To be fair, Fortnite did try to get their players to use sideloading to get around the 30% cut Google took. With Apple's more aggresive consumer protection stance, it wouldn't be surprising for more companies to take that step.
Aggressive Protection? Sounds like the Mafia. Protection, paid for by you whether you want it or not. Pay the 30% or the mafia's going to break your kneecaps.
Don’t be ridiculous, it’s not like Apple’s forcing anyone to publish software on the App Store. Or buy any of their hardware products, for that matter...
People and organisations do it because it’s highly profitable, and it’s highly profitable because it’s a trusted and curated platform (unlike the competition).
Pretending this is anything like the mafia is childish.
The problem is a lack of detailed choice. I use a lot of Apple’s products because I think they’re generally decent, but it seems like right now I can only make one choice with my phone - Apple or Google. But buying an iPhone not an android phone doesn’t mean I want Apple to control my life.
Some examples: I hate it how there’s no adult content allowed in the App Store. Or how if I build my own version of Signal, I have to disable push notifications and things because I haven’t paid apple enough money or something. I hate that last I checked, I can’t buy books in the audible app. If my camera breaks, I apparently can’t get it fixed by anyone except Apple. I hate how Apple charges my bank for the privilege of using the NFC chip in my phone, which I paid for.
It’s ridiculous to demand that Epic games makes their own phone if they want to sell me their game. Ideologically, this is capitalism. But capitalism works best for everyone when there’s healthy competition. Wielding their superior phones to enforce a monopoly in other parts of the ecosystem is anticompetitive and anti consumer. And I’m glad someone is finally standing up to them.
The hell are you even on about? Epic making their own phone? Epic can create an alternative store on Android TODAY.
If you don’t like your phone, get another one. This is the most ridiculous first world problem, and associated whining, I’ve ever seen.
You have alternatives, but you’ve willingly chosen the iPhone. Then you whine that it’s not sufficiently like the competition, despite this being the headline feature of this product and company. It’s completely
childish and ridiculous.
Let me make this very clear for you: I, as an end user, want Apple to have complete control over its platform. That’s precisely why I bought into this, and not another ecosystem. I do not want sideloading, I do not want alternative stores, I do not want the so-called “healthy competition”. And I should be able to make that choice, as a consumer.
Epic can't create an alternate store on iOS. At all.
The headline feature of apple devices for me is that unlike Google, Apple cares about my privacy and security. Apple doesn't offer a devil's bargain with every first party feature. "We can turn this great new thing on - but in exchange, we're going to track your physical movements everywhere. We can turn this other thing on, but we'll record, save and send audio recordings of your life."
Right now I have to decide between having control of my device but no control of my data (google). Or having control over my data but no control over my device (apple). That decision is crap.
> I, as an end user, want Apple to have complete control over its platform
Good for you. In comparison, I want to have more control over the devices I paid good money for. I don't want to live in a digital serfdom, where my only freedoms are those granted to me by the local lord of the cloud.
I don't want accidentally offending an algorithm to result in banishment (google). Or, in Apple's case, for the local lord to tax and morally judge every trade that takes place under their watch.
If you want to spend your life in Apple's walled garden, great! But I don't want owning the best phone to mean I'm trapped there with you. I demand to be able to enter into a voluntary financial agreement with Epic games if I like. I don't want my own phone to have the power to stop me or levy a tax, just so some Apple VP gets a bigger bonus.
> Epic can't create an alternate store on iOS. At all
And I pray it stays that way.
I’m sorry mate, but the reality of the situation is that your wishes mean nothing and Apple owes you zilch. You don’t like that, feel free to go somewhere else.
You imposing your views on all of us is not freedom. It’s the opposite of that.
You want open software? Linux is a thing, I should know, I use it every day.
You want a walled garden? Well you should be able to have that choice, too. You want to take that away from me while pretending to do it for the greater good, when in reality it’s just a selfish desire to impose your will on others.
> You want to take that away from me while pretending to do it for the greater good, when in reality it’s just a selfish desire to impose your will on others.
Let's call a spade, a spade. Your position appears to be "I don't want to choose, and I don't want anyone else to be able to choose either".
That is certainly not the paragon of virtue. Letting people choose -- which doesn't affect you at all - is.
People already can and do choose Apple knowing that they are entering a walled garden.
Apple has made a strategic decision to maintain this walled garden. This decision is one of the company’s key differentiators.
Your position appears to be “I want to force Apple to abandon a key market differentiator in service of a marginal gain in personal freedom for a marginal segment of customers who would actually care about such change.”
Apple customers are lacking choice in software just as much as Trader Joe’s customers are lacking choice in food brands.
Is the walled garden a key differentiator? When most people buy a phone, I think they're usually thinking about the camera and screen, or the security and privacy features. (And note the sandboxing features are part of the phone, not part of the app store.) I'd love to see data on this if you can find any.
I certainly didn't buy an iphone because I want to pay an extra tax whenever I buy apps.
>> Epic can't create an alternate store on iOS. At all
> And I pray it stays that way.
If Epic had an alternate app store, you know you wouldn't have to use it right? You could still use Apple's walled garden. Granting me the ability to run more software on my device doesn't restrict your ability to control what runs on your device.
> it’s just a selfish desire to impose your will on others.
You're the one arguing for restrictions about what I can do on my phone. I don't care what you do with yours. Nothing Epic is proposing would stop Apple from reviewing apps and selling them in the app store.
And if opening the door to free and open marketplaces, with the user in the driver's seat is selfish, guilty as charged! Sign me up! The engine of capitalism works best with healthy competition. (And no, the phone megacorp duopoly is not healthy competition.)
Reigning in monopolies is what healthy regulation is made for.
I don’t see how willingly deciding to use a closed platform and criticizing it for not being open and then asking the platform to open up affecting everyone else who also decided to use a close platform is logical.
The situation is that there's healthy competition between phone makers (Apple and Google/samsung/etc). If there was only one company making phones, that would be a monopoly and monopolies tend toward rent seeking extraction - which may require regulation, or consumers would have a bad time.
Apple has a clear, technologically enforced, complete monopoly on apps distributed on their phones. And google has a weak monopoly on their phones - you can distribute your app on other app stores, but its difficult for everyone. The situation on Android is slightly worse than Microsoft distributing IE with windows. And when that happened, the feds initiated a huge antitrust case against microsoft and nearly broke up the company.
Does the fact that there's competition in the phone market mean we should forgive monopolistic behaviour in the app markets on those phones? Thats a tricky question. Its too simple to just fall back on heuristics.
Is there monopolistic behaviour in the app market?
- Does the monopolistic provider use their position to block competition? Yes. Apple doesn't allow any competitors to their own software in the app store.
- Does the monopolistic provider rent seek, and extract far more money from the market than they would if there was healthy competition? Uncertain - I'm not sure if 15% is a reasonable or unreasonable cut. 30% almost certainly wasn't reasonable for the services apple provided.
- Do people buy phones mostly because of their app stores? If they do, then phone competition == app store competition. If they primarily choose a phone on other factors (cameras, etc) then these are separate markets and should be considered separately. Answer: ???
Is there a precedent? Its not exactly the same, but Australia didn't like telstra (an ISP who owned most of the cable at the time) renting their cables at unreasonable prices to other ISPs. They stopped anyone else from reasonably competing with them. You could make the same argument - "You willingly bought a house there so you can't complain. If you don't like it, move". But we regulated them anyway. Notably the US hasn't regulated comcast / etc from doing the same thing over there.
Longer answer than you were expecting. tldr; its complicated. Heuristics aren't enough. Personally I don't think competition in phones means its acceptable that we have monopolies in app stores. I find the justifications for letting apple have a monopoly in the app store unconvincing and I favor regulation.
FYI, Apple isn't a monopoly. Worldwide, Android has almost six times the market share that iOS does (https://www.idc.com/promo/smartphone-market-share/os). If you want to keep slinging dorm-room libertarian "free market" bullshit, please at least get your facts straight.
Epic is free to publish there game on AltStore. All AltStore requires is that the user runs a local copy of the application on their network and from there they can install anything they want.
Epic likely doesn’t want an ‘alternative’ App Store they want one that they completely control.
The entire point is that it does. Opening up the walled garden isn’t “a feature”, it’s something that will completely, and irreversibly change the incentives on the platform.
Why the hell should Facebook comply with Apple’s every whim and wish, if they could just publish on a different store with less stringent privacy rules, and force you to download it that way? “You want Facebook? Go to Settings -> Privacy, then uncheck the bla bla bla box, and install Fb Store. Then...”. Yeah, no, that’s my worst nightmare.
Privacy should be built into the OS, not rely on fallible human review. Not to mention a 3rd party app store could be even MORE privacy focused than Apple's App Store, if the market was there for it.
There's no reason Apple can't enforce the same privacy options OS wide, even for sideloaded apps.
Of course they don't want to, they would lose their 30% cut. But if they are forced to allow 3rd party app stores they would have to, if they wanted to continue their privacy focused marketing.
"It's not like the mafia is forcing you to open a business in Chicago. you don't like it? You can move elsewhere. People move to Chicago because it's highly profitable."
Pretending this doesn't have deep parallels to the mafia is childish. Keep pretending and we'll have Tony break your kneecaps.
There are plenty of parallels between Apple and the Mafia. Just ask Epic, who's kneecaps were busted for not paying the Don his share.
Their kneecaps were busted for voluntarily entering a contract, and then breaking it as a show of force. A contract absolutely nobody obligated them to sign. A contract they didn’t even have to sign, because they had alternatives.
So what alternatives are there to the Apple Store on Apple Devices? Can you point me to an alternative store that I can create, upload, sell and purchase games from that isn't the Apple store?
I'll gladly buy some games from the alternative store... because I love competition - unlike the Mafia.
If this was a Microsoft phone and Microsoft controlled the market share Apple does? people would be stampeding to force Microsoft to allow competing stores (or browsers, default email applications, etc) on them because anti-competitive behavior.
Yet Apple is "magical" and gets a pass for not allowing competition on "their" devices.
I hope to God there will never be an alternative App Store on iOS. You want that? Android’s your answer, and you have dozens if not hundreds of vendors to choose from.
Why does everything need to be like Android, which has way higher market share anyway? How exactly will that give us more choice, if everything has to be identical?
I buy Apple products precisely because Apple has complete control over its devices, not in spite of it. Get it through your thick head.
Your "hope" is tactic admission that there is no alternative and admission that Apple is willing to limit choice on their platform. "But Android" doesn't challenge the idea... it simply proves you can't defend Apple.
"I Buy apple" and others buy Apple while still wanting choice within that ecosystem of hardware. Why don't YOU get that through YOUR thick skull? You aren't the only customer and other people deserve the choice - which is why regulations exist to break up monopolies.
Thanks for, basically, admitting that I'm right and that the Don is willing to break kneecaps to keep control of their fiefdom.
and people were free to choose other operating systems when MS was found to be abusing their "monopoly".
Just because there are some other options... doesn't negate the fact that Apple is using monopolistic and anti-competitive tactics to limit consumer choice and business options.
There's zero reason why Epic should be force to pay Apple a 30% cut of all income when Epic has the resources and talent to do so.
The Mafia could have used the same argument... “You don’t have to have your store on this street, plenty of room for your store over in another town if you don’t like paying for our protection”
