1) Apple's apps come preinstalled on every iPhone.
2) Apple's apps have permission to do things that 3rd party apps cannot.
If I search for "Web Browser" on the App Store... well, technically I'll get results from third parties, but every single one is just a UI skin around Apple's own browser. That strikes me as a much larger problem.
Since Apple makes the hardware and the software I don't have a problem with them preinstalling their own products.
However, when a user is clearly searching for alternatives on the app store, it matters how far down you have to scroll to find a 3rd party app.
Spotify being the 23rd result for a "music" search is absurd.
If I delete Apple's Calendar, install a third party Calendar app (like Fantastical), and click a date link, I'll get a message asking me if I want to reinstall Apple's Calendar. I think it's pretty darn clear in that scenario what the user actually wants.
I have hard time believing this was not intentional.
Edit: on Android Spotify is at place 2-4. iTunes is nowhere to be seen but that could be explained with the horrible reviews it has received (some are even legit).
It goes: 1. Apple Music 2. Music 3. Music> 4. Spotify New music and podcasts
That search term is so broad it's difficult to figure out exactly what the users intent is for that. Do they want to listen to music? Do they want to create or record music?
FWIW, I just searched for "music" and saw: An ad, a story ("run with music"), apple music, two music players I've never heard of and finally Spotify in position 6.
That still feels like Apple is penalising Spotify ...
If I search for "Music" on google (incognito, google.com), spotify is nr 16 (page 2).
* Search ad for Spotify.
* App Store story for "Run With Music".
* Apple Music.
* Some app called "Music".
* Some app called "Music>".
* Spotify.
* YouTube Music.
* SoundCloud.
Not only that, but the autocreated links to addresses in the messaging app will not work with other map apps. In fact, if you've uninstalled the apple maps app, the address links in messenger are completely useless.
* unless i'm mistaken, but I'm a fairly adept technical user and haven't found a way to make address links work.
Meta comment regarding HN community... looking at the comments here it seems like most people didn’t read the article, and just assumed what is being reported.
> Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that."
Not to mention all the Samsung bloatware.
1. Granting more permissions to third party apps won't cause the iPhone to ship with Samsung bloatware.
2. I'm not necessarily advocating for 3rd party app privileges to be significantly expanded. However, Apple's own apps should mostly play by the same rules. If they can't, that's a sign the rules are too restrictive.
Whose apps should have come preinstalled on iPhones? Samsungs? No apps, let the user install everything from scratch?
The whole value proposition from Apple is that you get something that "Just works".
It might have issues and bugs, like everything has, but the idea behind "just works" => is more or less ready, no fiddling required for the regular Joe.
At Redmond, we believe everyones apps should come pre-installed. Bought a PC for serious work? well f--- you and please enjoy some candy crush!
Permissions are the bigger issue, though.
Pixel 3 lacks a basic pre-installed app which iOS includes: Voice Notes/Recorder. Scouring the Play store for a simple functionality like this seems silly, and it made me appreciate that Apple's pre-installed kit includes this staple feature.
Scrolling a dozen entries to find an alternate Podcast app, however. That's a joke.
While the pre-installed option is a convenience, it should be much easier to find an alternative, when desired.
However, if I were Spotify, I wouldn't be too concerned about this particular problem. Apple Music and Apple Podcasts come preinstalled on every iPhone, so Spotify effectively lost the discoverability battle before the user even got to the App Store.
By contrast, I'd be quite concerned that Apple is outright preventing me from making my app as good as their first party offerings. Spotify will not ever be able to open Podcast links shared from Safari, or fully integrate into Siri.
Apple is abusing its market position, it has been obvious for me long before this article and the lawsuits. But coming from a country not a member of EU or strong enough on its own, its hard to do anything about it.
The algorithm examines 42
different signals, they said,
including an app’s relevance
to a given search, its
ratings, and its popularity
based on downloads and user
clicks.
[...]
If you searched for “podcast”
in May 2018, you would have
had to scroll through as many
as 14 Apple apps before
finding one made by another
publisher.
[...]
“We make mistakes all the
time,” Mr. Cue said.
“We’re happy to admit when we
do,” Mr. Schiller said. “This
wasn’t a mistake.”
It's difficult to make any sense at all of such a result.
Not saying that's a good algorithm, but one _might_ be tempted to think that with enough users it should be fine. The 'bug' being that all Apple's users are Apple users, so Apple apps would get pushed high for any search.
I'm certainly not suggesting that's what happeened (or even that it would be something so simplistic), but it gives me an idea at least how something that, when presented only with the symptoms, seems so unbelievable.
> The algorithm examines 42 different signals, they said, including an app’s relevance to a given search, its ratings, and its popularity based on downloads and user clicks. ...
> If you searched for “podcast” in May 2018, you would have had to scroll through as many as 14 Apple apps before finding one made by another publisher. ...
> “We make mistakes all the time,” Mr. Cue said.
> “We’re happy to admit when we do,” Mr. Schiller said. “This wasn’t a mistake.”
For those on desktop, please stop formatting quotes like code. They’re just impossible to read on anything but a very wide screen.
This article has "interactive" in the URL. Note sure, but I think this is some special articles they do with a focus on just that? I believe there have been some other examples posted here previously, like this one: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/07/03/upshot/a-quic...
I'm not trying to say "you're right, I'm wrong", or the opposite: different strokes and all that. I found your excitement about the design quite interesting.
But it went one step further by providing the casus belli against the distribution of software outside of Apple's walled garden. Create something Apple didn't approve of, and you get booted. A clear break from its desktop programs, which could be freely installed from wherever.
Now the full picture is beginning to emerge. It was good going for app developers when Apple was largely a devices company, but as it moves into software and content creation/delivery, its position as marketplace gatekeeper means that everyone else will have to start paying tributes (in the form of ads, which appear above organic search results) if you don't want to end up relegated to the bottom of its search algorithm.
What's not fine is not being able to install a third party App Store with different policies so that users can choose whatever they prefer.
Apple's main thing is security, and one important aspect of how they achieve it is by only allowing signed code, which Apple also does some basic tests on, to be installed on the device. Many think this is a valuable service.
In the third party App Store scenario, does the developer still submit an app to Apple for approval? How does Apple then make the approved app available to the third party? How is this different from a website that gives App recommendations?
[1] https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/open-a-mac-app-from...
That said, I would only agree (ideologically speaking) to Apple being as unreasonable as they are now if they allowed third party stores and let users chose which store they prefer. I really don't know how that would work but it would not be my first option.
The idea I get hung up on is Apple doesn't control the market, they control access to the customers companies want. And those customers made a free choice to enter apple's ecosystem. They could get an Android, they could get none of the above. The game consoles have had an incredibly locked down marketplace. nintendo had to basically build their brand on it in the wake of atari in the 80s. Why do mobile marketplaces get such additional scrutiny? The orders of magnitude more money? The pervasiveness of mobile devices? The utility of the devices?
The area where I do struggle is the apple tax, they don't pay it while everyone else has to. My reflexive feeling, is that if you can't provide 20% value over what apple can provide, there might be intrinsic issues; your product might be a commodity. But for something like spotify, where the service exists way beyond the iOS platform, it seems wild that apple get 20% of anything that goes through its platform.
When you buy a Switch it means you can only play games Nintendo has approved. Unlike the app store, the policies are much more restrictive there. Random Joe can't put a game on the Switch. When you develop for the Switch it means if you have a game similar to a Nintendo game _they won't sell you a license and your product is dead in the water_.
People love to forget: The App Store was the first major distribution mechanism where anyone can join the program, no pre-vetting required, and so long as you obey the rules you can sell any app you want. Prior to that every distribution mechanism (sans selling it yourself on the web) was far more discriminatory, restricted, and took a bigger cut of your sales.
There's not much they can do in this regard; they might actually pay the Apple Tax in the accounting sense, but the tax taken goes into the same bank account. They can't take less money from the $10 Apple Music charge since the tax has to go somewhere, and they can't just charge less money for their services since that would just be changing the price for the users, making competition even angrier about Apple undercutting them.
The Apple tax is 30% by the way.
Apple does not control a market, but it controls a marketplace. Perhaps the fact that Apple's marketplace isn't the largest by most measures allows it to set rather market-fixing terms to the stalls it allows others to put in it, perhaps that's ok.
But once the other stalls paid their legal due to the marketplace owner (i.e. assented to the various terms, as unfair they may be), they and the customers have a justified expectation that competition would be fair from now on - the default is fair and free competition, and inasmuch as the other stalls haven't signed their rights off, these must be respected.
Now if the marketplace owner would then put in further roadblocks to make the other stalls hard to find and his stalls easy to find, despite that not being in the original terms, that should be not legal. As far as I know, nowhere did Apple reserve the 'right' to hide other due-paying apps and promote its own in searches.
For that alone, Apple's behaviour should be banned outright, even if it is their marketplace. If Apple can constantly alter the deal, than no stall or customer can be safe. The long term process would then be in favour of eliminating competition, both internally in Apple's marketplace, and in general as vendors flee to the largest marketplace since it is regulated by law. That's not in the public interest at all.
Edit: I did not remember correctly! This feature was added in iOS 10, released in September 2016.
The same company that won't admit hardware flaws won't admit they use your Data.
Although I agree that one shouldn't trust anyone, there's a difference here: certain uses of personal data come with reporting requirements, or are outright forbidden, whereas I think that there are no such requirements around hardware flaws.
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/09/apple...
No need to if the algorithm includes to artificially normalize having some of their apps syroketing their raning value.
Am I the only one having these sorts of problems over and over again? or I am i just an outlier?
The same wasn’t true for desktop OSes (at the time), Microsoft Windows had an overwhelming chunk of Europe’s market share.
Not to mention Apple employees are banned from making apps outside of company time, since they are aware of the issue with insiders having power to make apps that out compete the rest.
This is markedly different then, for example, Google altering search results to promote their own products, because Google owns something like 90% of Search.
But the take that I got from reading the article is if you say "Podcast" in the search box, you'll see pages and pages of Apple's own apps, unrelated to podcasts, before you start seeing podcast apps.
So there's that...
Microsoft then had a monopoly on desktop OSes at the time, at 95+ (close to 97%, in fact).
Apple has a paltry sub-50% share of mobile OSes.
The "But they have 100% share on their own products" is not an argument, as far as the law is concerned, as monopolies are not judged this way. That's the same reason why you can't legally force McDonalds to also sell Burger King burgers, or GAP to sell Banana Republic clothes...
And even MS monopoly position wasn't the issue (having a monopoly naturally is not illegal). The issue was it used its monopoly position to threaten and bribe OEMs to not work with competitors.
Microsoft also had a court order to comply with that they forgot about in Windows 7. https://www.engadget.com/2013/03/06/microsoft-european-commi...
1) Ad (for Audible)
2) Apple Podcasts (So far so good)
3) A story (?) about podcasts (still odd)
4) The Podcast App
5) DLC for The Podcast App
6) Himalaya: Podcast Radio Player
So, I'm not sure how the NY Times got that particular listing, but it's not exactly what I'd call a smoking gun against Apple.
"in May 2018"
> I just tried to replicate this
Unfortunately, you don't have a time machine.
Not that it's right for either case, just ironic.
Someone did an article on how it’s a strategy to save their ad money. Really.
Regardless of the motivation, NYT's recent algorithm-centric investigations (like the YouTube one a month or two back) are really interested and well-researched.
Of course, there are other grocery stores you can shop at. Just like how there are other mobile platforms you can use. (well: there's another mobile platform, singular. that's a problem).
I don't understand the argument for the App Store being a monopoly. Apple can do whatever they want in their store, just like Whole Foods can sell whatever they want in theirs, or Walmart, or Target, or whoever. If an argument can be made that they're actively trying to destroy the competition in the market of mobile platforms, then we should be much more concerned.
Beyond that: there's a very unique argument that the "platform" (iOS) and the "store" (App Store) are separate entities in a capitalistic market sense. If this is the case: the onus is NOT on the App Store being more open, but rather on iOS for supporting multiple different storefronts. And, again, I think that's not a very interesting argument unless iOS itself is being anti-competitive in the market of all mobile platforms, which doesn't seem to be the case.
Suppliers can and do use leverage like withholding popular brands from stores that go too far in favoring the house brand.
Apps however have no such leverage, and due to the way the store is set up, the retail defense doesn't apply.
Yes, retail stores have inventory that they, generally, have to purchase and hold before the sale. This is a natural limitation on the amount and variety of goods they can offer.
By comparison, app stores don't have inventory. But they do have natural limitations. There's a cost to each sale, represented by the 15-30% fees the App Store charges, which is a translation of underlying fees that Apple pays to host and distribute applications, whether paid to credit card networks, engineers, cloud infrastructure providers, supporting services such as iCloud, etc. There is a per-unit cost to app store downloads; its just that most of it is paid on the purchase, download, and use of the application, not hosting.
Additionally, App Store search result rankings are absolutely a limited resource which very closely resembles aisle space in a retail store.
When thinking about this specific issue (which dates back over 16 months ago? and has been fixed? why are we talking about this?): I don't see a philosophical or legal problem with Apple doing this. I see a usability problem. Its just bad results that aren't delivering what customers expect or want.
Maybe I misread it, but I see that it's talking about how if you say "Podcast" in the search box, you'll see pages and pages of Apple's own apps, unrelated to podcasts, before you start seeing podcast apps.
If you search for podcast now you see an ad, then apple podcasts, then a story about creating podcasts, then apps. In my case I have Spotify on 3rd place after 2 popular local radio apps. The article conveniently omits a history chart for 'podcast' search to push their agenda.
Just remember folks - NYT directly competes with many of the FAANGs. Its awfully convenient to do reporting questioning your directly rivals, especially when you never preface your articles mentioning the conflict of interest.
In what business segment? Does the NYT offer streaming TV/movies? An online retail presence? Cloud infrastructure? Computers and phones?
As reported in the article, the Supreme Court voted 5-4 to allow an anti-trust case to move forward on this issue. That's newsworthy, and IMO the article does a good job in showing the general consumer what anti-competitiveness looks like in practice, while getting comments from both Apple and companies who've been affected by these policies.
Can someone confirm my understanding that there is no percentage like 90% and if you are over that you are a monopoly . Is more about if you abuse your dominant position to screw the competition and consumers, and in this case Apple is screwing the application developers that they compete with by abusing their dominant position.
You can quibble over whether 80% or 90% is a monopoly, but 40% clearly isn't one.
The article is about "Apple made a mistake in its search algorithm", not about competition per-se.