I want the EU to force Apple and Google to allow 3rd party app stores with the exact same rights as theirs (auto updated etc.). Just like back in the day when Microsoft was forced to let users allow other browser when it wasn't even being blocked. Just theirs was pre-installed!
The security excuse doesn't cut it, sorry. 3rd party app stores can be just as secure if not even more being smaller and able to properly vet apps.
This closed eco-system hinders innovation. Apps that compete with apple or google routinely get blocked or removed.
Microsoft’s antitrust case is frequently misunderstood. MS was a supplier to the companies that made and sold computers. They got in trouble for messing with other suppliers.
Apple manufacturers and sells the computer. It’s not analogous.
Apple is a supplier to software companies (of both hardware and software). They are getting in trouble for messing with other suppliers (of both hardware and software).
To quote the charges in the MS case:
"the U.S. government accused Microsoft of illegally maintaining its monopoly position in the personal computer (PC) market primarily through the legal and technical restrictions it put on the abilities of PC manufacturers (OEMs) and users to uninstall Internet Explorer and use other programs such as Netscape and Java."
Apple in this case:
"Apple is illegally maintaining its monopoly position in the mobile application market primarily through technical restrictions it puts on the abilities of iOS software developers and users to install 3rd party application and programs."
We're essentially playing out a very similar situation, just with the focus on digital goods.
Isn't this only true for the US antitrust case? IIRC the EU antitrust case was similar Apple's situation.
(FWIW, I have always thought that media companies should collectively buy Twitter and run it as a utility)
You really don’t see the harm in government controlling distribution?
Apple’s behavior is BS and they need to be forced to allow competition
They’ve done it to themselves
TL;DR Apple and Google will have to allow to install third-party app stores trough their stores.
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/en/TXT/?uri=COM%3A20...
Gatekeepers like Apple will have specific obligation according to Article 5:
(b) allow business users to offer the same products or services to end users through third party online intermediation services at prices or conditions that are different from those offered through the online intermediation services of the gatekeeper;
(c) allow business users to promote offers to end users acquired via the core platform service, and to conclude contracts with these end users regardless of whether for that purpose they use the core platform services of the gatekeeper or not, and allow end users to access and use, through the core platform services of the gatekeeper, content, subscriptions, features or other items by using the software application of a business user, where these items have been acquired by the end users from the relevant business user without using the core platform services of the gatekeeper;
And Article 6:
(c) allow the installation and effective use of third party software applications or software application stores using, or interoperating with, operating systems of that gatekeeper and allow these software applications or software application stores to be accessed by means other than the core platform services of that gatekeeper. The gatekeeper shall not be prevented from taking proportionate measures to ensure that third party software applications or software application stores do not endanger the integrity of the hardware or operating system provided by the gatekeeper;
(k) apply fair and non-discriminatory general conditions of access for business users to its software application store designated pursuant to Article 3 of this Regulation.
Following articles, like:
- article 7: Compliance with obligations for gatekeepers
- article 10: Updating obligations for gatekeepers and
- article 11: Anti-circumvention
give the EU Commission quite a lot of executive power to ensure effective implementation.
What Apple and Google need to do is work on assuring that Apps can be uniquely identified (which the can already) and validated so that you don't have a clone of an App in another app store.
I am a long-time Mac user and I find myself fervently hoping that Apple has made the completely unnecessary self-own that will finally help people forget the whole keyboard fiasco.
This is the most staggering example of deliberate, bad-faith arrogance that they could have come up with. If Apple is now the kind of business that joyfully thumbs its nose at regulators like Facebook did, we are in the bad timeline.
[edit to add: I don't expect them to like dealing with regulators, and I do expect them to loudly complain in press releases and in the FT and WSJ and on every business TV programme in the world. I then expect them to comply in a way that is productive, whereas this is just aggression, and it'll only leave a bad taste with developers and customers. If they want the same instinctive response as RyanAir, this is the way to go about it]
Have you ever bought an Adobe subscription, ever tried to cancel a New York Times subscription? Or Audible where they say "Well, you can cancel but then we'll also take the tokens you've already paid for"? It's completely ridiculous.
I'm so sick of 14,000 variations on cancelling things, having to click through menus, five hundred different things I have to take care of and all that crap. On iOS I can cancel anything and everything - without exception - the same way and in a few clicks. I like that and it's just something I got used to.
- Cannot also support IAP
- Website links are all to a single URL specified in Info.plist with no parameters <-- !!!
- Must submit monthly report to Apple listing EVERY external transaction
All for measly 27% of the sales proceeds. A total steal.
Apple's really jerking on the regulators' chain. I sure hope they continue in the same vein, because the fallout will be spectacular.
[1] https://twitter.com/marcoarment/status/1489599440667168768
We used to hate Microsoft for much less than this. I wonder how Apple can still have so many fans, even on this forum.
Right.
I mean I am an Apple kit user (albeit mostly the cheap/secondhand stuff these days), but you're right -- this is a ghastly display of entitlement and I hope it costs them.
But they both discourage people from introducing third party payments and continue to collect their cut while the government now has to start the enforcement process again, take them to court again, etc.
When the profit scheme is so good, you just want to keep it running as long as possible, and this does that. Most court appeals you'll see in each case sound incredibly stupid on their face and you wonder why they'd pay a lawyer to argue it... but it's just because legal proceedings take time. The profits they make are so obscene, and the fines they'll pay for it are minimal in comparison.
Apple and Google are just crooks, full stop.
One would be "casual" iPhone (called just iPhone or iPhone Family), that'd have all the safety warnings, walled garden exits notification etc. etc., and then there would be "expert" edition or whatever, where there would be minimal notifications + link to menu where one could disable those notification/customize more/allow for more unsafe automations and such. Maybe even with swapping one to another in a hard way (for example requiring resetting full phone and re-linking it again - so it cannot be casually by convincing someone to).
I understand that for some people Apple is monopolist and closed garden, but for me my family this is exactly what I want. They don't care for security, 3rd party providers, iCloud storage options or how to not lose their photos and videos - and I don't want to be made to care for them for updates, configuration, security etc, and receive a call phone very single time they are confused by dialog (with state-mandated COVID app I spent ~40m with multiple people each on phone clicking them through the app).
I always believed that if someone wanted to tinker and hack around Android was the choice, if someone didn't care and wanted a phone that "just works" with sensible defaults and lack of knobs they'd go for iPhone. What's the dumb option now?
1. can't tell already do that with enterprise provisioning profiles?
2. can't you refuse them access to your personal phone and demand that they provide you a work phone?
I like Apple's payment system. It works, it's consistent, I can cancel things from a single menu. There are real benefits to me, the consumer, to using Apple's system.
On the flip side, other payment systems can be a hodgepodge of unsecured, user hostile (cancellations), and inconsistent. There can be real negatives to using other systems. More so some systems that don't have a consistent UX (ie, don't bump me into PayPal's UX or similar and have a branded payment page instead).
Basically, I'm not a fan of Apple being this heavy-handed. There has to be a happy middle ground. But, I also hate inconsistent payment workflows and loathe cancelling subscriptions elsewhere. Not sure what the right answer is, but as a consumer, I'm finding it hard to care about this.
"Your PSP will need to offer the following:[...] - Broad payment support including cards, iDEAL, and Apple Pay."
This just seems evil.
It feels a bit like
This app does not supporting App Store's privately and secure-payment system
Why are these any different from nutrition labels? In the US, nutrition labels always look pretty much exactly the same, down to the font. I don't have to look in 30 different places to find the calorie count. Compare that with cookie dialogs, where each website has its own different version so you've got to figure out which of 10 different options means "no, don't track me".
(And also collecting the 27% regardless. 3% goes to the payment processors)
Quite an unsurprising string of negatives for everyone which frustrates the user to choose in-app purchases in the end. Deliberately making outside payments not worth it for everyone.
There’d be dozens of articles about your tech-unsavvy grandma and how they couldn’t unsubscribe the way they normally do, and would blame Apple for it.
I, for one, would not want to deal with the trouble of teaching my parents that some purchases in the App Store are through the App Store, and some aren’t.
But apparently it should be fine to circumvent that AND not alert the user to the fact that's happening.
This will also train people to dismiss these dialogs blindly like they do with cookie dialogs.
A 20 year old PC still works. It might be slow, but as long as it's 64-bit, you can run modern software. If it's older and 32-bit you might be struggling but it's at least theoretically possible.
By contrast Apple seem hell-bent on creating this environment in which they control the software environment so completely that as soon as they stop supporting it, that's it, you now have a brick.
I feel like this is the angle that needs to be pushed on harder. The payment processing thing is just one aspect of a wider system which is that they're selling a subscription to a device rather than the device itself because they attempt to control your use of the device end-to-end and will eventually remove your ability to meaningfully use it.
It's possible to find something funny and be highly critical of it at the same time. Laughing at something outrageously bad is a pretty standard reaction.
It's hilarious because they could act in good faith, but they don't. It's funny to watch them do this, because it is so wildly out of touch with the image they continue to project. It's funny because they repeatedly do these sorts of things, so much that it is now predictable.
This is a sign of insecurity in what is arguably a bear market and it bodes poorly for a lot of us, I think.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30204604
Apple's just being a dick here.
- Written from my MacBook Pro -
Most people wouldn’t expect Sony to be forced to allow free access to the PlayStation platform. There really isn’t that big a case for Apple to be forced to allow free access to iOS.
Fatalistic, maybe, on reflection. But in this case it's a pretty toxic addition to the discourse.
They aren't just being "very clear", they are thumbing their nose at the regulator, and joyfully pissing in customer and developer chips as they do so.
They are trolling the process. That is very clear.
It should be about the thing you're going to. Something like 'WARNING: You are being directed to payment provider 'X', please trust them before continuing with your payment' would (I think) be seen as far less hostile. That doesn't insinuate that what you're doing is unsafe, does make clear that apple has washed their hands of it, and isn't about apple: It's about X.
BUT two things:
1. I already have relationships with some payment systems other than Apple's which I trust. Not many, but some. I mean, Amazon happens to be big enough that they are immune from this requirement, even for digital purchases, but there are plenty of other companies I would happily pay directly and trust as much as Apple.
2. This messaging requirement is just petty. It makes Apple look small and childish. It should embarrass them that this ever saw the light of day.
I highly doubt you would pay 30% more just so you can pay via Apple.
If an IAP is $15, then $4.5 of that goes to Apple. If you priced the direct payment option at $10.50, then $15 is 43% more expensive.
And this is the whole reason Apple doesn't want developers to be able to offer both IAPs and direct payment at the same time... it would make Apple look like the bad guy (a horrifying thought!), and they might feel pressured to lower their percentage to something more reasonable.
If Apple would switch to a usage based model more like AWS's where they charge for actual resource consumption (review requests, app store bandwidth, etc., maybe even with some kind of "free tier" to help very small developers who are still paying $99/year) then that would make more sense... but a 30% surcharge for every transaction is just absurd.
If credit card companies tried to charge 30%, the uproar would be so loud that no would be able to sleep for days, and you know businesses would instantly be offering steep discounts for people paying in cash. Apple has demonstrated that they want to eventually charge a 30% tax on all economic activity[0]... the App Store is more than just a place to download Angry Birds these days. Apple's 30% transaction fee is unsustainable. (I feel the same about Google's Play Store fees too, but at least Android allows sideloading and PWAs support push notifications there, giving developers and consumers some options.)
[0]: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/28/technology/apple-app-stor...
Apple charges the seller 30% (well 27% but w/e) as a sales commission for being able to sell digital goods through any means on their platform. Harping for allowing alternative payment methods is the wrong angle if you don't want to pay 30%.
It's not about the payment methods! If you can force Apple to drop their commission then IAP would be a 3% charge and nobody would really care.
Seems like subscriptions have gotten out of hand. Since the goverment can’t regulate meaningfully, I’m at least glad that Apple has some solution to this, even if it feels a bit monopolistic.
I generally like to cancel trial memberships immediately after signing up to ensure that I don’t forget about it and accidentally get charged for something I don’t want. If I end up liking the service then I’ll happily enter my payment info again at the end of the trial. Most online services (including all App Store subscriptions) are fine with this approach. But Amazon seems to want to take advantage of people forgetting to cancel their unused subscriptions.
It’s really surprising that a company as large and successful as Amazon would feel the need stoop to such levels.
That peace of mind has a price.
As long as Apple lets me charge you twice the price I'll play by their IAP rules.
And if those are conditions the customer and developer are okay with, then everyone wins.
I agree -- easy has a price. But it's one of the benefits of the walled garden. And it's one that a lot of customers are willing to pay, just to avoid the hassles involved with other systems.
(There are other benefits and downsides, but that's another thread).
But that's great argument for regulators to step in to prevent dark patterns. Cancelation should be just as easy as signing up.
Or “why I see a cookie pop up on every damn web page I visit .”
Has the government ever made a good law regarding technology? The last one I remember is phone number portability.
How many times in a year do you cancel something?
The explanation was like this that, it was an “offline“ charge, which they let thru.
So I'm getting 20% off all purchases, effectively, until the credit runs out.
A new view controller would require a new version of iOS to provide that view controller, which would lock out all the people on older versions of iOS from the alternative payment methods.
Any iOS developer can put together a screen like that in no time, it’s not a meaningful hurdle and it means more people can get the alternative payment method.
Stuff like this is in the interests of the company. The only way to prevent it is for regulators to make it no longer in their best interests.
It feels like a US management decision to win a court case in the US, not someone who knows European anti-trust regulators. Really bizarre.
When a company goes to war with the government, the company always loses. It is time for Cook to learn it. He is under a delusion that he is god.
For example, here’s a question I can’t answer from this tweet or from this entire HN discussion:
“In what way do each of these four facts conflict with one country’s regulators’ decisions, characteristics, or historical tendencies?”
(However, if your goal is simply to preach to the choir, then your comment is certainly sufficient for that purpose — so long as it’s acceptable that it won’t persuade anyone that doesn’t already agree with whatever viewpoint is left unexplained here.)
On Android, you can side load, but you're warned if you destroy your life via some strange binary you found on the internet, that's on you.
On iOS, it's more than a reasonable to say you're using an third-party payment service which is not subject to Apple security.
If your tech savvy, you know that this is just fear-mongering on Apple's part.
And if you're not tech savvy, then stick to using Apple payments for everything
Apple has a policy where every subscription model that is paid for via the app store needs to be one-click cancelable, and from a single system menu that shows all of your subscriptions. That's an actual protection that the app store gives me, the customer, and which I might not receive from other payment processors... so it's not really as much "fear mongering" as you're making it out to be.
I always take care to replace "users freedom" with "OWNERS freedom" in my conversations since so many people seem to have forgotten the distinction. Relatedly, I talk about "computer operators" not "computer users" to try remind people of this important distinction.
Either the Netherlands government ignores the fact that the spirit of their law was completely ignored and allows Apple to set the precedent of subverting the demands of lawmakers and regulators for Google to follow.
Or the Netherlands pass a new laws in retaliation to target this.
Telling users to just use phones by the other member of the mobile duolopoly doesn't address anything here. If Apple can get away with this, Google will follow.
It wasn't just Apple though, the value of their platforms is greatly reduced without the work of third-party developers (probably many of whom are on HN) that build software for them.
If you build a lifestyle product, people can and will struggle to separate their own identity from the products they own. People take an insult on Apple like it's an insult on them, which is not a basis for healthy discourse in the slightest. We end up with apologist takes like "I actually like having 30% of my revenue forfeited to Apple because [they deserve it | I would have given it to them anyways | it's not that much | (YOUR EXCUSE HERE)]" that don't really do anything to diffuse the situation.
Unfortunately, this dysfunction is not exclusive to technology, it's a problem with capitalism as a whole. The same "thought guards" exist with other lifestyle brands like Disney, Gucci, Ferrari, and anyone else who sells the idea of elitism to people who lack self-respect.
This is the idea I've liked the most, require plugging into Apple Configurator or Xcode to put the device into developer "beware all ye who enter here" mode which forces a wipe. I've never heard of anyone casually unlocking their bootloader on Android, which requires a similar process. You'd lose most people once you said "plug it into a computer", and everyone who isn't a dev once you said "wipe the phone".
But don't be selfish. You and your family are fine today but tomorrow some Apple decision will affect you and only then will you start complaining. You need to just the option to leave the garden , nobody is forcing you , say if buying an audio book and paying with PayPal is 25% cheaper but you love Apple so, so much you want o pay more nobody would force you not to pay with Apple(Apple could demand an Apple payment option but should not force that they get the smaller prices like Amazon do). Same with applications, nobody forces you to install a third party App Store, Apple can make this setting hidden, make a clear video on why this is bad (they should be honest though and not spread FUD). The truth is that on OSX you don't see the MAc users installing like retards malware and on Android I did not see any major app refusing to publish in the Google Play Store, Unfortunetly the reverse is true, you can't find most apps directly on the source website but you are forced to install the Google Store.
TL:DR
1 is not about security, it is about money.
2 nobody is forced to use anything else then Apple(no FB will not move their app from the store, they did not do it in Android and there is no intelligent argument they would do it for iOS)
But Apple doesn’t want to compete. Even if their service is better and they’re confident that users will choose them over third parties, they know that allowing competition will force them to lower their obscene fees in the long term. Market forces do that in a competitive market.
That’s all there is to it. It has absolutely nothing to do with user security or privacy. Apple isn’t going to sit idly by while regulators make decisions that threaten their long term profits. They’re going to fight it for as long as they possibly can. Anything less would be laziness on the part of their executive team.
In a perfect world, there'd be a "pay with Apple Pay (€2,60)" button right next to the "pay with iDeal (€2,25)" button, just like on most web shops. If you prefer to use Apple's services, you can pay the extra costs for the 30% Apple tax and lose nothing you have now. Apple are the ones putting extra restrictions on app developers, I'm sure devs would love to have the easy Apple option available right next to the cheaper option!
To me, Apple's behaviour reads like they know they can't compete in an open market with their payment processor fees so they'll fight tooth and nail to keep any form of competition out. Their cut is simply unreasonable compared to any other payment provider, but of course they'll try to fight their billions in profits whenever they can. They go so far to force developers to increase their prices and even forbid them from showing the transaction costs in the checkout screen.
I think your assumption is too optimistic. The only way the market would correct itself in this situation is toward user hostility with easy signups but hard cancellations (e.g. New York Times). So yes there will be some market correction, but only in ways that increase sales at the cost of user tolerance.
A horse and buggy still work, that doesn’t mean the only purpose of cars is creating waste.
There are 50 year old cars on my road - our cars could probably go on forever (though they won't, within 10 or 20 years my city will probably mandate electric drivetrains).
I think that newer cars are more likely to create waste for many of the same reasons.
Of course we can't extend the timeline out forever, but we can at least take steps to not _artificially_ cause obsolescence, this is distinct from the way in which a car is inherently far more useful than a horse and buggy.
A better comparison is old cars and new cars. Creating waste is not the only purpose of cars, but manufacturers sure do like to push newer models for the sake of sales, disregarding the waste problem.
Right now my 40 year old car still runs just fine. But that's because public infrastructure still supports it. With tricks like manufacturer-specific garages and forced software obsolescence, a car I buy today might well not be usable in 40 year's time.
> as soon as they stop supporting it, that's it, you now have a brick
The fact that you view "some stuff is broken but like, it's old" as okay is in my view an enormous concession. It should fully work, there is no reason for it not to other than them locking it down.
It's fair enough that an original Motorola Razr isn't a smartphone because there are physical constraints. If the only thing preventing it from working is that they've gone closed source, locked the bootloader and told you to get fucked that's planned obsolescence and I'm gonna call it out as being bullshit.
A 2009 iPhone had 128MB of RAM and 4-8GB of storage, along with a 320x480 3.5 inch display. Currently iPhones have at minimum 3GB RAM and 64GB of storage. Not to mention that 2G cell phone service has been cut out by all the carriers and 3G is on its way out. Your phone would still be useless.
But using your car analogy, the Apple //e came out in 1980 with 64K of RAM and a 1Mhz processor. 10 years later by 1991, processors were 30x faster and computers came with 40x more RAM. You now see smart phone performance increases slowing down and phones are useful a lot longer than they were a decade ago.
Pay with Apple or Pay with X, what should I do ??? "BrainException, more then one choice presented, plkease call Apple or GNOME you are using software wrong"
That's a pretty good analogy—twitter is to media companies, as power plants are to power companies.
The fair setup - as far as the owners of expensive devices are concerned - is to:
1. Be able to install arbitrary software capable of running on the device.
2. Be able to pay for it in whatever way that is supported by the software vendor.
This are reasonable expectations.
If Apple provides a way to install pre-approved software through their Store - excellent. As an option.
If Apple provides a way to pay using their super pro-consumer payment system - ditto, as an option. Possibly as a required option (option!) for programs distributed through the Store.
You want convenience for either aspect - you go through Apple, pay them extra, be happy. You don't want to pay them - install yourself and pay directly.
Voila. It's not very complicated.
All the arguments against this is not a "meme", it's Apple guarding its profits in ways that are explicitly and aggressively anti-consumer.
Except for Apple's own services, which includes Apple Music, Apple TV+, Apple Arcade, and Apple Fitness+. All of these will instantly terminate your trial if you cancel during the trial period, rather than terminating at the end of the trial period.
This goes against the way App Store subscription trials work for everyone else. Why? Because Apple isn't bound by their own rules, and I guess Apple wants people to forget and let the trial lapse into actual payment. It is certainly a proven (if unsavory) technique for making money.
That said, I don't think Apple should be the one to fix this system. The government should prevent such harmful behaviour through legislation rather than relying on private parties.
Besides, users can always choose not to pay for items in their apps if they can't use their preferred payment processor. People living in places where this predatory behaviour is still legal can choose not to pay through payment providers that don't allow them to easily cancel for the extra fees those providers (like Apple) charge.
And SSL validates just the domain name, which still allows all the phishing attacks to thrive. Compare installing App for the first time to coming to some website for the first time ever. SSL doesn't really provide anything to identify the site, anyone can get any domain.
It's not clear to me why the Chinese competition fails at undercutting Apple/Google and the proposed app store competition would achieve that. I don't see the relevant difference.
The unique identifier on Android is easily broken, BTW. I don't know iOS well, but on android it's simple. IIRC you don't even need an android development kit, the java tools will do. This fine web page lets you download a formerly welll-known app; someone downloaded the app, unzipped the executable (which is in zip format), resigned and uploaded. https://forum.xda-developers.com/t/app-quickpic-v4-5-2-class...
- annual EEA turnover equal to or above EUR 6.5 billion in the last three financial years
- market value of at least EUR 65 billion in the last financial year and it provides a core platform service in at least three Member States
So, I believe it will apply to many game consoles.
More in detail:
Article 2, Definitions
‘Core platform service’ means any of the following:
(a) online intermediation services;
(...)
Article 3, Designation of gatekeepers
Paragraph 1, a provider of core platform services shall be designated as gatekeeper if:
(a) it has a significant impact on the internal market;
(b) it operates a core platform service which serves as an important gateway for business users to reach end users; and
(c) it enjoys an entrenched and durable position in its operations or it is foreseeable that it will enjoy such a position in the near future.
Paragraph 2, a provider of core platform services shall be presumed to satisfy:
(a) the requirement in paragraph 1 point (a) where the undertaking to which it belongs achieves an annual EEA turnover equal to or above EUR 6.5 billion in the last three financial years, or where the average market capitalisation or the equivalent fair market value of the undertaking to which it belongs amounted to at least EUR 65 billion in the last financial year, and it provides a core platform service in at least three Member States;
(b) the requirement in paragraph 1 point (b) where it provides a core platform service that has more than 45 million monthly active end users established or located in the Union and more than 10 000 yearly active business users established in the Union in the last financial year;
for the purpose of the first subparagraph, monthly active end users shall refer to the average number of monthly active end users throughout the largest part of the last financial year;
(c) the requirement in paragraph 1 point (c) where the thresholds in point (b) were met in each of the last three financial years.
Or since there is already a shortage, the console makers prioritize the US.
Then Apple will have a much higher fee to use their developer tools.
Also in the case of Google, you can’t use Google Services outside of the Google Play store. The only company that has had the resources to duplicate many of those services is Amazon.
In iOS users case, you won’t be able to use iCloud backup, the same notifications controls, access to global settings, probably no access to KeyChain or any other API that requires server side integration.
Microsoft was accused of having a monopoly in a market (PC) defined by one single software (Windows) and hardware produced by a lot of PC manufacturers.
Apple could be accused of having a "monopoly" in market defined by their own software and their own hardware.
So in a way, IANAL, but Microsoft had a monopoly with their product in a bigger market than the one created by them, while Apple has a "monopoly" on the market (Apple ecosystem) that exists only because they exist. In this way, Microsoft was creating a monopoly in an otherwise free market, while Apple is a monopoly on their own devices, so if Microsoft would stop selling Windows the PC market will still exist, while if Apple will stop selling iPhones with iOS the App Store market will not exist anymore.
The correct comparison could be with Microsoft which has a monopoly on the Surface market where they produce both hardware and software.
It's not nearly as aggressive of a split as MS/everyone else, but being the larger side of a duopoly a lot of vendors don't really have the choice to just ignore them, and meanwhile their users are subjected to this.
The comparison also starts looking a lot closer when you consider the way it impacts web development as a profession that the same ~60% can't choose a browser other than Safari in any sense that has practical meaning.
That's like charging mechanics for repairing cars or charging road workers for the privilege of repairing roads.
Plus other payment providers, such as PayPal and stripe have their own dispute resolution processes.
Developers didn't build the software for Apple, they built it to sell to consumers and Apple provides them with a pitch on the market for a fee. It's how the world works. Don't like it, go make apps for Pine Phone.
Unless you're a huge corporation like Apple which can sidestep a lot of it.
Either way tho it seems that analogy boils down to Apple having a monopoly-like position.
>for a fee
A high one propped up by a lack of competition.
>Don't like it, go make apps for Pine Phone.
Yeah I support some more push behind projects like that. In the meantime tho I don't think me or many others are going to suddenly love anticompetitive practices.
At least from what I've heard, you can bypass the installer's check, and guess what, Windows 11 can still run even without TPM 2.0.
And the vast majority of the webviews used by the OS were IE (now webview2, based on Edge instead).
It turns out the ability to display a webpage is a pretty critical part of any modern operating system - they all support some form of a webview. The one in Windows is based on browsers that MS develops and owns (IE, then EdgeClassic, now Chromium Edge). It's absolutely baked in still.
> Microsoft Edge is the web browser recommended by Microsoft and is the default web browser for Windows. Because Windows supports applications that rely on the web platform, our default web browser is an essential component of our operating system and can’t be uninstalled. To provide our users with compatibility, compliance, accessibility, and performance, we'll continue updating Microsoft Edge through the browser installer or Windows updates.
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/why-can-t...
I still click on links in some parts of the OS or other applications on Windows 10 that opens in Microsoft Edge, even though I've set Firefox to be my default browser.
I don't know if it shares with the core that buildin edge use. But if it is the case, then obviously you can't remove it just like you can't remove core of ie in pre windows 11 world.
By the way, some function of the new shell seems relies on service not available under safe mode. So the explore.exe will crash repeatedly when you are in safe mode. __And it openes the edge for help article every time it crashed__, so you ends up with dozens of same tab in the edge.
There is no regulation that requires every website to give you cookie pop-ups. If you are seeing that, it is because the websites you visit are trying to stalk you online and making the popups as painful as possible so you will dislike the regulations instead of asking them not to stalk you.
In reality fines are already being written, Facebook is seeing the writing on the wall and is already now (this surprised me a bit) pulling the desperate "we'll take our toys and go home" card, hoping EU won't call their bluff.
Let's be clear here: most of these informed consent banners are invalid.
The rules are something like:
- default is opt out
- if a choice must be presented opting out should be the easiest choice
Besides they almost all are trying to hide sneaky stuff behind the "legitimate interest” clause, but in that case you don’t need to ask and an opt out would be meaningless.
The consequences of recent privacy laws is privacy-friendly services being able to compete easier because they're not subsidizing their costs by stalking their users and selling their data. If the government got such good results without even understanding the consequences, they must be very lucky.
But it doesn’t have modern safety features, to say nothing of its fuel efficiency.
> that's because public infrastructure still supports it
Public infrastructure supports old computers fine. Just like with old cars, people value the new things being brought to the table.
That doesn’t mean every new feature is wanted. But on the balance, most people upgrade their phones and computers out of choice.
Whether you or people in aggregate choose to do things is distinct from whether they are effectively forced via planned obsolescence. That's what makes it planned.
I know that my old car has lower fuel efficiency. It's actually not that bad, my 20 year old car gets about 45-50 UK MPG, a new one of the same shape etc would get about 60-70. The distinction is small enough that scrapping the car and making a new one would be worse overall from an emissions perspective.
But again, that's my choice. New phones have better cameras than mine. I don't care, I have a real camera for that.
I have a grandparent who uses the same phone we got her a decade ago. It runs entirely on closed-source software. It works fine. Same for the Windows computer we got her five years before that. Meanwhile, my friend who runs AOSP on his phone has a new device every six months.
The point is its embarrassing the lengths Apple are going to to try to maintain the status quo.
The germans actually have a word for this: “realsatire”. It means when reality writes better satirical tragedies than anyone of us ever could.
Your response to a comment about decades-old cars still working is to pitch a planned-obsolescence conspiracy theory?
(Just counteracting your anecdote about the friend...shrug)
And a privacy first social network.
And a privacy first search engine that is profitable.
The government has solved what tech problem exactly?
You can really only do that with third party payment processors if there’s some standard API/protocol/standard for the management of subscriptions… which would be great, but probably isn’t all that feasible in the medium term. It would be great if Apple did that though.
Should Apple open their store? Sure. But it’s not as cut and dry as people make it out to be.
[0]: https://www.epicgames.com/fortnite/en-US/news/how-to-install...
Apple did have that policy for less than a year over 10 years ago.
Why not? Isn't that the status quo? If you like the App Store, you buy an iPhone and don't use any of the others. If you like F-Droid, you get an Android phone, put LineageOS on it and don't use any of the others. Or if you like multiple Android stores, you can do that too.
Allowing multiple stores on Apple devices just reduces the cost relative to the "buy a new phone" solution.
There is more to it than only getting apps. How about family sharing or checking what the minors in my family are downloading?
And if they do it on the App Store I want to see the break up of Nintendo, Sony and Xbox games stores too.
I also understand that he's _laughing_ at Apple trolling a regulator by messing with other developers.
It's a fairly toxic addition to the discussion.
Guess I was wrong.
I don't develop in my spare time on my i-devices, so gain none of the benefits of the nicer development experience directly. I use them for tons of stuff, but I don't write personal software for them (never had a need to).
[EDIT] To head off any "but I think Android development is nicer"—most of the bad things about it don't kick in until you're working at (even smallish) scale. Much of it's due to the huge range of versions, customizations (Samsung's alternative web view implementation, say), and device capabilities in the wild. It's probably somewhat easier to develop for than iOS if you're targeting just your own device or small set of devices, are free to make the UI whatever you like rather than having to style it to be "on brand", et c.
So technology products shouldn’t “just work”?
[citation needed]
It can be about more than one thing at the same time, but it certainly seems likely to be about the money. Apple wants people to use the App Store on their Mac more.
Those apps can be malicious too[0], but you don't see Apple warning you before you download or open them.
[0]: one of the first links on google, but this is not an isolated incident: https://appleinsider.com/articles/18/09/07/more-malicious-ap...
Indeed. Remember we live in a world where Tim Cook can say in court that he has "a feeling" the App Store is profitable, and that is apparently where it is left.
No doubt on iOS it's about both, but my point is that it's reductive to think it's ONLY about losing app store revenue. Especially in the Dutch case, where they won't actually lose any revenue, since they're charging 27% anyway.
Becuase if I wasnt informed, and they took a subscription that I was then unable to cancel in 1 click from my iCloud subscription settings, I would be very annoyed. Shady.
So, you are definitely informed one way or another, but requiring the developer to be more explicit about that would probably be good, but achieving that benefit doesn't require Apple to do... whatever this is that they're trying to force developers to do. It's a farcically extreme version of what could otherwise be interpreted to be a consumer friendly requirement.
So, they can stop _selling_ in the Netherlands, but given how close is any Dutch to another EU state, I don't see it as a problem for purchasing a phone.
Apple will sustain that, given the phone wasn't bought in the Netherlands, they are not subject to their laws. Good luck with that.
>Except they cannot[...]
>[...] they can stop _selling_ in the Netherlands
I don't get it. Aren't you agreeing with the parent poster?
- not all are buying iPhones
- roughly 3 million of the population are under 15.
There is an intersection here, but basically this - in my mind - isn't about bad laws but about big businesses fighting for their lives (or at least the lives of whole branches in their organizations) against these laws.
They'll do most things they'll come up with and think they can get away with: misrepresent, plead, beg, threaten to leave, willfully misunderstand even very clear laws etc as long as their lawyers and business people think the risk/reward ratio is favorable.
GDPR isn't that hard, technically.
It just gets extremely hard to comply with without letting go of abusive but highly lucrative business practices.
From what I have seen, when the government gets away with stuff - imminent domain, police corruption, etc., it’s a lot more detrimental than my not being able to side load.
As far as the GDPR not being “hard”. It’s 11 chapters with 99 sections.
Yet, the guiding principles are clear as day, just like the ten commandments. (Don't collect personal data without consent, store it responsibly, allow users to introspect data about themselves and remove it and you shouldn't need to worry.[1])
And it also only becomes a real problem when someone wants to get away with breaking both the spirit and the wording of the law.
[1]: And yes, I'm aware that this is mostly incompatible with the practice of hoovering up all you can get, selling it to everyone who wants to buy and generally abusing it for fun and profit in every conceivable way, but that isn't the fault of the law but a problem that companies who habe grown addicted to now antiquated business models have to brought on themselves, isn't it?
Good job I was informed via this modal :)
People have been saying that the only reason people buy Apple products since the iPod was introduced in 2001. The rest of the industry has had 20 years to catch up with Apple if it were that easy, they couldn’t?
Also Google has how many active and failed messenger apps in the last decade?
Sure. They spend more money on it than any other company does.
> Google makes 80% of their revenue from ad sales and they can’t convince more than 40% of people to buy their supposedly superior OS?
First off, this is a false dichotomy. The 80% you're referencing is not what they spend on actual marketing of any of their products.
Secondly, I don't believe I ever called Android superior, or even insinuated that superiority was a component here. The average first-worlder doesn't give a shit about what the "superior product" is, this rings true for every market: cars, computers, TVs, and cell phones. Everything is disposable in the end, as long as they get their money's worth they're happy. Such is life under capitalism.
> The rest of the industry has had 20 years to catch up with Apple if it were that easy, they couldn’t?
The rest of the industry has no interest in building walled gardens and exclusive experiences. Apple is unique in that they have a massive software ecosystem of protocols and applications that they have made impossible to use on third-party devices. If any other company tried this without a majority share of the hardware market, it would be a suicide mission.
> Also Google has how many active and failed messenger apps in the last decade?
I don't really see how this is pertinent. If Apple really wanted to change the world of messenger apps, they could put iMessage on other platforms (hell, they could charge a fee for it if they want extra capitalism cookie points). They didn't.
The argument here is that Apple has no right to abuse their position in the market to extort developers for an arbitrary amount of money without competitors in that space. Apple is the largest company in the world; their antitrust scrutiny deserves to be through the roof, and actions like this are going to ultimately bury them when regulators come knocking. You're entitled to use whatever you want, but this isn't about individual technology politics (as much as Apple would like to frame it that way). This is about a large-scale failure of regulation, and the complete lack of consequence for refusing to build technology that empowers everyone.
And Apple didn’t start off with some magical majority share. When the iPhone was introduced, there were already 1 billion phones being sold every year. SJ said specifically he would be happy if he sold 10 million to capture 1% of the market. Did Apple do something magical that any of the incumbents couldn’t have done? How did Apple stop RIM, MS, or Google from creating a better experience?
How is the iPhone - where Apple supports phones back to 2015 with OS upgrades and 2013 with security updates - more “disposable” than Android phones where you probably don’t get two years worth of updates?
I believe Apple is being forward-looking here. They know such a ridiculous 27% policy is unlikely to be tolerated by the regulators, since it defeats the entire purpose, so they're planning for a future where they're forced to lower that. They want the option to be presented to consumers as being scarier than it actually is and to include as much friction as legally possible, so that developers will be more likely to continue to use IAPs even when they could use something else.
I've heard that Apple isn't allowing consumers any choice in the matter either -- developers can't simultaneously offer both their own payment method and IAPs[0] (at upwards of a ~50% higher price, to cover the ~30% that would have to go to Apple for the IAP option, if the percentage for out-of-band payments ever drops from 27%). Certainly, it would "make Apple look bad" to see the IAP at a much higher price just because of Apple's commission.
I actually think I'm 100% with Apple on this one. The Dutch regulators made the same mistake Epic and so many devs across the internet and hitched their "I don't want to pay 30% wagon" to "Apple is disallowing 3rd party providers" which have nothing at all to do with one another. The people pushing these regulations know that they would go nowhere if they tried to attack sales commissions directly and now the stupidity is bearing fruit.
I'm absolutely in favor of regulations that make it so platforms can't skim percentage revenue off the top but any regulation that does that will attract the ire of literally every business that sells things.
And hitching the wagon to "sideloading" or "alternative app stores" is equally as stupid because you're just trying to find a workaround to things that aren't the core issue. Even with sideloading and other app stores Apple can still demand a sales commission.
That’s a very strong statement to lack any citation. The intent of the regulators was clear. If a Apple is going to be petulant, the regulators can just come back and tell Apple to lower their commission across the board, which will inevitably hurt Apple more than if Apple had been reasonable about this.
I don’t think it’s a foregone conclusion at all that the regulators are just going to give up and go home, crying about how Apple so cleverly outsmarted them.
> I'm absolutely in favor of regulations that make it so platforms can't skim percentage revenue off the top but any regulation that does that will attract the ire of literally every business that sells things.
When it comes to other businesses, consumers have choice. If one company charges too much of a premium, consumers can go elsewhere. If I go elsewhere from Apple, I lose access to all of my purchased items. If Apple would refund me every dollar I paid, then maybe that would be viable, but Apple wants to have their cake and eat it too.
Imagine if switching from Walmart to Safeway required you to give up every item you had ever purchased from Walmart. This is why Apple is not the same as most businesses charging a commission.
It is a reasonable interpretation that I tried to get into and failed to.
It's brave if they are, because attempts to move the Overton Window are surely usually deliberately designed to fail before they are enacted, to avoid the cost of action!
This kind of double standard reveals the true nature of this warning dialog, which is just retaliation against the app makers who wanted outside payment methods and the regulators who agreed. Otherwise, Apple would have already required Uber to add such a dialog.
I think most customers are happy to assign blame to Apple regardless, since the app went through Apple's hand curated App Store. That may be illogical in the case of physical goods, but I've seen people assign blame for far less. It's also still illogical in the case of virtual events, even though those use Apple's IAP system and 30% cut now.
It suits them for the profitability of the App Store to be hard to observe as distinct from the sales of the devices themselves, and it supports the interpretation that they fudge around things that make them **loads of money by emphasising other things instead as important (customer experience, "security" etc.)
Growth at all costs regardless of margin is what money losing unicorns do. Not what companies do that are worth 3 trillion dollars.
And Apple is not a money losing unicorn. They don’t sell anything at a loss, and they wouldn’t be selling at a loss even if they made a good faith effort to comply with these regulations.
The question is what their margins look like: reasonable, or obscene? Apple is fighting to maintain the latter. Pulling out of the country would make them less money than complying.
Isn’t this exactly what is happening everywhere you see “we price match!” or “low price guarantee”?
Platforms can and do require sellers to provide the lowest price, and take whatever measures including offing violators from the platform if this means they suffer losses every time a buyer does their research.
Not even mentioning exclusivity clauses, which are very much legal and very much dictate your relationship with other distributors.
I’m not saying Apple is doing that, but there are so many precedents that I doubt this practice is illegal.
> they have no right to interfere with your business activity
If you choose to do business with them, they are literally taking part in your business activity. No one made you sign the contract (presumably you have done so in expectation of benefitting from the platform, which would attract users to you since its owner develops products that users want). Calling this “interference” is nonsensical.
I’m not saying they do not take a cut voluntarily, but they must take measures if this happens too often with a particular seller.
Edit: this is a fact, though feel free to downvote. Apple tries to hide this from the user by not letting publishers mention that the app or service is cheaper when purchased outside of the App Store or Mac App Store.
Okay, so they'll have iPhones brick themselves (or disable all third party purchases) if location services detect they're within the netherlands.
How are the Dutch going to come after Apple if they don’t have a presence in the country?
> How are the Dutch going to come after Apple if they don’t have a presence in the country?
The EU is a single market, for good or for ill.
If I only sold a physical product in GA and someone from Texas bought it and took it home. They could only sue me in GA under GA laws.
The US is also a “single market”. But each state has its own laws.
But going back to the point. When the iPhone was introduced, there was Palm, Windows Mobile, and Blackberry. Did someone make users choose iPhones?
Android was available on every major carrier when Apple started expanding beyond AT&T, once iPhones were available, Android phone sales dropped. What unfair advantage did Apple have over large companies like MS, Google, Motorola and Samsung?
Same is happening here...
Unless you somehow craft a "fuck you Apple in particular" law which in basically all courts wouldn't fly, the regulation would be an immediate massive change to how all platforms do business. You would in one stroke wipe out the business models of basically all ecommerce platforms.
Re: your edit
> If one company charges too much of a premium, consumers can go elsewhere.
Except they can't though, that's the entire point. You're paying the commission to reach specifically the people on that particular platform. It's inherently non-fungible. You can sell art on lots of online stores, but if you want to reach Etsy customers you gotta pay up. If you want to sell software there's plenty of ways to do it from sharecropping on existing platforms of selling you own appliance but if you want to reach iOS users you gotta pay up.
If we want to talk about the developer perspective, then you’re making an even stronger argument that Apple has abused monopoly privilege and needs to be regulated as such. These iOS consumers aren’t reachable through other markets, only Apple’s. This is not the case for Etsy.
In both cases, the ability to choose is greatly reduced compared to other markets. The switching cost is high and requires a big sacrifice from the consumer, but then both Apple and Google have either directly or indirectly conspired to keep App Store prices at 30%, so switching between the platforms doesn’t even provide a real choice there at all.
Well Apple has always charged 30%, so it would be strange if you suddenly wanted to change platforms now because of that. It's reasonable to ask you to do your research before buying it.
Are you suggesting I should have illegally acquired information about Apple’s future business plans so that I could make informed choices as a consumer?
I certainly never agreed to their expansion of the commission, but what power does a consumer have over that now? That’s what monopoly power feels like, even if it may not meet the legal definition of “monopoly” that was set many decades ago before a smartphone was even imaginable.
Apple seems intent to expand their 30% commission to cover all aspects of daily life nowadays. I certainly didn’t know this years ago, and years ago when many consumers bought into iOS, the 30% commission was really just a commission on Angry Birds and similarly casual apps. It wasn’t impacting more serious parts of life, but now the smartphone is the place where the average person does some of the most important transactions in life. It’s a completely different situation from when the App Store first launched, and it should be treated as such. Do you recognize the validity of any of that?
[0]: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/28/technology/apple-app-stor...
As to covering all the important things in life, it’s only an issue for things that are 1. Not physical, or “content”, and 2. Not available through the browser.
Can’t think of anything important in life that you HAVE to pay the 30% on, but I’m sure there’s something.
There are limits to everything. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System
unfocussed_mike's point is that Apple has obfuscated App Store P&L for years to try to keep regulators from feeling obligated to step in. There's no other obvious explanation for why they would keep it secret from both investors and the courts, and "the purpose of a system is what it does."
The app store is only a monopoly on iOS, not on phones or computers in general. I think it will be very hard to make that case.
No... it's easy to calculate their revenue, but it's not easy to calculate how much profit they made versus how much it cost them to operate the App Store. Pure revenue is largely irrelevant, from what I understand. As you say, making money isn't illegal, it's just the sign of a successful business.
> The app store is only a monopoly on iOS, not on phones or computers in general. I think it will be very hard to make that case.
I completely agree, under the way the laws were written decades ago. A lot of powerful people have been moving to update the way monopolies are understood for the digital era, and to remove Apple's monopoly over iOS. In the US, I can point to various examples of this, but these two will do for the current discussion:
https://9to5mac.com/2020/10/06/app-store-gives-apple-monopol...
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/03/senate-committee-advances-op...
Whether these attempts succeed or not is difficult to say, given how strongly Apple lobbies on their own behalf.
Knowing exactly what the P&L look like for the App Store would make it easier for Apple's opponents to make the case that Apple is misusing their position to take advantage of large numbers of people and businesses within the US due to a lack of competition for iOS users, which might make their government representatives push harder on the issue.
That's the political reality as I see it in the US. I could be off base, but there has been lots of discussion about Apple and their App Store again lately.
Imagine store A is a platform like Booking.com, and store B is seller’s site. There is a complaint every day to store A that store B sells cheaper. Store A charges the customer less but pays the seller the same, taking a loss.
Meanwhile, it turns out that those customers are friends of the seller, to whom the seller compensates the transaction plus some extra on top.
No… they didn’t stay the same. Apple has changed their policies, numerous times. In this specific case, it is easy to point to the changelog that added person to person classes as something that owes Apple 30% commission.[0] Many large companies' lawyers clearly interpreted the guidelines to not include such events until Apple updated the guidelines, or else Apple would not have updated the guidelines and talked to the press about it. I don't think you have much ground to stand on here.
Also, whether an activity is physical or virtual should be entirely irrelevant. It was never communicated to me when I moved into the iOS ecosystem, nor was it in the App Store guidelines. Yet... you think it is unreasonable that customers should be given the same freedom from monopolies that they have when it comes to other physical and online retailers?
Apple continues to move the goal posts on what people owe them money for, both by expansion of what the App Store is intended to contain and expansion of their rules, and it is detrimental to both consumers and businesses, who are both locked into Apple's ecosystem and have little to no choice in the matter at this point. If you like monopolies, then cool, but... I believe Apple needs to make some serious changes, and it is clear that I'm not alone in these thoughts.
On a related note, if Apple will properly support PWAs (including push notifications, which have been rumored to finally be making an appearance 6 or 7 years after Android did it), then that will dramatically change the balance of the equation. Very few companies offer PWAs because they lack push notification support, which they consider to be essential. Many HNers like to act as if push notifications are just an annoyance and that they prefer not to have them... but that's an irrelevant opinion outside of HN. I don't think lowering the App Store commission or allowing unrestricted, revenue-free sideloading are the only options... I think properly supported PWAs are a perfectly valid third option for most use cases, and I would care a lot less about this issue when that happens. PWAs already do not need to report any of their revenue to Apple, and that should remain the case forever, unless Apple is planning to start charging for the privilege of using websites. (To head off one obvious digression, no, Apple absolutely doesn't deserve to charge for providing push notifications... it's an essential feature of literally any smartphone, and they were paid for that service when the consumer bought the phone. Apple also doesn't let anyone else run a competing notification service on the phone using a background process to hold open a network connection. If Apple doesn't like offering notifications for free, they should feel free to raise the prices of the phones they sell, but they should have been pricing that in from the beginning. Chrome and Firefox don't charge money to provide push notifications either, and they weren't even paid a single cent by either the user or the developer. But, if Apple were to charge less than a cent per notification the way that developers have to pay for SMS messages, it wouldn't be the end of the world. 30% of all transactions just to use notifications? No, that's not reasonable under any circumstance.)
[0]: "3.1.3(d): Person-to-Person Experiences" https://developer.apple.com/news/?id=xqk627qu
> Also, whether an activity is physical or virtual should be entirely irrelevant
You can hold any belief you want, but there's nothing illegal or immoral about a phone charging fees for one but not the other. It's up to them obviously, and to me personally it makes a ton of sense to make that distinction. A virtual class provided through an app vs something happening in the real world.
I don't know what PWA is so I'm not sure how crucial it is, but if Android has it, that seems like yet another reason for people like you not to have iphones. If you are talking about push notifications in web apps, that's something I have never ever missed.
What about virtual experiences that are sold through an app that a customer uses, but are held on a different virtual platform? We’re not talking just about virtual events held through the app or FaceTime, we’re also talking about virtual events held through Zoom calls, it’s just that the app maker (for example, Airbnb) used their existing customer relationship to market virtual experiences, and Apple somehow decided that was different from the exception to selling (physical) goods and experiences that are also used outside the app.
If they aren’t using the app itself or FaceTime, how is it any different from an in-person event?
What if that in-person event includes teleconferencing equipment that links two locations together, do you suddenly need to give Apple 30%?
Apple's rules have an exception for 1:1 virtual events. So, if you suddenly bring your significant other to a virtual event that was classified as 1:1, will the app maker need to implement facial recognition DRM to ensure that there is only one participant on each side of the virtual event, or else they are in violation of Apple's rules and deserve to be banned because two people showed up instead of one?
The rules are deeply tedious, and often have no obvious rhyme or reason.
Regardless, Apple changed the rules, and I don’t have an option to opt out without giving up everything I’ve already bought. I could not have known they would change the rules in the ways they have, so to your earlier point, I could not have made a more informed decision. Would you like to offer the refunds on Apple’s behalf? Doubtful. This is clearly different from other retail relationships in ways that would benefit from being regulated. That’s the core discussion here. Apple is not just another retailer, and the App Store is not just another store.
> Clarifying the rules is not the same as changing them, ask any hermeneutic.
They did not clarify the rules. They absolutely changed the rules, and this is not the first time either. Your whole argument is invalid if they changed the rules, so of course you're holding on dearly to that incorrect point. Apple argues that some apps were accidentally paying them revenue for that already, therefore it would be "unfair" for them not to take that revenue from everyone... but it wasn't in the rules before, period. Apple added the rule so that they could add more revenue.
You may think my opinion is irrelevant, and that’s fine, but my opinion is as logically self-consistent as I can make it. Apple’s rules are the ones that hold very little self-consistency right now, and are just overreaching in any way they think they can get away with, which is getting tiresome.
[0]: https://9to5mac.com/2021/06/03/remembering-apples-sweet-solu...
There is a small but significant group of people that I've only found on HN who seem to claim to just not use notifications at all on their smartphones, but this is not how most people operate.
Regarding your question, there are definitely still important areas such as Background Sync: https://caniuse.com/background-sync
If you try to send a message in WhatsApp, Signal, or whatever, but you were on the elevator and your phone was offline at that moment, it would be a pretty poor user experience if the app didn't send the message as soon as your phone was connected again, even if you had switched away. This is currently problematic for PWAs on iOS. Similarly, if you get a notification, apps will often get a small allocation of background time to fetch content related to the notification so that it is cached when the user clicks on the notification. Apple wouldn't offer this to native apps if they didn't think it was useful.
Here's an article talking about the benefits of the feature: https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2015/12/background...
"Web apps" in this context should just be thought of as "apps". The fact that they're effectively bookmarks added to your home screen and operate without the user interface of Safari is just an implementation detail. I'm not talking about spam blogs trying to send you notifications. If you were required to "install" a PWA to your home screen before it could prompt for these other permissions, that would be perfectly fine, and a great way to avoid getting spammed for requests to send you spam notifications from random websites. Safari has fallen way behind other browsers on lots of standards, not just PWAs, so it's not terribly surprising that they aren't keeping up with PWA-related standards either, but it is disappointing. And, of course, Apple still doesn't allow third party browser engines to fill in the gaps.
Why? Native apps aren't webapps, and do have access to push notifications.
> There is a small but significant group of people that I've only found on HN who seem to claim to just not use notifications at all on their smartphones, but this is not how most people operate.
Why do you keep conflating webapps and apps? I certainly use notifications in native apps, but the thought never even crossed my mind to enable them in webapps. I click "No" faster than lightning when websites prompt me on the mac, so why would I want it on my phone.
As an example, if you go to twitter.com on your iPhone in Safari, you can click the share button, click Add to Home Screen, and you will get a very app-like Twitter experience when you launch what you just added to the Home Screen. Because it is an app.
Literally the only reason I’ve seen that most people would be dissatisfied with the Twitter PWA is because it lacks notifications. In my experience, it is often faster than the native app and does fewer dumb things, like clicking on a YouTube link actually opens in the YouTube app, instead of the way the native Twitter app tries to keep you in a modal web view.
Regardless of Apple marketing, PWAs run in a more secure environment than native apps, because Safari is used to dealing with untrusted code on every single page you load. Apple leaned too much on their insufficient app review process instead of native app isolation technologies for too long. They have fortunately corrected course over the last couple of years… but native apps still present higher risk.
(PWAs also run completely isolated from the regular Safari browsing session, so you will naturally need to sign into Twitter again even if you were already signed in within Safari, but then it stays signed in exactly like the native app.)