Comment by _aavaa_
2 years ago
But even in real life this doesn't hold.
> I can't just walk into Walmart and set up a stand and make money, if I want to sell in Walmart I have to work with them and give them a similar sized cut.
Apple's App Store might be Walmart, but the phone I bought is not Walmart.
Regular people understand the idea of "I bought a thing, and now the greedy company won't let me do what I want with it unless I buy their overpriced add-on", see printers.
Apple is no more entitled to a cut of everything I put on my iPhone anymore than Walmart is entitled to a cut of everything I put on my table simply because they made the table.
> Apple's App Store might be Walmart, but the phone I bought is not Walmart.
I don't know if that's inherently correct in people's eyes. For a counterexample, note that video game consoles are very popular, and I don't see any widespread opposition to the idea that e.g. Nintendo is controlling what you can play on a Switch.
I wouldn't be so sure. A major reason people pick PC gaming over consoles is specifically because they have control over what they are allowed to do.
I'm sort of skeptical about that being a major factor, though I'll admit I've not seen any good surveys about it.
(My money is on "I already have this computer for work" being the single biggest factor, with "the graphics can be better on the PC" being #2.)
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And they are free to make that choice. Surely consumers who care about this choose Android.
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The consoles are the most obvious example, but there are other things, too.
Perhaps the "best" counter argument is the Mac App Store and Steam - both of which take a big cut, both of which can be "easily" bypassed for many apps, and both of which customers don't really seem to care about from a monetary point of view.
People care much more about what is or is not permitted, not where the money goes.
Plenty of people complain vocally if you don't release your game on Steam, same deal when a musician doesn't release their music on Spotify.
I think a lot of developers will be surprised how many customers actually side with the convenience of the platform over the actual person creating the value.
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> both of which take a big cut, both of which can be "easily" bypassed for many apps, and both of which customers don't really seem to care about from a monetary point of view.
This isn't true. You cannot bypass the stream 30% fee from the consumer side.
Because of practices that stream does, which are arguably anti-competitive, I cannot buy the same exact game, from the game developer's website, and receive a 30% discount.
If such discounts were possible, and it was clearly advertised that I could just get the game for cheaper from a different location, customers would absolutely take that option almost always.
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In fairness, from everything I've heard the Mac App Store is really not doing well.
While interest in doing so on handhelds has lessened a little due to phones almost always being more capable, wanting to be able to run custom software on consoles is common enough that lots of effort is spent on the cat and mouse game between console hackers and console makers.
Yes, piracy is admittedly very popular. (And maybe 0.02% of said custom software isn't piracy, but...)
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"Being able to do exactly what you want with a thing you paid for" is a very different angle of argument to "knowing it allows Apple to heavily tax all AppStore developers"
I was tackling why I don't think that argument holds water with the average person.
"now the greedy company won't let me do what I want with it unless I buy their overpriced add-on"
With printers this is very tangible to the customer, with the App Store what you're describing here isn't as tangible because nothing on the App Store is actually expensive, it's either free or relatively cheap and it's more a case that the user pays little or nothing, Apple gets a cut for doing close to nothing and the dev gets screwed, printers is more the customer gets screwed.
As an iPhone user, if I wanted a phone with Samsung, Amazon, Epic and Huawei stores, 3 different preinstalled browsers and my workflows depended on sideloading some obscure app for a website in Turkey, I'd go with Android. Such an option exists for people who are into that.
But I chose iPhone (and I think many other customers do) specifically for it being a walled garden. Now some other corporations like Epic, who want to have a cake and eat it too, are going to ruin one of the platform's key selling points.
> my workflows depended on sideloading some obscure app
And if your workflow did require an obscure app, who is Apple to decided that you cannot install it on your own phone?
> But I chose iPhone (and I think many other customers do) specifically for it being a walled garden.
People like this walled garden since apple promises that it's safe and they deal with all of the problems for you. But time and time again we see that their App Store features outright scams and mountains of knockoff garbage apps.
People buy into the marketing of the walled garden, not the reality of it.
>People like this walled garden since apple promises that it's safe and they deal with all of the problems for you.
I get the "safety" argument, but it's also about the user experience. What if now Microsoft makes me install Microsoft store to use M365 apps, Amazon makes me install whatever store to use their products, etc? What do I win here as a consumer?
I buy iPhone specifically for what it is. I get that some people don't like walled garden approach, so they have Android at their service. Apple is not a monopoly.
What is the point of buying a phone knowing what you are getting, and then complaining about something you knew full well it doesn't have?
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I've been a loyal iPhone user since what? the iPhone 3.
The moment Apple is forced to "open up to the competition", all Meta apps are going to magically move to the Meta Store, where they'll likely be able to shove all sorts of tracking garbage down my throat.
Same for Alphabet, same for Samsung, same for Microsoft.
The experience will turn into a hopeless struggle against EULAs and consents, unless one refuses to install any third-party spyware and do the digital equivalent of moving into a forest cabin. The oddball, while everyone else sheepishly complies.
Evenyone loves to hate Apple, everyone forgets that the first commercial music store to sell unencrypted and hugh fidelity AAC files was Apple's. The rest was "squirting" tunes on Zune or inflicting Realmedia on their paying customers.
Nope.
I don't think your points about Google, Facebook and Microsoft. Firstly. If they are doing things we don't want them to do, the solution is regulations, not a monopoly.
So if you're unhappy with their behaviour, that should be made illegal.
Secondly. Apple's protection against tracking comes from the OS level. The OS stops them from accessing my contacts and my GPS location, not apple's 30% tax.
> sell unencrypted and hugh fidelity AAC files was Apple's.
So what. How unencrypted are those audio files now? They've since moved on to FairPlay.
Sure, let’s wait for the regulators to wake up and haggle with the lobbyists while the rest of the world takes a beating.
Ever heard of the expression “closing the barn door after the horse has bolted”?
How about we regulate tracking apps etc first then force Apple to change?
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Apple users do not understand that. That was the comment's point.
I don't think so. It seemed very strong about "Even if they would know, they still wouldn't care". Which I think is absolutely false. See people constantly complaining about having to buy expensive inkjet cartridges.
But this is why the eu case made more sense? It went after Apple for not allowing side loading of app stores vs this one which seems to be going after what Apple does on its own store?