That universe doesn't quite exist on iOS, partly because Apple makes it so uncomfortable in ways to attempt. I am hopeful that this shakeup might, in some way, make that easier. I've always wanted to ship some basic apps that do things without any ads or purchases or whatnot.
Besides the developer program cost (which I assume will still exist in this EU world) what is stopping you from doing this now?
Apple is a hardware company, an appliance company if you wish, and also a media company. The fact that they are forced to also produce general computing devices as a wayto run stuff like Ableton or Photoshop is, I suspect, seen as a pesky legacy of Apple II days.
Pedantic, but the license agreement line requiring that 'MacOS can only run on Apple hardware' is, itself, in service of the fact that they only license the software to you if you purchase their hardware.
A Hackintosh is a transgression.
Dealing with the capricious app store approval processs?
Not being allowed to use GPL code (might still be a problem for 3rd party app stores, but maybe not for sideloading. Maybe.)?
Having to develop on a mac (which will still be a problem)?
That's like saying people shouldn't be allowed to make unofficial accesories for physical products without paying the company because the original designs for the product itself are patented.
I don't really subscribe to one camp. There's pros and cons to both.
IMO a lot of developers are paying for Apple to have an unreasonable amount of control and the entire point of side loading or competing app stores is to get rid of that because we don't want to be paying Apple to act against our interests.
I don't want to pay for Apple to "verify" my app. I want them to use the OS to enforce user granted permissions and that's it.
A large portion of users want the protection that the walled garden affords. If you value openness, then I suggest you use and develop apps for Android.
Like how Apple's interests can be at-odds with your own. If developers have control over your device, you're not empowered as a user.
> A large portion of users want the protection that the walled garden affords
So, give it to them. Our interests are not mutually exclusive, you can make a device with both a walled garden and a developer mode. It's not rocket science, at least when you have 200 billion dollars in R&D cash sitting in your coffers.
You're at least right about one thing. Large tech companies will always exploit opportunities to limit the user, which is a privilege Apple has abused for too long. It's time for computing to be democratized again, even if we need to drag Apple though the mud to get there.
I don't know if you realize this, but OP and you are saying the same thing, they are just saying it slightly different.
You: To stand up to large company bullying you need to regulate them through the government.
OP: To stand up to large company bullying you, you need another large company who has the pockets and sway to bring change through congress because our government is bought and paid for by corporations.
It's regulating your iPhone so you don't have to?
I really don't want idealists to mess up the iPhone's stability, performance and security so people can use the minecraft app store or whatever.
You can’t walk away from government regulation because there is ultimately a gun at your back. Governments do not give up power once they’ve received it. Governments change hands who may wield that power differently than when it was imagined to be when first received.
People in European countries have had to learn this the hard way many, many times over and yet still don’t get why other cultures might take a different view on it.
The government is the one institution in most people's lives that they have a real say in, and probably the only one that affords them democracy. I doubt any of us sit on Apple's board.
The problem is that the Apple and Google duopoly is stifling choice and competition such that we can't realistically walk away from those companies. Market forces haven't solved this issue, and this is where antitrust legislation kicks in.
Just because smoldesu says “Letting software go unregulated didn't work, full-stop” doesn’t make it so. It doesn’t even make sense–you’re the one fighting for deregulation here.
Discoverability and the ease of access that the playstore/appstore provides is enough to pretty much always want to have your app up there.
The main difference is that there are a lot of apps that are simply not allowed in the appstore or that you need to change substantially to comply with apple's rules. For example, Telegram has censored content if you download the app from the appstore given Apple's pornography laws. Other apps that might be used to infringe on copyright are outright not allowed (they're also not allowed on the playstore, but you can install them from the apk or a third party store).
Now, maybe you think these restrictions are appropriate and that's fine... for you. Other people might want the freedom of doing more with their devices that they paid hundreds and hundreds of dollars for without having to resort to extreme measures. The argument Apple uses is bullshit and the EU saw through it.
and the argument about "giving developers power" simply doesn't hold any water. android openly allows sideloading with the google play store having very similar rules to the app store, and yet i can count the number of major apps that force or even offer a sideloaded version on one hand. the only ones that come to mind are fortnite (removed from google play) and telegram (on play store, but sideloaded version has faster updates and less censorship).
I fully agree, imagine if MS had made Windows apps on W10 only come from their store. Anybody saying that the solution is "just buy a mac 4head"*, like they love to do with mobile phones, would be laughed out of existence.
*: It's great to have options, and linux should be in here too, but that would be like telling a normal user in this situation (mobile market) to go buy a Pine phone, which for very few would work the way they expect/need it to.
If most people actually choose iOS/iPhones primarily because of the App Store quality/protections/ecosystem then people will continue to choose the App Store regardless if sideloading is possible - after all we just said that's the whole reason most bought the phone in the first place. If on the other hand people are choosing iOS/iPhones for other reasons and you're worried nobody else will use the App Store anymore then I don't really buy "there aren't enough of us so it should be allowed to hold a captive market to support our use case" as a reasonable argument even though I see it quite often on HN.
Why? Android is a legitimate alternative, one that the majority of the world population uses. You have many makes and models of handsets from which to choose. You want the polished apps with a completely open and free environment. Maybe you should ponder why such apps don't exist for the open and free ecosystems?
To state the obvious: if this were true, Apple wouldn't have to force the issue. Apple's app store would be a premium that they would charge users extra for. Getting your apps from 3rd-party stores would be the equivalent of the green bubble.
The issue is the monopolistic price gouging Apple charges for access to the walled garden.
If you took the "policing for developer's short circuiting the 30% cut" out of Apple's approval process, everything in their ecosystem works out fairly nicely.
The core issue is, simply, that Apple price gouges enormously.
It is simply the job of the sandbox and OS security to prevent security/privacy violations.
Either you'll pay Apple directly, or the non-App Store will collect the 30% they have to send to Apple.
Add a user, I do.
Developers, and the tech sphere in general, have proven themselves untrustworthy.
This is the bed of greed the tech industry built. Now lay in it.
For a user, Apple's app store will remain available. Your love for Coca-cola isn't ruined by the existence of Pepsi.
If I can use alternate stores then some popular apps - Fortnite is an obvious one - will go them exclusively, forcing people to set up and use a store which will probably do less auditing. Those apps will be able to steal more of my data, and some of them might (will) be malicious (“poison”).
Once a malicious app destroys my phone, “the system is down”; I can’t use any apps regardless of where I bought them.
Ransomware is a multi billion dollar business, and alternate stores will be motivated to cut corners. What could go wrong?
This seems a bit hyperbolic. I personally have not had this problem on my laptop (a Mac) despite being able to sideload apps, and it likely being a much juicier target.
The app can do whatever it wants, but if I disable it’s access to the internet at a system level it’s not getting access to the internet.
Even desktop OSes work like this. Just because I install a piece of software on my laptop does not mean that it gets root access.
You can yell about Zucks adtech empire all you like, but Apple launched their competitor at the same time they denied other apps.
Google is now moving the same direction as well.
Your phone OS vendor controlling which software distribution platform is mandatory is not meaningfully, "security".
I don’t believe this is true, can you cite a source? The recent buzz about ‘targeted ads’ was actually about adds on their own App Store, no third party data sharing or sale was involved, so I believe you are mistaken.
What they are just starting to do is no different from Amazon using your past purchases to place ads on their own site. I have no problem with that either.
If your going to criticise them and think what they are doing is wrong, fine. That’s fair, but could people at least get what they're complaining about factually correct.
Are they going to keep on giving their own apps entitlements they deny to everyone else? (Or even, allow to others, but very selectively.) Or is the EU going to crack down on that as well? I hope.
I'd actually consider iOS again if it were more open so I think this is a really good thing.
Otherwise they're building a web app, which they've always been able to do!
- When they pay $99/year for their developer license
- When they pay royalties on every payment that gets processed
- When they buy and promote Apple hardware and software
People simply want to remove the payment processing one. If Apple really needs more money to build their amazing intellectual property, they have plenty of ways to bill developers for services rendered. Their current system is undeniably exploitative, and the EU won't stop until that exploitation is alleviated. Apple will stop at nothing to defend their control, but will ultimately be forced to abide by Europe's terms. They're not defying small-fry court orders in the Netherlands anymore.
It's no surprise that Apple will comply as maliciously as they possibly can.
Hitching your "I don't want to pay the 30% commission" wagon to "Allowing 3rd party app stores and payment processors" is doomed to fail.
This has literally already happened https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/02/apple-shocks-ios...
Fighting monopolies is hard, but the penalties scale up the more games these companies play. They know it too, but all of the **holes running these companies are worried about is cashing out their bonuses and retiring before the regulations finally get things to where they should be.
We've had 15 years of hardware and browser optimization, Moore's law, and development when it comes to mobile hardware.
Web apps run just fine now. Hell, many native apps are just web apps via things React Native or webviews.
So this will wind up being a worst of all worlds.
Lmao, you must have missed the news about Microsoft, Amazon, Netflix and another few dozen Fortune 500 companies negotiating with Apple under the table. They already do bend the rules for sufficiently large companies, they just won't budge if you're someone that threatens them.
Developers are about to get a surprise about what they're actually paying for. This is the problem with believing their own talking points about "paying 30% for payment processing."
So now they'll be paying for actual third-party payment processing, as well as lawyers and accountants to ensure they're complying with Apple's royalty agreements to license their technology.