> Overall, Apple has not been a good steward of the App Store.

But the question on my mind is: what precedent are we setting by legally mandating what a corporation can do on a platform they solely built? And are we pulling up the ladder after the incumbents have climbed it?

It's one thing to mandate how much pollution a factory may leak into a shared water supply. But the Apple app store is not a utility or natural resource. Apple built it from nothing and they're its sole owner. If it's a crappy experience, the solution to me still seems to be to migrate to a competitor (I'm toying with the idea of trading my Galaxy for a Librem 5).

There seems to be a mentality that megacorps have to have their hand held to not be public menaces, but by doing this my fear is we fortify Goliath rather than giving David a shot to kill him. The main reason I see this hasn't happened yet is that we've let the giants get away with corporate murder (e.g. Facebook's acquisition of both Instagram and WhatsApp), not because innovation is dead.

And national regulation is a pretty patchwork solution anyway to corporations that can (and sometimes do) go toe-to-toe with national governments.

Apple and Google have a duopoly in the mobile app distribution market, and they're abusing that duopoly in an anticompetitive manner to prevent companies from competing with them in mobile app distribution. Anti-trust legislation gives regulators the right to order and prosecute companies for abusing their market positions and for limiting the ability of the free market to deliver to consumers better, more efficient and less costly solutions.

Microsoft in the late 1990's and early 2000's was in a similar situation. They abused their position in the PC operating system market in an anticompetitive manner to prevent competition in the browser market[1]. Microsoft built their OS and Internet Explorer, so who has the right to tell them what they can and cannot do with them? It turns out that the federal government and regulators around the world have that right.

This is like asking why regulators have right to prevent Standard Oil from engaging in anticompetitive behavior, given that Standard Oil built their own pipelines and railroads, after all.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor....

Can you think of any situation where bundling would be acceptable?

Should e.g. a restaurant have to provide an open market for silverware providers?

Restaurants doesn't sell silverware. And even if they did they wouldn't have 10% of EU as customers. EU puts their anti trust laws for marketplaces at 10% instead of defining it as a monopoly, at that size you have to play fair.

Restaurants sell a bundled experience. The use of their silverware is part of what I buy.

You could argue that the restaurant shouldn’t be a gatekeeper. Other parties could let me enjoy a cheaper meal, competing to offer the most discounted silverware. My $10 burger could be $9 if I could rent a paper plate from a third party and eat on the floor. After all, the restaurant shouldn’t abuse it’s monopoly, right?

What are you talking about. A restaurant doesn’t have the power to steer an economy of billions of dollars worldwide (the phone app market) . Apple and google do. Do you understand the risk for countries to allow one single private company to have complete control over the life/jobs of hundreds of thousands of citizens (app developers) that could be just destroyed by the whim of one of these two companies? It’s the price of creating a multi billion dollar business. You have to take responsibilities that go beyond your own revenue as you have worldwide power.

If the "app developer" doesn't feel fair to work for apple app store / google play store, they could work for other android app store or, they could work for the web.

Even there are many Apple App developer on the world doesn't mean they cannot choose to left.

I don’t feel entitled to controlling any company unless I own stock.

If I build my career on a supplier company I don’t control, that’s my problem.

EU politicians seem to disagree. Mostly (I bet) to protect their own.

Well that’s not how it works. When a company controls a very important piece of something society starts to rely on (oil, information, communication ... etc), regulation is not just preferable . It is NECESSARY.

Couldn't the society adopt alternatives on their own if they feel it unfair?

When you are the only two Restaurant in town that offers dinning services and somehow these restaurant has a high barrier of entry so other restaurant cant compete, then yes. How much and what silverware you use could then be a problem.

And I could force you to buy silverware made in X.

Good thing your feelings aren't relevant to... Pretty much anything under discussion here, then.

People who choose to do business by selling a phone or opening a restaurant choose to do so within the context of the rules and regulations that society imposes on businesses of their sort. If they or society don't like the current rules they are free to lobby congress.

There isn't any inherently correct answer just a variety of possible answers with various outlooks for many parties.

I don't think anyone regards a restaurant as a market for silverware and plates where different vendors compete but Apple explicitly clearly runs a market for apps which is a notably different situation from selling burgers.

There is everyone reason to suppose that burgers ought to be regulated differently from software and regulators, lawmakers, and courts aren't robots required to interpret law like code. Reasonable results require both the literal text of the law and common sense.

A lawsuit attempting to force Burgerville to allow third party plate rental would run into the common sense conclusion that the Burgerville isn't presenting plates inc an opportunity to do business with customers they are simply offering them an opportunity to sell n plates to Burgerville for usage in their business.

Well put.

Apple runs a store, not a market. This is the key distinction to my mind. In a store I expect curation and payola. On a market I expect independent hagglers.

I imagine if Plateify, a hot startup from the EU, wanted to get into the American Burger King “plate market”, they could get all sort of different attention from lawmakers.

Anyway, where’s the line to a “sub market”? If it’s the soda brand that goes with your burger? Should consumers always be able to get Pepsi cheaper than Coke? The whole reasoning is complex and arbitrary. I’d much rather just let companies decide what they want to bundle and unbundle.

It doesn't have a monopoly. Now if one restaurant chain controlled 50% of the market, suddenly you've got good reason to treat them as a platform and regulate them accordingly.

Once I’m in he restaurant, it has a monopoly. The same way Apple has a monopoly once I’m in the App Store.

Apple is the only seller of apps on my Apple phone.

Burger King is the only seller/provider of plates and cutlery at my local Burger King.

The difference is, if you don't like it you can leave the restaurant and choose any other. You have no lock in. Once you've bought an iOS device, you can't buy apps anywhere else.

Even if you forget the sunk cost you just have two providers to choose from.

I can always get my next phone from Samsung, just as I can always get my next meal from McDonalds.

But this meal is locked in. If I don’t like the pickles on my whopper, they don’t provide McDonald’s pickles, do they? The don’t allow me to get a McFlurry with my Chicken Sandwich?

Bundling is allowed in every other instance and is key to many great products. Apple can do it too.

This comparison of situation in restaraunts and mobiles is laughable. It reads as either disingenuous or daft.

You are significantly more locked in to your phone than your meal. There are also more choices for where to eat that what phone OS you want to have. Your phone OS is also a gateway to many different industries. Transactions made on a smart phone make up an ever expanding portion of economic activity, whereas eating-at-restaurant generally remains a constant portion of consumer spend.

You can use webapp with almost any modern device, without Apple or Google's app stores

But Apple phone is not your only choice

Does this restaurants operation constitute more than 10% of the silverware market? If not, there is your answer.

Also whoever came with this ridiculous analogy probably goes to a restaurant and then eats there their every meal for the next 2 or 3 years, thinks restaurants have popular multi billion marketplaces of silverware where they charge 30% to providers, which is a significant part of their revenue, and at the same time their own silverware factory which doesn't get the fee, lives in a world where 2 restaurant chains own 99.9% of the market...

I go to a restaurant for food and drinks, not silverware.

I'm not smart enough to make an argument about food pricing but some restaurants let you bring your own bottle of wine as long as you pay a 'corkage fee'

> What precedent are we setting by legally mandating what a corporation can do on a platform they solely built?

This does not concern setting precedents. The antitrust laws are already there, this is just a case of them being applied.

More broadly speaking, I'm not really sensitive to the argument "they built the platform, so they should get to choose to do with it whatever they want". Network effects are so large that there is effectively zero competition. What little competition there is can be easily squashed by Apple throwing a minuscule portion of its capital at it.

We need strong regulation to counter this, and to give small businesses a chance.

>"legally mandating what a corporation can do"

Can we please stop pretending corporations have feeling and liberties the way natural persons do? It reads like collective insanity "stones have feeling too".

> Network effects are so large...

Then are these network effects worth paying 30% for or not? If yes, you've just conceded the price is fair. If no, then Purism's Librem exists (and will not be bought by Apple).

> We need strong regulation to counter this, and to give small businesses a chance.

The same way it gave small railroad companies a chance? Or small oil, or small pharmaceutical, or small telecom? National legislation historically has been a method of pulling up the ladder behind robber barons, not of giving the little guy a chance.

> Then are these network effects worth paying 30% for or not? If yes, you've just conceded the price is fair. If no, then Purism's Librem exists (and will not be bought by Apple).

EU forcing Apple to lower app store fees to 5% or something similar wouldn't remove the network effect though, there is no incentive for EU to allow Apple to extract that fee. Tell me this, what would EU lose by capping App store fees in general? App stores would still operate there, App store companies would still be very profitable, they would just be less of a leech on the economy.

> The same way it gave small railroad companies a chance? Or small oil, or small pharmaceutical, or small telecom?

Regulating those companies greatly reduced their ability to extract money from the market and therefore contributed to the plethora of small companies in other domains we see today. We don't see small companies in oil or pharma since those domains requires scale, which is why we instead of forcing competition force regulations on them to make them do the right thing.

I mean, imagine if we let the oil companies take 30% of GDP as revenue, it would totally ruin the economy and prevent us from progressing as a society. You could argue that those oil companies deserved to get that much money since without them how would we get to work? But, fact is that giving large companies that much money doesn't benefit anyone but their shareholders.

> what precedent are we setting by legally mandating what a corporation can do on a platform they solely built? And are we pulling up the ladder after the incumbents have climbed it?

We are setting no new precedent. In the US, internet provider are regulated as utilities and are stripped of any power on the content they serve, and the platform thrived as a result. What would Internet look like today if AOL had applied Apple's policies?

If we go by that precedent, destroying the closed gardens around platforms is the best thing that could happen.

If we choose to ignore it, then shouldn't we welcome that network carriers demand their 30% share of Apple's profits?

> In the US, internet provider are regulated as utilities and are stripped of any power on the content they serve, and the platform thrived as a result. What would Internet look like today if AOL had applied Apple's policies?

About the same as it looks today. AOL was a walled garden, and unregulated internet was so compelling that AOL was forced to offer it, or die, like so many other services did; of course, AOL still pretty much died, but it lasted the longest of the pre-internet national information services. Incidentally, that was back when it was easy to switch between competitive ISPs or set up your own and there was not much in the way of regulation. Now, we live under the threat of the cable and telephone companies pushing their products. Not a whole lot of clear regulation now, and not even the basis for local loop unbundling like congress provided in 1996, but the FCC watered down until it meant hardly anything.

If Apple wants to keep a tight control on the app offerings and pricing on their store, they should be able to do that. But as there's no official way to install apps outside of that, it's really an unfair position to put the users and developers in to.

"what precedent are we setting by legally mandating what a corporation can do on a platform they solely built? "

They key word is 'platform'.

It's designed for 'broad public consumption', this is different than other, purely internal aspects of their service.

So Ford or GM cannot stop you from buying other vendors stuff and tweaking your car. The very thought would be absurd. A car is designed to be at very least maintained, they can void warranties etc. but not have absolute control.

BMW is stricter about those things, which is fine, but it's still outside of their control.

Finally, I think the reach of the platforms actually does matter - once something becomes a public good, we treat it differently.

Imagine if the electric company in 1921 only ever let you buy appliances 'made by them' suited for 'their electricity', it's just not good.

A similar situation is MS using their platform monopoly to dominate other areas, such as MS Office, which I think should have been regulated as well. Using a platform monopoly, companies can definitely dominating adjacent economies - even while providing an inferior product or experience, which is bad for everyone.

To your point, it's probably worthwhile for us to start defining in legal terms what we mean by 'platform' so the rules can be applied fairly.

You don't have to make up an imaginary electric company example when the real life phone company pulled that bullshit (and still sort of do tbh). In the old days you couldn't just buy a phone or something that used the phone line like an answering machine or some other device. No you had to lease a phone from the telephone company that was approved and installed by them. Hell they tried to stop people putting rubber cups on their phone receivers. And they also happened to have a majority stake in the phone manufacturer too...

Of fundamental importance is that they run a platform. A platform creates a new economy and letting one party (which is not the government) regulate a market is a bad idea.

Also, there is the network effect and there is vendor lock-in. In the past other companies could not use Bell's telephone network, so the government stepped in. The same could happen with OSes.

Don't forget, they built the platform, but 3rd party apps are what gives it value. Very few people would use an Apple device if they didn't have access to their games or productivity apps.

Moreover, users pay a high premium for their device to access the platform. Why should companies also pay in addition to the annual subscription fee to their developer program?

I’m a bit curious about this. I’ve been developing an impression that my willingness to install an app on my phone is a bit anomalous and that, as a rule, the trend is to install a core group of apps and use the browser for everything else.

Even for my day-to-day uses there’s only one or two third-party apps that really “add value” for me (Slack, Taskmator and Signal)

Microsoft also solely built Windows and the EU still forced them to introduce the browser selection screen. No new precedent here.

What about Microsoft and Windows then. People complained to death back in the day for anticompetitive behavior (and were right). The iPhone success is not only Apple’s success. Apple has to thank all the devs that supported its platform with their apps (yeah Facebook and google included) and without which the iPhone would be a gimmick. We can’t just ignore this and tell every developer after they get Sherlock ed to “suck it up and create your own platform you loser”.

Totally, the flow of value goes BOTH ways. The Mac in the 90s was on the verge a death, because you’d pay a premium for a platform with far fewer apps available for it than Windows 98. If Microsoft didn’t bring Office to the Mac, it would have been even more irrelevant.

Apps are the difference between “A phone with extra tricks” and “A computer in your pocket.”

These are very legitimate points. In my uneducated opinion, allowing other app stores to compete with Apple's would reduce the power of incumbents and allow Apple to compete on a level playing field. If another app store is better at filtering out spammy apps, or takes a smaller fee, then I just might install from their app store. It pushes Apple to improve their services than gouge as deeply as possible.

> Overall, Apple has not been a good steward of the App Store.

I'd go one step further and suggest that neither Apple nor Google are good stewards of the mobile app distribution market, either.

Thank you for being open-minded.

Since the article you posted, I’ve uncovered a lot more about the prevalence of fraudulent apps on the App Store: https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/21/22385859/apple-app-store-...

> has resulted in apps as simple as text editors or todo apps needlessly becoming subscription services

On the PC I have a mail app that turned into a subscription service and there are downsides. I have a lifetime license and get all the updates because I bought it before it went subscription based.

Now it feels like there’s a relentless push for more features every month to justify the subscription. Every month there’s some stupid update that does something I don’t need or want.

And the subscription costs 3x what I pay for my mailbox at Zoho. Sorry, but your stupid email client isn’t worth more than what my email provider charges me.

I won’t say the name because I think they’re a smaller company and they made good on all the lifetime licenses they sold afaik.

Drawboard PDF added subscription services after I bought it. Literally the only feature I wanted them to add was a lined paper template and they put that behind the subscription. Like I'm not paying monthly for that. Certainly not more than a few hundred sheets of actual lined paper cost which I would probably not use up for a few months...

> And the subscription costs 3x what I pay for my mailbox at Zoho. Sorry, but your stupid email client isn’t worth more than what my email provider charges me.

Niche products will always charge more than the mass-market alternative. There isn't another sustainable business model for small companies.

interesting point i hadn't really considered, i guess the app store interface doesn't really lend itself to selling upgraded versions of your software, since you'd essentially be starting over in terms of ranking/ratings/etc every time you do that

> has resulted in apps as simple as text editors or todo apps needlessly becoming subscription services

I'm torn on this. Of course I prefer to pay once for software but that's not really realistic in today's world where iOS (or Android) development is rarely "Write once, post online, walk away". It's an ongoing process and there aren't very many apps out there that are "done" (even the big players). I understand that my Drafts subscription goes to pay the developer on an ongoing basis to support the product and add new features.

> I'm torn on this. Of course I prefer to pay once for software but that's not really realistic in today's world where iOS (or Android) development is rarely "Write once, post online, walk away". It's an ongoing process and there aren't very many apps out there that are "done" (even the big players).

Why is that? The user interface hasn't significantly changed since the iPhone was launched. Why do apps need to be rewritten so many times?

Why should users pay once for software and then... need to pay for the same software again in 2 years even though there's really nothing that has improved?

Pay for a text editor? Why the hell wasn't a text editor well written on the first iPhone?

I’m sorry but your comment is completely divorced from the situation on the ground when it comes to app development. The UI has changed overtime, sometime substantially, and there is now an entirely new language (Swift) you can write your apps in as well as a new design language based on that new language (SwiftUI). On top of that, APIs change version to version of iOS and customers expect things that are now possible on newer iOS versions even if your app was written on an older version. Also, a lot of app developers work directly with their app’s communities to focus on what their users want.

Drafts, Apollo, Things, Overcast, and more are apps I pay subscriptions on so that they continue to add new features and keep compatibility with new iOS releases.

Have you not dealt with the annoyance of an app that hasn’t been updated for a newer OS? Or one that isn’t even providing “table stakes” to other apps in it’s category?

> your comment is completely divorced from the situation on the ground when it comes to app development

Perhaps it is.

> The UI has changed overtime, sometime substantially,

How so? I see an app in the store. I install it. An icon shows up on my screen. I tap it to open it. A window is shown where I can type text in. If I receive a phone call or text message, something is displayed on the screen to alert me to that fact. I can tap on that to be brought to the event source. Or I can ignore it. When I close the app, there's usually some way for changes to be saved (sometimes automatically).

This workflow, as the user sees it, hasn't changed.

> there is now an entirely new language (Swift) you can write your apps in as well as a new design language based on that new language (SwiftUI).

Did that deprecate compatibility with apps written in the older language?

> APIs change version to version of iOS and customers expect things that are now possible on newer iOS versions even if your app was written on an older version

Like what? The context was a text editor app and todo apps. What has changed here?

> Also, a lot of app developers work directly with their app’s communities to focus on what their users want.

That's pretty cool. What about basic features without needing a subscription?

> Have you not dealt with the annoyance of an app that hasn’t been updated for a newer OS? Or one that isn’t even providing “table stakes” to other apps in it’s category?

Yup. It's almost always an app that's written in some trendy language, using some cloud feature, or some paid-for app. I use lots of free software on my laptop without that problem.

Notably, text editors from 30 years ago still work fantastically. Email clients from 30 years ago still mostly work great (unless using certain popular anti-consumer cloud email providers). Games from 20 years ago are a hit or a miss. A lot of times they work just fine with an emulator.

And I've already paid for all of those. Once.

Why should the iPhone be any different?

> Notably, text editors from 30 years ago still work fantastically. Email clients from 30 years ago still mostly work great (unless using certain popular anti-consumer cloud email providers).

What text editors and mail clients are you using regularly that (a) you paid for and (b) have not been regularly updated for 30 years and (c) still work on modern systems with modern file types and file systems?

To be direct, I highly suspect that any 30 year old applications you're referencing receive regular updates, are tragically underfunded, and the developers would ultimately benefit from upgrade or subscription pricing.

Of course, everyone loves a free lunch, but someone had to pay for the sandwiches.

> What text editors and mail clients are you using regularly that (a) you paid for

None. The text editors and mail clients I use are free. They have been regularly updated for 30 years. And they still work on modern systems with modern file types and file systems.

Where appropriate, I do purchase and donate. Mozilla, Wikipedia, and some direct payments to certain developers, for example.

Thunderbird is good software. Vim, grep, and xterm are among the best text utilities in the world. Or, if you want, emacs.

> To be direct, I highly suspect that any 30 year old applications you're referencing receive regular updates, are tragically underfunded, and the developers would ultimately benefit from upgrade or subscription pricing.

I appreciate your directness.

Apps that don't to follow the latest anti-consumer trend don't need to be updated with new features every few months. They don't need bug fixes twice a day. Their development costs are massively less. And their development is often done because the developer needed the tool anyway. I'd call them altruistic. But I think a lot of apps would do better with more pro-consumer behaviors.

> > The UI has changed overtime, sometime substantially,

> How so? I see an app in the store. I install it. An icon shows up on my screen. I tap it to open it.

From iOS 6->7 there was a huge UI change where they went from a skeuomorphic design to a much flatter design. Every year since then they tweaked the design of iOS. Sometimes it might be as easy as building your app against the newer SDK to get the updated look but even that isn't always "easy". That requires the newer Xcode version, oh wait, your signing cert is expired so you need to generate a new one of those, oh wait, this API has been deprecated and you need to switch to the new one that you put off doing, and the list goes on. Then there are the new features that you are expected to support, not by Apple but by your users. Widgets are a great example of this for iOS 14. But again, every version of iOS (or Android for that matter) requires minor tweaks. Sometimes you can get away with ignoring those for 1-2 versions but you are just setting yourself up for some painful tech debt down the road.

> > there is now an entirely new language (Swift) you can write your apps in as well as a new design language based on that new language (SwiftUI).

> Did that deprecate compatibility with apps written in the older language?

I wouldn't put a firm date on Obj-C/Java being depreciated but Swift/Kotlin are clearly what Apple and Google respectively are betting the farm on. For iOS specifically, Swift continues to get the attention and it won't be long before we have some new framework that is Swift-only. Already the documentation is pretty heavily bent towards Swift and some frameworks don't make it easy to find the Obj-C docs/examples (and sometimes it just doesn't exist or you have to look at older versions of the SDK). Swift is clearly the future for iOS development and while you can still use Obj-C I'd be very wary of using it on anything new.

> > APIs change version to version of iOS and customers expect things that are now possible on newer iOS versions even if your app was written on an older version

> Like what? The context was a text editor app and todo apps. What has changed here?

I'd say it's a combination of design and what's possible. Design and design trends change over time and if you ignore that then you will lose market share to another app that feels/is better to use. As for what is possible, the phones themselves have gained both hardware and software features that, if not leveraged, will also cause you to lose users. Screen size is a good one but take Dark Mode as a example. Some apps had themes and/or "Dark Mode" before it was introduced in iOS but not supporting it now can, once again, lead to you losing users who don't want to be blinded when they open their notes app (or Todo app). When it comes to "what's possible", Drafts, for example, has a whole concept of "Actions" that you can find in their Drafts Directory or make yourself. Things like "Save this note to Dropbox" or "Open Twitter with this note's content as the tweet" and the list goes on. I wrote a Draft Action for myself that grabs the current timestamp of what I'm watching on Plex and inserts it along with the name of the media into my note, I use this to make a note of scenes I like and might want to save for later or share with friends. Are actions strictly required for a notes app? No, I guess not but it was one of the top reasons I picked Drafts for my notes app (along with many other things).

> > Also, a lot of app developers work directly with their app’s communities to focus on what their users want.

> That's pretty cool. What about basic features without needing a subscription?

Some apps do that. Apollo lets you use the base app for free but for nice/power-user features you have to pay for a subscription. The developer of that app updates it regularly, fixes bugs, and is active on his app's subreddit. Apollo is a Reddit client so not only does he have to deal with normal app development issues but with changes Reddit might make to their platform/api. Similarly, Twitter apps have had a number of challenges to address in the last 5+ years when it comes to integrating with the Twitter API.

> > Have you not dealt with the annoyance of an app that hasn’t been updated for a newer OS? Or one that isn’t even providing “table stakes” to other apps in it’s category?

> Yup. It's almost always an app that's written in some trendy language, using some cloud feature, or some paid-for app. I use lots of free software on my laptop without that problem.

I mean... I have plenty of iOS games that have died because they were never updated. I paid for them once and now they don't run at all on my phone, they are buggy, or don't support my screen size. Mobile development is difficult and needs to be ongoing which leads us to subscriptions seeing how there isn't a better method out there that I'm aware of. I like the idea of fallback subscriptions (like what JetBrains does with their IDEs) but that's just not possible in the App Store or Play Store as they work today. Not to mention that idea falls apart when "services" are involved like with Carrot Weather/Weather Nerd or even something like Overcast that uses backend servers to sync your podcast feed.

> Notably, text editors from 30 years ago still work fantastically. Email clients from 30 years ago still mostly work great (unless using certain popular anti-consumer cloud email providers). Games from 20 years ago are a hit or a miss. A lot of times they work just fine with an emulator.

> And I've already paid for all of those. Once.

> Why should the iPhone be any different?

I guess it comes down to what you want out of a text editor. Maybe calling it a text editor isn't even really fair based on what I expect out of mine but take a look at something like BBEdit. It's been around for practically the entire lifetime of the Mac yet it continues to put out updates. Some of what's in those updates are just compatibility/bug fixes but speed and new features are also a big part of it too. Think of git, BBEdit has git support but 30 years ago that wasn't even a thing. Nowadays it is table stakes for most code editors. BBEdit charges for the new major versions of it's app and to me, if you are releasing on a regular schedule, that's pretty much the same as a subscription. Subscriptions allow a company to plan better and for users to get software at a much cheaper initial price while being able to leave at any point if they aren't happy with the software. I think this is overall a good thing.

If you are happy with 30 year old apps then more power to you but that's not been my experience on the desktop nor mobile. I bought Prompt (an SSH client from Panic) when it first came out and then a few years later bought Prompt 2 (Prompt 1 was written pre-iOS 7 and looked very dated by the time I updated). Now Prompt 2 looks dated and has 1 foot in the grave and the other on a banana peal and I'm looking at apps like Termius as a replacement. I don't love going from 1-time to subscription but both Prompt apps made it very clear that if you pay 1 time then don't expect any updates, you get what you get and that's that. Termius may cost me more in the long run but if it is continuously updated and adds features then I'll be happy. For example, it's supports Mosh now but there might be some new protocol in the future that people switch to.

Bottom line, tech marches on and apps that don't adapt will be left for ones that do. Subscriptions help solve part of that problem by incentivizing developers to keep their apps updated or people will leave for ones that do.

Thank you for the very thoroughly detailed reply!

> I'd be very wary of using it on anything new.

That makes sense and I can understand it. On the other hand, the a text editor and todo app aren't exactly new apps ideas.

> "Save this note to Dropbox" or "Open Twitter with this note's content as the tweet" and the list goes on.

Perhaps this is a failing on my part again but... how is that an app problem? If the user has a Dropbox account or Twitter account then don't those provide the services through the OS? So every app works with Dropbox (or Nextcloud or Google Drive or their local filesystem) and every app can share a link to Twitter (or to Nextcloud or Slack or Discord or Twitch or ...). Why does the app need special integrations with the provider?

I would argue that's a failure of Dropbox or Twitter. They shouldn't provide APIs or toolkits that apps need to use. They should integrate with the OS and become a provider of services to the OS. Then every app gets the ability to save things to Dropbox or post something to Twitter.

> Apollo lets you use the base app for free but for nice/power-user features you have to pay for a subscription.

Cool. Apollo isn't a text editor or a todo app though.

> I have plenty of iOS games that have died because they were never updated. I paid for them once and now they don't run at all on my phone

I assume they don't run on your current phone. Do they still run on your old phone?

> Mobile development is difficult and needs to be ongoing which leads us to subscriptions seeing how there isn't a better method out there that I'm aware of.

Mobile development doesn't need to be difficult. It's made difficult by Apple's continuously-moving goalposts.

> BBEdit charges for the new major versions of it's app and to me, if you are releasing on a regular schedule, that's pretty much the same as a subscription.

In many ways, I agree. But there's one important distinction. I can pull up my old Mac OS 9 machine and run my old BBEdit on it. I'd be willing to bet that if I bought BBEdit ten years ago for Mac OS X on Intel then it would still run on today's Mac OS X even if it doesn't have all of the fancy new features of a new version.

> Subscriptions help solve part of that problem by incentivizing developers to keep their apps updated or people will leave for ones that do.

I don't have a problem whatsoever paying for new features that I want and use.

What I have a problem with is this:

> apps as simple as text editors or todo apps needlessly becoming subscription services

Basic text editors and todo apps were solved decades ago. Why do users need to pay for simple text editors as a subscription service? That's a failure of Apple's ecosystem.

You clearly want to migrate the discussion to continued developer support and new features. So let's do that then.

Let me walk you through my experience. I want to use a terminal on my iPhone. I know that I get terminals for free in Mac OS, Linux, and even Windows has a command prompt. They're literally free. So I see the lack of one in iOS as anti-consumer. Or, most definitely, anti-power-user. But whatever. In Apple's infinite wisdom, users shouldn't have a terminal emulator. So off to the app store I go to search for one.

The first result for "terminal" is Termius. It says it needs `in-app purchases`. In-app purchases for a terminal emulator? That sounds like a scam.

The next one, xTerminal, also needs in-app purchses.

The third one, LibTerm, doesn't say that it needs in-app purchases. But it's 448.7MB in size. Why the hell does a terminal emulator need that much storage to install? Nope, sounds like malware.

The fourth one, SSH Client, also wants in-app purchases.

I've scrolled two pages and all four of the top results smell fishy. So I don't install a terminal on my phone. I keep using Linux because it does what I want for free.

Tech marching on doesn't need to bring scammy baggage with it. Apple's walled garden ecosystem has brought that. And they're not policing their walled garden against anti-consumer behavior.

I'll try to keep this reply much more brief. I think the divide between what we think come largely from my expanding into talking about subscription service as a whole instead of just the examples you gave: text editor and todo app.

I can completely understand why some people might be fine with a text editor or todo app that doesn't change much and I'll ceed the point to you that the speed of mobile platforms causes work that might not otherwise be needed. Some of that comes from it still being a changing landscape where technology is improving. Desktops/laptops have not seen as large of leaps in part because they started from a much higher point. For a long time mobile phones had to be pretty limited because if they weren't they'd burn through the battery in no time at all (see: lack of backgrounding in early iOS/Android). I think the desktop platform (Windows, macOS, Linux) started from a much more mature (and open) place and thus it was easier to write something that would stand the test of time. Even then, things like gedit still get updates, nothing is ever really "done".

> Basic text editors and todo apps were solved decades ago.

Yes they were, now people want non-basic versions of both which is was brings up to where we are today. Part of that "required churn" can be blamed on Apple/Google but some of it is due to things that just weren't possible before. I won't pretend that Siri is good but Siri Intents (I think that's what it's called) is a newer (last few years or so) addition and I think it's a decent example of "why would a todo app need a subscription". The platform changes and your users want you to take advantage of the new features so that they can say "Hey Siri, tell Things to remind me do X" (don't get me started on not being able to set defaults). Or, to bring back another example, I might want a widget on my home screen of the next few items on my todo list.

Are these features necessary for todo app? No, in the general sense of "necessary" but yes in the sense of "needed to compete in the mobile stores". Platform churn aside, these new features require ongoing development and subscriptions mean you can roll out a feature as soon as it's ready instead of waiting for the next major point release so you have a list of features worth paying for all a once. Could a developer gate each feature behind a 1-time IAP? Sure but as a developer all I can think of is "there be dragons", that sounds miserable to support.

I do want to address the terminal program point you made. I've used mobile terminal and later mTerm on my jailbroken iPhone. For moving around my local phone's FS it's decent enough but I hated using it for SSH. The UI was just too clunky for mobile which is why I paid for Prompt1/2. I understand the annoyance at paying for something that is free on desktop but I think that misses the amount of work it takes to get a good SSH client on mobile. Could Apple add a Terminal app in the next OS release? Sure they could but unless they put in a lot of work it would be a terrible experience. I'm not trying to pretend Apple is perfect or blameless but I understand the decision.

Lastly, I agree with you that there are some apps that exist that don't require a subscription but one has been shoehorned in. I don't pay for apps like that, I guess I bristled up when you mentioned text editors (to which I pivoted to my notes app, Drafts) and todo manager (to which my mind jumped to Things), both of which I pay via a subscription. Your broader point about subscriptions being forced into some apps that don't make sense is correct, I just think sometimes people throw the baby out with the bathwater when it comes to subscriptions.

PS: If you are looking for linux-like terminal on iOS I would suggest you look at iSH[0]. It's free, open source, and seems like it would be something you might like.

[0] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ish-shell/id1436902243

Again, thank you for a well-reasoned good conversation.

> Your broader point about subscriptions being forced into some apps that don't make sense is correct, I just think sometimes people throw the baby out with the bathwater when it comes to subscriptions.

I'm willing to pay for something that I spend a lot of time in it. Clearly the developer deserves to benefit from my benefit.

But I've been burned by phishing, scams, and malware. So I avoid anything that even looks like it. That undoubtedly throws out a lot of good software that I might enjoy. But it also means that the very same software has room to improve.

Thirty years ago, software had demos. Demos weren't laden with advertisements beyond "buy the full product to access this feature!". They didn't have clearly paid-for reviews. Most worked without locking my data after a time bomb expired. Many of those demos resulted in me paying for the software. Some of those demos resulted in me deciding that I didn't like or need the software. The demo fulfilled its purpose.

Way too many demos of games got me to buy the full release of those games. BBEdit, like you mentioned, had a Lite version.

Demos seem to be gone from the modern walled garden.

And new devices + resolutions! Literally in just the past 5 years we got the bigger phones, notches, etc.

And of course, backend services aren't free and they're an ongoing cost. And apps rarely exist without backend services these days.

I much prefer an inexpensive subscription over ads or other approaches to revenue. Especially considering the consumer market has been sold on this idea that paying $10 for an app, even once, no matter how useful, is way too much money.

it's all relative - no system is perfect, some bad apps do slip through the cracks.

compared to Android, though? far far better, Google literally doesn't even try to police that sort of stuff, they just list it all anyway and take their cut, when this stuff comes to light Apple delists it but Google is perfectly satisfied to keep raking in their cut. That's the difference.

> compared to Android, though? far far better

Where's your data to support this?

Both platforms host scams and malware, despite the fact that they claim operating an app store is a means of protecting consumers.

Microsoft does just fine allowing downloads from the web and presenting a permissions and security screen. They even have a database of signatures for apps that get flagged.

You don't see people screaming bloody murder that you can install software on your PC. We survived all this time just fine without the app store garbage.

Consumer protection is a gaslighting scheme to gain control and project into other verticals and industries. It's a type of monopolism we've never seen before.

> Where's your data to support this?

Multiple mobile/security companies publish annual malware reports, for example here is Nokia's Threat Intelligence Report for 2020 (https://www.nokia.com/networks/portfolio/cyber-security/thre...):

Figure 3 provides a breakdown of infections by device type in 2020. Among smartphones, Android devices are the most commonly targeted by malware. Android devices were responsible for 26.64% of all infections, Windows/PCs for 38.92%, IoT devices for 32.72% and only 1.72% for iPhones.

I wouldn't say this is "just fine". Perhaps you (and most HN commenters) have the technical knowledge to avoid installing malware but the vast majority of people using these devices do not.