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Comment by slashdev | Hacker News Reader

There are two malls, Apple and Android on different sides of town. Both have a high level of foot traffic. There's a wide river with only one rickety old bridge joining the two halves of the town. People on the one side of the town almost never go to the mall on the other side of town. So both malls have a monopoly on their side of the town, and you have no choice but to pick one or both malls to setup your store and sell your wares. Both charge incredibly high rents, but then what choice do you have?

There's just the two malls, and nobody has successfully started another mall in a decade.

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Is it possible that on Android, where other malls have been permitted for a long time (and sideloading, too) - that there really just isn't much demand for another mall? Maybe they haven't been successful because nobody really wants to deal with another mall. Maybe this will be a complete no-op for Apple if they allow other app stores, too.

If they allowed other app stores, I wouldn't make the move. I get a ton of value out of Apple's ecosystem, including - maybe especially - the ability to see what subscriptions I have and cancel them with a single click without even interacting with the app vendor.

idk what they'd have to do to make me move over, but man, it'd have to be demonstrably valuable - not just the same thing but different 3 feet over that way.

[edit] What if I told you Amazon had its own Android App Store, and literally nobody cares. [1]

[1] https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=...

> idk what they'd have to do to make me move over, but man, it'd have to be demonstrably valuable - not just the same thing but different 3 feet over that way.

- Since Apple is currently charging 30%, another app store might charge only 10% and so you might be able to get your spotify subscription for 20% less.

- A provider of especially expensive software (say a CAD or Mathematica) might be unwilling to cede so much of their margin to anybody at all and may prefer to run their own single-item "store", making them the only place to get that particular item.

- Same for especially inexpensive software. Open source game ports that don't want to pay Apple's developer fees. They may make so little margin, including 0, that they aren't feasible with Apple's tax. New software may become sustainable to develop and distribute that isn't currently.

- Porn. Emulators. Anything that doesn't conform to Apple's capricious reviewers. Software that does conform but the pain of dealing with Apple made them give up. The kinds of things that are available on the jailbroken appstores currently.

I'm glad you personally don't have a need for any of these things but that's hardly evidence that the market for it shouldn't be allowed to exist.

> The kinds of things that are available on the jailbroken appstores currently.

Respectfully nobody jailbreaks their phones anymore. 10-15 years ago sure. Partly because security improved but also in large part because Apple's rules relaxed to the point the vast majority of what people want is just in the App Store now. Don't get me wrong Cydia brings back memories, but the last stable release was 3 years ago.

Which is a bummer, because damn did I love playing a solid port of The Legend of Zelda on my iPhone 4.

That sounds great in theory, but what we're more likely to get with multiple app stores is going to be like video streaming. We have Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, Max, etc.

Instead of the official walled garden App Store that we have now we'll end up with the Apple, Microsoft, Epic, Amazon, TikTok, Meta, X (formerly known as Twitter), Steam, etc.

This all sounds extremely miserable from an end user perspective. We are all going to have 15 app stores on our phones and they will all be sucking up every piece of identifying information they can.

The EU is going to ruin app stores like they ruined the web with cookie notices.

> - Since Apple is currently charging 30%, another app store might charge only 10% and so you might be able to get your spotify subscription for 20% less

That's nice in theory. In practice I'm sure it will be they charge the same amount and pocket the other 20%.

> Since Apple is currently charging 30%, another app store might charge only 10% and so you might be able to get your spotify subscription for 20% less.

Spotify might just increase its price to get more profit.

> Is it possible that on Android, where other malls have been permitted for a long time (and sideloading, too) - that there really just isn't much demand for another mall? Maybe they haven't been successful because nobody really wants to deal with another mall. Maybe this will be a complete no-op for Apple if they allow other app stores, too.

Yes, that's exactly the reason Apple is not allowing other malls. /s If it's so harmless for Apple, why not just allow other malls?

> If they allowed other app stores, I wouldn't make the move. I get a ton of value out of Apple's ecosystem, including - maybe especially - the ability to see what subscriptions I have and cancel them with a single click without even interacting with the app vendor.

What makes you think other app stores can't do it? What if apps are cheaper on other app stores because other app stores don't charge 30% tax?

> Yes, that's exactly the reason Apple is not allowing other malls. /s If it's so harmless for Apple, why not just allow other malls?

I'm sure it's partly related to cost, but also, part of what Apple users value is a consistent and trusted experience.

Yes, like 80 (cost)/20 (experience).

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