| > You want to make it illegal for someone to make a piece of hardware that can only run binaries signed by the manufacturer? I'm not sure why this is supposed to be controversial. It's not a prohibition on checking signatures, it's just a requirement to give the user the option of doing something else. Once you sell something it's not yours anymore. Companies shouldn't be allowed to stick up everyone in an ancillary market just because they have more market power. > I can’t understand this at all. If I go through the trouble to create a product and I want to control the user experience for that product, that’s my right and privilege. The market will decide if they want to purchase my product or not. That's assuming that markets are perfect. What you're saying would be true if there were two versions of the iPhone, one that could only run signed apps and one that was exactly the same but can also run unsigned apps and the customer chose the first one. But that isn't the case, and because that isn't the case you end up forcing someone who wants an iPhone for a reason other than mandatory signing to accept mandatory signing (and the consequent app store monopoly) even though they don't want it. That isn't the market deciding, it's the manufacturer deciding for the market. > Consumers have spoken, and spoken extremely loudly, that they like Apple’s approach. This is not really supported by the evidence. The large majority of phone customers chose Android and even among iPhone customers there are multiple other reasons (hardware, UI, status signaling) to choose an iPhone even if you don't want or don't care about app gatekeeping. The fact that customers don't want it is the whole issue. The first time most users are given a choice between installing an app they want that isn't approved or not having the app, they're going to install it. And given a choice between a distribution method that restricts apps and then charges 30% more and one that doesn't and has lower prices, they're going to pick the lower prices. Otherwise Apple wouldn't have to lock all the doors and windows from the outside -- you could just choose to never install anything outside Apple's store, even if you had the option to do otherwise. |
> This is not really supported by the evidence...
This isn’t about Apple vs Android or market share. The success of iOS speaks for itself, and in particular the success of the App Store speaks for itself. It is self-evident from the billions of dollars that apps have earned (is it tens of billions now?) that the model is successful and widely used both by developers and consumers. Apple users are much more prolific spenders on the Apple App Store than users of the Android market as well, the majority of that money going directly to developers. This is partly demographics, but also partly the security, reliability, and trust provided by the walled garden.
> And given a choice between a distribution method that restricts apps and then charges 30% more and one that doesn't and has lower prices
As long as apps that are not sold through the Apple Store do not use any Apple APIs to operate, that would be fair.
But if you want to use the massive infrastructure that Apple has built [1] then I think you have to play by Apple’s rules.
The iPhone is a device which you own, yes, but it is also a massive collection of services which Apple spends 10s of billions of dollars developing and supporting in order to deliver the overall experience.
As an app developer, the APIs, services, documentation, training, support, and marketing combine to justify the 30%. The “App Store” application itself, and all the search, discovery, reviews, auto-updates, billing, services, and support is just one piece of the massive infra that Apple provides to all the apps running on its platform.
[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17823937