Dude, Apple is the enshitifier par excellence (I type on an iPhone). Hereās a vignette:
Iām being issued a new credit card, and itās going to be a pain in the ass for me if I decide to renew my Spotify subscription. Why? Because I canāt renew it via the app. Why canāt I renew it via the app? Because the App Store takes a 30 percent (30 percent!) vig from anything sold via an app in its App Store.
So Spotify can either lose the massive global iPhone market, or it can pay the 30, or it can make the user experience shitty and I will have to go via the browser to renew (Iāve forgotten my password) and honestly I may just say fuck it at this point.
And hereās the thingā Apple doesnāt charge all apps the same. Apple wants me to use Apple Music and there I can subscribe via the app. And sometimes Apple picks winnersā Uber does not pay a 30 percent, but smaller ride shares do. Competition!
And of course Iām totally locked into Apple. Two factor authentication. Photos. Shit in the cloud. When I need a new phone I for sure want to just image my iPhone to the new one; trying to move to Android makes me shudder. Andā key pointā my choices are Apple and Android, basically, for a functioning OS. And also itās a felony to jailbreak my iPhone to move shit.
Remember, iPhone is supposed to be easier. User friendly. Seamless. Unless I want to use a streaming service I like more than Apple Music. Then itās not, and thatās enshitification. Pure rent-seeking; and we could regulate this shit and say āApple, you basically have a monopoly on apps. You have to extend them all the same terms of use and fees.ā We could say āwe arenāt going to make it a felony for people to move their own data from one phone to another.ā
And this is everywhere. Getting commercials on Amazon Prime streamingā after you cut the cord and bought a subā is enshitification. The entire Amazon search is a grift scheme designed to have sellers compete for how much they will pay for product placement and you the buyer have to work harder to find what you want in a sea of drop-shop slop. Thatās enshitification. I am sure itās creating shareholder value but itās not creating value.
And back to AIā what OpenAI is doing is getting OpenAI in EVERYTHING. Walmart, your bank, whatever. And then once itās there and you canāt get a toilet plunger at the Wal-Mart without it Altman will jack up the price and reduce support and add on features to make it even more impossible to dislodge. And thatās where the shareholder value comes in. This is not ācreative destruction.ā