Epic Games steps up Apple fight with EU antitrust complaint
reuters.com
reuters.com
Apple competing with third party app stores on iOS is going to be amazing. No computer platform should be allowed to prevent sideloading or other stores from competing.
This isn't the case on Windows. This isn't the case on Android.
Or Linux for that matter.
It's more disappointing it takes 10 years for regulators to step-in and say "that's bad, no more, open up your platform".
That's the equivalent of the IDFA message for Facebook. Which everyone will see, its worded in a very negative way, and it's a must.
On the other hand, Apple is acting as a platform owner and demanding that they continue to act as the sole store curator on their platform.
I do not see the hypocrisy.
Apple demand Facebook do thing = Good for Apple (bad for FB) yes way
So Apple is allowed to get its own way, 100% of the time, no questions asked, what they want is what they get end of (by virtue of holding all the cards and owning the platform they dictate the rules on)
How about no? You can play by your rules in your sandbox, but Epic has a right to demand it's allowed a sandbox in the same park, maybe Apple will be forced to change its business if everyone starts playing in Epic's sandbox and consumers decide Apple's policies are rubbish?
That's the very definition of "competition" something Apple has avoided for over a decade at this point (as far as iOS inter-competition goes)
Epic demands Apple do a thing = bad for Apple, bad for customers (good for Epic)
> Apple demand Facebook do thing = Good for Apple (bad for FB) yes way
Apple demands Facebook do a thing = Good for Apple, good for customers (bad for Facebook)
As a customer in these equations, I'm siding with Apple.
> That's the very definition of "competition" something Apple has avoided for over a decade at this point
Why do I have to use Epic's game store for Fortnite? Why can't I create my own skins with paint and sell them for whatever I want?
not bad for all customers. I would like to side-load third party apps on my Iphone. Remember when app store banned a hn reader app because it showed Covid-related submissions[1]
How is allowing developers to use alternate payment platforms "bad for customers"? Or, if not on the phone, at least to allow them to add funds to their account from the browser/another platform and use it in their iOS app?
Surely we can just apply the Windows argument of "well they should get antivirus software and stop browsing shady sites" and go about our day having improved the landscape for the tech-literate, while having increased the risk other people take on by using their phone if they don't know the first thing about ensuring the apps they download are safe or privacy-preserving. That's why people buy iPhone - you literally do not have to worry about malicious App Store apps.
Because those "alternate payment platforms" don't prioritise consumer protection.
Deliveroo did an update their software that wiped out my login settings. They didn't support apple login, so I lost access to my account. They won't recover my email because of a special character in it, and so they continued to charge me for their "plus" service every month, and avoided any emails I tried to send asking to stop (asking me to "log in" to change my payment settings!).
Requiring apps use Apple's channel would have protected me from that experience.
Why are we all talking about creating more stores? Shouldn't we opt into creating systems API for stores? That way you could choose store application and have products from all repositories (stores) available in there.
On most Linuxes you add repository and it doesn't matter if you use official package manager, graphical one, or some unofficial bash script. You are able to install same software.
Can you provide some reasoning behind that. What should I like, so I can dislike uPlay in the first place?
This is common in the gaming community. Full disclosure: I used to work in the studio that developed and maintained uplay.
One of the games I worked on was an epic store exclusive (or, wouldn’t launch on steam) and it was met with harsh criticism for that. Many players outright said that they wouldn’t buy the game if it wasn’t on steam.
Judging by PC sales, they held true to their word.
Back, years ago the distribution way were tons of 3.5" diskettes, or better yet - transportable hard disk with a jumper switch to slave mode. A lot has changed since, however subscribing to the model that one company has to govern my entertainment model is beyond silly.
This is something I'm pretty sure Epic would provide with their own app store.
Incidentally, employers already have the ability to distribute custom iOS software for their employees, so your scenario wouldn't happen.
As for social, why isn't this happening on Android if it's so inevitable?
Windows and Mac and Linux environments are not sandboxed like this either. All my data is files in folders, and I can export it as I like to another machine.
If I have a windows computer, and I buy a mac, I can't run all my windows software. The developers of that software may not even make mac equivalents.
The idea that choices need to be ultimately convenient and consequence free is just not realistic. Depreciation, transaction costs, and functional differences between products are a consumer's problem to manage.
I agree with you on media files, but, I also know that there are plenty of workarounds to exporting iTunes specific media formats if you would rather leave iTunes behind.
Exactly the same thing goes for what I do with the devices I buy, and what software I install on them. It's not in Apple's interest that I have a choice of what source of apps I use - but giving me as a consumer that choice would expand the market (e.g. by making it possible to sell an app-based service with a 20% profit margin - currently if you tried to make one, you'd lose 10% on every sale). So yes, consumers currently have a choice of which side of the duopoly they want to live on. I believe more choice would be better, both for consumers and for the ecosystem as a whole.
“Oh, you want Photoshop? Just add the Adobe store (don’t look at permissions, also please give us your debit card number, we promise it’ll be safe)”.
“Oh, you want that nifty game? Just install our store. And also give us your bank account.”
“Yes, Apple is draconian. So to get the Facebook app, you must give us complete access to your phone and all data you send. Sign with your blood here.”
From an opsec perspective, Apple’s store associated with a prepaid debit card is great. They are far from ideal, but they have amongst the best privacy practices in the industry, have great customer support, and their interests align with mine better than those of their competitors.
We know that the second third party stores are allowed, some developer will force them on us.
if they like it, they can keep using it.
EDIT: apparently suggesting people to keep using something they like deserves downvotes :)
Can’t this still be true for the App Store though?
>On the one hand, Apple is acting as a store curator and demanding that its customers be made aware of tracking software.
This sounds like marketing. Apple is limiting what apps their customers have access to. I wonder if you would make the same argument if Apple starts blocking websites?
Your desire to specifically use FaceTime does not make it a monopoly.
The USA simply isn't a leading innovator in this regard.
Hell, even the different cellular carriers fail this definition because you can't use a Verizon sim card to access AT&T.
The Verizon/AT&T comparison is interesting; because it wasn't so long ago that phones were locked to carriers.
Regulation could and should pry open the private networks of large software companies to facilitate healthy competition.
I’d argue not, as long as users can still achieve the same goal in a different way, and it doesn’t worsen their quality of life.
For instance, in this context, the OP’s mother can still do a phone call, or agree to use a different software - which, by the way, is probably free.
/shudder
What's the difference?
[1] https://www.cryptophone.de . And no, of course not.
But that's talking about Facetime as if it's a product. It's not - it's a feature of iOS, iPadOS and MacOS. Effectively, Facetime isn't free - it's a unlimited use service that is paid for with your initial purchase of your Mac or iOS device and includes a perpetual, transferable license.
I.e. no further innovation is possible?
It is completely voluntary.
You'll find many required open standards in civic engineering and aerospace engineering, and really, any engineering where engineers carry liability. They adapt and change in response to deficiencies discovered.
Anti-competitive behavior that harms consumers is the problem (and question). Whether Apple is a monopoly or not is really besides the point.
There is no competition in hardware for their operating system because of them locking it down.
There is no competition in operating systems for their hardware because of them locking it down.
There is no competition in application delivery for their systems because of locking it down.
There is no competition in some applications and/or functionality (webview/safari) for their systems because of them locking it down.
Each of these rely on and in turn reinforce the others. Taken together they all Apple to control absolutely all competition to do with their devices. Some aspects of this are fairly normalized and we're used to, but others less so (the complete hardware/OS lockdown, which in turn feeds into problems with repair). Whether some aspects seem normal or not, they all deserve a look with fresh eyes, as the world and how we use devices like this is changing, and old models of thinking may or may not work best for us. The bottom line is whether consumers are harmed by their actions or not, and that's what we should use to measure this, not whether it seems okay, or matches our way of thinking about what a company should be able to control.
At the base level, I think a useful question to ask is "why is the store cut for managing and distributing apps 30%, and why hasn't it changed with the emergence of other stores?" One answer might be that it really takes about 30% of revenues to provide store functionality. Common public sources seem to indicate this is not the case. Another answer might be that for some reason, the market is resistant to change. I think this is because one large market member, Apple, is insulated from competition to a large degree, and didn't feel any pressure to change. Other market members match this number because the market is distorted by Apple's resistance to change. I think the fact that as soon as congress started making noises about investigating app market pricing Apple was able to immediately drop their cut for certain store items significantly points towards them knowing this, and wanting to get ahead of the problem so the status quo isn't changed too much to their detriment.
The only claim one could make is “hey, 30% seems a bit high to do business there”. Yet Apple can claim that you pay a premium to get access to millions of consumers which they’ve cultivated a strong relationship with. Running an App Store isn’t hard. Running a successful App Store is very hard. This is why Epic doesn’t want to do it themselves, but rather sue it out of Apple.
What? You can put a BMW engine in another car, you can put another engine in a BMW. BMW does not make it so that you can't use other engines or parts. This is nothing like BMW. I don't know about Tesla, but I suspect it's more a matter of others not making engines that fit the spec than it being explicitly designed to not allow other engines, but I really don't know enough about them to so.
> Running an App Store isn’t hard. Running a successful App Store is very hard.
The running of it is always easy. Getting to the point it's successful is hard, because it requires many other things to go right.
> This is why Epic doesn’t want to do it themselves, but rather sue it out of Apple.
What are you talking about? Epic is specifically bringing suit so they can run their own app store. Not only that, but they already run their own app store. Epic already has the infrastructure and inventory to be a credible alternative for games, because they have hundreds of games they already deliver on Windows, at a smaller cut than Apple charges in their app store.
This isn't about Epic wanting to cash in on Apple's app store it's about them outgrowing it and wanting to open their own store when Apple won't let them (they might also be fine with a lower cut from Apple, but they would rather run their own store. They're keen to spend those Fortnite billions to expand as quickly as possible. They already opened their alternative to Steam on Windows, they would be happy to be the alternative to the App Store on iPhones for games).
This is nothing about Epic “outgrowing” Apple App Store. They had quite a bit of growth, but compared to Apple or even more directly to Steam they are still small.
This is mostly about trying to get Apple to give them access to their platform for free or close to free. Nothing prevents them to build their market with Apple’s cut in place.
You can't install Mercedes OS (I don't expect the iPhone to run windows it Microsoft doesn't want to port it), but you can customize the OS, as outlines here.[1] They call it a jailbreak, but given that it looks to just be replacing data files, I'm not sure someone couldn't opt to write their own portion of the system software entirely.
> Car manufacturers have their own part standards and their own tools specifically designed to be incompatible with each other and needing special tools that are only available to the manufacturers and certified service partners.
I see a clear difference between not making it easy (using your own standards to make it hard for others) and making it impossible or as close as they can through cryptopgraphy and signed software and not allowing the consumer to get access to those keys for their own devices. In some cases, it may be illegal because of DMCA encryption bypass laws.
There's a difference between custom screw heads, which you can buy parts for but are not commonly available and using a combination of technology and law to make it impossible.
> This is nothing about Epic “outgrowing” Apple App Store. They had quite a bit of growth, but compared to Apple or even more directly to Steam they are still small.
No, not small. Smaller than Apple, but possibly bigger than Steam. On a similar level at least. Epic reported revenues of $4.2 billionin 2019, and was projected to reach revenue of 5 billion in 2020.[2] There's not a lot of good data I can find about Valve's actual revenue, other than estimates from some data that it was ~4.3 billion in 2017 (explained in the Wikipedia article for them), which is then repeated as fact in a few other places.
Keep in mind, they created and control Fortnite, which is still extremely popular.
> This is mostly about trying to get Apple to give them access to their platform for free or close to free. Nothing prevents them to build their market with Apple’s cut in place.
Well, Apple is preventing them, if they want to offer it to iPhone customers. These are people that bought hardware, own that hardware, and then are told they are not allowed to control what runs on that hardware. I am opposed to this on a consumer rights level, because I don't believe I should be locked out of hardware I purchased. I am also opposed to this on a economic level, where it's adding arbitrary barriers to competition, distorting the market. For multiple reasons, I think allowing practices like this to continue are bad for our society and economy, and I think it needs to change.
Even if I thought Apple had stumbled into this and didn't intend to prevent competition, I think it's problematic enough that it should be specifically legislated to require some third party access, if certain criteria are met. The alternative is to move farther along the path we already have. A decade ago open APIs and cross platform access was the norm. You could us a single application to access almost every single chat platform. Them Apple made iMessage and it was platform specific. Then Google shut down the XMPP gateway for their chat protocol, and made it private. We've somehow gone from a situation where everyone knew you had to interoperate with other companies and protocols to survive, to everyone shutting all the others out and trying to grab as much of the market for themselves, make it too costly and hard to move away, and trap their customers. Are we really better off?
The biggest, most structurally resilient and important products we all use were developed in an age where interoperability was important and needed. HTTP, SMTP, POP and IMAP, IRC. Large companies have been trying to tear those down ever since, because it's less profitable. Now you have to log into Facebook or Instagram to see what most people would post to a blog previously. It's easier, and there's a lot of searchability enhancements, but would it really have been impossible for us to get close to that without the lock-in?
To me, this is all very clear. We're in a new age of large companies using their resources to limit competition and hurt consumers. That they are able to do so without being a monopoly is beside the point. That they are hurting consumers by doing so is. My only hope is that some changes are made before it's too late to turn back, if it isn't already. If it doesn't change, what's debatable as problematic now like this will look downright appetizing in comparison.
1: https://www.drivingline.com/articles/jailbreak-how-to-unlock...
2: https://venturebeat.com/2020/08/06/epic-games-unveils-1-78-b...
I don't understand this position at all. Google is by far and away the market leader. Their ecosystem is free and you can do just about anything in it. Their Play store's standards are utterly bare bones. The devices are cheaper. If what you want is an open source (ish) platform that you can hack on, modify, install software yourself, whatever, all of that is available to you, at a lower price, over there. This feels to be the ultimate first world problem, to pay a handsome premium for a top-tier device, then to complain about it's shortcomings. So take it back! Nobody made you buy one.
It's not like there aren't Android handsets that do all the stuff iOS ones do, occasionally even better, for similar prices. The main reason I stick to iOS is precisely for the locked down OS, and the curated App Store, so to see so many people complaining that they purchased the device when those things are like, the most obvious part of what comprises an iOS device, then complain about those things, is utter madness to me.
Why the fuck must Apple also do that, with a higher priced device, that everyone claims is inferior to Android handsets with their quad core processors and is "just a fashion item?" Android users seem unhealthily obsessed with turning iOS into Android. Just let us do our own thing over here for fuck's sake.
Yet again and again on here and elsewhere, iOS is constantly positioned as this MONOLITH of anti-consumer anti-developer DOOM, absolutely RUINING the mobile market. Again, FOUR. TEEN. PERCENT.
This fails every commonly held definition of a monopoly. We're not even talking like, cable company monopoly here that's entered into by virtue of buying or renting property in a given space, which at least you have a lot of friction there to claim "I can't reasonably be expected to go elsewhere just to buy from a different cable provider." You literally just buy an Android phone, and you're free of the restrictions imposed by Apple, immediately.
https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-a...
Here is the government released statement on these types of topics. "Courts do not require a literal monopoly before applying rules for single firm conduct; that term is used as shorthand for a firm with significant and durable market power"
That is from the US government. For any other further comments you have on the topic of anti-trust law, or market power, please read this government statement first and see how it applies to your statement.
> Entering into the restrictions of an iPhone is 100% voluntary.
If a company has significant market power, then anti-trust law can apply.
> This fails every commonly held definition of a monopoly
Anti trust law does not require a literal monopoly. So I am not sure why you are bringing that up. Anti-trust law only requires significant market power. And Apple has 50% of the US smartphone market, which is within the realm of what courts have considered to be significant market power.
> You literally just buy an Android phone, and you're free of the restrictions imposed by Apple, immediately.
Apple still has 50% of the US market. That can be significant market power, as the courts have ruled in the past.
But every iOS post I read is along the lines of make it like android, and I have the same prevailing thought. Why?? I would not own a MacOS machine, I wouldn't like it. But I don't feel the need to get on every Mac discussion complaining it should be more like Linux. The fact the differences exist is a good thing.
My phone, ultimately, is communications and quick research. I need it to make calls, send messages, send emails, and use the browser. And off-duty, I use the camera to capture memories. I got the big one because I wanted the bigger screen (though ultimately I miss the smaller size one I had before, so that will likely change whenever I get around to replacing it.)
And I also do projects. I build 3D printers, I play with Pi's, I build PC's. I do all kinds of tinkering shit. I just don't feel the need to do it on my phone, and therefore what are cited as "limitations" of it are just irrelevant to me. It does everything I need it to do, and more.
Android and iOS in my mind aren't really even in competition. They're two very similar products that should appeal to two entirely different userbases. They're pickups and sportscars, both great for what they do, but utlimately trying to have a pickup that's also a sportscar just means it's probably going to be lousy at both.
Having the ability to install apps not available on the app store does not make your entire phone something you 'have to fiddle with'. If you want to live in the walled garden, you of course can do so, just as many people do on Android.
>But I don't feel the need to get on every Mac discussion complaining it should be more like Linux.
This is an interesting take, seeing how a big reason Macs are so popular amongst developers is the similarity to Linux (which the vast majority of us are going to be deploying to).
I mean, that’s effectively where this whole argument leads. You could imagine a scenario where using external software could damage things like your battery, so now the user is on their own.
I don’t think that’s a tenable option either.
This is effectively what Google does with Chromebooks and developer mode. But if you’ve enabled developer mode, can’t you go back? But when you get into trouble, you can revert back to the base install (and lose all other data). Again, that’s not a good option either as people would complain about that too.
Why is it a bad thing for you that other’s get to use their phones have they see it fit after paying for it quite a bit, while the whole thing won’t case any difference to you?
There are good reasons to disallow any third party applications on some platforms like cars, but apple allows it and they only have a quick look at applications. The real security is in their sandbox/API.
A program that phones home often with tracking data, thus keeping a data connection open and the processor from sleeping would absolutely have an impact on battery life and longevity. This would be code that Apple would normally block at the AppStore level.
And we saw how mad people were when Apple slowed down processing speeds to extend battery life. Can you imagine the outrage if Apple suddenly said that your battery is no longer under warranty because you installed the Facebook app directly from Facebook?
I've had both device types through the years. I've had to support both device types in different form factors. As a developer I love Android. I've learned to code some Java and lightweight game development for Android due to that openness of the platform. But the pros of the walled garden concept do not shine through on Android as they do with Apple due to the lack of how tightly integrated and compatible the hardware & software are from being developed together and approved by a sole source.
As a purchaser of an Apple product, I feel fairly confident that I am Apple's customer. With Android, the customer is the manufacturer\carrier combo that runs my phone, and I am their customer. That distinction carries an important difference and it shows through the development tracts of both companies and how they deal with issues.
Let's be honest here. If this goes through to force Apple to allow competitors to their app store, that decision will go further than developer sideloading (which is already possible). It will not happen in a vacuum and as soon as the courts hand down such a decision the carriers will be next in line to shovel as much horse manure down the line as possible.
I've never purchased an Apple phone with pre-loaded software as part of a deal with a carrier, aka Bloatware. I have from Android manufacturers on several occasions. Lower standards of entry from 3rd party sources often mean lower standards for bugs, resource usage, and privacy concerns. Higher risk of malware. Lower chance of software to OS compatibility. Apple phones with whole disk encryption made the news when the feds couldn't break it as easily as Android devices.
>Macs are so popular amongst developers is the similarity to Linux
Then I rescind the poor choice of analogy and go straight to fundamentals. These two different tools are purpose built for different things from different principles and that is ok. Homogenizing the mobile space in a way that would detract from those differences would be a net negative in my opinion.
If I was told this plainly and openly up front then I wouldn't buy the car to begin with -IF- that is what I value in that specific vehicle. My car? Not a chance, I like my sports car and working on it is part of the fun I get from it. My wife's people carrier? If those repairs are close in line with other repair shops even after the 30% AND they'll come pick it up or tow it so I don't even have to mess with it? Absolutely, where do I sign up? Different tools have different uses and value propositions.
I am fully in agreement with your position, but it is really funny that you mention this specific detail, as it hits much closer to reality than most people realize.
Mostly because as a part of the anti-trust settlement that MSFT had to enter back in the day, they were forced to allow laptop manufacturers to preload bloatware on windows laptops. And I would definitely hate to see that on iPhones, as that was one of the major reasons I ended up switching from Androids (yes, I know, you can root your Android device, install custom Android distro, and get rid of the carrier bloatware, but not having to deal with all of that is precisely why I switched).
AAPL can relatively (compared to MSFT back in the day) easily decide to be the sole retailer of their own hardware and software stack, and cease to sell their phones through carriers.
AAPL already offers direct financing solutions, and trade in solutions, through their own retail channels. SIM-only plans tend to be cheaper as the carriers can no longer hide behind hardware costs to obfuscate their plans.
Who loses in this equation? AAPL might, through reduced sales. The carriers might, through reduced margins. Is either of those things bad to the consumer?
Doesn't AAPL already sell carrier plans as part of their iPhone retail experience?
When did MSFT sell hardware as part of their software licensing retail experience in the 90s?
There's no reason to expect it will be exactly like a PC, which is coming from a completely open past to a future which allows more locking down. The iPhone is locked down now, it's a bit ridiculous to assume they would immediately go straight to allowing anything and everything to be installed without any hoops jumped through.
Even Android requires you to allow unsafe sources to isntall third party packages. Why would anyone expect the iPhone to go farther than this when they're fighting tooth and nail to not even do this much?
I'm also considering the transition in the Steam marketplace as a recent example. Their opening from curation started with Greenlight, a fast track program with some but minimal curation. There were a few turds but by and large the games that came through were of some general quality. Enter phase 2, Early Access. The minimal barriers were removed except "will it run", adult content allowed, and a smaller hosting fee used. And in came the parade of low effort hot garbage. Recommendations in their platform are hard to come by now. Random impulse buy while scrolling rarely happens for me now as discovery of actual good games for me is much lower and I feel like the platform as a whole has suffered for it. I could see a similar trajectory for the app store albeit with my value of the services being placed in different categories.
I would think anything that required Apple to open up the OS would apply equally as well to carriers. Who cares if the carriers put crap on your phone if you can easily wipe what they provide with a clean copy? It's slightly more complicated than Windows in that the carrier is also providing drivers, but not entirely without precedent (much of Dell system innards are their own design, and they re-brand or develop their own drivers for chipsets to better suit their systems). That would be another differentiator to open the market though. IF X provider is hostile to replacing their OS and makes the experience suck, the market can deal with that. At least it's a small chunk of the stack, and not everything from the base hardware to web services all locking you in to one choice.
As for Early Access and opening up Steam, i've actually not found it to be a problem. Some of my favorite games and experiences started out as (and in some cases still are) Early Access. And even the ones that started strong and went to shit, I count 6-12 months of a fun game as well worth the $20-$30 an Early Access game generally costs.
I've also found the Steam ratings, and the reviews people put in that generate it to be extremely useful and accurate. You just have to zero in on the reviews that relate it to existing experiences that you're familiar with so you get a good idea of what it is like. Worst case you find some streamer on Twitch or YouTube to watch for a bit to get a feel for it.
If Facebook had a worthy competitor for example, surely you'll agree Facebook would be a considerably different product now. You might say that doesn't help my case, because it would actually be a better product, but it's not an inevitable outcome in every comparable scenario.
No, I don't think I would. The vast majority of people are not going to leave facebook as long as they can't take their social contacts with them, and Facebook knows this. They'll let you have your pictures and videos, but the graph? No way, and they know most people won't leave entirely because recreating all those links is a large undertaking for most people. Even young people that originally shun Facebook as their parent's social network eventually join because the network effect is too large to ignore.
The fact that Facebook very quickly buys anything that looks like it might have a draw that could possibly affect this in any way doesn't help it. Neither does that they blatantly lied to congress about things they would/wouldn't do with some of these acquisitions when asked about it.
Now that I've had an iPhone for a couple years, I can't think of single time where the app store 'curation' has benefited me. I'm not even sure what that means. I've released apps on both Google Play and iOS, and sure, it's a little more difficult to get an iOS app passed by Apple. But what does that really get us in the end? Maybe a little more protection from malicious actors, but not much more in my opinion.
I really think the idea that the iOS app store 'curation' is a feature that we benefit from as users is a myth Apple has made us all believe. It's mostly marketing speak & a 'placebo' effect for the end user, and a huge headache for the app developers. As a developer, app reviews take no less than a day or two to clear. And you have to sit there and hope they don't send it back rejected for some vague reason, or some random contractor in China doesn't reject it because they typed in the demo account password wrong (Yes, we had this happen at my job multiple times, and it wasted many days of our time).
I think app store 'curation' and the 'walled garden' get conflated sometimes. In the walled garden, where they have full control over the hardware & the OS, they have chosen to not allow any other method of distributing apps except through them. The idea that this is somehow making my life better I will never get. Either way, that in and of itself doesn't really bother me. What does bother me is that they think they are entitled to 3/10ths of every apps business in the walled garden. There is no way that makes sense.
They charge a yearly fee for developer accounts. I think this yearly fee system is how it should be handled. If their argument is that they are providing the servers and infrastructure and manpower to provide the app store service, then they could make more tiers. For bigger customers like Epic who use more of those resources they could charge more to cover the cost. But there is no way I'll ever be convinced that a 30% fee on every transaction across the board is fair or equitable.
My first one. HTC when 4G first got hot. It was a horrible shitshow and soured my taste ever since. I can see that was a combo of manufacturer, Sprint as my carrier, and early Android OS but that spoke a lot to my understanding of the ecosystem and how incentives were set up. My follow up experience with phones for my kids or staff has been better but I've never gave them the chance for daily driver again. It's a system I tinker with but not depend on. I understand that's anecdotal and YMMV, but then again I'm not looking for validation of my opinion. Is what it is, just stating what colored my purchasing decision.
30% is crazy. I've said the same about Steam for years and you'll get no arguments from me there. Does it makes sense from the standpoint of the developer? Not at all but my opinion there doesn't matter as I don't develop for iOS nor am I very concerned with 3rd party apps. As a customer, I don't care. The idea of curation may be placebo but even the placebo effect is measurable. It may dissuade malware developers from the platform at first principles. That 30% may serve as a soft barrier to entry from race to the bottom competitors even if that isn't its intended purpose. I can admit Play Store has cleaned up its act a good bit since its inception but first impressions are hard to get around.
End of day the reason for me buying an Apple phone as my daily was for reliability. I can't remember the last time I had to restart or tinker with my iPhone to get it to work, but I can't say the same for my kids various Android phones. It wasn't for the robustness of the platform or marketplace cause I would've just bought an Android. Also see my other argument in this thread about being the actual customer and a few other points. Fair payment doesn't really factor in for me, that is a business decision for someone else to make. For me and the choices that I have in front of me, this seems like the best one for my goals even if those differences are limited in scope. The fact that we can choose between them on these differences is a good thing. To get back to GPs point, if this doesn't work for you then don't buy it and let the free market do its thing.
I always had Samsungs, never remember any issues with them getting hot, maybe that was an HTC problem? I think my first android was a Samsung Galaxy S3. Now that I think about it, I do remember a lot of weird bugs and restarts to fix some issue.
After that I had a Note 4 & 5, and I really have high opinions of those. I kept the 5 for over 3 years I think it roped out at Android v8.x and it was pretty good, but still not as reliable a iOS at the time I’m sure. I recently got one of those cheap Samsung tablets & I must say I’m impressed with Android v10.
I switched to iPhone a couple years ago out of curiosity mostly. It’s fine. Doesn’t blow me away, but you’re right. Super reliable. There are things I miss about my Note, and things it did better, but also things about the iPhone I would miss if I went back. Mostly the seamless and sync between my MacBook Pro/ iMac, and effortless wireless file sharing with airdrop are amazing.
As a dev, I do like to use a Linux box for daily use so I’m with you there :)
If there's a viable third party app store without these restrictions, Facebook will immediately jump on it, and immediately start tracking users with no notifications in probably the most invasive way they can get away with.
The upshot is that thanks to this hidden "enable side loading apps" button if I wanted to use the Facebook app, I would have to use the scummy privacy invading version, and that's most definitely a regression.
Apple is really great at UX, they will find a way to make it hard for the general audience, so that my mother won’t install random malware because for it she would have to go through 3 pages in settings she knows nothing about, and I can run whatever I want on my phone.
Many of us believe they will not find such a way and that in fact no one will and it is impossible. That's the crux of the disagreement here. You believe this is a possible UX to build. I believe it is not possible to build such a UX.
As many folks have noted, Android does have a number of steps required to sideload. They also have a much more serious and active malware problem despite all the extra steps:
https://lifehacker.com/be-careful-about-sideloading-popular-...
>Just let us do our own thing over here for fuck's sake.
No one is forcing you to do anything. There can be 10 app stores and you could still use one the one. Just like many PC gamers have done for decades. I own hundreds of games and I only use GOG and Steam. Pretending you are forced to do anything is disingenuous. People have more right to use their bought hardware than you and Apple have to deny it. It's not a matter of if but when Apple will be forced to allow people to own their owned hardware.
As a developer I'm restricted from accessing that 66%. THAT is why I want an open platform. Access to those consumers.
That has nothing to do with my choice of platform. It has to do with access to a large market which I am being restricted from.
Wait - what App do you want to sell that won’t allow?
Basically, go to the Cydia store and look at any app in there. Why can't the Cydia store be allowed?
As for the Cydia store, that allows apps to to run on jailbroken phones, I.e. with security protections removed.
It should be obvious why users want to buy a platform that is as secure as Apple can make it.
And yes, the Cydia store is for jailbroken phones because that's the only way to load your own software onto your phone, but there are plenty of useful apps on there that aren't security issues and are only there to get around app store restrictions.
Apple doesn't have to restrict which apps I run to keep it secure. They do just fine securing MacOS, which allows one to install whatever they want.
Perhaps it’s simply not true that Apple pulls the plug on apps at any time.
Billions of dollars paid to developers suggest that you are just wrong about that.
I personally have had updates rejected, and then simply resolved the issues and resubmitted.
It’s simply false to say that apps are just pulled at any time.
You have allowed a few voices on hacker news to give you a false impression.
And to make sure it can be used with all existing libraries web sites and all opacs, you can enter any url and an xpath expressions, and then it runs the xpath expressions each day and shows the result as list of books.
And since I wrote it 15 years ago, there were no tech libraries for headless browsers available. So I wrote half of my own browser, and an XPath interpreter. (Modern XPath is actually Turing-complete, and with the EXPath file module, it can read and write to any file)
So, if the store does not allow custom browsers or Python interpreters, those are two reasons it would not allow my app.
Often the ideas about restrictions are simply false beliefs.
The OP said - headless browser, I.e: network and parsing the Dom, but not rendering.
Perfectly allowed. Please stop saying otherwise.
This is a jawbreaker of hyperbole around a chewy gum center of truth.
Although I have been thinking about making a JIT. Building on for x86 is easy enough, but then it is useless for ARM. I would not want to build two JITs. Or four with 32/64-bits.
iTunes library (at least for Books and Music) is DRM-free and has been from an early stage (though _did_ launch with DRM).
I've had great success in migrating my purchased items back and forth from linux with absolutely no issue. However now they're using streaming and I'm unable to easily "own" any music anymore... or at the very least it takes you off of the easy path.
iTunes has been DRM free for more than a decade now.
Thanks for clarifying.
And in the case of both devices (Apple and Android) you can still flash your own "competing" OS on the hardware. It's far easier to do this on an Android device than an Apple one, but the hardware is separate from the software you're running. But there are multiple mobile OSes not named Android or iOS.
What qualifies as a competitor, and what responsibility does Apple or Android have at creating new competitors? What actions are Google or Apple taking to actively stomp out mobile based OSes? Didn't Mozilla give it a shot? Didn't Ubunutu put out a mobile version of their OS? The lack of competitor for OSes seems like an odd argument to make. They exist even if they don't have marketshare, and there is no requisite business structure behind an OS in order for it to be a competing software. There are options. They may not be the single most accessible, and they may not meet your needs, but they exist.
What does this mean? Late 90’s Microsoft had more than 85% of the desktop PC market.
Early 2020’s Microsoft still has more than 85% of the Desktop PC market.
There is simply no comparison.
Apple doesn’t control the market. They don’t have anything like a monopoly.
They do have products that a lot of people think are category leading, but that isn’t the same thing as having ‘control’.
They also make a lot of profit, because people are willing to pay more for those products. But this is true of companies who focus on quality, regardless of scale.
Similarly, Apple and Google have leveraged their duopoly in the mobile operating systems market to prevent competition in the mobile application distribution market
Apple (52.4%) and Google (47%) control 99.4% of the mobile operating system market[1]. That's certainly much more than the 85% of the market that Microsoft had.
> They don’t have anything like a monopoly.
Colloquial definitions of monopoly do not matter when it comes to antitrust laws[2]:
> Courts do not require a literal monopoly before applying rules for single firm conduct; that term is used as shorthand for a firm with significant and durable market power — that is, the long term ability to raise price or exclude competitors. That is how that term is used here: a "monopolist" is a firm with significant and durable market power.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/266572/market-share-held...
[2] https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-a...
For the most part they aren’t trying.
Building a new mobile platform is expensive - probably billions of dollars of investment - and takes years.
There are actually quite a few companies who could do so if they wanted - e.g. Facebook, and yes, Epic.
But there is no reason to suppose they would be successful in any less time than it took Apple or Google.
There are reasons why people trust Apple’s platform, and integrated payments are one of them.
My point is that Epic actually is a company that has the resources to compete directly if they wanted to.
Apple just isn’t the leader in games, and it would be great if Epic leveraged its position to build a real alternative platform, rather than just attempting to force its way into being a middleman in Apple’s platform.
That isn’t actually going to result in more platform competition.
Apple did nothing to create Fortnite, but they want about a third of the revenue from Fortnite. Epic did not create the iOS platform, and they are not asking for any of Apple's profits from the iOS platform. So your characterization of who's wanting profit without doing the work seems completely backwards to me. Apple's demands here are essentially rent-seeking.
> There are reasons why people trust Apple’s platform, and integrated payments are one of them.
As far as I know, Epic did not prevent people from paying through Apple's integrated payment platform. They simply offered an alternative.
> My point is that Epic actually is a company that has the resources to compete directly if they wanted to.
> Apple just isn’t the leader in games, and it would be great if Epic leveraged its position to build a real alternative platform, rather than just attempting to force its way into being a middleman in Apple’s platform.
Your suggestion is that if somebody wants to sell things to users who happen to be on smartphones without paying into the duopoly's protection racket, they should simply develop their own hardware supply chain and manufacturing capabilities, phone operating system, mapping and GPS software, email software, ditto for every other piece of software that is table stakes for a phone — and do all of this to a level of quality sufficient to compete with companies whose primary businesses are doing these things — and then finally develop whatever it was they wanted to sell in the first place.
This is not a reasonable position, and even if Epic is in a position to do it (which I'm not sure if they are), most companies aren't, and it is not reasonable to demand every company develop its own phone.
It's also bad for users, because then they'd have to buy a phone for every app.
It is much more reasonable to just not allow smartphones to be the 21st century equivalent of a company town where employees are paid in scrip.
Obviously not. It’s not a protection racket.
I’m suggesting that it would be better for consumers if we had more competition at the platform level - then we wouldn’t have a duopoly, and we would have more pressure for the platforms to compete an innovate.
You list a bunch of technologies that have already been developed and can be integrated. I said it would take a billion dollars, so we’re on the same page.
> because then they'd have to buy a phone for every app.
Don’t be silly. Popular apps are available on more than one platform.
Yes, there would be exclusives - games especially, but that is no different to how it is now.
For all your complaining, you seem to be arguing very hard that we should be stuck with the duopoly you claim to dislike.
We deserve better than forcing both users and developers alike to deal with a bunch of additional middlemen within the duopoly.
We are only stuck if nobody thinks it’s worth creating an alternative. The ‘duopoly’ has only existed for around 5 years so far. It’s bizarre to consider regulating such a short lived phenomenon instead of encouraging new entrants, particularly when there are so many deep pocketed companies that want a piece of the market.
We’re not talking about a random video game company. We’re talking about Epic, a multi-billion dollar transnational enterprise that could easily afford to invest the time and money Apple and Google did to build their platforms.
Epic is vastly more profitable now than Apple was when they developed the iPhone. Let’s not deceive anyone that they are some small games company.
If you want to guarantee that we continue with the duopoly, the best way to do that is to take away the incentive for companies that could compete, to actually do so, by giving them a piece of the duopoly’s revenue stream.
What does the Android vs Apple vs Featurephone marketshare look like?
This part is entirely irrelevant in the EU
Apple is not a supplier. They only sell directly to consumers. They don’t even try to make their app store available on competing phones, even if it is technically possible.
Nitpick: Apple Music competing with Spotify is remarkably similar to the Microsoft case. (Epic's case is weaker.)
Apple Music is available in the Google Play Store but I don’t know of any credible accusation that Apple has tried to get Google to kick Spotify out.
You: Microsoft did not get prosecuted for being popular.
How does that response follow at all?
This sounds an awfull lot like the though process of religious zealots and extremists. Ignore the real world, consequences be damned, ideology comes first. There is no way we could make an error of judgement. Thats how you get a famine and 50 million dead in China.
"Apple has the right to create the software ecosystem they want to create."
There is absolutely no such right, neither morally nor legally
What there is none is the "right" for governments to claim ownership to other's work and dictate you must do what your own free will tells you is not on your best interest, that is why they use force.
Your private data is something within your own rights to do as you please with it, which gives you a choice of whether you want to store it on apple's systems or on someone else's systems or on the local systems that you personally own.
Now, what are you even arguing? Once i out data on an apple computer they can do whatever they want? If I but an iPhone is it still not a 'local system I personally own'? Do they have to respect my data, or do they not have to follow the law?
If your sex tapes are included as a part of your "work data", what would you count as your "private data" then?
Not trying to argue anything in particular, I am just genuinely curious at this point.
>Once i out data on an apple computer they can do whatever they want?
Nope, only things you agreed to in Terms of Usage that do not go against the law. Added that detail at the end because yes, I am aware that ToU do not override laws, and just because you put something in there doesn't necessarily mean that it is legal.
>Now, what are you even arguing?
Your earlier comment said "I store my data in apple's systems, is it my right to do with it as I please or theirs?", and that's what I was addressing. You have the right to do as you please with it, which manifests in your ability to NOT use Apple's systems for your data storage, unless you are satisfied with their Terms of Usage. If you decide to use their systems for that, you are agreeing on the ground rules with them which are outlined in ToU.
That is not a right. As I said there is only one right, or only one that matters: the right to your own thoughts, to your mind's work, that is the work I was talking about.
Everything else is not a right, at least not if we are gonna be true to the word. If it's dependent on others is not a right. If it's conditional to other people's whims is not a right. If it needs the entire legal establishment and an army to enforce it is not a right. Rights in the constitution are not "rights" per se but obligations from the government to its citizens, as in you have the right* to procure it from the government, whatever it might be.
If you need to ask for permission is not a right.
What there is none is the "right" for governments to claim ownership to other's work and dictate you must do what your own free will tells you is not on your best interest
The law absolutely dictates the rules, which may or may not contradict your own free-will e.g. paying taxes, abiding by copyright etc.
So say you. I say that consumers have the right to run whatever software they want on the hardware that they have purchased.
Apple can create whatever software platform they want, but it seems pretty bad that they don't allow you to use whatever software platform you want on the hardware that you paid them for.
I am strongly in favor of that. The whole App Store thing is just about some middlemen wanting a cut and has nothing to do with software freedom.
On the other hand bootcamp for iOS - so you could install android, or better yet, a genuinely free OS, would solve the software freedom problem and allow old iOS devices to be repurposed after Apple stops supporting them.
I want to have the freedom to buy and use such a platform, and Apple wants the freedom to sell and maintain such a platform. The entire process falls apart if Apple is forced to allow other App Stores. Why should the court restrict those freedoms and break this consumer benefit?
Why? You have the choice of not using other App Stores. Just like you have the choice to not use Android, so therefore it doesn't effect you.
Sure, it may not be fair to these large corporations, but it's currently a great situation for consumers. Everybody is free to either go more laissez-faire (Android) or more walled garden (iOS). I don't think the courts should ruin that.
Exactly, it is still anti-competitive behavior. Just because consumers like yourself may enjoy it, doesn't make it not anti-competitive.
> For example, Netflix could say "you have to use this other App Store" and many people would convert.
And in the same way that I can choose to not get iOS device, you can always choose to not use Netflix.
Why do you care what my preferences are? If you don't care for the iOS model, you should go buy an Android. Apple doesn't have a monopoly.
I prefer the Apple model because I want these restrictions. I want apps to be blocked from cross-app tracking. I want apps to have to explicitly spell out the type of data they collect from me, and how they use it. I don't care that I can't side load apps.
If you want a spyware phone, go get an Android.
I would be completely happy if IOS by default did not allow all the things it doesn't allow, but you could add a setting to allow 3rd party app stores with a list that apple curated themselves (similar to search engine preferences in a browser).
Apple can make it all scary about how the apps on the 3rd party applications could be doing more nefarious things. I would even be ok with apple having the ability to simply refuse to install specific apps from these 3rd party app stores for things that are egregious violations of ethics.
but I've just read too many stories about Apple rejecting apps over very innocuous things, and apple rejecting smaller apps but allowing the same thing in larger apps (anti-competitive).
It's a legitimate problem.
"I like that TrueCaller on my iOS device works for most features without getting any permission from me, while on Android it refuses to buzz from the splash screen unless you give it every permission - including full contact access and phone.
I like that on iOS a famous payment app from India (PhonePe) works flawlessly with zero permissions but on Android? It needs both location and contacts to even function - neither of these are mandatory for their functioning but still they do and can get away with that.
You know WhatsApp doesn't let you use "Status" feature unless you provide Storage permission to it on Android (I doubt they need it just to shows those images, videos, and texts)."
I think it's important to note that the mere existence of controls, i.e buttons that do a thing, don't actually end up achieving their goal of improving user privacy unless there's also enforcement of usage patterns. You can't get away with stuff like this on iOS, and it's clear by these accounts that the same companies would do the same on iOS if they could.
We know from past experience that it's commercially viable for platform owners to successfully develop secure operating systems that allow third party developers to develop and distribute apps without an additional tax. We don't have to look very far either. macOS is a great example of where the App Store and third party developers can coexist.
People should be able to choose to buy the app (for 30% more) using the App Store so that it's easy to ask for a refund, receive updates and for Apple to market apps they believe you'd like to use. But at the same time, Apple has no right to force people to overpay for services like Spotify on the App Store. Customers already pay to use a licensed copy of iOS on supported hardware.
Governments have every right to protect the customer from perpetually getting screwed by Apple. At the very least, we shouldn't allow Apple to limit free speech so that developers can't mention a way for their users to save money.
The problem is that Apple built an artificial monopoly in the distribution of apps by making the App Store the only curator of the platform. People who decided to purchase an iPhone with an iOS license should have the right to use the device to it's full extent (along with being able to fix it themselves if something breaks). If you don't feel safe running apps outside of the App Store, you don't need to!
>>People who decided to purchase an iPhone with an iOS license should have the right to use the device to it's full extent
The US Copyright Office has already made it clear that jailbreaking is legal. That does not imply upon Apple an affirmative obligation to fix a jailbroken phone or create a open/fixable hardware and software platform, or make either of the two easy to accomplish. Only a negative obligation to not interfere with those who take such risks at their own expense.
Especially for general computing devices like a phone (unlike gaming consoles and media like your examples). We already know that Apple doesn't need the App Store for iDevices to be a commercial success, just look at the Mac and macOS.
No.
It's like that, except my house is very big and I'm Apple. Everyone, by their choice in accepting my invitation, have chosen to abide by my rules.
All guests are free to leave any time!
Now, what right does a 3rd party (the gov't) have to come in and crash my party and force me to change some of my rules? Consenting adults chose to be here!
There would first need to be consensus as to what constitutes an artificial monopoly. So far the term has been used so nebulously as to encompass any choice or decision made with a tradeoff or constraint that somehow paid off for at least one but few, if any, others. In other words, "They cheated by holding onto a winning strategy / lottery ticket."
>>General computing devices like a phone (unlike gaming consoles and media like your examples).
I fail to see the distinction. The Nintendo Switch is powered by the same SoC that runs on the Android-powered Nvidia Shield. Just recently, the Switch has been jailbroken to run full Android 10. The PS4, PS5, XB1, XBSX all run on x86-64 AMD chips (the former two on an in-house OpenBSD distro and the latter two on a full Windows 10 kernel). Even older consoles like the PS2 and N64 can run Linux (the former as an official feature and the latter as a recent homebrew development). In short, anything in console space has been a general computer for the last 20 years if not earlier. Constraints are imposed onto the hardware and software of these products as a natural consequence of certain physical limitations or by intentional design of their respective companies. Apple's products are, in general, no different.
>> We already know Apple doesn't need the App Store for iDevices to be a commercial success.
What Apple needs to be a commercial success or not is a choice for Apple to make for itself. Apple chose a particular domain to succeed in and succeeded beyond almost every expectation. Absent fraud, it shouldn't be stopped from monetizing it's winnings any way it chooses just because you think the company has "over-succeeded". That on it's own doesn't make the App Store an "artificial monopoly" any more than it makes Usain Bolt "too good" to be allowed to compete in any more races. All of which leads me to question how exactly you are defining "artificial monopoly". What counts and what doesn't?
You need to watch Epic Games vs. Apple hearing from September 2020. This argument was already rejected by judge. She stated closed platforms (walled gardens) were before Apple's fore decades and are legal types of business. She also told about Nintendo/PlayStation/Xbox same closed stores.
No drugs, no porn, nothing offensive. Maybe if Apple stopped being such a moral busy body people this would be less of an issue.
How does this differ from "any programmable electronics should allow sideloading"? I don't see that as a very workable solution, legally, practically, or even in a pro-consumer sense.
It would certainly drive the cost of most electronics up incredibly as all devices would need to produce APIs and upgradeability.
And if the alternative for a vendor is being forced to lose enough revenue by letting any third party do whatever they want, then Apple will make an app for your bank, by contracting the bank to pay for the development.
The reason the third party platform is currently huge is because Apple created a platform for devs to publish on. If the rules were the ones prescribed above Apple would have likely taken a different route. Changing the rules because people are unhappy is simply bad precedent.
Will apple make app for every sort of app currently available in the App Store? That’s an unrealistic claim.
Changing the rules because people are unhappy is a bad precedent?? We should only change it when they are happy or what? It’s not about unhappiness, it is about disallowing them for controlling something that is an emergent property of the system they created, but is bigger then themselves. It directly effects most people on Earth, so it should not be decided by a private corporation, but by democratically elected governments. It is no longer only Apple’s freedom to do however they want
...And then they'll comply with it, because it's still plenty profitable to do so.
What about platforms like Playstation or the computers built into Teslas etc, should we allow sideloading on those? How do you define a platform?
The 360 allowed for homebrew as well. I think they learned a lot from XBMC.
Google have made it very clear that you have options other than the Play Store in recent dev docs
It's also a case of "you know it when you see it", iPhone wasn't a big platform when it launched but now it's the primary platform for many peoples computer needs, it should not be exclusively run by a private company.
Why? If you don't like the iPhone there are other general purpose computers that you can use, ranging from a laptop to a Pixel smart phone...
> General purpose computing.
If you want to call it a general purpose computer, then you also have to include tablets, laptops, desktop computers, and Android phones. All of a sudden there is quite a bit of choice for customers here. To name a few:
Microsoft
Samsung
LG
Dell
HP
Huawei
Amazon
...
The fact that Apple may very well make the best one, doesn't mean there isn't competition or that it isn't a competitive market.
Your list of manufacturers does not take the platforms into consideration. None of those are allowed to use apples platform unless they follow their strict rules.
There isnt't a competitive market unless ther's free movement and perfect information and the two smart phone platforms have large lock-in effects today so it hardly qualifies. The portion of the market that is android or windows are competitive markets, it's easy to switch from a samsung phone to a lg phone.
But they also have overlapping features, complementary features, and sometimes mutually exclusive features. You mention payments - I can pay for things using my laptop, or if I have a credit or debit card (ya know, the thing you're using for payments) I can just use that at the store normally. Messaging - yep you can send messages from your laptop. I could go on. The killer feature of the iPhone is that it's in your pocket, but it's also a limiting factor. You can live without one, easily, however. Doom scrolling Facebook (sorry, keeping in touch with friends and family - totally not addiction) is not important and living without that is very easy.
> Your list of manufacturers does not take the platforms into consideration. None of those are allowed to use apples platform unless they follow their strict rules.
I can't use any of those manufacturer's platforms without following their rules. I'm not sure what you're trying to explain.
> There isnt't a competitive market unless ther's free movement and perfect information and the two smart phone platforms have large lock-in effects today so it hardly qualifies.
You can debate whether it's a competitive market, but I'm not sure what you're explaining here is part of the considerations, or at least these may map to larger overall considerations. But you have to be careful to be specific about what you are talking about. Are we talking about the iOS App Store, or the general purpose computer market? It matters.
> The portion of the market that is android or windows are competitive markets, it's easy to switch from a samsung phone to a lg phone.
You can easily switch from iPhone to Android as well. One of my friends does it at least once a year because he wants to be "all-in" on either Google or Apple but finds flaws in each.
I think we should, yes. Not necessarily by default, but there should be a switch advanced users can flip.
Re: Tesla, there is in fact a long history of people fixing and modifying their cars. Why not the computers in those cars?
Hypothetical: if you modify the software in a Tesla, and your modification allows a hacker to remote control it, and this power is used to commit vehicular homicide, how much of the burden of responsibility do you have?
I’m not a lawyer, so while I can throw out phrases like “endangering others through negligence”, I don’t know what the threshold is or even if that’s the right concept in this case.
With regards to game consoles, I tend to agree with you — no good reason for them to be allowed to prevent side-loading.
With regards to phones however, I explicitly want the devices heavily locked down by law, to the extent that other people should not be allowed to put random software on them. This is because they are powerful sensor packages that almost everyone carries almost all the time, so the mere possibility of malware turning them into blackmail spy boxes is a problem for all of society — everyone, given what I’ve heard about “three felonies per day” [0] — and not just the person who installs the dodgy app.
I say this despite not liking that the action of American cultural hegemony in the App Store means those stores have a bigger problem with nipples than with violence.
And likewise, I have a problem with the law that requires me (a British citizen working in Germany) to keep the U.S. government informed about my app’s use of encryption in case I “export” something they can’t break, which is insane in my opinion.
Security is important and app stores help, but trust can be chained and delegated, and it is possible to have alternative App Stores which Apple/Google audit for security.
[0] https://kottke.org/13/06/you-commit-three-felonies-a-day
If you were negligent, I'd say you were responsible, just like if you hit someone because you took off the breaks and couldn't stop.
Although... response question: Let's say in ten years, Tesla stops providing security updates for their old cars. If you continue driving the car anyway, and it gets hacked and kills someone, who is responsible? Which is to say, I'm not super into this whole internet-connected-car thing. ;)
> With regards to phones however, I explicitly want the devices heavily locked down by law, to the extent that other people should not be allowed to put random software on them. This is because they are powerful sensor packages that almost everyone carries almost all the time.
What if I decide to carry around a Raspberry Pi, or wear a wire? I understand the concern, but I don't think controlling what everyone else uses is a reasonable solution in a free society.
Likewise, similar reasons.
> What if I decide to carry around a Raspberry Pi, or wear a wire?
Smartphone-software-based attacks target a wide net of unknowing victims, wearing a wire (or knowingly running a sousveilence app, which I’m all in favour of) targets just those you choose to target.
For the same reason, I regard state-mandated encryption backdoors as a much bigger privacy risk than the state giving the police authority to target specific suspects with wiretaps or even authority to replace all the target’s lightbulbs with ones that have built-in webcams — dragnet or spearfishing.
Hypothetically: a friend borrows your car, but you didn't fix the break fluid leak, and he runs over someone.
Who's at fault?
> With regards to phones however, I explicitly want the devices heavily locked down by law, to the extent that other people should not be allowed to put random software on them
that's the definition of a phone.
IMO Apple is to blame for creating the "smart" phones that can run arbitrary software.
They have created the problem that they are allegedly fixing by imposing walled garden on their users.
It is like handing guns to kids and then locking them up in their rooms so they are safe.
> Who's at fault?
Legally the answer is crystal clear. If it was intentional? He is. Unintentional? You are.
I don't really see the comparison.
That's weird...
In any country in the World the answer should be "it can only be decided by a judge, nobody can tell a priori"
In the case you tweak the software in your car and something happens, the justice system is there exactly to settle these kinds of issues.
That's the comparison.
If you modified your keyless-start car to not need a nearby key, and left it unlocked in parking lot and someone got into it, started it, and ran over several pedestrians would you be at fault?
Why does being remote change things?
What if the unlocked car was in your driveway, and the person who got in was your seven-year-old daughter? Now who's responsible, and why? The child is a minor, so legally she can't be at fault, but the parents should have taken appropriate precautions, like locking the door.
Likewise, if a bunch of people are killed by a remote driver in North Korea, you can't arrest the hacker. And if there's no one to arrest, our society has no way to discourage the crime. So responsibility moves up the chain.
We have more rules and regulations for things like food services, airlines, banking and farming than we do for a store like GameStop or a jewelry products.
I'm not personally in favor of walled gardens myself, but everyone who bought an iPhone knew that's what they were getting and did it anyway.
Epic could try to make life difficult for modders, but a lot of PC games have tried that over the years, and it generally doesn't work when players are dedicated.
In an ideal world I would force them (I probably wouldn't for a Tesla because diy software on a car...) to have some basic ability to load programs.
You didn't realize this when you bought Mario Run, because Nintendo paid Apple for you.
And if Nintendo tries to sell you something to recuperate that cost, they have to give Apple 30%.
I do consider to be ridiculous the requirement for me, a British national living in Germany, to keep the US Federal government informed about my use of encryption in all the apps I distribute on the App Store. That’s clearly nonsensical.
This lawsuit is about Epic trying to not pay the same fees as everyone else not some giant ethical debate over the rights that people should have on their devices. Epic wants rights for themselves, they don't want them for their customers.
As I've said elsewhere, this is about tail risk not tomorrow.
Companies change over time, it’s unrealistic to have the same service for ever (typically the product might be discontinued and not supported after some time, sometimes also the attitude when it comes to service changes). At the same time the platform was bought not rented and producing it and getting rid of it has its own cost.
I would argue it’s fair to demand open access to it.
I have an old iPad (3rd gen), since it can’t access iCloud properly or sync bookmarks with safari (a function that it originally had) or install Firefox, it’s essentially useless and I’m very unhappy with that, a whole car would be much worse though. I’ve learned to think about that before buying, but many don’t and often there’s no choice.
Apple and iOS, on the other hand, support side loaded code. It's just a matter of who pays for what.
Or even macOS.
I doubt Apple would ever truly stop you but there is a subtle level of friction that can't necessarily be assumed of the user.
To be fair, until it was limited to a small section of the population, it wasn't a big deal. So rich people want to live in walled gardens, so what? But when you start talking about 20% or 30% of the whole population, then it's a significant problem. It took a bit for Apple to reach that level but they are definitely there now, and since they don't seem to be willing to change, they have to be forced to accept that it has to happen.
They can strangle creativity and keep us prisoners in their walled gardens for decades, subjecting us to high prices and tarrifs, lack of choice, missed technological opportunities, biased filtering and ranking, whimsical deplatforming of users and blocking of apps, stifling the development of competing and innovative businesses, or buying them outright to keep the risk away.
Using term hypocritical for corporate law seems error just like it does for using it for animals. Apple is engaging in legal battles and hypocritical is not a legal consideration. Apple is not a an entity you can judge using moral psychology.
Apple uses "corporate messaging" toward consumers that has ethical content. It may be mistaken as morality, but it's just how a company's management talks to people. It is a marketing message strategy.
They didn't have to do it this way, which really makes me wonder what their intent was. They could have gone with a simple system like 'we look at how much you made this year, and everything over 1 million is taxed at 30%', but instead we got a weird complex system.
You are treating corporate entities as if they are people with emotions.
This is a mistake.
They are not people. They are legal entities, created to enable their owners and beneficiaries to have special rights regular citizens do not have, such as killing people and never going to prison (Boeing).
I'd argue that it is till the case on Android.
Yes, alternate stores are possible, but they are severely handicapped. First, manual APK install has to be enabled in obscure settings that come with a "scary" warning. Then they can't provide auto-updates but require a manual confirmation for each version update.
Epic gave up on running their own store on Android due to the difficulties.
I do think that regulators need to force Apples hand - not being in control of your own device is not acceptable.
But even then most business would remain on the official stores. We also need legislation to curb the excessive fees charged by both Google and Apple.
A few years ago the EU limited credit card transaction fees to 0.3% or a fixed maximum, whichever is lower.
A similar cap is needed for app stores.
But yes, the regulation came into effect partially in 2015 and fully in 2016.
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=uriserv:...
It's quite noticeable: all the CC related reward programs have disappeared.
I’m not trying to be snarky here but...don’t buy it?
Don't see how this is necessarily a bad thing. It's a general security notification.
> Then they can't provide auto-updates but require a manual confirmation for each version update.
Again, how is this a deterrent? How many times a day do you have to accept the new changes?
We've already established that the official store will always be designed to provide the best experience ootb compared to the 'installed' one.
This is true for all the other platforms where you need manual intervention to install/maintain apps "unofficially".
> Epic gave up on running their own store on Android due to the difficulties.
This is a hard stretch
> I do think that regulators need to force Apples hand - not being in control of your own device is not acceptable.
?? You'd be a fool to think Apple would give an equal footing to other competing stores in their own garden
> But even then most business would remain on the official stores.
Simple. Open it up and let the market decide this one out.
> We also need legislation to curb the excessive fees charged by both Google and Apple.
On this one I agree. Though it's a different for Apple which does not allow any other payment solutions other than themselves, unlike Google's store. This is not an apples to apples comparison.
The Apple store monopoly should be broken up. It's time.
I, as an Apple device user, do not want to change Apple’s behaviour. I like ‘em just they way they are.
> Again, how is this a deterrent? How many times a day do you have to accept the new changes?
That would be about 10 times a day on average (sometimes 3, sometimes 30) for me. I have 125 apps installed from F-Droid (no google services, two external apps: Signal and the local contact tracing app), it would be a chore to update them without privileged extension, especially as some of these are nightly and get updated everyday.
> We've already established that the official store will always be designed to provide the best experience ootb compared to the 'installed' one.
F-Droid gives me a better experience, except for the bugs. Now, it's intentionally crippled by Google, so you can call Google Play "designed for a better experience" if you want.
I picked the platform due to the features, not due to the store "expericence". I would like to pick that one separately, my best experience is different from yours.
> This is true for all the other platforms where you need manual intervention to install/maintain apps "unofficially".
Not true. On windows, most auto-updaters do not need user confirmation to perform updates. Most platforms have package managers that can auto-update their packages (steam, npm, pip, texlive, nix, aptitude, pacman, apk, flatpak, whatever). Their access to the system isn't artificially restricted.
Granted, a number of these package managers could work on Android today (like a chroot), but that would be a subpar experience.
Is this true? Did they change the install permission to one time use or something?
https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.fdroid.fdroid.privileged...
If you run a store your apps should play by the same rules as the apps you compete against.
It’s biggest company in the word, that tries to make most amount of money by monopolizing markets. And privacy sells nowadays, so they exploit that to grow even more. Of course users get something in return, but that’s not the reason why do that.
It’s one of the greatest PR campaigns of modern world, to have people believe that biggest company in the world cares about them and has their backs and interests. It’s almost Orwellian.
Is it worse for that?
Only thing that markets discovered so far, that has somehow customers back is free market and competition (and it’s far from being perfect of course), and they happen to push for it.
It’s just a case where customer interested happened to be aligned, even tho companies fight it for profit reasons (as with privacy and Apple - good for customers, but not being done because of it).
But that doesn’t mean I agree with them not allowing other people to make a choice. For me 30% for purchases and having heavily curated store is ok, but others it’s not, and they should be allowed to choose.
If Apple store is truly superior, they won’t have problems staying ahead of competition.
Android forks would be great but unfortunately phones come with plenty of firmware that gets wiped on flashing a new OS. And if the question is a possibly non-working camera than I personally will remain in the walled garden, but not happily.
(Also, I find the App Store’s recommendation engine pretty terrible unfortunately, discovery is pretty much impossible)
Of course not.
In principal, in a capitalist society, no firm is on the consumers side—all are trying to extract maximum value from the consumer and give back as little as possible in return. But, ideally, this is constrained by robust competition between firms.
To the extent Apple exercises a practical monopoly, Epic fighting against their ability to leverage that monopoly to dictate terms is fighting in the interest of consumers even if it does not come from a pro-consumer motivation, because it means that competition which benefits consumers will continue for other services dependent on the space monopolized by Apple.
From a consumer standpoint, this is a negative ;)
The whole purpose of a business is to create (and keep) a customer. The two ways it does that are innovation and marketing. Yes, there can be cases where customers are cheated, but they won't be customers for long.
It's not about "extracting maximum value and giving as little back in return". That's an extremely simplistic argument that bares no relationship to how companies are actually managed, or how products/services are designed and built.
Yes, in a business, there must be profit, as it covers today's risks and tomorrow's costs. "Profit maximization" is nonsense, it's like saying a sports team does "scoring maximization".
Finally, what is a 'practical monopoly', besides "it's not actually a monopoly but I want a cut of it and therefore I feel it is"? This seems to be the argument Epic is making.
No, the whole point of a capitalist business is to produce returns for the business’s owners.
Acquiring and retaining customers is valuable insofar as there is more value to be profitably extracted from the customer; it is instrumental, not an independent goal.
> The two ways it does that are innovation and marketing.
Well, no, monopolization is itself neither innovation nor marketing (though either or both may be involved in getting to the position where it is possible), but it is definitely a way or acquire and retain customers.
> Yes, there can be cases where customers are cheated, but they won't be customers for long.
That depends what you mean by cheated. If you mean losing net utility through trade, that's true in a simplistic rational-choice analysis, but given the known deviations from rationality in real-world decisionmaking, not always in practice. If you mean “receive less net value than they would in a competitive marketplace through monopoly rents, but still net positive value”, then it's not even true from a simplistic rational-choice analysis.
> It's not about "extracting maximum value and giving as little back in return".
Yes, it absolutely is.
> That's an extremely simplistic argument that bares no relationship to how companies are actually managed, or how products/services are designed and built.
It really isn't. The entire concept of establishing a “moat” is a euphemism for (legal) monopolization so as to enable extraction of monopoly rents, and avoid the reduction of price to marginal cost economics says is the fate of freely competitive markets.
Extracting maximum value at minimum cost (maximizing return on investment) is what business is about. Everything else is about techniques to achieve that goal.
You've apparently been distracted by the techniques to acheive the goal and missed the actual goal.
> "Profit maximization" is nonsense, it's like saying a sports team does "scoring maximization".
Sports teams usually strategically aim for win maximization, which isn't the same thing as score maximization, but, no, the error that exists with describing sports team as doing score maximization instead does not exist when describing business as being about profit maximization.
> Finally, what is a 'practical monopoly'
One whose existence is evidenced empirically through behavior in 5he market and absence of competitive substitution rather than by arbitrary, non-empirically grounded description of market categories.
This is completely wrong. You can’t have returns without customers.
> Extracting maximum value at minimum cost (maximizing return on investment) is what business is about. Everything else is about techniques to achieve that goal. You've apparently been distracted by the techniques to acheive the goal and missed the actual goal.
Creating customers is not a “technique”. It is the essential act. You can have a business that’s not profitable. You can have a business that doesn’t attract much investment. You can have a business that doesn’t maximize profit.
But you can’t have a business if you have no customers.
You’re so distracted by profit and investment that you’ve convinced yourself it’s possible to have a successful or profitable business with no customers.
> “practical monopoly” is One whose existence is evidenced empirically through behavior in 5he market and absence of competitive substitution rather than by arbitrary, non-empirically grounded description of market categories.
In other words, “I know it when I see it”.
This is because Apple would charge Amazon 15/30% to clear the transaction while Apple Books can be both more convenient and doesn't have to give up a large chunk of change to someone else.
Does them blocking those help me in any way? No, it is just to protect Apple's profits because they want to take a cut. You can't even pay for Netflix through the app, because Apple want their cut.
The fact is as a consumer my interests (essentially privacy and safety) are better aligned with Apple’s than with Google, Facebook, or Epic. Their transactions with me is how they get their money, and they have strong incentives to keep that relationship. This is not the case with Google or Facebook, because their bottom line does not depend on me being happy with them in any way. Similarly, Epic has no incentive to be nice to me because I’m not the one funding them.
The iPhone is not a computer platform, it's an integrated experience. Raspberry Pi or the PC you assemble is a platform (which you can still choose to do, if you want).
The transition happened so gradually that we ended up here without a lot of discussion, which is why the discussion is happening now.
I bet you’re right about the motivation for this silly outrage: People claim the iPhone is a PC because they wish it to be, because the cognitive dissonance was so great when “Open didn’t always win”
This is not to suggest we should remove this capability from macOS/Windows but I wouldn’t call it a regression.
Sorry, but this is bulls*t.
The iPhone has, what? A few million applications from third parties? It's a platform.
Use the iPhone with 0 (ZERO!) third party applications for 1 year and then get back to me ;-)
Actually, even if you somehow manage to do it, that's not even the point. The AppStore makes something like $60bn per year. iOS is a platform.
No - it’s not going to add anything at all for users except being forced to deal with a bunch of shady app stores, some of which will be deeply hostile to privacy.
Developers will also be forced to support multiple stores and sets of rules. Dealing with this will eliminate any possible cost advantage.
Everyone loses except for the new group of middlemen who get to take a cut.
> This isn't the case on Windows. This isn't the case on Android. Or Linux for that matter.
It sounds like you are saying there is plenty of choice for people who don’t want a walled garden.
> It's more disappointing it takes 10 years for regulators to step-in and say "that's bad, no more, open up your platform".
It sounds like you are saying this should never have been allowed, despite there being no legal reason against it.
It means lower prices for those who are smart enough to use the cheaper store and those who cannot will stay on the official store that takes its 30% cut.
In fact even the bare existence of other stores would mean that the cut probably goes down, since Apple probably will prefer to stop the outflow of users.
If someone is inept to use other store than the official apple store, then I guess they have to pay the higher price. Your post sounds comical on a forum called "hacker news". You sound as if using a second app store is some secret knowledge...
You also seem to ignore the fact that even computer inept people try to reduce the amount of money they pay for stuff and money is a big incentive (app costs 1 dollar less on other store is a great motivator to learn how to use it).
This is guaranteed false.
Unless the ‘cheaper store’ has almost all of the customers, you will need to support most of the stores, otherwise you’ll simply lose access to customers.
Just to break even, developers will be forced to support multiple stores.
If consumers want a cheaper option, there is nothing stopping them from buying a cheap android phone today.
That is one extra option for the consumer to choose, if they want it.
It wouldn’t be voluntary. They would be forced to support the other stores or lose revenue.
Claiming it’s just a matter of choice for developers is simply not correct.
The extra options would also come at a cost for consumers who would need to deal with multiple stores, many of them with undesirable features such as weaker privacy protections.
People like you could still overpay in the official store.
so if platforms are going to be forced open, we should go after game consoles too, then there needs to be some means to protect consumers from predatory apps because we are just opening the door to that and more.
finally, it also means that apps you don't like will now be easily available so best be good with that and not asking government to judge every app.
finally this means apps can do what they will unless we are willing to let platforms still restrict how they use your data.. which to be honest blocking 3rd party apps is at times beneficial
as in, you can have it all but everyone gets to as well.
So what will you give up for the freedom? Do you want the platform owner to still police for privacy issues? I don't see how it can be done if they cannot control access.
Frankly let all apps stores be forced open and it will be fun to watch how fast many demand them locked up or heavily regulated or worse
Every now and then their interests align with those of the users, but ultimately they all serve their own interests and will happily stand opposed to the users whenever it suits them best.
Of course, that behavior makes sense in chess because the entire point of a game is to be an artificial world where only the letter of the rules are what matters and the only tangible outcome is winning or losing.
In the real world of business and politics, things like human decency and fairness should come into play. But increasingly, at least in American politics and corporations, the game is played only according to the letter of the law. Anything they can get away with, they will.
Installing the software you want on your compute device isn't sideloading. Its just installing software. Apple is aberration here not all of the users who just expect to actually own the products they buy.
If that comes to pass, there will be no highly-guarded, highly-moderated mobile OS to choose from. Apple has tremendous resources and expends tremendous resources, under pressure of tremendous incentives, to moderate it well. Do you think Third-party app stores will be moderated better or worse on average? Not just with respect to content decisions, but privacy, security and the works.
There is a very reasonable case that having a solidly-guarded and moderated mobile OS as an option in the market is good for consumers. It may boggle the tech-savvy mind, but another way of reading the incredibly successful 10 year history of this horribly locked-down, oppressive OS is that the market has spoken. And it's happy.
My wife fell into this category when we first met, after I began teaching her even just some basics and she learned to question things and be more careful, I haven't needed to "diagnose" her computer in a long time (I still do regular maintenance, but irregular issues never come up anymore). So I would say that education is the biggest key in this regard, teach them to start with a zero trust model.
Problem solved. If you want the walled garden, opt in at the beginning, and now your children/grandmother are safe as long as they don't literally reset their phone, wiping all their pictures/apps/whatever.
Zero chance Facebook doesn't do this with Instagram. Zero chance large employers don't do this with their surveillance software.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/01/facebook-and-google-...
From Netflix' perspective that still adds considerable UX friction, and some percentage of potential customers will drop off.
At what percentage cut is it better for them to just stay in the Apple store? 10%? 5%? 2%? At any of those rates Apple still makes boatloads of money.
Android already allows side-loading and i don't think any popular app out there is asking users to enable side-loading to install their app. Why do you think the situation would be any different with iOS app store?
Aggressive Protection? Sounds like the Mafia. Protection, paid for by you whether you want it or not. Pay the 30% or the mafia's going to break your kneecaps.
People and organisations do it because it’s highly profitable, and it’s highly profitable because it’s a trusted and curated platform (unlike the competition).
Pretending this is anything like the mafia is childish.
Some examples: I hate it how there’s no adult content allowed in the App Store. Or how if I build my own version of Signal, I have to disable push notifications and things because I haven’t paid apple enough money or something. I hate that last I checked, I can’t buy books in the audible app. If my camera breaks, I apparently can’t get it fixed by anyone except Apple. I hate how Apple charges my bank for the privilege of using the NFC chip in my phone, which I paid for.
It’s ridiculous to demand that Epic games makes their own phone if they want to sell me their game. Ideologically, this is capitalism. But capitalism works best for everyone when there’s healthy competition. Wielding their superior phones to enforce a monopoly in other parts of the ecosystem is anticompetitive and anti consumer. And I’m glad someone is finally standing up to them.
If you don’t like your phone, get another one. This is the most ridiculous first world problem, and associated whining, I’ve ever seen.
You have alternatives, but you’ve willingly chosen the iPhone. Then you whine that it’s not sufficiently like the competition, despite this being the headline feature of this product and company. It’s completely childish and ridiculous.
Let me make this very clear for you: I, as an end user, want Apple to have complete control over its platform. That’s precisely why I bought into this, and not another ecosystem. I do not want sideloading, I do not want alternative stores, I do not want the so-called “healthy competition”. And I should be able to make that choice, as a consumer.
The headline feature of apple devices for me is that unlike Google, Apple cares about my privacy and security. Apple doesn't offer a devil's bargain with every first party feature. "We can turn this great new thing on - but in exchange, we're going to track your physical movements everywhere. We can turn this other thing on, but we'll record, save and send audio recordings of your life."
Right now I have to decide between having control of my device but no control of my data (google). Or having control over my data but no control over my device (apple). That decision is crap.
> I, as an end user, want Apple to have complete control over its platform
Good for you. In comparison, I want to have more control over the devices I paid good money for. I don't want to live in a digital serfdom, where my only freedoms are those granted to me by the local lord of the cloud.
I don't want accidentally offending an algorithm to result in banishment (google). Or, in Apple's case, for the local lord to tax and morally judge every trade that takes place under their watch.
If you want to spend your life in Apple's walled garden, great! But I don't want owning the best phone to mean I'm trapped there with you. I demand to be able to enter into a voluntary financial agreement with Epic games if I like. I don't want my own phone to have the power to stop me or levy a tax, just so some Apple VP gets a bigger bonus.
And I pray it stays that way.
I’m sorry mate, but the reality of the situation is that your wishes mean nothing and Apple owes you zilch. You don’t like that, feel free to go somewhere else.
You imposing your views on all of us is not freedom. It’s the opposite of that.
You want open software? Linux is a thing, I should know, I use it every day.
You want a walled garden? Well you should be able to have that choice, too. You want to take that away from me while pretending to do it for the greater good, when in reality it’s just a selfish desire to impose your will on others.
> And I pray it stays that way.
If Epic had an alternate app store, you know you wouldn't have to use it right? You could still use Apple's walled garden. Granting me the ability to run more software on my device doesn't restrict your ability to control what runs on your device.
> it’s just a selfish desire to impose your will on others.
You're the one arguing for restrictions about what I can do on my phone. I don't care what you do with yours. Nothing Epic is proposing would stop Apple from reviewing apps and selling them in the app store.
And if opening the door to free and open marketplaces, with the user in the driver's seat is selfish, guilty as charged! Sign me up! The engine of capitalism works best with healthy competition. (And no, the phone megacorp duopoly is not healthy competition.)
Reigning in monopolies is what healthy regulation is made for.
Apple has a clear, technologically enforced, complete monopoly on apps distributed on their phones. And google has a weak monopoly on their phones - you can distribute your app on other app stores, but its difficult for everyone. The situation on Android is slightly worse than Microsoft distributing IE with windows. And when that happened, the feds initiated a huge antitrust case against microsoft and nearly broke up the company.
Does the fact that there's competition in the phone market mean we should forgive monopolistic behaviour in the app markets on those phones? Thats a tricky question. Its too simple to just fall back on heuristics.
Is there monopolistic behaviour in the app market?
- Does the monopolistic provider use their position to block competition? Yes. Apple doesn't allow any competitors to their own software in the app store.
- Does the monopolistic provider rent seek, and extract far more money from the market than they would if there was healthy competition? Uncertain - I'm not sure if 15% is a reasonable or unreasonable cut. 30% almost certainly wasn't reasonable for the services apple provided.
- Do people buy phones mostly because of their app stores? If they do, then phone competition == app store competition. If they primarily choose a phone on other factors (cameras, etc) then these are separate markets and should be considered separately. Answer: ???
Is there a precedent? Its not exactly the same, but Australia didn't like telstra (an ISP who owned most of the cable at the time) renting their cables at unreasonable prices to other ISPs. They stopped anyone else from reasonably competing with them. You could make the same argument - "You willingly bought a house there so you can't complain. If you don't like it, move". But we regulated them anyway. Notably the US hasn't regulated comcast / etc from doing the same thing over there.
Longer answer than you were expecting. tldr; its complicated. Heuristics aren't enough. Personally I don't think competition in phones means its acceptable that we have monopolies in app stores. I find the justifications for letting apple have a monopoly in the app store unconvincing and I favor regulation.
Let's call a spade, a spade. Your position appears to be "I don't want to choose, and I don't want anyone else to be able to choose either".
That is certainly not the paragon of virtue. Letting people choose -- which doesn't affect you at all - is.
Apple has made a strategic decision to maintain this walled garden. This decision is one of the company’s key differentiators.
Your position appears to be “I want to force Apple to abandon a key market differentiator in service of a marginal gain in personal freedom for a marginal segment of customers who would actually care about such change.”
Apple customers are lacking choice in software just as much as Trader Joe’s customers are lacking choice in food brands.
I certainly didn't buy an iphone because I want to pay an extra tax whenever I buy apps.
Yes! And you’re being wilfully dishonest by not acknowledging this point, despite me repeating it to you a dozen times.
> I didn’t buy an iphone because [...]
Well, I did.
Epic likely doesn’t want an ‘alternative’ App Store they want one that they completely control.
Good. Don't use them. Do you use every single feature of your phone? Of course not. There are probably features you don't even know about.
So don't use them. The mere presence of the feature doesn't obligate you to use it.
Why the hell should Facebook comply with Apple’s every whim and wish, if they could just publish on a different store with less stringent privacy rules, and force you to download it that way? “You want Facebook? Go to Settings -> Privacy, then uncheck the bla bla bla box, and install Fb Store. Then...”. Yeah, no, that’s my worst nightmare.
Seriously, how do you people not get this?
There's no reason Apple can't enforce the same privacy options OS wide, even for sideloaded apps.
Of course they don't want to, they would lose their 30% cut. But if they are forced to allow 3rd party app stores they would have to, if they wanted to continue their privacy focused marketing.
Pretending this doesn't have deep parallels to the mafia is childish. Keep pretending and we'll have Tony break your kneecaps.
There are plenty of parallels between Apple and the Mafia. Just ask Epic, who's kneecaps were busted for not paying the Don his share.
Yes, exactly like the mafia.
I'll gladly buy some games from the alternative store... because I love competition - unlike the Mafia.
If this was a Microsoft phone and Microsoft controlled the market share Apple does? people would be stampeding to force Microsoft to allow competing stores (or browsers, default email applications, etc) on them because anti-competitive behavior.
Yet Apple is "magical" and gets a pass for not allowing competition on "their" devices.
Even Google allows "sideloading".
Why does everything need to be like Android, which has way higher market share anyway? How exactly will that give us more choice, if everything has to be identical?
I buy Apple products precisely because Apple has complete control over its devices, not in spite of it. Get it through your thick head.
"I Buy apple" and others buy Apple while still wanting choice within that ecosystem of hardware. Why don't YOU get that through YOUR thick skull? You aren't the only customer and other people deserve the choice - which is why regulations exist to break up monopolies.
Thanks for, basically, admitting that I'm right and that the Don is willing to break kneecaps to keep control of their fiefdom.
Just because there are some other options... doesn't negate the fact that Apple is using monopolistic and anti-competitive tactics to limit consumer choice and business options.
There's zero reason why Epic should be force to pay Apple a 30% cut of all income when Epic has the resources and talent to do so.
Zero reason... other than mafia tactics.
It's not a tacit admission. I will admit it openly. Apple has a close system with full control over it, and that's just the way I like it.
You think that it's a bad thing. I don't. There's nothing to hide on my part, I'm completely honest about it.
> which is why regulations exist to break up monopolies
Which Apple is not.
God, you're dumb, and you don't even know it.
He was tech illiterate. Yet without any effort or choice, people had engineered multiple ways to compromise the basic functionality of sending a message.
If I could have burned his phone in a fire and given him an iPhone, I would have.
He struggled with the tech until someone showed him how something worked, at which point he diligently studied that one app for all it’s worth - but this was limited to YouTube and audio recording apps.
For him to have multiple messaging apps? Can’t see him do it intentionally - most likely he got hit by a pop up which then merrily used it to install a new messaging service.
It was a nightmare because he kept losing track and therefore control of what was going on with his phone. I’m sure the data security and privacy settings on those messaging apps would have been more upsetting.
For his use case a simple big standard iPhone would have made him happier, instead of having to wait for someone else to help him out.
The App Store (and reduced API surface) was a true revolution for the customer. Remember every app installer requiring admin privilege on Windows and creating it's service that runs at startup checking for updates, littering the registry and sometimes installing drivers?
All gone from the App Store. If the app maker doesn't like it he can go target another platform.
Even on Android, the amount of useless software side loaded by the manufacturer is mind boggling.
Missing the point. Sure, many users will trust the Netflix app, but we only need one trustworthy app (like Netflix) to open the gate for all other kinds of untrustworthy apps to also skip the check.
Now you're in the situation "I've already done this, nothing happened. But of course, I shouldn't do it all the time. There's a reason the warning is there."
Now you want to try out this other app. The company doesn't seem shady, but they're new, they don't yet have the reputation Netflix has. So you don't trust it "absolutely", but "pretty much". OK, you go ahead, just for this one app.
Now you're even more used to clicking through the warning. Repeat a few times. Now you're installing totally_not_malware.apk. What could go wrong? You've already installed a bunch of apps this way with no issue. Plus this one app clearly isn't malware, it says so in the title! Also, all your friends are using it and you don't want to be left out.
Most people I've heard referred as "tech savvy" are just plain old gamers, and they can be easily tricked.
Android has only been asking once per source, not per app, for a while. Also, the messages aren't that scary. Folks haphazardly click OK in Windows without reading messages; you can be sure they do the same on a phone.
Then we deal with that later?
It's the same situation as with "third-party" package stores in your favorite Linux distro. Say, on Ubuntu you add a particular PPA, you got to see its PGP signature, etc.
So in the Netflix case, it will be a Netflix store, secured by a DNS + TLS lookup, and limited to what Netflix has to offer.
But consider differently curated stores, some maybe even requiring a subscription fee to support the operation, discovering, checking, and maybe suggesting apps in different areas: from as wide as art apps or music creation apps, to as narrow as high-quality puzzle game apps. (Of course, an app might be available through more than one store.)
When has the market been given a choice?
App Stores have been the only way to get software on iPhones since they were first released. I can't even install an alternative OS on my iPhone, and jailbreaking seems to have become less accessible now too. How do we know what experience is more competitive if competition isn't allowed to blossom? Maybe the market would value an alternative App Store that is able to compete on moderation and/or the 30% developer tax status quo?
> If that comes to pass, there will be no highly-guarded, highly-moderated mobile OS to choose from.
If the market wants this kind of experience, then surely it will continue to exist no?
The choice now is between Apple and Android ecosystems. The best Android phones have comparable hardware to the iPhone, so people are choosing based on software, price, and status.
This is a great place for regulatory intervention to act for the good of the people. I don't really care about the good of Apple. It is the world's most highly valued company, right? It'll be fine.
Librem 5 or Pinephone is a thing as well.
If you're gonna downvote me, I mean... I really feel like the burden is on someone to demonstrate how Apple is somehow more ethical, rather than on me to demonstrate how I'm more ethical than apple lmao
If this is keeping people from switching, then the costs are infinitessimal. Samsung has great importers for you to switch platforms.
That is the battle Epic is currently fighting, to remove the ability for anyone on the market to offer this option.
By requiring everyone to allow third-party app stores, you effectively remove the option for a fully curated experience. Because as mentioned, once a few popular apps start demanding usage of the third-party app store, consumers will no longer be able to choose a fully-curated experience without foregoing those services. And that will lead down an inevitable loss of privacy, increased demanding of permissions for marketing, etc - all of which Apple has fairly successfully fought back solely through their centrally-moderated experience. We all lived through the early days of Android before the built-in flashlight when you had flashlight apps demanding full permissions to monitor everything you do.
It is, in a sense, another "paradox of tolerance" - you have to restrict user freedoms in one area (what users are allowed to install) to protect them in another area (predatory developers). Apple's walled garden is the only thing keeping those marketing departments at bay, their restrictions on app-developer (and ultimately end-user) freedom are what protects your privacy. Similar perhaps to how GNU and BSD regard "freedoms" differently - BSD regards developer freedom as paramount, while GNU regards user freedom as paramount, and these are not quite the same things. While BSD protects developer freedom to release proprietary code on top of BSD code, GNU restricts developer freedom and forces that to be released under GNU license as well. And ultimately that translates into a loss of user freedom in some sense - surely users would like the ability to have ZFS distributed alongside the Linux kernel, but GNU restricts that freedom in furtherance of the big-picture.
Ironic as it is, the Apple Store is the GNU of this situation. They are willing to burn some specific cases of application developers who are not willing to accept the licensing terms, in order to protect the big-picture of user freedoms (privacy). Android is the "BSD", where they are more concerned about developer freedom than user freedom. And the loss of specific apps is analogous to the friction between mixing source under copyleft license with other open-source licenses.
If you want third-party app stores, Android exists. This is about Epic fighting to take away the option to have a moderated, quality-controlled experience and eroding the ability of users to maintain their privacy.
I've read a lot of mind-boggling post-hoc rationalisation of Apple's anti-competitive and paternalistic behaviour, but this definitely takes the cake.
Does GNU not (at times) restrict the distribution of software that end-users might find desirable, in order to protect their rights as a whole? Why do you think that is bad?
Has that restriction not resulted in the creation of a high-quality, user-freedom-regarding codebase despite (and in fact because of) those restrictions? Why can Apple’s policy of mandatory curation not have a similar effect on the market as well?
It seems self-evident that a lot of the privacy improvements in recent androids (like filesystem isolation in Android Q) probably would not have occurred without the impetus provided by Apple’s competitive pressure in this area, so you benefit from this even if you choose Android and “the BSD model”.
Like, I completely get that this is a developer-centric community and you see it as Apple gating access to the user base that makes you money. And as a user I see it as Apple blocking nefarious practices that developers clearly race to use as soon as they're allowed, in order to make a couple more pennies off my privacy and worsen my user experience. I don't think it's intellectually honest to pretend there's some huge Apple userbase who's champing at the bit to have Facebook have root access on their phones, they already have Facebook now, and Apple's curation forces Facebook to tone down the worst of their excess. Just like it wouldn't be honest to hear Microsoft whining about how it's not fair that GNU is restricting user freedoms because Microsoft isn't allowed to distribute code that links against GNU source. No user would want Microsoft to link against GNU code, Microsoft might want to do it because it would make them more profit, but you shouldn't put words into my mouth as an Apple customer.
And if you really did want to "sideload" onto your iphone, the only real barrier is having fifty bucks to get an apple developer account. Then you can sideload whatever you want. Similarly, a Microsoft developer account will let you sideload any UWP apps you want onto your Xbox, I've seen tons of people using it as an emulator console recently and that's certainly quite a thing for a walled garden.
Discuss, if you have points to make. Don’t just grump that “Apple bad”, that’s low quality posting.
No, the GPL does not restrict the distribution of software. The GPL requires that source code be made available. That's not remotely the same thing. The GPL also doesn't have anything to do with manual curation. The GPL is also, while we're on the subject, not a platform. The GPL does not prevent you from running GPL-licensed code on another system, or building your own system that interacts with GNU code. Apple does prevent all of those things.
So ignoring that the GPL does not restrict the distribution of software[0] there's still this huge jump in logic you're making that starts with "here is a thing that resulted in good outcomes" and jumps to a completely separate concept and says "maybe this will also have good outcomes." But it's an Apples and Oranges comparison.
It's like saying, "the GPL has resulted in good software. Maybe an increased federal minimum wage will also be good." Those two things aren't related to each other.
> It seems self-evident that a lot of the privacy improvements in recent androids (like filesystem isolation in Android Q) probably would not have occurred without the impetus provided by Apple’s competitive pressure in this area
It is also self evident that concepts like filesystem isolation do not require gatekeepers to work. The web has better security than your iPhone. It just does. And it doesn't require mandatory curation to get those benefits. It is possible to build systems that have good sandboxing controls without closing down platforms and installing gatekeepers that decide who is and isn't allowed to make software. Filesystem isolation is a good example of that. We can do things like retire persistent device advertising IDs without an app store.
> it's not fair that GNU is restricting user freedoms because Microsoft isn't allowed to distribute code that links against GNU source
No, Microsoft can distribute code that links against a GPL library, in fact if they link against a GPL-licensed source they are required to do so with the code they link. The lack of restrictions in the GPL is the reason why the GNU and the OSCI don't recognize "source-available" licenses like SSPL, which do actually restrict user freedom. The GPL is a different thing. We actually do want Microsoft to link to GPL code, and sometimes Microsoft does release code under the GPL, and we're all usually happy about it.
[0]: In fact, if anything it's the opposite, it requires the distribution of software code (in some instances). The GPL is never going to tell you that you can't release something.
GNU says you can't distribute their source unless their license terms are met. That's a restriction on distribution, yes. For example, it's not legal to distribute kernel source alongside CDDL licensed code like ZFS.
If we were to apply your standard to Apple - Apple doesn't restrict what apps can get into the app store, they restrict what apps in the app store are allowed to do. You cannot request permissions you don't use, for example, but they don't say that "Facebook is allowed and Instagram is not". Any other application that does what Epic does would have been blocked too, that is the licensing requirement of Apple's software environment.
> It is also self evident that concepts like filesystem isolation do not require gatekeepers to work
I in fact never said they did, this is putting words into my mouth.
I said there would have been no market impetus on Android to offer them without Apple doing them first. Which is self-evidently true as well - why are those features only being offered in Android Q? Why did it take 15 years?
> So ignoring that the GNU does not restrict the distribution of software[0] there's still this huge jump in logic
It's not a jump in logic, I'm asking you a very simple question: are there situations in which restrictions in certain "user freedoms" (such as the ability to receive CDDL code distributed alongside GPL code) produce an overall better outcome despite small-scale negative outcomes from players who do not comply with the overall licensing requirements?
Just saying that is apples and oranges doesn't mean anything. Tell me why that's not true.
Ultimately it is a microcosm of the paradox of tolerance. "The only thing that cannot be tolerated is intolerance itself". And similarly "The only freedom that cannot be tolerated is the freedom to violate user freedom" is the basis of both GPL and the Apple store license.
If you want the app store where you can do anything, there is Android. Apple is attempting to provide a curated user experience. They aren't preventing you from buying Android, just doing a model they think is better for their users. And that's the freedom of contract in action. Their users have alternatives and are free to go elsewhere. Why don't you think they should be allowed to prefer that?
Would it be OK to sue the GNU Foundation and force them to dual-license all existing code as BSD because copyleft is "anti-competitive"? Why or why not? If not, why should Apple be forced to alter their license agreement to allow third-party stores?
Where? GNU says that you can't link against a GPL-licensed[0] source without meeting those license requirements. There are zero restrictions on distributing GPL code, and there are zero restrictions on distributing your own code. There are also zero restrictions on allowing users to link code themselves. You could distribute your source and separately allow users to link that code to other libraries, and you would not be in violation of the GPL.
> it's not legal to distribute kernel source alongside CDDL licensed code like ZFS
I can run ZFS on Linux. This doesn't seem to be a real problem. There are multiple tutorials online about how to build the kernel with ZFS support, and with FUSE many distros do offer out-of-the-box ZFS support.
What is a piece of software that I am not allowed to run on Linux because of the GPL? I can run completely proprietary NVidia graphics drivers on Linux. How is my freedom as a user being taken away? This is not a comparable situation.
In fact, the only ecosystem where this is actually a problem is the Apple App Store, which disallows developers from distributing their software in a GPL-compatible way.
> Apple doesn't restrict what apps can get into the app store, they restrict what apps in the app store are allowed to do.
So Apple will never ban my developer account? They'll only ban an app? They certainly would never threaten to remove a separate app like Unreal Engine from a separate platform like Mac over a legal dispute?
Come on, Apple doesn't have restrictions on what apps can do. They have restrictions on what developers can do. And Apple reserves the right to remove apps from their store for any reason.
> are there situations in which restrictions in certain "user freedoms" [...] produce an overall better outcome
Sure. And at the risk of being a little too sarcastic or petty, that's why I think we should have higher federal minimum wages. The GPL works, so it's obvious that sometimes some restrictions in some areas can produce good outcomes. So therefore, having a higher minimum wage, or requiring software engineers to be licensed, or putting a cap on how much money Apple can charge in its store will also work. It's the same principle. /s
Leaving the snark/sarcasm behind, the comparison you're drawing is inaccurate because:
A) the GPL doesn't restrict people the way you think it does
B) even the restrictions you think the GPL is imposing are wildly different than the restrictions that Apple is imposing
C) the motivations behind the GPL's restrictions are different than Apple's motivations
D) every major architect and proponent of the GNU system has treated Apple's approach to moderation as a restriction of user rights that should be opposed, and they're probably in a good position to understand whether or not Apple is on the same side as them in regards to user freedom
E) the GPL is not a platform or an app runtime, and it doesn't restrict anyone's ability to run other code on top of it
F) the restrictions Apple is imposing are not required to produce secure/private outcomes (which you seem to be acknowledging, you yourself say that you're not claiming gatekeepers are required to build secure features like filesystem isolation)
G) it's not clear even ignoring everything above that the upsides of Apple's moderation are larger than its downsides. In contrast, the effects of the GPL are honestly a lot clearer
H) the majority of the privacy outcomes that Apple is touting were invented on the web long before they came to the iPhone. We might as well ask if Apple is so great at moderation why their entire platform has lagged behind the web by almost a decade in terms of adblocking and app isolation.
> Ultimately it is a microcosm of the paradox of tolerance.
Only if you think the paradox of tolerance means that anybody should be able to restrict any freedom and attack any person as long as they can kinda justify one potential area where they might have a good outcome. Looking at the entirety of Apple's restrictions, it is absurd to argue that they are advocating for user freedom in general.
> Would it be OK to sue the GNU Foundation and force them to dual-license all existing code as BSD because copyleft is "anti-competitive"?
Do they control >50% of the entire commercial market, and do they impose barriers of entry into that market, and do they engage in anti-consumer lock-in behavior that makes it impossible to switch devices for many consumers without giving up access to credit cards, subscriptions, and hundreds of dollars worth of software? Is there strong evidence that being able to exempt themselves from their own requirements allows them to undercut competitor prices?
The GNU is not in the same position as Apple.
----
[0]: Quick note, it is GPL, not GNU. GPL is the license, GNU is the overarching organization and software collection.
I didn't feel I needed to point this out, but I don't even have to like Richard Stallman to find it almost insulting to compare his passion for fighting in what he truly believes in with the highest-valued company in the world trying to protect their market share at all costs.
> Don’t just grump that “Apple bad”, that’s low quality posting.
It's not "Apple bad", it's "unregulated big tech bad", that includes Apple just as much as Facebook, Amazon, Google, and possibly Epic, although I really don't care about them.
(#) But still nowhere near the level of privacy you can have on e.g. a Linux system running only free software. Apple's privacy track record is good compared to other predatory companies, not necessarily on its own.
Android.
In Android, Epic (and probably tens of ISP and carriers) actually tried that strategy and miserably failed.
So yeah this method does work to keep people using the more "safe" options while also letting others have more freedom with their device if they desire.
Don't forget that the market was pushed that way by Apple's highly influential marketing. People didn't really choose to give up their freedom of their own free will --- they were persuaded to, and only found out about the downsides afterwards.
If you could, why would anyone try to innovate on any level? Why are software engineers and product people paid more than marketing people at the same company?
Is Apple > Blackberry just because Apple had better marketing? Or Nokia?
On the other hand, if you have something genuinely desirable, then yeah marketing help people find that thing.
But we're not talking about changing the operating system, are we? We're talking about opening up the marketplace.
If you're relying on perfect/near-perfect moderation of every application in your marketplace to protect your users from abuse by developers, that already seems like asking the impossible.
The operating system should have a robust security and privacy model that protects users, regardless of what software they run on it. But if you have that, the source of the software matters a lot less, and any argument based on restricting distribution to authorised channels will be weakened.
Conflating these two fundamentally different issues might be convenient for Apple's PR or legal departments, but it's still obscuring how a customer's device is being restricted in ways not necessarily in that customer's favour.
I am happy with the situation for one simple reason: it just works. I hve to many things to deal with and tinker with elsewhere. I honestly don't want to tinker with my phone.
So don't? People seem to have the idea that in order to use Android effectively you have to rebuild the kernel every week. If you treat a Pixel like an iPhone, it works like an iPhone.
Did... did you even read what I was replying to? I was replying to this, emphasis mine:
--- start quote ---
It's depressing that even on hackernews where you expect people want to tinker and have control over their machines there's a probably a majority who are happy with the situation and use the think of my grandma (aka children) using iPhone situation.
--- end quote ---
No, I don't want to tinker with my phone. So I don't, and as a user I'm quite happy with the situation on the iPhone.
I don’t have any urge to tinker with my phone, iPad or MacBook’s hardware- and that’s why I have them. We do build software via Xcode & Unity, which is an amazing experience, but I’m ok with the hardware being mostly static.
This whole “modern computers should be hackable like DOS machines of the late 80s” is absurd. By that logic we should never have accepted systems on a chip. The only criticism is that I strongly think these devices should have replaceable batteries, even at the cost of thinness.
Nevermind the "famers should own their equipment" argument that states that all general purpose computing devices should allow their owners to run whatever programs they want. The fact that Apple controls banking, dating, email, and a million other economic and social functions should be even more reason. That's an unhealthy amount of power.
Apple shouldn't be able to force literally every company in America to dance to their beat to reach 50% of American consumers.
Really think about it.
Apple controls access to 50% of Americans.
That's monopoly. Only the US Government is more successful in its taxing and regulation regime, and this is theoretically used for the betterment of all citizens rather than just shareholders.
Apple subtracts from our whole industry to add to itself. They're acting like a republic of their own. They're downright impossible to avoid if you want to build a successful business.
Give up your Apple fandom for a moment and think about this.
Is this healthy?
Would you still be happy with it if it were Windows Phone instead of iPhone? Would you still defend it?
This reason is exactly why I'm paying Apple premium.
How is this good and not cruel?
What a burden on our economy.
Can I pick phone from manufacturer with eco-system that takes my wishes into account?
Is there a desktop computer that takes your wishes into account? None of those behave like iPhone. What about a laptop?
Yes. That is why I chosen Apple to be my gatekeeper - they have appropriate leverage. As long as they understand that my privacy is more important than business need of some developer they will stay in this position.
> Is there a desktop computer that takes your wishes into account? None of those behave like iPhone. What about a laptop?
Expectations are different from smartphone, laptop, desktop tablet, mini PC, gaming PC, console, microwave, car etc.
Those devices need not to be the same, behave the same even if there is CPU that can run arbitrary code under the hood.
That is why we have different markets to cater for different needs.
This is where you fail to accept that others might have different views.
They want Apple to have a strong market position, so Apple can dictate their conditions to everyone else. They like the fact that Apple can bend every developer out there including Facebook and Google, because access to Apple users is a luxury. They like the fact that Apple uses its position to benefit Apple users.
Of course Apple uses its position to benefit Apple itself as well, but users don't care as long as they got their personal benefits like improved privacy or security. If that comes at a price to other developers, price that those developers would not pay with more open approach, users still don't care.
If Apple would allow installing of any applications to their phones, plenty of apps would run from Apple, because developers hate Apple. Installing some kind of OpenStore would be the first thing you're doing with your iPhone. AppStore would be empty just like Mac AppStore is empty. Very few developers would willingly pay 15% of their revenue to Apple just to have non-existent AppStore marketing (unless you're in lucky 0.001% who got top ranks). So those developers would not bend to Apple and Apple users would get reduced experience, less privacy, etc.
We need to speak up now more than ever. The heat against Apple is turning up, and with all this pressure and focus we can frame our argument with crystal clarity and make it LOUD.
Tim Sweeny, DHH, and plenty of other luminaries are carrying this argument forward. We need to join them in unison.
Why does everything need to become like Android? Why can’t Apple and its users do their own thing? What’s with this Borg mentality HN has when it comes to Apple?
Assimilate or perish. I genuinely think it’s deep seated envy, frankly.
It's difficult for the HN userset to understand, but a more private, more secure experience is more of a benefit than the ability to install arbitrary unsigned apps.
Most normal users don't care about installing the handful of apps that can't pass Apple certification, and it is in fact probably better that they not be on the platform because there are reasons they're being excluded.
Epic's fight here is to block that user experience from being allowed in the marketplace. There exist "open platforms", people choose Apple because they want curation.
Moreover, Epic is mad because that user experience is winning, there are a significant number of users who prefer curation over the ability to sideload whatever garbage.
If this is true, then you need to ask the question "should big companies be forced to be more competitive, even if doing so means a good amount of customers will lose privacy and security", and your answer will be entirely one of preference, what you say can't be correct or incorrect.
While I really would prefer the ability to install anything on my iOS device, I don't really want to do that. Not any more.
I like that TrueCaller on my iOS device works for most features without getting any permission from me, while on Android it refuses to buzz from the splash screen unless you give it every permission - including full contact access and phone.
I like that on iOS a famous payment app from India (PhonePe) works flawlessly with zero permissions but on Android? It needs both location and contacts to even function - neither of these are mandatory for their functioning but still they do and can get away with that.
You know WhatsApp doesn't let you use "Status" feature unless you provide Storage permission to it on Android (I doubt they need it just to shows those images, videos, and texts).
I tried Pixel 4a for sometime. The experience was nauseating. Everything from every corner was trying to jump into my face and distract me with this option, that option, that feature, that dark pattern. I found the right swipe quite nifty that shows you news and your daily calendar etc. So I first tried to find a way to only find the news source or types of news I could see - nope, no go! Then I disabled "Discover" and then it was just an empty white screen! I could literally not use that space for anything else. There was a button in the corner that I could tap once, and then it would show me daily calendar events. After one click! I couldn't set it to use the space which "discover" used to take. And mind it discover was just rage news stories.
And that calendar feature had a mind of its own - sometimes it would show the next 1 event, sometimes two I couldn't find a way to show day or week. I had the option to disable the entire right swipe feature.
I didn't want that clock on my home screen - no way to do that. Could I install another Launcher for all this? Yes, I could even though I didn't want to, but they came with other problems and limitations. I couldn't configure the keyboards to be more simple and remove all the settings from it.
Not to mention feature after feature getting disabled as I disable invasive permissions for features and apps.
It feels depressing to literally stare into a phone and see live and read - "you are the product, deal with it!"
And I was back to my iPhone with its pathetic battery life. So you see, Apple really has no competition and that's why they get away with things.
I have iOS and Android devices. Nothing of worth is stuck on iOS (or MacOS). But iOS is my daily driver. Though I've switched back to Linux for daily work.
I'm happy to mess around with something, but it's definitely great to have a platform that is not so easy to mess up and has great support for the rest of the family. And I'm happy to stay compatible with them.
It’s up to consumer choice people say, but the reality is, bad behavior, like NYT giving you a hard time to stop a subscription, is more profitable. Spamming your notifications with deals are more profitable. I really wish it wasn’t. And the worst thing is when it’s profitable they have the ad money to drown out all the marketing “the good guys” do.
AltStore lets you run your own app store locally on your own network and push app's to your phone from it.
Apple needs to be tarred and feathered for its sins of taking a different path to the rest of the industry.
s/taking a different path.*/creating a serfdom.
s/taking a different path.*/behaving like John Deere.
s/taking a different path.*/making Richard Stallman cry.
s/taking a different path.*/taxation without representation.
s/taking a different path.*/handicapping every platform (web, flash, etc) but theirs, capturing 50% of Americans, making iPhone their only computer, then forcing every single other company to wear a chicken suit.
This is the religious programming in all its glory. Brought to you by the same people that call Apple users sheep.
Some of the security and excellent user experience in fact comes from the enforcing and prevention of arbitrary third party apps. You can't have your cake and eat it too. If you don't want that experience go get an Android (many do, and are happy with it, but forcing Apple to become Android is nonsensical).
There is a common argument that having such a locked down store is what allowed the device to thrive but I don't believe that is usually made in good faith due to the easy counter example of Android being able to unseat the initial monopoly without using the same tactic and the fact that very little marketing or praise for the device has been specifically focused on the iStore being so locked down.
Consumer choice only really counts when there is an open field with healthy competition.
If you want to see more apps targeting a third platform, then you should buy one of these phones.
That's the way the market works.
But there is a network effect in play here, that pretty much disallows a new platform to emerge without compatibility. If I were to create the very best hardware with top notch OS on top, that is superior in every way to every android and ios phone out there, noone would buy it because phones are integral part of our lives with many areas of it requiring applications that are only available on these two platforms. Windows phone pretty much lost due to it — it was not worth the effort of companies to create a third port (even with the big funding Microsoft tried), and without a critical mass, it died off.
But if you can allow supporting the project do buy one! (Though I believe they work basically without a profit margin)
How do you imagine free market works? No companies magically capture the midshare of most users? No companies have anough money/resources to corner the market?
Literally nothing prevents any of the current players in the "non-free market" to develop their own phone. Heck, Microsoft even tried to do it.
Why do you think Microsoft failed even with the tremendous amount of money they poured into and even with having an arguibly great UX?
The way it works. It's not me complaining about "Free market doesn’t work that way."
> Because once a few gets big enough, they can control the whole market.
Yes, yes they will.
So what is, exactly, the nature of your complaint?
Literally, the already existing 2 platforms prevent a new one from emerging —- thus it is incorrect to say that the free market will solve the issue.
Are you arguing with yourself now?
This is your text (emphasis mine): "And frankly, there will not be more mobile platforms because even the current two is already much for companies to develop for. Free market doesn’t work that way."
Unless there is a newcomer with crazy good compatibility, nothing will change.
I'd be a lot more amenable to allowing Apple to make as much money as they want on controlling the only gate into my phone if their only incentives were monetary, but the moment they started making political decisions (banning all vaporizer apps, removing the Hong Kong flag emoji, banning Parler, etc) I was no longer on their side. You can agree or disagree with their decisions on each individual case, but as a liberal I'm not comfortable with a private organization having that much power over public policy. On some level I want to give Apple a way out. My best hope for the company is that they'd prefer not to be making political decisions, but have to bow to external political pressure. I'd like us to help them out and take the decision out of their hands.
As to being able to leave Apple. The amount of work it would take for me, a professional Software Engineer, to decouple all of my contacts, data, personal photos, text history, etc from their ecosystem effectively locks me in. They created a marketplace, and when you create a market in a free market society we'll take you up on it and enforce anti-trust laws. The idea that they don't have monopolistic power is demonstrably false. In fact, I think Apple's monopoly is the most clear cut in the tech community.
I find it hard to ignore that the future of Apple is iOS and MacOS is eventually going to be deprecated. Imagine if you were an Apple exec living and breathing Apple for the past 10 years, surely the OS that you don't get a cut of all app sales on and makes up a fraction of the more profitable OS will feel like the odd one out and the wrong way to do things.
Us, being HN posters obviously find such a statement absurd but imagine you're that Apple exec looking at the charts of how many users are fine with the iOS model, how much more money you make from the iOS model. How could you look at that day in and day out and justify the existence of a legacy OS with legacy ideas like being able to install outside a store like MacOS. Improved privacy/security for users within the store model is the icing on the cake to justify it.
I don't ask for my laptop to be an appliance. The laptop is one type of product that can run arbitrary code if I want it to. The iPhone is not, and that's the type of product I am specifically looking for.
> Us, being HN posters obviously find such a statement absurd
HN is probably just as representative on the authoritative/libertarian scale as society as a whole - this is just a forum for anyone remotely associated with technology after all. Just because you're on a forum doesn't mean everyone will view it from the same viewpoint as you, even if it does dictate how much people downvote/upvote your posts.
Everyone I know who uses an iPhone or iPad is generally using medium to high quality apps, and not suffering from crapware, slowdowns or weird issues.
Everyone I know who uses an Android phone is always complains about weird app behavior, ranging from crummy software quality to flashlight apps that request access to your contact list. And my guess is these people use Googles Play Store.
Somehow, Apple is doing something that is beneficial to the average Joe buyer of smartphones.
In the end, apple is a private company serving its customers. They can’t please everyone. And that’s what I like about them.
Plus: Apple mandated better privacy for users. How could they do that with sideloading app stores? They couldn't.
Now the same shit is happening for web apis / pwa. This is really sad and really makes me hate Apple as a company.
Consumers suffer because Apple controls about 50% of the mobile market and if Apple decides a certain feature will not be available in Safari (e.g. Push API), no other browser vendor can even offer a solution.
Sounds to me like totally abusing their market position to uphold their anti-competitive behavior.
And while the DOJ might only care about the US market... the fact that Microsoft's domination extended worldwide means not only were there no US competitors, but there weren't foreign competitors to challenge them either.
The fact that Android--with 50% US and 72% global marketshare--is so competitive with Apple makes it clear these two situations are not equivalent. Apple is more abusive/controlling in some ways, but they dont have the market power that Microsoft had.
Anchor v Rule:
although market share does not alone determine monopoly power, market share is perhaps the most important factor to consider in determining the presence or absence of monopoly power
Weiss v York Hospital:
A primary criterion used to assess the existence of monopoly power is the defendant's market share.
Maybe Apple can be prosecuted under some other legal theory, but that's a separate question.. and if we have to get into that, that's just more evidence of my point that Apple and Microsoft are different situations and aren't comparable.
You don't need to be successful in stifling competition to be anticompetitive so market share enough to be a "real" monopoly is likely irrelevant. Trying to abuse your position is enough as Google felt with Google shopping and Android. "Capable of having, or likely to have, anticompetitive effects". In Android, "it is sufficient that the conduct tends to restrict competition or is capable of having that effect".
In my opinion Apple is going to be hit hard in the EU. Fans of Apple always roll out the old "but the app store is much more profitable" which is a truth that will IMO come back to bite Apple when refusing others fair access and thereby "restrict competition".
>that's just more evidence of my point that Apple and Microsoft are different situations and aren't comparable.
I agree they are very different and not comparable.
The web is a platform. But Apple controls the browser like it controls the web store so it can selectively exclude functionality that pushes people to use its monopoly app store.
Going to be super fun!
My gaming computer is already filled with like 8 different app stores each completely different then the other and a variety of privacy/security issues on each. All of them need their App Store running in order to play their games, so half the time my computer has 4-5 App Stores running in the background so I can play a single game. And they are all electron/qt webkit apps cause nobody builds apps anymore so each one consumes about 500mb of ram.
And each App Store also has their own chat system along with the others like discord.
I don't agree that Apple should have a complete monopoly, but the alternative is not better. And while Android does have the main Google Play Store, and there isn't to many "alternative" App Stores at the moment. Just give it time, the same thing that is happening to TV Streaming/Game App Stores will happen on Android.
I feel your pain in the sense that that I think user UX will take a hit, but I think that's less important than breaking the monopoly of the current app store.
For example, I can't find apps with pornography or other types of things the high overlords at apple or Google have deemed inappropriate for me to have. That's bad. Apparently apps like Matrix fall under that category. It'd be nice if I can choose what I want to see.
End of the day you have to have enough value to get people to inconvenience themselves - I'd rather that this value gets shelled out to users as enticement to install some app store than Apple capturing that money simply because their store is the only one allowed to exist on the platform.
The App Store is good because it is closed and curated. That's a main driver of the product experience. Removing the App Store irrecoverably damages the iPhone - a curated, non-malware infested, high quality phone with a consistent experience.
I have yet to see any argument how the App Store harms consumers. It helps developers make more money (Play Store revenue is half that of the App store's apps), it helps consumers stay protected from malware infested applications and is easy to use.
Where, exactly, is the harm? Now Epic with their gambling games will be able to rip off kids even more in their own store? Fantastic.
https://www.ign.com/articles/2019/10/07/report-steams-30-cut...
What I mean is, if Apple's cut was lesser / we had different app stores, prices could potentially be up to 30% lesser.
30% is more than fair. People spend more money on the App Store than competitors. Developers want access to that. it shouldn't be free.
Yes people spend more on the App Store and if the dev wants to use it to market their app they should go ahead and pay that 30%.
However if the devs dont want to access that, and/or consumers want to pay lesser, they should have the option to download from elsewhere.
In other words, any savings from the developer cut is simply kept by the developer, not passed onto the consumer.
Is that really true? Legitimate Steam keys are sold by stores other than Valve's Steam store, such as Humble Bundle, Green Man Gaming and Fanatical.
I shop at multiple stores that sell Steam keys, and I would say that I only buy less than 1/3rd of my games from Steam directly, due to heavy discounts via bundling and other sales at various online game stores. I find that the alternate "Steam" stores have sales more often than the official Steam store does.
https://www.pcgamer.com/lawsuit-claims-valve-is-abusing-its-...
You can have a properly curated store with 10% fees, for example. And you can block malware without blocking alternative web browsers or game streaming apps.
People on HN get mad when others make money, but they never get mad when they want to make money too.
> You can have a properly curated store with 10% fees, for example. And you can block malware without blocking alternative web browsers or game streaming apps.
It becomes much more difficult and time consuming, and why 10%? The service is unbelievable - it provides great access to a platform and its high spending users. That is worth more than 10%.
More than fair? Okay then, tell me what percent is fair.
> People on HN get mad when others make money, but they never get mad when they want to make money too.
The problem is not that they make money, it's that they are engineering a lack of competition in order to keep their prices arbitrarily high.
> It becomes much more difficult and time consuming, and why 10%? The service is unbelievable - it provides great access to a platform and its high spending users. That is worth more than 10%.
Charging a significant percentage for "providing access to users" is rent-seeking. That's not a good thing.
Apple is using it's market position and it's leading to inefficient pricing. I guarantee you if Apple was forced to allow other payment methods on their store that their % cut would go down because the convenience they offer is not worth 30%.
And App Store can be as curated as they want if they provide the hooks to allow third party stores and app deployments.
I generally agree that you have the device choice - but considering the size of this market and Apple market position this is a right place for regulators to step in and fix the market inefficiency - just like the Windows/IE thing. And while they are at it they should probably look at digital store policies in general to prevent this kind of thing, Google isn't much better than Apple and they keep bundling stuff with the phone as well.
Apple isn't ripping off anyone. They're taking their cut of sales based off the value of providing access to a high paying market that has a non-negligible cost. The point is - Epic is not doing this "for the market." They're doing it because they want more money for themselves - which is fair, but they are using a service which provides them revenue. That should not be free. For that matter, they have a monopoly over their store as well - should they have to allow third party "VBucks" stores? It's absurd.
> Apple is using it's market position.....
It clearly is worth that, in fact, probably much more - others on this thread that support your POV have said the App Store generates twice the revenue of Android. It's not just the convenience - it simply makes devs more money. Cutting the app store will tank developer value instantly. Developers will lose big time in this event. There will be many on here that will begin to complain as their salary dips. Also apple already cut the fee for smaller apps. So what's the real problem? I have yet to see any tangible evidence of consumer harm.
> And App Store can be as curated.....
That opens the door for malware and a poor customer experience. I can see my mom now being tricked into downloading a privacy invading app. my dad's android is a nightmare. It destroys the product.
> I generally agree that you have the device choice....
There isn't market inefficiency. It's hard to argue monopoly of a company that has 20% of the market. The IE/Windows debate is far different. Both DOMINATED the market. This simply isn't true in this case.
The fact is every time this comes up on HN people just hate Apple, but never look at the actual merit of the arguments. It isn't a monopoly (less than 20% global marketshare), its fees aren't exorbitant based on the value it provides developers, and end consumers get a clean, relatively safe experience. No one is losing, except megacorps like Epic who want to make a little more money.
To your first example: Most malware infections on PCs today are distributed by the Chrome Web Store. (Preventing malicious extensions was Google's excuse for blocking third party install... but since they don't even attempt to control malware they distribute first party, it's hilarious.) If they tell you they have a virus, open their Chrome extensions tab, remove everything, and you're good.
If anything, centralized app stores magnify the problem: By making every single app submitted look like it's coming from a reputable source. If app stores did any realistic good job at policing malware, instead of focusing on policing their revenue tax, they might be a benefit.
But again, malicious apps can have millions of installs and nobody does anything about it. Epic decides to charge 18% less and circumvent Google and Apple's taxation, and they act in less than 12 hours.
Bear in mind, if Google and Apple had to compete in this aspect, it's possible users would actually choose and prefer a third party store with better curation. So they'd have an incentive to improve their review processes.
I will need to see evidence Google employs people to review third-party software.
What is considered Android/iOS malware these days is much more tame than what malware used to be. A cryptolocker on iOS is basically impossible.
Another great example is the target of the Apple/Facebook spat currently - Apple has not just said that the developer needs to go through the OS-dialog approval to use the IDFA (identifier for advertising) to track users, but to do _any_ cross-organizational tracking, including using mechanisms that Apple does not have technical protections for.
Apple developer accounts involve real-world identity verification, so that (hopefully) abuse results in an actual ban of the company and people rather than just of a throwaway account.
Now you can chose to buy en expensive device (or you did in the past and can't de-apple due to lock-in) or not. In the future you could chose not to buy photoshop because of their insistence on their app store dependency.
I think having a more granular choice is good. Like I said, that UX hit, imo, is less important than the monopolistic behavior displayed now:
The apple "tax" (including the rules around links to donation pages and similar nonsense). Curation that cannot be overridden by end-users. Unpredictable policy changes for developers. 1st party appropriation of successful independent applications. Unfair competing (think browser javascript engines).
I think bad UX is less important than those things listed above, that's the argument.
This is somewhat similar to "I don't want to buy an XBox just to play this one game". Of course the barrier there is often a monetary cost. The software platforms are free to download so there's no real barrier.
But for instance, I don't particularly like Epic Games attitude around buying exclusives so I don't use their store. I have missed out on some games I might have enjoyed as a result, but I still have lots to play elsewhere.
I know which one gives me more choice.
Choice is good when there's direct competition. Companies will compete to have better app stores if I can choose which app store I want to use. I as a consumer will get to choose what games I want to play. It's bad for me as a consumer that I also have to choose which app store I'm using to download that game.
Also both things can be bad, but I personally feel that the model where people like Apple due to the "ecosystem" seems to have worked pretty well for a lot of consumers. I don't think "more choice" is a good metric here at all because it's false. I don't care about having more choice in app stores(and I'm not getting to chose which app store I use under either model anyway), I care about my choice of apps. Which isn't really changing, companies will get their product to consumers.
What nobody is talking about is Epic could completely avoid the premium their complaining about by using a website for all transactions. Just like the Kindle App or Netflix etc. The only thing they get from this lawsuit is in app micro transactions. As such it’s really a question of business models not consumer choice.
Netflix is constantly at odds with Apple. You can't subscribe via the iOS app store and they don't even link to the Netflix website due to Apple's rules and how they want their 30% cut for app store-driven traffic.
https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/31/netflix-stops-paying-the-a...
Provides an article from 3 years ago during which time the sign-up flow has not changed and Netflix has exploded in growth.
> Trying to join Netflix?
>
> You can't sign up for Netflix in the app. We know it's a hassle.
What a goofy point of view.
If there are two restaurants in town, and only one grocery store, would you conclude that eating out is better than cooking your own meals because you have two restaurant options instead of just the one grocery store?
Epic would also need all paid transactions to originate entirely from said website - i.e. there would be no ability for their own apps to even send users to that website. There have been multiple horror stories about app developers trying this exact approach and Apple turning around with "nope, pay up your 30% cut".
Trying to join _? You can't sign up for _ in the app. We know it's a hassle.
Not:
Trying to join _? click here
But, actually following the acceptable approach and you don’t run into issues.
This is basically the right to repair / right to do whatever you want with your device debate. You can't force Apple to program the functionality for running other people's code into iOS, but it's legal if you figure out how. This is exactly what went down in 2010 with Cydia [0] - it's fair use to modify your own device, but that doesn't compel apple to make it easy to do so[1].
0: https://www.wired.com/2010/07/feds-ok-iphone-jailbreaking/
1: https://www.wired.com/images_blogs/threatlevel/2010/07/dmcae...
Thankfully, we’ve had the EFF to campaign for exemptions, but it’s frustrating having to go through the whole ordeal every three years because Congress can’t be arsed to fix it.
17 U.S. Code §1201(a)(1)(C)[0]:
> (C) During the 2-year period described in subparagraph (A), and during each succeeding 3-year period, the Librarian of Congress, upon the recommendation of the Register of Copyrights, who shall consult with the Assistant Secretary for Communications and Information of the Department of Commerce and report and comment on his or her views in making such recommendation, shall make the determination in a rulemaking proceeding for purposes of subparagraph (B) of whether persons who are users of a copyrighted work are, or are likely to be in the succeeding 3-year period, adversely affected by the prohibition under subparagraph (A) in their ability to make noninfringing uses under this title of a particular class of copyrighted works. In conducting such rulemaking, the Librarian shall examine—
(followed by a list of things the Librarian will consider)
Sure, you could go with AMD but does having other choices excuse a company? It certainly violates the spirit of anti-trust laws. Apple makes and controls 46% of all the mobile devices in the US. The nearest competitor is Samsung, who makes 25%.
If Apple allowed other OS's to operate on their phone, then they could say "If you don't like our integrated app store policies and policy of not allowing other app stores, use a different OS". But until they do that, the OS and the hardware have to be seen as one thing.
What I would do is force EA to put their games on all stores, then on their own store they can give you a 25% discount because they don't have to pay the tax. Then people could decide if they want store A, B or C version.
If the store tax would be low enough there would not be such a pressure from the giant publishers to avoid the store, as a person that don't like giants I hope that this giants fighting each other will benefit us by breaking the monopolies and ensuring that all stores will play by fair rules and respect all consumer rights.
About the argument that Apple,Valve gives you access to many users, sure that should be price correctly, developers could pay for getting promoted on the first page of the store, but Apple,Google should not get a cut for promoting my app if the user installed it starting from my own website.
That statement isn't true no matter how you slice it. Apple's largest competitor is Google so the idea that you can't compete with Apple is nonsense. And what countries does Apple have a 50% market share in?
I fucking can't compete with Apple, say I am a bank/store/club and my customers(not Apple ones) want a mobile app, how can I give the 50% of my customer my app without having to pay Apple , if I try to sell something or put a link to a page of mine for buying subscriptions or stuff Apple will demand a cut(I know they were forced to be less greedy lately).
2. You can't give your customers an app without paying Apple if your customers are demanding it work for Apple products. That doesn't mean you can't compete. You can still only sell to Android users and other phone users but you have to do so with the understanding of what that means. You're still competing. That's like saying you can't compete with Windows when you only release your app for Linux. That's your choice. You're still competing against Windows.
All that has to happen is that a company has significant market power.
And courts have held that 50% of a given geographic area can fall under anti trust laws.
Your second point is again invalid, say Apple is blocking my website because I said that they are greedy, this is fine in your opinion because I can still show my site to PC and Android users and you can't even see yet the abuse that is happening, Apple should not decide that they don't like the politics on an app or book and not allow the user the freedom to install it, they can block it from the store sure but the user should have the freedom to use his brain and install what he wants, The same for say a group of developers or musicians that want to compete with Apple products , like the Apple Store, or Apple Music or whatever games they have, it is actually ilegal for Apple to abuse their market share in smartphones to give it's own products an advantage. (yeah actually the law does not say you must have 50% +1 market share)
I take it you then also demand that Sirius and Comcast broadcast anyone who brings them any old content, then? Everything should public access?
For that matter, terrestrial radio stations also must broadcast the End is Nigh clapboard kooks, too, right?
I would appreciate if you try a bit more to make the distinction between Apple Store market and just he hardware(the laptop or phone).
So probably in your view this is evil, the people forced a private entity to not be a jerk and apply a big tax. Evil or not this is possible, a law can be made to limit the Google/Apple tax and the same law can be made to force side loading or block loot-boxes.
1. Huawei, in your example, didn't create the radio station platform. We're not talking about publicly accessible platforms, we're talking about a app platform that Apple created, cultivated, and maintains 100%.
2. Again, this analogy has the same issue. Apple doesn't own the entire internet. If Apple started blocking websites, that would be wrong because those websites existed and continue to exist without Apple. The App Store does not have that same providence and was 100% created by Apple.
No one ever said that you have to have 50% + 1 market share so I don't know where you're getting that from. Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, Amazon, Google... all these companies own the marketplaces for their devices. This is not illegal and there is precedent protecting it.
The difference is that laptops have always been able to run that stuff. iOS was setup from the beginning to only allow apps from the App Store.
If users want the freedom to install whatever they want on their devices, they can go with Android.
Why should be this true? Why a law that forbids radio and TV makers to lock their device is good for society but a similar law for phones is less good? What is the benefit? The only benefit is more money for Apple so maybe you love Apple more then people but it makes no sense, sorry.
Apple is a private company whose shareholders decide what's best based on the fact that they created the infrastructure and technology of their platform and they are the ones spending money and resources to ensure its quality and reliability.
If you want to pass laws to solve this problem, create a National App Store platform and then require companies to allow access to it. Forcing Apple to change their own App Store, though, is wrong. How much I love Apple or how much I love people has nothing to do with it.
And not to put to fine a point on it but you can do whatever you want with your iPhone after you've bought it. You can take it apart, swap out components, repair it yourself, jailbreak it, or whatever you want and Apple can't do anything about it (and won't). You're talking about forcing a company to change its own operations for their platform just because you don't like it or agree with the restrictions they've chosen to place on it. I would be really curious to see if you'd be willing to have a private company force you to do something you don't want to do with your own property or self.
The issue with the launchers is indeed a problem, the solution is to have the games run without the shitty launcher. So if you want to buy and play a game you can open your browser, find the best deal, buy the game and if you want do a direct download and play, or use a launcher, install the game then kill the launcher and play the game. This is the GOG model, you don't need the launcher.
So IMO the launcher issue should be addressed by fixing it, not by praying that there will be no competition in future so only my favorite launcher will exist.
Case in point, I bought DooM Eternal's Collector's Edition. I could not use Steam and had to activate the game through the Bethesda launcher. I can add the game to my Steam library as an "external" game but I can't play with my list of Steam friends or use the matchmaking tools built into Steam. I had to use Bethesda's platform and we, essentially, had to re-do all the connections and friends lists to duplicate them in Bethesda. I would have preferred not to do that. You may even be able to do that now but it was not an option at launch.
Also today there are many examples of PC players playing together with console players so there is no technical reason why someone that uses Steam should not be able to play multiplayer game with someone that bought on GOG or PlayStation Store.
Exactly. Yet these limitations exist. That's why people should vote with their wallets and not support games that artificially limit this and why, if people want phones that don't have walled gardens, they shouldn't buy an Apple product.
I agree people should vote with their money but also not ignore the actual voting, and demand that we pass laws in favor of the people. Americans could keep their locked iPhones and EU could have a law where a user would have the freedom to get his device rooted.
I could accept this if valve store didn't take 20 seconds to load on an 8-core machine.
Everything else you said is irrelevant.
But sure, if I put my app on the store I should pay for hosting it, for the updates and reviews, I should pay if I want it to be promoted on the store but I should not be forced to say pay Apple a tax for shit like soem subscriptions or books I sell from my app, I should pay Apple for the store services they offer.
Also Sony and Microsoft should not be immune either IMO
If you're selling them from within the app, you're making use of Apple's payment and subscription infrastructure and the customer base of iOS. Those things are not free.
I agree if you as a customer pay with Apple payment system Apple should charge you a fee, but you as a user should have the freedom to see a link to a product page.
Check all the rule changes Apple were forced to do, they reducing the tax and reducing the scope when to apply it, the Apple fans were sure that Apple was perfect before this changes and for some reason Apple changed it's perfection now and can it be more perfect??? Was the last change the last one, can't Apple be even more perfect then more perfect and offer the user the freedom that they do not deserve??
The changes in policy show that Apple was not in the right and it is not perfect and there is a large chance that the last changes were not enough and they need to slowly give up their control , but squeze as much money as possible because "this is the way"
That's a load of horseshit. You can't walk in to a Target and post an advertisement saying that the Walmart down the street or "Mom and Pop's General Store" sell the same items for cheaper or that they have x, y, z. Apple owns their App Store. It functions just like a regular store and they're allowed to decide what they want to allow on their store and what they don't.
Your position on this is wrong because it's based on assumptions you're making that are inaccurate. This a private platform. They're not abusing their power simply by operating their store and not allowing others to advertise their own outside goods inside of it.
There is an infinite difference with a physical Store, Apple and Google combined control the market where your local store might control a small area (in my little village there are at least 3 stores so there is more competition then in mobile market)
EA's Origin client also knows which EA games you have that were bought on Steam as well.
On an iOS device, the entity that makes the app has no choice of what store to be in, they must be in Apple's. That is a monopoly.
As many have pointed out, if you only want to get your apps from one store-- like Apple's-- you could chose that. But currently you can't choose to use another app vendor.
The fact is the App Store helps everyone. It curates apps for most people, it helps developers make more money (as you said, double the revenue, well worth the 1/3 cut, that no longer applies to small apps), and it helps Apple innovate on their hardware product.
App Store does help developers make more money than if they were not on it, but being on it is the only practical way for them to gain access to iPhone users (they could ask users to jailbreak their phones instead but that is impractical for most). If the courts order Apple to allow competing app stores, users would still benefit from Apple's curation, and developers would still benefit from the distribution by using Apple App Store, but they would have a viable choice of picking another app store without having to change to another OS (for users) or abandoning the largest market (for developers).
> In this case, opening up the market to competition might be beneficial to existing App Store developers.
Only true if the 50% revenue increase disappears (Which is likely with a flood of free apps). Not only that, but more free apps = more privacy violations.
> App Store does help.....
So the App Store is a net benefit - what, exactly, is the problem? There is no demonstrable harm. The small apps got a cut on the fee earlier this year. Now it's just megacorps trying to get as much of the pie as they can, in a way that hurts consumers.
Also allowing 3rd party applications to control critical features is a privacy/security issue I haven't seen addressed.
That is not a sure thing. Having a wealthier customer base could be as much or even bigger a reason for the higher revenue. And curated apps still have to compete with each other.
> If there are free alternatives available everywhere, people will be less likely to pay.
If this were really the case, it would actually be an argument for increased competition because it would be better for the consumers. However, I do not think that it is true because almost 93% of apps in the App Store are already free.[1] So the 100% revenue difference probably would not disappear. And free apps would have to follow Apple's privacy rules, as they do now.
> So the App Store is a net benefit - what, exactly, is the problem?
Of course it is a net benefit. Even if overall fees were 99%, it would still be a net benefit to both consumers and developers because retaining 1% is still better than nothing for developers, and having a software repository is very valuable for users. No-one is suggesting shutting down the App Store. What is being suggested is for Apple to allow other firms to compete against it, because they control almost two-thirds of the market by revenue and can dictate the terms to the participants.
> There is no demonstrable harm.
That is for Epic to prove. They would try to demonstrate that they suffered harm after violating App Store terms by offering a competing payment method, and that it is anti-competitive for Apple to eject Epic's app, given its market position. Regulators would also have their own methods of determining whether harm occurred.
1. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1020996/distribution-of-...
I understand what you wrote about the two companies' motivations but what do you mean when you write that Apple takes paid apps more seriously? What app store policy differences are you thinking of, for example, between Apple and Google, that suggest a more serious attitude?
Is that why I found a dozen Chinese knockoff BonziBuddy[1] clones on Apple's App Store?
There are a few reasons for the discrepancy though. Someone else already mentioned the higher average quality of apps on the App Store.
One facet is the difficulty involved in pirating iOS apps compared to Android, likely because Apple makes sideloading so difficult. Pretty much any kid can spend 20 minutes searching around on Google and figure out how to get paid games for free on their phone.
Another variable is average user affluence. Apple is popular in developed countries with sizable middle class populations, and they position themselves as more of a luxury brand. Android devices run the gamut from ultra premium to ultra budget, catering to user in every socioeconomic class. Apple users on average probably have more spare cash to spend on apps.
So, really what this is about is choice for the big app-manufacturers, including games. It has nothing to do with user choice at all, and the cost is borne by the user (who has a far shittier user-experience than they do now).
They want in on the platform, without paying the fees that being on the platform requires.
Argument for why is that happening: So Apple can make more money.
(Disclosure: I am an Apple shareholder.)
You’re also framing the market in an arbitrary way to support your conclusions. Every company could be said to have a monopoly over their own customers. Any argument that Apple monopolizes Apple customer, or that Google monopolizes Play Store customers could also be used to say Valve monopolizes Valve customers, or Sony monopolizes PlayStation customers, or that Samsung monopolizes the market of Samsung smart fridge customers.
You need a lot more than just that to make a compelling argument that the behaviour is illegally anti-competitive.
Amazon and other vendors have forked Android so that they can put there own store on it. Google does not open up its API enough that you can have the same functionality as the Google Play Store. I think you understand what I am saying, but just in case, it's really different than what you can do on Windows, Linux, MacOS.
I agree you can't have a monopoly by "customers". That's why I don't think Valve has a monopoly. PC users can can and do install games other ways. On the other hand, by my logic, Nintendo does have a monopoly on Switch users and PlayStation does have a monopoly on PlayStation owners. I think it matters a lot less in those cases because they aren't as ubiquitous as phones. In the US, Apple is 60% of the market, which is way past what the US used to define as a monopoly.
I am guessing you don't agree and don't think that is a problem. But I think I understand your point and respect the different point of view.
I think this reframes the issue even further. This changes the claim to being that they're anti-competitive by simply not distributing the competing software themselves. The typical workflow for downloading software on a PC is go to website > download software > install software. The typical workflow for "sideloading" an app is go to website > download software > install software.
I would suggest the reason consumers are inhibited from downloading alternative app stores is because they don't trust apps they've downloaded from alternative locations (you could say the security warnings are anti-competitive, but MacOS and Windows have similar warnings when installing software downloaded from the internet, and they don't seem to generate the same accusations). But in any case, the complaint "consumers trust Google, but they don't trust me, and that's not fair" is not a reasonable basis for a lawsuit.
It's also a very good thing for game devs who aren't at the mercy of the whims of a single company. Steam no longer wants to work with you? Go to GOG, Epic or even self-publish.
The only way to truly improve it for consumer is to require that all platform's be open source. That I could get behind but it will never happen.
This is demonstrably not true. Epic's launcher has been a laughing stock since it was announced.
* It only recently got any form of Achievements (that are completely undiscoverable)
* It has no way to join a party with your friends. I think it has Friends support but am not sure because you can't do anything at all with your Friends so I never even look.
* It has no way to get support (their "troubleshoot" guide amounts to 'clear your cache, run as Admin, then try reinstalling: https://www.epicgames.com/help/en-US/epic-games-store-c73/la...)
* Half the time their UI elements don't work (I just went into the "Troubleshoot" section and the back button doesn't work, so I had to close the whole window and start over)
* There are no user reviews of games
* Their store and library sorting is a mess that makes it difficult to find anything
* They launched without even having cloud save support
Epic's game store is underpowered, buggy, and miserable to use - and plenty of companies still do exclusive deals with them because Epic holds a bag of gold in front of their face. They even do it when it breaks their own promises, like when IOI decided to launch Hitman 3 after promising they'd import Hitman 2 purchases - and then apparently totally forgot that Hitman 1 and 2 were on Steam and Hitman 3 was on Epic, so while XBox and Playstation users got their levels migrated on day one PC users are still out of luck a month later.
And I also should note, half of those items don't need to implemented in a store. People ask for them because they are implemented as extras in other stores, but strictly speaking the distribution and support are the only things the store needs to have to be called a store. Achievements, friend lists, user reviews, and cloud saves can be provided by separate services and work just as well, and could result in a higher cut for the vendors if the store doesn't have to shelter the cost for that.
Also, I doubt you would criticize an embedded OS for only having process scheduling and hardware access, because that's probably all it was designed to do. Similarly, a low-cost store may want to skip on providing all those extra features so they can keep prices down.
No user reviews, no easy help button for noobs, no cloud save, only recently got achievements, can't crush a friends party. all sound like little nice to haves that don't add much value. Does it allow me to find/play the game? Everything else takes time away from playing.
This would be like shipping an OS without internet access to end-users.
Nobody cares about centralised achievements any more, and most people don’t particularly like having different friends lists for each service.
People would rather organise a game through something like Discord that is entirely seperate to the store ecosystem.
I'm not saying you need a full social network on every platform, either.
Nintendo must have missed this.
I'm not sure you understand the market. If saving to the cloud is a must have feature your game will provide it. Ditto for multiplayer. No one is refusing to play a game because the platform you purchased the game on doesn't have an easy help button.
Paying for exclusives is a bit of a bummer but game development is pretty damn competitive as it is, Epic injecting a lot of money to secure exclusives might actually do some good for indie devs.
In my experience most of these exclusivity deals are temporary anyway, so you just have to wait 6 months to a year to get it on your store of choice. That's a fair compromise IMO, especially since nobody bothers to release finished games anymore anyway, so you might as well get the finished version on Steam on sale a year later.
EGS "exclusives" are usually timed exclusives. You wait half a year or so, and get a more stable, better optimized and usually also cheaper version on Steam too. If you want to play an EGS exclusive game immediately, installing EGS isn't a big deal either.
So far, having multiple competing app stores on PC has been a win both for users and developers. Choice is always a good thing.
Maybe the Apple App Store can get it's shit together and present a less hostile environment so these companies are able/willing to distribute on the Apple App Store again, and then you'll actually have a choice.
1. Apple wins = I have no choice but to use the app store.
2. Epic wins = I have no choice but to install multiple different app stores to run many different apps.
Continuing the analogy: Some people want a walled garden to keep their kids safe, but your suggesting to remove the walls and just advice kids to stay on the lawn instead.
You are not buying an iPhone and the software separately. It is one product. The App Store is the product.
I can't "buy" iOS and put it on any phone. The phone and software are inextricably linked. It is one product.
> The App Store is a service provided by Apple that you should have a choice to use or not. The Apple Tax is what you're 'buying' from Apple when using the App Store service.
You can extend this to any level. This is like complaining "I don't want to use Amazon to buy things on Amazon.com"
So this business model is possible. And it's the friendliest to end users, too.
But a number of high-profile publishers (Rockstar, Ubisoft, EA) force you to use their app platform even if you purchased the game on Steam. I bought Far Cry 5 on Steam, and running it first launches Ubisoft's launcher, which usually needs to update (why????), then I can launch the game. GTA Online freebie in Epic Store, first has to start Rockstar Social Club (which also usually needs to update), then finally runs the game. FIFA on Steam forces Origin, and so on.
It's a lot easier to deal with if you use a game launcher like Playnite, or should I say a launcher launcher, but with the rigarmarole you have to go through just to start one game suddenly your launcher launcher is now a launcher launcher launcher.
For the same experience as you get with an iPhone.
What about that video streaming app? Well, there's a new version, so you have to download that right now or you can't watch. Oh, and we logged you out. Get out your phone or computer and type in this link. Then log in there and type this code. Make sure you enable all javascript because otherwise this won't work. Also, there will be an awkward pause after the computer tells you you've activated where the console won't indicate the same and you'll wonder if it even worked.
Granted, some consoles handle this better than others.
Same with new games ... pop in the disc, run the install routine, download the day 1 patch...
Sometimes you can use another publisher app store. Which will in fact start another app store upon starting the game. In turn starting the game. And the game itself will also ask you for a game studio account. So you need 2 app store and 3 account to play the game. And I am talking about single player game here.
Not saying this doesn't ever happen, but I've used Steam for more than a decade now and not once have I seen that happen, ever.
Yes, some games have separate launchers, and yes, sometimes these have support for their own separate accounts and mod loaders and such, but not once have they actually been full-blown alternative app stores.
I don't buy very many modern AAA titles, though, so that might be part of it. Still, of the ones I do buy, none of them have installed some alternative store.
I actively avoid and don't buy/play games that require Origin or Uplay. Even when friends tell me about free games in Origin I don't give a fuck. And I'm a very active gamer.
You do have a choice. There are tons of awesome games out there.
You're only forced to use stuff when you're in the small minority that cares about not using stuff. Moxie Marlinspike explained it perfectly in his DEF CON 18 keynote.
Thing is, I don't think there's any conclusive proof that the majority of customer would be okay with what you're describing.
Most of us on PC are getting along just fine with one or two game launchers. I'm using GOG and Steam. My kid uses Steam and Epic.
When Funcom tried adding their own launcher for Conan Exiles, the vast majority of players berated them so hard on their forums that they removed it.
There is no solution to this problem that benefits everyone perfectly. There are only solutions which are better than the solution we have today.
Actually, there is one near-perfect solution; Apple reduces their cut to ~5% and stops enforcing their insane rules. But that's not happening.
You, and many others in this thread, are blaming Epic, Steam, Blizzard, etc. That's fundamentally flawed thinking. All of this is Apple's fault. 100%. If the government forces Apple to destroy the UX of iOS, its because of actions Apple took which forced their hand. There are actions Apple could take which would abate this. They aren't taking them. You should not be mad at developers; you should be mad at Apple.
Telling consumers they should be mad at Apple is absurd. I am not mad at Apple, I am mad at Epic for wasting everyone’s time with this case that they know they will lose, purely to shape public opinion. The judge so far seems to be projecting this is what will happen. I also don’t like relying on regulators to force changes in a market they know little about. Interfering with a successful model that consumers LIKE and WANT into something else does not benefit consumers.
Benefiting other developers is completely irrelevant to the point of antitrust. That’s just corporate welfare.
Apple would be best to lower their rate a bit, clarify certain inconsistent rules, and not abuse the review process, but otherwise I do not want multiple App stores and prefer Apple to regulate their store over the government. I guarantee you there are far more consumers that share this opinion than not. We really could care less what developers are whining about Apple’s policies or retail cut. If you can’t build for iOS at a profit, find something else to do.
The government isn’t going to force a change of the iOS UX, that’s a pipe dream localized to Hacker News and Epic’s board room. Apple isn’t a monopoly by any definition of the term. You could declare them a utility, but that won’t have the effect you expect.
To believe that iOS, a platform with 15% market share, somehow represents the end of platform history that needs government intervention, is the height of lazy thinking. Build a better ecosystem. Apple did it barely 14 years ago when they were a fraction of Microsoft’s size, and everyone said it was impossible.
Those "insane rules" are an example of that.
Is Apple one of them? The company which disobeys its own App Store rules in the usage of push messages for marking AppleCare, Apple Music, Apple TV+, Apple Fitness, and Apple Arcade? The company which goes beyond this and into marketing these services within the literal Settings app of iOS, an avenue that no other developer has access to?
Is Apple putting the interests of their users "first" by restricting the distribution of cloud game streaming applications without being able to review the individual games within the service? How so? It doesn't put my interests first, and I'm an Apple user!
So, oof, ok, they're putting the interests of the nebulous, general, undefinable "prototypical user" first; not me, naturally, not millions of other users, but some unknown user out there. Though, by serving the interests of this unknown prototypical user, they're actively hurting my interests!
Is Apple putting the interests of users "first" by forcing a 30% tax onto any transaction made in the store? I mean, if one analyzes it with all the critical thinking of a seventh grader, sure. They're protecting their users! From the evil, icky "other" credit card processors like, uh, Visa! and Stripe! Those guys will steal your data... or, uh, I guess they wouldn't, actually they're fine, but then apps could use whatever processors they wanted, including ones which steal your data! I mean, lets ignore that Apple could require developers to use one of a set number of approved safe processors, because jeeze, that would destroy the whole argument, wouldn't want that.
Oh, right, I forgot, Apple is being Fair! They don't want to give special treatment to other payment networks, because then they'd have to pick which ones are safe and show favoritism. There we go, an Unassailable stance. Wait, but... Apple only enforces the IAP Framework requirement for Digital purchases... plenty of apps use whatever payment processor they want, including bad ones, as long as its for Physical goods. Weird... and didn't Apple give Amazon special treatment with Prime Video, for Digital goods, allowing them to bypass the IAP Framework? That's right, they did do that...
Jeeze, this is looking pretty bad for Apple. I mean, they're the ones making the rules, and they can't even operate in a position where the Nebulous and Undefinable Interests of Unknown and Uncountable Users is put "first". What hope does anyone else have?
Except, maybe, just maybe, their hope lies in not treating users like babies who need a nanny to make rules in the first place. I know, its crazy, but hear me out: there was that one time I was drinking from my bottle and the nipple fell off and I split milk everywhere, it was such a mess, my mommy was so mad! But, I'm still here. Growing. Learning. Making dumb, shitty comments on the internet. Capable of (most of the time) acting like an adult and making my own decisions. I'm capable of deciding for myself whether something is Safe, whether I want to take the risk, and hedging myself and my interests when those risks turn sour. Every human is. We can't operate in a nursery for our entire lives and expect to grow as people, or even as a species.
There is so much more that iPhones, and mobile computing in general, are capable of; so lets go do it, and lets not pay Apple 30% and deal with their App Review Team in the process. Because I already paid them fair and square for the phone. That should be enough.
So your perfect solution is to recreate the mess that's on the PC???
I don't think you understand - we don't want that. That's why people like me, my wife, my kids, my parents, my relatives, and most of my friends buy an iPhone - so we don't have to go through that hell.
The number of people who buy a iphone for sheer simplicity is enormous. My friend's Android has a better camera, a different friend's Android has some cool games that I can't get. But that's OK, and it's my trade-off to make.
If Blizzard really doesn't like Apple, when why don't they fork Android and make their own phone and have a cool backend like Unreal engine running it? They have the resources and the fans to do it. And frankly, it'd probably be really freakin cool.
And I’m not trying to understate the complexity, just saying they’d have a decent chance of making a great gaming device with phone capabilities.
And you are forgetting that 'too successful' in these cases is: literally has billions in profit uses market position in an anti competitive way
I bought this iPhone and I can't even run my own programs on it without asking for Apple's permission. This needs to be outlawed yesterday.
Apple is that gatekeeper because I, the user, want them to be. Apple has shown me, as a user, that the trade off they make between giving developers open access and protecting users from malware to be a sane one.
Does it make it harder to monetize an app? Totally, but for many iPhone users, that’s a feature, not a bug. The developers are not apple’s customer, so they’re not building a product around their needs — which we honestly need more of in tech. If I felt more strongly about Apple being a gatekeeper on its own platform, I might use Android in some flavor. But I just want a phone that works and has the apps I want to use without a bunch of garbage cluttering it up.
All Apple has to do is compromise on the 30% number. They've taken it to the extreme and demanded 30% of everything, 30% of subscriptions, 30% of every dollar.
It's outrageous and developers who are perfectly capable of either self-hosting or finding a solution for cheaper than 30% OF ALL REVENUE deserve to keep the 25% of that revenue that is pure profit to Apple.
Apple created this situation for themselves and they will have to give up sooner or later.
Steam makes plenty of concessions for the 30% number and now allows basically pass-through games so that a much more wide variety of titles can appear there even if they aren't paying a full tax to the storefront for appearing.
I mean, could you imagine a world where Wal-Mart was the only store your Toyota car was allowed to drive to, and Wal-Mart charged their suppliers 30% of all revenue to appear on the shelves?
What is happening with the App Store monopoly is truly outrageous, it's an unimaginable amount. 30% is why Apple is going to lose here. If they were willing to be reasonable, it wouldn't get to this point.
This is the real UX problem.
I have no problem buying from a variety of stores. I do that in real life. Most required (pre-Covid) me to walk in each of their doors.
What's a problem is requiring the installed & running presence of a particular App Store to run an app.
If I legally purchased something, why is a particular App Store even still required? If I want to re-install (new device) then I can download it again?
If we're talking updates... I'm happy to forgo update pushing. And renting software with subscriptions just needs to die.
yes and No. When some games are "exclusives" to a certain store, if you want to play such games you end up having to install every store in existence which is not very consumer friendly. It would be better for stores to have every game possible, just like at the time of good old physical retail. It's not like there were Wallmart exclusive games, right?
But to be fair, devs are almost as much to blame as store owners for this situation.
Then don't! You don't need that game. If you and other gamers want to make a stand against the crazy number of stores just refuse to install them. Unless you do that the store owners know your complaints aren't going to amount to a thing.
I think you fail to understand conflicting interests. Devs and Publishers do everything to hype up game releases, and Store Owners buy exclusivity to bring people to their platforms. Even if I restrict my own choice, my vote ultimately does not matter: these perverse incentives are at play, and make life suck for every end user involved.
Devs or Publishers, but devs can also self-publish when they are indies anyway. Epic Store is famously buying timed exclusives - we have seen ShenMue 3 for example exclusive for one year on EGS depiste a kickstarter campaign where they promised a release on Steam on Day 1. Devs/Publishers were clearly to blame there: they decided to ignore their supporters and go for the big bag of Epic money instead.
Either you’re younger than me or you’ve forgotten about the pre-order content exclusives from different stores.
If physical retailers had the marketshare that online distribution now has I’m sure they would have done exclusive games. If you have smaller game devs and no cost of disc manufacturing (ie download only) its easier to make exclusivity deals.
This has basically no bearing to the actual game access. While now, buying in a certain store means a very limited selection of titles, which is unlike anything ever experienced in physical retail. So, bad analogy.
Also, as players we occasionally get games at much lower costs than normal (sometimes even free), which seems to be a benefit we wouldn't get to the same extent if multiple storefronts weren't competing.
It doesn't matter too much, but there actually have been... Nintendo's Chibi-Robo Park Patrol was a WalMart exclusive game in the US. (in 2007)
Edit: In this scenario I am guessing it will not be Apple, but the government who will need to step in and sell store licenses to prevent illegal content... so yay for bribed big government over authoritarian Apple.
Have I got news for you?! You can choose exactly what you want to see.
There's a very cool "App Store" on your iPhone right now. Somebody in marketing named it "Safari" -- IKR! pfft; -- Safari is one of the best App Stores out there. It has this neat interface called "URLs" where you "search" for Apps and apparently they run on this HTML5 voodoo magic; which is a set of open standards, run by the open committees (W3C); and here's the best part -- JavaScript! Yes! No more pesky Xcode tooling and Objective C and Swift and C++. Bleh!
You don't have a choice with many of them. Some publishers force you to use a particular store.
It's not only about which app gets installed. It's also who is tracking what you own. If tomorrow EA decides that the store should be gone, what happens to all the money you spent on their store? Of course, a similar argument could be made for Apple's own store, but they have more incentives to keep that up.
If purchased assets would be treated like phone numbers that you can port to another carrier, then that would be great. Steam supports that (obviously just to 'import' games, not to 'export').
The minute you open up to multiple stores, much of that control is gone or reduced. Or at least limited. After all Apple also nuked Zoom's webserver off all OS X boxes in 2019 so I'm sure they could kill things via iOS updates.
As a more mundane issue, if now content is segregated across N store fronts, that's now N passwords I need to track, N potential places that my credit card can be stolen from, N stores I need up install, log into, and download apps from when I get a new iOS device, etc. I as a user do lose a lot of quality of life tweaks the moment balkanization of store fronts can occur. I as a consumer do feel I benefit from Apple being able to tell app providers "We have about 40% of the market on our devices and if you want to interact with them, it's our way or the highway. So if you want to sell to them, you will meet or exceed these standards, there are no other options."
Ideally this standard setting would be set by a neutral entity like say a government and applied equally across all personal devices, but US privacy regulations are a joke so basically I'm stuck hoping that Apple continues to see value in branding themselves as the more secure and private phone (I'm suddenly nostalgic for Blackberry).
You always have the recourse of buying an Android and side loading if you want total freedom.
Then get an Android if you like that experience?
On my Apple TV I can search for shows on HBO, Amazon, ESPN, etc. All of my recently watched shows, regardless of streaming service/channel, show up on the main "TV" page. I can use Siri to search across all services, e.g. if I ask Siri to play The Office it will find it on Peacock and play it directly from there.
The large exception here is Netflix, apparently they don't hook in to the Apple TV API like the rest of these apps do (I imagine it's the same on the Google TV).
Additionally, not just up next, but based on my subscription patterns, content from CBS, Showtime, Starz, AMC+, Epix, HBO, Cinemax, Sundance, Acorn, BritBox, IFC Films, and MUBI, as well as Apple’s TV+ channel, are all browsable without leaving the consolidated TV UI, and do not need an app installed at all.
From your list, Hulu, Disney+, Netflix, and Prime all do need apps installed. I do have to go into these to discover their own algorithmically proposed (personalized) thumbnails. But for day to day watching, the only app needed for each brand you happened to mention (except Netflix) is the TV app, and when searching for a show, shows from all of these (except Netflix) are in the search results.
Unfortunately, there are apps that work on Apple TV that do not play nice with the consolidated view and watch-roll. Some that were well integrated, backed off, most likely having to do with the waterline on viewer measurement / analytics data.
Netflix is the prime offender here. It wasn’t integrated, then it was, then it wasn’t again. They seem to have landed on a (for them) happy medium, where if you have Netflix in your home (top) row of icons on Apple TV’s home screen, “mousing over” (aka selecting w/ remote) the Netflix icon does show you your Continue Watching and Trending Now options, so you can go directly to those without opening the Netflix app itself. But they no longer show up in even the search interface, which probably keeps me subscribing to and watching other sources more than I need to.
To help give a signal to media owners, and to Apple, I systematically un-subscribed through individual apps and subscribed through the fully integrated “Channels” as those channels appeared. This individual statement is lost in statistical noise, sure. But what you describe is clearly better for the home user, and if enough folks do it, they’ll catch on.
ie: Razer Cortex
Channels are bad and too restrictive -> added cable TV "stores" to buy movies/stuff -> Netflix -> Prime/Hulu/Disney Plus/etc -> App to allow you to search through "channels" -> welcome to TV from the 1990's with the added benefit of millions or channels vs 1000's.
It's like the wheel that took a self-help course on how to reinvent oneself.
come on. there’s a distinct value these app stores add and there is a distinct value in having one for the platform.
the ONLY benefit to this future is Epic gets a larger slice. they will not “pass the benefit down” in some trickle down user freedom economy. they will shove more micro transactions and advertisements into every corner of their marketplace.
[1] https://torrentfreak.com/apple-bans-vpns-from-app-store-in-c... [2] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/meghara/pakistan-forced...
There has always been "app stores" if it's tucows download or filehippo or gamespy or what not.
Very few people google "simulation games" and scroll through the pages and pages of google results and go directly to a publishers website and download an exe that they run.
There is and always has been a middleman.
As someone who has worked in IT and in tech support, I get and agree with what Apple has done.
People buy iPhones and tolerate lack of sideloading.
I buy iPhone because it is basically the only reliable computer I own, and a single, reputable source of software is a big part of that. Not being extorted into installing Steam is a huge part of that.
No, I didn’t _really_ have a choice to install Steam and I fucking hate it, thank you very much.
By making sure the user has a single channel for dealing with payments and complaints.
Deliveroo did an update their software that wiped out my login settings. They didn't support apple login, so I lost access to my account. They won't recover my email because of a special character in it, and so they continued to charge me for their "plus" service every month, and avoided any emails I tried to send asking to stop (asking me to "log in" to change my payment settings!).
Requiring apps use Apple's channel would have protected me from that experience.
> Don't bullshit.
If you're not trying to be persuaded, why are you arguing?
Ok, and if you simply had a setting that you could turn on, that make it so your phone couldn't side load, then you still get what you want.
Everyone wins, by simply giving you the option to turn off side loading, but letting others choose to do so if they want to.
https://www.theregister.com/2019/01/30/facebook_apple_enterp...
If that's the case, take away all the knives, require people to get a license to have kids, don't let them drive cars, take away all of the dangerous things in life so that everybody can be secure. It's just a ridiculous argument to say that we must have only this one particular app store to keep everybody safe. There are a lot of solutions to this. I don't care if I have to sign a written agreement to allow me to sideload things, just give me a way to do it.
People who trade liberty for security are absolutely one of the biggest problems in this world. You should be advocating for people to smarten up instead. Otherwise you're going to wake up one day and you're not going to be able to make a move without asking for big brothers permission.
And, if you say that people have a choice to go on Android well, then they have a choice already don't they? Did the existence of that choice automatically screw the entirety of society? No it did not. So there's no problem with also giving them a choice to sideload.
You're acting like everybody will immediately flip the switch to sideload things. They already made a good choice by going on an iPhone, why are you discounting that people won't also make other good choices? You want people to throw out the baby with the bathwater. If I want to sideload one damn thing that doesn't mean I want to give up the comfort and security of the rest of my iPhone ecosystem.
That's awfully reductionist of you and absolutely not what I'm doing. I'm simply arguing that people saying "no one wants this" are wrong because I am a person that wants this. I do not want my family or friends, who reach out to me for support with their computers and phones, to be able to install and sideload apps.
I've been through these situations already and, yes, while a lot of people will be fine and can sideload without issues, there are just as many who mess everything up and waste my time when I have to restore everything without losing their data. These are not tech savvy people and they don't understand the risks.
Additionally, yes... people have the choice to go Android where they can sideload. That's the choice. Apple or Android. There is no other choice and I'm fine with that and actively support it.
That's rich, considering that you're arguing that offering people an option will somehow ruin the entire ecosystem for you and make your support job more difficult.
> I do not want my family or friends, who reach out to me for support with their computers and phones, to be able to install and sideload apps.
So, tell them not to. Done. If they listen to you - no problem. If they don't and you continue to waste your time helping them, that's completely on you.
If a man fails to learn from you how to fish, it's not very wise to prevent everybody else from fishing.
> That's the choice. Apple or Android. There is no other choice...
There will be, so don't get too comfortable with the status quo. Apple's control is so tight right now that there's only one direction that things can go and I'm looking forward to that as an iPhone user and a developer who would like to simply put some custom programs onto a device that I own without a major hassle.
Currently, my best option is https://altstore.io/ and as you can see from that, people are working on this outside of Apple so even if Apple isn't forced to open up like I am betting, we'll get there eventually.
What are you gonna do if someone in your family installs AltStore? You'll tell them not to or you can't support them - same with sideloading. So, I'm sorry, but your argument really holds no weight with me.
It doesn't need to. I'm not trying to change your mind. I'm explaining to you why some people prefer the option to use an ecosystem that has a walled garden vs. one that doesn't. Unfortunately for you, the majority of people must agree and be ok with the walled gardens provided by Apple because they continue to buy the products.
If people wanted the freedom you're describing, they'd buy an Android phone. If they by an Apple phone, it's because they're ok with that not being an option and some, like me, not only don't mind but actively prefer that.
You entered a lot of comments in this thread when one comment could have sufficed to get your message across. So you'll have to excuse me if I remain unconvinced of your motivation.
> Unfortunately for you, the majority of people must agree and be ok with the walled gardens provided by Apple because they continue to buy the products.
That's patently false. As I mentioned earlier, I myself buy iPhones and iPads despite the fact that I'm not okay with the walled garden as the sole method of loading software. I've also seen many, many people in this thread and in threads past express my same views. Heck, you can see it everywhere even among non-programming hangouts like reddit, 9gag, etc. There's a difference between begrudgingly accepting some sad state of affairs and actively pursuing it.
> If people wanted the freedom you're describing, they'd buy an Android phone.
That's better stated as "If the only thing people wanted was freedom of software sources, they'd buy a particular Android model and brand of phone that allows them that freedom." In other words, you're grossly oversimplifying the problem. As with all things, there's usually a multitude of competing desires driving someones choices. For the masses, software freedom doesn't even enter their minds. Instead, they decide based on their susceptibility to marketing, their financial means (price), what their friends are using, what they're used to and so on.
Luckily for me, the masses don't decide on this. Just like in Banking, Finance, Health and other industries that widely affect the common man - the common man doesn't decide the rules for those industries either. The people working in it do - and I'm one of the people working in it. Do you think common people cared that Microsoft was bundling Internet Explorer with Windows? Not really, not outside of Slashdot in that day - Netscape, Oracle and other affected companies got the ball rolling on that one. Even a small group of Linux users were able to push for getting refunds from OEMs on Windows bundled with their PCs.
With iPhones approaching 50% general market share in the US and 80-90% of the youth market in the US gravitating towards iPhones (which will cause the general market share to keep rising) - the writing is on the wall. They're going to be forced to open up somehow. The only question is what form that is going to take and where (EU/US/Asia). Apple will follow the laws of the land and the law is a constantly changing battleground, especially for a new-ish field such as ours.
I am sure that many people would be fine with being given the voluntary option of turning the switch on, to side load if they choose to do so though.
And you have no significant evidence that if many people were given the option to buy a perfectly identical Iphone, that simply was easier to jailbreak, that people would automatically choose the locked down version.
You have evidence of people prefering iphones over android. But you have no evidence about if someone was offered two otherwise identical Iphone, that people would always choose to not even have the option of switching the jail break switch if it were easy.
The obvious solution would be to give people the option of getting access to the easy to jailbrake iphones and seeing what they would prefer.
It is relevant because I think that a lot of people would want this option, and this would solve the issue by allowing people to voluntarily choose this.
As it is, I have to trust Apple to "not be evil", something Google certainly failed at.
False. People who don't want to take risk simply don't sideload, most people don't know how to anyways even on android - having the /option/ to do so is not a negative.
Android allows is and there's nearly no malware https://duo.com/decipher/google-data-shows-tiny-fraction-of-...
Also, that's a very naive position if you're just going to go by that article. That only covers "known" malware and only Android phones that they have been able to actually register has having these apps installed. Malware is not going to phone home to Google. It's going to do it's damndest to hide itself.
Side note: wtf kind of word is damndest? I always thought it was damnest.
So this argument is wrong but will be peddled by Apple for sure. PC operating systems had viruses because of the non-restrictive, unsandboxed access their APIs gave to every app.
2. Sandboxing is no panacea as we've seen from multiple Android malware attacks that abuse system vulnerabilities to break out of the sandbox. You're also underestimating the amount of damage that can be done even within the sandbox:
- The CryCryptor ransomware abuses file access APIs to encrypt photos and videos on external storage and hold them hostage. (https://threatpost.com/emerging-ransomware-photos-videos-and...)
- The DEFENSOR ID banking trojan abuses accessibility APIs to steal login credentials, text messages, and 2FA codes. (https://www.welivesecurity.com/2020/05/22/insidious-android-...)
App Store review process specifically checks for this.
Interesting, though, that instead of actually arguing any of my points, you want to claim, without any proof, that I'm a shill based on what I like to talk about. Instead of attacking me based on my history, how about actually addressing the points I'm making? Clearly you're unable or unwilling to do so.
I’m tolerant to friction (some) on my “exploratory” device. I’m intolerant to friction on my pocket-tool. The latter must always just work or it is pointless. I’m happy to trade freedom for stability for that use case, and deeply frustrated to make that same trade for the other.
with today's operating systems 99.99℅ of the malware of the past would be detected before being downloaded.
truth is vulnerabilities are still being discovered and exploited, even with the app stores
https://www.zdnet.com/article/apple-fixes-another-three-ios-...
Is same with video streaming, the giants don't want other giants to get a big cut without working hard.
IMO , AppStore competition should be like web hosting, competition is large enough so you have enough choice to buy exactly what you want. Imagine if you want your web page to be visible on Apple stuff you need to pay 30% of your profits to Apple and only if Apple likes your page content.
Please see preliminary hearing video where judge rejected such arguments like yours. Epic lawyers failed very badly.
So if the people would convince the politicians that loot boxes, game exclusives, wall gardens, tracking etc is bad they can force the big giants to stop it and no fanboy or judge in Texas could affect what EU m Australia or other countries would decide.
What? This is simply not true. If anything, 30% is the standard for app distribution. Steam, GOG, MS Store, Playstation, Xbox, Nintendo, Apple App Store & Google Play are all at 30%. If it's a lot or not is opinion.
>Amazon's Twitch takes 50% fee
Twitch is not an app store, it makes no difference to this discussion. It just happens to be higher than 30, so you mentioned it. For example patreon takes 8-12%, but that does not matter either.
>Also Tencent, who is behind Epic Games lawsuit
Tencent is not behind the Epic Games lawsuit.
I don't see people complaining about GoG or Itch.io on this point, because you can download your games for those systems using a web browser and import them into any game manager you want.
It also sounds a bit like you're arguing for federated standards, which is also a thing that we could do. Nobody complains about there being too many repository remotes in Linux, because you wire them up to whatever package manager you're using and that's it. Your setup doesn't become more complicated just because you're using extra software sources. It's still the same commands to search for software and update your system.
This is already how F-Droid works, and it's great. Anyone can set up an alternative repository to F-Droid and I can use them as a software source within F-Droid. It's also the way that your podcast app works. Nobody complains that there are too many platforms for hosting and distributing podcasts, because as long as you avoid bad actors like Stitcher, you just install one app and manage them in one place from every source.
You're looking at games on the desktop through the lens of the model that Valve popularized by being a dominant player that refused to play nicely with anyone else. There are plenty of ways to design an ecosystem for managing stores without turning your computer into a cesspool of DRM. And Apple could do that, it could build a framework that required 3rd-party stores to work like software repositories.
----
Look at all of the fragmented broken systems you're complaining about -- the vast majority of them from video, to music streaming, to game purchases, are fragmented because they are deliberately designed to not work well with each other because the companies want consumer lock-in and DRM. But that's also exactly what is Apple is doing, they're just in a position of power so they're the only people doing it.
People didn't notice that Steam's way of managing games was fundamentally broken until other people copied Steam's strategy and made the downsides obvious. You're noticing the same thing with Apple's app store. You're noticing what goes wrong when app stores are designed using Apple's template -- when they're designed to restrict consumer rights, lock them into platforms, and force competitors out of the market, rather than when they're designed to be standardized clients that serve the user.
> And each App Store also has their own chat system along with the others like discord.
Why does a games distribution platform have a chat system in the first place? Aren't all of those chat systems basically inferior to Discord in almost every way? The Unix way of handling this is that whatever chat system you're using should be able to talk to Steam and get events from that client -- it shouldn't be bundled into Steam itself.
Having the option to use PayPal, Stripe, some other payment processor increases the stress on the UX and also the attack surface for fraud.
When I get presented with the price and checkout in an in-app purchase I’m sure that’s everything I’m paying, there are no hidden fees, it’s secure and there is no way for someone to steal my details. And it’s the same flow to make the payment: double tap the side button and scan my face. This is the parallel with Apple Pay. Plus I think the backend on in-app and in-store payments are the same so it would be ApplePay.
No platform should ever be allowed to be the sole gatekeeper for apps on your device; that it's done for security is dishonest. And it's doubly egregious that they've tied payment processing restrictions onto it too.
I don't make mobile apps so I have no skin directly in this game, but as a user who believes my devices are my own, and as a developer too, I have to stand with my fellow developers in demanding app stores do right by the people producing apps for them.
Right now I'm PRETTY sure I can't get screwed by a random subscription. Having played with some of the others, definitely not true elsewhere.
Do you honestly think this is a worse scenario than having to buy all of your apps/games through Microsoft's app store? Can you imagine using macOS without homebrew because everything has to come from Apple's app store? Can you imagine using Ubuntu without apt because everything has to come from the Canonical's software center? Even Android is made slightly more tolerable by the existence of F-Droid.
Being able to use your preferred software manager/store for everything would be nice, but I don't know of any platform that lets you do that. You either have to deal with multiple software managers and use your preferred one as much as possible, or you're stuck with whatever the platform forces on you. I definitely prefer the former.
Obviously never going to happen, but it'd be a much nicer ecosystem if it did work that way
0: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/da...
(thankfully MSFT is indeed working on their own first-party code signing solution https://youtu.be/Wi-4WdpKm5E)
See SetApp for MacOS and for iOS:
No, because I would have never used macOS if there were limitations that prevented me from being able to do my job. And imagining a world where Apple restricted macOS in such a way is a rather unlikely hypothetical.
The big difference is that iOS has _never_ had these capabilities. Many people have opted into the current model of iOS because they don't consider it a general purpose computing device - they consider it a phone, an iPod, an internet browser, or an angry birds player.
> Can you imagine using Ubuntu without apt because everything has to come from the Canonical's software center?
No, for the same reason. Their customer base would refuse to upgrade, servers would be migrated off, etc.
A closer equivalent there to the current game app stores would be always-on licensing servers which used physical dongles - the game stores are running basically as licensing servers. And professionals _hated_ these. Even software-based licensing servers over the LAN is much less common in professional software these days.
While it's true that apps for PC game stores often double as DRM, I don't think that's relevant to a discussion of whether or not Apple should be compelled to allow for third-party app distribution platforms and the "side loading" of apps on iOS.
After all, there is little stopping you from implementing always-on DRM on an iOS app. You'd just have to implement it in the app directly, which is how PC games used to do it before modern platforms became popular. The rise of those platforms (Steam in particular) had a lot to do with the downfall of oft-maligned DRM solutions like SecuROM. Software-embedded DRM tech like Denuvo are still a blight on PC gaming, but they're at least less common than they once were.
One could expect that someone on a forum called "hacker news" knows how to close apps after running + also disable their autorun at startup.
Multiple app-stores are not that great, but still better than a monopoly of one company that takes a 30% cut for every product sold and in return provides an app that barely works (lags, constant updates, constant questions about password if you dont use it much).
It's basically the same as having multiple icons provided by multiple games. They also had different installers and privacy policies.
Competition among app stores means lower prices and cheaper service.
Somehow the locked down 'S' version of windows is not very popular.
It doesn't have any benefits.
Sorry for the sarcasm, but why do we even need appstores, apart from it being a website to download stuff?
Nothing wrong with that, but app stores, among other things, made computers far more accessible for non technical people, to do things like shop from their couch without talking to anyone.
This is how life is as a PC gamer and it's.... actually good. Who cares if you need to open multiple stores? That is the smallest possible inconvenience, and in exchange we get an insanely competitive marketplace where consumers are regularly given free games and deep, deep discounts to lure them into competing stores.
Would you prefer every city had one car yard? Is it a major hardship for you to have to go to different car yards for Fords and Nissans?
This is why Epic's position is a very difficult anti-trust argument: Apple is aligned with what many customers actually want.
Just vote with your wallet and stick with that store. Android has a half-dozen stores available, but how many people are using stores outside of the official one?
And yes I would love to go to a mall with all the different cars available. Would make it easier to see all available options and pick the best one for me (rather then pick the best one from Ford for me).
I do. I hate it with passion. Launchers have to be updated, games have to be updated; they all have different UX, work better or worse than the other. Let me have just Steam and regulate Valve so that they don't abuse their position, and I'll be fine thank you.
Welcome to the world where you can only use government approved software!
regardless, I hate it too but i really don't care, companies like EA and epic can do whatever they want and i just don't install or play games not on steam or the ps4 stores and move on with my life.
This is more of people complaining about DRM and acting like giving Steam a monopoly over the market is a solution. If you're worried about a company going under and you losing your purchases, the solution to that problem is to not tie game access to an account.
People are looking at a clearly inferior system and saying, "it's OK, Valve will do such a good job that I won't notice the flaws."
You don't have a problem with too much store diversity, you have a problem with DRM and the constant need for you to have a good-standing Steam account and a computer running their client in order for you to access any of your games. But Steam is only a solution to your problem if the company never goes out of business, never bans you, never starts doing shady stuff, never gets overshadowed by competitor... those are not safe bets for you to make.
Like while i trust sony to a degree i don't trust nintendo so all my switch games are hardcopy. I trust steam more then i trust EA/epic and thats on top of the not wanting to deal with multiple stores/ect.
Yes, if you ignored all of that you would have a problem, albeit in this case it would be a problem that was mostly your fault and not the fault of archaic US copyright laws. The point is that without DRM you at least have the option to be responsible and prevent this problem. With DRM, you don't have that option.
> I trust steam more then i trust EA/epic
:shrug: People trusted Kodak and Gamestop too. I'm not worried Steam is going to go under tomorrow, but if something happens where you start to get worried about Steam, tough. You can't do anything about that now. I hope you trust Steam because you don't have an option not to -- no matter what happens in the future or who retires or dies or takes over the company or how the market changes. Your game library is reliant on Steam being perpetually trustworthy for the rest of your life.
> and thats on top of the not wanting to deal with multiple stores/ect.
It's also important to note here that you wouldn't have to deal with multiple stores if you didn't have DRM. You could buy a game from Epic and use a separate client that you preferred to download it. The only reason you can't do that today is because the games are DRM-encumbered and Valve can't legally connect to Epic's servers with your credentials on your behalf and download and run those games for you without breaking the law.
This kind of 'adversarial operability' was commonplace in the computing world before it became legally tenuous for companies to offer those services. There is no reason other than copyright law and a misplaced fervor around the CFAA that Valve couldn't manage your Epic library for you.
> so all my switch games are hardcopy
Partially just a PSA here: there are good reasons to buy hardcopy games but if you haven't rooted your Switch and dumped those cartridges, then they're not actually backed up. You can have an extensive collection of 3DS games right now, but Nintendo doesn't sell a 3DS at this point. The Switch is going to be in an even worse position when it gets retired, because it's DRM-encumbered to the point that emulators won't work unless you dump files from your Switch that you own. You can't set up Yuzu (legally) unless you have a working Switch to get those files from, and Nintendo is definitely going to discontinue selling the Switch at some point.
This is one of the problems of DRM, and people's solution to this problem seems to be "well, I'll just pretend that this can never happen." In a DRM-free world, you can at least try to be responsible. You can take initiative to dump your saves so you don't lose hundreds of hours of Animal Crossing progress and Splatoon data when someone steals your Switch. In the current world you have to either root your console or just shrug your shoulders and try to remind yourself that nothing lasts forever.
This is also a problem that giving one console-maker a monopoly over the entire market would not solve.
You just reminded me one of the many reasons I stopped PC gaming and either casual game on mobile or use a console.
Are you kidding? Because it just takes a look at how bad the EA store is to realize it sucks.
Yeah, you don't use it, but you know who does? every single person playing Sims. You'd be amazed how many "Why does the Sims 4 doesn't work anymore on my mac?" calls I've got...
Right now the only choice people have for a phone that doesn't force you to have an apple or google account is a pinephone and this could potentially fix that.
Perhaps we should just name it such.
So "App Store" becomes "Content Filter".
And you can install any app you want from any URL, unless you have some content filters installed, which will limit what you can install.
No more App Stores.
This was the real problem. Apple has to get a cut if you run the app on an Apple-made device and either sell the software or charge money for digital goods at all.
There is only upside for Apple with these restrictions, so I see them continuing to fight this fight with the excuse being "Customer experience, security concerns," etc, where the reality is maintaining the wall and gate in their garden.
1. Buy game X from Apple's app store for $39.00.
2. Buy game X from X's own app store for $30.00.
Would you install X's app store then? Would you at least want the option of choosing that path?
The real solution there is forcing digital sales to include a perpetual license to the software independent of the platform. The current digital monopoly culture is against the overwhelming majority of citizens.
Why? Epic Store is literally giving games and discount vouchers away so you'd get _on_ they're platform. You somehow imply that there wouldn't be competition between competing services?
For people like (excuse my bluntness) us hacker news types sure. I can make a case that for a large chunk of the population this is not true - consoles are popular because people don't want to have to deal with the added complexity that came from "freedom".
If Epic wins, any user who wanted a walled garden (e.g. iOS) rather than open (e.g. Android) will be deprived of that choice. Ultimately, having looked into this quite a bit, I think this boils down to a debate whether the walled garden business model should be legal.
It will be install Epic store if you want Epic games.
Install uPlay if you want Ubisoft games.
And so on. Oh, and none of those will provide information about tracking and privacy breaches, because that's part of the business model.
You know, just a thought.
They want secure app distribution? Great! Build an equitable charge model. Charge for transactions, charge for usage, don’t charge flat rates that don’t scale. Certainly don’t prohibit other payment gateways.
And certain don’t punish your competitors in ways you don’t punish yourself. ( blanket certificate removals for a company and all its subsidiaries)
The ends do not justify the means. Apple can run a profitable and secure app distribution platform. It requires being open and fair. They are not doing that.
It is not an unreasonable thing to offer a platform with that security built in.
Blanket punishments are about the only thing that works on large corporations. Everything else can be worked around. Facebook would not have budged an inch on their app unless half their company was shut down a day. I have no doubt part of the point of Epic trying to bypass the billing system is to get additional user data they can monetize.
While it is true Apple is neither open or fair, it is reasonable to assume the many of the apps on the store have no intention of being either open or fair either. Apple is trying to stand between the consumer and rampant corporate ethical lapses. That they are also doing so in the name of corporate greed makes them hard to defend, but then I hate how much of my income funds the police.
It's the value-added services that are inexplicably linked that bug me. Why can't I allow push notifications without Google's app store? And why can't I use Google's app store without getting bundled into dozens of other services?
Allowing other app stores isn't going to be very compelling so long as Google and Apple can force you to use their app store if you want access to their value add services like push notifications.
30% is completely uneconomic and drives all of the profit to the platform owner. That's why were seeing so many acquisitions.
The problem here is with the 30%.
The answer is very simple - commissions before Apple's 30% were 50%-70%. That's why Jobs conducted that presentation with slide regarding with 30% fee - it was unprecedent for those times.
Also there is also another question - how did you calculate that 5-15% is reasonable? You need to have solid arguments to defend your position. But no one provided - even Epic's lawyers such data. Also most of apps in Apple's App Store are free, so Apple is paying for the whole development/maintenance of infrastructure (delta updates etc.)
Economies of scale alone indicates that if they could do the store at 30%, they could do it for far less when scaled up.
Finally, they are rather near brick-and-mortar markups for a lot of things despite not having all the extra overhead.
So as Apple stated in court docs - it's symbiosis between company, developers and users. If iPhone were bad people wouldn't buy them and developers wouldn't create apps with bad conditions in economic terms.
> if they could do the store at 30%, they could do it for far less when scaled u
Since they aren't monopoly (court conclusion after TRO hearing and on and after preliminary hearing on September 28th 2020) and we are on free market there is no reason to discuss their fee. Moreover they didn't upped it. And never did from App Store launch in 2008, only lowered for subscriptions after 1 year from 30% to 15%.
Developers can stop learning Objective-C/Swift and switch to Android-whatever on their career start if they feel bad about industry-standard 30% fee. But developers won't because Apple's user base is paying money and not sideloading pirated versions like on Android.
Also business and investors don't care about Android, like Clubhouse - for start-ups only iOS matters on first years.
So what we see? Developers who make tenths of millions (Epic Games with Tencent) want free access for Apple's user (install) base for free. There is a word for this - parasitism.
The Mac is great, but the Mac App Store is garbage. And that's the iOS analogue there. That's because Mac has alternatives; centralized, forced big-tech App Stores don't work in the face of alternatives. The only platforms they have worked on (iOS, lesser degree Android) only work because of the Big Tech monopoly.
What sucks more for consumers: Having to install the Epic Games Store to play Fornite, or not being able to play Fortnite? Those are your two options. You want to believe there's a third option where Big Tech Opoly is allowed to run a centralized draconian app store for perfect user UX. This third option does not exist; its availability over the past decade was a blip destined for the footnotes of history.
Hell, go over to Linux and juggle the multiple package managers and package availability between them. That's the natural state of the world; developers hold the cards, and they'll do what is best for their business. The App Store is fighting against nature, and that fight is always a losing one. Always. There is no third option; its just a matter of time.
as a user, I WANT a single app store, that is heavily curated.
As a surprise, who do NOT want that ? Companies already pushing garbage on my desktop computer so I can play their games.
The Mac App Store is garbage and so will be the iOS App Store if Apple are forced to allow alternate stores.
I love the Mac... but it really isn't great for regular (non hacker news) people - unlike iOS I've seen plenty of Macs needing a reinstall
This does mean that Apple will need to start upping their game by either lowering their fee (which means lower costs for you) or supporting other independent games that deserve attention in the App Store.
Furthermore, iOS is a well designed platform with very tight security restrictions. You don't need the App Store to do that, it's build into the platform.
Oh wait.
[1] yes, you can also buy physical games for most systems, but that’s in its way out too. If this plays out as expected, this complaint is going to have a lot of collateral damage.
I don’t think they are as far apart as you think. They are both walled gardens that are heavily controlled by their developers.
Not to mention — this all started with a game developer that wasn’t happy with the distribution of their game. Nevermind that they abide by the same rules and fees for Xbox, Playstation, and Nintendo.
This isn’t about Apple. It’s about all of them.
But we can vote with our wallet, it's a free market. I only buy things on GOG.
If it won't be on the ios apple store i won't install it.
> All of them need their App Store running in order to play their games, so half the time my computer has 4-5 App Stores running in the background so I can play a single game
You can always close down the app-stores you don't need right now, but it's true they don't tend to give you the option to do this automatically.
> And they are all electron/qt webkit apps cause nobody builds apps anymore so each one consumes about 500mb of ram.
Agree, it would be nice if they were more lean. I'm seeing Origin taking up >200MB just sitting there.
This doesn't happen on Android.
> My gaming computer is already filled with like 8 different app stores
This is because game companies want to be middlemen in games distribution. Games have communities, chat, matchmaking, patches, DLC, DRM, sales and pricing engines, analytics, online gaming, and a lot more complexity than your AirBNB or CashApp.
It's also happening with streaming. Once game steaming gains adoption, you'll see it there too.
You're not going to stop this by defending Apple's moat.
Forcing Apple to open up lets small developers get around the Apple tax and draconian and arbitrary review process that hinders their growth. It also lets people control the devices they purchased, and defends software freedoms broadly by discouraging the Apple behavior across the board.
In-game chat could be XMPP or a more modern alternative, too, and then you wouldn't need a separate IM client for each ecosystem.
Finally, I don't think anyone really dislikes the app stores themselves. They are annoyed that they have to pay a 30% tax. If it were 3%, I doubt anyone would be complaining. Apple took a big gamble by being as restrictive as they are -- if they win, they get free money for doing nothing; if they lose, they get $0. I think history will show that they lose; app developers have caught on. But, I could be wrong.
I got around this by simply refusing to install any other stores. If its not on Steam, GoG or Playstation store, I'm simply not buying that game. There are so many games I've still not played and my time is limited, I can live without playing a game that forces me to install another "app store".
With app stores the situation is reversed. Exclusives are common, and many quite expensive devices only have one store available. And once you've got an expensive product from the Apple App store on your Apple device, you can't (usually) change to a Google device and the Google Play Store and still use the product without re-buying it.
For some reason, apt-get has been able to do that with different package repos for last 25 years or so.
Between each of these launchers they have their own chat platforms, I need to duplicate my friends list between them all and they each have their pros and cons.
It's not great and its frustrating. Clearly Steam had a fantastic solution and was ahead of its time in terms of digital distribution of content.
Why can't we move to a solution like brick and mortar stores where every game is made available at every online store? Then I can choose where I want to download the game from.
All developers except Amazon, they mean.
Now that it has happened, I'm actually surprised it took Epic this long to file suit in the EU. Given Europe's stronger antitrust enforcement and general skepticism of tech giants, Epic likely has a stronger case there than in the US. If I were Epic, I'd have wanted to have both lawsuits ready to go simultaneously.
Additionally, movie rentals are already covered by a prior agreement. The article you mention even says that Canal+ and other video services were already using this which is an option where you can allow purchases tied to an existing subscription payment method if you also allow for those purchases in the iTunes Store and integration into the Apple TV app.
There was no special deal for Amazon and trying to present it that way, is, imo, disingenuous. How can it be a special deal for Amazon if it existed prior to Amazon's app changes and other platforms were already making use of it?
Again, I have no idea what is possible on the Apple version, but I have subscriptions on other apps that go through the play store payment system. I'm not an expert on app store policies for payments, but I don't use any other apps that have subscription payment that don't go through the play store. I have a LastPass subscription which I purchased through their website, specifically because you have to go through the play store if you get it through the app.
On iOS though, apps need to use Apple's payment system for any digital good. Unless you're an Amazon Prime member renting a video.
All of this is described clearly in their information. [1]
"3.1.3(a) “Reader” Apps: Apps may allow a user to access previously purchased content or content subscriptions (specifically: magazines, newspapers, books, audio, music, and video). Reader apps may offer account creation for free tiers, and account management functionality for existing customers." [2]
Additionally, Apple also allow small business at 15%.
"Keep 70% of your sales proceeds (85% if you’re enrolled in the App Store Small Business Program) and 85% for qualifying subscriptions." [3]
[1] https://www.apple.com/app-store/
[2] https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/
Even if there was something very specific about Amazon's implementation that allowed them to bypass the rule—at what point is it fair to acknowledge the rule was specially crafted for Amazon? What if the policy had an exemption for "Companies that begin with 'A' and end with 'zon'"?
Buying/renting you can go via their site and I bet they prefer that for at least Google. They get all that customer info and no cut needed.
Any previously purchased items are available on the apps it is just in-app purchasing is usually turned off to prevent the iOS 15% cut for "reader" apps. They could have it on and available to use Apple's Appstore to rent/purchase but the in-app purchasing fees apply 15%/30% depending on the content and app classification.
Pretty easy to just purchase online and then watch in the app.
Games will always be 30% most likely because iOS is a gaming platform as well and that matches other gaming store cuts.
Even Tencent was 55% at one point for MyApp, they came down to 30% inline with other markets in 2019. Tencent MyApp is a competitor to Appstore in China, both companies make about $16B on their stores in revenues. If anything Apple/Google/Steam/etc all forced Tencent MyApp to come down to 30% from 55%. So things could be worse. Cuts prior to app stores were in the 60-70% range for gaming which was absurd.
Epic Game store is 12% (was previously 30% but they lowered to compete on price) which Tim Sweeney has said profitability is around 7-8% but they only allow in games that you have a deal with them. They don't allow just any game to be sold which adds lots of additional cost. Apple, Google, Steam etc all allow in any game which is good as long as it meets their ToS. Mobile really opened up gaming markets and that is industry standard now. Apple/Google even forced Steam to open up about 5 years after the mobile stores appeared.
My guess is break even for stores is about 10-15% if you have a more open market for all, part of that is keeping the stores/games secure from malware and payment info protected. That is why Apple was willing to go to 15% for small business and does for "reader" apps. They aren't making a ton of profit on those.
https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/3/21206400/apple-tax-amazon-...
This provides additional weight to Epic's arguments. They have repeatedly said they don't want a special deal for Fortnite, they want every developer to have access to either alternate distribution methods or a smaller cut.
New purchases follow the same 30/15 rule as every other developer.
So why isn't Youtube allowed to use this for their video rentals, if the user has a credit card on file in their Google account? Why did Apple only offer it to a tiny number of companies, and only one major player?
Edit: to clarify, I'm saying I wouldn't mind having one app store if Apple's stranglehold on IAP could be relaxed (whether by choice or by law).
Another edit: Apple could also allow one-off sideloading, but not allow an app to install other apps (i.e. become a separate app store). This would be a win-win for consumers. Assuming that's who everyone cares about, of course.
Then after the homicide rate doubles, there’s shootings almost daily, and you can’t get from point A to point B without a reckless driver risking your life, you might get stressed.
At first you’d consider moving to the suburb, but you can’t, because Epic’s lawsuit applied internationally and nationally, so actually no community is allowed to police itself in any way (Epic also sued Google for Google Play and I really don’t get why no one on HN is capable of remembering or considering that). And then you’d think, “if I can get murdered here or I could get murdered there, might as well save on rent”. And so, Epic has succeeded in destroying a large part of what makes the iPhone unique.
You gave an example with reckless driving and homicides but it is not clear how that applies to app store competition.
I'm [insert big company e.g. Microsoft], why should I put [insert popular app e.g. Office] on the Apple App Store when I have to give 30% revenue and deal with Apple's privacy rules etc.? From now on if users want [insert popular app e.g. Office] on iOS they will have to download it from our store.
All of a sudden every big company/popular app will have their own store with (likely) worse privacy and security standards. If I'm in Apple's ecosystem but want to use [insert popular app e.g. Office] I'll have to accept these lower standards or not use the app.
It’s not just that iOS will be like Android, it’s that Epic is trying to force Android to be even more of a Wild West than that. Epic wants to give Microsoft the power to force me to download Teams & Office exclusively via the Microsoft Store on Android and iOS.
That's why this is an anti-trust suit, because Apple is stifling competition.
If you have to have a single app store then their prices should be regulated, and crucially there should be proper recourse for developers denied access to the platform
You act like all the R&D isn't paid for with phone sales and development kits ($99/year).
If you want to restrict the market? The price of that restriction should be regulation.
You act like companies wouldn't produce viable alternatives given the opportunity... and you act like Steam isn't better because of the competition.
Apple is putting forced restrictions on their platform because they want to squeeze everyone who comes through their doors. Apple acts like they are the only ones who can create a "brand, real-estate, parking lots, etc" when in reality, it can be done a lot better by any number of other companies - the only reason they can charge 30% is because of artificial restrictions put in place so... they can charge 30%.
Walmart doesn't want Target next door... because then they'll have to actually innovate to keep their customers.
There's no reason that EA can't accept payments outside of the Apple store other than monopolistic protectionism. "research and development" of something 100s of other companies can and do is a weak excuse - and one easily picked apart with relevant examples.
Apple would just have to take other phones as payment for their phones, and the same in reverse.
The issue isn't one of technology, it's that you're pretty much locked in after spending a lot on a phone.
I'd love to look at the software on that floppy, including the virus (it's always fun discovering a novel virus, if there's also games on there even better)
But I should also be allowed to use a floppy to get my software if i want.
Only as of recently and still rarely. Most cars of the world hardly used original parts for repairs. The whole auto repair industry is based on a bunch of hacks and fixes that are not licensed by holy overlords. Most of car computer AFAIK can be sideloaded and hacked with exception of something like the infamous john deere.
Speaking of which, John Deere has been in the news for this for ages now and maybe it's time to seriously liberate car software as well.
Neither of those are true for most people. Just reading the comments on HN the last half year clearly shows that people are confused about what Apple demands. If the HN audience is confused then I feel I can safely state that very few people knows what they're getting themselves into when choosing iOS.
Just the fact that you're not allowed by Apple to inform users about the cut Apple takes should be proof enough that Apple don't want users to know how much money Apple is costing them.
And the fact that iOS doesn't have a decent browser also sucks. Also, users don't understand that Chrome isn't Chrome on iOS.
Users have no idea what they're paying for, or that what they're using is being controlled by Apple.
I hope Apple have to open iOS up so this can end.
They all want, from what I can boil down to, the majority of the time, two things:
1. Control over payments (to cut out the 30%)
2. More control over releases and updates (particularly upgrade pricing)
I think if Apple caved in on these all this would go away.
Likely, that’s about all we will see from a successful lawsuit too.
It’s never been about the App Store being the only game in town. It’s all about reviews, fees, release schedules and pricing mechanics. I don’t think the consumer wins if there are multiple App Stores. I do think the consumer and smaller developers may win if there is some shift around the above issues, though
Well no because Apple needs to test the finished thing before it can decide whether it wants it or not.
Well you have the extremism bias. Only people that are really mad at apple will voice their opinion. You probably won't hear from the thousands or more of developers who have no problem with publishing on Apple platforms. Since it's nothing out of the ordinary they don't go out of the way to comment how awesome it is to publish on there.
And also what I've seen with these stories that there is always a human from Apple App Store review involved, the conlusion often are a phone call with an apple rep or something like that. That's one of the things that's often not true in cases like Google - no humans to reach.
So true sometimes Apple pulls an app, unrightfully, like Amphetamine or etc. but they usually reach out back and you can talk to them.
> “Well plaintiffs always want me to define relevant markets as narrowly as possible. It helps their case. And defendants always want me to define markets as broad as possible, because it helps their case.”
The big elephant in the room is gaming consoles.
If you see iPhone more or less in line with PC/Mac, you may already have made up your mind on how "relevant markets" are defined, and so naturally pre-inclined to side with Epic.
OTOH if you see it more or less in line with Xbox/Playstation/Switch (every one of them having a unique store that charges 30%), you may naturally be pre-inclined to side with Apple.
The judges will eventually get to define what the "relevant market" is, and no amount of HN arguments will change that.
If I were Apple, I would just make a version of an iPhone hardware-enabled to have alternative stores, and I would sell it for a surplus of $1000. This way both sides can have their cake, and the market can decide.
Or a car, or a tractor, or...
Also, like samsung, apple will only be providing like 18 months of updates
Just if you want the convince, security, ecosystem, support you can expect to also in the same price point start supporting all the possible malware you will be able to sideload to your car, tractor and iPhone.
But I guess most commentators want to eat the cake, sell it and keep it at the same time.
And it turns out that was actually a benefit for consumers.
“Included in clean installs of Windows 10 as well as upgrades to Windows 10 from Windows 8.1 or Windows 7.”
My Windows 10 also plays H.264 from a clean install (defaults to Movies and TV viewer) and the list of installed codecs (supplied from Microsoft) contains mp4, xvid and even divx, so no idea where you get the idea that Windows 10 only sells as a N edition. I bought my licenses in Sweden.
If you try to play anything else, you'll have to buy the Microsoft H.265 Codec Pack in the Microsoft Store.
Which, depending on device, country, and time, varies between 0,99€ and 4,99$.
The point of Windows N was to avoid users (or governments) having to pay for bundled codecs they don't need.
This provides the same situation as with Windows N: No Bundle pricing, no Microsoft programs having any special access.
Windows 10 comes with Skype pre-installed.
I’m starting to think you’re merely guessing instead of actually having used Windows 10, because nothing you’ve said so far has checked out with actual installations.
You can just go to the Microsoft store and you’ll see “Windows 10” and “Windows 10 N”, which should be sufficient enough to prove that not all Windows 10 are N editions.
The "Apple Tax" pays for the maintenance of the Apple ecosystem. Epic wants access to this amazing ecosystem, but resents having to help pay to support it.
Either "third party" app stores will also pay to support this ecosystem, in which case Epic will be paying the same amount either way; or they'll fail to support the ecosystem, in which case Apple will be forced to turn to other sources to make revenue (like selling personal information).
Right now I, as the consumer, can choose between an ecosystem whose business model is based on selling personal information (Android) or an ecosystem whose business model is based on the end user paying more (Apple). Don't take that choice away from me.
how did you work out that the amount apple gets paid (30%) is the "correct" amount? The only way to find out is via competition. But due to the monopolistic powers of apple, there cannot be competition on their platform. Thus, we do not know the true cost of maintaining this platform - only that apple is able to maintain it with at least 30%.
> Don't take that choice away from me.
nobody is forcing you to use the third party app store if it does exist. If you continued to use apple's curated store, you will continue to get the existing benefits. Adding an extra option can't possibly hurt you.
30% is industry standard.
> nobody is forcing you to use the third party app store if it does exist. If you continued to use apple's curated store, you will continue to get the existing benefits. Adding an extra option can't possibly hurt you.
It hurts the ecosystem - and all its users. Splitting the apps in multiple app stores is a nightmare
I don't get the point: the whole idea of Apple is to have everything under their control. Nobody is forcing anyone to use Apple devices
Epic will, and this is what they want
> Almost every game on steam can be purchased somewhere else, like icth.io or the game's website. 30% is industry standard among monopolistic players (Google play store, Apple app store, Steam).
That is a very different use case
Certainly false - just like with streaming video, platforms will pay for exclusives from popular developers to force users to visit their stores.
That Steam, and others you mention, charge 30% categorically undermines the whinging about Apple’s 30% being out of line.
I’m also curious about people’s thoughts on Sony pulling CDPR’s Cyberpunk 2077 from their Playstation store.
Steam is the only one on that list that takes 30% that I know of. MS store went through a period where they would pay you to put your app there.
The "correct" amount is the amount that everybody is happy to pay. If Epic doesn't want to pay 30%, then 30% is too high for them. That's OK -- nobody is forcing them to pay it.
The competition you're describing isn't the cost of running the app store; it's the cost of maintaining the entire Apple ecosystem, including iOS, new iPhone hardware, etc.
> Adding an extra option can't possibly hurt you.
Yes it can, and I just explained how. But let me try to spell it out.
1. New iOS "app store" starts up, but only charges 0.1%. This is possible because they don't write the OS or any of the infrastructure; they're a simple indexer
2. Everyone moves over to this app store because the fees are cheaper.
3. Apple's revenue drops precipitously
4. In order to maintain the OS, Apple either a) raises the prices of iPhones b) starts selling my information c) invests less in the iPhone and iOS.
All three of those possibilities hurt me; so yes, a new app store does hurt me.
Apple was already paid handsomely for OS development through the device's purchase price.
> Apple's revenue drops precipitously
Apple has some of the highest margins in the industry. They'll survive.
> In order to maintain the OS, Apple either a) raises the prices of iPhones b) starts selling my information c) invests less in the iPhone and iOS.
See my previous point.
As an iPhone user I prefer the single app store approach. Multiple app stores fragments the user experience, ultimately harming the experience of owning an iPhone. Especially when apps become exclusives to different stores, because they will.
It's one of the main reasons that I moved away from Android. I completely understand the "open system" argument for Android, but a fragmented user experience is a byproduct of that openness. The last android phone I had came with a Samsung store, Google play, and I believe a Verizon app store. As well, going from my Android phone to borrowing a friends meant learning a completely new UX almost every time. "Oh, you don't have a Samsung Android, so you don't have that particular app store, so you can't get the app... Sorry"
It's been several years now, so maybe that's changed, but the biggest thing that makes me stick with Apple is the consistency of the user experience, in both its OS and app store ecosystems.
You can tell people about apps and they know how and where to get them. See an app you like on another iPhone? You can probably install it on yours fairly easily. There's less confusion around the entire ecosystem because of its simplicity.
Boohoo, the most cash rich silicon company will have to compete. Brew or Cydia never ate into Apples profit margins, instead it allowed users to do things apple couldn't be bothered supporting (Like Bluetooth audio on the 3g iPhone on iOS 2.0). Having multiple app stores will allow users to circumvent government censorship in countries where Apple is forced to follow the governments demands.
Where does this "should" come from? Just because you don't think that's the best way to run an ecosystem doesn't mean nobody should be allowed to do it. If it's a bad model, that's Apple's problem, not yours. If you think you have a better model, start a new company with a different model.
> Not only that, without developers, there is no ecosystem. An iPhone without apps is less useful than an iPod touch with apps.
The fact that Apple has a rich and thriving ecosystem demonstrates that their business model works just fine.
> Having multiple app stores will allow users to circumvent government censorship in countries where Apple is forced to follow the governments demands.
Won't one of those government demands be, "No third party app stores"? (Or, "No third party app stores that we haven't approved"?)
It just shows it works for Apple. It doesn't show it works for everyone else. It's like slavery was a good system because it made the slave-owners rich and they thrived because of it.
This is only valid in a free market with lots of competition and information transparency. The crux of the argument is that this does not apply to the app store ecosystem.
But there are plenty of good smartphones with alternate business models. If you don't like the fact that your apps are more expensive because Apple charges a 30% commission, then buy an Android and install a third-party app store.
I really don't understand the attitude.
People need to stop saying this - it’s obvious completely false.
As soon as other app stores are involved, there will be paid exclusives. Equivalent to Joe Rogan on Spotify, or any of the streaming video services who commission studios to make content just for their platform.
It will definitely be impossible to avoid using multiple stores if you want access to the popular apps.
That isn’t true.
In order for it to be true you would need to explain how this would be possible if stores buy exclusive rights to apps.
If epic and others was allowed to use multiple payment processors in the apps, or to install different app stores such as epic games or steam, you wouldn't have fewer choices you would have more.
Apple have hundreds of billions in cash do you actually believe they're going to put ads in their services?
That's irrelevant. The issue in question is one of principle, not whether or not someone is in a certain position at this moment in time and can or can't or will or won't do something. If Apple suddenly lost all of it's money, you'd then be ok with them putting ads into their services?
Well no-one would be using it so I wouldn't care all that much - Apple losing all their money would basically require giving away iPhones for free with 0 revenue given apples financials.
No - the ~50% margin Apple makes on the phone pays for the ecosystem. Apple could charge nothing for inclusion in the app store and still be by far the most profitable electronic device maker on the planet.
By all means, keep overpaying for Spotify on the App Store so Apple can collect their 30% each month, but don't force me to. Customers already pay to use a licensed copy of iOS on supported hardware and governments have every right to protect the customer from perpetually getting screwed by Apple. At the very least, we shouldn't allow Apple to limit free speech so that developers can't mention a way for their users to save money.
Neither the Epic Store or Steam on PC are built around selling your data. Epic's PC store charges 12% (and if you use Unreal, they waive the licensing fee for that engine too), and Steam has a special tiered tax for massive companies (something like 25% for 50m+ in revenue, 20% at some higher tier)
Without the requirement that all apps able to be purchased on all stores at similar prices and still under Apple's review process then apps will flock to the store that makes them the most money and fewest rules and users will have no choice but to acquire that app via that store. If I have to go to X store for an app I need I don't really have my choice of store.
Do gamers like the current culture of having to have Origin, Steam, UPlay, Epic, GOGs, Blizzard Store, for no other reason than large middlemen playing Civ with marketshare and exclusives?
I think if this issue was solved we would see less people desiring Apple to have such tight control over their ecosystem because it would mean that for users that like Apple's store opening up isn't a strict downgrade for them.
I'm curious how this will play out in general. Android already allows side-loaded applications, and Epic allowed people to install Fortnite outside of the Play Store and it did poorly, so they begrudgingly added Fortnite back into the Play Store, so I imagine it would be the same thing on iOS. Arguably it could be even more challenging for others because Apple would likely not be forced to treat non-App Store stores the same as the App Store in some ways, which would very likely lead to a situation where users would get popups when when install the new app store and when they load an app, similar to how running a nonsigned program works on Mac now.
I don't like my game library is fragmented. But what if Steam was the only store for PC and I wasn't able to buy/play any Epic or EA games because of that? That would be worse.
Or what if the game prices had to be higher than current prices since the only place I can buy a game was steam and there was no competition?
I guess but if Steam was genuinely the only place where people bought games then Epic and EA games would have no choice but to list on Steam which makes you better off, no?
> Or what if the game prices had to be higher than current prices since the only place I can buy a game was steam and there was no competition?
This I think is the meat of the argument but I think it falls down because competition gets weird with software and copyrighted properties. There's no competition between Steam and Origin for games that are only on Origin. If Microsoft Word is only available on the Windows Store for iOS then there's nothing to compete over for a user that needs Word.
If Apple is forced to allow third party app marketplaces it is clear what will happen. Every major player will make their own marketplace and force you to use it to access their software and whatever other software they have paid to make exclusive. Epic is one of the absolute worst offenders for this sort of behavior. So to everyone claiming "you will still be able to use the curated app store", I guess that's true but only technically.
IOS will not be a better place should Apple be forced to go through with this. This is not being an "Apple apologist". I think we all agree that Apple will happily exploit the people forced to offer services through their platform. But if they are forced to take their hands off the wheel they will lose the power that allowed them to push through some fairly groundbreaking privacy protections, including sign-in with Apple, which I personally deeply appreciate.
This is like saying water is not an essential liquid, there is coca cola and pepsi.
A smartphone might be (big stretch)... of which there are plenty of choices.
This is like saying Dasani (Apple) is the absolutely ONLY water brand out there, when you can get Aquafina (Android) and get nearly the same product. Yes, Dasani is only bottled at certain places (exclusive features like iMessage, FaceTime), but Aquafina has minerality (rooting your phone, deep integration with Google services) as well that make it unique.
More likely, I think you thought the comparison sounded catchy, despite the fact that it has nothing to do with the situation.
And every one of them manages to lose my logged in state and force me to log in again every time I start them, apparently that "Keep me logged in" checkbox is just for show.
Do I sound bitter? It's because I am.
You might want to torch your computer with thermite before whatever it has can escape into the wild.
A lot of comments keep saying this. So why haven't they done it on android? If they wanted to have huge amounts of users use their stores, wouldn't android give them even more of that than iOS?
Why are there all these doomsday scenarios being touted in this thread when what epic is asking already exists on another (larger) platforms, and none of the things that you and others mention happened?
It depends on what you consider the market. Apple totally have a market on 'iOS App Distribution'. Which does not compete with Android because you can't get apps on each other. This is the same logic in the EU's ruling against Google's Android monopoly:
>Google's app store dominance is not constrained by Apple's App Store, which is only available on iOS devices.
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_18_...
When I am using my iPhone/iPad, I expect all apps to work with services connected to my Apple account. No user should be required to provide payment information to a shady 3rd party like Epic, Microsoft or whatever.
It is clear that the "antitrust" action is designed to allow Epic (and similar) to push a solution which is fit for their business model.
As a developer, I don't support the idea of alt-stores at all, it would mean that only big corps will have the resources to create and maintain such distribution channels. Nobody will go through the trouble of installing an alt store for my FooBar pet-project game. Also who is going to review these apps?
Apple could make everyone happy tomorrow vis-a-vis IAPs by charging standard credit card processing fees (~2-3%)instead of 30% while still protecting your payment info from app developers.
> the App Store guidelines that apply equally to every developer and protect customers
This is not only subjectively false, it is objectively false, provable with just a few minutes of reverse engineering. You don't have to be a fly on the wall at some secret meeting between corporate giants to know it, or listen to the plight of app developers. You can literally just go to Apple Configurator and download an IPA file for an app and inspect it to see that Apple does not in fact apply its rules equally to all developers. So why do they keep repeating this? Who will be the first party to hold them liable for perjury?
One of these rules is (hopefully), if i purchase a hardware gadget, all of its capabilities are my possession. Restricting the access on purpose is frault. Epic's case is just a consequence of the missing regulations when providing software AND hardware.
long live the EU and their friends.
Believe it or not, people generally buy Apple devices knowing full well they’re entering a walled garden ecosystem. And they’re doing it for that reason specifically, not in spite of it.
You might disagree, and you’re free to make a different choice, because it exists (and is more popular anyway). Everyone wins.
* Platforms MUST display the amount of the processing fee taken from the payment in a clearly visible format inside of the app and/or the IAP flow.
* Platforms MUST allow developers to implement alternative payment options (potentially cheaper due to lack of additional processing fee).
* Platforms MUST allow advertisement of alternative payment options inside of the app and/or the IAP flow.
* Platforms are allowed to reject apps if they think their alternative payment options are fraudulent but actionable feedback MUST be given within a reasonable time frame.
* Platforms MUST provide a list of trusted payment alternatives which will be unconditionally approved during the app review process. To prevent cartel, the list MUST be periodically audited by FTC.
That said I agree and think Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft should have to open up their platforms for side loading.
Now the less obvious issue: I like what apple does and I am prepared to pay for it.
I agree with those arguing for consumer choice, but I come to the exact opposite conclusion, and find those others hypocritical. I want an option to have a locked down environment. I want to have the choice to buy an Apple product. Given the choice between the Android system or the Apple system, I choose Apple. More people choose Android.
The argument that we should use "consumer choice" to remove this choice from me, and instead to demand that every business must make the world look like Android users want, is not logical.
Now to be fair, as far as 'App store payments' goes, both Google & Apple charge the 30% fee on all transactions. The reason Epic is battling Apple here mostly has to do with the 'walled garden', and the fact Apple's 'control over app downloads' is totally locked down. Epic avoids the Google play 30% fee by having users side-load the APK, so that's a fight for another day I suppose.
Now, for the 30% fee problem. Does anyone really think that is fair an equitable? Come again? They hover up 3/10ths of all business transactions? It just seems so obvious to me that the answer is absolutely not. There is no way I can twist my brain to believe there is any justification for that. If the issue is that it costs Apple (& Google) a lot of money to maintain servers and infrastructure to provide the app store services, then there are other ways to charge developers to cover this cost, and even make some profit.
Apple charges $100 a year for the 'Apple Developer Program'. This yearly fee model is the fair way to do this I think. You could add more tiers too this that scale with usage. $100 for the entry level package, and that covers 'X' amount of usage. There could be enterprise tiers for huge customers like Epic. They are using more of the resources of the app store, then they should pay more. I'm sure Epic would be happy to pay, IDK I'm just making up a number, something like $500K a year for their developer license instead of 30% of every transaction.
I'm just spitballing here, I've not fully formed all these ideas, and I don't know what fair pricing for tiers & usage would exactly look like. But I think most of us can agree a system like that would be much more fair and equitable. I have just never heard a convincing argument of why Apple & Google deserves to own 3/10ths of all the business on their platforms.
https://developer.apple.com/app-store/small-business-program...
I can take a tiny piece of carbon, call it a diamond and sell it for 50,000. Is it fair and equitable? Should that be allowed?
I can take a white T shirt and print a red Supreme logo on it and sell it for 100x cost of production. Is that fair and equitable? Should it be allowed?
The development cost for a book is about $10 dollars of ink and paper. Each copy is printed and distributed for 1 dollar. It took the author 10 hours to write. But the knowledge and insights are extremely valuable. Is it fair and equitable for the author to charge $100 for a copy of this book?
If 30% isn’t allowed, is 29% okay? How about 28%? What exactly is this magic number where things become okay? Don’t businesses have the right to try and profit and not just break even? (If not why would anyone start a new business venture)
If you would argue that we shouldn’t have a free market and the govt should set all the prices in the economy, well that’s a different philosophy entirely. It’s not very popular for a host of reasons
I’m not sure how you took it as far as me arguing against free markets, but I was just trying to speak of my perception of this very specific example.
I don’t think it’s fair for them to take 3/10ths of every business on their app stores. That simple. I don’t think the markets think it’s fair either, but they don’t have much choice. At least not on Apple’s platform.
I don’t think the government should ever set the prices by default, but if the market and the government decide it’s not fair then they can step in. That’s the whole point of anti-trust laws.
Of course businesses have the right to make a profit. I did mention the system I proposed could cover their costs and make some profit.
Sorry if I wasn’t clear on that. They should make profit on the app stores. But the current model is particularly offensive to me. I don’t think there is a magic number. I think the idea that all monetary transactions have to go through them and they get a percentage at all is dumb. At it’s heart app stores are just a means of distributing software. Why should they get a cut of the businesses?
Maybe we could compare it to credit card transactions. The card reader networks take a 3% cut and we’re all ok with that. They provide the infrastructure to allow the transactions to happen, sure I guess they earned it. If you forced me to pick a ‘magic’ number then I would say it should be similar to that.
If Google and Apple took 3-5% none of this would even be a discussion. We probably wouldn’t even care enough to fight it, and they’d still be making money hand over fist on their app stores.
Which to be fair aren’t even the main part of their business. It’s just a side huddle for them. But 30% is the kind of cut title loans and pawn brokers take. No way in hell that’s reasonable for a service to distribute software.
I’ve got a lot more thoughts on this, especially about the differences between Google and Apple in this regard, but I’ll stop there. I’ve ranted enough tonight:)
EU busted that, so in EU it is illegal to take more than a 0.3% cut instead. Because after investigations that was roughly how much they need to be profitable. The 3% fee you see in USA is just 1000% markup.
Although I wouldn't be surprised if app store fees are found to be reasonable at about 3% level and EU enforcing that, just like they lowered credit card fees by a factor 10.
For the sake of argument, let’s just assume there are legitimate security/privacy concerns here and ignore competitive issues a la Spotify for now.
This news article does not mention anything about the basis for antitrust. Is it the marketshare of iOS phone users or it is the revenue. Seems like iOS marketshare as defined by the number of users is about 20%, revenue share should be higher.
At this point, if Apple is forced to allow third parties, I'll lose one of the best time savers I have in my life. Having switched all of my family and close relatives to Apple gives me the freedom of not having to provide almost any support. They are trained to use the platform (and its UI has been stable for years), and I can trust that they won't do anything too crazy just because [insert social network] or [crappy game in vogue] want to sideload a lot of bloatware and spyware on their phones.
When they had android phones, I would get regular phonecalls that went like this:
"My friend X has an app that does [irrelevant stupidity that requires full permissions], how can I do that?" "You shouldn't, this will have access to all of your info" "I don't care, just tell me how to do it"
Then 2 weeks later I'd get another call complaining of how full of ads everything is when they try to open a browser. I tried to disuade them by saying "Your phone can't do that", but that just meant that they ended up changing phones, because now they feel that their phone is inferior.
When they switched to iPhones, i can just tell them "Your phone doesn't do that", and they had no problem. They realized that bragging for 10 minutes was an idiotic thing to do anyway, and they felt great, because they still have a flagship phone, "it's an iPhone!".
It’s not much of a choice when developers have all of the knowledge and users can’t even begin to understand how the apps work.
Obviously false. TenCent controls Epic’s access to the Chinese market, which is much larger than the iOS market has ever been for Epic.
TenCent owns 40% of Epic’s stock, has a seat in the board, and controls access to much more of epic’s revenue than Apple does.
TenCent can absolutely dictate a policy in relation to Apple to Epic if they so choose.
China absolutely has interests in seeing a less powerful Apple, for numerous reasons.
Does this mean the Chinese government is driving this policy? Of course we don’t know.
But, we do know that they were ok with their share of the iOS revenue being lost.
It’s also completely unreasonable to discount to 0 the idea that this is at least in part driven by Chinese government priorities.
It’s not reasonable to say that the only incentives involved here are money.
40% ownership does not dictate anything. They can make a stern request and threaten with some leverage. Ultimately it still won't be TenCent's decision.
> controls access to much more of epic’s revenue than Apple does.
They can dictate a policy.
I think that each editor can still provide an App Store, with specific price model for editor/users, and have to allow competition (with different features... for example, less curation) by providing THE SAME access for the user. For example, every app store must include other main app store. Right now, if you want to use F-Droid, you cant do it as smoothly as using Google Play because it's not on Google Play (but Amazon apps are I think).
The walled garden is a selling point, a feature - I don't care about sideloading at all. You want to sideload? Grab and Android.
Users like you have zero skin in the game. Nothing in your workflow will change, other than you might get cheaper applications.
Epic even tried doing a sideloaded Fortnite for Android and people didn't download it, so they came back.
New stores will pay for exclusives rights to popular apps just as video streaming platforms do for video.
Users will have no choice but to use a jumble of different stores.
If they want an independent store, there is no reason for them not to create one for Android.
If Android was a model for what Epic wants, they would have built a store there.
It’s pretty obvious that this is just about them going where the money is.
Do you think anyone would install alternative stores on iOS?
If so, Android is obviously an irrelevant comparison.
Epic clearly believes iOS is different from Android.
Why wouldn’t Facebook just integrate a store into their App?
Why wouldn’t Google advertise their store in the search engine just as they did with Chrome? Why wouldn’t their store ship with an Android runtime?
Epic doesn’t just believe it would be different. They are prepared to invest millions of dollars.
All there of these are obvious and coherent reasons why it would be different.
Just saying that it will be isn't a reason. None of this has happened. Every attempt at doing this has failed horribly. Most users are not technically capable enough to even go about installing an alternative store.
Why, given that this has not happened in the case of the leading mobile platform, and in fact all attempts to even mildly break with the play store have been resounding failures, would iOS be any different?
You say:
> Most users are not technically capable enough to even go about installing an alternative store.
This is obviously false. We know for sure that average users can install apps.
A store is just an app. Why would installing an alternate store be harder than installing any other app?
Why wouldn’t Facebook just integrate their store into their app?
Both are still in the range of tens of billions of dollars. If one is worthwhile the other is too. Android is also by far the leader in number of actual users, which is what matters most to companies like Facebook.
The sideloading process is harder than just installing an app. Most users do not know how to do it and have no interest in doing it.
Google does not allow third party app stores to be distributed via their app store, and I assume Apple would do the same.
This seems like an unreasonable assumption.
Apple wouldn’t allow alternative app stores at all.
We’re talking about them being forced to allow them. I.e. it’s not Apples choice.
Why would anyone forcing Apple to allow alternative stores permit them to make it too difficult for regular users to do?
It’s not true users who don’t want to side load have zero skin in the game. The entire ecosystem would suffer.
Some people do at the moment, but that's not completely the point.
This legislation should be about tail risk - protecting the people who increasingly only have an iPhone or iPad as their main computer from either forced obsolescence or restrictions on their behaviours.
Why would you buy a device that doesn’t do what you want?
All countries have crime, and the switching cost is immense. However some countries are much worse than others which makes it worth it.
Phones are at parity in terms of features, and the switching cost is trivial.
Moving even between counties is not comparable to just spending a few hundred dollars on a phone.
and this is because taxes are national matters. the EU can try some legal ways of forcing some countries to take more or less tax, but all of those tries are not only being litigated, but also pushed against by the national governments.
It's the monopolist vs the predatory casino, both throwing out thinly veiled user centric arguments at the press while their true motives are greed and user exploitation.
"What happens sometime though is that some people, uh, lie. Some people use unpublished APIs and their app gets rejected. Some people submit an app that they say does one thing, but really does something else. They try to hide it from us, they get very clever about that. They try to hide it from us and we find it and we reject it. And they run to the press and tell a story about oppression and it gets written up and they get their 15 minutes of fame because they hope it will convince us to change our minds which never does, but they keep trying to do that. And it’s unfortunate, but we take it in the chin. That part of what we do. We don’t run to the press and go, “This guys a son of a bitch liar.” "
That was in All Things Digital D8 Conference 2010. Nearly 11 years ago. The landscape has changed, the context has changed. iPhone has only sold 50M unit in total since launch in 2007. These days Apple has 1 billion active user and Apple sell about as much iPhone per quarter. Smartphone and Apps went from nice thing to have to near or already a necessity in modern society. Surely you cant apply the same rules in a modern era, not to mention those App Store rules has evolved since Steve Jobs passed away. Many Apps that Apple used to exempt from the 30% cut now has to comply.
I really wish HN folks read the great piece from Benedict Evans ( https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2020/8/18/app-stores) and Matthew Ball ( https://www.matthewball.vc/all/applemetaverse ). It is by far the best I have seen on this issue. I submitted both a few times but never got on HN Front page. Hopefully after reading both, people will stop using it is Apple Store they could do whatever they want as argument.
I think there are many things Apple could do as a compromise to satisfy vast majority of people and interest.
Break the App Store into Game Store and App Store.
Nearly 80% of App Store Revenue comes from Gaming. As long as all games are still going through Game Store, like console maker are doing which Apple should have a very strong case, they continue to keep the 80% of revenue ( or near raw profits ). Apple could also argue their continue investment into Metal API and the so called Apple's own GPU ( Which is still PowerVR ) as rational. Breaking this case would hurt lots of other interest including Microsoft's Xbox.
Lower the App Store to a flat rate of 10%. And the same apply across all Apps. Software, Services, Subscription or not with an annual Cap of Fixed amount ( minus CC processing fees ) , say $1M per App per year. So Apple isn't rent seeking per se on your revenue. If you sold $100M, instead of $10M to Apple, you now pay $1M max per App. Work load for Apple per App is fixed and doesn't scale with how much revenue an App Generate. And very few Apps ( not games ) make that much money. With Subscription which generate long term revenue benefits the most.
( EU / AUS has ruled both MasterCard and Visa to lower their price. Compare to the ridiculously 2-5% processing fees, they are closer to 1% in both EU and AUS, There are no reason why other countries wont start looking at App Store from Apple and Google in similar fashion. i.e Those 30% from Apps will be gone sooner or later. Better to make some good will than to have no option in court.)
Allow Side-loading of Apps in restricted mode. Where performance and Gaming Related APIs are limited. Access to Camera, Photos and Phonebook or any files requires consent everytime they try to access it with no option to disable or Dont ask again. The reality is 99% of user dont really need or want to side load Apps. And provides enough security and choice for its users. For a lot of Apps, this provide good enough for like News, Email, or other Subscription Apps which really is just a Web App accessing online information without needing the to go though Apple's permission for Apple Store.
And finally, a clear, open, transparent process and pages for developers to App Store rejection. Which makes it much more of a PR problem for Apple that has their interest tied to provide best service.
I really hope Apple do change. Tim Cook is far too focused on Apple's Services Revenue.
What Epic hope to do, is win commercial support and build pressure on apple to lower their fees. Might work too.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-app-store/apple-low...
Would love to hear Tim Apple's opinion on this stuff, on being in this position. I remember quite fondly how he berated Facebook and Zuck personally, by saying he as a CEO would never be in such a situation regarding media scrutiny and regulatory issues.
Oh how the tables turn.. As a dev, I do not like Apple an ounce more than Facebook. So kudos to Tim Sweeney..
Apple is acting as a leader in reducing the footprint of general computing hardware; albeit their devices have among the longest service lives, they continue to be further restricted in their operation over time. There is a danger here with the population switching en masse from using PCs to using Phones as their primary computing devices. Forcing it to allow third party marketplaces might be a start in reversing that trend.
Epic is a leader in the development of anxiety-driven consumer software. Fortnite's primary capital isn't the player's competitive standing, it's the uniqueness of their cosmetic gear. They target the most vulnerable and maleable markets, tweens and children, and ply them with social anxiety; one of the most insidious and emotionally distressing devices for that age group. See also, yesterday's lengthy discussion. [0]
So I kind of hope that the EU allows third party stores, but allows Apple to place curation constraints on the sort of purchases that are available to users.
Have they not hosted Fortnite right up until they wouldn't pay their rent?
Apple isn't defending users from games with manipulative business models, and in fact is actively profiting from them. This lawsuit is about Apple's ability to profit from them.
The EU has a proven track record of exploring innovative regulation; perhaps they will find a solution.
Why limit the condemnation to virtual goods?
Retail games have had a ratings body and seller restrictions by age for decades now.
Considering video games have such stringent regulations on their design, in ways that make the design cost-prohibitive to tailor for different geographies; and content-based sales restrictions around the globe - it's safe to say that games are heavily regulated as well.
Fortnite sells skins directly without blind boxes, which is as tame as virtual goods come. As it happens, none of their virtual goods come anywhere close to F2P regulations. You could have an equivalent moral panic about Twitch chat emojis.
I guess my point is, how much regulation will it take before Fortnite isn't preying on children anymore? Is uncapped spend the problem? Should we limit the other kid hobbies as well? There's really nothing forcing them to stop buying pokemon cards, or comic books, or TV episodes, or toys they see in commercials.
I would strongly support a system that forced operators to either run at cost or to charge any price but allow sideloading.
A maximum profit margin on services like could also be viable.
If we follow the logic of Phones providing access to a market that must remain "free" and allow competition, then constraints on purchase might be something decided by society/people/governments more than a single private company?
This is the worst possible (and likely) outcome.
Stores lose the right to determine what goes in them, but an expensive government scheme replaces that.
Clearly not.
Which department stores are forced to carry products they don’t want to deal with?
That was not about forcing stores to list everything - might be an idea when there is a monopoly. Don't know if this situation exists, that's a different topic.
I am happy he has a medium to socialize but the anxiety he gets from this machine is intense.
I generally advocate for users rights, but I am siding with Apple on this one. There is no monopoly - Epic has many (mobile) platforms to distribute their games/platform, including switch and android, that I can’t imagine the EU sides with them - especially in europe where iPhones don’t constitute the same market share.
However, what I would advocate for is a possibility for officially rooting your iPhone (with lots of big scary messages along the way) and mutual app store exclusion.
If Epic wants to run their own app store, great, but I don’t believe Apple should be obligated to make it comfortable.
That does not sound worse than any fashion store.
Looking forward to the EpicOS Phone, running yet another SDL/Qt variant.
Not only that, winning a case against a company in EU over antitrust often bolsters your defense in the US due to courts preferring to hear about established case law by other courts with similar laws.
What are you referring to here? Antitrust? If so, please provide some pointers. There're a lot of cases, not aware of many wins.
Apple fined 1.23 Billion for Price-Fixing in France https://venturebeat.com/2020/03/16/apple-fined-record-1-23-b...
Apple also has 4 open Antitrust investigations (all opened on the same date and likely interrelated) going on in the EU (irrespective of actions that members may be taking):
https://ec.europa.eu/competition/elojade/isef/case_details.c...
https://ec.europa.eu/competition/elojade/isef/case_details.c...
https://ec.europa.eu/competition/elojade/isef/case_details.c...
https://ec.europa.eu/competition/elojade/isef/case_details.c...
On the other hand, there is a €4.34bn fine for Google for market abuses relating to bundling of Google services in Android, as well as a €2.4bn fine for favoring Google Shopping in its search product, and a €1.4bn fine for abusive practices in Google AdSense.
[citation required]
Tim is not dumb, not at all but he just maintained one of the industry's strongest network effect/lock-in, not more. Beyond M1 there is not a lot that is not from Jobs' inheritance. Ah yes, broken keyboards for more than three years.