Ideally governments, and not Apple, would be regulating away this predatory behaviour, but I don't view that as a realistic prospect. Governments have never been great at regulating away anti-consumer behaviour.

For example, F-Droid in particular is very good at protecting users.

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2021/2/8/22272849/apple-app-store-s...

The vast majority of software on F-Droid is My First Android App garbage, usually doesn't follow any common best practices for UI/UX on Android, is extremely specific (like a door-opening app for a hackerspace in Germany) or all of the above.

I don't see how you could possibly compare them with a straight face.

The one or two times I've found an app on Apple's app store to not be up to snuff, getting a refund was completely painless and Apple is known for being pretty liberal about refunds, because I think both they and app developers realize that a smooth exit for an unhappy app customer is the best for everyone involved.

The paid apps I've bought on iOS have been miles better than Android apps, too. I was shocked to discover that an excellent Solitare program I used on an original iPhone is still kicking around getting regular updates from its developer. It shows one ad, briefly, after a game win (I think it doesn't even show an ad after a game loss.)

Most of the stuff I bought on Android? The dev abandoned it within a year or two, and then it broke not long after...

And thank goodness for that. If I just want an app to strip EXIF data and crop+resize, the relevant F-Droid app will be that, and just that, and will simply have a button front and center to do the things, and not hide crap behind whatever fancy multiple-taps nested menu indistinguishable-from-background options are the latest Google-driven UX fad. And as a bonus, it'll usually be smaller and lacking the analytics and ads and nagging subscription features that infest so many comparative "useful" apps on the play store.

2 notes: - the google playstore is even worse to find something and much more misleading. Hey you can't even sort out apps that include ads. - You usually get the necessary info quickly even though it might take an additionnal step. The project repo/website is always mentioned, you can consult it.

But yes regardless of the store, sometimes it is faster to check for an app and eventually install it using a regular search engine and follow the "playstore/f-droid/iOS/direct apk link".

Regarding the regulatory changes, I'd be happy with one of two things:

A) Governments impose restrictions on third party developers that are largely similar to the consumer protection standards that Apple has imposed on developers, while opening up alternative payment platforms.

B) Governments impose restrictions on Apple to prevent Apple from preying on their customers.

However, governments are going down the path of removing whatever protections the App Store provided consumers, without replacing those protections with any other pro-consumer regulation. This is the absolute worst case scenario for me. We've seen time and time again how developers will prey on their users, particularly with subscriptions.

As others pointed out, that's actually not true as far as the new EU regulation on the matter is concerned: it attempts to maintain principles that help users while removing monopolistic practices and abuses by gatekeepers.

In any case, even if governments were to ban certain behaviours without mandating replacements, the responsibility for such outcome lies very plainly with the handful of giant platform vendors who strenuously refused to work with competition authorities in good faith - preferring instead to defend their monopolistic abuses to the last day - with Apple being the worst of the lot.

I think EU governments have actually been really good at that.

The two year mandatory warranty for everything comes to mind, as do regulations that require business to be truthful about price in listings and not add a bunch of fees just before checkout (Airbnb is a lot less frustrating in the EU, for example).

There's also the mandatory 14 day cooling period during which you are entitled to return anything bought online for a full refund and a whole bunch more: https://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/consumer/consumer_laws...

I wouldn’t be surprised if users are simply forced to use some external service that has a much worse user experience and ultimately the consumer suffers.

However, the "attack surface" would be much bigger, given that consumers spend far more time on their smartphones than on PCs.

0: https://nypost.com/2019/11/06/tinder-owners-stock-tumbles-af...

"As we have previously said, we don't want to give our users any freedom of choice and we won't give away a single penny from our monopoly"

I’d think the last 20+ years of the evolution of the internet would be clear enough evidence that:

a) users don’t want choice about these kinds of things.

b) even when users do get these kinds of choices, they either can’t be trusted to choose in their best interest (e.g. millions of people chose to install malware in the past 20 years) OR

c) bad actors will learn to trick users into making the choices they want (e.g. Amazon changing button colors to trick people into doing things they don’t want to do)

IMO trying to frame this as about “user choice” is disingenuous.

There are benefits to not allowing choice in some case - I don’t know if you’ve ever had to call a company to cancel a subscription you’ve signed up for online, but that doesn’t happen to iOS IAP users.

We already have a mechanism to restrict choice - regulation. Turning to corporations to safeguard consumer rights will end in tears, especially if used as an excuse to curtail user freedom.

> Have you ever actually met or heard of a user [..] that cares about this?

Ordinary people don't care about a lot of things they should care about - there are only so many hours in the day to learn about issues and acquire the necessary knowledge to form an opinion. If experts in the relevant fields don't care for them, the only other ones are those that stand to profit.

I bet it would be mostly mechanics speaking up if auto manufacturers started requiring only "licensed" brake pads or blinker fluid be used. Does that mean the practice isn't car-owner-hostile?

That is not a dev thing. At least not a good dev thing. That is a shady business person thing, possibly holding devs to ransom with “I know you don't like it, you can always leave if you dislike it enough and I'll get someone else to implement”.

Of course it is possible to be both a dev and a shady business person, but away from one-man-band entrepreneurs people don't usually have the desire not the time to excel at both.

Keep in mind that the overwhelming majority of software that people interact with is coming from developers that are businesses.

/s

Meanwhile...

https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#cod...

> Apps should never prey on users or attempt to rip off customers, trick them into making unwanted purchases, ... or engage in any other manipulative practices within or outside of the app.

Regulation is great is there’s a one size fits all solution, or if a single compromise is good enough for the entire population. Otherwise regulation will only provide the least common denominator, the smallest set of rules that fit everyone.

Apple can enforce rules that don’t work for everyone - there are alternatives to choose from for users who need things that are not possible in Apple world.

I only noticed your username after reading your comment - well played!

Most people don't live in a jurisdiction that will provide this anytime soon. Frankly its not the top 10 of most peoples issue list because of the App Store regulation.

Just because consumers don't understand how something works doesn't mean it can't be bad for them. There are already tons of examples of this in other areas like legal contracts and biology/chemistry, where consumers need experts and regulation to be their advocates, and ensure their rights.

People fully understand that any other store takes a cut. The gov takes another 21%. It's arrogant to think that consumers don't understand. They understand once they've been told.

Consumers aren't told that ATM transactions cost money. That a creditcard transaction costs the merchant even more money. etc. etc. etc.

This will probably change. We know governments find this cut abusive, and requiring third party payments was intended in a lot of cases to address this. Google and Apple playing cheeky 27% workarounds will not fly for long.

If anything, these companies aggressively refusing to stop fleecing people is going to lead to much more draconian regulations that will turn them into regulated utilities.

> c) bad actors will learn to trick users into making the choices they want

Bad actors have been doing this for years, abusing Apple's amazingly convenient payment APIs, like a "Heart Rate Monitor" app that prompted users to put their finger on the touch ID sensor, and then throw up an $99 IAP screen which would be immediately purchased because the user's finger was already on the touch ID https://www.wired.com/story/iphone-touch-id-scam-apps/

Do most users care or regularly discuss it? Probably not. Would they be happier paying 30% less for their apps though? Quite likely.

Apple is also explicitly reviewing the payment providers involved in this. There's no reason to choose between "only apple" or "users will install malware". There is a huge middle ground here.

And lets not mince words: Apple in this case (and Google in theirs with their mobile ecosystem) is acting as a payment processor, and that function should be regulated as such. If that margin, once regulated down, is insufficient to operate an app store (hah), charge a flat fee per app to be listed and made available to customers. Shopify costs $30-300/month (depending on plan), which sounds like reasonable cost segmentation to adopt for providing a mobile storefront/app in their app store.

[1] https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/lt/IP_15_...

(I'm aware this post is Netherlands specific; I'm speaking in broad strokes)

No one - no one - wants that. Free apps suddenly won't be free when they have to pay to be on the App Store. Its so easy to create an app and share it, and that is a good thing. The end result of apps costing money (even though free apps have nearly a 0 marginal cost to distribute) is that you'll end up with less apps and/or more ads and data tracking (also proposed to be regulated away) and/or a subscription service that bundles free apps to cover the cost.

It's how you end up with 2 million apps in the store but you still can't find what you need.

Indeed, but that’s almost certainly not going to be the consequential result of whatever happens to the App Store.

The businesses might make 30% more, in their best case.

Worst case, Apple is ordered to split up in a way that means development of iOS has to be funded independently of device sales, and also that there App Store is no longer allowed to be the unique store for iOS sales, in which case developers might find that each of the frameworks they rely on from ARKit to WidgetKit now has a licence fee, or end users of iOS may find they have to pay for upgrades instead of getting them free.

It’s possible that the economic rent Apple currently extracts from the App Store will end up somewhere more economically useful, but not guaranteed for the same reasons mergers can reduce waste — replication is necessarily redundant, even though it’s also necessary for the exact competition that would naturally minimise economic rent extraction.

(That said, I don’t think any of this is why basically all governments are going after Big Tech right now. I think that’s happening because Big Tech is scaring a lot of governments by being too big, and in the case of everyone outside the USA, too beholden to Washington — as I’ve said before on the site, it is ridiculous that I, a British national living in Berlin, have to report to the US federal government the use of encryption in the apps I write, while working for German businesses who sell the apps to other German business).

It is 100% gonna be 27% instead of 3%. So a potential saving for the consumer of 3%. No thank you!

We don't show creditcard fees either.

In the Netherlands, companies are required to advertise all-in prices (VAT etc. etc.)

Also, the whole lawsuit was not against the 30% appletax. It was about "freedom of payment provider". Ofcourse the real reason is the 30% commission, but that doesn't hold up in court.

I think if you allowed users to choose between xx% markup and being able to cancel subscriptions from a centralized place, there would be takers of both approaches.

Many people choose Android phones, which kind of proves your point :)

Users are kept ignorant by Apple's policies. Apple punishes developers if they choose to educate users about Apple's fees or offer lower prices for purchases that Apple won't get a cut of.

I occasionally see MSRP price printed on packaging, which is sometimes mis-matched with the store I'm at - its usually convenience stores and other similar places that add extra markup for high-demand items (and usually you know what to expect).

> Retailers don't prevent suppliers from selling with other retailers.

Some do.

We only use Mastercard/VISA for travel, not for domestic payments.

Users in Denmark do care: Apple does not support the by far most popular payment card that people use (like 99% of cc payments).

> Consistent with the ACM’s order, dating apps that are granted an entitlement to link out or use a third-party in-app payment provider will pay Apple a commission on transactions. Apple will charge a 27% commission on the price paid by the user, net of value-added taxes. This is a reduced rate that excludes value related to payment processing and related activities. Developers will be responsible for the collection and remittance of any applicable taxes, such as the Netherlands’ value-added tax (VAT), for sales processed by a third-party payment provider.

So yay for 3% saving, which they'll spend on another payment provider, do all the support, add reporting, vat etc. Seems like a lot of trouble. They simply made the wrong case, just like Epic did. If they would've said that they think 30% is too much, it'd be a whole different story.

Would I want to save €0.75 on a €25/mo subscription and have to deal with dark patterns etc? Hell no. And especially no to the dating industry which is known for their tricks. Also, the 75ct saving should be split between the user and the dev. So my incentive would be 20ct? 10ct? Good luck lol

will they cut prices? Maybe not, but right now they can't, because Apple forbids it.

Equivalent logic

If you are not someone that owns and uses an iOS / iPadOS device then I was hoping you might explain why this is troubling you so much.

Apple has still not learnt the lesson. EU will see this as another provocation by Apple and the US is going the same way.

Governments are losing patience with Apple.

There is also nothing in the law that prevents developers from asking a higher price for Apple's payment system if that's what you prefer. If you want to pay the additional 25% for your convenience, then you're free to do so. Apple is the one taking they freedom away from you in this draft, adding a rule that developers can no longer use Apple Pay if they choose for an alternative payment provider.

Apple is free to not handle payments for an app if they don't want to, but if you're mad as a user, be mad at Apple. I think everyone agrees that there's a real benefit to Apple Pay, and if you're willing to pay for that benefit you definitely should.

Oh nothing, just some company interfering with a nation's democratically enabled oversight and consumer protection laws and policies.

Here's some detail Apple didn't include: https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/28/22999998/apple-bigger-fin...

And no, not all oversight should be appealable. That's how it became nearly impossible to permanently fire bad police officers.

Most of my friends here in the Netherlands don’t have a credit card. Instead they have Maestro (a debit card — aka Pin — with a bank account number on it instead of a credit card number). If you want to sell things online in the Netherlands, iDeal (a payment system) or go home.

They've gone from "I picked up one sock so technically I've now cleaned my room" level of compliance to "OK, OK, I picked up the other sock as well."