Some customers buy into the Apple ecosystem because of its walled garden. Not despite of it.
However, to me, it's hard to argue that Apple should keep getting money from you once you've established a loyal customer base and they are giving you money.
And as a not-so-crazy take on this issue, why isn't Apple insisting on taking a cut of, say, the check I'm depositing into Chase and just uploaded a photograph of it. It's revenue, it's in the app ... why isn't Apple taking a piece of that?
I like having a single vendor for all my software purchases, that I can trust to issue refunds and discontinue subscriptions promptly.
I spend all day thinking about computers, I don't want to also be my own IT professional and security team, especially for a slab of glass I hold in my hand. I accept that I have to do some IT and security thinking about my iOS devices, but the more the walled garden provides, the less is on me.
I understand that with this "safety" comes a loss of "liberty," but I find that an acceptable tradeoff for consumer hardware in my personal life. I don't automatically assume that the right tradeoffs for me are also the right tradeoffs for everyone else.
If someone wants to sideload apps and/or develop their own custom apps without some kind of special developer status, I have no problem suggesting they buy something else.
I accept that I am not the typical HN reader.
I question the validity of presuming this question has a correct answer for all parents under all circumstances.
Not your kids. Not your business.
Our school assigns every kid an iPad. In Kindergarten. Good idea? I kinda don't think so, though it's been useful this year, of course. But it happens.
Increasingly parents have trouble letting kids wander the neighborhood on their own without a tracker/communication-device on them, and a smartphone's really good at serving that role. There are other options but kids want to have their smartphone on them, and as soon as you want them to be able to do one other smartphone-thing any other option starts to look kinda pointless.
(just relating observations of parenting in the wild, not my own parenting approach)
I remember they got Samsung tablets and when I had looked at them to see if I would like to buy one... I saw they were completely full of - essentially - spyware and malware.
Okay.. then their opinion is what's relevant here, not yours.
> I like having a single vendor for all my software purchases, that I can trust to issue refunds and discontinue subscriptions promptly.
Weren't they in hot water recently for forcing developers to use their deceptive subscription trial system?
I’m sure you also want to make sure your kids aren’t spending all your money on dumb in-app purchases. Having a controlled mechanism for that provides an actual value to you, and letting companies circumvent it would make things harder for you. Are the fees for that mechanism fair? That’s a business negotiation.
This is a big one. I'm significantly more likely to subscribe to a service/app if I'm able to do so through iTunes, because it means the app developer can't directly reach into my wallet. If I hit "Cancel Subscription" in the iTunes subscription panel, it's canceled, no ifs, ands, or buts, and no hidden unsubscribe links or intentionally obtuse unsubscription processes to have to contend with.
This is a huge thing for consumers to give up for the sake of developer freedom. If Apple begins to allow third party payment systems, developers should be required to connect said payment systems to Apple-provided standardized subscription control APIs so strong user control is maintained.
I don't wanna have to worry about stupid computer shit when I'm just trying to use my iPad or iPhone as a tool to accomplish something else. Drawing, playing music, reading, writing, edutainment for the kids, very occasionally a game. Maybe the odd SSH session. If I decide I want some software to help me with any of those things I just want it to be in the App Store, and I just want it to use the App Store payment system. I don't want competing app stores because that might mean that sometimes what I want isn't on the Apple one, following Apple's rules about spying on my and otherwise behaving as badly as desktop software and webapps do these days. It means I have to search more than one store. Now we're veering into the stupid computer shit I don't want to have to worry about, again.
You don't lose anything if you don't want to.
You should have to keep doing what you already do.
Then buy any other general computing product on the market. I'd be more sympathetic to this concern if Android didn't exist. Meanwhile it does, and the users who picked Apple did it because they don't care about this, they don't care very much about this, or because they actively want the App Store restrictions and the ecosystem that they create.
> You don't lose anything if you don't want to.
I very well might, though. Changes to rules change how actors behave in a system. The way software developers and publishers behave on iOS could change in ways that I don't like if they're able to viably distribute software outside the App Store. That might be OK, except forcing developers and publishers to follow the App Store rules is part of the appeal of the devices. If that'd been a major sticking point for me, I could have bought Android.
That's not how free market works.
And it's a very silly objection.
Android is a licensed platform.from Google, but Google does not make the majority of devices.
Apple manufacturs the devices, but they sell them to me locked in the ecosystem they profit from.
Imagine being unable of refueling because your car does not work with standard oil pumps and you had to go to Apple licensed gas station whom Apple charges 30% to.
They would be prohibited from selling the car.
> I very well might, though.
But you wouldn't if you don't change your behaviour.
> Changes to rules change how actors behave in a system
That's exactly what many want from Apple.
Change the rules.
Nobody is asking Apple to relax their safety rules inside their walled garden.
If they can't allow sideloading, they're not as good as I thought.
> I could have bought Android.
I don't buy it.
If Apple sold Android powered iPhones you would still buy an iPhone, you're are buying the brand, not the product.
It... isn't? How not?
> Imagine being unable of refueling because your car does not work with standard oil pumps and you had to go to Apple licensed gas station whom Apple charges 30% to.
Then I'd probably buy a competing brand of car, if that bothered me? You know, one of my other choices on the market? Like how there are a bunch of Android device vendors and a couple Linux mobile vendors that I could choose if Apple's App Store model bothered me, rather than being something I actively want? I am 100% not following how this isn't a market working. The choices people are making may not be the ones you prefer—happens to me all the time with markets—but there are choices.
> That's exactly what many want from Apple.
> Change the rules.
Many developers and publishers, maybe. I'm very much unconvinced that's what the subset of users who are aware of this issue in the first place, want, for the most part. I think if it were a major problem for them they'd have bought an Android device, or something else.
> If they can't allow sideloading, they're not as good as I thought.
They do allow sideloading, it's just fairly inconvenient. They can't allow a form of it that's convenient enough to allow other app stores to thrive, without changing the character of the ecosystem for their users. I don't think any amount of being "good" at what they do would change that.
> If Apple sold Android powered iPhones you would still buy an iPhone, you're are buying the brand, not the product.
OK, cool, guess continuing this exchange is pointless.
But you also bought Apple approved tires, Apple approved child seat, Apple approved free miles on the highway and Apple approved breaking fluid
You can't use them anywhere else, maybe you can sell them, but you have to reset the car to factory settings
Whatever you bought cannot be used anywhere else, except another Apple car
That's how vendor lock in works, I'm European but I know US laws don't appreciate when a company locks users in
Probably most apps would still be on store and hopefully you would get a cheaper version from the developer website.
What is clear but you probably don't want to admit is Apple is not fighting here for your safety but for extracting mroe money, if they were not that greedy Epic,Spotify would not have started this wars and you would have been safe in the wallgarden and extremely satisfied that the other people inside can't escape either.
Why wouldn't I admit that? Of course the situation benefits them. I just doubt there's a way to give me all the aspects of their devices & ecosystem that I value, that doesn't also benefit them. I'd love to see them drop the cut they take, for instance. That being so high benefits me not at all, so far as I can tell.
... and if someone comes out with devices that actually compete with the specific sort of product they offer, including the integrated & closed app store and restrictions on what apps are allowed to do, and takes a lower cut of app store sales, then Apple might have to reduce their cut, too. Or this current scuffle might end up not changing the app store rules much, but dropping the cut they take substantially—personally, that's an outcome I'd love.
This is a completely false argument you're putting up - you can HAVE all of those protections while STILL having the option of replacing protected software with less safe one.
Please stop peddling this false argument.
If there's a way to allow easily & conveniently running one's own software without letting competing app stores work, I'm all for it. In fact there is a way to run your own software, it's just inconvenient, because time-limited so you have to re-install it periodically, which effectively kills any possibility of running a successful app store via that method.
Consider two vendors: A and G.
A provides a full walled garden. G provides a walled garden, but lets you side-load whatever you like, you can ignore the apps in the garden.
Everyone making apps for A puts them in the walled garden, so if you own an A, you buy an app from the garden.
For G, vendors decide for themselves whether to use the walled garden. Many choose to sell direct and avoid both the markup and the hassle of getting their apps approved.
They also get to make even more money by embedding surveillance capitalism into their apps if they sell direct. Or include completely unmoderated and unregulated adtech.
As a user, isn't G better than A, since I have the choice?
It is better than A, provided that every app in A's walled garden is also in G's walled garden. However, if in practice the apps I want to use are in A's walled garden, but sold direct on G to avoid the 30% hit, then in practice, as a user, I am better off with A if what I want are apps from the walled garden.
Of course, I can always do my research to figure out whether a side-loaded app on G is safe to use. But if what I wanted was to buy apps without having to think about them, then I can be better off with A in practice even though in theory, G provides everything A provides, and more.
Now, is there really a problem getting all the apps I use on A from G's walled garden? I don't personally know, since I don't want to go to the trouble of sorting out what is available in G's store versus what I have to sideload. So there's plenty of room to argue that in practice, G is superior to A.
But I do not think it is necessarily superior.
I don't like the complete lockout either. I like being able to run my apps on my device. But it is most definitely true that the ability to sideload apps results, in practice, in some developers opting out of providing App Store protected apps in favor of asking you to sideload.
Personally, this is so different from the way I think that I find it utterly surprising, much more so from the tech savvy audience of HN. But apparently preferring walled gardens and being willing to pay extra to obtain one and even more every time you buy something on it is not an uncommon opinion to have.
Seven billion people on the planet. It shouldn't be surprising to learn that not everyone thinks the way that you do.
I wonder if it's an age thing. When you're young and have more time than money, tinkering with the technical hassles of your phone is worth it to save a buck or two. When you're older and have more money than time, you happily pay $399 for an iPhone if it means getting hours or days of your life to spend on other things.
At some point I became acutely aware of every time I was doing something with a computer that was simply fucking with the computer, and not actually getting anything that I wanted or needed to get done, except to the extent that making my computer be not-broken is required for those things. Around that time I was exposed to macOS and iOS and finally had an actual choice to (mostly) not have to do that when I don't want to, and if I decide I would like to tinker then I can use... any other option on the market.
I'd probably be screwing around with trying to run NetBSD on Android phones and turn them into mobile computers I can plug monitors and keyboards into and embedding RPis and Arduinos in all kinds of crap around the house, if I were 16 again.
At the age I am now, though, you'd literally have to pay me to even think about doing any of that. Even when I screw around with getting allegedly set-it-and-forget-it RPi media projects (think: kodi, lakka) working I usually end up regretting it. I do know how to work with those sorts of things. I also very much don't want to any more, but do still want computer-things doing stuff for me with few or no hassles. Luckily these days you can pay to get that, in some categories at least. Largely from Apple, if you want them to last a while—I do wish they had actual competition in that sense. More options that don't spy (much) and Just Work (mostly), please.
Second, I very much argue that if there was no app store, consumers would pay 30% less. The app store and ecosystem provide something for developers, and if you remove the app store, the developers either do it for themselves, or pay somebody else to do it for them.
Of course, if there was meaningful competition, the fees might be less, or the value provided to developers might be more. But I doubt that prices would drop the full 30%.
I say this as someone who worked in tech distribution. Great things can happen when you cut out a middleman, but it's often surprising how difficult it is to replicate the middleman's distribution advantages.
All that being said, I'm not here to debate whether prices would fall 30%, 27.2%, or even 10%. I agree with your basic premise: tech-savvy people have less upside and more downside from owning locked-down devices.
Apple's rent seeking a bit with the App Store, but I have faith in their privacy protections, that they'll continue to support my devices for a long time after purchase, and that they'll be fairly prompt with security updates to all my devices.
And cobbling together the connections between ear phones, watch, phone, computer and TV would be quite tedious, probably no where near as smooth, and a pain in the ass to upkeep.
At the end of the day, besides my computer, I don't really give a hoot about side loading apps from different app stores, or I dunno... customizing things more I guess? I'm not really sure.
There is the possibility increased app store competition (say, if it was ruled anti-competitive to only allow Apple's App Store on Apple Products) would make Apple's App Store better though. Discovery can be kind of a pain in my opinion.
So, I'm not opposed to there being more app stores, but it'd probably take a fair amount of nudging to get me to actually try one.
Fast forward a decade (or maybe 2) and while I am still very pro open-all-the-things, I am happy to pay more for a controlled environment to run things I rely on but don’t care to spend time on maintaining and configuring.
I have 4 other people in my house, plus I'm the "tech guy" for maybe another dozen people. I appreciate how simple that job is when everyone has iPhones.
I have over a dozen and I really appreciate the ability to manage (or at least view) those in one place. Managing my non-app (website) subscriptions is quite a mess.
And it is only one advantage of the walled garden. I don't have to think much when I install an app - is it from the developer, or someone has tampered with it?
Apple is simple. I trust Apple to protect me and honestly based on the stories I read about Google's Play Store I feel more confident in Apple to do the right thing for consumers in the long run. Their incentive is aligned to my needs (good safe hardware that protects me from making potentially poor choices -- even as someone who is in the "tech" world)
Although the situation has gotten much better the past couple years, its still not uncommon to find apps on the app store that charge like 10$ a month for some wallpapers or something of a similar nature. Furthermore, every few months there are new news articles coming out about how ""XYZ"" app is collecting ""ABC"" data from iPhone users(like apps scraping clipboard data, or apps trying to access the microphone or camera when the user thinks there should be no recording going on).
The claim that the iOS is actually protecting users seems dubious at best. Apple tends to exert control over the app store, but it always seems to be in response to users finding out that some app is doing something evil rather then Apple protecting users up front to begin with.
Your point that some bad actors get through doesn't invalidate that Apple seems to be doing the best job of keeping the app store secure and consumer friendly.
The costs of Apple's walled garden have become so obscene at this point that I consider the pro-Apple position to be immoral.
I buy Apple products not because it's a walled garden per se, but because it's Apple's walled garden. Apple has been the only vendor to provide me with a consistently top-quality user experience, so I trust them to make decisions that benefit me. I don't have the same trust relationship with other software and hardware vendors, so their walled gardens I would protest against.
To me, a phone should work for me, not the other way around. I'd rather spend my time living my life than fussing with the technicalities of my phone. I'm willing to pay extra for it.
I also went with iPhone because I trust Apple to vet its apps better than any other vendor. When someone else does as good a job, I'll head over there. But for now, iPhone is where it's at.
The problem is that giving a choice to users is risky and not acceptable at scale because people are not smart, they do dumb things all the time; like pasting untrusted scripts into devtools console and getting hacked. Or replying to mail scams.
So I am happy I can hand an iPad to my parent and not be there to secure all activities they do online.
Users will give the installer root privileges.
History bore this out over and over and over again.
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[1]: See also: Crapware-laden browser toolbars, Java runtimes, Adobe Reader, Windows crapware, Smart TVs, ...
It's not the only thing I care about, but it's not all just strict downside.
I also buy it for my parents for the same reason.
For some background, I’m a longtime hardware and (more frequently) software developer. I also do quite a bit of ML consulting.
I was gifted a MacBook Air many years ago. I was an avid Ubuntu (and, to a much lesser extent, Windows) user and developer at the time so I didn’t know what to make of it. I certainly didn’t expect to be blown away and switch to all Apple devices.
Eight years later and I’m solidly in the Apple ecosystem. I have an open mind about switching but I love the reliability and consistency of the user experience. I can count on the core apps that I frequently reach for to just work. And if they don’t work there’s almost always an obvious, low-time, solution to fix them. I still do a great deal of development in Windows, but it’s exclusively in a Parallels VM on a MacBook and I’ve long since abandoned my desktop for development.
The Apple ecosystem has built up enough trust with me that I also use it when flying (Foreflight on an iPad). You couldn’t pay me to switch to an android tablet as an alternative for that use case.
My largest complaint is python development is not great on OS X out of the box. But that’s easy enough to work around.