
Apple’s defense of the App Store just shows how hard it is to compete with Apple - jmsflknr
https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/29/18644045/apple-defends-app-store-policies-antitrust-eu-spotify
======
pwinnski
> The message here seems to be that if companies don’t like Apple’s policies,
> they’ve got other options. Go find your riches on Android or make a Roku
> app. But developers have a huge financial incentive to be in the App Store.
> It’s often been reported that iOS users spend more money on apps than people
> with Android phones, and Apple leans on that advantage.

Apple's argument would seem to be that this financial incentive is the direct
result of their policies, so forcing them to change those policies would
reduce or eliminate this financial incentive.

It's a reasonable argument, although I think it's unknowable whether it's
true.

Legally, it might not matter.

~~~
wayoutthere
I tend to agree with this argument, and here’s why: Apple’s brand across the
board is about controlling every aspect of the user experience so they can
make it a cohesive experience the user enjoys. They do this at the expense of
short-term monetary gains from things like advertising, and don’t give a damn
about making life difficult for their business partners. This is not the
result of their success but likely the reason for it. There’s a reason it was
so culturally difficult for them to license “clone” Mac hardware in the 1990s;
it’s just not in their DNA.

They understand that the _end user relationship_ is all that matters. For
Apple’s brand to succeed, they have to own the relationship entirely so they
can protect their users from bad actors. That is literally why a large segment
of people choose Apple products. Do iPhones have malware problems on the scale
of Android? No, because of Apple’s heavy-handed control of the App Store. I
honestly think Apple would shut down the App Store entirely in favor of
something more universal like WASM before ceding control of the user
experience. General platform security / privacy also benefit from this
approach.

~~~
bitpush
Are we justifying potentially illegal behavior by saying "that's their brand"
and it helps them get wealthy in the long run?

Monsanto does the same with seeds. They do RnD, develop seeds and force
farmers to buy seeds directly from them, control end to end and probably
produce higher-yield crops with lesser diseases. It is their "brand" but
should we justify that behavior?

~~~
gowld
> justifying potentially illegal behavior

No, that's putting the cart before the horse. The question isn't "is this
(presumed) illegal behavior justified?"; the question is "this behavior is
illegal _if_ it is unjustified -- is it justified?". The illegality (should)
be a result of answering the question "is someone hurt unfairly?" If the
behavior in question is profiting from their own hard+smart work and not
sharing the wealth as much as partners want, it shouldn't be illegal (or at
most, the illegality is in keeping too high a share of the profits). If the
behavior is bait-and-switch trapping people and ripping them off by hooking
them with deceptively low onboarding price with high back-end "debt service",
then it should be illegal.

This is the principle underlying anti-trust/monopoly law.

------
pier25
It's funny that Apple shows competing alternatives to Safari on iOS when in
fact all iOS browsers use the same engine.

[https://www.apple.com/ios/app-store/principles-
practices/](https://www.apple.com/ios/app-store/principles-practices/)

------
alienreborn
Relevant article by former App Approval Chief at Apple:
[https://medium.com/@phillipshoemaker/apple-v-
everybody-59030...](https://medium.com/@phillipshoemaker/apple-v-
everybody-5903039e3be)

~~~
danShumway
From the article:

> _Target, for example, is a standard, old-school brick and mortar shop. You
> go to find specific products and walk up and down aisles. When you find
> something that interests you, you don’t purchase it through that product.
> Instead you bring it to the Target checkout clerk, and they will charge you
> for it. And believe me, Target gets their fair share of the purchase of that
> item. If Target finds that the product has stickers telling you to purchase
> this item from Amazon or another location for a lesser amount, Target will
> remove the item from the shelves, and rightfully so. It is their brand that
> is bringing in the customers, not the products._

It seems at first glance like this would largely contradict Apple's earlier
arguments that purchases are between app developers and consumers, and that
it's just an intermediary in the process[0]. Anyone willing to comment about a
subtlety to this argument I could be missing?

[0]: [https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/05/13/apple-app-store-
lawsu...](https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/05/13/apple-app-store-lawsuit-can-
proceed-supreme-court-rules/)

~~~
tguedes
I don't believe it contradicts it. Apple claims that it does not set the
price, the developers do. That's what they mean when they are just the
intermediary, they facilitate the transaction but are not part of it.

I think his example is poor because Target does set the prices on products,
for the most part. I think something better would be a flee market. The flee
market operators provide services to facilitate the sales of the vendors and
they can also choose which vendors are allowed to sell in their market, but
they do not control the prices the vendors sell at.

~~~
bilbo0s
Just as a point of precision, Target does not _technically_ set the price of
any given manufacturer's goods. What they do when you get to that point in
your talks with them, (and only if you're not ginormous), is to strongly
suggest that you sell your product at such and such price. If you don't,
they're gonna walk and sign on your competitor instead.

It's devilishly ingenious, because, as I found out the hard way, in a court of
law, they don't consider that to be setting the price. You still have the
power to set your own price. You just won't be in Target if you pick the wrong
price.

~~~
gowld
What do you mean? Target doesn't by wholesale and resell? They don't sell
products for their own revenue, and pay for those products as an expense? Is
the retail sale price a factor in the computation of how much the wholesale
provider is paid?

------
Ourotica
If you think it's tough dealing with Apple, try running an app that allows
adult content.

We're not allowed in the app store, we're not welcome on any major payment
platform, and thanks to Apple dragging their heels on PWA support in Safari,
we don't have any access to push notifications (or most of the other major
native features).

The vast majority of our traffic is on iOS, but we're completely locked out
from providing a native experience thanks to Apple's bullshit policies.

~~~
ppeetteerr
The policies are everywhere

[https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/29/18644537/google-
marijuana...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/29/18644537/google-marijuana-
android-play-store-policy-ban-direct-sales-facilitation-apps)

------
adgasf
Apple needs to allow you to change the default apps (similar to how you can
change the keyboard) for this argument to hold up.

~~~
mcphage
Also allow apps to allow purchases inside without going through Apple's in-app
purchases. Maybe they need to decide on a case-by-case basis, or maybe only
for apps for companies with a large external presence, but not being able to
buy eBooks through the Kindle app, because Apple wants it to go through their
own in-app purchases instead of Amazon's own payment gateway, is frustrating.

~~~
zepto
If they allow enough In app purchases not to go through the store then they
have no way to collect money from anyone, Since all apps could then just
collect their money that way.

If you limit it only to an anointed group of large companies then you have
formed a cartel, which itself is likely illegal.

~~~
balabaster
They could do something like Microsoft has with Azure where you have an
Enterprise Agreement whereby you pay some licensing fee and then they allow
companies to route through their own payment gateways to make for a better
user experience.

People say Apple care about the user, but they don't, they care only insofar
as ensuring lock in. They don't care if you hate Apple, just so long as you
keep giving them your money. As long as you don't hate them enough to leave,
they've done enough.

The only way to fix it is if enough companies make their user experience so
much better on Android that having an Android device is a more attractive
offering than an Apple one and enough users flee Apple for alternatives... but
companies don't give a shit if you want Android or Apple, what they care about
is how much they have to pay developers to win your money and your eyeballs on
their products.

I've worked on a number of high value development teams for these types of
apps across mobile platforms and this attitude has been common across all of
them: If they can still win your money through a crippled user experience that
it costs them a minimal amount to maintain across both platforms, that's what
they do. They want Apple's market. They want Android's market. They don't want
to maintain two applications and two development teams because that increases
costs and they want similar user experiences on each device because brand
fragmentation hurts their image. So in this sense Apple is also hurting
Android and it's evidence they don't really give much of a fuck about the user
as long as they're getting your money.

I say this as someone who has experience on the inside of development teams
that provide the apps you love on the devices you love, and I say this as
someone who loves my Apple devices but am by no means an iFanboy.

~~~
zepto
Your arguments rest on the idea that the independent software providers don’t
care about the user experience and are simply going to try to minimize costs.
You said as much.

Therefore, If Apple allowed alternative in app purchase experiences, there
would simply be a race to the bottom to provide the cheapest user experience
they could get away with on both Apple and Android devices.

------
stcredzero
_But the most interesting parts of this new site relate to competition. In one
section, Apple goes over the core, built-in apps on iOS and lists the many
popular third-party options that are available from the App Store in each
category as alternatives._

I dare someone to try it. Take all of the default apps and hide them away in a
folder somewhere and replace all of them with alternatives. Let me know 1) the
quality of your user experience and 2) of all of the annoyances, how many of
them are due to the lack of "special" capabilities and integration only
available to the in-house apps?

------
anfilt
2 things I really hope from this. Apple can no longer block side-loading, and
the dumb restriction on browser engines goes away, but I guess I will see how
this law suite goes.

Also It's hilarious how they claim it's competitive. You can only install one
app store.

------
just_myles
" (Apple takes a 30 percent cut of subscriptions for the first year a customer
is signed up and 15 percent for each year thereafter."

That is a considerable amount of paper.. How do you make any money when their
cut is so high? Anybody with experience? I wonder how this shakes out annually
with an app like Netflix.

~~~
pwinnski
Netflix doesn't give up 30% or 15%. It's listed as an example of a "Reader"
app, so Netflix subscriptions take place entirely outside of Apple's
infrastructure[0] and therefore Apple get zero of that money.

> How do you make any money...

The remaining 70%/85% is a pretty good start. As they say before that point,
"developers have earned more than $120 billion worldwide"

[0] The point Apple glosses over here is that Netflix isn't even allowed to
provide a link back to their site for subscribing within the app, which seems
difficult to defend.

~~~
pkamb
Netflix only recently removed in-app subscriptions; before that they _were_
paying X% to Apple for every subscriber who paid via iTunes. And still are for
anyone who is still paying that way. Although surely it was a sweetheart deal
always below 30%, and potentially below the 15%.

------
woodgrainz
Apple's market share is low enough that it may continue to be unchallenged by
enforcing all its own apps to be the default apps. Antitrust will probably not
apply to them, I suspect.

~~~
MBCook
The US government (for example) doesn’t care about Apple’s world wide market
share, they care about the US.

And in the US Apple’s market share is MUCH higher.

~~~
Retric
Still 10% below Android though.

~~~
writepub
Not according to [1]. Install base of iOS is higher in the US

[1]: [http://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/united-
stat...](http://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/united-states-of-
america)

------
singularity2001
I had three apps denied because they where 'too close to existing Apple
products'. (They where not). Break that monopoly!

------
ppeetteerr
What a joke! Apple made a product people enjoy using and an App Store people
trust. Now, companies are complaining that Apple is stifling innovation
because their App Store is charging 30% and making competitive products. Tough
shit. It's their walled garden. Don't build for the App Store if you're afraid
of competition.

