[yungstevejobs]

>By opening the platform to other app stores, developers will benefit due to choice and competition on fees and descoverability, end users will benefit from encouraged innovation, Apple will be forced to compete on convenience or features instead of letting it stagnate while they collect buckets of cash... it would be good for consumers and the ecosystem.

I think the only group that will benefit from 3rd party app stores on iOS is developers. I don’t see end users benefiting at all. The simplicity and convenience in downloading and discovering apps is gone. You said you have trouble discovering apps now with a unified store, so I’m not sure how discovering apps on multiple different app stores will be any easier. Frankly I’m sure it will become much more difficult and complicated for end users. Also I’m not sure how much more convenient Apple can make the App Store for iOS users. Payment information isn’t being shared between multiple parties. Switching payment info doesn’t involve going through each service. Receipts are automatically sent to emails. Automatic app updates. No confusion when it comes to where to download an app.

The App Store consistently brings in more money than the play store each year, despite Apple and iOS having a much smaller market share than Google and Android. I attribute this to Apples guidelines and developer tools, but also because of user confidence in the App Store. More people are willing to scan their face or use Touch ID because how simple and convenient IAP is. That and users are aware their payment info isn’t being sent around to multiple parties. I believe everyone arguing for 3rd party app stores on iOS aren’t thinking as the end user. at all. You said that allowing 3rd party stores will benefit end users with innovation, but innovate what exactly ? How much more innovation does the process of finding and downloading apps need?

>Microsoft got into trouble for bundling a web browser, where they didn’t directly make money, Apple should get into trouble for the App Store, where they do directly make money due to their artificial lack of competition.

Why should they get in trouble? Let’s not forget that Microsoft only developed one part of the final product(the OS). In Apples case they created every part of the product. The hardware , the software and the market on the software. I think they’re well in their rights to decide what and how 3rd party software gets on their OS..

[clusterfish]

Really. As the end user I don't want to pay Apple a 30% sales tax on all my apps, content and service purchases on a device that I already paid a thousand dollars for.

90% of the reason people are even talking about alternative app stores is because this 30% is extortion made possible by excessive monopolistic power provided by tight vertical integration. If it was 10% no one would blink an eye and it would still be massively profitable for Apple. They're just too fucking greedy, and the amount of their apologists here is insane.

The collective hypocrisy of chanting for things like the right to repair while not even recognizing the right to install arbitrary apps on a computing device you paid for in full is just mind boggling.

Americans trust everyone with a fucking gun but oh no, being able to install a non-Apple-approved app or - gasp - use a non-apple payment method - will collapse the whole ecosystem. Haha.

[dkersten]

> You said you have trouble discovering apps now with a unified store, so I’m not sure how discovering apps on multiple different app stores will be any easier.

Because multiple competing stores pushes them to compete on something. Apple is super rich, it would be really hard to compete with price alone, so a competing store has incentive to compete on features or other innovations, including novel ways to make discoverability on their stores easier. Maybe it wouldn't happen, but right now, Apple have zero incentive to do anything to improve their App Store.