3 ms·

Do I think side-loading and alt app stores would make iPads and iPhones more versatile devices? Yes. Do I believe indie devs will be worse off? Unfortunately,

Do I think side-loading and alt app stores would make iPads and iPhones more versatile devices? Yes. Do I believe indie devs will be worse off? Unfortunately, also yes. If you are a solo app developer, you will now have to keep presence on all app stores out there, since if you don’t publish on one then a copycat will. Every store would have its own review processes, fee structures, billing and tax procedures. Since you would need to follow a dozen of those, as an indie operation realistically you will either go under or pay middleman companies a chunk for this—so, in the end, you’ll lose the same cut or more and we’re back to the starting point. Furthermore, I believe you will have much less protection against plain piracy, which was a big thing in the days of yore until it was spectacularly dealt with by Apple within its mobile ecosystem. This is why I suspect the primary interests side-loading and alt app stores on Apple devices would satisfy is large enterprises and a few opportunistic middlemen. Entities like Epic, Netflix, who will be able to generate more profit; governments, perhaps; a few publishing companies (think CDBaby for apps) will win small time; some users who don’t want to pay and want to get things for free might be able to get their way; indie devs will be worse off.

justinclift 2y ago
> I believe Maybe give it some time to see how things shake out, before tying yourself to strong "beliefs" up front?
- pantulis 2y ago
  It's fair: beliefs are like that, you have them before seeing how things shake out.
  - justinclift 2y ago
    > beliefs are like that Not really a common approach with the people I know. People can make educated guesses ahead of facts. That's pretty standard. But having strong "beliefs" without evidence just means there's no real basis for the "belief". And that makes it just an irrational feeling or wish-for-it-to-be-true for whatever reason.
rfoo 2y ago
> This is why I suspect the primary interests side-loading and alt app stores on Apple devices would satisfy is large enterprises and a few opportunistic middlemen. Sideload as Apple implemented, yes. Sideload as what sideload always meant, no. Apple is trying to distract and mislead the public by redefining what "sideload" means. If I can't install whatever open source shit I build myself on NON-APPLE HARDWARE to an iPhone then it's not sideload. I hope EU figure this out soon and retroactively fine Apple for this dishonest move.
dkdbejwi383 2y ago
I've not done much app development as a solo dev, but hasn't it been the case for many years now that Android has supported multiple app stores? Is this a problem for developers of Android apps?
mrighele 2y ago
I disagree. First of all I expect competing stores to ask a smaller cut than what currently Apple asks (and Apple itself may lower it), so it may very well be the case even with a middleman the amount "lost" by the developer will be lower. Not a given though, I guess we will see. Secondly, the Android ecosystem seems to be doing well even with the situation you describe. There are not that many competing stores (mostly from sellers of devices, like huawei, samsung, amazon, which is something will not happen with Apple devices), and piracy, while present is not as commons as with desktops.
- outofpaper 2y ago
  I agree with you on most counts save for the piracy. It's highly dependent on market segment, with less affluent sectors especially with youth you'll find very high privacy rates. I look forward to the day an fdroid like platform is available on Apple phones and tablets.
  - madeofpalk 2y ago
    Are you making much money from less affluent sectors anyway? Existance of piracy doesn't mean loss of sales. I would guess that most pirated software was never going to be purchased anyway.
  - saintfire 2y ago
    I'd contend that profiteering off of youth is more questionably moral than piracy among youth. I pirated virtually everything I consumed as a kid/teen and now that I have money I pay for it. The companies I pirated off of lost nothing because I had no means to purchase it anyways.
- wellthisisgreat 2y ago
  > Secondly, the Android ecosystem seems to be doing well Android apps are notoriously pirated through and through. For a smaller company in developed market anything Android is a second thought because monetization is much harder
76SlashDolphin 2y ago
Do you think sideloading hurts indie developers on Android? I believe that over time the situation on iOS will become identical to the one on Android - Google Play/the App Store will be the primary way to install apps for 99% of users since it's the default and has the biggest catalogue; some companies that are unhappy with Google Play/App Store fees will have an alternative store just for their apps (see Epic games), and advanced users will have an "advanced user" appstore with apps that either Apple/Google don't want to support or developed by people who don't want to pay a Google/Apple developer fees (i.e. mostly open-source hobbyist apps), along the lines of F-Droid. It appears the iOS equivalent of that will be AltStore. If that's what happens then I see no way for this to be bad for indie devs - the ones who want to write a paid app and can afford the upfront capital to publish can still do so on the store with 99% of users, while those who don't have the capital or don't want to publish paid apps now have the option of going with AltStore. This is what I hope happens at least, as I am a big fan of Apple hardware but absolutely despise how its software treats me like a baby. If Android can allow for more freedom without compromising security by hiding advanced features behind several scary menus and parental controls then I don't see why Apple can't have the same.
- user_7832 2y ago
  I hardly see any critic of the DMA talk about things like F-Droid. I suppose the generous explanation is that they don't know.
pjerem 2y ago
This is already mitigated with copyright laws. If a copycat is using your brand, you’ll have zero issue removing them from any App Store. If a copycat is just copying your app, well, that’s called a competitor.
- kgc 2y ago
  Indie devs typically won’t have the resources to monitor and react to a constant flow of copycats.
  - blackoil 2y ago
    No one copies small indie apps. Copying makes sense only with popular apps. Also, web is very open ecosystem and phishing is a problem but for users and corporate, not for small devs
  - viraptor 2y ago
    If it's a common issue, services for automatic multi-store deployment and checks like that will appear very soon.
- labcomputer 2y ago
  And if the store is hosted outside of Europe? Just like how nobody can access the pirate bay?
pjerem 2y ago
You forgot an immense portion of companies who will benefit from this : B2B companies which have lower client pools but want to have a direct contractual relationship with their clients.
heavyset_go 2y ago
> Do I believe indie devs will be worse off? Unfortunately, also yes. Worse off than having 15% to 30% of their entire revenue stream taken? Doubt it.
- bluescrn 2y ago
  Indie game devs gave up on mobile almost a decade ago, when the F2P wrecking ball swung its way through mobile gaming. (Have the top games even changed since then? some variant of Clash of Credit Cards dominating?)
globular-toast 2y ago
Sounds like they need a meta-bundler that will build bundles for all of the app stores then.
user_7832 2y ago
You raise some valid points, but I believe your comparison isn't quite complete/holistic. > If you are a solo app developer, you will now have to keep presence on all app stores out there, since if you don’t publish on one then a copycat will. This doesn't make much sense. The App Store will still be where 90%+ apps are installed from, and I'm willing to bet money on that. Where are all the Google Play devs pushing their apps on the Amazon store or on 3rd party app stores? > Furthermore, I believe you will have much less protection against plain piracy, which was a big thing in the days of yore until it was spectacularly dealt with by Apple within its mobile ecosystem. Depending on your familiarity you already had lots of such websites (I'm not going to mention any names but it's easily googleable if anyone wants to verify). Yes keeping the app for >7 days was a pain as they expire but a 3rd party altserver helps with that. > This is why I suspect the primary interests side-loading and alt app stores on Apple devices would satisfy is large enterprises and a few opportunistic middlemen. Have you taken a look at any of the privacy forums/subreddits? Places where they use say GrapheneOS? Do you know what's their favorite app store? It's this thing called F-droid. And it only contains open source apps. Such a move would be amazing for open source devs. Hell, it would be great for beginner/hobbyist devs too. I (ages ago) had tried my hand at android dev. And unlike iOS, you don't need to pay $99 to appease the Apple gods for that. Free publishing is great for indie and small devs who may never hit $99/yr revenue. Btw, afaik you already needed to pay a higher price for youtube premium if subscribing through the app. And apple's draconian/benevolent-and-super-nice policies (/s) meant that you couldn't even tell your users to get it for cheaper from elsewhere. Would you like paying 30% of your income regardless of choice?
madeofpalk 2y ago
1) Users win. The first alt app store didn't even launch and it pressured Apple to change it's review policies TWICE. Once to allow game streaming services, and then to allow game emulators. Hell, even developers won here. 2) How did this play out on every other platform. Sure - piracy exists, but most don't and it's pretty non-impactful AFAICT.
- gtufano 2y ago
  Piracy is not-impactful is not true. The disappearance of indie software that do not depend on a remote server (or that's not software on a remote server) is basically due to the inability to monetize with sales native, stand-alone, software. And that's for the piracy. In some way, the success of the App Store towards indie/solo developers is because there was a way to sell things without the piracy easily steal your sales. Yes, I know that "it's not stealing", "it's not theft", etc. Beside the ethical/moral conundrum of piracy, the fact is that it destroys the market for small developers.
  - meepmorp 2y ago
    Piracy literally cannot affect the economic wellbeing of content or software producers. It is logically impossible! If it weren't, you wouldn't be experiencing this cascade of downvotes, so get with the program.
    - Zr40 2y ago
      This would be true if the only alternative to piracy is not using said content or software. If paying is a valid alternative to a nonzero fraction of pirate users if piracy was not an option, then the piracy does affect the creators economically.
    - robertlagrant 2y ago
      > If it weren't, you wouldn't be experiencing this cascade of downvotes, so get with the program. Disregarding this statement's general silliness, it is also downvoted. Now we're in a paradox. Downvotes mean you're wrong, so the statement that downvotes mean you're wrong..is wrong?
realusername 2y ago
> Do I believe indie devs will be worse off? Unfortunately, also yes. There's a high number of indie devs which just gave up with the cumbersome appstore process. The ones you see on the appstore are the ones who made past this filter already. I personally advise single devs against making an app unless you are really sure to have the motivation to go through all all of this. The mobile stores are particularly bad and unsuited for hobbyists or single devs at the moment. Just compare that to a website where you deploy and you are done.
ghusto 2y ago
> If you are a solo app developer, you will now have to keep presence on all app stores out there, since if you don’t publish on one then a copycat will I really wouldn't worry about it. Those of us who care about this kind of thing are the small minority. I'm incredibly happy to have this in the EU, but am under no illusions that it means the average Joe is going to care enough to jump through the hoops necessary to install (yes, install!) an alternative app store.
rmbyrro 2y ago
> you will now have to keep presence on all app stores out there, since if you don’t publish on one then a copycat will Nobody has to do anything. If you don't want the trouble of publishing on an alt-store to serve your customers, what's the problem of letting others do so? This is such a lazyness argument, to be honest...
jaystraw 2y ago
i can't speak for app stores, but my band, based out of Anchorage, Alaska, makes good money from streams. we are completely independent. we don't use cdbaby, but distrokid who charges a flat fee to upload, and publishes to all available platforms. that flat fee also covers publishing to new platforms as they become available to distrokid. i underdstand your worries but at least in my main line of work, i've seen a lot of innovation over the 20 years i've been doing this. fret not. i guess that's a guitar pun.
m463 2y ago
Come on, the pc has allowed "sideloading" since its inception maybe 40 years ago. On the pc, you could create applications entirely out of the control of microsoft (formerly ibm) and the world was better for it. When ios came out with the app store, apple immediately prevented large swaths of useful applications from seeing the light of day. The debacle with privacy would be of less consequence if Little Snitch had been ported from macos to ios.

justinclift 2y ago

> I believe Maybe give it some time to see how things shake out, before tying yourself to strong "beliefs" up front?

pantulis 2y ago
It's fair: beliefs are like that, you have them before seeing how things shake out.
- justinclift 2y ago
  > beliefs are like that Not really a common approach with the people I know. People can make educated guesses ahead of facts. That's pretty standard. But having strong "beliefs" without evidence just means there's no real basis for the "belief". And that makes it just an irrational feeling or wish-for-it-to-be-true for whatever reason.

rfoo 2y ago

> This is why I suspect the primary interests side-loading and alt app stores on Apple devices would satisfy is large enterprises and a few opportunistic middlemen. Sideload as Apple implemented, yes. Sideload as what sideload always meant, no. Apple is trying to distract and mislead the public by redefining what "sideload" means. If I can't install whatever open source shit I build myself on NON-APPLE HARDWARE to an iPhone then it's not sideload. I hope EU figure this out soon and retroactively fine Apple for this dishonest move.

dkdbejwi383 2y ago

I've not done much app development as a solo dev, but hasn't it been the case for many years now that Android has supported multiple app stores? Is this a problem for developers of Android apps?

mrighele 2y ago

I disagree. First of all I expect competing stores to ask a smaller cut than what currently Apple asks (and Apple itself may lower it), so it may very well be the case even with a middleman the amount "lost" by the developer will be lower. Not a given though, I guess we will see. Secondly, the Android ecosystem seems to be doing well even with the situation you describe. There are not that many competing stores (mostly from sellers of devices, like huawei, samsung, amazon, which is something will not happen with Apple devices), and piracy, while present is not as commons as with desktops.

outofpaper 2y ago
I agree with you on most counts save for the piracy. It's highly dependent on market segment, with less affluent sectors especially with youth you'll find very high privacy rates. I look forward to the day an fdroid like platform is available on Apple phones and tablets.
- madeofpalk 2y ago
  Are you making much money from less affluent sectors anyway? Existance of piracy doesn't mean loss of sales. I would guess that most pirated software was never going to be purchased anyway.
- saintfire 2y ago
  I'd contend that profiteering off of youth is more questionably moral than piracy among youth. I pirated virtually everything I consumed as a kid/teen and now that I have money I pay for it. The companies I pirated off of lost nothing because I had no means to purchase it anyways.
wellthisisgreat 2y ago
> Secondly, the Android ecosystem seems to be doing well Android apps are notoriously pirated through and through. For a smaller company in developed market anything Android is a second thought because monetization is much harder

76SlashDolphin 2y ago

Do you think sideloading hurts indie developers on Android? I believe that over time the situation on iOS will become identical to the one on Android - Google Play/the App Store will be the primary way to install apps for 99% of users since it's the default and has the biggest catalogue; some companies that are unhappy with Google Play/App Store fees will have an alternative store just for their apps (see Epic games), and advanced users will have an "advanced user" appstore with apps that either Apple/Google don't want to support or developed by people who don't want to pay a Google/Apple developer fees (i.e. mostly open-source hobbyist apps), along the lines of F-Droid. It appears the iOS equivalent of that will be AltStore. If that's what happens then I see no way for this to be bad for indie devs - the ones who want to write a paid app and can afford the upfront capital to publish can still do so on the store with 99% of users, while those who don't have the capital or don't want to publish paid apps now have the option of going with AltStore. This is what I hope happens at least, as I am a big fan of Apple hardware but absolutely despise how its software treats me like a baby. If Android can allow for more freedom without compromising security by hiding advanced features behind several scary menus and parental controls then I don't see why Apple can't have the same.

user_7832 2y ago
I hardly see any critic of the DMA talk about things like F-Droid. I suppose the generous explanation is that they don't know.

pjerem 2y ago

This is already mitigated with copyright laws. If a copycat is using your brand, you’ll have zero issue removing them from any App Store. If a copycat is just copying your app, well, that’s called a competitor.

kgc 2y ago
Indie devs typically won’t have the resources to monitor and react to a constant flow of copycats.
- blackoil 2y ago
  No one copies small indie apps. Copying makes sense only with popular apps. Also, web is very open ecosystem and phishing is a problem but for users and corporate, not for small devs
- viraptor 2y ago
  If it's a common issue, services for automatic multi-store deployment and checks like that will appear very soon.
labcomputer 2y ago
And if the store is hosted outside of Europe? Just like how nobody can access the pirate bay?

pjerem 2y ago

You forgot an immense portion of companies who will benefit from this : B2B companies which have lower client pools but want to have a direct contractual relationship with their clients.

heavyset_go 2y ago

> Do I believe indie devs will be worse off? Unfortunately, also yes. Worse off than having 15% to 30% of their entire revenue stream taken? Doubt it.

bluescrn 2y ago
Indie game devs gave up on mobile almost a decade ago, when the F2P wrecking ball swung its way through mobile gaming. (Have the top games even changed since then? some variant of Clash of Credit Cards dominating?)

globular-toast 2y ago

Sounds like they need a meta-bundler that will build bundles for all of the app stores then.

user_7832 2y ago

You raise some valid points, but I believe your comparison isn't quite complete/holistic. > If you are a solo app developer, you will now have to keep presence on all app stores out there, since if you don’t publish on one then a copycat will. This doesn't make much sense. The App Store will still be where 90%+ apps are installed from, and I'm willing to bet money on that. Where are all the Google Play devs pushing their apps on the Amazon store or on 3rd party app stores? > Furthermore, I believe you will have much less protection against plain piracy, which was a big thing in the days of yore until it was spectacularly dealt with by Apple within its mobile ecosystem. Depending on your familiarity you already had lots of such websites (I'm not going to mention any names but it's easily googleable if anyone wants to verify). Yes keeping the app for >7 days was a pain as they expire but a 3rd party altserver helps with that. > This is why I suspect the primary interests side-loading and alt app stores on Apple devices would satisfy is large enterprises and a few opportunistic middlemen. Have you taken a look at any of the privacy forums/subreddits? Places where they use say GrapheneOS? Do you know what's their favorite app store? It's this thing called F-droid. And it only contains open source apps. Such a move would be amazing for open source devs. Hell, it would be great for beginner/hobbyist devs too. I (ages ago) had tried my hand at android dev. And unlike iOS, you don't need to pay $99 to appease the Apple gods for that. Free publishing is great for indie and small devs who may never hit $99/yr revenue. Btw, afaik you already needed to pay a higher price for youtube premium if subscribing through the app. And apple's draconian/benevolent-and-super-nice policies (/s) meant that you couldn't even tell your users to get it for cheaper from elsewhere. Would you like paying 30% of your income regardless of choice?

madeofpalk 2y ago

1) Users win. The first alt app store didn't even launch and it pressured Apple to change it's review policies TWICE. Once to allow game streaming services, and then to allow game emulators. Hell, even developers won here. 2) How did this play out on every other platform. Sure - piracy exists, but most don't and it's pretty non-impactful AFAICT.

gtufano 2y ago
Piracy is not-impactful is not true. The disappearance of indie software that do not depend on a remote server (or that's not software on a remote server) is basically due to the inability to monetize with sales native, stand-alone, software. And that's for the piracy. In some way, the success of the App Store towards indie/solo developers is because there was a way to sell things without the piracy easily steal your sales. Yes, I know that "it's not stealing", "it's not theft", etc. Beside the ethical/moral conundrum of piracy, the fact is that it destroys the market for small developers.
- meepmorp 2y ago
  Piracy literally cannot affect the economic wellbeing of content or software producers. It is logically impossible! If it weren't, you wouldn't be experiencing this cascade of downvotes, so get with the program.
  - Zr40 2y ago
    This would be true if the only alternative to piracy is not using said content or software. If paying is a valid alternative to a nonzero fraction of pirate users if piracy was not an option, then the piracy does affect the creators economically.
  - robertlagrant 2y ago
    > If it weren't, you wouldn't be experiencing this cascade of downvotes, so get with the program. Disregarding this statement's general silliness, it is also downvoted. Now we're in a paradox. Downvotes mean you're wrong, so the statement that downvotes mean you're wrong..is wrong?

realusername 2y ago

> Do I believe indie devs will be worse off? Unfortunately, also yes. There's a high number of indie devs which just gave up with the cumbersome appstore process. The ones you see on the appstore are the ones who made past this filter already. I personally advise single devs against making an app unless you are really sure to have the motivation to go through all all of this. The mobile stores are particularly bad and unsuited for hobbyists or single devs at the moment. Just compare that to a website where you deploy and you are done.

ghusto 2y ago

> If you are a solo app developer, you will now have to keep presence on all app stores out there, since if you don’t publish on one then a copycat will I really wouldn't worry about it. Those of us who care about this kind of thing are the small minority. I'm incredibly happy to have this in the EU, but am under no illusions that it means the average Joe is going to care enough to jump through the hoops necessary to install (yes, install!) an alternative app store.

rmbyrro 2y ago

> you will now have to keep presence on all app stores out there, since if you don’t publish on one then a copycat will Nobody has to do anything. If you don't want the trouble of publishing on an alt-store to serve your customers, what's the problem of letting others do so? This is such a lazyness argument, to be honest...

jaystraw 2y ago

i can't speak for app stores, but my band, based out of Anchorage, Alaska, makes good money from streams. we are completely independent. we don't use cdbaby, but distrokid who charges a flat fee to upload, and publishes to all available platforms. that flat fee also covers publishing to new platforms as they become available to distrokid. i underdstand your worries but at least in my main line of work, i've seen a lot of innovation over the 20 years i've been doing this. fret not. i guess that's a guitar pun.

m463 2y ago

Come on, the pc has allowed "sideloading" since its inception maybe 40 years ago. On the pc, you could create applications entirely out of the control of microsoft (formerly ibm) and the world was better for it. When ios came out with the app store, apple immediately prevented large swaths of useful applications from seeing the light of day. The debacle with privacy would be of less consequence if Little Snitch had been ported from macos to ios.