> if you read the comments on the website there seems to be only Apple fanboys commenting who are butt-hurt about it

It makes sense, though: Apple is all about making things easier for the user at the expense of third party developers. Users don't need to deal with app reviewers denying bugfixes because they used the demo credentials on the wrong app, they can just be mad at apps for being buggy. Banks all around the world are paying a secret Apple tax to let Apple users pay with iPay or whatever it's called.

I think the situation with Valve is different. Valve has competition and has had competition before; game launchers on Windows (and Linux, I suppose) are perfectly viable, it's just that none of their competition put any effort into making their game launchers as good as Valve's.

I think Apple should be able to charge whatever percentages they want, as long as you can install alternative app stores. If their customers accept the higher app prices in exchange for Apple's convenience features, the percentages are perfectly fair.

Valve had a 17 years or so time to develop a launcher b4 Epic entered the market. And even if their laucher would be bad, its just where the people are, where they have their collection, they do not want to leave it. Its actually not such much about how good Steam is, its about the time advantage Valve has.

And of course they have the better launcher. But now they are soo big, and they have such a de-facto monopoly that Epic had to go to extreme measures to get some market share. And that is using Fortnite kids parents money to give out free games all the time while actually paying the devs for the games and pay massive amounts of money to devs for exclusive deals. Its all money they have from Fortnite and (Chinese) investors. That also sucks but its better then just one store in town. Bethshitsda has given up on their own distribution and they are back 100% on Steam and they just suck it up and pay the 30% because they failed to compete, no surprise there.

I actually think the situations are pretty similar. Except that there is not even a open door to try to compete with the Apples Appstore right now. But they both take 30% and everyone is basically forced to pay it. Game devs can not just release on Epic. They must release on Steam and they must then pay 30% to Valve. If you release a mobile app you must release on Apple and Google play and they take 30%, its the same thing. Even thou there are other stores like Amazons shitty store you are just forced to publish on Google/Apple.

I just hope one day decentralization is so mainstream and consumers just buy from creators directly or some blockchain or something without a gatekeeper middlemen that sucks 30% off.

Apple claims they make things easier but that is not actually the case. They may make a few things easier than Microsoft or Google but they make a lot of things harder too. All their hardware is harder to repair than what is available from competition. Their documentation is inferior (if it exists at all) to even open source project. Software from Apple is hard to use for anyone not used to it which negates their "intuitive" claims and people who are used to it are just keep buying more of their hardware when software fails so there is no incentive to fix anything.

Are you sure about your Statement "All their hardware is harder to repair than what is available from competition."?

https://www.ifixit.com/repairability/smartphone-scores

    Apple iPhone 14: 4
    Apple iPhone 14 Plus: 7
    Apple iPhone 14 Pro: 6
    Apple iPhone 14 Pro Max: 6
    iPhone 13 Pro: 6
    iPhone 12 Mini: 6
    iPhone 12 Pro: 6
    iPhone SE 2020: 6

vs.

    Samsung Galaxy S22: 3
    Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra: 3
    Fairphone 4: 10 (ok clear winner :D)
    Google Pixel 6: 6
    Google Pixel 6 Pro: 5
    Google Pixel 5a: 6
    Mi 11: 4
    Huawei Mate 40 Pro: 4
    Microsoft Surface Duo: 2
    Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra: 3
    Samsung Galaxy Z Flip: 2
    Motorola razr: 1
    Google Pixel 4 XL: 4

I mean, they are all bad, but looks like Apple is not "harder to repair".

> Apple claims they make things easier but that is not actually the case.

> They may make a few things easier than Microsoft or Google

Enough few things that make them worthwhile purchasing.

> All their hardware is harder to repair than what is available from competition.

Possibly true, but at least my Apple hardware is built well and lasts. The awful MS ”flagship” I had the misfortune of being forced to buy flexes when I type on it. The Android phones I’ve had have been of such poor build and material quality I’m not surprised people need stuff repaired all the time. Not saying repair isn’t important, but in the last 5 years of Apple devices the one repair I’ve needed was a screen replacement which was done in 10 mins, for free.

I find their software to be as hard to use as any new OS paradigm. Their design differs from their competition, but I don't think it's superior or inferior necessarily.

Repairability and open source software isn't what the lay person cares about, at least not until they break their phones.

Apple's fix to failing software is the same as what any computer service will do for a random customer: reinstall the entire OS, see if that helped, restore the backup you definitely didn't forget to make. Someone deeply knowledgeable can often use tricks to get a broken system to run like normal again, but that's not easy or time efficient to offer as a service.

Apple removed the worst UI to intuit (3D Touch, or "you didn't press the unmarked location hard enough"). After that, I think their software isn't any better or worse than their competition's in terms of usability, unless you have a visual disability; iOS is still king when it comes to the quality of built in accessibility features for those who can't/struggle to see a screen.

>Competition is always good for the consumers.

So lets have a walled-garden OS compete with a sideloading-enabled/free-for-all/anything goes OS.

But no, instead they have to break a good thing.

Now every idiotic company like Adobe will demand their own installers, and updaters, and background processes that you can't turn off, and piss all over the iOS, like they do on the macOS.

And let's not get started onto forced sideloaded Facebook (or having to make do without), and such, with all the tracking mechanisms dialed up to 11.

Or Chrome getting closer to total dominance and Google having its way with the web.

All of that is already accounted for and protected by in the OS. An app cannot normally register daemons or agent (or even an XPC service). Installing is already limited to FrontBoard standard installation mechanism. All that will remain in a possible open iOS future.

Except usage of private APIs?

I can hide any private API usage already for normal store submission. If I am the tiniest bit careful, I will get away with most private stuff that is still not protected by the kernel using entitlements. For example,

https://github.com/LeoNatan/LNExtensionExecutor

This is a framework I obfuscate API usage, and is present in several App Store apps that I know of.

Apple security comes from kernel hardening, not static API analysis.

Fair enough I need to look more into it. Thanks for the info

Until Apple detects its usage and bans your account for breaking TOS?

That framework’s logic has not changed in years, and neither has Apple’s static analysis checker. It’s just security theater at this point.

> An app cannot normally register daemons or agent (or even an XPC service). Installing is already limited to FrontBoard standard installation mechanism. All that will remain in a possible open iOS future.

So Apple won’t comply with the EU law then?

EU law doesn't have any requirements to change that.

The only requirement is that any APIs first party Apple services use can also be used by competing 3rd parties. If Apple isn't using those features in any competing services, they don't have to open it up for everyone. Alternately they could remove those APIs from their own apps and still be complying.

The goal is fair competition. I should be able have Google Pay to compete with Apple Pay, but Apple don't let other apps use the NFC for that. It's not fair competition when iMessage can be your default SMS app, but WeChat/WhatsApp can't. But if Apple choose to, they could separate iMessage and SMS and still be fine under EU law, cuz now none of the competing iMessage/WeChat/WhatsApp will be your SMS app.

So don't use adobe? Why you are writing like you are forced to sideload? You can just not sideload and stay in the apple's ecosystem and be safe. Don't install chrome if it's worse experience than safari? That's the thing with freedom: if you value your privacy, you'll still get it without sideloading/not using products that are screwing you

>So don't use adobe? Why you are writing like you are forced to sideload?

Because it doesn't matter if they don't threaten to kill you. If you need the apps and they only offer them via sideload, then you're still forced.

dont use their apps at all? They already have scammy behavior for cancelation. It's like saying if you need medicine and you can only find it on dark market: the action isn't buying medicine on dark market, it's finding/asking for a replacement that is easy to buy. If adobe will exit appstore, another players will pop out with similar functions and that are present on the store

“Sorry boss, I can’t open the email and attachment you sent, because MS and Adobe both decided they need to side load their apps, and I’m not about that on devices I use”

Yeah that’ll go down so well.

I need you to understand that orgs will abuse their standing and power, regardless of what users want. At least in the existing walled garden setup, they’re forced to at least try and behave.

like yes? if my job requires an app that can't be installed from official app store something is wrong and I'll not install that sh...? or at least they should provide work phone? Or at least install app on another account just for that(not sure if ios has this)

>if my job requires an app that can't be installed from official app store something is wrong and I'll not install that sh...

Yeah, good luck with that.

And we haven't touched personal use, features or format compatibility not existing elsewhere, and so on.

emm, thanks, that's already what i'm doing...

In many professional situations, that would be like telling your boss you don't feel like using Teams or Github or AWS, because you don't agree with their business practices. Or telling your clients.

It's not a Vim vs Emacs vs VS Code choice.

work is work, personal device is personal device. What you use for work doesn't matter since you either should be provided with a work device or at least be able to install apps on separate account God, mental gymnastics some people perform to justify ios limitations... Like WE HAVE THIS ALREADY, on macos, windows, android... and insta/wh/fb apps are still on google play... and you can still access them in the browser. Not to say that if apple makes the process to install these sideloaded apps a bit harder (like multiple warnings 'DANGER' and confirmations, the possibility apps will migrate fully outside appstore tends to zero

Adobe could do all of this on Android, yet they don't. So I guess your point is moot?

> that hardy costs 30% of a games profits.

It's more than that. It's 30% of a games revenues. Could very well end up being more than the entire profit of an app/game. Insane to me that if the devs costs are more than 40% of revenue apple makes more off the app than the dev does.

What monopoly? Android has a larger market share than Apple by quite a large factor in the European Union.

Saying that Apple does not provide value is laughable - saying that it isn't worth 30% of the transaction value might be one thing, but they provide the R&D to create the device, the platform, the review infrastructure, update infrastructure, development environment, etc.

I'm not even sure I disagree with you, but you have to at least describe what you are against correctly.

> Saying that Apple does not provide value is laughable - saying that it isn't worth 30% of the transaction value might be one thing, but they provide the R&D to create the device, the platform, the review infrastructure, update infrastructure, development environment, etc.

By that same measure I should be allowed to ask how this R&D benefits the majority of app developers on the app store. Honestly, when it comes to the value Apple provides to their developers, a much stronger argument would be their marketing that leads to extraordinary customer loyalty, in addition to the higher value market in terms of what customers they attract.

But R&D? Honestly you're joking right? The majority of the platforms "cool" features are locked down and not available to developers. Can I make use of the iPhones SOS feature for my emergency service? Nope, this is an Apple exclusive service, only offered by and through them themselves.

What about NFC/digital payments? Yeah no. Can't access that as an developer without a heavily restricted API.

What about their industry leading Bluetooth stack? Nope, also locked down. I can only pair certain devices, hell I can't even enable platform interoperability between Android and iOS, even though we _know this works_ due to the covid contact tracing feature.

Good luck with trying to offer a competing product to the Apple Watch on their platform. You can't.

Development infrastructure? You mean the infrastructure that I can also only procure through them? The infrastructure that consists of a Mac that I need to actually publish iOS apps, even though nothing would be stopping me from developing these apps on another platform, say Linux?

What about CI/CD and testing and security research? Remember, up until 1-2 years ago, Apple actively went to court against offers such as those of corellium, like when you wanted a virtual device to test your app with.

Google had all this and more on a free app store with a much more fractured ecosystem.

I could go on and on about this, but the majority of app store developers doesn't make use of a large part of their "R&D". A large part of what you call "R&D" I call the typical Apple BS of claiming well established technologies and practices as their own invention and then somehow finding a way to charge you for it.

I'd accept this argument in smaller markets what with the VR goggles and whatnot, and I agree that from a design standpoint, all of these API's / lockdowns are well intentioned and make sense.

But at the same time, the antitrust violation standpoint holds for me as well. Even if I tried, I could not offer a competing product to say, the Apple Watch, because Apple will not allow me to create a device with the same interoperability like their own devices.

> Can I make use of the iPhones SOS feature for my emergency service?

I’m not sure if this is a joke or not.

You know nothing about markets or real life market engagement if you blindly believe "competition is always good for consumers".

There are costs to competition, inherently. Competition is only of benefit to consumers if they capture the more of the new surplus utility generated by competition than they capture the new costs.

There will be marketing costs, there will be the costs of the data policies of these new models, there will be time that consumers have to spend becoming engaged in the market for not only software but also the market for markets for software, they will have to understand a greater amount of technical details of how these software marketplaces perform on their devices.

Now, these costs can be paid internally or externally. And guess what... corps always want these to be externalised. So the user/society can pay these costs and they can rack up unearnt surplus.

Curious about this answer. Do you have any example in which prices of goods and services actually went up after more competition entered an industry? In case you do, are you sure you aren't cherry picking?

I don't have any of my old economics notes nor the market reports I have read on hand but generally it's natural monopolies that have competition introduced, these are not particularly good analogue for software but they do have similarities with social media and mapping applications. Competition is generally good for consumers who are engaged but it's a means to an end. It is not good for its own sake.

Markets where competition works really well are elastic and have consumers with the appropriate amount of engagements from the consumers.

> This reminds me of gamers who hate the Epic Games Store with passion even though they give the actual devs of the games a bigger cut.

Most of the hate for Epic Games Store I read is that they do exclusives.

It's great that they take a lower cut and give away free games, but them taking away my freedom to buy games from my preferred store is not something I will accept. Yes, almost all games are on Steam because they have a near monopoly on PC gaming, but that's because they actually provide value with their platform. Though I'm biased since I'm gaming on Linux and any other store than Steam is an absolutely terrible experience.