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Comment by vorpalhex | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, if you don't like the fee, just make your own phone hardware, your own processor, your own screens, your own OS..

The same way when automakers tried a similar game and then.. the government stepped in, slapped the tar out of them with regulation, and told them to play nicely with third parties or lose the ability to do business.

Or when utilities had natural monopolies were preventing competition and.. then the government put strict regulations on them, set pricing rules and allowed significant control of them.

The answer is that if the two dominant parties have managed to keep out competitors and basically engage in collusion, the government should correct the situation.

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> Yeah, if you don't like the fee, just make your own phone hardware, your own processor, your own screens, your own OS..

So should companies not be rewarded for making an awesome system so they can charge these commissions? I mean Amazon and Microsoft can't blame Apple for their failure to produce phones people want to use...they certainly had the resources, and still do.

They are.. by selling a phone. You didn't get your iphone for free. Apple makes money off the hardware - more money than it does the app store.

So you're arguing that because apple makes a profit from the initial sale of the phone...they shouldn't also make a profit from the services they provide for that phone (such as maintaining an app store and the infrastructure for that app store)?

That's a bold position to take. What makes you feel entitled to that? Did apple ever sell iPhones as a one-and-done purchase? I'm pretty confused about how you're justifying this argument. It seems to me that you think all developers have some kind of entitlement to make a profit off of Apple's ecosystem without Apple making a profit from an ecosystem they risked a lot to build, because Apple is already making a profit off the iPhone. Am I following that correctly?

> Did apple ever sell iPhones as a one-and-done purchase?

Yes, the original iPhone 2G. It didn’t even have App Store on launch version of iOS. In fact, Cydia, the original jailbreak app store, existed on iOS before the official App Store. Saurik can speak to any fees for paid apps featured on Cydia. I remember an SMS app that allowed reply from notifications that I bought through Cydia, but I forget the name, maybe biteSMS? Most apps were entirely free, and Cydia supports adding arbitrary repositories.

So, arguably, the original app purchasing experience on iOS was free and open source. Apple and their App Store couldn’t compete, and thus the war against right to compute and jailbreaks.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cydia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/App_Store_(iOS/iPadOS)

So you basically agree all phones since the original iPhone are not sold as one-and-done purchases?

I just don't understand where developers are coming from. Let's say I build a wildly successful theme park. It's the best theme park in the world and only a couple other theme parks exist that is as fun as my theme park.

Because I'm so good at building theme parks, do you have some kind of entitlement to put your ride in my theme park and charge people money to ride it?

I don’t agree, because, as I said, the original iPhone didn’t even allow installing apps unless you jailbroke and sideloaded. Android has always let you sideload. Sideloading by the community is the natural state of affairs, imo. Insisting that users and developers only use an App Store that the vendors themselves run is untenable, and ahistorical.

I don’t get your theme park example. Here’s my spin on your analogy:

Apple built the theme park, and now they want to dictate that the independently-operated hotdog vendor may only purchase buns from Apple, and they further dictate that if they use the buns (totally optional), then Apple is entitled to 27% of the total hotdog purchase price.

> Apple built the theme park, and now they want to dictate that the independently-operated hotdog vendor may only purchase buns from Apple, and they further dictate that if they use the buns (totally optional), then Apple is entitled to 27% of the total hotdog purchase price.

You basically just described McDonald's business model. And yes, that's fair. Because if you as a hotdog vendor want to sell in Apple's theme park, then you play by Apple theme park rules. You can sell your hotdogs on the street if you don't like Apple's terms. What's so hard to understand about that?

> What's so hard to understand about that?

It’s anticompetitive, and so folks are legislating against it. What’s so hard to understand about that?

It's hard for me to understand how it's anticompetitive to charge a fee for a platform that you built, when there are many other platforms which a developer could use to sell their wares.

It seems to me like the only folk legislating against it are European nations, who have historically very uncompetitive tech companies so this is their only way of getting a piece of the pie. Seems like everybody is motivated by money to me. Epic and co. can act like they are for the people, but in the end, they just want more money.

I don’t see why the determinations of government officials and the public that they represent aren’t reason enough to justify the regulatory actions that they are taking. It may not seem fair to you or to Apple if those regulations were to pass, but the status quo already is, and has been for some time now, similarly unfair to everyone in the world living under the Apple/Google smartphone duopoly.

35 states and the Department of Justice are asking for reform in the US. Netherlands, Korea and others have passed rules.

You can have a private theme park. You can't call 50% of consumers theme park attendees. You can't operate globally and lock down a device and charge punitive rates - and if you do, we will use the legislative to fix that.

You can make a web app which can be run on the same phones with no fees. The vast majority of apps can be implemented as web apps.

Comparing utilities, based on physical constraints, with digital goods doesn’t make any sense. It doesn’t require any effort to make a web app relative to the status quo.

Furthermore your example doesn’t make any sense because you make money with Apple and pay a fee - you’re not paying for nothing. Natural gas, for example, has constraints around distribution and collection. These don’t exist for apps.

Ironically, if more developers just made web apps instead of going to app stores it would not only make their apps more accessible as they are inherently cross platform, but would likely lead to the creation of a web App Store to resolve the distribution problem.

This. Especially with the advent of technologies like WebAssembly, WebGPU, and WebXR, developers can now distribute real-time 3D applications like games universally via the open web, without having to sacrifice 30% to a walled garden.

Do those APIs work on safari, the only browser you can have on iOS?

No. No they don't. Oops.

Now that's just a flat out lie

https://caniuse.com/?search=webgpu

Sorry, who is lying again?

Except your PWAs won't run or be very nerfed on Safari because it is missing and has been missing all of those APIs for many years.

You could just install Chrome.. oh wait no, no you can't. Apple won't let you.

So what? It’s an option. If more people take it, it will get better. Stadia is literally a web app on iOS, for example.

> Yeah, if you don't like the fee, just make your own phone hardware, your own processor, your own screens, your own OS..

no, you just need a webapp.

Yup. Wish more developers would realize this.

I wish more developers would realize Safari doesn't support most modern browser APIs.

it depends how modern, but most are there. we develop primarily on safari and see no issues.

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