Apple admits third-party app stores in Europe are inevitable | Hacker News Reader

Apple admits third-party app stores in Europe are inevitable

appleinsider.com

66 pointselorant25 comments

I hope this happens in the US as well, Google has become a terrible partner for Android developers.

This past week Google announced (1) that in order to release an app on Play:

"developers with newly created personal Play Console accounts will soon be required to test their apps with at least 20 people for a minimum of two weeks before applying for access to production."

This will be gamed (test farms), and the policy will not achieve any goal but making life difficult for small / indie developers.

(1) https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2023/11/ensuring-h...

Google is really trying so hard to surpass Apple Store on being a worse experience for developers.

It's almost as if Google forgot what makes Android so appealing as open platform to mobile developers compared to IOs locked platform.

I honestly wonder what Andy Rubin thinks of what Android has become in the hands of Google ...

AFAIK you can use 3rd party stores on Android today and you pretty much always could.

Android at least has great support for web apps.

How would you even find 20 people willing to install and test your random app for at least two weeks? This requirement is insane.

I for one look forward the most to seeing the equivalent of the F-Droid store coming to iOS. Either from the people behind the original F-Droid, or from some group of people with similar ideals like them.

However, I wonder if that will enable apps that corporations don’t want to exist, to exist on iOS. I.e. BitTorrent clients, alternate YouTube frontends that use yt-dlp to play YouTube videos without ads, etc.

The apps still need to be signed with a developer account right? And so Apple will still be able to deny signing certain apps / blacklist those apps when they receive complaints, right?

I'm pretty sure one of the first app stores we'll see is Meta App Store.

The deliberate delay in releasing the Threads app in the EU, without any clear reason, makes me believe that they intend to make it an exclusive offering of the Meta store.

It doesn't make any sense... Why threads ia related to meta store?

Or, instead of conspiracy theories, why don't we go for most plausible cause? That the app is a privacy nightmare that in now way could pass the GDPR filter? As if Facebook had anything more to offer in his "store" other than Facebook, whatsapp and Instagram.

I agree that Threads may be a “privacy nightmare” and so that may limit its deployment to Europe, but is it really a conspiracy theory to suggest that Meta will release their latest products (and maybe move current ones) to their own Meta App Store once Apple is forced to allow 3rd-party app stores? That seems less of a conspiracy to me and more of a natural consequence, and Meta won’t be alone here either.

Many have said “that’s not what happened on Android” and that’s true, however I think that’s true only because everyone is waiting for the iPhone to be forced to change and then you release your own store across both platforms. It seems likely to me it’s not worth it to do it on Android alone - kind of like releasing an Android-only app. You’d want both an Android and iOS version of your app. The costs and duplication of infrastructure probably doesn’t make sense for one operating system but does for two.

Even if alternative stores will be allowed in the EU, Meta will still need to be present on the App Store because the majority of Apple users will probably not bother install others stores.

Plus, if it’s an EU only store they’ll still need to be present on the official store for all the other people that are not in the EU.

And no matter the store, they’d still be subjected to the new EU regulations which is the real reason why Threads is not available in the EU at the moment.

https://www.theverge.com/23789754/threads-meta-twitter-eu-dm...

I’ve heard this discussion point often “most users won’t switch to the new store” but the problem with that point is it makes all of the 3rd-party App Store development and related activities pointless. I don’t buy that they will need to maintain a presence. iOS is what moves the needle and drives revenue.

US regulation will almost certainly follow EU regulation to allow 3rd-party app stores or it’ll just be a tax we all pay in the US on prices (probably small, admittedly) for devices and software cost as Apple has to maintain increasingly divergent os profiles for different locales.

Also I think you are correct that Meta may follow 3rd-party App Store rules and regulations, but if they’re all subject to to the same rules and relegations allowing the 3rd-party stores is either pointless and annoying (download the Meta store to download the Meta apps) or it’ll just be used for scummy and scammy software.

But also a lot of let’s say user data tracking for example could theoretically be banned by the EU but Meta can just get around that and maybe pay the cost later. It’s not like there are any watchdogs here. They don’t need Apple or their requirement to allow Sign in with Apple or to follow any sort of checks and balances (they are dogfooding) from another institution.

All that to say, I see no benefit to these 3rd party app stores and lots of potential negatives. But I guess it’s “more open” or something?

Facebook is probably salivating at the thought of their own App Store. Don’t forget that Apple already once had to block Facebook’s enterprise apps because they were literally paying kids to enroll their devices and install a data harvesting VPN.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19035834

Threads is not available in the EU because it would likely surpass the 45M users and hence be subjected to all the various rules under the new DSA and it’s my understanding that the threads team is currently small and meta probably doesn’t want to allocate a ton of resources to it yet.

If memory serves correctly, signing certificates are issued to developers and signing is done locally on the build machine.

Apple cannot deny signing on a per-app basis. They could revoke a developer’s certificate perhaps, but that’s something else.

They may co-sign a binary in the App Store but that seems irrelevant for other distribution channels.

One app I use heavily is Blokada. It's a loopback "VPN" that runs completely locally, so all your traffic can be routed through the adblocking application running inside the VPN.

There's two versions of this app. From their website, it offers all the above features, but when installed from the Play Store there's no local VPN, it's only for connecting to a premium cost remote VPN.

Back in 2019, I was using blokada but from outside the phone source network analysis, I found blokada is doing network requests but not showing them in ui.

Nuked the app.

I was at around 1 million blocked requests so its not like I did not use it or like it.

Now I just do pihol

Is allowing direct install from internet (like how most desktop applications work) also required by the DMA? Or are all developers of independent apps going to be required to publish their app to some app store?

No, there will be 3rd party App stores (approved by EU) where developers can release their Apps.

I didn't hear anything about app stores approved by the EU. The new regulations talk about allowing side loading.

It mentions sideloading in passing.

I want to know if sideloading will be possible.

Honestly a repository (not a store) of open-source apps to compile and sideload would bring new life to the apple ecosystem.

A large proportion of mobile apps could be built as progressive web apps (PWAs), and avoid app stores altogether.

I am sure we'll see developers and users rushing to the Amazon Appstore, to about the same extent that they have on Android.

This would be great! Fingers crossed!

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