neoncat

rob53 said:

I've never had a problem with Apple's 30% fee. This is nothing when comparing it to a regular store's up-charge over what they pay for their "products." I keep seeing a note in the window of a health food store that give customers a 30% discount over list price when buying in bulk, in other words, their wholesale price. This wholesale price still gives the store owner enough money to operate their store sho I continue to wonder why these chintzy developers keep complaining about a standard fee. They simple want all the money for themselves. All they have to do is charge more for their software. 

Common in retail arrangements like you describe is the ability for the producer (the company that creates the product sold) to not only choose which retailers they want to feature their product, but to set minimum (and maximum) advertised markups. Apple does this quite deliberately, for example, setting different markups for different retailers (Amazon, for example). Apple also has an "authorized dealer" program where specific stores are granted direct access to products and marketing support. Other stores are not afforded such blessings, and are instead referred to as the "gray market," where warranty and other concerns are called into question.

You understand here how the power is ultimately in the hands of the producer. Now compare that to Apple's adversarial relationship with developers in the App Store. You don't have to agree with me whether or not that's a problem, nor am I trying to convince anyone here that's a problem, but when the snide Apple White Knights rush to defense of a two trillion one trillion dollar company and declare developers "chintzy" for not toeing the line, it's hard not to roll my eyes. There's nuance in every relationship. I don't disagree that Apple provides a valuable service to end users with how they've structured the App Store. I disagree that it's worth the cost and/or that developers receive value on their end as well. But again, we can agree to disagree. Just do so fairly and acknowledge your desire to represent your own selfish needs, the same way a developer wishes to do for themselves. 

JWSC said:

Does this indicate Adobe’s decline in relevance?  Years ago I was all in on Adobe.  But they priced themselves out of the non-commercial market and I dropped them like a hot potato.

What a weird take. But I get it, you just wanted to old-man-at-clouds about Adobe's subscription pricing. Go ahead and review every other structured drawing program on the Mac or iOS. Guess what file format they all use—some of them wrapped in their own file package, but they're all EPS at the core. It's *the* mathematical model for object drawing.

More I'd say it indicates Preview.app's decline in relevance. 

22july2013 said:

Youtube's ads are getting denser and denser. I remember a few years ago when they added a second ad to most ad breaks, and now they are occasionally forcing people to watch three ads in one ad break. And a huge percentage of those ads are at least 15-seconds (and longer, if you don't press SKIP ADS.) So 15 seconds times three ads is 45 seconds of ads, just to watch the first five minutes of a video. In my opinion they've hit the threshold of commercial TV ads (if you don't press on SKIP ADS.) And since ads are tailored for each user, that makes the business much more profitable than commercial TV. That gives me a few options:

1. Stop watching Youtube
2. Start using DuckDuckGo's browser
3. Start paying for "Youtube Premium" for less ads
4. Write software to click on SKIP ADS (I won't say if I've already done this.)

Not lobbying one way or another, everyone needs to decide what's in their budget and what their priorities are, but I've found YouTube Premium to be my most essential "media" subscription and it would be the last one I would consider dropping. I watch a lot of YouTube, for reference, learning and entertainment, and Premium succeeds in removing every single annoyance or limitation while still allowing you to indirectly support content creators (although, direct support via Patreon, etc. is always better, of course). Plus you get YouTube Music as part of the package, which even if you already have Spotify or Apple Music or whatever is different enough in how it works (particularly in how it can pull from YouTube music content) makes it an interesting value-add. 

Madbum said:

spheric said:

Madbum said:

EU=Modern day communists in suits

Anything I don't like = communism. 

It's amazing how McCarthyism can still raise its perverse stink, seven decades and more than two generations later. 

Do you see USA telling BMW to make cars like GM?

Maybe you like communism?

Um. I hate to break this to you, but the US does tell BMW how to make cars. U.S. standards for things like fuel efficiency, engine design, safety (airbags, backup cameras, etc.) are different here than in much of the world. In some ways, the U.S. standards are more strict, in some ways they are more relaxed. But in order for a company like BMW (or Toyota, or for that matter Ford) to sell cars in this country, they are required to conform to those standards. 

In some cases, this causes those standards to percolate around the world and cars become consistent regardless where they are sold. In other situations, standards cause cars to diverge—there are lot more diesel-fueled cars in Europe, for example, due to differing fuel/emission regulations. 

This is true across most industries.