Comment by ocdtrekkie
4 years ago
" Modern cars regularly send basic data about vehicle components, their safety status and service schedules to car manufacturers, and mobile phones work in very similar ways." -Google
This is a beautiful quote because it is an example of one industry's bad behavior leading to another industry's bad behavior, upon which the first industry then users the second's similarity to justify themselves. Cars only started doing this because phones made it normal. It's wrong in both cases.
It's similar to when Apple defended it's 30% store cut by claiming it's an "industry standard"... specifically, an industry standard that Apple established.
The 30% cut was considered very good at the time. It was way better than the 50-90% cut that traditional publishers would take.
A sibling comment notes that Steam charged 30% at the time (though some had better deals) but it's worth noting that Steam was not an open platform that anyone could publish on. Much like for consoles, to put a game on Steam you had to have a preexisting relationship with Valve, or try to develop one with no certainty of success. This was also considered a very generous cut because getting on Steam was almost a guarantee of financial success.
"The 30% cut was considered very good at the time."
Let me fix this.
There was a full range of views. Some considered the 30% cut to be good at the time, some didn't consider it much at all, some considered it to be a criminal abuse of market power. I remember commenting myself that microsoft would be crucified for attempting to tax everyone who wanted to write software for windows 30% of revenue. I don't recall anyone suggesting that was a controversial comment.
You want to talk about a criminal abuse of market power?
Microsoft used to charge ridiculous fees for things as simple as submitting a patch for an XBox 360 game.
>Double Fine's Tim Schaefer pegged the cost of submitting an Xbox 360 patch at $40,000 in an interview with Hookshot Inc. earlier this year.
"We already owe Microsoft a LOT of money for the privilege of being on their platform," he said. "People often mistakenly believe that we got paid by Microsoft for being exclusive to their platform. Nothing could be further from the truth. WE pay THEM."
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/07/microsoft-comes-under...
People who think a 30% fee is outsized tend to have no idea whatsoever what the costs were previous to that.
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Let me fix this.
Microsoft did worse, they did charge more than 30% to everyone that published software for the xbox.
People with skin in the game, game publishers, game developers, mobile app developers for nokia, blackberry, samsung, motorola, etc, considered Apple taking "only" 30% to be an excellent deal at the time. It was so good in fact, almost all other store splits collapsed shortly thereafter to the same 30% to compete with Apple.
Others complained, sure. I too complain Ferrari charges way too much for customizing the color of the thread of the interior lining on their cars, I don't know why they don't seem bothered.
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I have worked in mobile since 2004. How anyone felt about it is irrelevant.
The fact is that 30% was far less than the carriers and Qualcomm were taking with their stores.
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Microsoft didn't really have a comparable App Store at the time, not to mention, Apple hadn't really made a comparable App Store for the Mac yet either. The iPhone app model was more analogous to the business model of gaming consoles (and Steam), except with lower barrier to entry.
Today, I'm sure you could still publish independently of Steam... but you'd be at a disadvantage.
Microsoft also never managed to build a system that was secure enough to do e.g. banking on. I just noticed how I can do everything from my iPhone just using my fingerprint and don't even feel unsafe about it. I love that there are different approaches like you mentioned and hope that they continue to exist and are not overruled by a central authority as you suggest.
In the mobile world there were so many intermediaries and costs to publish then that included:
-the mobile carriers cut - up to 70 percent
-the publishers cut (depending on whether you used them). up to 70 percent (carrier fees included).
-some publishers requiring apps to be code signed like Java Verified (a cost that could go up to 50 thousand dollars PER J2ME/JAVA ME app) or Symbian Signed or BREW.
It was a horrific time to build mobile apps.
I am still not defending the 30 percent cut. Just that the cost was seen as trivial then (also the miniscule 99 yearly membership fee that included code signing - Blackberry started at 2500 USD a year).
A simple solution to all this mess is to have rules allowing us to download apps (at our own risk) from outside the app store like you can on Android.
This is such a nonsense justification.
You want to sell software you wrote to run on an iphone. You have zero choice. Apple tax your revenue.
You want to sell software you wrote to run on a pc. Steam is not your only choice. I am not defending steam or valve here, I've never sold anything using their stuff, nor am I suggesting anything other than that their market power over pc compared to apple's store over the iphone is not remotely comparable.
It actually works against you to suggest apple's iphone software store and steam are comparable at all because it's so incredibly bogus.
You want to make the case that steam suck too but with loads less market power. Go right ahead. We're listening. You don't need absolute and total market power to be abusive of it. Apple will immediately attempt redefine the market to include android or people spending money on coca cola instead of apple product to suggest that customers have real choice so there is no market power abuse here.
The situation on Android shows us that consumers like consolidation and they like walled gardens and simple choices. These things benefit them. Plenty of Android phones come with 2 or 3 app stores. One for the carrier, one for the vendor and Google Play Store. There plenty are others as well, but the market has spoken. Even Epic had to fold and move to Play Store. Maybe Google played dirty, but I think it's perfectly clear users benefit from consolidation. They like the simplicity of having everything in one store and when they change devices they just set up their Play Store account and there everything is. That's a massive advantage to them. Fragmentation is a nightmare.
Developers have come to the same conclusion, it's to their benefit for the customers to all be on one store with one set of policies and features so that's where the majority of the apps go.
So what are you going to do, force Apple to become a fragmented Android copy with multiple stores and side loading that a tiny fraction of techies actually use? Those people already have that on Android if they want it. Honestly you'd just screw over Apple and a few other people over a principle hardly anybody actually cares about or benefits from. It certainly wouldn't make any significant commercial difference. We ran that experiment and the results are in.
The idea that users would all be side loading apps and developers would be making far more money having their apps spread across 5+ different stores that would compete down to lower prices is delusional. If that were the case, why has this not happened on Windows or MacOS where side loading is actually the default yet Steam, GOG, etc still charge 30%? It's crystal clear that's just the split the market has converged on through a competitive process. After all Steam has competed from day one with a default split of nothing for direct downloads from the software publisher but has thrived charging 30%. If that's not direct market validation I don't know what is.
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I think the point is that Steam manages to do just fine while charging 30%, on a platform where developers could easily choose to self-publish. For small developers, that 30% is worth it because the value Steam brings to them is worth more than the revenue it takes. The only ones choosing to go elsewhere are massive publishers that can market their own storefronts, and indie devs taking large up front payments from Epic to leave Steam.
I can see both sides of the argument here. It sucks having no choice as a developer, and feeling forced pay Apple a tax just to get paid for your work. It's especially egregious with subscriptions, where Apple doesn't even do any of the content delivery. However, as a user, I think it would also suck if a huge player like Facebook or Google decided to open up their own iOS App Stores, and developers started flocking to them as a means to escape Apples increasingly strict app privacy rules.
It’s weird to compare Steam’s market power over PCs to Apple’s market power over the iPhone. The obvious difference is that the iPhone is a product created by and sold exclusively by Apple. Why would we expect Steam to have comparable market power over the entire PC industry? A much better comparison would be Apple’s market power over smartphones, which is probably comparable to Steam’s market power (as a video game store) over PCs!
Are you implying that you feel entitled to sell software on Apple's tightly controlled consumer devices?
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I can't help but feel like having it this way is breaking one of the huge reasons that made computers so absurdly exciting and enticing in the past.
The fact that there was this wide open field, where, sure, maybe you paid Microsoft for the OS, but then the rest was up to you. Trade shareware CDs, install stuff from the internet, type in code from a book or whatever, it felt like an infinite open field of possibilities.
I guess it's normal that the exciting frontier shifts around, but I really can't believe that it's somehow a good thing in this case.
You can still do all those things on a computer.
And now it’s so easy to put up a web app that I’d argue barriers are much, much lower than when you had to figure out how to get your physical software distributed.
The goals of “keep grandpa from getting his life savings stolen by malicious software” and “allow a power user to do whatever they want” can literally never be solved by the same device. If there’s any way to disable protections then the scammers will get grandpa to do it. And the market for grandpas is much larger than the market for tinkerers.
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> I can't help but feel like having it this way is breaking one of the huge reasons that made computers so absurdly exciting and enticing in the past.
We live in a bubble, so it was exciting for us.
The iPhone was exciting for everyone, for the whole world, and in no small part because normal people finally felt confident enough to try all that sweet sweet software that became available thanks to people like you who don't need a safety net to tinker with stuff.
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It’s a 15% cut for developers who makes less than $1 million and for most other developers after year 1 on the App Store.
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It depends of course on how you published.
When I was authoring software (over two decades ago) and a company acted as publisher they took 85% of gross.
For author/publisher relationships at that time, this was pretty typical (book authors/publishers being the closest analog).
Needless to say there was, in addition to the cost of creating and shipping floppies, advertising that the publisher had to cover.
Apple's 30% cut seemed fair to me when the App Store arrived.
I'm not sure if I would try to ship an iOS app these days though. Not because of Apple's cut but because of the race to the bottom that was unleashed shortly after the App Store gold rush: where now you don't appear to even be able to sell a $0.99 app.
You are probably right about the cut the publisher took, but the margins are still higher for Apple as they have very low costs of marketing, distribution etc. In fact I think Apple charges way more if you consider the margins.
The other problem is of course that no one else can really enter this space. It's now only Apple and Google. It will be very hard for anyone else to enter. There were many more publishers and the competition and differentiation was higher.
Bullshit - we were building and publishing mobile apps in the early 2000’s and the top rate was 15%.
The 30% cut was considered very good at the time.
No, it wasn't. I'm not going to dig up links, but one could pop a web site storefront and Fastspring for payment processing (as one example of a company I used) for less than 10% (Fastspring would take something like 6-7%, IIRC). Discovery has always sucked on Apple's store, so no value-add there. In fact, I'd argue that the only value-add one gets out of Apple's store is access to their closed garden.
And "50-90%"? Is that in reference to putting software in physical boxes and on CompUSA shelves? Because no mobile publisher charged 90% before Apple's store came along.
IIRC 50% (60%) was the rate for the app distributor I used for selling my PalmOS app. It was digital download, too.
For the Apple case: access to the walled garden is the majority of the benefit. But still, setting up payments, customer service, chargebacks, fees, etc., is nice to have taken care of. 30% nice? Who knows. But more than just the raw payment processor overhead, surely.
AFAIK physical boxes are way above 50%.
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I remember considering 1-2% to be fair, for the payment processing. Publishers were an old-fashioned thing and not even considered for the comparison.
> The 30% cut was considered very good at the time. It was way better than the 50-90% cut that traditional publishers would take.
Why didn't Steve Jobs go with web distribution of first class web apps or allow Flash on his platform? If they truly wanted to be remarkable, this would have been the future.
The answer is control.
Apple is a cutthroat business just like any other, and their "privacy first" veneer is just a wolf in sheep's clothing. They're playing it up as an attack against Google and Facebook, meanwhile they still phone home about the apps you're running and can shut them off remotely.
Microsoft never taxed software on their platform. Jobs had to invent that business model. It flourished like wildflowers thanks to him.
'First class web apps' was precisely how you were supposed to create apps for the first iPhone; the SDK was thrown together over the next year only after the huge demand for writing native apps. The iPhone pushed a bunch of device access web APIs originally explicitly for this reason.
> Why didn't Steve Jobs go with web distribution of first class web apps
That was exactly his intent when he announced the iPhone, and he got absolutely obliterated by the internet for it.
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Not allowing Flash on the iPhone is probably the best thing Apple ever did
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Flash was absolutely garbage on mobile at the time.
Signed, a heavy Windows Mobile user.
This may be pedantic, but Steam was collecting its 30% long before the App Store opened. Thought maybe that was inspired by Apple's cut of music revenues in the iTunes Store.
I could walk into Best Buy and buy the game I want off the shelf. I have no such option if I want to buy an iOS app from a store or the developers themselves.
Steam also don't engage in anti-competitive behavior and prevent billions of people from using alternative game distribution methods like Apple does.
What we need is real competition in the mobile app distribution market to determine whether or not that 30% is actually fair, efficient and competitive. As it stands, there is no competition in mobile app distribution.
That's simply not true, Android outsells iOS, it has multiple App Stores and allows sideloading. Plenty of phones come with 2 or 3 different app stores from the network, vendor and Google. The fact is consumers like app stores, they like consolidation because it makes it simpler for them and a lot of them like the benefits they get from a walled garden. Developers like consolidation too, which is why they have converged on the Play Store en masse on Android. These things benefit them, and the vast, vast majority appreciate those benefits more than they appreciate the benefits of managing multiple competing stores and side loading downloaded APKs.
You can't magic those preferences away. Even if you forced iOS to become an Android clone with multiple app stores and sideloading you can't force people to like those things. You'd just be giving an extra option to a very small subset of techies who have Android now to do that on already anyway. The market has spoken and it likes nice simple well managed choices because that's what the people want.
Why is it that Apple have to make the solution a small subset of people want. Why is that their problem to solve?
Maybe these stores converged on 30% because it's a nice round number and a roughly 1:2 split makes intuitive sense. Consoles, music stores, Steam, mobile app stores, they've all circled around about that number for a very long time. Some have tried around 20/80 to grab market share but it never worked, Nintendo tried 35/65 for a while before going to 30/70. In the end it's natural that competitive forces will tend to a convergence.
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On the other hand, steam will not stop collecting data about you if you ask.
GOG has much better policies.
For example, GOG sells some games that try to phone home. Many of these were games/franchises that did business with GOG, then were bought.
Take a look at the reviews for Kerbal Space Program, or Stellaris for some of the shenanigans that happened after a game was released.
But because their stance is no-drm and you can play all their games offline, you can block them and the game will still run.
There is no such stance with steam.
> I could walk into Best Buy and buy the game I want off the shelf. I have no such option if I want to buy an iOS app from a store or the developers themselves.
What percentage of that transaction do you think Best Buy would take?
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>I could walk into Best Buy and buy the game I want off the shelf.
If you try doing it for any PC games released over the past decade, you are more likely than not gonna have a disk with some installable files and a Steam code in the box. Without that Steam code, there is no way for you to play the game.
At this point, there isn't any difference between buying directly from Steam, as opposed to "walking into Best Buy and buying the game you want off the shelf".
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You pay 30% for all the hosting and listing and payment processing. But then you aren't required to use Steam to distribute your game — you could as well set up your own website. There's nothing preventing you. There's no predatory code signing on desktop OSes.
On the other hand, you can't sideload apps onto iOS devices. You HAVE to go through Apple. You either publish on the app store, or you don't have an iOS app. That's different. That's very different. That's antitrust-can't-happen-sooner different.
You aren't required to use the Apple store to distribute your product. You can sell to Android users and desktop/laptop users.
> "That's different. That's very different
Is it? Why is it? You can't sell software to run on Kindle Paperwhite even though it's a full computer inside. What's the specific difference between that and iOS, other than "Apple's ecosystem and customers are desirable, so I want to use it" and "I don't want to pay for it"?
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You can side load apps onto your iOS devices.
You just need to publish on the store in order to sell to other users.
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And just to be complete, there is little preventing other people from creating their own Steam (many do) or not using Steam at all (developers can publish their apps directly to users). This is not the case with the App store.
Older app stores and especially physical retail collected a lot more than 30%.
Steam charges that amount because it brought a customer to you.
If I did my own marketing to gamers and they downloaded the game from my website I would have to pay 0% to any intermediary.
I suspect that statement was to placate people with "your car does it too", but mine certainly doesn't --- it doesn't even require a computer to run --- and the statement had the exact opposite effect, namely to revalidate the reason I don't drive a "modern car".
That said, I do have an Android, but it is rooted and spends most of its time off. As I type this message, it is on the other side of the room.
Out of curiosity, how old is your car?
Close to 50 years.
> It's similar to when Apple defended it's 30% store cut by claiming it's an "industry standard"... specifically, an industry standard that Apple established.
Apple established a standard for the Apple app store. There was a lot of complaint about "Apple Tax" and Apple merely pointed out that it wasn't a "Apple Tax". Sure, Apple started it but others which are not even connected to the Apple ecosystem simply followed. They could have not decided to but they did (Re:Table 1) [0]. Microsoft, Samsung, Google and Amazon all have the same 30% tax. Heck, even commission rates for Xbox, Playstation, Nintendo have the same rate (Re : Table 2). I am sure Apple is not forcing them to have those rates.
Somehow, this conversation turns into an "Apple" vs rest conversation. There's no conversation had upon the charges on a digital distribution store. I'd say - let's have that conversation and come up with a number. Currently, the number is decided in a "free market". I would be open to come up to an alternate number. Most arguments against the 30% is that it is too high. Well, every penny that goes out from the developer's pocket is too high. The cost of an iPhone might be too high. Something, being too high is not an argument to not have that rate.
[0] https://www.analysisgroup.com/globalassets/insights/publishi...
this is a classic example of how companies collude without direct communication. it's a type of game theoretic outcome that's actually taught in business school - how to read your competitor's intentions from public information (like pricing intentions) and legally act and counter-communicate publicly your own intentions to not compete (in many cases by not lowering price).
this can practically only happen in oligarchic markets (those controlled by a few large players) who can safely assume a smaller competitor won't undercut them. unfortunately, most major markets in the US are oligarchic, if not downright monopolized (e.g., cellular service).
This is a great comment. It drives me crazy how often people take concepts that apply to an idealized free market and apply them to an area that's controlled by a small number of entrenched behemoths. Very little of the tech industry these days operates like an Econ 101 free marketplace.
> this is a classic example of how companies collude without direct communication.
In that case, let's have that conversation as a society and as a government. "Are companies listed in Table 1 and 2 in collusion as defined by current law?".
In most of the Apple 30% conversations, the conversations seem to be about an instance (Apple) instead of an object (Digital Store Tax, Collusion etc). Lets set the frame and be clear about the conversation we want to have regardless of the business we talk. We can use Apple, Microsoft et al as examples to make the point. We shouldn't replace them with the overarching discussion.
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> There's no conversation had upon the charges on a digital distribution store. I'd say - let's have that conversation and come up with a number. Currently, the number is decided in a "free market".
There is no competition in the mobile app distribution market. Apple and Google have a duopoly on mobile app distribution, and they behave like a cartel when it comes to price fixing.
For over a decade now, consumers and developers could have benefited from real competition in the mobile app distribution market. Real competition between companies means that consumers can benefit from increased efficiencies and reductions in cost when it comes to distributing mobile apps.
Instead, Apple and Google have kept a stranglehold on the mobile app distribution market, and it took over a decade and the threat of regulation before Apple chose to lower costs to developers somewhat.
How can anyone know what prices are "industry standard" or "too high" when it comes to mobile app distribution if there is no real competition in that market, just a cartel consisting of two trillion dollar companies controlling mobile app distribution for nearly 13 years?
I agree - there's no competition. What's your solution to change in the law that will create competition?
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I have an android phone and there is one clear difference: I can go elsewhere to get apps other than the official channel. For Microsoft I can go as far as installing a whole different OS on the device. You can do neither with iPhones. Sure, you can buy a different phone but it isn't as simple as that
It even polluted into other markets, like Wolt.com taking a 30% (!!) cut of food delivered using their platform. On top of the actual delivery charges.
I remember thinking that Just-Eat.com were criminals for taking 10%.
Hungry.dk takes 1-2%.
You're comparing apples and oranges.
You're most likely not being fair with what services these platforms provide, or how they structure their fees.
Wolt and other companies like UberEats or Postmates are food discovery, delivery and PoS platforms (and more). They don't operate on any single commission model.
(Ofc one could argue this pricing complexity is intentional so that comparing is more difficult)
> It's similar to when Apple defended it's 30% store cut by claiming it's an "industry standard"... specifically, an industry standard that Apple established.
I thought Apple chose that figure as game developers were already used to it from consoles and Steam.
It goes back much further than that—the mobile phone 'app' market was a lot worse (50%? And not a fun developer process) and was pretty poorly saturated by Java-based games and lightweight apps.
It all depends on what software / 'app' stores we're comparing to.
I honestly don't mind information about crashes being sent as long as it is very sanitized and easy to disable- similar to how Fedora reports issues.
They send only a list of functions on the stack without any of the arguments or data.
Example: https://retrace.fedoraproject.org/faf/problems/bthash/?bth=3...
Where Google goes too far is sending everything in the name of security or better yet to "serve" the user.
IMEI and serial number make sense, I think too: Apple’s activation lock is a big reason why I bought an iPhone and as far as I can tell, it requires interaction with the server on every boot to work.
I disagree on IMEI. It never changes and is unique.
I disagree that telemetry is inherently bad. As product engineers, telemetry is often our only visibility into whether or not a system is functioning healthily. How else can you detect difficult-to-spot bugs in production?
> our only visibility into whether or not a system is functioning healthily.
Your problem here is viewing the end user's setup as part of your system.
It's the user's private system -- why should you have any visibility into how it is functioning?
They said a system, not their system.
Car computers report telemetry to mechanics, and given that digitization allows for economies of scale, this isn't that different.
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As a software engineer I disagree. You are saying that you want to collect my personal information so you can fix your bugs. I don't see it being a valuable trade. I'll just find someone who can fix their bugs without tracking me.
>You are saying that you want to collect my personal information so you can fix your bugs.
How do you define personal information? Let's use Chrome as an example. Recording what website I visit is clearly personal information. What about recording how many tabs I have open, how much RAM each tab is using, and when each tab was last viewed? Is that personal information to you? I personally don't value keeping that private and it is probably a valuable piece of information that could help the developers improve what has been one of the biggest user complaints about Chrome since almost its release.
I think that is generally OP's point. Each piece of data exists on a spectrum in value for both the user and the developer. Data should be kept private when it has value to the user. There is little harm in sharing the data with the developer when the user would deem it low value and the developer would deem it high value.
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Personal information is a bit nebulous. Do we consider the list of function calls in a stack trace "personal information"?
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For me, the point is really about control.
These companies know people don’t actively want to be surveilled which is why they sneak this shit in instead of being upfront about it.
If it was so great for consumers it would be an opt in not an opt out hidden behind a series of dark patterns.
Even Apple switches Siri back on after every OS upgrade.
+1 to this. As long as proper privacy concerns are addressed and the data gathering is imperceptible to the product experience, telemetry signals are immensely valuable for improving the product in a variety of ways.
Many users care more about their privacy than your product.
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So why does $product need to send telemetry data via google? Why can highly complex software that runs most of the worlds internet infrastructure (linux) work without telemetry? Why is telemetry not opt-in or relies on reports in situation where a bug causes an issue like firefox crash reports? I'd rather have privacy and buggy software then bug free software in exchange for no privacy at all
>So why does $product need to send telemetry data via google?
Because Google is responsible for most of the software on said product. Who would be receiving that telemetry data if it wasn't Google?
>Why can highly complex software that runs most of the worlds internet infrastructure (linux) work without telemetry?
First, this is a false premise because it ignores the potential that telemetry could help improve this software but most Linux distros have decided against it for other reasons. Secondly, it ignores that some distros do in fact include telemetry.
>Why is telemetry not opt-in
It probably should be when it comes to something that has potential to invade privacy, but we have to be realistic that practically no one will actively turn on telemetry if it is initially set to off. That drastically decreases the value of the collected data and it basically turns into nothing more than something customer service can tell someone to turn on while trying to troubleshoot a specific issue.
>or relies on reports in situation where a bug causes an issue like firefox crash reports?
Telemetry isn't just about bugs. It is also about guiding future development, knowing what features are used, knowing the workflow for users, etc. It can provide value beyond crash reports.
>I'd rather have privacy and buggy software then bug free software in exchange for no privacy at all
This is completely fair. I would generally agree with you and bet that most HN readers would too. However this is not a binary choice. Not all telemetry is inherently bad. Not all loss of privacy is inherently damaging. This is a complicated issue that will involve compromises and anyone sticking to a complete extreme of it being all bad or all good isn't going to offer anything productive to this conversation.
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> I'd rather have privacy and buggy software then bug free software in exchange for no privacy at all
Unfortunately, nobody offers bug free software in exchange for no privacy. It’s still buggy.
We’re increasing the risk exposure for every user for our own trivial convenience. It is inherently bad, just like other forms of widespread surveillance that is often motivated by some seemingly good cause, like catching terrorists.
Telemetry is inherently bad if it's not done with the informed, opt-in consent of the end user whose data it's (mis)appropriating, oftentimes silently.
There's no issue with opt-in telemetry, where the user says "yes, it's okay to track me".
Invisible, silent, always-on telemetry is actually just spyware that's been mislabeled.
Ultimately it's not the telemetry that's at issue: it's the unethical and selfish behavior of the software/device manufacturer.
No sane or reasonable person thinks that an EULA is informed consent.
Once upon a time fixing bugs in production didn't happen because the product got all the bugs out before production. If it had bugs in production, the product failed.
You used the phrase "once upon a time", a common opening for fairy tales, which seems apropos for describing a magical land where products achieved a 100% bug detection rate before release. I suppose this might have been true 50 years ago, at the dawn of the electronic calculator, but that is now an age of legend...
I've often wondered about this commonly repeated belief that software of ~30 years ago was less buggy than software today, because it doesn't really line up with my memories. There's definitely part of it that comes from a standard "back in my day", rose-tinted glasses sort of thing.
But I actually think a lot of it comes from the fact that modern software can be easily patched, whereas older software couldn't. It is easy to believe that software today is buggier because of just how many patches we get for it. But back in the day, any bugs that existed in the product were not as visible, because we weren't getting weekly updates where the patch notes say "Bug fixes."
How many massive vulnerabilities existed in major products of the day, and continued to persist unnoticed by all of us because of the relative impossibility of patching them out?
On top of that, modern software is simply more complex -- often times an order of magnitude more complex. (Whether this increased complexity is always needed/appropriate is a separate question.) I'm not sure what metric you would use to be able to do a "bugs per complexity unit" sort of comparison between then and now, something that attempts to control for increased complexity, but my intuition is that it would be pretty flat.
When that was true, several decades ago, products generally had upwards of 2 years of design/architecture/engineering effort and definitions prior to another 3-5 years of development.
It still (sometimes) happens for medical, aerospace and other transportation software that interfaces with hardware where safety is a concern.
The more concerning thing about the car data is that the manafacturers resell it to third parties and those third parties have the right to resell it again. It's a mess.
As a comparison, I don't know if much of Google's data ever leaves Google.
i'm getting the impression that iot providers have far, far lower privacy standards vs dedicated tech providers. This to me indicates that they don't take the internet capability of their kettles/cars seriously enough. It's just a gimmick. This is not a constructive way to advance iot.
Every data broker out there says a prayer every night that we (as a society) continue to focus our attention on Google (an absolute saint by comparison) and ignore what phone companies, cable companies, browser extensions, gaming apps, smart tvs, etc. etc. do with our data.
> This to me indicates that they don't take the internet capability of their kettles/cars seriously enough. It's just a gimmick.
Of course it is, and of course they don't. There are exactly two reasons why stuff like cars or kettles get connected to the Internet:
1) A value-add gimmick to justify a price hike on what's pretty much a commodity product;
2) A way to lock you into paying (with money or data) for a cloud service, using a physical appliance as an anchor.
Actual utility of an Internet-connected appliance doesn't even enter the picture.
I read Steven Levy's book "Hackers" recently. One interesting insight was that developers for Sierra On-line and other early publishers had deals for the developer to get a 30% royalty on the games they wrote, with Sierra collecting 70% as the publisher. Over time, as there was some market saturation in the early 80s, this number decreased.
> cars regularly send basic data
I'm still terrified by the fact that some cars now apparently have network interfaces for some reason.
Got a courtesy call from BMW the other day to let me know my brake fluid needed changing and would I like an appointment made at my nearest garage?
I get that there are privacy concerns, but also that's pretty cool. It also has GPS and will automatically alert BNW if air bags are deployed. Has saved lives.
> Got a courtesy call from BMW the other day to let me know my brake fluid needed changing and would I like an appointment made at my nearest garage?
That's only marginally better than it popping up an alert on the dashboard, which many modern cars most probably do anyway, but imo it feels like something of a privacy invasion.
> It also has GPS and will automatically alert BNW if air bags are deployed. Has saved lives.
Aren't there systems that automatically call an emergency number and send GPS coordinates when they detect a crash? I think I read somewhere that some countries are even going to mandate them on new cars.
(Disclaimer: I'm not much into cars. I do have a driving license, but I don't own a car and don't drive very often.)
Ideally some of that data can be aggregated and acted upon locally to the car computer, so that once an arbitrary car manufacturer closes shop, you can still retain the value provided by that telemetry.
Sending it off to their servers and having them manually call you up is nice, but I'd hate for that to suddenly go away because of some business that is outside of your control as a consumer.
We can save a lot of lives if we monitor everyone/everything. I'm sure there was very little early death in the Matrix universe.
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It is like I tell my kids, "pointing to bad behavior does not justify your bad behavior"
Cities frequently do this when they want to raise fees or taxes, 'Hey look at City B and City C, our fees are still lower even with this unneeded and uncalled for increase'
>Cars only started doing this because phones made it normal. It's wrong in both cases.
I don't know that this is true, planes have been doing it for quite some time now, although obviously they existing in a totally different bracket of price and complexity.
although obviously they existing in a totally different bracket of price and complexity.
There's a whole world of difference between a plane operating commercial service in a highly-regulated industry and one's own car. At least there is an expectation of personal privacy - and some semblance of freedom - with the latter.
Apple didn’t establish the 30% cut. They kited the idea from console makers and other walled garden industries that came before them.
This doesn’t make it more defensible, but they didn’t create it.
It’s way worse. Google is the pioneer in that type of analytics.
Apple took the existing model and automated it. They didn’t invent it, it’s been around since RCA/Victor. Retail takes bigger cuts (Walmart used to get 60% from AV vendors). Enterprise software resellers and distributors take a similar share to Apple, and do other shenanigans as a financing mechanism. When you hear about “shipments” that’s what that means.
OT, but since you mentioned it, does anyone happen to know what the most recent model years without any kind of cellular radio might be?
In a similar vein, can the radios be physically removed from any newer cars without the car complaining about it?
Depends on the package you opt for, but I'd guess up to 2011 for cars without onstar
Wow, that's disheartening. Was hoping to hear at least 2014, heh.
Telemetry allows people to make better decisions. It's not a bad practice. Information deserves to be free.
Let's not forget that "better" is from the viewpoint of a giant corporation whose primary reason for existence is to suck as much profit out of you as it can...
Often the benefit is mutual. A better product is good for both the business and the users.
I wonder if they figured out the perfect "benign phrases" using a/b testing.
It's called the "tu quoque" logical fallacy
Such an important point.
And, as with most things, there’s an XKCD for that: https://xkcd.com/978/
I seriously don’t mean this in an offensive way. But isn’t bringing Apple now into this, “Whataboutism” in disguise?
>cars regularly send basic data
My car doesn't and I absolutely would never buy one that does even if that meant walking/taking the bus.
Which makes it weird that we accept this bullshit from our phones, considering that you have your phone with you whether you're driving or walking or taking the bus.
I think it's because you have to pay money to access the cell network; You need an identety to clear billing with. Until we have enough spectrum for WiFi to have longer ranges you will never be able to use a portable device with internet access like cell phones have without being tracked. The extra data exfiltrated from our devices is often only a little more precise than what the carriers in many places are already selling.
I don't accept it on my phone either.
My Oneplus runs Lineage, and I explicitly omitted Google services.
I had previously run the MicroG rewrap of Lineage, but the maintainer dropped maintenance for six months, so I found ways to do without the GMS emulation.
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