It's super weird people are bitter about things that happened almost two decades ago. Much less there was no war. I think Ballmer said some mean words about Linux and Microsoft sued Lindows for infringement and won. After the rename to Linspire Microsoft actually worked with them on compatibility. The whole Windows v Linux "war" is completely contrived by some fans of Linux as some holy war.
That completely glosses over the actual behaviour of Microsoft, and ignoring the kinds of career, business, project, and reputational damage those tactics did.
MS’s attacks on open source, open formats, and free software impacted and still impact democracies, developing nations, general computing capabilities, and create vast market inefficiencies. Looking at it as pure tech misses the forest for the trees. The corruption of the Office OpenXml process alone is a daily pox on the developing world. The tax impact of those entanglements is recurrent, and frequently hurts education and healthcare.
Also: if someone got burnt by some industry jerks and have had to deal with the fallout for decades, “it was 20 years ago” completely misstates the problem. Some BS was started 20 years ago, sure, but with daily crap-bowls that needed to be eaten every day in between. Entire careers have fallen into those cracks, armies of IT staff forced into suboptimal and broken workflows to satisfy decisions based on establishing and abusing monopolies.
Breaking a spine, even years and years ago, impacts the every day. Bitterness can be well deserved with an understanding of what was lost.
> As early as 2002, a court rejected Microsoft's claims, stating that Microsoft had used the term "windows" to describe graphical user interfaces before the product, Windows, was ever released, and the windowing technique had already been implemented by Xerox and Apple many years before.[4] Microsoft kept seeking retrial, but in February 2004, a judge rejected two of Microsoft's central claims.[5] The judge denied Microsoft's request for a preliminary injunction and raised "serious questions" about Microsoft's trademark. Microsoft feared a court may define "Windows" as generic and result in the loss of its status as a trademark.
> In July 2004, Microsoft offered to settle with Lindows.[6] As part of this licensing settlement, Microsoft paid an estimated US$20,000,000 (equivalent to $33,294,574 in 2024), and Lindows transferred the Lindows trademark to Microsoft and changed their name to Linspire.
> completely contrived by some fans of Linux
I mean there are absolutely some fanboy fantasies of grandeur here but I don't think it's the "fans of Linux" who are delusional mate.
I agree that the early days when every app was a single purchase and the prices were much higher it made more sense. A lot of people got rich from the App Store. So 30% wasn't a huge piece when you were seeing consistent growth every year in the user base.
I think the most annoying thing is how unevenly the policy is applied. Some megacorps pay the 30% and others like Amazon get sweetheart deals. So it unfortunately comes down to who benefits more. If you have something Apple really wants then they will cut a deal. But if not then you pay the high tax. They've at least cut it down somewhat for smaller devs and teams, but the whole industry needs to change. IAP/Subscriptions shouldn't just inherit the pricing systems of old.
I have a feeling Tim is just going to tank the Trump stuff and then peace out next admin so he gets all the blame. Much like Ive and Dye have been.
> I think the most annoying thing is how unevenly the policy is applied. Some megacorps pay the 30% and others like Amazon get sweetheart deals.
I agree, there were deals down to 15% I think (maybe lower) but I don't think that's still happening? I mean, Netflix finally gave up but only after increasing their IAP fee to cover the difference for many years. I might be behind the times on this but I didn't think they still had better cuts for larger corporations. I do know not all developers are treated the same (see Meta still being on the app store after all the shenanigans they pulled with enterprise certs, or Uber), and that does suck. It means that if you are big enough you can break the rules while an indie dev can have everything taken due to an automated system or mistake, even when it's not their fault.
> I have a feeling Tim is just going to tank the Trump stuff and then peace out next admin so he gets all the blame. Much like Ive and Dye have been.
I agree that's likely, though the thought of him staying till the "end" of that is not attractive.
Apple and the contracted company are very very unlikely to tell you they have a secret contract for lower prices in effect unless they are forced to under court disclosure.
Oh, I 100% agree. I was wrong, I thought they got in trouble for doing that but I think I am only remembering things that came out in discovery for the Epic case, which didn’t center on that or prevent Apple from having such arrangements.
Yep, the tax comes from using the Patreon's in-app purchase system. Using a browser on an iPhone/iPad or any other device will not be taxed. Seen many creators putting in their bios suggesting people use the browser instead of the in app purchase.
Patreon fought this for a while but Apple has all the leverage unfortunately.
As is the case with many mass layoffs. AI just makes a good reason to claim. It makes you look progressive to investors and it doesn't make you look bad to the public. If AI didn't exist it would be some other excuse to spin this as a positive for the company and not bad for the affected workers.
This isn't about the small group of people who lack self control. It's about the vast majority that can use something responsibly. Most people can consume alcohol and gamble without giving their lives to it.
Not to mention this presupposes that social media addiction is rampant. But there isn't a scientific consensus on that. This lawsuit reads like scaremongering of the past around television and comic books. Instead of regulating content or user privacy we get these dog and pony shows.
Another day another "hey guys I switched Linux" post gets pushed to the top of the heap. These add nothing except create an echo chamber about great Linux is and Windows is the worst.
A growth of 4% over 20 years is not an increasing rate. And yes, 4% marketshare is microscopic. macOS has a bigger share but you wouldn't say macOS is massive. Posts like this are cheerleading OS's because everything needs to be a zero sum competition.
It's not super difficult if you have an Apple ID from many years ago that you bought media with and then have a different Apple ID that you use for everything. Which isn't that uncommon for anyone who used iTunes and bought music or media and then forgot their ID and just made a new one when they got a iPhone or Macbook. Was able to transfer all my purchases to my main account pretty easily.
The real downside is if you have two fully active Apple IDs. Then things like calendars, photos, email, etc are still stuck on the other account until you export it. Which can be a pain since you have to sign out of your main account, sign into the old account and export, then sign back into the main account.
Similar case with Apple devices. They default to backing up to Apple servers where they are unencrypted. So they can provide data to police if requested. But for anyone concerned about privacy they can use Advanced Data Protection which encrypts all their data and prevents Apple from reading it or recovering it.
Definitely agree that choices like these are the most sane for the default user experience and that having these advanced options for power users to do with it what they want is a fair compromise. Wish more people were open to designing software for the average person and compromising on a middle ground the benefits both kinds of users.
reply