get
through them, so what chance do new entrants have?
stale2002 wrote 11 hours 32 min ago:
Or, instead of that, the consumer will have the choice to do
whatever they want with their own phone and you won't be able
to stop them. The free market wins if you give the freedom
to the user to control their own phones.
thisislife2 wrote 13 hours 16 min ago:
"Free market" doesn't mean consumer rights go for toss. "Free
market" also means a level playing field for everyone, which
is why we have things like standardisation (e.g. USB-C) to
make it easier for other businesses to compete. A monopoly or
duopoly is not a "free market". Once a monopoly or duopoly
emerges, it becomes an artificial moat to prevent competition
and as "free market" has ceased to exist in such a situation,
it is incumbent to change the rules to make sure a "free
market" exists again and competition can thrive. (And
ofcourse, all this has to be done without ignoring the rights
of other stakeholders in the society).
shlant wrote 15 hours 6 min ago:
"the free market is the solution!" you say while defending
monopolistic practices
WheatMillington wrote 17 hours 18 min ago:
That's an incredibly naive take on economics and competition,
because it ignores all of the forces that entrench existing
participants and make new entrants basically impossible in
many cases. You're coming off like a student of ECON100 who
thinks they've got it all figured out.
stevage wrote 17 hours 56 min ago:
>Being on the side of the consumer means being on the side of
the free market.
You're saying, companies should be able to do whatever they
want, even if it's bad for the consumer. How can you describe
that position as "being on the side of the consumer"?
echelon wrote 18 hours 13 min ago:
> Being on the side of the consumer means being on the side
of the free market.
An unregulated market leads to monopoly and anti-competitive
practices.
Capitalism is one of the best models we've discovered, but
its markets must be appropriately regulated.
Capitalism should be difficult. An eternal treadmill. You
shouldn't be able to wedge yourself into a market as a
quarter-century long hegemon.
You shouldn't be able to capture the key touch point of all
consumers to their digital life and then tax it for eternity.
It's putting incredible strain on innovation and all other
market participants.
Companies should die and be replaced by younger startups
regularly. It's a renewing forest fire that de-ossifies
technology.
Rewarding startups puts the capital rewards in the hands of
innovation capital rather than large institutions. Large
companies do everything they can to minimize labor costs.
Venture funds are even hurting in that the monopolies put a
cap on the number of startups that can reach decacorn or
centacorn status.
And before I field any complaints that consumers don't care
about this - most consumers are laypeople and do not
understand what is happening to them. They can't articulate
these points. This is why we require regulators to police the
system.
nandomrumber wrote 14 hours 43 min ago:
Iâm not convinced the solution to anything is government
picking winners, nor telling other people what they, the
government themselves, are going to do with their, the
people / companies, money.
And how to I get support for the products I just bought
when your government regulators terminate the existing of
the product developer / manufacturer.
sehansen wrote 6 hours 51 min ago:
What other mechanism can there exist that would have the
power to change the behaviour of these giant
corporations, except government?
mvdtnz wrote 18 hours 26 min ago:
> Being on the side of the consumer means being on the side
of the free market.
What makes you think the "free market" always produces the
best outcome for consumers?
foolswisdom wrote 18 hours 38 min ago:
The nature of a free market is that someone wins the
competition, and the winner is then happy to figure out ways
to prevent anyone from competing at all (this kind of action
doesn't require a complete winner either, but I'm focusing on
a thought experiment here).
Ergo, if you care about maintaining a free market, then you
care about limiting what kind of moves you can make in the
free market, in order to preserve a free market. A truly free
market with no rules has an end state where it is not a free
market, more like a much more sophisticated version of the
nobles of the land owning everything. So we declare many
activities that make it difficult for others to compete that
are not simply about manking a better product,
"anti-competitive" and illegal.
cedws wrote 17 hours 37 min ago:
Other than capital what prevents a new player entering the
smartphone market? In the US Apple is at ~50% market share
and Samsung ~30%. These are not colluding entities so there
must be enough theoretical freedom to create a smartphone
that claims significant market share.
array_key_first wrote 2 hours 52 min ago:
Arbitrary software limitations such as apps not running
on said phone.
The apple iPhone is a locked down system engineered in
such a way to extract maximum value from consumers and
developers. It is impossible to compete.
JustExAWS wrote 16 hours 31 min ago:
Microsoft, Amazon and Meta have plenty of âcapitalâ
and they couldnât create their own ecosystem for their
own phone and convince software developers. The hardware
is not really an issue. Any company with a few million
can sell their own phone and get a Chinese ODM to
customize it for them and white label it.
Outside of Apple and Samsung (only because they make a
lot of their own parts), the phone market is a commodity
race to the bottom
eptcyka wrote 13 hours 48 min ago:
Amazon, Meta and Microsoft tried their hand at making
competitive devices and enter the market, to varying
degrees of effort but practically identical degrees of
failure. All this to say, it takes a lot more than just
capital.
mcbrit wrote 17 hours 20 min ago:
Other than capital does a lot of work in that argument.
Companies will not pop up and optimize much less micro
optimize the tradeoffs. This isnât a stock exchange;
itâs a real capital intensive product.
timpieces wrote 18 hours 45 min ago:
This is true of an idealized perfect free market with
perfectly rational consumers, but not so much in the real
world. The simple fact that profits on phones haven't been
competed to zero is enough to show it's not a perfect free
market.
I don't think the average consumer spends much time
considering the long-term health of the app ecosystem when
they purchase a phone. Maybe the wisdom of the crowds is
correct here and it's truly not important or beneficial, but
to me it seems more likely that it's outside the bounded
rationality of most consumers.
Markets have blind-spots and they tend to be short sighted.
fhennig wrote 18 hours 46 min ago:
I don't like any of the options but still need a phone, now
what?
Ylpertnodi wrote 18 hours 28 min ago:
>I don't like any of the options but still need a phone,
now what?
I've always used this method: work out what are the most
benefits, with the fewest annoying 'features', between
various manufacturers that have items within your budget,
and choose something.
In my country we call it 'shopping'.
xmprt wrote 18 hours 42 min ago:
That's pretty unfortunately but if you articulate some of
your issues with the options, I'm sure I can find an
Android option for you that works. Despite Google's
attempts, Android is still quite open and many phones allow
you to do whatever you want with them.
Or if you only want to use iPhones then it seems like the
downsides of the locked down app store aren't worth
switching in which case it seems like you've already made
your choice.
celsoazevedo wrote 18 hours 3 min ago:
Android itself is fine, but in most of the world you need
Android with Google services, otherwise banking apps,
contactless payments, some games, etc, don't work.
The app sideloading changes they're about to
introduce[0]? Affects their Pixels, Samsungs, OnePlus,
Sony, etc, old and new. It can't be disabled. The work
around is to use ADB to install apks.
So while you have more choice of hardware, Android skins
with more or less features, different long term support,
prices, etc, in practice you're stuck with what Google
wants. Your options are Apple or Google.
---
[0]
HTML [1]: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/08/google-w...
Ferret7446 wrote 17 hours 4 min ago:
Whose fault is it if banks, etc require Google
services? There's a line somewhere, where punishing a
company for providing a great product that everyone
chooses to use is blatantly unfair
kadoban wrote 19 hours 2 min ago:
> If the consumer is choosy and doesnât like the options
available then there is a market opportunity for new
entrants.
And if new entrants can't enter the market because the
existing monopolies make it impractical, then what?
cedws wrote 18 hours 54 min ago:
This is the actual problem to be solved. The bureaucracy of
forcing the hand of tech companies every time consumers
scream loud enough is a shitty solution.
kelthuzad wrote 18 hours 41 min ago:
And that is exactly the problem that is being solved.
It's not about "consumers screaming", but companies,
consumers and governments realizing that anti-competitive
behavior is harming everybody except the gatekeeper. The
solution is competition. Since Apple is such a great and
innovative company, they surely won't be afraid of
competing on merit.
cedws wrote 18 hours 33 min ago:
It just props up the monopoly. Appeased consumers have
no reason to buy other products. There is no financial
motive for Apple to do good because they can do bad
until government forces their hand, and they have no
reason to fear competition. Itâs an admission weâre
all at the mercy of Apple until daddy government steps
in.
kelthuzad wrote 18 hours 22 min ago:
The fact that even a whiff of potential competition
incentivized Apple to half their tax for specific
cases shows that anti-trust regulation works and that
it's the only thing that will ever force a gatekeeper
to reconsider their anti-competitive business
practices.
>Itâs an admission weâre all at the mercy of
Apple until daddy government steps in.
That has always been the case when market
participants become too dominant e.g.
United States v. Paramount Pictures (1948)
United States v. AT&T (1984)
United States v. Microsoft (2001)
Anti-trust regulation would have dealt with Apple,
Google and co by now if the lobbying weren't so out
of control compared to previous times.
gpm wrote 19 hours 17 min ago:
I did not have a choice to buy another equivalent phone because
patents legally forbid other companies from producing equivalent
phones.
If Apple wants to take that defence, they should be required to
have abandoned every patent they own on iPhones prior to my
purchase of the device.
sehansen wrote 6 hours 31 min ago:
I don't think you're entitled to an equivalent phone. If we're
talking patents on essential things like a cryptographic
algorithm required for banking or a technology required to
implement 5G, sure, the patent holder should be required to
license the patent to anyone at a reasonable price. But not
licensing patents on non-essential features like Face ID or
health monitors are OK. And all of that is independent of
whether or not you can install your own software.
What matters is the competitive situation. Given that you're
practically required to have either a Google or Apple device to
participate normally in modern society, Apple and Google should
be precluded from forcing customers and suppliers[0] to use
their other services, like payment services, app stores,
delivery networks, ad networks, etc.
But if Apple were the 4th biggest phone platform with at most
10% of the market, Apple would definitely be entitled to remain
a walled garden. Even if their phones had features no-one else
can implement due to patents.[1]
0: E.g. app developers
1: I'd claim this is the only position that is consistent with
being in favor of patents. But I'm mildly anti-patent, so YMMV.
gpm wrote 2 hours 11 min ago:
I don't think I'm entitled to an equivalent phone either. I
merely think I'm entitled to either (at Apple's option) an
equivalent phone OR apple not using it's monopoly on
producing equivalent phones to extract further money from me
after patent rights are exhausted at the time of the purchase
of the phone from Apple.
I.e. I'm entitled to anti-trust protection. Or I'm entitled
to patent-misuse protection. I don't really care which set of
laws you put it under.
Even if Apple were 10% of the phone market they would still
have 100% of the distributing software to devices with
Apple's patented technology market, and that should be enough
for anti trust protection to kick in.
(I'm also mildly anti patent, but I've been carefully
selecting only arguments in this thread that I believe are
entirely consistent with a pro patent belief system. E.g. if
Apple treated their phones like their laptops - where they
also have patents - all the positions and arguments I've
taken would not have an issue with their behavior)
cedws wrote 19 hours 14 min ago:
Equivalent in what way? A Samsung, a Xiaomi, a Google phone
have all of the necessary capabilities to live a modern life.
stale2002 wrote 11 hours 30 min ago:
> Equivalent in what way?
Equivalent as in a literal exact copy of an iPhone. Lots of
factories can produce those, seeing as Apple contracts out
production. If we get rid of those patents and give free
choice to those factories and consumers, well they would be
glad to produce a modified "Open" iPhone.
Lets make a free market by stopping this government
intervention of the patent system that supports monopolies.
gpm wrote 19 hours 6 min ago:
Equivalent in the way of having the numerous features small
and large that Apple has patents on. Whether that's being a
rectangle with rounded corners (yes they have a patent on
that, or at least did, and successfully defended it in court.
Not sure what's happened in the meantime), or whatever random
patents Apple has on making blood oxygen sensor technology
just that little bit better.
If Apple believes their portfolio of patents protecting the
iPhone is worthless, they should abandon them. That they
haven't precludes the argument that they are.
dialup_sounds wrote 18 hours 34 min ago:
You seem to be confusing Masimo's patent infringement case
against Apple over Apple Watch with the notion that Apple
has some kind of a patented blood oxygen sensor in the
iPhone.
I don't think that supports your case that Apple's patent
keeps other phones from being equivalent given that the
sensor isn't in the iPhone and it's not even Apple's
patent.
For what it's worth, I'm typing this on a Pixel which is
also a rounded rectangle, so I'm skeptical that patent is
really holding other phones back, either
gpm wrote 18 hours 28 min ago:
You're typing that on a Pixel with a bump sticking out
the back, which would mean it doesn't violate the design
patent.
I wasn't specifically thinking of that case, though it's
likely why my mind chose that sensor as an example. Apple
has patents on blood oxygen sensors, of course, because
Apple has patents on basically everything they do. Here's
a recent example that I just picked off of Google
HTML [1]: https://patents.google.com/patent/AU2024216430B2...
dialup_sounds wrote 17 hours 3 min ago:
I'm not seeing how other phones are being held back by
any of this. Google and Samsung have design patents,
too, and my Pixel Watch also has a blood oxygen sensor.
gpm wrote 15 hours 57 min ago:
All phones aren't equivalent, we agree on that right?
Apple has legitimate hardware advantages in places.
Faster more energy efficient chips. Better earbuds.
Various camera components with various advantages. So
on and so forth. All of the minor improvements Apple
has made will have patents behind them. All of these
patents hold all other phone manufactuers back.
Yes, all the other phone manufacturers also have
patents. Yes, these also all hold Apple back. That's
the deal we make with patents, you invent something,
you get a monopoly on producing that thing.
All the other phone manufacturers are basically
respecting that deal. Apple is not - they're taking
that monopoly and extending it to a monopoly on
distribution of software which just happens to run on
the device with the thing. This is what anti-trust
law, the doctrine of patent misuse, etc should
prevent. Either they don't get a monopoly on the
things they invented (and all the other phones get
better) or they don't get to abuse that monopoly to
extract money from people who already purchased the
device - i.e. after the patent rights are exhausted.
cedws wrote 19 hours 0 min ago:
It sounds like your problem is with the patent system then.
The point of patents is to grant exclusive rights to a
technology in exchange for sharing information.
gpm wrote 18 hours 57 min ago:
I'm not taking any issue with patents existing here. I'm
taking issue with anti-competitive behavior that Apple is
executing on top of the patent system. If Apple merely
wanted to use their monopoly on features of devices to
sell devices with those features I would have no issue.
My issue is only when they leverage that monopoly to get
a monopoly on the distribution of software to those
devices and then leverages their monopoly on the
distribution of software to those devices to extract fees
for doing so.
Edit: I don't, for instance, have issues with how they
use patents with macbooks. There they don't abuse their
monopoly on certain hardware features to get and extract
money from a secondary monopoly on software.
doctorpangloss wrote 19 hours 24 min ago:
Your list is missing, "concentrating rich payers into one channel,"
which is why developers pay 30%, even if they don't like it.
someotherperson wrote 19 hours 30 min ago:
How much of a fee do you think you should pay to install applications
on your computer? The same amount as that.
Or provide alternative ways to install software.
This is a problem of their own creation.
chongli wrote 19 hours 20 min ago:
As soon as you open the door to side-loading, you'll have scammers
and data-siphoners force all their users to side-load so that they
can completely bypass Apple's privacy controls and security
features. The entire iOS ecosystem is built on the App Store review
process as a gatekeeper for entitlements and the capabilities they
grant (through API access).
How do you solve that problem for side-loaded apps?
array_key_first wrote 2 hours 48 min ago:
Apple has literally zero "security features" that rely on the app
store.
They do not review source code. There is malware on the Apple app
store, because they do not review apps for malware. Because they
do not review source code.
Any other opinion is just not true.
realusername wrote 10 hours 17 min ago:
Apple gets most of it's appstore money from very shady
casino-like game apps which I'm unconfortable giving to my
family.
If there's any benevolent gatekeeping, I'm not seeing it.
cco wrote 16 hours 44 min ago:
My precise location data and credit card transactions are freely
available on the market.
Just by companies listed on the stock market who got that data
"legally" in our current walled and "safe" garden.
I appreciate a lockdown for kids and elders, but let's not
pretend our data is locked safely away in this walled garden.
chongli wrote 14 hours 26 min ago:
Credit card and location data is one thing. If we opened up
these devices to the Wild West weâd have spyware that tracks
every single thing you do on the phone in real time (and logs
all your conversations and everything else). Weâd also have
malware that gets root access to the phone and breaks into your
bank accounts.
It would be a total disaster!
array_key_first wrote 2 hours 44 min ago:
1. The app store is already mostly spyware.
2. Apps are actively encouraged by Apple and Google to be
spyware.
3. An app store cannot prevent spyware.
4. Sandboxing is unrelated to an app store.
5. Most source code is not available on the app store, and
Apple and Google are actively hostile to open source apps.
6. There is zero source auditing done on the app store.
anonymous908213 wrote 18 hours 13 min ago:
Sideloading, AKA "installing software on your device", is
something PCs have been handling just fine for decades. It's fine
to warn the user when they're going off the beaten trail, but do
not lock them in a cage to prevent them from doing so.
If they ignore the warnings and get scammed because they are
unable to identify reputable software from disreputable software,
they learn a life lesson. Life goes on. There should be no
societal expectation that everyone is prevented from ever taking
an action that could bring themselves harm, by preventing them
from taking actions at all.
com2kid wrote 16 hours 46 min ago:
The PC app ecosystem is a tiny fraction of the App Store's,
outside of, notably, Steam's locked down closed ecosystem.
Having a single way to pay, subscribe, cancel, browse apps,
beta test versions, and update apps, proved to be a huge game
changer for making software accessible while also minting
millionaires around the world in terms of small development
teams.
anonymous908213 wrote 16 hours 27 min ago:
In 2024, computer software generated around $373b in revenue
while mobile apps generated around $522b. Given that
smartphone usage is significantly higher worldwide than
computer usage (around 2 to 1 ratio), the stats do not really
support your thesis that locking down software access to the
whims of a monopoly hegemon results in a massive financial
boon to application developers. Even if it did, it still
would not justify the harm to the end user entailed, but it
also just doesn't do what you say it does to begin with.
Incidentally, while looking this up, I discovered that 2/3rds
of that $522b in app revenue comes from in-app
advertisements. And here somebody was trying to mock Windows
for being adware friendly circa 2005. Good lord.
flomo wrote 17 hours 47 min ago:
There was some point around 15 years ago when it was nearly
impossible to download and install Windows software without
getting some extra adware and etc. This was true even for
'legit' vendors like Sun and Adobe. (Plus Google would offer up
wrapped installers for Firefox, OpenOffice, etc.) Honestly if
you thought "things were fine", you were ignoring the Linux/Mac
people laughing about it.
array_key_first wrote 2 hours 46 min ago:
Having an app store does literally nothing to prevent adware.
Almost all apps currently on the Apple app store or Google
play store are adware.
anonymous908213 wrote 17 hours 40 min ago:
"Nearly impossible" is quite a stretch. While it was
certainly shameful that it ever became as mainstream as it
did, it was a matter of unticking checkboxes in the adware
installers, and there was plenty of software out there that
did not engage in that behaviour to begin with. At any rate,
I didn't say anything about operating systems. You can also
install software of your choice on Linux or Mac. I'm not
really sure what point you were driving at there.
flomo wrote 17 hours 30 min ago:
Point being the only real difference between Windows and
Mac was marketshare. (Linux doesn't have an ABI, software
predominantly comes from the 'store'.)
chongli wrote 18 hours 6 min ago:
There are entire classes of people who have simply given up on
PCs and only use a phone, so I would call that substantial
evidence that PCs have NOT "been handling [it] just fine." For
these folks, PCs are a total failure; a dead end. A danger zone
to be avoided at all costs.
Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote 11 hours 54 min ago:
The same can be said about alcohol, yet all you need to do is
reach alcohol age in the country you live in, no "license to
drink alcohol". Why PCs should be treated differently?
bloppe wrote 13 hours 9 min ago:
Thank you for your concern, but I need a phone, not a device
to manage dementia. I don't see why nobody should be allowed
to have the former just because a few people need the latter.
troupo wrote 13 hours 23 min ago:
> There are entire classes of people who have simply given up
on PCs and only use a phone
Which actually makes the case for "Apple cannot control what
people install on their devices or demand that apps pay them
and can't even use other payment providers"
nandomrumber wrote 13 hours 51 min ago:
Botnets, rootkits, virus, malware.
Thatâs how fine PCâs have been doing software.
Search for your preferred PC brand and list of CVEs.
Iâve had Windows / malware roll back a BIOS update to a
previous version that had a know (published CVE) remote code
execution vulnerability complete with published proof of
concept.
mrheosuper wrote 14 hours 46 min ago:
Appstore has been the only app store on IOS for nearly 2
decades. And you are saying IOS has been a perfect safe zone,
and you cannot lose any hard-earn money on IOS for 2 decades?
What a joke.
anonymous908213 wrote 18 hours 1 min ago:
If you have a citation that droves of people are abandoning
PCs for phones specifically because PCs allow them to install
software of their choice, rather than other reasons like the
convenience of a computer that fits in their hand, I'd be
interested in seeing it. Because that sounds like an
absolutely outrageous claim to be asserting as a fact to me.
chongli wrote 14 hours 16 min ago:
You can Google it yourself. There are tons of studies
showing a decline in technology literacy among younger
generations (Z and alpha). Millennials were the peak.
This shows that younger kids arenât using traditional
PCs, at least not to the same degree. They just use phones
and tablets. At best they may play games on their PC by
installing via Steam. Very few of them are becoming proper
technologists (able to install and use any software, script
the computer, or write their own software).
anonymous908213 wrote 13 hours 52 min ago:
No shit. That's completely different from what you
claimed, though, which was specifically that people were
giving up PCs to become smartphone users because they
appreciated the lack of choice that smartphones gave
them.
The phenomenon you're talking about now is so completely
in another universe that it's insane you would conflate
the two. I actually can't finish typing this response
properly because it's hurting my head every second I
continue to think about your argument. To sum it up
really shortly: smartphones universal, required to even
participate in society, people now given smartphones from
early age, multi-functional as phones, cameras, etc, they
fit in your pocket, more than sufficient for normie use
cases and in fact more suitable for many use cases that
don't entail sitting at a desk at home, computers are
specialised tools for specialised functionality that many
people have no need for. There are 100000000 reasons why
smartphone usage displaces PC usage that aren't because
they explicitly abandoned PCs for the crime of allowing
them to choose what software to install, which was your
claim. Not even having mentioned that globally, 75% of
smartphone usage is Android which doesn't lock its users
in the cage (for the time being).
chongli wrote 13 hours 31 min ago:
Do you think smartphones would be ubiquitous today if
they had the malware situation that plagued Windows XP?
anonymous908213 wrote 13 hours 19 min ago:
I think you overstate how bad said situation was, and
to the extent it was a problem I doubt it had any
meaningful impact on PC usage rates, and I have not
the slightest doubt that such a situation would have
had minimal bearing on smartphone adoption. People
are drawn to things that offer utility to them,
regardless of any downsides. That's why people will
happily hand over the entire details of their private
life to any internet service that asks it of them,
and why the market does not punish any company that
has security breaches and loses hundreds of millions
of people's personal information. Security and
privacy are at the very bottom of a normie's list of
concerns in practice, even if they might say they
care in surveys. If something is useful to them, they
will use it regardless of security and privacy flaws.
Edit: It's also telling that you need to go back to
XP to make your case. It's 2025. Security practices
have improved a ton to give people more protection
from themselves without outright taking away their
freedom to make choices.
Also, let's again re-iterate that Android usage
outnumbers iOS by three-to-one, so it is clear in
practice that people are in fact willing to adopt a
phone that allows them to make mistakes (if they try
very hard to).
nandomrumber wrote 13 hours 44 min ago:
You think smartphones give people fewer choices?
troupo wrote 5 hours 10 min ago:
Yes.
Now you have a multibillion-dollar supranational
corporation playing judge jury and executioner for
any of your choices.
E.g. App Store prohibits adult content (which is not
illegal). Prohibits emulators (which are not illegal)
[1]. Prohibits or hinders the use of better
alternatives to pre-installed apps (Photos, Camera,
Maps, Siri) [1]. Removes any and all apps if there's
a hint of displeasure from wannabe dictators.
Basically, you don't have your range of choices. You
have Apple's range of choices. [1] Some of these
choices are now better on iOS precisely due to Apple
losing the fight against governments. They finally
allowed emulators after they lost a battle against
alternative app stores. They finally gave options to
change some default apps (but not all, and not in all
countries, see e.g. [1] )
HTML [1]: https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/03/14/dma-compl...
dreamcompiler wrote 18 hours 16 min ago:
How is it that I can load MacOS apps from anywhere, and yet they
don't "completely bypass Apple's privacy controls and security
features"?
nomel wrote 17 hours 43 min ago:
The context here is mobile. Everyone understands that you're
free to break/install things as you wish, in macOS, if you
disable the "dumb user" safeguards.
monkmartinez wrote 19 hours 16 min ago:
Does Apple have an explicit guarantee that apps can not scam or
data siphon from an iPhone or iPad app?
chongli wrote 19 hours 8 min ago:
Yes, assuming that iOS's entitlement security has not been
broken.
asadotzler wrote 11 hours 59 min ago:
Point me to an Apple document that says they'll reimburse me
if I'm scammed by an App Store app. If Apple cannot offer a
guarantee, that means they don't trust their App Store to
protect me and if they don't trust their App Store to protect
me then they can hardly claim in court that they deny user
choice to protect users.
Deathmax wrote 19 hours 4 min ago:
As if the App Store had any sort of those guarantees. I know
of people have been scammed via WebView wrappers that
purported to be some benign app to pass app store review,
which were then pointed at fake exchange websites afterwards.
GitLab which was hosting their C&C mechanism took action
faster than Apple or Google did to take down multiple scam
apps across multiple different developer identities, but the
scammers spun up new apps the next day.
chongli wrote 19 hours 0 min ago:
WebView wrappers don't have any more ability to siphon data
out of the phone than any other app. Scammers can always
scam users if they can trick them into entering data into a
website. There's nothing anyone can do about that (besides
blocking web access).
bloppe wrote 13 hours 6 min ago:
So... what's the point of all the onerous restrictions in
the first place?
Rohansi wrote 17 hours 41 min ago:
The point is Apple isn't really helping with the problem
because the weakest link is people. If you can get
someone to install malicious software how much more
difficult is it to have them willingly give it via
phishing?
chongli wrote 14 hours 30 min ago:
I donât see how going back to the Wild West of the PC
era is supposed to help these nontechnical users be
safer. The App Store isnât perfect but itâs far,
far safer than that.
I have vivid memories of loads of relatives in the
Windows XP era with browsers laden with toolbars that
spy on everything they do and slow the computer to a
crawl. Those users see something like the iPhone as a
massive breath of fresh air. Nothing you install on the
App Store can inject adware into the rest of the
operating system like that.
array_key_first wrote 2 hours 42 min ago:
> Nothing you install on the App Store can inject
adware into the rest of the operating system like
that.
That has literally fuck all to do with the app store.
That's called sandboxing - the app store has nothing
to do with sandboxing. They are different things.
Why are we being dishonest.
raincole wrote 19 hours 32 min ago:
The honest answer is that Apple shouldn't own iOS and its main app
store at the same time. But there is not legal / regulation framework
to prevent that.
Case in point: Steam is taking 30% too. But you've heard much less
fuss over it, right? Why? Is it because of players' cult-like
behavior around Steam? (probably partially) But more importantly it's
because Valve doesn't own Windows and Steam Deck is a far smaller
fry.
rpdillon wrote 17 hours 23 min ago:
> Steam is taking 30% too. But you've heard much less fuss over it,
right? Why? Is it because of players' cult-like behavior around
Steam?
It's because Valve doesn't routinely screw over developers and
gamers. Steam never removed a game from Steam because it could
cause "customer confusion" because it was too similar to one of
Valve's own games. When Valve released the Steam Deck, they didn't
layer on a bunch of trash for "safety", they sold gamers a portable
Arch Linux box that, other than running Windows games on Linux,
also runs local LLMs, games from GOG, and development environments.
You can write games for Steam on a Steam Deck, compile them, and
run them. It's the exact opposite of what Apple is doing - Valve
offers total control, and you can use it to do awesome stuff
without having to pay a tithe to some overlord corporation that
thinks they still own hardware that you purchased from them.
StopDisinfo910 wrote 17 hours 29 min ago:
Valve has plenty of competition and let people buy from other
stores even on the Steam Deck. Heck, you can even add games bought
on other store to the Steam Launcher and still use Valve
functionality like controller mapping in them.
abdullahkhalids wrote 18 hours 17 min ago:
Steam sells games, which is mostly a "want" good. App Store has
apps that have large scale economic and political implications -
banking apps, messaging apps, etc. So it is understandable that
people/governments care a lot more about reigning in the App Store
than the Steam store.
tomasphan wrote 18 hours 40 min ago:
Steam feels like a partnership with developers where Apple is a
gatekeeper. I publish free games on Steam and all it costs is a
$100 one time fee per game. I get human review and feedback on my
marketing material and store page assets.
Apple is incredibly strict with the content they allow to the point
that it feels like a they exclusively cater to children.
Itâs easier to vibe code the apps that I want under my own
developer account because at least I can side load those.
nomel wrote 17 hours 33 min ago:
Not sure why this was flagged. Apple is strict and does not allow
graphic adult content, famously so [1]. One of the only
exceptions you'll find is Twitter/X.
Steam does allow this. But, has recently started restricting some
adult content [2]. [1]
HTML [1]: https://techcrunch.com/2010/04/19/steve-jobs-android-por...
HTML [2]: https://www.gamesindustry.biz/whats-going-on-with-steam-...
Liftyee wrote 18 hours 58 min ago:
People are understandably much more amenable to Valve because the
company as a whole behaves in a much more cooperative and
pro-consumer way... e.g. Steam deck repair options, furthering
Linux gaming, and Gaben's general philosophy.
Cult-like or not, I find it reasonable to support companies that do
things which you agree with. Valve's non-adversarial approach to
business (as opposed to many rent-seeking corps these days)
probably helps that perception.
bsimpson wrote 19 hours 18 min ago:
You can also mod your Steam Deck to your heart's content. There's a
plugin called Junk Store that will let you use other stores.
npinsker wrote 19 hours 19 min ago:
Steam's cut decreases to 20% after a certain amount of money. Also
Steam does a lot more to earn their cut than any other platform, by
far -- for example, they do a lot of promotion for you, both
algorithmic and through things like Daily Deals, for free, whereas
on iOS it is very difficult for ad spend to not be a significant
part of your budget. The rule of thumb I've heard is, for every
organic sale you make, Steam's algorithm will get you one more
sale. So their cut feels quite worth it.
A closer example is game consoles, whose associated stores also
take 30%, and nobody seems to complain about.
raincole wrote 19 hours 11 min ago:
> for every organic sale you make, Steam's algorithm will get you
one more sale
I'm not sure what you mean. Every game dev now refers what Steam
algorithm gives you "organic sale."
npinsker wrote 18 hours 17 min ago:
Maybe my wording wasn't good -- I meant a sale driven primarily
through a channel other than Steam (streamer, Reddit, ads,
friend recommendation).
It's difficult for me to really trust this stat though because
purchasing decisions are complicated.
chris_wot wrote 19 hours 32 min ago:
Well, the market will decide I guess. If this is the case, then
competitors won't be an issue. If not, then Apple's goose is cooked.
bdangubic wrote 19 hours 34 min ago:
50-75%
bitpush wrote 19 hours 34 min ago:
This question is valid only if Apple lets apps host their own apps,
bring their own payment system.
Apple bans all such activities, has held the entire app ecosystem and
seeks rent. If they think their offering is superior, then they
should be OK competing. The fact that they have not opened it up says
that they are happy to overcharge.
Remember, competition is always good. Let Stripe and Apple duke it
out on payment processing, and let the best one win.
Let games me hosted both on Epic Store and App Store, and let users
decide where to download it from.
That will be fair.
Devasta wrote 19 hours 10 min ago:
Hardly always good. The mobile app ecosystem on both iOS and
Android is a morass of freemium games and ad slop, because the
market has determined that hooking one whale is more important than
creating a quality product.
The competition will find the most profitable process, not the one
that serves customers best necessarily.
The biggest change the iPhone users are going to see an increase in
spyware. They'll also notice in a few years a bunch of websites go
Chrome only.
bitpush wrote 12 hours 31 min ago:
On Macs, users can download and install apps freely from the
internet, and that platform isnt "a morass of freemium games and
ad slop".
Why is that for one platform, everything needs to go through
AppStore while the other it is OK - and both are equally secure?
Are you sure you're not falling for Apple's reality distortion
field?
rkomorn wrote 12 hours 23 min ago:
Not OP, and not that I buy that the App Store serves its
purpose given what's currently on it, but I just don't think
the two platforms are comparable.
iPhones outnumber Macs something like 10:1. The user base tech
literacy is lower on average. The usage habits are different.
The payoff for creating freemium and ad slop stuff on iOS is
way higher.
crims0n wrote 19 hours 25 min ago:
So in this scenario would Epic then need to develop and maintain
their own toolchain and SDK for their app store? The development
tools and education are also worth something, Epic shouldnât get
that for free.
pjc50 wrote 9 hours 43 min ago:
HTML [1]: https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/
jen729w wrote 19 hours 20 min ago:
Dystopian story plot:
Apple completely opens up the iOS platform. Do whatever you like.
Also, an XCode license is now $20,000/year. Donât like it?
Build your own.
pjc50 wrote 9 hours 44 min ago:
Have you heard of gcc? The entire open source ecosystem exists
because people were able to build their own.
It's entirely possible to build apps to run on OSX without
touching Apple tools .. except for notarization, which they
force you to use.
troupo wrote 13 hours 27 min ago:
> Also, an XCode license is now $20,000/year. Donât like it?
Build your own.
That's what people literally did, multiple times, for multiple
systems, and did a much better job than encumbents
someNameIG wrote 16 hours 32 min ago:
Say no one builds their own, and iPhones now only have first
party apps. How many people are going to buy them now? How well
did the Windows phone sell with no app support? How's the app
support on the Apple Vision Pro?
The idea that devs owe Apple for use of their SDKs and API
development is absurd. Apple already profits from it as people
by their phones due to the amount of third party app support.
See how Apple's profits go when WhatsApp, Instagram, Spotify,
Netflix Uber, banking apps, are all no longer available on
their devices.
ENGNR wrote 11 hours 53 min ago:
Vision Pro is an excellent example
What Apple really needs to do is mimic their old policy of no
fees except for games. Let everyone develop for it, and then
rug pull by making the fees apply to everything
But they canât do it twice. So the Vision Pro ends up with
no ecosystem
trothamel wrote 17 hours 38 min ago:
If I'm remembering correctly, the community jailbroke the
iPhone OS and produced a toolchain and app installer before the
App Store's original release.
Aloisius wrote 18 hours 30 min ago:
Why stop at xcode?
Add a licensing fee for UIKit, Core Data, Core Text, Core
Audio, Core Graphics, Metal, Network, SwiftUI, Quartz and all
the other libraries apps use constantly.
Heck, why not for the OS itself? If you don't want to pay, they
could conceivably dump you into an isolated VM and force you to
write your own OS and userspace device drivers.
troupo wrote 13 hours 25 min ago:
> Heck, why not for the OS itself?
We used to pay for OSes and OS upgrades. Heck, you still have
to pay for Windows.
rescbr wrote 18 hours 53 min ago:
That would be the best outcome!
We would be back to the real days of computing.
bitpush wrote 19 hours 16 min ago:
> Also, an XCode license is now $20,000/year. Donât like it?
Build your own.
And people will. That's how competition works. If someone
thinks they can make a profit by offering a) better product b)
same product at a cheaper price, you'll see investment.
VCs will be pouring money to capture that market.
surgical_fire wrote 19 hours 9 min ago:
> And people will.
And it will likely be much better too.
lukeschlather wrote 19 hours 22 min ago:
Epic has a toolchain and SDK for their own app store. So does
Valve, and many other competitors, and Apple won't let them
install their toolchain on iOS.
thewebguyd wrote 19 hours 31 min ago:
> Apple lets apps host their own apps, bring their own payment
system.
And also not require those apps to be also approved by Apple, which
they are trying to do with AltStore and the DMA.
Users should be able to go to a dev's website, pay them directly,
and download the ipa and install it with a click from the website.
Having to go through any kind of "app store" at all should be
optional.
kelthuzad wrote 19 hours 34 min ago:
That's what the market will determine once Apple is forced to
compete.
bigyabai wrote 19 hours 35 min ago:
Whatever Apple needs in order to compete with third-party
distributors. They can set it to a 105% tax for all I care, just let
me use third-party alternatives.
thunky wrote 19 hours 38 min ago:
5% tops.
awillen wrote 19 hours 41 min ago:
"The CAT said in its ruling that developers were overcharged by the
difference between a 17.5% commission for app purchases and the
commission Apple charged, which Kent's lawyers said was usually 30%."
Where does the 17.5% come from? I can't find it here or in the link
Reuters article. Is that just the number that the tribunal decided was
fair? If so I'd love to read the analysis of how they got there.
bmandale wrote 18 hours 16 min ago:
"""
919. The comparators available to us (the Epic Games Store, the
Microsoft Store and
Steamâs lower headline rate) suggest that the competitive rate of
commission
would be in the range of 12 to 20%. We do think it is reasonable to
make some
adjustment to that range to accommodate the points made by Apple
about its
premium brand, the quality of its offering and its established market
position.
However, we do not think those would be sufficient to displace the
upper end
of the range and are likely to operate mainly at the lower end, where
the
offerings are arguably less attractive to users for those reasons.
920. Applying again an approach of âinformed guessworkâ, on the
basis of the
evidence before us, we find that the likely range of Appleâs
Commission for
iOS app distribution services in the counterfactual is between 15%
and 20%.
For the purposes of quantifying the overcharge (for both the
exclusionary abuses
and the excessive and unfair pricing abuse) we will use the mid-point
of that
range, which is 17.5%.
shuckles wrote 15 hours 16 min ago:
TLDR: they made it up.
criddell wrote 15 hours 4 min ago:
What else would you expect?
Itâs from a tribunal. They make judgements.
shuckles wrote 14 hours 26 min ago:
Judgment can be grounded in reality or it can be picking a
random subrange of a list of somewhat random ranges and then
picking a midpoint because why not.
bondarchuk wrote 11 hours 12 min ago:
It cannot be grounded in reality precisely because it's a
monopoly. The whole point of laws against monopolies is to
let the market figure out the fair rate, or to define the
"fair" rate as the one that emerges in a competitive market.
So by definition of what the whole case is about it is
impossible to give a fair rate in this case. If you don't
want to be subjected to guesswork, stop being a monopoly and
let the market figure it out.
bmandale wrote 14 hours 21 min ago:
What would you expect them to do in this case in particular?
shuckles wrote 14 hours 19 min ago:
Consider Google Play, for starters.
troupo wrote 5 hours 17 min ago:
They have a literal section "(6) Description of the
âcomparatorâ platforms" where the very first item is
"(a) Google and other Android platforms"
There's a section "112. On 10 June 2022, the CMA
published the final report in its MEM Study, which
contains a number of findings in relation to both Apple
and Google."
It's amazing that you never even tried to read the actual
document but already immediately assume a position that
is trivially proven wrong.
shuckles wrote 2 hours 48 min ago:
> comparable yet notably omitted from the ranges the
tribunal considered
Interesting to accuse people of not reading the
document in a post where you donât read a 3 sentence
comment (and reply to the wrong one, but we can chalk
that up to HN UI).
troupo wrote 2 hours 8 min ago:
This is the correct comment to reply to.
Imagine if you actually read and understood the
document instead of pressing on with your ignorance.
The court considered Google Play. And explained how
Google Play has the exact dame issues as AppStore. So
whatever Google Play is doing is irrelevant to a case
against Apple.
It's not a difficult document to read and understand.
Just lengthy.
I would quote relevant sections, but that would be a
completely wasted effort.
Adieu.
bmandale wrote 13 hours 27 min ago:
Google play has a dominant market position as well and is
presumably next for this sort of ruling
shuckles wrote 12 hours 41 min ago:
Wow sounds very comparable yet notably omitted from the
ranges the tribunal considered. Sounds like you agree
with me that they just made it up? Or are you saying
that it's fair to exclude the app store of an open
platform which has plenty of "free market" competition
from side loaded and 3p distribution apps because
~vibes~?
lozenge wrote 12 hours 17 min ago:
Not considered? The words "Google Play" are in the
judgment 47 times. Maybe you could read it?
By your logic, each of the two companies could use
the other as an example and then both get away with
breaking competition law. Two wrongs don't make a
right.
shuckles wrote 3 hours 16 min ago:
> comparable yet notably omitted from the ranges
the tribunal considered
Interesting to accuse people of not reading the
document in a post where you donât read a 3
sentence comment.
Jalad wrote 12 hours 48 min ago:
The gang learns what an oligopoly is
awillen wrote 17 hours 31 min ago:
Thanks for digging that out.
mikeiz404 wrote 19 hours 16 min ago:
I haven't dug through the linked documents but it's probably in here
some where...
HTML [1]: https://www.catribunal.org.uk/judgments/14037721-dr-rachael-...
ur-whale wrote 19 hours 44 min ago:
The financial penalty is peanuts for AAPL.
More interesting would be if they'd be forced to allow other app
stores.
ocdtrekkie wrote 19 hours 41 min ago:
I think both third party app stores (without aggressive scare
screens) and third party payments will be globally available on both
platforms in the next few years. But it will take some time for
enough piecemeal jurisdictions to require it for it to become
burdensome for the companies to have different options in different
regulatory regimes, and to make it no longer worth blocking in
jurisdictions which haven't ruled against them yet.
stavros wrote 19 hours 30 min ago:
Yeah but Apple always required signing, and Google is moving to
that too, so they can simply charge you an exorbitant amount to get
your app signed, moving the money maker from the store to the dev
environment.
1oooqooq wrote 18 hours 29 min ago:
[1] and google is surreptitiously flagging several of the top
alternatives to their spyware bloatware on android, as a prelude
to the change.
this is clearly an action that can be easily attributed to
incompetence, but is a thinly veiled way to ensure a flood of
verified open source joining early on the ransom for signing
whitelist.
HTML [1]: https://github.com/deckerst/aves/issues/1802
userbinator wrote 17 hours 42 min ago:
Scare people enough times without reason, and they'll stop
listening. An increasing number of people already have. It'll
be amusing if the word "security" becomes meaningless soon, or
is perceived negatively by the majority of the population. Only
then can freedom win.
ocdtrekkie wrote 19 hours 26 min ago:
Now that the regulators are actually saying this is a problem I
suspect these schemes will be addressed much faster. I'm pretty
stunned Google announced that just after losing the case, because
it's so remarkably stupid. Judges do not like being screwed with.
joomla199 wrote 18 hours 32 min ago:
The police does not like being screwed with either. These
arenât good things. People with significant authority perform
a duty and ought to act independently of their personal
feeling.
stavros wrote 19 hours 24 min ago:
I really hope so, because I was hoping Apple would be forced to
be more open, and was surprised that, instead, Google got more
closed.
tehjoker wrote 19 hours 50 min ago:
interesting I suspect the UK uses the same Regan Era definition of
monopolistic practice as the US, meaning monopoly is fine so long as
prices seen by consumers are low (or rather not provably raised)
president_zippy wrote 13 hours 33 min ago:
You mean Circuit Court judge Robert Bork's "consumer welfare"
standard?
He's the genius behind that.
The same Robert Bork whose SCOTUS nomination got held up by the
Senate in a deluge of fire and fury, only for Antonin Scalia to get
the job and make the same kind of rulings much more articulately.
dmix wrote 19 hours 33 min ago:
The UK adopted the EU antitrust model in the 1990s and still kept it
after Brexit. So it's has a lot more stuff about 'fairness' and
controlling markets, it's not just about prices or monopolies abusing
their market position or blocking mega mergers. At least on paper...
abtinf wrote 19 hours 52 min ago:
In English law, is there a clearly defined, well understood, written
standard of âfairâ?
nemo44x wrote 7 hours 17 min ago:
The UK doesnât even have a single sourced constitution. Just random
things from random times in random documents. Parliament is
essentially king and can just make any law it wants at anytime with a
basic majority. Nothing is codified. There are no real standards.
The UK is one of the most arbitrarily defined places in terms of law.
Itâs why they can have and enforce a 2-tier system. âStirring
things upâ is literally a charge a judge can arbitrarily rule on.
Place is hilarious.
cjs_ac wrote 11 hours 10 min ago:
No, that's why courts and tribunals exist: to decide what's just in
each specific case.
amelius wrote 7 hours 35 min ago:
Yes. People always think about the law as if it is code. But code
means it can be hacked (loopholes can be found, etc.) Therefore,
better leave the law open to interpretation and let a judge sort it
out.
ocdtrekkie wrote 19 hours 49 min ago:
I don't know, but when every single business on the planet has to pay
you 30% for access to mobile device users, it definitely isn't.
criddell wrote 14 hours 57 min ago:
Why do so many people quote the 30% number?
Only apps with more than $1,000,000 annual revenue are paying 30%.
Most apps are smaller than that and are hit with a 15% fee.
benoau wrote 4 hours 14 min ago:
Because the 30% is "opt-in" not automatic, the $1m threshold
applies to all your apps and associated accounts apps combined,
and $1m is just not a big target anymore considering 8400 people
on $10/month subscriptions will get you over that line.
And of course, when they announced this big discount it was
reported to apply to about 5% of actual IAP spending, which would
make the average commission fee being paid around 29%.
tldr; it's a weaselly discount.
criddell wrote 2 hours 57 min ago:
> $1m is just not a big target anymore
Yes it is. The percentage of developers in the App Store who
make more than $1 million per year is tiny.
According to this analysis[1], it's a single digit percentage.
Hardly anybody pays 30%.
[1]
HTML [1]: https://sensortower.com/blog/app-store-revenue-share-a...
tucnak wrote 12 hours 53 min ago:
I think you should aggregate by app installs, not distinct apps.
The apps to make most impact, are most-installed apps. What if my
app blows up to a tune of 1.2 mil? I'll be paying 400k Apple tax
just because that's why?
nandomrumber wrote 9 hours 54 min ago:
Good point.
The percentage rate should go down the more you sell. Thatâs
usually how scale works.
shuckles wrote 15 hours 15 min ago:
Where does this meme come from? Spotify pays Apple nothing more
than a $99 developer fee, and the streaming music business would
not exist in its current form without iPhone.
JimDabell wrote 19 hours 29 min ago:
> when every single business on the planet has to pay you 30% for
access to mobile device users
That doesnât describe Appleâs situation though. Most businesses
donât distribute software at all; those that do mostly donât
need to distribute native iOS apps; those that do mostly donât
need to pay App Store fees; those that do mostly have to pay 15%.
Itâs only a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a fraction
that need to pay 30%.
giobox wrote 18 hours 49 min ago:
> those that do mostly have to pay 15%
This case only concerns Apple's App Store fees before 2020; it
was a blanket 30% charge for paid apps until they introduced
those changes following the whole Epic Games legal saga etc.
Apple are not paying a penalty for anything after 2020 when the
new rules allowing those with lower turnover to pay 15% came into
effect etc.
> Itâs only a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a
fraction that need to pay 30%
During the first 12 years of the App Store, everyone paid 30%.
JimDabell wrote 18 hours 6 min ago:
> During the first 12 years of the App Store, everyone paid
30%.
This is still not correct. The original claim was âevery
single business on the planetâ. Thatâs ridiculously
overstated.
Even if you massively narrow the scope to only businesses that
have iOS apps that make money directly through the app, itâs
still not true. The 30% specifically applies to buying digital
goods and services through iOS apps.
Take Uber, for instance. They make vast amounts of money
through their iOS app. They do not have to pay Apple 30%, or
15%, or anything beyond the basic $99/yr developer account fee.
They absolutely do not have to pay 30% for access to the
platform.
giobox wrote 3 hours 16 min ago:
> The 30% specifically applies to buying digital goods and
services through iOS apps
This is not correct at all and grossly misrepresents how
Apple collects revenues on the store - the 30% applied to the
list price of any paid app as well.
Prior to 2020, if your app had a price tag on the app store,
you paid 30% of said price to apple on every sale. There is
no ifs, no buts, no lower rate for smaller players like
today. You had a price tag, you paid 30%, whether you sold
100m copies or 5.
The decision taken by the CAT here concerns the fee for paid
apps (what they call the distribution charge) as well as in
app fees, the latter of which had some exemptions for
specific transaction types from the likes of Amazon, Uber etc
(but famously not Spotify or Epic Games, or the Amazon Kindle
app etc etc...). The "distribution charge" did not.
shuckles wrote 15 hours 14 min ago:
Or Spotify, a common complainant, who pays Apple $0 because
they only sign up accounts on their website.
bigyabai wrote 19 hours 26 min ago:
All those percentages are arbitrary, none of them are set through
natural competition.
Good on the UK for not backing down. 15% or 150%, Apple should
not be exempted from participating in a true market economy.
JimDabell wrote 19 hours 19 min ago:
What are you referring to when you say âall those
percentagesâ? I only mention two; 15% and 30%. 30% wasnât
arbitrary; it was in line with what other platform providers
like Nintendo and Sony were charging at the time. If youâre
referring to the multiple fractions of fractions, then
obviously a business that has nothing to do with software
isnât being coerced by Apple.
jjtheblunt wrote 19 hours 38 min ago:
How do web pages accessed from (for example) Safari cost the
publisher 30% of a subscription fee, when a subscription might be
established off mobile first?
bigyabai wrote 19 hours 33 min ago:
How are web pages analogous to installing mobile software, in
this particular example?
jjtheblunt wrote 5 hours 31 min ago:
> has to pay you 30% for access to mobile device users
is what the parent comment said, which overlooked web and
assumed native app installs
raincole wrote 19 hours 23 min ago:
In every single aspect of "business on the planet enabling
access to mobile device users".
bigyabai wrote 19 hours 20 min ago:
No? Websites are a subset of the software market, not the
other way around. Apple can absolutely monopolize software
distribution while providing a web browser.
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