EU tells Apple to open everything up to its rivals
appleinsider.com
appleinsider.com
If they had invested in better dev relations and dropped their 30% take (instead of coming up with all the weird ways you have to qualify for lower rates, which don't cover all scenarios), I don't think there would have been enough noise from below on this.
I still remember the cheers when the 30% was announced because it was vastly better than what the splits were before the launch of the App Store and even now it’s an industry standard.
> (instead of coming up with all the weird ways you have to qualify for lower rates, which don't cover all scenarios)
Not sure what you’re alluding to here.
You essentially automatically qualify if you have less than $1MM in revenue, you tick a few boxes and answer a few questions and within 3 minutes you’re done.
There are some very niche edge cases that might disqualify you to prevent gaming the system, but those are extremely rare.
More than 90% of the developers fall under the lower 15%, but I’m sure some of the big juggernauts are still unhappy that they’re on the 30% tier.
In a fit of irony, lowering the commission to 15% will prove to be a big defensive argument in future antitrust cases, as all developers, including myself, simply pocketed the difference, killing one of the main arguments in cases like that: that these commissions cause higher prices for end users.
The way the experts gave testimony in the cases that so far have occurred, a percentage point or two difference in commission rate would cause huge price swings, moreover, their impromptu studies to support their testimonies claimed that a price difference of a few cents would have huge implications for consumer’s willingness to make the purchase.
It sounded counterintuitive to me then, and now I’ve seen that it truly was nonsense. Apple in the meantime has been able to collect a treasure trove of data that shows that even a cut of 15% (roughly 3x more than the most ambitious hypothetical in testimonies) couldn’t sway the prices downwards for the end user.
You're not allowed to have a better price outside of the App Store. iOS users aren't paying for their preferred payment system, it's everyone else subsidizing Apple's cut. You're not allowed to give customers a choice of payment methods (people like Apple's subscription, but some may prefer PayPal, especially for multi-platform products). You're not allowed to say they exist outside of the App Store. You're not allowed to even say the word "Android" in the App Store description.
Apple intentionally bundles and mixes together security, convenience, and anti-competitive terms. This confuses the discussion, because if you protest the inflated price, or the unfair terms, they say "oh, so you want users to get malware, huh!?".
The price is high for what you get — an inflexible payment system without ability to offer direct customer support for the payments, and a lottery ticket to maybe appear somewhere else in the store than search results for your app's name, with your competitor's ad first.
Low-margin businesses can't exist with Apple's pricing. Even higher-margin business sucks with Apple - 40% margin is good, but when 30% goes to Apple, Apple earns 3x more than you do.
If I develop and app, and market it myself, and already have a relationship with my customers, Apple just inserts themselves with a "product" I don't want, my users may not want, but we're forced to buy it.
The very powerful people at the helm of Apple, Google and friends seem to forget that on the other side of the table there are powerful people as well and that those are quite similar to themselves.
I believe a large contributing factors were the public appearances (or lack thereof) of Tech Execs in front of government bodies (think Zuckerberg in the Senate) where it became clear that they think themselves above the rules of mere mortal man.
They committed the capital offence publicly "ridiculing" powerful politicians (and by proxy the people who elected them) all over the world and that is something that won't fly in the long term.
Come on Mark, suck in your ego, grovel a bit and agree to some semi-token compromises to keep the money train going.
And for the love of god spend some real money in Europe and pay your taxes if you want political leverage.
Apparently that was too much of an ask and now that the eyes of the public and regulators are on Big Tech they will be taken down a notch to "just" being profitable companies.
https://techcrunch.com/2021/03/16/google-play-drops-commissi...
Oh wait...
This sort of tracking can work even if you don't have a Facebook account, because so many different applications will include the Facebook SDK for ad tracking purposes.
Nothing specific to Facebook here, of course, it works the same way for any company with a large ad network.
Naive take. Network sockets, remote servers, and data brokers don't care about local file permissions and an OS won't be able to tell me if corp-surveillance.justbuyme.com might be a domain hosting a privacy-disrespecting service without some sort of human-mediated reputation service.
It took me a long time to realize that Apple is doing the right thing here.
Outside of our little bubble, smartphones are a means to an end. No one bothers to learn technology more than what they can get by in their everyday life. Technology needs to be as simple and intuitive as possible.
Now, if Apple were to let a person enter developer mode by solving some Leetcode puzzles or CS quizzes, I'd be all in for it. Though I can still see scammers scamming people even with this.
Because not all users choose what goes on their phones.
Some users have it chosen for them by abusive family members.
Asked and answered.
You can in theory keep it cornered in its own room (sandbox), but there's no way to be 100% sure it'll stay there. You can be absolutely sure that it will never stop trying to get out.
App Store apps can be trusted to stick to a sandbox because they are vetted to a standard before being allowed there.
There's no reason for Epic-F-Droid-Store have their applications adhere to any kind of standards enforced by Apple. They can do whatever shitty manipulative tricks they want to try to escape any OS level sandboxing Apple tries to build.
Doubly so for 3rd party browsers. A browser has a huge attack surface and can also run code (javascript and WASM at the least). Keeping it secure and sandboxed is not a trivial thing.
Argue with the premise, don't just tap downvote. This isn't Reddit.
For every value created a customer receives there is value captured by a company paid by this customer. Let say a company creates a service valued as 1X by customer and customer pays 1X for that. This balance guarantees accessibility and interest among many customers.
Apple tax demands for a customer to pay 1.43X for the same value of 1X (0.43 = 30% of 1.43). It means that the balance is ruined, and customers do not get enough value for what they pay. In value they still get 1X despite paying for 1.43X. Hence, a company gets significantly less customers and at the same time it’s unable to benefit from additional 0.43X customers paid. Drop in the revenue is significant. That makes business unsustainable.
So, what a company could do? It could provide more value by letting go own margin in favor of only Apple benefitting from the service or it could increase marketing expenses to attract more users. But then again that additional marketing budget eats into a company’s margin. And again, makes it uneconomical.
Maybe it used to be acceptable to pay the Apple Tax in 2008 when it was enough to just create a simple non-cloud app like calculator, submit to AppStore, and forget about it. In those days there were no expenses to actually run the service. Now the core of mobile services happen outside Apple ecosystem and an iPhone is a mere access point and interface to them. Nothing more. It’s a mere mobile browser for 3rd party services.
Wonder how many great businesses weren’t realized due to Apple making them uneconomical.
Recently they added possibility for other browsers to "Add page to Home Screen".
But this shortcut later opens in Safari...
I've added many shortcuts to websites from my home screen from within Chrome since this feature was recently added, and they all open in Chrome.
And most frustrating is when you had Safari in private browsing mode, then shortcut (not pwa app) is also opened in private mode as new tab...
It won't give users choice because we as an industry have again and again just chosen what's easiest for us instead of best for the customer.
We'd 100% still be using Flash if Apple hadn't refused to support it because of the battery and performance issues.
This forum spends a lot of time talking about the E**ification of everything and how user hostile many companies business practices are and then cheers tearing down the one walled garden a non-nerd can, by default, have a reasonable experience in.
He's saying that Apple should abide by the Digital Markets Act, which goes into effect in November. A summary of the changes the DMA will require would be nice.
I had to lol at that one.
So if no 3rd parties are going to make their own app stores, why force Apple to provide the ability at all? It’s a huge engineering cost to do so.
On android there's f-droid, which is an open source version of the app store with lots of great apps.
However, the current market situation is definitely limiting customer choice and freedom in a way very similar to a monopoly. There are only 2 options in the market. Iphone or android. So even if I do care about having a device with full control, I literally cannot buy one, without sacrificing the last half decade of tech improvements.
If the next version of android totally disallowed side loading, what recourse would people have? Literally nothing. You would be forced to take it.
This thing has happened multiple times before with removable batteries, headphone jacks, memory cards, etc. I care about having a headphone jack a little bit, but there is literally no new phone coming out with that feature now. You can still get some, but not without major degradation in areas like CPU/GPU, battery, screen, cameras, etc.
So effectively, I do think that iphone and android should be related in some ways like a monopoly. Simply because that's how they are affecting customers.
I think the whole Sony Xperia line has headphone jacks. For example, their latest one the Xperia 5 V: https://www.sony.co.uk/smartphones/products/xperia-5m5
One commenter simultaneously defended gay marriages - "if you don't like gay marriages, don't get married to gays" - and defended the Apple's monopoly - "I like that there is only one Appstore and developers won't force me to sideload".
Third party app developers don't have a right to use Apple's app store in whatever way they want. They have a right to sell things to customers on whatever terms the customers agree to and with whatever agreements they are able to make with other businesses like Apple.
Of all the major and minor players in this space, Apple has by far taken the most user-centric, privacy-first, security-centric stance. And they have done so over and over and over again.
Have they been perfect? Of course not. But every instance where they've lapsed, they've made geniune efforts to improve the situation. Are there ways they can still improve? Of course. But the direction has been clear and unambiguous. And as a result, they've earned my trust. This, in an environment where quite literally everyone else has repeatedly proven themselves untrustworthy.
I'm a EU citizen and I'm more than happy that they're taking on Apple for this. After all, they're doing business with EU citizens, why shouldn't the EU tell them to behave?
If they don't like it, they can just stop selling in the EU, no one's gonna stop them there, but seeing as it's a money hungry megacorp hellbent on hoovering up every single penny that exists on this planet, that obviously isn't gonna happen, so they'll have to play by the EU's rules in that case.
Do you support companies adding melamine to infant formula?
Or is your actual position slightly more nuanced?
Have you tried to understand it? It is pretty clear to me. People like not having to worry about malware, tracking, etc.
Of course the longterm solution is to get better legalization on privacy protection etc. But before that, I really prefer apple as a proxy between me and google/facebook/etc.
You can do it on MacBooks as well.
What monopoly?
Can’t get any more open than that.
But I think we will find people actually want access to Apple’s audience and dev tools for free. I’m loathe to stump for megacorp like Apple, but in the same vein as iMessage, I don’t think we should drag iOS down to Android’s level just because Googles messaging strategy has been a turd for a decade.
Wdym? Google Messages supports RCS, which has been a thing for a while, it's also an open standard. Apple still doesn't support it, they're stuck with SMS.
Noone asks them to open "everything", i.e. their hardware design or application-architecture.
For example, why not force Google to open up Chrome, to increase interoperability? I want to be able to export saved passwords from Chrome and import them into the macOS keychain, and vice versa.
If the EU focuses on Apple and forgets, say, Chrome, it might gain an even greater market share because Apple has to open up features while Google doesn’t have to open up Chrome.
The DMA applies to anyone with a "gatekeeper" role. Part of the criteria for the role are: having more than 45 million monthly active users and more than 10,000 yearly active business users established in the EU, for the past three years.
Six companies (and in particular, 22 services offered by those companies) are currently listed as gatekeepers. [1]
[1] https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_23_...
You can?
https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/95606?hl=en&co=GENI...
> I want to be able to export saved passwords from Chrome and import them into the macOS keychain, and vice versa.
Google is hit too, they'll have to open up too.
As for Chrome, it's already pretty open. Anyone can build extensions for it and distribute it freely. The same cannot be said for iOS.
Conceptually I'm on board in practice I'm not. Once we actually look at what the other side looks like it's going to be super disappointing. And like everyone else said -- if you don't like the platform go shop for another one theres others out there. No one forced you into the Apple ecosystem.
Can't wait for more Pegasus like exploits.
EU technology companies are not known for their profiteering compared to American ones. Just saying.
EDIT: I found it "What are the “dos and don'ts” for gatekeepers?" [0].
[0] https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/qanda_...
> The next job for Apple and other Big Tech, under the DMA (Digital Markets Act) is to open up its gates to competitors, be it the electronic wallet, browsers or app stores, consumers using an Apple iPhone should be able to benefit from competitive services by a range of providers
> making iOS so unsafe that everyone has to use physical branches for banking again
Yep, me the Android user has to go to physically go to the bank instead of installing my bank's app off the Play Store.
I assume many people are hard at work to get a free version of something like the xcode build system stood up. It's mostly there already, but I haven't seen anyone put the parts all together in a way you can self-host.
I think iOS hobbyists these days usually use a SASS build system with a free or cheap lower tier.
I think it's perfectly reasonable for Apple to continue prioritizing security and keeping things locked down, but the end user deserves to have a key that can unlock things if they want them unlocked.
It’s an innate limitation, not an arbitrary restriction.
Should Apple really be forced to port their tooling — and the entire, massive software stack it’s based on — to other platforms?
I assume most developers targeting Apple’s platforms don’t kick up a fuss because they’re happy running macOS.
The secondary strategy Timmy could pull is a dumbed down ecosystem in the EU which I’m sure is even worse for everyone. But hey, you’d be able to buy audible books straight in the app. Is it worth it?
But it’s a lot easier to make that choice early when you don’t need to give up on revenue. In Apple’s case, leaving EU would mean losing around $90 billion in annual revenue and ceding a large chunk of their global market share to Android. It’s really hard to justify that kind of thing to shareholders by “we didn’t want to open some APIs in our operating system.”
That's not what it was about.
The FTC accused MS of Monopoly Abuse.
MS gave away IE in a deliberate attempt to destroy Netscape, and they succeeded.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor....
Without even approaching whether it's a good case or not, Apple's situation is different: The monopoly claims against Apple are that they have complete dominance on their platform, not on all consumer platforms.
Less tongue in cheek: let me install any game I want from any game store on Xbox and Playstation and Switch. I do not understand why this only focuses on Apple. Is that just the media for clicks?
Nobody forces ppl to use Apple products, nobody forces ppl to use Google products. Ppl do so because they have no options to choose from.
So - Instead of fixing the issue of "there is no options to choose from" we try to force OUR rules on companies that operate totally within the rules of open market.
The issue we have should be solved by GOVERMENTs to make it easier for others to build and grow as competitors to Apple and Google.
But that requires donations, easier access to market, good conditions on the market. THIS is not something that can be easly done. So GOVERMENTs try to convince ppl the "big bad IT" is at fault for how the world works.
Tho they play only following the rules created by GOVERMENT in the first place..
So instead of being mad at GOVERMENT, ppl are mad at random companies. What a joke.
If I use neither Google nor Apple, I loose access to banking apps and other third-party apps. I have a choice not to use them, but that means I loose access to products that were developed by neither of those. Hell, even if I use Google's hardware (Pixels) but not Google software (Play Services), I loose these apps. Same goes for Instant Messaging, you can choose to use a competitor, but then you won't be able to discuss with other persons unless you convince them to use the same software as you do.
> The issue we have should be solved by GOVERMENTs to make it easier for others to build and grow as competitors to Apple and Google. > Tho they play only following the rules created by GOVERMENT in the first place..
You say that the government should change the rules to ensure competitions is possible. But isn't that what DMA creates? It (in part) allows new competitors by reducing network effect and enforcing interoperability.
So your real issue is lack of competition. Something that could be regulated but is not due to corrupted goverment. So instead of fixing the system to force Google and Apple to compete on a market, we prefer to choose an easy bandaid while keeping everything the same. Yes my solution is harder but there are no easy solutions to hard problems.
I'm not sure they meet the requirements of being a gatekeeper. One of the requirements for example is 45 million monthly active users in the EU. According to Microsoft, Xbox is only at 4 million:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/account-billing/informat...
Playstation and Nintendo might be more popular, but 10x more popular? Even the Switch has only sold 6x the Xbox Series consoles.
That feels very close, in spirit, to being able to run one’s own software on the device. Another natural extension is if one can run one’s own apps then that right ought also to extend to the entire device — the OS and the firmware.
The app / OS boundary is of interest to the computer scientists, but functionally there isn’t any distinction to the end user between the code that renders the heart under the cat video, the code that notices me touch the screen, the code which sends the JSON “{like:10295892983}” over the network, and the code which turns that message into radio waves.
"Open everything up" -- pretty vague.
- Malware including ransomware, password theft, and identity theft
- Lookalike, counterfeit apps
- Software piracy
- Lowering of curation standards by Apple
Certain other software bits cannot be open sourced, including specific cryptographic keys. There is a great deal of Darwin/XNU that is already FOSS.
What would be helpful for r2r would be the availability of schematics and Apple-proprietary custom variants of third-party chips. Certainly, T prefix chips can't be too freely shared without weakening the integrity of the security baked into Apple products (no pie puns intended).
- Lowering of curation standards by Apple
That has already been happening on the official App Store! Kosta Eleftheriou has done a ton of scholarship into the proliferation of bad apps. (Not to mention, poor UX such as archaic search.)
People imagine multiple app stores on iOS would be shady data-hungry operations from the likes of Meta or Google. But opening things up would just as likely, and perhaps more so, foster curated, transparent app stores such as an iOS equivalent to F-Droid.
I know Android does it, but Android's got many years of experience doing it, and it's generally not as smooth as iOS.
I think it is nice to have a choice of a walled off platform. If I wanted a "more open" platform, I would get an Android phone. There are plenty of amazing Android phones.
I choose the tradeoff of Apple's curation.
Yes, I cannot run arbitrary software and sometimes it is a disadvantage. Yes, I don't agree with all of the App Store rules all of the time. Yes, I don't think the App Store revenue split is entirely fair.
However, I absolutely love that all the developers including the likes of Meta or Uber have to bow down to Apple's rules, which are mostly beneficial to me. I don't want to download apps from alternative app stores. I want them to be available in App Store and to be submitting to all of the curation rules.
Perhaps it might seem ridiculous to you, but I want to have the freedom to choose a closed ecosystem as long as there is a good alternative.
----
On the other hand, I think jailbreaking shouldn't void warranty. Also, I might be fine with a regulation that forces Apple to release an "official jailbreak". But that policy should then also apply to PlayStation, X-box, Tesla infotainment, etc.
Having a curated store \neq Having only one store.
Also, that misses all the other areas pointed out: "Be it the electronic wallet, browsers or app stores, consumers using an Apple iPhone should be able to benefit from competitive services by a range of providers."
> But that policy should then also apply to PlayStation, X-box, Tesla infotainment, etc.
Why? That only applies to "gatekeepers". So you would have to argue that apple is very unsuccessful and hence these are at the same level as apple... seems like quite a stretch.
On Android, you have to abide by Google's rules if you want to be in the Play Store; Amazon's if you want to be in theirs; F-Droid's to be there.
Consumers have choice over whose rules they care about. In a hypothetical iOS with app store competition, what you write would presumably still be true for the Apple App Store, there just might be an 'F-iOS' or whatever that insists the app is open source too, for example.
iOS then becomes just one environment that the phone's owner can choose to run under that hypervisor. Within any given environment the maker of that environment should be free make it as open or closed as they want.
The device maker should have to make it easy to run different environments.
Some of the properties of the walled garden have nothing to do with security, though. They are simply uncompetitive practices on Apple part. I’m happy someone said “enough”.
As others have pointed out, you can have both a walled garden store and an Apple curated store — and this is how Android operates. More menacing though, are Apples reasons for not wanting competition.
Put simply; if Safari wasn't the only allowed browser on iDevices (other browsers are just skins over what is essentially Safari), they would lose a significant amount of power. They can throw their weight around now, partially because they have a strong web browser market share — but it's artificially imposed.
If you don't think it's forced, have a quick quiz at work amongst Apple fanboys, and find out how many of them use Safari as their default web browser — on their Macs.
Even if alternative app stores were allowed you'd more than likely never be forced to use them. Alternative stores are available on Android and yet the overwhelming majority of apps are still on the play store. The idea that Facebook, Amazon, Google or whoever would pull their apps and force you to use their store is complete FUD that ignores that the overwhelming majority of users wouldn't tolerate an app not being on Apples store.
I want the forced to open up to competitors to be applied to everyone.
Then don't. Nobody is forcing you.
When individuals choices start to actively harm society laws are often created to prevent more harm.
If I ever thought this was a threat to general purpose computing I would fight it tooth and nail. But Microsoft is and always has been the biggest threat there.
What I do care about is stupid shit like Apple messages, Air Drop, Air Play etc being locked up Apple stuff. What's really stupid is I can run an Air Play server on a raspberry pi and it works well with Apple devices but not at all with Android. It's utterly ridiculous that these things are locked up. Just let things be better for everyone you absolute fucking cunts. Of course Apple are by far not the only cunts in the world. People will be cunts unless we don't let them. Thank fuck for the EU (writing this as an embarresed UK citizen who no longer contributes).
He was also in the Netherlands to talk about/with ASML and NXP. There's a few dozen critical European suppliers that Apple depends on.
He's also not hostile to legislation at all, he openly committed and confirmed to want to apply with legislation in any major market.
Contrary to popular belief, legislation is not always perceived as negative by businesses. Without legislation, you're somewhat forced to get as unethical as the law allows, because if you don't, somebody else will.
In more cynical cases, companies may even embrace legislation as a competitive advantage. An example would be pro-active copyright detection, the detection of misinformation on platforms like Youtube and Facebook. Very hard and expensive to implement, thus small companies don't stand a chance to compete.
what worked well in last ~20 years isn't guaranteed to continue in that trajectory in the next 5 or 10 years even, since polarized Geo-political shifts make it more dangerous for a tightly-coupled enterprise [1] (enterprise-to-product coupling).
short-term makes sense to couple-tightly with a product, but not mid-term or long-term, for that it's better to focus on the market - think of the effects that sanctions (political or economical) or shortages (human or materials [chips, metals, oil etc]) could have on the enterprise's trajectory.
if you've got a monopoly, it's a good time to diversify [2], and sooner rather than later [1]
[1] enterprise could be a company or even a government
[2] hint "alliances"
I've read summaries of the DMA but it's not obvious.
They basically define it as "the same entitlements that a competing Apple app gets"
> the gatekeeper shall allow business users and alternative providers of services provided together with, or in support of, core platform services, free of charge, effective interoperability with, and access for the purposes of interoperability to, the same operating system, hardware or software features, regardless of whether those features are part of the operating system, as are available to, or used by, that gatekeeper when providing such services.
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A...
So features like the iMessage app being able to send SMS may be the biggest system entitlement? I don't think a settings app may be considered a service.
Currently any recognized address is an advertisement for Apple Maps in the App Store (which I can’t use due to how dangerously inaccurate it is in rural areas)
This makes the copy paste activity opening google maps, etc. much more likely to go away.
Essentially, Apple gave up the right to assert this argument when they decided to abuse their control with iMessage as an explicit way of locking users into their system (which is just one example).
The one thing that I know, for sure, is that Apple users are valued a hell of a lot more, by crooks, than Android and Windows users. Those folks are probably rubbing their hands in glee (I would not be surprised if quite a few of them, are on this very forum).
Should be interesting...
And I don't understand the point about ads. The vast majority of apps currently available on the app store is already plastered with ads?
On my phone I can install proprietary apps from Google's store, or open source apps from F-droid. What's wrong with having choice?
But you can have a lot more freedom without sacrificing security. For a start, you can have a web browser that supports the latest web APIs. For me, that would be enough, but you could also add a Linux VM. (Then you would have ChromeOS, basically.)
It would be nice if apples ecosystem was available for non hardware users.
If or when it gets opened up I’ll still stick to all the Apple or first party stores and things.
That the iPhone is locked down and android is open is a feature and difference that consumers choose I think.
Whatever changes apple implements would have to be easily revertable so people can go back to their golden prison.
It just seems something that would be really good for large companies like Spotify, and suck for small developers who will still need to rely on the App Store (and its commission) for visibility.
If the EU is so interested in which apps are available on iOS and eliminating any discriminatory practices, then the EU should legislate that the App Store approval process be made independent, heck the EU can run it themselves for the EU-states.
Sure, users will likely benefit from this but I don't see why the EU needs to regulate this.
Why don’t the govts set a good example and open up everything themselves?
This doesn't prevent high quality apps from being distributed on iOS - this just means that Apple needs to compete with other developers on its own platform, something it doesn't need to do currently.
It's unlikely consumers would install an alternative app store or side-load apps without a compelling reason to do so.
If we see that enough customers are motivated to learn and undergo the process of sideloading an app or installing an alternate app store, then we can view that as an indicator that Apple's existing ecosystem is lacking and restricting experiences customers desire - or that developers cannot publish using Apple's existing channels.
In other words, it indicates that Apple customers want more than Apple can provide meaning that Apple either needs to compete with the alternatives or lose software customers - fostering competition and engaging Apple on a level they haven't felt in a long time.
Apple can still justify its app store as the place to go to find the best quality "Apple certified" apps. Go there if you want to find an app free of tracking, and approved by Apple for quality - justifying their app store developer pricing through the marketing apps receive.
Would love to see how the legislation develops in the long term.
Will this eventuate in MacOS/iOS apps being cross-compilable (from Linux) through disarming license terms restricting libraries from being used on all platforms?
What about preventing the installation of iOS/MacOS on non Apple hardware?
What about banning locked bootloaders - allowing people to port Android to iPhones (which I assume is feasible given the cross over from the Asahi project) - or allowing root access as an opt-in feature for customers.
Or something like rules requiring vendors to provide minimal public software or hardware schematics to aid in repairability, or reuse through efforts to maintain software beyond the vendors support schedule (or support porting efforts like Asahi).
Considering how much effort dedicated people put into these endeavours today out of passion - overcoming the most immense artificial roadblocks - imagine how many crazy projects would emerge by breaking down these barriers... otherwise known as innovation ;)
I would buy my MacBook Pro again right now if I could run Linux on it with full hardware acceleration, hardware support and battery life. The desire to innovate is there.
Pretty much every year they show Android to have a sizable market share in malware and it’s almost always accompanied with the context that people got these from third party stores filled with Trojans posing as legitimate apps.
Yeah sure, you could try to cut this off at the pass with system level mitigations but it’s not like Google hasn’t made headway in improving this on Android.
People are also quick to forget that system level mitigations are but one layer of a Swiss cheese model with App Review, while not infallible, being a very important part of that model.
ETA: Below some information from said reports that I copy pasted from a different comment of mine
Where 2020[0] “only” saw Android come in at 26.64% with iOS coming in at 1.72%, in 2021[1] Android accounted for a whopping 50.31% of the infections while iOS didn’t even register on the charts.
Let me repeat that again: over half of all infections in 2021 were on Android devices.
Were these super sophisticated attacks? Let’s see, because Nokia, understandably so, dedicated significant sections of their reports to Android.
In 2020 they stated (emphasis mine):
> In the smartphone sector, the main venue for distributing malware is represented by Trojanized applications. The user is tricked by phishing, advertising or other social engineering into downloading and installing the application. The security of official app stores, such as Google Play Store, has increased continuously. However, the fact that Android applications can be downloaded from just about anywhere still represents a huge problem, as users are free to download apps from third-party app stores, where many of the applications, while functional, are Trojanized. iPhones applications, on the other hand, are for the most part limited to one source, the Apple Store.
In 2021 they stated (emphasis again mine):
> Among smartphones, Android devices remain the most targeted by malware due to the open environment and availability of third-party app stores.
> […]
> The number of Trojans targeting banking information through Android mobile devices has skyrocketed, putting millions of users around the world at financial risk.
> […]
> Banking Trojans can arrive on smartphones in a variety of ways, often disguised as common and useful apps. When run, they request a variety of permissions needed to perform their desired behavior, then often remove their icon from the application pane, effectively disappearing from the device. In many cases, the apps never provide the promised functionality that enticed the phone's owner to install them and are forgotten quickly after disappearing. However, they remain installed and continue to run as background tasks, using a variety of tricks to collect user information. These may include capturing keystrokes, superimposing their own transparent overlays onto bank login screens, taking screenshots and even accessing Google Authenticator codes.
So it looks like in most cases users are being tricked to install malware and grant permissions.
This all also explains why the whole “muh sandbox” argument carries little weight. Not only is the sandbox but a single layer of a bigger Swiss cheese model, the sandbox isn’t gonna help your mom if she’s tricked into granting permissions.
On top of that you can bet your ass that iOS users will be prime targets, certainly more desirable targets than random Android and Windows users, because of potential ill gotten gains.
0: https://vpnoverview.com/wp-content/uploads/nokia_threat_inte...
Apple does very little of this IMO. No one is forced to use Apple equipment and no one is forced to work with them. It is trivially easy to avoid Apple either as a consumer or developer. If you don’t think you can make enough money publishing to the App Store then you can code for some other purpose. If you want a phone that allows apps that Apple doesn’t allow you can get an Android.
I do not understand the argument that Apple has to sell devices that work the way you want them to. There is no false advertising, nobody is getting fooled, and nobody is being forced to work with Apple or pursue their customers. Apple has made a very popular system, why do so many people feel entitled to change what they do?
If Apple is forced to allow third party stores, I can't fathom a reason why Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo wouldn't have to do the same.
Comparatively, it looks like Apple has marketshare in the EU is somewhere between 25 and 40% of the mobile phone market, depending on your source.
And lastly, how about you open up your very own market to everyone by lifting protectionist taxes
It's well meaning but ultimately flawed. So long as humanity works "competitively" instead of sharing technology for the greater good - companies like Apple are the good guys, not the bad guys. They are trying to make the best products they can THEIR way because that's how this competitive market works.
So now EU is like "no no no you don't understand how to make good products, in fact you have no identity - you just build hardware and let people do whatever the F they want with it¨
LOL, like China is doing by forcing everyone into 51-49 joint ventures China owns?
Or like the US is subsidizing EV and battery production for stuff made in the US?
Don't be naive, everyone's doing it.
But i guess one step at a time
It doesn't matter that they don't call it slave labor locally, label don't change the facts.
Seems more than justified to me.
A correct analogy would be if BMW was taking a 30% cut from anyone selling seat covers for for BMW cars and EU telling them to not do that.
I'm sure that this is the only thing preventing cheap chinese and indian labor to stomp over all the overpriced EU market.
Besides, sideloading enables installation of modded apps giving users more choice.
It still ended up going away and they gave up. So allowing sideloading is hardly the threat you think it is.
If you don't like them, just don't use them, right? I mean that's the argument we're seeing against these changes, how does it not apply equally the opposite way? If you don't want to use an app like Facebook because it's on its own separate appstore, then don't. Besides, I don't see a reality in which these companies forego the easy native solution with millions of users in favor of whatever the process sideloading would involve.
I don’t care about gmail because I don’t use it
Would be nice if Apple required you to have a functional web app before installing app. I.E.FB Messenger - the only reason why it doesn’t work on mobile browser is so that FB can track you more via their App.
It's bullshit that you can only run Safari on iOS or that the App Store is the only store you can use.
Yes, I understand the security implications of a third-party browser having deeper integrations into the OS and potential battery life concerns.
I also don't care.
I want to run Firefox on my phone. The actual thing. With containers and extensions. Let Safari compete on the merits.
I want the choice of being able to pay for a great app or use its "good enough" open source equivalent outside of the App Store.
iOS is a fantastic operating system. iPhone and iPad are stellar hardware with brilliant physical UX. Apple Watch is leagues beyond anything else in its class. I will keep buying Apple stuff until I can't anymore.
But a monopoly on core system functions isn't necessary to keep that high bar high.
Apple mandating WebKit is the only thing holding v8 back from a total monopoly, while WebKit itself has no chance of being a monopoly in the forseeable future, so I doubt there's a good anti-competitive case to be made for forcing Apple to stop doing this. It would only accelerate the monopolisation of the browser market if this happened. It would be good for consumers in the short term to allow v8 on iOS but I deeply distrust Google.
Breaking the App Store monopoly there is a much stronger case for. There is a security argument for the app store, which I would accept were it not for Apple adding 43% to the purchase price of most paid applications, which is much worse for the end user than the average piece of malware. Not to mention the expenses it imposes on developers, like requiring them to maintain a subscription and buy Apple hardware.
Seconded. Perpetually baffled by the so-called hackers in all of these threads arguing vociferously against user freedom.
What I really want is an up-to-date browser even if iOS stops being supported on an old phone of mine. (And they seem to be dropping support faster, what with iOS 17 not supporting the iPhone X — introduced in 2017 — without any legitimate hardware reason.)
It's ridiculous that Safari and the underlying WebKit engine only get updated with every accompanying iOS release.
> I want to run Firefox on my phone. The actual thing. With containers and extensions. Let Safari compete on the merits.
I'd like to put in a firewall, I'd like to prevent apps from doing things I don't want them to do, and I'd like to run my own apps (without asking permission).
That's an extraordinary statement to make, got any matching evidence? Lots of competitors have been trying for over a decade but nothing has emerged thus far.
While I don't believe Apple's current methods and models are the only way that could possibly work, I haven't seen any other successful way either.
It's a bit like PKI and E2EE in that way, lots of noise around it (be it Secure Boot, Signal or Boot Guard or something else) but no true alternative. All we get so far is regurgitated ideas with Clipper chip concepts.
It's simple, don't buy an iPhone. If you say "But I want an iPhone because is better than any Android", than you have to think that maybe iPhone is better because of the more restrictive rules.
Dream on. I use Firefox on my (android) phone and tablet, and it is seriously crippled. Also evolving in the wrong direction. (becoming more crippled)
People want Apple’s quality, reliability and performance, but also want no restrictions so they can run any app and install anything.
Those things aren’t compatible.
E.g., Windows and Linux (Desktop distros) don’t have many restrictions. But they can be unreliable.
There was/is previously a restriction on including dynamic content or non UIWebView/WKWebView rendering, but I'm unaware of current IAS-MAS policies.
You're also demanding the impossible/very difficult because mobile browsers don't support extensions. It's just not a thing.
Also, Firefox is already available for iOS. If it doesn't meet your requirements, then it's FOSS and you're welcome to contribute improvements that meet your requirements.
Imagine arguing against press freedom because a relative might fall for some disinformation.
Personally I prefer the Apple ecosystem where things just tend to work well. It would be difficult to care less about running something other than Safari on an iPhone.
Nobody is forcing anyone to buy Apple’s products. I truly don’t understand treating them as some kind of monopoly.
Apple doesn't even need to make an Android version of iMessage, they just need to support RCS instead of SMS/MMS: https://www.android.com/get-the-message/
Nobody is forcing you to use any third party browser or app store of anything else.
The truth is that you can have both an iPhone and an Android phone and use both of them as you please. You can have a computer for OS X and one to dual-boot Linux and Windows. You can use a bunch of different text editors, depending on which suits you for the task at hand. You don't have to chose between Gmail and Fastmail, you can use them both. You can have several different web browsers installed on your machine and use them as you please.
People in these forums agonize over tech choices like it is something that they will have to stick with exclusively for the rest of their lives. I really don't get it. You don't have to chose between having a car or a bicycle. You can have both, and are free to walk as well when you feel like.
I like Apple's products and services, but if they don't offer something that is important to me and some competitors offer this, I can simply use the products of a competitor. Why would I trust the most corrupted bureaucrats this planet has ever seen to start interfering?
This reminds me of gamers who hate the Epic Games Store with passion even though they give the actual devs of the games a bigger cut.
Competition is always good for the consumers. And I get the security part when it comes to Apple BUT it does not justify that they take a cut of 30% from every dev, its basically a money printing machine they do not deserve AT ALL. The same for Valve, they only take 30% because they can, not because they provide any value for it. All the do it provide some servers for distribution and a discussion forum, that hardy costs 30% of a games profits.
So lets have a walled-garden OS compete with a sideloading-enabled/free-for-all/anything goes OS.
But no, instead they have to break a good thing.
Now every idiotic company like Adobe will demand their own installers, and updaters, and background processes that you can't turn off, and piss all over the iOS, like they do on the macOS.
And let's not get started onto forced sideloaded Facebook (or having to make do without), and such, with all the tracking mechanisms dialed up to 11.
Or Chrome getting closer to total dominance and Google having its way with the web.
Saying that Apple does not provide value is laughable - saying that it isn't worth 30% of the transaction value might be one thing, but they provide the R&D to create the device, the platform, the review infrastructure, update infrastructure, development environment, etc.
I'm not even sure I disagree with you, but you have to at least describe what you are against correctly.
There are costs to competition, inherently. Competition is only of benefit to consumers if they capture the more of the new surplus utility generated by competition than they capture the new costs.
There will be marketing costs, there will be the costs of the data policies of these new models, there will be time that consumers have to spend becoming engaged in the market for not only software but also the market for markets for software, they will have to understand a greater amount of technical details of how these software marketplaces perform on their devices.
Now, these costs can be paid internally or externally. And guess what... corps always want these to be externalised. So the user/society can pay these costs and they can rack up unearnt surplus.
It makes sense, though: Apple is all about making things easier for the user at the expense of third party developers. Users don't need to deal with app reviewers denying bugfixes because they used the demo credentials on the wrong app, they can just be mad at apps for being buggy. Banks all around the world are paying a secret Apple tax to let Apple users pay with iPay or whatever it's called.
I think the situation with Valve is different. Valve has competition and has had competition before; game launchers on Windows (and Linux, I suppose) are perfectly viable, it's just that none of their competition put any effort into making their game launchers as good as Valve's.
I think Apple should be able to charge whatever percentages they want, as long as you can install alternative app stores. If their customers accept the higher app prices in exchange for Apple's convenience features, the percentages are perfectly fair.
Most of the hate for Epic Games Store I read is that they do exclusives.
It's great that they take a lower cut and give away free games, but them taking away my freedom to buy games from my preferred store is not something I will accept. Yes, almost all games are on Steam because they have a near monopoly on PC gaming, but that's because they actually provide value with their platform. Though I'm biased since I'm gaming on Linux and any other store than Steam is an absolutely terrible experience.
It's more than that. It's 30% of a games revenues. Could very well end up being more than the entire profit of an app/game. Insane to me that if the devs costs are more than 40% of revenue apple makes more off the app than the dev does.
Hope this passes the same way the USB-C thing passed. All these parasitic megacorps with more money than many countries need to be whipped into submission for their shenanigans
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
I wish/hope that as the default family IT guy, I will be able to set policies on my parents devices that block 3rd party apps.
It has already passed and is active legislation as of this year, but there is some built-in grace period for making the changes.
Quoting Apple and Nokia here:
>In the Android ecosystem, which has 50 times more malware than iOS, Nokia found that “the fact that Android applications can be downloaded from just about anywhere still represents a huge problem, as users are free to download apps from third-party app stores, where many of the applications, while functional, are Trojanized.
Source: Apple response citing the Nokia Threat Intelligence Report 2021
Nokia's 2023 report continues to point the finger at side loading being the main culprit behind Android's security woes:
>Android based devices are not inherently insecure. However, most smartphone malware is distributed as trojanized applications and since Android users can load application from just about anywhere, it’s much easier to trick them into installing applications that are infected with malware.
Source: Nokia Threat Intelligence Report 2023.
The same is experienced app repos for Jail-broken iOS devices.
Yet here we are, everyone praising iPhone 15 for having a USB-C connector. I am looking forward to a couple of years down the line when we can say the same about the App Store.
Worldwide, Android has a bigger market share than iPhone and it also allows alternative stores, and lo and behold, none of the things that users here complain about have come to pass.
I'm an Android user and I have spent years dreaming that Apple would just open Lightning to the community.
I am kind of lightly thrilled at least that the Apple user base will soon realize what a nightmare it truly is.
After almost 15 years of Android, I'm buying an iPhone specifically for iMessage. I had a daughter, and I'm so tired of getting and sending videos of her and her peers over SMS. I'm constantly uploading to Google drive and sending links, or asking people to get on an alternative chat platform.
All Apple needs to do is support RCS. They don't do it because they want everybody else to inconvenience iPhone users with their green bubbles. They want tiny garbled videos and no read receipts. Everyone thinks that this is Android holding back Apple users when it's specifically the exact inverse. Accept the open standard for communication! It's one of their most nefarious business moves. "Get your mom an iPhone."
> RBM is a messaging platform that brands use to send One-Time Passwords (OTPs) and engage customers in dialog about transactions, customer service, promotions, and more. RBM is provided through a Google API and delivered to end users through Google servers. [1]
Google should work with carriers to increase MMS size limits for the sake of their users rather than end-run around SMS/MMS marketing laws.
[1]: https://developers.google.com/business-communications/rcs-bu...
Sure Apple is not as open as Google, and neither is as open as Arch Linux, but that doesn't have to be the best solution for every product. Phones are too personal and loaded with tons of personal data. Opening everything to it's rivals is just another phrase that consumer data is now in a free for all, a 21st century gold rush, just offer few bucks/conveniences that are hard to ignore and by the time you blink your entire social group is on 5 custom stores.
If you want the security of an all-Apple ecosystem, you will still be free to do so. If I want the freedom to install whatever I want to my iPhone, I will be free to do so.
Nobody is trying to take away your right to use your phone as you want, they are trying to grant you the right to use your phone as you want.