shreyansh_k

I think this is a short sighted and unfair view of native apps.

It is significantly difficult to provide fluent and fast “native” like experience with WebApps because of browser related overheads.

Another advantage of native apps, at least on iOS, is that they magically “receive” updates in the form of updates to the OS, I.e. when Apple updates the underlying iOS APIs, the apps can directly take advantage of the updates without any developer updates.

Apps also automatically adopt the new OS UI updates if they use native APIs. For example, many apps were dark-mode ready with little to no developer updates when Apple rolled out dark mode.

These are just the few advantages of native apps.

Reading this article left me more and more annoyed with every paragraph.

To quote from the article:

> Because the boiling point of water depends on altitude, you could take it to a very, very high place and the same calorific value might well boil the water.

I agree that approaching it like this is possible. But, “possible” doesn’t mean that it is sensible. Philosophically speaking, if such things like above are allowed, then it should also be allowed to simply heat this water to very high temperature (like 99 C) with another apparatus such as a stove and then finally boil it with the candles. That is, use a stove instead of a rocket. It is also possible to conceive of an apparatus with heating elements and photodiodes. This apparatus will run the heaters and heat the water when its photodiode detect the light from the candle. So, in effect, the candle is responsible for heating the water.

Here’s what I’m trying to say: we need to accept some constraints and reject some possibilities in order to answer anything. If there are no constraints, then anything is possible. But, we know that this is not how the universe works.

Finally, I hope to never read anything from this author again. Ironically for this person, maybe they should consider the possibility that their ”science” is BS, aka bullshit.

I am just going to flip this argument. Hope this gets my message across eloquently.

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How should Apple make a return on its investment? Through apps such as Spotify, who don't want to pay a dime? Through Governments, who are actively trying to sabotage it? Your arguments make it seem like Apple has a choice when trying to monetise a large part of the market. They don't.

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I think you are taking the efforts it takes to build an App store user base as granted. Microsoft is spending billions to build one with nothing to show for it. Google managed to build something half decent and it continues to be envious of Apple.

App Store and iOS existed independently of Spotify. Spotify decided to invest into Apple's ecosystem, by their own conviction. Apple didn't force them. Spotify, as a behemoth, and a large part of their market, probably only exists due to Apple. Therefore, any arguments to the effect of "it is unfair to Spotify" are difficult to consider.

I am just going to flip this argument to put things in perspective and add a bit of contrast.

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What is the value again? Playing music?

Spotify could just charge for services rendered, ie number of hours played, rather than a flat fee.

I find these kind of arguments to be ridiculous.

Apple risked their resources and created the whole ecosystem before Spotify even existed. It's not like Apple put a gun to the heads of Spotify executives and forced them to use the App Store. It's the executives who reviewed Apple's terms and then decided that investing in Apple's ecosystem would be useful for Spotify.

Apps wouldn't exist without the immense value delivered by all the Apple tooling on the iPhone.

This is just showing poor understandings of personal boundaries.

Yes, Apple is piggybacking on various ISPs infrastructure. That is a deal the ISPs explicitly allowed everyone to do and marketed as a selling point for others to use in their services.

Apple is simply trying to enforce its own boundaries which it established before Spotify came into the picture.

I find this argument kind of ridiculous - yes, app developers (such as Spotify) bring value proposition to Apple's products by being available on the platform. But, apps (such as Spotify) probably wouldn't exist and wouldn't have access to the immense value of an App Store and its tooling if Apple didn't exist.

Luckily, by custom there is another solution - respect each other boundaries and stop acting like whiny little children.

Spotify does seem to be in an interesting position where it gets to piggyback on Apple's whole infrastructure and ecosystem without paying Apple anything. That should count for something...

> “Other companies have failed in the past so we shouldn’t assert anything about a public company’s finances”

Please don't put words in my mouth. My original statement was only to the effect of "people (who are not associated to a respective company) shouldn't take calls on how the respective company should spends their budgets" and not to discourage the discussion of the finances of a company.

I assure that it definitely is a personal view... and all of us are projecting our own personal view(s) in this discussion _because_ this discussion is largely about the many ways to interpret this.

Anyway, not to take anything away from your point, even in the eyes of American/European law, a corporation is sometimes actually treated as a person, depending on circumstances. So, I think it is useful to look from that perspective as well.

My main issue with the EU regulators dictating how companies should handle their products is due to the fact that there is plenty of evidence to show that their regulation activities have equal chance of not working and actually working. The best example I can recall at this moment is the whole GDPR saga. Far too many people are tired of the pop-ups than the number of people GDPR has served.

I completely accept the history associated with Microsoft and Bell. But I also do not discount the possibilities that, sometimes, the regulators are wrong. There is plenty of criticisms of those verdicts in the pages of history already which don't need to paraphrased here again.

If Apple's limitations are uncompetitive, then Apple will simply die. No harm no foul. It is actually great for people because it opens opportunity to disrupt the market. Therefore, I think that ultimately, letting Apple do its own thing is actually the best thing to do. Let them decide how they want to handle their company.

Statements such as "Stating the simple fact that Apple has the ability to increase their resources is not somehow offensive." is doing a lot of heavy lifting here.

Plenty of people (and their companies) die trying to "increase their resources". Apple is no different or special from any of the other companies participating in the economy. I'm not an Apple fanboy but even I do see the point that statements such as "enough spare money" generally do not get anywhere simply because they patronise their targets and imply that somehow someone being rich makes it morally correct to grift them or break them.

It is agreeable that Apple doesn't care about any of us here. It's simply due to the fact that our relationship with any company is purely transactional. No one shouldn't be burdened with the responsibility of something they can't control, thus, no one should hold other in responsibility of something they have don't have authority over.

I simply think that you have poor understandings of boundaries.

Setting aside the remarks about Apple vs EU regulators, which, by the way I think are in bad taste, but I won't get into it here because then we might get distracted, I think that the people who are angry because "it's more like a child ... a normal battery" are wrong because Apple has been transparent from the start about how their ecosystem works and before people invest in this ecosystem.

It's not like Apple mislead a bunch of people to the effect of "one can use standard AAA batteries in this toy" to close a sale and then told them something to the effect of "sorry, it only accepts proprietary batteries".

Therefore, I think that you have poor understandings of the boundaries of these relationships.