Apple splits App Store team in two, introduces new leadership | Hacker News Reader

Apple splits App Store team in two, introduces new leadership

arstechnica.com

84 pointsLorenDB76 comments

It's gotta be tough running the "EU Alternative App Store" team, when the best thing for Apple overall would be if the alternative app store was a complete product failure, while technically satisfying all laws and regulations.

Imagine doing a great job and building a great product, and upper management being like, well... strategically, ideally this product wouldn't be so great. Let's put someone more incompetent in charge, who will create a buggier, worse-designed product. Let's put a leader in place who will make this thing as bad as legally permissible.

Apple is the kind of King Solomon that would indeed give the baby to the second woman, but cut in half regardless. Wonder if their corporate code of conduct has "Be a massive arrogant prick" instead of "Don't be evil".

Interesting that they are creating a separate team just for the EU app store, presumably because the EU is forcing Apple to make some changes. It seems like the investigations in the US, UK, Japan, etc will eventually lead to them being required to make similar changes everywhere.

Geo-fenced app stores could align with geo-fenced networks bounded by GFC-style inspection and filtering of network packets.

I’m very happy for Apple to geofence the EU cryptography backdoors they’re going to have to put in eventually.

It's already happening. You can save money on the firewall if you can convince FAANGs to enforce things for you though.

Creating a separate store just to be able to get away with anti consume anti competitive practices everywhere else is just so dishonest and unethical. I don’t understand why consumers give Apple the benefit of the doubt, trusting such a powerful entity to be benevolent. But I guess maybe it is because the everyday user isn’t visibly affected by those practices and they don’t know that they could benefit from change?

The alternative here is Google/Samsung.

I'm not sure what you expect consumers to do, but my other halfs Pixel phones have been absolutely rubbish with a significant flaw each generation.

My Fitbit has been degrading ever since Google picked them up.

Samsung at least gives me working reliable hardware, but are still stuck with Android and Googles forcing of shitty extras.

Other Android providers exist, but after being burnt several times by providers abandoning updates and my work VPN refusing to run with old versions with security flaws, I dont blame people for just going down the route that mostly works.

We need an alternative to Android, but that would require companies to make web pages again instead of apps.

I don’t give Apple the benefit of the doubt, but Google didn’t encrypt my phone back when I was using it, and living in a city where mugging is frequent, this is criminal.

Also I’ve always been disappointed with every single feature of Android, but that’s on the side of my choice matrix.

It's unlikely that the US will force Apple to make EU-style changes. It's been 26 years since the DOJ went after Microsoft and lost, and corporate regulation has only grown weaker.

Have you been following the news on this topic lately? Antitrust enforcement has had a huge resurgence under Biden, and it's actually looking like Google may get broken up soon. See: https://www.theverge.com/2024/8/11/24216760/google-trial-mon...

What Google's rivals want and what this judge ends up deciding to do and what actually gets enforced in the end are three entirely different things.

I have, and I don't believe that higher courts will ever go along with it. Microsoft lost their initial case too, and was ordered to break up at the time. Appeals courts prevent real change like that from happening--see the fate of the recent non-compete ban. Precedent suggests the antitrust cases will end in a small fine or a procedural change, at most.

"Alphabet extrudes smaller, useles Google to satisfy regulators"

--- start quote ---

users will get new default settings for dialing phone numbers, sending messages, translating text, navigation, managing passwords, keyboards, and call spam filters

Additionally, the App Store, Messages, Photos, Camera, and Safari apps will now be deletable for users in the EU.

--- end quote ---

https://developer.apple.com/news/?id=zglax7gc

Instead being on top of things and pre-empting the inevitable, they are just reacting.

It’s not a separate team for the EU App Store, it’s a separate team for other app stores in the EU.

As in one team for the Apple first party store in all countries and a second team for third party stores, which just happens to be in the EU.

This is great. We get to see the experiment play out in real time. If it sucks, it'll only suck for the EU. If it rules, it's possible the global App Store will take on those characteristics or we may be able to do this by just importing from the EU.

I'm sure it's on Apple's best interest to make it suck as much as possible within safe margins.

So they can go like: "Seee! I told you it would be bad! Blame EU!"

Except we won’t actually see, because Apple still has their thumb massively on the scale to prevent any real competition.

https://developer.apple.com/support/alternative-payment-opti...

The Correct Answer™ is for Apple to divest the App Store.

The party running a marketplace can not be allowed to also compete in that marketplace.

Ditto Google, Amazon, Walmart, and so forth.

Am I seriously the only person who dislikes the alternative app stores and being allowed to install apps outside of app stores?

If there were problems with the margins or which types of apps were allowed regulations should have tackled that instead.

I don’t want my mother or grandmother to be able to install apps from random sources ever.

You're not the only one. The crux however is that you can't force that on everyone. There's nothing stopping apple from adding a fuse bit you can set yourself to disallow alternative app stores. That'd be completely legal. As long as it's a free choice to set that bit.

> If there were problems with the margins or which types of apps were allowed regulations should have tackled that instead.

Yes, and no.

So, regulations did say: you can't prevent users from using other default apps than the ones you tell users to use. Hence users get a lot of new default settings: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41322904

On the other hand you can't really have a regulation listing all possible apps and app features that should be allowed on the app store: there are just too many of them. So the best course of action is to let users install the apps on their own. As a result for no reason at all Apple now allows gaming emulators on the App Store because alternative app stores allow them.

It's a tough balance to strike.

Then don't use that feature. This year alone Apple removed VPN apps on behalf of a Fascist country that they can't even do business in due to sanctions.

> I don’t want my mother or grandmother to be able to install apps from random sources ever.

If your mother or grandmother is tech-savvy enough to navigate the hurdles of enabling sideloading in the settings and deal with the scary warnings that come with it, then God bless them.

My mother has used Android for many years, and even though they have had their Windows installation plagued with various viruses, she hasn’t managed to install a single virus on her Android phone yet. And yes, I check every time I go back home.

> There will now be one team for the familiar, Apple-run App Store, and another one to handle alternative app stores in the European Union

Could someone explain why Apple needs someone to handle something they're not doing? I assume 3rd party companies are running their own servers and everything, is this just for the client-side software development?

Tangential but it's funny how by digging their heels in so tightly Apple's being forced so much. Sideloading (or "installing an app") has hardly been difficult on android (or desktop OSes), I don't think Google needs to set up a new team.

If there was never infrastructure to handle third party app stores, then such infrastructure would need to be built, and assumptions based on idea that there are no third-party app stores have to be revisited and reworked. They have to then provide hooks for those third party app stores that never existed before (like anything related to launching download of an app, for example.)

> why Apple needs someone to handle something they're not doing

Regulatory compliance on the boundary between doing, "not doing", not "doing", "not" doing and not "not doing".

Why do all the Big Tech companies have teams dedicated to Privacy, Trust & Safety, AI Ethics, etc?

The way a large organization functions is to have a directly-responsible individual for each attribute that they care about (or don't care about, but are legally required to do), and then assume that person is looking out to advance that interest. They may or may not succeed - in large companies it's often very difficult to push the ball forward on attributes that the organization at large does not care about. But that gives the company somebody to fire and pin the blame on when negative consequences arise, which in turn shields the corporation itself from liability. And since the employees are themselves protected by the corporate liability shield, the worst that can happen is they lose their job, and don't get personally sued.

This also explains why the role at Apple is being split between two executives: it gives them the option of firing the one in charge of the EU DMA efforts, if Apple is found in violation of them, without firing the one who is actually running the App Store.

This. Compliance - and preferably through deferred accountability, is the modus operandi of most, if not all, larger organisations.

Presumably they want to keep a pretty tight grip on what 3rd party app stores are doing. For all the usually assumed control reasons, but also because when some 3rd party App Store becomes a major vector for some malware or another, the headlines won’t be “Uncle Bobs Bait Shack App Store Wracked by Scandal”. You can be assured that the headlines will all very prominently use “Apple” and “iPhone”

Since we're here I have a suggestion to offer. When submitting your mobile app to the App Store there is a checkbox/option somewhere asking you to if you want to distribute the app to Mac as well. DO NOT do that. If enough people do that we'll end up having a Mac app store walled garden powerful enough to extract its 30% tax.

Also, full of badly-ported Catalyst apps.

Even worse, a lack of software and market penetration on the Mac App Store is the only thing stopping Apple from disabling non-App-Store applications on Macs like they do on iOS. They've already implemented the technical side of it under the guise of "security."

That's the only thing stoping Apple? Not the fact that if they did that every mac out there would become unusable?

I wonder how many people this actually applies to. Is it primarily developers who need non-app store software?

Is there still a sizable number of people using Macs for other work (like school or design) like in the old days?

I would say about 95% the software on my MacBook have nothing to do with the App Store. Whether for work, research, normal student stuff.

I see your point but also note that they have already done something similar with the M1. Pre-DMA and Epic lawsuit, I could potentially see them drop support for installing apps outside their app store. All they would really need is Adobe to agree and the rest would just have to follow, similar in some ways to the ARM transition. (With the notable difference being that one was free for developers aside from the cost of porting their software.) I don't expect that to happen now though.

What did they do similar with M1?

I don’t believe they changed anything about app installation in relation to their arm processors.

I meant that they made developers make changes to their apps. The obvious difference is that this change will cost the developers more money. The point was that developers didn't simply abandon Apple when they switched to ARM. I guess this point may be obvious now but IIRC there was a lot of discussion around if Apple would be able to make developers make native ARM versions of their apps or if they would just abandon MacOS (although perhaps I am remembering wrong here). The point is that they made "every mac out there unusable" to an certain extent, (although obviously there was a Rosetta 2) and it didn't matter because developers followed Apple's direction and made them usable again by making ARM versions of their software.

Macs would become unusable because so much software doesn't come from the App Store. If they can get enough market penetration through other means first, that wouldn't be a problem. It would break all kinds of development processes, but Apple doesn't care about developers. They'd work out some kludge and do it anyway.

> but Apple doesn't care about developers

Why? Their whole "Pro" line is targeting developers. How many enterprises/startups would have to switch away from macs if they cannot be used by their devs any more?

They'd still be usable by devs. We'd get VS code on the App Store and some kind of iOS-style ability to run unsigned binaries on some limited number of computers with an Apple Developer subscription.

As for why Apple doesn't care about devs, I don't know, but they are not afraid of massive, breaking changes. Remember a few years ago when they permanently deleted the entire MacOS game back catalog by removing 32-bit support?

Apple targets developers of software for Apple platforms, who will always be able to operate (obviously). Everyone else is not a priority.

They've gone further than that, they're now trying to make independent app developers look incompetent and shady by falsely claiming that the app is "damaged" [1][2] and the only way to get around it is to run some scary-looking commands in the terminal [3].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41306678

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41310844

[3] https://github.com/zen-browser/desktop/issues/53

I don't follow. How does withholding apps from the Mac App Store make it stronger, and what do you mean by "powerful enough to extract its 30% tax"? Legit question, I just don't get what you're saying, no argument.

Apple won't pull the trigger and ban 90% of apps to profit on the other 10%.

Apple may pull the trigger and ban 10% of apps to profit (more) on the other 90%.

Honestly i don't think i care lol. I'd be pissed, but i'd move to back Linux.

If they're that hostile to me as a user i'd prefer they just show their hand sooner hah.

Apple is a two (three?) trillion dollar company.

Their interests are different.

Yea, and so far their interests have not been misaligned enough for me to care.

When they are, i'd like to know. The sooner, the better.

So what's the alternative then? Because when developers uncheck this box I have to go through the trouble of decrypting the IPA and sideloading it, and I usually just end up not bothering to use the app at all.

After Authy discontinued their Mac app, there was a several month period where I could install the iOS app on my Mac laptop to keep using it anyway.

It stopped being installable a few weeks ago, presumably because they unchecked this box. (I bit the bullet and started paying for 1password and using it for my TOTP needs, btw)

As a MacOS user, if you have only an iOS app and not a MacOS app, why not allow Macs to run it too? You're suggesting that if enough people allow iOS apps to be installed on Mac, MacOS will stop allowing you install apps from anything but the app store? That seems unlikely to me. If you have a Mac app and choose not to distribute it via app store, that's fine though.

Yeah, I totally understand not wanting to deal with any extra support overhead of enabling the Mac app.

But this also seems like harmful advice if someone is trying to grow their app user base. I'm far more likely to purchase iOS apps that have Mac apps. Depending on the app, it's just far more valuable to me, and I'll prioritize what I buy based on this, e.g. if it's a note taking app, it needs to have a Mac version.

The day Apple stops allowing people to install their own apps outside of the App Store is the day I and many other people stop using Apple products as daily drivers. Apple is aware of this, and already under scrutiny from regulators.

> It stopped being installable a few weeks ago,

Well that sucks, I just recommended it to someone. I assume this also means it will eventually stop working for me once I upgrade something or other.

I've been using a very simple app called "OTP Auth" since I heard Steve Gibson talking about it on his Security Now podcast.

It's a few dollars, works well, and I've been really happy with it after using Authy for years.

I personally started using 2FAS. It’s a wonderful little app with push notifications and autofill, it really is the nicest little 2FA App I’ve used thus far

The forthcoming MacOS Sequel will have an option to use your iPhone and its apps on a Mac.

https://www.apple.com/macos/macos-sequoia-preview/

Also: Apples Password stuff has some TOTP stuff build in.

(Personally I'm a little bit depressed about the iOS-apps-on-Mac stuff - they are never good, not as Mac Apps not in general. I'd like to live in a world with better desktop apps.)

Doesn’t the EU’s DMA fix this?

It doesn’t apply to macOS, since it doesn’t have the numbers to be a Gatekeeper platform

Are you sure? Apple argued that but the actual designation seems to ignore any attempt at OS breakdowns for the store itself but I’m not 100% sure of that

https://digital-markets-act-cases.ec.europa.eu/cases/DMA.100...

That....really doesn't follow.

If it were "when you submit your app for notarization, there's a checkbox to distribute it through the App Store", then that would be valid. But the Mac App Store doesn't become "more powerful" just for having a crapload of iOS apps you can install from it on your Mac and run through Catalyst. It would become "more powerful" if fewer Mac apps were distributed by other channels.

That checkbox does absolutely nothing for or against that. You are advocating for developers to reduce their own reach, and users to lose a minor piece of utility, for zero gain.

Or get rid of your iphone and mac's.

Yeah, I’m perfectly fine using my Apple devices but if your relationship with a company is that strained stop buying their products.

The entire App Store is still within the marketing department, which is all you need to know about how the App Store is run. This reorganization is internal to marketing, and the leaders are all part of that team.

Can you site any references to back that up? AppStore came out of iTunes and has always been part of services under Eddy Cue.

From the submitted article:

> Apple Fellow and former marketing SVP Phil Schiller will continue to oversee both of the new divisions.

From Apple:

> Phil Schiller is an Apple Fellow, responsible for leading the App Store and Apple Events." https://www.apple.com/leadership/phil-schiller/

https://9to5mac.com/2024/08/21/app-store-vp-departing-apple-...

> According to his LinkedIn, Fischer currently holds the title of “Vice President, Head of Worldwide App Store and Apple Arcade.” He joined Apple in 2003 and led marketing and partnerships for iTunes before shifting to the App Store in 2010.

> Longtime Apple veteran Carson Oliver will lead the App Store team, while App Store product director Ann Thai will lead the alternative app distribution team. Oliver joined Apple in 2012 and currently serves as Senior Director of Business Management for the App Store. Thai joined Apple in 2010 and worked on Apple’s education apps marketing, eventually becoming “Worldwide Product Director, App Store and Apple Arcade” in January 2020.

Marketing. Marketing. Marketing. Marketing.

None of this supports your claim that these roles are "within the marketing department". Phil Schiller is a _former_ marketing VP, a position he left 4 years ago. Carson Oliver has been business management roles his entire tenure at Apple. Ann Thai worked in apps marketing, but moved to product 4 years ago. These execs have marketing experience, but none of them came directly from marketing roles and one has no marketing background. Fischer, the guy who's leaving, hasn't worked in marketing since 2010.

> Phil Schiller is a _former_ marketing VP, a position he left 4 years ago.

"Apple today announced that Phil Schiller will become an Apple Fellow, continuing a storied career that began at Apple in 1987. In this role, which reports to Apple CEO Tim Cook, Schiller will continue to lead the App Store and Apple Events." https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/08/phil-schiller-advance...

Schiller will continue [emphasis mine] to lead the App Store. In other words, he was already leading the App Store before he stepped back from SVP of marketing to be an "Apple Fellow".

Schiller's entire career has been marketing and nothing but marketing.

Admittedly, the App Store isn't under "Joz", who is the currently SVP of marketing, but let's not pretend that Schiller is anything other than marketing. Schiller has a special place at Apple because of his long tenure and relationship with Steve Jobs. Essentially, he has his own mini marketing team now (and continues to report directly to the CEO).

The main difference is that Schiller used to be the public face of Apple. Now Joz is the public face, and Schiller is more behind the scenes. But he certainly didn't magically transform from marketing to product security at age 60.

> These execs have marketing experience, but none of them came directly from marketing roles

App Store at Apple is a marketing role.

Now you're not only moving the goalposts, you're fabricating your own! App Store is not organized under marketing at Apple. Simple as that. You think there are too many "marketing types" running the App Store. Fine. That's not what you said and now you're trying to rationalize it.

You're being pedantic. It's a distinction without a difference. The OP said, "AppStore came out of iTunes and has always been part of services under Eddy Cue", but it's actually been a very long time since Cue was in charge of the App Store. Schiller became the head of the App Store while he was still SVP of marketing and continues to be the head of the App Store today.

App Store is absolutely organized under marketing at Apple. Not under Joz, as I've already said, but under Schiller. Both are marketing. "Apple Fellow" is a euphemism, a term of marketing!

If I would have said on August 3, 2020 that the App Store is within the marketing department, there would have been no dispute. The only change on August 4, 2020 was that Schiller gave up some of his responsibilities to Joz, but Schiller still retained some, such as the App Store.

App Store is not under Eddie Cue and services. It's not under Craig Federighi and software engineering. It's not under Apple Product Security. It's not under Jeff Williams and operations. What would you call it, if not marketing?

For reference, Schiller became head of the App Store in 2015: https://techcrunch.com/2015/12/17/apple-promotes-jeff-willia...

Schiller reports to Cook. You are literally making things up to suit a definition of "organized under marketing" that no one uses.

> Schiller reports to Cook.

Yes, and? I already mentioned that fact twice, two comments ago. Schiller has been reporting to Cook ever since Cook became CEO in 2011. Before that, Schiller reported to Steve Jobs.

> You are literally making things up to suit a definition of "organized under marketing" that no one uses.

I ask again: What would you call it, if not marketing?

I think you made a fair point AppStore is now under Schiller who reports directly to Cook, no longer under Eddy Cue. AppStore is big enough to be its own group not having to answers to service, software, or marketing. It's a digital goods store more parallel to retail.

That's not terribly surprising; the AppStore is about discovery, which essentially is marketing.

Or, as I prefer to call it, shilling.

But the marketing team says "sEcUrItY"

>Loses head at the command of a middle-eastern dictator while getting noods exposed because there was an unclicked URL sent to my phone

EDIT:

Sources

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Bezos_phone_hacking_incid...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2021/12/16/nso-a...

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