Spotify Lauds $2 Billion EU Fine, Says Apple Has 'Muzzled' Streaming Music Services

[wbeasley]

Well, they would have had to keep IE their default browser if MS had been allowed to have its way. You see the benefits now of government regulation?

Over the years, I've seen many default programs be replaced by the user selecting Open With...

I do it on my Mac. I usually prefer a PDF open in Preview to Adobe Reader because it's faster to open and doesnt nag with offers. It's not exactly hard in either system to choose who app opens a file type.

But a default browser is nothing like the things most people here are advocating. Nothing.

Funny how people are all for government regulation yet are happy to turn a blind eye to copyright ownership on game ROMS for emulators they want to run. Seems regulation is only beneficial when it works in your favour

 

[developer13245]

His ethics ruined his business. met his kind before when I contracted. they would always "fix things" but never showed you how they did it. knowledge is power. and if caught out and forced to leave, they knew they'd leave them high and dry. fortunately there are very few like that.

My business is doing fine because I divested from Apple platform work years ago when Apple became hostile toward developers. I work on other platforms that now yield the majority of my income. I license IP to other companies that I originally developed for my iOS and mac apps so I maintain those apps to maintain that royalty income. The income from that is much greater than the proportional effort to maintain it.

I manage the level of "opacity" based on customer. Some customers are very transparent and consider contractors part of the team - in those cases I'm an "open book" (while respecting NDAs of course).

In my experience most of the "knowledge is power" opacity hostile attitude I encountered was from "Apple Platform" customers. With one such customer I was restricted from having any of their source code and had to work with only binaries. This was THEIR requirement and the funny part is they didn't know how to do this at first until I showed them how to set up a system to generate a "contractor environment" that I worked in. During the project "end game" I encountered a data corruption defect that they assigned to my code. While debugging I discovered the bug was their code and their ignorant response was "you don't have our source code so that's not possible". They then demanded a "in person" code review meeting so I had to travel to their site. The first thing I did at the presentation was debug the problem by stepping through their code (in assembly) using the disassembler. This showed how the data was being corrupted to prove it was in their code. I was also able to 'fix' the data while debugging to show my code was correct. The rest of the code review went fine even though I could tell they were pissed I proved them wrong about the defect.
So I've actually "fixed things" in customer code without even having their source, yet this only made them more hostile.

The vast, VAST majority of poor business ethics in the software industry is perpetrated ON contractors by companies that use them us as expendable resources. This is not even debatable and has been the case for a very long time. Most companies issue different security badges to on site contractors. One company I worked for as an FTE openly called contractor badges "bad guy" badges. I have plenty of other stories I could cite from professional experience. You're living in a delusion if you believe companies treat contractors with respect.

 

[wbeasley]

My business is doing fine because I divested from Apple platform work years ago when Apple became hostile toward developers. I work on other platforms that now yield the majority of my income. I license IP to other companies that I originally developed for my iOS and mac apps so I maintain those apps to maintain that royalty income. The income from that is much greater than the proportional effort to maintain it.

I manage the level of "opacity" based on customer. Some customers are very transparent and consider contractors part of the team - in those cases I'm an "open book" (while respecting NDAs of course).

In my experience most of the "knowledge is power" opacity hostile attitude I encountered was from "Apple Platform" customers. With one such customer I was restricted from having any of their source code and had to work with only binaries. This was THEIR requirement and the funny part is they didn't know how to do this at first until I showed them how to set up a system to generate a "contractor environment" that I worked in. During the project "end game" I encountered a data corruption defect that they assigned to my code. While debugging I discovered the bug was their code and their ignorant response was "you don't have our source code so that's not possible". They then demanded a "in person" code review meeting so I had to travel to their site. The first thing I did at the presentation was debug the problem by stepping through their code (in assembly) using the disassembler. This showed how the data was being corrupted to prove it was in their code. I was also able to 'fix' the data while debugging to show my code was correct. The rest of the code review went fine even though I could tell they were pissed I proved them wrong about the defect.
So I've actually "fixed things" in customer code without even having their source, yet this only made them more hostile.

The vast, VAST majority of poor business ethics in the software industry is perpetrated ON contractors by companies that use them us as expendable resources. This is not even debatable and has been the case for a very long time. Most companies issue different security badges to on site contractors. One company I worked for as an FTE openly called contractor badges "bad guy" badges. I have plenty of other stories I could cite from professional experience. You're living in a delusion if you believe companies treat contractors with respect.

you are just a number, like any other employee, to HR.
you get paid to turn up and work.
if you dont like the way you get treated, leave.

companies these days dont treat full time, part time, casual or contractors any better or differently.
people arent loyal to companies because companies arent loyal to them.

some people probably resent the higher wages they pay contractors.
some employees also probably resent them for the same reason.

you bragged about your actions. that was what i was taking issue with. that doesnt reflect well on the whole IT industry regardless of employment role.

 

[developer13245]

This went off the rails


This is just a rant. Disagreed.

The EU handed down a $2 Billion fine and placed constraints on Apple's behavior, causing them to develop a crap salad of workarounds.
The EU hasn't really improved things (besides collecting $2B from Apple) but it isn't finished. The main thing to understand is the EU and other governments won't stop... ever. This is how bureaucratic governments operate. They'll mess with Apple until Apple gives up by truly opening the platform and waving the white surrender flag.
You can study history to see how many government anti-trust efforts ended this way.

 

[wbeasley]

The EU handed down a $2 Billion fine and placed constraints on Apple's behavior, causing them to develop a crap salad of workarounds.
The EU hasn't really improved things (besides collecting $2B from Apple) but it isn't finished. The main thing to understand is the EU and other governments won't stop... ever. This is how bureaucratic governments operate. They'll mess with Apple until Apple gives up by truly opening the platform and waving the white surrender flag.
You can study history to see how many government anti-trust efforts ended this way.

most companies with anti-trust issues werent trillion dollar ones who can afford lawyers and throwing money around.

the EU has poked the bear and after enough niggles, Apple is biting back.

the EU should be looking at bigger issues than a phone iOS. like Putin.
it wont matter what phone you have when the invasion or nukes start arriving.

 

[developer13245]

you are just a number, like any other employee, to HR.
you get paid to turn up and work.
if you dont like the way you get treated, leave.

companies these days dont treat full time, part time, casual or contractors any better or differently.
people arent loyal to companies because companies arent loyal to them.

some people probably resent the higher wages they pay contractors.
some employees also probably resent them for the same reason.

you bragged about your actions. that was what i was taking issue with. that doesnt reflect well on the whole IT industry regardless of employment role.

BTW, I don't maintain servers or install/admin software so I'm NOT in the "IT industry". I'm in the tech industry, specifically product development.
I wasn't bragging. I just explained how to deal with opaque customers who turn hostile. This was worse years ago when many software companies offered equity stake compensation to FTE developers. This caused FTE devs to work themselves nearly to death on the delusion they would get "IPO rich" from their efforts. Of course at some point along the way the project would be in trouble and the FTEs would be burning out, and so was VC cash. So contractors would be brought on to "offload" FTEs. The obvious problem was contractors then would also contribute intellectual property to the project without an equity stake, which ended up threatening FTEs (optics, why "give away" equity when you can just hire a contractor?). Attempts to "inform the employer what i'd learned from previous work" would be met with hostility because it devalued FTEs on the team that had no such experience. In some cases the team knew it had made a poor architecture or design decision early in the project (although they would never admit it) but believed they could "code around" the issue to "save the project". Hence the crazy hours leading toward burnout.

At least you can admit "companies aren't loyal". Duh. But it sounds like you are not a U.S. based developer (you mentioned Australia?)? If so you most certainly have significant government employment security. We don't have that fluff in the U.S. so we have to protect ourselves more.

 

[developer13245]

most companies with anti-trust issues werent trillion dollar ones who can afford lawyers and throwing money around.

the EU has poked the bear and after enough niggles, Apple is biting back.

the EU should be looking at bigger issues than a phone iOS. like Putin.
it wont matter what phone you have when the invasion or nukes start arriving.

You don't know history. A "Trillion dollars" is relative to history. Do I need to explain inflation?

Some of the largest companies in history "gave up" their legal battles to just stop further government BS.

Invasion? Nukes? You're wondering off topic. Try to focus. Being in the Free U.S.A, I'm not worried about either because I have plenty of other defense "equipment".

 

[wbeasley]

BTW, I don't maintain servers or install/admin software so I'm NOT in the "IT industry". I'm in the tech industry, specifically product development.
I wasn't bragging. I just explained how to deal with opaque customers who turn hostile. This was worse years ago when many software companies offered equity stake compensation to FTE developers. This caused FTE devs to work themselves nearly to death on the delusion they would get "IPO rich" from their efforts. Of course at some point along the way the project would be in trouble and the FTEs would be burning out, and so was VC cash. So contractors would be brought on to "offload" FTEs. The obvious problem was contractors then would also contribute intellectual property to the project without an equity stake, which ended up threatening FTEs (optics, why "give away" equity when you can just hire a contractor?). Attempts to "inform the employer what i'd learned from previous work" would be met with hostility because it devalued FTEs on the team that had no such experience. In some cases the team knew it had made a poor architecture or design decision early in the project (although they would never admit it) but believed they could "code around" the issue to "save the project". Hence the crazy hours leading toward burnout.

At least you can admit "companies aren't loyal". Duh. But it sounds like you are not a U.S. based developer (you mentioned Australia?)? If so you most certainly have significant government employment security. We don't have that fluff in the U.S. so we have to protect ourselves more.

Yes Australian. And from what we see the US have significantly worse employment standards. The whole tip economy is t about getting good service but the employer copping out paying proper wages and forcing the guilt onto customers (have been to US and regular tipping is not something we are used to).

Here though if you do work for someone, your are paid for the IP too. You generated it on work time. You might get a nod in a patent if they feel generous but rarely do you make anything from it.

I’ll take your response on board but it read like bragging about handling bad customers. Have dealt with a few too. Especially when the boss over promised on vague specs and I fronted a carpeting meeting and wore the blame. All I could do was explain what was delivered met the specs and “I’ll know what I want when I see it” isn’t a workable spec

 

[truthsteve]

Well... yes? Or do you have funny take on logic as well?

well...no. logic says incentivizing works too which is not a regulation and it attacks the status quo.

🤦‍♂️ 🤣

 

[truthsteve]

The EU handed down a $2 Billion fine and placed constraints on Apple's behavior, causing them to develop a crap salad of workarounds.
The EU hasn't really improved things (besides collecting $2B from Apple) but it isn't finished. The main thing to understand is the EU and other governments won't stop... ever. This is how bureaucratic governments operate. They'll mess with Apple until Apple gives up by truly opening the platform and waving the white surrender flag.
You can study history to see how many government anti-trust efforts ended this way.

again, this went off the rails. i already responded point by point.

 

[developer13245]

Yes Australian. And from what we see the US have significantly worse employment standards. The whole tip economy is t about getting good service but the employer copping out paying proper wages and forcing the guilt onto customers (have been to US and regular tipping is not something we are used to).

Here though if you do work for someone, your are paid for the IP too. You generated it on work time. You might get a nod in a patent if they feel generous but rarely do you make anything from it.

I’ll take your response on board but it read like bragging about handling bad customers. Have dealt with a few too. Especially when the boss over promised on vague specs and I fronted a carpeting meeting and wore the blame. All I could do was explain what was delivered met the specs and “I’ll know what I want when I see it” isn’t a workable spec

I've been in the U.S. tech industry for over 30 years and have witnessed its sad decline. I also live in an area where several thousand tech industry employees can get laid off and it barely makes the news anymore. In the U.S. you're lucky if your "pink slip" comes with a 2 week severance payment. Mostly all employment in the U.S. is "at will" employment, which is not the case in most other countries including Australia.

Most relevant anti-trust history is within U.S. history. Australia may have some case history, but so what. Apple is a U.S. company, not Australian. You lack a complete perspective.

I've actually worked with an Australian company (briefly) which seemed to maintain a strategy of "insulating" themselves from the U.S. as best they could while serving their target market. The experience was positive and the company seems to be successful. I would work with them again given the opportunity.

I'm named as an "inventor" on U.S. patents but not as an "assignee", meaning I have no ownership of the patent rights. In those cases I was working as an FTE, which are all considered "work for hire", meaning I have no ownership interest in the IP I developed. In some cases I did have stock options that paid off, but that was a long time ago. A contractor can also be named as an inventor without being an assignee, not really different because contractors are also "work for hire" situations.

 

[developer13245]

again, this went off the rails. i already responded point by point.

Well, you ignored 2 BILLION points, and also ignore the subject the article:
"Spotify Lauds $2 Billion EU Fine, Says Apple Has 'Muzzled' Streaming Music Services".

As discussed by others here Apple's changes aren't going to resolve the EU's opinion that Apple "Muzzled" Streaming, so the EU will continue to work against Apple.

 

[truthsteve]

Well, you ignored 2 BILLION points, and also ignore the subject the article:
"Spotify Lauds $2 Billion EU Fine, Says Apple Has 'Muzzled' Streaming Music Services".

As discussed by others here Apple's changes aren't going to resolve the EU's opinion that Apple "Muzzled" Streaming, so the EU will continue to work against Apple.

I didn't ignore it. I'm voicing my opinion against it which I did point by point to which you ignored 🤦‍♂️


I'm moving on.

 

[wbeasley]

I've been in the U.S. tech industry for over 30 years and have witnessed its sad decline. I also live in an area where several thousand tech industry employees can get laid off and it barely makes the news anymore. In the U.S. you're lucky if your "pink slip" comes with a 2 week severance payment. Mostly all employment in the U.S. is "at will" employment, which is not the case in most other countries including Australia.

Most relevant anti-trust history is within U.S. history. Australia may have some case history, but so what. Apple is a U.S. company, not Australian. You lack a complete perspective.

I've actually worked with an Australian company (briefly) which seemed to maintain a strategy of "insulating" themselves from the U.S. as best they could while serving their target market. The experience was positive and the company seems to be successful. I would work with them again given the opportunity.

I'm named as an "inventor" on U.S. patents but not as an "assignee", meaning I have no ownership of the patent rights. In those cases I was working as an FTE, which are all considered "work for hire", meaning I have no ownership interest in the IP I developed. In some cases I did have stock options that paid off, but that was a long time ago. A contractor can also be named as an inventor without being an assignee, not really different because contractors are also "work for hire" situations.

Thanks for the insight into your experience. Yes things are different here in many ways. Like out health system and gun control...

We have moved more towards US methods on some things. HR departments have outrageous control of business decisions. The moment they know your name, even if you are the one complaining about bullying or management issues, you wear a target. It's easier to leave rather than endure a year of grief as I recently did with a bad boss (who then left under a cloud shortly afterwards!)

 

[.wojtek]

well...no. logic says incentivizing works too which is not a regulation and it attacks the status quo.

🤦‍♂️ 🤣

It is regulation (or better yet, state involvement) of sorts...

 

[truthsteve]

It is regulation (or better yet, state involvement) of sorts...

no.

regulation is a mandate
incentive is optional

 

[Force11111]

Would love to see Elon jump in with a proper Linux distro that doesn’t suck.

I would drop my iPhone to support it just due to the free speech he is working towards on X.

X is a bastion of free speech, and it only costs 8 bucks a month!

 

[developer13245]

Like out health system and gun control...

I prefer the U.S. system in both of these areas.

I can get FDA approved medical treatments not available anywhere else in the world. Of course I buy a health insurance plan that suits my needs to cover costs, but I'd rather have that choice than be forced into a government system.

And I can buy guns... lots and lots of guns...

 

[developer13245]

I didn't ignore it. I'm voicing my opinion against it which I did point by point to which you ignored 🤦‍♂️


I'm moving on.

Well the EU isn't going to "move on".

And....

US DOJ just entered the chat...

 

[wbeasley]

I prefer the U.S. system in both of these areas.

I can get FDA approved medical treatments not available anywhere else in the world. Of course I buy a health insurance plan that suits my needs to cover costs, but I'd rather have that choice than be forced into a government system.

And I can buy guns... lots and lots of guns...

well said... proves a lot. about you rather than the topic being discussed.

 

[developer13245]

well said... proves a lot. about you rather than the topic being discussed.

You went off topic by binging up Healthcare and citizen disarmament (gun control). Funny you also admitted your government is caving on protecting employment rights, and now employers are becoming oppressive.

Now you get to experience a trifecta of "tyranny by proxy" where your government uses the healthcare system, employers, and criminals (against disarmed / defenseless society) to oppress its people.

 

[wbeasley]

You went off topic by binging up Healthcare and citizen disarmament (gun control). Funny you also admitted your government is caving on protecting employment rights, and now employers are becoming oppressive.

Now you get to experience a trifecta of "tyranny by proxy" where your government uses the healthcare system, employers, and criminals (against disarmed / defenseless society) to oppress its people.

Government here are not caving to oppressive employer behavior. Don’t put words in my mouth.

HR departments have significantly changed their behavior.
If I had to point at any reason for change, it would be because US behavior is to sue when something doesn’t go your way. Businesses change their processes to protect them from being sued by employees. They create a paper trail to justify actions.

Oppressive again?
Please.

 

[developer13245]

Government here are not caving to oppressive employer behavior. Don’t put words in my mouth.

HR departments have significantly changed their behavior.
If I had to point at any reason for change, it would be because US behavior is to sue when something doesn’t go your way. Businesses change their processes to protect them from being sued by employees. They create a paper trail to justify actions.

Oppressive again?
Please.

Umm.. It's impossible to sue an employer in the USA due to the "at will" legal status of most employment.
It is possible to sue for unpaid wages and maybe a few other rare cases. But at will employment means you can be let go or resign for any or no reason. This is unique to the USA and widely misunderstood.