Yes, because I want to be continue to recommend Apple products to friends and family who would definitely be scammed by fake payment mechanisms if Apple wasn’t preventing it.
There are ways to provide safety interlocks for naive users that don't require bowdlerising the entire platform.
What's more, Apple doesn't prevent those users entering payment card details into websites they reach by other means; this protection is patchy at best. Nor does it prevent apps using psychological tricks to maximise their revenue through the platform itself, e.g. as with many gambling and gaming apps.
So with the best will in the world I can't see that this security angle justifies the anti-competitive behaviour.
I'll also observe that in most card schemes, account holders aren't liable for fraudulent transactions. Although I would concede that many scams aren't technically fraudulent (merely egregious, unfair, and deceptive), and that naive users often don't understand their rights or how to assert them.
People know the difference between the web and apps, and the whole point is that people trust in app purchase app purchases more than they do entering their card details into browsers.
Clearly a browser that didn’t let you enter text would have been unacceptable and the iPhone would have failed as a product.
On the other hand, it’s clear that Apple does actually see this as a serious problem, which is why ApplePay for the web exists, and I know quite a few people who feel far safer with websites that use it.
The argument that Apple hasn’t yet made the web safe for their users even though they are working on it, therefore they should abandon the safety have managed to achieved on the store doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.
That’s a misrepresentation. The point is that they can achieve the same safety level for naive users without mandatory rules across permissible content in all applications. I can toggle privacy controls, for example, and manage advertising IDs, and relax (and strengthen) my online safety controls in many other aspects.
The web angle is simply demonstrating by contrast that the claim these hardline rules exist for online safety is horse shit. If they were prepared to irrevocably cripple one functional area for safety’s sake, why not another?
The answer is, because that was never the goal.
These rules are simply the protectionist use of market power, and by obliging other vendors to mislead consumers, become an abuse of market power.
How do you feel about them removing an app because it allows people from HK to circumvent censorship? And why? Just asking to understand your point of view on the article.
I think that part of the article is frankly intellectually dishonest.
I agree that there is a problem with them not allowing different descriptions in different countries, and I agree that they should add this feature to the store.
I wouldn’t have a problem with this being litigated on its own merits. I can see potential legal arguments.
I don’t see what this has to do with antitrust or the rest of the claims, which just seem like a tortured way to introduce an ethical dimension to the argument.
No proposed antitrust remedy has anything to do with challenging authoritarian regimens. If anything the remedies would make the situation worse.
One obvious pathological outcome is that if Apple is forced to create infrastructure to allow multiple stores, every authoritarian state will trivially mandate the installation of a state run store app, with all manner of tracking, privacy abuses, etc., even the ones which had previously had no leverage over Apple.
Using a website would mean browsing it through Safari (the only, artificially imposed browser on iOS), which notoriously doesn't support push notifications and other app-like features. One generally can not get the same functionality from websites and apps, and this is especially true for iOS.
