If there was ever a time to just admit you were wrong. Instead you move those goalposts are moving around so much that it's simply embarrassing.
Sure, it is. Claiming a vendor has no competition for the vendor's own products is ridiculous.
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Epic Games Loses Again in Battle With Apple Over App Store Rules
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Never say never. Absolutes fail miserably. Android is more than relevant competition it’s the overall winner in the phone market.
I'm not moving goalposts. I'll readily admit that it's a particular pet peeve of mine, but Apple moved the updates button a less convenient location that's also wrongly labeled (cause it shows apps not purchased with the account shown) and it frustrates me.
Please educate yourself about the economic concepts of product tying and vendor lock-in before making such dismissive statements.
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How does that relate to what was being discussed? I was just being helpful by letting you know that one-tap access was still available. You responded with a bunch of other complaints.
I'm quite well read on the topic. As I said, your argument is ridiculous. And this discussion has absolutely nothing to do with product tying.
Tying the Sale of Two Products
Offering products together as part of a package can benefit consumers who like the convenience of buying several items at the same time.
Government intervention disrupts market forces.
No. Android/web are the competition. Your button UI issue isn't worth asking gov to intervene because it's such an insignificant issue.
Context was whether or not gov should intervene in a locked up platform. Alexa is the dominant platform, but they're locked down. Tesla is the dominant EV, but they're locked down. You're suggesting they should be open by law. I disagree.
Oh, I knew that.
It's not as convenient - or consistent - as the one that got replaced.
Point being: Apple can crappify the App Store any time - as there's no alternative or competition (without switching platforms at a great cost due to the vendor lock-in)
Well then... you know that the App Store is a product (or separate) that's tied to the smartphone OS.
And it's - despite being integrated and shipped along with it by default - a separate product from the OS itself. As shown by the fact that you can not only operate the iPhone without an App Store but also install apps without using the App Store (though only for the limited group of enterprise developers and their apps).
And that's also the premise of the EU Digital Markets Act: Operating system and application software stores are clearly separate and separable products/services - even though Apple has decided to tie them together.
Android isn't a competition on iOS. Neither is web a viable one for many applications.
And I agree that the button is nothing that should concern government much.
Ah. So you purposely brought up something that wasn’t true.
Again, it’s the same absolutely ridiculous argument.
Great cost? It’s probably cheaper to switch to Android than stay iPhone for most people.
No, it’s not. As the link I posted from the FTC explains. Product tying isn’t simply selling things together. It isn’t product tying for my lawn mower to include a grass bag or screws or even an onboard OS.
Product tying involves at least 2 things that don’t exist in the situation we are discussing. 1) Apple doesn’t have a monopoly with the iPhone. 2) Apple doesn’t require the purchase of a separate product with the iPhone.
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it's iOS competition. web is viable, market forces says customer demand for web apps is low. your concerns are in the minority.
They made it worse and wronger than it used to be.
Even if it’s a small inconvenience, it demonstrates the point:
Switching to Android requires considerable expense (hundreds of $ for a comparable phone, plus purchase of apps, setup time and time to get accustomed to the user interface), so yes.
While the FTC may (usually) remain unconcerned about product tying in non-monopoly situations, that doesn't mean that product tying only happens in monopolies.
I can even link to the FTC site to provide a counterclaim: "Tying is so common in competitive markets that..." Also, notice the example of the French restaurant there? Restaurants aren't forcing patrons to drink wine (or anything else) with a meal - but it's customary to do so.
Same thing for the App Store: Everyone downloads and installs third-party apps on smartphones. There's hardly any customer that will not download and install apps on their iOS device they bought. And Apple is forcing them to do it through their own service (not strictly - but de facto. As it's customary to install third-party apps).
Again, that's your preference. That doesn't make it wrong. Making it more inconvenient is the point. And it certainly doesn't make any point on the topic at hand. Just another case of you believing you should control others.
Not really. Most people replace their phones every two or three years, and replacing an iPhone with an Android phone would save money. Repurchasing apps is negligible for most people. Most apps are free or subscription.
Again, your argument has no basis in legal precedent. To wit, your example of the restaurant means exactly the opposite of what you are implying. There's nothing wrong with a restaurant not allowing outside wine. In fact the whole article is about the end of tying being intrinsically illegal.
That's absurd. If a policy sucks, then it should be violated. This is a well known protesting strategy. For example, union workers refusing to work. People generally don't submit well to policies, or laws, that suck. Another example, gay people having gay sex before it was decriminalised.
So to say that it was a "fault" to challenge what sucks… Well, it's an absurd choice of wording, if it isn't what you meant.
I think his point is made up of a couple of matters. He's not saying that one shouldn't challenge what sucks, but that one ought to play smart, and know how to pick their battles. I suppose in a sense, it's not unlike a rebellion where the rebels knew right from the start that their cause was doomed all along, but they still marched grimly into certain death just to send a message.
1) Protesting an unpopular law doesn't always mean you will win. It just means you are protesting. Just as unions don't always get their way, and laws sometimes are there to reflect the general sentiments of the community rather than what is absolutely right or wrong (and I say this, coming from a country which only recently decriminalised gay sex, though it was never actively policed).
I have stated right from the start why I felt Epic's lawsuit was always doomed to fail. Consumers don't care about a 30% tax they will never see, they don't exactly hate walled ecosystems, and anti-trust arguments against Apple simply don't hold up to scrutiny, because US antitrust law looks at harm done to customers (as compared to the EU, which looks at harm to small businesses).
In short, Epic never had any chance of winning, because the bulk of people didn't agree with that they are doing. It was never a fight about right or wrong, which brings me to my next point.
2) The bigger problem here is that Epic was always the worst possible candidate to be the face of championing App Store change. It's pretty clear that Epic is doing so because they have been paying a lot of money to Apple in IAP revenue, and therefore have the most to gain. If the judge had sided in their favour, the payoff would have been huge. They would not only be able to keep that 30% App Store cut for themselves, but also potentially offer their own App Store on iOS devices, host other developers' apps and charge them a cut.
It didn't help that Epic has recently been in the news for very shady actions themselves that cast a dark cloud over the freemium app market and make a case that this is an industry in need of regulation themselves.
Which also makes it clear how hypocritical their actions are. They are not doing any of this to benefit consumers or empower developers, but to simply enrich themselves.
The danger, now that Apple has all but won, is that they will feel emboldened by its victory and will rigidly defend their practices. Apple will have no incentive to make any further concessions to developers because its legal victory will stand as a symbol of its unassailable authority on iOS (whereas compared to before the lawsuit, Apple had at least been making slow but measured change precisely to avoid the threat of an impending lawsuit).
Epic’s reckless gamble has been bad for the app economy. That's the risk. In trying to bring about change, you end up making things worse for everyone else.
Lawsuits are decided according to the law (and its interpretation), not according popular vote (what the bulk of people think). Consumers don't care about 1-2% charges on card transactions either - yet inflated card payment transaction costs can (and are) seen as harmful to consumers from an antitrust perspective, and have been regulated or successfully settled against card payment networks.
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