When there's only two companies fully controlling the next era of computing platforms, there's some argument that they have way too much power in their hand.
> The game is like a car that drives on a road. The car is Epic's Fortnite. The road is a toll road. The road was built by Apple. Many cars can drive on this road but must pay a fee. (The analogy isn't 1:1 but work with me a bit).
Except the phone isn't owned by Apple, and that's why every analogy similar to this one fails.
IMO this should extend to game consoles too. You should be able to run homebrew games and tools on a console.
However, I am curious about what happens when you force xbox to run unauthenticated 3rd party software. The reason why consoles can be priced the way they are (very low, usually taking losses) is because the company makes it back on game sales.
So what happens? Microsoft is in a solid position with its "stream to system" upcoming hardware, but I think this will force console prices to go up.
As soon as you can run anything on a console, the creators of the console no longer have the same LTV per customer (gamers will buy from cheaper app stores). Additionally, you'll have new demand for consoles for eg deep learning applications on xbox (this increases the value of a console)
I think this is fundamentally bad for the console ecosystem, although I think Microsoft (and its console division) will be fine because of their investments in "x cloud"
> IMO this should extend to game consoles too. You should be able to run homebrew games and tools on a console.
That argument there appeals to me emotionally a lot more though, I will admit! It's easy to admire Commodore 64 programmers before my time, or when I wrote Xbox 360 games using XNA in university.
But legal changes also need to come from above as well to ensure a fair computing market. I'm doing it more as a symbolic protest than any hope I will contribute towards that.
I doubt non-tech people even know about the walled-garden or the anti-competitive practices of both companies, they just buy their device based on features, screen and camera and that's it. Just have a look at a mainstream phone review video on YouTube, only those points will be detailed.
To consumers it's clearly the next area of computing. Smartphones are even fully replacing computers in developing markets. To developers however, it's an unhealthy market owned by two uncountable companies where they could be banned from at any point very easily.
There's multiple angles where the current situation is an issue, there's the anti competitive nature of the market where an increasing chunk of the economy is based on but there's also the limited propriety rights of the owners of the phone.
Also, I get the sense that people are trying to impose OSS-isms on Apple when they both have no power to and also Apple has no reason to abide.
> Also, I get the sense that people are trying to impose OSS-isms on Apple when they both have no power to and also Apple has no reason to abide.
That's why we need anti-trust investigations to both Google and Apple, having a good chunk of the modern economy relying on just two companies which don't even appear to have any competition pressure is just unacceptable.
If Microsoft had as much power over software distribution in the nineties as Apple does now, they would probably have (smartly for them) severely limited or eliminated web browsers, and forced developers to write their internet applications as Microsoft-specific native software instead (or some other proprietary technology). We take the cross-platform internet for granted now but earlier it was not a sure thing.
If many of (what are now) web services only worked on the Microsoft ecosystem, this would have not only deeply entrenched their position in the PC market but also given them a huge advantage in mobile (if Apple even survived long enough to compete there). One of the early iPhone's biggest strengths was having a full web browser (especially since there was no app store initially). If the real draw was MicrosoftNetwork and not the open web, this wouldn't have been a big selling point for the iPhone and it would have been much harder for them to get the ball rolling. Microsoft would have had an enormous amount of time to come out with a phone that can access the MicrosoftNetwork that everyone wants.
And this is all assuming that anti-trust is still enforced enough that Microsoft can't just demand exclusivity from everyone else, or that companies aren't afraid to associate with competitors since they live or die by subjective Microsoft processes.
Despite not being Tim Sweeney I think as a developer and a consumer I would prefer having the option to install alternative app stores. I'd like to be able to buy apps in a way that lets me install them across platforms, and don't like solely depending on Apple for curation when they ban apps like streaming / emulators etc that don't seem to be a real security concern.
I don't care about mobile as much as laptops and future platforms like VR/AR, but it seems like the trend in general is for things to be more locked down with a few companies acting as gatekeepers. Strong sandboxing with permissions seems great but I don't see why that has to be coupled with everything needing to go through one company for approval.
Because that what smartphones has become.
Actually nothing on my phone is essential to daily life.
Additionally, maybe we should have higher standards for technology which a good chunk of the world economy is relying on rather than applying some entertainment standards.
And you examples for taxes and roads are socialist services. The rates on tolls and taxes are decided by people elected representatives. Apple decided the rates on their own, not by Government mandate.
Developer's do have a choice: abide by the ToS and enjoy the trappings of a user base that tends to spend more on applications be they subscriptions or one-offs than Android or vote with your wallets and don't abide by it but to cry foul and try to usurp one's will on the company that built the platform makes no sense.
Some counter arguments:
If the ToS of the app store are likened to the tax laws in the USA then failing to abide the law that requires taxes to be paid is the same thing here as Epic using their own payments system to subvert the iOS tax of 30%.
The game is like a car that drives on a road. The car is Epic's Fortnite. The road is a toll road. The road was built by Apple. Many cars can drive on this road but must pay a fee. (The analogy isn't 1:1 but work with me a bit).
After years of investment in the iPhone and building the ecosystem around it the AppStore is just one way to monetize that. A 30% cut might sound high but they did spend tens(hundreds?) of billions in R&D and this is just one way, among many, that the iPhone is being monetized, this is just a return on investment on top of the sales price of the phone.
All of the arguments I have heard from those in the Epic camp strike me as temper tantrums thrown by children.