Japan Passes Law to Allow Third-Party App Stores on the iPhone | Hacker News Reader

Japan Passes Law to Allow Third-Party App Stores on the iPhone

macrumors.com

136 pointsthm38 comments

Third-party stores are nice to have but not as important, they are hard and expensive to run - not a thing any interested individual/company can afford to do for themselves and their peers. Sideloading, being able to just build your app and run it immediately (or put it on your own GitHub page for everybody to get) without asking Apple or any other store - this is the real game-changer.

> [3P appstores] are hard and expensive to run - not a thing any interested individual/company can afford to do for themselves and their peers.

F-Droid proves it can be done without much money.

As I understand, this is only so because F-Droid itself is side-loaded. The conditions Apple enforces on stores are a different story.

That's a trait of Apple restrictions, not an intrinsic trait of running a third party appstores.

Side loading isn't going to have any impact whatsoever on the concentration of power in the app ecosystem or any of the abuses of that power Apple constantly wields to the detriment of users, businesses, the planet, and other stakeholders (e.g. censored, imprisoned and/or murdered dissidents).

It'd be cool for people like you and me though. Aka nerds who know how this stuff works.

Short-term I agree, but long-term things can happen.

The internet used to be cool for people like you and me, nerds who know how this stuff works.

> Side loading isn't going to have any impact whatsoever on the concentration of power in the app ecosystem

I'd say the opposite. The people concerned about the cut that Apple and Google are taking from developers, and that they have to write a privacy policy for a screensaver app rather than using it as a trojan to exfiltrate user data are "people like you and me."

Normal people just don't want for people who are not them to be able to overrule them about whatever they want to do with their own phone. Multiplying the number of gatekeepers just gives opportunities to "people like you and me" who are equipped to become (and often dream of becoming) little bourgeois gatekeepers ourselves.

"Sideloading" (aka loading, made a subclass of itself), is an answer to the general question, while "alternative app stores" is simply an answer to potential competitors being locked out of the market.

Depending on how much discretion Apple is allowed, this might make it possible for anyone to run a free service that allows people to side load their own apps as an app store which would only be slightly less convenient than directly side loading apps.

In the EU, Apple is attempting to superficially comply (I don't think it's really even complying with the letter of the law but I guess it thinks it's worth a shot) while keeping the ability to unilaterally block apps from third party stores, but that will likely get rejected by regulators, and it might end up being forced to allow anyone to operate an app store and having to give up any control over apps distributed that way.

I haven't read the text of the Japanese lawbyet, however, so I'm not sure how much control apple will be able to exercise over third party app stores in Japan.

I guess from the perspective of user control of devices it would be better if you could at least just enter a URL for an arbitrary self hosted "app store" and that seems unlikely since the laws are coming more from the perspective of antitrust law, but it still may be able to get closer to that.

When I write an app, I usually don't want to distribute it outside my family. Ideally no party other than those I want (e.g. Apple) should even know it exists.

From the EU perspective, I dont believe the DMA definition for third party stores requires them to be an app on the device. In theory it should allow for exactly what you desire.

Apple can require them whatever they want though, in any case they comply just by making alternative stores formally possible. But perhaps I'm wrong, I haven't done any serious research, I can only guess.

Sideloading is outrageously dangerous for the vast majority of people.

I'm a developer and the only time I'd want to do it myself is to avoid some silly Apple policy.

Third party app stores wrest control from a single entity and still have some vested interest in doing the security and quality control that most people aren't capable of.

Every person should have a right to consciously take responsibility over their own device and program it the way they see fit without asking anybody, based on their own judgement of how qualified they are. Unless only they are objectively disabled and obviously incapable of doing a sufficiently good job (maybe a child or a mentally senile senior).

I don't disagree with this, but there's such a wide gulf between theory and reality.

I would wager that 90% of people or more, are incapable of doing a sufficiently good job at this.

The OECD has done research on computer skills and even email is difficult to manage for most people.

Sideloading becoming too accessible can be a major attack vector and there aren't good mechanisms for preventing this. Even with various protections there are a wide array of Windows scams that funnel millions and millions of dollars from luddites to scammers.

> The OECD has done research on computer skills and even email is difficult to manage for most people.

Yet nobody actively prevents them from doing it, or even running their own e-mail servers. There are many things in our lives which are dangerous and fairly difficult for average people yet are and should be left unregulated and unsurveilled.

There are ways to protect the user from making dangerous choices without proper judgement, also to counter the threats as they materialize.

I don't object recognizing the danger though. I've read border security services of some countries happen to install spyware on travelers Android devices this way.

I believe there just should be a not-too-easy (while perfectly legal, not ridiculously complex and not breaking anything itself) way to unlock certain policies, lock them back and see what's set for people who know what are they doing. Making the whole system more transparent can also help to notice and sanitize it when it is compromised.

That's tantamount to saying that MacOS is "outrageously dangerous" to the majority of people because it allows "" sideloading"". Absurd.

Everybody buying into Apple's FUD needs to take a step back and look at the greater context; Apple themselves already sell devices and an OS which permits that which they and you claim is too dangerous to exist.

Some people want to own the device they paid a lot of money for. As long as Apple policies prevent you from sideloading, you do not own your device. They do.

This is probably a very stupid question, but could GitHub claim to be, in effect, an app store, and force side loading? Not saying they would do that...

> Sideloading, being able to just build your app and run it immediately (or put it on your own GitHub page for everybody to get) without asking Apple or any other store - this is the real game-changer.

This would be awesome to have!

I’m not sure if I’m missing something here, but I am able to build my app and run it on my iOS device without going through the AppStore or TestFlight. Is what you are trying to do something different?

As long as you have an Apple developer account ($99/y) otherwise is silently deleted after 7 days.

Ahh, I hadn’t noticed that. Thanks for clarifying.

Agree, why can't I just visit a website for x, hit a button in my browser to download and install their app.

Security? Well, shouldn't the OS/sandboxing be handing that for me?

Malicious apps or scam lookalike apps? Surely a similar system to ssl certs can be used.

I have a subjective observation: Apps on the Store have steadily increased their pricing. I think this is due to a vicious loop:

- App Store Search results favor Apps that charge money. - App Developers advertise in App Store to show up at top of search results. - App Developers raise their prices to cover their CAC.

It would be good to have an alternate store.

Frankly I want my software to cost more, not less.

The App Store cratered software pricing. One of my favorite apps is now abandonware because the developer didn't (and probably couldn't) charge enough to support it long-term. I still rely on it, but someday it will no longer be usable.

I want developers to make enough money on their software to keep supporting it.

That is an interesting perspective. Curious which Apps do you rely on that seem abandoned? Might be a business opportunity hiding there.

I doubt it at this point: it's a somewhat niche tool, and there are plenty of competitors. The app is named Rego, and it's a points of interest database.

What I liked about it originally is that it offered a web-based interface for adding new locations, but that fell over a couple of years ago.

I still like the interface and export capabilities, and I prefer to keep my extensive PoI data separate from my route data, so I use Gaia for the latter.

But I can't imagine there would be enough people like me willing to pay a subscription fee to bring the web interface back online and support new development, at least not without a marketing budget that might never receive a decent RoI.

Discussion [0] (453 points, yesterday, 335 comments)

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40662176

[dupe]

Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40662176

In recent times, has Japan passed similar laws or executive orders that challenge the economic hegemony of the US?

Passes law to “allow”. When did the law forbid???? Lol.

It is supposed to be passes law to “force” 3rd party.

(Legal semantics is a pet peeve of mine.)

There is no forcing, Apple can choose to not comply and leave the market entirely. Japan's market regulations supersede Apple's arbitrary App Store limitations.

Apple is not leaving Japan though.

Then it may be wise to comply with their ruling.

Apple can also choose to dissolve or abandon product, rather than be forced to do something it doesn't want to do. (Like 1990's law forcing ICE car manufacturers to sell more EVs, so they destroyed the EV car.)

If you read the article, it uses that construction. To quote: "The Japanese parliament has passed [...] a law that compels Apple to allow access to third-party app stores and payment providers on devices that run iOS." There's quite a bit more required of Apple, too, if you read further.

I read the article just to understand how they "allowed" something. And I found what you found. The word "compel" is more polite than "force". But force nonetheless.

On iPhones, Apple is the law

Reply on news.ycombinator.com