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Apple has been fined €1.8bn ($2bn) by the EU after an investigation found it had limited competition from music streaming services such as Spotify.
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The European competition commissioner, Margrethe Vestager, said a smaller fine would have been nothing more than the equivalent of a parking fine and the €1.8bn was designed to act as a deterrent against a repetition of such practices by Apple or others.
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“Apple’s rules ended up harming consumers. Critical information was withheld so that consumers could not effectively use or make informed choices. Some consumers may have paid more because they weren’t aware that they can pay less if they subscribed outside of the app,” Vestager said.
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Vestager said consumers may have paid two or three euros a month more for music streaming because of the lack of open competition. However, she conceded that the fine would not be distributed to customers who had been allegedly exploited but to individual member states.
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She said the fine represented 0.5% of Apple’s global turnover.
Apple: If the App Store helps your app facilitate a sale, we should get a cut.
Developers: Makes sense. So, if I don’t want to pay your finder’s fee, I have to let people download my app from my site?
Apple: Doing that isn’t secure. If you want people to download your app, you have to use our App Store, or an App Store that we’ve blessed.
Developers: Ok, so I avoid paying you if I use a different App Store?
Apple: 3rd party app stores must pay us a commission.
Also if you’re a developer they won’t let you develop unless you own their apple device.
Which is a complete non-issue.
lol
Why do you consider it an issue?
Let me put it this way: if the costs of buying a Mac is too much, you certainly can’t afford the developer that needs to use that Mac. The cost of the hardware is such a tiny part of the total cost of developing an app that it’s laughable to consider it a major obstacle.
