Lex Fridman: evaluation

Transcript context

…as peers, and they all compete to give users the best deals, and they grow and do business with their customers directly. That thing can only exist if the and Google gatekeeping monopolies are lifted. And it’s not just the 30% fees. 30% fees are economically ruinous, but they impose other levels of control. Apple prevents all web browsers on iOS from implementing web standards better than Apple does. So, Apple has really limited data storage capabilities and 3D graphics capabilities on the iOS web APIs. So APIs, you can access from web apps running within a web browser, and that’s to intentionally cripple those apps to ensure that they can’t possibly compete with native apps. And by depriving web apps of those features, they prevent web apps from being competing with native apps. Well, Apple, if they treat the metaverse the way they treat the web, they’ll say, “You can only use Apple’s metaverse engine. Unreal Engine is disallowed.” And then they can impose all of their own limitations on the metaverse to force all commerce through Apple or force it to be so uncompetitive and lousy that it can’t compete. And they have this giant array of these anti-competitive techniques that they use to disadvantage other app developers, saying only Apple can build certain kinds of apps or only Apple can integrate certain features in Europe, even where the DMA law requires Apple to allow competing stores, they say, “A store can only be a store. You can’t build a store into Facebook, you can’t build a social network into a store. A store must only be a store because a store that’s more than a store might be able to compete with us more effectively.” It’s just a giant… To use the Soviet term, it’s a defense in depth strategy where they’ve constructed a massive series of barriers. Each are fatal to any attempt to compete so that even if one barrier is overcome, the others remain in place and shut down the whole scheme. And that’s playing out in Europe, where Apple has enabled us to launch the Epic Game Store but has made it so difficult and uncompetitive both for Epic and for clients who we want to do business with that it has no chance of success until the European Union starts to really enforce the DMA law and impose harsh and serious penalties on Apple to force compliance. I think it should be said, once again, I think it’s wrong what they’re doing there and I hope there’s public pressure and government pressure for them to open up the platform. I believe, as a person who loves Apple, I believe this is also good for Apple. There’s the natural thing in companies to want to close and control and crush competition, but Apple is full of brilliant engineers, open it up and win. It’s going to create the right kind of competitive incentive to make the Apple Store better to make… because they’re great at creating great interfaces, but competition will sharpen the sword. I mean, it is just going to make everything much better. So I do hope there’s a lot of public pressure, and I appreciate that you’re speaking out in this way, sort of putting that pressure and letting people know it’s okay to say that this is wrong. Thanks. Competition makes everybody better. You have a monopoly that’s forced to compete. Suddenly, the monopoly’s products get much better, the offerings to consumers get much better. You see so many areas where Apple could be the best, but what they have is just really, really lousy, and it’s this old guard of leadership who is clinging to these old policies, turning themselves into the enemy of every developer, every regulator, and I think it’s ultimately massively to their detriment. And I can’t wait for a new generation to come in and paint a bright path to the future. We were… Epic was an awesome partner to Apple for more than a decade of demos and partnership and technology usage together, and we did amazing things together. I’d love nothing more than to have that Apple. I mean, and bringing back Steve Wozniak’s original views. Just the Apple II was such an amazing thing. It’s a completely open platform.…

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