Apple admits it ranked its Files app ahead of competitor Dropbox • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple admits it ranked its Files app ahead of competitor Dropbox

#331

Post by heavyset_go » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 6:33 PM UTC

Saris wrote: post #328

Razengan wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I don't pay the $100 Apple tax Please. If you can’t make enough in an entire damn year to cover that $100, you need to look at what you’re doing. Hell I’ve seen obscure open source projects get more than $100 in donations every single month. If people see any value in your work, then that $100 is not a barrier at all.

What about OSS devs who don't make money from their apps? There are not very many OSS apps on the iOS app store, probably caused by the difficulty in getting an app published.

> There are not very many OSS apps on the iOS app store, probably caused by the difficulty in getting an app published.

It's also because OSS apps on iOS often need to be dual-licensed, especially if they're *GPL licensed. That's because the App Store imposes additional restrictions on the software it distributes, and the GNU licenses mandate that *GPL software cannot be distributed with additional restrictive terms.

For Apple to distribute *GPL software via the App Store, it would mean violating those licenses.

Take a look at the iOS VLC situation. It had to be taken down and re-released under a dual license because of this problem.

Re: Apple admits it ranked its Files app ahead of competitor Dropbox

#332

Post by Razengan » Tue, Jun 15, 2021, 12:37 AM UTC

heavyset_go wrote: post #298

Razengan wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I don't pay the $100 Apple tax Please. If you can’t make enough in an entire damn year to cover that $100, you need to look at what you’re doing. Hell I’ve seen obscure open source projects get more than $100 in donations every single month. If people see any value in your work, then that $100 is not a barrier at all.

I'm not begging for donations, nor am I dealing with the tax implications of taking donations, sorry. I made these apps before macOS enforced the $100 Apple tax on all apps. I would not have created them today if it meant jumping through the hoops that Apple imposes in 2021. It actually costs me money to maintain these apps, because the time I take to maintain them could be time I bill to a client.

> I'm not begging for donations

No, you’re begging for free access to millions of users to do whatever you want with them. Which Android/Windows/Linux will happily give you.

Re: Apple admits it ranked its Files app ahead of competitor Dropbox

#333

Post by webmobdev » Tue, Jun 15, 2021, 8:16 AM UTC

Turing_Machine wrote: post #52

GeekyBear wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Alarm bells should have been raised among us developers when Apple suddenly asked everyone to shell out $99 for the "privilege" of making an app available on the "App Store", and treated it as something normal. Somebody has absolutely no idea how high developer fees on proprietary platforms used to be. >Double Fine's Tim Schaefer pegged the cost of submitting an Xbox 360 patch at $40,000 in an interview with Hooksh…

> Somebody has absolutely no idea how high developer fees on proprietary platforms used to be. Right. Even in the mass-market area, I remember when Microsoft used to charge seven or eight hundred bucks for Visual Studio.

Sure, in the past the computing era was different and tech corporates could get away with charging a lot for their development tools. But even then, you did not have to depend solely on them and there was a healthy competition in this vertical - Borland easily comes to mind. During the Java boom, their JBuilder used to be a top selling product till Eclipse came out. Open source and internet changed the game. Today Visual Studio also has a free version and even Apple is forced to offer their development tools for free because otherwise developers will prefer the free opensource options, than pay the exorbitant price they used to demand.

Re: Apple admits it ranked its Files app ahead of competitor Dropbox

#334

Post by l33t2328 » Tue, Jun 15, 2021, 9:42 PM UTC

wincy wrote: post #195

l33t2328 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you say they’re degrading the experience?

The other day I had a windows upgrade and suddenly had weather on my desktop. I thought it was some malware I’d downloaded. Nope, new windows feature with a confusing way to disable it so I had to Google it. My next laptop will definitely be a MacBook.

I only just now realized that weather icon isn’t malware. Thanks for letting me know.

Re: Apple admits it ranked its Files app ahead of competitor Dropbox

#335

Post by ric2b » Tue, Jun 15, 2021, 10:28 PM UTC

Razengan wrote: post #251

heavyset_go wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Mac software and app industry has died. Even after notarising apps they show malicious popup to users. I maintain a handful of open source apps for macOS, and have for years. If I don't pay the $100 Apple tax, macOS will treat those apps as if they're radioactive, and it will trick users into believing the apps are either broken or malicious. In order to run them, users must know how to change arcane settings and d…

> If I don't pay the $100 Apple tax Please. If you can’t make enough in an entire damn year to cover that $100, you need to look at what you’re doing. Hell I’ve seen obscure open source projects get more than $100 in donations every single month. If people see any value in your work, then that $100 is not a barrier at all.

Sure, because open-source devs really want to ask for donations just to turn around and hand them directly to Apple. Must feel great.

Re: Apple admits it ranked its Files app ahead of competitor Dropbox

#336

Post by donmcronald » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 10:32 PM UTC

dwaite wrote: post #59

donmcronald wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Alarm bells should have been raised among us developers when Apple asked everyone to shell out $99 for the "privilege" of making an app available on the "App Store". And later, more so, when Apple demanded a percentage cut too on every sale you make from your app. I'm 100% against the way the app store works right now, but I don't have a problem with the idea of those two things if they were implemented in a better…

> Imagine an ecosystem where apps were signed with domain validated certificates, which would be free (or very cheap), instant, and better than what we currently have, and it definitely feels like entrenched interests are working to keep things from improving. The goal is to validate and associate a legal entity with a developer account, not a domain name. In addition to being required to do such things in many juris…

I know this is old, but...

> The goal is to validate and associate a legal entity with a developer account, not a domain name.

I'm saying that goal has failed. Setting up a company has a low, fixed cost for bad actors and there's plenty of malware signed by EV code signing certificates.

> not a $10 domain name

IMO domain names are worth a lot more than $10 once you start building a brand on them. For example, cars.com values their domain at $800 million dollars [1]. Obviously they couldn't sell it for that, but that's what they consider the brand value to be.

I can start a "legal entity" for much, much less than the value I attribute to my domain. For small developers and good actors, I think being able to build identity around a domain based brand would be useful.

Or, if it's _really_ about accountability, all code signing certificates should be issued to individuals who have validated their identity through a notary. And not using the terrible system the current CAs are using where some poor bastard in a developing country is expected to verify identity documents from a bajillion different legal jurisdictions.

I guess I just hate the high pricing and terrible, terrible product that code signing certificates have become.

1. https://domaingang.com/domain-news/cars-com-domain-was-value...