AltStore PAL receives Epic Games MegaGrant, will no longer require subscription | Hacker News Reader

AltStore PAL receives Epic Games MegaGrant, will no longer require subscription

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The issue is the “core technology fee”. There shouldn’t be any OS fee to install apps on your device. This became beyond ridiculous. A kind of “black mirror” episode,

Sounds like it's a game of CTF and we know who's winning :(

I think they should add a core technology fee to use the Mac and safari as well. All the fanboys on hn would disappear.

The fee isn't for installing the app, it's for using Xcode, Apple's SDKs and their notarization infrastructure.

There's no fee to install apps on your device, it's the developer that gets charged, not the user.

In that case what is the $99/year developer fee for?

> Join the Apple Developer Program to reach customers around the world on the App Store for all Apple platforms. Membership provides the tools, resources, and support you need to develop and distribute apps and games, including access to app services, testing tools, app analytics, and more.

List of tools that this subscription supposedly covers:

https://developer.apple.com/programs/whats-included/

it'd be true if it was also levied for macOS app installs. alas, it's a marketing lie, the CTF is just a emotional outburst aimed at punishing Europeans.

That doesn't explain why the fee is per user install. That's just rent-seeking.

That’s copyright and patent law for you! Imaginary property is all about rent seeking.

That's property law for you, earning money from other people's work just because you have a piece of paper claiming ownership over the land they work on is all about rent seeking.

Not just copyright, normal law works like this too.

E.G. if you're a company, you can rent a printer and pay per page. THe printer is physically in your own office, it's for your own exclusive use, but you can still get a per-page contract if you wish.

> it's the developer that gets charged, not the user.

.......you do understand there is no difference, right? Any extra costs incurred by the developer will be passed on to the user.

If that's the case why is it charged on a per-install basis?

The core technology fee is just so ridiculous. I'm glad it's being funded, but the fact that it exists angers me.

It, among other things, is being investigated by the EC. I wouldn't expect it to be deemed acceptable under the spirit of the DMA, it's just Apple throwing a fit and making their compliance as painful and slow as possible, perhaps in the hope that sentiment towards the new rules will grow sour before they actually have to open their platform.

Apple is setting fire to so much developer good will. Surely the need to purchase a Mac per developer, multiple iOS devices for testing, and the $99/year for a developer account is enough of a fee already paid to access that "core technology".

I can't help but wonder how many developers are now considering whether iOS support for PWAs is good enough to sidestep this crap entirely. Tim Cook really needs to learn the definition of the word "symbiosis", because a smartphone with no third-party software is barely worth anything.

It's no surprise that Apple tries to grift developers by creatively redefining the scope of what the developer fees actually get you. Coming up with the slimiest ways to extract money is the core of their DNA.

I expect that in a few years they'll say that their "Core technology fee" doesn't actually cover the full development experience, only the "core" of their technology, i.e. the compiler, while device-specific frameworks/libraries ought to cost extra for the relationship to be "fair".

As you say, Apple have forgotten how their relationship with 3rd party developers really works. They owe their success in the mobile space to them, yet they're so quick to brush them off and have the nerve to say that actually, developers should be paying them for the privilege - it's disturbing.

Are they though? I haven't seen any evidence to suggest significant migration away from the iOS App Store. I was under the impression that devs and consumers that cared about side-loading largely already self-selected to Android.

Yes, that's market capture. Odds are most people won't even know about other stores on IOS, for years on end.

>I was under the impression that devs and consumers that cared about side-loading largely already self-selected to Android.

Consumers mostly did, devs would still appreciate the feature since usually the choice isn't to make only an android nor only an iPhone app.

It's certainly a major disincentive for me to start developing iOS apps. Dealing with all that patronization and red tape is off-putting and feels just not worth it for projects that you want to do for personal edification and fulfillment. IOS not being particularly fun to develop for likely hurts the platform to some degree.

What I'm speculating is less that established apps will move elsewhere (after all, without rewriting your product with web tech there is nowhere to move to outside of the EU), and more whether new developers will simply choose not to bother or to go web-first at the start.

> how many developers are now considering whether iOS support for PWAs is good enough to sidestep this crap entirely.

It's hard to make any money on a PWA.

I have no numbers to back it up, but I would expect these days that a big chunk of revenue from non-ad-supported mobile apps is subscriptions. In which case, assuming you could get the same number of customers (a big if, especially considering Apple's unwillingess to treat PWAs as first-class citizens), you would make more money because you wouldn't lose 15-30% to Apple.

For what it's worth, I much prefer a high-quality native app to a PWA, but Apple's treatment of developers as basically bottom feeders leaves a very sour taste in my mouth.

Apple is playing with European Commission's proverbial patience, but in the end they will likely declare that illegal as well.

This is so cool, I can still remember the days where I installed Antutu and altstore for getting some apps for free. And now, I can actually download AltStore as an official third-part store without worrying about apps getting revoked again.

Apple still has to review and approve each single app update [0], and apps invariably tend to need updating sooner or later for new iOS versions.

[0] https://support.apple.com/en-us/117767#:~:text=All%20apps%20....

> Apple does not enforce the App Store's high standards for business practices and content on apps distributed through alternative app distribution.

I guess we'll see how well this ages. I just know some 18+ store is going to release within 12 months and that will truly test if Apple is just "testing for security" or not. I suppose EGS and assumedly Fortnite got approved, so that was the other hoop I worried about.

This can still potentially mean issues for stuff like Beeper and iSH style apps , though.

If Apple still has to review everything, why would one publish on an altstore anyway? You aren’t cheaper (still need to pay that $90 per year) and you severely limit your audience.

They publish there because they aren't allowed to publish their app on the app store, which is the whole point of the legislation that precipitated this.

There are now some torrent apps in the Altstore that are not allowed in the Apple app store. So the Apple review is more limited.

Monopoly sucks, Apple is the living proof.

Of course I’m excited, but on further thought I wonder whether this could be set up better. As far as I understand it a MegaGrant is just a bunch of money, which AltStore can freely use and they decided to use it to cover Apple’s excessive fee.

Had Epic pledged to pay the fee, they would have had a good reason to fight it (which, as far as I understand, they want to anyway).

I’m still waiting for legal exchanges over both notarization and the fee.

I’ve been waiting for somebody to sue over notarization (the reason I STILL can’t install the Pebble app) and my biggest hope was on AltStore. This type of support gives me hope that something is going to happen in this area.

Thanks to Riley for putting so much effort into this and thanks to Epic for accidentally being on the side of user freedom :-)

So fucking funny, what a middle finger to Apple. I hope they succeed.

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