The first I heard of snaps was while I was upgrading from 18.04 to 20.04 (I only do LTS for work servers).
What drove _me_ away personally, was I had no idea what snap is and it was all over the place all of a sudden. After studying up I was like “no I don’t want that, I want to have full control over my system”.
I switched to Fedora Server. The packages are much fresher, the kernel is fresher. It is a “staging” area for Red Hat, which for me is a plus.
Goodbye Ubuntu. I’ve been using you as my primary Linux distro since version 6.06!
Very well said! I am afraid there is a prophecy in your description. I have started moving all of our infrastructure away from Ubuntu at work. This sounds horrible. 2020 has been bad enough for one year.
Ubuntu 20.04 forced me to switch to Fedora Server on my home server. Pretty happy so far. I have significantly fresher package versions and most of the software tools I use offer a RPM package. I think I will wait for snap to mature, before giving it another go.
they didn't say it was ubuntu server, it might just as well be ubuntu desktop, and used as a home server (i.e. a box used mostly for server software, but no necessarily without desktop environment).
They won’t, at least not for now, I assume. They can put far more intrusive tracking inside an app compared to a web browser. There is also no way to do content blocking or ad blocking inside apps, at least not on iOS. I use Facebook in Safari - can’t be happier (well, I mean it’s Facebook, but I am not able to pursue all my friends to cancel it).
I believe Apple users choose the Apple ecosystem specifically because they value the protection the App Store provides. I can't even imagine the nightmare if every app was allowed to redirect me to their website, register there and enter payment information before I can start using their app. This system would be abused as hell. The in-app purchases are transparent (I can review all my transaction in one single place) and I can approve my child's purchases remotely.
Also I am sure if the roles were switched, Spotify would no way in hell allow Apple Music to be priced the same way on their App Store for their ecosystem users. It's hypocrisy.
I agree 30% might be too much, but it's their App Store, their users, their infrastructure, their public trust at stake, their rules.
I might get downvoted on principle, but I genuinely wonder and don't understand: why is it NOT OK for Google and Apple to ask for a cut? They have spent years and millions (if not billions) in developing the infrastructure, public trust and user base that allows developers to reach millions of potential customers in the first place. They provide some valuable guarantees that apps should follow that benefit and protect the consumer. I understand that bypassing fees is a way how to temporarily "have green numbers" and show savings on the quarterly report, but this is like a sugar company trying to sell sugar on the streets outside of a supermarket chain, because they don't want to pay a fee to the supermarket chain. It's their app store, their user base - why can't they make their own rules which benefit the consumer in the first place and not the greedy provider?
Again, I am genuinely curious what ethical principle am I missing here.
Developers of apps like Fortnite and Tinder believe the fee is too high for the services it provides, and they're literally putting their money where their mouth is by bypassing the fees and forgoing the benefits of the store.
We'll be able to tell if they're right by looking at whether the 30% savings offset the increased costs and lower install rates. The fact that developers are able to realistically try this out is a sign that the market is working as intended.
This is why Google's model of allowing 3rd-party stores is (imo) a pretty direct improvement over Apple's -- it allows us to run these kinds of experiments. Why waste time having a philosophical argument about whether or not Google's cut is fair when we can just test the hypothesis directly?
The other idea I want to push against is that because Google built a platform, they're entitled to continue to make money on it. That's just not how capitalism works -- "value" here is what the market will pay you, it has nothing to do with whether you did something good in the past. Google may have put a lot of resources into creating an amazing platform, but if being listed on the store is not currently increasing profits for large apps like Tinder after fees, then the cut isn't fair.
Their past contributions to the app ecosystem don't matter.
Well, they already used the stores to gain critical mass - and once they've reached it, now taking advantage of that. Not saying that is good or bad, just pointing it out.
Sure -- while they were gaining critical mass they were happy to pay Google's fees. Now they're big enough that they feel they don't need to anymore.
This goes back to what I was saying about whether or not a business should be owed some kind of 'gratitude' over past actions. There's no rule in a capitalist system that says you owe someone continued patronage just because they used to provide you with a good service.
It's all about what value Google is providing right now -- the past benefits are irrelevant.
- It seems like collusion that both of them keep the cut at 30% for more than 10 years
- It doesn't cost them that much anymore. Their cut is absurdly high. For apple it was a profit of 21.7 Billion last year from other people's apps , in exchange for whatever minor changes they made to their app store. Does it really cost even 1 Billion to keep the app store running?
- They should be more transparent about their numbers. How much does an app developer make? Their opaqueness is self-serving (attracting developers to work for them in the dark, basically). Their PR machine (like the article i 'm linking) is too loud and i believe misleads developers regarding what to expect from app revenue.
- Freedom is a benefit for the consumer, apple has way too many restrictions on the kind of apps i can have on my iphone. Whether it benefits the consumer or not is highly debateable.
- The lock-in of developers is real, it's built with dirty tricks, and i pity those devs who are bound by it.
There’s only one app store for Apple device and Apple fought tooth nails to ban jailbreking and forbidding any other app store like system.
There’s only one extensive app store for android and Google forced it down the throat of any maker that wanted Google’s service libraries which tons of apps learned to rely on.
Platform owners have been playing dirty in a lot of aspects, I think it’s game for service owners to find workarounds or get out of paying a cut to Apple or Google.
In principle consoles are not different, and lawyers looking at Apple/Google stores are also wondering what impact would a ruling in this field have on consoles as well.
I think nobody goes after consoles for now because there is no big enough business case getting hurt, and they’re kind of grandfathered in people’s perception.
>why is it NOT OK for Google and Apple to ask for a cut?
I don't think majority of people complaining are actually about the cut, but how much of the cut. And 30% is what a lot of people disagree with.
The reality is somewhere along the line Apple got too focused on their 20% Net Margin, they put themselves into a price corner. Before the iPhone era Apple mostly do ~10% Net margin, and at best some one offs ~13% quarters. Not only has Apple earned 30x the revenue post iPhone's introduction, that have also doubled their margin.
But then Pricing is only one part of the equation, it is the value on offer that matters, which is fundamentally what people are complaining about the App Store as well as iPhone 's prices.
Well, IMHO it is a fair argument for Google. They allow third party app stores. F-Droid is a brilliant example.
For Apple, however, things aren't as nice and shiny. They force you to distribute and get apps through their store. They don't let you distribute your apps easily otherwise. You don't have a choice of sharing a piece of your app price with Apple or selling it through your website as a package, or through any other app store.
As a side note, there are tons of countries, including in Europe, which are not supported as merchant countries in Play Store - i.e. devs are only allowed to publish free apps.
These countries do not support merchant accounts:
Antigua and Barbuda
Angola
Aruba
Barbados
Benin
Bermuda
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Botswana
British Indian Ocean Territory
British Virgin Islands
Burkina Faso
Cameroon
Cape Verde
Cote d'Ivoire
El Salvador
Equatorial Guinea
Falkland Islands
Faroe Islands
Gabon
Georgia
Gibraltar
Greenland
Liechtenstein
Mali
Monaco
Montenegro
Morocco
Mozambique
Nepal
Netherlands Antilles
Rwanda
San Marino
Senegal
Serbia
Seychelles
Tajikistan
Togo
Turkmenistan
Vatican City
Some of those are in Europe, but which in particular were you concerned about?
It’s the “Netherlands Antilles” not the Netherlands. Also, it split in 2010 [1]. The US played Curaçao, formerly of the Netherlands Antilles, in this year’s Gold Cup.
It would be no problem whatsoever if playstore/appstore were just two of many market places. As it is however, they both completely dominate their respective markets. On top of that, it is costly, both in terms of money and in terms of friction, for a customer to change between the two, so they really are quite separate markets. As a customer, you pretty much choose one of the two, then stick with it (or pay a hefty price to switch). As a developer, you either also choose one of the two, or both. Choosing neither really isn't an option.
In this situation of non-competition, some very crucial assumptions about the efficiency of free markets break down entirely. I think hardly anyone is debating that apple/google make some money for the infrastructure they provide. But the amount they take would be significantly lower if there was real competition. Which there really isn't. That's what's called "rent extraction" and basically just means you're extracting more money for something than would be needed to make you do it in the first place. Would google/apple still be motivated to provide the same service if their cut was halved? Probably. It would still make a killing. But their dominant position allows them to take more, so they do.
TL;DR:
At the base, your question (for me) really boils down to "why should there be any rules for corporation at all?"
To which I would answer: because if left completely to their own devices, that would be a bad system for nearly everyone, except the very few at the very top.
All of this is fantastic. I just hope the day comes, when Google is no longer the default search engine in Firefox. Safari is my default browser, but I use Firefox heavily for “social” media accounts. I love the extensions.
Yes, that is true. But the hypocrisy is how Firefox criticises Google (either directly or indirectly), but is paid by Google to have them as the default search engine. The emphasis is on the word default, not that you can't change it. The same thing goes for Apple with Safari. They disabled 3rd party cookies and promote privacy, but Google is still the default browser, for which Google pays a very large amount of money each year.
They (implicitly) critisize some of Google's behavior, while taking Google's money, yes. What makes that hypocrisy? It would be hypocrisy if they were doing what they are critisizing; it's not clear to me it's hypocrisy to take money from someone who is... while still critisizing them! not critisizing them because you are getting money from them might be hypocrisy...
Not entirely true - Orange has just announced eSIM support (http://dsl.sk/article.php?article=22304) and Apple Pay is definitely coming in next months (I have this confirmed from inside banks).
I switched to Fedora Server. The packages are much fresher, the kernel is fresher. It is a “staging” area for Red Hat, which for me is a plus.
Goodbye Ubuntu. I’ve been using you as my primary Linux distro since version 6.06!