Live data from Hacker News

iPad users will miss out on third-party app stores, browser engines, and more

9to5mac.com

131–140 of 194 posts

Re: iPad users will miss out on third-party app stores, browser engines, and more

#131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but your App Store commission is significantly lower as a percentage. So you're still going to wind up paying less money if you're collecting amounts like €5 or €10 or more from customers. In the cases where you'd come out worse, because your app is free or extremely low-cost like €1, then you shouldn't opt for the new business terms. You should use the current ones -- which show no indication of going away sinc…

> The point is that you've got a choice. Supposing I want to release a free, personal hobby project, app that uses some private APIs in iOS, to solve some long-standing usability or feature-gap within iOS, then no, I don't have a choice: I don't have an option at all: I can't release it in the Apple-run iOS App Store becuase it uses Private APIs, and I can't release it in a third-party App Store as a free app because…

Just because you don't like your choices doesn't mean you don't have one.

Before, you only had one set of terms. Now you have two, which may be an improvement for a lot of people.

It goes without saying that neither may be your ideal choice. Heck, in an ideal world, my choice would be for Apple to pay me rather than vice-versa! You know, as a little thank-you for making an app for their phone. It's not gonna happen, though.

Re: iPad users will miss out on third-party app stores, browser engines, and more

#132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We’ll see. I feel like it’s going to be a good Petri dish to see how shitty the third party stuff makes the Apple ecosystem.

Weird. How would it? You don’t have to buy anything except from the Apple Store if you don’t want to.

The people dismissing this may well have the technical knowledge to avoid problems, but that’s not how most people work.

Most people are influenced by advertising, their friends, social networks etc.

It’s pretty easy to persuade someone to install something malicious.

Just look at how many scams are being pushed on X/Twitter. They obviously work otherwise nobody would bother with them.

Re: iPad users will miss out on third-party app stores, browser engines, and more

#133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is what correct? Is iPadOS a different platform than iOS? That's not an easy question to answer. It's a different OS, it has a different name, it runs on different devices, it has different features, it runs different apps. But iPads ran "iOS" for many years, and iPadOS was clearly just a rebranding of the iOS that ran on iPads. On the other hand, iOS (then iPhoneOS) was announced as a "compressed and streamlined" ve…

As sibling points out, it's about what the EU thinks. "iPadOS" runs iOS apps, and iOS apps can be full fledged "iPadOS" apps with a single binary. The distinction is a business distinction, not a technical one. There are strange tiny differences in what APIs are offered, but the same is true of two Windows computers, for example, for one that has a DirectX capable graphics card and one that does not.

> "iPadOS" runs iOS apps, and iOS apps can be full fledged "iPadOS" apps with a single binary. The distinction is a business distinction, not a technical one.

That’s a rather weak argument, because the exact same thing can be said about running iOS/iPadOS apps on macs with ARM chips (aka any macs made since 2020).

Yes, you can literally go to the iOS/iPadOS section of the App Store on macOS, and for devs that enabled that checkbox during the build of their app, you can install those apps on your mac and run with a single click.

Re: iPad users will miss out on third-party app stores, browser engines, and more

#134

Apple did lot of efforts building the ecosystem. No government system helped them in it. Now fruits have come up & they want to tweak it to their own taste. If monopoly is causing trouble to small businesses & you’re able to prove it then impose fines & whatever is under the law. But just being jealous & imposition of laws just to target businesses(here almost Apple is being singled out). But this is unpopular opinio…

You may not be an Apple shareholder and I’m not sure how being a US Citizen has any potential to be a conflict of interest in this case but you still sound like you “drank the cool aid”… the question I have for you is where (if anywhere at all) do you draw the line between what Apple should be allowed to do and and what it should do voluntarily … and what rights you think individual nations have to regulate their int…

> what rights you think individual nations have to regulate their internal commerce including regulations on what manufacturers and sellers of devices must make it possible for the purchasing public to do

> while this regulation is targeting Apple’s software control the same principles are underlying the regulations that allow bilingual countries to require products be labeled in both languages, allow countries to mandate hygiene in health care facilities, higher food safety or ingredient quality control to minimise food contamination risks

I mean, while this regulation is targeting Apple’s software control, the same principles are underlying the regulations that allow countries like PRC to demand Apple to host data of their users in China in datacenters that are run by, essentially, the PRC government, as well as give them the keys to decrypt data of those users.

I don’t see how that’s a point in favor of anything at all here. Just because the countries have the right to do those things and sometimes utilize those rights for things like food safety management or bilingual product labeling enforcement, it doesn’t automatically make their usage of those same rights for other things (like compromising user data and, with full legal support, spying on political dissidents) any more justified.

No one is arguing that the EU doesn’t have the right to do what they are doing (the EU, indeed, has the right to do it). People are arguing whether it is a smart and beneficial thing to do.

Re: iPad users will miss out on third-party app stores, browser engines, and more

#135
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weird. How would it? You don’t have to buy anything except from the Apple Store if you don’t want to.

The idea is that, if for example some "evil company" you really depend on decides to do things that Apple is protecting you against they can be like "you have to install our app from outside the App Store". That "evil company" can be Facebook, Epic Games, your bank, your government etc.

Well both Facebook and Google have already convinced consumers in the past to install certificates that were only meant for internally distributed iOS apps so they could spy on end users.

Re: iPad users will miss out on third-party app stores, browser engines, and more

#136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We know it will because we remember what life was like before. Sucky platforms that were never good enough, always some weird piece of software that you thought was benign gunking up your system. It really did suck. And then…most of the problems were gone and things just worked. I’m ok if this is actually all optional, but I don’t think the anti-Apple crowd is going to be content until iOS is just another Windows. Th…

> Sucky platforms that were never good enough, always some weird piece of software that you thought was benign gunking up your system. This is a category error. Your iPhone isn't more stable because Apple charges a premium to developers so that they can invite you to use their apps, it's more stable because of all of the good decisions they make technically around the platform. Your iPhone isn't more stable because A…

And Zoom installed a secret backdoor web server on the Mac…

Re: iPad users will miss out on third-party app stores, browser engines, and more

#137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can go out and buy a windows machine if I want. Or a windows mobile phone back in the day, or an android phone today. There are so many alternatives to Apple products that if I wanted that kind of platform, it already exists and can be chosen! For Android…in China the play store basically doesn’t even exist, so phones with non-play stores aren’t rare at all. So you basically want to force your preferences on me, an…

> I can go out and buy a windows machine if I want. Or a windows mobile phone back in the day, or an android phone today. A duopoly does not a free market make.

So that's why they are making the other platform more like the firdt one?

Re: iPad users will miss out on third-party app stores, browser engines, and more

#138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can go out and buy a windows machine if I want. Or a windows mobile phone back in the day, or an android phone today. There are so many alternatives to Apple products that if I wanted that kind of platform, it already exists and can be chosen! For Android…in China the play store basically doesn’t even exist, so phones with non-play stores aren’t rare at all. So you basically want to force your preferences on me, an…

> So you basically want to force your preferences on me No one is forcing you to install third party apps. Are you really unable to control the impulse to install third party app stores on your device? You need Apple to stop you from doing something you don't want to do in the first place? Just because you want to stick in the Apple approved apps doesn't mean that I should have to do the same on my own iPhone.

Maybe I need the app but don't trust the altstore its developer is forcing me to use instead of App Store.

Re: iPad users will miss out on third-party app stores, browser engines, and more

#139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Choice is good, though I can't help but wonder what % of European customers will start getting their applications from third-parties. In 12 or so years of on-again, off-again usage of Android (usually as a secondary phone), I've sideloaded one app: a pre-release game that I happily pulled down from the official channel once it went "official"

I want a Firefox that doesn't suck badly.

This is the thing I see mentioned more than anything else, but wouldn't this require Firefox organizationally to completely rebuild the Quantum engine on native iOS code for you to actually see any benefit?

Re: iPad users will miss out on third-party app stores, browser engines, and more

#140
post #20

For anyone interested, EU has started an investigation on iPadOS despite not meeting the threshold: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_23_... The investigation should be completed within 12 months.

The funny thing is that Europeans will eventually have a better experience with Apple than U.S. residents. It's not my intention to poison the well, but Apple feels like treating its customers like cattle.

I have a feeling I am going to dislike a lot of the changes coming down the pipe. I like things as they are.
Post reply on HN