5 ms·
Surely this is true for all developers, at any size? And also just about any product, or service, in any industry? As counterexamples: Apple sell Logic, yet it
by the_other 6y ago
Surely this is true for all developers, at any size? And also just about any product, or service, in any industry?
As counterexamples: Apple sell Logic, yet it has numerous competitors, also all fairly successful: ProTools, Live, Cubase, Reaper, Ardour, FruityLoops. Apple give their customers Notes, Reminders and Mail for free, on all their devices (i.e. you don't even need to get hold of apps for these functions), and yet we also have Evernote, Notion, Airmail, Spark etc etc.
Does the App Store monopoly significantly change the nature of app competition? I'm not convinced, but I'm open to learning about it.
- afandian 6y agoSurely the fundamental difference here is whether "the market" decides, giving you a fighting chance, or whether the Deity decides, with no recourse but supplication?
- dannyw 6y agoWhen Apple added Screen Time, they banned other competing apps.
- the_other 6y agoI see how that does affect the competition. Fair point.
- danaris 6y agoIf I recall correctly, the apps they banned were doing things like abusing the VPN function to capture all traffic from the phone, and using that as their mechanism for blocking certain websites (or maybe it was MDM they were abusing...?). It wasn't a simple matter of "Apple releases product that does X, then bans all products that do X from the App Store;" the products they banned had to use some seriously sketchy tactics to monitor and restrict other apps on the iPhone without system-level access.
- coder543 6y agoAnd, instead of providing APIs to help make those apps less sketchy... Apple decided it would be easier to just ban them. Apple clearly thought they were valuable enough to customers to keep around before the release of Screen Time, even with the sketchy method they had to use.
- user-the-name 6y agoBecause those APIs can be used for extremely sketchy activity.
- coder543 6y agoMany APIs can be used for sketchy things. Supposedly, that’s one thing the App Store review process is meant to catch.
- user-the-name 6y agoYou can't detect everything in review. iOS has always been designed as not to offer APIs that can be used for particularly harmful purposes.
- coder543 6y agoI agree completely. I'm still not a fan of Apple sherlocking popular apps and then proceeding to ban those apps that carved out the market for them... that's a very anticompetitive move.
- dannyw 6y agoBut it’s not possible to replicate Screen Time without using VPNs.
- swebs 6y ago>Surely this is true for all developers, at any size? And also just about any product, or service, in any industry? No, this is very unique to Apple, and only on iOS. Its the reason why iPhone web browsers have to use Safari under the hood.
- the_other 6y agoThat particular case sees Apple setting the rules of the market, not acting anti-competitively. All the browser-makers successfully compete on features, as proved by the continued existence of multiple browsers on the App Store. Hell, Firefox can even afford to cannibalise its own market with two versions of Firefox (FF, and FF Focus). Furthermore all the big name browser makers sell their offering at "free". In my view, this makes browsers an outlier in any discussion of Apple's anti-competitive behaviour. It doesn't shut down the conversation, just takes browsers out of it.
- xinsight 6y agoYears ago, Apple banned Camera+ for allowing to take a photo with the volume switch (instead of using an onscreen button). It was "too confusing" and against their Human Interface Guidelines. Then they added that exact feature to the default iOS camera app.