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Japan Apple

Tim Cook Relayed Concern Over App Store Curbs To Japan Prime Minister (nikkei.com) 50

Apple CEO Tim Cook urged Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida to consider user protections when regulating smartphone app distribution during a mid-December meeting, Nikkei is reporting, as the tech giant faces growing pressure to open up to third-party app stores. From a report: Apple has come under fire in Europe and elsewhere for requiring all app downloads on the iPhone go through its official App Store. Cook's first trip to Japan in three years was likely intended to prevent similar arguments from gaining momentum in Japan. Cook met with Kishida in Tokyo on Dec. 15 as part of a whirlwind tour of Japan. He outlined how Apple invested more than $100 billion in Japanese supply chains in the last five years, and stressed the company's continued focus on the country.
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Tim Cook Relayed Concern Over App Store Curbs To Japan Prime Minister

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  • 1. prices wont go down for the consumer. the 3rd party store might have a lower fee but the app publisher will still price it the same for greater profit.
    2. reduced revenue to apples store will only result in apple products going up in price to make up for lost revenue. and since apple products are a status symbol to young people and a tax write off for workers prople will still buy it.

    • oops didnt mean to post it yet.

      3. if i buy apps why would i want to have a 3rd party store manage my license when i lose my license when they pull out. it is highly unlikely apple will abandon the apple store. why should i trust epic games if they make a store that they wont do a gfwl like microsoft did and abandon it later on.

      4. if i want to install 3rd party apps without apples approval then i would rather have a jailbroken phone. i dont need epic games for this.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Wow how far up apples arse do you have to be to invent such BS. Everything apple do will be good and everything everyone else does will be with evil intent seems to sum up your argument despite apple being the most anti consumer of all companies
        • keep sucking epics dick. the only reason epic doesnt make their own phone and wants in on the iphone is because theyre too tightass to make their own phone hardware. almost as bad as when microsofts ex employee stephen elop went to nokia and flipped it into the only microsoft phone manufacturer without buying the company.

          "apple being the most anti consumer of all companies"

          no thats microsoft. but so what if apple is? nobody buys apple if they dont like apple. there is not one thing apple makes you cant get

          • by dfghjk ( 711126 )

            "...the only reason epic doesnt make their own phone and wants in on the iphone is because theyre too tightass to make their own phone hardware..."

            The same could be said for you, the only reason you don't make your own phone is you're too "tightass".

            • by bn-7bc ( 909819 )
              Well might be wrong about this, but I suspect that dimes just might have fewer resources available than Epic, and so might be less able to bare the costs involved in getting a mobile phone to market. So calling him/here a tighttass just becausethe individual is not willing/abke to put put a mobile phone is a bit hash, while I have ,ess of a problem applying that label to Epic since they probably could get the financing for the endeavour if they wanted to
            • if willingness isnt a factor did you ever consider your stupid comment points back at yourself?

          • Getting in on the consumer electronic ecosystem at this point is a trillion dollar endeavour.

            Google and Apple started small competing on an open playing field. That playing field no longer exists. You have to offer a full stack of mobile, laptop, audio, home automation. You have to pay Qualcomm extorsion, because between Apple, Amazon and Qualcomm all competetive fables companies have been acquired already. You have to offer a competetive mapping AND street view solution.

            Consumer electronic ecosystem is the

            • PS. I think Google has top class engineering, better than Apple, they are just dragged down by a scummy business model and a licensing model for Android which was a giant mistake in retrospect (they should have licensed Android as they do Chromebook).

              Ideally Google would just split off search/advertising and start making their money completely off licensing and store tax. With Android licensed like Chromebooks to get decent quality and long term support. Then we could have a duopoly.

        • Does PlaysForSure still play for sure? :P
      • We already know 1 isn't true because many publishers offer exactly that: Buy outside of app stores, take a discount.

    • reduced revenue to apples store will only result in apple products going up in price to make up for lost revenue

      You do realize that between this post and the next post you only came up with four excellent reasons not to buy an iDevice?

      • yea thats fine. im not trying to say apple is great. at the end of the day theyre making a locked down device with a walled garden but at least they put in the money to do it. its in apples interest to not screw up the software or it will really hurt their hardware sales. epic wouldnt really care about this.

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by drinkypoo ( 153816 )

          its in apples interest to not screw up the software or it will really hurt their hardware sales.

          But they have been screwing up the software all along — iOS actually sucks really bad no matter how you measure it — but people keep buying from them. So no, it won't, or at least it hasn't.

          • by dfghjk ( 711126 )

            It's a question of which software sucks less then, isn't it?

            Few people are going to waste their time constantly evaluating one platform over another, but plenty do it from time to time. Last time I did it, iOS was far better than Android. Is it different now? I don't know, nor do I care unless there's a compelling reason to reconsider (and there isn't).

            If a company wants me to replace my phone with theirs, they need to offer me a compelling reason to switch. Changing software platforms requires investmen

            • It's a question of which software sucks less then, isn't it?

              Pretty much.

              Few people are going to waste their time constantly evaluating one platform over another, but plenty do it from time to time. Last time I did it, iOS was far better than Android.

              On what basis?

            • If a company wants me to replace my phone with theirs, they need to offer me a compelling reason to switch

              Freedom is important [gnu.org]. Not to you apparently.

        • theyre making a locked down device with a walled garden but at least they put in the money to do it.

          The customer paid for it. Apple did nothing out of their own goodwill.

          Compare that to the Debian repository, which is just as secure as the Apple store, and absolutely free. And that was done out of goodwill.

    • by dfghjk ( 711126 )

      what an idiot.

      If the underlying principals of capitalism do not work and all of society is fueled by unconstrained greed then how does society even exist?

      And sure, "apple products" are a "tax write off" for "workers people", that's why Apple exists.

    • Apple's pricing is what optimizers revenue over whatever terms they are interested in, the margins make fuck all difference unless they threaten to go negative.

  • Not to "consider"

    FFS Hire a native English speaker instead of these Mongolians.
    • There could be more than meets the basic eye level on this matter. Japan has gripes with other US trade rules especially cars so there could be posturing or touche for protectionism to detriment of Japan inc.
      • Japan has gripes with other US trade rules especially cars

        Japan builds most vehicles for the US in the US now, as was intended by tariffs. They worked! Japan and others can gripe all they like.

        • Japan builds most vehicles for the US in the US now, as was intended by tariffs. They worked! Japan and others can gripe all they like.

          I guess the question is, does it work the other way around as well?

          • I guess the question is, does it work the other way around as well?

            Why would Japan buy American cars? They need more disappointment in their lives?

  • Translation (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Saturday December 31, 2022 @05:45AM (#63170006)

    [Cook] outlined how Apple invested more than $100 billion in Japanese supply chains

    "Stop trying to break our monopoly or we'll stop giving Japan money."

    Nice...

  • You don't go to Walmart shopping and EXPECT to pay for it @ Target !!!! Go to Wendy's and pay for it @ McDonalds then complain about Wendy's food not being right !! REALLY !!! Buy an Apple laptop and pay Microsoft for it !! Common sense !
    • You don't go to Walmart shopping and EXPECT to pay for it @ Target !!!!

      No, but I do expect you to leave totally batshit comments that prove you don't understand the conversation

  • User protection? That's rich. Tell me another whopper.
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by dfghjk ( 711126 )

      People no longer remember, but the original justification was not "user protection" it was cellular network protection. That was a lie, of course, because the cellular network was always isolated in hardware from application software. It was Steve Jobs, and Steve Jobs loved to lie, to the extent he wasn't too ignorant to know the difference.

      When the app store was introduced to iPhones, the security it "provided" was advertised as protecting the phone AND the network it accessed from malicious software. I

      • by dgatwood ( 11270 )

        People no longer remember, but the original justification was not "user protection" it was cellular network protection. That was a lie, of course, because the cellular network was always isolated in hardware from application software

        That wasn't a lie. Application software uses the cellular data network, which at the time was extremely limited in its throughput. If everyone had used it at full throttle on day one, the backhaul likely would not have been able to handle it, and there's a decent chance calls would have started dropping, not to mention that everyone's data experience would get much, much worse. It took years to get the backhaul built up to the point where everybody running Netflix on their phones wasn't a big deal.

        • People no longer remember, but the original justification was not "user protection" it was cellular network protection. That was a lie, of course, because the cellular network was always isolated in hardware from application software

          That wasn't a lie. Application software uses the cellular data network, which at the time was extremely limited in its throughput. If everyone had used it at full throttle on day one, the backhaul likely would not have been able to handle it

          That's not the argument. The argument was that if people have free choice of apps on their phones, those apps will somehow abuse the network worse than if they don't. But since the baseband processor isn't under the user's control, that's silly. If the system makes that possible, then the isolation of that processor is inadequate to protect against merely buggy software, not just the malicious kind. If you haven't tampered with the baseband processor, then they can simply refuse to accept your traffic at al

          • by dgatwood ( 11270 )

            People no longer remember, but the original justification was not "user protection" it was cellular network protection. That was a lie, of course, because the cellular network was always isolated in hardware from application software

            That wasn't a lie. Application software uses the cellular data network, which at the time was extremely limited in its throughput. If everyone had used it at full throttle on day one, the backhaul likely would not have been able to handle it

            That's not the argument. The argument was that if people have free choice of apps on their phones, those apps will somehow abuse the network worse than if they don't.

            No, the argument was that if the only apps on the device were apps either written by the hardware manufacturer or running in a browser, you couldn't do anything worse than what you could do in a browser, which at the time wasn't very much.

            To be blunt, the single biggest risk from the cellular providers' perspective was that apps would allow people to tether their computers to their phones and download gigabytes of data without paying thousands of dollars per month for dedicated cellular modem service.

    • User protection? That's rich. Tell me another whopper.

      People saying the App Store is all about "user protection" are basically saying iPhone users are generally stupid. In a more polite way of course.

  • by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Saturday December 31, 2022 @11:56AM (#63170428)
    By the fact that a guy whose company makes overpriced PCs routinely speaks with world leaders? I mean say what you will about macintoshs but it's around $500 worth of computer hardware selling for around $2,000. I get that gives them one hell of a market cap but it doesn't exactly make them enough of a national security concern that presidents and prime ministers should be paying them any mind.
    • By the fact that a guy whose company makes overpriced PCs routinely speaks with world leaders? I mean say what you will about macintoshs but it's around $500 worth of computer hardware selling for around $2,000. I get that gives them one hell of a market cap but it doesn't exactly make them enough of a national security concern that presidents and prime ministers should be paying them any mind.

      If Apple and their smartphones are important enough to require legislation then is seems both appropriate and wise for the Prime Minister to speak to the CEO of Apple.

      It's not like a social call or a rich dude getting a meeting because he's "important". Apple's CEO is there as a representative of Apple, a major corporation with significant business in Japan and the Prime Minister is representing Japan and trying to help his country (and get re-elected).

      • I think this is a little different. This isn't him writing a letter to the president or prime minister this is the prime minister or president speaking directly to him. There are tons of laws that directly affect you. Do you get to talk to the president or prime minister directly?
        • If the law explicitly names you by name, yes, you should get to talk to the president or prime minister, especially if you happen to make large investments in the country. Imagine if Apple suddenly pulled out all investment out of of Japan, I bet their prime minister would like to talk to Cook. I haven't looked at the bill of materials in the latest iPhones, but last time I looked at iPhone 8 IIRC, Japanese companies were actually making more profit per iPhone sold than Apple - this is on hardware price alo
  • ... to consider user protections ...

    Translation: You must let us protect users and profits.

  • Tim Cook wants protection from big government so he can require every software developer to pay him money to be on iPhones. The tech world is a very competitive place and I hope he loses the ability to dictate to software developers and customers. He is also in bed with the Chinese Communist Party denying customers access to apps they need to keep the Party from spying on them and which could lead to their deaths.

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