You may approve of that change, but you can't deny it's a change for the worse for the majority of Apple users who don't care about the flexibility but were happy to have an app store whose interests were more or less aligned with their own.
The FTC and consumer protection agencies are elected by people (even if indirectly).
Apple does not act in the best interest of its customers. Not when those interests are in conflict with it’s own.
Which they very rarely have been for the majority of Apple users. There's a very small contingent of Apple users who spend time on HN who feel differently, but for most Apple users the experience that Apple offers is far and away better than that of any other tech company precisely because Apple's interests align with their own so well.
I'm just flummoxed why that small contingent of Apple users on HN gets behind the large companies' efforts to dismantle the ecosystem rather than just picking the other ecosystem that already offers the flexibility they want. It's inconsiderate of the majority of people who actually like what Apple is offering.
I am equally flummoxed why others defend the same clearly anti-competitive behaviour. Voting with our feet is no substitute for voting with our votes.
Steam is a way better product than the appstore. Appstore is full of toxic games with gambling monetization and in app purchases, steam is full of games you buy upfront and dlc is clearly labeled with dollar signs in the app store instead of premium gems etc.
I blame the apple appstore for creating that toxic ecosystem that made phonegames suck so hard. If there were alternatives things would be so much better, like you have in pc gaming. Steam launching game stores in the phones would be a massive win for everyone.
Interesting. I blame the medium [1] and the size of the audience [2]. I guess we'll see who is right, but either way I'm unconvinced a better phone gaming experience is worth letting Meta create its own app store that allows privacy shenanigans that Apple has successfully banned.
[1] Smartphones are attention-monopolizing devices by their very nature in a way that a tower PC just isn't.
[2] The majority of games on a platform will appeal to the lowest common denominator, and since ~everyone has a smartphone the lowest common denominator is very low.
The enemy of my enemy is not my friend. If Meta is doing impinging on people's privacy we need to make it illegal, not let it be used by Apple as a selling feature for their anti-competitive practices.
PC gaming is a good example of why the complaints about the 30% tax are overblown, but it's also a terrific example of what happens to consumers when a platform isn't able to vertically control every aspect of the distribution experience. It's not great.
I want to support the companies I want to support, not the companies I'm being forced to support because I bought a piece of hardware from them.
I would 1000% prefer the experience of steam over the App Store. Heck I would prefer the Epic Game Store.
Then don't install the Epic App store. Thats your right.
If you are still upset then that means that yes this is about forcing other people and other companies to do what they want with their store and their phones.
If thats your opinion, fine. Just say that out loud. Don't hide behind "Well, people should be able to choose what they want!" Type arguments.
Just explicitly say that you don't care about consumer choice or a companies choice to make their own app store, and leave it at that.
> Just explicitly say that you don't care about consumer choice or a companies choice to make their own app store, and leave it at that.
I very much do care about consumer choice. As a consumer, I chose Android because it has the flexibility to allow me to install what I want from where I want. As a consumer, my wife chose iOS because it currently offers a tightly integrated experience that doesn't get in her way.
The EU and many on HN are trying to dismantle the experience that my wife chose to make it more like Android. That's a net loss in consumer choice directly caused by lobbying on the part of already-wealthy businesses who try to make it sound like the choices of billions of Apple users don't count so that they can justify their push to make more money themselves.
Correct, yes. That is the same advice that you are trying to tell other people. "if you don't like it, just go buy something else", basically.
So yes, take your own advice and only install the app store that you prefer.
If that doesn't satisfy you, then you would have to admit that none of this is about choice, instead it would be about you wanting to force companies or other users to do what you want in your own way.
You can't have this both ways here. Every single time you throw around arguments like "go buy a different thing", that same exact line of thinking can be thrown back at you, to tell you to just not install the app stores that you don't like.
Pick one. This argument either is bad, or it can be thrown back at you when you use it. You can't use that argument and then run away when its thrown back at you.
> As a consumer, my wife chose iOS because it currently offers a tightly integrated experience that doesn't get in her way.
They can still have that. Just don't install those other app stores. Thats your advice that you throw around. So follow it.
This is what everyone says, but we know that's not how it will work. Epic doesn't want their own store because they want to put their stuff in both places—Epic wants their own store because they want to bypass Apple and Google entirely.
We're going to see a proliferation of app stores the way we've seen a proliferation of streaming platforms, with apps only being available in the Epic Store or the Apple Store or the Amazon Store or the Meta Store, and it's not going to be fun for anyone to navigate.