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there is fair competition and then there is companies wanting something for nothing. right now... it seems like Epic and Tile want the later. Apple built and maintains the ecosystem...they shouldn't have to have a "Level playing field". This would be like expecting Microsoft to allow a PlayStation controller to work on an Xbox. That being said...Apple could learn a bit from all this pushback and provide some friendlier terms, fees, and app requirements. Doing so would lessen their detractors and give Apple products more choices.
 
It's definitely a good idea to read them, but it doesn't mean everything that it's written there from the point of view of contract law actually stands. Depending on the country's legislation an EULA's mileage may vary a lot.
I’m not upset about the EULA, so I’ve no desire to test it. And, I wouldn’t recommend any lawyer attempt to challenge them. However, for those that ARE upset about the EULA and can find a lawyer to take them to court (be warned, the lawyer MAY ask for some cash up front), I’d say go right ahead!
 
Agreed. They stopped Microsoft from doing it even though they had a good UI that was genuinely different from iOS and Android. Developers really don’t want the added expense and overheads of building mobile apps for more than two operating systems if they can avoid it.

Nobody but Microsoft stopped themselves from taking a decent share of the smartphone market. A huge chunk of consumers have zero brand loyalty and are there for the taking by any market participant. The fact Microsoft failed to deliver a product consumers wanted to buy, is what led to a luke-warm reception from developers.

Microsoft don't seem to have had any challenges entering the tablet market... which is equally dominated by Apple and Android.
 
I don’t think so. Because there’s a very large number of companies depending on Amazon, Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, Steam, Epic etc. for their long term success and they have found it makes sense for them to do so. Blizzard doesn’t want to create an OS, Ubisoft doesn’t want to create a portable device, Sega doesn’t want to create a games console (anymore). DropBox doesn’t want to stand up a worldwide network of storage servers. As a result, they’re willing to work with the companies in question to do business.

The bigger lesson is… make sure that you’re always working to ensure that customers use your product NOT because they don’t have a choice, but because they WANT to. Because, if you’re in any way successful, someone’s going to challenge your market and if folks love what you’ve been making, they will be reluctant to switch to your competitor. If Tile has done nothing to make a Samsung user choose their tags over Samsung’s solution, then they’ve failed.
And do game companies not pay a royalty to the distribution platform?

Is Tile and Apple both making a product for customers to choose one over the other?

I think you're supporting my argument 😄
 
And if your response is "if you don't like it, go build your own cell phone company!", that argument is reductionist and absurd.

Not so fast. Isn't that exactly what Apple did? They could've licensed the iPod UI to mobile phone manufacturers back in 2007 or earlier, but they didn't. They wanted control over the entire system, so they designed it and built it. So if other companies want to follow suit, they should.
 
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Funny how I don’t remember Apple fans saying how “crappy” Tile was when they were happily using them long before AirTags came along. It’s almost like you have to HATE everything that competes with Apple products.
only when it's garbage. Which Tile is.
 
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lmao, his name being "Prober" is too perfect! only "Tracker" could top that.

but
The main points of differentiation of ‌AirTags‌ vis a vis Tile are enabled by platform capabilities that we don't have access to.
Prober says that Tile is "well-positioned" with a "super differentiated product"
like, make up your mind already, Prober!

other than that, i agree with LawJolla. i assumed U1 was open already tbh. maybe at WWDC?
 
Many of you fall for the illusion of competition. There's no competition. It's predatory.

Tile has a non choice. It can keep its own network and stay off Find My. But Apple won't give Tile the keys to have their network be as robust as Find My. E.g., they could figure out a solution to extend the iPhone/BluetoothLE pings for Tile's network, but they wont.

So then Tile's forced off their network onto Find My. But once on Find My, Apple products are again privileged with special abilities.

I'm not arguing Tile on the merits. Maybe it's the best product on Earth, maybe it's the worst. I don't care. The point is they can't build the best product because of Apple's 3rd party restrictions.

And if your response is "if you don't like it, go build your own cell phone company!", that argument is reductionist and absurd.

I love Apple as much as the next, but many of you are Apple sycophants. They are behaving as a cartel.

A cartel? This is essentially a company who created the cup holder for a car complaining that all the cars now already come with cup holders.
 
only when it's garbage. Which Tile is.
I don’t remember you saying that a year ago (assuming you actually own a Tile product) but I am happy to be corrected if you can point me towards any of your posts criticising Tile before AirTags. It’s easy to check. Just click on your username at the top of the screen then select Your Content and scroll through all your previous posts.
 
Many of you fall for the illusion of competition. There's no competition. It's predatory.

Tile has a non choice. It can keep its own network and stay off Find My. But Apple won't give Tile the keys to have their network be as robust as Find My. E.g., they could figure out a solution to extend the iPhone/BluetoothLE pings for Tile's network, but they wont.

So then Tile's forced off their network onto Find My. But once on Find My, Apple products are again privileged with special abilities.

I'm not arguing Tile on the merits. Maybe it's the best product on Earth, maybe it's the worst. I don't care. The point is they can't build the best product because of Apple's 3rd party restrictions.

And if your response is "if you don't like it, go build your own cell phone company!", that argument is reductionist and absurd.

I love Apple as much as the next, but many of you are Apple sycophants. They are behaving as a cartel.
Why should Apple allow Tile special privileges on their platform? Is Tile paying Apple for these software changes? Should Apple allow anyone else to do that? You expectation of accommodating every random technology that wants to use your platform is not reasonable for Apple. They don’t get anything out of it and have to maintain new code that doesn’t help them.

Tile could protect itself with patents. If they had none for the tech then anyone can replicate it. It’s tough out there for an innovator like Tile. No lie. Once a set of technologies exist and can be made anyone can compete just like Apple faces thousands of Bluetooth wireless headphones now.
 
If 30% is enough to eliminate profit, then there are other more fundamental issues with the business. They’re not charging enough, they’ve hired too many people, they’re paying the people too much, they’ve ramped up cloud costs faster than new customers are joining, the new customers are not enthused so not telling other users about the service, the new customers are actively telling users NOT to use the service, etc.

For any company making less than 1 million, it’s only 15%… and again if 15% is enough to eliminate profit, the FIRST place to look is how you’re running your business. If the expectation is that revenue=profit, then they should hire a business planner. :)
that's nonsense

There are fundamental issues with a business who cannot afford to lose 30% of their revenues? did you seriously think this out before typing?

DO I need to go over business 101? I am not planning on typing out basic business all day.

Most businesses in this world do not operate at the absurd profit margins that big tech does. Nor even Apple itself.

The whole very reason why Apple doesn't have so many competitors in most of it's market space, and able to afford such massive profit margins is because of it's heavily vertically integrated monopolistic locked in business practices.

There are benefits to us for this. I am not a hater who doesn't see some of the bonuses of the integration and security they have.

But to believe that Apple forcing 30% of all revenues from companies just to be allowed to sell on the app store isn't going to seriously harm competition is delusional. Virtually any business who isn't in Apple's position will be hurt by 30%.

I'm also not going to support "0". There's fees and it should be acceptable. However, there are legit questions about the ethicalness of Apple participating in the market, while also controlling and dictating that market.


We like making anologies. so here's a loose one.

THink of Apple as the regulatory body of the government over the economy. They can pick and chose what businesses are allowed to exist. every business must pay 30% of all revenues in tax to them.

that regulatory body than comes and sets up competition to you. but it doesn't have to pay 30% tax.

if you don't see why that's ethically questionable, than i'm done.
 
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Nobody but Microsoft stopped themselves from taking a decent share of the smartphone market. A huge chunk of consumers have zero brand loyalty and are there for the taking by any market participant. The fact Microsoft failed to deliver a product consumers wanted to buy, is what led to a luke-warm reception from developers.

Microsoft don't seem to have had any challenges entering the tablet market... which is equally dominated by Apple and Android.
The Microsoft tablet runs Android so no of course they didn’t have any problems. Their phone ran Windows Mobile. They had a compelling product but couldn’t persuade enough developers to port their apps across. With apps a smartphone OS is dead in the water. Developers simply didn’t want another platform to develop for. If Microsoft had taken the smartphone seriously from the beginning we could easily have three operating systems to chose from today.
 
Many of you fall for the illusion of competition. There's no competition. It's predatory.

Tile has a non choice. It can keep its own network and stay off Find My. But Apple won't give Tile the keys to have their network be as robust as Find My. E.g., they could figure out a solution to extend the iPhone/BluetoothLE pings for Tile's network, but they wont.

So then Tile's forced off their network onto Find My. But once on Find My, Apple products are again privileged with special abilities.

I'm not arguing Tile on the merits. Maybe it's the best product on Earth, maybe it's the worst. I don't care. The point is they can't build the best product because of Apple's 3rd party restrictions.

And if your response is "if you don't like it, go build your own cell phone company!", that argument is reductionist and absurd.

I love Apple as much as the next, but many of you are Apple sycophants. They are behaving as a cartel.
Then don't build a product that relies on someone else's tech that you have no control over.
 
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Literally the entire market would stop ANY company from making a new phone and os.
Agreed. They stopped Microsoft from doing it even though they had a good UI that was genuinely different from iOS and Android. Developers really don’t want the added expense and overheads of building mobile apps for more than two operating systems if they can avoid it.
Wait, WHAT? So, your point of view is that if someone was to produce a groundbreaking phone with an amazing UI that delights customers at a reasonable price, with features that go beyond what anyone’s ever seen before… that it WOULDN’T be successful? Because I think Apple showed that if you DO do those things you’ll be successful. The bar has been raised but to assume that there’s something magical about Apple that makes it impossible for anyone to make anything better… I don’t even know what to say about that.

What stopped Microsoft was that customers didn’t want it. How badly did people NOT want it? They didn’t want it SOOO badly, that even purchasing the number one Cellphone maker of the day (Nokia) could not help it. Nokia went from top dog in smartphone sales to number nothing overnight because people did not want that OS.

Yeah, developers don’t want to develop for more than two operating systems. Let’s see
1) PC - of many varying performance levels
2) Sony Playstation
2) Microsoft Xbox
2) Nintendo Switch
Yup, by my count, that’s 2 operating systems. I was thinking that developers want to develop for whatever they think will make them money, but I think it’s that they really just want to develop for only 2 OS’s.
 
I don’t remember you saying that a year ago (assuming you actually own a Tile product) but I am happy to be corrected if you can point me towards any of your posts criticising Tile before AirTags. It’s easy to check. Just click on your username at the top of the screen then select Your Content and scroll through all your previous posts.
Do you really need to see people complain to believe they were unhappy with a product? You'll virtually never see me complain about anything but I have to tell you, Tile was on to something and they dropped the ball. I've actually met people who bought into Tile not knowing that it would require people to be using the app to assist in tracking their tag. Even in a major metropolitan area, you'd be lucky if anyone ever picked up the signal. Adding a subscription was really the last straw...your product is already hit or miss on functionality, and now you're trying to put features behind a pay wall? Those features would have helped to sell the product had they not cut them off.

Tile's best bet was, long ago, to offer themselves up for sale to one of the platforms their trackers depended on. This is something that needed to be baked in to the OS, not part of an app, to really reach its potential. Their second best bet was to create a standard that those companies could have adopted easily and integrated into their OS. From day one, it was obvious that Tile would never be part of the end game with the strategy they adopted.

Both Google and Apple have the unique ability to own this market, even Samsung doesn't really have a chance with their tag. Rest assured, Google Tags are on the way.
 
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I just finished reading Tile Privacy Policy, I will never use Tile products and it's a good thing Apple has a stronghold on its system. I would invite everyone to go a read Tile Privacy Policy ( all of it ).
 
How exactly are they supposed to do that?
They could build a cross platform tool that worked the same way as Apple’s Find My network. They instead chose to create a tracking network that does nothing to preserve privacy.
Tile has its own tracking network that they charge for (and rightly so).
They have every right to charge for their network if they choose. However, given their lack of privacy preservation and that (at least in the past), they reserved the right to resell that data, why would I want to opt-in to it?
Apple has now come in with the Find My network...a forced opt-in anonymous tracking network, that everyone can use, and no one can charge for.
No one is forced to opt-in to the Find My network. While its functionality has been expanding, it has been around for years. Given that protecting Apple Devices from loss and theft is at the core of this service, it makes sense that it should be free. Tile could absolutely charge for their service, if they offered something that Apple did/could not, for example cross platform support.
Apple is abusing their position to reduce a paid service to free, by using all of the devices they control in the wild, with no consent from anyone.
No one is forced to opt-in to the Find My network. Everyone who does so explicitly has to opt-in. Are you arguing that Apple should now be forced to charge for a service they have been providing for free so that Tile can now charge for a service they used to provide for free?
The staggering hypocrisy here about what they just released with 14.5 and the prompting and opt-in for users on ad tracking vs. the Find My network which everyone is automatically opted in to is astounding. I wonder how well that would work if people were prompted to allow their device to be used by other people to track things.
No, it is not opt-in for ad tracking, it is opt-in for third party app tracking. First parties can track to their hearts content. Second, no one is automatically enrolled, when setting up a device, users are required to consent to location services if they wish to take advantage of the service. Users may choose to participate in the service or not.
 
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so glade apple came out with airtag, now I can keep track of my military equipment in the field and on deployment.
 
The Microsoft tablet runs Android so no of course they didn’t have any problems. Their phone ran Windows Mobile. They had a compelling product but couldn’t persuade enough developers to port their apps across. With apps a smartphone OS is dead in the water. Developers simply didn’t want another platform to develop for. If Microsoft had taken the smartphone seriously from the beginning we could easily have three operating systems to chose from today.
Surface runs on Android? That's new.

And bingo. So we agree, Microsoft's failure in the smartphone market was because they failed to deliver. Not the market preventing their entry.
 
Well I'm sure Vanmoof isn't charging you to track your Bike through their app.

No company is going to have a paid tracking service through their own app and a free one through a built in app.
I have a Vanmoof bike and I do not pay anything for tracking.
 
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