Note that this fine is made up of 0.04bn of fine and 1.8bn of deterrent against future anti-competitive behaviour [1]. The the 2006 fine-setting guidelines allow the Commission to do that [2].
We should read the 1.8bn lump sum (roughly 0.5% of Apple's revenue) as partially being about music streaming and app stores, but mainly a warning to all large firms which are currently jockeying for a dominant position in emerging tech like generative AI and visual computing.
The warning: play fair and compete on the merits, or see you in court.
I thought the function of fines WAS the deterrent effect? or is some aspect of this restitution? I thought this was payable to the EU itself, not spotify.
> I thought the function of fines WAS the deterrent effect? or is some aspect of this restitution? I thought this was payable to the EU itself, not spotify.
Maybe it's something akin to punative damages (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punitive_damages), where the "fine" component is assessed according to the actual harm measured and the "deterrent" amount is meant to make it sting as a punishment.
The law always needs a little something extra to deal with people like the guy who parks in handicap spaces because he can afford the fines.
Would be nice if fines like that were earmarked as probationary in the sense that if the bad behavior continues, they actually have to pay the fines plus a penalty, otherwise they get a diminished amount.
In most cases, the Commission sets a fine which is based on the harm caused by some anti-competitive conduct, with relatively small adjustments for extenuating or attenuating circumstances. In this instance it's the opposite; the economic harm was small but the adjustment was huge.
You're right that the logic - deterrence - is the same in both cases. But what's different (at least in my view), is the object of the deterrence.
Ordinary fines are designed to make anti-competitive behaviour unattractive in terms of the costs and benefits. Maybe some underhanded conduct generates €40m extra profit, but the risk of a €40m fine plus legal costs and adjustments makes it not worth it.
The trouble is that these fines might are essentially just rounding errors for large firms. In this case, a €40m fine would be tiny in relation to Apple's revenue stream (~€350bn euros a year), thus not an effective deterrent. That's for two reasons. First, the 40m figure is too low since a "significant part of the harm caused by the infringement consists of non-monetary harm, which cannot be properly accounted for under the revenue-based methodology as set out in the [Commission's guidelines]"[1]. Second, the fine is trying to to "deter [Apple and] other companies of a similar size and with similar resources from committing the same or a similar infringement"[1] even when they could absorb the ordinary (small) fine as essentially a rounding error on their cost of doing business. In that case, large conglomerates could basically just ignore competition law.
So here, the Commission is deterring all firms which have a "particularly large turnover" [2] (e.g. Big Tech firms) from using their power in one market to gain an advantage in another market, as in this case where Apple used its control over its App Store to gain an advantage in the music streaming market. The fining guidelines allow for fines to be much larger (~50x in this case) for tech giants, even if the actual infringement didn't cause that much quantifiable harm.
You're right, there's no restitution here. As you say, the fine is payable to the EU and would be paid into the EU budget.
It's insane that they think the deterrant to a single line of business should be based on the revenue of the business as a whole instead of that line of business. 0.5% of app store revenue would be far more reasonable than 0.5% of Apple revenue.
I think, in order to have the desired effect, the deterrant must be in proportion to the resources of the transgressor as a whole entity.
If its not, Apple can afford to behave anticompetitively with their appstore, hold on to an illegal position of power and use that to extract revenue for the other lines of business that they're in.
Morally, if we fine violations to the speed limit in proportion to the context of the transgression only it will not adapt to the income of the transgressor. That makes it practically legal for rich people to drive as fast as they wish.
I'd support fines for the whole business revenue if you can prove that's what the business is doing. Here it's pretty clear the app store is behaving anti-competitively to increase app store revenue. Apple doesn't sell more iPhones by making it harder to use Spotify on them.
I follow your reasoning, but by the same reasoning we could say that Apple shouldn't internally fund projects with the revenue from other projects. Each project should be supported by its own income stream.
To function as a deterrent, it needs to represent a cost that a company is unwilling to tolerate.
There are a few ways to think about this. One is deterrence based on cost-benefit analysis, which is essentially a game theoretic way to think about firm behaviour. The logic here would be to fine the firm enough to deter anti-competitive behaviour, as has been mentioned.
Another way to think about it, is to say that we care about safeguarding the process of competition itself. That could include ensuring that competition is fair, ensuring that firms can enter markets, ensuring consumers get to choose which firms to consume from, etc. There's lots of precedent for that in EU competition law [1]. Taking that view, Apple was using its dominant position to restrict the economic freedom of Spotify (and others) and thereby harming the process of competition. Specifically, it limited rival firms from "fully informing iOS users about alternative and cheaper music subscription services" (as per the press release), thus harming competition.
All that to say, if we take the objective of EU competition law as being to prevent large firms from exercising power over smaller firms and to protect the process of competition in a general sense, then these big fines are easier to justify.
Honestly, these multibillion dollar fines from the EU against US tech companies always have an air of 'Since we don't really have a domestic tech industry, these judgements don't really set a precedence for domestic companies, therefore let's just systematically use fines to collect cash'. An extra tax for big US tech companies doing business in Europe. Is there some truth to this?
Or maybe the US is just too comfortable with being the home of multiple large criminal organizations? Said crime syndicates then actually get fined for committing crimes on countries with actual rule of law, unlike the oligarchic farce that is the US justice system.
> Any person or company affected by anti-competitive behaviour as described in this case may bring the matter before the courts of the Member States and seek damages. The case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union and Regulation 1/2003 both confirm that in cases before national courts, a Commission decision constitutes binding proof that the behaviour took place and was illegal. Even though the Commission has fined the company concerned, damages may be awarded by national courts without being reduced on account of the Commission fine.
Uff. Spotify can ask for damage compensation on top of those 1.8 B€, huh?! Apart from music streaming services, I don't see why the situation isn't fundamentally the same with video streaming and Apple TV, and maybe even things like VPN, or cloud services, where Apple has its own competing products now.
So... this ultimately may get really, really nasty and expensive for Apple. I am so here for it :)
Looking from the perspective of Apple, the whole situation is really annoying. Let me play the devil's advocate here. They built the iPhone, iOS and all its frameworks and the App Store. Now they are forced to act as essentially a public service provider. Philosophically, the amount of users they have shouldn't necessiate them to be treated as one. But you know, everyone wants a piece of the cake Apple thought they baked under their own terms. It's quite telling that this regulation comes from EU which are not getting nearly the tax and revenue US gets from Apple.
Yeah, and if they don't like Android either, they still have the choice of not having a phone at all, therefore not having a job, medical care, a house, ... Maybe, you should consider the context of antitrust legislation and what that entails for your argument.
And maybe baby, you should also explore, if you may be affected by a cultural economic dogma founded in times of red scare propaganda. Because these naive free market takes tend to come up a bit reflexively in some people, but are actually very rare for economic scientists.
I'm not a crazy free market maximalist or antitrust hater.. its very important in many markets.
I just don't think its really necessary or high priority for iPhones. Android is one OS like Linux is one OS, there are 5-6 big time manufacturers with their own OSes, 100s of phones at all price points. I was replying to someone complaining about the price point but there are so many great phones at lower price points. Not to mention discounted rates on plans or second hand phones.
This particular case was about Apple not allowing third party payment options. The payment market is cornered by Visa/MasterCard that charges 1% on every single transaction. They charge a huge percent rate on a constant amount of work. There are countries that operate their own payment systems that have 0 or close to 0 fees on transactions. But no one is going to go after Visa/MC in a 2-player market just like phones that hasn't reduced prices in decades? So now Spotify can stop paying fees to one monopolist and pay them to the next one down the line? These don't look like rational, considered decisions by antitrust agencies to focus on the markets that have the worst behaviour, more just piling on the current thing.
> I was replying to someone complaining about the price point
No, you were replying to someone pointing out how much Apple already got paid for their product, the infrastructure and ecosystem entry, before rent seeking from Spotify.
> So now Spotify can stop paying fees to one monopolist and pay them to the next one down the line?
Are you serious? First off, the fees differ substantially, Visa/MC is likely involved in any case, and most importantly: That's not what this lawsuit is about at all. The antitrust dynamic comes with the fact that Apple has it's own competitive service going. Spotify can't even inform its customers about alternative payment options within the app.
Not to mention, mixing the end consumer choices with Spotify's choices now does not make a lot of sense as an argument to begin with.
Oh I do exercise that right but it's not that simple. There's only so much the average citizen can do against the marketing and the network effects that a trillion+ dollar company can buy.
Luckily there's such thing as consumer protection laws in EU.
So my family can enjoy at least some protection from idiotic things such as not using industry standard charging cables (USB-C) while still marketing their product as green. And abusing their power against other companies and customers.
We're still left with jokes like a thousand dollar 8GB/256GB laptop sporting glued parts and an outdated 60hz screen (my friends 6year old phone has better screen refresh rate).
Not to mention they compare M3 performance against M1 instead of M2. There's only so much laws can do against deceiving marketing.
Ah yes, and people also have the choice not to buy cigarettes, too. Let's remove all the warnings on the boxes and cancel any law changes around trying to reduce smoking.
Devil advocate is that people cannot have more that one phone per person realistically. If every app would need a separate phone, that would be stupid. It is totally fine for a country to ask that if a company wants to sell their devices in the country, they have to follow some rules.
> They built the iPhone, iOS and all its frameworks
That's what their customers payed for when they bought very expensive iDevices. Honestly, what a weird take, considering Apple really invented this argument. iOS app devs and service providers are just as much a necessity for Apple's popularity and success. You know, the default iOS calculator app used to be a meme not that long ago...
> Appstore
Yeah really, unhappy devs should totally roll their own distribution like on every other platform since the beginning of software development. Oh, wait...
> But you know, everyone wants a piece of the cake Apple thought they baked under their own terms.
Or maybe, Apple wanting a piece of the second largest consumer market should play by its rules, considering all the commerce infrastructure they are using... Not to mention the education system they are free-riding for their engineers, courts protecting their brand and IP, police enforcing property rights, ...
If they continue the fine amount will be increased on the next one. That's how the EU plays, you get a warning, then a deterrent, if that doesn't stop the behaviour fines will continue to be levied in increasing amounts.
GDPR rules follow the same structure and are a pretty good deterrent.
For whom was in tech during 90s and now in 2020s, what are the differences between Microsoft back then and Apple now in terms of why the regulators are so "soft" against an actor that is overplaying it's hand for consumers?
I was not in tech in that time, but I was cognizant about the fact that entire segments of media and policy makers just dunked on Microsoft due to anti-competitive practices back then, and I recall congressmen and congresswomen, members of DoJ and so on openly talking about break Microsoft in pieces and I wonder why we do not have those conversations today in the biggest markets (China, US and EU)?
I think you have to appreciate just how egregious the behaviour of Microsoft was in the 90s. We're talking about systematic attempts to use their absolutely dominant market advantage to move into new areas and kill rival technologies, plus quite deliberate sabotage of open standards process to prevent the web taking off. (I knew a few people involved in W3C then and Microsoft's behaviour was breathtaking)
Personally I'd avoid comparisons since you're looking at one of the worst situations imaginable, so anything else is bound to seem less harmful.
Apple is predatory on a level that 1990s Microsoft could not have dreamed of, which is all enabled by Windows being an open platform while iOS is locked down with strict technical measures.
Microsoft would make competition harder by bundling "good enough" versions of competing software into Windows, with business deals restricting pre-installs of competing operating systems (if you pre-install Windows on 100% of machines, you'll get a massively better deal than when installing on it on 95%), and (arguably) by making interoperability harder by not having stable documented interfaces and having the interfaces change with new releases every few years.
That was bad. But Apple... Apple hasn't been just making competing harder, but outright impossible. It's one thing to compete against a free pre-installed product. It's another thing to try to compete when the platform owner straight out forbids you from shipping a product that competes with them, or applies draconian business terms to the competition that their own business units get to ignore. They weren't just making interoperability harder by not documenting interfaces, but (in the case of iMessage) by actively breaking any attempt to interoperate.
I’m not sure if you lived it, but Microsoft was actively targeting companies to destroy, and destroying companies because they could. Read about Mosaic, Be, their role in the SCO case, the Halloween documents, the Embrace, Extend, Extinguish philosophy.
Their monopoly case wasn’t about draconian terms. They were savagely destroying competition as a company culture.
Edit to add: bad terms on a vertically integrated platform is cute compared to Microsoft dictating what the entire PC industry was allowed to sell. It’s not that Windows was the best game in town, it was that vendors couldn’t sell Windows pre-installed if they sold anything else.
They literally left comments in their code saying, "we should crash here if using DR-DOS". Digital Research had a compatible but different DOS implementation at the time.
I do remember Steve Jobs wanted "to go thermonuclear" on Android (mostly Samsung and Google), saying "I'm going to destroy Android, because it's a stolen product."
No, different behaviour. If Apple had announced its own Android derivative called Apple Android++, somehow forced all major OEMs to pre-install it, designed it such that 'Android' apps written for it wouldn't work on real Android, then killed it, that might be the sort of behaviour that would be closer to the mark.
Like, Steve Jobs making vague threats isn't really in the same league as what MS was getting up to in the 90s.
> Apple sued for patent infringement and that was about the extent of it.
You're massively understating the scope and scale of Apple's war on Android. Apple transfered patents to a NPE that sued Android vendors - possibly Google itself. Apple also spent billions on this war - Apple et al spent over $4B to outbid Google on Nortel patents, Google spent even more billions to buy Motorola and its patents, prior to that, Google had virtually no defensive parents.
I'm quibbling with the phrasing of the last half of your sentence, as it's a bit of an understatement, no?
> that was about the extent of it
Apple didn't only sue over patents they already owned: they went out of their way and bought billions worth of more patents to sue with, partnered with patent-trolls who also sued OEMs on their behalf. So we agree, but the breadth and depth of Apple's actions was remarkable - they didn't just sue, they went to great lengths to do so.
To be fair, Apple today is more about going thermonuclear on apps inside its own ecosystem, as compared to Android or Android apps. (I don't mean just the commission rate, but the blatant copying of successful app concepts).
EEE is still very much alive nowadays, especially how they got into Linux spaces with WSL(2) and into the wider FLOSS community with the GitHub acquisition. We're just in the Extend phase at the moment.
> For nearly 10 years now Microsoft's VS Code has been the dominant text editor among the soydev community. I use it on my Microsoft Windows machine to write Microsoft Typescript code with help from the latest AI models in Microsoft Copilot, it installs my Microsoft npm packages, pushes my code to Microsoft Github and automatically deploys to Microsoft Azure which I then admire from the Microsoft Edge browser.[1]
For real it's scary how much developer experience is controlled by Microsoft.
It’s about the difference between someone saying something mean to people and someone killing people. Sure, they are both socially unacceptable, but we typically don’t equate those.
At the time Microsoft was caught logging all communication in computers was new and business leaders hadn't adapted to it, but today you want catch them with their pants down like that, so today we wouldn't know if Apple or Microsoft were deliberately targeting and killing companies since they know to say "We are doing this to serve the customer, killing that company was just an unfortunate side effect" and they know the US court wont go after them.
I HATE these arguments. Peter Thiel talked about this in one of his lectures. He said: when you're a small company you define your market as small as possible in order to compete; when youre a large company, you define your market as large as possible in order to avoid antitrust. To illustrate the example, if you're the only grocery chain in California, you'd argue that "the united states has many grocery chains and we're just one of them!" thats true, but it doesnt mean that you arent acting monopolistically from within California. To bring this analogy back to Apple, we have to look at areas of competition: the area of competition that Apple meaningfully engages in is the apple app store. This would be the equivalent of california. Is any app in the apple app store prevented from meaningfully competing with Apple? Yes! 1. higher prices via app store fees 2. not allowed access to the same apis (e.g. files syncing in the background or no native messaging capabilities) 3. browser + messaging restrictions (e.g. cant link to a website which has any way of spending money). The reason I look at the "app store" as a place of competition is because apple is allowing competition in the space. If Apple removed the app store, or ONLY had Apple apps in the app store, then they would be acting perfectly fine IMO. But they allow this competition because it allows their platform to succeed, but they behave monopolistically wrt that competition to gain the upper hand over time.
Interesting, I haven't quite seen that perspective before. The reasoning of Apple creating a market is the first argument that actually makes sense to me. And I actually agree with the spirit of it. I definitely lean very heavily on Apple's valid security issues, but the fees and deliberate blocking of things that have absolutely no security concerns are a problem.
The grocery chain example has one very important difference: You can choose to buy Apple - they aren't a monopoly by any means in any market. Whereas with the grocery chains - you must go to the store in California or not get groceries.
I think Peter Thiel's logic is flawed. Apple does not conglomerate, does not have a monopoly in any sense, and has actively avoided those situations. In order to please shareholders it does need to innovate and attempt new markets (Project Titan is a good example).
Microsoft in the 90s was completely different - they wanted domination.
They should remove non-apple apps from their 'marketplace' if this is not a market then. Or single out apps: only one tuner, only one recording, only one scanner... If they allow competition for everyone but themselves, it's anticompetitive behavior.
No, but they control access to nearly 100% of the IOS market (all devices except a tiny number of rooted ones).
That is a sensible definition in some cases because their terms for developers, app store charges etc. apply to that whole market. There is also a lot of lock-in and control: Spotify (much less any smaller business) cannot realistically get people to switch to Android to use their app - and with a duopoly that would not be an effective tactic long term anyway.
Does this apply to any software integrations provided by enterprise vendors? Can I use your logic to force Oracle/SAP to list random software on their "integrations" storefront?
I think the answer would be no, and for good reasons.
This doesn't just affect iOS users - if I want to use Briar to communicate, it's just impossible to involve anyone who has an Apple device. They don't need a total monopoly for this to be anti-competitive. They've made it so that if you have 10 devices and you want some feature like AirDrop, it's impossible for that feature to function unless Apple wrote it, because 4 of the devices are Apple devices and Apple monopolizes all network code to those devices.
That's small potentates compared to what MS was doing. Windows was actively updated to break other browsers and then IE was actively leveraged to kill off competing browsers and server side web technology. For years the only thing that survived their onslaught was OSS.
And that's on the tech side of things, business wise they would do even less ethical things. If Apple bought Briar specifically to kill it because it ran on Android then you might get a taste of what MS was getting up to.
Platform restrictions aside, maybe I’m missing something but requiring a permanent open socket seems like an awfully brittle design. There’s a lot of network conditions which phones are highly prone to that’d make apps with that requirement barely functional.
Since people don’t seem to understand Microsoft’s anti-competitive behavior, I recommend you start with Groklaw[0] and decide if you want to dive any deeper. Microsoft was akin to US Steel or Standard Oil. We really haven’t seen anything like it since.
>Apple is predatory on a level that 1990s Microsoft could not have dreamed of.
That's hilariously wrong.
In the 1990s, there were only two computing platforms to speak of: Windows and the Mac. Windows had *90%* of the marketplace. Microsoft had deals with PC makers that required them to include (and charge for) a Windows license on ever machine they sold. When Netscape happened, Microsoft leveraged their immensely dominant desktop position to squeeze the upstart browser company out -- Gates famously said "I'll cut off your oxygen supply," which is more or less an overt confession to monopolistic behavior.
Nobody has anything close to the kind of market power and predatory behavior that MSFT had in 1996. To suggest otherwise is to either display profound ignorance of that period of time, or to show you have a weird axe to grind about Apple that causes you to overlook actual facts.
Yes, Microsoft had 90% of the desktop OS marketplace, and did use that dominance to gain an edge in other markets. But despite that large market share, their leverage was kind of limited by the platform being open. Apple, on the other hand, has unlimited technical leverage. They can make up whatever anti-competitive rule they want to, and enforce it totally.
When Microsoft chose to neglect the web after IE6, it didn't take that long for competition to work around it. When Apple chose to neglect Safari in exactly the same way (and probably for the same reasons as Microsoft did with IE6), that was it. There was no workaround, nor any way for anyone to compete with a better browser.
PC games are a >$50 billion market, with Microsoft only getting a small slice of that. That's because Microsoft wasn't just able to outlaw direct installs nor competing digital games stores. Games for Windows Live had to compete against e.g. Steam, with the predictable outcome. The size of the iOS gaming market is comparable. Apple collects a 30% cut of it, and will do so indefinitely. Competing with them is literally impossible; nobody else can make a different app store offering better terms or a better user experience.
Apple is at around 60% market share in the US. The difference between 60% and 90% is a minor difference in scale. The difference between Apple's absolute control of iOS vs. the limited control that Microsoft had over Windows is a difference in kind. Apple got to choose whether competing software was even allowed on the platform. They could opening up special capabilities to only their own software, and actually enforce that (unlike Microsoft, whose undocumented APIs could still be reverse engineered). They can charge their competitors a 30% cut of revenue, while obviously ignoring it in their internal accounting for their own competing businesses.
IE and Safari are vastly different situations. IE started off with near-total dominance and was truly left to rot, with the teams responsible for it having been scattered across the company because Microsoft was no longer concerned with cornering the market on web browsers. Safari on the other hand has only ever seen ~20% marketshare, has never been truly abandoned, and at least covers core competencies well (recall that IE couldn’t even handle transparent PNGs without DirectX filter hackery). IE made even basic static pages a pain to develop compared to Firefox, whereas most of Safari’s significant shortcomings have to do with more advanced functionalities.
If Google got complacent and decided to reallocate nearly the entire Chrome and Blink teams to other projects leaving only tiny skeleton crews on them, allowing both Firefox/Gecko and Safari/WebKit to leave it in the dust in terms of features that would be almost a 1:1 analogue for the situation with Microsoft and IE back in the day.
Besides, IE was closed source and WebKIt is open source. So are all other engines. And web standards are really a thing now.
The late 90s early 2000s were a dark period, software-wise. Nothing compares to that, thankfully. People either forget, weren't there or were just oblivious Windows users.
Chrome starts a proposal, implements it and “intends to ship” it before anyone really has time to discuss it. Recently (2 months ago?) they introduced a new WebExtension API that nobody cared about nor really understood the need for, but it’s still there, making it look like it’s a “standard”
> Besides, IE was closed source and WebKIt is open source. So are all other engines. And web standards are really a thing now.
Even today, this doesn't mean much if Apple decides to ignore web standards that are harmful to their business model. Web Notifications were implemented by Safari Desktop, Chrome Desktop and Firefox Desktop[0] in 2012 - and Safari Mobile in 2023. That's 9 years that a pretty useful and important API couldn't be relied on by PWAs. And this is just one of many examples.
This has a real effect on what technologies developers can actually use, which is fairly similar to the effect IE6 had on newer APIs during its time.
[0]: Chrome & Firefox desktop because I can't find a way to see historical dates for mobile on caniuse - but it was around that time, or a bit later, for mobile as well
> Safari on the other hand has only ever seen ~20% marketshare, has never been truly abandoned, and at least covers core competencies well (recall that IE couldn’t even handle transparent PNGs without DirectX filter hackery). IE made even basic static pages a pain to develop compared to Firefox, whereas most of Safari’s significant shortcomings have to do with more advanced functionalities.
The definition of what is a core feature and what is advanced functionality changes with time. When IE6 came out it was the most advanced browser available, including support for what was considered advanced functionalities back then. But over the long time IE6 existed expectations changed and things which were once advanced or not even thought of were now core. The same is happening with Safari, with the difference that thanks to Apples blocking of different browser engines people cannot just switch to another browser and light a fire under Apples ass.
My fear is that no matter how good Safari is or gets, it won’t be enough to withstand the crushing force that Chromium has become. Devs would much prefer to test against only one engine if they had the choice, which I believe will ultimately end up stripping choice from the user.
Many choices have already been stripped. My electric company’s payments portal only works in Chrome. When I called their helpdesk to say it doesn’t work in Safari, the person told me to use their iOS app instead of my phone’s browser.
When I told her I’m using Safari from my desktop she was confused. Her helpdesk script literally didn’t have a path in the reply tree for someone using a desktop and not using a chromium based browser. That should tell you how uncommon it must be. I guess everyone’s just using the App now and doesn’t notice.
I’ve encountered this several times in the past few years too, usually in the form of sites acting bizarrely or functions not working in Safari and/or Firefox. There’s been some active useragent sniffing too, though ironically enough in those situations it’s usually enough to spoof the user agent after which the sites in question as far as I can tell work properly.
Either way it gives the impression to non-technical users that non-Chromium browsers are subpar even if site devs are to blame (especially when “upgrade your browser” messaging is misused to equate your up-to-date Safari/Firefox with some derelict version that hasn’t been updated for years) and will only serve to strengthen Chrome’s hold. The only recourse Mozilla and Apple have are to perfectly emulate Chrome’s behavior and in the case of UA sniffing even pretend to be Chrome, which sounds an awful lot like the bad old days of Gecko needing to emulate IE to make sites work in Firefox.
The platform wasn’t “open.” Technologies like ActiveX were ways that Microsoft was trying to make the Internet depend on owning a Windows PC. Everything surrounding IE was an attempt to make other web browsers completely unviable.
I don’t know if you remember how it was back then, but huge chunks of the Internet simply did not work if you weren’t using Internet Explorer.
They would also sink your PC OEM business if you dared to ship a computer with an operating system alternative. They used their 90% marketshare to force companies like Dell to only sell computers with Windows installed. If someone like Dell wanted to provide an alternative like BeOS, Microsoft could terminate their contract or raise their royalty rate to unsustainable levels.
As mentioned elsewhere, they didn’t get to 90% by selling to a free market. They demanded exclusivity across the entire PC market. They didn’t just let IE stagnate. They told Mosaic they would license their renderer for a percentage of sales and then gave IE away for free.
It would be like Apple saying if you wrote an iOS app you couldn’t write an app for any other platform.
They didn’t chase Google to implement features that solely benefit ChromeOS, but iPhones have completely dominated Android and any other browser engine for mobile rendering performance since the iPhone 4. A miserably slow browser that can receive push notifications is pointless.
It’s really only been in the past 3 years or so that I’ve started to see real pushback from Devs on Apple being overly pushy. Prior to that so many of the complaints were on the order of “Apple won’t allow me to do [insert insanely user-hostile or non-performant thing here] woe is me!”
> When Microsoft chose to neglect the web after IE6, it didn't take that long for competition to work around it. When Apple chose to neglect Safari in exactly the same way (and probably for the same reasons as Microsoft did with IE6), that was it. There was no workaround, nor any way for anyone to compete with a better browser.
This isn’t even remotely true. The entire front-end web development ecosystem came to an absolute standstill in terms of browser support for five entire years because Microsoft decided that, since they had killed off the competition, they didn’t need to work on Internet Explorer any more. That’s five whole years without a single new release of Internet Explorer, which had >90% market share.
And then after they restarted development, the next version mainly focused on adding tabs and a few CSS selectors. It wasn’t until Internet Explorer 8 was released that it actually started to properly move forward again. But web developers still had to wait years before enough people had upgraded because Internet Explorer wasn’t evergreen and people didn’t upgrade very often.
Supporting Internet Explorer 6 was still a battle developers were fighting in 2010, nine years after it was released.
Apple releases new major versions of Safari with improved support for web standards every year like clockwork. And people upgrade promptly. And Apple take part in interop efforts with other browser vendors. The two situations are absolutely nothing alike.
>When Microsoft chose to neglect the web after IE6, it didn't take that long for competition to work around it
We have different definitions of long, and perhaps very different memories of the web from the years 2001-2012[0]
almost a decade for any real traction for competing web browsers to put a dent in Microsoft, and that is after the anti-trust trial and the EU browser ballot mandate.
Don't forget, it was so entrenched that even by 2015 IE had over 1/3 of browser share, really only defeated by Google Chrome (which had the infamous "kill IE" initiative[1]) in 2013 or there about.
To put it simply, a decade of dominance is a long time.
[0]: Data supports that Internet Explorer had majority market-share up through the first half of 2012 (globally), per https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/all/worldwid... and in North America, it held on to majority position through at least 2013.
You're comparing Microsoft's behavior now, after they've been smacked down in 1994 to how they operate now. MS had a long track record of breaking applications that competed with their offerings. If they hadn't been forced into the consent decree, they'd be 1)in a much stronger position than now, 2)behaving much worse.
<When Microsoft chose to neglect the web after IE6, it didn't take that long for competition to work around it. When Apple chose to neglect Safari in exactly the same way (and probably for the same reasons as Microsoft did with IE6), that was it. There was no workaround, nor any way for anyone to compete with a better browser.>
IE6 was released in 2001, after the consent decree. So the reason other browsers were able to compete was because MS couldn't kneecap them.
<Apple is at around 60% market share in the US. The difference between 60% and 90% is a minor difference in scale.>
30% is a huge difference.
<They can charge their competitors a 30% cut of revenue, while obviously ignoring it in their internal accounting for their own competing businesses.>
What does MS charge game owners on Xbox? Sounds like the exact same thing. Xbox dominates the US console market [1] far more than iPhone does.
>They can make up whatever anti-competitive rule they want to, and enforce it totally.
On iOS, maybe. MacOS isn't controlled in that way.
And, again, if you don't like iOS or Apple's rules, there's another completely viable OS you can use on mobile that actually has a larger global market share, so there's no monopoly play here.
One way I think they differ is that Apple is, at its core, traditionally a hardware vendor, whereas Microsoft is not.
You can, today, for example, install other OSes on Apple hardware, and they themselves have helped significantly to enable such until relatively recent architecture changes.
I, for example, run Fedora on a modern Macbook Air and it's super useful.
It's possible this reality deflects some of the antitrust attention.
That's an artifact of them switching to the standard hardware platform of the industry for a while (basically a PC with some niceties on top). When it was PowerPC it was not as easy and your options were pretty limited.
And now with their custom silicon, no other system is officially supported and your "options" are basically hacks that can only use some parts of the hardware.
The platform is notoriously undocumented so it's not like if Apple is making it easy to install any other system. In fact, the best you can say is that they didn't outright block running other OSs but you can't really use the hardware properly that way (for example the fingerprint reader).
When it comes to iThings, they actually go out of their way to make sure you can't even install any version of the OS than what they chose (sometimes people run into cases where it's extremely annoying to be unable to downgrade the OS because the hardware has become way too slow to be useful).
So, when you say they helped significantly that makes me laugh, they used the fact that their hardware that was very close to the common PC could indeed boot other systems as a marketing tool but not much more.
It's possible that still buried in legal agreements between network operators and Apple there's a clause requiring Apple to ensure Apple knows what behaviors the network operators' networks will endure when Apple issued hardware connects.
I wonder (and can not prove, but remember this concern at Qualcomm and Apple back around then) if the issue was forced by Cingular Wireless originally.
In particular, iOS devices were dependent on carrier cooperation, and Cingular may have required only vetted software builds to connect to their network.
Dude what the hell are you smoking Microsoft was 95% of the personal computer market in 1996 you can easily purchase an Android phone with no Apple influence.
Hell you don’t even need to buy a smartphone, That’s how little it has to do with the modern day. If you wanted the internet you had to go to Microsoft.
Isn’t it slightly different since Apple designs and sells the hardware with the OS, whereas Microsoft was manioulating entirely separate hardware companies and not designing their own hardware product (until recently)
This isn't about marketshare, it's about Apple making things impossible. You're a hacker, tell me how I can solve this problem:
I am with a friend in a place with no Internet access. They have an iPhone. I have an Android phone. We don't have any cables. My friend took a video and I would like them to send me the video right now over Wifi.
I think there are some ways I could solve it, but I don't think there are any ways I could solve it that would be reliable for nontechnical users (and even for me it's hard.) This isn't an accident, Apple is abusing their control over iOS to make this sort of thing impossible. And it's worse than anything Microsoft ever did. Apple is actively standing in my way, even though I don't own any iOS devices.
> This isn't about marketshare, it's about Apple making things impossible.
Of course it is about marketshare. The more you have, the more you can make things hard for your competitors. The less you have, the more you're the weird one with the odd platform.
> I am with a friend in a place with no Internet access
That's a vanishingly rare situation not worthy of legislation, IMO.
In 2003 I bought a PowerBook. It was the only commercially available laptop that could be bought without buying a Windows license. Microsoft had put any competitors out of business by that point and OEMs weren’t ready to sell Linux laptops. Apple only existed because Microsoft injected them with cash to show they had a competitor.
> You're a hacker, tell me how I can solve this problem:
Feem, but I'm interested to learn more about this contrived example where phones don't have internet access and so can't use SHAREit, Send Anywhere, or any number of other solutions.
Not a contrived example. happens to me often and iOS users are paralyzed when AirDrop doesn't work. (And like, it is possible but it's a lot harder than it should be.) People who transfer lots of media for work don't even bother, they just accept AirDrop as the only functional solution, which means you carry an iOS device.
Without prior downloads happening before going offline I’m not sure you could share a file between mobile operating systems out of the box, regardless of which OS is trying to supply the file.
If I’m allowed to pre-download software before encountering your scenario, running a web server or an app that serves FTP or other server types hosting files is trivial on either OS. iOS may require shuffling the video file into an app sandbox first.
It looks like Samsung and Google only merged their airdrop utilities in Summer 2023, so how would you have done this with two different android phones?
I think a lot of people were less affected by Microsoft’s actions than by Apple’s. After all, Microsoft didn’t stop people from making money off their platform or modifying their computers.
And Microsoft was three decades ago.
Apple is causing people far more harm now than they remember Microsoft doing in the past. (Assuming they were around for it in the first place.)
Edit:
I should have said "a lot of the people talking" instead of just "a lot of people".
I was around for Microsoft and would classify them as evil. The worst you can say about Apple is they are greedy. For all of Apple's flaws, they are competing in the consumer market on merit.
If by "people" you mean "a vocal minority of app developers", then sure. But the average iOS user not only doesn't care about Apple's app store policies, they actively appreciate them (whether they know it or not).
All apps being required to use a single payment system is a great example: it sucks for the app developers but only for the app developers. From the consumer perspective, Apple's app store is the only place in the internet economy where they're not subject to pervasive dark patterns trying to get them to not cancel a subscription, not back out of a free trial, or otherwise separate them from their money. People pay good money for Apple phones in part because Apple successfully protects them from predatory anti-consumer behavior.
Contrast that with 90s Microsoft, where people bought Windows because that's mostly all that was available (because Microsoft made sure of that). Today there are more non-Apple phone choices than Apple choices, and yet a substantial number of people consistently choose Apple.
As a user I love the ability to easily turn a subscription on and off, without having to call someone/chat with someone. Also, did you know that a requirement of the app store is you can delete your data from within the app? It's a great way to reduce your digital fingerprint.
As a developer, we rolled out in app subscriptions and our revenue essentially tripled. They handle refunds. That saves me a LOT of time.
Perfect? No, but I do as most pragmatists do: compromise and make the best of it.
> doesn't care about Apple's app store policies, they actively
appreciate them (whether they know it or not).
Don't think anyone actually noticed this fly past yesterday [0] but as
I commented here [1] Apple have set out their position clearly as
patrician and protective (under the dishonest guise of "security").
This is right for some people.
There is a place for the digitally bewildered, like a kind of care
home for those who've basically given up on trying to make sense of
their place in the digital world, given up all agency, and essentially
conceded control of their lives. Ironically the polar opposite of
Apple's 1984 Superbowl advert [2].
But we really ought to tell them they're being put out to pasture.
> After all, Microsoft didn’t stop people from making money off their platform or modifying their computers.
That is literally what they did.
Be built a business, lined up customers, and had every one of them fail because of exclusivity agreements with Microsoft. Unless you were a vertically integrated software/hardware business you couldn’t get your OS on PCs because of Microsoft.
It might seem quaint now, but there was a market for web browsers! They weren’t free until Microsoft duped Mosaic into giving them a license for a percentage of sales and then gave it away for free as Internet Explorer, instantly destroying any market for selling web browsers. That’s not only preventing others from making money on their platform, but anyone from making money in that entire segment.
Literally the entire world was affected by Microsoft’s business practices as the PC industry was booming.
>After all, Microsoft didn’t stop people from making money off their platform or modifying their computers
This is incredible whitewashing of Microsoft. Microsoft didn’t stop people from modifying their computers? Part of the anti trust case was Microsoft ending licenses with OEMs if they dared to sell a PC with Linux installed.
I think they fiddled with the bootloader of some pc vendors in the mid-90s,but we're quickly told to stop that. It might have destroyed a competitor though.
So I guess apple learned how to be slightly more subtle, and to let their rabid fanbase do some of their work for them. It's still wild to me how they managed to get people to argue against the freedom to install whatever they want on their device.
Android and F-Droid user here. I choose to buy hardware that allows me to install what I want, but I also consistently advocate for the right of consumers to buy into a closed ecosystem.
There is a large class of technology users that is uninterested in installing whatever they want on their device. They want their device to be predictable, they want their app store to be curated, and they don't want to deal with dark patterns on a company by company basis. These customers choose Apple because it provides a tightly integrated experience.
Forcing Apple to alter enough of their rules will eventually cause that user experience to no longer be an option, which is bad for consumer choice.
The problem with Apple's walled garden is that there's literally zero consumer choice for interoperability. If you have 10 devices and 4 of them are Apple, it doesn't matter that 6 of them are running F-Droid. Anything that requires you to install your app on all 10 devices is impossible to do. Everyone is limited to what Apple allows in their walled garden whether they choose it or not.
Yes, if you buy walled-garden devices you won't have a great time trying to install things that were meant for devices outside of the walled garden. I can see how that is unfortunate, but I'm not convinced that it's an argument for tearing down the walls.
The alternatives that most here on HN are pushing for would ultimately lead to a walled garden no longer being an option for consumers at all. I think the status quo is preferable: consumers who don't want to participate in the walled garden can choose to not buy devices that are explicitly sold as being part of said garden.
> The alternatives that most here on HN are pushing for would ultimately lead to a walled garden no longer being an option for consumers at all. I think the status quo is preferable: consumers who don't want to participate in the walled garden can choose to not buy devices that are explicitly sold as being part of said garden.
Why do apple fans always come up with bizarre fantasies like this? This isn't a problem for Android today, and it won't be a problem for mainstream apps when apple is finally forced to open up thanks to the EU.
More than 99% of the users will never install anything other than from the official Play store. But they are allowed to without Big Daddy Apple telling them "No". And that's what matters.
Did you miss my first comment where I said I'm an Android and F-Droid user? It's not like I don't know how Android works. The only Apple device I use is my work-issued MacBook.
The difference between Android and iOS is that Apple actually has rules that are strict enough to motivate the likes of Facebook to actively encourage people to side load if given the chance. I'm not comfortable looking at Android as a precedent, because Google is extremely lax with what kinds of things they allow on the Play Store, so the path of least resistance is acceptable to basically everyone. I do not believe the same would be true of Apple's store.
> because Google is extremely lax with what kinds of things they allow on the Play Store
Not really. They are pretty strict, actually.
> The difference between Android and iOS is that Apple actually has rules that are strict enough to motivate the likes of Facebook to actively encourage people to side load if given the chance
I doubt it. Especially after Apple will have submitted to the rest of the DMA.
I can use WhatsApp, Signal, Google Chat for messaging instead of iMessage. I can use Spotify, YouTube Music, Sirius instead of Apple Music for streaming music. What do you mean by zero consumer choice for interoperability? I see plenty of choices.
> Everyone is limited to what Apple allows in their walled garden whether they choose it or not
What software is Apple not allowing? I see competitors’ software available on their platform. The only issue is that these competitors want to avoid paying fees to Apple and argue under the guise of protecting consumer freedom.
> What software is Apple not allowing? I see competitors’ software available on their platform. The only issue is that these competitors want to avoid paying fees to Apple and argue under the guise of protecting consumer freedom.
Porn apps and hate speech mostly.
They supposedly also bar a lot of outright scams and malware, but a lot also sneaks through.
And yet they allow a lot of gambling and pseudo-gambling apps (probably because at least the latter makes bank with IAP). It's a strange morality that says "porn bad, gambling good".
So, one example I can give is Briar, which is a distributed messaging app. I don't know that I actually want to use Briar, but in order for it to be useful to me it would need to run on iOS, since I have too many people I would want to use it with who use iOS.
You can't see the things that aren't allowed, because they don't exist. The Briar team hasn't even built an iOS app because they know it would be rejected.
Apps exist on multiple platforms just fine. The fact that dealing with App Store approval rules & timing sucks is just a cost of doing business. Plenty of outfits deal with it to get the exposure/userbase or ignore it.
> They want their device to be predictable, they want their app store to be curated, and they don't want to deal with dark patterns on a company by company basis. These customers choose Apple because it provides a tightly integrated experience.
I’m glad someone in this thread gets it. If anything, my main criticism of Apple’s App Store curation is that they have too light of a hand on cracking down on scammers and other abusive business practices. Indie developers making honest mistakes get jerked around but the professional skeezeballs keep gaming their way through.
But the tone of a lot of the regulation seems to be trying to push Apple to make the thing I value about its ecosystem worse while adding me nothing I actually care for. With the phone, in particular, I am almost always using it while I’m half distracted with something else. I’m much more open to tinkering on my PC or even my tablet, but as far as I’m concerned having my phone being as locked down as can be and imposing as little additional cognitive burden on me as possible is a huge feature.
I'm sympathetic to the idea that users should be able to choose to remain within a walled garden if that's what they actually want. There are benefits to Apple being able to use their market position to enforce certain rules on behalf of their customers.
The problem is that same leverage can just as easily be used to enforce rules that benefit Apple at the expense of their customers. In theory competition from other platforms limits the extent Apple can abuse their position in that manner. But there's only one other major platform in the mobile space. That's not a lot of options for the market to optimise around.
Further, Apple is a large, vertically integrated company which does a lot to try to lock consumers into their ecosystem. If I'd like to chose a more open mobile phone operating system but feel like I can't because Android isn't allowed to interoperate with iMessage or AirPlay or AirDrop or AirTags or Apple Watch or iCloud and I like those products and want to continue using them... well, that's a problem.
There's also the software freedom issue. As a consumer, once Apple sells me a piece of physical hardware it should no longer be their place to dictate what software I'm allowed to run on that device. If I want to install an app that's not on Apple's App Store but Apple doesn't want me to, there's no question in my mind as to whose rights should win out in that scenario.
Overall, my take is that Apple should be allowed to offer a closed ecosystem to users who want that, but they shouldn't be allowed use technical measures or anti-competitive bundling to force or coerce consumers into remaining inside that ecosystem. If consumers want to buy their apps exclusively from Apple's app store because they see a benefit from that, then they should be allowed to. But if they don't, Apple shouldn't be able to hold their entire ecosystem hostage from the consumer as leverage to prevent them from leaving.
I realize this gives Apple a bit less leverage in their ability to advocate on behalf of their customers when dictating the terms under which companies can sell products within their walled garden, since those companies will now have the option of going over Apple's head and selling their product directly to consumers, sans Apple's rules. But that's how free markets work, in contrast to the monopoly-like situation we're currently in. If enough consumers see the value in Apple's rules to avoid other app stores with less restrictive policies, companies will still have to comply with them to access those consumers. (I'll note this is basically how things already work on Android. Google still operates the most popular app store on Android despite competition being allowed, and they're still able to dictate the terms under which apps are allowed in that store.) But if those terms are so egregious that consumers start to prefer alternative app stores instead, that's a good thing too.
I wouldn't say the fanbase is arguing against it. Apple just have a good understanding of their average user. While you may have no issue installing unsigned apps and dealing with any troubleshooting, their average user, or most users, don't.
It's not to say they don't have a financial incentive to disallow app installs outside of their App Store, but there is a predictable cost in terms of support man hours and device troubleshooting they will incur in addition to lost revenue. So long as it is legal for them to continue business as usual, they have no incetive to allow it and the large majority of the userbase don't care.
Many years ago I used to despair every time I used my dad's windows machine. Every time, his browser window was filled with loads of toolbars installed by various sites and utilities, leaving him with a tiny usable content area. I kept explaining why this happened and he never changed his behaviour.
I got him to buy a Mac and for a few years things went well. But then he started complaining about it behaving weirdly or running slowly. I'd take a look and find he'd installed some free utility or some other odd bit of software that was screwing up his machine. I kept explaining why this happened and he never changed his behaviour.
I keep telling him to get an iPad, as at least then everything would be sandboxed and iOS would kill background tasks. But he says, no, he needs a real computer.
> by Terretta 6 hours ago: Now that you can dock an iPad with an external screen and keyboard and trackpad, try that for him, tell him it's the new Macpad Pro.
ROTFL, someone made this and posted to HN four hours ago:
Any chance you could lock down his account (gatekeeper) and keep your own admin user? It's too bad there's no easy way to simply "grant access" to installs remotely (if you're the admin).
That's the real problem. People just refuse to learn. They refuse to put in any effort at all. They don't want to have to think about what they are doing.
It's making me become ever more elitist over the years. I no longer believe computers should be for everyone. Computers are world changing technology and they are wasted on people who don't give a shit.
Congratulations, you lack even the mental capacity to see that I was explaining the situation not defending it. How do you manage to breathe on your own I wonder.
> While you may have no issue using a different browser/media player/OS/... and dealing with any troubleshooting, their average user, or most users, don't.
> It's still wild to me how they managed to get people to argue against the freedom to install whatever they want on their device.
This isn't because of Apple, or at least it isn't in my case.
Even as an iPhone app developer with the means to do so whenever I want, and even though I find Apple's content restrictions derisory and "big brother"-y, I actively don't want a system that can install "whatever".
This is due to all the malware everywhere on the internet, and owing to this unfortunate reality, also means I think it is unwise even to have 3rd party libraries as project dependencies. I have an entire spare computer dedicated to learning scientific python because I don't feel I can rely on the absence of vulnerabilities in the stuff.
This makes me sad. I miss the old days of 2002 where I didn't feel any reason to worry about random apps from random websites. But part of my carefree youth was that I had a Performa 5200 running OS 8, which wasn't a popular targets for malware authors, and another big part was that my bank didn't have an app.
But before someone replies to point out that malware gets past the App Store tests: yes, of course it does, I see all this as a "defence in depth" strategy, not a silver bullet.
Why would having the ability to install sideloaded apps change this? Apps will not be able to just install themselves or other apps without prompting. And we've already had zero-click exploits in Safari leading to entire phone rootkitting more than once without sideloading
Most of the apps I install are mandatory apps. It's not illegal to not have them, but if you don't install you can't access your doctor, file an insurance claim, bank, see your childs grades, enter the front door of your child's preschool, etc. All of these are malicious actors who will steal as much of my data as possible at all times, but I do actually need a preschool. As long as I can only install these through the app store, we are at an uneasy truce where these apps comply with app store rules.
The operating system can apply restrictions to apps, and in fact already does. It does not need the officially sanctioned store for this. You are arguing for detailed privacy controls for all apps (including those installed by Apple), which is a good thing to want!
There are bad actors, like Facebook, who will prompt users to sideload so they can do bad things.
If the bad actors were all shady fly-by-night looking companies it’d be one thing. But once the gates are opened, if it’s easy enough, you’ll see people being pressured to open the gates by all sorts of companies that they will have no choice but to comply with. Imagine, for example, if your insurance company, in order to pay your bill, starts making you install the app through some alternate pathway that brings a side-dish of keylogging to adjust your rates based on your browser behavior.
> But before someone replies to point out that malware gets past the App Store tests: yes, of course it does, I see all this as a "defence in depth" strategy, not a silver bullet.
It’s really kinda crazy how normalized it’s become to pull in hundreds of dependencies (aggregate of dependencies and subdendencies) from unvetted sources on the regular. Combined with the popular insistence of developers to run with all protections disabled (SIP, immutable system, non-admin user, etc) it makes for a whole lot of easy targets.
Exactly my reasoning last week when I read about one more dependency attack on GitHub.
Do you have a mac? What's your setup? I need CoreML so VMs are not an option, and I'm a freelancer so I use my own MacBook for work. I have a different session for each client, but at this point I don't even know if it's useful at all. Of course I also have a personal session with banking stuff... which is what made me realise I was probably doing something dumb.
(Well, three, but the third is in a box waiting to go to recycling or someone who wants it "for parts", as that's from 2013…)
> What's your setup?
It's literally an entire second mac. I bought an MBAir/M1 second hand, then was given an MBPro/M1 Pro; the Pro became my main machine, the Air became my "mess around" box.
While I have two Mac (A mac mini as a workstation and a MBA for portability), I think next time I have to work on a contract, I’ll just setup a VM for the client. NPM always made me uneasy.
Unfortunately the impact is not limited to Apple product, but a wider ecosystem.
For example the browser. If a feature is not implemented in Safari, as only available browser on IOS, every website needs to be compatible with it. Songs must be available on Apple Music if you want to be available for Apple owners...
Yeah, those linux and netscape crazies trying to stop OS monopolies and internet explorer bundling. Let Microsoft sell the better product to their users !
Your framing is disingenuous by trying to frame this as an uneconomic and non-rational fanboying.
I don't think you truly appreciate how comfortable I am handing my parents an iPhone, and how uncomfortable I was helping them with their Windows computer replete with multiple spyware browser toolbars back in the day.
The onslaught of quasi malware on their computers was sickening, and they'd always ask me about insane popups that would show up due to some pre-installed thing nobody had control over.
Exactly. You gain a visceral appreciation for this when you watch your elderly parents get scammed for tens of thousands of dollars and taken of advantage of via technology channels.
We've created a very nasty internet - one that isn't safe for the old or the young - and without the law enforcement or age boundaries that we use in the physical world to keep our public spaces suitable for the broader population.
My dad had installed a QR code reader app on his iPhone that was a monthly paid subscription. He was wasting hundreds of dollars every year for something his phone already did automatically for free by just opening the camera. Apple will happily let scammers create garbage paid apps to do the same thing their phones already do for free. No side-loading to let viruses in required.
Why should a refund even be necessary? What’s the point of Apple’s highly selective review process if they let apps like this through? The only reason that I can fathom is it’s because Apple will gladly take a 30% cut of that revenue. And that is my overall point here.
Everybody always jumps to Apple’s defense by explaining how iPhones are built for inept users that just want a phone that works with no BS. Therefore, they claim, it’s a good thing that Apple has a highly locked down environment. But what good is this locked down environment if Apple will happily allow scam apps to charge their customers for features the phone already does for free? What’s the difference between a user downloading a scam app from an untrusted source and downloading it directly from the App Store? If Apple is going to have a locked down environment, at the very least, they should make it effective.
No ex-ante process will remove scams from the app store and I think you're bordering on arguing in bad faith. That's why the ex-post ease of refund part matters.
Like the appstore is any better, remember that the vast majority of money made on the appstore is for casino-like apps which I would not be comfortable giving to my parents or my family.
Casino apps werent pre-installed. Do you really not remember what Windows computers were like, fresh out of the box, back in the day?
Hardware companies pre-installed any and all sorts of software from vendors. Spyware, adware, gambling games, toolbars, "free" trials to internet services. Computers used to be up to their neck in absolute garbage.
I do, people installed those malware by clicking on random ads, about the same way they now install those undesirable apps, funny how history kind of repeats itself.
I guess the biggest difference is that the OS manufacturer now gets a cut on those.
Since you talk about this subject, I actually had to remove two calendar malware on two different family iPhones (and it was pretty annoying to find where to remove that, even as a dev) so while it's true that there's less malware, it's not non-existent.
And my point still stands anyways, the line between some of those top appstore casino-apps and malware is very blurry.
> remember that the vast majority of money made on the appstore is for casino-like apps which I would not be comfortable giving to my parents or my family.
Talk to your lawmakers to make these sort of apps illegal. Apple is not the government.
Back when he was still alive, I had to turn on "Parental controls" on my parent's Mac Mini, to stop my dad from accidentally removing things from the Dock and being unable to put them back.
It took him years to realise Google search results had a scroll bar, and it wasn't just the 3 items that fitted on the screen.
He wrote simulation software for the radio propagation of military IFF transponders before he retired, and his idea of "computer safety" was therefore somewhere between "do not connect them to the internet" and "put them in a faraday cage".
Okay, that's a nice anecdote. Is your point that no one should be allowed to have the freedom to install whatever they want on their devices because your parent was incapable of dealing with the responsibility?
Do you also want to take away everyone's cars because of traffic deaths? That's far more serious than someone's parent installing malware on their shiny digital toys.
What about taking away kitchen knifes? Those things sure are dangerous!
> Do you also want to take away everyone's cars because of traffic deaths? That's far more serious than someone's parent installing malware on their shiny digital toys.
This isn't the same thing. The equivalent in your anecdote is that Car A comes with a three point seatbelt that you don't want to use, and you want Car A to be sold without it so you can use your preferred safety device, despite multiple current owners of Car A telling you that they _want_ the three point seatbelt. And you can always buy Car B if you want to install a lap belt instead.
> Okay, that's a nice anecdote. Is your point that no one should be allowed to have the freedom to install whatever they want on their devices because your parent was incapable of dealing with the responsibility?
That this isn't "infantilizing".
> Do you also want to take away everyone's cars because of traffic deaths? That's far more serious than someone's parent installing malware on their shiny digital toys.
My mum did that for my gran when my gran got Alzheimer's and my mum realised she'd been driving for 6 months without paying road tax.
And then the same happened to my mum.
Also, you're giving the exact argument in favour of self-driving cars as soon as the tech is actually ready, and also the reason that crumple zones and seatbelts are mandatory.
And also the reason we have (revokable) driving tests to be allowed to use the vehicles in the first place.
> What about taking away kitchen knifes? Those things sure are dangerous!
> Also, you're giving the exact argument in favour of self-driving cars as soon as the tech is actually ready, and also the reason that crumple zones and seatbelts are mandatory.
No, that's dangerous! Everyone should crawl everywhere while wearing an iHelmet if we were to apply apple's modus operandi to transportation.
> And also the reason we have (revokable) driving tests to be allowed to use the vehicles in the first place.
Hmm, so you think that maybe qualified people should be allowed to use dangerous devices? I'm fine with you taking devices away from your parents. That's up to you and your parent.
Is your argument that your iphone should not be allowed outside where it might scare other people? Odd take. Even in the UK an adult is allowed to buy & posses a kitchen knife.
You're missing the point entirely. The idea of a "freedom to install" is incidental to what happened in the market which is that Apple made a platform that people felt secure and happy in. Consumers Apple's product to the extent that Apple became a dominant force in the market.
That's the house they chose to live in. It's a house in which no knives existed. Now you're saying "let them put knives in, how dare you restrict them from having a knife!" whereas most consumers are saying "I like this house, wow living here feels great.". It's not a knife issue. You're trying to make it a knife issue.
The success of the iPhone was never obvious from day one. To attribute Apple's success to monopolistic behavior and consumer oppression, rather consumer behavior and expression, is just denying reality.
> It took him years to realise Google search results had a scroll bar, and it wasn't just the 3 items that fitted on the screen.
I wonder if this is because today's interfaces are actually so much worse for scrollbar UX (usability and discoverability) than anything we had since they were invented 43 years ago.
My dad, when was a kid, would bust out a soldering iron and he'd show me how to swap out the quartz timing crystals on digital wristwatches to repair them (or, for fun, make them intentionally run fast or slow). On occasion, he'd even do it on PCs to under- or over-clock them and make them last a little longer.
By the time I was in college, he was on his way towards retiring, and knowing that I was into software, decided that I would be his IT support person. He went through various laptops and desktops (PCs, Macs, he even gave Linux a real try but gave up when he couldn't get his financial planning software to run on it), Android phones, etc. The one platform he liked using in his later years was iOS/iPadOS specifically because, in his words, "there's not a bunch of other s--- here, and I don't need to manage it".
It's ease-of-use dovetailing with computer safety, and that's a _hard_ problem.
Cars have seatbelts, airbags, ABS, crumple zones, etc.
Almost everybody has to use a computer for work and other stuff, and they are willing to pay for a safe and sound system. They are not interested in becoming full time Arch Linux root administrators just to conduct their daily business on their device. Just like almost none of the people who drive a car are full time mechanics and welders.
> They are not interested in becoming full time Arch Linux root administrators just to conduct their daily business on their device.
They don't need to if they don't want to.
I'd be one of the users who are not inclined to transform my iPhone back into my days using Linux on desktop and suffering the pains of doing it. I do have the option to turn my computer into that if I want, I do not have that option for my phone even though it's just a computer.
No one would be forcing users into doing that, it's about allowing the users who want that control over their own devices.
Since we're discussing prescriptivism (how things should be) rather than descriptivism (how things are in a subset of legal jurisdictions): I didn't force them to leave a copy of their code on my device, but I own every single bit of electricity and magnetism and metal and plastic within it. I thus have the right to flip 0s into 1s, and 1s into 0s, or smash the whole thing. It's mine. Redistributing anything, admittedly, might be somewhat related, but would be a different discussion.
Any effort to disenfranchise me from those rights is, in my opinion, unethical. If a company were to try to do so under the guise of a semantic argument, I would find it even more distasteful.
Great question, which has now been answered by new laws like the digital markets act!
The "point" at which such things should apply is when they are large enough that anti-trust laws and pro competition laws apply to them. IE: when they are very very large and are worth hundreds of billions of dollars.
> No one would be forcing users into doing that, it's about allowing the users who want that control over their own devices.
The moment this is a thing is when the social engineering attacks to get people to root their own phones, to set up untrusted app stores that firehose shitware down onto phones, etc. starts to happen. "I'm from Microsoft, you need to add the Microsoft Store to your iPhone, here's how." I get your concern, and in a world less built on open grift I would share it, but our esteemed tech brainlords have built a tech ecosystem that exists to enable scams. (Hell, I almost got popped a few months ago by a scam, and I tend to be pretty cautious about things.)
Unless the opt-in mechanism is something like "open the phone and turn a jumper" or "buy a different model of the same phone" I genuinely think it's way too dangerous for the average target of a social-engineering attack. People buy iPhones to not deal with this shit as much as is possible; taking that away hurts a lot more people than it helps.
You have that option, just buy another phone. Because there is no monopoly. Likewise if you want to install a non-Apple OS, there are thousands of different non-Apple models available for purchase.
Apple offers security and convenience on their devices, which is why many people like them. Windows offers no security but some convenience, Linux offers security and no convenience.
Like I said in another comment, if Spotify is not happy with Apple they can manufacture their own device and sell to consumers. People buy and use Apple devices of their own free will, and developers develop for their devices of their own free will as well. And there is plenty of competition in the market.
Sure, I will buy another phone and all the apps I paid for in 15 years of usage. It's very trivial and simple.
I invested money in the ecosystem and now there's vendor lock-in, I'm bound to it unless the usage becomes so unbearable that the pain to change vendors is less than continuing the one I have, the pain threshold only grows for each passing year I'm invested in the ecosystem. Do you comprehend that?
Opening a phone for others to develop apps on top does not encroach anywhere into Apple's sale of phones, it just creates a massive wall to guard against other competitors selling apps to their platform. They charge for the phone, and now they extract rent from something they sold through the App Store. Please, think deeper about this, you are missing the point entirely.
> Like I said in another comment, if Spotify is not happy with Apple they can manufacture their own device and sell to consumers.
No, they can't. That's not their business, they don't have the capital to develop and foster a whole 3rd platform of devices + OS just to move away from Apple's ecosystem, that's the whole point of developing a platform: creating a massive lever against competition because of network effects. Network effects are very hard to break from, hence why most major tech companies try to leverage that (look at Meta/Facebook, they are shit but still it's very hard to compete against due to their size).
> People buy and use Apple devices of their own free will, and developers develop for their devices of their own free will as well. And there is plenty of competition in the market.
There's only 1 competitor in the market: Android, manufacturers using Android are not 1 competitor each since none of them are providing a full platform, the platform is Android on top of some devices.
Free will is a massive naïvete to throw here. Is there free will when there are no other options to reach a market? Is there free will for online sellers in the USA to not put their products on Amazon since you'll be living on the outskirts of the market without any meaningful way to penetrate into it if other competitors have an advantage simply by paying the Amazon tax and selling their products through Amazon?
I think you are too naïve and ideological, that blinds you from understanding market forces and markets in general.
> Sure, I will buy another phone and all the apps I paid for in 15 years of usage. It's very trivial and simple.
I know you're being sarcastic, but it is extremely trivial and simple to buy another phone. Because you can also keep the phone you have!
There is a hang-up among hackers that think it is impossible to use different phones, different computers and different browsers. You can have one phone for this and another for that. You can use both vim and emacs to edit a document and you can have several computers with different systems. Hell, you can even have different sets of cutlery at your home.
> No, they can't.
They sure can. Being incompetent or lacking in capabilities is an acceptable excuse for a person, not for a billion dollar company like Spotify. I have here on my desk a pocket music player of excellent quality that was manufactured in 2023. It is not Android nor iOS and the company making it is much smaller than Spotify. So why can't they? "Not our business"? If they're that incompetent, the CEO and the leadership should apologise for being failures, step down, pay back to shareholders all salary they have received and go hide away.
Yes there is free will for sellers to not put their products on Amazon. That's called retail, and it's a tough market. If your product is good enough you can sell it without putting it on a third-party marketplace. Just like with hotel aggregator websites and food delivery apps. Companies are doing fine without being there.
> There's only 1 competitor in the market: Android
There's thousands of different Android phones in the market, that's the competition. And it's not that difficult for a tech company to develop their own mobile OS if they'd like. Microsoft made Windows Phone which many people liked, Nokia made the excellent and ahead of its time Meego OS, BlackBerry 10 OS was excellent as well. And there is absolutely no blame on Apple for these tech giants discontinuing their OSes. They were discontinued because they weren't profitable enough for the owners taste. So now Apple should be forced to make sure that their competitors can make a profit from their customers? Because that's the core of the matter. Other companies do not want to do the work and investments that Apple did to get a loyal customer base willing to spend money, so they're using EU regulators to freeload.
No sympathy to any of them. Make better ecosystems if you want to compete, you have the money and the means. Try giving a fuck about your customers and your business. That's something that the general public and consumers also would benefit from.
> deliberate sabotage of open standards process to prevent the web taking off
Whether Safari is this way deliberately or by chance, is something to be found on a court. But Apple's behavior here isn't different from the Microsoft one with IE.
Microsoft's market share was well over 90% in the 90s. The iPhone's market share is 60%. Very different market dynamics.
It was a lot easier to see how Microsoft was being mean-spirited for consumers versus Apple. I'd argue that Apple's policies are consumer agnostic, and the only people really up in arms about Apple are developers and some of its partners.
Also the US is no longer in a position to be punching it's own companies, given the onslaught of Chinese companies that are seeking to undercut in even auto manufacturing now.
>Microsoft's market share was well over 90% in the 90s. The iPhone's market share is 60%. Very different market dynamics.
Couldn't be more wrong. It's not even remotely comparable.
Yes Microsoft had a 90% OS market share but it was an open OS running on open HW platform wich had many players, so users had the freedom to install whatever non-Microsoft SW and HW they wanted on it and SW developers could develop software for it without needing Microsoft's permission for sales or distribution on their OS, or giving them a 30% cut of their profits (other than buying a MS Visual C++ license maybe).
While Apple might have an "only" 60% market share now (though it's currently 87% amongst US teens today[1] so it's only a matter of time till it reaches 90s' Microsoft levels of monopoly amongst US gen-pop) but it's a closed OS running on closed HW with attestation, so costumers and SW developers have absolutely no choice but to run only Apple approved content on them. Vastly more restrictive than what Microsoft of the 90's could even dream of.
>It was a lot easier to see how Microsoft was being mean-spirited for consumers versus Apple.
How? Just like Apple, Microsoft was only being mean spirited to SW and HW vendors and competitors, not to consumers.
There was no reasonable alternative to Windows for any consumer. There's a reason that the 90% market share number was for Windows.
Also, you could have developed whatever you wanted, but made an active choice to try to extinguish those applications with OEMs, ISPs, and content providers to squeeze out Netscape. It's truly lost on people today how Bill Gates was an absolute killer back in the day.
> How? Just like Apple, Microsoft was only being mean spirited to SW and HW vendors and competitors, not to consumers.
The consumer experience for iPhone users is much better than that of Windows users back in the day. People were scared of Windows.
>There was no reasonable alternative to Windows for any consumer.
Didn't stop you from selling your SW for the Windows platform without paying Microsoft a dime or Microsoft having any way to stop you. Look at WinRar or the thousands of other small companies who made a living selling SW for Windows without paying Microsoft a cent.
>The consumer experience for iPhone users is much better than that of Windows users back in the day.
UX is subjective and debatable. And there's a difference between one having poor UX, and one being "mean spirited towards users".
>The only way to sell software was in boxes and intermediaries took 80% of developers money.
But did Microsoft take their money like Apple does today?
The internet and shareware distributions was also a thing back then, where you get the SW for free from anywhere, and send a payment to the developer and received an activation key over the phone/post.
I think you're taking all of the decisions that led up to the success of the iPhone for granted. For instance, if this path is such a no-brainer, why doesn't Microsoft install a walled garden of their own? It's not due to the beneficence of their hearts.
Something that is a surefire success in one platform is not necessarily a surefire success in another. Which is why saying in hindsight "this is monopolistic behavior!" is such a silly thing to do.
Well, for one MS Visual Studio used to cost a fortune. Sure you could use whatever other -- also expensive -- DE or compiler but the end result and the ergonomics weren't as good.
If I'm not mistaken you also had to pay to redistribute or link to system libraries so yeah, you had to pay a pretty penny to play.
> Didn't stop you from selling your SW for the Windows platform without paying Microsoft a dime
Microsoft would charge you up-front for things like dev tools (Visual Studio), documentation (MSDN), server software (MS SQL, Windows Server), etc. Yeah, you could get alternatives, but it wasn't until the very end of the 90s that you started to see FOSS really take off in a way that would be appropriate for an enterprise-style environment.
App stores take a cut of revenue, while Microsoft would get its revenue before your project shipped.
> Yes Microsoft had a 90% OS market share but it was an open OS running on open HW platform wich had many players
The actual thing that Microsoft got in trouble for was technical and legal restrictions Microsoft put in place, especially on OEM/hardware manufacturers, to prevent prebundling of the paid Netscape product.
Apple has a 20 to 30% market share in Europe. All these comparisons apply to the us only ( where, interestingly enough, Apple is not getting fined it would seem ).
The EU always seems to be the one doing the work with this sort of regulation. Maybe the evil solution is just: avoid anti-competitive behavior in the EU.
Consumers weren’t Microsoft Windows customers for the most part - OEMs were. OEMs were not free to install any other operating system. Well they were. But they still had to pay for a Windows license even on computers shipped without Windows.
And this article is about the EU where iOS is less than 40% and Apple Music is less than 10%
>OEMs were not free to install any other operating system.
All the PCs I bought in 90's Europe came without Windows OS preinstalled. What you're talking about it the deals between Microsoft and the likes of Dell/HP/Compaq, etc, but nobody forced you to buy those brands as there were plenty of other local assembled alternatives without OS in the shops back then.
Androids can't run the SW developed for iOS same how X86 PCs built at home can run the SW developed for X86 PCs sold by Dell/Compaq nor can you sell you iOS SW you developed for Apple HW outside of Apple's SW garden.
Please stop making up arguments that are not in good faith.
I said that Microsoft’s customers were OEMs and that MS was found to be a monopoly because they forced OEMs to pay for Windows licenses for every computer shipped whether or not the computer was running Windows. This was part of the lawsuit.
The reply was that there were other computers sold in Europe by the non big brands that did not include Windows.
You could not in fact run the “same” Windows software if you were not running Windows
Apple was nearly dead. Microsoft literally gave them a big investment to keep them alive [1] , in part to avoid monopoly-related issues [2].
Microsoft was doing everything in its power to kill the only other serious browser at the time, Netscape, and it basically had "won" the desktop and server market. It's pretty astounding that Apple was ever able to do as well as it did in the server, laptop, and desktop market.
This is not true. The “big investment” was $250 million dollars after Apple had already secured a multi billion dollar loan.
Apple then turned around and used $100 million to buy PowerComputings Mac assets. Apple continued to lose millions after that. The investment did not “save” Apple
It was $250M, a public acknowledgment of continued Office for Mac development, and the announcement of Internet Explorer for Mac gave investors, business buyers, and developers confidence in Apple. Because if Microsoft, the biggest tech company at that time, was bullish on Apple the rest of the industry could have faith in them too.
The $250M was largely symbolic, everyone knew that.
It might be hard to imagine in a world where open source mostly won, but in the 90s Microsoft essentially had a de facto monopoly over the computer industry.
Mac OS was a thing, but it was different and expensive enough that it was not really a viable alternative to Windows 95 for most people. Solaris and HPUX existed, but were not accessible to home users. The alternative platforms of the late 80s (Atari, Amiga, Acorn) had pretty much died out by the mid 90s. Linux was very much a thing, but without a viable web browser it was really tricky to use on a day to day basis... and the only really viable web browser was Internet Explorer, so you ended up dual booting to Windows. If you (I) wanted to use a computer, that's how it was.
In short, the kind of monopoly that Apple has with its App Stores affects some consumers in some ways, but the kind of monopoly that Microsoft had in the 90s affected almost every computer user in almost every way.
At the end of the 90s, the internet was also not everywhere. Many people had 56k modems, smartphones did not exist ( and mobile phones weren’t exactly ubiquitous) so there was no way out, ie your apps were tied to your operating system, which meant windows to most people.
How do you believe Apple's overall market share is related to the (pre-DMA) monopolistic nature of their App Stores? I can't see a clear connection between the two things.
A monopoly can be so many things that the question needs to be "is it causing harm?"
For example, a trademark or a copyright or a patent is a monopoly on the use of that IP, and those are considered "good" by the governments and courts.
In my (IANAL) opinion, I think the important question for a mobile app store needs to be: do users and developers have a meaningful choice between iOS, Android, and just a website?
I really don't know the answer to that, though I expect the market share plays a part in it — if iOS was 10% or 90%, then developers surely would not have any meaningful choice.
It’s a regulatory nightmare for smaller companies.
Apple’s Ad Tracking Transparency did more to affect privacy - according to companies like Facebook that admitted on earnings calls that they projected billions in losses based on iOS users opting out
All of the AI regulations are just going to make companies say - forget it in the EU. How much longer did open AI take to come to the EU as opposed to the US?
I’m also not a lawyer but my understanding is that anti-trust law covers broader stuff than just monopoly busting. There’s no reason to require Apple to be a monopoly before we start to worry that they might be engaging in anti-competitive behavior.
IMO arguing about whether or not they are a monopoly is a losing pedantry battle that misses the point. People will bring up exact market share, and what exactly is a market—honestly, some good arguments about whether or not Apple is technically a monopoly—but, who cares? They are clearly a major player and so if they are not competing fairly that’s clearly a major problem.
Like you said, the US helped Carnegie stage actual massacres before the case was made that they were a monopoly. It's entirely feasible that Apple has and abuses monopoly power, but the politics of implicating them don't align yet.
The difference is that Microsoft was targeting general purpose computing with policy-based restrictions, and Apple is selling mobile phones that are not general purpose computing devices and later on a service ecosystem to go with it.
We could re-qualify mobile phones as general purpose devices (which technically they could be but in reality they are not), that would make the parallels much closer, and we could also have the service ecosystem made non-optional (it still is optional) to make it a bundled requirement, that would make the parallels even closer.
Other than that, the landscape and context have drastically changed, especially when it comes to presence, attention, personal attachment and the abuse of all of that (addition, mass media consumption, personal information that gets stolen or mined, attacks on devices that have a real world impact). So even if we were to make it just a browser war it wouldn't really be the same.
It's a shame Palm, RIM, Microsoft and Nokia are no longer playing the same game, it would have been interesting to see what their take on the market would be. Considering all of their hardware and software had the exact same model (release it as an appliance, all software and in some cases all traffic goes through them), it would have allowed more people to have some perspective.
> Apple is selling mobile phones that are not general purpose computing devices
I would argue this is 100% false. They are general-purpose computing devices! The only reason why people think they're not is because they're locked down.
Apple got away with it so Google did the same. Yet there's really no reason why these devices should be locked down the way they are. It should be much easier to take control of our phones than it currently is and I'd argue that with the recent EU decisions regarding app stores we're about to get just a tiny little taste of what these general-purpose computers in our pockets could be.
I would argue that it would be nice that everything that has a CPU and RAM is a general purpose computing device, but just because it is nice doesn't mean that it is reality or an effective use of products.
If we arbitrarily classify things based on what we desire instead of how they are brought to market, we might as well stop classifying things at all.
As for 'general-purpose computers in our pockets', they exist, and they are brought to market as such for about two decades. They did however not turn out to be useful or viable.
> It's a shame Palm, RIM, Microsoft and Nokia are no longer playing the same game
They tried, but completely failed competing with the jaws that were a) Apple taking all the profits at the top and b) Android taking the rest of the market
These smartphone providers had to compete on both fronts and it was too much for them (even for Microsoft).
The iPhone in 2007 was like alien technology compared to anything released before then (and I was a skeptic).
Only Microsoft tried to follow Apple in lockstep with Windows Phone 7: no USB mass storage, homegrown browser engine with no alternative, and no exposed filesystem.
Blackberry phones were sort of similar, but as enterprise-first devices they always had a reputation of being mostly a work email device, not personal.
They still had filesystem access and microSD expandability though.
Blackberry really blew it (hard). They could've been more pervasive and successful than iPhones and Android but they never put in the effort to make their phones easier for developers to use. Everything was so obtuse and difficult and they were far too late to the game in regards to, well, everything.
They didn't have a "glass slab" style phone until literally every other phone had been like that for years and years. They were also late to the game with cameras, IMUs, and other hardware features that we've all come to take for granted.
My guess: They listened too much to their enterprise customers. Enterprise customers have very, very specific needs that are essentially the opposite of "general purpose" that would translate into useful features for anyone else.
RIM's problem was hubris. The top brass listened to their "gut" instead of taking a sober analysis of the market. Their approach to devices in 2008 was basically the same as in 2001. They assumed BES was an unassailable moat. They also assumed carriers would never budge on data plans and I can only assume they had never heard of WiFi.
What the market was saying in 2008 was it didn't actually give a shit about BES, didn't give a shit about BBM, software keyboards were fine if they didn't suck, and real browsers on phones were important.
Instead of really listening to the market RIM just kept making the same devices as before. The iPhone and even early Android phones blew the doors off BlackBerries. By the time RIM decided to join the rest of the world it was too late. They were releasing devices in 2010 that couldn't compete with iPhones and Androids from 2008. The BlackBerries were up against the iPhone 4 by 2010, they were a joke in comparison.
I went from a BlackBerry Pearl to the first iPhone. Even in the admittedly early state of iOS 1.0 it was vastly superior to the Pearl. It wasn't even funny how much better of a device it was. Every iPhone after that just increased that gap over whatever RIM was selling.
It is silly but we arbitrarily classify computers as general purpose or not based on the market segment they go after. Phones, video game consoles, e-readers, TV sticks… and also cars and some refrigerators could run user provided code, but the general expectation is that it is OK to locked them down for whatever reason.
A GPC device should be able to develop and compile programs directly on device without any external dependency. That's what you get with Windows, Mac or Linux.
HTML+CSS is considered Turing complete [0], but we wouldn't call that a complete GPC environment.
To be honest, a lot of end-user problems would go away if they were restricted to a child-proofed version of computers.
In a sense they have been doing that to themselves by not knowing how it works, or how to write code, which already restricts them to things other people made.
They then further restricted themselves by migrating most of their work to mobile devices that run software that only the vendor realistically can be in charge of (mostly due to NDAs for the IP Cores like baseband and SoC, but the amount of kernel patches you get with Android hardware is insane... good luck trying to get a recent kernel for those).
As a result, there are mostly behaviour based problems that remain, most technical problems have disappeared. That is an effect (and limitation) that we cannot deny.
Despite all the talk Microsoft wasn't broken in pieces and never paid a significant penalty. The loudness of the congressmen was to compensate for that.
Now the Overton window has moved and people no longer believe a company can be broken up.
I recall reading that Microsoft basically had government oversight personnel on site. I also recall learning somewhere that the thing that basically saved MS from having the book thrown at them was that George W Bush was elected in 2000, and the DOJ switched hands - and didn't care much about pushing the issue.
Why do people always assume there's only two ways to deal with a monopoly? All you ever hear about in terms of dealing with monopolies are:
1) Break them up
2) Fine them
From history we know that #1 is really friggin hard to get right (see: AT&T). We also know that #2 is usually ineffective and can harm consumers that are still locked into the monopoly.
There's other options!
* End the company (corporate death penalty). Auction off all their assets and force all their intellectual property into the public domain.
* Force FRAND-style licensing of all their products and services. Make it so that if they want to make money they *require* 3rd parties to sell customized versions of their stuff.
* A combination of forced public domain on their intellectual property and FRAND-style licensing. Possibly with forced selling of assets. Basically, just force the company out of whatever market they were abusing.
Monopolists are always difficult to break up and there's always going to be negative consequences. Whole towns could go bankrupt as a result of ending a company! Thousands of workers could suddenly be jobless. The list of possible negative outcomes goes on and on.
It behooves society to look past these short-term consequences though and look towards the future. The longer a monopoly goes on the more it stifles the future. It may feel like you're cutting off an arm when you end a really big, powerful company but it's more like cutting off a tree branch. More and better branches will grow in its place and younger, nearby trees will now have access to more sunlight.
Unpopular opinion (here on VC-funded HN): The way capitalism is supposed to work is that large, old companies are meant to be overtaken by newer, more nimble ones. It shouldn't be so easy for large companies to acquire smaller ones. That's a big reason why tech monopolies persist! SO many of Microsoft's "staple" products wouldn't be part of their portfolio today if it weren't for acquisitions.
In the US at least, I tend to think that was the last gasp of an old anti-trust regime that had basically run out of gas by then. The 80's saw a conservative revolution that extinguished a lot of worker and consumer protections.
> For whom was in tech during 90s and now in 2020s, what are the differences between Microsoft back then and Apple now in terms of why the regulators are so "soft" against an actor that is overplaying it's hand for consumers?
Microsoft had a monopoly with the ambition to capture the whole market: “A microcomputer on every desk and in every home running Microsoft software.”
It is impossible for Apple to do that, it is against their DNA. They only sell limited product categories, all their hardware products would fit on a desk in their Apple Store if the merchandize wouldn't be so spaced apart. Their products are targeting a higher price point and if a product spirals to a race to the bottom (mp3 players, wifi routers) they leave the market. They dislike to partner with other companies. They are targeting consumers/prosumers, not business market. This all means there will always be very large gaps in the market which Apple won't cater too.
Probably a host of reasons. MS had 90%+ of the OS marketshare (Excel had ~90% of the spreadsheet market). I think it's hard for people to understand just how dominant MS was at the time - closest might be peak Google with search. Bill G while likable today because of his philanthropy, was really painted then as a ruthless businessman. MS ignored DC and politics for the most part. At the time, the west coast was even more of a different world than what was going on in DC.
All the companies today learned from MS. They have armies of lobbyists and court politicians. They are all ruthless business people, but come across as more human and cuddly. They have become key parts of the US economy. I think there's also some fear that if they do go after big tech they could inadvertently make things worse for constituents. Remember, the only thing a politician thinks about is getting re-elected.
From Felix Richter: "The information technology and communication services sectors, i.e. most things tech, were responsible for more than 70 percent of the S&P 500’s total return of 26.3 percent last year. Excluding companies from these two sectors, the index would have returned just 7.6 percent in 2023. The “Magnificent Seven” – Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Amazon, Meta, Tesla and Alphabet – accounted for roughly 60 percent of the index’s total return, illustrating how top heavy last year's rally has been."
In short, nobody wants to be perceived as the one that cooked the golden goose.
Could be wrong but Microsoft also had a policy back then to not spend much on lobbying before the trial. They now spend quite a bit. In the US, Apple spent a measly ~6 million a year before bumping it up to 9 a year in 2023. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1043061/lobbying-expense...
Could it be a coincidence? Obviously. But it does seem like if you play the game, you’re less likely to get burned. Of course, that’s a very US centric approach and it makes sense that the EU is the one bringing on these challenges.
All the sibling comments trying to compare exactly how alike or different MS vs Apple behavior is, like a compare and contrast high school essay, are missing the mark. Some are very insightful and bring up information I wasn't aware of. They aren't low value comments but I just don't understand why you would think it's even possible to compare two of the largest, most profitable companies (depending on the time we're talking about) 30 years apart. I mean, it's informative to discuss for sure but the markets, tech, laws and public opinion have all changed since then. Apple doesn't have to be as bad, in the same way, with the same motives as Microsoft, for it to be bad, anti-competitive behavior. The markets are both bigger, and more segmented as well.
I don't think we're going come up with a universal measuring stick to apply here though I'm sure some tech reporting outlets will try.
FWIW Microsoft software and generic hardware of the time were way more open for anyone.
Competing with MS was hard or even impossible, but they didn't try to control what you code or run on your machine, didn't try to interfere with software vendors' revenue streams and didn't even go after piracy the way they could.
Those was right calls that made Windows so ubiquitous.
In the past few years Apple's faced significant regulatory and legal action over it's App Store in the US, South Korea, Japan, United Kingtom, Australia, and the EU.
The EU has just forced Apple to open up to alternative App Stores and enforce browser ballots when you first open Safari.
> what are the differences between Microsoft back then and Apple now in terms of why the regulators are so "soft" against an actor that is overplaying it's hand for consumers?
The monetary proportion that big-tech contributes to US GDP. It would be silly to assume the US would ever kneecap it's most profitabile and rising industry. After killing its manufacturing industry, tech and finance is all ti has.
i.e. the quantities of goods produced is growing about as fast as the economy. The reason manufacturing is dropping as a percentage of nominal GDP is that inflation for manufactured goods has been lower than for other goods.
Generally speaking, what changed was the value in the tech sector skyrocketing (enabling political lobbying as well as propaganda - the latter of which Apple is extremely good at, just look at the amount of HN comments mindlessly repeating their propaganda about how opening their platform is such a massive security problem. Meanwhile the App Store has been rife with spam and fake apps for the past decade; you literally can't easily find government apps here because shady app companies buy adspace on the searches and put up apps with similar sounding names but with aggressive monetization) combined with ~20 years of US regulators just not really enforcing much in the way of antitrust cases whilst the EU was still on the boat of "maybe we should ask nicely" since that usually works for local enforcement.
Things are finally changing on that end (far moreso in the EU because big tech basically keeps pretending it's just the backyard rather than to be taken seriously and it's pissing off regulators), but it's still somewhat of an oddly prescient fact that Silicon Valley/US tech companies broadly more or less "invent" old corporate crimes that take a decade to get enforced because regulators don't get that the difference between a physical form of fraud and a digital form of fraud isn't really that big.
EU is catching on and has been passing landmark regulations specifically to attack this crap, while the FTC is doing what it can in spite of the GOP having been pulling it's teeth for the past 20 years.
Legislation has always been extremely slow when it concerns major corporations. Partly because there isn’t a great public incentive to really care about Apple vs Spotify, which means there is less political focus and in term less allocated resources. But mostly because EU law is complicated and large companies have a gazillion lawyers to poke at its holes.
Different times. The corporate propaganda machine that resulted from the Powell Memo hadn't yet infected the majority of minds (even with Reagan's heavy push) so there were still more people willing to hold companies accountable.
MS was a bigger chunk of the market, and it was, well, a lot more _blatant_. And already had a history of dubious behaviour by the late 90s (eg see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AARD_code). As someone else mentioned, MS in the 90s to early noughties was probably the most egregious case of tech misbehaviour ever (though some of Intel's stuff also wasn't great), so you're kind of grading on a curve here.
It makes it less ambiguous. There is no suggestion when you enter the Apple ecosystem that there is any way to use 3rd party hardware or software.
There is one supplier for the hardware: Apple. One supplier for the OS: Apple. And for phones, tablets, TVs and watches, only one supplier for software: Apple's official store.
Apple hardware like a gaming console. You buy an Xbox because you want/need an Xbox. You don't start fantasising about installing Arch on it and playing indie games from itch.io. You're perfectly happy getting what's available in the official store.
One absolutely key factor is that tech dominates a far higher fraction of life today than it did in the past. So these companies will be increasingly powerful entities, which makes it hard to litigate against them.
Through the late 90s and yearly 2000s I needed to purchase an expensive and slow emulator plus a Windows license just to do banking, taxes or accurately open some Office files. That's a monopoly.
If you buy an Android phone, you can use Uber, Instagram, Spotify, banking, maps, accurately render web pages, taxes, etc. There's nothing essential to modern mobile that's iOS only.
MS had ≈ 95% global market share back then, Apple has ≈ 30% of mobile market share now.
You may not like Apple's attitudes, but claiming they have a monopoly on mobile is comical.
There's a big geo-political component now at play, at least when it comes to Europe (I live in Europe). Meaning that the Europeans can try and upset the big American corporations up to a point (almost 2 billion euros as in this case), but not any further, because at the end of it all the security of the continent depends on American hegemony, on American guns and ultimately on American money.
From that point of view the situation back in the '90s was a lot more fluid, as at some point there were even talks of an Europe that would have extended "from Lisbon to Vladivostok" (so leaving the Americans out of it altogether).
We'll have to wait and see, for the moment I think it's mere posturing coming from some European leaders.
To begin with, the European nuclear deterrent when it comes to keeping Russian on their toes is a joke compared to what the American have as part of their arsenal.
There is no European nuclear deterrent. The non-proliferation treaties bar any further countries from developing one. It would be a huge upheaval for even Germany or Italy, let alone the EU itself, to develop their own nuclear deterrent. (Not to mention politically impossible within Germany itself!)
The UK has a quasi-independent deterrent (we developed our own and then agreed to abandon it and buy the US option instead), but is not part of the EU any more.
The only true independent EU nuclear deterrent is France.
An under-appreciated aspect of the NATO/EU defence situation is that the US does not actually want the EU, or any of its constituent countries such as the former Axis powers, to become too capable. Or develop a local manufacturing capability that outsells the US one. The US actually prefers a weakish Europe defended by US troops to one strong enough not to need them and even to contemplate removing them.
The other element at play is that if the EU fines become so egregious that US companies pull out of offering certain products in the EU, then what would fill the vacuum? Answer: Chinese tech companies with CCP control - essentially building a direct pipeline of EU personal data that CCP can weaponize.
> the security of the continent depends on American hegemony, on American guns and ultimately on American money.
And the security of the American chip industry depends on ASML machines, and American airline passengers depend on EU made airplanes. What's your point? Every post-WW2 economy is dependent on the other economies nowadays. There's no fully independent economy that can survive on its own anymore.
US (and other including EU) companies get fined because they break EU laws, it's not done out of spite. If they dont wanna get fined they should stop breaking the laws. Simple.
I didn't say it was "out of spite", to the contrary, I said that the measures should have been (and could have been, given a different geo-political context) a lot harsher, such as trying to breaking up Apple's operations in Europe and more.
That type of action is off the table for the foreseeable future, and the same goes for the other big US tech companies that are operating in Europe in defiance of the spirit of EU laws, such as Alphabet and Meta (anything related to Musk is a special case because of politics-related concerns).
Most of Europe’s communication can be severed by turning off WhatsApp servers. That’s just one product out of thousands that Europeans take for granted every day. Operating systems, maps, productivity, communications, cloud, entertainment, the list is never ending.
Europe is extremely dependent on American tech. An indisputable fact.
>Most European communication can be severed by turning off WhatsApp servers.
Oh no, what am I gonna do then?! Oh wait, I can just contact people by GSM voice or SMS, or use Signal or Threema the secure Swiss messanging service.
FYI, the US communication can be disrupted too because they're using Nokia-Siemens 5G stations since the US has no local players in this space anymore.
Let's stop being childish, ok? This isn't a CoD lobby for edgy 8 yearolds.
My company is highly intertwined with WA and if they killed it off in the EU, we'd just switch to Signal/Telegram/the millions of other secure messaging services out there ¯ \ _ ( ツ ) _ / ¯
Apple is nowhere near as bad as Microsoft. Microsoft was so bad that Bill Gates had to eradicate deceases from the surface of the planet to redeem himself.
Apple still has great customer experience and they still sell their products to willing customers and their damage is essentially to their competitors and the users might be losing out on even better service or can be overpaying.
Microsoft was considered the Devils incarnation. Awful lot of people still hold grunge towards Microsoft due to the suff they had to face because of the Microsoft's abuse of their market position. People who are really really angry with Apple are not that many, it's mostly people who get sherlocked or were denied the ability to publish their idea on the AppStore. Also, there a few who think they could make more money if Apple didn't take a cut or didn't stop them from collecting data.
If Microsoft was Saddam, Apple would have been Lee Kuan Yew - Singapore's dictator.
SaaS has given corparations so much more power over users and devs, that anything good ol' M$ did (remember that abbreviation?) could not be nearly as bad as a dominating company could do today.
Worth pointing out that when this complaint was filed Spotify was publicly complaining about the lack of equal access to the HomePod and Apple Watch.[0]
Apple addressed this with API’s at WWDC the following year.[1] Yet here we are, almost 4 years later and Spotify have yet to implement support whereas competing services have.[2]
The APIs don't allow applications quite the same access as Apple Music has. I imagine that using them would weaken Spotify's complaints, while also resulting in a sub-par user experience. Users lose out in the short run, but I wouldn't necessarily blame Spotify for this.
It would result in a significantly improved user experience… I really have no sympathy for Spotify intentionally refusing to improve their HomePod experience in order to avoid “weakening their complaint.”
This point in time is probably the peak of it not being worth it, assuming that this multi-billion dollar fine causes Apple to change strategy somewhat. I'd imagine it's likely to only get better from here, as Spotify implement whatever Apple gives them and Apple hopefully gives them more.
Because of this, I wouldn't judge Spotify at this point as this decision will probably look better over time. Maybe it's still not worth it in the long run, but at some level it will become worth it.
Right: complainants can argue they should have access to all of Apple’s hardware devices for free while they themselves are an Apple-level monopoly in their market. I wonder how many billions of dollars in exclusive podcast deals for formerly openly distributed content consumers are missing out on because of these anti-steering rules.
Drives me nuts. Apple even added this weird sort of work around where if you ask for it on Spotify, it connects to your phone and the phone airplays Spotify to the HomePod.
Spotify does not get that money. The general EU budget does.
> Fines imposed on undertakings found in breach of EU antitrust rules are paid into the general EU budget. This money is not earmarked for particular expenses, but Member States' contributions to the EU budget for the following year are reduced accordingly. The fines therefore help to finance the EU and reduce the burden for taxpayers.
There are no damages really, without Apple Spotify would be a dead product by now. Their entire existence is more or less due to the advent of iPhones and the App Store where customers subscriptions were significantly higher than any other platform (this was common knowledge within the organization too, we loved Apple, I say we as I worked there for many years)
Without Apple, there would be other mobile devices, surely? It was an idea that was in the air. Arguments about Apple doing it better or quicker or differently don't have much bearing on your specific point here.
There were, windows phone and android, but neither could prove the Spotify model that offering a free tier led to paying subscribers (and at least Android had enough market share for this to be certain), something their entire existence was built on and something the labels questioned a lot. People seem to forget this part entirely.
Now you could argue everyone on iOS would pay as happily on Android if there were no iOS, but then you argue fiction against reality.
No, my argument is what actually did happen, in this reality. There’s no need for any experiment to be run to state what events led to what is today, and what would happen in a another reality like the one you described in your first post is irrelevant for the subject at hand.
Apple provided Spotify the platform they needed to prove their business model, it really is as simple as that.
True without context, but not if you worked there at the time. It’s hard to describe just how much iOS did for Spotify at a crucial time of the company’s existence.
But sure, we will never know for sure, but certain outcomes have far higher likelihoods than others.
This isn't about music streaming but about the payment restrictions Apple forces on Appstore devs. The court decided that Apple's practices destroy competition, which is obviously true. Also it's in line with the new gatekeeping laws that are coming this month.
This was about music streaming and no court was involved with this. This is a decision from an executive branch. The courts will come into play once Apple has filed their announced appeal.
It's actully a 15 year old law (in it's current name, originally from 1958). From the article:
> Today's decision concludes that Apple's anti-steering provisions amount to unfair trading conditions, in breach of Article 102(a) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (‘TFEU')
This argumentation is probably being based on generic anti trust law ... and the DMA is a new specialization below it. Does not mean that you violated past law just because new law is also applicable to you.
- A weird callout to the nationality of the company right out of the gate
- Spotify will be nothing without us (insert crazy ex memes)
- "Our engineering helps ensure that Spotify’s apps can work seamlessly with Siri, CarPlay, Apple Watch, AirPlay, Widgets, and more." -- yeah, because those are your products, Apple. You make your money on those products being tightly integrated
- A bizarre quantization of the apple ecosystem by total number of "APIs" Apple gives them access to (250k)
- A claim of insider coercion between Spotify and the EU Commission that made it difficult for Apple to win
It's not even that they say it's been ineffective; they're saying that the EC can't prove that it has been effective.
And AFAIK there's also no reasoning given why it's fine to prevent apps from mentioning other payment options, even assuming it's not anti-competitive. (But to be fair, I haven't actually gone to the source to read their statement.)
No, if Apple tries to give advantages to its own music app it is still possible for their app to fail if it is bad enough compared to the competition even if Apple gave themselves large unfair advantages.
In cases where Apple succeeded in killing the competition you wouldn't see a lawsuit like this since the competition wouldn't have the money to sue properly.
This isn’t a lawsuit and it’s not being brought on by competition so I’m not sure why any of that is useful to say.
I did not say it’s impossible to be anti-competitive without being effective. I just said it’s a factor when judging whether something is. So your first point is irrelevant as well.
You should get your nuts checked, that nutshell is a bit rotten.
My nutshell contains something else:
- Apple lamp-shading that EU companies seem to get a pass
- Apple refuting Spotify’s claims that Apple’s acts somehow have harmed and stifled Spotify, by highlighting how successful Spotify is
- Highlighting how Spotify has benefited from Apple’s work without paying a dime, refuting the implied notion that Spotify is on the hook for 30% and refuting the implied notion that no benefit is provided in exchange for the commission by Spotify consistently calling it a “tax”
- Lamp-shading the fact that the scope of the EC’s investigation has changed more often than your average brothel’s bed occupant during the ten years of the investigation due to the EC not being able to make the case on all the other stuff they tried, from consumer harms to harm to competitors, eventually landing on a anti steering provision but only in the music streaming service market and only after that anti steering was already abolished, hinting that Spotify has been the driving force behind this indefatigable mindset to find something that sticks
- They think it’s BS and are going to appeal, according to them because no harm was proven, but I think in part because the actual fine is only $4m, because that’s how shitty the EC’s case was even after shifting the goal post so often, so the EC decided to add a bogus “deterrence” fine. That and of course because this is merely a decision by an executive branch, in that regard it’s not unlike, say, Trump’s executive orders, in that they’re not worth much more than the paper they’re written on until a judge has adjudicated it.
I mean the tone of their initial press release anouncing "compliance" was borderline unprofessional (in global company PR speak terms) and sounded at time like a pertulent teenager fuming about that "unfair" teacher.
I'm sure it was all calucated and discussed a million times but if their goal was to appeal to emotions, I think it mostly failed (outside a very small nieche of Apple groupies). Their leverage in the EU is weak (thanks to few jobs and tax avoidance (even if that's legal))
Once they notice they will revert to lawywers and silent compliance.
Apple's response makes me almost put my iPhone in the trash. What a trash article with trash arguments. It's like reading a kids writeup how they stole their candy that wasn't even theirs.
They also explained why my App Reviews sometimes take weeks, they treat their customers not with integrity. Sad stuff really.
Why don't we all do that already? Would people that have well knowledge about all the shit Apple has been pulling recently, still buy products of them if they weren't already so vendor locked in?
Spotify really has the short end of the stick here. Apple does themselves no favors by participating from a privileged position at every point in the market. Apple App Store sets rules that disadvantages Apple Music's competitors.
To offer subscriptions on iOS, Spotify must give away 30% of it's revenue to Apple. Yet Apple compete with them with Apple Music. Do you think Apple is giving away 30% of it's Apple Music revenue? This means that in order for Spotify to compete head-to-head with Apple Music, it must either charge 30% more, or maybe 30% less money than it's next competitor.[0]
This is on top of Apple's blatently unfair rules that prevent developers actually explaining any of them to it's users, or informing users how to actually sign up or get a cheaper option. If Apple believes these rules are so correct, why does it ban communicating them to it's users?
[0] Indeed, for Apple Music on Android Apple bypasses Google Play payments, it's 30% cut, and bills itself via credit card.
> To offer subscriptions on iOS, Spotify must give away 30% of it's revenue to Apple
Spotify haven't paid revenue to Apple in years. This finding is because Spotify aren't permitted to "[inform] users of payment options outside its App Store" due to Apple's anti-steering rules.
This is correct. They are allowed to charge whatever they want via iOS subscription, so that they could cover the 30% "Appple Tax" if they wanted to. They just can't tell people that they could get Spotify cheaper direct, which is the source of this antitrust action.
Spotify may apply for permission to have one link that does "not include, or be used with, language that includes the price of items available on the website". The OS will throw up an intermediary scare sheet warning the users of the dangers of the linkhttps://developer.apple.com/support/reader-apps/
Spotify is allowed to link to their website from the app and even inform about better deals since a while.
Spotify is of course also allowed to use IAP and pay a 30% commission.
Spotify is currently doing neither.
Meaning Spotify isn’t getting the 70% they’d get when converting a user via IAP nor are they getting 100% of users they convert in the app without IAP because they’re not doing that.
As an aside, it’s astonishing they’re still growing so hard despite that.
But that means Spotify is leaving money on the table so every choice is better than $0.
You’re right though, they can, without issue, charge 30% more. Some devs do this.
All of this means that it ultimately isn’t about “hurting” because Spotify is actively cutting off their nose to spite their face. What this is about is not wanting Apple to get a cut of the pie, even if they’d charge 30% and wouldn’t lose a dime. With that in mind, I think it’s fair game for Apple to point out all the benefits Spotify has enjoyed at Apple’s expense.
Once you get in a market domineering position your liabilites and duties to society increase and your ability to make unlimited profit decreases. The more central your product is the more you need to do.
Either voluntarily or by force of law.
The EU (comission) seems to agree and yes that is very much not an unregulated "libertarian dream" market they are talking about.
Yeah, I wasn't commenting so much on the remedy, or the need for a remedy, but the line of thinking Apple boiled the ocean but Spotify can't be expected to.
I've written my position before and that is -- nothing in my tech life works as well as iOS on iPhones. I have Linux and Windows and have been given Android devices and none of those are close enough in quality and execution to what Apple keeps shipping.
That said, 30% of everything is plainly obnoxious, but I'd rather see a direct approach on that than a per-platform, or per-app-store approach.
If you believe in democracy then you would know that the buck stops with us, the citizens, or to be more specific, with our democratically elected officials. Apple's participation in the EU market is contingent on their obedience of our laws and regulations.
If they don't wish to follow these laws, they're just as free to exit the market.
It's kind of a long stretch that this has to do with democracy. Rather you could argue that it is the sovereignty of the EU against foreign businesses. Fine, EU regulators of course have the right do whatever they want and see for how long foreign businesses take it. A little racket, a little pay-to-play. But why not just go with a straight up higher importation tax on the devices if they look with such envy at the money? That's how other nations do it.
But international trade goes both ways and the EU is just as dependent on exporting their own goods and services. The antitrust case could just as easily be made against Spotify, seeing that they are a dominant actor in their field and squeeze the artists much worse than Apple squeezes them. But in my opinion, artists can choose freely if they want to be on Spotify or not, just like Spotify can choose freely if they want to be on iOS or not.
Or Spotify can actually manufacture and sell their own devices to consumers. That was exactly what started Apple's success. A portable music player.
Then go ahead and ban foreign companies from doing business in the EU or put a straight up importation tax on them, instead of squeezing them for money using dubious juridical manoeuvres. But expect the rest of the world to do the same to EU companies. And remember that EU companies do much more serious damage abroad than what Apple does to Spotify.
Foreign companies are just required to obey local law when operating in the EU. That's _normal_. Everyone does that. For that matter, it's not like antitrust is a purely EU concept. It's easy to forget, because the FTC has gotten a bit toothless over the last couple of decades, but it was once seriously looking at _splitting up Microsoft_, and of course US regulators actually did that to Bell back in the day.
> But expect the rest of the world to do the same to EU companies
This ruling has nothing to do with law, this is the EU squeezing a fat hog for money while benefitting a domestic company. No honest person can argue that Apple is a monopoly in any market sector. And they haven't tried to limit competitors in the market the way Microsoft did. I don't expect EU judges to understand antitrust law and apply it correctly, but people here should understand the difference.
If they want to squeeze Apple, just do it in a honest way by increasing taxes on electronics and associated services, like every other country does.
I don't understand this argument: it's not about the money, it's about the product compliance. It should be no more controversial than trying to sell appliances with the wrong plugs.
(can you imagine how insane the appliance market would be if domestic plugs were DRM'd and you had to buy appliances from the maker of your house or pay a 30% platform fee?)
An an EU resident, I agree. Every country should protect consumer rights, have oversight over corporations operating in their jurisdiction, and enforce anti-trust laws to ensure a functioning free market.
Your problem seems to be that you see this as the EU doing something "to" Apple (for fun or whatever nefarious reasons you think they have), rather than the EU just doing their job in protecting its citizens against an economic aggressor.
Your framing of this is actually kind of sad. This isn't an EU vs US issue, but citizens united against the evils of the dark side of capitalism.
> Your framing of this is actually kind of sad. This isn't an EU vs US issue, but citizens united against the evils of the dark side of capitalism.
This framing was by the parent, I didn't come up with it and I don't agree with it either.
> Your framing of this is actually kind of sad. This isn't an EU vs US issue, but citizens united against the evils of the dark side of capitalism.
Yes, I know, hence why I would like if the rest of the world did to EU companies what the EU did the Apple: proper regulation. In fact, I would also be happy if the rest of the world did that to all companies as well.
I see comments like yours, and I seriously can't tell if you're trolling or whether you genuinely believe this. However, I'll try to answer (once) in good faith.
There are so many things in life, due to either scarcity, lack of options, laws, or prior investments that we have made, that we can't leave them easily, even when we dislike a subset of our choice.
If you hate Comcast's service, but they are the only available broadband option in your city, would you leave your city just for better internet?
If you don't like 10% of the policies of your current government, but dislike 50% of the policies of the opposition, would you start your own political party?
I like a lot of things about iOS as a user, including the quality of their hardware, but I dislike the dictatorial control that Apple exerts over both developers and consumers. Not just their anti-steering provisions (which is pure rent seeking), and lack of sideloading (which I want), there's no way for me to write my own app and install it on my own device, and have it run permanently without paying Apple even more money.
I bought the phone at full price, I hate Apple's attitude that I have just bought the privilege of using it as per however they see fit. And so, similar to above, my alternative is to switch to something like f-droid, and lose my hardware, lose my purchases, and in many cases, lose my ability to even use my phone for standard communication (eg: iMessage). Or maybe you would suggest that I build my own phone company
In all these cases, the alternative option is possible, yes, but it's very impractical and infeasible for the vast majority of people to pursue, and they come with serious negative costs. So we pursue them only when things become unbearably bad, as a last resort.
And so the feasible option is to complain, protest, and try to leverage the government/courts to change the rules so that large companies can't take advantage of us and keep exploiting us in a "boil the frog" manner. And if that doesn't work, then one day, my cup of frustration will overflow, and I will switch over to f-droid or something
Do you have your troll accusation saved in a text file to copy and paste when you write comments? Are you so far up in your own ego that anybody who has a different opinion or take than you has to be a troll, and still consider yourself writing in "good faith"?
You are comparing individual consumers and citizens with a powerful billion dollar company like Spotify. They should be able to take care of themselves, and if they can't they should fail and close shop.
> And so, similar to above, my alternative is to switch to something like f-droid
No, and this has become a strange hang-up of hackers. You can have an iPhone _and_ an Android phone with F-Droid. Apple do not send agents to break into your house and force their devices out of your hands when they get notice that you've bought a Samsung. Have both and use each as they benefit you. My recommendation is that you purchase devices that fit your needs.
I like feeling the breeze when I drive, but I don't petition the European Union to force Toyota to add a window that can be opened in the windshield. Instead I go for a motorcycle ride. That doesn't mean I have to get rid off my car.
Argument by down votes only tells something about the people down voting and those who give credit to such behaviour. Let's see who can boo the loudest!
Yes Spotify didn't want to invest time, money and effort to win customers in the free market, so they went to the bureaucrats to force Apple to let them get access to their customer base. And the bureaucrats got to steal some juicy billions for themselves, because this fine is not going to consumers.
It's kind of ironic if you consider what kind of business model Spotify themselves have, but this probably goes over the heads of down voting hackers.
This is going to be downvoted, very hard. I could not disagree more. Thank goodness there is a strong regulator in EU. In is unfortunate that US and Japan have not come to similar conclusions.
Spotify hasn't paid revenue to Apple in years... because Apple does not offer reasonable terms for Spotify to comply.
The 30% fee + no way to redirect users to better offers is kind of extreme, especially when Apple has a first party offering which doesn't need to go through the same hoops.
What's the point of defending a multi-trillion-dollar company? Apple is abusing its market position. Let's not pretend that they are strapping for money because getting a working phone platform is expensive. Apple doesn't provide 30% of the value of a company to deserve 30% of their profit. If they wanted to make it fair, they would charge a fair usage cost of the app store. Charge for hosting apps, delivering updates, appearing in featured apps, etc. Heck, companies already spend money on marketing, let them opt-out from appearing in search results if they want.
> Apple doesn't provide 30% of the value of a company to deserve 30% of their profit.
They're not being fined for the percentage they take are they? Rather it seems they are being fined for banning app makers from letting users buy subscriptions outside the app store.
Arguably Apple could still create licensing terms that take a percentage of revenue that happens outside the app store. The only odd bit about Apple is they're structured it around a transaction fee on the App Store rather than royalties for IP, which is more traditional. If they asked for royalties for the use of Apple SDKs, Apple branding, etc. instead, then it looks just like just another commercial vendor.
The fee is somewhat for paying apple to make and maintain the APIs they put into iOS, including perpetual access to all future APIs. Not Apple’s fault if Spotify then refuses to e.g. integrate with the HomePod for years after Apple made the APIs to do so.
So you’re of the position that when two companies are in a dispute, one should primarily favor the one with smaller market capitalization? Are you familiar with patent trolls?
And my stance is that if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, then it's a duck. Purchasing something already has an established definition and strong implicit contracts associated with that. Sooner or later this BS shall pass and I will be able to buy a phone without agreeing to a EULA and own the phone in the same way that I buy a banana and own it without having to agree to a EULA.
Totally irrelevant to whether I own what I bought at the time of sale.
If they want to release free updates (which I own a copy of) that's fine. If they make me pay for updates (which I will also then own a copy of) that's also fine. If they want to make me sign a Eula to get updates from them, fine I won't sign it but you better have not locked me out of my own device by preventing me from installing other operating systems.
> Why not include all the dollars required to get a working phone platform to billions of people on the planet?
> Spotify wants to have all the positive aspects of the global Apple ecosystem but is not willing to pay a price for it.
But this assumes that by creating something Apple has right to all the profits from it. For consumers, it's likely better if they didn't. And consumers are voters while corporations aren't.
> To offer subscriptions on iOS, Spotify must give away 30% of its revenue to Apple. Yet Apple compete with them with Apple Music. Do you think Apple is giving away 30% of its Apple Music revenue?
This isn't the right read on the situation — Apple pays the 30% in opportunity cost. Now Spotify doesn't actually pay the 30% but let's pretend they did. Every Spotify user they have paying $10/mo nets Apple $3/mo. So if Apple Music wants to enter the market every user they get that would have otherwise been a Spotify user loses them $3/mo. So the cost of the Apple Music subscription has to make Apple $3/mo in profit to break even with the cost of doing nothing. So if Apple's costs are the same as Spotify's for actually providing the service and Spotify charges $10/mo and Apple charges $7/mo Apple is losing money.
This is why across different industries and long before Apple existed this practice was ruled not anti-competitive.
I like Spotify and I like Apple. But Apple do treat Spotify badly - I assume it's nothing personal but just sheer abuse of power to push their own product - Apple Music. Thanks to this I as a end user get a worse product - buggy Apple Watch App, connectivity issues, reduced functionality
Currently Apple wants to charge core technology fee per install (irrespective of App Store or not, after first 1 million install) and App Store commission of 14.1666% of total revenue. This seems egregious because it is charging it on customer transaction and ultimately it is coming out of customer pockets when they have already paid Apple for the hardware.
Instead, Apple should have disaggregated their fees. IMO, they can charge the following fees fairly:
1. Developer Ecosystem Tools – compilers, libraries, entitlements – can be one time or annual fees, not coupled with number of installs or revenue. (mandatory, entitlement fees could be per entitlement purchased by the app).
2. App Store registration fees – can be one time or annual fees, not coupled with number of installs or revenue. (optional – can choose to not use App Store)
2.1 App Store technical fees for app binary release certification – charged per app release/update.
2.2 App Store bandwidth fees – per app install delivered via App Store – charged per total bytes delivered.
2.3 App Store in-app purchase payment fees – percent of payment processed (currently 0.25%).
2.4 App Store ads fees – developers can choose to pay for Apple Ads for boosted discovery of their app within App Store.
They could provide free quotas for each of the above. That way free apps can still exist.
Apple can also provide iOS level capability via System Preferences or managed device profiles to lock App stores (or alternate app stores).
IMHO, this is likely the path that would be well-received and will be followed by alternate app stores as well.
Platforms are very intertwined, where third party products increase the value of the platform far beyond the base value of the platform (i.e. the value created only by the creator of the platform).
A feedback loop is created as bigger platform attracts more third party products, which in turn make the platform even bigger. At some point it becomes impossible for new competition to enter the market.
IMO laws should treat platforms as special in order to promote creation of environments with a healthy amount of competition. Laws requiring openness of platforms seem to be one way to do it.
That only "works" for the DMA if there's a clear path through those where there's actually a market - i.e. it's possible to ship an app onto iOS devices without having to go through the fee/approval stage.
> 2.1 App Store technical fees for app binary release certification – charged per app release/update.
In particular, this is something that developers actively don't want and would pay money to not do.
> developers can choose to pay for Apple Ads for boosted discovery of their app within App Store
Suspect this ruins the app store for everyone, in the way that boosted discovery ruined Twitter/X.
> Suspect this ruins the app store for everyone, in the way that boosted discovery ruined Twitter/X.
Well, that is more because every bot and their toaster is able to pay a 8$/month fee to have top visibility, especially when it partitally gets reimbursed due to the payouts.
I salute the decision, but I wonder, is the fine big enough? I mean how much money did apple make with this behavior. If even after the fine they are net positive, wouldn't they continue the same way?
It's 0.5% of Apple's global turnover. So it's not a gigantic sum, but it's also certainly not nothing to them. And the fines will continue and escalate in size if Apple does not move to comply.
This is pretty comparable to a speeding ticket. E.g. if Apple was a person making $100,000 / year, this fine would be roughly equivalent to getting slapped with a $500 speeding ticket. Not a big dent in the total pool of income, but it still stings, and it is a deterrent to know that the next time you get caught speeding the fine will be even higher, and you could even lose your license if it happens too many times.
The fines are not to claw back damages, they are a deterrent for the company to stop the behaviour with the idea if they don't stop those fines will keep happening with increasing amounts.
> In addition, the Commission decided to add to the basic amount of the fine an additional lump sum of €1.8 billion to ensure that the overall fine imposed on Apple is sufficiently deterrent. Such lump sum fine was necessary in this case because a significant part of the harm caused by the infringement consists of non-monetary harm, which cannot be properly accounted for under the revenue-based methodology as set out in the Commission's 2006 Guidelines on Fines.
Translation: even after switching the scope of the investigation multiple times during the tens years we investigated Apple because we couldn’t make anything stick, we still ended up with a joke of a case, so to really make sure we can continue our streak of our decisions being overturned by the EU courts, we decided to slap an additional “deterrence” fine on the basis of “fuck you, that’s why”
Somehow I wonder if this is indeed protectionism. Slack filed a complaint against Microsoft too, but no action has been taken on that. Having said that, it took five years and three pivots for EU to arrive at this decision. So, wonder how long it will take for Slack to come through.
I doubt it. Could be a soft factor, but at the end of the day this (and other rulings) are consumer related.
This being suspicious against the EU mindset is amusing. From a European perspective, the US has enormous influence, the arrow clearly points in the other direction. EU politicians are often desperate to please the overlords to the west, and very little if any pressure is exerted to protect EU interests. Also EU is uncoordinated, and doesn’t act like a unified force at all.
Take the Pirate Bay trial for another example. That was proven to be a US media industry hit job. Lots of things like that. The US hints at sanctions and everyone loses their minds.
Make no mistake, modern US corporations untangled from pesky regulations are still screwing over Americans the most. This “the Europeans are up to something” is amusing in the face of an absolute massacre of the middle class at home, with things like healthcare-insurance-prescription cartels being probably the most egregious example.
Slack's case is an obvious example of Microsoft using their dominant platforms to stifle competition. Microsoft basically cloned Slack, then bundled it with Windows and Office. If this doesn't merit huge fines, I don't know what does.
Exactly. It was a slam dunk case with any criteria. They cloned the product, bundled it free with other apps, and later as a standalone product, priced it at half of slack's pricing. Completely killed the market for slack.
This is absolutely protectionism. The EU rent-seeks from American tech while avoiding punishing any EU company. Ask any artist if Spotify is a monopoly!
It seems more plausible that America is neglecting to regulate their duopoly because it benefits them. Europe has multiple examples of Apple ignoring municipal orders and is justified in targeting Apple with legislation. If you want to accuse protectionism, the United States has the most to lose if domestically-bugged hardware falls out of market favor.
Why are we talking about Microsoft's behavior 30 years ago in this thread about current Apple? Appalling diversionary tactic, that's what it is. I guess the parallel I can draw here is that just as you shouldn't defend whatever unrelated crap Microsoft pulled off in the 90s,you shouldn't defend the crap Apple is pulling off today.
I just can't imagine paying 30% more for a subscription to a third-party company offering a protection racket just so I can see it in a list and cancel it slightly more easily... there is just no way that that pencils out; I have bought a things throughout my life from lots of random parties and there is no way that I've lost enough money on hard to manage or refund payments that taxing me a full 30% to prevent it wouldn't be costing me a ridiculous amount of money.
- Let Apple require that apps accept Apple Pay as one form of payment
- Let Apple take whatever cut they want for Apple Pay
- Let apps inform users about Apple's cut
- Let apps inform users about alternative, cheaper, ways to pay.
How could anyone be against transparency?
Let all the folks that allegedly love the "convenience" of Apple Pay so much continue to pay an extra 30%.
How could that possibly get past EU antitrust regulators?
My Spotify subscription, for example, was purchased on their website, which I got to via a browser on my desktop computer. Apple has had no involvement whatsoever in my relationship with Spotify other than as a provider of some of the platforms on which I run Spotify's apps to use my Spotify service.
If Apple were to tell Spotify that Spotify must provide a way to cancel my totally outside of Apple Spotify subscription from Apple's subscription managements interface as a condition of being allowed on the App store I can't see the EU allowing that.
I can see that as a requirement allowed to maintain customer security. And Spotify is already obligated by european law to allow easy cancling.
If apple requires them to use an api to pass "basic techincal compliance" (they could just use a callback and let the app handle the rest) that would be very much in the spirit and the letter of the law.
Sorry, am I missing something? If I go to App Store => My Profile => Subscriptjons, I can see every subscription that I’m paying for in a unified view and I can cancel them all in a couple taps from there. That includes my Apple Music (Apple One) subscription.
Apple could have an API for putting a Cancel button and other info for 3rd party subscriptions in the unified subscription screen. App Store requirement to integrate subscriptions with it would be uncontroversial, unless they also slapped a 27% because-we-can fee on that API.
Apple creates these either-or narratives that you either accept exactly what they want at their egregiously inflated price, or you will get the crappiest most inconvenient basically fraudulent alternative. As if nothing was possible in between.
Yes, they are saying that Apple can require any app in the app store that wants to sell a subscription also must allow the user to cancel the subscription through that App Store UI (even if the user doesn't pay for the subscription through Apple).
Well no, that is why we have laws, and if you break the laws, you get punished. But some companies will always try to push the boundaries. They are just experimenting with how far they can go. Kind of similar to children at a certain age. Hopefully these companies will eventually grow up and see that it is way nicer and constructive to play fair and work together in this world. But for the time we need to have the laws and punishments to keep them in place.
You can say exactly the same for global investment banks. Only when the US and EU starting fining them billions of dollars after the Global Financial Crisis (when banking regulations finally got real teeth) did their behaviour change.
Or in the Netherlands they at some point obligated companies making commercials for loaning money that they add a message "loaning money costs money". Before that point, there was a booming (sometimes scammy) business regarding that.
Or how independent casinos were legal before, and people could still become stinking rich from it (the owners, that is). Until the government made strict rules allowing only them to have "real" casinos, for the people that still really want it, but then at least the government can use the money for something useful.
In the spirit of https://existentialcomics.com/comic/289 please familiarize yourself with Hobbes' Leviathan and the concept of state monopoly on violence and the advantages of it before embarrassing yourself with posts like this.
I’m not embarrassed. I occasionally explore contrarian interpretations of events in order to Cunningham a reasonable argument against them into existence. It’s a good exercise in reevaluating one’s internal implicit biases: if no argument exists against hypothesis H, one should reject that hypothesis in favor of the null.
In this case the only argument is “I read a book that says X is good”, which isn’t much of an argument at all. Null hypothesis is looking strong.
You however should be embarrassed for suggesting folks opinions don’t matter if they haven’t read the same books as you.
I do not argue with you because it's pointless. I recommended a book as a starter in order to get to a point where we can have a discussion. Some things can't be explained in a short comment.
You embarrassed yourself not with the statement itself but that it makes crystal clear you have no idea about what underpinnings of a modern state, its interaction with society and so forth.
> Literally: the barbarians with a monopoly over violence who control the land come by to pillage your spoils, and there’s nothing you can do about it.
What makes this analogy particularly funny is that Apple fits the role of the barbarian perfectly. Together with Google they've established an untouchable duopoly and feel empowered to set rules, collect arbitrary fees and threaten violence (banishment) upon every technology company that is forced to work with them.
Parent comment used “monopoly on violence” correctly: the government can physically show up to your house and forcibly imprison you or even kill you if you resist hard enough. No one else can (legally).
That's great, but it doesn't apply to this situation in a literal sense, so I interpreted it figuratively.
If you're going to police the figurative use of words, why don't you go after the parent poster for describing the situation as "barbaric"?
Our (mostly) democratically elected leaders and regulators are protecting the EU citizens by imposing fines on misbehaving organizations. That's unquestionably civilized behavior.
What happens? They garnish your wages or corporate bank accounts.
By participating in society, you agree to follow the law, with prescribed penalties for breaking it. If you don't wish to participate in society, then you're free to leave, peacefully.
I've yet to witness or hear about anyone facing violence over an unpaid fine in real life.
if the fines arent paid, then apple as a corporation cannot operate in the EU (is banished)
there arent going to be EU hit squads rocking up to punch apple executives for not paying fines
You say “cannot”, what does that mean? If they try, who will stop them, and by what means. My guess is they’ll be forcibly imprisoned, and if they resist there is very likely going to be a violent engagement between them and the State.
It's not entirely clear why the power to destroy livelihoods, obtained by monopolistic network effects (ie., racketeering) is substantially different in kind than the power to fine and imprison.
In that, many developers would gladly take a week in prison and a fine, over being banned from the app store; which is, in large effect, banning them from using their (developed, life-time specialised) labour effectively within an economy.
It's weirdness of the rightwing american mentality, especially, that the potential collective physical aggression of the state has a special status in one's oppression (presumably the civil war, etc. plays a large part here).
Since europe's civil wars are long-gone, the most relevant sort of oppression, for most people, is economic and metered out largely by monopolists.
Since their only job is to make their shareholders as much money as possible the (potentical) cost of noncompliance must outweigh the cost of compliance.
It's silly to expect anything else.
Trying to make a profit is a really powerful force to improve the lives of many people as a side effect. So we allow it and now enjoy the benefits.
In my opinion it seems like companies need to be confined though and is (sometimes) inherently unable to exert sufficeient self control and will even go so far as to saw off the branch they are sitting on.
> Apple's conduct, which lasted for almost ten years, may have led many iOS users to pay significantly higher prices for music streaming subscriptions [...]
Apple Music and Spotify subscriptions cost exactly the same.
Of all the narratives surrounding Apple's practices, "it leads to higher prices for consumers" is an outright lie, and I don't know why the EU is telling it. It applies to nothing. Reader apps (Kindle/Netflix/Spotify) don't use IAP so they currently pay nothing. In-game IAPs (where the vast majority of Apple's fees come from) would just pocket the difference, because customers are used to current prices and there's no price competition that could drive prices down (you can only buy Fortnite v-bucks from Epic Games, obviously). The App Store has exerted downward pressure on app prices compared to desktop apps, not upward pressure, since its inception.
The real benefit of these rulings is ease of competition (subscribing to Spotify as easily as to Apple Music, buying Kindle books as easily as iBooks, all great things). And more game companies dumping Apple IAP for their in-app gambling mechanics, overpriced cosmetic skins, and pay-to-win tokens, so they can make them non-refundable, screwing over parents. Some customers win and some lose, but prices won't change.
Yes but Spotify gets only 70% of that cut while apple gets 100%. Without the apple tax Spotify might be able to either go down in price or increase quality/breadth/payouts to creators/other offerings/... The market is distorted and you pay more and get less if one monopoly takes all others for a ride.
Spotify is not paying 30% to apple, nor is it cheaper for Android users than for Apple users. So this is just margin for Spotify (and record labels), not cheaper products for users
Spotify does seem to be in an interesting position where it gets to piggyback on Apple's whole infrastructure and ecosystem without paying Apple anything. That should count for something...
I find this argument kind of ridiculous - yes, access to Apple's APIs does bring value to its app developers, but crucially, the app developers increase the value proposition of Apple's product by being available on the platform.
It would be just as fair in this case to say that Apple should be paying Spotify for making their app available on the App Store.
Luckily, by custom there is another solution - the platform providers charge nothing and let their customers decide what software to use, and the developers targeting the platform do not charge for developing their software for the platform. As it has worked forever on Windows, Linux, Android, MacOS, etc.
This is a weird argument. Apple released a functionally comparable product to Spotify with about $2b of investment in Beats. Only one company on the planet has been able to create a functionally comparable product to iPhone, and that’s stretching the definition and required huge expense.
It’s pretty clear that Spotify’s value add to Apple is tiny while the reverse is much larger.
Spotify wouldn’t have a business in the counter-factual world where they were never allowed in App Store, while Apple Music would clearly exist. Their business model innovation was fairly limited; streaming music services began in the late 90s.
It's also not just APIs. I would argue more importantly, Apple has cultivated a platform with the most affluent users. Otherwise Spotify wouldn't care if they were on the minority platform in the EU. Apple's argument is the work they have done to get high paying users on the iOS platform is worth something to people who want to sell to that group.
It's a great question. Clear lines are always hard, but something has differentiated the two. And it may be less about what Apple has done, and more that Google is not a very good product company.
IMO, having used both platforms, Apple hardware and ecosystem/platform works better for me. /shrug
> I find this argument kind of ridiculous - yes, access to Apple's APIs does bring value to its app developers, but crucially, the app developers increase the value proposition of Apple's product by being available on the platform.
And yet, in retail, it's common for product brands to pay for shelf space. There's a recognition that the place users are, is worth paying to be in.
Meanwhile, Steam shows what just the storefront part of such a platform should cost a developer, and interestingly, that open market price is higher than Apple's ask.
I find this argument kind of ridiculous - yes, app developers (such as Spotify) bring value proposition to Apple's products by being available on the platform. But, apps (such as Spotify) probably wouldn't exist and wouldn't have access to the immense value of an App Store and its tooling if Apple didn't exist.
Luckily, by custom there is another solution - respect each other boundaries and stop acting like whiny little children.
> Luckily, by custom there is another solution - respect each other boundaries and stop acting like whiny little children.
So where does the Apple Music subscription entering the market to compete with Spotify (which came first), without having to pay itself 30%, nor being prevented from advertising how to subscribe in the first place, fit in to that narrative?
For any interesting market that props up on the App Store, Apple is free to: start by extracting 30% from everything in said market; then, develop its own competing product at a technical advantage (with access to private APIs) and a comercial advantage (avoiding said 30% fees); and, finally, bundle and market the shit out of their own thing, all the while restricting other's marketing (with steering and MFN rules).
And according to some people, this is all perfectly fine behaviour, by Apple standards.
As Matwood pointed out in a sibling comment, the real value of being on the App Store is the ecosystem of highly affluent consumers that Apple has cultivated.
Which has would be worthless without apps like Spotify. Do you also think that Apple is entitled to 30% of anything bought with their browser? Should Microsoft be entitled to the same on windows and their browser?
If the Appstore is so good Apple should not be worried about competition by allowing side loading or alternative Appstores.
You could flip that argument around and say that Spotify might have been worthless without the App Store to grow their userbase. I don't actually subscribe to that viewpoint myself, but I do think many on HN take the benefits of publishing on the App Store for granted.
> Should Microsoft be entitled to the same on windows and their browser?
I don't know, maybe? I'm sure people would riot if they tried it now, but if Microsoft had set that precedent from the start would we be here discussing this today?
You could, and any other music service could compete with Spotify on pricing. The difference here is that Apple also compete with Spotify with their own music service while they also want a 30% cut on Spotifys income.
And Apple would still demand 30% of it. Not sure how Spotify's fee structure has anything to do with Apple's fans' arguments that they're totally not behaving anticompetitively.
It’s a symbiotic relationship but not a symmetrical one.
In the beginning Apple needed the devs more than vice versa, but now it’s definitely the other way around.
Note the “more” part, it’s still a symbiotic relationship.
Apple couldn’t have made the iPhone successful without third party devs, but it’s doubtful Spotify could’ve been as successful as they are without access to the iPhone.
As an app developer for iOS myself I can say that Apple’s frameworks have been invaluable to me, especially the improvements and additions in the last few years have significantly made my work easier.
Not only that, because overtime I’ve become friends with some of the engineers that work on them, I also know how much time and money goes into them, at least on an individual engineer level.
So it seems fair to me that Apple gets paid for their IP. But I’m not interested in paying huge fees upfront like what was common when developing for game consoles, nor am I interested in paying potentially huge fees like the CTF.
To me, the best option is a revenue based commission. When I do well, Apple does well, but when I don’t I won’t owe Apple anything. This also motivates them to keep investing in frameworks, because with good frameworks I can make better and more successful apps, which then benefit them.
It also allows me to take risks and try out new things or even give away my work for free.
Personally I was already happy with 30% and that’s what I signed up for at the time. The 15% I pay now is of course even better, but it’s not like I passed on those savings to my customers.
If I ever get so successful that I hit $1m in revenue then I’ll be more than happy to pay the 30%, because I will have been successful in part because of the tools provided by them.
Or put differently, that success will be in part a consequence of what happened before I hit $1m, when I was still paying the 15%.
I’ve got friends that have launched their apps on Android as well, but those earnings are a rounding error compared to their iOS earnings and their apps are heavily being pirated on Android.
I can’t quantify what it is that Apple does different that it entices customers to spend money on apps (other than the lack of piracy perhaps), but it’d be silly to pretend like it doesn’t benefit developers to a degree that it warrants Apple getting something in return for that, in addition to the tool-based justification.
Apple accrues benefit from having Spotify in the App Store because it makes iPhones better. An iPhone with no apps is less useful than an Android phone with many apps. This should be a win/win scenario where both parties get value from the platform (they do!)
Also - Apple is welcome to just charge a fee for the costs they feel appropriate for the development platform and App Store distribution. However, that fee (one-off R&D, and per-download bandwidth) seems pretty marginal. I wish Apple had the guts to actually charge everyone to Core Technology Fee (50 euro cents per download), rather than requiring EU developers to opt into it https://developer.apple.com/support/core-technology-fee/
This is just showing poor understandings of personal boundaries.
Yes, Apple is piggybacking on various ISPs infrastructure. That is a deal the ISPs explicitly allowed everyone to do and marketed as a selling point for others to use in their services.
Apple is simply trying to enforce its own boundaries which it established before Spotify came into the picture.
Comparing a legal monopoly (utilities) to a privately developed computing product is a bit absurd. What easement rights and wireless spectrum did the EU grant iPhone?
Apple risked their resources and created the whole ecosystem before Spotify even existed. It's not like Apple put a gun to the heads of Spotify executives and forced them to use the App Store. It's the executives who reviewed Apple's terms and then decided that investing in Apple's ecosystem would be useful for Spotify.
How should Spotify reach iOS users? Through gimped PWAs? Through non-existent thrid-party app stores? Your argument makes it seem like Spotify has a choice when trying to reach a large part of the market. The don't.
I am just going to flip this argument. Hope this gets my message across eloquently.
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How should Apple make a return on its investment? Through apps such as Spotify, who don't want to pay a dime? Through Governments, who are actively trying to sabotage it? Your arguments make it seem like Apple has a choice when trying to monetise a large part of the market. They don't.
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I think you are taking the efforts it takes to build an App store user base as granted. Microsoft is spending billions to build one with nothing to show for it. Google managed to build something half decent and it continues to be envious of Apple.
App Store and iOS existed independently of Spotify. Spotify decided to invest into Apple's ecosystem, by their own conviction. Apple didn't force them. Spotify, as a behemoth, and a large part of their market, probably only exists due to Apple. Therefore, any arguments to the effect of "it is unfair to Spotify" are difficult to consider.
Your flipped argument doesn't work. Apple gets tons of money from... the people who buy the phones! The actual users! That they then consider these users to be a captive audience who can't be trusted to use the device they paid a lot of money for, is the questionable situation. Why can't these people engage in business with Spotify to use it on their device, that they paid for, without Apple coming back and asking for more money?
Can you image MS starts charging everyone (including everything done in the browser) because they are using Win32? Lol. The whole point of the OS is to provide API/ABIs and customers already paid for that.
I know. All those poor iPhone owners who bought them so they could use the millions of apps created by developers for free for Apple, and the same devs who also get rinsed on hardware and other costs. Apple get absolutely nothing out of any of this.
As an "old" Apple customer, I'm going to say it's well deserved it's not like they didn't work hard for that to happen.
Apple's behavior since a few years after Job's passing (around 2015) has been appalling on many fronts. They take their customers for fools and try very hard to trap them into their prison with very little recourse (and no you don't just get rid of very expensive devices for an alternative, especially if many of your purchases are dependent on the use of one of those devices).
As I get older, I care less and less especially since I am unlikely to purchase another iPhone (at the current price point with the current limitations) or any other Apple devices for that matters. In fact, the moment I decide to replace my Apple watch all the rest will follow in short order.
While the platforms are still nice in some ways, they just don't provide enough lasting value with the current pricing and forced obsolescence (both hardware and software).
Anyway that's good news for everyone because in the futur Apple and their friends will maybe think twice before fucking over their customers with absurdly anti-competitive rules.
As for me, Spotify could cease to exist. With each passing year, they become even more unusable. Now, even music recommendations are turning into rubbish. Not to mention the UI experiments...
Isn't this coming out from the politics of the EU? Isn't politics suppose to act on the desires of citizens? (In principle in Democracy). Would there be a lot of citizens that would want huge companies to easily gain a monopoly position? Is that what you want?
I’m quite sure I didn’t give an opinion either way. I’m also not that interested in how things “should” be. I was just musing that at a certain point there might be political blow back in the US towards a continent that doesn’t have a lot of leverage.
If Europe doesn't have much leverage, which content will? And still, why would citizens vote for politicians that would make monopolies easier? Of course there's corruption. But how would that work against the laws of another continet?
You're asking me why the real world works like it does. Citizens vote from a handful of candidates that have competing priorities. One of those priorities is going to be supporting the huge companies that support them, even if it's for non-selfish reasons like their own economy.
If we put aside how we wish things were or how they should be, the point I was musing on is that large companies can influence politicians in the US. The EU depends on the US in many ways, with energy and physical security probably being top of that list right now. With those things being true, there must be a point where politicians in the US, seeing the damage being done to some of the biggest companies in their own economy by a group dependent on them, start to apply pressure to back them off. If these politicians wanted their companies regulated like this they would do it themselves presumably.
Really just want to see the US tech industry leave this rent-seeking region and throw them 40 years into the past. Let the EU develop their own messaging services, mobile OSes, browsers, computing devices, and internet backbones. It'll make both sides happier.
Could someone please explain to me the following: does Apple have to pay the fine just once and then it can continue with the same practice of taking its 30% cut and preventing Spotify to direct users outside of the app for payment?
Or can EU sue Apple immediately again for the same thing? Or does Apple get some time to change their ways and if they don't, then they will get fined even more?
When you are fined for speeding, can you then just go on speeding like the speed limit does not apply to you, having paid the fine once?
No. Apple is ordered to change their behavior and pay a fine. If they pay the fine but repeat the behavior, they are in for more trouble. The second time around, it would not take years to do the investigation and decide on the fine. It would be really fast.
However, what I'm worried is that they may appeal the fine, and get it reduced. This happens sometimes with these fines, actualy feels like most times.
I think Spotify can direct users outside of the app for payment? From Apple's response:
> Music app developers can even include information about other offers available outside of their app, along with a link directing users to a website to create and manage their account.
Apps can link to external payment methods only if they pay Apple.
And there's a bunch of bureaucracy. You have to apply to the program beforehand, follow a bunch of guidelines, implement a bunch of hooks in app code and pray they will approve.
> Apple’s commission will be 27% on proceeds you earn from sales (“transactions“) to the user for digital goods or services on your website after a link out (i.e., they tap “Continue” on the system disclosure sheet), provided that the sale was initiated within seven days and the digital goods or services can be used in an app. This includes (a) any applicable taxes and (b) any adjustments for refunds, reversals and chargebacks. For auto-renewing subscriptions, (i) a sale initiated, including with a free trial or offer, within seven days after a link out is a transaction; and (ii) each subsequent auto-renewal after the subscription is initiated is also a transaction.
You can either pay Apple 30%, or you can pay Apple 27%… and then negotiate terms with your credit card processing provider. How's that not a great deal!?
I concur. Problem is, they're probably effective only because Europe has negligible control over Internet services/data due to its complete reliance on the Big Five US tech companies.
They may be imposing fines but Europeans have little (if any) control.
Try using an popular Android application without being forced to install Google Play Services. You can't do banking, can't get notifications, etc. Many of the most critical apps will simply refuse to launch.
Google slowly turned Android into a Google service thanks to developers having to rely on Google's proprietary APIs.
I work at a small independent app studio, and we just decided to required the Google Play Services in our Android apps because too few people don't have it (why try and do without then). It's like all websites only supporting Chrome and nobody complaining (except a few nerds using custom ROMs). What a shame.
Then Xbox for not allowing alternative marketplaces like Steam.
OneDrive and Office365 cross-promotion is also a bit dodgy, especially tied in to the near-mandatory Microsoft account. Apple might get sued over iCloud for the same reason soon.
Apple always thinks they are right and they know the best, the very same stubborn mindset as Google. And why they keep repeating "Spotify Pays Apple Nothing"?!
They don't have a choice as long as they are doing business in the European Union. It will be probably taken out of their Accounts in the European Subsidiary after going through the usual process of People/Companies not paying.
Apple blocking even the mention of alternative payment options in its app is pathetic. They are what they supposedly reviled in the original 1984 commercial for the Mac [0]. They're even doing "newspeak" in the brazenly self-serving way they attempt to justify these choices.
The open web is the metaphorical sledgehammer here. Megacorps need to go back to selling cool hardware as is, instead of $1000 trojan horses for whatever Wall St analyst-approved "service" they can tack on.
I agree with the sentiment but this is Big Tech fighting with Big Tech, or rather Big Tech / Music Rights Mafia fighting Big(ger) Tech. Small publishers are just happy bystanders in this case.
Would've been great if regulators had gotten smart on their own but I'm also happy to take it like this I guess.
But the relevant part here is the App Store. Giving users more freedom to get their apps without requiring Apple's authorisation is a good thing.
It helps startups and stops Apple from abusing the App Store monopoly to funnel users to Apple Music over competitors, etc.
The Big 3 labels don't enforce exclusivity at all (although UMG has threatened it a few times) - so you can get the same library on Apple Music, Deezer, Youtube Music, Spotify, Tidal, Amazon Music, etc. so even though it sucks they have a monopoly on almost all popular music, at least there isn't a monopoly in distribution like the App Store.
The EU is fighting big tech on multiple fronts. My point was that this fine (and other fines) might show these companies what happens if they keep ignoring lawmakers.
I think the DMA (and this case) is the most important one. Right now Apple directly controls how most people interact with all their software and the Internet.
Although I wish the EU would take the money from these fines and put it straight into developing European competition like the FairPhone, or new projects building on the PinePhone Pro or Purism work, etc. - competition is the only real threat.
I dislike some of the EU policies like the Cybersecurity Act and AI act (and parts of the DSA), but the DMA has been great.
> I wish the EU would take the money from these fines and put it straight into developing European competition
That would be nice, but currently we have much bigger social issues on the horizon that need funding than FOSS projects, like energy, the environment, the health system, the migration crisis, local defense spending, and the war next door out of which the EU will pay half of Ukraine's national deficit. I think those are more important ATM than having a nicer Fairphone.
This sound like a child not getting their ice-cream. Why does Apple feel entitled to get anything from Spotify? There has never been any precedence that application developers owe the platform they publish their applications on anything.
Also, Spotify never asked for an app store. They have been imposed an app store. And now Apple feel entitled to payment for that service? You have to be a government to set taxes.
Video game consoles are seen by most people, and marketed by their manufacturers, as appliances for playing video games. iPhones and iPads, on the other hand, are seen and marketed as general-purpose computing/communication devices. It's unprecedented for such a non-appliance to be locked down like this.
I mean, no other platform did that neither before nor after the iPhone came out. To my knowledge, all other smartphone OSes ever made had some way of sideloading apps.
Checkout the i-mode. Something like 50 million people were using them in 2001 and they were even more locked down than the iPhone. This was the era when ringtones were $2.99 and cell phone networks were trying their hardest to hold on to that revenue. Closed was definitely the norm back then.
I don't know about i-mode, but the main difficulty with custom ringtones in early 00s was that it wasn't easy to load them into your phone. Most of those phones (in my own experience) came with a ringtone editor where you entered them note by note. They could also be sent and received via SMS, but that in general only worked between phones of the same brand (try sending a ringtone from a Nokia to a Siemens and you get three screens of garbage characters, ask me how I found out). Later ones could be connected to a computer with a "data cable" that was a somewhat rare accessory, but you could then just load MIDI files. Oh, and IR ports. People used them all the time to share ringtones and images and games.
Same with Java games when they became popular. The hardest part was getting them onto your phone. You either used a data cable, or had GPRS set up in "internet" mode (as opposed to "wap"), or someone else shared them with you via IR port or Bluetooth.
Yes, there were paid ringtones/images/games, or course. But carriers themselves never sold them. It was third-party companies. A ringtone usually was $1.
Carrier-locked phones never really caught on in my country. It always worked such that you bought a phone for the full price and provided your own sim card. Some carriers tried the US model early on as an option, but people just weren't having it.
No there is not, one example would be the yellow tab EA cartridges for the Sega Genesis. EA reverse engineered the Genesis to get around the high licensing cost and Sega knew that they wouldn't be able to challenge this in court.
You could at least spend 1 minute on the Genesis Wikipedia article which includes several sources to verify my claims.
There you'll also find another case where Sega lost in court against similar reverse engineering done by Accolade to run their games on the Genesis without a license from Sega: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_v._Accolade
How’s this so much different than Nintendo? I’ve never been able to play any game I want to and I’ve always been forced to go through Nintendo or Sony to play games on consoles. (Or Xbox)
So in summary, in 2021:
- Number of Nintendos sold in EU: Over 7.1 million game consoles were sold total, and Nintendo Switch was the best-selling console.
- Number of iPhones sold in EU: Around 56 million iPhones.
Another commenter mentioned in another discussion something that is very much applicable here:
I'm under impression that Americans freak out because they tend to go full technical on laws, that is, they don't care much what the governments are trying to achieve with the laws but work within the limits of strict technicality. So a lot of Americans were freaking out here on HN when GDPR was introduced, some shutting down personal projects because were afraid to get in trouble with the EU laws and find themselves in huge and expensive lawsuits.
Yeah the quote says Americans freak out because they interpret the law as written. Implicitly, the Europeans defer interpretation to various bureaucrats leading to absurd situations where, eg, member states are retroactively punished for facilitating tax schemes that were allowed by the laws on the books at the time. You might argue that’s a better system with better outcomes, but it’s not rule of law.
This was merely a commentary on why it might be that we haven't seen any reactions to Nintendo's way of doing business but do see actions on Apple.
The truth is that we might very well see actions towards Nintendo when the dust has settled.
And don't tell me that the US doesn't try laws on some cases in order to copy/paste results to similar cases.
That said, yes. The EU is first and foremost not a country. It is a union that spans several countries with different legal frameworks and traditions. So of cause writing and interpreting laws is different. That should not be too difficult to understand.
It's literally the definition of rent seeking and it's toxic to free market society.
We don't want your landlord to get a cut of every thing you buy in their apartment. We don't want them to get a cut of every service you order. We dont't want them to get a cut of every single thing you buy while living in that apartment.
We don't want those things for digital landlords either just because they deigned to put together some eletronics they were already paid for.
Neither did Apple, Sony, Nintendo or Microsoft. They already got paid for their iPhones, Xboxes, PS4s and Switches (consoles have stopped being sold with a loss around PS3 generation). Apple earns fat profits and margins on their hardware especially.
Primary value is created by game developers, app developers and other people building things on top of those platforms.
If you believe this, then clearly you should believe that Spotify should be free after initial payment. After all, the recording artist was already paid, the mp3 exists, and the incremental cost to stream a song approaches $0.
It’s not a strawman. It’s an application of your claim that up front payment gives rights to perpetual and arbitrary use of a product. Content DRM is as arbitrary and artificial as any iOS limitation.
The "primary value of a property" (place), then, does not keep you warm or protect you from rain or theft, has no amenities nor facilities to store your belongings. It does not supply water or electricity, and has no responsible party to keep it maintained.
You might instead choose a open field, or under a bridge, which would require no rent payment.
The locational value of most property far outweighs the value of improvements on it. This is not a particularly controversial statement among economists. A 1000 ft. high rise in Antarctica is not very valuable. A lord who extracts taxes from peasants that grow crops on it does little to improve the ground.
Thankfully, that's dying on under its own weight now. Games have become so expensive to develop that sales from a single platform struggle to support many of them.
> Why does Apple feel entitled to get anything from Spotify?
Apple has argued they do not sell a piece of hardware, but a platform. It includes hardware, software, and a marketplace (like a video game console like others have said). Apple will also say that they have cultivated the platform to have the most affluent users (like a console again). This shows up in the stats. Even with iOS having a minority marketshare in the EU, all developers want to be on it because that is where the money is. What is access to a market and platform like that worth? Apple thinks 15%-30%.
Yes, it has been symbiotic between Apple and devs, but Apple has done something that differentiated it from Android wrt the type of user. Otherwise, all the devs could have left and Apple would have been forced to change long ago.
> Apple has argued they do not sell a piece of hardware, but a platform.
This is exactly where the EU goes in and say that responsibilities follow when you sell a platform and you need to act responsibly in the market - Apple just acts up instead of accepting that they did not behave correctly, like a child.
The EU has even specified what it means to act reasonably in the market through DMA.
The DMA is bizarrely protectionist and kind of a farce. Why doesn't it apply to Spotify? Ask any artist if Spotify should constitute a monopoly under the DMA.
You're not entirely wrong, but the DMA isn't a response to the existence of music streaming apps. It's a direct and targeted remediation to Apple's uniquely oppressive behavior, and would apply to Spotify too should they do the same thing. It doesn't protect Spotify from future litigation in any way, and in many ways limits their business prospects.
We might see legislation against Spotify someday, but it would have to be drastically different to account for Spotify's own unique damages. Plus, compared to Apple's impact on the market at-large, they're literal magnitudes smaller.
> Apple has argued they do not sell a piece of hardware, but a platform. It includes hardware, software, and a marketplace (like a video game console like others have said).
Can this even be quantifiably measured? Usually when selling something you describe, itemize and bill for it.
The Apple developer agreement offers the developer tools and access to Apple's App Store and related services. The dev's argument is that Apple is forcing them to enter into that contract to distribute apps to iOS users even when they explicitly wish to opt out of using Apple's developer tools and services.
Apple thinks it's worth 15%-30%. While app developers may complain, most still stay on the platform.
Or are you talking about how much the market is worth?
A new analysis has shown that iPhone users spend seven times more on apps than Android users, far higher than the 4x rule of thumb suggested by purely anecdotal data.
One of the goods that Apple sells to developers is the market of users. Attention of high value users is one of the most valuable items for sale today.
It is not possible to run software on iOS, an Apple software product, without running Apple’s developer tools. Are you thinking Spotify wants to opt out and build its own software stack for iPhone from kernel and baseband up?
I think you missed the argument. Since it's technically possible to compile an iOS app that uses iOS APIs without using Apple's developer tools, Apple would not have a claim that the developers "used their IP" in that situation. Calling APIs is not an exclusive IP right.
They do not. This entire case is about them not being able to use in app purchases (in which case they would pay 30%) or steer people to their site to pay for subscriptions. Spotify doesn’t sell subscriptions from the apps, and thus they pay nothing.
You are correct, and Spotify can't steer people to a subscription flow outside of the app through the app to not infringe into App Store's policies either. That's one of the main issues, either you pay the 30% Apple tax or you can't even tell your users "click here to subscribe" to a checkout flow outside of the app and App Store.
Seriously, what audience is Apple playing this to? The insinuations made in this press release should get them sued again for libel. Not to mention how off putting this kind of tantrum is for their customers.
> Today, Spotify has a 56 percent share of Europe’s music streaming market — more than double their closest competitor’s — and pays Apple nothing for the services that have helped make them one of the most recognizable brands in the world.
Don't they have to pay the provision of the subscription like other apps?
EDIT: actually read the letter and they indeed don't (thanks for the responses too)
> Today, Spotify has a 56 percent share of Europe’s music streaming market — more than double their closest competitor’s — and pays Apple nothing for the services that have helped make them one of the most recognizable brands in the world.
And they shouldn't have to, users should be able to install whatever software they want on their devices without paying a gatekeeper for it. Spotify exists on the web as well, they don't have to pay Google or Mozilla for delivering the service to their users. They don't have to pay Microsoft when users downloads and installs desktop software for windows. So why should Apple get any money because users install Spotify on their iphones? I'm sure Spotify pays Google for their cloud services that actually helps make them successful.
It explains it later that spotify does not allow for subscription via App store. so, all they pay is $100 per year as a dev fee which is basically nothing. Apple also claims that they flew an engineer to Sweden to help out Spotify.
It’s telling that Apple would rather get 30% of 0 than lower their fees to the point where it’s mutually beneficial for Spotify and other large apps to offer in-app subscriptions.
If an app is charging users $1000 a month, what entitles Apple to $300 of that versus the $3 of a $10 subscription? It seems like more of a tax than a fee that allows Apple to profitably operate the store and infrastructure.
> for the services that have helped make them one of the most recognizable brands in the world
I'm pretty sure Apple did nothing for that, Spotify's own marketing did. It's not like people discover that Spotify is a thing thanks to the app store.
I search Apple's response for the word cheaper and the phrase 'less expensive' which is the issue at hand, Apple insistence and not letting developer offer less expensive options in their own store. I found nothing of the sort. Apple is not a store, its a Mall. Imagine a Mall where security people enters your store to verify that you are not advertising stores at different Mall or else you get booted?
FTA:
"Apple's fine, however, is about a quarter of the 8.25 billion euro fines the EU regulator meted out to Alphabet's (GOOGL.O), opens new tab Google in three cases in the previous decade."
I don't understand. If Spotify (or EU) is unhappy with Apple's offerings and don't think they are worth the money, they can simply build their own smartphone ecosystem and offer their products on there. Why coerce Apple? Why not let them do their own thing? It's not like they are preventing you from developing your own technology or funding/buying from someone else.
I don't understand. If Apple is unhappy with the EU's rules and don't think they are worth the money, they can simply build their own country and offer their products on there. Why coerce Spotify? Why not let them do their own thing? It's not like the EU is preventing Apple from developing their own civilization or funding/buying from someone else.
Because as the past 20 years have demonstrated, the EU is fundamentally incapable of innovating in consumer technology. At this point all it can do is rent-seek from US tech.
If they are collecting fine as a percent of "global revenue", they should divide it proportionally. Why is EU claiming its share in something they are not involved in.
The money goes to the EU institutions and EU projects like fixing the infrastructure in a region with poor investment etc. The corruption tends to happen on the last minle, where the contractors might misappropriate money together with the local politicians. For example, they might use thinner asphalt than required, cover it up and split the savings with the local politicians.
As the British found out, the EU funds are quite useful for regions where the free market doesn't do good. That's how even the poorest places tend to be quite nice in EU.
The poorest places in the EU are nice because the EU specifically excludes nations where the poorest places aren’t nice. I can assure you the poorest places in the rim around the EU that are not welcome to join: Ukraine, Turkey, Belarus, are not as nice.
In other words, the selection bias is very strong.
No it doesn't work like that. When you want to join EU, you first become a candidate country and you start receiving EU money to fix your institutions and infrastructure and you keep getting more and more as you integrate and then you become EU country when you are ready. Turkey for example, a candidate country, received quite a bit of EU money until most of the funds got cut once the country drifted away politically. Yet, the EU funds and the institutional changes done to get these fund helped a lot and the country got in much better place during the decade they were getting ready to join EU.
Why EU is doing this? Well because, its much better to have prosperous and stable neighbours even if they don't end up join. Because of this, despite the politics Turkey and EU have very strong trade and security relations.
The same goes for every country, eastern European countries were a shit hole for quite a long time after the collapse of the USSR and they transformed to be good enough to join EU and they did use EU resources when transforming.
> the funds got cut once the country drifted away politically
Yes, my point exactly. It’s a system where the EU can at any point decide to pull funds and say “you didn’t jump through enough hoops, begone”, and will happily do so to maintain the perception that all is perfect in European government: after all, everyone who disagrees isn’t allowed a seat.
The EU member states get a big tax rebate at the end of the year. They're free to use this money to give tax rebates to their citizen or use it to build new infrastructure.
The EU has about 450M inhabitants, so that would amount to €4 each. Your suggestion is vile, and you didn't even bother with the basic arithmetic. Kindly fuck off.
I can't read it anymore, but there were two points, IIRC:
1. The suggestion that it's just a money grab. Of course it's a decent amount of money, but it has to be in order not to be just another sternly worded letter.
2. The implication that politicians are corrupt. Some will be, that's an unfortunate fact, but a slap-dash statement that they all are doesn't serve any purpose but to undermine trust in the institutions and democracy.
And the cause cannot really be disputed. I'm a bit of an Apple fanboy, and I'm somewhat opposed to non webkit browsers on iOS, and alternative app stores (but that's another story), but Apple clearly misbehaved in this case, and only for their own profit.
We should read the 1.8bn lump sum (roughly 0.5% of Apple's revenue) as partially being about music streaming and app stores, but mainly a warning to all large firms which are currently jockeying for a dominant position in emerging tech like generative AI and visual computing.
The warning: play fair and compete on the merits, or see you in court.
[1] "the Commission decided to add to the basic amount of the fine an additional lump sum of €1.8 billion to ensure that the overall fine imposed on Apple is sufficiently deterrent" https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_24_... [2] See paras 30 and 31. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/ALL/?uri=CELEX%3A...