ArianneFeldry

crowley said:

radarthekat said:

tehabe said:

urahara said:

tehabe said:

When it comes to distribution of applications for iOS Apple is a monopolist. You can't buy applications anywhere else. On the other hand, Spotify is not a monopolist, there are many music streaming services on the market, including Apple Music who are competing with Spotify. And currently i it is doubtful if you could charge more than $10 per month for music streaming.

When it comes to sell Big Mac in the McDonalds, it is a monopolist. By your logic.
By 'correct' logic - McDonalds is the owner. Apple is the owner of their platform. It has absolutely nothing to do with monopoly. 

You didn't get my point. There is no other way for Spotify to get there application on an iOS device than Apple's App Store. That is the monopoly part. This is also true for the Play Store on Android. Even though you could side load applications on Android, it is off by default and not recommended, so the Play Store is the only store for applications on Android and therefor a monopoly.

McDonald's is not a monopoly because there are other fast food chains and restaurants on the market. it would be different for example, if McDonald's had an exclusive contract with a mall and would be the only store on the food court.

Fraid not, as kids would say.  Your argument about McDonald’s plays out like this...  Hot dog shack (a fictional small restaurant) sees that MacDonalds has a huge number of customers attracted to their restaurants, and so goes to McD’s management and says, “how can we sell our dogs to your huge customer base, inside your stores?”  And McD’s says, “just pay us 30% and you’re in.”

So for a while Hot Dog Shack does that and everyone is happy.  But then one day MacDonald’s decides to start selling hot dogs too.  Now HDS is pissed, and they want the government to step in and demand equal access.  After all, MacDonald’s doesn’t have a 30% surcharge to make up when selling their own dogs.  

But here’s the rub.  For all the food sold inside the MacDonald’s restaurants, MacDonald’s is doing the marketing spend to pull in those customers.  HDS might do its own marketing, to promote its own locations, but it doesn’t have to do any marketing to tell customers to come to a MacDonald’s, because plenty are already there, drawn in by MacDonald’s marketing efforts, which MacDonald’s pays for 100%. 

So by demanding equal access, HDS is basically asking to have their kiosks selling their products in MacDonald’s restaurants without paying the 30% tariff that supports MacDonald’s rents, insurance, marketing, upkeep, etc. 

Do you know what MacDonald’s is gonna do?  Kick HDS out.  Bye bye.  I do wonder whether Apple has in its contract the ability to eject any app, for any reason or purpose it sees fit, from its platform.  Bye bye, we no longer wish to do business with you! 

Ugh, I hate these analogies that spin out of control.  You are missing one notable thing however, hardware.  The apps sold in the App Store can only run on Apple hardware, therefore a symbiotic relationship has developed, apps drive sales of hardware, and hardware drive sales of apps.  And since Apple make the majority of their money from hardware, and the app store is effectively the only way to get apps on that hardware, the situation with the app store is far more complicated than fast food. 

Even if Spotify aren't able to make anything of this legally, I think Apple are treating their developer community pretty badly here.  Time to shape up.

normm said:

I think this is the same issue as net neutrality.  If you are a dominant platform on the internet, there should be rules about not favoring your own content.  I actually think it's short sighted of Apple to take such a large cut from major services that enhance their devices.  For example, not being able to buy Kindle books in the Kindle App just makes the iPhone that much less useful.  Perhaps a solution would be for Apple to tier its subscription revenue, so that when services grow large enough they take a much smaller cut.

gatorguy said:

temperor said:

Apple has not the the market share the named companies have, they have no platform that brakes 25% of market share ... move on nothing to see here ...

Half the smartphones sold in the US come from Apple, and half the US smartphone users are also tied to Apple. The majority of households own an Apple product, many of them in some cases. That sure sounds like a major market share.

lkrupp said:

elnbrg said:

This proves that end-to-end encryption is still a right way to protect our data.

Protect our data from who and why? Just because? The police have no right to gather evidence in a criminal case other than by traditional methods? Legal precedent has evolved over the past two centuries regarding what information we have the “right” to conceal from police. How about the new technique of matching DNA in genealogical databases to narrow down or discover possible suspects? Should that be banned? Our DNA is about as private as it gets. With a search warrant issued by a judge I see no problem with forcing the decryption of communications. When the telephone was invented legal wiretapping soon followed. The only difference is today that data is encrypted and law enforcement should have the tools to retrieve that data under the supervision of a judge. Damned Facebook knows more about you than the government does.