The issue is for developers. The duopoly means developers who demand a first-class mobile presence are forced to abide by Apple's rules.
Would Spotify exist today if Apple disallowed its presence in the App Store? That's 60%+ of US mobile subscribers only reachable via the "open web"; a poor experience for a mobile music player. Its likely they would not exist; but Apple Music would.
This may sound like a theoretical argument; a problem that isn't a problem because obviously Apple allows Spotify. But consider cloud game streaming services; these compete directly with Apple's mobile gaming revenue. Apple won't allow them on the store. When you get right down to it, their only sin is that, unlike Netflix, Spotify, and Kindle; cloud game streaming apps do not pre-date the App Store. That's the only reason these other cloud media streaming apps are allowed; consumers adopted the iPhone with expectations concerning the nature of their existence. Apple got there first on gaming, then shut the door.
Thus, the greatest sin of the iPhone is its behavior toward destroying true innovation. Not a slightly better note-taker or a prettier weather forecast; the App Store is great at distributing that. But, rather, applications Apple hasn't foreseen, now hampered by both the App Store's distribution rules, financial rules, and more fundamentally, the intentionally limited operating system.
This is not a situation where these innovations can't exist on the iPhone, but will flourish elsewhere; Apple's stranglehold on the consumer US smartphone market, the primary means of computing for many, many people, means these innovations may never exist at all. Possibly because they can't find a market. Or, more disturbingly; because they would have been invented by our next generation's Steve Wozniak or John Carmack, but instead of growing up with a computing environment which (safely!) nurtures creation, they grew up with the iPhone. And maybe an iPad.
Apple wants users of their iPhone device, the thing that they actually sell, to have a phenomenal experience. And they're going enforce rules across the ecosystem to make sure that experience remains solid.
Flash was a fantastic technology. It gave birth to an entire generation of game developers, software engineers, and content creators, and certainly gave many young people plenty of hours of entertainment.
Are we actually better off because Apple killed Flash? Or, is it just that Apple is better off, having killed literally the only web-based gaming technology to ever see mainstream success and secured the gate for the App Store to remain the single source for gaming content on iOS?
And if Adobe had cared enough, they had enough clout to push Apple sometime in the past 5-10 years when the battery and CPU and GPU on iPhones/iPads hit the threshold that it made sense to return Flash to it.
But browser plugins like Flash and ActiveX were doomed once people started caring about the security of browsers, and once Google (via Chrome) and others started investing heavily in JS performance bring it closer to parity with Flash and removing features (like video playback) from Flash's domain and making it native to the browser.
It's also worth noting, that while Flash was barred from the browser, it wasn't barred from iOS once Apple opened up 3rd party development tools including Flash, which happened in 2010.
And because a better, cheaper, alternative came out: HTML5 + modern JS (powered by V8).
Consumers are not an undifferentiated mass. There are people who would have been better off with Flash support. Certainly at the time there were -- it was a hardship back when there were still many Flash sites.
And customers don't need Apple for this. If you dislike Flash enough to endure the hardship of not having access to Flash sites when they're still popular, don't install it. If many other people feel the same, Flash will go away. If hardly anyone feels the same then it's Apple doing it for their own benefit and against the will of most of their customers.
The way to settle this is to allow multiple app stores. If customers really want only the Apple one, that's what they'll choose. If that's not what they want and they're only after the operating system or the hardware, how can you claim that Apple is doing what the customers want?
Apple achieves this sensibility by making choices on behalf of their customers that they feel leads to a superior user experience. They don't present the user with pedantic choices. Instead they allow users to select only choices that they feel will lead to a great experience.
This is similar to other purveyors of premium and luxury goods. For example, a 5-star restaurant won't present you with (in their opinion) a shitty choice of meal. Tesla won't sell you a car with steering wheel--only a yolk. LV won't sell you a basic plastic purse. And BestBuy won't sell you just any old shit off of Alibaba.
Discerning consumers look to these companies to make these choices for them. To make the experience of owning those the products wonderful. And Apple's customers look to Apple to do the same thing with their phone.
Now, not all customers want or can afford these choices. So, there are competitors that see it differently.
If you really want flash, buy Android. Flash available from several publishers in the the Android app store.
I have two ideas:
For starters; Their, and Mozilla's, tracker obfuscation technology is something I'd label as an innovation for the web, and I'm happy that they've taken a stance toward privacy and not against it. Its easy to imagine a parallel reality where they didn't adopt such a strong stance, and iOS users have less of a recourse for a privacy-respecting web browsers.
Additionally; I'd say, micropayments. Now, you can interpret that as crypto-based, or traditional card based, and both have issues beyond just innovation in web standards and browser implementation. But: I strongly believe that some kind of web-native micropayment framework would fundamentally reshape the landscape of the web for the better. There are so many news articles behind paywalls I would have gladly given $0.50 to read; but with the requirement to create an account, dig out my credit card, and agree to pay $10/month (which they make hell to cancel); I click away. Or, supporting a creator; even a commentator here on Hacker News for an especially insightful comment. Not everything is worth $5.
A really obvious example: Fullscreen for webpages and PWAs on iOS is broken on purpose - the browser can do it, but won't allow you to stay in full-screen for anything except a <video> tag. Apparently they changed this on iPad? In any case, fullscreen is an absolutely ancient, uncontroversial web API they've chosen not to support that is essential for things like games and multimedia. There are other browser APIs that require fullscreen too, like pointer lock (if for some reason you've plugged a mouse into your iDevice... maybe that's why fullscreen is enabled on iPad.)
So in practice, if you want to watch videos or play a game fullscreen on your iPhone, you have to go to the app store. Which is an intentional choice, because Apple gets to siphon 30% of all game transactions over there.
I don't completely agree on innovation. While they are limiting, developers can always launch on Android which has a massive, if less affluent, marketshare and leverage that against Apple's ecosystem. Clearly it isn't a perfect solve. I'm still happier to not have my kids downloading bloatware, spyware, and battery killers on their Apple devices.
But I couldn't find a single quality calculator app and got really frustrated.
This was more than 4 years ago though.
the bigger view is that this is horrific. it's ghastly. it's a prison of thought/control imposed on most people.
> Just join the Android ecosystem then
just stop being intollerant to other options. Apple: stop putting your way of the high way as the only acceptable choice on Apple.
this is a machiavellian demand, to constrain a general purpose computer's internet connectivity so.
The bigger issue with Apple is their 30% cut on nearly all transactions that happen on apps acquired through the App Store.
I think a fair compromise might be 30% on the first month of a new subscription, followed by 2.5% on subsequent months. That way Apple gets their initial cut for providing the ecosystem and app store exposure, followed by a very small cut on top of the usual payment processing fees.
Having just moved from android to iphone, what a load of horse shit. I willingly choose to be in Apple's ecosystem. That control is not imposed, it is given (and can be taken away at any moment by me simply turning off my iphone and not using it again).
I have thoughts about the restricted nature of the hardware, but that's a different discussion to the openness of the software ecosystem.
no, this is horseshit. don't call me horseshit.
> I willingly choose to be in Apple's ecosystem.
apple is the only "general purpose computing" system on the planet that allows apps but only their approved apps, approve connectivity. this this is, as you say, a load of horse shit. i reassert:
> it's a prison of thought/control imposed on most people
as I said I think freedom costs nothing. what you say offers no counter, no reposte, no reply to this.
you can defend the jailers but I'm not sure why you would? why benefit do you see in keeping such immense gates? why raise the drawbridge so high? why the desire to tell people to buzz off, get the frag out if they don't like it? i don't get any of this attitude, this corporate-punk anti-individual spirit. why must this be zero-sum, you and apple teaming up versus choice, freedom, & capability? you're not the only one- there's an active, hating, negative crowd, booing & downvoting capability & choice. in this one circumstance. it's a wild call, such a call to prevent. unfathomable to me.
everything about this yearn to control & reduce & assert authority feels like manufacturing consent. for control. for fascism. it's hard to figure out what genuine earnest positive intent it could have.
As this does not infringe on your freedom in any way, I expect my government to legislate on my behalf to force Apple to do what I want.