Beep boop - this is a robot. A new show has been posted to TWiT…
What are your thoughts about today’s show? We’d love to hear from you!
I saw the title and knew Brianna was a guest… 
The Apple Store case, for me, the big plus point would be being able to choose who I use for payment processing.
Do I want a 30% discount, if I pay with Dogecoin or pay with Apple Pay? I’ll pay in that app with Apple Pay. Do I want a 30% discount in my Kindle App and buy direct from Amazon? Hell yeah!
I also don’t think that Apple did themselves any favours by saying that they would go after apps using external payment services and send them invoices for the 30% they aren’t making due to the external store.
I think, if Apple let apps use dual payment methods and users select the one they are most comfortable with, a majority would probably stick with Apple Pay, because it is quick and easy. But if I already have an account with Amazon, for example, why should I pay Apple an extra 30% for my purchases, just because I am using iOS?
Edit: The iPhone mini 12 is our new go to phone at work. It used to be the SE, but the 12 is now within our budget - if we want anything more, we have to pay extra (carrier subsidy limits and the amount the company will pay towards a phone). Given that we can use it for telephony, Teams and email and that is everything, most people don’t bother paying anything extra. We have to have a private phone anyway - no company data on private devices and no private data on company devices.
1 Like
I’ll have to check in and see whether the iPhone Mini is an option for us. I’ve using a gen 1 SE (16GB!) for a long, long time and it is in need of a refresh-- the battery is tired, the front camera is foggy, the mute switch is gummed up.
p.s. As I’ve said before, don’t count on all your favorite apps magically charging 30% less.
3 Likes
I’ll admit, I was one of those that always called for a device like the 12 mini but then didn’t buy one. The camera didn’t bother me as much as the battery life being a heavy mobile user when I bought my Pro Max last year.
1 Like
To be clear, Apple’s 30% commission is not dependent on the the developer using Apple’s payment processing. That mechanism makes it easier for Apple to collect it but that is not what the commission is for.
It is not uncommon for commissions to be owed and collected after the sale. In fact Epic does this with commissions for Unreal Engine.
Note: this does not mean that I support the way Apple runs the App Store but the widespread idea that using alternative payments will save developers the 30% commission is not correct.
3 Likes
Great panel - and very nice to hear some new voices as well! Always enjoy Brianna Wu, and I was completely unfamiliar with Lisa Eadicicco or Karl Bode, so it was really good to hear a fresh perspective on things.
Regarding the Epic/Apple ruling: for me - I see scams being less of an issue than impacts to the convenience of returning purchases. By making itself the intermediary between customer and developer - it could very easily handle automatically any refunds for customers. This ease was facilitated in no small part by the their control of the payment process. I can very easily see this convenience being disrupted by the introduction of 3rd party payment processors.
The best solution would be for Apple to articulate a standard for how 3rd party processors should be implemented and how they interact with iOS. Things like security, privacy, and the like can be established as rules that must be followed in order to be allowed as a 3rd party payment processor. This would enable Apple to include a standard that allows them to initiate refunds on behalf of a customer when requested to do so.
My suspicion is that Apple will not do this, and will instead opt to implement this in the most cumbersome way possible and blame both Epic and the courts (assuming they don’t get a stay and the judgment isn’t overturned) for the result.
2 Likes
I felt like your mention of Starlink in this last episode of TWIT was a bit misinformed. That Verge article by Nilay Patel left me scratching my head quite frankly. The article was from May 2021 it’s possible his testing was done some weeks earlier…in any case that article is NOT ACCURATE or representative at this point.
I have been a beta tester for Starlink since May of 2021. Day 1 I plopped my dish on the ground in my garden and had the fastest connection in town (Massachusetts) of 200/30. Even though it was in a very poor obstructed location I had few dropouts in the first 5 hours (10-20 seconds total)…I was like the monkeys in 2001 a space odyssey 
The only area with an open sky for me is a swamp located about 210 feet from my house. I dug a trench 135ft to the edge of my swamp and installed a waterproof box on a wooden pole. The Starlink dish is on a 16ft pole in the middle of the swamp with dishys cable running 80ft thru the air anchored to my pole (here is some drone footage of it: (Starlink install - YouTube).
I have a tiny bit of obstruction in one far corner but otherwise, the installation location is perfect. My speeds are a solid (but vary a lot) 100/20 most of the time. The nature of this service is that the speeds will be variable because the satellite is moving across the sky. My theory is that satellites directly overhead provides the best speeds of 200+ down and the speed drops off as the signal has to travel thru more atmosphere. In any case, I’m getting a reliable 100/20 with about 30-50ms ping.
As for dropouts, I get a number of 1-second drops (is that even a drop?) along with 2-3 longer drops of 15 seconds on a bad day. Some days I have no dropouts. My neighbor who shares my wifi had a 4-hour Zoom meeting a couple of weeks ago reported no issues. I had a 1-hour Zoom meeting during peak hours and had no issues. I have not tried console gaming because that’s not my thing (when you have crappy DSL 20GB downloads are not going to happen).
Elon musk should be given much credit for getting Starlink to where it is today. I am 65 miles from Boston before Starlink all we had was DSL (2.0/0.5). The way things are looking it’s going to be another 2 years before the RDOF grants produce results.
2 Likes
I came here to comment abou the Starlink article as well. We have had it since March here in central Kansas and it has done nothing but improve since we have had it. It is extremely rare to have any dropouts these days. We have tall walnut trees around us but our Dishy is up on our roof on our old Direct TV mount. Yes, it may drop out during a rain but it has to be pretty torrential and it’s only for a very short time. Direct TV if there were heavy clouds would drop out, Starlink is MUCH better. We can now stream TV and Youtube and save money because of our alternative, crap DSL, and getting rid of Direct Tv. That review needs some serious updating.
3 Likes