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Comment by cygx | Hacker News Reader

The counter-argument runs like this:

Third party developers want to get their apps onto the iPhone, because the platform has a lot of users, and there's a lot of money to be made. However, they will be forced to play by Apple's rules, which (according to the argument) is good for the customer, as the custodian of the platform has a vested interest in keeping them happy.

Now, if 3rd party stores were allowed, Apple's bargaining power which allowed them to force 3rd parties to respect the user's interest would go away, allowing developers to deliver a worse (eg privacy-violating) product.

Users who do not like this deal are free to go with an Android device instead of an iPhone. The popularity of the latter might suggest that quite a few people are reasonably happy with the status quo.

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Counter-argument to what? As Android shows, allowing 3rd party appstores has 0 effect on the main appstore offering.

But if the iOS store is so much worse for devs than the Play store, wouldn’t there be more incentive for devs to push for a legitimate alt store to succeed on iOS?

Android's third-party app stores have been majorly gimped for a long time unless they were installed by the manufacturer. Further, they don't even have great reach even if they're installed as such, as evidenced by Epic wanting Fortnite back on the Play Store despite it being available on the Galaxy store.

> Apple's bargaining power which allowed them to force 3rd parties

You are literally saying that you agree that Apple has very serious market power, and has the ability to force the rest of the market, to do what it wants, using its illegal, anticompetitive behavior.

Go ahead and say that you want this. But you are just straight up admitting that Apple has anti-trust level market power, and is using illegal anti-competitive behavior.

Therefore, they would lose the lawsuit, under your argument.

> The popularity of the latter might suggest that quite a few people are reasonably happy with the status quo.

People haven't thought it through at all. If they've even considered this aspect of it, I'd be surprised.

iPhone popularity is due to a mix of very good engineering, presentation, marketing and network effects.

Smartphones are also very, very new for people. Give them time and they'll rebel against a single point of control sooner or later.

> Give them time and they'll rebel against a single point of control sooner or later.

Who knows. Gaming consoles have had a decent run, but of course that may not be that good a precedent as they've not evolved into general-purpose computing devices to the same degree that phones have...

The customers who don't like the console system can game on a PC. It's not a perfect substitute, but it's pretty close. Is there any real equivalent that offers more user control for smartphones though? Stock Android is a bit less restrictive, but still pretty bad, and custom ROMs are extremely niche.

Android already has the majority of the market. Apple is, perhaps deliberately, pricing themselves out of the emerging markets in Africa and Asia.

It's the reason why I don't even really give a toss: there's nothing on iOS that you can't get on Android.

Except a lower chance of trouble if you down load an app without some security assessment of it.

> Android already has the majority of the market.

Not in the US market where iPhones have the great majority and where this trial is taking place.

There are also definitely iOS exclusives.

The question is does Apple's bargaining power come from monopoly power? That's exactly what makes it anti-competitive.

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