Hacker News Reader

Comment by ryandrake | Hacker News Reader

I don't really want multiple app stores all over my device. A world where if you want an application, you first need to install each developer's "store app" is a step backwards. Look at what happened on Windows. I can't just install Fortnite. No, I have to get the "Epic Games Store" and then use that to install and launch it. A lot of other games also have their own "launcher" now, too which is just a thinly veiled store that you have to launch before you run what you really want.

I just want to take the iOS equivalent of an EXE or APK, load it onto the phone, and be done with it. I don't want fucking stores all over the place.

View on HN

This is technically possible in the EU (through web distribution[1] of Apps), but intentionally made impossible to actually use by Apple. They require the developer to have had an Apple Developer account for at least 2 years and at least one App with more than 1m annunal downloads in the App Store.

[1] https://developer.apple.com/support/web-distribution-eu/

> I can't just install Fortnite.

You couldn't install it at all on iOS for 4 years.

To your point, you were fine with that, you'll be fine with forgoing anything that's not in Apple's AppStore.

I'm not much of an iOS gamer, but I also wasn't a big fan of the corporate pissing match between the two companies. There was no technical reason Epic couldn't compile Fortnite for iOS--they just wanted to put their "store" in the way. Which is what I'm really against: I don't want crapware stores all over my device as a prerequisite for installing software.

No they didn't. As a matter of fact Fortnite has not only been put on the Epic Games Store on iOS, but they are also supporting it on Alt Store. They just disliked that Apple forbade them from using their own payment infrastructure to bypass their fees and policy.

Isn't this same as Fortnite windows situation?; windows allows exe but Epic still forces the store.

Sometimes you need to take a step backward to go forward. By 'going back' to allowing third party stores and apps, you have introduced competition, and realistically, one of them becomes the defacto one that is easy for both developers and users. On my android, I have lots of sideloaded apps that come from different sources, however since F-droid allows you to connect lots of 'stores' to it, I only have one app store app, as I have connected 5 app repositiories to F-droid. This is a huge win, because most of my apps come from F-droid, but there are those few that require different repos to get, as well a the few that I can install without a store at all, by just installing the APK I grabbed from the official site. Apple's store could allow these features, but since it undermines their anti-competitive practices, law has to come in to temporarily inconvenience you, so that your and everyone else's lives can be better. It'll just take some time though, because Apple goes out of their way to conform to new regulations as minimally as possible, to the point of completely missing the point of the regulation when possible.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com