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Play store has much less demands on your app UX, much easier and faster review process, takes much smaller fee and doesn't claim any earnings out of the platfor

Play store has much less demands on your app UX, much easier and faster review process, takes much smaller fee and doesn't claim any earnings out of the platform and the OS isn't locked down too much. It's not 1:1 comparable. There's not a big good reason to do it on Android, there are many on iOS.

Apocryphon 4y ago
Still, you would think they would've done it as a trial run. You really believe Facebook likes Google and they're not competitors? If they were interested and committed in running their own app stores, they would have tried it already. Facebook is simply not good at running their own app ecosystem, see the collapse of Facebook Apps as a platform.
- EUROCARE 4y ago
  I don't think it's going to be a real App Store anyways. It's going to be updater for their own apps - one without fees, reviews, UX demands and API restrictions, just like Play store. Facebook doesn't care about Play store on Android. They have deals with most operators on the planet to preinstall their app and Play store is a nice updater only. A user never installs Facebook, it's already there.
  - Apocryphon 4y ago
    I think you're onto something with the installer idea. Curious to think how it would work technically and UX-wise on iOS. Maybe users go to Facebook's mobile website to download the installer's binary. (Apple would probably just ban apps that are just installers for unreviewed apps, so Meta couldn't host the installer there.) Interesting to imagine how'd that go for them, as going through a webpage does complicate things for casual users. (And savvy users who might be turned off by it.) Makes me wonder too if Apple might end up enforcing indirect app review outside of the App Store. They could bundle the iOS equivalent to Microsoft Defender, basically Apple's built-in security tool. It could mark binaries found in the wild as unsafe if Apple discovered them to be misusing permissions or to be malware. If iOS apps can just be sideloaded, they should still be inspectable...

Apocryphon 4y ago

Still, you would think they would've done it as a trial run. You really believe Facebook likes Google and they're not competitors? If they were interested and committed in running their own app stores, they would have tried it already. Facebook is simply not good at running their own app ecosystem, see the collapse of Facebook Apps as a platform.

EUROCARE 4y ago
I don't think it's going to be a real App Store anyways. It's going to be updater for their own apps - one without fees, reviews, UX demands and API restrictions, just like Play store. Facebook doesn't care about Play store on Android. They have deals with most operators on the planet to preinstall their app and Play store is a nice updater only. A user never installs Facebook, it's already there.
- Apocryphon 4y ago
  I think you're onto something with the installer idea. Curious to think how it would work technically and UX-wise on iOS. Maybe users go to Facebook's mobile website to download the installer's binary. (Apple would probably just ban apps that are just installers for unreviewed apps, so Meta couldn't host the installer there.) Interesting to imagine how'd that go for them, as going through a webpage does complicate things for casual users. (And savvy users who might be turned off by it.) Makes me wonder too if Apple might end up enforcing indirect app review outside of the App Store. They could bundle the iOS equivalent to Microsoft Defender, basically Apple's built-in security tool. It could mark binaries found in the wild as unsafe if Apple discovered them to be misusing permissions or to be malware. If iOS apps can just be sideloaded, they should still be inspectable...