Why? Why does Apple insist on playing middleman, if not for totalitarian control over all commerce on the platform? How is this not monopolistic anti-trust behavior?
The above statement is not correct. You’ve always been free to sell non digital goods through the App Store. For instance, you can buy anything through the Amazon app that is actually shipped to you.
Can you set up your own independent shop in Walmart and sell stuff?
Apple wants to earn more money by taking a cut from your transactions. Few people are ready to share their profits unless forced to do so. It's not monopolistic behavior, because Apple does not hold a monopoly in any market.
When you look at the smartphone market for apps, I think you could make a pretty good argument that there is monopolistic behavior between the two giants, Apple and Google. Call it a duopoly or what have you. The fact that both stores have very similar policies regarding revenue share (70/30) seems to support this.
Both stores having the same exact revenue share may just be a consequence of there being a duopoly, or it may be more nefarious where active collusion has occurred between the two. Remember when Apple and Google got caught a few years back colluding against labor? https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-google-others-settle-anti-po...
Now, yes, Android does allow you to download apps outside the Play Store, but not by default. Microsoft was able to make a similar argument with Internet Explorer and Windows with it's monopoly cases. If you are one of a few large powerhouses like Fortnight or Tinder, you may be able take advantage of being able to bypass Play Store.
What exactly is Apple's role in the sale of digital goods? You made a comparison to selling via Walmart, which is a false equivalency.
The app store can easily work like podcasts aggregating RSS feeds from developers, it's just that Apple has forcefully inserted itself into the transaction
The entire premise of the App Store, permissions and sandboxing is that users should be able to download anything from the App Store willy nilly and know that it won’t do the same type of invasive crap that can happen on Windows and Macs.
The App Store is not a flea market. Podcasts can’t install malware, eat battery life, invade privacy, etc.
I’m very careful about what I install on my personal computers. I install all sorts of crap on my iOS devices with some type of assurance about knowing what they can and can’t do.
1. Sandboxing doesn't need apple's app store, it's manual policy enforcement and arbitrary anti competitive rejections. Many, many sandboxes have existed with well documented permissioning systems that don't need anointing by manual reviewers.
2. Speaking of flea markets and the false equivalency of the app store to a Walmart, Walmart doesn't require banning flea markets but the app store (Apple) bans sideloading. Walmart and flea markets coexist peacefully.
3. Just because you enjoy being chaparoned on iOS, doesn't mean everyone does. Go ahead and enjoy willy-nilly installs from the app store, but don't block user's choice to circumvent Steve Jobs' image of the universe
The truth is that Apple doesn't play a role in the sale of digital goods, or meaningfully increase security outside automated sandboxing. The real premise of the app store is totalitarianism and greed
Sandboxing doesn't need apple's app store, it's manual policy enforcement and arbitrary anti competitive rejections. Many, many sandboxes have existed with well documented permissioning systems that don't need anointing by manual reviewers.
Where is an example of that actually working in the consumer market? How has that worked out for Android?
2. Speaking of flea markets and the false equivalency of the app store to a Walmart, Walmart doesn't require banning flea markets but the app store (Apple) bans sideloading. Walmart and flea markets coexist peacefully.
Android and iOS also coexist. If you care about “freedom” you are free to use Android like 80%+ of the rest of the smart phone market.
Just because you enjoy being chaparoned on iOS, doesn't mean everyone does. Go ahead and enjoy willy-nilly installs from the app store, but don't block user's choice to circumvent Steve Jobs' image of the universe
Sadly, Apple almost seems to purposefully keeps mobile Safari buggy for HTML5 apps. You might think, why not install Firefox or Chrome on iOS then? Well, turns out Apple only allows those apps to use an outdated version of Safari as their browser engine.
Apple almost seems to purposefully keeps mobile Safari buggy for HTML5 apps
Then your HTML5 app is broken.
Back before there was an App Store, when all "apps" were web apps, I wrote one of the first non-Apple weather apps for the iPhone. It included animated radar, weather alerts, hurricane tracking, and even streaming audio from a real meteorologist. And this was more than a decade ago, on bog-standard launch-day iPhones. It was even featured by Apple back when it had a directory of iPhone web apps.
Mobile web apps could be really incredible with today's technology, if so many of them weren't crammed with unnecessary/lazy/stupid garbage.
Can you set up your own independent shop in Walmart and sell stuff?