<story><title>Epic, Spotify, and Tinder form advocacy group to push for app store changes</title><url>https://appfairness.org/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dgellow</author><text>What I learned from past experiences is to never use analogies. They are almost always a source of distraction, people start to argue about the analogy itself instead of the topic at hand, which is almost always completely counter productive.&lt;p&gt;Also it often only makes sense in the mind of the author...</text></item><item><author>danShumway</author><text>Can we just link directly to the advocacy group&amp;#x27;s page (&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;appfairness.org&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;appfairness.org&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;)? I&amp;#x27;m not certain the article is adding anything.&lt;p&gt;----&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m generally supportive of at least some of Epic&amp;#x27;s arguments towards Apple, and I do believe that Apple (and multiple other FAANG companies) are engaged in anti-competitive behavior that&amp;#x27;s currently hurting the market. But a lot of the arguments I&amp;#x27;m reading on the App Fairness site in particular seem really poorly phrased, almost to the point of being incoherent.&lt;p&gt;From their objection on &amp;quot;user freedom&amp;quot;:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Think about this a little differently: A box of Cheerios costs about $3.00 at Kroger, but sometimes Cheerios offers a coupon which lowers the price to $2.50 at any store that offers Cheerios. What Apple is doing is basically like Kroger telling Cheerios that they’re not allowed to offer coupons, and if they do, Cheerios is at risk of being kicked out of the cereal aisle. Consumers wouldn’t stand for this type of monopolistic behavior over their cereal, so why should they allow it for the apps used on their mobile devices?&lt;p&gt;I had to think really hard what they mean by this and how it actually relates to user freedom. Most resellers &lt;i&gt;are&lt;/i&gt; allowed to choose their own prices for goods. I don&amp;#x27;t think this analogy corresponds at all to what Apple is doing. Apple is banning apps from telling consumers &lt;i&gt;in app&lt;/i&gt; about other purchasing options. That&amp;#x27;s a totally different objection.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m pleased to see developers banding together, but if this is the result then I wish they&amp;#x27;d spend more time making more reasonable, understandable arguments. If this site was my first introduction to the debate over app store policies, I think I&amp;#x27;d probably be on Apple&amp;#x27;s side.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>munificent</author><text>&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt; They are almost always a source of distraction, people start to argue about the analogy itself instead of the topic at hand, which is almost always completely counter productive.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;My experience is that this is very true among a certain group of people, particularly literal-minded software enngineer types. But it is much less true in the general population where a single good analogy can accomplish more than pages of prose.</text></comment>
<story><title>Epic, Spotify, and Tinder form advocacy group to push for app store changes</title><url>https://appfairness.org/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dgellow</author><text>What I learned from past experiences is to never use analogies. They are almost always a source of distraction, people start to argue about the analogy itself instead of the topic at hand, which is almost always completely counter productive.&lt;p&gt;Also it often only makes sense in the mind of the author...</text></item><item><author>danShumway</author><text>Can we just link directly to the advocacy group&amp;#x27;s page (&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;appfairness.org&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;appfairness.org&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;)? I&amp;#x27;m not certain the article is adding anything.&lt;p&gt;----&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m generally supportive of at least some of Epic&amp;#x27;s arguments towards Apple, and I do believe that Apple (and multiple other FAANG companies) are engaged in anti-competitive behavior that&amp;#x27;s currently hurting the market. But a lot of the arguments I&amp;#x27;m reading on the App Fairness site in particular seem really poorly phrased, almost to the point of being incoherent.&lt;p&gt;From their objection on &amp;quot;user freedom&amp;quot;:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Think about this a little differently: A box of Cheerios costs about $3.00 at Kroger, but sometimes Cheerios offers a coupon which lowers the price to $2.50 at any store that offers Cheerios. What Apple is doing is basically like Kroger telling Cheerios that they’re not allowed to offer coupons, and if they do, Cheerios is at risk of being kicked out of the cereal aisle. Consumers wouldn’t stand for this type of monopolistic behavior over their cereal, so why should they allow it for the apps used on their mobile devices?&lt;p&gt;I had to think really hard what they mean by this and how it actually relates to user freedom. Most resellers &lt;i&gt;are&lt;/i&gt; allowed to choose their own prices for goods. I don&amp;#x27;t think this analogy corresponds at all to what Apple is doing. Apple is banning apps from telling consumers &lt;i&gt;in app&lt;/i&gt; about other purchasing options. That&amp;#x27;s a totally different objection.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m pleased to see developers banding together, but if this is the result then I wish they&amp;#x27;d spend more time making more reasonable, understandable arguments. If this site was my first introduction to the debate over app store policies, I think I&amp;#x27;d probably be on Apple&amp;#x27;s side.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>porknubbins</author><text>Every journalistic or popular science or economics book I’ve read recently seems to go to great lengths to come up with helpful analogies (sometimes dragging on for pages.) But there is a fundamental contradiction in that the topic of the book is supposedly interesting or remarkable because something about it is novel, otherwise the book wouldn’t need to exist. The analogy can give readers a fake feeling of following along, but whenever I study the topic in detail I find the analogy based understanding was incorrect.</text></comment>