Comment by idle_zealot
2 years ago
I am very pro-users-owning-their-computers, which makes me highly critical of Apple's behavior. However, these sorts of lawsuits or regulations that seek to force Apple to change App Store policies feel so wrong-headed and out of touch. The problem with Apple is not that they take a 30% cut of app sales in their store, or that they don't allow alternative browser engines or wallets apps or superapps or whatever in their store. It's their store and they ought to be able to curate it however they like. The problem is that users cannot reasonably install software through any means other than that single store. The problem is that Apple reserves special permissions and system integrations for their own apps and denies them to anyone else. That is not an acceptable way for a computer to work.
> That is not an acceptable way for a computer to work.
Luckily, you have a choice. Other companies make handheld computers that align better with your definition of ownership.
> Luckily, you have a choice. Other companies make handheld computers that align better with your definition of ownership.
The issue is that your choice is constrained by vertical integration. If you like Apple's hardware, or iOS, or iMessage, or any number of other things, these are all tied together with Apple's app store when they should not be. It's like encountering a retail monopoly in California and someone tells you that you're lucky because you can shop at another store and all you have to do is move to Florida, which also has a retail monopoly, but a different one.
Obviously this is not the same thing, and does not have the same benefits, as multiple stores being right next to each other and allowing you to choose the one you want on a per-purchase basis.
The opposing view, in this retail metaphor, is that they like living in a state with this retail monopoly, because the store will not sell them or anyone else... say, bacon. And they find bacon distasteful and like being able to live in a community where nobody eats it. If the retail monopoly were broken, then their neighbors would be able to purchase bacon, and some would have cookouts and they would have to smell it. Perhaps their favorite snack would discontinue its regional bacon-free variant and sell its normal variant in another store now that it is able to. Don't you know that bacon is bad for you?
The counterpoint is: if bacon is so bad awful and bad for you we should probably regulate its sale, rather than leave that up to a company bullying other companies.
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> The issue is that your choice is constrained by vertical integration.
No it’s not. It’s constrained by one’s preferences as a consumer. If I am concerned about vertical integration, I will not choose an Apple device. Personally, I am not concerned about vertical integration. It seems to make my devices work better.
> If you like Apple's hardware, or iOS, or iMessage, or any number of other thing, these are all tied together with Apple's app store when they should not be.
Why not? Because you say so? Or because it harms consumers? Can you describe how it harms consumers? Smartphones are cheap and plentiful. Cloud-based apps and services are too.
Yes, I might have to make some tough choices as a consumer. Maybe no company makes the perfect device for me. I might really like iMessage, but hate iPhone hardware. But there are lots of viable competitors to iMessage and plenty of viable mobile devices on which to run them. “I don’t get to use iMessage on my Pixel phone” is not evidence of harm.
> It's like encountering a retail monopoly in California and someone tells you that you're lucky because you can shop at another store and all you have to do is move to Florida, which also has a retail monopoly, but a different one.
No, it’s not. Switching mobile platforms is nothing like migrating 2000+ miles in terms of difficulty or expense. If you want to use a retail analogy, it’s like complaining that you can’t buy Kirkland-branded products at Wal-Mart.
I am quite aware of the landscape. I use a Pixel phone with GrapheneOS and an iPhone. I prefer many aspects of my iPhone, and can understand why many people choose one as their primary or sole mobile computer. A phone is a very special product category, it's where most users keep their digital lives. As such switching costs are quite high, and user agency is quite important. In general software introduces some very odd dynamics into ownership. If you buy a vacuum cleaner you can take it home, plug it in, and vacuum every room in your house; the vacuum cleaner is yours. If you buy a Roomba and take it home, it demands that you sign a unilateral EULA, then install an app on your phone, and then informs you that it will only clean one room unless you sign up for Roomba Pro for $20/mo[0]. So clearly Roomba still owns the vacuum cleaner they just sold you; they have the final say in what it does or doesn't do. That's ownership. Now, technically, you can legally disassemble your Roomba, and if you manage to dump, modify, and reflash its control software, then you'd be allowed to use your product to clean multiple rooms without paying monthly for the privilege. That would require a lot of effort and specialized skills and tooling, and you would then not be allowed to share your modifications with less skilled Roomba owners because doing so would almost certainly involve trafficking DRM circumvention technology, which is a crime. So in practical terms you only own the Roomba as an inanimate plastic puck.
This whole situation maps to iPhones as well. As things stand when you purchase an iPhone you own a glass brick, and Apple owns the phone part. They graciously allow you to use their phone to perform a certain limited set of activities. I am fundamentally opposed to this sort of non-ownership. Whether the buyer had an option to purchase a roughly-equivalent item with different terms is irrelevant; selling someone a product while retaining ownership of it is a mockery of property rights. Some rights are too important to allow people to sign them away with the tap of a button. When the market missteps by rewarding bad behavior like this it is the job of our democratic governments to step in and mandate good behavior.
[0]: this is made up to illustrate a point, I don't actually know how Roomba service works
This is all so exhausting and goes in circles over and over. I honestly can not believe that there are people on HackerNews of all places that want two companies to control pocket computers and just because one is only marginally better it's totally okay that the first one is draconian.
I feel like someone who woke up in the middle ages with a fever and they are trying to cure me with leeches. Yes yes. No need to worry. Let the leech do it's work and you too will be secure from the plague.
Does anyone actually know anyone that has gotten hacked on their Android phone?
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"...selling someone a product while retaining ownership of it is a mockery of property rights."
Excellent comment, it sums the situation up very well. And the above extract encapsulates the matter in just a few words.
If I buy an iPhone, I can legally sell it. Thats ownership.
Phones are unique in the consumer space because of how thoroughly they can restrict end user usage. Once you buy an iPhone you can use it physically as a hammer if you wish, but if you want to digitally use a non-Apple wallet then you are restricted. Most consumer goods don't behave this way; my TV lets me watch anything I input into it, my bike lets me ride to wherever a pedal to, my vacuum lets me clean my counter if I want it to. Consumers are choosing a desirable physical good with undesirable digital restrictions. Apple is flexing its hardware power to its advantage and end user's disadvantage in software.
> Consumers are choosing a desirable physical good with undesirable digital restrictions.
So long as it is the customers making that choice, and they have access to alternatives, then it's not really a problem. If apple were advertising the iphone as a consumer product that had no such digital restrictions in an effort to hoodwink people into buying them, or if iphone were the only serious game in town, then those restrictions would be an issue, but right now iphones are advertised as being worth more than their competitors specifically because of those restrictions, and people are willing to pay such premiums. That you personally would not make the same decision does not mean they've been manipulated by anti-competitive measures into making theirs.
If someone were to make a consumer product that worked better for my use cases at the expense of being worse at or even incapable of doing things I don't intend to use it for, I should have the option to buy it. If you don't like the restrictions, buy something else. That's not anti-competitive, that is exactly how competition is supposed to work.
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> Phones are unique in the consumer space because of how—
—they were marketed as phones that can compute, instead of as computers that can phone.
That's the crux: people would never have accepted the restrictions on computers like the iPhone, if that thing were instead sold as a general computer called the iPalm or similar. But since it's sold as a phone, any thing else it can do is more easily perceived as a bonus, and we hardly feel the restrictions at the beginning.
Only people who see smartphones for what they really are, general purpose palmtops that can make phone calls, can really perceive the egregiousness of those restrictions. The first step then, is generalising this understanding to everyone.
A good first step, I think, would be to start naming those things more accurately. I'd personally suggest "palmtop".
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Luckily, we have anti-trust and other forms of law and regulation specifically because assuming markets will alway provide meaningful choices has historically proven a bad assumption.
In this case, we don't have to assume. There is meaningful choice in which platform you use.
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Motor companies should not be able to gate physical features (seat heaters) behind software.
My opinion isn't changed by the fact that I can purchase from a company that doesn't do that.
> Motor companies should not be able to gate physical features (seat heaters) behind software.
Why not? If you don’t want a car with this property, don’t buy one — how are you being harmed?
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Luckily, people can like something despite shortcomings and ask for it to become better.
“You can buy this other thing” is not a good defense against antitrust allegations simply because that’s not what it’s about.
What is it about?
But these computers are so different… But if Apple does that it would be differently different… /s
I mean, what gp wants is literally just there on the shelves and they don’t want it. But they also want it, but in Apple, because it’s nicer when Apple does[n’t] it. Why would they want it after Apple does it?
Surprise, people want more than one thing out of a product.
Voting with your wallet works very badly when there are two main options. Which anti-consumer behaviors do you pick? When something is bad enough, it's better to make it illegal for all options.
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Unfortunately regulations and lawsuits like this one seek to reduce the amount of meaningful choices consumers have in the smartphone market.
Isn't that exactly what the EU went after?
They didn't tell Apple not to charge 30% for their App Store. They can charge 90% for all they care.
They told Apple they mustn't block other installation methods.
Sort of. My reading of the DMA is basically what you're saying; Apple has to let people install what they want on their phones, Apple cannot self-preference with app capabilities. Apple is planning to comply not by allowing users to install what they want on their devices, but instead by offering companies an avenue to enter a business relationship with Apple through which Apple will allow users install that company's applications, provided that Apple has vetted and signed them. That is, all told Apple still has final say over what apps are allowed on peoples' phones. It sounds like the EC is going to nix those app-signing requirements, but the rest of the scheme may or may not be deemed acceptable.
So the question remains whether the spirit of the DMA is "users should be able to install the software they want on their computers" or "businesses offering apps and services should be able to compete with Apple on the iPhone". Is this a fundamentally a pro-user law or a pro-business law? There may be overlap, but they are not the same.
If there was alternatives Apple wouldn't be able to charge 30% anymore.
Wouldn't they? Google gets away with it.
Google Play charges 30%, despite F-Droid, Samsung Galaxy, TapTap, Itch.io, Aptoide, Amazon, Aurora, Uptodown, etc.
It really is amazing hearing Apple people talk about the world.
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It is not a “mobile computer”. The fact that it has a CPU and other computer parts is an implementation detail (your dishwasher also probably has a CPU). If you want a mobile computer then buy one, don’t buy an iPhone, and don’t advocate for the government to force Apple to change how iPhones work for those of us who like them.
You are exactly describing the recent EU lawsuit
> The problem with Apple is not that they take a 30% cut of app sales in their store, or that they don't allow alternative browser engines or wallets apps or superapps or whatever in their store.
Nope, the problem very much is that they won't allow alternative browser engines, specifically so that they can force a crippled Safari browser with limited APIs to force people to write apps instead of web apps, forcing more traffic to their store. It's explicitly anti-competitive behavior.
>It's their store and they ought to be able to curate it however they like.
It's kind of forced fraud to call Chrome in iOS as "Chrome". It's like trying to sell someone a Ferrari that's just a facade bolted onto 2010 Honda. It's not Chrome, it's actually Safari - and its seems like people are finally starting to wake up to this abusive behavior that Apple has been getting away with for far too long.
Microsoft had a famous anti-trust case against them for simply bundling IE with Windows - not from forcing their engine on every other "browser" that gets installed. Apple is doing far worse than that and getting away with it for far too long.
>The problem is that users cannot reasonably install software through any means other than that single store.
That's one of the many other problems outlined by the DOJ today.
>The problem is that Apple reserves special permissions and system integrations for their own apps and denies them to anyone else.
Also another problem.
>However, these sorts of lawsuits or regulations that seek to force Apple to change App Store policies feel so wrong-headed and out of touch.
I was clapped out loud when I watched the DOJ announcement today. I cheered. They actually mentioned "Developers", which is a group I am part of, and I feel the pain that dealing with Apple and Safari is. Apple absolutely deserves this, and it's about time.
Sony and Microsoft obviously don’t benefit from opening up the platforms, it’s not just something they don’t care about but something they actively oppose, and they specifically ensured they got legislative exceptions to ensure they would never have to reciprocate under the DMA.
Your goals aren’t aligned, you’re just a useful idiot to them and they’ll cast you aside as soon as they no longer need you. The end result of the push isn’t going to be “free as in freedom” for everybody here, just Microsoft capturing 90% of a revenue stream instead of 70%.
Classic populism moment - but of course it’s “populism, but on the computer”.
Freedoms for users and freedom for business are two fundamentally opposed and conflicting goals, see: GPL vs MIT/BSD. And in their moment of victory, businesses will just steamroll right over you - just like they literally already did with consoles.
It’s just crazy that they have these exceptions when their own hardware is very much general-purpose on a technical level, and when they’re actively pushing to use that general-purpose capability to ensnare users with AI features and other crap.
Sony and Microsoft are two of the platforms that stand to gain the most from AI adoption literally purely on the basis of being closed platforms with proprietary APIs (plus a minimal amount of interop for embrace-extend-extinguish) with millions of active users and a captive audience of dev studios who have no choice but to use Sony and Microsoft’s closed, gatekept platforms.
Somehow the plight of poor little Larian being stepped on by Sony and Microsoft and Epic just doesn’t make the front page of HN like apple hate.
The game console exception in the DMA is very disappointing, but phones are the largest gaming platform regardless. As hardware improves and ownership becomes even more obligatory I suspect we will see more development effort focused there. I can only hope that F2P/Gacha game culture on mobile is destroyed by that point. Perhaps by anti-gambling laws?