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I really think Apple needs to allow alternative stores. I don't have anything against Apple's app store, and I think it's up to them how they want to run it, w

by jmull 4y ago

I really think Apple needs to allow alternative stores. I don't have anything against Apple's app store, and I think it's up to them how they want to run it, what they want to include or not, what policies and requirements they want to set, even what payment processor they will accept. But as a user, I want to be able to choose a store that can make different choices... like f-droid, or maybe something completely different. Plus, I think Apple has little to fear. You can have alternative stores on Android devices and it's not killing the Google store. Also: MacOS already allows you to install software from different places. It's not some dystopian malware armageddon.

lol768 4y ago
> I really think Apple needs to allow alternative stores. They're not going to have a choice. https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_22_6423 https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_22_...
- tcoff91 4y ago
  I wonder if they'll restrict this to EU-only. So perhaps europeans will have more access than the rest of us.
  - aliqot 4y ago
    we need china to oppose centralized app markets, then we're set.
eftychis 4y ago
They have lots to fear as they get a 30% cut. One "simply" needs to launch their own app store and save millions, and aggregate other companies on their store. I can think of Epic Games as a first thought, but I am sure the list is lengthy. Edit: P.S. Amazon is the other obvious one.
- Aicy 4y ago
  There is great risk in migrating your app to an app store that no one yet uses, even if you are amazon
  - yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
    What's the risk? Assuming that it's not exclusive, that is
    - enjo 4y ago
      Apple will make that decision for you. I'll bet anything they would require exclusivity for listing in their store (in the event they're forced to allow for third party installs).
  - Gigachad 4y ago
    You can provide the app on both and make all IAPs 30% cheaper on the alt store. Most apps already make purchases 30% more on the app vs their web version.
    - kibwen 4y ago
      If Apple doesn't provide services that are worth the cost of the 30% cut, then they deserve to lose that revenue.
      - ethanbond 4y ago
        Their argument is that that service is provided continuously by virtue of people having (and buying year after year) the handsets that you’re trying to install on. So this all comports: you’re free to make your own App Store and not get the 30% cut, but in exchange you will not have a billion device user base on day 1 to ship your apps to.
        Gigachad 4y ago
        This is about as correct as saying people support everything the government does because they voted for them. But the reality is there aren’t that many choices and too many results are bundled in with one choice. Maybe apple makes the nicest hardware and someone buys for that reason but it doesn’t mean they support the App Store lock-in.
deltarholamda 4y ago
>and I think it's up to them how they want to run it But it isn't. Or it shouldn't be. Apple is a corporation, and as long as the corporation is an American corporation, the corporation should be regulated for the benefit of the citizens of America. (insert laugh track here)
- kilolima 4y ago
  But their stockholders are citizens!
b4je7d7wb 4y ago
It's apple's appstore that is being dystopian. Not being able to install free apps without providing a credit card is ridicilous. I have 0 apps from the appstore on my work laptop for this reason.
- Gigachad 4y ago
  Meh I don’t see much issue with this. I think they should be able to run their AppStore however they want but it’s when they tie in too many products together like the iPhone and the App Store that it becomes an issue because you simply can not have alternatives this way. If you could install your own App Store, there would be no issues.
- eigen 4y ago
  > Not being able to install free apps without providing a credit card is ridicilous you can use the App store without a credit card. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204316 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204316 >4. Enter your credit card and billing information, then tap Next. You can also choose None.
hk1337 4y ago
I think Apple needs to get back on the web app train and make iOS Safari more useable for people to do things in safari and not have to create a native application.
- EGreg 4y ago
  Notifications are coming in 2023 And contactpicker is behind an experimental flag. When are they launching it?? What more do you want :)
  - leesalminen 4y ago
    WebNFC, for one.
  - hk1337 4y ago
    Honestly, the big thing I think is just keeping step with standardizations. Google tends to do the same thing with Chrome or perhaps it's that frontend developers tend to implement Chrome experimental features a lot. It would be great to deploy a simple site or PWA without a lot of catches where "if it's this browser do X or if it's another do Y.
- bob1029 4y ago
  > make iOS Safari more useable I'd argue it's really good in 2022. We only distribute our software as a web app these days. Many of our customers exclusively use iOS Safari to access it. We even got the PWA stuff working reliably. Our web app runs full-screen on iOS devices and is launched from an icon on the home screen. For most users, there is absolutely zero difference between this and a native iOS app experience.
  - mysterydip 4y ago
    Do you have a set of guidelines or boilerplate css/js to do this? I want to do the same but the solutions I've seen online and tried have been a mixed bag.
    - 4y ago
DevX101 4y ago
Microsoft got hit with anti-trust enforcement for doing a small fraction of what Apple does. Both political parties in the U.S. seem to have abandoned anti-trust regulation in the past 20 years.
- fishcrackers 4y ago
  William Gates was basicly a crimelord
- int_19h 4y ago
  More like 40 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Antitrust_Paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Antitrust_Paradox Microsoft got hit because it had, what, >90% of the desktop PC market? And that at the time where the mobile market was so niche (Palm etc) that it could be disregarded. Apple is hovering around 50% of the market. It's certainly market-dominant, but by the standards of the 90s and the Microsoft anti-trust case, it's nowhere even close. By the pre-Bork standards, that's a very different story. Here's how we used to run things: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/370/294/ https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/370/294/ "The District Court found that the merger would increase concentration in the shoe industry, both in manufacturing and retailing, eliminate one of the corporations as a substantial competitor in the retail field, and establish a manufacturer-retailer relationship which would deprive all but the top firms in the industry of a fair opportunity to compete, and that, therefore, it probably would result in a further substantial lessening of competition and an increased tendency toward monopoly. ... The District Court was correct in concluding that this merger may tend to lessen competition substantially ... The judgment is affirmed." And how much market share did the two companies in question have? "... the combined share of Brown and Kinney sales of women's shoes (by unit volume) exceeded 20%. In 31 cities -- some the same as those used in measuring the effect of the merger in the women's line -- the combined share of children's shoes sales exceeded 20%; in 6 cities, their share exceeded 40%. In Dodge City, Kansas, their combined share of the market for women's shoes was over 57%; their share of the children's shoe market in that city was 49%. In the 7 cities in which Brown's and Kinney's combined shares of the market for women's shoes were greatest (ranging from 33% to 57%), each of the parties alone, prior to the merger, had captured substantial portions of those markets (ranging from 13% to 34%); the merger intensified this existing concentration. In 118 separate cities, the combined shares of the market of Brown and Kinney in the sale of one of the relevant lines of commerce exceeded 5%. In 47 cities, their share exceeded 5% in all three lines."
josephd79 4y ago
You can “install” the apps from the web. Their called PWA. People have been trained to just download apps from the App or Play store. Now some apps have to be native, but most of the apps I see people using can be saved as a PWA and still do the almost the same stuff the do in the native app. Ie doom scroll for hours.

by jmull 4y ago

lol768 4y ago

> I really think Apple needs to allow alternative stores. They're not going to have a choice. https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_22_6423 https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_22_...

tcoff91 4y ago
I wonder if they'll restrict this to EU-only. So perhaps europeans will have more access than the rest of us.
- aliqot 4y ago
  we need china to oppose centralized app markets, then we're set.

eftychis 4y ago

They have lots to fear as they get a 30% cut. One "simply" needs to launch their own app store and save millions, and aggregate other companies on their store. I can think of Epic Games as a first thought, but I am sure the list is lengthy. Edit: P.S. Amazon is the other obvious one.

Aicy 4y ago
There is great risk in migrating your app to an app store that no one yet uses, even if you are amazon
- yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
  What's the risk? Assuming that it's not exclusive, that is
  - enjo 4y ago
    Apple will make that decision for you. I'll bet anything they would require exclusivity for listing in their store (in the event they're forced to allow for third party installs).
- Gigachad 4y ago
  You can provide the app on both and make all IAPs 30% cheaper on the alt store. Most apps already make purchases 30% more on the app vs their web version.
  - kibwen 4y ago
    If Apple doesn't provide services that are worth the cost of the 30% cut, then they deserve to lose that revenue.
    - ethanbond 4y ago
      Their argument is that that service is provided continuously by virtue of people having (and buying year after year) the handsets that you’re trying to install on. So this all comports: you’re free to make your own App Store and not get the 30% cut, but in exchange you will not have a billion device user base on day 1 to ship your apps to.
      - Gigachad 4y ago
        This is about as correct as saying people support everything the government does because they voted for them. But the reality is there aren’t that many choices and too many results are bundled in with one choice. Maybe apple makes the nicest hardware and someone buys for that reason but it doesn’t mean they support the App Store lock-in.

deltarholamda 4y ago

>and I think it's up to them how they want to run it But it isn't. Or it shouldn't be. Apple is a corporation, and as long as the corporation is an American corporation, the corporation should be regulated for the benefit of the citizens of America. (insert laugh track here)

kilolima 4y ago
But their stockholders are citizens!

b4je7d7wb 4y ago

It's apple's appstore that is being dystopian. Not being able to install free apps without providing a credit card is ridicilous. I have 0 apps from the appstore on my work laptop for this reason.

Gigachad 4y ago
Meh I don’t see much issue with this. I think they should be able to run their AppStore however they want but it’s when they tie in too many products together like the iPhone and the App Store that it becomes an issue because you simply can not have alternatives this way. If you could install your own App Store, there would be no issues.
eigen 4y ago
> Not being able to install free apps without providing a credit card is ridicilous you can use the App store without a credit card. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204316 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204316 >4. Enter your credit card and billing information, then tap Next. You can also choose None.

hk1337 4y ago

I think Apple needs to get back on the web app train and make iOS Safari more useable for people to do things in safari and not have to create a native application.

EGreg 4y ago
Notifications are coming in 2023 And contactpicker is behind an experimental flag. When are they launching it?? What more do you want :)
- leesalminen 4y ago
  WebNFC, for one.
- hk1337 4y ago
  Honestly, the big thing I think is just keeping step with standardizations. Google tends to do the same thing with Chrome or perhaps it's that frontend developers tend to implement Chrome experimental features a lot. It would be great to deploy a simple site or PWA without a lot of catches where "if it's this browser do X or if it's another do Y.
bob1029 4y ago
> make iOS Safari more useable I'd argue it's really good in 2022. We only distribute our software as a web app these days. Many of our customers exclusively use iOS Safari to access it. We even got the PWA stuff working reliably. Our web app runs full-screen on iOS devices and is launched from an icon on the home screen. For most users, there is absolutely zero difference between this and a native iOS app experience.
- mysterydip 4y ago
  Do you have a set of guidelines or boilerplate css/js to do this? I want to do the same but the solutions I've seen online and tried have been a mixed bag.
  - 4y ago

DevX101 4y ago

Microsoft got hit with anti-trust enforcement for doing a small fraction of what Apple does. Both political parties in the U.S. seem to have abandoned anti-trust regulation in the past 20 years.

fishcrackers 4y ago
William Gates was basicly a crimelord
int_19h 4y ago
More like 40 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Antitrust_Paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Antitrust_Paradox Microsoft got hit because it had, what, >90% of the desktop PC market? And that at the time where the mobile market was so niche (Palm etc) that it could be disregarded. Apple is hovering around 50% of the market. It's certainly market-dominant, but by the standards of the 90s and the Microsoft anti-trust case, it's nowhere even close. By the pre-Bork standards, that's a very different story. Here's how we used to run things: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/370/294/ https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/370/294/ "The District Court found that the merger would increase concentration in the shoe industry, both in manufacturing and retailing, eliminate one of the corporations as a substantial competitor in the retail field, and establish a manufacturer-retailer relationship which would deprive all but the top firms in the industry of a fair opportunity to compete, and that, therefore, it probably would result in a further substantial lessening of competition and an increased tendency toward monopoly. ... The District Court was correct in concluding that this merger may tend to lessen competition substantially ... The judgment is affirmed." And how much market share did the two companies in question have? "... the combined share of Brown and Kinney sales of women's shoes (by unit volume) exceeded 20%. In 31 cities -- some the same as those used in measuring the effect of the merger in the women's line -- the combined share of children's shoes sales exceeded 20%; in 6 cities, their share exceeded 40%. In Dodge City, Kansas, their combined share of the market for women's shoes was over 57%; their share of the children's shoe market in that city was 49%. In the 7 cities in which Brown's and Kinney's combined shares of the market for women's shoes were greatest (ranging from 33% to 57%), each of the parties alone, prior to the merger, had captured substantial portions of those markets (ranging from 13% to 34%); the merger intensified this existing concentration. In 118 separate cities, the combined shares of the market of Brown and Kinney in the sale of one of the relevant lines of commerce exceeded 5%. In 47 cities, their share exceeded 5% in all three lines."

josephd79 4y ago

You can “install” the apps from the web. Their called PWA. People have been trained to just download apps from the App or Play store. Now some apps have to be native, but most of the apps I see people using can be saved as a PWA and still do the almost the same stuff the do in the native app. Ie doom scroll for hours.