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This is so dishonest, it's unbelievable. Just over 10 years ago pretty much only way to install latest apps on your "internet communicator" phone was to go to

This is so dishonest, it's unbelievable. Just over 10 years ago pretty much only way to install latest apps on your "internet communicator" phone was to go to xda-developers, browse the forum and download some random files and trust they won't brick your Windows Mobile device. Mobile operators controlled the market and software on the phones everywhere. Apple came in, kicked everyone in the butt and changed the whole mobile and app development industry in every country, worldwide, forever. Mobile operators can no longer dictate phone's software or hardware. Apple enforced quality, design (UIKit), added manual reviews, mobiles and software became easy and accessible to consumers. They also gave developers a marketplace with instant access to millions (now over a billion) of users with a connected credit card, making a simple purchase just a tap away. They also took away any issues of selling software worldwide. If you sell your app in Germany or South Korea, you don't need to worry which VAT to charge or when to file your local German tax reports. And so many more things, from insane APIs, app discoverability and to all the billions they spent on software and hardware R&D to make apps even better. And now you're telling they do nothing except bullying and extortion. Seriously, it's so unbelievable that people forget what the world was just a few years ago, and suddenly feel so entitled that it's their basic human right to have access to a 1+ billion people marketplace to distribute their software. If you would tell anyone 15 years ago that they would be able to sell software on a digital shelf where 1 billion people can find and purchase it in under 30 seconds, they wouldn't believe you. But today, you're saying what Apple made possible after making a huge bet and changing everyones lives, are suddenly bullies and extortionist...

IggleSniggle 5y ago
Not the person you're replying to, and I haven't forgotten what Apple contributed. I remember being a young person, trying to figure out how to load my own program onto my clearly capable Motorola Razr (pre-iPhone), and getting so incredibly frustrated that there wasn't a way for me to boot up whatever software I wanted to boot up. Part of how we got apps on phones was by Apple bullying corps in the names of users. I remember how Apple leveraged their desirability to get AT&T to do all kinds of things they previously blocked outright. They were bullies, and they're still bullies. It's just that we really needed a bully back then to change the telecoms. I'm not convinced they're using their power to make things better for the user anymore. What Epic is doing to Apple feels very similar to what Apple did to AT&T.
- LanceH 5y ago
  If their store is so awesome, why do they need to block any other method of loading?
  - HatchedLake721 5y ago
    So that Apple customers keep having awesome experience?
    - LanceH 5y ago
      Why would they choose the less awesome experience?
      - HatchedLake721 5y ago
        Customer’s might not have a choice at all if app’s available only in the less awesome experience. Also bad experience often comes after, not at the point of service. From not being able to get a refund to bad actor abusing the system/personal data/credit card information. Yes there are financial incentives for Apple to control the App Store, but we also know Apple was always notoriously picky and laser focused on customer experience even before the App Store. That’s what they do for decades. Vertical integration. Hardware + software fitting like a glove. That’s how they’ve beaten the music player industry, the phone industry and the tablet industry. And built huge ecosystems around these devices. By making sure customers have the best experience possible. Not only they want to keep the marketplace revenue they’ve tirelessly built, but they want to stay the leader in customer satisfaction and I honestly believe they want to keep customers safe and happy. I don’t really see much customer or Apple benefit for them to give away control over software distribution on their platform. Pretty much all discussions and Epic’s court case is not about customers, it’s about giving less to Apple and keeping more to themselves. That’s it. Customers don’t know and don’t care if developers take 70% home or 85% home. That’s how any physical or digital distribution channels work, from Walmart to PlayStation store.
        5y ago
mthoms 5y ago
Where have I seen this before.... oh yeah: Bell [0] brought the home telephone to tens of millions of people. They made it affordable and reliable. They laid millions of miles of wires, provided tens of thousands of high paying jobs, and made life measurably safer. They improved the quality of life for everyone. The improvement is practically immeasurable. Despite what they did, they (and their descendants) went on to become the very villains you deride in your post. Imagine that! The Bell companies introduced world-changing technology and were richly rewarded. Then they morphed into abusive monopolists. Funny how we've come full circle. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_System
echelon 5y ago
> This is so dishonest, it's unbelievable. Not one word is dishonest. Please don't attack me. Apple was not the first to market with a capacitive touch screen phone. LG Prada and others beat iPhone to announcement and launch. Apple won because of build quality and brand power. They fought so hard that they won 50+% of the American market, when there could have been room for far more players. Steve Jobs focused on making sure Apple had a monopoly over the software executing on the iPhone processor. Devices that came before it were mostly open. The marketplace was Jobs' idea. If Jobs had tried this with Mac back in the early 2000s, it would have failed. He got to do it with iPhone because he dominated the market. It doesn't make it fair or right.
- dwaite 5y ago
  > Devices that came before it were mostly open. This really depended on your carrier and handset. My iPhone 3G was my first unlocked device, and the first one I could actually build and run software on. Apple wasn't the first "store", because the carriers tried and failed to operate the same model (curated store of apps from partners, pre-established billing, a big cut for the privilege of working with them, etc). Apple took off because they had a compelling platform to develop software for, and they were willing to work with orders of magnitude more developers. Apple also was willing to put the store front and center, on the first screen after you set up your phone, and make apps the primary value of the "phone" itself. > If Jobs had tried this with Mac back in the early 2000s, it would have failed. He got to do it with iPhone because he dominated the market. If Jobs had tried to do this with the Mac in 2000s, he would be mandating a more closed distribution model and generally more closed operational model, after devices had been in market for 16+ years. Thats why the Mac has been moving that way as a game of inches over the last decade, while the iPad started there day 1. Just like the iPhone, the platform has only ever had one real supported way for the masses to get software, and the entire security stack is built around it. Domination would imply that Xbox and Playstation stores (which BTW launched before the iOS App Store) are somehow both dominant, and now Nintendo has emerged into the market also dominant. It is how those platforms were designed. A platform designed like that would likely fade to nothingness just as locked down.
SahAssar 5y ago
Apple has done a lot, and I remember it but this would have been a much more convincing argument if you also included why apple should be able to dictate what runs on a device I bought. Your argument would also mean that HP, Dell, Microsoft and any other OEM or enabler of functionality should be able extract payment after the sale of a device is done. Should every computer program require license payment to the OEM? I think people should be able to use what they bought as they want and need. The device manufacturer should not be involved post-sale unless the consumer wants it.
autoexec 5y ago
> Just over 10 years ago pretty much only way to install latest apps on your "internet communicator" phone was to go to xda-developers, browse the forum and download some random files and trust they won't brick your Windows Mobile device. I had an LG Chocolate in 2006 and you could get new apps on your device in a few ways, but primarily through LG's own "app store" which was just an app pre-installed on the phone. At the time it wasn't much different than what we have now really, just much less polished. In the end, it still comes down to the phone manufacturers (and carriers) deciding what apps you can or cannot easily install on your phone. Selection wasn't great back then, but mobile devices were very limited and the demand wasn't there either.
- jamesfinlayson 5y ago
  This - I remember in 2006 was when all new mobile phones now had cameras. They certainly weren't the personal computing devices they are now.
smoldesu 5y ago
This is also disingenuous. For decades before Apple entered the scene, distributed package management was the norm and perfectly functional (while also completely free and transparent to maintain). When Apple came in, they threw away a perfectly functional system because it didn't make enough money, and then replaced it with their own flawed approach that's starting to melt before our very eyes. It's not an "us vs them" situation like you're painting it out to be, it's a "humanity vs extortion" scenario where Apple is most definitely not fighting alongside humanity. If Apple's system were really as good as you claim, it would be a monopoly on it's own merit alongside alternative stores. However, without the opportunity to exercise such a theory, we simply have to assume the worst (or prepare to be proven wrong).
- dwaite 5y ago
  > This is also disingenuous. For decades before Apple entered the scene, distributed package management was the norm and perfectly functional (while also completely free and transparent to maintain). Could you point me to this sandboxed/containerized packaging system for third party applications with capability-based entitlements that existed decades prior? AFAIK the only widespread Linux system which has this today is Android. Microsoft added one in Windows 8. Both those happened after the App Store.
  - smoldesu 5y ago
    Sure, FreeBSD's FireJail has been sandboxing software for decades.
    - heavyset_go 5y ago
      FreeBSD has jails, Firejail is a sandbox that uses features that are native to the Linux kernel.
      - smoldesu 5y ago
        My bad, I got the two mixed up. Either of them are effective options for sandboxing though.
heavyset_go 5y ago
> Just over 10 years ago pretty much only way to install latest apps on your "internet communicator" phone was to go to xda-developers, browse the forum and download some random files and trust they won't brick your Windows Mobile device. Nonsense, I had a Palm Pre with webOS in 2009 and at that time it had an official App Catalog and you could add third-party repositories to it. PreWare[1] was amazing, and made the Pre one of the best phones I've ever had. Before that I had a Nokia N900 with Maemo/Meego. It had an app store based on apt, and you could add third-party repositories to it, as well. > Mobile operators controlled the market and software on the phones everywhere. They certainly didn't on the Pre, Pre 2 or N900. I had more freedom to install software on my phone in 2010 than I do now with a modern iPhone or iPad. > If you would tell anyone 15 years ago that they would be able to sell software on a digital shelf where 1 billion people can find and purchase it in under 30 seconds, they wouldn't believe you. Steam's store existed in 2005. [1] https://webos-internals.org/wiki/Application:Preware https://webos-internals.org/wiki/Application:Preware
- HatchedLake721 5y ago
  2009 is just over 10 years ago :) Also not great examples. One of the main reasons webOS and Symbian died (including Windows Phone by the way) is because they barely had any apps and developers didn’t want to build for those platforms. Because either the developer APIs were bad, the hardware was slow or there weren’t many people around on those platforms. Microsoft tried to incentivise developers, but it didn’t work. And consumers didn’t want to stick around those platforms. So it shown us that: - people want to stick on platforms with active developers - developers want to develop for platforms with great APIs, hardware and great distribution RIM, Nokia and Palm tried, burned billions, but the market (via consumers and developers) has spoken, and made Apple right - people care about experience, whether they are people that consume or build the software. It’s no easy feat for new entrants (Google & Apple) to dethrone existing mammoths. But they’ve done it and turned others into history and a business lesson about innovation and changing the status quo. They had a single rule for developers - we’ll charge you fee for our work (R&D, APIs, software, hardware, distribution, handling payments and taxes worldwide). Developers voluntarily agreed and chosen Apple (then Google) instead of what RIM, Nokia and Palm offered. In the end I feel it was the right decision, everyone won. Now, after history’s been made and unsuccessful platform and models died out, developers (companies) decided to change their mind: "Hey, remember how we agreed to your rules and changed the world together? Well, we want to go back to the days of no distribution and marketplace fees, but still have access to the best hardware and billion people on your platforms. We don't care that it's normal for other marketplaces to charge 30-50% fees (Walmart/PlayStation), you're a monopoly!" (even though we know Apple is not a monopoly, and developers played a huge part in demise of the 3rd player in the market - Microsoft) ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
lupinglade 5y ago
Installer/AppTapp did this first, to be fair. I should know, I wrote it. ;-)
Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
You laud appstore as some kind of grand innovation. It was not: software repositories for linux distributives or Steam existed long long before Appstore came around, y could find what you want, press a button and boom, the application is installed on a device! The necessity of same system for smartphones was beyond obviois, it would have appeared no matter what. What was unique in what Apple did was locking down the device, prohibiting all other methods of app installation, and silly people applaud them for making everyone wearing these shiny handcuffs.

IggleSniggle 5y ago

Not the person you're replying to, and I haven't forgotten what Apple contributed. I remember being a young person, trying to figure out how to load my own program onto my clearly capable Motorola Razr (pre-iPhone), and getting so incredibly frustrated that there wasn't a way for me to boot up whatever software I wanted to boot up. Part of how we got apps on phones was by Apple bullying corps in the names of users. I remember how Apple leveraged their desirability to get AT&T to do all kinds of things they previously blocked outright. They were bullies, and they're still bullies. It's just that we really needed a bully back then to change the telecoms. I'm not convinced they're using their power to make things better for the user anymore. What Epic is doing to Apple feels very similar to what Apple did to AT&T.

LanceH 5y ago
If their store is so awesome, why do they need to block any other method of loading?
- HatchedLake721 5y ago
  So that Apple customers keep having awesome experience?
  - LanceH 5y ago
    Why would they choose the less awesome experience?
    - HatchedLake721 5y ago
      Customer’s might not have a choice at all if app’s available only in the less awesome experience. Also bad experience often comes after, not at the point of service. From not being able to get a refund to bad actor abusing the system/personal data/credit card information. Yes there are financial incentives for Apple to control the App Store, but we also know Apple was always notoriously picky and laser focused on customer experience even before the App Store. That’s what they do for decades. Vertical integration. Hardware + software fitting like a glove. That’s how they’ve beaten the music player industry, the phone industry and the tablet industry. And built huge ecosystems around these devices. By making sure customers have the best experience possible. Not only they want to keep the marketplace revenue they’ve tirelessly built, but they want to stay the leader in customer satisfaction and I honestly believe they want to keep customers safe and happy. I don’t really see much customer or Apple benefit for them to give away control over software distribution on their platform. Pretty much all discussions and Epic’s court case is not about customers, it’s about giving less to Apple and keeping more to themselves. That’s it. Customers don’t know and don’t care if developers take 70% home or 85% home. That’s how any physical or digital distribution channels work, from Walmart to PlayStation store.
      - 5y ago

mthoms 5y ago

Where have I seen this before.... oh yeah: Bell [0] brought the home telephone to tens of millions of people. They made it affordable and reliable. They laid millions of miles of wires, provided tens of thousands of high paying jobs, and made life measurably safer. They improved the quality of life for everyone. The improvement is practically immeasurable. Despite what they did, they (and their descendants) went on to become the very villains you deride in your post. Imagine that! The Bell companies introduced world-changing technology and were richly rewarded. Then they morphed into abusive monopolists. Funny how we've come full circle. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_System

echelon 5y ago

> This is so dishonest, it's unbelievable. Not one word is dishonest. Please don't attack me. Apple was not the first to market with a capacitive touch screen phone. LG Prada and others beat iPhone to announcement and launch. Apple won because of build quality and brand power. They fought so hard that they won 50+% of the American market, when there could have been room for far more players. Steve Jobs focused on making sure Apple had a monopoly over the software executing on the iPhone processor. Devices that came before it were mostly open. The marketplace was Jobs' idea. If Jobs had tried this with Mac back in the early 2000s, it would have failed. He got to do it with iPhone because he dominated the market. It doesn't make it fair or right.

dwaite 5y ago
> Devices that came before it were mostly open. This really depended on your carrier and handset. My iPhone 3G was my first unlocked device, and the first one I could actually build and run software on. Apple wasn't the first "store", because the carriers tried and failed to operate the same model (curated store of apps from partners, pre-established billing, a big cut for the privilege of working with them, etc). Apple took off because they had a compelling platform to develop software for, and they were willing to work with orders of magnitude more developers. Apple also was willing to put the store front and center, on the first screen after you set up your phone, and make apps the primary value of the "phone" itself. > If Jobs had tried this with Mac back in the early 2000s, it would have failed. He got to do it with iPhone because he dominated the market. If Jobs had tried to do this with the Mac in 2000s, he would be mandating a more closed distribution model and generally more closed operational model, after devices had been in market for 16+ years. Thats why the Mac has been moving that way as a game of inches over the last decade, while the iPad started there day 1. Just like the iPhone, the platform has only ever had one real supported way for the masses to get software, and the entire security stack is built around it. Domination would imply that Xbox and Playstation stores (which BTW launched before the iOS App Store) are somehow both dominant, and now Nintendo has emerged into the market also dominant. It is how those platforms were designed. A platform designed like that would likely fade to nothingness just as locked down.

SahAssar 5y ago

Apple has done a lot, and I remember it but this would have been a much more convincing argument if you also included why apple should be able to dictate what runs on a device I bought. Your argument would also mean that HP, Dell, Microsoft and any other OEM or enabler of functionality should be able extract payment after the sale of a device is done. Should every computer program require license payment to the OEM? I think people should be able to use what they bought as they want and need. The device manufacturer should not be involved post-sale unless the consumer wants it.

autoexec 5y ago

> Just over 10 years ago pretty much only way to install latest apps on your "internet communicator" phone was to go to xda-developers, browse the forum and download some random files and trust they won't brick your Windows Mobile device. I had an LG Chocolate in 2006 and you could get new apps on your device in a few ways, but primarily through LG's own "app store" which was just an app pre-installed on the phone. At the time it wasn't much different than what we have now really, just much less polished. In the end, it still comes down to the phone manufacturers (and carriers) deciding what apps you can or cannot easily install on your phone. Selection wasn't great back then, but mobile devices were very limited and the demand wasn't there either.

jamesfinlayson 5y ago
This - I remember in 2006 was when all new mobile phones now had cameras. They certainly weren't the personal computing devices they are now.

smoldesu 5y ago

This is also disingenuous. For decades before Apple entered the scene, distributed package management was the norm and perfectly functional (while also completely free and transparent to maintain). When Apple came in, they threw away a perfectly functional system because it didn't make enough money, and then replaced it with their own flawed approach that's starting to melt before our very eyes. It's not an "us vs them" situation like you're painting it out to be, it's a "humanity vs extortion" scenario where Apple is most definitely not fighting alongside humanity. If Apple's system were really as good as you claim, it would be a monopoly on it's own merit alongside alternative stores. However, without the opportunity to exercise such a theory, we simply have to assume the worst (or prepare to be proven wrong).

dwaite 5y ago
> This is also disingenuous. For decades before Apple entered the scene, distributed package management was the norm and perfectly functional (while also completely free and transparent to maintain). Could you point me to this sandboxed/containerized packaging system for third party applications with capability-based entitlements that existed decades prior? AFAIK the only widespread Linux system which has this today is Android. Microsoft added one in Windows 8. Both those happened after the App Store.
- smoldesu 5y ago
  Sure, FreeBSD's FireJail has been sandboxing software for decades.
  - heavyset_go 5y ago
    FreeBSD has jails, Firejail is a sandbox that uses features that are native to the Linux kernel.
    - smoldesu 5y ago
      My bad, I got the two mixed up. Either of them are effective options for sandboxing though.

heavyset_go 5y ago

> Just over 10 years ago pretty much only way to install latest apps on your "internet communicator" phone was to go to xda-developers, browse the forum and download some random files and trust they won't brick your Windows Mobile device. Nonsense, I had a Palm Pre with webOS in 2009 and at that time it had an official App Catalog and you could add third-party repositories to it. PreWare[1] was amazing, and made the Pre one of the best phones I've ever had. Before that I had a Nokia N900 with Maemo/Meego. It had an app store based on apt, and you could add third-party repositories to it, as well. > Mobile operators controlled the market and software on the phones everywhere. They certainly didn't on the Pre, Pre 2 or N900. I had more freedom to install software on my phone in 2010 than I do now with a modern iPhone or iPad. > If you would tell anyone 15 years ago that they would be able to sell software on a digital shelf where 1 billion people can find and purchase it in under 30 seconds, they wouldn't believe you. Steam's store existed in 2005. [1] https://webos-internals.org/wiki/Application:Preware https://webos-internals.org/wiki/Application:Preware

HatchedLake721 5y ago
2009 is just over 10 years ago :) Also not great examples. One of the main reasons webOS and Symbian died (including Windows Phone by the way) is because they barely had any apps and developers didn’t want to build for those platforms. Because either the developer APIs were bad, the hardware was slow or there weren’t many people around on those platforms. Microsoft tried to incentivise developers, but it didn’t work. And consumers didn’t want to stick around those platforms. So it shown us that: - people want to stick on platforms with active developers - developers want to develop for platforms with great APIs, hardware and great distribution RIM, Nokia and Palm tried, burned billions, but the market (via consumers and developers) has spoken, and made Apple right - people care about experience, whether they are people that consume or build the software. It’s no easy feat for new entrants (Google & Apple) to dethrone existing mammoths. But they’ve done it and turned others into history and a business lesson about innovation and changing the status quo. They had a single rule for developers - we’ll charge you fee for our work (R&D, APIs, software, hardware, distribution, handling payments and taxes worldwide). Developers voluntarily agreed and chosen Apple (then Google) instead of what RIM, Nokia and Palm offered. In the end I feel it was the right decision, everyone won. Now, after history’s been made and unsuccessful platform and models died out, developers (companies) decided to change their mind: "Hey, remember how we agreed to your rules and changed the world together? Well, we want to go back to the days of no distribution and marketplace fees, but still have access to the best hardware and billion people on your platforms. We don't care that it's normal for other marketplaces to charge 30-50% fees (Walmart/PlayStation), you're a monopoly!" (even though we know Apple is not a monopoly, and developers played a huge part in demise of the 3rd player in the market - Microsoft) ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

lupinglade 5y ago

Installer/AppTapp did this first, to be fair. I should know, I wrote it. ;-)

Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago

You laud appstore as some kind of grand innovation. It was not: software repositories for linux distributives or Steam existed long long before Appstore came around, y could find what you want, press a button and boom, the application is installed on a device! The necessity of same system for smartphones was beyond obviois, it would have appeared no matter what. What was unique in what Apple did was locking down the device, prohibiting all other methods of app installation, and silly people applaud them for making everyone wearing these shiny handcuffs.