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Comment by bsaul | Hacker News Reader

"Before they go on our store, all apps are reviewed against the same set of guidelines that are intended to protect customers and provide a fair and level playing field to developers."

As an iphone customer and an iphone developer, let me just say apple can just go f* themselves... This hypocrisy is making me mad. the OS is secure, the access permissions are secure, at this point the only thing they need to ensure is that the game store isn't a scam and then it'll be fine. So, please, stop pretending it's to protect anyone (or in this case macOS doesn't provide a secure environment, right ?).

Just admit it's for your own personal greed, and that you're leveraging a totally unfair position to impose your app store to win against its competitors.

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Just two thoughts.

We do not know if the MacOS store will undergo a similar transformation if not outright rebranding so that it follows the same rules.

It is possible if they continue down this path they will be the only members of their walled garden and this segment of the industry will pass them by; streaming of games and shows and possibly just hosting apps remotely.

addendum, there are times where I think they are asking to be regulated, perhaps just to see how far they can go or to get regulation which prevents or limits future competition

It's really ironic how having suffered from microsoft monopolistic abuses in the past, they now do the EXACT same thing.

And the worst is that higher management probably convinced themselves they're not.

Yeah, i believe only a trial will make them realize what they've become.

PS: planning on buying a non-google non-apple phone in the future, after having had to buy a new iphone just so that i could install ios 13 and keep working (the old one being perfectly fine btw). Any advice ?

Apple has always been like that: https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&stor...

Of course they will relive their desktop experience because some other environment will at some point be better due to fierce competition. It's kind of their omen that the company with the bitten apple from paradise has to created a walled garden. The difference will be that there is no Steve to rescue them again.

Funny thing is, their first logo was Newton's apple. Imagine the difference.

Well, Newton's life was heavily influenced by an intellectual property battle over the invention of calculus, and he spent his later life hunting and executing counterfeiters, so, maybe appropriate after all?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Later_life_of_Isaac_Newton#Ach...

While I see where you're coming from, I think there's a pretty big difference between software and hardware expandability. Anyone can write software for a Mac and run it, then and now. (Nowadays users need to right click to open apps from unidentified developers, but that's not so onerous.)

Have you considered SailfishOS? It can be run on a number of devices (including the PinePhone if that interests you): https://jolla.com/sailfishx/

And more info about the PinePhone and it's OS support: https://wiki.pine64.org/index.php/PinePhone_Software_Release...

Jolla are selling sailfish for 50 euros and the official support is limited to Sony xperia phones. Personally, i have never paid for my cellphone OS and neither have the vast majority of people out there.

When the instructions involve a bunch of convoluted commands and the terminal, Sailfish doesn't stand a chance. Like, their chances of growing in popularity are literally zero with this model.

The options I know of are the Pinephone and the Librem 5. They're various degrees of open source and secure. They're also slow, lack most software, require constant tinkering, and have terrible battery life. The pragmatic option is to get an Android phone you can install LineageOS on, use the fDroid store, and don't install Google services. This way you can sideload normal apps if you need them.

>Android phone you can install LineageOS on

What would be good candidate phone for that? Is there a phone that is friendly towards hackers in that way?

Looking at the LineageOS downloads page OnePlus has strong support (as a ratio of the number of phones they released to the number of phones that are compatible). Another idea is to check XDA Developers and see which forums are most active.

https://download.lineageos.org/

The OnePlus phones are good and they run on Lineage, but they do bundle google services by default. Of course, you can unlock the bootloader (wasn't too hard on the OP6, or the OPO before that, not sure about newer devices) and flash whatever you want, though, if you want to get rid of google services.

The list of supported devices is here: https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/

I just bought a oneplus pro 7 with lineage and microg and i love it !

I'm happy with my Pocophone F1. It's not the only phone with very good ROM/Free software support, but among the cheapest (around 300€, maybe a bit less by now, it should now also be available used).

It has lots of RAM, an SD card slot, a headphone jack, a high-end processor, a large battery and most importantly is very repairable (a screen costs about 20€).

The initial unlocking process is a bit annoying and stupid, but after that it's quite nice. The only thing you could say it really lacks is NFC.

If you intend to flash custom rom on your phone, generally avoid devices with mediatek (or other non-qualcomm) chipsets because they tend to have higher risk of hard-bricking when you messed up which will require sending the phone to a service center to fix.

I guess it depends what you use your phone for, but Mobian[1] on the PinePhone is a surprisingly decent daily driver for me.

1 - https://mobian-project.org

It works for some use cases, I don't mean to imply otherwise. For my use cases... I have more apps installed on my phone than Mobian has in its repository.

One plus runs and android fork and pixels. Both have decent support with non bkoatware images that unlocked for a privacy kernel if you want.

> It's really ironic how having suffered from microsoft monopolistic abuses in the past, they now do the EXACT same thing.

It is also extremely concerning how little backlash there is for this behavior, because that is what stopped Microsoft.

> Any advice ?

Last I checked, all Google phones (Pixel, Nexus) can be rooted/flashed in a supported manner. There's irony for you. You can't do anything about the binary blobs for the baseband/radio.

It was a different time man.

How so? I didn't get the chance to experience it.

The government didn't just bend over and let companies do whatever they wanted every single time. They still fought back some of the time.

There are also a lot more people playing the stock market now than before.

If one is a shareholder of a company, that gives incentive to defend them no matter what.

> just so that i could install ios 13

Can you install iOS 13 on a non-Apple phone? If not, why not just stay on iOS 12? What software requires that kind of upgrade and is available on a phone OS other than the iOS/Android duopoly?

If I were to guess, they may need to develop against iOS 13. Or an application they rely on only works on iOS 13 now.

But yeah the problem doesn’t get solved by moving devices.

i had to test the app i was developing for a customer on an iOS 13 device for some technical reasons (i used to not care for my previous apps). And my iphone 6 wouldn't install that version (which is another topic).

As i said, i'm both an iphone user AND mobile professional developer. The first is quite easy to change, but the second will take a bit more time for me to get rid of Apple (or google).

> there are times where I think they are asking to be regulated

Never ascribe to malice, that which can be explained by corporate incompetence.

I really appreciate having the MacOS app store as a sort of "trusted" alternative to downloading off the web. That said I can't ever see Apple removing the ability to download applications from untrusted sources, like they did with iPhone.

Really? I can absolutely see that. It seems OSX has been creeping towards that for some time, and now they're moving to ARM and stuffing their machines with "security" chips, it's getting more and more locked down. Macintosh computers are steadily becoming iPads with hardware keyboards.

That is just not backed up in the actual events of what they are doing.

If there was ever a time to do this it would be right now as they undergo changing Mac to ARM, but they're not.

I don't think the right time to make that transition is while they're trying to switch to ARM. Right now, they're probably trying to get things switched by making as few changes as possible. That eases the transition for everybody. I'm not sure why they would want to deal with both things at the same time. They are both huge undertakings. Not to mention, the two things are really unrelated. Besides, how does CPU architecture affect the ability to lock the OS into only running App Store apps?

You think Apple could make Adobe, Autodesk, and countless others go through the Mac App Store?

They've been already doing that for all the iOS version of their apps (which are now way past a simple player or viewer).

Why not ? It's probably only a matter of time.

A couple of points:

1) Apple has much more leverage on iOS because it has a bigger market share and many more iOS users than macOS.

2) macOS has traditionally been an open platform

3) Many desktop app developers wouldn't be able to keep installing and running the products the way their do it now. For example, Adobe has an app called Creative Cloud that manages installs, licenses, active computers, and other things. It's practically malware at this point, but if you want to use Adobe apps there is no other way.

Yes, yes they can.

The real question is if they can convince all the professionals those companies cater to to adopt an ecosystem where software providers have to go through an arbitrarily and closely controlled App Store.

If their hardware and base OS is too attractive to those professionals relative to the loss of freedom Adobe, etc. will follow.

Thankfully, though, I don’t think Mac users will actually be ok with that. There’s been quite an exodus of professionals from Mac to windows based on much smaller things so far.

you can't really stop a desktop computer from running arbitrary software. If users can install compilers (which you pretty much have to allow), then all you can do is make them go through extra steps.

> I really appreciate having the MacOS app store as a sort of "trusted" alternative to downloading off the web.

But it's not, the Mac App Store is a dumpster fire.

How come?

Because there's a vibrant marketplace outside the store and Apple provides little benefit but takes 30%.

It’s still far more trusted than buying on the web. That’s a significant benefit for developers.

It's only a benefit for Adobe and Microsoft and Slack who can call someone up at Apple and ask them to hand over the appropriate entitlements so their apps will function.

> provides little benefit but takes 30%

I understand the MAS is not a great fit for all use cases, but IMO this statement is wrong for the use cases where the MAS is a good fit.

I used the MAS as a dev, and it adds other benefits such as updates, cloud storage, etc.

I used it specifically for an education app and it was just great to tell macOS users to simply download it from the MAS and let it handle the updates from there.

Implementing updates on your own is not trivial in a desktop app. Before using the MAS we used Electron with Squirrel. We had to manage a server exclusively for the updates. Squirrel worked great in macOS but in Windows it was a nightmare. Also the Electron apps were huge, as you probably know.

For the MAS app, we kept the web UI but moved to Swift + WKWebView. The app went from a 50MB download to about 4MB. Memory consumption also decreased dramatically, I think the Swift version used something like 10-15MB of RAM.

> As an iphone customer and an iphone developer...

if you really cared, you would vote against them with your dollar.

I think it's implied that they likely will in the future. They just mention their experience an Apple developer to convey that they know more about what they're talking about than average.

The problem with that argument is that you don't get a line-item vote. I can't vote security +1, privacy +1, curated app store +1, no streaming services -1. I can't go to Apple and say "I'd love to buy an iPhone, but I want a $50 discount because you won't enable streaming games."

that's absolutely what i intend to do with my next phone. However, as a professional, i'm a bit stuck with that ecosystem (or google's one, which isn't much better, for other reasons)

Greed. That's the problem underneath all of this issues Apple is having.

> As an iphone customer and an iphone developer, let me just say apple can just go f* themselves

But you keep buying their product, so apparently... you can?

What are they supposed to do, try to return their phone months after buying it?

> "all apps are reviewed against the same set of guidelines that are intended to protect customers and provide a fair and level playing field to developers."

It's impressive Apple so blatantly say this when we know for a fact big companies get a different/better deal.

Everyone is equal, some are just more equal, it seems.

I hope a large company/developer/celebrity with a massive following will pressure Apple/Tim Cook into responding to this hypocrisy. I realize Apple are in the business to make money, but it's insulting for them to say "Everyone gets the same deal" when that is clearly not true.

A better deal (money wise etc) is different than "the same set of guidelines" (code check, features wise).

They've cut apps from big companies like Microsoft (now, with their game platform) and Amazon (Kindle purchases) in the past...

Select developers get special entitlements and access that other developers do not get https://twitter.com/steipete/status/1288156232717606912

Apple does not use the same set of guidelines.

Just as bad is a Dev that feels righteous it don’t understand the finer details on both sides.

You gave them money after they had been doing this for a decade. You can only blame yourself.

While I agree with you from an economical point, I totally disagree because phones are quite a duopoly. Either you go with Apple or you cut your market size in half (depending on where you are, or then it‘s the same with Google).

It‘s not like a car dealer where there are probably more than one in your small town each dealing with different brands. There you can ignore one dealer and one brand and you still have enough dealers & brands to select from. With phones you have exactly 2. And at some point you‘ll also want to eat food and not only don‘t do stuff because of reasons.

Right. Because nobody else will buy an iPhone if I don’t.

As a developer, you can’t have a successful app and not be on the Apple app store.

Anyway, even if neither of those were true, as human beings we certainly always have the right to talk shit about Apple and tell them to go fuck themselves. Even while we’re using their products.

I make sure to cost Apple money by convincing entire companies to not use their stuff. And any Apple products that my family buys aren’t new. We also never buy apps from their app store.

If you want to change the US Government, you don't do it by packing up and moving to Japan. "Voting with your wallet" isn't voting for change; it's giving up. Apple can do better, Apple must do better, and they don't listen to people who aren't their customers. Why should they?

This positions literally made me guffaw.

'"Voting with your wallet" isn't voting for change; it's giving up.'

I love the subtext I'm reading that boycotting companies that are doing bad things is for dirty quitters who lack grit.

This brings to mind a Musashi quote, from the book of five rings.

“You should not have any special fondness for a particular weapon, or anything else, for that matter. Too much is the same as not enough. Without imitating anyone else, you should have as much weaponry as suits you.”

It's possible that GP changed their opinion over time, and that is something to be celebrated rather than chided.

I have kids, and one of my primary difficulties is limiting their screen time, and to a lesser extent, content. I appreciate having Apple as one gatekeeper that I can trust and learn to operate. I don't want a Wild West, and I consider these restrictions one of the reasons I pay Apple's premium.

The need to filter out content seems orthogonal to Apple not allowing certain content in the first place.

i'm really having trouble understanding how giving the choice to the people that want to to install a different app store is going to change anything to your situation...

I'm not for removing apple's store...

Apple allows Candy Crush, Clash of Clans, and all manner of other games using addictive psychological tactics onto the App Store.

If you're more concerned about "gamer-centric" titles, there's also Fortnite and F2P versions of Call of Duty.

How is not allowing streaming Xbox games limiting screen time?

Your kids could now use my linux machine and they wouldn't be able to install or do any harm at all.

Apple's restrictions don't matter at all here.

Google's Family Link allows very granular control over what your kids do with their devices. The the extend that you get a notification if you want for every app they try to install and won't get installed unless you permit it. You can set time limits not just for screen time but on on a per app basis as well.

I don't know how this works but from my experience I found that Google's got this one right.

>So, please, stop pretending it's to protect anyone (or in this case macOS doesn't provide a secure environment, right ?).

Well, ultimately, it is. If a "store within a store" (or a second independent store) gets too much traction, it will hold the platform back.

If such a store/third entity becomes powerful Apple can't direct the future and make the changes it wants (the jump to Apple Sillicon is just a recent example, deprecating Carbon, notarization, etc) but has to placate to that too, or risk the ire of tons of dependent users.

Apple has seen that play out when it gave too much power to Adobe, MS and others, and has been correcting for that ever since Jobs came back...

> Well, ultimately, it is. If a "store within a store" (or a second independent store) gets too much traction, it will hold the platform back.

A better solution would be for the DOJ to force Apple to allow other app stores and open installs.

> If such a store/third entity becomes powerful Apple can't direct the future and make the changes it wants (the jump to Apple Sillicon is just a recent example, deprecating Carbon, notarization, etc) but has to placate to that too, or risk the ire of tons of dependent users.

Where is that a problem in reality? They've changed their desktop architecture, and that's a completely open platform.

> Apple has seen that play out when it gave too much power to Adobe, MS and others, and has been correcting for that ever since Jobs came back...

Apple built something that is now widely used for conducting business, finance, communication, etc. They no longer deserve to have a singular stranglehold on it. The world depends on iPhone, and it needs to be opened up.

As a former iOS developer and a user, I'm torn. AppStore's rules are frustrating and unevenly applied, and it sucks that AppStore is the only way to distribute apps. On the other hand, as a user I don't want 20 goddamn app stores on my device. Want Portal 2? Go download Steam! Want Fortnight? Go download Epic store! Minecraft? Windows store! It's horrible.

Sure but I prefer that to the alternative of ‘everything is only available on the Windows store’, where Steam doesn’t exist

> as a user I don't want 20 goddamn app stores on my device

Nobody would force anyone to install alternate stores.

Once a program is purchased from a store, it doesn't need to be launched from that store. GOG Galaxy 2 accumulates the storefronts into one launcher, where you can search, install, and launch any game that you've purchased on any of the platforms. This wouldn't even be possible on an iOS device. I'm in favor of openness and interconnectivity over uniformity.

Most games except the ones you listed are available across multiple stores, and websites like humble bundle. Typically the only limitation is that most stores do not allow publishers to advertise that an item is available on another store. For example, Halo can be picked up on Steam or Windows Store these days. Microsoft realised that people preferred certain stores over others. So much so that Epic is still giving away multiple games every week trying to build up it's user base.

EA tried to play hardball with their Origin store and only recently started selling on Steam again.

What happens to my games when the store I bought them from goes bust?

Depends on the store. GoG and Humble Bundle offer DMR free downloads typically so you can store and keep your own software. Others? Same thing as any other walled garden.

>A better solution would be for the DOJ to force Apple to allow other app stores and open installs.

Force them to make a different product that the one users buy on their own volition, despite a more open alternative with double the adoption, and which took Apple from a bankrupt company in 1997 to the largest company on Earth in 2020?

Did it ever occured to anyone that some of the success iOS has is precisely because it does restrict things a certain way (which enable other things, from security to quicker platform tech changes)?

And that as users we like it because of those things, not despite them?

i don't think the game store is using any kind of private apis, so in that regard it's really the same as any other application.

"risk the ire of tons of dependent users": This argument doesn't hold: the reason an OS is successful isn't for the OS, but for the apps. So, unless you think apple should actually write all the successful apps themselves, to remain in control and easily make deep technical migrations feasible, i really don't see how that could work.

> Well, ultimately, it is. If a "store within a store" (or a second independent store) gets too much traction, it will hold the platform back.

Here's the thing. We're talking about objective, concrete examples. Allow Microsoft's and other trusted partners app, but reject others. Apple likes to pretend it sets the same rules for all developers and there's no exceptions, which is categoricly false, as has been documented time and time again[1].

Google Stadia and Xbox Game Pass Ultimate game streaming services are not "alternate app stores" which will hold the iOS platform back. Arguably as these are all streaming services, where there's no code executing on the device, it makes it easier for Apple to make architectural changes to its platform because the games playable within the apps do not require those changes!

Apple can still reject "alternate app stores", but allow specific applications like XGPU because it just seems like the right thing to do? Preventing these services on iOS holds back iOS and ultimately makes the platform less capable and hurts consumers.

[1]: Apple taking only 15% cut from Amazon, letting Amazon use their own payment provider for in-app rentals, extending private entitlements for certain developers

xCloud isn’t a store. It’s a subscription model just like Netflix.

Meanwhile Amazon can sell digital movies à la carte on iOS. A literal store downloaded via a store.

You must be mad a lot. This is how the world works and Apple is nothing to single out here.

> This is how the world works

It's broken, and the government is going to slap the shit out of Apple.

The App Store eats away more profit than taxes, and is single handedly responsible for teaching the public that an eternity of app updates are for free. They drove the public to expect apps should be cheaper than coffee.

> They drove the public to expect apps should be cheaper than coffee.

While still continuing to charge the developer 99USD a year.

This is the least of the problems of trying to earn money on the App Store.

How did Apple teach the public this?

My recollection was that if anyone taught this to the public it was the press and the blogosphere.

This argument was had at the time, and review sites vilified anything that wasn’t $1 as greed.

Can you say what Apple did that contributed to this?

Couple of things:

* iOS upgrades were free and macOS upgrades turned free a few years after the iOS App Store became available * the lower price tiers available for app developers started with 0 and $1, and in steps of $1 * for many years, the iOS App Store free and paid charts were huge drivers for downloads. It was worth making an app much cheaper and making it up in volume. That strategy worked for many years.

Apple cultivated that environment and developers lived it

I don’t think Apple set the standard for free software updates - they just needed to do that to compete with VC and Adversing funded Browsers and web apps.

That is where the idea that software should be free or cheap came from.

As for ‘allowing’ one dollar apps. It seems like you are proposing that Apple should be punished for not entering into a price fixing arrangement to artificially inflate software prices.

I have some sympathy for wishing they had done this, but this is exactly what they tried with books, and they were subjected to antitrust action.

Keeping prices artificially high is illegal - you can’t blame Apple for not doing it.

Making software free or cheap was already a fait accompli, thanks to the web and VC funded startups.

Apple actually reversed that partially by creating a store that was trustworthy enough for people to spend some money on software again.

It is simply not true that Apple caused the race to the bottom. Look back at media from the time and you can confirm this.

I don’t think they had to do anything illegal. One of the things they could have done much earlier can be felt in the App Store nowadays. Notice the lack of emphasis on charts now. It’s not perfect now, but developer laments that getting featured doesn’t drive sales like it did before (because chatting didn’t have the kind of up front visibility and that features don’t last for an entire week anymore). That’s a good thing.

There is always downward pressure on prices because well-funded startups can provide their product free. But charts and the emphasis on them were very very unhealthy. I don’t think Apple can ever fix it now.

This is a serious problem for the entire consumer and prosumer industry. While competition that drives prices down is often good, but past a certain limit and it can do long term harm to the industry that is irreversible. I fear we might have already crossed that threshold.

I agree that charts are a problem - arguably Google is just a set of charts for keywords, and i think that’s one of the reasons it is so corrosive.

I just don’t think that Apple could have done much about it at the beginning. If they weren’t producing charts, someone else would have been because people want to know what other people think is good, and on a global scale this results in winner takes all dynamics.

I agree with you about everything in this comment except the sentiment that it’s Apple’s fault or that they could have done something about it from the start.

My view is that we actually now do have a chance to do something about it, but anti-trust action against Apple will almost certainly destroy that chance and leave us stuck with this situation for much longer.

I think that the race to the bottom that ended with the domination of the F2P model is not entirely because of Apple, but they contributed by not doing anything against it.

And they were one of the very few companies that could have done something.

They saw it happening and they chose to not intervene.

What intervention would have helped?

Instead of applying a 30% fee, a fixed $2 + 5% would have completely changed the market.

Seems like a conspiracy to raise the price of apps to me.

And a clear violation of anti-trust law.

> They drove the public to expect apps should be cheaper than coffee.

I don't understand - did Apple set app prices? Or did the app developers?

It's exactly what you'd expect from a low-friction, highly competitive marketplace. They eat everyone's profit in a hurry. That Apple was able to take a 30% cut while this happened leads me to believe they did an incredibly good job of creating a low-friction, highly competitive marketplace.

Now, contrary to econ 101 thought experiments, you don't always want to approach the ideal of perfectly-competitive marketplaces too closely. It can be bad for overall market health and even, ultimately, harm choices available to consumers for exactly the reasons cited.

[EDIT] actually it could also indicate that they've done one part of market-creation really poorly, which is that they're making reliable information other than price way too hard to discover, though again, that the market has not just survived this defect/cost but thrived indicates they did an uncommonly good job at other parts.

> It's broken, and the government is going to slap the shit out of Apple.

I doubt it. Apple would get out it like they got out of their European Tax-ish.

This article and thread is about Apple though. Why would they not be the subject of consternation?

The world has worked in many different ways before, and will work in different ways in the future. Let's have a discussion about how we'd like to see it work, ya?

> This is how the world works

"It is what it is"

Doesn't mean we have to be happy about it or accept it

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