It would be fun to try to sue Apple for misleading their customers (devs are customers, they pay yearly) and try to force them (and Google) to change the wording to correctly use rules.
That's if you have a lot of throwaway money and you don't like charity.
Good call out, and something I’m not seeing a lot of discussion on here. I am an iOS developer but I want Apple to care about me as an iOS user first and foremost.
A lot of the discussion around this sounds almost exactly like “we need pro-business anti-regulation, it’ll trickle down!”, ie “high taxes on business hurts consumers”. Just like in real life, these arguments would be easier to swallow if they weren’t coming from the businesses themselves who just want a larger slice of the pie.
That's where I am too. I actually mostly agree (at least in principle) with a lot of the arguments about Apple's anticompetitive behavior and hostility towards their app developers, but I can't help but think that if app developers had their way, iPhones would be much worse products for the average iPhone customer and iPhone would have essentially no product differentiation from Android.
Too often these discussions on HN center on the power dynamics between Apple and app developers, and occasionally mention in passing something like ("choice is good for the iPhone owner too; if they don't want X then they can just choose to not install X"), but the discussion rarely tackles the nuance of the power dynamics between app developers and smartphone owners.
The correct question is "which do you think Apple cares about least?"
They care about market power very deeply so they don't have to care. Where are you going to go? Google? Doing the exact same thing. Neither? Cabin in the woods territory. Oh for the Nokia N900, right?
> Where are you going to go? Google? Doing the exact same thing. Neither? Cabin in the woods territory. Oh for the Nokia N900, right?
The Pinephone is on the frontpage at the moment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24329900, and the Librem 5 has been several times recently. Maybe not grandma friendly ATM but I wouldn’t call it “cabin in the woods territory.”
I look forward to the day I agree with you and hope it comes soon.
The point is we had it. The N900 was it. 10+ years ago. Maybe pine or librem or open moko or whatever will get us back to where we were more than a decade ago. I really hope so.
I think there’s good reason to hope, there’s a variety of implementations:
+ 2 companies, Pine64 and Purism, making 2 lines of phones
- Pinephones in various community editions, $150 and $200 with and without the convergence package
- Librem 5s for $750 now that the crowdfunding campaign’s over, and a $2000 Made in the US version
+ Several GUI environments:
- Phosh, based on GNOME and GTK+, developed by Purism as the default shell for the Librem 5
- The KDE equivalent of that, that Purism has wanted as an option for the Librem 5 from early on
- Ubiports’ community maintained Ubuntu Touch
- Sxmo, a bundle of mobile adaptations of dwm, dmenu, etc. with a nice modular (Unixy/KISS/suckless) design eg. a gesture daemon made by the same developer with it but not exclusively for it
This seems significantly better than the N900’s single (though great sounding) thing that couldn’t thrive independently after Microsoft bought Nokia out.
Well, I suppose I'd have to see the growth rate of how much that 30% cut adds to their bottom line to decide that. But even if it were huge, probably the actual iPhones still make way more money.
Even as an individual, the agreements you sign would be considered business deals since both you and Apple have the potential to profit from the agreement.
If I am an individual developer and only intend to release free apps, I should be entitled to full customer protections, period. Apple has no excuse here.
Would that also be true if you are an independent developer? Why should individual developers releasing apps not get full customer protections?
Treating all developers as businesses is part of the problem here I think. There should be more bespoke apps by individuals for small audiences — more of a community feel to things.
Apple does not have to cater to independent developers - and it doesn't, per the Developer Agreement contract. Initially you weren't able to develop apps for the iPhone at all - that is okay too.
You are not entitled to get a open computing platform if the thing resembles an... Actually, they defined this form factor!
That's if you have a lot of throwaway money and you don't like charity.