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> If the market wants this kind of experience, then surely it will continue to exist no? That is the battle Epic is currently fighting, to remove the ability f
by paulmd 6y ago
> If the market wants this kind of experience, then surely it will continue to exist no?
That is the battle Epic is currently fighting, to remove the ability for anyone on the market to offer this option.
By requiring everyone to allow third-party app stores, you effectively remove the option for a fully curated experience. Because as mentioned, once a few popular apps start demanding usage of the third-party app store, consumers will no longer be able to choose a fully-curated experience without foregoing those services. And that will lead down an inevitable loss of privacy, increased demanding of permissions for marketing, etc - all of which Apple has fairly successfully fought back solely through their centrally-moderated experience. We all lived through the early days of Android before the built-in flashlight when you had flashlight apps demanding full permissions to monitor everything you do.
It is, in a sense, another "paradox of tolerance" - you have to restrict user freedoms in one area (what users are allowed to install) to protect them in another area (predatory developers). Apple's walled garden is the only thing keeping those marketing departments at bay, their restrictions on app-developer (and ultimately end-user) freedom are what protects your privacy. Similar perhaps to how GNU and BSD regard "freedoms" differently - BSD regards developer freedom as paramount, while GNU regards user freedom as paramount, and these are not quite the same things. While BSD protects developer freedom to release proprietary code on top of BSD code, GNU restricts developer freedom and forces that to be released under GNU license as well. And ultimately that translates into a loss of user freedom in some sense - surely users would like the ability to have ZFS distributed alongside the Linux kernel, but GNU restricts that freedom in furtherance of the big-picture.
Ironic as it is, the Apple Store is the GNU of this situation. They are willing to burn some specific cases of application developers who are not willing to accept the licensing terms, in order to protect the big-picture of user freedoms (privacy). Android is the "BSD", where they are more concerned about developer freedom than user freedom. And the loss of specific apps is analogous to the friction between mixing source under copyleft license with other open-source licenses.
If you want third-party app stores, Android exists. This is about Epic fighting to take away the option to have a moderated, quality-controlled experience and eroding the ability of users to maintain their privacy.
- Tainnor 6y ago> Ironic as it is, the Apple Store is the GNU of this situation. I've read a lot of mind-boggling post-hoc rationalisation of Apple's anti-competitive and paternalistic behaviour, but this definitely takes the cake.
- paulmd 6y agoSeeing as this is HN, perhaps you would care to explicate a reason why. Does GNU not (at times) restrict the distribution of software that end-users might find desirable, in order to protect their rights as a whole? Why do you think that is bad? Has that restriction not resulted in the creation of a high-quality, user-freedom-regarding codebase despite (and in fact because of) those restrictions? Why can Apple’s policy of mandatory curation not have a similar effect on the market as well? It seems self-evident that a lot of the privacy improvements in recent androids (like filesystem isolation in Android Q) probably would not have occurred without the impetus provided by Apple’s competitive pressure in this area, so you benefit from this even if you choose Android and “the BSD model”. Like, I completely get that this is a developer-centric community and you see it as Apple gating access to the user base that makes you money. And as a user I see it as Apple blocking nefarious practices that developers clearly race to use as soon as they're allowed, in order to make a couple more pennies off my privacy and worsen my user experience. I don't think it's intellectually honest to pretend there's some huge Apple userbase who's champing at the bit to have Facebook have root access on their phones, they already have Facebook now, and Apple's curation forces Facebook to tone down the worst of their excess. Just like it wouldn't be honest to hear Microsoft whining about how it's not fair that GNU is restricting user freedoms because Microsoft isn't allowed to distribute code that links against GNU source. No user would want Microsoft to link against GNU code, Microsoft might want to do it because it would make them more profit, but you shouldn't put words into my mouth as an Apple customer. And if you really did want to "sideload" onto your iphone, the only real barrier is having fifty bucks to get an apple developer account. Then you can sideload whatever you want. Similarly, a Microsoft developer account will let you sideload any UWP apps you want onto your Xbox, I've seen tons of people using it as an emulator console recently and that's certainly quite a thing for a walled garden. Discuss, if you have points to make. Don’t just grump that “Apple bad”, that’s low quality posting.