These last few legal responses from Apple are really damaging their "cool" factor. Apple has, for some time now, succeeded by staying quiet and just shipping high quality stuff.
Their PR / legal team acting like children when they don't get what they want is a genuine harm to their brand. It's amazing to me that these press releases are approved.
They once had to put a notice on their website for 2 weeks in the UK due to losing a Samsung design patent case.
Their non compliance was impressive. They changed the website to ensure users wouldn't see the footer with the link without scrolling. Then they edited the notice's wording by adding paragraphs in the middle of it - and sentences in the middle of paragraphs.
I really think there's some Americanism behind it. Like, "we don't care what you foreign authorities think".
It's a really weird return to the Steve Jobs attitude towards problems like this. Except then it was usually literally Steve writing statements and saying those things, and now it's just a faceless Apple Inc which is even less sympathetic.
I don't know who these statements are for, aside from the most devoted Apple fans. I feel like investors would be happier with shorter, more professional communication.
He pulled some childish moves that the public found out about (Engadget being banned from reporting on Apple when a reporter wrote about an iPhone prototype they found in a bar or something is one of the next examples I can think of) but it wasn’t Apple officially behaving childishly in public.
>and pays Apple nothing for the services that have helped make them one of the most recognizable brands in the world.
It says a lot that the €100 developer fee (I'd imagine Spotify pay for multiple licences in multiple countries) that Apple consider it nothing. It probably is 'negligible' given the size of Spotify but also don't even consider highly popular apps like Spotify 'contributing' to App Store ecosystem that has also helped Apple.
Their press statements are starting to become more and more snarky. They would do better to keep their chin up and keep going. This sort of snark is more befitting of Ryanair than Apple.
Apple is not taking in consideration that the argument works completely in reverse, without all the apps paying them a 30% cut, or developers investing time into creating apps for their ecosystem there would be no iOS in 2024.
I don't think this is a valid argument, because both sides of it are true. Developers invested, but so did Apple, and they did it first and took bigger risks.
The App Store is packed with apps because developers saw an opportunity and wanted to seize it. Everyone's in it because it serves their interests.
The iPhone released without an App Store. Their original plan was very clearly to limit it to web apps. Apple, including Steve Jobs, spent a lot of time and energy explaining why web apps were the best option.
And then Apple realized, largely through apps developed for jailbroken phones which led to a lot of people jailbreaking their phones, that for iOS to really succeed they needed apps.
Windows Phone 7 is another example of this. It was a superior OS to iOS by most measures. It died almost entirely because of the lack of major apps.
If major app providers (Google, Spotify, Netflix, etc) had never made their apps available on iOS and had made them available on Android instead iOS would probably be looking like Windows Phone 7 right now.
> It says a lot that the €100 developer fee (I'd imagine Spotify pay for multiple licences in multiple countries) that Apple consider it nothing
They literally do consider it nothing. I've talked to some
of the devs that were responsible for implementing it and they consider it entirely a spam prevention measure. They determined that $100/account was a high enough bar to prevent people from creating hundreds of them and doesn't have the overhead of manual human ID verifications.
The most recent numbers I can can find is that there are 34 million registered devs which is a cool 3.4 billion ARR and that is 0.89% of their $380 billion revenue last year.
I do find it hilarious that Apple expects companies to fork over 30% of the price of renting a movie in an app and considers that "fair" and then on platforms where THEY would have to fork over 30% (e.g., Apple TV app on Google TV) they don't let you rent at all. So everyone gets a shittier worse experience everywhere on the off-chance they can extract rent.
Apple fights hard to not allow users to install from other sources on devices they own, so they can charge rent from developers, then complains when some apps that are too big for them to control are installed from the sole app store.
The solution is pretty simple, let people use the devices they own as they want; allow multiple app stores; allow people to download binaries and install on their devices.
Or, let people choose the other platform that already allows them just that.
What some people may not understand is that a large percentage of Apple customers are buying iPhones because of those restrictions and not in spite of them.
This has always been such a funny argument to me. The "some" is carrying some much weight. Yeah there's a couple vocal apple users in hacker news that think a closed ecosystem is good, more private and secure, they trust Apple and they indeed have chosen the iPhone for this reason.
But more likely than not, people choose iPhone because everyone has an iPhone. People choose iPhone because when both parents have iPhones they buy their kids iPhones and then when their kids grow into young adults, well, they're already invested in the ecosystem to such a degree that it's impossible to get out.
More likely than not, they choose iPhone because iPhones are just what people think about when they think smartphone. Because Samsung phones seem "complicated".
I really doubt people even care about privacy and security. I mean, sure, if you ask them if they care they will say yes; because that's how polls work, no one wants to say they don't care and be judged. But if you were to ask people "why iPhone" I'd say the answer will be more on the lines of "because iPhone".
The modern world is made on marketing and Apple is the best company in the world at it.
> What some people may not understand is that a large percentage of Apple customers are buying iPhones because of those restrictions and not in spite of them.
Citation needed. Do you have polls or other consumer research to back this claim?
I have 70% of Android global market share. It offers more choices of devices, price points and a less restrictive OS.
There's almost nothing you can do on an iPhone that you can't on an Android. Conversely, there are plenty of things that the more open Android platform allows that iOS doesn't.
And yet, despite all of that, some people still prefer to buy iPhones. I think it's their choice to make.
I didn't buy an iPhone because of the "security" that the restrictions give me, and I suspect few others who jumped ship from Android to iPhone did either.
I switched because the iPhone does what I need it to do, and then gets out of the way. It works as I need it to with my Mac, and is for the most part intuitive and well thought out. I would prefer it if I could install what I wanted from where I wanted, but it's a price I'm willing to pay. And no, allowing me to do so would not undermine any of the value I've pointed out.
I bought an iPhone _despite_ the restrictions, not because of them.
I can say, from a personal perspective, that I didn't buy an iPhone because it's vendor locked. I bought an iPhone because I'm a Mac user and developer, so I was already in the Apple ecosystem.
I suspect that there are a lot of people who buy an iPhone simply because their family and/or friends have iPhones already.
If you ask a user if they want to be prevented from installing an app, they'll most likely reply “no”, of course. If, however, they wake up and their phone is not behaving as usual due to borderline malware app they inadvertently installed, most people would be pissed. The age old freedom/responsibility tension.
To my surprise, many people had a similar questioning like you did in this thread, so it's probably not as obvious as I imagined.
I've heard this over and over and my follow-up question is never answered... What would change for those users? This is about ownership of your device, if you're OK with Apple's walled garden - that they apparently can change on any whims - nothing will be shoved down your throat.
There are side effects to allowing third-party stores, or giving up on restrictions. It's a trade-off. There are advantage to both choices. I thought this was pretty obvious in my post.
If Apple was the only viable platform, then absolutely, I don't want to live in a world where I can't hack with my devices. But when you have Android, I think it's actually better for the user that a more locked down platform also exists. It's a different model to choose from.
Also, "There are side effects to allowing third-party stores" - what is this bs???
Do I need to link to Steve Jobs presenting the iPhone saying iOS is based on MacOS? Have you use installed software on your Mac from outside the App Store?
> What some people may not understand is that a large percentage of Apple customers are buying iPhones because of those restrictions and not in spite of them.
Huh?? This is an extraordinary claim, given the plain fact that if someone really doesn't want apps from 3rd-party stores on their device, they could just, you know... not install any...?
If Apple wanted to destroy Spotify they would simply drop prices by 30%, and Spotify would be unable to compete with that pricing because of the Apple tax.
Why should Apple have that much leverage? They didn't even "build the platform", they took an Open Source platform, put the Apple logo to it, and then proceeded to EEE like good old Microsoft.
Apple is in the wrong here, or they charge the Apple tax to music apps, or they have Apple music. They can't have both.
OTOH, I don't see Apple paying 30% of their revenue to the Open Source maintainers that made "the platform" possible.
If only price was the only signal people used when buying or renting services.
But that's not the case. And Apple themselves know this as they charge premium prices for the brand alone.
If Apple drops their prices by 30% there's no guarantee that it would "destroy spotify" at all. For one, no one on android would think of switching to apple music anyway, the concept just seems so foreign. Second, Spotify is winning the marketing/cultural battle with their wrapped. It might sound silly but the advertisement feature of Spotify wrapped is worth a lot of money.
So what's more likely to happen if Apple drops the price? Well, I'd say they'd be locked into a PR nightmare everytime they need to raise prices because there's a precedent that the service is cheaper. They wouldn't really gain significant market share against Spotify and they would just end up leaving money on the table.
In these things, price is a component of the decision that is made, it's not really the deciding factor. Not to mention that a significantly lower price also signals "worse quality" to costumers. People might easily go "Spotify costs 3 dollars more because it is worth 3 dollars more". Because people will try to justify higher prices with higher quality even when that's not the case.
No, I'm arguing that if Apple feels entitled to steal 30% of my hard earned money, then the open source maintainers should also feel the same entitlement, because without their work there would be no iOS, and no App Store.
Apple owes their existence to the Open Source maintainers the same way Apple claims I owe my existence to their proprietary APIs.
> No, I'm arguing that if Apple feels entitled to steal 30% of my hard earned money, then the open source maintainers should also feel the same entitlement
If the people who explicitly stated “feel free to use my software for free for any purpose you see fit” feel entitled to get any money for the stuff they wrote, they shouldn’t have said that, and, I expect, Apple would have used something else.
Writing a halfway decent OS kernel isn’t that hard, and performance-wise, you don’t really need more than halfway decent).
Also, Apple paid for many of the higher layers of iOS and/or developed them in-house (NeXT wrote NeXTSTEP, Apple bought NeXT, and then spent years before releasing Mac OS X)
That may be true, but those suckers (the open source maintainers) chose to give their work away for free, so they deserve what they get (nothing). Apple won't be making the same mistake!
The press release somehow forgot to touch the core of the fine: apple customers paid higher subscription fee for apple music than they would for Spotify because it's against app store policy to inform that Spotify has a cheaper subscription if they don't want to pay apple 30% cut...
The market share of iOS in the EU is only around 35% though. The market this is about isn't the market for music streaming apps but the market for iOS apps.
I noticed this narrative in their press release. They don't really mention Spotifys share just on iOS. If it's less than 56%, clearly something's up, right?
There's not a single mention of Apple Music. There goes the credibility of this statement.
It's rather obvious that problems started when Apple decided to build a services business the size of a F100 company by directly and unfairly competing with said developers, unchained from all the constraints and costs they impose on them.
> If a developer sells physical goods, serves ads in their app, or just shares an app for free, they don’t pay Apple anything.
If so, don't ask me to pay $99 every year for installing my own app on a device I bought.
Apps signed with a free developer account are severely limited with a short validity period and Apple enforces a limit on the number of apps that could be installed this way on a device.
Cool. Now explain why my iPhone has FLAC codecs built in, but the Apple Music app refuses to play it (the file manager can play it natively, no extra software like VLC needed). I'm sure it has nothing to do with ALAC.
No Apple, you deliberately cripple the competition all the time — especially with music — and you're getting what you deserve.
Their PR / legal team acting like children when they don't get what they want is a genuine harm to their brand. It's amazing to me that these press releases are approved.
Their non compliance was impressive. They changed the website to ensure users wouldn't see the footer with the link without scrolling. Then they edited the notice's wording by adding paragraphs in the middle of it - and sentences in the middle of paragraphs.
I really think there's some Americanism behind it. Like, "we don't care what you foreign authorities think".
I don't know who these statements are for, aside from the most devoted Apple fans. I feel like investors would be happier with shorter, more professional communication.
He pulled some childish moves that the public found out about (Engadget being banned from reporting on Apple when a reporter wrote about an iPhone prototype they found in a bar or something is one of the next examples I can think of) but it wasn’t Apple officially behaving childishly in public.
In any case, most of the broad public is not really aware of these things at all. So I doubt it really tarnishes their image much.
It says a lot that the €100 developer fee (I'd imagine Spotify pay for multiple licences in multiple countries) that Apple consider it nothing. It probably is 'negligible' given the size of Spotify but also don't even consider highly popular apps like Spotify 'contributing' to App Store ecosystem that has also helped Apple.
Their press statements are starting to become more and more snarky. They would do better to keep their chin up and keep going. This sort of snark is more befitting of Ryanair than Apple.
The App Store is packed with apps because developers saw an opportunity and wanted to seize it. Everyone's in it because it serves their interests.
The iPhone released without an App Store. Their original plan was very clearly to limit it to web apps. Apple, including Steve Jobs, spent a lot of time and energy explaining why web apps were the best option.
And then Apple realized, largely through apps developed for jailbroken phones which led to a lot of people jailbreaking their phones, that for iOS to really succeed they needed apps.
Windows Phone 7 is another example of this. It was a superior OS to iOS by most measures. It died almost entirely because of the lack of major apps.
If major app providers (Google, Spotify, Netflix, etc) had never made their apps available on iOS and had made them available on Android instead iOS would probably be looking like Windows Phone 7 right now.
I'm torn in all of this because I'm not much of a fan of either company.
They literally do consider it nothing. I've talked to some of the devs that were responsible for implementing it and they consider it entirely a spam prevention measure. They determined that $100/account was a high enough bar to prevent people from creating hundreds of them and doesn't have the overhead of manual human ID verifications.
The most recent numbers I can can find is that there are 34 million registered devs which is a cool 3.4 billion ARR and that is 0.89% of their $380 billion revenue last year.
Apple's attitude towards developers complaining about App Store was largely "Deal with it" but seems like they themselves can't deal with it.
The solution is pretty simple, let people use the devices they own as they want; allow multiple app stores; allow people to download binaries and install on their devices.
What some people may not understand is that a large percentage of Apple customers are buying iPhones because of those restrictions and not in spite of them.
But more likely than not, people choose iPhone because everyone has an iPhone. People choose iPhone because when both parents have iPhones they buy their kids iPhones and then when their kids grow into young adults, well, they're already invested in the ecosystem to such a degree that it's impossible to get out.
More likely than not, they choose iPhone because iPhones are just what people think about when they think smartphone. Because Samsung phones seem "complicated".
I really doubt people even care about privacy and security. I mean, sure, if you ask them if they care they will say yes; because that's how polls work, no one wants to say they don't care and be judged. But if you were to ask people "why iPhone" I'd say the answer will be more on the lines of "because iPhone".
The modern world is made on marketing and Apple is the best company in the world at it.
Exactly. And why is it so?
Citation needed. Do you have polls or other consumer research to back this claim?
There's almost nothing you can do on an iPhone that you can't on an Android. Conversely, there are plenty of things that the more open Android platform allows that iOS doesn't.
And yet, despite all of that, some people still prefer to buy iPhones. I think it's their choice to make.
I switched because the iPhone does what I need it to do, and then gets out of the way. It works as I need it to with my Mac, and is for the most part intuitive and well thought out. I would prefer it if I could install what I wanted from where I wanted, but it's a price I'm willing to pay. And no, allowing me to do so would not undermine any of the value I've pointed out.
I bought an iPhone _despite_ the restrictions, not because of them.
1. This is false. There are plenty of features and apps (including my own apps!) that are exclusive to iPhone. iMessage and iCloud for example.
2. Products are not simply lists of features. There's also something important called design.
3. Don't forget vendor hardware support, software support, and resale value.
I can say, from a personal perspective, that I didn't buy an iPhone because it's vendor locked. I bought an iPhone because I'm a Mac user and developer, so I was already in the Apple ecosystem.
I suspect that there are a lot of people who buy an iPhone simply because their family and/or friends have iPhones already.
IOW, is there any evidence that if the apps that are currently unavailable on iOS became available on iOS, iPhone sales would drop?
To my surprise, many people had a similar questioning like you did in this thread, so it's probably not as obvious as I imagined.
Please answer.
If Apple was the only viable platform, then absolutely, I don't want to live in a world where I can't hack with my devices. But when you have Android, I think it's actually better for the user that a more locked down platform also exists. It's a different model to choose from.
Also, "There are side effects to allowing third-party stores" - what is this bs??? Do I need to link to Steve Jobs presenting the iPhone saying iOS is based on MacOS? Have you use installed software on your Mac from outside the App Store?
Huh?? This is an extraordinary claim, given the plain fact that if someone really doesn't want apps from 3rd-party stores on their device, they could just, you know... not install any...?
Why should Apple have that much leverage? They didn't even "build the platform", they took an Open Source platform, put the Apple logo to it, and then proceeded to EEE like good old Microsoft.
Apple is in the wrong here, or they charge the Apple tax to music apps, or they have Apple music. They can't have both.
OTOH, I don't see Apple paying 30% of their revenue to the Open Source maintainers that made "the platform" possible.
But that's not the case. And Apple themselves know this as they charge premium prices for the brand alone.
If Apple drops their prices by 30% there's no guarantee that it would "destroy spotify" at all. For one, no one on android would think of switching to apple music anyway, the concept just seems so foreign. Second, Spotify is winning the marketing/cultural battle with their wrapped. It might sound silly but the advertisement feature of Spotify wrapped is worth a lot of money.
So what's more likely to happen if Apple drops the price? Well, I'd say they'd be locked into a PR nightmare everytime they need to raise prices because there's a precedent that the service is cheaper. They wouldn't really gain significant market share against Spotify and they would just end up leaving money on the table.
In these things, price is a component of the decision that is made, it's not really the deciding factor. Not to mention that a significantly lower price also signals "worse quality" to costumers. People might easily go "Spotify costs 3 dollars more because it is worth 3 dollars more". Because people will try to justify higher prices with higher quality even when that's not the case.
Apple owes their existence to the Open Source maintainers the same way Apple claims I owe my existence to their proprietary APIs.
If the people who explicitly stated “feel free to use my software for free for any purpose you see fit” feel entitled to get any money for the stuff they wrote, they shouldn’t have said that, and, I expect, Apple would have used something else.
Writing a halfway decent OS kernel isn’t that hard, and performance-wise, you don’t really need more than halfway decent).
Also, Apple paid for many of the higher layers of iOS and/or developed them in-house (NeXT wrote NeXTSTEP, Apple bought NeXT, and then spent years before releasing Mac OS X)
(sorry for the sarcasm)
It's rather obvious that problems started when Apple decided to build a services business the size of a F100 company by directly and unfairly competing with said developers, unchained from all the constraints and costs they impose on them.
If so, don't ask me to pay $99 every year for installing my own app on a device I bought.
Apps signed with a free developer account are severely limited with a short validity period and Apple enforces a limit on the number of apps that could be installed this way on a device.
> We’ve even flown our engineers to Stockholm to help Spotify’s teams in person.
Some level playing field. Apple certainly hasn't flown any engineers to my town.
No Apple, you deliberately cripple the competition all the time — especially with music — and you're getting what you deserve.
https://www.hackerneue.com/item?id=39589483