[jackdeansmith]

Feels to me like public pressure is on Apple to actually justify their argument that their App Store policies are for the benefit of their customers. If that results in more policies like this that really do improve customer experiences, that's not the worst outcome.

[slownews45]

Most of their policies are ones CONSUMERS have liked but BUSINESSES have hated.

The litigation / cases / govt intervention has been on behalf of businesses not consumers. A lot of folks in the "alliance for app fairness" have just horrible billing practices. Understandably, if they can get out of the app store, they can stop you from being able to do things like delete your account or unsubscribe with a few clicks.

A lot of the newspapers make it easy to sign up, but then you have to call to cancel, the same papers that go on and on about how terrible the app store is. There is a REASON people spend fortunes, particularly in the apple app store - it's damn safe to do so in most cases.

[Hammershaft]

Apple killed valve's steam link app because they couldn't get a cut of games consumers had purchased on a different platform. Hardly pro consumer behavior.

[dwaite]

They _temporarily removed_ steam link because the app allowed you to enter credit card information and purchase directly within the app.

Once that was removed, Steam Link went right back up

[Tepix]

The reason why they removed it is still anti-consumer.

[skunkworker]

Steam Link? It’s on the App Store right now. Same with Xbox and PS remote play.

They don’t allow a native app for GeForce now, but it works with a browser.

[zamadatix]

> Most of their policies are ones CONSUMERS have liked but BUSINESSES have hated.

I'd agree here, the majority of the policies are likable by consumers.

> The litigation / cases / govt intervention has been on behalf of businesses not consumers.

Consumers don't have millions to throw around on litigation against Apple so it's no surprise the litigation is focused around business cases. On the government intervention side I disagree though, of the very little intervention there has been it has been consumer focused IMO.

In either case there is also some overlap of "business interest" and "consumer interest" even if the vast majority of the time there isn't so blanketing that all litigation has been on behalf of businesses does not imply all litigation is about policies not in consumer interest. And I think the courts have been very conservative on which points are actually acted upon even if there is a bit of a "throw it at the wall and see what sticks" approach to many of the cases.

> A lot of the newspapers make it easy to sign up, but then you have to call to cancel, the same papers that go on and on about how terrible the app store is. There is a REASON people spend fortunes, particularly in the apple app store - it's damn safe to do so in most cases.

If people are truly buying Apple devices because they only want to purchase things from the controlled app store then the availability of alternative app stores wouldn't be a concern, they would simply go unused. The truth is most people don't actually buy the devices for this reason which is why Apple is so afraid to give that singular point of control up.

[harles]

So the case for this practice is that Apple is the only corporation that can be trusted with billing - consumers are just being protected from all those evil corporations that aren’t Apple. Seems like a straw man.

[blendergeek]

> The litigation / cases / govt intervention has been on behalf of businesses not consumers.

There is actually a class action suit against Apple regarding anti-trust brought by consumers. Unfortunately, while the suit was filed in 2011, it wasn't until 2019 that the Supreme Court ruled that consumers even do business with Apple in the App Store [0]. So, a lawsuit filed in 2011 was allowed to go forward in 2019. I don't know what methods Apple had used to hold up the case since then.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Inc._v._Pepper

[MrStonedOne]

Don't you think that is something apple should have thought of before doing what they did to cause outcry?

Apple wanted to be the gatekeeper blocking out harmful apps, fine by me.

Apple then wanting to use that gatekeeper status to steal money from app developers, block apps that compete with apple internal apps, and enforce moral choices on what kinds of apps you can install on your phone, evil by me.

They could have done the former without doing the latter, but they fucked it up, and have to pay the piper.

[forty]

Honestly I'm more on the business side, but I fail to see how the fact that we cannot refund our customers is a benefit for them.

[bogwog]

Bad billing practices like the NYT's impossible-to-unsubscribe bullshit is not Apple's responsibility to fix: it's the market's first, the government's second. A corporation having the power to control/regulate society to such an extent is like textbook dystopian hell-hole stuff.

[syshum]

I am a consumer... I hate their policies which is why I do not consume their products

[Despegar]

The App Store policies were always for the benefit of customers (and Apple). These policies will keep happening because the basic incentive of Apple's business model has been unchanged since 2008.

[mehrdada]

Indeed many people do not remember that Android ecosystem at the beginning deliberately was on the side of the developer (and Google) as opposed to the user with its lax permissions and liberal access to the system and took its leisurely time to add more useful permission controls for years (location access was install time and you could not opt out of that specific permission unless you chose not to install the app at all).

Priorities matter.

P.S. I do see Apple business model changing to services bringing in some bad behavior associated with that: for instance, push notifications now are used as a spam/marketing mechanism for Apple services similar to Android; iCloud Storage nag is another example.

[slownews45]

100% this, folks do not remember that it was really apple leading on a TON of this stuff.

The storage and other nags I hate, it's a real ethos breaker for me. Get that crap off my iphone. That's why I pay extra - for less crap (I like that they somehow can also block the carriers from installing unremovable apps, for some reason android phones sometimes come with weird apps from your carrier when you get them).

[laurent92]

> leisurely time to add more useful permission controls for years

I remember when I discovered my Android phone wasn’t encrypted, and it had lasted for years. I suddenly stopped using it, changed my passwords/tokens and bought an iPhone. Never came back.

[Andrew_nenakhov]

Yeah, like the inability for the user to install an app after an authoritarian government decided that their subjects should not be using it, and Apple subserviently obeyed and removed said app from the Appstore.

An extremely beneficial policy for the customers, right.

[simonklitj]

You’re talking about something else. Do we expect money-making companies to be the ones to war against authoritarian regimes? Do we not also expect companies to obey the laws of the lands in which they conduct business? You can’t just say screw it to GDPR and expect to continue to be able to conduct business in the EU.

[Andrew_nenakhov]

I do expect the company that sells hardware to their users to allow users to decide which apps to run on sold devices. Currently, Apple is behaving as if still owns those devices and decides which apps to run. Precisely this lock-in created by apple is actively exploited by authoritarian regimes.

If Apple will allow third-party app stores or direct installation of applications on devices, dictatorships will lose this capability to harm Apple's customers.

But of course we all know that this policy was never intended to protect users, it was to protect Apple and their appstore monopoly, which also allows Apple to extort developers of 30% of all of their revenues by forcing them into Apple's payment services. Finally, the world has had enough of this and starts to fight back against it.

[lovich]

> If Apple will allow third-party app stores or direct installation of applications on devices, dictatorships will lose this capability to harm Apple's customers.

As someone who switched from the Samsung note line to iPhone, the only freedom I felt from the ability to install other apps was the freedom to deal with all the unrecoverable crap ware.

There’s other phones out there with greater freedom than the iPhone, people are aware of them, and are still choosing the iPhone.

The curation is a benefit in that I have a corporation with thousands of employees working to prevent the other corporations from making my user experience worse. If the curation goes away I’d probably switch to a cheaper phone next upgrade and I’m sure apples aware of that

[Andrew_nenakhov]

You are not living in an authoritarian country. That's why you think that the shiny chains that you wear are just a nice decoration, because they were never used to strangle you.

[MrStonedOne]

Apple didn't have to lock users out of installing "unapproved" apps on their own. That isn't for the user's benefit and isn't necessary for apple to have a curated app store.

[simonklitj]

They do allow this with a free developer account. It’s not easy-easy, but tools to do it pretty effortlessly exist (AltStore).

[dwaite]

What would the alternative be - the method of installation is the App Store, and Apple's compliance was removing the public and private presence from the App Store within that country.

[oauea]

Just allow sideloading. It's not hard to not block that. But apple is hell-bent on collecting every cent they can, so of course all app installations must go through their walled garden where they can take their 30%. Anti-consumer behavior at its finest.

[hawski]

How does the app store searching and filtering work now? I had last contact with Apple devices around iPhone 4S. What I remember from that time (maybe wrongly) is that the experience was practically limited to a name search (as on Android). You can't filter for example for open source apps. I know that the example is not useful at its face value even if power users could show their less technical peers "this one simple trick". But it is just an example. From what I remember searching things in app stores is a lesson in frustration, because it is mainly there to input a well known brand or app name and quickly install it instead of helping with app discovery.

Nowadays on Android I try to search for apps on F-Droid first or search on Github as a shortcut to find open source apps. Why open source? They are often a barebones version, that will probably not sell me out and will not use dark patterns (I know it can still happen). I have nothing against paying for apps, I do have a couple I bought, but sometimes I have simple itch, that I know for sure someone else already scratched for everyone else and I do donate sometimes. This lousy state of app stores leads me often to search for some simple web apps on github.io. At the same time I sold whole open source category to Microsoft. In the end it seems that all I want is a smartphone shell scripting equivalent, but that is a totally different point.

[dwaite]

> You can't filter for example for open source apps.

There isn't metadata for this, as it is not part of Apple's relationship.

They are a seller of software, and the creator of the software is responsible for making sure the software can be compatible with the licensing and copyright terms of both Apple and any dependencies.

A semantic link to grab the source code for an app would be neat, but a pretty niche feature. That Apple can't verify that it is the same code (or that the separately hosted build process doesn't have malicious logic within it) probably quickly pushed them over the edge in terms of not supporting such a feature.

[gm]

I would rephrase it as "The App Store policies were always for the benefit of Apple (and customers)."

The priorities have shown very clearly over time.

[rexf]

I'd question if their policies benefit consumers overall.

In theory Apple sign-in is great. In reality, many apps now show several login options (Google, FB, Apple, e-mail) and I can't remember which one I used.

I've had many instances of trying to login with Apple, the app silently throws an error, and the app won't proceed. E-mail pw reset doesn't work. Did I use Apple Sign-In with my real e-mail or a forwarded (private) e-mail? Apple has made logins more complex and confusing.

[threatofrain]

IMO the most recent spike of Apple pressure came from the Epic lawsuit, but these App store changes were communicated about 6 months ago, which is slightly before the Epic lawsuit came to light. I would also imagine that Apple discussed these changes internally for at least a month before announcing it.

[duxup]

I feel like a lot of policies were always there for that reason. I don't consider this anything but just another policy like that.

[echelon]

Feels like a celebration of "Apple sticks it to the stupid app developers, hooray!"

Except app developers are mostly small shops and startups. One-person operations.

How would we like it if the web were forced to behave according to some governing body? It feels like some North Korean 1984 dystopia and we've all got explosive collars around our necks.

It's anti-freedom, anti-American, anti-ownership, anti-Stallman. And I own five iPhones and an iMac.

I just want my stupid software on the stupid fucking software execution device. No tap dancing bear rules. No praise to Apple or forced induction to the Church of Jobs.

Steve Jobs made this artificial, ceremonious bullshit to make money. There is no other reason.

I curse history that his authoritarianism won. It's become pervasive throughout the industry now. It should be illegal.

I'll gladly charge 3x the price to Apple users for having to put up with this malarky.

[wruza]

Why don’t you just use pro-everything devices. Even top quality ones exist now, which can be reprogrammed to function as you wish. Apple is not the only option anyone has.

[echelon]

Because it's impossible to ignore 50% of the market using iPhones. To do so would be to doom your company.

[wruza]

So you’re an app developer, the part “want to run my software” confused me. As an apple user, I’m afraid that I’m with apple here, because I’ve been experimenting with other platforms before and didn’t like it when people just ran their software without any rules on my phone. That big market share is partially the result of the rules that protect the consumer, and that is a good thing. (Btw, I’m okay with 3x price idea, I think it isn’t criticized by apple and would be not)

[balancemayvary]

why's this being downvoted, even? I mean, (personally "Anti-american" means nothing to me and) while I've developed for OSX plenty, I've got no stake in this game...but this post is not wrong lol. In fact, this sentiment is precisely why I've long-refused to ever own an apple product for anything save for devices from employers.