Naiyas

Not one to burst the bubble here, but a headline corporate tax rate of 15% does not equate to a 15% effective corporate tax rate. Taxable profits before tax are not the same as accounting profits before tax and never have been, so there is still plenty of scope for incentives.

crowley said:

gc_uk said:

Unfortunately neither of you seem to understand that iOS is not a “market”. The market is actually “Mobile Applications” of which iOS is a part of. Therefore Apple cannot have a monopoly because the mobile app market is far bigger than just iOS.

Epic’s argument for Apple having a monopoly is even more flawed as they refer to the Gaming market which includes consoles and computers.

To re-establish the definition of a market down to the iOS level (which you have to do in order to argue a monopoly exists) the unintended consequence is that anyone can define a market however they wish. For example, Epic games App Store could be defined as a market by your definition to which they would have monopoly control over. It’s fundamentally flawed and will have a mountain of unintended consequences across more than just the tech industry.

Whilst I am not one, I do know many people who do not have a mobile phone at all. Moves like this exclude a huge number of people and all tech companies and governments today are guilty of excluding a huge number of people.

It should not be mandatory to require a mobile device for anything on the web or to interact with government.

I have several and have been using them for a variety of purposes, though mostly for keys as I can’t tell you how many sets have had to be replaced over the years. Some of them are used as luggage tags and one in particular is used on my child’s school bag (they are 4.5 years old).

In the later use case I can tell you for certain that the three day notification period is for audible alerts only. My partner sometimes takes our child out for play dates without me and after a short time (a couple of hours) gets a notification on their iPhone that an AirTag is “following” them in close proximity. They know what it is so it’s not an issue and we share our location with each other anyway.

But even in the few days we have had the AirTag it has already served it’s purpose as we had to locate the school bag as it was left behind somewhere in a zoo. Rather than retracing our steps we simply opened Find My and saw it had been handed in at lost property, so from a real world use case perspective it has performed flawlessly.

As for those complaining about “stalking” why would I use an AirTag for that purpose? The device is directly associated with an AppleID so it’s dead easy to file charges once it is found. If I was going to stalk someone there’s plenty of other trackers available that can be bought and used, without the ability to be so easily identified, for about the same price as an AirTag 4-pack and also don’t need to rely on the iPhone network for its data. Hell if you really wanted to track someone you could just mirror their SIM card and use that to monitor them via the cell network using equipment that can be acquired for a reasonable cost if you look hard enough.

This is just another case of Apple bashing for the sake of it and focussing on the negative without regard to practical realities.

InspiredCode said:

22july2013 said:

AppleInsider said:

So-called "cross-wallet" gaming featured large in the second day of the Epic Games v. Apple trial, with Epic and other developers arguing the payment method is not a viable alternative to in-app purchases.

Available as a continuity feature for users, and an option for developers averse to in-app payments (and Apple's cut of those payments), the "cross-wallet" alternative allows for the use of in-game currency purchased from another device or platform. For example, "Fortnite" players can buy V-Bucks on a PC or through Epic's website and use those V-Bucks to buy in-game items on iOS -- or at least they might have when the game was still on the App Store.

As noted by The Verge, Apple allowed Epic to implement cross-wallet play in "Fortnite" until the game was stricken from the App Store for violating Apple's rules against direct payments. The fact, noted by Apple's lawyers, undermines a central argument that claims developers have little choice but to give Apple 30% of all in-app purchase proceeds.

Wow, I did not know that. Good thing Apple has real lawyers, and didn't hire me. This is a fascinating point. Apple never blocked Epic from getting 100% of their players' money from another platform and spending that money inside iOS, without paying Apple that 30%. So Epic has the functionality it needs, it just doesn't want users to suffer any "inconvenience", even though 90% of Fortnite players play on more than one platform, so it wouldn't be inconvenient to them. This whole case is about a minor inconvenience to Epic's users, not anything actually functional.

At one time the cross-wallet rules were different. It was written in the App Store rules that more of the purchases must come from App Store IAP then cross-wallet. This would have obviously caused problems for Epic where most players started on another platform. I'm curious when this changed if anyone has old copies of the rules. I think this was brought up last year with the HEY email app when subscribing on a web page.

If I recall from the HEY fiasco (and the AI Podcast interview recently) the issue was not about the subscription for HEY but rather that there was no IAP originally available at all for the app. The interview is really interesting and sheds some light on some of the issues us developers have to contend with - though I personally have never had any issue probably because I don’t have the inclination, as a solo shop, to build my own payments capability.