Apple Publishes a New App Store “Principles and Practices” Page

With WWDC ’19 just around the corner, Apple has just published a new “Principles and Practices” page that attempts to make a case for how the company runs the App Store.

We created the App Store with two goals in mind: that it be a safe and trusted place for customers to discover and download apps, and a great business opportunity for all developers.

The page features and details positive things about the App Store and lists stats about how many apps Apple reviews every week, and how many apps are approved or rejected.

As part of our rigorous app review process, we use a combination of automated systems and hundreds of human experts. This team represents 81 languages across three time zones. We work hard to maintain the integrity of the App Store. In fact, since 2016, we have removed over 1.4 million apps from the App Store because they have not been updated or don’t work on our most current operating systems. This helps unclutter the search for new apps, and makes it easier for users to find quality apps.

Apple is also listing several apps that the company says competes with Apple’s own apps, although the company fails to mention how the company still has the upper-hand in most of those cases.

Apple App Store Mail Apps

Let’s take the case of mails apps, for example. There’s no way Gmail, Spark, Outlook and Yahoo! Mail are on the same level playing field as the built-in & native Mail.app on iOS. You can’t set either of those apps are the default mail app on iOS instead of Apple’s Mail app, so all mailto: links still open Mail.app. Similarly, Apple’s own web-browser Safari and messaging app Messages have the upper-hand over other “competing” apps.

And then there’s this:

Apple App Store Principles and Practices Page

84% of apps are free, and developers pay nothing to Apple.

I get what Apple is trying to say here, but the “developers pay nothing to Apple” bit is highly misleading when you consider that one simply cannot publish an app on the App Store without paying $99/year to Apple for the Apple Developer Program membership. Even if one has to publish a free app for iOS, they need to shell out over ₹ 7000/year just to sign up for the membership.

May 29, 2019 ✚ Permalink

Disney to Acquire 33% of Hulu from Comcast

The Walt Disney Company (Disney) and Comcast Corporation (Comcast) have just announced that the companies have entered into an agreement wherein Disney will take “full operational control” of Hulu, effective immediately, and will purchase 33% ownership in Hulu in 5 years.

Under the put/call agreement, as early as January 2024, Comcast can require Disney to buy NBCUniversal’s interest in Hulu and Disney can require NBCUniversal to sell that interest to Disney for its fair market value at that future time. Hulu’s fair market value will be assessed by independent experts but Disney has guaranteed a sale price for Comcast that represents a minimum total equity value of Hulu at that time of $27.5 billion.

Disney seems to be going all out on this whole video streaming business.

May 14, 2019 ✚ Permalink

Spotify to Delete All of Saregama’s Songs from its Library

Aditi Singh, writing for Bar and Bench:

[…] Spotify had approached Saregama to get a license for streaming the latter company’s musical works on its platform. The negotiation talks between the parties also began and the terms of the license were discussed. Subsequently, on Spotify’s request, Saregama also provided copyright of its work a month prior to the launch of Spotify in India.

The license agreement, however, could not be finalized and Saregama requested Spotify to block all of its work on the app..

Spotify India already doesn’t have any of Warner Music content, and this is only going to make its library less appealing.

April 24, 2019 ✚ Permalink

Apple Addresses Spotify’s Claims in a Statement

After Spotify filed a complaint against Apple earlier this week, Apple has today released a statement trying to address Spotify’s claims.

According to the statement:

What Spotify is demanding is something very different. After using the App Store for years to dramatically grow their business, Spotify seeks to keep all the benefits of the App Store ecosystem — including the substantial revenue that they draw from the App Store’s customers — without making any contributions to that marketplace. At the same time, they distribute the music you love while making ever-smaller contributions to the artists, musicians and songwriters who create it — even going so far as to take these creators to court.

and

Spotify wouldn’t be the business they are today without the App Store ecosystem, but now they’re leveraging their scale to avoid contributing to maintaining that ecosystem for the next generation of app entrepreneurs. We think that’s wrong.

Great points, but the statement complete sidesteps why the company disallows apps to mention other available payment models. I think Apple is fair in asking for a 30% cut for payments made through the App Store, but Spotify (and other apps) should also be allowed to tell their users that they can purchase the same subscriptions, using other payment methods, sometimes cheaper, from the service’s own website. Apple itself says that many Spotify users are free users and Apple is fine not getting any revenue from them. For any revenue Spotify receives outside of the App Store payment system, Apple shouldn’t need to ask for a cut.

Moreover, Spotify wouldn’t be in this tough position if Apple didn’t have its music streaming service, with substantial unfair advantages over Apple, offered at the same price as Spotify. Right now, Apple offers a competitor service on the same platform as Spotify, at the same price as Spotify, and has substantial advantages that users like.

March 15, 2019 ✚ Permalink

Spotify Files a Formal Complaint Against Apple

Spotify has announced that it has filed a complaint against Apple with the European Commission (EC), the regulatory body responsible for keeping competition fair and nondiscriminatory.

Daniel Ek, founder and CEO of Spotify, writes:

In recent years, Apple has introduced rules to the App Store that purposely limit choice and stifle innovation at the expense of the user experience—essentially acting as both a player and referee to deliberately disadvantage other app developers. After trying unsuccessfully to resolve the issues directly with Apple, we’re now requesting that the EC take action to ensure fair competition.

and

We aren’t seeking special treatment. We simply want the same treatment as numerous other apps on the App Store, like Uber or Deliveroo, who aren’t subject to the Apple tax and therefore don’t have the same restrictions.

More power to Spotify!

The company has created a lovely website called Time to Play Fair that shows a timeline of all the ridiculous App Store policies that Apple has in place as well as the rejections that Spotify has faced over the years.

March 13, 2019 ✚ Permalink

HMD Global Unveils Nokia 9 PureView with Five Cameras

Lars Rehm, writing for Digital Photography Review:

The main camera on the back features a total of five Zeiss-branded lenses which all come with an equivalent focal length of 28mm, an F1.8 aperture and a 12MP image sensors. Three of the latter are monochrome, two are RGB sensors. A sixths module captures additional depth information of the scene.

As ridiculous as it looks, this thing is very real and I’m actually looking forward to seeing samples from this phone.

February 25, 2019 ✚ Permalink

Delhivery Acquires India Operations of Aramex

Writankar Mukherjee & Sagar Malviya reporting for ETtech:

In an email to customers, Aramex India country manager Hector Crasto said: “Aramex is entering into a strategic relationship with Delhivery, who shall take over the domestic business of Aramex India. Accordingly, effective March 1, 2019, Aramex India will be discontinuing its domestic operations.”

Crasto wrote that Aramex in India will focus on its global competencies of express and freight and will continue the international business in the country. “However, as part of our strategic arrangement the pick-up/delivery of the shipment in India shall be done by Delhivery,” the email said.

The deal is set to be effective starting March 1st, 2019. I wonder how this is going to affect Aramex’s deal with dbrand.

February 18, 2019 ✚ Permalink

Backblaze Raises its Subscription Prices, But it’s Still Well Worth It

Let’s face it — Backups are IMPORTANT.

There are no two ways of looking at it. You either have backups, or you’re fucked! If not today, then tomorrow.

Without backups, you’re living a risky life that doesn’t value the data you have. Your important files, photos of your loved ones, client files, app preferences, the files you’ve downloaded over the years — they’ll all be gone one day if you don’t have backups.

I have been using Backblaze — a popular online backup service, for many years now. Backblaze has been providing unlimited personal backup service for $5/mon. Whether you have a Mac or a PC, whether you have a measly 128GB SSD in your Mac or whether your PC is stuffed with Muti-terabytes of Hard Drives, Backblaze will back it all up for just $5/month or $50/year. Not only can you do a full restore of your backup — via multiple reliable methods — in the event of a horrible data loss, but you can also log into the website to browse and download individual files, remotely, whenever you want.

These are easily the best $5 you’ll spend in a month to get a feature-rich and reliable backup service for your computer. If you’re in India, that’s less than ₹10 a day, or about the cost of a cutting chaai.

Earlier this week, Gleb Budman — Co-Founder and CEO of Backblaze — announced some changes to the subscription pricing of Backblaze, starting next month. The company is raising the prices of the subscription by $1 month — that’s right, by a dollar.

Monthly Plan: $5 → $6
Yearly Plan: $50 → $60
Two-Year Plan: $100 → $110

This is the first change in pricing since the launch of the service in 2008, over 10 years ago.

Gleb explains why they had to raise the subscription:

The short answer is that we have enhanced the service in many ways and storage costs have gone up. We have continually removed impediments to getting data backed up — no file size restrictions, speeding up uploads, all while data sets have grown larger and larger. We’ve worked hard to avoid raising our prices, which resulted in some great storage innovations and has allowed us to keep our original prices for more than a decade. By making this decision now, we are ensuring we can continue to offer unlimited backup and keep improving our Computer Backup service. I’d like to go into further detail on the two primary sources of our increased costs: 1) enhancements to the service, and 2) the market cost of storage.

Even at $6/m, Backblaze is a fantastic purchase that everyone should be using. Take a look at some of the comments by customers on the blog post announcing this change. People sure are crazy!

If you still aren’t convinced, here are my top three reasons why Backblaze is worth it!

  1. You get Unlimited Backups. I’m currently backing up close to 12TBs of data to the service.
  2. You can Remotely Access and Download any file or folder from your backed up data, using their website. They even give you mobile apps to download files up to 5GB.
  3. You get Native Apps for your Mac or PC that comes with a whole bunch of features to help you efficiently upload your data. You can throttle your uploads depending on how much bandwidth you have or want the app to use, and you’ll need this for that initial batch of uploads.
  4. You can Offload Files to B2 for permanent storage and free up space from your computer. This is especially useful if you work with video projects and have old archival data. Sure, additional B2 pricing applies, but it’s super cheap.

If you aren’t already using Backblaze, do sign up using this link and you’ll get a whole month of Backblaze for Free.

February 15, 2019 ✚ Permalink