Curiously, though, the country where almost everything from healthcare to education to rents to eggs has insane prices it's the one with the politics you seem to consider superior.
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Japan App Store Gets Alternative Marketplaces, Third-Party Payments and More
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I mean, Apple can afford to hire more people to spend ten hours a day folding origami cranes and immediately tossing them into an incinerator. (Job creation!)
Who said for me?
There are people out there who still don't know how to download apps from the App Store. Now they're tasked to select default apps during setup which already is a complicated process for many.
who said for me?
maybe don't assume next time.
but here's a phone for you if you're the one that's been asking for these features: https://www.android.com/phones/
read the article about setup
then look at the grandmas and grandpas that still don't know how to download apps from the App Store.
apparently that's a lot easier than complainers who can't fathom of switching to android phone to get what they want.
If you have "not tech savvy" family that usually needs your help, those same folks will not be installing a 3rd party App Store without your help anyhow.
I don't think you've read the article if that was your response.
It's clearly not free.
Apple is free to charge other fees - they just decided...
...not to do it (for free-to-download apps).
That's exactly what maintains their monopoly power (and hardware business): Giving the App Store away for free to all those apps. Other industries would consider it predatory pricing or price dumping.
You clearly haven't observed all their legal action against the EU commission.
They are taking legal action against quite literally every bloody interoperability requirement the DMA provides for.
They are absolutely against it all. Out of sheer greed - but under the pretense of "security" and "privacy".
Then again, some users like Meta and their products.
And they may have a choice.
Others prefer Big Brother deciding for them.
I assume Apple could charge whatever it wants. It chose $99.
That’s their problem. And how many people are we talking about anyway?
Sure, some users like Meta and will willingly trade away their privacy. That's great for them. That doesn't mean the government should force Apple to create and maintain an integration that, in Apple's opinion, harms the user (even if the user don't know or care they are being harmed) and then call that "pro consumer."
If Meta wants deep integration, there's a market leading platform that is built around that tradeoff: Android. Meta should make their glasses work wonderfully on Android, advertise that their glasses "work best on Android", show all the great things they can do on Android and not iOS, and then users who like Meta and their products can select Android phones. You know, the free market. That thing the EU supposedly believes in?
Apple isn't Big Brother in this story. Customers can leave Apple anytime they want. It's easy. In case it's been a while since you read 1984, Big Brother is the government. The people living under Big Brother's tyranny don't have a choice - they're stuck and whatever Big Brother says goes - even when it's clear Big Brother is lying or contradicting what was previously said.
Like a bunch of regulators who admit burdensome regulation is hurting their competitiveness, but that changing one of the most burdensome regulation ever passed, is "off the table" (even when it's already been shown that it is not achieving its goals), or that they are increasing consumer choice by removing an option millions prefer. "Less choice is more choice. Hurting the consumer is pro consumer." That sort of thing.
...to which Apple behaves very similarly in governing its ecosystem (figuratively: their "country").
Again, customers can leave Apple easily if they don’t like the rules. A lot of them chose Apple because of those rules.
It’s like voluntarily choosing to buy a house in a community with a HOA and immediately complaining that you don’t like the rules that you agreed to when buying the house, even though the vast majority of people in the community like the rules, and many paid extra to be in that community because of the rules. Your preferences aren’t more important than others. If you don’t like it, move. Don’t make it worse for everyone who likes it the way it is. There is a community without a HOA with houses that are just as nice.
There are lots of places to (realistically) move to.
There aren't lots of application stores to (realistically) get your apps from.
Let alone operating systems to move (migrate) to.
There are more than 350'000 home-owner associations in the U.S.
If there were just, say, 0.01% (a ten-thousandth) as many competing app stores and operating systems that carry most relevant apps, I would completely agree that government should get the heck out of regulating them and let them compete freely.
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Because those are Irrelevant in this conversation, and I do have access to those, and have used both Huawei, Oppo, Etc. since i live in Japan, but Chinese companies are about two generation behind in their software, and they are hit and miss on OS updates, and most of them want to look like IOS, so why would i use the copy when i can get the original?
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yes, thanks for agreeing with me about the problem they're having.
Apple's IAP process is basically how Apple collects its licensing fee from developers for the use of Apple’s intellectual property. It's just that the way it is structured, some developers pay more, some pay less, and some don't pay a cent at all. As I have also pointed out earlier, I don't think this is a "bug" from Apple's perspective. It's by design to incentivise as many developers to release apps for the App Store as possible, knowing that they don't need to fork out a cent if their venture doesn't pay off (because only the successful ones need to pay Apple anything).
One observation is that, yes, huge companies like Facebook or banks don't pay Apple a cent, despite their companies making billions of dollars a year, because their apps don't facilitate any digital transactions (or at least, not the sort that Apple can directly monetise). I can acknowledge that as a potential loophole, while also maintaining that it may not be feasible for Apple to attempt fixing this "loophole" without also catching other smaller developers in the crossfire (ie: any attempt to "tax" Facebook may end up affecting the latter group as well).
You are free to propose other alternatives, but I recall there also being a ton of backlash when Apple proposed the core technology fee (then again, that was in the EU; this is primarily an US-specific ruling).
I refer you to page 151 of this document.
apple-epic-judgement
www.documentcloud.org
It can be argued that yes, to be a successful developer, you first and foremost need a good app that users are willing to pay for, but as far as iOS is concerned, having a good app will only matter if you can get it in front of as many users as possible, and more importantly, make them want to pay for it.
Take malware for example. I will argue that one consequence of Windows being an open platform is that it massively suppressed the market for third-party applications (and the ironic thing is that people are now flocking to massive app storefronts such as Steam, when they could easily be downloading their games from standalone websites and letting developers keep 100%).
Consumers on desktop platforms didn’t suddenly get smart about apps, thanks to the pressure of competition; they simply stopped downloading and installing apps on Windows altogether. One of the great triumphs of the iOS App Store, I feel, is the fact that it conditioned consumers to feel safe and secure about downloading and installing apps, thus dramatically expanding the market for developers. And if they sell more apps thanks to the way Apple has structured every aspect of iOS, does Apple not deserve something for the role it has played in all of this?
Maybe not 30%, but definitely not zero either (as we now await Judge's Yvonne's latest ruling). 😬
Well, it does so happen that certain features, such as the wifi-sync feature on the Apple Watch, can pose a privacy risk if third parties were to be able to access it (and in theory, triangulate your location history based on what wifi network you were last connected to). And for what many would deem to be a fairly innocuous feature, Apple apparently felt this was serious enough to raise a stink, as well as go to the extent of disabling it even on their own devices in the EU.
What Apple also seems to be trying to do is bring attention to the fact that the EU commission fundamentally does not understand technology at all, and they may not fully understand the ramifications of the changes proposed under the DMA. People like to point to usb-c coming to the iPhone as an example of how legislation can result in positive change for users, but for every port change, there could also be another crowdstrike waiting to, well, "strike" sometime in the future. 😬
Personally, I feel Apple should just disable each and every single one of those features in the EU and call it a day, but if they want to take the time to argue over every single bullet point, that's their prerogative as well. 😛
That's the real concern. That people are just "tech-savvy" enough to follow some simple instructions on how to sideload an app or install a third party App Store, but not tech savvy enough to understand the ramifications of their own actions, or deal with the fallout.
That’s probably true. I just think they may believe that for the wrong reasons. And that they are just plain wrong about some of their reasons, especially in the way they implement them.
