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False dichotomy.

Having a curated store \neq Having only one store.

Also, that misses all the other areas pointed out: "Be it the electronic wallet, browsers or app stores, consumers using an Apple iPhone should be able to benefit from competitive services by a range of providers."

> But that policy should then also apply to PlayStation, X-box, Tesla infotainment, etc.

Why? That only applies to "gatekeepers". So you would have to argue that apple is very unsuccessful and hence these are at the same level as apple... seems like quite a stretch.

>False dichotomy.

No it's not. Currently all the apps that want to be available on Apple's platform have to submit to Apple's rules. If alternative app stores are allowed, they won't have to do that. As a consumer I like the current state of matters more.

>Also, that misses all the other areas

I'm reacting only to the App Store part. I'm all for opening electronic wallet or allowing browser engines into App Store. Those are off topic in this subthread.

>Why? That only applies to "gatekeepers".

I don't see how PS/Xbox/Tesla are any less of a gatekeeper than Apple.

The point is choice. As a consumer, you can choose to only get your apps via the official Apple store, which comes with all the "Apple rules" you want. As another consumer, I prefer freedom and hate monopolists so would choose another store. Everyone is happy!

why not just buy an Android?

Why don't you move to mexico? It's about the same level of nonsense question.

yes, moving countries is the same as buying phones.

> However, I absolutely love that all the developers including the likes of Meta or Uber have to bow down to Apple's rules, which are mostly beneficial to me. I don't want to download apps from alternative app stores. I want them to be available in App Store and to be submitting to all of the curation rules.

On Android, you have to abide by Google's rules if you want to be in the Play Store; Amazon's if you want to be in theirs; F-Droid's to be there.

Consumers have choice over whose rules they care about. In a hypothetical iOS with app store competition, what you write would presumably still be true for the Apple App Store, there just might be an 'F-iOS' or whatever that insists the app is open source too, for example.

I believe companies like Meta could afford to leave the Apple App Store and distribute apps through their own app store only.

Perhaps you might say that would be fair, but it is a world that suits me less than the current one.

So why is that not happening for android?

You don't have to come up with hypothetical scenarios if you already have a real life example to look at.

This actually happens in China and every phone manufactures has their own app store. It's a shitshow

having multiple stores in itself is fine, but it's even worse worse. if you want to release your app on multiple app stores, you have to release on all of them at the same time. if you skip one they will not allow you to launch there later because you dared to treat them as second choice. imagine apple banning you because you dared to release on android first.

Because there's no point as they need their apps to be cross platform and so Apple is setting a baseline for what behaviour is allowed.

But once Meta, Epic etc can run their own stores on both iOS and Android they will absolutely move their apps to them. Epic has already said how important this is to be able to implement their metaverse strategy.

Epic already did this at the height of fortnite's popularity, by using a "fortnight installer" app that you had to get from outside the play store. Can't remember why they backtracked, or why they didn't offer store/sideload versions at the same time.

Google even took steps to prevent people from installing malware pretending to be fortnite, and steered them to the official installer. Not out of the goodness of their heart, TBF.

I really, really don't think it'll be as easy you as say. Neither the audience nor the regulators will let them off easy, and these creaking giants aren't exactly great at launching popular new platforms, these days:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33978081

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30808926

Isn't Google far less strict on privacy rules (and their enforcement) than Apple?

it is happening for android - there is more malware in the third-party stores, even with the extremely minimal scrutiny google apples to the official store.

anyway, here is a real-world example of the type of spyware that facebook and others will deploy once they have the leverage. again, remember that this already happened and most likely still exists and is something they have ready to deploy again if the opportunity presents.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/01/facebook-and-google-...

One approach that might be reasonable is for device makers to provide a hypervisor to control actual hardware access, and then implement their environments in virtual machines running under that hypervisor.

iOS then becomes just one environment that the phone's owner can choose to run under that hypervisor. Within any given environment the maker of that environment should be free make it as open or closed as they want.

The device maker should have to make it easy to run different environments.

Yes! That would be nice.

I like the walled garden of Apple as well, especially as a “family IT guy” who had no need to reset/reconfigure the systems or remove malware from any phones since talking the family members to switch to iPhones a few years back.

Some of the properties of the walled garden have nothing to do with security, though. They are simply uncompetitive practices on Apple part. I’m happy someone said “enough”.

It doesn't seem ridiculous to me, I get where you're coming from. Only I'd say you've been misled.

As others have pointed out, you can have both a walled garden store and an Apple curated store — and this is how Android operates. More menacing though, are Apples reasons for not wanting competition.

Put simply; if Safari wasn't the only allowed browser on iDevices (other browsers are just skins over what is essentially Safari), they would lose a significant amount of power. They can throw their weight around now, partially because they have a strong web browser market share — but it's artificially imposed.

If you don't think it's forced, have a quick quiz at work amongst Apple fanboys, and find out how many of them use Safari as their default web browser — on their Macs.

If there were other app stores besides Apple's for iDevices, Google would require you to download the Play Store to access Gmail, YouTube and Google Maps. Once there's an alternative major app store where Apple's strict privacy rules don't apply, why should companies with a more relaxed privacy stance stay on Apple's store? Your Bank, Facebook, Adobe, and Amazon will likely move to the store with the lowest standards.

That's absolutely not the case on Android, why would it be different on iOS?

Being on the default store is 1000% buff. Literally your Bank, Facebook, and Amazon aren't going to just disappear off the shelves of the biggest store. On Android, Amazon actually run their own app store and they still have all their apps on the play store.

Besides all of the trouble it takes to build and run one's own store, pulling one's apps off the official App Store would be hell for discoverability and UX. And the Amazon store really only exists for the sake of Fire tablets.

I have a Samsung Phone, it's preloaded with Galaxy store, and they still put their own apps (even exclusive apps) in the Play store.

nobody needs to "discover" facebook, that's the power of network effect

Ushering the FB app to a Meta store would still require a migration process that would be annoying at best and arduous at worst depending on the user. See what happened to the HBO Max to Max app rebrand this year, except with the additional headache of going to a new app store entirely.

That migration process is the discoverability issue, because now users would be forced to contend with yet another website, marketplace, account, etc.

When someone searches for the fictional new Facebook clone "Visagebook" in the Apple store you can bet they'll want to pay money for "Facebook" to show up somewhere in those results.

>I don't want to download apps from alternative app stores. I want them to be available in App Store and to be submitting to all of the curation rules.

Even if alternative app stores were allowed you'd more than likely never be forced to use them. Alternative stores are available on Android and yet the overwhelming majority of apps are still on the play store. The idea that Facebook, Amazon, Google or whoever would pull their apps and force you to use their store is complete FUD that ignores that the overwhelming majority of users wouldn't tolerate an app not being on Apples store.

> The idea that Facebook, Amazon, Google or whoever would pull their apps and force you to use their store is complete FUD that ignores that the overwhelming majority of users wouldn't tolerate an app not being on Apples store.

I think you're right, but won't that defeat the purpose of opening the stores up? For instance: right now, you can't buy Kindle eBooks through the Amazon app. You need to do it through the web browser, so Amazon doesn't need to pay Apple 30%. But if Amazon continues to list their Apple in Apple's App Store, how will that change? Would they have 2 versions of their App—one in Apple's store that disallows eBook purchases, and one in Amazon's App Store that allows eBook purchases? Or will they still just disallow eBook purchases?

Perhaps in this case they would be able to go to Apple and negotiate a more reasonable 5 or 6% cut and stay in Apple's store. Amazon gets discoverability in the safe, Apple app store and Apple gets a cut of the revenue, win win.

> But that policy should then also apply to PlayStation, X-box, Tesla infotainment, etc.

I want the forced to open up to competitors to be applied to everyone.

> I don't want to download apps from alternative app stores.

Then don't. Nobody is forcing you.

big corps (including apple itself) are powerful enough to force you to do everything if they really want.

If I can only get WhatsApp from the Meta Store then, yes, I’m forced.

That does not happen on Android though.

I want to download them from the App Store. I use Instagram, but I want it to play by Apple's rules. Surely you understand what I mean.

Yes, I get what you want. You want to coerce everybody that brought a phone like yours into your cause, due to its sanctity.

And also, for some reason you are afraid that most people that brought that phone will refuse to join if not coerced.

That first one is morally wrong. And the second one of factually wrong.

Except this is a disingenuous argument.

Because there will be many applications you may need to use e.g. banking which will be on an alternative App Store purely so they can skirt Apple's privacy restrictions. Finance is one sector where they would love to siphon all of your user data in order to better promote products and reduce risk.

And so I would be forced to use them.

You can switch banks? Trust me if these banks are only following the rules because of Apple, I can guarantee you their backend is definitely not following these privacy rules.

Also, OS level permissions don’t need to go away for third party apps.

Switching banks can often mean changing home and personal loan products which is non trivial to say the least.

And Apple can’t properly enforce OS level permissions due to Objective-C dynamic dispatch.

Why can't they? They control the objc runtime, and IIRC the way message passing works in that system requires throwing strings around with the involvement of the runtime.

This being entirely separate from using allowed APIs for unapproved reasons, after passing whatever review/scan is done.

Because you would need to check every message against a hash map of disallowed private APIs.

The performance degradation would be so significant it would render many apps and most of the OS unusable.

Or not allow all apps to send messages to the objects that host those private APIs. Again, unless I don't understand how the message passing system works in objc/swift. (most of my knowledge of the internals comes from reading blogposts on nshipster.com years ago)

I am much more worried about Apple siphoning my data than my Credit Union. Apple is building an ad mega-empire, in big part via abuse of power on their monopolistic platform.

> Except this is a disingenuous argument.

And yours is truly insane.

How many people would install a banking app from a third party app store on Android? Let's be real, zero. Why would it be different on iOS?

If the third party App Store is owned and operated by the bank then there would be no choice.

And given that the benefit of doing so is unlimited access to user data and the capabilities of the hardware then it would be hard for many companies to not consider it.

I totally agree and am bewildered that not more people do. The downsides and abuses to come are so obvious everybody should be revolting at the very idea. Instead we get a law to force it…

> I choose the tradeoff of Apple's curation.

When individuals choices start to actively harm society laws are often created to prevent more harm.