Dozen Worthy Reads š° (No. 166)
This week : Tech censorship, Apple v. Epic, Google Fuchsia/Harmony OS, Roblox on the app store, Amazon mesh, Cost of cloud hosting, Twitter's new subs, Waze, Apple Watch lead, Only Fans, Amazon Prime
Hi All,
I hope you all are doing well and welcome to Dozen Worthy Reads. A newsletter where I talk about the most interesting things about tech that I read the past couple of weeks or write about tech happenings. You can sign up here or just read on ā¦
Tech happeningsĀ
Censorship and politics
This is becoming a daily affair in so many countries; to censor something or else weāll use some kind of force - either legal or otherwise to make sure you comply. This specific aspect is about censorship but changing maps, changing defaults on phones are becoming commonplace. With that there is a huge rise in local services. India for example has Koo which is the Indian Twitter. What happens now? Does the whole internet get split into localized services? I think weāre definitely heading that wayĀ
Russia Raises Heat on Twitter, Google and Facebook in Online Crackdown
Apple v/s Epic
As I wrote last week in Apple v/s Epic, App Store policies, and regulation the court case arguments are done and now the Judge has a fun summer ahead! My predictions for this are as follows:
Does the āApp storeā itself have an antitrust issue?Ā
In favor of : AppleĀ
That depends on how you define the market and it's almost impossible to define the market so I think that Epic loses on āmarket definitionā. It was a good try and this is what they were aiming for so that they could have their own āgaming app storeā on iOS. Their gaming āapp storeā doesnāt do too badlyĀ
Does allowing for 3rd party app stores reduce securityĀ
In favor of : AppleĀ
Hell yes! Epic is unlikely to win on this. This is Appleās brand and their brand reputation could suffer in addition to it just being a bad idea and I would - Epic or not - NOT be willing to sideload apps. No sir!Ā
Should Apple allow 3rd party (not Apple IAP but lets say Spotifyās own IAP) IAPĀ
In favor of : Apple for nowĀ
Remember Uber does this, Lyft does this, Macyās does this. Hell every physical product does this; so why exclude apps? Epic has a case to be made here and there is really no good reason to not allow it -- at least for larger companies that have a strong brand reputation
Are the anti-steering provisions logical/do they help āprotectā customers? Should Apple be allowed to prevent anti-steering for all apps?
In favor of : Epic
The ant-steering provisions do not make any sense at ALL! I mean why the hell can't you just tell your users that you can go to epic.com and pay! In fact they should allow a link so that you donāt get redirected to a fake store when you search.Ā
Should Apple be prevented from competing with Apps that use the store as a gateway to access customers (and are paid, Spotify for example) and/or be required to offer more favorable terms
In favor of : Apple or Epic (in EU)Ā
This is hypothetical and not part of the Apple/Epic trial but could be for the Spotify/Apple (EU trial) The EU court will not rule in favor of killing Apple Music, as an example, just because Spotify has to pay the 30% commission though a fair approach would be to reduce the commission if Apple also competes in the same āmarketā (Music streaming services, in this case)
Should Apple be prevented from pre-loading Apple Music on their iPhones?Ā
In favor of : Apple
This is hypothetical and not part of the Apple/Epic trial but could be for the Spotify/Apple (EU trial). If the argument is that Apple Music comes pre-installed (or any such app that Apple also offers) I donāt think the EU court will rule in Spotifyās favor. This is a baseless argument and Apple is leveraging their innovation as they should.
New OSās abound
Google released their new OS called Fuchsia. This OS is aimed at small devices starting with Nest Hub. As a user you will not notice this change though the OS used to be Linux based. The interesting thing here is why not use Android itself? I mean they have this for wearables with WearOS (which theyāre rethinking). Why build a whole new OS unless you plan to do something more specific with it? Time will tell, im stumped on this one
9to5google.com Google is releasing Fuchsia OS, starting w/ 1st-gen Nest Hub
Huawei also launched Harmony OS on smartphones and smart watches. Last year due to sanctions they didnāt have much of a choice but to plug away at their own OS. Looks like their marketplace is doing just fine as well. While it's hard to unseat iOS/Android at least in China it's possible that Harmony OS becomes huge, offers developers better incentives to build for a large market and takes a smaller % cut. Alternative monetization models also work very well in China!Ā
How is it that Roblox is able to have a game store .. uhh experience on iOS. The below read was interesting but the crux of it is Apple probably made an exception to their policy for Roblox. I would expect that the outcome of the Epic trial will influence potential lawsuits against Apple for discriminating and then weāre back for another trial!Ā
Why is Roblox Allowed on the App Store?
WhatsApp sues India
Guess for what? Youāre gonna laugh. PRIVACY! The Indian government has asked WhatsApp to provide an attribution chain for messages (in other words if I forward a message to you and you forward it to Tony, then India wants the chain Me ā You ā Tony and so on and so forth. While facebook is trying to protect privacy, what happens if Indiaās Supreme court rules in favor of the government? Does Facebook lick its wounds and walk away? Allow it? Lose users? These are all interesting questions -- and to me an amazing opportunity to have Web3.0 type decentralized services that cannot be traced back to a user. Good or not, is of course arguable!Ā
Amazon gets mesh-y
Amazon gets in on the mesh network game. All of Amazonās smart home devices have a wireless network which Amazon has extended with a Tile Partnership. So in the case of an airtag your airtag shares someone elseās internet to send data back to iCloud so you can find your device. Amazon in this case is introducing Amazon Sidewalk (not to be confused with Googleās Sidewalk labs) so you can share your internet with your neighbors. Uh wut? Thanks but no thanks!Ā
Amazon devices will soon automatically share your Internet with neighbors
Cloud and taking back control
A16z has written about why hosted/SaaS companies using public clouds, once they get to a certain size need to move workloads back into their own data centers; it's more cost effective For companies running on thin margins this could make or break profitability
The Cost of Cloud, a Trillion Dollar Paradox - Andreessen HorowitzAndreessen Horowitz
Twitterās new subs productsĀ
Twitter has been on a (product) roll recently and is now finally making inroads into monetizing their interest graph with new services such as spaces and Twitter Blue, a paid sub. This makes a lot of sense; as I have written in the past for people serious about their time/what they read being able to get unique insights from specific creators (be it a journalist, a VC, a tech professional, or a blogger) paying for content is the only way. You pay for not just the content but for the curation. Curation, similar to a physical store, helps avoid decision fatigue and one can read more things aligned to oneās interest deeper than just politics or technology or science. Twitter is now playing catch up and as I wrote in Substack v. Twitter. Newsletters, Subs, and ways to make money, it remains to be seen how much this can be monetized. In addition to specific areas of interest Twitter is also launching a local weather news service which is quite well aligned (but again at $10 a pop it remains to be seen). Twitter also, according to Axios, wants to invest more in ācollectivesā which is nothing but deeper curation into oneās interest graph. Collectives are what Medium should have done instead of an AYCE plan which doesn't give creators incentive or readers the kind of curation they are looking for.
Uber agrees to unionization in the UK - I mean really what choice did they have, really?Ā
Great reads from around the web
Waze : A good read from NFX on how Waze got started and the challenges they had along the way
Nilay Patel interviews Revathi Advaithi about Flex, an electronics manufacturing company that youāve never heard of but have their products in your house
Above Avalon on Appleās decade long lead in wearablesĀ
Matt Stoller on how Amazon Prime actually increase prices not reduce them (iām not fully sure I agree but very interesting read)Ā
The First1000 on how Only Fans got their first 1000 customers
Thank you for reading. Stay safe, be well! If you enjoyed reading this please consider sharing with a friend or two (or sign up here if you came across this or were forwarded this)