What baffles me about people defending Apple is that they are basically saying this: "I like not having a choice. And I want others not having a choice too, whether they like it or not".
Users were able to run apps on their Mac directly bypassing AppStore since forever. Why would it suddenly be a dreadful problem if Apple would allow app sideloading on iOS?
Take New York Times. Last I checked, you can sign up online, but to cancel your subscription, you have to call and subject yourself to a slick sales pitch and all sorts of questions. It's inconvenient and borderline immoral.
One solution is, heh, the free hand / competition, but we clearly see that doesn't work all that well. A much simpler solution is to identify such behaviours and straight up outlaw that stuff. Which hasn't happened yet and probably won't for the foreseeable future.
Here's the thing: __The app store is in some ways like a government, and brings laws__. As long as that subscription were to run via the app store, you _CANNOT_ hide cancellation behind a phone number. Apple won't let you ship an app that works that way; in fact, apple does the billing.
I'm pretty sure that benefit pales in comparison to the problems that apple's sole ownership and onerous Judge Dredd-ian (judge, jury, _and_ executioner!) control over the fate of your apps on the apple app store bring.
But you paint the argument as zero cost to allowing alternate app stores, and __that is not true__.
Once alternate app stores or other enforced reduction in apple's abilities to enforce and police app store policy are in place, a bunch of apps WILL go sleazy on you where they wouldn't have otherwise.
NB: Of course, in practice, netflix etc. just do signups online, you get the same total lack of protection against sleazy stuff, and now the apps you download from the app store don't even tell you what you're supposed to do because apple won't let you explain that you need to sign up online and not in the app. Apple's solution / the current status quo sucks; probably sucks more than having alternate app stores available. All I'm saying is that having alternate app stores, whilst it brings a lot of upside, does bring downside, and that is (presumably) what the defenders of apple are trying to warn you about: Those downsides.
To be fair, if an alternative App Store was available and popular, I’d probably have to use it to download Spotify, Audible, etc. Its existence would affect me.
It would benefit in some way (like being able to subscribe to Audible in the app) but also it could be less safe (because if Amazon can, anyone else also can, possibly without supervision)
What baffles me about people attacking Apple is that they basically saying this: You first had to choose an Apple product with its restrictions over all other available devices.
You made the first choice, if the choice does not permit you to do what you want then you have made an incorrect choice. Apple did not choose you, you chose Apple.
I willingly bought my last iPhone knowing the restrictions of the App Store and it did not bother me. If it did I could have easily bought any of the Android phones or at the time Windows phones. If you bought an Apple device knowing the restriction why did you make the choice anyway?
Why would an average customer want to download apps from who knows where instead of an App Store? Hey started this whole drama, they clearly did not even follow the guidelines. Why is it so hard to follow the guidelines to provide a better experience for the end user?
I have seen many arguments, but "I like not having a choice. And I want others not having a choice too, whether they like it or not" has never been one, nor has any argument I have seen ever get close to that.
I think that Apple should allow apps to be installed from outside of the app store, but your argument is just a straw man.
"I like not having choice, so long Apple is the only choice. And I want others not having choice too, as log as Apple is their only choice, whether they like it or not."
They should at least allow optional sideloading on device versions they no longer support, e.g., "obsolete" iPhones and iPads. There should be an "official" way to "root" these devices that otherwise in effect can no longer use the AppStore (because most AppStore apps only work with the most recent iOS versions). Another idea would be to have an AppStore "archive" so older devices can still use an official AppStore.
Apple's "AppStore" is in effect a way to force obsolecence and mandate device upgrades.
Unpopular opinion: I see it as a little bit similar the coronavirus masks here. Your choice can potentially impact my security. (or, security of the platform).
Personally I like apple devices, I like that when I give them to my family I don't get a bunch of support questions like I do when I give them PC's or my old Android devices.
That said: I would prefer apple devices (and thus, their store) to be a minority market share, which pushes the play store to look at their own practices and increase the barrier to entry, or the standard to which applications are held.
Even my girlfriend (who is young and relatively tech savvy, though does not work in tech) has downloaded and executed virus' from the play store by mistake.
It is full of Apple (and other corporate) apologists. But I just want to point out that Google executives were saying some years ago that if Android was not part of Google, it would have been one of hottest startups in the valley.
Similarly, I am sure that if PASemi is spun off Apple, it may be the hottest CPU company in the world. I am sure that the Apple services will also do better outside the Apple hardware group. There are plenty of innovations and certainly there is the tendency to use them to raise the prices for consumers (which is illegal) as opposed to grow the market. I will refrain to say if Apple if guilty in this case, just saying that if hypothetically it is, this is not the end. In fact, many good things may happen in the long term by actually applying the anti-monopoly laws and breaking up a few companies instead of working around the laws.
It's important to remember that the root issue is not Apple's profit margin, it's Apple's refusal to allow users to install the apps they wish to install on phones that they've legally purchased.
The margin, if it is indeed very high—and common sense says it must be very high—is just an indicator of how much power this control gets them and what the degree of harm might be.
To add to this, we don't even know what the Internet would look like now if half of the U.S. mobile market wasn't subject to Apple control. It's likely that there are amazing apps that never got worked on because of ambiguity about whether Apple would accept them.
> Meanwhile, the expenses required to host and review these apps are in the tens of millions, not billions of dollars. We know that because we at Telegram host and review more public content than the App Store ever will.
That’s some hyperbole from Telegram. How big is the App Store engineering and review team? I don’t know, but one report had at least 300 reviewers alone[1]. Add devops, engineering, management...this is easily a team of 500 people, almost certainly more. And then you’ve got to add hardware and opex costs.
Does Telegram seriously believe a team of that size costs “tens of millions”? Because I’ve never seen a project of that size and complexity come in at that level.
Note that the Telegram messaging app is free, with no in-app purchases or premium membership. They are paying Apple only the annual developer program membership.
> Telegram said that in 2016 Apple restricted the messaging app from launching a gaming platform on the grounds that it went against App Store rules.
Ok, so they wanted to launch their own game store, basically? And what would their business model have been?
> In its complaint, Telegram took issue with Apple’s argument that the App Store commission keeps it running.
Why do I doubt that they were going to offer their gaming platform at-cost?
Joining Spotify and Rakuten. Honestly hope there'll be more to come. The recent situation with Google and Danish record companies being in a stand-off and Google deleting Danish music from YouTube shows how bad things can get if left unchecked.
I’m wondering which legal entity has filed the complaint. Telegram has always been reluctant to provide transparency on its ownership and the legal entities in charge.
Regarding transparency, imagine the faces of the journalists who in 2018 went to check Telegram's offices in Dubai and the Aramex employees who share the floor with Telegram said they've never even seen anyone enter Telegram's office spaces. Apparently Telegram's registered in Dubai just to evade taxes.
Telegram supposedly doesn't make a profit, but not having to pay corporate taxes also allows them to hide their profits. Where are they working from? How many employees are there? Also given that they had to return their ICO money and pay 18M USD in fines[1], how are they funding the supposedly free app when [2] estimates the running costs of the app are about 200M USD / year?
Imho the app store clearly hinders innovation.
In a recent project of ours (corona related) we had to wait over 1 month for Apple to approve our app - never knowing whether they would actually approve it. Google Play rejected it, saying it wouldn‘t allow any corona related apps from parties that are not government entities.
As a response we ported everything to a web based solution.
While I can understand their aim to keep scammers out (probably mainly to avoid PR issues) it was a real inhibitor to our legit project.
For future projects I will always build web first. With the app store/ google play you are at the whim of some person at the other end of a textarea.
They can file complaints but that's not going to change much. If the EC decides to bring a case against Apple they will have the herculean task of arguing to the courts that Apple is dominant with less than 25% share of the smartphone market. I'm willing to bet it will be a repeat of the EC's state aid case.
I pay premium for their hardware cause I want to use their software. yet even after I bought it - I somehow dont own it. Im not renting iphone - they have no business telling me which apps to install. market share should be irrelevant in this argument - this is my devise.
I believe one can launch an "app-store" like platform, WeChat has done it with its mini apps. But it will get tricky with Apple when you start earning money from your app developers.
Through the App Store Apple make sure IOS apps are high quality, which won't be possible if developers start publishing apps all over the place. The fee is too high, that's a fact and that's the problem. The fact that you cannot download apps outside of the App Store is not the problem
This case is so full of pot calling kettle back, it's amusing. Not to detract from their claim, but cmon, at least use arguments that hold water.
"Meanwhile, the expenses required to host and review these apps are in the tens of millions, not billions of dollars."
As if the price a company charges for its product has to be tied strictly to the cost it incurs to make that product. Does Telegram follow the same rule in its business dealings?
As in so many disputes, the parties will claim this is about principles and yada yada yada, "Apple/Google exercises monopoly control, etc.
You can be guaranteed though, it's always just about the price and how the one party doesn't want to pay it, and the other party doesn't want to change it. Simple as that.
I think giving ability to download apps outside of App Store would break the entire business model that Apple has, because app owners will use other subscription providers and payment options with cheaper fees, but on the other hand there would be a huge problem with Scam apps or cracked versions. So it's not going to happen anyway...
I think one of the reasoning Telegram is giving is good though. If protesters in HK are using Telegram to communicate and Apple removes it from the App Store then they have no recourse of installing it.
I guess giving a way like in Android where you hide the setting behind a flag in settings and explicitly keep warning the user when they install an app from outside is a decent middle ground.
I am not sure of this but I think recent version of either Android/Pixel do a check on apps even installed from outside for malicious activity.
Can you define "huge"? Android enables that possibility, so a good randomized sample to prove the point: how huge is that problem in the android world, as in, how many millions of vulnerated devices and users are out there? How many millions of installs these "scam stores/apps" have?
It's a genuine questions since it's likely someone in hn can provide some peer reviewed data.
I don't see the problem. Spam and scam apps still make their way on to the Mac and iOS App Stores, and I'm sure that other app stores can use the 30% cut (or less) more efficiently compared to how Apple or Google uses it to run their app stores.
The App Store is only one piece of Apple's business model. They also earn significant profits from hardware sales (including seriously overpriced accessories), extended warranties, and content licensing.
you mean that OSX users are cracking apps a lot? or they get scammed all the time? IMO the OSX security feels more sane for me, you let power users to decide if they want to allow apps to do "dangerous" things and you give the option for users to run stuff they downloaded or they wrote.
[+] [-] Andrew_nenakhov|5 years ago|reply
Users were able to run apps on their Mac directly bypassing AppStore since forever. Why would it suddenly be a dreadful problem if Apple would allow app sideloading on iOS?
[+] [-] rzwitserloot|5 years ago|reply
Take New York Times. Last I checked, you can sign up online, but to cancel your subscription, you have to call and subject yourself to a slick sales pitch and all sorts of questions. It's inconvenient and borderline immoral.
One solution is, heh, the free hand / competition, but we clearly see that doesn't work all that well. A much simpler solution is to identify such behaviours and straight up outlaw that stuff. Which hasn't happened yet and probably won't for the foreseeable future.
Here's the thing: __The app store is in some ways like a government, and brings laws__. As long as that subscription were to run via the app store, you _CANNOT_ hide cancellation behind a phone number. Apple won't let you ship an app that works that way; in fact, apple does the billing.
I'm pretty sure that benefit pales in comparison to the problems that apple's sole ownership and onerous Judge Dredd-ian (judge, jury, _and_ executioner!) control over the fate of your apps on the apple app store bring.
But you paint the argument as zero cost to allowing alternate app stores, and __that is not true__.
Once alternate app stores or other enforced reduction in apple's abilities to enforce and police app store policy are in place, a bunch of apps WILL go sleazy on you where they wouldn't have otherwise.
NB: Of course, in practice, netflix etc. just do signups online, you get the same total lack of protection against sleazy stuff, and now the apps you download from the app store don't even tell you what you're supposed to do because apple won't let you explain that you need to sign up online and not in the app. Apple's solution / the current status quo sucks; probably sucks more than having alternate app stores available. All I'm saying is that having alternate app stores, whilst it brings a lot of upside, does bring downside, and that is (presumably) what the defenders of apple are trying to warn you about: Those downsides.
[+] [-] wonderlg|5 years ago|reply
It would benefit in some way (like being able to subscribe to Audible in the app) but also it could be less safe (because if Amazon can, anyone else also can, possibly without supervision)
[+] [-] Shivetya|5 years ago|reply
You made the first choice, if the choice does not permit you to do what you want then you have made an incorrect choice. Apple did not choose you, you chose Apple.
I willingly bought my last iPhone knowing the restrictions of the App Store and it did not bother me. If it did I could have easily bought any of the Android phones or at the time Windows phones. If you bought an Apple device knowing the restriction why did you make the choice anyway?
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] scarface74|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] RomaTesla|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] searchableguy|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Skinney|5 years ago|reply
On the other hand, if Apple would limit MacOS in this way I would be livid.
[+] [-] foobiekr|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ballenf|5 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] haecceity|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DeusExMachina|5 years ago|reply
I think that Apple should allow apps to be installed from outside of the app store, but your argument is just a straw man.
[+] [-] 1vuio0pswjnm7|5 years ago|reply
They should at least allow optional sideloading on device versions they no longer support, e.g., "obsolete" iPhones and iPads. There should be an "official" way to "root" these devices that otherwise in effect can no longer use the AppStore (because most AppStore apps only work with the most recent iOS versions). Another idea would be to have an AppStore "archive" so older devices can still use an official AppStore.
Apple's "AppStore" is in effect a way to force obsolecence and mandate device upgrades.
[+] [-] dijit|5 years ago|reply
Personally I like apple devices, I like that when I give them to my family I don't get a bunch of support questions like I do when I give them PC's or my old Android devices.
That said: I would prefer apple devices (and thus, their store) to be a minority market share, which pushes the play store to look at their own practices and increase the barrier to entry, or the standard to which applications are held.
Even my girlfriend (who is young and relatively tech savvy, though does not work in tech) has downloaded and executed virus' from the play store by mistake.
[+] [-] veselin|5 years ago|reply
Similarly, I am sure that if PASemi is spun off Apple, it may be the hottest CPU company in the world. I am sure that the Apple services will also do better outside the Apple hardware group. There are plenty of innovations and certainly there is the tendency to use them to raise the prices for consumers (which is illegal) as opposed to grow the market. I will refrain to say if Apple if guilty in this case, just saying that if hypothetically it is, this is not the end. In fact, many good things may happen in the long term by actually applying the anti-monopoly laws and breaking up a few companies instead of working around the laws.
[+] [-] holmesworcester|5 years ago|reply
The margin, if it is indeed very high—and common sense says it must be very high—is just an indicator of how much power this control gets them and what the degree of harm might be.
[+] [-] threeseed|5 years ago|reply
Your argument that "every platform must allow open access" is an unprecedented one that would destroy many business models.
Consoles being an obvious one.
[+] [-] holmesworcester|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] objclxt|5 years ago|reply
That’s some hyperbole from Telegram. How big is the App Store engineering and review team? I don’t know, but one report had at least 300 reviewers alone[1]. Add devops, engineering, management...this is easily a team of 500 people, almost certainly more. And then you’ve got to add hardware and opex costs.
Does Telegram seriously believe a team of that size costs “tens of millions”? Because I’ve never seen a project of that size and complexity come in at that level.
[1]: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/21/how-apples-app-review-proces...
[+] [-] rgovostes|5 years ago|reply
> Telegram said that in 2016 Apple restricted the messaging app from launching a gaming platform on the grounds that it went against App Store rules.
Ok, so they wanted to launch their own game store, basically? And what would their business model have been?
> In its complaint, Telegram took issue with Apple’s argument that the App Store commission keeps it running.
Why do I doubt that they were going to offer their gaming platform at-cost?
[+] [-] ConsiderCrying|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chmars|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] maqp|5 years ago|reply
Source? Here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1chIByzDhsg
Telegram supposedly doesn't make a profit, but not having to pay corporate taxes also allows them to hide their profits. Where are they working from? How many employees are there? Also given that they had to return their ICO money and pay 18M USD in fines[1], how are they funding the supposedly free app when [2] estimates the running costs of the app are about 200M USD / year?
[1] https://www.financemagnates.com/cryptocurrency/icos/sec-orde...
[2] https://www.businessofapps.com/data/telegram-statistics/
[+] [-] Dahoon|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] daanlo|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Despegar|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] amoitnga|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] yannikyeo|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] skc|5 years ago|reply
Apple products are beloved the way sports teams are.
Now you have to decide if those products should be tarnished (because that's what Apple would see it as) or not.
[+] [-] t0ughcritic|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] RomaTesla|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] skrowl|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thecreamedcorn|5 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] supernova87a|5 years ago|reply
"Meanwhile, the expenses required to host and review these apps are in the tens of millions, not billions of dollars."
As if the price a company charges for its product has to be tied strictly to the cost it incurs to make that product. Does Telegram follow the same rule in its business dealings?
As in so many disputes, the parties will claim this is about principles and yada yada yada, "Apple/Google exercises monopoly control, etc.
You can be guaranteed though, it's always just about the price and how the one party doesn't want to pay it, and the other party doesn't want to change it. Simple as that.
[+] [-] tigranbs|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] actuator|5 years ago|reply
I guess giving a way like in Android where you hide the setting behind a flag in settings and explicitly keep warning the user when they install an app from outside is a decent middle ground.
I am not sure of this but I think recent version of either Android/Pixel do a check on apps even installed from outside for malicious activity.
[+] [-] 627467|5 years ago|reply
It's a genuine questions since it's likely someone in hn can provide some peer reviewed data.
[+] [-] heavyset_go|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nradov|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] simion314|5 years ago|reply