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Comment by jmull | Hacker News Reader

I really think Apple needs to allow alternative stores.

I don't have anything against Apple's app store, and I think it's up to them how they want to run it, what they want to include or not, what policies and requirements they want to set, even what payment processor they will accept.

But as a user, I want to be able to choose a store that can make different choices... like f-droid, or maybe something completely different.

Plus, I think Apple has little to fear. You can have alternative stores on Android devices and it's not killing the Google store.

Also: MacOS already allows you to install software from different places. It's not some dystopian malware armageddon.

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> I really think Apple needs to allow alternative stores.

They're not going to have a choice.

https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_22_...

I wonder if they'll restrict this to EU-only. So perhaps europeans will have more access than the rest of us.

we need china to oppose centralized app markets, then we're set.

They have lots to fear as they get a 30% cut. One "simply" needs to launch their own app store and save millions, and aggregate other companies on their store. I can think of Epic Games as a first thought, but I am sure the list is lengthy.

Edit: P.S. Amazon is the other obvious one.

There is great risk in migrating your app to an app store that no one yet uses, even if you are amazon

What's the risk? Assuming that it's not exclusive, that is

Apple will make that decision for you. I'll bet anything they would require exclusivity for listing in their store (in the event they're forced to allow for third party installs).

You can provide the app on both and make all IAPs 30% cheaper on the alt store. Most apps already make purchases 30% more on the app vs their web version.

If Apple doesn't provide services that are worth the cost of the 30% cut, then they deserve to lose that revenue.

Their argument is that that service is provided continuously by virtue of people having (and buying year after year) the handsets that you’re trying to install on.

So this all comports: you’re free to make your own App Store and not get the 30% cut, but in exchange you will not have a billion device user base on day 1 to ship your apps to.

This is about as correct as saying people support everything the government does because they voted for them. But the reality is there aren’t that many choices and too many results are bundled in with one choice.

Maybe apple makes the nicest hardware and someone buys for that reason but it doesn’t mean they support the App Store lock-in.

By the same argument, I could say that you're free to start your own gasoline station, but in exchange you will not be compatible with the Ford Gasoline Nozzle which may only be used with a 30% cut going to Ford.

The market for applications is entirely separate from the market for hardware. By tying the two together, Apple is dipping into a revenue stream that they have no right to, just as Ford has no right to profits from sale of gasoline.

> the market for applications is entirely separate from the market for hardware.

This seems like a matter of opinion, and one that Apple has disagreed with for decades as far as I can tell.

Of course it's a matter of opinion. Practically all important questions are matters of opinion. Any preference you can possibly state about how the world should be is a matter of opinion. Whether the world is better for having eaten chocolate or vanilla ice cream is a matter of opunion. Whether a death is an accident to be ignored, a murder to be punished, or a heroic act to be praised is a matter of opinion. Any statement involving "should" or "ought" is a matter of opinion.

So when you say that the lines between markets is a matter of opinion, of course it is. When you say that Apple has a different opinion on the matter, of course they do. Those were not in dispute, and so your comment on it being "a matter of opinion" is both true, and so widely applicable as to convey effectively no meaning.

Instead, you could have responded with pointing out inconsistencies in the analogy given. You could have pointed out ongoing work done by Apple to justify the ongoing payments. These would have worked to shift the opinion on Apple's business practices, not merely to point out the general category of "matters of opinion".

Well one inconsistency in the analogy is straightforward: the gasoline and the automobile are obviously two distinct markets as an accident of history, whereas the smartphone hardware and smartphone software markets are not obviously distinct, also as an accident of history.

If you just assume the issue at hand resolves in your favor then it’s trivial to come up with analogs that appear in your favor! It just isn’t very convincing.

Consider if 50%+ of people moving from horse and buggy to automobiles picked Ford and in order to support this new market creation Ford had to invest billions to create gas stations all over the country. It does not seem crazy at all that they would prevent other manufacturers from utilizing those gas stations, and that they’d take a cut from every gas station operator who chooses to service the giant market that Ford created.

Thank you for engaging, and I hope that my previous comment wasn't too harsh. I get rather frustrated at the "matter of opinion" statement being used as if it were a conclusion, rather than being used to guide discussions.

Regarding the gasoline/automobile being "obviously two distinct markets" and computing software/hardware being "not obviously distinct", I'd say that's a description of how the markets current are, and not a argument for how they ought to be. I intentionally selected an analogy where two complementary good (gasoline/automobiles) are treated as separate markets, to state that goods being complementary, just as computing hardware/software are complementary, does not mean that they are the same market.

> Consider if 50%+ of people moving from horse and buggy to automobiles picked Ford

Looking it up, Ford did have 56% of US automobile market share in 1920 [0]. Not really relevant to either of our arguments, but was interesting to find.

> and in order to support this new market creation Ford had to invest billions to create gas stations all over the country.

I tried to find history of gas stations, to see what historic parallels could be drawn, but it looks like gasoline was either sold at general stores or hardware stores, with dedicated gas stations being either owned independently or by oil companies, and were started in response to the rise in automobile ownership [1]. That is, the existing infrastructure was used for the automobile.

I'd say this is a pretty good parallel for Apple's App Store. The existing infrastructure for software deployment, the internet, was and is the primary method by which software is distributed to iOS. This infrastructure predates Apple, and is a far larger part of the software deployment. Apple's primary role is not one of enabling software deployment (i.e. enabling deployment where it would otherwise be impossible), but one of restricting software deployment (i.e. preventing software deployment where it would otherwise be possible). That strikes me as entirely undeserving of an extra cut of payments.

Another potential analogy would be in vehicle repairs. Your manufacturer warranty is valid, even if the car is serviced by a mechanic not employed by the manufacturer. This required legal battles to resolve, and established that even closely tied markets such as car sales and car repairs should be considered as separate markets.

[0] https://www.entrepreneur.com/growing-a-business/how-ford-cre...

[1] https://www.saferack.com/the-first-gas-station/

Apple could just remove you then from the App Store if you offer it on a 3rd party app, which I'm assuming they will

Regulation that forces alt app stores to be allowed can just as easily make this retaliation illegal too.

These regulations take years to create. Then the court challenges. More than enough time for the amount of revenue loss to a developer to matter.

It isn't even retaliation anymore, they can say "well they can use their own app store, which is what they wanted anyway." Don't get your hopes up.

Removing a competitor's apps in retaliation for them shipping their own app store sounds like exactly the kind of thing that existing anti-trust regulations would cover just fine, at least in EU.

> even if you are amazon

Or Microsoft.

This is exactly what the case study looked like for Microsoft when they were producing phones and were just getting their app store up and running. People were hesitant because their app store didn't have all the apps they used like YouTune, Facebook and Twitter.

The one classic example is how Google refused to allow MS to have a YouTube app in their store - that single app alone kept thousands of people from switching to the MS mobile platform which in turn contributed to their low market share and eventual collapse and MS killing off most of their mobile platform.

I am wondering why Epic Games comes to mind, but not Steam? I see this happen quite often.

I have nothing against Steam or Epic Games; rather, I am curious why the discourse around the two seems to be different, even though they're quite similar as services?

Did Epic Games do "something wrong" (not sure what the right term here is, please do suggest a better one if it comes to mind) in comparison to what Steam does?

Steam doesn't sell games on iOS platforms. Epic does.

I feel like the introduction of "store exclusives" really grated badly on an already well established Steam user base.

Gamers, and PC gamers in particular, are quite stubborn. I suspect there's a lot of loyalty to Steam for many reasons and Epic making their own copycat store split their already well-curated libraries. That and they literally yanked games already released on Steam and moved them to Epic, so I'd say that's where most of the bad blood comes from.

Epic literally said 'screw you' to Apple store policies on in-app purchases, then went to court after they got pulled down.

Valve doesn't have anything in the phone space AFAIK.

Or create a new store that takes 5% cut but only allow apps Apple allow in their store so you get security for free.

It's apple's appstore that is being dystopian. Not being able to install free apps without providing a credit card is ridicilous. I have 0 apps from the appstore on my work laptop for this reason.

Meh I don’t see much issue with this. I think they should be able to run their AppStore however they want but it’s when they tie in too many products together like the iPhone and the App Store that it becomes an issue because you simply can not have alternatives this way.

If you could install your own App Store, there would be no issues.

> Not being able to install free apps without providing a credit card is ridicilous

you can use the App store without a credit card. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204316

>4. Enter your credit card and billing information, then tap Next. You can also choose None.

I think Apple needs to get back on the web app train and make iOS Safari more useable for people to do things in safari and not have to create a native application.

Notifications are coming in 2023

And contactpicker is behind an experimental flag. When are they launching it??

What more do you want :)

WebNFC, for one.

Honestly, the big thing I think is just keeping step with standardizations.

Google tends to do the same thing with Chrome or perhaps it's that frontend developers tend to implement Chrome experimental features a lot.

It would be great to deploy a simple site or PWA without a lot of catches where "if it's this browser do X or if it's another do Y.

> make iOS Safari more useable

I'd argue it's really good in 2022. We only distribute our software as a web app these days. Many of our customers exclusively use iOS Safari to access it.

We even got the PWA stuff working reliably. Our web app runs full-screen on iOS devices and is launched from an icon on the home screen. For most users, there is absolutely zero difference between this and a native iOS app experience.

Do you have a set of guidelines or boilerplate css/js to do this? I want to do the same but the solutions I've seen online and tried have been a mixed bag.

I used the Starbucks PWA as a guideline for all the meta tag crap: https://app.starbucks.com

I did this some years ago for a game and at that time many APIs were completely broken, the most important one being push notifications. Has that changed now in your experience?

That's good. I know there's been a lot of improvements on macOS but I wasn't sure about iOS or even PWAs on iOS.

Microsoft got hit with anti-trust enforcement for doing a small fraction of what Apple does. Both political parties in the U.S. seem to have abandoned anti-trust regulation in the past 20 years.

William Gates was basicly a crimelord

More like 40 years.

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

Microsoft got hit because it had, what, >90% of the desktop PC market? And that at the time where the mobile market was so niche (Palm etc) that it could be disregarded.

Apple is hovering around 50% of the market. It's certainly market-dominant, but by the standards of the 90s and the Microsoft anti-trust case, it's nowhere even close. By the pre-Bork standards, that's a very different story. Here's how we used to run things:

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/370/294/

"The District Court found that the merger would increase concentration in the shoe industry, both in manufacturing and retailing, eliminate one of the corporations as a substantial competitor in the retail field, and establish a manufacturer-retailer relationship which would deprive all but the top firms in the industry of a fair opportunity to compete, and that, therefore, it probably would result in a further substantial lessening of competition and an increased tendency toward monopoly. ... The District Court was correct in concluding that this merger may tend to lessen competition substantially ... The judgment is affirmed."

And how much market share did the two companies in question have?

"... the combined share of Brown and Kinney sales of women's shoes (by unit volume) exceeded 20%. In 31 cities -- some the same as those used in measuring the effect of the merger in the women's line -- the combined share of children's shoes sales exceeded 20%; in 6 cities, their share exceeded 40%. In Dodge City, Kansas, their combined share of the market for women's shoes was over 57%; their share of the children's shoe market in that city was 49%. In the 7 cities in which Brown's and Kinney's combined shares of the market for women's shoes were greatest (ranging from 33% to 57%), each of the parties alone, prior to the merger, had captured substantial portions of those markets (ranging from 13% to 34%); the merger intensified this existing concentration. In 118 separate cities, the combined shares of the market of Brown and Kinney in the sale of one of the relevant lines of commerce exceeded 5%. In 47 cities, their share exceeded 5% in all three lines."

You can “install” the apps from the web. Their called PWA. People have been trained to just download apps from the App or Play store.

Now some apps have to be native, but most of the apps I see people using can be saved as a PWA and still do the almost the same stuff the do in the native app. Ie doom scroll for hours.

>and I think it's up to them how they want to run it

But it isn't. Or it shouldn't be. Apple is a corporation, and as long as the corporation is an American corporation, the corporation should be regulated for the benefit of the citizens of America. (insert laugh track here)

But their stockholders are citizens!

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