It's actually an interesting question how nefarious or harmful this actually is.
We obviously know why Apple is doing it and why the apps in question don't like it.
But a couple things occurred to me:
You could view this like Amazon giving away your book or android app in a promotion. As I understand it, they still pay the author as if it were a sale, so the author seemingly has nothong to complain about. Even that still seems wrong to me but that's the argument Amazon uses. That is essentially, no, litterally, Amazon advertizing your product for their own purposes.
Another argument Apple and Apple devotees and general "invisible hand" worshippers may try to use is: Any sales generated by the ads would not have existed without the ad, and so it's not taking anything from the app developer.
I don't really buy either theory, but it does take some thinking to describe a mechanism by which they cause harm and should be considered invalid.
They hold enough water to convince a lot of people who want to be convinced, and the arguments against just sound kind of weak and whiny.
We obviously know why Apple is doing it and why the apps in question don't like it.
But a couple things occurred to me:
You could view this like Amazon giving away your book or android app in a promotion. As I understand it, they still pay the author as if it were a sale, so the author seemingly has nothong to complain about. Even that still seems wrong to me but that's the argument Amazon uses. That is essentially, no, litterally, Amazon advertizing your product for their own purposes.
Another argument Apple and Apple devotees and general "invisible hand" worshippers may try to use is: Any sales generated by the ads would not have existed without the ad, and so it's not taking anything from the app developer.
I don't really buy either theory, but it does take some thinking to describe a mechanism by which they cause harm and should be considered invalid.
They hold enough water to convince a lot of people who want to be convinced, and the arguments against just sound kind of weak and whiny.