4 ms·

> Current status isn't normal, but no one would complain about it if transaction fees weren't abusive. This is an oft-repeated misconception. Even if transact

> Current status isn't normal, but no one would complain about it if transaction fees weren't abusive. This is an oft-repeated misconception. Even if transaction fees were 0%, we'd be way better off with alternative stores. You're just so used to how shitty things are that you can't conceive of a better alternative. Consider that there are plenty of completely free games on Steam that are popular and help those creators find thriving communities. How? They have good discovery. App Store and Google Play sucks in every way. Discovery is awful. Their approach is awful. Why even show download counts and top lists? Stupid, stupid stupid. But you have no choice as a consumer or developer. So the top developers will not complain. What's the point? And anyway, you're complaining about a world where alternatives are viable. Why are alternatives being viable a bad thing. If EGS is paying up front for games and giving them away for free as cross-promo for Fortnite, better that than ad supported garbage. What exactly is the bad thing here, for consumers? The negative aesthetic experience of having more icons? Everyone has to oppose this crushed-in-head line of thinking. One meaingless detail that impacts an extremely low brow part of the aesthetic experience - the fucking home screen icons - should not preclude the gain in meaning from 10k-100k more developers who could flourish in the mobile ecosystem if it were to have working discovery. It has the same energy as requiring Helldivers users to create PSN accounts - offensive only in a strictly aesthetic sense even though successful competition and cross promo benefits everyone. The users' fixation on meaningless aesthetics is wrong. I mean Apple could make discovery pluggable too, all of it could be pluggable and have fewer "icons," this isn't even a real obstacle. There are many, many ideas in this space, and no permissions to do any of it. As it is, the App Store and Google Play are glorified install wizards. Open, install TikTok, Google Maps, whatever. Never visit again. That is 98% of people. That's horrible and its Apple's fault. TikTok already does not pay any fees. This is just to show that you are not right in general, even if you are right about the one company you've heard of that went and took these people to court in this country for an outcome that you should be in favor of.

talldayo 2y ago
Free app stores like F-Droid are also great for stopping you from downloading crap software. Whenever I need "normal software" (music player, PDF reader, RSS feed, what have you) I search for it there and don't suffer through ads or microtransactions. It's like using Linux, free software is just what I default to now. Using stock iOS and Android today, it feels like both sides have lost the script. The entire pipeline of "consumption" dominates both platforms, and demands you pay money or accept a competitor's inferior product. Google didn't even let F-Droid auto-update apps until recently, it's a racket on either side. We need to bring the hammer down and enable people to stop supporting shit businesses. The current loop of consumption is going to kill everything we love about computing with a long and painful extortion process.
- throwaway2037 2y ago
  Real question: How does F-Droid police malware?
  - talldayo 2y ago
    By disallowing all proprietary software, building each application themselves, and then signing it with their key before the end-user receives it.
    - throwaway2037 2y ago
      I was not aware. This is interesting to know. Let's go deeper about "malware". I'm sorry that I was not more specific. What about some dumb app that shows holiday calendars or "the weather", but actually uses your mobile to secretly mine Bitcoin? Does their process also stop that type of malware?
      - talldayo 2y ago
        That sort of attack would need to take one of two forms: 1) Hijacking an already-approved application 2) Creating a forked/new fraudulent application and submitting it to the store Option 1 requires you to fool the repository owner, first of all. That would mean submitting a pull-request with your malicious code, having that malicious code reviewed by the app author, and then getting it into a major release. In most apps with a significant userbase that's nigh-unimaginable; especially if there are testers or multiple contributors testing and debugging on recent builds. Option 2 requires you to fool the F-Droid admins. This means one of two things. Either creating a forked application with plausible yet distinct features that make it necessary to be forked from the main project. Alternatively, you get ChatGPT (or just copy boilerplate ffs) and make a calculator app or whatever, commit it all to Github and send it in for review. Both of these routes are horribly suspicious - a reviewer is going to want to see if you have multiple contributors, a long history on Github, linked social media accounts or websites, other repositories, binary blobs, that sort of stuff. Maybe they aren't the most cautious, but suffice to say anyone making an attack like this is going to be covered in red flags. So; it's a feasible attack. But it requires so much social manipulation for so little feasible gain (especially when F-Droid wasn't even auto-updating for most people) that it's not worth the effort. If you do manage such a daring attack, your reward is maybe 300-odd sideloading users that mistakenly clicked your install button instead of the other guy's.
onlyrealcuzzo 2y ago
> App Store and Google Play sucks in every way. Discovery is awful. Their approach is awful. ~30% of Apple's total value could be attributed to the App Store alone. That's a ~$1T company. If you think the product is awful - I don't know what to tell you. Next, are you going to tell me the iPhone is awful and Nvidia's GPUs, too? Look, just because something isn't perfect doesn't mean it's awful. The App Store could be better. It doesn't suck.
- doctorpangloss 2y ago
  99% of people opening the App Store are not opening it to solve a problem with software. They’re opening it because it is the only way to install Disney+, ChatGPT or whatever thing they’ve heard of through a $10m-$1b of ad budget and ubiquity in the discourse. Compare to Steam where most people opening it are doing so to launch games and learn more about other new games. The App Store sucks. Lots of things suck and make money, tons of money. OPEC absolutely sucks and makes tons of money, are you going to tell me “OPEC could be better. It doesn’t suck.” Monopolies and cartels don’t just suck, they are horrible, they are the biggest antagonists in our lives, because everyone’s income is someone else’s expense, and we don’t all work for Apple or OPEC.
  - throwaway2037 2y ago
    Your first paragraph raises some very good points. I am concerned about this last point: > The App Store sucks. Can you give some specifics? Do any other app store do it better?
    - pineaux 2y ago
      So much about it sucks. I am actually amazed when an app I want is actually on the app store. It needs an iCloud log in, so you can't install free software on a kiosk without a throw away account. Which is hard to set up. Why do you first need to 'get' an app and then install it? How many affirmations do you need?
      - 2y ago
zztop44 2y ago
My fear is that if I want to download Skype or Teams, I’ll need to first download the Microsoft Store app, and then sign in, and then download the app I want. And the store will be slow and shitty and packed with ads. Likewise for Meta, Adobe, every big game publisher, etc. And my subscriptions will end up spread across multiple different stores rather than all in one place. That feels like the natural direction App Store competition would take us. But, on the other hand, it doesn’t seem to have happened on Android, so maybe I’m being overly pessimistic.
- KennyBlanken 2y ago
  The PC gaming industry is a perfect example of this. In the last 5-6 years I have had to install and use the following game stores: * Epic's Launcher * EA's Origin * Ubisoft Connect * Steam * GOG * Xbox Store * Battle.net I had a brief Gatcha game phase (before I realized how pay-to-advance it was) and that game had its own damn game-specific "launcher" as well. Each one of these required creating an account, installs its own "overlay", background windows services, anti-cheat system (more background services!), has its own "social" system, and defaults to running at startup and minimizing (not quitting) when you click the window-close button unless you dig through the options. Of course, each one of these games also has at least one type of currency unique to the game, which you can only convert in one direction, nor is there any way to move currency in the "store". Often that currency, and anything you bought with it, is locked to the particular platform on which it was purchased. It's a complete mess, and nearly every single one of them is worse than Steam in terms of UX design and features. Do we see any competition, resulting in lower prices, better terms of use for customers, or better quality software? Nope. Games are as expensive as ever, have even worse day-of-release bugs, more cheaters, and more microtransactions. Games are exclusive to one particular store either indefinitely or during the period after its release. But according to Epic, why...if Epic can make its own app store for iOS, consumers will benefit! Bullshit. All that will happen is we'll have to install multiple app store apps on our phones, having each one collect data constantly about us...
  - maccard 2y ago
    It’s actually worse than on PC imo. Apple have a set of standards (google do too but slightly less so) that means that every app has to support Apple Pay and login with apple. This means I’m not giving my details to random third party with popular game, and I can try it and even spend money on it. With this new order, you can bet that I now have three different subscription management platforms with different rules, for example
da768 2y ago
Do you expect it from being different from Windows with the average person having at least a dozen game launchers, update services and downloaders running in the background?
- bruce511 2y ago
  "Average" is doing a lot of work here. Gaming is surely popular on phones, but I suggest that AAA games on on a tiny minority of phones overall. (My mom has literally no games on her phone etc.) For Windows the proportion of games-machines to others is tiny. The number of people with "a dozen game lauchers" would be a microscopic percentage. Yes, there are home PCs that are dedicated to gaming. Yes they will likely have lots of shortcuts, launchers, auto updates etc. And in some demographics (think male, under 25 etc) there will be proportionally more games installed. But "average" ? I'm not sure.
ChoHag 2y ago
[dead]

talldayo 2y ago

Free app stores like F-Droid are also great for stopping you from downloading crap software. Whenever I need "normal software" (music player, PDF reader, RSS feed, what have you) I search for it there and don't suffer through ads or microtransactions. It's like using Linux, free software is just what I default to now. Using stock iOS and Android today, it feels like both sides have lost the script. The entire pipeline of "consumption" dominates both platforms, and demands you pay money or accept a competitor's inferior product. Google didn't even let F-Droid auto-update apps until recently, it's a racket on either side. We need to bring the hammer down and enable people to stop supporting shit businesses. The current loop of consumption is going to kill everything we love about computing with a long and painful extortion process.

throwaway2037 2y ago
Real question: How does F-Droid police malware?
- talldayo 2y ago
  By disallowing all proprietary software, building each application themselves, and then signing it with their key before the end-user receives it.
  - throwaway2037 2y ago
    I was not aware. This is interesting to know. Let's go deeper about "malware". I'm sorry that I was not more specific. What about some dumb app that shows holiday calendars or "the weather", but actually uses your mobile to secretly mine Bitcoin? Does their process also stop that type of malware?
    - talldayo 2y ago
      That sort of attack would need to take one of two forms: 1) Hijacking an already-approved application 2) Creating a forked/new fraudulent application and submitting it to the store Option 1 requires you to fool the repository owner, first of all. That would mean submitting a pull-request with your malicious code, having that malicious code reviewed by the app author, and then getting it into a major release. In most apps with a significant userbase that's nigh-unimaginable; especially if there are testers or multiple contributors testing and debugging on recent builds. Option 2 requires you to fool the F-Droid admins. This means one of two things. Either creating a forked application with plausible yet distinct features that make it necessary to be forked from the main project. Alternatively, you get ChatGPT (or just copy boilerplate ffs) and make a calculator app or whatever, commit it all to Github and send it in for review. Both of these routes are horribly suspicious - a reviewer is going to want to see if you have multiple contributors, a long history on Github, linked social media accounts or websites, other repositories, binary blobs, that sort of stuff. Maybe they aren't the most cautious, but suffice to say anyone making an attack like this is going to be covered in red flags. So; it's a feasible attack. But it requires so much social manipulation for so little feasible gain (especially when F-Droid wasn't even auto-updating for most people) that it's not worth the effort. If you do manage such a daring attack, your reward is maybe 300-odd sideloading users that mistakenly clicked your install button instead of the other guy's.

onlyrealcuzzo 2y ago

> App Store and Google Play sucks in every way. Discovery is awful. Their approach is awful. ~30% of Apple's total value could be attributed to the App Store alone. That's a ~$1T company. If you think the product is awful - I don't know what to tell you. Next, are you going to tell me the iPhone is awful and Nvidia's GPUs, too? Look, just because something isn't perfect doesn't mean it's awful. The App Store could be better. It doesn't suck.

doctorpangloss 2y ago
99% of people opening the App Store are not opening it to solve a problem with software. They’re opening it because it is the only way to install Disney+, ChatGPT or whatever thing they’ve heard of through a $10m-$1b of ad budget and ubiquity in the discourse. Compare to Steam where most people opening it are doing so to launch games and learn more about other new games. The App Store sucks. Lots of things suck and make money, tons of money. OPEC absolutely sucks and makes tons of money, are you going to tell me “OPEC could be better. It doesn’t suck.” Monopolies and cartels don’t just suck, they are horrible, they are the biggest antagonists in our lives, because everyone’s income is someone else’s expense, and we don’t all work for Apple or OPEC.
- throwaway2037 2y ago
  Your first paragraph raises some very good points. I am concerned about this last point: > The App Store sucks. Can you give some specifics? Do any other app store do it better?
  - pineaux 2y ago
    So much about it sucks. I am actually amazed when an app I want is actually on the app store. It needs an iCloud log in, so you can't install free software on a kiosk without a throw away account. Which is hard to set up. Why do you first need to 'get' an app and then install it? How many affirmations do you need?
    - 2y ago

zztop44 2y ago

My fear is that if I want to download Skype or Teams, I’ll need to first download the Microsoft Store app, and then sign in, and then download the app I want. And the store will be slow and shitty and packed with ads. Likewise for Meta, Adobe, every big game publisher, etc. And my subscriptions will end up spread across multiple different stores rather than all in one place. That feels like the natural direction App Store competition would take us. But, on the other hand, it doesn’t seem to have happened on Android, so maybe I’m being overly pessimistic.

KennyBlanken 2y ago
The PC gaming industry is a perfect example of this. In the last 5-6 years I have had to install and use the following game stores: * Epic's Launcher * EA's Origin * Ubisoft Connect * Steam * GOG * Xbox Store * Battle.net I had a brief Gatcha game phase (before I realized how pay-to-advance it was) and that game had its own damn game-specific "launcher" as well. Each one of these required creating an account, installs its own "overlay", background windows services, anti-cheat system (more background services!), has its own "social" system, and defaults to running at startup and minimizing (not quitting) when you click the window-close button unless you dig through the options. Of course, each one of these games also has at least one type of currency unique to the game, which you can only convert in one direction, nor is there any way to move currency in the "store". Often that currency, and anything you bought with it, is locked to the particular platform on which it was purchased. It's a complete mess, and nearly every single one of them is worse than Steam in terms of UX design and features. Do we see any competition, resulting in lower prices, better terms of use for customers, or better quality software? Nope. Games are as expensive as ever, have even worse day-of-release bugs, more cheaters, and more microtransactions. Games are exclusive to one particular store either indefinitely or during the period after its release. But according to Epic, why...if Epic can make its own app store for iOS, consumers will benefit! Bullshit. All that will happen is we'll have to install multiple app store apps on our phones, having each one collect data constantly about us...
- maccard 2y ago
  It’s actually worse than on PC imo. Apple have a set of standards (google do too but slightly less so) that means that every app has to support Apple Pay and login with apple. This means I’m not giving my details to random third party with popular game, and I can try it and even spend money on it. With this new order, you can bet that I now have three different subscription management platforms with different rules, for example

da768 2y ago

Do you expect it from being different from Windows with the average person having at least a dozen game launchers, update services and downloaders running in the background?

bruce511 2y ago
"Average" is doing a lot of work here. Gaming is surely popular on phones, but I suggest that AAA games on on a tiny minority of phones overall. (My mom has literally no games on her phone etc.) For Windows the proportion of games-machines to others is tiny. The number of people with "a dozen game lauchers" would be a microscopic percentage. Yes, there are home PCs that are dedicated to gaming. Yes they will likely have lots of shortcuts, launchers, auto updates etc. And in some demographics (think male, under 25 etc) there will be proportionally more games installed. But "average" ? I'm not sure.

ChoHag 2y ago

[dead]