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I've said it before, but I'll throw it in here too - Apple is going to lose this fight in basically every market except the US. It's very clear that their beh

I've said it before, but I'll throw it in here too - Apple is going to lose this fight in basically every market except the US. It's very clear that their behavior is rent-seeking. If their product (the app store) is genuinely better for users & companies - it should be able to out compete other products (alternative app stores) on the platform. Instead they arbitrarily prohibit any competition what-so-ever.

Aaargh20318 5y ago
> If their product (the app store) is genuinely better for users & companies - it should be able to out compete other products I don't think this is true. If there were multiple stores, then the one that is best for companies would win, not the on that is best for end-users. Users don't get a say in which store an app is published in.
- clusterfish 5y ago
  Users get a say in which apps they purchase. I've no idea what people are whining about saying cancelling app subscriptions is hard. Never ran into this, and if I ever do, worst case credit card chargeback would put the unscrupulous vendor in its place. It's not Apple's job to hold my hand.
  - Aaargh20318 5y ago
    > Users get a say in which apps they purchase. You expect users to not get an app they want to buy just because they prefer a different app store ?
    - Jensson 5y ago
      Apple takes a cut since they give you visibility in their appstore. Are you saying that their argument is nonsense and that nobody finds apps they want to install in the appstore and instead people learn about apps in other ways? Then why should the app store take the huge 30% cut? And difficulty to install matters a great deal. If it is a few more clicks you will lose a ton of users because of it.
  - darkwizard42 5y ago
    Look at PC gaming for an example of how this choice is NOT in the hands of consumers. If a developer gets paid by Epic to have an Epic store exclusive, how does the consumer win here? I have to decide between getting a game (that I want to get and want to give my money to the developer for) at the time I want at the cost of using Epic's buggy and shady launcher. It isn't Apple's job to hold my hand, but I certainly appreciate them dealing with the hundreds of developers whose products I interact with, creating a "code of conduct" that I can trust and know developers will abide by (99.9% of the time)
    - stale2002 5y ago
      > Look at PC gaming for an example of how this choice is NOT in the hands of consumers. This doesn't make any sense. It is already the case that if someone only publishes the app on android, and don't publish it on the iPhone, then you as a consumer can't buy it on the apple app store. Are you going to argue that your choice is being taken away, because a developer only put it on android? That is no different than if they put it on a different iPhone app store.
- colinmhayes 5y ago
  Yes they do. If users like the app store more than competing stores companies will be faced with the choice of putting their app on the app store or losing customers to competitors that put their copycat app on the app store.
  - darkwizard42 5y ago
    So we should encourage copycat apps? This line of thinking doesn't really lead to a place that is productive for developers OR consumers...
    - colinmhayes 5y ago
      We don't need to. They already exist. Either way it won't matter because companies will see that putting their app on the app store for apples cut - 10% less while also telling users about the cheaper option is profit maximizing.
- bradknowles 5y ago
  That assumes that the companies running the alternative stores wouldn’t use dark patterns to encourage users to make decisions that are not in their best interests. I think we can safely say that this will happen on the planet of Never, not in a trillion years.
015a 5y ago
I think its a bit more complex than pure competition. Let's say we're living in a world where Apple's IAP framework has a 5% fee. This is roughly in-line with baseline credit card transaction processing fees, think Stripe or whatever, at 3-5%. Many apps would still choose to not use Apple's system, because of exactly what Match says: Its not a matter of cost, its a matter of power. Service providers want to control the billing relationship with their users; they don't want Apple to have any control, because Apple is traditionally very pro-Consumer, and they will delegate much of that power to the Consumer. Service providers don't want their users to have any power in the billing relationship. There are reasonable arguments why this is fine; say, for example, a service provider wants to offer some customer 20% off for the next three months, for whatever reason. This kind of setup is hard to model in the IAP framework; its very egalitarian. But, overwhelmingly, the problem is more-so when it comes to canceling subscriptions, and whenever Match or Netflix or whoever says "we want to be able to directly deal with consumers" you should delete every word they say and replace it with the words "apple makes canceling free trials and subscriptions too easy, and we want to make it hard." There's actually nothing else to it; the magnitude of the fee Apple charges is high (30%), and needs to be reduced, but that tax is dimes compared to the profit companies make from users paying for subscriptions they don't want or need. So; competition states, if their solution is genuinely better, companies will use it. Actually, this is false; companies don't give a shit about their users. They won't use it, even if its better for users, even if it were free, because the solution is definitely not better for them, because money is power, and Apple's IAP framework delegates too much power to Apple (a third party) and the users. The competition argument is actually irrelevant, because the two solutions we're comparing (self-managed sub management vs Apple-managed) are actually not fungible in the same way Stripe is fungible with Square (or whoever). They carry fundamentally different externalities for both users and service providers.
- tshaddox 5y ago
  A much simpler way to put this is: What if I explicitly want a smartphone with a platform where all third-party software has to follow the platform’s rules? iPhones will actively become worse for me if third party app stores are allowed. Or perhaps even more simply: How does making the iPhone platform more like the Android platform somehow give customers more choice?
simonh 5y ago
Let's look at games consoles. The way the console manufacturer makes money is by operating a store and providing access to the platform to games publishers, they generally make a loss on the device. It would break the industry to demand that they must allow alternative app stores on their consoles, as those third party app stores would be parasitizing the work the console developer did designing, manufacturing, developing the OS and services, etc and subsidising the devices. Nintendo is unique in that they actually make some small amount of money on their devices. Does that mean they should be required to allow alternative stores on the Switch? Apple make a lot of money on their devices, but they still did all the work developing the product, maintaining the OS, supporting the ongoing costs of device services like iMessage and location services that they don't charge for. The App Store arguably provides recurring revenue to offset those costs, which alternate stores would not help support. Is it really fair to require manufacturers to allow third party app stores to free ride on all the work they've done?Maybe there is an argument that if a manufacturer makes enough money on the device they should allow third party app stores, but how much is it? At what point does it become ok to bar the device manufacturer from maintaining an exclusive app store?
- Orphis 5y ago
  The problem is that you are comparing a device sold to play games to a general purpose device (music, videos, games, banking, productivity, healthcare, phone, modem...). While consumers generally don't have too many expectations from being able to do much more on a game console (though that is changing on the XBox), people expect a LOT more from their minicomputer in a phone shape. Hampering control on that device is detrimental to the consumer who paid already a LOT for that device.
  - simonh 5y ago
    I don’t see why being able to run different types of software should change the legal situation.
  - bradknowles 5y ago
    What, you don’t watch movies on your game device? You don’t surf the web? You don’t connect to social media? Because all the game devices I’ve seen lately have been much more capable as universal devices than most desktop computers from previous decades.
enos_feedler 5y ago
If you look at from Apple’s persepctive, why should it take competition on top of their platform to shake out what is best for the user if they believe they are doing right by the user themselves? The fundamental issue here is that developers, at scale, cannot be trusted. You can trust specific ones to do the right thing but you can’t trust them all. Apple sees themselves as responsible for protecting all of their customers from this reality. Some call them “gatekeepers”. The example here is sharing an email address with developers. There are other examples like “no background processes”. Developers hate this becuase they see _themselves_ as trustworthy but the reality still stands: developers at scale cannot be trusted to do the right thing. Now let me add my opinion on this: Should we have a platform that allows consumers to make a single choice ie) choose Apple, and by proxy never needs to trust developers at scale? Absolutely. Many people, especially developers, would rather trade some developer flexibility (multiple payment processors) and push some responsibility onto Apple’s users to continue making an opt-in choice for Apple. I choose them for my phone. I choose them again for in-app purchases. Continue making choices in support of Apple for each layer of the system. I am not really sure what this buys the consumer. What is Apple blocking from you by forcing you to make that choice once, and then being forced to “never trust developers at scale” for the remainder of being an iPhone customer? Is it blocking “innovation”? Some people think that. I don’t see it. I see a company that pushes the hardware envelope with sensors, battery, operating system, etc, and works hard to give developers access to THOSE things. Maybe not a users email address, but is that really innovation anyway? I looked at this Paddle payment processor and they have some things like “pause subscription”. Is pause really an innovation that is being blocked by only using Apple’s system? Google has supported pause for a long time. Users want it, but to developers really want users pausing their subs? probably not.
- pg_1234 5y ago
  Look at it from the countries perspective, why should it let some foreign corporation dictate how transactions are performed on their platform (where their platform is all business in their national jurisdiction). The country's users are it's citizens, and it may act to ensure what it deems best for them. If Apple doesn't like that ... it can find another 'store'.
tomtimtall 5y ago
> If their product (the app store) is genuinely better for users.... Apple doesn’t make and sell App Store. It makes and sells iPhones. And it’s not “genuinely better” and they do not dominate the market however it’s good enough that a lot of people are willing to pay a premium for that product.
- paulryanrogers 5y ago
  They sell AppStore licenses to developers and take a percentage of purchases within that store.
zepto 5y ago
You may well be right that they are going to lose. Everything else, you are wrong about to the point of absurdity. Alternative app stores is means the Facebook App Store*. Nobody can seriously pretend that Facebook competes on its merits.
matheusmoreira 5y ago
So why does the US keep protecting these rent seekers? I have no idea why they do it. US courts literally said Apple is entitled to other people's money. Does copyright benefit anyone other than US companies? I wonder if other nations would accept such a thing if the US didn't ram it down their throats via trade agreements.
- cronix 5y ago
  Those rent seekers pay the politicians rent.
MomoXenosaga 5y ago
Apple will fight it as long as they can. Don't even blame them to be honest.
8bitsrule 5y ago
Same as it ever was. I bought a (Mac-licensed) Power clone (for about a grand less) in early 1997. It worked for 7 years without failure. "Power Computing released upgraded models until 1997 with revenues reaching $400 million a year.... In September [1997], Apple bought the core assets of Power Computing for $100 million in Apple stock and terminated the Mac cloning business." [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Computing_Corporation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Computing_Corporation] Over 30 companies had invested in making licensed Mac clones. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_clone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_clone] The iMac I got to replace it had an (intermittently) faulty HD and within a year the display started to fail (for hundreds of users).

Aaargh20318 5y ago

> If their product (the app store) is genuinely better for users & companies - it should be able to out compete other products I don't think this is true. If there were multiple stores, then the one that is best for companies would win, not the on that is best for end-users. Users don't get a say in which store an app is published in.

clusterfish 5y ago
Users get a say in which apps they purchase. I've no idea what people are whining about saying cancelling app subscriptions is hard. Never ran into this, and if I ever do, worst case credit card chargeback would put the unscrupulous vendor in its place. It's not Apple's job to hold my hand.
- Aaargh20318 5y ago
  > Users get a say in which apps they purchase. You expect users to not get an app they want to buy just because they prefer a different app store ?
  - Jensson 5y ago
    Apple takes a cut since they give you visibility in their appstore. Are you saying that their argument is nonsense and that nobody finds apps they want to install in the appstore and instead people learn about apps in other ways? Then why should the app store take the huge 30% cut? And difficulty to install matters a great deal. If it is a few more clicks you will lose a ton of users because of it.
- darkwizard42 5y ago
  Look at PC gaming for an example of how this choice is NOT in the hands of consumers. If a developer gets paid by Epic to have an Epic store exclusive, how does the consumer win here? I have to decide between getting a game (that I want to get and want to give my money to the developer for) at the time I want at the cost of using Epic's buggy and shady launcher. It isn't Apple's job to hold my hand, but I certainly appreciate them dealing with the hundreds of developers whose products I interact with, creating a "code of conduct" that I can trust and know developers will abide by (99.9% of the time)
  - stale2002 5y ago
    > Look at PC gaming for an example of how this choice is NOT in the hands of consumers. This doesn't make any sense. It is already the case that if someone only publishes the app on android, and don't publish it on the iPhone, then you as a consumer can't buy it on the apple app store. Are you going to argue that your choice is being taken away, because a developer only put it on android? That is no different than if they put it on a different iPhone app store.
colinmhayes 5y ago
Yes they do. If users like the app store more than competing stores companies will be faced with the choice of putting their app on the app store or losing customers to competitors that put their copycat app on the app store.
- darkwizard42 5y ago
  So we should encourage copycat apps? This line of thinking doesn't really lead to a place that is productive for developers OR consumers...
  - colinmhayes 5y ago
    We don't need to. They already exist. Either way it won't matter because companies will see that putting their app on the app store for apples cut - 10% less while also telling users about the cheaper option is profit maximizing.
bradknowles 5y ago
That assumes that the companies running the alternative stores wouldn’t use dark patterns to encourage users to make decisions that are not in their best interests. I think we can safely say that this will happen on the planet of Never, not in a trillion years.

015a 5y ago

I think its a bit more complex than pure competition. Let's say we're living in a world where Apple's IAP framework has a 5% fee. This is roughly in-line with baseline credit card transaction processing fees, think Stripe or whatever, at 3-5%. Many apps would still choose to not use Apple's system, because of exactly what Match says: Its not a matter of cost, its a matter of power. Service providers want to control the billing relationship with their users; they don't want Apple to have any control, because Apple is traditionally very pro-Consumer, and they will delegate much of that power to the Consumer. Service providers don't want their users to have any power in the billing relationship. There are reasonable arguments why this is fine; say, for example, a service provider wants to offer some customer 20% off for the next three months, for whatever reason. This kind of setup is hard to model in the IAP framework; its very egalitarian. But, overwhelmingly, the problem is more-so when it comes to canceling subscriptions, and whenever Match or Netflix or whoever says "we want to be able to directly deal with consumers" you should delete every word they say and replace it with the words "apple makes canceling free trials and subscriptions too easy, and we want to make it hard." There's actually nothing else to it; the magnitude of the fee Apple charges is high (30%), and needs to be reduced, but that tax is dimes compared to the profit companies make from users paying for subscriptions they don't want or need. So; competition states, if their solution is genuinely better, companies will use it. Actually, this is false; companies don't give a shit about their users. They won't use it, even if its better for users, even if it were free, because the solution is definitely not better for them, because money is power, and Apple's IAP framework delegates too much power to Apple (a third party) and the users. The competition argument is actually irrelevant, because the two solutions we're comparing (self-managed sub management vs Apple-managed) are actually not fungible in the same way Stripe is fungible with Square (or whoever). They carry fundamentally different externalities for both users and service providers.

tshaddox 5y ago
A much simpler way to put this is: What if I explicitly want a smartphone with a platform where all third-party software has to follow the platform’s rules? iPhones will actively become worse for me if third party app stores are allowed. Or perhaps even more simply: How does making the iPhone platform more like the Android platform somehow give customers more choice?

simonh 5y ago

Let's look at games consoles. The way the console manufacturer makes money is by operating a store and providing access to the platform to games publishers, they generally make a loss on the device. It would break the industry to demand that they must allow alternative app stores on their consoles, as those third party app stores would be parasitizing the work the console developer did designing, manufacturing, developing the OS and services, etc and subsidising the devices. Nintendo is unique in that they actually make some small amount of money on their devices. Does that mean they should be required to allow alternative stores on the Switch? Apple make a lot of money on their devices, but they still did all the work developing the product, maintaining the OS, supporting the ongoing costs of device services like iMessage and location services that they don't charge for. The App Store arguably provides recurring revenue to offset those costs, which alternate stores would not help support. Is it really fair to require manufacturers to allow third party app stores to free ride on all the work they've done?Maybe there is an argument that if a manufacturer makes enough money on the device they should allow third party app stores, but how much is it? At what point does it become ok to bar the device manufacturer from maintaining an exclusive app store?

Orphis 5y ago
The problem is that you are comparing a device sold to play games to a general purpose device (music, videos, games, banking, productivity, healthcare, phone, modem...). While consumers generally don't have too many expectations from being able to do much more on a game console (though that is changing on the XBox), people expect a LOT more from their minicomputer in a phone shape. Hampering control on that device is detrimental to the consumer who paid already a LOT for that device.
- simonh 5y ago
  I don’t see why being able to run different types of software should change the legal situation.
- bradknowles 5y ago
  What, you don’t watch movies on your game device? You don’t surf the web? You don’t connect to social media? Because all the game devices I’ve seen lately have been much more capable as universal devices than most desktop computers from previous decades.

enos_feedler 5y ago

If you look at from Apple’s persepctive, why should it take competition on top of their platform to shake out what is best for the user if they believe they are doing right by the user themselves? The fundamental issue here is that developers, at scale, cannot be trusted. You can trust specific ones to do the right thing but you can’t trust them all. Apple sees themselves as responsible for protecting all of their customers from this reality. Some call them “gatekeepers”. The example here is sharing an email address with developers. There are other examples like “no background processes”. Developers hate this becuase they see _themselves_ as trustworthy but the reality still stands: developers at scale cannot be trusted to do the right thing. Now let me add my opinion on this: Should we have a platform that allows consumers to make a single choice ie) choose Apple, and by proxy never needs to trust developers at scale? Absolutely. Many people, especially developers, would rather trade some developer flexibility (multiple payment processors) and push some responsibility onto Apple’s users to continue making an opt-in choice for Apple. I choose them for my phone. I choose them again for in-app purchases. Continue making choices in support of Apple for each layer of the system. I am not really sure what this buys the consumer. What is Apple blocking from you by forcing you to make that choice once, and then being forced to “never trust developers at scale” for the remainder of being an iPhone customer? Is it blocking “innovation”? Some people think that. I don’t see it. I see a company that pushes the hardware envelope with sensors, battery, operating system, etc, and works hard to give developers access to THOSE things. Maybe not a users email address, but is that really innovation anyway? I looked at this Paddle payment processor and they have some things like “pause subscription”. Is pause really an innovation that is being blocked by only using Apple’s system? Google has supported pause for a long time. Users want it, but to developers really want users pausing their subs? probably not.

pg_1234 5y ago
Look at it from the countries perspective, why should it let some foreign corporation dictate how transactions are performed on their platform (where their platform is all business in their national jurisdiction). The country's users are it's citizens, and it may act to ensure what it deems best for them. If Apple doesn't like that ... it can find another 'store'.

tomtimtall 5y ago

> If their product (the app store) is genuinely better for users.... Apple doesn’t make and sell App Store. It makes and sells iPhones. And it’s not “genuinely better” and they do not dominate the market however it’s good enough that a lot of people are willing to pay a premium for that product.

paulryanrogers 5y ago
They sell AppStore licenses to developers and take a percentage of purchases within that store.

zepto 5y ago

You may well be right that they are going to lose. Everything else, you are wrong about to the point of absurdity. Alternative app stores is means the Facebook App Store*. Nobody can seriously pretend that Facebook competes on its merits.

matheusmoreira 5y ago

So why does the US keep protecting these rent seekers? I have no idea why they do it. US courts literally said Apple is entitled to other people's money. Does copyright benefit anyone other than US companies? I wonder if other nations would accept such a thing if the US didn't ram it down their throats via trade agreements.

cronix 5y ago
Those rent seekers pay the politicians rent.

MomoXenosaga 5y ago

Apple will fight it as long as they can. Don't even blame them to be honest.

8bitsrule 5y ago

Same as it ever was. I bought a (Mac-licensed) Power clone (for about a grand less) in early 1997. It worked for 7 years without failure. "Power Computing released upgraded models until 1997 with revenues reaching $400 million a year.... In September [1997], Apple bought the core assets of Power Computing for $100 million in Apple stock and terminated the Mac cloning business." [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Computing_Corporation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Computing_Corporation] Over 30 companies had invested in making licensed Mac clones. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_clone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_clone] The iMac I got to replace it had an (intermittently) faulty HD and within a year the display started to fail (for hundreds of users).