macarena

No matter what our thoughts about Epic are, it’s clear that Apple’s policies on the App Store need some amount of tweaking.

30%, or even 15% is fairly high - and Apple surely can’t make the case that it needs the money to sustain or survive. They need to figure out a way in which they make money from free apps like Banks, etc - rather than putting higher burden on other apps. If they can’t charge money from Wells Fargo, that’s not Epic’s problem, is it?

But this isn’t just about the 30% cut. It is important that Apple gets its wings clipped in other ways as well. How fair is it that Apple Music gets unfair access to App Store which Spotify doesn’t get? Either Apple shouldn’t compete with Spotify, or it must be broken up into separate companies- is that so hard to understand?

In general, it is about time that Apple gets a few raps on its knuckles. They are actually hurting themselves with their “we know what’s best for you” approach. Exorbitant lightning cables that don’t last a few months, wimpy batteries that don’t last half a day of serious use, forcing people out of TouchID in to FaceID, and such other practices are customer unfriendly. It’s not like Apple sells the base iPhone as a loss leader - what’s the logic of the premium they charge for extra flash capacity? Again, sheer market bullying. We can rip you off, and we will.

Apple shareholders love these measures - obviously - because it increases profits. But no company can sustain customer unfriendly practices forever. It will come to bite them someday.

A few raps on Apple’s knuckles and a serious dip in AAPL shares caused by these raps, will do the company and its shareholders a good service in long term. It will make the company truly consumer friendly - rather than claim to be consumer friendly in a sham way, the way it is today.

Apple will crib if Qualcomm wants 4% royalties that are tied to the cost of the phone - and not to the much lower cost of the chipset.

But Apple wants a 15% cut of ONGOING subscription costs of NetFlix, even though the only service provided by Apple is hosting the app and delivering it. Which is a one time service. That too, with a policy that prevents customers from downloading from elsewhere.

One day whatever Apple wins from Qualcomm will be lost multiple times over because of this policy.

Apple’s policies were OK and acceptable when it was a small struggling company - not when it is the largest company in the planet. Maybe the DoJ or someone else should step in, and make it a smaller company once again.

Google, FB, etc make money off violating customer privacy, and we think of that as bad.

Apple engages in unfair business practices, but it’s ok?

How different is this from Microsoft making IE the default browser on Windows? MS at least didn’t charge Netscape anything. And still got canned for it.

Apple is attracting too much bad karma and some day this will all come back to bite Apple. Waiting for that moment.

This is someday going to come back and bite Apple - because it will be seen as an Unfair Business Practise.

Apple claims services revenues are growing rapidly, but this is clearly not healthy. This is the sort of thing that a court or the Justice Department can take cognizance of, and hit them with a really big fine. Maybe even force a split of the company, so that Apple Services becomes a separate and standalone company.

This policy might still be justifiable if Apple isn’t in the streaming business - but now, it’s an extremely uncompetitive practise.

Apple deserves to be split up, so that there is fairness all around.

Karma catching up? For a long time, Apple has been tempting karma - selling overpriced lightning cables to customers whose cables frayed out within months, soldering RAM into the motherboards, so that customers have no choice but to accept Apple's rip off pricing, etc. When a company goes out of its way to screw its own loyal customers, you can be assured that its day of reckoning is coming. It is ridiculous that a company that makes such humongous profits and that charges such a stiff price for admission into their walled garden finds the need to rip off even its own loyal customers this way. And not just the company, even Apple shareholders and Apple fan boys rubbed their hands in glee when Samsung had a huge loss from the Note 7 recall. There's lot of bad karma in there too. Apple's greed will only get worse. They will keep pushing the envelope, trying to make the phones thinner - even if the wimpy batteries struggle to last the whole day! They only care for making these devices as thin and as light as possible. Obviously, all that thinness and lightness is making the devices vulnerable to such problems. It is indeed unbelievable how many people hate Apple. And how even a lot of Apple's customers hate the company.