It's intolerable that Apple has been allowed to lockdown their device for 10 years, completely control the market for apps and when it looks like regulators will take action they reduce their price and claim to be acting in the interest of small business.
Third party app stores must be allowed. Apple should not be allowed to dictate what software I can and cannot have on my device.
My 82-year-old mom's desktop computer is riddled with spyware, browser toolbars, and other garbage. Her iPhone is pristine and works as well as it did the day she got it. That's because Apple refuses to allow that garbage to make it to the App Store.
Yes, there's some collateral damage for us nerds. And perhaps there should be an easier way to - for those who really care - install more low-level tools and apps. But it shouldn't be easy, and it shouldn't put the majority of users at risk.
Your 82-year-old mum's iphone wouldn't behave any differently but other people will be able to go into the developer settings and tick an option that will allow them to install non-app store apps. That's how it works on Android.
Smartphones have seen explosive growth because normal people can use them safely.
This advice would work for clothes/home appliances/furniture and other competitive markets, but not to mobile OSes.
Mobile OSes are natural monopoly/duopolies. There isn't enough room in the world for 100 OSes for us to get a competitive market. There isn't even room for 3. There is barely room for 2 with great downside. Companies spend a lot of money developing an app for one OS and basically re-creating it for the other.
I'm looking at my phone's home screen. Most of these apps are available in the other OS too, with almost the exact same functionality, but completely different codebases. Each of these duplicate efforts represent anything from X×100K $ to X×10M $ of development cost. This is just part of the cost of having more OSes. And the consumer ultimately pays for these costs.
Arguably not to OSes in general. Each platform type (desktop, server, mobile) effectively has only a couple of realistic choices when it comes to the OS. The network effects are very strong and winners take all.
Can you back this claim with a source? How do you explain that Android smartphones has grown even more than iOS, despite the fact that they allow you to install whatever apps you choose?
> How do you explain that Android smartphones has grown even more than iOS, despite the fact that they allow you to install whatever apps you choose?
1. Android is free for OEMs, iOS is unavailable. If you want to make a phone then its a great choice, and a free one. 2. Most flavors have a dominant store built in (android store, amazon store, Chinese-oem stores like Xiaomi) that are "safe" or offer that illusion. The important thing here is the built-in-trust of the default settings 3. Piggy-backing off point 1, cheap phone OS means people can make cheap phones -> Cheaper leads to more available for more people, and most of the world is poor compared to US iPhone users
I don’t particularly like it but the "trickle down theory" non marginally applies to fashionable or otherwise luxury items. iPhone creating a desire later satisfied by a cheaper option. Or something like that.
Practically speaking, the only big thing a web app can’t do on an iPhone that most app writers would like to do is notifications. Most other locked down things like call recording aren’t available to App Store approved apps either (and APIs are being removed from Android)
But what's obviously anti-consumer to me is the in app payment system. They take their 30% cut and forbid you from even hinting at alternative means to pay for something to use in an app.
It means I have one place to manage subscriptions, one place with my credit card details, one place to manage family payments and all of it is from a company that can be trusted to do things in a secure and private way.
Do you really want the likes of PayPal or Epic to dominate mobile App Store payments ?
Only that it is user-hostile which services like Paypal absolutely are.
You are right. Choices and options just are messy. We should just have one company that does everything. Lets just merge everything together.
> all of it is from a company that can be trusted to do things in a secure and private way.
Are you for real? Apple is one of the greediest immoral and anti-competitive companies in the world. Not just in terms of tax avoidance via offshore shenanigans or slave labor in china, but their overall ethos of closed platform. But trust Saint Apple if you must.
> Do you really want the likes of PayPal or Epic to dominate mobile App Store payments?
What's wrong with nobody dominating anything and having competition?
The main issue is not the exorbitant commission rate. Apple is hurting the consumers via its anti-competitive behavior with regards to what apps people are and are not allowed to install on a device that they've paid for. They are blocking value creation up and down the stack in a manner that "if we can't extract it, you're not allowed to create it."