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App store bill sails out of Senate Judiciary Committee

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Re: App store bill sails out of Senate Judiciary Committee

#141

Post by Apocryphon »

shimfish wrote: post #115
thebaer wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Allowing alternative payment systems. This would be absolutely huge for small devs, as you no longer have to pay the ridiculous 15%-30% rent to Apple.

Oh goody. I get to manage my own payment system. And have to worry about being tax compliant in every country and state. And deal with logins, and refunds and fraud and uptime and customer support. Where do I sign up?

Because a market is suddenly opened for business, alternative payment processors can now start offering systems that take care of this, and with different terms from Apple's. You wouldn't have to handle all of it yourself, you could simply sign on with one that provides you with service you like.

This is the free market competition that tech is supposedly in favor of.

Re: App store bill sails out of Senate Judiciary Committee

#142

Post by javajosh »

nerdjon wrote: post #88
javajosh wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are in luck! Another way to manage subscriptions client side is to use PayPal. In the same way you have control over all your subscriptions in one place, and can cancel without the interference of the counterparty - a great benefit indeed. And paypal can work with anything, any entity that has a PayPal account. PP is, of course, not without its own horror stories, however a lot of that is around p2p selling-gone-…

Your assuming everyone will use PayPal for subscriptions. When with this there are no rules forcing them to do anything since they can just ship outside the store. This doesn't address my issue (also I don't want another one I want to keep everything in a single place in settings on my phone). Considering I have never used PayPal for any of my subscriptions on the web I don't see this catching on for mobile either. I…

I'm letting you know of an alternative that has worked well for me. If you want to respond to that assistance with silly assertions and general whingeing, well, that's your choice. But you are not coming off as very...impressive, shall I say.

Re: App store bill sails out of Senate Judiciary Committee

#143

Post by Apocryphon »

yalogin wrote: post #79

If this comes into effect will we see a plethora of appstores on each devices? Every app worth its salt will want to create their own bundle or App Store and hope to control their own end to end experience. I cannot imagine how terrible that experience is going to be.

Android already allows third-party app stores and there is no plethora.

Re: App store bill sails out of Senate Judiciary Committee

#144

Post by idle_zealot »

threeseed wrote: post #96
olyjohn wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's being removed from you again? Don't sideload apps if you don't like sideloading. Keep using Apple's app store if you like it, or maybe in the future, you will find you like an app store better than Apple's. We will never find out if someone does it better than Apple, if nobody can even try.

This is such a facetious argument. You know that developers will end up using alternate App Stores. Which means I will be forced to use them if I want to continue to use the app.

> You know that developers will end up using alternate App Stores

This keeps being stated as though it’s a foregone conclusion. All evidence points to the contrary. Look at Google Play. Android has allowed third-party stores since inception and yet the only stores that see any notable use are the ones that ship on devices, i.e. Google Play and to a much smaller extent OEM stores (at least in the English market).

So no, it is not likely that you will have to install another store. Just like most Android users only ever touch the Play Store most iOS users will only ever touch the App Store.

The only notable stores I expect to see from this are an Epic Games store that basically just has Fortnite on it, and some community-driven F-Droid-like.

Re: App store bill sails out of Senate Judiciary Committee

#145

Post by e93849 »

stuff4ben wrote: post #90
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't kid yourself. Definitely not value for money. They're checking that nobody is getting around their pay-to-play walled garden. Any security checking is probably automated and incidental.

> Any security checking is probably automated Genuine question, do you think that comes free? It costs money to develop these things and having control over the app store allows them to recoup that. I see no problem except maybe it's too expensive for developers. A more reasonable cut should be offered IMO.

I already paid Apple when I bought my iPhone. Why should I be forced to keep paying them more?

Re: App store bill sails out of Senate Judiciary Committee

#146

Post by shimfish »

henryfjordan wrote: post #131
shimfish wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you're suggesting that either Google or Apple will just step aside? And the point of this monopoly busting legislation was to create a bigger monopoly?

The legislation would require Google/Apple to "step aside" and allow side-loading/alternative app stores, so yes? Google and Apple would still be welcome to operate their own stores. A 3rd-party cross-platform store would compete with them, hence no monopoly. Edit: I guess you read my comment to mean "Apple's app store would come to Android" or vice versa? That's a possibility. I'd prefer that to the current state of…

I still end up with one more app store to deal with. Unless this 3rd party becomes a de-facto monopoly, there's no way you could afford to leave money on the table by not also dealing with Apple and Google.

Re: App store bill sails out of Senate Judiciary Committee

#147

Post by shimfish »

Apocryphon wrote: post #141
shimfish wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh goody. I get to manage my own payment system. And have to worry about being tax compliant in every country and state. And deal with logins, and refunds and fraud and uptime and customer support. Where do I sign up?

Because a market is suddenly opened for business, alternative payment processors can now start offering systems that take care of this, and with different terms from Apple's. You wouldn't have to handle all of it yourself, you could simply sign on with one that provides you with service you like. This is the free market competition that tech is supposedly in favor of.

And these services would all take a 15-30% cut. It wouldn't be profitable otherwise.

Re: App store bill sails out of Senate Judiciary Committee

#148

Post by idle_zealot »

anonymouse008 wrote: post #139
andrewjl wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it forcefully being removed from you?

I purchased my goods with the express contract that the AppStore will be the only way a developer gets access to Apple's APIs, Libraries, and instruction sets for iPhone. That's the thesis for a treatise I could write. This breaks the contract I had with them upon purchase.

That’s not true though. Users can already sign and sideload apps from a Mac. It’s just that doing so imposes annoyances (have to manually update apps, and resign every week). Allowing proper sideloading would only eliminate annoyances associated with current capabilities.

Re: App store bill sails out of Senate Judiciary Committee

#149

Post by e93849 »

roughly wrote: post #112
georgeecollins wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On my PC I have a Windows Store, a Steam Store, an EA Origin store and an Epic Games store. There are problems with Windows, particularly because it is like a 25 year old OS. But I don't think the problems are due to those store. I like being able to buy things on the Windows Store and on Origin and Steam. If you are right and this makes things worse don't you think people will just stick with the Apple store? Full d…

> If you are right and this makes things worse don't you think people will just stick with the Apple store? No, they won’t. At a bare minimum, they’ll have the Google store and the Facebook store, and they’ll probably have a dozen others, because most people don’t actually care enough to make a principled stand on these kinds of things, but their lives will be shittier because of this, in the same way that we all hav…

In other words, people will have more freedom, and with that comes the freedom to make bad choices.

Re: App store bill sails out of Senate Judiciary Committee

#150

Post by Apocryphon »

shimfish wrote: post #119
shaky-carrousel wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, my user experience is my problem. Other people dictating how should I experience my devices is hugely condescending.

It becomes everyones user experience when every big company only offers their software on their own app store so they don't have to pay anyone else a cut.

Yes, but is that inevitable? Facebook tried to take advantage of Android's open nature in the past and failed outright, and that wasn't even an app store but an app launcher (Facebook Home). The Amazon Appstore is mostly used for their Fire Tablets anyway. Ditto Samsung Galaxy Store is specifically for their own devices. Epic's attempts at building their own mobile app store hasn't gotten anywhere. So what other phantom third party app store are we so afraid of? Steam?
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