flydog

wonkothesane said:

According to their logic, they should kill also any calendar apps, note apps, maps apps, etc. 
something doesn’t make sense here. 

The reason it doesn’t make sense is these articles all cast what Apple is doing as removing competing apps, which is false. These apps were removed because they use private APIs and expose personal information of users. 

If Apple simply removed competing apps the Netflix, Spotify, Word, Excel, and hundreds of other apps would be gone. 

MacPro said:

So much for this being kept secret eh?  So far both stocks are up so that is a good thing.  I for one am glad cooler heads prevailed. We own both.

No secrets have been revealed. If you actually read the article you’ll see that the number is an estimate by an analyst. 

ChampionPower said:

In order to stop these crazy lawsuits, we need to have he losing party pay the legal fees of the prevailing party. Conversely judges should be allowed to throw-out various lawsuits if these appear superficial based on existing and past case law. Finally, the patents trolls need to be enjoined from bringing any lawsuits unless they or their legal business partners are exercising the patent in a product.

The rules of civil procedure provide for attorney fees to the prevailing party in a motion to dismiss or motion for summary judgment. Rule 11 also provides for dismissal of frivolous lawsuits. 

Your last point is up to Congress, but likely would violate Article 1 Section 8 of the constitution, as well as the 5th amendment. Plus it would be unworkable in practice. 

Pretty well established that these twitter messages are sent by publicists, not the company or the celebrity endorsing the company's products. 

EsquireCats said:

> Other critics have suggested that it's unfair for Apple to claim revenue from content it doesn't produce or host.

This line goes a long way to describe how two faced some of these execs can be. It's "unfair" for Apple to claim revenue, but they can't see that there is real costs in:

• Hosting their app and providing editorial to keep a compelling store to drive awareness/traffic to their app

• Keeping backups of their app, along with maintaining the servers and server security
• Increasing server farms to allow their app to be distributed to larger audiences, and working with the various governments worldwide to provide this, including in regions where their competitors are banned.
• Building and running green energy facilities to run said server farms
• Make store cards and deals with retailers world wide to minimise friction into the store and provide a bricks-and-mortar presence.
• The continual development of APIs to provide new features for the developers to monetise into their apps. (Plus other features such as allowing Siri to search their content for easier purchasing/use.)
• Continually enhancing and reacting to threats upon iOS/macOS security so these apps won't inadvertently divulge customer data or put their users at risk.

Yet all of that is included after paying a measly developer subscription cost - which is significantly less than any other kind of professional grade software subscription. Maybe we should go back to renting movies at Blockbuster or buying software on floppy discs in boxes?

No one has said Apple deserves nothing.  But taking a 15% or 30% cut of all revenues from an app that grosses hundreds of millions of dollars a year is absurd and grossly disproportionate to the cost of the things you mention, most of which Apple does anyway for its own apps and services.  

Moreover, as a developer, I can tell you that Apple is miserable to work with and provides near zero support to developers.  Often app rejections and other decisions are arbitrary and based on the subjective opinion of whoever is interpreting the rule, and appeals take weeks or months while the developer is left with no revenue while the app is in limbo. Our company pays Apple six figures a year in App Store fees, and there is no way for us to get a hold of anyone either my phone or email if we have a question or problem.  if we are lucky enough to get a response from someone at Apple it is generally some canned nonsense that has no relevance at all to the question or problem. 

As long as Apple continues to treat developers like crap while extracting these absurd fees, developers will continue to find ways to sell content outside of the App Store.