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If anyone actually thinks we’re going to be in an objectively better spot in 2 years because of this bill, I encourage you to take a real good look around at th

If anyone actually thinks we’re going to be in an objectively better spot in 2 years because of this bill, I encourage you to take a real good look around at the actual world we actually live in. Things I guarantee you will see because of this: 1. You will have six different app stores on your phone. The Apple one, the Facebook one, the Google one, the Epic one, and at least two more, probably one from Disney and one from Spotify. 2. Those apps will absolutely not follow anything even close to App Store guidelines, and will wholesale be grabbing everything they can and exploiting every available opportunity to at best take your data and at worst add any kind of adware, malware, or anything else they can. 3. You thought payment dark patterns were bad Now? 4. Every goddamn app you want from every goddamn anything will be side-loaded. Some of these will be legit versions of the app you wanted. You live in a world in which large predators want to devour you and small predators want to gnaw on you. You live in a world in which goddamn websites are running crypto-miners in your browser. You live in a world in which every company out there is aggressively hacking your dopamine circuits to try to get you to use their app more, and every company out there is grabbing every bit of data they can on you so they can sell it to whatever shady asshole’s willing to give them money for it. You live in a world where nation states are actively targeting you and everyone else around you from across the goddamn world. For fuck sake, you live in a world in which every entertainment studio out there is yanking their content from every other channel and demanding a subscription for them alone. The App Store is an extractive tax on developers. It restricts user freedom. These things are true. But the goddamn naivety it takes to seriously think that the ability to side-load is going to make our actual lived day-to-day lives better instead of just hypercharging this dark forest hellscape we’ve invented for ourselves takes my breath away. Where the Hell have you people been Living for the last decade?

citrusynapse 5y ago
Pure artistry.
slaymaker1907 5y ago
I'd rather developers have flexibility and for aggregators to have competition. Yes it is inconvenient having the EA games app, Steam, and the battle.net launcher (all of which I have installed), but people have choices. And despite what fear mongerers would have you believe, there is a lot of pressure on devs to make their games available on common stores like Steam due to convenience. Right now we just have contractual monopolies with no other options.
echelon 5y ago
> You will have six different app stores on your phone. The Apple one, the Facebook one, the Google one, the Epic one, [...] Let me turn this on its head. If you don't want Facebook, you're free not to download it. > You live in a world in which large predators want to devour you and small predators want to gnaw on you Right now Apple is that large predator. They take 30% (wtf!), have to examine all deploys (nevermind your emergency), have arbitrary rules, force unwanted and unfair Apple platform integration, separate you from your customers, etc. Eventually the web will become the app store and software distribution without shackles will be new again. Apple's false uni-channel model has been a disease on our industry for far too long. Bits are free to send, download, and run.
- Apocryphon 5y ago
  If anything, it seems like the public is shifting its interest away from Facebook, thus obviating the demand for a Meta App Store to begin with!
- jws 5y ago
  I agree with a lot of this, but some of the boogey men in the these arguments when stated simply over inflate themselves. …They take 30% (wtf!)… On 93% of the applications, Apple takes 0%. They vet your app for the users and handle distribution for $0. They provide the development environment for free (Your developer identity costs you $100/year and is required to release software in the store, but the tools are free and you don't need an identity to use them for yourself.) Of the remaining 7% of the applications, until you are pulling in $1,000,000/year from the Apple App Store the Apple takes 15% and pays the credit card processing costs out of that. (At the worst end for you, if you sell a $0.99 app or in-app-purchase, your credit card company is going to charge you maybe 12.4%, so you are right back in the same territory. My local deli won't even take a card for less than a $5 purchase.) Now we come to the whales. Statistically about 0% of the apps, but they bring in the money. These guys are paying 30% and that is some serious coin. They are absolutely subsidizing the development tools and store mechanics. It must gaul them that they are the huge customer and are getting a negative discount. I wonder how big a whale you have to be to go to a different store and take >70% of your users with you? …have to examine all deploys (nevermind your emergency)… People's milage varies here, and no one writes a blog post describing things working normally, but the store review process is so fast these days that I push my release candidate up, refill my "tea", ask the cat how her day is going, and TestFlight download my approved app to one of my untethered test devices to test. It's that fast. In the bad old days that process could have taken days for me, but now it's smooth. I've been releasing this app since there was an App Store and I've never had a release rejected, so maybe I get special treatment. And to be balanced, I know people in industries which have to educate the reviewer on the legality and compliance of their app on every release, so that part of the review process still could use some help. That isn't doing Apple or the app developer any good. But… even though I agree with many of your points, I want all my apps to come through Apple, and I don't want to have to provide friends-and-family tech support to all my knuckleheads who will cargo cult install some unmonitored store and end up on the bad end of a bad person's scam.
georgeecollins 5y ago
On my PC I have a Windows Store, a Steam Store, an EA Origin store and an Epic Games store. There are problems with Windows, particularly because it is like a 25 year old OS. But I don't think the problems are due to those store. I like being able to buy things on the Windows Store and on Origin and Steam. If you are right and this makes things worse don't you think people will just stick with the Apple store? Full disclosure : Apple shareholder.
- roughly 5y ago
  > If you are right and this makes things worse don't you think people will just stick with the Apple store? No, they won’t. At a bare minimum, they’ll have the Google store and the Facebook store, and they’ll probably have a dozen others, because most people don’t actually care enough to make a principled stand on these kinds of things, but their lives will be shittier because of this, in the same way that we all have LinkedIn accounts even though LinkedIn is dogshit because we all need jobs and none of us care that much, but our lives are shittier because of LinkedIn and they’ll be shittier because of this.
  - e93849 5y ago
    In other words, people will have more freedom, and with that comes the freedom to make bad choices.
  - idle_zealot 5y ago
    > a bare minimum, they’ll have the Google store and the Facebook store Why Google and FB in particular? Because of the ad tracking thing? Note that if Apple allows sideloading, then rather than installing G/FB’s official apps you’d be able to install 3rd-party clients to their services that mitigate tracking/block ads. Currently you can’t easily do this because of App Store policy disallowing apps that violate the ToS of services that they access.
    - roughly 5y ago
      Because Facebook and Google have the size, market power, and incentive to do it. They’re both mad at Apple over Apple’s privacy moves, they’ve got the engineering talent and scale to make it viable, and there’s not an apple device out there without at least one of Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram or Gmail, YouTube, and Google Maps. Hell, I’m as ornery as they come over this crap, but even I won’t use Apple Maps. And, what’s to keep 3rd party clients from working? The same thing that currently does: Google and Facebook control their APIs. This isn’t the era of the open internet, and that doesn’t change with an open App Store either.
post_break 5y ago
Where are the 6 app store apps for android. Where are the app stores for Mac and PC? I can buy games for my PC from Steam, direct, green man gaming, etc etc. I can install apps that do things Apple thinks I shouldn't. The idea that having a choice of where I buy an app is a bad thing boggles my mind just because one goes in my pocket and the other sits on a desk. This fear mongering has to stop. Don't want to sideload? Then don't. Only buy apps from the app store on mac and pc and android and iPhone. And don't hit me with "But what if XYZ takes their app out of the app store and goes sideloading only?!" Well then don't install their app, it's that simple. If the logic is if you want to sideload get an android phone, then the same should be applied to sideloading in general. Don't want to sideload? Then don't.
- KerrAvon 5y ago
  That’s because Android users are cheap! There’s no money in it. Is Google actually making money off their App Store yet?
- toast0 5y ago
  Amazon has an android app store, there's the f-droid one, all the companies selling android phones in china have their own, I think. Samsung has/had something, IIRC (maybe that was just for Gear VR though). Not a huge reason to have 6 on one phone though. On PC, there's Microsoft's store. Amazon sells software downloads online, and I don't think they're the only ones. Lots of game stores of course. You can also buy software in actual stores, although that's less common, and sometimes it's just a big box with a download code. But yeah, your take on sideloading seems reasonable. You don't need to do it. I ran a windows phone for years, it's fine to not have apps (and it's less fine to not have a good browser, but if Safari lingers enough, it'd be nice if you could sideload something else)
- simondotau 5y ago
  The reason why there aren’t 6 stores on Android is that Google hasn’t been forced by law to roll out the red carpet for alternative stores.
summerlight 5y ago
I don't see 6 different competing stores on Android. As platform holders, Apple and Google will keep massive competitive advantages against other stores and I'm 100% sure that >95% of users outside of China will only use either App Store/Play Store.
- merrywhether 5y ago
  At least in this hypothetical, that’s at least partly because Google owns the primary store on Android. It’s easy to envision them making Google Play for iOS and moving all of their apps exclusively into that and generating quite the beachhead while enabling them to increase their tracking capabilities and gathering more data. Especially if they exclusively release a true build of Chrome (everyone’s favorite monoculture) half of HN will immediately download the store so they can help give Google complete control over the internet.
  - summerlight 5y ago
    That's one possibility but Google and Apple effectively made a peace treaty to maintain their duopoly status. I would expect them to keep the status against other uprising competitors rather than breaching each other's territory.
  - Apocryphon 5y ago
    What benefit would Google Play on iOS provide for the user? My theory is that for the major non-gaming companies- Google, Meta, and Amazon- building their own third party app store on iOS is not in their interest. They would essentially be carving out a ghetto for their own apps. Even if the law mandated Apple accept third party apps, Apple can still control that experience. And that experience will inherently involve friction. There will be friction to enable third party app stores. There will be friction to sign up for said stores, add payment information, and deal with yet another membership. Users would rather use mobile web sites before they have to jump through hurdles to install an app from a third party app store. There will be a public backlash against these companies for hoarding their apps in third party stores. I think if they do introduce third party app stores, they won't take crucial apps- Google Maps, Facebook, Instagram, etc.- off of the Apple App Store. They stand to lose out too much by risking being dependent on their own new, untested third party app stores. And they would suffer a lot of heat from angry users for forcing them to sign up for and then manage yet another account. Besides, these companies' apps aren't exactly the new hotness that inspire organic migration, unlike say TikTok. Imagine: users muddling through the Google Play Store for iOS® to get their Chrome, Google Maps, YouTube, and Gmail/G-Suite apps, and what else? The Google search app? The umpteenth Google instant messenger app? What would Amazon stand to benefit by duplicating their Kindle-oriented third party Android app store on iOS? Offer their Kindle reading app, the Amazon storefront app, and Audible? Does Zuckerberg really want to reenact the Facebook Home fiasco? Most of the time when these giants try to play in the others' home court, they tend to stumble pretty badly. Gaming companies such as Epic, Valve, EA, UbiSoft, and now Microsoft-Acclaim-Blizzard might have a great chance at fostering third party app stores, given their unique content and gamers being accustomed to having to deal with multiple platforms with exclusive content. And er, a greater willingness to ignore user outcry over closed platform shenanigans.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
asah 5y ago
...then let the app store compete on these merits - users can come to trust the app store if that's what they prefer.

citrusynapse 5y ago

Pure artistry.

slaymaker1907 5y ago

I'd rather developers have flexibility and for aggregators to have competition. Yes it is inconvenient having the EA games app, Steam, and the battle.net launcher (all of which I have installed), but people have choices. And despite what fear mongerers would have you believe, there is a lot of pressure on devs to make their games available on common stores like Steam due to convenience. Right now we just have contractual monopolies with no other options.

echelon 5y ago

> You will have six different app stores on your phone. The Apple one, the Facebook one, the Google one, the Epic one, [...] Let me turn this on its head. If you don't want Facebook, you're free not to download it. > You live in a world in which large predators want to devour you and small predators want to gnaw on you Right now Apple is that large predator. They take 30% (wtf!), have to examine all deploys (nevermind your emergency), have arbitrary rules, force unwanted and unfair Apple platform integration, separate you from your customers, etc. Eventually the web will become the app store and software distribution without shackles will be new again. Apple's false uni-channel model has been a disease on our industry for far too long. Bits are free to send, download, and run.

Apocryphon 5y ago
If anything, it seems like the public is shifting its interest away from Facebook, thus obviating the demand for a Meta App Store to begin with!
jws 5y ago
I agree with a lot of this, but some of the boogey men in the these arguments when stated simply over inflate themselves. …They take 30% (wtf!)… On 93% of the applications, Apple takes 0%. They vet your app for the users and handle distribution for $0. They provide the development environment for free (Your developer identity costs you $100/year and is required to release software in the store, but the tools are free and you don't need an identity to use them for yourself.) Of the remaining 7% of the applications, until you are pulling in $1,000,000/year from the Apple App Store the Apple takes 15% and pays the credit card processing costs out of that. (At the worst end for you, if you sell a $0.99 app or in-app-purchase, your credit card company is going to charge you maybe 12.4%, so you are right back in the same territory. My local deli won't even take a card for less than a $5 purchase.) Now we come to the whales. Statistically about 0% of the apps, but they bring in the money. These guys are paying 30% and that is some serious coin. They are absolutely subsidizing the development tools and store mechanics. It must gaul them that they are the huge customer and are getting a negative discount. I wonder how big a whale you have to be to go to a different store and take >70% of your users with you? …have to examine all deploys (nevermind your emergency)… People's milage varies here, and no one writes a blog post describing things working normally, but the store review process is so fast these days that I push my release candidate up, refill my "tea", ask the cat how her day is going, and TestFlight download my approved app to one of my untethered test devices to test. It's that fast. In the bad old days that process could have taken days for me, but now it's smooth. I've been releasing this app since there was an App Store and I've never had a release rejected, so maybe I get special treatment. And to be balanced, I know people in industries which have to educate the reviewer on the legality and compliance of their app on every release, so that part of the review process still could use some help. That isn't doing Apple or the app developer any good. But… even though I agree with many of your points, I want all my apps to come through Apple, and I don't want to have to provide friends-and-family tech support to all my knuckleheads who will cargo cult install some unmonitored store and end up on the bad end of a bad person's scam.

georgeecollins 5y ago

On my PC I have a Windows Store, a Steam Store, an EA Origin store and an Epic Games store. There are problems with Windows, particularly because it is like a 25 year old OS. But I don't think the problems are due to those store. I like being able to buy things on the Windows Store and on Origin and Steam. If you are right and this makes things worse don't you think people will just stick with the Apple store? Full disclosure : Apple shareholder.

roughly 5y ago
> If you are right and this makes things worse don't you think people will just stick with the Apple store? No, they won’t. At a bare minimum, they’ll have the Google store and the Facebook store, and they’ll probably have a dozen others, because most people don’t actually care enough to make a principled stand on these kinds of things, but their lives will be shittier because of this, in the same way that we all have LinkedIn accounts even though LinkedIn is dogshit because we all need jobs and none of us care that much, but our lives are shittier because of LinkedIn and they’ll be shittier because of this.
- e93849 5y ago
  In other words, people will have more freedom, and with that comes the freedom to make bad choices.
- idle_zealot 5y ago
  > a bare minimum, they’ll have the Google store and the Facebook store Why Google and FB in particular? Because of the ad tracking thing? Note that if Apple allows sideloading, then rather than installing G/FB’s official apps you’d be able to install 3rd-party clients to their services that mitigate tracking/block ads. Currently you can’t easily do this because of App Store policy disallowing apps that violate the ToS of services that they access.
  - roughly 5y ago
    Because Facebook and Google have the size, market power, and incentive to do it. They’re both mad at Apple over Apple’s privacy moves, they’ve got the engineering talent and scale to make it viable, and there’s not an apple device out there without at least one of Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram or Gmail, YouTube, and Google Maps. Hell, I’m as ornery as they come over this crap, but even I won’t use Apple Maps. And, what’s to keep 3rd party clients from working? The same thing that currently does: Google and Facebook control their APIs. This isn’t the era of the open internet, and that doesn’t change with an open App Store either.

post_break 5y ago

Where are the 6 app store apps for android. Where are the app stores for Mac and PC? I can buy games for my PC from Steam, direct, green man gaming, etc etc. I can install apps that do things Apple thinks I shouldn't. The idea that having a choice of where I buy an app is a bad thing boggles my mind just because one goes in my pocket and the other sits on a desk. This fear mongering has to stop. Don't want to sideload? Then don't. Only buy apps from the app store on mac and pc and android and iPhone. And don't hit me with "But what if XYZ takes their app out of the app store and goes sideloading only?!" Well then don't install their app, it's that simple. If the logic is if you want to sideload get an android phone, then the same should be applied to sideloading in general. Don't want to sideload? Then don't.

KerrAvon 5y ago
That’s because Android users are cheap! There’s no money in it. Is Google actually making money off their App Store yet?
toast0 5y ago
Amazon has an android app store, there's the f-droid one, all the companies selling android phones in china have their own, I think. Samsung has/had something, IIRC (maybe that was just for Gear VR though). Not a huge reason to have 6 on one phone though. On PC, there's Microsoft's store. Amazon sells software downloads online, and I don't think they're the only ones. Lots of game stores of course. You can also buy software in actual stores, although that's less common, and sometimes it's just a big box with a download code. But yeah, your take on sideloading seems reasonable. You don't need to do it. I ran a windows phone for years, it's fine to not have apps (and it's less fine to not have a good browser, but if Safari lingers enough, it'd be nice if you could sideload something else)
simondotau 5y ago
The reason why there aren’t 6 stores on Android is that Google hasn’t been forced by law to roll out the red carpet for alternative stores.

summerlight 5y ago

I don't see 6 different competing stores on Android. As platform holders, Apple and Google will keep massive competitive advantages against other stores and I'm 100% sure that >95% of users outside of China will only use either App Store/Play Store.

merrywhether 5y ago
At least in this hypothetical, that’s at least partly because Google owns the primary store on Android. It’s easy to envision them making Google Play for iOS and moving all of their apps exclusively into that and generating quite the beachhead while enabling them to increase their tracking capabilities and gathering more data. Especially if they exclusively release a true build of Chrome (everyone’s favorite monoculture) half of HN will immediately download the store so they can help give Google complete control over the internet.
- summerlight 5y ago
  That's one possibility but Google and Apple effectively made a peace treaty to maintain their duopoly status. I would expect them to keep the status against other uprising competitors rather than breaching each other's territory.
- Apocryphon 5y ago
  What benefit would Google Play on iOS provide for the user? My theory is that for the major non-gaming companies- Google, Meta, and Amazon- building their own third party app store on iOS is not in their interest. They would essentially be carving out a ghetto for their own apps. Even if the law mandated Apple accept third party apps, Apple can still control that experience. And that experience will inherently involve friction. There will be friction to enable third party app stores. There will be friction to sign up for said stores, add payment information, and deal with yet another membership. Users would rather use mobile web sites before they have to jump through hurdles to install an app from a third party app store. There will be a public backlash against these companies for hoarding their apps in third party stores. I think if they do introduce third party app stores, they won't take crucial apps- Google Maps, Facebook, Instagram, etc.- off of the Apple App Store. They stand to lose out too much by risking being dependent on their own new, untested third party app stores. And they would suffer a lot of heat from angry users for forcing them to sign up for and then manage yet another account. Besides, these companies' apps aren't exactly the new hotness that inspire organic migration, unlike say TikTok. Imagine: users muddling through the Google Play Store for iOS® to get their Chrome, Google Maps, YouTube, and Gmail/G-Suite apps, and what else? The Google search app? The umpteenth Google instant messenger app? What would Amazon stand to benefit by duplicating their Kindle-oriented third party Android app store on iOS? Offer their Kindle reading app, the Amazon storefront app, and Audible? Does Zuckerberg really want to reenact the Facebook Home fiasco? Most of the time when these giants try to play in the others' home court, they tend to stumble pretty badly. Gaming companies such as Epic, Valve, EA, UbiSoft, and now Microsoft-Acclaim-Blizzard might have a great chance at fostering third party app stores, given their unique content and gamers being accustomed to having to deal with multiple platforms with exclusive content. And er, a greater willingness to ignore user outcry over closed platform shenanigans.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

asah 5y ago

...then let the app store compete on these merits - users can come to trust the app store if that's what they prefer.