[ballenf]

But if you've paid for Amazon Prime then Amazon has become a platform similar your iPhone.

Just like you can buy a cheap secondary phone for Steam Link, you can join another company's "free shipping membership program" to buy your Nest (or just pay shipping or get it locally, like you said).

Regardless, I think the distinction is less clear than you make out.

[cblades]

Is that a serious suggestion to buy a second phone, or is it supposed to be absurd?

How does having prime lock you into Amazon, at all? You're not disallowed to shop elsewhere after signing up for Prime. You don't even have to sign up for someone else's "free shipping membership program" to buy your Nest.

You're argument doesn't work for me.

[ballenf]

Not it wasn't meant to be absurd. I grew up carrying single-function devices, so maybe don't feel that one device should automatically be able to do every thing its electronics could support.

To be clear, I think Apple is shortsighted in this decision and the Steam Link app isn't actually very competitive with native games. But I'm not its target audience either, even though I have a decent library of Steam games (50+).

My guess is that this move is not really about Steam Link but about the next company to come along with something like "play Android games on your iPhone" functionality.

[zimbatm]

The argument on both sides is around financial burden:

* Pay more for delivery because not using Amazon Prime

* Pay more to buy an Android phone

When making this argument it's obvious that buying a new phone is much more expensive than Amazon Prime but this raises an interesting question; what is the financial threshold at which point one has to be considered a monopoly?

[_Mazza_]

Most people shop on multiple websites, most people don't carry around two phones.

[shawnz]

Most people also don't pay for a subscription service that gives you cheaper prices. If you look specifically at Prime subscribers, I bet you'd find that they make efforts to do all their shopping through Amazon where possible.

[zimbatm]

In this context, the Phone is supposed to be on the same network for latency reasons. Having multiple phones at home is not a big issue.

[hbosch]

Amazon Prime doesn’t lock people in. That’s like saying a Costco membership stops people from shopping at other stores.