What is there to regulate? If you don't like their terms you can sell on a different store or distribute yourself, there's nothing stopping you like there is on a typical iPhone or Android device. And frankly their terms are pretty damned fair. For the longest time they took such a hands-off approach to their marketplace that people got angry about that instead!
What other stores have a family plan at all?
I think even the Nintendo Switch is more fair about it, but I haven't checked it directly
This has burned me really badly. I had an account with hundreds of Steam games, and then my dad got hooked on some of the VR games I'd bought and set up on a Vive machine in the living room upstairs. I had to make a new account to be able to play new games. Then my nephew got hooked on one of the games on the new account, so I ended up giving it to him and making a third account for myself. That one only has a couple of games on it, since I've mostly just transitioned to playing stuff on GoG and the Nintendo Switch
In most cases the regular plan is the family plan because most people live in a family and the extra features don’t harm people with individual accounts at all.
Me as a kid on Christmas morning 2004 unwrapping the Half Life 2 disc only to realize it’s a 6.5GB download over my 14.4k dial-up connection. My parents bought the physical disc for a reason, because we had a shitty Internet connection.
They definitely did not get everything else right.
AppStore and, to lesser extent, Google Play are monopolies, that severely restrict rights of their users, no matter what people say that 'Apple is not a monopoly because you can buy another phone'
Btw, curating is basic responsibility of every storefront. It's something even your Brick and Mortar Store does.
Traditionally the company that develops a product gets to decide what features that product has. There are various laws that require a product be safe to use, is not misrepresented and does what it is advertised to do, but beyond that there are very few actual features of products that they are required by law to have. Maybe some standards they need to meet.
Sometimes companies will invite other companies to join them in adding features to a product. A TV company might add licensed audio technology from Dolby, a car company might add licensed software for infotainment or navigation software, and they may charge their customers for the added software features.
This is how games consoles work, you buy the console from the manufacturer, who licenses other companies to write games for their product as add-on modules. In the past CDs and cartridges were used, but now this often happen via downloads. These games are developed using the console manufacturers tools, run against their code libraries on the device and are clearly an extension of their product. This has been an established approach for many decades. When my kids were toddlers I bought an educational toy where you could buy little cartridges for it that added educational features.
That's all the App Store is. It's a feature added by Apple to their product for adding optional features to the device. As in many cases in the past, across many types of device, this is a feature added by the manufacturer and your relationship as a customer remains with them.
There is no law requiring that a device containing a computer, be it a car, TV, games console, phone or whatever have any specific features to enable loading additional software. That's just not a requirement that exists, and if a device does have a mechanism to add or update its software, there are no laws about how that must or must not be implemented, that I'm aware of anyway.
If you disagree that this is the way it should be that's fine, that's absolutely your right, but can you explain how such laws should be drafted. What kinds of requirements should be put on manufacturers? Under what criteria should they apply and to what devices?
If you think Apple has failed to comply with some law in the way they implemented their products, I'd appreciate some clarity about exactly what you think Apple has done wrong, and how that should be redressed.
Youre not actually answering my questions. Exactly what features should Apple, Samsung, Pinephone, etc be required to implement? How should we decide what products these new requirements should apply to? Who gets to specify those features and certify compliance?
Besides that, it could be argued that running software is the feature. What software does is not a feature of the iPhone. Like a recipe is not a feature of a stove.
We are buying the device, it's a tool, and we should control how it's used.
I agree it's a tool and you should control how it's used, but you're demanding that Apple implement specific features for you that they don't want to implement. How do you intend to coerce them into doing that? Who gets to specify precisely how those features are implemented?
I agree that what you do with your phone after you bought it should be up to you. If you can find a way to jailbreak it, I think you should be allowed to do that. In fact I've jai-broken iPhones and iPod Touches before. However I don't think I have a right to tell apple how they make their products, or to force them to implement features for me that I get to specify.
So, let's make them!
Saying that there is "no law" is the weakest argument ever.
We the people make the laws, we can decide whatever we want, and we can certainly vote into law the regulations we think are necessary.
Common carrier regulations on railroads provide a model for regulating critical tech infrastructure that happens to be privately held. I'm as big a fan as it gets of the capitalist market-based way of organizing society, but even I acknowledge that at large scales, companies need to play by a different set of rules, one that makes them accountable to the public. The alternative is essentially the subversion of democracy. You can take a purist approach to corporate autonomy all the way to its natural feudal end, but I'm not going with you.
Please understand I don't in any way mean to pick on you. The comment has 8 paragraphs that are mostly a description of how property rights work. Analogies to how they worked in other markets, examination of the law, etc. This detail is all very clear and I appreciate it because it helps me understand your point of view.
It is less clear to me, why the current situation of property rights is good. Of course many bad things (and for that matter many good things) have been done in the name of how property rights worked at one time. But in democratic societies we decide how things work, so in that sense we are the author of things like property rights, we decide how we want them to be based on our values.
> If you think Apple has failed to comply with some law in the way they implemented their products, I'd appreciate some clarity about exactly what you think Apple has done wrong, and how that should be redressed.
I don't know if they have "broken the law" but there are certainly similarities to historical situations.
You discuss game consoles and licensing games. I might suggest from Sega v. Accolade that a hardware marker's ability to license games exclusively was quite controversial at that time, was ultimately reversed by courts.
In DOJ vs MS, Microsoft was convicted as an illegal monopoly for (among other things) illegally bundling software with Windows, and using technical means to keep Netscape off the platform.
I am sure that Apple has great arguments for why they are different than these cases, and a lot has changed since then. At the same time, some things are similar. It's really about our values. Is the law about encouraging companies to innovate new ways to lock out all their competitors? Or is it about helping competitors? Or helping the large companies? Society has not yet decided, so the question has no answer.
> What kinds of requirements should be put on manufacturers? Under what criteria should they apply and to what devices?
Personally? My designer regulation is one where we have a tiered regime which gets worse the bigger you are.
So, for a small startup that serves basically nobody, we have the current regime, or maybe even we remove some things. There's still regulation on things like HIPAA and SEC rules, fraud, etc. I would also be in favor of much stronger privacy regulation, and limiting arbitration clauses, mostly because a lot of adtech is fly-by-night.
Once you reach some threshold, we regulate at a basic level. This is probably defined as some combination of revenue, daily active users, units sold, subscribers, employee/contractor headcount, but let's just call it a $10m company. Here you fill out a form once a year with an address the regulators can write letters to you, send in your EULA and privacy policy, and there's a list of basic rules like "don't sell user data", "make your software accessible", that are mostly on the honor system unless someone complains in which case the regulator writes you letters.
As we go up in orders of magnitude it becomes a bigger deal. By the time we get to FAANG, you have a regulatory team looking at individual products full-time, the same way we have inspectors in food or finance or anything else. For Apple specifically, maybe "users can jailbreak their device, subject to certain warranty consequences", "all first-party apps will only use public APIs", "developers of first-party apps will find out about new APIs the same time as everyone else", etc.
Regulations makes competition important for benefit maximization. Apple would have long bought and closed by Microsoft if not for Regulation. AMD would have had suffered end.
But personally, yes. I think controlling your own device is more important, so there should be a way to sideload apps.
Putting them in the list but leaving out all console manufacturers and operating system devs? Strange.
That would solve the problem. Someone will spin up a better App store. Someone already has in fact. If you jailbreak your iPhone you get access to a second app store (https://cydia-app.com) which has apps that Apple won't put in their regular store.
Regulation granted! There are now many stores on Apple devices. But the platform still requires code signing from Apple for code to run and must still abide by all existing Apple policy including entering into a contract with Apple that 30% of all revenue from your app on iOS is paid to them.
Regulation granted! You can now download and install apps directly from the internet or locally with no pesky store to act as an intermediary. However, you still require Apple code signing for the app to run and for that your app must go through the regular App Store approval process.
What monopoly? Apple controls maybe 8% of the desktop/notebook market and ~13% of the smartphone market. They don't even come close to qualifying as a monopoly.
Even if we rewrite the dictionary and legal texts, Apple would be part of a duopoly, not a monopoly. If you try to redefine monopoly to mean that Apple has a monopoly over their own platform, then you better start lawyering up because essentially every company in America has a monopoly.
I think people want Apple to be classified as a monopoly because they see their behavior as unfair. But they aren't a monopoly and your recourse as a free American citizen is to just not buy Apple products. The fact that you are able to buy from a competitor with zero personal harm is absolute indication that Apple is not a monopoly.
If Apple has pricing power because people don't move to competitors, they are a monopoly in the eyes of the law no matter how many players are in the same commonly-described market segment and what their sizes are.
> If you try to redefine monopoly to mean that Apple has a monopoly over their own platform
If that platform is sufficiently sticky that pricing changes don't induce people to switch to competitors, that's exactly what the law already does, no redefinition needed.
> then you better start lawyering up because essentially every company in America has a monopoly.
No, most don't, though they tend to seek them (what do you think a ”moat” is?)
I'm not taking sides, or claiming I'm an expert on economics, but isn't the question with monopolies always "what is the market, and what are the competitors"? If you accuse someone of being a monopoly, they will always define their market as widely as possible, but if you are an antitrust lawyer trying to win a case against them you will define it as narrowly as possible. There's always a sufficiently wide or narrow definition for either side to win. And every business has some pricing power and some friction for their customers. Everyone talks about investing in companies that have a "moat" which seems to be understood as something more than many companies have, but less than a monopoly.
Pricing power is a key way in which that question is answered: if an actor doesn't have it, the people to whom business goes when they raise prices are the rest of the market they are in. If they do have it, there are no actual competitors.
The fact that Apple can charge a premium despite being a minority player, and despite their marketshare shrinking, is evidence of their excellent marketing, not a monopoly.
To be a monopoly you must either have a dominant position in the market or your behavior must be such that you are attempting to gain a dominant position in the market. Or you can just make shit up because you don't like Apple.
You are wrong in two respects.
First, I am not taking a position o whether Apple meets the test for monopoly.
Second, the test is pricing power (the ability to raise prices without defection to competitors) not “high prices”. This is more important than how many players might be in any popular description of the market, because it is test of whether those other players are in fact competing with the player in question, or whether they are in objectively separate markets even if the usual popular description is of a single market.
> Wanting something to be true doesn't make it true
Correct, wanting “are there more players in what is typically described in the press as the market in which the actor is participating” to be the main legal test for monopoly instead of pricing power does not make it so.
> They are the very definitions of predatory competition squashing monopolies.
But they aren’t, this is a rather competitive space.
A competitive market would be one in which the platform providers were forced to divest from the app markets, and support competing app markets which meet requirements, and which actively compete on features and price.
If cars only supported gasoline from manufacturer gas stations, and 95% of the market was controlled by cars from GM and Ford, and once you bought a GM car you could only buy gasoline from a GM gas station, would you call the gasoline market competitive?
To extend the metaphor, let's say it was technically possible to use third-party gas stations, but the manufacturers had hidden this ability, and it required a small amount of mechanical knowledge to enable, and maybe voided your warranty, would you then consider the market competitive?
How much do they take? 30% and 30%.
Is there an option where they take less than 30% or where someone can compete on that cut? No.
Is there a different store you can use with the same privileges as these two stores? No.
Can you take your payments outside of the store and manage payment fees yourself so as to not give them 30%? No.
At best I guess we could say Google has a carrot approach where Apple prefers the stick.
Ideally measured two ways: in downloads and in dollars.
In fact, they don’t even really compete with each other. Play is only on Android and App Store is only on iOS.
You could say Android and iOS compete with each other, but once someone has bought a phone, they do not have a choice of where to buy apps.
When I buy a phone I can choose from multiple models, then once I choose a model I can choose a store where I want to buy it. These 2 examples are competitive. Then I can choose what app I want to buy, but I can't choose anymore where I buy it (at least on IOS). There's no competition between stores. There's just competition between phone manufacturers that ends the moment you choose the phone, from then onwards is a monopoly (or near monopoly in case of Android)
We already had battles on this front, Microsoft had to offer competing browsers for some time at least in the EU. Manufacturing the platform ceases to afford dictatorship when the device reaches a large enough share of the population imo.
They actually can't. Not legally, anyway.
I am not a lawyer, but Nintendo famously lost a lawsuit, when attempting to block third-party software distribution : https://openjurist.org/16/f3d/1032/nintendo-of-america-inc-v... Sega (back when Sega was a major console competitor) also lost a similar lawsuit, when attempting to block third-party software distribution : https://openjurist.org/977/f2d/1510/sega-enterprises-ltd-v-a...
If we still had anti-trust enforcement, this should set precedent against what Apple is doing here today. We already decided this issue in the 80s and 90s, making a specialized locked-down computer (i.e., a "game console") does not entitle you to own the entire software market for that device. And so long as you don't steal copyrighted materials to do so (see Nintendo v Atari), you are allowed to reverse engineer and sell your own software for these devices, without any royalties or licensing owed.
If you want iPhones to be treated like "gaming consoles" instead of computers, then it is already legal to jailbreak an iPhone, distribute your own apps (or entire app store) and sell to iPhone users, without ever paying Apple a single penny.
It's even legal by precedent to modify other people's software when selling your own third-party software (see Game Genie / GameShark lawsuit, it's legal to sell a program that modifies someone elses copywritten software, so long as you don't include or redistribute the original copywritten code).
This is a stupid question. Whether or not there is competition on iOS doesn’t matter as long as there exists viable competition on any viable platform.
Apple and Google may be competitors, strictly speaking, but the reality is they've pretty well carved up the market between premium buyers mostly concerned with fit+finish, prestige, and compatibility with other Apple devices, and the operating system and network infrastructure for, well, everything else.
It's absolutely a duopoly, and so minimally competitive: either Google or Apple would happily claim leadership status, but neither party really wants the other to go away lest actual competition or government intervention cause them to lose control of their patch of ground.
Somehow there are heaps of expensive android phones that sell just fine. The flagship Samsung phones cost more than any iPhone.
> It's absolutely a duopoly, and so minimally competitive
Well no, there are tons of smartphone manufacturers with viable products.
There are 2 viable software platforms.
Interesting and rather unfortunate that you should use that example, since the landmark Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act famously invalidated automakers attempts to revoke their products' warranty if aftermarket parts were installed. It's a clear example of a consumer-hostile practice that was deemed to be unfair and regulated, even though no monopoly was involved.