Protect the users from misguided legislation.
To me this only seems to twist the arms of large companies like epic and Facebook. A small malicious app with thousands of installs can exist completely for free.
The app publishers don't have to choose this new pricing. They can stay with the old pricing, if they stay exclusively on Apple's App Store.
The reason Apple wants fewer app stores is that if fewer third party app stores survive, then there are fewer app stores with questionable or lacking review processes out there hosting malicious apps.
Just to make the connection super explicit for completeness, having fewer avenues for malicious apps is a good thing for user privacy.
There are other better ways to do it, like controlling one app store that has only well reviewed apps, but it seems the EU with the DMA left Apple only this bad way.
Apple gets other benefits from controlling the App Store, beyond protecting user privacy, don't get me wrong. Money being one, but not in a greed sense, but more because mostly that money pays the costs of running the development program, which are huge costs involving many thousands of Apple engineering salaries, which in turn enables the app ecosystem that benefits everyone. Another benefit is they can minimize the appearance of bad user experiences on their platform, to protect their brand, which they have invested a lot in and care a lot about.
This is a non issue.
The real issue… stay with me, it’s a lot of words… is that alternative unreviewed or poorly reviewed app distribution mechanisms open a pathway to pervasive abuse via installation of malicious privacy violating apps onto devices of unwitting targets by people other than the targeted device users.
Even outside of school systems, there is a wide variety of virtual desktop systems where office employees essentially get a fresh install of the OS every morning with their files where they should be — because they can't be trusted to manage a dedicated piece of hardware without adding malware.
For managed Chromebooks, you are incorrect. They are usually configured so that the end-user cannot install additional software, enable developer mode, or set up the Linux sandbox, making them often less useful than Apple iOS or iPadOS devices.
The GGP comment said we should ban PCs [because they're too dangerous for most people to use]. And with Chromebooks or thin clients with virtual desktops, that is exactly what a lot of organizations have done.
None of which you addressed in your knee-jerk response that is about as coherent as "M$" was back in the day (and I did my share of that when I was young and stupid).
You didn't specify managed Chromebooks, but I also didn't know they could be locked down to such a degree, thanks for informing me.
> None of which you addressed in your knee-jerk response that is about as coherent as "M$" was back in the day (and I did my share of that when I was young and stupid).
I honestly don't see why you felt the need to add this last paragraph. Was it "iDevices"? I just used it for convenience. Either way, the snark is totally unnecessary, your comment is better without it.
My comment about "school systems and corporations" did sort of imply "managed"; there's not a public school system in the world that would give their students unmanaged Chromebooks. Some private schools might, but the private schools are also more likely to have it tightly controlled and install spyware because of the "threat of cyber-cheating" (I wish I were kidding: https://www.eff.org/wp/school-issued-devices-and-student-pri...).
My apologies on the snark — it’s too late to edit it, but I read your "iDevices" as snark itself, since most of this discussion has been populated by people who have reflexive anti-Apple stances with exactly no nuance on their stances, so I let my frustration get the better of me. Mea maxima culpa.
No no, when I wrote 'run Linux natively', I meant pure Linux right on the bare metal (on a subset of models). One random hit I got when searching: https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/How+to+convert+a+generic+Chrome...
> My apologies on the snark [...]
No worries, and I realize my comment probably comes across differently than intended when in a frustrated mindset. To be honest, that parting shot took me a bit by surprise, and I was about to respond in kind, worsening the quality of discussion. Thankfully, HNs comment guidelines got the better of me : - )
Many things are possible for a suitably motivated person. But such things are unlikely to be done by your average device user (of any sort), because they don't have such motivation and can't even conceive of why they would bother.
Does Apple need to change things? Yes. But I — and I know that I’m not alone on this — happen to agree with Apple that the DMA changes requested will reduce overall security for customers. There may be worthwhile changes that happen because of the DMA, but the reduced security position is real.
All Apple is doing is protecting their pockets.
Apple losing 30% fee? Money lost for apple is money saved by people.
Why are you so invested in defending that company's shitty practices?
When someone already paid for their device they should be able to side load apps and use other app stores (without apple taking a 10% or 30% cut).
Are you an apple employee, marketer or investor? I bet that 30% cut on every app boosts their profits, but if people own phones they ahould be able to use them whatever way they want. Without apple taking a cut again just because.
Instead, many people seem to have had a head-in-the-sand view that many of the services Apple provided were no-cost, or done out of goodwill.
So, now there is the option for alternative marketplaces, the costs have been shifted to those marketplaces.
Makes complete sense.
It's almost like... those marketplaces will need to find a monetising model similar to how the Apple App Stores used to operate.
Part of the appeal about iOS for me is that apps are reviewed for quality and don't have obvious scams or spywear inside.
I'm happy to guide my parents to use and download apps from the app store without worrying about it. Compare this to the constant education and guidance I need to provide about websites, phone calls, text messages etc. The amount of targeted scams and spam we receive nowadays is excessive.
I think this is the problem: people want access to the 'app store' while forgetting/ignoring that the tight security and rigid processes are a feature, not a liability.
You shouldn't be. There have been plenty of scams in the App Store.
And where did you heard iOS is free from viruses?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegasus_(spyware)
From the top of my head there's also AdThief and AceDeceiver.
Not only that but App store is full of Anti-virus offerings.
And let's not pretend that IOS hasn't been jailbroken for 15 years and there aren't already spy/malware apps.
They don't block, and you can disable scanning fully.
It's not.
Now you're suggesting that there ought to be a "warranty void if app is installed" sticker on Apple's supposedly premium hardware which is running Apple's supposedly hyper-secure operating system, otherwise some unwashed piece of software is going to damage it?
No such requirement exist on macOS, for obvious reasons. The double-think in these threads is astounding, repent.
Furthermore, claiming that Apple's review or signing processes are effective measures for preventing malware has no basis in reality. Apple has reviewed, approved and signed malware before, and they'll do it again because detecting malware is borderline impossible.
They do not possess magic powers that can suss out malware any better than industry average because (1) automated virus scanning is almost entirely ineffective against new malware and (2) they're not paying a team of specialists to reverse engineer and analyze app updates.
Now I do agree that bad software can wipe all your data or hold it hostage, but Apple currently provides no such guarantees that software downloaded from the App Store won't do that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnuson%E2%80%93Moss_Warranty...
>Apple still expects to be compensated for the value it's developer tools and platform is providing to developers, and the €0.50 per install fee is how they are choosing to charge for those services.
Well I wish them the best of luck in their future fights with the EU. Glad some government seems to not be thinking of the trillionaires first.
(if they don't, then what is it for?)
Based on their new alternative business terms, we can better describe what that bundled deal includes (which is still available):
• 15% tier (first $1mil/yr revenue and subscriptions after the first year):
- 10% distribution
- 2% developer platform
- 3% payment processing
• 30% tier (all other revenue):
- 17% distribution
- 10% developer platform
- 3% payment processing
The only service an alternative app store needs it the ability to be made and sideloaded. Apple justifies the 30% cut in teh App Store with all the stuff they do for you in packaging, distributing the app and updates, payment processing, etc.
But somehow they are making it a worse deal to not deal with those services. They are making it more expensive for any moderately popular app to opt out by suggesting that they need 50 cents anytime someone presses the install button. Which feels less like convenience and more like rent seeking.
The do not sell hardware at a loss, they charge yearly for seats to develop for IOS, and they have various other opt in services to incentivize making use of Apple and its App store. They will not be bleeding money if some companies decide to instead roll their own stack.
>It's almost like... those marketplaces will need to find a monetising model similar to how the Apple App Stores used to operate.
except they can't because they still gotta pay apple to exist, apparently. That's where it starts to reek of anti-trust.
Apple did not do this because consumers do not value malware and fraud protection nearly as much as Apple would like everyone to believe.
Where we do impose regulations to ensure public safety, they are decided by a democratic process. And as imperfect as that process may be at times, it is better than letting a single for-profit corporation set the terms.
> they can buy any number of Android phones
I can imagine a world in which iPhone's and Android phones were drop in replacements for each other.
And I can imagine Apple selling many wonderful interoperable products into an open standards ecosystem, with a tiny fraction of its current market cap.
But we live in a world with a huge global corporation with a highly knit ecosystem, quietly investing billions of dollars retarding threatening innovation, continually raising switching costs, and the costs of interoperability with alternatives, growing a tax base of third party efforts having little to do with Apple's efforts (streaming media and games, third party stores, creator economy, ...), shifting inconveniences from users to third parties, etc.
There are worse forms of coercion, i.e. the systematic privacy violations and manipulative media of the surveillance economy (run in part by Google the major benefactor of Android, and which even Apple dips its toes into).
But the choice between iOS and Android ecosystems is anything but a simple easily informed choice, free of supplier leverage, conflicts of interest, with predictable long term implications in cost efficiency and future freedoms of choice for most users.
For the minority who do want this world, again, there is a laundry list of Android variants they can buy.
Coercion implies the threat of violence due to non-compliance. There is no coercion here. Apple, Google, etc aren't governments.
I think it's a little silly to argue that purchasing decisions for a device are an endorsement of every single aspect of that device. There are features that are desirable on iOS that would be enough to influence a consumer to buy an iOS device that have nothing to do with whether or not the device supports sideloading.
But if we are arguing that purchasing decisions are an endorsement of every corporate decision about a device, then it seems silly to argue that voting decisions are not a similar endorsement of government policy. And of course, Apple is not legally obligated to serve the EU, they're one of richest companies on the entire planet so if anyone is equipped to be choosy about the markets they support, it's Apple. However, Apple has freely chosen to do business in the EU, and EU residents have freely chosen to vote for politicians that have imposed regulations on Apple's presence in the market.
Of course I don't actually think it's that simple. But ignoring the lock-in present in government policy and market participation is no less silly than ignoring the lock-in on in a device where moving away from the ecosystem can cause your credit card to stop working. A more reasonable take is that consumers make purchasing decisions for complicated reasons, some of them having nothing to do with lock-in (if they are even aware of lock-in or security or user freedom debates to begin with, which is usually not the case), and their preferences about these systems can change wildly depending on the circumstances and affordances and research that they do.
As an example, Facebook argued that users were clearly opting in to tracking on iOS by choosing to use the Facebook service instead of the many other available social networks they could sign up for. Thankfully, Apple didn't agree, and when users were offered a more clear choice about whether to share advertising IDs with Facebook, many of them said no. If we took a view that participation in an ecosystem was endorsement of the entire ecosystem, we'd be arguing that Apple adding privacy controls in front of Facebook was somehow circumventing the social-media market. But as it turns out many users did want privacy controls in front of Facebook, just not so much that they were willing to avoid Facebook entirely. When offered the best of both worlds, they were happy to use Facebook while sharing less information with the service.
I can only add, that votes for Putin are similarly not simple votes. Centralization and consolidation of power, or product categories, encompassing a myriad of implications, into one, two or three entities, completely derail the meaning of seemingly normal expressions of preference.
It's not like governments (which also have a monopoly on legal violence, something no corporation has) or political parties at all.
Governments sublease the right on legal violence out to corporations -- The government enforces copyright and legal rights for companies like Apple and allows Apple to dictate the terms of how users interact with phones that they purchased, and the government will commit legal violence if those terms are violated.
It's not so simple as to say that government is completely isolated from business. The government seizing 3rd-party repair parts at the border is on behalf of Apple. Apple definitely has agency over ways in which that monopoly on legal violence is wielded. During Apple's lawsuit with Epic, both parties were operating with the understanding that the government would enforce the outcome of that case using (if necessary) legal violence to do so.
These lines are much blurrier than you suppose; there is a reason why the expansion of the DMCA is often called in some circles "felony contempt of business model." You can't let Apple off the hook here when Apple is able to sic the government on people who break their DRM, run emulators, or otherwise bypass technological controls that have been added to Apple devices. Apple is a part of this. The government is not intervening on Apple's behalf without Apple's permission.
Consent is complicated, people often try to define bright lines between "this is a completely fair outcome that is the result of choice" and "this is a coerced outcome" -- and in reality, there aren't bright lines between those scenarios. The market has plenty of ways to coerce outcomes, some of them completely separate from the government (vendor lock-in does not require a monopoly on legitimate violence) and some of them based on leverage of government systems that allow corporations to compel or ban certain consumer behaviors.
To be clear, I'm not saying that Apple is the same as Putin; there's different kinds of "voting" in any government system. But I really like the way you phrase that: "consolidation of product categories" is a really good description of how Apple's ecosystem works, and it's clear (to me at least) that this consolidation is purposeful and deliberate; Apple wants iOS to be a composite product that is all-or-nothing. And you're completely right that both votes and purchases are often at best decisions about the entire composite ecosystem as a whole and not about the individual parts of those ecosystems.
The consequence is that once consumers are in a place where there are only a few choices about ecosystems that actually make sense to use, there's no longer pressure to change the parts that people don't like as long as the overall ecosystem still remains better than the alternatives. In the same way that single-issue voting allows parties to pass otherwise unpopular policies in other areas, products can excel in specific important areas that allow companies to ignore other flaws and criticisms in other areas. It's very easy for markets to hit local maximums where having a clear market winner in a particular category removes any incentive for the market to otherwise improve, because improving those areas would require at least temporarily moving away from the current best choice.
Given the size of Facebook's userbase and its revenue growth over many years, most people don't care about the tracking that goes on there.
You'll have to dig yourself back out of the vendor lock-in in order to do so. If you have an Apple device and you use an Apple credit card, switching to Android means changing your credit card and changing your subscriptions. It means different compatibility rules between devices, it means different app availability. Sometimes it means giving up related services that are not available on other platforms (almost like the switching costs inherent in bundling services together is part of what this debate is about).
Of course, you can do all that. But you can also emigrate between countries in many cases. The EU and US will allow you to move someplace else if you want to. It'll be expensive, it might be prohibitively expensive, there might be large switching costs and things you have to give up -- but that's just another system of vendor lock-in. The United States will not (generally) say that it's illegal for you to move to France.
And note that with Apple in particular, Apple has the resources to move out of countries if it wants to. Apple is not a single family struggling to make ends meet that can't afford legal advice on how to exit a market. Apple is one of the richest companies in the world. If Apple doesn't want to be part of the EU market, Apple has the freedom to walk away from that market -- and in fact, corporations have done this before, they have exited markets over policy. There are few companies in the world where participation in a market is more of a choice than it is with Apple.
To say that developers have a choice about which ecosystems they work with but that Apple doesn't have a choice about whether it does business in the EU... it's just wildly inconsistent. Oh, Apple would have to give up a lot of revenue, sure. But I wonder if developers making a decision about whether to support iOS have ever faced that conundrum? ;)
I'll concede that the scale is different, but there is no bright line here that makes vendor lock-in fundamentally different, you're just quibbling over where to draw a line on a continuum. And it's a lot simpler and more accurate to the real world to just say, "yes, governments can impose more switching cost but that doesn't mean that switching costs and the concept of coercion stop existing outside of governments." People like to pretend that the extreme power of governments and the extreme danger of government overreach means that they're fundamentally the only system of coercion and that means that markets are always pure expressions of free choice, and it's just obviously not true.
Governments are coercive and are often coercive on a level beyond the market. There is a reason why we care more about freedom of speech as applied to the government than as applied to businesses. Scale matters. But scale is not the same as a binary system. The fact that government has more tools at its disposal to coerce people does not mean that the market (or Apple) has none.
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> Given the size of Facebook's userbase and its revenue growth over many years, most people don't care about the tracking that goes on there.
And yet, when offered the choice when booting up Facebook on iOS, many users chose to disable tracking. Why? I thought we knew their preference. How do we explain this difference in behavior if using Facebook is an expression of approval over how users are tracked? Are we supposed to believe that all of those users suffered concussions and then suddenly became not OK with the tracking anymore?
It's one thing to say that consumers are choosing to opt into a system, but here we have an example of consumers literally demonstrating two separate choices in opposite directions. So it just doesn't make sense to act like using Facebook means users like being tracked when we have extremely clear signals that those same users immediately opted out of being tracked as soon as they had the opportunity to do so.
The only way to explain that behavior is to say that their usage of Facebook did not provide a clear indicator on their preferences on privacy/tracking and that their decision to use Facebook was a complicated decision based on multiple factors and was not some kind of full endorsement of Facebook's business model.
More generally, I don’t believe I nor anyone else should mandate anything about a private software company’s product roadmap (least of all spiteful bureaucrats obsessed with targeting American technology companies).
The precedent this sets is absurd. The market already provides a solution outside of arbitrary coercion: we all have the freedom to purchase other products.
…except if they value a device that enforces audited software only, because they find it safe and convenient. If they value that they’re wrong, because wanting that is unfair to some businesses who want to sell them things.
> it is better than letting a single for-profit corporation set the terms
This is sort of true, government regulation is better than a single corporation dictating terms. But it’s not that relevant, is it? There are two major corporations in the mobile OS business. Plus a bunch of open source projects and a few small businesses for the adventurous. And web standards making it reasonably possible to not depend on any one of them, if that’s a priority.
Are the big technology companies powerful? Yes. Should they be regulated? Yes. Like this? Probably not.
What is the legitimate reason for tying this to hardware? If you only want to use audited software, then don't install software from outside the official app store. I agree that the iOS App Store is a great service, I just object to it being the only option.
Apple locks up the supply chains for the best screens, the best cameras, the most advanced chip fabrication processes, etc etc. Then practically all of the consumers with enough disposable income to care about those things buys iPhones, and Apple turns around and says "clearly, these people buy our hardware because they like being locked into the App Store!" I don't buy it.
There's a lot of selective reasoning on both sides of this debate. We both know that consumers don't think about security enough that they would consciously avoid an alternate app store in order to keep themselves safe. We've all worked with tech-illiterate people long enough to know that they don't have survival instincts around security, they will happily walk out of a walled garden at the first opportunity, disable their firewalls, and install malware.
But it's also pretty obvious that consumers don't think about security enough that the majority of them are consciously opting into a curated app store as an informed decision. If Apple suddenly decided to throw open the flood gates and became even more open than Android, these users would not switch to Android. I have never heard an ordinary, non-techy, non-HN user tell me that they're buying an iPhone because it doesn't support sideloading.
The reality is, consumers don't think about this at all and they probably don't have much of a conscious preference for any outcome. Some tech users do, but the majority of Apple users are neither so security conscious that they would inconvenience themselves in any way to avoid 3rd-party installs, nor so conscious of consumer freedoms that they would inconvenience themselves in order to buy a device that supports sideloading.
I do not believe that this is a behavior that the market selects for in either direction. The smartphone market is not a reflection of social preference towards either security or freedom.
So I think it's just kind of nonsense to act like this is a question of consumer choice. If Apple is allowed to run a curated store, customers will keep buying Apple products and they'll ignore any apps that they can't install and they'll lose zero sleep about that arrangement. If Apple is forced to run a more open store, customers will keep buying Apple products and they'll install anything they want regardless of the warnings, and they will once again lose zero sleep over it.
And of course that's the case because there's no other way to square the idea that people willingly buy into the Apple ecosystem and also that those same people wouldn't avoid sideloaded apps if given the choice. There's no way we can pretend that one of those decisions is a consumer preference and the other one is the opposite and their brains have magically turned off -- the only explanation that explains both behaviors is that consumers are not making either of these decisions based on security/freedom.
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Most consumers are apathetic to this entire debate. Again, there are some tech users that doesn't apply to. They are an extreme minority, but they exist. Some people use Android out of principle, some people consciously choose to use Apple devices because they don't want sideloading. Most people do not fall into either of those categories, and I just think it's a mistake to interpret consumer buying trends of Android/iOS devices like it's some kind of general expression of customer will about technical issues that they don't even understand in the first place.
You have to remember the majority of both Apple and Android customers probably don't even know what sideloading is; they certainly are not making informed decisions about it in any direction. To the extent that they are thinking about privacy or security at all, they are primarily thinking about the number of TV ads that they've seen for each product that used the word "privacy."
So when we talk about regulation, it's more valuable to talk about the effects on the overall market for smartphone apps and software innovation, the practical effects on security regardless of people's supposed choices about the risks they want to take, and about whether the market/security benefits outweigh the downsides. "What consumers want" is a misdirection; consumers don't want anything to do with this debate and they couldn't care less about whether or not Apple has an API for 3rd-party web browsers or whether or not the app store allows distributing GPL apps. They don't know or care what those words mean.
> And of course that's the case because there's no other way to square the idea that people willingly buy into the Apple ecosystem and also that those same people wouldn't avoid sideloaded apps if given the choice.
I think there is a universe in which:
1. Apple allows sideloading on iOS.
2. 95%+ of users don't ever sideload apps, preferring the safety and security of the official App Store.
Note that #2 does not mean consumers need to understand the precise risks of untrusted software, provided they generally understand that malicious apps exist and can harm their phone, whereas Apple promises everything in the app store is safe.
To make this happen, Apple would need to do some work, aka actually compete in the market! They would need to run an advertising campaign about the value of app store curation. They would need to improve search and discoverability, such as by not auctioning off the top search result spot. They might need to take a lower percentage of app revenue.
And Apple should have to do these things because it would be good for consumers!
I do think that general users can understand what the security/freedom tradeoff of sideloading is; this is not something that's beyond the ability of normal people to reason about. I just think that in the current market they don't. I don't believe that the current behaviors we see where lots of people simultaneously buy into iOS as a closed platform and are also pretty bad about staying in walled gardens without being forced to can be explained by saying that one of those things is an educated decision and the other one isn't.
But you're right, that's not to say that in theory consumers couldn't be educated about the tradeoffs or that it wouldn't be good to have a general education effort in that direction. But I think it would need to be a shift and we would need to start doing that education. I'm only trying to push back on the idea that absent consumer education we can still make inferences about their preferences through just surface-level choices that they might be making for arbitrary reasons.
Apple already does that marketing. It’s why I bought an iPhone rather than an android phone. Apple doesn’t have a lockdown on the smart phone market. They don’t even have a majority of it, I choose an iPhone because I don’t want to deal with my phone like a Linux box.
Yes, Apple has a monopoly on iPhones. But making the iPhone suck as much as other phones doesn’t seem like it will correct that monopoly.
Do you believe that if sideloading is offered on the iPhone that the majority of Apple users will be able to make an informed decision about whether or not it's safe to use 3rd-party stores?
This is exactly what I'm getting at: it cannot simultaneously be true that iOS customers already know the security/choice tradoeffs and are opting into the market fully informed about their decisions specifically because they want a walled garden, and also be true that those same people's brains are going to suddenly, magically turn off and they'll be incapable of making security decisions if they ever have an option in the iOS settings to enable sideloading.
Given that we know that lots of people buy Apple phones, and given that we know that many of those same users would choose to sideload possibly malicious apps without hesitation even though doing so would open them up to security risks -- the only explanation that reconciles those two contradictory facts is that the majority of iOS users are not thinking about security or user choice at all. And that's an explanation that's supported by what we seen in the real world as well: when talking to non-technical iOS users they don't tend to have strong opinions about this (if they even know what the debate is in the first place). If you go to a random person on the street and ask them why they bought an iPhone, "app store policy" will not be their response.
You may not be in that category; maybe you did buy an iPhone specifically because you wanted a closed ecosystem. But if so, you are not representative of the majority of iPhone users. The majority of iPhone users don't know what an "alternate browsing engine" is. The majority of iPhone users have probably never thought about how the app store works or whether they agree with it. They don't have preferences in any direction; the majority of iPhone users currently think we're all giant nerds for having this conversation at all.
And being informed about that conversation is what we're talking about when we talk about education. None of this is to say that people couldn't be educated enough to make informed decisions about sideloading or that they're incapable of thinking about security, but you're fooling yourself if you think an average smartphone user is currently thinking about app store policies at all when they buy a smartphone.
I doubt that. Decades of having to run malware (removal) software on Windows has pretty much guaranteed everyone knows what a virus is.
I don’t want every other game dev/streaming service pushing me to install their own “store” like they do on the other platforms. That’s why I keep choosing Apple.
And I still don't understand the "I don't want to have multiple stores on my device". you probably have over 100 apps in your phone right now. And if you don 't you have dozens hidden under the surface for basic IOS functionality. is clicking into another store to install one more app a problem? App/Play stores don't even have all the bells and whistles Steam does (no forums, shit curation that spam companies SEO optimize for, no mod workshop, no community aspect, etc), so that's not an excuse.
And presumably also Chromebooks, since Macs are unacceptable by this standard?
Apple should be absolutely prohibited from controlling what apps users want to run on their devices. If a user wants to install an app, and developer of said app wants it too, they should be able to do it without any restrictions. Or else Apple should start being honest and admit that they are only lending their devices to users, and not selling them, because selling implies full control over property.
- if users are happy with the alt store and it becomes highly successful, Apple loses revenue it would otherwise get from its own store
- if users are unhappy with the alt store because viruses, etc., get onto their phones, or it becomes a spam-ware cesspool, Apple gets the blame (the vast majority of users will not differentiate and then Apple has to spent tons of effort to "don't buy from stores X, Y and Z"--much easier to just disallow them)
Remember, most Apple users care about an optimum experience. If they care a lot about openness they would be using Android / Linux and are not Apple's target.
What other platforms? I've never been pushed to install another store on Android for example, so I highly doubt the situation would be much different on iOS.
In general I agree. But the support burden/cost goes up enormously. Ask Microsoft.
No way they can do that, because the second something malware or fraud happens, you can imagine the headlines. Apple advertises the iPhone as a secure and private device. By notarizing third-party store apps, they still have the ability to remove malicious apps.
1. Developers can continue to use the existing terms.
2. If a smaller developer elects to use the new terms, they pay less commission (10%) and a 3% transaction fee. That’s 2% less.
3. If they have more than 1 million users download their app, then there is an additional €0.50 Core Technology fee. If the developer is a commercial entity, then yes, they have to pay but in reality, it’s the end user that will have to pay.
3. If the app is free but offered by a commercial entity, they pay nothing in commission or payment fees (13% X $0 ) but they reach 1 million installs, then they do have to pay €500k. If the business has no revenue - that’s a weird business model.
4. If the app is offered by a not for profit, then they don’t pay the CTF.
So, the new terms seem better for developers and users in the EU.
I think that "growth first, revenue later" is actually a fairly popular business model, and I can imagine a lot of my own app ideas reaching 1M downloads with <$500k revenue (in an ideal world, but still)
I’d argue that a number way less than 1 million installs would signify enough success to start charging for
1. You made a one time paid app. If in the first year you got 2M installs and sold app for 5$ you are profitable, but next year if those users who already paid will make an app update then you will own ~$1M to apple for those app updates even if you didn't make any new money from those users. You would be forced to change your business model to subscriptions.
2. If user has iPhone, iPad, apple watch and your app support all those platforms then probably this will be counted as 3 installs.
3. By default app store updates app automatically - if user has still some old iphone/ipad that uses from time to time this is getting even worse.
This applies only to iOS Apps. iPad OS and Watch OS isn’t (yet) covered by this Core Technology Fee.
I strongly suggest actually reading the linked page. Most of what you’re saying is clearly and obviously wrong, had you read the page.
So update do counts it just in a year (12 months) install, reinstall and update is counted as one. But once user bought a paid app and installed it then next year if that user update app developer will have to pay for this update
[0] https://developer.apple.com/support/core-technology-fee/
https://developer.apple.com/support/fee-calculator-for-apps-...
Enter "No" to digital goods selling (you are making OpenFlappyBird as a personal project, and are not charging for it!)
Enter 10,000,000 Annual installs.
Check "New Capabilities and Terms" (you are putting it on OpenMarketPlace).
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Where did I go wrong? This is a genuine question: I am not an iOS developer, maybe I am not applying this calculator correctly to my hypothetical?
I definitely don’t love all of the detail of either option.
However, why would one chose an option that would cost them so much when the other, existing option costs nothing?
Yes that's the point. In my scenario I was wanting to distribute this on a different app store than Apple's, which forces me to choose the new terms.
Your question there is the exact question apple expects people to ask themselves, to dissuade them from supporting other stores.
When you compile OpenFlappyBird for iOS, your binary includes statically linked Apple intellectual property. Just as open source developers are entitled to use copyright law to enforce GPL rules[0], Apple is entitled to set license terms for use of this intellectual property.
While many operating system developers have historically chosen to license this intellectual property at no cost, many others have not. And regardless, norms aren't laws. Apple isn't required to give away their stuff for free.
[0] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#LinkingWithGPL
What does that have to do with being asked to pay $400k/month for a free app that you made $0 from being considered by the person I replied to as "better for developers and users in the EU."?
If we were discussing desktop operating systems, this is the moment where I would advocate switching to a properly Free Software (or near-Free) software ecosystem. Unfortunately there's nothing for me to advocate when it comes to smartphones; there aren't any serious recommendations to make which aren't catastrophically impractical for all but the most obsessive Richard Stallman acolyte.
1. They're already charging for access to SDKs and services via their $100 annual developer fee. Quote from Apple:
> Membership includes all the tools, resources, and support you need to develop and distribute apps, including access to beta software, app services, testing tools, app analytics, and more.
2. In any case, reverse engineering, modifications, and distribution of IP for the purposes of interoperability is protected under the Computer Programs Directive in the EU
2. The directive gives end users the right to reverse engineer, modify, and make PRIVATE copies of intellectual property for the purposes of interoperability. It doesn’t create a new avenue for the redistribution of intellectual property.
Can you imagine if AMD or Intel tried to charge a fee to every program written using their instruction set? How about your web browser or keyboard manufacturer wanting a cut of your revenue? Is that ridiculous enough yet? Apple derives almost the entirety of their value from their app ecosystem, so don't act like giving developers access to development tools used to be charity before this new fee came along. Conveniently it only affects one side of this monopolistic fence, too.
Above all, there's nothing being distributed, the tools and SDKs certainly aren't, and APIs aren't protected IP, courts have already settled that.
Your third paragraph is technically incorrect. Even the simplest iOS binary includes fragments of statically linked Apple intellectual property. Software piracy is software piracy, no matter how simple the app.
Pray tell, when can I publish my porn app on iOS for free?
Apple doesn't want it in their stores, which is fair, but I heard there was this piece of regulation coming around that gave us the right to sideload, and the right to use alternative browsers!
At this point I just look forward to the day they get hit with the spicy fines of percentage annual revenue. If you think that having to pay a fee to exercise your lawful rights will be allowed to stand, I have bad news.
> Software piracy is software piracy, no matter how simple the app.
The law also considers fair use, which is allowed infringement. Additionally, EU courts have ruled that "functional" parts of computer programs aren't protected at all.
Apple’s new rules now allow an avenue for porn apps, and those rules are actually great for paid apps. Hopefully you’re not talking about free porn? You want to women to take their clothes off and you won't even pay them for it?
> the right to use alternative browsers
You have the right to use whatever browser you want, just buy a device which supports that browser. Meanwhile, you're being embarrassingly short-sighted. Browser diversity is infinitely more important than browser choice. Apple is the only significant entity forcing browser diversity upon the web ecosystem.
> If you think that having to pay a fee to exercise your lawful rights
You do that every time you consume the goods and services provided by corporations. You have a lawful right to watch Netflix, but that right doesn't absolve you from paying for your subscription. You have no lawful right to decide how Apple monetises their intellectual property. And the EU has no right to give Apple's intellectual property away.
If you demand that governments force Apple to rearrange their deal, don't complain when they rearrange it.
> The law also considers fair use
Just using someone else's intellectual property because you think you're entitled to isn't fair use. This is the third reply in a row where you've repeatedly demonstrated a gross misunderstanding of law.
> EU courts have ruled that "functional" parts of computer programs aren't protected at all
Wow, there you go again. No they didn't. That ruling did not walk back copyright in any way. The ruling upheld the self-evident truth that functionality isn't protected by copyright. The example they cite is code which parses a specific file format. You can't declare the idea of a specific file format structure as intellectual property, and you can't stop someone from writing their own code to parse it. But that doesn't give them a right to use your code without permission.
Edit: Seems I misunderstood, I just re-read the relevant section:
>iOS apps distributed from the App Store and/or an alternative app marketplace will pay €0.50 for each first annual install per year over a 1 million threshold.
The fact that they are charging money for apps installed from non-App Store sources is ludicrous to me, if they aren't running the store, then they don't get to collect fees on it, imo.
To comply with the regulation they've introduced even more egregious pricing.