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I think it would still poison the “Apple experience” to have many AppStores all competing with their own closed ecosystems. The Apple Experience of not being ab

I think it would still poison the “Apple experience” to have many AppStores all competing with their own closed ecosystems. The Apple Experience of not being able to install some apps sucks, but its always been easy for me to help someone with an iOS device. That’s not true with Android or Windows. A walled garden ecosystem isn’t for everyone, but it does have value. Instead, I’d like to see Apple be forced to provide bootloader unlocks and some basic drivers for alternative operating systems. We own the hardware, after all. Then they could have their walled garden and people who wanted more could run something else. It’s also a simpler and more generalizable goal, in my opinion. If you own it, you should have low level access. That sounds more reasonable than forcing a corporation to add open App Store access, maintain it, and deal with whatever market effects precipitate.

Daho0n 5y ago
How does it matter which policy the app store have in ease of providing support? Providing support in Windows (can't talk for Android) isn't hard at all.
- tracedddd 5y ago
  Apps in the Apple App Store must meet usability and standardization guidelines, and are deeply integrated into the OS. As a simple example that came up recently, all the payments on the phone go through Apple, so the payment process is the same cross ecosystem. While that is a point of discussion in the monopoly debate, it’s undeniably a simpler experience on the user side - and that translates to easy support. I don’t have to consider it it’s stripe or PayPal or freedompay or anything else when mom calls and wants help buying premium, payments just work. With an open app ecosystem all guarantees of standardization or not using private APIs or (ideally) the app has been somewhat vetted are out the window.
Apocryphon 5y ago
> I think it would still poison the “Apple experience” to have many AppStores all competing with their own closed ecosystems. I actually think Apple could find a way to navigate it. They already allow one prominent alternative choice on iOS: non-iMessage SMS. If Apple allowed third-party stores, I could see them using their product, UX, and branding mastery to create the equivalent of the blue-bubble and green-bubble dichotomy for App Store vs. 3rd party downloaded apps. Creating a social stigma without technical restrictions, so to speak. So allowing an alternative while at the same time encouraging users not to partake in it.
- thekyle 5y ago
  I don't understand how a social stigma would work for sideloading apps. It works for iMessage because it's a social product. But how would anyone else even know if the apps on your phone were sideloaded or not?
  - Apocryphon 5y ago
    Apple could easily put in UX to identify the apps as not from the App Store, similar to how green text bubbles signify non-iMessage messages. The very fact that the color differentiation exists has led to a bifurcation in texting, which has been discussed elsewhere, as in here: https://www.wsj.com/articles/ugh-green-bubbles-apples-imessage-makes-switching-to-android-hard-1539867600 https://www.wsj.com/articles/ugh-green-bubbles-apples-imessa... Apple is good at social psychology through product design, and it's not hard to imagine them employing similar methods to single out non-App Store apps on the phone to make them seem suspect for being less official. Less technically-savvy users will shy away from third party apps and sideloading if Apple's UI makes those apps seem scary. Thus, this can be a means for Apple to allow additional freedom while deterring most users from pursuing it, minimizing their potential exposure to third party insecurity.
    - oarsinsync 5y ago
      The bifurcation isn’t caused by the colour of the bubbles. The colour doesn’t cause the stigma. The colours are simply used as a simple headline to represent all the differences and improvements that iMessage brings compared to traditional SMS/MMS. The costs of someone not participating in the “blue bubble ecosystem” are borne by all of the people trying to participate in the conversation. Unless the cost of my friend side loading an app is felt by me, the same stigma approach is unlikely to occur. Ironically, Game Center could have been that exact thing for gaming on iOS, if only they hadn’t mostly killed it off already.
      - Apocryphon 5y ago
        The colors are an important signifier of the second-class status of non-iMessage texts, though. So if there were similar UX around non-sideloaded apps, whether differently-formatted text or warning labels, they could also shape user attitudes towards those apps. To some extent you can already see this on desktop, when MacOS warns you about programs from unidentified developers and so forth.

Daho0n 5y ago

How does it matter which policy the app store have in ease of providing support? Providing support in Windows (can't talk for Android) isn't hard at all.

tracedddd 5y ago
Apps in the Apple App Store must meet usability and standardization guidelines, and are deeply integrated into the OS. As a simple example that came up recently, all the payments on the phone go through Apple, so the payment process is the same cross ecosystem. While that is a point of discussion in the monopoly debate, it’s undeniably a simpler experience on the user side - and that translates to easy support. I don’t have to consider it it’s stripe or PayPal or freedompay or anything else when mom calls and wants help buying premium, payments just work. With an open app ecosystem all guarantees of standardization or not using private APIs or (ideally) the app has been somewhat vetted are out the window.

Apocryphon 5y ago

> I think it would still poison the “Apple experience” to have many AppStores all competing with their own closed ecosystems. I actually think Apple could find a way to navigate it. They already allow one prominent alternative choice on iOS: non-iMessage SMS. If Apple allowed third-party stores, I could see them using their product, UX, and branding mastery to create the equivalent of the blue-bubble and green-bubble dichotomy for App Store vs. 3rd party downloaded apps. Creating a social stigma without technical restrictions, so to speak. So allowing an alternative while at the same time encouraging users not to partake in it.

thekyle 5y ago
I don't understand how a social stigma would work for sideloading apps. It works for iMessage because it's a social product. But how would anyone else even know if the apps on your phone were sideloaded or not?
- Apocryphon 5y ago
  Apple could easily put in UX to identify the apps as not from the App Store, similar to how green text bubbles signify non-iMessage messages. The very fact that the color differentiation exists has led to a bifurcation in texting, which has been discussed elsewhere, as in here: https://www.wsj.com/articles/ugh-green-bubbles-apples-imessage-makes-switching-to-android-hard-1539867600 https://www.wsj.com/articles/ugh-green-bubbles-apples-imessa... Apple is good at social psychology through product design, and it's not hard to imagine them employing similar methods to single out non-App Store apps on the phone to make them seem suspect for being less official. Less technically-savvy users will shy away from third party apps and sideloading if Apple's UI makes those apps seem scary. Thus, this can be a means for Apple to allow additional freedom while deterring most users from pursuing it, minimizing their potential exposure to third party insecurity.
  - oarsinsync 5y ago
    The bifurcation isn’t caused by the colour of the bubbles. The colour doesn’t cause the stigma. The colours are simply used as a simple headline to represent all the differences and improvements that iMessage brings compared to traditional SMS/MMS. The costs of someone not participating in the “blue bubble ecosystem” are borne by all of the people trying to participate in the conversation. Unless the cost of my friend side loading an app is felt by me, the same stigma approach is unlikely to occur. Ironically, Game Center could have been that exact thing for gaming on iOS, if only they hadn’t mostly killed it off already.
    - Apocryphon 5y ago
      The colors are an important signifier of the second-class status of non-iMessage texts, though. So if there were similar UX around non-sideloaded apps, whether differently-formatted text or warning labels, they could also shape user attitudes towards those apps. To some extent you can already see this on desktop, when MacOS warns you about programs from unidentified developers and so forth.