Photo by Medhat Dawoud on Unsplash
I bet you love your Airpods, can’t spend your day without your Mac, iPhone is your best friend, and Apple watch accompanies you in all the adventures of your life. The way they all work seamlessly is just better than the cherry on top of any cake.
This ecosystem that Apple has created, the laws they have set for the tech industry, it’s just like Facebook owning the whole social media, but Apple is doing it without as many users. Apple releases a new smartphone, everyone follows them; Apple released Airpods, it’s like the world has never seen Bluetooth earphones before; Apple has the shittiest Mac repair service, but no-one cares. We still want the “sexiest” laptop. They have a 64% margin on iPhone X, but no one seems to care about the price.
This goes way far than just the hardware. Apple gets to control the App Store market in the whole IOS platform, they receive 30% of every single payment you make from the apps downloaded from the App Store. They get to make rules which other companies have to follow, big or small, it does not matter. Apple recently became the first American 2 trillion-dollar company. Where do you think all this money comes from?
Apple owns the App Store. They started the whole trend of the ‘App Store’ in the first place. Apple would get a 30% fee for all the purchases made from the apps downloaded from the App store. Google has a similar fee in its Play Store. Before Apple, you had to go down the street to your local CD shop to get your favorite video game and they would take 50%–70% from developers as a commission for distribution. Such a large fee was set because of the inventory management costs, rental costs, labor costs, and a bunch of other costs. Apple has reduced the fee, but is it justified? Given that they don’t have a lot of these costs.
When you download Amazon Prime from the App Store, you can pay directly to Amazon for subscription, and Apple does not get that 30% fee. Many other apps such as kindle are doing the same thing. Other apps such as Spotify charges you $3 extra to cover the ‘Apple tax’. Apple made $15 billion just from this ‘Apple tax’ in 2019. But Apple is not allowing everyone to do that, probably because they don’t want to mess with giants like Amazon. Recently, Epic Games, the company that owns Fortnite, tried to do the same thing. They added a payment gateway to allow Fortnite players to directly pay to Epic bypassing ‘Apple tax’. Apple removed Fortnite from the App Store and threaten Epic to remove the payment gateway. Epic sued Apple for its monopoly over the IOS App Store, and over the fact that they bend rules for different companies, showing the congress amount of power and authority Apple has. You can find the details of the story here-
Epic Games is suing Apple
Game developer and publisher Epic Games has filed a lawsuit against Apple over the removal of the iOS version of its…www.theverge.com
Does Apple Or Epic Understand What They're Doing In This 'Fortnite' Fight?
Yesterday, the Godzilla versus Mechagodzilla battle of Epic Games versus Apple took a seemingly unexpected turn…www.forbes.com
Oh, one more thing, Apple is not just attacking Fortnite, it will restrict updates on all the games created using Unreal Engine, which is owned by Epic. Now that is a big move that can shatter a lot of developers and gaming companies. Does owning the IOS platform mean they can do whatever they want? What about the people who own their iPhones and want certain apps? This is one of the ways Apple is destroying the tech industry.
Apple Announces New Independent Repair Provider Program
Wow, great news. Now I can finally get my Apple products fixed by independent repair shops. No, it’s not that simple.
Before this program, Apple made it almost impossible for independent repair shops to repair any Apple products; Repair shops did not have access to the required parts, and Apple keeps taking away the ability to repair individual parts. Apple service centers charge you around $1000, the third party technician can fix that for less than $100.
An independent technician can’t even take out the drive to restore your data. With this new program, this hasn’t changed much. Independent technicians can only replace iPhone batteries and displays, that’s it, nothing else. Even these batteries and displays cannot be stocked, so you have to wait for at least 2 weeks for it to get replaced. That’s not even the worst part. You have to share all your details with Apple through the technician. You need to give your name, address, and IMEI number. In short, Apple does not care about privacy as much as they say they do.
This program is just a way of telling the congress that they are doing everything they can to provide better service. But they are not. This program is just designed to get out of the current lawsuit.
When I buy an Apple product, I want to feel I own it, that I can do anything I want with it, but that's not the case with Apple devices anymore. A few years back, Apple was found guilty of making your older iPhone slow automatically when a new one comes out. They claimed it was done to make your iPhone battery run longer, if that’s the case why didn’t they said earlier. Apple released a MacBook in 2016 with a shit keyboard. They didn’t replace them. If you break your MacBook, you can't get back your data, even though it's possible, just because Apple does not want that and want you to buy a new one rather than fix it.
So how is Apple affecting the whole industry, you ask? Well, what do other companies do when Apple makes a move? They copy it. Look at Microsoft they released basically a MacBook killer, and that thing has the exact same problems, it got zero from iFixit for repairability. Google is doing the exact same thing with its Play Store as Apple is doing with its App Store. Also, I did not mention how every Apple product is overpriced, and other companies will do the same (not the Chinese ones, of course). If this continues to happen, then people will have no choice. You will always have to pay more than what it's actually worth. Got a broken Mac? sad, buy a new one because fixing it is more expensive. Want to purchase a game? Pay extra because of the ‘Apple tax’. This is how Apple became the first American 2 Trillion dollar company.
