[HN Gopher] Apple blocks Coinbase Wallet
___________________________________________________________________
Apple blocks Coinbase Wallet
Author : stale2002
Score : 528 points
Date : 2022-12-01 18:39 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| skc wrote:
| I'm in the "too bad" camp.
|
| This is what happens when customers and companies gleefully buy
| into the idea of a walled garden.
|
| Because I can bet anything that there are iPhones and Macs on
| every desk at Coinbase.
| christkv wrote:
| Next they will want 30% off every stock purchase you do using the
| E*trade app
| Traubenfuchs wrote:
| Why can't companies like that just make a good web app? It's time
| to kill native apps unless you really need them.
| ShamelessC wrote:
| > The biggest impact from this policy change is on iPhone users
| that own NFTs - if you hold an NFT in a wallet on an iPhone,
| Apple just made it a lot harder to transfer that NFT to other
| wallets, or gift it to friends or family.
|
| Wow, so decentralized. /s
| efields wrote:
| The exchange is NFT for eth. In order to do that, it requires
| gas. That is a fee imposed on the user, meaning they have to pay
| something in order to pursue a digital transaction for digital
| goods. Payments in iOS for digital goods and services must go
| through the App Store. It's right there in the developer terms,
| and has largely not changed since the App Store was introduced.
|
| Doesn't matter that it's gas. It's a purchase the user is trying
| to make. The rules apply.
|
| Coinbase may think it's unfair, but that's what they agreed to
| when they put the app in the App Store. Apple can continue to
| enforce this rule as long as they're legally allowed to, which
| doesn't seem to be changing anytime soon.
|
| No sympathy for Coinbase here. They chose to whine in public when
| they could just sue Apple like a grown up.
| seydor wrote:
| Agreed. They should pull their wallets and become web-only.
|
| No sympathy for Coinbase or any other app participating in the
| system.
| Fnoord wrote:
| There's a different reason Apple should block the feature: NFTs
| are a scam. I have zero interest in falling for scams, I want
| walled gardens to protect me from them. Unfortunately they did
| not use this reason.
| bloppe wrote:
| I'm always fascinated by opinions like this.
| rybosworld wrote:
| NFT's are no more a scam than any digital goods.
| colordrops wrote:
| Public visibility helps their case by both pressuring apple and
| getting customers on their side. It's not whining, it's PR.
| alwillis wrote:
| If Apple told the FBI to go pound sand in the San Bernardino
| shooter case, where the government wanted a back door to the
| iPhone, what makes you think they're going to pressures by
| some crypto geeks?
| sneak wrote:
| That was coordinated marketing between the FBI and Apple.
|
| Apple does not have the power or authority to tell the USG
| to pound sand:
|
| https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-fbi-icloud-
| exclusiv...
|
| There is already a backdoor in the iPhone, and Apple
| already preserves it for the FBI.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| For those who don't know: you can fully encrypt your
| iPhone backups and store them locally on your computer if
| you prefer. You do not need to use iCloud backup to use
| an iPhone.
|
| You can also skip backups entirely if you want.
| willcipriano wrote:
| Yeah who do these crypto guys think they are the CCP?
| Spivak wrote:
| It's actually kinda funny because it's exactly right. The
| US has less power than the CCP to control Apple. Perks of
| being too big to fail. Apple doesn't bend the knee to the
| CCP -- gtfo. Apple doesn't bend the knee to the US gov't
| -- five years and a massive political battle later some
| Apple exec gets dragged to a congressional hearing to get
| mildly berated by a 70 year old white dude who doesn't
| even care outside of scoring some political points for
| the next midterm election and a fine, maybe? Not too big
| though, it can't actually hurt them because that's jobs
| and American business.
| varispeed wrote:
| How do banking apps work on iOS? If my friend sells me his vase
| and I pay him through banking app making a money transfer, does
| Apple get 30% cut?
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| Apple store people just don't know how cryptocurrencies work.
| The gas fee doesn't go to Coinbase, it's going to completely
| random people, called miners or stakers. Why Coinbase should
| pay for the fees it doesn't receive?
| kimixa wrote:
| Making a system that bypasses intentional hoops doesn't make
| the company go "Oh, good job!". They close those loopholes,
| as they're _intentional_.
|
| It's not a technical problem to be solved, it's part of the
| terms for using the platform.
| themagician wrote:
| They don't need to know because it doesn't matter and they
| don't care. They see it as you buying a digital item. It
| doesn't matter to them if it's coins for virtual slots or
| NFTs--it's all the same. It's up to you to figure it out.
| Coinbase could, conceivably, charge you through the app store
| and then process the transaction for you. This would be a
| nightmare to do and defeat the "purpose" of crypto, but it's
| possible.
|
| One of the benefits of Apple's enforcement here is their
| _extremely_ generous refund policy. If you ever buy something
| by accident (or even on purpose, really, and just later
| regret it) you can ask Apple for a refund and it 's almost
| guaranteed they grant it.
|
| Obviously crypto users don't really think about refunds
| because nothing is reversible... although who knows, maybe
| they do.
|
| Honestly, Apple and Google should ban ALL software crypto
| wallets. No one is checking to see how secure they are. A
| seed generated on a software wallet may appear random to the
| user, but there is NO REASON AT ALL to believe that it is,
| and no way to verify that it is. IMO every iOS software
| wallet is compromised simply by virtue of the fact that it's
| impossible to know whether the seed was generated securely.
|
| I 100% guarantee you there will eventually be a massive
| "hack" on a major iOS software wallet which is nothing more
| than the person who wrote the code intentionally making it
| such that they know how the seed is generated. It would be
| trivial to generate seeds that appear random but are based on
| nothing more than a passphrase you know and a timestamp that
| you can increment over, allowing you at any time to generate
| all possible private keys for every wallet ever made with
| your app. That app is probably already out there and people
| are using it, blissfully unaware that at any time all their
| crypto could just disappear. If the attacker is smart they
| can later patch the app, remove their proprietary seed
| generation and no one will EVER know. They can drain wallets
| randomly and everyone will assume that the victim must be
| responsible for the compromised seed, when in reality it was
| compromised on generation. The attacker will never get
| caught. I would be honestly surprised if this isn't happening
| right now.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| > Payments in iOS for digital goods and services must go
| through the App Store. It's right there in the developer
| terms, and has largely not changed since the App Store was
| introduced.
| croes wrote:
| Sue Apple? They have enough money to stretch any process until
| the opponents funds are empty.
| everfree wrote:
| Not when your opponent is also a Fortune 500 company.
| Lawsuits don't stretch on _that_ long.
| rybosworld wrote:
| Did the apple employee who delisted coinbase wallet write this?
| electic wrote:
| This is not what is happening here. It's worse. If you want to
| send a NFT to another address, you need gas to complete the
| transaction.
|
| Coinbase does not get gas fees to complete the transaction.
| This isn't a swap. This isn't an exchange for ETH.
|
| Absurd and I've downvoted you.
| cmovq wrote:
| Is apple supposed to take 30% of the transaction fee when I
| purchase investments in an online banking app?
| ar_lan wrote:
| I think this is a great question. Stocks and NFTs are largely
| the same in my eyes - but I can't imagine Fidelity even
| bothering with an iPhone app if they lost 30% of each
| transaction people make (unless it was solely on the fees -
| I'm not sure where Apple draws the lines).
|
| Also - does Apple take 30% from each Amazon purchase? I
| overwhelmingly just use the Amazon app for purchasing - I
| can't imagine the amount of money Apple makes from Amazon
| alone, if so.
| thehappypm wrote:
| No, physical goods are exempted.
| cjensen wrote:
| No because investments are not digital goods. Just because
| something is not physical does not mean it is digital. For
| example, a right to mine iron is not a physical thing, not is
| it a digital thing; instead it is a legal thing.
| bsamuels wrote:
| If apologists like you ran the world, I would probably have to
| pay Apple 30% premium on the value of my entire house if I
| tried to sign mortgage paperwork on an iphone
| wkdneidbwf wrote:
| let's not give apple ideas!
| jerf wrote:
| Oh, you can do better than that. You'd pay 30% on the
| mortgage, the seller would pay 30% on the mortgage, the title
| company would pay 30% on the mortgage, the listing agent
| would pay 30% on the listing.... my point here not merely
| being sarcasm, though it is that as well, but it isn't
| scalable to have every little person involved in facilitating
| some transaction trying to take 30%.
| nomercy400 wrote:
| You mean like how the title company, listing agent,
| mortgage broker, notary etc. all take money from the simple
| transaction that should be just between buyer and seller?
| Same idea.
| unityByFreedom wrote:
| There may be an anti-trust case against Apple, but if there
| is, hanging it on crypto is not the place to do it.
|
| Personally I am more concerned about Comcast's monopoly and
| would prioritize the FTC to look at that, but that's been out
| of style since 2014.
| function_seven wrote:
| Coinbase isn't on the other end of this. Apple demanding 30%
| from gas fees would be like them taking that cut from every
| Venmo or PayPal transaction.
| marcfr wrote:
| I remember when in school in history class we all were upset when
| we learnt that the land lord demanded a "tenth" from the
| agricultural gains. Those were the times...
| noasaservice wrote:
| Frankly, anybody who bought iPhones is an idiot. And they have
| been for quite some time.
|
| It was OBVIOUS for ages their long term play is: create walled
| garden, entice people to walled garden, and then TAX everyone for
| the privilege of an iPhone with no other choices once locked in.
| And "Green Bubble Shame".
|
| At least you can install other app stores on Android. At least we
| still have a modicum of control there, and can root it fairly
| easily with most phones.
| trasz2 wrote:
| FWIW, Coinbase Wallet hasn't been very useful simply because it's
| owned by Coinbase, and thus cannot be trusted.
| zenexer wrote:
| HN title is incorrect. Apple is demanding 30% of gas fees, not
| exchange fees.
|
| Personal opinion: That's even more ridiculous. Coinbase has no
| access to or control over gas fees.
| dang wrote:
| Submitted title was "Apple Blocks Coinbase wallet, for not
| giving them a 30% cut of exchange fees". We've taken the latter
| bit out since it seems to be editorializing in any case.
| seydor wrote:
| More precisely: Coinbase is not asking for the gas
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Add it to the antitrust pile. Is their strategy to attack
| unpopular things in the current zeitgeist so nobody complains
| about antitrust? Facebook, Twitter, now crypto?
| josephcsible wrote:
| The next logical step is for Apple to demand a 30% cut of the
| revenue when you order physical goods on Amazon from your iPhone,
| or 30% of money you send to people with Venmo. If you don't think
| those behaviors would be okay, how can you think this is okay?
| madrox wrote:
| Apple wants a 30% on fees, not the good itself. This is
| consistent with the rest of their policies. Arguably that still
| isn't ok, but this is not an encroachment.
| ldoughty wrote:
| should they get 30% of my Amazon Prime fee?
|
| If not.. Could Coinbase Wallet offer Coinbase Wallet Prime
| for. $100 that provides free transactions on qualifying
| orders?
|
| All these rules feel arbitrary to carve out as much money as
| they can from "lesser people" without upsetting the larger
| players that have a budget to afford a lawsuit.
| halostatue wrote:
| If your Amazon Prime fee were paid via in-app purchase, why
| not?
|
| The Coinbase thing is happening because it's an all-digital
| _purchase_. There's no physical benefit being transferred
| to the customer, as NFTs are wholly digital. Apple has been
| consistent about the fee being applied to all digital-only
| purchases, including for virtual yoga classes.
|
| One can argue whether 30% is still an appropriate amount
| (compared to 15 years ago, it's _still_ a steal where pre-
| iPhone App Store models would take 50-75% of the revenue),
| but people should stop arguing in bad faith on this.
| makestuff wrote:
| Robinhood gets paid for order flow should apple get 30% of
| that each time a trade is executed on the platform? Apple
| should also take a fee from all trading apps that charge a
| fee on options trades in this case.
| rdtwo wrote:
| So 30% of the eBay fees and 30% off the Amazon marketplace
| fees should be fair game
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| That doesn't seem to hold up. If I buy something on eBay
| it's not any different from, e.g., buying stock on Robin
| Hood. There is an agreement between two parties, neither of
| whom are the people distributing the app, to make an
| exchange of money to [the eBay item] or stocks.
|
| Apple does not claim a cut of the exchange of stocks, but
| they do claim a cut of the transaction fees for the
| exchange of stocks. If eBay or Amazon charged a transaction
| fee to facilitate their transactions, that would be an in-
| app purchase of which Apple would claim 30%.
| rdtwo wrote:
| But they do, all eBay transactions have a 5-15% fee and
| Amazon 3rd part is the same
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| I see. In that case, I'd agree these fees should be fair
| game by the same logic. That does make me curious what's
| different here, if anything.
| [deleted]
| Dma54rhs wrote:
| Next is profit fees and transaction fees form your banking
| app. Hey not salary, after all Apple is providing the
| platform for banks. Peasants can always ask their salary in
| cash ir build their own platform.
| influx wrote:
| You actually can't order Kindle books on any Amazon iOS App.
| halostatue wrote:
| Because Amazon doesn't want to give up the 30% IAP fee. Fair
| enough.
| postalrat wrote:
| Isn't that circumventing apples payment system and against
| their rules?
| halostatue wrote:
| No. They also cannot direct people to the Amazon website
| to buy the books, which would be against the rules.
| That's likely to change with the recent changes and
| upcoming legislative requirements.
| jacobr1 wrote:
| It isn't a circumvention - you can't buy the products in
| the app. If you try to go to the product page of a
| digital product it redirects you to a browser - but
| importantly you can't actually even see the product in
| the app so it isn't redirecting a _purchase_.
| tacker2000 wrote:
| Exactly, where does it stop? Will apple also take a cut when i
| buy public transport tickets or flight tickets? What about
| hotels or airbnb?
|
| This shit has to be stop now!
|
| Free up the app stores and see if the customers and app devs
| will be still willing to fork over these extortionate fees.
|
| And this security argument is just complete BS, a typical
| "Totschlagargument" that gets thrown around as needed.
| Y_Y wrote:
| > Totschlagargument
|
| For others just learning this gorgeous word (literally
| "killing-blow argument") Wikipedia says:
|
| > A thought-terminating cliche (also known as a semantic
| stop-sign, a thought-stopper, bumper sticker logic, or cliche
| thinking) is a form of loaded language, often passing as folk
| wisdom, intended to end an argument and quell cognitive
| dissonance.
| actionablefiber wrote:
| I prefer "thought-stopper" better. I would say
| Totschlagargument sounds like it could just be a really
| compelling argument that leaves the other side speechless
| and "kills" the discussion with a victory; but the point is
| not that the argument is compelling but rather it tries to
| block substantive thought and discussion.
| make3 wrote:
| 30% of your bank with an app on interests on loans xD
| tshaddox wrote:
| I think it's bizarre to say that's "the next logical step" when
| in fact that things have all been explicitly addressed and
| exempted for the entire history of the App Store. It's not as
| if Apple is slowly discovering new things they can take a cut
| from and they just haven't discovered Amazon purchases yet.
| smoldesu wrote:
| It's bizarre to call any of it logical when 15 years ago this
| wasn't a problem. The App Store is at the center of this, and
| if Apple refuses to cede power it will be a long winter for
| them.
| matwood wrote:
| What do you mean? 15 years ago other phone app stores
| charged insane fees if you could even get on the store. At
| the time, 30% was seen as a huge win for developers.
| smoldesu wrote:
| Those were feature phones, basically the handheld
| equivalent of a games console. In the age of smartphones,
| there is not a single reason that software distribution
| should be centralized.
| tshaddox wrote:
| What's different about game consoles and smartphones?
| chrisco255 wrote:
| Imagine if a desktop environment had the same
| restrictions. Would you accept them?
| tshaddox wrote:
| I'd buy from a different company if the restrictions
| bothered me.
| arcticbull wrote:
| App Store rules have never required a cut of physical
| transactions, only digital.
| tyingq wrote:
| So, kindle books then?
| shagie wrote:
| Exactly kindle books. And audible books. And Netflix shows.
|
| Which is why none of those companies offer the ability to
| purchase them directly through an app that is on the App
| Store.
| tyingq wrote:
| Ah. It does sort of highlight why a simple policy like
| this gets silly, and isn't great for consumers.
| matthewowen wrote:
| Yes, which is why you can't buy ebooks in either the Amazon
| app or the Kindle app.
|
| It's not great.
| pornel wrote:
| That was tolerable a decade ago when it was only about iTunes
| songs and power-ups in kids' games.
|
| But now more and more of the economy is moving online, and
| the Apple/Google duopoly gets to tax everything.
| jabbany wrote:
| Pretty sure there's a carve ot specifically for those.
|
| Ref: https://developer.apple.com/app-
| store/review/guidelines/#in-...
| shagie wrote:
| There's also a carveout there specifically for NFTs
|
| > Apps may use in-app purchase to sell and sell services
| related to non-fungible tokens (NFTs), such as minting,
| listing, and transferring. Apps may allow users to view their
| own NFTs, provided that NFT ownership does not unlock
| features or functionality within the app. Apps may allow
| users to browse NFT collections owned by others, _provided
| that the apps may not include buttons, external links, or
| other calls to action that direct customers to purchasing
| mechanisms other than in-app purchase._
|
| (emphasis mine)
| josephcsible wrote:
| There is for now. I'm saying I can see their next step being
| to remove that.
| brookst wrote:
| That is the next "logical" step for people to claim without
| regard for whether it's true or not. People will believe
| anything that confirms their biases.
| Dig1t wrote:
| I think higher ups at Apple know things we don't know WRT how
| politicians and agencies will act. It seems they are pretty
| confident they won't be regulated any time soon, at least in the
| US.
| bogwog wrote:
| Guess it's time to write to our politicians and threaten to
| vote them out. Maybe collect signatures from a bunch of people
| and attach it to the letter to give it more weight.
| zopa wrote:
| If you've got a way to distinguish between accurate
| foreknowledge and hubris, please share. Everybody thinks the
| party will never stop until it does.
| threeseed wrote:
| It's because Apple is legally allowed to charge a fee for what
| happens on their platform.
|
| They can do it as a channel cost which is a standard concept in
| business or they can do it as a fee for using their platform
| services again another standard concept.
|
| If any government were to prevent this it would unravel the
| entire economy because supermarkets, retailers and services
| businesses would no longer be legal. Hence why after nearly a
| decade the App Store is still fundamentally the same as day
| one.
| bryan_w wrote:
| This would be like apple blocking your stockbroker app because
| they charge $2 per trade but the broker allows you to use the
| cash sitting in your account.
| latchkey wrote:
| The fee on gas is more like nasdaq charging $2 and the broker
| can't do anything about it.
| shaburn wrote:
| Dorsey's call for an open mobile web os could not be more
| important for this subject. Mobile payments, device to device
| with crypto is so dangerous for the existing payment/financial
| system, don't expect anything but resistance from establishment
| players.
| salawat wrote:
| Your choice of establishment needs a capital E. You may not
| realize it, but a significant part of the political sphere is
| absolutely, cripplingly dependent on a tightly controlled
| financial medium of exchange with tight, inescapable
| integration with tax authorities/law enforcement.
|
| If everyone were to suddenly remove all their money from banks
| and the financial system, and only started transacting point to
| point, and (lets handwave the how and just say that everyone
| immaculately keeps their own set of books/accounts with
| everyone else, _not on a public ledger_ ), the entire
| political/regulatory power structure of the United States falls
| apart _that day_.
|
| Money transmission regulation cannot be coordinated/scaled to
| effectively service period at a population of the U.S. scale.
|
| A) Private books means if you really want your tax authority to
| see them, congratulations, send a warrant. Oh wait, due process
| (not enough hours in the day).
|
| B) If we assume the magical bookkeeping extends only to
| facilitating a transaction, but not records retention/OFAC,
| that goes out the window. LE integration too.
|
| AML, gone, KYC, gone.
|
| On the upside, everyone can send anyone money. On the downside,
| there's a hell of a lot that _no one talks about that goes into
| that than anyone probably has the patience, comfort, or
| intellectual fortitude to sit through_.
|
| Also Wall Street dead.
|
| I mean, for me it's a hard choice. Possible national collapse,
| dead Wall Street, and chance to reaffirm and rebuild a
| nation...
|
| Dead Wall Street...
|
| Let it be known: I very much dislike what out financial system
| has done to the U.S.
| joyfylbanana wrote:
| Apple should be given a medal for making it harder to trade
| NFT's. Those are bad for you.
| tensor wrote:
| So if I use my bank's app to pay a bill will Apple want 30% of
| that too? This is really too much.
| jurschreuder wrote:
| They have found a way to tax websites.
| nickthegreek wrote:
| apple doesnt want 30% of the NFT price, they want 30% of the
| _fee_ on the sell of the digital good (the nft).
| camdenlock wrote:
| Why is it seen as acceptable for a government to tax people for
| the privilege of transacting in their (the government's) markets,
| but it's seen as bad form for a corporation to do the same?
| bredren wrote:
| This reminds me of the last time Coinbase had its app removed
| from the app store in 2013. Our secure messaging app, Gliph, had
| the ability to send bitcoin and was still live in the App Store.
|
| Our companies shared an investor, and our app was the first to
| implement Coinbase's API. Between that and SF Bitcoin meetups, I
| interacted with Brian regularly enough and the App Store was a
| common topic because in that first year of funding for crypto,
| the goal was generally find a way to breaking Bitcoin mainstream.
| (It seemed like it might happen soon, but was in fact still quite
| early.)
|
| After some press, Apple took our app down. I blogged about it
| [0], (I believe the first survey of App Store policy toward
| bitcoin) and that got picked up by Tech Crunch. [1]
|
| I remember speaking with Brian about it on the phone. Apple's
| objection was on legality of sending Bitcoin in the regions our
| app was available, so I suggested we could file a legal brief as
| part of our appeal.
|
| Brian's response was they had already tried that and that Apple
| was unswayed by their brief. There wasn't much we could really do
| other than commiserate on being under the thumb of the App Store.
|
| Those were some heady, yet comparatively innocent days in crypto
| compared to now.
|
| [0] https://blog.gli.ph/2013/12/09/the-state-of-bitcoin-
| mobile-a...
|
| [1] https://techcrunch.com/2013/12/09/how-does-apple-really-
| feel...
| unityByFreedom wrote:
| > Apple's objection was on legality of sending Bitcoin in the
| regions our app was available, so I suggested we could file a
| legal brief as part of our appeal.
|
| > Brian's response was they had already tried that and that
| Apple was unswayed by their brief.
|
| A legal brief would go to a judge. This sounds like an appeal
| written by a lawyer, submitted on behalf of one company to
| another. Not the same thing.
|
| Or maybe there _was_ a legal case and they filed a brief. Then
| it would be a judge who decides whether the brief is
| convincing, not Apple.
| bredren wrote:
| Thanks for clarifying this. It has been a long time since
| this happened.
| patchtopic wrote:
| so apple also expect 30% from everything transacted on every
| banking app?
| rich_sasha wrote:
| If I were a Coinbase and iphone user, I would be irate. I'm
| neither but that's besides the point.
|
| Will Apple demand 30% of bank transfers made with a bank app? 30%
| of a firstborn if the hookup happened on Tinder?
| bink wrote:
| Wouldn't a better comparison be 30% of the add-on fees that a
| bank charged you for a bank transfer? And that does seem like
| something they would expect if it were paid via the app.
| blint_carton wrote:
| Or possibly any extra fees eBay charges on a purchase.
| LeafItAlone wrote:
| FWIW, I am both and I am not irate. Mostly because I think it's
| reasonable to give Apple some time to respond here.
| WanderPanda wrote:
| Have a nice walk with Tim around Apple Park, Mr Armstrong!
| mkrishnan wrote:
| pjkundert wrote:
| It would help your case if you provided reasoning.
|
| Cost limits uptake of limited resources - storage and
| processing on Ethereum blockchain must have a limiting function
| - gas provides it.
| Maursault wrote:
| NFTs are brilliant and essential. Shame on Apple for blocking
| Coinbase wallet from transferring NFTs
| Maursault wrote:
| NFTs are stupid and pointless. Good for Apple for blocking
| Coinbase wallet from transferring NFTs and subtly protecting its
| consumers from idiodic dogshit.
| mcast wrote:
| "At first they came for our NFTs..."
| Maursault wrote:
| This is pure gold.
| zarzavat wrote:
| If it were groceries would you say the same? You shouldn't have
| to pay a tax to the phone company to buy something on your
| phone. Whether you think the thing people are buying is stupid
| or not is beside the point.
| Maursault wrote:
| > If it were groceries would you say the same?
|
| Weak analogy. Unlike groceries, NFTs can't do what they claim
| to do. NFTs are fraud.
| stevenkkim wrote:
| "The American crayfish was introduced in the '20s. A guest, if
| you like. And like most guests having a good time, they didn't
| wanna leave. Next 50 years, they consumed all the local crayfish,
| wiped them out. And then, they started eating each other. That's
| the thing about greed, Arch. It's blind. And it doesn't know when
| to stop." - Lenny Cole, from Rocknrolla
| dontblink wrote:
| I don't understand why the disgruntled companies don't simply
| band together and remove their apps from Apple until Apple
| complies? Apple is as reliant on their third party apps for their
| ecosystems as much as the inverse.
| hoherd wrote:
| Doing this would piss off the entire Apple user base of those
| companies, with no certain gain. Those companies would lose
| lots of customers as collateral damage in a war that they could
| potentially lose. Sounds like a bad strategy to me.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Meh, Apple would be the one pulling the plug.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| And do what? When in an oligopoly, there aren't many places to
| go to.
| gryf wrote:
| Investors would fire the board for doing that.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| People have already invested $1000 into their phones. It will
| take a long time to get them to switch (probably years tbh) and
| apple thinks they can wait longer than app developers.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| Many of the apps in the Apple App Store--including Coinbase--
| also offer a web interface which would work fine in Safari.
| People would not even have to switch phones.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| There is a reason these companies make apps, they increase
| engagement and make it easier to track users. I don't big
| tech is ready to give up apps on iPhones.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| Me either, which is the point: companies complain about
| the App Store cut, but they are obviously getting value
| for it because they don't pull their apps.
| zopa wrote:
| It's not a bad idea but there's no "simply" about it:
| organizing is hard. And if you're one of the disgruntled
| companies, you have to balance the chances a campaign like this
| succeeds against the odds that Apple retaliates against the
| first companies to sign on.
| mberning wrote:
| Apple us so flush with cash I doubt they care.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > Apple is as reliant on their third party apps for their
| ecosystems as much as the inverse.
|
| I would take the other side of this bet. Barrier to entry for
| software to make a new chat app, social network, streaming app,
| crypto app, etc is much lower than barrier to entry to make
| hardware.
|
| Another company willing to play by Apple's rules will swoop in
| in relatively little time, while an alternative to iPhone/Apple
| Watch/AirPods/iPads/M processor computers will not.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Someone will just make a Roblox or Fortnite competitor and
| everyone will switch to it overnight? I doubt it
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > relatively little time
|
| Meaning alternative Roblox or Fortnite is coming much
| sooner than alternative devices equivalent to Apple's
| hardware products.
| actionablefiber wrote:
| Sure, why not? If the top ten games from my Steam library
| disappeared off the face of the earth I'd still have plenty
| of other games to play. Games rise and fall all the time;
| 10 years ago you could have written that about Minecraft
| and 15 years ago about Runescape. There are certainly still
| audiences for those games but they are smaller than before.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Say you have a game that you and all your friends play
| which you've purchased things for and logged thousands of
| hours on. You wouldn't be upset if it dumped from the App
| Store simply because Tim Cook woke up and chose violence?
| actionablefiber wrote:
| I would certainly be sad. And then I'd start playing
| something else. It happens all the time in video games.
| People paid money for Club Penguin memberships and logged
| untold amounts of time there, too!
| threeseed wrote:
| Because the most important apps to users right now are
| advertising-driven.
|
| And the App Store has been around for nearly a decade now and
| we already know that users care far more about Apple than they
| do any one particular app.
| laweijfmvo wrote:
| Apple probably has a loaded PR statement ready for a situation
| like this. Coinbase? The public perception of crypto is already
| a joke at this point on its own. Facebook? Something about
| "privacy". And so on.
| jacamera wrote:
| This is an interesting question. It reminds me of the contract
| disputes that content producers sometimes have with cable
| companies that might result in one or more channels suddenly
| becoming unavailable for cable customers. Content producers
| need distribution (or at least did, back in the day) but the
| cable companies needed them as well and I would imagine must
| have taken the brunt of customer outrage when a channel became
| unavailable.
| [deleted]
| asdff wrote:
| Why don't companies just get ahead of apple here, decamp from the
| app store, and heavily advertise a web app instead? Most of these
| apps need online connectivity anyway, so having a native app
| isn't all that useful.
| FractalHQ wrote:
| Progressive Web Apps can run offline thanks to Service Workers.
| I'm not sure how reliable or feature-complete the iOS/Safari
| service worker API is (likely half-baked and bug-ridden like
| the rest of their browser APIs), but in theory it can be
| installed once and run offline just fine.
| ravenstine wrote:
| No one can figure out how to write a good web app. Give your
| average web developer the task of showing _Green Eggs And Ham_
| to the user and they 'll always figure out how to make the page
| really slow and clunky.
|
| The web has played out, and I'm pretty sure most people use it
| for news, recipes, and Wikipedia. Everything else is done
| through apps. You don't see a lot of young people talking about
| websites. Websites are seen as something for old people, and
| the App Store is the easiest way to access services and social
| media, which is how Apple has these companies in a bind. If
| going to The Google or typing in a URL was as easy or easier
| for the average person, Apple would have lowered the cut they
| take a long time ago.
| asdff wrote:
| If you can make an app, you can make a web app. I use a few
| made by companies with very little means and they work great.
| saurik wrote:
| The primary purpose of the Coinbase Wallet app is to securely
| store and mediate access to a private key that allows the user
| to spend/transfer money (by making transactions on Ethereum or
| other similar decentralized networks, which involve a payment
| of gas fees to the network). It isn't clear that there is a
| reasonable way to build that product as a web app.
| asdff wrote:
| Why not? Coinbase lets you do this stuff from their website
| too.
| andrewstuart wrote:
| The best thing about Apple's outrageous 30% cut is it's some of
| the biggest companies in the world and Apple smashing each other
| to bits.
|
| In this society, big companies usually get all the breaks and the
| little guys get nothing, so it's nice to see the big guys forced
| to brawl.
|
| Governments, for example, folded many years ago and stopped
| taxing big companies 30% and instead give them money. Apple isn't
| as easily bribed as politicians.
| saurik wrote:
| But at the end of the day the 30% overhead goes to Apple. If
| there is some sub-market of apps where there is actual
| competition--where the companies making these apps are
| competing with each other and are driving their price lower--
| Apple's existence tacks on a 30% overhead to all of the
| competitors equally, meaning it is the user who loses out, not
| the companies.
|
| When a government taxes you 30%, the money is supposed to go
| for services or capital improvement products that eventually
| indirectly help people. That isn't how Apple hoarding this cash
| works.
| jpttsn wrote:
| Devil's advocte: Apple pays for a lot of things that benefit
| the apps, like developing the chips the app runs on. This is
| similar to how a government can build roads that the
| businesses begin taxed can drive their trucks on et.c.
| bee_rider wrote:
| It is like Godzilla smashing up other monsters; yeah
| technically I know I shouldn't be rooting for any of the
| monsters but it is kinda cool and also funny. Apple unleashing
| a giant anti-ad beam at Facebook is just great.
|
| Coinbase, I dunno, they are some tiny nobodies right? Seems
| like punching down too much.
| gl-prod wrote:
| Customers still are the one paying those 30% cut. So it's not
| nice.
| acover wrote:
| Are they? Monopolies don't set prices based on marginal costs
| but on maximizing profit. A 30% tax may very well come out of
| their profits as raising prices may reduce sales enough to
| reduce profits.
| JOnAgain wrote:
| What about the wire transfer fee I pay to my bank on my app when
| I send a wire?
| skullone wrote:
| what about buying and selling stocks? Paying yiur credit card
| through banking app (with fees/interest). is apple going to
| want a cut of all that?
| exabrial wrote:
| Apple at this point has no fear of regulatory action.
|
| I think both Red and Blue can agree they need to be reigned in
| and split up.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| I'm all for this if government would outlaw all the bad
| behavior I can currently pay Apple to protect me from, first.
| Which they really ought to do anyway. Like, do that and I'll
| join you with the pitchforks demanding Apple change its ways or
| be destroyed. Meanwhile... please don't.
| goosedragons wrote:
| Do you just not use a computer? Why would it be any
| different?
|
| I feel like Apple sells false safety and there's still scams
| and still malware in there.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| Been using computers since... oh, '91 or '92, Apple stuff
| only since ~2010. Having at least one platform I can use as
| an actually-useful-in-real-life tool without constantly
| having to scrutinize and second-guess and mistrust and un-
| fuck everything is damn nice. They could absolutely be
| better--a lot better, yes bad stuff gets into the store,
| yes some practices like loot box gambling really ought to
| be on their naughty-list except those make them tons of
| money, et c.--but I like having an option for that kind of
| experience--even if it's far from perfect, even if they're
| not as privacy-respecting as they claim, even if App Store
| rule enforcement and sandboxing protections are less than
| 100% effective, et c.--especially with government asleep at
| the wheel, regulation-wise. I _like_ that Apple 's in a
| position to force other companies not to be shitty, while
| also having an ecosystem too tempting for those companies
| to ignore. That's great for me.
|
| I'd rather the worst behavior they protect against were
| simply illegal. I'd rather Apple had other competitors
| offering similar things (though, absent regulation, that
| kinda _depends_ on their leveraging monopoly power, so it
| 's hard to see how robust competition would fit into that
| dynamic). I'd rather _no_ companies were as big as Apple
| (or Microsoft, or Google, or Facebook, or...) with hands in
| as many pies. But given the broader environment I 'd rather
| have Apple the way it is, than broken up or destroyed.
| Ideally, yes, that's what would happen, but the rest of the
| situation's far from ideal. Fix some of that first, so
| losing them doesn't _remove_ an option I like having, and I
| 'm with you, let's break them up.
| saurik wrote:
| Have you ever totaled up how much money you are spending on
| Apple's protection every month to verify it is actualy worth
| it? And are you really sure that same tradeoff makes sense
| for larger transactions? Like, if someone is spending
| hundreds of dollars on gas fees or consumable access credits
| every month, does it really make sense that they should be
| paying Apple $30/mo for "protection"? If someone gets really
| into some app and wants to plunk down $1000 for it, is there
| any amount of protection in the world that makes $300 feel
| right?
| dmitrygr wrote:
| Yes I have. Yes it is.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| Very little. The devices & OS are otherwise better-enough
| than the competition (in the case of iOS, the _sole_
| competitor, which goes a long way to explaining why the
| market sucks so bad) that I 'd still be buying them absent
| app store regulations, so that doesn't count, and anyway
| the premium's pretty low if you're comparing them to
| actually-comparable products and factor in resale value. I
| think the 30% cut (which isn't always that high, these
| days, for smaller players) of my purchases amounts to low-
| tens of dollars per year and almost all of that is from a
| single subscription. So, less than I spend on any one
| streaming service.
| smoldesu wrote:
| That's an awfully vague demand. Apple protects you from a
| handful of things and exposes you to others, it's not a
| binary situation in any sense (nor will "outlawing"
| everything you disagree with).
|
| Mind you, neither of us need to be at each other's throat.
| Apple can give me a Developer Mode toggle without taking
| anything away from you.
| jdminhbg wrote:
| > That's an awfully vague demand.
|
| It's a response to saying Apple needs to be "reined in"
| which is hardly a concrete proposal.
| bioemerl wrote:
| What prevents you from opting into a more closed garden or
| having apple outline clear walls that you can jump off you
| prefer?
|
| A law like this only gives you more choice.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| It's been discussed to death on here.
|
| One side believes there's a risk of companies leaving the
| App Store if that monopoly's broken, which would make
| things worse for them than the current situation.
|
| The other thinks that's bullshit because that hasn't
| happened on Android.
|
| The first notes that Android hasn't restricted Facebook
| practices such that Facebook's blaming them for significant
| earnings misses, so, you know, things _might_ play out a
| little differently on iOS than it did on Android, and also
| this group prefer the status quo to even the best-likely
| outcome from shaking that up, so no amount of risk to it is
| worth it to them (us).
|
| Except usually instead of writing it out plainly like that,
| the pro-Apple poster writes something shorter and less
| well-considered, probably assuming certain parts of that
| are obvious and don't need to be written out, the other
| jumps on it, a flamewar ensues, and the next time around we
| get a sea of comments that are like "I just don't
| understand how this would hurt Apple-lovers, they can just
| stay on the App Store" and it all repeats.
| trap_goes_hot wrote:
| Its BS to think Apple is the cop that is going to fight
| your fights. Apple only cares about money, and they're
| going to obediently abide by local laws - see China. We
| need more/stronger laws, we don't need to give Apple more
| power.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| Yes, of course, I agree. Again, I'd rather a bunch of the
| stuff Apple prohibits were simply illegal (plus a few
| things they don't) and that several huge companies,
| including Apple, were broken up into a dozen or more
| parts. But in the meantime I'm glad to have one platform
| where some of those practices are _effectively_ illegal,
| at least. The second government steps up I 'll be
| thrilled to see them smashed to bits (and hopefully not
| _only_ them--and hey, those others don 't have to wait as
| far as I'm concerned!).
| trap_goes_hot wrote:
| Money = Power. Why would Apple allow this breaking up?
| Its naive to think otherwise, see what is happening in
| South Korea with Samsung accounting for like 25% of the
| economy. They're untouchable in South Korea.
| paulmd wrote:
| thinking of "freedom" as a singular thing that exists is
| misleading, there's multiple kinds of freedom, that's why
| GPL exists vs BSD/MIT, there is an _inherent conflict_
| between end-user freedom vs developer freedom and the
| obvious solution (MIT "do anything you want" license is
| more free than one with licensing stipulations and
| limitations, right?) doesn't actually maximize freedom for
| everybody.
|
| We literally already are in a situation where people have
| opted into a more closed garden, that's the Apple model
| right now, and people are arguing that it needs to be
| forcibly opened up, which effectively destroys the walled-
| garden model. Like, the reason Facebook and Google are
| arguing that isn't because it's the right thing to do and
| they're on your side, they're doing it because app review
| is successfully and significantly holding back their
| spyware bullshit and this is the mechanism they want to use
| to get around it, they've found the most-appealing argument
| that will get nerds arguing on their side to produce the
| desired outcome. But ultimately they're not arguing for
| _your_ freedoms here, just like Sony wasn 't arguing that
| they should have to open up their own app store on ps5.
| They are arguing for _their_ freedoms, not end-users.
|
| Facebook literally already got caught using their dev
| credentials to deploy a spyware build to users who _opted
| in_ to additional surveillance that normally would have
| been prevented by the walled-garden. If you "open it up",
| the next step is Facebook withdraws their app from the
| normal app-store, and now you need to install the Facebook
| App-Store to use facebook, which will demand full
| permissions to spy on everything, just like their spyware
| build already did with the dev credentials. This shit is
| literally already ready to go, they just need the ability
| to pull the trigger.
|
| https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/01/facebook-and-
| google-...
|
| Yes, in a notional sense it will be "optional", in the
| sense you can choose to just not use google or facebook,
| but in the real world people need those things if they want
| to maintain their social networks/etc, so in effect _merely
| allowing sideloading to exist completely neuters any
| possibility of a walled garden existing at all_ ,
| especially against the largest players from whom you need
| the most protection. There are dozens of horoscope apps or
| whatever, there is only one facebook, so you play by their
| rules or you don't play, that is what the walled garden is
| really about preventing. Apple is using their leverage to
| hold back some of the facebooks of the world from preying
| on users with permissions bullshit and spying.
|
| If you want to "allow some people to choose a walled
| garden" that's the apple position here. You can still
| choose a not-walled-garden option for yourself personally,
| if you want. People are ideologically opposed to the
| walled-garden existing at all, they want it eliminated, not
| as merely a choice. It's sort of like the people who
| "aren't pro-abortion or anti-abortion, they just think
| everyone should have all the information and as safe an
| environment as possible and can make their own choice".
| Congrats that's the pro-choice position, and if you want
| the option of being able to choose a walled garden but
| nobody is actually forced to use it then congrats, that's
| the apple position here, go buy an android phone. Nobody is
| arguing you shouldn't be able to buy an android like people
| are arguing about apple, these sides aren't equivalent at
| all. It is quite literally an "anti-choice" argument from
| the android side here, they want that choice to be
| eliminated and walled gardens to cease to exist entirely.
|
| To go back to the original point, BSD/MIT vs GPL... Apple
| is the GPL freedom model in this situation. Apple is
| concerned about maximizing end-user freedom even if it
| kills developer freedom, and _even if some specific kinds
| of user-freedoms are decreased_. Yes, you are giving up the
| ability to sideload apps for free... and that restriction
| allows the app-review model to exist, which protects user
| freedoms in the bigger picture. Android is the BSD model,
| anything goes, and that means giving freedom to large
| players whose interests run counter to users ' interests
| and user freedoms as a whole. You have lots of freedom on
| Android, as long as they're freedoms to use google services
| or facebook or wechat or other closed proprietary all-in-
| one platforms. And if you want to run google-less
| replacement builds... go for it but that's not the
| experience 99.9% of people get out of android, they are
| just as locked-in to google services as apple people are on
| apple, but they also get much less protection via app-
| review etc.
|
| (and again, reminder that sideloading has NEVER been
| unavailable on ios... it's just not free. the cost of
| sideloading apps is $99 a year. If you allow anyone to do
| sideload with no friction, then you just enable the
| facebooks of the world to demand that you do it, there
| _has_ to be a friction there if the walled-garden model is
| ever going to exist.)
|
| And besides app review... in the big picture... what do you
| think happens when iOS Safari gets killed off? Google
| already has a basically 95% monoculture of Chrome and
| Chromium-derivatives (like Edge). When you look at how
| manifest-v3 has been handled (contrary to the interests of
| end-users), do anybody really think Google crushing the
| last 5% of the market that's holding out is going to result
| in _more_ end-user freedoms? Safari on IOS is a bulwark
| that nobody likes using but it holds back an ocean of salty
| consequences if Google can assume complete control of the
| Browser-As-An-OS platform. Like yeah Safari iOS is trash
| but it's _load-bearing trash_ as far as the broader
| internet and google monoculture...
| orangecat wrote:
| _Yes, in a notional sense it will be "optional", in the
| sense you can choose to just not use google or facebook,
| but in the real world people need those things if they
| want to maintain their social networks/etc_
|
| Also in the real world a lot of people "need" to use
| iMessage or FaceTime, so they have to use iOS whether or
| not they want the walled garden. Let Apple open up those
| protocols, and then we can talk about having a real
| choice.
|
| _Nobody is arguing you shouldn 't be able to buy an
| android_
|
| Apple was arguing exactly that for many years.
|
| _they want that choice to be eliminated and walled
| gardens to cease to exist entirely_
|
| I'll almost bite that bullet. Walled gardens are terrible
| for freedom and innovation, as we've seen just recently
| when Apple crippled AirDrop under orders from the Chinese
| government. I wouldn't say that they shouldn't exist at
| all, but it should be something that you very explicitly
| opt in to rather than the default.
|
| _what do you think happens when iOS Safari gets killed
| off?_
|
| Alternatively, allowing competition might force Apple to
| spend some effort making Safari not suck so that doesn't
| happen.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Splitting Apple into Tv, music, App Store probably makes sense
| jimbob45 wrote:
| My understanding was that the new EU rules would force Apple to
| open up their platform to competing app stores, no? In that
| view, this would seem to be a last gasp by Apple to capture
| profit that they soon won't be able to seek.
| threeseed wrote:
| Apple may be forced to have competing app stores but:
|
| a) They would be allowed to then ban apps that exist on
| alternate stores.
|
| b) They can still collect their 30% cut which no-one has ever
| said was not permitted. They already have telemetry about
| what apps are being installed on their phones and can simply
| bill the third party App Store. Non-payment would result in
| the store being banned.
|
| Similar situation happened when Apple was forced to support
| alternate payment processors in Netherlands. Nobody used it
| because it ended up being less profitable than simply using
| Apple.
| unity1001 wrote:
| > My understanding was that the new EU rules would force
| Apple to open up their platform to competing app stores, no?
|
| It gave companies 6 months to comply. They are still within
| that period. Then the fine hammer will start coming down.
| RajT88 wrote:
| When it comes to politicians, both red and blue rely on big
| tech money.
|
| It could be as simple as investment portfolios, or the more
| likely lobbyist money which fills their war chest
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| The politicians can just take short positions, their
| investments will be fine as always
| OnuRC wrote:
| Yes and recent years they're great traders anyway. High ROI
| then many funds and market avg. Great people
| cobertos wrote:
| Split up? They're not a monopoly in the phone market and only
| barely have a majority market share.
|
| I don't defend Apple's actions but I don't think this is a
| company-sized anticompetition problem. This is a regulation
| problem where it should be a user right to have access to
| alternate app stores, and to choose to run whatever software we
| want.
| weberer wrote:
| >I think both Red and Blue can agree they need to be reigned in
| and split up.
|
| Well I'm not too sure about one of them.
|
| https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/apple-inc/totals?id=D000021...
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| I think you overestimate the extent to which the political
| parties will look at the most profitable company in America and
| say "hmm, time to disrupt that".
| nickthegreek wrote:
| I think they need to be reigned in, but what is the reason to
| split them up?
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| I would love it if _public_ companies were forced to take a
| niche and stick with it - because the horizontal integration
| becomes a major anti-competitive tool. Imagine if iOS was
| developed independently and available for other phone makers
| as an Android competitor, the iPhone just being one of them.
| The App Store could be its own thing, as could Apple Music.
| AirPods could be its own business. Sure, things might be less
| integrated and tight-knit, but the market would be far more
| competitive.
|
| At this point I'm almost willing to say horizontal
| integration is the source of so many competitive problems and
| anti-consumer behavior.
| threeseed wrote:
| Where do you want to draw the circle ?
|
| Sony is allowed to sell the Playstation but not the
| controllers. Tesla would be forced to have their car
| support other operating systems. Leica could sell cameras
| but not lenses.
|
| Your idea is completely unworkable.
| akmarinov wrote:
| Yeah but some things would never have seen the light of
| day. The M1 chips for example were a huge investment that
| wouldn't have been made without the behemoth that is Apple
| behind it.
| exabrial wrote:
| I don't really understand how the M1 chip is any
| different than other speciality SOC offerings though.
| retromario wrote:
| https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/17/yeah-apples-m1-macbook-
| pro...
|
| 2-3x more energy efficient + the same performance (if not
| better) than other (Intel) chips ~2 times more expensive.
| I don't think there's been another leap like that in the
| last 20-25 years.
| dmitriid wrote:
| Apple has had over a decade designing and testing these
| chips to exact specifications and use cases.
|
| Without this you have... well, literally everyone else
| who haven't done this (because they couldn't or
| wouldn't). This is what makes it different from
| "specialty SOC offerings".
| exabrial wrote:
| Qualcomm and Samsung have made SOCs for 5-10 years longer
| than Apple though... It's not like there was no
| integrated cores before the M1.
| dmitriid wrote:
| And where exactly are those SoCs? I mean where are the
| M1-level chips? Forget M1. Where are A-level chips? They
| didn't even anticipate the switch to 64-bit on mobile
| devices, much less M1.
|
| Yes, custom SoCs are nothing new. To pretend that M1
| isn't any different from other "specialty SoCs" is
| delusional.
| trap_goes_hot wrote:
| Apple is more than willing to milk cash cows with little
| to no innovation - See iphone/ipad/macos/ios, etc. Its
| the same with chip foundaries/companies - Intel et al.
| will just milk their own cash cow with mild incremental
| releases. Companies with nothing to loose often innovate.
| (e.g. Apple with M1).
|
| Keeping companies "stay hungry, stay foolish" is probably
| in our best interest ! :)
| dmitriid wrote:
| Apple could've also milked their cash cow.
|
| And yet they implemented and executed a multilayered
| intertwined decade-long (or actually longer) plan.
|
| Their first custom chip was launched in 2010. It means
| they were designing it since _at least_ 2008, but
| definitely since before then.
|
| The original iPhone was launched in 2007.
|
| So, they were designing and releasing a new product
| category, _and_ already designing custom chips for it.
|
| Even fat lazy companies can stay hungry and foolish.
| There are not that many of them, though.
| Gigachad wrote:
| Even if another company did build it, it would have ended
| up in a Windows RT situation where no one would want to
| support it. In this case Apple can use its weight for
| good and actually get everyone else to support it
| resulting in a better situation for end users.
| macintux wrote:
| And as importantly, if the company making iPhones and the
| company making Macs were forced to be different entities,
| how would the A-series chips have evolved into the
| M-series? Apple took a decade of hard-earned
| architectural knowledge and evolution to create the M1.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| There comes a point though when you have to break
| monopoly's for the market's sake.
|
| For example, remember Standard Oil? They made oil super
| cheap, researched new oils, basically were great for
| customers almost like Amazon - but they were monopolistic
| and were shattered for being so. Similar monopolies in
| the past like Bell Telephone or, arguably, Amazon now are
| great from the consumer's perspective but terrible for
| businesses.
|
| In the past, we were less afraid to say, "you're doing
| great, but you're still too powerful."
| jacobr1 wrote:
| With the benefit of hindsight was breaking up Standard
| Oil worth it?
| [deleted]
| simonh wrote:
| I just don't see a monopoly though. Apple has simply been
| successful, and there's no anti-consumer angle to just
| making incredibly popular products.
|
| A big part of that popularity comes from the tight
| vertical integration. That's why so many Apple users see
| this kind of talk as an attack on us, you want to make
| the things we like about these products illegal or
| commercially infeasible. I just don't see how that is in
| our interests as consumers.
|
| If you want to use products that work a different way,
| fine, but I don't see how that's our problem.
| jacobr1 wrote:
| And it isn't like quality Android phones are somehow
| niche, hard to find, or cost more. The competitions is
| strong and Apple only maintains its lead (in fairly short
| 1-2 year product cycles) with innovation. If it stopped
| innovating or charging excessive amounts, they would lose
| their market share very quickly.
| threeseed wrote:
| It's this ridiculous "everything should be a market"
| concept.
|
| Would you expect a LG microwave to be forced to support
| other operating systems ?
|
| And how do warranties and support work for this.
| aliqot wrote:
| You have to be able to pivot your company. You can't just
| pick a niche and stick with it if you don't know how
| profitable it is.
| dmitrygr wrote:
| And nothing of value was lost
| ProAm wrote:
| Double taxation refers to the imposition of taxes on the same
| income, assets or financial transaction at two different points
| of time.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| This doesn't even make business sense. What money is there to be
| made in NFT transitions in December 2022?
| tylersmith wrote:
| The average Eth tx fee is around 50 cents, so the money to be
| made is about 15 cents per tx sent from the Coinbase app.
| imchillyb wrote:
| The entire world should be required to read: The Jungle, by Upton
| Sinclair.
| newbie578 wrote:
| Can't wait for Apple and Tim Cook to be brought back into reality
| by the EU.
|
| I'm popping champagne on that day.
| josteink wrote:
| As an iPhone-user, Apple is really doing everything they can to
| make sure I don't like them or their products anymore.
|
| The China riot iOS censor-update, this, the Twitter app threats.
| And all in a about a weeks worth of time.
|
| Wtf guys. Seriously.
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| Really? Every blow they deal to crypto I start liking them
| again.
| josteink wrote:
| I don't give a rats about crypto stuff generally or coinbase
| specifically. At this point I equal blockchain to snake oil
| and scamming.
|
| For me this is all about their flagrant abuse of platform and
| gate-keeper power.
| crazygringo wrote:
| You know what baffles me? That Apple doesn't have a separate,
| "VIP" review process for apps that are from established, known
| companies.
|
| When I see a independent developer complaining about Apple (or
| Google) being arbitrary in their app review process, I can at
| least understand how it's some low-paid employee trying to
| fulfill a daily quota. It still sucks, but I see the economic
| rationale of low-paid, low-skilled app reviewers there.
|
| But it really surprises me that when it comes to apps from well-
| known tech companies like Coinbase, that Apple isn't doing a
| higher-quality review by people who actually know what they're
| doing and understand the industry. That there isn't a
| knowledgeable team inside of Apple making sure that corporate
| partners are treated like partners rather than niche indie
| developers.
|
| I'm not saying a two-tier system would be more fair, because
| obviously it wouldn't be. I'm just saying it surprises me that a
| company like Apple shoots itself in the foot like this with bad
| decisions that then lead to bad press. It's such an own-goal.
| (Because in this case, the 30% cut doesn't even make sense
| conceptually, it's like trying to tax Amazon 30% on physical
| goods sold through its app.)
| Marsymars wrote:
| > You know what baffles me? That Apple doesn't have a separate,
| "VIP" review process for apps that are from established, known
| companies.
|
| What makes you confident that they don't?
| selykg wrote:
| My experience working with a very large app is that, yea,
| they basically do.
|
| Or at the very least, you get yourself in a certain
| relationship with Apple that it sort of is like this.
|
| When we had a version we needed to get through quickly due to
| a bad bug, we'd shoot our contact an email, a few leadership
| members had this contact's phone number if needed. We'd make
| a call, and within an hour we usually had the version
| approved. Sometimes it did come with a caveat of "you're
| going to need to fix this issue before the next update" or
| whatever if we hadn't quite followed the rules, but they gave
| us a bit of leeway in emergency situations.
|
| This does not really mean all updates went through this super
| fast process. We had to wait weeks at times for app
| approvals. So it's not really VIP reviewing, it's more like
| VIP treatment if you're big enough and know the right people.
|
| Edit: and yes, we often ran into the situation of the
| previous version did something that we figured was fine, and
| approved by one reviewer but then the next update was flagged
| as no good by the next reviewer despite the last one
| approving it.
| Aulig wrote:
| This process seems to be available to regular apps too now.
| When Apple rejects an update, they ask whether it's a bug
| fix update you need approved quickly. If yes, you can
| resolve the identified issues with the next update.
|
| They started mentioning this in the past few weeks when I
| was updating clients' apps.
| selykg wrote:
| it's a little different. In our case we were
| circumventing requests to make changes to the app to get
| approval. We were effectively getting a free pass to ship
| the version with a possible App Store rule breakage, this
| one time, and getting it approved super fast.
| naravara wrote:
| The problem is being an established, known company doesn't mean
| you can be trusted to not behave badly on the platform with
| regard to security vulnerabilities or user privacy. See
| Facebook as a prime example.
|
| The bad press doesn't really matter as long as they have such a
| dominant profit share on all mobile software sales.
| shagie wrote:
| An old example of well known companies behaving badly...
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2017/4/23/15399438/apple-uber-
| app-s...
|
| > The practice, called fingerprinting, is prohibited by
| Apple. To prevent the company from discovering the practice,
| Uber geofenced Apple headquarters in Cupertino, changing its
| code so that it would be hidden from Apple Employees. Despite
| their efforts, Apple discovered the activity, which led to
| the meeting between the two CEOs, in which Cook told Kalanick
| to end the practice. If Uber didn't comply, Cook told him,
| Uber's app would be removed from the App Store, a move that
| would be a huge blow to the ride-sharing company. According
| to the article, "Mr. Kalanick was shaken by Mr. Cook's
| scolding, according to a person who saw him after the
| meeting," and ended the practice.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Cook love money.
|
| Meanwhile he is cracking down on Chinese protestors and
| doesn't bat an eye.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| You read that story and _Cook_ is the villain? Uber
| deserved to get slapped down for that behavior. Should
| have knocked them off the store for a week just to punish
| them for the attempt.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| It just shows he has principles when he gets paid more.
| shagie wrote:
| Uber doesn't pay _any_ cut to apple. The money collected
| by Uber is for services and clearly falls under:
|
| > 3.1.3(e) Goods and Services Outside of the App: If your
| app enables people to purchase physical goods or services
| that will be consumed outside of the app, you must use
| purchase methods other than in-app purchase to collect
| those payments, such as Apple Pay or traditional credit
| card entry.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| Well, this is why we can't have nice things.
|
| I get so ticked off with these other tech companies that on
| the one hand want me to support them in their fight to get
| more laisez faire access to Apple devices, and on the other
| actively engage in what are undoubtedly some of the most
| consumer hostile privacy invading practices on the planet.
| They actively compromise security, and then lobby and
| payoff senators to get better access because they are
| unable to compromise consumer security enough to make the
| profits they need.
|
| The entire industry from Apple on down to startups needs to
| be nuked with a "no use of user information for any
| commercial purposes at all" law. Coupled with draconian
| fines that pierce the corporate veil and are assessed per
| user violation. We need something like GDPR in the US, but
| more strict. Apple isn't the problem. I'm starting to see
| that this entire industry is problematic.
|
| Apologies for the rant.
| shortcake27 wrote:
| > The bad press doesn't really matter as long as they have
| such a dominant profit share on all mobile software sales.
|
| It also doesn't matter because there's no alternative.
|
| "Side-loading" can't come quick enough. I have no issue with
| the App Store vetting apps arbitrarily, but there needs to be
| an alternative where developers can provide their apps direct
| to consumers without this BS.
| varispeed wrote:
| > You know what baffles me? That Apple doesn't have a separate,
| "VIP" review process for apps that are from established, known
| companies.
|
| That sounds elitists and what is wrong with capitalism. It gets
| distorted by big corporations having their way with their big
| elbows inhibiting growth and competition. Then you have people
| supporting the VIP lane are part of the problem.
|
| Corporations should get equal treatment regardless of their
| size or in fact small business should get _more_ help than big
| corporations.
| lostgame wrote:
| They do. Source: I work for a major bank in Canada and I know
| people with direct lines to people at Apple who handle this
| kind of thing.
| hackernewds wrote:
| This is what doomed Twitter early on. Not respecting the devs,
| Apple has its day of reckoning approaching as well.
| musk_micropenis wrote:
| What difference do you think a "higher quality review" would
| make? Apple is enforcing their strict policy that all purchases
| from within apps (with some documented exceptions) must use
| Apple's IAP and cough up the 30%.
|
| This has nothing to do with Apple's kafkaesque review process
| and everything to do with their policies, which have been
| increasingly strictly enforced for the last couple of years.
| bonestamp2 wrote:
| I think he means the "people who actually know what they're
| doing and understand the industry" part. Someone who
| understands how crypto works would understand that the user
| is not making a payment to the app developer and therefore
| Apple has no claim to a cut of the transaction. If this is
| the way that Apple wants to enforce their policy, they'll
| have to take a cut of the transaction when I open my banking
| app and use that app to pay a bill.
| unityByFreedom wrote:
| Isn't it obvious that making crypto payments easier allows
| devs to circumvent Apple's cut?
|
| I don't think people would accept any percentage taken of
| crypto exchanges.
|
| Let's not beat around the bush. This is Apple protecting
| the way it earns money, not trying to levy fines on crypto
| to make _more_ money. I 'm pretty sure they understand that
| this decision makes them unpopular with some people. Their
| bet is that it preserves the model where there is still a
| functional review system for code that runs on your phone.
| simondotau wrote:
| Apple doesn't ask for or take a mandatory cut of in-app
| money transfer services. They also don't take a cut of
| any physical goods sales (e.g. grocery shopping) or
| physical services (e.g. Uber car rides).
|
| They take a 15% or 30% cut of all in-app experiences
| (e.g. entertainment, productivity software, content
| subscriptions). This is levied through the App Store and
| IAP.
|
| (They take 0.15% of card payments if they are routed
| through Apple Pay, levied from the regular merchant fee
| associated with all card payments. However this is not
| forced on anyone and bank pays anyway, willingly, as the
| lower rate of fraud means the fee represents good value.)
| unityByFreedom wrote:
| > Apple doesn't ask for or take a mandatory cut of in-app
| money transfer services.
|
| I suppose you mean like when I use Venmo or my bank.
| Okay, but I can't readily use those to buy other in-app
| things like subscriptions, right? So it's consistent.
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| > Isn't it obvious that making crypto payments easier
| allows devs to circumvent Apple's cut?
|
| No, it isn't. Please enlighten us.
| unityByFreedom wrote:
| It is another form of payment. What's to get?
| [deleted]
| maccard wrote:
| Echoing the other comments here, why do you think they don't? I
| worked on <insert_very_large_game_here> and we had dedicated
| contacts at apple, special agreements for (some) rules and a
| different SLA to what I now know is standard.
| singularity2001 wrote:
| >> Apple doesn't have a separate, "VIP" review process for
| apps
|
| they do. Some years ago my app was in the top 100 and I had
| nice telephone calls with real human people.
| smoldesu wrote:
| It's shocking that this isn't part of the $99/year developer
| program. 15-minute quarterly check-ins with an Apple
| developer seem fully within their means.
| richbell wrote:
| But then it wouldn't be free money.
| danpalmer wrote:
| It sort of is. You get 2 developer technical support
| tickets (DTS). These are essentially at the level of having
| an engineer look at your code and help you figure it out.
| With these they've done things like review my build
| settings when I was having difficulty with a complex build.
| I believe App Store consultation is one of the available
| topics, but if not it would be worth trying anyway. These
| tickets are clearly worth a lot more than $50 each if used
| well.
| smoldesu wrote:
| Interesting, I didn't now that. Still though, my
| recommendation is mostly tongue-in-cheek because even
| spending 5 hours with an Apple engineer won't fix OP's
| problem. Nevertheless though, thanks for sharing!
| 1123581321 wrote:
| What's OP's problem? Everyone has told them that there
| are multiple tiers of attention in the review department.
| Plus you get the support credits for specific issues
| (i.e. ones that aren't a business problem like the 30%
| cut.)
| nailer wrote:
| I imagine OPs problem is that Apple wants 30% of all the
| Blockchain transactions. Which is insane.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| If that's what he was referring to, then agreed. There is
| no red telephone access to appeal broadly strategic
| decision-making, no matter who is the developer, sadly.
| unityByFreedom wrote:
| A review of the above three exchanges:
|
| "Apple doesn't have dedicated support for established devs"
|
| "They do, I was in it"
|
| "Why don't they support _all_ devs this way? Apple sux. "
|
| Added:
|
| "They do, you get 2 free support tickets"
|
| "Oh they do? It still wouldn't fix every problem. Apple
| still sux."
|
| In this lose-lose environment, I can only expect Apple will
| simply end up pissing people off no matter what it does.
|
| I realize we all know this but I've never seen it expressed
| so succinctly in a thread.
| smoldesu wrote:
| The problem isn't Apple's lack of transparency (at least
| for me) but the fact that they charge $99/year for
| features that should be a God-given right. They will
| always piss people off as long as they charge them for a
| product that should be included with their computer by-
| default. Until then, I may as well demand Apple include a
| few rocks from Mars and astronaut ice-cream every year,
| at least then I'd be getting my $99's worth.
| unityByFreedom wrote:
| > features that should be a God-given right.
|
| What features are you asking for that apply to this
| thread?
|
| You do not have a god given right for _them_ to follow
| _your_ policies.
|
| > They will always piss people off as long as they charge
| them for a product that should be included with their
| computer by-default.
|
| The goalposts move with every comment. You don't have the
| right to determine what parts of their products are free
| vs. paid.
| freediver wrote:
| Curious what would the criteria for VIP status be if there was
| such system?
| littlestymaar wrote:
| They could charge a few tens of thousands a year for the
| status, and most non-small companies would pay for it easily.
| [deleted]
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| > ... Apple doesn't have a separate, "VIP" review process for
| apps that are from established, known companies.
|
| Why do you say that they don't?
| busymom0 wrote:
| They do. Small developers get apps rejected for now including
| detailed update notes whereas big companies like FB, Uber,
| Google routinely put out updated with generic update notes
| which is against Apple's developer guidelines.
|
| Uber geofenced Apple's Cupertino headquarters to hide that it
| was tracking iPhones and yet they weren't banned entirely from
| the App Store. They got a mere threat from Tim Cook.
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2017/4/23/15399438/apple-uber-app-s...
| matwood wrote:
| > You know what baffles me? That Apple doesn't have a separate,
| "VIP" review process for apps that are from established, known
| companies.
|
| I'm not sure this is true. I know years ago they had an
| expedited track you could get on. Once we got on it, we had
| very quick reviews, re-reviews, and releases. I would read
| about people waiting weeks while we almost always had 48h turn
| around. I don't think expedited exists anymore since turn
| around is always quick now, but I could easily see them routing
| big names towards a senior review team.
| pavlov wrote:
| Imagine a bunch of game developers join forces to create
| something called the Game Asset Service. When you unlock a
| feature in a game by one of these developers, it gets delivered
| through the GAS.
|
| The GAS is legally a separate entity from the game companies
| (although controlled by them), and it sets a varying fee for its
| delivery network. Maybe the fee is quite high, and unlocking a $6
| game feature actually consists of $5.50 fees paid to the GAS and
| $0.50 paid to the game developer.
|
| Would Apple say: "Sure, this delivery fee you're paying to GAS is
| something completely separate from the in-app purchase. We'll
| just take our cut only from the $0.50 and let you pass all of the
| $5.50 through to this GAS corporation that you partially own."
|
| Of course not, because that structure would be such a transparent
| attempt by the game developers to evade Apple's fee.
|
| The situation in crypto isn't all that different. These gas fees
| are ultimately paid to Ethereum stakeholders, and Coinbase
| happens to be a big one.
| mgraczyk wrote:
| This is true and matters, but there is a key difference that
| affects our sense of justice and morality.
|
| Coinbase didn't create Ethereum, and the vast majority of
| Ethereum stakeholders are not apps on the app store. The fact
| that ETH gas is mostly unrelated to Coinbase and the app store
| should also matter in determining how we feel about this.
| zadler wrote:
| You're suggesting that coinbase launched NFT support on its app
| so it could make a pittance in gas fees?
| Manuel_D wrote:
| At this point it'd probably be better to invest in building good
| browser web UIs over dedicated apps. No appstore verification, no
| fees, it basically seems like a no-brainer at this point. I guess
| it sacrifices viral growth through appstore installs, but maybe
| just don't support transactions on the app and kick them to the
| browser.
| [deleted]
| g42gregory wrote:
| Why wouldn't companies like Coinbase just release an iOS App on
| their web site? Why would they even need to go through the App
| Store? What are the benefits of the App Store for established
| companies with large existing customer base? If Coinbase or
| Amazon, for that matter, publish an iOS app on their website, I
| would not hesitate to just install and use it, without an App
| Store.
| skinnymuch wrote:
| Most people want to update their iOS versions past iOS 14
| (jailbreakable depending on device) or iOS 15-15.1.1 where one
| can install TrollStore. Which is still a whole thing people
| won't want to do.
|
| Otherwise the user would have to take the ipa, get an app like
| altstore on a compatible computer. Sync it. Then be stuck with
| the limitations of sideloading like needing to refresh the
| authorization every 7 days.
|
| Either way. Most people won't do this. We saw what happened
| when Fortnite was off the Play Store. It wasn't that effective.
| [deleted]
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| Users of iOS don't have that kind of control over their phone.
| Software is installed (or deleted) at Apple's behest not the
| user's.
| OnuRC wrote:
| How else are they going to advertise for shitcoin (shib) in
| their App name in Apple store? App in their website can't do
| that.
| aaronharnly wrote:
| You can't install a native iOS app from a website.
| snarf21 wrote:
| Release it how? They can't load it on an iPhone without Apple's
| cert.
|
| The only path would be to require jail breaking and most
| consumers trust that even less.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Just imagine if Microsoft or Linux distributions could do this on
| desktop. They would make so much money.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| You mean like the Microsoft gaming store does already?
| sylens wrote:
| The Microsoft Store now allows you to use your own payment
| processing to avoid giving them a cut at all (https://blogs.w
| indows.com/windowsexperience/2021/06/24/build...). They also
| allow the installation of other app stores.
|
| Microsoft has been overly keen to open up their own store on
| Windows to use as a cudgel against Apple in future courtroom
| cases such as the Epic one.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| > _The Microsoft Store now allows you to use your own
| payment processing to avoid giving them a cut at all_
|
| Not for games. https://www.engadget.com/microsoft-zero-
| percent-cut-doesnt-e...
| smoldesu wrote:
| It's been a while since I've used Windows, but I don't think
| using the Microsoft Gaming Store stops you from installing
| software from the internet. I could be wrong.
| jobs_throwaway wrote:
| you mean like how I'm free to install any games I wish to
| download on my PC without Microsoft taking a cut?
| nickthegreek wrote:
| They do it on console.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Ack, a real conundrum here. On one hand, Apple's ridiculous
| behavior. On the other hand, hard for me to imagine a more
| useless and counterproductive invention than NFTs...
| bogwog wrote:
| It really is like trying to choose between Giant Douche and
| Turd Sandwich.
| bloppe wrote:
| Gas fees are peer-to-peer transactions. This is like Apple
| deciding that all Venmo transactions should be subject to their
| 30% fee. Not only would it be impossible to implement given the
| existing infrastructure; it would be dumb.
| latortuga wrote:
| It emphatically does not matter to Apple if the transactions
| are peer to peer or subject to fees or paid for with doge coin.
| Coinbase offers an app that allows users to purchase digital
| goods ("NFTs"). In order to purchase those digital goods, iOS
| apps must use app store payments.
|
| Solutions:
|
| 1. don't offer users the ability to buy those digital goods 2.
| add a layer of payment indirection where users pay coinbase and
| coinbase pays for the digital goods - using app store payments!
| 3??? execute a PR campaign that "apple doesn't understand
| crypto" amidst a historic crypto crash
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Apple... what the heck is wrong with you?
|
| This is _not_ the time to be strengthening the rules. You 've got
| the Digital Markets Act already entering force in Europe which is
| going to most likely break App Store dominance over there in just
| a year or two. The US has senators eyeing the Open App Markets
| Act again after Elon's threat (and if it doesn't pass now, when
| senators see an open Europe and a closed US, what about then?).
| You've got antitrust investigations opened in the UK. This is
| time to be giving concessions hoping to keep power - _not
| doubling down!_
|
| Edit: If Apple's claims about it being "privacy and security" are
| true, here's how to keep power. Drop the 30% cut, make a $25-$50
| fee every time a new version comes out for a quality app review
| from a 3rd party independent board, drop some of the more onerous
| restrictions, and maybe then regulators would be willing to allow
| the App Store to remain. Instead...
| acomjean wrote:
| There is nothing wrong with them. They're maximizing profits.
| They will get away with it, they are so big. (The biggest?)
|
| People will still support them, as long they can have the
| fastest phones/laptops. I started on a mac clone in the mid 90s
| (they almost went under), but I finally moved away last year,
| though I still have an iphone. The Linux desktop works great
| for developing.
|
| Its a societal and network effect problem. This isn't new.
| We've been warned. We've chosen to ignore.
| bilekas wrote:
| As much as I believe companies can decide for themselves
| whatever they want to do within the law, this seems incredibly
| stupid. They're pushing the limits of their customer base, even
| the Apple fanatics..
|
| I can't fathom why this decision was made.
| warcher wrote:
| I mean, just make it 30%, or whatever, of stuff that _uses
| their in-built app store payment_. If you don 't want to use
| their payment infra, you don't pay and you make whatever
| arrangements with the user both parties agree to. It forces
| them to justify their cut other as more than just rent-seeking.
| Netflix doesn't need any help getting a CC number. Or
| delivering apps, frankly. Apple inserts themselves as a
| middleman in that capacity for their benefit and theirs alone.
| Despegar wrote:
| Neither the Open Markets Act or the Digital Markets Act will do
| anything about Apple's commission. You can have alternative app
| stores, sideloading, whatever. It doesn't change anything about
| using Apple's intellectual property and having to pay for it.
| All it will do is make the products worse for users. But
| developers aren't going to get the outcome they want, which is
| to ride the rails for free.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Right - but those pushing for external app stores _assume_ it
| will work that way. Instead... Apple 's probably going to
| make some forms and demand manual reporting and commission
| payments.
|
| However, it would be so contrary to the _spirit_ , if not the
| _letter_ , of the law that I expect any such attempts would
| quickly gain antitrust scrutiny and new legislation declaring
| that APIs and software included in a device may only be
| monetized at point-of-sale (with the exception of
| subscription plans marketed toward consumers). It is possible
| that a court would even see it as such a violation of the
| law's intended effect that they would step in.
| Despegar wrote:
| No government is going to expropriate Apple's intellectual
| property just to move some money from Apple to developers.
| It also wouldn't get passed courts.
| EMIRELADERO wrote:
| The whole point of the DMA EU regulations is that one
| should be able to make and distribute an iOS app without
| entering into a contractual relationship with Apple at
| all
| EMIRELADERO wrote:
| How is me making an app that makes API calls to iOS an "use
| of Apple's intellectual property"? I'm not distributing any
| IP besides my own, all I'm doing is telling the API to
| execute in a certain way inside the hardware the user already
| posseses.
|
| A good analogy would be me making a new control panel for a
| mechanical machine, where the panel has metal arms and rods
| that connect to the machine's original mechanisms to bring
| about a certain result that the machine itself would be
| incapable of bringing on its own.
|
| You wouldn't say I can't distribute that new panel I made
| because the original machine is patented, right?
| hesdeadjim wrote:
| It would be the silliest legal move to make any concessions
| until forced to by a court. If they indicate that they don't
| need that full 30% in enough different contexts, it will lend
| credence to a larger argument against 30% _at all_.
|
| Disagree with it or not, were I Apple Legal, I would never in a
| million years allow a concession without a fight.
| midjji wrote:
| Microsoft is preemptively cooperating, and will likely not be
| forced to create a separate OS for the eu. Apple will be
| forced to create a EU specific one, one which not just lets
| people install other Appstore's, but which will ask the user
| if they want the google Appstore or a free one, or the apple
| one, the first time you start it.
|
| Knowing when to lose is quite valuable. Microsoft learned
| that the hard way last time.
| __derek__ wrote:
| This seems like a consistent application of existing in-app
| purchase rules: purchasing a digital good to enjoy within the
| app requires IAP support for everyone else, so why not
| Coinbase? It's not clear (to me) that Apple is doubling down or
| strengthening the rules here.
|
| If anything, I suspect that Coinbase intentionally violated the
| rules with this update so that it can sign on with Epic and
| Twitter in the fight against Apple.
| Y_Y wrote:
| What if I buy AAPL in my trading app or USD with my forex
| broker? I bet they're not taking 30% on that.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| If the app you were using included a transaction fee to
| purchase the AAPL stock, Apple would claim a 30% cut of
| that fee.
| thefounder wrote:
| So online banking apps should be charged 30% of forex
| transactions as well, right? Either way the whole comission
| thing is plain stupid. Maybe paying for app review & download
| but why for transactions?
| paulmd wrote:
| forex transaction _fees_ , which is different from forex
| transaction value.
|
| yeah arguably if apple wanted to say "you're doing a forex
| trade in app, TD Ameritrade makes $10 in fees on that $20k
| transaction, we deserve $3 of that, and it needs to be paid
| via our IAP scheme" that's a consistent application of
| their rules at least.
|
| again though, coinbase's PR department is doing what PR
| departments do, they've got you talking like coinbase would
| be charged 30% of the whole transaction and that's not
| actually what Apple is saying here... just like it turns
| out Qualcomm may not have been entirely honest about ARM's
| licensing changes and many of the specifics of EVGA's
| complaints are highly misleading or specific to their
| (atypical) business model, despite a generally-correct
| thrust.
|
| Like, kinda funny that grown-ass adults don't understand
| that _a literal PR department_ might not always be
| presenting the situation _entirely_ fairly... and this is a
| business community we 're discussing that in, no less. You
| need to apply critical thinking about why someone might be
| saying things now, and why they're saying them in that
| particular way... they're happy to lead you into a wrongful
| conclusion even if they themselves haven't said anything
| technically wrong: that is the conclusion they intended for
| you to draw and you consumed the information uncritically
| and you did draw that conclusion. They walked you right
| down the garden path there, give that PR guy a raise.
|
| Just like Sony can argue for app-store openness on Apple's
| platforms but argue they shouldn't have to open their own
| platform to competitors too... they want to keep their 30%
| cut but force their competitors to give up theirs. And no,
| consoles are not sold at a loss anymore, PS5 hit hardware
| profitability around 6 months after launch...
| jonathannorris wrote:
| But Stocks and Currencies aren't technically a digital
| good, they are partial ownership of a company or a hard
| currency. A NFT is exactly the definition of a digital only
| good, seeing as how a large number of NFT use-cases are to
| replace / make portable in-app goods sold in online games /
| mobile apps, which all currently require IAP fees to
| purchase on mobile. So this is just Apple applying the same
| rules to NFTs that apply to purchasing items in mobile
| games.
|
| Apple was never going to allow the blockchain to remove
| their 30% cut on these purely digital items, as much as
| crypto folks preached that the blockchain would remove us
| from the shackles of App Store IAP payments.
| smileysteve wrote:
| To be nuanced, cryptocurrency in a custodial wallet is no
| more of a digital good than a stock/forex/cash custodial
| brokerage/bank account.
| sverhagen wrote:
| Honest question, but is that really what's going on here?
| Is the analogy 30% of forex transactions, or 30% of the
| fees charged for forex transactions?
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| Don't forget, your stock broker should give Apple 30% of
| every stock purchased.
|
| edit: for those paying a broker fee, does Apple even take
| 30% of that?
| geocar wrote:
| > If anything, I suspect that Coinbase intentionally violated
| the rules with this update
|
| Trading volume has been falling 30-44% every quarter:
|
| https://s27.q4cdn.com/397450999/files/doc_financials/2022/q3.
| ..
|
| https://s27.q4cdn.com/397450999/files/doc_financials/2022/q2.
| ..
|
| https://s27.q4cdn.com/397450999/files/doc_financials/2022/q1.
| ..
|
| so I'm thinking they don't have a product and they know it.
| This NFT product was supposed to be so hot their servers
| couldn't take it!
|
| https://www.gfinityesports.com/cryptocurrency/coinbase-
| nft-w...
|
| so what gives? I think _someone_ is lying here. Maybe even
| bad enough someone could get fired if this doesn 't get
| turned around. And if that's the case, it seems plausible to
| me that someone looked at 30% of "their" revenue going to
| Apple and just said _fuck it_.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| Yep. Then they saw Spotify and the like attacking app store
| and decided it's a hot moment to pile on.
| __derek__ wrote:
| This fits with what I've heard from ex-Coinbase folks.
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| Coinbase is facilitating purchasing between third parties. Do
| you have to pay 30% Apple tax when purchasing things in the
| e-bay app on an iPhone? (I honestly don't know, but these
| seem equivalent to me)
| mrbombastic wrote:
| "Digital" goods is the differentiator. ebay, amazon and the
| like can sell physical goods without giving a cut. It is
| why you can't buy kindle books in the amazon app, they
| would have to give apple a cut.
| px43 wrote:
| When you buy an NFT using the Coinbase wallet, you aren't
| buying it from Coinbase, you're buying it from some other
| random person. The Coinbase wallet is only being used to
| facilitate a person-to-person transaction, and view
| personal NFT collections.
| darkwizard42 wrote:
| They would still take a cut. If the transaction is still
| happening in the Coinbase app then it is an in-app
| payment. It is still the transaction of a digital good.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| they don't care who you're buying it from.
| mrbombastic wrote:
| It has been claimed elsewhere that coinbase charges
| transaction fees for these, i don't know if that is true
| or not but if it is it does not seem to be an
| inconsistent application of the rules. It would be the
| same as buying a kindle edition from an independent
| publisher through amazon's iOS app, amazon takes a cut so
| they have to pay up. I am not defending the policy just
| not clear to me this is an inconsistent application.
| [deleted]
| luckylion wrote:
| It would be 30% of the ebay fee, I suppose. That would be
| wild though. Would banks be paying 30% of their account
| fees that are related to actions taken on the iphone?
| houstonn wrote:
| From Coinbase's post:
|
| For anyone who understands how NFTs and blockchains work,
| this is clearly not possible. Apple's proprietary In-App
| Purchase system does not support crypto so we couldn't comply
| even if we tried.
|
| This is akin to Apple trying to take a cut of fees for every
| email that gets sent over open Internet protocols.
| arcticbull wrote:
| I guess that means there's no way for the IRS to collect
| taxes on anything crypto related - or indeed on any non-
| cash transactions...
|
| Oh, wait, they can just pay in dollars. I don't think that
| Coinbase has their problem solving hat on :)
| __derek__ wrote:
| I read their thread before my comment because the title on
| this submission was pretty inflammatory. Their tendentious
| argument is exactly what made me think this was a trial
| balloon.
| Someone wrote:
| > This is akin to Apple trying to take a cut of fees for
| every email that gets sent over open Internet protocols
|
| No, only the ones sent using their hardware. And I think
| there's no law or regulation that would forbid them from
| doing that.
|
| Similarly, if, currently, the App Store model doesn't
| support what Coinbase wants to do, they shouldn't have made
| an app.
|
| (this isn't a statement about the desirability of the
| current situation)
| mistermann wrote:
| > And I think there's no law or regulation that would
| forbid them from doing that.
|
| They're lucky that the US has the particular form of
| "democracy" that they do, because I suspect the current
| regulations aren't exactly "the will of the people".
| dahfizz wrote:
| I don't think that's a reasonable interpretation of the
| current rules, though. Apple doesn't (yet...) demand a
| 30% cut when you buy stocks via an app on your iphone.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| They're demanding a 30% cut of the _transaction fees_ ,
| not of what is being purchased.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| > No, only the ones sent using their hardware.
|
| Apologies if I'm misunderstanding, but are you saying my
| iPhone belongs to Apple?
|
| (I may be confused by how you mean "their hardware".)
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| I believe that could be changed to:
|
| > No, only the ones sent using [an app distributed via
| Apple's App Store].
|
| I don't want to speak for anyone, but that's (probably)
| more accurate to the intended meaning.
| Kab1r wrote:
| Since Apple's App Store is the only practical way to
| distribute apps on Apple devices, there isn't really a
| difference. The fact is that the owner of an apple
| devices has no control over their device.
| dahfizz wrote:
| Should apple also take 30% of every Venmo transaction I make?
| If I use my iphone to do a check deposit to my bank account,
| should apple take 30% of that?
|
| This is not an in app purchase, IMO.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| Coinbase charges transaction fees and those are the in-app
| purchases for which Apple are claiming their cut.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _This seems like a consistent application of existing in-
| app purchase rules..._
|
| Exactly, the dumb/risky thing to do would be to make a
| special exception for Coinbase. This is no different from a
| consumer buying Robux to spend on a 3rd-party game.
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| This would only be comparable if Coinbase sold BaseBux
| through the app or something, which gave access to features
| within the app.
|
| This is more like your stock broker app letting you buy a
| stock, although "cryptocurrencies aren't securities,
| they're speculative assets". So maybe more like buying art
| via an app.
| baq wrote:
| If crypt ever gets treated as securities, you'll see Apple
| backing off the same minute.
| shagie wrote:
| (I haven't gone trawling through captures) but its been there
| for at least a month.
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20221030193939/https://developer.
| .. (search for NFT in the page).
| cocacola1 wrote:
| I wonder if they think the hammer is going to fall either way?
| If so, it makes sense they'll take while the takings good.
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| But they can't even take here. Obviously coin base can't give
| them 30% revenue even if they were willing to. That would be
| like asking for a 30% cut for deposits from the bank apps.
| This just seems like spite for the new rules.
| nick238 wrote:
| I don't think in banking apps you're purchasing anything
| while using the app (in-app purchases). If you buy an NFT
| in an app, you are purchasing it in the app, no?
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| No, you're purchasing it but it's not in the app. And you
| can absolutely pay bills in a lot of banking apps, or
| even use zelle to buy things in a store. The whole point
| of the nft is that you can trade it outside of the app.
| If I buy a physical limited edition poster on etsy does
| Apple get 30% of that sale?
| xkqd wrote:
| Yeah. Does this apply to forex fees I incur via my banks?
| shagie wrote:
| > 3.1.3(e) Goods and Services Outside of the App: If your
| app enables people to purchase physical goods or services
| that will be consumed outside of the app, you must use
| purchase methods other than in-app purchase to collect
| those payments, such as Apple Pay or traditional credit
| card entry.
|
| https://developer.apple.com/app-
| store/review/guidelines/#goo...
|
| It isn't an in app purchase. It doesn't pay a cut to
| Apple.
| brookst wrote:
| Coinbase PR got you.
|
| Apple is asking for 30% of fees charged, not amounts
| exchanged. It's like if a bank app charged you $1 to
| deposit $100; Apple would want $0.30, not $30.
|
| Still debatable and I've got no sympathy for Apple, but
| this kind of OMG they want to take 30% of all cash flows
| response is exactly the misleading PR people are trying to
| gin up.
|
| EDIT: here is what Coinbase themselves say:
|
| Apple's claim is that the gas fees required to send NFTs
| need to be paid through their In-App Purchase system
| baq wrote:
| Should they also take 30% of exchange fees in your
| Fidelity app?
| nickthegreek wrote:
| there is no digital good in this scenario.
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| Coinbase isn't actually taking any cut of the
| transaction. The gas fee goes directly to the blockchain
| network itself. That fee varies depending on the total
| number of transactions, so as far as I understand it's
| actually not possible to have it go through Apple's in-
| app purchase system.
|
| I'm not supporting Coinbase here, though, and I wouldn't
| be mad if this policy were actually just a tacit way to
| ban cryptocurrency transactions in the App Store. But
| your analogy doesn't fit.
| deadbunny wrote:
| Coinbase absolutely take fees that are unrelated to
| network fees. When you buy $COIN from Coinbase you don't
| touch the network at all they just note in their database
| that you bought 0.5 of $COIN for $10 total, $2 which was
| their fee. It doesn't hit the network till you withdraw
| it. This is the fee Apple is talking about.
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| No, it's not -- Coinbase Wallet is their non-custodial
| wallet, meaning you actually get a real address on the
| blockchain rather than just a row in their database.
| https://www.coinbase.com/wallet
| sam0x17 wrote:
| I completely agree, but the real problem here is they are
| dependent on, nay, addicted to the revenue they get from that
| 30% cut. Only way to fix this is regulation and I believe that
| Apple's quarter-based short-sightedness will essentially ensure
| that they keep pushing until they get regulated.
|
| If someone's OKR is based on quarterly revenue from App store,
| they aren't going to care until regulation is literally at
| their doorstep. That's next quarter, not this quarter. Next
| quarter that person could retire or quit.
| Y_Y wrote:
| Dependent? From over here it just seems like they're Walter
| White with such a huge pile of cash that life itself becomes
| meaningless.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| Companies exist to enrich shareholders and they all agree
| on one point: they want more.
| codealot wrote:
| Especially newer shareholders who just started their
| wealth building journey - they want more innovation and
| more products so the share price and dividends can
| increase as the company scales more.
| [deleted]
| fijiaarone wrote:
| Somebody should tell shareholders about the goose.
| smoldesu wrote:
| I think App Store revenue is pretty close to hardware
| revenue at this point, which is absolutely _mind-boggling_
| once you consider the volume /margins of the iPhone. 80-odd
| billion dollars of Developer Program subscriptions and 30%
| cuts, what a racket.
| sharkjacobs wrote:
| > App Store revenue is pretty close to hardware revenue
| at this point,
|
| Fiscal 2022 Services revenue is 77 million and iPhone
| revenue is 220 million, so it's not there yet, but it's
| beating iPad (29 million) and Mac (40 million) combined
| which is nothing to sneeze at.
|
| I don't think that Apple discloses App Store revenue
| separate from Services revenue
|
| https://sixcolors.com/post/2022/11/apples-fiscal-2022-in-
| cha...
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| Hmm, I thought it's traditional media feature to confuse
| millions with billions, didn't expect that on HN.
| [deleted]
| awinder wrote:
| Apple says they paid out 60B in App Store revenue to
| developers in 2021, if you used the 30% figure (which is
| unfair because they charge 15% on +1yr subscriptions and
| <1M revenue) that would be like 26B in commissions. Take
| that for what you will.
| JayPalm wrote:
| Would you like a [visual representation](https://www.stat
| ista.com/statistics/382260/segments-share-re...) of how
| incorrect you are? App Store revenue is part of
| "Services", which accounts for just shy of 1/5 of the
| company's revenue. The rest is by definition hardware.
| Certainly services as a growth division has been a big
| part of Apple's story to investors, but to say that App
| Store revenues is close to hardware revenue is clearly
| daft.
| usefulcat wrote:
| For-profit companies (especially large ones) are machines
| whose primary function is to make profits. Anything else
| they do along the way (employ people, make products,
| provide services, trash the environment, etc) is a side
| effect.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| He's still got a point. there is no scenario where apple
| needs the money they get from app store, so there has to
| be another explanation. I mean, no one will convince me
| that a company with 366 billion in revenue is dependent
| on 12 billion in revenue from app store.
|
| There is something we're not being told here. Because the
| reasons all these commenters are throwing out make zero
| sense.
| usefulcat wrote:
| > there is no scenario where apple needs
|
| You're assuming the existence of a 'need'. Part of my
| point is that there doesn't have to be any 'need' for
| additional revenue beyond the revenue itself.
|
| It also seems like you may be assuming that the person or
| people responsible for this and other similar decisions
| are incentivized to consider _all_ of Apple 's revenue as
| opposed to a specific subset of it, which I suspect is
| unlikely.
| [deleted]
| conductr wrote:
| I think they know regulation is imminent and are just wanting
| to milk it dry while they can
| asdajksah2123 wrote:
| I was about to write a comment that Apple's App Store
| earnings are basically pocket change for them, but I looked
| up the most recent numbers and they've exploded.
|
| They claim they gave devs ~$64Bn in 2021. That means they
| collected about $27Bn in revenue in 2021, and most of that is
| basically money for free and almost entirely profit.
|
| It's probably about 10-12% of their profit and grows without
| them having to do much at all.
| willcipriano wrote:
| How much time to iUsers spend within native apps compared
| to third party apps? I'd imagine it's mostly third party,
| can't imagine tons of people spend a hour a day in the call
| log. If it was made illegal to take any cut on the app
| store, they would still have to run it otherwise that new
| iPhone is just a telephone and a browser, who's paying $1k+
| for that?
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Safari, photos, messages, mail, maps, notes...
| willcipriano wrote:
| So less functionality than a first or second generation
| iPhone, but you want to charge a months rent for it? Who
| cares what sensors and tech you have if there isn't any
| applications to take advantage of them? It's like
| releasing a state of the art game console but not having
| any games to play on it.
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| Apple always pushes until they are regulated they put a spin
| on it trying to present what they are forced to do as hurting
| consumers. That's their usual playbook.
| mistermann wrote:
| Not that I'd ever expect it to happen, but the DOJ coming
| down hard on Apple like they did with Microsoft could go a
| long way to getting corporations to voluntarily rein in
| their aggressive business practices.
|
| For anyone interested in the antitrust space, this is a
| pretty good (though excessively optimistic imho)
| newsletter:
|
| https://mattstoller.substack.com/
| guywithahat wrote:
| Regulation will make it worse long term; what we need is
| competition, which seems to be coming in the way of alternate
| android OS's. ~75% of China uses android, and they all use
| google alternatives. Huawei uses HarmonyOS, and there's no
| reason to believe this won't slowly make its way around the
| globe.
| midjji wrote:
| At this point apple is just in denial. The eu alone will force
| them to make every user pick the default appstore on first
| install from alternatives including both something free and
| google, and probably samsung, and force them to provide easy to
| use api for everyone else.
|
| Its hilarious to see the difference between apple, google and
| microsofts reactions. Two of them went we will fight tooth and
| nail, microsoft who tried that last time instantly went we are
| dropping the fees instantly, unless you want more? and will
| work with regulators to make open access ...
| chrismarlow9 wrote:
| Apple is about 6.5% of holdings in SPY. It's economic suicide
| to hit them hard and they know it. Especially with impending
| recession and a heavy bear year.
| mkrishnan wrote:
| Great move. I hope apple blocks all scammy apps like coinbase to
| protect consumers from cryptocurrency pyramid schemes.
| nerdawson wrote:
| Yes, as a stupid user I can't be trusted with my own money, I
| need a corporation to step in and tell me how I'm allowed to
| spend it.
| hello_friendos wrote:
| lowbloodsugar wrote:
| Well you apparently bought an Apple device despite your
| awareness of its policies which you vehemently disagree with.
| everfree wrote:
| I also vehemently disagree with Google's policies. Where's
| the third place?
| stale2002 wrote:
| Apple isn't blocking scammy apps. Instead what they are doing
| is demanding a 30% for running such an app.
|
| As long as you pay them the Apple tax, they don't care.
| kevinventullo wrote:
| Apple didn't do this to protect consumers, they did it because
| they weren't getting their cut.
| nick238 wrote:
| So the Ethereum network is entitled to their cut, but not
| Apple?
| aliqot wrote:
| What exactly is the Ethereum network's cut?
| tylersmith wrote:
| This issue is about fees paid to the Eth network. The
| exact amount depends on the gas market and what users are
| doing specifically.
| Veen wrote:
| The gas fee is Ethereum's cut. It's paid to validators.
| p0pcult wrote:
| So, is it "Ethereum's" or the validator's cute?
|
| Who is this monolithic "Ethereum"?
| Veen wrote:
| It depends what you mean by "Ethereum". The usual meaning
| is the network that runs the blockchain. Validators are
| part of the network. I mean, it's a decentralized network
| --that's the point--there is no monolithic "who".
| p0pcult wrote:
| Right, which is why it is weird when you say it is
| "Ethereum's" cut.
| [deleted]
| andrewflnr wrote:
| We have to ask the question: is Apple actually this stupid? I
| don't particularly like or trust Coinbase, so I'm not going to
| take their word as gospel. I have to wonder if (a) it's an
| oversight, a possibility they raised in the thread (trying to
| give Apple an out?) or (b) there's something weirder going on
| that we can't figure out from outside.
| arvindrajnaidu wrote:
| Apple collects 30% if the product is purely digital and has no
| monetary value outside of the app.
|
| Could one not prove that NFTs have value outside of Coinbase? Oh
| wait I see the problem.
| arvindrajnaidu wrote:
| Ah they are paying for in-app Gas. I see.
|
| A customer is to pay one network for gas, but that network
| won't pay another network for their value add.
| tylersmith wrote:
| The title is currently wrong. This is not about exchange fees
| paid to Coinbase, but transaction fees paid to the Ethereum
| network when using smart contracts through the Coinbase app.
| anm89 wrote:
| I'm so confused as to why anybody still supports apple. They have
| utter contempt for their customers.
| rvz wrote:
| I did say that the roles have been switched, and Apple in 2022 is
| like Microsoft in 1998 and is getting away with by doing even
| more worse things. [0]
|
| It is going to take more than just Epic, to get rid of the 30%
| cut in fees.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23564759
| p0pcult wrote:
| "If you were a product person at IBM or Xerox, so you make a
| better copier or computer. So what? When you have monopoly market
| share, the company's not any more successful.
|
| So the people that can make the company more successful are sales
| and marketing people, and they end up running the companies. And
| the product people get driven out of the decision making forums,
| and the companies forget what it means to make great products.
| The product sensibility and the product genius that brought them
| to that monopolistic position gets rotted out by people running
| these companies that have no conception of a good product versus
| a bad product."
|
| -Steve Jobs
| shepherdjerred wrote:
| Apple still makes great products. Nothing can beat a MacBook
| (especially the new ones), AirPods work pretty well. Many
| (most?) people that use iPhones or Apple Watches love them.
| risho wrote:
| their hardware is good and the ecosystem is good, but their
| software is god awful. macos has essentially zero window
| management to speak of and it's refusal to adopt vulkan has
| siloed it off from the rest of the industry. if they would
| just stop being stupid and adopt vulkan they would pick up
| support for a large number of games for free. it also has
| really bad multimonitor support.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| They are getting worse particularly in the software
| department. Two that really grind my gears (there are
| others):
|
| MacOS on Apple Silicon for an extremely long time (maybe it's
| solved now? 2 years later?) which caused incredibly glitchy,
| almost unusable cursor movement if you let your battery drain
| to 0%, then plugged it back in and woke it from hibernate.
|
| Screen Time in macOS is unbelievably, ludicrously, fully
| broken. _Nothing_ about it works almost at all. Metrics for
| children don 't show up. Web filtering falls open after a few
| hours at random (presumably because the background services
| crash). The "site not allowed" page predates HTML5 and
| randomly doesn't work. You can't block built-in apps like
| Apple News, the best you can do is set a 1-minute time limit.
| Tons of IP Addresses and Apple phone-home addresses get
| blocked on the "allowed sites only" mode resulting in
| constant popups. I had to pay for Qustodio because it's just
| _useless_. Also, it has _elementary bugs_ that are
| horrifying. For example, the pane where you add allowed
| websites doesn 't remember websites you just added when you
| dismiss it - so if you open the pane again without a reboot,
| and add another site, it forgets the one you added last time
| you opened the pane.
|
| However janky other things might be on macOS, Screen Time
| with "Allowed Sites Only" is _by far the most broken thing on
| macOS_ , bar none. Try using it with your younger children
| and rage in frustration as it crashes-open silently and
| allows Private Browsing with no filtering after a few hours.
| tomxor wrote:
| All the children comments to this post are amusing... Some
| things get worse, some get better, some things depend on
| the use case.
|
| They all miss the point. The problem with Apple in it's
| relentless mission of maximising vertical integration, is
| that you are forced to align with their decisions at _every
| single level_ , whether it's technical, social or
| political. "Cult" doesn't do it justice, Apple is has gone
| far beyond this.
|
| Most other proprietary tech is not like this because the
| pieces are smaller with some reasonable degree of either
| interchangeability or combinability. Apple isn't neutral
| technology it's some kind of political entity. When you
| sign up, you are handing over _all_ control, which is fine
| until they do something you don 't like at which point your
| only choice is abandon the entire thing or accept it - I
| don't give a crap about NFTs, but I give a crap about some
| things, and I don't want to be part of an ecosystem where I
| can be pushed around. I don't blame the people who are
| stuck in it, it's hard to exit something that can define a
| lot about how you work with technology, they are
| essentially the victim of a big bully with a very difficult
| to stomach exit strategy.
| smoldesu wrote:
| tomxor, you may survive us yet. Unfortunately, many of
| the hackers on this site aren't willing to see the forest
| for the trees. We're too busy fighting over myopic
| identity politics to imagine a future without the
| problems we face today.
| jensensbutton wrote:
| My M1 Pro still randomly loses internet requiring a
| restart.
| iamacyborg wrote:
| My asus wifi card in my pc does that too
| 2muchcoffeeman wrote:
| Have you tried flushing the DNS cache?
| typon wrote:
| This has almost become a meme at this point. Anyone in
| the office who has a problem with their internet on the
| Macbook, I just send them this:
|
| sudo dscacheutil -flushcache;sudo killall -HUP
| mDNSResponder
| atribecalledqst wrote:
| I haven't seen mine lose Internet entirely, but I have
| seen it randomly switch between the two Wi-Fi networks I
| have set up where I live. I eventually got frustrated
| with this and then told it it can't automatically connect
| to one of them anymore.
| therein wrote:
| Likely that it is related to Bluetooth as well.
| Especially if you have AirPods connected. I noticed the
| wireless connection quality degrades significantly when
| the device is connected to an AirPod.
| abdusco wrote:
| > _almost unusable cursor movement if you let your battery
| drain to 0%, then plugged it back in and woke it from
| hibernate._
|
| Argh. I hate it when this happens. It's infuriating that
| this hasn't been fixed yet.
| flutas wrote:
| > They are getting worse particularly in the software
| department.
|
| I actually just found one that has me scratching my head...
|
| If I plug a USB-C -> Ethernet adapter in to my M1 MBP on
| OSX Ventura...it brings down the entire network.
|
| Just ethernet + adapter + power is fine, plug it into the
| laptop, entire network dies.
| bartvk wrote:
| Which USB-C -> Ethernet adapter is that?
| jrmg wrote:
| It's probably a bug in your network switch:
| https://mjtsai.com/blog/2022/05/11/usb-c-hubs-breaking-
| ether...
| rootusrootus wrote:
| That's a weird one. When you say it brings it down, what
| do you mean is actually occurring? I have a USB ethernet
| adapter in use on my M1 MBP running Ventura as I write
| this, and it's been completely fine. But if there's a
| gotcha out there lurking, I'd be interested to know what
| triggers it.
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| Do they run their own DHCP server on a laptop maybe?
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| > They are getting worse particularly in the software
| department.
|
| I would argue the opposite.
|
| Their software has historically been _terrible_.
|
| OG iTunes ranks at the top of the worst pieces of software
| I've ever used - rendered the iPod almost useless for me.
|
| Their software is still unimpressive, but I'd argue it's
| trending in the right direction.
|
| The App Store is functional. Safari is not terrible. Their
| email client is fine. The Apple TV UI is pretty snazzy,
| etc.
| sn0wf1re wrote:
| The Apple TV is a multi-user device with extremely poor
| multi-user support. Considering how long it has been used
| by B&Bs it amazes me that Apple has never allowed guest
| access.
|
| Music App sometimes breaks. It just doesn't play certain
| sections of some songs, even on replay, closing the app
| doesn't help; a device reboot is required to play songs
| in their entirety. And this happens on both devices that
| are connected via hardwire as well as wifi/LTE.
|
| Considering Apple's revenue it is ridiculous how long
| bugs persist in their applications.
| atribecalledqst wrote:
| I can't speak for the original iTunes (I used it but not
| heavily and too long ago to remember), but I've been a
| consistent user of iTunes between Snow Leopard and
| Monterey and my experience is that it's gotten worse with
| every release. With Music being the worst iteration yet,
| and significantly worse than the last version of iTunes I
| used (on High Sierra).
|
| I actually have a whole laundry list of things I consider
| regressions in the Music app, but I'll just regale you
| with the most frustrating one for my use case:
|
| If you use Home Sharing with wired headphones, it works.
| If you use wireless headphones with a local music
| library, it works. If you use wireless headphones and
| Home Sharing, it does not work. The program refuses to
| play anything. This was a nice surprise when I first
| tried to use Music after getting this laptop.
|
| (I'm actually really curious if anybody else experiences
| this behavior -- anybody reading please chime in if so!)
| ericmay wrote:
| Yea I don't get this either. I find while maybe lacking
| some features, a lot of their applications work either
| just fine or great. Apple Maps for example, the Podcasts
| app, many others.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| You have to be kidding, right? The Apple Podcasts app is
| widely considered one of Apple's worst - and before Apple
| started playing "rating pop up" shenanigans, it was rated
| only 1.8 stars on the App Store.
|
| https://9to5mac.com/2021/11/19/apple-podcasts-app-store-
| rati...
| ericmay wrote:
| I use it every day and it works just fine for me. What's
| wrong with it?
| olyjohn wrote:
| Before iTunes, I think the OS was great. I think iTunes
| was the catalyst that pushed OSX down the priority list.
|
| Once they saw they could make money selling music, they
| started focusing on that and pushing that POS down your
| throat. Then when they finally realized they could sell
| apps on iPhones, that's where the focus went. The OS has
| stagnated since then, IMO. Their bread and butter has
| been selling apps, music and cloud storage, and it's
| clear (IMO) that's where all the actual development focus
| has gone.
|
| Also the e-mail client is trash. It is supposed to
| support MS Exchange, and my co-workers and I used to use
| it at work just fine with OS 10.14. It was an awesome
| replacement for shitty Outlook. Once 10.15 came out, it
| would quit syncing, freeze up, stop sending email, etc.
| This was not just once in a while, it would literally
| quit working almost immediately. I was forced back into
| Outlook again. It felt like they never tested it with
| Office 365 even once. But of course, their own e-mail
| services work fine with it.
| bink wrote:
| The first example is oddly specific. I think you can find
| flaws like that with almost any software or hardware
| manufacturer, regardless of monopoly status.
|
| The second example is, I think, a perfect example of what
| most large companies do, which is to neglect specific
| features in favor of others. People want to work on the
| "new hotness" rather than maintain something written 10
| years ago by a team that no longer exists.
|
| I don't think either suggests that Apple software is
| getting worse as a whole. The simple fact that they rolled
| out an entirely new architecture and it's worked pretty
| flawlessly (except for some fraction of people when the
| battery drains to 0 and it hibernates and needs a restart)
| suggests to me that they aren't just resting and pulling in
| money based on their monopoly status (which they don't even
| have in any industry).
| 2muchcoffeeman wrote:
| There was a time when Apple would release a new version
| that was basically a maintenance release. And they would
| squash a bunch of bugs. I think a lot of people still
| remember this. Perhaps through some objective measure,
| it's still ok. But I agree it all feels worse.
| TravelPiglet wrote:
| Old macOS versions were usually extremely buggy. People
| have just forgotten this
| olyjohn wrote:
| I don't know man. I used to work on tons of PPC and early
| Intel Macs that ran OSX (before iPhone and all that).
| Those were pretty great machines, and the OS basically
| just was an OS. No shit software preinstalled on top of
| it.
|
| The first real shit app was iTunes. And ever since then,
| the OS has just stagnated while they put more software in
| to sell music, apps, and cloud storage.
| 2muchcoffeeman wrote:
| There were plenty of bugs. But there were at least a few
| releases that addressed these. Snow Leopard is probably
| the most notable which shipped with no new features. I
| think I first started on Panther and there was at least 1
| upgrade during the PowerPC times that really cleaned
| things up and improved performance quite a bit.
|
| Which is why I speculate that overall, it might not be
| better. You had to wait a couple years to get the fixes.
| Now they probably ship the fixes and new features on a
| more regular basis.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| > The first example is oddly specific. I think you can
| find flaws like that with almost any software or hardware
| manufacturer, regardless of monopoly status.
|
| True... but this one has caught me, over and over, and it
| makes me paranoid of a low battery. Before I just had a
| lazy habit of not getting off the couch until the battery
| actually died from 0%. Now I panic the moment it turns
| red, because the cursor bug quickly makes working
| miserable and requires a restart for my sanity.
|
| > I don't think either suggests that Apple software is
| getting worse as a whole.
|
| To me, it suggests they are letting more surface-level
| bugs get a pass than previously. Before, they might have
| had poorly designed software once in a while, but not
| things this basic and easily discoverable.
| PTcartelsLOL wrote:
| Gawd... a restart... unthinkable.
|
| You should try windows...
| Aeolos wrote:
| Seems to have been finally fixed on MacOS Venture 13.0.
|
| But 2 years of this bug was embarrassing.
| atribecalledqst wrote:
| A lot of folks are disagreeing with you in the replies but
| I actually agree with you to be honest. I recently got a
| new Macbook Pro after my old one unexpectedly died and
| there are a lot of things in Monterey that I find highly
| annoying relative to the last version I was on (High
| Sierra). I complained about Music in another reply.
|
| One thing that really annoys me that I don't remember from
| High Sierra is this weird "overbounce"/"overscroll"
| functionality. This drives me absolutely nuts! Preview does
| this for example, and actually so does Firefox (but you can
| disable it there).
|
| If you open up a PDF in Preview, set the zoom so that a
| full page width is entirely within view (i.e. no scrolling
| needed), then scroll a bit to the side anyway, you'll see
| what I'm talking about. The viewport moves even though the
| full page width is in view. I've found that this triggers
| even when I'm trying to scroll down, resulting in a weird,
| glitchy scroll feel.
|
| I feel like I should temper the bad with the good a bit
| though. For example I have not had Bluetooth fail randomly
| with this new computer, whereas it failed quite a lot on my
| last one -- often requiring a reboot to fix.
| erdos4d wrote:
| > Nothing can beat a MacBook You can't upgrade the RAM, it
| has a weird processor that tons of code won't run on, and it
| starts at $2K. I have the latest one sitting on my desk right
| now from my work and it is a useless brick that I can't do
| any actual work on because so much code we use simply won't
| compile on it. I use a mini from 2018 for actual work and the
| macbook runs teams and zoom. Complete joke of a computer.
| WanderPanda wrote:
| They are really good compared to whats out there but they are
| far from excellent in many details. They are still quite far
| from Microsoft where almost every detail is atrocious and
| only the whole is making the cut because the sum of the parts
| is quite terrible.
| croes wrote:
| Crumbs beat a MacBook
| sneak wrote:
| My iPhone hostname is Capitulation because I reluctantly
| switched back because Graphene is worse.
|
| I miss ssh clients that don't Philip K Dick me. I miss
| syncthing. I miss being able to use non-Apple services to
| sync my photos. I miss being able to run any apps I want from
| the web without identifying myself to a vendor. I miss
| NewPipe and I miss background apps and I miss basic local mp3
| players that don't report what I play to remote parties
| against my will.
| ubermonkey wrote:
| Hilariously (at least to me), that was the hostname for my
| first iPhone when I gave up on the HTC I was using and got
| a 1st-gen iPhone.
|
| WinMo was SO AWFUL, man.
|
| re: SSH clients, what does "PKD me" mean? Have you tried
| Blink?
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| Did no one here get utterly destroyed when updating to
| Ventura deleted your git, requiring you to either:
|
| 1. install xcode, which requires apple id, which your company
| might not support
|
| Or
|
| 2. Side load git, which your company's security policy might
| prohibit?
| TravelPiglet wrote:
| Same as every major release? Accept the xcode bojo and
| continue?
| rootusrootus wrote:
| That sounds unpleasant. Hasn't been a problem for me,
| however, my work laptop is managed 100% through our
| corporate IT folks, including the Apple OS updates and
| packages. I've never needed a personal Apple ID to get
| Xcode.
| radicalbyte wrote:
| I doubt that many people here would stick with companies
| who had both of those policies.
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| 99% of the time it's not a problem, but yes, I am leaving
| the company for other reasons
| tourist2d wrote:
| Sounds like a crappy company.
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| The root cause is the apple update deleting git. I mean
| wtf
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I'm curious about that. Git has been part of xcode CLI
| tools for years, I can't recall the last time it was came
| by default with the OS.
| p0pcult wrote:
| ...according to some.
|
| Nothing like the trifecta of ipod/itunes/iphone under Steve.
| nikanj wrote:
| Especially now that they've abandoned the race to be ever
| thinner and eliminate keys for a touch bar
| olyjohn wrote:
| Now if they can just put a fucking headphone jack back in
| the iPhone, kthx. Batteries are getting denser, mainboards
| are getting smaller, phones are bigger than ever... but no
| room for a headphone jack! I guess they just want to sell
| more AirPods.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Happiest I've been about a computer in a while was when
| they backtracked on the things they'd removed from the MBP
| and put them back. Combined with the M1, it finally became
| the first MBP since 2015 that I thought was an actual
| improvement over all previous versions.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| anderber wrote:
| Honestly, the Pixel Buds are better than the AirPods. So it's
| not a guarantee that Apple makes the best products. However,
| I do like their phones and laptops better.
| teawrecks wrote:
| Nothing can beat a macbook at what? I literally can't think
| of one thing. Maybe battery life? Maybe? It's surely not
| compatibility, long term support, reparability, or
| performance per $1.
|
| They dropped support for every graphics APIs except their
| own. They launched a greenwashing campaign that is always out
| of stock of parts, updates are mandatory regularly regress
| performance on old hardware, and we all know you're paying an
| apple premium for the same performance as something 60-70%
| the price.
|
| They used to define good build quality, but most laptops are
| pretty sturdy these days.
| smoldesu wrote:
| See, this is your problem. Abhorrent business practices can
| exist alongside great products, just look at Nestle. Nothing
| will excuse them for pumping freshwater out of inland lakes,
| or paying for paramilitary organizations to oppress their
| slave labor camps. It just means that people are fine eating
| Hershey Bars without thinking about the child labor that made
| their chocolate.
| josephcooney wrote:
| What products do Nestle make that you consider "great"?
| smoldesu wrote:
| When I'm hacking? Coffee-mate and Perrier.
|
| When nobody's looking I've been known to enjoy a Hot
| Pocket or two, though... I can feel my dignity slipping
| through my fingers as I type this.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Is blocking Coinbase Wallet an abhorrent business practice?
| Invictus0 wrote:
| They didn't block it, they just wanted a 30% cut. Yes it
| is abhorrent to rent seek 30% of every transaction when
| you literally contributed nothing whatsoever to that
| product.
| zaphirplane wrote:
| I get why people have a negative reaction and it makes
| sense. Then I look at retail where there are several
| wholeseller adding a %, stores adding a %, drop ship
| sellers adding a percent
|
| There was a documentary that showed the price of a
| chicken sold in a store and how much the chicken farmer
| makes vs the retail price and I can't say the situation
| is wildly out of tune with retail or the big SAP/ERP
| consulting
| Gigachad wrote:
| The equivalent situation would be if the world had two
| landlords which together owned essentially every single
| bit of commercial property on the planet (or at least
| most of the countries) and if you wanted to sell chicken,
| you'd have to agree to whatever terms those landlords
| set, which are mostly identical between them.
|
| But it's ok because you have the option of building your
| own store on your own island and convincing enough people
| to relocate to your island to buy chicken direct.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| If it actually mattered to enough people, they would sail
| over to that island. The fact that most don't is
| extremely telling about what people actually want, I
| think.
|
| (F-Droid is _right there._ It 's relatively trivial to
| install on an Android device. As is, last I checked,
| replacing the whole Android OS).
| pixl97 wrote:
| In the US a large portion of phones are via carrier
| contract and hardware locked. So no.
| smoldesu wrote:
| This might be a relevant comparison if the App Store had
| any businesses it competes with, like the ones grocery
| stores contend with.
| dools wrote:
| That's not what rent seeking is. Apple has a very strong
| distribution channel, in part because of how trustworthy
| it is, that costs money to run, so it's fair they take a
| cut of sales.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| > contributed nothing whatsoever
|
| The hardware it's running on?
|
| I don't see an issue. If users have a concern, they can
| use another platform.
|
| ETA: it does seem to be the kind of thing that the market
| will sort out... If apple is going to build a reputation
| for being hostile to use as a crypto transaction
| platform, then Android is just a quick trip to the
| nearest Best Buy away.
| smoldesu wrote:
| They didn't contribute that, the user already payed for
| it (and Apple pocketed ~40% of the MSRP). The hardware is
| paid for, same as the software it comes pre-installed
| with.
|
| > If users have a concern, they can use another platform.
|
| They can't. Apple locks the bootloader even after
| purchasing/unlocking the device. It would be nice if we
| could though!
|
| > it does seem to be the kind of thing that the market
| will sort out...
|
| No, I think the arbitrary limitation of what you can
| execute on hardware you purchased will be a bit more of a
| sticking point than that. At least when we're addressing
| the single largest corporation in modern American
| history, Europe seems to agree with me.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Another hardware platform, these days Apple functionally
| sells computing appliances, not general purpose
| computers. It's why I recommend Apple to all my relatives
| who don't want to think about the guts of the machine and
| I recommend windows or Linux to everyone I know who wants
| to write their own software.
| smoldesu wrote:
| That's great! Giving me bootloader access has nothing to
| do with how your grandma uses her iPhone though, at least
| if I'm understanding your grandma right.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| It requires more than zero engineering effort on their
| part so they won't. It is also, technically, an attack
| vector... A sufficiently sophisticated phisher might be
| able to convince somebody to replace their bootloader,
| but we both know that's not why Apple does it.
|
| They do it because it allows them to capture the revenue
| for use of their computing appliances and it saves them
| every headache of having to provide customer support for
| hardware they sell that isn't running an operating system
| they wrote.
|
| Serving your use case isn't what they make computers for.
| Google does though. I recommend switching platforms.
| stale2002 wrote:
| > I recommend switching platforms.
|
| Well, there are other options.
|
| Other options, such as how the EU is going to force Apple
| under threat of government force to make changes.
|
| Anti trust laws have existed for a century now. We can
| make new ones, or use those existing uncontroversial laws
| to apply to the newer tech monopolies.
|
| If Apple doesn't like it's then they can stop selling
| their product in every country where this is the law. (So
| that includes the entire EU, and hopefully the USA soon,
| as there are laws in Congress being considered right
| now).
| shadowgovt wrote:
| EU antitrust differs from American antitrust, IIUC,
| because American is couched in harm to consumers while
| Europe is couched in harm to merchants.
|
| So I can see how the EU might see a way towards saying
| "Your ownership of the vertical stack makes you a market-
| maker and market-caller on a very lucrative app market;
| you bear some responsibility to making that market fair
| and competitive." This is the same kind of thinking that
| caused France to crack down on Amazon offering discounts
| on books that undercut local booksellers because they
| could collapse the booksellers' guild (even though
| Amazon's shipping integration means they actually _can_
| afford to charge so little).
|
| But in the US, the first hurdle such a case has to cross
| is "Why doesn't the user and app maker just go to Android
| if Apple's so bad?" Which, indeed, is the question I'm
| asking myself here; Coinbase could just jump ship and
| offer their app only on Android, and then, hey, the
| Android ecosystem is slightly better than their
| competition.
| smoldesu wrote:
| Serving my use case is what computers are. If Apple
| doesn't make those devices, then why are their devices
| capable of doing everything I described? They already
| wrote the bootloader. They already wrote the sideloading
| code, app sandboxing model, filesystem isolation APIs and
| even the packaging standard needed to distribute iOS
| applications. What's the major engineering hurdle they're
| struggling with, relative to everything they've already
| done?
| shadowgovt wrote:
| I don't follow. They don't let you replace the
| bootloader; I thought that was your concern. So they
| can't do everything you want them to.
|
| I can run Doom on a refrigerator but it's still a
| refrigerator. Apple makes computing appliances.
| smoldesu wrote:
| I don't follow either. If this refrigerator got an update
| that started showing you advertisements, you'd want the
| manufacturer to have some form of accountability that
| they don't further degrade the experience. Having
| multiple choices benefits everyone and forces the OEM to
| not make bone-headed moves. You're arguing that Apple
| shouldn't do good things because... Apple doesn't care? I
| already know that. I own many of their devices and
| experience it first-hand.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| > If this refrigerator got an update that started showing
| you advertisements, you'd want the manufacturer to have
| some form of accountability that they don't further
| degrade the experience.
|
| Me personally? I might just let it happen (especially if
| it goes hand-in-glove with some other benefit, like lower
| cost). Or if it's too annoying I'll switch refrigerators.
|
| > Having multiple choices benefits everyone and forces
| the OEM to not make bone-headed moves
|
| That's the business model of the alternatives to Apple.
| Apple's business model is value delivered through
| vertical integration. For their end-users, they're
| building a better product _because_ they own and control
| the hardware, OS, and software ecosystem.
|
| It's Nintendo-Seal-of-Approval thinking, and it's not
| inherently wrong so long as there are alternatives (and
| there are many, just none that have a supported path to
| using Apple's hardware).
|
| > You're arguing that Apple shouldn't do good things
| because... Apple doesn't care?
|
| I don't think Apple sees opening the bootloader as a good
| thing. It increases the ways the machine can be in a
| broken state with the only benefit to people tech-savvy
| enough to just use other hardware. And, of course, from a
| pure-business standpoint, it might kick a leg out from
| under the money-made-through-vertical-integration stool,
| which is of concern to them.
| WJW wrote:
| > They can't. Apple locks the bootloader...
|
| There are other hardware manufacturers than Apple?
| smoldesu wrote:
| Nope. Choosing your software platform on iPhone isn't an
| option though, if it was then we wouldn't be having this
| conversation right now.
| homonculus1 wrote:
| Hershey bars are made by Hershey, not by Nestle.
| bluejekyll wrote:
| There is the oddity of KitKat in the US being made by
| Hershey but Nestle internationally.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I was expecting a Nestle product in your last sentence.
|
| Also, pretty sure effectively all chocolate benefits from
| child labor because of where cocoa trees are located.
| smoldesu wrote:
| FWIW Hershey was _also_ accused of child labor /slavery
| alongside Nestle, but you're right and I fumbled that one
| at the 95-yard-line.
| egberts1 wrote:
| Right. And that would be fumbling at the "5" yard line
| but the opponent touched and miraculously tipped the ball
| back to you, and you recovered and still made your points
| (puns intended).
| [deleted]
| lucisferre wrote:
| Is it really _their_ problem? Blaming the consumer has
| consistently proven the least effective way to effect
| change.
| smoldesu wrote:
| Exactly, so we need to stop blaming the consumer and
| start making systemic change with regulation. If the
| largest player doesn't agree to play nice, then it's time
| that we change the rules.
| mort96 wrote:
| So, p0pcult cited with a Steve Jobs quote which, in this
| context, can only be understood to mean, "Apple is
| becoming/has become a company where sales and marketing
| people are running the companies, and the product quality
| is suffering for it". shepherdjerred points out that the
| product quality is still extremely high, so the quote
| doesn't seem apt.
|
| "Apple makes some good products but is evil" is valid
| criticism of Apple, which shepherdjerred hasn't disagreed
| with. "Apple is making bad products these days because they
| are lead by marketing and sales people" isn't valid
| criticism of Apple (in shepherdjerred's, and my, opinion).
| smoldesu wrote:
| There is certainly proof of Apple's software quality
| declining in recent years (iTunes, MacOS, Xcode, APFS,
| Time Machine, oh god the list never ends) but there's a
| larger point to be made about how regulation can be a
| salve for our ills. Apple wouldn't need to be fighting
| this war if they played nice, but much like Nestle they
| refuse to heed our warning until it's too late.
|
| Apple is at a scale where pithy Steve Jobs quotes don't
| aptly describe their relationship with the economy or
| world governments. We cannot trust them to do the right
| thing, so our _best hope_ for turning them around is
| holding them accountable for the things we want.
| aYsY4dDQ2NrcNzA wrote:
| What's wrong with APFS?
| busymom0 wrote:
| I disagree. While they may make decent products, the quality
| and attention to detail has gone down. Especially the UX has
| gone downhill entirely. Look at how bad the wallpaper
| changing UX is on iOS 16 for example.
| roody15 wrote:
| Hmm apple still makes great hardware but I think software
| wise quality has suffered and this quote applies...
|
| For example on you phone you will get a red alert in settings
| ... when you click it ... says Try apple music for 3 months
| .. or will say setup apple pay ... or sometimes say sign in
| with icloud. (even after declining multiple times)
|
| These are just ads disguised as systems alerts ... hurts the
| experience and comes off as cheap.
|
| Also on Apple Computers and Phones alike it keeps asking to
| sign in and use icloud. But then gives you only 5gigs of
| space ... not enough to even backup your phone and then tries
| to upsell a monthly fee for expanded storage.
|
| The software is designed to confuse users into purchasing
| when simply taking photos. New iphone with 64 gigs of storage
| 40 gigs free .... user gets message they are out of space in
| icloud and can purchase more space. They are quite aware that
| many users are not savy enough to know they don't need to use
| icloud at all with photos or anything. Every time you update
| the phone it prompts you to "sign in" or "create and
| account". Again comes off as cheap and pushy.
|
| I can go on and on but money crunchers are definitely at the
| table with software these days.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| > Nothing can beat a MacBook
|
| At what? Price? Performance? Gaming? I/O?
| koonsolo wrote:
| I'm a Linux guy, not an Apple fan. But the hardware is
| always top notch. If you look at the MacBook: the trackpad,
| the sound, the battery life, the overall quality, ... I
| haven't found any laptop hardware that comes even close to
| it.
|
| If you know a product that does, please let me know so I
| can buy one and run Linux on it :).
| TinyRick wrote:
| I have a Dell XPS from around 2018 that I run arch on.
| Only issue I've had is needing to replace the battery
| once due to swelling (very easy to swap), but otherwise
| the hardware and specs are on par with my work assigned
| Macbook.
| Gigachad wrote:
| I have had a few dell XPSs, newest one was a 2019 one and
| they work, but they were not even close to the quality of
| the full macbook package. The keyboard was dogshit, the
| webcam didn't work on linux, the mic picked up huge
| amounts of fan noise, finger print scanner didn't work on
| linux and the maintainers of the open source drivers
| believed the hardware to be critically insecure so there
| is no reason you'd want it supported anyway.
|
| You could upgrade the ram on the 16" versions though
| which is nice. Although this is still not something I
| have ever done on a laptop. The new Macbooks now have
| easily replaceable batteries which is a welcome change.
| dlivingston wrote:
| But how does it feel to use? On my MacBook Pro, the
| trackpad and keyboard feel like I am manipulating text
| and windows at the speed of thought. On my work-assigned
| Dell, with specs ~matching my MacBook, it feels like
| there's a hidden friction to everything I do. Like going
| from skating on ice to jogging on sand.
| Gigachad wrote:
| Had a 2019 16" XPS and I'd describe the keyboard as
| borderline unusable. It was weirdly squeaky and if you
| hit a key on the edge a bit it just wouldn't register so
| I had so many typing mistakes.
| trap_goes_hot wrote:
| Apple is incredibly profitable, but Lenovo, dell, hp combined
| ship 60% of the laptops worldwide. Customers overwhelmingly
| choose non-Apple laptops.
| viscanti wrote:
| Apple routinely has 90%+ of the laptop marketshare for
| computers that cost $1,000 or more. Seems weird to compare
| their marketshare to markets they're not competing in.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| How does that say anything except that Apple laptops are
| so expensive that for anything they don't need Apple for
| they don't have to spend $1k?
| mint2 wrote:
| The cellular Apple watch has a terrible flaw. The networks
| only support it on the premium feature post paid contract
| plans and not on any prepaid plan. There's no way to have a
| prepaid cell plan and add a watch for yourself. It's an awful
| user experience. This limitation has no logical reason other
| than short sighted cell company greed and lack of Apple
| pushback
| DiabloD3 wrote:
| Unfortunately, none of that is true. Apple hasn't made a
| product worth owning in a long long time.
|
| Macbooks no longer can run Windows and don't quite run Linux
| yet (the two largest OSes in the world, and Linux On The
| Desktop(tm) is a bigger market share than OSX), iPhones still
| can't run Android after all these years (the majority phone
| OS), and Apple Watches suffer the issues all the smart
| watches have (no real good use case, battery lives of a day
| or less, violates "zero distraction" ethical concerns,
| sensors are fulltime uploaded to the cloud and there are no
| good Federal controls on personal data in the US, etc).
|
| I see no reason to ever buy Apple until they actually catch
| up to the rest of the world. Apple is a cult, and a very
| expensive one to buy into.
| Gigachad wrote:
| Defining a phone as worth owning as "being able to run
| android" is very arbitrary. I believe that nothing but the
| iphone is worth owning because the other's can't run iOS
| yet. Android just isn't suitable for real world usage yet.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| However this is not Apple products. This is other peoples'
| products. For example, other peoples' software. Following the
| "tech" company playbook, Apple is simply acting as a middleman.
| And in this case a 30% tax man.
|
| Is the volume of crypto transactions rising. Coinbase announced
| something about increased volume back in September. Perhaps
| those sales and marketing people at Apple see an opportunity to
| profit as crypto investors lose their shirts.
| donmcronald wrote:
| > However this is not Apple products.
|
| The App Store is a product and it's a bad product for
| developers and users when Apple is using their market
| position to take 30% of revenue.
| echelon wrote:
| At this point iPhone isn't a product. It's control,
| manipulation, and extortion of the free market well beyond
| any notion of fair competition.
|
| Apple won 51+% of American consumers. Now it taxes all of the
| computing and commerce workloads they engage in.
|
| Imagine if Tesla charged Starbucks money to drive you to
| coffee. Because that's exactly what Apple has been doing for
| the last decade. They've buttoned up every single industry
| and put them all under thumb.
|
| Apple is taxing the internet, basically. (And Google's scary
| and hidden side loading isn't much better.)
| weixiyen wrote:
| they've certainly become the very thing they've set out to
| disrupt
| [deleted]
| mkrishnan wrote:
| thelock85 wrote:
| Can anyone here provide some ideas of sensible regulation on this
| issue (or point to someone else talking about it)?
|
| IANAL or even novice on antitrust issues but seems Apple would
| just find another way to make up the slack if App Store
| (iOS/Android/other) fees were regulated.
|
| As a good friend of mine likes to say about DNC vs GOP, it's
| "steak or fish" with Android and iOS (you can choose which is
| which). They take up too much space for anyone else to
| fundamentally reimagine and reintroduce an app ecosystem (no
| disrespect to PWAs and the like). I feel regulation would
| ultimately hurt developers and consumers more, at least in the
| medium to long-term, but I'm open to forming a new opinion.
| ThatPlayer wrote:
| "Apple finding another way to make up the slack" will happen
| even if it doesn't get regulated. To companies, there's no such
| thing as making enough money. Look at how they're doing ads
| now.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| Microsoft was taken to court for less than this in the 90s over
| the browser wars. 1) Apple should be forced to allow side-
| loaded apps. 2) they should be forced to allow competing
| marketplaces. 3) they should be forced to allow PWAs to be
| installed alongside regular apps. 4) they should be forced to
| allow alternative web engines (inc. Chrome, Edge, Brave,
| Firefox, Opera, etc)
| bogwog wrote:
| Government setting prices like that is a terrible idea. The
| solution to this problem is competition. The only regulation
| needed are laws that stop Apple from preventing competition. If
| there were alternative app stores, free market forces will
| naturally prevent Apple from doing stuff like this. They'll be
| free to charge whatever they want, but customers and developers
| will also be free to go with a competitor instead of them.
|
| Sure, Apple and their fanboys are going to say stuff like "it
| will be bad for privacy" and "Apple needs to control everything
| to protect us from malware", etc. Pretty much the exact same
| type of arguments AT&T was making before they got broken up in
| the ~80s. If that didn't happen, we probably wouldn't have
| gotten the internet as quickly as we did (or at all). That's a
| pretty clear example of how monopolies stifle competition, and
| how breaking them up can be lead to incredible innovation.
|
| Hell, I don't think we even need new laws. I'm not a lawyer,
| but I'm pretty sure what Apple is doing is already illegal,
| since it's so obviously anti-competitive and detrimental to
| society/the economy. Even investors will probably be better off
| in the long run if all these tech giants have their monopolies
| broken up, since the new opportunities in the market will
| undoubtedly result in new innovations and better investment
| opportunities.
|
| Also, I need to say this otherwise the conversation will get
| predictably derailed:
|
| * Apple is bad
|
| * Google is bad too
|
| * Microsoft is bad too
|
| * Amazon is bad too
|
| * Meta is bad too
|
| * <insert tech company here> is bad too
| bink wrote:
| Even forcing competing app stores has problems. It's Apple
| that will be forced to provide support for those app stores.
| If someone installs malicious software from one and it bricks
| their phone they're going to bring it to an Apple store. Even
| if they have a policy of "competing app stores mean no
| support" there's still going to be the time wasted
| determining if another app store was used and the good will
| lost when customers find they no longer receive support for
| their broken phone.
| bo1024 wrote:
| Sure, one answer. Whenever a company owning a "platform" also
| competes on the platform and sets the rules to favor
| themselves, this hurts competition. Regulation should ensure a
| fair playing field on the platform, preventing companies from
| putting up barriers to competition.
|
| This is why Microsoft lost a lawsuit about bundling Internet
| Explorer onto the computing platform of Windows, this is why
| the platform of Google search has results rigged in favor of
| Google products, etc.
|
| This is also why Net Neutrality is a good idea, the company
| that controls the "platform" of the Internet being delivered to
| your device shouldn't get to stifle competition by making some
| websites cheaper or more expensive to visit.
|
| In this case, phones are a physical platform that should be
| opened to allow any software to run, and iOS is a software
| platform that should be opened to allow users to easily install
| alternative App Stores and easily install alternative
| applications not offered on the App Store.
| nightski wrote:
| I feel like I am the only one who has never made a single
| transaction on a mobile device. I refuse to contribute.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| Cryptocurrencies and NFTs, the amount of scam in this ecosystem
| makes me least concerned about them having to pay Apple fees.
| dboreham wrote:
| The new vampire squid.
| barumrho wrote:
| Maybe I'm off here, but this doesn't really seem like it's about
| the 30% commission. Maybe Apple is taking a position against
| allowing crypto trades on their platform?
| everfree wrote:
| Then maybe they should state that.
|
| Apple didn't block fungible tokens (crypto), they only blocked
| non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Right now is the time for them to
| clarify their position.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Ahahaha, they will soon be asking Charles Schwab for a 30% cut
| for anyone that sells equities in the iPhone.
| seydor wrote:
| At what point does Apple get classified as a Bank?
|
| What is the point of a Coinbase wallet at this point in any case?
| Free tracking by coinbase, apple, the NSA etc etc?
|
| If you consider the reason why Bitcoin, ETH etc were invented in
| the first place, this is beyond ridiculous, absurd and a travesty
| paulmd wrote:
| Apple already has lending licenses for the apple pay later
| feature. they're not a bank though, in the same sense that
| paypal is not a bank.
| madrox wrote:
| At this point in the "30% is unfair" game, I'm fascinated by the
| general reaction by the crowd. In every high profile case, it
| comes down to which company you have more affinity for. I watched
| a lot of the gaming community side with Apple against Epic,
| because from their perspective it was Epic being greedy and not
| the other way around.
|
| This time, I'm sure anyone still excited about web3 will side
| against Apple. It's going to take a coalition of companies with
| enough goodwill amongst enough people to break the general
| conception that Apple is, overall, working more in the interests
| of the consumer than other businesses.
| elashri wrote:
| care to mention some of these companies that have enough
| goodwill?. Hopefully it is not Twitter and facebook because
| they lead the attack on app store policy ( beside epic of
| course)
| dotnet00 wrote:
| Having been someone who also sided with Apple against Epic but
| has changed his tune, I think a big point there was that it was
| the first notable company that spoke up about Apple's
| practices.
|
| While I tend to think most of this web3 stuff is trash
| (especially the centralized stuff), I think by now so many
| cases of Apple's excessive control have piled up that changing
| opinions is understandable. Especially as someone who hasn't
| had to deal directly with Apple's restrictive ecosystem before.
| weberer wrote:
| People are against Epic because the CEO is obviously acting in
| bad faith and so shameless about it. He claims to be in favor
| of open platforms when it is beneficial to his bottom line, but
| refuses to do the bare minimum to support Linux. Obviously tech
| nerds aren't going to like that.
| freedomben wrote:
| Agreed, but I'm not sure we're anywhere near the tipping point.
| Apple users _really_ love Apple and will (nearly) always
| interpret Apple 's actions with the absolute best of
| intentions/benefit of the doubt. The company is not stupid.
| Like most of silicon valley they will always come up with some
| justification for doing what they want to do, and odds are good
| that they'll actually convince themselves that those are the
| real reasons.
| nluken wrote:
| Honestly, I hate web3 but this move is absolutely bullshit on
| Apple's part. I think it goes a step further than just "30% of
| IAP money" since there's no download or product that the user
| is really buying. It would be like Apple demanding fees for
| Cash App or some other related service.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| I'm convinced at this point that Coinbase intended for people
| to be confused about this: Apple is claiming a 30% cut of the
| transaction fees that Coinbase charges their customers. If
| Cash App charged a fee to transfer money, Apple would claim
| their cut of that fee.
| nluken wrote:
| > If Cash App charged a fee to transfer money, Apple would
| claim their cut of that fee.
|
| They do, at least for rapid transfers to banks. It was
| perhaps not the greatest analogy on my part since transfers
| within the app are free, but I fully understand what Apple
| is claiming here. You don't see them claiming Cash App's
| transfer fees, or bank fees, or other similar charges.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| I should apologize since I misunderstood the fees being
| collected; they are the gas fees as presented in the
| Wallet app (I'd been thinking the separate app they
| release that includes the exchange trading, which has
| transaction fees). It's likely that the gas fees as
| presented by the Ethereum network are simply being passed
| along to the app user, which is definitely not the same
| as I'm suggesting.
|
| If Cash App charges their own fee (ie, it's not a bank
| fee that Cash App is passing along to the consumer) then
| I would actually expect Apple to want to claim their cut
| of that fee. At least, that would be consistent with how
| they've gone after this in, e.g., the Epic case.
| (Different type of in-app "purchase", but consistent
| considering who would be receiving the profit of the fee
| is the app developer.)
| rottencupcakes wrote:
| Do you have a source for this? If this is true, then this
| tweetstorm seems completely out of line.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| I believe in the title I originally saw, it specified
| "exchange fees".
|
| But also from the tweet thread (second tweet):
|
| > Apple's claim is that the gas fees required to send
| NFTs need to be paid through their In-App Purchase
| system, so that they can collect 30% of the gas fee.
| zopa wrote:
| That's a fee paid to the Ethereum network, not to
| Coinbase itself, isn't it?
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| I'm not actually sure about this because it's their
| Wallet app rather than the trading app. If they obfuscate
| the gas fee behind their own transaction fee the way they
| do with their trading app, I believe my take is correct.
|
| Otherwise, it actually seems way more open for debate.
| It's possible I am mistaken and this is a reach from
| Apple. It might also be that Apple is claiming that
| Coinbase _needs_ to obfuscate the fee in such a manner,
| which sounds kinda crazy to me.
|
| At any rate, this confusion about it being the assets
| themselves being cut is what I intended to be speaking
| about, so apologies if this response is not helpful.
| amanj41 wrote:
| The reason this is different is because the fee does not go
| to Coinbase at all. It goes to the Ethereum network. If
| cash app could prove they got zero profit from a service
| fee that could be one thing. In this case, Coinbase can
| prove exactly how much the gas fee was and that they do not
| take a cut of this "fee"
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| Yes, I think I was mistaken. My thinking was based on a
| previous title, which didn't specify Coinbase "Wallet"
| and included the phrase "exchange fees". If they were the
| fees from Coinbase's trading application, they wouldn't
| be strictly the gas fees as charged by the Ethereum
| network. Tweets in the thread also specify gas fees and
| this is exclusive to NFTs, so I suspect the fees in
| question are indeed the network gas fees.
|
| Sorry for the confusion.
| andirk wrote:
| Ironically, this wouldn't be an issue if your hated web3 was
| the defacto app store. Maybe Apple sees crypto as a game, and
| buying/selling/trading crypto on the Coinbase app is in-game
| purchases to Apple.
| initplus wrote:
| Exactly. This seems analogous to Apple demanding 30% of the
| bank fees I pay because I use my bank's app.
| avgDev wrote:
| Yeah.....I use Schwab as bank/brokerage and pay fees for
| trading. Should apple get a 30% cut......
| [deleted]
| laweijfmvo wrote:
| I placed a stock trade that carried a 50 cent commission
| from my iPhone this morning.
| datadata wrote:
| I sincerely can't tell if this is real or parody. Which
| is it?
| andirk wrote:
| If it is, it may not be soon. I have never been a fan of
| these app stores. I like a gatekeeper making sure
| malicious content doesn't get on our devices, but there
| should be the option to easily use other stores without
| jailbreaking the device.
| laweijfmvo wrote:
| Neither, I just suck at English. I did place a stock
| trade this morning, using my brokerage's iPhone app. It
| had a commission.
|
| Should Apple get 30%?
| threeseed wrote:
| Except that NFTs are supposed to be a good and not a
| currency.
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