[HN Gopher] Apple's profit is always the priority-no matter the ...
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Apple's profit is always the priority-no matter the cost
Author : carlycue
Score : 84 points
Date : 2022-02-09 18:21 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.macworld.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.macworld.com)
| hughrr wrote:
| As an end user and developer I don't care. They produce a huge
| market customers care about, high quality experience on the
| software and hardware front and mostly do the right thing.
|
| You can always choose not to participate if these things are a
| problem for you. They are not a monopoly in their sector nor are
| they required to participate in society.
| kelnos wrote:
| > _You can always choose not to participate if these things are
| a problem for you._
|
| Not always. Consider what would happen in the US if Uber
| decided they didn't want to participate anymore. Uber fails,
| and Lyft wins. This holds for companies like Spotify, Yelp, any
| messaging platform, food delivery, video streaming...
|
| Sure, if you're an indie developer whose revenue doesn't depend
| on being on mobile platforms, this might not be a problem for
| you. But anything where a mobile experience is important to
| your revenue (or even your continued existence), you must be in
| the App Store (and the Play Store).
| makecheck wrote:
| Apple likes to highlight all the ways their actions benefit
| developers, while ignoring all the ways their actions harm
| developers.
|
| Well if you get to _add_ money to your bottom line for all the
| great stuff you do, you should also have to _subtract_ money for
| all the crappy things you do.
|
| Off the top of my head:
|
| - Developers should get a "cut" whenever Apple makes arbitrary
| changes that completely break 3rd-party apps. If the app's code
| doesn't change but Apple _does_ change something, their behavior
| is literally creating problems for developers with no cost to
| Apple. Let's charge them!
|
| - Developers should get a "cut" whenever Apple is _literally the
| reason for delay_ when trying to deliver things like critical
| fixes to customers. Let's charge them!
|
| - Developers should get a "cut" whenever their reputation is
| completely trashed by users because Apple refuses to acknowledge
| their own mistakes. In other words, Apple is perfectly happy to
| let users think apps are trash, even if the _reason_ for the
| problem is Apple. Let's charge them!
|
| Apple doesn't get to have only the good parts. I personally am
| sick and tired of all the ways they get to hide their awful
| behavior, and forcing developers to take the brunt of it.
| [deleted]
| donquixote25 wrote:
| None those will ever happen unless developers/app companies for
| a union of some sort.
| pooper wrote:
| I see no way Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Netflix, Uber, ...
| would join such a union. And if they did, would they have way
| too much influence on the union?
| lelandfe wrote:
| Charging for API compatibility issues sounds like a dangerous
| precedent.
| blowski wrote:
| It exists in enterprise. You can have SLAs that an API will
| be supported for 5 years, for example.
| e4e78a06 wrote:
| And enterprise apps are notorious for being stagnant and
| difficult to use. Not the newfangled SaaS stuff but the
| legacy stuff that has the SLAs you're talking about.
|
| Apple's decision to break apps that don't update is a user-
| centric decision. Just like deciding against GC and forcing
| automatic reference counting for more consistent UX
| performance is a user-centric, developer-hostile decision.
| bduerst wrote:
| >Apple's decision to break apps that don't update is a
| user-centric decision.
|
| Is it _really_ though? Users are then stuck with their
| favorite apps being broken and unusable.
|
| We're not talking just about mandatory security updates
| here, some of the breaking changes are mundane.
| e4e78a06 wrote:
| In the long run, it frees up the hardware manufacturer to
| make big changes that benefit the user. For example one
| of the reasons Apple was able to pull off the Arm
| transition was because they didn't have years of backward
| compatibility to deal with. They didn't have to deal with
| 32 bit apps, because those had been banned by Apple in a
| prior OS version. No super old legacy APIs, because they
| all were already removed in prior OS versions.
|
| Just compare the cluster-fuck that Windows on Arm is to
| the great experience of running x86 apps on an Arm Mac.
|
| > Users are then stuck with their favorite apps being
| broken and unusable.
|
| Yes, and they get mad at developers and the developers
| have to fix it when they otherwise wouldn't have. That
| means Apple can credibly roll out new APIs and features
| that are _better_ and force developers to adopt them.
| That's incredibly positive for users in the long run.
| Things like HW accelerated machine learning (still not
| available on Windows!), ARKit (Android equivalent is
| garbage), GPU accelerated UI (a dumpster fire on Android
| that no developer uses), etc.
|
| Think about this: if you're an AR app developer and Apple
| suddenly rolls out a new update that massively boosts
| performance IF you use the new API, are you going to use
| the new API and spend time porting over your existing
| functionality? Hell no. But if Apple forces you to, in
| the long run users get a way faster app, in exchange for
| some short run inconveniences because the app broke.
|
| A famous example that the Android community gripes about
| is Google's Camera2 API. It gives much better image
| quality but Snapchat refuses to use it. So Android image
| quality in Snapchat continues to suck because Google
| doesn't have the cajones to outright remove old APIs and
| force app developers onto new ones.
| saurik wrote:
| The point that I am reading isn't to say "this should happen"
| but to argue that such things sound about as reasonable as
| Apple's attempt at a moral framework for their enforced
| platform fees.
| [deleted]
| MichaelBurge wrote:
| "Sure - we've discounted the 'Apple Tax' from 40% to 30% to
| account for all these costs we've been inflicting on you.
|
| No actual changes to your fees - we've been thinking of our
| precious developers and giving you that 10% discount since the
| very beginning."
| arcticbull wrote:
| > - Developers should get a "cut" whenever Apple makes
| arbitrary changes that completely break 3rd-party apps. If the
| app's code doesn't change but Apple does change something,
| their behavior is literally creating problems for developers
| with no cost to Apple. Let's charge them!
|
| So when Apple introduces new features and frameworks, should
| developers then pay Apple? This doesn't seem to make sense.
| latexr wrote:
| > So when Apple introduces new features and frameworks,
| should developers then pay Apple?
|
| They already do, in the form of a couple subscriptions. A
| fixed one of $99/year and another one which is a tax of 30%
| on their revenue.
| gowld wrote:
| And they could pay more if Apple never made breaking
| changes.
| pooper wrote:
| >> - Developers should get a "cut" whenever Apple makes
| arbitrary changes that completely break 3rd-party apps. If
| the app's code doesn't change but Apple does change
| something, their behavior is literally creating problems for
| developers with no cost to Apple. Let's charge them!
|
| > So when Apple introduces new features and frameworks,
| should developers then pay Apple? This doesn't seem to make
| sense.
|
| I thought so too at first but that brings back one idea I had
| that most independent software vendors will probably hate and
| puts more control in Apple's hands but here it is anyway:
|
| Apple can add a way for developers to submit source code,
| assets, and machine readable build instructions in an Apple
| supplied format. Apple then builds the bits that goes on the
| App Store. Developers already pay USD 100 a year for the
| privilege of being on the App Store anyway, right?
|
| This way, if Apple introduces new features and frameworks,
| they can automatically update the code as needed and push
| updates to the users?
| gowld wrote:
| Then Apple could steal dev IP.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| rhelzerman wrote:
| You say "profit is always the priority" like its a _bad_ thing.
| Aren 't we all maximizing our profit? Isn't that kind of the
| point of being in business?
| kevingadd wrote:
| If my profit comes at the cost of your profit eventually things
| are going to disintegrate. If you optimize for profit
| aggressively you can end up making decisions that maximize
| short term profit but destroy the long term viability of your
| business (or the entire market)
|
| For example, Zynga's leadership eventually realized they were
| salting the earth and ensuring that in the future their
| genre/model wouldn't work anymore. They did it anyway. They've
| owned up to this
| pfortuny wrote:
| Nope.
|
| Lots of people stay in business because they just like it AND
| it gives enough money for a reasonable life.
| djbebs wrote:
| What makes you think their enjoyment isn't profit?
| trinsic2 wrote:
| I think the point of all this is, don't put the cart before
| horse. Money is a byproduct of what you do to enrich
| peoples lives. If you put money first, people suffer, and
| businesses end up suffering in the long run. If you put
| enriching lives first, real people want to compensate you,
| hell its kind of unspoken/unconscious law not to take
| advantage of people that create things that improve life. I
| can't count how many times I decided to compensate people
| that made software that enriched my life, not because the
| asked for it, but because they made something that deserves
| compensation.
| spiderice wrote:
| No one is saying it isn't. But that's clearly not what is
| being discussed here. This is just changing the definition
| mid argument.
| simion314 wrote:
| >Aren't we all maximizing our profit? Isn't that kind of the
| point of being in business?
|
| The full sentence is maximize profit no matter anything else,
| like profit first , honesty later, family later, friends later,
| happiness later , health later.
|
| Not everyone gets off by increasing some numbers, sometime
| there is enough.
| nomel wrote:
| > family later, friends later, happiness later , health
| later.
|
| For these, it's the employee taking the stance of "profits at
| all cost".
| throw14082020 wrote:
| But once a company is public, then maximising profit is
| really the only goal. If you don't do that as a CEO, aren't
| you being negligent (doing something illegal).
| flyinglizard wrote:
| There are many faces to profit. Amazon didn't turn a profit
| for twenty years but no one would say Jeff Bezos was
| negligent. It is more accurate to say that CEOs need to
| create _value_. Even then, value can be at one point
| (liquidate all company assets) or oriented towards the
| distant future (invest in nuclear fusion tech).
| cromka wrote:
| > But once a company is public, then maximising profit is
| really the only goal.
|
| You may want to research the growing trend of measuring
| companies against their impact, sustainability, etc., as
| well as increasingly popular indices that track companies
| based on that.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| All of these measures are just trying to instrument on
| long term profitability. The idea being that sustainable
| companies are less likely to be abandoned in the future.
| cromka wrote:
| The point was made as to what Apple currently maximizes
| for, and explained as "no matter anything else, like
| profit first , honesty later". This is what we're arguing
| about.
|
| _Long term_ profitability that involves thinking ahead
| of time of what would become unsustainable is, logically,
| speaking not maximizing for profit _NOW_. Honesty (ethics
| in business) will become increasingly important for the
| next generations. The current generations, however, don
| 't care that much just yet.
| bruce511 wrote:
| That really is a myth that needs to die.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| No it's really not. Thinking that it means "maximising
| short term profit is really the only goal" is a myth that
| needs to die, but maximising net discounted profit is
| really the only goal of public companies.
| wtetzner wrote:
| They're obligated to act in the interest of shareholders.
| That usually means profits, but could very well be other
| things.
| foolinaround wrote:
| this here is the real answer.
|
| So, if a majority of Apple's shareholders feel a
| different way from just maximizing profits then changes
| could be underway.
| pixelatedindex wrote:
| Is it really illegal to not maximize profit? I suppose we
| have capitalism to thank for that, where companies like
| PG&E can cut corners on maintenance and yet the C-level
| executives get to take home millions in bonuses.
|
| Just because it's legal doesn't mean it's the right thing
| to do, you know? Or perhaps I'm just naive and everyone
| should be out for themselves, the community/society be
| damned.
| pc86 wrote:
| The "illegal" thing they're referring to is fiduciary
| responsibility. The board and officers of a public
| corporation have a duty to do what is in the best
| interest of the shareholders. The question then becomes
| what horizon is "in the best interest" of the
| shareholders.
| chronofar wrote:
| Not every, or even most, individuals no, I would hope not.
| But every for-profit company surely does. No matter whatever
| bullshit mission they may plaster on their walls, the moniker
| "for-profit" tells you what the goal is plain and simple, and
| any high minded ideals will ultimately become subservient to
| that.
| kelnos wrote:
| Sure, and that's the problem. While capitalism may be
| better than the other systems we've tried, it's still not
| great. I don't think profit should take precedence over
| many high-minded ideals, but capitalism guarantees that
| will be the common case.
| bduerst wrote:
| One of the (growingly scant) bonus side-effects of having
| social media is that consumers now tie brands to their
| identity.
|
| This means that the brands of traditionally _maximize-
| profits at all cost_ at least have to make efforts to
| demonstrably align with consumer ideals, if they want to
| continue to profit. It 's far from perfect but still a far
| cry better than before.
| bruce511 wrote:
| It's almost never good business to optimise for profit. Or,
| perhaps more accurately to optimise for short term profit.
|
| For example I can maximise profit by firing all the staff, but
| continuing to collect subscription revenue for a couple years.
| Lots of profit, perhaps even "more profit", but a dead
| business.
|
| We spend money on all sorts of things, at the cost of immediate
| profit. Staff bonuses, end-of-year lunch, social donations,
| R&D, all come off the bottom line.
|
| Now, you can argue that we do it to stay in business, and a
| business that exists infanitly creates infinite profit, in
| which case the goal of business is to stay in business. Or
| perhaps profit is best served by keeping staff forever, in
| which case the odd benefit increases profit.
|
| Profit is important, without it a business will fail - but if
| that's the _only_ metric then its a very cold unpleasant place
| to work.
| jonshariat wrote:
| It's about shifting the cost of growth to other things like
| employee health, environment, users, etc that is the problem.
| neolefty wrote:
| Taken to certain extremes, yes it is a bad thing.
|
| In moderation -- for example if you take a wholistic view that
| incorporates benefit to the society at large as well, then it
| can be very good.
| sschueller wrote:
| Just remember, security is also on the table when it comes to
| profit. Including rating you out to a fascist state.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| > When Apple introduced the iPhone, it didn't have an App Store.
| From the moment the iPhone was announced, everyone speculated
| that it was only a matter of time until one was created, and a
| bit more than a year later, Apple announced it would allow
| developers to create iPhone apps and sell them in the App Store.
|
| This is not exactly accurate. Everyone speculated about an SDK
| (like for the Mac). When it was finally announced, the locked-
| down "App Store" aspect of it was a surprise.
|
| And it was generally greeted positively; after all, at the time
| it was pretty hard and expensive to go to market with new client-
| side software. Websites were way easier, and in fact that is one
| reason Apple initially were all-in on web apps for the iPhone.
|
| (There were also honest concerns whether Apple had the chops to
| adequately secure a phone SDK so that calls would always work.)
|
| The bad feelings about it built over time. One could say that
| people have started taking the existence of the iOS ecosystem for
| granted. But the world has changed around Apple. It no longer
| looks hard to go to market with software, so people no longer
| think Apple's cut is fair.
|
| And I think the article is correct that Apple has increasingly
| viewed it as a tax, not pass-thru expense.
| anonymouse008 wrote:
| Discussion: if the profit is 'monopolistic' and primarily rent
| seeking, then why hasn't any other company been able to produce
| hardware at parity while producing developer tools to make apps
| on par with competent developers on iOS?
|
| It feels like there is so much work that goes into the Apple
| ecosystem working so cleanly, that most take it for granted
| without considering what is really an 'alternative' and its
| costs.
| iqanq wrote:
| It's a good question. Google should've done it, but they have
| failed time and time again. Microsoft just gave up.
| onion2k wrote:
| There's a great article about how hardware companies can't
| compete with Apple. Apple do things like finding a technology
| for making better laptop enclosures and buying the company that
| makes it so no one else can use it. It's a good read.
| https://beneinstein.medium.com/no-you-cant-manufacture-that-...
| lelandfe wrote:
| It looks like the article focuses much more on how the
| processes Apple employs are expensive, laborious, and
| challenging - which make them difficult to replicate.
|
| > _Pretty much no company, big or small, can afford to do
| these things. Yes, Apple has done a great job building many
| of these products and yes, consumers have come to love many
| of these difficult-to-manufacture features. But you are not
| Apple_
| stevehawk wrote:
| It started about fifteen years ago, but Apple discovered
| that a great use for their extra cash flow was to buy up
| the processes they (and their competitors) would need in
| the future. When a screen manufacturer needed money to do
| the next big thing, then Apple would chip in significant
| funding and own a percentage of the new joint venture. They
| would not only get priority and lower prices on orders, but
| they profited from anyone else buying the same tech. Apple
| now owns an exclusive license to Liquidmetal, is a
| significant investor in Corning (Gorilla Glass), invested
| heavily in a Toshiba LCD plant, paid LG (for LCD) and
| various SSD manufacturers massive upfront payments for
| priority and/or exclusivity.
| anko wrote:
| any idea what liquidmetal is used for?
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Not just predicting, but driving. With the iPhone market
| share, Apple has been in a good seat to define what
| consumers expect from {generation+1} devices.
|
| Which makes it a bit easier to acquire / pre-book the
| relevant manufacturing capacity, when you know you're
| going to make a surprise announcement of it as a major
| feature in the future.
|
| After which, everyone else eventually ends up at the same
| upstream manufacturers, or trying to duplicate the
| technology...
| urthor wrote:
| Has more to do with innate economies of scale than any
| individual market abuse. Which isn't to say that there is
| some, but even if you stripped out the market abuse, Apple
| would still be fine.
|
| Apple is a machine that is fueled by cross subsidizing new
| platforms (Apple Watch) with their already significant
| capital investments in the iPhone.
| tolmasky wrote:
| I don't see how these two things are related, and in fact
| disagree with both assumptions: 1. that the profit contributes
| in any meaningful way to the quality of the "hardware", nor
| that the apps on iOS are some "amazing" bar to live up to. This
| is all from the perspective of a _user_ , as I haven't had
| anything on the AppStore in a decade:
|
| 1. I'm not sure I'd describe an ecosystem where Netflix and
| Amazon get sweetheart reduced revenue cuts while small devs
| have zero negotiating power is one I'd describe as working
| "cleanly" FOR USERS. Again, forget the devs here for a second,
| let's just think of the users. The AppStore is _not just a
| "monopoly"_, it is a _monopoly enabler_. New platforms are
| traditionally one of the best places to disrupt the old big
| players -- and as a user, I 'd _love_ a place that let small
| upstarts be nimble against the likes of Amazon or Netflix. But
| if Apple specifically lets Amazon compete at reduced revenue
| cuts, this becomes impossible. No one can compete in an already
| difficult space like a Music app (or even a Comic Book app!) if
| Apple is giving the world 's largest corporations better deals.
| Forgetting Apple's dominance in phones, they are also helping
| me have less choice in terms of these other services.
|
| 2. And consider this, 30% revenue split for a small app shop
| can mean the difference between being able to afford a new dev
| on your team, or a full time QA person, or full time support
| person, etc. Literally, if you are a 2 person team, getting
| that extra 30% would allow you to roughly afford one more hire
| at the same wage. Those are bug fixes, features, and support _I
| 'm missing out on as a user_. I sure as hell don't "feel" that
| 30% from Apple. I already paid them $1000+ for my phone, why do
| I have to pay them a 30% markup on my ToDo's app? It sure as
| hell isn't going into writing the 3 lines of code to make even
| exact string matching work in AppStore search, so I'm fairly
| certain that money would be better spent by the devs, again,
| purely from a selfish user perspective.
|
| 3. Which brings us to the larger "ecosystem" and store. They
| suck. It's hard to find anything on the store, it's full of
| scams, to the point where I am terrified of my kids someday
| being given any access to it and the casino-like games they
| allow. An equally "tyrannical" Apple that was values-based and
| tried to stop both overt scams but also was more opinionated
| about the subscription-addiction junk they allow to get sold to
| children, would be far more defendable in my opinion. I might
| be like "well, philosophically I disagree with this, but you
| can't argue with results!". Currently, it's "well, I disagree
| with this philosophically, and _wow_ is this mismanaged. Like,
| I think you 'd have a hard time finding someone that could have
| less pride in what you see when you scroll through the charts."
| I think Apple's own Phil Schiller put it best in 2012: "Is No
| One Reviewing These Apps?"
|
| 4. None of the "security" on iOS comes from the 30% cut, or
| even the AppStore review process. It's all stuff that's built
| into the sandbox model. If anything, there's an argument that
| the AppStore makes iOS more insecure since it puts the "Apple
| Review Seal of Approval" on a bunch of apps that just rip you
| off.
|
| 5. The apps _themselves_ are pretty meh. I don 't even know how
| anyone could hold any opinion on native vs. web anymore, unless
| you're big into games, at which point, sure, some native thing
| is going to have better graphics. All the things "native does
| better" these days are mainly because the browser _isn 't
| allowed_ to do those things, and Apple doesn't allow any
| competing web engine on iOS. And some things the iOS "wild west
| web" still does better: like having Picture-in-Picture work
| everywhere. To be clear: I 100% believe iOS apps _used_ to be
| clearly better, and they could 100% _still be_ clearly better,
| but Apple 's dropped the ball on their
| tooling/frameworks/resources and there's just not much exciting
| taking place there anymore. The Apple Pencil was a big
| watershed moment with this: they shipped the thing with barely
| any developer docs so you had the few key players making some
| cool apps (like Adobe of course), but otherwise nothing really
| revolutionary was enabled on the iPad. I think the Pencil
| _could_ have been a game changer, but Apple was more content
| with selling a couple $150 trinkets to iPad die-hards vs.
| really expanding their lead in the tablet space by doing
| something bold (like just including a Pencil with every iPad to
| create huge incentives to make every Apple developer make their
| apps "Pencil-ready" just like with all the "in device"
| features like 3D touch or whatever), or by even just
| integrating the Pencil more meaningfully in their own OS to
| lead by example. We didn't get the ability to have the Pencil
| "just work" in any text field until _6 years_ after its initial
| release.
|
| iOS is increasingly just something I kind of have to use. Or
| else lose iMessage or whatever. I think the opportunity cost
| that more interesting is what if things were different than
| _this_. For the record, I think ironically the result would be
| that Apple would act more like the old Apple, and be forced to
| make a compelling case for being on the Store and not using a
| third party to process payments (and I think there 's lots of
| interesting stuff Apple could _actually_ do there, as opposed
| to... nothing). Again, I 'm not arguing about whether they have
| the right or not to do any of this, just what the consequences
| would be if they stopped doing it.
| keleftheriou wrote:
| Among other reasons, you have to also consider the "winner-
| takes-all" type of network effect here: any new platform,
| however great the hardware & tools might be, will today have an
| _extremely_ hard time luring developers to it's non-existent
| user base, while at the same time users won't be as attracted
| to the platform due to the lack of apps.
|
| This is a _vicious_ cycle for newcomers, and at the same time a
| _virtuous_ cycle for the incumbent(s), further cementing their
| dominant position.
| [deleted]
| nathan_compton wrote:
| Network effects. Even if you were the best hardware/software
| maker in the world it would be difficult to compete with a
| walled garden that has locked in many customers both
| technically and culturally.
| anko wrote:
| I agree.
|
| I think most of arguments against what Apple is doing are based
| on an incomplete picture of Apple's product. They are based on
| someone not appreciating an aspect of what Apple is doing.
| Maybe they don't like the price. Maybe they don't like a lack
| of complete control over their hardware. The rest of it is
| always a rant to justify that position.
|
| There is provable value in what Apple is doing, or the app
| store would not be a success. Some people just want to have
| their cake and eat it too.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| > _There is provable value in what Apple is doing, or the app
| store would not be a success._
|
| There is provable value in what Apple is doing, by curating a
| higher quality and better integrated ecosystem than
| Google/Android offers. Polish which is funded by profits from
| the App Store.
|
| On the other hand, the App Store's success also benefits from
| full capture of all iOS users and network effects of
| releasing when it did.
|
| > _Some people just want to have their cake and eat it too._
|
| Some people think you shouldn't be allowed to put cocaine in
| soda, even if it's tasty. (To use a 1920s metaphor)
| acover wrote:
| Uneducated answer: it's a natural monopoly. There are economies
| of scale and any new entrant won't get monopoly profits to
| justify the required capital and risk.
|
| Why couldn't anyone compete against Bell by building a second
| phone network?
| arcticbull wrote:
| Apple isn't anywhere close to a monopoly, though, about a
| quarter of smartphones. A little more in install base, and a
| little less in quarterly shipments. [1] Building a phone
| network has massive capital expenditure costs on
| infrastructure, building a phone does not.
|
| [1] https://financesonline.com/number-of-smartphone-users-
| worldw...
| bmarquez wrote:
| The same article you mentioned says that 56% of US/Canada
| users and 70% of Japanese users have iPhones.
|
| I'd argue that monopolies should be judged on country and
| not worldwide. As each country has different iMessage
| popularity, apps restricted by region, earning power, phone
| availability, etc.
| bduerst wrote:
| That's market shifting though.
|
| Apple does have a monopoly on the markets running on all
| their devices, from apps to media, for ~900 million phones.
| When Apple doesn't completely own the only available market
| service to it's hardware (that it exclusively gives
| itself), it still charges a 30% fee to it's competitors for
| access to it's markets while actively blocking everyone
| else.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| The judge in the Epic case said that Apple though not a
| monopoly was acting like one and might be on the way to
| becoming one.
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/06/house-antitrust-
| subcommittee...
|
| https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/02/eff-appeals-apples-
| mon...
|
| So sure. Not a monopoly. But also not far from a monopoly
| as you claim.
| aaomidi wrote:
| > building a phone does not.
|
| Companies have a limited output of the materials needed to
| make a computer. If Apple tells one of these companies you
| now have an exclusive relationship with us, or else, what
| is that company going to do?
|
| Anyway, Apple has a monopoly of platform, which is measured
| between its own base, rather than as an absolute number
| compared of what % devices are iPhones.
| urthor wrote:
| Apple's primary moat isn't hardware, it's software.
|
| Their software moat with IOS is everything.
|
| _Software itself_ is innately a hugely monopolistic
| industry.
| dont__panic wrote:
| The impact of all of that $$$ and vertical integration on
| hardware and software quality is not to be ignored. Apple
| Silicon in particular is an astonishing development after years
| of Qualcomm/Intel dominance.
|
| The only real issue I have with Apple Silicon is that since it
| isn't open hardware that anybody can buy, I can't run my own
| software on A-series chips. At least M-series chips are opening
| up slowly to Linux, though.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| The iPhone is only valuable because of developers. If they all
| coordinated together, they could get apple to change. Imagine all
| the apps breaking one day...
| geodel wrote:
| A large number of developers work for companies. They don't
| need to deal with Apple as their employers/clients take care of
| all that. On freelance side free apps do not see much issue and
| paid apps devs are not in position to organize worldwide to
| make Apple change policy in haste.
| lancesells wrote:
| It's a symbiotic relationship. They both serve each other.
| Things could always be better and Apple is not a good guy but I
| doubt any large app or organization is either.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| I feel that's a knee-jerk assertion.
|
| Is no value assigned to the truly amazing custom silicon that
| sips power while efficiently supporting an instruction set
| that, in turn, supports developers external and internal?
|
| Is no value assigned to the work that goes into evolving with
| the wireless network standards? Those are internal people,
| generally with decade+ hardcore engineering backgrounds.
| adventured wrote:
| And it's well worth noting that the iPhone came first, not
| the wave of developers. Apple provided the platform and
| potential, they put in enormous resources and effort to make
| the iPhone work out, to deploy a phone in a new manner
| (bending the telecom providers to their will). What existed
| for developers before the iPhone (the languishing Windows
| desktop, much amazing)? If the developers are the primary,
| why'd they have to wait for Apple to make everything
| possible?
|
| It's because the developers are secondary. Apple is the
| primary, the key to it all.
| LouisSayers wrote:
| Anyone that remembers history correctly will remember when
| the iPhone was first released Apple wanted to make ALL the
| apps.
|
| Then developers started jailbreaking the phones, adding
| their own apps to them.
|
| The Appstore wasn't obvious for Apple, and it was only
| after developer backlash that they changed their tune.
|
| So you can say that Apple did everything but the truth is
| that the success of the iPhone is from the COMBINED effort
| of Apple, and the work of developers in the community.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| "The Appstore wasn't obvious for Apple, and it was only
| after developer backlash that they changed their tune."
|
| This is not "remembering history correctly" at all.
|
| Apple didn't have an SDK ready, and tried to sell the
| shit sandwich of Web Apps as a stopgap.
| LouisSayers wrote:
| >Apple didn't have an SDK ready, and tried to sell the
| shit sandwich of Web Apps as a stopgap.
|
| And how exactly do you know that it always was their
| intent to make an SDK for third party developers?
|
| From https://9to5mac.com/2011/10/21/jobs-original-vision-
| for-the-...
|
| "The App Store came later and apparently as a reaction to
| jailbreakers and developer backlash."
| selectodude wrote:
| I'm not sure how people don't understand this. If certain
| apps stopped working on my iPhone, I wouldn't get an
| android. I would just stop using that app.
| random314 wrote:
| The argument is - what happens when all non apple apps
| stopped working on the iPhone
| random314 wrote:
| Of course there is value. That's why iPhones are priced
| 1000$+
| [deleted]
| asperous wrote:
| If all apps go on strike, an app that crosses the picket line
| gets all the revenue in their market. This is related to the
| economic term "cartel", and why they are unstable in practice.
| Iolaum wrote:
| in practice?
|
| Instead of posting anecdotal evidence of mine to the
| contrary, I ll ask the following. If cartels are unstable in
| practice, then why do states need competition authorities to
| punish price fixing, and similar practices?
|
| I 'd say cartel's are unstable in theory but not necessarily
| in practice.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| Yeah, I would argue that almost every market/segment in
| America is dominated by a cartel or monopoly.
|
| Even things like commodities have hidden cartels and
| monopolies. Oil may be a commodity, but the refining
| facilities are most certainly cartel-owned. Agriculture is
| seemingly not a cartel, but ADM and Cargill dominate
| certain aspects of the supply chain and processing.
|
| Instead I would argue that iterative game theory of free
| market economics would stabilize to a cartel or monopoly.
| Once one of the open competitors determines an advantage,
| and/or has substantial access to near-free capital (um,
| what's the interest rate of the last two decades?), then
| they can acquire their competitors.
|
| Then they can apply barriers to entry such as regulation
| and lockin contracts with equipment suppliers and the like.
| Look at the practices of Intel to lockout AMD. Look at how
| Microsoft exerted power on PC makers. Once you are big, you
| can influence the suppliers and distributors to lockout
| competitors.
|
| As long as size is an intimidator (and it almost always
| will be except to extreme examples of markets), it will be
| effective. The only time it helps is when it slows response
| until an upstart using an entirely different supply chain
| and technology (like Tesla) gains such a fundamental
| advantage they can't stamp it out.
| ronyfadel wrote:
| They'll need to go through Apple's approval process first. And
| if they mention breaking one day in any manner, could get
| rejected, or worse, booted off the store. Apple has developers
| by the neck.
| fyzix wrote:
| Most of the useful apps has to connect to a server, let's say
| app devs stop serving requests for iOS, Apple would be
| pressured to come to the table because the iPhone is useless
| without apps.
| nomel wrote:
| This would take such a critical mass that it's silly to
| consider. Without some critical mass, the average consumer
| would see that the rest of their apps work fine, and
| probably just give the app a 1 star review "it keeps
| freezing".
| manquer wrote:
| Unions are able to organize with similar power inbalance.
| Collective action is not impossible, just difficult.
|
| Nobody will a join a union just to strike ( a.k.a pull
| the apps) however making collective to better negotiate
| with someone with lot of control over your revenue
| (salary) is not inherently a dumb idea.
| geodel wrote:
| Indeed. If some random app does not work I, as a user,
| would call that app as crap and not Iphone.
| ronyfadel wrote:
| These apps will be booted off the store (look at Epic),
| bye-bye revenue
| geodel wrote:
| Also majority of those serious apps are part of
| enterprise's digital platform who are not going to
| knowingly break their Apps.
| qzw wrote:
| That level of coordination among human beings has only been
| possible a handful of times in all of recorded history. And
| most cases involved wars or absolute autocrats, or both. Good
| luck forming any kind of an agreement between hundreds of
| thousands of independent companies and individuals across
| multiple countries. I can't even get my wife to agree on what
| to order for lunch.
| christophilus wrote:
| What? I buy iPhones because they work, are simple, are
| supported for a long, long time, and aren't riddled with
| trackers, trojans, and whatever the heck Android generally has
| baked in. I have very few apps on my iPhone other than the ones
| that come pre-installed (by Apple, not by my cell provider).
|
| I'm sure I'm atypical, but I do wonder how much an app-
| developer rebellion would really affect folks. I can't imagine
| my wife or parents switching to Android even if all of the non-
| Apple apps were to disappear tomorrow.
| kelnos wrote:
| > _I can 't imagine my wife or parents switching to Android
| even if all of the non-Apple apps were to disappear
| tomorrow._
|
| That seems surprising. Do your wife and parents not use
| Uber/Lyft/etc.? Do they not use any banking apps? Do they not
| use any social media apps? Yelp? Food delivery apps?
| Messaging apps aside from iMessage? Video streaming apps? And
| that's just from looking at _one_ of my home screens!
|
| Do you really believe they'd be happy with a phone that
| suddenly couldn't do all that anymore? I very much doubt
| that.
| bhelkey wrote:
| The App Store supported over half a trillion dollars in
| billings and sales in 2019[1]. According to Satista, that is
| more than the global coffee market[2].
|
| [1] https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/06/apples-app-store-
| ecos...
|
| [2] https://www.statista.com/outlook/cmo/hot-
| drinks/coffee/world....
| bduerst wrote:
| Tragedy of the commons, in a triple sided market, prevents
| this.
|
| At the end of the day, these developers are still competing
| with each other, and rational actors will break from the
| coordination to profit off the users for themselves.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| Not third party. You still have a pretty valuable device if you
| use nothing but apps provided by Apple.
| kelnos wrote:
| Valuable, yes. Clearly it was valuable enough back in 2007
| before there was an App Store. But nowadays, would it be
| valuable enough? I doubt it.
| Grustaf wrote:
| The original iPhone had quite a cult following, as did the
| iPod. People were flocking to them without any apps. It's
| because the iPhone was so cool that developers wanted to make
| apps for it. So it's pretty reductive to say that it's "only"
| valuable because of developers. Best regards, mac/iOS developer
| mchaynes wrote:
| The profit motive corrupts all. We need to kill capitalism in its
| current form for these companies to stop being terrible and evil.
|
| There are constant articles on HN about why <insert big company>
| is doing <terrible monopolistic thing>, and we inevitably talk
| about how these companies are doing horrible things, while others
| then go on to say "well look at all the value they're bringing".
| As if both can't be true at once. It's an embarrassingly
| reductive back and forth.
|
| These companies have a fiduciary responsibility to their
| shareholders to maximize the stock price. This inevitably leads
| to this behavior.
|
| Of course, everyone on this site secretly wants to build the
| "next big thing" so they can get famous and incredibly wealthy.
| You can only become that rich under the current system, so
| instead of just understanding the fundamental reasons why we see
| this behavior again and again and again, we bicker about the
| finer points of governance of these corporations. It's like
| arguing about what size bandaid to put over a gaping chest wound.
|
| This site is full of smart people, but our collective greed makes
| us seem pretty damn stupid
| politician wrote:
| Can you suggest something less drastic than eliminate
| capitalism? For example, "enforce existing anti--trust
| regulation". Tossing out a system that basically works in the
| hopes that a complete rewrite will solve all of our problems
| never works.
| neolefty wrote:
| I agree that throwing out what we have is a recipe for
| disaster and reconstitution in the same or worse form. But I
| think we can build anew from within, constructively.
|
| I like the Baha'i view that breaks it down into 3 components:
| the individual, community, and institutions, and then works
| on gradually reforming each of them, and recognizing their
| interactions. Here's my summary; there are undoubtedly better
| summaries out there too:
|
| * Individual: Empower people to act on ethics first, and
| material benefit second -- by emphasizing the inherent value
| of ethics, based on the view of humans as
| intellectual/spiritual as well as physical. Educate them to
| be good electors (see Institutions, below).
|
| * Community: This is the one I understand least, but I think
| it's about the emergent behaviors of groups of people who
| interact informally. Like a neighborhood or interest group.
|
| * Institutions: Reform their selection process & functioning.
| There are plenty of people who would make great public
| servants, but they are precisely the people who avoid our
| current electoral processes which are so poisonous and dumb.
| So have elections that focus on the qualities that are good
| for office -- caring for the well-being of the whole, wisdom,
| appropriate skills & abilities -- and prohibit all
| campaigning or discussion of individuals. You'd think it's
| impossible, but the Baha'i electoral process actually works
| in practice and people love it.
|
| All of these need reform. A good place to look at current
| Baha'i thinking is the "Baha'i International Community"
| website: https://www.bic.org/ which is kind of a public
| policy outreach site.
| kchameleon1234 wrote:
| > Tossing out a system that basically works in the hopes that
| a complete rewrite will solve all of our problems never works
|
| Does it "basically work" though? You are, for example, aware
| that profit motives have driven things like:
|
| - the water crisis in Flint, Michigan;
|
| - the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan by the United States
| and its allies in the early 2000s;
|
| - the ongoing destruction of the Amazon rainforest (and the
| genocide that continues to go hand in hand with it) by
| ranchers seeking to increase their bottom line;
|
| - the instance by airlines to continue flying completely
| empty planes all over the EU "to keep takeoff and landing
| times";
|
| - the refusal to pass a TRIPS waiver for the mRNA COVID
| vaccine that prevents much of the world from accessing the
| most effective vaccines in a timely manner (or at all);
|
| - the ongoing exploitation and perpetuation of underpaid or
| outright slave labor in many parts of the world by countries
| proped up by western colonial powers intent on delivering
| luxury items to their citizens at relatively low costs (while
| still reaping massive profits off those sales);
|
| - etc, etc, etc.
|
| I don't disagree that we need some intermediate solution like
| enforcing existing anti-trust legislation, repealing anti-
| union restrictions that outlaw effective labor organizing
| techniques, actually enacting harsh and swift consequences on
| companies that continue to destroy the environment (and the
| people who live in it).
|
| But those are only short term solutions to immediate harms
| being perpetuated by a system that has for well over a
| century brought death and destruction to the earth and its
| people... not to mention what capitalism's ancestors did in
| the never-ending, blood-thirsty western colonial expansion
| throughout the globe.
|
| So yes, let's enforce anti-trust laws... but let's not do
| that and think that alone will solve the myriad problems that
| have been thrust upon the peoples of the earth by a small
| number of extremely rich, profit driven people. And let's
| definitely not claim that the system that props up and
| perpetuates that behavior "basically works" when for most of
| the people of the world it patently does not "basically
| work".
|
| I don't know what the ideal system is. I have my own utopian
| visions but I acknowledge they'll likely never come to pass.
| But we _have_ to try something different than what we're
| doing now. The current global economic trajectory is a
| deathwish that most people have not consented to.
|
| (Edited to fix list formatting)
| gowld wrote:
| > the water crisis in Flint, Michigan;
|
| This was government not putting the effort in, not
| capitalism.
|
| > the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan by the United States
| and its allies in the early 2000s;
|
| Does the Communist invasion of Eastern Europe and
| Afghanistan count?
|
| > the ongoing destruction of the Amazon rainforest (and the
| genocide that continues to go hand in hand with it) by
| ranchers seeking to increase their bottom line;
|
| They are doing that because people want to eat steak.
|
| > - the refusal to pass a TRIPS waiver for the mRNA COVID
| vaccine that prevents much of the world from accessing the
| most effective vaccines in a timely manner (or at all);
|
| Your idea is that without getting paid, people will just
| provide public health work for free, because they .... ?
|
| > the ongoing exploitation and perpetuation of underpaid or
| outright slave labor in many parts of the world by
| countries proped up by western colonial powers intent on
| delivering luxury items to their citizens at relatively low
| costs (while still reaping massive profits off those
| sales);
|
| OK at this point it's clear that your problem is with
| material consumption , not capitalism.
| manquer wrote:
| It was not like Apple was a good considerate benevolent
| dictator before power got to their head. They have always been
| like this.
|
| Apple won't have had the resources to develop something the
| Apple Silicon or most other products, if they aren't ruthless
| about their profit.
|
| Is it worth the cost for society ? Depends on the POV, it sucks
| to be the handicraft producer when a big factory opens up, but
| more people do get product and benefit from it.
| buscoquadnary wrote:
| If we talk at that level though there are lots of other
| terrible things at that level of crime. The alternative to
| capitalism, meaning private ownership of capital, is collective
| or state control of capital.
|
| If we start talking about terrible things done by collectively
| or state owner endeavors we find things just as terrible like
| the holomdor, the 5 Year Leap. I mean don't get me wrong Apple
| is doing some seriously terrible things with their power grabs
| and monopolies, but I don't know if equates to 5 million dead
| of famine in 5 years, and although Google is violating my
| privacy and sucking up everyone's data I would prefer that over
| being loaded on a train to a concentration camp.
|
| My point isn't to exonerate capitalism, because Nestle is a
| truly despicable company and have committed crimes of close to
| the same magnitude, but to believe that just changing the
| system is going to magically make everything better is in my
| opinion naive, because no matter how great you try and make
| your system if you fill it entirely with bad people it will
| result in bad outcomes.
|
| Additionally we often find that during times of large scale
| change in "systems" it is more often than not the most
| ruthless, sociopathic, despotic individuals rise to the top
| because they are most willing to do whatever it takes to retain
| power. In contrast it seems like the activist investors that
| amass capital and attempt to force changes in company through
| monetary means is much less disruptive for the vast majority of
| people's lives.
|
| EDIT: For some line breaks and missing word.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Surprising how little attention this story got:
| https://www.theinformation.com/articles/facing-hostile-chine...
|
| AFAIK, it was not in the mainstream media. Perhaps The
| Information credibility is an issue?
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