Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair
timetoplayfair.com
timetoplayfair.com
I believe that Apple should take some cuts but not as high as 30%. I believe for some categories like microtransaction based apps Apple should take maybe 5%. Plus, I think that if Apple has a competing service, then it should waive the tax altogether. It's only fair.
If the only function of the App Store (or Play Store) is to provide hosting and some quality control then I don't see why apps can't be hosted on a secure website from the vendor - as far as I'm aware, Apple requires you have some sort of website anyway.
At least Google allows installing apps without the Play Store, perhaps it's time Apple permitted something similar with its apps? This could solve this whole problem and have other positive side effects such as people being less likely to jailbreak their iPhones.
If not Apple/Google controlling it directly, I'd imagine there would be a reasonable market for malware/AV providers on mobiles, if not solutions provided by Apple/Google.
Maybe I'm uninformed, but it doesn't appear to me that access to an app store and the terms of such access (which by the way didn't even exist almost 10 years ago) is a public utility or good with an expectation of equal access or certain fair pricing.
Then, under what right does anyone claim that Apple (or any ecosystem platform) has to do anything beyond what is regulated in the payment and terms of operation? What makes your 30% price the right call? If you're an app developer, are you equally ok with someone else determining what you get to charge for your app when you're done with it? Isn't that the same (lack of) logic?
"How is it fair for Price Chopper to undercut Rice Crispies with a similar, cheaper product?" no on says this...
If we go with the store=phone analogy, then somehow my brand A flour and my brand B milk are magnetically repulsed and I can't make pancakes. It's not good for consumers.
Before you should people should simply switch phones: you can switch phones, but you can't take the apps you bought with you. And even if you switch: there's only one real alternative: Android. If Apple is allowed their 30% cut on literally everythig, why wouldn't Google do the same?
This way you end up with only 2 App stores, 2 Music and 2 Movie streaming services.
We do have only two app stores. Apple and Google just haven't managed to kill all the competing Music & Movie services. They'd love to!
that's like tesla releasing a car saying if you are a lawyer who wants to drive it you have to pay them 100k a year plus 30% of what you earn, or are "free" to drive another car (even if theirs is the fastest/safest/best-for-price in the market.)
or, now, can obtain a "provisional" license to drive it that expires weekly, with the same option to pay yearly for an annual license - these are all artificial barriers. installing software has up till now always been as simple as owning the device you're running it on and running the appropriate commands, these artificual barriers introduced by apple ensure anyone wanting to do so has to check in to see if it's okay with them.
I think that is where part of the problem lies: you can choose to do something with the platform or you can leave it alone. Seeing it as an 'I must do something with the platform' is rather strange considering it is a private, non-public platform in the sense that it has an owner and the owner is free to make whatever rules they want to as long as it is within the boundaries of the law (i.e. you can't require use of a platform to be paid with organs :p ).
Apple or Google's app store isn't a blank / open space where you entered an agreement that you have right to do anything you want. Just because you want to not run your code by Apple every time doesn't mean you have the right to do it.
There is no expectation that you have access to their hardware or software kit to do anything that you define. It's not like owning a car.
If the terms of your agreement are that you get time-limited / renewable access to a certain company's playground, what right do you have to insist that they change their terms, with recourse to what law?
There could be laws that decide that there should be open access. But there aren't. Why should this kind of lawsuit succeed in misinterpreting the law? The law can be rewritten, but until then I believe this effort should fail.
> There is no expectation
The expectation comes down to the owner of the device being allowed to have control over something they purchased, which in extension gives app developers freedom to target these users. This includes both hardware (right to repair), and software. It's completely valid, and repair, specifically, has been in news headlines months prior.
Actually your bridge analogy is apt, but in a way that works against your argument.
Toll bridges aren't required to have an alternate way around just because you think you have a right to go there for free by some alternative method.
Staten Island is only accessible by toll bridge. Entry to San Francisco from the north or east is only accessible by toll bridge.
Regardless, Apple built an island and a toll bridge that allows crossing for a fee. There is no entitlement in law that says you have the right to get to that island without paying what Apple charges because you think that would be "fair".
And in extension to that, paying other people for software that they'd like to run and don't mind paying for, which is not sold through e.g. the App Store.
I'm legitimately interested in this, because I cannot see any reason why a user shouldn't be able to run any software they'd like on their own hardware, and/or pay for it however they want.
Just because you might disagree with that contract, it doesn't change the rules. Your ability and expectation to run software of your choosing on your computer doesn't mean you have the same ability on a phone.
I could ask you, why don't you complain that even on an Android phone, you're not allowed to tinker with the baseband chip and broadcast whatever you want over the air. "Why can't I be allowed to do that? It's my right." Nope. It is not.
This is just an extension of that principle. In some other state or country the rules may be set up differently that consumer rights (however those are defined) take precedence over commercial regulations. But not here. Public opinion and law might someday change. Until then, don't confuse what you think should be with what is. It will not do you credit.
You're expressing wishes. I'm expressing facts.
I did not sign a contract relinquishing my rights to execute whatever code I like when I purchased my phone. Does one have to do that with an iPhone?
If you do, shouldn't it be called an applePhone, not an iPhone? If you cannot control what code is executed by the cpu, it is really more Apple's phone than your own.
You don't naturally have any expectations of a right to run whatever code you want on a phone. There is nowhere written in law or regulation that you have such a "right". So there is no such right to give up.
Apple enters into an agreement with you to give you a phone with certain capabilities. Control of what code is executed by the phone is not included in your capabilities. End of story.
> You don't naturally have any expectations of a right to run whatever code you want on a phone. There is nowhere written in law or regulation that you have such a "right". So there is no such right to give up.
Plenty of things that you naturally have a right to do aren't written in a law. Is there a law saying you can browse and post on hackernews on your computer?
USA: If not prohibited by law, you can do.
Taiwan: If prohibited by law, you still can do.
China: Even if allowed by law, you can't do.
You are simply answering the question "Why are things this way?" with a tautological "because this is the way it is." Whether or not the status quo will change in the future, it must always start with someone questioning it.
If I were a game developer could I install any software on my game console?
that's like tesla releasing a car saying if you are a lawyer who wants to drive it you have to pay them 100k a year plus 30% of what you earn, or are "free" to drive another car (even if theirs is the fastest/safest/best-for-price in the market.)
Let’s not make an analogy. Can I install any software on the computers in my Tesla?
Why not only allow to use their payment system?
You pay for your account on Spotify's own web site, which bypasses Apple getting any cut at all.
https://support.spotify.com/us/account_payment_help/subscrip...
Netflix has done the same thing.
https://www.billboard.com/articles/business/8471988/spotify-...
In my book, the problem is that you are not allowed to provide a link to your payment website inside your app.
This is especially damaging to small companies. Most people have heard of Spotify, Netflix, Pandora, etc. So it's somewhat natural for them (if not a bit akward) to go to the website if they can't get premium in the app.
But for small companies that connection isn't immediately obvious. In my company for instance, we aren't allowed to put ANY reference to our website in the app (as it relates to purchasing premium). As a result when a user signs up, my only option is IAP. I cannot just assume they will naturally go to the website.
(An "email me a payment link" button would almost certainly get rejected by Apple)
It could even be 2 digits (the same 2 digits for everyone), you’re just looking to get their eyes on the email letting them know additional paid subscriptions are available on your website.
I think you'd end up confusing users. Most people will go to their email expecting to see a verification code in big bold type. If you make the code less obvious, they'll get frustrated ("I came here to get a code, why am I now doing something else?") It's awful UX at a particularly business-critical moment.
And this is all assuming Apple doesn't see through your ploy and just reject the app.
So you couldn't even get to the point where you can send an email without first falling in line with IAP.
And according to my understanding of the Spotify timeline, and I haven't see this because I haven't published to the platform in a while, Apple now prohibits you from targeting your iOS users with upgrade communications (even if they didn't sign up via iOS, which they didn't since that's prohibited).
Deezer music went another route: you can pay for your subscription through an iOS device, but you'll pay a higher price. [0] I'm surprised Apple permit this.
All this strikes me as a clear indication that Apple is asking for too high a cut.
I've never been tempted to use a mobile app to shop on, say, Amazon, but Apple are clearly ok with that experience being far better on Android than on iPhone.
> In my book, the problem is that you are not allowed to provide a link to your payment website inside your app.
Interesting.
The exact words used by the Audible app for iPhone: This app does not support purchasing content. Instead, add to your wishlist.
[0] https://support.deezer.com/hc/en-gb/articles/360000633989
This is what Spotify used to do (charging $13 instead of the normal $10 to give apple their cut), but they stopped when apple started making apple music available at $10 (since they didn't need to pay their own tax)
You simply can't ignore iOS if you want to have a successful smartphone app business. That fact alone is enough in my opinion to consider Apple a monopoly and to take action to force them to play fair on their own platform.
Abusing market dominance in one sector in order to shut out or outcompete other providers in another sector is the classic justification for antitrust action.
I honestly never really thought about why this is - I simply just hated Audible for it, and thought it was the most annoying part of their app.
However, it's odd - how come the Amazon app is allowed to get away with its own purchasing system?
I believe jordanthoms's explanation is correct.
Why on earth is Apple allowed to do that? I get that it is their marketplace and their rules, but they are directly hurting competition and consumers this way. There's simply no real argument to prohibit developers like this. Seems like something the EU should combat against.
I think something like 30% on the first purchase and then 5-6% for any recurring purchases would make more sense. I know it changes to 15% after a year but that's still ridiculous IMO.
Maybe there's an App Association that challenges all of these stores on their rather high recurring fees.
Strawman. That's not at all what the parent said.
> For instance, if the app asks you for payment, you could be first shown its rating in the store, if it's low. There could be even a separate rating judging the payment security of the app, if security is what Apple is after.
You think people should be shown a payment security score so they can judge whether they want to make an in-app purchase? You must be joking. I don't think you understand what Apple is after if that's your suggestion.
> You're allowing Apple to rip you off by 30% on all app transactions, it's as simple as that.
Your entire comment reeks of irrational anti Apple bias. It's as simple as that.
I'm not particularly scared of paying for things online. I'm scared of almost anyone else in my extended family doing so, though. If you think that concern's "ridiculous" you haven't watched them use the Web. And lots of them—especially the older ones—have (rightly!) never entirely gotten over fear of buying things online. Some(!) of them do buy things online, but reluctantly, with great deliberation. In an app on an Apple device? Concerns gone. Even for me, that little background stress of being on alert for shenanigans quiets down when I'm in the Apple ecosystem. Far lower (though non-zero—there's a reason I do almost no iOS gaming) permitted rates of douchebaggery is one of the things keeping me on iOS, and the one-source-of-payments is a vital part of that.
[EDIT] there are further benefits to users and developers alike, I should add, when the UI for a purchase is the same in every app. It's worth 30% to "defect" from that, so worth it on the individual level, but if it's permitted at all then the game's up and everyone loses.
This is why geeks make horrible product people.
And ratings have never been faked....
I think it's perfectly reasonable for governments to update their terms and agreements.
The counter point is, if Apple allowed this, then every single App would use that method. Most people would not realize or care that they bought the XYZ in a web view vs through the AppStore payment system. Even apps that are currently paid only would switch to a "free" app with a "pay here" in-app purchase.
At this point the AppStore no longer can bring in any money for Apple except indirectly via encouraging iPhone sales.
Maybe Apple could charge the publisher for each app download or something instead to keep making money but I doubt that would be very popular.
Do you think spotify should just suck it up and take the hit to keep prices the same because apple is providing a service (access and subscription handling) worth 30% of the price? Not even Amazon charges that much.
I don't know if the anti-competitive practices mentioned are illegal, but they're certainly scummy. The company that owns the walled garden shouldn't be bullying spotify to try and prop apple music up.
It would be the poster child of an anti-trust case.
Consider the countless users that, perhaps rightfully, argue that Apple should include more than 5 GB of iCloud storage for backups, user data, etc. That could be considered part of the product while it still competes in a different market with Dropbox and similar services.
And then every PAID app will switch to FREE and charge for PRO, to circumvent the 30%. Oh, Apple complained it’s not technically a microtransaction? Fine, just separate every feature into a new purchase.
> If the only function of the App Store (or Play Store) is to provide hosting and some quality control then I don't see why apps can't be hosted on a secure website from the vendor
If the vendor server is compromised or is down, a download from the App Store won’t work for a single app, leaving customers confused and complaining to Apple, who can’t fix the issue.
App doesn’t download - Apple’s fault.
App doesn’t work - App developer’s fault.
Then make it 30% of the first 20 or 30 dollars, and 5% or less after. That more than pays for Apple's verification work without letting them gouge repeat payments.
But if you're dealing with a $100+ per year subscription, the fee goes down to a modest processing cost.
1: they're likely refining the process of obtaining one of these certs after the recent news reports on business fraud
On the side of 'level playing field' they do of course still have a point, just like all the anti-trust stuff we had/have with Microsoft and Google. It does make me wonder a bit why this hasn't been involving other companies like Amazon and Facebook. (or, why it hasn't been suggested as widely as it is now)
I do wonder about the technical aspect of those store denials and watchOS problems; other streaming services do not face the same issues/pressue, so what makes spotify so special? They app is a bit crappy (it's not very good at maintaining/restoring state and doesn't have the most consistent UI), but other than that, it doesn't do much different things when compared to others (like Deezer or Tidal). Putting it as a "Apple Music vs. Spotify" thing is a bit weird too; while it might make sense, it doesn't make sense if it's just that and all the other streaming and buying services are free to do what they want. It's weird stuff.
And I can opt out of selling things in Idaho if I don't want to pay their sales tax. I don't understand the distinction you're making at all.
If you consider the Appstore/iOS ecosystem to be Apple's "land", then sure that 30% is like the tax for having a presence in that land.
That's the classic meaning of "tax".
However, nowadays, in most civilised countries we expect more of "tax". We expect it to not simply flow to whoever holds power over the land (ecosystem), for them to use for profit, projecting power and keeping it. We expect the tax instead to largely be invested in things that benefit the people paying it (users). In fact, the more this happens, instead of going to the rulers, the nicer a place to live (in general).
Now one the one hand Apple is doing a pretty good job with things that benefit the users: they get security and some privacy. On the other hand, as a tax, it's fair to ask whether that 30% is really necessary for these benefits or just for lining Apple's pockets. An additional thing, looking at it pragmatically, whatever Apple's doing to Spotify doesn't seem to be in the user's benefit at all. But then, they don't pay tax. So that points to the 30% being significantly more than the tax required to benefit the users.
It seems to me that Apple should lower this tax to a rate that Spotify is willing to pay and put up with.
Thing is, Apple is not really like a modern government to its users. They are a "if you don't like it, just leave"-ocracy. So when they put up a "public" service (Apple Music), that undercuts commercial services (Spotify), it is NOT in the benefit of the people (users) like a public transport system would be. This is because the undercutting is purely based on the tax-cut, not because it's more efficient to do it as a public service rather than a commercial one.
If you were to scope it to 'services' or 'platform', then perhaps we should call virtual hosting cost not cost but tax :p and if you rent a movie, that'd then be movie tax, or rental tax? But what about actual tax, are we going to call that tax tax? Because at this point people just start using the word tax for every generic transaction.
Isn't Spotify just the biggest one by a large margin?
Because frankly I never heard of Deezer or Tidal, and everyone I know that uses a music streaming service is on Spotify or, rarely, iTunes (or Apple Music? is that a rebrand or is it a new thing?)
It is everyone's full legal right to do whatever they want with their phone. Including downloading apps from websites.
It's just that consoles never have been nearly as popular to make a stink about it. I never bought a console because of exactly this limitation: I can do anything with a computer, why would I buy a neutered computer as well? And that was fine. Because you don't need a console. But you do need a smartphone. And the choice is Android or iPhone, and the usage is about 50/50. So when the iPhone is shut tight, that's a much bigger deal.
There is 30 years worth of malware, ransomware spyware and viruses on PCs to show that most of the public hasn’t benefited from being able to download freely.
Unfortunately, Apple often disagrees. They have tried to make multiple frivolous lawsuits against people doing exactly this, over the years.
Sometimes it doesn't matter what your rights are, if a company is willing to spend a bunch of money trying to submit illegal lawsuits to bankrupt you.
Here you go: https://consumerist.com/2009/02/14/apple-wants-to-make-jailb...
That is a clear example of a bad actor.
This is such an extreme stance compared to what you're allowed to do on the desktop. Regardless of what Apple allows or not, shouldn't the user, the owner of the device, be allowed to install applications as they see fit, and choose to bypass any centralized app store? A smarthphone is a computer, and it's arguably many peoples primary computing device, and so I see no valid reason for the future of such devices to be a locked-down walled garden under the guise of security.
More than anything and any security, Apple benefits directly from this, just like they do lobbying against right-to-repair legislation. Because God forbid an owner of a Apple device repairing it themselves instead of have to go through official, expensive channels. Likewise with a (legitimate) company or app maker saying "We'll just let the users install it outside of the app store" and choosing not to deal with Apple's ecosystem. For example, Wireguard for macOS cannot be distributed outside of the app store due to native integration requiring APIs that Apple restricts with such clauses [1]. This is in my opinion ridiculous.
[1] https://lists.zx2c4.com/pipermail/wireguard/2019-February/00...
I put quotes around "their" just to remind that this ecosystem is made up by hundreds of millions of users, too. Yes Apple holds a singular power over this ecosystem but that power mostly boils down to the ability to wreck it for any particular group of participants. That's not ownership unless you want to claim that humans own the coral reefs, too.
Apple is simply erecting gratuitous roadblocks for rent-seeking purposes.
If not, how is it any different from the phone?
*EDIT: i’m not saying “place and purpose” is a reason why macos and ios have different security models, but just pointing out that “why is a laptop different to a phone” is not reeeeeeally a particularly valid place to start
Um really those are artificial, not natural. The nature of the devices is that they're still general purpose computers, the artificial restrictions on them give them an artificial place and purpose. It's still a thing, but Apple isn't magically altering reality.
Do you feel that console makers shouldn’t be allowed to dictate what runs on their devices? Yes physical discs still have to be approved by the console maker. It’s been that way for 30 years.
Yes of course. Either allow the user full control of the hardware they apparently own, or call it what it really is, renting.
You could have an argument in the case of a car, for safety. Cable box perhaps, but I'd say that should probably be considered a case of renting hardware for it to really make sense.
Car radio or printer, etc? Nothing comes to mind.
That's easy enough to circumvent.
But it is standard practice for divisions to bill other divisions for work. I would be almost certain that Apple Music is already paying the 30% tax however since it’s internal it doesn’t really make a difference. Likewise splitting into a new entity does not change anything.
Subscriptions for apps should be different, but I see a challenge in drawing the line between Spotify/Netflix and a scam app like "awesome culculator" that charges $5/mo to people who don'didn't realize it was a subscription (there was an article on HN this week about apps like that, targeting kids and the elderly, of course).
If Apple has a stipulation about requiring a website, then maybe subscription-based apps can get a discount on the 30% fee if they also have a web or desktop-based version of their application that provides comparable functionality and takes payments.
This is not a good reason to limit how much money an app developer makes. You want to make the play field fair, regardless if there are some companies making a lot of money.
These dollars are most certainly coming from VC funding. Most of these businesses aren't (and will never be) profitable.
You're talking about the top 1% or less of micro transaction-based apps here. There are ton of indie apps that depend on micro transactions and aren't making enough to buy a Super Bowl ad.
It's unfortunate that spammy or low quality micro transaction-based apps have become commonplace, but I'd rather that be dealt with by the App Store flagging and filtering the apps with issues.
That said, how much is distribution worth to Spotify? Imagine that Spotify was not software, but instead it was a hardware device. Would they expect Best Buy to carry it for free? Would they expect Walmart or Target not to offer a store branded competitor? I think not.
When you don't own your distribution channel, you pay for distribution one way or another.
In either case the difference between a store doing this and Apple doing this is that Best Buy is not the one of two practical ways to access the product, and consumers are not compelled to go only to Best Buy simply because they chose to go there once.
Figuring out the proper practices for phone app markets is difficult right now, because we really can't compare them to anything that already exists. Physical markets just aren't the same thing.
A billion people live in a company town ("Appleville"). When they first decided to move there, they paid a lot of money to buy a house there, and in return they get access to all the benefits the town offers - nicely-built houses, well-maintained streets, and access to lots of public services. Because living in the town is so nice, houses there cost a lot more than they do in other areas.
While you live in the town, you've signed a contract that says you're only allowed to buy things from one store owned by the town's developer. Most popular items are available at the store, so it's never too much of an inconvience, but sometimes things are more expensive than they are in other towns, or they aren't available at all.
Every time you drive into the town, you get stopped, and a bunch of guards search your car. If they find anything in your car that you didn't buy from them, they take it, and you can't have it back.
If you ever do want to leave the town, not only will you have to buy a house somewhere else (and your existing house will be worth a lot less than what you paid for it), but you're not allowed to take any of the stuff in your house with you - it all just disappears forever.
Now imagine you're a new company trying to sell a product, and the store owner won't let you sell your product in their town for some reason (you aren't paying them enough, it violates one of their rules, etc.) Even if the people living inside the town want your product, they can't buy it unless they completely uproot their life and move somewhere else, which no one is willing to do. And so the town owner is able to kill your product, and prevent it from ever being a threat to them. (Meanwhile, the town owner copies your product and starts selling it in the store themselves).
They've still got to at least cover bandwidth (minor) and payment processing.
Because that worked so well for Windows with malware,viruses, and ransomware.
This is not the same as Amazon offering their own label in their Store. Customers could shop in dozens of many other online retail or local retail. And Amazon does not charge other label 30% cut for stocking fees.
I believe Apple should charge a fair amount only when they have a competing product or services within its locked system. Had Apple Charge 15% for the first year on Spotify and 10% for all subsequent subscription it would have been much better. I don't believe the 5% would work, as I have seen many saying 5% should be enough. The cost of running microtransaction, processing, billing, legal, etc are just about break even at 5% even in the scale of Apple. I don't see charging 10% would seem unfair. ( In US at least, in EU the processing fees are much much lower )
Or Apple should never have made Apple Music in the first place. I still don't see any value in Apple offering it. iTunes was required for iPod. And it changes the whole music industry as a whole, along with iPod sold which ultimately saved Apple. No one will buy iPhone because of Apple Music, and Apple Music itself isn't even profitable.
We submitted the original version to Apple with a fully functioning store built into it—and were then stuck in submission limbo. Two weeks later, Apple announces their intent to build in-app purchasing.
The kicker: Apple wanted a 30% cut of every book sold on the store …and at the same time, had negotiated with book publishers that the publishers MUST sell all books at a 30% margin on ALL stores if they want to sell their books via Apple's own ebook store.
Aka we couldn't sell books at an increased cost, even if we wanted to. We would have had to take a loss on every purchase.
In the end, we had to remove all of the store functionality from the app, and weren't even allowed to link people directly to the web store for purchasing (or even instructions for purchasing).
He was very confused when it disappeared. I imagine most users feel this way. I had to coach my mom to sign up for Pandora on the website so she saved a couple bucks a month, and it was baffling to her why it costed more in the app.
This is confusing for users.
people bought apple hardware and the operating system, not voted them the unilateral governing body on consumer choice in that platform. one should not be taken to imply the other.
Apple's a perfect example of this: they have a long history of making high-quality hardware products loved by consumers at an immense scale with high margins. In a more rational world, that would be "enough", and even if their revenue fluctuated somewhat from year to year, they could still easily support their activities and pay out generous dividends while focusing only on their core competency.
Instead we live in a world where a small drop in demand for a single product based on extrinsic market forces leads to a slew of articles heralding an "end of Apple". So they prioritize service revenue, and continue to squeeze more and more value out of every revenue stream which flows through their products.
It's insane that this is seen as necessary for a company which basically prints money, and sits inside a massive moat of wealth greater than the GDP of many nations.
Then on the payment page:
- Spotify fee: $9.99.
- Apple's cut: $3.33. (When purchased through the app, save online).
- Total: $13.32 > [Purchase Button]
To get $9.99 (for the first year at the 30% rate) it'd be
Spotify fee: $9.99 Apple fee: $4.28 Total: $14.27
When they were charging $12.99 on iOS Spotify was only taking home $9.09 and Apple getting $3.87.
Really goes to show the insanity. Apple probably made more from a Spotify user than an Apple music user. (Of course, they're happy to have an Apple music user for the increased lock in.)
(But as others point out, Spotify showing this almost certainly wouldn't be permitted by Apple).
I suspect we (Kindle) we're either the trigger for the in-app purchasing store, or really accelerated plans around it.
https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#in-...
> Apps and their metadata may not include buttons, external links, or other calls to action that direct customers to purchasing mechanisms other than in-app purchase.
<add it to your wish list!>
button it is so that Apple won't fall on you like a ton of bricks for suggesting I can buy things outside their store.
You put a walled garden... in another walled garden.
On a more serious note: I get it; among Apple users are the most happily paying people that you can find on this planet and if you have a product you want to make it available to them. No wonder they think it their right to take a massive 30% cut.
In the case of e-ink kindles it's sort of the same problem, but the kindle app is available on many platforms so it reduces the harm by a lot.
https://www.dailyherald.com/article/20140608/business/140609...
The disagreement spilled into public view last month when Amazon tried to dissuade its customers from buying Hachette titles on its website, removing discounts from some books or delaying shipments by as much as five weeks when items typically ship within three to five days. By refusing to buckle under the pressure, Hachette is leading the charge for publishers' fight against Amazon.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/feb/02/amazon-greedy-...
Besides, how far will a book publisher get if they can’t sell on Amazon.
Also screw a lot of those publishers. They were demanding control over the price amazon sells at, which should be none of their business. Lawmakers need to fix the first sale doctrine for digital goods.
> Besides, how far will a book publisher get if they can’t sell on Amazon.
If they can't sell on kindle they should be fine.
So you don’t care about publishers of physical books who according to one of the articles actually go negative because of the “Amazon tax” but you do care about software developers who can’t sell loot boxes without a 30% cut going to Apple
What do you think is Amazon’s motive for selling Kindle books below cost if it isn’t to kill competition just to raise prices later?
Apple even went as far as making some Steve Jobsian rule that you had to sell your book for the same price on the web as you did in-app. So you couldn't make up for the 30% cut. That was a pure bad-faith move and Apple only recently rescinded that requirement.
Or is the rule that the physical good can't be accompanied by anything beyond the physical object itself? If that's the case, then is Amazon not allowed to sell items via its iOS app if those items come with warranties?
Or what about video games? If Amazon is allowed to sell physical copies of them, then can Spotify go full-AOL-mode and send a CD with a Spotify installer on it every month?
If you want a better answer, if a large percent of amazon app purchases became physical objects tied to upgrades you can use on your iPhone, then they would also get the hammer.
Precedent doesn't matter here, the rules will adapt to whatever is needed to require that 30% cut. (Unless Apple changes their mind first.)
More importantly: the more Apple tries to react to these tactics, the more evidence in favor of Spotify's case. It's a classic case of squeezing sand so hard that it slips through your fingers.
Okay, you forced them into having a rule about an exceptionally niche category of physical goods. They already ban the sale of firearms, so this isn't even new. It causes them no problems.
> More importantly: the more Apple tries to react to these tactics, the more evidence in favor of Spotify's case. It's a classic case of squeezing sand so hard that it slips through your fingers.
Not when they're so obviously looking for a loophole. It would hurt Spotify's reputation more than Apple.
Even if we wanted to stick to a narrow category of "subscription to a service that entails shipping physical media devices on a subscription", there are other apps in that category (though I don't know if they do let you actually sign up via the app): https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/dvd-netflix/id1169772776
Spotify could do something similar and pivot into the music rental business, kinda like an inverse Netflix. Whether that'd actually be better than just paying the 30% App Store tax is another question, of course :)
Apple wouldn't approve our app until we blocked the Kindle Store button from loading on the Kindle Cloud Reader website. It never occurred to me that Apple would try to exercise control over how third-party websites are rendered inside webviews, but it turns out they do.
1: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/beeline-reader/id938026867?m...
Wow. I'm not sure why this isn't all over the tech press. Apple forcing developers to modify third party websites is way, way over the line of what I would call ethical.
I'm generally an Apple fan, but this is nothing more than unrestrained corporate greed.
Disgusting.
p.s. Do you know how I would go about recommending someone add the ability to have green or amber text on the black background?
If you're on Android:
1. go to Settings -> Info -> About
2. Draw a lowercase h on the screen (anywhere), and you'll see a "special color mode enabled", and should get amber on black. another letter gives you green on black, but I forget which :( . There's a bunch of hidden color combinations there :)
I'm not sure that exists on iOS, though
---
For requesting it: help & feedback -> contact us -> give feedback is your best bet. I'm out of touch w/ the Kindle team, but at least several years ago many of the devs would obsessively read customer feedback (that wasn't deemed sensitive/PII)
Great tip.
Any idea some where to to find the other hidden combinations ?
Unfortunately we cannot build a similar tool for Android, as Amazon blocks the Kindle Cloud Reader on all Android devices (including the Kindle Fire).
1: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/beeline-reader/id938026867?m...
2: https://imgur.com/a/nFzLNIs
- Apple blocked Spotify from working with Apple Watch
- It blocked Spotify from building apps for HomePod
- It blocked Spotify from building apps for Siri
- It blocks Spotify updates on a regular basis
- It blocked Spotify from using a podcasting API after it acquired 2x major podcasting companies
I genuinely hope Europe takes this seriously. The issue of the 30% cut alone is enough for further investigation, particularly as Apple now uses that as an advantage to undercut Spotify with Apple Music.
But they've blocked every streaming music thing, right? It wasn't a vindictive campaign targetted at Spotify as this timeline is suggesting - no-one got to build streaming music apps for the Watch or HomePod IIRC.
Rephrased, Spotify seems to think it has a /right/ to run its software on Apple platforms in an identical fashion to Apple's first-party software. Does that mean Apple has an obligation to provide an equivalent technical capacity for literally any software that runs on its devices? An app store? A payment provider? A cloud provider? A health data store? An update mechanism?
[---- obsolete info ----]
Yeah, it's a bit of a grey area.
However, App Store policies explicitly forbid apps that duplicate iOS and first-party functionality IIRC. Now that Apple has Maps, and Apple Music, and Podcasts, and..., and... should they enforce those rules?
[---- obsolete info ----]
You should probably pull out the relevant quote from the guidelines. I don't think this is a thing anymore, at least in the way you're describing. If they did enforce it it would be a huge blow to the App Store.
I wish you'd stopped here because this is an interesting question, but the rest of your comment feels like it stretches things a bit.
What Spotify seems to be saying (correct me if I'm wrong), is that Apple does provide the technical capabilities for third parties to do as they're asking, but Apple is rejecting proposals purely on whim. It's not like there's not a API to stream music on the Apple Watch or play music through HomePod. It's all there. Apple's just blocking them from using it.
The same thing about not allowing others to use “private APIs”. No guarantees are made about any methods that I didn’t make public. If I change that method in future releases, and your software that depends on it breaks - so be it.
Windows is full of backward compatibility hacks because one piece of software that wanted to use an undocumented method.
Apple has since day one had APIs that it used privately until they were fully baked and made public. Do you think that Apple waited two or three years to make share extensions public because of competitive reasons?
If the Apple Watch and WatchOS is a device then I expect it to only contain Apple software.
If the Apple Watch and WatchOS is a platform then I expect to be able to install 3rd party software on it.
The real question is how much feature-parity should 3rd parties expect when developing on another company's platform?
I'd say if you're selling $1200 computer devices, one principle of that is ownership and that you get to run what you want, not what Apple wants. We seem to have come a long way on this site from fighting Tivoization of embedded platforms, and unrepairable, unfixable, unhackable consumer electronics, to people making excuses for a super locked down platform, and not even on the excuse that it helps security, but from a philosophical standpoint that somehow Apple is morally right to do whatever they want.
Yes, you have a choice of not buying Apple software, just like you had the choice of not buying Windows and using Linux, or building a MythTV instead of a Tivo, but keep in mind, in the latter case, this was only possible because the CableCard standard was forced by law on the cable industry.
Apple can maintain their high levels of security and privacy without their 30% cut of subscriptions, it's a false dichotomy to pretend their behavior is anything but rent seeking.
At the same time though, Microsoft wasn't preventing other developers from using those hidden APIs (if they could find them) nor preventing them from publishing their own competing apps. Sure, Microsoft's behaviour at the time was anti-competitive and sometimes even predatory, but they were never so on Windows to the extent that Apple is today on iOS.
Yes.
> An app store? A payment provider? A cloud provider? A health data store? An update mechanism?
Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes and Yes.
To do otherwise, is to invite platform owners to be (potentially abusive) monopolists with a license to favor their own services instead of promoting and maintaining fair competition in markets on top of that platform. In western societies, since the last century, that has been behavior which has been regulated by law and courts.
Every API on the platform is available to all apps which have the necessary permissions.
Sure, it might look like Google has taken over key low level features of the device like updates and wifi location, but in fact from the platform perspective, all those components have an open API and can be replaced.
The only fly in the ointment here is some of the API's require powerful permissions which aren't allowed in store apps, but you can still sideload them, or use an alternate store.
Specifically my company wanted to break our app into multiple apps and give a way for people to easily install the companions. If you send the user to the Play Store page, about 75% of users would dropoff, in user studies much of it was confusion about what to do once they saw the play store page.
Google has an api that is a much simpler flow than the full store experience which has much lower user dropoff. If you're curious where it's used, one example is the Google Drive app to install the Docs, Sheets, etc.
The API validates that the calling app is an app signed by the Google dev cert.
This isn't a security issue, you could just ship one app with all the functionality. It's clear they just wanted to reduce user drop off in a flow, but now provide that option to others.
I understand the potential for abuse even though the api still checked with the user. It wouldn't bother me if no one had access to the API, we'd just have to deal with it. But it felt anti-competitive that Google had it and we did not.
IIRC there are a few other similar non-security private APIs and they also felt anti-competitive to us. That said, it was no where near on the order of Apple, where it's commonplace on iOS.
As far as the platform is concerned, any app with the right permissions can install any other app. It just so happens that only the play store and other stores have that permission.
As you point out there is a fly in the ointment (which is enhanced by Google making it very difficult to ship with anything but the Play Store).
As an app developer like Spotify, the platform is the base of devices out there in the wild and how I build on top of them which, for me, is inclusive of the play services and play store.
Android definitely is a lot more open than iOS. But when the Play Store enforces a mechanism that favors Google, it's not of a practical difference to my livelihood than when the App Store has policies that favor Apple. If you have a really loyal following, like Epic/Fortnite, it's better than nothing. But even then the barrier to your users is huge and even the most establish companies with technical user bases will have a hard time crossing it. Nevermind the fledgling startups or developers with non-technical user bases.
Perhaps they should not be allowed (by law) to change the terms of the platform for X amount of time.
There's a vast gulf between "Spotify was blocked" and "Apple didn't spend time and money building a service that Spotify wanted".
Clearly the technology is there, but Apple is not letting Spotify use it.
Tech is there, https://developer.apple.com/documentation/sirikit/media_inte...
I'm sure Spotify has no problems with the knowledge of its engineers, I just found the APIs in 5 min. In fact, number 4 of this page explains your comment: https://www.timetoplayfair.com/facts/
They did indeed have "the service" in question, it was just limited to Apple's own offering.
It's a scenario not unlike net neutrality: an infrastructure provider that is also a content provider can put themselves or select customers in a position where free market forces are hindered or suspended in order to achieve a monopoly-like status.
Again, there's a difference between "Siri can talk to our music service" and "We have a stable public API that 3rd party vendors can hook into to connect up to a music service". They're not the same thing, and one is a lot easier than the other.
Given that they are a platform provider, maybe doing the bare minimum to get their own stuff working, but not enough to get any alternatives to work, is a strategic choice on their part.
"If Homepod only works with Apple Music, more people will switch"
No, a hardware manufacturer has no requirement to support any specific software. An infrastructure provider, however, has (in MY opinion) a requirement to support what they support to an equal degree, or it amounts to… market manipulation? Something not quite fair, some kind of abuse of power which is to the detriment of all other participants in the market, customers and companies alike.
Obviously, America as of today disagrees, seeing as net neutrality is not held in very high regard.
I look forward to roads that only support Fords, water pipes that only support Nestlé water, and stairs that only support Nike shoes.
Thankfully, America is not (yet) stupid enough to let private companies build our critical infrastructure, and thankfully "voice controlled speaker" is as critical as chewing gum.
EDIT: I thought you could now stream on the Watch but further research suggests that's still not possible. In summary, confusion.
I'm not sure this is 100% true. From browsing the spotify support forums many moons ago, some guy had built a spotify playing app for the apple watch, but spotify squashed it. Given that some random dev could do this, it doesn't seem like apple prevented anything.
If anything it makes the case that if it were so simple for a single random dev that unless Apple itself were preventing it there is no reason the app wouldn't have been released.
It streams Spotify directly without your phone and has a very flaky offline mode.
The developer tweeted that Spotify (not Apple) asked him to remove it four days after it reached the App Store.
I was lucky enough to get hold of it in that brief window and use it often.
On the other hand Spotify did squash this guy's app. That's a thing that happened. So it's not like the APIs aren't there.
So now we're taking Spotify's word that Apple is keeping them off the app store, while ignoring the fact that said app is possible and they themselves have kept an app off the app store.
Sounds like PR bullshit all around.
This is a VERY different statement than the true one which is:
Apple didn't allow ANY streaming music (or audiobook, or podcast) apps on the watch due to not providing the API's. They didn't specifically block Spotify.
- If you're deep into iOS development you know that Apple apps - the ones shipped with the OS - sometimes do things that 3rd party apps aren't able to. For example the Music app gets to be the _default_ app to live in the control panel even if you hardly ever use it and are using Spotify most of the time.
- I believe - for the Apple Watch - some of the 3rd party apps which were already available on the day of the launch were a) invited to preview the Watch ahead of other developers and b) in some cases allowed to use undocumented APIs. Uber may be one example of this - https://www.macrumors.com/2017/10/05/uber-removing-apple-gra...
Apple has been inviting 3rd party developers to preview technologies for a while e.g. https://appleinsider.com/articles/16/06/17/apple-invites-dev... so it seems to be standard practice.
As I read this "Time to Play Fair" website, it looks to me like Spotify is complaining they weren't invited to these preview sessions and thereby didn't get to learn about / get permission to use undocumented APIs.
Of course IANAL
Did that guy's app make it on the App Store? He could have easily built it with private APIs which would work but wouldn't pass review (maybe, App Review is very inconsistent) or many other reasons why he could and Spotify couldn't.
I inferred this from the vague wording in the earlier points and the clarifications in the later points.
> When Apple launches their new Apple Watch, they dismiss our proposals and won’t work with us to develop an app for it.
Notice, they didn't say they were blocked. Also why would building an app for the watch necessitate a proposal to Apple that requires Apple to work with them directly? Wouldn't you instead build your app and submit it for approval? This is probably because the Apple Watch SDK didn't provide all the functionality Spotify wanted, and so Spotify was trying to get Apple to add new functionality to the SDK.
> We submit a new proposal for a streaming app directly on the Apple Watch. Apple declines
> With WatchOS 4, Apple continues to make it challenging for us to deliver a workable streaming solution for the Apple Watch
Again, doesn't say they were blocked, just that proposals were rejected and the provided functionality made it difficult/impossible to do what they wanted.
> With Watch OS 5, Apple allowed the Spotify team to start developing offline functionality
Was this the functionality Spotify was proposing for Apple to make possible all along? In other words, was this the missing part of the SDK that Spotify had kept proposing to Apple and having rejected (not the app itself, which they didn't want to build without this functionality)?
EDIT: I'm also not saying they didn't build the app and submit it and have it rejected. They just never actually say that in the timeline.
Not really, it's 30% for everyone, not just Spotify.
Apple could charge themselves the 30% App Store fee for Apple Music, demonstrating that the App Store is a fair marketplace that doesn't artificially advantage Apple's own services. It would then be incumbent on Apple to prove that Apple Music is priced fairly, rather than being deliberately operated at a loss to squeeze other streaming music services out of the market.
It's somewhat similar to net neutrality proposals. AT&T doesn't have a monopoly as an ISP. However, if AT&T starts/acquires a video streaming service, they should not give unfair advantages to their own service because they want to compete with Netflix.
What does it change ? Nothing.
It’s on multiple platforms, it’s tied to Beats, it has a relationship with iTunes Store, there is advertising involved etc. So there could be multiple licensing and revenue sharing deals that mean Apple Music is not running at a loss.
In fact I think it’s likely than you’re wrong.
Interesting, so Spotify could pay nearly the same simply by paying the 30% to artists instead of Apple.
And of course, those 37 might already be partly paid by Spotify anyway.
As they mention on the website. That's not true. It's not 30% for Uber or Deliveroo. And most importantly, it's not 30% for Apple Music.
Regarding Apple Music I'm not sure what that supposed to mean. I'm pretty sure that Spotify doesn't charge the same for "Spotify Premium" and "McDonalds" ads.
What do you mean it isn't? Apple Store could trivially take a 30% cut of the Apple Music revenue, and the only thing that would change would be the distribution of revenue between Apple Music and Apple Store in Apple's revenue reports. The total revenue would be the same.
This effectively gives Apple an extra 30% margin for their streaming music service.
I definitely couldn’t start a ride sharing company when Uber and Lyft are being funded by VCs...
If you buy a real world product or service, you need to use a third party payment service like Stripe (or Apple Pay, if you want), there is a 0% commission fee from Apple. This is why Amazon can distribute an app on iOS that allows to buy whatever you want without Apple getting a cut; well, anything but digital goods, like Kindle books, which in fact can't be bought from Amazon iOS app.
Spotify could have made a watch app that provided controls and had offline somgs. They didn’t, and kept shutting down spps that did, or buying them and shutting them. This was a major sore point against spotify on the apple watch subreddit. Even now they’re dragging their feet, iirc.
I’m guessing apple will add lte support for 3rd party apps in watchos 6. Meanwhile, 3rd party apps have had the ability to make apps with offline support since June 2018. Most audio apps have added this.
Spotify....has not. What’s the holdup? Apple watch users are pretty frustrated with spotify: if all the other audio apps can do it, why haven’t they?
(Lte is an edge case: few watches have lte, and even fewer have an active lte plan. Offline audio is the main use case spotify still isn’t doing)
Interesting one since it is Spotify that is trying to close the currently open podcasting universe.
Let's not pretend that Spotify is either the white knight or the underdog here. This is two big companies negotiating over pricing.
How much, I have no clue - but if they can't even have a "get premium now" button in the app then that's insane to me. The 30% fee Apple would take isn't a real alternative either, it's still not profitable.
Is this talking about the Apple Watch-Podcasting issue? Until recently, podcast apps on the watch had issues saving where you are in an episode because they couldn't constantly run in the background; you could still play audio in the background without your app, you just couldn't watch the percentage played. Fitness tracking apps were allowed to run in the background forever, so some podcast apps told the API they were fitness apps to get around the restriction [0]. Apple later removed this loophole and created the APIs necessary for podcast apps to work on the watch [1].
[0] https://marco.org/2017/08/10/removed-send-to-watch#fn:pLK9h4...
How? By not providing API's to do what they wanted? yawn Next?
- It blocked Spotify from building apps for HomePod
How? By not providing API's to do what they wanted? yawn Next?
- It blocked Spotify from building apps for Siri
How? By not providing API's to do what they wanted? yawn Next?
- It blocks Spotify updates on a regular basis
Wakes up Ok here we have the first real issue, BUT even with that said this is SUPER one-sided. We have only Spotify's word and given their liberal stretching of the truth (or outright breaking it in some cases) I'm not willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.
- It blocked Spotify from using a podcasting API after it acquired 2x major podcasting companies
I'm going to need more info on this because it is super vague.
Until WatchOS 5 the APIs to do something like Spotify didn't really exist. There were workarounds, like by abusing the workout API, but unsurprisingly these has significant drawbacks, were unstable and Apple cracked down when they found API abuses.
Apple "blocked" Spotify only in that it hadn't (yet) released APIs that supported their use cases.
It makes me wonder how disingenuous their other claims are.
I do think services should have more options than Apple allows for accepting payment.
By raising prices and blocking access to competing services, Apple is acting with malice to consumer welfare.
The newest version of WatchOS does allow it. The first generation of watchOS really didn’t allow any apps - just remote views of iOS apps (yeah I’m simplifying it).
- It blocked Spotify from building apps for HomePod
Apple doesn’t have any apps on the HomePod. Now we are going to force all single purpose devices to ship with an SDK?
- It blocked Spotify from building apps for Siri
Apple also just came out with any third party integration with Siri a version or two ago. Again we want the government to dictate the timeline when they build features for apps?
- It blocked Spotify from using a podcasting API after it acquired 2x major podcasting companies
Netflix also blocked its API from most third parties years ago. Can we sue Netflix?
The problem isn't the amount of the Apple tax, and it buries the lead to make it about that. The contention here is that applying rules like this arbitrarily in a way that at least appears to favour your own products over your rivals is an abuse of your position.
If the commission rules in Spotify's favour (which I would think is likely, given the dim view they've taken of such matters previously), then I'd be astonished if Spotify doesn't file lawsuits in the US under the Sherman Act.
In any case, having this fight happen, and in public, can only be good for indie developers if it forces Apple to apply it's rules arbitrarily.
Fast forward a decade later and apple, google and amazon bundle a crazy amount of unrelated services into their platforms without the regulators raising an eyebrow...
I agree that Apple is trying to squash Spotify, but I don't believe it doesn't have an effective monopoly on mobile phones.
Currently consumers do have a choice - and more chose Android than Apple.
I'm not familiar enough with Android to know if Google does this as well.
In my opinion, the problem with Android is not that you can't add to its functionality, which you can, but that you can't effectively limit Google's privacy-invasive functionality (much worse than iOS's) unless you can unlock the bootloader.
>Fast forward a decade later and apple, google and amazon bundle a crazy amount of unrelated services into their platforms without the regulators raising an eyebrow...
That's because the "sanctions" solidified that practice as explicitly legal. So now EVERYONE started doing it. The only thing you needed to do was to allow other people to put their unrelated services on your platform too. You could even charge other people for that if you wanted. (And you didn't even have to let unrelated services on your platform in certain cases. For instance, at the time, Windows was riddled with viruses and bugs, so where the safety or security of the consumer was concerned, you didn't have to allow or even have certain services on your platform. Little known loophole there.)
The problem was really that the issues on the face of it, to someone like me, a young developer activist at the time, were not really the questions dealt with when you finally get into court. The law is about the law, and there was no getting around it.
I became convinced that what we should be doing is trying to change the law. I'm just to old to put that kind of effort into agitating for changed laws any longer.
EDIT: It's probably only fair for me to add that the courts turned out to be right in the Microsoft case. History has shown that information processing paradigms can change on a dime. (PC to mobile). The law is there to provide reasonable safeguards to all actors in a market, and ensure that competition is fair. It's just that "fair" in the eyes of the law, looked a bit different than "fair" did in my own opinion.
When Apple, Google and Amazon are releasing unrelated services into their platforms it isn't to starve out competitors but just expand their business. They aren't, as far as I know, drastically undercutting the prices of their services to levels that aren't sustainable for other companies to compete.
The linked Spotify page says exactly the opposite.
> Because Apple Music doesn’t have to pay the 30% IAP charge, they are able to hugely undercut us and charge €9.99. To our fans, this just looked like we were ripping you off
(N.B.: I'm not defending the specific 30% cut that Apple takes or any of their other demands, just going "hmm" at the bit you've quoted.)
> 2014 June > So, we give IAP a try. That means we are now charged Apple's 30% tax and sadly have to increase our price for our fans... to €12.99 a month.
> 2015 June > Because Apple Music doesn’t have to pay the 30% IAP charge, they are able to hugely undercut us and charge €9.99. To our fans, this just looked like we were ripping you off
> 2016 May > We opt out of Apple's payment system and the artificially uncompetitive price we had to charge for using it
That's a very recent promotion (like, this week), and is the Hulu plan with ads [0], which has a marginal value of $0 or less in my opinion.
Difficult to compete with free on a large scale, you can only compete on niche audiences at that point. Gmail feels like a good example here that effectively drove out most of the other competition's relatively limited free tiers for personal users, leaving only larger businesses and privacy-oriented individuals to continue to pay for email.
What does Apple have a monopoly on? What does Amazon have a monopoly on? Google arguably has a monopoly on search which could put them in an unfavorable position should an antitrust case be brought against them (maybe why they added DDG to a default search engine choice in chrome, see judge, there are other search options!).
Amazon theoretically is abusing it's market power by being selective about which products it sells in it's stores. When they removed competing AppleTV/Chromecast products from their own and seller lines, to promote their firestick, that was monopolistic behavior. There's also arguments that Amazon is promoting their own line of products on their platform as well, by replicating products that end up being successful, but this is a new area for antitrust that needs to be sussed out.
the locked down software platforms wherein users can't install anything on their own devices without the owning company's say-so is the artificial monopoly. they're trying to get away with adding things like device management now to weasel out of it but in reality these are artificially high barriers to entry for any competing software distribution services or 'stores'.
when Amazon can barely even get a foothold in a competing ecosystem with its own 'app store' you know it's anticompetitive and it's working.
It’s just that their products were terrible and consumers didn’t want them. And the barrier to building your own ecosystem really isn’t that high anymore. We have hundreds of Chinese companies doing this today.
Store doesn't mean much. There needs to be a difference between hosting an online store that sells your own products and services, and hosting an online platform that sells your own things but also allows other businesses to sell on it as well.
The latter needs more guidelines on how the host ensures competition, especially when it starts to get market dominance and abuses control of the platform to promote it's own products.
Microsoft desktop market share in 2009 was still over 90%[1]
Google search has no significant competition, much like Microsoft Windows had no significant competition.
[0] http://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share
[1] http://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide/...
Monopoly is tied to access to competition. Monopolies have market dominance, but not all market dominant companies are monopolies. Windows was more of a monopoly in the 1990's because you went into a computer store and could typically only buy windows machines. This limits consumer options.
You can type https://www.bing.com into your browser right now, or any other number of accessible competitors, meaning that while popular, Google is not a monopoly. Consumers have a myriad of options and choose one because of it's quality, which is how competition on open markets work.
Because so far search seems to be a self-perpetuating machine, it can be unfair to compare google and other searches as the amount of data Google already has could pose as an unfair advantage.
What if some other company had the same amount of data? Could they be doing a lot better job? Would the favor for google products dissapear?
the degree to which apple has singlemindedly anticompetitively abused their vertical integration frankly astonishes me. the breaking point for me was opening the music app on the at the time 'latest' ios to be presented with a full page ad for apple music.
utter garbage and I hope they get what's coming to them before they have a chance to worm out of it.
Now there is a completely separate question of unfair competition, but this has to be answered on an App by App basis. Does Apple have an app that provides the service in question? Does Apple disallow competing apps which provide that same service? Is there a compelling reason for the prohibition (Security, physical safety, etc.)?
There's an awful lot that goes into those questions. That said, it seems to me that if Apple is prohibiting spotify from being on its devices, this could be unfair competition. I don't really see any issue of safety with spotify. (I don't use it though, so if there is some safety or security issue with it, I'll freely admit I'm wrong.)
Then, of course, the issue of the tax. That's a non-starter. Apple, actually any company, is allowed to charge for services rendered. They can't be compelled to provide app store and ecommerce services at no cost.
Now... that doesn't mean that Apple aren't jagoffs in this matter. I'm sure they have bullet-proof fine-print, but the best attack one can make on them is that they're stealing from vendors by letting them waste development resources and then changing the rules when the development's done.
It’s one of the most fundamental parts of their ecosystem.
And your analogy is really bad. If you own a fairground and a doughtnut shop then it is not illegal to exclude competitors. It’s normal business practice.
And the fairgrounds analogy is better than the doughnut shop one. I didn't say it was perfect, but it illustrates the point. I also did not say that it was illegal or that it wasn't normal business practice--that's why I said "I don't know".
Having a monopoly on Clorox bleach doesn't mean you have a monopoly on bleach. You have to define what the market is.
The issue is that iOS app distribution and Android app distribution are two separate markets, in a way that Clorox bleach and Great Value bleach are not. The apps being distributed are not the same (they have to be written specifically for each platform), the customers for each are almost entirely disjoint, etc. You can't substitute one for the other. You can't distribute your iOS app to iOS devices via Amazon or Google Play.
It's like operating a school. You don't have a monopoly on schools, but you control what kind of books and equipment your students have to buy. If you specify commodities (e.g. any laptop with a minimum spec and a web browser), you don't have a monopoly there either. But if you require the students to buy a specific thing that only you provide, now you have a monopoly. You've created a market with no viable substitutes and no other competitors -- that's what a monopoly is. And that's what the App Store is.
> They can't be compelled to provide app store and ecommerce services at no cost.
Nor is that what's needed. What's needed is competing app stores for iOS apps.
Who cares if the Spotify apps for Android/iOS are coded differently ? It’s irrelevant. Users have access to the same app on both platforms with the same functionality. And Apple is not stopping these users from moving to Android.
And yes Apple has a monopoly on their products. So does every company.
It's a different product. It's like saying who cares if you can't sell shoes, go sell boots. Different products, different markets.
> Users have access to the same app on both platforms with the same functionality.
Not if Apple doesn't accept it in their app store.
> And Apple is not stopping these users from moving to Android.
Charter isn't stopping a homeowner from buying a house in Comcast's service area either. Having to replace a $1000 phone in order to get a $1 app is a prohibitively high barrier.
Moreover, in the market for app distribution the customer is the developer. Saying "you can sell to Android customers" is like a company with a regional monopoly in California saying "you can sell to customers in Texas" as an argument that they don't have a monopoly in California.
> And yes Apple has a monopoly on their products. So does every company.
Clorox has a monopoly on Clorox bleach, not on bleach, and other bleach is a perfect substitute. Apple has a monopoly on their App Store, which is the sole app store for iOS and there are no viable substitutes.
i feel this is dangerous thinking. maybe apple doesn't have a monopoly on a particular market in terms of market share, but their influence on businesses, markets, policies, etc. is massive and is basically indistinguishable from a market monopoly. with their amount of money and position in the market, they have near limitless influence on other companies and ways of abusing this influence to act in their favor. they've done it many, many times, and continue to do it.
That won't hold up well in a court of law. That's the problem, we need to change the law. Because the law as it is currently written, just doesn't see something like Apple as anything close to a monopoly.
Iff that is true, you should be prohibited from preinstalling, offering, or endorsing any marketplace... without a customer being able to substitute another at their discretion.
Thereby requiring that you make any and all technical considerations necessary for an alternate marketplace to interface with the end user in exactly the same way your marketplace does. (Aka a public, dogfooded API, and no secret internal API shenanigans).
There are two considerations that contribute to the ultimate consumer ills:
(1) Do I, as a user, have robust choice of alternatives with equivalent functionality? (Absolute market share * , coupled with self-sustainability)
In the case of the Android / iOS duopoly, I do not.
(2) Is the owner of the product using its dominance in such a way that users of the product must contribute post-initial-sale revenue to that owner?
In the case of Android & iOS, I must.
Monopolies will arise naturally in technology. And they're healthy: FAANMG deliver amazing technologies.
But a single choice should not allow a company to passively leverage your demand ever after (e.g. by attracting suppliers, from whom they can then take a cut). This extends beyond marketplaces and app stores, but they're the current offenders.
Amazon's shopping marketplace is the trickiest example. Is Amazon a "significant market participant" in online sales? Yes. Does the Amazon seller marketplace allow Amazon to extract additional revenue from suppliers by gatekeeping access to Amazon users' demand? Yes.
In Amazon and Walmart's cases, they should probably have retail cleaved from their logistics chains.
* I'd put this number low enough that the total number of large competitors should be sufficient to promote true choice. By gut, 2 is probably too small, 3 seems dicey, so let's say 25%.
???
Why's that?
Serious question.
And
>But a single choice should not allow a company to passively leverage your demand ever after...
That's how things have always worked though. And I'm not only talking about the tech industry now. I'm talking about nearly everything. Literally everything from Automobile manufacturers obliging you to buy accessories which fit only their vehicles, to sewing machines, even simple things like shaving razors.
We have to narrow our focus if we want the government and the courts to take us seriously. These shotgun approaches that qualify nearly every major corporation in nearly every market sector for a breakup just make us seem like amateurs.
You can't have a marketplace that you participate in? That just makes no sense. I mean think about it, you've just snared Walmart, Target, and dozens of other retailers with similar web presences in your net. You have to have something more tailored to tech companies, or you have to go with the laws as they stand. You can't say, "Oh, I just want to handicap companies comprising the top 25% of every market sector in the country." That makes you seem unreasonable.
It stems from the second bundling problem about iOS: They bundled the OS and the device. If switching OSs were easier, it wouldn't be such a problem.
You can argue the term isn't well defined or you can disagree with the definition. But you can't say it is "dangerous thinking" when someone simply applies the definition.
> But you can't say it is "dangerous thinking" when someone simply applies the definition.
yes i can.
"Just use a different smartphone" isn't a real defense in my opinion, any more than "just use a unix workstation" would be to Microsoft's desktop computer monopoly in the 1990s.
The attack on Microsoft was grandstanding BS, while the government has allowed the REAL customer-harming monopoly of Ticketmaster to not only continue but grow with its acquisitions of LiveNation and StubHub.
The most persistent misconception about antitrust regulation in the US, and one repeated over and over on HN and in this thread, is that it only applies to businesses in a monopoly position. While the original Sherman Act of 1890 explicitly targeted monopolies, the 1914 Clayton Act expanded its scope to encompass a range of anticompetitive practices, including predatory pricing. [1]
A market actor need not be a monopoly to engage in these behaviors, only a dominant position that they are abusing.
[1] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/clayton-antitrust-act.a...
This argument is so prevalent, but it needs to be unpacked: would most iPhone customers buy a totally different phone only to run an app that Apple doesn't allow? Whether or not someone can switch phones isn't really the issue, but whether or not the phone has replaced general-purpose computing and access to the entire software industry is the issue.
Buy Spotify is just another music app.
I think it is an impressive PR achievement by Microsoft that you remember it this way.
As a more recent example, when Google was fined related to Android, they tried to spin it as "being fined for bundling the play store". That is of course not what they were fined for, but it makes a nice memorable headline.
I believe this is because previously antitrust law was used when things were bad for competition but nowadays the thinking is more that antitrust laws should be used when things cause higher prices.
https://qz.com/work/1460402/google-facebook-and-amazon-benef... https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/07/lina-kh...
That’s exactly what is happening...Spotify can offer price $x to their customers but Apple’s rules are forcing the price to be $x + 30% Apple Tax. Spotify has articulated numerous acts Apple has taken to ensure Spotify can’t circumvent the Apple Tax...Apple coming out with a competing App and being able to charge $x sans their own tax is just the icing on the anticompetitive cake.
This is one of the biggest issues with Google as well...where company was advertising on Google for $x, once google uses its position to determine they want to compete Google starts competing with their own customers for the same ads jacking up the ad pricing.
This basically ensures both Apple and Google can use their dominate market position and platforms to determine markets, market prices, and then unfairly compete with the market incumbents by offering the original $x price without the google/Apple Tax. There is no leaving the Apple/Google platforms at that point or you are basically waiving the white flag and telling your customers to go over to the Apple/Google product.
Having said this, Apple can do as they please. They control the hardware, the OS, the App Store, and the user accounts. The same was true of Twitter who effectively squeezed access to their API until one or two desktop clients remained.
The only two ways out of this is to legislate a lower rate (through campaigns such as these), or to create a competing platform that lowers costs for its users. Imagine if Spotify offered a lower rate for Android users... Wouldn't that send a very clear message to Apple?
Apple shrugs and bans Spotify. Next move?
Having a monopoly over their own product is what every company has.
I think the confusion here is that you incorrectly believe this is a necessary condition for Spotify's complaint to be upheld.
Potential antitrust issues notwithstanding, it seems like such a message would be very much aligned with Apple's interests.
https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2019-02-2...
phone choices are inelastic. users do not drop phones and switch to a competing platform because they cannot install an app, it's the other way around. besides, with that logic you have no guarantee against ALL platforms becoming locked down (as they more or less have) to compete.
Well, it wasn't just an app, but that was a pretty big reason (though not the only one) for my dropping iOS.
I believe this is also against Apple's Terms of Service. IIRC, they have a "most favored nation" clause which prohibits you from offering a lower price on a competing platform.
2. "You must not directly or indirectly target iOS users to use a purchasing method other than in-app purchase, and your general communications about other purchasing methods must not discourage use of in-app purchase."
I think this implies that the subscription must be the same for all devices and you can't treat iOS differently. Pretty sure having a lower price if you subscribe on Android would violate that second clause.
Right, the app must not say that subscribing outside of the app is cheaper.
Unless there is proof of the contrary, the statements you point to do not imply that a provider cannot charge a different rate on a different platform.
I believe they also used to have it for subscriptions to things like video services (i.e. if you offered a web price and a 'through the store' price, the store price couldn't be higher), but dropped it.
So given Apple's marketshare (not a monopoly per se though pretty substantial), and given they both control the platform that people pay money to access, and promote preferential treatment of a first party service at the expense of any third party services, it sounds pretty ripe for an anti-trust lawsuit.
The same I believe has recently been applied to Google in the EU for using its monopoly to promote its own product search results above other online stores.
The only difference now is, the teeth of anti-trust regulators are a lot more dull than they were in the 90s, for various reasons.
Speaking of which, even just developing for iOS is a painful chore compared to Android. Unfortunately when the client and the users want iPhones, folks like us have to develop for them. In this world, it's fuck or walk.
You might be in the wrong business.
Also, iOS is a treat to build on. Not sure what your source on that is, but they don't have the device and OS fragmentation of Android, to say the least.
Changing countries is usually not even possible because of immigration restrictions. And even if you could get past that you are looking at years/decades before you are a proper citizen.
But yes they are totally the same thing.
That’s the same as Microsoft saying you can go to Best Buy and pick up a copy of Netscape Navigator
The other issue here is using dominance in one market to expand into another. Walmart may sell their own branded stuff, but even then they're still a retailer buying and selling things. Compare that with Apple where building phones and selling online music subscriptions are different markets.
The friction of switching from iPhone to Android is high for most people: purchasing an iPhone quality Android device and repurchasing apps could easily exceed $1000.
But...so could the cost of buying a iPhone quality iPhone (without trade in or other discount the XS Max seems to be $999 to $1499.)
Um, of course?
Apple's marketshare is nowhere close to that.
Microsoft actively and wilfilly went out to hurt Netscape. You can’t really argue Apple is doing the same with Spotify.
.. yes, for many of the reasons described in Spotify's microsite.
They have a monopoly, and they are unfairly favouring their own products.
This should be enough to bring anti-trust concerns to the table.
I have to imagine a fair number of Google searches for "spotify remove ads", too, which can lead to an upgrade.
I guess the crutch of Spotify's argument is that 30% is too high to charge while having their own competing app that isn't required to pay the same fees. Effectively using their unilateral control of the App Store and IAP to squeeze a third party competitor
Spotify can do this thing called "advertising". Look into it.
They advertise for Spotify Premium constantly on their free tier.
If you redefine "monopoly" to mean "minority market share," then yes, I suppose they do.
I don’t think that’s what the US law says. Most platforms are proprietary, and their makers have a monopoly on them (you don’t see people complain that Tom-Tom, Volkswagen, Miele, Boeing, etc. shield of their platforms for third-party software)
What is illegal under anti-trust law is having a monopoly in a market and using that monopoly to hurt consumers.
If you want to use anti-trust law in this case, you’ll have to convince the judge that “iPhone applications” is a market, and not “smartphone applications”. Doable? Maybe.
I think (but am not sure) you will also have to show that Apple’s behviour hurts consumers (as opposed to just other companies)
I hope they continue to do so, in so much as I would like Apple to experience some backlash for having inconsistent stances when it comes to the app ecosystem and their rules.
They already did, the 12.99 for premium was only for purchase through the App store.
I disagree. Apple created the App Store and invited 3rd parties to host their apps there, so they should have to play fair for whatever the legal system deems is a good definition of fair.
https://www.theverge.com/2015/7/8/8913105/spotify-apple-app-...
Or does Apple have the customers to kill Spotify by cutting them off?
But then you have the complication in the analogy that afaik, the landlord doesn't usually operate stores?
Similarly, at a local level, it looks pretty bad, Apple has advantages in its environment that allows it to operate in sort of unassailable ways. But indeed, if you zoom out, the big driver Apple has is millions and millions of iPhone users.
Apple has users that want its products, spotify wants market access to those users, the link imo is "do the users want spotify more than apple?". And the answer I would think is no, but then that brings up I think the reasonable issue that there's a larger barrier in switching devices than there is in switching apps. Sorry for the ramble, the whole thing seems like a mess.
You cant move to another platform without losing access to all your "purchases" - there is no free market. They have monopolies within ecosystems they created.
They should be FORCED to have an open platform, with users able to access multiple 3rd party storefronts on multiple platforms. They can market themselves as official/curated/whatever they want but the user should have the choice.
Using an Apple devices is accepting a benevolent dictatorship, and it's a trade off tonnes of users are happy to make.
So then how would a novice user get apps the first time they boot up their phone? They would have to know where to get apps from. That seems like an easy way for users to end up downloading a bunch of malware because they think it's the official Apple or Google app store when it's just a random website.
Having a built in app store has huge advantages in security and usability for the end user.
"Find Spotify on [list of ten app stores here]." One of the advantages for users and developers is that if you want an app on iOS (and for the most part) Android, you know exactly where to find it.
It's by no means a dealbreaker, but something to consider.
Also I believe it had a positive effect on Firefox gaining users, no one can claim that was a bad thing.
That comparison doesn't really work, because MSFT had an effective desktop monopoly. By contrast, Apple is a minority player in the mobile market.
>They should be FORCED to have an open platform,
Just because YOU want this doesn't mean the Apple users want it. I'm utterly content with a single, curated-by-Apple app store for iOS. I like the stability it affords the platform.
I'd never accept it on a general-purpose computing device, but for my phone it's perfect.
That's Apple's magic trick. They only own the top 20% of the market (evading monopoly attention) but they extract almost 100% of all profit in the smartphone market. No idea how you'd legislate against that though..
No one told Google to skimp on customer service and make 18 chat programs that don’t work. No one told Microsoft to drag their feet on preventing malware from destroying the usability of their system. It was Microsoft’s choice to profit from letting manufacturers sell computers riddled with malware that you had to spend hours to remove after buying. It’s google’s choice to not offer product support such that you can’t use their “flagship” devices for 5 years.
Apple invested in setting up their retail stores, training employees well, making their devices easy to use, and now they are reaping the rewards.
Apple sold 47% of the all smartphones shipped in the US in Q4 2018
https://www.counterpointresearch.com/us-market-smartphone-sh...
2. 47% is not a monopoly
https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2019-02-2...
Market share is not the only criteria for determining whether a company has a dominant market position under EU competition law. Apple have a substantial share of the mobile phone market and they have a total monopoly on iOS app distribution. If you want to sell apps to ~27% of consumers in the EU, you have no choice but to go through Apple. End users might have a meaningful choice, but developers don't, which is highly relevant in this case.
And you should be able to choose that. But should you change your mind, you should be able to take your purchases with you and go elsewhere. Although apple is in the spotlight here, all of these vendor-locked app-stores are the problem.
What do you mean? Every time I've installed Windows, it came with Internet Explorer or Edge (which I then used to install another browser).
Congratulations, you've just reinvented the desktop adware / malware market. We know that if this is possible users will be manipulated into making bad decisions which are hard to recover from, and in many cases those bad decisions will be made for them by their carrier.
What I would support is that the app store should be more open: no refusing apps for competing with the built-in apps, and removing the ban on purchases which don't go through the platform — let the store owner charge for payment processing but e.g. Amazon should be allowed to sell you a movie on iOS without paying Apple a cut simply by using their payment system instead.
Also, is Android as malware infected as GP describes? He singles out desktops, but Android does allow side-loading apps and people still near exclusively download apps though the play store. Adding a few other stores of big&trusted companies to painlessly load apps doesn't seem that risky to me. But would certainly add competition. I really don't understand why I must have a Google account to download Microsoft office.
> I really don't understand why I must have a Google account to download Microsoft office.
This is a related but separate issue: most of the value comes from trusting Google to verify that the app you found searching for “Microsoft Office” is actually published by Microsoft. Having a Google account saves you from having to manage accounts with every software publisher you use — which is huge for most people — but it's not really a prerequisite for user safety the way having a review step makes it a lot harder to spam popular application names.
There's nothing wrong with providing an app store as long as that store offers fair and non-discriminatory terms to all vendors. Charging app developers for the costs of running a store and maintaining an ecosystem is perfectly reasonable; using those charges to stifle competition isn't.
Engineers tend to want neat, perfect solutions that require no human judgement, but they're very rare in the real world. There are obvious and major disadvantages to a free-for-all versus a walled garden, for both developers and users. Customers have a right to choose a tightly-controlled platform, just as they have a right to shop at a grocery store that refuses to sell poisonous food. Banning app store bundling is a scorched-earth approach that would do more harm than good for the average consumer.
And giving them the choice is the whole point
Setting aside the store issue for a moment, what you suggest is impossible if Apple is also making apps.
No, it's very easy to implement and commonplace in all sorts of businesses. Apple need to treat their in-house app development teams in exactly the same way as they would treat a third-party developer - they get the same APIs, they get the same documentation, they go through the same approvals process and they pay the same fees.
Apple can hardly claim that they lack the expertise to compartmentalise information in this manner - prior to the iPhone launch, the software team had never seen the hardware and vice-versa.
Can you provide a software example?
> Apple need to treat their in-house app development teams in exactly the same way as they would treat a third-party developer - they get the same APIs, they get the same documentation, they go through the same approvals process and they pay the same fees.
Nobody should believe that a company paying fees to itself will change its behavior. The app development team would still act in Apple's overall best interest and not seek to maximize its own profits.
Even if we somehow accept that there is a real divide, it's still not equal footing. Say that Apple Music and Spotify both have $0.75 in expenses for every $1 they charge on app store. After the 30% cut, both would have loses of $0.05 per dollar of revenue. For Apple, that's a fictitious loss and their actual cash flow is a positive $0.25. For Spotify, that $0.05 represents an actual nickle they have to give someone else. Apple can continue on doing that indefinitely while Spotify can't.
Amazon are already very, very close to that state of play - developers within Amazon are required to design their infrastructure based on standard APIs, to facilitate the commercialisation of those systems via AWS. Chinese walls are commonplace in any kind of reverse-engineering as a protection against claims of copyright infringement.
>For Apple, that's a fictitious loss and their actual cash flow is a positive $0.25. For Spotify, that $0.05 represents an actual nickle they have to give someone else. Apple can continue on doing that indefinitely while Spotify can't.
That would constitute predatory pricing, which is illegal under EU competition law.
They were never stopped from that.
They were stopped for abusing their monopoly (e.g. threatening OEM PC vendors that unless they bundled this or that, they wont get Windows for a special price, etc).
And that when they had a monopoly (e.g. close to 98% of the desktop AND business market) -- which in itself is not illegal.
But instead, they are greedy and want 100% of the users of their platform to use their apps.
The problem here isn't the quality of the App Store. The problem is that Spotify has no alternative.
Apple is a hardware developer, a software developer, and a software retailer. The problem is how tightly coupled those three roles are on the iPhone.
You can't run iOS on other hardware. You can't run another OS on the iPhone. You can't install apps on iOS except from the App Store. You can't use the App Store on other OSes.
Those are the underlying problems.
Users can't use part of the ecosystem. They have to invest in the whole thing, giving Apple more control and reducing consumer mobility.
Microsoft had a monopoly, Apple doesn't. It's as simple as that.
They are certainly complying with the laws in this regard, but the reality is that anti-competition laws need to change to deal with companies of this scale and reach.
It doesn't work that way. Otherwise I could also say that any company has a monopoly on "products with the company's name on it".
> the reality is that anti-competition laws need to change to deal with companies of this scale and reach.
Hm ... I really think that Facebook and Google are the bigger problems today. And a lot is happening there already (not so much in the US though).
I agree Facebook and google are also problems. Amazon too, likely others. They all have their walled gardens - and whats worse is when they "go to war" with each other, affecting the users tied to their services (financially or otherwise).
I didn't mean that your definition of a monopoly is incorrect, but that you can't just narrow down the market until you find a monopoly. Because if you could, every company has a monopoly (which wouldn't make any sense).
The user signed up for that, so IMHO he gets what he deserves. The only I think I would change is to disallow the use of the word "purchase" when the user only buys the right to access some DRM-ed content.
For those of us that care about freedom, we can just buy a phone that's compatible with LineageOS (or Replicant if you're willing to go full Stallman) and install it.
Look at Google Play store. Much more "open," and a shitload of malware, scams, and shit software. Without curation of any kind, you end up with shit. It's the Tragedy of the Commons applied to apps. Build it, and they will ruin.
The anticompetitive behaviour described on that website is just the tip of the iceberg. Apple is doing a lot worse behind the scenes. Cellular service on Apple Watch for example - as a carrier you can't just provide service for the Watch - you have to be an "approved" carrier and this means being friends with Apple and selling iPhones among other things (you only provide SIM-only plans and not interested in selling phones? Tough luck.). Same for visual voicemail, etc.
I sell physical goods on Amazon. They charge me 15% for this privilege. The only reason they don't charge more is because physical goods have lower margins than digital goods (my margins after it's all said and done are somewhere between 10-15%). And, you know what? I'm happy to pay Amazon their 15% because they're bringing me customers that I wouldn't have otherwise.
Perhaps thinking about it like this is instructive: does Amazon have an obligation to let me sell on their platform simply because lots of consumers choose to buy stuff from Amazon? Does Amazon have an obligation to change their fee structure so that I can more easily compete with Amazon Basics branded products?
Should Apple charge a smaller percentage to subscription services that can't afford to give up 30%? Probably. It would net Apple a percentage of something, rather than the 30% of $0 that they're getting now. And it would be a better experience for Apple's customers. But it is in no way unreasonable for Apple to expect to get paid for originating sales of software and subscriptions. And it is certainly not unreasonable for them to get paid significantly more than credit card processing fees.
The problem is that it’s really hard to measure how many customers Apple really brings and how many would find an app through other means.
This feels like an abuse of their position as a marketplace platform, but it isn't that different from grocery stores creating white label/off brand products.
Maybe it only becomes an issue when they promote their own items and bump original products down the search results. This is closer to the behavior that Spotify alleges Apple is doing.
It looks like they’ve filed a complaint with the EU Commission; I wonder if it will become a talking point in US politics as well.
Progressive Web Apps -- web apps that are installable and available offline without any app store -- are a viable alternative, and ultimately a threat to Apple's app store racket. It's likely why iOS Safari continues to drag it's feet on PWA support.
Note I work for Google but have no knowledge of Googles PWA products or PWA roadmap
Something mimicking today's stores would essentially be links you can rate and comment on. Kind of like Reddit, but with a different UI and no direct user submissions.
Yeah. You could technically still kick them off the store for the sake of maintaining trust— like a forum.
> Things like Reddit style voting can be gamed, just like app store search and reviews are today. Whoever has the most resources wins, not necessarily who has the best product.
Wait, isn't this like current App Store ratings though? I wouldn't be worried about this. It is already the case that many people invest a lot of resources in trying to game the App Store. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
If your app can be distributed as a PWA, then the question becomes: is the App Store (which gives you discoverability) worth the 30% revenue cut? For some PWAs the answer will be no.
Honestly, no, they're not. Even the Gold Standard of PWAs - the Twitter Lite app that Google (the patron saint of PWAs) helped them build - provides an inferior experience compared to native apps.
People bring this up often - Apple refuses to improve Safari to bolster their App Store - which completely ignores all the valuable improvements Safari has made to give web apps more native-like features, like backdrop-blur for blurred backgrounds and CSS Snap points for native JS-less carousels. Chrome doesn't support either of these.
And despite it adding certain CSS standards, mobile Safari on the whole remains the IE6 of the mobile browser world. Apple drags its feet on web app standards support for a reason similar to why Microsoft dragged its feet with IE6 web standards support.
4 years ago, I was all in- Mac, iPad, iPhone. In the last 4 years, I've been driven away by Apple seeming contempt for professional users.
Their contempt for other competition is even graver cause for concern.
You just have to wonder what's up with Apple.
It's 1990s Microsoft on a mobile phone.
Phones now have the same level of processing power as portable computers. We shouldn't be obligated to only run applications that are siphoned thru a third party "trusted clearinghouse", be it the smartphone or the operating system vendor.
If I want more safety or I am not a Power User, I can flick a switch on the device to allow that binding behavior to happen. Heck, they are giving me the 'free service' of taking care of app security for me, I could even pay for that if I am serious about having my apps checked and stuff.
Phones are computers. You own the hardware, you should be able to install whatever you want. Always.
Is the argument about protecting the masses of non-tech people? Great, make it an opt-out. And still: There ought to be someone keeping tabs on that big brother (gov regulations? agencies) or else shady behavior can ensue as well.
I pay a lot of money for iPad Pros and Google Pixelbooks for precisely this functionality. When the user can run anything they want, the result is the unsafe landscape of malware we see on common desktop OSes.
Antitrust is a useful tool for when players end up controlling monopolies and using them in anti-competitive ways.
There is a stronger case against Amazon for selling Amazon-branded, well-moving products like batteries and diapers, even though they don't stifle the other brands.
Having had to take antitrust training at my company in the past few weeks, I can say that you are very mistaken if you think antitrust only kicks in when the company is a monopoly.
You can fall afoul of these conditions if you have "sufficient market power", which is a substantially broader claim than "monopoly power." I don't think there's any lawyer that would try to claim that Apple doesn't have "market power"--note that the smartphone market, from an OS perspective, is basically a duopoly.
Both Hulu and Netflix compete directly with Prime Video, and both 1) are available as free apps for Kindle and the Amazon Fire Stick TV and 2) literally rely on Amazon hardware to run through AWS.
Sure, they have complete control over who publishes on their own platform, but that sort of thing happens all the time without anyone batting an eyelash at it: The major console vendors do this, as did all cell phone vendors in the pre-smartphone era. My digital camera does this.
That leaves me thinking there's no real ground for invoking antitrust laws on this issue. Though there's still plenty of room to say that these policies are consumer-hostile and not in the public interest, and therefore there ought to be a law against it.
Philosophically interesting perhaps, but legally irrelevant. EU competition law is primarily concerned with dominant market positions and the abuse of that dominance. As the junior partner in a duopoly, Apple are inarguably powerful enough to substantially manipulate the market.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_competition_law...
My mistake, I was thinking of this in terms of US law, which is much less effective on these sorts of issues.
http://ec.europa.eu/competition/antitrust/procedures_102_en....
40% share is certainly a much lower bar than in the US, but would still not apply to Apple's share of EU smartphones.
Smart watches, on the other hand…
the argument is markets within the ios ecosystem, of which there's effectively one, and how it affects developers' ability to build on that ecosystem.
From your source:
>The Commission also takes other factors into account in its assessment of dominance, including the ease with which other companies can enter the market – whether there are any barriers to this; the existence of countervailing buyer power; the overall size and strength of the company and its resources and the extent to which it is present at several levels of the supply chain (vertical integration).
Apple clearly score very highly on most of these points.
On the other hand, you say Apple is free and clear for undercutting Spotify with their own product in a way that Spotify is incapable of competing with.
Unfortunately they are abusing their power, and are being flat out unfair if you want to develop a bluetooth device or app. If you want to vet apps to ensure a safe environment, that's fine, but these practices go beyond that and are unfair.
Spotify is paying as much as music industry extorts from it. Where does the money go? Ask the big labels that are the ones paying artists.
Meanwhile, Bandcamp streams the songs for free but they allow you to pay what you want. I've made at least 10x the profit from selling tracks on Bandcamp than I ever did in the streaming world.
If Spotify wants to play fair, they need to pay artists more for streams. This site is just another instance of tech bros thinking they know better and meanwhile fucking over everyone else involved.
How? 90% of their catalog is owned by big labels. They cannot sign up artists directly because it will put them directly into competition with the labels.
They are trying to move towards paying artists directly [1], but you have to be eligible (most likely read: not signed up for a label already).
This is a legal and financial nitghmare.
But what happens when a major label demands that they also get a dollar every time a song is played. The next time Taylor Swift releases a new album the entire country of Sweden would be owed in Royalties.
Yea digital streaming doesnt pay jack. Even the best paying streaming services only pays .0064 cents per stream. Of course that doesnt add up to much considering they only have .65% of the market.
At the end of the day duder it sucks that you dont make shit from streaming services. It really does. But with how the entire streaming payout model works it just is NEVER going to be profitable for smaller artists. It 100% caters to artists that will pull in 100 million streams in a month. But how much does platforms like Spotify help artists on your label get noticed? I constantly try to find new artists that have under 100,000 listens on their top song to see if its some hidden gem or the next big thing.
https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2018/01/16/streaming-music-...
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/apr/03/how-much-...
Apple policies do not really benefit anyone. Kindle iOS users will simply open Safari to buy their books, making their experience worse.
Either Apple should really remain objective and not have horses in the App Store race, or follow the same rules on its own apps that they impose on others, or change the rules to benefit everyone (including the users).
If your use case for a tablet is to read books or comics (which I suspect it is for many people! A lot!), then the iPad is terrible because of this specific limitation, and Android tablets are much easier to use. Shame Google seems hellbent on destroying them - the Pixel C really was a very, very nice comic reading tablet when it wasn't suffering hardware failures.
Software platforms are marketplaces and company behind such platforms yield great power, even if technically speaking they aren't yet a monopoly.
Hardware devices should not be legally allowed to be locked down in the way that Apple devices are. Not sure how many people remember, but Microsoft eventually being forced to provide choice in browsers was a great outcome and allowed Firefox and Chrome to flourish. Yes, Microsoft was at that time a monopoly, whereas Apple right now isn't, but Apple has the potential to be a monopoly. They are after all the richest software company in the world.
Apple succeeded where Microsoft failed, they normalized “trusted computing”, which brought everything we feared.
I very much prefer EU's consumer protectionism in these regards and I'm hoping they'll do something about walled gardens such as Apple's.
[1] https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/11/app-store-generated-93-mor...
And... listening to SCOTUS oral arguments recently, that sounds like it will be changing soon.
Spotify knowingly built a low margin business living in the pocket of the labels (who force Spotify towards razor thin margins) and Apple/Google (who have, since before Spotify launched, operated app stores for their platforms which are to some extent curated and which are not free market economies).
Spotify feels aggrieved that Apple does not allow it to develop software for certain of their hardware lines, such as Homepod or Apple Watch. Why do I have to allow you to develop software for my proprietary hardware, just because it's technically possible?
The crucial line in their argument is this:
> giving up 30% was too much for us to keep our prices low for our fans. Unfortunately, the end result is that you can no longer upgrade to Premium through the app.
How is this Apple's fault and not your fault? Every market place takes a cut from the vendor. Your business not being able to sustain the cost of doing business is nobody's fault except your own.
Apple should not be allowed to send push notifications about products or services they prohibit other apps from sending. They shouldn't arbitrarily restrict Spotify from updating the app (virtually no information is provided about what infractions Apple saw, and history suggests that companies are great at presenting one side of the argument and then we find that Apple has a legitimate grievance). They should not be able to charge Spotify more because of their competition.
But to suggest that Apple should be forced to allow Siri integration with Spotify? Homepod? Apple Watch? Ridiculous.
Monopolies where prices rise are bad news. But look at UK football coverage. On top of my free-to-air channels (£150 p.a. TV licence) I need a Sky Sports subscription (minimum £25 per month) and a BT Sport subscription (which necessitates one of BT Broadband - gross - or Sky) which I think is around £5-£10 per year. The top flight football is fragmented across all three providers. Is that better for me?
They probably could live with it but I can understand why it feels like an artificial cost that Apple came up with. It would be an understandable cost if they were selling the Spotify App through the App Store and using the actual store infrastructure for supporting Spotify... but they are not.
The app is nothing more than a portal to the entire Spotify infrastructure, it doesn't weight anything to Apple.
And then we have the subject of the direct competition, Apple Music doesn't need to have their profits cut in 30% because they are owned by Apple itself.
And it's even worse if they are using Siri, Homepad and Apple Watch to make Apple Music more appealing in comparison to Spotify.
Not so as I understand it. Only if you put the option to subscribe into your app in the app store. That cost doesn't exist for Mac or PC, but Apple doesn't heavily curate and have costs associated with the wild west of downloading apps from the web.
> it doesn't weight anything to Apple
There are significant costs associated with the app store, no? Part of the reason users gravitate towards the iPhone is because you can download high quality apps without malware, viruses, etc.
> Apple Music doesn't need to have their profitts cut in 30% because they are owned by Apple itself.
Conceptually I'm with you. This is an area I'm struggling with though. The Apple Online store charges accessory manufacturers a fee to be featured there. Should Apple also pay a fee to feature their own products there? I don't think so.
> it's even worse if they are using Siri, Homepod and Apple Watch to make Apple Music more appealing in comparison to Spotify
Why? They've made the hardware. Why should they have to let Spotify run on it in the exact way Spotify wants? (You can Airplay Spotify to Homepod.)
That should be covered by the one time fee that developers pay to Apple in order to publish apps into the App Store. I am not sure if a simple binary needs a 30% cut of the entire Spotify profit to keep up with the costs of hosting an app there.
> Why? They've made the hardware. Why should they have to let Spotify run on it in the exact way Spotify wants? (You can Airplay Spotify to Homepod.)
Because Apple is using a completely different market, which they have a strong presence on, to increase the value of Apple Music and consequently devaluing any other competing music streaming services.
We're now into the murky world of trying to tell other people what their cost base or margins should be.
> Because Apple is using a completely different market, which they have a strong presence on, to increase the value of Apple Music and consequently devaluing any other competing music streaming services.
Another view is that Apple fairly charges a consistent 30% to all customers in the app store. In the same way as Amazon doesn't pay to list its own products on Amazon, and Google doesn't pay to advertise Chrome on google.com, Apple should not have to pay to market its own services on its own marketplace.
This is the core issue. Apple using their dominant market position in the hardware/operating system markets to push anticompetitive practices for their product in a different market (Apple Music).
I don't see how this is much different than IE. Maybe even worse in some ways. But regardless, it is very clearly manipulating the market artificially in Apple's favor.
Allegedly anticompetitive.
Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Facebook all engage in similar behavior by giving preferential treatment of their products/features/services.
Remember it's my device, but theirs. Not apples. If they are going to allow third party apps then do so, but there's no technical reason to not allow the service.
Imagine Ford says you can only use a certain brand of tires on your new car, or can only buy tires through the dealership. That's what's going on here.
That's the reason I don't buy Apple stuff to begin with.
It's your device that you bought, which quite clearly doesn't support the things you want, so why did you buy it?
As a developer I can push a hundred updates per day if I want to, and they all have to be reviewed by a human. How large of a "one time fee" should be expected to cover the cost of that review?
That seems quite unrealistic. Apple certainly has recurring costs to keep the app store running. Taking a one time publishing fee wouldn't be sustainable long term.
I perfectly understand why Apple would be as anti-competitive as they can away with on their plateform. It benefits them tremendously.
What I don't understand is why some comsumers, who are definitely loosing from the situation - even if you prefer the Apple solution competition tends to bring price down - are systematically defending Apple. It's not like we are talking about a small and endearing company here.
Out of curiosity, do people really view using Apple products as a life style choice ? I liked my iphone but as far as I am concerned it's a mass market device.
Maybe you haven't considered that some consumers don't feel like they're losing from the situation. Maybe some consumers feel like they are winning because Apple's interests align with their own, and the interests of Apple's competitors are not aligned with their own?
I like having an app store I can trust to not have malware, I like knowing the apps I download have had a human review them for quality. I like having hardware with an OS where the developer of the OS controls when I get updates, not a carrier or manufacturer who are not affiliated with the developer. I like getting security and feature updates for my OS for 5 years. I like paying the developer of my software so the developer has a profit structure that doesn't necessitate spying on me. I like knowing that every piece of software pre-packaged on my device was put there by the developer of the OS with their explicit approval, and not sold to the highest bidder. I like knowing that the software on my phone is exactly how the developer planned it, and not modified by an unaffiliated device manufacturer to the point where multiple websites exist for the sole purpose of creating ROMs that mimic the developer's intended software, necessitating that I now either trust the unaffiliated hardware manufacturer or trust some random person on the Internet to deliver me a clean ROM.
There are platforms that are open and free to use however you see fit. They exist and they are great options. Very modern and easy to use and as open as you want them to be. I prefer the option that isn't open to modification. Products exist for both use cases.
And none of that has anything to do with what we are discussing. Apple could still do all this thing while allowing more competition on the plateform. For example could you explain to me how allowing apps competing with the system ones or allowing other streaming service to cast and use the watch would prevent any of what you listed ?
It is not an either/or situation between two opposite situations. There are plenty of inbetween possibilities.
> feel like they are winning because Apple's interests align with their own
Apple interests is selling you phone and apps so they can make money. Unless you are a stockholder, I don't see how their interests can align with yours. Unless you take pleasure in paying more, you are clearly losing from the situation.
The cost is there whether or not you pay through the App Store mechanisms. You have to pay it, even if you provide your own payment mechanism.
> There are significant costs associated with the app store, no? Part of the reason users gravitate towards the iPhone is because you can download high quality apps without malware, viruses, etc.
Sure. Then charge all apps for the cost of being in the App Store. It doesn't excuse a situation where Apple directly competes with Spotify and then charge Spotify 30% they don't charge for Apple Music. Thats a textbook violation of antitrust law.
> Conceptually I'm with you. This is an area I'm struggling with though. The Apple Online store charges accessory manufacturers a fee to be featured there. Should Apple also pay a fee to feature their own products there? I don't think so.
You can buy your accessories other places as well. Apple's Online store doesn't have a monopoly on selling accessories to iPhone users. The App Store on the other hand is the only mechanism to sell to iPhone users. The alternative is to allow competing App Stores on their platform.
Yes, they get 30% only if you subscribe through the app store. That's already too much for a service that doesn't use Apple's infrastructure, but Spotify played along for a while. Their main complaint however is that Apple is outright censoring the Spotify app so that it makes no mention to other options for upgrading to Premium.
That's clearly foul play in my book. I wonder if you would still defend it if instead of Apple, it was e.g. Microsoft using Windows Defender to block Chrome downloads.
> There are significant costs associated with the app store, no?
You pay a $99 per year fee as a developer to Apple. That should cover their costs for general QA. If they feel that popular apps need to pay more, they can still set a higher fixed price. But claiming that 30% is to cover Apple's QA costs is ridiculous.
> Why should they have to let Spotify run on it in the exact way Spotify wants?
Because of the way they market Homepod. They present Homepod as interoperable with your iPhone, but it turns out they place artificial limits to interoperability. I wonder, what would Apple do in case of a mass-return of Homepods from customers unhappy by the lack of interoperability with Spotify or other apps?
They can do the purchases on their own website, but its against App Store rules for an app to tell users that they have the option of upgrading outside of IAP.
Can you even subscribe through the app? Spotify could simply yell you so go to your web browser to subscribe. That’s what Amazon does for its video etc and it doesn’t seem to cause them any problems.
I subscribed to Spotify via their web site and it works fine on my phone. I’m sure they pay nothing to Apple in order for me to listen. That makes me feel that this is a publicity play by Spotify no matter what the more general (non-Spotify) merits of the issue might be.
Monopolies can have negative effects without trying to extract monopoly rents.
The competition between BT and Sky massively increased the TV rights price for e.g. the premier league, so the clubs got much more money. In theory, they used this to buy better players etc and increase the quality of the league.
Although you now have to pay twice, the quality of the product has gone up. So it's not a zero-sum game. You can argue that you don't think it's worth it, but that's an opinion, it's not true that it's an inherently worse situation.
Until they entered into a rights sharing agreement.
Also worth noting that the rights sharing arrangement on Sky's end is... <drumroll> ...mandated by a settlement from a previous anti-trust case!
To put this in 19th century anti-trust terms, the manufacturing company owns the railways and charges the competition a toll to transport their goods. It's a clear cut case for Spotify, from a legal perspective.
To repeat my question asked of someone else in this thread: Apple charges e.g. Mophie a fee to feature their products on the Apple Store online. Should Apple be required to pay the same fee for featuring their own products there?
What Apple is doing is a direct violation of the Sherman Act of 1890, specifically Section 1, in regards to artificially raising prices by restricting trade or supply:
> Every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, is declared to be illegal.
Apple is big enough to pull their products from Amazon. Taking it back to the 19th century, Apple owns their own "railway". The real quandary comes in if Amazon gets so big that there's no way for a small supplier to sell a product in mass without going through Amazon and paying their premium. I don't think we're anywhere near there yet.
Amazon also built their own Amazon store, to get away from the fees of Google's equally Sherman Act violating store, and in the process potentially violated the act themselves (Prime Music).
Edit: I just thought of another, slam dunk case, this time for Amazon, because Apple restricts purchasing Audible books in the app, even when using existing book credits.
I am genuinely curious, does Google Play violate the Sherman Act in the same way that the Apple App store does or is it a different clause?
It seems like allowing users to fairly easily side-load apps (ex. Fortnite) and the presence of competing app stores (Amazon App Store, F-Droid, etc.) should alleviate some concerns.
Exxon doesn't force Shell sell their gas in Exxon stations.
And if you don't, you're out of luck due to the increasingly hostile restrictions on what you're allowed to even mention in the app - at least according to the website.
Can't say I'm 100% on Spotify's side, but to me it doesn't seem like Apple has anything stand on here, ethics-wise. Microsoft and the IE case comes to mind.
But Spotify's argument seems to be "you have to pay the same price as everyone else ... except Apple itself."
And why should it change just because Apple introduced a competitor? Apple charges Spotify the same before and after they launched Apple Music.
> Why do I have to allow you to develop software for my proprietary hardware, just because it's technically possible?
Of course if you were Apple, you would not want to do it. But, that’s what antitrust laws are for. As a consumer they are valuable: how long have people been waiting to use Spotify their Apple Watch?
I see your point but you could flip that a 3rd way:
"Consumers pay for their hardware - they own the device - so why should manufacturers tell consumers what they can or cannot install on their hardware?"
I grew up in an era when hardware wasn't so tightly coupled with software. In fact you could go further than that and mod your hardware with custom chips and so on without violating anything more than your warranty. So I find this current era where consumers are expected to pay high prices for hardware and still not have any rights over that platform to be a massive con.
Can you?
Ultimately there isn't a single consumer handset out there that has the same principles of "now you own the device it's yours to do with as you like". Consumer tech just doesn't operate that way any more.
Also I’d already acknowledged that it was easier and cheaper to sideload apps on Android.
Before you jump in and say something like “why should OEMs / Google offer you all this stuff for free etc”, I do completely agree. This isn’t a rant at Google (nor Apple) specifically but just at the state of technology these days. It’s not just an issue about geeks like us having ownership of our devices, it’s also creating a problem for environmental waste since it’s becoming increasingly hard to upgrade or replace parts. Laptops have components soldered in and old phones often end up in landfills. It’s such a shame to see.
Anyhow, I’ve drifted way off topic. Sorry for that
This will be fine for HN folks but will result in the erasure of security and privacy for normal users.
It's not that you have to, but if you do and you become one of only two or three platform oligopolists worldwide, then you better make sure it's a level playing field or you risk getting regulated as a utility.
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/11/sen-elizabeth-warren-wants-t...
Because Apple+Android = de facto monopoly.
As a user of an iPhone/Mac/etc, but who loves Spotify, this whole thing just sours me on Apple a bit. Spotify works great with my webOS TV, and just about everything else for that matter. It supports everything. Its networking/streaming model is brilliant. The interface is much better than Apple music (with its bizarre integration with iTunes). That I can't use Siri to play a song is just obnoxious and turns me off of Siri, and whatever middle managers in Apple are pushing this are just doing themselves harm in the longer run.
I don't think we have a clear ethic yet, for these situations. There's obviously a ton of economic power in platforms. Since the msft-vs-netscape days, it's been controversial.
Ultimately... these are marketplaces, important ones and, considering their size, scope and influence... I think there is a strong case that "my house, my rules" is not a reasonable way of doing things.
Apple/Google's app & content stores are huge bottlenecks and being locked out of them is on the same scale as being locked out of the financial/banking system for certain companies.
Does "free market" mean anything useful, if the free market consists of a handful of unfree "platforms?"
There's a similar question for FB and Twitter. They are such big media channels that being locked out of one could (for example) make it impossible to run for elected office.
Things have different implications at large scale.
Apple are directly competing with Spotify in the field of streaming music services via Apple Music. Apple's total control of the app store and their substantial share of the smartphone market means that they have a dominant market position within the meaning of Article 102 TFEU. Apple are using that dominant market position to advantage their own streaming service and disadvantage Spotify, for reasons set out at length in the original article. Apple are required under EU competition law to give Apple Music and Spotify an equal playing field, which they clearly aren't doing. Apple might have a partial defence if they allowed sideloading of apps, but they don't.
The obvious precedent is the European Commission's action against Google in 2018. Google were fined €4.34bn for using Android to unfairly advantage their search business. Android has a dominant market position within the mobile OS market - if you're a small mobile device manufacturer, you don't have many reasonable alternatives to using Android. Google didn't allow manufacturers to pre-install the Play Store app unless they also pre-installed Chrome and the Google Search app, which is an abuse of their dominant market position. They used their dominance of the mobile OS business to unfairly advantage their search business, which is blatantly illegal.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_competition_law...
Hmm! What about?
> Apple's behaviour in this instance is clearly an abuse of market power and I fully expect the European Commission to rule in Spotify's favour.
I'm not contesting that. I'm saying that I don't believe Apple is doing anything wrong. (The law and me may differ on that.)
> Apple [has] a dominant market position
Isn't the test for this substitutability in the event that the dominant force increases price? (This area is a total unknown to me so thanks for taking the time to explain!)
> to advantage their own streaming service and disadvantage Spotify
I think the he-said-she-said of the software updates thing is easily parked (unless you think it forms a substantive part of their complaint), so I will focus on the pricing issue. Again I'm drawing a distinction between the ethics of the situation and the law (although I assume that to some extent, the latter follows the former).
Spotify's P&L will have a bunch of rows in it for the costs associated with acquiring a paid user. Different channels have different costs. For example TV, radio, google/bing/alta vista PPC. Each of those will have a cost per install and some channels and keywords will convert better than others. For example if I look at the analysis frequently cited about iPhone vs. Android users, it's easy to believe that there is a greater propensity to pay money for apps on iOS vs. Android.
If Apple was the only place to get those users, I could understand totally the belief that this is unethical behaviour. But Spotify grew by four million paying subscribers in Q4 of last year, all of whom are evidence that they can grow their business by ~$500m of ARR without the app store.
So for me Apple charging Spotify 30% for their paying subscribers (who came to the App store because of a product and marketplace which Apple created, markets, and curates -- benefits which are at least conceptually worth paying for by app developers, even if some of them quibble the 30%). Is the argument that Spotify should not pay this 30% [but still benefit from all the great things which Apple foots the bill for]? And if Apple wasn't in music streaming, they'd be able to charge Spotify 30% Because that to me seems orthogonal to a common monopolistic argument: they are able to do significant harm to Apple (app store), which is a business unit, and remove all of the acquisition costs they'd ordinarily pay through hany channel.
Would it be acceptable legallyl/ethically if Apple effectively treated app store as an acquisition channel like any other, and the Music business unit paid the 30% to App store?
[1] - https://stratechery.com/2018/antitrust-the-app-store-and-app...
Secondarily, the expectation that Spotify buck the labels AND expect to bring the concept of 'all music for one price' is a non-starter, so I don't understand that criticsim.
On iOS unless everything else is only partiality supported. iTunes in comparison to Spotify was a joke when it was first released and they're shoving it down our throats constantly.
Never really used Siri until I bought a pair of AirPods. How am I not able to tell it to play music via Spotify?
But on the other hand, Apple is stepping into a market (music streaming) from which they control top to bottom and has a advantage no one has (no IAP transactions fee, they basically pay themselves for it), which in a way is unfair.
If they want to remain fair to competition, they should waive IAPs costs or reduce them significantly in market they engage themselves in which they are direct competitors.
I mean, of all companies, Spotify. Their whole business model is built upon not playing fair with content creators.
https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2019/03/11/spotify-amazon-g...
Quote: "Early last month, the US Copyright Board (CRB) officially ruled in favor of a 44% increase on streaming music royalties for songwriters and publishers."
Care to guess how much of those services' content comes from publishers (read: labels), and how much those services already pay to them (hint: as much as 70% of their revenue)?
Also, strangely enough, the article quotes everyone except Spotify, Amazon etc. But is happily quoting .... (substitute expletives) various music vultures^W associations who directly benefit from this arrangement (and not the songwriters).
Source: https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2018/12/25/streaming-music-...
>ATTENTION EVERYONE: > >1 Million Streams on YouTube = $690 > >1 Million Streams on Spotify = $4,370 > >1 Million Streams on Apple Music = $7,350 > >1 Million Streams on @Tidal = $12,500 > >1 Million Streams on Amazon Music = $4,020 > >Don’t shoot the messenger. >Jus Sign up 4 @tidal > >— THA GREAT (@NipseyHussle) January 15, 2018
The only thing about payout $ is that you have to take into account how many streams you actually get on each service. Are we to believe that Tidal's payouts would stay they same if they had Spotify's much greater listenership? Or Apple for that matter? Streaming services pay the rates charged to them by the record companies based on myriad listenership demographics.
I believe the labels are charging the services, and those labels pay the artist. Am I wrong on that? The labels set the price to be paid, don't they?
As much 70% of a streaming service's revenue (any streaming service, not just Spotify) goes to rights holders.
Who decides whats fair? Or are you forgetting that the go to website to download songs before streaming was thepiratebay?
The payout per play is basically different between free and premium users as they add more to the revenue shared by all the artists.
If you look at revenue for premium users, then it's probably much higher than that, but when you add free users, it will lower the average.
A solution you might think would be to remove the free-tier. But that will only do one thing: cut a (admittedly smaller) revenue stream for artists, cut a promotional stream for artists and less possibilities to upsale premium accounts to free users.
Someone who isn't even a free user will either not listen to music or pirate it. Is that preferable?
A lot of artists admit that Spotify pay-out per stream is certainly lower, but it's still dominating all the other streaming revenues, as long as you are actually an artist who has the potential to make any. Some unknown artist selling 1 CD for $10 on bandcamp with no listen on streaming services will probably think differently.
Legally, you have to pay more expensive royalties if you download music (referred to as "right to reproduce") rather than stream (right to transmit), so a special type of downloaded file must be used that can't be exported in any way. This is what Apple are prohibiting.
> That’s why I nearly jumped for joy during the watchOS 5 announcement in June, when Apple unveiled most of my list of watchOS changes needed to make good podcast apps.
In my understanding, an Apple Watch Spotify app would surely be technically feasible as of watchOS 5 (but I might be in the wrong here, I haven't tried myself more than read the available API docs).
Yes, but I would guess that limitation is done for some "legitimate" technical reason. Streaming Apple Music on the watch just kills the battery life in my experience, and it seems pretty on par with Apple's M-O of limiting expensive hardware access to third parties (like multitasking back in the days). But who knows, could perhaps be out of some evil anti-spotify spite.
> I wouldn't be surprised if a Watch app that allows offline playback would get rejected.
Maybe, but Pandora seems to have done it without problem. https://9to5mac.com/2019/01/04/pandora-apple-watch-update/
While this post represents Spotify's view without having Apple's to contrast it with, it seem eerily similar to the "Browser War" days leading up to Microsoft's admonishment. Apple seems to be the equivalent of a drunkard walking a fine line.
Your war with Apple seems to have distracted you from the one platform you are on good terms with. As a premium subscriber it's very frustrating to not be able to pause music on the lockscreen anymore. Or using the headphone controls. Or why a blocked song keeps being played in discover weekly. Get your act together or you'll lose your android customers to Apple too.
I just wanted to say that I am also a Spotify Premium subscriber using the Android (Pie) app and I don't have any issues with these two features. I cannot comment on the blocked songs, since I do not use that functionality. Have you checked the forums to see if other users are experiencing the same problems? Maybe there is a specific fix for your device.
The app is extremely unstable on Bluetooth as well, I now leave my expensive wireless earbuds at home because Spotify can't handle more than 10 seconds of continuous wireless playback without cutting out.
Every grocery store takes a cut of every item sold on the store. The store owner determines the percentage. Just like Apple. Grocery stores make similar/nearly identical products to the third-party merchandise they sell. Just like Apple. Grocery stores can routinely undercut the pricing of third-parties due to not needing to "pay themselves". Just like Apple.
Damn. I really wanted to hate EvilBigTech for this.
The rest of Spotify's points I have no issue, but this one doesn't hold as much water for me anymore.
I have given all hope on the US govt doing anything to help the average joe. It’s a govt lobbied and paid for by corporations.
The only difference here it that Apple's customers have $$, so everybody wants to be on their platform and everybody make noise.
And these politicians are talking on both side of their mouth: first they say how "3rd-party apps are stealing data" so platform must to have more checks when adding an app on their store. And when platform tries to enforce the rules they complain how platform needs to be "more open".
This little app lets you go back to the old behavior, or set a priority: http://milgra.com/mac-media-key-forwarder.html
It came down to the fact we required an email address and password for IAP so you could bring your subscription to the web or other platforms. While everyone else in the category did this, they decided that policy was going to change and we were just going to be the first people to deal with it. Since having an email-based account was core to the architecture and the UX, I went through a week of refactor hell to make emails/passwords optional to meet our launch date.
Since other apps still get to do this, it's clear the policy change message was BS. I've suspected a lot has had to do with Apple's ambitions in the streaming space and their desire to be in a position to offer bundling and other over the top services. They're already trying to control the UX with the TV app and are offering companies better rev share rates to do the integration work. Cutting back from 30% is how Apple incentivizes even heavier integration into their ecosystem.
Apple keeps doing this: Google and the Google Phone app, Netflix, Spotify, my product...more that we haven't even heard of, since not many are as big as the ones I've mentioned. The idea that this is somehow about protecting the consumer rings hollow.
Spotify doesn’t just forfeit 30% of their App Store revenue, they pay this directly to Apple - so the relative handicap is doubled.
And of course it only applie for in app purchases, if you browse to Spotify.com on you iphone and pay there, Apple doesn’t get a penny.
Most of these claims are dubious at best. Bunch of cry-babies.
Those three serving up things like music or movies are ancillary to their main product. Spotify has a vested interest in being the best music platform. Apple as an interest in selling more phones and computers, which may be benefited by a good in-house music app.
I'm looking forward to the Chrome dev tools and v8 that comes out of this.
Microsoft/IE antitrust led to a retraction in unhealthy Microsoft dominance (see IE6) and a rise in Firefox and eventually Chrome. Rise in Chrome led v8, node and better dev tooling (and by extension a richer JS ecosystem and maybe things like ClojureScript tangentially).
When the platforms monopolist/duopolists get retracted that will pave the way probably for more open source apps in the app stores and maybe a few other large corporations (like Google did for Chrome) dominating. Maybe better cross-platform tooling will come out of this? It's fun to think of what this will allow.
The thing I find to be anticompetitive is that Spotify cannot provide a web link to their own payment processing web page within their app.
Apple has long allowed content providers to opt out of using Apple's own payment system (and paying Apple a cut), but without being able to point users to your payment website, this rings hollow.
As far as Apple Watch goes, the API to allow for downloading content to local storage and playing it back in the background landed in last year's Watch OS update.
Pandora manages this task just fine.
Well, you probably can’t advertise your apartment on AirBnb and then Link people to your own payment service that bypasses AirBnb’s fee either. It sort of makes sense.
But Spotify doesn't want to use Apple's infrastructure and is compelled to do so regardless.
Spotify is saying that if using Apple payment infrastructure was free, then not allowing other options would not be a problem, but since it's not free, not allowing anything else is a problem, not that Apple charging for the use of its payment infrastructure is a problem in itself.
They are absolutely free to handle billing their customers on their own website and to turn off the ability to pay through their iOS app altogether.
This is, in fact, exactly what Netflix has chosen to do with new users.
https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/31/netflix-stops-paying-the-a...
Nothing is stopping Spotify from doing the same thing with new and/or existing users.
What they are not free to do is provide a link to their billing web page within their app.
Would you believe it after a citation showing that Spotify itself has already ditched Apple's payment system?
>Spotify & Netflix Are Bypassing Apple's App Store Billing Charges
Both companies are now driving new subscribers to pay directly, avoiding iTunes' 30% cut.
https://www.billboard.com/articles/business/8471988/spotify-...
What Spotify is complaining about is that it is possible, but at a massive inconvenience to users, (having to manually type the payment url into safari etc that they need to find manually first), which makes it so that most just decide the burden is not worth the hassle. That's how anti competitive behavior manifests itself, usually. Technically, anything is possible, Spotify can develop an iPhone competitor and then ship the app there, but come on, we both know that's unrealistic.
I believe I mentioned that not being allowed to provide a link to their payment website within their app was anticompetitive in my initial post?
However your assertion that Spotify is forced to use Apple's in app payment system is simply not true. Especially given the fact that they no longer use it at all for new users.
But they absolutely are if they want to offer the same level of experience as Apple Music can.
What they're doing now is significantly degrading the user experience compared to Apple Music, which is the whole premise behind them complaining. I don't know why that needs explaining.
What you're saying is effectively akin to 'the iPhone is not limited to running iOS, because you could disassemble the SoC, reverse engineer the HW and load your own OS on it".
Am sure it would theoretically be possible, however nobody sane would say 'Apple allows multiple operating systems to run on the iPhone'.
Yes, I get that you can switch to Android and Apple doesn't have an actual monopoly. They still wield a lot of power to force this 30% tax down everyone's throats. Specifically it's the power of "bundling" which is a potential antitrust violation.[1]
The implied reasoning behind Apple's restrictions on bypassing the tax is to ensure a positive customer experience. By selling things through Apple they take on the role of an intermediary merchant that can do things like refunds and otherwise ensure a positive, trustworthy customer experience.
But we need only look at the Mac App Store to get an idea of how much consumers truly value this value-add. On that platform, vendors and consumers have the freedom to directly interact, while Apple has still enacted a pretty good level of privacy and security protections (through revokable developer certificates and sandboxing). Many simply bypass the store. And the tax there would make even less sense for strictly ongoing content subscriptions that pose no additional security or privacy threat.
Spotify should just quit said platform if they don't like the rules and ask their "fans" to follow them over to other platforms. I know this is not likely to happen but, oh boy, what a move. Let's all jump into the water and let the Apple platform be an Apple service ghost town.
On the other hand I do want to see Apple slapped on the hand by the European Commission and level the ground for all developers, specially indie ones.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FairPlay#Steve_Jobs'_%22Though...
https://craphound.com/msftdrm.txt
> "Sony didn't get permission. Neither should you. Go build the record player that can play everyone's records."
I remember when Apple's M.O. was to build insanely great hardware, and make money selling that hardware. It was the Other Guys who would do shady things like bundle browsers with OSes and do things explicitly against users' preferences to promote their own platform and ecosystem. Apple never really started with that until the iPhone.
Now they do all of this ecosystem-lock-in stuff because they're not solely interested in revenue from hardware sales now. It's lame and scummy and un-Apple.
I'd love to be able to use the Google Assistant and Signal Messenger on my Apple Watch, and use Spotify on my HomePod, and use iMessage on my Pixelbook. Real shame that I pay top dollar for hardware and that I can't.
Imagine it's the 1800s and you wanted to develop technology to let anyone listen to music anytime. You'd have to invent the computer, an operating system, and the internet (some means of distribution), then invent Spotify. (Or maybe not all those things in their entirety, but just enough to support the Spotify's functionality.)
Since it's 2019, there are platforms that provide the operating system and means of distribution, and Spotify merely has to deliver an app that floats in high-level-land. They then complain that that platform, who did all the work Spotify didn't have to, isn't being "fair." What does that mean? What are they rightfully owed?
Why doesn't Spotify create their own OS and App Store, and develop/distribute Spotify there? Because it's inconceivably hard? Surely that's why the people who did it get to set the rules.
This platform ownership piffle Apple has sold for eons is pure horse shit, and the EU regulators will rule as such. Simply put, a fridge manufacturer cannot control what items get stored and cooled in the fridge, after the customer has paid in full for both the fridge and the item. And the fridge manufacturer certainly cannot restrict items only sold though it's own stores
Right now, Apple owns the moat. The fairness Spotify is asking for requires people to give up money on the table. Because of that, a well-intentioned public awareness campaign is no substitute for legal action.
PS - I'd love it if more news websites were structured like the simple timeline on this site. I'd like to see how the situation developed over time, rather than seeing a stream of articles littered with links to past stories. Just give me one timeline I can scroll through, and I'll decide which of the linked stories I want to click on.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/au...
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Web_Audio_A...
A company not providing you and API you want does not equate to them blocking you. FULL STOP.
Spotify had some decent arguments (re: 30%, IAP, payment) but it fell 100% flat when they started giving equal importance to things that were not targeted at them. The lack of music API's on homepod, watch, iPhone are not some direct slight against Spotify and to pretend they are only shows Spotify's inflated view of themselves. Put simply: NOT EVERYTHING IS ABOUT YOU.
Spotify is twisting the truth to it's breaking point in this post with just enough truth sprinkled around that you might not notice the bullshit.
And once Spotify proves that then maybe we can have a discussion. There is no data to support that claim. I can think of a number of reasons why they weren't ready to provide audio API's like battery reasons. Also Apple has released audio API's both before Apple Music (iPhone) and after (Watch). Spotify is just mad they didn't get them sooner.
NO ONE is willing to give Apple the benefit of doubt, after they have unilaterally, retroactively mucked with app store rules to kill competition. The most egrageous case was with Steam, whose game streaming app was found to be non compliant after apple retroactively applied change of policy.
A few points: * Without Apple, Spotify would be worthless and not reached any users at all, never grown * Apple is doing the heavy-lifting of building and distributing Apple Watch, HomePod, iPhones. Spotify is creating little additional value in comparison * Spotify repeatedly tried to cheat Apple's system and they were blocked and rejected (in my opinion) rightfully. They tweaked wordings, they even linked to a website that first looked harmless and would be MODIFIED after the app is approved. I'm not sure Spotify's behavior is ANY better.
I don't agree with Warren's stance, but hats off to Spotify for nice PR campaign timing.
However, I'd like to point out something that doesn't sit well with me.
Spotify uses this same kind of extraction mechanism on the artists that use its platform.
The complaint loop is complete. We have artists complaining about artist 'hosting' companies complaining about application hosting companies.
I believe the solution lies in different, non-zero sum economics, but haven't been able to think of anything for music. I do, however, have some pretty cool ideas for longer form text and video content.
Seriously? Y'all want to sniff/sell my data and run ads on a website that's supposed to "raise awareness" about "consumer unfairness"? Jerk move. Yeah it's all technically legal, but it's definitely tacky. You're making it rather hard to sympathize with you.
This looks to me like a blatant attempt to latch on to a perceived popular sentiment that Spotify thinks they can use to to have the government give them a big advantage that they didn't have before.
Call me cynical but it's hard to see this as anything but self serving.
After all, if they treat Spotify this way, how do you think they'll treat your app in the future if it happens to compete with them in someway?
It's insanely great. As a speaker. Period.
This makes me curious if this is how Uber(Jump Scooters) is undercutting Lime and Bird on Scooter and Bike pricing in my city (Dallas). Uber is $0 to start a ride + $.15 a min. Bird and Lime and $1 to start + $.15 a min.
Is this partially because Apple takes 30% from Bird and Lime, but not Uber?
Spotify is not the good guy here.
Spotify works just fine on apple products (I use it), who cares about using Apples payment processing system (which they have a right to charge for), it's a Spotify service, so i should pay through Spotify which i do.
Post-Jobs Apple is over & done for. They are in “rent collection” mode now.
So long & thanks for all the fun. It was good while it lasted.
https://community.spotify.com/t5/Live-Ideas/iOS-Siri-Shortcu...
Spotify is not the angel here, as it's using same tricks to block free choice and lock in users heavily.
It seems that Spotify's latest salvo is timed to capitalise on the rumoured event[1] and maybe even influenced by previous decision by Netflix to breakaway[2] from the two main revenue generating platforms (Android & iOS). Whether or not it will be beneficial to their business model(s) long term - only time will tell.
Apple needs a new goose and a contender in the ring to keep institutional investors happy, at least until a new market strategy[3] is cemented and next round of R&D, technological advancements, tooling etc. take effect and come to fruition; especially considering the recent battery recalls[4] and lower than expected demand for flagship products, So, I would assume they have carried out some due diligence to avoid any punitive measures by the EU or invite excessive regulation.
Nonetheless, it might turn out to be a pyrrhic victory for Spotify, despite a ruling in favour of an app with some clout in a dominant ecosystem. For example, Amazon has decided to fight[5] Google/Apple on many occasions, with no obvious benefits. Microsoft has largely capitulated to Amazon & Google on some of their efforts e.g. Cortana v Alexa, Edge v Chrome..
[1]https://www.macworld.co.uk/news/apple/apple-streaming-servic...
[2]https://bgr.com/2018/08/23/netflix-subscription-payment-chan...
[3]https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-must-reverse-angela-ah...
[4]https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/2/18165866/apple-iphone-sale...
[5]https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/26/16371292/google-youtube-a...
The problem is that Spotify is not allowed to take credit card input directly in the app. The problem is that Spotify isn't allowed to redirect users to a webpage to collect payment.
We already had the web for those things ...
BUT
If you're going to ask someone else to play fair, then maybe you should do the same i.e. have a revenue-sharing model that is fair to all of big labels, indie labels, and independent music producers.
A sound logic.
Spotify doesn't play fair with intellectual property, they were founded by a guy than ran an ad supported torrent company and got enough early market share to go public, but it's not sustainable. Now they expect less of a cut to gain market share because they didn't build something sustainable, unique or based upon a higher standard of ethics. No tears to be shed for this company's standard of fairness. Plus the product has other issues which I noted when I was a customer but were ignored as this company is simply interested in the bottom line; so I cancelled my account, which was not easy.
https://www.timetoplayfair.com/ on Facebook.
It says:
Oops
Something went wrong. We're working on getting it fixed as soon as we can.https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/13/tech/facebook-instagram-down/...
I'm pretty sure I signed up on Spotifys website, then logged into my iPhone. Apple definitely don't get 30% of that subscription fee.
Because it's forbidden by apple to inform your user that it's cheaper on the website.
A few quotes from the timeline:
> Apple now prohibits buttons or links to any other external ways to pay.
> While we haven’t been able to include any buttons or external links to pages containing product info, discounts, promotions, etc. (even if they don’t link directly to a payment system!) since Feb. 2011
I can't imagine a clearer example of uncompetitive business practices and platform monopolization than the App Store.
It's a lazy tax as far as I see it, why would anyone complain?
Because it's one thing if a government regulates a market, but yet another if a company does it.
Unfortunately not every app can work his way, e.g. access to PII-sensitive sensors. But nothing stops Spotify from doing this — it’s how Spotify works on a laptop anyway.
it's almost like private markets are bad and always lead to this sort of bs in every single real world case.
Google does exactly the same thing with Chrome Extensions or Android Apps.
F-droid works perfectly well on any Android device, and is a viable alternative to Google Play (for some users). Android .apk files can be installed on any Android device with one switch flipped - and the first time you attempt to install an .apk file, it points you to the setting. Chrome extensions can similarly be packaged and distributed from another source (i.e. GitHub) and are treated as first-class chrome extensions alongside their store-installed counterparts. Apps installed on an iPhone via Xcode (only available for macOS, which is only available on Apple hardware) expire after 7 days and refuse to open unless they are re-deployed. They last for a year if the user pays Apple $99/year for a developer certificate.
Google's platforms don't have people spending money as much as iPhone users do, but they are not nearly as locked down or restrictive.
Spotify isn’t so much a rival as it is a serf on Apple’s farm though, right?
Apple could just remove Spotify from the app store altogether, for fun.
Nice marketing.
[0] https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/31/netflix-stops-paying-the-a...
It has the potential to really be the one true alternative runtime that can get mass adoption.
Spotify isn't really complaining about "unfairness". Business complaining are really just them trying to mobilize customer outrage to force a better deal for them. Apple created an ecosystem, and is allowed to charge what they want for it. Other vendors charge markups: retail, a business with notoriously low profit margins, charges about 15% markup. This is because price elasticity of groceries is exceedingly high: customers have extensive choice and it's not an immediate/emergency good. Restaurants charge about 60%. Clothing can be 300%, high fashion more. But nobody complains about that.
We need to stop thinking of the app store as a "tax" and more as a retail outlet, because it is just a digital retailer. The 30% effectively amounts to a markup.
> [Apple] frequently decides to interpret (and re-interpret) them [App Store rules]
This is a hard line for Apple to walk. Other platforms have issues with this too, and can't always come to one perfect interpretation. See some of the issues with Youtube policing pedophilia recently and having to take some drastic (and very unpopular) steps. What was okay previously isn't now.
On Apple's payment system: they run a walled garden. Though there are disadvantages to this, there are also advantages to it. The case could be made that this has massive security benefits (iOS malware, anyone?) and can also keep users from having their payment details tricked out of them by forcing them through one channel. Think it wouldn't happen? An app tried to trick iPhone users into scanning their fingerprint to authorize a large Apple Pay charge to the scammer. It could be worse without the security.
> Siri still won’t talk to us today
Need some more technical detail here, but why is the onus on Apple to do the work to integrate with your platform the way you want to do it? Apple does provide SiriKit: https://developer.apple.com/sirikit/
> [they] won’t work with us to develop an app for it [the Apple Watch]
Again, why should Apple have to work with you? What you're effectively looking for is a support contract. Pandora managed it.
> Apple Music doesn’t have to pay the 30% IAP charge
Yes, it's called vertical integration and there are huge benefits to it. It's been one of Apple's core business practices from day one. They control huge parts of their supply chain, even developing their own phone chips (which may well end up as desktop-grade CPUs and could provide a huge consumer benefit in terms of microarchitectural advancement). This isn't unfair. Undercutting is not unfair.
App store tightening is of course designed to protect Apple's revenue stream. They've seen other developers stop using IAP, and want to ensure the App Store remains dominant. Not unfair. It's Apple's right to say what they sell and don't sell on their store.
> "level playing field"
See the article linked at the top of this reply. Spotify is trying to keep users in its platform by preventing playlist transfer (and even prohibiting apps that do it for them, so not an issue of just not developing the functionality). That's at least as anti-consumer. Business do this sort of stuff all the time, and Spotify is more committed to its revenue than to "fairness".
Spotify is just salty because they didn't get the deal they wanted and because Apple is trying to push users toward its products over Spotifys. Not really nice of Apple, but not "unfair".
The other parts of the page are very nice though. The font contrast is fine and the font has a nice weight to it. When they want us to read something they actually still know how to make a proper webpage. And it works fine without JS.
Going to take another 50 years before that succumbs to regulatory capture.
Apple is starving innovation by deliberately not supporting many thing on the Safari iOS browser and prevents competition illegally by restricting 3rd party browser engines.
Taking a 30% rent on purchases is blatant theft. More people need to speak out. #AppleRentSeeker
Because Apple is unable to increase revenues, it's now trying to increase by using uncompetitive tactics and illegal restriction of competition.
Latency is hardly the main downside of Electron.
As far as resources usage goes, Spotify is definitely worse. If you browse through a few artists and albums, memory usage quickly soars pst 500MB and can reach 1GB, which is ridiculous. iTunes doesn’t do this at all and hovers at 200MB in most cases.
Spotify loads wholly separate copies of all JavaScript dependencies for each major sub component on screen. Efficiency is not even remotely that dev team’s strong point.