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>> Consumers have spoken, and spoken extremely loudly, that they like Apple’s approach. > 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 |
Requiring everyone to use something and then claiming that everyone wants to use it because everyone uses it is a bit circular, isn't it?
> This is partly demographics, but also partly the security, reliability, and trust provided by the walled garden.
But why do you need the walls instead of just a sign that says "now leaving Apple's garden"? If being in Apple's store means you're trusted and make more money then go be in Apple's store. That still doesn't explain why it should be prohibited for a user to install an app outside of it. And then we would find out which factors actually make the difference, instead of claiming it's this and then taking an action inconsistent with it -- if nobody wanted to install apps outside the store then there would be no reason to prohibit it because no one would be trying to do it.
> As long as apps that are not sold through the Apple Store do not use any Apple APIs to operate, that would be fair.
They don't even allow that. If they did you would soon have alternate APIs from Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Canonical, Mozilla or others. But Apple encouraging that would be like Microsoft encouraging use of Sun Java. Apple gets more from people using their API than the people get from using it instead of an alternative.