▲ | jterrys 4 days ago | |
I agree with you in principle. But I also, I guess, kinda just have a dumb thought about this whole ordeal. Broadly speaking, we are in a position where we, the general public with the backing of the government, want to change how a private corporation uses it's products that it sold to us. Not for any other reason that would shield us from harm or prevent risk, but rather because the corporation's products are so successful a lot of people use them too much! But wait! That's not actually true because there's enough products on the market that we don't actually need to use this product...but we like it because its incrementally the best and the chat bubbles are blue and applications run better and seem higher quality (which is a selling point of the product we are now actively dismantling but I digress...) I know its tiring to use food cliches, but imagine if like, I make a business selling apple pies and my apple pies are incredibly successful and everyone eats them all the time and now all of a sudden I need to also guarantee that my business can make cherry pies because my apple pies sell so damn well. But truth is, its not really about the apple pies at all. It's about my baking trays. We actually just want to make sure that the baking trays of my business are now capable of also cooking for cherry pies even though that's got nothing to do with my fucking business. I sell apple pies. I'm so confused | ||
▲ | concinds 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | |
Okay. Now flip this free-enterprise metaphor. Apple is dictating the behavior of every business operating in the digital market (Apple itself brags that this amounts to over $1 trillion, with a T, in economic activity), with the App Store, which has 70-80% profit margins, and numerous dev horror stories. Rejecting your update over something they previously approved, or something they let all your competitors do. Forcing their IAP system on you. Dictating what links you can put in your app, how you present prices (don't call out the Apple tax), what you can tell consumers in emails. Forcing their direct competitors to have an inferior user experiences (can't subscribe in Spotify, can't buy books in Kindle; oh, and bundling Apple Music/Books/TV with the OS, and advertising them throughout the OS). Threatening retaliation if you complain publicly ("If you run to the press, it never helps.") Blocking VPNs or secure messaging in authoritarian countries, and you can't sideload. Sabotaging the web to keep their monopoly (even trying to kill PWAs recently). Apple feels entitled to a higher profit margin on your business than your business will ever achieve for itself! That's nuts! | ||
▲ | Nevermark 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | |
Large corporations with large marketshare can easily do significantly uncompetitive things, with little effort on their part. No monopoly required. All that is required is that they have large marketshare, an important product, and it is difficult for users to change to alternatives, or avoid its uncompetitive behavior. Choosing a phone involves balancing numerous features of devices. There is no phone market with the thousands of competing devices it would take to really cover what a customer might ideally want. So choices often balance so many things, involve so much practical investment, that they make switching devices over a few things, or even many things, from awfully unpleasant to very difficult. And, with great market power, comes great responsibility: to not become a barrier to competitive innovation and hard work. By definition, Apple's strict gatekeeping App Store, a significant feature on a significant general purpose computing platform, is anti-competitive. There is no technical reason why side loading or side-stores couldn't thrive, on such a general purpose device intertwined in all our lives. Onerous fees and terms and selective limitation (relative to Apple's own offerings) for developers make it even more anticompetitive. Of course, anyone who likes having fewer options, or just the options they have now, is free to not explore others. For now and forever. Amen. | ||
▲ | pjc50 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] | |
> Broadly speaking, we are in a position where we, the general public with the backing of the government, want to change how a private corporation uses it's products that it sold to us Yes, because it's "we the people" not "we the corporations". |