[rootusrootus]

If there was more than a duopoly in smartphones, I'd say Apple should be able to have whatever horrible app policy they want, so long as it is clearly communicated to everyone including customers. Let the market decide.

But that's not where we are. I think it makes sense to treat both Apple and Google as de facto monopolies with respect to the smartphone market, and impose some regulation on what they have to allow and how much they can charge for it.

[throwaway31131]

We probably do need some kind of regulation in this space because for better or worse, and I think it’s worse, it’s hard to be a participant in modern society without a smart phone. (In my mind it would be something more akin to the communications act of 1934, but for apps to mandate a certain amount of “interoperability” across operating systems, whatever that may mean, but I digress)

on the other hand, it wasn’t all that long ago that we had many smart phone markers and operating systems, all with different strategies. It’s possible that the market did decide…

[bruce511]

I would argue that there was more than a duopoly. We had Windows Phone, WebOS, blackberry, Palm etc. The market voted and we're left with 2.

Equally, pretty much no iPhone user (outside of tech circles) cares about the App Store monopoly for iPhone. The policy is well known, and hasn't changed in 15 years.

Indeed many (not all) tech folk who complain about the App Store still went out and bought an iPhone.

The raw truth is that the market did decide. And no we don't need regulation. Apple and Google have different enough policies for there to be choice. In some countries Android has dominant market share.

[CPLX]

> The market voted and we're left with 2.

It's a matter of multiple independent legal decisions at this point that both of these companies have engaged in repeated, sustained, illegal anti-competitive behaviors, so the extent to which there was a "market" that voted is highly arguable.

[arp242]

Whatever may or may not have happened in the past is not especially relevant. Today it's essentially impossible to enter the market as you will need to develop a solid iOS or Android compatibility layer, because the best phone in the world is useless without software (apps) you want to run. This is also a major reason several of those platform you mentioned didn't work out by the way.

Sailfish OS does exactly that, but it has a number of limitations and added friction due to legal and technical reasons.

And choosing between two systems is really not much of a "choice". Right now there is a story on the front page about Android app requiring devs to validate their ID, even for side-loaded apps.

[simianparrot]

I only use my smartphone for the basics. I want the tightly controlled app store hence I buy iPhone. I don’t want apps to be able to roll third party subscription and payment options because they will inevitably abuse it at the cost of less savvy users.

Epic Games is a developer and publisher making billions off tricking children into paying for worthless virtual goods. Fuck ‘em if they can’t make a living with the 30% Apple cut.

[icev]

Apple has no issue with tricking children into paying for worthless virtual goods, they will happily host your Coin-Dosing-Clash-Of-Shadow-Fortnights if they get their 30% cut.

[jachee]

Didn’t we “let the market decide” and the market drowned out every other player but Apple and Google?

Why did so many people pick iPhone or Android over their prior competitors? Because the developers wrote software there. Why did the devs write software there? Because people were picking those ecosystems. It was an upward spiral that changed the world a LOT in 18 years, but it was all started with Apple—being a hardware company—selling premium-quality hardware, and then adding their support for third party development.

[bloomca]

Is it allowed to charge more in storefronts which take these cuts? Why nobody does that?

What about Steam? Can a publisher sell a game for ~$45 in their store and $60 in Steam, or is it against some TOC?

[pkaye]

For Steam, I believe the price parity requirement for Steam only applies to Steam Keys. Publishers can sell at a lower prices on other store front as long as it doesn't involve Steam infrastructure.

[AndrewPGameDev]

There were some comments talking about this yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45002977

I'll just reproduce FatalLogic's last comment here:

""" In the class action case[0], which was allowed to go forward by the court last year, it is claimed that Valve told someone:

"This includes communications from Valve that “‘the price on Steam [must be] competitive with where it’s being sold elsewhere’” and that Valve “‘wouldn’t be OK with selling games on Steam if they are available at better prices on other stores, even if they didn’t use Steam keys.’” Dkt. No. 343 ¶ 158, 160 (quoting emails produced at VALVE_ANT_0598921, 0605087). "

(This is a new case, not the 2021 suit, which was rejected by the court, then amended and refiled, later with an additional plaintiff added)

[0]https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wawd.29... """

So a US court of law has decided that it's at least possible that this isn't true.

[somenameforme]

Very few people here are going to have a PACER account. Here's a link to the filing itself. [1] It'll be interesting to see where this goes and if it's deemed accurate, because it runs directly contrary to what Steam's stated policy is. This [2] appears to be part of the testimony from the case. It really doesn't look good for Valve as they effectively acknowledge pursuing price parity and implicitly doing something that sounds like a soft shadowban of games where the publishers don't agree.

Their lawyers sure frame it such a friendly and elegant way though: 'We want to make sure our customers are getting the best deal, and we wouldn't want to mislead them into making a poor decision [by promoting the game] if that's not the case.' Undoubtedly the best legal money can buy. I have immense respect for Gabe and I hope he steps in at some point because this sounds like the bean counters are starting to run amuck. Or course it's possible he's complicit to this, but I think he probably deserves the benefit of the doubt, for now.

[1] - https://cases.justia.com/federal/district-courts/washington/...

[2] - https://trellis.law/doc/district/13397794/wolfire-games-llc-...

[zdragnar]

Pretty much none of the stores allow that. If my memory is right, Apple and Steam don't, though Google might be a bit more permissive in their store.

[echelon]

Games are silly and inessential. And there are a dozen markets to choose from. Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, Steam, GOG, Epic, Ubisoft, Humble, Itch, direct download, retro games, ...

Phones are essential. You can't get a job without one. It's impossible to stay connected or navigate without one. You can't even order food in a restaurant these days without your smartphone. Yet two companies control and tax the entirety of mobile computing.

Scratch that. Mobile computing *IS* computing for most people. It's the only computer or internet portal they know.

And two companies own it all. The passport to the modern world is owned and taxed by two trillion dollar companies.

2000's-era DOJ-litigated antitrust abuser Microsoft dreams that they had this much of a monopoly.

The Halloween papers sounded evil. Mobile computing monopolization is evil.

Here's what needs to be done:

1. Web installs. Both companies need to allow web native installs without scare walls or buried settings flags that need to be enabled. First class apps from the web, with no scaring users about it. We have all the technology to make this work safely: permissions, app scanning, signature blacklisting, etc.

2. Defaults. Both companies need to be prevented from pushing their apps as defaults. No more default browsers, default wallets, default app stores, default photo galleries, default search engine, etc.

3. Taxation and control. Apps cannot be taxed on any transactions. Users must not be forced to "sign in" with the monopoly provider's identity system. Apps must not be forced to use the monopoly payment rails. Apps must not be forced to be human reviewed or update to the latest UI changes / SDK on a whim.

Mobile apps and platforms must work like desktop software.

We need this freedom and flexibility for consumers, and we need competition to oxygenate the tech sector and reward innovation. Capitalism shouldn't be easy - it should be hard to keep your spot at the top. Resting on the laurels of easily defended moats for twenty years while reaping some of the most outsized benefits in the industry has created lethargy and held us back.

[zdragnar]

We could have had other competitors, but nobody wanted them.

Windows phones had a very enthusiastic but too-tiny following. Blackberry lost the plot with terrible hardware and software for the app era (developing an app for the Storm was enough to convince me to never get one of their phones). Symbian's S60 was too little too late in the US. Ubuntu, Mozilla, and others all tried various flavors of Linux and web based phones to no success.

I don't think you can really blame Google or Apple for any of these failures in the same way Microsoft could be blamed in the 90's for their abuses.

With that said, I wouldn't be surprised if, eventually, Google was forced to change how they handle third party app stores. iPhones will likely never be big enough for Apple to be forced to allow other stores in the US.

[echelon]

> We could have had other competitors, but nobody wanted them.

Don't blame individual consumers. Bad things happen at a societal level all the time. Carbon emissions, etc. We're powerless to stop it without governmental intervention.

Your average consumer isn't educated on marketplace behaviors and doesn't understand how a lack of consumer choice leads to increased prices, inflexibility, taxation of smaller marketplace participants, less innovation, less freedom, etc. They simply can't understand the complexities of the case as deep familiarity isn't a part of their daily lives.

The large players that set these rules are squarely to blame.

> I don't think you can really blame Google or Apple for any of these failures in the same way Microsoft could be blamed in the 90's for their abuses.

You can install whatever you want on a Microsoft PC.

[thewebguyd]

> We could have had other competitors, but nobody wanted them

People didn't even get a choice. Google bullied Windows Phone out of the market.

People won't switch to a platform without apps. Microsoft tried to fix that, made an HTML5 youtube app. Google threw a fit and blocked it, twice. MS even followed what Google told them to do, and still blocked the app.

Google saw great hardware, and an OS that was gaining media attention (Windows phone at the time had a lot of positive reviews, and the Nokia Lumnia phones were great, and better cameras than any Android at the time) and used their market power to kill it.

[echelon]

> Google threw a fit and blocked it, twice.

Can we get retroactive regulatory enforcement for that?

Sounds like Google needs to no longer have YouTube. They're wielding it like a blunt instrument to destroy trillions in market value.

[andsoitis]

> Mobile computing IS computing for most people. It's the only computer or internet portal they know. And two companies own it all. The passport to the modern world is owned and taxed by two trillion dollar companies.

Top smartphone brand global market share: Samsung (20%), Apple (17%), Xiaomi (14%), vivo (9%), OPPO (8%).

https://www.counterpointresearch.com/en/insights/global-smar...

[mhh__]

I bet there are quite a few people out there who actually have a phone with a faster single thread perf than their laptop i.e. latest iPhone + a crappy windows laptop

[oefrha]

> Is it allowed to charge more in storefronts which take these cuts? Why nobody does that?

What? There are plenty of apps charging more when you buy currency/subscription on iOS compared to when you buy from their website, or in some cases Android app. Patreon is an example that made the loudest noise recently, but it’s been a widespread practice for years. That said Apple doesn’t (didn’t?) allow you to tell users that a cheaper option exists elsewhere.

[jchw]

This whole situation is frustrating. Even if there were eight or twelve companies all competing fairly, I'm not sure it would matter: if Apple's approach makes hand-over-fist more money, even though it is much worse for consumers in many regards, it has the chance to unfairly win and for vendors that follow Apple's lead to out-compete vendors that don't. (Don't imagine this world, try to find the parallels you've personally experienced; you know they're out there.)

Of course today, we're getting to the point where governments are going to probably start softly relying on citizens having smartphones that are either Android or iOS. This is terrible and completely the wrong way to go; it would be much better to depend on standards that anyone could implement. Even progressive web apps would be a better outcome than Android/iOS apps. Getting to this point definitely puts both Apple and Google in privileged positions wherein they pretty much do have to be treated like defacto monopolies, but I'm also pretty sure this isn't the outcome we want either.

[pabs3]

Its not just Android or iOS, its Google (Android) or Apple (iOS), govt apps (also other random ones) often use attestation to block use on non-Google variants of Android:

https://grapheneos.org/articles/attestation-compatibility-gu...

[zdw]

"much worse for customers" is relative. While in no ways perfect, Apple's walled garden gets rid of a huge amount of the enshittification found on other platforms, and makes it so that downloading a random app is relatively safe and unlikely to nuke your phone, steal your data, etc. Yes all the "allow access to location/photos/etc." are annoying, but at least the user has some level of control and consent.

I do agree that requiring specific platforms is a problem - we don't want a return to the IE6 or Flash-dominated eras where people who weren't on Windows were treated like sub-humans.

[kaladin-jasnah]

Android also has permission prompts to allow access to files and location and such.

Either way, I would be fine with this, if there were a big, red, and scary button with a warning in iOS to turn the coddling off. I bought a phone, so I own it. If I choose to, there should be a way to let me control the hardware. Even Android phones don't have this, with bootloader unlocking disappearing. To be fair, there's a layer below that where you could also replace the XBL (Xtensible Boot Loader, on Qualcomm devices) if secure boot is off and the efuses aren't blown. But there are even fewere devices that have this.

[labcomputer]

But, like, why fight your tools?

Why not just accept that iOS has coddling, and that your preferences are better served by the competition? As you said, Android has permission prompts. They have folding phones. Android phones regularly beat iPhones in camera quality measurements, for example.

What does Apple have that you actually want?

For me, I liked the walled garden and I put up with the rest because of it. If you don’t like the walled garden, I can’t understand wanting an iPhone.

[petralithic]

There are so many garbage apps on the App Store that Apple's claim of vetting them must be a farce to justify the store's existence and supremacy over any potential third party ones.

[bloomca]

"Allow access" is pretty orthogonal, I don't know how it all works in mobile OSes, but I assume everything is virtualized there, so you can't just access whatever you want without user granting a permission (e.g. through a file picker system component).

You can also ship sandboxed apps on Desktop without the store (although I am not sure on how hard it is to auto-update them, usually stores handle that part), at least on Windows and macOS.

Stores handle storing the apps themselves and distributing updates, that part of the cost is real, plus they do manually review submissions (to some degree), but 30% is insane for that.

[labcomputer]

Well, some of the permissions include things like “allow the app to track the user for advertising purposes”. There isn’t a technical way to enforce that with virtualization and sandboxing.

You can enforce it by booting misbehaving apps from the app store... but that only works if there’s one app store.

[bloomca]

I _believe_ on macOS, if they revoke your certificate (the one you used to sign the app), the app moves into the "We can't verify that this app is free of malware" category, so in theory they can still do that.

But it is a nuclear option, and it would be a big deal if they did so for something "minor".

[jchw]

> While in no ways perfect, Apple's walled garden gets rid of a huge amount of the enshittification found on other platforms, and makes it so that downloading a random app is relatively safe and unlikely to nuke your phone, steal your data, etc. Yes all the "allow access to location/photos/etc." are annoying, but at least the user has some level of control and consent.

Better than Android sure, but let's not get too hyperbolic. There's less outright malware, but a ton of questionable crapware with bad practices. Let's not forget that Android phones definitely also do sandboxing and just-in-time permission prompts.

Even among major apps, maybe especially among major apps, the Apple App Store is full of apps that blatantly violate Apple's own policies, often including Apple's own apps too, much like the Google Play store. As a simple example, apps that put crucial notifications in the same category as advertisements are all over the place, despite this being a clear violation of the policies. There is plenty of enshittification on Apple platforms.

Beyond that, I can go onto my iPad and search something that is likely to be popular and find a ton of very questionable apps. For example, search "Grand Theft Auto". Scroll down slightly. That sure looks like a lot of very questionable garbage apps full of questionable advertisements. You can repeat this with tons of popular search terms. Yes, it's one thing to trust the sandbox, but are you really sure you feel safe installing all of those?

And sure, App Store review policies do stop most malware and unwanted tracking software from flowing through, but that doesn't mean you should gamble your life on it either. There are plenty of lapses all the time. Probably at least a few times a year, though obviously we only see the incidents that generate a lot of publicity. Just for fun, here's a few incidents over the years that generated a lot of publicity:

From 2011: [1]

> As a proof of concept, [Charlie Miller] created an application called Instastock that was approved by Apple's App Store. He then informed Apple about the security hole, who promptly expelled him from the App Store.

From 2015: [2]

> XcodeGhost exploits Xcode’s default search paths for system frameworks, and has successfully infected multiple iOS apps created by infected developers. At least two iOS apps were submitted to App Store, successfully passed Apple’s code review, and were published for public download.

From 2025: [3]

> We found Android and iOS apps, some available in Google Play and the App Store, which were embedded with a malicious SDK/framework for stealing recovery phrases for crypto wallets. The infected apps in Google Play had been downloaded more than 242,000 times.

And even if the apps aren't malicious, that doesn't mean you're secure. If the idea is that you feel safe using random app store apps because the apps are neatly sandboxed from the system, well, first of all, that part can be accomplished without an app store or a 30% tax. Second of all though, a lot of people's important information lives inside of the apps anyways. Why compromise the phone to access the data when you can compromise the apps themselves? Consider this from 2017:[4]

> During the testing process, I was able to confirm 76 popular iOS applications allow a silent man-in-the-middle attack to be performed on connections which should be protected by TLS (HTTPS), allowing interception and/or manipulation of data in motion.

Obviously Android has more malware than iOS, but if the idea is that even an idiot can use an iPhone and not have to care about good security practice and just run completely random apps, I firmly believe that's a horrible idea. It definitely reduces risks for the average person, but in practice they definitely should be employing good security practices either way because the app store and all of the sandboxing in the world can not save them from themselves. For power users, it basically doesn't do anything meaningful to the security practices calculus and you may possibly be better off with CalyxOS or GrapheneOS depending on what threats you are most concerned about.

My point, of course, is not to say that Apple iPhone is particularly unsafe, just that these anti-malware measures are very far from foolproof, definitely not something you should trust your Bitcoins with. They do probably screen a lot of obvious attempts at malware, but a lot of subtle attempts definitely find their way in. They don't really at all stop the store from being flooded with shitware that does things that would probably harm the privacy of the average user, like apps for "file format conversion" that silently upload your data to the cloud and have dubious privacy policies, or apps that try to convince you to accidentally subscribe to some expensive subscription. This is the kind of thing the Google Play Store was definitely known for, yet it's actually also completely all over the Apple App Store right now. Apple doesn't really seem to mind too much, they're more concerned about periodically harassing people like the developer of iSH.

What Apple and Google both do have a tendency to do is tie their dystopian anti-consumer garbage in with their security features even when they don't actually have to, for reasons that I don't think anyone needs explained to them.

Personally I think the sky will not fall if iOS allowed people to choose to be able to sideload applications. The fact that this would cause a tension whereby Apple would have some pressure to change App Store policies in order to continue getting a cut of sales and have better ability to mitigate unwanted software is kind of a feature and not a bug. As it is today, Apple has basically no incentives to ever consider changing its policies in any way that wouldn't be beneficial to them somehow.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Miller_(security_resea...

[2]: https://unit42.paloaltonetworks.com/novel-malware-xcodeghost...

[3]: https://securelist.com/sparkcat-stealer-in-app-store-and-goo...

[4]: https://medium.com/@chronic_9612/76-popular-apps-confirmed-v...

[ksec]

Agree. I think all the discussions often missed the main problem. Apple App Store holds far too much power, and they alone decides letting or stopping other business. All Banks, Finance, Ecommerce, Retail need to kowtow to Apple or Google for access. And that is not the power and responsibility you want to hold.

People argue you have Website too. But Website does not provide the same level of experience and is at disadvantage compared to Apps.

I have long argued Apple should have given up this power since 2013 / 2014. And Apple should split Games to Game Store, that keeps their 30% cut and would have kept at least 70 - 80% of their current App Store revenue.

For what ever reason last time I said this in 2018 and 2020 I was devoted to oblivion on HN.

[andsoitis]

> treat both Apple and Google as de facto monopolies with respect to the smartphone market

Apple and Google can’t both be monopolists of the smartphone market (or even app stores). By definition, if there’s more than one seller, there is no monopoly.

I suppose you could say Apple is the monopolist if the iPhone market or the iPhone App Store market. You can’t say Google is the monopolist of the Android phone market or the Android App Store market.

But neither one, and certainly not both, can be the monopolist of the smartphone market or the smartphone app store market.