And when Google decides to stop allowing that, then what?
There's a duopoly and history suggests that when one can get away with rent seeking the other will follow.
If we continue to allow this behavior now then we guarantee it'll continue on the future.
This is exactly what happened with the 30%. Google did it because Apple had set the standard. They didn't do it because they did the math and came the exact same conclusion as Apple ina vacuum.
Google has a great incentive not to do it, which is that if they do it there would be a real argument for software distribution. to be regulated by the government.
But until they do, there isn’t.
Some developers may disagree with Apple’s strategy, but it’s obvious that they are investing in technologies that support developers, and continue to reach more customers - which also makes the platform better for developers.
Apple impacts businesses, consumers, engineers - multiple industries - with their bad behavior.
Apple has an illegal platform and it must be regulated. They've captured 50% of the United States computing market and illegally inserted themselves as middleman into every transaction, every software install. They punish everyone trying to do business and make engineers dance through flaming hoops.
Apple has become their own banana republic. Anticompetitive and illegal.
Unfortunately the alternative is letting businesses and engineers impact the life of their own customers negatively.
Developers had way too much power to screw up users for years, and they did: spying and tracking behind our backs. Mandatory rootkits [1]. Piracy Protection and DRM that did way more than advertised and caused nuisance for paying customers. Rootkits on music albums. Apple has fixed or is trying to fix most of those.
If government wants to step up to regulate developers, small or big, maybe it's fine. But until then then Apple has provided the best solution to toxic developers.
Sure you can say "you can't just not install the app from the toxic developer", but then why isn't it ok to use the "you can just not buy an iPhone" argument?
They are even free to hide that option from regular users so the security of them won’t be harmed - they can’t install malware with 2 clicks because there will be 4 apple prompts explaining why it’s a bad idea. But I get to install a prog language interpreter or a proper browser - so win-win (other than apple’s profits, but I couldn’t care less)
And my point is that random application developers should not disallow me from using my device in any way I want to, nor they should be allowed to make my device work against my interests.
So far, as a user, for the last 25 years, Apple has not disallowed me as much as random developers have, and in fact Apple has fought that fight on my behalf.
What Apple is doing by limiting developers powers is 100% in my interest since I don't care about developers that are hostile to me.
I 100% agree that I should be able to run what I want, but the other side of the story matters too. Maybe there's a technical solution? Maybe if everything was open source? Maybe better sandbox/firewalls?
People keep trying to say this is about them being denied choice, and yet the choice they say they want is widely available.
All the safety issues that are solved by Apple’s approach could be solved by some combination of open source and or open source development, in an open way that does away with the single gatekeeper.
That would be better than either Apple or the Government controlling software distribution.
Of course the argument here seems to be that Apple is gradually becoming an almost "public good", while if you're unhappy with a company you're working at, you can switch. But then again if there are better alternatives to Apple, nothing theoretically prevents the users from switching. I have been using Android since forever but this year I'm switching to iPhone. The touted "freedom" simply is not evident in most scenarios during my daily phone usage, and I'm fed up with a lot of downsides of Android (ironically, it's hard to think that being tracked by countless potentially malicious apps offers you more "freedom" than living in Apple's ecosystem), also Google is not known to be exactly friendly to developers either and it can be even more Kafka-esque to appeal a ban, apparently.
To maintain the standards of a system, sometimes the maintainer has to get hard, and this would result in them occasionally cracking down on false positives. Still, it's similar to how a society cannot function without an actual enforcer of rules, which is the police. As long as there is a mechanism/will to redress the false positives, it's much better than a system where there's no control at all. Of course, if you say you're a hardcore libertarian and are fine with living in a society without any policing and would rather protect your own interests yourself, no problem and you can always go with the most liberal phone OS out there. But most societies can't realistically function that way nor do most people wish it that way. The app ecosystem is similar in this sense.
Newcomers enter the phone market all the time.
What we don’t have is an adequately developed alternative OS that can appeal to regular users yet.
Microsoft failed because they have their own legacy to protect.
Google is compromised by their need to maintain their position in search.
There are plenty of Linux phone projects.
The only reason none of these are a good replacement yet is a lack of time and investment.
iOS didn’t just appear out of thin air - it took more than a decade to develop.
It’s easier than ever now to develop an alternative.
People who are focussing on forcing Apple to install alternative stores are by definition not interested in an alternative platform.
If they were, they would be investing in building one.
They just want access to Apple’s customer base.
That’s all there is to this.
Microsoft failed, partly because it was as of yet not a big enough platform to target by other developers - they have enought things to do with android and apple. A new platform can’t emerge unless there is some incentive for developers to target it. Linux phones are in a special circumstance, because apps are developer for them out of a hobby. But phones are a main social device, you can’t have one that doesn’t have your bank’s app on it for example. Linux phones must emulate android (and it is sort of working, fortunately) to remain afloat.
But ultimately you are right - there does have to be some incentive for people to support the platform.
People here are claiming that freedom from Apple is a huge incentive for developers.
Is that not correct?
It's just as easy to firewall your platform and prevent trackers. Open installation and privacy are not mutually exclusive.
The browser is a firewalled platform. Look at what Mozilla can do for privacy on their shoestring budget.
Apple likes it the way they have it. You cannot tell me the DOJ can't force them to open their platform and suddenly every Apple user is stuck on 90's era Windows. This is not how it works.
Also, the fact I use a firewall doesn't excuse developers from being assholes and spying/tracking me behind my back. It's my computer, it's a developer's sacred right to have any kind of code that acts against my interests.
Please read the linked reply. It was a real issue, not an hypothetical. Installing software required by my bank REALLY screwed up my computer in the past, and I didn't really have a choice.
> It's my computer, it's a developer's sacred right to have any kind of code that acts against my interests.
Apple has created an exclusionary economic zone and put 50% of Americans in it. This is unprecedented.
> Also, the fact I use a firewall doesn't excuse developers from being assholes and spying/tracking me behind my back.
A sandbox will protect you from everything you claim to be worried about.
You say this like Apple did it at gunpoint. They offered a superior product, and people bought it.
Not really. I needed to be a customer of the specific bank to receive my salary. Luckily, this changed many year ago after government intervention, though. Now you're allowed to have an account in a bank other than the one chosen by your company. The problem is that every other bank still has the same requirement.
And my father still needs to be a customer of a specific bank to use government-backed credit for small companies that was best for him. There was nothing in the contract about Diebold controlling every single bit coming in or out of his computer.
> Apple has created an exclusionary economic zone and put 50% of Americans in it. This is unprecedented.
It's still not a sacred right of developers to fuck with my computer or threaten my ability to conduct business. My computer is my property, not yours or any other developers. Having asshole developers out of this zone is great for me.
I'm not saying what we have is perfect. I want more freedom, but only for myself and for other users. What I don't want is this freedom to be abused by third-parties, so that I and other users are the mercy of asshole developers, which seem to be the majority in 2020. Freedom is difficult when it comes to closed source software.
> A sandbox will protect you from everything you claim to be worried about.
Still doesn't excuse it, nor completely fixes it.
And I tried everything and couldn't find anything that works with Warsaw by Diebold, other than buying Apple stuff. If you have suggestions I'm all ears.
It's insane that you would compare selling a superior product on a largely free market, to a CIA-backed coup of a foreign independent nation. Can you please point to me to the people Apple murdered to capture their market? This is some incredible anti-Apple rhetoric.
Meanwhile, in our currently implemented "open" platform you have engineers running amok with the personal data of millions of Americans.
Even the way the worded your response you are making a plea as a developer to a user "hey take your app own to the gallows and kill it.". I don't have an app. What I do understand is; given the last 20 years of computing is that developers broadly cannot be trusted to run software on my device and I don't have the time to inspect the source code of every app. What I have decided is that I can trust Apple to be the gatekeeper to my device and if you can't play by their rules you won't have access to their official distribution processes.
If I, the user, decide that Apple isn't in my best interest then I'll switch devices. But I have no incentive to adopt a more developer friendly workflow when it's been broadly anonymous developers that have been sucking up and spying on me every chance they get. If some innocent apps get caught in the cross fire, it's unfortunate.
I care about the fact that the US government has let this gorilla grow into King Kong and start throwing us into walls and trampling on our industry.
If this trend continues, the giants will swallow us completely. Our industry has always been special, and the barriers have historically been low. Now that Apple enjoys a position at the top, they're putting up fences and walls for the rest of us.
Apple is shitting into all of our faces, and we're being told to just take it.
Meanwhile, you celebrate that. Please don't.
Why do you remain within them?
Also, it’s not like I have any chance ever to compete with Apple, even if I were to be the cleverest people on Earth.
At least you admit this is about your desire to sell things to Apple’s customer base.
You could always build for Android.
You can compete with Apple.
Obviously not on your own, but remember that when Apple was founded it was just a few people in a garage, whereas IBM was a global corporation.
You can choose to contribute to an alternative if you like.
As for customers ‘not choosing the best thing’: It sounds like you are saying that people don’t know what is good for them and you know better.
I disagree. I believe people value things differently from you or even I.
If we want them to choose an open mobile operating system, we need to build one that does the things they want and is open.
We agree on your last point, an open platform should finally emerge (and it is pretty much happening with pinephone) - but it would be a fairy tale to believe that it can gain foothold in the recent future against these monster corps
iMessage is one of them, as is Facebook messenger.
There are many other messengers with far smaller user bases. There is no reason at all that a messaging app needs to address 50% of the population immediately.
Have you ever lived in a communist dictatorship or even visited one?
I have
Yes.
> Have you ever lived in a communist dictatorship or even visited one?
Yes. I spent a year studying Chinese in Shanghai. My partner is from Vietnam.
What's your point? I stand behind my analogy.
Apple is a horrible company and is ruining our industry.
It doesn’t excuse them from letting me use my phone as I want to.
It sounds like you just like the quality of their product.
Apple does let you use the phone as you want to.
They just didn’t design it to do the things you say you’d prefer. I assume that you wouldn’t have made the trade off if you didn’t think it was worth it.
Liking a product enough to buy while wanting it to be designed a little differently is what we do with almost all purchases.
That is pretty much the opposite of living in a communist dictatorship.
iSH is really great, and is a must - and so would several other app which can’t exist here.
The point here is that you can actually get everting you want, just not with Apple’s design.
Nobody is forced to interact with them, either as a customer or a supplier.
I don't want to deal with Apple and their draconian rules. They translate to "you're small peanuts not worth our time" or "you're not paying us enough".
Apple does not deserve to control all economic activity reaching 50% of Americans. Only the government gets to do that. Last I checked, Tim Cook is not in the Treasury department.
This is the company that cares more about dollars than the lives of Belarusian protestors. I do not want to deal with these thugs. It's insulting, degrading, and costs people their livelihoods.
You might change your view if you had correct facts. This is wrong on two counts. Firstly the amount of economic activity through the App Store is a tiny fraction of what you claim, and secondly Apple doesn’t control it because there are alternatives.
There are many avenues for delivering your streaming service.
You can deliver it via the desktop.
You can deliver it via the web.
You can sell cheap streaming boxes based on raspberry pi grade hardware.
You can create a storefront on Android.
You can deliver individual titles as apps through the App Store store.
There are plenty of options.
It's cute you think this is why people buy things.
Also, you're completely missing the point here. Developers have no choice but to developer for Apple and that means that whatever Apple says, Apple gets. That's called bullying, at the very least, and I'm not alone in asserting that it extends into behavior that should at least be regulated.
Mind you, the only reason I think so is that their user base exceeds 1 billion users. There's a public interest in things when numbers are that big. If we were talking about some company with only a million users, the case would be much weaker.
Developers absolutely have a choice. They have one choice if they want access to Apple's customers.
This just has to do with wanting to sell your apps to more people from the developer side, or wishing Google would use better materials to make their phones from the user side.
Let’s be honest here.
Can you imagine anyone who wanted to make an app now, without publishing on either the Google Play Store or the App Store "in protest"? That's the option you're giving them. "Ask for more gruel or fail" and you're calling that a choice. Lets be honest here, indeed.
You know perfectly well what I meant and refused to touch the point.
It’s not even remotely ‘needed’ for success.
Here’s a recent darling of HN as an example: https://roamresearch.com/
I’m suggesting that consumers should buy a product that that suits their needs.
If you need alternate stores - buy Android.
There is no reason at all for Apple to be forced to do anything.