Comment by dmix
2 years ago
> In the IBM case it opened up an entire industry of third party "compatible" peripherals and saved consumers a ton of money
I’m curious what market opportunities the Apple suit could open up.
- Xbox cloud game streaming
- WeChat like super apps w e-commerce (X wanted to do this play but more likely Facebook Messenger and the like)
- iMessage on android
- a receipt tracking app or something directly tied into Apple Pay tapping
From a hardware standpoint third party fitness trackers with full integration into iHealth and third party ear buds with the same (or better) features than airpods.
Part of the IBM settlement required them to document interoperability. That was used by the DoJ to force Microsoft to document their CIFS (distributed storage) and Active Directory (naming/policy) protocols.
The latter might be particularly instructive as my experience with CIFS when I worked at NetApp was the different ways that Microsoft worked to be "precisely" within the lines but to work against the intent. Documentation like "this bit of this word must always be '1'" Which as any engineer knows, if it really was always '1' then that bit didn't have to be in the protocol, so what did it do when it wasn't '1'?
> From a hardware standpoint third party fitness trackers with full integration into iHealth and third party ear buds with the same (or better) features than airpods.
As someone who makes apps in the health space, I couldn’t care less if other tracker data was integrated into HealthKit. HealthKit honestly sucks - it's some bastard of objc naming schemes and methods jammed into Swift. The async is horrible to debug, too. No one has a good time in HK.
The issue with other trackers is that they are more locked down than Apple. You can't just get HR from Oura for instance - and that's not a health kit issue either.
The reason you can't get heart rate data from Oura is that they don't want people looking at it except in aggregate, because then they would notice the accuracy problems and data gaps.
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I had a similar experience with MSFT docs when working at Sun. The docs were not very good, and though they seemed somewhat redacted, it felt like in fact their internal docs probably weren't much better.
Don't tall into that trap of thinking.
Many years ago I knew an ex-microsoft engineer. Microsoft had poor interoperability with something, and I speculated that engineers in microsoft didn't know what 3rd parties were doing and accidentally broke things.
He told me, "don't be naive - microsoft would have meetings saying 'how can we own this?'"
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>Documentation like "this bit of this word must always be '1'" Which as any engineer knows, if it really was always '1' then that bit didn't have to be in the protocol, so what did it do when it wasn't '1'?
Maybe it was a deprecated part of the protocol, and setting it would cause an error or do nothing.
Or it could be a placeholder for future expansion and while it would do nothing now, in the future it might break things if you've ignored the documentation.
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Maybe it's there to prevent desyncing errors that occur for long strings of zeroes. Information theory isn't the only possible consideration.
I'm not a developer in this space myself, but my impression is that HealthKit is one area where 3rd party apps have access to the same data as 1st party apps.
Reminds me of Bob Colwell's talk, although it's not from the same angle: https://youtu.be/jwzpk__O7uI?si=NZmfU6av_2D-uPgk (around 1:04:10)
Forget iMessage, I just want media messages from iPhone to not be sub-144p pictures/videos. I know sms is limited but I doubt that's a technical limitation.
And yea, Gamepass was an immediate thought of something a company wanted to ship but Apple blocked. Between that and the Epic Games store it looks like there's gonna be a lot more options to game on IOS by the turn of the decade.
It's not sms, it's mms, and it is in fact a technical limitation.
Honestly we should just sunset MMS entirely. It's like using 56k dialup.
yeah, but the one blocking its sun-setting is apple with their artificial barriers. if apple didn't do it's shenanigans, RCS or something similar with a different name would've have replaced MMS by now.
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No, it's not. Carriers limit the attachment sizes quite severely, but that's not an inherent limitation of MMS.
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I still want to see Matrix get adopted for messaging by default. Purism actually did it with their Librem 5 (probably one of the few good things about that company, but that's a rant for another day).
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I can count on one hand the number of MMS messages I've ever received.
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That is, indeed, a technical limitation of MMS.
The newer RCS standard would be better, but Apple has already announced they're going to support it this year (after dragging their heels for a few years).
No, it's not. It's an implementation detail. MMS is basically just SMTP on the back end. There's no technical reason you couldn't allow much larger attachments aside from cost and shitty implementations.
The last time folks got worked into a frenzy over RCS I ended up looking at the MMS specs. If memory serves 3GPP recommended an upper bound of at least 5 megabytes. American carriers typically limit attachments to like 3 megabytes or less and they mandate ancient video codecs.
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If you pay for iCloud ($4 a month) you can send an iCloud link easily to any video that anyone else can access at full resolution
I realize this isn’t what you are asking for. But it works well and doesn’t depend on Google’s closed version of RCS
Pretty sure Apple will make the recipient sign up for an Apple account to view the content. At least it does this for notes sharing.
EDIT: Tried it on my iPhone and it does not require an Apple account, kudos Apple. It does show my full real name as others have mentioned.
long-time iPhone user here, i did not know this!
thank you for posting!
FYI for those others who don't know: click on a video in your photos app. click share --> "Copy iCloud Link"
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That’s via email, right? Or is there something they offer in the messages app now?
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Apple opened up the app store for game streams back in January.
https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/25/24050430/apple-app-store-...
Media messages from Androids to iPhones are in fact technologically-limited by MMS. That's not an Apple-imposed limitation, it's written in stone in the MMS standard.
Works fine over WhatsApp/Telegram/…. Not a technological limitation.
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Please show me where that's written because iPhones have no problems sending full-resolution images to my droid device but I can't do the same to them.
Cloud game streaming has been recently allowed worldwide under a few conditions ( https://developer.apple.com/news/?id=f1v8pyay ).
Forcing Apple to allow third party payments without Apple's cut would improve market opportunities for many businesses. Facebook could have its marketplace conduct peer to peer transactions. Amazon could allow the purchase of digital goods (books, movies, etc.) and put it on more equal footing with Apple itself. While big businesses are best positioned to take advantage today, the effects directly trickle down to small startup businesses.
While I personally don't care for it, cryptocurrency use would have more potential. Apple blocked apps for NFT features in the past because they couldn't get their 30%.
Having third party marketplaces might make it so that there is some actual curation at the App Store.
> Forcing Apple to allow third party payments without Apple's cut would improve market opportunities for many businesses.
It would, but that is how Apple collects their commission. Where regulations where Apple has been forced to provide this separation (such as the US), they have split 3% to cover payment fees out of the commission, and put additional considerations for when leaving the app to make a payment would result in a commission and that Apple may audit that you are properly reporting commissions.
The DMA mandated that Apple decouple their commission structure from a single App Store in favor of multiple marketplaces, and they put in a 50 Eurocent core technology fee per user per year (after a margin of free installs).
> Amazon could allow the purchase of digital goods (books, movies, etc.) and put it on more equal footing with Apple itself.
Amazon does have digital purchasing of Video. Amazon added the ability to subscribe to a limited video version of Prime using in-app purchasing, and that kind of account will bill purchases using in-app purchasing.
They likely have razor thin margins for anyone who chooses to do this, but expect customers to either have existing Prime accounts or to want to upgrade from Video to the full Prime account for the other services. I suspect they did the math and think their margins on Kindle wouldn't support this.
The DMA did not mandate that they decouple their commission structure. That is Apple’s interpretation of the DMA which seems to change every few weeks so far. PWAs on home screens were disallowed and then allowed again. Apple looks like they do not have legal and execution discipline and is being caught flat footed. It is somewhat alarming that they have made so many mistakes (see Epic being revoked from their third party marketplace and then Apple being strong armed to re-allow because of a EU comment about investigation).
The idea that Apple is compliant with the DMA has yet to be tested. There are many direct statements by the enforcing commissioner and complaints from third parties that I think only a direct ruling will settle things.
I forgot about Prime Video purchases having a special back door deal for some of their purchases. I wasn’t referring to the subscription service but the purchase of digital books/movies. My point stands though. Digital goods could be sold and bought without special exceptions or loopholes from the 30% fee. That alone is a huge market opportunity.
> Amazon does have digital purchasing of Video. Amazon added the ability to subscribe to a limited video version of Prime using in-app purchasing, and that kind of account will bill purchases using in-app purchasing.
Sorry, I do not parse this. What did they add?
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I wonder if this will have a trickle down effect on other app stores, specifically gaming consoles. Would XBox Live or Playstation Store, for example, be on the hot seat if they rejected an application or "game" that was basically a storefront for streaming other games?
I don't think so, at least not as a consequence from this case if Apple loses. Antitrust cases are usually very limited in scope. Microsoft's loss required many actions (documenting Active Directory and other protocols/formats, browser choice screens, etc.), but no one else in tech were required to do so.
John Sircacusa (from ATP.fm) pointed out years ago that the heart of Apple's biggest issues is business relationship management. This was when Apple only had a handful of issues with a few companies and made some poorly received statements about developers. Their ability to build mutually agreeable relations has only gotten worse in recent years.
Sony and Microsoft have kept their relations with third parties tough but ultimately agreeable. They promote practically all of their third parties (unlike the App Store which has so many apps that its like winning the lottery to be promoted). Consoles have stores which are probably more curated but which third party publishers/developers actually like.
IMO, DoJ, EU, etc. are acting primarily because they have received so many complaints from Spotify, Microsoft, Epic Games, Google, Meta, Tile, etc. Governments don't take action for the "public" interest on its own.
Super apps are a dud. China has them because the regulators want them, not because they're a good business.
My understanding is the reason they are dead in the US is even though the banks might let you build payments into it they will not let you negotiate any discount in fees so you will have to add your own fees on top of their own fees. It begs the question of why a bank or consortium of banks hasn’t developed a super app.
When I gave this talk in late 2016
https://www.slideshare.net/paulahoule/chatbots-in-2017-ithac...
there was huge interest in messaging-centric apps as this runs around the boondoggle of having even the tiniest patch to your app get reviewed.
Exactly. Most people would rather use the best app for the niche thing they want to do rather than the shittier version from some mega-app they happen to have for some other reason.
Yes, but don't underestimate the power of convenience. That factor seems to inordinately raise the shittiness toleration threshold these days.
Why do they show up in other asian markets, like Grab and such?
A lot of people are used to WeChat, so it can feel natural to make another one. LINE is also basically WeChat.
I don't think that's enough to make them competitive though. For instance, a scandal in one feature of the app (or Facebook being considered lame by kids) will hurt the rest of it.
Facebook tried this with games and cash transfer within Messenger but it never really took off.
Personally, I don’t think Western (or at least American) consumers are all that interested in a super app. Asia has a ton of players in this space like WeChat, QQ, Line and Kaokao but those have never taken off in the West outside of diaspora communities.
Kind of sideline here but..
Tim Hortons had gift and loyalty cards ("every 7th coffee free"). Then they introduced an app with "rewards" as an alternative to loyalty and gift cards. Then the app turned into a bank. Then they stopped the physical loyalty cards. Now you can't "earn" free coffee without giving them your personal information and signing up for the bank of Tim Hortons. It's ok though. I stopped being a customer because of it.
Facebook’s attempt didn’t work out because they lost the youth market to Snapchat, TikTok, Discord and Instagram(It’s funny, I know). They tried to bring in Instagram users into Facebook but that didn’t(hasn’t) work out yet.
Facebook marketplace has been the unexpected success in drawing Instagram users and youth in general. It's thrifting central for Gen Z.
I mean even the old people barely play Facebook games or use Messenger money transfer. Western consumers just tend to trust product specialists rather than an all in one app.
Why don't twitter. com just do the super apps w/ e-commerce thing? It's financial regulations, not App Store regulations, isn't that the case?
What are challenges for implementing such "payment" system on iOS that can transfer, say Monopoly money vs real USD? Aren't those almost entirely legal or compliance matters for very good reasons? The Alaskan 737 MAX 9 landed largely intact thanks to still-working parts of regulations and we all value that.
So why not they just do that? Or CAN'T they?
> Why don't twitter. com just do the super apps w/ e-commerce
X, the company formerly known as twitter, fairly explicitly plans to, they are just taking time to pivot, in part because they don’t seem to have any real clear roadmap from where they are to where they want to be.
What you call "fairly explicitly plans to" I call "supposedly is working on, according to statements by its owner, who has a history of vaporware announcements".
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>fairly explicitly plans to,
>don’t seem to have any real clear roadmap
not your fault, but that's pretty funny
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And also because they're in a technical quagmire of their own creation
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I would be happy if iMessage threads could be exported and saved.
if I was going to dream big, I would like to point the iCloud hooks to a personal server instead of apple in a meaningful way.
It is possible to export iMessage threads by purchasing an Apple computer and enabling "iCloud for Messages", at which point the messages will be synced to the computer and stored locally in an SQLite database then exported using open source tools... unless you sent too many messages or attachments, at which point you also have to purchase an additional iCloud subscription based on how much storage you need.
Hopefully you can accomplish all this within the return window of the computer (or purchase a used one). The iCloud subscription fees are non-refundable. You can also just give up, keep the computer, and embrace the Apple ecosystem.
Thank you Tim Apple, very cool!
Sent from my iPhone
> It is possible to export iMessage threads by purchasing an Apple computer and enabling "iCloud for Messages"
And hoping Apple's broken client actually downloads full history or by forcing it to download by scrolling up through years of chat by hand.
And hoping Apple doesn't interpret a read lock on the db as malicious activity and temporary ousting you from iMessage and causing every message you send on unrelated hardware to drop to SMS until you login / logout from every device you "own".
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If you have a Mac, your messages are stored locally with SQLite, so you can export them that way.
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- Music Apps (Spotify) that properly integrate with Siri, like on Amazon and Google devices.
This is one thing that no-one else seems to mention (not even Spotify).
When Apple Music launched it was around the time that 3rd party apps were allowed to hook into Siri - so you could say "Hey Siri, tell MyToDoApp to remind me to do X in six hours" and MyToDoApp would add the reminder.
But it was only allowed for certain categories of app (strangely enough, categories where Apple didn't have a paid service). It wasn't permitted for music apps until a few years later, by which time Apple Music was established.
Similarly - when I connect my iPhone to my car over Bluetooth or wired connection[1] - with Spotify I get the normal play/pause/skip controls. But I can't see the upcoming play-queue, nor browse my playlists through the car's interface. If I listen through Apple Music, I can see not only my queue, playlists, albums and artists but also podcasts from the totally separate Apple Podcasts app.
Of course, the car interface is shite, but why can Apple's app do this and the third party not? Is it just that Spotify didn't bother implementing the relevant APIs or because those APIs were not available?
As a long-time Apple fan, my distrust of them is so great at the moment, I suspect the latter.
[1] The inbuilt head-unit doesn't do CarPlay, but I have a standalone wireless CarPlay screen. I like to connect the phone through Bluetooth (or wired) so the display unit shows my apps but I can adjust the volume and skip tracks using the steering wheel controls.
> It wasn't permitted for music apps until a few years later, by which time Apple Music was established.
My understanding - Siri is at its heart a command and control system. It was able to do Music (and iTunes before) because it knew The Who and The Rolling Stones from the hosted music catalog, even if those weren’t downloaded locally.
Apple needed to provide the localized commands, but also still needed the nouns to go with the verbs.
> Is it just that Spotify didn't bother implementing the relevant APIs or because those APIs were not available?
The former. There are plenty of other CarPlay media apps. They are all limited (first and third party) in that CarPlay is basically like a low bandwidth VNC display.
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I'd just like to be able to get music off my iPhone to my mac without having to buy a third party app or buy a subscription to Apple Music.
Your Mac has a microphone. A less analog option is Air Drop.