Go back in time 20 years and tell someone that the most popular personal computer taxes every transaction that runs on it for 30% and has absolute control over what software runs on it including banning any programs it doesn't like, and they'd look at you like you were crazy. And then be like, "Fucking Bill Gates! How'd he pull that off?"
>and has absolute control over what software runs on it including banning any programs it doesn't like
Don't forget taking the idea from an app developer, implementing it themselves, and then banning the app from the developer that came up with the idea. Apple has done this so many times, and it's completely abusive.
> The phenomenon of Apple releasing a feature that supplants or obviates third-party software is so well known that being Sherlocked has become an accepted term used within the Mac and iOS developer community.
To be clear I don’t think this is an acceptable practice, but the concept wouldn’t be completely unfamiliar because Nintendo did this with the NES and their lockout chip/seal of quality system
The differences are scale and utility. A company that has control of such a large market gets different rules because of the power they weld. Apple's market is 1-2 billion people and affects 100,000+ companies. Nintendo's market is 2-3 orders of magnitude less and the number of companies affected is similarly much much smaller.
I still think if you own a device you should be able to run whatever software you want on it, even if it's a game console from a somewhat smaller (but still huge) company
>Apple's market is 1-2 billion people and affects 100,000+ companies.
It's a bit disingenuous to use customer base and the number of people who develop for the platform as a excuse to bring legal action against the company. Customers know what they were getting when they bought the phones and companies knew the rules when they chose to develop for the platform.
I don't think users are fully aware of the extent these platforms control the devices. The same thing happened with cigarettes; eventually, the government required a warning. Perhaps a similar approach is necessary here.
I agree. Though to be fair Nintendo's NES is a gaming console (not that they are right, just contrasting the use-cases).
Consider Apple's very own Mac - another general-purpose computing device like the iPhone, only in a different form-factor.
Surely Mac developers must be tripping over themselves to throw 30% of their total revenue at Apple, as reward for their laser focus on privacy and security and for developing a nanny-platform that makes their users feel warm and fuzzy inside?
Surely Mac users must not be allowed to do business with literally any entity in the world without involving Apple as the gatekeeper?
You mean distributing .mob files on xda-developers and needing to speak with carriers to distribute your app?
There’s a reason most developers moved in droves to Apple ecosystem for amazing APIs, software and hardware, abandoned Symbian/blackberry/etc and had no issues with the 30% fee since they instantly got market access to millions of consumers.
30% was never an issue to begin with. People just feel today that everyone should get access to a marketplace with billion users for free, often forgetting what it took to build this market in the first place.
The confiscation of 30% of all revenue earned online has always been an issue for any company and developer here on planet Earth.
There are countless useful apps and companies that will never serve people's needs because it is not financially feasible to run a business where your total revenue is confiscated to the tune of 30%.
It has always been an issue. It's just better than the status quo before the iPhone.
> People just feel today that everyone should get access to a marketplace with billion users for free, often forgetting what it took to build this market in the first place.
1. It's not for free. Users (and developers) pay for it when they buy the iPhone. iPhone revenue is 3x Apple's R&D expenses. That is, iPhone sales alone cover the R&D on every single of Apple's products: from iPhone and iOS to Macs and MacOS, AppleTV, HomePods, Vision Pro, all of Apple's software running on those devices etc.
2. This market was built in no small part by the actual developers you now so snidely dismiss. iPhone is nothing without the app ecosystem.
What Apple does is bad but they don't tax 30% of every transaction. Apple isn't taking a 30% of your Uber or DoorDash, they charge 30% for sales made
on their platform for digital goods and services redeemed on that platform.
I think it's harder to argue that Sony shouldn't be allowed to take a cut of game sales on the PS5 outside of "well we all decided collectively to make that illegal because we don't like it." And honestly that's plenty enough for legislation but it's not going to be without consequences because Apple will extract their pound of flesh somewhere, can't have profits go down.
> The commission says a fee for such matchmaking is justifiable but what Apple charges goes “beyond what is strictly necessary”.
The EU commission is a hair away from just telling Apple what they're allowed to charge which I don't love. Either how Apple extracts fees is legal and how much is up to the market, or it isn't. Saying "it's legal as long as the percent is small enough" is silly.
> What Apple does is bad but they don't tax 30% of every transaction. Apple isn't taking a 30% of your Uber or DoorDash, they charge 30% for sales made on their platform for digital goods and services redeemed on that platform.
You're mischaracterising the situation. Apple taxes 30% of all transactions made on apps other than exempt transactions. The food and tangible services you mentioned are exempt categories. Apple takes a 30% cut of all sales of digital goods and services transacted on apps on their platform, regardless of whether the goods are "redeemed on that platform" (whatever that means). Of course Apple has built a byzantine maze of carve-outs, exemptions and counter-exemptions that muddy the waters and give them great power if you're a small developer without the resources to fight them for your rights.
Subscriptions are 15% after the first year. Apps from small developers also pay 15%. Given the prevalence of subscriptions and the large number of indies on the app store, I really doubt 30% is close to the average. At any rate, 15% is still sizable, but it doesn't help the conversation if we are substantially overstating the fee percentage.
Rather than going in to details why that doesn't matter, with relation to monopolistic power, I'll just let you extrapolate your reasoning to the following:
The EU population is quite literally a minority of the world population.
Of course the fines are punitive, that's because the fines aren't supposed to be a revenues source for the EU they're supposed to deter behaviour (To the point the first round of them are often dimunitive or waived entirely before ramping up steeply if the behaviour doesn't change).
Another reason the fines are based on global revenue are to get around all the income shenanigans tech companies play, or do you really believe google's most profitable country is Ireland?
>Apple has less than 30% market share globally.
The EU is less than 30% of the population globally, and only 10% of iphone sales. By your logic clearly what it does doesn't have an outsized effect on apple that needs to be corrected.
I think it's funny people argue this when Google already does extract a massive pound of flesh from web purchases and uses Chrome to push "the web" where they control the market.
I have to pay the Apple tax to reach my customers where they are, iOS.
I have to pay the Google tax to reach my customers where they are, the web dominated by Doubleclick and Google search.
Do you care that a tech company is extracting huge sums from digital markets or do you just care how? Does it make a lick of difference that with ad spend it feels like you're buying something or when you put ads on your site you never see the money they took off the top?
> Do you care that a tech company is extracting huge sums from digital markets or do you just care how?
Everyone should care how! The how is the important part.
If there are alternative ways to access something then people are free to compete of product. That's a huge difference because competition is generally consumer friendly.
And the EU should look into Google's unfair practices from its domination of web search and ads. I suspect it will.
If Google starting charging site owners 30% of their revenues to index their website on Google Search, and there was no possible alternative, the EU would probably be looking at them pretty harshly too.
Love that, I fully expect "pound of flesh" to soon have an entry in the dictionary for "an unspecified amount of flesh" to annoy language prescriptivists.
That was the case 5-10 years ago, but many e-commerce businesses are surviving solely on TikTok and Instagram ads. Look at most of the Google Shopping results for small items, all Amazon and Temu who have bigger pockets.
> I think it's harder to argue that Sony shouldn't be allowed to take a cut of game sales on the PS5
I agree, it's hard to argue that. Sony created a narrow-purpose platform (gaming + media) and is taking a cut for offering 3rd party games there.
It's not a general purpose computer designed to be your main communication device and your key to connect you to any type of service or appliance in your world.
Sony didn't sell best-in-class TVs, then used their dominating position to demand revenue-share from broadcasters, then integrated a gaming console for the same price to crush console competitors, then created a custom plug and partnered with building companies that their plug shall be in all living rooms, then launched a watch which would only work if you also have their TVs, then started a bank and mandated that all products promoted on any TV channel must only be payable via their payment service,...
...and then when a commission started setting boundaries on its grip over the market, started complaining how the commission is preventing competition, how only Sony can ensure a secure living room and safe TV-experience, and started weaponizing its customers (with the custom sockets, watches and wallets all on Sony) against their own elected regulatory body...
Apple didn't develop a "general purpose computer" either, they developed a cell phone. They entered into an established product market, with a product that was even more locked down than the current competition (remember, Palm Treos and Blackberrys?). Even "dumb" phones had apps and games (though if you think Apple's fees are ridiculous, you should look up the cost of developing a bejeweled clone for your old sony ericson, "Qalcom BREW" would be a contemporary starting point). Within this market, 3 different competitors (Palm, Microsoft and Google) also threw their hat into the ring, with far more open platforms. Palm and Microsoft eventually gave up, and Google is the majority player with the fully open platform. Yet Apple is somehow so dominant that we're crafting entirely new rules around them doing the same thing they and many other highly integrated hardware/software manufacturer has done for ages. Why?
Because like it or not, it has become a general purpose computer. For millions it’s their primary (for some: only) gateway to banking, payments, education, government services, personal relations, keeping in touch with family, navigation, healthcare and emergency services.
Up next: digital ID and (possibly) online voting.
Those things are all pretty important for a society, right? In a sense, they are society.
Accordingly, a couple powerful entities controlling all those things ought to expect oversight from said society. It’s not hard to understand.
So no, Apple is not doing “the same thing” as other device manufacturers have “done for ages”. Not even close.
They are a victim of their own success in a way, but their shareholders have been rewarded handsomely. They’re hardly a victim like you’re proposing.
It feels to me like the problem here is the government and large institutions only providing access via a single manufacturers single platform, rather than the existence of the platform. That is to say, if education, government services, health care, emergency services, ID and voting are all only accessible via having an iPhone, the solution to that is to mandate that those things be accessible via other options too, not to mandate opening up the iPhone ecosystem. Aside from the fact that the government needs no new laws to actually make its services available on open platforms, there's also the "single point of failure" problem, and the "government services only available to people with $400+ electronic toys with expensive monthly subscription services" problem. Regulating banking vs phone app store markets might be more of a toss up, but it seems like again the "single point of failure" problem should argue much more strongly in favor of forcing banks to not limit access to iPhones, rather than forcing iPhones to change to be something the iPhone consumers don't actually want.
No, the problem is that a critical mass of a market is dependant on a single operator of that market, and that operator is not providing equal access to it but considers itself the owner AND a privileged player there which everyone has to pay to compete with.
The audience of iPhone users are that market.
-
"You have something to sell on my market? Sure, here are the fees, the rules and I take a cut of all your sales"
--> "My data shows that people like what you're selling on my market, so I studied all details, decided to build it myself, provide it for less/free and compete with you. Thanks for doing the risky work of proving that potential."
"Feel free to stay if you like, your continued success will continue to educate/fund my competing product. If you leave, you have to end business with all customers, as I took measures that they are ONLY able to visit MY market"
"Thanks for doing the risky work of proving that potential"
When people realise that Apple hasn't innovated any new technology pretty much ever (certainly for at least the last 30 years).
They always wait until something is proven in the market and then buy their way to it & lock the competition out. "Face ID" = Kinect, "we invented multi-touch" = blatant lie, vision= pre-existing AR/VR...oh sorry "spatial computing" Etc.
>You have something to sell on my market? Sure, here are the fees, the rules and I take a cut of all your sales
>My data shows that people like what you're selling on my market, so I studied all details, decided to build it myself, provide it for less/free and compete with you. Thanks for doing the risky work of proving that potential.
>Feel free to stay if you like, your continued success will continue to educate/fund my competing product. If you leave, you have to end business with all customers, as I took measures that they are ONLY able to visit MY market
None of those things really affect the banking, government services, education, ID, health etc apps that the OP was concerned with. They're not selling their apps or even selling any services via their app (except for services which are incidentally forbidden from using IAP in the first place which means the 30% fees don't apply:
>3.1.3(e) Goods and Services Outside of the App: If your app enables people to purchase physical goods or services that will be consumed outside of the app, you must use purchase methods other than in-app purchase to collect those payments, such as Apple Pay or traditional credit card entry.
Nor are they competing with Apple for their applications. At a stretch, you could argue that the banking apps sort of kind of compete with Apple wallet in the credit card space, but like I said, it's a bit of a stretch.
My comment about government services, banking, education and so on was in response to your general assertion that an iPhone is no different than other electronic devices and therefore shouldn't be treated differently by regulators. For the reasons I listed, that's kind of ridiculous. Smartphones are just as important to modern economies/societies as the automobile, air travel, public libraries or news organizations (at least in my opinion).
Accordingly... unlike an XBox (which only provides entertainment) smartphones need to have well considered legislation that maximizes the overall benefit to society (while still maintaining a financial incentive for innovation). There's a lot at stake.
So, I wasn't trying to cite specific examples where Apple has fallen short in these areas (though I'm aware of a few), I was making a generalization about the relative importance of the smartphone to modern economies and society. It's just not the same thing as other gadgets (even if the technology is similar). Not even close.
> None of those things really affect the banking, government services, education, ID, health etc apps that the OP was concerned with.
Of course they do. All those entities have to follow terms and conditions of Apple to reach THEIR customers/citizens, requiring them to share crucial information to Apple, the sole gatekeeper with a vested interest to maximize user-profit.
> At a stretch, you could argue that the banking apps sort of kind of compete with Apple wallet in the credit card space, but like I said, it's a bit of a stretch.
No stretch at all. The market operator also offers financial services directly, while having privileged access (as preloaded app) and a superior level of information (via user profiling) about the users needs and behavior. Other financial service providers have the choice between paying revenue-share to Apple to be integrated with Apple Pay, or have their services only surface if the customer explicitly searches for their app (all while a competitor may pay the rev-share and have higher integration/visibility from the market provider)
You raise good points about making sure that all those services are always available through multiple means, but the argument I'm making isn't that all those services are limited to a smartphone - they aren't... I think everything I mentioned (except for emergency calls) are available in a web browser.
The argument is simply; the smartphone is the platform we have chosen because it makes our lives so much better. It does its job so well that it has become a critical part of the economic and social fabric of the country. Thus we need to make sure it's regulated (up to a point, obviously) so that the public's needs and that of the larger economy are met, while still maintaining the financial incentive for smartphone platforms to innovate.
Consider; it's possible to walk to work/banks/government offices for the majority of people but vehicles are convenient and time-efficient so that's what people choose. Accordingly, society accommodates and regulates vehicle use. Same thing for radio and television in the past... it was possible to get information and entertainment elsewhere, but people chose those mediums because they were better than the alternatives. It's because of the popularity of cars/radio/television that those things deserved regulation, nothing else.
I guess my question is what part of the various laws being passed is addressing some "public need" that's not currently being met for these apps, or by the entire rest of the market place. I've said it before but every single thing every advocate of regulating Apple's iPhone and App Store is already available on Android. And unlike in the 90's when Windows literally dominated the market, even in the markets where Apple is doing the strongest, at best they have half of the market. Which means every single "necessary" application and resource is equally present on both iOS and Android.
So what is the need here? Who isn't able to access something they need access to and how is forcing Apple to open up their hardware and software platform the correct solution to that problem? And I'm asking honestly here, are there any actual necessary services that are only available on iOS? Not more convenient on iOS, unavailable anywhere else. If we accept the arguments against iOS at face value, it seems impossible for there to even be any necessary services that are more convenient on iOS. The major arguments are Apple is too restrictive, they prevent apps from doing things, they prevent PWAs from working, they disallow integrations that developers want. By all accounts, the iOS experience should be measurably worse for users in every single way for any 3rd party service. If removing Apple's restrictions was important to consumers, if it was actually harming them in ways that they didn't think was worth the benefits those same restrictions provide, Android should be mopping the floor with Apple. But they're not. And none of the arguments I've heard for regulating Apple have been because of failures of iOS users to be able to access critical government and economic resources.
The closest arguments that could be made are about things like blocking access to certain VPNs or other "subversive" applications in places like China and Russia. But of course, the proper way to regulate that would be to mandate wide open consumer access to strong end to end encryption that governments can not control or have access to. But mandating that sort of thing would be admitting that even "western" governments are untrustworthy and might need to be subverted. It would be mandating access to law breaking tools, which the EU and the US are not eager to do even here, let alone eager to step into that political battle on the world stage.
> Apple didn't develop a "general purpose computer" either, they developed a cell phone.
Yeah, like Sony did in the analogy above. They became best-in-class
in TV and then started to dictate the rules for reaching every living room with their TV in, made trillions of dollars and then used that position to take control of other industries.
