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!
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Stellar panel this week 
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It can be very hard to understand something, when misunderstanding it is essential to your paycheck (or one could amend - worldview).
Alex really, really comes off poorly (in my opinion) from a journalistic perspective in the discussion with Cory and Iain regarding Apple’s duopoly and the App store policies. When it comes down to it - he has vested interests in going along with how Apple conducts business. He doesn’t care about how those policies affect other people except insofar as it affects himself. It’s such a selfish perspective that it’s made me really examine whether to continue to listen to MBW.
Cory put forth the most articulate reasons for why Apple needs to have its conduct checked, and Alex just put forth the flimsiest of defenses for it or came across as disregarding Cory’s positions outright. It seems like his only reason for being on the panel was as someone who could ‘defend’ Apple.
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Alex is really great and knowledgable about tech, but when it comes to Apple and the App Store, he really seems to be wearing blinkers over his peril sensitive sunglasses. It is a real shame, I thoroughly enjoy listening to him on nearly any other topic, but at least it made for a lively discussion.
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I used to think it his blind spot too. I’ve just come to the conclusion that he’s fully informed and doesn’t care as long as he’s not personally impacted. His arguments are purely self-oriented. He’s perfectly fine with other people’s choices being taken away - but when it comes to his own choices - well then, it’s horrible.
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G#d dam! Cory is on fire in this episode! The whole segment on Ensh*ttification is conversational brilliance! Especially the section beginning at around 1:19:30.
Where is the AI-generated transcript! There are so many quotable sections in this episode so far!
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Credit where credit is due - I’m watching Alex’s Fireside Chat with Colleen Henry and it’s absolutely excellent. In his field, Alex really is outstanding and incredible.
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On one hand I see what you’re saying, I somewhat tend to agree with Alex in the sense that keeping everything in one payment platform is certainly easier and to some respects more secure. When I use Apple Pay I LOVE the fact that the merchant is getting almost no information about me that I am not choosing to share. I can see all my subscriptions in one place and cancel easily. While its easy for us technical people to know where to go to cancel everything, after recently helping my grandmother cancel a TON of things she didn’t need anymore on PayPal and other places, non-technical people can get lost fairly easily.
On the other hand I agree with Cory that there is effectively no competition in this space and that is creating an environment where these big companies have the upper hand.
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The problem is, if Apple allows external payment systems, you don’t have to enable them, you can keep using Apple Pay, no loss of privacy or security. If you already have a relationship with an external store (E.g. Amazon Kindle/Audible), why should you have to pay Apple 30% premium to buy the same content you can buy elsewhere? Apple provide no routing for the electronic books you are buying, they don’t store those books, those books don’t pass through Apple’s servers, they aren’t registered to your Apple account, so Apple is getting 30% for doing payment processing, which costs less than 3%, usually.
If it is a subscription for a magazine or in-game content, I’d probably want to go with Apple Pay, if it is with a company that I already have a payment relationship with, I feel gipped that Apple is forcing itself in the way and taking 30% for literally no added benefit.
That was one of the most annoying things, when I switched from Android to iOS, on Audible and Kindle, if I wanted a new book, I’d just browse and buy in the app, now I have to leave the app and go to the Audible or Amazon website to do that. I can’t even buy the books on Amazon in the App, it shows me the paper, ebook, CD and Audible versions, but won’t let me buy the ebook and Audible versions. WHERE IS THE DIFFERENCE? It is the same darned book, the same words from the same author, from the same publisher…
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Thankful Leo shuts down Alex, since he will not stop defending his same talking points that we’ve all heard many times before. We’ve gone in circles so many times before.
2 things can be true the same time. Apple’s IAP (and policies regarding) can be very convenient for both customers and developers. But by also gauging developers, depending platform payments they didn’t earn, hurts both customers and developers. Having competing services (TV, music, gaming subscriptions) and forcing competitors to charge more for similar services should get them into big trouble. Buying e-books in the Kindle Store, no Xbox Game Pass app
Alex constantly rags on the Apple TV experience, but it’s no different than using the same streaming apps on the phone. The phone just has better access to your keychain. You still have to create a login and give them your payment info. It’s a hindrance on ATV because of the current IAP rules, having that many middle men will eat into any profit that can go to the content makers. And I think they’re so far down the hole into demanding that VIG that even if they lowered the IAP to 5% in exchange for making a better customer experience, the developers wouldn’t change.
It always gets mentioned the 30% fee comes from consoles. What doesn’t get mentioned is the fact that consoles were sold at a loss. But I think an even bigger point is market penetration of smartphones vs consoles. How many people in any given country own a gaming console vs own a smartphone. Monopoly definition shouldn’t matter when basically everyone has to own a smartphone.
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I watched this show earlier today. What Alex says make sense from a simple Apple user perspective that is all in the Apple ecosystem.
It does make sense for people who are not very technical and take a lot of value out of the Apple ecosystem simplicity and integration.
That does not mean that he is right. Apple decisions benefit primarily Apple, any benefits users see are a side-effect of the that policy and not its focus. A good example of this is the very similar discussion we had in the past about charging ports where Apple, and Alex were arguing that mandating USB-C ports was not beneficial, but after EU forced Apple to switch to USB-C they changed their tune and now they are arguing for the port instead of against.
So generally speaking we should always take what Alex is saying with a pinch of salt, he is viewing things from an all in Apple ecosystem user, or a person who is a multimedia professional. I am neither, even though i do have quite a lot of Apple hardware.
In general i think it was a great panel, Cory is always a pleasure to watch and I do like Iain very much as well.
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What a fantastic panel!
I hope Alex was LARP’ing as devil’s advocate, but I do feel as though he really does feel this way. A bit of an unpleasant caricature of the stereotypical Apple user.
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He has been putting that viewpoint forward since these arguments around separating the App Store as part of the EUs measures was first rumoured, so a few years. He genuinely believes what he is saying.
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It’s weird to hear Alex’s flaccid arguments right after Steve Gibson did a complete 180 on his privacy stance (“it would be wrong for [Apple to not build a backdoor]”) to protect Apple’s moral authority. Not every host is pro-Apple, but boy do the supportive camp have a fannish streak.
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He’s not LARPing. Dude is really smart and successful, but he is pretty much the walking definition of an Apple cultist.
One of his worst takes over the years has been that if/when Apple opens up side-loading, he and, I’m guessing, a bunch of Office Hours guys were going to start review bombing developers if they implemented it on their apps. Literally “We’re going to destroy your business in order to defend this poor helpless trillion dollar tech corporation.”
I cannot wrap my head around being so devoted to Apple you’re willing to ruin people’s lives because you’ve made a faceless corporation a core pillar of your psyche.
It also must have been killing him to keep quiet when Iain and Cory were praising Lina Kahn. Alex usually describes her as an incompetent clown, along the lines of what the WSJ does.
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This will be an unpopular opinion, but I was glad to finally hear someone offer a counter-opinion to Cory on TWiT. Yes, he’s very knowledgeable on issues related to privacy and how companies abuse their power. However, I find that he frequently overwhelms the panel with screeds that are mostly composed of anecdotes. He’s a difficult panelist to control, and Leo loses a bit of agency as a host to allow others to jump in when Cory is on. It’s also very unpopular to disagree with him.
I appreciate that Cory is an entertaining and yes, on occasion, enlightening speaker, but the points from Alex (which yes, have their own flaws as well), highlighted for me some of the flaws in Cory’s arguments, when it comes to the experience for the average user (which is flawed as well), and his somewhat myopic viewpoints.
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I have not listened to this episode yet but this matches my thoughts on when I have heard Cory on other shows.
First off, I haven’t watched the show yet. I know a lot of people think Apple’s 30% is excessive and punitive. Does anyone really expect the developers to suddenly drop their prices by 30% once they can direct you outside the App Store and don’t have to pay Apple? If customers are already willing to pay, say $10, for your app, why charge only $7? They might charge something less than $10, but I doubt most will. Maybe they’ll raise the App Store price by 30% (assuming that’s allowed). 
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I don’t expect any prices to fall. Let’s be real, this is a fight between millionaire corporations and billionaire corporations. Many Apple Indie devs have no issue with paying. But their onerous rules make the experience worse for users. Apple has enshitified their own App Store.
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I can agree that Cory generally overwhelms a panel. He naturally has an ability to explain very difficult concepts with simple parables. If you look up his blog over on pluralistic, you can see his anecdotes and facts stem from a practiced art of knowledge hoarding.
I can only speak for myself, but I would be happy to hear an argument against Cory… but these were the pretty outrageous and poorly articulated things that I heard from this episode.
- They made the platform they should do what they want (weak, that isn’t how anything else works in society, why should it work that way here)
- My needs are well served and I really don’t care about your third party payments because I won’t trouble myself with your pauper-like sub $100 apps anyway (…)
- The users don’t care about the side loading (as if the question was ever about what Alex cares about and not about what devs trying to make a living care about)
Ultimately, it all comes across very disingenuous and self-centered. I guess it’s a hard computer science problem for Apple to come up with a solution that has developers making a living in a way that wouldn’t put too much burden on Alex’s user experience.
In the meantime, oh well, we’ll continue getting rich from our 30% tax and selling our users to Google.
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