Rethinking the App Store

The "problem" with forming an opinion about Apple Store rules is that the users are willingly and knowingly putting themselves in the golden cage of apple by buying an iPhone.

Under this view the problem is not with Apple, that created a framework that users want, and communicate accurately to its customers what they get - but rather with the app developers, who wants to reach Apple clients, without accepting the rules of the framework that those clients chose willingly.

One is in-app signup. I have no problem with Apple charging a fee for services accessed via the phone when you sign up through the phone. I do think it's user hostile and opaque to not allow apps to refer the customer to a web site to buy a subscription though. Apple should compete on convenience, not awkward asymmetric information restrictions.

The other is the organising principle issue. I agree it makes sense to base the decision to charge on whether the service incurs marginal cost. That seems a fair way to do it, I just don't understand how that could be made into a clearly and unambiguously applicable rule. You may well end up with even more of a fractious grey zone.

I do not get the focus on TikTok. Yes, it read your clipboard content… just like Snapchat, Instagram, Reddit, etc. Most security researchers agree that TikTok is among the more restrained social media apps, when it comes to gathering user data.

This is a bad look for the social media landscape in general, not TikTok specifically.

Access to private APIs for example is not preventable at runtime due to the way Objective-C works.

And the ability to change payment screens etc at runtime has always been possible. But Apple simply bans the developer and so instances of this happening in the wild have been basically non-existant.