freeassociate2

foregoneconclusion said:

Facts...

• Digital stores on consoles and the Steam digital store on Windows charged 30% commission at the time the App Store launched in 2008.

• Brick/mortar stores charged commissions significantly higher than 30%.

• The iPhone had launched a year earlier than the App Store. Apple's market power was very limited when it set the 30% commission.

• Apple never raised the commission when they achieved greater market power. 

• Since the App Store only operates on Apple's 1st party operating systems and hardware, Apple cannot be considered a middleman. 

Small quibble: The fee is a markup, effectively. Not a sales commission. Commissions are subtracted from a buy, markup is added on top (yes, this is a rough explanation).

Everything we buy has a markup in whole or part, whether that cost is apparent or not — usually the consumer end user isn’t aware of most of it.

Fifteen percent (for commissions or markups) are incredibly common. Items in your average big box store can be marked up by hundreds or thousands of percentage points, and that’s just one vendor.

Developers have nowhere near the overhead that a manufacturer or a seller of physical wares has and so have been able to take that savings and lavish it on employees and shareholders. We all know that particular  gravy train is under pressure, and many groups that have had it good are fighting to retain their piece of the pie at the expense of others. It’s lazy, entitled greed. Time to come down to earth.

designguybrown said:

As much as the world is a better place for Apple having existing, I feel that Apple has to be taken down a notch - forced obsolescence in operating systems, software, hardware, and online services; morality police in passwords and data; over the top DEI initiatives; endless 'highly exclusive' proprietary wireless, chips, and online services; etc., etc. Apple hasn't done much really, really wrong as they have horribly neglected to do much 'politically' and socially right. This means they should win the suit but lose much money, customer loyalty, and developer/vendor attention/ service. Maybe a 30% drop in stock prices can deride the Arrogance. Hopefully, Apple will be a bit more like Tesla with absurdly open protocols and standardization - benefitting the industry more and the bottom line less.

“Tell me you’ve never run a business without telling me you’ve never run a business. Particularly not a tech or automotive business.”

The AI titles and ledes have long had what feels like latent passive aggressiveness, at least to me.

pembroke said:

Need to ask this somewhere….

iOS 17.3.1 …. Apple have removed the symbols for male and female but have retained the symbol for Transgender (sic) ⚧️. 

This is creepy. What on earth are Apple doing? This is remarkably idiotic and a game changer for me as an owner of many iPhones since inception. But I WILL switch to Android if Apple persists on this gaslighting nonsense. 

What do you think this is, then? (see below) With the genderized (i.e. made up by the clothing industry) colors, even. Arguably these are more recognizable to a wider international audience than the Mars and Venus symbols of astrology. If it’s important to you because you are in a biology field … well, there’s always the option of another keyboard OR just using the actual word. 

P.S. - Please make sure you understand terms before using them. You’re 100% not being gaslight by Apple. However, there certainly are places you could have brought this up that are undoubtedly more appropriate than here. Also, not for nuthin’, but any fixation on gender symbols that makes someone feel they need to switch computing platforms — that’s super creepy to me.

So, after all the lovely thoughtful comments here …

I’ll add that my personal experience bears this out. My M1 Max MBP 32Gb absolutely kept up with the Alienware R12 i7 64Gb. The only difference between the two was the graphics card (NVIDIA) performance and the ability to ramp up the processor cycles (and sound like a hair dryer).

I pushed the limits of both machines in video encoding and streaming.