> But people should also be able to get apps from whatever store they want.
This the answer. The app store monopoly doesn't really matter, the real tyranny is needing Apple's cryptographic blessing to run software on our own computers. This should be literally illegal. Restore our computer freedom and their app store rent seeking becomes irrelevant.
It's not just about that. I am sure if the court would force them to allow sideloading, they'll make sure to never promote your app if you decide to offer both options to the users.
Not until alternative stores become competitive. Realistically they have such a monopoly thar you end up in a chiclen and egg situation. Their monopoly is so large that noone wants to distribute via small alt stores, meaning alt stores never get large.
A chicken and egg problem is highly unlikely. Here's a few probable situations:
1) A fdroid equivalent pops up, which them becomes a collection of fantastic open source apps, and soon develops a strong user base.
2) Google launches play store for iPhone, which will on day 1 get millions of users.
3) Meta launches metaStore, which so the only way to get Facebook, threads, Instagram and WhatsApp. This becomes the fastest growing store in a matter of a week.
One may personally not like this world - but imo it's a better world than the one we have - personally for (1) to exist.
> 3) Meta launches metaStore, which so the only way to get Facebook, threads, Instagram and WhatsApp. This becomes the fastest growing store in a matter of a week.
Why? They don't do this on Android.
At then end of the day the number of active users would fall if they do this. That's unavoidable. So what incentives do they have to not distribute on the App Store? It's not like (unlike in Epic's case) Apple is requiring Facebook to hand over 30% of its revenue.
fdroid is of course great. Extremely niche and not that significant, though.
> Google launches play store for iPhone, which will on day 1 get millions of users.
Amazon tried that on Android. Of course I would expect Google to do much better but that doesn't mean a lot.
On #3, Meta could have done it for Android and I don't think they did. Actually if Android is a god estimation of how it looks like with 3rd party stores, it won't be super disruptive.
Unless the iOS market is so lucrative it will garner far more interest.
This will rightly push Apple in the right direction - to bring the right OS controls at the operating system level / store API level, and not leave things up to apps. This is a better world, despite short term issues with metaStore.
> bring the right OS controls at the operating system level / store API level, and not leave things up to apps
This will almost certainly be litigated. We also haven’t broached national laws mandating a government-controlled App Store. (Would expect this to emerge in right-wing Europe or India first.)
As long as they clearly give the option, at the time of first setup - or an upgrade, to select which app store becomes default; and make it very easy to change default app store later, just like default browser, default search engine et cetera. But they must not be allowed to disallow for the reason that "you are on another app store, we don't like you, go away!".
Yup, it's then fair and they can keep the banner in their App Store that screams at font size 38 "This Journal App Is Da Best", "No Other Note App Has Been Made Greater Than This One".
It's a tradeoff. You may have the knowledge and risk awareness to install anything, circumvent protections like you still can on MacOS, but the vast majority does not and should not have that power; this led to huge botnets during the Windows XP era when many internet connections were first set up. They overcompensated with Vista, asking permissions for everything so people developed a kneejerk "just hit accept". The iPhone came out not long after, with a safety by default - which invariably meant restricting what a user can and cannot do and install on their system.
I think it's been a net positive overall. The percentage of people that want to do and install more with it is small.
The problem with Windows XP was that at the time you plugged it into your modem directly (or the computer contained the modem if it was dialup) with no firewall, and it would get exploited in seconds without any user interaction through some default Microsoft background service. Wifi routers were probably a much larger impact than any operating system changes. Especially anything user facing. It's also why clickbait silliness aside, running windows XP isn't actually that likely to run into issues today.
> It's a tradeoff. You may have the knowledge and risk awareness [...] but the vast majority does not and should not have that power
But that power is not more dangerous than having guns, right?
So.. while I can apply for a gun license, I can't apply for an unrestricted computing license, so something is wrong here, don't you think? Unless you believe guns are less dangerous.
> But that power is not more dangerous than having guns, right?
It actually is.
Free computers are intolerably subversive. They can literally wipe out entire sectors of the economy just by copying artificially scarce things. They can defeat police, judges, militaries, governments by democratizing access to strong cryprography.
They want to control our computers at all costs. We must resist. Computers are too important for us to allow them to be controlled and limited.
> > But people should also be able to get apps from whatever store they want.
The web. Without scare walls or hidden "enable downloads" menu settings.
And apps should no longer have to use first party payment rails, first party authentication/sign in rails, or be forced to jump through review or upgrade hoops.
> The web. Without scare walls or hidden "enable downloads" menu settings.
I'm not too sure about that, for non-technical users the warnings before installing an APK on Android are very likely a good thing. There's a lot of malware out there and, similar to running a downloaded Exe on Windows, you should at least explicitly confirm it's execution.
The warnings arent needed on the web, because it's vastly more secure, flexible, etc.. Steve Jobs even coined the PWA concept before going the fiefdom route
I don’t know whether to feel happy or sad for you.
Happy because you have nobody in your life in a vulnerable position to be taken advantage of the inevitable malware that will be installed on their device as a result of your wish.
Or sad because those people are most likely to be grandparents or elderly aunts and uncles. Perhaps you never even got to know them.
What a stupid argument. Maybe grandpas and grandmas should get a different phone then, like a Doro, and stop bringing the rest of us down. And it doesn't even hold water as my mother has been scammed by legitimate App Store apps that have charged extra-fees just because they could.
> Maybe grandpas and grandmas should get a different phone then, like a Doro
They did, they got an iPhone.
> my mother has been scammed by legitimate App Store apps that have charged extra-fees just because they could.
Did it empty her bank balance by abusing the private NFC payment APIs that Apple are being ordered to open up?
Did it cryptolock all her files?
Did it activate the camera and mic to spy on her for blackmail?
These are things that we need to worry about with random things we download on desktop these days. It's not 2007 any more, I have an entire spare computer for untrusted software.
I don't want to get into politics but dont you think it's funny when you can purchase assault rifles, made for killing people, yet we are so afraid of having the poor individuals in control of their own phones. Or farming equipment - the list seems to keep growing.
It's just corporate propaganda that all hell would break loose, you could just offer installing baby mode at Apple physical store that can only be removed at said places. Yeah some people would still climb the fence and touch the power lines but look, can we save them all? Should we? In this world of merciless exploitation, wouldnt it be just fair we stopped pretending it never was about anything else but money?
> I don't want to get into politics but dont you think it's funny when you can purchase assault rifles, made for killing people
I'm British by birth, living in Berlin. We definitely think Americans are a bit "funny", in the not-at-all-funny sense of the word, about guns.
> It's just corporate propaganda that all hell would break loose, you could just offer installing baby mode at Apple physical store that can only be removed at said places.
Thing is, with computers, we've had decades of watching malware infect, destroy, corrupt, ransom, and blackmail. It's still happening, even.
And we even have a way to get past "baby mode" restrictions: be a developer.
But guess what? Developers also face supply chain attacks, because malware is everywhere.
I do miss the olden days when I didn't need to care. A mac online in 2009 was worry-free.
>Did it empty her bank balance by abusing the private NFC payment APIs that Apple are being ordered to open up?
NFC payment APIs have been open on Android for decades and no such thing of the sort has ever happened. You cannot magically conjure up a payment from Apple Pay to <X> without user involvement and confirmation.
>Did it cryptolock all her files?
Apps do not have write access to all your files.
>Did it activate the camera and mic to spy on her for blackmail?
Every mobile device now has a giant notification saying that the device is using the microphone or recording video.
The disingenuous "having an open app store/not being locked in the walled garden is a security risk" is getting tiring, especially when it's basically all lies now. Unless your argument is that Apple is too incompetent to write APIs properly, in which case I wonder why you think that said APIs being private would prevent anything.
> NFC payment APIs have been open on Android for decades and no such thing of the sort has ever happened.
Google is also getting legal action for monopoly abuse of their app store, so what's possible today on Android is not sufficient to say what's safe or not.
Despite this, they're also already facing legal
action for sharing too much data from Google Wallet.
Fail on all directions at the same time.
> Apps do not have write access to all your files.
> Every mobile device now has a giant notification saying that the device is using the microphone or recording video.
And this can't be circumvented ever, even when private APIs are no longer vetted? And none of the voices describing downloads warnings as "scare screens" aren't making the same demand on this?
> The disingenuous "having an open app store/not being locked in the walled garden is a security risk" is getting tiring, especially when it's basically all lies now. Unless your argument is that Apple is too incompetent to write APIs properly, in which case I wonder why you think that said APIs being private would prevent anything.
The disingenuous "force platforms to be open, there's no security risk" position was tiring decades ago when the iPhone was brand new, especially when it was obviously lies even then. Apple obviously isn't magically competent enough to write APIs properly, they had "goto fail" and all the jailbreaks we've seen in so many versions of iOS were specifically some random doc that users could install that included a way to escalate privileges, and even without that evidence we've also got access to the black market prices for zero-day exploits that for a long time showed they're cheaper than Android, and the obvious reason why this prevents "anything" is that "anything" is a massive subset of "everything".
What you are proposing is the balkanization of software delivery.
I indeed choose not to download software from Facebook and friends, but it’s quite likely others will need to as it will become the only way to get their software. At that point: tracking out the ass.
"Balkanization" is the wrong way to view this. This is waking up the regulatory arm of the government that has been asleep at the wheel. And it should have been done over a decade ago.
The better analogy is a forest fire. We're clearing up the overgrowth (ossification, unfair taxation, and unfair control) and creating room for new life to start and flourish.
> I indeed choose not to download software from Facebook and friends, but it’s quite likely others will need to as it will become the only way to get their software. At that point: tracking out the ass.
Don't like a negative externality? Tax and regulate it. It's what Europe does. And it's what we're good at doing in every industry except for the software industry. We need to stretch those muscles and get back into the habit of doing it.
We should pass regulations on giant social media companies as well.
But in a world where we have no software freedoms and where certain software tracks us, having software freedoms is the more important cause and it's where we must start our battle. You don't need to use Facebook, but you need to use a smartphone. New social media apps are started all the time (TikTok, Tea, etc.) but smartphones are trillion dollar moats.
Our smartphones are our gateway to digital life. They need to be liberated from Apple and Google. Mobile computing belongs to all of us.
It's a perfectly valid way to view it. Forest fire might be another valid way to view it, but is different. Both are equally valid, and represent different views of what ideal is.
> Tax and regulate it. It's what Europe does.
I am European. Nice try though.
> We need to stretch those muscles and get back into the habit of doing it.
I don't disagree. Start there then. Make it so that tracking me incurs such a heavy penalty payable to me personally that it is not worthwhile. Then go after the distribution mechanisms that allow someone to live a relatively tracking-free life without having to be an uber-nerd to make it reality.
> Mobile computing belongs to all of us.
There are plenty of platforms. What you are saying is it belongs to the people who want it to be a certain way with particular negative outcomes for many people. I want it to be a different way with negative outcomes that affect me less.
Yet another "think of the children", except now it's think of the elderly. We CAN NOT make the world safe for everyone without also making it a total crapsack for everyone. It's simply not an option that exists.
I don't think the Mac is a great counter example. It started as a fully open platform, so the expectations are different. The iPhone was never anything other than an appliance, Apple is not trying to turn an open garden into a walled one, because it started that way.
But what really happened is that apple kept a stranglehold on what more and more became a general computing device. And they've done enough anti-compettive maneuvers to have the EU make them open up. I wouldn't be surprised if the US eventually comes to a similar decision.
Apple may not be as blatant about it as the other big tech, but I hope it's not contentious to say that all three big companies needs a round of anti-trust overhaul.
I think the problem is that the app store is perceived as a general computing platform compared to what it was originally birthed from: Built in immutable applications on a mobile phone.
Counter example to what? Why should they not be able to run both a relatively open ecosystem and a mostly closed one?
I don’t think Apple is arguing that it is impossible to allow more open ways to install apps on iPhones. I think they’re saying that they don’t want to, and that they shouldn’t have to.
> Counter example to what? Why should they not be able to run both a relatively open ecosystem and a mostly closed one?
> I don’t think Apple is arguing that it is impossible to allow more open ways to install apps on iPhones. I think they’re saying that they don’t want to, and that they shouldn’t have to.
Apple volunteers the position that they couldn't possibly open the iOS ecosystem themselves, not just that they don't want to, making some very amusing claims in the process.[1] They also don't want to, but the more you dig into possible "whys", you get into a lot of troubling realities quickly.
Epic Games, on the other hand, is arguing that they actually should have to, at least to some extent. There are actually a lot of reasons why Apple's App Store practices might violate the law, and to my understanding, Epic Games is alleging that Apple's App Store practices constitute "illegal tying" whereby Apple unlawfully ties its payment processing service with its app distribution. That's far from the only potential legal issue that the App Store could face just based on current, existing law. (Note: I am not a lawyer, so take this with a grain of salt; but nothing I am saying is too original or groundbreaking.)
And of course, it's always worth remembering that what's legal today can be regulated tomorrow. I don't really believe lawmakers or the general public really have had enough time to take a look at the impact that Apple/Google app stores have had on the software market and decide if these practices should be legal. The EU seems to think they shouldn't, and while I don't agree with the EU on everything, I tend to agree.
Luckily corporate greed it not the only thing that matters in this world. If they want to sell in half a billion rich market of EU, they will soon need to start behaving more morally. If not they can fuck off, write off 20-30% of company value and EU will have better products, (almost) everybody wins.
Given how low morally they are, the room for improvement is massive and easy to move into. As you write, they didn't do it so far because they were not forced, and waiting for some good moral behavior 'just because it would be nice from them' is rather dumb.
It's possible they'll allow this on iOS once finer granularity logging of battery usage is pervasive, how fine is anyone's guess, so as to track down what apps, and of whatever provenance, degrade some kpi like user impression of battery life.
This is about money not battery life. Apple makes billions of dollars in highly profitable revenue by cryptographically blocking users from controlling their own devices.
That said, i was an engineer for several years in Apple and primary internal concerns were battery life and its influence on user experience; the removal of Flash viability, favoring html5, is an example: profiling of Flash apps written in the wild showed code that routinely drained battery with aplomb...inexplicable to end users not also programmers.
It's unsurprising that the internal narrative focused on the plausible user, product and technical issues which happen to align with sustaining the multi-billion dollar monopoly. Senior leadership isn't going to say the 'quiet part' out loud in all-hands meetings.
I also worked in a valley giant with a multi-billion dollar monopoly position being preserved in a similar way. But I was senior enough to see both sides - the divisional all-hands mtgs and (some of) the exec staff mtgs (my boss was an EVP reporting directly to the CEO). The instructive part was observing what happened in the senior staff mtgs when a serious user, product or technical issue emerged which directly conflicted with sustaining the multi-billion dollar monopoly. Even in small mtgs with just the CEO, a couple EVPs and a handful of their direct reports, I never witnessed any explicit collusion or overt manipulation. The reason is surprisingly simple, they don't need to. They can make "the right thing" happen without being so obvious - just by controlling the agenda, attendees and context and then asking the right questions, prioritizing certain concerns and selecting the right working group leader to "come back with options which balance these concerns". These EVPs didn't get to where they are by plainly speaking their mind, although they are masters of appearing to do so when it serves them. At that level, there are degrees of subtlety and multi-dimensional chess that make Machiavelli look like a toddler.
All those years of being "in the room where it happens" fairly frequently and there wasn't one moment where I thought, "Wow, if I leaked a tape recording of the last 60 seconds, somebody very important is losing their job." These people are far to experienced and skilled at this for it to be that simple. Which isn't to say there may not have been some very private conversations between only the CEO and an EVP or two where things were said explicitly - but I'm not even sure that was necessary. Frankly, the euphemistic language and context control is sufficient that it's probably easier for the them to "stay in character" all the time. In fact, I think some of them sort of believe it themselves - or at least prefer to avoid stewing on the more "unpleasant realities" of the job. Most of these people are, in their own minds, still the 'good guy' in the story they tell themselves.
we evidently both had very senior positions, but i came away with the impression that parts of Apple might operate differently than inner sanctum hw engineering (obviously) , though what i mentioned wasn't from some pep talks, but rather from hard data.
i think the last two sentences you wrote resonate, for sure, though!
> i came away with the impression that parts of Apple might operate differently than inner sanctum hw engineering
I agree and I'm not at all questioning what you experienced. I saw similar things. In the case of Apple, it makes sense the iPhone business would prioritize issues like battery life etc and that the App Store business would prioritize maximizing their multi-billion dollar monopoly revenue stream. Within each business unit they're going to make decisions and allocate resources based on maximizing the metrics their business is judged on.
Where it gets 'interesting' is when two major business units have priorities which directly conflict - like one BU achieving a major objective requires the other BU to not achieve one of their major objectives. When those conflicts are things which directly impact tens of millions or more in revenue and are also high-visibility issues, the conflict gets elevated to the CEO in a small group mtg with both EVPs where they assesses the trade-offs on each side. Ultimately, the CEO is going to pick a 'winner' based on the overall impact to company-wide revenue and the stock price. If the issue is preserving (or losing) the app store monopoly worth billions - we can guess which side is very likely going to win. And maximum motivated reasoning will be deployed to highlight the many reasons that outcome is correct. Many of those reasons will even be legitimate :-).
> But people should also be able to get apps from whatever store they want.
I agree with you. But, as devil's advocate, why not suggest that Apple should be allowed to run as crappy a store as they want, while people should be free not to buy Apple?
People are free to buy Apple (or an Android flavour, or no smartphone at all). But there are many many things which goes into a buying decision than what manner of software delivery is available.
This duopoly does not truly offer a lot of choice, so any criticism must happen from within the confines of the current reality.
I’m not going to tell a pedestrian who wants safer roads to stop being a participant in traffic, I accept that they have very little real choice.
Having to uncritically accept anything and everything the manufacturer of your device does is not really viable and is a recipe for a worse future.
They also go out of the way to make these stores prohibitively expensive to set up and still applies app review to apps distributed through those stores (even though they claim they don't and won't)
0.5€ Core Technology fee per install
2% Initial acquisition fee
5% Store service fee
This includes app reviews, manual updates, and fraud protection. This tier is mandatory for any app that promotes external payment options.
Compare that to 20-30% that Apple's own AppStore take and its a bargain.
Even with Tier 2 with marketing tools, automatic updates, app recommendations, analytics dashboards, and promotional features the cost is only 10% for small business program members, 15% for others.
You forgot that just to set up an alternative app store you need this:
--- start quote ---
Provide Apple a stand-by letter of credit in the amount of €1,000,000 from a financial institution that’s at least A-rated or equivalent by S&P, Fitch, or Moody’s, and maintain that standby letter of credit as long as your alternative app marketplace is in operation
--- end quote ---
> 0.5€ Core Technology fee per install
per install
So if your app is suddenly popular, you have to pay through the nose.
> This includes app reviews, manual updates, and fraud protection.
Why is Apple involved in app review on alternative app stores?
Why is Apple doing manual updates?
Considering the amount of scam apps on App Store, Apple isn't doing fraud protection in their own store.
> This tier is mandatory for any app that promotes external payment options.
Why? What does Apple have to do with external payment options?
> I was just trying to protect other readers for falling your "prohibitively expensive" argument thrown in to the mix.
Never new that "having a letter of credit for 1 000 000 dollars" and "having to pay 0.5 cents for every install potentially amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars just because people are installing your app" isn't prohibitively expensive
> Now after you started Googling
That's what you did. I knew about all those charges before you pretended they are nothing to write home about.
I wonder what Apple's bigger fear is - losing that ~30% cut, which is massive, or when they have to compete with alternative app stores and when finally people see how forward "software finesse" has come to in 2025 and how pathetic Apple's software/service ecosystem has been, losing most of the remaining whatever reduced cut it was; i.e. getting hammered at both ends. I think that's why they are fighting tooth and nail to keep the curtain as it is on the grand stage of privacy theatre.
> how pathetic Apple's software/service ecosystem has been
Compared to what?
Also, are we certain that a better alternative would really appear? E.g. I’m aware of f-droid and I’d install a similar ios libre software store, but I’m not aware of any, even in the EU where alt stores are possible.
But the OS is the main thing that sets Apple apart from other phones; you can get equivalent hardware for half the price, and you get to install whatever OS you want already. The prison is mainly in your head in this case.
People are allowed to get apps from whatever store they want. There is nothing stopping someone from purchasing a device that supports the google play store and downloading whatever they want from that store.
I have no right to complain that I can't run Apple programs on a Windows computer, and Microsoft shouldn't be compelled to support MacOS software.
apple isn't allowed to choose whatever I can install on the device that I own and that I purchased with my own money. I am not renting the device. Get your dirty fingers off of what I can or can't do with it.
seems like you can get it to run on windows via wsl if you want to run apps built for macs on your windows machine
is there a need to complain? windows might not be putting in support for it, but unlike apple in their store, they arent actively preventing you from doing so
That's not the argument, and you know it. It's not complaints that cross-platform binaries don't run, it's that Apple gatekeeps development in terms of users actually being able to use the fruits of that development (without onerous work arounds like having to reinstall once per week, or jailbreak).
But I also, I guess, kinda just have a dumb thought about this whole ordeal. Broadly speaking, we are in a position where we, the general public with the backing of the government, want to change how a private corporation uses it's products that it sold to us. Not for any other reason that would shield us from harm or prevent risk, but rather because the corporation's products are so successful a lot of people use them too much! But wait! That's not actually true because there's enough products on the market that we don't actually need to use this product...but we like it because its incrementally the best and the chat bubbles are blue and applications run better and seem higher quality (which is a selling point of the product we are now actively dismantling but I digress...)
I know its tiring to use food cliches, but imagine if like, I make a business selling apple pies and my apple pies are incredibly successful and everyone eats them all the time and now all of a sudden I need to also guarantee that my business can make cherry pies because my apple pies sell so damn well. But truth is, its not really about the apple pies at all. It's about my baking trays. We actually just want to make sure that the baking trays of my business are now capable of also cooking for cherry pies even though that's got nothing to do with my fucking business. I sell apple pies. I'm so confused
Apple is dictating the behavior of every business operating in the digital market (Apple itself brags that this amounts to over $1 trillion, with a T, in economic activity), with the App Store, which has 70-80% profit margins, and numerous dev horror stories. Rejecting your update over something they previously approved, or something they let all your competitors do. Forcing their IAP system on you. Dictating what links you can put in your app, how you present prices (don't call out the Apple tax), what you can tell consumers in emails. Forcing their direct competitors to have an inferior user experiences (can't subscribe in Spotify, can't buy books in Kindle; oh, and bundling Apple Music/Books/TV with the OS, and advertising them throughout the OS). Threatening retaliation if you complain publicly ("If you run to the press, it never helps.") Blocking VPNs or secure messaging in authoritarian countries, and you can't sideload. Sabotaging the web to keep their monopoly (even trying to kill PWAs recently).
Apple feels entitled to a higher profit margin on your business than your business will ever achieve for itself! That's nuts!
Large corporations with large marketshare can easily do significantly uncompetitive things, with little effort on their part.
No monopoly required.
All that is required is that they have large marketshare, an important product, and it is difficult for users to change to alternatives, or avoid its uncompetitive behavior.
Choosing a phone involves balancing numerous features of devices. There is no phone market with the thousands of competing devices it would take to really cover what a customer might ideally want. So choices often balance so many things, involve so much practical investment, that they make switching devices over a few things, or even many things, from awfully unpleasant to very difficult.
And, with great market power, comes great responsibility: to not become a barrier to competitive innovation and hard work.
By definition, Apple's strict gatekeeping App Store, a significant feature on a significant general purpose computing platform, is anti-competitive. There is no technical reason why side loading or side-stores couldn't thrive, on such a general purpose device intertwined in all our lives.
Onerous fees and terms and selective limitation (relative to Apple's own offerings) for developers make it even more anticompetitive.
Of course, anyone who likes having fewer options, or just the options they have now, is free to not explore others. For now and forever. Amen.
> Broadly speaking, we are in a position where we, the general public with the backing of the government, want to change how a private corporation uses it's products that it sold to us
Yes, because it's "we the people" not "we the corporations".
If there was more than a duopoly in smartphones, I'd say Apple should be able to have whatever horrible app policy they want, so long as it is clearly communicated to everyone including customers. Let the market decide.
But that's not where we are. I think it makes sense to treat both Apple and Google as de facto monopolies with respect to the smartphone market, and impose some regulation on what they have to allow and how much they can charge for it.
We probably do need some kind of regulation in this space because for better or worse, and I think it’s worse, it’s hard to be a participant in modern society without a smart phone. (In my mind it would be something more akin to the communications act of 1934, but for apps to mandate a certain amount of “interoperability” across operating systems, whatever that may mean, but I digress)
on the other hand, it wasn’t all that long ago that we had many smart phone markers and operating systems, all with different strategies. It’s possible that the market did decide…
I would argue that there was more than a duopoly. We had Windows Phone, WebOS, blackberry, Palm etc. The market voted and we're left with 2.
Equally, pretty much no iPhone user (outside of tech circles) cares about the App Store monopoly for iPhone. The policy is well known, and hasn't changed in 15 years.
Indeed many (not all) tech folk who complain about the App Store still went out and bought an iPhone.
The raw truth is that the market did decide. And no we don't need regulation. Apple and Google have different enough policies for there to be choice. In some countries Android has dominant market share.
Whatever may or may not have happened in the past is not especially relevant. Today it's essentially impossible to enter the market as you will need to develop a solid iOS or Android compatibility layer, because the best phone in the world is useless without software (apps) you want to run. This is also a major reason several of those platform you mentioned didn't work out by the way.
Sailfish OS does exactly that, but it has a number of limitations and added friction due to legal and technical reasons.
And choosing between two systems is really not much of a "choice". Right now there is a story on the front page about Android app requiring devs to validate their ID, even for side-loaded apps.
It's a matter of multiple independent legal decisions at this point that both of these companies have engaged in repeated, sustained, illegal anti-competitive behaviors, so the extent to which there was a "market" that voted is highly arguable.
I only use my smartphone for the basics. I want the tightly controlled app store hence I buy iPhone. I don’t want apps to be able to roll third party subscription and payment options because they will inevitably abuse it at the cost of less savvy users.
Epic Games is a developer and publisher making billions off tricking children into paying for worthless virtual goods. Fuck ‘em if they can’t make a living with the 30% Apple cut.
Apple has no issue with tricking children into paying for worthless virtual goods, they will happily host your Coin-Dosing-Clash-Of-Shadow-Fortnights if they get their 30% cut.
Didn’t we “let the market decide” and the market drowned out every other player but Apple and Google?
Why did so many people pick iPhone or Android over their prior competitors? Because the developers wrote software there. Why did the devs write software there? Because people were picking those ecosystems. It was an upward spiral that changed the world a LOT in 18 years, but it was all started with Apple—being a hardware company—selling premium-quality hardware, and then adding their support for third party development.
For Steam, I believe the price parity requirement for Steam only applies to Steam Keys. Publishers can sell at a lower prices on other store front as long as it doesn't involve Steam infrastructure.
I'll just reproduce FatalLogic's last comment here:
"""
In the class action case[0], which was allowed to go forward by the court last year, it is claimed that Valve told someone:
"This includes communications from Valve that “‘the price on Steam [must be] competitive with where it’s being sold elsewhere’” and that Valve “‘wouldn’t be OK with selling games on Steam if they are available at better prices on other stores, even if they didn’t use Steam keys.’” Dkt. No. 343 ¶ 158, 160 (quoting emails produced at VALVE_ANT_0598921, 0605087). "
(This is a new case, not the 2021 suit, which was rejected by the court, then amended and refiled, later with an additional plaintiff added)
Very few people here are going to have a PACER account. Here's a link to the filing itself. [1] It'll be interesting to see where this goes and if it's deemed accurate, because it runs directly contrary to what Steam's stated policy is. This [2] appears to be part of the testimony from the case. It really doesn't look good for Valve as they effectively acknowledge pursuing price parity and implicitly doing something that sounds like a soft shadowban of games where the publishers don't agree.
Their lawyers sure frame it such a friendly and elegant way though: 'We want to make sure our customers are getting the best deal, and we wouldn't want to mislead them into making a poor decision [by promoting the game] if that's not the case.' Undoubtedly the best legal money can buy. I have immense respect for Gabe and I hope he steps in at some point because this sounds like the bean counters are starting to run amuck. Or course it's possible he's complicit to this, but I think he probably deserves the benefit of the doubt, for now.
> Is it allowed to charge more in storefronts which take these cuts? Why nobody does that?
What? There are plenty of apps charging more when you buy currency/subscription on iOS compared to when you buy from their website, or in some cases Android app. Patreon is an example that made the loudest noise recently, but it’s been a widespread practice for years. That said Apple doesn’t (didn’t?) allow you to tell users that a cheaper option exists elsewhere.
Games are silly and inessential. And there are a dozen markets to choose from. Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, Steam, GOG, Epic, Ubisoft, Humble, Itch, direct download, retro games, ...
Phones are essential. You can't get a job without one. It's impossible to stay connected or navigate without one. You can't even order food in a restaurant these days without your smartphone. Yet two companies control and tax the entirety of mobile computing.
Scratch that. Mobile computing *IS* computing for most people. It's the only computer or internet portal they know.
And two companies own it all. The passport to the modern world is owned and taxed by two trillion dollar companies.
2000's-era DOJ-litigated antitrust abuser Microsoft dreams that they had this much of a monopoly.
The Halloween papers sounded evil. Mobile computing monopolization is evil.
Here's what needs to be done:
1. Web installs. Both companies need to allow web native installs without scare walls or buried settings flags that need to be enabled. First class apps from the web, with no scaring users about it. We have all the technology to make this work safely: permissions, app scanning, signature blacklisting, etc.
2. Defaults. Both companies need to be prevented from pushing their apps as defaults. No more default browsers, default wallets, default app stores, default photo galleries, default search engine, etc.
3. Taxation and control. Apps cannot be taxed on any transactions. Users must not be forced to "sign in" with the monopoly provider's identity system. Apps must not be forced to use the monopoly payment rails. Apps must not be forced to be human reviewed or update to the latest UI changes / SDK on a whim.
Mobile apps and platforms must work like desktop software.
We need this freedom and flexibility for consumers, and we need competition to oxygenate the tech sector and reward innovation. Capitalism shouldn't be easy - it should be hard to keep your spot at the top. Resting on the laurels of easily defended moats for twenty years while reaping some of the most outsized benefits in the industry has created lethargy and held us back.
We could have had other competitors, but nobody wanted them.
Windows phones had a very enthusiastic but too-tiny following. Blackberry lost the plot with terrible hardware and software for the app era (developing an app for the Storm was enough to convince me to never get one of their phones). Symbian's S60 was too little too late in the US. Ubuntu, Mozilla, and others all tried various flavors of Linux and web based phones to no success.
I don't think you can really blame Google or Apple for any of these failures in the same way Microsoft could be blamed in the 90's for their abuses.
With that said, I wouldn't be surprised if, eventually, Google was forced to change how they handle third party app stores. iPhones will likely never be big enough for Apple to be forced to allow other stores in the US.
> We could have had other competitors, but nobody wanted them.
Don't blame individual consumers. Bad things happen at a societal level all the time. Carbon emissions, etc. We're powerless to stop it without governmental intervention.
Your average consumer isn't educated on marketplace behaviors and doesn't understand how a lack of consumer choice leads to increased prices, inflexibility, taxation of smaller marketplace participants, less innovation, less freedom, etc. They simply can't understand the complexities of the case as deep familiarity isn't a part of their daily lives.
The large players that set these rules are squarely to blame.
> I don't think you can really blame Google or Apple for any of these failures in the same way Microsoft could be blamed in the 90's for their abuses.
You can install whatever you want on a Microsoft PC.
> We could have had other competitors, but nobody wanted them
People didn't even get a choice. Google bullied Windows Phone out of the market.
People won't switch to a platform without apps. Microsoft tried to fix that, made an HTML5 youtube app. Google threw a fit and blocked it, twice. MS even followed what Google told them to do, and still blocked the app.
Google saw great hardware, and an OS that was gaining media attention (Windows phone at the time had a lot of positive reviews, and the Nokia Lumnia phones were great, and better cameras than any Android at the time) and used their market power to kill it.
> Mobile computing IS computing for most people. It's the only computer or internet portal they know.
And two companies own it all. The passport to the modern world is owned and taxed by two trillion dollar companies.
Top smartphone brand global market share: Samsung (20%), Apple (17%), Xiaomi (14%), vivo (9%), OPPO (8%).
I bet there are quite a few people out there who actually have a phone with a faster single thread perf than their laptop i.e. latest iPhone + a crappy windows laptop
This whole situation is frustrating. Even if there were eight or twelve companies all competing fairly, I'm not sure it would matter: if Apple's approach makes hand-over-fist more money, even though it is much worse for consumers in many regards, it has the chance to unfairly win and for vendors that follow Apple's lead to out-compete vendors that don't. (Don't imagine this world, try to find the parallels you've personally experienced; you know they're out there.)
Of course today, we're getting to the point where governments are going to probably start softly relying on citizens having smartphones that are either Android or iOS. This is terrible and completely the wrong way to go; it would be much better to depend on standards that anyone could implement. Even progressive web apps would be a better outcome than Android/iOS apps. Getting to this point definitely puts both Apple and Google in privileged positions wherein they pretty much do have to be treated like defacto monopolies, but I'm also pretty sure this isn't the outcome we want either.
Its not just Android or iOS, its Google (Android) or Apple (iOS), govt apps (also other random ones) often use attestation to block use on non-Google variants of Android:
"much worse for customers" is relative. While in no ways perfect, Apple's walled garden gets rid of a huge amount of the enshittification found on other platforms, and makes it so that downloading a random app is relatively safe and unlikely to nuke your phone, steal your data, etc. Yes all the "allow access to location/photos/etc." are annoying, but at least the user has some level of control and consent.
I do agree that requiring specific platforms is a problem - we don't want a return to the IE6 or Flash-dominated eras where people who weren't on Windows were treated like sub-humans.
Android also has permission prompts to allow access to files and location and such.
Either way, I would be fine with this, if there were a big, red, and scary button with a warning in iOS to turn the coddling off. I bought a phone, so I own it. If I choose to, there should be a way to let me control the hardware. Even Android phones don't have this, with bootloader unlocking disappearing. To be fair, there's a layer below that where you could also replace the XBL (Xtensible Boot Loader, on Qualcomm devices) if secure boot is off and the efuses aren't blown. But there are even fewere devices that have this.
Why not just accept that iOS has coddling, and that your preferences are better served by the competition? As you said, Android has permission prompts. They have folding phones. Android phones regularly beat iPhones in camera quality measurements, for example.
What does Apple have that you actually want?
For me, I liked the walled garden and I put up with the rest because of it. If you don’t like the walled garden, I can’t understand wanting an iPhone.
There are so many garbage apps on the App Store that Apple's claim of vetting them must be a farce to justify the store's existence and supremacy over any potential third party ones.
"Allow access" is pretty orthogonal, I don't know how it all works in mobile OSes, but I assume everything is virtualized there, so you can't just access whatever you want without user granting a permission (e.g. through a file picker system component).
You can also ship sandboxed apps on Desktop without the store (although I am not sure on how hard it is to auto-update them, usually stores handle that part), at least on Windows and macOS.
Stores handle storing the apps themselves and distributing updates, that part of the cost is real, plus they do manually review submissions (to some degree), but 30% is insane for that.
Well, some of the permissions include things like “allow the app to track the user for advertising purposes”. There isn’t a technical way to enforce that with virtualization and sandboxing.
You can enforce it by booting misbehaving apps from the app store... but that only works if there’s one app store.
I _believe_ on macOS, if they revoke your certificate (the one you used to sign the app), the app moves into the "We can't verify that this app is free of malware" category, so in theory they can still do that.
But it is a nuclear option, and it would be a big deal if they did so for something "minor".
> While in no ways perfect, Apple's walled garden gets rid of a huge amount of the enshittification found on other platforms, and makes it so that downloading a random app is relatively safe and unlikely to nuke your phone, steal your data, etc. Yes all the "allow access to location/photos/etc." are annoying, but at least the user has some level of control and consent.
Better than Android sure, but let's not get too hyperbolic. There's less outright malware, but a ton of questionable crapware with bad practices. Let's not forget that Android phones definitely also do sandboxing and just-in-time permission prompts.
Even among major apps, maybe especially among major apps, the Apple App Store is full of apps that blatantly violate Apple's own policies, often including Apple's own apps too, much like the Google Play store. As a simple example, apps that put crucial notifications in the same category as advertisements are all over the place, despite this being a clear violation of the policies. There is plenty of enshittification on Apple platforms.
Beyond that, I can go onto my iPad and search something that is likely to be popular and find a ton of very questionable apps. For example, search "Grand Theft Auto". Scroll down slightly. That sure looks like a lot of very questionable garbage apps full of questionable advertisements. You can repeat this with tons of popular search terms. Yes, it's one thing to trust the sandbox, but are you really sure you feel safe installing all of those?
And sure, App Store review policies do stop most malware and unwanted tracking software from flowing through, but that doesn't mean you should gamble your life on it either. There are plenty of lapses all the time. Probably at least a few times a year, though obviously we only see the incidents that generate a lot of publicity. Just for fun, here's a few incidents over the years that generated a lot of publicity:
From 2011: [1]
> As a proof of concept, [Charlie Miller] created an application called Instastock that was approved by Apple's App Store. He then informed Apple about the security hole, who promptly expelled him from the App Store.
From 2015: [2]
> XcodeGhost exploits Xcode’s default search paths for system frameworks, and has successfully infected multiple iOS apps created by infected developers. At least two iOS apps were submitted to App Store, successfully passed Apple’s code review, and were published for public download.
From 2025: [3]
> We found Android and iOS apps, some available in Google Play and the App Store, which were embedded with a malicious SDK/framework for stealing recovery phrases for crypto wallets. The infected apps in Google Play had been downloaded more than 242,000 times.
And even if the apps aren't malicious, that doesn't mean you're secure. If the idea is that you feel safe using random app store apps because the apps are neatly sandboxed from the system, well, first of all, that part can be accomplished without an app store or a 30% tax. Second of all though, a lot of people's important information lives inside of the apps anyways. Why compromise the phone to access the data when you can compromise the apps themselves? Consider this from 2017:[4]
> During the testing process, I was able to confirm 76 popular iOS applications allow a silent man-in-the-middle attack to be performed on connections which should be protected by TLS (HTTPS), allowing interception and/or manipulation of data in motion.
Obviously Android has more malware than iOS, but if the idea is that even an idiot can use an iPhone and not have to care about good security practice and just run completely random apps, I firmly believe that's a horrible idea. It definitely reduces risks for the average person, but in practice they definitely should be employing good security practices either way because the app store and all of the sandboxing in the world can not save them from themselves. For power users, it basically doesn't do anything meaningful to the security practices calculus and you may possibly be better off with CalyxOS or GrapheneOS depending on what threats you are most concerned about.
My point, of course, is not to say that Apple iPhone is particularly unsafe, just that these anti-malware measures are very far from foolproof, definitely not something you should trust your Bitcoins with. They do probably screen a lot of obvious attempts at malware, but a lot of subtle attempts definitely find their way in. They don't really at all stop the store from being flooded with shitware that does things that would probably harm the privacy of the average user, like apps for "file format conversion" that silently upload your data to the cloud and have dubious privacy policies, or apps that try to convince you to accidentally subscribe to some expensive subscription. This is the kind of thing the Google Play Store was definitely known for, yet it's actually also completely all over the Apple App Store right now. Apple doesn't really seem to mind too much, they're more concerned about periodically harassing people like the developer of iSH.
What Apple and Google both do have a tendency to do is tie their dystopian anti-consumer garbage in with their security features even when they don't actually have to, for reasons that I don't think anyone needs explained to them.
Personally I think the sky will not fall if iOS allowed people to choose to be able to sideload applications. The fact that this would cause a tension whereby Apple would have some pressure to change App Store policies in order to continue getting a cut of sales and have better ability to mitigate unwanted software is kind of a feature and not a bug. As it is today, Apple has basically no incentives to ever consider changing its policies in any way that wouldn't be beneficial to them somehow.
Agree. I think all the discussions often missed the main problem. Apple App Store holds far too much power, and they alone decides letting or stopping other business. All Banks, Finance, Ecommerce, Retail need to kowtow to Apple or Google for access. And that is not the power and responsibility you want to hold.
People argue you have Website too. But Website does not provide the same level of experience and is at disadvantage compared to Apps.
I have long argued Apple should have given up this power since 2013 / 2014. And Apple should split Games to Game Store, that keeps their 30% cut and would have kept at least 70 - 80% of their current App Store revenue.
For what ever reason last time I said this in 2018 and 2020 I was devoted to oblivion on HN.
> treat both Apple and Google as de facto monopolies with respect to the smartphone market
Apple and Google can’t both be monopolists of the smartphone market (or even app stores). By definition, if there’s more than one seller, there is no monopoly.
I suppose you could say Apple is the monopolist if the iPhone market or the iPhone App Store market. You can’t say Google is the monopolist of the Android phone market or the Android App Store market.
But neither one, and certainly not both, can be the monopolist of the smartphone market or the smartphone app store market.
A family member of mine has an Apple phone, and the lack of availability of not just open source software but even freeware or freemium software astounds me. They make it so difficult to distribute anything, that it's not worth it unless you are getting significant revenue. This means that often the only option is something extremely scammy that charges monthly for the most trivial capabilities.
Of course, Apple gets a 30% cut in any scams, so they have absolutely no incentive to do anything about it, and really their policies are what create it, in the first place.
You know how we got here? It used to be a free-for-all where grandma could download any software off the Internet on her Windows computer. You know how the rest went. I honestly don't mind it. It's so easy to recommend an iPhone to non-technical users, knowing the app store is still not compromised with low quality/malicious garbage. (Sure it requires a bit of expectation attenuation but the Android app stores are worse yet).
This is an argument for gating the free-for-all behind a setting technical users can find, not demanding 30% of revenue if a dev would like access to apple users. The security aspect is real, but this is really about maximizing profits by monopolizing access to anyone with an iPhone.
When a normal user is highly motivated to install software, there is no such distinction from a "technical user". He wants to install AnimeWallpapersTotallyNotATrojan.app. The operating system disallows it. Then he just does a search for how to install AnimeWallpapersTotallyNotATrojan.app on iOS, and finds 20 tutorials walking him through the steps to ungate the install.
You can make the expert mode dialog say "Clicking this button will erase your hard drive, drain your bank account, and give your dog cancer" and people will still click it.
Grandma: Help me, Joey! After the neighborhood kid helped me install the coupon code app (he said something about expert mode, he is very smart!) my phone runs slow and crashes. :-(
There are many ways to deal with any scenario like this, all of which don't involve the device manufacturer locking ALL device owners out of ANY control over the hardware they own.
For example, you can be the administrator on Grandma's device and block access to third-party app stores which cannot be overridden by anyone (including the device manufacturer) without your credentials. Alternatively, you could delegate that authority to a provider you trust. No one is saying you can't keep choosing Apple's walled-garden app store as the only store provider or that you shouldn't be able to block any or even all app stores. Options like that can even be locked by one-time hardware fuses so they can never be changed - even by the owner. The only issue here is Apple forcing a sole monopoly on that control for themselves because it's worth billions of dollars - instead of device owners having a choice.
> No one is saying you can't keep choosing Apple's walled-garden app store as the only store provider or that you shouldn't be able to block any or even all app stores
Well... no, it's not. As long as device owners can choose which and how many app stores are on their device, regulators and courts will be satisfied. If users then choose number_of_app-stores == 1 and app_store_provider == "Apple", that's the user's choice - and for many users, like Grandma, that may be the right choice.
Regulators have never ruled that Apple can't have an app store or that the number of enabled App Stores MUST be more than 1 - only that the legal owner of the device have an opportunity to choose. Scenarios like "Oh no, the EU wants to take away Grandma's one safe, simple walled-garden app store so she's left to fend for herself on the dark web" is a disingenuous straw man exaggeration by Apple and their apologists to protect Apple's multi-billion dollar app store monopoly.
Once there's owner choice, even Grandma who chooses Apple as her only app store will pay lower prices and very likely gain other safe options like a full featured Firefox with Ublock Origin ad blocking. Just the existence of competitive choice is beneficial - even to users who choose "no competition". Plus Apple will finally have a real incentive to be more responsive and reasonable with app developers regarding app store prices and policies - which will help solo and small startup app developers.
I love how the threat of Grandma installing malware on her phone is the new "think of the children!"
And I love how the response to shit mobile security is to lock down devices so the people who buy them don't actually own them. Instead of, y'know, actually cleaning up the security posture of these devices.
Then those people deserve what they get as a result. People should have autonomy to make less than optimal decisions if they want.
And to provide a counterpoint, my dad can barely navigate his iPhone. I literally spent an hour on the phone with him when he was lost and needed directions; it took 20 minutes to guide him to open the messages app so he could read the address I sent. Someone that clueless isn't searching the internet to figure out workarounds for installing anything.
A warning lets a person know it is getting deeper. It is up to the person to realise if they are out of their depth.
If a person lacks the self reflection to realise their capabilities then they need a guardian. Children and the elderly routinely have this for other aspects of life. Why not a phone?
Why can't I delegate such authority to others when I become old and infirm?
This is more than doable with app stores. The review process never instruments the apps or reads the source, it's trivial and common to hide malware in apps and then use modals/ads to push them on people.
Now we have strong sandboxing by default and many other platform security advances to mitigate that risk. You can download any software off the Internet on macOS, so why not on iOS?
How did you conclude the lack of freeware? Both the Apple and Google app stores have a couple million apps, and most of them (about 95% in the App Store’s case) are free.
Is that an Apple thing? People trying to monetize anything they make seem to vastly outnumber those of us who just want to make stuff for other people to enjoy. When I turn off an adblocker I'm shocked how many hobby projects spam ads at their users to try to make a few pennies.
Giving away free software on the appstore is gonna cost you $100/yr developer license. Sure, the more apps you make dilutes the cost, but it doesn’t seem like that inviting of a space for maintained free apps.
It's a thing that was started by Apple and now everyone is trying to mimic.
The other day I transferred pictures from my android phone to my Windows desktop, and some of them required a codec to open. I followed prompts, which landed me on a page in Windows store asking for $0.99 in exchange for the said codec.
We had a good Internet in the 90s and 00s. Apple had to ruin that.
Strings and Unicode are a lot more complicated than they first appear. I like the way this article puts it:
> Swift’s string implementation goes to heroic efforts to be as Unicode-correct as possible. […] This is great for correctness, but it comes at a price, mostly in terms of unfamiliarity; if you’re used to manipulating strings with integer indices in other languages, Swift’s design will seem unwieldy at first, leaving you wondering.
> It’s not that other languages don’t have Unicode-correct APIs at all — most do. For instance, NSString has the enumerateSubstrings method that can be used to walk through a string by grapheme clusters. But defaults matter; Swift’s priority is to do the correct thing by default.
> Strings in Swift are very different than their counterparts in almost all other mainstream programming languages. When you’re used to strings effectively being arrays of code units, it’ll take a while to switch your mindset to Swift’s approach of prioritizing Unicode correctness over simplicity.
> Ultimately, we think Swift makes the right choice. Unicode text is much more complicated than what those other languages pretend it is. In the long run, the time savings from avoided bugs you’d otherwise have written will probably outweigh the time it takes to unlearn integer indexing.
I'm well aware of all of this. Swift strings aren't random-access. There are reasons no other language did it Apple's way. Even in the rare situations when you do care about the edge cases with these multi-code point symbols (basically just emojis), Swift strings still make that a nightmare, while in other languages you have easy ways to deal with it.
I was on such a project where we cared a lot about these details, and the whole team agreed to throw Swift strings out the window and build our own array-based string replacement where each slot is a symbol. Which is probably what Apple would've done if it weren't for performance overhead.
Didn't help that their API was really unstable. Every major Swift version broke our code in so many places that we started adding extra layers just to protect ourselves.
“A 30% revenue share can easily be the difference between a company that can afford to scale, hire new employees, and reinvest in its product, and one that is perpetually struggling to stay afloat.”
This brought up a fun thought exercise for me. Pretty sure that Y Combinator would argue that giving away 7% of one's company for access to intangible (but beneficial) things like funding, advisors, etc, is completely worth it for a company. Pretty sure that they also fund companies that pay salespeople fairly significant commissions on sales.
Interesting to see them argue that asking a company to give up 30% "commission" on revenue for access to a large market stifles competition and innovation.
Is Y Combinator's forcing companies to give up 7% of their companies for access to advisors and funding stifling innovation and competition? (Spoiler: I don't think so. I think both Y Combinator and apple should be able to capitalize on the access they provide.)
Startup founders can choose between many models of funding, VCs, etc. Starups cannot choose between different ways of accessing willing customers over iOS, they have to comply with a %30 cut and a jungle of regulations that act in Apple's interest.
These two examples aren't the same, even just on the basis of market power.
Startups aren’t paying 30% of sales unless they have more then $1 million in revenue coming through the App Store, they are selling access to digital goods and even then, they can still sell access to subscriptions and services outside of the App Store and now they can link directly to their website from the App Store thanks to the courts ruling - at least in the US.
Many startups are still losing money at $1M ARR. So getting a bump up to 30% of revenue at $1M can be catastrophic.
Investors don't want large percentages of pre-profit money being siphoned off by Apple.
Generally speaking, an optimized win-win fee would be some percentage of profits, not revenue.
That might be far too difficult to manage, accounting wise. But we can safely say that 30% of revenue, would translate to an extreme percentage of profit. Apple is extorting from many companies.
One sign of anticompetitive behavior is when a company is leveraging things in their favor so hard, it seems quite plausible that they are actually harming themselves. Killing of developers, by charging massive fees even to money losing developers, is not a good long term strategy.
But the power to extract money even from those it causes real pain, is hard to turn down when quarterly numbers keep coming up.
> Starups cannot choose between different ways of accessing willing customers over iOS
What? They can offer an SPA, or a traditional web page. They can offer a hardware device. They can make an android app compelling enough to convert users.
You are really trying to say that for a startup trying to build software, say a productivity app or whatever, they should consider launching their own hardware device? They are very different things and would basically make indie development impossible (or really any software company that can't raise hundreds of millions to billions)
There is a limit to this sort of logic though. Don't get me wrong, I'm generally pro free markets. But:
A) Apple's policies make some products completely unviable (anything with a gross margin less than 30%). Even for products at say 40% gross margin, Apple as a storefront is taking 75% of the gross margin pool (ie 30% to Apple, 10% to developer). This in my view is direct consumer harm.
B) Apple acts egregiously and restricts what should be basic free speech. For instance, app developers not being able to even mention they have to pay Apple (let alone being able to direct customers to their own website etc). To me this is the biggest one - I could probably live with everything else more if developers at least could show customers where their fees were going etc.
C) Apple has changed the rules over time, or at least how they enforce the rules (by trying to force more and more apps to pay the 30% - eg what they did to Patreon)
This hasn’t been true in months in the US because of the courts ruling. Right now, just looking at two apps, you can click on “Buy book” from the Kindle app and be redirected to Amazon’s website and download the Netflix app, click on “Get Started” and create an account.
Just because people will go along with something because they have no other choice, it doesn't mean it's a fair business practice that we should allow.
Apple's deal is still an acceptable business proposition because there aren't any alternatives. Android users don't spend much on apps compared to iPhone users. It's an ok market, but not a great one, and in the US, if you aren't on the iPhone, then you aren't relevant, period.
Maybe if there was an actual competitive market on iOS for app stores, we'd see what app developers actually thought was a good business proposition, not the only take-it-or-leave-it (but if you leave it there's no way to be successful) proposition they have now.
People clearly have other choices here: develop for Android, develop for the web, create a telephony-based or text-response system, operate in bricks-n-mortar format, etc.
Apple with a 90% commission would still be a better business proposition.Did they earn that or are they at that point a monopoly on half a domain of tech?
Is that a better business proposition for a prospective app developer? GP was arguing that the alternatives to the App Store commission were far worse. Under a 90% commission scheme, they're probably both unviable.
> would basically make indie development impossible
We aren’t talking about indie development though. People like to paint a picture of a small, scrappy startup or beleaguered solo dev being held back by Apple’s crushing 30%, but that isn’t the case.
Unless you are earning more than a million dollars a year through the App Store alone, you don’t pay 30%, you pay 15%. And if you earn more than that, you still only pay 15% for long-term subscribers. And of course, all those SaaS companies where the app is just an interface for the larger service pay 0%.
As soon as you start talking about “Apple’s 30%”, you reduce the scope of the argument to the tiny fraction of developers with millions in revenue.
If you do actually want to talk about indie development, you should be talking about “Apple’s 15%”.
Say you're a team of 3. Your game takes 2 years to develop. You spend on salary for 3x2 years. You've spent ~$600,000 so far. Let's assume you haven't had any other sources of operational costs like software licenses for your art tools (3D modelling, 2D drawing, music production, sound production, game engine), marketing expenditure, development hardware, outside contracting, and a number of other things.
If you pull $800,000 in the first year Apple will take $120,000. Your net profit is $80,000. Apple has taken over half your profit.
If you pull $1,200,000 in the first year Apple will take $210,000. I'm going to assume that Apple still only takes 15% on the first $1million. Your net profit is $390,000. About a third of your profit has gone to Apple now.
The carve-out for small revenues is not some panacea. Fixed cost overheads for small teams will swallow the platitude very fast. Video games is a high risk, hits based industry. Apple's tax adds the most risk to small ventures, the kind of ventures that are going to produce innovative high risk content, making them even more risky adding more difficulty to acquiring finance.
So if we want to talk about Apple's 15% it's actually worse.
This is not what people have in mind when you talk about poor little indie devs being unable to cope with 30%. We’re talking about a well-funded operation that can run for years without revenue.
> So if we want to talk about Apple's 15% it's actually worse.
As someone who worked at a company that tried to do this, years ago, that's hilariously laughable, and either you're just incredibly unaware of what that sort of thing takes, or you're arguing in bad faith.
And if you think SPAs or regular websites on mobile Safari can give you the same experience and hardware access as a native app, I'm not sure what to tell you.
> They can make an android app compelling enough to convert users.
Sure, right, now you're just spouting fantasy stories. (And I say this as an Android user.)
When Y Combinator gives $10,000 for a 7% stake in the company, the company goes from being "worth" $130,000 before the money to being worth $140,000 after, and they have $10,000 more in their bank account. Every dollar the company earns afterwards also increases their bank account by $1.00.
When an app store takes a 30% commission on sales, every dollar the company earns afterwards increases their bank account by $0.70.
The percent doesn't really matter (if YC took 30% ownership or app stores took 7% commission), the comparison doesn't really make sense either way.
> Every dollar the company earns afterwards also increases their bank account by $1.00.
Wouldn’t this be true also if YC owned 100% of the company? On the other hand from that point on, from every dollar the company is worth YC gets 7%.
You need to know what is (or will be) bigger and more critical for your success, the investment worth 7% of your company, or the 30% Apple takes from your app. Either of these numbers can be millions or $0.
I’m very much for alternative storefronts and letting people choose. Android already proved this works just fine and most people still go for the official store. But I don’t think the argument above paints a clear, unbiased picture.
Equity ownership doesn't directly effect operating capacity on the same timescale as revenue. (sure investment does but in a positive way, but again not quite the same) Where as revenue does on shorter timescales, and 30% off revenue is an ongoing constraint to operating capacity day to day in a way ownership just isn't.
They don't behave the same way so to make the comparison didn't make any sense.
Note: Edited this a few times because words are hard.
This is a very good argument. We would also learn what features of an App Store add marketable value, and what features are trivial. I imagine the front end isn't very important, but some kind of build certification/verification is. That requires branding, infrastructure and labor. Maybe its easier than I imagine to verify that apps aren't lying about what they do, but as far as I can tell that could well account for some 5% at cost.
On the other hand you trust your bank, for example, so you follow the link on their website and install the App, and the trust came from their own brand.
Far be it from me to defend Y Combinator or VCs in general but IMO the situation is a bit different because of the monopoly (or at least duopoly) power that Apple and Google hold as gatekeepers over the only practical way to sell to iOS and Android device users.
Of course, I'd also assume most or all the people associated with YC were part of the "fire Lina Khan because our whole business model is actually just taking advantage of FAANG acquihire panic" squad, making them hypocrites (in a slightly different way) for helping to prop up these monopolistic gatekeepers and then acting put upon by the results of that.
Equity and revenue share are fundamentally different things. YC could be asking for 30% equity and it'd still be more reasonable than the 30% revenue cut modern gatekeepers demand.
I'm not sure how offering an investment in a highly competitive market (dozens of incubators, thousands of vcs) is comparable to raising the cost of payment processing 900%. Alongside all the other bad acts that Apple does, mostly inhibiting your ability to provide good customer service to your customers. Or even continue a billing relationship if they migrate from ios -> android/pc.
I thought the standard advice is to target 80-90% gross margin at early stage so you can easily eat 30% CAC. It probably starts to hurt as you scale though.
People here miss the value of a tightly moderated walled garden: I don't have to worry about downloading things that are misleading or are chock full of dark patterns, because it has been vetted by an App Store that I trust. And when I download an app with a subscription through App Store, I can see any time how much it costs, I can cancel it any time no fuss: https://www.iphonelife.com/sites/iphonelife.com/files/styles...
Meanwhile, any subscription I sign up for through another channel, I have to wade through a sea of dark patterns to reach a cancel screen.
This is why I choose to have an iPhone, because the garden is walled and I can relax. If you want freedom to have multiple different app stores, Android is a better option for you.
I'd rather another one not exist, because then it would become a game of incentives... app owners might only make their apps available on THAT App Store, resulting in App Store's value being diminished. I would like that the one App Store be the one and the only one in a KISS principle. Apple so far hasn't failed me, and so I continue to trust it and its judicious management and curation of apps.
Folks who care about having any app they want through alternative stores I wish would just opt for Android systems.
Ah, the Highlander principle: there can be only one. The complete opposite of a "market", of course, which is why the rest of us are gearing up the non-market mechanisms against it.
This applies in reverse, of course. The existence of the Apple store makes certain apps only available for the Apple store (iOS only), so therefore us Android users need to have it banned so we can continue to have choice.
I think a switch happened inside me roughly 5 years ago, that I went from eschewing walled gardens to now valuing them more and more. Too much of my life has been wasted fighting through dark patterns, finding cancel screens, or being had by manipulative subscription arrangements wherein there are cancelation fees or complex terms of service that somehow make cancelation difficult.
When I paid 1k-something dollars for an iPhone 16 a few months ago, I did not pay for a general purpose computing device, no, I paid for a device that can take pictures, and has certain apps that I like which I know how much I'm paying for, and I know that with ease I will be able to active/deactivate its subscription with zero struggle. That's what I paid for, a device made by a company whose discretion I trust and support, and I pray it continues being this way.
And people like you will continue to have access to this curated experience. But developers who decide that access to you is not worth the platform fees will be able to pursue an alternative.
Why wouldn't your bank remain on the App Store? Does the app store really lack that many dark patterns? (Billions spent gambling every year)
Again: There is nothing to stop the walled gardens from being build, but they should be built within a competitive market!
> app owners might only make their apps available on THAT App Store
Because it's better for them and they have that right. If YOU need a safe walled garden, shouldn't YOU be the one who supports the process and incentives for developers?
Is one store not just a different game of incentives? One where instead of going off to a different platform, your experience will be as enshittified as it can within the bounds of the one and only?
The brief is not particularly compelling; it mostly assumes what it is trying to prove. It says:
But the Injunction requires Apple not to prohibit linking-out period,
full stop. It does not permit Apple to condition the right to
link-out on the payment of a fee.
In fact, the injunction is silent on the matter of fees for linking out.
Similarly, the simplicity of the alternative world of just clicking a button fails to incorporate any additional risks (hence the "scare" screen).
Courts generally permit companies to charge what they want. It may be justifiable to force alternative markets for something close to a monopoly, but it's not clear they can force the alternative to be cheaper.
If you look at the table of authorities, it's basically Epic itself, and some 50+ year-old cases. There's just nothing really in support.
Currently, a tiny, tiny percentage of very large developers make virtually all of the profits from selling Apple apps. Apple's 30% rate has been in place longer than most of them have existed, so there's been no surprise. Price discrimination is legal, and Apple's choice to make larger companies pay more seems supportive of small businesses. So there's not even a compelling argument that Apple's fees are evil; it's just that big, maximalist players see a way to get more profit.
So yes, Apple fees limit profits for Y-combinator startups. The brief would have been more compelling had it listed the startups that were passed on due to the fees (rather than listing the successful ones). That's the only new data point in this argument, and would have been direct evidence of impact to small companies. But because the brief didn't make this argument factually, the court can fairly assume there are no such cases, and the brief may have done more damage than good to its cause.
In a lot of cases prices would go down, that extra 30% makes app development often pretty unprofitable if you aren't the store.
And a lot of things just aren't available on mobile because of the cut. Most apps which offer movies or books for sale for instance only let you view them on the phone, you have to buy on the web.
90% of in app purchases on the App Store come from pay to win games. I don’t think the cost of loot boxes and coins would go down. The 90% number came from the Epic Trial.
The other major players in the App Store haven’t allowed in app purchases for years.
I think the argument here is that there's less good apps because it's a difficult market and your profits are being garnished too aggressively for it to be a viable option when seeking investment for novel ideas.
It's not about "having less profit" necessarily, it's about it being a more risky business with a lower potential ceiling making investment less likely and thus: a dearth of Apps.
Grocery stores on average make ~1-4% profit on revenue. Hungary has a sales tax of 27%. Do you think that if Hungary eliminated the sales tax that Hungarian grocery stores would make 28-31% profits?
Is this the civil rights struggle for middle-men and compradors? You lack a preference that your money go to people who work as opposed to people who don't work and stand between you and the people who do, collecting tolls?
I don’t know. You could just as well say, “A 3% merchant fee can easily be [… ruinous to a bunch of companies]”, and I’d be talking about Stripe, a Y Combinator company. In Europe they manage to cap interchange fees at 10x less, and there’s no less “payments innovation” or more “fraud” or whatever some nice red headed LISP brothers or some insightful patio furniture guy will say is eating into the 3% merchant fees.
People struggle with this: Stripe and Apple do the same thing wrt to the fees. They get all into a knot trying to explain how 3% of all revenue, successfully capped at 0.3% in Europe, is somehow different than Apple taking 30% of App Store IAP. We already live in the world where nice, red headed LISP brothers and insightful patio furniture guy is wrong. You don’t even need to talk about it or file a brief.
The reason the Epic case is tough is because the fee doesn’t matter. Like what is the right fee? Say a number. Clearly it doesn’t make sense to take a fee at all! Apple is doing something valuable - they are concentrating wealthy, good customers who overwhelming choose iPhones instead of Android phones - and instead of making iPhones more expensive they take from app developers. But if you did the sensible thing - force the platforms to charge the cut they are taking from the end user up front, when they buy the phone - nobody is going to do that.
It’s exactly the same problem as Europe saying Facebook has to be ads free. Nobody chose to pay for a Facebook subscription. The truth is the regulators are in between a rock and a hard place if they try to make changes to one number in the midst of the status quo. In the past, regulators took more drastic steps, they split up the monopolies, and once you understand how weak these regulations that people are litigating are, suddenly you will be much more sympathetic to the idea that the App Store and the iPhone have to be different businesses, or that private digital payments companies shouldn’t exist at all.
If you think 3% is too much, there are plenty of other payment processors... the thing is, most of that 3% is not set by the processor (or kept by them) but is set by the card networks. It is the card networks that should be targeted by antitrust laws.
If there anyone could make an App Store, then we would have a better idea of what the market rate for app stores should be.
> If you think 3% is too much, there are plenty of other payment processors...
The things is, there's really not.
There's two: Visa and Mastercard.
In the US there's also American Express and Discover (afaik), but those aren't accepted everywhere (to the point that it was a joke in Futurama).
But We’ve actually seen this happen in the United States before. The Durbin Amendment put a cap on debit card transactions of 21 cents plus 0.05% (although an additional 1¢ can be added to the cap if certain security requirements are met). After this Amendment was put into practice we saw two things:
1) Rewards earning debit cards were almost entirely phased out.
2) Prices did not drop as a result.
The reason the EU even capped payment processing fee's was because of this duopoly that was strangling the market. Quite poignant.
I don't understand why transaction fee is a percentage as it takes the cost of transferring money is the same irrespective of the amount. There should be a reasonable cap. For example 2% for any transaction less than $2, and $0.2 for any larger transactions. Why do we still have this charade of collecting money and then giving some pittance back to the customer in the form of credit card points?
Roughly speaking, when a transaction needs to be unwound, if the merchant cannot cover the reversal (for example, because it has defaulted), then the payment processor needs to pony up instead. Note that this isn't an edge case, this is something that happens every day.
If the payment processor defaults (gasp!), then the processor's sponsor bank needs to cover it. This is why a sponsor bank will have a lot to say about what a processor can and cannot do.
If the sponsor bank is unable to meet its obligations (argh!), then it's the card Network itself that is on the hook. This is why card networks have a lot to say about what a sponsor bank can and cannot do ;)
The key to understanding payment processing is to realise that the risk is very asymmetrical. The processing party collects only a small fraction of the transaction amount as fees, but is effectively on the hook for the full amount if things go pear shaped.
That is why the cost is typically proportional to the value of the payment.
You'll see fixed/capped fees mostly on payment methods that don't allow reversals (ie: not very consumer friendly), or that take place between highly trusted parties where credit risk can be handled through other ways.
Okay, why does this all work basically the same in Europe, but interchange fees are capped at 0.3% by law? The reason has nothing to do with fraud or technology.
1. Even in regulated markets like Europe, you’ll note that it’s still a percentage of the transaction value, not a fixed cost.
2. In EU, while Interchange is regulated, Scheme fees, Acquirer fees, and Processor fees are not. These are usually also expressed as percentage of the transaction value.
3. Because of the more limited avenues to offset risk, access to credit in EU is more difficult than in more dynamic markets like the US (not saying it’s good or bad, just highlighting that there are downstream impacts).
I wonder if US issuers/merchants/customers are subsidizing their European counterparts. Maybe the "right" number is for everyone to pay 1.2% or something like that.
Of course, without price controls, most businesses will charge whatever they can get away with that doesn't cause them to lose too many customers, so...
Yeah, the root of that is Zelle being required (by law?) to reverse charges the payer didn't authorize, like if their account was hacked. This is sometimes used for scams, but even scams aside, any kind of charge reversal is a problem.
Epic's argument is very understandable: they don't want to pay the same kind of platform fees to Apple for having Fortnite in the App Store that they are paying Nintendo for having Fortnite in the eShop, etc. Makes a lot of sense.
Time to see what the next move for Apple will be if they lose the appeal. Because I doubt Apple will be content to lose money on the ruling and will look to collect the fees elsewhere. Without the ability for developers ship iOS apps with no business relationship to Apple you're still pitching your tent on someone else's land.
If there is one thing I've seen Apple do reliably over the past 20 years, it's being able to comply with rulings in the most malicious and hindering way possible. They'll be just fine with no difference to their bottom line.
> “Y Combinator — and the larger venture capital community — have long been hesitant to back app-based businesses that were poor investments due to the Apple Tax,”
This could be good, if it encourages people to re-learn the value of open standards, like Web is supposed to be, rather than helping to perpetuate the proprietary app stores.
Also, I think it's noteworthy that, once a company gets customers locked into a proprietary app store, they show their true extremely greedy, abusive, and indifferent side to third-party developers. No matter how warm and fuzzy a brand they craft for consumers.
Are Bay Area libertarian techbros ironically going to try to rely on government regulation to keep the awful proprietary app stores tolerable, or will they rediscover what industry has known for decades about the value of open standards, and direct their efforts consistent with that?
Seriously. If Apple put even half of the effort into open web standards that they've put into building their mobile SDKs and the App Store ecosystem, we'd have webapps that would be just as capable, performant, and secure as native apps can be.
Though I'm sure then Apple would lock a lot of device access by websites behind a domain allowlist that you have to pay a bunch of money to get on.
> if the App Store had never existed? ...even though it lays golden eggs
Why is the general rebuttal always binary? Be grateful that it exists at all! It lays golden eggs!
No, they're just eggs. A few of us are lucky to sell a lot of eggs. That doesn't make them golden. The true gold eggs are grown despite the store (Netflix, YouTube, OpenAI).
Imagine an App Store that only lets you make black and white apps, but the store itself can produce full-color apps. Further, if your black and white app is actually successful, they'll copy it and release their version in color.
> Apple invested so much in their platform because of the expectation that they'd get to run it the way they want, including taking a cut
Source? Jobs’ original vision included no App Store. Web apps would suffice. They sucked, and continue to suck, so he built an App Store to flesh out the iPhone’s feature set.
Probably, mobile operating systems would work more like macOS where apps can be installed directly from websites with a layer of (possibly server side) malware checking and more reliance on code signing/sandboxing. There's no inherent reason apps must be distributed via app stores.
The inherent reason initially was so that there was one central place to obtain apps/games in a mobile market that wasn't used to browsing the web for apps.
I genuinely don't think there are many people that want something different to the app store. If all of the apps I can use on my phone are in the app store from a functionality and ease of use standpoint that is the best option.
> Probably, mobile operating systems would work more like macOS where apps can be installed directly from websites
There’s no reason to speculate on this. We already saw Apple’s vision for an iPhone without an App Store.
When the iPhone was first launched, Apple said that if you wanted to build an app for the iPhone, you should build a web app. People hated that, so Apple launched the App Store.
Devs love web-style distribution. App Stores can be convenient for discovery, but that only matters for a limited number of apps.
What they didn't love was being forced into the JS/DOM straitjacket when Apple were building much higher quality APIs and implementations for native apps.
The combination of web-style distribution, an App Gallery for discovery, and still having the ability to use UIKit, would have been very popular.
Selling exclusively on Google Play, which doesn't have these digital Berlin-walls. Or crazier still, distributing a web app through their website. Apple didn't invent payment processing.
I think Apple should mostly be allowed to run as crappy an App Store as they want.
But people should also be able to get apps from whatever store they want.
(Ground rules all app stored would have to follow based on technical, security, and legal concerns would be fine too, IMO.)
Of course Apple would never go for that, so we'll end up with whatever mess legal processes can wring out of them.
> But people should also be able to get apps from whatever store they want.
This the answer. The app store monopoly doesn't really matter, the real tyranny is needing Apple's cryptographic blessing to run software on our own computers. This should be literally illegal. Restore our computer freedom and their app store rent seeking becomes irrelevant.
It's not just about that. I am sure if the court would force them to allow sideloading, they'll make sure to never promote your app if you decide to offer both options to the users.
And that’s fair. Apple doesn’t have to provide services to businesses
Punishing developers for not exclusively using their App Store would be clearly uncompetitive.
If they have to allow other stores, then they are not going to be allowed to punish developers for using them.
(Assuming the lowest bar possible in anti-competitive resolution follow through.)
Not until alternative stores become competitive. Realistically they have such a monopoly thar you end up in a chiclen and egg situation. Their monopoly is so large that noone wants to distribute via small alt stores, meaning alt stores never get large.
A chicken and egg problem is highly unlikely. Here's a few probable situations:
1) A fdroid equivalent pops up, which them becomes a collection of fantastic open source apps, and soon develops a strong user base.
2) Google launches play store for iPhone, which will on day 1 get millions of users.
3) Meta launches metaStore, which so the only way to get Facebook, threads, Instagram and WhatsApp. This becomes the fastest growing store in a matter of a week.
One may personally not like this world - but imo it's a better world than the one we have - personally for (1) to exist.
> 3) Meta launches metaStore, which so the only way to get Facebook, threads, Instagram and WhatsApp. This becomes the fastest growing store in a matter of a week.
Why? They don't do this on Android.
At then end of the day the number of active users would fall if they do this. That's unavoidable. So what incentives do they have to not distribute on the App Store? It's not like (unlike in Epic's case) Apple is requiring Facebook to hand over 30% of its revenue.
fdroid is of course great. Extremely niche and not that significant, though.
> Google launches play store for iPhone, which will on day 1 get millions of users.
Amazon tried that on Android. Of course I would expect Google to do much better but that doesn't mean a lot.
> Why? They don't do this on Android.
So they can fuck their users in ways not currently permitted.
On #3, Meta could have done it for Android and I don't think they did. Actually if Android is a god estimation of how it looks like with 3rd party stores, it won't be super disruptive.
Unless the iOS market is so lucrative it will garner far more interest.
> Actually if Android is a god estimation of how it looks like with 3rd party stores, it won't be super disruptive.
Google Play has fewer restrictions though. Apple doesn't even allow alternative browser engines. Until last year they didn't allow any emulators.
> Meta launches metaStore, which so the only way to get Facebook, threads, Instagram and WhatsApp
Would note the trade off: this store will be a bastion of tracking, possibly with Meta requiring its bugs be installed for inclusion.
Highly probable.
This will rightly push Apple in the right direction - to bring the right OS controls at the operating system level / store API level, and not leave things up to apps. This is a better world, despite short term issues with metaStore.
> bring the right OS controls at the operating system level / store API level, and not leave things up to apps
This will almost certainly be litigated. We also haven’t broached national laws mandating a government-controlled App Store. (Would expect this to emerge in right-wing Europe or India first.)
As long as they clearly give the option, at the time of first setup - or an upgrade, to select which app store becomes default; and make it very easy to change default app store later, just like default browser, default search engine et cetera. But they must not be allowed to disallow for the reason that "you are on another app store, we don't like you, go away!".
Yup, it's then fair and they can keep the banner in their App Store that screams at font size 38 "This Journal App Is Da Best", "No Other Note App Has Been Made Greater Than This One".
It's a tradeoff. You may have the knowledge and risk awareness to install anything, circumvent protections like you still can on MacOS, but the vast majority does not and should not have that power; this led to huge botnets during the Windows XP era when many internet connections were first set up. They overcompensated with Vista, asking permissions for everything so people developed a kneejerk "just hit accept". The iPhone came out not long after, with a safety by default - which invariably meant restricting what a user can and cannot do and install on their system.
I think it's been a net positive overall. The percentage of people that want to do and install more with it is small.
The problem with Windows XP was that at the time you plugged it into your modem directly (or the computer contained the modem if it was dialup) with no firewall, and it would get exploited in seconds without any user interaction through some default Microsoft background service. Wifi routers were probably a much larger impact than any operating system changes. Especially anything user facing. It's also why clickbait silliness aside, running windows XP isn't actually that likely to run into issues today.
> It's a tradeoff. You may have the knowledge and risk awareness [...] but the vast majority does not and should not have that power
But that power is not more dangerous than having guns, right? So.. while I can apply for a gun license, I can't apply for an unrestricted computing license, so something is wrong here, don't you think? Unless you believe guns are less dangerous.
> But that power is not more dangerous than having guns, right?
It actually is.
Free computers are intolerably subversive. They can literally wipe out entire sectors of the economy just by copying artificially scarce things. They can defeat police, judges, militaries, governments by democratizing access to strong cryprography.
They want to control our computers at all costs. We must resist. Computers are too important for us to allow them to be controlled and limited.
I can shoot an executive and it would tank the stock far more than anything I could do with a computer.
> > But people should also be able to get apps from whatever store they want.
The web. Without scare walls or hidden "enable downloads" menu settings.
And apps should no longer have to use first party payment rails, first party authentication/sign in rails, or be forced to jump through review or upgrade hoops.
> The web. Without scare walls or hidden "enable downloads" menu settings.
I'm not too sure about that, for non-technical users the warnings before installing an APK on Android are very likely a good thing. There's a lot of malware out there and, similar to running a downloaded Exe on Windows, you should at least explicitly confirm it's execution.
The warnings arent needed on the web, because it's vastly more secure, flexible, etc.. Steve Jobs even coined the PWA concept before going the fiefdom route
I don’t know whether to feel happy or sad for you.
Happy because you have nobody in your life in a vulnerable position to be taken advantage of the inevitable malware that will be installed on their device as a result of your wish.
Or sad because those people are most likely to be grandparents or elderly aunts and uncles. Perhaps you never even got to know them.
What a stupid argument. Maybe grandpas and grandmas should get a different phone then, like a Doro, and stop bringing the rest of us down. And it doesn't even hold water as my mother has been scammed by legitimate App Store apps that have charged extra-fees just because they could.
> Maybe grandpas and grandmas should get a different phone then, like a Doro
They did, they got an iPhone.
> my mother has been scammed by legitimate App Store apps that have charged extra-fees just because they could.
Did it empty her bank balance by abusing the private NFC payment APIs that Apple are being ordered to open up?
Did it cryptolock all her files?
Did it activate the camera and mic to spy on her for blackmail?
These are things that we need to worry about with random things we download on desktop these days. It's not 2007 any more, I have an entire spare computer for untrusted software.
I don't want to get into politics but dont you think it's funny when you can purchase assault rifles, made for killing people, yet we are so afraid of having the poor individuals in control of their own phones. Or farming equipment - the list seems to keep growing.
It's just corporate propaganda that all hell would break loose, you could just offer installing baby mode at Apple physical store that can only be removed at said places. Yeah some people would still climb the fence and touch the power lines but look, can we save them all? Should we? In this world of merciless exploitation, wouldnt it be just fair we stopped pretending it never was about anything else but money?
> I don't want to get into politics but dont you think it's funny when you can purchase assault rifles, made for killing people
I'm British by birth, living in Berlin. We definitely think Americans are a bit "funny", in the not-at-all-funny sense of the word, about guns.
> It's just corporate propaganda that all hell would break loose, you could just offer installing baby mode at Apple physical store that can only be removed at said places.
Thing is, with computers, we've had decades of watching malware infect, destroy, corrupt, ransom, and blackmail. It's still happening, even.
And we even have a way to get past "baby mode" restrictions: be a developer.
But guess what? Developers also face supply chain attacks, because malware is everywhere.
I do miss the olden days when I didn't need to care. A mac online in 2009 was worry-free.
>Did it empty her bank balance by abusing the private NFC payment APIs that Apple are being ordered to open up?
NFC payment APIs have been open on Android for decades and no such thing of the sort has ever happened. You cannot magically conjure up a payment from Apple Pay to <X> without user involvement and confirmation.
>Did it cryptolock all her files?
Apps do not have write access to all your files.
>Did it activate the camera and mic to spy on her for blackmail?
Every mobile device now has a giant notification saying that the device is using the microphone or recording video.
The disingenuous "having an open app store/not being locked in the walled garden is a security risk" is getting tiring, especially when it's basically all lies now. Unless your argument is that Apple is too incompetent to write APIs properly, in which case I wonder why you think that said APIs being private would prevent anything.
> NFC payment APIs have been open on Android for decades and no such thing of the sort has ever happened.
Google is also getting legal action for monopoly abuse of their app store, so what's possible today on Android is not sufficient to say what's safe or not.
Despite this, they're also already facing legal action for sharing too much data from Google Wallet.
Fail on all directions at the same time.
> Apps do not have write access to all your files.
> Every mobile device now has a giant notification saying that the device is using the microphone or recording video.
And this can't be circumvented ever, even when private APIs are no longer vetted? And none of the voices describing downloads warnings as "scare screens" aren't making the same demand on this?
> The disingenuous "having an open app store/not being locked in the walled garden is a security risk" is getting tiring, especially when it's basically all lies now. Unless your argument is that Apple is too incompetent to write APIs properly, in which case I wonder why you think that said APIs being private would prevent anything.
The disingenuous "force platforms to be open, there's no security risk" position was tiring decades ago when the iPhone was brand new, especially when it was obviously lies even then. Apple obviously isn't magically competent enough to write APIs properly, they had "goto fail" and all the jailbreaks we've seen in so many versions of iOS were specifically some random doc that users could install that included a way to escalate privileges, and even without that evidence we've also got access to the black market prices for zero-day exploits that for a long time showed they're cheaper than Android, and the obvious reason why this prevents "anything" is that "anything" is a massive subset of "everything".
Or maybe the iPhone should be that phone and those who don’t like the closed ecosystem should get something else?
Why would buy a phone that doesn’t work the way you like when alternatives exist?
Because we want the iPhone on our terms.
So? I want it on my terms, which are mutually exclusive to yours. Who wins?
You can choose not to download anything.
We're asking to rewire the economics and regulatory framework, not change how you personally use your phone.
I don't care how you use your phone. I care how the world works.
What you are proposing is the balkanization of software delivery.
I indeed choose not to download software from Facebook and friends, but it’s quite likely others will need to as it will become the only way to get their software. At that point: tracking out the ass.
"Balkanization" is the wrong way to view this. This is waking up the regulatory arm of the government that has been asleep at the wheel. And it should have been done over a decade ago.
The better analogy is a forest fire. We're clearing up the overgrowth (ossification, unfair taxation, and unfair control) and creating room for new life to start and flourish.
> I indeed choose not to download software from Facebook and friends, but it’s quite likely others will need to as it will become the only way to get their software. At that point: tracking out the ass.
Don't like a negative externality? Tax and regulate it. It's what Europe does. And it's what we're good at doing in every industry except for the software industry. We need to stretch those muscles and get back into the habit of doing it.
We should pass regulations on giant social media companies as well.
But in a world where we have no software freedoms and where certain software tracks us, having software freedoms is the more important cause and it's where we must start our battle. You don't need to use Facebook, but you need to use a smartphone. New social media apps are started all the time (TikTok, Tea, etc.) but smartphones are trillion dollar moats.
Our smartphones are our gateway to digital life. They need to be liberated from Apple and Google. Mobile computing belongs to all of us.
> "Balkanization" is the wrong way to view this.
It's a perfectly valid way to view it. Forest fire might be another valid way to view it, but is different. Both are equally valid, and represent different views of what ideal is.
> Tax and regulate it. It's what Europe does.
I am European. Nice try though.
> We need to stretch those muscles and get back into the habit of doing it.
I don't disagree. Start there then. Make it so that tracking me incurs such a heavy penalty payable to me personally that it is not worthwhile. Then go after the distribution mechanisms that allow someone to live a relatively tracking-free life without having to be an uber-nerd to make it reality.
> Mobile computing belongs to all of us.
There are plenty of platforms. What you are saying is it belongs to the people who want it to be a certain way with particular negative outcomes for many people. I want it to be a different way with negative outcomes that affect me less.
Yet another "think of the children", except now it's think of the elderly. We CAN NOT make the world safe for everyone without also making it a total crapsack for everyone. It's simply not an option that exists.
You say “they would never go for this” but they do it on the Mac.
It’s funny how they are their own counter example. They have no leg to stand on.
I don't think the Mac is a great counter example. It started as a fully open platform, so the expectations are different. The iPhone was never anything other than an appliance, Apple is not trying to turn an open garden into a walled one, because it started that way.
Sure, in theory.
But what really happened is that apple kept a stranglehold on what more and more became a general computing device. And they've done enough anti-compettive maneuvers to have the EU make them open up. I wouldn't be surprised if the US eventually comes to a similar decision.
Apple may not be as blatant about it as the other big tech, but I hope it's not contentious to say that all three big companies needs a round of anti-trust overhaul.
I think the problem is that the app store is perceived as a general computing platform compared to what it was originally birthed from: Built in immutable applications on a mobile phone.
Counter example to what? Why should they not be able to run both a relatively open ecosystem and a mostly closed one?
I don’t think Apple is arguing that it is impossible to allow more open ways to install apps on iPhones. I think they’re saying that they don’t want to, and that they shouldn’t have to.
> Counter example to what? Why should they not be able to run both a relatively open ecosystem and a mostly closed one?
> I don’t think Apple is arguing that it is impossible to allow more open ways to install apps on iPhones. I think they’re saying that they don’t want to, and that they shouldn’t have to.
Apple volunteers the position that they couldn't possibly open the iOS ecosystem themselves, not just that they don't want to, making some very amusing claims in the process.[1] They also don't want to, but the more you dig into possible "whys", you get into a lot of troubling realities quickly.
Epic Games, on the other hand, is arguing that they actually should have to, at least to some extent. There are actually a lot of reasons why Apple's App Store practices might violate the law, and to my understanding, Epic Games is alleging that Apple's App Store practices constitute "illegal tying" whereby Apple unlawfully ties its payment processing service with its app distribution. That's far from the only potential legal issue that the App Store could face just based on current, existing law. (Note: I am not a lawyer, so take this with a grain of salt; but nothing I am saying is too original or groundbreaking.)
And of course, it's always worth remembering that what's legal today can be regulated tomorrow. I don't really believe lawmakers or the general public really have had enough time to take a look at the impact that Apple/Google app stores have had on the software market and decide if these practices should be legal. The EU seems to think they shouldn't, and while I don't agree with the EU on everything, I tend to agree.
[1]: https://observer.com/2021/05/even-craig-federighi-apples-hea...
Luckily corporate greed it not the only thing that matters in this world. If they want to sell in half a billion rich market of EU, they will soon need to start behaving more morally. If not they can fuck off, write off 20-30% of company value and EU will have better products, (almost) everybody wins.
Given how low morally they are, the room for improvement is massive and easy to move into. As you write, they didn't do it so far because they were not forced, and waiting for some good moral behavior 'just because it would be nice from them' is rather dumb.
[dead]
It's possible they'll allow this on iOS once finer granularity logging of battery usage is pervasive, how fine is anyone's guess, so as to track down what apps, and of whatever provenance, degrade some kpi like user impression of battery life.
This is about money not battery life. Apple makes billions of dollars in highly profitable revenue by cryptographically blocking users from controlling their own devices.
You could be right.
That said, i was an engineer for several years in Apple and primary internal concerns were battery life and its influence on user experience; the removal of Flash viability, favoring html5, is an example: profiling of Flash apps written in the wild showed code that routinely drained battery with aplomb...inexplicable to end users not also programmers.
It's unsurprising that the internal narrative focused on the plausible user, product and technical issues which happen to align with sustaining the multi-billion dollar monopoly. Senior leadership isn't going to say the 'quiet part' out loud in all-hands meetings.
I also worked in a valley giant with a multi-billion dollar monopoly position being preserved in a similar way. But I was senior enough to see both sides - the divisional all-hands mtgs and (some of) the exec staff mtgs (my boss was an EVP reporting directly to the CEO). The instructive part was observing what happened in the senior staff mtgs when a serious user, product or technical issue emerged which directly conflicted with sustaining the multi-billion dollar monopoly. Even in small mtgs with just the CEO, a couple EVPs and a handful of their direct reports, I never witnessed any explicit collusion or overt manipulation. The reason is surprisingly simple, they don't need to. They can make "the right thing" happen without being so obvious - just by controlling the agenda, attendees and context and then asking the right questions, prioritizing certain concerns and selecting the right working group leader to "come back with options which balance these concerns". These EVPs didn't get to where they are by plainly speaking their mind, although they are masters of appearing to do so when it serves them. At that level, there are degrees of subtlety and multi-dimensional chess that make Machiavelli look like a toddler.
All those years of being "in the room where it happens" fairly frequently and there wasn't one moment where I thought, "Wow, if I leaked a tape recording of the last 60 seconds, somebody very important is losing their job." These people are far to experienced and skilled at this for it to be that simple. Which isn't to say there may not have been some very private conversations between only the CEO and an EVP or two where things were said explicitly - but I'm not even sure that was necessary. Frankly, the euphemistic language and context control is sufficient that it's probably easier for the them to "stay in character" all the time. In fact, I think some of them sort of believe it themselves - or at least prefer to avoid stewing on the more "unpleasant realities" of the job. Most of these people are, in their own minds, still the 'good guy' in the story they tell themselves.
we evidently both had very senior positions, but i came away with the impression that parts of Apple might operate differently than inner sanctum hw engineering (obviously) , though what i mentioned wasn't from some pep talks, but rather from hard data.
i think the last two sentences you wrote resonate, for sure, though!
> i came away with the impression that parts of Apple might operate differently than inner sanctum hw engineering
I agree and I'm not at all questioning what you experienced. I saw similar things. In the case of Apple, it makes sense the iPhone business would prioritize issues like battery life etc and that the App Store business would prioritize maximizing their multi-billion dollar monopoly revenue stream. Within each business unit they're going to make decisions and allocate resources based on maximizing the metrics their business is judged on.
Where it gets 'interesting' is when two major business units have priorities which directly conflict - like one BU achieving a major objective requires the other BU to not achieve one of their major objectives. When those conflicts are things which directly impact tens of millions or more in revenue and are also high-visibility issues, the conflict gets elevated to the CEO in a small group mtg with both EVPs where they assesses the trade-offs on each side. Ultimately, the CEO is going to pick a 'winner' based on the overall impact to company-wide revenue and the stock price. If the issue is preserving (or losing) the app store monopoly worth billions - we can guess which side is very likely going to win. And maximum motivated reasoning will be deployed to highlight the many reasons that outcome is correct. Many of those reasons will even be legitimate :-).
definitely agree
> But people should also be able to get apps from whatever store they want.
I agree with you. But, as devil's advocate, why not suggest that Apple should be allowed to run as crappy a store as they want, while people should be free not to buy Apple?
People are free to buy Apple (or an Android flavour, or no smartphone at all). But there are many many things which goes into a buying decision than what manner of software delivery is available.
This duopoly does not truly offer a lot of choice, so any criticism must happen from within the confines of the current reality.
I’m not going to tell a pedestrian who wants safer roads to stop being a participant in traffic, I accept that they have very little real choice.
Having to uncritically accept anything and everything the manufacturer of your device does is not really viable and is a recipe for a worse future.
> Of course Apple would never go for that
They do in EU, because they were forced to.
AltStore PAL https://altstore.io/
Buildstore https://builds.io/
Aptoide https://en.aptoide.com
.. and so on
They also go out of the way to make these stores prohibitively expensive to set up and still applies app review to apps distributed through those stores (even though they claim they don't and won't)
> prohibitively expensive
fact checking
Apple Tier 1 mandatory store services:
This includes app reviews, manual updates, and fraud protection. This tier is mandatory for any app that promotes external payment options.Compare that to 20-30% that Apple's own AppStore take and its a bargain.
Even with Tier 2 with marketing tools, automatic updates, app recommendations, analytics dashboards, and promotional features the cost is only 10% for small business program members, 15% for others.
> fact checking
You forgot that just to set up an alternative app store you need this:
--- start quote ---
Provide Apple a stand-by letter of credit in the amount of €1,000,000 from a financial institution that’s at least A-rated or equivalent by S&P, Fitch, or Moody’s, and maintain that standby letter of credit as long as your alternative app marketplace is in operation
--- end quote ---
> 0.5€ Core Technology fee per install
per install
So if your app is suddenly popular, you have to pay through the nose.
> This includes app reviews, manual updates, and fraud protection.
Why is Apple involved in app review on alternative app stores?
Why is Apple doing manual updates?
Considering the amount of scam apps on App Store, Apple isn't doing fraud protection in their own store.
> This tier is mandatory for any app that promotes external payment options.
Why? What does Apple have to do with external payment options?
[flagged]
> I was just trying to protect other readers for falling your "prohibitively expensive" argument thrown in to the mix.
Never new that "having a letter of credit for 1 000 000 dollars" and "having to pay 0.5 cents for every install potentially amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars just because people are installing your app" isn't prohibitively expensive
> Now after you started Googling
That's what you did. I knew about all those charges before you pretended they are nothing to write home about.
50c per install (of which there are hundreds of thousands) to a party who should be uninvolved is not reasonable
I wonder what Apple's bigger fear is - losing that ~30% cut, which is massive, or when they have to compete with alternative app stores and when finally people see how forward "software finesse" has come to in 2025 and how pathetic Apple's software/service ecosystem has been, losing most of the remaining whatever reduced cut it was; i.e. getting hammered at both ends. I think that's why they are fighting tooth and nail to keep the curtain as it is on the grand stage of privacy theatre.
> how pathetic Apple's software/service ecosystem has been
Compared to what?
Also, are we certain that a better alternative would really appear? E.g. I’m aware of f-droid and I’d install a similar ios libre software store, but I’m not aware of any, even in the EU where alt stores are possible.
... and we should be able to run whatever OS on Apple phones we want.
But the OS is the main thing that sets Apple apart from other phones; you can get equivalent hardware for half the price, and you get to install whatever OS you want already. The prison is mainly in your head in this case.
People are allowed to get apps from whatever store they want. There is nothing stopping someone from purchasing a device that supports the google play store and downloading whatever they want from that store.
I have no right to complain that I can't run Apple programs on a Windows computer, and Microsoft shouldn't be compelled to support MacOS software.
apple isn't allowed to choose whatever I can install on the device that I own and that I purchased with my own money. I am not renting the device. Get your dirty fingers off of what I can or can't do with it.
https://www.darlinghq.org/
seems like you can get it to run on windows via wsl if you want to run apps built for macs on your windows machine
is there a need to complain? windows might not be putting in support for it, but unlike apple in their store, they arent actively preventing you from doing so
Ridiculous argument. Microsoft isn't stopping me from running Apple programs on my Windows PC.
That's not the argument, and you know it. It's not complaints that cross-platform binaries don't run, it's that Apple gatekeeps development in terms of users actually being able to use the fruits of that development (without onerous work arounds like having to reinstall once per week, or jailbreak).
I agree with you in principle.
But I also, I guess, kinda just have a dumb thought about this whole ordeal. Broadly speaking, we are in a position where we, the general public with the backing of the government, want to change how a private corporation uses it's products that it sold to us. Not for any other reason that would shield us from harm or prevent risk, but rather because the corporation's products are so successful a lot of people use them too much! But wait! That's not actually true because there's enough products on the market that we don't actually need to use this product...but we like it because its incrementally the best and the chat bubbles are blue and applications run better and seem higher quality (which is a selling point of the product we are now actively dismantling but I digress...)
I know its tiring to use food cliches, but imagine if like, I make a business selling apple pies and my apple pies are incredibly successful and everyone eats them all the time and now all of a sudden I need to also guarantee that my business can make cherry pies because my apple pies sell so damn well. But truth is, its not really about the apple pies at all. It's about my baking trays. We actually just want to make sure that the baking trays of my business are now capable of also cooking for cherry pies even though that's got nothing to do with my fucking business. I sell apple pies. I'm so confused
Okay. Now flip this free-enterprise metaphor.
Apple is dictating the behavior of every business operating in the digital market (Apple itself brags that this amounts to over $1 trillion, with a T, in economic activity), with the App Store, which has 70-80% profit margins, and numerous dev horror stories. Rejecting your update over something they previously approved, or something they let all your competitors do. Forcing their IAP system on you. Dictating what links you can put in your app, how you present prices (don't call out the Apple tax), what you can tell consumers in emails. Forcing their direct competitors to have an inferior user experiences (can't subscribe in Spotify, can't buy books in Kindle; oh, and bundling Apple Music/Books/TV with the OS, and advertising them throughout the OS). Threatening retaliation if you complain publicly ("If you run to the press, it never helps.") Blocking VPNs or secure messaging in authoritarian countries, and you can't sideload. Sabotaging the web to keep their monopoly (even trying to kill PWAs recently).
Apple feels entitled to a higher profit margin on your business than your business will ever achieve for itself! That's nuts!
Large corporations with large marketshare can easily do significantly uncompetitive things, with little effort on their part.
No monopoly required.
All that is required is that they have large marketshare, an important product, and it is difficult for users to change to alternatives, or avoid its uncompetitive behavior.
Choosing a phone involves balancing numerous features of devices. There is no phone market with the thousands of competing devices it would take to really cover what a customer might ideally want. So choices often balance so many things, involve so much practical investment, that they make switching devices over a few things, or even many things, from awfully unpleasant to very difficult.
And, with great market power, comes great responsibility: to not become a barrier to competitive innovation and hard work.
By definition, Apple's strict gatekeeping App Store, a significant feature on a significant general purpose computing platform, is anti-competitive. There is no technical reason why side loading or side-stores couldn't thrive, on such a general purpose device intertwined in all our lives.
Onerous fees and terms and selective limitation (relative to Apple's own offerings) for developers make it even more anticompetitive.
Of course, anyone who likes having fewer options, or just the options they have now, is free to not explore others. For now and forever. Amen.
> Broadly speaking, we are in a position where we, the general public with the backing of the government, want to change how a private corporation uses it's products that it sold to us
Yes, because it's "we the people" not "we the corporations".
If there was more than a duopoly in smartphones, I'd say Apple should be able to have whatever horrible app policy they want, so long as it is clearly communicated to everyone including customers. Let the market decide.
But that's not where we are. I think it makes sense to treat both Apple and Google as de facto monopolies with respect to the smartphone market, and impose some regulation on what they have to allow and how much they can charge for it.
We probably do need some kind of regulation in this space because for better or worse, and I think it’s worse, it’s hard to be a participant in modern society without a smart phone. (In my mind it would be something more akin to the communications act of 1934, but for apps to mandate a certain amount of “interoperability” across operating systems, whatever that may mean, but I digress)
on the other hand, it wasn’t all that long ago that we had many smart phone markers and operating systems, all with different strategies. It’s possible that the market did decide…
I would argue that there was more than a duopoly. We had Windows Phone, WebOS, blackberry, Palm etc. The market voted and we're left with 2.
Equally, pretty much no iPhone user (outside of tech circles) cares about the App Store monopoly for iPhone. The policy is well known, and hasn't changed in 15 years.
Indeed many (not all) tech folk who complain about the App Store still went out and bought an iPhone.
The raw truth is that the market did decide. And no we don't need regulation. Apple and Google have different enough policies for there to be choice. In some countries Android has dominant market share.
Whatever may or may not have happened in the past is not especially relevant. Today it's essentially impossible to enter the market as you will need to develop a solid iOS or Android compatibility layer, because the best phone in the world is useless without software (apps) you want to run. This is also a major reason several of those platform you mentioned didn't work out by the way.
Sailfish OS does exactly that, but it has a number of limitations and added friction due to legal and technical reasons.
And choosing between two systems is really not much of a "choice". Right now there is a story on the front page about Android app requiring devs to validate their ID, even for side-loaded apps.
> The market voted and we're left with 2.
It's a matter of multiple independent legal decisions at this point that both of these companies have engaged in repeated, sustained, illegal anti-competitive behaviors, so the extent to which there was a "market" that voted is highly arguable.
I only use my smartphone for the basics. I want the tightly controlled app store hence I buy iPhone. I don’t want apps to be able to roll third party subscription and payment options because they will inevitably abuse it at the cost of less savvy users.
Epic Games is a developer and publisher making billions off tricking children into paying for worthless virtual goods. Fuck ‘em if they can’t make a living with the 30% Apple cut.
Apple has no issue with tricking children into paying for worthless virtual goods, they will happily host your Coin-Dosing-Clash-Of-Shadow-Fortnights if they get their 30% cut.
Didn’t we “let the market decide” and the market drowned out every other player but Apple and Google?
Why did so many people pick iPhone or Android over their prior competitors? Because the developers wrote software there. Why did the devs write software there? Because people were picking those ecosystems. It was an upward spiral that changed the world a LOT in 18 years, but it was all started with Apple—being a hardware company—selling premium-quality hardware, and then adding their support for third party development.
Is it allowed to charge more in storefronts which take these cuts? Why nobody does that?
What about Steam? Can a publisher sell a game for ~$45 in their store and $60 in Steam, or is it against some TOC?
For Steam, I believe the price parity requirement for Steam only applies to Steam Keys. Publishers can sell at a lower prices on other store front as long as it doesn't involve Steam infrastructure.
There were some comments talking about this yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45002977
I'll just reproduce FatalLogic's last comment here:
""" In the class action case[0], which was allowed to go forward by the court last year, it is claimed that Valve told someone:
"This includes communications from Valve that “‘the price on Steam [must be] competitive with where it’s being sold elsewhere’” and that Valve “‘wouldn’t be OK with selling games on Steam if they are available at better prices on other stores, even if they didn’t use Steam keys.’” Dkt. No. 343 ¶ 158, 160 (quoting emails produced at VALVE_ANT_0598921, 0605087). "
(This is a new case, not the 2021 suit, which was rejected by the court, then amended and refiled, later with an additional plaintiff added)
[0]https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wawd.29... """
So a US court of law has decided that it's at least possible that this isn't true.
Very few people here are going to have a PACER account. Here's a link to the filing itself. [1] It'll be interesting to see where this goes and if it's deemed accurate, because it runs directly contrary to what Steam's stated policy is. This [2] appears to be part of the testimony from the case. It really doesn't look good for Valve as they effectively acknowledge pursuing price parity and implicitly doing something that sounds like a soft shadowban of games where the publishers don't agree.
Their lawyers sure frame it such a friendly and elegant way though: 'We want to make sure our customers are getting the best deal, and we wouldn't want to mislead them into making a poor decision [by promoting the game] if that's not the case.' Undoubtedly the best legal money can buy. I have immense respect for Gabe and I hope he steps in at some point because this sounds like the bean counters are starting to run amuck. Or course it's possible he's complicit to this, but I think he probably deserves the benefit of the doubt, for now.
[1] - https://cases.justia.com/federal/district-courts/washington/...
[2] - https://trellis.law/doc/district/13397794/wolfire-games-llc-...
Pretty much none of the stores allow that. If my memory is right, Apple and Steam don't, though Google might be a bit more permissive in their store.
> Is it allowed to charge more in storefronts which take these cuts? Why nobody does that?
What? There are plenty of apps charging more when you buy currency/subscription on iOS compared to when you buy from their website, or in some cases Android app. Patreon is an example that made the loudest noise recently, but it’s been a widespread practice for years. That said Apple doesn’t (didn’t?) allow you to tell users that a cheaper option exists elsewhere.
Games are silly and inessential. And there are a dozen markets to choose from. Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, Steam, GOG, Epic, Ubisoft, Humble, Itch, direct download, retro games, ...
Phones are essential. You can't get a job without one. It's impossible to stay connected or navigate without one. You can't even order food in a restaurant these days without your smartphone. Yet two companies control and tax the entirety of mobile computing.
Scratch that. Mobile computing *IS* computing for most people. It's the only computer or internet portal they know.
And two companies own it all. The passport to the modern world is owned and taxed by two trillion dollar companies.
2000's-era DOJ-litigated antitrust abuser Microsoft dreams that they had this much of a monopoly.
The Halloween papers sounded evil. Mobile computing monopolization is evil.
Here's what needs to be done:
1. Web installs. Both companies need to allow web native installs without scare walls or buried settings flags that need to be enabled. First class apps from the web, with no scaring users about it. We have all the technology to make this work safely: permissions, app scanning, signature blacklisting, etc.
2. Defaults. Both companies need to be prevented from pushing their apps as defaults. No more default browsers, default wallets, default app stores, default photo galleries, default search engine, etc.
3. Taxation and control. Apps cannot be taxed on any transactions. Users must not be forced to "sign in" with the monopoly provider's identity system. Apps must not be forced to use the monopoly payment rails. Apps must not be forced to be human reviewed or update to the latest UI changes / SDK on a whim.
Mobile apps and platforms must work like desktop software.
We need this freedom and flexibility for consumers, and we need competition to oxygenate the tech sector and reward innovation. Capitalism shouldn't be easy - it should be hard to keep your spot at the top. Resting on the laurels of easily defended moats for twenty years while reaping some of the most outsized benefits in the industry has created lethargy and held us back.
We could have had other competitors, but nobody wanted them.
Windows phones had a very enthusiastic but too-tiny following. Blackberry lost the plot with terrible hardware and software for the app era (developing an app for the Storm was enough to convince me to never get one of their phones). Symbian's S60 was too little too late in the US. Ubuntu, Mozilla, and others all tried various flavors of Linux and web based phones to no success.
I don't think you can really blame Google or Apple for any of these failures in the same way Microsoft could be blamed in the 90's for their abuses.
With that said, I wouldn't be surprised if, eventually, Google was forced to change how they handle third party app stores. iPhones will likely never be big enough for Apple to be forced to allow other stores in the US.
> We could have had other competitors, but nobody wanted them.
Don't blame individual consumers. Bad things happen at a societal level all the time. Carbon emissions, etc. We're powerless to stop it without governmental intervention.
Your average consumer isn't educated on marketplace behaviors and doesn't understand how a lack of consumer choice leads to increased prices, inflexibility, taxation of smaller marketplace participants, less innovation, less freedom, etc. They simply can't understand the complexities of the case as deep familiarity isn't a part of their daily lives.
The large players that set these rules are squarely to blame.
> I don't think you can really blame Google or Apple for any of these failures in the same way Microsoft could be blamed in the 90's for their abuses.
You can install whatever you want on a Microsoft PC.
> We could have had other competitors, but nobody wanted them
People didn't even get a choice. Google bullied Windows Phone out of the market.
People won't switch to a platform without apps. Microsoft tried to fix that, made an HTML5 youtube app. Google threw a fit and blocked it, twice. MS even followed what Google told them to do, and still blocked the app.
Google saw great hardware, and an OS that was gaining media attention (Windows phone at the time had a lot of positive reviews, and the Nokia Lumnia phones were great, and better cameras than any Android at the time) and used their market power to kill it.
> Google threw a fit and blocked it, twice.
Can we get retroactive regulatory enforcement for that?
Sounds like Google needs to no longer have YouTube. They're wielding it like a blunt instrument to destroy trillions in market value.
> Mobile computing IS computing for most people. It's the only computer or internet portal they know. And two companies own it all. The passport to the modern world is owned and taxed by two trillion dollar companies.
Top smartphone brand global market share: Samsung (20%), Apple (17%), Xiaomi (14%), vivo (9%), OPPO (8%).
https://www.counterpointresearch.com/en/insights/global-smar...
I bet there are quite a few people out there who actually have a phone with a faster single thread perf than their laptop i.e. latest iPhone + a crappy windows laptop
This whole situation is frustrating. Even if there were eight or twelve companies all competing fairly, I'm not sure it would matter: if Apple's approach makes hand-over-fist more money, even though it is much worse for consumers in many regards, it has the chance to unfairly win and for vendors that follow Apple's lead to out-compete vendors that don't. (Don't imagine this world, try to find the parallels you've personally experienced; you know they're out there.)
Of course today, we're getting to the point where governments are going to probably start softly relying on citizens having smartphones that are either Android or iOS. This is terrible and completely the wrong way to go; it would be much better to depend on standards that anyone could implement. Even progressive web apps would be a better outcome than Android/iOS apps. Getting to this point definitely puts both Apple and Google in privileged positions wherein they pretty much do have to be treated like defacto monopolies, but I'm also pretty sure this isn't the outcome we want either.
Its not just Android or iOS, its Google (Android) or Apple (iOS), govt apps (also other random ones) often use attestation to block use on non-Google variants of Android:
https://grapheneos.org/articles/attestation-compatibility-gu...
"much worse for customers" is relative. While in no ways perfect, Apple's walled garden gets rid of a huge amount of the enshittification found on other platforms, and makes it so that downloading a random app is relatively safe and unlikely to nuke your phone, steal your data, etc. Yes all the "allow access to location/photos/etc." are annoying, but at least the user has some level of control and consent.
I do agree that requiring specific platforms is a problem - we don't want a return to the IE6 or Flash-dominated eras where people who weren't on Windows were treated like sub-humans.
Android also has permission prompts to allow access to files and location and such.
Either way, I would be fine with this, if there were a big, red, and scary button with a warning in iOS to turn the coddling off. I bought a phone, so I own it. If I choose to, there should be a way to let me control the hardware. Even Android phones don't have this, with bootloader unlocking disappearing. To be fair, there's a layer below that where you could also replace the XBL (Xtensible Boot Loader, on Qualcomm devices) if secure boot is off and the efuses aren't blown. But there are even fewere devices that have this.
But, like, why fight your tools?
Why not just accept that iOS has coddling, and that your preferences are better served by the competition? As you said, Android has permission prompts. They have folding phones. Android phones regularly beat iPhones in camera quality measurements, for example.
What does Apple have that you actually want?
For me, I liked the walled garden and I put up with the rest because of it. If you don’t like the walled garden, I can’t understand wanting an iPhone.
There are so many garbage apps on the App Store that Apple's claim of vetting them must be a farce to justify the store's existence and supremacy over any potential third party ones.
"Allow access" is pretty orthogonal, I don't know how it all works in mobile OSes, but I assume everything is virtualized there, so you can't just access whatever you want without user granting a permission (e.g. through a file picker system component).
You can also ship sandboxed apps on Desktop without the store (although I am not sure on how hard it is to auto-update them, usually stores handle that part), at least on Windows and macOS.
Stores handle storing the apps themselves and distributing updates, that part of the cost is real, plus they do manually review submissions (to some degree), but 30% is insane for that.
Well, some of the permissions include things like “allow the app to track the user for advertising purposes”. There isn’t a technical way to enforce that with virtualization and sandboxing.
You can enforce it by booting misbehaving apps from the app store... but that only works if there’s one app store.
I _believe_ on macOS, if they revoke your certificate (the one you used to sign the app), the app moves into the "We can't verify that this app is free of malware" category, so in theory they can still do that.
But it is a nuclear option, and it would be a big deal if they did so for something "minor".
> While in no ways perfect, Apple's walled garden gets rid of a huge amount of the enshittification found on other platforms, and makes it so that downloading a random app is relatively safe and unlikely to nuke your phone, steal your data, etc. Yes all the "allow access to location/photos/etc." are annoying, but at least the user has some level of control and consent.
Better than Android sure, but let's not get too hyperbolic. There's less outright malware, but a ton of questionable crapware with bad practices. Let's not forget that Android phones definitely also do sandboxing and just-in-time permission prompts.
Even among major apps, maybe especially among major apps, the Apple App Store is full of apps that blatantly violate Apple's own policies, often including Apple's own apps too, much like the Google Play store. As a simple example, apps that put crucial notifications in the same category as advertisements are all over the place, despite this being a clear violation of the policies. There is plenty of enshittification on Apple platforms.
Beyond that, I can go onto my iPad and search something that is likely to be popular and find a ton of very questionable apps. For example, search "Grand Theft Auto". Scroll down slightly. That sure looks like a lot of very questionable garbage apps full of questionable advertisements. You can repeat this with tons of popular search terms. Yes, it's one thing to trust the sandbox, but are you really sure you feel safe installing all of those?
And sure, App Store review policies do stop most malware and unwanted tracking software from flowing through, but that doesn't mean you should gamble your life on it either. There are plenty of lapses all the time. Probably at least a few times a year, though obviously we only see the incidents that generate a lot of publicity. Just for fun, here's a few incidents over the years that generated a lot of publicity:
From 2011: [1]
> As a proof of concept, [Charlie Miller] created an application called Instastock that was approved by Apple's App Store. He then informed Apple about the security hole, who promptly expelled him from the App Store.
From 2015: [2]
> XcodeGhost exploits Xcode’s default search paths for system frameworks, and has successfully infected multiple iOS apps created by infected developers. At least two iOS apps were submitted to App Store, successfully passed Apple’s code review, and were published for public download.
From 2025: [3]
> We found Android and iOS apps, some available in Google Play and the App Store, which were embedded with a malicious SDK/framework for stealing recovery phrases for crypto wallets. The infected apps in Google Play had been downloaded more than 242,000 times.
And even if the apps aren't malicious, that doesn't mean you're secure. If the idea is that you feel safe using random app store apps because the apps are neatly sandboxed from the system, well, first of all, that part can be accomplished without an app store or a 30% tax. Second of all though, a lot of people's important information lives inside of the apps anyways. Why compromise the phone to access the data when you can compromise the apps themselves? Consider this from 2017:[4]
> During the testing process, I was able to confirm 76 popular iOS applications allow a silent man-in-the-middle attack to be performed on connections which should be protected by TLS (HTTPS), allowing interception and/or manipulation of data in motion.
Obviously Android has more malware than iOS, but if the idea is that even an idiot can use an iPhone and not have to care about good security practice and just run completely random apps, I firmly believe that's a horrible idea. It definitely reduces risks for the average person, but in practice they definitely should be employing good security practices either way because the app store and all of the sandboxing in the world can not save them from themselves. For power users, it basically doesn't do anything meaningful to the security practices calculus and you may possibly be better off with CalyxOS or GrapheneOS depending on what threats you are most concerned about.
My point, of course, is not to say that Apple iPhone is particularly unsafe, just that these anti-malware measures are very far from foolproof, definitely not something you should trust your Bitcoins with. They do probably screen a lot of obvious attempts at malware, but a lot of subtle attempts definitely find their way in. They don't really at all stop the store from being flooded with shitware that does things that would probably harm the privacy of the average user, like apps for "file format conversion" that silently upload your data to the cloud and have dubious privacy policies, or apps that try to convince you to accidentally subscribe to some expensive subscription. This is the kind of thing the Google Play Store was definitely known for, yet it's actually also completely all over the Apple App Store right now. Apple doesn't really seem to mind too much, they're more concerned about periodically harassing people like the developer of iSH.
What Apple and Google both do have a tendency to do is tie their dystopian anti-consumer garbage in with their security features even when they don't actually have to, for reasons that I don't think anyone needs explained to them.
Personally I think the sky will not fall if iOS allowed people to choose to be able to sideload applications. The fact that this would cause a tension whereby Apple would have some pressure to change App Store policies in order to continue getting a cut of sales and have better ability to mitigate unwanted software is kind of a feature and not a bug. As it is today, Apple has basically no incentives to ever consider changing its policies in any way that wouldn't be beneficial to them somehow.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Miller_(security_resea...
[2]: https://unit42.paloaltonetworks.com/novel-malware-xcodeghost...
[3]: https://securelist.com/sparkcat-stealer-in-app-store-and-goo...
[4]: https://medium.com/@chronic_9612/76-popular-apps-confirmed-v...
Agree. I think all the discussions often missed the main problem. Apple App Store holds far too much power, and they alone decides letting or stopping other business. All Banks, Finance, Ecommerce, Retail need to kowtow to Apple or Google for access. And that is not the power and responsibility you want to hold.
People argue you have Website too. But Website does not provide the same level of experience and is at disadvantage compared to Apps.
I have long argued Apple should have given up this power since 2013 / 2014. And Apple should split Games to Game Store, that keeps their 30% cut and would have kept at least 70 - 80% of their current App Store revenue.
For what ever reason last time I said this in 2018 and 2020 I was devoted to oblivion on HN.
> treat both Apple and Google as de facto monopolies with respect to the smartphone market
Apple and Google can’t both be monopolists of the smartphone market (or even app stores). By definition, if there’s more than one seller, there is no monopoly.
I suppose you could say Apple is the monopolist if the iPhone market or the iPhone App Store market. You can’t say Google is the monopolist of the Android phone market or the Android App Store market.
But neither one, and certainly not both, can be the monopolist of the smartphone market or the smartphone app store market.
I recently wrote about how Apple now has the most hostile developer ecosystem of any major platform:
https://www.magiclasso.co/insights/apple-development/
Good to see VCs and Y Combinator now supporting and pushing for change.
A family member of mine has an Apple phone, and the lack of availability of not just open source software but even freeware or freemium software astounds me. They make it so difficult to distribute anything, that it's not worth it unless you are getting significant revenue. This means that often the only option is something extremely scammy that charges monthly for the most trivial capabilities.
Of course, Apple gets a 30% cut in any scams, so they have absolutely no incentive to do anything about it, and really their policies are what create it, in the first place.
You know how we got here? It used to be a free-for-all where grandma could download any software off the Internet on her Windows computer. You know how the rest went. I honestly don't mind it. It's so easy to recommend an iPhone to non-technical users, knowing the app store is still not compromised with low quality/malicious garbage. (Sure it requires a bit of expectation attenuation but the Android app stores are worse yet).
This is an argument for gating the free-for-all behind a setting technical users can find, not demanding 30% of revenue if a dev would like access to apple users. The security aspect is real, but this is really about maximizing profits by monopolizing access to anyone with an iPhone.
When a normal user is highly motivated to install software, there is no such distinction from a "technical user". He wants to install AnimeWallpapersTotallyNotATrojan.app. The operating system disallows it. Then he just does a search for how to install AnimeWallpapersTotallyNotATrojan.app on iOS, and finds 20 tutorials walking him through the steps to ungate the install.
You can make the expert mode dialog say "Clicking this button will erase your hard drive, drain your bank account, and give your dog cancer" and people will still click it.
Grandma: Help me, Joey! After the neighborhood kid helped me install the coupon code app (he said something about expert mode, he is very smart!) my phone runs slow and crashes. :-(
Me: ...
There are many ways to deal with any scenario like this, all of which don't involve the device manufacturer locking ALL device owners out of ANY control over the hardware they own.
For example, you can be the administrator on Grandma's device and block access to third-party app stores which cannot be overridden by anyone (including the device manufacturer) without your credentials. Alternatively, you could delegate that authority to a provider you trust. No one is saying you can't keep choosing Apple's walled-garden app store as the only store provider or that you shouldn't be able to block any or even all app stores. Options like that can even be locked by one-time hardware fuses so they can never be changed - even by the owner. The only issue here is Apple forcing a sole monopoly on that control for themselves because it's worth billions of dollars - instead of device owners having a choice.
> No one is saying you can't keep choosing Apple's walled-garden app store as the only store provider or that you shouldn't be able to block any or even all app stores
Err.. Isn’t that exactly what the EU is saying?
Well... no, it's not. As long as device owners can choose which and how many app stores are on their device, regulators and courts will be satisfied. If users then choose number_of_app-stores == 1 and app_store_provider == "Apple", that's the user's choice - and for many users, like Grandma, that may be the right choice.
Regulators have never ruled that Apple can't have an app store or that the number of enabled App Stores MUST be more than 1 - only that the legal owner of the device have an opportunity to choose. Scenarios like "Oh no, the EU wants to take away Grandma's one safe, simple walled-garden app store so she's left to fend for herself on the dark web" is a disingenuous straw man exaggeration by Apple and their apologists to protect Apple's multi-billion dollar app store monopoly.
Once there's owner choice, even Grandma who chooses Apple as her only app store will pay lower prices and very likely gain other safe options like a full featured Firefox with Ublock Origin ad blocking. Just the existence of competitive choice is beneficial - even to users who choose "no competition". Plus Apple will finally have a real incentive to be more responsive and reasonable with app developers regarding app store prices and policies - which will help solo and small startup app developers.
I love how the threat of Grandma installing malware on her phone is the new "think of the children!"
And I love how the response to shit mobile security is to lock down devices so the people who buy them don't actually own them. Instead of, y'know, actually cleaning up the security posture of these devices.
Then those people deserve what they get as a result. People should have autonomy to make less than optimal decisions if they want.
And to provide a counterpoint, my dad can barely navigate his iPhone. I literally spent an hour on the phone with him when he was lost and needed directions; it took 20 minutes to guide him to open the messages app so he could read the address I sent. Someone that clueless isn't searching the internet to figure out workarounds for installing anything.
> When a normal user is highly motivated...
...they reap the consequences of their actions.
A warning lets a person know it is getting deeper. It is up to the person to realise if they are out of their depth.
If a person lacks the self reflection to realise their capabilities then they need a guardian. Children and the elderly routinely have this for other aspects of life. Why not a phone?
Why can't I delegate such authority to others when I become old and infirm?
> knowing the app store is still not compromised with low quality/malicious garbage.
It absolutely is, the only argument is about to what degree.
This is more than doable with app stores. The review process never instruments the apps or reads the source, it's trivial and common to hide malware in apps and then use modals/ads to push them on people.
Now we have strong sandboxing by default and many other platform security advances to mitigate that risk. You can download any software off the Internet on macOS, so why not on iOS?
How did you conclude the lack of freeware? Both the Apple and Google app stores have a couple million apps, and most of them (about 95% in the App Store’s case) are free.
Is that an Apple thing? People trying to monetize anything they make seem to vastly outnumber those of us who just want to make stuff for other people to enjoy. When I turn off an adblocker I'm shocked how many hobby projects spam ads at their users to try to make a few pennies.
It feels like a social issue.
Giving away free software on the appstore is gonna cost you $100/yr developer license. Sure, the more apps you make dilutes the cost, but it doesn’t seem like that inviting of a space for maintained free apps.
You'll also need a Mac computer for the happy path so it's more than $100/year.
Free for non-profits though.
I'm a little surprised there isn't an open source non-profit set up to act as an umbrella for open source iOS app development.
Then one bad app and the whole account is nuked. Not a great setup unless with explicit blessing from Apple, which they won’t give.
It's a thing that was started by Apple and now everyone is trying to mimic.
The other day I transferred pictures from my android phone to my Windows desktop, and some of them required a codec to open. I followed prompts, which landed me on a page in Windows store asking for $0.99 in exchange for the said codec.
We had a good Internet in the 90s and 00s. Apple had to ruin that.
I know this isn't the biggest thing, but it's funny how even simple questions have complicated answers in Swift, ex https://stackoverflow.com/questions/39677330/how-does-string...
Strings and Unicode are a lot more complicated than they first appear. I like the way this article puts it:
> Swift’s string implementation goes to heroic efforts to be as Unicode-correct as possible. […] This is great for correctness, but it comes at a price, mostly in terms of unfamiliarity; if you’re used to manipulating strings with integer indices in other languages, Swift’s design will seem unwieldy at first, leaving you wondering.
> It’s not that other languages don’t have Unicode-correct APIs at all — most do. For instance, NSString has the enumerateSubstrings method that can be used to walk through a string by grapheme clusters. But defaults matter; Swift’s priority is to do the correct thing by default.
> Strings in Swift are very different than their counterparts in almost all other mainstream programming languages. When you’re used to strings effectively being arrays of code units, it’ll take a while to switch your mindset to Swift’s approach of prioritizing Unicode correctness over simplicity.
> Ultimately, we think Swift makes the right choice. Unicode text is much more complicated than what those other languages pretend it is. In the long run, the time savings from avoided bugs you’d otherwise have written will probably outweigh the time it takes to unlearn integer indexing.
— https://oleb.net/blog/2017/11/swift-4-strings/
I’d encourage you to read that entire article before describing strings as simple.
I'm well aware of all of this. Swift strings aren't random-access. There are reasons no other language did it Apple's way. Even in the rare situations when you do care about the edge cases with these multi-code point symbols (basically just emojis), Swift strings still make that a nightmare, while in other languages you have easy ways to deal with it.
I was on such a project where we cared a lot about these details, and the whole team agreed to throw Swift strings out the window and build our own array-based string replacement where each slot is a symbol. Which is probably what Apple would've done if it weren't for performance overhead.
Didn't help that their API was really unstable. Every major Swift version broke our code in so many places that we started adding extra layers just to protect ourselves.
Someone hasn’t programmed on Windows…
https://www.reddit.com/r/cpp_questions/comments/10pvfia/look...
“A 30% revenue share can easily be the difference between a company that can afford to scale, hire new employees, and reinvest in its product, and one that is perpetually struggling to stay afloat.”
This brought up a fun thought exercise for me. Pretty sure that Y Combinator would argue that giving away 7% of one's company for access to intangible (but beneficial) things like funding, advisors, etc, is completely worth it for a company. Pretty sure that they also fund companies that pay salespeople fairly significant commissions on sales.
Interesting to see them argue that asking a company to give up 30% "commission" on revenue for access to a large market stifles competition and innovation.
Is Y Combinator's forcing companies to give up 7% of their companies for access to advisors and funding stifling innovation and competition? (Spoiler: I don't think so. I think both Y Combinator and apple should be able to capitalize on the access they provide.)
Startup founders can choose between many models of funding, VCs, etc. Starups cannot choose between different ways of accessing willing customers over iOS, they have to comply with a %30 cut and a jungle of regulations that act in Apple's interest.
These two examples aren't the same, even just on the basis of market power.
Startups aren’t paying 30% of sales unless they have more then $1 million in revenue coming through the App Store, they are selling access to digital goods and even then, they can still sell access to subscriptions and services outside of the App Store and now they can link directly to their website from the App Store thanks to the courts ruling - at least in the US.
Many startups are still losing money at $1M ARR. So getting a bump up to 30% of revenue at $1M can be catastrophic.
Investors don't want large percentages of pre-profit money being siphoned off by Apple.
Generally speaking, an optimized win-win fee would be some percentage of profits, not revenue.
That might be far too difficult to manage, accounting wise. But we can safely say that 30% of revenue, would translate to an extreme percentage of profit. Apple is extorting from many companies.
One sign of anticompetitive behavior is when a company is leveraging things in their favor so hard, it seems quite plausible that they are actually harming themselves. Killing of developers, by charging massive fees even to money losing developers, is not a good long term strategy.
But the power to extract money even from those it causes real pain, is hard to turn down when quarterly numbers keep coming up.
Let’s look at the startups that YC funds. How many of them are selling apps in the App Store with in app purchases?
>they can link directly to their website from the App Store thanks to the courts ruling - at least in the US.
In Apple. fashion, they are still pushing back on this despite the court ruling. It only shows more so why Apple needs to be made to open up.
> Starups cannot choose between different ways of accessing willing customers over iOS
What? They can offer an SPA, or a traditional web page. They can offer a hardware device. They can make an android app compelling enough to convert users.
You are really trying to say that for a startup trying to build software, say a productivity app or whatever, they should consider launching their own hardware device? They are very different things and would basically make indie development impossible (or really any software company that can't raise hundreds of millions to billions)
You’re arguing that Apple’s App Store, even with its commission, is a better business proposition.
I agree, and from that conclude that Apple’s earned their commission/fees.
There is a limit to this sort of logic though. Don't get me wrong, I'm generally pro free markets. But: A) Apple's policies make some products completely unviable (anything with a gross margin less than 30%). Even for products at say 40% gross margin, Apple as a storefront is taking 75% of the gross margin pool (ie 30% to Apple, 10% to developer). This in my view is direct consumer harm. B) Apple acts egregiously and restricts what should be basic free speech. For instance, app developers not being able to even mention they have to pay Apple (let alone being able to direct customers to their own website etc). To me this is the biggest one - I could probably live with everything else more if developers at least could show customers where their fees were going etc. C) Apple has changed the rules over time, or at least how they enforce the rules (by trying to force more and more apps to pay the 30% - eg what they did to Patreon)
This hasn’t been true in months in the US because of the courts ruling. Right now, just looking at two apps, you can click on “Buy book” from the Kindle app and be redirected to Amazon’s website and download the Netflix app, click on “Get Started” and create an account.
Yep. But Apple are appealing that decision.
Just because people will go along with something because they have no other choice, it doesn't mean it's a fair business practice that we should allow.
Apple's deal is still an acceptable business proposition because there aren't any alternatives. Android users don't spend much on apps compared to iPhone users. It's an ok market, but not a great one, and in the US, if you aren't on the iPhone, then you aren't relevant, period.
Maybe if there was an actual competitive market on iOS for app stores, we'd see what app developers actually thought was a good business proposition, not the only take-it-or-leave-it (but if you leave it there's no way to be successful) proposition they have now.
> because they have no other choice
People clearly have other choices here: develop for Android, develop for the web, create a telephony-based or text-response system, operate in bricks-n-mortar format, etc.
Apple with a 90% commission would still be a better business proposition.Did they earn that or are they at that point a monopoly on half a domain of tech?
Is that a better business proposition for a prospective app developer? GP was arguing that the alternatives to the App Store commission were far worse. Under a 90% commission scheme, they're probably both unviable.
> would basically make indie development impossible
We aren’t talking about indie development though. People like to paint a picture of a small, scrappy startup or beleaguered solo dev being held back by Apple’s crushing 30%, but that isn’t the case.
Unless you are earning more than a million dollars a year through the App Store alone, you don’t pay 30%, you pay 15%. And if you earn more than that, you still only pay 15% for long-term subscribers. And of course, all those SaaS companies where the app is just an interface for the larger service pay 0%.
As soon as you start talking about “Apple’s 30%”, you reduce the scope of the argument to the tiny fraction of developers with millions in revenue.
If you do actually want to talk about indie development, you should be talking about “Apple’s 15%”.
Let's run the numbers for indie development.
Say you're a team of 3. Your game takes 2 years to develop. You spend on salary for 3x2 years. You've spent ~$600,000 so far. Let's assume you haven't had any other sources of operational costs like software licenses for your art tools (3D modelling, 2D drawing, music production, sound production, game engine), marketing expenditure, development hardware, outside contracting, and a number of other things.
If you pull $800,000 in the first year Apple will take $120,000. Your net profit is $80,000. Apple has taken over half your profit.
If you pull $1,200,000 in the first year Apple will take $210,000. I'm going to assume that Apple still only takes 15% on the first $1million. Your net profit is $390,000. About a third of your profit has gone to Apple now.
The carve-out for small revenues is not some panacea. Fixed cost overheads for small teams will swallow the platitude very fast. Video games is a high risk, hits based industry. Apple's tax adds the most risk to small ventures, the kind of ventures that are going to produce innovative high risk content, making them even more risky adding more difficulty to acquiring finance.
So if we want to talk about Apple's 15% it's actually worse.
> You've spent ~$600,000 so far.
> If you pull $800,000 in the first year
This is not what people have in mind when you talk about poor little indie devs being unable to cope with 30%. We’re talking about a well-funded operation that can run for years without revenue.
> So if we want to talk about Apple's 15% it's actually worse.
Paying 15% is not worse than paying 30%.
I believe we call that a "pivot"
> They can offer a hardware device.
As someone who worked at a company that tried to do this, years ago, that's hilariously laughable, and either you're just incredibly unaware of what that sort of thing takes, or you're arguing in bad faith.
And if you think SPAs or regular websites on mobile Safari can give you the same experience and hardware access as a native app, I'm not sure what to tell you.
> They can make an android app compelling enough to convert users.
Sure, right, now you're just spouting fantasy stories. (And I say this as an Android user.)
[dead]
The dynamics of 7% of ownership and 30% of ongoing revenue are vastly different.
So different in fact that the comparison doesn't hold water.
I'd love to hear a proper cointerargument, and not a dismissal.
When Y Combinator gives $10,000 for a 7% stake in the company, the company goes from being "worth" $130,000 before the money to being worth $140,000 after, and they have $10,000 more in their bank account. Every dollar the company earns afterwards also increases their bank account by $1.00.
When an app store takes a 30% commission on sales, every dollar the company earns afterwards increases their bank account by $0.70.
The percent doesn't really matter (if YC took 30% ownership or app stores took 7% commission), the comparison doesn't really make sense either way.
> Every dollar the company earns afterwards also increases their bank account by $1.00.
Wouldn’t this be true also if YC owned 100% of the company? On the other hand from that point on, from every dollar the company is worth YC gets 7%.
You need to know what is (or will be) bigger and more critical for your success, the investment worth 7% of your company, or the 30% Apple takes from your app. Either of these numbers can be millions or $0.
I’m very much for alternative storefronts and letting people choose. Android already proved this works just fine and most people still go for the official store. But I don’t think the argument above paints a clear, unbiased picture.
Yes, that was my conclusion as well.
> The percent doesn't really matter (if YC took 30% ownership or app stores took 7% commission), the comparison doesn't really make sense either way.
Thank you, making it concrete expressed what I was trying to say way better than I was doing in my reply :P
Equity ownership doesn't directly effect operating capacity on the same timescale as revenue. (sure investment does but in a positive way, but again not quite the same) Where as revenue does on shorter timescales, and 30% off revenue is an ongoing constraint to operating capacity day to day in a way ownership just isn't.
They don't behave the same way so to make the comparison didn't make any sense.
Note: Edited this a few times because words are hard.
Ownership doesn’t cost the company anything.
30% of revenue cuts off the flow of money immediately even long before the company is profitable.
[dead]
If there were competition for App Stores, we could discover what the correct market price for App Stores is, but Apple doesn't want that.
This is a very good argument. We would also learn what features of an App Store add marketable value, and what features are trivial. I imagine the front end isn't very important, but some kind of build certification/verification is. That requires branding, infrastructure and labor. Maybe its easier than I imagine to verify that apps aren't lying about what they do, but as far as I can tell that could well account for some 5% at cost.
On the other hand you trust your bank, for example, so you follow the link on their website and install the App, and the trust came from their own brand.
Far be it from me to defend Y Combinator or VCs in general but IMO the situation is a bit different because of the monopoly (or at least duopoly) power that Apple and Google hold as gatekeepers over the only practical way to sell to iOS and Android device users.
Of course, I'd also assume most or all the people associated with YC were part of the "fire Lina Khan because our whole business model is actually just taking advantage of FAANG acquihire panic" squad, making them hypocrites (in a slightly different way) for helping to prop up these monopolistic gatekeepers and then acting put upon by the results of that.
Equity and revenue share are fundamentally different things. YC could be asking for 30% equity and it'd still be more reasonable than the 30% revenue cut modern gatekeepers demand.
I'm not sure how offering an investment in a highly competitive market (dozens of incubators, thousands of vcs) is comparable to raising the cost of payment processing 900%. Alongside all the other bad acts that Apple does, mostly inhibiting your ability to provide good customer service to your customers. Or even continue a billing relationship if they migrate from ios -> android/pc.
7% of equity is worth far less than 7% of gross, equity ultimately gets paid on what you can make net.
> I think both Y Combinator and apple should be able to capitalize on the access they provide.
Capitalizing, to the detriment of your competition (other paid software services) when you have a monopoly or duopoly on app distribution isn't legal.
I thought the standard advice is to target 80-90% gross margin at early stage so you can easily eat 30% CAC. It probably starts to hurt as you scale though.
People here miss the value of a tightly moderated walled garden: I don't have to worry about downloading things that are misleading or are chock full of dark patterns, because it has been vetted by an App Store that I trust. And when I download an app with a subscription through App Store, I can see any time how much it costs, I can cancel it any time no fuss: https://www.iphonelife.com/sites/iphonelife.com/files/styles...
Meanwhile, any subscription I sign up for through another channel, I have to wade through a sea of dark patterns to reach a cancel screen.
This is why I choose to have an iPhone, because the garden is walled and I can relax. If you want freedom to have multiple different app stores, Android is a better option for you.
If an alternative app store existed, you could just .. not install it? Does the mere existence of an alternative harm you if you never use it?
I'd rather another one not exist, because then it would become a game of incentives... app owners might only make their apps available on THAT App Store, resulting in App Store's value being diminished. I would like that the one App Store be the one and the only one in a KISS principle. Apple so far hasn't failed me, and so I continue to trust it and its judicious management and curation of apps.
Folks who care about having any app they want through alternative stores I wish would just opt for Android systems.
Ah, the Highlander principle: there can be only one. The complete opposite of a "market", of course, which is why the rest of us are gearing up the non-market mechanisms against it.
This applies in reverse, of course. The existence of the Apple store makes certain apps only available for the Apple store (iOS only), so therefore us Android users need to have it banned so we can continue to have choice.
I think a switch happened inside me roughly 5 years ago, that I went from eschewing walled gardens to now valuing them more and more. Too much of my life has been wasted fighting through dark patterns, finding cancel screens, or being had by manipulative subscription arrangements wherein there are cancelation fees or complex terms of service that somehow make cancelation difficult.
When I paid 1k-something dollars for an iPhone 16 a few months ago, I did not pay for a general purpose computing device, no, I paid for a device that can take pictures, and has certain apps that I like which I know how much I'm paying for, and I know that with ease I will be able to active/deactivate its subscription with zero struggle. That's what I paid for, a device made by a company whose discretion I trust and support, and I pray it continues being this way.
And people like you will continue to have access to this curated experience. But developers who decide that access to you is not worth the platform fees will be able to pursue an alternative. Why wouldn't your bank remain on the App Store? Does the app store really lack that many dark patterns? (Billions spent gambling every year) Again: There is nothing to stop the walled gardens from being build, but they should be built within a competitive market!
> app owners might only make their apps available on THAT App Store
Because it's better for them and they have that right. If YOU need a safe walled garden, shouldn't YOU be the one who supports the process and incentives for developers?
Is one store not just a different game of incentives? One where instead of going off to a different platform, your experience will be as enshittified as it can within the bounds of the one and only?
Everybody should have a choice. You have a choice to go through Apple. The developer should have a choice to bypass Apple.
The brief is not particularly compelling; it mostly assumes what it is trying to prove. It says:
In fact, the injunction is silent on the matter of fees for linking out.Similarly, the simplicity of the alternative world of just clicking a button fails to incorporate any additional risks (hence the "scare" screen).
Courts generally permit companies to charge what they want. It may be justifiable to force alternative markets for something close to a monopoly, but it's not clear they can force the alternative to be cheaper.
If you look at the table of authorities, it's basically Epic itself, and some 50+ year-old cases. There's just nothing really in support.
Currently, a tiny, tiny percentage of very large developers make virtually all of the profits from selling Apple apps. Apple's 30% rate has been in place longer than most of them have existed, so there's been no surprise. Price discrimination is legal, and Apple's choice to make larger companies pay more seems supportive of small businesses. So there's not even a compelling argument that Apple's fees are evil; it's just that big, maximalist players see a way to get more profit.
So yes, Apple fees limit profits for Y-combinator startups. The brief would have been more compelling had it listed the startups that were passed on due to the fees (rather than listing the successful ones). That's the only new data point in this argument, and would have been direct evidence of impact to small companies. But because the brief didn't make this argument factually, the court can fairly assume there are no such cases, and the brief may have done more damage than good to its cause.
I don’t care that developers have to pay 30%, it makes no difference to me. If that fee went away… it would just give them 30% more profit.
In a lot of cases prices would go down, that extra 30% makes app development often pretty unprofitable if you aren't the store.
And a lot of things just aren't available on mobile because of the cut. Most apps which offer movies or books for sale for instance only let you view them on the phone, you have to buy on the web.
90% of in app purchases on the App Store come from pay to win games. I don’t think the cost of loot boxes and coins would go down. The 90% number came from the Epic Trial.
The other major players in the App Store haven’t allowed in app purchases for years.
I think the argument here is that there's less good apps because it's a difficult market and your profits are being garnished too aggressively for it to be a viable option when seeking investment for novel ideas.
It's not about "having less profit" necessarily, it's about it being a more risky business with a lower potential ceiling making investment less likely and thus: a dearth of Apps.
(reading charitably, of course).
Grocery stores on average make ~1-4% profit on revenue. Hungary has a sales tax of 27%. Do you think that if Hungary eliminated the sales tax that Hungarian grocery stores would make 28-31% profits?
Is this the civil rights struggle for middle-men and compradors? You lack a preference that your money go to people who work as opposed to people who don't work and stand between you and the people who do, collecting tolls?
Developers getting paid better is a good thing, surely?
I don’t know. You could just as well say, “A 3% merchant fee can easily be [… ruinous to a bunch of companies]”, and I’d be talking about Stripe, a Y Combinator company. In Europe they manage to cap interchange fees at 10x less, and there’s no less “payments innovation” or more “fraud” or whatever some nice red headed LISP brothers or some insightful patio furniture guy will say is eating into the 3% merchant fees.
People struggle with this: Stripe and Apple do the same thing wrt to the fees. They get all into a knot trying to explain how 3% of all revenue, successfully capped at 0.3% in Europe, is somehow different than Apple taking 30% of App Store IAP. We already live in the world where nice, red headed LISP brothers and insightful patio furniture guy is wrong. You don’t even need to talk about it or file a brief.
The reason the Epic case is tough is because the fee doesn’t matter. Like what is the right fee? Say a number. Clearly it doesn’t make sense to take a fee at all! Apple is doing something valuable - they are concentrating wealthy, good customers who overwhelming choose iPhones instead of Android phones - and instead of making iPhones more expensive they take from app developers. But if you did the sensible thing - force the platforms to charge the cut they are taking from the end user up front, when they buy the phone - nobody is going to do that.
It’s exactly the same problem as Europe saying Facebook has to be ads free. Nobody chose to pay for a Facebook subscription. The truth is the regulators are in between a rock and a hard place if they try to make changes to one number in the midst of the status quo. In the past, regulators took more drastic steps, they split up the monopolies, and once you understand how weak these regulations that people are litigating are, suddenly you will be much more sympathetic to the idea that the App Store and the iPhone have to be different businesses, or that private digital payments companies shouldn’t exist at all.
If you think 3% is too much, there are plenty of other payment processors... the thing is, most of that 3% is not set by the processor (or kept by them) but is set by the card networks. It is the card networks that should be targeted by antitrust laws.
If there anyone could make an App Store, then we would have a better idea of what the market rate for app stores should be.
> If you think 3% is too much, there are plenty of other payment processors...
The things is, there's really not.
There's two: Visa and Mastercard.
In the US there's also American Express and Discover (afaik), but those aren't accepted everywhere (to the point that it was a joke in Futurama).
But We’ve actually seen this happen in the United States before. The Durbin Amendment put a cap on debit card transactions of 21 cents plus 0.05% (although an additional 1¢ can be added to the cap if certain security requirements are met). After this Amendment was put into practice we saw two things:
1) Rewards earning debit cards were almost entirely phased out.
2) Prices did not drop as a result.
The reason the EU even capped payment processing fee's was because of this duopoly that was strangling the market. Quite poignant.
And it's 0.2% on debit cards. :)
Note that Stripe isn't really the problem with payments. AFAIK Stripe pays ~2.5% (mostly to banks) and they charge ~3%.
I don't understand why transaction fee is a percentage as it takes the cost of transferring money is the same irrespective of the amount. There should be a reasonable cap. For example 2% for any transaction less than $2, and $0.2 for any larger transactions. Why do we still have this charade of collecting money and then giving some pittance back to the customer in the form of credit card points?
It's about provisioning for credit losses.
Roughly speaking, when a transaction needs to be unwound, if the merchant cannot cover the reversal (for example, because it has defaulted), then the payment processor needs to pony up instead. Note that this isn't an edge case, this is something that happens every day.
If the payment processor defaults (gasp!), then the processor's sponsor bank needs to cover it. This is why a sponsor bank will have a lot to say about what a processor can and cannot do.
If the sponsor bank is unable to meet its obligations (argh!), then it's the card Network itself that is on the hook. This is why card networks have a lot to say about what a sponsor bank can and cannot do ;)
The key to understanding payment processing is to realise that the risk is very asymmetrical. The processing party collects only a small fraction of the transaction amount as fees, but is effectively on the hook for the full amount if things go pear shaped.
That is why the cost is typically proportional to the value of the payment.
You'll see fixed/capped fees mostly on payment methods that don't allow reversals (ie: not very consumer friendly), or that take place between highly trusted parties where credit risk can be handled through other ways.
Okay, why does this all work basically the same in Europe, but interchange fees are capped at 0.3% by law? The reason has nothing to do with fraud or technology.
1. Even in regulated markets like Europe, you’ll note that it’s still a percentage of the transaction value, not a fixed cost.
2. In EU, while Interchange is regulated, Scheme fees, Acquirer fees, and Processor fees are not. These are usually also expressed as percentage of the transaction value.
3. Because of the more limited avenues to offset risk, access to credit in EU is more difficult than in more dynamic markets like the US (not saying it’s good or bad, just highlighting that there are downstream impacts).
I wonder if US issuers/merchants/customers are subsidizing their European counterparts. Maybe the "right" number is for everyone to pay 1.2% or something like that.
Of course, without price controls, most businesses will charge whatever they can get away with that doesn't cause them to lose too many customers, so...
I wish there were a "the customer is always wrong" way of paying digitally, so that there's almost no fee. Right now the only way is cash.
> wish there were a "the customer is always wrong" way of paying digitally
People always manage to make it the processor’s fault. See the hysteria over people being scammed through Zelle.
Yeah, the root of that is Zelle being required (by law?) to reverse charges the payer didn't authorize, like if their account was hacked. This is sometimes used for scams, but even scams aside, any kind of charge reversal is a problem.
crypto?
For a few things, yeah that works. Except the fee is high without lightning, and lightning confuses me
Epic's argument is very understandable: they don't want to pay the same kind of platform fees to Apple for having Fortnite in the App Store that they are paying Nintendo for having Fortnite in the eShop, etc. Makes a lot of sense.
Time to see what the next move for Apple will be if they lose the appeal. Because I doubt Apple will be content to lose money on the ruling and will look to collect the fees elsewhere. Without the ability for developers ship iOS apps with no business relationship to Apple you're still pitching your tent on someone else's land.
If there is one thing I've seen Apple do reliably over the past 20 years, it's being able to comply with rulings in the most malicious and hindering way possible. They'll be just fine with no difference to their bottom line.
> “Y Combinator — and the larger venture capital community — have long been hesitant to back app-based businesses that were poor investments due to the Apple Tax,”
This could be good, if it encourages people to re-learn the value of open standards, like Web is supposed to be, rather than helping to perpetuate the proprietary app stores.
Also, I think it's noteworthy that, once a company gets customers locked into a proprietary app store, they show their true extremely greedy, abusive, and indifferent side to third-party developers. No matter how warm and fuzzy a brand they craft for consumers.
Are Bay Area libertarian techbros ironically going to try to rely on government regulation to keep the awful proprietary app stores tolerable, or will they rediscover what industry has known for decades about the value of open standards, and direct their efforts consistent with that?
Seriously. If Apple put even half of the effort into open web standards that they've put into building their mobile SDKs and the App Store ecosystem, we'd have webapps that would be just as capable, performant, and secure as native apps can be.
Though I'm sure then Apple would lock a lot of device access by websites behind a domain allowlist that you have to pay a bunch of money to get on.
When I was doing fancy things with HTML5 Offline, Apple seemed to be actively breaking even that (e.g., storage), like other browsers weren't. Sigh.
FFS, break up the monopolies and stop approval new mergers. This isn't this hard.
Stop monopolies doing any acquisitions IMO.
Our current governments love monopolies, though. Easier to control.
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More like inconsistent policies, cronyst carve outs for big tech companies while app store is full of spam and scam apps.
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It baffles me how in tech folks think "if X wouldn't have been created, there wouldn't be anything comparable created since then".
Software app stores, even mobile app stores existed before, App store's success was mostly a mere consequence of the iPhone's success.
30% fees are mental.
Most of my clients don't even bother/care and their competition doesn't bother/care either.
The fees are 15% as part of the small business program.
The fees are not the only barrier.
I agree, the review process can be painful where your app gets rejected for guidelines that aren’t necessary for other platforms like web.
Yes, however it was a great deal back in 2008.
Then why bother arguing?
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HINDERED not prevented.
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I guess you could argue that the Apple tax is also a barrier to prevent AI slop apps
it’s also incorrect. The barrier to entry tax is 15% of sales and a developers license. 30% is more of a barrier to scale after you take off.
If your biz model doesn't work at a ~1/3 cut, there's no reason to start at a %15 cut.
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> if the App Store had never existed? ...even though it lays golden eggs
Why is the general rebuttal always binary? Be grateful that it exists at all! It lays golden eggs!
No, they're just eggs. A few of us are lucky to sell a lot of eggs. That doesn't make them golden. The true gold eggs are grown despite the store (Netflix, YouTube, OpenAI).
Imagine an App Store that only lets you make black and white apps, but the store itself can produce full-color apps. Further, if your black and white app is actually successful, they'll copy it and release their version in color.
That's what's hindering us today.
Apple invested so much in their platform because of the expectation that they'd get to run it the way they want, including taking a cut
> Apple invested so much in their platform because of the expectation that they'd get to run it the way they want, including taking a cut
Source? Jobs’ original vision included no App Store. Web apps would suffice. They sucked, and continue to suck, so he built an App Store to flesh out the iPhone’s feature set.
Jobs' original vision was not what they chose. Sure I would've liked webapps as a user.
Probably, mobile operating systems would work more like macOS where apps can be installed directly from websites with a layer of (possibly server side) malware checking and more reliance on code signing/sandboxing. There's no inherent reason apps must be distributed via app stores.
The inherent reason initially was so that there was one central place to obtain apps/games in a mobile market that wasn't used to browsing the web for apps.
I genuinely don't think there are many people that want something different to the app store. If all of the apps I can use on my phone are in the app store from a functionality and ease of use standpoint that is the best option.
> Probably, mobile operating systems would work more like macOS where apps can be installed directly from websites
There’s no reason to speculate on this. We already saw Apple’s vision for an iPhone without an App Store.
When the iPhone was first launched, Apple said that if you wanted to build an app for the iPhone, you should build a web app. People hated that, so Apple launched the App Store.
Don't conflate APIs with distribution.
Devs love web-style distribution. App Stores can be convenient for discovery, but that only matters for a limited number of apps.
What they didn't love was being forced into the JS/DOM straitjacket when Apple were building much higher quality APIs and implementations for native apps.
The combination of web-style distribution, an App Gallery for discovery, and still having the ability to use UIKit, would have been very popular.
Selling exclusively on Google Play, which doesn't have these digital Berlin-walls. Or crazier still, distributing a web app through their website. Apple didn't invent payment processing.
Peak app store was doodle jump. It's been all downhill from there