"This case asks us to draw the line between anticompetitive behavior, which is illegal under federal antitrust law, and hypercompetitive behavior, which is not."
I feel this contradiction within me when I find myself promoting and praising the growth hacks and 'doing whatever it takes' mentality startups employ and then subsequently realizing that at the same time I would probably shame and criticize the same tactics if the same company got large.
You should not shame and criticize Apple for being anticompetitive, you should lament that the US is not a fair playing field when it comes to anti-trust investigations.
Apple is under no obligation to behave fairly. Many (not me) would argue the opposite.
That's why I try to reflect on my feelings when I can because they aren't rational. I have to remind myself it's the fiduciary duty of companies to take legal advantage of any opportunity the law gives it.
I’m not confident that’s an accurate description. Companies are certainly beholden to their shareholders, but e.g. there’s no legal requirement to maximize profits.
That is not a pragmatic view. Law works on assumption that most of the society will follow them (under moral or social pressure) and few rogue people will be punished appropriately. If everyone starts breaking the law, no Police/Govt will be able to contain it.
That gets at the crux of the problem: hyper-competitive behavior can become anti-competitive when you are powerful enough and have enough leverage to make anti-competitive behavior part of your strategy. The line between "anti-competitive" and "hyper-competitive" today isn't a line, it's a big messy gray area.
It's pretty hard for an underdog or tiny startup to be anti-competitive because they simply don't have the leverage to do it. They can still be dishonest or immoral, it's just hard to be monopolistic when you're not anywhere close to being a monopoly.
Uber is the prime example of this. They broke many laws and regulations in order to provide a better product/user experience without much punishment to get to where they are today. If Uber started breaking more laws today they would be shot down very quick.
> If Uber started breaking more laws today they would be shot down very quick.
Unfortunately, I don’t see this as being true. I’d be willing to bet they’re still breaking laws and ordinances today and we’re just not aware of it.
Part of it is the news cycle today, we’d never see a story about Uber breaking some municipal laws with the state of the world as it is. And after all, they have tons of cash, which is what breaking laws requires.
Until they suffer material operational pain from doing wrong, they’re not going to change.
The problem is that we’re terrible at assessing the morality of companies. We tend not to care about what startups do, even though the “doing whatever it takes” mentality sometimes leads to deeply concerning behavior (i.e. Instacart/door dash tipping dark patterns, Zoom security practices, online advertising startups generally, etc.)
Part of it is that business models are getting increasingly complex, and it’s getting harder for laypeople to really grok how a particular company makes money, especially when consumer data is involved.
The public tolerates quite a bit of unethical behavior by companies if they determine the value of the product to be worth it (i.e. Facebook). And some entrepreneurs see these examples and think that there are no consequences. There really is no concrete mechanism to assess morality in companies. Marketing gets to dictate most of that.
I think that's ok though. I think that we handicap ourselves by trying to find universalizing systems and rules, and then throwing our hands up when we can't do so. I also think that this sort of thing is tacitly encouraged by incumbents because usually giving up benefits them.
Size matters. If a child hits you, you scold them and tell them not to do it, but you're likely no worse for wear. If an adult hits you, they could kill you, we call it assault and it has legal consequences.
The contradiction you feel is like saying "well I don't think we should punish children the same way we punish adults, so maybe we shouldn't punish anyone?". I know that when I put it into this type of metaphor it seems obvious, I'm not trying to be insulting, merely that when you change the context we suddenly see that it does makes sense to weigh different situations with different consequences differently.
Trying to find a common legal framework to cover a 2 person ramen startup and the continent spanning wealth and power of Jeff Bezos and Amazon, or Tim Cook and Apple is something that seems fraught, and the consequences for the actions that each group takes are vastly different. I think we shouldn't be afraid to judge or regulate them differently as well.
In the spirit of this particular story, I'd like to ask HN the following question: Should closed hardware (that owns its entire stack) even be legal to sell?
Yes, it's legal today but should we make it illegal?
In many iPhone debates, we throw around phrases such as, "unlike a game console, it's a general computer" and "I own the device so I should be able to put any software I want on it".
Understandable sentiments. So the question is, should consumers be able to knowingly buy restricted hardware such as Prima Cinema? They pay $35000 and own the computer but they know they can't sideload their own movies. They know can't pick another "movie store", or watch Youtube/Netflix on it, etc. The hardware has anti-tampering sensors so that it bricks itself if the owner tries to open it. The hardware is a "general pc". It runs Wind River Linux. I think the cpu is x86 but it might be ARM or something else.
You can't argue that Prima Cinema should not be locked down (claiming anti-competitive behavior) because the paranoid film studios wouldn't even license their content if it wasn't. If a buyer wants to have 1st run movies at home, all those restrictions in place is they only way to get it. It's more restrictive than iPhone in that sense.
I don't see why not. If it's a problem, then either a competitor will emerge, or people won't purchase the product.
If it's truly a bad business practice, it'll lose out in the end. Besides that I actually love the closed system of the iPhone + App Store, we can't just go around banning things anytime we think we might not like them. Every time I see this story it just annoys me. I want the iPhone and App Store to be a closed system. Opening it up is the bad idea here.
Philosophically, amazon.com and Facebook are closed systems too. As is Wal-Mart and UPS. I'm not sure why we're only focused on hardware systems here, what's the meaningful distinction?
> If it's truly a bad business practice, it'll lose out in the end.
Many bad business practices only lose out because they're made illegal. Protection rackets are great for the ones running them. Although one could quibble that the police is the cheapest universally available protection racket that pushes out all the competition.
It seems worth considering startups and entrenched near-monopoly situations differently. Competition is hard to bring back in the latter, and certainly consumers might well benefit from the right interventions. It doesn't mean a purist law to prohibit proprietary closed devices is necessary.
And I'd argue with your example of Facebook that they should at minimum be compelled to enable universal linking so that other app vendors can intercept outbound links directly, and users can choose their web browser etc.
Hardware is a physical product you buy. You don't buy Amazon or Facebook. They are a service not a product. The meaningful distinction is that you should OWN the hardware you buy and thus it shouldn't be limited by the manufacturer except for things that are vital for product function.
We're mostly talking about the App Store, but even so I don't think there's much of a meaningful distinction. I can't choose to get a 12 pack of cola that's half Pepsi, 1/4th Mountain Dew, and 1/4 Cherry Coke either.
I can't choose to use iMessage with my non-existent Facebook account either. Why? Why are they allowed to lock in their software?
But I can choose to make myself a 12 pack of half Pepsi, 1/4th Mountain Dew, and 1/4 Cherry. That's the entire point. There is no artificial restriction that mixing Pepsi with some other soft drink results in a toxic mixture. But that is essentially what's happening on the App store/Phone hardware space.
IMessage facebook messenger case is not an artificial lock. They are fundamentally different protocols. It's not like IMessage supports facebook messenger and Apple just say no you can't use it. There is a real difference here.
Apple is artificially restricting usage of it's phones for no other reason then greed. If the app store would actually protect against malware I would agree that it might have some value but it really doesn't. The app store is filled with mountains and mountains of malware. But since it's malware that makes Apple money it's completely fine.
Apple mobile hardware is really amazing. The best there is in the world I think. But the software locks it down so much that it's essentially a paper weight compared to its potential.
> It's not like IMessage supports facebook messenger and Apple just say no you can't use it. There is a real difference here.
You can make a protocol then and Facebook won't allow you to use it. They're definitely artificially locking you in. It's no different.
> Apple is artificially restricting usage of it's phones for no other reason then greed.
Really? That's the only reason? Does it not seem odd to you that iPhones are considered safe devices, and that Apple goes to great lengths to protect them and user data and now companies are complaining about the App Store? Once they can circumvent the App Store, then can put all sorts of garbage tracking and malware into applications. iPhone and the App Store have been around for more than 10 years, and then over the last two years Apple requires no tracking, prompting of data usage, soon a data use "nutrition scorecard" and now just this year all of these companies are complaining about pricing? Give me a break. If you want to call Apple greedy, then it's just a case of pots calling kettles black. Notice how there aren't any customers complaining about this oh so bad and greedy practice? I don't care what developers want here. I want my iPhone the way it is, and changing the App Store is bad in my view. I'll vote with my wallet in this case. If that means fewer applications because they want to circumvent these things that I want Apple to do, then that's fine, good riddance.
These companies can partner with Samsung or something and make their own phones and app stores. That's fine. But this isn't about that. It's about them wanting money and to abuse user data on the platform that Apple built.
> You can make a protocol then and Facebook won't allow you to use it. They're definitely artificially locking you in. It's no different.
If the technical requirements are met and Facebook won't allow then it indeed is not an artificial lock in. But I doubt that Facebook messenger can talk to IMessage right now. It's not the responsibility of either Facebook or Apple to make those two apps work together. The only thing they should not do is go out of their way to not allow them to interface. I.e. It should be possible for a user to write a bridge between those two apps.
> Really? That's the only reason? Does it not seem odd to you that iPhones are considered safe devices, and that Apple goes to great lengths to protect them and user data and now companies are complaining about the App Store? Once they can circumvent the App Store, then can put all sorts of garbage tracking and malware into applications. iPhone and the App Store have been around for more than 10 years, and then over the last two years Apple requires no tracking, prompting of data usage, soon a data use "nutrition scorecard" and now just this year all of these companies are complaining about pricing? Give me a break. If you want to call Apple greedy, then it's just a case of pots calling kettles black. Notice how there aren't any customers complaining about this oh so bad and greedy practice? I don't care what developers want here. I want my iPhone the way it is, and changing the App Store is bad in my view. I'll vote with my wallet in this case. If that means fewer applications because they want to circumvent these things that I want Apple to do, then that's fine, good riddance.
I don't consider Apple safe devices because of the App store. Every single protection that is afforded by the app store is actually provided by the OS. With the exception of manual review and that is a subjective process full of holes.
Can you explain to me, since you believe Apple is actually not user hostile, why does it allow obvious malware in the app store such as apps that appear to be free but once you install them you end up in micro-transaction hell? Why do they allow micro-transactions at all? Micro-transactions are very rarely if ever beneficial to the user. What's up with the apps that promise a feature and don't deliver? I'm not joking when I say that the quality of apps I can download for free on my desktop is way higher then most stuff that is in the app store. App stores have brought down the quality of software significantly. It's so bad that my default stance on anything on the app store is that it must be trash because that's what it is usually.
> I don't see why not. If it's a problem, then either a competitor will emerge, or people won't purchase the product.
Aka "the invisible hand will fix it". We have been waiting quite a few years for this and it did not happen. Instead we got the complete opposite: a duopoly of android and iOS which nobody, not even Microsoft, can compete against. At this point, we have to acknowledge that simply waiting is not going to fix anything.
It works most of the time, actually. I'm not against regulation (I argue that companies like Facebook and other social media companies shouldn't be able to merge or acquire each other, for example), but it needs to be sensible regulation.
I also don't think a duopoly is necessarily bad, and in this case I think it's not even a duopoly long-term. It is right now because Google and Apple are the leaders, but it's only a matter of time until other large companies (Samsung, Huawei, etc.) gain a foothold and market share. Being a local duopoly (in the US) is one thing versus being a global duopoly.
Further, I'm not really convinced that this duopoly we have is even bad. Why is it bad that we have a duopoly? Is it only acceptable if we have 3 large players? Why aren't we complaining about the Microsoft and Apple duopoly with computers? I think this is just arbitrary really and it won't be long-lived anyway.
But Android in general doesn’t have these restrictions. Plenty of phones (including Google’s flagships!) support rooting, and you can install a third-party App Store like F-droid even when they only support sideloading. So that’s not really a good example of market forces failing to solve the unlocked hardware availability problem.
Something can be both "good business" that is make you a lot of money, and a terrible thing for society.
There's an incredible amount of effort to prevent that - we can start with obligatory things like slavery, but there's a lot more - safety regulation in cars or airplanes, food safety, various environmental protections, employee protections, and so on.
"I want the iPhone and App Store to be a closed system." is kind of like saying "I want powerful car that doesn't have to follow emission limits." - I believe you that you want it, but you having it might hurt others, and that's why it's not allowed.
There's nothing stopping you from putting a Blu-ray player in your rack next to the Prima box and the cost is trivial.
There's a common-sense argument that a person is only going to have one phone, one phone carrier, one ISP, etc. and thus those companies shouldn't hold their customers hostage. Turning that into a legal principle is left as an exercise for the reader.
If I could install iOS on a Samsung device or Android on an iPhone that would be different
I'm with you there. I'm so mad that I can't install iOS on any device I want. My Android phone? Nope. My HP laptop? Nope. My car entertainment system? Nope. My TRS-80? Nope. My waffle maker? Nope.
I even tried to install iOS on my cat, and she rebooted all over the rug.
Clearly this is a massive conspiracy by the Apple industrial complex to control what I do with the things I bought and paid for with my own money.
Not my sole reason, but since you asked, here I am. I give my children iPhones. I like having certain family controls over what they use, and further controls over what appears in the app store to begin with.
I like having a single vendor for all my software purchases, that I can trust to issue refunds and discontinue subscriptions promptly.
I spend all day thinking about computers, I don't want to also be my own IT professional and security team, especially for a slab of glass I hold in my hand. I accept that I have to do some IT and security thinking about my iOS devices, but the more the walled garden provides, the less is on me.
I understand that with this "safety" comes a loss of "liberty," but I find that an acceptable tradeoff for consumer hardware in my personal life. I don't automatically assume that the right tradeoffs for me are also the right tradeoffs for everyone else.
If someone wants to sideload apps and/or develop their own custom apps without some kind of special developer status, I have no problem suggesting they buy something else.
Maybe, maybe not, but by like 5th grade most of them seem to have one regardless. Many younger kids have one. By 7th it's practically all of them (a smartphone, that is, though yeah, often an iPhone)
Our school assigns every kid an iPad. In Kindergarten. Good idea? I kinda don't think so, though it's been useful this year, of course. But it happens.
Increasingly parents have trouble letting kids wander the neighborhood on their own without a tracker/communication-device on them, and a smartphone's really good at serving that role. There are other options but kids want to have their smartphone on them, and as soon as you want them to be able to do one other smartphone-thing any other option starts to look kinda pointless.
(just relating observations of parenting in the wild, not my own parenting approach)
I will add to this: I wish my parents had stuck with iPhones. The amount of IT support that I had to do after they switched went up quite a bit. It's been a few years so they've adjusted (and I've just ignored their complaints and told them to fix it themselves) but who knows what garbage they've installed on their phones! They're not tech savvy. It would be quite nice if they had stuck with iPhones.
I remember they got Samsung tablets and when I had looked at them to see if I would like to buy one... I saw they were completely full of - essentially - spyware and malware.
> I give my children iPhones. I like having certain family controls over what they use, and further controls over what appears in the app store to begin with.
Okay.. then their opinion is what's relevant here, not yours.
> I like having a single vendor for all my software purchases, that I can trust to issue refunds and discontinue subscriptions promptly.
Weren't they in hot water recently for forcing developers to use their deceptive subscription trial system?
I’m sure you also want to make sure your kids aren’t spending all your money on dumb in-app purchases. Having a controlled mechanism for that provides an actual value to you, and letting companies circumvent it would make things harder for you. Are the fees for that mechanism fair? That’s a business negotiation.
> …that I can trust to issue refunds and discontinue subscriptions promptly.
This is a big one. I'm significantly more likely to subscribe to a service/app if I'm able to do so through iTunes, because it means the app developer can't directly reach into my wallet. If I hit "Cancel Subscription" in the iTunes subscription panel, it's canceled, no ifs, ands, or buts, and no hidden unsubscribe links or intentionally obtuse unsubscription processes to have to contend with.
This is a huge thing for consumers to give up for the sake of developer freedom. If Apple begins to allow third party payment systems, developers should be required to connect said payment systems to Apple-provided standardized subscription control APIs so strong user control is maintained.
Right but i do not think it is really about Apple having responsibility - it is about Apple being in control.
For example, see how Apple is in total control on when iOS devices are obsolete by requiring some minimum version. You can't keep your device usable and useful by installing a program that supports it from another source, you can only install it from Apple and Apple's requirements limit the iOS versions you can target.
This is common FUD for Android, but i have non-technical family members and all of them use Android devices (because they were cheaper). I never had any of them complain about issues with their phones and Android doesn't exactly let you download stuff out of the box, you have to explicitly enable it and it pops up a scary warning whenever you do so.
Yes, people can ignore that warning, but considering it is there and considering all the steps they have to make, at that point it is up to personal responsibility, not making the entire society worse to avoid telling non-technical people that they screwed up.
No, buying an Apple device doesn't make the entire society worse, however supporting devices that take away control from their users does make the entire society worse.
After all that control doesn't disappear, it just moves to someone else's hands - and guess who has no say whose hands those will be.
I empathize with you. Certain products have network effects, and therefore, if you personally prefer product G to product A for whatever reason, the more people go with G instead of A, the more value you obtain.
As a result, people often have a lot of incentive to try to get other people to make the same choices they make. This explains a lot of the jousting over frameworks: The more people use the framework you use, the more bug fixes, the more talent you can hire, the more courses, books, and blog posts you can depend upon, &c.
Without agreeing with you that society as a whole is better off without Apple selling me a locked down device, I can certainly empathize with your desire for fewer people to make the choice I'm making.
I don't wanna have to worry about stupid computer shit when I'm just trying to use my iPad or iPhone as a tool to accomplish something else. Drawing, playing music, reading, writing, edutainment for the kids, very occasionally a game. Maybe the odd SSH session. If I decide I want some software to help me with any of those things I just want it to be in the App Store, and I just want it to use the App Store payment system. I don't want competing app stores because that might mean that sometimes what I want isn't on the Apple one, following Apple's rules about spying on my and otherwise behaving as badly as desktop software and webapps do these days. It means I have to search more than one store. Now we're veering into the stupid computer shit I don't want to have to worry about, again.
> That doesn't address the issue: those who would can't.
Then buy any other general computing product on the market. I'd be more sympathetic to this concern if Android didn't exist. Meanwhile it does, and the users who picked Apple did it because they don't care about this, they don't care very much about this, or because they actively want the App Store restrictions and the ecosystem that they create.
> You don't lose anything if you don't want to.
I very well might, though. Changes to rules change how actors behave in a system. The way software developers and publishers behave on iOS could change in ways that I don't like if they're able to viably distribute software outside the App Store. That might be OK, except forcing developers and publishers to follow the App Store rules is part of the appeal of the devices. If that'd been a major sticking point for me, I could have bought Android.
> Then buy any other general computing product on the market
That's not how free market works.
And it's a very silly objection.
Android is a licensed platform.from Google, but Google does not make the majority of devices.
Apple manufacturs the devices, but they sell them to me locked in the ecosystem they profit from.
Imagine being unable of refueling because your car does not work with standard oil pumps and you had to go to Apple licensed gas station whom Apple charges 30% to.
They would be prohibited from selling the car.
> I very well might, though.
But you wouldn't if you don't change your behaviour.
> Changes to rules change how actors behave in a system
That's exactly what many want from Apple.
Change the rules.
Nobody is asking Apple to relax their safety rules inside their walled garden.
If they can't allow sideloading, they're not as good as I thought.
> I could have bought Android.
I don't buy it.
If Apple sold Android powered iPhones you would still buy an iPhone, you're are buying the brand, not the product.
> Imagine being unable of refueling because your car does not work with standard oil pumps and you had to go to Apple licensed gas station whom Apple charges 30% to.
Then I'd probably buy a competing brand of car, if that bothered me? You know, one of my other choices on the market? Like how there are a bunch of Android device vendors and a couple Linux mobile vendors that I could choose if Apple's App Store model bothered me, rather than being something I actively want? I am 100% not following how this isn't a market working. The choices people are making may not be the ones you prefer—happens to me all the time with markets—but there are choices.
> That's exactly what many want from Apple.
> Change the rules.
Many developers and publishers, maybe. I'm very much unconvinced that's what the subset of users who are aware of this issue in the first place, want, for the most part. I think if it were a major problem for them they'd have bought an Android device, or something else.
> If they can't allow sideloading, they're not as good as I thought.
They do allow sideloading, it's just fairly inconvenient. They can't allow a form of it that's convenient enough to allow other app stores to thrive, without changing the character of the ecosystem for their users. I don't think any amount of being "good" at what they do would change that.
> If Apple sold Android powered iPhones you would still buy an iPhone, you're are buying the brand, not the product.
OK, cool, guess continuing this exchange is pointless.
>Changes to rules change how actors behave in a system. The way software developers and publishers behave on iOS could change in ways that I don't like
Probably most apps would still be on store and hopefully you would get a cheaper version from the developer website.
What is clear but you probably don't want to admit is Apple is not fighting here for your safety but for extracting mroe money, if they were not that greedy Epic,Spotify would not have started this wars and you would have been safe in the wallgarden and extremely satisfied that the other people inside can't escape either.
> What is clear but you probably don't want to admit is Apple is not fighting here for your safety but for extracting mroe money, if they were not that greedy Epic,Spotify would not have started this wars and you would have been safe in the wallgarden and extremely satisfied that the other people inside can't escape either.
Why wouldn't I admit that? Of course the situation benefits them. I just doubt there's a way to give me all the aspects of their devices & ecosystem that I value, that doesn't also benefit them. I'd love to see them drop the cut they take, for instance. That being so high benefits me not at all, so far as I can tell.
... and if someone comes out with devices that actually compete with the specific sort of product they offer, including the integrated & closed app store and restrictions on what apps are allowed to do, and takes a lower cut of app store sales, then Apple might have to reduce their cut, too. Or this current scuffle might end up not changing the app store rules much, but dropping the cut they take substantially—personally, that's an outcome I'd love.
IMO the ideal situation for Apple fans is that Apple is forced to offer a choice to developers, either pay a fair fixed charge(like you would pay for webhosting, you have different tiers or plans and fortuneteller with web hosting you have true competition) or a developer could decide to give Apple 30% cut. Probably most developers would chose to pay the fixed fee and the Apple users will have cheaper apps and subscriptions(in app payments) while enjoying the restrictions that nobody can have the option to escape the wallgarden(not sure how are you happy with this though, say in a country Apple is forced to remove all chat apps that are encrypted including browsers and then Apple fans would just say `you should have predicted this,sell the phone and use Android`)
Nothing what you say has absolutely ANYTHING to do with you being locked out from ever running your own software on Apple devices.
This is a completely false argument you're putting up - you can HAVE all of those protections while STILL having the option of replacing protected software with less safe one.
It's not false though? Games are a thing. In the sense of how systems run and how actors make decisions in it, not in terms of video games. Any change that makes it convenient to run a competing app store will almost certainly change the experience of using iOS, even for those who choose not to use an alternative app store.
If there's a way to allow easily & conveniently running one's own software without letting competing app stores work, I'm all for it. In fact there is a way to run your own software, it's just inconvenient, because time-limited so you have to re-install it periodically, which effectively kills any possibility of running a successful app store via that method.
You're right in theory, but possibly not in practice.
Consider two vendors: A and G.
A provides a full walled garden.
G provides a walled garden, but lets you side-load whatever you like, you can ignore the apps in the garden.
Everyone making apps for A puts them in the walled garden, so if you own an A, you buy an app from the garden.
For G, vendors decide for themselves whether to use the walled garden. Many choose to sell direct and avoid both the markup and the hassle of getting their apps approved.
They also get to make even more money by embedding surveillance capitalism into their apps if they sell direct. Or include completely unmoderated and unregulated adtech.
As a user, isn't G better than A, since I have the choice?
It is better than A, provided that every app in A's walled garden is also in G's walled garden. However, if in practice the apps I want to use are in A's walled garden, but sold direct on G to avoid the 30% hit, then in practice, as a user, I am better off with A if what I want are apps from the walled garden.
Of course, I can always do my research to figure out whether a side-loaded app on G is safe to use. But if what I wanted was to buy apps without having to think about them, then I can be better off with A in practice even though in theory, G provides everything A provides, and more.
Now, is there really a problem getting all the apps I use on A from G's walled garden? I don't personally know, since I don't want to go to the trouble of sorting out what is available in G's store versus what I have to sideload. So there's plenty of room to argue that in practice, G is superior to A.
On the Mac, where the App store is not required, a great deal of software is not in the App store and as a result the user does not benefit from App Store policies for said software. By forbidding sideloading, it forces developers to meet the App Store standards or not play at all. There are developers whose software is present on the iOS app store but the companion Mac app is not.
I don't like the complete lockout either. I like being able to run my apps on my device. But it is most definitely true that the ability to sideload apps results, in practice, in some developers opting out of providing App Store protected apps in favor of asking you to sideload.
On every discussion about this topic on HN, there has been at least one but typically many more commenters saying they love the walled garden and they would pay a premium for it. They trust Apple so they are OK with paying them 30% more instead of paying the app developers directly. They would never dare recommend Windows or Linux or Android to their parents but they would happily recommend them to get iPhones and iPads because they would not end up with a virus-ridden device.
Personally, this is so different from the way I think that I find it utterly surprising, much more so from the tech savvy audience of HN. But apparently preferring walled gardens and being willing to pay extra to obtain one and even more every time you buy something on it is not an uncommon opinion to have.
Personally, this is so different from the way I think that I find it utterly surprising
Seven billion people on the planet. It shouldn't be surprising to learn that not everyone thinks the way that you do.
I wonder if it's an age thing. When you're young and have more time than money, tinkering with the technical hassles of your phone is worth it to save a buck or two. When you're older and have more money than time, you happily pay $399 for an iPhone if it means getting hours or days of your life to spend on other things.
Age was it, in part, for me. I used to do lots of hardware and OS tinkering. Now the last goddamn thing I want to do is troubleshoot graphical glitches in x-windows, or try to get my audio to handle changing outputs correctly, or cross my fingers while "dist-upgrade" runs, or fix scaling and font rendering in GTK apps, or whatever, when I'm just trying to do something else.
At some point I became acutely aware of every time I was doing something with a computer that was simply fucking with the computer, and not actually getting anything that I wanted or needed to get done, except to the extent that making my computer be not-broken is required for those things. Around that time I was exposed to macOS and iOS and finally had an actual choice to (mostly) not have to do that when I don't want to, and if I decide I would like to tinker then I can use... any other option on the market.
I'd probably be screwing around with trying to run NetBSD on Android phones and turn them into mobile computers I can plug monitors and keyboards into and embedding RPis and Arduinos in all kinds of crap around the house, if I were 16 again.
At the age I am now, though, you'd literally have to pay me to even think about doing any of that. Even when I screw around with getting allegedly set-it-and-forget-it RPi media projects (think: kodi, lakka) working I usually end up regretting it. I do know how to work with those sorts of things. I also very much don't want to any more, but do still want computer-things doing stuff for me with few or no hassles. Luckily these days you can pay to get that, in some categories at least. Largely from Apple, if you want them to last a while—I do wish they had actual competition in that sense. More options that don't spy (much) and Just Work (mostly), please.
First, I embrace your choice to not go with a locked down, un-free device. That is entirely within the spirit of being a hacker.
Second, I very much argue that if there was no app store, consumers would pay 30% less. The app store and ecosystem provide something for developers, and if you remove the app store, the developers either do it for themselves, or pay somebody else to do it for them.
Of course, if there was meaningful competition, the fees might be less, or the value provided to developers might be more. But I doubt that prices would drop the full 30%.
I say this as someone who worked in tech distribution. Great things can happen when you cut out a middleman, but it's often surprising how difficult it is to replicate the middleman's distribution advantages.
All that being said, I'm not here to debate whether prices would fall 30%, 27.2%, or even 10%. I agree with your basic premise: tech-savvy people have less upside and more downside from owning locked-down devices.
Hmm... I'm pretty tech savvy I'd say, but I don't think there's anyway the benefits I'd gain outside Apple's wall garden would compare to the ecosystem I live in now.
Apple's rent seeking a bit with the App Store, but I have faith in their privacy protections, that they'll continue to support my devices for a long time after purchase, and that they'll be fairly prompt with security updates to all my devices.
And cobbling together the connections between ear phones, watch, phone, computer and TV would be quite tedious, probably no where near as smooth, and a pain in the ass to upkeep.
At the end of the day, besides my computer, I don't really give a hoot about side loading apps from different app stores, or I dunno... customizing things more I guess? I'm not really sure.
There is the possibility increased app store competition (say, if it was ruled anti-competitive to only allow Apple's App Store on Apple Products) would make Apple's App Store better though. Discovery can be kind of a pain in my opinion.
So, I'm not opposed to there being more app stores, but it'd probably take a fair amount of nudging to get me to actually try one.
Just to make a vast generalisation with no hard evidence: I wouldn’t be surprised if it often came down to age. When I was younger, I had the desire, and more importantly the time, to keep everything I used as open source as I could afford.
Fast forward a decade (or maybe 2) and while I am still very pro open-all-the-things, I am happy to pay more for a controlled environment to run things I rely on but don’t care to spend time on maintaining and configuring.
I also like having a car with an automatic transmission and engine instrumentation that tells me when to get the oil changed and perform maintenance. My interaction with my car is strictly monetary and burns none of my mental cycles.
I have 4 other people in my house, plus I'm the "tech guy" for maybe another dozen people. I appreciate how simple that job is when everyone has iPhones.
I'm curious, how many apps do you have installed on your phone, and how many of them are paid ones? Especially, ones using subscription models? Less than 10, or dozens?
I have over a dozen and I really appreciate the ability to manage (or at least view) those in one place. Managing my non-app (website) subscriptions is quite a mess.
And it is only one advantage of the walled garden. I don't have to think much when I install an app - is it from the developer, or someone has tampered with it?
Me for one. I don't want to deal with several different terms of service, different ways of payment, lack of clarity on if an app is trustworthy or not.
Apple is simple. I trust Apple to protect me and honestly based on the stories I read about Google's Play Store I feel more confident in Apple to do the right thing for consumers in the long run. Their incentive is aligned to my needs (good safe hardware that protects me from making potentially poor choices -- even as someone who is in the "tech" world)
Is Apple's app store actually protecting you from anything, or do you just get the illusion that its protecting you?
Although the situation has gotten much better the past couple years, its still not uncommon to find apps on the app store that charge like 10$ a month for some wallpapers or something of a similar nature. Furthermore, every few months there are new news articles coming out about how ""XYZ"" app is collecting ""ABC"" data from iPhone users(like apps scraping clipboard data, or apps trying to access the microphone or camera when the user thinks there should be no recording going on).
The claim that the iOS is actually protecting users seems dubious at best. Apple tends to exert control over the app store, but it always seems to be in response to users finding out that some app is doing something evil rather then Apple protecting users up front to begin with.
iOS is protecting me WAY more than Google Play store. I also read plenty about Apple being TOO strict on developers more than I read them being loose. (which sorry to the developers out there and definitely an area that apple can and should improve on)
Your point that some bad actors get through doesn't invalidate that Apple seems to be doing the best job of keeping the app store secure and consumer friendly.
“Apple does an imperfect job of delivering that value proposition, therefore it should be illegal to even try” is quite the take. Keep in mind that there are huge confirmation biases here; when Apple blocks scammy or insecure apps before they even come out, nobody notices, but if they miss a single one, everyone notices.
Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom, as Kierkegaard said. But freedom is an incredibly worthwhile thing, so much so that anxiety is the cost society should for it.
The costs of Apple's walled garden have become so obscene at this point that I consider the pro-Apple position to be immoral.
I buy Apple products not because it's a walled garden per se, but because it's Apple's walled garden. Apple has been the only vendor to provide me with a consistently top-quality user experience, so I trust them to make decisions that benefit me. I don't have the same trust relationship with other software and hardware vendors, so their walled gardens I would protest against.
Me. My life is too full of other things to want to worry about the latest bit of malware floating around on Android, or whether my phone will stop getting updates a year or two after I own it.
To me, a phone should work for me, not the other way around. I'd rather spend my time living my life than fussing with the technicalities of my phone. I'm willing to pay extra for it.
I also went with iPhone because I trust Apple to vet its apps better than any other vendor. When someone else does as good a job, I'll head over there. But for now, iPhone is where it's at.
Me. It limits the attack surface and all the problems that come with openness, very visible in the Android world.
The problem is that giving a choice to users is risky and not acceptable at scale because people are not smart, they do dumb things all the time; like pasting untrusted scripts into devtools console and getting hacked. Or replying to mail scams.
So I am happy I can hand an iPad to my parent and not be there to secure all activities they do online.
We used to joke about the fact that no matter what you do to educate users, if told that to see a video of funny dancing pigs[1] all they have to do is give the installer root privileges...
Users will give the installer root privileges.
History bore this out over and over and over again.
—
[1]: See also: Crapware-laden browser toolbars, Java runtimes, Adobe Reader, Windows crapware, Smart TVs, ...
Me. I like the sandboxing. I like Apple Pay (especially for subscriptions). I like the new random-gen email addresses system. I like that apps have to use these things and can't just opt-out, because I may have to use the app for work or something.
It's not the only thing I care about, but it's not all just strict downside.
To be fair, this is a somewhat common sentiment that I’ve seen on HN. Similar is the “non tech oriented parent” point, where you don’t have to worry about your parents phone getting a virus.
For some background, I’m a longtime hardware and (more frequently) software developer. I also do quite a bit of ML consulting.
I was gifted a MacBook Air many years ago. I was an avid Ubuntu (and, to a much lesser extent, Windows) user and developer at the time so I didn’t know what to make of it. I certainly didn’t expect to be blown away and switch to all Apple devices.
Eight years later and I’m solidly in the Apple ecosystem. I have an open mind about switching but I love the reliability and consistency of the user experience. I can count on the core apps that I frequently reach for to just work. And if they don’t work there’s almost always an obvious, low-time, solution to fix them. I still do a great deal of development in Windows, but it’s exclusively in a Parallels VM on a MacBook and I’ve long since abandoned my desktop for development.
The Apple ecosystem has built up enough trust with me that I also use it when flying (Foreflight on an iPad). You couldn’t pay me to switch to an android tablet as an alternative for that use case.
My largest complaint is python development is not great on OS X out of the box. But that’s easy enough to work around.
The "walled garden" isn't really the issue most at stake here, it's the in-app purchases. To me, it's hard to argue against the benefits of having a one-stop-shop safe-and-secure place to download apps on your phone which contains all your personal information.
However, to me, it's hard to argue that Apple should keep getting money from you once you've established a loyal customer base and they are giving you money.
And as a not-so-crazy take on this issue, why isn't Apple insisting on taking a cut of, say, the check I'm depositing into Chase and just uploaded a photograph of it. It's revenue, it's in the app ... why isn't Apple taking a piece of that?
The only people paying the cost of that are companies like Epic, and if their games aren’t available for iOS that will affect the popularity of the iPhone. Maybe Apple backs down on the in-app purchases, or maybe they don’t and that decision drives away developers followed by users. Until then, we’re just seeing them negotiate with each other via PR.
If Apps are delivering new content and functionality in response to users directly giving them money then in what way is the walled garden walled? Just download the "door" app - now you're downloading arbitrary apps from a 3rd party. What happens when you download steam and suddenly people are downloading totally arbitrary code. Oh and that arbitrary code is hijacking whatsapp and sending itself to all your contacts?
Would that apply to anything electrical, or with integrated circuits, or with a port or antenna, or connected to the Internet? Is there an exception for ROM? What about device-specific IDs or keys?
And I wonder what test the courts would accept (which the manufacturers would then build to): that the device can run arbitrary code? That each feature of the device is easily accessible via FOSS library or API? That access to each feature in the device could theoretically be reverse-engineered by a sufficiently motivated expert?
I'm really happy with my closed hardware as the tightly controlled environment promises the customer that the software run in it will be high quality and on some level will be vetted before allowed to the platform. This also attracts other developers to create high-quality software, as those good enough will be highlighted by the platform owner, which in turn means increased sales.
And I really can't say the same about open platforms, which usually UX-wise are awful and for that I'm willing to give away the "freedom" some other platform might provide.
> I'm really happy with my closed hardware as the tightly controlled environment promises the customer that the software run in it will be high quality and on some level will be vetted before allowed to the platform. This also attracts other developers to create high-quality software,
I am not sure whether this is sarcasm or not.
Since it seems like it is not, let me say that most closed platforms are absolutely garbage. Let us not think only of the iPhones and the Androids of the world, and instead focus on everything else. Think industrial control. Even the cinema stuff mentioned by the GP I'm sure contains software of the worst quality.
All you have to do is compare the Apple AppStore with the Android AppStore. How many apps on Android have been found to contain malware? also when it comes to quality and design, Android AppStore is terrible compared to apple.
Considering Android is also mostly closed hardware, and that the Android store is exactly as "tightly controlled" as Apple's, thanks for proving my point. If now this was sarcasm, sorry.
Nope. If a person "owns" a piece of hardware, it should be legal to jailbreak it without any consequences (except perhaps lack of support for 3rd party software) and companies that sell products that build off of jailbroken products should be 100% legal. Edge case products like Prima Cinema can simply lease the hardware with restrictions on how can be used under the terms of the lease. If Apple feels so strongly about locking down their platform, they can adjust their business model and lease their hardware to customers. However, companies should not be able to legally "sell" products that transfer ownership if they are going to include "strings" restricting the usage of the product.
>Nope. If a person "owns" a piece of hardware, it should be legal to jailbreak it without any consequences (except perhaps lack of support for 3rd party software) and companies that sell products that build off of jailbroken products should be 100% legal.
All of those things are true today.
The question was: >Should closed hardware (that owns its entire stack) even be legal to sell?
And the answer to that is: obviously it should be, if you care about competition and innovation. The only people that disagree with this are the tech people who have had problems with Apple's business on ideological grounds for decades (people like Richard Stallman and saurik).
But outside that one particularly small constituency, there's no good public policy reason to actually make it illegal, and plenty of reasons not to.
>The U.S. Librarian of Congress ruled on Monday that consumers who circumvent digital protections on smartphones to install unapproved applications—a practice often colloquially known as “jailbreaking”—for noninfringing reasons should be exempted from prosecution under the anti-circumvention section of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).
Yes, the "consumers" should be exempted, not anyone selling solutions to do this or just giving them up for free. Which essentially means that unless you are an uber hacker that does this for their iPhones, nobody else can do it. It's pretty pointless in practice.
If you can figure it out, you can jailbreak it; but there is no reason why jailbreaking a device is inherently possible: jailbreaks for iOS are happening later and later in the boot cycle and so are more and more limited, and we have had a single bootrom exploit in like a decade. If you want to be able to jailbreak a device it must be illegal to lock it down like that, not merely legal for someone to figure out how to maybe break the lock after you build it.
>If you want to be able to jailbreak a device it must be illegal to lock it down like that
I'm not sure why you're putting this in terms of iOS, since many Android devices also ship with a locked bootloader.
>there is no reason why jailbreaking a device is inherently possible
Any iDevice with an A11 or earlier has an unpatchable bootloader flaw that absolutely makes it inherently jailbreakable. Apple cannot prevent you from jailbreaking those devices, nor can it patch the flaw with a future version of the OS.
I think that the right legal and political concept to accomplish essentially the same goal is the “right to repair”. This is a concept that lots of people (outside of technology) have an immediate connection to, and the downsides of not having it are more clear (waste, less competition, bricking when companies go out of business).
From a regulatory standpoint, it seems easier than attempting to hand ‘closed’ hardware - less line drawing on what counts as firmware and more focus on what consumers need to properly use and maintain a device over a long period of time.
> So the question is, should consumers be able to knowingly buy restricted hardware such as Prima Cinema?
If this would be restricted then you should keep it legal to buy but illegal to sell. Making the purchase illegal would only further criminalize the consumer.
So, the core issue, it seems to me, is one of outcomes. Do we want a locked down future? Or do we want an open one? Do we even want to have a choice?
That last question is actually important - maybe "the market" (meaning whoever is positioned at time) should decide. Maybe "we" already have "decided" and the rest is just that decision playing out.
But I don't think this discussion is that useful without specifics. Imagine 10 years forward - Amazon, Facebook and Google all require locked down (you do not have root) hardware to access anything they store for you/to buy anything. Maybe you can still give your Raspberry Pi an IP and send packets, but interaction with any mainstream entity requires signing your traffic with a key on a chip. ("To solve identity theft" "for the children" "do you want the terrorists to win?")
> Yes, it's legal today but should we make it illegal?
IMO, yes. We make it illegal for someone to come into your home and take your stuff, which ends up with you losing control over it (you have no more access to your stuff), so it also makes sense to make it illegal for someone to decide to not allow you install or modify the stuff you have (again taking control away from you).
The way most of these platforms run is like buying something but by doing so you also give an implicit permission for the seller to come in your house and modify or even forbid you from using what you bought if they do not like what you are doing with it.
Imagine if you bought an oven and you could only bake specific recipes that the over manufacturer allowed. And when you complained you had others telling you "just buy another oven" (until all oven manufacturers were into the game because it made them more money - especially those who are also into selling ingredients - and you had no other options, except perhaps a few cheap models that had a tendency to explode every now and then and their only usefulness is to be used as skapegoats whenever "monopoly" is brought up).
And yes, i know the above comparisons aren't 100% fitting, software isn't a physical product, it is special, but it still feels very wrong to buy a device (be it a phone, gaming console, TV or whatever) and have no control over what you can install or even -in some cases- do with it.
> We make it illegal for someone to come into your home and take your stuff
It's not illegal however if you signed a contract to that effect, which is what you did when you started using the platform.
A better analogy is that you're renting some furniture and the furniture is found to be unsafe. The company can come and take it away, either replacing it with something else or refunding you.
In the software world nobody but the creators or IP holders of the software actually owns the software. They just provide you the license to use it.
It's illegal in many countries to modify the software so if you had a closed-source word processing application it would be illegal to mod it or to use it as part of a data transformation pipeline. You can only use it for the purposes stated when you bought it.
If there was a way to limit your oven to bake recipes the manufacturer allowed or to use specific approved ingredients, and would come with some sort of value-add to make consumers ignore that as a problem, I'm sure someone would actually do this.
(please note that I am stating facts as I see them and not necessarily agreeing with the state of affairs)
The question above was about if something should be made illegal, not what the current state of affairs is.
Also i'm not arguing about who owns the software, i never asked for ownership of the software, i ask for being able to be in control of the software that runs in the hardware i do actually own. This does not require me owning the OS that runs in my hardware.
And yes, i'm sure someone would do the oven stuff if it was possible and making that illegal would also be something that would be needed.
If it was clearly stated before I bought the oven that it was limited to a certain number of recipes that the manufacturer provided, I actually don’t see the problem. You knew from the start what you were paying for.
And for your complaint that all the other ovens are crap and explode. Shouldn’t you take that up with the people making those ovens, not the one that made the locked oven? Maybe it’s very very hard to make ovens that don’t explode from time to time when people can cook whatever they want in them?
If someone came after you paid them and said, btw, you can’t make muffins in this oven, then I think it’s fair to be upset. But in the current situation, no.
The part of that argument I have trouble with is the “until all oven manufacturer were into the game” part. Do you have an example where an entire class of computer hardware became impossible to buy without firmware restrictions? This alarm bell has been sounded as “The War on General Purpose Computing” for over a decade for different pieces of hardware (laptops, desktops, routers, phones, etc.) but it still hasn’t really trended negatively (phones and routers in particular have many more unlocked options today that they did in the early 2000s), let alone come close to extinction for any of them. The broadest category you could make a case for is specifically x86 processors, but only the IME/PSP/SMM components.
I think the reality is there just isn’t as much business incentive to do these kind of things to computing devices as much as people imagine, and instead the arguments tend to paint the would-be oppressors as cartoon villains that want to remove these abilities from the world just because. Android phones that can root or at least sideload have been numerous forever; somehow nobody has bothered to create a halfway serious Google Play Store competitor anyway. Why would every business move to quash something which ultimately isn’t a universal threat? What Epic wants isn’t sideloading or rooting their way on to iPhones, they want Apple themselves to have to let users install Epic’s store through normal channels.
Game consoles, right? Back in the day things like the Commodore were often sold as game systems and computers (the NES wasn’t but you could still run unlicensed software). Nowadays, good luck running something on your PS4/Switch that the company didn’t approve (unless you have a hackable switch I guess, but that’s extremely fiddly).
That’s a good point, but the incentives there make more sense: game piracy has been a huge issue for publishers on every gaming platform (PC included) that didn’t put serious hardware roadblocks to it. They also sell the hardware at a loss, which means locking it down if you don’t want someone to build a supercomputer out of it on your dime.
The NES could not run unlicensed software. In fact, the NES arguably invented the App Store licensing model. Every console (save for the toploaders) has a lockout chip that resets the CPU every second or so unless it's able to exchange encrypted data with a companion lockout chip in the cartridge. Nintendo used this to "protect" the US gaming market from games they didn't approve of.
Technically, the Family Computer (Famicom) could run unlicensed software. It even had a BASIC interpreter and a keyboard controller. Nintendo realized their mistake very quickly, however, which is why the NES has a lockout chip and the disk add-on for the Famicom also locked out third-party disks. (Note that part of the system was the ability to buy blank disks and pay to download games onto them via a Disk Writer kiosk, hence why the disks were proprietary, not just the games.) A number of game developers in Japan found that to be a bit of a shock, from what I've heard.
In my opinion there is an important difference between purpose-built entertainment devices like consoles where sometimes HW cost is donated by the manufacturer and a multi-functional generic computer like laptop/desktop and partly smartphone. I care less about locked PS4 ecosystem than smartphonrs and computers.
While I'm sympathetic to this idea, one thing that I get hung up on is game consoles. I enjoy multiplayer shooters, and I like knowing that none of my opponents are using bots. So the fact that the console is locked down is part of the value proposition for me. It's a pro, rather than a con.
So... we're gonna throw out the freedom to play with non-cheating strangers when your friends are all busy, in order that every computing device, instead of just lots and lots of them, can have arbitrary software installed on it?
> we're gonna throw out the freedom to play with non-cheating strangers
Freedom? No. Opportunity? Maybe. I think communities would arise to fill the demand though. Pseudo-anonymous reputation systems tied to matchmaking could fill the roll. I have a group of pseudo-anonymous friends/acquaintances I frequently play games with online. None of us cheat and if any of us did, we'd stop playing with them. We don't need big brother. We don't need technical solutions to social problems.
That only works if you have friends to play both your teammates and the enemy team which is a very tall order. Most people play with strangers overall, and most people who play with friends just have them as teammates against stranger opponents.
> I enjoy multiplayer shooters, and I like knowing that none of my opponents are using bots. So the fact that the console is locked down is part of the value proposition for me.
The issue here is that you're using "locked down" too generically. What you actually want is something like remote attestation. The device can assert with a signature that it's running a particular version of the OS and a particular version of the game and in so doing allows you to know that the user isn't cheating by using some other software.
That has nothing at all to do with whether you can install arbitrary software on the device or who gets a percentage of what. Even if you could install the Amazon store on your PlayStation and the install Cheat App from there, the device wouldn't then assert that you're running the official game (because you're not), and then the other players would know that and be able to boot you out. You don't need the other player's console to refuse to install an arbitrary app for that, only for it to be able to tell you when that has happened.
I don't see a huge issue there. You need not necessarily be able to run your code in parallel to game, the console could provide the option to run either your game or other code.
Of course you can now make the argument that any form of code execution increases the attack surface. And you're right but hypervisors can be quite effective. Also the XBOX One can be put in developer mode to run arbitrary UWP apps and has not yet had any major exploits (to my knowledge), where the PS4 has no similar features, but has had several firmware versions with significant security flaws.
But just as a devil's advocate; what about rentals? You can't just put new wheels on your ZipCar. If we made locked platforms illegal, they would simply become rentals. But at least it would be explicit then.
> closed hardware (that owns its entire stack) even be legal to sell?
Two thoughts:
1 - As software goes into everything, keep in mind that the universe of devices to which this applies will grow to include the set of "non-organic physical objects."
2 - And this will means that surprising outcomes could come of requiring everything to be open. Who do you trust to verify the software in your used car/refrigerator/lightswitch/water heater/etc? For devices where physical safety is at play, how do you verify that the (possibly aftermarket) software is up to code or other certification? Imagine every car sale or home inspection required a software assurance verification of every embedded system. Closed systems implicitly provide some level of assurance here.
(Edit: I did not downvote, this is a legitimate counterpoint.)
> perfect counterexample is the VW dieselsoftware
This is a great counterexample that inadvertently proves the point because in that case a) the software in question was exactly as delivered by the manufacturer so that b) consumers were able to receive compensation from rich VW for the faulty software.
If the software stack was open, a malfunction could be caused by aftermarket software (think: downloaded from Sourceforge) and therefore consumers would have no real remedy.
I suppose I could have been clearer on what's being assured. There is (obviously) value in being assured that you are buying what the manufacturer intended!
With an open system, that flaw would have been detected way earlier. Now the original post was about closed hardware, so I'm not sure if this was the case here. I have never tried flashing some motor control of a car, but it's possibly not even restricted, so "open system" would more likely refer to "open source".
While there might be an incentive to restrict modifications (at least on a car, which is potentially dangerous), I don't see counterpoints to open-sourceing the software that runs on (the car in this example).
I think this comparison is in bad faith. I would put it like this, it should definitely be illegal to be anti-competitive on general computing devices once you hit a significant revenue(the revenue bit only to allow small players to compete first and not be stifled).
Devices like Kindle are one purpose devices. It is supposed to be a replacement for a book. The integration with Kindle Store for ebooks can be complained about, but Amazon gives you the freedom to use ebooks from anywhere, infact if you can live with the bad experience you can use the browser itself to download them on the device.
iPhone is a different ballgame, it is an ecosystem creating device. I have no problem with them restricting the APIs for third party developers if it improves security on the device, that's a good thing. But then the rent seeking on apps like Spotify is just bad for upcoming companies and would be for users in the end. This is not just limited to software, they can use the same leverage to even kill companies in hardware space.
Sure, Apple doesn't have a monopoly in terms of device share, but they absolutely are in a position to kill a company.
As long I own it the vendor should unlock it, it the past the phones were locked to work only with SIM cards from the provider you bought the phone, when the contract expired the phone still remained locked and you had to find someone to unlock it for you, Then (hope my memory is not mistaken) something changed(probably laws) so carriers had to provide you with a code to unlock your phone when the contract was over. I think should be the same with game consoles if and only if they are subsidized , when I paid the full price then is my hardware. Preventing piracy should not affect my property rights and hardware should not brick itself if somehow detects I want to use it as I want. If Sony does not like this they could rent me the hardware for cheap or free because the bastards are locking already online features behind subscriptions.
Back in the heyday of the Bell system, telephones were owned by the phone company and you leased them as part of your phone service. That’s why they were made of indestructible steel and you could hang up by slamming the handset down on the receiver at full force if you were really ticked off at a telemarketer or something. That also meant phone phreaks tampering with their own phones were in dubious legal territory because they didn’t own the phones.
I think people should have the freedom to consent to buy whatever products they like so long as the functionality of the product is not kept secret. They also should (and do) have the freedom to try and jailbreak it but not to the point of obligating the manufacturer to produce an open system. But even if there is some sort of law that you can’t sell closed-stack systems, you could just migrate everything to equipment leases. IMO this would make matters much, much worse for the consumer in terms of having control over their own equipment (though maybe some equipment would be made to last again).
How about don't buy it? Here's another question. Is it reasonable to buy a product, knowing that it works a particular way, and then expect the law to change in order to change the way that product works?
> Is it reasonable to buy a product, knowing that it works a particular way, and then expect the law to change in order to change the way that product works?
if we agree as a society that the way the product work does not fit with our society ideals, then yes, definitely ?
Especially when the person buying it will likely not have a lot of information / put a lot of thought in the issue. Laws are meant to protect people from that.
I’m not sure if all cases need to be handled this way, with the Prima Server the main transaction seems to be the right to access the movies.
With a device that needs to be used in every day life (proof: smart phone penetration in many countries, more recently, access to certain locations only with a Covid app) it makes sense to have stronger protections for consumers and other businesses.
IMO, In most circumstances companies shouldn't need to document their products to the point that anyone can recreate them or modify them. But I don't think companies should actively create mechanisms (legal or otherwise) that prevent tinkerers.
No, Can you Imagine a consumer PC manufacturer demanding such fee for Softwares using their hardware 10 years back and getting away with it? But in the age of Appstore(s), it would not be that alarming anymore if the computer manufacturer suddenly decides to lock the computer for non-store softwares instead of what's happening now(Warning, having to right-click to open etc.).
But the thing is, Apple has been stomping little guys forever and these Billion dollar gaming companies got benefited from it and only when the 30% cut has become too big of a chunk of their revenue; they are now making it as a David vs Goliath story. I had a retro arachnoid type game in Appstore for years which was under 'Arcade' category, when apple branded its gaming subscription service as 'Arcade', it forced me to change it to an irrelevant category.
>In the spirit of this particular story, I'd like to ask HN the following question: Should closed hardware (that owns its entire stack) even be legal to sell?
You can have both ways. You can sell, but after 1 year (or 2) it becomes open.
> Should closed hardware (that owns its entire stack) even be legal to sell
Yes (practically), but with a small exception.
If you are the only provider of the hardware. For example if you own a single patent protecting any component of the hardware. You are the sole manufacturer of any reasonably unique component of the hardware. You are the only manufacturer putting components together in this combination. Etc. Then it should be illegal. It should be an anti-trust violation. You are using your monopoly on the hardware to create a monopoly on the software running on the hardware. Moreover attempting to do so should constitute patent misuse and invalidate any patents that you previously owned on the hardware [1].
If the hardware is completely commoditized, consumers have the option to buy practically identical hardware from a competitor, then it should not be illegal. It's hard to come up with examples of such hardware
[1] Patent misuse is a doctrine where if you attempt to use a patent to create a monopoly on something else, you lose the patent. It is rarely but not never used by the courts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_misuse
(I acknowledge this is a fairly extreme position, and that it is partially created by motivated reasoning. But it is the most principled position I can find to reach the conclusion that I want)
> Should closed hardware (that owns its entire stack) even be legal to sell?
No.
> You can't argue that Prima Cinema should not be locked down (claiming anti-competitive behavior) because the paranoid film studios wouldn't even license their content if it wasn't.
You can actually. They demand this kind of DRM because they know the customer would sooner say yes to it than not get the movie. But that's only because they're in the better bargaining position as the only source for the movie -- it's leveraging the copyright monopoly into perfidious control over the device market. But they still, at the end of the day, want your money. Which means that if the thing they're insisting on is prohibited, they'll make it work without it.
Consider the general argument you're making. It's basically that if DRM was prohibited by law then Hollywood wouldn't distribute movies at all. But that's farcical -- they would have no revenue. Instead they would just distribute them without it, because they'd have no other option.
Okay, but what about your edge case, the really fancy one with the hardware anti-tampering. Wouldn't they at least not have that one? Still no, because it's still the same thing. The only point in having that is to try to push back the day when the movie is on all the pirate sites. But it's only to push it back while they're still distributing it using the higher margin distribution channels. If DRM was prohibited whatsoever then they couldn't use it there, so they would distribute it even there without it because otherwise there is no high margin early release market to protect.
Which makes me think, what prevents me from putting a lens in front to the projector and directly imaging the projection into a camera sensor? Modern cameras can record lossless 48bpp equiv. video in 4K, it would pretty much be a 1:1 copy given sufficiently sophisticated optics.
Which leads me to the conclusion that the only reason why no one is ripping movies using Prima Cinema projectors and commodity grade hardware is the price. If they removed DRM it wouldn't make much of a difference, the limiting factor is already the price of the projector.
I honestly think that DRM is very much like antivirus in the sense that the only reason anybody buys into it is that the companies who develop it pay sales reps to convince corporations that it's something they need when it's really just poisonous snake oil and paying money to someone to shoot you in the foot.
This is how some video game demos are managed. Subtle color variations are used throughout the game window to uniquely finger print each copy of the game during media blackout.
Well, there's some practical considerations - getting the refresh rate sync'd up, avoiding or filtering moire patterns out, getting the colors and such just right, things like that. However, it's possible enough that most theater projectors already have DRM restrictions that shut the system down if you start fiddling with the image path. The password to authorize an image path change is only handed out to supervisors. Evidently, access to such codes were so uncommon that, during the 3D movies era of last decade, most projectionists wouldn't bother swapping out 3D stereographic filters for 2D showings because it would require getting management involved.
Modern cameras will actually automatically sync their shutter rates to any flickering light sources. As for colors, they are designed to let you apply lookup-table based corrections by providing huge amounts of color information you can correct later.
Crucially, this approach wouldn't trigger anything because all of the equipment would work outside of the projector. You would add the lenses and camera aligned and just after the projector. In effect, the system would take the place of the screen in the image path. I don't know of any protected image screen that can detect tampering.
> Should closed hardware (that owns its entire stack) even be legal to sell?
I think the problem here arises not from the DRM (which I tend to believe is OK for clear cut cases like the above movie player), but from the universality of the smartphone device. Because of this universality, the phone is in a way "essential", so the "contract" you (as an end user) have with Apple is not able to encompass every use case of the device.
In this particular case, you might have bought the phone/tablet with the sole (or main - I know kids) purpose to play Fortnite on it. Now, because of politics, you can no longer use the phone for your initial intended purpose. Not because something you did, but because of something Apple and Epic did.
So it should be either forbidden for Apple, or they should be obliged to fully refund you, because the device is no longer usable for the original purpose you used it.
In an "ideal" world (with much less regulation), Apple would not be protected from such litigation (and now they are, because of the fine print) where users demand refund because of such things, but the world is not ideal. The regulation is there, so we should extend it onto Apple, who need to be "reduced" to something more like a utility company.
They maybe should have to say their product cannot be modified on the tin. That'd let consumers choose. It'd also let competitors advertise an advantage, if it is such.
I am in favor of right-to-repair, but that's a different concern than what you're asking about.
This particular company decided to grow financially by cutting apple from a revenue stream. Apple invested billions of dollars in rnd, PR , legal protection, security, servers etc... Behemoth like Epic decided to ignore that, at the same time still using apple services and platforms. Such a simple case to me. The funny part is I never heard from small company that gain traction from apple store that it's bad. It's a social lift for them. But once you grow , you forget about it... and start complaining...
And they didn't even start with the lawsuit, they just broke the terms of service explicitly and then surprise pikachu faced when Apple slapped them down.
They weren't surprised at all by the lawsuit. They wanted a lawsuit. The only person who could change the TOS was a judge and Epic could only sue if Apple enforced the TOS on them.
Plus, if you don't think Epic had already talked to lawyers and lobbyists in Washington DC and already been given a heads-up that they might win, then you don't know business that well.
They were well prepared for this, with what must've taken months of planning. They added the payment option, got banned, filed the lawsuit and published their 1984 parody ad, all within 24 hours.
> but the benefit [the App Store arrangement gave] to developers was much less clear cut.
I disagree, I think the fact that so many developers built apps for iPhone supports my point. Apple gave developers everything they needed, users with dollars to spend.
Those users would always be there. If there was another App Store instead they would be there. If there were app stores competing there would be users with dollars to spend on both. The App Store doesn't provide users because it does something special, it provides them because there is no other option to install apps on your expensive smart phone/tablet without using it.
A pretty well-thought out article, given the inflammatory nature of the subject matter.
I think Apple is right on the line. But I don't see a good argument as to what their doing is being anti-competitive. ~2 million apps are on the app store. Charging a fee for giving developers a huge market that spends money is not exactly unfair. And the rules of engagement are generally applied equally to everyone - the exceptions are noted by the guidelines.
What would make it fair? Lowering the fee? If that were the case, then the problem isn't anti-competitive behavior. If it's the rules, what would fair rules look like that don't harm the end user or the product?
What actual harm is Apple inflicting on the market by their behavior? Developers make less money? That isn't good enough.
actual harm => consumers end up paying more for the apps because the app developers have to increase their price to cover Apple's cut (which is more like a shakedown).
I don't see any reason why a company needs to pay any percent of their revenue instead of a flat fee. You pay a % of revenue when someone is your partner or an investor in your company. Apple is neither. In fact, they've shown to be the opposite of a trusted investor/partner as they've copied successful apps and integrated them into their own platform.
The App Store should be a fixed fee, something like $19/month, for your app to be on sale there.
On another note, regarding your first comments, in the late 90's Microsoft went through DOJ depositions and demands for breaking up simply because they bundled Internet Explorer with their operating system. It didn't charge Netscape money for access to Windows and IE wasn't generating any income. But the furor at the time was huge and the anti-MSFT attitude has prevailed to this day. Why not the same feelings for Apple who's made this far more extreme and far more anti-competitive.
> actual harm => consumers end up paying more for the apps because the app developers have to increase their price to cover Apple's cut (which is more like a shakedown).
So what? All markets work like this. Food prices go up whenever there fuel prices increase, so the grocery store increases the cost to cover the higher cut taken by the supply chain. Apple created this entire market - they could've been far more anti-competitive than they are. Why should the free advertising, access to a market that has users that spend more on average, be free to anyone?
> I don't see any reason why a company needs to pay any percent of their revenue instead of a flat fee.
You're the one making the claim - you have to prove why it's wrong to charge a percentage of revenue first.
The Internet Explorer argument just doesn't apply. They had market dominance - Apple does not.
> So what? All markets work like this. Food prices go up whenever there fuel prices increase
If it were a monopoly then anti-competitive practices, that would result in price increases, would be illegal .
> Apple created this entire market
It doesn't matter if they created the whole market. That is completely irrelevant to the legality of anti-competitive practices. Now, they are a monopoly, and they are no longer to allowed to engage in anti-competitive behavior.
> they could've been far more anti-competitive than they are
The idea that they could do worse, is not an argument against something as for why it is not bad.
Apple could do many things that are worse than what they are doing now. Maybe, in the future they will hire assassins to kill anyone who does not own an iphone. But that hypothetical world, does not make the current world any better. It is not an excuse.
> Why should the free advertising, access to a market that has users that spend more on average, be free to anyone?
Because the purpose of laws are to help consumers, not to protect apple. The reason why the law should force apple to allow competitors, is because by doing this, this helps consumers.
> They had market dominance - Apple does not.
Apple absolutely has market dominance over apps that are sold on the iphone. They prevent competitors from running app stores on that platform.
It's not a monopoly. There is an alternative which dominates the market share. This simply is not a monopoly.
> Apple absolutely has market dominance over apps that are sold on the iphone.
This is just wrong. This would hold true if no alternative exists. There currently is not an app the iPhone offers that isn't matched in functionality anywhere else.
> This is just wrong. This would hold true if no alternative exists. There currently is not an app the iPhone offers that isn't matched in functionality anywhere else.
There is no alternative for buying apps on the iPhone.
> It's not a monopoly. There is an alternative which dominates the market share.
Yes it is. There is not a single alternative, for buying apps on the iPhone. They control that market, and have 100% market share over the iPhone app store market.
Which market? 3rd party software on a computing device? Sorry, that was dozens of years prior. Packaged apps on a mobile device? Sorry, I had those on my Treo in 2001. They haven’t really created any market, they just created a software monopoly on their hardware using existing ideas.
Aside from trying to be smug, I'm not sure the point of this comment.
No one cares that a small handful of people owned a Treo in 2001. It wasn't relevant then and it isn't now. In any case, if it isn't a market, then there is no case here, so not sure what your comment means for you.
> They haven’t really created any market, they just created a software monopoly on their hardware using existing ideas.
The monopoly where the competitor has far, far higher marketshare. I'm sorry, I've never read about that in the history books.
Treo’s were extremely relevant! It was a device that early adopters loved and inspired Apple to make the iPhone which “crossed the chasm” into the mainstream. (Read “Crossing the Chasm” to learn about early tech and its influence)
There are no competitors on the iPhone. The iPhone isn’t the anti-competitive issue, the App Store is! No one has a market share but Apple on that front.
“consumers end up paying more for the apps because the app developers have to increase their price to cover Apple's cut”
I think it will be hard to defend that argument in court, given the historical development of prices for apps.
Also, Apple will likely argue that prices could go down because they provide developers a huge market relatively cheaply, so that they can make up Apple’s cut with increased number of sales.
I also think one could argue Apple is your partner when you publish on the App Store (evil partner, maybe, but developers sign a contract with them)
Many customers and developers want the service the App Store provides and are willing to pay for it.
I.e. it’s not a shakedown, it’s a service just like any other.
But even if you argue that people should be allowed to have someone else provide a different service (which is technically problematic since they will still need to use Apple’s API’s), there is no reason to presume that more stores equates to lower prices.
It doesn’t in streaming for example, because of exclusive content.
It also means developers will need to support multiple stores and pass that cost on to the customers.
They might want the App Store, we don't if they're willing to pay for it because they have no choice.
And it's absolutely a shakedown. It's not a service, it's a requirement. A service implies app developers have options. They do not. Apple could raise the price to 70% of the revenue and app developers would have no choice but to pay. It's not much different than the mob saying "it'd be a shame if this business went away for a while, wouldn't it" and demanded protection money.
What did Internet Explorer have? DOMINANT MARKETSHARE. That was the problem - not that a program came bundled with software. Such a basic fact conveniently ignored because Apple Bad.
> Without Internet Explorer Windows is literally just a piece of software.
A piece of software that can do many things - an iPhone without apps just doesn't work. Apps run everything - from making phone calls to keeping notes. Windows without internet can still be used. Bad analogy.
Internet Explorer didn't have dominant market share; Windows did. You say the problem wasn't that a program came bundled with software, but that was literally the heart of the antitrust action: the government contended that Microsoft was using their defacto operating system monopoly of Windows to give IE a leg up on non-bundled competitors.
> An iPhone without apps just doesn't work.
Sure, but an iPhone without an App Store works fine -- that was literally the way the first iPhone shipped, remember? -- so I'm not quite sure your analogy is a slam dunk here. :)
The iPhone without an App Store doesn’t work fine to install software.
Remember - they originally said - just use web apps, but developers demanded a way to install software, and Apple developed the App Store in response to that demand.
I'm super amused by people bemoaning Apple's cut of sales on the App Store. I remember mobile software before the App Store. Buying software for a Palm or PocketPC device was a fucking shit show.
There were multiple competing stores and sometimes even the developer's own site. The prices were ridiculous, partly because everyone had to implement their own payment and distribution systems. If the software didn't work or there was a problem it was rare to get a refund. Most of the time your contact info was readily sold to "partners".
Apple's cut of sales for the service they provide is pretty small compared to the costs of doing it yourself. There's many of thousands of developers that are enabled by the fact they don't need to host their apps, handle billing, or handle user accounts and PII.
If you seriously think prices to end users would decrease if Apple took a smaller cut you're deluding yourself. If developers are making sales at current prices there's zero reason for them to drop prices even if their overhead drops. Prices are set by what the market will bear and only have their lower bound set by the developer's overhead.
That's the entire issue right there. When Apple is the market, then they can make it whatever they want. If Apple has to legitimately compete with other "App Stores", then the market will find a lower price than 30%.
Play is also an anti-competitive monopoly as well. Google was a bit smarter about avoiding potential anti-trust though, because they at least give the illusion of choice with 3rd party app stores.
There basically is not a competitive market for either app marketplace right now, so an accurate price can't be determined. Allow 3rd party marketplaces to be installed as easily as any other app and I'm certain prices will come down from where they are today.
The choice is important. About 20% of apps on my Android phone come from F-Droid marketplace distributing free software and some of them are not distributed via Play store at all. And then there are Amazon App Store, Galaxy Store etc. (device-manufacturer stores) https://fossbytes.com/10-google-play-store-alternatives/
The fee should be whatever would the fee would be, if there were multiple app stores allowed on the iPhone.
I expect that number would drop to around 10%, for "premium" app stores, such as if Steam or the Epic app store were allowed on iPhones.
But also, I would expect there to be even lower priced competitors. Payment processors charge 3% of sales, so a competing app store could get pretty close to around 3%, if they wanted.
So the answer is 10% for "premium" app stores, and for the app stores that instead only doing payment processing, the price should be 3%.
> Apple's cut of sales for the service they provide is pretty small compared to the costs of doing it yourself
Pretty small? I think Epic, who makes billions and billions of dollars in overall sales (though revenue is unknown specific to Apple devices, but fair to say at least $100M), would strongly disagree with this point.
I couldn't possibly care less if Epic only makes $100m instead of $130m. Why are you carrying water for Epic which makes stupid amounts of money selling props for in-game toons? I'd be sympathetic if they sold anti-cancer drugs or built low income housing but they sell fake things to people in their own captive market.
This is such a condescending and arrogant response. What makes you the moral judge over whether Epic deserves to make the money they do? Who put you in charge of deciding what "good causes" or "bad causes" are? You might not care, but they have employees who have families that could use the money to better their lives. What the hell does Apple need the extra $30M for? You come off as a bitter and jealous person with this comment, perhaps upset at their own business failures.
2020 is very different from 2008. Palm and PocketPC devices were "organizers" and not primary computing devices (as smartphones are today, for some users), so there was a lot less at stake back then.
Additionally, companies like Stripe have made integrating payments _way_ easier than it was back then. Hosting downloads is not difficult either. As noted in the Stratechery article, developers not only give up 30%, but give up a customer relationship and can't even issue refunds! They can't do upgrades, either. It's not just the 30%, it's the flexibility in payment models as well.
I don't know that prices would drop, but more developers would have a sustainable business.
Late model PDAs and early smartphones (Treo, Blackjack, N95, etc) were capable devices. The paid software for these you'd see were office suites, PIMs, e-mail clients, and games. Of course these weren't as capable as 2020 devices but we're not talking early Palm Pilots.
Payment processors like Stripe aren't new, there was PayPal, Kagi, and others before 2008. Handling payments is a non-trivial task for a small developer, the same goes for handling user accounts/data. They're not insurmountable problems but they're a lot more effort than Apple or Google just sending you money when people buy your app.
Hosting is worse than payments as it costs the developer money and keeps costing money. If your app gets a popularity spike instead of getting a revenue spike you get a huge hosting bill.
I think you've got it entirely backwards, more developers have sustainable businesses because of the App Store than without. Payment processing, hosting, managing user data? That shit is easy for big companies or it's an extant expense so mobile app sales aren't adding real overhead. So for Microsoft, Adobe, and Epic those aren't problems. They could easily sell their stuff without the App Store/Play Store and in fact currently do so. For the many thousands of small developers that aren't Epic payment processing and hosting are big costs as is advertising they need to even be found. Before the App Store mobile app aggregators charged money to get listed and wanted bribes to be featured.
Epic et all might see their overhead drop from Apple's 30% to maybe 10%. They pocket the extra revenue and prices don't change for consumers. For many thousands of developers their overhead goes from Apple's 30% to 50-60% doing it in house. So Epic rakes in even more money and small developers get the shaft.
> actual harm => consumers end up paying more for the apps because the app developers have to increase their price to cover Apple's cut (which is more like a shakedown).
Out of all the arguments against Apple's App Store policies, this has always struck me as the weakest. I remember app prices for Palm Pilots, and for that matter, app prices in general before the App Store came along -- and they were way, way higher. In 2005, a program like Pixelmator for iOS would have at least been $40; on iOS, it's $5. And how much do you think LumaFusion, a multitrack video editor, would have gone for in 2005? If it had been under $200 reviews would have been calling it a steal. It's $30. And that seems insanely high.
So the problem with the "Apple's cut artificially inflates prices" argument is that prices have demonstrably been in free fall during the app era. We can argue that LumaFusion would be able to cut their price to $25, or Pixelmator to $4, and that somehow "proves" that developers have to increase their price, but it's not super compelling.
> I don't see any reason why a company needs to pay any percent of their revenue instead of a flat fee. You pay a % of revenue when someone is your partner or an investor in your company. Apple is neither.
Well, Apple is acting as a payment processor, and payment processors charge you a percent of revenue. I don't think anybody's gonna run credit cards for you for a flat $19 a month fee; if Apple charged only what Stripe did (30¢ + 2.9%), LumaFusion's fees would be over $19 on their 11th copy sold per month and Pixelmator would hit it on sale 65.
> consumers end up paying more for the apps because the app developers have to increase their price to cover Apple's cut.
I don’t think so. When we determined our app’s monthly price we have A/B tested several price like $5/month, $8/month, $15/month. And we have chosen the one that we earned most (It was the expensive one). If the Apple’s cut will become 10%, we won’t change our price because would earn less. Therefore, Apple’s cut won’t change most of the apps’ price.
Apple doesn't have a monopoly, people are free to chose other platforms. You can't claim harm on end-users due to higher costs when literally every single costumer of Apple chose their product and ecosystem despite it being more expensive.
> Why not the same feelings for Apple who's made this far more extreme and far more anti-competitive.
Because you can't abuse a monopoly when you don't have a monopoly. Apple isn't being anti-competitive. In fact by the very nature of your argument that they are hurting themselves by having high prices and are welcoming competition as consumers could chose cheaper alternatives, which most actually do as Apple only sits on like 14% of the market. Microsoft on the other hand tried to misuse their near 100% position one market to corner a different one in order to kill of competitors and take it for themselves.
> On another note, regarding your first comments, in the late 90's Microsoft went through DOJ depositions and demands for breaking up simply because they bundled Internet Explorer with their operating system.
The crucial point of the Microsoft case was that their operating system had 90% market share, which Apple does not.
At least in terms of their banning xCloud, they recently filed a patent to make their own cloud gaming service. I would definitely say that sounds anti-competitive to ban competitors that are ahead of you from your store, so you have time to make your own.
It depends on the reason for banning xCloud and if their product becomes market dominant. The rules are there. It seems unfair to punish Apple for someone else breaking an agreement.
Ah, so the key to a monopolistic company being a monopoly is that we have to wait for them to become a monopoly elsewhere, after they've banned their own competitors from the space they just entered/want to enter. Makes sense.
Having a large customer base is not an argument against them being a monopoly. Quite the opposite, it is evidence of it being a monopoly.
> Charging a fee for giving developers a huge market that spends money is not exactly unfair.
It is unfair if they are engaging in anti-competitive practices to prevent competitions from competing.
> What would make it fair? Lowering the fee?
Allowing alternative apps stores to compete against apple's would make it fair, and giving users the option and ability to do this, easily. So, specifically I should be able to install a Steam, or epic app store, on the iphone, without apple having any ability at all to stop me, or take a cut.
> What actual harm is Apple inflicting on the market by their behavior? Developers make less money? That isn't good enough.
Of course it is. If you have a monopoly, then the harm is on the customers of the market. That includes both buyers and sellers. That is how monopolies work.
And also, it is not just developers making less money. Instead, the monopoly place in the market, prevents developers from passing on the savings to the consumer.
So the fee would have to be literally 0%, for me to even accept the idea that consumers aren't harmed by it.
A monopoly needs to dominate the market. Apple is not, it does not dominate the smartphone or mobile OS market. People on here can't get past this basic fact.
> It is unfair if they are engaging in anti-competitive practices to prevent competitions from competing.
Which has been proven untrue - because there are 2 million apps on the marketplace. The rules are out there. I haven't seen a case where the rules were violated and nothing was done.
> Allowing alternative apps stores to compete against apple's would make it fair, and giving users the option and ability to do this, easily. So, specifically I should be able to install a Steam, or epic app store, on the iphone, without apple having any ability at all to stop me, or take a cut.
This is a significant risk to the product. Opening it up means that the quality of the product and consumer suffers. The competing app store is the Play Store. Feel free to switch to that OS.
> Of course it is. If you have a monopoly, then the harm is on the customers of the market. That includes both buyers and sellers. That is how monopolies work.
Sigh. It isn't a monopoly, but I'll humor you. Go ask any iPhone user what they think about the app store. I highly doubt you'll find any significant figure upset.
> This is a significant risk to the product. Opening it up means that the quality of the product and consumer suffers.
Thats still a monopoly on apps sold on the iPhone.
You are just giving arguments as for why you support Apple's monopoly on the iPhone app store market.
> A monopoly needs to dominate the market.
Also, related, there does not even need to be a monopoly for anti-competitive practices to be illegal. Anti-competitive behavior can still be illegal, even if there is not monopoly.
> the competing app store is the Play Store
No, actually. The play store cannot install apps on the iPhone. That is the market that Apple has a monopoly on.
Not when they're different markets. Even EU's antitrust case against Google found that Google "dominant in the markets for [...] app stores for the Android mobile operating system." Which means Apple is the same for iOS app stores.
It is anticompetitive because there is no other way to get apps on iOS. If they would allow side loading and other store apps I would have nothing against them
I'm sure they do but the situation is a bit different. Its a bigger leap for the consoles to implement a third party store than Apple. They don't allow unsigned code on consumer devices and the cert process is even more entailed than Apple. There's no tooling or infrastructure to install third party apps onto the consoles outside of the first party store. Apple has a ready made developer flow that is artificially blocked through provisioning profiles and the like.
If I wanted a PS4 game I could go to gamestop or walmart and buy it. I can buy games used. As closed as consoles are there's much more choice in where you get your software than iOS devices.
This is what screams "publicity stunt" to me. Especially the 2-tier pricing in the iOS app, whereas on consoles everyone[1] got the 20% discount even though Epic is still paying Sony/Microsoft their 30% cut.
The counter argument (from the article). Emphasis mine.
>[smartphones are] not a console you play to entertain yourself, or even a PC for work: it is the foundation of modern life
IMHO, this is a perfectly valid argument.
To be clear, I have no idea how that could be legislated, nor do I necessarily think it should be. I'm only saying that it's easy to see why they aren't the same thing.
Okay this is going to sound stupid but maybe someone else feels like me about it: I don't understand why Apple has to take such a big chunk from transactions of in-app purchases? Similarly Google.
Why 30%? Why not 5%? That feels like it would be more honest.
Partly because they can but also to prevent developers from gaming the system. Imagine a free app with an IAP to unlock features but Apple only takes 5% from the IAP.
Exactly this. If IAP was a different cut, all apps would go "free" overnight and require an IAP purchase to unlock most of the app.
Apple could try something like giving "consumable" IAP a different cut, but I'm sure devs would still try to game that too (e.g. having a consumable that unlocks the app for a set amount of time, rather than a permanent unlock).
So they should take 5% of regular app purchases, too. Problem solved.
Would hardly even create a dent in Apple's revenue and they apparently don't know what to do with the money anyway except put it in a giant pile, so no loss for society.
Part of the reason is that Apple & Google don't charge credit card processing fees. So for a $1 app, 30% is ~ their cost. Of course, that logic doesn't scale to things like $9.99/mo subscriptions and the like.
Apple could take out credit card processing fees and then charge 5%, but up until now they haven't had a reason to change. Perhaps we will see change here, who knows?
I assume their costs are just, Credit Card Fees, Infrastructure Fees (Bandwidth, Storage), Reviewers Salary. Not sure this adds up to 30%.
I think the real reason is that when the Apple store was started, they looked around at the current prices for "software distribution". Retail was like 70%, and other app stores; for example the Danger Hiptop / T-mobile Sidekick charged 60% for their apps store, and the carriers were worse. At the time, 30% was actually a lot cheaper than everyone else. Then I assume Google just copied Apple.
CC processing fees may exceed this. Just using Stripe [1] as an example, 2.9% + 0.30 per transaction means $.329 for retail CC pricing. Surely Apple gets a discount, but it's price of competitive alternative that matters.
Part of the problem with this whole market is that we're talking about zero marginal cost goods. Taking away frictional costs of transaction, distribution and support, the economic argument is for prices to trend towards $0. Hence the "race to the bottom" once the App Store made distribution "free" for free apps.
Apple has to pay for these somehow. They can either get the money by charging more for each iPhone or they can get the money from the real end-users of these products: Developers.
The iOS App Store supposedly grosses around $50 billion USD per year. Let's say that they were to halve their cut from 30% to 15% (very close to what players like Epic are asking for) - cutting Apple's take from $15 billion USD to 7.5 billion USD.
What is Apple spending 7.5 billion USD on such that they'd have to raise the price of iPhones? They have multiple other revenue sources as well, like developer program fees. None of those cover their costs either? Are you suggesting they're selling phones at a loss?
Programming languages, code editors and other developer tools exist for many platforms, without corporate backing. Developing apps for iOS would be very doable without Apple maintaining XCode.
But Apple are choosing to maintain XCode, not as a charity, but to make money selling phones -- $250 billion last year. It's not like they aren't getting paid for it…
The MAS fees add up to 3% with presumably similar service costs.
30% is just rent-seeking opportunism. 3% shows something far closer to Apple's true costs for all this when faced with the fact that the Mac App Store is (for now) not required.
This is something I hadn't thought about until the article pointed it out. According to the first link in google (https://www.braze.com/blog/in-app-purchase-stats/) the average iOS IAP in 2017 was $1.08. If you compare that to Square and Stripe's fee structure then the processing fees charged by the credit card processors is about 25%. This means Apple's taking for themselves much closer to a 5% cut which seems much more reasonable for the services provided.
Why Apple doesn't switch to a 5% + $0.29 structure is anybody's guess, however...
Why compare to Square's or Stripe's fee structure? It's ridiculous to claim "This means Apple's taking for themselves much closer to a 5% cut" as if Apple is paying a $0.29 processing fee per IAP.
If developers had a choice in payment processors, they could choose one with smaller minimum per-transaction fees, aggregate multiple payments from the same customer, try out subscriptions instead of microtransactions so the payment processor takes a smaller cut, etc...
Sorry, I am not arguing that developers shouldn't be allowed to pick their payment processor on iOS, just doing some back-of-the-envelope math that tracked with the quote from the original article that 30% is not much higher than the processing fees in the first place on a $0.99 transaction. This was a surprising revelation to me since I hadn't considered that there were often flat fees of ~30 cents from card processors.
Having worked at a payment processor, if you are a medium to large business, you can cut deals with payment processors for a much lower fee. They are very competitive, and of course, Apple would be a special customer given very generous terms (assuming Apple are not processing the transactions themselves which is possible). This does not even take into account Apple store credit via gift cards and the like or purchasing different apps in one transaction which eliminates or lowers the fees.
Apple provides a ton of services besides the credit card processing.
- 24/7 worldwide availability, instant payment/app download
- Easy re-install after deletion, you still own the app even if deleted
- Region restriction
- Separate app pricing by region
- Revenues paid to developer from multiple region currencies without
conversion fees
- Tax calculation and collection
- Customer refunds
- User rankings and reviews
- App store advertising in category listings
- Video previews of the app in operation
- Packaging of media content allowing developers the ability to load game
levels as needed. This allows a user to start playing your game quickly.
- App sales stats
Most of them are there either because local laws, or purely to benefit Apple, or both, e.g. region restriction helps Apple add content to their store, and circumvent local restrictions, if apply.
Call a spade a spade. Not even the mafia extorted businesses for 30%. I'd argue an act of digital eminent domain is in order. Imagine being a store owner and having to give a 30% kickback to your landlord.
Most shops do have to pay somewhere around 15% of the revenue in rent. In addition to the flat cost, there are tons of commercial leases that charge a percentage of profits on top of that.
well maybe the digital word needs Georgism too. The OP is exactly right, what Apple is doing is nothing else than the digital equivalent of extracting land rents.
If Apple, Google et al want to have control over their digital domains honestly instead of breaking them up let's just socialise the economic rents, or cap it at 2% or whatever.
well, for one get rid of laws that allow platform manufacturers to control who makes stuff that runs on their platform. (even stronger would be to mandate providing an open api or equivalent, but just getting saying interop trumped the dmca would be a great start). that would fix the issues with xbox, nintendo, playstation and ios immediately. best buy, game stop and steam aren't as bad, they don't have as many reasons they can't be competed against if someone was minded to.
Apple's share of the hardware market is practically fully saturated. They're not going to sell 30% more phones or computers. They need some place to expand and grow, and services/payment processing is where they're doing it.
When they launched the App Store Apple took a risk - invested in the systems etc needed to support it and I think that at the time it would be possible to justify 30% as reasonable given these factors - and was comparable with other stores.
I think it would probably be hard to argue, given the market structure now, that the return relative to risk is still reasonable. Normally other entrants would join and exert some degree of pricing pressure on theses fees. The Google / Apple duopoly means that this isn't working.
If I were an app developer who relied on in-app purchases, I would probably care a lot more. But as a consumer, I don’t, and I suggest the only reason consumers have to care is because app developers (understandably) want lower fees and are negotiating terms via PR.
At launch, Apple operated the App Store hoping to break even, and 30% wasn't quite doing it at first.
On a $.99 app, they still might not. I mean, they might, given economies of scale, but barely. Free apps incur costs with zero compensation. If all apps cost 99 cents, I don't think we'd be having this conversation. If Apple were still operating the App Store at break-even, I don't think we'd be having this conversation.
Apps with IAPs that are $9.99, that's a lot of extra profit. Apple might argue that they help offset all of the free apps, but obviously a company like Epic is going to feel singled out.
Apple is no longer only trying to break even with the App Store. They have openly stated that it is profitable, and that they want it to be more so. Epic and others with higher-than-99-cents sales don't like giving up so much, and I can't say I blame them.
The trouble is with the App Store that you can't charge more on the App Store than you do elsewhere to cover the costs of the App Store. This is perhaps the anti competitive part - if you could just pass on the App Store costs then the free market would reign.
Don't they need to pay for and take care of country specific sales tax for you? If you sold directly to customers within the EU for example, you'd be liable to pay ~20% VAT for sales to most countries as far as I understand.
I don't know if 30% is fair but there's value for sure in making tax returns easier.
When it started, I think they needed that kind of share, and (obviously) everyone agreed (because they came in droves). Now that the thing is successful, they could surely reduce it. What I want to see is a sliding scale. If you're an Amazon, Netflix, or Epic, based on your sales, it should be an ever-decreasing percentage. I feel like that's how most any business would shape their fee structure, and I don't understand why Apple won't even consider it.
>That means, for example, allowing purchases via webviews, particularly for products and experiences that are not zero marginal costs. Sure, that could mean less App Store revenue in the short run, but Apple would be well-served having to build more and better products to win developers over. At the end of the day, squeezing businesses that can stomach the cost of Apple development, both in terms of implementing in-app purchase and that 30%, by definition has less ultimate upside than growing the pie for everyone.
Apple shouldn't have to enable you to undermine their business with their own property. And no court would ever require them to.
The fact is that Apple hasn't changed the terms. It's been the same since the App Store began (technically it's become more generous to developers with the reduction in the fee for subscriptions after the first year). Meanwhile the iPhone installed base is magnitudes larger than it was in 2008, making it more lucrative for developers than ever. Apple would be well within their right to raise the fee, but the fee has only ever gone down.
That's addressing the moral argument of their business model. Legally, Epic has no case.
The Hey saga emphasized that Apple has multiple products interacting in a single app store.
* Screened apps - Apple only lets "safe" apps into the store.
* Discoverability - Apple in theory lets users find apps that they didn't know about before. Customer Acquisition
* Payments - Apple makes it easy to accept payments, for their 30% fee.
One or all of those are useful and great. Where I have an issue is when they use one (the required screened apps aspect) for force you into the others.
Hey wanted an app on the store, as an extension to their primarily web based experience. But they couldn't purchase just the rubber-stamp that says they're not malware and the app store hosting. They were being forced to buy into all 3.
That feels like using an existing monopoly (actually a duopoly w/ google's similar practices) to force developers to purchase products they don't want. Hey didn't want to accept payments via apple, but Apple's market power and decisions were focused on forcing them to.
If Apple had a yearly fee of $1000 (arbitrary number, maybe pay per download or device or whatever), for an app to simply be reviewed & hosted, that would be reasonable. They provide a service, businesses can opt into that. But they're taking their core value prop of "closed app store helps customers" and forcing their way onto "and now you have to pay us a portion of revenue".
> That feels like using an existing monopoly (actually a duopoly w/ google's similar practices) to force developers to purchase products they don't want. Hey didn't want to accept payments via apple, but Apple's market power and decisions were focused on forcing them to.
In order to sell goods in a place like Walmart, a manufacturer is subject to onerous terms. Why is the app store different than a retailer limiting access to their shelf space? I personally feel they are different but I cannot put into words why.
And Android, the only other realistic option, has effectively the same policies. Technically you can side load or use an alternative app store, but that means you don't get Play Services. And it's pretty impractical to develop apps without using those services.
Sure, in Mountain View, but otherwise the parent comment is correct. Charles Fishman’s book The Wal-Mart Effect[1] goes into great depth about how Wal-Mart suffocates smaller stores across America and turns around to arm-twist their suppliers.
Even a frequent walmart buyer can still order online. On the other hand most people only own 1 phone and thus are a captive audience which limits the ways developers can reach them.
We are talking about the same exact item with the same exact features, just a different brand
There is no "vendor lock in" for t-shirts
You are not forced to buy walmart special editions using Walmart payment gateway and vendors don't have to pay Walmart a 30% cut, the opposite is true, Walmart HS to buy at least N items and pay in advance to be able to require a special edition, even though they don't know if they are going to sell all of them
Because Walmart owns the physical space but apple doesn’t own the physical device.... Apple has set up shop on the real-estate (the device) that it sold over to the user. I’ve seen this argument plenty of times and it rings hollow to me every time.
So, if they started renting the phone to you and everybody else, having a single Apple-controlled App Store would be acceptable?
(That may not even be 100% hypothetical. They have lots of money, so can afford getting delayed payment for phones. They might even be able to become a global phone company, too, and rent you a phone and a network subscription)
This is how apps on phones worked for a really long time, each carrier ran its own App Store and in many cases you were renting the phone from them or getting it for free with your plan. Mobile carriers have begun merging into megacarriers over the last decade, but for a while you had a choice of at least 4 real carriers in the US.
Plus, you could unlock your phone (in some cases) and move to another carrier, which theoretically meant a different store! True freedom.
Of course actually using these phones and putting apps on them was MISERABLE, mostly because they were symbian and/or j2me apps
Suppose Apple and Google started making cars and put every other car company out of business. Both made the rule that if you bought their car, every product or service that went into the car also had to be purchased through them. You preferred the Apple car world to the Google car world. (All Google cars streamed your location and live video of you and your facially recognized passengers back to Google for analysis of who you did what with where and when, for your "convenience", and Google was the only alternative to Apple.)
Avoiding Google surveillance meant you could only buy an Apple car. You could then only buy gasoline at Apple gas stations. People in your town who wanted to change your oil had to pay an annual fee to Apple to even be considered, would have to pay 30% of revenue to Apple if approved, and could be put out of business at any moment with no recourse by whatever happened in secret behind the Apple fortress walls.
You as a car owner could not choose to buy tires or get "your" car painted or even get your car washed by anyone without going through Apple. You paid Apple for the car wash, because (no matter what you or the people washing your car would prefer) you were Apple's customer and the car you paid for was Apple's car.
For your "safety", of course.
A phone is as fundamental to the infrastructure of your life today as a car. Any company that could utterly control it would probably become a trillion-dollar company.
This is the first good analogy I’ve read for understanding Apple’s power in a way that non tech people can understand.
The problem with most comments shouting “30% is too high!” is that it’s impossible to throw out a better number that isn’t entirely arbitrary. The issue isn’t the number.
The issue is the mechanism by which that number can be enforced.
If we agree smartphones have become essential infrastructure, needed for the modern economy to function, we should not allow just 2 companies to have such power over it.
What makes people uncomfortable about this though, is that Apple has really done nothing wrong to get here. It’s just that their product and the App Store concept they popularized became so successful, that it’s now essential to modern life.
For the people arguing against regulation, I totally understand the uncomfortable feeling that creates.
This analogy only works if Walmart had a contract with 50% of Americans to buy everything from Walmart only and nowhere else. Those people would not be allowed to even grow their own tomatoes in their gardens, unless they pay Walmart $99 per year for that privilege.
It should be worth it to Apple to review and host these apps just to benefit the platform which leads to users purchasing their products. The current $99 fee I imagine covers their costs to review and host most of these types.
Screened, primarily to be in agreement with Apple's business interests. The user's concerns (privacy, functionality, avoiding other types of malware) are given far less (inadequate) consideration. Worse, they are lulled into a false sense of security due to such memes.
As a user I'd much rather pay for a service used on my phone through Apple Pay and not have to worry about how the service is handling my card details/personal information. If I want to cancel any subscriptions I can easily do it from the one place inside my iPhone as well. I agree it's probably not worth paying 30% extra for though.
A 30% just seems wrong to me. It just screams: we have a monopoly, if you want to build something that everybody around can you use, if you want to be a successful startup, you’ll have to give us a third of what you charge. There’s no other way: we’ll be your middle man forever.
Here's the thing. Even if you're OK with Apple (or whoever) controlling what you can run on your computers, this is a centralization of power that will be co-opted.
Let's say that Australia wants to ban consumer encryption. This would currently be difficult to enforce for PC software. But on mobile, this is easy. Just make Apple and Google enforce it! Make them ban such apps from their stores. Now you've achieved perfect enforcement on Apple hardware. Even on Android, where people could in theory side-load the banned apps, this would prevent those apps from achieving any scale or network effect.
That's what I think people are missing here. No matter how much you trust Apple, once the mechanisms for this kind of power are in place, you won't be able to control what happens next.
I don't think you are using two points that are similar enough.
If Australia bans encryption, you as a consumer who resides in Australia has a high switching cost (moving, new job, residence, etc.) and thus the consumer loses out.
If Apple starts to use that power badly... you can switch to a number of competitor feature phones with largely the same feature and app capabilities (Android being the most obvious)
In a market with 2+ competitors and where its low switching costs (moving contacts is quite easy these days, not a lot of deep 2-year contracts for phones/providers) this point doesn't hold true
The points are not supposed to be similar... you're missing the part of the parent's argument where one is used as a tool to enforce the other, when otherwise it would be difficult/impossible to enforce.
There is only one real competitor: Android. Google would very much like to have the same degree of control that Apple does over their ecosystem, but they're holding back for now so that they can point to Apple as being worse when the congressional inquiries heat up.
Feature phones are not real competitors to smartphones.
I'd argue there is a third competitor in the form of Huawei/Xiaomi. Despite fears of spying by the Chinese, which might be justified, their phones tend to have better prices all the way to the ultra market, and due to the fact that they want to allow you to sideload GsmCore and Play Services, will never be locked down.
>If Australia bans encryption, you as a consumer who resides in Australia has a high switching cost (moving, new job, residence, etc.) and thus the consumer loses out.
>If Apple starts to use that power badly... you can switch to a number of competitor feature phones with largely the same feature and app capabilities (Android being the most obvious)
It depends, network are effects are strong on Apple (iMessage) and maybe you already bought tons of apps and software that you can't transfer to Android or Windows.
"you can switch to a number of competitor feature phones with largely the same feature and app capabilities"
How much does that cost? How does it work if the apps you rely on are iOS only? How do I transfer my app and subscription purchases to my new Android phone?
Apple already actively censors political content in apps and actively works with Chinese government to censor content on Chinese AppStore.
A private company is already put themselves in plate to control software content that reaches millions of people without those people having the ability to choose anything else on their pocket computers.
> Apple already actively censors political content in apps...
This is true, which is why I surprised the other day when I found this app called "BLMovement" when I was looking around to see if anyone was making a completely distasteful joke...
Lest your comment suggest the author of this article isn't aware of this point, he has made this argument precisely:
> Whereas China needed to control country-wide Internet access to achieve its censorship goals, Apple and Google have helpfully provided the Indian government with a one-stop shop. This also, for better or worse, gives a roadmap for how the U.S. government could respond to TikTok, if it chose to: there is no need to build a great firewall — simply give the order to Apple and Google. Centralization, at least from a central government’s perspective, has its uses.
As part of selling on Apple's app store, you agree to follow the ToS. The ToS are very clear that you don't set up your own marketplace inside your app where Apple doesn't get a cut. This reaction (terminating Epic's account) was eminently foreseeable and completely justified. You do not fuck with Apple's cut. Don't like it, don't sell on the app store.
Epic thought they were big enough and valuable enough that they could bully their way through ToS violations. All the hip thinkpieces were saying that no matter what happens here Epic comes out on top, because Apple has everything to lose and blah blah.
Turns out nope, Epic's customers do need the app store after all, so Apple has the leverage here after all.
> But on mobile, this is easy. Just make Apple and Google enforce it!
This is exactly how Indian government has banned tiktok. They are never able to ban websites because the web is open. But apps they can ban easily because if Apple/Google say no, they will be squeezed.
Not versed enough in law to argue about this, but from a customer point of view, I hope that Apple wins as I would hate the iOS ecosystem to end up being a Wild West like the Android.
I am happy to pay for a premium to have peace of mind. To give an analogy it’s kind of like gaming console vs PC gaming where I am happy to sacrifice a bit of performance in exchange of getting rid of all shady game-specific launchers
You're not addressing the real issue here though - should Apple get a cut of the revenue from in game purchases? Once you download the game and are looking to purchase more of the game you've already let the app pass your "shady wild west" internal warning system.
> , it opens a loophole for everyone to avoid the 30% cut altogether.
But this is a good thing, not a bad thing. Literally the purpose of all this, is to get around this cut. It is better for developers and consumers, to take whatever actions possible, to support loopholes, that get around this 30% cut.
This is the explicit goal here, and the reasons why it is good. The loophole would be a good thing.
Closed hardware should be opened when unsupported... meaning if apple cannot support old hardware anymore they should open it by law. There are so many ipads and phones that could still be in use but arent because you need to run their software. We need to stop the planet to be an electronics garbage bin. Same when they start with the new chip on apple computers.
They’re discontinued, but they don’t prevent you from doing what you want to those old devices. Sure, a first generation iPhone/iPod touch only runs iPhone OS 3.1.3, but you can still jailbreak it and do what you want.
Epic has billions of dollars and a lot of customers. Microsoft has billions of dollars.
There are a wide range of other parties that dislike Apple’s policies.
Why don’t they build their own platform with their own exclusive and attractive content?
I can see two options:
1. A full blown phone. Hard to do? Perhaps, but if Apple and a Google really aren’t competitive, then it should be possible to take customers away from Apple over the next few years, especially if your device has the games that teens want and can’t get from Apple.
2. Don’t start when a phone. Make a gaming handheld with exclusive content - Epic’s super popular titles, plus XBox streaming. Sell it for $200. Basically an iPod for games, done right. If Nintendo can sell handheld consoles it’s obvious Epic and Microsoft can.
Then just build this out with phone functions, and a great browser for SPA’s etc, leveraging flutter, and eat Apple’s lunch from the bottom up in classic low-end disruption style.
Bonus: have an open bootloader - bootcamp style so that enthusiasts can hack the thing.
#2 seems like they could have a product on the market next year if they wanted.
I could see this strategy easily forking the market into iPhones for productivity and Epic devices for fun, and causing both segments to improve at a greater pace.
Apple simply isn’t unassailable if people are willing to put in the sustained effort needed to compete with them, but to do so will take a similar sustained effort over a similar time period to what it took them to obtain their position.
A Nintendo like gaming device with decent phone can be a viable alternative. Gaming i think generates a huge revenue for both iOS and Play Store. Those powerful cpu/gpu are simply getting wasted with current mobile games.
If they win the lawsuit they will (probably) be able to have more control over how they want to distribute their iOS apps.
If they lose, they won't have to deal with iOS anymore. Free players cost money too, and it's possible iOS is not so interesting to Epic with the %30 Apple cut.
Also, since their business model is based on microtransactions, most of their revenue must come from whales. These are committed players who will most likely go get their Fornite fix somewhere else. Specially if Apple wins. Most gamers will always side with Epic here.
It's a common meme that "With a free service you're not the customer, you're the product." Well, you may be Apple's customer at the beginning when you pay for the phone, but immediately afterward you become their product. You're being sold for the 30% tax. And to enforce that tax Apple maintains ultimate control over the hardware you supposedly bought, blocking you from doing things that would threaten Apple's revenue streams.
> "...immediately afterward you become their product. You're being sold for the 30% tax."
I don't understand the argument you're attempting. Apple doesn't sell my info "for the 30% tax." In fact, they charge app developers that 30% and then keep my data away from those same developers.
Apple sells access to your wallet, not data, similarly to how ad-supported services sell access to your eyeballs, not data.
To exclude other companies from accessing your wallet Apple must control the software running on your phone, which means blocking you from installing or modifying software on the device you supposedly own.
Developers then asks users 30% more so in the end users pay it. It's the same with increasing government taxes - at the end of the day, the end user ends up paying those. :)
Well, we could make similar arguments about something like Chromebooks. You pay for the hardware, but then Google expects you to store personal data in a Google cloud data center. Your data and access to you is the product. They use pre-installed software, e.g., Chrome, as well as numerous other read-only, auto-running programs, and automatic updates, as a way to enforce control, including testing user behaviour through Chrome. The situation is even worse on Android phones.
You could but you would be wrong because Chromebooks and Android phones support alternative methods of app distribution including both sideloading and competing app stores. Plus, the operating system itself is open source and the hardware is unlockable to run your own modified OS builds under your own complete control.
In particular, Fortnite is still available on Android with its new payment system after being removed from the Play Store.
Yes, but Google does not expect nor intend that users will use those alternative possibilities. The tests here are "Do they make it easy and encourage it?" and "What are the defaults?" The company does not support running an Android phone without using Google Play Store, does it? It is true Apple puts much more effort into locking users out, but to suggest because Google does not make that same effort the company is actually encouraging users (outside of Google) to run "modified OS builds" is not convincing. They neither encourage it nor expect it. Nor do they make it easy. The focus of the company is on encouraging users to accept the defaults. If those defaults were aimed at giving users "complete control" then there would be no need for the term "modified OS builds" because users would not need to make modifications. The defaults are aimed at sending data to the mothership. Google control.
If I want "complete control" I can use *BSD.
There are far more similarities than differences between the big tech companies. None of them offers the user anything approaching "complete control". Their employees must engage in no small amount of self-delusion to argue otherwise.
If Google is so different from Apple, why do they need a "Play Store" pre-installed on every mobile device. Where did they get that idea. Worse is that Google will use it to siphon more user data and feed its core business.
> The company does not support running an Android phone without using Google Play Store, does it?
Of course running an Android phone without the Play Store is supported by AOSP.
Your bias is very clear, but even you have to admit the fact that Fortnite is still available to any Android user who wants it, thanks to features that Google intentionally develops and enables in Android for the explicit purpose of enabling alternative app distribution methods.
If you are suggested I have an Apple bias, you are dead wrong.
BSD bias, maybe. ;)
Show me a mobile device Google is selling that has no Play Store.
As I said, the differences between the companies are very small compared to the similarities.
But employees and fanboys on both sides love to try to make the differences seem profound. They're not.
Fortnite, nor any other software, should not even have to go through a company "store" approval to run on hardware the user bought. Even you have to admit that, since you are the one mentioning so-called "sideloading". Jumping through these hoops should not even be necessary and you know it.
If you have a small pub in the middle of nowhere you can be a selective as you want. If your pub chain feeds 50% of the people in the country you damn right will have to be heavily restricted in what you can do.
It doesn't matter if it's monopoly or not. After you cross a threshold the rules should be different and it's just amazing Apple has been allowed to grow so big with basically no oversight.
Fully agree with this sentiment - if there is anything which becomes so common place like say a road, then I think there should be some kind of oversight.
Apple saying no to people being able to bring their own payment provider feels akin to saying the road provider only allows cars they vet, and then charge 30% car manufacturers 30% of the price of the car.
Its interesting if Epic's and Xbox's long term plan should be to enable cloud gaming support via the browser. Basically the Google Stadia approach (cloud based rendering and only controls/decompression of the rendering down on the device).
Basically figure out how to make mobile gaming available via Mobile Safari, Mobile Edge or Mobile Chrome browsers.
> My preferred outcome would see Apple maintaining its control of app installation. I treasure and depend on the openness of PCs and Macs, but I am also relieved that the iPhone is so dependable for those less technically savvy than me.
I think people overestimate the importance/benefit of such level of control over instalation of apps. Yes, Wintel was plagued by malware viruses but Mac/Linux/Unix wasn't. I don't think the benefit (protecting users from threats) outweighs the drawbacks (not having control of device, not allowing ecosystem of paid thinkerers to help Muggles personalize their devices) of having such closed approach.
I find the comparison that many people make to game consoles very short minded.
It should be clear to everyone that the smartphone will become more and more integrated into our lives to a point where at some point you cannot participate in society without a phone.
Sure, many things have alternative options or are limited to tech enthusiasts but other options become less favorable more and more.
The alarm clock in the morning, communicating with friends and family, paying for things, doing your taxes, unlocking your door.
Also unlocking your car is coming and there is even early talk of putting your driver’s license in your phone.
Getting driving directions, some people use their phone as an artificial pancreas system. (https://androidaps.readthedocs.io/en/latest/)
The smartphone has become the personal computing device.
A gaming console is something completely different, there I'm perfectly fine if a company wants to control the environment.
I would prefer an open system but Sony, Nintendo or Microsoft controlling the games I can play is not even close to the limitations apple creates with their ecosystems on society.
Google allows for third-party stores on their Android system, I would be doable for Apple to allow the same.
I can pay Amazon and Sony to take a cut from the developer.
I can pay retail stores to take a 50% or more cut, and then Sony takes a cut.
I can regain some of the cut that I paid to a retail store, so that the developer gets nothing, by selling it on Ebay or craigslist.
You are always buying the game from Sony, and Sony is always getting their cut. Your options are whether to involve other rent seekers or to just fuck over the developers completely.
While I don't like Apple's 30% cut on multiplatform/subscription products, I think Epic's real motivation here is to run their own App Store, build a bigger moat and get the profits themselves (they take 12% cut, 5% if you use Unreal Engine, from developers in their store). They also make exclusive deals, bribing developers with funding/marketing support, so that the games can only bought in their store for 6-12mo. Clearly they are not welcoming to competition themselves.
Buying games on PC now means that you have to install 5 different app stores which are usually slow, buggy and not that well written cross-platform code (pretty much like Fortnite itself).
Tencent is also 40% shareholder in Epic, and there has been criticism on Epic sending user data back to China.
> In early December 2018, Epic Games announced that it would open a digital storefront to challenge Steam by using a 12% revenue split rather than Steam's 30%.[20] Epic also said that it would not impose digital rights management (DRM) restrictions on games sold through its platform.[20] The store opened days later, on December 6, 2018, as part of the Game Awards, with a handful of games and a short list of upcoming titles.[21][22] The store was open for macOS and Windows platforms before expanding to Android and other platforms.[20] Epic aims to release a storefront for Android devices, bypassing the Google Play Store, where it will similarly only take a 12% cut compared to Google's 30%. While Apple, Inc.'s monopoly on iOS currently makes it impossible for Epic to release an App Store there, analysts believe that if Google reacts to Epic's App Store by reducing their cut, Apple will be pressured to follow suit.
I'm going to heavy push back against both-sides-isms here.
> I think Epic's real motivation here is to run their own App Store
Yeah, you're right. That is the outcome that we want. We want multiple stores on iOS. I thought advocates for this position had been really clear, but maybe we haven't been clear enough.
For the record, we want there to be multiple app stores on iOS.
> build a bigger moat and get the profits themselves
You're worried that Epic's store is going to eventually overrun Apple's and then Epic will somehow prevent other stores from being installed on iOS devices? You're worried that we'll get a bigger moat than literally not being able to run any code on the device that doesn't pass through Apple's review process?
What on earth would that theoretical bigger moat even look like?
> and get the profits themselves (12% cut, 5% if you use Unreal Engine)
I want to follow up on this in the context of your worry about moats. We live in a world where Apple has complete control over the app ecosystem, and you're frightened that another company might get control and... offer better terms than we have right now?
What specifically is the horror scenario that you're frightened of?
> They also make exclusive deals, where the games can only bought in their store for 6-12mo.
I can only imagine how upset you're going to be when you learn about how Apple Arcade works.
> Tencent is also 40% shareholder in Epic
Apple actively censors thousands of apps in China from the app store right now. You are worried about accidentally funding censorship through indirect means, and your response to that is to directly take the side of one of the censors.
> Yeah, you're right. That is the outcome that we want. We want multiple stores on iOS. I thought advocates for this position had been really clear, maybe we haven't been clear enough though.
Right, and the rest of us don't want that, and I also don't want games or apps that don't adhere to Apple's rules. You want another option of App Stores because you want don't want to pay for the user base that Apple created and maintains. You want to embed permanent location tracking in your apps, abuse user data, and not have to have your crappy practices out in the open when Apple shows the "nutrition scorecard" for your app.
That's not what I want on my iPhone. If your app doesn't conform to the App Store, then that's your problem, not mine. I'll vote with my dollars here. I want the iPhone just the way it is, even if that means fewer apps from bad actors.
> We live in a world where Apple has complete control over the app ecosystem, and you're frightened that another company might get control and... offer better terms than we have right now?
Yes that's exactly what I want. I want Apple to have complete control over the ecosystem. They've earned my complete trust.
Instagram and TikTok have been found guilty on collecting an absurd amount of data against user's wishes. How did Apple's policy prevent that? Also I don't see Apple banning TikTok or Instagram.
Also, notice that FB has done everything possible to gather information. Frankly, the NSA should just hire FB to do their work - it'b be faster and cheaper.
Locking stuff down is hard. Doing it with multiple app stores will be impossible.
If developers have a choice of app stores, then users have to install ALL app stores if they want access to the entire market. This happened with streaming services as well: when Netflix was the only prominent one, only that subscription was enough. Now you also need Amazon, Hulu, etc.
If enough users agree with the parent comment that the app store is the best way get software then companies can weigh that user base against the 30% cut. Why should we force the users who don't like the App Store (or want apps that are incompatible with Apple's business model) to suffer on behalf of the users who don't?
Nobody forces anyone into interaction with Apple ecosystem. People want to get onto App Store because they know they can benefit from it, financially big. And they subscribe voluntarily by the most fair means of it, by trading their money in exchange for the service under the rules that are mentioned prior the transaction takes place.
By omitting details and framing each transaction as an isolated incident, you can make almost any monopoly or anti-consumer practice sound like just another business.
Nobody forces anyone into interaction with Carnegie Steel. People want to use their steel because they know they can benefit from it, financially big. And they purchase it voluntarily by the most fair means of it, by trading their money in exchange for the steel under the rules that are mentioned prior the transaction takes place.
so, where's the flaw? The fact that somebody sometime ago named another corporation a monopoly by the same ridiculous criterion as "too big" and discharged it, doesn't make it anyhow right. Was there gatekeeping from the government for new players to enter the same market? Any quotas or tariffs by chance?
> then users have to install ALL app stores if they want access to the entire market
You didn't have access to the entire market when Netflix was the only store. You had access to Netflix's market, and all of the other shows that are currently being funded by competitors didn't exist.
You could still use only Netflix today if you wanted to. The only difference is that now you are aware of what you are missing.
How many developers have consciously chosen to abandon the entire mobile market because of how toxic it is, because of how tailored the market is to a very specific sub-genre of mass-market apps and games? How many developers have abandoned iOS because their games touched on political or serious topics that Apple decided weren't suitable for their store? Many of us are not interested in creating the types of apps that thrive on the current mobile app stores, so we've abandoned the mobile market entirely.
When you can only see a tiny part of the world, you think that you have access to all of it. Once the walls get taken down and you realize how big the world is, then you realize how much of it you didn't have.
I completely sympathize with the frustration of not being able to get access to some of this stuff. I won't sign up for Netflix because of their DRM and anti-consumer practices. There are some shows I can't watch because of that. Trust me, I get the pain.
But having only one streaming platform forever would have been worse. So much of the original content that's coming out on Netflix only exists because Netflix had to compete. There are really good shows that are HBO/Hulu/Disney+ originals. I want that media to exist, even if I can't personally get at it right now.
That would never happen because there will always be a market for other gatekeepers who want to try and build their own lock-in even if Apple charged nothing.
It also leads to competition. Without alternative streaming services, we'd have a Netflix monopoly, and there's nothing stopping them from increasing prices like what happened with cable monopolies.
Look at how Netflix is still raising prices even with less content.
You’re certainly not speaking for me and the many many devs that were harmed by Apple’s arbitrary application of rules. I also want so see people get wild and creative with apps. This doesn’t happen if you’re pre-censoring because you’re unsure if Apple would allow the app.
If the only people arguing about this lawsuit fell into either my camp or yours (ericmay's), I'd be a lot less irritated about this whole debate.
I fundamentally disagree with you, but at least your arguments are relatively internally consistent. At least I understand where you're coming from.
Give me a hundred people saying, "I like Apple being a dictator", just get rid of all the awful arguments about how, "there is no right side, and both of them are in the wrong."
I couldn't care less whether or not people like Epic in particular. If you spend all of your time getting picky about who can and can't advocate for you, then eventually people will stop advocating for you altogether.
For someone who has a massive Steam library, why wouldn't they want their Steam games to be available on iOS as well? (For those games that have ports.) I think there's a huge number of people in this boat.
>Right, and the rest of us don't want that, and I also don't want games or apps that don't adhere to Apple's rules.
Then don't install them? But I fail to see why you (or Apple) should be in a position to tell other users what they can install or not.
>You want another option of App Stores because you want don't want to pay for the user base that Apple created and maintains.
lolwat
Honestly, I don't even know what this is supposed to mean.
>You want to embed permanent location tracking in your apps, abuse user data, and not have to have your crappy practices out in the open when Apple shows the "nutrition scorecard" for your app.
This is a typical "think of the children" argument once more. Nobody forces you to install that tracking shit. You're free to not use apps that do that - e.g. get your apps from the Apple App Store, or make your own app if there is no such tracking free alternative. But those Apple App Store approved apps you seem to be so fond of... they do track you already ;)
>That's not what I want on my iPhone.
Then don't put use it on your iPhone.
>Yes that's exactly what I want. I want Apple to have complete control over the ecosystem. They've earned my complete trust.
Good for you. Nobody is stopping you from exercising your trust and only use Apple and/or Apple-approved software in the future.
> But I fail to see why you (or Apple) should be in a position to tell other users what they can install or not.
Because it's their platform, they created it, they grew it, they paid for its development out of their pocket, and they offered it as a unique market proposition that satisfies millions of users around the world. Apple doesn't force anyone into their platform, everyone involved are there voluntarily and solely because they know that it's beneficial for them to be on the platform.
I think a good option here would be for Apple to sell jailbroken developer phones for say an additional 30% cut up front and a nice DEV brand on the back for bragging rights. The additional fee hurdle would discourage those who just want a cheap way to get paid software and whatever additional expenses from helping with malware.
I don't own an iPhone in large part because I cannot install an alternative app store or install non-Apple approved apps.
> Right, and the rest of us don't want that, and I also don't want games or apps that don't adhere to Apple's rules.
Why do you care? If you don't want to install a third-party app store, then don't. The games available on Apple's store will continue to adhere to Apple's rules, and if you want that curation, you still get it.
> They've earned my complete trust.
This blind devotion to the Apple Way is baffling, especially considering how Apple-approved apps are not free of the tracking and user-data abuse you (correctly!) rail against.
> Why do you care? If you don't want to install a third-party app store, then don't. The games available on Apple's store will continue to adhere to Apple's rules, and if you want that curation, you still get it.
Apple users care because if non-App Store distribution methods are banned, then developers are forced to go through Apple's process to get access to them. You can see complaints around this thread about how bad Epic's store on PC is. On iOS, they're forced to use Apple's purchase UI, subscription rules, privacy rules, etc.
If it provides that much consumer value then people shouldn't be worried about a little bit of competition. This feels more to me like a certain subset of users siding with Apple because their values happen to align with Apple's avenue for generating profit from the App Store.
If Apple's goal was protecting their consumers, they could easily roll back the contested parts of their policy while protecting consumers AND still make a profit.
If Apple doesn't want competition, maybe they should address the reasons why people want that competition. If the App Store's terms and review policies were attractive to these kinds of developers, they wouldn't push so hard to have their own store.
And if the only policies that these developers had to legitimately complain about were the ones that protect users, they'd be laughed out of town. But that doesn't seem to be the case.
Epic's store has been incredible for PC gaming. Amazing for developers and quite good for consumers too. Taking down steam is the best thing to happen this decade.
> If you don't want to install a third-party app store, then don't
I've been seeing this argument a lot and it makes the assumption that allowing alternative app stores has no impact on people who choose not to use them. I don't think this is true.
An app developer may decide to only list their app on an alternative store because they pay lower fees and they can handle payments themselves. As a user you now need to choose between not using the app or giving your credit card information to the app developer you may not trust.
If you get value out of the current App Store rules, like the person you replied to, then there is absolutely a cost to allowing alternative stores.
> An app developer may decide to only list their app on an alternative store because they pay lower fees and they can handle payments themselves. As a user you now need to choose between not using the app or giving your credit card information to the app developer you may not trust.
But then this is competitive pressure for Apple to charge lower fees and allow apps to handle payments themselves, at which point the app would be back in Apple's store because the customer prefers to buy it from there. Everyone benefits (except Apple).
Meanwhile if you don't want to give the app your credit card number, you still don't have to. Refuse until they use Apple's payment method. If most users share your unwillingness then developers will still have to use a payment method you do trust. If they don't, what right do you have to constrain the choices of the other users?
> But then this is competitive pressure for Apple to charge lower fees and allow apps to handle payments themselves, at which point the app would be back in Apple's store because the customer prefers to buy it from there. Everyone benefits (except Apple).
No it isn't. The next moment Apple significantly lowers its comission, the same people will start whining about Apple "dumping the market" "to sink its competitors", and that it should be prosecuted under the same flawed anti-trust legislation. Been there, seen that: if your rates are too high you are a monopolist; if your rates are low you are dumping; and if your rates are the same as of your competitors then there's a "collusion".
If you’re a seemingly unstoppable corporate juggernaut, you’ll make enemies who think (rightly or wrongly) that your business practices are unfair, and they may successfully sue you using the laws intended to stop huge companies from engaging in unfair business practices.
I’m not sure what your point is here. That antitrust litigation is futile or counterproductive? The threat of it seems to be having positive effects already, looking at the front page of HN: https://techcrunch.com/2020/08/17/apple-expands-its-independ...
All very interesting questions, which Apple can raise in its defence to the lawsuit contending that the answer is “because of Apple’s unfair trade practices.”
It's counter-productive, it aims at punishing successful where mere "bigness" is used as the proof of "unfair". We don't know how much cheaper Apple products could be if it hadn't have to spread costs of lobbying its interests in Washington DC across their device prices.
> The threat of it seems to be having positive effects already, looking at the front page of HN
it depends on your reliance on that kind of services and varies greatly among the userbase. I'm using Apple since 2014, I've never needed to use any of these services, and I would prefer to have a device that is hard to disassemble and is cheaper to produce without a loss in quality.
It’s true that we can’t know how much cheaper Apple products would be if the antitrust laws didn’t exist, and that some people (and not only shareholders) benefit from or prefer a less competitive market. But conversely, we don’t know how much worse things might be if there were no laws to keep “bigness” in check. I am convinced by the history of antitrust that competition regulators do more good than harm.
> But conversely, we don’t know how much worse things might be if there were no laws to keep “bigness” in check.
We know it from history for sure, that "bigness" of an economic player is not a problem. There was no anti-trust legislation prior 1913, and Standard Oil was lowering prices for their oil and kerosine every year in order to compete with emerging oil wells developers, which kept popping up dispite Standard's dominance. [1] Customers, large and small, were benefiting along the way. But notice how governments-coordinated OPEC influences the prices and ability to enter the market:
I have no desire to constrain user choice. I do think there is value to users in putting some constraints on app developers. If you can accomplish that without also constraining user choice then that is the ideal outcome in my mind.
What people seem to be looking for here is some kind of purchasing co-op which can then have greater negotiating leverage with developers than an individual customer.
The problem is, Apple isn't that -- it doesn't have a duty to the user, it has a duty to Apple shareholders, so what it does will be for their benefit and not yours unless they happen to coincide. Which they won't in enough cases that you don't actually benefit on net. It's not in your interest to have developers paying 30% and destroying the marginal developer and providing other developers with fewer resources to make better apps, or to have apps rejected just because they compete with Apple's, or deterred from being developed because developers become unwilling to risk their investment being wiped out by the opaque rejection process.
Meanwhile if you want the purchasing co-op, go set it up. So that it's using the market power of all the store's customers to get concessions from developers (and Apple), but is a co-op owned by and acting in the interests of the users instead of a for-profit monopoly acting in the interests of itself. Unless Apple is preventing anyone from creating that, right?
This view is equally flawed in my opinion. How many apps do you not have access to because their business model doesn't align with giving 30% of the revenue away, or is entirely banned a la XCloud?
Honestly not that many that I can think of. XCloud is a notable exception and I hope Apple changes their rules on game streaming services. I think many of the App Store rules have a benefit to end users but the “no game streaming services” rule seems like a loss for everyone involved.
> An app developer may decide to only list their app on an alternative store because they pay lower fees and they can handle payments themselves.
This is literally the point of allowing healthy competition. If Apple wants these games on their app store, they should offer terms that are competitive with the hypothetical third-party app stores.
I’m 100% for Apple being pressured to have lower fees but less stoked about Apple being pressured to allow any payment processor. The root of my concern, I think, is that what is good for developers is not always what is good for users and alternative app stores will compete by doing what is good for developers at the expense of users.
> I’m 100% for Apple being pressured to have lower fees but less stoked about Apple being pressured to allow any payment processor.
You talk about developers if this is the only concern, but Apple is ultimately deciding it wants to not give money to certain social concerns or movements it doesn't like based on it's whim, and no corporation should have the power to do that for something as important as half of mobile telecoms.
Along those lines, you are no longer allowed to browse or post anywhere outside of HN, since your keyboard is only authorized for HN browsing and posting. Those other web-sites are insecure and HN has decided that you can no longer visit other websites.
Furthermore, Walmart has placed restrictions on all keyboards purchased from their stores. All online purchases made using their keyboards will now funnel 30% of the payment to Walmart.
Thank you for your business and absolute trust in our secure business model that we operate for your benefit.
And how does having multiple app store would stop anything that you want? It wouldn't stop the Apple app store from existing with theses restrictions, they would still be there. You would still have access to the apps that Apple consider fine for their stores, without installing another app store. Win-win for everyone.
> You want to embed permanent location tracking in your apps, abuse user data, and not have to have your crappy practices out in the open when Apple shows the "nutrition scorecard" for your app.
How about stopping theses practice on the OS side of the device? Apple already do that there... I agree completely that it's crazy when an OS allow stuff that we don't want to allow, it's not curation that solve this, it's actually a secure system that does.
Please stop speaking for others. I would certainly like to have the ability to install other sources for apps. Since I am part of "the rest of us", for any kind of "us" that came to my mind while reading your posting ("iPhone users" or "Apple customers" or "HN readers"), your statement is patently false.
> That's not what I want on my iPhone.
Then don't install additional stores. I also don't want most of the apps currently available in Apple's app store on my iPhone, but I'm far from demanding that they are to be banned and other people who want to use them should be prevented from doing so.
Also it's too sad you conspicuously skipped over danShumways question regarding the "bigger moat" - because I indeed would be interested in what moat you are imagining there, too.
Same to you and the GP here. And last I checked there aren’t a lot of customers really complaining about the App Store. It’s just big companies who, although they could have done this years ago, are now going against Apple’s customer protection because it degrades their crappy business practices.
> Then don’t install additional stores
Then buy a different phone?
I want any app that doesn’t follow Apple’s guidelines to be completely banned. Goodbye Epic. Nice knowing you. Don’t care. I don’t want apps spying on me, engaging in shitty business practices, scamming customers, and doing bad things. Apple is working to protect my privacy and safety. They’re not perfect, but that’s why I buy an iPhone and I want it to stay that way. If I wanted another App Store I’d buy a different phone, like you should.
Are you incapable of self control to the point of not being able to stop yourself from using a different app store? Or is it that you know Apple's cut is onerous enough that given competition, most the apps would leave? It feels like you want other users to suffer on the basis that your values happen to align with Apple's avenue for generating profit. If Apple were in it for your privacy and safety they could drop their cut substantially and kneecap most of the controversy.
>you're frightened that another company might get control and... offer better terms than we have right now?
While some people here might fall for this simple propaganda, I doubt the courts will.
It is totally expected of Epic that they will at the same time make the claim about "freedom" and "choice" while signing exclusive deals so that customers are required to install the Epic store if they wish to play certain games.
If the real issue is my freedom, then let me play Fortnite on the App store thanks. But it's not about my freedom. It's about your $$$.
You're certainly free to do so, and free to say whatever bullshit you think will help you, but you're not going to get a free pass from everybody here.
>What specifically is the horror scenario that you're frightened of?
Really? What sort of horror scenarios have happened with game installers on PCs and Android? Root kits. Spyware. Password capture. Camera activation.
And you know this, so all you are doing is letting us know that you think we are stupid.
> while signing exclusive deals so that customers are required to install the Epic store if they wish to play certain games.
A surprising number of people on Hackernews don't understand how Apple Arcade works.
This isn't just specific to the mobile market. As an Open advocate and critic of DRM, it's been frustrating to watch gamers suddenly get very concerned about store choice and exclusives over the past few years, after over a decade of watching them dismiss the same arguments against Steam.
I'm not going to read too far into that inconsistency, because I feel like doing so would skirt HN policies. But I will say that if you're worried about exclusives, giving more platform control to users and developers weakens exclusives, it doesn't strengthen them.
> then let me play Fortnite on the App store thanks
Epic didn't take Fortnite off of the App store. If it's about your freedom, then talk to the people who did take it off.
> What sort of horror scenarios have happened with game installers on PCs and Android? Root kits. Spyware. Password capture. Camera activation.
If you're going to try and argue to me that the games PC market would be better if we had fewer stores, then I need to see some seriously better arguments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24153897
I do not believe reality in any way backs up the argument that giving users control over what code runs on their devices has hurt the games market or made it worse for consumers -- even with the increased risk of bad actors.
> If you're going to try and argue to me that the games PC market would be better if we had fewer stores.
If you hang around gaming forums you'll see this echoed plenty. If I could buy every single game ever through Steam I would without hesitation. I don't want Origin or the Epic store but I don't get the choice.
I mean this isn't a super uncommon sentiment. Everyone has a preference but not everyone agrees. But regardless fragmentation hurts everyone.
I would be totally fine with multiple stores on iOS devices on the condition that every app is available on every store for the same price-ish (like you can't snub a store by making it 1000x because that effectively takes away choice).
> If I could buy every single game ever through Steam I would without hesitation. I don't want Origin or the Epic store but I don't get the choice.
I know that some gamers feel this way, but I wholeheartedly disagree. Epic's entry into the market has been good for the PC games industry[0]. We have more games now from more developers covering more diverse genres. We've even managed to pull a few exclusives off of consoles and back onto PC.
As to your choice, I bring this up in another comment[1], but people should focus less on the percentage of the market they have access to, and more on the overall size of the market itself.
You do have a choice, you could buy all of your games through Steam and ignore the games on every other store. The only difference is that now you know what you're missing. Before, you couldn't see the games that weren't being made or ported.
Yes, it stinks to have some games exclusive to one storefront. I understand that, as someone who refuses to install DRM on my computers, I have been struggling to deal with Steam-exclusive games for a long time. I know the pain.
But having a diverse market of storefronts means that there are a ton of new games that exist that wouldn't otherwise exist. And even if you only get access to some of those games, that's still better than having none of them.
Now, if you want to talk about ending exclusives entirely, I'm not opposed to that goal. But a diverse market is a prerequisite for a federated market. How do you feel today about the Android games that don't come to iOS specifically because of Apple's terms? How do you feel about the exclusives Apple is signing for the Apple Arcade right now? Having one storefront doesn't get rid of exclusives; it just means you've traded an exclusive storefront problem for an exclusive market problem.
What about people who want to play games on Linux? Since 2018 Steam has made playing Windows games on Linux absolutely painless. How is Epic Games going to afford doing projects like proton with their cutthroat revenue cut? They can't. They charge extra depending on the payment method and from what I have heard they don't even have regional pricing so the vast majority of people can't even afford games on that store anyway.
Having some games not work on Linux is preferable to having fewer games exist.
Again, I understand the pain. I am currently only running Linux. If a game doesn't run in Linux without DRM, I can't play it. I know as well as anyone how bad it feels to see a game that I want to play, and can't, because the developer thought that Linux wasn't a big enough market to support.
Even so, it is better that there be a broad market where I can't access all of it, then there be a narrow market that only fits my criteria and can't grow. Some of the games that don't work on Linux will get ported later, or people will figure out how to get them working in Wine. I want those games to exist because eventually I'll get access to them.
> How is Epic Games going to afford doing projects like proton
They won't. Other platforms like Steam will do that. How is Steam going to afford to get old DOS games working on modern computers without DRM? They won't, GoG does that.
The market is better served when there are lots of people doing lots of different things. It's those conditions that force companies to innovate and find new market niches that were previously underserved.
> Epic didn't take Fortnite off of the App store. If it's about your freedom, then talk to the people who did take it off.
This isn’t a good argument. Epic did something with the intention of getting removed from the store. Sure, Apple was the one who removed them, but Epic violates Apple’s TOS.
I think Apple clearly has their moat, but it's not the App Store. The whole stack, from hardware and OS, is their moat and one that makes them unique. Maybe I'm a fan, but the moat actually makes the user experience better. Epic's Store moat likely won't make anything better for anyone, expect for Epic.
I personally don't enjoy the experience of managing my PC games in 5 different libraries which all log out almost every day, need to be updated every week, push ads, newsletters, free stuff, crashes etc. So I'm not worried how Epic store would somehow overrun App Store, I'm worried how it would degrade the user experience. If people want to side load apps, they can use Android. But even on Android, most people are happy using the Google Play. As a consumer there isn't much benefit for multiple app stores, since every app store will be essentially exclusive to another, so don't really have more choice, just more app stores to manage and get the apps from.
My point was that Epic tries to make this some kind of crusade of freedom and developer rights, while their clear intention is actually get in to kingmaker position themselves that they can strong arm developers and competition to play by their rules (which they're already trying to do on the PC market). This fight is different from Hey's fight, who just wanted to have their app in the store and criticized the rules and way Apple manages the store. So I have very little sympathy for Epic in this and I hope the fail.
> I personally don't enjoy the experience of managing my PC games in 5 different libraries which all log out almost every day, need to be updated every week, push ads, newsletters, free stuff, crashes etc.
But, do you enjoy having 5 times as many games? Do you enjoy having a ton of games from GoG updated and running on modern Windows? Do you enjoy having DRM-free options for many indie titles? Do you enjoy that it's at least possible now to buy some console-exclusive games like Journey for the PC?
People get really bent out of shape about the idea that sticking to one storefront means they might need to skip games. But getting rid of the storefronts doesn't mean you'll get all of the games. It means those games that were made possible because of the other storefronts won't exist.
You are already skipping games on iOS, because those games aren't being made.
> Epic tries to make this some kind of crusade of freedom and developer rights, while their clear intention is actually get in to kingmaker position
Correct, and my point was that these are not exclusive goals. Allowing multiple stores to fight over users is explicitly the outcome that we want.
It's not a surprise to anyone advocating for developer rights that Epic wants to make a store and compete with Apple, because that is what we want them to do. None of us care about whether or not Epic is going to make any money in the process.
> which they're already trying to do on the PC market
I know that gamers hate Epic right now, but understand that when you look at the overall market and you talk to the developers themselves, Epic has been unambiguously good for the PC games market.
You want to talk about kingmakers -- it is good that the entire success or failure of a PC game doesn't need to rely on Steam's decisions. It is good that Steam is being forced to negotiate better terms for developers right now. It is good that Epic is funding indie games that otherwise would not have been made.
I don't like the exclusives either, neither as a developer nor as a gamer. But the exclusives are nothing compared to the amount of good Epic is doing right now for the PC game's market. If you're an indie developer and suddenly you can halve the cut that storefronts are taking from you? That's huge.
But, to circle back around to my main point:
> So I have very little sympathy for Epic
You don't need to have sympathy, you need to have self-preservation instincts. You don't get the luxury of choosing who the champion is to take on Apple, nobody who fits your moral criteria is powerful enough to do the work.
> Maybe I'm a fan, but the moat actually makes the user experience better.
But it doesn't. It makes it worse. I can't use cloud gaming services. I can't buy an ebook on Amazon or a comic on Comixology, without having to guess that I need to go to a website and buy it.
These are all bits of user experience that that are flat out better on Android, and the bad UI is directly caused by Apple's sole control of the app store.
But that pales in comparison to the rampant content censorship Apple causes (see Instagram admitting the clumsy, terrible policies that it implements are directly due to the Apple), or the geopolitical blocks that it causes on apps to help the populace of Hong Kong, or the apps that it permits (and blocks counter-software) to enable the misogynistic control of women's free movement in Saudi Arabia.
> As a consumer there isn't much benefit for multiple app stores, since every app store will be essentially exclusive to another, so don't really have more choice, just more app stores to manage and get the apps from.
There is a huge benefit to customers for multiple app stores - cheaper pricing, more competition on features and navigation, and most importantly editorial differences about what content will be allowed in the store. Don't agree with Apple's editorial censorship of code in the app store? Go and use someone else.
Apple will even be better off - without the coddling of the App Store being used to prop up it's poorer products it will actually have to make them good or have them die, much to it's long term benefit than turfing out poor quality software and the reputational damage that causes which has happened far too often recently.
> For the record, we want there to be multiple app stores on iOS.
Who is „we“? I know a lot of users that don‘t want or don‘t feel a need for other app stores. Of course, most developers would be glad to get alternatives or make more money.
> You're worried that Epic's store is going to eventually overrun Apple's and then Epic will somehow prevent other stores from being installed on iOS devices?
Not the original poster, but I would be worried that alternate app stores would as well lead to even more apps not honoring the user rights, spying on Location all the time, selling and monetizing user data and pushing even more IAP crap. Epic isn‘t really known as the Robin Hood of user rights and promptly, Spotify and Facebook, two other big players with black spots on their vests, called for the same. I have a hard time believing that everything Epic wants is just beneficial for the users.
It's this type of thinking that has caused me to have more freaking messaging and video apps on my phone so I can talk to everyone: Zoom, Skype, Meet, Meetings, Facetime, Messenger, Chime,...etc, etc. etc.
NO. I ABSOLUTELY do not want that. Freaking nightmare.
When that happens I ditch my iPhone and buy a flip phone.
Seriously - stop the insanity. There is no "choice" when we need to have every alternative installed in order to do the things we need to do. That's not choice - it's insanity.
But actually, there is a big difference - I can buy jeans anywhere. I can buy Levi jeans anywhere.
If I had to go to Macy’s so that I could get a shirt (with no alternative), and then had to go to Nordstrom to get socks (with no alternative), and then..... then yeah, that would be crippling.
There is a reason amazon and Walmart are so powerful - you can get anything in one stop.
Bundling is important. It’s why people buy Comcast xfinity cable + internet or have all their family on one cell phone plan - it’s reduces effort, stress, and cognitive load.
Apple vs Android is good choice. Having to go to ten app stores to get my apps is not - it’s just a pain in the butt masquerading as “choice”.
>So when a friend of yours wants to message you and you don’t have the same app, what happens?
I tell the friend to call, text or email me. Price doesn't have any bearing because the market on messaging apps has bottomed out, in part due to Apple's app store policies.
Wait, do we think the situation with Visa/MasterCard is good?
I'm discovering a number of people here who see the world very differently than me. I would have taken it as a given that most people would agree that it would be healthy for the US market overall if we shook up the payment industry and got some new options.
A lot of Visa/Mastercard's terms for businesses are really bad. There are entire industries that are being pushed out of the market right now. Not to mention that these cards come with a tremendous amount of user tracking that's basically impossible to opt out of if you want to buy anything online.
That's why people are throwing everything at the wall from Bitcoin to GNU Taler trying desperately to find any kind of Open alternative that might work for online micropayments.
The problem is not that Epic would be able to prevent other stores from being installed.
The problem is that if there are multiple app stores, it encourages a race-to-the-bottom for the app stores -- why go through Apple's store with all its vetting if you can release to the Epic store instead?
So, yes, the worry is exactly that another company might offer better terms to developers -- because sometimes, those terms don't matter to users (e.g. the cut between the app store and the developer), but other times, those terms are absolutely at a cost to the users.
If Epic has a way of offering multiple stores, while preventing that race-to-the-bottom from impacting the user experience, it'd be wonderful. But that doesn't seem to be what Epic is pushing for; Epic seems to be pushing for their own profit at a cost to Apple (which is fine, IMHO -- it's just business) and to the iOS ecosystem (which is much less fine, IMHO).
I suppose one way to counteract this is for apple to license app stores and they have to have the same standards as apples store. I have no desire to have low quality stores on my phone, thats why I like the iPhone - I don't have to worry about all the nonsense android phone owners do.
So many comments here to this effect and they're all so puzzling. I'd love to hear exactly what "nonsense" I'm supposedly worried about all the time. Relying solely on Google's store is perfectly usable. I wish I could find data on this but I'd confidently assert the vast vast majority of (non-Chinese) Android owners never use alternative stores.
The first one that comes to mind is how many android phones are out of date - upgrading to the latest version of android isn't a priority for mobile distributors and is a lot of work on some phones. So this causes a larger attack surface, Apple is very careful to make their phones all have the latest iOS - also makes it easier to develop to.
Another issue is trust - who knows what google does with your data, their business model includes exploiting your personal data, Apple has a vested interest in keeping your personal data secure and doesn't keep the keys to it - its their business model.
These two are enough for me, theres also a lot more reports of android apps with exploits - a google turns up a lot of them, less so with iPhone, and apple reacts if there is. Maybe these issues have been addressed in android, if so it's not something Google appears serious about, if they were then they'd be advertising how secure their phones are and how they don't touch your data - apple is very serious about keeping my data personal and has invested a lot of their business integrity in that.
Edit: tl;dr - googles business model is built around exploiting your personal data, apples is built around keeping your personal data secure
I if was Chinese then I probably couldn't say anything about it, but not sure how this is related to the current discussion - not much any of us can do about china - including apple
Apple's business model is also built around exploiting your personal data, not at the same scale sure but still. Just look at the Siri recordings scandal
> I suppose one way to counteract this is for apple to license app stores and they have to have the same standards as apples store.
Absolutely not - that's the entire point of this action. Apple's "standards" are to block upgrade pricing and force developers down a path of microtransactions. Do we really want that to be carried over to other stores? Do we want other stores to have to live with Apple's decision to block apps to help dissidents in Hong Kong or the Middle East communicate?
A single point of decision-making on code always leads to terrible geopolitical outcomes. Always. That is the important part of what is happening here.
If alternative app stores are consistently lower quality than Apple's app store, why do you think consumers wouldn't notice them and avoid those stores?
We want a few more families to move into your house. We don't like the fact that you have a complete control over your home, and I think you're just frightened that other families could run your house better than you. And by the way, you've never invited us for a party, so it is extremely rude and unfair, and just shows your monopolistic stance, so we expect that other families will open the doors for anyone who needs a full access to your fridge and amenities. But don't be afraid, it's for the benefit of your neighbours that we all care about, and eventually you will get used to it too.
And if there were only two livable houses in the entire world, then that would be a completely reasonable position for someone to take.
Apple is one half of a duopoly. People keep on bringing up these 'gotcha' arguments about, "how would you feel if Walmart was forced to stock everybody's stuff?" And that ignores the fact that it would be a serious problem if there were only two supermarkets that I could buy from. I would feel exactly the same way if one to two companies had the kind of stranglehold over physical supermarket goods as Apple has over the mobile app ecosystem.
A physical duopoly of that scale would very clearly call for either breaking up the owners or regulating them to ensure that everyone had equal access to the market. Scenarios like that are why we have antitrust in the first place, particularly around the kind of vertical integration that Apple advocates hold in such high regard.
I don't think the people who put forward these arguments have really thought them through. A duopoly is different from a house.
If we could travel back 35-40 years through history, I have no doubt there'd be no shortage of people arguing that Bell's vertical integration of the Internet was the very reason why their service was so good, and that allowing people to hook their own 'unapproved' answering machines to their phone lines would just ruin the entire network, and that allowing one company to own all of the railroads would just mean that shipping became that much simpler and reliable for consumers.
So be careful about making analogies to the physical world when you're supporting Apple, because people might just take them at face value.
> And if there were only two livable houses in the entire world, then that would be a completely reasonable position for someone to take.
There are more than two platforms out there. But even if there weren't, the fact that there's only N things in the world doesn't make your random claim on someone else's property any more valid. App Store is Apple's property. Build your own and host whoever you want there, but firstly you have to convince others that it is more valuable than the popular alternative. And if you fail to do that, it's not necessarily because the alternative is a monopoly, it may be and more likely is because your product is inferior.
> And that ignores the fact that it would be a serious problem if there were only two supermarkets that I could buy from.
Do you know the reason why it never happens though?
Your examples from the past just demonstrate that no monopoly exists without a government acting as a gatekeeper, like it was in the case of Bell and Union Pacific, and even then there was a place for successful competitors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Northern_Railway_(U.S.)
> So be careful about making analogies to the physical world when you're supporting Apple, because people might just take them at face value.
likewise, learn what you are advocating for, because mere quantity of stuff out there is never a justification for taking it over (and neither is your convenience), which my analogy was all about.
Such as? If I'm making a mobile game, what other phones can I realistically target other than Android and iPhone? You don't really think that the Librem 5 is a real competitor right now in this space, do you?
> because mere quantity of stuff out there is never a justification for taking it over
All of US antitrust law is based on the idea that the quantity of providers in a market matters. If you're arguing that we should get rid of antitrust entirely, fine. But be upfront about that, that's not a mainstream position to take.
> no monopoly exists without a government acting as a gatekeeper
I'm not going to derail things too much here, but I do have at least a few Libertarian bones inside of me. To the extent that I am sympathetic to your argument here, I would question why you think that Apple is different.
Apple's dominant market position exists in no small part based on its exploitation of copyright, the DMCA, import laws, and heavy lawsuits over trademark and cross-compatible app runtimes, all of which only work because of artificial government intervention into the market.
If you want to go full Libertarian, I'm not necessarily opposed to the idea, but then I'm also going to go full Libertarian and ask what your views are on abolishing copyright. Apple might not have such a stranglehold over the market if it was legal for other US companies to build iPhone emulators, hackintoshes, to distribute jailbreaks, and to build their own compatible phones that could run both iOS apps and apps from other markets.
If we're all OK with making that stuff legal, then I'm OK with dropping antitrust. If we're not OK with making that stuff legal, then I'm keeping antitrust. I'm OK with either having government regulation or not having it, but no halvsies.
> Such as? If I'm making a mobile game, what other phones can I realistically target other than Android and iPhone? You don't really think that the Librem 5 is a real competitor right now in this space, do you?
Any phone that runs WebGL. Inconvenient? Tough life, why does Apple have to do anything about it for you?
> All of US antitrust law is based on the idea that the quantity of providers in a market matters.
US antitrust laws are deeply flawed and in no way serve the purpose they were enacted for. If your product (subjectively) costs too high you are a monopolist; if your product costs too low (hello IE) you are dumping the market; and if your product costs approximately the same as of your competitors then there's a "market collusion". You cannot win in this system if you are a successful economic player. The bottom line is this though - there was no time in history where monopoly existed without government's sanction and gate-keeping, and Union Pacific was a prime example of it.
> If you want to go full Libertarian
I don't as I'm not one of them, which doesn't negate the points that I've made before.
> Apple's dominant market position exists in no small part based on its exploitation of copyright, the DMCA, import laws, and heavy lawsuits over trademark and cross-compatible app runtimes, all of which only work because of artificial government intervention into the market.
Wasn't it the government that enacted them? Why asking for it from Apple?
> I'm also going to go full Libertarian and ask what your views are on abolishing copyright.
I'm not libertarian; if you are just asking, I'm for IP in principle, whether it's modern copyright laws or something else is another story.
> If we're all OK with making that stuff legal, then I'm OK with dropping antitrust. If we're not OK with making that stuff legal, then I'm keeping antitrust. I'm OK with either having government regulation or not having it, but no halvsies
with all respect, it really is a funny position. Everything you mentioned here is a product of federal legislature, yet you want to blame an economic player that acts according to the law, in a system that is designed to eventually punish successful.
There are no phones on the market where the web is a comparable platform to native mobile apps. There could be in a better world, but there aren't in this world. Talk to me in a couple of years when we have native storage ironed out and maybe that'll be different. Or talk to me in 5-10 years when Librem 5 has its issues worked out, and maybe things will be different then.
> why does Apple have to do anything about it for you?
It doesn't, not unless Apple enjoys the benefit of extensive government regulations that allow it to block and sue the competitors that do want to do something about it for me. Regulations like, for example, the DMCA.
Live by the government, die by the government. Companies don't get to pretend to be free-market Capitalists only when it's convenient for them.
> Everything you mentioned here is a product of federal legislature, yet you want to blame an economic player
No, I just want consistency. I want the government to get in the way or to get out of the way.
It is infeasible to get rid of antitrust unless we're also going to also get rid of the regulation and interference that keeps the market from working the way it was intended.
Getting rid of the regulations that protect us from the current smartphone duopoly while keeping the regulations that caused the smartphone duopoly isn't free market Capitalism, it's Feudalism. I don't have patience for an argument that it's a bridge too far for the government to stop Apple from exploiting developers/consumers, but perfectly fine for Apple to use the government to reinforce their market position.
I'm sympathetic to anti-regulation arguments and the people who make them, but I am not sympathetic to pro-monopoly arguments.
If I name you the companies that release WebGL games I would state impossible? Let's not get that low in this discussion.
> There are no phones on the market where the web is a comparable platform to native mobile apps.
Comparable based on what criteria? Oftentimes I wish companies stop bother me with their "bug fixes and performance improvements" every other day and provide a sleek Web experience instead. So far I just hear how you are saying that alternatives do exist, but they suck, hence Apple's ability to charge 30% on top of everything is a viable business model, because their platform doesn't suck that much. No issue here.
> Getting rid of the regulations that protect us from the current smartphone duopoly while keeping the regulations that caused the smartphone duopoly isn't free market Capitalism, it's Feudalism.
If you make this claim, then it's on you to prove that in the absence of regulations you won't be able to enter the market with your new competing platform. Apple with all its money is in no position to dictate the way you or anyone else establish a new ecosystem based on open standards and free licenses.
Apple is the reason why web experiences on iOS suck. They deliberately lag on web standards so that their browser experience is inferior to native apps. None of this accidental.
And no, it's not just inconvenience. There are things on iOS that are literally impossible to do in WebGL. Reliable, persistent offline storage on iOS is impossible to do from a web app. Reliable persistent login on iOS is impossible to do from a web app. Notifications are impossible to do on iOS from a web app. The APIs have not been added to the platform.
It's not inconvenient -- you literally can't do them. It is not a comparable platform, because Apple makes sure that it will never be a comparable platform. It's not that Apple made an amazing native experience and the web couldn't keep up. The reason the web can't keep up on iOS is because Apple deliberately hobbles its mobile browser.
> Apple with all its money is in no position to dictate the way you or anyone else establish a new ecosystem based on open standards and free licenses.
Imagine a world where I could build a phone that was compatible with every iOS app and Android app, where users didn't have to choose in advance which ecosystem they wanted to be a part of.
Imagine a world where I could build a competitor to iOS that allowed users to port the apps that they had already bought to their new phones outside of Apple's ecosystem, rather than spending hundreds of dollars buying all of them a second time.
Imagine a world where I could build and sell my own hardware that dual-booted iOS and Android.
Imagine a world where I could sell a TV/Phone that would play DRM-encumbered content from Apple devices and iTunes.
That would be a real free market. In the current market, any of those competitors would be sued into oblivion.
> If you make this claim, then it's on you to prove that in the absence of regulations you won't be able to enter the market with your new competing platform.
Give people a real free market, and then we'll find out whether or not in the absence of regulations they can compete.
You keep on repeating the exact same argument, that regulation is the problem. I'm not sure that you're following what I'm saying. All I'm advocating for is that we get rid of all of the regulation. If you have a problem with regulation, then fine, let's get rid of it, including the DMCA.
It doesn't sound like you have a problem with market regulation and interference though. It sounds like you have a problem with a very small subset of regulations.
> Apple is the reason why web experiences on iOS suck. They deliberately lag on web standards so that their browser experience is inferior to native apps. None of this accidental.
I've never mentioned web experience on iOS, let's not add words into my replies for the convenience of your argument. Everyone is free to choose any other platform with a better web experience and to build on top of it, with all open standards and free licenses in mind. Apple won't be able to interfere.
> Imagine a world where I could build a phone that was compatible with every iOS app and Android app, where users didn't have to choose in advance which ecosystem they wanted to be a part of.
Build Linux phone instead and make it compatible with Android. Or a Windows-compatible phone on ReactOS. Why are you so fixated on Apple and iOS? At this point it just looks as a random wish that Apple implements your ideas. Sorry, no one is obliged to implement your wishes as you see them fit.
> Give people a real free market, and then we'll find out whether or not in the absence of regulations they can compete.
> At this point it just looks as a random wish that Apple implements your ideas. Sorry, no one is obliged to implement your wishes as you see them fit.
You don't understand what I'm saying, and I don't know how to say it any more clearly.
I'm not asking Apple to do anything. I want to be able to do things myself without Apple using the government to attack my business.
This is worse than the Right to Repair debates -- people accuse us of trying to force Apple to fix our phones for free when in reality we just want to stop Apple from suing everyone who imports a 3rd-party battery.
Just let people compete, that's all I'm asking. Apple doesn't need to lift a finger. Let other people build emulators, port apps, display content, and make compatible phones. Apple doesn't need to fix my problems, but they shouldn't be able to use the government to stop other people from fixing my problems.
> Apple won't be able to interfere.
Again, I don't know if this is on purpose or not, but I just listed a few of the ways that Apple can interfere with Open standards, including suing competitors that use adversarial operability to get around network effects in an entrenched market.
> I've never mentioned web experience on iOS [...] Everyone is free to choose any other platform
We're talking in circles, but just to repeat -- when you say "any other platforms", that means Android or iOS. Those are the only two viable mobile platforms that exist right now. And good luck building a third when users have invested hundreds of dollars into closed app ecosystems that it will be illegal for you to interoperate with.
If you know a way to get around the problems listed at https://whatwebcando.today/, by all means let me know, I'd love to build some offline webapps for my phone. If you know a way to get reliable disk storage from a website on any mobile platform, please let me know, it would open up a world of possibilities for me as a developer.
But don't pretend the web is an escape hatch when its mobile support depends entirely on the two companies who have the most to gain from keeping its capabilities behind those of native apps.
> Just read how commerce existed prior 1913.
You keep trying to phrase this like I'm secretly being pro-regulation in this conversation. I'm willing to concede literally every single antitrust point I've raised in the comments above, and my only condition is that we get rid of all of the regulations including copyright.
At this point, you're arguing that market regulation is bad to someone who's proposing that an alternative to antitrust might be... to get rid of all market regulation.
What is your position? Do you think market regulation is bad or good? If you don't like regulation, then what do you disagree with me on? What do you oppose about the idea of stopping the government from using copyright to interfere with the free market?
> I want to be able to do things myself without Apple using the government to attack my business.
Here, how exactly does it attack your business? Is your business built around Apple ecosystem? Have you accepted their terms and conditions? there's no way to enter into any relations with Apple without accepting their terms of the services. Have you got warrants coming from Apple lawyers?
> Just let people compete, that's all I'm asking
You are free to compete, not on their platform at their cost though. For the same reason why you would refuse to give me access to your business (whatever it does) to compete with you. You cannot just freely re-interpret the definition of the market so that it fits your narrative. Market is never a private entity's platform.
> I don't know if this is on purpose or not, but I just listed a few of the ways that Apple can interfere with Open standards, including suing competitors that use adversarial operability to get around network effects in an entrenched market.
It's either open standards or inter-operability with a proprietory standard. If you don't want to get sued, either buy the license or build your own solution that doesn't require interop. There's hundreds of companies who do that regularly, they pay their fees and make money along the way. There are also businesses who do not interact with Apple in any shape or form yet are able to build their mobile solutions. Because Mobile is not "Applications for either Android or iOS", you can believe this but that doesn't make it anyhow true.
> Those are the only two viable mobile platforms that exist right now.
There was a time when they didn't exist at all, the fact that there are two now doesn't change anything. Again, all your points are about convenience to you, not about inability to create a new platform. And by the way, define "viable".
> people accuse us of trying to force Apple to fix our phones for free when in reality we just want to stop Apple from suing everyone who imports a 3rd-party battery.
are you elected to represent all of those who comment positively on that topic? I can play this game too, and "we" who oppose it neither do want any third-party battery to be presented as a genuine replacement for the original ones nor desire to have a device that is easily disassembled by third-parties. Had we wanted these features, we'd go and buy any noname Android phone.
> But don't pretend the web is an escape hatch when its mobile support depends entirely on the two companies
You have to prove that, so far it's an unsubstantiated claim. Another one, because you feel like it. The majority of people use these two platofrms not because there are no alternatives, but because it doesn't worth the effort to switch to anything else. The existing solutions already are convenient enough. Notice the difference. You may disagree with this, but again, it's just your wishes.
> you would refuse to give me access to your business
You will always be free to build 3rd-party products that work with and wrap around my products. I will never use the law as a cudgel to stop you from fairly competing with me. Users have an inherent right to control the devices that they own.
> You are free to compete, not on their platform at their cost though
Not asking to compete on their platform. I want to be able to compete on my platform, and I don't want Apple to tell me whether or not I'm allowed to build a platform that's compatible with iOS apps.
> If you don't want to get sued, either buy the license or build your own solution that doesn't require interop.
Why? Why can the government decide what I'm allowed to build? If I can build a solution by myself without a contract that interops with Apple's platforms, why should the government tell me I'm not allowed to do that? If I can build a device that runs iOS, why should the government say that I'm not allowed to do that?
What right does the government have to stop me from building and distributing products that solve my problems?
> [...]
This is ridiculous.
If you support regulation, then fine. Go argue about what the regulations are.
If you don't support regulation, then fine. Let's get rid of artificial government monopolies that allow companies to decide what is and isn't legal. Copyright is not a natural right.
You're taking a great many words to say that you selectively oppose regulation only when it's directed towards the protection of the consumer. If that's your position, then fine, but I'm not going to debate it, I don't think that position is logically coherent enough to debate.
> But even if there weren't, the fact that there's only N things in the world doesn't make your random claim on someone else's property any more valid.
It is notable that basically every functional democracy in the world disagrees with this statement.
I'm not at all enthused about Epic being one of those stores, but being able to download from Steam sure would be nice.
If you were trying to remove the monopoly, I'd think you should start there, and then expand to other people who can prove they have their shit together. Epic let someone else use my email address to sign up for an account (and they only allow one account per email). That is serious amateur-hour territory. When they have figured out how to tie their own shoes we can talk about whether they should be in the running.
Pretty sure you can buy from Steam on the iOS app - Steam just has a revenue-sharing agreement with Apple.
which is specifically the part that got Epic in trouble, they don't want to share revenue with Apple, and what's more they want to charge other developers a fee for the use of Epic's app store.
the thought that Apple was just going to let this hilarious ToS breach lay was all wrong, absolutely not
The Store application lets you buy games because you cannot consume them on the device, like how Amazon allows you to buy physical items but not Kindle books.
So I recently built a living room gaming PC. Installed Steam, Epic Store, GOG, Origin, XBOX, Rockstar Social Club, even Twitch. Pretty much anything where I have a library of games. And let me tell you, what a pain in the ass it is!
I keep all the games organized in Playnite. If I try to launch Epic games from Playnite, most of the time nothing happens. So I start the epic client and... oh look, it logged me out again. So now to play Maneater or whatever I have to log into my password manager with its complicated passphrase from a tiny HTPC keyboard, grab the password, paste it into Epic, wait for Epic to update, click the game icon again, and now it launches. Heaven forbid I actually set up 2FA, cause then I'd have to go through that too!
To say nothing of the fact that the Epic store runs like ass on a brand new third-gen six-core Ryzen CPU with an current-gen GPU and 16gigs of RAM.
Some of the other game stores behave just as bad as this... the only ones that actually seem to work reliably are Steam and GOG, and they've been around a while. Origin constantly nags about updates and "you logged in from another PC" bullshit, Rockstar can't seem to hold on to a session cookie to save its life, and the Twitch client is just a mess all around. XBOX kind of sucked in Beta but they finally fixed the worst issues there.
Multiple launchers is NOT ideal. We all have this fantasy idea that competition will make everything better but really what it results in is now we have a bunch of garbage launchers running on startup (and if you don't have fun waiting for them to update every time you launch them). Just like with streaming... competition is making everything worse
If you "don't spend time in an app store" you're either only using one or two of those launchers or you're lying. The last time things "just worked" was when Steam reigned supreme and unchallenged. (And that's not necessarily a good thing, nearly everyone knows that Valve is a good citizen solely because of management, and I have no doubt that one day that will change and Steam will suck.)
Absolutely agreed, but consider what would happen if only one of those game stores you mention were allowed to be installed on your gaming PC. Then you'd have to go through a single gatekeeper, and I bet you a bunch of the games you like just wouldn't be available at all, because they'd either have been capriciously rejected, or because their developers can't make the terms work to their satisfaction. But because this mythical single game store is the only game in town (heh), there's no recourse.
Or maybe most, or even all, of those games you play might be available on this single app store. But expect them to be worse, because their developers have to pay a middleman a larger fee for distribution, which leaves less money to build the game itself. Expect them to be missing features, because this gatekeeper makes it harder to build some features, even if it's through well-meaning policies.
It absolutely floors me that people on a site called Hacker News are praising the role of a gatekeeping corporation that locks down devices they own to the point that they don't even really own them.
You phrase this as an either/or proposition... either 1 app store with its gatekeepers and rules (and frankly, the Steam supremacy was a good king to live under...)
The real answer is neither. Fuck all these proprietary launchers and app stores. There are other answers.... personally I feel like these platforms need to be run and controlled by a nonprofit, with a charter that holds customers' and business' needs equally without a primary duty to greedy shareholders. Either that or sideloading
edit- and I think most folks are OK with living under a good , just king. Steam is this, and many argue that Apple was this at some point in their past. Since we are all apparently too stupid to handle a truly distributed method of installing software like sideloading or old-school brick and mortar retail, we have to learn to live with a store of some kind, with all that entails. And in that case, we're OK if the platform is fair and just
> because they'd either have been capriciously rejected, or because their developers can't make the terms work to their satisfaction
edit2- this never really happened with Steam, amazingly enough. Surely there are edge cases, and there are certainly reports of Steam staff working with devs to ensure a positive release (which is a nice way of saying they have probably forced developers to alter their product), and Valve has certainly made some bad decisions (which they thankfully backed down on). But Steam was such an improvement over the old distribution model that its downsides were almost unfairly outweighed by its upsides. And now they own the market with such a large competitive moat that Epic has to give away boatloads of free games (and good ones too!) and a PR campaign of trashing competitors just to seed their userbase.
You're not taking into account the differences in how App Store and Steam behaved
App Store has a natural monopoly on the iDevices. (And I would love to see this broken, a jailbroken iPhone in the old days was a wondrous thing) This is because Apple owns the platform and are heavily incentivized to use that integration to maximize their own profit and growth.
There are no such incentives on an open platform like Windows. Steam had to be better than the status quo and it seems they took that to heart, so much that entire ecosystems have built up around Valve's generosity -- ecosystems that compete with Steam itself -- and that Valve could pull the plug on tomorrow. But I bet they won't, because they seem to be interested in a vibrant and healthy ecosystem, and because their attitude of good stewardship is apparently quite rare these days, giving them a significant competitive advantage with mindshare.
It's a totally different ballgame. Google uses anticompetitive dealmaking and sheer force of will to try and achieve a semblance of what App Store does, and up until recently their success in that area was mixed at best. Google Play is closer to Steam in that regard, but their execution sucks.
But even if Steam was as vertically integrated as Apple something tells me they would be a lot more permissive and generous in how others sell on their platform. Steam offers a ton of value-add and, while I don't hang out in gamedev circles, the only bitching about price and Steam's 30% cut I've seen comes from Tim Sweeney and noone else
> Absolutely agreed, but consider what would happen if only one of those game stores you mention were allowed to be installed on your gaming PC.
That is how it was several years back with Steam and everything was just fine. The new stores that popped up are, with the exception of GoG and Itch.io, in the service of large companies.
Having everything locked behind a single App Store is the perfect way for the government to enforce bans without building a “great firewall”. It’s no coincidence that a few days after Trump signed an executive order to ban TikTok/WeChat then Epic (heavily backed by Tencent) engaged in a PR-focused lawsuit that would encourage Apple to allow side-loading apps, which, if implemented, would allow Chinese companies to easily bypass the ban. It’s also worth noting that apps are already violating people’s privacy in so many ways (the latest example is copying clipboard text while running in the background) - without the App Store then there’s no doubt that the privacy violations would become even worse.
I will only offer that finding content on Apple TV now that everyone has the ability to not only sell content but resell content (eg, HBO on Prime), it's gotten to the point where we sometimes give up on finding a particular movie or TV show and do something else.
I'd like other stores on iOS too, but there's a qualitative difference between 1, 3, and 6 vendors that doesn't necessarily make 6 better than 1. In fact 6 is probably default worse than 1, and requires active management and cooperation to make it behave.
You don't get a cheaper game, especially not if you live in India where Steam will basically give you a 66% discount on every single game automatically. The 18% fee reduction goes straight to the developer. I have spent quite a lot of time chatting with friends on my "App Store".
> While I don't like Apple's 30% cut on multiplatform/subscription products, I think Epic's real motivation here is to run their own App Store, build a bigger moat and get the profits themselves (they take 12% cut, 5% if you use Unreal Engine, from developers in their store). They also make exclusive deals, bribing developers with funding/marketing support, so that the games can only bought in their store for 6-12mo.
Sounds great to me. Truly. Who loses here, other than Apple, one of the biggest, wealthiest companies on the planet?
> Buying games on PC now means that you have to install 5 different app stores which are usually slow, buggy and not that well written cross-platform code (pretty much like Fortnite itself).
It sucks that there's so much slow buggy software (with Steam being, by far, the biggest offender), isn't it great that we have such a thriving competitive market on PC? I think it's awesome. I think the PC gaming market has never been better.
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[ 0.24 ms ] story [ 411 ms ] threadI feel this contradiction within me when I find myself promoting and praising the growth hacks and 'doing whatever it takes' mentality startups employ and then subsequently realizing that at the same time I would probably shame and criticize the same tactics if the same company got large.
Apple is under no obligation to behave fairly. Many (not me) would argue the opposite.
https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/8146/are-u-s-co...
It's pretty hard for an underdog or tiny startup to be anti-competitive because they simply don't have the leverage to do it. They can still be dishonest or immoral, it's just hard to be monopolistic when you're not anywhere close to being a monopoly.
Unfortunately, I don’t see this as being true. I’d be willing to bet they’re still breaking laws and ordinances today and we’re just not aware of it.
Part of it is the news cycle today, we’d never see a story about Uber breaking some municipal laws with the state of the world as it is. And after all, they have tons of cash, which is what breaking laws requires.
Until they suffer material operational pain from doing wrong, they’re not going to change.
Part of it is that business models are getting increasingly complex, and it’s getting harder for laypeople to really grok how a particular company makes money, especially when consumer data is involved.
The public tolerates quite a bit of unethical behavior by companies if they determine the value of the product to be worth it (i.e. Facebook). And some entrepreneurs see these examples and think that there are no consequences. There really is no concrete mechanism to assess morality in companies. Marketing gets to dictate most of that.
Size matters. If a child hits you, you scold them and tell them not to do it, but you're likely no worse for wear. If an adult hits you, they could kill you, we call it assault and it has legal consequences.
The contradiction you feel is like saying "well I don't think we should punish children the same way we punish adults, so maybe we shouldn't punish anyone?". I know that when I put it into this type of metaphor it seems obvious, I'm not trying to be insulting, merely that when you change the context we suddenly see that it does makes sense to weigh different situations with different consequences differently.
Trying to find a common legal framework to cover a 2 person ramen startup and the continent spanning wealth and power of Jeff Bezos and Amazon, or Tim Cook and Apple is something that seems fraught, and the consequences for the actions that each group takes are vastly different. I think we shouldn't be afraid to judge or regulate them differently as well.
A lot of the time, the only rule for healthy ecosystem is that players don’t get too big. Players getting too big means monopoly, cartel, etc.
Yes, it's legal today but should we make it illegal?
To try another example besides Apple iPhone, consider the $35000 Prima Cinema movie server to play 1st run movies at home on day of release: https://www.google.com/search?q=%22prima+cinema%22&source=ln...
In many iPhone debates, we throw around phrases such as, "unlike a game console, it's a general computer" and "I own the device so I should be able to put any software I want on it".
Understandable sentiments. So the question is, should consumers be able to knowingly buy restricted hardware such as Prima Cinema? They pay $35000 and own the computer but they know they can't sideload their own movies. They know can't pick another "movie store", or watch Youtube/Netflix on it, etc. The hardware has anti-tampering sensors so that it bricks itself if the owner tries to open it. The hardware is a "general pc". It runs Wind River Linux. I think the cpu is x86 but it might be ARM or something else.
You can't argue that Prima Cinema should not be locked down (claiming anti-competitive behavior) because the paranoid film studios wouldn't even license their content if it wasn't. If a buyer wants to have 1st run movies at home, all those restrictions in place is they only way to get it. It's more restrictive than iPhone in that sense.
I don't see why not. If it's a problem, then either a competitor will emerge, or people won't purchase the product.
If it's truly a bad business practice, it'll lose out in the end. Besides that I actually love the closed system of the iPhone + App Store, we can't just go around banning things anytime we think we might not like them. Every time I see this story it just annoys me. I want the iPhone and App Store to be a closed system. Opening it up is the bad idea here.
Philosophically, amazon.com and Facebook are closed systems too. As is Wal-Mart and UPS. I'm not sure why we're only focused on hardware systems here, what's the meaningful distinction?
Many bad business practices only lose out because they're made illegal. Protection rackets are great for the ones running them. Although one could quibble that the police is the cheapest universally available protection racket that pushes out all the competition.
And I'd argue with your example of Facebook that they should at minimum be compelled to enable universal linking so that other app vendors can intercept outbound links directly, and users can choose their web browser etc.
I can't choose to use iMessage with my non-existent Facebook account either. Why? Why are they allowed to lock in their software?
Same argument.
IMessage facebook messenger case is not an artificial lock. They are fundamentally different protocols. It's not like IMessage supports facebook messenger and Apple just say no you can't use it. There is a real difference here.
Apple is artificially restricting usage of it's phones for no other reason then greed. If the app store would actually protect against malware I would agree that it might have some value but it really doesn't. The app store is filled with mountains and mountains of malware. But since it's malware that makes Apple money it's completely fine.
Apple mobile hardware is really amazing. The best there is in the world I think. But the software locks it down so much that it's essentially a paper weight compared to its potential.
You can make a protocol then and Facebook won't allow you to use it. They're definitely artificially locking you in. It's no different.
> Apple is artificially restricting usage of it's phones for no other reason then greed.
Really? That's the only reason? Does it not seem odd to you that iPhones are considered safe devices, and that Apple goes to great lengths to protect them and user data and now companies are complaining about the App Store? Once they can circumvent the App Store, then can put all sorts of garbage tracking and malware into applications. iPhone and the App Store have been around for more than 10 years, and then over the last two years Apple requires no tracking, prompting of data usage, soon a data use "nutrition scorecard" and now just this year all of these companies are complaining about pricing? Give me a break. If you want to call Apple greedy, then it's just a case of pots calling kettles black. Notice how there aren't any customers complaining about this oh so bad and greedy practice? I don't care what developers want here. I want my iPhone the way it is, and changing the App Store is bad in my view. I'll vote with my wallet in this case. If that means fewer applications because they want to circumvent these things that I want Apple to do, then that's fine, good riddance.
These companies can partner with Samsung or something and make their own phones and app stores. That's fine. But this isn't about that. It's about them wanting money and to abuse user data on the platform that Apple built.
If the technical requirements are met and Facebook won't allow then it indeed is not an artificial lock in. But I doubt that Facebook messenger can talk to IMessage right now. It's not the responsibility of either Facebook or Apple to make those two apps work together. The only thing they should not do is go out of their way to not allow them to interface. I.e. It should be possible for a user to write a bridge between those two apps.
> Really? That's the only reason? Does it not seem odd to you that iPhones are considered safe devices, and that Apple goes to great lengths to protect them and user data and now companies are complaining about the App Store? Once they can circumvent the App Store, then can put all sorts of garbage tracking and malware into applications. iPhone and the App Store have been around for more than 10 years, and then over the last two years Apple requires no tracking, prompting of data usage, soon a data use "nutrition scorecard" and now just this year all of these companies are complaining about pricing? Give me a break. If you want to call Apple greedy, then it's just a case of pots calling kettles black. Notice how there aren't any customers complaining about this oh so bad and greedy practice? I don't care what developers want here. I want my iPhone the way it is, and changing the App Store is bad in my view. I'll vote with my wallet in this case. If that means fewer applications because they want to circumvent these things that I want Apple to do, then that's fine, good riddance.
I don't consider Apple safe devices because of the App store. Every single protection that is afforded by the app store is actually provided by the OS. With the exception of manual review and that is a subjective process full of holes.
Can you explain to me, since you believe Apple is actually not user hostile, why does it allow obvious malware in the app store such as apps that appear to be free but once you install them you end up in micro-transaction hell? Why do they allow micro-transactions at all? Micro-transactions are very rarely if ever beneficial to the user. What's up with the apps that promise a feature and don't deliver? I'm not joking when I say that the quality of apps I can download for free on my desktop is way higher then most stuff that is in the app store. App stores have brought down the quality of software significantly. It's so bad that my default stance on anything on the app store is that it must be trash because that's what it is usually.
Aka "the invisible hand will fix it". We have been waiting quite a few years for this and it did not happen. Instead we got the complete opposite: a duopoly of android and iOS which nobody, not even Microsoft, can compete against. At this point, we have to acknowledge that simply waiting is not going to fix anything.
I also don't think a duopoly is necessarily bad, and in this case I think it's not even a duopoly long-term. It is right now because Google and Apple are the leaders, but it's only a matter of time until other large companies (Samsung, Huawei, etc.) gain a foothold and market share. Being a local duopoly (in the US) is one thing versus being a global duopoly.
Further, I'm not really convinced that this duopoly we have is even bad. Why is it bad that we have a duopoly? Is it only acceptable if we have 3 large players? Why aren't we complaining about the Microsoft and Apple duopoly with computers? I think this is just arbitrary really and it won't be long-lived anyway.
There's an incredible amount of effort to prevent that - we can start with obligatory things like slavery, but there's a lot more - safety regulation in cars or airplanes, food safety, various environmental protections, employee protections, and so on.
"I want the iPhone and App Store to be a closed system." is kind of like saying "I want powerful car that doesn't have to follow emission limits." - I believe you that you want it, but you having it might hurt others, and that's why it's not allowed.
There's a common-sense argument that a person is only going to have one phone, one phone carrier, one ISP, etc. and thus those companies shouldn't hold their customers hostage. Turning that into a legal principle is left as an exercise for the reader.
There's nothing stopping an iPhone owner from also buying an Android phone, and the cost is trivial.
There's a common-sense argument that a person is only going to have one phone, one phone carrier
There are hundreds of thousands of people in the United States, maybe even millions, who have more than one phone.
iPhone is not an Android competitor, iPhone is a Samsung/Huawei/LG etc competitor
Android competes with iOS
If I could install iOS on a Samsung device or Android on an iPhone that would be different
But I can't
I'm with you there. I'm so mad that I can't install iOS on any device I want. My Android phone? Nope. My HP laptop? Nope. My car entertainment system? Nope. My TRS-80? Nope. My waffle maker? Nope.
I even tried to install iOS on my cat, and she rebooted all over the rug.
Clearly this is a massive conspiracy by the Apple industrial complex to control what I do with the things I bought and paid for with my own money.
Yes.
You could.
Hackintosh do exist, you know?
Buut it's illegal because Apple doesn't want to.
So blame Apple for your cat.
I like having a single vendor for all my software purchases, that I can trust to issue refunds and discontinue subscriptions promptly.
I spend all day thinking about computers, I don't want to also be my own IT professional and security team, especially for a slab of glass I hold in my hand. I accept that I have to do some IT and security thinking about my iOS devices, but the more the walled garden provides, the less is on me.
I understand that with this "safety" comes a loss of "liberty," but I find that an acceptable tradeoff for consumer hardware in my personal life. I don't automatically assume that the right tradeoffs for me are also the right tradeoffs for everyone else.
If someone wants to sideload apps and/or develop their own custom apps without some kind of special developer status, I have no problem suggesting they buy something else.
I accept that I am not the typical HN reader.
I question the validity of presuming this question has a correct answer for all parents under all circumstances.
Not your kids. Not your business.
Our school assigns every kid an iPad. In Kindergarten. Good idea? I kinda don't think so, though it's been useful this year, of course. But it happens.
Increasingly parents have trouble letting kids wander the neighborhood on their own without a tracker/communication-device on them, and a smartphone's really good at serving that role. There are other options but kids want to have their smartphone on them, and as soon as you want them to be able to do one other smartphone-thing any other option starts to look kinda pointless.
(just relating observations of parenting in the wild, not my own parenting approach)
I remember they got Samsung tablets and when I had looked at them to see if I would like to buy one... I saw they were completely full of - essentially - spyware and malware.
Okay.. then their opinion is what's relevant here, not yours.
> I like having a single vendor for all my software purchases, that I can trust to issue refunds and discontinue subscriptions promptly.
Weren't they in hot water recently for forcing developers to use their deceptive subscription trial system?
I’m sure you also want to make sure your kids aren’t spending all your money on dumb in-app purchases. Having a controlled mechanism for that provides an actual value to you, and letting companies circumvent it would make things harder for you. Are the fees for that mechanism fair? That’s a business negotiation.
This is a big one. I'm significantly more likely to subscribe to a service/app if I'm able to do so through iTunes, because it means the app developer can't directly reach into my wallet. If I hit "Cancel Subscription" in the iTunes subscription panel, it's canceled, no ifs, ands, or buts, and no hidden unsubscribe links or intentionally obtuse unsubscription processes to have to contend with.
This is a huge thing for consumers to give up for the sake of developer freedom. If Apple begins to allow third party payment systems, developers should be required to connect said payment systems to Apple-provided standardized subscription control APIs so strong user control is maintained.
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2020/mar/11/my-kids-spent-...
And kids shouldn't be able to buy things with their parents' cards, which is something completely unrelated to a platform being open or not.
Apple store is not more secure because it's a walled garden, people will always find other ways to scam other people
Apple could just make sideload possible declining responsibility
It doesn't sound very hard to me, for a company like Apple which employ some of the best talents in the World
For example, see how Apple is in total control on when iOS devices are obsolete by requiring some minimum version. You can't keep your device usable and useful by installing a program that supports it from another source, you can only install it from Apple and Apple's requirements limit the iOS versions you can target.
Yes, people can ignore that warning, but considering it is there and considering all the steps they have to make, at that point it is up to personal responsibility, not making the entire society worse to avoid telling non-technical people that they screwed up.
After all that control doesn't disappear, it just moves to someone else's hands - and guess who has no say whose hands those will be.
As a result, people often have a lot of incentive to try to get other people to make the same choices they make. This explains a lot of the jousting over frameworks: The more people use the framework you use, the more bug fixes, the more talent you can hire, the more courses, books, and blog posts you can depend upon, &c.
Without agreeing with you that society as a whole is better off without Apple selling me a locked down device, I can certainly empathize with your desire for fewer people to make the choice I'm making.
I don't wanna have to worry about stupid computer shit when I'm just trying to use my iPad or iPhone as a tool to accomplish something else. Drawing, playing music, reading, writing, edutainment for the kids, very occasionally a game. Maybe the odd SSH session. If I decide I want some software to help me with any of those things I just want it to be in the App Store, and I just want it to use the App Store payment system. I don't want competing app stores because that might mean that sometimes what I want isn't on the Apple one, following Apple's rules about spying on my and otherwise behaving as badly as desktop software and webapps do these days. It means I have to search more than one store. Now we're veering into the stupid computer shit I don't want to have to worry about, again.
You don't lose anything if you don't want to.
You should have to keep doing what you already do.
Then buy any other general computing product on the market. I'd be more sympathetic to this concern if Android didn't exist. Meanwhile it does, and the users who picked Apple did it because they don't care about this, they don't care very much about this, or because they actively want the App Store restrictions and the ecosystem that they create.
> You don't lose anything if you don't want to.
I very well might, though. Changes to rules change how actors behave in a system. The way software developers and publishers behave on iOS could change in ways that I don't like if they're able to viably distribute software outside the App Store. That might be OK, except forcing developers and publishers to follow the App Store rules is part of the appeal of the devices. If that'd been a major sticking point for me, I could have bought Android.
That's not how free market works.
And it's a very silly objection.
Android is a licensed platform.from Google, but Google does not make the majority of devices.
Apple manufacturs the devices, but they sell them to me locked in the ecosystem they profit from.
Imagine being unable of refueling because your car does not work with standard oil pumps and you had to go to Apple licensed gas station whom Apple charges 30% to.
They would be prohibited from selling the car.
> I very well might, though.
But you wouldn't if you don't change your behaviour.
> Changes to rules change how actors behave in a system
That's exactly what many want from Apple.
Change the rules.
Nobody is asking Apple to relax their safety rules inside their walled garden.
If they can't allow sideloading, they're not as good as I thought.
> I could have bought Android.
I don't buy it.
If Apple sold Android powered iPhones you would still buy an iPhone, you're are buying the brand, not the product.
It... isn't? How not?
> Imagine being unable of refueling because your car does not work with standard oil pumps and you had to go to Apple licensed gas station whom Apple charges 30% to.
Then I'd probably buy a competing brand of car, if that bothered me? You know, one of my other choices on the market? Like how there are a bunch of Android device vendors and a couple Linux mobile vendors that I could choose if Apple's App Store model bothered me, rather than being something I actively want? I am 100% not following how this isn't a market working. The choices people are making may not be the ones you prefer—happens to me all the time with markets—but there are choices.
> That's exactly what many want from Apple.
> Change the rules.
Many developers and publishers, maybe. I'm very much unconvinced that's what the subset of users who are aware of this issue in the first place, want, for the most part. I think if it were a major problem for them they'd have bought an Android device, or something else.
> If they can't allow sideloading, they're not as good as I thought.
They do allow sideloading, it's just fairly inconvenient. They can't allow a form of it that's convenient enough to allow other app stores to thrive, without changing the character of the ecosystem for their users. I don't think any amount of being "good" at what they do would change that.
> If Apple sold Android powered iPhones you would still buy an iPhone, you're are buying the brand, not the product.
OK, cool, guess continuing this exchange is pointless.
But you also bought Apple approved tires, Apple approved child seat, Apple approved free miles on the highway and Apple approved breaking fluid
You can't use them anywhere else, maybe you can sell them, but you have to reset the car to factory settings
Whatever you bought cannot be used anywhere else, except another Apple car
That's how vendor lock in works, I'm European but I know US laws don't appreciate when a company locks users in
Probably most apps would still be on store and hopefully you would get a cheaper version from the developer website.
What is clear but you probably don't want to admit is Apple is not fighting here for your safety but for extracting mroe money, if they were not that greedy Epic,Spotify would not have started this wars and you would have been safe in the wallgarden and extremely satisfied that the other people inside can't escape either.
Why wouldn't I admit that? Of course the situation benefits them. I just doubt there's a way to give me all the aspects of their devices & ecosystem that I value, that doesn't also benefit them. I'd love to see them drop the cut they take, for instance. That being so high benefits me not at all, so far as I can tell.
... and if someone comes out with devices that actually compete with the specific sort of product they offer, including the integrated & closed app store and restrictions on what apps are allowed to do, and takes a lower cut of app store sales, then Apple might have to reduce their cut, too. Or this current scuffle might end up not changing the app store rules much, but dropping the cut they take substantially—personally, that's an outcome I'd love.
This is a completely false argument you're putting up - you can HAVE all of those protections while STILL having the option of replacing protected software with less safe one.
Please stop peddling this false argument.
If there's a way to allow easily & conveniently running one's own software without letting competing app stores work, I'm all for it. In fact there is a way to run your own software, it's just inconvenient, because time-limited so you have to re-install it periodically, which effectively kills any possibility of running a successful app store via that method.
Consider two vendors: A and G.
A provides a full walled garden. G provides a walled garden, but lets you side-load whatever you like, you can ignore the apps in the garden.
Everyone making apps for A puts them in the walled garden, so if you own an A, you buy an app from the garden.
For G, vendors decide for themselves whether to use the walled garden. Many choose to sell direct and avoid both the markup and the hassle of getting their apps approved.
They also get to make even more money by embedding surveillance capitalism into their apps if they sell direct. Or include completely unmoderated and unregulated adtech.
As a user, isn't G better than A, since I have the choice?
It is better than A, provided that every app in A's walled garden is also in G's walled garden. However, if in practice the apps I want to use are in A's walled garden, but sold direct on G to avoid the 30% hit, then in practice, as a user, I am better off with A if what I want are apps from the walled garden.
Of course, I can always do my research to figure out whether a side-loaded app on G is safe to use. But if what I wanted was to buy apps without having to think about them, then I can be better off with A in practice even though in theory, G provides everything A provides, and more.
Now, is there really a problem getting all the apps I use on A from G's walled garden? I don't personally know, since I don't want to go to the trouble of sorting out what is available in G's store versus what I have to sideload. So there's plenty of room to argue that in practice, G is superior to A.
But I do not think it is necessarily superior.
I don't like the complete lockout either. I like being able to run my apps on my device. But it is most definitely true that the ability to sideload apps results, in practice, in some developers opting out of providing App Store protected apps in favor of asking you to sideload.
Personally, this is so different from the way I think that I find it utterly surprising, much more so from the tech savvy audience of HN. But apparently preferring walled gardens and being willing to pay extra to obtain one and even more every time you buy something on it is not an uncommon opinion to have.
Seven billion people on the planet. It shouldn't be surprising to learn that not everyone thinks the way that you do.
I wonder if it's an age thing. When you're young and have more time than money, tinkering with the technical hassles of your phone is worth it to save a buck or two. When you're older and have more money than time, you happily pay $399 for an iPhone if it means getting hours or days of your life to spend on other things.
At some point I became acutely aware of every time I was doing something with a computer that was simply fucking with the computer, and not actually getting anything that I wanted or needed to get done, except to the extent that making my computer be not-broken is required for those things. Around that time I was exposed to macOS and iOS and finally had an actual choice to (mostly) not have to do that when I don't want to, and if I decide I would like to tinker then I can use... any other option on the market.
I'd probably be screwing around with trying to run NetBSD on Android phones and turn them into mobile computers I can plug monitors and keyboards into and embedding RPis and Arduinos in all kinds of crap around the house, if I were 16 again.
At the age I am now, though, you'd literally have to pay me to even think about doing any of that. Even when I screw around with getting allegedly set-it-and-forget-it RPi media projects (think: kodi, lakka) working I usually end up regretting it. I do know how to work with those sorts of things. I also very much don't want to any more, but do still want computer-things doing stuff for me with few or no hassles. Luckily these days you can pay to get that, in some categories at least. Largely from Apple, if you want them to last a while—I do wish they had actual competition in that sense. More options that don't spy (much) and Just Work (mostly), please.
Second, I very much argue that if there was no app store, consumers would pay 30% less. The app store and ecosystem provide something for developers, and if you remove the app store, the developers either do it for themselves, or pay somebody else to do it for them.
Of course, if there was meaningful competition, the fees might be less, or the value provided to developers might be more. But I doubt that prices would drop the full 30%.
I say this as someone who worked in tech distribution. Great things can happen when you cut out a middleman, but it's often surprising how difficult it is to replicate the middleman's distribution advantages.
All that being said, I'm not here to debate whether prices would fall 30%, 27.2%, or even 10%. I agree with your basic premise: tech-savvy people have less upside and more downside from owning locked-down devices.
Apple's rent seeking a bit with the App Store, but I have faith in their privacy protections, that they'll continue to support my devices for a long time after purchase, and that they'll be fairly prompt with security updates to all my devices.
And cobbling together the connections between ear phones, watch, phone, computer and TV would be quite tedious, probably no where near as smooth, and a pain in the ass to upkeep.
At the end of the day, besides my computer, I don't really give a hoot about side loading apps from different app stores, or I dunno... customizing things more I guess? I'm not really sure.
There is the possibility increased app store competition (say, if it was ruled anti-competitive to only allow Apple's App Store on Apple Products) would make Apple's App Store better though. Discovery can be kind of a pain in my opinion.
So, I'm not opposed to there being more app stores, but it'd probably take a fair amount of nudging to get me to actually try one.
Fast forward a decade (or maybe 2) and while I am still very pro open-all-the-things, I am happy to pay more for a controlled environment to run things I rely on but don’t care to spend time on maintaining and configuring.
I have 4 other people in my house, plus I'm the "tech guy" for maybe another dozen people. I appreciate how simple that job is when everyone has iPhones.
I have over a dozen and I really appreciate the ability to manage (or at least view) those in one place. Managing my non-app (website) subscriptions is quite a mess.
And it is only one advantage of the walled garden. I don't have to think much when I install an app - is it from the developer, or someone has tampered with it?
Apple is simple. I trust Apple to protect me and honestly based on the stories I read about Google's Play Store I feel more confident in Apple to do the right thing for consumers in the long run. Their incentive is aligned to my needs (good safe hardware that protects me from making potentially poor choices -- even as someone who is in the "tech" world)
Although the situation has gotten much better the past couple years, its still not uncommon to find apps on the app store that charge like 10$ a month for some wallpapers or something of a similar nature. Furthermore, every few months there are new news articles coming out about how ""XYZ"" app is collecting ""ABC"" data from iPhone users(like apps scraping clipboard data, or apps trying to access the microphone or camera when the user thinks there should be no recording going on).
The claim that the iOS is actually protecting users seems dubious at best. Apple tends to exert control over the app store, but it always seems to be in response to users finding out that some app is doing something evil rather then Apple protecting users up front to begin with.
Your point that some bad actors get through doesn't invalidate that Apple seems to be doing the best job of keeping the app store secure and consumer friendly.
The costs of Apple's walled garden have become so obscene at this point that I consider the pro-Apple position to be immoral.
I buy Apple products not because it's a walled garden per se, but because it's Apple's walled garden. Apple has been the only vendor to provide me with a consistently top-quality user experience, so I trust them to make decisions that benefit me. I don't have the same trust relationship with other software and hardware vendors, so their walled gardens I would protest against.
To me, a phone should work for me, not the other way around. I'd rather spend my time living my life than fussing with the technicalities of my phone. I'm willing to pay extra for it.
I also went with iPhone because I trust Apple to vet its apps better than any other vendor. When someone else does as good a job, I'll head over there. But for now, iPhone is where it's at.
The problem is that giving a choice to users is risky and not acceptable at scale because people are not smart, they do dumb things all the time; like pasting untrusted scripts into devtools console and getting hacked. Or replying to mail scams.
So I am happy I can hand an iPad to my parent and not be there to secure all activities they do online.
Users will give the installer root privileges.
History bore this out over and over and over again.
—
[1]: See also: Crapware-laden browser toolbars, Java runtimes, Adobe Reader, Windows crapware, Smart TVs, ...
It's not the only thing I care about, but it's not all just strict downside.
I also buy it for my parents for the same reason.
For some background, I’m a longtime hardware and (more frequently) software developer. I also do quite a bit of ML consulting.
I was gifted a MacBook Air many years ago. I was an avid Ubuntu (and, to a much lesser extent, Windows) user and developer at the time so I didn’t know what to make of it. I certainly didn’t expect to be blown away and switch to all Apple devices.
Eight years later and I’m solidly in the Apple ecosystem. I have an open mind about switching but I love the reliability and consistency of the user experience. I can count on the core apps that I frequently reach for to just work. And if they don’t work there’s almost always an obvious, low-time, solution to fix them. I still do a great deal of development in Windows, but it’s exclusively in a Parallels VM on a MacBook and I’ve long since abandoned my desktop for development.
The Apple ecosystem has built up enough trust with me that I also use it when flying (Foreflight on an iPad). You couldn’t pay me to switch to an android tablet as an alternative for that use case.
My largest complaint is python development is not great on OS X out of the box. But that’s easy enough to work around.
However, to me, it's hard to argue that Apple should keep getting money from you once you've established a loyal customer base and they are giving you money.
And as a not-so-crazy take on this issue, why isn't Apple insisting on taking a cut of, say, the check I'm depositing into Chase and just uploaded a photograph of it. It's revenue, it's in the app ... why isn't Apple taking a piece of that?
And I wonder what test the courts would accept (which the manufacturers would then build to): that the device can run arbitrary code? That each feature of the device is easily accessible via FOSS library or API? That access to each feature in the device could theoretically be reverse-engineered by a sufficiently motivated expert?
Interesting thought experiment.
And I really can't say the same about open platforms, which usually UX-wise are awful and for that I'm willing to give away the "freedom" some other platform might provide.
I am not sure whether this is sarcasm or not.
Since it seems like it is not, let me say that most closed platforms are absolutely garbage. Let us not think only of the iPhones and the Androids of the world, and instead focus on everything else. Think industrial control. Even the cinema stuff mentioned by the GP I'm sure contains software of the worst quality.
All of those things are true today.
The question was: >Should closed hardware (that owns its entire stack) even be legal to sell?
And the answer to that is: obviously it should be, if you care about competition and innovation. The only people that disagree with this are the tech people who have had problems with Apple's business on ideological grounds for decades (people like Richard Stallman and saurik).
But outside that one particularly small constituency, there's no good public policy reason to actually make it illegal, and plenty of reasons not to.
>The U.S. Librarian of Congress ruled on Monday that consumers who circumvent digital protections on smartphones to install unapproved applications—a practice often colloquially known as “jailbreaking”—for noninfringing reasons should be exempted from prosecution under the anti-circumvention section of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).
https://www.macworld.com/article/1152935/jailbreak_exemption...
This would not apply to something like Prima Cimea, nor a John Deere Tractor, or 1000's of other things.
Also the wording of the exception bu LoC was very open to interpretation and not as powerful as people commonly think
https://www.idownloadblog.com/2019/11/10/how-to-jailbreak-wi...
I'm not sure why you're putting this in terms of iOS, since many Android devices also ship with a locked bootloader.
>there is no reason why jailbreaking a device is inherently possible
Any iDevice with an A11 or earlier has an unpatchable bootloader flaw that absolutely makes it inherently jailbreakable. Apple cannot prevent you from jailbreaking those devices, nor can it patch the flaw with a future version of the OS.
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/09/devel...
Ahh, I see the problem - thanks Osiris - there are 2 questions, each of them opposite.
> Should closed hardware (that owns its entire stack) even be legal to sell?
and
> Yes, it's legal today but should we make it illegal?
Good thing I'm not a lawyer!
His answer: Nope.
From a regulatory standpoint, it seems easier than attempting to hand ‘closed’ hardware - less line drawing on what counts as firmware and more focus on what consumers need to properly use and maintain a device over a long period of time.
If this would be restricted then you should keep it legal to buy but illegal to sell. Making the purchase illegal would only further criminalize the consumer.
That last question is actually important - maybe "the market" (meaning whoever is positioned at time) should decide. Maybe "we" already have "decided" and the rest is just that decision playing out.
But I don't think this discussion is that useful without specifics. Imagine 10 years forward - Amazon, Facebook and Google all require locked down (you do not have root) hardware to access anything they store for you/to buy anything. Maybe you can still give your Raspberry Pi an IP and send packets, but interaction with any mainstream entity requires signing your traffic with a key on a chip. ("To solve identity theft" "for the children" "do you want the terrorists to win?")
Is that a world you want to live in?
IMO, yes. We make it illegal for someone to come into your home and take your stuff, which ends up with you losing control over it (you have no more access to your stuff), so it also makes sense to make it illegal for someone to decide to not allow you install or modify the stuff you have (again taking control away from you).
The way most of these platforms run is like buying something but by doing so you also give an implicit permission for the seller to come in your house and modify or even forbid you from using what you bought if they do not like what you are doing with it.
Imagine if you bought an oven and you could only bake specific recipes that the over manufacturer allowed. And when you complained you had others telling you "just buy another oven" (until all oven manufacturers were into the game because it made them more money - especially those who are also into selling ingredients - and you had no other options, except perhaps a few cheap models that had a tendency to explode every now and then and their only usefulness is to be used as skapegoats whenever "monopoly" is brought up).
And yes, i know the above comparisons aren't 100% fitting, software isn't a physical product, it is special, but it still feels very wrong to buy a device (be it a phone, gaming console, TV or whatever) and have no control over what you can install or even -in some cases- do with it.
It's not illegal however if you signed a contract to that effect, which is what you did when you started using the platform.
A better analogy is that you're renting some furniture and the furniture is found to be unsafe. The company can come and take it away, either replacing it with something else or refunding you.
In the software world nobody but the creators or IP holders of the software actually owns the software. They just provide you the license to use it.
It's illegal in many countries to modify the software so if you had a closed-source word processing application it would be illegal to mod it or to use it as part of a data transformation pipeline. You can only use it for the purposes stated when you bought it.
If there was a way to limit your oven to bake recipes the manufacturer allowed or to use specific approved ingredients, and would come with some sort of value-add to make consumers ignore that as a problem, I'm sure someone would actually do this.
(please note that I am stating facts as I see them and not necessarily agreeing with the state of affairs)
Also i'm not arguing about who owns the software, i never asked for ownership of the software, i ask for being able to be in control of the software that runs in the hardware i do actually own. This does not require me owning the OS that runs in my hardware.
And yes, i'm sure someone would do the oven stuff if it was possible and making that illegal would also be something that would be needed.
Contracts are not above the law. Or: you can't contradict laws with your contract.
And for your complaint that all the other ovens are crap and explode. Shouldn’t you take that up with the people making those ovens, not the one that made the locked oven? Maybe it’s very very hard to make ovens that don’t explode from time to time when people can cook whatever they want in them?
If someone came after you paid them and said, btw, you can’t make muffins in this oven, then I think it’s fair to be upset. But in the current situation, no.
I think the reality is there just isn’t as much business incentive to do these kind of things to computing devices as much as people imagine, and instead the arguments tend to paint the would-be oppressors as cartoon villains that want to remove these abilities from the world just because. Android phones that can root or at least sideload have been numerous forever; somehow nobody has bothered to create a halfway serious Google Play Store competitor anyway. Why would every business move to quash something which ultimately isn’t a universal threat? What Epic wants isn’t sideloading or rooting their way on to iPhones, they want Apple themselves to have to let users install Epic’s store through normal channels.
Technically, the Family Computer (Famicom) could run unlicensed software. It even had a BASIC interpreter and a keyboard controller. Nintendo realized their mistake very quickly, however, which is why the NES has a lockout chip and the disk add-on for the Famicom also locked out third-party disks. (Note that part of the system was the ability to buy blank disks and pay to download games onto them via a Disk Writer kiosk, hence why the disks were proprietary, not just the games.) A number of game developers in Japan found that to be a bit of a shock, from what I've heard.
This feels like losing options, not gaining them.
Freedom? No. Opportunity? Maybe. I think communities would arise to fill the demand though. Pseudo-anonymous reputation systems tied to matchmaking could fill the roll. I have a group of pseudo-anonymous friends/acquaintances I frequently play games with online. None of us cheat and if any of us did, we'd stop playing with them. We don't need big brother. We don't need technical solutions to social problems.
The issue here is that you're using "locked down" too generically. What you actually want is something like remote attestation. The device can assert with a signature that it's running a particular version of the OS and a particular version of the game and in so doing allows you to know that the user isn't cheating by using some other software.
That has nothing at all to do with whether you can install arbitrary software on the device or who gets a percentage of what. Even if you could install the Amazon store on your PlayStation and the install Cheat App from there, the device wouldn't then assert that you're running the official game (because you're not), and then the other players would know that and be able to boot you out. You don't need the other player's console to refuse to install an arbitrary app for that, only for it to be able to tell you when that has happened.
Of course you can now make the argument that any form of code execution increases the attack surface. And you're right but hypervisors can be quite effective. Also the XBOX One can be put in developer mode to run arbitrary UWP apps and has not yet had any major exploits (to my knowledge), where the PS4 has no similar features, but has had several firmware versions with significant security flaws.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/xbox-apps/devki...
Switching back and forth between retail and DEV mode is as easy as rebooting.
But just as a devil's advocate; what about rentals? You can't just put new wheels on your ZipCar. If we made locked platforms illegal, they would simply become rentals. But at least it would be explicit then.
Two thoughts:
1 - As software goes into everything, keep in mind that the universe of devices to which this applies will grow to include the set of "non-organic physical objects."
2 - And this will means that surprising outcomes could come of requiring everything to be open. Who do you trust to verify the software in your used car/refrigerator/lightswitch/water heater/etc? For devices where physical safety is at play, how do you verify that the (possibly aftermarket) software is up to code or other certification? Imagine every car sale or home inspection required a software assurance verification of every embedded system. Closed systems implicitly provide some level of assurance here.
No they don't as I can't verify any of that. A perfect counterexample is the VW dieselsoftware.
> perfect counterexample is the VW dieselsoftware
This is a great counterexample that inadvertently proves the point because in that case a) the software in question was exactly as delivered by the manufacturer so that b) consumers were able to receive compensation from rich VW for the faulty software.
If the software stack was open, a malfunction could be caused by aftermarket software (think: downloaded from Sourceforge) and therefore consumers would have no real remedy.
I suppose I could have been clearer on what's being assured. There is (obviously) value in being assured that you are buying what the manufacturer intended!
While there might be an incentive to restrict modifications (at least on a car, which is potentially dangerous), I don't see counterpoints to open-sourceing the software that runs on (the car in this example).
Devices like Kindle are one purpose devices. It is supposed to be a replacement for a book. The integration with Kindle Store for ebooks can be complained about, but Amazon gives you the freedom to use ebooks from anywhere, infact if you can live with the bad experience you can use the browser itself to download them on the device.
iPhone is a different ballgame, it is an ecosystem creating device. I have no problem with them restricting the APIs for third party developers if it improves security on the device, that's a good thing. But then the rent seeking on apps like Spotify is just bad for upcoming companies and would be for users in the end. This is not just limited to software, they can use the same leverage to even kill companies in hardware space.
Sure, Apple doesn't have a monopoly in terms of device share, but they absolutely are in a position to kill a company.
Yes I can.
> because the paranoid film studios wouldn't even license their content if it wasn't
That's fine by me.
I think people should have the freedom to consent to buy whatever products they like so long as the functionality of the product is not kept secret. They also should (and do) have the freedom to try and jailbreak it but not to the point of obligating the manufacturer to produce an open system. But even if there is some sort of law that you can’t sell closed-stack systems, you could just migrate everything to equipment leases. IMO this would make matters much, much worse for the consumer in terms of having control over their own equipment (though maybe some equipment would be made to last again).
if we agree as a society that the way the product work does not fit with our society ideals, then yes, definitely ? Especially when the person buying it will likely not have a lot of information / put a lot of thought in the issue. Laws are meant to protect people from that.
With a device that needs to be used in every day life (proof: smart phone penetration in many countries, more recently, access to certain locations only with a Covid app) it makes sense to have stronger protections for consumers and other businesses.
But the thing is, Apple has been stomping little guys forever and these Billion dollar gaming companies got benefited from it and only when the 30% cut has become too big of a chunk of their revenue; they are now making it as a David vs Goliath story. I had a retro arachnoid type game in Appstore for years which was under 'Arcade' category, when apple branded its gaming subscription service as 'Arcade', it forced me to change it to an irrelevant category.
You can have both ways. You can sell, but after 1 year (or 2) it becomes open.
Yes (practically), but with a small exception.
If you are the only provider of the hardware. For example if you own a single patent protecting any component of the hardware. You are the sole manufacturer of any reasonably unique component of the hardware. You are the only manufacturer putting components together in this combination. Etc. Then it should be illegal. It should be an anti-trust violation. You are using your monopoly on the hardware to create a monopoly on the software running on the hardware. Moreover attempting to do so should constitute patent misuse and invalidate any patents that you previously owned on the hardware [1].
If the hardware is completely commoditized, consumers have the option to buy practically identical hardware from a competitor, then it should not be illegal. It's hard to come up with examples of such hardware
[1] Patent misuse is a doctrine where if you attempt to use a patent to create a monopoly on something else, you lose the patent. It is rarely but not never used by the courts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_misuse
(I acknowledge this is a fairly extreme position, and that it is partially created by motivated reasoning. But it is the most principled position I can find to reach the conclusion that I want)
No.
> You can't argue that Prima Cinema should not be locked down (claiming anti-competitive behavior) because the paranoid film studios wouldn't even license their content if it wasn't.
You can actually. They demand this kind of DRM because they know the customer would sooner say yes to it than not get the movie. But that's only because they're in the better bargaining position as the only source for the movie -- it's leveraging the copyright monopoly into perfidious control over the device market. But they still, at the end of the day, want your money. Which means that if the thing they're insisting on is prohibited, they'll make it work without it.
Consider the general argument you're making. It's basically that if DRM was prohibited by law then Hollywood wouldn't distribute movies at all. But that's farcical -- they would have no revenue. Instead they would just distribute them without it, because they'd have no other option.
Okay, but what about your edge case, the really fancy one with the hardware anti-tampering. Wouldn't they at least not have that one? Still no, because it's still the same thing. The only point in having that is to try to push back the day when the movie is on all the pirate sites. But it's only to push it back while they're still distributing it using the higher margin distribution channels. If DRM was prohibited whatsoever then they couldn't use it there, so they would distribute it even there without it because otherwise there is no high margin early release market to protect.
Which leads me to the conclusion that the only reason why no one is ripping movies using Prima Cinema projectors and commodity grade hardware is the price. If they removed DRM it wouldn't make much of a difference, the limiting factor is already the price of the projector.
DRM is ridiculous because consuming the product is a side channel.
Crucially, this approach wouldn't trigger anything because all of the equipment would work outside of the projector. You would add the lenses and camera aligned and just after the projector. In effect, the system would take the place of the screen in the image path. I don't know of any protected image screen that can detect tampering.
I think the problem here arises not from the DRM (which I tend to believe is OK for clear cut cases like the above movie player), but from the universality of the smartphone device. Because of this universality, the phone is in a way "essential", so the "contract" you (as an end user) have with Apple is not able to encompass every use case of the device.
In this particular case, you might have bought the phone/tablet with the sole (or main - I know kids) purpose to play Fortnite on it. Now, because of politics, you can no longer use the phone for your initial intended purpose. Not because something you did, but because of something Apple and Epic did.
So it should be either forbidden for Apple, or they should be obliged to fully refund you, because the device is no longer usable for the original purpose you used it.
In an "ideal" world (with much less regulation), Apple would not be protected from such litigation (and now they are, because of the fine print) where users demand refund because of such things, but the world is not ideal. The regulation is there, so we should extend it onto Apple, who need to be "reduced" to something more like a utility company.
They maybe should have to say their product cannot be modified on the tin. That'd let consumers choose. It'd also let competitors advertise an advantage, if it is such.
I am in favor of right-to-repair, but that's a different concern than what you're asking about.
Plus, if you don't think Epic had already talked to lawyers and lobbyists in Washington DC and already been given a heads-up that they might win, then you don't know business that well.
I disagree, I think the fact that so many developers built apps for iPhone supports my point. Apple gave developers everything they needed, users with dollars to spend.
I think Apple is right on the line. But I don't see a good argument as to what their doing is being anti-competitive. ~2 million apps are on the app store. Charging a fee for giving developers a huge market that spends money is not exactly unfair. And the rules of engagement are generally applied equally to everyone - the exceptions are noted by the guidelines.
What would make it fair? Lowering the fee? If that were the case, then the problem isn't anti-competitive behavior. If it's the rules, what would fair rules look like that don't harm the end user or the product?
What actual harm is Apple inflicting on the market by their behavior? Developers make less money? That isn't good enough.
I don't see any reason why a company needs to pay any percent of their revenue instead of a flat fee. You pay a % of revenue when someone is your partner or an investor in your company. Apple is neither. In fact, they've shown to be the opposite of a trusted investor/partner as they've copied successful apps and integrated them into their own platform.
The App Store should be a fixed fee, something like $19/month, for your app to be on sale there.
On another note, regarding your first comments, in the late 90's Microsoft went through DOJ depositions and demands for breaking up simply because they bundled Internet Explorer with their operating system. It didn't charge Netscape money for access to Windows and IE wasn't generating any income. But the furor at the time was huge and the anti-MSFT attitude has prevailed to this day. Why not the same feelings for Apple who's made this far more extreme and far more anti-competitive.
So what? All markets work like this. Food prices go up whenever there fuel prices increase, so the grocery store increases the cost to cover the higher cut taken by the supply chain. Apple created this entire market - they could've been far more anti-competitive than they are. Why should the free advertising, access to a market that has users that spend more on average, be free to anyone?
> I don't see any reason why a company needs to pay any percent of their revenue instead of a flat fee.
You're the one making the claim - you have to prove why it's wrong to charge a percentage of revenue first.
The Internet Explorer argument just doesn't apply. They had market dominance - Apple does not.
If it were a monopoly then anti-competitive practices, that would result in price increases, would be illegal .
> Apple created this entire market
It doesn't matter if they created the whole market. That is completely irrelevant to the legality of anti-competitive practices. Now, they are a monopoly, and they are no longer to allowed to engage in anti-competitive behavior.
> they could've been far more anti-competitive than they are
The idea that they could do worse, is not an argument against something as for why it is not bad.
Apple could do many things that are worse than what they are doing now. Maybe, in the future they will hire assassins to kill anyone who does not own an iphone. But that hypothetical world, does not make the current world any better. It is not an excuse.
> Why should the free advertising, access to a market that has users that spend more on average, be free to anyone?
Because the purpose of laws are to help consumers, not to protect apple. The reason why the law should force apple to allow competitors, is because by doing this, this helps consumers.
> They had market dominance - Apple does not.
Apple absolutely has market dominance over apps that are sold on the iphone. They prevent competitors from running app stores on that platform.
This is a huge market.
> Apple absolutely has market dominance over apps that are sold on the iphone.
This is just wrong. This would hold true if no alternative exists. There currently is not an app the iPhone offers that isn't matched in functionality anywhere else.
This doesn't pass basic legal sniff tests.
There is no alternative for buying apps on the iPhone.
> It's not a monopoly. There is an alternative which dominates the market share.
Yes it is. There is not a single alternative, for buying apps on the iPhone. They control that market, and have 100% market share over the iPhone app store market.
Which market? 3rd party software on a computing device? Sorry, that was dozens of years prior. Packaged apps on a mobile device? Sorry, I had those on my Treo in 2001. They haven’t really created any market, they just created a software monopoly on their hardware using existing ideas.
No one cares that a small handful of people owned a Treo in 2001. It wasn't relevant then and it isn't now. In any case, if it isn't a market, then there is no case here, so not sure what your comment means for you.
> They haven’t really created any market, they just created a software monopoly on their hardware using existing ideas.
The monopoly where the competitor has far, far higher marketshare. I'm sorry, I've never read about that in the history books.
There are no competitors on the iPhone. The iPhone isn’t the anti-competitive issue, the App Store is! No one has a market share but Apple on that front.
I think it will be hard to defend that argument in court, given the historical development of prices for apps.
Also, Apple will likely argue that prices could go down because they provide developers a huge market relatively cheaply, so that they can make up Apple’s cut with increased number of sales.
I also think one could argue Apple is your partner when you publish on the App Store (evil partner, maybe, but developers sign a contract with them)
Many customers and developers want the service the App Store provides and are willing to pay for it.
I.e. it’s not a shakedown, it’s a service just like any other.
But even if you argue that people should be allowed to have someone else provide a different service (which is technically problematic since they will still need to use Apple’s API’s), there is no reason to presume that more stores equates to lower prices.
It doesn’t in streaming for example, because of exclusive content.
It also means developers will need to support multiple stores and pass that cost on to the customers.
And it's absolutely a shakedown. It's not a service, it's a requirement. A service implies app developers have options. They do not. Apple could raise the price to 70% of the revenue and app developers would have no choice but to pay. It's not much different than the mob saying "it'd be a shame if this business went away for a while, wouldn't it" and demanded protection money.
Without the app store the iPhone is literally just a piece of hardware. The idea that the App Store isn't a product in and of itself is a falsehood.
> A service implies app developers have options. They do not.
They do - it's called Android.
Internet Explorer is as much the product as Windows.
Without Internet Explorer Windows is literally just a piece of software.
They have options - it's called a Mac
What did Internet Explorer have? DOMINANT MARKETSHARE. That was the problem - not that a program came bundled with software. Such a basic fact conveniently ignored because Apple Bad.
> Without Internet Explorer Windows is literally just a piece of software.
A piece of software that can do many things - an iPhone without apps just doesn't work. Apps run everything - from making phone calls to keeping notes. Windows without internet can still be used. Bad analogy.
> An iPhone without apps just doesn't work.
Sure, but an iPhone without an App Store works fine -- that was literally the way the first iPhone shipped, remember? -- so I'm not quite sure your analogy is a slam dunk here. :)
Remember - they originally said - just use web apps, but developers demanded a way to install software, and Apple developed the App Store in response to that demand.
Nobody is forcing developers to develop for iOS.
If Apple raised their rate to 70%, I’d build for the web or Android in a heartbeat.
It can be both a service and a requirement for iOS developers without being a shakedown.
There were multiple competing stores and sometimes even the developer's own site. The prices were ridiculous, partly because everyone had to implement their own payment and distribution systems. If the software didn't work or there was a problem it was rare to get a refund. Most of the time your contact info was readily sold to "partners".
Apple's cut of sales for the service they provide is pretty small compared to the costs of doing it yourself. There's many of thousands of developers that are enabled by the fact they don't need to host their apps, handle billing, or handle user accounts and PII.
If you seriously think prices to end users would decrease if Apple took a smaller cut you're deluding yourself. If developers are making sales at current prices there's zero reason for them to drop prices even if their overhead drops. Prices are set by what the market will bear and only have their lower bound set by the developer's overhead.
That's the entire issue right there. When Apple is the market, then they can make it whatever they want. If Apple has to legitimately compete with other "App Stores", then the market will find a lower price than 30%.
If that is exorbitant, what SHOULD the price be?
There basically is not a competitive market for either app marketplace right now, so an accurate price can't be determined. Allow 3rd party marketplaces to be installed as easily as any other app and I'm certain prices will come down from where they are today.
I'd argue the opposite -- one of Epic's allegations is that Google scuttled a deal Epic had reached with OnePlus to ship Epic's own Android app store.
I expect that number would drop to around 10%, for "premium" app stores, such as if Steam or the Epic app store were allowed on iPhones.
But also, I would expect there to be even lower priced competitors. Payment processors charge 3% of sales, so a competing app store could get pretty close to around 3%, if they wanted.
So the answer is 10% for "premium" app stores, and for the app stores that instead only doing payment processing, the price should be 3%.
Pretty small? I think Epic, who makes billions and billions of dollars in overall sales (though revenue is unknown specific to Apple devices, but fair to say at least $100M), would strongly disagree with this point.
Additionally, companies like Stripe have made integrating payments _way_ easier than it was back then. Hosting downloads is not difficult either. As noted in the Stratechery article, developers not only give up 30%, but give up a customer relationship and can't even issue refunds! They can't do upgrades, either. It's not just the 30%, it's the flexibility in payment models as well.
I don't know that prices would drop, but more developers would have a sustainable business.
Payment processors like Stripe aren't new, there was PayPal, Kagi, and others before 2008. Handling payments is a non-trivial task for a small developer, the same goes for handling user accounts/data. They're not insurmountable problems but they're a lot more effort than Apple or Google just sending you money when people buy your app.
Hosting is worse than payments as it costs the developer money and keeps costing money. If your app gets a popularity spike instead of getting a revenue spike you get a huge hosting bill.
I think you've got it entirely backwards, more developers have sustainable businesses because of the App Store than without. Payment processing, hosting, managing user data? That shit is easy for big companies or it's an extant expense so mobile app sales aren't adding real overhead. So for Microsoft, Adobe, and Epic those aren't problems. They could easily sell their stuff without the App Store/Play Store and in fact currently do so. For the many thousands of small developers that aren't Epic payment processing and hosting are big costs as is advertising they need to even be found. Before the App Store mobile app aggregators charged money to get listed and wanted bribes to be featured.
Epic et all might see their overhead drop from Apple's 30% to maybe 10%. They pocket the extra revenue and prices don't change for consumers. For many thousands of developers their overhead goes from Apple's 30% to 50-60% doing it in house. So Epic rakes in even more money and small developers get the shaft.
Out of all the arguments against Apple's App Store policies, this has always struck me as the weakest. I remember app prices for Palm Pilots, and for that matter, app prices in general before the App Store came along -- and they were way, way higher. In 2005, a program like Pixelmator for iOS would have at least been $40; on iOS, it's $5. And how much do you think LumaFusion, a multitrack video editor, would have gone for in 2005? If it had been under $200 reviews would have been calling it a steal. It's $30. And that seems insanely high.
So the problem with the "Apple's cut artificially inflates prices" argument is that prices have demonstrably been in free fall during the app era. We can argue that LumaFusion would be able to cut their price to $25, or Pixelmator to $4, and that somehow "proves" that developers have to increase their price, but it's not super compelling.
> I don't see any reason why a company needs to pay any percent of their revenue instead of a flat fee. You pay a % of revenue when someone is your partner or an investor in your company. Apple is neither.
Well, Apple is acting as a payment processor, and payment processors charge you a percent of revenue. I don't think anybody's gonna run credit cards for you for a flat $19 a month fee; if Apple charged only what Stripe did (30¢ + 2.9%), LumaFusion's fees would be over $19 on their 11th copy sold per month and Pixelmator would hit it on sale 65.
I don’t think so. When we determined our app’s monthly price we have A/B tested several price like $5/month, $8/month, $15/month. And we have chosen the one that we earned most (It was the expensive one). If the Apple’s cut will become 10%, we won’t change our price because would earn less. Therefore, Apple’s cut won’t change most of the apps’ price.
When we returned to iPhoneOS 1 era, all of us should just develop PWA websites without dealing with 30% cut.
> Why not the same feelings for Apple who's made this far more extreme and far more anti-competitive.
Because you can't abuse a monopoly when you don't have a monopoly. Apple isn't being anti-competitive. In fact by the very nature of your argument that they are hurting themselves by having high prices and are welcoming competition as consumers could chose cheaper alternatives, which most actually do as Apple only sits on like 14% of the market. Microsoft on the other hand tried to misuse their near 100% position one market to corner a different one in order to kill of competitors and take it for themselves.
The crucial point of the Microsoft case was that their operating system had 90% market share, which Apple does not.
if there is no monopoly, then little will change.
if there is, then consumers will win.
Having a large customer base is not an argument against them being a monopoly. Quite the opposite, it is evidence of it being a monopoly.
> Charging a fee for giving developers a huge market that spends money is not exactly unfair.
It is unfair if they are engaging in anti-competitive practices to prevent competitions from competing.
> What would make it fair? Lowering the fee?
Allowing alternative apps stores to compete against apple's would make it fair, and giving users the option and ability to do this, easily. So, specifically I should be able to install a Steam, or epic app store, on the iphone, without apple having any ability at all to stop me, or take a cut.
> What actual harm is Apple inflicting on the market by their behavior? Developers make less money? That isn't good enough.
Of course it is. If you have a monopoly, then the harm is on the customers of the market. That includes both buyers and sellers. That is how monopolies work.
And also, it is not just developers making less money. Instead, the monopoly place in the market, prevents developers from passing on the savings to the consumer.
So the fee would have to be literally 0%, for me to even accept the idea that consumers aren't harmed by it.
> It is unfair if they are engaging in anti-competitive practices to prevent competitions from competing.
Which has been proven untrue - because there are 2 million apps on the marketplace. The rules are out there. I haven't seen a case where the rules were violated and nothing was done.
> Allowing alternative apps stores to compete against apple's would make it fair, and giving users the option and ability to do this, easily. So, specifically I should be able to install a Steam, or epic app store, on the iphone, without apple having any ability at all to stop me, or take a cut.
This is a significant risk to the product. Opening it up means that the quality of the product and consumer suffers. The competing app store is the Play Store. Feel free to switch to that OS.
> Of course it is. If you have a monopoly, then the harm is on the customers of the market. That includes both buyers and sellers. That is how monopolies work.
Sigh. It isn't a monopoly, but I'll humor you. Go ask any iPhone user what they think about the app store. I highly doubt you'll find any significant figure upset.
Thats still a monopoly on apps sold on the iPhone.
You are just giving arguments as for why you support Apple's monopoly on the iPhone app store market.
> A monopoly needs to dominate the market.
Also, related, there does not even need to be a monopoly for anti-competitive practices to be illegal. Anti-competitive behavior can still be illegal, even if there is not monopoly.
> the competing app store is the Play Store
No, actually. The play store cannot install apps on the iPhone. That is the market that Apple has a monopoly on.
Not when they're different markets. Even EU's antitrust case against Google found that Google "dominant in the markets for [...] app stores for the Android mobile operating system." Which means Apple is the same for iOS app stores.
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_18_...
Thus, Apple music can be offered cheaper than Spotify. I'm not sure how exactly this applies to Fortnite, though.
And IAP, which is the subject under discussion, is 100% through Sony, and Sony still gets 30%.
[1] https://www.epicgames.com/fortnite/en-US/news/the-fortnite-m...
>[smartphones are] not a console you play to entertain yourself, or even a PC for work: it is the foundation of modern life
IMHO, this is a perfectly valid argument.
To be clear, I have no idea how that could be legislated, nor do I necessarily think it should be. I'm only saying that it's easy to see why they aren't the same thing.
Is it just because "they can"?
Apple could try something like giving "consumable" IAP a different cut, but I'm sure devs would still try to game that too (e.g. having a consumable that unlocks the app for a set amount of time, rather than a permanent unlock).
Would hardly even create a dent in Apple's revenue and they apparently don't know what to do with the money anyway except put it in a giant pile, so no loss for society.
Apple could take out credit card processing fees and then charge 5%, but up until now they haven't had a reason to change. Perhaps we will see change here, who knows?
I think the real reason is that when the Apple store was started, they looked around at the current prices for "software distribution". Retail was like 70%, and other app stores; for example the Danger Hiptop / T-mobile Sidekick charged 60% for their apps store, and the carriers were worse. At the time, 30% was actually a lot cheaper than everyone else. Then I assume Google just copied Apple.
Part of the problem with this whole market is that we're talking about zero marginal cost goods. Taking away frictional costs of transaction, distribution and support, the economic argument is for prices to trend towards $0. Hence the "race to the bottom" once the App Store made distribution "free" for free apps.
[1]: https://stripe.com/pricing
$0.59 in CC fees for ten dollars. That's 5.9%
$0.735 in CC fees for $15: 4.9%
The EU just limited credit card inter bank exchange fees to 0.2%.
Apple has to pay for these somehow. They can either get the money by charging more for each iPhone or they can get the money from the real end-users of these products: Developers.
What is Apple spending 7.5 billion USD on such that they'd have to raise the price of iPhones? They have multiple other revenue sources as well, like developer program fees. None of those cover their costs either? Are you suggesting they're selling phones at a loss?
But Apple are choosing to maintain XCode, not as a charity, but to make money selling phones -- $250 billion last year. It's not like they aren't getting paid for it…
30% is just rent-seeking opportunism. 3% shows something far closer to Apple's true costs for all this when faced with the fact that the Mac App Store is (for now) not required.
It absolutely shouldn’t add up to 30% unless you believe Apple should be using the App Store as a pseudo-loss-leader for the iPhone.
Why Apple doesn't switch to a 5% + $0.29 structure is anybody's guess, however...
If developers had a choice in payment processors, they could choose one with smaller minimum per-transaction fees, aggregate multiple payments from the same customer, try out subscriptions instead of microtransactions so the payment processor takes a smaller cut, etc...
If Apple, Google et al want to have control over their digital domains honestly instead of breaking them up let's just socialise the economic rents, or cap it at 2% or whatever.
What do you call Steam, Xbox, Nintendo, Best Buy, Game Stop, Playstation, Microsoft...
I think it would probably be hard to argue, given the market structure now, that the return relative to risk is still reasonable. Normally other entrants would join and exert some degree of pricing pressure on theses fees. The Google / Apple duopoly means that this isn't working.
Are developers going to lower prices of in-app purchases if Apple’s cut goes down? Doubtful. But if they do I might buy more.
On a $.99 app, they still might not. I mean, they might, given economies of scale, but barely. Free apps incur costs with zero compensation. If all apps cost 99 cents, I don't think we'd be having this conversation. If Apple were still operating the App Store at break-even, I don't think we'd be having this conversation.
Apps with IAPs that are $9.99, that's a lot of extra profit. Apple might argue that they help offset all of the free apps, but obviously a company like Epic is going to feel singled out.
Apple is no longer only trying to break even with the App Store. They have openly stated that it is profitable, and that they want it to be more so. Epic and others with higher-than-99-cents sales don't like giving up so much, and I can't say I blame them.
It was true for a brief period of time, several publishers challenged Apple on it, and Apple relaxed that rule.
They still have several silly rules, but not this one.
I don't know if 30% is fair but there's value for sure in making tax returns easier.
Apple shouldn't have to enable you to undermine their business with their own property. And no court would ever require them to.
The fact is that Apple hasn't changed the terms. It's been the same since the App Store began (technically it's become more generous to developers with the reduction in the fee for subscriptions after the first year). Meanwhile the iPhone installed base is magnitudes larger than it was in 2008, making it more lucrative for developers than ever. Apple would be well within their right to raise the fee, but the fee has only ever gone down.
That's addressing the moral argument of their business model. Legally, Epic has no case.
* Screened apps - Apple only lets "safe" apps into the store. * Discoverability - Apple in theory lets users find apps that they didn't know about before. Customer Acquisition * Payments - Apple makes it easy to accept payments, for their 30% fee.
One or all of those are useful and great. Where I have an issue is when they use one (the required screened apps aspect) for force you into the others.
Hey wanted an app on the store, as an extension to their primarily web based experience. But they couldn't purchase just the rubber-stamp that says they're not malware and the app store hosting. They were being forced to buy into all 3.
That feels like using an existing monopoly (actually a duopoly w/ google's similar practices) to force developers to purchase products they don't want. Hey didn't want to accept payments via apple, but Apple's market power and decisions were focused on forcing them to.
If Apple had a yearly fee of $1000 (arbitrary number, maybe pay per download or device or whatever), for an app to simply be reviewed & hosted, that would be reasonable. They provide a service, businesses can opt into that. But they're taking their core value prop of "closed app store helps customers" and forcing their way onto "and now you have to pay us a portion of revenue".
In order to sell goods in a place like Walmart, a manufacturer is subject to onerous terms. Why is the app store different than a retailer limiting access to their shelf space? I personally feel they are different but I cannot put into words why.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wal-Mart_Effect
Imagine if you could buy shoes only at Walmart because you bought the shoe rack there.
No you can't. Walmart often requires vendors to make a special Walmart-only version of their product. So there is nothing that's truly comparable.
There is no "vendor lock in" for t-shirts
You are not forced to buy walmart special editions using Walmart payment gateway and vendors don't have to pay Walmart a 30% cut, the opposite is true, Walmart HS to buy at least N items and pay in advance to be able to require a special edition, even though they don't know if they are going to sell all of them
(That may not even be 100% hypothetical. They have lots of money, so can afford getting delayed payment for phones. They might even be able to become a global phone company, too, and rent you a phone and a network subscription)
Plus, you could unlock your phone (in some cases) and move to another carrier, which theoretically meant a different store! True freedom.
Of course actually using these phones and putting apps on them was MISERABLE, mostly because they were symbian and/or j2me apps
Avoiding Google surveillance meant you could only buy an Apple car. You could then only buy gasoline at Apple gas stations. People in your town who wanted to change your oil had to pay an annual fee to Apple to even be considered, would have to pay 30% of revenue to Apple if approved, and could be put out of business at any moment with no recourse by whatever happened in secret behind the Apple fortress walls.
You as a car owner could not choose to buy tires or get "your" car painted or even get your car washed by anyone without going through Apple. You paid Apple for the car wash, because (no matter what you or the people washing your car would prefer) you were Apple's customer and the car you paid for was Apple's car.
For your "safety", of course.
A phone is as fundamental to the infrastructure of your life today as a car. Any company that could utterly control it would probably become a trillion-dollar company.
The problem with most comments shouting “30% is too high!” is that it’s impossible to throw out a better number that isn’t entirely arbitrary. The issue isn’t the number.
The issue is the mechanism by which that number can be enforced.
If we agree smartphones have become essential infrastructure, needed for the modern economy to function, we should not allow just 2 companies to have such power over it.
What makes people uncomfortable about this though, is that Apple has really done nothing wrong to get here. It’s just that their product and the App Store concept they popularized became so successful, that it’s now essential to modern life.
For the people arguing against regulation, I totally understand the uncomfortable feeling that creates.
This analogy only works if Walmart had a contract with 50% of Americans to buy everything from Walmart only and nowhere else. Those people would not be allowed to even grow their own tomatoes in their gardens, unless they pay Walmart $99 per year for that privilege.
It should be worth it to Apple to review and host these apps just to benefit the platform which leads to users purchasing their products. The current $99 fee I imagine covers their costs to review and host most of these types.
Screened, primarily to be in agreement with Apple's business interests. The user's concerns (privacy, functionality, avoiding other types of malware) are given far less (inadequate) consideration. Worse, they are lulled into a false sense of security due to such memes.
Let's say that Australia wants to ban consumer encryption. This would currently be difficult to enforce for PC software. But on mobile, this is easy. Just make Apple and Google enforce it! Make them ban such apps from their stores. Now you've achieved perfect enforcement on Apple hardware. Even on Android, where people could in theory side-load the banned apps, this would prevent those apps from achieving any scale or network effect.
That's what I think people are missing here. No matter how much you trust Apple, once the mechanisms for this kind of power are in place, you won't be able to control what happens next.
It is a strong counter argument for requiring openness at the App store level.
If Australia bans encryption, you as a consumer who resides in Australia has a high switching cost (moving, new job, residence, etc.) and thus the consumer loses out.
If Apple starts to use that power badly... you can switch to a number of competitor feature phones with largely the same feature and app capabilities (Android being the most obvious)
In a market with 2+ competitors and where its low switching costs (moving contacts is quite easy these days, not a lot of deep 2-year contracts for phones/providers) this point doesn't hold true
There is only one real competitor: Android. Google would very much like to have the same degree of control that Apple does over their ecosystem, but they're holding back for now so that they can point to Apple as being worse when the congressional inquiries heat up.
Feature phones are not real competitors to smartphones.
>If Apple starts to use that power badly... you can switch to a number of competitor feature phones with largely the same feature and app capabilities (Android being the most obvious)
It depends, network are effects are strong on Apple (iMessage) and maybe you already bought tons of apps and software that you can't transfer to Android or Windows.
How much does that cost? How does it work if the apps you rely on are iOS only? How do I transfer my app and subscription purchases to my new Android phone?
A private company is already put themselves in plate to control software content that reaches millions of people without those people having the ability to choose anything else on their pocket computers.
This is true, which is why I surprised the other day when I found this app called "BLMovement" when I was looking around to see if anyone was making a completely distasteful joke...
https://apps.apple.com/uy/app/blmovement/id1517754969
As a "resource directory", it's not purely political but surely it skirts the line.
I'm certain that if some political movement had popular support Apple would forget the rules though.
(Although, I doubt they'd let this same app in the store if it was called AntifaMovement, QAnonMovement or NationalSocialistMovement.)
You could always use a website instead. Why is an app necessary?
> Whereas China needed to control country-wide Internet access to achieve its censorship goals, Apple and Google have helpfully provided the Indian government with a one-stop shop. This also, for better or worse, gives a roadmap for how the U.S. government could respond to TikTok, if it chose to: there is no need to build a great firewall — simply give the order to Apple and Google. Centralization, at least from a central government’s perspective, has its uses.
https://stratechery.com/2020/india-bans-chinese-apps-the-app...
Epic thought they were big enough and valuable enough that they could bully their way through ToS violations. All the hip thinkpieces were saying that no matter what happens here Epic comes out on top, because Apple has everything to lose and blah blah.
Turns out nope, Epic's customers do need the app store after all, so Apple has the leverage here after all.
This is exactly how Indian government has banned tiktok. They are never able to ban websites because the web is open. But apps they can ban easily because if Apple/Google say no, they will be squeezed.
But then again, I shouldn't be surprised since there are incentives to act this way.
I am happy to pay for a premium to have peace of mind. To give an analogy it’s kind of like gaming console vs PC gaming where I am happy to sacrifice a bit of performance in exchange of getting rid of all shady game-specific launchers
Also from customer prospective, I feel more comfortable knowing the payment will go through Apple.
But this is a good thing, not a bad thing. Literally the purpose of all this, is to get around this cut. It is better for developers and consumers, to take whatever actions possible, to support loopholes, that get around this 30% cut.
This is the explicit goal here, and the reasons why it is good. The loophole would be a good thing.
Do Microsoft, Sony or Nintendo allow other stores on their consoles?
How much % do they take from console game sales?
There are a wide range of other parties that dislike Apple’s policies.
Why don’t they build their own platform with their own exclusive and attractive content?
I can see two options:
1. A full blown phone. Hard to do? Perhaps, but if Apple and a Google really aren’t competitive, then it should be possible to take customers away from Apple over the next few years, especially if your device has the games that teens want and can’t get from Apple.
2. Don’t start when a phone. Make a gaming handheld with exclusive content - Epic’s super popular titles, plus XBox streaming. Sell it for $200. Basically an iPod for games, done right. If Nintendo can sell handheld consoles it’s obvious Epic and Microsoft can.
Then just build this out with phone functions, and a great browser for SPA’s etc, leveraging flutter, and eat Apple’s lunch from the bottom up in classic low-end disruption style.
Bonus: have an open bootloader - bootcamp style so that enthusiasts can hack the thing.
#2 seems like they could have a product on the market next year if they wanted.
I could see this strategy easily forking the market into iPhones for productivity and Epic devices for fun, and causing both segments to improve at a greater pace.
Apple simply isn’t unassailable if people are willing to put in the sustained effort needed to compete with them, but to do so will take a similar sustained effort over a similar time period to what it took them to obtain their position.
They don't want to spend their cash to do the R&D, and build up the network of stores and customer support required to be able to compete with Apple.
If they win the lawsuit they will (probably) be able to have more control over how they want to distribute their iOS apps.
If they lose, they won't have to deal with iOS anymore. Free players cost money too, and it's possible iOS is not so interesting to Epic with the %30 Apple cut.
Also, since their business model is based on microtransactions, most of their revenue must come from whales. These are committed players who will most likely go get their Fornite fix somewhere else. Specially if Apple wins. Most gamers will always side with Epic here.
You think Epic would start a lawsuit without having done their math and willingly decide to lose millions daily plus the legal fees?
I don't understand the argument you're attempting. Apple doesn't sell my info "for the 30% tax." In fact, they charge app developers that 30% and then keep my data away from those same developers.
To exclude other companies from accessing your wallet Apple must control the software running on your phone, which means blocking you from installing or modifying software on the device you supposedly own.
In particular, Fortnite is still available on Android with its new payment system after being removed from the Play Store.
If I want "complete control" I can use *BSD.
There are far more similarities than differences between the big tech companies. None of them offers the user anything approaching "complete control". Their employees must engage in no small amount of self-delusion to argue otherwise.
If Google is so different from Apple, why do they need a "Play Store" pre-installed on every mobile device. Where did they get that idea. Worse is that Google will use it to siphon more user data and feed its core business.
Of course running an Android phone without the Play Store is supported by AOSP.
Your bias is very clear, but even you have to admit the fact that Fortnite is still available to any Android user who wants it, thanks to features that Google intentionally develops and enables in Android for the explicit purpose of enabling alternative app distribution methods.
BSD bias, maybe. ;)
Show me a mobile device Google is selling that has no Play Store.
As I said, the differences between the companies are very small compared to the similarities.
But employees and fanboys on both sides love to try to make the differences seem profound. They're not.
Fortnite, nor any other software, should not even have to go through a company "store" approval to run on hardware the user bought. Even you have to admit that, since you are the one mentioning so-called "sideloading". Jumping through these hoops should not even be necessary and you know it.
If you have a small pub in the middle of nowhere you can be a selective as you want. If your pub chain feeds 50% of the people in the country you damn right will have to be heavily restricted in what you can do.
It doesn't matter if it's monopoly or not. After you cross a threshold the rules should be different and it's just amazing Apple has been allowed to grow so big with basically no oversight.
Apple saying no to people being able to bring their own payment provider feels akin to saying the road provider only allows cars they vet, and then charge 30% car manufacturers 30% of the price of the car.
Basically figure out how to make mobile gaming available via Mobile Safari, Mobile Edge or Mobile Chrome browsers.
I think people overestimate the importance/benefit of such level of control over instalation of apps. Yes, Wintel was plagued by malware viruses but Mac/Linux/Unix wasn't. I don't think the benefit (protecting users from threats) outweighs the drawbacks (not having control of device, not allowing ecosystem of paid thinkerers to help Muggles personalize their devices) of having such closed approach.
It should be clear to everyone that the smartphone will become more and more integrated into our lives to a point where at some point you cannot participate in society without a phone. Sure, many things have alternative options or are limited to tech enthusiasts but other options become less favorable more and more.
The alarm clock in the morning, communicating with friends and family, paying for things, doing your taxes, unlocking your door. Also unlocking your car is coming and there is even early talk of putting your driver’s license in your phone. Getting driving directions, some people use their phone as an artificial pancreas system. (https://androidaps.readthedocs.io/en/latest/)
The smartphone has become the personal computing device.
A gaming console is something completely different, there I'm perfectly fine if a company wants to control the environment. I would prefer an open system but Sony, Nintendo or Microsoft controlling the games I can play is not even close to the limitations apple creates with their ecosystems on society. Google allows for third-party stores on their Android system, I would be doable for Apple to allow the same.
I have a PS4
I can buy the game digitally from Sony
I can buy the digital code which activates on PS4 from Amazon or sometimes even straight from the publisher
I can buy a physical copy from countless retail stores both off and online from Walmart to BestBuy to Amazon to Gamestop
I can sell my used physical copy on Facebook Marketplace, Ebay, or Craigslist
This is the difference. And it's much bigger than people realize.
It is true, there is no physical media for Android or iOS purchases.
I can pay Sony to take a cut from the developer.
I can pay Amazon and Sony to take a cut from the developer.
I can pay retail stores to take a 50% or more cut, and then Sony takes a cut.
I can regain some of the cut that I paid to a retail store, so that the developer gets nothing, by selling it on Ebay or craigslist.
You are always buying the game from Sony, and Sony is always getting their cut. Your options are whether to involve other rent seekers or to just fuck over the developers completely.
Buying games on PC now means that you have to install 5 different app stores which are usually slow, buggy and not that well written cross-platform code (pretty much like Fortnite itself).
Tencent is also 40% shareholder in Epic, and there has been criticism on Epic sending user data back to China.
> In early December 2018, Epic Games announced that it would open a digital storefront to challenge Steam by using a 12% revenue split rather than Steam's 30%.[20] Epic also said that it would not impose digital rights management (DRM) restrictions on games sold through its platform.[20] The store opened days later, on December 6, 2018, as part of the Game Awards, with a handful of games and a short list of upcoming titles.[21][22] The store was open for macOS and Windows platforms before expanding to Android and other platforms.[20] Epic aims to release a storefront for Android devices, bypassing the Google Play Store, where it will similarly only take a 12% cut compared to Google's 30%. While Apple, Inc.'s monopoly on iOS currently makes it impossible for Epic to release an App Store there, analysts believe that if Google reacts to Epic's App Store by reducing their cut, Apple will be pressured to follow suit.
Epic should sell App Store gift cards.
> I think Epic's real motivation here is to run their own App Store
Yeah, you're right. That is the outcome that we want. We want multiple stores on iOS. I thought advocates for this position had been really clear, but maybe we haven't been clear enough.
For the record, we want there to be multiple app stores on iOS.
> build a bigger moat and get the profits themselves
You're worried that Epic's store is going to eventually overrun Apple's and then Epic will somehow prevent other stores from being installed on iOS devices? You're worried that we'll get a bigger moat than literally not being able to run any code on the device that doesn't pass through Apple's review process?
What on earth would that theoretical bigger moat even look like?
> and get the profits themselves (12% cut, 5% if you use Unreal Engine)
I want to follow up on this in the context of your worry about moats. We live in a world where Apple has complete control over the app ecosystem, and you're frightened that another company might get control and... offer better terms than we have right now?
What specifically is the horror scenario that you're frightened of?
> They also make exclusive deals, where the games can only bought in their store for 6-12mo.
I can only imagine how upset you're going to be when you learn about how Apple Arcade works.
> Tencent is also 40% shareholder in Epic
Apple actively censors thousands of apps in China from the app store right now. You are worried about accidentally funding censorship through indirect means, and your response to that is to directly take the side of one of the censors.
Right, and the rest of us don't want that, and I also don't want games or apps that don't adhere to Apple's rules. You want another option of App Stores because you want don't want to pay for the user base that Apple created and maintains. You want to embed permanent location tracking in your apps, abuse user data, and not have to have your crappy practices out in the open when Apple shows the "nutrition scorecard" for your app.
That's not what I want on my iPhone. If your app doesn't conform to the App Store, then that's your problem, not mine. I'll vote with my dollars here. I want the iPhone just the way it is, even if that means fewer apps from bad actors.
> We live in a world where Apple has complete control over the app ecosystem, and you're frightened that another company might get control and... offer better terms than we have right now?
Yes that's exactly what I want. I want Apple to have complete control over the ecosystem. They've earned my complete trust.
Also, notice that FB has done everything possible to gather information. Frankly, the NSA should just hire FB to do their work - it'b be faster and cheaper.
Locking stuff down is hard. Doing it with multiple app stores will be impossible.
Honest question, what do you lose by other people having the option?
If developers have a choice of app stores, then users have to install ALL app stores if they want access to the entire market. This happened with streaming services as well: when Netflix was the only prominent one, only that subscription was enough. Now you also need Amazon, Hulu, etc.
Nobody forces anyone into interaction with Carnegie Steel. People want to use their steel because they know they can benefit from it, financially big. And they purchase it voluntarily by the most fair means of it, by trading their money in exchange for the steel under the rules that are mentioned prior the transaction takes place.
That isn't what a monopoly is.
You didn't have access to the entire market when Netflix was the only store. You had access to Netflix's market, and all of the other shows that are currently being funded by competitors didn't exist.
You could still use only Netflix today if you wanted to. The only difference is that now you are aware of what you are missing.
How many developers have consciously chosen to abandon the entire mobile market because of how toxic it is, because of how tailored the market is to a very specific sub-genre of mass-market apps and games? How many developers have abandoned iOS because their games touched on political or serious topics that Apple decided weren't suitable for their store? Many of us are not interested in creating the types of apps that thrive on the current mobile app stores, so we've abandoned the mobile market entirely.
When you can only see a tiny part of the world, you think that you have access to all of it. Once the walls get taken down and you realize how big the world is, then you realize how much of it you didn't have.
I completely sympathize with the frustration of not being able to get access to some of this stuff. I won't sign up for Netflix because of their DRM and anti-consumer practices. There are some shows I can't watch because of that. Trust me, I get the pain.
But having only one streaming platform forever would have been worse. So much of the original content that's coming out on Netflix only exists because Netflix had to compete. There are really good shows that are HBO/Hulu/Disney+ originals. I want that media to exist, even if I can't personally get at it right now.
Then you could personally keep using a single app store and enjoy the non-monopolistic prices.
Look at how Netflix is still raising prices even with less content.
If the only people arguing about this lawsuit fell into either my camp or yours (ericmay's), I'd be a lot less irritated about this whole debate.
I fundamentally disagree with you, but at least your arguments are relatively internally consistent. At least I understand where you're coming from.
Give me a hundred people saying, "I like Apple being a dictator", just get rid of all the awful arguments about how, "there is no right side, and both of them are in the wrong."
I couldn't care less whether or not people like Epic in particular. If you spend all of your time getting picky about who can and can't advocate for you, then eventually people will stop advocating for you altogether.
Then don't install them? But I fail to see why you (or Apple) should be in a position to tell other users what they can install or not.
>You want another option of App Stores because you want don't want to pay for the user base that Apple created and maintains.
lolwat Honestly, I don't even know what this is supposed to mean.
>You want to embed permanent location tracking in your apps, abuse user data, and not have to have your crappy practices out in the open when Apple shows the "nutrition scorecard" for your app.
This is a typical "think of the children" argument once more. Nobody forces you to install that tracking shit. You're free to not use apps that do that - e.g. get your apps from the Apple App Store, or make your own app if there is no such tracking free alternative. But those Apple App Store approved apps you seem to be so fond of... they do track you already ;)
>That's not what I want on my iPhone.
Then don't put use it on your iPhone.
>Yes that's exactly what I want. I want Apple to have complete control over the ecosystem. They've earned my complete trust.
Good for you. Nobody is stopping you from exercising your trust and only use Apple and/or Apple-approved software in the future.
Because it's their platform, they created it, they grew it, they paid for its development out of their pocket, and they offered it as a unique market proposition that satisfies millions of users around the world. Apple doesn't force anyone into their platform, everyone involved are there voluntarily and solely because they know that it's beneficial for them to be on the platform.
> Right, and the rest of us don't want that, and I also don't want games or apps that don't adhere to Apple's rules.
Why do you care? If you don't want to install a third-party app store, then don't. The games available on Apple's store will continue to adhere to Apple's rules, and if you want that curation, you still get it.
> They've earned my complete trust.
This blind devotion to the Apple Way is baffling, especially considering how Apple-approved apps are not free of the tracking and user-data abuse you (correctly!) rail against.
Apple users care because if non-App Store distribution methods are banned, then developers are forced to go through Apple's process to get access to them. You can see complaints around this thread about how bad Epic's store on PC is. On iOS, they're forced to use Apple's purchase UI, subscription rules, privacy rules, etc.
If Apple's goal was protecting their consumers, they could easily roll back the contested parts of their policy while protecting consumers AND still make a profit.
And if the only policies that these developers had to legitimately complain about were the ones that protect users, they'd be laughed out of town. But that doesn't seem to be the case.
I've been seeing this argument a lot and it makes the assumption that allowing alternative app stores has no impact on people who choose not to use them. I don't think this is true.
An app developer may decide to only list their app on an alternative store because they pay lower fees and they can handle payments themselves. As a user you now need to choose between not using the app or giving your credit card information to the app developer you may not trust.
If you get value out of the current App Store rules, like the person you replied to, then there is absolutely a cost to allowing alternative stores.
But then this is competitive pressure for Apple to charge lower fees and allow apps to handle payments themselves, at which point the app would be back in Apple's store because the customer prefers to buy it from there. Everyone benefits (except Apple).
Meanwhile if you don't want to give the app your credit card number, you still don't have to. Refuse until they use Apple's payment method. If most users share your unwillingness then developers will still have to use a payment method you do trust. If they don't, what right do you have to constrain the choices of the other users?
No it isn't. The next moment Apple significantly lowers its comission, the same people will start whining about Apple "dumping the market" "to sink its competitors", and that it should be prosecuted under the same flawed anti-trust legislation. Been there, seen that: if your rates are too high you are a monopolist; if your rates are low you are dumping; and if your rates are the same as of your competitors then there's a "collusion".
I’m not sure what your point is here. That antitrust litigation is futile or counterproductive? The threat of it seems to be having positive effects already, looking at the front page of HN: https://techcrunch.com/2020/08/17/apple-expands-its-independ...
> The threat of it seems to be having positive effects already, looking at the front page of HN
it depends on your reliance on that kind of services and varies greatly among the userbase. I'm using Apple since 2014, I've never needed to use any of these services, and I would prefer to have a device that is hard to disassemble and is cheaper to produce without a loss in quality.
We know it from history for sure, that "bigness" of an economic player is not a problem. There was no anti-trust legislation prior 1913, and Standard Oil was lowering prices for their oil and kerosine every year in order to compete with emerging oil wells developers, which kept popping up dispite Standard's dominance. [1] Customers, large and small, were benefiting along the way. But notice how governments-coordinated OPEC influences the prices and ability to enter the market:
[1] https://www.winton.com/longer-view/price-history-oil
The problem is, Apple isn't that -- it doesn't have a duty to the user, it has a duty to Apple shareholders, so what it does will be for their benefit and not yours unless they happen to coincide. Which they won't in enough cases that you don't actually benefit on net. It's not in your interest to have developers paying 30% and destroying the marginal developer and providing other developers with fewer resources to make better apps, or to have apps rejected just because they compete with Apple's, or deterred from being developed because developers become unwilling to risk their investment being wiped out by the opaque rejection process.
Meanwhile if you want the purchasing co-op, go set it up. So that it's using the market power of all the store's customers to get concessions from developers (and Apple), but is a co-op owned by and acting in the interests of the users instead of a for-profit monopoly acting in the interests of itself. Unless Apple is preventing anyone from creating that, right?
This is literally the point of allowing healthy competition. If Apple wants these games on their app store, they should offer terms that are competitive with the hypothetical third-party app stores.
You talk about developers if this is the only concern, but Apple is ultimately deciding it wants to not give money to certain social concerns or movements it doesn't like based on it's whim, and no corporation should have the power to do that for something as important as half of mobile telecoms.
You need to choose between not using the app, or buying a new phone and giving a developer you may not trust your credit card information
Furthermore, Walmart has placed restrictions on all keyboards purchased from their stores. All online purchases made using their keyboards will now funnel 30% of the payment to Walmart.
Thank you for your business and absolute trust in our secure business model that we operate for your benefit.
> You want to embed permanent location tracking in your apps, abuse user data, and not have to have your crappy practices out in the open when Apple shows the "nutrition scorecard" for your app.
How about stopping theses practice on the OS side of the device? Apple already do that there... I agree completely that it's crazy when an OS allow stuff that we don't want to allow, it's not curation that solve this, it's actually a secure system that does.
Please stop speaking for others. I would certainly like to have the ability to install other sources for apps. Since I am part of "the rest of us", for any kind of "us" that came to my mind while reading your posting ("iPhone users" or "Apple customers" or "HN readers"), your statement is patently false.
> That's not what I want on my iPhone.
Then don't install additional stores. I also don't want most of the apps currently available in Apple's app store on my iPhone, but I'm far from demanding that they are to be banned and other people who want to use them should be prevented from doing so.
Also it's too sad you conspicuously skipped over danShumways question regarding the "bigger moat" - because I indeed would be interested in what moat you are imagining there, too.
Same to you and the GP here. And last I checked there aren’t a lot of customers really complaining about the App Store. It’s just big companies who, although they could have done this years ago, are now going against Apple’s customer protection because it degrades their crappy business practices.
> Then don’t install additional stores
Then buy a different phone?
I want any app that doesn’t follow Apple’s guidelines to be completely banned. Goodbye Epic. Nice knowing you. Don’t care. I don’t want apps spying on me, engaging in shitty business practices, scamming customers, and doing bad things. Apple is working to protect my privacy and safety. They’re not perfect, but that’s why I buy an iPhone and I want it to stay that way. If I wanted another App Store I’d buy a different phone, like you should.
It would be like having to buy a different laptop to use Amazon or Ebay.
Ok. Now what if I were to tell you that you are perfectly capable of doing this, by simply not installing other app stores.
You dont need to metaphorically break into my house, and force me, at gun point to follow your rules as well.
You can do what you want with your phone, even if other people are able to do what they want with their own phone.
> If I wanted another App Store
Then just don't install the other app store? You have no said why you need to force me to do something, in order for you to get what you want.
While some people here might fall for this simple propaganda, I doubt the courts will.
It is totally expected of Epic that they will at the same time make the claim about "freedom" and "choice" while signing exclusive deals so that customers are required to install the Epic store if they wish to play certain games.
If the real issue is my freedom, then let me play Fortnite on the App store thanks. But it's not about my freedom. It's about your $$$.
You're certainly free to do so, and free to say whatever bullshit you think will help you, but you're not going to get a free pass from everybody here.
>What specifically is the horror scenario that you're frightened of?
Really? What sort of horror scenarios have happened with game installers on PCs and Android? Root kits. Spyware. Password capture. Camera activation.
And you know this, so all you are doing is letting us know that you think we are stupid.
A surprising number of people on Hackernews don't understand how Apple Arcade works.
This isn't just specific to the mobile market. As an Open advocate and critic of DRM, it's been frustrating to watch gamers suddenly get very concerned about store choice and exclusives over the past few years, after over a decade of watching them dismiss the same arguments against Steam.
I'm not going to read too far into that inconsistency, because I feel like doing so would skirt HN policies. But I will say that if you're worried about exclusives, giving more platform control to users and developers weakens exclusives, it doesn't strengthen them.
> then let me play Fortnite on the App store thanks
Epic didn't take Fortnite off of the App store. If it's about your freedom, then talk to the people who did take it off.
> What sort of horror scenarios have happened with game installers on PCs and Android? Root kits. Spyware. Password capture. Camera activation.
If you're going to try and argue to me that the games PC market would be better if we had fewer stores, then I need to see some seriously better arguments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24153897
I do not believe reality in any way backs up the argument that giving users control over what code runs on their devices has hurt the games market or made it worse for consumers -- even with the increased risk of bad actors.
Lol. Ok. Thanks for sharing your opinion of us, once again.
If you hang around gaming forums you'll see this echoed plenty. If I could buy every single game ever through Steam I would without hesitation. I don't want Origin or the Epic store but I don't get the choice.
I mean this isn't a super uncommon sentiment. Everyone has a preference but not everyone agrees. But regardless fragmentation hurts everyone.
I would be totally fine with multiple stores on iOS devices on the condition that every app is available on every store for the same price-ish (like you can't snub a store by making it 1000x because that effectively takes away choice).
I know that some gamers feel this way, but I wholeheartedly disagree. Epic's entry into the market has been good for the PC games industry[0]. We have more games now from more developers covering more diverse genres. We've even managed to pull a few exclusives off of consoles and back onto PC.
As to your choice, I bring this up in another comment[1], but people should focus less on the percentage of the market they have access to, and more on the overall size of the market itself.
You do have a choice, you could buy all of your games through Steam and ignore the games on every other store. The only difference is that now you know what you're missing. Before, you couldn't see the games that weren't being made or ported.
Yes, it stinks to have some games exclusive to one storefront. I understand that, as someone who refuses to install DRM on my computers, I have been struggling to deal with Steam-exclusive games for a long time. I know the pain.
But having a diverse market of storefronts means that there are a ton of new games that exist that wouldn't otherwise exist. And even if you only get access to some of those games, that's still better than having none of them.
Now, if you want to talk about ending exclusives entirely, I'm not opposed to that goal. But a diverse market is a prerequisite for a federated market. How do you feel today about the Android games that don't come to iOS specifically because of Apple's terms? How do you feel about the exclusives Apple is signing for the Apple Arcade right now? Having one storefront doesn't get rid of exclusives; it just means you've traded an exclusive storefront problem for an exclusive market problem.
[0]: https://www.pcworld.com/article/3487735/a-year-in-the-epic-g...
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24192204
Again, I understand the pain. I am currently only running Linux. If a game doesn't run in Linux without DRM, I can't play it. I know as well as anyone how bad it feels to see a game that I want to play, and can't, because the developer thought that Linux wasn't a big enough market to support.
Even so, it is better that there be a broad market where I can't access all of it, then there be a narrow market that only fits my criteria and can't grow. Some of the games that don't work on Linux will get ported later, or people will figure out how to get them working in Wine. I want those games to exist because eventually I'll get access to them.
> How is Epic Games going to afford doing projects like proton
They won't. Other platforms like Steam will do that. How is Steam going to afford to get old DOS games working on modern computers without DRM? They won't, GoG does that.
The market is better served when there are lots of people doing lots of different things. It's those conditions that force companies to innovate and find new market niches that were previously underserved.
This isn’t a good argument. Epic did something with the intention of getting removed from the store. Sure, Apple was the one who removed them, but Epic violates Apple’s TOS.
I personally don't enjoy the experience of managing my PC games in 5 different libraries which all log out almost every day, need to be updated every week, push ads, newsletters, free stuff, crashes etc. So I'm not worried how Epic store would somehow overrun App Store, I'm worried how it would degrade the user experience. If people want to side load apps, they can use Android. But even on Android, most people are happy using the Google Play. As a consumer there isn't much benefit for multiple app stores, since every app store will be essentially exclusive to another, so don't really have more choice, just more app stores to manage and get the apps from.
My point was that Epic tries to make this some kind of crusade of freedom and developer rights, while their clear intention is actually get in to kingmaker position themselves that they can strong arm developers and competition to play by their rules (which they're already trying to do on the PC market). This fight is different from Hey's fight, who just wanted to have their app in the store and criticized the rules and way Apple manages the store. So I have very little sympathy for Epic in this and I hope the fail.
But, do you enjoy having 5 times as many games? Do you enjoy having a ton of games from GoG updated and running on modern Windows? Do you enjoy having DRM-free options for many indie titles? Do you enjoy that it's at least possible now to buy some console-exclusive games like Journey for the PC?
People get really bent out of shape about the idea that sticking to one storefront means they might need to skip games. But getting rid of the storefronts doesn't mean you'll get all of the games. It means those games that were made possible because of the other storefronts won't exist.
You are already skipping games on iOS, because those games aren't being made.
> Epic tries to make this some kind of crusade of freedom and developer rights, while their clear intention is actually get in to kingmaker position
Correct, and my point was that these are not exclusive goals. Allowing multiple stores to fight over users is explicitly the outcome that we want.
It's not a surprise to anyone advocating for developer rights that Epic wants to make a store and compete with Apple, because that is what we want them to do. None of us care about whether or not Epic is going to make any money in the process.
> which they're already trying to do on the PC market
I know that gamers hate Epic right now, but understand that when you look at the overall market and you talk to the developers themselves, Epic has been unambiguously good for the PC games market.
You want to talk about kingmakers -- it is good that the entire success or failure of a PC game doesn't need to rely on Steam's decisions. It is good that Steam is being forced to negotiate better terms for developers right now. It is good that Epic is funding indie games that otherwise would not have been made.
I don't like the exclusives either, neither as a developer nor as a gamer. But the exclusives are nothing compared to the amount of good Epic is doing right now for the PC game's market. If you're an indie developer and suddenly you can halve the cut that storefronts are taking from you? That's huge.
But, to circle back around to my main point:
> So I have very little sympathy for Epic
You don't need to have sympathy, you need to have self-preservation instincts. You don't get the luxury of choosing who the champion is to take on Apple, nobody who fits your moral criteria is powerful enough to do the work.
But it doesn't. It makes it worse. I can't use cloud gaming services. I can't buy an ebook on Amazon or a comic on Comixology, without having to guess that I need to go to a website and buy it.
These are all bits of user experience that that are flat out better on Android, and the bad UI is directly caused by Apple's sole control of the app store.
But that pales in comparison to the rampant content censorship Apple causes (see Instagram admitting the clumsy, terrible policies that it implements are directly due to the Apple), or the geopolitical blocks that it causes on apps to help the populace of Hong Kong, or the apps that it permits (and blocks counter-software) to enable the misogynistic control of women's free movement in Saudi Arabia.
> As a consumer there isn't much benefit for multiple app stores, since every app store will be essentially exclusive to another, so don't really have more choice, just more app stores to manage and get the apps from.
There is a huge benefit to customers for multiple app stores - cheaper pricing, more competition on features and navigation, and most importantly editorial differences about what content will be allowed in the store. Don't agree with Apple's editorial censorship of code in the app store? Go and use someone else.
Apple will even be better off - without the coddling of the App Store being used to prop up it's poorer products it will actually have to make them good or have them die, much to it's long term benefit than turfing out poor quality software and the reputational damage that causes which has happened far too often recently.
Who is „we“? I know a lot of users that don‘t want or don‘t feel a need for other app stores. Of course, most developers would be glad to get alternatives or make more money.
> You're worried that Epic's store is going to eventually overrun Apple's and then Epic will somehow prevent other stores from being installed on iOS devices?
Not the original poster, but I would be worried that alternate app stores would as well lead to even more apps not honoring the user rights, spying on Location all the time, selling and monetizing user data and pushing even more IAP crap. Epic isn‘t really known as the Robin Hood of user rights and promptly, Spotify and Facebook, two other big players with black spots on their vests, called for the same. I have a hard time believing that everything Epic wants is just beneficial for the users.
No no no no no no!!!!!!
It's this type of thinking that has caused me to have more freaking messaging and video apps on my phone so I can talk to everyone: Zoom, Skype, Meet, Meetings, Facetime, Messenger, Chime,...etc, etc. etc.
NO. I ABSOLUTELY do not want that. Freaking nightmare.
When that happens I ditch my iPhone and buy a flip phone.
Seriously - stop the insanity. There is no "choice" when we need to have every alternative installed in order to do the things we need to do. That's not choice - it's insanity.
But actually, there is a big difference - I can buy jeans anywhere. I can buy Levi jeans anywhere.
If I had to go to Macy’s so that I could get a shirt (with no alternative), and then had to go to Nordstrom to get socks (with no alternative), and then..... then yeah, that would be crippling.
There is a reason amazon and Walmart are so powerful - you can get anything in one stop.
Bundling is important. It’s why people buy Comcast xfinity cable + internet or have all their family on one cell phone plan - it’s reduces effort, stress, and cognitive load.
Apple vs Android is good choice. Having to go to ten app stores to get my apps is not - it’s just a pain in the butt masquerading as “choice”.
It's not when they actually have to compete on price. Then you pick the one which offers you the lowest price for what you're looking for.
Both apps are free. Now you have to download another App Store to download the messaging app.
Price has no bearing here whatsoever.
I tell the friend to call, text or email me. Price doesn't have any bearing because the market on messaging apps has bottomed out, in part due to Apple's app store policies.
And nobody checks email frequently enough.
But the point was a simple example. Clearly you seem to enjoy complexity more than me.
That's a bit extreme. It's less of a nightmare, and more of an annoyance, that is paid in exchange for competition and innovation.
Imagine the former. No thanks.
I'm discovering a number of people here who see the world very differently than me. I would have taken it as a given that most people would agree that it would be healthy for the US market overall if we shook up the payment industry and got some new options.
A lot of Visa/Mastercard's terms for businesses are really bad. There are entire industries that are being pushed out of the market right now. Not to mention that these cards come with a tremendous amount of user tracking that's basically impossible to opt out of if you want to buy anything online.
That's why people are throwing everything at the wall from Bitcoin to GNU Taler trying desperately to find any kind of Open alternative that might work for online micropayments.
The problem is that if there are multiple app stores, it encourages a race-to-the-bottom for the app stores -- why go through Apple's store with all its vetting if you can release to the Epic store instead?
So, yes, the worry is exactly that another company might offer better terms to developers -- because sometimes, those terms don't matter to users (e.g. the cut between the app store and the developer), but other times, those terms are absolutely at a cost to the users.
If Epic has a way of offering multiple stores, while preventing that race-to-the-bottom from impacting the user experience, it'd be wonderful. But that doesn't seem to be what Epic is pushing for; Epic seems to be pushing for their own profit at a cost to Apple (which is fine, IMHO -- it's just business) and to the iOS ecosystem (which is much less fine, IMHO).
Another issue is trust - who knows what google does with your data, their business model includes exploiting your personal data, Apple has a vested interest in keeping your personal data secure and doesn't keep the keys to it - its their business model.
These two are enough for me, theres also a lot more reports of android apps with exploits - a google turns up a lot of them, less so with iPhone, and apple reacts if there is. Maybe these issues have been addressed in android, if so it's not something Google appears serious about, if they were then they'd be advertising how secure their phones are and how they don't touch your data - apple is very serious about keeping my data personal and has invested a lot of their business integrity in that.
Edit: tl;dr - googles business model is built around exploiting your personal data, apples is built around keeping your personal data secure
Unless you're Chinese, when it's not.
Absolutely not - that's the entire point of this action. Apple's "standards" are to block upgrade pricing and force developers down a path of microtransactions. Do we really want that to be carried over to other stores? Do we want other stores to have to live with Apple's decision to block apps to help dissidents in Hong Kong or the Middle East communicate?
A single point of decision-making on code always leads to terrible geopolitical outcomes. Always. That is the important part of what is happening here.
Apple is one half of a duopoly. People keep on bringing up these 'gotcha' arguments about, "how would you feel if Walmart was forced to stock everybody's stuff?" And that ignores the fact that it would be a serious problem if there were only two supermarkets that I could buy from. I would feel exactly the same way if one to two companies had the kind of stranglehold over physical supermarket goods as Apple has over the mobile app ecosystem.
A physical duopoly of that scale would very clearly call for either breaking up the owners or regulating them to ensure that everyone had equal access to the market. Scenarios like that are why we have antitrust in the first place, particularly around the kind of vertical integration that Apple advocates hold in such high regard.
I don't think the people who put forward these arguments have really thought them through. A duopoly is different from a house.
If we could travel back 35-40 years through history, I have no doubt there'd be no shortage of people arguing that Bell's vertical integration of the Internet was the very reason why their service was so good, and that allowing people to hook their own 'unapproved' answering machines to their phone lines would just ruin the entire network, and that allowing one company to own all of the railroads would just mean that shipping became that much simpler and reliable for consumers.
So be careful about making analogies to the physical world when you're supporting Apple, because people might just take them at face value.
There are more than two platforms out there. But even if there weren't, the fact that there's only N things in the world doesn't make your random claim on someone else's property any more valid. App Store is Apple's property. Build your own and host whoever you want there, but firstly you have to convince others that it is more valuable than the popular alternative. And if you fail to do that, it's not necessarily because the alternative is a monopoly, it may be and more likely is because your product is inferior.
> And that ignores the fact that it would be a serious problem if there were only two supermarkets that I could buy from.
Do you know the reason why it never happens though?
Your examples from the past just demonstrate that no monopoly exists without a government acting as a gatekeeper, like it was in the case of Bell and Union Pacific, and even then there was a place for successful competitors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Northern_Railway_(U.S.)
> So be careful about making analogies to the physical world when you're supporting Apple, because people might just take them at face value.
likewise, learn what you are advocating for, because mere quantity of stuff out there is never a justification for taking it over (and neither is your convenience), which my analogy was all about.
Such as? If I'm making a mobile game, what other phones can I realistically target other than Android and iPhone? You don't really think that the Librem 5 is a real competitor right now in this space, do you?
> because mere quantity of stuff out there is never a justification for taking it over
All of US antitrust law is based on the idea that the quantity of providers in a market matters. If you're arguing that we should get rid of antitrust entirely, fine. But be upfront about that, that's not a mainstream position to take.
> no monopoly exists without a government acting as a gatekeeper
I'm not going to derail things too much here, but I do have at least a few Libertarian bones inside of me. To the extent that I am sympathetic to your argument here, I would question why you think that Apple is different.
Apple's dominant market position exists in no small part based on its exploitation of copyright, the DMCA, import laws, and heavy lawsuits over trademark and cross-compatible app runtimes, all of which only work because of artificial government intervention into the market.
If you want to go full Libertarian, I'm not necessarily opposed to the idea, but then I'm also going to go full Libertarian and ask what your views are on abolishing copyright. Apple might not have such a stranglehold over the market if it was legal for other US companies to build iPhone emulators, hackintoshes, to distribute jailbreaks, and to build their own compatible phones that could run both iOS apps and apps from other markets.
If we're all OK with making that stuff legal, then I'm OK with dropping antitrust. If we're not OK with making that stuff legal, then I'm keeping antitrust. I'm OK with either having government regulation or not having it, but no halvsies.
Any phone that runs WebGL. Inconvenient? Tough life, why does Apple have to do anything about it for you?
> All of US antitrust law is based on the idea that the quantity of providers in a market matters.
US antitrust laws are deeply flawed and in no way serve the purpose they were enacted for. If your product (subjectively) costs too high you are a monopolist; if your product costs too low (hello IE) you are dumping the market; and if your product costs approximately the same as of your competitors then there's a "market collusion". You cannot win in this system if you are a successful economic player. The bottom line is this though - there was no time in history where monopoly existed without government's sanction and gate-keeping, and Union Pacific was a prime example of it.
> If you want to go full Libertarian
I don't as I'm not one of them, which doesn't negate the points that I've made before.
> Apple's dominant market position exists in no small part based on its exploitation of copyright, the DMCA, import laws, and heavy lawsuits over trademark and cross-compatible app runtimes, all of which only work because of artificial government intervention into the market.
Wasn't it the government that enacted them? Why asking for it from Apple?
> I'm also going to go full Libertarian and ask what your views are on abolishing copyright.
I'm not libertarian; if you are just asking, I'm for IP in principle, whether it's modern copyright laws or something else is another story.
> If we're all OK with making that stuff legal, then I'm OK with dropping antitrust. If we're not OK with making that stuff legal, then I'm keeping antitrust. I'm OK with either having government regulation or not having it, but no halvsies
with all respect, it really is a funny position. Everything you mentioned here is a product of federal legislature, yet you want to blame an economic player that acts according to the law, in a system that is designed to eventually punish successful.
Impossible. There's a difference.
There are no phones on the market where the web is a comparable platform to native mobile apps. There could be in a better world, but there aren't in this world. Talk to me in a couple of years when we have native storage ironed out and maybe that'll be different. Or talk to me in 5-10 years when Librem 5 has its issues worked out, and maybe things will be different then.
> why does Apple have to do anything about it for you?
It doesn't, not unless Apple enjoys the benefit of extensive government regulations that allow it to block and sue the competitors that do want to do something about it for me. Regulations like, for example, the DMCA.
Live by the government, die by the government. Companies don't get to pretend to be free-market Capitalists only when it's convenient for them.
> Everything you mentioned here is a product of federal legislature, yet you want to blame an economic player
No, I just want consistency. I want the government to get in the way or to get out of the way.
It is infeasible to get rid of antitrust unless we're also going to also get rid of the regulation and interference that keeps the market from working the way it was intended.
Getting rid of the regulations that protect us from the current smartphone duopoly while keeping the regulations that caused the smartphone duopoly isn't free market Capitalism, it's Feudalism. I don't have patience for an argument that it's a bridge too far for the government to stop Apple from exploiting developers/consumers, but perfectly fine for Apple to use the government to reinforce their market position.
I'm sympathetic to anti-regulation arguments and the people who make them, but I am not sympathetic to pro-monopoly arguments.
If I name you the companies that release WebGL games I would state impossible? Let's not get that low in this discussion.
> There are no phones on the market where the web is a comparable platform to native mobile apps.
Comparable based on what criteria? Oftentimes I wish companies stop bother me with their "bug fixes and performance improvements" every other day and provide a sleek Web experience instead. So far I just hear how you are saying that alternatives do exist, but they suck, hence Apple's ability to charge 30% on top of everything is a viable business model, because their platform doesn't suck that much. No issue here.
> Getting rid of the regulations that protect us from the current smartphone duopoly while keeping the regulations that caused the smartphone duopoly isn't free market Capitalism, it's Feudalism.
If you make this claim, then it's on you to prove that in the absence of regulations you won't be able to enter the market with your new competing platform. Apple with all its money is in no position to dictate the way you or anyone else establish a new ecosystem based on open standards and free licenses.
Apple is the reason why web experiences on iOS suck. They deliberately lag on web standards so that their browser experience is inferior to native apps. None of this accidental.
And no, it's not just inconvenience. There are things on iOS that are literally impossible to do in WebGL. Reliable, persistent offline storage on iOS is impossible to do from a web app. Reliable persistent login on iOS is impossible to do from a web app. Notifications are impossible to do on iOS from a web app. The APIs have not been added to the platform.
It's not inconvenient -- you literally can't do them. It is not a comparable platform, because Apple makes sure that it will never be a comparable platform. It's not that Apple made an amazing native experience and the web couldn't keep up. The reason the web can't keep up on iOS is because Apple deliberately hobbles its mobile browser.
> Apple with all its money is in no position to dictate the way you or anyone else establish a new ecosystem based on open standards and free licenses.
https://venturebeat.com/2019/08/16/apples-corellium-lawsuit-...
Imagine a world where I could build a phone that was compatible with every iOS app and Android app, where users didn't have to choose in advance which ecosystem they wanted to be a part of.
Imagine a world where I could build a competitor to iOS that allowed users to port the apps that they had already bought to their new phones outside of Apple's ecosystem, rather than spending hundreds of dollars buying all of them a second time.
Imagine a world where I could build and sell my own hardware that dual-booted iOS and Android.
Imagine a world where I could sell a TV/Phone that would play DRM-encumbered content from Apple devices and iTunes.
That would be a real free market. In the current market, any of those competitors would be sued into oblivion.
> If you make this claim, then it's on you to prove that in the absence of regulations you won't be able to enter the market with your new competing platform.
Give people a real free market, and then we'll find out whether or not in the absence of regulations they can compete.
You keep on repeating the exact same argument, that regulation is the problem. I'm not sure that you're following what I'm saying. All I'm advocating for is that we get rid of all of the regulation. If you have a problem with regulation, then fine, let's get rid of it, including the DMCA.
It doesn't sound like you have a problem with market regulation and interference though. It sounds like you have a problem with a very small subset of regulations.
I've never mentioned web experience on iOS, let's not add words into my replies for the convenience of your argument. Everyone is free to choose any other platform with a better web experience and to build on top of it, with all open standards and free licenses in mind. Apple won't be able to interfere.
> Imagine a world where I could build a phone that was compatible with every iOS app and Android app, where users didn't have to choose in advance which ecosystem they wanted to be a part of.
Build Linux phone instead and make it compatible with Android. Or a Windows-compatible phone on ReactOS. Why are you so fixated on Apple and iOS? At this point it just looks as a random wish that Apple implements your ideas. Sorry, no one is obliged to implement your wishes as you see them fit.
> Give people a real free market, and then we'll find out whether or not in the absence of regulations they can compete.
Just read how commerce existed prior 1913.
You don't understand what I'm saying, and I don't know how to say it any more clearly.
I'm not asking Apple to do anything. I want to be able to do things myself without Apple using the government to attack my business.
This is worse than the Right to Repair debates -- people accuse us of trying to force Apple to fix our phones for free when in reality we just want to stop Apple from suing everyone who imports a 3rd-party battery.
Just let people compete, that's all I'm asking. Apple doesn't need to lift a finger. Let other people build emulators, port apps, display content, and make compatible phones. Apple doesn't need to fix my problems, but they shouldn't be able to use the government to stop other people from fixing my problems.
> Apple won't be able to interfere.
Again, I don't know if this is on purpose or not, but I just listed a few of the ways that Apple can interfere with Open standards, including suing competitors that use adversarial operability to get around network effects in an entrenched market.
> I've never mentioned web experience on iOS [...] Everyone is free to choose any other platform
We're talking in circles, but just to repeat -- when you say "any other platforms", that means Android or iOS. Those are the only two viable mobile platforms that exist right now. And good luck building a third when users have invested hundreds of dollars into closed app ecosystems that it will be illegal for you to interoperate with.
If you know a way to get around the problems listed at https://whatwebcando.today/, by all means let me know, I'd love to build some offline webapps for my phone. If you know a way to get reliable disk storage from a website on any mobile platform, please let me know, it would open up a world of possibilities for me as a developer.
But don't pretend the web is an escape hatch when its mobile support depends entirely on the two companies who have the most to gain from keeping its capabilities behind those of native apps.
> Just read how commerce existed prior 1913.
You keep trying to phrase this like I'm secretly being pro-regulation in this conversation. I'm willing to concede literally every single antitrust point I've raised in the comments above, and my only condition is that we get rid of all of the regulations including copyright.
At this point, you're arguing that market regulation is bad to someone who's proposing that an alternative to antitrust might be... to get rid of all market regulation.
What is your position? Do you think market regulation is bad or good? If you don't like regulation, then what do you disagree with me on? What do you oppose about the idea of stopping the government from using copyright to interfere with the free market?
Here, how exactly does it attack your business? Is your business built around Apple ecosystem? Have you accepted their terms and conditions? there's no way to enter into any relations with Apple without accepting their terms of the services. Have you got warrants coming from Apple lawyers?
> Just let people compete, that's all I'm asking
You are free to compete, not on their platform at their cost though. For the same reason why you would refuse to give me access to your business (whatever it does) to compete with you. You cannot just freely re-interpret the definition of the market so that it fits your narrative. Market is never a private entity's platform.
> I don't know if this is on purpose or not, but I just listed a few of the ways that Apple can interfere with Open standards, including suing competitors that use adversarial operability to get around network effects in an entrenched market.
It's either open standards or inter-operability with a proprietory standard. If you don't want to get sued, either buy the license or build your own solution that doesn't require interop. There's hundreds of companies who do that regularly, they pay their fees and make money along the way. There are also businesses who do not interact with Apple in any shape or form yet are able to build their mobile solutions. Because Mobile is not "Applications for either Android or iOS", you can believe this but that doesn't make it anyhow true.
> Those are the only two viable mobile platforms that exist right now.
There was a time when they didn't exist at all, the fact that there are two now doesn't change anything. Again, all your points are about convenience to you, not about inability to create a new platform. And by the way, define "viable".
> people accuse us of trying to force Apple to fix our phones for free when in reality we just want to stop Apple from suing everyone who imports a 3rd-party battery.
are you elected to represent all of those who comment positively on that topic? I can play this game too, and "we" who oppose it neither do want any third-party battery to be presented as a genuine replacement for the original ones nor desire to have a device that is easily disassembled by third-parties. Had we wanted these features, we'd go and buy any noname Android phone.
> But don't pretend the web is an escape hatch when its mobile support depends entirely on the two companies
You have to prove that, so far it's an unsubstantiated claim. Another one, because you feel like it. The majority of people use these two platofrms not because there are no alternatives, but because it doesn't worth the effort to switch to anything else. The existing solutions already are convenient enough. Notice the difference. You may disagree with this, but again, it's just your wishes.
You will always be free to build 3rd-party products that work with and wrap around my products. I will never use the law as a cudgel to stop you from fairly competing with me. Users have an inherent right to control the devices that they own.
> You are free to compete, not on their platform at their cost though
Not asking to compete on their platform. I want to be able to compete on my platform, and I don't want Apple to tell me whether or not I'm allowed to build a platform that's compatible with iOS apps.
> If you don't want to get sued, either buy the license or build your own solution that doesn't require interop.
Why? Why can the government decide what I'm allowed to build? If I can build a solution by myself without a contract that interops with Apple's platforms, why should the government tell me I'm not allowed to do that? If I can build a device that runs iOS, why should the government say that I'm not allowed to do that?
What right does the government have to stop me from building and distributing products that solve my problems?
> [...]
This is ridiculous.
If you support regulation, then fine. Go argue about what the regulations are.
If you don't support regulation, then fine. Let's get rid of artificial government monopolies that allow companies to decide what is and isn't legal. Copyright is not a natural right.
You're taking a great many words to say that you selectively oppose regulation only when it's directed towards the protection of the consumer. If that's your position, then fine, but I'm not going to debate it, I don't think that position is logically coherent enough to debate.
No he is not. Because Apple will make a call to the people with guns (The government) Who will prevent them from doing so.
Why do you support government regulations forcing people to not do these things?
> It's either open standards or inter-operability with a proprietory standard. If you don't want to get sued
Why should Apple have these rights? Why should. the government be protecting them?
He was arguing that we should get rid of Apple's ability to sue people for these things.
Lets get rid of the regulations that allow Apple to sue anyone for any of this.
Why do you support big government regulation, that allows apple to use threats of legal violence against people?
It is notable that basically every functional democracy in the world disagrees with this statement.
If you were trying to remove the monopoly, I'd think you should start there, and then expand to other people who can prove they have their shit together. Epic let someone else use my email address to sign up for an account (and they only allow one account per email). That is serious amateur-hour territory. When they have figured out how to tie their own shoes we can talk about whether they should be in the running.
which is specifically the part that got Epic in trouble, they don't want to share revenue with Apple, and what's more they want to charge other developers a fee for the use of Epic's app store.
the thought that Apple was just going to let this hilarious ToS breach lay was all wrong, absolutely not
The Store application lets you buy games because you cannot consume them on the device, like how Amazon allows you to buy physical items but not Kindle books.
Instead of clicking icon A, I click icon B and if I get a cheaper game, all power to Epic.
I don't spend time in an app store. I spend time playing the game.
I keep all the games organized in Playnite. If I try to launch Epic games from Playnite, most of the time nothing happens. So I start the epic client and... oh look, it logged me out again. So now to play Maneater or whatever I have to log into my password manager with its complicated passphrase from a tiny HTPC keyboard, grab the password, paste it into Epic, wait for Epic to update, click the game icon again, and now it launches. Heaven forbid I actually set up 2FA, cause then I'd have to go through that too!
To say nothing of the fact that the Epic store runs like ass on a brand new third-gen six-core Ryzen CPU with an current-gen GPU and 16gigs of RAM.
Some of the other game stores behave just as bad as this... the only ones that actually seem to work reliably are Steam and GOG, and they've been around a while. Origin constantly nags about updates and "you logged in from another PC" bullshit, Rockstar can't seem to hold on to a session cookie to save its life, and the Twitch client is just a mess all around. XBOX kind of sucked in Beta but they finally fixed the worst issues there.
Multiple launchers is NOT ideal. We all have this fantasy idea that competition will make everything better but really what it results in is now we have a bunch of garbage launchers running on startup (and if you don't have fun waiting for them to update every time you launch them). Just like with streaming... competition is making everything worse
If you "don't spend time in an app store" you're either only using one or two of those launchers or you're lying. The last time things "just worked" was when Steam reigned supreme and unchallenged. (And that's not necessarily a good thing, nearly everyone knows that Valve is a good citizen solely because of management, and I have no doubt that one day that will change and Steam will suck.)
Absolutely agreed, but consider what would happen if only one of those game stores you mention were allowed to be installed on your gaming PC. Then you'd have to go through a single gatekeeper, and I bet you a bunch of the games you like just wouldn't be available at all, because they'd either have been capriciously rejected, or because their developers can't make the terms work to their satisfaction. But because this mythical single game store is the only game in town (heh), there's no recourse.
Or maybe most, or even all, of those games you play might be available on this single app store. But expect them to be worse, because their developers have to pay a middleman a larger fee for distribution, which leaves less money to build the game itself. Expect them to be missing features, because this gatekeeper makes it harder to build some features, even if it's through well-meaning policies.
It absolutely floors me that people on a site called Hacker News are praising the role of a gatekeeping corporation that locks down devices they own to the point that they don't even really own them.
The real answer is neither. Fuck all these proprietary launchers and app stores. There are other answers.... personally I feel like these platforms need to be run and controlled by a nonprofit, with a charter that holds customers' and business' needs equally without a primary duty to greedy shareholders. Either that or sideloading
edit- and I think most folks are OK with living under a good , just king. Steam is this, and many argue that Apple was this at some point in their past. Since we are all apparently too stupid to handle a truly distributed method of installing software like sideloading or old-school brick and mortar retail, we have to learn to live with a store of some kind, with all that entails. And in that case, we're OK if the platform is fair and just
> because they'd either have been capriciously rejected, or because their developers can't make the terms work to their satisfaction
edit2- this never really happened with Steam, amazingly enough. Surely there are edge cases, and there are certainly reports of Steam staff working with devs to ensure a positive release (which is a nice way of saying they have probably forced developers to alter their product), and Valve has certainly made some bad decisions (which they thankfully backed down on). But Steam was such an improvement over the old distribution model that its downsides were almost unfairly outweighed by its upsides. And now they own the market with such a large competitive moat that Epic has to give away boatloads of free games (and good ones too!) and a PR campaign of trashing competitors just to seed their userbase.
App Store has a natural monopoly on the iDevices. (And I would love to see this broken, a jailbroken iPhone in the old days was a wondrous thing) This is because Apple owns the platform and are heavily incentivized to use that integration to maximize their own profit and growth.
There are no such incentives on an open platform like Windows. Steam had to be better than the status quo and it seems they took that to heart, so much that entire ecosystems have built up around Valve's generosity -- ecosystems that compete with Steam itself -- and that Valve could pull the plug on tomorrow. But I bet they won't, because they seem to be interested in a vibrant and healthy ecosystem, and because their attitude of good stewardship is apparently quite rare these days, giving them a significant competitive advantage with mindshare.
It's a totally different ballgame. Google uses anticompetitive dealmaking and sheer force of will to try and achieve a semblance of what App Store does, and up until recently their success in that area was mixed at best. Google Play is closer to Steam in that regard, but their execution sucks.
But even if Steam was as vertically integrated as Apple something tells me they would be a lot more permissive and generous in how others sell on their platform. Steam offers a ton of value-add and, while I don't hang out in gamedev circles, the only bitching about price and Steam's 30% cut I've seen comes from Tim Sweeney and noone else
That is how it was several years back with Steam and everything was just fine. The new stores that popped up are, with the exception of GoG and Itch.io, in the service of large companies.
PC gaming wasn't a dystopia 5 years ago.
Indeed, it was glorious. Another golden age suffocated by business interests
Once the app is installed, it should be easy to start the app.
https://www.gogalaxy.com/en/
I'd like other stores on iOS too, but there's a qualitative difference between 1, 3, and 6 vendors that doesn't necessarily make 6 better than 1. In fact 6 is probably default worse than 1, and requires active management and cooperation to make it behave.
Sounds great to me. Truly. Who loses here, other than Apple, one of the biggest, wealthiest companies on the planet?
> Buying games on PC now means that you have to install 5 different app stores which are usually slow, buggy and not that well written cross-platform code (pretty much like Fortnite itself).
It sucks that there's so much slow buggy software (with Steam being, by far, the biggest offender), isn't it great that we have such a thriving competitive market on PC? I think it's awesome. I think the PC gaming market has never been better.
This sounds like one of those tinfoil conspiracy theories. Has there been any evidence whatsoever that confirms this?