Can I for example go to Walmart and setup my own store inside their store without having to ask them?
Can I do the same in your local mom-and-pop store?
If you think what Apple has created is different, again, define it. Let's see how it's fundamentally different and where the line is.
Here I'm going to do it again. What does it mean "30% store cut is illegally anti-competetive". What does that even mean? Why isn't Apple allowed to charge a fee for maintaining their own store?
It's just entirely unclear what's the objection here. Is the objection Apple's cut is too big? Is 5% legal? Is 10%? Should it be 0%? How big should it be? What is everyone even saying? Or is everyone just whining about "big bad corporate is bad, punish bad corporate" and not thinking any deeper than this?
Believe it or not, Walmart and all other grocery stores charge 50% for the same service. Even when you order online, actually. Should we sue them for this? If no, why. If yes, why?
And the Walmart example came directly from Epic wanting to open a store inside iOS. You don't agree? Again, where's the definition that contradicts this interpretation.
Define what you say, so it means something. Right now I just see bunch of emotion and absolutely nothing of substance being said.
It's also how lawyers argue and judges decide.
Not using them is implausible.
Or can Ford forbid Taco Bell from operating drive through stores of their own, and require Ford owners to go through Ford's own all purpose drive through stores?
People who purchased a phone, own that phone. Apple doesn't own it anymore.
Thats the difference. McDonald's own the store. But they don't own your car.
And similarly, Apple does not own your phone, but they go to great efforts to prevent you from using other app stores.
We don't need to force Apple to put apps on its app store.
Instead, people should be allowed to install whatever they want on the hardware that they own.
> So take your own phone and install your own OS
Or, instead of that, we could use the court system, to stop illegal anti-competitive practices, and require, by the existing law, that people are allowed to do what they want with their own phone.
But, with the court decision, it will become much easier to install other app stores on the phone, if Apple's actions are ruled illegal anti-competitive.
Thats the point. The illegal anti-competitive behavior, that makes it more difficult for people to install other software, could be blocked by the courts.
At which people, people will be able to install other app stores, while also having iOS on their phone.
That sounds like a much better solution to all of this. Everyone gets what they want, and can now more easily install things on the phone that they own.
A store in a store is like a country in a country. I declare myself a country now laws no longer apply to me. How would that work for society.
And you already had what you want. It’s full of phones where you can install whatever. Why should you force Apple to offer a product they don’t want to?
Users are free to choose the Apple app store, if the decide to do so.
The problem is Apple's illegal, anti-competitive behavior, that needs to be stopped.
> I don’t get what I want.
If the courts rules that Apple's behavior is illegally anti-competitive, then what will likely happens is that Apple will be ordered to make it easier for people to install other app stores, if the users choose to do so.
> It significantly altered the iPhone experience
You can continue to have that experience. Just don't install other app stores. But, if the courts rule that apple's behavior is illegal, then other users will be able to choose differently.
> declare myself a country now laws no longer apply to me.
What are you talking about? I am talking about the law. You know, the court case that is happening right now? The legal system?
The judge, in this case, in America, could rule Apple' behavior illegal, and force them to make it easier to install other app stores.
> And you already had what you want.
No, actually. What other users and developers want, is for Apple's behavior to be ruled illegally anti-competitive, and for them to be required to stop intentionally making it more difficult for people to install other app stores, using their illegal anti-competitive behavior.
> Why should you force Apple to offer a product they don’t want to?
It is not about forcing them to offer a product. Instead, it is about stopping them from spending so much effort, illegally, to stop competitor app stores. With their illegal behavior.
And that's ok, the average user doesn't have to think about all these things. But this is why Apple has to.
What's really disappointing is this sub should be populated by relatively intelligent individuals, yet this intelligence, which I'm sure is there, didn't help in figuring out how Epic getting what it wants would significantly harm the iPhone experience.
So then, at the end of the day, this is not about you getting what you want.
Instead, it is that you want to force other people, to agree with your decisions, and take away their choice to buy from other app stores, if the courts rule that Apple's behavior is illegally anti-competitive.
> But this is why Apple has to.
You can stay with Apple if you want. Problem solved. Other people, would get to choose what they want, and it is not on you to force them to agree with you, if Apple's behavior is ruled illegally anti-competitive, and they have to let other app stores exist.
> would significantly harm the iPhone experience.
Don't install the epic app store, if you don't like it then. Problem solved. You just want to take that decision away from other people, even though the courts could absolutely rule that the behavior that Apple is engaging in is illegally anti-competitive.
If you get a job through a phone interview, do you owe Apple 30% of your salary? No.
Using your phone's services doesn't cause Apple to get a cut of anything that happens while you do so. Selling apps THROUGH ITS OWN STORE does.
"No, you can't drive to Walmart; Walmart isn't in the destination store. You may drive to Target."
In the 80s and 90s breaking up AT&T local loop unbundling made a huge positive change in telco in the us.
Requiring the power company to rent pole space has a positive benefit.
I think the App Store is more like a utility pole than a Walmart. Forcing Apple to unbundle the infrastructure of delivery, payment and signing would allow for competitive forces and innovation.
The AppStore is all built around PKI. My company already operates an internal enterprise store — the metaphor exists. It would be pretty straightforward to evolve it into something different and arguably better.
You can think of the space within an ecosystem as virtual land. Apple has a monopoly on this virtual space. They can charge whatever they like, there is no competition.
The argument of choose another phone is different, because it requires spending a large amount of money for the right to entry. To many people this is cost prohibitive.
I don't have a personal stance on what the outcome should be either way, need to dig into it more.
Of course, that may be (is for a large part, in my opinion) because of their market power, but that, I think, isn’t much different from Walmart. Market power and sales volume are how Walmart can negotiate lower prices with sellers.
Theme parks such as Disney World may be even better examples. If you want to sell ice creams there, I bet you have to pay a huge sum of money to Disney. It wouldn’t even surprise me if that were a percentage of revenues.
Opening a store in iOS is not "next to" it's "inside of".
> The argument of choose another phone is different, because it requires spending a large amount of money for the right to entry. To many people this is cost prohibitive.
This makes no sense, first because Androids tend to be cheaper than iPhones, and second no one forces you into buying an iPhone.
Also "iPhone is too expensive" is not an argument for "I should be allowed to do X with it". If you don't like what an iPhone does, don't buy one.
You don't get to buy a Tesla and complain how come it's so expensive and doesn't run also on oil, do you?
I don't plan to hash out the legal language of a proposed law in a HN comment, but "platforms" will probably be defined in some way and be required to allow competition. An app store is nothing other than a market that can either be competitive or not, depending on how it's regulated.
It was considered sensible to implement anti-trust laws to protect consumers in the broader markets, I have no doubt that when a privately created market reaches sufficient market share and impact, they will be subject to anti-trust laws as well.
As a thought experiment, imagine 99% of the population uses iOS... now the private market of an app store becomes the de-facto public market by virtue of adoption. The same can be said for social media, where a single app can control 90% of discussion (depending on country and medium of discussion). There is no world in which these things will not be regulated as "public spaces" once they reach sufficient scale.
The question is just when does the scale become sufficiently large, and when do the rules cross the line into anti-competitive behavior. They are close but maybe not quite far enough to get regulated yet.
If you wanna install your own OS, you can set up your own App Store.
Yes, please. Who do I have to call at Apple to get an iPhone's bootloader unlocked?
I'm not moving any goalposts. Your argument is this utterly ridiculous notion that you get to buy an iPhone and then whine it doesn't do what it never said it'll do.
It's like buying a Tesla and complaining it doesn't run on oil.
The responsibility is on you, as a buyer, to buy shit that does what you want it to do. It's full of phones that you can install whatever on. Buy one of those.
"How about we make it illegal for corporations to control the product they themselves make" is a shitty, entitled, spoiled brat behavior that honestly disgusts me to my core.
Yes, your time is so precious you spend it defending the monopolist practices of a multi-billion dollar corporation on a hacker forum.
> I'm not moving any goalposts.
First you compared having software freedom to invading someone else's private property. "Can I go to Walmart and setup my own store inside their store without permission?" You implied people's iPhones were still Apple's private property despite people having purchased them.
So I asked you in direct terms if this is really what you believe. You immediately backtracked by changing focus from hardware to software. "Just install your own OS", you said.
Okay. So how are people supposed to do that on the locked down device they bought? "I don't know, do your research, buy something else, stop complaining."
And I am the one being "intellectually dishonest"?
> Your argument is this utterly ridiculous notion that you get to buy an iPhone and then whine it doesn't do what it never said it'll do.
It doesn't have to be said. If I buy something, it's perfectly reasonable to assume I can do whatever I want with it. It shouldn't require some corporation's permission.
> It's like buying a Tesla and complaining it doesn't run on oil.
It's like buying a car and then finding out it only drives to pre-selected locations which pay 30% tax to the manufacturer for the privilege of having people reach them via that manufacturer's product.
> "How about we make it illegal for corporations to control the product they themselves make" is a shitty, entitled, spoiled brat behavior that honestly disgusts me to my core.
It's entitlement to actually want to own things I paid money for? You gotta be kidding me.
If you want to advertise the alternative inside your app, well, that's a bit like Target putting a sign inside that mom-and-pop store saying you can get a better deal at Target.
edit: You changed your comment and added your line about mom-and-pop stores. To which I reply that different rules should apply to multi-billion dollar corporations.