Apple: Person-to-person experiences do not have to use in-app purchase
developer.apple.com
developer.apple.com
This line makes my blood boil. Futhermore, later they define disallowed sexual content as:
> 1.1.4 Overtly sexual or pornographic material, defined by Webster’s Dictionary as "explicit descriptions or displays of sexual organs or activities intended to stimulate erotic rather than aesthetic or emotional feelings."
Do they not know from which ruling that quote comes from?
It just plays into their current "meh, here's some rules but we'll do whatever we want anyway" image.
Then Apple lets people do it and now they’re okay with it
Apple added YubiKey support (https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2019/12/12/apple-ios-13-3-i...) for 2FA in Safari in 13.3 and they added better mouse support to Safari as well as other built in apps between major releases.
Firefox is losing market share and almost completely dependent on Google for its survival. If Firefox tries not to support something that the rest of the industry is supporting (like the web based DRM) the rest of the industry just yawns.
EDIT: From App Store Review Guidelines on September 2014:
> "If your App is rejected, we have a Review Board that you can appeal to. If you run to the press and trash us, it never helps."
https://web.archive.org/web/20140903022336/https://developer...
99% of app devs will not benefit from “running to the press.” Those that will will know it for certain.
It used to be that engineering/design led the company. Now it's marketing and legal.
Isn't that what people make fun or Oracle for?
edit: Here it is, from 2016, probably goes back a lot longer than that
https://web.archive.org/web/20160706210122/https://developer...
The guidelines also used to say:
> If your App looks like it was cobbled together in a few days, or you're trying to get your first practice App into the store to impress your friends, please brace yourself for rejection. We have lots of serious developers who don't want their quality Apps to be surrounded by amateur hour.
You can tell this was personally written by Steve.
---
Taken from https://web.archive.org/web/20140903022336/https://developer.... This is the earliest available in the Internet Archive as far as I can tell; circa-2012 they were kept behind an account login.
Situation now is different though. Jobs would likely have some human touch in the current situation. Where as Tim Cook feels less so.
Everyone was an amateur once. How should they distribute their apps?
Why is it so difficult for people to imagine how insanely powerful and datapacked your phone is?
Allowing sideloading to average people means they will get hacked and ransomwared left and right. Your entire life is on the iPhone.
While I agree with you about sideloading apps for enthusiasts and hackers, but the world is far different than you and me. I really don't understand why these arguments are presented on HN time and again. Jailbreaking your iPhone is a terrible idea. Horrifying even.
I am glad Apple is gate keeping. Privacy > Hackability. You can't have both. The world is full of vultures that will shred your privacy in no time. Just look at what the ad-tech is doing within these sandboxes (browsers). Microsoft got into ad-tech game because they realized "Holyshit, we are actually in a unique position...develop operating system and sell data for millions of users?".
Apple is probably the only company looking after users and yet we've got completely deluded developers on HN complaining about sideloading apps. Sigh.
For amateurs, let them develop stuff on browsers. I don't want these amateurs widely distributing apps to billions of users with system level access with a quick approval popups for billions of idiots that don't care about their privacy and would give access to anything that asks for it.
I think you massively overestimate how many people would use that functionality.
I have.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2019/07/24/warni...
I admit that I know very little about Fortnite and am not a regular Android user, but my understanding is that, right now, anyone who wants to play Fortnite on Android is sideloading it. That's a lot of people who are opening up a pretty brutal attack vector to be able to play a game that got kicked out of the official Play Store.
https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/13/21368079/fortnite-epic-an...
Sideloading Fortnite is not opening up an attack vector unless Fortnite itself is malicious, which it's not, because it's a huge game from a huge company. As long as the official download source is known to everybody, I think it's fine.
I know there are fake (malicious) copies of Fortnite out there, but those promise free V-Bucks or some such. You could just as easily run that scam without sideloading and target the user's credit card number of similar.
How were non-sophisticated users supposed to figure out that the Epic link was the correct link to click among the thousands of search results? How many of the people wanting to play Fortnite for the first time even knew what Epic was?
> As long as the official download source is known to everybody
It's not, and that's the problem.
[1] https://blog.malwarebytes.com/cybercrime/2018/06/fake-fortni...
For example, does everyone know the official source of Facebook? If so, why, and if not, why is there not an epidemic of fake Facebook scams that steal login credentials? I know there are targeted phishing attacks, which is a separate issue, but I haven't heard of significant attacks from people who just didn't know the correct login page.
One way we do deal with this is with targeted blacklists of known-bad sites, particularly Google Safe-browsing. That's certainly a mechanism that could be employed for Android Malware—and I think it already is, actually.
Problems do happen—but I don't see anyone calling on Google to restrict Chrome to a whitelisted set of approved URLs. And I'd posit that gaining access to someone's Facebook account is no less invasive than gaining access to their phone.
> And I'd posit that gaining access to someone's Facebook account is no less invasive than gaining access to their phone.
I don't think so. Accessing someone's Facebook messages and photos is one thing, gaining access to their phone means gaining access to their email which means potential access to any account linked to that email. Given how many people use mobile banking these days, I'd say there's a lot more potential for damage if your phone is compromised.
https://research.checkpoint.com/2019/agent-smith-a-new-speci...
https://blog.malwarebytes.com/android/2019/08/mobile-menace-...
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/07/virul...
And the fact that I can Jailbreak my phone has not caused your iPhone to to become safer or less private. All I want is for Apple to offer an escape hatch, completely optional. It would not affect your experience in the slightest.
Hot links, such as reddit.com launching App Store to download their app should not be allowed because some uninformed user might just download bogus apps from 3rd party stores.
Again, I support the idea of an escape hatch, but I feel like that applies to an imposssibly small slice of the total iPhone userbase. People like you and me. I feel like I should write it out: 0.00000001% people.
Do you think executives at Apple look at this feature request and spin the entire ship around so that you and I can hack a phone?
The world population is ~7.8 billion. 0.00000001% of that is 0.78. If you drop the percentage, it's still only 78 people. And that's assuming every person in the world is an iPhone user.
I think the slice is obviously bigger than that.
Yes, because of what happened with HKMap.live. This is incredibly important for free expression.
It’s only used by a tiny number of people until one day when it suddenly becomes essential.
Perhaps Apple could sell a developer edition of the phone that allows side loading.. come to think of it, they do. If you are an Apple developer you can side load apps. Any developer that wants to can post their code on github and let other developers install it on their phone.
Really, if you don’t like the rules, you have an alternative.
https://web.archive.org/web/20160706210122/https://developer...
Now as to Apple, I don't have to buy their products and if I do I know what to expect. If it really mattered or should I say bothered me enough I certainly would buy a different product.
Right now my Apple purchases are on hold for their virtue signaling and effective turning their backs on abuses in China and Hong Kong.
Apple Human Rights Warranty, Void where prohibited by law.
E.g.: https://puri.sm/products/librem-5-usa/
But the issue wasn't about manufacturing to begin with. The trouble is that Apple have significant operations in China, which makes them subject to influence by China, while at the same time maintaining control over what their users see and what they see about their users.
A less vertically integrated company wouldn't have that problem.
There's always people that walk right up to and over the line and generally push boundaries and find loopholes, no matter how well written rules are. Human judgment needs to be a part of the process if a good experience is desired.
Now it can be argued that Apple doesn't execute on this approach particularly well, but the idea that they want to be able to make some judgment calls is perfectly valid and if done right leads to the best experience.
Yeah just to second this I think that a lot of us coming from software backgrounds like to think of laws as being code, fully definable, automatable and capable of covering all edge cases. This isn’t the case. Judgement is required.
Not to ruin my own metaphor but I actually think there is a lesson about software as well. Software is not something capable of perfection. There is no perfect code, everything is a bodge, some bodges are more useful than others. You can’t cover every edge case. Software evolves and has flaws much like the product of natural evolution.
And I think that's healthy. Laws are written for people, not computers, and as far as I can (I'm very much not a lawyer), everyone basically agrees on what "reasonable" means. Furthermore, I'm not sure what we'd do without that word, because you can't realistically outline every possible scenario in advance.
And to add more complexity to the situation, laws and rules are but static snapshots within a dynamic system, and may simply drift away from intent with the progression of time and people's viewpoints. Kind of like a really old keyframe in a compressed video that starts smearing from the accumulation of too many changes.
problem arises when the method for achieving Judgement isn't codified.
Meaning, while laws and punishment are open to interpretation by the judges, the system by which we appoint judges, their permissions and abilities, are strictly codified, and they must be in order to subdue and reduce corruption.
OK: Your company decides to stop producing specific codified rules -- what is in place to prevent judgement bias and fair interpretation of 'crossing the line'?
The answer, in most cases, is that there is nothing to hold the 'judges' accountable. Nothing to insure fair unbiased decisions. Nothing to insure that they can't hold the position indefinitely without malice.
In other words : The shorter your Terms of Service become, the longer the Employee Handbook must become to prevent corruption and overall unfairness.
Besides that problem, there is the problem where the acceptable behaviors on a platform may wander with society -- this leads to issues where developers may be barred from a platform for behavior which was perfectly acceptable earlier that year without any real warning.
How does one avoid breaking rules if they can't know the rules?
Well, one might say "Play nice.", but the reality is that we all interpret it differently. That's one of the many nice features that comes along with codified law.
It can't be as unambiguous as code and usefully describe the world, but it shouldn't require judgment based on individual opinion - that's why the pornography ruling is such a dodge.
Judges should be disinterested and appealable; they are not in Apple's case.
However....
I've worked on an internal communications platform. For some reason people would forget that they were on a corporate site with their corporate email linked to it and spew garbage that any decent person would be embarrassed to say out loud.
So we deliberately didn't codify our rules. We chose not to because we were aware that if we did then people would deliberately cozy up as close to the line as they could, and that wasn't the kind of environment we wanted to foster.
We avoided bias by removing information about the flagger or flagee when content was flagged and judged it based on the content ourselves. After we judged we'd look up who was responsible for the content, and if we felt they were doing some penetration testing to see exactly where those lines were we would start to loop in their manager, HR, legal, and anyone else we felt should be aware. Our escalation procedure went up to banning, though nobody ever reached that point. And our content improved.
If the story ended there I would still be against not having codified rules, but begrudgingly accept that it worked in that situation.
Unfortunately the story doesn't end there. Staff was hired so that engineers wouldn't be responsible for this. The staff was less familiar with the ecosystem and they proceeded to clamp down more and more on acceptable content. They cozied up to HR and legal who were never really comfortable with the permissiveness of the platform, and received praise and additional funding to grow the team for these clampdowns.
I left the project and haven't looked back.
You're right, "I'll know it when I see it" is a garbage sentiment that at best is a cop out, but too often is used to withhold rules and keep people in the dark as a power play, or even squash dissenters with arbitrary and unbalanced application of force.
First, they used them for transfers only, but later came games, and etc.
That made sense when the Apple store was a small kind of start up enterprise. Nowadays, it should be regulated so all developers can use the platform in a level field where competition is real and it is not just a game for big corporations.
The problem is that they restrict the user from using any other app store. So then when they get it wrong there is nothing anybody can do. And then they have less incentive not to get it wrong, because it's much harder for them to lose users to a competitor, so then they prohibit things the user actually wants more often.
I do agree that the best solution would be allowing third party stores.
I’m not sure how third party stores are the best solution to this. That means users would have to trust another gate keeper for security and validation. 3rd party app stores will just increase the possible of malicious apps
If third party App Stores are ever forced onto iOS devices, that market vanishes completely. Crashes, slowdowns, battery drain, malware, and information theft will become the norm. Go no further than your gaming PC to witness the nightmare that is multiple app stores all competing for CPU and control/surveillance of your system, all needing to bring their own flavors of information-harvesting/exposing DRM.
This new round of digital YIMBYism is profoundly anti-consumer and stands to destroy the trust that Apple has built with its customers. I sincerely hope that those of us who have trusted Apple with our data will start to speak out before Google-backed lobbyists tranform iOS into a malware-ridden hellscape.
You vastly overestimate the number of figs the average user gives about most of the privacy problems that HN grapples with. The average user, after all, uses Facebook. What the average user wants is for shit to just work.
The reason that iOS is a huge market has less to do with that, and more to do with all the other aspects of what makes a good phone.
You argument is also somewhat undermined by the existence of... A rather large amount of crap on the App Store. Somehow, the iPhone has managed to survive.
... Also, cutting side-deals with apps created by billion-dollar players, and telling all other app developers to pound sand (Regardless of the quality of the apps in question) is the main problem we're talking about. Whether or not Apple does this has no bearing on the current quality of the iPhone (But has a lot of bearing on their bottom line), but has a large bearing on the future quality of the iPhone (A vibrant app ecosystem is healthier then one where a few hand-picked winners are rewarded, and their competitors can never compete on an even playing field. At least, that's what advocates of open markets tell me.)
> I'd wager that the average user cares much more about protecting, say, their browsing history,
No, you won't, for a lot of reasons.
1. If people gave a fig about their browsing history, they wouldn't have Facebook accounts. (Which, combined with tracking cookies, do a great job of leaking their browsing history.)
2. If people gave a fig about their browsing history, they wouldn't use browsers with omnibars.
3. Or browsers which sync their accounts across multiple computers/devices.
3. People don't even understand which part of the tech stack (The OS, the app, the browser, the website, the third-party cookies served by the website) that they use actually compromises their information.
4. Unless you're a political dissident being hunted by the CIA, the House of Saud, and the Mossad, when this information is compromised, the harm is difficult to quantify, and is never directly linked to the part of the stack that caused the compromise.
Ask five different people 'Who knows your browsing history?', and you will get five different answers, all of which will be wrong. If normal people cared about this in the particular, they'd be tech-literate about this sort of thing. They aren't. As long as some asshole is not using that compromised browsing history to harass them personally, as long as it's being used in the abstract, by some information broker to show them ads, most of them don't give a damn. I know that they don't, because they don't take any steps to secure it.
Obviously, the users don't care about the B2B spat between Apple and developers. I'm not asking them to - I'm pointing out that rigged markets rarely produce good products.
The issue is that the rules for Facebook on the App Store isn't subjected to the same rules as <Small competitor> on the App Store.
The reality is that, having created a great market, they are now extracting rents by using their ability to exclude apps to enforce things that don't benefit users but expand their margins (like forcing use of their identity and payment systems).
Somebody who wants to not use the App Store can buy an Android device. It's fine. It's fine.
"This user just had their entire camera roll exfiltrated" certainly does harm other people.
These are social devices. Their users are, by and large, non-technical and incurious. Expecting them to not just click past the "scary sign", and so condition to do it again and again, so they can play Fortnite is a level of lack of understanding that borders on incredible.
> Expecting them to not just click past the "scary sign", and so condition to do it again and again, so they can play Fortnite is a level of lack of understanding that borders on incredible.
That's not an excuse. This is bad behavior. It doesn't matter if it's common, or expected - it's wrong, and their responsibility for correcting - not Apple's, and especially not at the freedom of other users who have nothing to do with these idiots. If this behavior is normal, then we need to make it not normal, not continue to compensate for their ineptitude. Fix problems, don't avoid them.
I appreciate the fix. And I don’t want to be hectored by bad actors to fuck up my phone for their profit margin.
Buy Android if you do. That “freedom” is right there for you. I used to buy Android when I thought I cared about sideloading; I don’t, so I don’t. Do likewise!
This sounds great in theory, but two decades of history of malware on Windows have already taught us it is hopelessly impractical.
Go do that if you feel the need. Nobody's stopping you.
I'm not even convinced that those who do value safety as highly wouldn't be better off with other stores. For example, Google Play has the actual Tor Browser, with all of the anti-fingerprinting work they've put into it, which isn't available on iOS because it isn't Safari. I think F-Droid does a better job of keeping out malware than Google or Apple, because by their nature they're more selective of what they put in. The platform's own store is going to be under a lot of pressure to include e.g. the Facebook app, whereas F-Droid is happy to not. And there is value in that to the user who places a high value on safety and security.
Ive had iPhone for the past year, but before that I had many years of Android. I really don’t see my years on Android as hellscape. I never had any malware, I mostly used google play store but also sideloaded some “grey” software (a mobile hearthstone client before the game had a real mobile client). I think at some point I installed amazon App Store but not sure why.
I also can’t say that my recent Apple experience is smoother than my android experience. On my iPhone 11 Pro I’ve had multiple experiences where some app after a while started to crash on startup and clearing data didn’t help. They had to be explicitly removed then reinstalled. My previous phones (Samsung S8 was my last Android) didnt have this or really any issue.
I think you need to be careful about taking your experience as a sophisticated user that understands how to avoid malware and extrapolating that experience to the general population.
There's a reason fake Fortnite APK links have been plastered all over the internet and are successfully tricking less knowledgeable users into installing things they did not intend.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/more-pre-installed-malware-has...
A user who acts without knowledge or advice buys that phone and is infected. A user who acts without knowledge or advice buys an app from a store operated by the people who made that phone and is infected. It's the same scenario.
So how do you justify forcing the people who do know what they're doing to choose which app store they want to use based on which phone they want to buy, instead of allowing them to choose independently?
> There's a reason fake Fortnite APK links have been plastered all over the internet and are successfully tricking less knowledgeable users into installing things they did not intend.
There is a reason, but it's not the one you're implying.
The problem with having a single dominant app store is that it has given people no experience in how to be safe in installing apps from other sources, so then when an app they really want gets kicked out of the dominant store, they mash whatever buttons they think will get it back. Whereas if there were multiple major trustworthy stores, the users of an app whose developer is having a dispute with one the stores could safely and easily switch to another well-known store.
Meanwhile the users with iPhones can't mash buttons to get somewhere stupid, but they also can't do anything to install Fortnite on their phone right now, which is still worse for them than having it available in a trustworthy store other than Apple's -- which would keep them from getting the point of wanting to mash buttons.
That's silly. The number of people who might buy a specific no-name budget brand of phone with this problem is much, much smaller than the number of people that search for "how to install Fortnite" on Google or Youtube and end up clicking on a fake installer instead of the real one, because they can't find Fortnite in the Play Store like they can with all their other apps.
The implication of your argument is ridiculous. Oh, you might accidentally buy a phone pre-loaded with malware, so we might as well give up and not bother taking any other steps to prevent the spread of malware on the rest of our phones?
> The problem with having a single dominant app store is that it has given people no experience in how to be safe in installing apps from other sources, so then when an app they really want gets kicked out of the dominant store, they mash whatever buttons they think will get it back.
So the fact that Windows has never had a single dominant app store means Windows users must be particularly experienced in how to be safe in installing apps from other sources? This does not match reality.
If you search for "how to install Fortnite" then you get this:
https://www.epicgames.com/fortnite/en-US/download
Which is actually how you install Fortnite and not a fake installer.
People end up with the fake installer in the same ways they end up with the malware phone.
> Oh, you might accidentally buy a phone pre-loaded with malware, so we might as well give up and not bother taking any other steps to prevent the spread of malware on our phones?
There are a hundred ways to prevent the spread of malware without prohibiting multiple app stores. Allow third party apps but scan them for malware first. Get your apps from another app store, but that store checks it for malware. The only thing we give up on is the thing which is anti-competitive.
> So the fact that Windows has never had a single dominant app store means Windows users must be particularly experienced in how to be safe in installing apps from other sources? This does not match reality.
Have you used Windows lately? It comes with built in virus and malware detection for free and which doesn't expire. People are increasingly getting their software from stores like Steam and EGS which evict malware, which they can do even when they have competitors. Or getting it directly from well-known developers who they trust, like Mozilla or Adobe. Things that have no reason not to be web pages, are web pages. It works fine, even though you can still technically click through five warnings and run random garbage from the internet, because people have actually learned not to do that.
The people who haven't aren't the majority, they're the same people who buy the malware phone.
https://blog.malwarebytes.com/cybercrime/2018/06/fake-fortni...
> There are a hundred ways to prevent the spread of malware without prohibiting multiple app stores. Allow third party apps but scan them for malware first. Get your apps from another app store, but that store checks it for malware.
The App Store review process checks for more than just malware. It also enforces privacy restrictions and ensures that developers aren't abusing legitimate APIs for malicious purposes. Malware scanning isn't going to prevent third-party apps from slurping all your friends phone numbers and selling that data to advertisers.
> People are increasingly getting their software from stores like Steam and EGS
Which is why we now have malware floating around masquerading as the Epic Games Store.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/new-lokibot-trojan-malware-cam...
I think you're making the same fallacy as the person I originally replied to, which is taking the experience of a highly technical user and assuming everyone else knows how to do the same things you do. I use all four platforms (iOS/Android/Mac/Windows) regularly. I've personally never had problems with viruses/malware on Windows, even back in the XP days before Windows Defender was a built-in thing. But simultaneously I don't believe my experience is typical of the majority of users on those platforms.
This is a wild projection. Having alternative app stores on iOS, especially if gated behind a hard-to-find switch with a scary warning sign, will be totally different than any PC experience, partially because iOS has a sandboxed architecture (and incredibly solid engineering in general) that is far more secure than Windows, and partially because Windows allows you to install stuff incredibly easily with no signing or app store required. It's really obvious that iOS will have a fraction of the security issues that Windows has had over its lifetime.
Sandboxing has not prevented the proliferation of malware on Android, why would it be any different on iOS?
Sandboxing also doesn't really address the other major risk which is theft of personal information by supposedly "trustworthy" apps.
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/02/resea... (Note the date. This is an ongoing problem.)
https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/10/20688885/agent-smith-andr...
https://securelist.com/skygofree-following-in-the-footsteps-...
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/07/virul...
Don't you think there's a direct correlation between the ability to install APKs from random shady internet sources and the spread of malware on Android? Even macOS has a worse malware situation than iOS for the exact same reason.
If you believe this has "worked out well" for Android, you and I must have very different definitions of the phrase.
You also didn't address my other point, which is sandboxing is only meant to address operating system level security, not developer abuse of legitimate APIs.
> If you believe this has "worked out well" for Android, you and I must have very different definitions of the phrase.
Yes, it's a ringing endorsement. Android is good enough - actually, better than good enough. I've seen at least five cases of Windows malware from friends and family over the years, and zero Android cases.
As the article you listed above shows, xHelper has had 33K detected cases. That's literally two decimal orders of magnitude less than Conficker, which had over 9M cases, in 2008, when there were, if anything, fewer Windows devices than there are Android devices now.
iOS is only better than Android because it sacrifices a lot of user freedom for a little security - which is not an acceptable tradeoff. If I pay for a device, I (should) own it - not the company. If you, personally, are not going to check the box that says "let me install third-party apps" then you, personally, are at no risk of infection, and you have absolutely no right to tell me that you think that I should not have the right to check that box.
> Don't you think there's a direct correlation between the ability to install APKs from random shady internet sources and the spread of malware on Android? Even macOS has a worse malware situation than iOS for the exact same reason.
Yes, there's a direct correlation. If you give users sharp tools, the dumb ones will stab themselves. This is normal, and good. Users deserve the sharp tools. Put a sheath around them, but device makers intentionally restricting users from things that they might reasonably want to do, for the sake of their own profit, is borderline theft.
> You also didn't address my other point, which is sandboxing is only meant to address operating system level security, not developer abuse of legitimate APIs.
Yes, because developer abuse of legitimate APIs is irrelevant to what we're talking about here, which is whether or not to allow third-party app stores. Why? Because (a) both Apple and Google's app store review processes have let malware through before and (b) sandboxing, which doesn't necessarily prevent developers from abusing legitimate APIs, is necessary for it - and both iOS and Android take advantage of sandboxing to make it harder for devs to do bad things. For instance, iOS (now) gives you a notification if an application accesses the clipboard. Even better, there are modifications for Android that allow you to intercept and fake API data (so that an application doesn't refuse to work if you deny it access to an API) - which is significantly better than anything you can get on iOS.
> As the article you listed above shows, xHelper has had 33K detected cases. That's literally two decimal orders of magnitude less than Conficker, which had over 9M cases, in 2008, when there were, if anything, fewer Windows devices than there are Android devices now.
That's some odd cherry-picking when I actually listed several different articles with much larger case counts. If it's magnitude you're looking for, HummingBad has infected 85 million Android devices, Chamois has infected 199 million, SimBad has infected 150 million. If you total up all of the Android malware attacks since the platform launched you're looking at several hundred million infections at the very least. This is not a small problem and is far from "good enough".
> Yes, because developer abuse of legitimate APIs is irrelevant to what we're talking about here, which is whether or not to allow third-party app stores. Why?
Sorry, I disagree. There are many APIs that can be used for legitimate purposes (for example loading my contacts so I can message my friend) that can be abused by developers who don't care about privacy (for example subsequently scraping my contacts and selling them to advertisers without my consent). Sandboxing or permissions or notifications don't really help address this issue, whereas at least with an app review policy you can say this behavior is unacceptable and you will be banned if you abuse it. Will the review process catch all of theses abuses? No. But it serves as a deterrent, and if you're comparing an app that is distributed via the App Store and subject to its privacy rules versus a version distributed directly via their website where they can do whatever the hell they want, I'd prefer the former any day. That's why it's relevant to the discussion of third-party app distribution.
> both Apple and Google's app store review processes have let malware through before and
No process is perfect and of course sometimes things will slip through the cracks, that doesn't mean there isn't value in the process. The statistics indicate that malware is a significantly larger problem on the Android platform compared to iOS and this is directly tied to the existence of side-loading and third-party App Stores.
1. Android is responsible for 47.15% of mobile malware infections compared to 0.85% on iOS. Windows accounts for 35.82% and IoT devices take up the remaining 16.17%. In other words, Android is now a larger malware vector than Windows itself, and your suggestion that malware is less of a problem on Android compared to Windows is statistically incorrect. (https://onestore.nokia.com/asset/205835)
2. Google's own reports show that Android devices that use side-loading have an 8x higher incidence of malware compared to devices that only use the Play Store, meaning it's specifically direct downloading and third-party stores that are the cause of the problem. (https://source.android.com/security/reports/Google_Android_S...)
I am sorry but this is just FUD.
I own both a Macbook Pro and PC that I built and I have yet have these supposed "multiple app stores nightmare" that you are talking about.
Do you own a Windows machine yourself? Because the above comment doesn't seem to be done in good faith.
iOS doesn't magically lose it's sandboxing and become Windows just because 3d party stores are allowed.
On the Web, payments almost always go through the credit card system, using one of many payment providers (PayPal, Stripe, etc.) set up by the seller. The customer also has the option of using a "safer" virtual credit card to avoid the possibility of credit card theft.
Seems pretty straightforward to me.
I personally think this is the worst line that ever came out of a Supreme Court decision because of how simple it is. It is such a blatant low effort cop out that legitimizes arbitrary rulings. At least usually they obfuscate it with legal jargon and historical rulings.
Which means different app reviewers will have different interpretations of it. A problem that exists now.
None of which require Apple to have a monopoly on app distribution.
Saying Apple users knew what they were getting into is kinda like saying Apple users agreed to the ToS, so they shouldn't complain.
What we should not do, is treating average Joes as idiots with no knowledge. They are non-tech, but not clueless. If you ask one of them about installing apps from the internet, they will likely remember that guy who told them it may be unsafe and it's better to stick with official store. PC users will definitely know about viruses and other "in the wild" hazards. Even my life-long non-tech grandma asked me about dangers and banking app practices when I brought her a tablet.
Personally I even bet that many of android users want/pretend apple safety or think that these two platforms are probably as safe as apple. They do not know what they are getting info, they assume that, because why wouldn't you.
I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description ["hard-core pornography"], and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.
The Supreme Court of the United States reversed the conviction by ruling that the film was not obscene and so was constitutionally protected.
Absurdly, apple opponents itt use its completely opposite meaning in their arguments.
I find it fascinating that they included ^this^ one.
No, anything here has to be purely a question of whether Apple or Google are acting unfairly, and everything I’ve seen says that the commissions involved match other hardware manufacturers.
wait, is this going to be a basis for pixelated/black bar’d porn on App Store
3.1.3(d) Person-to-Person Experiences: If your app enables the purchase of realtime person-to-person experiences between two individuals (for example tutoring students, medical consultations, real estate tours, or fitness training), you may use purchase methods other than in-app purchase to collect those payments. One-to-few and one-to-many realtime experiences must use in-app purchase.
This is huge news. Being able to use third-party payments methods to bypass Apple's 30% charge is essential for service driven marketplace apps. Classpass and AirBnB bumped into this issue [0], but, I wonder if this exception will apply for them?
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/28/technology/apple-app-stor...
Edit: In excitement, I missed the last sentence; group services aren't covered by the exception :(
WUT?! This is so arbitrary and petty. So we're supposed to feel thankful that the all mighty Apple is allowing 1 on 1 personal fitness trainers and tutors but not build something that is scalable?
Imagine if Microsoft decided to take 30% of all online transactions that happen on Windows PCs...Pretty ridiculous thought, right?
That stuff Apple has gotten away with and continues to get away with is beyond absurd.
Yeah, because Apple isn't doing that at all.
What's more, it seems like the fee Microsoft charges for every sale in their Microsoft Store is also either 15% or 30%. (Source: the App Developer Agreement, https://query.prod.cms.rt.microsoft.com/cms/api/am/binary/RE...)
Yes, but for many users this is a premium feature, not a flaw.
It is also difficult to see how it is a feature. In a world where additional app stores or side-loading was enabled for those that want it, it wouldn't somehow remove the ability to use a single app store for those that don't.
So, of iPhone buyers, you're left with two remaining groups:
1. People who care a little bit about side-loading but not enough to choose a difference device.
2. People who don't care about side-loading at all.
In any case:
> the people who really cared about side-loading
> 1. People who care a little bit about side-loading but not enough to choose a difference device.
This is not a useful model. If I choose feature X over feature Y, all you can really tell from that is that value(X) > value(Y). It doesn't tell you whether value(Y) <<< value(X). It's also important to note that this is vastly simplified, because there are many features and issues that people must combine and weigh against each other.
To illustrate, if a product offers side-loading but kills your mother on first use, if you choose a different product it doesn't mean you don't "really" care about side-loading. You might genuinely care a tremendous amount, but sacrificing your mother isn't an option for you.
I differentiate between products that I buy because they are a good option for me and products I buy because they are the least bad product for me. Phones are currently in the second group. It's not that I don't care about side-loading. It's that all issues combined, IOS is less bad for my purposes and preferences than Android.
To the extent that the lack of side-loading helps prevent the spread of malware and shady apps stealing user data, I think they value it indirectly.
Android has serious malware problems. Even Epic's attempt to distribute Fortnite off the Play Store has directly led to fake APKs being distributed to unsuspecting users.
I don't see how you can open up iOS to side-loading without exposing it to the exact same malware problems Android has.
The enabling of sideloading on Android phones already comes with warnings written in plain language, and even if you want to install an app from e.g. the browser it asks you to give the browser permission to install apps, so it's pretty idiot-proof...
Not on the Xbox, which Epic doesn't seem to mind in regards to Fortnite etc.
Any game developer could at any point opt out of using Steam and accept payments on their own site, or go through another store. Most developers don't bother because Steam provides enough value to make it worthwhile.
It's impossible to determine if this is the case with the App Store since competitors don't (and can't) exist.
And a big difference with Google is that you can sideload or use other stores on Android. And same on Windows, you don't have to use the store.
I didn't mention Windows. I was discussing platforms where everyone takes a 30% cut. You may say this is mere whataboutism, but anyone who reads Hacker News knows that 99% of the anger and attacks on this practice are directed at Apple. Nobody bitches at Google and Sony and Microsoft for doing the exact same thing.
"The problem with this logic is that every company is going to set up their own App Store. Microsoft, Epic, etc. Then for every app that I use right now on my iPhone I would have to source from several App Stores. It will make my experience very cumbersome. reply"
And this is proven false since the Google Store is still very popular and I don't see people having to source 5 apps from Google store, 5 from Microsoft, 2 from Apple, 3 from Adobe. With the Epic the situation is clear, this giants are asking too much just for hosting your application and the small guys had no chance to fight this , lucky for the developers Epic started this and as we can see from this article Apple is backing down one step here, other step a month ago ...
That’s why we’d see a proliferation of stores on iOS.
https://www.cnet.com/news/just-as-critics-feared-fortnite-fo...
https://www.cnet.com/news/just-as-critics-feared-fortnite-fo...
Or reputable companies have ever been convicted of falsely getting money from minors.
https://www.sportskeeda.com/esports/news-fortnite-sued-trick...
Remember the keyboard issues with broken keys, people like you were accusing uses that they are using it wrong and stop complaining, Apple is perfect and those genius engineers don't make mistake, Apple is always right and the complainers are trolls or guys that eat at their laptop? If you don't remember Apple was forced by lawsuits to aknowledge that their genius engineers are not perfect and were forced by those lawsuits to replace the broken parts (again Apple was not protecting the users but was trying to avoid losing money )... so if you can reflect 1 moment you could maybe(low chance though) that Apple sometime is not perfect and sometimes users that complain are in the right (it happened so it is not impossible)
But you know what I didn’t do? I didn’t buy a Mac laptop with a keyboard after everyone knew the keyboards were bad and then complain about the keyboards.
It’s not about Apple being perfect - it’s about people buying a product that doesn’t meet their needs and then complaining when there are alternatives.
So my question that you avoided to answer, the change Apple just made, what is your opinion? Was Apple correct yesterday or today after the change? Is not Apple perfect and developers and users should stop complaining starting today because this was the exact last issue missing from Apple perfection?
Also if you can expand why people should not complain or express their negative opinions when they are on topic on this article thread? If you are tired of reading why X is not perfect and how it should be fixed then skip this topics and maybe watch a movie.
The difference was that people who owned the devices complained. How many Apple pundits spent time complaining about Android devices instead of just not buying them?
Well Gruber always buys the top of the line Android device that Google sells and had a lot of good things to say about the assistant and the camera but that’s besides the point.
Was Apple correct yesterday or today after the change? Is not Apple perfect and developers and users should stop complaining starting today because this was the exact last issue missing from Apple perfection?
No one ever said that Apple was perfect. I’ve bought a few Apple duds. What I am saying is that people want the government involved instead of just not buying the device when their are alternatives.
How much money have you really spent buying apps or doing in app purchases over the past year? What’s more likely to happen, you will save money or the developers will keep more of a cut?
On the other hand, most money on either store is not being spent buying apps from Indy developers - it’s being spent on loot boxes and pay to win games. Do you think that getting rid of the 30% is going to all of the sudden mean indy developers can make a come back like they did in 2008?
Could be both, Why are developers evil and they should not get the money but the overlord that does (almost)nothing. It is like if a farmer goes to a market and the mafia forces them to pay 39% for protection, then if mafia is destroyed you feel bad if the farmer gets more money now.
Not all developers are EA level of evil, some of them deserve every cent IMO.
Related to the money I spent I have some subscriptions and I bought some PC games and some PS4 games for my kid, I hope that consoles would be investigated too, there is not enough competition to have a fair market.
Besides, not only now are you arguing about a phone that you don’t own, you are also complaining about an in app system where just as I thought - you haven’t spent any money. Most people don’t spend money “buying apps”. The money is coming from in app purchases from games.
As far as the “farmer”. If the farmer is selling tobacco - an addictive substance just like loot boxes and coins for play to win games. I don’t feel sorry for either. This is not just my opinion. The government is investigating virtual loot boxes as gambling.
I seen case of good developers that have free games (they are passionate and use Patreon to get some money) and I see this developers creating Win,Linux, Mac and Android versions but no iOS version. So then you have the iOS users looking at all this plartforms that are supported but he is excluded, what do you think? Could there be a way that would make everyone happy(but maybe less money from some rich gy yacht?).
If a judge deciders that is OK iOS is locked down this means OSX,Windows and Android can be legally completely locked-down , in the future, do we want this?
A bit offtopic, I am trying to keep away from Apple related topics, but sometimes there is one comment that I need to respond to correct something and then a threads starts, I will try not to get as involved next time, I feel we are 2 groups that are in a way "paranoid" that 2 different bad things will happen , some think that everything will get more and more locked and DRMed and others are afraid that competition will destroy apples garden.
I think Apple is already trying to address that through Apple Arcade, it is giving indy developers that make games that don’t have in app purchases or advertising advances to publish games. Apple Arcade has to be a loss leader to convince more people to buy iOS devices.
I would go one step further, if they really want to support good, ethical games, prominently display ethical games (no in app purchases or advertising besides games from the same publisher) in the App Store, increase the minimum price that a game maker can charge - gets rid of the race to the bottom - and take a 15% cut. This would make iOS the platform for “premium games”.
They could also say that it “protects children”. Politicians eat up “think about the children”.
> If a judge deciders that is OK iOS is locked down this means OSX,Windows and Android can be legally completely locked-down , in the future, do we want this?
I wouldn’t buy a Mac. I use Macs because it is a consumer friendly Unix with commercial applications. I could completely live in a world running Linux and open source if it came down to it.
I run Linux but I am the only one that I know in my family and friends and if the hardware would be DRM and locked down you could not get an older windows machine and put Linux on it.
Don you think that the hardware and software you bought should serve you the owner? Like if it is my own OS it should execute what I tell it to do(maybe I would need to enable something to exit the "kid mode")
On the other hand, my iPad has a strict sandbox, I can restrict apps from using cellular on an app by app basis (I wish I could do the same for WiFi), I can restrict apps from running in the background using my battery life unnecessarily (see Slack), developers have proven they can’t be trusted to have unfettered access to your computer.
Even if you don’t give an app admin access on a computer, they still have all of the rights the signed in user does.
People exited the “kids mode” on Mac and turned System Integrity Protection off and the Chrome installer hosed their system. (https://support.google.com/chrome/thread/15235262?hl=en)
And of course the one popular app that tried to bypass Google Play - Fortnite - introduced a severe security vulnerability.
https://www.cnet.com/news/just-as-critics-feared-fortnite-fo...
So I think the focus should not be in locking users but in locking the apps in strong sandboxes.
Thank you for all your replyes but I notice you are ignoring a category of developers, you are only consider the ones that do it for making lot of money and ignoring people that do it for passion, as I said I see plenty of free stuff that is made for passion and shared with the community (like a small game, or a mod, or a "save cleaner/editor" tool), this communities are small and probably not that vocal but they exist - a strong sandbox and a giant warning when you install such an approved tool should be enough for this people.
If I may add, Apple allowed Fortnite and games with lootboxes or skins purchase, Apple gets 30% cut so they will not block this as long as they make big money. I know they are making some arcade but that is to handle teh case of games that have ads. it is a good way of Apple making more money and it will not stop the lootboxes, let me know if I missed something and Apple is blocking lootboxes or skin.gem,coin purchases.
As far as the hobbyists, I had another proposal in another thread. Free “self signed certs” that are tied to your device. You can compile from source an app and keep it on your phone. You are free to share source code. This would also be keeping within GPL2, GPL3.
Apple making money on in app purchases is just as unethical. I think that’s the purpose of Apple Arcade.
All have an App Store and are fully capable of facilitating payments, running Microsoft Office, using SaaS apps, doing "work".
Users are prevented from doing so by artificial restrictions on their App Stores which could be lifted at any time by a simple business decision. Apple allows more freedom to developers than these platforms yet somehow should be treated differently. Seems arbitrary and capricious.
Sure, they could be, with a lot of effort. But they are neither marketed nor capable of general compute today. They don't have the toolset or ecosystem to make general purpose apps. Nor do they actively encourage people to make general apps.
It's simply that Sony won't approve non-gaming or non-entertainment apps. And if Apple were to follow the same path and block productivity apps then it would somehow stop being a general computing device ?
Why should someone else get to dictate which of my devices is a 'general computing device' and what that means for me and my use-case?
What is your definition of "general" that makes one of them general, and the other one non-general?
To me the only reason an iPhone seems to be "general purpose" is because the "number of developers has reached some critical mass and wants it to be". Which seems like putting the cart before the horse.
Sanity Test: Should my microwave be a "general purpose" device because it is built with a Raspberry Pi and a touch screen?
People quickly forget what a tremendous liberation the App Store created for developers.
It's also not about the developers, the success of the App Store comes from Apple's users. They trust the App Store because they trust Apple's curation/privacy/security. That's what has caused this flood of software purchases from consumers. Trust doesn't come cheap.
We do, but at the same time, physical stores selling software are now rare or non-existent. Apple is not competing with them.
There are two platforms that drive 100% of the mobile phone industry. One (Android) allows other distributors in the platform (even if they have to go through loops like sideloading an app and then allowing that app to install other apps). The other will kick and try to destroy you if you try to do something like that. Is that legal or anti-competitive in the US & Europe? We'll find out...
Zero %.
Retail used to buy boxed software and sell it at risk. Were Apple buying units of software/service up front and the taking a risk reselling it, it would be valid to compare the split of end-user cost with classic retail, but Apple's not doing that, so it isn't.
And retail doesn't charge "0%" on boxed products, or they would go out of business. Logistics, distribution, and store markup all add up to the final price of the product on the shelf.
Yes, they do, unless it's consignment model, which wasn't usually the case for boxed software. The retail sale happens after retail has made the purchase. It’s obviously usually at a higher price than the retailer paid, but they don't take a cut of what the vendor is asking for the software. They pay whatever the vendor (or, often in real retail, a distributor that sits in between) is offering to sell the product for, in advance, and takes a risk that they will be able to sell the units they have purchased at a higher price.
It's structurally not at all the same as what an app store does, where it pays no one, anything (indeed, often charges an access fee up front to the seller) before a sale is made, and then pockets a share of the sale at no risk.
Whether that happens in one simultaneous transaction or two different ones doesn't really make a difference to how much the developer gets paid in the end, which is less with the retail store model compared to the current digital storefront model.
Let's also not forget that Steam launched with a 30% cut a full 5 years before the App Store ever existed, so it's not like Apple dictated this price, they were following industry norms at the time.
Apple act as a middleman and and add on their fees, with absolutely no risk to themselves.
They're very different business models.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remaindered_book
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cut-out_(recording_industry)
I can't find anything current for boxed software (for obvious reasons), but boxed video and board games cannot be returned unless the retailer has a special deal with the publisher (rare).
https://www.polygon.com/2017/7/17/15974096/what-it-costs-to-...
https://www.ign.com/articles/2014/03/05/inside-the-secret-wo...
https://www.reddit.com/r/boardgames/comments/6asinu/can_reta...
I though they just returned unsold boxes back to the vendor?
Even in the cases where the vendor/distributor allowed that (and discount bins were a thing because they often did not, at least at no restocking fee), the retailer still accepted the risk that the vendor or distributor would be defunct. If they had a consignment model where they only paid contingent on a retail sale, that was different, but (at least AFAIK) that was never the norm for boxed software.
If Electronics Boutique can dump a $50.00 game in a discount bin for $3.00, how much do you think it paid for that game in the first place? And how much of that amount went to the author?
That said, it's valid to acknowledge this history and still think 30% is too much for distribution overhead in 2020. I do not have an opinion on the latter.
They pointed out that retailers would buy the software up front (at wholesale price), and assume the rest of the risk for "promoting, distributing, and selling" themselves. Thus, the retailer did not "charge developers" for those things[0].
I realize this is a bit pedantic but it's not fair to say the parent has said something "historically inaccurate".
[0] There were special marketing or buyback arrangements in some cases, but what's described above is the default retail model.
Also the App Store really is the only way to get apps on an iOS-device, so the user has no real choice anyway.
Apple does plenty of app promotion, from promotions inside its own store to multi-million dollar television campaigns showcasing all the cool apps that are available inside the App Store.
People quickly forget that software was distributed on the web long before the App Store existed.
>That's what has caused this flood of software purchases from consumers.
No, that was caused by a billion people buying shiny new mobile computers. They would have bought a lot of software in any case, even without an App Store. New platform, new software.
He's talking about when you used to have to pay $50 to $500 for software in a store, but the author was lucky to see $5-$10 of that.
Independent software development was an absolute wasteland. It was extremely hard to get a user to give you money outside of a few extremely fortified ghettos (Steam, for instance, which takes a 30% cut as well). Begware was the most common tactic.
Even now with multiple options, while everyone piles on Apple, we should note that iOS was the single most profitable platform for Epic, across all platforms. Apple did more to liberate payments from a user than any other platform. Through trust, through standardization and normalization, and even through things like the wide availability of App Store gift cards (which are often heavily discounted - $85 for $100 of App Store gift cards at Costco many times through the year).
Elsewhere people are arguing that Windows is a wonderful platform because look, it's so open. Okay, go and make money from Windows users and see how great it is. Unless your name is Microsoft or Adobe, you are in for a really, really rough time of it. You'll get 100% of nothing.
As always, of course this is downvoted. Anyone looking to HN for rational, reality-based discussion might find it a bit disappointing. Here apparently the Windows ISV market is a vibrant, lucrative market. Everyone here is profiting from it, right? (LOL -- close to none of you are). This is farce.
It seems like the unavoidable conclusion is that there are no longer any good places to make or find decent consumer software without having a corporate entity get their undeserving cut.
I had a 10 year career in that "wasteland".
> we should note that iOS was the single most profitable platform for Epic, across all platforms
Citation? From what I've seen, that's not actually true.
> Okay, go and make money from Windows users and see how great it is.
For a time, the Windows version of our product was my company's biggest money-maker. It seems that in recent years though Microsoft as a company has pivoted away from Windows as their primary product. Away from desktop, toward "the cloud". I personally find that unfortunate, but I'm not a stockholder.
> The whole torch mob anti-Apple angle seems entirely detached from actual reality.
I'm not anti-Apple, I'm pro-Macintosh.
There was so much community, and such an optimistic mood with things like the Appsterdam movement.
And then it all crashed and burned, because Apple decided to get greedy, and that 99cents was going to be the default App price, with 30cents going to Apple.
Those are scraps, and nobody who wants to make an artisanal niche app to scratch their own itch, and maybe sell it, can live from that money. It was either win the lottery, or starve.
Apple killed its own ecosystem, most app store apps suck nowadays. It's ironic that they were the ones with an ad saying "we mistake abundance with choice".
I wish all the old mac devs would get together and collaboratively write a good GUI-toolkit for linux and a new Userland. Right now there is not a single good operating system. Having all those apps on linux would be a dream come true. But a dream it is...
Utter nonsense. Shrink-wrapped and downloadable software in the Windows world was all over the place using activation/serial codes either thru email or on a CD.
Two examples:
VueScan https://www.hamrick.com/
SnagIt screen capture (which is now cloud based, I think. I still use an old version)
Almost 80% of Fortnite players are on console, so I very much doubt that's even remotely true.
https://newzoo.com/insights/articles/newzoos-battle-royale-s...
I did that. Kagi.com was my payment… handler?
https://web.archive.org/web/20100303221537/http://www.kagi.c...
$0.75 + (5…8)%
So any transaction less than or equal to the $2.99 tier would be just as bad (as in, it costs you at least 30% of the list price), even if hosting was free.
I’m also old enough to remember Apple getting involved in the fight over the In App Purchases patent: https://www.macrumors.com/2012/10/08/lodsys-offers-update-on...
It's true that App Store has the best deal for payment processing for very low-priced apps.
But that's not truly a win for developers when the App Store itself caused the "race to the bottom". Who was selling 99 cent apps before the crap store?
You can argue lower prices lead to more crap, but it also encourages people to spend more. Most people would debate a $4.99 purchase, but think nothing of 5 99¢ purchases if done separately.
The catch is that as you get bigger and seem more B2C than B2B then Apple might start to take notice (see: Hey e-mail).
Well, that was before the Internet era, wasn't it. Personally I'm buying macOS software outside of the AppStore and I'm very happy with it. I also feel good that I support the developers directly.
People buy way more on Amazon, and Amazon doesn't rob 30% of your sales.
It sounds like Apple is trying to keep from becoming the new backpage.com.
It doesn't want to handle the money when you rent a hooker.
Unless, of course, you throw a gangbang, and Apple ends up eating 30% of the price of admission. Imagine the headline!
Imagine how much more fun life would be if vices were more accessible
Apple is one of the few that has different standards. And some of its consumers appreciate that. There's room in the market for both views.
Especially payment processors, which cause serious bottlenecks in the ability of people to pay for services online.
Apple seems to be in the majority from where I look.
Everybody wants to be "family friendly", which means no sexy stuff. Violence? Sure. Guns? Sure. Sex? Get that filth out of my product!
“Folks who want porn can buy an android.”
“You might care more about porn when you have kids. It’s not about freedom, it’s about Apple trying to do the right thing for its users.”
TBH as much good as he did, he sounds like a pretty boring square, one of those people who liked drugs in their 20s then got married and lived the entire remainder of his life alternating between home and his suburban office.
I don’t know the guy, I’m just going based on what was reported of his work.
In general I don’t think people who consider cities like Santa Clara or Cupertino to have very good taste, despite the popularity of square American suburban living.
I don't think Jobs would have cared if you thought he had good taste or not, or whether you think he's a "square." As for boring, it's already been widely documented in newspapers, magazines, books, and online that his short life was 1000 times more interesting than your life ever will be.
Adult humans who decide for other adult humans what they should or should not be allowed to choose to read on their own devices are lame as fuck.
That's probably the point - 1:1 experiences that are not scalable is a drop in the bucket even if they charge a 30% commission.
> If your app enables the purchase of realtime person-to-person experiences between two individuals (for example tutoring students, medical consultations, real estate tours, or fitness training)...
But I'm pretty sure pay-per-date apps of either type have bigger legal and App Store policy issues than whether the payment must be made via IAP with the Apple Tax.
There are probably more apps / companies who belong to this group due to secret deals by Apple, but now Apple says: No 30% charge for apps who's customers are 1-1. That's it.
Charging at scale without the app store tax is disqualified. But not for the Les Incorruptibles.
See Spotify as an example.
Then Apple made up another rule saying ''You download the app and it does not work. Therefore it has to be removed'' .
Lets keep adding more rules and exclusions as time passes. That's the Apple way of doing things.
Yes. And that's the gray area that needs to be challenged. Are email apps for private services reader apps? Yes, they probably are.
But the current guidelines specifically tell you what reader apps are [1]. So, no, there's no "secret agreement" between Netflix and Apple. They are a reader app by Apple's definition. Same as Spotify, Kindle, etc. etc.
[1] https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#rea...
A segment gets free pass for lower fees because it is too big to get kicked from iOS while others get shafted.
Just because they can.
Everything else is the same: the fees are the same, the prohibition to use and/or advertise payment methods outside AppStore is the same etc.
> Apple on Wednesday confirmed the existence of a program for streaming video providers that allows those platforms to bypass its standard 30 percent App Store fee when selling individual purchases, like movie downloads and TV show rentals. The program first became public earlier today when Amazon updated its Prime Video iOS and Apple TV apps to allow in-app purchases for the first time. It is not clear how long the program has existed, but there are at least two other providers, Altice One and Canal+, currently participating, Apple confirmed.
> Other apps would get booted because they don't work without navigating elsewhere.
No. "Reader apps" get an exception to this.
So you can avoid the Apple tax if you're a private tutor.
However it looks like I misread blueicecubes' comment. They were asking about one-to-few vs one-to-many, but I talked about one-to-one.
I'm not sure what the few/many distinction is about, but I can guess: if they only said "one-to-many" it could be unclear whether "many" means "more than one" or "some sufficiently large number", so they include "few" to remove ambiguity. Said another way: "one-to-few and one-to-many" is just a different way to say "one to more than one". As far as I can tell the new guidelines don't use the few/many distinction anywhere and only mention both in this one sentence.
What would stop someone from meeting up with another person and then agree to pay in cash or Zelle or any other way to transfer funds? There's no way for Apple to track that.
https://web.archive.org/web/diff/20200911173859/202009011909...
What catches my eye, other than the "person to person experiences" and game streaming changes is the complete removal of the following clause in section 3.1.3(b) "Multiplatform Services":
>You must not directly or indirectly target iOS users to use a purchasing method other than in-app purchase, and your general communications about other purchasing methods must not discourage use of in-app purchase.
To me, this was the most draconian rule in the entire agreement since it governed how you could communicate with your customers outside of your app (such as on your own website). IANAL, but this change seems to allow mentioning the 30% Apple cut to your users and nudging them towards alternatives.
the diff feature looks awesome, and is definitely a massive under-leveraged tool for us. respect for wmbs just went up.
https://archive.org/donate/ if anyone else also feels the same :)
This needs to end...
This seems to imply the original Hey app would have been legal now?
We need a new Sherman or Clayton act specifically for platforms. You can split them out, social media platforms over X users are regulated in this way. Marketplaces over x users are regulated in this way.
We cannot rely on platform owners to update policy in response to mounting public pressure. Because you get things like this - rules on Apple's platform that won't be applied to significant platforms, just the developers who are too small to have any influence.
No. God no.
Regulation has its place. But regulation is also a slooow bureaucratic process. Regulators have no incentive to change with market conditions and in a fast moving industry will be a hindrance in no time. They also increase the cost of development benefiting the big guys that can afford an army of HR, Regulatory and Legal people to handle compliance.
Today you don't need an army of legal people to deal with existing anticompetitive regulations if you're not a behemoth yourself. To argue that regulation designed to protect from monopolists will actually help those monopolists by its mere existence is ridiculous.
In the States, this is on Congress: we need new laws and a new process to sort out this flavor of antitrust issue. The current stuff on the books doesn't cut it.
Also of note: I'm also not saying we need more laws. It's not a question of to what degree we do regulate this sort of thing: my point is that we don't even have a process to think about the issues! It's totally archaic.
> Also avoid piling on to a category that is already saturated; the App Store has enough fart, burp, flashlight, fortune telling, dating, and Kama Sutra apps, etc. already. We will reject these apps unless they provide a unique, high-quality experience. Spamming the store may lead to your removal from the Developer Program.
I totally agree that there's enough of these types of apps, but you'll need to convince a reviewer that your "special" if you want to compete in that space. I'm torn between agreeing with Apple and being disgusted at the anti-competitive nature communicated. I just wonder if Apple uses this to say "oh, there's already enough find-my type apps" "oh, there's already enough music apps" "oh, there's already enough word processor apps" and you're left holding the bag of software you've spent the last year writing.
Click the share button, Scroll up, click “Add to home screen”, click OK. The title is the title of the page.
The initial post that we both responded to clearly stated Safari.
> We provide Safari for a great web experience too, but don't implement any standard APIs like push notifications, data persistence, bluetooth, NFC, add to homescreen prompt, icons, launch screen, themes that would actually make it a worthwhile alternative to the app store" is what they should have said.
> And even in Safari, the most a website can do is guide users through the open settings -> swipe -> scroll -> click button -> enter title -> hit ok flow.
Was wrong.
Also, it’s coming to iOS 14
Look back at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24447692
There are two complaints in that comment.
You addressed one of those complaints, showing it to be wrong. You did not address the other complaint, and it was not "moving the goalpoats" to repeat it.
> Also, it’s coming to iOS 14
Good.
> push notifications,
Abused by spammers even on supposed reputable sites like PC Mag and Toms Hardware. I’ve made the mistake of clicking on Ok on my computer since every site now forces you to acknowledge that they use cookies. It’s back to the toolbars of old level of annoyance. I would be okay if only websites that were added to your home screen could ask for permission.
> data persistent.
iOS has supported localStorage since 2007
> bluetooth, NFC
How many “web apps” are really being held back by either? And Apple and to a lesser extent Mozilla has said some of the standards are privacy invasive.
https://www.infoq.com/news/2020/07/apple-fingerprinting-priv...
>add to homescreen prompt,
Already shown not to be true.
>icons
The icon when you add a web page to your home screen is the same that shows up in your browser bar.
> launch Screen
Is this really stopping you from creating a PWA because you want a launch screen?
But the larger question is if PWAs are so powerful, why aren’t Android developers forgoing apps and just writing PWA’s in droves?
I mean, that's the whole point.
Now that Apple has the power to shut you out of nearly 50% of the US market if you don't follow their rules, those rules carry a lot more weight than it if was 5% of the market.
All of the example transactions in the guidelines (“tutoring students, medical consultations, real estate tours, or fitness training”), are for real-world services performed by people. In-App Purchases have always been specifically and exclusively intended for digital content. The introduction for the IAP section explains: “If you want to unlock features or functionality within your app […] you must use in-app purchase.”
Apple Pay is the Apple-provided payment mechanism that has always been used for real world goods and services on the App Store, for which all of the above examples would qualify.
but they can be done over the app.
Yes, they will loose out on money and yes, this will dilute the iPhone experience.
But come on - That company is worth 2 trillion and it’s holding a whole economy hostage.
iOS is not even near to the "whole economy" of mobile software.
Companies should just stop being based in the US.
With what’s happening to TikTok and this ridiculous push for a Communist-style reappropriation of Apple’s platform, it seems that the US may no longer be a safe place for businesses to become too big in (except of course, the ancient titans of oil, guns, pharmaceuticals etc. that have been happily screwing the planet since forever..)
None of this indignation is really about protecting the people, is it, but rather about taking a slice of the billion user pie, which Apple has historically denied other companies ever since they refused to put AT&T bloatware on the first iPhone.
And I don’t care if that company single-handedly invented roads - there should a limit to how far you can milk the society you operate in.
Again, Apple is not the only company in this space and iOS is not the only intersection/road/whatever analogy you want.
There are alternatives and companies like Epic are absolutely free to start their own platform.
Honestly, all of this becomes much less complicated if you think of the iPhone as an Xbox, PlayStation or Switch. iPhone is not the entire mobile industry, it is one phone among hundreds.
Will you move for a forced break up of their exclusive stores too if MS/Sony/Nintendo started allowing general-purpose apps on those consoles? (They already have YouTube, Netflix, etc.)
iPads on the other hand may be a different story, given how Apple likes to market them as general purpose computers, and the reason why they forked iOS into iPadOS I think.
But in practice, are anyone capable of that? It's a winner-takes-it-all, and the winners are so huge it's virtually impossible for anyone to upset them. You cannot compete on price, features or anything without a hundred billion investment.
See Samsung and all their proprietary crap on Android, including their own alternative to the Play Store, for one.
Epic already have their own store and want to weasel it into iOS, whether the majority of users want it or not.
Instead of losing money [0] on this whole mess they could have just made their own phone or handheld by now.
[0] https://www.macrumors.com/2020/09/05/epic-injuction-fortnite...
And people care a lot less about the consoles because they are a lot less important to the economy. This is like McDonalds complaining about paying fair wages and pointing to a two-location mom and pop shop and saying “but they do it too!”. Classic whataboutism.
Why?
And because most Apple users don't actually know what the ramifications of ramifications of Apple's policies are and instead blame the app developers instead?
And because Apple makes it a policy violation for apps to even inform the users about these policies?
And because Apple makes it practically impossible to run apps on an iPhone any other way, with even personal use requiring a reinstall every 7 days or paying Apple 100 dollars a year?
And because Apple's 30% extortion fee causes prices to rise across the board (including non-Apple users) because Apple makes it a policy violation to offer the same service cheaper on non-Apple devices, and ultimately somebody's got to foot the bill?
There's Android, Windows, Linux and the web. And for games, also the PlayStation, Xbox, and Switch.
> And because most Apple users don't actually know what the ramifications of ramifications of Apple's policies are and instead blame the app developers instead?
Developers can pull out of iOS and inform users to use Android etc. instead.
> And because Apple makes it practically impossible to run apps on an iPhone any other way, with even personal use requiring a reinstall every 7 days or paying Apple 100 dollars a year?
Users who want to do that can use Android etc.
> And because Apple's 30% extortion fee
Android, Windows, PlayStation, Xbox, Switch, Steam, Epic etc. have the same extortion.
I didn't down-vote the Question but I did choose not to answer it because it's a "Gotcha" question. Different users have different preferences on what they want out of their device or OS. Sure you can come up with a laundry list of features that exist on platform X or Y but it doesn't really answer the issue, because any given user will have their specific preference values for each, and talking about them starts pointless discussions of how one can approximate the same functionality on some other platform.
I can speak for my personal preference. I don't use iPhones so I will speak for Macbooks, but the idea is the same.
I like Macbooks for the quality of their touchpad (best in the market), their general look and feel (they don't feel plasticky), I like some UX polishes MacOS has, and I am a programer so I like that MacOS is a UNIX-based OS because I spend a lot of my time on the terminal.
Note that most or none of these have to do with Apple's software choices (such as locking down their OS much more compared to Windows) and in the future, if Apple makes MacOS closer to iOS in terms of their vice grip on what can and can't run on it, it will effectively be adding features that I not only don't appreciate, but actively find annoying. They are NOT what I own a Macbook for.
Apple have a monopoly....on Apple products..?
And government has often ruled that anticompetitive behavior violates antitrust law.
From the Sherman Act: “Every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, is declared to be illegal.”
If Apple is restraining trade (which they obviously are according to any reasonable interpretation, whether or not a court has yet ruled on it), they are breaking the law. Obviously the courts have failed us before and they take ages to rule on anything regardless, but I suspect Apple will lose in the long run.
Interestingly, in recent years such things have happened. In Chicago, the tolled Skyway has been leased to an Australian company. And all the city's parking meters have been sold to a Spanish company.
Trying to equal a smartphone and a fucking gaming console (Switch).
A smartphone has become as you said an intersection, i.e. a bridge to the digital world and has become an absolute neccessity in today's world. And as such should also be regulated.
All these people who are comparing Nintendo to Apple, try going a month without your Switch and then a Month without using your Macbook, Ipad or iPhone. Hint:Good luck
Hint: PC, Windows, Linux, Android. Congratulations.
> Consider using Xcode to install your app on a device for free or use Ad Hoc distribution available to Apple Developer Program members.
Can anyone explain this to me? I have some AppleTV apps I’ve written for myself. I can run them on my AppleTV but I have to reconnect to Xcode every 7 days to continue using them. It’s a pain in the butt. How can I install these apps without a dev account and without having to reconnect to Xcode every 7 days?
Ad Hoc provisioning profiles are usually only used for testing, since all of the target devices have to be registered in your developer account before signing the app. Also, Ad Hoc profiles expire after 12 months and the app needs to be re-signed and installed again.
You can install the signed app by using Xcode or Apple Configurator or "over the air" (see https://dev.to/gualtierofr/ad-hoc-distribution-for-ios-1524 for an example).
Apple has become the most arrogant asshole company of all the tech giants. They have forgotten the role that we developers played in making them the largest company in the world. But in their moment of financial victory, they have lost their soul.
:(
Personally, alternative marketing channels have yet to work for me.
If they want access to the market then it's a "Want to be" not a "have to be" because of the opportunities apparent.
I guess I was a bit misleading in my original comment. 98% of my users come from iOS and Android organic search results. I haven't been able to find any profitable non-store marketing channels.
It's not Apple or Google. It's users who are paying.
This may be one possible reason: https://i.imgur.com/kPXs9NO.png
Here's another interpretation: iOS devices are more expensive hence people that use them can spend more money on apps.
The issue is whether making your own hardware also allows you to set policies on the software that can be run on it. One viewpoint is that these are separate industries and a dominance in one (smartphones) should not allow you to dominate the other (software distribution). There can be a legitimate discussion about what the boundaries are (operating system vs browser apps in case of Microsoft)
Because iOS represents about +60% of the revenue in the global mobile market, probably even more in some countries where it has a bigger market share.
It's naive to think a business with a product/service can just decide to not have a presence on iOS.
It's not even completely about the iOS revenue either, but the simple expectation from users that a service has to be on as many platforms as possible. For example, I wouldn't be a Spotify user if I couldn't use it on all my devices.
Apple does not have the largest market share by OS, Android does. Other app stores and sideloading are already very widely available.
I've heard this argument from iOS users who have never really used Android for a significant amount of time.
I have been using both Android and iOS devices for almost a decade now and there's not much of a difference.
In fact I'd say the experience is better on Android. For instance, if you uninstall a paid app you just recently bought you get an automatic instant refund. Good luck getting a refund on iOS.
I can't tell for sure, but all top commenters itt just feel like being those guys I wholeheartedly hate on the playstore. Some of them even admit that apple does a best thing for a user, but must be regulated down to not being able to do that. To hell with them, I don't want their crapware anyway.
¹ not even a year tbh, but not in just three-day test mode as well. I'm definitely beyond the "setup and try playing with it" stage right now.
I don't care what device, it's features, security, app review, privacy, it just has to be a device.
My users also want my product in their device. They will download it from the App Store or from my website (sideloading).
Apple has no business getting 30% from a business that happens despite itself. Apple is just rent seeking and monopolizing access to people.
If Apple didn't gut their browser, it'd be fine.
My users want push notifications. My users want to persist data from my product in their device. They want to use their device's features with my product.
And they want native performance.
At any rate, just because a platform is popular and will make you more money doesn't mean you have a legal right to force that platform owner to do business with you.
(Unless it is ruled as an "essential facility", which is what Epic claims, but I think is a huge stretch and not likely to be accepted by the court.)
Still a lot of room for improvement, but good to see they are moving in the right direction.
* For each in-app purchase, Apple MUST explicitly highlights how much commission they're taking.
* For each in-app purchase, Apple MUST allow app developers to show alternative payment options available.
* Apple may review the alternative payment options and reject the app if it is implemented in an obviously unfair way against Apple IAP, but no other reasons. If it is violated, Apple MUST give a clear reason and actionable items to app developers within a reasonable time frame.
This doesn't require any technically complex changes but just gives strictly more information to their customers. If the customers think it's justifiable, then they will continue to use Apple's IAP. If not, they will go to the developer's site. If the alternative is designed to be unfair against Apple, at least they can have a chance to raise an objection. For the rest, let the market decide.
In Sweden, via-app medical consultancy gets a standard way for this services as a first - line support. Payment for this is fixed and goes to the registry, where after certain amount of payments, you're getting free consultancy (It's by the health care system). How they are going to handle that?
Too me this new guideline is like a wide net - most of top application will have to violate some rules there, but in case of miss subordination (like Epic) then having that rule is a simple case in court.
> Facebook’s complaints come a day after Epic Games Inc., the creator of Fortnite, sued Apple and Google after both companies removed Fortnite from their respective app stores over a payment dispute.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/on-small-business/fa...
Both were obviously also timed to go near the antitrust scrutiny.
Is this rule referring to anything in particular? Was there an issue with a pillow-warming app that I missed out on hearing about?
This is worded so broadly, that it can perfectly be applied to browsers and email clients. User plays a browser or PBEM game that has subscriptions? Ka-ching
Can a yoga instructor add personalized text to each individual stream to have 5 simultaneous 1-1 sessions?
etc.
this is so rife for double standards, in practice it basically boils down to "what we say goes"
"Family interactions do not have to use in-app purchases."
"Your hopes and dreams do not have to use in-app purchases."
Thank you Apple. I for one, appreciate your generosity.
Apple does not allow others to have a store in their platform, so why doesn't Apple pay extra tax to keep others out rather than taxing devs to be in Apple's store?
What percentage do you think it costs simply to process the credit card for a $10 app? What about for a $1 app?
Why do you think so many bricks and mortar shops have a “minimum purchase” requirement to pay with a card?
If the swipe costs 3%, what should all the rest of the app store’s value cost?
You could compare to competitors, such as Xbox store, for an answer.
tl;dr the new rules allow For games to be streamed, but each title must be a separate app and run all in-game purchases through in-app purchase. They’ve also explicitly allowed for game streaming services to have catalogue apps that link to the individual App Store listings.
This is massive and strikes me as a great compromise solution. It separates the technical implementation (streaming) from the actual value proposition to users (the game itself). Essentially, each individual game needs be a separate app in the store and be reviewed individually.
I think the xCloud team at Microsoft is about to pull a few late nights to get this launched on iOS in the next few weeks.
It will take one generation who grew up playing video games to normalise it.
This sounds like a huge pain in the butt for users and kind of loses some of the value proposition of game streaming: trying games instantly, not needing to download anything, and not taking up a bunch of space for your whole library.
Imagine having to download every netflix movie separately from itunes. Well some progress is better than none.