> Apple needs the control to have the leverage that makes their ecosystem better. It's in the interest of their customers for them to have this leverage and it requires that their 'store' is the only available store so app devs can't bypass their requirements.
I don't understand this argument at all.
You're almost certainly taking more risk driving in a car than downloading an app, yet you're probably willing to embrace the full degrees of freedom of the roadway.
We shouldn't be afraid to use computers. Security is possible without an app store.
Apologizing for Apple's exploitive system is doing us all a disservice. It's making it harder to do business, launch a startup, use your own device, refurbish your device, and compute freely.
Technology wasn't always a locked-in time share. We're witnessing a hostile takeover. An invented scam, sold to us by the Jobs and Ballmers of the world.
The Apple and Google stores make us serfs in their kingdoms. We're renting, not owning.
Your choices are impinging upon my freedoms. The more people that accept this, the more companies are willing to take.
A Department of Justice breakup is looking like the only solution at this point.
You don't have to do business on the App store. You don't have to launch a startup on the App store. You can buy any device you want, and if there isn't currently one sold that meets your specific criterion, society might be better off if someone takes the initiative to meet this demand rather than force a company to roll out the red carpet for it's competition.
Your liberty is not at stake here, nor any real detriment to your quality of life really. The more companies take, the more opportunity for disruption there will be.
A Department of Justice breakup is certainly the easiest and most immediately gratifying solution. It is hardly the only solution, and in my mind I am certain it is the wrong solution.
>society might be better off if someone takes the initiative to meet this demand rather than force a company to roll out the red carpet for it's competition.
Would you say the same if the car market suddenly coalesced into a duopoly and the car companies become very restrictive?
Would you defend only them being allowed to do basic repairs in the interest of safety?
One going as far as saying you need to buy their tires or tires from companies that pay them tribute or the car won't start, their seat covers unless you manage disable some weird detection, etc
The other allowing such stuff just making it a pain.
Would you then say a company just needs to pop up and meet this demand?
Despite all the stuff involved and the size of cars would be a lot lot easier. Because at least cars don't necessarily need an ecosystem, userbase and developer community outside of the company to get of the ground and get sales.
As soon as you apply these things the other industries they start sounding ridiculous and hilariously anticompetitive but with phones people for some reason have come to accept it.
Car company requires third party manufacturers to adhere to its quality standards and pass review before being installed. The car company installs all of the third party parts for you and distributes them globally, handling payment, they charge 30% (or 15%) to the third party for this.
If you refuse to adhere to their quality standards they refuse to install your third party accessory.
Drivers can only get approved service from the car company.
Seems fine? Probably an exclusive benefit for owners of that car. I could see people choosing that car because of this.
Except in the real world Apple purposefully prevents you from getting your hands on replacement parts, they sue anyone distributing scematics, refuse to repair equipment that's 4 years old and repairable and refuse to do data recovery.
So no, there is no part of that thats fine.
When laws around cars were put together people actually cared about their liberty, and I have the right to open car repair tomorrow and BMW and Toyotas of the world wont interfere. And unlike iPhones,cars actually are dangerous.
Firstly, thats not how warranty work - if I add fins to my car that does not give you the right to void wrranty on the engine.
Secondly I vote to get laws passed that they make sure they can shove this policy. I've had enough of this corporate lawmaking and stockholm syndrome victims covering for them
>Then you can buy a different car from the other company that doesn't have this policy.
Which now also charges more fucking over consumers because they can and limits more in their favour because ...hey it's a duopoly. There's no pressure to make it a monopoly.
Also as someone else noted apples own actions show that this isn't how they do business given the opportunity.
> Your liberty is not at stake here, nor any real detriment to your quality of life really.
Yes it is.
iOS controls a sufficient part of US revenue that wider ecosystem effects on what is permitted speech come directly from the app store terms, or at least in some cases about trying to second guess the inconsistently applied, arbitrary and vague as hell App Store rules.
We've got direct testimony from all sorts of app makers that what speech they do and do not censor on the platform (especially around sex, impacting the fundamental liberties and safety of sex workers, queer communities, artists and educators) is directly because their business is such that they need to watch the terms of the app store.
We've seen examples in China of Apple blocking apps that literally lead to people failing to escape authoritarian governments and them disappearing, quite possibly to their death.
Liberty is the fundamental reason that a singular control of what software can be run on mobile device is a thing too dangerous to be allowed to exist. Competition law is probably the most expedient route to fix it, but a centralised app store should be a criminal act on it's own merits.
Except there are no negative rights being infringed upon here. You can hardly appeal to natural law for the right to publish what you want on someone else's platform. Liberty is defined as being 'free from', not 'free to'.
> We've seen examples in China of Apple blocking apps that literally lead to people failing to escape authoritarian governments and them disappearing, quite possibly to their death.
This seems very flimsy but I would be genuinely interested in reading up on this, if you could provide a source/reference. Either way, this is a great reason not to use and publish on the iOS platform. But the irony of suggesting government overreach as a cure for the ails of extreme government overreach in another country is not lost on me.
Liberty does not mean freedom. Actually, the positive freedom you want for would come at cost of the negative liberties of other individuals.
And an iPhone being your property does not change the properties of the iPhone you bought. You can tinker with it as much as your ability allows you to, but if you are not happy with the limitations of the device than you should not have bought that device.
Yes, you do. If you want to reach 50% of Americans, you're forced to build and distribute an app on the App Store.
Try building Netflix without an iOS app.
Try writing a new social media app and not building for iPhone.
Pick any modern vertical without an iPhone app. You just can't do it. Apple is the new AOL for a lot of folks.
You immediately surrender 30% to reach 50% of your customer base, and on top of that, you have to dance to Apple's arbitrary rules and app approval release trains.
1. This is not how technology should work.
2. Apple's fees are extortion.
3. This is using monopolistic advantage to strong arm an entire industry.
There are competing video services to Netflix which are accessible through the web browser on iOS. Also keep in mind that Netflix does not manage subscriptions through in-app purchases (anymore).
Several people (including me) access social media sites through the browser rather than having a native app, in part because of the abuses done by social networks in device profiling in the past.
> Apple is the new AOL for a lot of folks.
So the same sort of companies who made a marketing decision to invest in AOL keywords are now willing to write an app and give money to apple so that users can find their service through a search in the app store?
> You immediately surrender 30% to reach 50% of your customer base
I assume you do not realize that it is well documented all of the ways you can pay less (e.g. subscriptions, small business program) or nothing (external payments and subscriptions - you are only limited by your ability to advertise those as alternatives to offering in-app purchases, and can raise your in-app price if you prefer to cover the difference).
I like local control, I think urbit is cool and hope they succeed. I'm a little disturbed by the need for mighty and how we've ended up in a such a messy state of things with modern computing.
It's not about reducing risk or scam apps really - it's about Apple being able to incentivize user-benefiting behavior that ad-driven business models corrupt. Maybe we wouldn't need this in a world that had more CCPA laws with teeth, I'd be happy to live in that world, but we don't.
At least with Apple I have the option to buy hardware from a company with aligned incentives that gives a shit.
> It's not about reducing risk or scam apps really - it's about Apple being able to incentivize user-benefiting behavior that ad-driven business models corrupt. Maybe we wouldn't need this in a world that had more CCPA laws with teeth, I'd be happy to live in that world, but we don't.
Apple isn't doing this out of their own good heart! They've built one of the largest monopolies in the world.
Is it okay for one megamonopoly to tax everyone else simply because they reached market penetration first?
Yes, one takes more risk using the road than using an unofficial apk. But I’m not aware of an “App Store-like” method of transportation that would let someone get where they’re going just as easily and quickly without any risk. And if we’re talking about the average user, the harm done by malicious software may be much harder to detect in the first place.
I don't understand this argument at all.
You're almost certainly taking more risk driving in a car than downloading an app, yet you're probably willing to embrace the full degrees of freedom of the roadway.
We shouldn't be afraid to use computers. Security is possible without an app store.
Apologizing for Apple's exploitive system is doing us all a disservice. It's making it harder to do business, launch a startup, use your own device, refurbish your device, and compute freely.
Technology wasn't always a locked-in time share. We're witnessing a hostile takeover. An invented scam, sold to us by the Jobs and Ballmers of the world.
The Apple and Google stores make us serfs in their kingdoms. We're renting, not owning.
Your choices are impinging upon my freedoms. The more people that accept this, the more companies are willing to take.
A Department of Justice breakup is looking like the only solution at this point.