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Apple's most valuable intangible asset isn't its patents or copyrights - it's an army of people who believe that using products from a $2.89 trillion multinational makes them members of an oppressed (media.kbin.run)
submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Apple's most valuable intangible asset isn't its patents or copyrights - it's an army of people who believe that using products from a $2.89 trillion multinational makes them members of an oppressed religious minority whose identity is coterminal with the interests of Apple's shareholders.

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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/12/youre-holding-it-wrong/#if-dishwashers-were-iphones

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[-] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

@[email protected] I love your writing but I struggle with the full spelled out URLs in between paragraphs. It makes the screen reader experience awful. :-( Any particular reason you do links this way and not as hypertext or footnotes?

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[-] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

Take the #AppStore. Apple blocks third parties from offering rival app stores for its #iOS platform, which means you can only install apps that have been blessed by Apple. That blessing is contingent on the software authors involved giving $0.30 out of every dollar you spend in their apps to Apple.

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[-] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

@[email protected] 1/2 Not saying I wholly disagree, but I’d like to hear your take on the following:

If you wanted to open a place in my food court, and you made good money from doing so, since the people who only look for food outside the mall typically have less available money and lower willingness to pay, would you say I’m robbing you if I started to demand rent or kick you out otherwise?

[-] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

@[email protected] 2/2 In other words, is providing a platform on which to attract potential customers for free on is a basic feature a service, and if yes, is it a service for which payments need to be rendered?

Relatedly, would a flat fee be better? You pay the mall’s rent, and either you have the $5k/mo necessary, or you’re booted out – this is how it’s done in real life, capital trumps – instead of a percentage revenue cut? (small devs/dev companies are the analogy)

[-] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

@[email protected] The problem with the analogy is that you're not operating a restaurant, you're selling me groceries, which I take home, and then you're insisting that I can only cook them in pots whose makers paid you 30% vig - and you've found a law that makes it a felony for me to use other pots, in my own house, with my own groceries.

You sold me the groceries. If you have regrets about how I prepare them, that's a you problem.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

This has two effects: first, it makes certain products impossible to offer. The gross margin on an audiobook is 20%. Apple takes a 30% cut of sales. Try to sell audiobooks in an app, and you'll lose money on every sale. That's why non-Apple audiobook stores like Libro.fm and #Downpour require you to buy your books in a browser, which hamstrings them and gives Apple an unbeatable advantage (Apple doesn't charge itself 30% on every transaction, obviously).

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[-] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

But at least you can buy audiobooks on Apple Books. There are plenty of services whose gross margins are lower than 30%. Apple's 30% #AppTax renders these unviable, and if Apple doesn't deign to offer its own in-house monopoly version, the service is simply unavailable as an iPhone app.

But that's not the only bad outcome. Some lucky service providers are able to pay the #AppleTax by gouging Apple's customers, raising prices to pay the danegeld. That's the second effect.

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[-] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

This is obviously bad for industry. Take the news media: some people think the thing that #BigTech steals from the news is the news itself. That's a frankly bizarre argument: including the news in a search index or providing a forum where people can talk about the news is not bad for the news. News you're not allowed to find or talk about isn't news, it's a secret.

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[-] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

But Big Tech most assuredly steals from the news: it steals money. The #AdTech duopoly takes 51% out of every ad dollar. Social media holds news subscribers to ransom and requires "boosting" payment to reach the people who've asked to see their articles. And the mobile duopoly takes 30% out of every in-app subscription dollar:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/06/save-news-we-must-open-app-stores

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[-] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

The mobile duopoly likes to talk about the #MobileEcosystem, but it's no ecosystem - it's a pair of walled gardens:

https://crookedtimber.org/2022/12/08/your-platform-is-not-an-ecosystem/

It's a planned economy run by a pair of corporate executives who deliberate in secret and are accountable only to their shareholders. Thankfully, some regulators are alive to the hazards of this #technofeudal arrangement and are taking firm measures:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-12-13/apple-set-to-be-hit-by-eu-antitrust-order-in-app-store-fight-with-spotify

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[-] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

These regulators couch their enforcement action in terms of defending an open market, but the benefits to app makers is only incidental. The real beneficiaries of an open app world is Apple customers. After all, it's Apple customers who bear the 30% app tax when it's priced into the apps they buy and the things they buy in those apps. It's Apple customers who lose access to apps that can't be viably offered because the app tax makes them money-losing propositions.

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[-] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

It's Apple customers who lose out on the ability to get apps that Apple decides are unsuitable for inclusion in its App Store.

That's where the #CultOfMac steps in to cape for the $3 trillion behemoth. The minority of Apple customers for whom their brand loyalty is a form of religious devotion insist that "no Apple customer wants these things."

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[-] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

This is such obvious nonsense that it can only be described as an article of faith, not a reasoned position. If rival app stores - ones that had different editorial standards and different payment policies - existed, the only people who could possibly use them are Apple customers. Android users won't be using an alternative iOS store. Symbian users aren't going to be installing apps from an iOS store offered by someone other than Apple.

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[-] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

If it's true that "Apple customers don't want non-Apple app stores," then Apple wouldn't need to use technological countermeasures and legal threats to prevent them from coming into existence. These non-Apple app stores would fail on their own terms.

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[-] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

This is a point I first raised in The @[email protected] in 2015, with a satirical piece called "If Dishwashers Were iPhones" - a letter from a charismatic smart dishwasher CEO called Absterge, explaining that it's unreasonable for customers to be able to buy their dishes from third-party dish vendors:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/feb/13/if-dishwashers-were-iphones

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[-] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

The comments on that article are wild. It's just a litany of people saying, "If you want to choose where you buy your apps, you shouldn't buy an iPhone." That this is exactly the same argument the fictional Absterge CEO makes about his dishwasher ("People who don’t want to go the Absterge way don’t have to") is lost on them. As far as they're concerned, any Apple customer who wants have the final say over how their $1,000 pocket computer works isn't a true Apple customer.

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[-] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

@[email protected] oh snap 🍿 here we go

[-] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

@[email protected]
I wish Mastodon had a way to collapse/hide these long threads. I read and enjoy them on the blog but still have to scroll through pages and pages of posts, sometimes missing other people's which have become embedded.
Is there something I'm missing (using an Android phone)?

[-] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

@[email protected] a lot more needs to be said about the 2-3 decades that tech used PR to really horrific ends, and the journalists and interested tech employees who help them out

[-] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

@[email protected] Yeah, I've been using "iCult" as a term for a while. I'd bet it's not unique to me.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

@[email protected] I would love to see your analysis about Apple refusing to put SD storage slots on their products, and then switching iOS Photo's default mode to store images as (much larger) movies... thus forcing many users at inopportune times to use iCloud (before E2E encryption was a feature).

BTW, I use an older iPhone and #iOS constantly nags that its not fully setup because I don't have #iCloud linked to it.

#Apple #darkpatterns #dataheist

[-] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

@[email protected] The sad thing is that I agree with most of your criticisms, but when you veer off into calling Apple customers cultists … you just lose me.

People just want nice things.

Should they care more about repairability? Should we regulate abusive monopolies? Yes, of course.

But people don’t buy Apple products because of a reality distortion field. They buy Apple products because they’re nicer.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

@[email protected] I can only assume that you haven't read the parts of this post where I identify specific cult-like behavior.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

@[email protected] I just think that’s your interpretation of the behavior. The “Steve Jobs reality distortion field” was a term invented by people who just didn’t see the value in what Apple had made.

Don’t get me wrong, I love your writing, and agree with many of your points. Just seems to me that this focus on Apple being a cult detracts from the real issue which is that they are an abusive monopoly.

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this post was submitted on 12 Jan 2024
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