That said, I do not think this is the way to fight them. Just do not make apps for iPhone, or pass the 30% Apple tax to the Apple fanboys. They enjoy being submissive to walled garden overlords and paying for the privilege, so give them what they want.

These are perfectly valid options. Create value for more open ecosystems if you want to hurt the closed ones.

Challenging one of the most powerful corporations in history, god I feel so much safer already. Sounds like PR campaign speak. I trust Proton as much as I trust Microsoft.

I'm not smart enough to get into the politics of other parts of the world, but just because the EU found something illegal doesn't mean its the basis of a good lawsuit under the US rules. Will be interesting to see how this unfolds.

People pay extra to be in walled gardens, presumably because they think it will make them cool. If they -like- pointlessly spending money, let them.

No one needs an iPhone, and there is no monopoly. Just educate consumers on alternatives.

[1] https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/worldwide

Buying something used to mean something. If you're still beholden by company rules of a product you _bought_, you have been leasing/renting it.

If I buy a house from a builder, and it came with a requirement that you can only use Amazon Ring cameras, or builder-approved groceries - you'd be pretty pissed.

I reject that argument.

For start ToS may have unenforceable claims (if someone puts that I agree to give all things I own to them into ToS it has zero effect).

Also, at this point I dispute that ToS clickery should be treated as agreeing to them. "I have read and agree with ToS" is a blatant lie in at least in the first half.

As a developer, there is no choice. Apple should not be able to abuse their dominant position.

Entire country was stuck on IE6 for far too long.

The UK e-visa system worries me for similar reasons: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/online-immigration-status-evisa

Non-technical people have absolutely no hope.

For social it’s key to communicate with others, so as long as you use it you kind of have to be where everybody is, and everybody is where the free stuff is. If you can’t easily leave and continue communicating, because the platform attracts advertisers by the number of figurative eyeballs so it’s not in their interest to let yours go, then you can’t vote with your wallet unless you make yourself an outcast, which humans—extremely social beings—tend to find extremely stressful, which makes it is not really in their best interest no matter their media and marketing literacy.

On the other hand, even if you do make this difficult near-suicide move and leave, you have hardly anywhere to go: because of this phenomenon, any honest competition where you can pay for better service that works in your interest and has actual customer support (remember when that was a thing?) has no chance. All viable competition remains mostly free to use—we have been conditioned that it’s got to be free, but of course if neither users nor advertisers are paying then no one can really demand things that we take for granted from commercial services (like uptime, availability, well-supported convenient clients and so on), and the amount of resources that goes into development and support of these services is much smaller and much less coordinated.

With non-social ad-supported products it’s not as bad, at least in terms of lock-in. I personally would prefer a paid app from a somewhat reputable developer than risk installing a tracking machine from a shady SDK. However, still, most people default to free, and if platform fee is reduced and that honest app costs slightly less but is still not free, will it make any perceptible difference? I doubt it (maybe you’re right, most people lack media/marketing literacy, they can see that with free their economic utility per dollar approaches infinity and are unaware or not concerned about the intangible damage, including to the ecosystem of developers who try to make an honest living) and so I think ad/data mining based model should be fought on another level.

The problem is companies/marketers who won't take no for an answer... And unfortunately, short of reverse monetization, (marketers must pay individuals for our eyeballs, which has its own logistical problems), there isn't a way to really prevent the pathological impression pipeline that advertising has gravitated toward. In the U.S. unfortunately, there is zero we can do to corral mercantile speech short of collectively coordinated action by the populace since we've written the capability out of our governmental edifice.

Patreon was told to change its whole billing model until a court found in their favor: https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/1878206.html That's the kind of thing I think we'd both find unacceptable.

But I'd still be ok with "one store, resonable rules, respect user privacy".

Meanwhile on google's lawn, there's hundreds of things like this: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.falnesc.to... a torch app that contains ads and shares your location with selected third parties. At least they don't require permission to read your contacts. (You can buy an ad-free "secure" version for $0.99, or you can just ... turn on your phone's LED for free because that's provided by the OS.)

Technically firefox extensions are "one app store" too - you can't sideload unless you install from the dev/nightly channel and fiddle with the settings. But at least it's a not-for-profit store. Chrome and even Edge allow you to sideload.

I went all in; for years I paid 100% to replace phones of friends or lovers who were still sending archaic SMS.

It’s the implicit camraderie between the speaker and listener in “A computer for the rest of us…”

Today, I don’t even have iMessage enabled on my disposable carrier number. It’s off off.

It's interesting how this seems like an incredibly American problem. In Europe everyone either uses WhatsApp or Signal and iMessage is hardly ever used.

It sounds like you are implying that a monopoly classification would somehow be relevant to fee/pricing strategy?

The reality is that every company that has a hardware/software ecosystem has some form of AppStore. Sony, Nintendo, Valve, etc. Should we consider them all to be monopolies of their store? For fun, let's say they all are.

In order for that monopoly classification to have some impact, it would have to be used in an anti competitive way.

Let's say Nintendo wants 20%, Valve wants 30%, and Sony wants 40% of an apps sales price. You adjust your price for each platform, the software costs more on Steam Deck and PlayStation. Are Valve and Sony using their stores in an anti competitive way by charging more than Nintendo? I don't see how. It is not anti competitive for Sony to charge developers more.

An example of something anti competitive would be Sony telling you that you can only put things up in their shop if it's exclusive to Sony.

Apple didn't integrate with RCS because RCS was a fragmented pile of garbage. It still is, but it's I suppose less fragmented now.

None of that "harmed" friendships, certainly not any real ones.

I argue, default compulsory license fees should be a feature of copyright and patent. A 'reasonable' cap to the maximum it costs to reuse an existing device / idea. (Also that it should be a LOT tougher to patent things, maybe 1 patentable thing per expert examiner's work week, which would be the cost of filing for a patent. That only individuals should be able to own a patent. That companies could create 'prior art' with academic detail releases.)

Not only that it is "naturally prone" to it (with thinks like bulk efficiencies) but also that it is economically prone to it. A free market with no monopolies drives profit towards zero. No company wants this so the logical response is to become a monopoly (or as close as possible) by putting up barriers to entry and competition.

To clarify what exactly that agreement does: it prohibits companies from developing competitors. It is nakedly anti-competitive, and no, business deals are not supposed to be that - there's a large body of law, sadly rarely enforced, saying so. Not every business practice is legal just because the directly involved parties agreed.

take a moment to think why amazon has no google services on their table and/or an amazon branded basic android smartphone, it would be super easy for them to do it (leave aside firephone .. for reasons).

How is this not monopoly abuse? if Lina Khan had any balls this is what she would have gone after.

edit: chatgpt explanation: https://chatgpt.com/share/686350ce-47dc-8008-8c30-14c6298d75...

That sounds like a terrible user experience ?

Real wages and purchasing power at the median are so strongly correlated with 90℅ income tax at the top that the causality digression is a waste of time we don't have. Unchecked executive power via a lockstep legislative apparatus and meek courts is not some unprecedented thing, its a totally predictable response to privatizing the commons and selling it off to oligarchs.

It was a fucking disaster in Russia in 1992 and its shaping up no better here now.

Conficistory taxes at the top work, they keep real assets broadly distributed throughout society which gives everyone a stake in democratic institutions which creates stability and growth. That's recent, robustly researched history.

However if you happened to like E.G. Apple's screen, or camera, or another component that was better than what else could be selected it could be part of a design which competed on other merits. E.G. maybe the touch digitizer is just that much better, so it might make sense on some models of Android or some Libre phone more closely based on Linux or BSD. Or some company that makes an iPhone like device but to GOV spec standards for a given country. (In my mind, I'm thinking US Gov, but IP laws tend to be International too, so maybe Germany wants it's own secure phone.)

You can't comment like this on Hacker News, no matter how right you are or think you are. It's not what HN is for and it destroys what it is for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

but we cannot have these until the lock in is removed

We need to craft legislation saying software vendors have to support some kind of standardized payment system with easy cancellation built in to it rather than relying on Apples good will.

Whenever I want a subscription I want inside an app, I actually take the effort to go to their website and buy it from them directly, because it's cheaper (not that they're allowed to tell me this in their app though).

When I want to stop paying for the subscription, I cancel it and I'm done. At least in the EU, this is always an easy thing to do.

There are two scenarios to this (probably more)

1) A developer wants to use a 3rd party app store to distribute their apps, using 3rd party payment solutions. This is fine, it puts no load on Apple. That's what we've had in EU for a year or more, and truth be told, nobody uses 3rd party app stores. It's a desire that exists because vendors don't want to pay Apple 30%, users have no desire for it.

2) Which leads to the second scenario, where developers will want to publish their apps on the App Store, because that's where the users are, but still use 3rd party payment solutions, meaning Apple essentially hosts their apps for free.

Even after a year in EU, there are literally no users (and not many 3rd party app stores): AltStore has about 1.5 million users, Epic Games Store has about 29 million users across iOS and Android, so best case they're all iOS users, or worst case it's less than half. There are 450 million people living in the EU.

The Apple App Store is overwhelmingly dominant in EU, despite there being a free choice. So, which scenario do you think is most likely ? 1 or 2 ? The store where nobody shops, or the store where the users are, and developers wants to live rent free ?

> Also, facebook can already be a "bad actor" right now

Facebook, and later Meta has been involved in several "controversies" over the past decade or so, too many to be an accident.

In 2015-2018, people discovered that the Facebook app on Android had been collecting call logs and SMS metadata, presumably to help you connect with people you know, but it was being done without your consent.

in 2016-2020, there were rumors that Facebook listened on conversations using the iOS and Android microphones for use with targeted ads. Nothing was proved, but it was verified in 2019 that Facebook kept the camera active on iOS while you browsed the feed.

The Onavo VPN 2013-2019 (later Facebook Research) app collected various stuff like App usage stats, Web browsing, private messages and network activity on both iOS and Android, until the App was removed from Play Store and App Store in 2019.

Facebook also tracks your location, despite you disallowing this, by using background access, Photo EXIF data, and WiFi//bluetooth beacon.

All of the above were default on, without any informed consent, and the behavior of Meta (and others) are a large part of why both iOS and Android have severely hardened their cross application data access.

Think it through: Amazon dominates shopping-search results. It easily swamps any other shopping portal or indie vendor. So it is a de facto gatekeeper to a huge portion of online shopping. You're citing Apple's alleged 58% of phone-platform share as making it a gatekeeper to the Internet? Amazon is actually an Internet-based entity with huge dominance in its field.

Meanwhile Meta (Facebook) IS the Internet for a large (less tech-savvy) portion of the public. Akin to when AOL slapped Internet access onto its platform.

Apple controls its app store. Is it douchey as hell to developers? Yep. Has it antagonized governments and flouted legal rulings? Yep. Has it lied about App Store search? Yep.

But it is not an Internet gatekeeper or a monopoly.

Consumers who spent hundreds of dollars in Appstore purchases and have 10+ years of photos, movies and data tied to Apple won't just suddenly leave all that and move to Android and start their digital life from scratch.

And the young consumers just starting their digital lives, are jumping in the ecosystem their friends and family already use (iMessage lock-in). It's basically not even your choice at that point, it's more that you're forced to.

If it's necessary to put a qualifier on the word "monopoly", it's a great indication that it's not a monopoly.

The link you provided is only for "Referral fee", not whatever fee charges to fulfill the order (ie. warehousing and shipping), which is separate: https://sellercentral.amazon.com/help/hub/reference/external...

Since when can WhatsApp interact with SMS users? They're so evil and predatory that they have entirely walled themselves off from that method of communication entirely.

We had PWA even before we had locked in app-stores but then Apple saw the dollar signs of locking people and app devs in their graded and gave up on PWA and doubled down on draconian lock-in.

No.

And the browser-engine ban is being lifted; something that sounded good at first, until you realize that Chrome is already a cancer on the Web that is only held back to the dominance of Safari on mobile. Cheerleading for a total takeover by Chrome isn't smart if you think it through.

Who are the third party distributors for the playstation or xbox?

>They already are, through their developer fees.

It's $100/developer. Considering Microsoft used to charge thousands for Visual Studio, it doesn't seem too unreasonable to claim that $100/year is too low.

>If Apple can't compensate themselves without forcing people to use their services, then they need to redesign their business model.

What's wrong with royalty fee based business models?

>Installing software is not a service, arguably Apple has no right to demand compensation for it in the first place.

Right, which is why Apple characterizes the fee as "core technology fee", ie. for access to its tools and SDKs, not for access to the store.

B) if people truly value the Apple lock down system, they will not use applications that don't comply with the lock down system

If apple is incompetent and makes it less secure, I'm sure they'll fix it.

Are you saying that Qubes OS is less secure than iOS?

But your position that it is somehow uniquely evil just reads as a coping mechanism—a way of not having to blame your friends and family for being shitty for you.

I know plenty of "regular, non-tech people" who understand perfectly well that a) different computer systems do not work properly together, and b) if you choosing to use a particular computer system excludes someone because they do not have access to it, that's rude, discriminatory, and generally shitty behavior.

SMS not having the same features as iMessage is a technical issue, sure.

Apple not providing iMessage on Android was a business decision, no question.

But people being exclusionary and obnoxious to each other over group chats is a social issue, and should be treated as such, and not blamed on either the technical or business side of things.

Probably you meant it differently, but guaranties and warranties exist exactly due to this. Users have right to expect their device performs as advertised and in a reasonable manner.

How do you feel about user rights (of wheelchair users) dictating how a product hardware (such as public property and public and private spaces and structures open to the general public) should be manufactured (to include wheelchair ramps and and other amenities such as elevators and accessible restrooms)?

And you know, maybe they have a point. I especially think about Microsoft and MSN Messenger/Skype. How do you fumble away not one but two dominant messaging apps?

Why didn’t Google deliver an alternative to iMessage? Did they choose not to? Is it actually hard? Are they just too incompetent at making software that isn’t for running infrastructure?

Would they? I imagine they would distribute via all available, at different price points. At least that's what I would do. Why would I want to forgo access to customers who prefer every last detail to be handled via Apple's infrastructure?

That said, if there were actually a dichotomy between "force developers to distribute via my preferred means" and "permit developers to choose whether or not to use my platform of choice" the former seems obviously immoral and the latter obviously the correct course of action. Why should you get to dictate how developers must do things? That's simply valuing your own preference over everyone else's (both developers and users) right to choose.

Shouting "monopoly" from the rooftops is not enough to affect real change. If I wish not to pay property taxes, my options include moving to another state, but courts do not recognize a general right to challenge tax liability on the grounds of personal preference or disagreement with taxation. Perhaps it's worth sparing a thought as to why, and who ultimately empowered that stance.

Plus, this is often the “if I can’t have it no one can” line of thought, sometimes from companies engaging in anticompetitive practices themselves (like Epic Games).

Edit:

WAI stands for working as intended

So while I'm not against the general outcry and need for change, it is not just apple. The problem is way way bigger, and it should not be put onto one of the players in my opinion. Create regulation/platform that sets the limits, then put ALL players into the process not just one

I don't like this hypothetical (or maybe real) argument from Apple, but can't answer it either.

Update; well, here's the answer to that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44427725

No. They're computers with a modem peripheral. This is like saying once you plugged your e machine into the phone line it could interfere with 911 calls so they need to be regulated by the FCC. We settled that one over 50 years ago.

It's whether you are engaging in anticompetitive behavior or not.

Otherwise you don't own the product.

This basic premise doesn't hold for Apple products.

And by the way, I think consumer rights are more important than rights of companies to do whatever they want.

Every time you make those comparisons it becomes much clearer just how much of an overreach and danger to market capitalism Apples behaviour is.

The thing with this 30% tax the private company Apple imposes on a majority of US adults is reasonable?

When you're "competing" with the government (30% tax sounds pretty government like to a Swede, we have 25% VAT) the government will get involved because you're operating a "shadow government" eventually (you set all the rules and set the tax rate, you're now a government).

Supporting Apple here is unreasonable, sure they should be able to take a margin on the app store, but not allowing other stores OR allowing external payment methods to be advertised is definitely predatory behavior and the government already has a monopoly on that.

And the "core fee" response was entirely unreasonable, it is unreasonably expensive. If Apple were operating like Sony on the Playstation where the console is a loss leader for much of it's lifetime then you ofc deserve a cut from developers since you enable them to build profitable games for your platform which markets the game for you and stuff. But Apple makes a profit of iPhones, they make a profit on iCloud, they make profit on App Store... They make a profit everywhere. It's predatory and I don't know how to agree with them here.

If the iPhone's App Store has competition, equivalent to how MacOS already works in America, then Apple has to choose between maintenance or abandonment. In the status quo, Apple is enabled to neglect their platform and users while almost singularly harming developers.

If Apple prefers anticompetitive practices, it can simply only do business in those regions.

However, the counter argument that opening iOS to other stores and payment methods would not affect users who prefer the App Store is not necessarily true either. If developers can choose not to distribute via Apple's store to avoid restrictions that are unfavourable to their business model then users would no longer be able to buy those apps in the App Store.

This is the dilemma that needs to be solved.

One solution could be to adopt a rule similar to the one for social logins. If an app supports any social logins at all then it must also support Sign in with Apple. Unfortunately, adopting a similar rule for the App Store is a lot more complex.

If an app rejected by Apple is then not allowed to be installed via an alternative app store either, Apple would once again be able to veto apps for whatever reason they want. And if developers were free to set a any price they want for each store, they could effectively make the App Store unviable.

I still feel that there is a set of rules that could make this work. The complexity is unfortunate though.

You mean, the Google system that collects 20 times more telemetry than the iPhones? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26639261

Even a cursory glance at the world around you quickly proves that what you wrote it just utter crock.

But those types of contracts also have obligations on the seller, which is why Apple and similar companies don't want to have to treat their equipment that way and would rather call it "selling" with an asterisk.

For just selling the game elsewhere, there is no such clause, and there are games that e.g. are cheaper on Epic and explicitly say that's because Epic takes lower fees. But there are also devs claiming that Valve pressured them in private to not do that, and that's what the lawsuit is about.

I can assure you, with all my money bet on it, that no one in a roblox exec meeting ever said "We need to focus on lobbying schools to shorten the school day in key markets." No one at roblox is fantasizing about roblox replacing -all- (I mean this literally, not just entertainment time) facets of a child's life with roblox.

Whereas apple explicitly had their goal "Get kids using iphones, don't port imessage to android, families will be forced to buy iphones and stay on iphones to maintain familial communication."

That is evil.

Competitive markets have enough similar suppliers that they are forced to adapt to customers instead of the other way around.

This happens to be incompatible with capitalism due to phenomena like the tendency of the rate of profit to fall and fascism (as well as other corporativist ideologies). Capitalism survives and reproduces through monopolies and oligopolies, i.e. undemocratic forms of rent seeking and price cartels.

The bar isnt whether it is legal or not. You know that no company can create laws, and either you're saying it out of ignorance, or willful ignorance.

When Walmart drives away mom and pop shops, and dominate a certain town and then hikes the prices for groceries, you cant say "but it isnt illegal to go buy groceries from elsewhere, what did we - Walmart - do wrong?"

Say it with me - monopoly rules are about consumer choice.

I'm sick of people writing off entire classes of problems because "well, it's not illegal". The law doesn't matter until you're actually in court. What matters is practicalities. There are many rights that are impractical to use and there are many laws that are unenforced. Some problems could be solved by law, others probably not. The law is a solution, not a problem. Focus on problems, not solutions.

What Apple is taking away is practical control for owners of a class of device that has become essential to my practical participation in society.

I actually desire my country to intervene and change laws forcing Apple give me that control.

Your argument, or attempt to make an argument, somehow neglects this obvious Apple created and enforced barrier.

The first iPhone technically wasn't a smartphone (unlike its competitors at the time) because it did not have a way to install third-party programs. This situation only lasted a year though.

It did have a pre-installed Google Maps app, very much not a toy...

And don't game consoles typically come out bundled with some first party games too ?

I don't particularly like my iPhone, in fact I see as a worse device in many ways to my old Android phone, but the interoperability with my Mac makes the trade-off worth it. So ironically, the only reason I want it is because of even _more_ anticompetitive practices.

And yes, the day the Mac is as closed off as the iPhone, there will be zero Apple devices in this house.

As others have repeatedly said, you can still opt to not use any other kind of app from outside the AppStore.

But as I asked on another thread, as a thought experiment: What about we meet in the middle and governments force Apple to only "open" 50% of the phones, for the same price. Would that satisfy you?

> third parties wish to intervene on a transaction between me and Apple so they can illegitimately get a piece of the pie.

It's actually Apple that wants to intervene in transactions where I don't want them to be a part of. I don't want to pay 10 euros and give 3 to them.

Anyhow, I can't stoop that low to converse with a random lout online hurling insults left and right. Enjoy it elsewhere, bye.

If the goal is to make Apple open up their platform in a way that doesn't take away choices from users, we need a set of rules to guarantee that. Otherwise I agree with rTX5CMRXIfFG. Facebook and Google would find ways to gradually make the App Store more and more unattractive until that choice no longer exists. There would be billions of dollars worth of incentives.

Well, yes.

There is a real solution to this, where we codify our social limits through legislation and open standards to prevent these horrible "leopards ate my face" scenarios that everyone seems to hate so much. Or we could keep trusting Apple, and see how many F1 advertisements that nets us in the long-run.

"Communicate outside the home" is a pretty vast difference

> It's even generally using all the same network protocols.

This whole thread was about proprietary iMessage

Maybe the answer from Apple should be to improve Safari instead of restricting competition.

Sad to see supposedly technically-knowledgeable people cheerleading for regression.

That's not what the parent is asking. The OP said it was the most evil ever done.

Big Tech does predatory and evil stuff all the time. That's not what's being claimed. The OP is claiming that this specific thing is the worst, the singular event that is above and beyond all others.

I use both iOS and Android.

> It is only through a complex labyrinth of settings

I have no love for the way iOS settings are done, but calling the setting for this in particular a complex labyrinth is some pretty blatant editorializing.

> A user’s default calendar is Apple Calendar, and the default cannot be modified

I don't think this is a true statement? My default calendar is a Google calendar. Actually switching to instead use my Apple iCloud calendar has been something of a chore.

EDIT: Actually, there already is a “Default Apps” section right at the top of the page of Settings > Apps. Yeah, if that’s a “labyrinth” then the assumed level of user intelligence is quite low.

You can use WebKit to visit any site you want; whether it supports every technical feature you might encounter on a site is irrelevant. I'm not arguing that it's a good engine or even competitive. I don't question your objections to missing functionality, and probably agree with all of them. But that is not gatekeeping. That's like saying black-&-white TVs were "gatekeeping" by not showing color, or some Bluetooth speakers are "gatekeeping" by not being stereo.

Anyway, the point is moot because Apple has to allow other browser engines now. If you think it through, this will simply allow Chrome to completely dominate the Web and take us backward to the bad old days of "this site works best on..."

WHEEEE!

But I don't see much that's local about Apple vs. Samsung. It's the same phones for sale in the US or in Thailand. Literally as one-size-fits-all global as you can get.

Developers don't have a right to access other business's customers. If you want to sell jewelry you don't have a right to have your jewelry put into a nation wide jewelry store chain to be able to access most Americans. Customer relationships are a vary valuable asset of a business.

>passively making 30%

It's only passive if you ignore the billions of dollars they dumped into building the ecosystem and growing a customer base that they can monetize to developers.

Anybody (possibly except Epic Games) can develop and publish on the App Store. There's a cost associated with it, which in Apples case is 30% (or whatever you negotiate apparently). If you play by the rules, you can keep doing that as long as you like.

If you rent a shop in a shopping mall, there will be costs associated with that as well, and it's almost guaranteed to be more than 30%.

That is essentially what Apple is providing for those 30%, they provide a shopping mall where you can expose your goods, and people can pay for them. They handle the pesky stuff like refunds, (international) taxes, compliance with various government requirements, EU rules, and everything else. They even handle potential lawsuits for you (provided your app wasn't the one breaking laws).

They also vet (mostly automated) apps to ensure they're not using private APIs. That is for your protection. It's not an evil scheme by Apple to keep competitors out, it's for protecting the end user from bad actors like Meta scooping up all your personal data for "backup purposes" via some internal API.

Here in Europe we've had "alternative app stores" for a year or so, and despite living in a country where ~70% of the population uses iPhones, I don't know a single person that has ever used an alternative App Store, just like I don't actually know anybody that has downloaded an alternative keyboard despite those being available for a decade or more.

There is really very little you cannot do on the App Store in terms of features, so for many end users it is not a problem.

You may not like the price associated with it, which is what most of these complaints are about, the fact that Apple scoops up 30% of recurring subscriptions created through the App Store as well. People tend to forget that running your own infrastructure is also not free, especially when you need to handle refunds, legal matters and international compliance.

And that's the core of the problem, most of these companies complaining wants to use Apples built in App Store tools, but they want to direct them to their own App Store for free, ditching the complicated stuff of dealing with users on Apple. They're more than happy with Apple to handle payments and refunds if they do it for free.

Sideloading is usually a very bad idea in this day and age. In northern europe at least, your phone is quickly becoming your most trusted device in matters concerning anything state or municipality, and here we have a national ID app on our phones, along with social security, healthcare, drivers license, micro payments, taxes, childcare, hell, there's even video conferencing with your GP, in an app that has access to your medical records, including bloodwork and various scans. There's literally no way in hell I'm trading the perfectly walled garden for the Wild West outside.

Anecdotally, where I live, most companies don't allow Android phones as company phones as they're considered insecure, and instead mandate iPhones. The more regulated the industry (medical, banking, power, etc), the more certain it is that you'll be getting an iPhone.

What is silly about going to do an errand without distractions? It's more efficient in my experience. I wont look up stuff in the store or answer texts that in reality can totally wait. I've yet to have something happen where not having my phone lead to me missing some big emergency or event.

Going out into the world is in fact the opposite of abandoning all contact, it's directly interfacing. According to your comment, you equated your world with access to your phone.

On the contrary, I find it liberating, and I hate the idea of people trying to compel me to maintain contact through those situations.

Like think about this logically? Should a grocery store be forced to sell my products without receiving any of the profit? Can I force a cafe to let me serve customers on their premises without giving anything in return?

But "non-evergreen" doesn't mean anything.

And if the argument has become about security, as others have said, Jailbreak has repeatedly relied on security issues, so the security problems have always been there.

But making the argument that Apple is the only company to solve secure payments on the internet is silly.

This makes no sense. There is no "boom". You can't accidentally do it. There are a series of very deliberate steps, with numerous warning signs. Even on Android I have to specifically enable an option to even be able to install apps from alternate sources, and it is a separate permission per source, and this option can be locked down on a managed device (e.g. a work phone).

By your logic, there should be no web browsers on iOS, since someone might visit a scam website and give away all their money.

> They want to be able to give away their app and sell subscriptions, and they expect Apple to foot the bill for the infrastructure required to provide downloads.

Nobody expects that. What the EU wants is, simply let another app store compete. That new app store will host the downloads.

You keep shedding tears for the costs to Apple's infrastructure, yet as I keep repeating - what many developers really want is to NOT use Apple's infrastructure. NOT use Apple's payment processor. If the problem is that we're being a burden to Apple, well then I'm in full agreement with you, let's stop doing that!

This is completely fabricated. I've been using Android for more than 15 years, and this has never happened, ever. Nothing even close to it. To be clear, you're advocating to take away people's freedom to install software of their choosing in order to mitigate a hypothetical security problem. It's not a good trade.

In any case, generally the threat against most people is fraud, not some technical minutiae.

Compare Apple with Steam (who also provide the infrastructure, marketplace and platform). Steam don't force developers to use their services. They're still successful, but you can get almost every game on Steam from somewhere else. This is what I'd ideally like Apple to do. It wouldn't make any difference to me, as I haven't owned or developed for Apple devices in many decades, but it would make a huge difference to many developers, and many device owners. I doubt it will actually make that much difference to Apple's profits, but it would make a difference to the rapidly declining good will they have in the developer community, and increasingly in their customers.

Especially in the light of the only real complaint being that "there is a possibility of loss of security".

Apple have over a billion iPhones out there I believe, and your phrasing of "it's all of us vs just you" is really inappropriate - both from an argumentation perspective and probably a fact perspective too.

Also, thinking that all businesses will lock one in using friction and timewasting is not a rational argument. There are a lot of honest businesses there forced to pay the Apple Mafia's tax.

The problem is they don't allow apps to come from anywhere else, this is the core of the issue and what everything eventually comes down to.

Make it possible for users to control their own app installation sources on the hardware they own, show them what is happening when they do so, that they are replacing Apple as the source of trust with the developers of the app marketplace or app they are installing, but only do it once, it can't become a nag.

If they do that, then whenever anyone complains about App Store rules Apple can just tell them to do everything themselves instead, no APNS, no convenient installation from a pre-installed App Store, no seal of approval from a partner the user trusts, no free hosting, no infrastructure for app updates, etc.

Also, as a customer, presumably you could choose to use apple's store.

if apple was saying you had to support their payment processor alongside others (so you could opt into paying +27% and getting easy cancellations), that would be one thing, but they don't allow you to have any other options available in the app, which i think is where the anticompetitive complaints start to feel more valid.

Anyhow I do see your point that narrowing user options can lead to better UX - if you actually like all the tradeoffs they make. The problem is if you don't, your SoL. And in this case the trade-off is Apple taking a giant extra cut so... I think it's reasonable that folks don't like that trade-off.

> No-one's saying you don't have a right to an opinion

Someone said to me “Who are you to claim that my consumer desires are irrelevant?” so you’re wrong.

They charge $19.39 for the same subscription if you buy it direct. By the logic of Apple taking a 30% cut thereby pushing up the price of doing business, you'd think they could charge $12.59 to direct customers and take the same profit out.

(This is month by month subscriptions to NordVPN)

I would presume an outlier as it seems to make poor business sense.

> That’s an unsupportable claim.

It's supported well enough in my view by a long history of sleaze that apparently people have forgotten.

And you will get 20 times telemetry as a bonus: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26639261

When I hear about a 3% fee, I think of the interchange fees for a credit card. That doesn’t have the same overhead as hosting the software, handling the updates, managing the front end, reviews, etc. I can only assume that 2-3% of the 30% are going to Visa, as I’m sure Apple is paying interchange fees to process the payments.

30% probably still creates a very healthy margin, which could be trimmed (and has been for companies making less than $1m). But it is right in line with the rest of the industry, at least for the other big players.

I'll say the same thing, another way: Apple is the only smartphone manufacturer that forces you to install apps through their services only.

No, the issue is that they have both a 30% cut of every software sale and a closed platform. Steam has a 30% cut, but not a closed platform, hence the bad analogy.

Not sure why you're bringing the Steam Deck into this discussion. Is the only way to play Steam games via Deck? No, so it's completely irrelevant.