Two separate levers determine how meaningful this is: distribution friction and runtime parity.
Distribution friction = install prompts, default store, ability to deep-link to a store listing, auto-updates, and payment flows.
Runtime parity = access to the same OS APIs/entitlements (push, background tasks, NFC, etc.) without extra fees.
If Apple keeps scary interstitials, disables auto-updates for non–App Store apps, or taxes critical entitlements, you get malicious compliance. If regulators require neutral prompts, update parity, and ban API tolls, alternative stores become viable—even if only for niches (thin-margin games, enterprise, open-source).
The metric to watch isn’t “are alt stores allowed,” but how many taps from web → install → update. If that gets close to App Store levels, behavior will follow. If not, it’s the EU story all over again.
The whole concept of “third party App Store” is just to add friction to the whole thing.
Alice wants to use a program made by Bob. Apple won’t allow Alice to do so unless Bob pays a fee to Apple. With third party app stores, they’re just allowing _different_ middlemen. What we actually want is to be rid of middlemen imposing arbitrary restrictions on how Alice can use her own device.
I prefer middlemen, especially for something like a phone. But even on a server I would rather be limited to using the OS packages from official repositories, and have a process in place if i need to compile something myself, I also think that process should be more involved than simply running as root.
I am afraid that making it too easy to install anything you want on modern smartphones is going to be a problem. Imagine how many are going to end up in botnets.
To go one step beyond, here a simple way to view it that doesn't trigger the usual "it's a one store per app bonanza issue" : would a steam store work and be properly usable ? I use steam because it's one major "app" store (though on desktop) that is very large, not based on specific ethics nor to a specific manufacturer nor OS developper
One problem is that Apple still requires that they notarize each single app on alternative app stores, and reserve the right to refuse apps for security reasons, so a large third-party app store would still be handicapped compared to an independent operation like Steam.
> the usual "it's a one store per app bonanza issue"
What do you mean "usual"? Android had always had app stores without too many restrictions (though for a long time it was complicated to have auto updates) and it's never been a problem.
I think there would be a few different models. Epic, of course, would lead as a gaming store, but I could easily see competition between Epic and Steam for this space. But there could also be other audience-focused stores as well, such as for creative professionals, like we had prior to iPhones. Then there's also suite apps that will maintain their own stores as well.
Just because Apple locked down the entirety of the mobile app world for 20 years, and told us we didn't want alternatives, doesn't mean it won't happen. If anything, it's evidence to the contrary.
Not only that they still live with ptsd from the times when they almost disappeared, and will do everything in their power to keep as much revenue as they can squeeze.
Because of this, the Japan appstore will be as crappy as the european one. And the apps as surpar as the ones from the appstore.
Because let’s be honest, apps quality have gone downhill
You do bare minimum, get sued, litigate for few years, pay some fines (that are MUCH less than amount of money they made), then do bare minimum again, etc - rinse and repeat.
And one may argue - it's not malicious compliance. It's just how world is setup for big companies. Any other strategy is leaving huge amount of money on the table - that's not what shareholders want. Unless you're willing to have fines that exceed the profits (and not just say about possibility of those, but actually impose and collect them) it's not going to change.
You know Apple is going to do the bare minimum required to avoid lawsuits or government regulation. It will be as miserable is possible. And now Google and Apple will converge at that point.
“Effective date — The Act shall come into force on the date to be set forth by a Cabinet order within one and a half years after the date of the promulgation of this Act”
Only Incredible Amazing Awesome Apple could manage to ship this change in a year and a half and totally weren't waiting for the last possible moment.
No, it's funny because of the way they feel the need to glaze Apple over doing something Apple are required to do. Very transparent way to avoid writing a headline that is entirely negative about the company these people base their identity around. It really doesn't bear mentioning at all that they will beat the deadline by, like, a week at most.
If anything it should be mentioned in the opposite way, calling out that Apple took as long as possible as an obvious way to spite the requirement, with the week-or-so wiggle room being a buffer in case of a disastrously bad release that might need to be recalled for some reason.
Are there any regions in which they’re not allowed to enforce notarization? Since that effectively preserves their gatekeeper status. Even a lot of the App Store guidelines still apply to notarization.
Notarization is an automated process at the very least, and just speculation, but since entitlements are baked into the codesigning step, it seems meant to prevent software from granting itself entitlements Apple doesn't want 3rd parties having access to.
Apple is a hardware company with proprietary CPUs and such. They have such a moat that if they open sourced their entire OS stack today nobody would be able to do anything with it except by buying their hardware.
But the issue with the app stores is the app fees. Those must be lucrative enough to want to keep that gate for themselves.
Services are super high margin (twice that of hardware), growing quickly year over year, and now make up a big fraction of Apple's overall revenue. Sadly, I think, the days of Apple having the incentives and motivations associated with being primarily a hardware company are well past us—we're at the stage where hardware and OS product decisions reflect a need to drive services revenue, rather than simply making something great that people want to buy.
Services are the second largest revenue steam for Apple, after the iPhone. All other hardware they make is way further down. There's a relevant discussion at [0].
Their services revenue this quarter was their second largest business segment (iPhone #1), but experienced more growth than any other segment (~15% iirc, iPhone was more like 6%). Many onlookers see "Services" and think "Oh wow Apple TV and Apple Music must be doing really well", and that's exactly what Apple wants you to think. In reality, these services are doing good, but my understanding is: that category is utterly dominated by tolls. Their toll-taker position in controlling App Store sales, the fees they charge on Apple Pay transactions, and their revenue from their part in the Apple Card system.
Their genuine services, other than maybe iCloud storage, are small businesses. Consider this: Apple reports $28.7B in quarterly services revenue. Spotify reported $3.8B in quarterly revenue directly from their 281M premium subscribers ($4.3B total) (AM has no free tier). Spotify is, in all likelihood, quite far ahead of AM in subscriber counts; estimates put AM at ~100M. AM also gives away a ton of subscriptions likely at a bulk discount (its included with some Chase credit cards, Verizon Wireless plans, etc); it would surprise me if total AM revenue is higher than $1.5B/q.
This is very true, and this is why we need freedom for our phones. Sadly, the best way of running free software on a modern and feature-complete phone at the moment is to buy a Pixel and flash Graphene.
They have such a moat that if they open sourced their entire OS stack today nobody would be able to do anything with it except by buying their hardware.
That doesn't make much sense, XNU and the layers above it are very portable, they went PowerPC -> x86 -> x86_64 -> ARM64 after all. They also supported multiple different GPUs in the Intel era.
If the entire OS stack was open sourced today, we would have forks running on standard Intel/AMD CPUs in a week. They wouldn't have the same optimized power management, etc. But I think it would have a good chance of wiping out desktop Linux within a brief period.
> I think it would have a good chance of wiping out desktop Linux within a brief period.
Given how polished the Linux desktop experience has become and how much software is available (gaming on Proton in particular), I don't think this is true.
If the entire stack would be open sourced there would be ports, but would there be a market for macOS devices without the optimized power management and device integration Apple offers now?
I'm still hoping some other integrated software/hardware company will stand up and offer the same attention to detail as Apple did. Instead of that everybody's actively enshittifying their own products and complaining Apple is earning so much...
Mu favorite Macos bug (haven’t upgraded to 26 yet, so not sure if it is still a thing):
1. Have Bluetooth on.
2. Turn it off from the menu option, but don’t close the menu.
3. The shortcut to lock the computer don’t work.
It’s been like this for 5+ years.
Funniest thing is if you’re quick enough it’s possible to close the menu using a Bluetooth mouse after BT has been turned off. It’s my daily challenge to pull that off.
The next decade looks like tech vs. governments everywhere. From the article, it seems Apple won’t roll this out worldwide unless forced.
As a user I like Apple’s App Store for security personally, but I wonder how multiple app stores turn out in other regions. I see the EU already allows alternative app marketplaces — has anyone used one and can share their experience?
Apple complied but maliciously in the EU making it very difficult and very expensive to offer apps on alt stores. They also made sure to add scary warnings so one can never offer a normal onboarding flow.
> Apple’s App Store for security
The App Store doesn’t do anything to protect you in that sense. It’s easy to circumvent and these days it’s cheaper to just buy an iOS exploit than go through the trouble of making a shady app.
> Apple complied but maliciously in the EU making it very difficult and very expensive to offer apps on alt stores. They also made sure to add scary warnings so one can never offer a normal onboarding flow.
Even for web distribution in the EU (which they allowed some time ago) they require you to have had an Apple Developer account for at least 2 years and at least one App with more than 1m annunal downloads in the App Store.
So they're forcing you to have a very successful app in their own store before you can distribute yourself, basically making this impossible to actually use. It's such a blatant case of malicious compliance, it's insane.
> The App Store doesn't do anything to product you in that sense. It's easy to circumvent...
Interesting, their marketing has customers believe otherwise, so I wouldn't have thought that as a noob in cybersecurity.
I've submitted an app to the iOS App Store in the past, and the process is tedious and doesn't seem superficial (unlike the Play Store process, which was completely autonomous at the time), so that's another reason why I wouldn't have thought it.
> It’s easy to circumvent and these days it’s cheaper to just buy an iOS exploit than go through the trouble of making a shady app.
But why is that easier? And is it inevitably so or a result of the fact that the boundaries of the one place to install apps from is aggressively policed?
>The App Store doesn’t do anything to protect you in that sense. It’s easy to circumvent and these days it’s cheaper to just buy an iOS exploit than go through the trouble of making a shady app.
Different threat models. If you're the mossad and want to go after someone in particular, yes the exploit is the way to go, but if you're running some run of the mill scam, you're certainly not going to spend 6+ figures on a ios 0day that'll get patched within days.
> They also made sure to add scary warnings so one can never offer a normal onboarding flow.
is this any different from Macs also prompting the user when a downloaded binary is suspicious/not signed properly? or windows when installing it'd flash a screen about trusting what you're installing?
Requires an EU apple account, a faraday bag, two esp32 boards (or other way to spoof hotspots), a VPN with an endpoint in the EU, and an iOS device with a supported OS version.
I have Alt, Epic, and Setapp installed. Setapp is something I had to stop paying for while unemployed, but has good stuff if you can afford it. Alt is mostly empty, but now lets you add multiple sources for more sideloading options.
Basically the market is still in an alpha stage. My next app will be on Alt just because I want to support the idea. Hopefully more apps gets on these stores, for now it's mostly nice to have for games, emulators, and some dev tools.
Apple didn't make it friction-free either, but it seems the issue is lack of user demand and/or lack of supply.
For Setapp, I am kind of forced to pay for it since I use NotePlan and Paste. And I use Timing Tracker sometimes. The first two alone cost the same as a Setapp sub for 4 desktops and 4 iOS devices.
I hate the security argument when it comes to third party stores or apps. No one is putting a gun to your head to install these things. Imagine trying to apply the same logic to macbooks and not let them install from the web or homebrew.
Not put a gun to your head but ring up pretending to be your bank and there’s fraud detected and can you follow these steps to verify your identity and secure your account.
Now that Google has agreed to better support third party stores worldwide in the Epic settlement, the writing is on the wall. It's only a matter of time before Apple is forced to support third party stores in the US and I predict they will change their policy worldwide at that time.
Maybe another solid gold statue to the administration could make that pesky lawsuit go away, though. I'm hoping that shift doesn't come into effect until 2028 to avoid it being mangled or declawed entirely.
I remember the time when Macrumor comment section was full of opinions like "The EU is being unreasonable and that's why EU is so behind in tech" "Why not create your own operating system" blah blah.
Pardon me if this is a basic question but surprised I couldn't find more details regarding it.
What prevents an end user to either buy a japanese vpn and use that to connect to the app store.
I doubt that a vpn running itself inside an ios phone itself would work out of the box but what about if its running at a router level or lets say I use a vpn on another phone and use it to create a hotspot to connect to in an ios phone.
Don't things like these basically allow these rules to effectively break the ios monopoly.
Or think about it this way, lets say I go to japan and install an third party app store and then go back to some other country, would the 3rd party app store still work?
I am also wondering about what mechanism can be used which can make a third party store work in the first place, I know of IOS jailbreaks so would it be similar to it, how would they detect that its in "japan"
Or would these work at a hardware level? That a phone sold in japan would have such features, if that would be the case, I would assume it would increase the values of such phones.
I would appreciate it if people could tell me more about what's the case and answer my questions.
If it’s like for other region-locked features, you’ll need a Japanese Apple account (formerly Apple ID), which likely means a Japanese payment method and/or billing address, and you need to set your iPhone region to Japan. Furthermore, whatever Apple uses for geolocation (it will include mobile cell and wifi metadata) needs to not indicate a location outside of Japan most of the time.
Yeah, they use (from highest to lowest weight) your last reported GPS location, the country codes of nearby cell towers, the country codes of nearby WiFi networks, and the origin country of your SIM/eSIM. Possibly more besides, but at least those.
Is Apple really going to keep playing this game of gatekeeping until legislation forces them not to? I really don't understand how you could remain so stubborn as a company that a system of complex rules across regions is preferable to just making it open and getting with the times.
I've considered an iPhone due to the recent Google announcement w.r.t. code signing but it's still too walled off for me. They need to open up access to third party stores and third party browser engines.
EDIT: yes I understand that we live in a capitalist system that is maximizing profit. My argument is that long term they're going to lose this battle seeing as the EU and Japan have already forced them to play ball. There are two options: remain stagnant and collect app store rent as long as possible or learn to be competitive in this new environment.
> Is Apple really going to keep playing this game of gatekeeping until legislation forces them not to?
By this point it seems pretty clear that they will, at least while Tim Cook is in charge. Other higher ups, specifically Phil Schiller, knew this was a bad idea but were overruled.
Yeah, the fragmentation that is caused by Apple's behaviour is insane.
You can set a different email client globally, but a different default Messages or Maps app? That only works in some regions. In-App payments? You can now basically do whatever you want in the US, in the EU you can opt-in into a different regime, in other regions it's staying the same but who knows for how long.
By fighting this everywhere they're basically losing control over the outcomes and will end up with lot's of different regulations everywhere. Instead of doing the sensible thing and opening up their platform before they're being forced to do so.
1. Apple potentially loses giving ground to regulators before the regulators ask for something. They don't want to allow alternative app stores and then have a regulator say they are also not allowed to mandate royalties for digital good/service sales in their own store. Apple is likely nudging regulators to go a particular way, but is effectively trying to barter.
2. Likewise, individual regulatory bodies solving the issues they see in different ways has and will continue to create complexity in app developers, in some cases meaning their app needs different business models in different countries to take advantage of the individual regulated changes. That is a consequence of regulators pushing Apple to themselves have different business models to fund the App Store in different countries.
3. If Apple doesn't want a feature to be used or thinks the feature is actively harmful, they aren't going to encourage its use by making it available in jurisdictions where it isn't required.
4. Some of these features (such as default maps app) are semi-baked and without industry consensus, but rolled out because they were required for regulatory timelines. I can emphasize with not wanting to roll out broken features where you aren't being required to.
> Is Apple really going to keep playing this game of gatekeeping until legislation forces them not to?
Is Apple going to kill the golden goose unless it is literally forced to? Of course not.
Apple, together with Google, get a cut of 15% to 30% of all mobile app revenue. They have the entire market captured. They will only give that up when they're forced to.
They all will try to gatekeep as much as they can. Google's move made this pretty obvious. They don't need free market and open platform. This is something for some nerdy enthusiasts. Funny that all the new device that are being released lately, like Sidephone or Light Phone; they all do the same thing. And not only they lock you into their OSes, but they even restrict the software that you are allowed to use.
I mean, sure, but it's most likely a myopic analysis trying to keep earnings looking good for next quarter. My personal feeling is that, after seeing the winds shifting, you would figure out how to operate in an open garden and start pivoting now rather than resisting it at every corner.
Only in a quarter to quarter sense. I’ll never give them another cent. I’ve watched large numbers of people go from fans to haters in the last five years especially. I also think at just a fundamental technical level their moat is quickly disappearing.
For app stores specifically, I don't think people would get apps from other App Stores. Alternative App Stores have been possible on Android, some manufacturers even include their own store (Samsung), but only a tiny subset of users installs apps from another app store or from outside the app store.
For me personally, it is mostly an escape hatch for developers and users. It will keep Apple honest, because if they really mess up the platform, people have the possibility to go elsewhere.
I think the bigger risk for Apple is allowing other payment options within apps that are distributed through the App Store (which I believe is now allowed in the EU among other places)? I think the app store is very sticky, but a lot of people would pick another payment option if is ~30% cheaper.
Because doing so would have generated goodwill, which would have lead to a stronger brand and more money in the long term. Instead, they shot themselves in the foot and put themselves in a situation where the launch of a new product (Vision Pro) was an embarrassing and utter failure with lacklustre support from third-parties.
What incentive does Apple have to comply in advance? Every government wants to have their stamp on it, trying to build ahead of the specifications risks building something that is not compliant.
Even if alternative app stores are opened up, there are enough limitations that severely impede the device for me as is. You can't use a VPN and at the same time do service discovery on your local network, for instance. For some services, anyway.
Android will still be able to install apps via ADB, even if the worst rumors are true about the restriction that will be enforced. If Apple allowed installation via some command line utility, that would be a radical opening of the platform.
On the other hand if long ago they backed down and lowered fees and allowed more control, aside from the potential security and privacy concerns that could negatively affect the brand, companies would have just then wanted more. As Epic has said they think they should have to pay nothing for all that Apple provides. So not saying all Apple’s choices and timing were right or best, but giving up previously wouldn’t have prevented all of this but rather just lowered the bar and making it easier for companies and countries to make it easier to lower it even further.
> aside from the potential security and privacy concerns
I make apps both as an indie and during my day job. The App Store review doesn’t do anything to protect the privacy or security of iPhone users. Most of the review is focused on ensuring Apple doesn’t get sued and that you as a developer don’t try to advertise something Apple doesn’t like. The whole idea that the App Store is safer is a marketing thing.
> As Epic has said they think they should have to pay nothing for all that Apple provides.
As they should be. iOS was already paid for when the user bought their device. Mandating a 30% cut on all in-app purchases is double-billing.
Tim Kulak[0] calls this "forcing Apple to give away its technology for free", which is asshole logic. In no sane world would a court consider application developers to be making a derivative work of the OS they port to, so the OS vendor has no legal entitlement to application developers' revenue. The only world in which this stupid 30% cut was even tolerated was, ironically for Epic, games development.
As for privacy and security concerns, I would like to note that Apple has very specific definitions of those words that only marginally interact with your own understanding. To be clear, if you were to modify an iOS app to, say, remove tracking code from it, Apple would consider that a security breach. Even though this is a common thing that we do in web browsers all the time. Because users have their hands tied on iOS in ways that they don't on macOS, they can't fight back against tracking on their phones like they can on their computers.
[0] Term used by the Soviet government to refer to "any rural landowner that didn't cooperate with their disastrous attempts at land collectivization". I'm using it here mainly because it almost-rhymes.
Everything banned in the US is still offered as soon as you step across a border, every gross visual warning mandated in those countries is not implemented in the US
> They need to open up access to third party stores and third party browser engines.
Here in EU they did allow third party stores and all we got were shovelware sites with subscriptions. It added even more friction an shadiness to acquiring apps.
We need to sop pretending iOS third party stores are anything like what we envisioned them to be. They are not f-droid or anything even half as good. Apple complies with this impotent law because the law changes absolutely nothing for end user.
Hardly. They did everything they could to make it completely pointless. Your apps still need to be blessed by apple and you still need to pay them. It's embarrassing the EU is allowing this sham.
The current system gives Apple a 30% cut of every transaction that happens on iOS. Did you really think they'd voluntarily give that up just to be nice?
There are end user benefits to apples approach too, due to better governance and control over what apps are available. Governments also have incentive to maximize their power and are not benevolent actors in this scheme.
Here's a thought experiment. (you may need to ignore reality for a moment or think alternate universe)
Let's say Apple changed the requirements to have an app "pass" the app store rules.
Allowed developers a lower fee for "free" applications, including OSS ones. (It would be nice if this was $0 if the developer was intending to make $0 just to make your platform better, etc.)
Charged a 10% fee to be hosted on the app store instead of 30% (ignore any other fee minutia here, I understand making sure taxes are paid in other countries, etc. I don't expect them to do it out of the goodness of their hearts)
Allow businesses to make revenue without going through Apple. (yes, the year is past 1998, we can all do this now)
I'm ignoring legality for the most part. I also understand there's a provision "for children safety", but that's never really been "for children safety", but some other form of control because children figure out how to bypass it before grownups do. (sorry I'm jaded. I have children that have figured it out).
Would an alternate store even be needed at this point?
How much financial loss do they have due to the other app stores vs the 30% fee difference? Where I come from 10% is greater than 0%.
What about folks making money outside of Apple platforms? Yes, it happens, strange to think otherwise.
Downloading apps? The whole thing is sandboxed, with provisions... how is app store review different here? If I have to say "yes", allow shady apps to access my contacts, does it matter where the app came from?
I don't think third party app stores is the problem. Let people install what they want, and charge less to do so. Change the App Store to show "This hasn't been blessed by Apple", like the Firefox extension store does. Let me install an app I wrote/built without expiring in a week, etc. You could have something like Gatekeeper that says "hey, are you sure you want to run this?". Or, if it's the same self signed cert on my computer and my phone just let me do it. It still protects your user base (I can't imagine the support calls), without stopping folks that "know what I'm doing". You'd have a walled garden for those that want it, but a nice footpath for those that don't. It doesn't have to be on or off, it can be both.
I'm thinking Apple has much more to lose here. I'd bet in the billions. A perspective shift could have avoided this. Think different :)
I don't really want multiple app stores all over my device. A world where if you want an application, you first need to install each developer's "store app" is a step backwards. Look at what happened on Windows. I can't just install Fortnite. No, I have to get the "Epic Games Store" and then use that to install and launch it. A lot of other games also have their own "launcher" now, too which is just a thinly veiled store that you have to launch before you run what you really want.
I just want to take the iOS equivalent of an EXE or APK, load it onto the phone, and be done with it. I don't want fucking stores all over the place.
I'm not much of an iOS gamer, but I also wasn't a big fan of the corporate pissing match between the two companies. There was no technical reason Epic couldn't compile Fortnite for iOS--they just wanted to put their "store" in the way. Which is what I'm really against: I don't want crapware stores all over my device as a prerequisite for installing software.
This is technically possible in the EU (through web distribution[1] of Apps), but intentionally made impossible to actually use by Apple. They require the developer to have had an Apple Developer account for at least 2 years and at least one App with more than 1m annunal downloads in the App Store.
Sometimes you need to take a step backward to go forward. By 'going back' to allowing third party stores and apps, you have introduced competition, and realistically, one of them becomes the defacto one that is easy for both developers and users. On my android, I have lots of sideloaded apps that come from different sources, however since F-droid allows you to connect lots of 'stores' to it, I only have one app store app, as I have connected 5 app repositiories to F-droid. This is a huge win, because most of my apps come from F-droid, but there are those few that require different repos to get, as well a the few that I can install without a store at all, by just installing the APK I grabbed from the official site.
Apple's store could allow these features, but since it undermines their anti-competitive practices, law has to come in to temporarily inconvenience you, so that your and everyone else's lives can be better. It'll just take some time though, because Apple goes out of their way to conform to new regulations as minimally as possible, to the point of completely missing the point of the regulation when possible.
I hate this. If I wanted a race-to-the-bottom malware ecosystem, I’d buy Android.
This helps the tens-of-thousands fart app developers and ultimately hurts quality developers making privacy sensitive apps for well-heeled customers who gladly sign up for fat subscriptions if the value is there.
The people who want to prostrate themselves for tech giant "security" paternalism can still use the first-party app store. The people who don't want to give up freedom for security should have the choice not to do so.
It also helps the developers of apps that Apple can't or won't approve. Apps like ICEBlock could still work just fine using alternative app stores that have backbone.
Actual security / privacy person here. The iOS ecosystem is much much much worse than people currently think of it as. This is primarily due to adware SDKs and in-app browsers that Apple has done absolutely nothing to address.
I see someone really gulped down that Apple kool-aid.
Your life is absolutely untouched by having other store options. And privacy is maintained by the granularity of the permissions, the manual review process is generally a joke and it changes like the weather.
If your social network is only available on a store not respecting your privacy and it's normalized people install stuff from there it's a loss for you since you don't have the option for the app that's compliant with Apple's privacy rules.
Either you give in to more privacy violations or you give up being able to speak to part of your social network easily.
Don't worry, Google is making the opposite move to lock down Android, whereby now app developers have to get notarized and anyone who distributes apps Google doesn't like gets fucked.
Personally, every time I hear Apple fans talk about Android users "trying to turn their iPhone into Android because they bought the wrong device", I groan. Because over the last ten years, while Apple has more or less hasn't budged on their shitty security policy[0], Google has been stumbling head over heels trying to turn every Android into a shittier iPhone.
As for the "race to the bottom malware ecosystem", you don't need to sideload at all to get pwned on Android. That's enabled by Google themselves, because Google Play - what is supposed to be the vetted and secure place to obtain software - is absolutely chock full of scamware. If the app store is the "default", or only option, its business model doesn't actually punish the store for failing its users' trust.
In fact, while Google is demonstrably worse at every aspect running an app store, Apple's own store isn't much better. Sure, Apple can stringently review and deny app submissions from a new developer, but large established megacorporations get all sorts of special treatment on Apple devices. Think about how they made an example out of Tumblr, compared to how they manage Reddit, Twitter, or any Facebook-owned[1] app. Or how Apple blatantly violates their own ATT guidelines by not letting us turn off their own first-party tracking[2]. Or worse, how Roblox's core business model violates basically all the App Store rules and nobody at Apple seems to care, even though that app is basically a child predator's best friend. The iOS App Store is also a race-to-the-bottom malware ecosystem.
[0] To paraphrase, "Users can't be trusted not to fall for scams, and also they will rape developers, so we should have total control over their phones".
For the record, "rape developers" means "modify software in a way those developers don't like", which is "rape" in the same sense that your VCR is a home-invading rapist.
[1] It is always ethical to deadname corporations.
[2] In fact, this is so blatantly anti-competitive, the EU is mulling over - I shit ye not - forcing Apple to get rid of opt-in consent to level the playing field. Which itself sounds like a GDPR violation.
Two separate levers determine how meaningful this is: distribution friction and runtime parity. Distribution friction = install prompts, default store, ability to deep-link to a store listing, auto-updates, and payment flows. Runtime parity = access to the same OS APIs/entitlements (push, background tasks, NFC, etc.) without extra fees.
If Apple keeps scary interstitials, disables auto-updates for non–App Store apps, or taxes critical entitlements, you get malicious compliance. If regulators require neutral prompts, update parity, and ban API tolls, alternative stores become viable—even if only for niches (thin-margin games, enterprise, open-source).
The metric to watch isn’t “are alt stores allowed,” but how many taps from web → install → update. If that gets close to App Store levels, behavior will follow. If not, it’s the EU story all over again.
The whole concept of “third party App Store” is just to add friction to the whole thing.
Alice wants to use a program made by Bob. Apple won’t allow Alice to do so unless Bob pays a fee to Apple. With third party app stores, they’re just allowing _different_ middlemen. What we actually want is to be rid of middlemen imposing arbitrary restrictions on how Alice can use her own device.
I prefer middlemen, especially for something like a phone. But even on a server I would rather be limited to using the OS packages from official repositories, and have a process in place if i need to compile something myself, I also think that process should be more involved than simply running as root.
I am afraid that making it too easy to install anything you want on modern smartphones is going to be a problem. Imagine how many are going to end up in botnets.
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> What we actually want is to be rid of middlemen imposing arbitrary restrictions on how Alice can use her own device
Isn’t it difficult to do this without rolling out a welcome mat for NSO et al?
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Sideloading is nice and good but realistically most users are just gonna go to app stores, because they make things easy and convenient.
Users actively don’t want that. This is how millions of users get malware on their phones.
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To go one step beyond, here a simple way to view it that doesn't trigger the usual "it's a one store per app bonanza issue" : would a steam store work and be properly usable ? I use steam because it's one major "app" store (though on desktop) that is very large, not based on specific ethics nor to a specific manufacturer nor OS developper
One problem is that Apple still requires that they notarize each single app on alternative app stores, and reserve the right to refuse apps for security reasons, so a large third-party app store would still be handicapped compared to an independent operation like Steam.
> the usual "it's a one store per app bonanza issue"
What do you mean "usual"? Android had always had app stores without too many restrictions (though for a long time it was complicated to have auto updates) and it's never been a problem.
On which platform did this happen?
> would a steam store work and be properly usable
I think there would be a few different models. Epic, of course, would lead as a gaming store, but I could easily see competition between Epic and Steam for this space. But there could also be other audience-focused stores as well, such as for creative professionals, like we had prior to iPhones. Then there's also suite apps that will maintain their own stores as well.
Just because Apple locked down the entirety of the mobile app world for 20 years, and told us we didn't want alternatives, doesn't mean it won't happen. If anything, it's evidence to the contrary.
Apple priorities are and have always been:
Apple first Users second Developers third
Not only that they still live with ptsd from the times when they almost disappeared, and will do everything in their power to keep as much revenue as they can squeeze.
Because of this, the Japan appstore will be as crappy as the european one. And the apps as surpar as the ones from the appstore.
Because let’s be honest, apps quality have gone downhill
You do bare minimum, get sued, litigate for few years, pay some fines (that are MUCH less than amount of money they made), then do bare minimum again, etc - rinse and repeat.
And one may argue - it's not malicious compliance. It's just how world is setup for big companies. Any other strategy is leaving huge amount of money on the table - that's not what shareholders want. Unless you're willing to have fines that exceed the profits (and not just say about possibility of those, but actually impose and collect them) it's not going to change.
You know Apple is going to do the bare minimum required to avoid lawsuits or government regulation. It will be as miserable is possible. And now Google and Apple will converge at that point.
This is one of the funniest headlines I've seen in a while RE: “ahead of regulatory deadline”, because deadline is the new year.
Citation: https://www.jftc.go.jp/file/240612EN3.pdf (June 2024)
“Effective date — The Act shall come into force on the date to be set forth by a Cabinet order within one and a half years after the date of the promulgation of this Act”
Only Incredible Amazing Awesome Apple could manage to ship this change in a year and a half and totally weren't waiting for the last possible moment.
> This is one of the funniest headlines I've seen in a while RE: “ahead of regulatory deadline”, because deadline is the new year.
So you are saying that headline is funny because it is correct?
No, it's funny because of the way they feel the need to glaze Apple over doing something Apple are required to do. Very transparent way to avoid writing a headline that is entirely negative about the company these people base their identity around. It really doesn't bear mentioning at all that they will beat the deadline by, like, a week at most.
If anything it should be mentioned in the opposite way, calling out that Apple took as long as possible as an obvious way to spite the requirement, with the week-or-so wiggle room being a buffer in case of a disastrously bad release that might need to be recalled for some reason.
Are there any regions in which they’re not allowed to enforce notarization? Since that effectively preserves their gatekeeper status. Even a lot of the App Store guidelines still apply to notarization.
Notarization means they still have a say on which app is allowed to run or not.
This goes against the spirit of the DMA, which was supposed to 'open up' 3rd party stores.
The European Commission does not seem to care atm that Apple is still the gatekeeper.
The European Commission does not seem to care atm that Apple is still the gatekeeper.
I think the European Commission is threading the needle, trying to find a path to uphold the DMA/DSA while not provoking another tariff war.
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Notarization is an automated process at the very least, and just speculation, but since entitlements are baked into the codesigning step, it seems meant to prevent software from granting itself entitlements Apple doesn't want 3rd parties having access to.
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Apple is a hardware company with proprietary CPUs and such. They have such a moat that if they open sourced their entire OS stack today nobody would be able to do anything with it except by buying their hardware.
But the issue with the app stores is the app fees. Those must be lucrative enough to want to keep that gate for themselves.
Services are super high margin (twice that of hardware), growing quickly year over year, and now make up a big fraction of Apple's overall revenue. Sadly, I think, the days of Apple having the incentives and motivations associated with being primarily a hardware company are well past us—we're at the stage where hardware and OS product decisions reflect a need to drive services revenue, rather than simply making something great that people want to buy.
App Store revenue is essentially infinite margin. Selling gambling games to children is essentially free money for them.
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Services are the second largest revenue steam for Apple, after the iPhone. All other hardware they make is way further down. There's a relevant discussion at [0].
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45764986
And this is why it should be taken away from them. They will make better hardware without it.
Their services revenue this quarter was their second largest business segment (iPhone #1), but experienced more growth than any other segment (~15% iirc, iPhone was more like 6%). Many onlookers see "Services" and think "Oh wow Apple TV and Apple Music must be doing really well", and that's exactly what Apple wants you to think. In reality, these services are doing good, but my understanding is: that category is utterly dominated by tolls. Their toll-taker position in controlling App Store sales, the fees they charge on Apple Pay transactions, and their revenue from their part in the Apple Card system.
Their genuine services, other than maybe iCloud storage, are small businesses. Consider this: Apple reports $28.7B in quarterly services revenue. Spotify reported $3.8B in quarterly revenue directly from their 281M premium subscribers ($4.3B total) (AM has no free tier). Spotify is, in all likelihood, quite far ahead of AM in subscriber counts; estimates put AM at ~100M. AM also gives away a ton of subscriptions likely at a bulk discount (its included with some Chase credit cards, Verizon Wireless plans, etc); it would surprise me if total AM revenue is higher than $1.5B/q.
$20B+ of that service revenue per year is free money from Google.
This is very true, and this is why we need freedom for our phones. Sadly, the best way of running free software on a modern and feature-complete phone at the moment is to buy a Pixel and flash Graphene.
They have such a moat that if they open sourced their entire OS stack today nobody would be able to do anything with it except by buying their hardware.
That doesn't make much sense, XNU and the layers above it are very portable, they went PowerPC -> x86 -> x86_64 -> ARM64 after all. They also supported multiple different GPUs in the Intel era.
If the entire OS stack was open sourced today, we would have forks running on standard Intel/AMD CPUs in a week. They wouldn't have the same optimized power management, etc. But I think it would have a good chance of wiping out desktop Linux within a brief period.
macOS/iOS are part of the moat.
> I think it would have a good chance of wiping out desktop Linux within a brief period.
Given how polished the Linux desktop experience has become and how much software is available (gaming on Proton in particular), I don't think this is true.
If the entire stack would be open sourced there would be ports, but would there be a market for macOS devices without the optimized power management and device integration Apple offers now?
I'm still hoping some other integrated software/hardware company will stand up and offer the same attention to detail as Apple did. Instead of that everybody's actively enshittifying their own products and complaining Apple is earning so much...
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> wiping out desktop Linux
Doubt. I couldn't figure out how to do windows management under macOS to save my life. This is so needlessly obscure and inconsistent.
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According to the first Google result they had a revenue of 10 billion dollars in app store fees in 2024.
Here is a joke for you all. How do you keep a floor clean?
Tell MacRumors it's Tim Cook's boot.
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/ios-26-2-to-allow-third...
There are zero mentions of Cook in that thread.
It's a thought-terminating cliché common in online circles "bootlicker" "corporate overlords" etc. etc.
Has nothing to do with reality and more just a bunch of young kids who found another tech forum to perform their political whining on.
Eternal September wherever you go.
Tim Cook has shown everybody what he is good at. It’s not running a user-first computer company. It’s time for him to be shown the door.
Can’t even scroll right in the text editor. Trillion-dollar company.
The stockholders have something different to say about that. He's been a cash cow for them and that's how the game is played.
It's really hard to be a publicly-traded corporation and user-first. Those goals are often at odds with each other.
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Mu favorite Macos bug (haven’t upgraded to 26 yet, so not sure if it is still a thing):
1. Have Bluetooth on.
2. Turn it off from the menu option, but don’t close the menu.
3. The shortcut to lock the computer don’t work.
It’s been like this for 5+ years.
Funniest thing is if you’re quick enough it’s possible to close the menu using a Bluetooth mouse after BT has been turned off. It’s my daily challenge to pull that off.
Wish I could be as miserable a failure as him
Nonono, you have to tell MacRumors that Bloomberg reported that it was Tim Cook’s boot in this week’s Power On newsletter.
Then that floor will be so clean you could do open heart surgery on it.
The next decade looks like tech vs. governments everywhere. From the article, it seems Apple won’t roll this out worldwide unless forced.
As a user I like Apple’s App Store for security personally, but I wonder how multiple app stores turn out in other regions. I see the EU already allows alternative app marketplaces — has anyone used one and can share their experience?
Apple complied but maliciously in the EU making it very difficult and very expensive to offer apps on alt stores. They also made sure to add scary warnings so one can never offer a normal onboarding flow.
> Apple’s App Store for security
The App Store doesn’t do anything to protect you in that sense. It’s easy to circumvent and these days it’s cheaper to just buy an iOS exploit than go through the trouble of making a shady app.
> Apple complied but maliciously in the EU making it very difficult and very expensive to offer apps on alt stores. They also made sure to add scary warnings so one can never offer a normal onboarding flow.
Even for web distribution in the EU (which they allowed some time ago) they require you to have had an Apple Developer account for at least 2 years and at least one App with more than 1m annunal downloads in the App Store.
So they're forcing you to have a very successful app in their own store before you can distribute yourself, basically making this impossible to actually use. It's such a blatant case of malicious compliance, it's insane.
> The App Store doesn't do anything to product you in that sense. It's easy to circumvent...
Interesting, their marketing has customers believe otherwise, so I wouldn't have thought that as a noob in cybersecurity.
I've submitted an app to the iOS App Store in the past, and the process is tedious and doesn't seem superficial (unlike the Play Store process, which was completely autonomous at the time), so that's another reason why I wouldn't have thought it.
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> It’s easy to circumvent and these days it’s cheaper to just buy an iOS exploit than go through the trouble of making a shady app.
But why is that easier? And is it inevitably so or a result of the fact that the boundaries of the one place to install apps from is aggressively policed?
> these days it’s cheaper to just buy an iOS exploit than go through the trouble of making a shady app.
"Look, you do not need a front door, and definitely not one with a lock on it. After all anybody could machine-gun you down through your windows."
>The App Store doesn’t do anything to protect you in that sense. It’s easy to circumvent and these days it’s cheaper to just buy an iOS exploit than go through the trouble of making a shady app.
Different threat models. If you're the mossad and want to go after someone in particular, yes the exploit is the way to go, but if you're running some run of the mill scam, you're certainly not going to spend 6+ figures on a ios 0day that'll get patched within days.
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> They also made sure to add scary warnings so one can never offer a normal onboarding flow.
is this any different from Macs also prompting the user when a downloaded binary is suspicious/not signed properly? or windows when installing it'd flash a screen about trusting what you're installing?
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If you want to try it for yourself, you can. https://downrightnifty.me/blog/2025/02/27/eu-features-outsid...
Requires an EU apple account, a faraday bag, two esp32 boards (or other way to spoof hotspots), a VPN with an endpoint in the EU, and an iOS device with a supported OS version.
Sounds grand. I'll have my 80yo grandparent try it tonight.
I have Alt, Epic, and Setapp installed. Setapp is something I had to stop paying for while unemployed, but has good stuff if you can afford it. Alt is mostly empty, but now lets you add multiple sources for more sideloading options.
Basically the market is still in an alpha stage. My next app will be on Alt just because I want to support the idea. Hopefully more apps gets on these stores, for now it's mostly nice to have for games, emulators, and some dev tools.
Apple didn't make it friction-free either, but it seems the issue is lack of user demand and/or lack of supply.
For Setapp, I am kind of forced to pay for it since I use NotePlan and Paste. And I use Timing Tracker sometimes. The first two alone cost the same as a Setapp sub for 4 desktops and 4 iOS devices.
I should try Alt out again with you reminding me.
I hate the security argument when it comes to third party stores or apps. No one is putting a gun to your head to install these things. Imagine trying to apply the same logic to macbooks and not let them install from the web or homebrew.
I dont even get it. Apps require system prompts for access to local network, files, etc. Whats the security issue?
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Not put a gun to your head but ring up pretending to be your bank and there’s fraud detected and can you follow these steps to verify your identity and secure your account.
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Now that Google has agreed to better support third party stores worldwide in the Epic settlement, the writing is on the wall. It's only a matter of time before Apple is forced to support third party stores in the US and I predict they will change their policy worldwide at that time.
Maybe another solid gold statue to the administration could make that pesky lawsuit go away, though. I'm hoping that shift doesn't come into effect until 2028 to avoid it being mangled or declawed entirely.
I remember the time when Macrumor comment section was full of opinions like "The EU is being unreasonable and that's why EU is so behind in tech" "Why not create your own operating system" blah blah.
How the table has turned.
Those comments are still plentiful on MacRumors.
Still, 'Why not create your own operating system'?
Terry a davis did and look what happened to him.
Linux??? KDE was German
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Pardon me if this is a basic question but surprised I couldn't find more details regarding it.
What prevents an end user to either buy a japanese vpn and use that to connect to the app store.
I doubt that a vpn running itself inside an ios phone itself would work out of the box but what about if its running at a router level or lets say I use a vpn on another phone and use it to create a hotspot to connect to in an ios phone.
Don't things like these basically allow these rules to effectively break the ios monopoly.
Or think about it this way, lets say I go to japan and install an third party app store and then go back to some other country, would the 3rd party app store still work?
I am also wondering about what mechanism can be used which can make a third party store work in the first place, I know of IOS jailbreaks so would it be similar to it, how would they detect that its in "japan"
Or would these work at a hardware level? That a phone sold in japan would have such features, if that would be the case, I would assume it would increase the values of such phones.
I would appreciate it if people could tell me more about what's the case and answer my questions.
If it’s like for other region-locked features, you’ll need a Japanese Apple account (formerly Apple ID), which likely means a Japanese payment method and/or billing address, and you need to set your iPhone region to Japan. Furthermore, whatever Apple uses for geolocation (it will include mobile cell and wifi metadata) needs to not indicate a location outside of Japan most of the time.
A VPN doesn’t cut it.
And if they don’t match? Let’s say all of those parmeters indicated a different country…
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Here are people documenting what they had to do for this, in both cases it necessitated the use of Faraday cages:
https://downrightnifty.me/blog/2025/02/27/eu-features-outsid...
https://lagrangepoint.substack.com/p/airpods-hearing-aid-hac...
there's an entire daemon dedicated to making sure you're not trying to bypass apple's business model, using every phone sensor possible
just a VPN alone won't fool it
Yeah, they use (from highest to lowest weight) your last reported GPS location, the country codes of nearby cell towers, the country codes of nearby WiFi networks, and the origin country of your SIM/eSIM. Possibly more besides, but at least those.
Open a terminal on your Mac and type `man 8 countryd`. Apple documents the daemon for determining your country.
Is Apple really going to keep playing this game of gatekeeping until legislation forces them not to? I really don't understand how you could remain so stubborn as a company that a system of complex rules across regions is preferable to just making it open and getting with the times.
I've considered an iPhone due to the recent Google announcement w.r.t. code signing but it's still too walled off for me. They need to open up access to third party stores and third party browser engines.
EDIT: yes I understand that we live in a capitalist system that is maximizing profit. My argument is that long term they're going to lose this battle seeing as the EU and Japan have already forced them to play ball. There are two options: remain stagnant and collect app store rent as long as possible or learn to be competitive in this new environment.
> Is Apple really going to keep playing this game of gatekeeping until legislation forces them not to?
By this point it seems pretty clear that they will, at least while Tim Cook is in charge. Other higher ups, specifically Phil Schiller, knew this was a bad idea but were overruled.
https://www.macrumors.com/2025/02/25/apples-phil-schiller-co...
Yeah, the fragmentation that is caused by Apple's behaviour is insane.
You can set a different email client globally, but a different default Messages or Maps app? That only works in some regions. In-App payments? You can now basically do whatever you want in the US, in the EU you can opt-in into a different regime, in other regions it's staying the same but who knows for how long.
By fighting this everywhere they're basically losing control over the outcomes and will end up with lot's of different regulations everywhere. Instead of doing the sensible thing and opening up their platform before they're being forced to do so.
Four points:
1. Apple potentially loses giving ground to regulators before the regulators ask for something. They don't want to allow alternative app stores and then have a regulator say they are also not allowed to mandate royalties for digital good/service sales in their own store. Apple is likely nudging regulators to go a particular way, but is effectively trying to barter.
2. Likewise, individual regulatory bodies solving the issues they see in different ways has and will continue to create complexity in app developers, in some cases meaning their app needs different business models in different countries to take advantage of the individual regulated changes. That is a consequence of regulators pushing Apple to themselves have different business models to fund the App Store in different countries.
3. If Apple doesn't want a feature to be used or thinks the feature is actively harmful, they aren't going to encourage its use by making it available in jurisdictions where it isn't required.
4. Some of these features (such as default maps app) are semi-baked and without industry consensus, but rolled out because they were required for regulatory timelines. I can emphasize with not wanting to roll out broken features where you aren't being required to.
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Apple preferences users over developers all the time. And users are represented by their local governments.
> Is Apple really going to keep playing this game of gatekeeping until legislation forces them not to?
Is Apple going to kill the golden goose unless it is literally forced to? Of course not.
Apple, together with Google, get a cut of 15% to 30% of all mobile app revenue. They have the entire market captured. They will only give that up when they're forced to.
Google has allowed alternate app stores for a long time though. Just being the default is good enough to capture a lot of revenue.
They all will try to gatekeep as much as they can. Google's move made this pretty obvious. They don't need free market and open platform. This is something for some nerdy enthusiasts. Funny that all the new device that are being released lately, like Sidephone or Light Phone; they all do the same thing. And not only they lock you into their OSes, but they even restrict the software that you are allowed to use.
Presumably they did a cost/benefit analysis and think it is more profitable this way?
I mean, sure, but it's most likely a myopic analysis trying to keep earnings looking good for next quarter. My personal feeling is that, after seeing the winds shifting, you would figure out how to operate in an open garden and start pivoting now rather than resisting it at every corner.
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Only in a quarter to quarter sense. I’ll never give them another cent. I’ve watched large numbers of people go from fans to haters in the last five years especially. I also think at just a fundamental technical level their moat is quickly disappearing.
Tim Cook must go: he failed at preserving their gatekeeping, and failed at opening it in an honorable manner.
Apple makes over $10B from App Store commissions in the US alone, why would they reduce their profits unless forced to do so?
For app stores specifically, I don't think people would get apps from other App Stores. Alternative App Stores have been possible on Android, some manufacturers even include their own store (Samsung), but only a tiny subset of users installs apps from another app store or from outside the app store.
For me personally, it is mostly an escape hatch for developers and users. It will keep Apple honest, because if they really mess up the platform, people have the possibility to go elsewhere.
I think the bigger risk for Apple is allowing other payment options within apps that are distributed through the App Store (which I believe is now allowed in the EU among other places)? I think the app store is very sticky, but a lot of people would pick another payment option if is ~30% cheaper.
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Because doing so would have generated goodwill, which would have lead to a stronger brand and more money in the long term. Instead, they shot themselves in the foot and put themselves in a situation where the launch of a new product (Vision Pro) was an embarrassing and utter failure with lacklustre support from third-parties.
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What incentive does Apple have to comply in advance? Every government wants to have their stamp on it, trying to build ahead of the specifications risks building something that is not compliant.
Even if alternative app stores are opened up, there are enough limitations that severely impede the device for me as is. You can't use a VPN and at the same time do service discovery on your local network, for instance. For some services, anyway.
> I've considered an iPhone due to the recent Google announcement w.r.t. code signing
You might want to get informed about the hurdles Apple puts in your way first.
Android will still be able to install apps via ADB, even if the worst rumors are true about the restriction that will be enforced. If Apple allowed installation via some command line utility, that would be a radical opening of the platform.
Is Apple really going to leave all that money on the table until obligated? No.
On the other hand if long ago they backed down and lowered fees and allowed more control, aside from the potential security and privacy concerns that could negatively affect the brand, companies would have just then wanted more. As Epic has said they think they should have to pay nothing for all that Apple provides. So not saying all Apple’s choices and timing were right or best, but giving up previously wouldn’t have prevented all of this but rather just lowered the bar and making it easier for companies and countries to make it easier to lower it even further.
> aside from the potential security and privacy concerns
I make apps both as an indie and during my day job. The App Store review doesn’t do anything to protect the privacy or security of iPhone users. Most of the review is focused on ensuring Apple doesn’t get sued and that you as a developer don’t try to advertise something Apple doesn’t like. The whole idea that the App Store is safer is a marketing thing.
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> As Epic has said they think they should have to pay nothing for all that Apple provides.
As they should be. iOS was already paid for when the user bought their device. Mandating a 30% cut on all in-app purchases is double-billing.
Tim Kulak[0] calls this "forcing Apple to give away its technology for free", which is asshole logic. In no sane world would a court consider application developers to be making a derivative work of the OS they port to, so the OS vendor has no legal entitlement to application developers' revenue. The only world in which this stupid 30% cut was even tolerated was, ironically for Epic, games development.
As for privacy and security concerns, I would like to note that Apple has very specific definitions of those words that only marginally interact with your own understanding. To be clear, if you were to modify an iOS app to, say, remove tracking code from it, Apple would consider that a security breach. Even though this is a common thing that we do in web browsers all the time. Because users have their hands tied on iOS in ways that they don't on macOS, they can't fight back against tracking on their phones like they can on their computers.
[0] Term used by the Soviet government to refer to "any rural landowner that didn't cooperate with their disastrous attempts at land collectivization". I'm using it here mainly because it almost-rhymes.
> As Epic has said they think they should have to pay nothing for all that Apple provides.
I agree with this assuming what Epic Games wants is to be able to distribute their software themselves without Apple being in the loop
Do you 'really not understand' that they only want to maximize profit?
Not only want, but this is what they must do in interest of shareholders.
Cigarette companies do this everywhere
And they’re just the most visible
Everything banned in the US is still offered as soon as you step across a border, every gross visual warning mandated in those countries is not implemented in the US
> They need to open up access to third party stores and third party browser engines.
Here in EU they did allow third party stores and all we got were shovelware sites with subscriptions. It added even more friction an shadiness to acquiring apps.
We need to sop pretending iOS third party stores are anything like what we envisioned them to be. They are not f-droid or anything even half as good. Apple complies with this impotent law because the law changes absolutely nothing for end user.
> Here in EU they did allow third party stores
Hardly. They did everything they could to make it completely pointless. Your apps still need to be blessed by apple and you still need to pay them. It's embarrassing the EU is allowing this sham.
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The current system gives Apple a 30% cut of every transaction that happens on iOS. Did you really think they'd voluntarily give that up just to be nice?
There are end user benefits to apples approach too, due to better governance and control over what apps are available. Governments also have incentive to maximize their power and are not benevolent actors in this scheme.
Here's a thought experiment. (you may need to ignore reality for a moment or think alternate universe)
Let's say Apple changed the requirements to have an app "pass" the app store rules. Allowed developers a lower fee for "free" applications, including OSS ones. (It would be nice if this was $0 if the developer was intending to make $0 just to make your platform better, etc.) Charged a 10% fee to be hosted on the app store instead of 30% (ignore any other fee minutia here, I understand making sure taxes are paid in other countries, etc. I don't expect them to do it out of the goodness of their hearts) Allow businesses to make revenue without going through Apple. (yes, the year is past 1998, we can all do this now) I'm ignoring legality for the most part. I also understand there's a provision "for children safety", but that's never really been "for children safety", but some other form of control because children figure out how to bypass it before grownups do. (sorry I'm jaded. I have children that have figured it out).
Would an alternate store even be needed at this point? How much financial loss do they have due to the other app stores vs the 30% fee difference? Where I come from 10% is greater than 0%. What about folks making money outside of Apple platforms? Yes, it happens, strange to think otherwise. Downloading apps? The whole thing is sandboxed, with provisions... how is app store review different here? If I have to say "yes", allow shady apps to access my contacts, does it matter where the app came from?
I don't think third party app stores is the problem. Let people install what they want, and charge less to do so. Change the App Store to show "This hasn't been blessed by Apple", like the Firefox extension store does. Let me install an app I wrote/built without expiring in a week, etc. You could have something like Gatekeeper that says "hey, are you sure you want to run this?". Or, if it's the same self signed cert on my computer and my phone just let me do it. It still protects your user base (I can't imagine the support calls), without stopping folks that "know what I'm doing". You'd have a walled garden for those that want it, but a nice footpath for those that don't. It doesn't have to be on or off, it can be both.
I'm thinking Apple has much more to lose here. I'd bet in the billions. A perspective shift could have avoided this. Think different :)
No word on being able to turn off "transparency" (really translucent), as opposed to muting it. Until then, I'm staying on 18.
There has to be a catch. Apple would never give in without malicious compliance to the hilt.
Is there an update on the malicious compliance from Apple in the EU?
I don't really want multiple app stores all over my device. A world where if you want an application, you first need to install each developer's "store app" is a step backwards. Look at what happened on Windows. I can't just install Fortnite. No, I have to get the "Epic Games Store" and then use that to install and launch it. A lot of other games also have their own "launcher" now, too which is just a thinly veiled store that you have to launch before you run what you really want.
I just want to take the iOS equivalent of an EXE or APK, load it onto the phone, and be done with it. I don't want fucking stores all over the place.
> I can't just install Fortnite.
You couldn't install it at all on iOS for 4 years.
To your point, you were fine with that, you'll be fine with forgoing anything that's not in Apple's AppStore.
I'm not much of an iOS gamer, but I also wasn't a big fan of the corporate pissing match between the two companies. There was no technical reason Epic couldn't compile Fortnite for iOS--they just wanted to put their "store" in the way. Which is what I'm really against: I don't want crapware stores all over my device as a prerequisite for installing software.
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This is technically possible in the EU (through web distribution[1] of Apps), but intentionally made impossible to actually use by Apple. They require the developer to have had an Apple Developer account for at least 2 years and at least one App with more than 1m annunal downloads in the App Store.
[1] https://developer.apple.com/support/web-distribution-eu/
Isn't this same as Fortnite windows situation?; windows allows exe but Epic still forces the store.
Sometimes you need to take a step backward to go forward. By 'going back' to allowing third party stores and apps, you have introduced competition, and realistically, one of them becomes the defacto one that is easy for both developers and users. On my android, I have lots of sideloaded apps that come from different sources, however since F-droid allows you to connect lots of 'stores' to it, I only have one app store app, as I have connected 5 app repositiories to F-droid. This is a huge win, because most of my apps come from F-droid, but there are those few that require different repos to get, as well a the few that I can install without a store at all, by just installing the APK I grabbed from the official site. Apple's store could allow these features, but since it undermines their anti-competitive practices, law has to come in to temporarily inconvenience you, so that your and everyone else's lives can be better. It'll just take some time though, because Apple goes out of their way to conform to new regulations as minimally as possible, to the point of completely missing the point of the regulation when possible.
Now to have it everywhere, not just in specific spaces or Apple approved “independent app stores”.
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I hate this. If I wanted a race-to-the-bottom malware ecosystem, I’d buy Android.
This helps the tens-of-thousands fart app developers and ultimately hurts quality developers making privacy sensitive apps for well-heeled customers who gladly sign up for fat subscriptions if the value is there.
The people who want to prostrate themselves for tech giant "security" paternalism can still use the first-party app store. The people who don't want to give up freedom for security should have the choice not to do so.
It also helps the developers of apps that Apple can't or won't approve. Apps like ICEBlock could still work just fine using alternative app stores that have backbone.
Actual security / privacy person here. The iOS ecosystem is much much much worse than people currently think of it as. This is primarily due to adware SDKs and in-app browsers that Apple has done absolutely nothing to address.
And it's still better than Android in that regard...
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I see someone really gulped down that Apple kool-aid.
Your life is absolutely untouched by having other store options. And privacy is maintained by the granularity of the permissions, the manual review process is generally a joke and it changes like the weather.
If your social network is only available on a store not respecting your privacy and it's normalized people install stuff from there it's a loss for you since you don't have the option for the app that's compliant with Apple's privacy rules. Either you give in to more privacy violations or you give up being able to speak to part of your social network easily.
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Helping tens of thousands and developers sounds like a good trade.
Don't worry, Google is making the opposite move to lock down Android, whereby now app developers have to get notarized and anyone who distributes apps Google doesn't like gets fucked.
Personally, every time I hear Apple fans talk about Android users "trying to turn their iPhone into Android because they bought the wrong device", I groan. Because over the last ten years, while Apple has more or less hasn't budged on their shitty security policy[0], Google has been stumbling head over heels trying to turn every Android into a shittier iPhone.
As for the "race to the bottom malware ecosystem", you don't need to sideload at all to get pwned on Android. That's enabled by Google themselves, because Google Play - what is supposed to be the vetted and secure place to obtain software - is absolutely chock full of scamware. If the app store is the "default", or only option, its business model doesn't actually punish the store for failing its users' trust.
In fact, while Google is demonstrably worse at every aspect running an app store, Apple's own store isn't much better. Sure, Apple can stringently review and deny app submissions from a new developer, but large established megacorporations get all sorts of special treatment on Apple devices. Think about how they made an example out of Tumblr, compared to how they manage Reddit, Twitter, or any Facebook-owned[1] app. Or how Apple blatantly violates their own ATT guidelines by not letting us turn off their own first-party tracking[2]. Or worse, how Roblox's core business model violates basically all the App Store rules and nobody at Apple seems to care, even though that app is basically a child predator's best friend. The iOS App Store is also a race-to-the-bottom malware ecosystem.
[0] To paraphrase, "Users can't be trusted not to fall for scams, and also they will rape developers, so we should have total control over their phones".
For the record, "rape developers" means "modify software in a way those developers don't like", which is "rape" in the same sense that your VCR is a home-invading rapist.
[1] It is always ethical to deadname corporations.
[2] In fact, this is so blatantly anti-competitive, the EU is mulling over - I shit ye not - forcing Apple to get rid of opt-in consent to level the playing field. Which itself sounds like a GDPR violation.