This is probably a controversial opinion but I actually use my iPhone because it's locked down with a curated app marketplace and secure payment system. I don't want alternative payment methods or app stores. So I find it distasteful that other companies are seeking to control Apple's product design through the legal system. They're essentially trying to make it impossible to purchase a product I want, which is more monopolistic than the current status quo. iPhones do not have any sort of monopoly on phones.
If you want that, you can purchase any number of Android devices.
if all you want is for your apps to come from Apple's store and your payments to go through Apple's system, you would simply continue to use only those options and allowing other people to have other options would not impact you.
what you actually want is to force all developers to use Apple's distribution and payment systems, so that you can have every app and service from any provider delivered via your chosen mechanisms. that takes away freedom from developers and users who prefer other systems. it eliminates the market for anyone to make or use something better than your chosen options
Except, what happens when apps get removed from the iOS App Store and moved to another store for distribution? If people want to continue or need to use those apps then they would have to use these other app stores.
What if those apps moved to other stores so they can skirt Apple's review and other consumer-friendly restrictions? How is that better for consumers that use Facebook, Insta, etc... for them to have apps with less review and less scrutinized for their behavior? Some of Apples policies have been good for consumers of apps.
Just witness how Fb, etc... already try and skirt those rules that are in place to protect users from tracking and other abuses. Seems pretty logical to assume they would all jump ship to another store to not be under Apple's review process if they could.
I don't doubt for one minute that Fb, etc.. would not jump to another store with less restrictions, and either pull their existing apps or leave them severely restricted in the Apple App Store as an "incentive" to download from the other store.
That's not Facebook moving to an alternative store, that's Facebook the company introducing another application outside of the store.
Also worth noting that they got called out and ultimately shut down for being shady. Even though they were operating outside of Apples locked down environment. It's almost like we don't need Apple to protect us, and in fact we can protect ourselves
If you can only attract good apps by making yourself the only option then your platform is bad. If Apple can't compete in the market they are doing a bad job.
Developers are not forced into using Apple's distribution and payment systems because there are a multitude of other competing devices (with a higher market share mind you) they can and do develop for.
If users and developers prefer other systems they can simply use those.
Apple is not forced into doing business in Europe, because there are a multitude of other anticompetitive tolerant regions (much larger than Europe mind you) they can do business in.
If Apple prefers anticompetitive practices, it can simply only do business in those regions.
I'm curious what becomes the breaking point for them to pull out of a region. Obviously it's about profit but at what point (if any) does it make profitable sense for them to leave?
Leaving a region means they would give up market share, investments and a lot of staff. This is huge. It's not just about quarterly profit, even if it might sometimes feel like it is.
Presumably, before they take such a drastic measure, they would first spend massive amounts on lobbying, which would most likely succeed.
A point we're still lightyears away from. The lengths they go to in order to operate in China are magnitudes greater than to operate in the EU, yet EU makes them $10+ billion more profit than China.
What would actually happen is that the US would start seriously threatening (blackmailing) the EU to a degree where it's forced to relent long before Apple would pull out.
Apple's estimated operating profit from the EU is around $40 billion dollars. If the US government wouldn't get involved, they could force Tim Apple himself to live on top of the Alps and he'd happily do it rather than lose that $40 billion, or shareholders would vote him out ASAP.
Why are you assuming that not only this kind of blackmail is even going to work, but that the EU isn't just going to kick out ALL of US infocoms instead ? (Because of this or because of other issues related to Trump or even Bush (Patriot Act).)
yeah, true, because then people think the government is solving it for them without them doing ANYTHING. Take their facebook/whatsapp away, and you'll see consequences. hell, we have several people on HN that claims its simply not possible with live without whatsapp. Take their whatsapp away and they may aswell go lie down in a ditch and die.
When there is no more profit and only loss, I reckon. Shareholders would not be happy if they pulled out of a region because they can only make $1 over $10. If that $1 is profit, they'll want it.
Never. The Apple bet, the North Star, is that personal computing is both the present and the future. The minute an exception gets carved out, like “personal computing but not in Europe” then Apple enters a death spiral. They’ll deal with each blow that comes their way because it will come for everyone else in the market too, but they’ll still be in the lead.
Except that developers are forced to use Apple's distribution and payment systems to reach users with a native experience on Apple devices. This ability to limit or control competition within a market is called market capture, a key consideration of antitrust.
This argument doesn't make sense. Many developers are de facto forced to distribute their apps on iOS. There are only two mobile platforms globally. Deciding not to support one of them would be economically (and in some cases functionally) unviable for a very large number of apps.
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.
If it was actually stifling competition we would see many more good apps for Android that don’t exist for iOS. That’s not the case. If anything most companies I know develop first for iOS and then for Android if they have sufficient resources. Why? Because accessing Apple’s user base, even with the Apple Tax, is more lucrative than developing for Android.
The point is that more, different, better and cheaper options might exist. The fact that people are still willing to trade in a large captured market does not mean that competition is not greatly distorted in favor of the market's owner.
> The point is that more, different, better and cheaper options might exist.
They can, on Android, which worldwide is about 75% of the market.
> competition is not greatly distorted in favor of the market's owner
If Apple were primarily engaged in making its own apps that compete with apps in its marketplace, then yes, that is distorting the competition (and one could argue that it does this with certain apps like Mail). But the fact that it takes a cut from anyone who wants access to its user base, doesn't stifle competition per se.
This is primarily about access. If I want to set up a popup store inside a fancy country club to access a captive market, I'm going to pay a lot more in fees to the country club than I would if I put it up in some random strip mall. This is no different.
Not very. Plenty of people, including on HN, agree with you.
> but I actually use my iPhone because it's locked down with a curated app marketplace and secure payment system.
Except it’s not. That argument would be much stronger if the App Store weren’t full of scammy predatory apps which regularly top the top grossing charts.
> I don't want alternative payment methods or app stores.
And I don’t want everything to be a subscription, yet here we are. Just like I have to avoid the majority of apps today, you’ll avoid other App Stores if that is what you want.
You’re at a significant advantage because ignoring other stores is much easier, and opening up the iPhone to third-party stores has an effect on the policies of the main App Store. This is plainly demonstrated by the acceptance of the emulator from the creator of an alternative store. So even by not using those third-party ones, you’re benefiting.
> They're essentially trying to make it impossible to purchase a product I want, which is more monopolistic than the current status quo.
That doesn’t make sense. There’s no monopoly on a product which doesn’t exist.
> iPhones do not have any sort of monopoly on phones.
You don’t have to be a monopoly to be harmful to consumers. Companies have realised that long ago and it’s time consumers do too.
> Except it’s not. That argument would be much stronger if the App Store weren’t full of scammy predatory apps which regularly top the top grossing charts.
Not just that - they also actively interfere with search results for essential apps people need. Looking up government or banking apps in the iOS app store will always surface either dodgy insurance sellers or dodgy banks that aren't the one you want to use before the actual app you want to download.
The App Store's curation is absolutely horrendous - these are also bought/sponsored placements, meaning Apple is actively profiting off of people being led to these sorts of misleading apps.
It's not controversial, you can still have your walled garden as-is.
The point of this is so that there is the possibility of escaping that walled garden, arguably welcoming more users into the ecosystem.
Nothing would change for you. Just like android users can keep using all things Google, they have the possibility of installing apps from other sources.
Things would actually change—developers would instead choose to distribute via the alternate means instead of the App Store.
So, you see, it doesn’t matter whether Apple has the walled garden or the third-party devs have the walled garden. Either way, users will be forced to accept someone’s distribution policy. But the difference really lies in the trust on Apple and its security and privacy practices, which is a choice that will be robbed from people buying iPhones to use apps exactly for this purpose.
> developers would instead choose to distribute via the alternate means instead of the App Store
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.
Oh devs would absolutely avoid distributing through the App Store if they want to run any code that would fail App Store Review, such as the abuse of private low-level APIs to gather more user data than the app needs, which all businesses have a profit incentive to do.
There are many other possible scenarios: devs forcing users to authenticate with unsecure methods, gather and unsecurely store credit card information, gather passwords, upload contacts, read SMSes, etc. The value that a third-party dev can derive from private user info is far greater than alternately offering a different version of the app that will pass App Store reviews.
Distribution via alternative stores does not mean there’s no review and moderation. Junk stores may have their fans, but competitive alternatives to App Store will inevitably introduce some controls to maintain reputation and remain compliant. Their advantage will be price, not presence of junk apps. That’s how free market with consumer protection laws works: regulation defines parameters of new equilibrium and eventually all start playing by the same rules to the benefit of the consumer.
Price wouldn't be the only point of differentiation though. Say Google were to bring the Play Store to iOS. Apple's App Store allows users to opt out of tracking. The Play Store does not. Wouldn't all apps that use an advertising based business model automatically gravitate towards the Play Store?
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.
>Apple's App Store allows users to opt out of tracking. The Play Store does not.
In EU the only legal way to do tracking is opt in, so this is a matter of law enforcement and not a long term competitive advantage.
The weakness of regulation is a problem of American users, which they can solve by voting for politicians who support better consumer protection. Of course they may choose otherwise and choose instead a quasi-monopoly of more expensive walled gardens. After all, America is democracy, isn’t it? :)
If my apps are changing, yes it is changing for me.
Right now I can manage all of my app subscriptions from the Subscriptions screen in the Settings app of my devices. If they open up to other payment methods, my subscriptions are no longer centralized, I have to give my credit card information to more parties of variable trustworthiness, I have to worry about subscription renewal policies for every individual app, I have to figure out different methods of cancelling which could be a more difficult process than hitting "cancel" and trusting Apple will stop the payments, etc.
sound like an opportunity for a service that provides the conveniences you enjoy without the lock in and high taxes that Apple requires. imagine an app store that was curated more carefully, where every app was hand tested and with a guarantee of safety that Apple has not provided. a subscription manager with even better UI, lower fees, etc. a payment processor that offered better terms than Apple does.
but we cannot have these until the lock in is removed
I think those problems are largely also due to anti competitive and anti consumer behaviors.
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.
Here in the UK we have something called Direct Debit, that is backed by the Direct Debit guarantee. All regular payments are made by DD and we can cancel a regular payment at any time just by contacting our bank. I can go into my banking app, review a list of all DD payments, and cancel any of them with just the press of a button. You should campaign to have that system in America.
I often find it strange that a country that is so advanced in many ways is so backwards when it comes to banking.
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.
Except implementing the functionality to optionally open up your device to the world inherently makes it less secure. I now have no ability to purchase the phone that I want. It's actually decreasing consumer choice.
There are jailbreaks available for iOS 16.6.1 (released in 2023), and every iOS version prior to it. I count that as "recent", though I understand either way.
Recent versions of iOS have specific anti-jailbreak mechanisms (anti-downgrade mechanisms, ephemeral root filesystems) which don't provide general security, so they're sort of cheating. These mechanisms just mean it's harder to use the vulnerabilities for good, without significantly stymieing evil. (And they aren't wholly effective, seeing as 16.6.1 contains all of them, and it's still got a semi-untethered jailbreak.)
Or you end up with companies (like Wal-mart) that decide that they don’t want to accept Apple Pay and become payment processors themselves, requiring you to install their app to do phone/watch payments. Congrats, you now need a whole boquet of payment apps and we’re back to it being easier to use physical credit cards. For some of these things, the consolidation was the whole point.
Since Walmart keeps popping up in other comments, I'll do devil's advocate using the exact same argument other people used:
If you don't want to buy on Walmart and their custom payment system, then just go to a competitor.
With that said: this is an unrealistic scenario. Walmart doesn't pay the famous 30% to ApplePay, only a regular CC-like fee (probably less). Also, physically they can just accept contact payments where they don't interact with Apple but it still works with the iPhone wallet. Online, they can just use credit cards instead of ApplePay, which iPhones have autofill for, and probably not lose much.
That only works if competitors aren’t doing the same exact thing.
There’s also situations where you don’t have a choice. In many parts of the US the only reasonably accessible store (and sometimes grocery store) is a Walmart.
HN's time-honored scapegoat. "Corporations can't be trusted - that's why I trust Apple to fight them" is a ridiculous pretense to support consolidation. If Apple uses their de-facto position of privilege to demand people use their products as a solution, then they have become the problem. The exact same problem as Wal-mart insisting you download their wallet app.
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.
Legislation would be better, no question. Have you seen US politics, though? Not just lately, but for the past couple of decades. Electing knowledgable politicians who are willing to stay properly abreast of technology and work for the interests of their constituents is nigh impossible.
The ones that get into office are most often out of touch and in someone’s pocket because they grandstand on polarizing topics that information-deficient and single-issue voters flock to. I try to vote for candidates who I think will do good that way, and it makes some impact on the micro scale, but on the national scale it’s like trying to drain the Pacific Ocean with a thimble.
Are you now going to argue that Tim Cook is a really nice guy who practices genuinely principled leadership? I hope not, he's only there to convert your loyalty to something more liquid and fungible.
Nope, it’s clear he does what he thinks is best for the company and its shareholders. Companies aren’t your friend. Even without that, the US political system is broken and the alternatives have their own glaring issues that either lie in the blind spots of or are actively ignored by their proponents.
Conversely, we can _not_ open up our bootloaders in Android because banking apps then refuse to run on an "insecure" OS. Of course we'd have to put aside the fact that our computers can access the same banking features through a web browser.
Exactly. Jailbreaking is WAI for the folks who want the “Android experience” on an iPhone. Much of this drama is merely corporations vying to “get theirs” from the ecosystem, without understanding that the extant nature of the ecosystem is why it is the most valuable platform by user spend (that is to say, they care little for the consumer).
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).
I'm all for corporations "trying to get theirs" if it benefits the rest of society.
iPhones are a premium product and they don't have a natural right to 30% of transactions going through it if the participants don't want Apple to know about it.
> It’s the “if I can’t have it no one can” line of thought
That describes what you and _benton are advocating. "If I can't have the phone be the way I want, no one can".
That's exactly backwards. I have no desire to limit the types of phones you can purchase, and you have an enormous amount of choices in phones outside Apple that provide essentially the same functionality, and can be as open as you wish. You wish to limit my ability to access a device that I want. I want a locked down phone, and third parties wish to intervene on a transaction between me and Apple so they can illegitimately get a piece of the pie.
How about people who want a Mac (which is still "open" to the extent that it makes a difference), and therefore would also like an iPhone because of the propitiatory APIs Apple makes available solely to the iPhone?
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.
> You wish to limit my ability to access a device that I want. I want a locked down phone
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.
Never seen WAI before, all I can come up with is Works As Intended or Web Accessibility Initiative?
Anyways- jail breaking requires being or remaining on certain iOS versions on certain specific hardware models. You can’t “just jailbreak” your apple device that you daily drive/use regularly. If you’re not on an old version on the right hardware already, you’re fucked. And waiting for a new jailbreak exploit is a (anecdotally, for me at least) nondeterministic amount of time on the order of O(years), with a significant probability that it will not be relevant for whatever device you’re waiting on.
This is how you know Apple's marketing is effective. When users think they have a sense of security by using Apple's apps and apps on Apple's store and advocate against competition against Apple.
Controversial maybe, but we have to suffer through this exact same incredibly odd opinion in every thread that makes contact with this issue. No one is asking you to leave your walled garden.
iPhone's other aspects would still remain comfortably locked down and strictly controlled for you by them if there was the opt in for those interested to have alternative ways of paying for subscriptions.
I could hardly believe you only pay through Apple for everything, I mean everything, as THE trustful, others are not trusted, not using other safe payment methods for some products due to security concerns. Not only Apple is secure in this regard.
As there are opt ins on iPhone for so many highly unsecure matters, you could share the most sensitive data with the individual apps with a flick if you wish (sharing personal and very sensitive data, sometimes personal data of others without their consent, like contacts) it is very hard to understand why this particular opt in is ringing your alarm bells of security irrevocably lost and get locked out completely ("impossible to purchase product") that hard....
You can have your choice of not choosing still, while Apple's product design would otherwise remain intact in its current form. Your arguments are very inconsistent.
Same here. I don’t want to hack around with my phone like I do my computer. I want it to just work and be as feee as possible from malware etc. Other considerations are a distant second.
If you want that, you can purchase any number of Android devices.