6 ms·

Apple's punitive compliance will burn its political and developer goodwill

109 points by hexage1814 3y ago

6R1M0R4CL3 3y ago
[dead]
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
sonofhans 3y ago
This is a polemic, close to flamebait, and I don’t think will lead to much useful discussion here. It has few facts and many ad hominems. There are better articles about this.
- juunpp 3y ago
  The shit don't even have proofreading. Leave it to TechCrunch to write the narrative. > and developers feeling spurned and insulted enough will be more likely to wan too help replicate Wan too, wan too, testing.
  - ben_w 3y ago
    > wan too That mistake looks like the result of a voice-to-text conversion; I wouldn't be surprised if it was proof read, but by text-to-speech which would hide that mistake in the other direction, too.
candiodari 3y ago
... and the alternative is? Apple management answers to shareholders and "service income" is the only thing in Apple earnings that hasn't been going down for years.
- nicce 3y ago
  What? Didn't Apple just go over Samsung. Not to mention M series laptops... https://www.reuters.com/technology/apple-overtakes-samsung-top-seller-smartphones-2024-01-17/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/apple-overtakes-samsung-t...
  - dmoy 3y ago
    Sure, but those are tangentially related to the GP statement about profit growth. Samsung raw unit sales of smartphones have been decreasing since ... what like 2015 or something? So simply by keeping sales equal, Apple could overtake Samsung in sales. But that wouldn't necessarily indicate an increase in profit. It's definitely true that services is Apple's biggest income growth right now. And the revenue is already double that of all Macs
- pc_edwin 3y ago
  The alternative is to take the L and turn it into a win. Being forced to open up by both the EU and homefront is more than enough a mandate for Tim and the rest of the leadership to make the transition without any trouble from shareholders. They can use this to really open up the platform and solidify their marketshare. Now instead you have every major player that doesn't already have its own distribution (Meta, AMZN, NFLX) looking for the exists. As a side note, this is why I think Zuckerberg burning tens of billions in AR/VR R&D was such a good move. It gave them a foothold in the next thing. I'll be surprised if the rest of MANGA wont follow suit and double down after what Apple is doing.
- MSFT_Edging 3y ago
  It's amazing how "shareholders" is now an effective reason to flout regulation and perform malicious compliance. It's almost too perfect in passing around the blame. Apple does something shitty, they had to because they owe it to the shareholders. The shareholders are protected by the fiduciary protection allotted to their gamble so the company is in no way responsible for having an ethical or socially beneficial business model. Corporate interests have us all by the balls.
- realusername 3y ago
mvdtnz 3y ago
Any developer who was already developing for the Apple platform doesn't care about being bent over a barrel by Apple.
- mcfedr 3y ago
  When there is a monopoly you are forced to deal with them
  - mvdtnz 3y ago
    I've been developing software for 15 years and have never written a single line of code for an Apple device, and never will. While Apple has a monopoly on software for iOS and iPad devices, you do not need to develop for these platforms (and you shouldn't). Any effort you put into their ecosystem only emboldens this awful company.
alexfromapex 3y ago
I would call it malicious compliance at this point. The flippant contempt for anti-trust measures that large companies have openly demonstrated without repercussions for decades is a major reason America may enter into economic decline and doesn’t truly have a free market.
- FredPret 3y ago
  American corporations invented the “trust” concept that anti-trust rules are named after in the mid-1800’s. The legislation was initially just a list of things that Standard Oil actually did. America will be just fine. The biggest factor perpetuating the free market and the decline of monopolies is tech progress and the MBA-ification of big companies.
  - pc_edwin 3y ago
    This is true but the thing is, it can take a decade of two for the free market to do its thing. Its really hard to break network effects, especially at Apples scale. If it was just gonna end with a minor gatekeeping fee, I can see myself (and other) just biting the bullet but history suggests that this is just the beginning of a massive descent.
    - FredPret 3y ago
      Descent for Apple - maybe. Descent of the free market - no, this is how it's supposed to work. Monopolies can be good for a short while for the economy, although they always go sour after a while. Standard Oil provided clean(er) and safe(r) lighting and fuel for millions around the world, developing ultra efficient refining and distribution techniques. They even saved the whales by accident. M$ was much-reviled in the 90's, but their PC monopoly helped establish a standard for computing, which almost certainly contributed positively to the rapid development of hardware and the internet in that time. The same is true for the iPhone ecosystem and the large-country-sized app economy it spawned. But if Apple doesn't keep innovating (truly new products, not just newer phones and iOS'es), no amount of monopolistic action will keep them afloat and in fact would probably hasten their decline. These big corpo's become the victims of the economic and technical progress they create.
ramshanker 3y ago
EU compliance is highlighting all the loopholes for other jurisdictions to close in their respective law. US and Other nations may decide better worded law now. ;)
- crossroadsguy 3y ago
  Or be "handled" with proper good old lobbying?
  - TheLoafOfBread 3y ago
    Well Japan is already following EU's steps https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2023/06/16/business/japan-apple-google-apps-stores/ https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2023/06/16/business/japan-...
- madsbuch 3y ago
  As with many other tech companies, Apple decide themselves when they think they satisfy the requirements of law. From now on it will be the courts work to figure out whether that is the case. Right now, we don't know for these changes. But the EU has been seen handing out fines before, because of the tech companies malicious interpretations – so I don't think it will be unreasonable to assume it will happen again.
cynicalsecurity 3y ago
Apple's official announcement on implementation of the new EU regulations sounded very fear mongering and manipulative, as something an authoritarian cult would write. Reminded me of the writing style of the Watchtower cult magazines. https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2024/01/apple-announces-changes-to-ios-safari-and-the-app-store-in-the-european-union/ https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2024/01/apple-announces-chang...
kjkjadksj 3y ago
Developers are already dropping support for macos, at least game devs are after making a big deal of starting to support macs 15 years ago. Too bad considering how powerful the hardware is finally on these macs.
- vaylian 3y ago
  I'm out of the loop. What happened?
  - drooopy 3y ago
    Blizzard hasn't released a new game for macOS since Heroes of the storm back in 2015 and valve has pulled support for Steam VR on mac and won't even bother updating most of their games to intel 64 bit binaries in order to get them working even under rosetta. Also, they won't release CSGO2 for macOS, proton is not supported on macos nor do they have any immediate plans to update steam to a universal binary for AS macs.
  - incangold 3y ago
    This is a fairly typical example from 2 years ago: https://www.vintagestory.at/blog.html/news/dropping-official https://www.vintagestory.at/blog.html/news/dropping-official... [edit] although for context this team rolls their own engine. If you’re using Unity or Unreal > 5.2 (May 2023) things are slowly improving.
  - shantara 3y ago
    Apple dropped support for 32 bit binaries, then migrated from Intel to ARM architecture, breaking backwards compatibility in major way. This led to the inability to run the absolute majority of the existing library of games on the recent Apple hardware and OS. Unlike the devs in the Apple ecosystem who are used to be on the constant treadmill of app updates to accommodate Apple constantly breaking and changing things with every release, this is incompatible with the gaming industry release model, where after the patch cycle the devs can move onto the next project and rely on the backwards compatibility to trust that their released games will keep running for years and decades into the future. So when Apple broke this unspoken agreement, the game devs have simply left their existing games in whatever broken state they were, and decided against releasing their future projects on macOS, supporting which wasn't financially viable in the long term, given the time needed and the relatively small percentage of playerbase which uses it.
daeros 3y ago
All Apple Deserves from the Press is polemics.
garmonbozia8668 3y ago
I’m mobile iOS developer and have been for several years. The different pain points with iOS development (documentation, Apple) and how Apple is behaving right now, is so disgusting that I want to change focus to anything else than Apple development.
- donor20 3y ago
  Apple exists to serve customers not developers, theyve made that clear. If you want a force installed unremovable app deployment work with the android folks - plenty of ways to ship stuff there in nasty ways
- sumuyuda 3y ago
  I transitioned off iOS development this year. I had been doing macOS and iOS development close to 10 years. Apple’s behavior has really put me off their platform as both a developer and user.
endisneigh 3y ago
Good. They should make things that aren’t restricted to a single platform.
drooopy 3y ago
It doesn't make any business sense whatsoever to antagonize developers right about when they're about to launch a new product that will need 3rd party support.
ksec 3y ago
Tim Cook's Apple has all the stubbornness, arrogance of Steve Jobs's Apple while completely lack Steve Jobs's wisdom and courage to change direction. It has now fully becomes an Operation, Sales and Marketing company.
- barelysapient 3y ago
  And yet, the company is one of the most valuable in the world. If consumers hated this, they'd vote with they wallets.
  - CharlesW 3y ago
    First, how dare you. Here on HN we don't believe that consumers are qualified to make decisions like this.
    - barelysapient 3y ago
      Humblest apologies. I stand corrected. :)
- FredPret 3y ago
  There have been some pro-consumer developments. Thicker devices with better batteries, MacBooks with many ports, iPads with pencils.
- kjkjadksj 3y ago
  And on top of that we are entering this era of developers stopping to give them the time of day at least on the mac platform. Historically developers used to build for mac without seemingly much fuss, that’s just how the industry seemed to work you’d have a native mac and pc app. These days it seems software decisions are made by bean counters more than ever, who look at the numbers at hand with how few today are on the mac platform (or how many people “game” on an ios device perhaps), and don’t bother continuing support. Even popular, seemingly more community supporting developers like Valve are dropping mac support after supporting the platform for over a decade even porting older games over like cs 1.6 in that time. Meanwhile at the apple press conference they are saying how these new macs support ray tracing and are a leap over the m1, seemingly with their heads in the sand at the fact you can probably count on one hand the number of large studios actively developing for their platform today, and that number is liable to shrink with the years if this trend is any indication.
zer00eyz 3y ago
I have to say: I have had to call apple quite a number of times for product issues. I have almost always left a happier customer. I know folks who work in CS at Apple. They put up with a lot of nonsense from end users (they have good work stories for sure). They are paid well (living wage), they get stock options, and all of them LOVE their job. Customer support and loving your job is fuckin rare. I have done CC processing in the past. Candidly the 5-7 percent you pay to do it yourself has the hidden cost of managing charge backs. As a small developer that's NOT something I want to do for a personal/side/small project. The apple users love it because they KNOW they can call, cancel and get a refund... (and when they dont it's probably because they have been abusing the system, but I digress). SO here is a company that makes a high quality product, charges obscene margins based on brand, doesn't fuck over it staff (apple employee you pee in a bottle lately, you making good money?), has rabidly loyal customers, and seems intent on not turning them into a product or handing their shit over to the government... I'm not sure from where I sit, where I have a right to complain about the 30 percent transaction tax.
- echelon 3y ago
  > I'm not sure from where I sit, where I have a right to complain about the 30 percent transaction tax. I didn't choose for Apple to win 50% of US mobile and for the other company to also have draconian rules about deploying software and taxing it. I don't care how much Apple hand holds grandma. Mobile is a hellscape for developers and other companies. The idea that distributing your software should subjugate you to paying taxes to a private company (one that can compete with you) is surreal. Moreover, mobile is what most consumers use now. You have to be present on mobile to reach them. Web should have been enough, but it isn't. And to make it worse, it's knee-capped to suck on mobile. It's impossible to enter this market and compete on hardware, so we won't get any reprieve unless regulators put a stop to this. We need to be able to deploy software at zero cost. Without scare walls or adversarial advertising. Or mandates to use certain software choices. Or mandatory reviews. I'll stop bitching about Apple and Google when that happens.
  - kiratp 3y ago
    > I don't care how much Apple hand holds grandma. Mobile is a hellscape for developers and other companies. As a developer and founder, grandma before developers. Every time. iOS is the first platform my family can just run with safely.
pc_edwin 3y ago
Microsoft did the exact same thing and it took them the better part of almost two decades to undo the damage. The difference here is the entire map has shifted. Tech is no longer just a niche or a B2B thing. Pretty much everyone in the western world is a stakeholder and they chose piss us all off. This is not gonna end well for Apple. Such a short sighted move by the leadership that has me doubting their leadership.
CharlesW 3y ago
From the perspective of someone who used to do developer relations for Apple, developers have never had "goodwill" for Apple. "Goodwill" is an emotional plea. Developers do not make platform support decisions based on emotions¹. Developers need to eat. EU developers will choose to create an App Store competitor or not based on which option they believe will help them make more money. If they believe the new path mandated by the EU will help them make more money, they will take it. If not, they will continue on the current path. Developers support iOS and App Store because they make money. They will continue to support iOS and App Store as long as they can make money. If that ceases to be true, developers will reevaluate their support Apple's platform(s). ¹ In aggregate, of course. Some developers have enough money and don't answer to anybody, and so have the luxury of making platform support decisions based on emotional factors.
matt3210 3y ago
Developers have the option of remaining in the original tos
oldpersonintx 3y ago
[dead]
chmaynard 3y ago
This post is pure clickbait. I'm flagging it as inappropriate for HN.
benguild 3y ago
Look at how popular the Mac App Store is. If iOS didn’t force it, it could turn into a similar graveyard given that devs don’t want to pay 15-30%.

109 points by hexage1814 3y ago

6R1M0R4CL3 3y ago

[dead]

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

sonofhans 3y ago

This is a polemic, close to flamebait, and I don’t think will lead to much useful discussion here. It has few facts and many ad hominems. There are better articles about this.

juunpp 3y ago
The shit don't even have proofreading. Leave it to TechCrunch to write the narrative. > and developers feeling spurned and insulted enough will be more likely to wan too help replicate Wan too, wan too, testing.
- ben_w 3y ago
  > wan too That mistake looks like the result of a voice-to-text conversion; I wouldn't be surprised if it was proof read, but by text-to-speech which would hide that mistake in the other direction, too.

candiodari 3y ago

... and the alternative is? Apple management answers to shareholders and "service income" is the only thing in Apple earnings that hasn't been going down for years.

nicce 3y ago
What? Didn't Apple just go over Samsung. Not to mention M series laptops... https://www.reuters.com/technology/apple-overtakes-samsung-top-seller-smartphones-2024-01-17/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/apple-overtakes-samsung-t...
- dmoy 3y ago
  Sure, but those are tangentially related to the GP statement about profit growth. Samsung raw unit sales of smartphones have been decreasing since ... what like 2015 or something? So simply by keeping sales equal, Apple could overtake Samsung in sales. But that wouldn't necessarily indicate an increase in profit. It's definitely true that services is Apple's biggest income growth right now. And the revenue is already double that of all Macs
pc_edwin 3y ago
The alternative is to take the L and turn it into a win. Being forced to open up by both the EU and homefront is more than enough a mandate for Tim and the rest of the leadership to make the transition without any trouble from shareholders. They can use this to really open up the platform and solidify their marketshare. Now instead you have every major player that doesn't already have its own distribution (Meta, AMZN, NFLX) looking for the exists. As a side note, this is why I think Zuckerberg burning tens of billions in AR/VR R&D was such a good move. It gave them a foothold in the next thing. I'll be surprised if the rest of MANGA wont follow suit and double down after what Apple is doing.
MSFT_Edging 3y ago
It's amazing how "shareholders" is now an effective reason to flout regulation and perform malicious compliance. It's almost too perfect in passing around the blame. Apple does something shitty, they had to because they owe it to the shareholders. The shareholders are protected by the fiduciary protection allotted to their gamble so the company is in no way responsible for having an ethical or socially beneficial business model. Corporate interests have us all by the balls.
realusername 3y ago

mvdtnz 3y ago

Any developer who was already developing for the Apple platform doesn't care about being bent over a barrel by Apple.

mcfedr 3y ago
When there is a monopoly you are forced to deal with them
- mvdtnz 3y ago
  I've been developing software for 15 years and have never written a single line of code for an Apple device, and never will. While Apple has a monopoly on software for iOS and iPad devices, you do not need to develop for these platforms (and you shouldn't). Any effort you put into their ecosystem only emboldens this awful company.

alexfromapex 3y ago

I would call it malicious compliance at this point. The flippant contempt for anti-trust measures that large companies have openly demonstrated without repercussions for decades is a major reason America may enter into economic decline and doesn’t truly have a free market.

FredPret 3y ago
American corporations invented the “trust” concept that anti-trust rules are named after in the mid-1800’s. The legislation was initially just a list of things that Standard Oil actually did. America will be just fine. The biggest factor perpetuating the free market and the decline of monopolies is tech progress and the MBA-ification of big companies.
- pc_edwin 3y ago
  This is true but the thing is, it can take a decade of two for the free market to do its thing. Its really hard to break network effects, especially at Apples scale. If it was just gonna end with a minor gatekeeping fee, I can see myself (and other) just biting the bullet but history suggests that this is just the beginning of a massive descent.
  - FredPret 3y ago
    Descent for Apple - maybe. Descent of the free market - no, this is how it's supposed to work. Monopolies can be good for a short while for the economy, although they always go sour after a while. Standard Oil provided clean(er) and safe(r) lighting and fuel for millions around the world, developing ultra efficient refining and distribution techniques. They even saved the whales by accident. M$ was much-reviled in the 90's, but their PC monopoly helped establish a standard for computing, which almost certainly contributed positively to the rapid development of hardware and the internet in that time. The same is true for the iPhone ecosystem and the large-country-sized app economy it spawned. But if Apple doesn't keep innovating (truly new products, not just newer phones and iOS'es), no amount of monopolistic action will keep them afloat and in fact would probably hasten their decline. These big corpo's become the victims of the economic and technical progress they create.

ramshanker 3y ago

EU compliance is highlighting all the loopholes for other jurisdictions to close in their respective law. US and Other nations may decide better worded law now. ;)

crossroadsguy 3y ago
Or be "handled" with proper good old lobbying?
- TheLoafOfBread 3y ago
  Well Japan is already following EU's steps https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2023/06/16/business/japan-apple-google-apps-stores/ https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2023/06/16/business/japan-...
madsbuch 3y ago
As with many other tech companies, Apple decide themselves when they think they satisfy the requirements of law. From now on it will be the courts work to figure out whether that is the case. Right now, we don't know for these changes. But the EU has been seen handing out fines before, because of the tech companies malicious interpretations – so I don't think it will be unreasonable to assume it will happen again.

cynicalsecurity 3y ago

Apple's official announcement on implementation of the new EU regulations sounded very fear mongering and manipulative, as something an authoritarian cult would write. Reminded me of the writing style of the Watchtower cult magazines. https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2024/01/apple-announces-changes-to-ios-safari-and-the-app-store-in-the-european-union/ https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2024/01/apple-announces-chang...

kjkjadksj 3y ago

Developers are already dropping support for macos, at least game devs are after making a big deal of starting to support macs 15 years ago. Too bad considering how powerful the hardware is finally on these macs.

vaylian 3y ago
I'm out of the loop. What happened?
- drooopy 3y ago
  Blizzard hasn't released a new game for macOS since Heroes of the storm back in 2015 and valve has pulled support for Steam VR on mac and won't even bother updating most of their games to intel 64 bit binaries in order to get them working even under rosetta. Also, they won't release CSGO2 for macOS, proton is not supported on macos nor do they have any immediate plans to update steam to a universal binary for AS macs.
- incangold 3y ago
  This is a fairly typical example from 2 years ago: https://www.vintagestory.at/blog.html/news/dropping-official https://www.vintagestory.at/blog.html/news/dropping-official... [edit] although for context this team rolls their own engine. If you’re using Unity or Unreal > 5.2 (May 2023) things are slowly improving.
- shantara 3y ago
  Apple dropped support for 32 bit binaries, then migrated from Intel to ARM architecture, breaking backwards compatibility in major way. This led to the inability to run the absolute majority of the existing library of games on the recent Apple hardware and OS. Unlike the devs in the Apple ecosystem who are used to be on the constant treadmill of app updates to accommodate Apple constantly breaking and changing things with every release, this is incompatible with the gaming industry release model, where after the patch cycle the devs can move onto the next project and rely on the backwards compatibility to trust that their released games will keep running for years and decades into the future. So when Apple broke this unspoken agreement, the game devs have simply left their existing games in whatever broken state they were, and decided against releasing their future projects on macOS, supporting which wasn't financially viable in the long term, given the time needed and the relatively small percentage of playerbase which uses it.

daeros 3y ago

All Apple Deserves from the Press is polemics.

garmonbozia8668 3y ago

I’m mobile iOS developer and have been for several years. The different pain points with iOS development (documentation, Apple) and how Apple is behaving right now, is so disgusting that I want to change focus to anything else than Apple development.

donor20 3y ago
Apple exists to serve customers not developers, theyve made that clear. If you want a force installed unremovable app deployment work with the android folks - plenty of ways to ship stuff there in nasty ways
sumuyuda 3y ago
I transitioned off iOS development this year. I had been doing macOS and iOS development close to 10 years. Apple’s behavior has really put me off their platform as both a developer and user.

endisneigh 3y ago

Good. They should make things that aren’t restricted to a single platform.

drooopy 3y ago

It doesn't make any business sense whatsoever to antagonize developers right about when they're about to launch a new product that will need 3rd party support.

ksec 3y ago

Tim Cook's Apple has all the stubbornness, arrogance of Steve Jobs's Apple while completely lack Steve Jobs's wisdom and courage to change direction. It has now fully becomes an Operation, Sales and Marketing company.

barelysapient 3y ago
And yet, the company is one of the most valuable in the world. If consumers hated this, they'd vote with they wallets.
- CharlesW 3y ago
  First, how dare you. Here on HN we don't believe that consumers are qualified to make decisions like this.
  - barelysapient 3y ago
    Humblest apologies. I stand corrected. :)
FredPret 3y ago
There have been some pro-consumer developments. Thicker devices with better batteries, MacBooks with many ports, iPads with pencils.
kjkjadksj 3y ago
And on top of that we are entering this era of developers stopping to give them the time of day at least on the mac platform. Historically developers used to build for mac without seemingly much fuss, that’s just how the industry seemed to work you’d have a native mac and pc app. These days it seems software decisions are made by bean counters more than ever, who look at the numbers at hand with how few today are on the mac platform (or how many people “game” on an ios device perhaps), and don’t bother continuing support. Even popular, seemingly more community supporting developers like Valve are dropping mac support after supporting the platform for over a decade even porting older games over like cs 1.6 in that time. Meanwhile at the apple press conference they are saying how these new macs support ray tracing and are a leap over the m1, seemingly with their heads in the sand at the fact you can probably count on one hand the number of large studios actively developing for their platform today, and that number is liable to shrink with the years if this trend is any indication.

zer00eyz 3y ago

I have to say: I have had to call apple quite a number of times for product issues. I have almost always left a happier customer. I know folks who work in CS at Apple. They put up with a lot of nonsense from end users (they have good work stories for sure). They are paid well (living wage), they get stock options, and all of them LOVE their job. Customer support and loving your job is fuckin rare. I have done CC processing in the past. Candidly the 5-7 percent you pay to do it yourself has the hidden cost of managing charge backs. As a small developer that's NOT something I want to do for a personal/side/small project. The apple users love it because they KNOW they can call, cancel and get a refund... (and when they dont it's probably because they have been abusing the system, but I digress). SO here is a company that makes a high quality product, charges obscene margins based on brand, doesn't fuck over it staff (apple employee you pee in a bottle lately, you making good money?), has rabidly loyal customers, and seems intent on not turning them into a product or handing their shit over to the government... I'm not sure from where I sit, where I have a right to complain about the 30 percent transaction tax.

echelon 3y ago
> I'm not sure from where I sit, where I have a right to complain about the 30 percent transaction tax. I didn't choose for Apple to win 50% of US mobile and for the other company to also have draconian rules about deploying software and taxing it. I don't care how much Apple hand holds grandma. Mobile is a hellscape for developers and other companies. The idea that distributing your software should subjugate you to paying taxes to a private company (one that can compete with you) is surreal. Moreover, mobile is what most consumers use now. You have to be present on mobile to reach them. Web should have been enough, but it isn't. And to make it worse, it's knee-capped to suck on mobile. It's impossible to enter this market and compete on hardware, so we won't get any reprieve unless regulators put a stop to this. We need to be able to deploy software at zero cost. Without scare walls or adversarial advertising. Or mandates to use certain software choices. Or mandatory reviews. I'll stop bitching about Apple and Google when that happens.
- kiratp 3y ago
  > I don't care how much Apple hand holds grandma. Mobile is a hellscape for developers and other companies. As a developer and founder, grandma before developers. Every time. iOS is the first platform my family can just run with safely.

pc_edwin 3y ago

Microsoft did the exact same thing and it took them the better part of almost two decades to undo the damage. The difference here is the entire map has shifted. Tech is no longer just a niche or a B2B thing. Pretty much everyone in the western world is a stakeholder and they chose piss us all off. This is not gonna end well for Apple. Such a short sighted move by the leadership that has me doubting their leadership.

CharlesW 3y ago

From the perspective of someone who used to do developer relations for Apple, developers have never had "goodwill" for Apple. "Goodwill" is an emotional plea. Developers do not make platform support decisions based on emotions¹. Developers need to eat. EU developers will choose to create an App Store competitor or not based on which option they believe will help them make more money. If they believe the new path mandated by the EU will help them make more money, they will take it. If not, they will continue on the current path. Developers support iOS and App Store because they make money. They will continue to support iOS and App Store as long as they can make money. If that ceases to be true, developers will reevaluate their support Apple's platform(s). ¹ In aggregate, of course. Some developers have enough money and don't answer to anybody, and so have the luxury of making platform support decisions based on emotional factors.

matt3210 3y ago

Developers have the option of remaining in the original tos

oldpersonintx 3y ago

[dead]

chmaynard 3y ago

This post is pure clickbait. I'm flagging it as inappropriate for HN.

benguild 3y ago

Look at how popular the Mac App Store is. If iOS didn’t force it, it could turn into a similar graveyard given that devs don’t want to pay 15-30%.