Hacker News Reader

Comment by the_duke | Hacker News Reader

> This isn't the case on Android.

I'd argue that it is till the case on Android.

Yes, alternate stores are possible, but they are severely handicapped. First, manual APK install has to be enabled in obscure settings that come with a "scary" warning. Then they can't provide auto-updates but require a manual confirmation for each version update.

Epic gave up on running their own store on Android due to the difficulties.

I do think that regulators need to force Apples hand - not being in control of your own device is not acceptable.

But even then most business would remain on the official stores. We also need legislation to curb the excessive fees charged by both Google and Apple.

A few years ago the EU limited credit card transaction fees to 0.3% or a fixed maximum, whichever is lower.

A similar cap is needed for app stores.

View on HN

> First, manual APK install has to be enabled in obscure settings that come with a "scary" warning.

Don't see how this is necessarily a bad thing. It's a general security notification.

> Then they can't provide auto-updates but require a manual confirmation for each version update.

Again, how is this a deterrent? How many times a day do you have to accept the new changes?

We've already established that the official store will always be designed to provide the best experience ootb compared to the 'installed' one.

This is true for all the other platforms where you need manual intervention to install/maintain apps "unofficially".

> Epic gave up on running their own store on Android due to the difficulties.

This is a hard stretch

> I do think that regulators need to force Apples hand - not being in control of your own device is not acceptable.

?? You'd be a fool to think Apple would give an equal footing to other competing stores in their own garden

> But even then most business would remain on the official stores.

Simple. Open it up and let the market decide this one out.

> We also need legislation to curb the excessive fees charged by both Google and Apple.

On this one I agree. Though it's a different for Apple which does not allow any other payment solutions other than themselves, unlike Google's store. This is not an apples to apples comparison.

The Apple store monopoly should be broken up. It's time.

Arguably the market has already decided the behavior they want by buying iPhones in the first place. Apple didn't suddenly change their behavior. This is how the app store has always behaved. Everyone had that information available to them prior to making the purchase. How can you be sure that Apple customers don't actually want a walled garden with a single app store that is tightly controlled by Apple? After all if they didn't want this they could have purchased one of the numerous other Android offerings.

And if you didn't like railway cartel back at the time you could have used a horse instead. Wonderful thing about laws is that we can make the companies behave the way we want.

The way YOU want.

I, as an Apple device user, do not want to change Apple’s behaviour. I like ‘em just they way they are.

The market has decided on Standard Oil! What's the problem?

>> Then they can't provide auto-updates but require a manual confirmation for each version update.

> Again, how is this a deterrent? How many times a day do you have to accept the new changes?

That would be about 10 times a day on average (sometimes 3, sometimes 30) for me. I have 125 apps installed from F-Droid (no google services, two external apps: Signal and the local contact tracing app), it would be a chore to update them without privileged extension, especially as some of these are nightly and get updated everyday.

> We've already established that the official store will always be designed to provide the best experience ootb compared to the 'installed' one.

F-Droid gives me a better experience, except for the bugs. Now, it's intentionally crippled by Google, so you can call Google Play "designed for a better experience" if you want.

I picked the platform due to the features, not due to the store "expericence". I would like to pick that one separately, my best experience is different from yours.

> This is true for all the other platforms where you need manual intervention to install/maintain apps "unofficially".

Not true. On windows, most auto-updaters do not need user confirmation to perform updates. Most platforms have package managers that can auto-update their packages (steam, npm, pip, texlive, nix, aptitude, pacman, apk, flatpak, whatever). Their access to the system isn't artificially restricted.

Granted, a number of these package managers could work on Android today (like a chroot), but that would be a subpar experience.

> not being in control of your own device is not acceptable.

I’m not trying to be snarky here but...don’t buy it?

We're unfortunalely way past the point where this is an option. Neither Android nor Apple leaves you with nothing truely usable at the moment, unless you're ready to live in the year 2000 again.

I don't think fees are as large a problem as competing against first party apps in the same marketplace that don't pay the fees or have the same restrictions. iMessage for example doesn't require granular permissions for photo access like Messenger does, Apple Music doesn't have an additional 30% overhead as Spotify, etc.

If you run a store your apps should play by the same rules as the apps you compete against.

>Then they can't provide auto-updates but require a manual confirmation for each version update.

Is this true? Did they change the install permission to one time use or something?

Yes. For example, F-Droid, the FOSS store requires a rooted phone to be able to install/update applications on it's own. Even itself.

https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.fdroid.fdroid.privileged...

There are two different layers: The app has to have OS permission to install APKs, and then the app has to have user permission to install each individual APK. Android will prompt you each time. The only apps exempt from this are "system" apps (baked into the root-only partition) which are allowed to install/upgrade software without asking the user. It makes sense from an anti-malware perspective, but then again most malware finds ways around this anyway so you could argue that it serves no purpose and is only user hostile.

IIRC the (proposed? is it in place yet?) EU cap is 0.2% for debit cards and 0.3% for credit cards.

I checked and you are right, it's 0.3% for CC, 0.2 for debit.

But yes, the regulation came into effect partially in 2015 and fully in 2016.

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=uriserv:...

It's quite noticeable: all the CC related reward programs have disappeared.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com