If you think Apple is doing this because they care about you, gentle user, then you will get burned, eventually, probably really badly, and you won't even have any kind of inkling as to why or how you could have avoided it.

Behind the cutesy facade is a rapacious, consumer-hostile monster. The facade is paper-thin, and it's only a matter of time until you rub it the wrong way and it flakes off, then the monster will eat your money and anything you've entrusted to it. Apple products eat people's data, hungrily and mercilessly, then the company blames you when it loses it.

It will get the world hooked on their fashionable products then make them less and less usable. Those little mini-stereo to lightning dongles are the worst-made products imaginable. Guess what you can get a mini-stereo port on? An iPod Touch. Very brave, Apple.

Instead of offering developers a real userland, you get forced onto zsh because Apple would rather die than ship GPL later than v2.

Don't get it twisted, Apple hates you, and loves only money. It's only a matter of time until each and every Apple user is taught that.

Nowhere in OP's comment did they imply that Apple provides the App Store out of the goodness of their hearts. Obviously they do it to make money, like every other corporation. They have clearly sat down and said "We think building this 'walled garden' will make us more money." No debate there. Why does it make them money? It makes them money because a lot of end users are like OP, prefer the 'walled garden,' and are willing to spend their money there. You can argue that they are wrong to like it, but that kind of argument tends to go nowhere on the Internet.

And they're going to get burned. Each and every one of them. And when they do, they'll make excuses. Other companies that burn them, they won't make excuses for. Apple, they will.

I feel like you hate Apple more than Apple hates me. Your boogieman analogy is over the top or laughable. Also:

  bash --version
  GNU bash, version 5.1.16(1)-release (x86_64-apple-darwin21.1.0)

You may be running non-standard bash.

In macOS Monterey 12.2.1:

  ┍ … Thu Feb 17 09:09:44[~] 
  ┕ which bash
  /bin/bash

  ┍ … Thu Feb 17 09:10:25[~] 
  ┕ bash --version
  GNU bash, version 3.2.57(1)-release (x86_64-apple-darwin21)
  Copyright (C) 2007 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

I absolutely do. I want some parity with Linux so I also install gnu coreutils via brew and alias with bashrc.

  which bash
  /usr/local/bin/bash

  which ls
  /usr/local/opt/coreutils/libexec/gnubin/ls

Or, hear me out here, maybe just run Linux. Your life can be very simple and easy without having your system subjected to Apple's caprice.

Imagine it, a system that you, and only you, control.

I run both, on top of FreeBSD and Windows. Being an OS zealot isn't what pays my bills.

Comments like these are needlessly cynical. Corporations care about money else they would not have a reason to exist and apple is no exception.

What apple sell is something that is accessible to the majority and usable by most. Their sales are testament to this as is the fact that several ios apps are generally higher quality than their android equivalents. This is a natural consequence of the average ios user spending more on apps. There are no two ways around that.

As a counter to you headphone jack argument, i could equally make the case that many phone users care about their phones working, not much else. Apple's products are quite durable and many here will attest to using laptops from 2015-2016 and phones equally as old.

The short story is that apple provide products and services that people value. Period.

Excuses. Please understand that these are excuses. You are accepting lower quality products and accepting nothing in return, even accepting higher prices. Apple doesn't make the iOS apps that people use and love. They just provide an increasingly crappier platform to put them on.

That's what people make for Apple every single time they get burned. Apple lowers the quality of their manufacturing, people don't care. They remove features, people don't care.

The reality is, people are irrational and will stay in the pot long after the frog has jumped out. With other products, with other companies, people will absolutely not accept this kind of behavior. The nation empowered Teddy Roosevelt to bring down Standard Oil. Today's robber barons have slicker marketing campaigns and PR departments and social media managers.

My main computer is a MacBook from 2013. The battery is a bit flaky now, so I keep it plugged in, but that's some pretty heroic performance.

You're making my point for me. 2013 MacBooks were great. New ones, not so much. IIRC, 2013 was around the high water mark for MacBook quality.

Yeah, the M1 chip is blowing your argument out of the water. The performance and battery life are nothing short of impressive. Find me another OEM that isn't just cobbling parts together and selling it to you in a plastic shell versus actually designing an SoC/CPU.

It's a new processor. Great. What about the rest of the machine?

The rest of the machine is kind of amazing. Better audio than a 2013, WAY better microphones, great battery life, better screen than all the early Retinas, non-mechanical trackpad that lasts longer, keyboard is great again. And that's an entry-level machine, whereas an Air in 2013 wouldn't be as powerful as this. Don't be fooled, the products are great despite your personal feelings on the company.

It's an SoC so it's definitely not just a processor. If you can't appreciate the engineering there isn't much I can say. What parts of the machine bother you the most when compared to other laptops?

Yep. I still can’t find several games that I purchased before simply because they are no longer in the App Store. There was a really solid iOS version of Final Fantasy VI/III, almost the entire catalog of games from Origin8 seems to be missing too. Would love to get them again but can’t for some reason.

> There was a really solid iOS version of Final Fantasy VI/III

Square stopped selling those in anticipation of upcoming remastered versions, but if you already bought them you can still download and install them, you can find them in "Purchased" in the App Store

Thanks for the tip

This is more than likely because the apps were abandoned by the developer and not updated for the new hardware when iOS moved to 64-bit.

This seems light on facts and heavy on fear. I also disagree that removing the head phone jack is user hostile.

> Apple would rather die than ship GPL later than v2.

So would I, so I'm not about to blame them for that.

Apple actively doesn't want to know anything about me. I pay Apple a lot of money because of this.

Our incentives match. Apple gets the money they love. I get devices that actively work against third party tracking.

Alright, I have to respond to this.

> Instead of offering developers a real userland, you get forced onto zsh because Apple would rather die than ship GPL later than v2.

    export BASH_SILENCE_DEPRECATION_WARNING=1
    brew install bash # if homebrew is installed
    chsh `which bash` # if homebrew is configured correctly

Done. I've been running without zsh just fine. oh-my-bash even exists! https://github.com/ohmybash/oh-my-bash

> Don't get it twisted, Apple hates you, and loves only money. It's only a matter of time until each and every Apple user is taught that.

No. Quod grātīs asseritur, grātīs negātur.

Homebrew is not Apple so you're just reinforcing OP's point: you need to go to a 3rd party to get a CLI that's worth a damn.

Nor is Homebrew supported by Apple which is totally outrageous, given that without it, you might as well buy an iPad for how useful MacOS is.

And yum, dnf, dpkg, apt, pacman, emerge, zypper are not Linux. Like brew they repackage software. Let's also not pretend that in the world of Linux I haven't had to add a 3rd party repo to get something working or look to community repos or even enable testing/unstable branches assuming I can get what I want working to work.

There are trade offs everywhere. Considering it takes an entire second to add brew to a machine, it's not a big deal or what I would hang my argument on. I've spent much more time messing with packages in Linux versus troubleshooting brew. I disagree it reinforces anything. I'm using a lot of rust tools on my CLI today and they're all available via brew, on Linux not always because the developer isn't targeting all of the different Linux package managers.

You're classing essentially nonprofit Linux community efforts as "3rd party" then you're comparing it to one of the flagship products of one of the largest tech companies in the world. Are you even listening to yourself? This is absurd.

I actually wrote a pacman wrapper in Bash that makes it feel a lot more like Homebrew: https://github.com/pmarreck/pac

I would recommend that you read the angry soap box lecture before responding to it. Because you didn't say anything about the actual article, you just asserted that you think Apple is a benevolent consumer union and that you have no interest in being told otherwise.

If you had read the article you would know that this is another case of a developer being summarily dismissed with little explanation. This kind of story is rather common among iOS developers and it shouldn't happen. In this specific example they said "no copycats", without really explaining what does and does not make a game a "copycat". So the only assumption the developer could make is Apple has an internal policy of "nobody is allowed to make games in which you guess words" because they got embarrassed by a news article on Wordle clones.

Whether or not you think this particular developer is justified or not is immaterial. It could be the case that you just happen to really, really hate Wordle clones. However, there is still an issue here: Apple is very much non-communicative with, if not outright hostile to, smaller developers. I doubt you really intended to say "if you want my money you will be a large monopolistic enterprise with a dedicated App Store compliance department and the market power to embarrass Apple", but that's the implication of what you wrote.

>The intense planning on their part to mess up a thing I love just because they couldn’t make their money… Oh. Nevermind.

And... what's wrong with that? Apps take time and money to develop[0]. These kinds of no-comment rejections are Apple basically throwing your work in the garbage. It's not "hey you need to change this in order to get approved", it's just a flat "no".

[0] More generally, I'm getting the same vibes from that last comment that I do from really angry pirates trying to justify piracy on the grounds that "publishers only care about money".

Considering that you replied to this specific article, are we to assume you enjoy seeing tons of 1-to-1 Wordle clones in the app store, but not those providing actually different features?

Or did you just want to do an "angry soap box lecture" without much relevance to the article?

edit:

Just to clarify, this was not an article about Apple having rules, strict rules, or even content curation. This was an article about Apple rolling the die when deciding to accept you or not, and not caring about quality in the slightest.

> are we to assume you enjoy seeing tons of 1-to-1 Wordle clones in the app store

The article is about rejecting a clone game app, the author is just complaining that this rule is enforced without 100% consistency. If I had to guess Apple hit some sort of clone limit on this concept and started cracking down on new submissions. So author missed the bus.

> and not caring about quality in the slightest

Dunno where this claim comes from, but the author literally spent 1 day on their app lol.

> So author missed the bus.

The author specifically mentions that many of these other clones were approved after Wörd was rejected.

> Dunno where this claim comes from, but the author literally spent 1 day on their app lol.

So you did not read the article. Got it.

This sentiment comes up every time people complain about the App Store. If you only want to use Apple's App Store, great--keep using it the same way you've always been using it. Nothing will change for _you_.

> What I don’t get is the angry soap box lectures from the people who disagree.

The failure of people to put themselves in other people's shoes is mind-boggling sometimes. There's a reason why so many people are angry.

While I mostly agree with you, I think there are some reasonable arguments for why allowing alternative app stores could degrade the iOS experience, for example:

  - Security, no matter how many warnings you throw up/hoops you make users jump through some number will be convinced to install scammy app stores and apps and then will blame Apple for it. And I imagine the App store has some deep hooks into the rest of iOS which would be difficult to change without opening potential security holes
  - Fragmentation, competition is great if it serves the user, but multiple app stores could just mean an explosion of exclusivity arrangements and other user-hostile tactics that companies use to try and gain market share

That concern of Facebook or Google launching their own third party app stores and being successful at it are probably overblown. At the very least, even if they did do that, they would be unlikely to take their apps off of the existing App Store.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30280457

The points in that post make sense to me, I'm not too worried about the major players breaking away from the app store (although if it's anything like streaming/TV some may try it). I think the more likely scenario is that some smaller App developers break away from the store for one reason or another, and then users are asked to install yet more app stores/use yet more payment providers when it provides no benefit to them, or risk losing their Apps/data.

For all the problems with Apple's rules I do believe some of them at least prevent some of the shenanigans that go on in other platforms and reduce the cognitive overhead of managing software on user devices (which may partly explain why iOS users are happier to spend more money on their devices/apps)

> I think the more likely scenario is that some smaller App developers break away from the store for one reason or another, and then users are asked to install yet more app stores/use yet more payment providers when it provides no benefit to them, or risk losing their Apps/data.

I think that there would be as much friction against smaller developers doing that, as against the big players. Same headache for users of having to set up and deal with multiple memberships and payment methods would still apply. The smaller indie devs would be disinclined to do that for the most part. What will end up happening is that there might be one or two major alternative app stores at most, and probably well-curated by the most dedicated and motivated of volunteers. On Android, that exists with F-Droid, which is a useful case study of how an independent third party App store for hobbyists can arise. These niches will exist for those who choose to pursue them but users will not be “forced” to go to them as they will not need those stores.

Your point about streaming/TV apps make sense, like the major gaming publishers, they both have unique content that might be the most compelling reason for users to pursue them, and the most motivation to get away from the 30% cut.

Apple pundits will never be able to do this unless the other pair of shoes were made by Apple.

Or maybe we already have put ourselves in their shoes and realize that they have other options that fulfill their qualms regarding Apple?

>If you only want to use Apple's App Store, great--keep using it the same way you've always been using it. Nothing will change for _you_.

And if you don't want to use Apple's App Store, don't. Nothing will change for _you_ when they do something.

> If you only want to use Apple's App Store, great--keep using it the same way you've always been using it. Nothing will change for _you_.

That's not really true. The security implications. The effort of having to fix my mom's phone because she got tricked into sideloading something.

The last day of my dad's life in a hospital bed was interrupted by my mom's malware filled android phone playing voice advertisements for a casino app every 30 minutes. It was from some supposed "emoji pack" she installed online. I got her an iPhone the next week.

Let me have a locked down device. Opening it up will negatively affect the experience of users who want that.

> What I don’t get is the angry soap box lectures from the people who disagree. The intense planning on their part to mess up a thing I love just because they couldn’t make their money… Oh. Nevermind.

Do you support arbitrary and nonsensical reviews? Do you support everything described in the article? Do you support Apple saying that there is one set of standards for all developers even when this is clearly false?

You say you spend very little time discussing this point, yet you come and post 150 words about how you love the app store and how great it is (which I get) but you don't address a single claim made in the article. Rather you refer to it as an "angry soap box" and insinuate that the author might be acting in bad faith because of a failed business.

The author is upset because Apple failed to properly enforce the rules, and this egregious error cost the author the ability to ship an iOS app. Please respond to this rather than just say, "I love Apple".

All you've done is created a straw man. No one is arguing that the app store shouldn't exist or that if you choose to you shouldn't be allowed to use it exclusively. The argument is that alternatives should be allowed to exist and that people should be allowed to install whatever software they like on the devices they own.

If other app stores or modes of installation exist, that ruins nothing for you. You can just ignore them and go on as you do now.

You don't see anything wrong with the obviously highly subjective and demonstratably hypocritical approach that Apple is taking here?

I like the AppStore and want it to be good. Clearer, more consistent app reviews and better developer experience would increase the quality, quantity and variety of apps available to me in the AppStore.

So the answer is no?

It's a feature for Apple. To extract money from you and the makers of the apps you love.

For you? It's a prison. Apple is glad you like it.

Is it a prison that I don't have to install a hundred different launchers ? that I have a reliable way to refund my purchases ? That I don't have to share and trust a random developer with my credit cards ?

Yes, because none of that requires the app store.

The problem is the lack of an alternative.

To put it bluntly: you might like your nanny filter but other people might have different preferences.

The alternative is non-Apple phones.

Not an alternative if you want the Apple ecosystem.

But it sounds likely people in this case do not want the apple ecosystem. If you want the apple ecosystem, you want the app store.

But this explains the problem.

When there are only 2 companies, both providing a multitude of features, then the more features there are, the easier you run into the problem that the features you want are not covered by both companies.

Therefore, the features should be decoupled from the platform companies as much as possible. Features should be orthogonal to the platform.

For example, imagine you cannot buy shoes separately from your pants and your shirt. If there are only two companies making outfits, then you'd easily run into trouble finding an outfit you like.

> When there are only 2 companies

There are at least a dozen companies selling Android phones, each of which is free to customize it to their heart's content. For that matter, Android users are free to customize their phones to their heart's content, download apps from sketchy app stores, sideload them....

Not necessarily. The "ecosystem" refers to every product Apple makes, not just the fact that they control app distribution.

You may have friends, colleagues, or bosses who insist that you use iMessage or FaceTime. The former is Apple-exclusive, and the latter... well it technically supports web browsers, but the setup is way clunkier than just getting or sending a call from an app. Apple has internally discussed this and absolutely does not want the process of sending messages to iPhone users from Android users to be easy, lest kids buy cheap Android phones.

Or, alternatively, you want to use an item-tracker to track lost items. AirTags are the best option available because the app for it is built into iOS; whereas Android-compatible competitors like Tile or Chipolo absolutely do not have that kind of network size. In fact, this actually made Android phones slightly dangerous to use, because all of the anti-stalking features AirTags have are designed around the stalking victim having an iPhone.[0]

Or you like AirPods, which have firmware that only updates on Apple devices. You can use them with Android phones (I do), but even things like battery status require third-party apps, auto-switching doesn't work, and you can't configure all the settings the AirPods have. This also applies for MFi hearing aids, which is actually the thing that got my dad to switch off Android and onto iPhone.

Every product Apple releases is another thing Android phones can't do or can't do well, and another reason why someone who might absolutely hate the App Store would buy an iPhone despite instead of because of it.

[0] Yes, I'm aware of the Tracker Detect app. As far as I'm concerned, that's a half-measure, because most stalking victims are not going to be aware of it until they've already been stalked. To misquote Steve Jobs, it's a feature, not a product. You need to bundle that feature into something else that people might actually install - like, say, actual AirTags support apps.

Wouldn't all of these arguments also apply to Internet Explorer in the 90s? Just because you currently love the quality of the bundled and "approved" software packages doesn't mean that will keep being true or that you shouldn't be allowed to install software from other sources

The hidden argument in this “30% is anti-competitive” thing is that it has never been easier for me, as a consumer, to cancel a subscription than to go through Apple to do it.

All my subs on one screen with a single click to cancel at any time, without forgoing my pre-paid time.

I wish everything were like that.

>angry soap box lectures

Have you ever considered that you are the one that’s wrong and emotional about it? No one wants to take the App Store away. In fact, I can think of many things the App Store could do to improve my experience. Maybe some competition would be the necessary motivation.

Yeah high quality guaranteed... https://twitter.com/keleftheriou/status/1480626605370142724

No one wants to take your walled garden away from you. Freedom for me maintains freedom of choice for you also. You seem to want to limit my freedom because the only available option happens to be your preference.

>I have purchased zero items for use on my phone from places outside the App Store. I am very happy with this.

Because this is impossible, so how the fck would you judge the grapes you can't taste.

I assume the commenter’s choice of which smartphone to buy is related to these preferences. If the commenter wanted a smartphone that supports sidelining, they could switch to the other smartphone platform (the one that is vastly more popular than Apple’s).

We all know switching is not free, you might have a lot of digital assets locked inside the garden. Still nobody would force him to give money directly to a developer/artist he can continue feeding poor giant companies and you can check Google Play Store and see that is full of apps(includng Facebook,Apple and Microsoft apps) so there is no risk that an alternative will empty out the official store.

I hate the apple App Store, if you want my money, don't be on the Apple App Store.

> I have purchased zero items for use on my phone from places outside the App Store. I am very happy with this.

Because you cannot install anything on your iOS/iPadOS device from anywhere else.

I absolutely hate App Store and their stupid policies, I hate that I have an iPad Pro on which I cannot install everything I want because of their idiotic policies, on a device I paid more than 1000 EUR.

I cannot wait till EU will force them to allow competing app stores on iOS/iPadOS

"on a device I paid more than 1000 EUR"

Then why did you pay for it? Buy a Galaxy Tab. They've got similarly-priced high-end models with OLED screens and an App Store model you like.

Not every product has to be designed for your wishes and needs. That's what competition is for.

I used to own a Galaxy Tab S3, and it became horribly slow (a Samsung Galaxy S9 Plus released just the next year in 2018 was faster) after barely more than two years of use. This isn't an isolated case, as there are threads on Reddit documenting slowdowns (with more recent models) due to software updates [0][1].

In contrast, users report the iPad reliably lasting at least 5 years without noticeable slowdowns [2]. There are surprisingly few other Android tablet alternatives aimed to compete with the iPad (especially the iPad Pro).

This makes the iPad the only option for a high-end tablet that lasts years without upgrades. There are also other benefits of the iPad (e.g. better stylus with the Pencil, better variety of apps in the App Store, less buggy apps from the App Store), but these can be considered as reasonable tradeoffs in favour of an Android tablet (no walled garden). However, I personally don't believe that the short lifespan of the Galaxy Tabs make them a reasonable competitor to the iPads.

[0] https://old.reddit.com/r/GalaxyTab/comments/mzwzew/s5e_slow_...

[1] https://old.reddit.com/r/GalaxyTab/comments/od1f4v/galaxy_ta...

[2] https://old.reddit.com/r/ipad/comments/m4013a/how_long_do_ip...

It's hard to argue with Apple's specific design choices (locked down App Store) while also complaining that the competitor's device fails to deliver the same quality and experience. Apple's design choices around stuff like the app store are part of the package they use to deliver that superior experience. That's the tradeoff.

IMHO, the solution is iOS on mobile, Windows on desktop and Linux on the server.

The old adage goes: macOS for work, windows for games, linux for servers :)

>>I love the App Store. If you want my money then you will be on the App Store. I have purchased zero items for use on my phone from places outside the App Store. I am very happy with this.

I read this as: I am currently a happy apple customer. I do not buy apps on other app stores because they do not exist.

>>What I don’t get is the angry soap box lectures from the people who disagree. The intense planning on their part to mess up a thing I love just because they couldn’t make their money… Oh. Nevermind.

Apple's practices as a company are things that, historically, have more or less gotten other companies into a lot of legal trouble. The whole world is watching and waiting for a legal system somewhere to step in and say, "Ok, enough is enough."