[COGlory]

This is very simple:

1) Apple should be able to charge as much as they want to use their app store. Even 100%!!

2) You should be allowed to install other app stores on the device you own, over which Apple has no control.

Anything else is a half measure.

[iotku]

I'd probably flip the order, but to a certain extent I don't disagree.

In theory, if there's a truely competitive market (has such a thijg evwr actually existed for anything?) it shouldn't matter what a particular store charges as any other store could come in and charge a lower percentage and provide a 'better' service.

That can't happen without very open access to alternative app stores though.

In an idealized enviornment whoever could provide the best app store for the least amount of overhead and fees would be successful.

That said there's something about defaults and the many year headstart Apple has had with their own app store which makes me skeptical that even in a completely open environment that there could ever realistically be a mass alternative for everyone and expecting the average user to care about developer fees they don't understand is a hard sell.

[bloppe]

Even if Apple manages to keep 99% of all transactions, simply having open competition will open the door to all sorts of improvements.

You could decouple distribution from payment processing. Have an "app store" with only free apps, but they can have in-app purchases if they handle their own payment processing. This is basically just a CDN. We already have a very mature and open market for CDNs, and they're very cheap.

We also already have a mature, slightly less open market for payment processors. Stripe charges about 3% and provides almost all the features the App Store provides for 10x bigger fees. The one feature most people would probably miss is centralized subscription management, but there would be nothing stopping Stripe (or someone else) from offering the exact same basic feature, charging way less than Apple, and still making a huge profit for themselves

[jocoda]

It's clear that you do not own your device. It comes with limitations that tbf were agreed to upfront. For mobile, there is no real choice. Devil 1 is apple, devil 2 is google.

Imo, Apple should be allowed to charge what they want - I'm ok with that as long as I can sidestep their thrall and sideload whatever I choose at no cost. If I get burned, that's on me.

I think their costs in running the AppStore are the cost of doing business. They need this for their product. Without it, the product is nothing. And they get to suck 30% out of everything. Got to admire that.

Better would be a replacement OS but is that even possible?

[Const-me]

Android mobile devices aren't that bad. I'm using an android phone without a Google account for a few years now, works pretty good for me. I have multiple non-google app stores (one of them, Samsung, came pre-installed), using a third party web browser, and I can install software from APK files bypassing any stores at all. The only downside is lack of offline maps/navigation apps I had previously on windows phone. Web apps work but they require internet, just GPS doesn't cut it.

[thebruce87m]

> 2) You should be allowed to install other app stores on the device you own, over which Apple has no control.

How would apple recoup the costs associated with allowing third party app stores? Even ignoring the direct costs, they will probably get derivative costs such as extra support requests that they can’t do anything about but have to burn man-hours telling people that.

[margana]

How would Samsung/Google/etc recoup the costs associated with allowing third party app stores on Android? How would Microsoft recoup the costs associated with allowing third party app stores on Windows? How would Valve recoup the costs associated with allowing third party app stores on Steam Deck? How would Apple recoup the costs associated with allowing third party app stores on macOS? Have you really lived in such a closed iOS bubble for so long that you forgot that literally the entire rest of the industry handles it just fine?

[thebruce87m]

You’re almost there. Let me finish your train of thought:

In order to recoup the costs they would have to increase prices elsewhere. Having third party access from the start as part of the value proposition would mean they had already priced that in like the others, but they didn’t, so they haven’t.