If I get your FIDO2 token and reprogram it without somehow also wiping the data on it, your problem is that I got your FIDO2 token, not that I could reprogram it without erasing it (which theoretically could perhaps be true right now)
For this exact reason, I store my cryptographic keys in a ring which I never remove from my finger.
Also, you should probably spend more time reading about cryptography and less time reading FIDO Alliance propaganda.
The first is if I can reprogram it, then so can anyone else. I don't know what the situation is where you live, but government has passed laws allowing them to compel all manufacturers of reprogrammable devices to all them to reprogram is with their spyware.
The second is places I interact with, like banks, insist on having guarantees on the devices I use to authenticate myself. Devices like a credit card. "I promise to never reprogram this card so it debits someone else's account" simply won't fly with them.
The easy way out of that is to ensure the entity who can reprogram it has a lot of skin in the game and deep pockets. This is why they trust a locked pixel running Google signed android to store your cards. But take the same phone running a near identical OS, but on unlocked hardware so you reprogram it, and they won't let you store cards.
But that's the easy way out. It still let's a government force Google to install spyware, so it's not the most secure way. One way to make it secure is to insist no one can reprogram it. That's what a credit card does.
In any case, if someone successfully got the law changed in the way the OP suggested, so people could not use their devices as a digital passport, it won't only be me wishing a pox on their house.
It's actually the other way around, the only way to garantue that your device is free of spyware is you reprogramming it. You shouldn't have to trust the potentially compromised manufacturer.
The fact that there is always something you must trust in a device, as opposed to being able to prove it's trustworthy to yourself by just looking at it is so well known it has a name: is called the root of trust.
The interesting thing is it can ensure the root of trust the only thing you need to trust. The ability to do that makes your statement factually wrong. In fact it's drop dead simple. The root of trust only need let you read all firmware you loaded back, so you can verify it is what you would have loaded yourself. TPM's and secure boot are built around doing just that. Secure boot is how the banks and whoever else know you are running a copy of Android produced by Google.
In this case the government may mandate to have spyware pre-installed in the factory - which is already the case for phones and laptops in some countries.
> I promise to never reprogram this card so it debits someone else's account
When reprogramming, the card should wipe private keys so it becomes just a "blank" without any useful information.
Secondly, they have no control over companies not based where I live. So I could just import it myself, provided you are successful get ever country to pass a law the denies me the right to do this the way I want to do it.
I prefer to have my auth device bricked than compromised.
for anything else, i want to be able to reprogram.
so for vendors, a simple choice :
* be OTP, but no "patching"
* be R/W, but also by its owner
Regardless the rest us who don't want to go through the extra work OTP creates still of use want to put our credit cards, fido2 keys, government licences, concert tickets and whatever else in one general purpose computing device so we don't have to carry lots of little auth devices. To do pull that off securely this device must have firmware I can not change.
The OP wants to make it illegal to sell a device with firmware I can not change.
In asking for that, they've demonstrated they don't have a clue how secure and opening computing works. If they somehow got it implemented it would be a security disaster for them and everybody else.
It should very much be enforced though, similar to speed limits on the road. It's much easier to zero in on weird electromagnetic waves than it is to catch people speeding on roads.
I'm all in to allow free access to reading waves, but broadcasting is regulated for good reason. Today I was in the subway when my Bluetooth headset started lagging, it's happened once before on a highway close to a specific car, this is DOS.
The radio spectrum is limited and it must be regulated and follow regulations, enforcement is really hard, it's a lot easier and reasonable to dump it on the manufacturers by locking the juice behind closed firmware.
2.1033 Application for grant of certification. Paragraph 4(i) which reads:
For devices including modular transmitters which are software defined radios and use software to control the radio or other parameters subject to the Commission’s rules, the description must include details of the equipment’s capabilities for software modification and upgradeability, including all frequency bands, power levels, modulation types, or other modes of operation for which the device is designed to operate, whether or not the device will be initially marketed with all modes enabled. The description must state which parties will be authorized to make software changes (e.g., the grantee, wireless service providers, other authorized parties) and the software controls that are provided to prevent unauthorized parties from enabling different modes of operation. Manufacturers must describe the methods used in the device to secure the software in their application for equipment authorization and must include a high level operational description or flow diagram of the software that controls the radio frequency operating parameters. The applicant must provide an attestation that only permissible modes of operation may be selected by a user.
2.1042 Certified modular transmitters. Paragraph (8)(e) which reads:
Manufacturers of any radio including certified modular transmitters which includes a software defined radio must take steps to ensure that only software that has been approved with a particular radio can be loaded into that radio. The software must not allow the installers or end-user to operate the transmitter with operating frequencies, output power, modulation types or other radio frequency parameters outside those that were approved. Manufacturers may use means including, but not limited to the use of a private network that allows only authenticated users to download software, electronic signatures in software or coding in hardware that is decoded by software to verify that new software can be legally loaded into a device to meet these requirements.https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-47/chapter-I/subchapter-A...
Likewise for requiring someone to change out drivers or firmware.
> The radio spectrum is limited and it must be regulated and follow regulations, enforcement is really hard, it's a lot easier and reasonable to dump it on the manufacturers by locking the juice behind closed firmware.
By far the largest problem in this space is users importing devices purchased via travel abroad or drop shipping and then those devices don't follow the rules.
Getting domestic users to follow the rules is not a significant problem because a) most people don't know how to modify firmware anyway, b) the people who do know how to do it are sophisticated users who are more likely to understand that there are significant penalties for violating regulatory limits and know they actually live in the relevant jurisdiction, c) if those users really wanted to do it they're the sort who could figure out how to do it regardless, and d) there is negligible benefit in doing it anyway (increasing power increases interference, including for you, and it works much better to just get a second access point).
It's not a real problem.
I am against regulation of broadcasting equipment. There's a difference.
At most, it prevents people from accidentally doing it. Anyone who wants to do can figure it out on their own.
No more reasonable than limiting cars to 75mph (which some people, admittedly, are probably in favor of).
I wouldn't be in favour of a hard 75mph because current speed limits are set by social consensus on the basis that they aren't strictly enforced. The police are extremely unlikely to stop you for doing 76mph in a 70, so I don't think your car should.
https://github.com/meshtastic/firmware/blob/develop/src/mesh...
The true limits are imposed by the hardware, not the software, as it should be!
I swear not even Micro$oft attained this level of commitment.
Being able to reprogram a pacemaker isn't enough!
We should require that any devices that our lives depends on, especially devices that go inside our bodies, to be open source: not just reprogrammable, but with source code available for inspection and modification.
I've been working in this industry for too long in order to trust a closed source pacemaker to be bug-free.
Requiring that the pacemaker be outside a human body in order to reprogram it seems like a very sensible solution.
You're legally (and technically) prohibited from re-programming GPS modules, GSM modules, and probably many stuff in cars as well.
(Actually, maybe contractually when it comes to GPS modules.)
Besides that your point is missing the fact that you are dealing with outside services that provide a contract for their usage (GPS, GSM). You should be free to program your own devices but if you use an external service, then yes they can specify how you use their service. Those are contractual obligations. Cars on the road have clear safety risks and those are legal obligations. None of those obligations should govern what you do with your device until your device interacts with other people and/or services.
Sounds like something Apple would say.
It wouldn't be fit for purpose (letting soldiers know precisely where they are on the globe) if it required transmission of any type from the user. That would turn it into a beacon an adversary could leverage.
GPS et al would be non-functional if everybody could make a jammer.
(That’s not to say that app stores fall even remotely in that category.)
>GPS et al would be non-functional if everybody could make a jammer.
Then it should be illegal to make a GPS jammer. Making it illegal to reprogram a GPS receiver in any way is unnecessarily broad.
It would be difficult to catch in an inspection if you could reprogram the OEM parts.
I don't care about closed-course cars, though. Do whatever you want to your track/drag car, but cars on the highway should probably have stock software for functional parts.
Essentially all passenger cars use physical/hydraulic connections for the steering and brakes. The computer can activate the brakes, not disable the pedal from working.
But also, this argument is absurd. What if someone could reprogram your computer to make the brakes not work? They could also cut the brake lines or run you off the road. Which is why attempted murder is illegal and you don't need "programming a computer" to be illegal.
> It would be difficult to catch in an inspection if you could reprogram the OEM parts.
People already do this. There are also schmucks who make things like straight-through "catalytic converters" that internally bypass the catalyst for the main exhaust flow to improve performance while putting a mini-catalyst right in front of the oxygen sensor to fool the computer. You'd basically have to remove the catalytic converter and inspect the inside of it to catch them, or test the car on a dyno using an external exhaust probe, which are the same things that would catch someone reprogramming the computer.
In practice those people often don't get caught and the better solution is to go after the people selling those things rather than the people buying them anyway.
I'm not seeing an argument here.
Cars have posed a physical threat to humans ever since they were invented, and yet the owners could do whatever the hell they wanted as long as the car still behaved legally when tested[1].
Aftermarket brakes (note spelling!), aftermarket steering wheels, aftermarket accelerator pedals (which can stick!), aftermarket suspensions - all legal. Aftermarket air filters, fuel injectors and pumps, exhausts - all legal. Hell, even additions, like forced induction (super/turbo chargers), cold air intake systems, lights, transmission coolers, etc are perfectly fine.
You just have to pass the tests, that's all.
I want to know why it is suddenly so important to remove the owners right to repair.
After all, it's only been quite recent that replacement aftermarket ECUs for engine control were made illegal under certain circumstances[2], and that's only a a few special jurisdictions.
What you are proposing is the automakers wet dream come true - they can effectively disable the car by bricking it after X years, and will legally prevent you from getting it running again even if you had the technical knowhow to do so!
---------------------------
[1] Like with emissions. Or brakes (note spelling!)
[2] Reprogramming the existing one is still legal, though, you just have to ensure you pass the emissions test.
Oftentimes even the stock software can cause those problems you've mentioned, and has happened quite a few times in the past
This would be easy to inspect if the device were open.
This is silly. Prohibiting modifying car firmware because it would enable some methods of sabotage is like prohibiting making sledgehammers because someone might use one to bludgeon someone, when murder is already a crime to begin with.
The only reason it's "illegal" is because they were thinking people would use it to make missiles easily - but that's already the case even with non-reprogrammable gps. And in big 2025 you can also just use drones with bombs attached to it.
Hardware receivers cannot be reprogrammed as transmitters.
We already have well known areas with constant GPS manipulation. https://www.flightradar24.com/data/gps-jamming
They're becoming self aware!
That's the whole point.. parent is arguing that it should not be illegal.
It is however, illegal to broadcast into spectrums you're not allowed to.
But if I modify the uc in a GPS module to calculate 1+1=3 then AFAIK that's totally allowed.
In support of this irrefutable statement:
• > "Whatever is, is right." — Alexander Pope
• > "If you want to get along, go along." — Sam Rayburn
• > "Reform? Reform! Aren't things bad enough already?" — Lord Eldon
• > "We've always done it this way." — Grace Hopper (referred to it as a dangerous phrase)
• > "Well, when you put it that way..." — [List of millions redacted to protect the compliant]
Rebuttal:
• > "“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” ― George Bernard Shaw
• > "Yeah, well, ya know, that's just like, uh, your opinion man." — The Dude (In someone's pharmaceutically elevated dream, addressing the Supreme Court.)
John Deere is already subject to extra regulation in Europe; it's only in America that they're allowed to molest consumers in the aftermarket. And Xbox has had sideloading for decades now, in case you were unaware: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/windows/...
Which clearly shows the problem is not John Deer, Apple, etc.
The problem is weak consumer protections in the US from corrupt US lawmakers who were bought by the companies they are supposed to regulate.
For those who didn’t click the link, Xbox allows you to either load your own software or load software you buy from the Xbox store. Not both.
I would think making sure outside payment links aren’t scams will be more expensive than that because checking that once isn’t sufficient. Scammers will update the target of such links, so you can’t just check this at app submission time. You also will have to check from around the world, from different IP address ranges, outside California business hours, etc, because scammer are smart enough to use such info to decide whether to show their scammy page.
Also, even if it becomes ‘only’ hundreds of dollars, I guess only large companies will be able to afford providing an option for outside payments.
If you have a hint of a payment button 15 clicked after leaving your support page through the site logo link your app would get immediately flagged for removal unless you deal with it within week or two give to you.
He seems to be ignoring the part of the ruling finding that Apple is entitled to "some compensation" for the use of its intellectual property.
> The appeals court recommends that the district court calculate a commission that is based on the costs that are necessary for its coordination of external links for linked-out purchases, along with "some compensation" for the use of its intellectual property. Costs should not include commission for security and privacy.
https://www.macrumors.com/2025/12/11/apple-app-store-fees-ex...
Apple wanted 27% and Epic thinks it should be 0%. The lower court will have to pick a number in between the two.
Like, if all major marketplaces only charge 12% from the get-go, we probably would have had much less fuss and lawsuits over this.
This issue was always the disproportionate size of the fee, not the fact that they charge a fee.
Doing it this way makes no economic sense for either the seller or the buyer but it's coincidentally the absolute best way for a middleman to maximize the tax they can extract from a two-sided marketplace they control. In competitive markets, blanket taxing on total gross revenue generally only occurs when there's a single fundamental cost structure tied to that revenue, or the amounts being collected are so small it's de minimis. App stores are highly profitable, multi-billion dollar businesses.
Perhaps the most perverse thing about this is that electronic transactions for purely digital goods which occur entirely on real-time connected digital platforms make it trivial to price each service for maximum efficiency. It's easy for the price a 2GB game with frequent updates pays for electronic delivery to reflect the cost they impose on the infrastructure while a 100k one-time purchase app can pay a vastly smaller amount. And that's exactly the way the competitive marketplaces evolve - from moving shipping containers around the planet to residential propane delivery.
Pick 3 imaginary games for sale priced at $1, $10 and $100. Any one of those games could be a million download a month success, and any one of them could be a complete dud.
What flat rate would you suggest to:
* Pay the developer for their work (ongoing per sale)
* Review each game and ensure it meets store guidelines (once per update)
* Host said game regardless of how popular it is (ongoing)
* Process transactions for the game (ongoing)
The alternative would be pricing based on revenue tiers (similar to what Unreal Engine does now), which aren't known in advance and don't take global variance into account (USD$200 in Eastern Europe might be a month's salary).
Percentage is just simpler. It also means that they'd be taking a loss on every free app or in the case of Free-to-Download In-App purchase apps - until users start transacting.
The scaling also helps so that some (probably most) games aren't losing money to be hosted kn a store. That would be catastrophic as at some point games would need to remove themselves to name financial sense.
Do you object to other sorts of royalty-based compensation, like for Unity engine or Unreal engine?
There should be caps overall and under the caps there should be the option to choose between lump sum and royalties.
Nobody should be collecting unlimited revenue for a brilliant idea at the start and benefit from cheap or free scaling.
This entire model is ripping apart the fabric of modern society.
And yes, I known this is blasphemy on this website.
You should look at it the other way, where ANY income or income equivalent, of any kind, should be taxed like income.
So when Bezos spends $5bn per year, that means he made $5bn per year (at least), so his tax statement should show him paying $2bn or whatever the top tax rate would imply.
If something gets super popular, it presumable costs Epic more. But does 100 sales cost 100x more than 1 sale? That seems unlikely.
Does Microsoft earn their 30% cut on Xbox since they do provide the OS, hardware development and gaming APIs?
Wherever competing services drive it. If Epic can charge 90% margins while remaining attractive to users, more power to them.
> Does Microsoft earn their 30% cut on Xbox
It's an irrelevant comparison. No serious person can accuse Microsoft of having a gaming monopoly.
So, to you answer your question, the fee that Epic should take is exactly the same as Apple's. It is exactly Zero dollars for all apps that do not go through their app store. Thats already how it works though.
It, of course, would be absurd if Epic was able to force you to pay them money for apps that don't involve Epic in any way and dont go through their app store!
"Royalty". It's common to charge a royalty when allowing someone to distribute your copyrighted property.
> Why can’t Apple collect fees for any apps that are built on their software AND hardware?
Because that's not a royalty - you aren't distributing Apple's copyrighted property when you send someone an iPhone application.[1]
When you send someone your game built on Unreal Engine, you are sending them Epic's copyrighted property.[2]
-------------------------
[1] If people could side-load iPhone apps, that is. I don't believe that they can.
[2] If you sell someone code to your game and tell them to to download Unreal Engine, then compile and/or link it against Unreal Engine themselves, then sure, Epic won't get a dime. But your customer might still have to pay for that, depending on whether Epic makes single-user no-sale licenses free (I believe they do).
The only other category you can really compare this to is game consoles, but the hardware is sold at a much smaller margin and they still (for now) support physical media.
12% is if you sell directly through Epic's platform - nobody is claiming Apple shouldn't get a cut of that for their own platform.
Aren't Epic's 12% fee less than half of what is usually charged?
Since courts work on what is reasonable, what makes you think that they will reduce it?
"0% Store Fee For First $1,000,000 in Revenue Per App Per Year Starting in June 2025, for any Epic Games Store payments we process, developers will pay a 0% revenue share on their first $1,000,000 in revenue per app per year, and then our regular 88%/12% revenue share when they earn more than that. "
But I also recognize that few out there are pressing strong opposition to the idea of paying 3% for someone else to manage their financial transactions, or to host their own business. If I make a million dollars, paying 50k to Patreon or Kickstarter for hosting the service seems to make sense in my mind
> Apple should be able to charge a commission on linked-out purchases based on the costs that are genuinely and reasonably necessary for its coordination of external links for linked-out purchases, but no more.
> In making a determination of Apple’s necessary costs, Apple is entitled to some compensation for the use of its intellectual property that is directly used in permitting Epic and others to consummate linked-out purchases.
> In deciding how much that should be, the district court should consider the fact that most of the intellectual property at issue is already used to facilitate IAP, and costs attributed to linked-out purchases should be reduced equitably and proportionately;
> Apple should receive no commission for the security and privacy features it offers to external links, and its calculation of its necessary costs for external links should not include the cost associated with the security and privacy features it offers with its IAP;
https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/legaldocs/lgvdqxweopo/...
https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/news/introducing-epic-web-...
Not that they'd ever do the review to begin with, so the hashing won't be done either, but it's something that could be done on iOS/ipados.
And if you consider that infeasible, you might want to check out current CSP best practices, you might be surprised
According to the ruling on page 42, "(c) Apple should receive no commission for the security and privacy features it offers to external links, and its calculation of its necessary costs for external links should not include the cost associated with the security and privacy features it offers with its IAP"
I'm not versed in legalese, so maybe I misunderstand. Isn't it reasonable that Apple receives money for a service they provide, that costs money to run?
Think about it this way: totally free apps with no IAP get reviewed by Apple too, and there's no charge to the developer except the $99 Apple Developer Program membership fee, which Epic already pays too.
Yearly fee. And about $500 a year in hardware depreciation, because you can reasonably develop for Apple _only_ on Apple hardware.
This is _way_ more than Microsoft has ever charged, btw.
Tens to hundreds every time an app goes through review is "super supor minor"... This is how you know Epic has the backs of all the indie devs who fret about $100/year dev membership.
Is Apple actually checking outside payments for scams outside of review times? Do they check non-payment links for scams outside of review times? How often?
The point is that they should only be able to charge a fee for work they are truly doing, and it shouldn't be retaliatory.
Or we end up with this modern disease where the OS wants to update itself, the browser needs to update itself, Acrobat wants to update itself, etc, etc, all the time.
On average, Apple spends less than a minute on app reviews for new versions.
You really think that the aggregate cost of fraud mitigation in the app store is 30% of revenue? That seems laughable, the credit card industry as a whole does far, far better than that with far less ability to audit and control transaction use.
There has been craploads of litigation about “Fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory” licensing over the last two decades, and fees that are percentages of revenue with no cap have survived and there is no reason to believe any of these legal standards will change.
In fact, I think it’s likely that Apple and Google will team up to create a standards body that defines the method for distributing/installing smartphone apps (because this is now in their best interest, not that I want them to). These standards are going to end up using a bunch of patents that you will have to license on FRAND terms.
Yes, the cost is going to go down. Yes, Epic is going to benefit a lot more than any indie developer. Such is life
I'm not even sure about that. This very ruling shows that Apple blatantly violated the law (the previous ruling) and tried to collect as much fee as possible while the case goes through the system.
And Apple isn't afraid of being sued. As long as they can earn more money in revenue than paying for lawyers, that's a net profit for them. They can certainly afford all of this.
And small companies are hit by 30% platform tax the most. More money for small compsnies mean more competition.
For starters, small companies are paying 15%, not 30%.
I'm also not sure where a small company can find a payment processor that will only charge 1%. Stripe charges 2.9% plus 30 cents per transaction.
If you have a $4.99 in-app purchase that will cost you 44 cents per transaction to use Stripe vs 75 cents to use Apple's IAP.
But Stripe does not act as a merchant of record so you are responsible for remitting sales tax yourself. Registering for and remitting sales tax in every jurisdiction where you have nexus adds huge administrative overhead to a small company.
If you want to avoid this overhead, Paddle will act as a merchant of record for you, but then you're paying 5% plus 50 cents which adds up to 75 cents on a $4.99 purchase anyway.
Linking to external payments also reduces conversion rates (https://www.revenuecat.com/blog/growth/iap-vs-web-purchases-...) compared to using IAP.
Taken all together, depending on their pricing structure, small companies may very well be financially better off sticking with IAP rather than linking to external payments anyway.
When talking in the grand scheme of this case, the 15% arose out of these proceedings. It was 30 back on in 2018.
But yes, overall most people will stick with Apple regardless. I still see it as a win that companies who want to put the work in to go around apple can. That simply seems reasonable in my eyes.
I'm not sure about the timeline, but in general the reduction to 15% for small developers was due to market signals as much as it was anything else. Both Apple and Google need small developers to continue to create new apps and if the 30% is onerous to small developers (which I think it probably is) they'll lower it to attract more products and services.
> But yes, overall most people will stick with Apple regardless. I still see it as a win that companies who want to put the work in to go around apple can. That simply seems reasonable in my eyes
When you think about it, there's maybe half a dozen companies that truly could put in similar work to Apple or Google in creating and maintaining these stores and platforms at the scale and with the features and security that they have built. Most people are going to stick with Apple and Google, except when one of those large competitors like Meta decides to bypass those stores and create its own and continue to nudge folks to their store for various features or downloads or whatever. It introduces friction for no obvious benefit to customers.
You can argue that 3rd party app stores will be more permissive in what they allow, but most of the things that people complain about "scary surveillance" or other onerous regulations for example have to also be followed by any legitimate App Store. So all you've really done is create worse versions of the Apple or Google App Store that siphon away applications. It reduces the profit margins of Apple or Google but it doesn't benefit customers.
Are there any good places to grow this kind of knowledge? How to use payment processors? How to actually setup a business and get paid yourself?
I don't want to get into the whole founder ethos, I just want to make something and get paid for it.
Google are doing exactly the same as Apple previously were doing, mandatory from end of next month - January 28, 2026.
Their new requirements: https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answ...
https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answ...
F-Droid notwithstanding using an alternative app is not a very attractive option right now as there no good alternatives. But if Valve can create an Android app store that competes with the Play store, the in principle situation is very different.
I've no idea, but I presume it's not even possible to use the Google Play purchasing API if your app isn't on the Play store.
My understanding, at least several years ago, that Netflix was paying as much to Apple in subscription fees, as they did for their AWS hosting.
I also noticed when upgrading my Spotify account, I couldn't do that through the iphone app itself - I assumed this was because it would break TOS, or they didn't want to pay a massive chunck of the monthly subscription cost to Apple.
Apologies for being unable to find a better source at the moment, but it links to this press release: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2021/09/japan-fair-trade-comm...
“You download the app and it doesn’t work, that’s not what we want on the store” https://techcrunch.com/2020/06/18/interview-apples-schiller-...
Apple wins partial reversal of sanctions in Epic Games antitrust lawsuit
https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulat... (https://archive.ph/Cbi3f)
Both articles appear to point at the same 9th circuit appeals court ruling:
The Ars piece points at:
https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/US-Co...
Which appears to be the same ruling as the Reuters piece links to:
https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/legaldocs/lgvdqxweopo/...
As such, I believe that, yes, this is the same ruling reported by both Ars and Reuters.
insist on Apple IAP links/buttons to be the same as buttons/links to external payments. But they can't ask for the outgoing links/buttons to be less prominent
charge for links/buttons to external payment, but not as they please. One interpretation is that it has to be based on real cost and can't in any way be tied to IAP costs.
can't use scare screens on external purchases
Devil's always in the details. But in this instance, any even partial win is still a win. Something is better than nothing.
And I don't think any of the big players are interested in fracturing consoles. Consoles change every 6-8 years so it's a moot point.
https://developer.nintendo.com/faq
Q: How much does it cost to develop on Nintendo platforms?
A: Registering for the portal and downloading the tools is completely free.
Also, if you plan to release a digital only title, you can use the IARC system to retrieve the age rating for no fee, which will allow you to publish in all the participating countries.
All that is left is the cost of acquiring development hardware: you will find more information on this inside the portal.
Heck, pre-COVID, you needed a business address to even receive a kit. Things changed quickly at the turn of the decade.
This would be for a clear subset of the web, with strong protections.
Obviously, on this venue the question is rhetorical. But Apple's prohibition on any kind of real web competition is a problem.
Do you live in Europe or Japan? If so, you can [1][2]. If not, Apple forbids you from doing so.
The US, Department of Justice is suing Apple [3]. Maybe the US will be added to this list.
[1] https://developer.apple.com/support/alternative-browser-engi...
[2] https://open-web-advocacy.org/blog/japan-apple-must-lift-eng...
[3] https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/justice-department-s...
Meanwhile, Apple and Google sure aren't going to call it quits just because they take 10, 20% less.
1. No one cares about making an app store for the Ps5 when in 10 years they'll need to port it to the PS6
2. Consoles are already stagnating and it won't take much to also push Sony out. So basically we'd reduce competition back down to Nintendo to enable a feature no one cares about.
But sure. If you want to look at it in that lens: I want apple and Google to get "special punishments" because they've long proven to be a monopoly and practice anti-competitive behaviors. We can deal with other monopolies as we go along.
If the government wanted to proscribe store rates for productivity apps only, I’d be more receptive. But it’s ridiculous for the government to proscribe rates for game sales, especially if they aren’t doing the same for all game stores.
https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/australia-court-rul...
I think the simpler answer is that Epic isn’t upset with the arrangement they have with Microsoft/Nintendo/Sony. They’ve done a better job cultivating a relationship with Epic than Apple has who seems to have only contempt for every other developer.
https://direct.playstation.com/en-gb/buy-consoles/playstatio...
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ubcwin-Switch-Fortnite-Wildcat-Bund...
Why? Because a console is bought as a gaming device. And because you can reasonably have multiple consoles and there’s healthy competition between them.
In comparison, people buy a phone to have a phone. Then the App Store lock-in is tacked on the side. iPhone and Android compete on who has the best cameras. But once you’ve bought your phone, you’re trapped in the manufacturer’s App Store, who can charge monopolistic pricing. And normal people don’t buy multiple phones for different app stores.
The App Store monopoly is like if your electricity company somehow made it so you could only buy an Xbox. Games on steam and PlayStation aren’t compatible with the electricity in your house. And your friend down the street could only use a PlayStation. Not for any technical reason, but simply because locking you in to a single console manufacturer means they can make you pay way more for games. And you’ll pay it, because you don’t have a choice and can’t shop around.
The problem comes about because phones and app stores are glued together. They use a captive market created by one part of the business to trap consumers and developers elsewhere. If Google and Apple had to compete on app stores - like how Nintendo, PlayStation and Microsoft have to compete - then there’s no way Apple could get away with charging their extortionate 28% for App Store sales. If chrome charged a 28% commission on all purchases I made through the browser, everyone would switch to Firefox. Apps on my phone should be more like that.
But sure, nothing on a technical lecdl stops you from using a console as a general computer. It's just that that's not what the overwhelming use is as of now. Use cases play a large factor in rulings like this.
Consoles compete on games. Phones compete on specs, and then they happen to have an app store on the side. Thats a difference.
Naturally not, Microsoft has to pay the Sony tax to publish their games into the PlayStation.
There are more mobile devices than people, since not everyone has a phone, naturally there are enough people with multiple phones.
Finally, people do browse the Internet, watch TV, and even have a general app store in XBox's case.
Consoles run more "commodity hardware" than phones, like CPUs and GPUs and standard ports etc.
Not really. They share CPU/GPU architecture but there are significant differences vs. what you can buy for a PC. For example, the latest PlayStation and Xbox use unified GDDR memory and commodity CPUs all use (LP)DDR.
However, you can buy systems that use the same (or similar) chips as phones these days. Snapdragon, Apple Silicon, SBCs?
For what it’s worth, I agree with the argument that if I buy a computer it should let me run arbitrary code. But there’s no laws against that. There are laws about monopolies. I see that as a much stronger way to attack Apple over their behaviour here.
Before this ruling:
1. Apple were prohibited from charging any fee for external/referral purchases. Now this is once again allowed and the district court will work with all parties to develop a reasonable commission.
2. External links were permitted to dominate over IAP options. Now they must have equal size, prominence and quantity.
3. Apple were prevented from showing any kind of exit screen, that is now restored (but it can't be a scare screen).
4. Apple were barred from preventing certain developers/app classes from using external links (such as those enrolled in the News or Video Partner Programs) those are now reversed and Apple can once again prevent them.
Epic/Tim Sweeney are trying to spin these recent losses as a win. It's the old marketing playbook of hoping no one reads the fine print.
The celebration is premature but it's a good step forward legally. I think only #4 is a true loss here
> Speaking to reporters Thursday night, though, Epic founder and CEO Tim Sweeney said he believes those should be “super super minor fees,” on the order of “tens or hundreds of dollars” every time an iOS app update goes through Apple for review.
Wow, one step forward, and one step back. Good job, Epic.
The outcome is obviously going to be that Apple's store will have the most apps, with the most up to date versions, and with the most free apps/games. I'm sure Fortnite will do just fine though.
Unless I'm misunderstanding this, why would the court allow Apple to act as a gatekeeper for their competitors?
Yeah, this is the fundamental problem, and not something this court ruling does anything to fix. Apple has full control over what software its competitors are allowed to sell. The court's solution? Tell Apple to be more fair when dictating rules to its competitors. Yeah... I'm sure that'll work great.
As a pattern there's nothing wrong with it.
The crux of the issue is that creation of a mobile operating system that people actually want, like in some other industries, as resulted in two dominant platforms that don't compete all that much with each other. That's a much more interesting and important "problem" to solve than Apple/Google create competing apps on their software distribution platforms.
There's Linux phones and phones that run versions of Android that are completely decoupled from Google.
I'll keep pounding it in people's heads that 30 years ago Microsoft was hit over a web browser. It's a shame these days people would instead revert that and say "just download Netscape". If that worked, sure. But we have decades of market lock in showing it doesn't
Today there are many phones to choose from. You can buy an iPhone, or a Pixel, or a Galaxy. You can even buy a more open-source style phone with open-source style stores just like any other generic product feature. There is a marketplace and there is competition, it's just that, unlike what so many people here seem to desire, locked-down stores are what the market prefers.
I don't think phones and PCs compete against each other, though. A phone can act like a general computer, but a PC can't act like a phone.
>Today there are many phones to choose from.
We had Linux, mac, BSD and a few other OS's back in the day as well. If we're saying Windows is 95% of PCs back then, I don't think it's controversial saying Apple and Android are 95% of phones. Especially in a day and age where phones are now needed to act as verification for work and school and chat communications are expected to be snappy (so it's not like I can just opt out and go back to dumb phones).
>locked-down stores are what the market prefers.
That's why anti-trust isn't left to "what the market prefers".
Yes, society will always waiver towards idyllic destruction if left ubchecked. People generally "like" monopolies. People yearn for that society on WALL-E where they do minimum work and get maximum dopamine. It's a quirk genes that benefitted us 1000 years ago that haven't adjusted to modern realities.
Governments and non-monopoly businesses alike hate it, though. Don't want to put all your eggs in one basket. Don't want to have a single businessman hold the country hostage later and shift to a plutocracy as they abuse your citizens who work.
That's why it's best to stop it much earlier and not when the company becomes a trillionaire. But now is the 2nd best time.
MS had 97% market share and were abusing their market dominance to push others out. Apple isn't doing this, so there isn't a valid comparison here.
Duopoly might apply if those companies were using their combined dominance to collude and push other competitors out but that isn't really happening as evidenced by the amount of competitors that are in the market.
You're doing the equivalent of saying "but Dell and HP make PC's". When the case is about Internet explorer.
> Do you really need a nanny state
This is a false dichotomy. The reason you're doing this is because you know the current situation sucks major donkey dick and nobody, including you, likes it. So to defend it you have to appeal to something even more sucky. It's the death rattle of a poorly constructed argument.
You don't need a nanny state, quite the opposite! You need a freer market.
When Walmart sells the evil fridge, which I can only assume has been hexed by a swamp witch, what they are actually doing is subverting the free market. They're cheating.
Instead of competing by selling the best groceries or the best fridge, they're competing by artificially limiting their competition. They see the market, say "fuck that market, your market is only our stuff", and force your hand. They've created a soft monopoly.
The misconception about free markets is that, if you just let them be, then they're good. Ha. Every free market player is actively devising every single plan imaginable to make the market less free.
If Walmart could run behind you and lock the doors so that you have to buy their groceries, lest you starve to death, they would. Luckily, the "nanny state" stepped in, and we have a freer market because of it.
This whole argument is a neat trick, as you smuggle bad outcomes into a situation where there aren't any by pretending that everyone wants to buy the horrible product.
If you want to make a case that monopolies that arise from consumers overwhelmingly choosing a preferential product are bad, go ahead, but don't construct an impossible scenario where everyone loses their minds and buys a product that provides purely negative value to them just cuz.
A pre-requisite for a free market is consumer choice, which deception naturally undermines. And don't even say "well the EULA..." no, doesn't count.
Look, you're describing how it should work, and I agree. But how it actually works is far, far different.
No, first the product is introduced with no ads. You sign a EULA that might contain language around ads, but guess what - the EULA is 100 pages long and nobody is reading that shit because we have jobs and families.
The product gets glowing reviews, probably because it's cheap and subsidized by the mega-corp (aka sell product at a loss for market capture). Then, the product enshittifies from under your feet.
There's nothing you can do at that point, because you already bought it. Your "market", so to speak, is 1. You were deceived. You thought you were buying a fridge, but really you were just licensing access to a fridge.
But say you didn't buy it. Even then, you're fucked. There's no trustworthy online reviews, well, anywhere basically. And it's just not reasonable to expect consumers to do hours of research prior to buying anything. No, I should be able to go to the store and ascertain the quality and nature of the product. But I can't, so I get tricked and hoodwinked.
This is all very purposeful. Companies know if they're honest about their products that consumers might look at the competition. So everyone just scams and lies. Even multi-billion dollar multi-nationals are basically running scams at this point. And guess what? All their competition is doing it, too. Because if your competitor is scamming, you have no choice but to be a con artist yourself, lest you become irrelevant.
You've been repeating this flawed comparison for years. It's getting really stale.
The App Store is markedly unlike Wal-Mart or Kroger, in that a user cannot buy one thing from one store and another thing from the other. This would be like buying a Kroger-branded car and then being forbidden from entering the Wal-Mart parking lot. The problem with the App Store is not Apple's control over it and the Apple-branded experience - it is the exclusion of alternative and competing schemes that could naturally drive down their own prices.
If Wal-Mart or Kroger did this, they would be in the same hot water as Apple. Probably quite a bit worse, since people understand the commoditization of groceries better than software.
> That's a much more interesting and important "problem" to solve
No it's not. The industry has no interest in overturning it, if there was commercial demand for an innovative third platform then we'd see one. The crux of this issue is Apple becoming a services company and then denying competing services from competing on equal grounds. It cannot get any clearer than that.
Well I've been repeating it because it's still true.
> The App Store is markedly unlike Wal-Mart or Kroger, in that a user cannot buy one thing from one store and another thing from the other.
You're just shifting around a definition of store to fit your argument. If you want to be consistent, it's more like you can't go in to Kroger and demand to buy products sold at Wal-Mart for Wal-Mart prices. You're in a different store.
> No it's not. The industry has no interest in overturning it, if there was commercial demand for an innovative third platform then we'd see one.
So the market is clearly saying "this works and we like it". It's just that the lawyers and accountants want to shift which giant corporation gets to keep more of whatever fee percentage.
> The crux of this issue is Apple becoming a services company and then denying competing services from competing on equal grounds. It cannot get any clearer than that.
Equality will never exist on these platforms, nor is equality necessarily something that's desired. Every company on earth that operates any sort of marketplace or store sets rules and boundaries that restrict competition. You're just mad about Apple/Google doing it because some algorithm decided it was an important issue for you. Do you know why that's true? Because you're sitting here arguing about Apple/Google doing it and not every other company doing it.
Even worse is that these changes that you champion have resulted in no price reductions, no "innovation", and have degraded features that I personally like and enjoy.
You don't have to. Kroger and Wal-Mart are completely commoditized options providing the same service. There is fundamentally no difference from buying at one store vs the other; you can do both. If someone goes into Kroger demanding to buy Wal-Mart products at Wal-Mart prices, they're in luck; Wal-Mart exists. There is no lock-in to either store or the options they provide. You're describing a boogeyman that doesn't exist because the greater grocery market is functional and competitive.
The same opportunity does not exist for customers of the App Store. Apps themselves are entirely commoditized; it's only the App Store that is a deliberate monopoly. That has been consistent since the launch of the iPhone and packaging of iOS applications as infinitely reproducible .IPA files.
> So the market is clearly saying "this works and we like it".
That's how most monopolies work, yes. Unfortunately, "the market" won't be asked to testify to whether or not they like or enjoy a monopoly, but whether it causes anti-competitive damages.
> You're just mad about Apple/Google doing it because some algorithm decided it was an important issue for you.
I cannot parse what you're even trying to accuse me of in this sentence. This is the Y Combinator forum. We discuss monopolies like AdSense and the App Store because they harm the economy, not because Instagram Reels showed me a Louis Rossman short.
Sure you can use your own payment processor, we're still charging 27% though. Sure you can have your own App Store, you still have to go through the same review process though. It seems some of the cracks in this malicious compliance are starting to show.
It is not fair to me as a merchant that everyone who wants to buy a phone case goes to Best Buy. That's where all the foot traffic is. It's clearly anti-competitive that they expect me to pay for shelf space I benefit from.
And now they want to charge me to verify that the USB-C cables I'm selling actually work? How is that remotely reasonable? Just because most of my cables are faulty and customers will inevitably go complain to their customer service desk, why should I bear that cost?
Consumers deserve the right to choose accessories from multiple independent merchants inside Best Buy. Suggesting otherwise is anti-consumer, anti-choice, and proof that you hate open and accessible ecosystems.
Your analogy as presented was so lacking in merit you might as well have been talking about cats and leprechauns for how completely nonsensical it was to bring it up in the context of Apple.
Apple's "shelf space" is not free. There are constant R&D expenses involved in introducing new sensors and screens that make the underlying apps better. They take on the support load of on-boarding users, managing the relationship, and dealing with any problems. Advertising, carrier validation, third party hardware ecosystem, etc.
Epic wants to sidestep all of the costs of building a platform, and offload support costs onto Apple.
This is factually incorrect, and not only incorrect, but so wildly far from being correct that one wonders if this statement was made in bad faith. They only have around 300 million sqft out of an estimated 12 billion sqft, around 2.5%. That is not an overwhelming percentage, nor is it "99.9999% of all retail square footage in the world", which was not a hyperbolic statement. Competitors in retail can obtain their own shelf space. You cannot obtain your own shelf space for mobile software. The network effects of hardware+OS centralization are too strong, so there are and never will be any viable competitors to iOS and Android.
> Apple's "shelf space" is not free. There are constant R&D expenses involved in introducing new sensors and screens that make the underlying apps better.
The R&D expenses do not change regardless of whether there are 1 million or 10 million apps available for iOS. Allowing people to distribute their own software comes at no cost to Apple.
> They take on the support load of on-boarding users, managing the relationship, and dealing with any problems.
Apple absolutely does not do any of this as it pertains to individual apps.
> Epic wants to sidestep all of the costs of building a platform, and offload support costs onto Apple
Nobody is asking for Apple's support; really, what the world needs is less of Apple's involvement in the hardware the people own, not more. Epic is clearly willing to spend money on building platforms, since it has a documented $600 million in losses in its effort to build a competitor to Steam. This, however, is not a case where it is possible to build a platform.
You absolutely can sell your product as a merchant! Best buy doesnt force you to pay them a fee, if you are selling electronics. You are perfectly within your right to ship the electronics to the merchant yourself and best buy doesnt take a dime!
The same is not true for Apple. For Apple, a customer can want to make a direct agreement with an app store developer, without the involvement of Apple in any way, on the phone that they completely own, and Apple wasn't allowing this to happen.
It would be like if it was illegal to setup competing stores that are located next to best buy that dont involve best buy in any way. That would be absurd.
But yes, that's built into the product's price. Devs are paying for a license to work with IOS and need to own hardware only Apple sells to work on IOS. So I think those costs are covered.
We'll see what the "reasonable" price is. If nothing else, we know 27% was too much even for appeals.
Not if the only way to get to the store was through that road. In that case, there are public access laws and it is literally illegal for people who "own" a road to charge people money, if there is an easement.
Thats probably a simplification, but they are called "easement by necessity." rights. So even in your example of the roadway, thats also wrong. They get zero dollars.
My point is in the real world sharing an area with it would mean the other store also contributes tax wise. It's not equivalent to bring up real life if the real life paying part isn't also adhered to; the lack of symmetry is notable. I don't think they deserve to set their price, though (30% is way too high).
it is not efficient, it doesn't incentivize high quality products, and the web proves that security / safety can be done in an open way.
A) the web is full of phishing and other scams, as well as tons of low quality garbage
B) the web achieves this security model by limiting applications to a browser sandbox, which imposes restrictions on what the software can do. This is a non starter for many native apps.
Its still worth pursuing. Hut the effects may not be what we desire.
Epic celebrates “the end of the Apple Tax” after appeals court win in iOS payments case
Look at the major companies aligned with Epic on this, like Match.com, and what they do.
Games seems to be more of an exception to the rule, for historical reasons.
I mean, it's certainly not for lack of business insight. And you don't need the internet to sell applications.
But it took until 93-94 for Windows to actually become dominant enough to have such leverage, some argue that this only really happened with Windows 95. Since it was an open ecosystem for almost a decade at that point, changing was hard.
The Apple AppStore was different, it was launched after the iPhone shipped 13 million units and "only allowed web apps".
Apple really pioneered the walled garden (which I would assume was previously taken to be shooting yourself in the foot), and it's proven to resonate with the wider less tech-savvy population.
Could you elaborate on what you mean by this? I don't know how you'd sell them otherwise. How do you do you process a payment without a network connection? The only thing I can think of is offering a catalog in the OS which users could browse and physically order stuff from, but I wouldn't call that a store.
In some cases, some console manufacturers even handled the manufacturing of cartridges/CDs and the distribution side too.
> How did the users view products, how did they purchase them, and how did they receive them?
For the specific case of games, it was mainly via physical stores but I'm sure there were other methods such as catalogs, especially internationally.
EDIT: Remember GP is talking about the 90s and without internet, so it doesn't mean an app store where the app is instantly in your possession after clicking a button.
Right, but how is that an app store and not just a catalog?
…am I fully misunderstanding and they just meant a physical store?
Not GP but, processing payments absolutely does not require a network connection. Doing so is absolutely not nearly as convenient, but in my adult lifetime it was pretty normal for retailers to pick up a phone, give a customer service rep and/or automated call handler CC info and dollar amounts and get appropriate confirmations.
As for a business without an OS interface not being a "store," that's ridiculous on its face. If that were true, we'd have to call 7/11 or any similar place (like those at most gas stations) convenience "locations with items for sale but not a store, because stores are only places with catalogs in my OS," and "places which sell stuff but aren't stores because rimunroe says they can't be a 'store' without a catalog in their OS."
Touch grass, friend.
I forgot about phone payments, but that doesn't change my argument. If it's a built in listing of products, it presumably needs to be updated occasionally too, which I'm not sure how you'd do without mailing disks if you didn't have a network connection. I also don't know how you'd make room for the bundled software. My memory of my Windows 3.1 machine involves a lot of wishing I had more space on my HDD.
> As for a business without an OS interface not being a "store," that's ridiculous on its face.
That indeed would be absurd. Fortunately, I never argued this. I argued that without taking payments or distributing the software through the "store", I don't think it would qualify as a store but would qualify as a catalog. I think of a store as somewhere you go to exchange money for goods/services. If it's doing neither of those things is it still a store?
> Touch grass, friend.
I don't know why you felt this hostility was warranted. Did I slight you in some way?
I can understand how someone under, say, 30, might not know how commerce happened before the Internet. My 13 year old can't believe there was even once a world without the Internet.
I remember those days, but I think most people would call something where you viewed a list of products and then called or mailed to order and received the product elsewhere a catalog, not a store. As for over-the-phone payments, I forgot about that method for a moment but don't think it meaningfully affects my argument. It's just as out-of-band as the mail order example I included.
- Apple shouldn't be able to charge for external payments, come on.
- Force prominent disclosure of refund policies. Epic Games doesn't allow them for IAP. Apple does. Epic knows exactly how predatory that is, betting some kids will find ways to spend thousands and the parents will be helpless. Ideally you'd have a law mandating refunds, but without that, there should be mandatory disclosure on the IAP screen, at least for microtransaction games. You can't have fair "competition" when you have an information asymmetry, and if these rulings don't mandate that, you'll open the floodgate for these gaming companies to screw over parents.
The courts can only enforce the laws on the books. Congress needs to update the laws, but they won't because they are hopelessly corrupt :(
Courts don't allow you to submit false evidence yet somehow they need to update their produces to handle AI generated false submissions?
The issue is enforcement. Plain and simple. The anti-trust on the books are fine; no more amount of written laws will make regulators regulate.
100% agree Apple should be forced to have a big banner on explicitly stating they have no refund policy and it's all whatever they feel like this week. Which funny enough is also basically their app approval process.
Apple has no official App Store refund policy, either for IAP or for upfront paid apps. I've already looked for one. There's of course a form to request a refund, but refunds are entirely at Apple's discretion, for any reason or no reason, and Apple often exercises its discretion to refuse refunds.
Good for you, but you're only one user out of more than a billion.
> I’ve had an iTunes account since 2003
I'm not sure how that's relevant, because the App Store opened in 2008. Also, Apple had a different CEO at the time.
Have you heard reports of Apple not granting refunds?
I'm not talking about the technical process. Like I already said, "There's of course a form to request a refund".
> Have you heard reports of Apple not granting refunds?
Yes, many. Indeed, I've heard it from my own customers, as I'm an App Store developer myself.
How is the iPhone different from the Macs? I can install anything I want from any source on the Mac, but I can't do that on the iPhone. Doesn't make any sense.
Nobody is getting forced to use the Apple platform.
This goes both ways - when Apple produces a phone, they own it and they're also free to load whatever software they want onto it. They then enter into voluntary transactions with others, in which the ownership of the phone is transferred along with the right to load whatever software is desired.
If you can't figure out how to load your desired software onto an iPhone, don't buy one. But it's certainly not Apples problem at that point since, as you said, they no longer have a right to any say in how that device is used, and thus also give up any responsibilities you seem to desire.
Apple is actively preventing competition for app stores on the iPhone. And in other countries they’ve already lost the battle.
Walmart is actively preventing competition for grocery stores inside Walmarts.
Not everything is a monopoly and not everything needs to be totally competitive....
Different from gacha at least.
Small developers/business won't benefit from this change.
End-users COULD benefit from this change but the skeptic in me knows Epic won't adjust their prices to reflect the smaller cut they have to pay now.
If Jobs was still here, he would have fired all the fat management.
shame on you Apple, you are acting like M$!
> “I think this is all pretty simple — iBooks is going to be the only bookstore on iOS devices. We need to hold our heads high. One can read books bought elsewhere, just not buy/rent/subscribe from iOS without paying us, which we acknowledge is prohibitive for many things.”
https://www.theverge.com/2020/7/30/21348130/apple-documents-...
Microsoft, for all their faults, gave us an actual operating system that people could build and distribute executables on as they saw fit with no restrictions, and they did it despite the fact that they owned almost the entire personal computing space.
Imagine Microsoft had charged everyone who distributed a Windows executable 30%, they'd have made trillions by now. Bill Gates said once that Microsoft has captured maybe 1% of the value that people have created on top of their software because they don't insert themselves between what users do with each other and I do think they actually deserve some props for that
Even on Windows, Microsoft has very similar notarization requirements as Apple. Microsoft requires either an ~400-500$/year EV cert (if you don't want to involve Azure), or more recently a $10/month subscription to Azure, which is almost the same as Apple's $99/year. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46182546
https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answ...
It's incredibly similar to what Apple had before.
Thats another industry that needs more competition.
The walled garden has to end. There is no excuse for making people pay a premium price for an iPad Pro that can't run a third party web browser or do software development in any meaningful way.
Outside of a very narrow use case, the iPad product range is useless, despite the endless rantings of the brainwashed fanboys. Source: used to be one. Left the ecosystem when they started treating the RFCs like toilet paper.
But now? There are tons of scammy and fraudulent apps on the app store. If you try to search for any popular app, you'll be presented with a dozen apps that look similar with similar names and logos.
I don't even know how this is possible. FOSS repos have more security than that...
They might do some sampling, but they're definitely not checking everything.
The first app I published in 2012 had a backend, but the Apple team never logged in with the provided credentials, or even tried anything.
They are then getting removed in days / weeks, but it just proves their review process is a joke.
I know! I was just out shopping for a towel and these armed gunmen grabbed me and pulled me into this store and held a gun to my kids head until I bought them a new iPad Pro M5. I am traumatized.
Oh, no, wait, I remember, my kid wanted an iPad Pro for their art and for school. They liked their wacom, but the iPad was more portable, and with the keyboard, it was perfect for taking notes.
He signed his name to the "fuck Flash" memo, promised to publish interoperable specs for iMessage/FaceTime and never did, presided over the original App Store launch, etc.
A lot of the balls Tim is rolling were first pushed by Steve.
Why?
There's an alternative: Android. I'm perfectly free to use that instead. I don't.
If I want to "do software development in any meaningful way", I'm not using a tablet. I'm using something with MacOS or GNU/Linux on it.
People willingly pay what Apple's charging for the iPad in the face of competition from a different OS and different classes of device, so I'm not really seeing the problem, especially when I can hand my technologically-handicapped 65-year-old mother an iPad and not have to worry as much about her installing something that will wreck every device on my parents' network or compromise her bank accounts or something.
Besides, the whole "locked-down device" wasn't Tim's idea, it was Steve's. There are plenty of reasons to gripe about Tim Cook, but "the iPad is too locked down" isn't one of them.
I think this is my entire problem with most of these conversations. When they say "The walled garden has to end." ... they mean "YOUR walled garden has to end.".
I also like the Walled Garden. Do I think Apple should be able to charge more than Stripe? No.
I wish they would stop conflating the gate keeping price to enter the walled garden being too high with the wall garden and the gate being a moral wrong.
We don't have to lock an entire ecosystem of devices because your mom's technologically-handicapped
It's the niche that wants open and flexible devices and the ability to customize everything.
Let's not ruin iOS by trying to make it Android.
I say that both as an iOS developer and Android user.
>For iOS 27 and next year’s other major operating system updates — including macOS 27 — the company is focused on improving the software’s quality and underlying performance.
-via Bloomberg -18d
Edit: almost can’t be true if they’re going to try to push Siri hard :-/
The use case is rich iPhone users who want an easy experience to watch videos, read, or consume social media on a larger screen than their phones. It’s especially popular for the children or elderly parents of these rich people. You can argue this use case is narrow, but it’s decently profitable.
Just because this use case doesn’t apply to your experience doesn’t mean anyone who disagrees is a brainwashed fanboy.
I will agree that the iPad Pro range seems overly niche to me — but also it could be I just don’t understand the use case. If someone else finds it productive and pleasant to use, what difference does this make to me or you?