You’re celebrating the possibility that EU regulation will remove Apple’s ability to enforce good user experience?

Apple doesn't get to dictate what constitutes a good user experience. Especially for me - that is my prerogative and mine alone.

So yes, I will be extremely happy with it. This opens doors to all kinds of software that can compete with one another, and if I don't like it, I can simply uninstall it myself.

Just one more bit of anecdotal evidence to support your view.

Our app was rejected after review until we updated an external support doc to which the app linked. The doc contained system requirements for both iOS and Android devices, and we were specifically rejected for even having mentioned the competing operating system.

  > The doc contained system requirements for both iOS and Android devices, and we were specifically rejected for even having mentioned the competing operating system.

same, for us we just open all links in safari now, so if mentions of android show up its not "in the app"... an arguably worsened user experience for no good reason except to keep apple happy

If open doors did a better job of UX than apple, then you would have been using Android instead of iOS in the first place

You're confusing first party apps with third party apps. Also you're forgetting that this is a forum which is heavily biased to developers. I use Android because my phone isn't a fashion piece. Some of my users sadly use iOS. They want the software on the devices they purchased and own, but Apple is preventing us from delivering this to them unless we do exactly as Apple commands.

So in the end everyone loses, except Apple.

You’re being downvoted (clearly by multiple people) for having a valid opposing opinion in a subjective debate. Hate to see that on HN. Upvoted you to balance it out.

“All sides in this UI debate are equally valid”, says local cross-platform UI toolkit salesman

This is why upvote/downvote systems are trash.

Sure, they keep some actually bad opinions out, but they also keep correct but unpopular opinions out.

The Sun revolves around the Earth! Downvote Galileo!

Let me push back against that a bit.

My phone is not a fashion piece. AFAICT the blue bubbles will show up with an old 4S just as well as with a 14 Pro Max.

I have an iPhone - which I got after many years with Android - because iMessage is an essential app for me. I live in the US, so my business partners do not have [choice of alternative messaging app] installed and they are not going to install it just for me. I'm a doctor working in a hospital that has two complete dead spots for cell reception, and whose IT department blocks WiFi calling. So I can't make phone calls on either service, and only on iOS can I get messages that are really, really important over the hospital WiFi.

I could talk until I was blue in the face about how other methods are better. Or how Apple is being a gigantic bunch of assholes by not using something other than vanilla SMS if you're not an iMessage user. But it's sitting at about 30:1, and you can either go along and be aware of important things going on, or you can be left out.

When business decisions are being made over those conversations, I'd be a fool to ignore it. I don't much like the iOS way, having gotten used to Android and LineageOS, but after my experience with the Nexus 6P that suffered the infamous "battery goes to shit overnight one day" problem that Google wouldn't fix, as well as being dropped from updates after two years, five years of security updates from model introduction sounded pretty nice.

> Or how Apple is being a gigantic bunch of assholes by not using something other than vanilla SMS if you're not an iMessage user.

What alternative would you suggest? And is that alternative as universal as SMS?

I'm a doctor, not a phone technologist!

But on Android, you can replace the default messaging app, and that app can have access to SMS as a fallback, so it's really easy to convince people to switch. "Hey, uh, plain messaging is annoying some of us, please install this app, we can all use it, but it will work even with people who don't have it over the regular text service."

Can't do that on iOS.

a system that can deliver messages through SMS or wifi is better, especially one that was a protocol, not a product, and would allow multiple platforms to access

RCS

It's still getting rolled out a lot of places. Google sees it as the successor to SMS and it's built into native messaging apps. I recently saw cross-carrier support get enabled locally and that made it universal enough that so far anyone I message that's running Android is already connected via RCS.

Apple intentionally doesn't support RCS in order to keep imessages from interoperating with android.

Yes. Of course. Apple do not enforce anything like a good user experience. They enforce a good Apple experience.

Is the user experience on Mac bad? Macs let you install non-store apps, and somehow it works out fine.

No one is forcing you to install anything you don't want to. The only thing I want is having the ability to install anything I want to. If you don't want to install those things the solution is simple: Don't. You don't need Apple to make that decision for you.

While I wish I lived in a world of perfect competition, I also realize that I don't. System-wide rules against bad behavior are a lot more efficient.

> You don't need Apple to make that decision for you.

I also don't need an app making the decision of whether I need an account. Apple preserves that choice for users. And they're not making any decisions for the user about installing. Effectively zero apps will leave the store over this rule, so the user retains full choice over installing.

> System-wide rules against bad behavior are a lot more efficient.

I don't want Apple making many system-wide rules on behavior, even on Apple's own systems (which they share with their users.)

That being said, they're very right about this. Making the distinction between, on one side, apps that are useless without accounts (like banking apps) or apps that are made to help with already existing accounts, and on the other side apps that are just forcing accounts to capture and control the users, is a smart and thoughtful move.

Or (1) is: it’s impossible to create codified rules that have no false negatives and no false positives and we’re smart enough not to act like it’s possible.

You know, this is how almost every rule system on the planet operates. Ultimately there’s an arbiter whose job is to look at the totality of the case.

This has a nice demonstration at the following link (which was on hn recently):

https://novehiclesinthepark.com/

A better response would be: "Thank you for making us aware, we will revisit their evaluation or update the guidelines" (and then they would actually do so)

This isn't what's happening though. If you're a big app you get to do whatever you want, and if you're small then you have to do as you're told.

That would not be a better solution because it would entail either “solid” rules that are actually always fluctuating and/or people having prior assessments overturned after the fact.

As opposed to… humans working through a specific situation for a specific solution?

It would at least strive for equality, instead of letting the big boys do whatever the hell they want while punishing everyone else (and making it impossible to compete).

There's also the ethical concern about how apple (or their reviewer) can bully you specifically which means there is no other way to delivery our software to your users, other than complying with a bully.

The point isn’t to strive for equality, it’s to curate a healthy ecosystem.

Sure, the world is rife with ethical concerns.

> rules for thee but not for me

"not for me" isn't what's happening in a comparison between two third party apps.

> Companies should not have to bend over to apple's whims just to get their software in end user hands. Hopefully upcoming EU regulation will reign apple's overreach in a bit.

Maybe in general, but I think a rule against requiring unnecessary accounts is a good rule. The EU should consider making that a regulation.

If you were protesting a speeding ticket, I suspect the defense of “the guy next to me was going even faster” wouldn’t go very well.