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U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee Approves Another Antitrust Bill That Would Allow Sideloading on iPhone
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You have a signed letter from every iOS developer in existence that states any iOS app ever made and will be made will be available in the App Store? Is there proof of this?
If it can be 100% guaranteed that any and ALL apps on iOS will be available on the App Store, then yes, it won't impact anyone. But unless there is a legal binding contract that prevents apps from being pulled from the App Store and only available in a third party store, it will happen. Therefore, it impacts everyone.
My wife had a really good comparison to this situation. Instead of comparing phones to cars (which we have all seen doesn't work all to well for many reasons) she is comparing the iPhone and Sideloading to an HOA (HomeOwners Association). Basically if you buy a house in a neighborhood with an HOA, you lose some of your freedoms to add additions to your house or paint it different colors or install certain plants or other things like that and often a fee is associated with it. For following these rules and paying your fees, they often take care of your yard for you and provide security in the neighborhood and discounts on utilities. Even though you own the house, you cannot necessarily do whatever you want to it. You do however know these things before going into the HOA.
So as much as I hate to say it because I would like to do stuff on the iPhone that I cannot due easily right now, Apple is not law breaking/being completely unreasonableI don't think. I DO think that before somebody buys the phone that Apple needs to make abundantly clear that they are buying into a walled garden and cannot do what is possible on other devices. More than just a big wall of text that nobody actually reads.
So as much as I hate to say it because I would like to do stuff on the iPhone that I cannot due easily right now, Apple is not law breaking/being completely unreasonableI don't think. I DO think that before somebody buys the phone that Apple needs to make abundantly clear that they are buying into a walled garden and cannot do what is possible on other devices. More than just a big wall of text that nobody actually reads.
If you are that so tied up in Apple's environment, that is a you problem not an Apple problem. I can switch to Android today if I wanted without any effort.
That same logic, how about we actually go after the true monopolies instead of the big bad Apple huh? Talk about uprooting your digital life, in order for me to get an ISP other than Spectrum I need to sell my $250,000 house and move.
While I don't know for a fact that Android users avoid side loading, I will say that it is such an American myth that the more choice you have the better. The paradox of choice is that too much of it leads to a human inability to actually determine what is "best" or it leads to degraded judgement as to what is "good enough". America as a society overall still doesn't get this.
Yep. I expect the App Development fee to significantly increase, and Xcode will no longer be free, with a large premium like Visual Studio Professional/Enterprise. Which is fine for the Epic and Facebook of the world, but not for a single developer.
Except it doesn't go through Apple's review process. Which I have acknowledged could use some improvements. But even some half checked review is better than zero review at all.
This. With as absurdly buggy as iOS 15 and Monterey are, I do not have faith Apple can fully 100% secure this hook for the first couple iOS versions.
So you're saying that all apps in the App Store are safe and no one invading your "privacy" in any of the millions of apps there? Really? If you live under a rock and never give out your CC info to anyone but Apple, then you've got other problems than this. If you fear that an app may be spying on you, quit loading candy games from China on your phone.
Maybe I'm just unclear what aspect of one's "privacy" people are worried about if the app comes directly from the company that wrote it? If you don't trust the developer, maybe you shouldn't put it on your phone in the first place!
Perhaps. But the devs did not create the marketplace. If there was an amazing market opportunity prior to the App Store, why didn’t any dev take advantage of it?
That’s because your local government franchise board granted a monopoly to Spectrum for a percentage cut. So you have to blame your local government. But along with that monopoly power they are granted they become regulated. Spectrum would like to restrict you to only buying a TV content through them since they are the ones who put forth the capital to build and maintain the physical network that your house is wired to. But they can’t because they are a regulated industry. If they weren’t they could start charging NetFlix, Disney, Apple and any other streaming service that their customers use a percentage of the streaming revenue or just block them since it is literally Spectrum’s physical platform that provides the connection. But they can’t because they are regulated which is the exact thing Apple is trying to avoid.
Geez is it so difficult to have decent conversations on this site. I never even once brought up that the App Store is perfect. But the solution to a problematic gated community is not to abolish it entirely and allow installations from other sources. There is a very simple solution to fix the App Store issue, have the App Review process take months. But no developer would ever agree to this.
Sure, and they could also put up 7 warning screens every time someone downloaded an app, and has their settings set to Apple-store-only. How do you like them Apples? Not so fun that way around huh?
Nope, just have the setting, and leave users alone to make their choices.
Regardless, the setting would be redundant, as Apple's App Store app would obviously only download from Apple's app store. To find sideloading apps, you'd have to first find the alternates on the internet.
To the people saying nobody is forcing you to sideload, just get the app from the App Store for more money they are forgetting the Epic Game Store vs Steam.
Epic pretty much handed out loads of cash to developers to make their games exclusive to the Epic Game Store, do you really believe this wouldn’t happen on iOS? You just know that if Apple were forced to allow 3rd party app stores then Epic or (insert other big player here) will buy up a load of exclusives and pretty much force people into compromising the security of their phones anyway.
The next big game comes out on iOS right now my child has a fully locked down screen time managed phone with family sharing, I can check and monitor all her purchases and stop the whole in app purchase fiasco whereby parents have accidentally had their cards rinsed by their children buying Fifa dollars or some other in app currency.
Now if iOS was unlocked and the next big game didn’t list on the App Store because they are exclusive somewhere else you either have to tell your child no and risk them being the odd one out at school and potentially bullied (extreme i know but i wouldn’t put it past the youth of today), or allow them to have a device with far less security and parental controls. The game itself might be brilliant for kids but the compromises to obtain said game wouldn’t be worth the risk.
Also in recent history Apple have always been fairly decent at refunding parents cards for “accidental” in app purchases (although this may have changed recently) however if there are now loads of different stores all with different policies then this too also becomes a massive nightmare with probably very little chance of that cash ever being refunded.
Now if the compromise is that every app has to be made available on the App Store as well as 3rd party stores then everything I said above could be ignored, however you’d have no way of making sure this was done As a developer could simply export the app from the SDK and put it on whatever App Store or website download they wanted.
Also as someone said above I myself wouldn’t mind sideloading I probably wouldn’t use it anyway, however my 70 year old mother in law, or my 11 year old daughter I dread to think what damage they could do if they were allowed unrestricted access outside the walled garden. The child I would imagine would end up looking for some Minecraft skin tool or something that when downloaded starts sending your personal data to China or somewhere for exploitation.
The walled garden is precisely why I recommend iPhones/iPads to non tech savvy people as its too easy to ruin a general purpose OS such as macOS or Windows because of being able to install something that can dig itself into the core of the system and do nasty things. Most people just wanna browse the internet and do their banking safely which is why the walled garden approach of iOS is the safest way, yes its not perfect but with the ability to unlock the gate at anytime the garden is far less safe going forward.
Epic pretty much handed out loads of cash to developers to make their games exclusive to the Epic Game Store, do you really believe this wouldn’t happen on iOS? You just know that if Apple were forced to allow 3rd party app stores then Epic or (insert other big player here) will buy up a load of exclusives and pretty much force people into compromising the security of their phones anyway.
The next big game comes out on iOS right now my child has a fully locked down screen time managed phone with family sharing, I can check and monitor all her purchases and stop the whole in app purchase fiasco whereby parents have accidentally had their cards rinsed by their children buying Fifa dollars or some other in app currency.
Now if iOS was unlocked and the next big game didn’t list on the App Store because they are exclusive somewhere else you either have to tell your child no and risk them being the odd one out at school and potentially bullied (extreme i know but i wouldn’t put it past the youth of today), or allow them to have a device with far less security and parental controls. The game itself might be brilliant for kids but the compromises to obtain said game wouldn’t be worth the risk.
Also in recent history Apple have always been fairly decent at refunding parents cards for “accidental” in app purchases (although this may have changed recently) however if there are now loads of different stores all with different policies then this too also becomes a massive nightmare with probably very little chance of that cash ever being refunded.
Now if the compromise is that every app has to be made available on the App Store as well as 3rd party stores then everything I said above could be ignored, however you’d have no way of making sure this was done As a developer could simply export the app from the SDK and put it on whatever App Store or website download they wanted.
Also as someone said above I myself wouldn’t mind sideloading I probably wouldn’t use it anyway, however my 70 year old mother in law, or my 11 year old daughter I dread to think what damage they could do if they were allowed unrestricted access outside the walled garden. The child I would imagine would end up looking for some Minecraft skin tool or something that when downloaded starts sending your personal data to China or somewhere for exploitation.
The walled garden is precisely why I recommend iPhones/iPads to non tech savvy people as its too easy to ruin a general purpose OS such as macOS or Windows because of being able to install something that can dig itself into the core of the system and do nasty things. Most people just wanna browse the internet and do their banking safely which is why the walled garden approach of iOS is the safest way, yes its not perfect but with the ability to unlock the gate at anytime the garden is far less safe going forward.
Again this is all good and sunshine and rainbows.....until the Epics and others come alone and purchase exclusivity rights to apps to where they are NOT on the App Store. So we will not have a choice.
Apple isn't breaking the law- that's why they're writing a new one!
In terms of being unreasonable- what's unreasonable is refusing to work with regulators once they've made it clear that changes are coming.
In case you missed the point, both parties put in the work and both parties benefitted from it. Some folks on here act as if Apple allowing devs to create software for the iPhone was some benevolent and gracious act on behalf of Apple. No, Apple did it because they knew it would be of benefit to themselves. The success of the App Store or the iPhone would not have been what it was without both Apple and the millions of devs, and some people seem to gloss over the latter.
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Thank you thank you thank you! I have been saying this for a LONG time now! Epic does this because it is the ONLY way to compete with the behemoth of Steam. Not even their less markup was enough, so they had to resort to buying exclusives in order to compete with Steam. App Store is a behemoth too, so Epic will need to do the same (other companies as well).
Yeah, because it's so convenient to do my banking on a Playstation or Firestick or Mac while I am out and about. Ridiculous logic.
And so your argument is Apple can do whatever the heck they want, overcharge, set unfair rules, etc., and if you don't like it, you can go elsewhere? I would love to see developers just dump Apple then and put everything on Android only. That's what you're saying?
What do you mean by “iOS unlocked”?
I am literally begging people to go try out Altstore to see how this works right now.
Imagine that - but easier - and with no silly seven day restriction to re-sign the app
Literally nothing here is going to change other than the source of the actual app.
The security will be the same, parental controls will all be there …all the features will be there …everything is the same… it’s signed to make sure there’s no malware.
It just comes from a different source
Nobody is talking about wanting root level access or different operating systems or anything operating differently than right now other than you can get the same safe applications from other physical sources.
Agreed. But the analogy about Apple being blamed for what would arguably be a user issue is not without warrant. See what happened to the Audi brand in the ‘80s with the phenomenon know as ‘runaway’ acceleration.
You've never heard of macOS, huh? You know, the OS that has always allowed side loading on all Macs since Apple's inception. And yet, the entire Mac world has not collapsed due to a privacy/malware disaster.This is just sad. Third-party app stores sound like a great way to get the malware. Say goodbye to privacy and security.
Our privacy will be on the line and we will be exposed to the malware. I really hope Apple will find a way to stop this. The government should really stay out of this.
Relax, it's just choice. You will still be able to exclusively download from Apple's app store if you so choose. And most apps will stay on it, due to people's paranoia. All that will happen is major software companies will remove their apps to sideloading, so they no longer have to get reamed for 30% of their revenue (yeah, that's not 30% of profits, it's 30% of revenue!!!). Most of the smaller ones will put their apps on both the app store, and on other stores etc.