“App Store Monopoly” Discussion

Who is pretending that? You are arguing against points which nobody said - I’m a bit confused.

Epic Games, maker of the hit video game “Fortnite,” has agreed to pay a total of $520 million to settle US government allegations that it misled millions of players, including children and teens, into making unintended purchases and that it violated a landmark federal children’s privacy law.

consumers who were allegedly harmed by user-interface design choices the FTC claimed were deceptive

Pretty sure the App store does a pretty good job so that people are not misled and make unintended purchases? Perfect? No. Better than how Epic would like their own store to be? Hell yes.

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I dunno. Do we trust these guys?

Or these guys?

https://therecord.media/apple-deserves-e6-million-fine-for-privacy-violations-french-data-protection-adviser-says/amp/

Or these? :sweat_smile:

I could go on but you get the picture.

I sort of feel like it’s take your pick with which company’s abuses you want to put up with, but in many eyes things being ‘Apple only’ is a long way from a form of protection

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@N26throwaway literally said:

I’m not defending Epic. I’m saying that the whole point of locking down the App Store and enforcing all these rules is so Apple can profit off the back of these sorts of practices.

Of course it would never explicitly condone them, but it’s more than happy to watch the money roll in and take its 30% cut.

I don’t hate Apple. My house is full of their kit. I hold them to a higher standard.

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Yes far far more than many of the others out there, no company is flawless but apple is a lot better than the other options.

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Honestly, I think that’s naive but if that’s your point of view then fair.

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I think its naive to not realise how bad the other options are.

I am not naive to think apple do a better job than the majority, look at the hellscape for privacy android is but yet many on android are ignorantly unaware and throw shade at apple without considering their own choices.

I do pay attention to what apple does and I dont think its perfect.

Since you are not naive and I supposedly am, who do you trust with your data and privacy more than apple?

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Apple care deeply about not giving your data to their rivals. They are happy to abuse it themselves though and they are also happy to ignore relevant laws and pay fines instead of that’s what makes them more money.

I’m really not sure Insee that as ‘better’

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^^ posted from android :rofl: (jk)

Thats a pretty naive statement with blanket assertions but if that’s your point of view then fair enough.

Personally, when it comes to megacorps, yes I agree that I tend to cover them with the blanket statement that everything they do is entirely self-interested.

Anyway, the point stands that ‘it’s Apple only’ really doesn’t look like a form of protection to a lot of people.

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Apple will refund anyone who asks who gets caught out by developers who do things like this. When caught, those developers will have their apps removed and/or blocked unless they fix it. There’s no 30% cut to take on those refunds.

Epic Games, like most others in the video game space tend to run their stores with a no refund policy. I don’t know how it flies, when the Apple one you linked to essentially boiled down to the same policy, which they quickly changed.

Fortnite offer you 3 refund requests as a goodwill gesture. Once you’ve used them all you can’t get refunded for anything else. And those are lifetime account requests. Once they’re gone they’re gone, and it’s only for cosmetics you purchased with v bucks. You’ll never get real money back. You could run to Xbox or PlayStation, but they won’t have your back either (Xbox have been known to make rare exceptions). Even if it’s your kid fleecing your credit card. Apple on the other, would have your back in this case.

For the most part, I do. The examples here are relatively minor in the grand scheme of things. The privacy ones are frustrating because I think they could be better. And maybe another company hasn’t done those specific things, or maybe they do and just fly under the radar, and you may trust them more. But on privacy especially, there is no big tech company that handles it with as much care as Apple does.

Apple, and rightly so given their size, gets put under a lot more scrutiny than your typical tech company. So just because they’re the ones who get pulled up for these things doesn’t mean they’re the only ones doing them, or that they’re the worst offenders generally.

I put a lot of thought into it, and as far as big tech companies go, Apple all around is the one I generally feel I can trust above their competitors, which is why I buy their products.

Now, I still like and play Fortnite. I still buy v bucks, but I accept that once I’ve bought them I’ll never see that money again no matter how justified I might be in wanting a refund. I trust them to make fun and engaging experiences I can enjoy with my friends. I don’t trust them to be an App Store authority between me and my developers because I don’t think they’ll have my back in the way Steam or Apple would.

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Except for those that bought apple devices because of the extra protection. If you are personally happy with android and the whole huge data vacum that is google thats your choice but a lot of people bought apple to avoid the google data hell. You enjoy android, we will enjoy ios as we bought.

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I use iOS

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Five apps in the Top 50 kind of indicates otherwise.

And there’s the default search engine deal for Safari.

I would imagine most people are using Google services on iOS.

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Pretty disingenuous again. You know fine well they have to follow the ios app tracking rules (and prompt for enhanced tracking if not off for all) and they also cant easily harvest just as much data as being baked in the core on android. Its also far far more optional, I actually know quite a few people without “Google” on their iphones which is far far easier than trying to be android without google.

The short lived cookies on safari wont help much.

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It sounds like you may not be happy not having a locked down device with one store, ever thought of going android?

I presume you use iOS as your daily driver phone.

Honestly all in all I don’t think it’s a big deal. I really don’t think many people choose their phone based on privacy setting in the OS, that’s got to be like 1% of users or less.

I like the iOS UX, that’s why I use it.

Also, looks like thanks to regulatory intervention it won’t be as locked down anyway so that’s a win for me :stuck_out_tongue:. I wonder what you’ll move to?

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Different circles I guess, most I know who have iOS buy it for simplicity, security and privacy. Some care less about one factor over another but they all like those aspects and all 3 will be harmed by the incoming mess.

I will do well out of fixing peoples messed up iphones on the side. When things like this come along I know I will be making bank off the stupidity of allowing this to go ahead.

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I’m genuinely not sure what’s disingenuous?

10% of the Top 50 free apps are Google owned. I’d love to see some data, but I’d happily wager that the vast majority of iOS users still want to use Google services.

It is optional. And I’m guessing that most people opt in. They literally wouldn’t want iPhones without Google services.

And yes they can’t get as much data as on Android. But they can still harvest a huge amount. As I’ve been banging on about, Apple doesn’t call it tracking when it’s first party data (to suit their own ad tracking aspirations), and people just happen to live in Google apps all day long.

Same with Facebook and Instagram.

The cookies don’t matter when you’re signed in to Google!

At least we know both asda and tesco are more popular that google, the joy of using charts to map out usage and make assertions based on it.

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Most people I know are on social media, essentially meaning they don’t give two ticks about ‘privacy’.

All the incredible abuses that Meta have been party to and yet 3 bn still use it, that says everything to me about how important this stuff is on average.

I wish people cared about privacy online more, generally I think they don’t.

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