If you’re steering a platform, you want people to use your APIs and tools. I don’t see how that’s controversial. Otherwise, what are you even doing?

It's not about using their APIs and tools. It's about banning competition. That is beyond controversial - it should be illegal.

What they should be doing? Competing on merit. Not pushing lock-in.

Allowing third party also circumnavigates Apple's approval process.

Personally I don't care about giving up choice if it means reduction of spam.

On a similar note, I'm happy Reddit is reducing third party apps.

Prevents spammy reddit apps.

spammy reddit apps?

“ What a horror - someone won't be using Apple APIs and tools.”

It's illegal when a company has a monopoly, but otherwise that's the nature of business. The line of thought that 'apple has a monopoly in iPhone software distribution' never seemed very compelling to me since they don't have a monopoly on mobile phones in general.

You are using term "monopoly" in a misleading way there. It should be illegal when it's causing harm to competition and it totally does. It doesn't need to be an absolute monopoly to be a problem. The fact that competition law is toothless today to address it speaks badly about how it's applied, not about this being a non issue.

Apple has enough control on the market to cause harm to it by stiffing Web standards for example without being an absolute monopoly.

> It should be illegal when it's causing harm to competition and it totally does

Banning being mean to your competition, that's a first.

Read what competition law is about. It's not simply about absolute monopoly which is an extreme edge case. It's about harm to competition. Anti-competitive practices totally should be illegal.

> Read what competition law is about

OK

> Anti-competitive practices totally should be illegal

So are there competition laws that make it illegal, or do you wish there were? Are you asking for enforcement? Or are you just hoping for change?

Concepts in current competition law are good enough already. Its enforcement is toothless though. So yeah, I'm asking for enforcement.

If your store is big you can sabotage your providers: Apple to Facebook.

If your store is small your providers can sabotage you: Google to Microsoft (Windows Phone).

I wonder whom will Apple be begging for more content for their Vision - perhaps Valve?

Big respect to Apple though for inadvertently protecting their customers from web "apps". But times will change...

> I wonder whom will Apple be begging for more content for their Vision - perhaps Valve?

If you're talking gaming content for Vision, I think they would go with Sony. They have what seems to be a good partnership. There's official support for the dualsense on apple devices and apple brought AppleMusic to the playstation store. Steve Jobs himself was a fan of Sony[1]

[1]: https://www.kitguru.net/lifestyle/mobile/apple/anton-shilov/...

Sony competes with Vision, since they sell PS VR. I suspect that they wouldn't want to cannibalize sales of their own hardware/platform in order to forge a partnership with Apple.

Except that PS VR is VR, not AR.

My bet is that vision will launch with very few VR or even 3D apps. You probably won’t even be able to view 3D photos in the browser. It’ll be existing native 2D apps projected into a 3D cylinder.

From the latest WWDC (2023) Apple has actually encouraging web app support. In Safari Version 17:

Added support for web apps on macOS Sonoma. Add any website to the Dock from the File menu or Share Sheet to get to them even faster. Web apps open in their own window, and integrate with system features like Stage Manager, Screen Time, Notifications, and Focus. (68606770) [1]

[1] https://developer.apple.com/documentation/safari-release-not...

Encouraging support while banning competing browser engines doesn't look like encouraging.

Why? As a web app developer or user, the browser engine is low on my list of priorities.

Browser engine preferences are about far more niche concerns.

As a web app developer your perspective actually makes you desire a monopoly so you only have to test once. But, as a person I don't want that situation at all.

I don’t know a single non-technical end user that even knows what web “engine” powers their browser, let alone cares. This is not something real people remotely think about.

That doesn't mean it doesn't matter or doesn't affect them.

Just because they don’t think about it doesn’t mean it is good for them. (E.g. sugar in almost everything that kids eat).

I didn't say real people...

To me this looks like Apple porting a feature that's existed on iOS for ages. It's one of those features "so obvious, we missed it." It's certainly a much better idea than apps made with Electron.

I mean, "web apps" are just PWAs which iOS, Android(?), and Chrome have all supported for a while now. Still, it's nice to see a better push for web, and it's a bit of a reversal to Apple's historic position on apps (Steve Jobs opposed creating an app store, preferring web apps).

They don’t make that argument at all in the quote you pulled.

The objection could very well be for security reasons.

> The objection could very well be for security reasons.

It could also be for control over users but claiming "security reasons" whenever anyone asks since that has become a "think of the children" topic in tech.

Sure I don’t disagree. My point was that the quote isn’t “proof.”

The thing I took away from this exchange was the total lack of discussion about what’s in the end user’s best interest. What’s best for the user’s experience? It’s all “We want this” and “Facebook wants that” and the end user is just a bystander. Nobody cares what we think or want.

For all these companies’ marketing-talk about how they care so much about the end user experience, the executives don’t seem all that interested.

Do you not think that this would already have been discussed when the policy under discussion was first developed? The rationale for the policy - whatever it is - would have been determined well before this problem arose. There would be no need for these people, who would have been central to those policies, to rehash their reasons in these emails. They already know all the arguments.

Anti-competitive reasons hidden with security excuses is Apple's modus operandi.

Sure I don’t disagree. My point was that the quote isn’t “proof.”

Charging 30% doesn't enhance security.

Charging a markup on products sold in a store has a long tradition in retail.

I’ll let the Google Play Store know.

Definitely let them know. Then they can make their store successful enough so that the android developers stop trying to make iOS android.

Huh? The parent didn't make that claim. The grandparent wasn't making that claim. And I certainly haven't ever heard Apple stating or implying that free apps are less secure than paid apps.

Aka the mob argument

If other browsers were allowed Chrome would become an all-platform monopoly and there would no longer be real web standards.

I guess regulators could also antitrust Google in a balancing act.

To be fair, the amount of effort that Apple puts into their APIs is well above the industry standard. Cocoa and Cocoa Touch stand with few peers when it comes to depth, breadth, and quality which has been a big factor in the success of their platforms. They’re some of the few SDKs where if you want to, you can produce a top tier app without importing a single third party library, which is no small feat.

In their shoes, even if the App Store didn’t exist, I’m sure I wouldn’t be all that thrilled to open the floodgates for lowest common denominator apps built with other toolkits that do nothing to leverage what makes the platforms good and unique.

That's never really an excuse for lock-in. If they are so superior, they wouldn't need to worry about developers not using them, right?

Using tools as a way to control developers is just disgusting.

It doesn't matter how good your SDKs and tooling are, there will always be a large number of developers who will instead prefer options they perceive to be cheaper or more convenient. It's the same reason why McDonalds has no problem selling their food when far higher quality options exist.

Outright control is probably overboard yes, but I don't see any reason why a platform maintainer needs to do anything to encourage low investment apps.

There is a huge difference between encouraging and forbidding. And quality or security in the above case are used as an excuse to hide the anti-competitive intent.

This is an argument to trust developers and business school grads as opposed to a company that I have a 40+ relationship with. If you want developer freedom choose a different platform. Apple is for users and not developers. We all have the freedom to do whatever we want. Why some people choose to constantly rail against a company they think is ridiculous os mystifying. Move on bless some other platform with your gifts.

One should develop for a platform they enjoy.

Not buying this argument. This should be illegal and not excused with "choose a different platform". That's all there is to it.

The thing that surprised me the most is there’s no mention of what makes a better product for the user. It’s all business strategy and scheming to build a silo. I hope regulators obliterate the platform owners.

But then they'd also have to obliterate Microsoft, Google, and who knows what else. This won't happen.

But the user as almost full control of a M$ and google device.

These are not related unless I'm misunderstanding.

Really? Good luck getting rid of Google play services, the mix of core of the operating system and location/ad tracker.