Installing the software you want on your compute device isn't sideloading. Its just installing software. Apple is aberration here not all of the users who just expect to actually own the products they buy.
If that comes to pass, there will be no highly-guarded, highly-moderated mobile OS to choose from. Apple has tremendous resources and expends tremendous resources, under pressure of tremendous incentives, to moderate it well. Do you think Third-party app stores will be moderated better or worse on average? Not just with respect to content decisions, but privacy, security and the works.
There is a very reasonable case that having a solidly-guarded and moderated mobile OS as an option in the market is good for consumers. It may boggle the tech-savvy mind, but another way of reading the incredibly successful 10 year history of this horribly locked-down, oppressive OS is that the market has spoken. And it's happy.
My wife fell into this category when we first met, after I began teaching her even just some basics and she learned to question things and be more careful, I haven't needed to "diagnose" her computer in a long time (I still do regular maintenance, but irregular issues never come up anymore). So I would say that education is the biggest key in this regard, teach them to start with a zero trust model.
Problem solved. If you want the walled garden, opt in at the beginning, and now your children/grandmother are safe as long as they don't literally reset their phone, wiping all their pictures/apps/whatever.
The App Store (and reduced API surface) was a true revolution for the customer. Remember every app installer requiring admin privilege on Windows and creating it's service that runs at startup checking for updates, littering the registry and sometimes installing drivers?
All gone from the App Store. If the app maker doesn't like it he can go target another platform.
Even on Android, the amount of useless software side loaded by the manufacturer is mind boggling.
Missing the point. Sure, many users will trust the Netflix app, but we only need one trustworthy app (like Netflix) to open the gate for all other kinds of untrustworthy apps to also skip the check.
Now you're in the situation "I've already done this, nothing happened. But of course, I shouldn't do it all the time. There's a reason the warning is there."
Now you want to try out this other app. The company doesn't seem shady, but they're new, they don't yet have the reputation Netflix has. So you don't trust it "absolutely", but "pretty much". OK, you go ahead, just for this one app.
Now you're even more used to clicking through the warning. Repeat a few times. Now you're installing totally_not_malware.apk. What could go wrong? You've already installed a bunch of apps this way with no issue. Plus this one app clearly isn't malware, it says so in the title! Also, all your friends are using it and you don't want to be left out.
Android has only been asking once per source, not per app, for a while. Also, the messages aren't that scary. Folks haphazardly click OK in Windows without reading messages; you can be sure they do the same on a phone.
Most people I've heard referred as "tech savvy" are just plain old gamers, and they can be easily tricked.
In Android, Epic (and probably tens of ISP and carriers) actually tried that strategy and miserably failed.
So yeah this method does work to keep people using the more "safe" options while also letting others have more freedom with their device if they desire.
Zero chance Facebook doesn't do this with Instagram. Zero chance large employers don't do this with their surveillance software.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/01/facebook-and-google-...
When has the market been given a choice?
App Stores have been the only way to get software on iPhones since they were first released. I can't even install an alternative OS on my iPhone, and jailbreaking seems to have become less accessible now too. How do we know what experience is more competitive if competition isn't allowed to blossom? Maybe the market would value an alternative App Store that is able to compete on moderation and/or the 30% developer tax status quo?
> If that comes to pass, there will be no highly-guarded, highly-moderated mobile OS to choose from.
If the market wants this kind of experience, then surely it will continue to exist no?
That is the battle Epic is currently fighting, to remove the ability for anyone on the market to offer this option.
By requiring everyone to allow third-party app stores, you effectively remove the option for a fully curated experience. Because as mentioned, once a few popular apps start demanding usage of the third-party app store, consumers will no longer be able to choose a fully-curated experience without foregoing those services. And that will lead down an inevitable loss of privacy, increased demanding of permissions for marketing, etc - all of which Apple has fairly successfully fought back solely through their centrally-moderated experience. We all lived through the early days of Android before the built-in flashlight when you had flashlight apps demanding full permissions to monitor everything you do.
It is, in a sense, another "paradox of tolerance" - you have to restrict user freedoms in one area (what users are allowed to install) to protect them in another area (predatory developers). Apple's walled garden is the only thing keeping those marketing departments at bay, their restrictions on app-developer (and ultimately end-user) freedom are what protects your privacy. Similar perhaps to how GNU and BSD regard "freedoms" differently - BSD regards developer freedom as paramount, while GNU regards user freedom as paramount, and these are not quite the same things. While BSD protects developer freedom to release proprietary code on top of BSD code, GNU restricts developer freedom and forces that to be released under GNU license as well. And ultimately that translates into a loss of user freedom in some sense - surely users would like the ability to have ZFS distributed alongside the Linux kernel, but GNU restricts that freedom in furtherance of the big-picture.
Ironic as it is, the Apple Store is the GNU of this situation. They are willing to burn some specific cases of application developers who are not willing to accept the licensing terms, in order to protect the big-picture of user freedoms (privacy). Android is the "BSD", where they are more concerned about developer freedom than user freedom. And the loss of specific apps is analogous to the friction between mixing source under copyleft license with other open-source licenses.
If you want third-party app stores, Android exists. This is about Epic fighting to take away the option to have a moderated, quality-controlled experience and eroding the ability of users to maintain their privacy.
I've read a lot of mind-boggling post-hoc rationalisation of Apple's anti-competitive and paternalistic behaviour, but this definitely takes the cake.
Does GNU not (at times) restrict the distribution of software that end-users might find desirable, in order to protect their rights as a whole? Why do you think that is bad?
Has that restriction not resulted in the creation of a high-quality, user-freedom-regarding codebase despite (and in fact because of) those restrictions? Why can Apple’s policy of mandatory curation not have a similar effect on the market as well?
It seems self-evident that a lot of the privacy improvements in recent androids (like filesystem isolation in Android Q) probably would not have occurred without the impetus provided by Apple’s competitive pressure in this area, so you benefit from this even if you choose Android and “the BSD model”.
Like, I completely get that this is a developer-centric community and you see it as Apple gating access to the user base that makes you money. And as a user I see it as Apple blocking nefarious practices that developers clearly race to use as soon as they're allowed, in order to make a couple more pennies off my privacy and worsen my user experience. I don't think it's intellectually honest to pretend there's some huge Apple userbase who's champing at the bit to have Facebook have root access on their phones, they already have Facebook now, and Apple's curation forces Facebook to tone down the worst of their excess. Just like it wouldn't be honest to hear Microsoft whining about how it's not fair that GNU is restricting user freedoms because Microsoft isn't allowed to distribute code that links against GNU source. No user would want Microsoft to link against GNU code, Microsoft might want to do it because it would make them more profit, but you shouldn't put words into my mouth as an Apple customer.
And if you really did want to "sideload" onto your iphone, the only real barrier is having fifty bucks to get an apple developer account. Then you can sideload whatever you want. Similarly, a Microsoft developer account will let you sideload any UWP apps you want onto your Xbox, I've seen tons of people using it as an emulator console recently and that's certainly quite a thing for a walled garden.
Discuss, if you have points to make. Don’t just grump that “Apple bad”, that’s low quality posting.
I didn't feel I needed to point this out, but I don't even have to like Richard Stallman to find it almost insulting to compare his passion for fighting in what he truly believes in with the highest-valued company in the world trying to protect their market share at all costs.
> Don’t just grump that “Apple bad”, that’s low quality posting.
It's not "Apple bad", it's "unregulated big tech bad", that includes Apple just as much as Facebook, Amazon, Google, and possibly Epic, although I really don't care about them.
(#) But still nowhere near the level of privacy you can have on e.g. a Linux system running only free software. Apple's privacy track record is good compared to other predatory companies, not necessarily on its own.
No, the GPL does not restrict the distribution of software. The GPL requires that source code be made available. That's not remotely the same thing. The GPL also doesn't have anything to do with manual curation. The GPL is also, while we're on the subject, not a platform. The GPL does not prevent you from running GPL-licensed code on another system, or building your own system that interacts with GNU code. Apple does prevent all of those things.
So ignoring that the GPL does not restrict the distribution of software[0] there's still this huge jump in logic you're making that starts with "here is a thing that resulted in good outcomes" and jumps to a completely separate concept and says "maybe this will also have good outcomes." But it's an Apples and Oranges comparison.
It's like saying, "the GPL has resulted in good software. Maybe an increased federal minimum wage will also be good." Those two things aren't related to each other.
> It seems self-evident that a lot of the privacy improvements in recent androids (like filesystem isolation in Android Q) probably would not have occurred without the impetus provided by Apple’s competitive pressure in this area
It is also self evident that concepts like filesystem isolation do not require gatekeepers to work. The web has better security than your iPhone. It just does. And it doesn't require mandatory curation to get those benefits. It is possible to build systems that have good sandboxing controls without closing down platforms and installing gatekeepers that decide who is and isn't allowed to make software. Filesystem isolation is a good example of that. We can do things like retire persistent device advertising IDs without an app store.
> it's not fair that GNU is restricting user freedoms because Microsoft isn't allowed to distribute code that links against GNU source
No, Microsoft can distribute code that links against a GPL library, in fact if they link against a GPL-licensed source they are required to do so with the code they link. The lack of restrictions in the GPL is the reason why the GNU and the OSCI don't recognize "source-available" licenses like SSPL, which do actually restrict user freedom. The GPL is a different thing. We actually do want Microsoft to link to GPL code, and sometimes Microsoft does release code under the GPL, and we're all usually happy about it.
[0]: In fact, if anything it's the opposite, it requires the distribution of software code (in some instances). The GPL is never going to tell you that you can't release something.
GNU says you can't distribute their source unless their license terms are met. That's a restriction on distribution, yes. For example, it's not legal to distribute kernel source alongside CDDL licensed code like ZFS.
If we were to apply your standard to Apple - Apple doesn't restrict what apps can get into the app store, they restrict what apps in the app store are allowed to do. You cannot request permissions you don't use, for example, but they don't say that "Facebook is allowed and Instagram is not". Any other application that does what Epic does would have been blocked too, that is the licensing requirement of Apple's software environment.
> It is also self evident that concepts like filesystem isolation do not require gatekeepers to work
I in fact never said they did, this is putting words into my mouth.
I said there would have been no market impetus on Android to offer them without Apple doing them first. Which is self-evidently true as well - why are those features only being offered in Android Q? Why did it take 15 years?
> So ignoring that the GNU does not restrict the distribution of software[0] there's still this huge jump in logic
It's not a jump in logic, I'm asking you a very simple question: are there situations in which restrictions in certain "user freedoms" (such as the ability to receive CDDL code distributed alongside GPL code) produce an overall better outcome despite small-scale negative outcomes from players who do not comply with the overall licensing requirements?
Just saying that is apples and oranges doesn't mean anything. Tell me why that's not true.
Ultimately it is a microcosm of the paradox of tolerance. "The only thing that cannot be tolerated is intolerance itself". And similarly "The only freedom that cannot be tolerated is the freedom to violate user freedom" is the basis of both GPL and the Apple store license.
If you want the app store where you can do anything, there is Android. Apple is attempting to provide a curated user experience. They aren't preventing you from buying Android, just doing a model they think is better for their users. And that's the freedom of contract in action. Their users have alternatives and are free to go elsewhere. Why don't you think they should be allowed to prefer that?
Would it be OK to sue the GNU Foundation and force them to dual-license all existing code as BSD because copyleft is "anti-competitive"? Why or why not? If not, why should Apple be forced to alter their license agreement to allow third-party stores?
Where? GNU says that you can't link against a GPL-licensed[0] source without meeting those license requirements. There are zero restrictions on distributing GPL code, and there are zero restrictions on distributing your own code. There are also zero restrictions on allowing users to link code themselves. You could distribute your source and separately allow users to link that code to other libraries, and you would not be in violation of the GPL.
> it's not legal to distribute kernel source alongside CDDL licensed code like ZFS
I can run ZFS on Linux. This doesn't seem to be a real problem. There are multiple tutorials online about how to build the kernel with ZFS support, and with FUSE many distros do offer out-of-the-box ZFS support.
What is a piece of software that I am not allowed to run on Linux because of the GPL? I can run completely proprietary NVidia graphics drivers on Linux. How is my freedom as a user being taken away? This is not a comparable situation.
In fact, the only ecosystem where this is actually a problem is the Apple App Store, which disallows developers from distributing their software in a GPL-compatible way.
> Apple doesn't restrict what apps can get into the app store, they restrict what apps in the app store are allowed to do.
So Apple will never ban my developer account? They'll only ban an app? They certainly would never threaten to remove a separate app like Unreal Engine from a separate platform like Mac over a legal dispute?
Come on, Apple doesn't have restrictions on what apps can do. They have restrictions on what developers can do. And Apple reserves the right to remove apps from their store for any reason.
> are there situations in which restrictions in certain "user freedoms" [...] produce an overall better outcome
Sure. And at the risk of being a little too sarcastic or petty, that's why I think we should have higher federal minimum wages. The GPL works, so it's obvious that sometimes some restrictions in some areas can produce good outcomes. So therefore, having a higher minimum wage, or requiring software engineers to be licensed, or putting a cap on how much money Apple can charge in its store will also work. It's the same principle. /s
Leaving the snark/sarcasm behind, the comparison you're drawing is inaccurate because:
A) the GPL doesn't restrict people the way you think it does
B) even the restrictions you think the GPL is imposing are wildly different than the restrictions that Apple is imposing
C) the motivations behind the GPL's restrictions are different than Apple's motivations
D) every major architect and proponent of the GNU system has treated Apple's approach to moderation as a restriction of user rights that should be opposed, and they're probably in a good position to understand whether or not Apple is on the same side as them in regards to user freedom
E) the GPL is not a platform or an app runtime, and it doesn't restrict anyone's ability to run other code on top of it
F) the restrictions Apple is imposing are not required to produce secure/private outcomes (which you seem to be acknowledging, you yourself say that you're not claiming gatekeepers are required to build secure features like filesystem isolation)
G) it's not clear even ignoring everything above that the upsides of Apple's moderation are larger than its downsides. In contrast, the effects of the GPL are honestly a lot clearer
H) the majority of the privacy outcomes that Apple is touting were invented on the web long before they came to the iPhone. We might as well ask if Apple is so great at moderation why their entire platform has lagged behind the web by almost a decade in terms of adblocking and app isolation.
> Ultimately it is a microcosm of the paradox of tolerance.
Only if you think the paradox of tolerance means that anybody should be able to restrict any freedom and attack any person as long as they can kinda justify one potential area where they might have a good outcome. Looking at the entirety of Apple's restrictions, it is absurd to argue that they are advocating for user freedom in general.
> Would it be OK to sue the GNU Foundation and force them to dual-license all existing code as BSD because copyleft is "anti-competitive"?
Do they control >50% of the entire commercial market, and do they impose barriers of entry into that market, and do they engage in anti-consumer lock-in behavior that makes it impossible to switch devices for many consumers without giving up access to credit cards, subscriptions, and hundreds of dollars worth of software? Is there strong evidence that being able to exempt themselves from their own requirements allows them to undercut competitor prices?
The GNU is not in the same position as Apple.
----
[0]: Quick note, it is GPL, not GNU. GPL is the license, GNU is the overarching organization and software collection.
The choice now is between Apple and Android ecosystems. The best Android phones have comparable hardware to the iPhone, so people are choosing based on software, price, and status.
If this is keeping people from switching, then the costs are infinitessimal. Samsung has great importers for you to switch platforms.
This is a great place for regulatory intervention to act for the good of the people. I don't really care about the good of Apple. It is the world's most highly valued company, right? It'll be fine.
Librem 5 or Pinephone is a thing as well.
If you're gonna downvote me, I mean... I really feel like the burden is on someone to demonstrate how Apple is somehow more ethical, rather than on me to demonstrate how I'm more ethical than apple lmao
Android.
Don't forget that the market was pushed that way by Apple's highly influential marketing. People didn't really choose to give up their freedom of their own free will --- they were persuaded to, and only found out about the downsides afterwards.
If you could, why would anyone try to innovate on any level? Why are software engineers and product people paid more than marketing people at the same company?
Is Apple > Blackberry just because Apple had better marketing? Or Nokia?
On the other hand, if you have something genuinely desirable, then yeah marketing help people find that thing.
Android already allows side-loading and i don't think any popular app out there is asking users to enable side-loading to install their app. Why do you think the situation would be any different with iOS app store?
He was tech illiterate. Yet without any effort or choice, people had engineered multiple ways to compromise the basic functionality of sending a message.
If I could have burned his phone in a fire and given him an iPhone, I would have.
He struggled with the tech until someone showed him how something worked, at which point he diligently studied that one app for all it’s worth - but this was limited to YouTube and audio recording apps.
For him to have multiple messaging apps? Can’t see him do it intentionally - most likely he got hit by a pop up which then merrily used it to install a new messaging service.
It was a nightmare because he kept losing track and therefore control of what was going on with his phone. I’m sure the data security and privacy settings on those messaging apps would have been more upsetting.
For his use case a simple big standard iPhone would have made him happier, instead of having to wait for someone else to help him out.
Aggressive Protection? Sounds like the Mafia. Protection, paid for by you whether you want it or not. Pay the 30% or the mafia's going to break your kneecaps.
People and organisations do it because it’s highly profitable, and it’s highly profitable because it’s a trusted and curated platform (unlike the competition).
Pretending this is anything like the mafia is childish.
Some examples: I hate it how there’s no adult content allowed in the App Store. Or how if I build my own version of Signal, I have to disable push notifications and things because I haven’t paid apple enough money or something. I hate that last I checked, I can’t buy books in the audible app. If my camera breaks, I apparently can’t get it fixed by anyone except Apple. I hate how Apple charges my bank for the privilege of using the NFC chip in my phone, which I paid for.
It’s ridiculous to demand that Epic games makes their own phone if they want to sell me their game. Ideologically, this is capitalism. But capitalism works best for everyone when there’s healthy competition. Wielding their superior phones to enforce a monopoly in other parts of the ecosystem is anticompetitive and anti consumer. And I’m glad someone is finally standing up to them.
If you don’t like your phone, get another one. This is the most ridiculous first world problem, and associated whining, I’ve ever seen.
You have alternatives, but you’ve willingly chosen the iPhone. Then you whine that it’s not sufficiently like the competition, despite this being the headline feature of this product and company. It’s completely childish and ridiculous.
Let me make this very clear for you: I, as an end user, want Apple to have complete control over its platform. That’s precisely why I bought into this, and not another ecosystem. I do not want sideloading, I do not want alternative stores, I do not want the so-called “healthy competition”. And I should be able to make that choice, as a consumer.
The headline feature of apple devices for me is that unlike Google, Apple cares about my privacy and security. Apple doesn't offer a devil's bargain with every first party feature. "We can turn this great new thing on - but in exchange, we're going to track your physical movements everywhere. We can turn this other thing on, but we'll record, save and send audio recordings of your life."
Right now I have to decide between having control of my device but no control of my data (google). Or having control over my data but no control over my device (apple). That decision is crap.
> I, as an end user, want Apple to have complete control over its platform
Good for you. In comparison, I want to have more control over the devices I paid good money for. I don't want to live in a digital serfdom, where my only freedoms are those granted to me by the local lord of the cloud.
I don't want accidentally offending an algorithm to result in banishment (google). Or, in Apple's case, for the local lord to tax and morally judge every trade that takes place under their watch.
If you want to spend your life in Apple's walled garden, great! But I don't want owning the best phone to mean I'm trapped there with you. I demand to be able to enter into a voluntary financial agreement with Epic games if I like. I don't want my own phone to have the power to stop me or levy a tax, just so some Apple VP gets a bigger bonus.
And I pray it stays that way.
I’m sorry mate, but the reality of the situation is that your wishes mean nothing and Apple owes you zilch. You don’t like that, feel free to go somewhere else.
You imposing your views on all of us is not freedom. It’s the opposite of that.
You want open software? Linux is a thing, I should know, I use it every day.
You want a walled garden? Well you should be able to have that choice, too. You want to take that away from me while pretending to do it for the greater good, when in reality it’s just a selfish desire to impose your will on others.
Let's call a spade, a spade. Your position appears to be "I don't want to choose, and I don't want anyone else to be able to choose either".
That is certainly not the paragon of virtue. Letting people choose -- which doesn't affect you at all - is.
Apple has made a strategic decision to maintain this walled garden. This decision is one of the company’s key differentiators.
Your position appears to be “I want to force Apple to abandon a key market differentiator in service of a marginal gain in personal freedom for a marginal segment of customers who would actually care about such change.”
Apple customers are lacking choice in software just as much as Trader Joe’s customers are lacking choice in food brands.
I certainly didn't buy an iphone because I want to pay an extra tax whenever I buy apps.
Yes! And you’re being wilfully dishonest by not acknowledging this point, despite me repeating it to you a dozen times.
> I didn’t buy an iphone because [...]
Well, I did.
> And I pray it stays that way.
If Epic had an alternate app store, you know you wouldn't have to use it right? You could still use Apple's walled garden. Granting me the ability to run more software on my device doesn't restrict your ability to control what runs on your device.
> it’s just a selfish desire to impose your will on others.
You're the one arguing for restrictions about what I can do on my phone. I don't care what you do with yours. Nothing Epic is proposing would stop Apple from reviewing apps and selling them in the app store.
And if opening the door to free and open marketplaces, with the user in the driver's seat is selfish, guilty as charged! Sign me up! The engine of capitalism works best with healthy competition. (And no, the phone megacorp duopoly is not healthy competition.)
Reigning in monopolies is what healthy regulation is made for.
Apple has a clear, technologically enforced, complete monopoly on apps distributed on their phones. And google has a weak monopoly on their phones - you can distribute your app on other app stores, but its difficult for everyone. The situation on Android is slightly worse than Microsoft distributing IE with windows. And when that happened, the feds initiated a huge antitrust case against microsoft and nearly broke up the company.
Does the fact that there's competition in the phone market mean we should forgive monopolistic behaviour in the app markets on those phones? Thats a tricky question. Its too simple to just fall back on heuristics.
Is there monopolistic behaviour in the app market?
- Does the monopolistic provider use their position to block competition? Yes. Apple doesn't allow any competitors to their own software in the app store.
- Does the monopolistic provider rent seek, and extract far more money from the market than they would if there was healthy competition? Uncertain - I'm not sure if 15% is a reasonable or unreasonable cut. 30% almost certainly wasn't reasonable for the services apple provided.
- Do people buy phones mostly because of their app stores? If they do, then phone competition == app store competition. If they primarily choose a phone on other factors (cameras, etc) then these are separate markets and should be considered separately. Answer: ???
Is there a precedent? Its not exactly the same, but Australia didn't like telstra (an ISP who owned most of the cable at the time) renting their cables at unreasonable prices to other ISPs. They stopped anyone else from reasonably competing with them. You could make the same argument - "You willingly bought a house there so you can't complain. If you don't like it, move". But we regulated them anyway. Notably the US hasn't regulated comcast / etc from doing the same thing over there.
Longer answer than you were expecting. tldr; its complicated. Heuristics aren't enough. Personally I don't think competition in phones means its acceptable that we have monopolies in app stores. I find the justifications for letting apple have a monopoly in the app store unconvincing and I favor regulation.
Epic likely doesn’t want an ‘alternative’ App Store they want one that they completely control.
Good. Don't use them. Do you use every single feature of your phone? Of course not. There are probably features you don't even know about.
So don't use them. The mere presence of the feature doesn't obligate you to use it.
Why the hell should Facebook comply with Apple’s every whim and wish, if they could just publish on a different store with less stringent privacy rules, and force you to download it that way? “You want Facebook? Go to Settings -> Privacy, then uncheck the bla bla bla box, and install Fb Store. Then...”. Yeah, no, that’s my worst nightmare.
Seriously, how do you people not get this?
There's no reason Apple can't enforce the same privacy options OS wide, even for sideloaded apps.
Of course they don't want to, they would lose their 30% cut. But if they are forced to allow 3rd party app stores they would have to, if they wanted to continue their privacy focused marketing.
Pretending this doesn't have deep parallels to the mafia is childish. Keep pretending and we'll have Tony break your kneecaps.
There are plenty of parallels between Apple and the Mafia. Just ask Epic, who's kneecaps were busted for not paying the Don his share.
Yes, exactly like the mafia.
I'll gladly buy some games from the alternative store... because I love competition - unlike the Mafia.
If this was a Microsoft phone and Microsoft controlled the market share Apple does? people would be stampeding to force Microsoft to allow competing stores (or browsers, default email applications, etc) on them because anti-competitive behavior.
Yet Apple is "magical" and gets a pass for not allowing competition on "their" devices.
Even Google allows "sideloading".
Why does everything need to be like Android, which has way higher market share anyway? How exactly will that give us more choice, if everything has to be identical?
I buy Apple products precisely because Apple has complete control over its devices, not in spite of it. Get it through your thick head.
"I Buy apple" and others buy Apple while still wanting choice within that ecosystem of hardware. Why don't YOU get that through YOUR thick skull? You aren't the only customer and other people deserve the choice - which is why regulations exist to break up monopolies.
Thanks for, basically, admitting that I'm right and that the Don is willing to break kneecaps to keep control of their fiefdom.
It's not a tacit admission. I will admit it openly. Apple has a close system with full control over it, and that's just the way I like it.
You think that it's a bad thing. I don't. There's nothing to hide on my part, I'm completely honest about it.
> which is why regulations exist to break up monopolies
Which Apple is not.
God, you're dumb, and you don't even know it.
Just because there are some other options... doesn't negate the fact that Apple is using monopolistic and anti-competitive tactics to limit consumer choice and business options.
There's zero reason why Epic should be force to pay Apple a 30% cut of all income when Epic has the resources and talent to do so.
Zero reason... other than mafia tactics.
But we're not talking about changing the operating system, are we? We're talking about opening up the marketplace.
If you're relying on perfect/near-perfect moderation of every application in your marketplace to protect your users from abuse by developers, that already seems like asking the impossible.
The operating system should have a robust security and privacy model that protects users, regardless of what software they run on it. But if you have that, the source of the software matters a lot less, and any argument based on restricting distribution to authorised channels will be weakened.
Conflating these two fundamentally different issues might be convenient for Apple's PR or legal departments, but it's still obscuring how a customer's device is being restricted in ways not necessarily in that customer's favour.
From Netflix' perspective that still adds considerable UX friction, and some percentage of potential customers will drop off.
At what percentage cut is it better for them to just stay in the Apple store? 10%? 5%? 2%? At any of those rates Apple still makes boatloads of money.
It's the same situation as with "third-party" package stores in your favorite Linux distro. Say, on Ubuntu you add a particular PPA, you got to see its PGP signature, etc.
So in the Netflix case, it will be a Netflix store, secured by a DNS + TLS lookup, and limited to what Netflix has to offer.
But consider differently curated stores, some maybe even requiring a subscription fee to support the operation, discovering, checking, and maybe suggesting apps in different areas: from as wide as art apps or music creation apps, to as narrow as high-quality puzzle game apps. (Of course, an app might be available through more than one store.)
Then we deal with that later?
They want Apple to have a strong market position, so Apple can dictate their conditions to everyone else. They like the fact that Apple can bend every developer out there including Facebook and Google, because access to Apple users is a luxury. They like the fact that Apple uses its position to benefit Apple users.
Of course Apple uses its position to benefit Apple itself as well, but users don't care as long as they got their personal benefits like improved privacy or security. If that comes at a price to other developers, price that those developers would not pay with more open approach, users still don't care.
If Apple would allow installing of any applications to their phones, plenty of apps would run from Apple, because developers hate Apple. Installing some kind of OpenStore would be the first thing you're doing with your iPhone. AppStore would be empty just like Mac AppStore is empty. Very few developers would willingly pay 15% of their revenue to Apple just to have non-existent AppStore marketing (unless you're in lucky 0.001% who got top ranks). So those developers would not bend to Apple and Apple users would get reduced experience, less privacy, etc.
If this is true, then you need to ask the question "should big companies be forced to be more competitive, even if doing so means a good amount of customers will lose privacy and security", and your answer will be entirely one of preference, what you say can't be correct or incorrect.
We need to speak up now more than ever. The heat against Apple is turning up, and with all this pressure and focus we can frame our argument with crystal clarity and make it LOUD.
Tim Sweeny, DHH, and plenty of other luminaries are carrying this argument forward. We need to join them in unison.
Why does everything need to become like Android? Why can’t Apple and its users do their own thing? What’s with this Borg mentality HN has when it comes to Apple?
Assimilate or perish. I genuinely think it’s deep seated envy, frankly.
The only person responsible for your success is you. There are plenty of other things successful startups need besides an iOS app but you’re targeting your anger at Apple instead?
> Apple makes this hostile to everyone that isn't them.
Apple isn’t hostile to its users. Sure, Apple is hostile to developers and it’s understandable to be upset about that.
As an Apple user I appreciate and trust their protection over the OS for this very personal device that goes in my pocket.
I appreciate Apple ID gives me a layer of privacy between me and the developer.
> Would you still have this opinion if history had been different and Microsoft's Windows Phone had taken the place of the iPhone
I have no idea. I’ve never used a Windows phone. If my choice was between Google’s Android and a Windows phone with the same consumer protections that Apple gives me now, yes, I would have a Windows phone.
That said, Apple is successful because they did things that Microsoft wasn’t doing and I find this premise silly.
This is false.
It's difficult for the HN userset to understand, but a more private, more secure experience is more of a benefit than the ability to install arbitrary unsigned apps.
Most normal users don't care about installing the handful of apps that can't pass Apple certification, and it is in fact probably better that they not be on the platform because there are reasons they're being excluded.
Epic's fight here is to block that user experience from being allowed in the marketplace. There exist "open platforms", people choose Apple because they want curation.
Moreover, Epic is mad because that user experience is winning, there are a significant number of users who prefer curation over the ability to sideload whatever garbage.
I don’t have any urge to tinker with my phone, iPad or MacBook’s hardware- and that’s why I have them. We do build software via Xcode & Unity, which is an amazing experience, but I’m ok with the hardware being mostly static.
This whole “modern computers should be hackable like DOS machines of the late 80s” is absurd. By that logic we should never have accepted systems on a chip. The only criticism is that I strongly think these devices should have replaceable batteries, even at the cost of thinness.
Nevermind the "famers should own their equipment" argument that states that all general purpose computing devices should allow their owners to run whatever programs they want. The fact that Apple controls banking, dating, email, and a million other economic and social functions should be even more reason. That's an unhealthy amount of power.
Apple shouldn't be able to force literally every company in America to dance to their beat to reach 50% of American consumers.
Really think about it.
Apple controls access to 50% of Americans.
That's monopoly. Only the US Government is more successful in its taxing and regulation regime, and this is theoretically used for the betterment of all citizens rather than just shareholders.
Apple subtracts from our whole industry to add to itself. They're acting like a republic of their own. They're downright impossible to avoid if you want to build a successful business.
Give up your Apple fandom for a moment and think about this.
Is this healthy?
Would you still be happy with it if it were Windows Phone instead of iPhone? Would you still defend it?
This reason is exactly why I'm paying Apple premium.
How is this good and not cruel?
What a burden on our economy.
Can I pick phone from manufacturer with eco-system that takes my wishes into account?
Is there a desktop computer that takes your wishes into account? None of those behave like iPhone. What about a laptop?
Yes. That is why I chosen Apple to be my gatekeeper - they have appropriate leverage. As long as they understand that my privacy is more important than business need of some developer they will stay in this position.
> Is there a desktop computer that takes your wishes into account? None of those behave like iPhone. What about a laptop?
Expectations are different from smartphone, laptop, desktop tablet, mini PC, gaming PC, console, microwave, car etc.
Those devices need not to be the same, behave the same even if there is CPU that can run arbitrary code under the hood.
That is why we have different markets to cater for different needs.
This is where you fail to accept that others might have different views.
It’s up to consumer choice people say, but the reality is, bad behavior, like NYT giving you a hard time to stop a subscription, is more profitable. Spamming your notifications with deals are more profitable. I really wish it wasn’t. And the worst thing is when it’s profitable they have the ad money to drown out all the marketing “the good guys” do.
While I really would prefer the ability to install anything on my iOS device, I don't really want to do that. Not any more.
I like that TrueCaller on my iOS device works for most features without getting any permission from me, while on Android it refuses to buzz from the splash screen unless you give it every permission - including full contact access and phone.
I like that on iOS a famous payment app from India (PhonePe) works flawlessly with zero permissions but on Android? It needs both location and contacts to even function - neither of these are mandatory for their functioning but still they do and can get away with that.
You know WhatsApp doesn't let you use "Status" feature unless you provide Storage permission to it on Android (I doubt they need it just to shows those images, videos, and texts).
I tried Pixel 4a for sometime. The experience was nauseating. Everything from every corner was trying to jump into my face and distract me with this option, that option, that feature, that dark pattern. I found the right swipe quite nifty that shows you news and your daily calendar etc. So I first tried to find a way to only find the news source or types of news I could see - nope, no go! Then I disabled "Discover" and then it was just an empty white screen! I could literally not use that space for anything else. There was a button in the corner that I could tap once, and then it would show me daily calendar events. After one click! I couldn't set it to use the space which "discover" used to take. And mind it discover was just rage news stories.
And that calendar feature had a mind of its own - sometimes it would show the next 1 event, sometimes two I couldn't find a way to show day or week. I had the option to disable the entire right swipe feature.
I didn't want that clock on my home screen - no way to do that. Could I install another Launcher for all this? Yes, I could even though I didn't want to, but they came with other problems and limitations. I couldn't configure the keyboards to be more simple and remove all the settings from it.
Not to mention feature after feature getting disabled as I disable invasive permissions for features and apps.
It feels depressing to literally stare into a phone and see live and read - "you are the product, deal with it!"
And I was back to my iPhone with its pathetic battery life. So you see, Apple really has no competition and that's why they get away with things.
I have iOS and Android devices. Nothing of worth is stuck on iOS (or MacOS). But iOS is my daily driver. Though I've switched back to Linux for daily work.
I'm happy to mess around with something, but it's definitely great to have a platform that is not so easy to mess up and has great support for the rest of the family. And I'm happy to stay compatible with them.
AltStore lets you run your own app store locally on your own network and push app's to your phone from it.
I am happy with the situation for one simple reason: it just works. I hve to many things to deal with and tinker with elsewhere. I honestly don't want to tinker with my phone.
So don't? People seem to have the idea that in order to use Android effectively you have to rebuild the kernel every week. If you treat a Pixel like an iPhone, it works like an iPhone.
Did... did you even read what I was replying to? I was replying to this, emphasis mine:
--- start quote ---
It's depressing that even on hackernews where you expect people want to tinker and have control over their machines there's a probably a majority who are happy with the situation and use the think of my grandma (aka children) using iPhone situation.
--- end quote ---
No, I don't want to tinker with my phone. So I don't, and as a user I'm quite happy with the situation on the iPhone.
Some of the security and excellent user experience in fact comes from the enforcing and prevention of arbitrary third party apps. You can't have your cake and eat it too. If you don't want that experience go get an Android (many do, and are happy with it, but forcing Apple to become Android is nonsensical).
Apple needs to be tarred and feathered for its sins of taking a different path to the rest of the industry.
s/taking a different path.*/creating a serfdom.
s/taking a different path.*/behaving like John Deere.
s/taking a different path.*/making Richard Stallman cry.
s/taking a different path.*/taxation without representation.
s/taking a different path.*/handicapping every platform (web, flash, etc) but theirs, capturing 50% of Americans, making iPhone their only computer, then forcing every single other company to wear a chicken suit.
This is the religious programming in all its glory. Brought to you by the same people that call Apple users sheep.
On the other hand, Apple is acting as a platform owner and demanding that they continue to act as the sole store curator on their platform.
I do not see the hypocrisy.
>On the one hand, Apple is acting as a store curator and demanding that its customers be made aware of tracking software.
This sounds like marketing. Apple is limiting what apps their customers have access to. I wonder if you would make the same argument if Apple starts blocking websites?
Why do you care what my preferences are? If you don't care for the iOS model, you should go buy an Android. Apple doesn't have a monopoly.
I prefer the Apple model because I want these restrictions. I want apps to be blocked from cross-app tracking. I want apps to have to explicitly spell out the type of data they collect from me, and how they use it. I don't care that I can't side load apps.
If you want a spyware phone, go get an Android.
"I like that TrueCaller on my iOS device works for most features without getting any permission from me, while on Android it refuses to buzz from the splash screen unless you give it every permission - including full contact access and phone.
I like that on iOS a famous payment app from India (PhonePe) works flawlessly with zero permissions but on Android? It needs both location and contacts to even function - neither of these are mandatory for their functioning but still they do and can get away with that.
You know WhatsApp doesn't let you use "Status" feature unless you provide Storage permission to it on Android (I doubt they need it just to shows those images, videos, and texts)."
I think it's important to note that the mere existence of controls, i.e buttons that do a thing, don't actually end up achieving their goal of improving user privacy unless there's also enforcement of usage patterns. You can't get away with stuff like this on iOS, and it's clear by these accounts that the same companies would do the same on iOS if they could.
To you.
>Apple and android DO have a duopoly, and it is bad for every phone owner.
Google owns over 85% of the worldwide smartphone market. I agree that we need more competition. This competition should come from breaking Google/Android into 4 pieces, and then we'll have 5 companies with 15-25% market.
In the US, Apple's App Store makes more than 100% more revenue than Google's Play store does[2].
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/266572/market-share-held...
I would be completely happy if IOS by default did not allow all the things it doesn't allow, but you could add a setting to allow 3rd party app stores with a list that apple curated themselves (similar to search engine preferences in a browser).
Apple can make it all scary about how the apps on the 3rd party applications could be doing more nefarious things. I would even be ok with apple having the ability to simply refuse to install specific apps from these 3rd party app stores for things that are egregious violations of ethics.
but I've just read too many stories about Apple rejecting apps over very innocuous things, and apple rejecting smaller apps but allowing the same thing in larger apps (anti-competitive).
It's a legitimate problem.
And in the case of both devices (Apple and Android) you can still flash your own "competing" OS on the hardware. It's far easier to do this on an Android device than an Apple one, but the hardware is separate from the software you're running. But there are multiple mobile OSes not named Android or iOS.
What qualifies as a competitor, and what responsibility does Apple or Android have at creating new competitors? What actions are Google or Apple taking to actively stomp out mobile based OSes? Didn't Mozilla give it a shot? Didn't Ubunutu put out a mobile version of their OS? The lack of competitor for OSes seems like an odd argument to make. They exist even if they don't have marketshare, and there is no requisite business structure behind an OS in order for it to be a competing software. There are options. They may not be the single most accessible, and they may not meet your needs, but they exist.
What does this mean? Late 90’s Microsoft had more than 85% of the desktop PC market.
Early 2020’s Microsoft still has more than 85% of the Desktop PC market.
There is simply no comparison.
Apple doesn’t control the market. They don’t have anything like a monopoly.
They do have products that a lot of people think are category leading, but that isn’t the same thing as having ‘control’.
They also make a lot of profit, because people are willing to pay more for those products. But this is true of companies who focus on quality, regardless of scale.
This part is entirely irrelevant in the EU
Similarly, Apple and Google have leveraged their duopoly in the mobile operating systems market to prevent competition in the mobile application distribution market
Apple (52.4%) and Google (47%) control 99.4% of the mobile operating system market[1]. That's certainly much more than the 85% of the market that Microsoft had.
> They don’t have anything like a monopoly.
Colloquial definitions of monopoly do not matter when it comes to antitrust laws[2]:
> Courts do not require a literal monopoly before applying rules for single firm conduct; that term is used as shorthand for a firm with significant and durable market power — that is, the long term ability to raise price or exclude competitors. That is how that term is used here: a "monopolist" is a firm with significant and durable market power.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/266572/market-share-held...
[2] https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-a...
What does the Android vs Apple vs Featurephone marketshare look like?
For the most part they aren’t trying.
Building a new mobile platform is expensive - probably billions of dollars of investment - and takes years.
There are actually quite a few companies who could do so if they wanted - e.g. Facebook, and yes, Epic.
But there is no reason to suppose they would be successful in any less time than it took Apple or Google.
There are reasons why people trust Apple’s platform, and integrated payments are one of them.
My point is that Epic actually is a company that has the resources to compete directly if they wanted to.
Apple just isn’t the leader in games, and it would be great if Epic leveraged its position to build a real alternative platform, rather than just attempting to force its way into being a middleman in Apple’s platform.
That isn’t actually going to result in more platform competition.
Apple did nothing to create Fortnite, but they want about a third of the revenue from Fortnite. Epic did not create the iOS platform, and they are not asking for any of Apple's profits from the iOS platform. So your characterization of who's wanting profit without doing the work seems completely backwards to me. Apple's demands here are essentially rent-seeking.
> There are reasons why people trust Apple’s platform, and integrated payments are one of them.
As far as I know, Epic did not prevent people from paying through Apple's integrated payment platform. They simply offered an alternative.
> My point is that Epic actually is a company that has the resources to compete directly if they wanted to.
> Apple just isn’t the leader in games, and it would be great if Epic leveraged its position to build a real alternative platform, rather than just attempting to force its way into being a middleman in Apple’s platform.
Your suggestion is that if somebody wants to sell things to users who happen to be on smartphones without paying into the duopoly's protection racket, they should simply develop their own hardware supply chain and manufacturing capabilities, phone operating system, mapping and GPS software, email software, ditto for every other piece of software that is table stakes for a phone — and do all of this to a level of quality sufficient to compete with companies whose primary businesses are doing these things — and then finally develop whatever it was they wanted to sell in the first place.
This is not a reasonable position, and even if Epic is in a position to do it (which I'm not sure if they are), most companies aren't, and it is not reasonable to demand every company develop its own phone.
It's also bad for users, because then they'd have to buy a phone for every app.
It is much more reasonable to just not allow smartphones to be the 21st century equivalent of a company town where employees are paid in scrip.
Obviously not. It’s not a protection racket.
I’m suggesting that it would be better for consumers if we had more competition at the platform level - then we wouldn’t have a duopoly, and we would have more pressure for the platforms to compete an innovate.
You list a bunch of technologies that have already been developed and can be integrated. I said it would take a billion dollars, so we’re on the same page.
> because then they'd have to buy a phone for every app.
Don’t be silly. Popular apps are available on more than one platform.
Yes, there would be exclusives - games especially, but that is no different to how it is now.
For all your complaining, you seem to be arguing very hard that we should be stuck with the duopoly you claim to dislike.
We deserve better than forcing both users and developers alike to deal with a bunch of additional middlemen within the duopoly.
We are only stuck if nobody thinks it’s worth creating an alternative. The ‘duopoly’ has only existed for around 5 years so far. It’s bizarre to consider regulating such a short lived phenomenon instead of encouraging new entrants, particularly when there are so many deep pocketed companies that want a piece of the market.
We’re not talking about a random video game company. We’re talking about Epic, a multi-billion dollar transnational enterprise that could easily afford to invest the time and money Apple and Google did to build their platforms.
Epic is vastly more profitable now than Apple was when they developed the iPhone. Let’s not deceive anyone that they are some small games company.
If you want to guarantee that we continue with the duopoly, the best way to do that is to take away the incentive for companies that could compete, to actually do so, by giving them a piece of the duopoly’s revenue stream.
Apple is not a supplier. They only sell directly to consumers. They don’t even try to make their app store available on competing phones, even if it is technically possible.
Nitpick: Apple Music competing with Spotify is remarkably similar to the Microsoft case. (Epic's case is weaker.)
Apple Music is available in the Google Play Store but I don’t know of any credible accusation that Apple has tried to get Google to kick Spotify out.
You: Microsoft did not get prosecuted for being popular.
How does that response follow at all?
iTunes library (at least for Books and Music) is DRM-free and has been from an early stage (though _did_ launch with DRM).
I've had great success in migrating my purchased items back and forth from linux with absolutely no issue. However now they're using streaming and I'm unable to easily "own" any music anymore... or at the very least it takes you off of the easy path.
iTunes has been DRM free for more than a decade now.
Thanks for clarifying.
This sounds an awfull lot like the though process of religious zealots and extremists. Ignore the real world, consequences be damned, ideology comes first. There is no way we could make an error of judgement. Thats how you get a famine and 50 million dead in China.
"Apple has the right to create the software ecosystem they want to create."
There is absolutely no such right, neither morally nor legally
What there is none is the "right" for governments to claim ownership to other's work and dictate you must do what your own free will tells you is not on your best interest, that is why they use force.
That is not a right. As I said there is only one right, or only one that matters: the right to your own thoughts, to your mind's work, that is the work I was talking about.
Everything else is not a right, at least not if we are gonna be true to the word. If it's dependent on others is not a right. If it's conditional to other people's whims is not a right. If it needs the entire legal establishment and an army to enforce it is not a right. Rights in the constitution are not "rights" per se but obligations from the government to its citizens, as in you have the right* to procure it from the government, whatever it might be.
If you need to ask for permission is not a right.
What there is none is the "right" for governments to claim ownership to other's work and dictate you must do what your own free will tells you is not on your best interest
The law absolutely dictates the rules, which may or may not contradict your own free-will e.g. paying taxes, abiding by copyright etc.
Your private data is something within your own rights to do as you please with it, which gives you a choice of whether you want to store it on apple's systems or on someone else's systems or on the local systems that you personally own.
Now, what are you even arguing? Once i out data on an apple computer they can do whatever they want? If I but an iPhone is it still not a 'local system I personally own'? Do they have to respect my data, or do they not have to follow the law?
If your sex tapes are included as a part of your "work data", what would you count as your "private data" then?
Not trying to argue anything in particular, I am just genuinely curious at this point.
>Once i out data on an apple computer they can do whatever they want?
Nope, only things you agreed to in Terms of Usage that do not go against the law. Added that detail at the end because yes, I am aware that ToU do not override laws, and just because you put something in there doesn't necessarily mean that it is legal.
>Now, what are you even arguing?
Your earlier comment said "I store my data in apple's systems, is it my right to do with it as I please or theirs?", and that's what I was addressing. You have the right to do as you please with it, which manifests in your ability to NOT use Apple's systems for your data storage, unless you are satisfied with their Terms of Usage. If you decide to use their systems for that, you are agreeing on the ground rules with them which are outlined in ToU.
Anti-competitive behavior that harms consumers is the problem (and question). Whether Apple is a monopoly or not is really besides the point.
There is no competition in hardware for their operating system because of them locking it down.
There is no competition in operating systems for their hardware because of them locking it down.
There is no competition in application delivery for their systems because of locking it down.
There is no competition in some applications and/or functionality (webview/safari) for their systems because of them locking it down.
Each of these rely on and in turn reinforce the others. Taken together they all Apple to control absolutely all competition to do with their devices. Some aspects of this are fairly normalized and we're used to, but others less so (the complete hardware/OS lockdown, which in turn feeds into problems with repair). Whether some aspects seem normal or not, they all deserve a look with fresh eyes, as the world and how we use devices like this is changing, and old models of thinking may or may not work best for us. The bottom line is whether consumers are harmed by their actions or not, and that's what we should use to measure this, not whether it seems okay, or matches our way of thinking about what a company should be able to control.
At the base level, I think a useful question to ask is "why is the store cut for managing and distributing apps 30%, and why hasn't it changed with the emergence of other stores?" One answer might be that it really takes about 30% of revenues to provide store functionality. Common public sources seem to indicate this is not the case. Another answer might be that for some reason, the market is resistant to change. I think this is because one large market member, Apple, is insulated from competition to a large degree, and didn't feel any pressure to change. Other market members match this number because the market is distorted by Apple's resistance to change. I think the fact that as soon as congress started making noises about investigating app market pricing Apple was able to immediately drop their cut for certain store items significantly points towards them knowing this, and wanting to get ahead of the problem so the status quo isn't changed too much to their detriment.
The only claim one could make is “hey, 30% seems a bit high to do business there”. Yet Apple can claim that you pay a premium to get access to millions of consumers which they’ve cultivated a strong relationship with. Running an App Store isn’t hard. Running a successful App Store is very hard. This is why Epic doesn’t want to do it themselves, but rather sue it out of Apple.
What? You can put a BMW engine in another car, you can put another engine in a BMW. BMW does not make it so that you can't use other engines or parts. This is nothing like BMW. I don't know about Tesla, but I suspect it's more a matter of others not making engines that fit the spec than it being explicitly designed to not allow other engines, but I really don't know enough about them to so.
> Running an App Store isn’t hard. Running a successful App Store is very hard.
The running of it is always easy. Getting to the point it's successful is hard, because it requires many other things to go right.
> This is why Epic doesn’t want to do it themselves, but rather sue it out of Apple.
What are you talking about? Epic is specifically bringing suit so they can run their own app store. Not only that, but they already run their own app store. Epic already has the infrastructure and inventory to be a credible alternative for games, because they have hundreds of games they already deliver on Windows, at a smaller cut than Apple charges in their app store.
This isn't about Epic wanting to cash in on Apple's app store it's about them outgrowing it and wanting to open their own store when Apple won't let them (they might also be fine with a lower cut from Apple, but they would rather run their own store. They're keen to spend those Fortnite billions to expand as quickly as possible. They already opened their alternative to Steam on Windows, they would be happy to be the alternative to the App Store on iPhones for games).
This is nothing about Epic “outgrowing” Apple App Store. They had quite a bit of growth, but compared to Apple or even more directly to Steam they are still small.
This is mostly about trying to get Apple to give them access to their platform for free or close to free. Nothing prevents them to build their market with Apple’s cut in place.
You can't install Mercedes OS (I don't expect the iPhone to run windows it Microsoft doesn't want to port it), but you can customize the OS, as outlines here.[1] They call it a jailbreak, but given that it looks to just be replacing data files, I'm not sure someone couldn't opt to write their own portion of the system software entirely.
> Car manufacturers have their own part standards and their own tools specifically designed to be incompatible with each other and needing special tools that are only available to the manufacturers and certified service partners.
I see a clear difference between not making it easy (using your own standards to make it hard for others) and making it impossible or as close as they can through cryptopgraphy and signed software and not allowing the consumer to get access to those keys for their own devices. In some cases, it may be illegal because of DMCA encryption bypass laws.
There's a difference between custom screw heads, which you can buy parts for but are not commonly available and using a combination of technology and law to make it impossible.
> This is nothing about Epic “outgrowing” Apple App Store. They had quite a bit of growth, but compared to Apple or even more directly to Steam they are still small.
No, not small. Smaller than Apple, but possibly bigger than Steam. On a similar level at least. Epic reported revenues of $4.2 billionin 2019, and was projected to reach revenue of 5 billion in 2020.[2] There's not a lot of good data I can find about Valve's actual revenue, other than estimates from some data that it was ~4.3 billion in 2017 (explained in the Wikipedia article for them), which is then repeated as fact in a few other places.
Keep in mind, they created and control Fortnite, which is still extremely popular.
> This is mostly about trying to get Apple to give them access to their platform for free or close to free. Nothing prevents them to build their market with Apple’s cut in place.
Well, Apple is preventing them, if they want to offer it to iPhone customers. These are people that bought hardware, own that hardware, and then are told they are not allowed to control what runs on that hardware. I am opposed to this on a consumer rights level, because I don't believe I should be locked out of hardware I purchased. I am also opposed to this on a economic level, where it's adding arbitrary barriers to competition, distorting the market. For multiple reasons, I think allowing practices like this to continue are bad for our society and economy, and I think it needs to change.
Even if I thought Apple had stumbled into this and didn't intend to prevent competition, I think it's problematic enough that it should be specifically legislated to require some third party access, if certain criteria are met. The alternative is to move farther along the path we already have. A decade ago open APIs and cross platform access was the norm. You could us a single application to access almost every single chat platform. Them Apple made iMessage and it was platform specific. Then Google shut down the XMPP gateway for their chat protocol, and made it private. We've somehow gone from a situation where everyone knew you had to interoperate with other companies and protocols to survive, to everyone shutting all the others out and trying to grab as much of the market for themselves, make it too costly and hard to move away, and trap their customers. Are we really better off?
The biggest, most structurally resilient and important products we all use were developed in an age where interoperability was important and needed. HTTP, SMTP, POP and IMAP, IRC. Large companies have been trying to tear those down ever since, because it's less profitable. Now you have to log into Facebook or Instagram to see what most people would post to a blog previously. It's easier, and there's a lot of searchability enhancements, but would it really have been impossible for us to get close to that without the lock-in?
To me, this is all very clear. We're in a new age of large companies using their resources to limit competition and hurt consumers. That they are able to do so without being a monopoly is beside the point. That they are hurting consumers by doing so is. My only hope is that some changes are made before it's too late to turn back, if it isn't already. If it doesn't change, what's debatable as problematic now like this will look downright appetizing in comparison.
1: https://www.drivingline.com/articles/jailbreak-how-to-unlock...
2: https://venturebeat.com/2020/08/06/epic-games-unveils-1-78-b...
But that's talking about Facetime as if it's a product. It's not - it's a feature of iOS, iPadOS and MacOS. Effectively, Facetime isn't free - it's a unlimited use service that is paid for with your initial purchase of your Mac or iOS device and includes a perpetual, transferable license.
I.e. no further innovation is possible?
It is completely voluntary.
You'll find many required open standards in civic engineering and aerospace engineering, and really, any engineering where engineers carry liability. They adapt and change in response to deficiencies discovered.
Your desire to specifically use FaceTime does not make it a monopoly.
What's the difference?
[1] https://www.cryptophone.de . And no, of course not.
/shudder
I’d argue not, as long as users can still achieve the same goal in a different way, and it doesn’t worsen their quality of life.
For instance, in this context, the OP’s mother can still do a phone call, or agree to use a different software - which, by the way, is probably free.
The USA simply isn't a leading innovator in this regard.
Hell, even the different cellular carriers fail this definition because you can't use a Verizon sim card to access AT&T.
The Verizon/AT&T comparison is interesting; because it wasn't so long ago that phones were locked to carriers.
Regulation could and should pry open the private networks of large software companies to facilitate healthy competition.
I don't understand this position at all. Google is by far and away the market leader. Their ecosystem is free and you can do just about anything in it. Their Play store's standards are utterly bare bones. The devices are cheaper. If what you want is an open source (ish) platform that you can hack on, modify, install software yourself, whatever, all of that is available to you, at a lower price, over there. This feels to be the ultimate first world problem, to pay a handsome premium for a top-tier device, then to complain about it's shortcomings. So take it back! Nobody made you buy one.
It's not like there aren't Android handsets that do all the stuff iOS ones do, occasionally even better, for similar prices. The main reason I stick to iOS is precisely for the locked down OS, and the curated App Store, so to see so many people complaining that they purchased the device when those things are like, the most obvious part of what comprises an iOS device, then complain about those things, is utter madness to me.
Why the fuck must Apple also do that, with a higher priced device, that everyone claims is inferior to Android handsets with their quad core processors and is "just a fashion item?" Android users seem unhealthily obsessed with turning iOS into Android. Just let us do our own thing over here for fuck's sake.
Yet again and again on here and elsewhere, iOS is constantly positioned as this MONOLITH of anti-consumer anti-developer DOOM, absolutely RUINING the mobile market. Again, FOUR. TEEN. PERCENT.
But every iOS post I read is along the lines of make it like android, and I have the same prevailing thought. Why?? I would not own a MacOS machine, I wouldn't like it. But I don't feel the need to get on every Mac discussion complaining it should be more like Linux. The fact the differences exist is a good thing.
There's no reason to expect it will be exactly like a PC, which is coming from a completely open past to a future which allows more locking down. The iPhone is locked down now, it's a bit ridiculous to assume they would immediately go straight to allowing anything and everything to be installed without any hoops jumped through.
Even Android requires you to allow unsafe sources to isntall third party packages. Why would anyone expect the iPhone to go farther than this when they're fighting tooth and nail to not even do this much?
I'm also considering the transition in the Steam marketplace as a recent example. Their opening from curation started with Greenlight, a fast track program with some but minimal curation. There were a few turds but by and large the games that came through were of some general quality. Enter phase 2, Early Access. The minimal barriers were removed except "will it run", adult content allowed, and a smaller hosting fee used. And in came the parade of low effort hot garbage. Recommendations in their platform are hard to come by now. Random impulse buy while scrolling rarely happens for me now as discovery of actual good games for me is much lower and I feel like the platform as a whole has suffered for it. I could see a similar trajectory for the app store albeit with my value of the services being placed in different categories.
I would think anything that required Apple to open up the OS would apply equally as well to carriers. Who cares if the carriers put crap on your phone if you can easily wipe what they provide with a clean copy? It's slightly more complicated than Windows in that the carrier is also providing drivers, but not entirely without precedent (much of Dell system innards are their own design, and they re-brand or develop their own drivers for chipsets to better suit their systems). That would be another differentiator to open the market though. IF X provider is hostile to replacing their OS and makes the experience suck, the market can deal with that. At least it's a small chunk of the stack, and not everything from the base hardware to web services all locking you in to one choice.
As for Early Access and opening up Steam, i've actually not found it to be a problem. Some of my favorite games and experiences started out as (and in some cases still are) Early Access. And even the ones that started strong and went to shit, I count 6-12 months of a fun game as well worth the $20-$30 an Early Access game generally costs.
I've also found the Steam ratings, and the reviews people put in that generate it to be extremely useful and accurate. You just have to zero in on the reviews that relate it to existing experiences that you're familiar with so you get a good idea of what it is like. Worst case you find some streamer on Twitch or YouTube to watch for a bit to get a feel for it.
If Facebook had a worthy competitor for example, surely you'll agree Facebook would be a considerably different product now. You might say that doesn't help my case, because it would actually be a better product, but it's not an inevitable outcome in every comparable scenario.
No, I don't think I would. The vast majority of people are not going to leave facebook as long as they can't take their social contacts with them, and Facebook knows this. They'll let you have your pictures and videos, but the graph? No way, and they know most people won't leave entirely because recreating all those links is a large undertaking for most people. Even young people that originally shun Facebook as their parent's social network eventually join because the network effect is too large to ignore.
The fact that Facebook very quickly buys anything that looks like it might have a draw that could possibly affect this in any way doesn't help it. Neither does that they blatantly lied to congress about things they would/wouldn't do with some of these acquisitions when asked about it.
Having the ability to install apps not available on the app store does not make your entire phone something you 'have to fiddle with'. If you want to live in the walled garden, you of course can do so, just as many people do on Android.
>But I don't feel the need to get on every Mac discussion complaining it should be more like Linux.
This is an interesting take, seeing how a big reason Macs are so popular amongst developers is the similarity to Linux (which the vast majority of us are going to be deploying to).
I've had both device types through the years. I've had to support both device types in different form factors. As a developer I love Android. I've learned to code some Java and lightweight game development for Android due to that openness of the platform. But the pros of the walled garden concept do not shine through on Android as they do with Apple due to the lack of how tightly integrated and compatible the hardware & software are from being developed together and approved by a sole source.
As a purchaser of an Apple product, I feel fairly confident that I am Apple's customer. With Android, the customer is the manufacturer\carrier combo that runs my phone, and I am their customer. That distinction carries an important difference and it shows through the development tracts of both companies and how they deal with issues.
Let's be honest here. If this goes through to force Apple to allow competitors to their app store, that decision will go further than developer sideloading (which is already possible). It will not happen in a vacuum and as soon as the courts hand down such a decision the carriers will be next in line to shovel as much horse manure down the line as possible.
I've never purchased an Apple phone with pre-loaded software as part of a deal with a carrier, aka Bloatware. I have from Android manufacturers on several occasions. Lower standards of entry from 3rd party sources often mean lower standards for bugs, resource usage, and privacy concerns. Higher risk of malware. Lower chance of software to OS compatibility. Apple phones with whole disk encryption made the news when the feds couldn't break it as easily as Android devices.
>Macs are so popular amongst developers is the similarity to Linux
Then I rescind the poor choice of analogy and go straight to fundamentals. These two different tools are purpose built for different things from different principles and that is ok. Homogenizing the mobile space in a way that would detract from those differences would be a net negative in my opinion.
I am fully in agreement with your position, but it is really funny that you mention this specific detail, as it hits much closer to reality than most people realize.
Mostly because as a part of the anti-trust settlement that MSFT had to enter back in the day, they were forced to allow laptop manufacturers to preload bloatware on windows laptops. And I would definitely hate to see that on iPhones, as that was one of the major reasons I ended up switching from Androids (yes, I know, you can root your Android device, install custom Android distro, and get rid of the carrier bloatware, but not having to deal with all of that is precisely why I switched).
AAPL can relatively (compared to MSFT back in the day) easily decide to be the sole retailer of their own hardware and software stack, and cease to sell their phones through carriers.
AAPL already offers direct financing solutions, and trade in solutions, through their own retail channels. SIM-only plans tend to be cheaper as the carriers can no longer hide behind hardware costs to obfuscate their plans.
Who loses in this equation? AAPL might, through reduced sales. The carriers might, through reduced margins. Is either of those things bad to the consumer?
Doesn't AAPL already sell carrier plans as part of their iPhone retail experience?
When did MSFT sell hardware as part of their software licensing retail experience in the 90s?
If I was told this plainly and openly up front then I wouldn't buy the car to begin with -IF- that is what I value in that specific vehicle. My car? Not a chance, I like my sports car and working on it is part of the fun I get from it. My wife's people carrier? If those repairs are close in line with other repair shops even after the 30% AND they'll come pick it up or tow it so I don't even have to mess with it? Absolutely, where do I sign up? Different tools have different uses and value propositions.
I mean, that’s effectively where this whole argument leads. You could imagine a scenario where using external software could damage things like your battery, so now the user is on their own.
I don’t think that’s a tenable option either.
This is effectively what Google does with Chromebooks and developer mode. But if you’ve enabled developer mode, can’t you go back? But when you get into trouble, you can revert back to the base install (and lose all other data). Again, that’s not a good option either as people would complain about that too.
Why is it a bad thing for you that other’s get to use their phones have they see it fit after paying for it quite a bit, while the whole thing won’t case any difference to you?
A program that phones home often with tracking data, thus keeping a data connection open and the processor from sleeping would absolutely have an impact on battery life and longevity. This would be code that Apple would normally block at the AppStore level.
And we saw how mad people were when Apple slowed down processing speeds to extend battery life. Can you imagine the outrage if Apple suddenly said that your battery is no longer under warranty because you installed the Facebook app directly from Facebook?
There are good reasons to disallow any third party applications on some platforms like cars, but apple allows it and they only have a quick look at applications. The real security is in their sandbox/API.
If there's a viable third party app store without these restrictions, Facebook will immediately jump on it, and immediately start tracking users with no notifications in probably the most invasive way they can get away with.
The upshot is that thanks to this hidden "enable side loading apps" button if I wanted to use the Facebook app, I would have to use the scummy privacy invading version, and that's most definitely a regression.
Apple is really great at UX, they will find a way to make it hard for the general audience, so that my mother won’t install random malware because for it she would have to go through 3 pages in settings she knows nothing about, and I can run whatever I want on my phone.
Many of us believe they will not find such a way and that in fact no one will and it is impossible. That's the crux of the disagreement here. You believe this is a possible UX to build. I believe it is not possible to build such a UX.
As many folks have noted, Android does have a number of steps required to sideload. They also have a much more serious and active malware problem despite all the extra steps:
https://lifehacker.com/be-careful-about-sideloading-popular-...
Now that I've had an iPhone for a couple years, I can't think of single time where the app store 'curation' has benefited me. I'm not even sure what that means. I've released apps on both Google Play and iOS, and sure, it's a little more difficult to get an iOS app passed by Apple. But what does that really get us in the end? Maybe a little more protection from malicious actors, but not much more in my opinion.
I really think the idea that the iOS app store 'curation' is a feature that we benefit from as users is a myth Apple has made us all believe. It's mostly marketing speak & a 'placebo' effect for the end user, and a huge headache for the app developers. As a developer, app reviews take no less than a day or two to clear. And you have to sit there and hope they don't send it back rejected for some vague reason, or some random contractor in China doesn't reject it because they typed in the demo account password wrong (Yes, we had this happen at my job multiple times, and it wasted many days of our time).
I think app store 'curation' and the 'walled garden' get conflated sometimes. In the walled garden, where they have full control over the hardware & the OS, they have chosen to not allow any other method of distributing apps except through them. The idea that this is somehow making my life better I will never get. Either way, that in and of itself doesn't really bother me. What does bother me is that they think they are entitled to 3/10ths of every apps business in the walled garden. There is no way that makes sense.
They charge a yearly fee for developer accounts. I think this yearly fee system is how it should be handled. If their argument is that they are providing the servers and infrastructure and manpower to provide the app store service, then they could make more tiers. For bigger customers like Epic who use more of those resources they could charge more to cover the cost. But there is no way I'll ever be convinced that a 30% fee on every transaction across the board is fair or equitable.
My first one. HTC when 4G first got hot. It was a horrible shitshow and soured my taste ever since. I can see that was a combo of manufacturer, Sprint as my carrier, and early Android OS but that spoke a lot to my understanding of the ecosystem and how incentives were set up. My follow up experience with phones for my kids or staff has been better but I've never gave them the chance for daily driver again. It's a system I tinker with but not depend on. I understand that's anecdotal and YMMV, but then again I'm not looking for validation of my opinion. Is what it is, just stating what colored my purchasing decision.
30% is crazy. I've said the same about Steam for years and you'll get no arguments from me there. Does it makes sense from the standpoint of the developer? Not at all but my opinion there doesn't matter as I don't develop for iOS nor am I very concerned with 3rd party apps. As a customer, I don't care. The idea of curation may be placebo but even the placebo effect is measurable. It may dissuade malware developers from the platform at first principles. That 30% may serve as a soft barrier to entry from race to the bottom competitors even if that isn't its intended purpose. I can admit Play Store has cleaned up its act a good bit since its inception but first impressions are hard to get around.
End of day the reason for me buying an Apple phone as my daily was for reliability. I can't remember the last time I had to restart or tinker with my iPhone to get it to work, but I can't say the same for my kids various Android phones. It wasn't for the robustness of the platform or marketplace cause I would've just bought an Android. Also see my other argument in this thread about being the actual customer and a few other points. Fair payment doesn't really factor in for me, that is a business decision for someone else to make. For me and the choices that I have in front of me, this seems like the best one for my goals even if those differences are limited in scope. The fact that we can choose between them on these differences is a good thing. To get back to GPs point, if this doesn't work for you then don't buy it and let the free market do its thing.
I always had Samsungs, never remember any issues with them getting hot, maybe that was an HTC problem? I think my first android was a Samsung Galaxy S3. Now that I think about it, I do remember a lot of weird bugs and restarts to fix some issue.
After that I had a Note 4 & 5, and I really have high opinions of those. I kept the 5 for over 3 years I think it roped out at Android v8.x and it was pretty good, but still not as reliable a iOS at the time I’m sure. I recently got one of those cheap Samsung tablets & I must say I’m impressed with Android v10.
I switched to iPhone a couple years ago out of curiosity mostly. It’s fine. Doesn’t blow me away, but you’re right. Super reliable. There are things I miss about my Note, and things it did better, but also things about the iPhone I would miss if I went back. Mostly the seamless and sync between my MacBook Pro/ iMac, and effortless wireless file sharing with airdrop are amazing.
As a dev, I do like to use a Linux box for daily use so I’m with you there :)
My phone, ultimately, is communications and quick research. I need it to make calls, send messages, send emails, and use the browser. And off-duty, I use the camera to capture memories. I got the big one because I wanted the bigger screen (though ultimately I miss the smaller size one I had before, so that will likely change whenever I get around to replacing it.)
And I also do projects. I build 3D printers, I play with Pi's, I build PC's. I do all kinds of tinkering shit. I just don't feel the need to do it on my phone, and therefore what are cited as "limitations" of it are just irrelevant to me. It does everything I need it to do, and more.
Android and iOS in my mind aren't really even in competition. They're two very similar products that should appeal to two entirely different userbases. They're pickups and sportscars, both great for what they do, but utlimately trying to have a pickup that's also a sportscar just means it's probably going to be lousy at both.
This fails every commonly held definition of a monopoly. We're not even talking like, cable company monopoly here that's entered into by virtue of buying or renting property in a given space, which at least you have a lot of friction there to claim "I can't reasonably be expected to go elsewhere just to buy from a different cable provider." You literally just buy an Android phone, and you're free of the restrictions imposed by Apple, immediately.
https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-a...
Here is the government released statement on these types of topics. "Courts do not require a literal monopoly before applying rules for single firm conduct; that term is used as shorthand for a firm with significant and durable market power"
That is from the US government. For any other further comments you have on the topic of anti-trust law, or market power, please read this government statement first and see how it applies to your statement.
> Entering into the restrictions of an iPhone is 100% voluntary.
If a company has significant market power, then anti-trust law can apply.
> This fails every commonly held definition of a monopoly
Anti trust law does not require a literal monopoly. So I am not sure why you are bringing that up. Anti-trust law only requires significant market power. And Apple has 50% of the US smartphone market, which is within the realm of what courts have considered to be significant market power.
> You literally just buy an Android phone, and you're free of the restrictions imposed by Apple, immediately.
Apple still has 50% of the US market. That can be significant market power, as the courts have ruled in the past.
As a developer I'm restricted from accessing that 66%. THAT is why I want an open platform. Access to those consumers.
That has nothing to do with my choice of platform. It has to do with access to a large market which I am being restricted from.
Wait - what App do you want to sell that won’t allow?
Basically, go to the Cydia store and look at any app in there. Why can't the Cydia store be allowed?
As for the Cydia store, that allows apps to to run on jailbroken phones, I.e. with security protections removed.
It should be obvious why users want to buy a platform that is as secure as Apple can make it.
And yes, the Cydia store is for jailbroken phones because that's the only way to load your own software onto your phone, but there are plenty of useful apps on there that aren't security issues and are only there to get around app store restrictions.
Apple doesn't have to restrict which apps I run to keep it secure. They do just fine securing MacOS, which allows one to install whatever they want.
Perhaps it’s simply not true that Apple pulls the plug on apps at any time.
Billions of dollars paid to developers suggest that you are just wrong about that.
I personally have had updates rejected, and then simply resolved the issues and resubmitted.
It’s simply false to say that apps are just pulled at any time.
You have allowed a few voices on hacker news to give you a false impression.
And to make sure it can be used with all existing libraries web sites and all opacs, you can enter any url and an xpath expressions, and then it runs the xpath expressions each day and shows the result as list of books.
And since I wrote it 15 years ago, there were no tech libraries for headless browsers available. So I wrote half of my own browser, and an XPath interpreter. (Modern XPath is actually Turing-complete, and with the EXPath file module, it can read and write to any file)
So, if the store does not allow custom browsers or Python interpreters, those are two reasons it would not allow my app.
Often the ideas about restrictions are simply false beliefs.
The OP said - headless browser, I.e: network and parsing the Dom, but not rendering.
Perfectly allowed. Please stop saying otherwise.
Although I have been thinking about making a JIT. Building on for x86 is easy enough, but then it is useless for ARM. I would not want to build two JITs. Or four with 32/64-bits.
This is a jawbreaker of hyperbole around a chewy gum center of truth.
>Just let us do our own thing over here for fuck's sake.
No one is forcing you to do anything. There can be 10 app stores and you could still use one the one. Just like many PC gamers have done for decades. I own hundreds of games and I only use GOG and Steam. Pretending you are forced to do anything is disingenuous. People have more right to use their bought hardware than you and Apple have to deny it. It's not a matter of if but when Apple will be forced to allow people to own their owned hardware.
So say you. I say that consumers have the right to run whatever software they want on the hardware that they have purchased.
Apple can create whatever software platform they want, but it seems pretty bad that they don't allow you to use whatever software platform you want on the hardware that you paid them for.
I am strongly in favor of that. The whole App Store thing is just about some middlemen wanting a cut and has nothing to do with software freedom.
On the other hand bootcamp for iOS - so you could install android, or better yet, a genuinely free OS, would solve the software freedom problem and allow old iOS devices to be repurposed after Apple stops supporting them.
I want to have the freedom to buy and use such a platform, and Apple wants the freedom to sell and maintain such a platform. The entire process falls apart if Apple is forced to allow other App Stores. Why should the court restrict those freedoms and break this consumer benefit?
Why? You have the choice of not using other App Stores. Just like you have the choice to not use Android, so therefore it doesn't effect you.
Sure, it may not be fair to these large corporations, but it's currently a great situation for consumers. Everybody is free to either go more laissez-faire (Android) or more walled garden (iOS). I don't think the courts should ruin that.
Exactly, it is still anti-competitive behavior. Just because consumers like yourself may enjoy it, doesn't make it not anti-competitive.
> For example, Netflix could say "you have to use this other App Store" and many people would convert.
And in the same way that I can choose to not get iOS device, you can always choose to not use Netflix.
Can’t this still be true for the App Store though?
No drugs, no porn, nothing offensive. Maybe if Apple stopped being such a moral busy body people this would be less of an issue.
Apple demand Facebook do thing = Good for Apple (bad for FB) yes way
So Apple is allowed to get its own way, 100% of the time, no questions asked, what they want is what they get end of (by virtue of holding all the cards and owning the platform they dictate the rules on)
How about no? You can play by your rules in your sandbox, but Epic has a right to demand it's allowed a sandbox in the same park, maybe Apple will be forced to change its business if everyone starts playing in Epic's sandbox and consumers decide Apple's policies are rubbish?
That's the very definition of "competition" something Apple has avoided for over a decade at this point (as far as iOS inter-competition goes)
Epic demands Apple do a thing = bad for Apple, bad for customers (good for Epic)
> Apple demand Facebook do thing = Good for Apple (bad for FB) yes way
Apple demands Facebook do a thing = Good for Apple, good for customers (bad for Facebook)
As a customer in these equations, I'm siding with Apple.
> That's the very definition of "competition" something Apple has avoided for over a decade at this point
Why do I have to use Epic's game store for Fortnite? Why can't I create my own skins with paint and sell them for whatever I want?
Can you provide some reasoning behind that. What should I like, so I can dislike uPlay in the first place?
This is common in the gaming community. Full disclosure: I used to work in the studio that developed and maintained uplay.
One of the games I worked on was an epic store exclusive (or, wouldn’t launch on steam) and it was met with harsh criticism for that. Many players outright said that they wouldn’t buy the game if it wasn’t on steam.
Judging by PC sales, they held true to their word.
Back, years ago the distribution way were tons of 3.5" diskettes, or better yet - transportable hard disk with a jumper switch to slave mode. A lot has changed since, however subscribing to the model that one company has to govern my entertainment model is beyond silly.
Why are we all talking about creating more stores? Shouldn't we opt into creating systems API for stores? That way you could choose store application and have products from all repositories (stores) available in there.
On most Linuxes you add repository and it doesn't matter if you use official package manager, graphical one, or some unofficial bash script. You are able to install same software.
not bad for all customers. I would like to side-load third party apps on my Iphone. Remember when app store banned a hn reader app because it showed Covid-related submissions[1]
This is something I'm pretty sure Epic would provide with their own app store.
How is allowing developers to use alternate payment platforms "bad for customers"? Or, if not on the phone, at least to allow them to add funds to their account from the browser/another platform and use it in their iOS app?
Surely we can just apply the Windows argument of "well they should get antivirus software and stop browsing shady sites" and go about our day having improved the landscape for the tech-literate, while having increased the risk other people take on by using their phone if they don't know the first thing about ensuring the apps they download are safe or privacy-preserving. That's why people buy iPhone - you literally do not have to worry about malicious App Store apps.
Because those "alternate payment platforms" don't prioritise consumer protection.
Deliveroo did an update their software that wiped out my login settings. They didn't support apple login, so I lost access to my account. They won't recover my email because of a special character in it, and so they continued to charge me for their "plus" service every month, and avoided any emails I tried to send asking to stop (asking me to "log in" to change my payment settings!).
Requiring apps use Apple's channel would have protected me from that experience.
“Oh, you want Photoshop? Just add the Adobe store (don’t look at permissions, also please give us your debit card number, we promise it’ll be safe)”.
“Oh, you want that nifty game? Just install our store. And also give us your bank account.”
“Yes, Apple is draconian. So to get the Facebook app, you must give us complete access to your phone and all data you send. Sign with your blood here.”
From an opsec perspective, Apple’s store associated with a prepaid debit card is great. They are far from ideal, but they have amongst the best privacy practices in the industry, have great customer support, and their interests align with mine better than those of their competitors.
We know that the second third party stores are allowed, some developer will force them on us.
Exactly the same thing goes for what I do with the devices I buy, and what software I install on them. It's not in Apple's interest that I have a choice of what source of apps I use - but giving me as a consumer that choice would expand the market (e.g. by making it possible to sell an app-based service with a 20% profit margin - currently if you tried to make one, you'd lose 10% on every sale). So yes, consumers currently have a choice of which side of the duopoly they want to live on. I believe more choice would be better, both for consumers and for the ecosystem as a whole.
Windows and Mac and Linux environments are not sandboxed like this either. All my data is files in folders, and I can export it as I like to another machine.
If I have a windows computer, and I buy a mac, I can't run all my windows software. The developers of that software may not even make mac equivalents.
The idea that choices need to be ultimately convenient and consequence free is just not realistic. Depreciation, transaction costs, and functional differences between products are a consumer's problem to manage.
I agree with you on media files, but, I also know that there are plenty of workarounds to exporting iTunes specific media formats if you would rather leave iTunes behind.
Incidentally, employers already have the ability to distribute custom iOS software for their employees, so your scenario wouldn't happen.
As for social, why isn't this happening on Android if it's so inevitable?
if they like it, they can keep using it.
EDIT: apparently suggesting people to keep using something they like deserves downvotes :)
We know from past experience that it's commercially viable for platform owners to successfully develop secure operating systems that allow third party developers to develop and distribute apps without an additional tax. We don't have to look very far either. macOS is a great example of where the App Store and third party developers can coexist.
People should be able to choose to buy the app (for 30% more) using the App Store so that it's easy to ask for a refund, receive updates and for Apple to market apps they believe you'd like to use. But at the same time, Apple has no right to force people to overpay for services like Spotify on the App Store. Customers already pay to use a licensed copy of iOS on supported hardware.
Governments have every right to protect the customer from perpetually getting screwed by Apple. At the very least, we shouldn't allow Apple to limit free speech so that developers can't mention a way for their users to save money.
The problem is that Apple built an artificial monopoly in the distribution of apps by making the App Store the only curator of the platform. People who decided to purchase an iPhone with an iOS license should have the right to use the device to it's full extent (along with being able to fix it themselves if something breaks). If you don't feel safe running apps outside of the App Store, you don't need to!
>>People who decided to purchase an iPhone with an iOS license should have the right to use the device to it's full extent
The US Copyright Office has already made it clear that jailbreaking is legal. That does not imply upon Apple an affirmative obligation to fix a jailbroken phone or create a open/fixable hardware and software platform, or make either of the two easy to accomplish. Only a negative obligation to not interfere with those who take such risks at their own expense.
Especially for general computing devices like a phone (unlike gaming consoles and media like your examples). We already know that Apple doesn't need the App Store for iDevices to be a commercial success, just look at the Mac and macOS.
It's like that, except my house is very big and I'm Apple. Everyone, by their choice in accepting my invitation, have chosen to abide by my rules.
All guests are free to leave any time!
Now, what right does a 3rd party (the gov't) have to come in and crash my party and force me to change some of my rules? Consenting adults chose to be here!
There would first need to be consensus as to what constitutes an artificial monopoly. So far the term has been used so nebulously as to encompass any choice or decision made with a tradeoff or constraint that somehow paid off for at least one but few, if any, others. In other words, "They cheated by holding onto a winning strategy / lottery ticket."
>>General computing devices like a phone (unlike gaming consoles and media like your examples).
I fail to see the distinction. The Nintendo Switch is powered by the same SoC that runs on the Android-powered Nvidia Shield. Just recently, the Switch has been jailbroken to run full Android 10. The PS4, PS5, XB1, XBSX all run on x86-64 AMD chips (the former two on an in-house OpenBSD distro and the latter two on a full Windows 10 kernel). Even older consoles like the PS2 and N64 can run Linux (the former as an official feature and the latter as a recent homebrew development). In short, anything in console space has been a general computer for the last 20 years if not earlier. Constraints are imposed onto the hardware and software of these products as a natural consequence of certain physical limitations or by intentional design of their respective companies. Apple's products are, in general, no different.
>> We already know Apple doesn't need the App Store for iDevices to be a commercial success.
What Apple needs to be a commercial success or not is a choice for Apple to make for itself. Apple chose a particular domain to succeed in and succeeded beyond almost every expectation. Absent fraud, it shouldn't be stopped from monetizing it's winnings any way it chooses just because you think the company has "over-succeeded". That on it's own doesn't make the App Store an "artificial monopoly" any more than it makes Usain Bolt "too good" to be allowed to compete in any more races. All of which leads me to question how exactly you are defining "artificial monopoly". What counts and what doesn't?
No.
You need to watch Epic Games vs. Apple hearing from September 2020. This argument was already rejected by judge. She stated closed platforms (walled gardens) were before Apple's fore decades and are legal types of business. She also told about Nintendo/PlayStation/Xbox same closed stores.
I'd argue that it is till the case on Android.
Yes, alternate stores are possible, but they are severely handicapped. First, manual APK install has to be enabled in obscure settings that come with a "scary" warning. Then they can't provide auto-updates but require a manual confirmation for each version update.
Epic gave up on running their own store on Android due to the difficulties.
I do think that regulators need to force Apples hand - not being in control of your own device is not acceptable.
But even then most business would remain on the official stores. We also need legislation to curb the excessive fees charged by both Google and Apple.
A few years ago the EU limited credit card transaction fees to 0.3% or a fixed maximum, whichever is lower.
A similar cap is needed for app stores.
Don't see how this is necessarily a bad thing. It's a general security notification.
> Then they can't provide auto-updates but require a manual confirmation for each version update.
Again, how is this a deterrent? How many times a day do you have to accept the new changes?
We've already established that the official store will always be designed to provide the best experience ootb compared to the 'installed' one.
This is true for all the other platforms where you need manual intervention to install/maintain apps "unofficially".
> Epic gave up on running their own store on Android due to the difficulties.
This is a hard stretch
> I do think that regulators need to force Apples hand - not being in control of your own device is not acceptable.
?? You'd be a fool to think Apple would give an equal footing to other competing stores in their own garden
> But even then most business would remain on the official stores.
Simple. Open it up and let the market decide this one out.
> We also need legislation to curb the excessive fees charged by both Google and Apple.
On this one I agree. Though it's a different for Apple which does not allow any other payment solutions other than themselves, unlike Google's store. This is not an apples to apples comparison.
The Apple store monopoly should be broken up. It's time.
I, as an Apple device user, do not want to change Apple’s behaviour. I like ‘em just they way they are.
> Again, how is this a deterrent? How many times a day do you have to accept the new changes?
That would be about 10 times a day on average (sometimes 3, sometimes 30) for me. I have 125 apps installed from F-Droid (no google services, two external apps: Signal and the local contact tracing app), it would be a chore to update them without privileged extension, especially as some of these are nightly and get updated everyday.
> We've already established that the official store will always be designed to provide the best experience ootb compared to the 'installed' one.
F-Droid gives me a better experience, except for the bugs. Now, it's intentionally crippled by Google, so you can call Google Play "designed for a better experience" if you want.
I picked the platform due to the features, not due to the store "expericence". I would like to pick that one separately, my best experience is different from yours.
> This is true for all the other platforms where you need manual intervention to install/maintain apps "unofficially".
Not true. On windows, most auto-updaters do not need user confirmation to perform updates. Most platforms have package managers that can auto-update their packages (steam, npm, pip, texlive, nix, aptitude, pacman, apk, flatpak, whatever). Their access to the system isn't artificially restricted.
Granted, a number of these package managers could work on Android today (like a chroot), but that would be a subpar experience.
I’m not trying to be snarky here but...don’t buy it?
If you run a store your apps should play by the same rules as the apps you compete against.
Is this true? Did they change the install permission to one time use or something?
https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.fdroid.fdroid.privileged...
But yes, the regulation came into effect partially in 2015 and fully in 2016.
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=uriserv:...
It's quite noticeable: all the CC related reward programs have disappeared.
That's the equivalent of the IDFA message for Facebook. Which everyone will see, its worded in a very negative way, and it's a must.
I guess the analogy would be if a brand forbade a retailers from revealing their margins, so customers don’t go to secondary markets and potentially/almost-certainly have a worse experience. Like counterfeit products or just in general to be subjected to dark patterns.
As far as my personal opinion regarding this I am completely fine with it. I think they’ve created something remarkable in the sense that everyday people are starting to pay for software, because they’ve created a valuable ecosystem. Sometimes I think we forget that in the past everyday people wouldn’t really pay for digital products in the same way they’d pay for physical ones. The one thing I’d say though is that maybe the 30% is high, but given they have the small business program that argument is mostly gone.
Any way now I’m rambling but that’s my best attempt to honestly explain why they do that.
0: https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/20...
1: https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/31/netflix-stops-paying-the-a...
But if FAANG are allowed to go rampant, eventually they will grapple us like they have done for the game industry. And it will not end with us, they will continue to expand their umbrella until there is regulation.
OR - our kids will live in a world where FAANG gets 30% of all transactions and it will look like CP2077. If we don't get regulation, we can all just sell our current businesses and buy FAANG stock.
And I'm not happy with the current situation. I think game industry too deserves to be free of the tax and FAANG administered regulation.
Think about the regulation in the shoes of a business owner. Apple decides if you can make business - they can make a fair sounding rule, but your business is affected by weird chance or by Apple employee mistake. The business you built, the one with all the good intentions and the users in the center, disappears.
It’s biggest company in the word, that tries to make most amount of money by monopolizing markets. And privacy sells nowadays, so they exploit that to grow even more. Of course users get something in return, but that’s not the reason why do that.
It’s one of the greatest PR campaigns of modern world, to have people believe that biggest company in the world cares about them and has their backs and interests. It’s almost Orwellian.
Only thing that markets discovered so far, that has somehow customers back is free market and competition (and it’s far from being perfect of course), and they happen to push for it.
It’s just a case where customer interested happened to be aligned, even tho companies fight it for profit reasons (as with privacy and Apple - good for customers, but not being done because of it).
But that doesn’t mean I agree with them not allowing other people to make a choice. For me 30% for purchases and having heavily curated store is ok, but others it’s not, and they should be allowed to choose.
If Apple store is truly superior, they won’t have problems staying ahead of competition.
Android forks would be great but unfortunately phones come with plenty of firmware that gets wiped on flashing a new OS. And if the question is a possibly non-working camera than I personally will remain in the walled garden, but not happily.
(Also, I find the App Store’s recommendation engine pretty terrible unfortunately, discovery is pretty much impossible)
Does them blocking those help me in any way? No, it is just to protect Apple's profits because they want to take a cut. You can't even pay for Netflix through the app, because Apple want their cut.
This is because Apple would charge Amazon 15/30% to clear the transaction while Apple Books can be both more convenient and doesn't have to give up a large chunk of change to someone else.
Of course not.
In principal, in a capitalist society, no firm is on the consumers side—all are trying to extract maximum value from the consumer and give back as little as possible in return. But, ideally, this is constrained by robust competition between firms.
To the extent Apple exercises a practical monopoly, Epic fighting against their ability to leverage that monopoly to dictate terms is fighting in the interest of consumers even if it does not come from a pro-consumer motivation, because it means that competition which benefits consumers will continue for other services dependent on the space monopolized by Apple.
From a consumer standpoint, this is a negative ;)
The whole purpose of a business is to create (and keep) a customer. The two ways it does that are innovation and marketing. Yes, there can be cases where customers are cheated, but they won't be customers for long.
It's not about "extracting maximum value and giving as little back in return". That's an extremely simplistic argument that bares no relationship to how companies are actually managed, or how products/services are designed and built.
Yes, in a business, there must be profit, as it covers today's risks and tomorrow's costs. "Profit maximization" is nonsense, it's like saying a sports team does "scoring maximization".
Finally, what is a 'practical monopoly', besides "it's not actually a monopoly but I want a cut of it and therefore I feel it is"? This seems to be the argument Epic is making.
No, the whole point of a capitalist business is to produce returns for the business’s owners.
Acquiring and retaining customers is valuable insofar as there is more value to be profitably extracted from the customer; it is instrumental, not an independent goal.
> The two ways it does that are innovation and marketing.
Well, no, monopolization is itself neither innovation nor marketing (though either or both may be involved in getting to the position where it is possible), but it is definitely a way or acquire and retain customers.
> Yes, there can be cases where customers are cheated, but they won't be customers for long.
That depends what you mean by cheated. If you mean losing net utility through trade, that's true in a simplistic rational-choice analysis, but given the known deviations from rationality in real-world decisionmaking, not always in practice. If you mean “receive less net value than they would in a competitive marketplace through monopoly rents, but still net positive value”, then it's not even true from a simplistic rational-choice analysis.
> It's not about "extracting maximum value and giving as little back in return".
Yes, it absolutely is.
> That's an extremely simplistic argument that bares no relationship to how companies are actually managed, or how products/services are designed and built.
It really isn't. The entire concept of establishing a “moat” is a euphemism for (legal) monopolization so as to enable extraction of monopoly rents, and avoid the reduction of price to marginal cost economics says is the fate of freely competitive markets.
Extracting maximum value at minimum cost (maximizing return on investment) is what business is about. Everything else is about techniques to achieve that goal.
You've apparently been distracted by the techniques to acheive the goal and missed the actual goal.
> "Profit maximization" is nonsense, it's like saying a sports team does "scoring maximization".
Sports teams usually strategically aim for win maximization, which isn't the same thing as score maximization, but, no, the error that exists with describing sports team as doing score maximization instead does not exist when describing business as being about profit maximization.
> Finally, what is a 'practical monopoly'
One whose existence is evidenced empirically through behavior in 5he market and absence of competitive substitution rather than by arbitrary, non-empirically grounded description of market categories.
This is completely wrong. You can’t have returns without customers.
> Extracting maximum value at minimum cost (maximizing return on investment) is what business is about. Everything else is about techniques to achieve that goal. You've apparently been distracted by the techniques to acheive the goal and missed the actual goal.
Creating customers is not a “technique”. It is the essential act. You can have a business that’s not profitable. You can have a business that doesn’t attract much investment. You can have a business that doesn’t maximize profit.
But you can’t have a business if you have no customers.
You’re so distracted by profit and investment that you’ve convinced yourself it’s possible to have a successful or profitable business with no customers.
> “practical monopoly” is One whose existence is evidenced empirically through behavior in 5he market and absence of competitive substitution rather than by arbitrary, non-empirically grounded description of market categories.
In other words, “I know it when I see it”.
Is it worse for that?
The fact is as a consumer my interests (essentially privacy and safety) are better aligned with Apple’s than with Google, Facebook, or Epic. Their transactions with me is how they get their money, and they have strong incentives to keep that relationship. This is not the case with Google or Facebook, because their bottom line does not depend on me being happy with them in any way. Similarly, Epic has no incentive to be nice to me because I’m not the one funding them.
What about platforms like Playstation or the computers built into Teslas etc, should we allow sideloading on those? How do you define a platform?
I think we should, yes. Not necessarily by default, but there should be a switch advanced users can flip.
Re: Tesla, there is in fact a long history of people fixing and modifying their cars. Why not the computers in those cars?
Hypothetical: if you modify the software in a Tesla, and your modification allows a hacker to remote control it, and this power is used to commit vehicular homicide, how much of the burden of responsibility do you have?
I’m not a lawyer, so while I can throw out phrases like “endangering others through negligence”, I don’t know what the threshold is or even if that’s the right concept in this case.
With regards to game consoles, I tend to agree with you — no good reason for them to be allowed to prevent side-loading.
With regards to phones however, I explicitly want the devices heavily locked down by law, to the extent that other people should not be allowed to put random software on them. This is because they are powerful sensor packages that almost everyone carries almost all the time, so the mere possibility of malware turning them into blackmail spy boxes is a problem for all of society — everyone, given what I’ve heard about “three felonies per day” [0] — and not just the person who installs the dodgy app.
I say this despite not liking that the action of American cultural hegemony in the App Store means those stores have a bigger problem with nipples than with violence.
And likewise, I have a problem with the law that requires me (a British citizen working in Germany) to keep the U.S. government informed about my app’s use of encryption in case I “export” something they can’t break, which is insane in my opinion.
Security is important and app stores help, but trust can be chained and delegated, and it is possible to have alternative App Stores which Apple/Google audit for security.
[0] https://kottke.org/13/06/you-commit-three-felonies-a-day
If you were negligent, I'd say you were responsible, just like if you hit someone because you took off the breaks and couldn't stop.
Although... response question: Let's say in ten years, Tesla stops providing security updates for their old cars. If you continue driving the car anyway, and it gets hacked and kills someone, who is responsible? Which is to say, I'm not super into this whole internet-connected-car thing. ;)
> With regards to phones however, I explicitly want the devices heavily locked down by law, to the extent that other people should not be allowed to put random software on them. This is because they are powerful sensor packages that almost everyone carries almost all the time.
What if I decide to carry around a Raspberry Pi, or wear a wire? I understand the concern, but I don't think controlling what everyone else uses is a reasonable solution in a free society.
Likewise, similar reasons.
> What if I decide to carry around a Raspberry Pi, or wear a wire?
Smartphone-software-based attacks target a wide net of unknowing victims, wearing a wire (or knowingly running a sousveilence app, which I’m all in favour of) targets just those you choose to target.
For the same reason, I regard state-mandated encryption backdoors as a much bigger privacy risk than the state giving the police authority to target specific suspects with wiretaps or even authority to replace all the target’s lightbulbs with ones that have built-in webcams — dragnet or spearfishing.
Hypothetically: a friend borrows your car, but you didn't fix the break fluid leak, and he runs over someone.
Who's at fault?
> With regards to phones however, I explicitly want the devices heavily locked down by law, to the extent that other people should not be allowed to put random software on them
that's the definition of a phone.
IMO Apple is to blame for creating the "smart" phones that can run arbitrary software.
They have created the problem that they are allegedly fixing by imposing walled garden on their users.
It is like handing guns to kids and then locking them up in their rooms so they are safe.
> Who's at fault?
Legally the answer is crystal clear. If it was intentional? He is. Unintentional? You are.
I don't really see the comparison.
That's weird...
In any country in the World the answer should be "it can only be decided by a judge, nobody can tell a priori"
In the case you tweak the software in your car and something happens, the justice system is there exactly to settle these kinds of issues.
That's the comparison.
If you modified your keyless-start car to not need a nearby key, and left it unlocked in parking lot and someone got into it, started it, and ran over several pedestrians would you be at fault?
Why does being remote change things?
What if the unlocked car was in your driveway, and the person who got in was your seven-year-old daughter? Now who's responsible, and why? The child is a minor, so legally she can't be at fault, but the parents should have taken appropriate precautions, like locking the door.
Likewise, if a bunch of people are killed by a remote driver in North Korea, you can't arrest the hacker. And if there's no one to arrest, our society has no way to discourage the crime. So responsibility moves up the chain.
In an ideal world I would force them (I probably wouldn't for a Tesla because diy software on a car...) to have some basic ability to load programs.
This lawsuit is about Epic trying to not pay the same fees as everyone else not some giant ethical debate over the rights that people should have on their devices. Epic wants rights for themselves, they don't want them for their customers.
As I've said elsewhere, this is about tail risk not tomorrow.
You didn't realize this when you bought Mario Run, because Nintendo paid Apple for you.
And if Nintendo tries to sell you something to recuperate that cost, they have to give Apple 30%.
I do consider to be ridiculous the requirement for me, a British national living in Germany, to keep the US Federal government informed about my use of encryption in all the apps I distribute on the App Store. That’s clearly nonsensical.
Epic could try to make life difficult for modders, but a lot of PC games have tried that over the years, and it generally doesn't work when players are dedicated.
We have more rules and regulations for things like food services, airlines, banking and farming than we do for a store like GameStop or a jewelry products.
I'm not personally in favor of walled gardens myself, but everyone who bought an iPhone knew that's what they were getting and did it anyway.
Companies change over time, it’s unrealistic to have the same service for ever (typically the product might be discontinued and not supported after some time, sometimes also the attitude when it comes to service changes). At the same time the platform was bought not rented and producing it and getting rid of it has its own cost.
I would argue it’s fair to demand open access to it.
I have an old iPad (3rd gen), since it can’t access iCloud properly or sync bookmarks with safari (a function that it originally had) or install Firefox, it’s essentially useless and I’m very unhappy with that, a whole car would be much worse though. I’ve learned to think about that before buying, but many don’t and often there’s no choice.
The 360 allowed for homebrew as well. I think they learned a lot from XBMC.
Google have made it very clear that you have options other than the Play Store in recent dev docs
Apple and iOS, on the other hand, support side loaded code. It's just a matter of who pays for what.
It's also a case of "you know it when you see it", iPhone wasn't a big platform when it launched but now it's the primary platform for many peoples computer needs, it should not be exclusively run by a private company.
Why? If you don't like the iPhone there are other general purpose computers that you can use, ranging from a laptop to a Pixel smart phone...
> General purpose computing.
If you want to call it a general purpose computer, then you also have to include tablets, laptops, desktop computers, and Android phones. All of a sudden there is quite a bit of choice for customers here. To name a few:
Microsoft
Samsung
LG
Dell
HP
Huawei
Amazon
...
The fact that Apple may very well make the best one, doesn't mean there isn't competition or that it isn't a competitive market.
Your list of manufacturers does not take the platforms into consideration. None of those are allowed to use apples platform unless they follow their strict rules.
There isnt't a competitive market unless ther's free movement and perfect information and the two smart phone platforms have large lock-in effects today so it hardly qualifies. The portion of the market that is android or windows are competitive markets, it's easy to switch from a samsung phone to a lg phone.
But they also have overlapping features, complementary features, and sometimes mutually exclusive features. You mention payments - I can pay for things using my laptop, or if I have a credit or debit card (ya know, the thing you're using for payments) I can just use that at the store normally. Messaging - yep you can send messages from your laptop. I could go on. The killer feature of the iPhone is that it's in your pocket, but it's also a limiting factor. You can live without one, easily, however. Doom scrolling Facebook (sorry, keeping in touch with friends and family - totally not addiction) is not important and living without that is very easy.
> Your list of manufacturers does not take the platforms into consideration. None of those are allowed to use apples platform unless they follow their strict rules.
I can't use any of those manufacturer's platforms without following their rules. I'm not sure what you're trying to explain.
> There isnt't a competitive market unless ther's free movement and perfect information and the two smart phone platforms have large lock-in effects today so it hardly qualifies.
You can debate whether it's a competitive market, but I'm not sure what you're explaining here is part of the considerations, or at least these may map to larger overall considerations. But you have to be careful to be specific about what you are talking about. Are we talking about the iOS App Store, or the general purpose computer market? It matters.
> The portion of the market that is android or windows are competitive markets, it's easy to switch from a samsung phone to a lg phone.
You can easily switch from iPhone to Android as well. One of my friends does it at least once a year because he wants to be "all-in" on either Google or Apple but finds flaws in each.
I find it hard to ignore that the future of Apple is iOS and MacOS is eventually going to be deprecated. Imagine if you were an Apple exec living and breathing Apple for the past 10 years, surely the OS that you don't get a cut of all app sales on and makes up a fraction of the more profitable OS will feel like the odd one out and the wrong way to do things.
Us, being HN posters obviously find such a statement absurd but imagine you're that Apple exec looking at the charts of how many users are fine with the iOS model, how much more money you make from the iOS model. How could you look at that day in and day out and justify the existence of a legacy OS with legacy ideas like being able to install outside a store like MacOS. Improved privacy/security for users within the store model is the icing on the cake to justify it.
I don't ask for my laptop to be an appliance. The laptop is one type of product that can run arbitrary code if I want it to. The iPhone is not, and that's the type of product I am specifically looking for.
> Us, being HN posters obviously find such a statement absurd
HN is probably just as representative on the authoritative/libertarian scale as society as a whole - this is just a forum for anyone remotely associated with technology after all. Just because you're on a forum doesn't mean everyone will view it from the same viewpoint as you, even if it does dictate how much people downvote/upvote your posts.
If you want to see more apps targeting a third platform, then you should buy one of these phones.
That's the way the market works.
But there is a network effect in play here, that pretty much disallows a new platform to emerge without compatibility. If I were to create the very best hardware with top notch OS on top, that is superior in every way to every android and ios phone out there, noone would buy it because phones are integral part of our lives with many areas of it requiring applications that are only available on these two platforms. Windows phone pretty much lost due to it — it was not worth the effort of companies to create a third port (even with the big funding Microsoft tried), and without a critical mass, it died off.
But if you can allow supporting the project do buy one! (Though I believe they work basically without a profit margin)
Unless there is a newcomer with crazy good compatibility, nothing will change.
How do you imagine free market works? No companies magically capture the midshare of most users? No companies have anough money/resources to corner the market?
Literally nothing prevents any of the current players in the "non-free market" to develop their own phone. Heck, Microsoft even tried to do it.
Why do you think Microsoft failed even with the tremendous amount of money they poured into and even with having an arguibly great UX?
The way it works. It's not me complaining about "Free market doesn’t work that way."
> Because once a few gets big enough, they can control the whole market.
Yes, yes they will.
So what is, exactly, the nature of your complaint?
Literally, the already existing 2 platforms prevent a new one from emerging —- thus it is incorrect to say that the free market will solve the issue.
Are you arguing with yourself now?
This is your text (emphasis mine): "And frankly, there will not be more mobile platforms because even the current two is already much for companies to develop for. Free market doesn’t work that way."
I'd be a lot more amenable to allowing Apple to make as much money as they want on controlling the only gate into my phone if their only incentives were monetary, but the moment they started making political decisions (banning all vaporizer apps, removing the Hong Kong flag emoji, banning Parler, etc) I was no longer on their side. You can agree or disagree with their decisions on each individual case, but as a liberal I'm not comfortable with a private organization having that much power over public policy. On some level I want to give Apple a way out. My best hope for the company is that they'd prefer not to be making political decisions, but have to bow to external political pressure. I'd like us to help them out and take the decision out of their hands.
As to being able to leave Apple. The amount of work it would take for me, a professional Software Engineer, to decouple all of my contacts, data, personal photos, text history, etc from their ecosystem effectively locks me in. They created a marketplace, and when you create a market in a free market society we'll take you up on it and enforce anti-trust laws. The idea that they don't have monopolistic power is demonstrably false. In fact, I think Apple's monopoly is the most clear cut in the tech community.
There is a common argument that having such a locked down store is what allowed the device to thrive but I don't believe that is usually made in good faith due to the easy counter example of Android being able to unseat the initial monopoly without using the same tactic and the fact that very little marketing or praise for the device has been specifically focused on the iStore being so locked down.
Consumer choice only really counts when there is an open field with healthy competition.
so if platforms are going to be forced open, we should go after game consoles too, then there needs to be some means to protect consumers from predatory apps because we are just opening the door to that and more.
finally, it also means that apps you don't like will now be easily available so best be good with that and not asking government to judge every app.
finally this means apps can do what they will unless we are willing to let platforms still restrict how they use your data.. which to be honest blocking 3rd party apps is at times beneficial
as in, you can have it all but everyone gets to as well.
So what will you give up for the freedom? Do you want the platform owner to still police for privacy issues? I don't see how it can be done if they cannot control access.
Frankly let all apps stores be forced open and it will be fun to watch how fast many demand them locked up or heavily regulated or worse
Of course, that behavior makes sense in chess because the entire point of a game is to be an artificial world where only the letter of the rules are what matters and the only tangible outcome is winning or losing.
In the real world of business and politics, things like human decency and fairness should come into play. But increasingly, at least in American politics and corporations, the game is played only according to the letter of the law. Anything they can get away with, they will.
Every now and then their interests align with those of the users, but ultimately they all serve their own interests and will happily stand opposed to the users whenever it suits them best.
Using term hypocritical for corporate law seems error just like it does for using it for animals. Apple is engaging in legal battles and hypocritical is not a legal consideration. Apple is not a an entity you can judge using moral psychology.
Apple uses "corporate messaging" toward consumers that has ethical content. It may be mistaken as morality, but it's just how a company's management talks to people. It is a marketing message strategy.
Everyone I know who uses an iPhone or iPad is generally using medium to high quality apps, and not suffering from crapware, slowdowns or weird issues.
Everyone I know who uses an Android phone is always complains about weird app behavior, ranging from crummy software quality to flashlight apps that request access to your contact list. And my guess is these people use Googles Play Store.
Somehow, Apple is doing something that is beneficial to the average Joe buyer of smartphones.
In the end, apple is a private company serving its customers. They can’t please everyone. And that’s what I like about them.
Now the same shit is happening for web apis / pwa. This is really sad and really makes me hate Apple as a company.
Plus: Apple mandated better privacy for users. How could they do that with sideloading app stores? They couldn't.
The iPhone is not a computer platform, it's an integrated experience. Raspberry Pi or the PC you assemble is a platform (which you can still choose to do, if you want).
The transition happened so gradually that we ended up here without a lot of discussion, which is why the discussion is happening now.
This is not to suggest we should remove this capability from macOS/Windows but I wouldn’t call it a regression.
I bet you’re right about the motivation for this silly outrage: People claim the iPhone is a PC because they wish it to be, because the cognitive dissonance was so great when “Open didn’t always win”
Sorry, but this is bulls*t.
The iPhone has, what? A few million applications from third parties? It's a platform.
Use the iPhone with 0 (ZERO!) third party applications for 1 year and then get back to me ;-)
Actually, even if you somehow manage to do it, that's not even the point. The AppStore makes something like $60bn per year. iOS is a platform.
Or even macOS.
I doubt Apple would ever truly stop you but there is a subtle level of friction that can't necessarily be assumed of the user.
They didn't have to do it this way, which really makes me wonder what their intent was. They could have gone with a simple system like 'we look at how much you made this year, and everything over 1 million is taxed at 30%', but instead we got a weird complex system.
You are treating corporate entities as if they are people with emotions.
This is a mistake.
They are not people. They are legal entities, created to enable their owners and beneficiaries to have special rights regular citizens do not have, such as killing people and never going to prison (Boeing).
How does this differ from "any programmable electronics should allow sideloading"? I don't see that as a very workable solution, legally, practically, or even in a pro-consumer sense.
It would certainly drive the cost of most electronics up incredibly as all devices would need to produce APIs and upgradeability.
And if the alternative for a vendor is being forced to lose enough revenue by letting any third party do whatever they want, then Apple will make an app for your bank, by contracting the bank to pay for the development.
The reason the third party platform is currently huge is because Apple created a platform for devs to publish on. If the rules were the ones prescribed above Apple would have likely taken a different route. Changing the rules because people are unhappy is simply bad precedent.
Will apple make app for every sort of app currently available in the App Store? That’s an unrealistic claim.
Changing the rules because people are unhappy is a bad precedent?? We should only change it when they are happy or what? It’s not about unhappiness, it is about disallowing them for controlling something that is an emergent property of the system they created, but is bigger then themselves. It directly effects most people on Earth, so it should not be decided by a private corporation, but by democratically elected governments. It is no longer only Apple’s freedom to do however they want
...And then they'll comply with it, because it's still plenty profitable to do so.
To be fair, until it was limited to a small section of the population, it wasn't a big deal. So rich people want to live in walled gardens, so what? But when you start talking about 20% or 30% of the whole population, then it's a significant problem. It took a bit for Apple to reach that level but they are definitely there now, and since they don't seem to be willing to change, they have to be forced to accept that it has to happen.
They can strangle creativity and keep us prisoners in their walled gardens for decades, subjecting us to high prices and tarrifs, lack of choice, missed technological opportunities, biased filtering and ranking, whimsical deplatforming of users and blocking of apps, stifling the development of competing and innovative businesses, or buying them outright to keep the risk away.
No - it’s not going to add anything at all for users except being forced to deal with a bunch of shady app stores, some of which will be deeply hostile to privacy.
Developers will also be forced to support multiple stores and sets of rules. Dealing with this will eliminate any possible cost advantage.
Everyone loses except for the new group of middlemen who get to take a cut.
> This isn't the case on Windows. This isn't the case on Android. Or Linux for that matter.
It sounds like you are saying there is plenty of choice for people who don’t want a walled garden.
> It's more disappointing it takes 10 years for regulators to step-in and say "that's bad, no more, open up your platform".
It sounds like you are saying this should never have been allowed, despite there being no legal reason against it.
It means lower prices for those who are smart enough to use the cheaper store and those who cannot will stay on the official store that takes its 30% cut.
In fact even the bare existence of other stores would mean that the cut probably goes down, since Apple probably will prefer to stop the outflow of users.
If someone is inept to use other store than the official apple store, then I guess they have to pay the higher price. Your post sounds comical on a forum called "hacker news". You sound as if using a second app store is some secret knowledge...
You also seem to ignore the fact that even computer inept people try to reduce the amount of money they pay for stuff and money is a big incentive (app costs 1 dollar less on other store is a great motivator to learn how to use it).
This is guaranteed false.
Unless the ‘cheaper store’ has almost all of the customers, you will need to support most of the stores, otherwise you’ll simply lose access to customers.
Just to break even, developers will be forced to support multiple stores.
If consumers want a cheaper option, there is nothing stopping them from buying a cheap android phone today.
That is one extra option for the consumer to choose, if they want it.
It wouldn’t be voluntary. They would be forced to support the other stores or lose revenue.
Claiming it’s just a matter of choice for developers is simply not correct.
The extra options would also come at a cost for consumers who would need to deal with multiple stores, many of them with undesirable features such as weaker privacy protections.
Apple competing with third party app stores on iOS is going to be amazing. No computer platform should be allowed to prevent sideloading or other stores from competing.
This isn't the case on Windows. This isn't the case on Android.
Or Linux for that matter.
It's more disappointing it takes 10 years for regulators to step-in and say "that's bad, no more, open up your platform".