Are you implying that American citizens do not exist?

With the constitution in tatters, you might be right about that...

At the same time suicidal empathy is a thing. I think currently we have too much empathy and not enough cost vs. benefit analysis going on the societal scale. To put it bluntly - maybe sit out protesting ICE when they are deporting murderers and pedophiles?

Trump was caught red handed with documents in fully unsecured/unlocked locations and Trump didn't even give up the documents, he refused until Mar-a-lago was raided.

No, I don't. He "cooperated" because he was caught red handed. A former senator and vice president does not have the same authority to declassify docs as they see fir. See the difference?

And to just leave banker boxes of classified material in his unsecured garage is beyond the pale and it was clear he'd been doing that for years.

To make it explicitly clear. I am not aware of anybody on the right that thinks criminal illegals should be protected from deportation or sympathetic with organized protesters that attempt to disrupt federal authorities conducting lawful deportations. We are, however, concerned about protecting our rights to peacefully protest and also concerned about our rights to bear arms. We also concerned about lack of leadership at ICE, where up to very recently there was no realization that this situation caused a serious and avoidable crisis. Personally, I'd rather see sanctuary cities lose all federal funding and have complete pull-back of federal law enforcement - let them have all the illegal immigrants they want - than have these confrontations.

You are probably a committed partisan, that no level of evidence would convince that Conservatives are patriots who want what is best of the fellow citizens.

The Stanford iPhone programming course has been free online from the very first year. It is absolutely extraordinarily popular and it has always been taught by top-shelf people. The first year was taught by a guy who worked with Steve Jobs at NeXT. It's like you're saying, is $20k worth it for food to stay alive? Yeah sure, it's better than death EXCEPT you're not mentioning that there's also a church giving away free food all the time that's across the street. If the 193p lectures and exercises are not enough for you to learn, you do not have the brains to be an iOS developer. And let's face it, the way the $20k course is being targeted, it is not intended to get results. It is just setting money on fire in a racially discriminatory way to make Apple look good, somehow.

We're talking about a market where goods/services are bought and sold at a price, so this is beer.

Additionally, our legal system equates money with speech. Restrict someone's money and you restrict their speech. While I have serious problems with some of the implications of that perspective, at least the courts are being consistent here, in a case where that interpretation actually does something good for the public (and incidentally the market).

Yes the ICE tracking app is a bit tricky in the trump era, in pricipal ICE is law enforcement, and any app that interferes with legitimate law enforcement ( if you don't like ghe laws on the books work to change them ), but when you have a convited criminal, thst seames tomsdmire and want to emulste desopots ocupuimg the oval offuce... yea it's a tricky one all right. And before you say " but trump was elected in a free and open election " yes I know, that's the scary part, who votes for a convicted cry fot fge highest office in the land, I still dont get that part

...if you don't like it make your own phone and your own app store.

What you are missing is that the barrier to switch platforms is nontrivial. Consumers would have to buy a whole new phone and lose any purchased apps. Apple is able to leverage this to act anticompetitively and extort more fees from consumers than they normally would be able to in a completely free market. Thus, the government must step in to balance the scales.

You are not required to associate with Apple in anyway. If you choose to develop an app that runs on Apple's technology stack, then you have to play by their rules. Don't like the rules? Take your ball and go home. They don't owe you anything.

I personally don't like the idea of a walled garden and that drives me away from the Apple platform. It doesn't mean they shouldn't be allowed to have a walled garden, just that I am choosing not to bother with them.

No one is forcing you to deal with Apple. They are just another corporation and they aren't even a monopoly.

such scummy practices, and yet they're regarded by their fandom as such paragons. crazy disconnect, there.

the really alarming thing is the number of people who seem not to recognize immediately that this is scummy behaviour which should have no role in human society, and want to quibble and defend it, usually because they're reserving the right to treat others like shit/like they've been treated when it's their turn on top.

Accepting unacceptable behaviour is the weird thing, yutzes. Don't lemming yourself off the cliff just cuz there's something shiny down there... just because the courts say it's ok doesn't make it ok! Or do you want to say you are fine with all the supreme court's recent decisions? Fine with legally mandated backdoors too I suppose, bloody embarrassing is what it is.

> Apple builds the handset, the OS and the store

Remember, when iPhone came out there was no App Store.

That was a separate business that came later, competition was prohibited, and by prohibiting competition rents were extracted.

This is called "illegal tying" in the law.

I'm happy for the ruling.

The chief difference between Apple and Android is there is NO WAY to sideload apps on the iPhone. If you don't like Android's store, and can get people to find a url to your app, they can install it directly. That has never been the case with Apple, and they can arbitrarily deny store access.

The chief difference between Apple and Sony/MS game consoles is the Playstation and Xbox hardware are sold at or below their COGS. So their cut of the store is al the revenue they get for those products. Apple on the other hand profits handsomely on every iPhone, in addition to the cut they require of every app.

To people that say Apple can do what they want or people can switch to Android if they don't like it... Apple intentionally makes it difficult to leave their ecosystem, with lockin between their phones and computers and online services. They've also acted anticompetitively by make common services (such as cellular texting, in the case of iMessage) appear worse to and from Android phones.

As an app developer, it's obvious that Apple's rules have benefitted them more financially than the developers providing apps for the iPhone, and am for a more equitable split of consumer dollars based on the effort and value each side provides. Apple is entitled to their share for providing and supporting their platform, and listing on their store. But the cost of that compared to development and marketing costs by developers is far less than 30%.