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Comment by null_object | Hacker News Reader

Let's face it, this is a hilarious HN episode: all the pitchforks that came out to protest Apple's 'monopoly' appstore, when the app-developer was actually totally free to distribute the application outside the appstore in any way he wished - but actually wanted to force Apple to distribute it for him, INSIDE the appstore.

I guess you have to choose your battles.

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I'm glad you are here to defend apple, you should write up a medium article asking apple to reverse their decision. Clearly apple was wrong to reverse it.

>I'm glad you are here to defend apple, you should write up a medium article asking apple to reverse their decision. Clearly apple was wrong to reverse it.

What a strange personal attack.

I'm not here to "defend Apple", but there's an undeniable irony in all of the posts decrying Apple's supposed 'monopolistic' rules 'forcing' developers to use the AppStore, when this application could have been freely distributed outside the AppStore - which was precisely what the developer did not want to do.

FWIW, I'm with you down here at the bottom. The developer wants to distribute non-free software and wants Apple's help. Why should we sympathize with either party?

Yup. Both parties here are in the wrong. Apple for their shitty walled garden model no one should participate in but in which people are coerced to participate due to their profit motive. And the Amphetamine developer for primarily caring about the profits he can achieve from getting into the walled garden and going so far as to demand access to another's (really shitty and lame) property.

Hey, sorry yeah my sarcasm was a little misplaced. Clearly on Mac which is a semi open platform (at least more open than iOS) the option to not use the App Store is available. The problem with your argument imo is that it can be extended to iOS where apple has the best hardware and software but force you to use their store. And in this store they abuse developers in a similar manner to what they do here.

Looks free to me: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/amphetamine/id937984704?mt=12

No in-app purchases either.

Wanting to participate in a marketplace doesn’t necessarily imply that you agree with how that marketplace is run in every detail. Especially when it seems that there is one set of rules for Netflix and Amazon and another for everyone else.

It would be fine except the user has no way of proving to the developer they already bought the app, which would be handy for continuing to get updates elsewhere. Apple doesn't share anything about who bought what.

This isn’t quite correct. Vendors can and do verify Mac App Store purchases with applications deployed outside the Mac App Store. The installed bundle contains a receipt you can validate yourself. I think there is a gap where if you delete the application, then Apple removes it from the Mac App Store, you can’t reinstall it to get the receipt, but that’s a bit of an edge case; the majority of customers will be “upgrading” from the Mac App Store version to a newer non-Mac App Store version in a situation like this.

Also, if you have user accounts and plan for it in advance, you should upload the receipt to your server and associate it with a user account, which makes some things like this a lot easier.

Who will think of Apple in this trying time?

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