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.
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.
[0] https://developer.apple.com/security/complying-with-the-dma....
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.
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.
Granted, drivers were a massive issue.
And if anything, this only furthers the point that Apple isn't anything close to what Microsoft was doing.
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.