Comment by grishka
4 years ago
You pay 30% for all the hosting and listing and payment processing. But then you aren't required to use Steam to distribute your game — you could as well set up your own website. There's nothing preventing you. There's no predatory code signing on desktop OSes.
On the other hand, you can't sideload apps onto iOS devices. You HAVE to go through Apple. You either publish on the app store, or you don't have an iOS app. That's different. That's very different. That's antitrust-can't-happen-sooner different.
You aren't required to use the Apple store to distribute your product. You can sell to Android users and desktop/laptop users.
> "That's different. That's very different
Is it? Why is it? You can't sell software to run on Kindle Paperwhite even though it's a full computer inside. What's the specific difference between that and iOS, other than "Apple's ecosystem and customers are desirable, so I want to use it" and "I don't want to pay for it"?
> You aren't required to use the Apple store to distribute your product. You can sell to Android users and desktop/laptop users.
You aren't making much sense. You won't have any semblance of adoption if you don't have presence on iOS. Except maybe in India where iOS market share is tiny.
> You can't sell software to run on Kindle Paperwhite even though it's a full computer inside.
It's an appliance. It's marketed as a device to serve one purpose — read books. Amazon isn't making apps for it either, as far as the user is concerned, there's no notion of application software on these things.
By the way, washing machines and microwaves also have a full computer in them — there's CPU, RAM, and ROM. Yes, tiny and underpowered. Probably not quite powerful enough to run Doom. Computers nonetheless, technically.
Yet no one raises any objections about not being able to run arbitrary code on them. Precisely because of the marketing and expectations.
> What's the specific difference between that and iOS
iPhones and iPads are marketed as general-purpose computing devices. They are not appliances by any stretch of imagination. Yet they are crippled because Apple has knowingly and deliberately put in a limitation so they only run code that was signed by Apple. This limits their general-purposefulness. This forces developers who don't want or need the hosting and listing still go through the app store.
Apple devices aren't crippled by it, they're improved by it. By curation and restriction. Users don't buy Apple gear to pay the lowest possible price for software, or to sideload software, users buy Apple to get something that works. The whole point is that Apple is selling an Apple experience, not an overwhelming flood of "fix it yourself" freeware. Users who want that can get it elsewhere, they shouldn't be forced to suffer it on iOS as well. Taking the restrictions away isn't an improvement. They aren't mandatory restrictions until using iOS is mandatory, and it isn't.
This is like a restaurant demanding smart shoes for customers, and you complaining that it's anti-competitively hurting your sneaker business and the restaurant should be forced to change. Customers going there are going there knowing the dress code applies to them and others, forcibly blocking that removes part of their reason for going there at all.
> "You aren't making much sense. You won't have any semblance of adoption if you don't have presence on iOS."
That is the sense, you aren't required to have any semblance of adoption. Apple is successful by building a curated, restricted, "exclusive" (by perception if not fact) experience. You want access to the customers and their money, without upholding the reasons the customers are using that platform.
> "Yet no one raises any objections about not being able to run arbitrary code on them. Precisely because of the marketing and expectations."
Now you aren't making sense. Apple never marketed or set expectations that you could sideload apps on iPhone or iOS, did they?
> "By the way, washing machines and microwaves also have a full computer in them — there's CPU, RAM, and ROM. Yes, tiny and underpowered. Probably not quite powerful enough to run Doom. Computers nonetheless, technically."
So you're going after Bosch for anti-competitively not allowing you to sell software that runs on their washing machines, and not allowing owners to sideload? Because this is all about anti-competitive, you said? No obviously you aren't doing that, which calls into question your claimed reasons. You can easily list your app on Apple's store and compete, what it's about is you want more money. Which is fine in its own way, until you try to get some legal mandate for Apple to force me to worse platform so you can avoid paying Apple money for using Apple's platform and reputation.
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> Yet no one raises any objections about not being able to run arbitrary code on them.
I would certainly love to be able to do this.
There is no difference.
Just like I can't run third party, unapproved apps on a Tesla, SNES, Gameboy, Samsung TV etc. Or even every website that has a marketplace and supports plugins e.g. Shopify.
Your argument rests on the strange assumption that people who are against IOS restricting apps on the iPhone would for some reason support Amazon's restrictions on Kindle apps.
I can also easily load PDFs and other formats to a Kindle even if I didn’t go through the Amazon store.
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My "argument"[1] rests on the idea that they don't care about restrictions on Kindle apps because there's no valuable market of buyers on the other side, and so it's not about "anti-competitive" as claimed.
The famous and expensive London shop Harrods has a reputation for a wealthy customer base, and it's like saying it's unfair that you have to convince Harrods to stock your products and then they take a cut of all sales for doing so, and that you should be able to sell to their specific wealthy customer base and use their trusted environment for doing so, using the reputation they've developed, without them getting anything in return, and their shop should be an open street market.
[1] in which I ask why it's different, which was no argument at all.
You can side load apps onto your iOS devices.
You just need to publish on the store in order to sell to other users.
No you can't. Literally the only situation when you don't have to sign your app with an Apple-issued certificate is when the device is jailbroken and has signature enforcement disabled.
You're probably referring to one of these things:
- You can install any app on your own device. This requires an Apple ID (but no $99 membership) and a certificate that Xcode automatically gets from Apple. The certificate is valid for 7 days, after which the app no longer launches. The bundle ID of the app also has to be globally unique.
- There's "enterprise" distribution that requires a developer ID and a certificate. Subject to terms of use. Apple can revoke it at any time. Sometimes Apple turns a blind eye to the misuse of this, but, again, it can and does revoke these certificates remotely disabling any apps signed with them.
You can temporarily install your apps on your own device. They expire after 7 days, and you can't have more than 10 such apps installed simultaneously.