Web Excursions 2022-02-08
Michael Tsai - Blog - The Danger of Sideloading Chromium
Ironically, Apple believes that the way to ensure [the viability of Safari] is by only allowing one voice on iOS.
In the short term, that probably is slowing the advance of Chrome, albeit by preventing Apple’s customers from accessing certain sites and features.
But this is depressing as a long-term strategy.
Safari should not merely be good enough to keep iOS users from abandoning the platform in order to switch browsers.
It should be good enough that Apple doesn’t fear Chromium browsers taking over if users were allowed to choose.
Similar logic applies to the debate around Web apps vs. native apps on the desktop.
The way to avoid a monoculture and get more native apps is not to ban Web apps.
It’s to make it so that native apps can do more and work better, so that developing, distributing, and selling them is easier—so that users and developers choose them.
Here the dominance of Chromium works to Apple’s advantage, in a way, because currently Apple makes the best notebook hardware for running Chrome.
Peter Ammon:
So many users live in Chrome and use nothing else.
You may think that development is good or bad,
but it’s obviously undesirable from Apple’s perspective,
since it gives Google extra leverage over Apple’s products.
If your users live in Chrome, then you are at Google’s mercy. You are dependent on Google to make any changes.
Let’s shoot here for a discussion merely of what is going on, and put (most) judgments aside for later.
Apple has been clear from the App Store’s debut that their cut from App Store sales wasn’t merely for payment processing.
The 70/30 split is the same as the split from the iTunes Music Store, and no one ever claimed that was for “payment processing” alone.
Apple sees the App Store as a store, and the entire iOS third-party ecosystem as an extension of that store, and expects a retailer’s cut of sales.
Testifying during the Epic trial last May, Tim Cook made that clear.
Apple’s lawyers said Apple could charge a commission on such purchases, but lawyers are going to lawyer.
Cook, in his testimony, made clear that Apple would. And so they are.
I often compare Apple punditry to Kremlinology —
to predict or analyze an opaque, secretive organization, you’ve got to read between the lines of the few things they do say, and you’ve got to know how to interpret silence.
The “interpreting silence” aspect is the hard part; what Apple does say they almost always mean.
Apple’s guidelines seem so contradictory with the ACM’s requirements that I feel like I must be missing something.
Neither the ACM ruling nor Apple’s updated guidelines seem ambiguous here,
but clearly Apple’s guidelines don’t comply with “Providers must be able to choose both options.” [Note: Another possibility that there may be inherit ambiguity in the ruling’s English translation e.g. that “both” can be interpreted to mean “either.”]
What’s interesting to me is that in Google’s proposal for South Korea,
apps choosing to offer their own payment processing must offer it as a choice alongside the Play Store’s built-in in-app purchasing.
Both Apple and Google obviously want purchases to be made using their built-in purchasing.
Google’s thinking seems to be that if third-party payment options can only be offered alongside their built-in Play Store processing, most users will just use the Play Store option.
Apple’s thinking seems to be to make offering third-party payment processing so unappealing to developers (including the requirement that they use an entirely different SKU just for the Netherlands version of their app) that they won’t even bother.
Google, in their aforementioned response to new regulations in South Korea, is reducing their commission by 4%
Stripe charges 2.9% plus $0.30 per transaction.
That’s very fair and delightfully simple,
but while that extra 30 cents per transaction is negligible for large transactions, for small ones, it’s very significant.
The language here is clearly slanted — perhaps laughably so.
The title, for example, sort of implies that only Apple’s payment system is “private and secure”.
As written, these warnings make Apple look petulant.
the Netherlands ACM ruling is really weird in that it only applies to dating apps.
This makes no sense to me and I’ve never seen a good argument from anyone why dating apps deserve any sort of special treatment
Why the ACM issued a ruling specifically focused on dating apps is baffling to me, other than that it’s the output of a stringent bureaucracy —
in response to a petition from the maker of dating apps, they can only issue a ruling that affects dating apps, even if the logic is more widely applicable.
Compare and contrast with the Japan Fair Trade Commission’s investigation into “reader” apps,
which Apple settled in September by agreeing to allow such apps to link out to the web.
That’s a carve out for a specific class of apps that makes sense.
It strikes me as inherently problematic for Apple to demand anything from transactions that take place outside the app.
Another restriction on web-based payments: an app can only have one URL that users are sent to, and that URL cannot contain any parameters
Apple justifies this restriction “so that user or device data is not transmitted to the developer without the user’s knowledge or permission”,
but they are also requiring that the app present the user with a modal warning dialog before they are redirected to the web.
The app could get explicit permission for passing along “user or device data” in URL parameters in the mandatory confirmation sheet — with a detailed explanation in that sheet regarding what is being shared.
When Apple first added in-app purchases, they were only available to paid apps — free apps couldn’t offer them.
Paying for stuff in an app, after you’ve installed it, feels more like something else [than a traditional “store”.]
while Apple’s perspective has been very consistent through the entirety of the iPhone era,
they have conspicuously not explained their perspective as times have changed and as the platform has grown to half of a global duopoly.
Rather than decrease regulatory tensions, Apple’s new guidelines seem to intentionally escalate them.
我们的互联网，在今天，是服务于两个目标的： 1，卖广告。 2，动员。
因此你只需要做两件事情，即可对抗无数从业者辛苦生产的算法：
1，忽视任何关于“怎样消费更合算”的内容。
2，不看新闻，不看网络小说，不看短视频。
上述都是些老生常谈，我倒是想问——为什么你们会觉得推荐算法和“信息茧房”被绑定在一起了？是不是对“信息茧房”这个词有什么误会？
一般认为信息茧房是 Sunstein 在 2006 年提出，实际上，Sunstein 在 2001 就写过一本书，叫做 Republic.com，认为互联网可能会削弱民主，因为公民把自己隔离在拥有自己观点和经验的群体中。
这不就是后来信息茧房之说的主要理念吗？
被强行推进一个巨大的、不容躲避的钢铁机器，有的人落在车顶上，有的人恰好攀爬进入了驾驶室，有的人到了锅炉与煤堆前，但也有很大概率，会落在车轮之间。
互联网，尤其是覆盖更广阔的移动互联网，也是这样的巨物。