8 ms·

This article glosses over the biggest deal in the bill. Section 3 subsection d - INTEROPERABILITY A Covered Company that controls the operating system or oper

This article glosses over the biggest deal in the bill. Section 3 subsection d - INTEROPERABILITY A Covered Company that controls the operating system or operating system configuration on which its App Store operates shall allow and provide the readily accessible means for users of that operating system to— (1) choose third-party Apps or App Stores as defaults for categories appropriate to the App or App Store; (2) install third-party Apps or App Stores through means other than its App Store; and (3) hide or delete Apps or App Stores provided or preinstalled by the App Store owner or any of its business partners Let's see how far this goes before it gets mangled all to hell.

smoldesu 5y ago
That's actually a fairly sensible bill. I'd imagine that both Google and Apple's respective teams are working their hardest to prevent the American people from hearing too much about this.
- eganist 5y ago
  Not so much "preventing" anyone from hearing it as much as disparaging the bill in public discourse alongside buying off politicians. Mostly because word about bills like this tends to go around anyway thanks to all the orgs working for the public good. E.g the EFF, etc.
- xxpor 5y ago
  Google already complies with that except the default is one big switch AFAIK on android, it's not per-category.
  - teruakohatu 5y ago
    I think having two app stores being installed would (or should) satisfy this. I think the intention is to prevent Apple saying "either you use our store exclusively, or you opt out of all our apps". Google lets you install a browser from one store, a game from another, and everything else from the official Play Store. Google could also easily implement category switching. The URL navigation structure of android could just append ?cat=gaming.
  - m4rtink 5y ago
    The non Google Play stores are severely nerfed though - they for example can't auto-update apps installed from them, like Google Play can. So if you install something say from Fdroid and want to have it up to date (say a Firefox rebuild), you have to periodically open the Fdroid app, check if there are any updates for the app and manually install them if there are some. Also I don't think you can currently hide Google Play if its installed, again giving it an unfair advantage.
    - xxpor 5y ago
      This is probably because I'm running a Samsung os, but I get auto updates from the Samsung store.
      - m4rtink 5y ago
        Well I actually also have a Note 9 and it seems Samsung stuff generally does not get updated by itself & either stays outdated or nags for update I need to manually trigger.
      - altantiprocrast 5y ago
        The vendor has custom modules for auto-updating. afaik F-Droid also auto-updates on freer distributions of Android but not on most manufacturer ones.
        sureglymop 5y ago
        Exactly. This is because F-Droid requires root access to provide this functionality. I'm not sure if the module for this is still up to date, but it is a Magisk module that could be installed on any Android device rooted with Magisk.
      - heavyset_go 5y ago
        Stores that are baked into vendor images are granted special privileges to act as app stores.
    - kelnos 5y ago
- drenvuk 5y ago
  I believe it is a sensible bill. it limits its impact to companies that have access to 50,000,000 users or more so it should only curtail giants.
  - judge2020 5y ago
    I'm sure PSN and xbox have more than 50M users, so does this bill apply to them?
    - drenvuk 5y ago
      IANAL. It will probably argued that way at some point if this passes.
    - altantiprocrast 5y ago
      don't know but I hope it does
    - jkaplowitz 5y ago
      I haven't yet formed an opinion on whether this bill should apply to Sony (PSN) or Microsoft (Xbox), but in general, Sony and Microsoft very definitely qualify as giants.
- noobermin 5y ago
  Why downvotes? Can we please have a discussion of ideas rather than blatant info-warfare on HN?
- kota2 5y ago
  Of course. Sensible bills are quashed rather swiftly. Especially these days.
meowster 5y ago
I wonder how the Cydia lawsuit against Apple is going. I'm not a lawyer so I don't know, if this law passes before the conclusion of the lawsuit, is Cydia out of luck?
- codetrotter 5y ago
  Out of luck how? Isn’t the goal to be able to install and use Cydia without jailbreaks and without signing it yourself? And if the bill passes in the sort of form that is here, isn’t that exactly what’s going to be possible, so then the goal is achieved?
- judge2020 5y ago
  https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/18730843/saurikit-llc-v-apple-inc/?order_by=desc https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/18730843/saurikit-llc-v...
vineyardmike 5y ago
Obviously phones/game consoles would be game changing with this law, but i wonder what else would get hit... Could this impact the infotainment on cars? Google Home devices? Smart TVs? This could have major affects on user's ability to control their devices.
- dillondoyle 5y ago
  That's a good question!! Do you think Alexa 'apps' count? If so making that work seems like it have to completely open 'Alexa' up (hooks into voice recognition, programming logic) as basically an extensible AWS type platform.
  - vineyardmike 5y ago
    It doesn't seem like it since it specifies on-device stores, but hopefully!
- judge2020 5y ago
  As always, they draw an arbitrary line in the sand since they know they just want to target specific things. This hasn't been introduced yet, btw, so it doesn't have a real congress.gov entry - you'll have to settle for this https://www.blumenthal.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/8.11.21%20-%20Open%20App%20Markets%20Act%20-%20Bill%20Text.pdf https://www.blumenthal.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/8.11.21%20-%... > APP STORE.—The term ‘‘App Store’’ means a publicly available website, software application, or other electronic service that distributes Apps from third-party developers to users of a computer, a mobile device, or any other general purpose computing device General purpose computing device isn't even defined in this bill! Is the Xbox general purpose? Sure, most people use it to play games, but it has a full web browser with Microsoft Edge! the Switch and PS5 also have web browsers, just not with a URL bar. Do they qualify?
  - Vespasian 5y ago
    Laws need to hit the right amount of vague in order to be practical. Courts and legal traditions will fill in the gaps (especially in a precedence heavy system like the US one). It wouldn't surprise me if there isn't already a standard interpretation for "general computing device".
estranhosidade 5y ago
Apple is like "over my dead body!!!"
- vsareto 5y ago
  Pretty sure I could retire if I was a lobbyist and this is the only issue I worked on Apple's about to turn some money faucets on
  - runawaybottle 5y ago
    Facebook app store and Epic App Store are about to double turn their faucets on. But you are right, the lobbyists involved here are playing for seriously high stakes. I guess someone finally found a way to make Apple spend all that cash on hand.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- dathinab 5y ago
  It's already mangeld: (1) choose third-party Apps or App Stores as defaults for categories appropriate to the App or App Store; What does "appropriate" mean? From apples POV they will probably push that no "sensitive" default is ever appropriate for any App or AppStore and how is it handled? If I would be Apple acting like apple did in recent years I would require such apps to be white listed in a extremely cumbersome system which requires and Apple Dev account, allows later revocation by Apple and requires resigning every time you push a update which will always takes weeks and gets randomly denied because they supposedly detected malware or security flaws in you app. Making it "de-facto" impossible to set defaults to 3rd party apps. (3) hide or delete Apps or App Stores provided or preinstalled by the App Store owner or any of its business partners Hide doesn't mean disable, it just means "make it not visible" and makes this paragraph in the end pointless.
  - michaelmrose 5y ago
    I suggest you read the full text or at least in part. >choose third-party Apps or App Stores as 13 defaults for categories appropriate to the App or 14 App Store; Categories appreciate to the app means you can set a non default browser to handle urls and a image viewer to handle images herein appropriate means that the application can handle that type of content it is not an opening for apple to decide what kinds of apps are appropriate in the normal English language definition of the word. I don't think merely deleting the icon for an app but opening it in response to a link would meet the intent of the law but it ought to just say disable.
treis 5y ago
It's too easy to for Google&Apple to tip the scales. Choice will mostly be an illusion as almost everyone will choose Google or Apples store. You can see it on Android today.
- Valkhyr 5y ago
  I don't mind that personally. They can default to their own stores and advertise them, as long as I can sideload anything I want. On Android I do use sideloading for niche applications and for FOSS applications available outside the Play Store (F-Droid). If iOS allowed the same ability to sideload that Android does, that would be a huge step forward for "power"users, irrespective of whether the majority of the population stays with the Apple default.
  - noobermin 5y ago
    Right, it would have a huge impact on iOS devices and for their users.
  - arrosenberg 5y ago
    It should really work the same way you select a default browser during setup. Even if you can sideload a different option, setting a default to their own property is a classic example of bundling, which is an anticompetitive act.
  - btown 5y ago
    For what it's worth, https://altstore.io/ https://altstore.io/ is a relatively-new sideloading system that "just works" for iOS without jailbreaks - you can download .ipa packages however you want, and as long as you're on the same WiFi as a computer running the server, it will re-sign them with a personal key every 7 days. Outside of emulators, though, there's just not much of an ecosystem of high-quality apps for iOS that aren't built to be Apple-approved. But hey - you can bring back Flappy Bird!
    - runawaybottle 5y ago
      I’m not sure who lobbied for this legislation, but I have a gut feeling a company like Facebook is behind some of the money. What a Trojan horse, a government legislated third party Facebook App Store on your IPhone/Android that incentivizes developers to build apps that plug into the FB ecosystem. Lower percentage cut taken by Facebook, with the ultimate caveat - no privacy, all your user data is ours, oh and ads, lots of them. Cheers. Shit, FB didn’t even have to develop their own phone. What a win.
matheusmoreira 5y ago
That's an awesome law! I doubt the copyright industry will allow it to pass...
raxxorrax 5y ago
This would be so good for the smartphone environment and clean and trustworthy systems. It would a complete game changer. One can dream...
Ajedi32 5y ago
As a long-time Android user, if this passes I might actually consider buying an iPhone for the first time in my life, which feels rather ironic considering Appple is fighting it tooth and nail.

smoldesu 5y ago

That's actually a fairly sensible bill. I'd imagine that both Google and Apple's respective teams are working their hardest to prevent the American people from hearing too much about this.

eganist 5y ago
Not so much "preventing" anyone from hearing it as much as disparaging the bill in public discourse alongside buying off politicians. Mostly because word about bills like this tends to go around anyway thanks to all the orgs working for the public good. E.g the EFF, etc.
xxpor 5y ago
Google already complies with that except the default is one big switch AFAIK on android, it's not per-category.
- teruakohatu 5y ago
  I think having two app stores being installed would (or should) satisfy this. I think the intention is to prevent Apple saying "either you use our store exclusively, or you opt out of all our apps". Google lets you install a browser from one store, a game from another, and everything else from the official Play Store. Google could also easily implement category switching. The URL navigation structure of android could just append ?cat=gaming.
- m4rtink 5y ago
  The non Google Play stores are severely nerfed though - they for example can't auto-update apps installed from them, like Google Play can. So if you install something say from Fdroid and want to have it up to date (say a Firefox rebuild), you have to periodically open the Fdroid app, check if there are any updates for the app and manually install them if there are some. Also I don't think you can currently hide Google Play if its installed, again giving it an unfair advantage.
  - xxpor 5y ago
    This is probably because I'm running a Samsung os, but I get auto updates from the Samsung store.
    - m4rtink 5y ago
      Well I actually also have a Note 9 and it seems Samsung stuff generally does not get updated by itself & either stays outdated or nags for update I need to manually trigger.
    - altantiprocrast 5y ago
      The vendor has custom modules for auto-updating. afaik F-Droid also auto-updates on freer distributions of Android but not on most manufacturer ones.
      - sureglymop 5y ago
        Exactly. This is because F-Droid requires root access to provide this functionality. I'm not sure if the module for this is still up to date, but it is a Magisk module that could be installed on any Android device rooted with Magisk.
    - heavyset_go 5y ago
      Stores that are baked into vendor images are granted special privileges to act as app stores.
  - kelnos 5y ago
drenvuk 5y ago
I believe it is a sensible bill. it limits its impact to companies that have access to 50,000,000 users or more so it should only curtail giants.
- judge2020 5y ago
  I'm sure PSN and xbox have more than 50M users, so does this bill apply to them?
  - drenvuk 5y ago
    IANAL. It will probably argued that way at some point if this passes.
  - altantiprocrast 5y ago
    don't know but I hope it does
  - jkaplowitz 5y ago
    I haven't yet formed an opinion on whether this bill should apply to Sony (PSN) or Microsoft (Xbox), but in general, Sony and Microsoft very definitely qualify as giants.
noobermin 5y ago
Why downvotes? Can we please have a discussion of ideas rather than blatant info-warfare on HN?
kota2 5y ago
Of course. Sensible bills are quashed rather swiftly. Especially these days.

meowster 5y ago

I wonder how the Cydia lawsuit against Apple is going. I'm not a lawyer so I don't know, if this law passes before the conclusion of the lawsuit, is Cydia out of luck?

codetrotter 5y ago
Out of luck how? Isn’t the goal to be able to install and use Cydia without jailbreaks and without signing it yourself? And if the bill passes in the sort of form that is here, isn’t that exactly what’s going to be possible, so then the goal is achieved?
judge2020 5y ago
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/18730843/saurikit-llc-v-apple-inc/?order_by=desc https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/18730843/saurikit-llc-v...

vineyardmike 5y ago

Obviously phones/game consoles would be game changing with this law, but i wonder what else would get hit... Could this impact the infotainment on cars? Google Home devices? Smart TVs? This could have major affects on user's ability to control their devices.

dillondoyle 5y ago
That's a good question!! Do you think Alexa 'apps' count? If so making that work seems like it have to completely open 'Alexa' up (hooks into voice recognition, programming logic) as basically an extensible AWS type platform.
- vineyardmike 5y ago
  It doesn't seem like it since it specifies on-device stores, but hopefully!
judge2020 5y ago
As always, they draw an arbitrary line in the sand since they know they just want to target specific things. This hasn't been introduced yet, btw, so it doesn't have a real congress.gov entry - you'll have to settle for this https://www.blumenthal.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/8.11.21%20-%20Open%20App%20Markets%20Act%20-%20Bill%20Text.pdf https://www.blumenthal.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/8.11.21%20-%... > APP STORE.—The term ‘‘App Store’’ means a publicly available website, software application, or other electronic service that distributes Apps from third-party developers to users of a computer, a mobile device, or any other general purpose computing device General purpose computing device isn't even defined in this bill! Is the Xbox general purpose? Sure, most people use it to play games, but it has a full web browser with Microsoft Edge! the Switch and PS5 also have web browsers, just not with a URL bar. Do they qualify?
- Vespasian 5y ago
  Laws need to hit the right amount of vague in order to be practical. Courts and legal traditions will fill in the gaps (especially in a precedence heavy system like the US one). It wouldn't surprise me if there isn't already a standard interpretation for "general computing device".

estranhosidade 5y ago

Apple is like "over my dead body!!!"

vsareto 5y ago
Pretty sure I could retire if I was a lobbyist and this is the only issue I worked on Apple's about to turn some money faucets on
- runawaybottle 5y ago
  Facebook app store and Epic App Store are about to double turn their faucets on. But you are right, the lobbyists involved here are playing for seriously high stakes. I guess someone finally found a way to make Apple spend all that cash on hand.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
dathinab 5y ago
It's already mangeld: (1) choose third-party Apps or App Stores as defaults for categories appropriate to the App or App Store; What does "appropriate" mean? From apples POV they will probably push that no "sensitive" default is ever appropriate for any App or AppStore and how is it handled? If I would be Apple acting like apple did in recent years I would require such apps to be white listed in a extremely cumbersome system which requires and Apple Dev account, allows later revocation by Apple and requires resigning every time you push a update which will always takes weeks and gets randomly denied because they supposedly detected malware or security flaws in you app. Making it "de-facto" impossible to set defaults to 3rd party apps. (3) hide or delete Apps or App Stores provided or preinstalled by the App Store owner or any of its business partners Hide doesn't mean disable, it just means "make it not visible" and makes this paragraph in the end pointless.
- michaelmrose 5y ago
  I suggest you read the full text or at least in part. >choose third-party Apps or App Stores as 13 defaults for categories appropriate to the App or 14 App Store; Categories appreciate to the app means you can set a non default browser to handle urls and a image viewer to handle images herein appropriate means that the application can handle that type of content it is not an opening for apple to decide what kinds of apps are appropriate in the normal English language definition of the word. I don't think merely deleting the icon for an app but opening it in response to a link would meet the intent of the law but it ought to just say disable.

treis 5y ago

It's too easy to for Google&Apple to tip the scales. Choice will mostly be an illusion as almost everyone will choose Google or Apples store. You can see it on Android today.

Valkhyr 5y ago
I don't mind that personally. They can default to their own stores and advertise them, as long as I can sideload anything I want. On Android I do use sideloading for niche applications and for FOSS applications available outside the Play Store (F-Droid). If iOS allowed the same ability to sideload that Android does, that would be a huge step forward for "power"users, irrespective of whether the majority of the population stays with the Apple default.
- noobermin 5y ago
  Right, it would have a huge impact on iOS devices and for their users.
- arrosenberg 5y ago
  It should really work the same way you select a default browser during setup. Even if you can sideload a different option, setting a default to their own property is a classic example of bundling, which is an anticompetitive act.
- btown 5y ago
  For what it's worth, https://altstore.io/ https://altstore.io/ is a relatively-new sideloading system that "just works" for iOS without jailbreaks - you can download .ipa packages however you want, and as long as you're on the same WiFi as a computer running the server, it will re-sign them with a personal key every 7 days. Outside of emulators, though, there's just not much of an ecosystem of high-quality apps for iOS that aren't built to be Apple-approved. But hey - you can bring back Flappy Bird!
  - runawaybottle 5y ago
    I’m not sure who lobbied for this legislation, but I have a gut feeling a company like Facebook is behind some of the money. What a Trojan horse, a government legislated third party Facebook App Store on your IPhone/Android that incentivizes developers to build apps that plug into the FB ecosystem. Lower percentage cut taken by Facebook, with the ultimate caveat - no privacy, all your user data is ours, oh and ads, lots of them. Cheers. Shit, FB didn’t even have to develop their own phone. What a win.

matheusmoreira 5y ago

That's an awesome law! I doubt the copyright industry will allow it to pass...

raxxorrax 5y ago

This would be so good for the smartphone environment and clean and trustworthy systems. It would a complete game changer. One can dream...

Ajedi32 5y ago

As a long-time Android user, if this passes I might actually consider buying an iPhone for the first time in my life, which feels rather ironic considering Appple is fighting it tooth and nail.