So, the competitor of one major tech monopoly that controls half of the people's online lives is another major tech monopoly that controls the other half. And they implement almost the same policies. And that is, 'somehow ok'.

Man, you Americans are SO taken in by your corporate landscape that you seem to have literally forgot what it is making your own choices.

Companies needing to be compelled by law to treat users as adults is also frustrating.

Frustrations everywhere, I guess we should just not do anything about it and go back to the stone age? Someone else in this thread was suggesting that.

I’m an adult, and I want Apple to sell a product that doesn’t comply with these regulations.

“You can opt out” doesn’t help, because I want Apple to leverage its market power to force other companies to act in my interest, such as by banning unnecessary location harvesting from the App Store. Today, if someone wants access to the iPhone market, they have to comply with a pile of requirements that benefit me. If Apple loses the power to force policies on developers, for example by being required to allow sideloading, developers won’t have any incentive to offer non-user-hostile apps, and the the product “a smartphone where apps are available that are not user-hostile” will be gone from the market. The only options will be “a smartphone where user-hostile apps are available” (if you succumb to sideloading), and “a smartphone where apps aren’t available” (if you refuse to sideload), because given the opportunity app developers will only make user-hostile apps.

The EU is making my life worse and I’m annoyed about it. People who want an Android can already buy an Android, why is the EU banning the product I want to buy?

Apple only loses power to force policies if developers AND users move off the Apple App Store. If you believe that people want to stay on Apple's App Store with all that it entails, then anything not on Apple's App Store will be irrelevant right?

Otherwise if you're saying that users WILL move off the App Store, then that's how Apple's monopoly is anti-consumer and anti-competitive.

If users choose to continue to use Apple App Store only, then Apple can continue to enforce policies while also not being (as) anti-competitive since they wouldn't be actively stifling competition.

I want to continue using Apple’s App Store, but most people are less aware of things like location harvesting, and are less privacy-sensitive than I am. Today, Apple can set policies that benefit users without those users having to be aware of those policies or understand why those policies benefit them. In a world where Apple’s policies can be sidestepped simply by asking the user to sideload the app, many, even most users will likely agree to do so without any awareness of what they’re giving up. The shady app developer certainly won’t tell them!

Users unambiguously benefit from most of Apple’s App Store policies (the payment rules less so, but even then there are benefits such as mandatory subscription cancellation support), but often in ways they can’t or don’t see. Apple’s policies are obviously negative for app developers, but I don’t care and nobody should care that Apple chooses to benefit its consumers at the expense of its third-party corporate partners. That’s just normal business behavior.

I don't disagree with the benefits, but there are also negatives to me as a consumer with Apple's App Store policies that do nothing but benefit Apple. And as long there's no competition, Apple have no incentive to change that because it benefits them.

Look at Fortnite's removal, all because they added an additional payment method that bypassed Apple's. You could still use Apple's method if you wanted to for all those benefits, but Apple want their cut. Apps like YouTube increase prices to make up for Apple's cut. Others like Netflix and Spotify not only do not allow you to pay for it via the app, but also aren't allowed to tell you how to pay for it, making a worse user experience.

Or how about the blocking of streaming gaming apps like Stadia and Xbox Cloud Gaming? Who benefits from that? Only Apple.

>In a world where Apple’s policies can be sidestepped simply by asking the user to sideload the app, many, even most users will likely agree to do so without any awareness of what they’re giving up.

This doesn't happen with any kind of frequency on Android so I'm curious as to why it would happen on iOS. Do you have ideas on what it would be like? Why would it be so different than android or windows?

Facebook tried successfully to do this in 2019 by misusing their internal corporate app certificate, and only stopped because Apple noticed and revoked their certificate. So we already have proof that in the absence of Apple’s ability to punish and ban companies for asking users to sideload to bypass tracking restrictions, they will ask and users will accept.

https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/30/18203551/apple-facebook-b...

As for Android, many Android app stores (especially ones in China) impose no restrictions or barely any at all. The only one that imposes meaningful restrictions is Google’s Play Store, and the restrictions are much less than in Apple’s App Store, so the incentive to bother circumventing them is much lower. For example, unnecessarily harvesting user location is not a blocker for access to the Play Store.

>given the opportunity app developers will only make user-hostile apps

Can you give examples of this? Android has plenty of non-user-hostile apps...