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EU's AltStore Gets First Native iOS Pornography App
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It feels like you're describing the situation you want to exist, rather than the one that actually does exist.
Game developers can put anything on a console that meets Sony's / Microsoft's / Nintendo's terms of service. iPhone developers can put anything on the phone that meets Apple's terms of service. Those sets of rules are not mysterious, they are readily available, last time I checked.
Apple has been pretty upfront about their "somewhat curated" App Store philosophy since it was first released. If you bought an iPhone, seeing the ecosystem that exists, and then complain, "hey, I can't run any arbitrary software on this phone!!1!", that's on you. If you want to run anything and everything and bought iPhone instead of Android, you made that mistake.
(I'm in the Apple ecosystem quite intentionally, because the benefits for me far outweigh the drawbacks. That's a decision I made long ago. I definitely do not agree with everything Apple does - e.g. do I think their commissions should be lower? Yes. Do I think that government should force them to make their commissions lower? No.)
It's like people who move in next to an airport and then complain endlessly about the airport noise and insist that the airport should be quieter ("it's unreasonable for them to make all that noise, I'm trying to sleep") - should have picked a different location, if that was high on your criteria.
Androidās existence does not satisfy iPhone usersā demand for superior viewing experience of pornographic content.
(ā¦on the devices they own. Letās not pretend people spend 100s šø to buy an Android for that)
I suspect that Apple is driven a little by morality, a lot more by (a) making sure to not run afoul of local regulations in any jurisdiction where they sell phones in a way that would jeopardize their ability to sell phones, and (b) by concerns of backlash from the more uptight members of society (if porn apps were available on iPhone, in some areas there'd be huge campaigns to boycott anything Apple, and those uptight people would try to morally coerce their friends, relatives, fellow church members, etc., to shun/boycott/cancel Apple).
But what would they switch to that is better or meaningfully different?
ā¦. Careful we are making the EU case in a hurry here.
The free market has a multitude of phone options, one which famously doesn't allow porn apps. Apple is not standing in the way of the free market by not allowing them.
The parental controls are good but not perfect. Their granularity goes down to the app level, but generally not lower. I know someone who is debating about allowing access to the YouTube app for their kids because you can find really useful insightful information there, but also stuff that is not especially kid-safe (and no, "YouTube Kids" is not the answer - that gets you a minuscule fraction of entertainment content, that has been whitelisted). Same deal with Safari - you can get access to all sorts of wonderful information, but also hardcore porn, uncensored combat footage, etc. You can use content filters to block a lot of objectionable content for Safari, but not for YouTube or Reddit, for instance.
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At 13 years oldā¦ they can have apple devices without parents and 13 is not 18
at 13 years old they can also use Safari and go bananas on all the porn they want
They can download the "Apple Approved" X.com App and see endless porn
Additionally they can easily download the Reddit App (or use safari for Reddit) and again, get endless porn
The examples are literally endless..
What should we do?
This is not something that Apple has done. There has aways been an associated cost, either directly, or through the purchase of one of their devices.
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The larger point is that they've apparently never been charging appropriate developer costs to reflect the value of what they were offering (according to them I mean)
It's a disservice to all sides when sub market rates are charged to get you hooked into an ecosystem (to Apple's enormous benefit), as opposed to a more clear and fair for both sides arrangement up front
Yes.
Charging a ātaxā on every Euro spend on every āsoftwareā purchase (apps or downloadable media content) on it - and forcing developers to use Appleās transaction processing - has taken it to another level of rent-seeking though.
They didnāt do that on Macs.
Not even iPods.
Thatās why government regulation is appropriate and welcome.
What you're saying is that these people bought phones without doing adequate research into which phone(s) would serve their needs, and now they're trying to renegotiate the terms after the purchase ("gee, I bought a sedan because I liked the color but now I need to move this sofa - you, car manufacturer, must now equip my sedan with a pickup bed!").
Um no... why not banning all theses useless things no one needs? and not banning x but bad things on x yesOnly one thing for it. Ban smartphones for under 18's ...
Exactly. They want to have their cake (use iOS) and eat it too (have an open ecosystem).
Who cares that the platform owner doesnāt want an open platform, the majority of their users donāt want an open platform, there is a competitor who has the majority of the market that is open, and iOS has always been closed and they bought the device knowing that? I know better. Iām more important than the majority of Appleās users - take away their choice!
No. The correct answer to "I don't like the way you're doing business" should be to not do business with them, and not to try to get the government to force them to behave the way you want.
I don't like orange clothing. I'm sure there are others who agree with me. Should we get together and make the government force companies to stop selling orange clothing? Does that seem "appropriate and welcome" to you?
No.
What Iām saying is: thereās inadequate consumer choice for mobile operating systems and application stores.
Smartphones and their operating systems arenāt unitasker devices - they do (or provide a technical platform for) so many things in our everyday lives today that they arenāt purchased for one single need, spec or requirements.
To illustrate the point: I may be inclined - or āneedā - toā¦
- use an iPhone, cause my family communicates over Appleās proprietary FaceTime or iMessage (need 1)
- āsideloadā a certain type app, cause I need it for business, hobby or study (need 2)
Using your analogy, two clothing businesses are controlling 95% or more of the market
- One that sells only orange clothing
- Another one that sells only blue clothing
And neither you nor I should be forced to make that choice between duopolists and buy all our clothing from one of them. Or go the expensive and inconvenient route of using both at the same time.
The comparison is obviously āoffā - cause clothing stores arenāt āplatformā services. You can switch between them and mix & match their items sold at basically no cost.
And thatās what the āapp ecosystemā should be regulated for:
- interoperability, ability to mix and match
- not having to buy everything from one placd
- competition
- ability and low costs to switch