Is Apple Rent Seeking with the App Store? (2018)
stratechery.com
stratechery.com
It's weird to just forget the value added through the whole ecosystem by Apple and say that they make "30% for doing nothing" which is only true if you ignore... everything? It's like saying a downtown store is rent seeking because it's only selling stuff they didn't make at a higher mark up.
What Apple is doing is artificially limiting what an app can do with regards to specific functionality made possible by having a web browser embedded in your app, because they want to be a middle-man in every financial transaction.
That is all Apple is doing. They're not adding shit, they're limiting existing functionality because they can set arbitrary bullshit rules that have nothing to do with customer satisfaction or productivity and everything to do with Apple's profit margins. That's what rent seeking is.
Every large company does this - they grow at all costs, usually using their investor buddies' money until they run most competition out of business and then proceed to squeeze their suppliers into borderline extinction through monopolistic abuse.
These criminals do it to everyone and they do it across companies too by forming anti-competitive backroom deals between each other. [1]
[0] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/rentseeking.asp
[1] https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-requires-s...
If Apple is “not adding shit”, why are we even discussing this, why aren’t they being run into the ground by Android?
That is an illegal move :)
Regarding only game in town:
You're saying that if I claim to have been raped by someone I decided to go on a date with, that you'd be sympathetic if this rapist were the only other human in existence, but since there are other human beings I can now go on dates with, there is no problem that needs to be fixed?
Well, alright then, as long as we have choice, having been raped is not a problem I suppose.
That deliberate design choice from Apple is a big reason it's userbase exists in the first place and that's what Apple is offering to devs in exchange for the 30%. It's creating wealth for apple and for app devs. If anything the refined products they make and even the restrictive design choises make iOS apps much more profitable for devs than Android.
It would have been rent seeking if Apple was the only player and users basically cannot do anything but pay Apple, but there is already Android with much less restrictions. Yet, people don't massively migrate to android.
- Gordon Tullock, The Rent-Seeking Society (2005), p.9
Tullock is credited as the originator of the concept of rent-seeking.
I think anyone who claims Apple is rent-seeking would agree that the App Store has a negative social impact. They are using the term as its originator intended.
Apple is acting as a middleman.
My point being that at the time it was released the platform was welcomed as an amazing opportunity and at some point that soured, but why?
They're approaching two trillion dollar market cap. That's like filling the Great Lakes with Grade A honey and not expecting any bees to come sting yoh azz. Once the economy and political scenario stabilities, the hammer will fall. As for what that means, one only needs look at what happened to Bill and Steve when they chose to fight rather than capitulate and then realize how much opportunity Tim Apple has already had to avoid what's now inevitable.
IMNSHO: If Apple doesn't license alternate app-stores to be operated by qualified third-parties (on a per-consumer opt-in basis) and support the iPhone development tools on non-Apple systems, there will be a similar outcome. I'm just hoping if they go foreign, it's someone from Italy or Norway that takes over --I may have 40 years experience, but in my family, I'm considered mid-career and will be stuck with Apple for decades to come.