I understand this question, but I believe an eshop is different from a major platform used by hundreds of millions of people on a daily basis to run their lives.
It is possible that some of those people would list "only one app store & gateway for digital payments" as a feature for which they bought devices based on that platform. I'd list lots of the things devs complain about on iOS as reasons I favor it as an end user, in fact. (for the record, I've also done iOS and Android dev)
They're not perfect at all and I wish very much that they had competition, but for me to consider it real competition with the product they're providing it'd have to be similarly locked-down. The locking-down is part of the value. There are already far-less-locked-down phones and tablets available for people who want that.
I’m totally cool with that provided it’s not easy enough that another App Store is able to become a de facto necessity via that install method. The current official side-loading methods are almost good enough to suit the case of power users running a few custom apps from outside the store. If there’s a way to take off the time limits and not open up the possibility of the above scenario, that’d be wonderful. I have a couple non-App Store apps I’d put on mine, in fact.
Fortnite is a game, but the lawsuit only uses Fornite as a concrete example of what Apple is doing. Epic Games if fighting for everyone--all app developers and ios users.
Its a monopoly for developers. As a company you can not not use the app store because half of your customers are there and very few companies can afford to give up half of their customers.
I personally don't like Apple and will never buy an Apple product, but I fully agree. People who buy Apple products are perfectly fine with the way Apple restricts their platform. If you don't like this as a developer, then just leave and stop developing for iOS.
A single big company doing this just to cut down on some fees just reeks of greed.
It is not a single company, Google also kicked Fortnite, and it has been a thing in game consoles, car infotaiment systems, pre loaded apps on TV settop boxes and blue-ray players,....
The world is unfair, no one is expected to do charity for developers.
We are not a special snowflake job that isn't expected to give others the necessary payments to keep the whole chain working.
For most business that is not a choice. If you are making a utility or game then maybe, but can a company like uber decide that they will only be available to android users?
This is probably the most important question: what is fair in a world where there are technological platform providers that are essentially creating two-sided markets of vast size and value? If the platform provider is in a dominant position, their actions or inaction could significantly harm participants in the market. Should they then be permitted to impose their own terms and charges on one or both sides of that market arbitrarily, or should there be some form of regulatory intervention in the interests of the participants in the market (from either side)? And to what extent should competition in whatever form be a factor in this?
There are many examples of harm where a single platform has a kind of quasi-monopoly and/or quasi-monopsony status. Aside from the current topic, consider Google's dominance of web search, and the corresponding effects it can have on web developers, advertisers and searchers. Other online marketplace services might qualify as well if they have come to dominate their niche. Then we have the manufacturers of many other types of device, such as cars or smart home control systems, which are also relatively high value purchases and "sticky", but where clearly there will be an ecosystem building up around them. It may not be in the interests of either the purchaser or those who would provide related products or services to be locked into whatever arrangements the manufacturer wants to impose.
We already have precedent for overriding the wishes of manufacturers in some instances in order to protect more vulnerable parties to the arrangements. For example, various regulatory authorities have acted to prevent car manufacturers from restricting their vehicles in such a way that only approved dealers can repair or service them, and of course there is the wider "right to repair" movement that is based on a similar principle.
But as ever, the law has not necessarily kept pace with the rapid evolution of technologies, and even if certain actions may be legal today as a result, that doesn't necessarily mean they should remain so.
You can choose a different royal family. If you don't like your current royal family then don't let your tongue be cut out voluntarily and then complain about it while still wanting to support the royal family that cut your tongue out.
Well, Apple were at the right place at the right time. There is quite a bit of input from their side, but don't underplay the huge role of luck. And there is also network effect, once they had healthy numbers, people flock to them, so it is also due to network effects they are huge.
The comment is expecting you to have an opinion or some kind of comment on the practices that determines accessibility to software.
I will start: Are software stores and locked down environments really a good idea, when conflicts like this determine what kind of software you can install on your devices? Without a comment on who is in the "right" here, I will just use a clear 'no'.
I don't give a fuck about Epic. Let's get alternative app stores be present in the default app stores on my device. What are you even complaining about? I am on your side, are you on your side?
Please don't post in the flamewar style to HN. It's not what this site is for. Plenty of commenters are expressing views similar to yours without breaking the site guidelines. If you'd please read them and stick to the rules, we'd be grateful.