Getting started as an alternative app marketplace in the European Union | Hacker News Reader

Getting started as an alternative app marketplace in the European Union

developer.apple.com

51 pointsconsumer45155 comments

> Do either of the following: (1) Provide Apple a stand-by letter of credit in the amount of €1,000,000 from a financial institution (...) (2) be a member of good standing in the Apple Developer Program for two continuous years or more, and have an app that had more than one million first annual installs on iOS in the EU in the prior calendar year.

Ok, so that's a no for startups.

It’s certainly not easy and apple is playing the malicious compliance game here. But it’s not impossible for a (even pre-product) startup to raise a $1M line of credit from a bank through some creative financing shenanigans without locking up too much working capital or otherwise.

> startup to raise a $1M line of credit from a bank through some creative financing shenanigans

The whole point of that $1M is to send send the message "stay out". It's like a rattle snake shaking it's tail. Basically anyone doing this has to treat that money as throw away money since Apple may keep that money for whatever reason, including criticizing them on current/future TOS policy changes.

> The whole point of that $1M is to send send the message "stay out"

Alternative take: the whole point of €1m is to send a signal “I’m serious about doing this”.

You're not giving Apple $1M. You're merely giving them a letter from a bank saying "We're $TrustworthyBank and we trust creativeSlumber enough to be willing to give them a $1M loan whenever they want, according to such and such terms".

By giving that letter to Apple, you're just telling Apple "I could give you $1M but I'm not going to, instead take this letter that says that I could give you $1M if you wanted to."

No actual money ever changes hands.

Sure. That's why Apple added the second condition.

No it specifically says, "Do either of the following:".

You can either have the letter of credit or be a known quantity. Presumably it you launch your marketplace and it goes well, after 2 years you don't need the letter of credit.

I'm not sure if you can call a company with one million downloads in the previous year a startup anymore...

Why would a startup need their own store?

Should Valve have had a million dollars for Microsoft to be able to launch Steam?

Considering I can install any app on the PC, this comparison doesn’t make sense. AFAIK Apple still reviews and gatekeeps any app. Even from other app stores.

Honestly it would have been better if they never launched it

Why can a startup not provide one or become one?

For what reason does Apple need a million dollar bond for someone to release an App Store? They don’t for regular apps. What’s the difference?

Clearly to ensure not everyone opens a store just to publish their single app that would otherwise not make it on the app store due to its content. The same reason they won't allow stores that only host first party apps. Both of these rules are made to stop this.

Either apple found a clever way to comply to DMA without actually doing so or we'll soon be hearing from EU and apple will backtrack as it did with PWAs and Epic account.

> to publish their single app that would otherwise not make it on the app store

Isn't publishing apps that wouldn't make it on the App Store the whole reason for alternatives?

Apple's still looking for a way to undermine the DMA.

That's exactly what I'm saying. Apple is creating its own rules to make it as hard as possible while pretending they opened up.

I am trying to figure out the advantage. The way it is implemented now the App Store wouldn’t be fully independent anyways and still bound to review processes.

> The way it is implemented now the App Store wouldn’t be fully independent anyways and still bound to review processes.

This is entirely the point many people are up in arms about - the implementation is the problem, not the concept of alternate app stores as such.

There is nothing in most people's definition of a generic "app marketplace" that involves the steps Apple are demanding at present (stand by letter of credit for a million dollars etc).

If it was implemented fairly (and IMHO in the original spirit of the EU legislation), its pretty obvious what the advantages would be; being able to compete with Apple to offer lower fees and thus hopefully attract developers and sales.

Most outside observers with a reasonable understanding of the facts and a capacity for independent thought do not think this process is fair or implemented in the spirit of the legislation at all. Apple have made the process about as difficult as they could get away with while still appearing to follow the rules to secure their existing app store moat as best they could.

Maybe someone wants to start up a new store?

But for what? You still need to submit your app through the Apple review process. If this was true Sideloading I’d understand but the way it is now I don’t see any advantage.

Until you will be able to install an alternative marketplace without an Apple account (a la browser-downloaded F-Droid .apk) I cannot find a purpose to this, especially since you cannot publish the same app on multiple marketplaces

On the one hand, I see the appeal of getting away from a gatekeeper like Apple telling me what I can, and can't do, on my own device.

On the other hand, it would be very cool to also be able to avoid companies like DJI forcing sideloading of their heavily obfuscated app [0], as is currently the deal on Android.

Is there a way to accomplish both?

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39438842

Proper sandboxing and effective security permissions. Third party code is inherently still a black box, especially when the bulk of the would be attacker's code is running on a server and never goes through Apple's review process. There is no way to tell the difference between an app that uploads all of a user's contacts to do a one time search, and one that backhauls and stores all those contacts for later nefarious purposes. (I believe) Apple came up with a rule to directly prohibit mass uploads to address this specific thing, but the cat and mouse dynamic remains.

Ultimately users need to be able to deny apps permissions, based on what an app needs to do and how much a user wants to trust a company (by default, very little). Permissions need to be implemented such that apps are unaware they're being denied so they're unable to coerce users into enabling them. For example, "location access" needs to have the option of returning a virtual location that was set from a map.

> On the other hand, it would be very cool to also be able to avoid companies like DJI forcing sideloading of their heavily obfuscated app [0], as is currently the deal on Android.

> Is there a way to accomplish both?

I think so, but this sounds like a different problem. The problem here is a app that is required to operate a device bought by a EU consumer. EU can have additional regulations on such apps that are required for using all the capabilities of a purchased device that focuses on security and data governance.

That’s my concern too.

I don’t like the situation with Apple, but I also am concerned about the ability for alternatives to be … a net positive for the user.

Understandably we think of some good examples of folks acting in good faith but a lot of the people offering apps… won’t.

I disagree. The purpose should be (1) no need for app developers to pay 30% to Apple, (2) bypassing whatever Apple claims to be mandatory (e.g., notarization, etc) to run on their, sorry, your device.

None of this is currently possible. They pretended to have tackled some of it, but in reality it's gonna create just some very niche marketplace and say "hey look, you see, we made it possible". This is one of the biggest vendor lockins existing (for an app developer).

Big companies won't spend several billion $ just to make you download their free app (and let's not forget that reinstalling or updates count as a new download).

It looks like the first one to get approved is an enterprise marketplace by Mobivention.

https://app-marketplace.eu/?lang=en

> Marketplace developers will need to pay €0.50 for each first annual install of their marketplace app. First annual installs included in your Apple Developer Program membership can’t be used for marketplace apps.

Apple really makes you pay for it.

> Agree to provide and publish terms...and accept apps that meet those terms.

Marketplaces cannot offer only their own apps and cannot offer (per my reading) a curated list of apps. Apps must be able to apply and, if they meet the terms, must be accepted.

> €0.50 for [annual] install

Essentially, marketplaces cannot offer free apps unless they are nonprofits in which case they cannot offer paid apps.

Basically, no marketplace can compete by offering both paid and free apps.

> A “First Annual Install” is the first time in a twelve-month period that an Apple account (Apple ID or Managed Apple ID) installs Your Application on iOS

Users will be required to use an Apple ID to use third party marketplaces.

Still not compliant with DMA.

Let's see if EU commission does anything. I'd assume they'd already known about apple plans before law went into effect

Yeah, but I guess before the law went into effect, they could only politely say "that will not be allowed".

Now they can sanction

If as a start up I want to sideload my apps on my users devices, that's still not possible correct? I have to find an alternative market to publish the app through?

In App Store I like the extra integrations with the apple ecosystem: the history of all downloads, or single place to manage all subscriptions; apple pay and sign in with apple are convenient too.

I want the alternative marketplaces to be that - an extra option that expands what users can do with their devices.

I wouldn’t want popular companies like Adobe, EA, Microsoft, taking their products to their own marketplaces while offering inferior UX.

I kind of half expect this might be the (terrible) end game here: If you want App A, you have to download Publisher X’s crappy store and buy it there, then if you want App B, you need Publisher Y’s store, and then for App C, it’s publisher Z’s store. Yuck!

That's windows and games. Truly a PITA. And the worst thing is the rich companies can just bribe their way into people's computers by offering their games for free. EA and Epic are both guilty of this and I won't install that just on principle alone.

That being said, maybe if there was a good sandboxing, ot wouldn't be so bad?

> That's windows and games. Truly a PITA. And the worst thing is the rich companies can just bribe their way into people's computers by offering their games for free. EA and Epic are both guilty of this and I won't install that just on principle alone.

I have returned my last two game purchases on steam because they didn't launch into the game but an alternative login. I will no longer accept that. I'll chose another game and I wish many more will do that but I'm not hopeful.

Gamers are the least principled bunch of users I've come across. They screech & moan about shit they hate in games, and then turn around and buy the next carbon copy clone of Call of Duty, EA's games with thousands of dollars of DLC, the shiny new limited time microtransaction sword that costs $3,000.

If gamers had any kind of principle, they'd do what you're doing and show their disdain for these practices by not buying the game. But they just can't help themselves. The diminishing dopamine hits are just too difficult to resist, and so they just keep putting money into these awful schemes that are ruining the industry, making sure to cry and whine as they pull their credit card back out to really show the company how unhappy they are to continue buying the shit they put out.

> I have returned my last two game purchases on steam because they didn't launch into the game but an alternative login.

Ughh that’s the worst. When I double click on a game I want to play it, not run some publisher’s shitty “launcher” that begs you to create an account and hits you with ads. I HAVE A LAUNCHER: it’s called my operating system and it works fine.

Game developers please stop doing this shit! Nobody wants this.

Why speculate when Android had been using this model all along? It haven't been an issue. Of course there are multiple alternate marketplaces, but it's not like every company has their own.

Apple is a bit different, it has tighter control over its store; and more rules over things like using internal apis or duplicating os features.

But yes, in many ways this is similar too. You’re right, time will tell.

That seems like quite a likely outcome unless the store offers sellers more value than it takes. The liklihood of that for the specific example of the Apple store is pretty low. If the stores cut were more of the order of 5% it's be much less likely that sellers would feel the need to work around it.

all a company would be doing by acting like this would be restricting the size of their user base

Companies that need to use the discoverability features of the store won't do this, but with things as they are, probably most companies that are already famous enough not to need that probably will (adobe, amazon, microsoft).

they don't do this on windows

I think the ms store revenue share is around 5% for non-games plus they allow you to take money in other ways too.

Is it a coincidence that the only group that needs to pay the big fees - games makers - are the only group that make their own stores?

>I think the ms store revenue share is around 5% for non-games plus they allow you to take money in other ways too.

so what do you think Apple will do the second this starts happening?

I know what I hope they'll do, and what most likely the entire point of this is - they should make their store more competitive and give app sellers a better deal. Whether that's what they'll actually do isn't trivial to work out - this is apple after all.

It's look like Apple used all dark patterns you can imagine to make this as crap as possible. I really hope EU will force them to act better.

What dark patterns are you thinking of here? I usually think of dark patterns as tricks that companies use to guide users to make a particular decision. Such as making the undesired link text smaller or harder to find.

While I don’t think Apple is doing what most people wanted them to do (just allow users to install alternative stores or sidelod apps), I think they’re being quite transparent here.

They made a lot of efforts to make this useless. Requiring $1M to start a marketplace, making it hard for the customers to use it, trying to comply with the law but in very bad faith.

I can’t wait to have to install 30 different app stores to keep installed the apps I currently have

That's not going to happen, for the same reason there aren't 30 different mobile operating systems to choose from when you buy a phone

EU needs to address this as it is still gatekeeping.

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