I find it hard to blame anyone for leaving any store when there has been almost nothing of value added in years and things are even regressing. That 30% should have gone a lot further
It's not really a market if the seller thinks there's no alternatives, and the buyer has no choice but to put up with anything. Works the other way around, too.
This misses the point. It is not equal. I choose Apple's store for one Very Big Reason over almost all other third-party services: I trust them with my financial details.
I don't have to 'beg' to later cancel my subscription. I don't have to worry about my credit card being stolen. I don't have to worry about a bunch of sophomoric engineers breaking their own website and creating grief for me.
I am in control with Apple. I prefer it. I am the customer.
I realize Netflix is no startup. I realize I may be paranoid and not even a fan of the Stripe madness that every two-bit startup uses.
But Netflix is still YAFS (Yet Another Friggin Subscription) that I have to manage on some other platform.
I prefer to have Apple be the "overseer" of even Netflix.
Would I cancel my Netflix subscription if I'm not at least provided the option of continuing my Apple management of their subscription? I'm leaning heavily toward it.
Don't be naive, everyone. This is more than just about the 30% cut. This is also about Netflix having a LOT of extra data on their customers they can't get within the Apple ecosystem.... home addresses, full names, credit card data, and possibly (yes, quiet possibly) cross-referencing that with other data providers to determine credit scores, income brackets, lifestyle choices, etc.
Why wouldn't' Netflix want a complete 'subscriber per zip code' breakdown. Yes, they could guesstimate it with IP addresses (and probably do), but now they could even say, "Hmmm... these subscribers appear to have 700 beacon scores, are single, and pay with a Titanium credit card. Surely, we could charge them more per month and they'd still pay. Or at least spam, er, offer them premium packages".
Not saying they don't have the right. Just as long as they don't say I don't have the right to stick with my Protective Shield of Apple.
After 2018 and all the data breaches the past two years, it's almost enough to want to pay cash for everything - or just bow out altogether. What little things I want to stay with, I prefer some 'middleman' that I can trust. Like Apple.
P.S. I am not an Apple Fanboy. But they are devoted to my privacy like no other Big tech company. So, they get my business. For now.
Am I the only one who is convinced Apple is focused on privacy because its cloud tech is really far behind Google and privacy was a path largely ignored in a data driven world? Don’t get me wrong—I like that they pursue the privacy angle but if the company’s strengths allowed them to compete with modern web/ads services companies, I think they would not have focused on privacy as much.
You'd be hard pressed to find any credible source for your conviction.
Apple's privacy stance is what Steve Jobs believed in, and what Tim Cook has stuck with, because they know that leaving privacy-based decisions up to third-party developers never ends well.
Here are excerpts from Jobs 2010 interview with Walt Mossberg [0]:
“Silicon Valley is not monolithic,” Jobs responded, “We’ve always had a very different view of privacy than some of our colleagues in the Valley.” Apple, for instance, does not leave it up to developers to decide whether to be dutiful about warning users that their apps are tracking their location data, instead forcing pop-ups on users to alert them that an app is tracking them, and to turn off that ability if they don’t want. “We do a lot of things like that, to ensure that people know what these apps are doing,” he added.
"Privacy means people know what they’re signing up for, in plain English, and repeatedly. I’m an optimist; I believe people are smart, and some people want to share more data than other people do. Ask them. Ask them every time. Make them tell you to stop asking them if they get tired of your asking them. Let them know precisely what you’re going to do with their data."
“A lot of people in the Valley think we’re really old-fashioned about this,” Jobs said in the interview, “And maybe we are, but we worry about stuff like this.”
Very good find, but SJ was using a slight-of-hand here. While true, privacy has always been a feature of Apple products, this was said during the Amazon iBooks lawsuit when Apple suddenly added this 30% in-app purchase restriction.
SJ was obsessed with control more than privacy and believed developers would make a mess of his beautiful iPhone. Every decision always started from that angle.
No, I believe privacy that we understand it today is wholly Tim Cook. This is his vision for Apple and how he wants to run the company. Good for him and it definitely plays better against Android.
as for your point, i don't think it was an either-or situation. i think both jobs and cook considered both control and privacy (among considerations like litigation, as you mention). jobs seemed more overtly a control freak though (not that that's always a bad thing).
I honestly don't expect to be able to cite any sources regarding Apple's decisions based on their level of transparency into their business.
It seems perfectly compatible for Jobs to make those statements about privacy after weighing the cost for Apple to implement robust cloud infrastructure and services, and (potentially) deciding Apple would just not compete in that space.
It's like Google finally conceding it won't be a social network, only not having wasted a ton of resources before pulling the plug. Actually, with their messaging apps being spun up and spun down, Google may still be in the midst of pulling.
> (I honestly don't expect to be able to cite any sources regarding Apple's decisions based on their level of transparency into their business.
If that's the case, wouldn't it be better to not, you know, not speculate? Anyone can come up with a plausible sounding reason for x once there is some evidence of y, but it doesn't change the underlying fact that it is all a conjecture -- drawing conclusion(s) from incomplete information.
I pointed you to information refuting your central claim but since you are not privy to salient information, saying nothing is much better than expanding on your conjecture.
I'm not sure where you're going with not speculating and "better". What is wrong with a conjecture? Aren't some conjectures out of the set of all conjectures going to be right?
Also, how is an interview complete information?
I also pointed out later that I don't see the information you provided as refuting what I said, but compatible with it. From your response, it seems reasonable to ask what refuting is happening here.
OK, here’s your original claim about what you were convinced about Apple’s strategy with respect to competition from web/ads companies like Google:
“Am I the only one who is convinced Apple is focused on privacy because its cloud tech is really far behind Google and privacy was a path largely ignored in a data driven world?”
I pointed to the explanation given in 2010 by the founder/CEO of Apple, regarding their stance on privacy — it was conceived because of the risk of third-party developers going rogue as has happened with Facebook/CambridgeAnalytica (even though Zuck was in the audience). Apple’s privacy position was taken independent of Google.
Google’s competitive advantage over Apple today wrt cloud tech comes from public-facing cloud infrastructure & expertise that was previously internal to Google — Google’s cloud advantage was completely non-existent back in 2010 when Jobs granted that interview.
In 2010, GCP didn’t really exist yet, developers/end users could only interact with sandboxed apps on App Engine; GCP was still in infancy, the market leader in cloud tech was and still is AWS.
Google’s main competitive advantage back then was in search, Apple recognized this and did not try to compete head-to-head with Google (like Yahoo! or Bing), or the way Google competed but failed against Facebook. (Apple would later go up against Google in maps.)
OTOH, Apple did try to compete head-to-head with Amazon using iBooks, but they shot themselves in the foot by colluding with publishers to raise prices.
I think there's some misunderstanding about what I'm saying, but unfortunately, I don't think clarification will make this discussion any more fruitful for either of us. I'm sorry, I think it's best for me to disengage for now.
> Apple's privacy stance is what Steve Jobs believed in, and what Tim Cook has stuck with, because they know that leaving privacy-based decisions up to third-party developers never ends well.
As opposed to leaving their API wide open so anyone could access anybodys photos and files? Hence, the fappening.
Apple is a marketing company, not a technology company.
I don't know if it's because they are behind in cloud tech, but I do believe their privacy stance can change as quickly as market changes. As soon as selling iphones or apps on the app store won't be enough, apple will have to change its business model. I'm not saying that making money out of the data they collect is what's gonna happen, but it's a possibility.
People learn about new things through two ways: through algorithmic recommendations, and through social media / real life social networks.
From what I can tell from recaptcha requests, Google still hasn’t figured out how to teach something to identify storefronts, bicycles, crosswalks, or traffic lights.
Apple doesn’t offer a consumer cloud, what they refer to as iCloud is just a SaaS similar to Dropbox. For their internal requirements they use both GCP and Azure IIRC.
Apple's privacy stance is based on the fact that they can make money just selling hardware. The recent news of 'pivot to services' suggests Apple's stance would loosen on privacy.
Most of Google's competitors would do well to focus on privacy, because that is one area in which Google will most likely not be able to outdo them. Google is likely to be better at machine learning or most other technical qualities of whatever products you're competing in. It still is, however, a data analytics company - that's where its main strength is, and that's what pays the bills. It will therefore be almost a guarantee that it will be worse in the privacy department than a competitor for whom that is not the case, so that's what they should capitalise on.
Even if that’s the case, rewarding Apple for that decision is still the right thing to do because in a free market, companies will make decisions where they earn the most money. If the company that out of selfish reasons is promoting privacy makes the most money, other companies will also shift to a more privacy oriented business model rather than business models which rely on selling people’s information.
Right, I would hope it encourages more consideration for privacy in other business as well. I wonder though if people with privacy concerns will turn to non-profits or other orgs instead of companies. For instance, lots of people on Hacker News will voice support for Firefox, but dish dirt on Brave or even Chromium.
That said, more consideration of privacy as part of product development practice in business, even if non-businesses may end up winning more from this, is a good thing.
Apple now controls aprox 10% of mobile marketshare and I believe most people consume most content on screens bigger than their iPhone which can also be used to sign up for Netflix.
Nobody much cares about Apple TV either.
Apple is taking a sizable chunk of revenue and they don't have enormous leverage.
Taking away Netflix from Apple users would hurt Apple more than Netflix and people will happily sign up on via their browser. It's not like Netflix is a fly by night org they have a similar rep to Apple because users don't make fine distinctions.
Apple will suck it up and any negative for Netflix will be a rounding error compared to the pile of cash saved.
Fair point, although I would bet that the share of Netflix customers using Apple devices is significantly higher than 10%. For one thing, in the US, iOS has more like a 45% share. For another, wealthier people are more likely to own iOS devices (worldwide), and I’m guessing they’re also likelier to be Netflix customers.
> But Netflix is still YAFS (Yet Another Friggin Subscription) that I have to manage on some other platform.
I prefer to have Apple be the "overseer" of even Netflix.
Would you pay 30% more via the App Store if given the choice?
I'm not the person you replied to, but yes. I can't think of many subscriptions I have that I wouldn't happily pay more for if it meant having one central place to manage them all, overseen by a company that I fully believe gives a shit about my privacy.
Other than the slightly obscure menu option to get to your list of subscriptions, how nice is the process to cancel an Apple subscription? Any of them – an app, Netflix, whatever.
The Netflix cancellation process is also 3 steps, for what it’s worth:
Click “more”
Click “account”
Click “cancel”
Off course, this isn’t the same as having a centralized location for managing all subscriptions, but at least in this case the cancellation process is the same number of steps.
We should consider one other party: your credit card provider.
I've always believed that they should be the ones providing subscription management, because scummy "hope they forget to cancel!" business practices exist offline too, so Apple could never become the central place for managing all of your subscriptions.
I vaguely feel like that would be even worse somehow.
It's strange. Sure I trust Visa and my bank with the literal fruit of my labour so far in life, but I don't think I could abide them knowing what exactly I use their financial tools to do (besides what little information a vendor chooses to share).
It probably doesn't make any difference in reality, but I just feel more comfortable with one party having full access to my funds but little to no information about how those funds are used, and another with all that usage information but little/easily revoked access to my funds.
Edit: I also think the current rigorous process around directly contesting transactions with your bank/card provider does more good than harm, and on contemplation wouldn't scrap it for ease of canceling subscriptions.
Funny you mention that. I have a friend who works as a 'think up interesting new products' person for one of Australia's big 4 banks. On their list of stuff to try is some way of centrally managing your subscriptions for you.
No idea how they'd pull it off – do you have to set up relationships with every provider, globally?! – but it's certainly an interesting idea. The number of subscriptions we have is only going in one direction.
One way of doing it is flagging all subscription payments as "requires me to give it the thumbs up each cycle otherwise the payment is declined or trigger a charge back". This would not require any integration with any service provider as you're simply declining any payments that weren't explicitly agreed to by the user.
A big bank has the muscle to attempt this, because most service providers would be too scared to let these transactions fail and send collections after people because having too many charge backs paints a target on your back and they could get booted off the network.
This generally lines up with my philosophy that all payments should be initiated by users on a one-off basis. It really shouldn't be too much hassle to approve every monthly recurring cost you have.
In terms of execution, I believe subscription charges are a distinct "type" of transaction.
I have a weird money management system that involves two bank accounts, one of which regularly can go down to a zero balance. When this happens, I rely on the bank to deny the transaction when I use my debit card, which they do—I have overdraft "protection" turned off—unless it's an autorenewing subscription. My bank has told me these types of transactions can't be blocked because they're considered pre-approved.
My point being, the credit card company knows which transactions are "subscriptions", so they should be able to provide you with a list. No provider relationship needed.
I used to have a Capital One card, and one thing I liked about it was that it sent me emails when my monthly charge from a company was higher than expected. This was especially helpful for Verizon/Comcast bills, which shot up unexpectedly on a few occasions.
If you look at the post I was responding to, it said "how nice is the process to cancel an Apple subscription". I was pointing out that it is no easier than canceling directly through Netflix.
If you block a payment with your bank or credit card the other end can attempt to charge you anyway. You can sometimes dispute and lose and still pay.
It also can trigger negative repercussions if you do have an ongoing relationship with the company, like IIRC Steam locks your whole account if you go that path on the basis that it indicates fraud to be blocked (not just that you wanted to cancel)
It's not uncommon for the terms to require an explicit cancellation. People who try to cancel gym memberships by just letting their payment card expire find this out when they get sent to collections.
Why is it naive to think they just simply want to keep $250 million a year for themselves? Find me a CEO in America who wouldn’t go for that option first
I agree with your point on need for a strong middleman that can look after interests of its customer and defend against greedy sellers who are after customer's data and money. I would love to see Apple expand its role further and spearhead initiatives to safeguard interests of buyers from behemoth internet service/product providers, something that we desperately need.
Not sure what I’m adding here, but I used to feel this way about PayPal and Amazon too. PayPal lost my loyalty years ago, Amazon I now run all products through a review checker and don’t buy clothes from them anymore
What do you use instead of PayPal? Just enter your credit card on every site you buy something from? Definitely curious, because Google Pay and Amazon Payments are the only alternatives I can think of and neither are as widely adopted as PayPall.
Be careful, a few fraudulent transactions and the teams would start thinking you're just trying to get out of paying your bills instead of helping you out.
Lots of banks have virtual cards now that you can generate for one time use or for subscription services with a dollar/expiration date limits. I highly recommend seeing if your bank has such a feature.
This is also about Netflix having a LOT of extra data on their customers
If you have a Netflix subscription in the first place, you've already given them a superset of what you've given Apple's app store, haven't you? (Aside from specific card details if you use a unique card for your Netflix payment.)
Still, it doesn't seem reasonable for Netflix to get 30% less revenue from users who happen to be using iOS. I guess the fairest thing for Netflix to do is to charge 40% more (so they get roughly the same amount after Apple takes their 30% cut) for people who sign up through Apple. That way, customers get the choice to go through Apple or not.
> I don't have to worry about my credit card being stolen.
I still think it's bizarre that you even have to authorise payment through the vendor you're buying from, rather than through your bank. This credit card-based payment system the internet accidentally foisted upon us is completely backwards.
According to Google Stripe was posted on HN 130 times in the last month. I'm guessing for someone who uses HN daily this might skew their world view to assume that Stripe is everywhere.
What is privacy is just their marketing selling point.
Apple did try ads and they failed. So they changed their business to something they can handle. Something even required by law through GDPR.
The most obvious prove was that Apple had insufficiently implemented GDPR according to a consumer organisation on the EU, a month after implementation. Where they surveyed all tech companies.
They love GDPR because they think it would hurt their competitors though
As long as Apple operates its services in china, I have no faith in ANY of their empty privacy promises. Publicly refusing to unlock phones and yet always allowing persistent backdoors used by anyone with 40k and a cell searching device is a nice way of turning their heads and proclaiming everything is fine.
> Don't be naive, everyone. This is more than just about the 30% cut. This is also about Netflix having a LOT of extra data on their customers they can't get within the Apple ecosystem.... home addresses, full names, credit card data, and possibly (yes, quiet possibly) cross-referencing that with other data providers to determine credit scores, income brackets, lifestyle choices, etc.
I am no developer of iOS, but I am quite sure that Apple gives this information to developers. I worked in a payment system for years and this kind of information is quite common to share with your API users. I think they're even obligated by law because you can't really have a monetary transfer without sharing more details between both parties involved (yeah, you also have more information about the seller when money is involved).
I mean, I don't see how Apple would share less information with Netflix, them say, Stripe itself. Of course Netflix has some more information about you because you're using their platform to make the payment, however about the payment data itself I would say the information they can get with both Apple or Stripe is similar [1].
[1]: Unless of course Netflix made their own payment system, that also would make sense considering their size. In this case they would have more information about you, like full Credit Card number instead of only the bin number of your Credit Card. However I don't think this would make my point much different.
While it's been a long time since I played in Apple's sandbox, I can tell you from experience in Google's that this is most certainly not how things work for your average app store developer.[1] The transaction is between the customer and the app store (i.e. Apple/Google) and the app store then acts as an intermediary telling your app if the user (effectively just a meaningless ID number from the App point of view) is authorized etc. About the only times a developer even knows that someone is a user of their app is when they need support or leave a review.
[1] There was a very brief period of time in the early days of Google supporting paid apps when some very limited customer information was provided (iirc, it was maybe email address and city level information) but that changed very quickly and I don't believe Apple ever provided this.
They did bend enough in 2011 to allow their customers to choose to share some limited information when subscribing to the digital version of a magazine.
>As for subscriber data, Apple will allow customers to provide publishers with name, e-mail and zip code information at the time of subscription. This is optional
It's not a market. It's like a shopping mall on a cruise ship—you chose to go on this cruise, and if you don't like dealing with the ship as a monopoly vendor, you can get off the ship and buy whatever you like from wherever.
Just because this cruise happens to be the nicest, most comfortable vessel in the sea doesn't mean you have a right to expect space to be reserved on the ship for competitor's stores.
Sure, but in the case of the cruise ship, you can just wait until the cruise is over and buy things at your usual store at home. So the analogy falls down at a pretty fundamental level. It's more like you're living in a company town, and there's no openly advertised non-black market alternatives to the company shops.
Yes, a company town is also a good analogy. Maybe even a better one, though it is a lot easier and cheaper to switch mobile platforms than it is to pick up your whole life. To expand your analogy, nothing stops you from owning homes in two different towns at the same time. (Nobody is forcing you to carry just one mobile phone, even though most people do.)
And in this company town, yes they own all the stores and playgrounds, but you can still get stuff delivered from anywhere. (All these phones have web browsers that give you unencumbered access to the wider internet. No you can't play Fortnite through a web browser, but you can't play football by mail-order either, so the analogy holds.)
(Nobody is forcing you to carry just one mobile phone, even though most people do.)
So now we're getting somewhere. This is the height of the wall around this particular walled garden. Now let me ask this: What percentage of the population would even consider owning two smartphones? That's how close to an idealized monopoly this walled garden is. So granted, it's not a monopoly in an idealized sense. But we now quantify how "monopolish" it is.
I used to carry 2 smart phones- one for work, one personal. I did it because my work phone was strictly monitored and I didnt want my company (or feds, namely SEC) reading my personal communications without a warrant just because it was on my work phone.
That said, I would not pay for 2 personal smartphones.
Imagine you live in a town with two similarly good cable TV providers. Each has a monopoly on selling HBO subscriptions through their particular service.
Most people have one cable TV subscription. Which means if you want HBO on your cable TV box, you can only subscribe through your current cable TV provider. You can call this a monopoly if you like, doesn't make it wrong or illegal.
> Most people have one cable TV subscription. Which means if you want HBO on your cable TV box, you can only subscribe through your current cable TV provider. You can call this a monopoly if you like, doesn't make it wrong or illegal.
It is, however, the exact reason for having network neutrality requirements.
It might be slightly easier, but there are still a big cost to switching phone platforms. You lose all the apps you have purchased over the years, and all the music as well. It isn't easy to just leave.
It would be like if the company town made you leave your clothes behind if you decide to leave.
> though it is a lot easier and cheaper to switch mobile platforms
Try telling that to your customers. "Yeah sure just sell your phone and buy an Android device to use our app". And having them use Safari? Yeah right. Apple doesn't even provide push notifications for web apps. Have you ever wondered why that is?
The fact is, if your customer has an iOS device, you must include Apple in the transaction and pay them 30%. And if you're a smaller developer there's no way they will let you get away with what Netflix and Epic have done. Oh you thought the review process was completely fair and impartial? Well, i've got some bad news about that too.
Seeing how websites have abused push notifications I don’t blame them. A happy medium would be only to allow push notifications for websites that the user has saved to their home screen.
That could work. Though i'd argue by now users know what they know what they are getting themselves into when accepting a push notification - and the notifications pane in settings for disabling them has been working just fine.
It would keep expectations more consistent. A website that was saved to the home screen would be a signal that the user wanted to treat it as an app. When they delete the website from their home screen, they would stop getting notifications. Apple could even manage website notifications in that case in the same settings screen as apps.
> The fact is, if your customer has an iOS device, you must include Apple in the transaction and pay them 30%
This is false.
What Netflix and Epic are doing is completely within the terms Apple has laid out. The only thing they can't do is direct their iOS app customers elsewhere for the purpose of a monetary transaction.
And it's not limited to big corps. There are countless examples of small developers doing the exact same thing. For example, I subscribe to 1Password for use on my iOS device, and Apple doesn't get a single cent of that subscription fee.
Except 1Password is a huge and very well known product, and it could be argued that the software takes places outside the app and therefore is exempt from IAP.
AgileBits are a very small private company with just one noteworthy product and fewer than 100 employees. Calling them "huge and very well known" is objectively absurd.
You're complaining about the experience from a developer, which is not what this analogy is about. No, Wal-Mart isn't allowed to run their own business in a company town.
As for push notifications—it's not surprising that Apple doesn't allow the HTTP version because it would be chaos for battery life. Besides, any website can offer a totally free native app that simply performs push notifications for your site. You don't need to give up 30% of anything to Apple for that.
As someone thats submitted over 50 apps to the app store over the last 8 yrs through my agency I disagree. Try submitting a "totally free native app that only performs push notifications for your site" and watch them immediately reject your app for not being "App-like enough". How do I know this? Because I've actually done it. Sorry but your idealistic opinions just don't reflect reality.
I've submitted a multitude of apps to the App Store as well. Of course Apple will reject it if you try to make it simply perform notifications—but exceeding that hilariously low bar is honestly not difficult for anyone with an ounce of creativity.
> As for push notifications—it's not surprising that Apple doesn't allow the HTTP version because it would be chaos for battery life.
Web push notifications use a browser-vendor-provided server to trigger notifications, the exact same architecture as APNS.
> Besides, any website can offer a totally free native app that simply performs push notifications for your site. You don't need to give up 30% of anything to Apple for that.
Iff you buy a Mac, pay their dev fees, rewrite your site as a native app, and put up with their review bullshit. That's not really an alternative to them supporting the standard.
Not only is it chaos for battery life, web push notifications are almost entirely spam. The web should have never added them in the first place. I’m glad that Apple stands against that crap.
Notifications are opt in. I actually find them useful for the news sites and blogs I care about. Forcing someone to make native app just to send notifications is wrong.
Exactly, I am sick of websites asking me to enable notifications. Apps asking me to allow notifications. At the end of the day, rarely is the app worthy of that sort of interruption. I've absolutely never seen a website that can justify. But they will still somehow notify you about enabling notifications. Companies have a delusional vision that their particular product is that important to their users. It isn't.
For many social media, dating, discussion forum apps where users want to be notified of DM's or replies to their threads push notifications is essential. Just because you don't think its valuable for you doesn't mean users shouldn't have the choice.
Social media has little value and hilariously enough dating apps are actually incredibly terrible with notifications. The average website or app though will annoy the fuck out you. Those have absolutely no need for implementing it. A notification to rate the app, a notification reminder to use the site, a notification to...
You listed the very limited set of notifications that are useful. and while there could be a couple more, everyone else should stop asking and doing it
Straight forward use case example: any web based messenger. But browser UI for the notification enable request has to be good. The one I know (Firefox) is terrible.
It's not really a market if the seller thinks there's no alternatives, and the buyer has no choice but to put up with anything. Works the other way around, too.