svanstrom

basjhj said:

kmarei said:

igorsky said:

The day I get to dictate what price I pay to sell stuff on eBay, Amazon, Etsy, Poshmark, Walmart, a flea market, etc. to the owners of those marketplaces is the day I side with these developers.  Until then they can all take a flying leap.

But this is not something you are buying from amazon, eBay etc. 
this is an accessory to what you bought from them

Buying v-bucks in fortnite has absolutely nothing to do with apple
doesn't go through their servers, doesn’t need to be checked by Apple like apps, requires zero effort from any Apple employee. So what am I paying Apple $3 for when I buy v-bucks? What service am I getting for that?

I believe this to be incorrect. As far as I understand, Apple actually takes care of the payment processing, also for in-app purchases.

blastdoor said:

If Epic wants to characterize Apple as a monopoly because they control their own App Store, then Epic is a monopoly because they control FortNite. Epic should be broken up and copies of Fortnite given to several other game developers, so that Epic's Fortnite monopoly is finally ended! 

In some seriousness, though... I actually think Apple would be wise to allow other app stores on their platforms, at least sort of. 

Other app stores could be authorized to operate on iOS, and perhaps pay Apple a much smaller share of revenue than the Apple App Store gets. By disassociating the Apple brand from these other stores, Apple could get a share of revenue that hey otherwise might never get, because they could lower their content standards. In other words, Apple could finally make money off of porn! Also, Apple could require that other App Store operators accept liability for anything that goes wrong with the apps sold through their stores. 

Meanwhile, Apple could more aggressively curate their own App Store for content quality, so that their store truly is the best. 

tomasulu said:

svanstrom 

This Trump nonsense of sanctions, trade wars, and bravado will make Apple sales tank in China.

And probably, in any other country where TikTok and WeChat is popular.

Now if only Trump has a single proof of illegal behavior on ByteDance, which is funded by (among others) several American firms. 

This. I’m not Chinese and have been as big a fan of Apple As anyone. I own most of apples products and paid services such as iCloud and music. Even as I look at some of the newer android phones with some envy I don’t see myself switching because of how invested I’m with apples ecosystem. But if Apple removed WeChat which I use for work (with Chinese and many around the world), I will have to get myself an android phone. And I think that will be the beginning of a move away from Apple. 

Or they will have to use another app for contacting you.

In the end it comes down to whether or not you are comfortable with going out of your way to make sure that you're only communicating via an app the CCP controls totally.

(I also used to have WeChat just for talking to people in China; but in the end it just seemed like too much of a compromise with my personal values. I do have the luxury of being my own boss, though.)

I’m not a fan of the CCP but I don’t see this as a good versus evil boycott that concerns my value system. For a nation that’s highly skeptical/critical of it’s government, I’ve to say Americans can be so easily riled up by their politicians. 

It’s the US starting Cold War 2.0 on an emerging superpower that can threaten its dominance. Where data privacy is concerned, it’s not like the NSA can’t access my data if it really wanted to