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Reminder that Jobs initially did not support having an app store at all for the original iPhone, IIRC for reasons of maintaining the bar on experience. His proposal was to build "apps" for use in Safari.

https://appleinsider.com/articles/18/07/10/the-revolution-st...

That was because their iOS API wasn't ready for public consumption. Web apps were a stopgap so they had something to ship.

No, Jobs actually didn't want an App Store. He had to be convinced.

I'd really love to know his mindset, because it's completely unfathomable to me.

The idea of applications on the phone was something blindingly obvious to me ever since my first Nokia 3410 I had as a kid. The phone had a bunch of distinct functionalities other than making calls, which you could invoke through a menu. Why shouldn't I be able to add new ones? Write new ones myself?

Installing custom software was later normalized when phones gained ability to run J2ME applets. By the time iPhone was conceived, it was an expected feature.

> I'd really love to know his mindset, because it's completely unfathomable to me.

He was fixated on having complete control.

And why would webapps give Apple complete control?

Someone develops a webapp, I can make my own phone and anyone who wants to continue using all the webapps they were using in Safari on their iPhone can come over and do that in the browser on my phone.

People develop native apps for the iPhone, and suddenly leaving the iPhone means leaving behind all those apps.

It's the other way around. WebApps at the time would have been a complete joke since mobile browsers were so limited. At least that's how I understand it. He just didn't want any third party apps. He wanted to make every app in-house. (For example the original YouTube app was an in-house project.)

It sounds crazy but at the time the wild west of apps on the desktop meant that the user experience was pretty poor and allowed malware to explode.

It has been said that Microsoft's failure to fix these issues is really what drove web application development. No one realized a viable alternative was to lock down the device to a single store/publisher and then take a 30% cut.

Now that WebApps probably could replace nearly all native apps, it's in Apple's best interest to not fully support PWAs, WASM, etc. because the app store is so lucrative.

> It has been said that Microsoft's failure to fix these issues is really what drove web application development.

Nah, what drove web development was 100% ease of deployment. No more dealing with installers that don't work and people who don't know how to use them, the browser is already there; no more dealing with the pain of rolling out updates, you push to your own server and it's done. And you don't have to care about Windows stack vs Mac stack with completely different teams, a few css/js tweaks and you're done. Sun understood the issue and tried to put up a fight with their Java Web Start, but in the end the JRE still required an installer, with all the related issues. MS eventually got something like that working seamlessly, but it was 15 years too late.

Nah, what drove web development was the business interest: the core code stays on your servers and is never shipped to users, making piracy impossible and allowing to make users pay you in perpetuity for what otherwise would be a one-time-paid product. Previous attempts at forcing this business model on users involved "licensing servers", but those still left the software vulnerable to cracking.

The whole "we can fix a bug and deploy new version to everyone while still on the phone with the customer who reported the problem" thing was just a bait.

That's still an element of deployment, and I'd argue not even the most relevant. Web dev was picked up also by tons of "hobbyists" who had no interest in any of that. For a long while there were quite a few companies selling web products to install on customers' servers (and there are still so many). In the '90s we built loads of intranet apps who did not care about licensing requirements, but cared deeply about ease of deployment towards employees. The SaaS explosion came much later.

There is no need to be always cynically focused on "evil money", often it's just pragmatism.

Locking others out gave him complete control over the phone's native interface and performance, he couldn't do anything about the web, and it was a convenient way to placate those who wanted to develop apps.

Nobody can know what Jobs actually wanted and what is narrative-building because he was the best storyteller this industry has ever seen.

Citation? This contradicts everything I’ve seen on the matter.

The article linked in the comment they’re replying to.

According to Walter Isaacson's biography of Jobs, the tech guru was opposed to allowing third-party to run natively on iPhone…

…Others in the know disagree with Isaacson's story and contend third-party apps were always on the iPhone roadmap; Jobs and company were simply not comfortable with releasing an SDK at launch.

https://appleinsider.com/articles/18/07/10/the-revolution-st...

Apple put a lot of effort into the UIKit API and fixing the deficiencies of AppKit, I'm not sure why they would have done this if they didn't intend to later release it.

Sorry, what I meant was, who are the "others in the know"?

We're now at the point where writing web-first apps that can get optionally also get compiled into "native" apps that run in a js/wasm runtime on any platform and act like native apps might get popular again.

Is this allowed under iOS?

Yes. Apps that are basically a webview over a site are pretty common.

It may be common but it's not technically allowed. Apple forbids apps that are mere duplicates of a website. As with most things App Store, the rules are enforced inconsistently.

Apple changed their policies to prohibit this

PWAs have acceptable (but not full) support on iOS 14 and 15, you just are forced to ask customers to “press the share button then press add to Home Screen” for it to install to the Home Screen like a regular app.

"Acceptable" is a stretch. There is no way of discovery, say via the App Store. There is no "Add to Home Screen" button (apps can only tell users to open safari settings and do it themselves). There are no push notifications or background sync/fetch. No way to play background media. Full screen doesn't work for anything outside of video. Only a small part of the web manifest file is recognized. The cache limit is a tiny 50MB, which will be purged in 7 days.

Here is a very detailed post on this – https://infrequently.org/2021/04/progress-delayed/

You want a PWA app to do all that, you have to wrap it inside an app and put it on the App Store.

Indeed, that is the exact specific complaint.

> There is no way of discovery, say via the App Store.

Anybody is free to create a site listing PWAs. The fact that PWAs aren’t listed in the App Store does not mean that there is no way of discovering PWAs.

> There is no "Add to Home Screen" button (apps can only tell users to open safari settings and do it themselves).

This is wrong. You press the Action button in the main Safari toolbar and select Add to Home Screen. You don’t have to go into Safari settings at all.

> The cache limit is a tiny 50MB, which will be purged in 7 days.

That’s not correct. The seven day limit is for websites when you use Safari but don’t visit the website. PWAs added to the Home Screen get their own counter separate to Safari, and since every time you open it you visit the site, the usage limit is effectively infinite.

I read that more like

We're now at the point where a chat program that does nothing more than one from 1995 is using 300mb ram minimum, basic animations lag and no style mathes the other because nothing even tries to adhere to any centrally defined theme, only to what that projects specific ui designer thinks looks best.

But Jobs didn't turn down the money, did he?

Nor did his wife turn down her friendship with the Epsteins.

There's no need to volunteer to write hagiographies for billionaires, they pay PR firms to do it for them.

I want it one step further, it's not called "sideloading" but just "normal install", people should be able to install anything they want without some unwanted middleman, all the restrictions are just market distortions.

> people should be able to install anything they want without some unwanted middleman

What “people” are you referring to? The millions of people, like yours truly, who’ve made the conscious decision to pay Apple because of their App Store model.

I’m an engineer, I have a desktop and a laptop I can install whatever I want on. I’m ok with not doing that on my phone. In fact, I don’t want that experience on my phone.

So, I don’t understand when others speak for “people” like me who’ve voiced their opinion via purchase. There’s a long list of moments where I’ve been over-the-moon, downright happy with Apple’s payment and subscription experience. It’s been a breath of fresh air vs. dealing with independent providers where, oh, I have to cancel by calling your customer support center? Oh, no, you need me to send an email instead? With a photo of my ID? Oh, you accidentally continued charging me because the subscription wasn’t canceled? That’s ok, but why did you double the price of the subscription without so much as an email notifying me? Oh, you sent an email titled “Thanks for being a customer” and buried it in the addendum, gotcha. Yeah, I’m ok, I’ll stick with Apple’s payments and subscriptions system on my phone.

Those are all real experiences, by the way, that I’m happy to say I haven’t had with Apple for the past decade.

Some people went with Apple in spite of their closed App Store model. They might have well not wanted it, but other advantages of iPhones won out for reasons that will remain their own.

As a reminder, Android requires manually ticking a checkbox before allowing sideloading. Sideloading is a choice, not a requirement. If you don't want to do it, don't enable it.

This can be easily resolved by forcing developers who provide their own method of payment to also include the App Store's default in-app purchases. That's how it currently works with Sign in with Apple.

That is your experience that I would not challenge. Mine is completely different for a very simple reason: except Netflix I completely ignore products that do not offer perpetual license no matter what. And finding decent products I need on generic web in my opinion is way better then doing the same thing on app stores. There are exceptions of course like off-line GPS software.

Yeah everything super easy when you control the entire process, from what apps you will see, to how you purchase them. There is no conscious decision to chose to pay with apple. You either purchase an apps subscription through apples payment gateway or not.

Alternative solution are convoluted because Apple makes it that way, it's by design. You are paying more than you need to, and developers get less then they should.

People complain about 1% surcharge on a visa, which is made clear before each purchase. Apple takes 30% and they hide the fact from consumers. But it's all so smooth, you hardly notice you're spending money it's so convenient. Is that so surprising when the company controlling the OS also controls how you pay for products they didnt make?

Apple controls the entire process except the minds of those that buy the iPhone and the bank accounts the money comes from.

> People complain about 1% surcharge on a visa, which is made clear before each purchase.

This is utterly false. I've never seen a physical nor online POI specifically say "price includes x% fee paid to credit card processor". I imagine Visa and MC explicitly forbid you from making it a line-item as well.

Sorry it is utterly true. Have you ever bought a plane ticket? It’s there in BOLD at checkout. ‘Credit card purchase surcharge of x amount.’ Amazon have recently made a huge deal about Visa’s 1% markup and emailed millions of customer telling them they should consider alternate payment options.

As for iPhone user’s. It’s obvious to all that Apples resources allow them to create the best devices on the market with the biggest library of apps that people want. Their monopoly on the market is not some green light to exploit customers and developers.

I'm not going to pretend there's a choice on mobile because there's not, both Apple & Google are acting as they are part of the same company and with similar rules. it's just a duopoly without competition, I don't buy the illusion of competition.

Going into the debate of Apple vs Google is already missing the point, both are part of the same mobile conglomerate.

> I’m an engineer, I have a desktop and a laptop I can install whatever I want on. I’m ok with not doing that on my phone. In fact, I don’t want that experience on my phone.

I want that, phones are just computers like any others and having two companies control the worldwide app market without any competition is terrible. It's not just me who want that, it's that society and the global economy needs that.

If there’s an unserved market need: you want it, society and the global economy needs it; then go compete in the market, create your own competitive alternative. No one is preventing you from doing that. The market will dictate how right you are.

he said "should be able to" not "must exclusively". Maybe you enjoy the limited offerings in the official store but that doesn't justify preventing the People (including you) from installing without the store.

Problem is we need an Appstore with enforcing rules nowadays to protect ourselves from greedy ruthless software makers. Just look at Windows - and ecosystem where Software mostly is installed outside of an Appstore. What major players in the Industry do now (Big players like Adobe but also other smaller shops) would have been considered malware/adware some 10 years ago. Stuff like uploading personal data, contents of your Download folder, contacts information etc.

Even on Linux you can see that this "moderation" is beneficial. No software will land in the repositories that spy on the users, and its uncommon to install software outside those repos that ship with your distro.

> Even on Linux you can see that this "moderation" is beneficial. No software will land in the repositories that spy on the users, and its uncommon to install software outside those repos that ship with your distro.

Which demonstrates that this works perfectly well without restricting users from installing software outside of the repositories.

You want the App Store to exist. You don't want it to be mandatory.

The most secure medium currently is still the web, much more than any mobile app store, and it's an unmoderated & decentralised platform.

You should not buy their excuses about so-called security, it always has been about control.

And Apple likes to pretend that there are no better payment options. I would prefer to subscribe via PayPal, because it's easier to cancel via them than via Apple's iTunes corpse.

The reason I vastly prefer paying via Apple over other methods is precisely because of how easy it is for me to see my subscriptions in one place and cancel with a click.

I guess one can have subscriptions outside of iOS?

I don’t understand?

Settings -> AppleID -> Subscriptions?

It’s on your phone? You don’t have to use iTunes at all? I wouldn’t have even thought to use iTunes? Unsubscribing is the easiest thing in the world - much easier than PayPal. It’s right there in the Settings app.

Dude it’s like some ancient web UI despite existing in the native settings software, it’s utterly slow as fuck to load and only faintly responsive to touch. It is clearly a deliberate ploy by Cupertino. Or in practice, an update is “not on the agenda this cycle”

I am so humour-impaired I initially responded seriously to your joke - sorry!

I've made a mistake of using a desktop computer.

> I think people are focused on the wrong issue. The fee % is not the problem. The problem is the restriction against using other types of payment processors.

I generally agree with this sentiment, but still feel that the fee % itself is a significant part of the problem and worth to tackle it in parallel.

My concern is that Google/Apple have lots of direct/indirect advantages against its payment competitors as platform holders and I'm 90% sure that they're willing to exercise that position to keep the dominance of their payment solutions. And I think they have a good chance of winning. We need to push them in all possible directions even if some approaches don't work.

As a iOS user I feel safer that all payments go through apple. I am assured of certain level of privacy and security which is very comforting.

Why not just require whether or not it is going through apple to be prominently displayed, and you can only use the apple App Store then, and allow other people to use other payment processors if they trust them?

If I can make a purchase or get a subscription through Apple I always do because I know it will be infinitely easier to cancel and I won’t have to deal with any shady billing from sites that store your card info. I don’t understand why Apple can’t require their payment methods but also allow the option for external payment. Apple should position themselves like American Express: maybe a touch more expensive but worth it for the peace of mind and ease of getting assistance.

Are you also feel safer that Apple decides what apps you are allowed to run? For example, in China, iOS users aren't allowed to run Signal or Protonmail apps.

Did it occur to you that if a user is not the final authority who decides which apps should run on the device, he is not really owning the device, but merely leasing it, under some strict terms?

This isn’t really a concern for me, no

"When they came for Communists, I wasn't concerned, because I'm not a Communist."

Take it up with the CCP

It’s not really a concern tbh. Appstore hasn’t been draconian in that sense. It’s a fair argument that they can do that if they wish but there is no incentive to become that. Quite the opposite actually.

It is not a concern for you, but only because you lack imagination and foresight.

I think the solution is for Apple to require that all payments at least have the option of being made through the app store payment system, while allowing developers that want to take the time and effort to set up outside payments do that as well.

Consumers can continue to use app-store payments if they wish (and I bet the vast majority would), but developers and companies can no longer complain about Apple's monopoly over payment processing.

The problem with this is that using Apple Pay would be more expensive and so why would anyone use it?

A bunch of people here just mentioned they love the fact that the payment is handled by Apple for piece of mind. So I guess that would be why?

Security and peace-of-mind, as the other commenter requested. Convenience - already having a credit card linked and ready to go.

Also who is to say the developer would charge less? Let's say, for example, a company called ezpay charges $1 per transaction. If an IAP costs $10, they make $7 off the user who buys via Apple, and $9 off the user that buys via ezpay API in the app. They could lower the ezpay price to $8 and still only make $7, but why bother?

Virtually no one is concerned with the security of card payments on non apple processors. They have been typing their card numbers in to stripe/paypal/etc for years.

Only the tiniest % of HN idealists will pay 30% extra to have it go through Apple.

If competing payment methods were reasonably available then maybe Apple Pay would lower its fees.

Are you sure they wouldn't considering it would be 15%-20% cheaper?

Who is to say the developer would charge less? Let's say, for example, a company called ezpay charges $1 per transaction. If an IAP costs $10, the dev makes $7 off the user who buys via Apple, and $9 off the user that buys via ezpay API in the app. They could lower the ezpay price to $8 and still only make $7, but why bother?

Because another company will offer the same product for slightly cheaper now that their fees are lower.

Google One already charges you less if you subscribe via web or android. They just haven't been allowed to advertise this fact in the iOS app.

Nothing would stop you from limiting yourself to apps that only use Apple's ecosystem, but what is the reason to stop others from installing apps that are using other ecosystems on their iOS devices?

I would certainly enjoy F-Droid for iOS.

What if the alternatives were PayPal, Amazon Pay, Google Pay, Steam, etc. ? Would you not similarly trust those payment processors?

Also, it should be telling that if you are using an App which only offers: Sketchy Payment Processor, that the app itself is sketchy, so just go use another app.

Okay but charging fees on in-app purchases as a pretty high percentage of the purchase amount is ridiculous and basically just a moneymaking racket with no real justification, that they do just because they can and they already have a stable base of customers who are unlikely to switch to a competitor (Android is the only competitor).

Flat per-transaction fees to cover operating costs is more acceptable. But Apple might make less money in that scheme. On the other hand, more developers might be willing to write apps for iOS if they weren't getting gouged by such high Apple Store fees, so Apple might even come out ahead if they reformed their pricing and payments policy.

> The problem is them preventing you (the developer) from allowing the user to use other forms of payment processing within the app itself.

One major kink in this idea is that it breaks the free tier model, since paid apps are essentially subsidizing free ones. If you can use any payment processor in-app, then developers will make their apps nominally "free" for App Store purposes, and then use the payment processor of their choice in-app, circumventing Apple's ability to collect any fee whatsoever. So how do you address this problem without charging every developer, even if they were otherwise willing to give away their app?

They would still be required to report that they have in-app purchases, just like they are currently required to report they have ads, even if they aren't using Apple's or Google's ad APIs.

This is the only reasonable suggestion I've heard, but it's still very messy because it would not only require even more careful policing of app code, but mostly because Apple would have to invent an entirely new fee structure for apps under this umbrella. I think to do it fairly it would just end up looking like an AWS bill.

An Apple developer account costs $100 per year and with 20Million registered developers. $2B a year is more than enough to host an appstore.

Or they can compete in the free market and offer their payment gateway for a competitive fee, or they can do what google is doing and allow third party app installs.

If Apple allowed developers to keep 100% of revenue from App Store transactions while Apple continued to pay for all the operating costs it would still, undoubtedly, work out greatly to Apple's advantage. They derive enormous value from having apps in their store creating value for their platforms.

Of course, they would not be satisfied with that arrangement because no company has ever been satisfied with making a ton of money if it is possible for them to make some more. But that certainly doesn't mean the model can't work or that if there were regulation to this effect that it wouldn't still be in Apple's enormous interest to continue to operate the App Store.

I think this could be defendable if they were selling the devices at a loss ("cheap printer, expensive ink" model, or gaming consoles model), but providing something that is effectively a general purpose device on which they already earn money, and that is locked down like this makes me annoyed with them ("we know better what you should do with your device, trust us"). That's the primary reason why I don't even look at what devices they are offering, which is a shame (I'd like to have more options).

> So how do you address this problem without charging every developer, even if they were otherwise willing to give away their app?

Aren't they already requiring developers to pay a fee to have a developer account? I'm sure there are ways they could recoup the costs of providing a service to the publishers of free apps (normally, a free market would converge on the actual price of providing this service). But they will only look for a solution when forced to, why give away a stable source of income?

There's no way the model would actually break when Apple pulls in tens of billions USD every year off the App Store, a lot of it provided by whales in gacha games and online gambling services. A single one of those would be enough to keep the store humming (there are a few specific ones that bring in a billion usd a year by themselves)

They could also just require developers to pay them a set % of gross even when using third-party payment processors. There is precedent for this, for example Sony requires this in order to approve cross-play between Playstation and other platforms. It could also be treated as a royalty model where you give them say 5% of your gross revenue to use the iOS platform and the 5% is baked into the normal 30% store cut (Unreal Engine works this way.)

In an alternate universe these app "stores" operate the same as package managers on Linux do. No account necessary.

God willing.

Devils Advocate: if I’m a widget manufacturer selling my product on Walmart.com or even the brick & mortar store - do I have a say in what payment method can be used to buy my product?

You can sell it in other stores as well, can't you?

Yep, I can sell it on myWidget.com or at another store.

So how is this different than App Store policies?

Can you sell it on myWidgetAppStore? Can someone install myWidgetAppStore that sells apps? (the way I can visit myWidget.com if I don't want to use Walmart.com, because Safari doesn't block other websites but iOS blocks other appstores)

If I own an XBox, can I buy a game digitally anywhere expect from XBox own App Store?

If I own a TiVo, can I install an app from anywhere other than TiVo App Store?

And if you did, there’s plenty of examples where it would void your warranty. Eg John Deere, Tesla, etc can only be serviced by the manufacturer otherwise it void warranty.

Yup, same exact problems as with App Store on iOS, I think you got it!

> And if you did, there’s plenty of examples where it would void your warranty. Eg John Deere, Tesla, etc can only be serviced by the manufacturer otherwise it void warranty.

Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act says otherwise.

On Apple app store you can't sell on other stores to the same customers. If you extend your abstraction to say that Android and Apple are two neighborhoods, it's like to say that Apple app store have a monopoly to sell in Apple neighborhood and for you to sell to people that lives in Apple neighborhood you have to pay apple 30% and use their payment system.

But on Android neighbourhood you can sell in other stores, or even create your own store, if you don't like to use android's app store or pay them 30% or use their payment system.

Some people living in Apple neighborhood says that they prefere the Apple app store monopoly because they can be sure that Apple store is safe to shop and there is only good products.

You’re forgetting consumer choice.

The consumer choosed to buy a product (iOS device) that only allows you to install for 1 App Store.

Because you are not forced to sell exclusively at walmart. You can sell your product at any store and people can get to it. Because of the walled-garden nature of the iPhone and iPad, the only way for people to get apps and make purchases for those apps is via the App Store. So, in your comparison, you would only be able to sell at walmart.

Control over payment flow is already in the right place imo, though I think the charges should be per transaction flat rates and not % based.

App developers are bad actors and should not be trusted to control payment information, refund policies, or subscription management. They will abuse all of them, and they already abuse the limited tools they have for in app payments.

Payment flow needs to be controlled by an entity that is trying to protect the buyer, not the developer

If only Apple would protect us from the thousands of bad actor developers selling physical goods that they give free reign to take our credit card information and abuse it however they please.

Apple now moved on this by the smallest possible amount. They‘ll allow media apps (like Netflix and Spotify) to link to their own payment system on the web. Though the details aren‘t quite clear afaik.

And how would it be enforced? (If charged outside of the app store and get an invoice from google instead on their cut)

Why should Google get a cut for a payment made outside of their app store?