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Comment by grishka | Hacker News Reader

> I'm not sure why they feel so emboldened

Because they feel like they own the relationship between the user and the developer by virtue of it happening on a device they made, regardless of how much their contribution, if any, was to the formation of that relationship in the first place.

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the same could be said of any game developed on Unreal and required to pay an (admittedly lower) percent to Epic

You have a choice to use a different engine to build your game (including rolling your own). You don't have a choice to not use the app store to distribute your iOS app.

Yes, you do. You have the choice to put your App on Google Play or host it yourself and make it available for Android.

I'm talking about iOS apps specifically. Don't pretend that not making your app available for the second most popular mobile OS is acceptable.

You're not forced to make apps for iOS or any Apple product. Making your app for the second most popular OS is acceptable because that's what iOS is. I know you tried to make it seem like Android is but, worldwide, Android is far more popular than iOS. The fact that there even is a 2nd most popular mobile OS proves that Apple doesn't have a monopoly.

That doesn't make it any easier for people who have iPhones but can't install your app because your app is incompatible with whatever Apple demands. Trust me, most people who buy iPhones are completely oblivious to the app store rules and review process.

That's irrelevant. Both iPhone users and app developers have options on both sides. Developers can ignore Apple's platform and end-users have lots of options for phones that aren't iPhones.

You keep pretending that this problem can be solved if everyone "just" ditched iPhones for Android or Windows Phone or Symbian or whatever. Sorry to disappoint you, but this is not how the world works.

I’m not the one pretending. You’re pretending like people don’t have a choice in what phones they buy. They do.

In the US, iOS has the majority of the market share, so it is the first most popular mobile OS.

And in Japan iirc. In the rest of the world, though, the usual situation is around 2/3 Android and 1/3 iOS.

That's not an apt comparison because Apple banned alternative app stores from their devices.

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