I don't really care about any of Apple's business partners being upset about their business terms with Apple. Developers want a bigger cut, banks want a bigger cut, Foxconn wants a bigger cut.
My interests as an Apple user are aligned with Apple. But even if I wasn't an Apple user, market forces determine what the "fair" cut is for everyone.
Doesn't seem to be working. Have you seen the App Store? You can buy 'antivirus' apps with $79.99 weekly subscriptions. On a sandboxed platform where you can't "scan" anything but yourself.
Also -- it's not that hard to make $143 in scam sales, which will pay for that $99 account.
I actually would rather the developer program fee was $2,000 if it meant it actually was harder for scammers to get in. Of course, it should be free to make apps for my own phone, and to distribute it to those in my family group.
Yeah the app store really has turned into a wasteland of shit.
I don't think a $2000 fee would change that. People scamming with the $79 weekly subscription for junk make a lot more than that in the blink of an eye.
Better business for a specific company doesn't mean better markets for consumers and other participants, and we make laws to ensure the latter even if it's at the expense of the former.
Google is also listening though. They are slowly introducing similar restrictions after seeing what absurdity Apple gets away with as "compliance" of needing to also allow anyone to offer software for iOS. Our mistake is thinking it's fine that apple believers get vendor lock-in because there is still Google and Android lets you run whatever code you want. Yeah, until it doesn't
Why do you want huge companies to be allowed so much control?
What is it about letting them restrict what people can do in order to squeeze even more money out of them and other companies that appeals to you so much?
Where do you think this should stop?
Should my wifi router be allowed to only work with some brands of phone or laptop?
Should my mobile service provider be allowed to ask for a percentage of any payment I use over their connection?
Should my car by allowed to refuse to park if the owner of the car park doesn't share ticket revenue with its manufacturer?
If not, why not?
Personally, I choose to believe that just like some things cannot legally be agreed to contractually (even if they're in the contract and you sign it), some business models should also be unacceptable to society. That includes any situation where by owning a platform, media property, or content/service delivery technology or provider, a company wants to force itself as a middleman between any two parties.
>Yes, obviously they want to make as much money as possible, and this is at odds with consumer interests.
It's not at odds with consumer interests at all. It's at odds with developer interests.
It would actually cost consumers more if Apple couldn't make any money from developers directly because they'd try to make it up by charging more for Apple products.
Developers might prefer to shift the burden to consumers's wallets instead of their own, but overall this model is beneficial for everyone involved. It is also better for the environment because directly making money from developers incentivizes them to support old hardware for as long as possible.
> because they'd try to make it up by charging more for Apple products.
> Developers might prefer to shift the burden to consumers's wallets
I vigorously disagree with this. It sounds very confused about economics, specifically prices.
Apple, as every market actor does, charges the absolute maximum price the market will bear for their products and not a penny less. They cannot "make up" any money that comes from unrelated parties (such as their Google payola for search, or their casino games for children IAP revenue) by raising product prices. If they could raise their product prices and have that be profit-positive, they would have done it yesterday.
They could raise prices on phones to make up for a hypothetical "free iCloud+," because the same consumers are the other party in both those transactions so presumably many people would see that the more expensive phone justifies free iCloud services.
Apple doesn't set its prices by saying "OK, we need exactly 83 billion dollars in net income this year, so given that our products cost us 233 billion dollars to make and we have 54 billion dollars in expenses, we need 383 billion in revenue, so now let's set prices of each product to target this."
That $83 billion in net income is just the number they are able to make last year with the prices being what the market would bear. Trying to increase prices to hold it there when a downfall in other revenue happens would depress sales.
>Apple, as every market actor does, charges the absolute maximum price the market will bear for their products and not a penny less.
That price is much lower than it otherwise would be if the only revenue Apple could generate came from hardware. The opposite incentive exists today, where it actually benefits Apple to sell cheaper razors to make more money from the razor blades.
> It would actually cost consumers more if Apple couldn't make any money from developers directly because they'd try to make it up by charging more for Apple products.
iPhone sales pay for the entirety of Apple's R&D. 10 times over.
That's just not how that works, how much consumers will pay is a binding constraint. Apple isn't subsiding their phone with developer fees and distributing their below marginal cost. Apple is almost certainly charging well above its marginal costs and is already charging the revenue maximising price, it's not willingly leaving money on the table.
Not entirely how you've made formed this connection but respectively it sounds like you've confused several things here.
They are obviously not charging the maximum price because they’ve raised the price significantly when the iPhone X came out and suffered no harm. Apple sets prices based on a 30% raw profit margin and ignores the market except as it constrains their raw material and manufacturing costs. They use that 30% to pay there other costs, such as iOS development and R&D and investing in manufacturing partners.
The iPhone X, like all models, is a different model than all the others; the maximum price for one model is not going to be the maximum price for another.
> Apple sets prices based on a 30% raw profit margin and ignores the market except as it constrains their raw material and manufacturing costs.
Literally impossible ahead of time, as some of their costs are fixed rather than marginal. If you spend, as they did last year, ~$34.5bn on R&D, and you make a thing that costs $1000 to make and then you price it at $1300, but the market looks at what it is and what it costs and says "nah" so only 1 million people buy it that year, then what you're actually making isn't a 30% profit, it is a loss >110x your revenue.
We don't know exactly how much R&D was spent on the AVP, nor the exact sales, but the market reaction to the price is something you should have in mind. No matter what its unit economics were, Apple probably made a loss overall.
Apple didn't give itself better dialogs. It never did third-party tracking across across apps or websites so the ATT prompt would never apply to their apps. It also voluntarily showed a dialog explicitly asking you to opt into personalized advertising. Facebook doesn't show anything similar when you use Instagram or the Facebook app, because that would be undoubtedly bad for business.
The German regulator settled because the facts are simply on Apple's side. Apple settled because at the end of the day it's no skin off their back if the EU now wants to weaken privacy protections to benefit ad-tech.
>Apple only gives third-party app publishers access to the IDFA if they have obtained user consent through a dedicated consent prompt that is largely predefined by Apple – the so-called ATT prompt. If the user refuses to give consent in this prompt, the app publisher does not gain access to the IDFA.
According to the Bundeskartellamt’s investigation, there are no other technical options available to app publishers that are equally suitable for exchanging data across companies.
In contrast, Apple’s own personalised advertising is subject to different conditions. Apple itself does not use the IDFA and cross-company data combination, but draws on user data from its own ecosystem – a wealth of data that is not available, in particular, to the large number of smaller app publishers. This is why Apple is not subject to the requirement of displaying an ATT prompt. Insofar as Apple requests consent to its own processing of user data for advertising purposes, the company uses a different consent prompt – the so-called PA prompt (“Personalized Ads prompt”). The design of the PA prompt differs from that of the ATT prompt for third-party app publishers.
Ok, let's break down your claims one by one and compare to the text of the FAQ...
> Apple didn't give itself better dialogs.
On the contrary page two of the FAQ states "The design of the PA prompt
differs from that of the ATT prompt for third-party app publishers."
> It never did third-party tracking across across apps or websites
The FAQ strongly implies that they did track across apps and websites, i.e. "draws on user data from its own ecosystem [which involves multiple apps and websites]",
> It also voluntarily showed a dialog explicitly asking you to opt into personalized advertising.
Nothing in the FAQ supports that this was voluntarily and not required by law. In fact it strongly implies the opposite "the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the provisions of the ePrivacy Directive, in particular, require app publishers to obtain user consent for certain types of data processing" ... "Insofar as Apple requests consent to its own processing of user data for advertising purposes,"
> Facebook doesn't show anything similar when you use Instagram or the Facebook app, because that would be undoubtedly bad for business.
Nothing in the FAQ supports this claim, and as discussed in other comments here it is simply false.
> The German regulator settled because the facts are simply on Apple's side. Apple settled because at the end of the day it's no skin off their back if the EU now wants to weaken privacy protections to benefit ad-tech.
>On the contrary page two of the FAQ states "The design of the PA prompt differs from that of the ATT prompt for third-party app publishers."
The PA prompt is a voluntary (required in the EU?) prompt Apple shows requesting opt-in for personalzied ads. It is of course different from ATT because it doesn't involve third-parties whatsoever.
If Apple wanted, it could mirror Facebook's behavior (in the rest of the world) by not showing any PA prompt. This would greatly increase the number of people who are exposed to personalized ads from Apple's first-party ad network.
>The FAQ strongly implies that they did track across apps and websites, i.e. "draws on user data from its own ecosystem [which involves multiple apps and websites]",
It draws on data from Apple's first-party apps.
>Nothing in the FAQ supports that this was voluntarily and not required by law. In fact it strongly implies the opposite "the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the provisions of the ePrivacy Directive, in particular, require app publishers to obtain user consent for certain types of data processing" ... "Insofar as Apple requests consent to its own processing of user data for advertising purposes,"
My comment refers to Apple and app developer behavior in the rest of the world.
>Noting in the FAQ supports any of these claims.
That is my informed opinion based on following this story since the very beginning.
> It is of course different from ATT because it doesn't involve third-parties whatsoever. [and] It draws on data from Apple's first-party apps. [and] It draws on data from Apple's first-party apps.
Your original comment does not distinguish between multiple first and multiple third party apps. This is defending a comment you did not write. Regardless the FAQ you cite does not say whether or not Apple is collecting or aggregating with data from third party apps (just that it is not using the apple specific identifier for advertisers to do so) nor say that not doing so is why the PA prompt is different. And again it does not support your assertion that it is voluntary (in or out of the EU). So again your claim that page 1 of the faq supports all of your original comment is wrong - it supports literally none of it.
> My comment refers to Apple and app developer behavior in the rest of the world.
No, your comment explicitly refers to the behavior of Apple in its interactions with the german regulator, which is its behavior on germany, not the rest of the world.
>Your original comment does not distinguish between multiple first and multiple third party apps. This is defending a comment you did not write. Regardless the FAQ you cite does not say whether or not Apple is collecting or aggregating with data from third party apps nor say that is why the PA prompt is different. And again it does not support your assertion that it is voluntary (in or out of the EU). So again your claim that page 1 of the faq supports all of your original comment is wrong - it supports literally none of it.
That is what Apple says about their ad network and what they've said in communications with regulators. And if they were actually doing third-party tracking, that would actually be an instance of Apple being a hypocrite. The regulator would have had them dead to rights if that were the case. The regulator doesn't actually say Apple was doing that.
The quoted section from page 1 indeed says that Apple does not use the IDFA nor uses cross-company combination of data:
>Apple itself does not use the IDFA and cross-company data combination, but draws on user data from its own ecosystem – a wealth of data that is not available, in particular, to the large number of smaller app publishers. This is why Apple is not subject to the requirement of displaying an ATT prompt.
>No, your comment explicitly refers to the behavior of Apple in its interactions with the german regulator, which is its behavior on germany, not the rest of the world.
I wrote my comment and know what I was referring to and I clarified it in later comments. I'm sorry you misunderstood.
Your mistaken, words have meanings, I understood perfectly, I'm sorry you did not write the comment you meant to but intending to write something other than what you did does not mean you did so.
I don't really care about any of Apple's business partners being upset about their business terms with Apple. Developers want a bigger cut, banks want a bigger cut, Foxconn wants a bigger cut.
My interests as an Apple user are aligned with Apple. But even if I wasn't an Apple user, market forces determine what the "fair" cut is for everyone.