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Comment by gnicholas | Hacker News Reader

> They provide the space, the signage, the discovery

Signage and discovery are a joke. The App Store is littered with garbage, and even when you search for an app by name, you often get unrelated apps for pages and pages before the real app.

> Also, small indie developers are only being charged 15% until they exceed $1 million. So the 30% you always hear about are the big fish that can afford it anyway.

This is a new development, which seems to have resulted only because of the pressure from regulators.

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> This is a new development, which seems to have resulted only because of the pressure from regulators.

The 15% was actually part of the settlement of the lawsuit Cameron, et al. v. Apple Inc.

Thanks for the clarification — I thought it was due to soft pressure, but you're right it was hard pressure as you mention.

> Signage and discovery are a joke. The App Store is littered with garbage, and even when you search for an app by name, you often get unrelated apps for pages and pages before the real app.

That's what you get by making it is easy for anyone to develop and release apps. It is a very low barrier of entry. Almost anyone sitting at home can make an app and release it. If they release garbage to game the system and Apple blocks it, then there cries of draconian policies.

Imagine the garbage that you will have to wade through when sideloading is forced upon them.

Somehow I have a hard time believing that the store being littered with junk comes from first timer app developers.

The web still works...

No, it's because Apple sells the signage so that when people search for XYZ they instead get an ad for QQQ. The number of apps on the market has nothing to do with this. It's a monopolistic abuse. The only way to sell your apps is on a controlled platform where people with marketing dollars can put their name on top of yours when people search for your exact title.

Good news! You can still only use Apple's app store, and not worry about this supposed garbage that will be everywhere. Because Apple will still be curating and vetting all the apps in their store, you have nothing to worry about.

Not when Microsoft makes their own App Store and moves their apps to it, then Meta, Epic, TikTok, X (Twitter), Netflix, Amazon, and you get the idea. It's going to be just like the streaming video mess that we have now.

And I still prefer the streaming video mess to the cable company monopoly we had before. Which is what Apple is in this analogy.

Also I doubt other stores are going to charge a subscription fee like streaming services do. So there's nothing wrong with having multiple stores.

Things that didn't happen on Android: that.

You're mindlessly repeating Apple's bullshit.

And also hiding your app in search results behind a list of junk unless you pay Apple extra. Which is pretty much extortion.

That and their curation and vetting process turned into complete garbage over the last few years.

Imagine the garbage that you will have to wade through when sideloading is forced upon them.

We can only hope that one day Apple will save Mac users from the horrors of being able to run software of our choice.

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