There are effectively only two smartphone platforms available to users, and destroying one of the only meaningful differences between the platforms in the name of “user choice” is nothing if not ironic.
If you want to stay in the playpen, that's fine, but there's no reason why users who want to use the full potential of their devices shouldn't be able to in order to keep you happy.
It's not a dichotomy. If you want to keep your options limited, stay in the playpen. Users who value freedom, competition, and efficiencies of markets can also enjoy those things, but they currently are prevented because Apple will pull no stops to protect their App Store moneyhose.
The counter is that these users do have a choice. They can buy an Android.
Allowing different stores might end up removing choice for the end user who like Apple's current approach as the large developers with power like Meta will likely force the different stores on us. This change is reducing Apple's power, but that power isn't all going to the end user. It is empowering Meta, Google, Amazon, and other big tech companies who are seemingly even less likely to act in the end user's best interest than Apple.
The majority of the mobile OS market in the US is iOS, the rest is Android. Apple is responsible for 2x mobile app revenue than Google, but Apple and Google both make up more than 99% of all mobile app sales.
When talking about monopolies, the working definition from the FTC are firms that have significant and durable market power such that they can set prices and exclude competitors[1]. That describes the Apple and Google duopoly accurately. Such firms and their anticompetitive tactics are outlawed by antitrust legislation in the US.
[1] https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-a...
But for whatever reason that I can’t quite explain (especially on android, on iOS I think iMessage locks people in. Maybe on Android it’s the Google suite?), others haven’t made a dent.
I can, to some degree, understand people's gripe with Apple for DRM behaviors on hardware you own. But I don't see why forcing Apple to host multiple app stores will provide more user-choice in the mobile OS space.
It might make Apple's platform more compelling for some users. But it will do the opposite for other users and still doesn't solve the duopoly problem you're citing.
I also don't see what the FTC's definition of a monopoly brings to the discussion other than to boogey-man the big bad corporations.
It sounds like your issue is with the lack of OS choice in the mobile market. Forcing Apple to allow other app stores does nothing to solve this problem.
Apple and Google are doing the same with their dominance in the mobile OS market to dominate the mobile app distribution and mobile app payments markets.
If you don't see the significance of literal illegal anticompetitive business practices, I don't know what to tell you.
https://www.justice.gov/atr/complaint-us-v-microsoft-corp
Has Apple compelled asked companies that are using Android to dump Android and switch to iOS (for some money)? (P.17)
How about having 3rd party iPhone manufacturers be restricted to using iOS as a condition for licensing and distributing iOS? (P.18 - note, if you're making Android and requiring all of the 3rd party manufactures that use it to also have Google Play... that's ok)
Has Apple entered into exclusive contracts with all the top ISPs to brand their web pages to work with Safari but not Chrome? (P.28 - note, if you are making Chrome and make a site not work with... say Firefox, that's ok)
So yes, Microsoft and the DOJ went to court. But the thing was about Microsoft forcing its terms on other companies that excluded it's competitors. Is Apple going to other companies and enforcing terms that are excluding Android?
There are arguments for side-loading on Apple, but that doesn't have anything to do with breaking up the iOS-Android mobile OS duopoly, which seems to be the thing you're really mad about.
Android allows side-loading. Making iOS more like Android doesn't strike me as "increasing consumer choice".
>illegal anticompetitive business practices
None of what Apple has done is apparently illegal. In fact, this is a _new_ law that Apple is complying with.
[0] https://www.justice.gov/atr/complaint-us-v-microsoft-corp
I don't think so- they'll try, they might build their own stores, but I doubt they can force the customers to switch.
1. Consumers are already sick and tired of having to do account management already and having to deal with Meta or Google forcing them to do more of that will lead to backlash.
2. I'm unconvinced that Meta and Google have the product capability wherewithal to force a great migration, judging by their attempts at new products in recent years, let alone what basically amounts to a new platform. The Facebook Home launcher went nowhere and I'm pretty sure Android Instant Apps didn't either. They don't really fare very well outside of their home turf, and iOS is definitely not theirs.
3. Regulators, particularly in the EU, would not sit idly by while Big Tech lures customers to shady third party app stores; if anything, these stores would present opportunities for greater scrutiny and more crackdowns.
4. I'm not even sure if Meta can get away with pulling a crucial app such as WhatsApp away from the main App Store. That seems like monopolistic behavior, and disruptive to the lives of tens of millions of people who use it for basic communications. The EU would probably mandate them host it on their third party app store AND on the official App Store.
5. I do have a carve out exception for games, because publishers regularly engage in extractive abusive behavior and gamers just take it or pirate:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30204012
I do think the possibility of a Bytedance app store/sideloaded .ipa is a wildcard, as TikTok seems to be the current killer app on mobile.
My main point is that it's not about actually creating an app store ecosystem to compete with Apple's. I agree that that would be difficult (although existing ecosystems like Steam would almost certainly go for it, as you seem to concede). My main point is that they would just immediately make you sideload to use Facebook, Fortnite, etc.
> My main point is that they would just immediately make you sideload to use Facebook
What about my points about the regulators? Meta does not exist within a vacuum. They are under as much scrutiny, probably more, than Apple. Sideloaded binaries will end up combed through by regulators, government watchdogs, security firms, Brian Krebs, etc., to check for Meta malfeasance. Plus, the point about forced migrations being potentially monopolistic behavior.
And again, they can try to make users sideload, but a not-insignificant minority would not comply. Forcing them to jump through new hoops while presenting no new benefits would not be a good user experience. Plenty would take to social media to complain. Many would read up about Meta's dastardly data policies. It would be a PR nightmare. The mea culpas and reversals would come quicker than you can say "Senate hearing."
This is also all overlooking the fact that Meta as a company is in a pivotal business situation right now- DAU was falling a few quarters ago, they just spent a ton of money on the metaverse with no results other than avatar legs to show for it, and so on. Trying to do something as disruptive as forcing their customers to get their apps from a new source could be highly detrimental to them.
Not to mention that it's not much use for most social media platforms, assuming this doesn't allow them to bypass privacy restrictions. The only apps eho would immediately benefit from such a move would be the ones handling payments.
This is just flat out not true with networked devices. I want my tech illiterate mother on a platform with no malware. That includes no malware on other devices that can contact hers and trick her into installing the same malware on her device. Apple’s iOS is the only computing platform that she has ever used on which she has avoided being tricked into malware installation. I’m skeptical that that will continue with third party app stores becoming a thing.
She doesn’t know what that is. She won’t remember what I said 5 minutes after I leave. She will blindly follow the instructions of any official-looking website or any scam caller that instructs her to disable these protections in order to “watch a video” (actually sideload an executable).
> Apple is the master of UX; surely they can figure out a way to keep things secure for users who need it to be?
She got around all of the modern permissions and signing protections on macOS and installed a malicious phony video player that nuked her device and stole her banking credentials. It doesn’t matter what you tell her: she WILL get tricked unless it’s impossible to be tricked.
You probably shouldn't let her use the internet unsupervised, if this is true.
If not more.
If we're just telling people to do things then why not just tell app developers to publish through the App Store.
Well you should probably get her off iOS then, don't want her getting Pegasus by accident.
> That man’s name is Kosta Eleftheriou, and over the past few months, he’s made a convincing case that Apple is either uninterested or incompetent at stopping multimillion-dollar scams in its own App Store. He’s repeatedly found scam apps that prey on ordinary iPhone and iPad owners by luring them into a “free trial” of an app with seemingly thousands of fake 5-star reviews, only to charge them outrageous sums of money for a recurring subscription that many don’t understand how to cancel. “It’s a situation that most communities are blind to because of how Apple is essentially brainwashing people into believing the App Store is a trusted place,” he tells The Verge.
Apple is also responsible for distributing 500 million copies of Xcodeghost to users via the App Store[2].
The App Store model is about profits, and security is an afterthought that makes for good PR.
[1] https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/21/22385859/apple-app-store-...
[2] https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7bbmz/the-fortnite-trial-is...
You are advocating for your own preferences and dressing it up as a noble pursuit of some general user choice, when the users have already chosen. You simply want to subvert their choice.
Okay, but surely there has to be some reasonable bound on what we mean by "user choice," otherwise given any finite set of products we can say there is suppression of choice of every customer who wants any of the infinite set of products that does not exist. Of course there are endless combinations of features that I might want to exist in a product, but the fact that not every conceivable product exists is not (in my view) sufficient to show that customer choice is being suppressed.
Maybe I want a Playstation 5, but in the enclosure of an Xbox Series X because I prefer the look of the latter. Is Sony suppressing customer choice by only offering the Playstation 5 in one enclosure?
Maybe I want a folding phone, but I want it to by an iPhone. Is Apple suppressing customer choice by not offering any folding phones?
My answer to both of those examples is "No." If you want a gaming console that looks exactly like an Xbox Series X, it's reasonable to that have to buy an Xbox. I think if you want a folding phone it's totally reasonable that you have to go to manufacturers that offer them. It's not reasonable to desire some specific set of requirements and require that one particular manufacturer provide you with a product that fulfills them.
What we are actually discussing is Apple's anticompetitive restrictions against third-party app stores and sideloading. These restrictions harm user choice especially in light of iOS being part of a duopoly. Apple's anticompetitive restrictions are what the EU's Digital Markets Act is addressing to increase user choice.