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I think what you’d see is not much in the way of price decreases or increased availability of apps, but more dark patterns, malware, and anti-privacy measures.

I think what you’d see is not much in the way of price decreases or increased availability of apps, but more dark patterns, malware, and anti-privacy measures. Apple basically collectively bargains for iPhone users via the App Store. Privacy features, sign-in with Apple, limiting tracking abuse, privacy “Nutrition Facts” and other items will go out the window. Apple will have those in their App Store, but users will make the trade off with privacy to play Fortnite or download a new social media app. Apple makes it so that trade off doesn’t have to happen. It’s all around awful. I really hope Apple wins this court case.

hhjinks 6y ago
I sure love having a faceless trillion-dollar company making choices for me to try to keep me and my device safe.
- ericmay 6y ago
  Well, they have a good enough track record so far. If you feel the iPhone is unsafe, you're free to buy a different phone or not use one at all. Why would Apple be less incentivized than another company, like Epic, to protect your data? Apple sells the iPhone and markets it toward pro-privacy and security. Going against that is not in their own best interest. It's in Epic's interest to break through that, because then they can use dark patterns and break privacy restrictions (as other companies will and intend to do). Again, it's no surprise that as Apple has been more user-focused and privacy-focused in their continued iPhone and iOS development that developers are feeling the squeeze when they want to use dark patterns, so naturally they'll try and break out of that so they can go back to their old bad habits again.
  - cycloptic 6y ago
    >Why would Apple be less incentivized than another company, like Epic, to protect your data? Probably because their store doesn't have to compete? I would say they really are not doing a good job at this considering their track record contains plenty of dark patterns, privacy violations, tracking, data mining, censorship, and so on. If you don't believe me I can provide plenty of examples. The situation might be marginally better than a low-end Android device that typically comes loaded with OEM malware, but that's not saying much.
    - medbrane 6y ago
      They do a lot better than a hypothetical Facebook store, which Epic suit would make possible.
  - Apocryphon 6y ago
    I would rather that the industry adopt higher standards for itself or the government play a regulatory role (or that everyone spontaneously develops a higher level of morality and social responsibility). Putting all of our trust into one corporation, no matter how big its market cap, is just asking for a single point of failure. Not to mention, Apple can always change its attitudes toward security, and then there wouldn’t be anyone left to speak for you.
    - Spivak 6y ago
      I mean if Apple changes their ways then the only loss will be that they're finally on par with Windows and Android.
- Analemma_ 6y ago
  This, except unironically. I am just one person, who has no leverage whatsoever against companies using dark patterns and scamware. I like having someone with sufficient leverage fighting in my corner. If you don't want that, that's totally fine: Android is right over there.
dgellow 6y ago
> Apple will have those in their App Store, but users will make the trade off with privacy to play Fortnite or download a new social media app. > Apple makes it so that trade off doesn’t have to happen. That's the core of the discussion here: you seem to think that's in the interest of the user to have Apple taking all those decisions for themselves. I firmly disagree, I'm a happy user of an iOS device and do release iOS apps, in both case I would prefer to have more choice of trade-off, and to be able to decide for myself instead of Apple taking a decision for all their user base and developers.
- ericmay 6y ago
  Yea, I definitely think it's in my interest and the interest of the vast majority of iPhone users to have Apple make these decisions. I'd rather every developer leave the App Store than switch away from the current model. I'd just use Apple's built-in apps.
  - dgellow 6y ago
    Your own situation wouldn't be different if you had alternatives to Apple's store. Apple can even market their own store as the one with higher quality apps and promote their safety guarantees. Applications from another store wouldn't have to be less "safe" (depending on your definition) as other iOS applications, they would still use the same sandbox system and all the other standard APIs. You can always decide to stick to one store and not care about the rest. Considering the fact that you prefer Apple to block you from other options: it doesn't follow that they should do this to everyone, just that you would still pick that option if you had the choice.
    - jabirali 6y ago
      > Your own situation wouldn't be different if you had alternatives to Apple's store. I respectfully disagree with this statement. I think an analogous situation would be the launch of Disney+: it used to be possible to watch Disney series on Netflix, but after Disney decided to launch Disney+, these series were pulled from Netflix to push the adoption of Disney+. For a Netflix user, their situation would very much be affected by Disney+ existing.
jayd16 6y ago
Apple can still enforce privacy measures at the OS level.
- wool_gather 6y ago
  There's more to shitty app behavior than just hardware-dependent data like location, and some of the enforcement can't really be done in software. Especially when it comes to workarounds/exploiting private APIs. Right now Apple can yank an app pretty much immediately if it's found to be doing that; if the app were in an alternate App Store, a much slower OS update would be Apple's only option. Payments also come to mind: Apple has strict standards for what you have to explain to users before you take their money. (Granted they're not always perfectly enforced.) And some of the terms (like easy, clear cancellation) are enforced simply by the fact that you must use Apple's payment system. With another App Store, that goes out the window.
kabes 6y ago
I would think that people who care about their privacy, would be anti anything that reminds them of totalitarianism and therefore would also not like that Apple can decide what they can install on their devices. It's curious to see that people care about their privacy/data are fine with the control Apple has over their devices.
- mlindner 6y ago
  I think that reality is more nuanced. Totalitarianism is type of government and in such a situation you have no choice over types of government so totalitarianism has no driving factor to ever work in your favor. Additionally they have control not over just your phone but your entire being which in the hierarchy of needs is significantly higher. However in a hypothetical environment where you can pick between multiple different totalitarian states and the totalitarian states have no control over your entire being (and cannot ever become so) the totalitarian states have to compete with each other to attract people to live under them. On the privacy/data aspect, if Apple forced data to be uploaded to the cloud, I would care. If it was "privacy" where the "privacy" is protected by apple keys I wouldn't really call that privacy. However that's not what Apple does in general where it can avoid it. For example, in the new iOS version they're adding offline language translation functionality rather than uploading your voice snipets to the cloud to translate them. This is substantially harder engineering problem than doing it in the cloud as it requires significantly more turning to run on a constrained platform like a phone. If Apple actually didn't care about privacy they'd do what basically everyone else does.

hhjinks 6y ago

I sure love having a faceless trillion-dollar company making choices for me to try to keep me and my device safe.

ericmay 6y ago
Well, they have a good enough track record so far. If you feel the iPhone is unsafe, you're free to buy a different phone or not use one at all. Why would Apple be less incentivized than another company, like Epic, to protect your data? Apple sells the iPhone and markets it toward pro-privacy and security. Going against that is not in their own best interest. It's in Epic's interest to break through that, because then they can use dark patterns and break privacy restrictions (as other companies will and intend to do). Again, it's no surprise that as Apple has been more user-focused and privacy-focused in their continued iPhone and iOS development that developers are feeling the squeeze when they want to use dark patterns, so naturally they'll try and break out of that so they can go back to their old bad habits again.
- cycloptic 6y ago
  >Why would Apple be less incentivized than another company, like Epic, to protect your data? Probably because their store doesn't have to compete? I would say they really are not doing a good job at this considering their track record contains plenty of dark patterns, privacy violations, tracking, data mining, censorship, and so on. If you don't believe me I can provide plenty of examples. The situation might be marginally better than a low-end Android device that typically comes loaded with OEM malware, but that's not saying much.
  - medbrane 6y ago
    They do a lot better than a hypothetical Facebook store, which Epic suit would make possible.
- Apocryphon 6y ago
  I would rather that the industry adopt higher standards for itself or the government play a regulatory role (or that everyone spontaneously develops a higher level of morality and social responsibility). Putting all of our trust into one corporation, no matter how big its market cap, is just asking for a single point of failure. Not to mention, Apple can always change its attitudes toward security, and then there wouldn’t be anyone left to speak for you.
  - Spivak 6y ago
    I mean if Apple changes their ways then the only loss will be that they're finally on par with Windows and Android.
Analemma_ 6y ago
This, except unironically. I am just one person, who has no leverage whatsoever against companies using dark patterns and scamware. I like having someone with sufficient leverage fighting in my corner. If you don't want that, that's totally fine: Android is right over there.

dgellow 6y ago

> Apple will have those in their App Store, but users will make the trade off with privacy to play Fortnite or download a new social media app. > Apple makes it so that trade off doesn’t have to happen. That's the core of the discussion here: you seem to think that's in the interest of the user to have Apple taking all those decisions for themselves. I firmly disagree, I'm a happy user of an iOS device and do release iOS apps, in both case I would prefer to have more choice of trade-off, and to be able to decide for myself instead of Apple taking a decision for all their user base and developers.

ericmay 6y ago
Yea, I definitely think it's in my interest and the interest of the vast majority of iPhone users to have Apple make these decisions. I'd rather every developer leave the App Store than switch away from the current model. I'd just use Apple's built-in apps.
- dgellow 6y ago
  Your own situation wouldn't be different if you had alternatives to Apple's store. Apple can even market their own store as the one with higher quality apps and promote their safety guarantees. Applications from another store wouldn't have to be less "safe" (depending on your definition) as other iOS applications, they would still use the same sandbox system and all the other standard APIs. You can always decide to stick to one store and not care about the rest. Considering the fact that you prefer Apple to block you from other options: it doesn't follow that they should do this to everyone, just that you would still pick that option if you had the choice.
  - jabirali 6y ago
    > Your own situation wouldn't be different if you had alternatives to Apple's store. I respectfully disagree with this statement. I think an analogous situation would be the launch of Disney+: it used to be possible to watch Disney series on Netflix, but after Disney decided to launch Disney+, these series were pulled from Netflix to push the adoption of Disney+. For a Netflix user, their situation would very much be affected by Disney+ existing.

jayd16 6y ago

Apple can still enforce privacy measures at the OS level.

wool_gather 6y ago
There's more to shitty app behavior than just hardware-dependent data like location, and some of the enforcement can't really be done in software. Especially when it comes to workarounds/exploiting private APIs. Right now Apple can yank an app pretty much immediately if it's found to be doing that; if the app were in an alternate App Store, a much slower OS update would be Apple's only option. Payments also come to mind: Apple has strict standards for what you have to explain to users before you take their money. (Granted they're not always perfectly enforced.) And some of the terms (like easy, clear cancellation) are enforced simply by the fact that you must use Apple's payment system. With another App Store, that goes out the window.

kabes 6y ago

I would think that people who care about their privacy, would be anti anything that reminds them of totalitarianism and therefore would also not like that Apple can decide what they can install on their devices. It's curious to see that people care about their privacy/data are fine with the control Apple has over their devices.

mlindner 6y ago
I think that reality is more nuanced. Totalitarianism is type of government and in such a situation you have no choice over types of government so totalitarianism has no driving factor to ever work in your favor. Additionally they have control not over just your phone but your entire being which in the hierarchy of needs is significantly higher. However in a hypothetical environment where you can pick between multiple different totalitarian states and the totalitarian states have no control over your entire being (and cannot ever become so) the totalitarian states have to compete with each other to attract people to live under them. On the privacy/data aspect, if Apple forced data to be uploaded to the cloud, I would care. If it was "privacy" where the "privacy" is protected by apple keys I wouldn't really call that privacy. However that's not what Apple does in general where it can avoid it. For example, in the new iOS version they're adding offline language translation functionality rather than uploading your voice snipets to the cloud to translate them. This is substantially harder engineering problem than doing it in the cloud as it requires significantly more turning to run on a constrained platform like a phone. If Apple actually didn't care about privacy they'd do what basically everyone else does.