apple responds to hey controversy by insulting free app developers

[AlTech]

56 minutes ago, Kisai said:

Their store, their rules. Don't like it, there's the door.

 

If you are the only source of apps on a platform and you explicitly block people from sideloading then you have less of a right to say no to things. I would argue that if you block others from sideloading apps on your platform that you don't have the right to say no to any app or game that comes through.

 

56 minutes ago, Kisai said:

There is a stubborn level of arrogance from people who seem to think that a mobile phone should be as open as a PC, when the entire purpose of such app store walled gardens is for Apple to have control over the experience.

 

Doesn't change what a monopoly is and doesn't stop Apple's behaviour from being monopolistic.

 

56 minutes ago, Kisai said:

Start allowing side-loading, and you open up a huge pile of support issues from side-loaded software overwriting parts of the OS. Anyone who has ever used any desktop, laptop or server computer in any capacity has encountered this, and third party "package managers" love to stomp all over the OS like they own the place. One OS should designate one store/package management system and anything else that installs software on the OS should play by the OS's rules and be sandboxed so they depend on no third party libraries to be provided by the OS so it has no access to anything on the device without sharing a key between related software (eg Part 1 and Part 2 of a game, Microsoft Word and Excel)

Do you think that nobody should be in control of the devices they own?

[AlTech]

Just now, Arika S said:

Sure, but when the apple store is the ONLY store, then this argument falls apart. 

Exactly.

 

If Apple doesn't want sideloading then I have almost no problems with it in theory provided that Apple uniterally says yes to all apps and games and cannot disqualify or discriminate against any app or game.

[Bombastinator]

39 minutes ago, Salv8 (sam) said:

apple and arogant are always in the same sentence, it's a universal constant. like gravity.

“Arrogance” is a vague word.  It’s too often used as a stand in for “I don’t like X”. Doesn’t mean it’s not true in this case but the word is over used to the point that it becomes a red flag for “here lies BS” like “facist” or “Antifa” or any number of deeply unpleasant things.  There are real nazis. There is real antifa, there is real arrogance.  They tend to get over painted for the personal gain of the user often enough they lose their bite.

[spartaman64]

2 hours ago, Kisai said:

Their store, their rules. Don't like it, there's the door.

 

There is a stubborn level of arrogance from people who seem to think that a mobile phone should be as open as a PC, when the entire purpose of such app store walled gardens is for Apple to have control over the experience.

 

Start allowing side-loading, and you open up a huge pile of support issues from side-loaded software overwriting parts of the OS. Anyone who has ever used any desktop, laptop or server computer in any capacity has encountered this, and third party "package managers" love to stomp all over the OS like they own the place. One OS should designate one store/package management system and anything else that installs software on the OS should play by the OS's rules and be sandboxed so they depend on no third party libraries to be provided by the OS so it has no access to anything on the device without sharing a key between related software (eg Part 1 and Part 2 of a game, Microsoft Word and Excel)

 

well by the same logic if apple dosent like antitrust laws then they should just stop selling their devices in the EU then

[Kisai]

1 hour ago, AluminiumTech said:

 

If you are the only source of apps on a platform and you explicitly block people from sideloading then you have less of a right to say no to things. I would argue that if you block others from sideloading apps on your platform that you don't have the right to say no to any app or game that comes through.

 

To which I'd agree to that if there wasn't liability involved. You may as well said "allow all the underage content on the device". Apple should permit anything to be installed to the device as long as it doesn't circumvent the sandbox.

 

[spartaman64]

3 minutes ago, Kisai said:

To which I'd agree to that if there wasn't liability involved. You may as well said "allow all the underage content on the device". Apple should permit anything to be installed to the device as long as it doesn't circumvent the sandbox.

 

if thats true then windows and probably mac os and linux also would all be shut down by now

[Kisai]

1 minute ago, spartaman64 said:

if thats true then windows and probably mac os and linux also would all be shut down by now

Don't conflate the app store/package manager, with the people who willingly run anything on their device no matter where it comes from, legal or not.

 

[Bombastinator]

27 minutes ago, spartaman64 said:

well by the same logic if apple dosent like antitrust laws then they should just stop selling their devices in the EU then

Apple had their butts saved by antitrust laws in the 90’s.  They were a thin butt hair from going under.  When I was at school there were advertisement for people to buy Apple stock for a dollar not because anyone thought it would be worth anything but as a charity statement to help save the company. (Kinda wish I thew a couple Benjamin’s at em then  )  Microsoft had them beat good.  It was a long time ago though.

[spartaman64]

28 minutes ago, Kisai said:

Don't conflate the app store/package manager, with the people who willingly run anything on their device no matter where it comes from, legal or not.

 

you can install stuff not from the package manager on linux also. thats sort of the point of linux you know not being locked down. and why shouldnt people be allowed to run anything they want on their device

[Kisai]

1 hour ago, spartaman64 said:

you can install stuff not from the package manager on linux also. thats sort of the point of linux you know not being locked down. and why shouldnt people be allowed to run anything they want on their device

Yes, but if you compile it yourself, you are taking all the risks in verifying that it's not going to hose your machine. It's an insane pain in the ass to build a Linux distro from scratch because everything and their dog wants to do things their own way, which sounds fine in theory, but in practice it results in binaries going into:

/home/username/

/home/username/programname/

/home/username/programname/bin

/home/username/programname/lib

/bin

/lib

/usr/bin

/usr/local/bin

/opt/bin

/opt/lib

/usr/lib

/usr/sbin

/opt/programname/bin

/opt/programname/lib

 

and that doesn't include all the lib32/lib64 and bin32/bin64 directory possibilities. Then on Windows and OSX you have just straight up /Users/username/(anything)

 

Likewise installing binaries from "other distros" ends up with things in the wrong place, and rarely works without it's entire dependency chain. 

 

If you want to install something on an OS, you are already required to do it the way the OS wants you to not break things or make a mess of things, and the App store is no different. Fink and MacPorts do things their own way and you can only use one or the other. Use both and you have to install everything twice.

 

http://www.finkproject.org/

Quote

2019-10-02: 10.15 (Catalina) and Xcode11 information

Fink 0.45.0 and up support the upcoming 10.15 release, but there are some important things to note:

• Apple locked down the / (root) directory where Fink normally installs (in /sw by default), so existing Fink installs may become read-only upon updating to 10.15.

 

[wanderingfool2]

6 hours ago, Kisai said:

Again. Apple's store. Apple's Rules. Apple can throw anyone out of it's store, for any reason it wants. Apple wants specific kinds of software to work consistently across the device, and that's just "too much effort" for some developers. 

Antitrust laws exist for a reason, and especially with statements like what was said by Apple, and given that fact that Apple created these rules after getting market dominance.

 

Apple generated more revenue than Android, which does make them a market leader (and it does limit what rules they can effectively put in).  Similar to the price fixing for e-books [they used their market dominance to unjustly increase prices, and they had to settle].

 

It's not the "too much effort" for some developers, it's that people expect an app to exist on the iPhone, and Apple knows that and is using their dominance to demand a really high %.  Remember, when Apple originally introduced the new "rules" they had actually also forbid increasing prices for people paying with it (which had Apple not backed down, would have meant higher prices overall everywhere as companies having to increase their prices to compete).

 

It should also be noted, Apple in the past has also used the rules to kill apps that they competed against (using a button for the camera...they literally kicked out an App that used it stating something along the lines of "you cannot use this because it's dedicated for the volume control"...and then miraculously Apple came out with an update on their Camera app that did the same thing).

 

Apple may "make" the rules, but if they set out rules, they have to follow them consistently (without giving exceptions to larger players) otherwise those rules could be viewed as an abuse of power.

[kpluck]

8 hours ago, mr moose said:

If I can't install whatever app I want without apples blessing then I don;t own the device.

That statement is just silly. Missing a feature has nothing to do with device ownership and yes, being able to install whatever app you want is just a feature plain and simple. Everyone knows that feature is missing before they buy an iPhone. If you don't like not having that feature buy an Android phone. Easy enough to do since Apple doesn't have a  monopoly on smartphones.

 

-kp

[xtroria]

1 hour ago, huilun02 said:

Those app devs should just abandon Apple

Except the fact that apple users generate way larger revenue for companies and devs.

 

So much so that google writes checks to apple so they can become the main search engine for siri.

 

If google wants to neuter apple, they could've pulled their apps from iOS to promote android. The fact google still makes app for iOS means the user base of iOS is that valuable for google and absence of google in iOS can threaten google's market share.

[mr moose]

1 hour ago, kpluck said:

That statement is just silly. Missing a feature has nothing to do with device ownership and yes, being able to install whatever app you want is just a feature plain and simple. Everyone knows that feature is missing before they buy an iPhone. If you don't like not having that feature buy an Android phone. Easy enough to do since Apple doesn't have a  monopoly on smartphones.

 

-kp

It's not a feature.  That's an apple marketing ploy to make you believe you haven't been sold a lemon.

 

When apple control what software you can install then you don't control it.  PERIOD.

 

[Video Beagle]

2 hours ago, mr moose said:

When apple control what software you can install then you don't control it.  PERIOD.

So..do you own a playstation? A switch? Xbox?

[suicidalfranco]

17 minutes ago, Video Beagle said:

So..do you own a playstation? A switch? Xbox?

No you don't.

Still anti consumer behaviour

Doesn't justifies Apple's behaviour

Two wrongs don't make a right.

 

[mr moose]

29 minutes ago, Video Beagle said:

So..do you own a playstation? A switch? Xbox?

Nope,  what we have are secondhand consoles that people have given us, I have not paid a cent for any console and i have never bought a console game brand new, they have always been $5 jobs from private sellers. 

 

And just so you know, other companies being shit doesn't excuse from being shit and it certainly doesn't mean they aren't shit.  If you don't learn how to say no to shit behavior then you are going to be treated like shit the rest of your life. 

 

It's fucking bad enough that I only have two choices for a mobile phone, one that tracks me and the other that wants to charge me excessive prices to tell me how I can use the thing (both repair and apps) without the constant defending of either of them for it. 

[Arika]

5 hours ago, Video Beagle said:

So..do you own a playstation? A switch? Xbox?

you can purchase games from a large number of physical stores, digital codes from numerous online retailers, or from the console built-in store. not the same thing

[suicidalfranco]

3 hours ago, Arika S said:

you can purchase games from a large number of physical stores, digital codes from numerous online retailers, or from the console built-in store. not the same thing

still the same thing, what ever is allowed to run on them is determined by their respective manufacturer 

[Bombastinator]

3 hours ago, Arika S said:

you can purchase games from a large number of physical stores, digital codes from numerous online retailers, or from the console built-in store. not the same thing

Physical stores are clearly going the way of the dodo though. 

[Kisai]

6 minutes ago, valdyrgramr said:

Well, unless you're pirating or cheating MS doesn't care what you do with the XBOX in terms of SW.   Phil Spencer is impressed with modification, sideloading, and so on.   He feels MS's way is better, but he won't stop you from doing legal and what not mods.   Nintendo has always been super anal about legality this and that, and even have a page over it.   As for Sony, they're kinda bipolar on the matter ever since Bleem was a thing.   But like, say you own a PS2 and rip the bios from it to run an emulator on your computer, they don't care.   Pirating the bios then yes they do care.

None of them permit modding. Xbox has always had a legitimate way to side-load software because you can put their consoles into development mode without paying Microsoft to be developer, just like you can with iOS and Android devices. You can not do this with the Playstation or Switch.

 

Nintendo's lack of sympathy for pirates is entirely reasonable because mods for their consoles and flash carts are entirely for the purpose of piracy. Home-brew for any of these consoles didn't exist until the consoles were off the market, and both the pirates and Nintendo know this. If Nintendo didn't crack down on pirates, third party developers wouldn't bother with their console. The same goes for Microsoft and Sony.

 

Sony on the other hand, mods for their consoles were the only way to play imports without importing a console as well, and when it costs $50 to mod a console vs $800 to import one, you're likely going with the mod option.

 

With the move to getting away from optical drives in the upcoming generation of consoles, this is going to flip the problem on it's head, where countries with high piracy rates (like Australia) and the laws support modding and parallel imports, will just not get physical releases at all.

 

As for if Apple is a monopoly or not, it's not, and it depends several metrics.

- Devices sold, Apple sells only premium devices unlike samsung and lg which also sell garbage.

- Profit, Apple's rules against sideloading are entirely why this is the case. If you could side load software, then you could pirate software, and the "most profitable" games are full of rubbish client-sided P2W things that on Android versions are typically just hacked to have 4.7 billion of the premium currency points and you never have to pay for it at all. There is an entire market out there to pirating "Free" games and modding them so they don't need the google store so they can be used on bluestacks/memu without being tracked by google or the developer.

- Market share, as reported by wireless carriers. This of course is a metric that is a responsibility of the wireless carriers. If Verizon wanted to, they could sell nothing but iPhones to give their brand a premium polish, and that would increase Verizon and Apple's market share in some markets where the iPhone is considered affordable. But in most cases the store themselves are incentivized by commissions, and they get larger commissions on selling the worst phones.

 

[Kisai]

58 minutes ago, valdyrgramr said:

  Like when all those PS3s were running as a cluster by the airforce like 10 years ago they loved it, but when people were using the PS3 to run Linux they stopped this ability.

The PS3 had a legitimate Linux distro published by Sony. It was removed in later models not because Sony wanted to be evil, but because nobody seriously used it for that, and it was only used as a way to play pirated games outside of one or two examples of non-gaming uses. This is the proverbial "see people only mod their console to play pirated games, because when we offered them a legitimate way to homebrew, nothing came of it."

 

[Kisai]

30 minutes ago, valdyrgramr said:

Well, I know there was OtherOS, assuming that was theirs, but there were a few others like Yellow Dog.   I won't fault Sony if it became a piracy problem as that's a legit thing, but I have more of a problem with Nintendo doing it because everything they're not okay with is illegal even if it is actually legal.   They will contradict laws in countries on their legal pages, and tell you that your view is wrong then try to sue you.   But, Sony has done that just not as bad as Nintendo.   Going back to Bleem they didn't exactly steal anything on the copyrighted level and Sony was ruled against in that case because of it.   To be fair, I'd still fault Sony if they were suing a company over a hypothetical scenario like I did with Nintendo there.   It's one thing to ask them not to because of a piracy concern, but suing a company over a hypothetical is shitty.

Mod chips are literately marketed at people to play "backups" , aka, pirate copies. Nobody has the means to make these backups except pirates, who spend lots of extra money in acquiring cd/dvd-rom/blueray drives that can read said discs. With the Nintendo handhelds, these are all specialty copier devices that have ONLY one use, to play copied games from other people who made backups of theirs with the same device.

 

In particular that Switch mod, entire intent is to make it so Nintendo can't tell you're playing pirated games.

 

Anything done to a console to enable homebrew, enables piracy. But Nintendo, Sony, etc also overstate how common piracy is. Most people are not willing to spend $500 on a modified console, that can not be repaired or replaced and can only play pirated games, not legal ones.

[mr moose]

I'm not sure how console issues legitimatizes apple being anti consumer.   I think since I was asked if I own a console,  all we have established is that consoles can also have some issues that maybe need to be dealt with at a consumer law level.

 

 

[Kisai]

17 minutes ago, valdyrgramr said:

Actually, there are legal methods and countries have different laws on the matter.   These companies cannot contradict federal laws of a country for one, which Nintendo does constantly.   Sony was guilty of this in the Bleem! case as well.   You can use these modchips for other aspects that are legal too, and you cannot sue people over hypotheticals either regardless of the marketing.   A gun maker could sell a gun and say it's the best weapon for killing a human, but that doesn't mean the buyer purchasing it will be using it for a criminal act.   Sony and Nintendo, not sure about MS on this one, both have tried to sue makers of gamesharks, AR, game genie, and so on for what they do aka creating game saves, cheats, and allowing you to use them.   Modchips can be used for that to, and to get around region locking.   Both lost those court battles.   If ripping from your own device was illegal in the US then Stone Age Gamer wouldn't be able to sell the devices that they do.   But, nothing is stopping them from doing so on the legal side.   Now, hypothetically you could borrow a copy owned by another person then rip it, which is illegal, but that's a hypothetical scenario.   That doesn't mean the device would be used for something illegal.

Let's stop dealing in hypotheticals here. The fact is that the entire purpose of the modchip/copiers is to play pirated games, and the amount of actual homebrew software out there is next to nil, and since there's no way to play the software legitimately, it's an entirely pointless thing to invest in unless you are engaging primarily in piracy.

 

The iPhone and the Nintendo Switch or PS4 have the same thing in common, they control their stores, and they don't want people side-loading content to play pirate software. That is a very simple, easy to see fact.

 

Microsoft's entire history has been to take advantage of these kinds of shortcomings and offer their "open" platform that anyone can use and anyone can develop, and thus when Android tried to use the same playbook, it blew up in Microsoft's face, and then Google's. Nobody wants to use the Microsoft store, and nobody who wants to make money puts their app on the Google store. Microsoft could turn around and require all software to be UWP going forward, but that would just put more incentive for something to take Microsoft's place. Adobe and Autodesk, in the mean time can operate their own stores, and charge people whatever they want, and people still shun free alternatives because that's not what their clients require.

 

There's no Microsoft Phone. Microsoft's attempt at the phone blew up in their face when they decided to dump Windows CE/Mobile which was the #2 option behind Blackberry arguably worse to use, but adopted-by-enterprise. So try tried to push a nerfed windows product on everyone, and everyone hated it on the desktop, and pretty much doomed Microsoft from ever producing another device with their Metro UI. Google' was gunning for blackberry's business with an equally ugly product, but Apple beat them to punch without even marketing the iPhone as a blackberry replacement, It was simply a better product and what Google and Microsoft offered were terrible experiences.

 

So suffice it to say, Apple has done everything in the name of protecting their brand and ignored "smarter" people who wanted to expand the brand onto poorer performing devices just to hold market share, and tacky luxury products to get celebrities to wear it. If the smarter investors were in charge of Apple, you would see $100 iPhones that only run email/text-messaging software, and $50000 Tiffany & Co models made with silver and diamonds. Neither were required to get people to buy the iPhone brand. At this point, Apple is sitting exactly where it wants to, and the Android rubbish compete for the scraps of profit, while the manufacturers and wireless companies make larger profits just selling the rubbish-tier devices to people who don't know better because they get large commissions to.

 

You can only buy your way into #1 until people realize your hardware is trash, and more recognized brand is what people actually want, and any lie you tell yourself that you are selling a good product collapses under the weight of evidence to the contrary. 

 

Google vs Oracle is STILL not finished.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_v._Oracle_America