
App stores, trust and anti-trust - kaboro
https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2020/8/18/app-stores
======
jarjoura
This article is just repeating the same Apple messaging points they've given
us.

First off, the article's biggest point, the security sandbox, is not the issue
at all with the App Store. The entire internet runs inside of a sandbox.

Developers understand they must play fair on a device that is shared with
other developers. I don't think I've seen anyone complain of this anywhere.

However, what Apple has employed its engineering team to do is create and
enforce only one path to getting usable apps on the device and that's through
installing via the App Store.

~~~
bhupy
> This article is just repeating the same Apple messaging points they've given
> us.

Unrelated, but this is just about my least favorite criticism of an argument.
"Messaging points" are used/reused because they're usually the strongest
arguments. By pointing this out, you're just saying "this person is just
repeating the strongest arguments". Attack the argument, not its provenance!

~~~
an_opabinia
I don't know, it would be great if any of these people had bothered talking to
a lawyer or an anti-trust scholar, a provenance that would matter a lot to
understanding this issue.

For example, almost everyone here will learn more reading "Amazon’s Antitrust
Paradox" ([https://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/amazons-antitrust-
parado...](https://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/amazons-antitrust-paradox)) to
understand why Epic set things up the particular, exact way they did - because
they got Apple to take down a store page that clearly gave consumers the
option to buy something at a lower price.

If you don't want to be prejudiced by educational background, which is
reasonable, you can easily tell if a take on the Apple v. Epic case is well-
informed by simply Ctrl+F searching "consumer welfare." Additionally if the
writer makes the distinction between the legal realism (what _will_ happen,
which is that Epic will relist but not sell IAP on the App Store anymore, and
the outcome of the case will be non-precedent-forming), the legalism (what
_should_ happen, which is that Apple is reducing consumer welfare), and what
you _hope_ will happen, which surprisingly, for Ben Evans, I guess Apple makes
even more money?

~~~
Despegar
I'm not sure why people think this was some great legal trap pulled off here.
Everyone already knows that Apple's commission is 30%. Simply charging less in
the app doesn't actually show that Apple's commission is harming consumer
welfare (or conversely with Spotify, charging more in iOS). Epic would have to
show that Apple's alleged monopoly power is raising prices at a
_supracompetitive_ level in a relevant market.

~~~
an_opabinia
You have a page, it says “if you pay using a credit card versus the same exact
credit card except you give to Apple earlier, here is a 20% discount,” that is
obviously increasing consumer welfare. Apple booted them when they made that
page. It sort of doesn’t have to say anything about the commission, because it
doesn’t matter.

Epic could have offered 20% off and STILL paid the commission, and if Apple
booted them, it would still harm consumer welfare!

That’s why Ben Evans and Stratechery and so many tech takes are wrong, they’re
just not informed on the status quo of antitrust. It’s not material where the
consumer welfare comes from, it’s not material the goods being sold are
imaginary IAP, etc etc.

------
pkaler
This is a whole lot of words that doesn't clearly convey the core point: Apple
App Store payments should compete on technical/business merits and not be
mandatory based upon contractual obligations.

------
lsiebert
Epic is fine with the appstore, but it wants to handle it's own in-app
payments. You can have an app store with a separate in app payments; Uber does
for example. Epic says as much in it's argument for a preliminary injunction.*

Stadia is actually more of an existential issue than Epic because they want to
run unapproved games.

* [https://cdn2.unrealengine.com/epic-v-apple-8-17-20-768927327...](https://cdn2.unrealengine.com/epic-v-apple-8-17-20-768927327.pdf)

~~~
scarface74
You notice that Epic isn’t insisting on in app payments for any of the
consoles, why not?

Can I use in app payments within the Epic app that allow me to bypass Epic and
get virtual currency even cheaper than Epic?

Epic gets to choose how people buy currency on its platform. What’s the
difference?

~~~
panpanna
I think their fee is much lower.

Also, there are competing "stores" on PC, including the buy-cd-from-physical-
store-and-pay-no-fees option. On iPhone it's apples way or the highway.

So while epic are hypocrites, they can be bypassed easily.

~~~
scarface74
There are no competing stores within Fortnite’s “platform”.

------
saurik
> This is a trade-off, but there's a certain kind of person in tech that
> thinks app stores and the iOS sandbox have nothing to do with the success of
> smartphones and the iPhone - they're just a stupid Apple thing you could get
> rid of with no ill effects.

> Unfortunately, you can’t have your cake and eat it. A secure system with a
> switch to turn off the security might work for Linux and a highly technical
> user, but when you’ve given smartphones to a few billion people, a secure
> system with a switch to turn off the security is just a target for malware.

One of the things I found very frustrating about this article is that it fails
to remember the actual history: when the iPhone first came out, jailbreaks
were plentiful and powerful... the iPhone tried to be a closed and locked down
platform, _but failed_ due to the almost continual existence of serious
security flaws that allowed for 0-day drops of exploits with almost every new
device release (which coincided with every new major iOS release).

This means that we can actually look back at the history of the iPhone and
answer the question "could the iPhone have been as successful as it was if
there had been a switch that allowed users to opt out of Apple's complete
control of not only whose apps could be installed, but further what _kind_ of
software could be installed (to let you install things like daemons or
extensions to existing apps)" and the answer is "apparently, it could, because
it did".

In fact, it is the opposite question that we _can 't_ easily answer: "would
the iPhone have been as successful as it was _without_ the ability to opt out
of Apple's closed ecosystem?"... and this is a question where the answer is
not at all obvious: for many many years the iPhone very poorly satisfied the
needs of users in many countries, and jailbreaking filled the gap. Apple
didn't get around to having a good Chinese keyboard until iOS 5 or 6 or so,
and so Baidu maintained one and seriously encouraged users of their search
engine to jailbreak from their landing page. Meanwhile, the feature set was in
some real sense anemic, and jailbreaking also filled _that_ gap: as a trivial
example, Steve Jobs seemed very anti-wallpaper, a feature which didn't appear
until iOS 4... the number of people who jailbroke just to install wallpaper
was incredible ;P.

And honestly, I think Apple sort of knew that: I had always gotten the
distinct impression that they considered the bugs used by people who jailbroke
to be pretty low priority, and they would sometimes remain unfixed for months
on end. At some point, the iPhone started to get "good enough" by default, and
it was only then that Apple really started to turn down the screws, deciding
to fix bugs quickly and even hire jailbreakers who never believed in the cause
--those who were willing to play the game as a mercenary for hire--to defend
the platform instead of being on the offensive. Today, jailbreaking thereby
feels like a niche ecosystem, but it _mattered_ for at least half the history
of the iPhone, with something like 12% of users being jailbroken (it would
quickly fall a bit on new firmware releases and then rise back up).

The reality is that _innovation_ happens on platforms because of the ability
for people to make modifications and enhancements without having to wait for
the platform vendor: if iOS had succeeded in truly being a closed ecosystem,
Baidu would not have been able to build custom keyboards to support Chinese
users as Apple didn't get around to supporting third-party custom keyboards
until iOS 8. Open platforms thereby get new features faster and can support
the needs of many more users from any number of market subsets. Yes: it is the
case that a closed system can sort of try to satisfy the needs of at least
most people, but you don't get there overnight, and even coming up with sane
extensibility hooks takes time. The real experiment has thus only recently
begun: can a platform where only a single company can decide how to deploy new
features continue to maintain its relevance going forward?

~~~
benedictevans
I genuinely don't understand this argument. The fact that a platform succeeded
despite security holes is not an argument against removing those holes. You
might as well say that the malware explosion on Windows wasn't a problem
because Windows still did well.

~~~
thaumasiotes
> I genuinely don't understand this argument. The fact that a platform
> succeeded despite security holes is not an argument against removing those
> holes.

True enough, but you're just assuming the truth of your argument by using non-
neutral words.

The fact that a platform succeeded despite security holes is not an argument
against removing those holes.

The fact that a platform succeeded thanks to security holes is an argument
against removing those holes.

But how do you know which fact you're looking at?

------
tonywastaken
Why don't disgruntled app developers just pull their apps from the app stores?
Everyone is using custom launchers on Android these days anyway, lets show big
tec how much customers want to use custom launchers.

~~~
bearjaws
RIP your app on iOS if you remove it from the app store.

There is very little an iPhone user can do if their phone isn't rooted.

~~~
amelius
How about: one developer puts a "launcher app" in the App store, and all the
other developers use that to launch their apps?

~~~
scarface74
That’s also against the rules.

~~~
amelius
And how about: one developer creates a web-browser with some features that
will make it start fast on certain web-apps that don't use javascript but only
wasm, while other developers create apps for that browser?

~~~
scarface74
Having an alternative web engine is also against the rules. No I don’t agree
with that rule.

------
dariosalvi78
According to this article, billions of desktop operating systems users would
not be able to handle their computers without destroying them with malware.

~~~
scarface74
Which one are you more likely to do, install a random app on your phone from
an untrusted author or your computer?

~~~
dariosalvi78
In my case none or both, depending on the need. The point is, you could allow
lower security if people need it and it's not necessarily that catastrophic as
the author suggests.

~~~
scarface74
Why are people acting as if three decades of malware, ransomware, and toolbars
haven’t happened on PCs?

------
3pt14159
I'm generally for more tech regulation, but I don't want to see Apple's
position of power degraded. What may be needed is regulations to limit Apple's
take, because 30% of a $2 app is fine in my eyes, but 30% of an app that goes
for $50 is a bit much. To me it's the amount of work involved. Apple does more
work for more complex apps, but it doesn't really scale with the investment
involved.

I really don't want to go back to the days where I have to enter my credit
card in some stupid payment form instead of just authenticating with face id.

~~~
izacus
Apple is a giant 2 trillion dollar company, one of the richest in the world. I
think they can recover from allowing other companies in this world to compete
with them on equal footing.

------
vimota
I think a more interesting angle is to look at incentives. With Apple deriving
so much revenue from having a stranglehold on software running on iOS, are
they incentivized to improve the mobile web (which would be an alternative to
being forced to use an app for many use cases)? Are they actively stifling
innovation in web standards for mobile because of their conflict of interest?
As more and more of internet usage goes mobile, mobile web becomes the default
web and Apple's market dominance in the space gives them the same power of its
development as Microsoft had with IE pre-2001.

Another thing to consider is, if Apple has such a dominant position in this
critical market, how are they using it to dominate other adjacent markets? For
example, they're able to provide the exact same service as Spotify, Netflix,
Dropbox but with a 30% pricing advantage. What other markets will they enter
with this advantage? And should they be able to? And that's to speak nothing
of their other non-financial advantages (ie. first-party integrations, native
"advertising" of services, etc).

I look forward to a DOJ investigation, mostly because it's only in these
probes where you get answers to the above questions, and understand the degree
to which the company is considering these problems internally.

------
alex_t
I am trying to understand why is this business model from apple not
acceptable, from my point of view the way apple makes money on the apple store
is with the 30% fees on transations. In exchange they give out tools,
libraries and services for free. Do i get that wrong?

with that in mind isnt the request of Epic something like: "We want access to
all your platform and tools for free?"

~~~
panpanna
> Do i get that wrong?

Yes.

> We want access to all your platform and tools for free?

Well, they do pay the $99 annual fee + cost of a Mac required for submitting
to the store :)

More seriously, you are wrong because Epic/Spotify/etc don't mind giving apple
money when they use their payment infrastructure _but_ want to be able to also
use their own infrastructure and sell things 30% cheaper.

And yes, for companies with multiple sale points (fortnite is also on PC and
consoles ?), apple TOS forbids Epic selling things cheaper elsewhere which
means in-game item prices are artificially increased by up to 30% on _all
platforms_.

~~~
alex_t
but how is this different from, for example, me selling stuff on amazon? i
want to access the amazon customer pool, so i pay amazon a fee to do it?

what would be apple alternatives that would not imply giving away services for
free? i still have an hard time understanding this part: i understand that 30%
cut i a lot i am not defending the 30% tax.

~~~
izacus
Amazon itself is in hot waters for antitrust, so perhaps you shouldn't use
them as an example.

Still, there's a giant difference - Amazon's "customer pool" isn't forced to
buy only on Amazon and Amazon doesn't force YOU to ONLY sell the same item to
that "customer pool" (I like how you use a term that makes people seem like
inanimate objects.) via Amazon.

This is a massive difference. All the benefits of free market (as opposed to
command economy) are derived from customers being able to freely choose
another vendor and product to purchase. Monopolized integrated services are
just a corporate version of command economy where a single actor dictates
pricing and eliminates competition leading to severe lack of innovation and
worse products for everyone.

------
tempsy
I don't know why anyone reads Ben Evans - he's a sycophant for big tech who
seems to lack the ability to objectively reason about monopoly power.

~~~
benedictevans
Well, you clearly don't read anything I write - this piece ends by saying
Apple's IAP model is unsustainable and needs to be dismantled, and my previous
post said big tech companies are going to become as tightly regulated as
banks.

~~~
wayneftw
I don't see it. I read it twice and tried searching for "unsustainable" and
"dismantle". Could you point out where you said that exactly?

~~~
sa46
Presumably:

> This second one is instructive: the EU is taking the view that Apple has a
> monopoly of payment on the iPhone. Market definition is everything. I-am-
> not-a-lawyer, but I don’t see how Apple can win on Spotify (or Kindle), and
> I don’t think it should.

And the final sentence:

> Apple finally won the argument with users’ wallets, and that means it’s not
> niche anymore - Apple has become the navy, and different rules apply.

~~~
scarface74
Can I put music on Spotify without them getting a cut?

~~~
wayneftw
Yes, you can import any mp3 that you want into your Spotify playlists.

