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Comment by BoysenberryPi | Hacker News Reader

Genuine question: Why does this matter? I see 0 problems with Apple having a "walled garden." It's their product and their platform so they should be able to decide what gets supported and developed for it.

I personally don't like how Apple conducts their business so I just don't use Apple products and that's that.

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Well, you should hope that your country doesn't turn into a authoritarian regime. Cause then you'll be unable to use VPN or any kind of encrypted chats - only those that give access to comrade Major from the secret police.

If you think I'm overblowing things, try finding Signal in China's AppStore.

This is a fair point that I was overlooking and was more focused the part of the article that talks about Apple selling their own products and being the "only game in town" regarding selling apps.

I think the article explained that reasonably well. One example is that they also make their own apps, so you potentially have to pay your competitor 30% of your income which is more than your own margins. And then they surface their own app and hide your's. Cannot compete against that.

My issue with the article is that despite acknowledging that Android market share overall they are acting as if Apple is the only game in time. Maybe my thought process is just overly simplistic and I'm missing something because every time the app store gets brought up my general feeling is just don't use Apple. If enough developers abandon the platform they will be forced to change.

A consumer can somewhat choose freely. A developer though has to go where the market is. Not being on the app store is a huge blow to many businesses.

I'm curious how often this has actually occurred in the App Store? I can't think of too many apps that Apple has released that have many competitors. Sure, there are the built in apps (which you can remove) but I certainly haven't seen any lack of To Do or weather apps on the App Store.

It's an issue for Spotify vs Apple Music for instance. Apple wants a cut of Spotify's fee, and also had APIs for Apple Watch etc only they themselves could use.

Spotify never implemented those APIs.

There were other apps e.g. Podcast ones that used it.

They did, Apple just rejected their app... https://www.timetoplayfair.com/timeline/

No. They wanted to "work with Apple" on developing proposals that favoured their specific app.

And then kicked up a fuss when Apple said no.

When actual APIs were released Spotify never bothered to implement them for quite some time.

Because it makes apps more expensive.

If the apps become more expensive then people will stop buying them from the App Store and seeing people are not willing to pay for more expensive apps developers would probably stop developing for iOS which in the end would cause users to abandon the platform seeing as they cannot get the apps they need.

If apps being more expensive is really the only problem then it seems like the problem fixes itself.

It clearly doesn't fix itself, because both Apple and Google are taking a 30% cut.

You're assuming efficient markets. The App Store is a monopoly, i.e. the opposite of an efficient market. (Well, it's more nuanced, all markets are somewhere between efficient and monopolistic.)

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