I went to a free iPhone Developer Tech Talk where they specifically addressed this policy. Not too many developers in the audience seemed thrilled about it, but it was laid out in front of them. If a customer comes to you for whatever reason asking for a refund, Apple's official policy is that it is your problem to deal with. I specifically made a note about it because I caught the Apple representative's very lawyer-esque response which was to minimize what he said at all about the issue, except to really say "it's your problem".
I might add that I don't think this policy is due to maliciousness on Apple's part. The reality is that trying to handle refunds has a number of logistical nightmares associated with it, namely:
1. Refund standards and laws within contiguous regions that the store serves are inconsistent. For instance, just because you have Apple Store USA, doesn't mean that there can be one consistent refund policy. Now multiply this problem by the number of countries that the store is present in.
2. A great number of customers would use refunds as a way to "try before you buy". The numbers would be significantly high enough to cause a problem.
Now, there's that old saying that you should never attribute to malice that which can be attributed to ignorance. I strongly suspect Apple's approach to this specific case is a simple case of bureaucratic ignorance. I bet that you have a middle-management type implementing a policy that was designed for him/her based upon very specific legal advice. The situation has probably been flagged for attention by the legal department and upper management, but until a policy is designed, they have to address the current situation using known protocols.
If you were at the Tech Talk that I was, Apple apologized for a lot of the iTunes Store stupidity that developers were complaining about online. They also explained why things were the way they were and it wasn't due to Apple being malicious.
1. The developer is on the hook for refunding 100% of the sale price... but Apple takes a 30% cut of the sale price. So the developer is actually _losing_ money to make a refund to the customer.
2. Apple is the cause of the refunds.
Apple is in a win-win situation here (for them) because they are making their own decisions and shrugging off any responsibility or consequences for their actions on to the developers. Wouldn't it be nice to have someone else take the fall and/or answer for the consequences of any actions that you take?
In any case, even if the developer is only on the hook for the 70% of the sale price, Apple is the cause of people asking for refunds. As such, Apple should refund them their money. Afterall, it was Apple's approval process that failed if it allowed some of these products into the AppStore where they were sold for months before Apple 'realized' that they were in violation. (At least according to Apple's official word on the subject)
I don't think developers have a problem with paying a full refund for user-returned apps so much as a problem with paying a full refund for Apple-returned apps (the capriciousness is just the icing on the cake).
You raise reasonable points, but consider in turn that Apple's whole brand is built around providing a friendly experience. They're certainly aware of app store trends at the upper management level, as evidenced by discussions with stock analysts on conference calls about whether the trend towards $0.99 apps means a race to the bottom that could lower the perceived value of the platform.
I agree that it's not as simple as Steve Jobs rolling around in a swimming pool of money cackling at the misfortune of penniless developers, but I find it hard to believe nobody has mentioned to him that the peasants are revolting.
No, but I know many medium-achieving students who could have contributed a lot more productively to society if they'd had the chance and the money to attend college.
By focusing on only the high-end (and the low-end) we ignore what makes America a great place to be.
The gifted will find a way. The untalented and those lacking willpower usually won't, no matter what.
Everyone else needs a little help, help that actually matters.
I wonder how much students who are poor look in high school like medium-achieving students when they would really be high-achieving students if they were in a more resource-rich environment.
If they don't put DRM in the shoes, then break into my house and steal them back in the middle of the night, I might consider buying something from Zappos again.
Could you please cite sources for those numbers? Given that it's unlikely you could find millions of people who even know what DRM is, I find your claim... inventive.
It seems unlikely that a corporation with so much to gain would not have done the numbers and research here. I understand you think those with your point of view are legion, but the mere fact that a large business is successfully pursuing a strategy counter your beliefs itself argues against this notion.
It is unlikely, actually -- they were forced into DRM by the publishers, not because of any true desire to include it. DRM doesn't help Amazon; it hurts them.
As for DRM, if you think that at least 200,000 people haven't heard of DRM (all my statement requires, if you'll read closely) ok then.
Do your own research, if you want to. There are resources available. The EFF alone has around 80,000 members, I believe, and I am sure just about every one of them knows what DRM is.
The problem with measuring opportunity cost is that it is very, very, very hard to measure. DRM means that I haven't bought about $500 worth of books or so, so far, I'd guess.
Wonder how many people there are like me? More than a few, even without having hard numbers, I'd wager.
If you weren't prepared to back up your statement of millions, maybe you shouldn't have said "millions"? It makes it sound as if you're tying to inflate the importance of your argument hoping you wouldn't get called on it.
I agree completely that opportunity cost is very, very, very hard to measure. Which is why I'm more likely to believe someone with resources, incentive, and skin in the game rather than anecdotal armchair talk.
I wasn't trying to inflate the importance of my argument. I was offering a guess of a possible range, given that there aren't any statistics. That's a common thing to do, and I would do it again.
If I had to guess, I'd probably say about 5% of the US population in toto has heard of DRM and could define it to a reasonable approximation. (That's about 15 million people.)
You chose to take the higher number in my range for me to "prove." I called you on it.
There are about 5.8 million people in the tech industry in the US. I've worked in some pretty big tech shops (and some small ones) in the US. Almost everyone I've worked with has heard of DRM, no matter what they think of it.
But assuming even only 10% of them have heard of DRM (an extremely low estimate) that'd be 580,000 people right there.
That's not proof, as there can't be any such thing in this case.
To me it's a convenient filter that lets me know the likelihood of some comment being good -- though it's not always reliable because unpopular opinions (like, often, my own) that threaten people's self-interests or self-image tend to get voted down pretty aggressively.
It's convenient for me when I view my own comments to see which ones have been most appreciated by other HN participants. Agreeing with the above, I know sometimes a comment can fail to gain upvotes because it is controversial (or because it is in a thread, or subthread, that has become inactive), but usually a comment with a lot of upvotes is worth a look.
Because you wrote this, and I generally like the people who take the time to comment on HN, I re-read the post, carefully. I'm sorry I did.
I don't know what you see in this post.
It has a thesis, buried in the 5th? graf, which is that Fascism means "a dictatorship of corporations". Then it uses a rhetorical sleight of hand to tar all corporations with the brush of syndicalism, equating Mussolini's psuedo-nationalized sham companies with (I guess) the S&P 500, and pronouncing the WSJ Editorial Page as a bastion of fascist thought.
It concludes by suggesting that people who disagree with the author are --- well here I'll just quote: "you support dictatorship in any form, and oppose democracy, you are anti-american, a traitor, and scum. Period."
I'm a socialist-leaning liberal (and an entrepreneur), not a Mises Institute libertarian, and even I think this is over the top.
Can you either tell me how I'm misreading this, and what value this article adds, or can you flag the post too and acknowledge you did? Because I feel like right now all this post is doing is wasting people's time.
Well, it certainly is a polemic, and it does try to make too many points in one post.
I'm also a left-leaning liberal -- in most areas -- but the value of the post was that it attempted to elucidate the links between the persistent corporatism of our society and the fact that the corporatists truly did intend at one time to take over the government.
I have no doubt that they would (and in many ways, already have, through direct purchase) attempt to do the same again.
All in all, the piece could use some more research and fewer ideas all jumbled together, but it rebuts pretty well the too-rosy view of corporations as beneficent angels that all too many here seem to have.
And also, I've had a problem lately as well with the attempted historical revisionism towards Nazism, and have been wondering what's responsible for this as well.
As for being intellectually interesting, I think that fits that particular criterion for HN pretty well.
The bar for political posts on Hacker News is higher than the bar for other topics. Off-topic: "most posts about politics".
It should be the case that when a political post on Hacker News survives flagging, that post is of exceptional quality.
Most of Nate Silver's 538 posts are like that: they're interesting not just because they advocate a sensible position, but because they use interesting methods to do that, methods that hackers find congenial.
Even though right-leaning libertarianism makes my skin crawl, a lot of libertarian posts find a good home here too. They advocate a vision of society that is nurtures entrepreneurialism, and even assigns it a central role in the social contract.
This post doesn't live up to either standard. It takes a viewpoint that any college freshman selected off the UMich campus at random could be expected to have, and articulates it using a rhetorical and logical style that any college freshman selected off the UMich campus at random could be expected to use.
Meanwhile, the post has managed to spark a vigorous debate on HN about whether it's fair to compare the WSJ to Nazis.
Posts like this suck the air out of Hacker News. It's one of the great features of HN that we tend to reject them. I hope you'll reconsider whether material like this has a place here. There are many other communities on the Internet that are better suited for it.
[edit no offense to college students --- I think my point is clear, if clumsily written]
