I just paid for 12 months worth of Skype subscription which I have used for just 2 calls back in January.
I want ALL my subscriptions to go through Apple Pay and App store.
Once I subscribed to New York times. The newspaper that was advertised to me for years in all Hollywood movies as a place where honesty and freedom are of highest priority. I had to spend an hour on a phone with their representatives to cancel it refusing to accept discount or a free subscription.
I don't trust many other companies. Especially if all my interactions with them are virtual and they are not specialized in information technology. At least big tech is quite rich to afford to think about users.
Each bank got their app and added some obvious features there: pay for utilities, for your phone etc. I want more progress here. I want to be able to see all my fees upfront in a clear format. I want to know my credit score. I want to be able to take this credit score to different organizations. etc. etc.
Big hope that fin tech will blow it up, but unfortunately start ups didn't deliver. There are some successful ones, but I think finance is too regulated for them to have a shot at a serious scale. Apple and Google have a shot at that and they will create a road for smaller companies.
The situation in Belarus is bad. And believe me I know. I was concerned as well about my device security. But to be honest at the end of the day it can't be Apple's problem. Belarussian government must be replaced by Belarussian people and Apple has nothing to do with that. And on top of that - what choice do I have. Android devices in Russia are preinstalled with Russian software while Apple's aren't. That's more important sign for me.
> I want ALL my subscriptions to go through Apple Pay and App store.
You do so only because you believe have no choice as you know that your democracy is so crippled that you don't expect them to protect your rights as a consumer any more!
Where as many Europeans and Asians, who also enjoy democratic rights, will tell you openly that we would prefer that our democratically elected government protect our consumer rights through regulations that bind all corporates to behave themselves.
Well, okay, it may be the case that our democracy is so crippled that it can’t protect basic consumer rights. But even so, what are we supposed to do? Quit our jobs, abandon our livelihoods, and take to the streets until our government decides we’re too much trouble and hands over power to a more consumer-friendly replacement government? Or just continue to want to use subscriptions through Apple where possible?
This is a false dichotomy that both pro-government and pro-corporate people fall into. Whether Apple or "Our Government", we shouldn't be giving this much power to institutions.
> But even so, what are we supposed to do?
Vote with your wallet. Stop consuming whatever it is that comes with attached strings. Stop putting convenience above principles. Refuse to pay/subscribe/accept any terms that are clearly not in your best interest.
You don't need Big Government to do that. You don't even need to be part of a mobilized group. It's in your hands and every individual can choose for themselves. Let's take responsibility for our own actions and stop using the vices/failings of others to excuse ourselves to do the same.
Regulations are there tools that citizens have to reign in corporate behavior. 'Big government' is just a catch name for many anti regulation lobbying entities to remove power from citizens and acumulats it on corporations.
> Vote with your wallet.
Yes. And also vote with your ballots, one person one vote triumphs one dollar one vote if you want freedom.
> 'Big government' is just a catch name for many anti regulation lobbying entities to remove power from citizens and acumulats it on corporations.
This is completely reductionist, and completely uninformed.
Banks, as an easy counter example to your worldview, don't have armies of third party regulators, corporate compliance staff, and auditors because they hate regulation. They love big government. It acts as a barrier to entry for them, because they already have the 10,000 person department ready to modify procedures and legal documents to comply with the next set of regulations while the little banks drown. Regulators frequently dine with top bank executives, but I can assure you they aren't dining with the citizenry or your local regional bank.
Every amount of extra regulation just increases tyranny. It makes the American dream more untenable. I want people to succeed and not rely on giant mega corporations for their well being and wealth generation. You can rightly claim that I'm an anti-regulation lobbying entity in this regard, if you wish.
Strong banking regulations is necessary to ensure that people trust the banks, and the banks don't misuse the fund you deposit with them. The collapse of some banks in US and India due to lax oversight, greed and corruption, in the last 2 decades is strong proof of this.
"Stop consuming... " isn't enough. You also have to do some of the work needed for the other side of "vote with your wallet". "Vote" for the system/product/method you wish to see. This might include building it yourself, using crowdfunding/micropayments for journalists/politicians/artists you trust/follow.
I would also add that nobody saying "vote with your wallet" necessarily means it to be the only action you take.
It's more a bare minimum. If you're inclined to moan about how awful something is, but you're still paying $5/month for it, it kinda bounds how awful it must be in practice. If it's that bad, stop paying them, as a bare minimum, not as an exclusive remedy.
(Exceptions for monopolies like local internet or other situation where there are considerations strongly forcing you into a particular contract. Some exception for oligarchic situations where everyone has the bad terms... but only some. If it didn't even exist 20 years ago, you don't "need" it.)
> Vote with your wallet. Stop consuming whatever it is that comes with attached strings.
This is... impossible. Ignoring the amount of time I would sink into researching every eventuality for a given service (how do you find out what the unsubscribe flow is for a site before you subscribe to it?). Some "services" have their hooks in just about everything. Good luck avoiding the likes of Google Analytics or ReCaptcha if you want to use the internet.
It might be "impossible" to do everything at once, but there is nothing stopping you from taking steps in that direction, and the more people taking those steps with you the stronger the market forces will force the companies to provide the things that you do want.
Not signing up to the NYT is a choice. Not buying from Apple and all their locked down systems is a choice. Not signing up for any subscription service that has DRM is a choice. Having an ad-blocker to fight surveillance capitalism is a choice. Adopting and promoting alternatives to every "free" offering from Google is a choice, even if they are of inferior quality. Putting your money where your mouth is and supporting the development of better alternatives for whatever comes from FAANG is also a choice. If you are doing all of that, then maybe you will be entitled to complain. But I am sure you have a lot of veggies to eat before that.
You stand no chance against multi billion big corporation that can own you. It's the level of influence needed that only government can attain. The trouble is our corruption laws are so weak, you can just call it lobbying and be on your way to money town. It must be a combination of voting with your wallet and making your local politicians aware of the issues you are facing. More people put pressure the more will get done. You know if people are not doing anything, then in their mind problem is not serious.
> we shouldn't be giving this much power to institutions.
In a democracy, the government derives power from us, the people. In a good and functioning democracy there exists other democratic institutions to ensure that the government cannot abuse the powers granted to them.
"Vote with your wallet" is a disingenuous argument were all the corporates work together like a cartel towards a particular business model that maximises profit for them to the detriment of us consumers. Regulations that bind all business to certain rules and standard also benefit the businesses as it creates a level playing field for them too. (But obviously large corporates at the top don't want a level playing field).
> In a good and functioning democracy there exists other democratic institutions to ensure that the government cannot abuse the powers granted to them.
This is kinda recursive - a "good and functioning" democracy is the one in which such institutions exist, so one where they don't is not a "good" one - but they are no less real for that. Worse yet, a "good" one can turn into other kinds - and the more centralized its governance, the more powerful it is, the faster that can happen.
> In a good and functioning democracy (...) institutions to ensure that the government cannot abuse the powers granted to them.
This is the idealistic view. In the real world we have people in power, with their own personal interests, with institutions that are ever more distant from the people and with ever less consequences to face when they do wrong.
The one exception is perhaps Switzerland, and this would be more due to how local governments and cantons prevail over national leaders. The institutions are small and limited in reach. Aside from them, every model (US, the EU, China, Russian) relies on over-centralization and ever-expanding reach of the institutions and the consequential subversion of said institutions to the favor of interest groups.
So, unless you are Swiss I really don't have any reason to believe you actually have any power over the government, and I really don't believe you should be defending to give them even more power and attributions.
> maximises profit to the detriment of consumers
Last I checked, no one forced me to buy anything from Apple. I don't think closed systems are beneficial for me, so I don't buy them. No one forced me to buy anything from Google, either. No one forced me to buy a car or to live in an expensive metro area or even check any trendy bar with overpriced drinks. No one forced me to buy home appliances that can I not repair.
"Well, where I live there is only one internet provider, so I am forced to use it". No, you are not. It's just that the inconvenience of not having internet at home outweighs your willingness to get your community and put together an alternative. Also, more likely than not, the reason that there is no alternative is due to REGULATIONS that lobbyists from big telco managed to pass so that they have an advantage.
To truly believe that "regulations creates a level-playing field" is beyond naive. It's borderline harmful to you and for society at large.
You work with the reality you live in, but you do strive for idealism. If you don't, you stagnate as the society rots.
The reality today is that in some democracies the balance of power has shifted from the people to the corporates. And that's unacceptable. Thinking that this is what's the best achievable in your democracy is just nihilistic and pessimistic attitude. Sitting silent is not an option. Regulation is one of the tools through which the government restores the balance between the corporates and the people. And it is possible to strike the right balance between the greed of the corporates and the need of the people.
I am advocating political action for change in a democracy. Unless you live in a country that doesn't claim to be a democracy, this applies to any democracy. Just because your democracy is being screwed by the power to be, doesn't mean you stop believing in it and stop fighting for it.
The issue is that the medicine you are proposing is oftentimes worse than the disease.
You call for increased regulations as a way to control corporations and "more power to the Government" but don't acknowledge the number of times that the elites have subverted the institutions for their own benefit. Sorry for the bluntness, but that is either malice or stupidity.
You completely ignored my argument that is important to look at the scale and reach of the democratic institution you're dealing with. It's all good if you say that you are working for democracy. It is not okay of your idea of democracy is to have some federal bureaucrat responsible in making decisions that affect so many people at once and does not take into account the desires and peculiarities of the people in the local level. I don't want Federal Government being responsible for and the arbiter of matters that are in the realm of the city council, much like I don't want the city council to step into things that should be in the realm of my neighbors association. The scale of power and reach matters. Do you understand that?
It seems your idea of "fighting for democracy" is in advocating more power and authority in an single entity and more central planning. History is filled with examples where centralization of power has always led to tyranny and abuse. Road to hell paved with good intentions and all...
So, before you start advocating for regulations that can affect so many people and have so many catastrophic unintended consequences, consider acting on the change on the smallest possible level: you. Once you do it and can honestly tell that the change was good, then you go a little bit higher in your circle and advocate for them to adopt the policies you did. Go bottom-up, not top-down. Not only is the most realistic way to affect change, it is the most ethical one.
> It seems your idea of "fighting for democracy" is in advocating more power and authority in an single entity and more central planning.
No, that isn't my idea at all - decentralisation and independence of institutions matter in a democracy. And I consider regulatory bodies as a NECESSARY institution of democracy that strive to balance the needs of the executive, the corporates and the people (consumers). Democracy is all about balancing everyone's needs and corporates too have a role, just as the consumers do too.
As a citizen of a country that was once enslaved by one of the largest corporate of its time (East India Company)^, to me you are the ignorant one here if you think that regulation has no role in a democracy.
If your best example of a "corporate" that got so big and powerful to the point of enslaving a nation is one that was financed and supported by the largest Empire at the time, we should really re-frame the debate.
Which regulations do you think would've stopped East India from becoming what it did, and what democratic institutions do you think would have effectively restricted their unchecked expansion and abuse of power?
Every mention from OP is regarding democracy in the "country" and in the context of a powerful State to "fight" corporate interests. The discourse rings all the Socialist/Social-Democratic talking points. Not buying the idea that he is talking about local communities and direct democracies.
While I do believe in decentralization and am an advocate for it, I don't think it works well in the context of consumer rights that we are discussing. Different regulatory laws at different levels and in different states will just create a hassle for both the consumer and the corporate.
Democracy is about balancing the needs of everyone, and that includes the corporate too. Regulatory bodies should have the necessary independence to hold regular discussions with the stakeholders (the executive, the corporates and the people) so that appropriate regulations can be drafted and more importantly fairly enforced.
It is in the nature of corporate to vie for power with the sovereign and thus in a democracy it is very much necessary to ensure that the corporate never gain gain an upper hand to do so. Regulations can definitely help with this. But ultimately it all about finding the right balance as hurting the corporates too is not the aim and in the best interest of a nation.
Again, your discourse comes with lots of "shoulds" that History has shown to fail whenever it gets confronted with the reality of geopolitics and the structure of power. It sounds oh-so-nice on paper, but paper accepts anything.
It is very abstract. You constantly talk about "the need of regulations" but don't get to specifics. You hope that by hiding in complexity under some abstract body things will work out. In reality, those "regulatory bodies with necessary independence to balance the needs of everyone" will be undeniably influenced by interests groups and shaped by the very people you want to avoid having too much power. Worse still, they get to be put in this position of power indirectly and out of reach from people to express their will through vote or elections.
No matter how much you talk, at the end of the day we all should be asking ourselves what are the things that we want to "regulate" and make it the systems as clear as possible to avoid regulatory traps.
Here is my proposal for a system that can control the abuse of power by corporate entities and at the same time avoid this trap of believing that "regulations" are magic dust that makes anything better:
1. Put a hard cap on the headcount of a corporation. Any company that gets past a certain size (say a few hundred employees) has to be split up by the end of the fiscal year.
2. No single person can be a board member or manager at more than one corporation. No subsidiaries shenanigans, no shell corporations, no "holdings". People and companies can have investments anywhere they want, but these should grant them any executive control over the board.
3. Governments must never bail out a company. If no company is "too big to fail", there are no systemic risk and bail-outs are not required.
That is it. By limiting corporations by size, you avoid any single entity to dominate the space, you promote healthy competition, you avoid systemic risks, you avoid rampant inequality and corruption, we don't get lost in a sea of abstractions and we avoid the hell of regulatory capture. We might lose the "benefit" of economies of scale and we will never see a "Unicorn-style startup" and we will never be talking about "FAANG" again, but I think that would be a good thing overall.
> But even so, what are we supposed to do? Quit our jobs, abandon our livelihoods, and take to the streets
If necessary yes. Your forefathers fought hard to earn you your democratic and associated rights that you have all taken for granted. And that's why its slow erosion has only now made you start to feel a bit uncomfortable. So yes, you too need to start asserting for your rights.
And no, to begin with you don't need to quit your job and take to the streets.
Start by writing letters to the political parties of your country. Start by making your local politicians aware that you feel the government isn't concerned about your rights as a consumer. Escalate and urge others in your network to do the same. And move on from there. Democracy is designed to slow down political changes because abrupt political changes also has a lot of chaos. Initially you will only have to spend maybe an hour or two a week to do the above. As more and more people support you, and you all work together, this may increase to 5-10 hours a week depending on how much you are willing to commit yourself. Once a political party latches on to your issue, it then becomes a lot easier - join it or offer issue-based support to them. (Yes, often it is all quite boring and just takes patience and dedication. That's democracy - it is often boring participating in it, but still worth it).
I don't know, perhaps vote for politicians that do have your rights and not corporation's rights at heart? Convince people that protecting their rights and livelihoods is not socialism or unamerican? I know that this is difficult in the US, both because there is so little choice in elections and it is difficult to convince other people to vote differently.
But you can be sure that if everyone puts all their eggs in Apple's (or more generally FAANG's) basket, their only interest is and will be their corporate profit, not your or content creators' rights.
“Voting” for pre-selected candidates in rigged elections without a way to hold the elected accountable to their promises, basically means the citizens have zero means but strikes/violent protests. (This is true in most non-Western “democracies”.)
You are to ask precicely this question and think up variations of it.
I was just pondering how easy we dedicate our lives to a thing in contrast with how unpopular dying for it is. It doesn't seem both can be right at the same time?
More like "we should only try to implement large-scale systems after we test a smaller-scale of it and that we are sure that no side-effect is worse than the problems we are trying to solve in the first place"
Not to speak for the op but for me it’s not that I’m lacking choice it’s that I want to use the first party solution because it works better. For me, it’s like a programming language with one canonical way to do something. It makes things so much easier. Easier to read. Easier to reason about. I just use the Apple version for things because 9/10 times it works flawlessly.
I thought it was an EU regulation, but perhaps not. In Denmark you can't bind customers to a mobile contract for more than six month. You can sell them a phone and have them pay that off for 24 months, but that different, you can pay that off at anytime, for a fee.
That's also why you're not getting a new phone from your carrier every two years like most Americans seems to do.
Phone subsidies have completely disappeared in the United States. Phone companies will finance your phone over 24-30 months but you can cancel the contract (and the interest free financing) at any time.
It's sort of interesting that, if you had told people 5+ years ago that phone subsidies were going away, a lot of them would have predicted a lot of doom and gloom for Apple and other smartphone makers. In fact, I bet if you looked around, you could probably find articles and reports to that effect.
That I fully agree, most aren't even aware of their work rights, having had a quite good works council on my first employer really opened my eyes to care about the German legal system.
The point is that - if we were to take seriously the claim that consumer rights are well protected by the governments outside of the US - their help shouldn't even be needed.
My feeling living in Germany is that consumer protection rights goes as far as the "right" for some bureaucrat to keep their job. It's a constant feeling they create the problem so that they can sell the solution and get people to be oh-so-thankful for it.
I see if differently, the EU governments have made it possible that such kind of help exists, and is actually empowered to protect us.
In US, as far as I am aware it isn't even possible to have such kind of help, and those organizations that do try to help, just go through the same endless court sessions as hiring a random lawyer would do, plus having to pay them way beyond the almost symbolic "Gebühren" that you pay here.
So while the situation isn't perfect, it could be much worse.
This idea is one of my favorite tells to find out the level of alienation of people regarding their own governments.
The top 10 conglomerates from South Korea amount to more than half their GDP. This level of centralization alone should tell you how the regulations are enacted to protect the corporations, not the people.
If Germany (and more generally Brussels) was actually serious about environmental regulations, VW and all the German car makers would be exterminated after Dieselgate. Instead they got one or two scapegoats for VW (and no, the CEO being ousted and still receiving a generous retirement package does not count) and made it clear that the regulations are there just to give the people the illusion of control.
"For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law" -- this is what your democratically elected government is giving you.
why do the workers of VW have to pay with a loss of their jobs for the wrongdoings of their managers? Several of those responsible have already spent time in prison, others will follow.
Companies with rotten culture are ripe for their own kind of disruption. Above a certain level of decadence, it is more promising to build a parallel company on the other side of the street rather than trying to remove the rotten apples. Countless examples in history. One of the few ways to keep a megacorp alive at this stage is government subsidies, corruption or contracts, with the goal of exploiting its scale advantages.
Because it wasn't just the manager, but also the engineers that implemented the fraudulent system and the people doing QC that turned a blind eye and did not speak up.
The manager is the one with most skin in the game and should go to jail, does not mean that anyone else is free from fault. By working for a company that kept an unfair advantage they also benefited from the fraud, they should also face some of the consequences.
Yep, otherwise the feedback loop does not work. It works best if people at every stage question if their company is doing something wrong instead of selecting some high income people to blame and take all the liability. After all every worker should be incentivised to have skin in the game through stock compensation
> I want ALL my subscriptions to go through Apple Pay and App store
What about defining a standard subscription protocol that allows any company to offer subscription management, and allow consumers to change their subscription manager if they are not happy?
Putting all your eggs in one nest because you currently like it is a very risky gamble.
Banking has worked with standards for decades that allow interoperability and competition.
> But to be honest at the end of the day it can't be Apple's problem.
That's why the trust in one company should be very limited. As a non USA consumer, I will prefer some one else managing my data.
You have a point, but that standard protocol doesn’t exist yet to even be implemented. Even then, is it a strict standard that everyone will follow to a T, or is it one where every company will have their own special interpretation?
Unfortunately, people need something that works right now.
I understand similar fragmentation exists in payments for electric car charging. You need lots of cards, accounts, qr codes, sms and calls. This makes all the technological progress with billions poured into it not very useful, if you can't trust that you can charge on a road trip.
Someone could make a single app that would handle all that for you.
Yeah, I typically use Electrify America (range anxiety has been replaced by "is the charger broken anxiety" and EA is hella reliable), and they don't support Plugshare. Apparently they are working on account identification through the charging cable, if that catches on this mess could really be a thing of the past. I'm going off-topic, though.
A similar thing happened to me years ago. I was a monthly contributor to This American Life. I switched credit cards and wanted to update my payment, but they had changed their website or something and there was, as far as I could tell, no way to change or cancel or any "account" page or "login" system. I couldn't even find support or a phone number. I think I sent email to a generic account and waited a week. After not hearing back I canceled the credit card.
I tried to stick to PayPal to manage subscriptions for a few years since it was centralized and I could change payments or cancel. Patreon seems to have taken over a lot of this--but it's even more niche.
> Big hope that fin tech will blow it up, but unfortunately start ups didn't deliver.
I just can't imagine the ROI needed to satisfy VC funding...especially without it becoming shady or predatory itself. Or, like you said, the regulations involved for a self-funded startup. I think the other aspect is that big companies aren't motivated to play ball. Yodlee is probably the biggest player and has had spottier integration as companies have added 2fa and other security measures. Very few have gone as far as adding tokens to support 3rd parties like Yodlee.
> Each bank got their app and added some obvious features there
I suspect if something does happen (I'm not particularly confident) it will be a spinoff from a bank like how Allstate and Discover Card were spinoffs of Sears or Kingsford Charcoal from Ford Motor. Do companies do this anymore?
> I want ALL my subscriptions to go through Apple Pay and App store.
This.
I just got screwed out of money by Couchsurfing when they started throwing a full-screen extortion prompt that prevents you from using the app or website at all so you can’t even delete your account until you cough up the dough.
They are using their own payment processing system. If they used the standard In-App Purchases, Apple could have given me a refund on the spot and hopefully booted them off the store for this bait and switch tactic.
Apple has always refunded me without question and I am willing to bet that most complaints about the App Store are from those entities that Apple protects users from.
I agree but I don't want that place to be tightly tied with the maker of my phone. I want to be able to change phone and not loose anything. Phones are commodities to me. Who makes them is as important as the brand of gas I put in my car. Browser, mail client, WhatsApp, camera, maps, banking apps are about all I need. The subscription management service should be a third party.
Some of them are portable between banks, at least where I live (Italy). Anything I authorize to be paid for automatically (usually periodically) from my bank account can be ported to another bank (utilities, etc.). I give the authorization to the new bank and they do the work because it's in their best interest. I expect this to work in most of the EU and/or the SEPA area because the regulations and the tools are the same.
Handling periodical billings on my credit cards is probably a pain, I'd have to go through all those services and update them. It would be nice if VISA or MasterCard would do that for me. Luckily all those services send me mail when my credit card expires and I get the new one.
This is an excellent point and perhaps the right answer.
Most of these problems exist because the one place we trust to manage our resources never pivoted on these things. In fact most banks are barely crawling out of the dark ages.
But you can have a third party if you want. (Though my personal preference would be NO party. I want total control over it myself with zero privacy leaks. But that likely won't happen.) In any case, the point is that you could buy something other than an Apple phone if that's important to you. I mean why buy a horridly overpriced phone that can't do what you want it to do? I wouldn't buy a Ferrari to haul farming implements around the back roads of Wisconsin.
Right, this is the network effect behind it. There is never before experienced convenience as you buy your apps, movies, books and songs from one place, which is in your pocket. Then there's the other store for all tangible things (Amazon). The list goes on, MS for business apps, Facebook for social media. Google for information?
The NYT experience is indeed the fastest way for a company to lose trust. It took me 3 tries to cancel. First rep said: yep cancelled all done. Except it wasnt: renewed at a discount. The 2nd rep: said sorry sorry and produced a chat transcript where I supposedly said thanks for the new discount, k thx bye (I didn’t). Said it was cancelled now. Surprise: it wasnt. Third rep got it done. For real this time. Still disappointed at how this played out.
Personally I don't want all my subscriptions to go through Apple Pay, I want a system that all banks supports where I can manage my recurring payments/subscriptions, in which I can generate virtual, revocable credit cards to which I can set custom limits and track my expenses.
I can do it for my emails, why not for my payment systems?
Not exactly what you're looking for, but I talked to a developer of a solution that integrates with online banking and recognizes subscriptions and allow you to cancel them directly from your online banking thingy.
Only downside is that it's the banks that has to do the integration. I can't really figure out how they deal with the actual unsubscribing bit. The subscriptions people are most likely to want to cancel has to be those who with the worst unsubscribe process.
Indeed, I'm fed up with people criticising Apple because it refuses to instruct it's employees to criminalise themselves. Nobody expects any other companies to do this. It's bizzare to me how distorted a moral framework can be that people blame a company for obeying bad laws, as if breaking laws and criminalising employees was an acceptable and moral way to run a business.
Sure a company can fight governments in court, if that option is available, but if it isn't or if that approach runs out, that's the end of the line. At the end of the day it's the governments and laws that need to change.
> people criticising Apple because it refuses to instruct it's employees to criminalise themselves.
That's not what they criticize.
They criticize Apple because Apple positioned itself to be the sole actor capable of enforcing such a bad laws. That they do it, surprised nobody.
In this case, if they were not capable of destroying Telegram on iOS platform, their request would have no teeth and even the governments would not ask Apple to do it in the first place.
This really hasn't got anything to do with App Store exclusivity. They have a business model that's widely used and has been perfectly legal and established for many decades before they adopted it. This happens to make them vulnerable to certain forms of regulatory control. That's a government and regulatory issue, not a business issue.
After Belarus, I thought Apple would have learned it's lesson and might loosen it's so-called "security" a bit and allow 3rd party apps/app stores on their phones, but nope; they went full steam ahead into their M1 chips with forced code signing in ARM, demonstrating that they learned nothing.
Apple positioning itself as the sole proprietor of what can and cannot run on their machines will only get worse as censorship becomes normalized.
Several banks and credit cards offer FICO score information. The information is likely there for you, but you may have to accept some data sharing terms and conditions in order to access it.
> Each bank got their app and added some obvious features there: pay for utilities, for your phone etc. I want more progress here. I want to be able to see all my fees upfront in a clear format. I want to know my credit score. I want to be able to take this credit score to different organizations. etc. etc.
Isn't there some sort of hack with subscriptions in the US where you can change your address to California and they have to offer you an electronic solution for cancelling?
>
Once I subscribed to New York times. The newspaper that was advertised to me for years in all Hollywood movies as a place where honesty and freedom are of highest priority. I had to spend an hour on a phone with their representatives to cancel it refusing to accept discount or a free subscription.
SAME. Somewhere deep in my comment history here, I tell the story of trying to cancel NYT, and needing to do it three times, because I kept getting charged. Ughhhhh.
I had the same problem and contacted my state representative and my congressperson. This has since been fixed by regulation in California, and by having to follow California's laws, most companies' subscription services have been fixed for everybody.
This all comes down to the statement near the end: "I believe Apple should simply refuse to cooperate with oppressive governments"
Which is another way of saying "I believe Apple should either not operate in certain countries, or should try to operate in those countries in defiance of the laws of those countries."
The beef is primarily with the government. Companies are stuck in the middle -- either operate in compliance with local laws (even if they believe those laws are wrong) or don't operate there at all (since the third option of operating in contravention of local laws doesn't usually last long, and has painful consequences).
It would be interesting to know what the people who live in the countries think -- would they prefer not to have Apple products (or any other company's products) unavailable to them?
> Which is another way of saying "I believe Apple should either not operate in certain countries, or should try to operate in those countries in defiance of the laws of those countries."
That's true, but it doesn't mean your beef is only with the governments, in exactly the same way that IBM's collusion during WWII can't be pinned solely on the German government. They can choose not to do business in that country, or to be as subversive as they can until they get kicked out. Not doing so is a choice.
And that choice has implications for the company in other countries, when they become dependent on the countries they do business in, which then start making demands of the company's behavior globally.
I think the point is when it comes to censorship, taking the high road of refusing to collude with the government and ceasing to operate in the country (whether willingly or by non-compliance leading to being banned yourself) has ultimately the same effect as following the law. The communication which the govt wants to censor gets censored.
> The communication which the govt wants to censor gets censored
Only if social dynamics evaluate as a zero sum game. Which is the exception, not the rule.
Law making is really a modelling exercise. The proof of the validity of a model is measured via the success of it's implementation. The extent of that success is a function of the ability of an authority to enforce those rules.
At surface level, centralizing mass media into a handful of channels - whether it's public broadcasting or market dominance through a single private actor - seems like a boon for authoritarians when it comes to censorship. But what censorship really accomplishes is just stripping away the convenience with which undesirable information is spread. It doesn't necessarily strip the wholesale spread of information.
History is rife with examples. In the 20th century there were clandestine newspapers (French newspaper La Libération for example) and pamphlets, or listening in on the BBC via longwave. In modern times, there's sneakernets, streetnets (Cuba, even North Korea), datacasting,... (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_circumvent...)
When a big corporation doesn't play ball and seizes operating in a country, it only moves the needle in one direction, but never quite entirely to the end.
"Someone else will do it if I don't so I might as well get paid for assisting evil."
It's a common enough point of view. I disagree with it myself. There's plenty to discuss about just how evil it has to be before you can't live with it anymore. Those are interesting discussion. Binary discussions based on purity are usually pretty dull.
So do you also agree with sanctions against the population? In a sense, censorship is an inaction for a communications company, not a positive act of assistance. Apple doesn't get paid for actually censoring anything. They get paid for whatever legal services they can still sell to innocent civilians. Suppose they were selling food and the govt insists they refuse to sell food to an opposition group. Taking the high road and refusing to play ball is to starve everyone, not just the people the govt wants to starve.
> Apple doesn't get paid for actually censoring anything.
Yep they do. They don't do it they don't get paid. They decide to do it, they get paid. They can count the difference in revenue and profit from those two alternatives. It is literally one of the things they are getting paid to do. Can you live with doing that for monetary profit? You can certainly make arguments both ways.
This is not "sanctions against a population." Sanctions against a population is something more like blockading medical aid to Iraq through law for years prior to the invasion. Now Iran. It's certainly worthwhile weighing up the ethics of that, and there are dead bodies to count and trade off that decision, which obviously makes it a pretty unpleasant thing to consider, but that isn't what is under discussion here.
If apple refuse to do it, someone else will, to be sure. That's not a reason that should influence whether you can live with doing it or whether it's something you refuse.
> Yep they do. They don't do it they don't get paid. They decide to do it, they get paid. They can count the difference in revenue and profit from those two alternatives. I
I happily censor everything the government demands. Yet I do not get paid anything. Hence your logic is proven to be false. Specifically you have made a fallacy of omission.
Your perspective on what a sanction is indeed is too narrow to be very relevant. But you didn't answer, anyway. I guess you're against them as long as you can make the choice easy for yourself? But now stop dancing around and consider sanctions which restrict other forms of trade besides medical supplies.
Taking that argument to its extreme, if someone hands you a gun and says "shoot this person for $100 or I'll do it myself", whether you do the shooting has "ultimately the same effect" of that person dying. Still, most people wouldn't.
>That's true, but it doesn't mean your beef is only with the governments, in exactly the same way that IBM's collusion during WWII can't be pinned solely on the German government. They can choose not to do business in that country, or to be as subversive as they can until they get kicked out. Not doing so is a choice.
> Same with South Africa and IBM during apartheid.
And same thing with the U.S.A. today! How do you think that this war-mongering country will be seen a few decades from now? My guess is that it will be seen in the same light as the British Empire of a century ago. True, they had very nice things "inside", but they were totally callous on the countries that they controlled for economical interests (e.g., India, South Africa).
In this case it is largely an issue for governments.
Because what Apple is doing is not immoral or unethical but completely standard business practice. Every company who runs a marketplace sets its terms and distorts competition to benefit them.
In this case the author et al are arguing that Apple should be regulated differently and forced to operate a "level playing field" marketplace.
I know that if Apple did not offer products in some of the countries I live(d), many more citizens would be using spyware-loaded phones—because they don’t have the skills or dedication to use a PinePhone (or even to clear their Android devices of preinstalled malware and maintain them in that state), because it’s infeasible for them to purchase an Apple device overseas, or because they just don’t know better—which would lower the bar for propaganda and censorship, ensuring people with inconvenient opinions are fewer and farther between.
It seems highly unlikely that oppressive governments would be compelled to stop being such if Apple decided to withdraw from their countries’ markets. Yes, it is profitable to allow and tax Apple’s sales, but by my reckoning not nearly enough to pursue through a fundamental shift in political climate. (Yes, some citizens will wonder what happened, but considering Apple’s minor market share and domestic media’s capability to spin the story in favour of the leading party, public opinion would hardly be a factor either.)
To allude to an essay I read recently, a withdrawal in this context would be somewhat akin to Apple acting like Star Trek Federation (first do no harm, avoid mistakes at all costs), while remaining engaged, preserving the opportunity to enact a positive change laterally through non-obvious implications of attractive technology with superior security, would be them acting more like Culture.
Allow the iPhone to be fully unlocked, which makes it possible to install any software.
Then, Apple isn't in the position to apply the censorship to begin with, and it can both allow for a way to install these apps, and follow local rules.
It's not some issue that everyone else has to contend with. You can buy a Pixel or an LG in China and install anything you want on it. It's only Apple that has this issue.
> Allow the iPhone to be fully unlocked, which makes it possible to install any software.
There isn't a disclaimer in the world that would make this worth it. If someone bricks their phone with a dodgy app after "fully unlocking", they WILL be going after Apple, not the app developer.
I consider the locked nature of Apple devices a feature and an useful at that.
We've had unlocked desktop PCs for decades and the only "bricking" you can imagine is BIOS updates going wrong, and even that is nowadays going away with things like fallback BIOSes.
It's perfectly possible to allow arbitrary third-party software without exposing the device to a risk of bricking.
It’s possible to compromise a device at the firmware level - as evidenced by the recent UEFI attacks in the wild - but the better comparison would be ransomeware. That’s shut down businesses, school systems, hospitals, etc. and is completely prevented by the iOS security model. Whether or not I like the impact on flexibility, there are inarguable benefits to the users from having devices which cannot be resold, permanently compromised, etc.
> Religion is a touchy subject. Oddly enough, as I have come to discover in these pages, so is Apple.
This has also been my experience. I know people with whom I just avoid talking about Apple. Personally I just accept that Apple is their religion (some of them have Apple bumper stickers) and that religion is something deeply personal.
There are people who develop a religious fervour for brands, but I too often see that used as an excuse to dismiss legitimate arguments and preferences. Some people seem to develop an almost religious antipathy to brands and their customers. If Apple fanatics think Jobs or Cook are Jesus-like, the detractors seem to cast them as one rung up from Lucifer.
It's assumed that if you prefer Apple products, it must be because you're brainwashed or ignorant. The possibility that there are rational reasons for preferring Apple and its ecosystem is rejected with no consideration.
It's curious that Apple have been more successful in inspiring this kind of zealotry than have the FSF. The power of good marketing I suppose. As I indicated in my other comment in this thread, I think such 'corporate fanboyism' can be considered a kind of immaturity.
I would say the FSF certainly has. It's just a far smaller group. Probably smaller than the group that finds them rather off-putting. And, of course, far smaller still than the group that doesn't care if, in fact, they've heard of the organization at all.
I have used Apple products for years and like them. I've tried competing products and they never worked as well as a complete package. Sure, they might have had a feature or two that was better by some metric, but overall Apple stuff works well for my use case. Does this mean I'm in love with Apple? I don't think so, but for now they work.
Love and hate are also pretty similar emotions. I find both the people who love Apple and hate Apple to be...odd. I really don't understand either. It's a company, either use their products or don't.
This is where the hate comes from: It is frequently not a choice that one is able make, to not use their products. "You're at work, you must use $this." Is one of thousands of examples where your preference is made utterly irrelevant.
Also this is where the love comes from.
When forced to use something else and you hate it because your dislike of it is supercharged by that coercion, and you would much prefer to use this other product you might decide you love this other product and even evangelise it to increase your chance of being able to exercise your preference.
The idea that we use choose our use of, and knowledge of, operating systems by our own free will is a little fanciful. X billion smart phone users and 99+% of them freely choose 1 of 2. "It's your choice" doesn't make sense as soon as you look at it from that perspective. At best, exercising your preference comes with a non-trivial cost. At worst, you have no choice.
If it were easy to decide to use something else, something different whenever you felt like it the evangilism and ire would be more like it is for fast-food chains or clothing manufacturers. ie A little more fringe than we're seeing in computing.
I always find it funny when people describe the beliefs of middle-ages as bigoted, believing God more than Galileo (or so the legend says) when clearly today, some masses clearly believe in states being the originator of public good, and some corporations being worth worshipping.
Civilizations have evolved, but humans still be humans ;)
I agree it's rather silly for an adult to have a strong emotional attachment to a corporation. I can understand a child feeling that way about the company behind their favourite products, but it seems unbecoming in adults. The best example might be Apple 'fanboys'. (I don't know of a gender-neutral term here. Fanboy implies an excess of appreciation, but fan means something weaker.)
I don't see that it has much to do with religion though. It's only silly because of the specifics of what a corporation is - a somewhat amoral body of capital, very roughly speaking - but it's not always silly to be attached to an institution. There's nothing religious about supporting the Against Malaria Foundation, or the EFF, or (here in the UK) the National Health Service.
> I don't know of a gender-neutral term here. Fanboy implies an excess of appreciation, but fan means something weaker.
I would say "fanatic". Of course the word "fan" is derived from "fanatic", but perhaps the fact that "fan" is a shorter word implies less zeal than the longer word.
Visit some investor forums and search for TSLA sometime. They make Apple fans look tame :)
With that said, and it may be my own bias kicking in, Apple anti-fans seem way more passionate than fans. The anti-fan cannot understand why any rational person would ever use a product from Apple.
All of the above completely pales in comparison to the best example of adult fanaticism - political affiliation.
That sounds about right. Sure there are exceptions but most Apple "fans" have just bought into the Apple ecosystem, generally like their stuff better than the alternatives for most purposes, upgrade now and then, and often buy new types of devices, even though they acknowledge that Apple whiffs now and then. I'd mostly even put Gruber in this category.
They mostly don't openly ridicule people who run Android, Linux, or Windows. Whereas, as you suggest, there's a definite subset of people who think and are happy to say they think anyone who buys Apple products has more money than sense and has clearly been brainwashed.
Aren’t you just equivocating on the phrase “in love” though? In this context it just means a strong preference for products manufactured by a certain firm in a certain industry, which isn’t particularly abnormal.
"Falling out of love" still implies the kind of love you also fall into, I think. "Falling in love" has not yet been banalized to some mean some generic positive emotion like the word live itself unfortunately has.
I'm sad about the latter because we apparently lost the word to simply express this profound emotion without context.
The whole cultue of Apple is so weird, and kind of appalling. Just the fact that their press conferences are broadcast, and they're held in front of an audience that applaud everything the presenter says, and laughs at his jokes. People "live blog" it, like some bizarre court stenographer. And 1.000 threads are posted on HN about Apple keybords having been made even worse. Again.
That’s some selective consideration right there. Every large consumer tech company broadcasts their press conferences, because it’s of interest both to fans of the products and industry pundits.
Samsung broadcast their phone events every year. As do Google. Microsoft and Sony are very happy to get on stage to tell you about their new consoles. Tesla have got a new car to tell you about too.
Surely you can see why some people might be interested?
I call them mass, because that’s what they are. I watch even them intentionally because the comical onslaught of positive words and colors does have a mood enhancing effect
I suppose the alternative would be a press conference that is broadcast to nobody, presented before an audience that remains entirely silent, and covered by no news outlets or tech blogs.
That doesn't seem like a fair thing to expect from a consumer technology company.
If you can do a shuffling run, punctuated by awkward hops around a stage while screaming, "Eeeeeeeeeeeeee!" to applause from a huge crowd at a corporate event, then you've got some devoted fanatics.
Honestly, the arguments in this series of posts are not strong. I laughed out loud when I got to his complaints about Apple's headphone chips and the ease of pairing they allow -- and how it's somehow unfair that Apple, having developed this competitive advantage, is refusing to share it with other companies.
What IS it about Apple that makes a certain class of tech geek feel like they have to dislike them in such a public and performative way?
>What IS it about Apple that makes a certain class of tech geek feel like they have to dislike them in such a public and performative way?
Well in this case some of the reasons seem to be anticompetitive behaviour.
Tech geeks like to use their general purpose machines where they have a choice to pick their preferred tools and programs rather than feel like they're being pushed to get trapped in a walled garden of everything [company x] that comes to exist by said company exploiting monopsonies and leveraging it's platform control to slowly increase it's clout and push out competitors.
Yes the same can apply to Microsoft or the like in other/similar cases.
The counterargument is that Apple is not at fault for its own success, and it would be anti-competitive to hamstring Apple simply because its ecosystem is profitable. The company clearly does not have market control in personal computing hardware, and competes with Samsung and others in the mobile device market, so what exactly is the reason that Apple can't try to convert its platform into a conduit for services revenue?
The usual dichotomy is that if you control the platform, you can't sell using it will lead to an abuse of market power.
Eg "If we're massively successful in building/buying the water distribution network in $city why hamstring us?" Is an argument that holds no water.
There's a decreasing long-run average total cost curve for systems software. Which is why microsoft dominated the desktop for so long and why there are only 2 viable phone operating systems - where the veondors and controllers of those operating systems use their massive market power to compete in how much abuse of the users they can dole out.
I realise trying to explain conflict of interest and market power abuse to fans of a company that literally tax the revenue of anyone selling software on their phones and tablets, then destroy success by competing with it unfairly abusing that platform control, is doomed. But it remains a very strong economic argument based on the technical defintion of market failure accross the spectrum of economics as I studied it late last century, from Friedman to Keynes.
As ever, anything that contains "...with a computer" prevents most adults from engaging the critical thought region of their brain. [1]
[1] I'm really happy to have people disagree with me on specifics if they can explain why this thing "..with a computer" is different and needs to be treated differently in law and policy to the same thing, contstructed with thousands of people, filing cabinets, paper and old-school dial-up telephones. Imagine how you would provide the service with the latter. What policy is appropriate? What law is appropriate? When should that law be enforced? Then apply just that to the same system with a bunch of servers and software.
If that "same system - computerless" analysis and case was made each time, we'd have much more sensible policy and policy discussion. I can dream, right?
>The counterargument is that Apple is not at fault for its own success
No it isn't a counterargument unless you think it's success is solely the consequence of it's anticompetitive market practices...in which case yes it's definitely at fault for it's own success.
>so what exactly is the reason that Apple can't try to convert its platform into a conduit for services revenue?
They can charge high rates by virtue of having created a monopsony in what's essentially a duopoly.
This is bad for the consumer. This is bad for competition. This is bad for capitalism.
It's entrenched enough and able enough to extract this way that it's value soared to more than the GDP of a host of countries including Italy, Brazil, Canada and Russia and still there's plenty licking their boot because their product is good.
If a water utility country delivers the freshest and well filtered water to your home if it does so at ridiculous rates because it pushes legislature in it's favour and stomps on the competition using it's clout then that's still a shit state of affair
The fact that there's an alternative option in a duopoly rolling with these high rates protecting both from being called out and split up doesn't matter much. Especially if they only deliver sparkling water which you happen to dislike.
Looking back it's a bad analogy because these companies would do a whole host more than just water and interconnect their services.
They're not the underdog anymore, they're very profitable, they make lukewarm claims for headlines that fall apart under scrutiny (the kind of scrutiny that tech geeks are all about), and in recent history have acted pretty badly towards developers.
All that said, after building a Linux machine for development and general client work, I consider Macs the best option out there. Everything from being able to copy 2FA codes from my phone and pasting on my computer, to colored tags and smart folders in Finder make my work easier. Also, Bluetooth is just a breeze under macOS.
Hate to be that guy, but I copy paste clipboard contents across devices with kde connect. It's so reliable that I tried doing it when fixing my mum's computer without realizing it's not a magic built in thing that computers just do for some reason.
That's because it's impossible to implement that functionality in iOS with its locked-down APIs. It's the same reason that Microsoft's Your Phone app is limited on iOS compared to Android. On iOS, only Apple has the privilege to implement such features and they limit the interoperability with macOS.
Considering that your're not allowed to do anything interesting with the system when developing for ios, that's not surprising to me. I connect my android with my gnu/linux machine and my windows videogame box, that's all I tested.
On Android, I can transparently use a third party messaging service that also delivers phone calls and messages to my computers. I don't even need my phone with me to do what rendezvous does. This just isn't possible on iOS due to its restrictions on APIs available to third parties.
You never see people going on about how Apple products work for them and how much they love their products? You never see people defending Apple’s premium pricing because they believe Apples products just work even though it’s unlikely that every iteration is perfect off the factory line? John Gruber articles gushing about Apple products are never posted to HN?
Just because there’s healthy criticism doesn’t mean it’s some negative malevolent argument. Most criticism of Apple is activist focused. Most gushing about Apple is consumerist focused.
People are actively trying to move off closed platforms. So what?
And, on the converse side, why is there a class of tech geek that always strongly defends Apple in the comments? No matter how strong or weak the original criticism is, the top comment basically laughs it out of the room. It is never taken seriously. Could we not equally characterize the defenses as 'public and performative' as well, and if not, why not?
In either case, I agree with you people generally have strong feelings about Apple, relative to other companies. The existence of one side brings out the other more (compared to a baseline where more people have no opinion or are neutral).
It's usually people who feel sour about spending their savings on Apple product and want to justify it so hard, they'll try to shut down anyone with even a hint of criticism for that product. They just cannot feel they might be in the wrong. It's actually an effective litmus test for one's personality and you can more easily filter out your circle based on how well people take such criticism.
Or just people who are sick of seeing it every post. It’s the same with Microsoft (I hate the constant unjustified EEE claims). It adds nothing to the discussion and only starts flame wars.
Apple fanbois are annoying, but Apple haters are equally annoying. The idea that any sane person could like Apple for reasons other than being sheep never crosses their mind.
>It's usually people who feel sour about spending their savings on Apple product and want to justify it so hard
That's a really weird assertion.
Nerds as a tribe are typically not willing to let factually incorrect statements pass without refutation, but if we do that re: Apple, it's because we're insecure about my tech choices? I mean, seriously?
Because of their behavior. A recent example is their actions around (not) allowing cloud gaming on their platform.
xCloud and Stadia have been trying to get iOS apps setup and Apple keeps stopping the apps. Apple does not have their own cloud gaming platform. They have been hypocritical about what apps and behavior they do or don't allow on their iOS platform.
Cloud gaming is just one recent example, is this behavior not worth of antitrust?
> xCloud and Stadia have been trying to get iOS apps setup and Apple keeps stopping the apps.
Apple did indeed do that before they had guidelines that could accommodate this new streaming app distribution model. But now they do.[1]
These companies can choose other platforms if the iOS platform experience doesn't meet their needs, OR choose to support an iOS-compatible web distribution experience.[2]
Personally, I don't generally choose Apple products for my own use because I tend to prioritize customization, flexibility, cost and a wider range of choices over simplicity, ubiquity, consistency and aesthetics. However, I concede that Apple makes some outstanding hardware and is generally an innovative, well-run company and the world is better for having the company in it. There are many users and use cases for which Apple's offerings are an excellent fit (including my own mother).
Most of my personal usage concerns are around the software and content areas where the user types and use cases Apple tends to prioritize aren't a good fit for my needs. For example, the focus in iOS on content consumption and app-snacking vs flexible content authoring and application depth (speaking-broadly here, as there are certainly notable counter-examples).
From a meta-perspective, as a long-time software-centric serial entrepreneur, I feel the long-term, net impacts on the market of Apple's app and content business models is, at-best, mixed for third-party developers. It can be excellent for very large developers with established brands and/or customer bases as well as the single-digit percentage of app developers that score a mega-hit. It can also be a good deal for small part-time devs that just want to get started quickly and don't necessarily need to count on consistent long-term revenue to make a house payment or employee payroll.
The app store model introduced a different set of trade-offs for developers because Apple retains certain significant value components for themselves such as the direct customer relationship, finely-grained control of distribution, some promotion avenues, margins and available business models. They also force certain requirements on developers. I agree that some of these requirements are also net benefits for users (eg privacy, compatibility, etc). However, they are also differentiators for Apple's offerings and enablers of Apple's extraordinary business model success.
Unlike some others, I don't believe Apple is guilty of being a monopoly (as defined by regulatory agencies) and don't see Apple's strategy as even especially predatory or deceptive. Sure, it's boldly aggressive and perhaps lopsided in Apple's favor, at least as compared to the Wintel proposition before it. But it's not fundamentally immoral, unethical or illegal. Certainly, the net effects and trade-offs of the app store value proposition to developers (and users) should be well-understood by now. If it's not a good fit, developers (or customers) should evaluate alternatives and respond appropriately depending on their preferences, context, requirements and priorities.
Finally, I think the difference between my viewpoint and that of Apple's biggest fans or harshest critics is more a matter of subjective value-judgements and perspective than objective right vs wrong. For example, I'm probably influenced by personally benefiting from valuation increases based on having durable customer relationships and diverse distribution channels.
Sadly many are very anti success here when it comes to corporations. It is all okay when you are the underdog but when you become top tier suddenly everyone piles on to nitpick
you can read stories throughout the history of HN and see where a company was being heralded for what they were doing only to be criticized later on for the same or similar.
We will never have a world where every company is equally successful and rarely does one company stay at the top for very long. Apple has been at the top of the "their" game for a relatively short amount of time considering how long they have been around. Same with other companies
I guess you haven't been around for the past 20-30 years? They're part of a culture war that they helped create surrounding Mac vs PC, iOS vs Android.
Steve Jobs even created these types of wars in-house. (e.g. the new Mac team vs everybody else - see The Pirates of Silicon Valley) Business is war.
People choose sides and they must defend their choice out of pride. It's like Ford vs Chevy.
Beyond that - Apple is very much against putting general computing freedom in the hands of users especially in iOS but also definitely in macOS. Lots of people hate a tyrant and don't want to work with them and will try to convince people who don't care about that to join them. And of course there are people who disagree.
So that's basically where you get all the anti/pro Apple argumentation.
Okay. I'm not wrong at all but I'll wait for your explanation as to why you think I'm wrong and also what the correct answer is in your opinion.
Without either of those, your comment is just noise.
Oh I see, you're the one asking the question - Pfft so, since you don't know the answer yourself I'd love to hear how you know that my answer is incorrect. I've only been around computer culture since the 70s when Apple was born... what could I possibly know?
Many good points in the article. And the starting point is brilliant:
> Extract more revenue from your existing customers
That is the only way forward for a company so used to growth. pressure on its current customers is only going up to buy new services and pay more for the old ones. Old strategies that new tools and a device that is with you 24/7 bring to new abusive levels.
Saying that Apple banned Epic for "fighting back" is definitely twisting the truth a bit. Epic released a behind-the-scenes software update in direct contravention of the App Store rules, which they knew was going to get them banned.
My layman understanding was Epic had to do this to be able to legally challenge Apple in court (to demonstrate damages or whatever). That's not quite the same as (covertly) breaching your contract hoping you get away without getting caught, which is the impression you're giving.
Assuming that's accurate, then I'm not sure what else one would expect them to do—not do something that gets them banned, then have their case thrown out immediately because they can't (say) demonstrate damages? Did they have any other realistic options besides just shutting up and putting up with the situation (which they have been doing this whole time)?
That's Government v. Apple, not Epic v. Apple. Furthermore, irrespective of what the outcome of Epic v. Apple is, more people are paying attention to Apple's behavior and the rouse may eventually bear fruit (in the form of more Government v. Apple).
If you're going to make a claim about a pending case and you're not a lawyer then you really need to provide a source. Because based on what the judge has said to date [1] your understanding does not seem accurate.
Read the CNN report your article links to. It says the same thing I said:
> Epic's attorneys acknowledged that the company breached its agreement with Apple but claimed Epic was simply refusing to comply with an anti-competitive contract, and that forcing a legal battle was part of Epic's plan.
You might disagree about whether it should've been part of their plan (evidently their lawyers disagree, and I have yet to see either your article or yourself mention an alternative approach), but either way, everything I've seen is consistent with their intention having been to force this into court than to covertly breach the contract.
You're arguing against a layman's explanation by linking to a layman's explanation.
The first argument is about standing. The second argument is about, apparently, an injunction to remain available during the course of the litigation. They're two separate issues.
No I am linking to an article with quotes from the judge presiding over the case and a factual summary. The author is not giving their understanding of the legalities and merits of the case.
OP's statement, "Epic had to do this to be able to legally challenge Apple in court" is worthless if they are not a lawyer and don't have some reputable source.
> No I am linking to an article with quotes from the judge presiding over the case and a factual summary. The author is not giving their understanding of the legalities and merits of the case.
The article is written by a layman and includes a contextless quote from the judge which doesn't appear relevant to the point you're trying to make.
> OP's statement, "Epic had to do this to be able to legally challenge Apple in court" is worthless if they are not a lawyer and don't have some reputable source.
Accusing someone of not being a lawyer is not a counterargument, it's an ad hominem attack. If they're right, they're right. If they're wrong, where's your evidence?
I would consider Epic's action the corporate equivalent of civil disobedience, which is a form of protest. Fighting back seems an apt description for such a protest.
It’s like civil disobedience but it’s backed by profit motive rather than human rights. That makes it much less of a clear cut moral victory.
During these discussions a lot of people on HN have come forward and expressed their support for Apple’s walled garden. They like that Apple keeps malware out. Should Epic win and the iPhone be fixed wide open, that could change the situation dramatically.
Of course, I think Epic would be happy if they won a special exemption for their own marketplace but with the status quo remaining for everyone else.
Civil disobedience is not by definition limited to specific causes such as human rights. Many actions during union strikes (e.g. not respecting a back-to-work legislation or picketing on company property) would fit the definition too, even if the only reason for the strike is disagreement over remuneration, i.e. profit motive. In fact, the Wikipedia article for civil disobedience has a picture of a union member on strike about to be arrested.
Just to emphasize your point, 30% take is relatively small in the retail world. A store like Amazon or Walmart or Target or Best Buy generally wants a cut of 40-50%, if not more. And that doesn’t include the cut many distributors want to take for being the middle person.
(Source: I’ve been on the executive team at startups with products sold in retail stores)
Then I'm sure you'd agree monopsonies due to increasing centralisation and clout in the past few decades aren't all that nice for the consumer and smaller players like startups.
Yup. And that excludes the fee many brands pay supermarkets to be in the eye level spot on the shelves. New entrants have to spend money just to be visible in the racks, regardless of whether their product is being sold.
> Just to emphasize your point, 30% take is relatively small in the retail world.
The internet already provides a nearly free distribution medium for software application - so even paying a 5% markup to an unnecessary middleman is just outrageous. The app store only exists so that Apple (and others) can gauge even more money from developers, who ultimately pass on the cost to us customers.
The web also allows any producer of physical products to distribute directly to consumers, doesn't it? So why is it OK for Amazon to get a fee, or any physical retailer? Aren't they unnecessary middle men too?
> So why is it OK for Amazon to get a fee, or any physical retailer? Aren't they unnecessary middle men too?
Amazon or Walmart or any other online or offline super market doesn't prevent either the manufacturer to sell directly to the consumer, or me as a consumer to directly buy from the producer / manufacturer.
Apple does precisely that with its restrictive app store on ios (and soon will on the macOS too), denying the buyer the right to buy an app directly from the developer and avoid the unnecessary burden of the Apple Tax. Due to this same restriction it is also able to charge the developer an annual recurring fee, again unnecessarily raising the total cost of an application for the user.
And how does that dispute anything I said? I wasn’t making a claim that the AppStore commission is warranted or not, I was speaking to what retail stores charge. I get it, you think Apple is out of line, but maybe reply to someone who is claiming it’s justified rather than pointing your vitriol towards me?
Wouldn’t you say your post is “bitter criticism” of Apple/the AppStore? If so, then welcome to learning the definition of vitriol! If not, then other help than I can provide is needed.
This doesn't add to the debate and detracts from it. To come back to it - we were not discussing whether it is fair for Apple to charge how much ever percentage it does on its app store vs Amazon (or anyone similar).
The crux of the matter is that neither Amazon or Walmart or any other online or offline supermarket restricts anyone from buying a product directly from the producer / manufacture or from elsewhere.
Apple does precisely that with its app store on ios (and soon will on macOS too). By depriving us the freedom of buying from the developer (or others) directly, Apple not only violates our privacy but also raises the cost of an app for everyone (by unnecessarily charging the developer an annual recurring fee and by charging a commission on sale).
> The crux of the matter is that neither Amazon or Walmart or any other online or offline supermarket restricts anyone from buying a product directly from the producer / manufacture or from elsewhere.
That’s not true either. Just because you aren’t away of it, doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. Trust me, the retail world has lots of dark corners that you learn when you have to deal with it directly.
It's not even a valid comparison and disingenuous because software products now don't need to be sold through any retail outlet, and can be sold directly to the customer through the internet. There is absolutely no need of any app store as a middle man here.
There are plenty of companies who sell their products directly to consumers. So physical products don't need to be sold through third party retailers either.
And some brands have started doing just that. But that's not the point - Amazon or Walmart doesn't prevent me from buying the products directly from the producers / manufacturers or from some other third-party. Apple does precisely that with its app store and ios platform (and soon will do with macOS).
While there are many reasons to fall out of love with Apple, including those discussed in this blog post, many people will simply not do so.
Apple has always had an unusual and often unhealthy relationship with their customers, which has garnished Apple fans with labels such as "Cult of Mac members" - Ch.3 through 5 of this satirical book actually analyzes why that is: https://github.com/jasoneckert/CultOfMac
I never in my life bought that amount of software compared to the App Store, it’s convenient and mostly safe.
Apple paid revenue in the store is two times higher than Googles. I think this is directly correlated with convenience and safety.
Client IP is city-level geolocation. It's sent with every communication to Apple, necessarily, because Apple has not embedded Tor into their OS.
AppleID (which you have stipulated) + timestamp (obvious) + client IP (necessary for a TCP/UDP connection) on inbound App Store requests is travel history, because client IP = city. It's quite simple.
Each time you open the App Store not on a VPN, Apple knows which city that Apple ID holder is in.
Additionally, the App Store sends the device serial number to Apple (per Apple's disclosures), so the device serial number is associated with your Apple ID.
The device maintains a persistent, serial-number-linked connection to Apple at all times (APNS) for receiving push notifications. This device-serial linked connection involves Apple seeing the client IP (and thus city) as well. Because Apple has linked the device serial with your Apple ID via the App Store, the persistent, 24/7 APNS connection allows Apple to track which client IP (and thus city) is in use by which AppleID, in real-time, whenever the device is on and connected.
I would appreciate it if you stop systematically responding negatively to so many of my comments. It feels like a pattern of harassment based on my identity to me, rather than you sincerely engaging with what I have to say.
Not only that but any time any app gets your meter-accuracy GPS location, Apple also gets it to use for their AGPS service, and (unlike every other AGPS service I've seen) there is no way to turn it off. This information gets sent with an "anonymized" identifier to prevent spoofed requests, but this is easily correlated with the other Apple ID tagged requests they get from the same device.
Perhaps that you do not realize that storing client IP logs is standard practice for all internet services, and indeed without special and custom engineering effort is necessary for preventing brute-force attempts and denial of service as well as other types of abuse.
Any system as vast and reliable as APNS or the App Store is logging client IPs (and is thus logging approximate client location).
Anyone who doesn’t embed Tor for all communications, is recording your travel history?
First off, this is still simply false.
It may be technically possible that they are in fact reconstructing identifiable location history for individuals.
It’s also possible that they do what they say they are doing, which is to anonymize as early as possible and not use data for this purpose.
They could easily be keeping these logs separate, and disposing of them in a timely fashion, and not attempting to use them to analyze individual’s locations.
You are clearly technically competent enough to know that either scenario is possible (as well as many others).
Therefore you know it is not true to say that Apple is ‘recording you travel history’ in the absence of additional evidence.
As you have been repeatedly informed, that data is very easy to deanonymize. The last time you were told this, you then made the wacky claim that the data isn't sent to Apple at all. After being shown that it was, you just went on your way only to repeat the original lie again.
I have not seen sneak be repeatedly pointed out that his statement is incorrect. That is a lie. He is completely correct, which is why he has never been corrected.
I never said that they were actively doing it for everybody, only that they can do it, and there is nothing in their privacy policy that prevents them from doing it. Your claim that I said otherwise is the lie. Your claim that sneak had been repeatedly told he was wrong is also a lie. You have repeatedly called me and sneak liars even though we have provided proof that you have simply not read. Will you apologize to both of us?
Note that Apple's location privacy is worse than every other platform with AGPS that I haye used, from Google, Amazon, Mozilla, and Microsoft. Each one correctly classifies this as a privacy setting and allows the user to opt out. Every single one also "anonymizes" their data collection for AGPS, but none of them are facile enough to say that there isn't a reduction in privacy for having it enabled.
No, they are not recording your location or your “travel history”.
The best you can do is suggest that they might have the possibility of using geoIP to deduce locations from logs whose storage duration you do not know.
That simply isn’t the same thing.
If sneak were to have said something like this:
“Apple could be lying to us, and may in fact be using geoIP to deduce people’s location from IP addresses in their logs. I have no proof of this, but it is technically feasible, and I don’t trust them not to be doing it.”
I would not say they were lying. These are all true statements.
But to say “Apple is recoding your travel history” when really all you have is speculation about what is technically possible, is a lie.
> No, they are not recording your location or your “travel history”.
Another lie. They are recording your location. You already agreed to that except last time, you said it was "anonymized." Then you said that it was recorded but not queried. Now you're saying they're not recording it at all? Keep your facts straight.
The worst part is that you're paying for this abuse from Apple and then justifying it to others. Nobody else is falling for it.
You keep saying ‘Apple is recording your location’. You haven’t provided a single link to a single piece of evidence.
‘You already agreed to that except last time, you said it was "anonymized."’
If this is true you’ll be able to find a link to where I agree that Apple records your location.
As to me saying it’s anonymized. It’s not just me. Apple states that the location data is anonymized. I’m basing my statement on their published statements.
On the user side without question, but ion the developer side this enormous convenience for the user is worth much more than 30 percent. This is not Marketing this 50% of your sales funnel.
"Censorship: Apple manages a global set of App Stores and cooperates with law enforcement in each jurisdiction in which it operates. ..."
Okay. We agree. What's the fix?
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This censorship food fight is at least two problems.
#1 Which rule of law applies to international companies?
This is foreign policy. Just like trade agreements, treaties.
USA flagged corporations like Google, Apple, Facebook need a federal solution. Just like shipping, banking, and so forth. These corporations cannot act unilaterally, nor should they be expected to.
I have no idea what an international treaty covering speech and privacy would look like. Please share any and all ideas.
#2 Need for fair and impartial court system, legitimate enforcement.
FAANGs cannot be governments onto themselves. If my app gets rejected, there must be a separate fair and impartial court system to hear my appeal and adjudicate. If an impersonator takes my profile, I need legitimate enforcement to restore my property rights. If a FAANG closes my accounts, I must have the right to sue for damages.
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Again: Enough complaining about unfair, arbitrary behavior. We get it.
You remove the master key nature that they have over their services and devices and let people manage their own master keys. I.e. let other app store happen, do not require apple to be the sole dispenser of keys, let side loading happen, etc.
That removes a lot of profit from their %30 cut although, so they are directly incentivized to prevent that from happening
The companies principally who are lobbying ... to have changes to your bills, are Apple, Nike, Coca-Cola [and] the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. What are they trying to do? What changes do they want to make to your laws?
Well, I don't know, because they haven't come to me to try to make changes to my piece of legislation, but the word is that they're trying to water down some of the enforcement provisions while publicly proclaiming that they are very much against and condemning forced labour. They're going behind the scenes and trying to change the law.
If they're against it, if they say that this is not in their interest, then why would they want to change your bills?
Because it's going to impact their supply chains and make it harder for them to profit off of this forced labour.
Which means that they're using the forced labour?
If they're not using it, it wouldn't be a problem. But, you know, it appears that they are using it. And if they are auditing their supply chains the way they're supposed to, this legislation wouldn't be an issue.
> According to a document viewed by The New York Times, Apple’s suggested edits to the bill included extending some deadlines for compliance, releasing certain information about supply chains to congressional committees rather than to the public, and requiring Chinese entities to be “designated by the United States government” as helping to surveil or detain Muslim minority groups in Xinjiang.
It’s definitely suspicious that lobbying is being done in secret, but I can’t think of many cases where any lobbying is done in the open.
As a passionate Apple hater their new chips didn't make me go 180 but I'm certainly looking over my shoulder. I'm not going to lock myself into any prison but the idea it could be cosy enough to sign up is entirely new to me.
I'd estimate that the more one rationalises this the less likely to actually switch away from Apple.
It's actually quite simple: let things run their course. When the iPhone becomes too lousy, don't buy another iPhone. When the Apple Watch gets broken, don't buy another Apple Watch. When the laptop won't work, get something else.
Step by step you realise all the Apple gear you have is just broken or old stuff.
I am in that boat after some painful experiences with my 2018 Macbook Pro. Battery bloated and wrecked the keyboard and touchpad. That combined with the OS continued to go be "iOSified" I am out. Back to Linux for me. The phone... that is harder, Android phones just aren't as good as iPhones, and that is okay. The quality of both Macbooks and MacOS have been in decline for some time now and it is quite disappointing. Even simple things that used to just work like migration assistant required me to deal with errors in the process and it was not simple.
If you want Apple then an alternative will indeed not help you. If you don't want Android then the alternative provides an opportunity not to be forced into Android.
I disagree. The original quote: "I really don't want to be forced to buy an Android phone". One can interpret it in a way that the person does not want to be forced into Android as the only alternative to Apple. In this case, my comment should be helpful.
Does this sentence change the meaning? The OP did not say they wanted Apple. They said they didn't want to be forced into Android. Of course, without Apple, in the absence of any other alternatives, you are forced into Android.
No, it doesn't. The OP never said they wanted Apple. But without Apple you are forced into Android (because there's no other obvious choice) and this seems to be the problem.
Silence. This is my comment. Waiting for legislative solution agains big tech in a financial depression is a pipe dream. So...I vote with my money. No more Apple tax for me.
> I believe Apple should simply refuse to cooperate with oppressive governments – but this is an unlikely scenario, as they have extremely close ties and dependence to China, a current perpetrator of genocide against the Uyghurs.
I could imagine Apple eventually moving its supply chain out of China, but it seems unlikely that they would be willing to be blocked from China's marketplace as Google services are. I wonder where Pixel phones and Chromebooks are manufactured, and where their components are sourced?
I would also like to see Apple refuse to cooperate with authoritarian governments, but I don't see that happening sadly.
Nope they’re counting my dollar bills. They keep putting out amazing hardware: AirPods, iPhones, M1 Macs, etc., I’ll keep bending around their software (which I love 99% of the time) and their control of the experience which I think is what makes everything work so cohesively.
We just bought a new MacBook Air with the M1 and my wife will use it until it dies so if it’s anything like our other Apple laptops could be 7 years or so.
My MBP 2013 lasted until 2019 which is amazing considering all of my prior laptops only lasted around 1 year. The same can't be said about the ones with any variation of the butterfly keyboard.
My keyboard is pristine on the 2013 and after only 6 months of my 2019 they're already wearing away. I think it's to make it feel old and worn so I'll buy another.
Money trumps everything. Everything done under the name of "we're are a privacy respecting company. We care about our users." is just a facade. Apple will sell you out in a heart beat if the law orders them to help them oppress their own citizens.
I wonder how do these people sleep at night knowing what they are supporting under the mask of company. What will their children think? "I'm so proud that my dad/mom contributed to a company which silently supported oppressive and genocidal government's and helped make the world a worse place to live for the people".
But let's go and buy iPhones and Macs and let them know we fully support their actions.
Sleeping at night is invariably achieved by dehumanizing the exploited. Chinese lives don't matter much, they are not Americans. Commies live on scraps. Such acts of othering make it easy to circumvent your conscience, this is the foundation of all war and crimes against humanity.
Then, of course, there are also the real bastards, those without conscience, who couldn't care less. They also don't care about American lives, or even their friends or family for that matter. The dumb ones end up in jail and the smart bastards end up running a company.
The rest of us just goes along with what everybody else does, we are too busy anyway to really reflect on our behavior. Need to buy more presents for the holidays!
Complaints about Apple’s censorship shouldn’t be limited to just foreign governments, which is a myopic and self-serving stance I often see in posts like this. It’s important to demand transparent free speech policies across the board for everyone. Like other big tech companies, Apple also censors content that doesn’t align with their progressive biases. They’ve banned numerous conservative apps from their App Store, and have threatened to ban others (example: https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2019/06/tech-tyranny-apple-...). They’ve also engaged in the cultural wars more directly by doing things like replacing the gun emoji with the squirt gun emoji (https://blog.emojipedia.org/apple-and-the-gun-emoji/). At this rate I will be unsurprised when Apple decides to start blocking certain websites across their devices for wrongspeak.
If by conservative you mean antisemitism, white supremacy, far out conspiracy, racism and hate speech: then yes they banned 'conservative' platforms.
That's trying to make a cultural war of broadly accepted, democratic values. It got nothing to do with progressive politics.
If you want to go full libertarian and demand Apple to give freedom to all these medieval hate platforms, you'll have to allow IS and the Al Qaidas of this world their jihadism videos too.
This hits the key point: there’s no history of oppression adding weight to that. Someone can not like white people but that’s not linked to a history of violence, financial discrimination, etc. which is living memory for a LOT of non-white people. There’s a big difference between not liking/trusting and echoing real threats of organized violence.
Again, read the entire song. It’s not exactly profound but if you aren’t cherry-picking it seems a lot more likely that they’re referring to the people who supported the colonization, slavery, and other violence mentioned earlier in the song. That’s why I mentioned the history since those were widespread real problems which still affect millions of people whereas the average white person has no credible reason to fear being mistreated.
I'm white and not a racist at all (have multicultural family, think we're all capable humans but also think any race/religion can have its antisocial parasites amongst them) but do find that song more as stirring hate rather than coming from a place of grievance. The song is putting all whiteness and all history in one bucket and setting it on fire. That's no different than a white guy being mugged by a black guy and crying black is evil and pointing at the guy's color. This song doesn't help the black cause at all, the blacks in America have indeed been deprived and put down and am willing to put a hand and stop it
What happened to the unifying message of love? Hate is divisive and never brought anything good to the table.
I don’t disagree. It’s not a song I like but my point was just that I think it’s in the genre of “hurt people sometimes lash out” rather than a sincere call for genocide, and that it doesn’t pack the punch of being associated with decent ability to actually cause harm.
Not to mention how (for better or worse) they don't apply the same content restrictions to music, movies, and other media as they do to software. A movie can include a sex scene or a song can include someone using explicit language to express how they feel about something. They will still often sell them. Not sure how I feel about it, but it seems to have been their policy for a while now.
I want ALL my subscriptions to go through Apple Pay and App store.
Once I subscribed to New York times. The newspaper that was advertised to me for years in all Hollywood movies as a place where honesty and freedom are of highest priority. I had to spend an hour on a phone with their representatives to cancel it refusing to accept discount or a free subscription.
I don't trust many other companies. Especially if all my interactions with them are virtual and they are not specialized in information technology. At least big tech is quite rich to afford to think about users.
Each bank got their app and added some obvious features there: pay for utilities, for your phone etc. I want more progress here. I want to be able to see all my fees upfront in a clear format. I want to know my credit score. I want to be able to take this credit score to different organizations. etc. etc.
Big hope that fin tech will blow it up, but unfortunately start ups didn't deliver. There are some successful ones, but I think finance is too regulated for them to have a shot at a serious scale. Apple and Google have a shot at that and they will create a road for smaller companies.
The situation in Belarus is bad. And believe me I know. I was concerned as well about my device security. But to be honest at the end of the day it can't be Apple's problem. Belarussian government must be replaced by Belarussian people and Apple has nothing to do with that. And on top of that - what choice do I have. Android devices in Russia are preinstalled with Russian software while Apple's aren't. That's more important sign for me.