Thanks for articulating your position in more detail.
The way I read your argument is that you actually do think the distinctions are real, buy they shouldn’t be used by Apple to control the marketplace.
I think that’s a reasonable position and one worth exploring.
I actually agree with you that the distinctions are in place to allow Apple to retain control of the marketplace.
I just don’t think it makes sense to pretend they aren’t meaningful distinctions. Not do I think we can assume the reason is mainly about gouging. If you want to make a case for that - by all means, but it’s not a given.
I don’t agree that steaming games are no more of a threat to Apple than the web.
For one thing, the web as a platform is slow to evolve because of interoperability issues.
These would not be present with steaming Apps.
If you don’t think Games are a distinct category then you must concede that streaming games means streaming apps of all kinds.
Yes - offline is an issue still, but it’s becoming less of one over time.
Streaming Apps don’t need to be an existential threat to Apple or have access to local data in order to be harmful.
They can bypass age restrictions, phish, be scams, collect credit card numbers, do social engineering, promote hate etc.
More importantly - your argument seems to be that Apple shouldn’t be able to discriminate based on what apps do.
If that is the case, then you’re not arguing for a narrow carve out for steaming games since you’ve already denied they are a category that Apple should be using.
You real argument is against Apple being able to control what goes on the store or on their platform.
I think that’s a valid argument, however I think it can’t meaningfully be just about Apple. If we are going to say Apple shouldn’t have this control, then nobody should be allowed it.
And then of course we have to articulate how we’d deal with all the security, malware and trust issues in such a world.
> If you don’t think Games are a distinct category then you must concede that streaming games means streaming apps of all kinds.
Well, but this is the rub: Apple does allow virtual desktop streaming on the app store. Streaming an app is allowed, as long as the user clicks on an icon on a virtual desktop. Can we think of a consumer-relevant difference between streaming a game and booting up a game by clicking on an icon on a virtual desktop? Is it relevant enough that one of those two things should be banned?
The only difference that seems credible to me is that the distinction allows Apple to directly target Google Stadia and Microsoft.
> They can bypass age restrictions, phish, be scams, collect credit card numbers, do social engineering, promote hate etc.
But is this a distinction that it's reasonable to think that Apple actually cares about? You can buy illicit ebooks on an Apple platform as long as Apple gets a 30% cut from the purchase screen. Apple isn't filtering the content of 3rd-party digital purchases.
And if the distinction that we're drawing is, "we need to make sure that we're blocking hate speech", make a policy that streaming platforms like Netflix, Amazon Video, and Google Stadia can't make hate speech available. Given what we know about Apple's current policies, is a ban on games the type of thing you would expect from an app store worried about hate speech, or would you expect something direct that actually targeted the real problem?
> your argument seems to be that Apple shouldn’t be able to discriminate based on what apps do.
I don't think I'm claiming anything quite that broad. I'm arguing that if discrimination exists only to target a specific market, and if the company involved is one half of a duopoly, then we should consider antitrust implications.
There are technical reasons to restrict what apps can do: for example, limitations around the platform and hardware. There are also consumer-facing reasons to restrict what apps can do, to block malware, spyware, and security risks. There are even moral reasons to restrict what apps can do, to block hate speech, or to make safe spaces for younger users.
The distinction between a game and movie for an entirely off-device experience doesn't fit any of those reasons. There's no moral reason to treat games differently than movies; if you were worried about morals you'd create a general policy against hate speech that applied to all 3rd-party content. There's no technical reason; the engineering resources to support both use-cases are exactly the same. And there's no consumer-facing reason; remote applications are all sandboxed from the user's phone.
The only reason to choose that specific distinction -- games vs videos vs ebooks vs applications -- is because of what companies are involved in each market. We can theoretically imagine a world where Apple might make a distinction there for non-malicious reasons, but the most logical, obvious explanation for those rules is that Apple isn't interested in blocking hate speech or phishing scams, it's interested in blocking markets. We know what it looks like when Apple gets interested in blocking hate speech or phishing scams or improving privacy, and generally it looks different than this.
To go back to the original analogy, I can come up with some tortured reasons why maybe consumers really care about the color of people's shirts (fashion is a giant industry after all), and I can say I want to create a shopping experience where everyone is dressed well and that maybe a solid red shirt might have bad words written on it, and obviously I can filter on clothing in general because I'm allowed to say that my customers can't be naked. These are all theoretically possible explanations for my policy, it's just that they're obviously lies. It's obvious that if I cared about people showing up naked, I'd target that specifically. It's obvious that in this scenario I'm coming up with the policy first, and then trying to justify it afterwards as if it's a neutral decision.
To flip your earlier incredulity back at you: do you really, honestly believe that if Amazon, Hulu, and other streaming services weren't essential apps for iOS, that Apple would still be looking at them right now and saying, "clearly video purchases should be treated differently than ebook purchases."? We can intuit something of Apple's motivation here.
We clearly disagree that there is no consumer facing reason to distinguish streaming game stores from movie stores.
The clothing store analogy is not relevant in this argument, because it assumes there are no technical differences, but that isn’t actually something we agree on. I.e. it’s a case of affirming the consequent.
It doesn’t explain anything - it just hides the point of disagreement by talking about clothes instead of software, which in fact work very differently.
Streaming games can clearly do things that other interactive malware can do, and that includes fraud, phishing, collecting credit card information, promoting hate, funding terrorism, and any number of other things.
Movies can’t do things like phishing or collecting credit card numbers etc.
They can of course promote hate, and Apple has removed streaming video services when they have done so.
So there is a difference.
As for claiming Apple is lying - well you clearly want to make that case, but it’s not at all obvious to me that they are lying about anything.
Nobody is pretending Apple doesn’t want to block competitors from establishing their own storefronts.
Apple is quite clear that they are banning streaming video because they want to retain control of what goes in the store.
I also think they are quite clear that they don’t want anything that does an end run around their control, and their collection of in app payments.
Nobody is lying about that.
As for you ‘flipping’ incredulity round on me - is there something I’ve said that you don’t think I believe?
Everything Apple does with the store rules involves enabling classes of apps they think will be essential to their users while preserving their control of the storefront.
Streaming game stores would be competition with the App Store itself, and allow it to be bypassed.
Streaming video services obviously don’t allow the App Store to be bypassed.
There’s nothing secret or hidden about this.
As for ‘duopoly’ - as I say, if you want to make the case that they shouldn’t be allowed to block competing storefronts based on a legal theory that they are too powerful to be permitted to do that, fine.
But that’s not what this discussion has been about. You are claiming streaming games and streaming videos are the same for the purposes of this argument.
They are obviously not and I’ve articulated the reasons.
If you want to continue to disagree on that point, be my guest.
The way I read your argument is that you actually do think the distinctions are real, buy they shouldn’t be used by Apple to control the marketplace.
I think that’s a reasonable position and one worth exploring.
I actually agree with you that the distinctions are in place to allow Apple to retain control of the marketplace.
I just don’t think it makes sense to pretend they aren’t meaningful distinctions. Not do I think we can assume the reason is mainly about gouging. If you want to make a case for that - by all means, but it’s not a given.
I don’t agree that steaming games are no more of a threat to Apple than the web.
For one thing, the web as a platform is slow to evolve because of interoperability issues.
These would not be present with steaming Apps.
If you don’t think Games are a distinct category then you must concede that streaming games means streaming apps of all kinds.
Yes - offline is an issue still, but it’s becoming less of one over time.
Streaming Apps don’t need to be an existential threat to Apple or have access to local data in order to be harmful.
They can bypass age restrictions, phish, be scams, collect credit card numbers, do social engineering, promote hate etc.
More importantly - your argument seems to be that Apple shouldn’t be able to discriminate based on what apps do.
If that is the case, then you’re not arguing for a narrow carve out for steaming games since you’ve already denied they are a category that Apple should be using.
You real argument is against Apple being able to control what goes on the store or on their platform.
I think that’s a valid argument, however I think it can’t meaningfully be just about Apple. If we are going to say Apple shouldn’t have this control, then nobody should be allowed it.
And then of course we have to articulate how we’d deal with all the security, malware and trust issues in such a world.