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Apple apologizes to WordPress, won’t force the free app to add purchases

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Re: Apple apologizes to WordPress, won’t force the free app to add purchases

#211

Post by stephenr »

cageface wrote: post #187
stephenr wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s the last truly developer friendly platform. Right because no one ever complained about browser inconsistencies, the inherent limitations of a browser runtime, etc.

If I have to choose between a flawed platform and a broken ecosystem I'll take the former any day. No browser quirk is anywhere near as annoying as having a bug fix update to your app rejected for some new random capricious reason.

That's your choice to make, but pretending that developing web apps is all sunshine and lollipops and developing local apps for distribution via an OS vendor's store is fire and brimstone, is not realistic.

Re: Apple apologizes to WordPress, won’t force the free app to add purchases

#212

Post by krrrh »

parasubvert wrote: post #206
ardit33 wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

are you serious? Historically you are on the wrong side of the argument. MSFT lost their case in the 90s, of 'other' but not that much different reasons... to their core they are anti-competitive. Also we have the break up of the original Bell system and several companies were formed out of it. GOOG and APL most likely will lose this one.

Microsoft’s case was about parlaying their monopoly in Windows to the browser space by making Internet Explorer an intrinsic part of Windows. This is completely different from the #1 and #2 smart phone marketshare players charging a 30% cut as the exclusive software reseller to their own platform. The original At&T was allowed to be a monopoly for 80+ years because it was in the public interest. The 1982 breakup was…

There is so much misremembering of the Microsoft antitrust case, especially by people who didn’t follow it closely at the time, and you’re very right to remind everyone that the core issue was asking the government to intervene to maintain the viability of $40 closed source browser licenses.

MSFT “lost” the case but the remedies amounted to a slap on the wrist. Meanwhile the market in its broadest sense innovated in ways that no court or legislator could have reasonably predicted in the late 90s. Not just innovation in terms of superior technology, but in intellectual property (open source), culture (the web standards movement amongst devs), and organization (W3C getting its act together).

Beyond browsers Microsoft’s expected dominance on internet server business ran up against Linux, which like gecko and webkit, won out not because some Kommissar deemed it worthy, but because competitors to Microsoft were incentivized to think way outside of the box.

If App Store policies truly are as untenable as half of the people posting in this thread believe them to be, then the desire to solve the problem by bringing the coercive power of the state to redistribute some revenue seems more like a lack of imagination than anything else.

Re: Apple apologizes to WordPress, won’t force the free app to add purchases

#213

Post by Marsymars »

parasubvert wrote: post #153

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…

> 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.

You partially addressed it in your edit, but I'm pretty doubtful that the legal systems of every major state support Apple forever. It's really just a matter of time before some country gets the critical mass of popular opinion and legislative support for the idea that app stores should be treated as public goods and require regulation as such.

Many locales have regulated interchange fees for payment processors, or have threatened regulation to force voluntary reductions and caps on interchange fees. The legal arguments here are similar - I'd place Visa/Mastercard/Amex on a similar level as Apple/Google app stores in terms of competition.

Re: Apple apologizes to WordPress, won’t force the free app to add purchases

#214

Post by realusername »

jonplackett wrote: post #18
g_p wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the biggest issues with Google play store review is they won't actually tell developers which rule they're breaking, as you point out. This is so incredibly developer-hostile that the fact developers keep using the play store pretty much helps make the case they're acting in an anticompetitive manner. It certainly is interesting to note Google removed the title "Non-competition" from clause 4.5 of their develo…

This is really shoddy behaviour. Is it just laziness on their part or is there a benefit to them to keep developers guessing?

It helps them to enforce rules arbitrarily depending of their current strategy and how important of a developer you are.

Re: Apple apologizes to WordPress, won’t force the free app to add purchases

#215

Post by Marsymars »

scarface74 wrote: post #101
mortenjorck wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 cos…

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 (?).

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.)

Re: Apple apologizes to WordPress, won’t force the free app to add purchases

#216

Post by stephenr »

jjeaff wrote: post #199
stephenr wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... So many things wrong with this comparison. (a). WSL is just a Linux VM. You can do this on any desktop OS. If you're not using WSL, you can even do it with multiple hypervisors at once if you so wish. (b). macOS isn't, and has never tried to be, "Linux". It's POSIX.

There's a little more to wsl2 than just a VM. It's lighter and partially integrated. More like a VM running alongside windows instead of on top of windows.

> More like a VM running alongside windows instead of on top of windows.

It's not like that, it literally is that, because to enable WSL2 you end up running Windows itself on top of Hyper-V, and the Linux VM as a parallel VM.

> It's lighter and partially integrated.

I don't know what you think it's "lighter" than - it's a VM running on Hyper-V.

Re: Apple apologizes to WordPress, won’t force the free app to add purchases

#217

Post by bekman »

cameldrv wrote: post #208
dylan604 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem I have is that you make it sound like you have a right to release software for their platform. They opened their platform for devs to make apps. You accepted that offer, read their terms, agreed to those terms, and are now complaining about those terms? I get it that you want to make 100% of the price made from each sell, but that's not realistic. If you sell your product at a brick&mortar store, you don'…

Arguably Apple should have nothing to do with this. Someone buys a phone from Apple, and now owns that phone. He wants to use his property to run some software. What should Apple have to do with this decision any more than Chevy should tell me what neighborhoods I should drive my car into?

Not a fair comparison, this’s between developers and Apple, Apple doesn’t change you anything after you buy their phone.

Re: Apple apologizes to WordPress, won’t force the free app to add purchases

#218

Post by chromedev »

scarface74 wrote: post #107
chromedev wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

How did that work out for a Fortnite?

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.

Re: Apple apologizes to WordPress, won’t force the free app to add purchases

#219

Post by cageface »

stephenr wrote: post #211
cageface wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I have to choose between a flawed platform and a broken ecosystem I'll take the former any day. No browser quirk is anywhere near as annoying as having a bug fix update to your app rejected for some new random capricious reason.

That's your choice to make, but pretending that developing web apps is all sunshine and lollipops and developing local apps for distribution via an OS vendor's store is fire and brimstone, is not realistic.

Do you really think that's a fair characterization of my point?

If any of it was all sunshine and lollipops they wouldn't have to pay us to do it because people would be queuing up to do it for free.

Re: Apple apologizes to WordPress, won’t force the free app to add purchases

#220

Post by Marsymars »

slow_donkey wrote: post #25

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…

Huh, I wasn't even aware of this. My business has an app that's only usable by our B2B customers. (Which are low in number, but high value.) It would cause significant consternation if Apple decided to reject it.
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