I'm betting that one would have to opt-in to use those stores in the first place.

Until Facebook is only distributed through their own store that doesn’t require app tracking transparency. Or Teams, or slack, …

I think that's unlikely to happen, for a host of consumer experience and market viability reasons:

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

One should note that Meta could create their own Android third party store right now, like Amazon has (pretty much only to support their Kindle Fire devices), yet they haven't had any interest in doing so. One could claim that's because Android users don't pay as much for apps as iOS users do, but that's still a lot of users worldwide, and a lot of data that could be tracked. Yet they don't bother to.

On the other hand the Play store is not being policed for days tracking and many apps are stuffed to the brim with tracking libraries.

So they really don't have a need to do this.

Apple can still make it difficult for them though. They can just remove the forbidden APIs and sandbox apps better. If they do this they don't even have to bother to review as thoroughly anymore.

The big benefit is that Apple no longer gets to decide what type of apps are allowed and what aren't.

The sandbox is enforced by App Store review. I don't mean the runtime enforcement, but rather the sandbox that apps opt into. It is the App Store that rejects apps when they have attempted to include sandbox entitlements that they have no business having.

Access to your photos, contacts, device identifiers, etc are all gated on sandbox entitlements, and if you remove the App Store review process then you remove the gate the prevents an app from saying "give me read/write access to the whole file system", "give me read/write access to the photos on the device", etc

Yes that's how it works now.

That can be changed of course. They can make it work just like on Android where the user has to give permission for things like filesystem access.

The point of the law is to bring more control away from Apple and to the user.

Perhaps Apple can just hardcode such restrictions into the operating system itself

That’s what the sandbox is for. Without specific entitlements an app can’t access any data outside of its container.

The OS cannot decide when it should or should not trust the entitlements, because the whole point is that an app has some modicum of trust.

Apple could always enforce a more restrictive, hardened security model for non-official App Store distributed apps. Again, they control the platform- they could change it at will to accommodate new use cases.

The whole point of this is that it does not allow that.

Allowing sideloading and independent app stores doesn't say anything about adding restrictions on third party app permissions.

Android has an explicit opt-in for allowing sideloading, and a whopping 0.06% of users currently utilize it. I really don't know why this issue is causing such a big fuss in the iOS ecosystem.

My impression is that the Google Play store is much less hostile to developers than the Apple store. Which makes for larger momentum/impact to actually move to 3rd party services.

(I have only dabbled in Android apps, my impression of the Apple situation is very much that, an impression.)

On the other hand Play Store is much more hostile to it’s users compared to Apple.

1) Because apple doesn't want developers to have any alternatives

2) Because apple doesn't want to compete

Looks to be about Apple's fear of losing control and allowing free choice.

I never understand people who make this argument. Everyone has choice, go buy an Android phone and install/customize whatever you want. Apple has chosen what parts of their OS and user experience they control versus what part they let the user control. Personally I'm very happy with it because it gives me higher quality apps and some reasonable protection versus the alternative. If your issue is that you don't like where that line is split, fine, then choose a different platform like Android. Now if Android didn't exist, then your argument would hold more water for me.

The problem is when some critical app forces you to use their store.

I hope at the very least apple can mandate that the additional app stores enforce the same privacy and safety rules, or would the EU consider that allowing people to not be spied on be to much of an infringement of the rights of business?

Apple ecosystem isn't the bastion of privacy and security you think it is.

It's better than android's.

And yeah, it isn't perfect, but actively making it less secure isn't going make it better

As I mentioned elsewhere, it’s debatable whether or not the other tech giants are really going to bother creating another app store, and then force users to migrate there.

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

Such a move is basically mutually assured destruction- they would be taking their critical app off the official Apple App Store, and in doing so inviting huge customer backlash. Besides the negative press, at least a fraction of users will not migrate over- both HN power users technical and ideological enough to reject entering a user data harvesting shady app store, and the less technically adept users who can’t figure out how to enable such a store. Not to mention, everyone who is sick and tired of having to manage yet another user account forced upon them by a tech giant. It’s guaranteed that not 100% of existing users would transition, and even if it’s not a huge amount, it would be upsetting the apple cart and damaging the brand.

There’s more considerations beyond that I mentioned previously- the difficulties of these companies now having to create their own parallel iOS app ecosystems- again, ask Facebook how their own platform’s app community is faring these days, let alone every smartphone app market that isn’t iOS or Android.

And it’s debatable that these tech giants can even successfully create a sufficiently compelling alternate app market from a product or business perspective. It feels like all of the giants are at a point where they’re engaged in side projects- cloud gaming, Clubhouse clones, Snapchat stories clones, Libra- that don’t really have staying power, as far as new products go. Creating a parasitic clone iOS App Store would yet be another boondoggle, and committing to it, as I mention, is MAD- Apple loses their apps, and these companies are forever tied to having to maintain and work on their 3rd party app stores. In fact, one can easily imagine a Meta pulling back and resubmitting Facebook, Instagram, etc. back to the official App Store after initially removing them. And it’s incredibly easy to imagine Google resigning an iOS Play Store to the Google Graveyard before you can say Stadia.

Smartphone software has been around a decade now. I don’t think it’s so easy to woo users over with your own carbon copy that offers nothing. Not to mention, perhaps these companies might invite regulator antitrust attention as well if they keep truly “critical apps” away from the official App Store. There’s a lot of possible implications.

I think the prospect of tech giant data-harvesting third party iOS app stores is a fascinating prospect that hasn’t been examined in detail. Too often it’s used as a bogeyman, “Facebook will take away their app and track you!” against sideloading. The reality is probably more complex that that, and I would argue that opening iOS to alternate app marketplaces and sideloading might actually increase business opportunities and vectors of positive innovation for Apple. But that’s the subject of another comment.

Epic has wanted to do this for a long time. If you have enough clout like Fortnite had, you can do it. You also have GOG, Steam and other game stores on PC. They might also push “mobile carriers should be able to install whatever they want”-legislation that adds extra app stores.

You make some good points, but in my linked comment, and in the comment linked to that comment, I do carve out an exception that game publishers will likely be ones who want to pursue having their own third party app stores. That is because as seen in the PC gaming world, such companies can ruthlessly force gamers to join their locked down stores. But I think this is a specific niche that allows for that because games are a medium that’s developed into this sort of unique landscape.

Also, I’m uncertain if many of these companies really have that many iOS game exclusives to incentivize this sort of lock in- Epic being a major exception. But most other publishers don’t exactly have big iOS libraries. Most of their apps are more like incidental tie-in material accompanying their actual PC and console titles.