davidlewis54

I am sure Visa can afford the minimal charges.  I’m in the UK paying 29.9% on my Visa card with a base rate of a 1.25%.  I have never managed to get the rate reduced, there is always another six months to wait.  I have been nowhere near my credit limit for several years and have always paid more than the minimum. The account has been clear for some months.  I also have a very high credit score.  Visa doesn’t reduce my rate because historically I have not been able to clear it, so I was just captive.  Banks charge business more for debits and credits on business accounts which is why personal current accounts are free.  I only use Apple products because they are so secure.

Oh, no! Has the world ended and I’ve missed it?

The home buying and selling analogy as a general thing is hard to use as ultimately any deal depends on its contract. If you find black mould (I’m in the UK) after you’ve bought, it could be your survey didn’t pick up the damp or you didn’t see it.  That would be down you. However, if you asked the seller, perhaps thinking the property might have damp, if the property suffers from mould and the seller says no, knowing there is, that is a misrepresentation so an actionable matter. As I imagine you’re in the US you’d immediately rush off to court claiming billions in damages! In the Twitter/Musk case, and assuming the contract contains the relevant provisions, the questions which have to be answered are (1) can Twitter identify spam and bot accounts and (2) if it can, has it passed the information along. Musk, if he has been given the data is responsible for sifting it to answer his own questions, this being part of his due diligence. Is it, perhaps some buyer’s remorse that having offered the amount per share he did, the value of the shares has dropped, making his purchase not seem such a good idea. This flipping and flopping merely brings the share price down further, so the gamble is to sue, bring the price right down and then re-bid. Neat.

This is just more nonsense from the UK government in the guise of protecting the public. It’s not that at all. It’s also very simple: if developers don’t want to pay then they can market their product by other means. If the public thinks something is too expensive then they won’t buy it.

At a simpler level, why should Apple open up access to its, no doubt, extremely expensive and secure systems? These are systems for which the buying public expects to have at no direct cost (you buy a device and pay for an app, with all that infrastructure in place). Why on earth should Apple give free reign to anyone to circumvent all that? It is because Apple has a chunk of money which it has rightly earned, and others feel aggrieved because they have less. I certainly would not want Apple to open up to all comers.  One of my reasons for using Apple products is the knowledge that my personal information is secure.  Other companies are nowhere near as good.