Would you mind explaining your position a little more? Are you saying that walled gardens keep evil away, or are you saying that they can hurt the user?
> Walled gardens keep attention-span-harvesting profits on the inside.
A few different counters:
1. Steam is on an "open" platform and charges the same 30% for the marketplace access value as the rest of the industry, whether open or appliance/console, including Apple. So it is memetic but incorrect to argue that Apple being "walled garden" is causing Apple to take more from devs than other places devs can market their wares.
2. Apple's "ingredient labeling" telling users what personal data is being harvested and resold has changed a variety of apps' practices so the data is not, in fact, exfiltrating. In general, big tech is mad about this labeling, and wants out of it, since "profits" associated with secret resale of personal data are being prevented .. not kept inside. For what happens elsewhere, one need look no further than the $5B settlement from Chrome "Incognito" mode:
3. If the argument is "attention span harvesting" means "ads" that package and sell users to advertisers, and that that is what Apple is gate keeping, on the contrary, the adtech ecosystem profits are not being kept "on the inside":
4. Coincidentally, Juno (what this HN post is about) is a one-time purchase. Nothing about attention-span harvesting from the garden or wall. It's app makers who are choosing the user-hostile attention-span harvesting, which causes them to be misaligned with users and Apple.
> incorrect to argue that Apple being "walled garden" is causing Apple to take more from devs than other places devs can market their wares.
I thought you just said that Steam was on an open platform that doesn't choose how much they charge developers? Compared to iOS and the App Store, it's a very different situation; Steam is actually motivated to compete.
> In general, big tech is mad about this labeling
Source? I kinda think Apple has the API coverage to make this an OS-level or app-level feature instead of an App Store one. If not then they better start investing in that technology.
> "ads" that package and sell users to advertisers, and that that is what Apple is gate keeping,
Where is Apple gatekeeping advertisement? Seems to me that they barely care, as long as you conform to their App Store standards. They even sell their own targeted (but of course, respectful) ads: https://searchads.apple.com/
> which causes them to be misaligned with users and Apple.
For one, users don't care. Go on, go ask your mom how often she thinks about YouTube targeted advertisement when she's looking up chicken recipes.
For two, Apple only pretends to care. If you make a time-wasting, attention-span harvesting sinkhole gatcha game, Apple will welcome you into their platform with open arms. They operate so many double standards that threatening a company breakup a-la Microsoft antitrust is starting to look like the most sensible solution.
Steam is different because there is a great sense of ownership on one's steam game library - to the point that one has family control PINs and passwords, and can share or hide or private games, wishlists and gifts to and fro.
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Walled gardens (paywalls) around 1-time consumed content is bs, mostly.
"Information wants to be free - but we plan to monitize freedom through paywalls" is the content business model of Ye Olde Gaard Media... where the paper you were reading todays* news on had significant cost to deliver that story to your eyeballs - such as a medium empire to own the substrate for the narrative presented to you (Hurst's lumber paper empire and the demise of hemp as a paper product)
And the insane amount of control that supply chain enabled - thus the entitled archetype seen in the DNA of all media companies.
so - walled gardens, are an old model. Especially for sites that are digital pheonix of their prior paper media empire...
This is why I think that any linking to New York Time on HN should be banned - so annoying, HN isnt US-centric, exclusively and it shouldnt have so many expectations that its users want to pay NYT for anything.
(paywalls promote title-clickbate-commenting, because you want to engage in the topic without paying for the full context of the article clickbaiting you...
> 1. Steam is on an "open" platform and charges the same 30% for the marketplace access value as the rest of the industry, whether open or appliance/console, including Apple. So it is memetic but incorrect to argue that Apple being "walled garden" is causing Apple to take more from devs than other places devs can market their wares.
Steam has put a lot of effort into being the best place to buy games, and if a developer doesn't like it they're allowed to sell to customers on the same devices through a different store.
If there were no threat of competition, would Steam be as good as it is?
If the App Store did have competition, would it be better?
