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rieter

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But you can purchase a Spotify subscription on a different platform (say, Web), and then use your account on iOS, enjoying the same experience as every other iOS user. The only part of the experience that's different is the one time sign-up process, for which Apple wants to charge a permanent 30% fee for the entire duration of the subscription (even if after that you happen to primarily use Spotify on Desktop or Android).

This puts Spotify in a weird spot. Their only options are:

1) Charge more to iOS users. This seems unfair to them and of course they will complain and blame Spotify when they find out they've been overcharged since Apple explicitly forbids informing customers about their fees.

2)Charge ~10-20% (depending on the share of iOS subscribers) to users of all platforms to compensate for Apple's fees. Why should I as an Android user pay extra so that someone else can make purchases on an iPhone?

3) Status quo - disable subscriptions on iOS entirely, make customers jump through the hoops to figure out how to purchase a Spotify subscription.

I don't have the exact figure, but I imagine that quite a few Spotify customers use their subscriptions on multiple platforms. Apple just wants to take a permanent 30% cut if the the initial subscription was handled through an iOS app. Maybe this isn't such a huge problem for game DLC where there is no fixed unit cost, but companies like Spotify need to pay royalties to music labels, etc.

How many Muslims did China actually kill? I mean, what's happening in Xinjiang is obviously very concerning, however I don't think anyone has ever produced any evidence that a literal genocide is happening. Mass incarceration? Perhaps. Brainwashing? Maybe. Genocide? Highly dubious.

Why won't 350 million American citizens do something about their own government first, before engaging in moral grandstanding in respect to other countries? No, this doesn't mean just getting rid of Trump - the entire political spectrum is complicit in millions of deaths every decade.

US calls itself a "Democracy", so you're supposed to be more empowered to make a change than an average Chinese citizen.

Yes, also impoverished and displaced several million people.

Consider the impact of all the regime change operations undertaken under the patronage of the United States in countries like Iraq, Lybia, Syria and Yemen, as well as devastating effects of economic sanctions on Iran, Syria and other nations.

Not every decision is going to be entirely rational, especially when it comes to giant corporations with thousands of stakeholders and various internal incentives that may not be visible to outside observers. E.g., sometimes companies do stuff simply because it's helpful for someone's upcoming performance review. Apple probably has a team responsible for trademark protection and these people have to regularly demonstrate activity to justify the budgets.

No one is arguing Google's revenue is mostly ads. It just doesn't mean Google is a one-hit-wonder. There are different advertisement products.

You could generalize any company that way. Apple would be a one-hit-wonder who's revenue comes from one source - selling consumer electronics.

Schmidt already tried telling people this would happen:

"I think judgment matters. If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place. But if you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines, including Google, do retain this information for some time. And it’s important, for example, that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act. It is possible that that information could be made available to the authorities."

Instead of praising him for honesty, people started taking his quote out of context. "If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place."

Airbnb Annual 13 years ago

I have the opposite feeling - 5 years from now hotels will be a niche to be used only for exceptional circumstances.

If iOS is your platform. First you have to decide if you want to do a desktop game or a mobile game. Pursuing both at the same time is a bad idea for an indie developer.