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Comment by grishka | Hacker News Reader

An unpopular opinion: app stores as a default means of app distribution need to die, yesterday. The intentions were good, but in the end, it's horrible for everyone — both the users and the developers. Especially for those outside of the US who don't share the American obsession with relentlessly protecting everyone from the very idea of sexuality, whether they want that protection or not. And the reviews are just never helpful to neither users nor developers. And apps begging for those reviews always feel pathetic.

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Not likely. Both mobile platforms have app stores, windows has winget/chocolatey/..., macs are trying/have brew and linux has package managers since the 90s. It seems very much that this approach is winning over "side-loading" and for good reason.

Your complaint is somewhat orthogonal to this. It would be perfectly possible to just have multiple repositories/sources backing the same app store with different values of curation/censorship. Tick a box once to enable the sources and it is completely seamless. Of course, the store owners have little incentive to do that, since they earn a cut if you buy from their repo, but that is why you have to force "gatekeepers" (in the EU terminology). If they make it non-seamless, fine them and fine them again until they do.

I think you and GP are using different definitions of "App Store". GP seems to be taking issue with how walled gardens enable application censorship and erode user control. You counter that standardized application installation/management is good UX and compatible with models that allow anyone to spin up software repositories, which is true, but doesn't counter anything GP says.

GP is equating app stores with walled gardens. I am saying that this need not be the case and that you should keep the benefits while getting rid of the points he is criticizing.

> but doesn't counter anything GP says.

It says that razing the earth and getting rid of the whole concept is overkill and his criticism should not be of app stores as such but of "gatekeepers" abusing their position.

Package managers are not app stores. They are very different things. A package manager usually allows you to freely add non-default repositories — that alone makes it different enough.

They do have their own shortcomings, like how library packages work, but that's ultimately out of scope of this particular discussion. I didn't even have package managers in mind when I was writing that comment.

App stores are front-ends for managing/buying apps/packages, e.g.

winget install Netflix

will install netflix from the windows store.

Click on settings to enable new sources, e.g. join the beta channel. They are the same thing just graphical.

Not the same thing. You can't add a custom repository in App Store or Google Play. They only ever install apps from Apple's and Google's servers. Getting your app published on those servers is obviously subject to their owners' whims. Meanwhile, you can just run

    brew tap grishka/grishka

to add my personal repository to your homebrew configuration. Try doing that with mobile app stores. One might say that, ignoring some technical details, the functionality of package managers is a superset of the functionality of app stores.

> Not the same thing. You can't add a custom repository in App Store or Google Play.

Exactly the point. The problem is that you are not allowed to do that (not a problem of can't). As pointed out by people in other comments, alternative app stores on android totally do have that functionality. So the problem is not app stores as such but google and apple being gatekeepers. Give me the option to add fdroid repos in google play.

> Try doing that with mobile app stores

F-Droid?

Sigh. Mainstream mobile app stores.

You are conflating tools (apt, brew, pip) with stores (Play Store, Appstore, F-Droid).

Android already has the ability to allow a tool to install from different sources (this is how F-droid functions, however only from their own single source).

> however only from their own single source

F-Droid is actually both a tool as well as a repository (which is the one that's included by default in F-Droid the tool). You can add additional repositories to F-Droid the tool.

I honestly did not know that was possible. Thanks!

Sorry, are you saying that winget, chocolatey, and brew are equivalent to the mobile App Store? Because for the average user, that is not remotely true. The App Store is how you install programs on mobile by default. On desktop, however, the default installation process is to download an installer/executable from a website. Only very technically literate people (basically just software developers) will be installing things via winget, chocolatey, or brew

Since Google is blocked in China, the default process for installing Android applications there is also to download an .apk from the internet and install it manually.

It works without a hiccup on my phone running LineageOS. I haven't tried on something running stock Android.

But it leads me to suspect that there isn't much standing in the way of distributing your Android apps this way outside of China, either.

Sanctioned Russian banks distribute their apps as self-updating apks. It's much, MUCH worse with iOS — Tinkoff tried publishing an innocuous-looking app that turns into their usual bank app after you open a "secret" deeplink for example.

Two things are problematic, though: 1) app stores got normalized as a way to distribute apps to the point of people being afraid to sideload, and 2) the fact that you can't distribute an iOS app without Apple's permission is utterly bonkers.

> Android applications there is also to download an .apk from the internet and install it manually.

This is how I do it in the US whenever possible, too.

> Sorry, are you saying that

No.

> It seems very much that this approach is winning over "side-loading"

But it's a shame. I hate app stores, personally. Not just on smartphones, but everywhere else they've been popping up.

Web managed to survive and thrive without App Stores, so I agree with you. What we need is resilient implementation for applications, so it's safe to install anything, just like it's safe to browse anything. May be some curation is good for applications with very deep integration with OS, like file browsers or remote control. But for typical application which could work as a website, there's no reason to have any curation.

Modern mobile OSes (and macOS) are already resilient. An app can't access anything sensitive unless you give it a permission to do so.

> Web managed to survive and thrive without App Stores

Did it? It reached critical mass and started getting shittier, more complex and more closed.

Open is great whilst the majority of users are technical or at least competent in critical thinking. Once you pass that tipping point, protectionism is a necessity.

This sounds good but its really impractical in practice. Even well designed systems suffer from security holes. Telling dumb people they can install anything they like will always be a harmful pretense.

> Especially for those outside of the US who don't share the American obsession with relentlessly protecting everyone from the very idea of sexuality, whether they want that protection or not.

The first step would be to not have mobile telecom device OSes run by American advertising and media companies.

Unfortunately mobile Linux is limited to ultra-small vendors liek Purism and Pinephone.

90% of apps could just be websites, so developers also bear a lot of responsibility for jumping onto that bandwagon for little benefit

While I agree on the sexuality part of this and I do wish that wasn’t a problem on the App Store.

I disagree with this.

There are a lot of situations where an app is unnecessary. I feel like we have too many situations where it could just be a website.

But if I am going to download an app I prefer the App Store. Especially if it’s an app that I need to spend money on/with.

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