Hacker News Reader

Comment by 0xDEEPFAC | Hacker News Reader

Apple has more than enough money to both protect users and actually help developers - it doesn't need to squeeze them. For example, why isn't it a one-time fee for the initial scan? Why must they take a share of every purchase.

Without competition (like gasp competing app stores) Apple will continue to be negligent to devs and ban applications that compete with their services.

For example, the Apple watch without cellular cannot use Spotify in offline mode since that would compete with Apple music. My girlfriend and I had to find this out after the purchase and completely defeated the purpose of buying the product for her workouts.

View on HN

You start off with Apple has enough money and supposing that you know better how to run a successful App Store than the company with the most successful App Store. Maybe the App Store is so successful because it’s customers are the people that own the phone not the devs. I know I absolutely don’t want competing app stores, that ends with fragmentation and having to deal with a pile of installed app stores to download a couple of apps. It also means that apps will go to the least restrictive stores that let them get away with the shadiest anti-consumer practices.

I’ve not run into the Spotify issue. I don’t listen to music from my watch, but I agree that is annoying. The alternative sounds so much worse and why I stay away from Android.

Lets replace "Apple" in your response with AT&T. "You think you know better how to run a successful phone service than a company with the most successful one?". No, I don't exactly, but I have enough common sense to see that they are doing wrong.

And sure they have the most successful (and only) app store compared to the only other app store.

But yea fragmentation/choice is just awful and without a doubt will lead to a less rich experience... totally

Your reply comes off as very authoritarian and controlling. If you like the app store then you should have the choice to use it. What you are saying is that devs shouldn't have access to other options because you dont understand why they wouldn't use the perfect one already there.

>Your reply comes off as very authoritarian and controlling. If you like the app store then you should have the choice to use it. What you are saying is that devs shouldn't have access to other options because you dont understand why they wouldn't use the perfect one already there.

Oh, I get that the App Store isn't perfect for developers. That's perfectly fine though. My concern is end users, not developers (software developers aren't benevolent actors).

Developers, such as Facebook, haven't exactly conducted themselves in a way to earn my trust. I'm happy to see them ensnared in the App Store's rules (at least the ones pertaining to privacy, security and general user experience). There's a reason you see users (even right here on HN) celebrating when Apple imposes an ever growing risk of privacy policies on developers. It's because users have learned we cannot trust developers.

> For example, the Apple watch without cellular cannot use Spotify in offline mode since that would compete with Apple music.

IIRC this is related to Spotify's music licensing agreements only permitting streaming and not copying of music and has nothing to do with Apple itself. I don't believe there are any technical restrictions preventing Spotify from implementing offline playback on the watch, they simply have chosen not to do so.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com