
A Real Gatekeeper - ingve
https://bitsplitting.org/2019/07/22/a-real-gatekeeper/
======
dfabulich
> _Finally, in 2019, Apple announced that software signed with Developer ID
> certificates, that is to say all non-Mac App Store software, must also be
> notarized. The Catalina 10.15 public beta identifies software that has not
> been notarized as potentially risky because it “cannot be scanned for
> malware.”_

> _In effect: developers who ship software directly to end-users are now
> required to notarize their apps._

People keep spreading this rumor, and it's just not true. You can distribute
unsigned apps to users; most open-source Mac apps do it this way.

When users try to open an unsigned app, macOS pops up a "denied" message.
People who know how to run unsigned apps can right-click and Open the app to
run it, or go to the Security panel in System Preferences.

Getting out of "warning mode" previously required Developer ID, and now it
requires notarization, too. But warning mode still works, so it's not
required, nor is it "effectively required."

------
3xblah
Is it fair to say the reasoning Apple would present in favour of having an
"App Store" is that Apple can act as an _exclusive_ gatekeeper for quality
control and "security". Are there other reasons?

Through the App Store, Apple attempts to exert control over the software that
an Apple hardware purchaser can run. Are the business advantages to Apple of
this arrangement incidental or coincidental?

~~~
Despegar
It's for quality control and security _and_ it's good business. When they
decided to do this in 2008 they couldn't have known how big the App Store (and
the iPhone) was going to get. You can listen to an interview a WSJ reporter
did with Steve Jobs about it. No one at Apple actually knew, including Jobs.

[https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-mobile-industrys-never-
seen...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-mobile-industrys-never-seen-
anything-like-this-an-interview-with-steve-jobs-at-the-app-stores-
launch-1532527201)

> MR. WINGFIELD: What does that number say to you?

MR. JOBS: It says the App Store is much larger than we ever imagined, iTunes
has been out for over five years. In 30 days, users downloaded 30% as many
apps as everybody in the world downloaded songs from iTunes.

MR. WINGFIELD: What did you expect? What was your internal...

[crosstalk]

MR. JOBS: We didn’t expect it to be this big. The mobile industry’s never seen
anything like this. To be honest, neither has the computer industry. [laughs]
60 million downloaded applications in the first 30 days. 30% as big as iTunes
song downloads during the last 30 days, this is off the charts.

MR. WINGFIELD: OK. The 70-30 split, are the economics of this working out the
way that you had said when we last spoke, which is that you might make some
money, but you don’t expect it to be a big source of profits?

MR. JOBS: Yeah. It’s just like iTunes.

MR. WINGFIELD: Even with the huge popularity of this, you don’t...

MR. JOBS: No. It costs money to run it. Those free apps cost money to store
and to deliver wirelessly. The paid apps cost money, too. They have to pay for
some of the free apps. We don’t expect this to be a big profit generator. We
expect it to add value to the iPhone. We’ll sell more iPhones because of it.

MR. WINGFIELD: Every time I write about the amount of developer support that
you have on iPhone, I hear from a bunch of other people who have been doing
BREW applications for years. People say, “No, this is nothing new. There is a
whole ecosystem around Windows Mobile, around Java, BREW, for other types of
phones.” How do you think these apps compare to those?

MR. JOBS: Two or three things. No. 1, if you talk to developers that are
developing for the iPhone, what you’ll hear from them unanimously is two
things. There’s never been a mobile platform that’s been this powerful before.

As an example, when we were working with some of the first developers under
the radar before we launched, they first sent their mobile teams here. When
they realized how powerful the platform was, they sent their desktop teams
here or their console teams here.

They realized that the quality of the graphics, the animation, the processing
and the memory really made this much more capable as a platform than any other
mobile platforms. We’re hearing that from every developer. You heard
[videogame designer John] Carmack’s comments, right?

MR. WINGFIELD: Mm hmm.

MR. JOBS: The second thing we’re hearing is that the development environment
is far more advanced than they had ever seen on a mobile platform before. The
APIs are in another league, the whole development cycle, the debug tools, etc.
That’s just to develop the app.

Once your app is developed, to be able to submit it to Apple and have us take
care of all of the marketing, wireless distribution, billing and all the
transactional stuff for you, and deliver it right on the handset, that doesn’t
exist today. There are some websites that will do some of that for you. They
don’t deliver it to the phone.

MR. WINGFIELD: They go and...

[crosstalk]

MR. JOBS: Yeah, they’ll deliver it to your PC. You can sideload it, this and
that. They charge a lot more than we do for doing a fraction of what we do.

MR. WINGFIELD: Do you know what the revenue split is on these other sites?

MR. JOBS: The minimum is 50-50. Generally, it can go into the 70% or more.

MR .WINGFIELD: On the other side of the equation, 70 to the distributor and 30
to the developer?

MR. JOBS: Yes. It’s at least 50. We’ve heard it goes up to 70. They do a lot
less than we do. They don’t get it in front of every user. You have to go to a
website. You have to buy it on your PC, blah blah blah.

