Which is fine for flashlight apps but as someone else put it heee, you don’t have the option of choosing another fortnite clone with a better payment provider - all your friends are on fortnite and you can either play with them or not.
Sijilaely, had the court forced Apple to open up “third party app stores” via sideloading, you would have Facebook and others immediately block web access via safari and Force all iOS users to install a full-permissions rootkit like they already got busted for. And sure you would have the choice to not talk with your friends via Facebook ever again, but network effect is a real thing.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/01/facebook-and-google-...
That might be the case with a market that doesn't already have a competitor offering it, but Apple has already positioned themselves as pro consumer with fairly well known differences. Any competitor store on iOS will compared and contrasted to the App Store. I have no idea why you think any dark patterns that Apple specifically has rules and procedures to combat won't be obvious points of comparison, and won't be something competed over.
> Which is fine for flashlight apps but as someone else put it heee, you don’t have the option of choosing another fortnite clone with a better payment provider - all your friends are on fortnite and you can either play with them or not.
Or, Apple is forced to compete on price, and their cut goes down, and Fortnite is available through the App Store at a slight markup (that is, not 30%) or through the Epic Store without that markup. And if Epic chooses not to list on the App Store, well maybe they lose customers for that choice, but it's the customers choice.
If you actually care about combating bad behavior of companies with regard to private data, put your efforts behind legislation or regulation. Markets can't completely deal with that, and a single market definitely isn't doing so. All you're supporting is a system where those with more money get to pay for the rights we all have. There's no reason someone should have to opt into the expensive Apple ecosystem when a $50 whatever phone should have the same safeguards. Letting Apple prevent competition doesn't help that situation at all. I would argue it makes it worse (with competition, we might see better options arise).
> Force all iOS users to install a full-permissions rootkit
Allowing a separate store does not mean allowing rootkits. A sane permissions system where the store is not the only defense over what is actually allowed would be better for everyone involved, even iOS App Store users.
If Apple wants to say certain permissions just plain aren't supported, even for App Store apps, there's nothing wrong with that, and it would keep the whole phone more secure.
In the end, if Facebook really wants to pull something like that, let them try, and let them face the backlash for it. Ultimately, Apple is not a good steward for your interests, because your interests only matter to them as much as they align with their profit motives, and there are places where they definitely do not align, such as App Store pricing. Just because you're happy with what Apple says they're doing right now, and perhaps you actually are coming out ahead (but it's important to consider that Apple advertises where they help you, but they hardly advertise where they hurt you, so there may be harms you're not yet aware of), but there's no guarantee that the balance will stay that way or that you can even accurately assess it.
Apple having competition isn't a problem. That competition selling me to that competition's actual customers--enabling difficulties and dark patterns that Apple does not--is a problem.
I like Stripe as an app developer because I pick them as a seller; they're not there to serve my customer and are there to serve me. I am reasonably confident that Apple's there to serve me at least as much as an app developer because I as a buyer picked Apple. For B2C interactions where I'm the C, I want the platform on my side.
Why would your selection of Stripe ever put the platform on my side? Why should I want this as a consumer? The money's already a rounding error, the time and stress aren't. If the end result here is "you must use Apple's subscription system, must honor one-click cancellations through a centralized clearinghouse, and sure you can use your payment provider on the other hand", then that's great. Anything else is worse than the status quo ante.
Then don't use that competition? It's not like Apple is special here. They've developed a reputation for not doing that, which is what you're relying on for them to not do it. Any other competitor could develop a similar reputation if they chose to compete on that level.
> For B2C interactions where I'm the C, I want the platform on my side.
And in what way is any of that untrue or different if a different store is allowed to compete on iOS.
> Why would your selection of Stripe ever put the platform on my side?
Why is the options Apple pay or Stripe? Why isn't it App Store + Apple pay or Some other store + stripe or some other service that attempts to put the same constraints in place?
For whatever reason, people only seem to see this issue in terms of straw man arguments. There is nothing unique about any one aspect of Apple or the services they run that some other service couldn't attempt to do the same or better, and maybe that might actually make Apple's version evolve to be better than it is, so I'm confused why people are so against this.
Stripe doesn't care about having me do anything. The business using Stripe is their customer. I am an incidental aspect of their arrangement with that business and if that business decides to be an asshole, Stripe just shrugs.
Apple doesn't.
I mean this as politely as I can: that you're writing this off as a strawman argument sounds like deliberate misunderstanding.
I've been very clear that I'm talking about a separate store on the platform, while you're talking specifically about payment processing. Both are somewhat related to the discussion (with payment processing be more directly relevant to this ruling). To be clear, I don't mind a store getting between me and who I'm paying, but only if there's a level of choice involved that means people have a way to opt out of a third party being involved if they want. If that's at a store level and Apple requires all payments go through Apple pay and a different store does not, I'm fine with that. I feel confident that very quickly what we'd see is that the premium on payments like that, whether for an app or a recurring service/subscription, would quickly drop to a more representative cost of what it takes to offer that feature, just like the store cut would likely change to something more competitive with other stores, based on what it offers.
That you like this feature now and see it as a benefit is not surprising. Because of Apple's position, they're able to fold it into their store fees, which traditionally developers and publishers have not felt they could charge additional for to make up the cost. But that is not something that can be relied on, especially for services and subscriptions, which are generally more cost aligned than application pricing. Epic, for example, is/was charging App Store users that additional amount over the base cost, and Apple's rules were such that they weren't even necessarily allowed to tell people that Apple was causing them to be overcharged.
Consider a world where the status quo shifts, and for services and subscriptions it's more the norm to see things charged extra when bought through App Stores that charge quite a bit over market rate for payment processing. If you had to for example pay an additional 25% for services and subscriptions, would you think it was quite as good a deal? For small things, probably. For large things, maybe that's less likely? If you pay $100/mo for some service, maybe $30/mo to protect your name is a bit steep?
All I can say is that I think we're far more likely to have one or more good providers that will offer this service one multiple platform years from now if we actually open this up and let people put their money where they care. I don't think Apple can be trusted to be stewards of what's best for us overall. Like any public company they are beholden to their board and the stockholders, and the mandate for increased profits. That right now you benefit from their interests does not mean you are guaranteed to do so in the future. Relying on corporate interests to align with our own instead of promoting a system where what we want could be provided by any competitor that wants to provide is seems a poor way forward, to me.
Ex. if a 3rd party makes their own subscription management that somehow allows you to cancel subscriptions faster than Apple does, maybe that is more convenient, but now you have to figure out which of your services work with that provider and likely would have to use both as neither could offer you everything you wanted. I understand how the idea of competition for revenue could incentivize better management from the likes of Apple and others but I just don't think the market for this will be competitive at all.
Is Amazon was allowed to run a store on iOS, Android, and Fire devices, and if you bought an app you were guaranteed the equivalent version on other devices if it existed, I think there would be a lot of incentive for people to use it. I wouldn't necessarily prefer Amazon be the entity running it in the end, but they're probably best poised to do so with customer trust.
> Apple does a really good job of warning me, I feel, and centralizing subscription cancellation etc., and that's huge.
If there was actual competition between stores, this could be an item of competition, and a minimum acceptable level of support for this might emerge in the front runners. Amazon is already pretty good at making customers happy, this might be something they'd happily take on (and don't they already do subscriptions for magazines?).
The whole problem is that people keep looking at this as "Apple may be bad at X, but they do Y really well and I don't want to lose that" when they should be looking at it as "Apple is bad at X, maybe if they get some competition they'll do better at X, and Y will still be done well by them".
I can't understand why anyone would assume Apple having competition on their platform would make them worse. They would actually have to address problems for once otherwise worry about losing people to other stores, not entire phone ecosystems which require multiple hundreds of dollars and losing access to all your purchases.
If some company is really trying to get out of the Apple controlled system not because of costs but because they really want access to your personal info or to make it hard to stop paying them, maybe they should be allowed to leave and they can get less customers and hopefully change or die. Chances are they're trying to figure out the info using other methods right now anyways.