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Comment by chrisfinazzo | Hacker News Reader

Not to put too fine a point on it, but for all practical purposes Apple can't boot Facebook or Google from the App Store, regardless of what they do.

Tim Cook's head would end up on the chopping block if several billion users suddently left iOS because FB, Instagram and the rest weren't available.

With Google, the userbase is potentially even bigger and some of what they do really is fundamental to most people's experience of the web. Users would certainly revolt.

The same might be true of Fortnite, but despite the fact that we now know most App Store revenue comes from games, Epic is still one of many, regardless of how popular their titles are.

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I believe in the Facebook dispute Apple only disabled their Enterprise account because that's the one they were abusing.

Losing the Enterprise account wouldn't prevent Facebook from pushing their apps on to the store, but they would not longer be able to distribute internal apps outside the App store.

Additionally epic wants to stop paying apple, so essentially it’s 0 lost revenue either way.

> The same might be true of Fortnite

It would seem that Fortnite's demographic is preteen kids. Are they playing Fortnite on their parent's device or one they own? If it's the later then Apple could be fostering a lifelong mistrust or dislike for their platform. If it's the former then Parents might just install another App for them and that's the end of Fortnite.

I guess it comes down to how many people are willing to jump ship for Fortnite. I have a feeling Apple probably already knows the answer since Fortnite hasn't been in the App store for some time.

I think many of them (including me) were waiting for this to play out. I can remember walking into a cell phone store years and years ago to look around. I remember overhearing this:

Kid: I really like this phone.

Dad: That’s a Windows Phone, you don’t want that. It doesn’t have that many apps. You want an Android because you get all the apps out there.

I can see a similar argument for Android vs. Apple now. “Get Android, you’ll get all the apps. With Apple, you only get Apple approved apps, which includes malware, but not that game you like to play, what’s it called? Fortnight?”

In the context of iOS, define "malware".

Does this simply mean App Review screwing up and allowing questionable apps to be approved, dark patterns that encourage bad behavior, or something else?

Malware: viruses, Trojans, etc.

Apple has been caught allowing malware (see Shlayer for a high profile case) and in their case with Epic, has alluded that they don’t even check iOS apps for malware so they don’t even know how much iOS malware is out there; if any.

Most of the cases I've seen either involve leaks of sensitive info (think diplomats, their governments, and the like) or well-known individuals who value privacy (CEO's, celebrities, etc.)

Most of the Gatekeeper protections in macOS are baked into the design of iOS, but I wonder if they will eventually need to surface them so users have more direct control over what runs.

If sideloading from the web ever comes to pass, I would expect this to be a fundamental building block of how it would work.

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