If you want to use Apple SDK and APIs to develop your software and use Apple Infrastructure, and Services to deploy your software, push notifications, upgrades, manage billing, etc. then they want 30%.
Or you can use none of those services and program against the Web API and pay them 0%.
You can't not use Apple's infrastructure; they don't let you. You could get billing, upgrades, push notifications, etc, from somewhere else for cheaper if it was possible.
"the Netflix iOS app no longer lets you sign up for a subscription. Instead, new users are booted into the web browser to sign up on Netflix.com. Since this transaction happens outside the app, Netflix doesn’t have to give Apple its 30 percent cut.."
...
"This approach is even more extreme than what Spotify does on iOS. If you sign up for a subscription via Apple’s platform, the cost is $12.99 per month to cover the Apple fees. If you sign up online, Spotify only charged $9.99. It has even reached out to customers to help them transfer their membership outside of Apple’s sandbox..."
https://www.extremetech.com/mobile/276066-netflix-experiment...
Try doing that as a non-multi-billion dollar company and your app gets rejected. The guidelines specify that in-app-content MUST use the Apple in-app-purchase system
Being Netflix has its benefits, because smaller devs definitely got their app booted out because they tried the same workaround. There cannot be any kind of linking to an outside payment system, even a web redirection.
Is this the case for native iOS? I would love to forego the Apple toolchain and release obstacles and use stripe apis. But to suggest that a web solution is on par with a native app isn’t really a sound argument
Yeah no. Commercial SDKs and toolchains existed before iOS; heck the OS itself is just a fork of Mac OS. There is no financial reason, other than massive profits, to charge 30% on every transaction.
Is going PWA an option? 99% of the apps can just be that; A PWA. Unfortunately most consider having an app on the store is a mandatory thing for branding. I hope PWA does the same to Apple what the web did to Microsoft; in a good way, remove lock-ins
Is it ok for the government to take 30% but not Apple? Or are you saying the EU should look into EU’s app fees as well? Apple at least provides some value add directly to the transaction and ecosystem.
> Is it ok for the government to take 30% but not Apple? Or are you saying the EU should look into EU’s app fees as well? Apple at least provides some value add directly to the transaction and ecosystem.
I'm pretty sure the EU provides a lot of "value add directly to the transaction and ecosystem." They certainly provide more of that than Apple. Good, comprehensive laws and regulations that are consistently enforced are a lot more important to sustaining modern society than producing a smartphone with a mildly curated app store.
Ha, not arguing EU doesn’t provide value, but specific to the transaction? Not much there: the Apple App Store transaction takes place around the world without the EU’s input. The value you are describing is very much on a different level to purchasing an app electronically. I just thought it was interesting that apple’s cut is viewed as unethical and illegal when the government takes the same. If 30% is the cost of providing a stable, safe marketplace, and EU and Apple are both creating marketplaces, then I don’t see the foul, except that those are pricey marketplaces
The problem here is that you have to pay the fee, even if you think it isn't reasonable. I have no idea if 30% is a reasonable fee to charge or not, and because no one is allowed to compete with Apple, there's no way to find out. If you were allowed to install apps from alternate sources, app developers could offer discounts if you pay them directly or install the app from another store, and Apple would have to adjust its fees to match what the services it offers are actually worth.
One problem with that is that Apple’s restrictions allow them to eliminate piracy, and perform an approval process that keeps high the perception of iOS app quality. These two things make the iOS app market much more attractive to developers. Allowing Android-style competition would lower the value. It might be that it lowers it by less than the difference between 30% and a “fair” cut, but it’s hard to tell and users and developers wouldn’t be well-served by performing an uncontrolled experiment to test the theory.
It also gives Apple a big lever to ensure the platform stays agile. For example, Apple was able to make 64 bit happen first because they knew what software could be installed (so they knew what the compatibility risk was), and because they controlled distribution.
If there were another major app store with significant market share, Apple would find it more difficult to evolve the platform.
There are really two questions. One is what is a reasonable profit margin for a software distributor. Before there was a app store there was boxed software in brick and mortar stores so there is a reference there. The other issue is that Apple imposes a monopoly on software distribution in their devices. Because of the monopoly no one can really be sure what a fair cut is in the app age because there is no competition.
Just to put this in perspective, credit card fees are around 2.5%.
So, you think Apple should collect 2.5-7.5%!(after covering CC fees) to confer the infrastructure required to run the app store (people, servers, office, etc)?
If Apple can't make a profit skimming 7.5% surcharge on billions of sales then they should get out of business of running an App Store and let someone else do it.
In a free market situation someone will build a thriving business with such economics.
Monopoly power over iOS users is the only reason Apple gets away with murder (i.e. skimming 30%).
Apple gets paid per unit of value that changes hands. What do you imagine their actual costs are for automatically vetting a 1 dollar game and transmitting it to a million users over one year.
S3 storage / bandwidth prices according to google is $0.021 per GB per month for storage and $0.085 per GB of transfer
so approx 3c for storage $8500 for transfer if we pretend that apple has to pay so much. In reality its probably much lower.
They would earn 75000 by taking 7.5% so nearly 9x the cost of executing so one would imagine that could easily cover any overhead.
In practice the revenue generated 26.5 billion for developers and 11.5 billion for apple in 2017. Even 2.5% would be almost a billion dollars 7.5% would be almost 3 billion dollars. I'm betting that apple can run an app store for 1-3 billion in a competitive market.
Im sure creditcard fees are lower for companies with billions of transactions like Apple.
And yes i think my ballpark number is fair. This appstore market is a billion dollar industry. 10% of that is certainly more than enough to cover the expenses you mentioned. Believe me, if Apple had proper competition in smartphone market the fees would have been closer to my number. They are simply dodging taxes in Ireland, building t a trillion dollar fund, ripping of developers by abusing defacto monopoly, selling snake oil privacy first speeches while bending over for communist China. Fking sick and tired. I dont like regulations by gov, but with greedy no-longer innovating corporates we really need them
5-10%. What’s “access”? Apple aren’t featuring your app unless you know someone. Otherwise they’re providing payment processing (<2% at Apple scale) and binary hosting.
They're providing an extensive toolchain, extremely well documented APIs, a solid development environment, code signing, app reviews etc.
They're also providing a mechanism for automated updates.
They're also providing a degree of trust around the sale process, including the developer's identity and an additional layer of guarantees of suitability and merchantability.
They're also providing to the end user a level of confidence—whether real or perceived—about the products being sold and their ability to mislead, abuse or damage the device.
They're maintaining the ecosystem that allows the App to be sold in the first place.
And they're providing all of the above for free to developers who want to give away their apps.
I'm not saying the sum total is worth 30% of gross sales—or even half that—but it's not simply credit card processing and binary hosting.
As a customer who purchased the iPhone, I paid for the iPhone already. The first two points benefit Apple and me, not just App developers. I've already paid for that, because that's part of what Apple sells when it sells an iPhone: access to apps. As for the degree of trust around the sales process, that's not true. I get that with my credit cards already. Apple doesn't instill any additional confidence when it comes to the sales process. Quite the opposite in fact.
I mean, if I want a refund for valid reasons, and Apple won't give it to me, and I call up my credit card company and they issue a charge back, will Apple do something negative to my account (such as block other purchases I made?)
> They're also providing to the end user a level of confidence
Yeah, and I paid for that already.
> They're maintaining the ecosystem that allows the App to be sold in the first place.
That benefits them, because without it, I wouldn't buy an iPhone.
> And they're providing all of the above for free to developers who want to give away their apps.
No, they aren't providing it for free. I'm paying for it, the iPhone/iPod owner. They are literally using these things you mention in their marketing of the iPhone. Take away apps, and see how well the iPhone does.
Apple takes 30% because they can. I'd much rather see the producer of the App get my money, but Apple makes this difficult to do easily for customers.
If Apple really had my best interest in mind, they'd charge a modest fee for the app store and processing, or allow companies to use 3rd party processors.
> > They're also providing to the end user a level of confidence
> Yeah, and I paid for that already.
The point is Apple is providing developers access to that reputation. Anyway, I agree that the sum total of everything they provide is not worth 30 percent.
But then again, when I bought boxed software of a retail shelf fifteen years ago, the retailer applied a 50-100% mark-up. It has never been easier to sell software.
I would rather that those users, who own their own devices, are able to do whatever the hell that they want with their own property.
Apple does not rent you a device. They sell them. Once they sell them, they should be yours. That's how property works.
If a refrigerator company put in special protections that made it difficult to put food in your refrigerator, without paying a 30% tax, would you accept that? I wouldn't.
This must be a bad analogy since consumers do widely accept it. Nobody I know cares about where profits go when they buy an app, they just want nice apps that work well for cheap.
Users "accept" it because it is literally illegal to create an alternative.
If I am a factory, I can't build iPhones and sell them to people. Even if I was previously a factory that Apple contracted to make iPhones previously, and therefore they are exactly the same.
On the other hand, the same arguement does not apply to refrigerators. Most refrigerators are basically the same. It is easy to provide alternatives that are almost the same.
This is not the case for smartphones. Smart phones are a strongly differentiated good, and another company can't just make an iPhone that's exactly the same as Apple's iPhones, as that's illegal.
Therefore apple can do whatever they want with their iPhone, and nobody can really make the decision to buy an iPhone that doesn't have these restrictions.
Indeed, when people tried to remove these restrictions, Apple tried to sue people who jail broke their phones. That's not ok. It is horrible of them to have done that.
I don't understand what principle you are endorsing. Are you saying it should be illegal to make hardware devices unless you allow others to duplicate it exactly?
Nobody can make the decision to buy a Chromecast or an Echo or a Nest or a Tesla without restrictions inherent to those devices. In what way is Apple special here?
The principle I am arguing for is that people should be able to do whatever they want with property that they own.
Apple is different in this respect in that if you try to do something with the phone that you bought, whether it be repairing it against their wishes, jailbreaking it, or whatever, they'll sue you.
These matters have come up multiple times in the courts, and this is what Apple does.
The only reason why they aren't sueing customers today for jailbreaking is because they lost that court battle. But the intention is there.
I don't want them to have the ability to sue anyone ever for doing something to property that the customer already owns, because that's how property rights should work.
Other companies generally do not sue you for modifying hardware that you bought.
But what does that have to do with refrigerators? You seemed to be saying it's bad that only Apple can make iPhones?
For the record, Apple has never sued anyone for jailbreaking. They did argue it should be illegal under copyright grounds, and lost that argument. If that's a dealbreaker for you, so be it.
Apple controls how icons are laid out in their store - you don’t have 1.3 billion people looking at your app. If you did have 1.3 billion app icon impressions you will be removed from the store.
Consider making apps for something else; shockingly alternative mobile platforms exist. You aren't entitled to put things on their App Store, you know.
How do you think they keep it from being a cesspool? You think it might have to do with the people they hire to manage it? People they pay with the fees they collect?
It also shows that not being a cesspool isn't necessarily ready. They deserve to be compensated for that effort.
What if the other one isn't a cesspool because of high fees - that filter it? What if that's what people actually want from iPhone and App Store and is the reason people prefer Apple? How is it fair to Apple - since it might be their competitive advantage?
Experienced similar issues with a 20x annual spend on Apple gear. After a laundry list of issues with Apple Business and some repairs we switched to buyint from a procurement partner (CDW) and moved device repairs in-house via Apple Self Service so that we aren't stuck with overpriced flat-rate depot repairs.
Like the iPhone Upgrade Program, it's probably best for businesses to lease devices from Apple than to deal with all the nonsense around repairs.
> it's probably best for businesses to lease devices from Apple than to deal with all the nonsense around repairs.
Heh. Apple's stance on control and repair starts to make a lot of sense when you think of it as apple's transitioning phase to a device-renting business model. They want to make truly owning and repairing your device as inconvenient (and illegal) as possible so that people are more inclined to pay monthly for access to a device.
I just hope other OEMs aren't capable of following in their footsteps.
The only reason that those "repair fraud gangs" are worth while is that iPhone parts are difficult and expensive the obtain.
If they produced enough spare parts and sold them at reasonable cost it wouldn't be as worthwhile for those "gangs" to try to abuse the warranty system for parts.
Poor Apple!
After reading this extensive article by cultofmac.com I too can understand all restrictions and exorbitant overpricing.
God bless Apple. Amen.
My experience with Apple repairs is a mixed bag. For several iPhone repairs over the years the experience has always been easy and positive.
However last year I bought my first iMac, an i7 27” 5K. Last month a line appeared in the display; a vertical column of pixels were stuck black. The issue is intermittent but I took pictures when it happened.
In store they were happy to schedule warranty repair of the display even though the probably wasn’t occurring the moment when we booted.
But I got a call from Apple yesterday saying my repair was “completed”, they found the problem, it was the two 16GB sticks of RAM I added. They said because it didn’t match the other two 8GB sticks it would cause display issues.
Of course Apple’s own docs state you can mix sizes as long as you do it in pairs and keep the matching pairs on the same bank. How RAM would cause a single column of stuck pixels is beyond me.
My only hope is it reproduces again without the RAM present before the 1 year warranty runs out in 3 weeks. Bah!
Devil's advocate here, Rossman cites that only a pin needed to be bent back in the case of the flickering display. Apple has to provide a warranty on their service, therefore they want the solution that is least likely to break again. Bending the pin may not be good until the lifespan of the device, it may break off next time the machine is dropped or put down a little hard.
Of course, any sane person would have a discussion with the customer about whether or not they wanted to try a simple fix versus replace the whole damn thing, which is the crux of the overpricing argument.
The other argument is cost, Apple faces massive short supply on the Genius Bar, so having more bodies that can do simpler repairs faster (ie blind part swaps) seems to have won out over having technical talent properly diagnose and repair the machine.
They could have alleviated this through their authorized service providers, but hobble them with massive fees, high part prices and overall little trust (often being last in line to receive technical documents and training for new devices). Just check out Linus Sebastian's iMac Pro saga for an insight.
Overall, it's a massive system orchestrated to give Apple maximum control over the entire process, and nowhere near enough supply for consumers. It's now actively hampering their experience, leaving people without the super glossy Genius Bar experience or a cheap option at all. I believe they've just put too few resources into this area and are too greedy to loosen the stranglehold of control for third parties to pick up the slack. Directly in contrast to their whole "we want these products to last" argument from the recent iPhone release keynote.
> Devil's advocate here, Rossman cites that only a pin needed to be bent back in the case of the flickering display. Apple has to provide a warranty on their service, therefore they want the solution that is least likely to break again. Bending the pin may not be good until the lifespan of the device, it may break off next time the machine is dropped or put down a little hard.
I think you missed that point. He talks about replacing the cable, which is the 100% fix, and still cheap. The problem is looking at the "this got wet/humid" indicator and deciding that the only valid step is replacing entire boards unrelated to the problem.
It's good argument, but maybe they are saying that most, (or maybe "some"), people would be fine with a repair that is understood to have drawbacks where usable lifespan is concerned?
Maybe it's like a car? You can get the mechanical issue really fixed, or you can have a less expensive repair. Most people understand almost immediately that there is going to be a drawback if you select the less expensive repair.
Good question. Anecdotally, I have been to a few stores in Australia and they have always been consistently busy. I listen to a few podcasts following (ATP, Connected) when the topic comes up the same experience pops up, the Genius Bar used to be great but now they are routinely difficult to get an appointment and being seen late is a real possibility.
I suppose expensive retail spaces? Apple has got mail-in and phone service but I've never really heard anything about it.
Sort of - the reality is that with the scale Apple is at, they aren't able to hire enough people anywhere near as smart as Rossmann to work in their stores repairing laptops - he's easily a 100x technician.
Absent that, the only way to provide a reliable service is to make it very process-based - Run this procedure to find which of these 5-6 components in the device is most likely faulty, replace it with a new one by following this standard procedure, then run this automated QA test and if it doesn't pass, replace the next most likely component until it passes.
It probably costs Apple a lot less to do their warranty/applecare repairs in this way, replacing whole boards at a time, than to try and hire enough people who could do board-level repairs.
It does suck for people who are out-of-warranty and have a minor fault like in this case though - and Apple should have a better solution for them. Arguably if it's a minor fault, they should charge a minor fee to fix it even if their solution is replacing a whole component.
Apple also seems to be trying to restrict third party repairers (and not just for security-critical components), which is indefensible IMO.
How is it indefensible? They're protecting their brand and serving their customers; this approach has actual measurable business value AND value to the customer.
I use Apple products (and in turn services) because I can be fairly certain that an aftermarket unit (Macbook) is going to work well. If I didn't know that I'd look for other brands that do exactly what Apple does now - and then I'd buy their phone and use their cloud so it works well with my main device.
If Apple stopped doing what they do, a lot of people will start to experience weird issues that didn't happen before - and they will attribute these issues to Apple. Additionally the resale value of Apple gear would go substantially lower and Apple would probably also stop offering free OS.
Since I assume that the cost of new device would remain the same, this could actually substantially negatively affect poorer people (to which right to repair would be relevant) - much more than this Apple policy does.
As Apple customer, I prefer their approach. Why should anyone else stop me from consuming a service/product however I and the company I buy from like it (and it doesn't hurt anyone) just because it doesn't suit them? Why don't they buy a Lenovo?
I'm referring to tactics like Rossmann described here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVL65qwBGnw where US Customs is seizing imports of genuine Apple parts - for laptops they don't repair themselves anymore!
I see your point though, there are plenty of untrustworthy third-party repairers.
This is just the stupidest thing. All Louis had to do is purchase non-genuine third-party laptop batteries that don't have an Apple logo printed on them. He could have his batteries, he could perform the repairs, everyone would be happy.
With his complaint he is effectively saying is that trademarks mean shit and anyone can use anyone else's brand whenever they want. It's absurd. And it's a loser case. If he tries to fight Apple, he won't win.
"Lous Rossman, on his own reddit account in a comment, says that he commissioned the batteries from a factory in China that was no longer authorized to make those batteries, because likely they lost the bid/contract to do so."
"The reason is that, if you are not “authorized” to buy an original part, it is considered counterfeit, regardless of the content of the actual part. The way the law works right now, if I bought five iPhone 5C from the Apple store, flew to China, took the five screens off and shipped them to an unauthorized repair shop in Jacksonville – they would be taken as “counterfeit” for having Apple logos. I personally believe this to be wrong, regardless of what the law says – but it is the world we live in, and the vendors deal with that reality the way they do."
And for what it's worth he even acknowledges the possibility that they fit his personal definition of counterfeit:
"This is Chinese market, which is known for counterfeits. It is possible something is fake. This is also an industry where everything is done to place roadblocks to people like me getting parts - I realize he is jumping through hoops and could've made a mistake. Since I have not seen the box prior to it being confiscated, there’s no way for me to tell what is in there..."
At no point does that post by Rossman state "The batteries in this shipment were counterfeit". If the batteries were built to Apple's specifications explicitly for the purpose of going into an Apple device and were not used, does that make them counterfeit?
If he is getting the same kind of of surplus parts we get here in Europe (everything comes from Shenzhen anyway...) then there is functionally no difference between them and the parts installed in an Apple device, because that is the specification they were built to/what their intended use at production was. I doubt an Apple engineer could reliably distinguish between parts used in a machine then recovered and the kind of surplus you get from decent resellers in China, they are for all intents and purposes the exact same part.
> If the batteries were built to Apple's specifications explicitly for the purpose of going into an Apple device and were not used, does that make them counterfeit?
That's pretty much the exact definition of counterfeit. The product doesn't need to be inferior or even different in order to qualify. Counterfeits could be absolutely identical.
If I went to a company that was capable of manufacturing US currency to the exact same quality and standard as the US Federal Reserve, how perfect would they need to be before they stop being counterfeit? Trick question: they are always counterfeit, because they were not issued by the US Federal Reserve.
This company may be manufacturing batteries to Apple's specification and possibly even maintaining Apple's level of quality control. And they are allowed to do that. They can sell their batteries to Louis. But they can't print the Apple logo on them.
> This company may be manufacturing batteries to Apple's specification [...]. And they are allowed to do that. They can sell their batteries to Louis.
Can they? I'd expect Apple trying very hard to prevent that via patents, "only sell to us"-contracts, not offering specifications, laws against reverse engineering, etc. I'd expect Louis would want to buy them, if available. So why isn't he / aren't they available?
Yep, viable choice. Patents definitely are standing in the way of many things, IMO, but this is the very reason of its existence, so we need to decide whether we want to protect companies (and spur innovation, at least that's the theory - we definitely should revisit it and measure it) or if we want to allow people to start new companies making now-not-patented cheap hardware.
> "only sell to us"-contracts, not offering specifications
What's wrong about that?
> laws against reverse engineering
Are there any? I'm not aware. Can you elaborate?
> why [...] aren't they available?
Probably because making counterfeit (as defined by law) hardware isn't that profitable anymore and the market is too small for legal newcomers.
What I really don't understand is why the company he bought from had to stick an Apple logo on it. It wouldn't be counterfeit if they didn't.
That's a great question. Why aren't these non-genuine parts manufacturers able to produce these parts without also printing the Apple logo on them? I mean it shouldn't be that hard to not print the Apple logo on something.
Are they? They are just making it really hard as far as I can tell. I haven't seen any lawsuits for repairing a device nor any laws that would prevent it. Of course right now the law allows companies to disallow you from importing counterfeit (as in "not sold by Apple") parts - maybe that's the issue we should focus on?
While I agree with the general intent of it, to call it "right to repair" legislation is slightly misleading. Apple isn't trying to make it so that if you open your own device you'll go to jail or something like that. When you buy an iPhone, you can do whatever the hell you want with it. Apple doesn't care. What it IS trying to do is basically not making it so that it actively helps people to repair the device. Right to repair legislation — as in the case of New York's — would require companies to take certain actions, like providing repair manuals and parts.
I don't have particularly strong evidence of this, but I think Apple might actually be doing component-level repair on at least some of their boards. Last time I got my computer repaired by Apple, they said in the repair agreement that they might use new or refurbished parts, and the invoice said it was repaired by "CSAT Solutions". Looking at this company's website, they state that they do logic board repairs [0], and they have a bunch of job openings for "component level trouble shooting (capacitor, resistors, etc. )" [1].
- It's not quite fair to compare the service you get from some randomly chosen retail employees with the service you get from a near-celebrity repairman.
- Aggressively suing people over copyright infringement is sometimes required by copyright law. If you don't do it, other people in the future can argue in court that you were implicitly giving up your enforcement rights. I don't know how often they win with that argument, but I know how Apple's lawyers feel about risking it.
The issue Rossmann found was not complicated, any competent repair guy working for Apple should have known what the issue was and how to fix it instead of saying the device would need significant repairs.
And how did the pin get on the outside of the connector? Presumably the laptop was working sometime in the past. Which means that whatever happened, it wasn't Apple's fault, nor is it their responsibility to fix it.
Apple doesn't claim to offer electronic circuit diagnosis services, they offer limited repair options for a limited set of devices. Sure, it would have been nice if the Genius Bar staff could offer a disclaimer-laden advertisement for competent third party repair shops, but I'm not surprised that they don't because as Rossmann himself acknowledges, many third party repair shops are staffed with incompetent fools.
That's because they don't offer electronic circuit diagnosis services, they can only replace entire parts.
And remember, that $1000+ was a quote, not a final invoice. If it turned out to be a broken cable, a motherboard replacement wouldn't have solved the issue. It's likely the actual repair technician would have identified this fault and the customer would have ultimately paid a much lower price.
Because the Apple Stores do not offer electronic circuit diagnosis services. The quote would have been based on an educated guess, as backlight failure plus triggered moisture sensors often points to a corroded motherboard as the underlying fault.
It's not fair to expect Apple's store staff to accurately diagnose faults on the assumption that the device was opened and mishandled by the customer or a third party repairer. The guys in these stores aren't electronics experts, they're just regular people with some training on the most common points of failure and the out-of-warranty repair options offered by Apple.
Provide support for Apple products. That doesn't mean they're expected to have BGA rework stations and an endless supply of the hundreds of thousands of individual components that make up Apple's entire product catalogue spanning four decades.
Your link is not relevant. The Canonical dispute was about another website using their name and logo as descriptive materials associated with reportage/complaint. It was not about the selling of goods bearing that trademark.
Selling non-genuine products bearing another company's trademark is not legal. Failure of the trademark owner to police such activity can dilute the strength and future defensibility of the trademark.
In this case—as Louis himself admitted—they were not manufactured by or on behalf of Apple. They weren't even manufactured by the current OEM and sold on the side. They might prove to be of equal quality, they might have been manufactured to Apple's particular recipe, but that doesn't make them genuine.
Just because a company used to be an OEM for Apple in the past doesn't mean their present output is "genuine" or is allowed to bear the Apple logo.
If Nike ended a contract with a shoe factory, should that factory be allowed to continue manufacturing Nike branded shoes and import them directly to shoe stores in the USA?
Not sure about the pricing but the counter argument I hear regarding restrictions often is that Apple doesn’t want to tarnish the brand by letting third party vendors repair devices. They don’t want the situation where the third party mucks up the screen replacement and the consumer (however right or wrong) blames Apple for it in some part.
I imagine you could tie the pricing into the above argument somehow by saying you need to pay more to do the repair correctly (training technicians, buying the proper parts)
They're basically doing what BMW and Mercedes dealers have done for a long, long time. Overprice the repair labor and repair parts, market the product to people who don't particularly care how much it costs, and charge a ridiculous amount for scheduled services.
There's a reason why a ten year old BMW 7 series has terrible resale value, the parts are incredibly expensive and rare/hard to find, in addition to the intentionally overcomplicated engineering of many subsystems. Using the 7 series as an example there is a steel cooling system tube that runs through the top center of the engine, with a rubber gasket on it. It's a thing that commonly fails and if you need to replace it, the "book rate" labor to do so requires something like 13 hours of labor (at $150/hour?), because it requires removing the whole engine.
Even if you are willing to take it to a third party small repair shop that specializes in german cars, your repair costs are going to be a lot higher than a ten year old Lexus.
Apple gluing things together in a way that can't be easily serviced (look at ifixit's repair scores and teardown photo galleries) is very similar.
your repair costs are going to be a lot higher than a ten year old Lexus
Ironically, one model of Lexus engine has the starter in a location that requires disassembling most of the top of the engine (and thus incidentally also requiring the replacement of many other soft parts like gaskets) to reach it:
That said, a lot of newer cars, not just luxury models, have seemingly been designed to make changing the simplest parts as difficult and involve removing as many other parts as possible.
I know this is off-topic but that's fascinating and prompts me to ask: do you know which Lexus models have that engine design? I'm guessing it's only the LS/SC/GS 400 models.
That probably means the factory intended for topside oil changes. I switched to topside oil changing about 7-8 years ago and it's tremendously more convenient. I didn't trust it at first, so the first 3 I did, I did the vacuum process and then removed the plug. Never got enough oil out of the plug area to fill much more than a tablespoon, so I became a believer.
I use the MityVac 07300 and can recommend it highly if you have a good sized compressor to run it. They also sell a manual pump version.
Except in Apple's case, Apple's products last longer and have higher resale value. Apple tightly controlling the supply chain and who repairs their products directly influences the secondary market value for their products.
When you go on eBay to buy a used Macbook, you can be reasonably sure that what you're buying has had "complete repairs" with original parts (if it was repaired at all). Buyers can be sure that the computer they bought didn't just have a pin bent back, but has some other unresolved problem that will lead to a failure later on. That increases demand in the used market and gets better prices for sellers.
Problem is, they leave no avenue for good third parties to exist. Their AASP policies are restrictive, expensive and overall make shops that are trying to give a legitimate experience less competitive.
If you look at the components that Apple has additional restrictions on e.g. Screen, TouchID they are the ones that if were comprised would enable actors to record you, capture keystrokes etc.
There have been recorded incidents of state actors taking people's laptops, replacing components and then giving them back to them. Apple's position at least to my knowledge prevents this.
That's about as credible as the argument that having your car serviced by a third-party mechanic will make it more dangerous --- yes, it happens, but it's not a real concern compared to the loss of freedom imposed by these restrictions.
State actors who have someone really interesting to focus on can likely defeat anything Apple does anyway.
My car isn't continuously encrypting and decrypting my most critical business information and my most private, intimate personal information. This fact alone drives my priorities—at least for me.
I'm glad Apple maintains trust between the fingerprint sensor and the secure enclave. That's a feature, not a bug.
Unless we're willing to compromise our lives to RMS proportions, we are forced to trust third parties. The value proposition for me with the iPhone is that I'm trusting the fewest third parties possible, and Apple has shown themselves to be sufficiently deserving of my trust.
It seems as though there is always a way. With things like GreyKey and the like popping up and probably other stuff no one is talking about.
In term of telegram, I'm not positive but I always thought that the encryption was in transit and if you could infect the phone you could see the messages as the intended user looks at them. An "analog problem" attack if you will.
I don't know if you can see telegram messages simply by having access to the phone.
That reminds me of unlocking android boot loaders. I took the liberty to modify it and now have to live with a warning screen on boot. I'm fine with safe baby-mode defaults, but still want opt out to be available for those informed or willing to take the risk.
Sadly that phone vendor doesn't allow unlocks anymore, so the upcoming replacement will be a hassle and I'll probably have to settle on a somewhat inferior device (also hoping for a headphone jack and replaceable battery).
Thank god I can choose from a big and free-ish market of android phones and don't have a huge sunk cost locking me into a specific vendor.
So first sale doctrine means nothing? We should all investigate the restrictions on how we use the device before buying?
I'm fine if we conclude "yes", but it is worth noticing that this is not the "norm" for most of human history and so the question is entirely reasonable to ask.
Instead of going sophisticated way I would just say - read some reviews before buying. Fake reviews are a problem for a separate discussion, but they should give you some idea on probability of having some problems and difficulty of solving them.
In this case I think most people who buy Apple products are not really looking for the cheapest parts and repair costs. They pay extra for the experience they want to get.
Or instead of that, we could assert our legal rights and sue everyone who breaks them. And if the laws don't do what we want, we should change them to make such things illegal.
If Apple doesn't want to lose money then they should follow the law.
I'd say the same thing to a company selling poisoned food. "Just don't buy it" isn't a valid argument.
The valid argument is instead "companies that break the law should be fined, sued, or people should go to jail".
I agree with you. It's just that I also believe that we should have as few laws as possible. Complexity of our society is not easy to capture in a strict rules and law is already so complicated that even those who devote their lives to study it find it overwhelming.
So whatever rules you create (and I'd say there are too many of them already), huge legal team at Apple will work their way through them. It won't be easy for a small startup though.
So then you oppose the Magnuson–Moss Warranty Act, you believe that car dealers should be allowed to deny you a warrany claim because you had your car serviced at some place other than the dealership
If you do not like that policy you should just choose not to buy a car?
Seem like a terrible, anti-consumer position to me
Yes. They are a private company charged with making money for their shareholders. They are supposed to be greedy and get as much money for the shareholders. That's their only reason for existence. Actually, that's the reason for every company's existence.
There are laws against price gouging and egregious behavior, especially if a company has a monopoly position. Is Apple price gouging or being egregious? Is it a monopoly? It's hard to say.
In a capitalist society, we are supposed to have competition which naturally guards against such behaviors. If one store charges $100 for a bottle of water, you can go to another that charges a reasonable price. But the modern capitalist system seems to want large conglomerates dominating markets. In agriculture, supermarkets and tech, it all seems to be merging and converging to a few market players.
Apple is interesting in that they are somewhat monopolistic but not completely. They seem to be overcharging, but not price gouging. They collect tons of your data, but only for themselves and don't sell it to others ( at least as far as we know ). They seem to be walking a very thin line where it's hard to attack them as easily as you can facebook or google.
That's apt.. I used to support them back in 2003-04 when they were struggling to survive. Quickly moved away from them when I realized their power abuse. They are the Grand-dad of locking and exploiting..
I don't think it's intentional overpricing so much as incompetent staff whose immediate solution is replacing the entire affected component. In addition, Apple has designed their hardware in a way that makes it very difficult for the average hobbyist to repair things the way you can a PC.
Apple has defined policy and procedures that staff are to follow. The staff aren't free to repair faulty electronics, they're to replace failed boards or systems.
Write to Tim Cook. I had an iMac that was in repair for 4 weeks with no clear indication of when it would be done. I emailed Tim Cook and the next day a senior manager called to discuss my case, and the week after I got my machine back. Worth a try.
You might be surprised. Jeff Bezos has a similar system in place, and it seems to be holding up to Amazon scale. Something slipping through the cracks is a failure of process, and failures of process are exactly what a CEO wants to be paying attention to. While I imagine the "actually gets read by Bezos" claim is just PR, these sorts of emails actually do get read by people who have power and influence, and the interesting ones do actually end up in front of Bezos long enough for him to forward them to someone he suspects is responsible.
Having worked at Amazon, there's a perception even internally that he's actually reading those emails. Obviously it's possible that it's just assistants, but it's not just externally that that perception persists.
I recently replaced the screen on my 2017 iPad 9" via parts from Aliexpress. I was surprised by how thin the display glass is. It appears to be designed to fail.
EU should look into their app fees