It's nice that they provide that service for those developers that want it. It's not nice that I don't have a choice to distribute my own app however I see fit.
See, I want to build an app, and people want to install it, but Apple is standing between us, dictating how we must and must not interact.
> As an Apple customer I value these things pretty highly, more than I value any one app.
Then you're free to not enable sideloading when it eventually inevitably materializes, and miss out on apps that aren't available on the app store. This decision is still yours to make. We've had this on Android and macOS since forever.
I propose Apple start charging some pennies for every million UIView calls.
But Apple always offered Xcode for free and, iirc, some Macs even came with an Xcode installation CD in the box. But major macOS updates were also paid back then. But the version that came with your computer out of the box was still free. So no, I feel like "we need the $99/year and the 30% to support the R&D cost of our APIs" is a mostly made-up excuse. It's not like Apple would operate at loss if they remove the $99 and 30% fees tomorrow.
Remember: Apple is considered a gatekeeper for app installation regardless of the cost they pay to maintain the platform. Charging per-call on a literally free API would be so profoundly stupid that it would force a second Digital Market Act.
Making an API public, even if the necessary code runs entirely on-device, is not free. It incurs immense upfront and perpetual R&D costs.
The digital markets act is about facilitating competing entrants to “essential platform services.” Charging for the Apple technology those entrants use would not be inconsistent with its aims. A developer could use their own UI framework that draws straight to the window server itself! And maybe use some of that famous Android audio processing software!
Sorry, that's like saying the Apple Developer program fulfills the DMA qualifications because it's not "inconsistent with it's aims".
Apple is of course welcome to try any of these things; nothing stops them as a private business. They failed to defend the mandatory value of the App Store in Europe though, so I fail to see how they could defend an arbitrary charge on other API calls. Apple quite literally cannot call Europe's bluff - that's what my original upstream comment was about in the first place. You can talk confident smack about Apple's talent in the pissing contest, but none of that means anything when the capitalist leash gets tugged and the alternative is losing money.
There is not a single value Apple holds that they would not forgo for money.
Mine as a consumer is that Apple doesn’t have dark patters when I want to cancel my subscription with your app. When I try to cancel my membership for something else like a magazine or the gym I have to go over 10 steps…
Then you're not my user. And I'm not talking about anything involving money anyway.
> When I try to cancel my membership for something else like a magazine or the gym I have to go over 10 steps…
It's the government's job to enforce consumer rights, not Apple's. I'm sorry that consumer protection in the US is so terrible. Where I'm from, "credit card on file" is just not a thing and most of everything is prepaid. If a service really insists on charging you against your will, you can block your card and get a new one but I've yet to hear about this actually happening to someone.
This is a complete red herring and a very sly one at that.
Sure, MS have no obligation to make it so that Safari can run on Windows.
However, Microsoft also cannot stop Apple from building a version of Safari that runs on Windows. Or iTunes on Windows. And when Apple built iTunes on Windows MS had no right to force them to fork over 30% of every song they sold within iTunes to MS. MS had no right to force Mozilla to build Firefox around the IE6 engine, or Chrome around IE6.
It’s very likely Apple, Google, or Mozilla would not have existed if governments (specifically the EU) hadn’t stopped Microsoft from pushing it’s options as the default, never mind blocking alternatives altogether.
Microsoft also doesn’t charge a ransom fee for 3rd party applications to use the hardware features of my computer, that I’ve already paid for. Apple does this with the NFC chip in iPhones - public transit companies the world over need to pay Apple money to use the nfc chip present in iPhones to pay for transit.
What choices might those be? The only other mobile operating system that people develop for is Android. How is a duopoly choice?
But there is, in the EU. That's what this whole thread is about. Like it or leave it, our market, our rules.
The freedoms we have, and the freedom that should be protected is market choice to buy or not buy any consumer product.
If you don’t like Apple, don’t buy its products and purchase a device from a large number of competitors. It is really that simple.
There is no rule that consumers have a right to do anything. You are not guaranteed a right to install a Windows app on your iPhone, or iPhone apps on Windows. You aren’t guaranteed that your coffee machine can run Python.