Platinum plan (which winds up most fiscally responsible for us - we max out the low out-of-pocket-max reliably), four people. Something like a bronze plan wouldn't save us any money; lower premiums trade for high deductibles and copays. Good if you're healthy.
Either you have a high deductible, or you're just being subsidized by everyone else.
The unsubsidized cost of a standard PPO plan for a family can easily reach $3000 a month. This is situation normal, people just don't see it because their employer is responsible for the cost.
Ethics dictate always using the smallest viable cohort to show that giving the treatment regimen (in this case dosage for a drug known to be effective) isn't obviously worse than the thing it's supposed to treat, even if we're already pretty sure. This also keeps the costs of running the studies down so we can effectively conduct more studies for more treatments.
We also already have data about its use in babies over 11 lbs, and this is just going even smaller to 4.4 lbs, so a strong baseline has already been demonstrated.
What do you mean "ethics dictates?" We define ethics and they generally reflect the current culture, ethics aren't universal and can't dictate anything.
The scientific method, though, would dictate that a cohort size should be large enough to show a high probability of safety and efficacy, assuming that is what is being tested. It would also dictate that a control group would be needed to compare against the test group.
I totally understand the ethical concerns of potentially allowing children to be harmed while part of a control group, but when the test is being done specifically because there is currently no treatment the only change is that they would pick a group of untreated children that are a valid control group for the study. Either way those children wouldn't be treated and there really isn't an ethical issue to deal with.
Having a control group in a life saving intervention study is a major ethical dilemma that isn't as simple as they would die if not in the study.. There's a lot of information about study ethics and it is more complex a subject than you imply.
Is it in this case though? The study, and the related article, states that there is currently no approved treatment for the population. What is the harm in following a control group that would otherwise still go untreated?
The claim still holds then that there are no approved treatments for malaria in this age range. If we were already treating patients off book, and that were the reason we couldn't have a control group, then there is no real reason to do the study at all.
Maybe if any evidence ever existed of such a thing. But since there is none, I say people spend far too much time and effort worrying about the dignity of dead bodies that have no feelings.
There are lots of animist (etc.) societies that mark/hold certain grounds as sacred and unfit for other purposes and prevent their usage. Should we tell them to get on with the times?
You can simultaneously ask permission in cases where you don't actually need the body for anything meaningfully useful (displaying them this way is extremely frivolous) and also think it's dumb and paleolithic for them to object on such grounds and also tell them to grow up in cases where their mysticism necessarily obstructs societal growth.
If someone believes the earth is flat, how far do you go to humor them? If someone believes lizard people control the Vatican, do we put that belief on equal footing? If someone's perception of god tells them that poor people don't deserve healthcare if they can't pay for it, is that good, or am I allowed to say "what the fuck, that's fucked up"?
Maybe 8/10 people in your family circle would benefit from reading the published user guide for their device. That doesn't take technological proficiency, just reading.
You may as well ask why you should look anywhere but at your own feet while walking around your city.
You have been told that every new OS update brings new features and abilities, and Apple publishes an iPhone User Guide for learning about iOS features like how to change the default mail app (https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/change-the-default-ap...). It's on you to look.
> There's no technological reason for app developers to be restricted from using other payment processors
But there is a customer experience reason. As an iOS user, I very much appreciate that I can ask Apple to cancel some bullshit subscription that used to otherwise try to lock me in behind a labyrinth of added friction and timewasting.
You are free to pay ~30% extra for your preferred customer experience. The rest of us can leverage discounted pricing. Customer Choice for the win!
Also, thinking that all businesses will lock one in using friction and timewasting is not a rational argument. There are a lot of honest businesses there forced to pay the Apple Mafia's tax.
Exactly. This is the part that I dont get about Apple apologists. If one really likes paying 30% extra to Apple for privacy/security (debatable, but whatever) nobody is stopping you.
But for every one of those, there are many who might want to transact with the business directly.
FWIW, I trust Spotify equally as Apple - so if I get a Spotify subscription, I'm more than happy to get a 30% discount and deal with Spotify directly. Heck, I can do that on my MacOS (another fine product the Cupertino company makes) but when it comes to iOS - OMG, virus, malware, user privacy!!
I prefer everything go through Apple b/c I trust Apple more than I trust the average other vendor.
This way, I know if I'm dealing with something on my phone, I have a trusted channel for commerce. I am sophisticated enough that I can probably ascertain what alternative payment schemes are reasonable and which are scams, but Apple's imposed payment monoculture means unsophisticated users are protected as well.
A more permissive payment setup would necessarily mean more scammy apps, or maybe just vendors with gross, dark patterns designed to obfuscate cancellation without quite being fraud. No thanks.
the next response would be "but then i would find myself taking the option that I don't like because the option that I like would put me in a disadvantage so since i can't control my options in order for me to have the best, the other bests should not exist and especially other people can not have better things than what i say is the best because then i would again find myself in choice conflict"
Not just apple apologists btw, it's a full category of people who can't enjoy their "choices" without having everyone else have only that "choice"
> You are free to pay ~30% extra for your preferred customer experience. The rest of us can leverage discounted pricing. Customer Choice for the win!
People say this stuff, but recently I re-examined my subscription to a multi-platform VPN service through the App store and found that they priced it cheaper than getting the same package through their website or through their windows client.
I mean, that's pretty flexible. At $17.99 (AUD) per month it could fit into the $1 step model, which starts at $0.99, maxing at $139.99
They charge $19.39 for the same subscription if you buy it direct. By the logic of Apple taking a 30% cut thereby pushing up the price of doing business, you'd think they could charge $12.59 to direct customers and take the same profit out.
I'm not sure if it is still the case after the EU cases, but it at least used to be that Apple prohibited you from charging more for paying through the app store. And that leads to increased prices for everyone, regardless of if you even own an iOS device.
I thought you could charge more (at least now, maybe not in the before times), but you still can't say explicitly that you're charging more because of Apple's 30% fee.
Well then the rule could be: All apps must offer the possibility to use Apple Pay for payments.
Or Apple could do one of those virtual credit card things. Or do they already? So you could use an Apple virtual credit card with any processor.
But then the 30% extra fee would be visible to the user. Apple's whole schtick is making things way more expensive and hiding the competition pricing from the user. If "$10 with Stripe" was placed side by side with "$13 with Apple Pay", Apple would immediately lose all of their payment customers and about $2,000,000,000 in revenue, which is a lot. They can only prevent this by preventing "$10 with Stripe" from being there at all. (And if they did it with virtual credit cards, they'd have to tell users there's a 30% fee on each transaction)
If customers want to pay more for Apple to facilitate, there isn’t an incentive to not keep apps in the App Store too. If a company has other reasons not to be in Apple’s store, why should they be required to?
this is about allowing business to offer other choices, other store rules still would apply. for example if apple would be to require it's option as always present together with the rest in the app, then noone could say anything against it. it's the lack of choice that is the problem not requirements per se.
I 100% agree with this. Apple should be allowed to put whatever restrictions they want on apps in the App Store.
The problem is they don't allow apps to come from anywhere else, this is the core of the issue and what everything eventually comes down to.
Make it possible for users to control their own app installation sources on the hardware they own, show them what is happening when they do so, that they are replacing Apple as the source of trust with the developers of the app marketplace or app they are installing, but only do it once, it can't become a nag.
If they do that, then whenever anyone complains about App Store rules Apple can just tell them to do everything themselves instead, no APNS, no convenient installation from a pre-installed App Store, no seal of approval from a partner the user trusts, no free hosting, no infrastructure for app updates, etc.
One reason that I support alternative (non-Apple) app stores, is that it allows differentiation between mediocre and higher-Quality apps.
You can get your clothes from Target or Saks Fifth Avenue. For most folks, Target is fine, but there are people that insist on paying $30 for every pair of skivvies. I think that they should have that choice. If they can afford it, then let them eat cake (for the record, I tend to be a Costco type of guy, but have not regretted occasionally getting something from Saks).
Selfishly, I would like them to allow sideloads, because the App Store approval process has slowed to a crawl, lately, as well as APNS calls. I’m certain that’s because of thousands of AI-generated submissions. I think many of those submitters would much rather avoid the hoops they need to jump through, for the store.
But I doubt that Apple sees things that way. The secondary app stores are likely to make a lot of money, which they would miss.
The more damaging thing, however, is that Apple’s brand image could get corroded, and there’s a very good chance that they could be strongarmed into supporting side-loaded crapplets. I’m a bit cynical on this, myself. I feel that Apple has been doing a great job of damaging their own brand, in the past few years. I feel as if the quality of their internal engineering has declined precipitously.
I think the answer is that if you want non-Apple app stores... get a non-Apple phone. For whatever reason, a great deal of people prefer to live inside Apple's walled garden.
> I’m a bit cynical on this, myself. I feel that Apple has been doing a great job of damaging their own brand, in the past few years. I feel as if the quality of their internal engineering has declined precipitously.
Agreed. The quality of Apples own software has declined, as has the outcome of app reviews, there's never been as much crap on the App Store as there is today.
And obviously Apple wants to "have their cake and eat it too", who doesn't? I'm just saying that this is the reason why they're being dragged to court now, because they aren't "playing fair" when they're acting as both store operator and store participant in multiple segments, and are acting as gatekeepers of software for literally hundreds of millions if not billions of devices now (congrats to them).
There is always a customer experience reason. Every anticompetitive company that has ever existed has benefited from the customer experience of everything being in one place and coming from one company. Unfortunately, "my product benefits from being anticompetitive" is not a valid justification for anticompetitive practices.
I struggle to paint a company with a minority marketshare, after having first mover advantage, as anticompetitive.
That said, their argument that the payment policies disproportionately impact apps trying to create sustainable business models that don’t monetize user data is a compelling one that I very much sympathize with.
I’m a Proton subscriber, but I went through their website, just because I tend to do that for any service that isn’t exclusive to Apple or the App Store. The same is true for Kagi, another privacy focused service I subscribe to. I never thought about it, but maybe that’s my way of avoiding lock-in. If I ever leave iOS at some point, I don’t want to have to cancel and resubscribe to something that could cause a service interruption. I also want to make sure that the subscription is everywhere, not just on my Apple devices, and it’s tied to the email I choose.
Anticompetitive practices don't mean that you have a monopoly. In fact people often get this wrong - having a monopoly is not illegal in and of itself. What's illegal is using one's market position to prevent other companies from being able to compete in a market. Whether that market position is 100% or 10%, what matters is that it's significant enough for you to pressure other companies out of the market.
I'm not a fancy lawyer or some kind of top flight ceo but I feel like "being able to cancel subscriptions" doesn't require a 30% cut off the top for apple.
Also, as a customer, presumably you could choose to use apple's store.
If we unpack this argument we can precisely pinpoint the issue.
In order for this argument to be true, Apple would need to have market power.
Having market power is the thing that makes tying etc. an antitrust violation.
Because it can be used for more than allowing people to cancel subscriptions. Like charging a 30% margin in a market where it's normally 3%, or excluding apps that compete with Apple software or services, or requiring customers to use a specific combination of hardware, operating system, app store and services, even if the customer only wants one of those things and binding them together then eliminates competition from any company that can't supply all of them. Which are exactly the sort of things that antitrust rules are meant to prevent.
Steam and Android charge a similar 30% fee in their stores.
When I hear about a 3% fee, I think of the interchange fees for a credit card. That doesn’t have the same overhead as hosting the software, handling the updates, managing the front end, reviews, etc. I can only assume that 2-3% of the 30% are going to Visa, as I’m sure Apple is paying interchange fees to process the payments.
30% probably still creates a very healthy margin, which could be trimmed (and has been for companies making less than $1m). But it is right in line with the rest of the industry, at least for the other big players.
The difference is on my Android phone, I use F-Droid, and I sideload using Obtainium, and on my Steam Deck, I install Heroic Launcher and install games from GOG.
Proton also offers subscriptions through the Play Store. If the issue is the 30% cut hurting non-ad-funded businesses, shouldn’t this be against all these companies charging 30%, not just Apple? Or not have subscriptions in the Play Store, if Google doesn’t have the same requirements against linking out to other payment options?
The outrage against Apple in this regard has never felt consistently applied based.
You didn't address anything I wrote. The issue is not the 30%, it's the lack of choice. Apple locks businesses into having to support Apple Pay to access the user base of Apple users. Google doesn't do this: apps can be distributed via F-Droid or just downloaded from the net. Steam doesn't do this: you can just run apps you bought years ago, or bought from GOG, even on devices built by Valve.
I'll say the same thing, another way: Apple is the only smartphone manufacturer that forces you to install apps through their services only.
I really despise the analogy with Steam. And this is not the first time I hear it. People somehow fail to understand that the core problem with the App Store is that it is operated by the platform owner.
To bring the analogy in line with the App Store, imagine if: (1) Steam was operated by Microsoft, (2) Microsoft only allowed installation of games on Windows through Steam, and (3) Microsoft disallowed installation of alternate OSes on Microsoft PCs.
So the issue has never been about the 30%, it’s about the closed platform? What if the App Store was free, would people still have an issue, because Apple is controlling the platform and software distribution? If so, why keep going after the 30% fee? It just seems like a convenient headline to use for the attacks.
Valve also makes the Steam Deck. In that case they do own the platform, but if the user wants they can install whatever OS they want… but as designed, and used by most consumers, it’s Valve hardware, running SteamOS from Valve, where people can run games they buy from Steam, Vavle’s game marketplace… where Valve takes 30% of the sales.
The only difference between the Steam Deck and an iPad is that the user can wipe SteamOS off it and use it as a generic system, likely killing most of the reason why they bought the hardware in the first place.
So if the issue is how open the platform is, that seems like an issue for the free market. A lot of people buy Apple stuff because it’s a closed platform that spends a lot of time dialing in the user experience, which is something that often seems lacking on more open platforms, because there are an infinite number of edge cases to cover. If customers want the closed platform, forcing it open end up reducing customer choice, as the closed, tightly knit, ecosystem option no longer exists.
Apple’s business model has also historically been about selling hardware to run their software. “People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware.” Forcing them into a Microsoft-style business model is a fundamental change to their core business. There should be room in the market for different ideas. Microsoft, Apple, and Google all have very different business models which serve different types of customers. This is a good thing. I wish there was room for more business models to let the little guy move up, but forcing Apple to be Microsoft, Google, or whomever else doesn’t seem like a win, and it has little to do with the 30% App Store fee.
> So the issue has never been about the 30%, it’s about the closed platform?
No, the issue is that they have both a 30% cut of every software sale and a closed platform. Steam has a 30% cut, but not a closed platform, hence the bad analogy.
Not sure why you're bringing the Steam Deck into this discussion. Is the only way to play Steam games via Deck? No, so it's completely irrelevant.
> Is the only way to play Steam games via Deck? No, so it's completely irrelevant.
Apple has more open platforms as well, macOS.
Paying through Apple is also not the only way to pay for Proton. I'm a Proton subscriber, and have an iPhone. I paid for Proton through their website and Apple didn't see a dime, but I still use Proton Mail on my iPhone.
Let me summarize why Apple’s iOS is not even in the same planet as Valve’s Steam:
Apple sells a device (iPhone) whose OS it controls (iOS) that is so ubiquitous to the point where most businesses cannot afford to not have a presence on this OS/platform.
But in order to have a presence, businesses must list their app on the App Store. There is no other natively supported mechanism available to allow your users to interact with your business. And absolutely no sideloading is allowed. Apple charges businesses a 30% tax to use the App Store.
The cherry on top is that you as a business are also completely disallowed from accepting payment that doesn’t adhere to this tax. Not just that, but even indirectly linking to such payment mechanisms from within your app is disallowed.
Not going to engage any further here because I have made my points.
> To bring the analogy in line with the App Store, imagine if: (1) Steam was operated by Microsoft, (2) Microsoft only allowed installation of games on Windows through Steam, and (3) Microsoft disallowed installation of alternate OSes on Microsoft PCs.
Not only that, because there are other ways to install an app than Steam, the 30% paid to Steam is paying for promotion within their system. Which is valuable because not all apps are available there, so paying for it makes you more likely to be noticed over someone who distributes for the same platform using an external means.
If an app store is the only way to install apps on a platform then everybody is paying the fee and therefore nobody is getting promoted over anybody else in exchange for it.
So you're saying Apple's artificial stronghold is the only reason why apps are using it. Isnt that super-duper bad look on them?
It is one thing to say "listen, people are using our product even though there's another choice" but it is another to say "if we give them a choice, nobody will use us"
i think there are a lot of folks who would be willing to have a 27% discount (allow for ~3% card processing fee) and forego those features.
if apple was saying you had to support their payment processor alongside others (so you could opt into paying +27% and getting easy cancellations), that would be one thing, but they don't allow you to have any other options available in the app, which i think is where the anticompetitive complaints start to feel more valid.
> i think there are a lot of folks who would be willing to have a 27% discount (allow for ~3% card processing fee) and forego those features.
This makes sense because companies are used to making 70%, so obviously when given the choice to make 30% more overnight they will simply lower prices to avoid having to deal with all that extra revenue
Unlike phone platforms, phone apps are a fairly competitive market, and competitive markets have low margins.
Which means that if you remove 30% of revenue as a cost, one of two things happens. Either the price comes down because the suppliers who lower their price get more business, or the customers aren't very price sensitive in which case developers who use the additional money to improve their apps get more of the market and then users get better apps.
Either of those is better for the customer than having the money go into a megacorp's money bin and have them use it for competition-reducing M&A or unrelated empire-building projects or just have them add it to their cash mountain and have the customer paying that money in exchange for nothing.
> This makes sense because companies are used to making 70%,
I would love to live in the world you're living in where companies have 70% margin on $5 apps and $10/month subscriptions. And where they ever had those margins.
It's the other way around. The app devs select the nominal price and offer it on platforms that don't take the massive cut - on their website, for example. And when Apple forces them to give up 30% of their revenue, they instead raise the price and pass the extra cost to the consumers.
That is bad enough. But here comes the infuriating part. Many app devs don't want their customers to pay extra. But Apple forbids them from providing an alternative payment interface or even informing the customers that such an option exists. And the icing on the cake is that Apple used to forbid the app developers from even providing an alternative, until the courts forced their hand. Is this an anticompetitive practice or just plain extortion?
But if you ask Apple or their fanbase, they would say that it takes resources to review and host the apps. But that rings hollow when you consider all the other ways in which Apple wrings both app developers and customers dry. Then perhaps allow the users to sideload the apps? Oh no! That will break Apple's perfect safety record. How about just making it slightly hard instead? No! The user must be protected at all costs, including by holding them hostage! At this point, I'm convinced that either Apple is astroturfing, or the fans suffer from an extreme form of Stockholm syndrome, or both.
I feel like that could still be accomplished by allowing multiple payment backends, and charging them a reasonable fee to integrate (to cover the cost of development/maintenance of the APIs and whatever overhead to account for dealing with abuse/fraud).
It should be possible to open up the “Cancel Subscription” feature/button to apps using other payment providers. Maybe even keep that in as a requirement for all payment providers?
In reality, everyone other than Apple has created as much friction as possible in the cancellation process. With Apple, I simply subscribe and then immediately go and unsubscribe.
I partly agree with you - but then you as a consumer should also be willing to expect variable pricing in such cases. If I as a developer offer a subscription for $10, and Apple demands $3 from it, while other payment providers only want $1 or $2 commissions, I should be able to tell you (the consumer) this information transparently and should be able to give you the options to choose between these different payment service providers. (Note that while you, as a paying customer, are an important part of the ecosystem, we developers too add value to the platform by developing apps that people like you want to use. That Apple seeks to exploit both you and me, should piss you off too. After all, one of us has to absorb the higher cost of Apple's services, and that often ends up being you, the consumer.)
It would be one thing to say "you must offer our payment method as an option to users". It's another to say "our payment method must be the only option you offer to users". Just the former would be enough to cover your use case.
Perhaps then there should be a subscription API, so Apple could make the nice "see all your subscriptions in one place" UI? Or maybe banks could better offer this as part of online banking for credit cards. Not sure the right place to put this.
Anyhow I do see your point that narrowing user options can lead to better UX - if you actually like all the tradeoffs they make. The problem is if you don't, your SoL. And in this case the trade-off is Apple taking a giant extra cut so... I think it's reasonable that folks don't like that trade-off.
Except that those claims feel like intentional exaggerations and not meaningfully true?
I use both iOS and Android.
> It is only through a complex labyrinth of settings
I have no love for the way iOS settings are done, but calling the setting for this in particular a complex labyrinth is some pretty blatant editorializing.
> A user’s default calendar is Apple Calendar, and the default cannot be modified
I don't think this is a true statement? My default calendar is a Google calendar. Actually switching to instead use my Apple iCloud calendar has been something of a chore.
People don't bathe because everyone does it. People bathe because not bathing leads to personal loss from ostracization due to unpleasant odor. There's a huge difference. Calling it mindlessly following a social trend is weirdly misguided and not well thought through. You might have more to learn from the people you mindlessly call NPCs than you think.
> Showering more than once a week has no health benefits
> I want to be right
Ok, well, this is only right if you don't benefit from others not being viscerally disgusted by being near you. This is almost never actually the case for anyone. Social benefit is also a health benefit.
I want to know details of your situation, because my exchange premiums are like $300/month.
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