New EU law could force Apple to allow other app stores, sideloading, and more | Hacker News Reader

New EU law could force Apple to allow other app stores, sideloading, and more

macrumors.com

88 pointskasperni31 comments

Bring it on, time to bring down the walled gardens once and for all.

30% is highway robbery and Apple is making off like a bandit. Epic, Spotify, and others all see this. Time to see the fruit company humbled.

And hopefully we shall see more open source projects flourishing on iDevices - Apple app store has crippled open source development on ios / iPadOS because it lets Apple exploits for-profit developers, while non-profit developers who can't or won't give in to the extortion are denied a platform for their software. It also has been in Apple's interest to not allow open source software to flourish here, as most of them are popular, free and avoid adware (which goes against Apple's tried and tested business model of extorting money from non-free software or pushing "free" apps to bundle ads through their ad platform).

I haven’t spelt it out, but reading https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?toc=OJ%3AL%3... I can’t find any clear indication that this act affects that for apps.

The closest I find is article 41:

“The ability of end users to acquire content, subscriptions, features or other items outside the core platform services of the gatekeeper should not be undermined or restricted. In particular, a situation should be avoided whereby gatekeepers restrict end users from access to, and use of, such services via a software application running on their core platform service. For example, subscribers to online content purchased outside a software application, software application store or virtual assistant should not be prevented from accessing such online content on a software application on the core platform service of the gatekeeper simply because it was purchased outside such software application, software application store or virtual assistant.”

that may mean third party App Stores would be free from paying the gatekeeper for access to their platform, but I’m not sure about that.

Hope this policy also applied to consoles. They also take 30% from game developers.

Devil's advocate here: For their cut, the console manufacturers provide more than Apple does. At the very least, you usually have actual humans you can talk to when there are problems. They have a much stronger argument for taking 30%.

Whether they provide more in exchange for a mandatory fee begs the question of whether the fee should be mandatory in the first place (I.e forced to use their store)

Yeah, I do think it would be nice if you could sideload or use other stores on consoles, but I also think that it would cause consoles to get a lot more expensive, and also make the barrier to entry to publishing a game on consoles higher.

Sony and Microsoft sell their consoles at a loss for a large part of the consoles' lifetime. (There was even news recently that Microsoft is still losing money on the latest gen xboxes.) They do this because they can recoup that loss via the cut they get from games. Once that becomes not as certain, the calculus will change, and likely more towards breaking even on the hardware from the start. Is Apple selling their hardware at a loss?

And again, Sony and Microsoft just straight up provide more support to console devs than Apple does to app devs. A lot of those additional services are related to either publishing itself, or to online services for players. How much does it cost to get a human being on the line from Apple, that can actually do something to help solve your problem?

I'm not sure that they would become much more expensive. While Microsoft is choosing to sell theirs for a loss, Sony and Nintendo are not and they both seem to be doing fine.

I also don't think that it would cause a landslide of games/gamers to move. E.g. The PC market is as free as they come, and Steam for all its flaws is the defacto game store.

Microsoft doesn't get to charge the 30% fee, but the games outside the store also don't get to use the XBox live network and the current developer support.

And again, while it's great that you get more help and support from Sony/Microsoft in exchange for the 30%, it doesn't change the fact that you're forced to pay it.

Steam for a long time also charged something like 30%, so that wasn't a free lunch. Even now it isn't. I'm not saying we shouldn't have a discussion on what the console manufacturers do and how much they take as their cut, but we should be careful to equate the two ecosystems. My worry is Apple going 'See, if they can do it, why can't we?'

If we treat the two as separate problems, though with similar outcomes, we might be more successful finding a cure to both rather than a bandaid to either.

Right, my point about steam was that even thought it charge a high amount AND the pc market is completely free, people (gamers and developers) still flock to it.

In the same way that while google allows side loading and competing app stores, essentially everyone uses the Play Store.

While I can see your concern, for that discussion to be had we’d need to first demonstrate that they should in fact be treated different. That isn’t a given.

Apple run their ecosystem like the British Empire ran it's trade, it rarely goes outside of it.

This is the only way I'd ever get an iPhone. You can rip YouTube (Re)Vanced from my cold, head hands.

For iOS, you have the altstore with uYouPlus. It's basically a modded youtube with adblock and sponsorblock. The sideloading is hacky but it works

https://github.com/qnblackcat/uYouPlus

Does it provide significant features beyond being ad free?

I pay for Premium, largely because it's too annoying running adblockers on mobile and TVs.

Lots of quality of life stuff. Sponsorblock (it doesn't only skip sponsor messages but also subscribe-whining, which I find way worse), background playback (can you believe they took this away?) and the ability to set playback speeds beyond 2x are the features that immediately come to my mind.

> I pay for Premium, largely because it's too annoying running adblockers on mobile and TVs.

I don't use iOS because ad blocking is too cumbersome there and only watch YouTube videos on my TV by mirroring my laptop's screen.

Every once in a while I consider subscribing to YouTube premium but then I remember that I'd still have to mod to get a (somewhat) tolerable experience.

SponsorBlock removes in-video sponsors but also a lot of filler content like intros and endings, and even filler in between like joke content, if you configure it that way.

Not to mention, if you get YouTube premium you also get YouTube Music ad-free. Ads in music players are far more annoying IMO.

Vanced and Revanced work for YouTube Music too.

Will this law also apply to Nintendo, Xbox, and Play Station systems?

I would think Nintendo and Sony wouldn’t pass the bar for being a gatekeeper because they don’t provide “a core platform service to more than 45 million monthly active end users established or located in the EU _AND_(emphasis_added)_ to more than 10,000 yearly active business users established in the EU;” (https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/api/files/docume...)

Xbox will be an interesting case. Microsoft easily passes that bar, but I would think that product doesn’t.

I guess splitting iOS in a consumer version and a business version would be a way to get around the letter of that law, but I expect the EU wouldn’t be happy with that, and very rapidly “designate the company as a gatekeeper on the basis of a qualitative assessment, even if it does not meet the quantitative thresholds” (https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/QANDA_...)

Game developers are business users though, aren’t they?

They're just going for the elephant in the room first. Cell phones are ubiquitous and touch most facets of modern life, game stations do not.

Will this have any impact on non EU markets? Similar to the USB-C port ruling, other than practical reasons, it doesn't mean it'll get applied everywhere else.

> Apple is also facing similar legislation in the United States, with U.S. House lawmakers in June introducing antitrust bills that would result in major changes to the tech industry if passed.

Nice for them to introduce a bill but how much hope is there this will actually become law. And even then, what about other countries?

But will it have any impact. Apple was forced to allow third party payment but crippled it with a 27% tax and other roadblocks [0]. I expect side loaded apps will have a host of restrictions making it a poor option.

[0]https://www.theregister.com/2022/02/08/apple_payments_develo...

I'm extremely interested in the DMA. Does anyone have a detailed explanation of the effects it will have?

Everyone talks about the App Store, but what options does Apple have to make the experience miserable?

Will Apple be forced to open up all the special treatments they currently give themselves (special APIs for OS integration and policies) to other developers?

Yes. https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/TA-9-2022-0270... is the full text. The relevant portion of that is 56/57:

>The aim of the obligations is to allow competing third parties to interconnect through interfaces or similar solutions to the respective features as effectively as the gatekeeper’s own services or hardware.

Can’t wait for every company to have their own App Store I need to install just to download the one app I want. All the inevitable data mining and security bugs will just be the icing on the cake!

It’s definitely going to happen. Exactly like for Android which has allowed concurrent app stores for a decade and is now submerged under them. /s

Better than having to jailbreak your device, opening it to all manner of attacks, to install an app you want.

In what way is that better? Jailbroken iPhones represent a tiny fraction of the devices out there. So now we have to expose everyone for the sake of the “WAlLeD gaRdEn” minority?

No reputable company can afford to do that (as they can't in Android).

As for security, etc. nobody will force you to install any third party store (as they don't in Android). Very likely, >99% of people won't install any other store than Apple's, yet they will get the benefits of breaking the monopoly in form of reduced prices, since Apple's premium will have to be determined by the market rather than by extortion.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com