But that's good thing. More people move away from Apple the less power Apple will have.

Apple has built the touchscreen smartphone that the world to date still could not move on from, and it still leads in that category. By working both hardware and software fronts, they have grinded out an ecosystem that was compelling and money-making to small developers (handling legal and tax logistics pretty much worldwide for you) and to the end users.

Apple Pay is yet another example: you’d think somebody would have come up with a way to conveniently and securely pay with, say, a phone, and yet everybody needed for the teacher to do it first and only then jumped on copying the feature with barely enough creativity to call it “%SOME_BRAND_NAME% Pay” and put their logo on it. Now it’s incredibly convenient, it’s everywhere online, and it basically turns every shop out there into Amazon’s patented “one-click purchase” experience.

Saying they should not be able to profit from their innovation because they just did too good of a job intuitively seems like the opposite of American values. This is not some rusty ISP monopoly with a geographically captive market, sitting on decades old software as secure as Swiss cheese, doing mostly nothing. People switch between ecosystems all the time, there are no strong lock-ins; you have to be on top of it to stay competitive, and Apple generally is. This is one of the rare cases where a company keeps generating and implementing (pretty well) idea after idea in multiple areas with a valuation, contrary to trends, built not on empty future promises but on a concrete, sound business model that provides real value to people who are willing to pay for it, despite having a lot of choice.

I don't care if they're "rusty" or or not. Sell a good hammer, make money selling the hammer: Everything is fine.

Sell a good hammer, double dip with rent seeking and charge for every nail the user drives? Fuck off. Happy to see them get wrecked in the court system.

If you like this one, with all the futuristic tech it brings, don’t get on a high horse whenever those who dare to innovate also dare to make money from it. Have the brains and the balls to do it yourself and be as flush as they are.

This isn’t “rent”—landlords don’t have to incessantly innovate.

I'm less interested in a future where hammer manufacturers charge rent for every nail the user drives. I don't consider that "innovation" to be good for humankind.

0) don’t speak for all humankind,

1) when there is no extractive behavior—defined as taking a fee without producing even remotely proportionate value in return—do not misuse the word “rent” (as I said: landlords don’t innovate), and

2) when innovation is actually innovation, don’t put it in quotes.

Unless your hammer comes with a team of security engineers that work round the clock pushing security updates against zero-day vulnerabilities, or a selection of millions of expansions that expand its functionality in various ways, etc., no amount of mental gymnastics would make your hammer anything like a supercomputer that fits in the palm of your hand. The analogy you decided to repeat works against you; the fact that such a supercomputer costs only 20x more than a really good hammer costs today is amazing.

This seems like a disingenuous and fallacious response. Would you like to try replying in a more good faith manner? It might convince others to keep reading, rather than stopping at the first sentence.

It certainly did not seem to convince anyone that a hammer manufacturer which charges rent for every nail the user drives (in addition to charging for the hammer) is better than a regular hammer pricing model, and I still don't consider that rent-seeking "innovation" to be good for humankind.

I am the one trying to maintain a constructive argument here. It is not coincidental that people upholding the other side very rarely do.

Your claim that a hammer manufacturer's "pay us for every nail" model is not a suitable metaphor for the apple's "pay us for every dollar" payment processing model, was respectfully communicated (thank you for that) and heard. The case you made for that claim, was not persuasive enough to convince the people who think it is. I think no more meta-arguing (or meta-insisting) need be done regarding whether a metaphor is perfect or not: I will be the first to admit that none are (because comparing a thing to itself is useless), but some are illustrative.

To wit, this metaphor illustrates that the world would be a better place without apple asking to be paid for every dollar accepted in-app which is distributed in the app store, just like the world would be a better place without a hammer manufacturer asking to be paid for every nail driven by the hammer.

Maybe one might think otherwise if apple showed data that explained how their 27-30% cut of others' sales was necessary to allow payments? We understand that making 2 hammers costs ~2x as much as making 1 hammer, but does allowing an app to accept $2 cost ~2x as much as allowing an app to accept $1? What is the magnitude of that cost? Remember that compensation for distribution (which covers the costs of running the app store, and need not be correlated with in-app payments) can happen separately.

Great job at goalpost moving (and putting words in my mouth).

No amount of mental gymnastics will turn your hammer into a sophisticated device that gains new features after you buy it, so powerful that it can be used by ill-intentioned people to compromise entire livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of customers if it’s not patched in a timely manner after they bought it. All of them expect this ongoing service, and many of them do not pay a cent for it, never using any paid apps or in-app purchases.

However, I’m repeating myself.

TL;DR: The reason your business model works for a hammer is because it is a damn hammer. Come back with a better analogy, reply to my points in the comment upthread, and start finally making sense—or, to quote the comment whom you are so hell-bent on defending, “get outta here”. The overhwelming majority of people worldwide use Android; go join their ranks and be happy.

No amount of mental gymnastics will turn apple's "pay us for every dollar you make" payment extortion model into an innovation good for humankind, nor will it make that model any more innovative. It's simply a vig, one of the oldest business models in history. No change, no innovation. Same ol' "give us a cut of everything you make [or else]" that it's always been. The extortion model is not necessary for the app store, it's not necessary for devices, it's not necessary for security, it's not necessary for anything except making more profits. Apple could start demanding 1% of every dollar spent in an app, instead of 27-30%, and still continue providing the same service. Your deafening silence on the topic of their actual incurred costs speaks volumes here: One would be forgiven for concluding that you agree with me, that it has no justification to speak of, other than greed and might-makes-right.

As for your claim that a hammer manufacturer's "pay us for every nail" model is not a suitable metaphor for the apple's "pay us for every dollar" payment processing model: It was respectfully communicated (thank you for that) and heard. Unfortunately, the case you made for that claim was not persuasive enough. You could try to come back and make a better case, but I think no more meta-arguing (or meta-insisting) need be done regarding whether a metaphor is perfect or not: I will be the first to admit that none are (because comparing a thing to itself is useless), but some are illustrative.

To wit, this metaphor illustrates that the world would be a better place without apple asking to be paid for every dollar accepted in-app which is distributed in the app store, just like the world would be a better place without a hammer manufacturer asking to be paid for every nail driven by the hammer.

Maybe one might think otherwise if apple showed data that explained how their 27-30% cut of others' sales was necessary to allow payments? We understand that making 2 hammers costs ~2x as much as making 1 hammer, but does allowing an app to accept $2 cost ~2x as much as allowing an app to accept $1? ---> What is the magnitude of that cost? <--- Remember that compensation for distribution (which covers the costs of running the app store, and need not be correlated with in-app payments) can happen separately.

I observe such statements being repeated, uncreatively and without any factual support, with my arguments against them conspicuously left unaddressed. In fact, my very first comment in this thread listed how Apple keeps innovating and leading change in multiple industries. Present specific evidence that would refute that.

> As for your claim that a hammer manufacturer's "pay us for every nail" model

This was never a claim I made; in fact, this “pay us for very nail” model was never once mentioned by me and in all likelihood is a hallucination of whatever chatbot is spewing this.

> In fact, my very first comment in this thread listed how Apple keeps innovating and leading change in multiple industries.

That may be so, but their "pay us for every dollar" model isn't innovative, and that's what we're talking about here. All the other innovation is unrelated to that. All the other innovation can be done without that. You seem to be confusing one thing Apple does (the "pay us for every dollar" model) with everything else they do. This point was covered in the post you replied to, but you seem to have not only ignored it, but selectively quoted me so as to make it easier for you to ignore it.

>> As for your claim that a hammer manufacturer's "pay us for every nail" model [is not a suitable metaphor for the apple's "pay us for every dollar" payment processing model]

> This was never a claim I made

Sure it was. This entire thread is comparing apple's "pay us for every dollar" model with a hypothetical "pay us for every nail hammered" model. Your contribution was claiming that the metaphor was inapt (a claim unconvincing to multiple people).

It sounds like you're now saying you agree with the metaphor that we've all been discussing, rather than disagree? Either way, I think no more meta-arguing need be done regarding whether a metaphor is perfect or not: I will be the first to admit that none are (because comparing a thing to itself is useless), but some are illustrative.

To wit, this metaphor illustrates that the world would be a better place without apple asking to be paid for every dollar accepted in-app which is distributed in the app store, just like the world would be a better place without a hammer manufacturer asking to be paid for every nail driven by the hammer.

p.s.: please stop omitting critical context from quotes to make your point: Your "no change, no innovation" quote creatively omitted that it was referring to apple's "pay us for every dollar" business model for app store payments; your quote regarding the metaphor omitted the second half of the metaphor whose invalidity was your central claim. For your convenience, in this post I've added back the critical omitted context.

As I do with Microsoft, I only use Apple products when its absolutely necessary.

My personal choices are whatever is best, Fedora for my home OS(Don't call Fedora Linux, Fedora is so far and beyond Linux, you don't want to associate them).

My Pixel phone... Idk, looking for something new. But at least I have been using Fdroid and its pretty amazing.

But yeah I bend to their will when I'm doing corporate stuff, never personal.