The litigation / cases / govt intervention has been on behalf of businesses not consumers. A lot of folks in the "alliance for app fairness" have just horrible billing practices. Understandably, if they can get out of the app store, they can stop you from being able to do things like delete your account or unsubscribe with a few clicks.
A lot of the newspapers make it easy to sign up, but then you have to call to cancel, the same papers that go on and on about how terrible the app store is. There is a REASON people spend fortunes, particularly in the apple app store - it's damn safe to do so in most cases.
Once that was removed, Steam Link went right back up
They don’t allow a native app for GeForce now, but it works with a browser.
Apple wanted to be the gatekeeper blocking out harmful apps, fine by me.
Apple then wanting to use that gatekeeper status to steal money from app developers, block apps that compete with apple internal apps, and enforce moral choices on what kinds of apps you can install on your phone, evil by me.
They could have done the former without doing the latter, but they fucked it up, and have to pay the piper.
I'd agree here, the majority of the policies are likable by consumers.
> The litigation / cases / govt intervention has been on behalf of businesses not consumers.
Consumers don't have millions to throw around on litigation against Apple so it's no surprise the litigation is focused around business cases. On the government intervention side I disagree though, of the very little intervention there has been it has been consumer focused IMO.
In either case there is also some overlap of "business interest" and "consumer interest" even if the vast majority of the time there isn't so blanketing that all litigation has been on behalf of businesses does not imply all litigation is about policies not in consumer interest. And I think the courts have been very conservative on which points are actually acted upon even if there is a bit of a "throw it at the wall and see what sticks" approach to many of the cases.
> A lot of the newspapers make it easy to sign up, but then you have to call to cancel, the same papers that go on and on about how terrible the app store is. There is a REASON people spend fortunes, particularly in the apple app store - it's damn safe to do so in most cases.
If people are truly buying Apple devices because they only want to purchase things from the controlled app store then the availability of alternative app stores wouldn't be a concern, they would simply go unused. The truth is most people don't actually buy the devices for this reason which is why Apple is so afraid to give that singular point of control up.
There is actually a class action suit against Apple regarding anti-trust brought by consumers. Unfortunately, while the suit was filed in 2011, it wasn't until 2019 that the Supreme Court ruled that consumers even do business with Apple in the App Store [0]. So, a lawsuit filed in 2011 was allowed to go forward in 2019. I don't know what methods Apple had used to hold up the case since then.
Priorities matter.
P.S. I do see Apple business model changing to services bringing in some bad behavior associated with that: for instance, push notifications now are used as a spam/marketing mechanism for Apple services similar to Android; iCloud Storage nag is another example.
The storage and other nags I hate, it's a real ethos breaker for me. Get that crap off my iphone. That's why I pay extra - for less crap (I like that they somehow can also block the carriers from installing unremovable apps, for some reason android phones sometimes come with weird apps from your carrier when you get them).
I remember when I discovered my Android phone wasn’t encrypted, and it had lasted for years. I suddenly stopped using it, changed my passwords/tokens and bought an iPhone. Never came back.
An extremely beneficial policy for the customers, right.
Oh, and of course you won't be able to use push notifications, because Apple.
edit: the apps expire after 1 week and need to be constantly reinstalled. This is abusing an exploit in apple's walled garden that will surely be "fixed".
The fact is that you are allowed to sign apps with a free dev account, the cert will just expire after a week.
AltStore’s been around since 2019, so they’ve had ample time to “fix” it.
Edit: they do not need to be reinstalled. With AltStore the cert update is automatic and wireless (your computer handles it and sends the updated cert to your phone). You will never notice their expiration, and never need to reinstall, unless you’re away from your computer for more than a week.
The point is as the device owner you have the ability to run code on your own device outside App Store without paying Apple. To be able to effectively distribute such code to the average iOS user who may not understand how to deploy unsigned app and the potential implications of it is a different story and one that you could argue is designed to protect the layperson against themselves (contrast this with users running random .exe from emails on Windows).
If Apple will allow third-party app stores or direct installation of applications on devices, dictatorships will lose this capability to harm Apple's customers.
But of course we all know that this policy was never intended to protect users, it was to protect Apple and their appstore monopoly, which also allows Apple to extort developers of 30% of all of their revenues by forcing them into Apple's payment services. Finally, the world has had enough of this and starts to fight back against it.
As someone who switched from the Samsung note line to iPhone, the only freedom I felt from the ability to install other apps was the freedom to deal with all the unrecoverable crap ware.
There’s other phones out there with greater freedom than the iPhone, people are aware of them, and are still choosing the iPhone.
The curation is a benefit in that I have a corporation with thousands of employees working to prevent the other corporations from making my user experience worse. If the curation goes away I’d probably switch to a cheaper phone next upgrade and I’m sure apples aware of that
The priorities have shown very clearly over time.
Nowadays on Android I try to search for apps on F-Droid first or search on Github as a shortcut to find open source apps. Why open source? They are often a barebones version, that will probably not sell me out and will not use dark patterns (I know it can still happen). I have nothing against paying for apps, I do have a couple I bought, but sometimes I have simple itch, that I know for sure someone else already scratched for everyone else and I do donate sometimes. This lousy state of app stores leads me often to search for some simple web apps on github.io. At the same time I sold whole open source category to Microsoft. In the end it seems that all I want is a smartphone shell scripting equivalent, but that is a totally different point.
There isn't metadata for this, as it is not part of Apple's relationship.
They are a seller of software, and the creator of the software is responsible for making sure the software can be compatible with the licensing and copyright terms of both Apple and any dependencies.
A semantic link to grab the source code for an app would be neat, but a pretty niche feature. That Apple can't verify that it is the same code (or that the separately hosted build process doesn't have malicious logic within it) probably quickly pushed them over the edge in terms of not supporting such a feature.
In theory Apple sign-in is great. In reality, many apps now show several login options (Google, FB, Apple, e-mail) and I can't remember which one I used.
I've had many instances of trying to login with Apple, the app silently throws an error, and the app won't proceed. E-mail pw reset doesn't work. Did I use Apple Sign-In with my real e-mail or a forwarded (private) e-mail? Apple has made logins more complex and confusing.
Except app developers are mostly small shops and startups. One-person operations.
How would we like it if the web were forced to behave according to some governing body? It feels like some North Korean 1984 dystopia and we've all got explosive collars around our necks.
It's anti-freedom, anti-American, anti-ownership, anti-Stallman. And I own five iPhones and an iMac.
I just want my stupid software on the stupid fucking software execution device. No tap dancing bear rules. No praise to Apple or forced induction to the Church of Jobs.
Steve Jobs made this artificial, ceremonious bullshit to make money. There is no other reason.
I curse history that his authoritarianism won. It's become pervasive throughout the industry now. It should be illegal.
I'll gladly charge 3x the price to Apple users for having to put up with this malarky.