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Apple is a monopolistic freedom-denying exploitative corporation which has essentially created a digital fiefdom for itself where it's allowed to tax companies for the privilege of reaching "their" consumer base.

I worry about the people living under such digital serf conditions. It was only a matter of time before they started promulgating changes like lords, like the client side scanning "feature" they tried to push. That is absolutely a problem that needs to be addressed and the answer is always computing freedom.

With that said... I shed zero tears when Apple screws over even worse exploitative corporations like Facebook. I simply have no sympathy for advertising giants complaining about being unable to continue their surveillance and exploitation of the most profitable market segment. The only problem is it took an Apple to put a stop to them when simply saying no should have been sufficient.

The irony is too much. Apple is extremely stifling to the ecosystem, but the fact they shut down facebook is perhaps the only argument one could make in favor of this power. I don’t need your tears, facebook, just get in the coffin already.

> I worry about the people living under such digital serf conditions. It was only a matter of time before they started promulgating changes like lords, like the client side scanning "feature" they tried to push. That is absolutely a problem that needs to be addressed and the answer is always computing freedom.

Social classes already exist in the US. The digital divide in internet access, software availability, and technology literacy between states is stark and almost comical. Software engineers consistently earn more comparatively than almost any other industry or profession. You lot and these monopolistic companies already 'promulgate changes like lord's.' The future is now; awareness just isn't evenly distributed.

One of the things I like about Facebook are the ads. Remember TV? Where all the ads are just targeted at extremely broad demographics and most of them have nothing to do with you? Apple says we should go back to that. I actually like finding out about niche products that have to do with my hobby from some small company with a limited advertising budget that was able to hypertarget me. The golden era of the 2010s for Consumer Packaged Goods was glorious. You had literally thousands of little brands chipping market share away from Proctor and Gamble and the big conglomerates. Apple's privacy changes made it much harder for those little guys to compete.

It’s a valid counterpoint. I myself started a small company (competing against giants) and the only way I was able to do it was with the foreknowledge that I could use Facebook advertising to target my audience. Any other mechanism to reach them would have been far too expensive.

In the end it was a win-win for myself and the customers, and I don’t feel like anyones privacy was exploited.

If nobody feels like their privacy is being exploited, then surely they'll opt in to being tracked, right?

I’m not sure I understand your question. With Facebook (and my example) users have already opted in to sharing that data with FB and it’s advertisers. No tracking involved.

As an aside, I think the only real problem with targeted advertising right now is that everyone is trying to do it in a covert way. Why?

Just straight up ask people what kind of ads they want to see. Relevant ads are much better than random ads, and in a lot of cases are genuinely very useful. Personally I’d happily fill out a Google “ad preference” form in great detail.

> With Facebook (and my example) users have already opted in to sharing that data with FB and it’s advertisers.

Disagreed. Most people have no idea how pervasive the stalking is (FB stalks you outside of FB too, thanks to their spyware being embedded in a lot of other apps & websites) and don't really have a choice if they are forced to use FB for work/social reasons.

Indeed, if ad targeting was absolutely opt-in and would only use information you explicitly provide I would agree with you but I don't see that ever being the case without enforced regulation that bans nonconsensual data collection & processing.

LMAO. Ah yes micro-targeting, used by firms like Cambridge Analytica. Who really wants any ads in their reading or surfing experience? I don't and most people don't either, which is why adblocking is huge.

You can’t target ads like that anymore, that was removed a while ago. And yes I prefer tasteful ads over 100s of subscription services that drain my bank account.

> Apple is a monopolistic freedom-denying exploitative corporation which has essentially created a digital fiefdom for itself where it's allowed to tax companies for the privilege of reaching "their" consumer base

Is anyone surprised that the iOS App Store, which makes the bulk of its money from games, operates similarly to other walled garden game stores?

I think we saw the same behavior with Microsoft in the early 2000s. When a company becomes more preoccupied with "shoring up the moat" to keep the stranglehold on the market more than it cares about innovating what's best for their consumer, the internal decay starts to happen.

Fortunately I think for both Apple and Microsoft, they still have internal resources in the upper-ranks that truly care about what's best for their customers. If those people end up being the prevailing voices they will succeed. I think a lot depends on whether the CEO has control of the vision, or if they're actually just managing operations. Cracks are shown in the form of who they are able to retain & hire and who is leaving.

You mean like the same behavior Microsoft exhibits in Windows 11?

https://scottrlarson.com/publications/publication-transition...

This scenario you speak of is on the center stage where everyone can realize it and see it: game consoles. The console itself used to buy the manufacturer a gaming platform to collect license fees. Now that being a gaming platform means reaching people on mobile, the console makers are _desperately_ trying to reach mobile without giving up gaming revenue share to phone makers. This has led cloud platforms like AWS and GCP to build cloud-based game delivery systems (Luna and Stadia, respectively). The issue is the mobile PWAs that are built to connect to these cloud platforms are clunky and have special ways to install / add to mobile home screen. To stream using proper native apps, these platforms need to separate each game into a separate App Store game entry. Kind of bullshit. In my opinion, this is the most interesting area where the power struggler will play out because it’s not the little guy with no power getting bent over here. These are companies like Sony and Microsoft. Just watching on the sideline with my popcorn.

It is sort of complicated. I understand why Microsoft and Sony would fight for gaming revenue as the playing field moves to a more “all screens everywhere” platform. At the same time I think: what have these middle men actually done in the past couple of game console cycles to warrant a platform they deserve to defend? They have basically been living off the innovation of x86 and GPUs made by others and packaging it in a power hungry box that plugs into a TV made by someone else. They are living off network effects not innovations. From a hardware standpoint, Apple has earned the right to pull in more of the profits in my view. They innovated across the entire stack to build lower power draw, high graphic intensity, custom silicon, deeper integration etc.

But on the PC, Steam exists, and they don't have this clamped down DRM jail that other systems have. They also don't build the box, they don't give you the technical advancements that owning the whole stack enables.

Yet Steam takes the same 30% cut. So far others with money, like Epic have been unable to break Steam's stranglehold, even though they take a much lesser pay cut of the earnings.

Every dev ever who has posted about game sales says that non-Steam merchants are a rounding error in terms of revenue.

In practice, the PC being an open platform has only allowed giants like EA and Epic's Fortine to get around having to pay the 30% to Valve.

I feel like this situation would be similar with Facebook and Apple - if they manage to break Apple's monopoly, still nobody would use a 3rd party app store, save for people forced by giants like Facebook.

Ah but Minecraft was sold and purchased outside of Steam when it was still a tiny indie game, long before it was popular. On an iphone it would not have been allowed. And steam provides services that are IMO great, which is why I keep using it for things that I can use it for. So it seems like Apple could keep up a similar margin and most of their customers, while still allowing the choice for users. It's still a massive improvement.

Well I suppose this is a testament to the idea that 30% cut is warranted commission fee for marketing/distribution. Being that aggregator has a lot of value that you can extract from content creators.

> I feel like this situation would be similar with Facebook and Apple - if they manage to break Apple's monopoly, still nobody would use a 3rd party app store, save for people forced by giants like Facebook.

The Amazon app store exists for Android. And yet Google Play still commands high platform fees.

As you note, Facebook is probably big enough to force people to use their 3rd party app store (and thereby avoid Apple's privacy regulations, which interfere with Facebook's business model.)

> Because in 10 years, what currently exists as the only option on iPad and iPhone will be the only option on MacBooks too. There is a reason why the last WWDC was all about making the iPad feel more like MacOS and making parts of MacOS feel like iPadOS.

This is pure supposition and reasoning with a UI feature that you have to explicitly turn on that helps you manage windows in way that's more like a traditional desktop than ever for the iPad than it is like a tablet for macOS is quite a stretch.

You could have said the same about other features that iOS/macOS got and it would have been just as unconvincing too: Screen Time, Control Center, Focus, Share Play, anything for Messages or Safari, etc.

Look at the profit charts for IAP/software sales on iOS vs MacOS then imagine you are an exec who has no reason to have any love for the concept of computing and ask yourself "Why is MacOS so unprofitable?"

Fortnite runs on iOS and Fortnite runs on Mac, imagine you're an exec looking at that chart and asking yourself why Fortnite is so unprofitable on Mac and why it's financing whole Apple departments on iOS.

It's hard to imagine any sane executive wouldn't be working towards the future I'm describing. Only an individual with extreme passion to the concept of free computing would do anything else.

s/sane/greedy

Target market. Is MacOS a viable target market for Fortnite? Even if you do wish to play competitive games on MacOS... Using the same hardware, the performance has been shown to be worse, in every comparison I've been able to find.

While I think this discussion is moot, as you're claiming this is a reason to start charging for IAP in MacOS apps and Epic has decided not to release new Fortnite seasons on MacOS, because of their beef on iOS, you're also talking about a specialized and high profile game, where most IAP are targetted at mobile specific games. Just look at the backlash that Diablo Immortal is receiving right now. Non-mobile gamers complete reject the style of monetization in mobile games.

Again, is this something you actually believe is true? Apple execs are looking to monetize their desktop OS as a mobile OS? Microsoft is already very carefully trying to do this and it's being pretty unsuccessful. There's a lot of rejection for this aspect of Windows 11. Remains to be seen where it's going to be in 5 years, but for now, I don't think this is where desktop OS's are going.

Back to the real meat of the article, Apple is both doing it's customers a service and a disservice at the same time. What is the solution to that? Let 3rd party app stores on, so that we can go back to no protection against tracking and a store full of garbage? (looking at you, Google Play)

Replace Fortnite with any profitable app that is available on both platforms. What the app is isn’t relevant, the fact one one platform them get a 30% cut and the other platform they don’t is all that matters.

Yea Microsoft has tried to do it but Apple will succeed and the announcement will be “The New MacBook, shipping with the worlds most loved OS with the largest number of apps, iOS”

>Because in 10 years, what currently exists as the only option on iPad and iPhone will be the only option on MacBooks too.

People love to say this, but there's no evidence it's true.

Both Windows and MacOS now have features that can limit the sources of software to vendor-approved channels, but they're also very very easy to turn off. You can still run whatever the hell you want on a Mac, and on Windows -- by downloading from vendor sites, or even by building from source.

Neither platform is EVER likely to block this. There's no upside to it. But having the OPTION to lock down either platform is GREAT because, well, we all have an Aunt Millie or whatever who clicks on everything and can't be arsed to learn to use the web safely, etc.

Is iOS locked down? Sure! I love it that way.

> Is iOS locked down? Sure! I love it that way.

lol welcome to Hacker News.

> People love to say this, but there's no evidence it's true.

Furthermore the Mac's status as Apple's development platform means that locking it down is a non-starter.

For people who want a managed computing experience, Apple already has a solution for them—the iPad. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if we see Apple releasing iPadOS devices in other form factors. An iPad notebook to compete with Chromebooks. An iPad desktop computer for people who want a large screen iPadOS experience. But the Mac will never go away. It's necessary for the iOS/iPadOS app ecosystem to work.

I understood that clearly when I owned an iPhone. Basic stuff that works on Android simply doesn't work on iOS. Apple practices are straight up anti competition and I'm surprised the EU barely lifts a finger against Apple. For example, I was pretty much forced to use iCloud for cloud backups since everytime I tried to backup with Google Photos Apple forced the app to stop running in the background, ruinning completely the experience of Google Photos auto backup. This is their behavior towards another major huge corp, now just imagine how bad they are towards the small developer trying to make a living.

I sold the iPhone, got back to Android and will never touch an Apple product again. They represent EVERYTHING that's wrong with the tech world nowadays.

I guess it's time other major companies start screwing over Apple as much as they screw over them.

> only option on iPad and iPhone will be the only option on MacBooks too

I've had so many MacBooks but only because of the hardware form factor, the moment they wall off the terminal is the moment I would abandon mac forever.

They will also lose all of their corporate customers.

What about the hardware form factor? There are dell and lenovo laptops that are close enough.

I just purchased the new HP Dev One to give it a shot. I'm quite happy with it so far. $1k. Also has a nipple mouse. https://hpdevone.com/

Pretty sure this still comes down to developing on Windows vs an OS that has nix internals. WSL is no substitute (yet). If I get anything that's not Apple, I have to use Linux and now I have a completely different set of problems. Even in the MacOS flavor of nix, most things "just work". Linux leaves you with a bevy of choices to be made, most of which I don't know the real effects of and then I have to deal with maintenance on my own.

Why isnt WSL a solution. It's a VM now and starts cold in less than 5 seconds

I’m not bothering to learn new keyboard shortcuts and change my muscle memory to use Windows.

The touchpad just works.

M series are also the best laptop CPU available currently. The same trio of weight, processing power and battery life just don't exist anywhere else.

Yep, and the same thing is true for the other giants - Amazon, Google, Microsoft.

We're already living in a world where most segments of your life are taxed in a way from these 3. In a few years they will cannibalize the rest.

They were a great company that had the misfortune of making a shitload of money that now overrides everything else.

It's a progression as old as time, is it not? This can be applied to so many other companies and even people in general.

What's the saying? Die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become a villain?

Sort of. As an example I'm talking about Skyrim making $450m-$620m over 11 years and Fortnite making $3.7b in one year.

I don't believe they ever prioritized their tech ahead of their marketing campaigns.

Apple hardware is generally quite good. Besides the complete lack of repairability on recent models, new Macbooks are really quite nice work laptops.

The software experience, on the other hand... it's been slipping downhill for almost a decade now. I haven't been able to "full-time" MacOS since Mojave, and with each update I just find myself using it less and less. I suspect this is mostly driven by their attempts to appease shareholders: changes like the Big Sur UI overhaul, forcing everyone onto Metal, prioritizing SaaS offerings, all of it contributes to the Windows-10-ization of MacOS. Meanwhile, MacOS has major architectural issues they could be fixing, like their increasingly broken BSD compatibility layer or rectifying their licensing woes with GPLv3.

I really wish people luck in bringing Linux to modern Macs, but I'm not very hopeful that it will be a fruitful long-term relationship. Apple has time-and-time-again shown that their bottom line comes first, and if Linux becomes an appealing enough alternative for developers, I suspect they'll cut support for that too. People said the same thing about Nintendo when developing custom firmware for the Switch ("Who would shut down a project used for running Android/Linux on first-party hardware?"), but subsequent models came with extensive homebrew mitigations.

Instead of dealing with these issues, I've just cut Apple out of my life. As a developer, my life has gotten so much easier, and as a user, I've got so much more peace-of-mind. It feels great, but it's not a path everyone can take. Apple (like Microsoft and Google) deserves strict regulation to ensure that their behavior is ethical and doesn't promote harmful lock-in.

If only I could get employers to stop foisting MacOS on me. sigh.

Paying 30% to get access to millions of users, with money and having distribution, backups, creditcard handling, user management etc. Handled for you.. seems like a pretty good deal.

Some developers want none of that, and even those that do will I’m sure argue the fairness/value. If it’s genuinely a good deal then there’s no reason to not allow competition.

Yeah, this is the issue I see over and over. There isn't a good alternative available, so the complaint usually comes down to "but if it were free and open and they didn't charge these "commissions" then I'd make more money!" It's all theoretical though, since the only other sizable platform has kind of the opposite problem. Lots of potential customers who don't spend as much money, far more competition and even if you clearly have a superior app, you have to spend more time/money getting potential buyers to recognize that.

It's been shown over and over again, if you're going to build a mobile app and want to make a profit, you build it for iOS first, then if it isn't a huge cost sink, also make it for Android. The people most likely to pay well are iOS users. Why is that? Anybody against Apple will just call the users stupid, but if you really analyze it, most users believe that Apple provides a better platform, better app selection on their app store, etc.

There's clearly still an issue between "Apple wants to protect its customers" and "Apple wants to _protect_ its customers".

iOS users pay more != iOS users/devs needs strict IAP enforcement. Google Play is on similar situation but sales are less. I don't see much praises for App Store's discoverability.

Why should other companies be allowed to sell licenses to Apple's intellectual property? It's not theirs to sell.

The app store fee is a "roll-up" of numerous fees including transaction costs, cost of running the store, and license fees for use of Apple intellectual property (all that Apple code that you import into your iOS app when you hit compile).

Distribution, backups, credit card handling, user management etc are all cheap. You'd be looking at <5% overheads in most cases.

What Apple are actually charging for is the first item in your list - access to the users. Apple wired the hardware to make themselves a middleman in every transaction. That's it, that's all it boils down to.

Good for a solo developer. Awful for a company.

I don’t know. I sell a macOS app outside the App Store. It took me about a day to set that all up myself using Stripe and AWS, including a anti-piracy mechanism. The costs are next to nothing.

The visibility and access to the user base that the App Store provides is a valid incentive, depending on the product.

Interesting that Facebook is pushing this claim after Apple gave users a way to block Facebook’s user tracking on their devices.

I fail to see your point, really. I'm not sure how your premise of "[trying] to build something like a new hardware device or systems" forces anyone into the app store, or even if it did compel them - say in the instance of the Roku app - what reason is there to charge for this? Bake it into your hardware price.

While this stuff makes it hard for developers, it makes it more secure for users, so users will keep buying stuff until such hindrances get in their way. If it's bad enough they will move on to other vendors.

It hardly matters, Apple’s worldwide market share is tiny.

Open source phones exist. So why aren't they taking off?