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Yet multiple times I’ve seen people on this site defend Apples approval process as a good thing since they get such a great curated experience as a consumer. Bu

by waprin 3y ago

Yet multiple times I’ve seen people on this site defend Apples approval process as a good thing since they get such a great curated experience as a consumer. But here’s the thing - you don’t know what you’re missing because you never see it. If this persons idea was for iPhone instead of macOS it would never benefit those thousands of users that it did. And - I’m going to put this bluntly while trying not to be too rude - Apple does not assign the best of the best to their App Store approval process. The experience is rife with reviewers who seem to have never looked at your app and are incapable of communicating in English outside the scope of auto form responses. Imagine the worst call center experience you’ve ever had as a customer - now you get that experience after having put hundreds or thousands of hours into a project and in some cases , a business of yours. And your concerns are a speck of dust to this trillion dollar company. And let’s be real - you can’t seriously make a mobile app and ignore iPhones. It’s not a pure monopoly but they effectively have the leverage of one. It’s unimaginable to me that on a site called hacker news I would see support for such incredibly antagonistic behavior towards developers that Apple exhibits but unfortunately I have multiple times so I hope this persons brilliant keyboard app that has helped so many people serves as one of the many many examples as to how Apples broken App Store process hurts developers and hurts consumers and benefits absolutely nobody. I haven’t even touched upon the fact that you have to pay $99/year and THIRTY percent of revenue for the privilege of this experience. The simple solution is a legal mandate to allow third party app stores. It’s fine if Apple wants the official rails to be highly curated but there simply must be an off-ramp. We are so lucky that European regulators have some sense here.

wruza 3y ago
The missing out is real, but it is still a tradeoff. I’d prefer the world where we could have both all the reasonable apps and no spyware/pii-ransomware nonsense in app stores. But we only have this one and have to share it. You don’t see it as a tradeoff, that’s okay. But voting to ruin the experience that people actually liked for decades… that’s hard to understand.
specialist 3y ago
> THIRTY percent of revenue What is a reasonable percentage? > ...a legal mandate to allow third party app stores. My proposal is a bit more, um, simple: Apple's App Store must be spun off and operated as an entirely separate entity. Maybe even run as a nonprofit org. I cannot abide by markets also competing with their own vendors. Apple cannot both run the App Store and sell its own apps on it. They must pick a lane and stick to it. Ditto Amazon, Walmart, Google, etc. Amazon can be an e-commerce site or sell Amazon Basic (etc), but not both. Said another way: No vertically integrated monopolies. Dominate one market, by default or by design, fine (sort of). But using that domination to enter and dominate other markets, adjacent or otherwise, is not allowed.
- komali2 3y ago
  > My proposal is a bit more, um, simple: I think your suggestion is kinda based, but it's definitely not more simple, as it would require targeting a single company and enforcing a monopoly action against it to force it to split up. I believe the last time that happened in the USA was 1982 when Bell System was broken up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System Meanwhile a legal mandate to allow third party app stores can be accomplished more simply (imo) similar to how the EU forced Apple to use USB-C: market directives.
  - pyrale 3y ago
    Let's be honest, there's probably a dozen antitrust actions that are overdue in the US tech sector, and since the US doj has ignored that issue for so long, it now probably needs to be done the Standard Oil way, with a hacksaw. Of course it's not going to be easy, but the current situation happens because for 4 decades the US has taken the easy way, or done nothing at all. As for simplicity, it lies in the fact that lighter actions often don't produce enough effect, can be side-stepped or simply ignored without continuous oversight. On the other hand, when you force divestment and bust corporate control, it is much easier to guarantee that the desired effect happens.
jodrellblank 3y ago
> "you don’t know what you’re missing because you never see it." I saw the Cydia store, I see the Google Play store, I see the Microsoft Windows store, I see the internet outside the stores and all the software offerings on the web and on GitHub and Sourceforge and all the rest. What makes you think there's some secret buried treasure of high quality apps and not an overwhelming noise of 99% crud? And no, one example of a good program doesn't refute this, this is not a claim that there are zero good programs outside the app store (or even that there are 100% good programs inside it), this is a claim that removing moderation would be like removing the walls of your house in winter - how dare you try to keep the heat in and the cold out when I know of some warm places outside; the majority of places outside are cold. This is like wishing for unmoderated blog comments; I like this blog[1] but see how long the scrollbar is, scroll down until the original sensible comments turn into spam. Yes there may be a good comment lost in anti-spam moderation systems, but getting rid of them is worse. [1] https://yosefk.com/blog/compensation-rationality-and-the-projectperson-fit.html https://yosefk.com/blog/compensation-rationality-and-the-pro...
- komali2 3y ago
  Your concern is addressed in the OP: > The simple solution is a legal mandate to allow third party app stores. It’s fine if Apple wants the official rails to be highly curated but there simply must be an off-ramp. Right now Apple has an effective monopoly on the software that can run on its machines, especially the iPhone which is extraordinarily difficult to install non-appstore software on. I don't understand why that's considered acceptable when we once pilloried microsoft for having internet explorer be uninstallable. In that case you could at least still install whatever other browser you wanted... (obviously software being uninstallable is also bad) > What makes you think there's some secret buried treasure of high quality apps and not an overwhelming noise of 99% crud? This could be because of the barrier to entry to getting software onto the platform. I don't really face this problem with other platforms, such as Android or Linux. Maybe because I have my own curation process though, which brings me to my final point: If 3rd party app stores were mandated, not only does that allow users to install the software of their choice on the computers they purchased, it also allows competitive markets. Apple right now can (and might?) pull an Amazon and promote their own products/software over others' because they own the market and the algos that run the search on the market. They can prop up their partners, and they can charge whatever markup they please to be listed in their curated experience. 3rd party markets means new algos representing different needs without daddy Apple getting say-so. F-droid is a great example. The various marketplaces for linux software is another: Ubuntu's official repositories, Arch's, etc, with offramps in the form of AUR or just compiling software on your own that you find on your favorite search engine or forum if you're so inclined. Apple's app store is monopolistic behavior, plain and simple. You can love it, you can have it, it's actually quite fine imo for there to be an official software repo, but there must be an offramp to enforce user freedom.

by waprin 3y ago

wruza 3y ago

The missing out is real, but it is still a tradeoff. I’d prefer the world where we could have both all the reasonable apps and no spyware/pii-ransomware nonsense in app stores. But we only have this one and have to share it. You don’t see it as a tradeoff, that’s okay. But voting to ruin the experience that people actually liked for decades… that’s hard to understand.

specialist 3y ago

> THIRTY percent of revenue What is a reasonable percentage? > ...a legal mandate to allow third party app stores. My proposal is a bit more, um, simple: Apple's App Store must be spun off and operated as an entirely separate entity. Maybe even run as a nonprofit org. I cannot abide by markets also competing with their own vendors. Apple cannot both run the App Store and sell its own apps on it. They must pick a lane and stick to it. Ditto Amazon, Walmart, Google, etc. Amazon can be an e-commerce site or sell Amazon Basic (etc), but not both. Said another way: No vertically integrated monopolies. Dominate one market, by default or by design, fine (sort of). But using that domination to enter and dominate other markets, adjacent or otherwise, is not allowed.

komali2 3y ago
> My proposal is a bit more, um, simple: I think your suggestion is kinda based, but it's definitely not more simple, as it would require targeting a single company and enforcing a monopoly action against it to force it to split up. I believe the last time that happened in the USA was 1982 when Bell System was broken up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System Meanwhile a legal mandate to allow third party app stores can be accomplished more simply (imo) similar to how the EU forced Apple to use USB-C: market directives.
- pyrale 3y ago
  Let's be honest, there's probably a dozen antitrust actions that are overdue in the US tech sector, and since the US doj has ignored that issue for so long, it now probably needs to be done the Standard Oil way, with a hacksaw. Of course it's not going to be easy, but the current situation happens because for 4 decades the US has taken the easy way, or done nothing at all. As for simplicity, it lies in the fact that lighter actions often don't produce enough effect, can be side-stepped or simply ignored without continuous oversight. On the other hand, when you force divestment and bust corporate control, it is much easier to guarantee that the desired effect happens.

jodrellblank 3y ago

> "you don’t know what you’re missing because you never see it." I saw the Cydia store, I see the Google Play store, I see the Microsoft Windows store, I see the internet outside the stores and all the software offerings on the web and on GitHub and Sourceforge and all the rest. What makes you think there's some secret buried treasure of high quality apps and not an overwhelming noise of 99% crud? And no, one example of a good program doesn't refute this, this is not a claim that there are zero good programs outside the app store (or even that there are 100% good programs inside it), this is a claim that removing moderation would be like removing the walls of your house in winter - how dare you try to keep the heat in and the cold out when I know of some warm places outside; the majority of places outside are cold. This is like wishing for unmoderated blog comments; I like this blog[1] but see how long the scrollbar is, scroll down until the original sensible comments turn into spam. Yes there may be a good comment lost in anti-spam moderation systems, but getting rid of them is worse. [1] https://yosefk.com/blog/compensation-rationality-and-the-projectperson-fit.html https://yosefk.com/blog/compensation-rationality-and-the-pro...

komali2 3y ago
Your concern is addressed in the OP: > The simple solution is a legal mandate to allow third party app stores. It’s fine if Apple wants the official rails to be highly curated but there simply must be an off-ramp. Right now Apple has an effective monopoly on the software that can run on its machines, especially the iPhone which is extraordinarily difficult to install non-appstore software on. I don't understand why that's considered acceptable when we once pilloried microsoft for having internet explorer be uninstallable. In that case you could at least still install whatever other browser you wanted... (obviously software being uninstallable is also bad) > What makes you think there's some secret buried treasure of high quality apps and not an overwhelming noise of 99% crud? This could be because of the barrier to entry to getting software onto the platform. I don't really face this problem with other platforms, such as Android or Linux. Maybe because I have my own curation process though, which brings me to my final point: If 3rd party app stores were mandated, not only does that allow users to install the software of their choice on the computers they purchased, it also allows competitive markets. Apple right now can (and might?) pull an Amazon and promote their own products/software over others' because they own the market and the algos that run the search on the market. They can prop up their partners, and they can charge whatever markup they please to be listed in their curated experience. 3rd party markets means new algos representing different needs without daddy Apple getting say-so. F-droid is a great example. The various marketplaces for linux software is another: Ubuntu's official repositories, Arch's, etc, with offramps in the form of AUR or just compiling software on your own that you find on your favorite search engine or forum if you're so inclined. Apple's app store is monopolistic behavior, plain and simple. You can love it, you can have it, it's actually quite fine imo for there to be an official software repo, but there must be an offramp to enforce user freedom.