Right...because there are no costs to running its App Store, or the development of the products that the App Store runs on and make it actually useful to someone. None at all.
Laws are meant to protect us all from predatory behavior.
And Apple is doing nothing predatory. It says, "We have an App Store. Here are the rules. Come use it and make yourself some money, or not."
Apple is not selling life's essentials. We're talking about convenient or entertainment applications running on a pocket computer costing hundreds of dollars. It's a fucking luxury by any standard! They're hardly preying on anybody. No one is going to die if they don't have Spotify on their iPhone, or even if they don't have an iPhone at all! No one has a gun to anyone's head threatening to kill them if they don't develop something for Apple's App Store or buy Apple's products.
Spotify's argument is essentially, "Apple's prices are so low that we can't compete in the market for luxury goods for entitled people." FIRST WORLD PROBLEM if there ever was one!
When you ask Siri to play a song, it will always open in Apple Music. There is no way to tell it to use Spotify instead.
Oh well boo fucking hoo.
You don't have to use Siri to play a song. I don't. I play songs with my iPhone all the time too. I have Siri completely disabled.
This is a feature issue for those who buy the fucking phone. Don't like how it works? Then by all means, complain to Apple.
It's not a feature issue for a 3rd party app developer. Don't like how the platform works? Then go to another platform. Apple isn't collecting piles of money from you just to have access to the platform. It is virtually free to have access. You only get charged real money if you make sales. And guess what? If you're making sales, it is because the people who are SPENDING THE MONEY are sufficiently satisfied with the situation to spend the money and enrich the app developer.
> The problem is that Apple carved out a monopoly position...
I think this is the crux of the argument: does Apple have a monopoly? If so, a monopoly of what? Mobile operating systems? Music distribution systems? Mobile payment systems? It really is unclear what is the basis for the "monopoly" accusation.
It is because people are confusing "monopoly" with "vertical integration.
The only thing Apple has a monopoly on is making its own products. Those products include hardware (phones, computers, tablets, media streamers, etc.), controller software required to make THOSE products minimally work out of the box (OS X, iOS, tvOS, etc.), and applications to allow people to do something useful with those products (a browser, a messaging app, etc.).
Besides all of that, it also created a mechanism (App Store) for third parties to benefit from hardware that Apple sells to its customers. This increases the usefulness of Apple's hardware to its customers, and, presumably, allows Apple to sell more hardware to those customers.
Apple doesn't not sell hardware for the purpose of enriching 3rd parties, who are not Apple's customers. If THOSE people want to have access to Apple's customers, they pay Apple for that access. If they are unhappy with that arrangement, they are welcome to try to reach those customers another way, or pursue other avenues to enrich themselves.
Similarly, a head hunter doesn't provide access to its rolodex of job-seekers for free. If it makes a connection between a employer and an employee, it gets paid.
Not only is it sarcasm, its wrong and stupid. Car manufacturers don't make all the parts for their cars. And aside from the Benz Patentmotorwagen probably never have. Cars have many parts suppliers behind them, Delco, Bosch and Denso to name a few off the top of my head.
Apple doesn't make parts for its phones. All that shit comes from some 3rd party manufacturer. Phones have many parts suppliers behind them too.
Apple shall be dictator and arbitrager of any decision concerning Apples bottom line.
That is pretty much the gist of it. If you don't like that, you are free not to buy Apple's products, or use its App Store. Go somewhere else where you can be more successful.
Maybe auto manufacturers should not be allowed to sell parts for the cars they produce either. I mean, it is TOTALLY anti-competitive to allow them to make BOTH the cars AND the parts required to repair those cars. I mean, WTF???
Apple makes a phone and sells music services on it.
Spotify could make a phone and sell music services on it too. But instead, it wants to JUST sell its music services, and ride on the coattails of someone else who bothers to make the hardware to make that possible.
On a related note...Spotify of course doesn't make the music either. It is just a middle man. It wants to connector creators and consumers, and charge a Spotify tax to SOMEBODY (either users who pay, or advertise), to make use of its marketplace. Sound familiar?
Did they happen to indicate the quota distribution for the various groups of people that need to be catered to?
For example - of the 1000 high schools, how many of them are targeted to be primarily or majority black kids? What about hispanic kids? How many of them will be affluent schools?
Did they release how many gay children will receive scholarships or internships? How many of the students will be female, or female-like in gender?
Lastly - what we really want to know, are they going to exclude Asian and white kids from receiving scholarships or internships, since, you know, they're already over-represented in the useful arts?
You know, they are not stupid. You can bet that if you want to file a claim, you have to provide not only proof that you bought a ticket, but prove that it went unused.
By a similar token, if you crash your car and it is totaled out, you donâ(TM)t get to just keep the car. You either sign it over to the insurance company or buy it back at a price they agree to.
Also new contenders know they are price competing against bots, if you enter the market undercutting a bot, the other bots are going to price match you in milliseconds, no customers are even going to see the window of time where you were cheaper, everyone's going to be the same price always, and by dropping the price you just threw away everyone's profit for no benefit.
That opens the door to a new game. Consumers deliberately crashing the market. A consumer can open up a new store and advertise items at a steep discount, never intending to actually ship anything. Such a store could even take orders and refund them "later". By refunding HIS customers when he can't ship, hey, no harm, no foul there. In the meantime - if other stores match that price, then the consumer could buy product from THOSE stores at the discounted price and get some quality stuff, for cheap. In other words, take advantage of robotic price watching to manipulate the market on the items he wants to buy.
Yes - there are ways to counter this too, nevertheless, it would be successful for at least some period of time - probably long enough to be worth doing if you had a lot of money to spend on stuff you wanted and were organized about it.
1). File a buy/sell plan on the first business day of the year. The plan must indicate, by transaction type (buy/sell), amount of stock and transaction date, all of their transactions for that calendar year. Make such plans irrevocable after being filed.
2). Require a 120 day lead time on all transactions, and make them irrevocable once declared.
Do that, and they will have to get a lot more complicated about their insider trading schemes.
Slashdot Mirror
You can sell apps for the iPhone without paying a single fraction of a penny to Apple.
Your customers may have issues installing the app on their phones, however.
So, Apple is keeping 95% of that 30%, at least.
Right...because there are no costs to running its App Store, or the development of the products that the App Store runs on and make it actually useful to someone. None at all.
Laws are meant to protect us all from predatory behavior.
And Apple is doing nothing predatory. It says, "We have an App Store. Here are the rules. Come use it and make yourself some money, or not."
Apple is not selling life's essentials. We're talking about convenient or entertainment applications running on a pocket computer costing hundreds of dollars. It's a fucking luxury by any standard! They're hardly preying on anybody. No one is going to die if they don't have Spotify on their iPhone, or even if they don't have an iPhone at all! No one has a gun to anyone's head threatening to kill them if they don't develop something for Apple's App Store or buy Apple's products.
Spotify's argument is essentially, "Apple's prices are so low that we can't compete in the market for luxury goods for entitled people." FIRST WORLD PROBLEM if there ever was one!
Why not log on and make your comment?
Because registrations suck.
When you ask Siri to play a song, it will always open in Apple Music. There is no way to tell it to use Spotify instead.
Oh well boo fucking hoo.
You don't have to use Siri to play a song. I don't. I play songs with my iPhone all the time too. I have Siri completely disabled.
This is a feature issue for those who buy the fucking phone. Don't like how it works? Then by all means, complain to Apple.
It's not a feature issue for a 3rd party app developer. Don't like how the platform works? Then go to another platform. Apple isn't collecting piles of money from you just to have access to the platform. It is virtually free to have access. You only get charged real money if you make sales. And guess what? If you're making sales, it is because the people who are SPENDING THE MONEY are sufficiently satisfied with the situation to spend the money and enrich the app developer.
Musicians are free to choose a different publisher/music store. iOS app devs are locked into 1 store.
Yes, but they are not locked into being iOS app devs. They are free to develop software for any other platform that interests them.
> The problem is that Apple carved out a monopoly position ...
I think this is the crux of the argument: does Apple have a monopoly? If so, a monopoly of what? Mobile operating systems? Music distribution systems? Mobile payment systems? It really is unclear what is the basis for the "monopoly" accusation.
It is because people are confusing "monopoly" with "vertical integration.
The only thing Apple has a monopoly on is making its own products. Those products include hardware (phones, computers, tablets, media streamers, etc.), controller software required to make THOSE products minimally work out of the box (OS X, iOS, tvOS, etc.), and applications to allow people to do something useful with those products (a browser, a messaging app, etc.).
Besides all of that, it also created a mechanism (App Store) for third parties to benefit from hardware that Apple sells to its customers. This increases the usefulness of Apple's hardware to its customers, and, presumably, allows Apple to sell more hardware to those customers.
Apple doesn't not sell hardware for the purpose of enriching 3rd parties, who are not Apple's customers. If THOSE people want to have access to Apple's customers, they pay Apple for that access. If they are unhappy with that arrangement, they are welcome to try to reach those customers another way, or pursue other avenues to enrich themselves.
Similarly, a head hunter doesn't provide access to its rolodex of job-seekers for free. If it makes a connection between a employer and an employee, it gets paid.
No, they could not reasonably make their own phone. Without access to someone else's app store, it would be dead in the water
Really?
What App Store did Apple have access to when it made its own phone? Oh yeah, that's right! It made its OWN phone and its OWN app store.
It is egregious that no one but GM is allowed make GM products. I mean, GM has a total monopoly on making GM products! That's so unfair!!
It is ridiculous for a court to decide what should be included with an OS and what should not be included with an OS.
If someone wants to include web browser capability in an OS, the court should pretty much just fuck off.
Apple has one of the two biggest app markets. They use that to help their apps. Spotify does not own an app market.
Apple owns an app market because it created one for itself. Spotify is free to do the same.
Fair competition should allow for Spotify either use Apple as a service to sell their app *OR* compete with Apple's app.
What they should not be forced to do is both use Apple as a service and compete with their app and that is what is wrong here.
Spotify isn't forced to deal with Apple AT ALL. It is free to ignore Apple entirely.
because Apple leverages the market to make it more affordable.
And the very last thing consumers want is for something to be more affordable.
Not only is it sarcasm, its wrong and stupid. Car manufacturers don't make all the parts for their cars. And aside from the Benz Patentmotorwagen probably never have. Cars have many parts suppliers behind them, Delco, Bosch and Denso to name a few off the top of my head.
Apple doesn't make parts for its phones. All that shit comes from some 3rd party manufacturer. Phones have many parts suppliers behind them too.
Apple shall be dictator and arbitrager of any decision concerning Apples bottom line.
That is pretty much the gist of it. If you don't like that, you are free not to buy Apple's products, or use its App Store. Go somewhere else where you can be more successful.
What was Apple's chance of going up against everyone else in the mobile world? Hint: it was given virtually no chance of success at all.
Maybe auto manufacturers should not be allowed to sell parts for the cars they produce either. I mean, it is TOTALLY anti-competitive to allow them to make BOTH the cars AND the parts required to repair those cars. I mean, WTF???
p.s: for the stupid, yes, that is sarcasm.
Apple makes a phone and sells music services on it.
Spotify could make a phone and sell music services on it too. But instead, it wants to JUST sell its music services, and ride on the coattails of someone else who bothers to make the hardware to make that possible.
On a related note...Spotify of course doesn't make the music either. It is just a middle man. It wants to connector creators and consumers, and charge a Spotify tax to SOMEBODY (either users who pay, or advertise), to make use of its marketplace. Sound familiar?
Americans were also invented by the English, so it's OK.
Did they happen to indicate the quota distribution for the various groups of people that need to be catered to?
For example - of the 1000 high schools, how many of them are targeted to be primarily or majority black kids? What about hispanic kids? How many of them will be affluent schools?
Did they release how many gay children will receive scholarships or internships?
How many of the students will be female, or female-like in gender?
Lastly - what we really want to know, are they going to exclude Asian and white kids from receiving scholarships or internships, since, you know, they're already over-represented in the useful arts?
Words of a guy who never got much shore leave.
I am glad Wal-Mart exists. It keeps all the people that shop there from going to where I shop.
I will gladly pay more to shop elsewhere.
That is why I said to buy their stock low and sell it high.
You know, they are not stupid. You can bet that if you want to file a claim, you have to provide not only proof that you bought a ticket, but prove that it went unused.
By a similar token, if you crash your car and it is totaled out, you donâ(TM)t get to just keep the car. You either sign it over to the insurance company or buy it back at a price they agree to.
Also new contenders know they are price competing against bots, if you enter the market undercutting a bot, the other bots are going to price match you in milliseconds, no customers are even going to see the window of time where you were cheaper, everyone's going to be the same price always, and by dropping the price you just threw away everyone's profit for no benefit.
That opens the door to a new game. Consumers deliberately crashing the market. A consumer can open up a new store and advertise items at a steep discount, never intending to actually ship anything. Such a store could even take orders and refund them "later". By refunding HIS customers when he can't ship, hey, no harm, no foul there. In the meantime - if other stores match that price, then the consumer could buy product from THOSE stores at the discounted price and get some quality stuff, for cheap. In other words, take advantage of robotic price watching to manipulate the market on the items he wants to buy.
Yes - there are ways to counter this too, nevertheless, it would be successful for at least some period of time - probably long enough to be worth doing if you had a lot of money to spend on stuff you wanted and were organized about it.
Require all eligible employees to EITHER:
1). File a buy/sell plan on the first business day of the year. The plan must indicate, by transaction type (buy/sell), amount of stock and transaction date, all of their transactions for that calendar year. Make such plans irrevocable after being filed.
2). Require a 120 day lead time on all transactions, and make them irrevocable once declared.
Do that, and they will have to get a lot more complicated about their insider trading schemes.
Maybe they encrypted it all and the guy with the password died, and now they're all fucked because they can't hack into it.
Iâ(TM)m sure that if you read the contract you would find that would be fraud.