
Apple apologizes to WordPress, won’t force the free app to add purchases - pier25
https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/22/21397424/apple-wordpress-apology-iap-free-ios-app
======
dang
All: could you please not post to threads like this if you're hot under the
collar and have passionate feelings for or against $BigCo? It leads to tedious
flamewars with people snarking at each other, flaming each other, making
generalizations about the other side, and making up accusations of
astroturfing (for or against). All of that is against the HN guidelines:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).

The idea here is: if you have a substantive point to make, make it
thoughtfully; if you don't, please don't comment until you do. "Boo $BigCo",
"yay $BigCo" fan-v.-antifan cage matches are not curious conversation. We want
_curious_ conversation.

------
rubber_duck
Really at this point Apple control over app store is anti-competitive (and
Google over play store), having to rely on community outrage to get stuff like
this turned is ridiculous.

They should create legislation to control access to all app stores to prevent
this rent seeking - force app stores to treat all apps equally according to
store defined guidelines (including store owners apps) - any submissions have
to be reviewed in a reasonable amount of time and if declined must receive
specific violations of the guidelines on which the denial is based. Also make
the "no outside payment inside of apps" illegal.

Suddenly the value add of the store streamlined experience has to be justified
vs. other payment options - and you'll see the fees drop significantly closer
to market level (and it will still be profitable for store owners and they
will still invest money in developing/maintaining it).

~~~
bloblaw
> They should create legislation to control access to all app stores to
> prevent this rent seeking

You have a lot of faith in 60+ year old (mostly tech-illiterate men) to fix
technology they don't understand. Government isn't the solution to this
problem. Developers leaving the app store is probably only what will get Apple
to change.

~~~
diffeomorphism
I have faith that politicians can task experts to come up with legislation.
Politicians are of course not experts in all subject matters and one should
not expect them to be.

Developers leave the app store for which alternative on iOS?

~~~
jazzdev
I think that's called regulatory capture when politicians task experts to come
up with legislation.

------
parasubvert
I find the group think here to be incredible, and you all will likely be very
disappointed when the legal system winds up supporting Apple.

Regulating retailers because you don’t like their cut is price controls, which
is completely contrary to a free market, and ultimately undermines the end
user experience of having a trusted, secure store. Perhaps Google or Apple’s
power is so strong as to warrant regulation - but It must be applied fairly,
or else it’s just politically corrupt wielding of power against a successful
corporation because a part of the supply chain wants a bigger share of the
pie.

Apple’s behavior is not anti-competitive by any historical measure, as the
courts will show when Epic loses both their Google and Apple cases.

Antitrust law is always political. Do you really think the Trump or even Biden
administrations will punish their most successful company, given the other
problems in the economy? Convince them this will lead to more growth and
you’ll get your wish. Right now it just seems like grousing.

Edit: I could see Europe doing something more intrusive, as is their tendency.
However I still think it would have to be legislative and not legal, the
arguments are too weak.

~~~
hackingthenews
What Apple and Google is doing is in many ways effectively price control and
inhibits free market dynamics.

For example Apple demand that app developers price their apps in the app store
similar to the same service in other stores (website, Google play store, etc),
even though they are taking a huge 30% cut. So Spotify can't price their
product 30% more expensive in the app store, which makes the app store appear
competitive and effectively kills incentives for the app store to reduce their
fees, while devaluing products sold through the app store.

I do agree with you though about the political side of the matter.

~~~
parasubvert
Those pricing tactics are standard retail practices when dealing with large
chains (“we will not be undersold”). This is why most items have an MSRP: to
provide transparency across all retailers.

With software it’s of course easy to say that it’s a different product in
different platforms. Which is why Apple used legal licensing to make Apps feel
more like traditional products.

Arguably this makes easier for consumers to compare platforms and make a
buying decision based on the underlying platform and not transitory deals on
top of it. We can assume that all smartphone platforms are equal for their 3rd
party software prices. Competition therefore isn’t on partner discounts or
formations of cartels, it’s on the strengths of the underlying platform
itself.

This does stop a form of competition, but I’m not sure price opacity is a form
that has traditionally been viewed as a net positive.

Perhaps this leads to a legislative regime similar to US auto sales where
dealers/shops and manufacturers must have separate ownership. To me Apple’s
policies aren’t directly trying to emulate some aspects of this to avoid
having to give up running the store.

~~~
rdslw
Nope.

Lets stick to the ‘no lower pirce than apple store’. This is very and clearly
anti competitive tactic. Only side (apple) with significant leverage can use
it. In every other situation it is not possible.

And to make it clear: this point is anti competitive, while you re completly
skipping this topic concentrating on apple vs developer, because it harms
(increases of price) consumers.

Multiple datapoints on this available, the best one is the very own of apple:
mac os store. It is a ghost town.

Ios store would be instantly the same ghost if there existed even one ios app
store alternative.

P.S. reminder: im addressing your mistake of ‘this is not anticompetitive’.

~~~
parasubvert
I disagree.

“No lower price” is not anti-competitive, it’s a common retail policy, and
traditionally has been viewed as pro-competitive as it stops predatory pricing
tactics.

It also implies the existence of a marketplace of dealers for iOS apps: there
is none. The marketplace is among two different platforms vying for users.

ISVs are free to exclusively support one platform or the other. Google could
lower their cut to 15% as incentive. The fact that they don’t do this is
testament to Apple’s platform ability to attract customers that actually spend
money.

Fundamentally this is about retailer policies and a reseller has every right
to reject your product if it doesn’t want to represent it. 30% markup isn’t
unreasonable when looking at actual retailers with a mix of products that have
markups that vary from 5-100%.

What you want is Google and Apple’s platforms to be declared utilities where
their platforms are state-regulated businesses that are forced to create a
marketplace of retailers and are forced to have a 3rd party agency determine
app admission guidelines across stores. This is far beyond the reach of
antitrust law and will require legislative solutions.

Two tiers of completion would now exist: among retailers and among platforms.
The cut % in some cases will go down. It is however debatable this will lead
to overall lower consumer prices or a better consumer experience. The
platforms are now entrenched for a generation and can’t make major changes
except by 3rd party permission. All these new agencies need to be funded, and
this raises the supply chain cost. The new admission guidelines might be worse
or better. The retail experiences will be confusing as none will be default.
The MSRP of software will be confusing (unless it’s mandated that ISVs publish
one).

All of this to solve the problem of ISVs that want to build and sell the same
product on two platforms and want to be able to take more of the retail margin
for themselves?

Hard pass. I’d much rather see time, energy, and capital be allocated to
entrepreneurs that may topple this regime by making a better alternative.

------
makecheck
What ultimately made me pull out of the Mac App Store was the fact that
publishing with Apple meant “app with customizations to accommodate stupid
rules”, and $EVERYWHERE_ELSE meant “upload and be done with it”. If you
haven’t checked lately, the Mac App Store is a pathetic ghost town for the
most part.

On iOS I guarantee that if the App Store had even _one_ alternative, many apps
would do the same and bail on Apple, and you’d see a similar ghost store.

Also, since Apple loves to compare its grand scheme to how physical stores
used to behave, let’s examine that: there isn’t a single physical store that
demands to have complete control over everything in the boxes on their
shelves. If you open a product box and it contains a card with information,
such as a link to the company web site or other stuff, then that’s what you
get. If apps followed this sane model, Apple would just let apps put whatever
they want “in the box”, including sensible things like _INFORMATION_ about
account sign-ups and other products, and links.

~~~
mortenjorck
I have an allergy to tech analogies in general, but Apple's brick-and-mortar
retail analogy is one of the worst.

In any locality other than rural towns served by a single Dollar General,
consumers have a choice between multiple retail outlets. If they don't like
the choices at one store, they're free to shop at another.

 _" But Android!"_ one might say, and once again, the analogy falls completely
flat. The switching costs of going between iOS and Android are obviously not
remotely comparable from the switching costs of going between Walmart and
Target. When you move into iOS town, the only store within a thousand miles is
the App Store.

~~~
scarface74
Name one app that is of any importance on iOS that there isn’t available on
Android or that would cause you to have to buy again?

I have exactly one - Overcast. Even with that I can export to OPML (?).

~~~
Marsymars
Well, Apple Maps, Photos, Siri, and Messages.

(I'd be willing to pay a subscription fee to have them on Android. As is, I
just do without, and deal with ridiculous workarounds like having my Android
phone save my photos to OneDrive and them manually copying them over to Photos
on my Mac.)

~~~
scarface74
Really? I’m an iPhone user and even I admit that Google Maps, Google Photos
and whatever Google is calling their voice assistant today are better. If I
were serious about photos I would use Lightroom.

~~~
Marsymars
Well I've got some specific points for each of them:

Maps: Google Maps is _drastically_ better from a POI standpoint, particularly
for reviews, as it's become the de facto standard for restaurant reviews in my
locale, while Apple Maps just imports the graveyard of Yelp reviews, and GMaps
is mildly better for routing. That being said, Google Maps has ads, which is
enough for me that I'd preferentially pay for Apple Maps to avoid ads for
anything other than restaurant reviews. As is, I use a Garmin GPS in my car in
large part because of my annoyance with Google Maps.

Photos: For desktop software, Photos on macOS is fine for my use, and
significantly improved over the past few years. (I abandoned Lightroom after
Adobe's previous macOS file-deletion snafu a few years ago.) I have no
interest in a web-based photo editor/management software rather than a desktop
one. Apple's photo recognition stuff is generally done on-device, which is
preferable to me over a cloud service.

Voice assistants: They're pretty much all equivalent in terms of accuracy for
my use. (Setting timers, setting alarms, controlling my lights and music.) The
killer feature of Siri/HomeKit is that it processes commands locally, so my
lights respond instantly rather than needing to bounce my requests to
Amazon/Google HQs for processing.

And Apple has generally better privacy policies.

~~~
pseudalopex
Siri doesn't work locally.

~~~
Marsymars
Hm, seems you're right - I think what I must have been remembering was
comparing control of home automation products via Alexa/Google (voice and app
are similarly responsive) to non-voice HomeKit control. (But even Siri voice
seems more responsive than e.g. Alexa voice for Hue, presumably because
commands just bounce to Apple and back to me, rather than to Amazon, then to
Philips, then back to me.)

I don't actually use voice control on phone, so I guess what I actually want
on my Android phone is just HomeKit, and not Siri. (Would also let me switch
my camera to HomeKit Secure Video, which I can't practically use with my
primary carry being an Android phone, despite owning all of the
prerequisites.)

------
slow_donkey
An issue I haven't seen previously discussed is Apple's enforcement of their
"Business" guideline (3.2) which effectively prevents certain b2b apps from
making it onto the App Store because the app is supposedly not available to a
wide enough consumer audience.

This is a very subjective policy because popular b2b apps such as Slack,
Zendesk, etc which have a wide reach are allowed, but more industry specific
b2b apps are rejected even if our theoretical user base spans 10s of thousands
of people simply because only clients of the business are able to use the app.

And btw this policy is not actually encoded in their rules[1] but 3.2 is the
code they cite when rejecting your app. The rejection wording is as follows
[2]:

"During our review, we found that this app was designed for a specific
business or organization and not for general distribution on the App Store.
Business apps available on the App Store are meant for use by a wide variety
of external customers around the world.

As this app is not intended for general distribution, it cannot be made
available on the App Store. We encourage you to review the other ways to
distribute your business app and choose one that better meets your business
needs."

[1] [https://developer.apple.com/app-
store/review/guidelines/](https://developer.apple.com/app-
store/review/guidelines/)

[2]
[https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/122473](https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/122473)
(not actually my thread but same rejection copy)

~~~
easton
Then there’s things like this:
[https://apps.apple.com/us/app/hondamobile/id1455573927](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/hondamobile/id1455573927)

Which is an app specifically for Honda internal employees and it still passed
review.

~~~
slow_donkey
Wow that's mind boggling. It's possible that's a whitelabeled app developed by
a different company which has greater overall reach.

But yes, this is exactly why Apple's subjective enforcement of invisible
policies is so enraging - it's like you need to negotiate some secret backdoor
deal just to get your app into the store.

------
7tsfmCAusrQ
As an app developer myself, with apps on both the Google Play Store and the
App Store with over 250K monthly active users, I have become so frustrated
with Apple's arbitrary and capricious enforcement of its App Store
regulations, its bullying and coercion of developers, its extortionate fees,
and its monopolistic anti-competitive practices, that I have stopped updating
my apps on the App Store. I wonder how many other developers are in a similar
position. As a consumer, I now know that if I want the latest, up to date
apps, I'm better off turning to the Play Store or one of the many other app
stores that can be used on Android devices.

I've also given up on the MacBook line, tired of the touch bar, the slate-like
keyboards, and (now) the transition to ARM. My next laptop will be a Thinkpad
or Dell. Most of my development these days is done under Windows using WSL2,
and my primary focus is on Android.

It used to be that my apps made more money on Apple devices, but now I
actually make more on Android. The Google Play review process is a breeze
compared to Apple's laborious and stifling rules (although it is not perfect
either by any means), and at some point, it's just not worth the hassle.

It's sad, I was an enthusiastic endorser of Apple products just 7 years ago,
but can no longer recommend them. This is the first year I won't be buying a
new iPhone, iPad, or Apple Watch, too - I'm looking to switch to the Pixel or
Samsung Galaxy line and Wear OS.

I'd like to see regulation that forces Apple and Google to allow any and all
app stores on their devices, and the process of installing apps through those
stores must be, by law, equally easy and straightforward as through their own
stores (i.e., no security warnings or other jank). The law should make illegal
restricting developers to any specific payment processor(s), too.

~~~
userbinator
_I 'd like to see regulation that forces Apple and Google to allow any and all
app stores on their devices, and the process of installing apps through those
stores must be, by law, equally easy and straightforward as through their own
stores (i.e., no security warnings or other jank)._

I'm pretty sure that will have massive opposition, because they are deathly
scared of opening their devices back to the general-purpose computers they
actually are. However, I remain hopeful that people may finally wake up to the
"security" excuse and stop sacrificing their freedom.

~~~
bloblaw
I'm a libertarian. I believe in personal choice and freedom. But you have tons
of freedom here.

Instead of using an OS (iOS in this case) with 25% market share that forces
you to go through their AppStore, you can _choose_ to use Android (which has
75% market share) and side load apps to your hearts content.

reference: [https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-
share/mobile/worldwide](https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-
share/mobile/worldwide)

~~~
sebmellen
Libertarianism is d̵e̵a̵d̵ * _slowly dying_ , because it fails to recognize
that corporations can exert a similar amount of oppressive force as
governments. Your platform of choice is now your country, and the software
that platform runs is your government.

~~~
mindslight
I wouldn't say libertarianism is "dead" but rather is quick to fall prey to
logical contradictions justifying totalitarianism, similar to the two prime
time political teams.

You're right that there is little difference between a corporation that one is
de facto forced to interact with, and a bona fide government. For example, one
can easily reframe USG as a corporation that you form a contract with by
owning land, renting, or being on a public way. This does not mean that our
current society is a libertarian paradise.

Turing completeness shows us the ouroboros of expressivity with programming
languages. It's unfortunate people let their guard down in other areas.

~~~
cgriswald
Libertarian thought is complex, non-static, and (importantly), non-monolithic.
This is especially true for the relationship between people, government, and
corporations. The generalizing statements in this thread reject vast swaths of
ideas for no reason at all; even ideas that generally agree with the ideas in
the thread. My guess is most people hold in their minds a caricature of
libertarianism informed either by "that one libertarian guy from college" or
social media postings. That's somewhat deserved, but also a shame.

~~~
commoner
Many people associate the word "libertarian" with right-libertarianism, which
is the predominant form of libertarianism in the United States. Ayn Rand's
philosophy of objectivism is right-libertarian.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-
libertarianism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-libertarianism)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism_in_the_United_S...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism_in_the_United_States)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objectivism_and_libertarianism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objectivism_and_libertarianism)

On the other hand, left-libertarians oppose capitalism while supporting
personal property rights. Left-libertarians and right-libertarians find common
ground in rejecting authoritarian governments.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-
libertarianism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-libertarianism)

Libertarianism comprises a diverse collection of views that aim to advance
individual freedom, and anyone who is not an authoritarian is likely to agree
with some libertarian principles.

------
edoceo
I was worried about this. I'm small potatoes but we make an open source app
that can connect to self-hosted or paid-hosted services. So if they could have
forced WP, they could have easily forced me too, now there is a baseline set.

To even get approved we had to make sure the App doesn't offer any sign-up or
even billing info at all. And still went round and round for approval
explaining how paid services, if any, are completely outside Apple realm.

~~~
xenospn
This is so weird. I've removed and added in-app subscriptions to my app
multiple times and never had any problems getting it approved. Even now my app
is redirecting users to my website to purchase subscriptions, and never had an
issue getting past the review process.

~~~
7tsfmCAusrQ
Watch out, you are sitting on a ticking time bomb. It's just a matter of time.

~~~
xenospn
I'm selling physical products so I'm not too worried.

------
social_quotient
Makes me think that at some point showing a restaurant menu with prices is
soon going to get the ire of Apple for suggesting an offline monetization that
they aren’t a part of.

~~~
dsparkman
They will require you to only accept Apple Pay in your restaurant, or you will
have to remove your app from the app store. :)

~~~
madeofpalk
Well, at least Apple doesn't take a cut from restaurants for Apple Pay.

~~~
commoner
Apple collects 0.15% of all credit card transactions made through Apple Pay
for US-based cards. The percentage is higher for the Apple Card, of course.

[https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-loses-key-mobile-
payment...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-loses-key-mobile-payment-
feesgoogle-misses-out-on-apples-slice-of-mobile-transactions-1433546638)

[https://venturebeat.com/2018/05/10/apple-pay-credit-card-
is-...](https://venturebeat.com/2018/05/10/apple-pay-credit-card-is-coming-
backed-by-goldman-sachs/)

~~~
Google234
They can’t take 0, the service isn’t freee to develop

~~~
Marsymars
They _can_ take 0, that's Google's cut on Google Pay.

~~~
yungstevejobs
Of course they’ll take 0. You do realize that Google is in the business of
harboring as much data about you as possible. It’s much more worthwhile for
them to know what you’re buying than for them to take a cut from using Google
pay.

------
baby-yoda
"The App Store guidelines ensure a high-quality, reliable, and secure user
experience. They are transparent and applied equally to developers of all
sizes and in all categories." \- tim cook

i can envision a scenario where apple legal, in preparation for their battle
with epic, gave that statement a critical look. after realizing the myriad of
exceptions and omissions they have in app store enforcement, they decided they
need to run a clean up campaign immediately and the WP app simply ended up a
casualty of this process.

------
bostonvaulter2
I'm glad that Apple backed down this time.

> What’s more, Mullenwag told us that he had previously offered to strip other
> mentions of the paid plans out of the app (even workarounds like when a user
> views a preview of their own WordPress webpage and then navigates to
> WordPress.com), only to have those suggestions rejected by Apple.

Having to remove those kinds of work-arounds is part of what bugs me about
apples control over the app store.

~~~
seba_dos1
Consider that they backed down only when it became a popular news story at
exactly the worst time for them to have it (because of Epic).

~~~
kergonath
Well, we’ll never know if it would have turned out differently at another
time. They can be stubborn, but they can also recognise mistakes and correct
them.

That said, there is no comparison: forcing a developer to add features to an
app is nothing like enforcing the TOS the developer agreed with and is trying
to subvert.

~~~
tsycho
Yes, we know. Ask any iOS developer friend of yours and you'll know that Apple
never backs down, until the incident gets publicity.

And the non-malicious explanation for that is simple. The majority of the
million apps in the app store are small fry to them, and they can't scale
support to that level in any empathetic rational manner.

My wishlist for legislation is:

1/ Apple has to allow side loading of apps (make it an advanced developer
setting, with plenty of warnings and periodic reminders, that's fine).

2/ Apple cannot force usage of Apple pay and apple sign in.

3/ Apple cannot force developers to hide any options or even information about
alternative mechanisms to pay for content, or sign up to a service.

~~~
kergonath
Yeah it certainly is perfectible. I’d just like to retain decent security at
the platform level. We know that if sideloading can be enabled, at some point
Adobe will require it because they won’t be bothered.

I am conflicted about Sign In with Apple. It’s heavy handed, but I clearly
benefit by not having to trust Google or Facebook for this. There should be a
standard with several providers, like FIDO, but somehow I don’t see this
happening as long as Facebook and Google are utterly dominant.

I completely agree with your third point.

------
protomyth
Calling that an apology is a bit rich. It wasn't "confusion" that was the
problem, it was forcing monetization that was the problem. They basically say
it was all WordPress's fault.

~~~
userbinator
Apple tends to use that sort of language (corporate doublespeak?) a lot.

------
fastball
I think given the nature of modern multi-nationals with vertical integration
and hugely diversified product spaces, we need to rethink anti-trust in
general.

My test is fairly simple: are you generating value and capturing some portion
of it at the point of generation, or are you doing something else? Anything
that is "something else" should at the very least be questioned. Questions 10x
if the party doing "something else" is trying to _encourage_ information
asymmetry as part of this. e.g. Apple telling app developers that not only can
they not integrate another payment option in their apps, they can't even
_inform_ users that such an option exists elsewhere.

Arguably the main issue in this case is that Apple is not just requiring
themselves to be the payment gateway in transactions where they are involved
(getting an app onto your device), they also want to insert themselves into
transactions where they provide no value (e.g. subscriptions). In the case of
my Spotify subscription, Apple is not paying for bandwidth, payment processing
costs, or anything else, but they still get a cut.

If you're capturing value from a transaction you're not directly involved in,
I think that's a problem. Apple's argument is that they are enabling such
things by building the device/operating system, and historically that has been
a valid argument, but I think we've come to the point where that just isn't
enough anymore. You need to either directly be providing value _in that
particular transaction_ , otherwise it's problematic. You just end up with too
many cases like this.

Is running the App Store expensive? Then charge for actual costs. But this
sort of bait and switch of "we're providing distribution but are inserting
ourselves in subscriptions we have no hand in" is only possible due to their
market position.

------
traveler01
Apple is being too ridiculous at this point. Devs need App Store but Apple
also need devs. Being so hostile is going to hurt them pretty bad, both for
Apple and for Google.

~~~
chromedev
Google already allows apps outside the Play Store, and third party app stores
as well

~~~
scarface74
How did that work out for a Fortnite?

~~~
chromedev
I use F-Droid everyday to install and manage apps outside the Play Store and
it works out fine for me. Android is also open source. If I don't like the way
something is done then I'm free to change it, and there are multiple ROMs that
I can choose from as well.

~~~
scarface74
Good luck with the “open source” version of Android and running apps that
depend on Google Play Services.

~~~
chromedev
Like what apps? If I need something that depends on Google, there is always
this:

[https://opengapps.org/](https://opengapps.org/)

------
drummer
The only effective way to deal with apple is to vote with your wallet and your
development machine. Nothing else will help. They can do with their platform
what they want. Start developing for other platforms and take your users with
you.

------
sn41
We should have a GNU like alternative for the mobile. Mobiles are the primary
computing devices now, and we should give liberty to the developers to
distribute their products as they wish.

~~~
colordrops
Not exactly GNU like, but you could use LineageOS without the Google apps
installed. There are other open app stores like FDroid, and you can sideload
as well.

------
nojvek
In a way every App Store is somewhat a walled garden. I like that there aren’t
a 1000 anti-virus scam apps on the App Store.

Just want the process to be sane.

Like being able to install other apps on the Mac. They make it very hard to
install non Apple signed apps. But it’s possible.

In iOS, it’s not possible. It’s my device, let me do what I want with it. Let
me create things with it, not be just a content consumer.

------
carolosf
I would really love to see more open source applications on the app store
like: scummvm Dosbox iSh

I imagine that app store issues prevent these publishers from publishing to
this platform. That's pretty sad especially since there are working builds for
iOS for these applications.

It would be nice if Apple supported open source a bit more than it has on
these platforms.

iPads and iPhones are fairly powerful devices. My iPad would replace my laptop
for many usecases if I could download a CSV file and edit it in a text editor
without safari blocking the download and if I had a bash terminal and the
ability to download and build source code without jumping through hoops.

------
ficklepickle
This is what we would have if AOL won in the 90's. That round of walled
gardens failed, but this round is much better funded.

We need protocols not platforms. The longer this goes on, the more they will
ratchet up the pressure. The open internet has always won out in the past, but
this round of walled gardens has a strangle hold. More people conflate
Facebook with the internet than ever did AOL or CompuServe.

------
mensetmanusman
Apple proclaims to be on the side of consumers.

This behavior looks like anti-developer in many cases.

On one hand, Apple will lose some ability to say they are protecting consumer
privacy if they open their phones to any software, android is proof of that.
Someone else’s freedom is always someone else’s constraint.

I know many consumers benefit from being able to hand their grandparents a
phone that will work smoothly and be updated for 5 years.

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rreichman
The only way forward is to avoid Apple products. Some are truly great but if
you care about freedom and the open web we must avoid Apple.

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serdox
google killed my first app on which i worked for a year for copyright claims
by rockstar games take two! it was in fair use with no commercial usage. free.
it was an interactive map. all i used were the map and added my own icons and
locations. since it was completely free it was under the fair usage right. i
referred to the dozen other apps that had ads in them and all they said was
just that one app is allowed doesn't mean another is too.

i was buffed at that statement. its a disgrace. my app had 120 k downloads in
a year and people were loving it because no ads and useful. this is the state
of app development. how long will we tolerate this!

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serdox
what BS is this @dang talking about on the pinned comment?

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metalgearsolid3
This should be an unpopular opinion but I kind of respected Apple's previous
stance, and I'm in a way a bit disappointed they've backed down, but I think
they've needed to because they are moving too quickly.

5 years from now we'll likely see Apple Silicon powering Apple's entire new
product lineup, and Swift developers will be deploying software across the
entire product lineup with minimal effort. Swift is both quick and safe, so we
can hope these new softwares will be both fast, secure and free of critical
bugs.

This to me is a really interesting and appealing alternative to the
frustrating world of slow web apps that invade your privacy and fill your
computer with bloat. I don't see Apple's previous stance as being greedy about
obtaining a 30% cut, rather it is about trying to bring to fruition a vision
of the future where users can perform their computing needs with fast and
secure native apps. I hope we don't legislate away such a reasonable
opportunity for people to be freed from Google and Facebook invasion.

~~~
chromedev
Google allows you to install apps outside the app store and Android is open
source

~~~
Google234
People can use google then. The vast majority of people around the world use
android

~~~
chromedev
So people don't need to be freed from Google then, they need to be freed from
Apple.

~~~
scarface74
They can be, they can buy an Android.

