danox

harrykatsaros said:

How does Sweeney keep his job at this point? The losses as a result of removing Fortnite from iOS have got to be in the billions of dollars by now, in addition to the millions in legal fees; and it was all for nought. Surely his one man crusade will not be looked upon kindly by his board and investors. 

Applejacs said:

sconosciuto said:

entropys said:

Moving away from political appointments to sector knowledge is an improvement.  And yes, CEO salaries are obscene.  Does anyone seriously believe Tim Apple wouldn’t do the CEO job if it was one fifth as much (or one tenth)? Their salaries are well past the point the actual amount matters. It is which CEO position it is that matters,  and if it doesn’t, they shouldn’t have the job.

That’s President Al Gore you’re speaking of and he deserved to be on the BoD.

Please enlighten us as to his contribution?

elijahg said:

mark fearing said:

elijahg said:

hmurchison said:

Reminds of the conundrum the Pre - Jobsian Apple found themselves in with Clones. 

They thought the clone vendors would attempt to expand into new markets but instead they 
simply sought to cannibalize the company with inferior offerings. 

What incentive does Apple have to allow a significant amount of vendors to leverage their distribution 
platform at minimal cost and reap the financial benefits outside of Apple's sphere? 

If they were inferior offerings how was it they were able to cannibalise Apple's sales?

A lot of the clones were excellent. That was the problem, they were faster, more feature-rich and cheaper than Apple's Macs. 

This is different. Apple's incentive to allow vendors to sell on the App Store is increased sales of iPhones. Besides, Apple distributes Facebook, X and a multitude of apps completely free, so why try and force this small developer to pay especially when they've already got another app through with the "reader" clause? And considering the amount of trash on the App Store - and as the dev points out, Google has heaps of apps that could all be mangled into one. Why did Apple allow Messenger to be separated from Facebook?

The question is - should it be illegal for Apple to do something someone thinks is dumb? And what about access to x-box and PlayStation stores? Or reselling digital downloads? I think this is a big ‘so what’. Walmart still won’t sell my homemade bird feeders and that’s the way I reach Walmart buyers. Illegal?

The issue comparing with Walmart are multifaceted; Walmart isn't part of what is effectively a duopoly, Walmart doesn't have unlimited shelf space, third party products aren't designed to work only for customers of Walmart, and there is no "access charge" to shop at Walmart.

To enter a market where a duopoly exists is hard. This is especially true, to use your Walmart analogy, when you would have to attract customers to your store initially without having any third party products at all, only a small range of products produced by you. You would then somehow need to persuade companies to spend a lot of R&D designing products for your store, products that could only be sold in your store. Companies can't just pick up an iOS app and stick it onto the Google Play store. Once they're invested in iOS, there is no way out without rewriting their app pretty much from scratch.

The argument from the customer side is similar: the customer has effectively paid several thousands to your store firstly for access, and then on items within your store that they will effectively no longer be able to use if they switch to a different store. Once the customer has bought an iPhone, if they find an app they want is only on Android because Apple rejected it, they can't just "buy an Android" like it's a couple of dollars, as people often suggest as a solution. This tie-in is a big part of the issue. You can just go to a different store and ask them to sell your bird feeder. The same customers can just buy that bird feeder at the alternative store, and it will work just the same. You can't just pick up your app and sell the same binary on the Play store. iOS users can't just go and download your app from the Play store.

I agree though that the Xbox and Playstation should allow sideloading. Though I don't imagine it would be that common because - as far as I know - neither MS or Sony have quite such restrictive rules as Apple. But that doesn't mean devs shouldn't have a way around the 30% tax on those platforms.

I don't have a problem with reselling digital downloads, but traditionally the issue there is guaranteeing the original purchaser does not still have access to the sold download. That is quite hard, especially if sideloading is allowed.

JustSomeGuy1 said:

This is a likely tragedy in the making. Foundation is one of the worst SF productions of all time, with virtually no connection to the original source material at all. Worse, the sheer level of stupidity and internal inconsistency in the plot is difficult to fathom. So I don't hold out much hope for Murderbot.

This is really sad. Murderbot is such amazingly good source material. But since Murderbot's inner life, replete with sarcasm and humanism, is so much of what makes the books great, it's hard to imagine it ever translating well to the screen. It's a near certainty that we're going to get another senseless action-SF dud with empty characters.

Oh well. I can always read the books again.