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No one will force you to use the other store, no one will make you side load apps. You can even voluntarily continue paying a higher commission, just post Apple

No one will force you to use the other store, no one will make you side load apps. You can even voluntarily continue paying a higher commission, just post Apple cheques.

dogma1138 5y ago
Me maybe not, my peers would surely be forced when the big apps move away from the AppStore not because of the commission but because they can get away with shit that Apple doesn’t allow. Facebook, Google, TikTok w/eTok would move to their own store or to some shell they’ll set up and then move out of the App Store eventually you’ll be surprised how easy it would be for them to move their user base. If they’ll be able to pull off shit like requiring you to allow location sharing in the background all the time to use the app or force you to share contacts for the app to load which they would definitely be able to do as there would be no policies in place to prevent that that alone would be worth the cost of migrating to their own store even if they’ll lose a few customers… If you want to side load apps already then just buy a dev account and or use TestFlight there are ways to getting FOSS apps on your phone, it’s just has a buy in cost right now. Allowing users to do that for free by having to register for a dev account and registering their device might be a good compromise if you really only want to allow side loading for FOSS uses.
- c6401 5y ago
  >Me maybe not, my peers would surely be forced when the big apps move away from the AppStore not because of the commission but because they can get away with shit that Apple doesn’t allow. Yeah, because that is what totally happened with Android which has 72% market share. Or is it? In actuality there were some alternative stores like Opera or Yandex store and all of them die out on some point. Amazon has an android store but you can't find a lot of apps there. There are vendor stores like samsung's or huawei's stores and my favorite f-droid, for OSS apps. But you can find EVEERYTHING in google play store and you'll have a hard time to live without it, like on Chinese devices or if you want to have de-googled android you'll need to find APKs on some weird mirrors. So no I don't buy it.
FreezerburnV 5y ago
Until the only way to get <app/game> that is either necessary or useful is via another store. e.g.: a transportation app, or something used to interact with family. I really dislike this constant refrain, because as soon as more stores can be integrated, all bets are off. Everybody who says this gives off the impression they aren't thinking more than 5 minutes into the future and we start seeing stuff like Epic having exclusive games, or Origin, or whatever else. And you better believe someone like Facebook and/or Amazon is going to take advantage of being able to build their own store.
- LatteLazy 5y ago
  This is already a problem. Apple banned WhatsApp for ages just because. So you are no worse off than before. Of course, with a competing store Apple will be less likely to ban things arbitrarily...
  - FreezerburnV 5y ago
    Well with this WhatsApp would be on the Facebook store along with Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, and anything else they devour along the way. Which will all harvest an infinite number of things from your phone, and you will have zero choice in the matter. The issues with Apple arbitrarily banning things is a real issue, among others, and I acknowledge that and that these things need to be fixed. But don't throw the baby out with the bath water and make everyone's life who uses iOS more miserable along the way.
    - lostmsu 5y ago
      Huh? What does iOS have permissions and access control for?
      - FreezerburnV 5y ago
        Imagine if nobody stopped companies like Facebook from just digging into and using things like private APIs or doing stuff that bypassed silly things like public/standard APIs that would normally prevent that or ask for permission from the user. It's not like they've done anything like that in the past for things like Android, clearly an upstanding company like Facebook or Amazon would never do that kind of thing in order to gain access to more stuff that normally they would be prevented from. And no, some researcher finding out about that happening wouldn't really cause them to change their behavior. And even IF somebody outside of the HN bubble found out about it, I doubt the vast majority of people would change their own behavior and get rid of the apps or anything. Apple is never going to build a perfect OS with no security holes and they'll never be able to 100% guarantee that an app isn't doing something like that. But the threat of having that activity discovered and Apple straight up removing everything from the App Store is enough to kind of force them into being a better actor than they would be if they controlled their own store. (see the incident where Apple found out about something Facebook was doing with their enterprise certificate and then revoked it, crippling tons of internal apps on top of their user-facing stuff)

No one will force you to use the other store, no one will make you side load apps. You can even voluntarily continue paying a higher commission, just post Apple cheques.

dogma1138 5y ago

Me maybe not, my peers would surely be forced when the big apps move away from the AppStore not because of the commission but because they can get away with shit that Apple doesn’t allow. Facebook, Google, TikTok w/eTok would move to their own store or to some shell they’ll set up and then move out of the App Store eventually you’ll be surprised how easy it would be for them to move their user base. If they’ll be able to pull off shit like requiring you to allow location sharing in the background all the time to use the app or force you to share contacts for the app to load which they would definitely be able to do as there would be no policies in place to prevent that that alone would be worth the cost of migrating to their own store even if they’ll lose a few customers… If you want to side load apps already then just buy a dev account and or use TestFlight there are ways to getting FOSS apps on your phone, it’s just has a buy in cost right now. Allowing users to do that for free by having to register for a dev account and registering their device might be a good compromise if you really only want to allow side loading for FOSS uses.

c6401 5y ago
>Me maybe not, my peers would surely be forced when the big apps move away from the AppStore not because of the commission but because they can get away with shit that Apple doesn’t allow. Yeah, because that is what totally happened with Android which has 72% market share. Or is it? In actuality there were some alternative stores like Opera or Yandex store and all of them die out on some point. Amazon has an android store but you can't find a lot of apps there. There are vendor stores like samsung's or huawei's stores and my favorite f-droid, for OSS apps. But you can find EVEERYTHING in google play store and you'll have a hard time to live without it, like on Chinese devices or if you want to have de-googled android you'll need to find APKs on some weird mirrors. So no I don't buy it.

FreezerburnV 5y ago

Until the only way to get <app/game> that is either necessary or useful is via another store. e.g.: a transportation app, or something used to interact with family. I really dislike this constant refrain, because as soon as more stores can be integrated, all bets are off. Everybody who says this gives off the impression they aren't thinking more than 5 minutes into the future and we start seeing stuff like Epic having exclusive games, or Origin, or whatever else. And you better believe someone like Facebook and/or Amazon is going to take advantage of being able to build their own store.

LatteLazy 5y ago
This is already a problem. Apple banned WhatsApp for ages just because. So you are no worse off than before. Of course, with a competing store Apple will be less likely to ban things arbitrarily...
- FreezerburnV 5y ago
  Well with this WhatsApp would be on the Facebook store along with Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, and anything else they devour along the way. Which will all harvest an infinite number of things from your phone, and you will have zero choice in the matter. The issues with Apple arbitrarily banning things is a real issue, among others, and I acknowledge that and that these things need to be fixed. But don't throw the baby out with the bath water and make everyone's life who uses iOS more miserable along the way.
  - lostmsu 5y ago
    Huh? What does iOS have permissions and access control for?
    - FreezerburnV 5y ago
      Imagine if nobody stopped companies like Facebook from just digging into and using things like private APIs or doing stuff that bypassed silly things like public/standard APIs that would normally prevent that or ask for permission from the user. It's not like they've done anything like that in the past for things like Android, clearly an upstanding company like Facebook or Amazon would never do that kind of thing in order to gain access to more stuff that normally they would be prevented from. And no, some researcher finding out about that happening wouldn't really cause them to change their behavior. And even IF somebody outside of the HN bubble found out about it, I doubt the vast majority of people would change their own behavior and get rid of the apps or anything. Apple is never going to build a perfect OS with no security holes and they'll never be able to 100% guarantee that an app isn't doing something like that. But the threat of having that activity discovered and Apple straight up removing everything from the App Store is enough to kind of force them into being a better actor than they would be if they controlled their own store. (see the incident where Apple found out about something Facebook was doing with their enterprise certificate and then revoked it, crippling tons of internal apps on top of their user-facing stuff)