Closing Setapp Mobile Marketplace

Keep it up, Apple, keep alienating, gaslighting, and abusing developers. I hope you liked what you saw with the Vision Pro--no developers wanted to touch that thing with a ten-foot pole. Enjoy experiencing that with every new product you develop.

I hope the EU sees that Apple is doing this on purpose. There really shouldn’t even be any fees for devs outside of Apple’s store

To develop for a platform, you use technology developed by the platform owner. The owner decides how to monetize their efforts in creating and maintaining that technology—that's basic business, and no ideology can change it.
The owner may choose to sell the development tools, subsidize the cost by selling the operating system or charge a fee for each app sold. These are business decisions. Saying, "There really shouldn’t even be any fees for devs outside of Apple’s store," is not a sound business argument—especially when the OS and development tools are already free. Apple could certainly give away its technology for free, but why they should is beyond me.

"that's basic business, and no ideology can change it."

Laws can.

"Saying, "There really shouldn’t even be any fees for devs outside of Apple’s store," is not a sound business argument"

Sound business argument for whom? Are you arguing that we, as a society, must protect the business interests of one of the world's largest corporations over those of small developers, or of Apple's customers?

"especially when the OS and development tools are already free."

Apple decided to make them free. If that puts an undue financial burden on them, they can re-evaluate that decision.

Also, note that no one is asking Apple to do more. Everybody is asking Apple to do *less*. They should stop using their platforms to harm developers and their customers.

@Joe

Apple sells me a device they advertise as an App platform, how many iPhones would they sell without those apps? Is the cost of that not therefore bundled into the cost of the device?

Next Apple already values their tools and core tech at $0.
If you put the app in their store then the tools and core tech are worth $0. So, if you're Netflix, Amazon, Walmart, Spotify, McDonalds, Ebay, Uber, etc... all you pay Apple is the annual dev fee. $0 for core tech.
If you're a small developer on a single platform (iOS) now your'e in trouble. Now Apple gets to eat your revenue because you're not cross platform it's harder to get them to let you opt out of the requirement to use Apple's payment processing.

If you want to distribute outside of Apple's store, which costs Apple less money since you are no longer using the Apple servers or requiring their reviewers to spend time on you, suddenly you have to give up 5% of your revenue?

Also, The exact same tools and technology are valued at $0 if you build a Mac app and distribute it how you like.

The whole argument around monetizing core tech is all a distraction, I would describe it as basically a lie in fact. They don't care about that. They care about control.

@Plume, the allegory of the Golden Goose comes to mind.

Open source exists, Linux exists, but right now, it seems that a private enterprise can still do a better job at making and popularizing a mainstream OS.

We can change laws, but at what point do we destroy the person or company making the thing by demanding work without compensation? (national interest would be one situation — such as China wanting to create its own independent OS — that would argue for a ‘publicly’-controlled OS)

Capitalism is a bull that should be harnessed by the people, but it’s also possible to kill that bull, or cause that bull to sit it out. The EU is going to have to figure that one out.

Also, even in our current American laws, we have the concept of imminent domain — that society needs that thing, and so we’re taking it. But in exchange, there’s often adequate market-based compensation (unlike, say, a country that nationalizes its oil (and I’m not necessarily blaming them — often those are based on contracts that deny the people income from their national assets, and funnel it instead to the rich and powerful))

So, communism (or anarchy?) sounds great in theory, but a blend is probably better.

Also, Apple does not give away its dev stuff for free. There ares strings attached, such as the 15/30% fee that so many big companies are complaining about.

“eminent domain”

@joe

"To develop for a platform, you use technology developed by the platform owner. The owner decides how to monetize their efforts in creating and maintaining that technology—that's basic business, and no ideology can change it."

This is not a law of nature. If we as Europeans draft a law that says that Apple should allow other app stores that they cannot tax purchases in those other app stores, it is at it is. Our countries, our rules. We believe in a single internal market without barriers and Apple and Google are creating barriers for new entrants because they are effectively a duopoly.

If Apple does not like this, they can stop doing business in the EU (which would be very dumb financially) or they can comply. Ironically, they do not seem to have issues complying with laws of authoritarian states (e.g. China) while they fight laws in democratic countries tooth and nail. Moreover, like other tech moguls they like to leverage the president to threaten the EU with all kinds of nonsense to get their ways. That should tell you how much they care about citizens or democracy.

It is hard to recognize the Apple of better days.

"We can change laws, but at what point do we destroy the person or company making the thing"

Honestly, this is an absolutely hilarious thing to say in the context of this discussion. On a scale of "costing Apple a tiny fraction of a percentage in revenue" to "destroying Apple," we're so close to the former that we can't even see the latter from our current position.

And what of all the other companies? What of the developers from whom Apple steals 30% of their revenue? Once you're done arguing that we need to protect one of the world's largest corporations, will you spare a second to think about how you are destroying *them* with your argument?

"So, communism"

Yes. Yes, you're so right. Forcing Apple to allow developers to sell products outside of their own store is communism. Competition in a free market is communism, of course. I'm grateful that you opened my eyes to this. As Karl Marx wrote in "Das Appital": "The more stores I can run on my iPhone, the more communism."

Horace Deidu of Asymco wrote a piece in June 2025 aptly titled, "The Purpose of the App Store." It provides analysis of how the Apple app stores play into the company's Services revenues and how the platforms facilitate income for developers (estimated at $1.3 Trillion).

https://asymco.com/2025/06/06/the-purpose-of-the-app-store

@Plume, you advocate nationalizing/price fixing Apple’s work, then in the next sentence say it's a “free market”.

Those are literally mutually exclusive things.

It’s clear you’re frustrated, but didn’t you already opt-out of corporate computing a while back? Why do you care at this point? Are you a dev? Are you making a million bucks in app sales?

"you advocate nationalizing/price fixing Apple’s work, then in the next sentence say it's a “free market”."

Yes. Free markets do not happen by default. You cannot have free markets without regulation.

(As evidenced by the state of mobile devices, where there is no free market for apps.)

"but didn’t you already opt-out of corporate computing a while back?"

It is not possible to opt out of corporate computing. You need either a phone blessed by Apple or by Google to participate in Western societies. Again, this shows that we already do not have a free market.

"Why do you care at this point?"

It's funny to me that the only reason you can think of why somebody would care is if they would financially benefit, and yet you are here simping for a multinational corporation. Does Apple pay you to post here?

@Benjamin
Apple does not value its developer tools 0$; it monetizes their value through commissions on the App Store or in the alternate app stores of the eu true requests of fees.
Could they monetize it by inserting their cost into the hardware price? Yes, of course, but they don’t.
They think that developers who earn from apps should pay the cost of developing the tools, not hardware buyers. Is it a good or bad decision? It’s their business; they decide what’s best; their master is the market, and only the market can change their behaviour.
The very basic definition of a free market is a market where the person who produces something decides how to sell it and the price, and if there is no monopoly, laws should not interfere.
EU want to change the free market basis, they could but not for a single business and not for a single company and not without a public debate and not without changing the constitutions of its country members.
Actually DMA does not impose to Apple to give away its work for free, it “only” impose to use different monetizations method, that also is free market denying but it also not what some developers are asking, free meals.

Just enjoying my popcorn reading the acrobatics from people defending a trillion-dollar corporation as if it was this scrappy, underdog startup we should save because they're good people.

"The very basic definition of a free market is a market where the person who produces something decides how to sell it and the price"

Right. Re-read what you just wrote. Do you see the problem now? If I'm a seller of iPhone applications, and you are a buyer of my application, there is no free market between us because Apple has inserted itself into the transaction.

I can't decide how to sell my product and at what price because Apple prevents me from doing so.

That's why free markets require regulation.

@Joe

"Apple does not value its developer tools 0$; it monetizes their value through commissions on the App Store or in the alternate app stores of the eu true requests of fees."
It doesn't earn any money on any of the apps I listed. Thousands of apps that are monetized (Netflix, Walmart, Amazon, are among the largest) do not pay Apple anything beyond the annual fee. You will of course, like most Apple defenders, move away from the claim that they are trying to monetize IP because of course that argument fails when you realize many devs pay nothing to use the IP.
They also, as I said, don't think Apps on the Mac should pay anything for the exact same tools and technology. They have valued the tools and technology at $0 if you choose the Mac as your deployment target. It's a setting in Xcode, you could literally build the same app and either pay 0 or 5% of your revenue based on a toggle switch.

They have dominance and control on iOS which they don't have on the Mac. They abuse that dominance to force devs to either stay in their store and pay nothing, (where Apple restricts how devs communicate with their customers), or, if devs want to get away from Apple they charge a fee to use the only tools that are available.

If Apple wants to charge for its tools they should be optional. It should be possible for third parties to build their own APIs and tools on top of whatever bare-metal OS that apple considers to be sold as part of the iPhone. The thing is, Apple doesn't want that, they would rather devs use their first party tools (which is why they are free for devs who choose to stay inside Apple's walled garden) because it benefits Apple. Apple would rather not support third party UI frameworks because the moment they support a third party framework the value of native app development goes down, the commitment of devs to native frameworks goes down.

Furthermore, if Apple wants to claim devs owe them a tithe because it is the iPhone success that lead to devs earning money then Apple should also tithe 30% of iPhone revenue back to developers because I know that almost no one I know would buy an iPhone if it couldn't run third party apps. iPhones are obviously not just driven by Apple's first party apps. They are welcome to try and compete without developers but we all know they would fail.

@Benjamin Yeah, Apple has set up so that the developers who don’t have to pay the tithe are the ones who support multiple platforms or who monetize via advertising. Seems kind of backwards, but that’s what they’re incentivizing.

@Benjamin, Those apps are free because Apple chooses to make them free — it's a loss-leader, in business terms. The $5 costco rotisserie chicken. Doing this beings in more eyeballs/customers who are willing to pay for other things.

But just because Apple says 'free food' to those developers doesn't make the food free.

Apple created a new way of charging developers — through the the distribution network, AKA, the app store. That's pretty clever for when it was created. Still is, I'd say. Way better for everyone than any other licensing enforcement technique that I can think of.

But it 100% is absolutely a license, and not free. I think it's more of a 'giveaway'.

And if we want to skip the app store, then everyone needs to suffer the consequences -- surveillance, auditing, lawsuits, cheating.

@Plume, Tim Cook pays me real well, thank you very much! Is the other Tim paying you to argue for nationalizing private IP so that he can put in his own app store? What's the going rate? It's a free market -- maybe I'll switch sides. Oh, do you also complain when Epic takes 75% of creator-made in-app items in Fortnite? I hope so!

You can't have it both ways, both abstractly and in reality -- free markets, private IP vs regulation (and basically nationalizing).

You're actually arguing for something in between, so perhaps don't use those terms or modulate them with adjectives?

"Apple created a new way of charging developers — through the the distribution network, AKA, the app store. (...) Way better for everyone than any other licensing enforcement technique that I can think of. "

There was no charge for developing apps for platforms like the Mac before the App Store existed. Apple did not use "other licensing enforcement techniques" before the App Store existed because that whole concept makes no sense at all.

You're undermining your own argument.

Apple takes money from developers solely because it can, not because it's "licensing its IP" or anything like that. If Apple were forced to stop taking money from developers, it would not stop making developer tools, because it needs developers.

In fact, developers would love it if Apple stopped doing anything at all and just left them to their own devices. I'd love to use IntelliJ instead of that piece of shit Xcode, for example, but Apple's monopolistic behavior prevents that.

"You can't have it both ways, both abstractly and in reality -- free markets, private IP vs regulation (and basically nationalizing). You're actually arguing for something in between, so perhaps don't use those terms or modulate them with adjectives?"

I have no idea what you mean by "those terms." You are the person who pretends that the people you're arguing with are arguing for things like "nationalizing" or "price fixing." You brought up "communism" and "anarchy" like an actual child that doesn't understand what any of these words mean.

I would kindly invite *you* to stop using those terms.

You continue to ignore the fact that free markets can't exist without regulation, and, in fact, do not currently exist on mobile platforms due to a lack of regulation. By your own logic, if you were actually in favor of free markets, rather than just in favor of Apple, you would argue for regulation that protects developers selling their products to their customers.

@Plume,

You: “There was no charge for developing apps for platforms like the Mac before the App Store existed”

What. There absolutely were.

You: “Apple did not use "other licensing enforcement techniques" before the App Store existed because that whole concept makes no sense at all.”

Sure it did. Examples:
https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/apple-drops-price-of-mac-developer-program-to-99/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FairPlay
Those are licenses and enforcement mechanisms.

You seem to be working off of incomplete information, or a (deliberate?) mis-understating of how licensing works.

Also, “Free markets” means something.

free mar·ket /ˌfrē ˈmärkət/ noun
an economic system in which prices are determined by unrestricted competition between privately owned businesses.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_market#:~:text=Such%20markets%2C%20as%20modeled%2C%20operate%20without%20the%20intervention%20of%20government%20or%20any%20other%20external%20authority

A country setting price ceilings (or floors) means something and that’s considered a ‘[free] market distortion”.

Words have commonly-agreed-upon meanings, and can’t just be thrown around into a contradictory mix and expect other people to make sense of the general thrust of your argument. There are terms for these things and I’m not sure you know what they are. Precision is important when discussing economics if you want to be understood.

Also, I never said I was in favor of free markets.

@Someone else You seem really confused here. That article about the Mac developer program is from 2010, two years after the App Store existed. Even then it had nothing to do with licensing enforcement, and you did not have to be a member to ship Mac apps. You could do that for free. FairPlay has nothing to do with shipping non–App Store apps.

@Plume, Look, I get it — you want more-free or more-open (or even totally free) access to the tools and systems that we build our lives around.

I think that’s an interesting thought — and things can certainly be more “open and free” than they are now… though I’d argue that just like any ‘market disruptor’, such as internet TV, AirBnB, Uber — we’re just going to replace one middleman with another… but with detrimental effects on normal people (Streaming is the new cable, AirBnB is hotels but worse and less regulated and raises rents, Uber for taxis, busses, etc leading to increased traffic)

In this case, Epic’s fees replace Apple’s, but also introduces gambling, porn, scams, etc. and in the end, I suspect developers will probably charge the same amount on all sales platforms.

Alternative direct distribution leads to gambling, porn, scams, malware but on an even greater level. We’ve been lucky as mac users that that’s rarely happened to us, but look at Windows for examples of that.

So, I’d say we really don’t want a free market when it comes to mainstream devices like that. Regulation is a boon, in this case. Mainstream users aren’t and shouldn’t bear the responsibility and risk of vetting the apps they use.

It should be more difficult to do risky things, IMO. And finally, I think that 15/30% is actually a pretty reasonable fee (as in market-rate compared to other platforms) for what Apple is doing. Could it be less? Sure, why not? Should be be zero? I don’t think so.

@Michael, Perhaps?

When I said Apple created a nice licensing mechanism, I was comparing what Apple did (in making their 2008 App Store the sole distribution channel for iPhones and method of collecting licensing fees) to previous software development licensing regimes. Palm, the cellular networks’ individual stores, PC, Video game platforms, and I guess Mac. I’m not as familiar with the history of Mac development SDKs and fees.

Anyway, I wasn’t talking about Apple’s previous licensing schemes-only, as Plume assumed/responded.

This, all in the context of Set App giving up on their iOS App Store, not their mac store, which I believe still exists.

My main point is that Apple didn’t (and doesn’t) make anything ‘free’. They expect something in return — developers to make things for their underdog platform back in the old days… if it was indeed free (free of fees? licensing? free of all restrictions?), they probably hoped to gain market share.

If you’re referring to the age of TurboPascal-era (or whatever of the 90 and aughts), that was the era of the unrestricted PC, so I’d say the iOS DRM lockdown was a good/clever response to that, and followed Nintendo’s lead where they learned the hard way about the downsides on the relatively open NES (and Atari 2600). The DRM chip on each SNES cartridge and licensing model gave them control over quality and fees/royalties… just like Apple’s App Store purports to do.

Do we want DRM and an App Store as licensing-collection-mechanism? What does it give us?

We talk about how unsustainable it is, long-term, for developers to charge a single lifetime fee for apps. I think that’s probably true even for the biggest company on earth (market-cap wise), especially as we reach market saturation — that all possible iPhone users have one already.

I think 15/30% developer fees are like subscriptions — which is also why folks balk about it, as we probably do about all subscriptions. A single fee can be an amazing deal if you use something a lot, so subscriptions feel/are worse to the user, but are arguably better for the ecosystem. Likewise, ‘free’ is great ideologically, but practically… I think we’re not quite there yet.

That said, like I mentioned earlier, I think it’d require a national-level push to make things “free”… similar to publicly-owned-utilities, if (thinking of technology platforms as utilities and as tools of independence from the USA), and perhaps there’s some new movement on that (besides in China, spurred from when we cut off Huawei from Android) Hundreds Answer Europe's 'Public Call for Evidence' on an Open Digital Ecosystem Strategy (helpnetsecurity.com)

Also, Fairplay DRM is an example of a licensing regime that Apple used for the iPod and the iTunes Music Store of 2003, enforcing media licensing, including for iPod games, if we want to narrow it down further to software.

The 2010 link was referring to Mac developer licensing(?) prices of $500-$3,500 for the Apple Developer Connection, so yes, after the app store, but prior to the Mac app store.

I’m not claiming there’s DRM involved in this case unlike with music and iPod games, but I expect there are contractual obligations and there’s obviously an actual fee to get access to that Mac dev software, so those to me would count as licensing (though to be honest, I have not read those contracts), with a different fee structure and mechanism (probably upfront vs royalty/percentage).

"we’re just going to replace one middleman with another"

Why? I can go to mjtsai.com and buy EagleFiler directly from him. There is absolutely no reason it can't work the same way on iOS.

"Alternative direct distribution leads to gambling, porn, scams, malware but on an even greater level"

Oh no, porn. Whatever will we do to stop those harlots from showing their boobs.

"It should be more difficult to do risky things"

Sure. And it will be, because just going to the App Store will always be the easiest option.

"I wasn’t talking about Apple’s previous licensing schemes-only"

Then your argument was irrelevant.

"The 2010 link was referring to Mac developer licensing(?) prices of $500-$3,500 for the Apple Developer Connection"

Again, completely irrelevant to your argument. That fee did not buy access to APIs, which you previously argued the 30% fee did, and it was not required to write or publish programs for the Mac.

Again: There was no charge for developing apps for platforms like the Mac before the App Store existed. This is just a fact.

I'm honestly getting kind of confused about what your argument really is.

@Someone else

Anyway, I wasn’t talking about Apple’s previous licensing schemes-only, as Plume assumed/responded.

One could develop for Palm, PC, and Mac (and, of course, the Web) without paying a licensing fee. Old-style cellular phones and video games were niche platforms and not really comparable, in my opinion. So Apple’s “nice” mechanism was less nice than all the other general computing ones that preceded it.

My main point is that Apple didn’t (and doesn’t) make anything ‘free’.

You’re just completely wrong here. Apple development was free from the 1970s until the introduction of Gatekeeper in 2012. Even now, it’s free on the Mac if you opt not to notarize.

Also, Fairplay DRM is an example of a licensing regime that Apple used for the iPod and the iTunes Music Store of 2003, enforcing media licensing, including for iPod games, if we want to narrow it down further to software.

There was never any open market for any of these things. I don’t see what it has to do with the rest of your argument.

The 2010 link was referring to Mac developer licensing(?) prices of $500-$3,500 for the Apple Developer Connection, so yes, after the app store, but prior to the Mac app store.

Those programs were for if you wanted developer technical support, hardware discounts, videos, etc. Developing and distributing software was totally free. There was no fee to get access to the dev software, either. It even used to ship on the same disc as Mac OS X.

Your whole argument seems to be based on a misunderstanding, yet you’re lecturing Plume about “incomplete information” and “(deliberate?) mis-understating.”

@Tsai
Whether to give something away for free is a business decision. We can debate whether that decision made sense in the market conditions at the time, from a business perspective.

It makes little sense to discuss it in terms of principles: these decisions are rarely made on ethical grounds, but rather on commercial ones.

In a free market, they should also not be dictated by law (except in extreme cases such as monopolies). In a non-free market, you can have five-year production plans, state-fixed prices, and so on—but those systems have not worked, so we rely on the free market instead.

Therefore, the fact that macOS and Windows do not charge a fee to develop and sell apps does not, by itself, say anything about Apple’s different business decision for the iPhone.

From a developer’s perspective, iOS and macOS are completely different channels: the demographics, spending habits, spending power, and the ubiquity of iOS vs. macOS users are all very different. And even if there is no fee on Mac and there is a fee on iOS, the majority of developers still choose to develop for iOS.

As mentioned in the Asymco article quoted by @NaOH, this is the cost developers pay to access Apple’s iPhone customers—think of it like companies paying fees to place their products on supermarket shelves.
It seems the cost is right otherwise iPhone would not have so much development for it.

And here Joe gives the game away, suggesting that there should be a fee to sell to iPhone owners. Assuming that Apple should have the right to stand between developers and iPhone owners in this way assumes and perpetuates the idea that when we buy a thing we don't really own it. A position I abhor and think that any sane person should as well as it fundamentally undermines the right to private property.

And of course Gruber swallowed down the whole plate of bullshit Apple served him. What a good boy.

@Joe I think it’s obvious that this is not a free market—it’s a monopoly or duopoly—and therefore it’s not an isolated business decision. In theory, any government action would be moving things closer to a free market.

The reason for discussing macOS and Windows is that Someone else was making ahistorical claims about them, and also because I think the Mac history undermines a lot of Apple’s arguments about iOS, e.g. the recent “calling APIs for free would be violating our IP” argument.

Yes, it’s like paying to be on the supermarket shelf, only there are only two supermarkets. Their fees are strangely similar. You can tell the cost is more arbitrary than right with a thought experiment of what would happen if Apple and Google in coordination raised or lowered them by 10% or so. I think there was even something about this in some of the e-mails that were released during legal discovery.

@Benjamin
Think this way, Apple make two products, an hardware device that you buy, the software needed to make apps for the device.
You say: since I pay for the hardware the software to make apps should be free for developers.
I say: this is just a possibility, it’s not a principle, it is a business decision for Apple to make.

@Tsai
A monopoly is a market where users have no real choice, and that lack of choice gives the monopolist the ability to set prices freely—prices are no longer determined by the market.

Apple does not have a monopoly in the smartphone market; it is the fifth-largest vendor by sales volume.

For the DMA to work, the EU had to introduce a new concept of “monopoly” (or dominance) that applies specifically to digital markets, in order to force Apple to allow alternative app stores—claiming this would lower app prices for iOS users.

I personally think the EU lawmaking process is a corrupt environment where laws are effectively sold to lobbyists, and that this law was made to benefit a few large paying companies rather than EU citizens.

In practice, the dispute between the EU and Apple is harming EU iOS users. App prices have not changed (prices are set by the market; lowering costs does not necessarily lower prices—it often just increases margins), while some Apple technologies have been blocked for EU users, and some still are.

I don’t particularly care about Apple or developers. This DMA affects me as an EU citizen, and I read the law to understand whether it was justified. If it was, so be it—but what I found was a mess of absurd justifications that undermines free-market principles for the benefit of some companies and to the detriment of EU citizens.

The vast majority of EU users don’t want alternative app stores—they want privacy, security, and a curated store. In fact, alternative stores are not thriving. People also don’t want alternative browser engines or absurd browser choice screens. This is a law that goes against the will of the people.

For developers, the 15%/30% fee is not such a heavy burden—better without it, of course—but this is the price the market has effectively set across most platforms. Apple and Google, as well as Sony and Microsoft, have converged on similar rates (and only Meta takes a significantly higher cut). The only exceptions are legacy desktop platforms like Windows and macOS, largely for historical reasons: they never had such a fee, and the market would not accept introducing one now and changing the OS to block alternative stores or installation methods is not feasible at this point.

Furthermore, the DMA is not against Apple charging developers a fee to distribute apps on the platform—that would violate other free-market principles. It is against Apple controlling which apps can be sold and where.

The DMA does not really benefit developers; it simply prevents EU citizens from having, in Europe, a platform with a curated store that tries to avoid viruses, scams, pornography, and similar risks.

And the security of a curated store is one of the reasons I prefer the iPhone. I don’t understand why the EU wants every platform to become a Windows-like mess.
And like Steve Jobs said, if you don’t want a curated store you can buy an Android, or now live in Europe.

@Michael,
> "Old-style cellular phones and video games were niche platforms and not really comparable, in my opinion"

I disagree. I mean, video game consoles were pretty huge, as were cell phones.

> So Apple’s “nice” mechanism was less nice than all the other general computing ones that preceded it.

Nice for whom? For developers? Okay, sure. Maybe.

For users? Nah. Not compared to the App Store, IMO. App Store is sooo easy in comparison.

But first, why are we even talking about Macs and mac dev fees? How does any of that bear on iOS?

Oh, it's because Plume brought in the strawman of free Mac development.

So, let's assume that's true: the Mac really was totally free to develop for...

Perhaps you were there (I was not)… did most Mac programmers roll their own development kits back then? Program in assembly? No manuals or reference guides? I bet most devs paid someone — Apple — for those programming environments or bought such things for their programmers, so if that's the case, then I dunno... not really free?

Perhaps you're talking about free of licensing fees/royalties, though, right? Market conditions back then were that fees were born by us end users back then, right? Mac was fighting for program availability to compete with Windows/DOS machines.

But I personally remember buying the annual Apple CD ROM for Mac upgrades. So maybe it was free for you because Apple really needed folks like you, but it wasn't free for me, as a user.

Well things a different now. The iPhone was pretty nice without the App Store. Amazing hardware. Users bought it without the app store for quite high un-subsidized prices. I remember wanting one really bad. So now Apple was on a more even playing field with developers, so why should we be surprised when they charge for access to this burgeoning user base with developer licensing fees?

Are we saying that just because developing on Mac was/is free, it should be free for iOS? I think that's close to what Plume is saying. Perhaps a law saying that we must forever hew to the lowest-possible fee structure for devs?

The yearly costs have shifted from the user to the developers… but I argue that those costs were always there.

Me >> Also, Fairplay DRM is an example of a licensing regime that Apple used for the iPod and the iTunes Music Store of 2003, enforcing media licensing, including for iPod games, if we want to narrow it down further to software.
You > There was never any open market for any of these things. I don’t see what it has to do with the rest of your argument.

I stated earlier that Apple used DRM to protect and manage licenses before the App Store — that their intellectual property and work was never 'free'. I think that's correct.

Also, the iOS App Store is not an open market. It's definitely not a free market.

It's an Apple-controlled marketplace, distribution, and IP licensing channel.

Can I *wish* a this tomato tasted like the sweet, free-to-develop-and-sell-programs-for bananas I used to love? Sure, I guess.

But I think it's then also fair for someone else to point out that tomatoes are very different from bananas, and it's unlikely for tomatoes to ever be a banana (given our current laws, private property, IP laws, etc.)

And so while some of us may wish that or even try to legislate that all tomatoes are now bananas — to make iOS into free distribution and free everything (free to whom? is it free to Apple, the developer who has to maintain their stack and customers?) — that's very unlikely to happen unless we convince the IP holder and licensor, Apple, that it's in their interests.

And if you force it, you'll end up with a weird Frankenstein tomato-banana combo thing.

"it is a business decision for Apple to make."

No, it's a decision for society to make.

"it simply prevents EU citizens from having, in Europe, a platform with a curated store that tries to avoid viruses, scams, pornography, and similar risks."

No, it doesn't. The App Store still exists.

"In a free market"

You do realize that you're both arguing for and against a free market in the same comment, right? You argue that the monopolistic platform vendor must be left alone since it's "a free market", and then you go on to argue that app developers must not be allowed to have a free market because of porn.

If you favor free markets, you must support regulation that enables developers to operate in a free market. If, on the other hand, you favor Apple regulating iOS developers, then you can't also argue that it is wrong for governments to regulate Apple.

In your words, how developers sell their products "is a business decision for [them] to make." It's not for Apple to dictate.

Plume > "As Karl Marx wrote in "Das Appital": "The more stores I can run on my iPhone, the more communism.""

I honestly gotta say I got a good chuckle out of this line. Good one. Really good.

(in fairness to me, I was referring to the nationalization of private industry leading to less-than-great outcomes that communism is so famous for, but it's a good zinger internet-debate-wise)

"But first, why are we even talking about Macs and mac dev fees?"

Because you wrote this:

"Apple created a new way of charging developers [which is] way better for everyone than any other licensing enforcement technique that I can think of."

I pointed out that there was no other "licensing enforcement technique" that Apple used previously. Hence, it makes no sense to call the App Store charge "a new licensing enforcement technique" and call it "way better", because before Apple was able to monopolize app delivery, it did not charge for app development.

"So, let's assume that's true: the Mac really was totally free to develop for..."

You don't have to assume. That's just a fact.

"I bet most devs paid someone — Apple — for those programming environments"

You don't have to assume or bet or do anything like that. You can just look it up. There were free programming environments for the Mac, but most professional devs used something like CodeWarrior (from Metrowerks, not Apple). You bought it once, and then you owned it. You did not pay any licensing fees to use Apple's APIs.

"Mac was fighting for program availability to compete with Windows"

It's also free to develop for Windows and has always been.

"why should we be surprised when they charge for access to this burgeoning user base with developer licensing fees"

Nobody is surprised that a corporation is going to corporate.

"Are we saying that just because developing on Mac was/is free, it should be free for iOS?"

What I'm saying is that it is nonsensical to call the fee an intellectual property license.

"I argue that those costs were always there."

Yes, you can't make a platform like iOS without building APIs. Apple needs these APIs for its own programs. That doesn't make it reasonable for Apple to externalize these costs to developers.

"that's very unlikely to happen unless we convince the IP holder and licensor"

Right. That's what regulation is for. So you agree.

@Someone else

Nice for whom? For developers? Okay, sure. Maybe. For users? Nah. Not compared to the App Store, IMO. App Store is sooo easy in comparison.

I was responding to the part where you said it was “way better for everyone,” and I thought you were referring to the developer IP “licensing enforcement,” not the user software license. That seems very clear based on the next sentence that you wrote. Now it seems like you are shifting to argue something else.

I’m done discussing the earlier Apple development stuff with you. You have no idea what you’re talking about, and now you’re pitting your speculations against the experience of people who were actually there.

It's the same old argument:

Wealthy companies, or companies who monetize you through advertising or privacy, are allowed to give away their apps completely for free without paying anything but $99 per year for a developer fee.

Everybody else is somehow "unfairly taking advantage of Apple's investments" and must pay fees over and over and over again.

Even though literally the only cost Apple is actually incurring is that the developer who sells their apps has to pay about 2.5% credit card processing fees. Yes, there are other small things like processing refunds and some backend stuff to manage subscriptions. But come on, that's not worth one set of developers having to pay 10-30% fees and the other pays 0% (especially when Apple's costs are FIXED, e.g. beyond the credit card fees, it doesn't cost them anything extra whether it's a $1 app or a $100 app).

@Plume,
>>"But first, why are we even talking about Macs and mac dev fees?"
>
>Because you wrote this:
>
>>"Apple created a new way of charging developers [which is] way better for everyone than any other licensing enforcement technique that I can think of."
>
>I pointed out that there was no other "licensing enforcement technique" that Apple used previously. Hence, it makes no sense to call the App Store charge "a new licensing enforcement technique" and call it "way better", because before Apple was able to monopolize app delivery, it did not charge for app development.

Ah, so you're the one who bought up Apple's previous licensing enforcement. FairPlay DRM pre-dated the App Store, and that locked music and a small collection of apps to a user. I think Apple currently uses FairPlay to lock apps to a user.

But I was really thinking industry-wide licensing enforcement -- video games, computers, etc. -- not just the Mac.

But perhaps you take issue with the 'way better for everyone' -- or were arguing about fees but the real point is the 'better': If so, look below.

Also, I never claimed Apple charged to use their APIs. I didn't say anything about APIs at all. I'm not sure where you're getting that from. The only one who mentioned APIs before you did was Benjamin, then Michael after.

@Michael,

Ah, I see now what you're saying: that when I said the App Store was "way better for everyone"…

…everyone would presumably include developers…

…but that as a developer yourself who sold software without paying a license fee to Apple previously, that the app store was actually *not* an improvement over the old system of selling/monetizing/licensing your software because you could do it without giving money to Apple…

…and because the App Store is now on the Mac (and not just iOS), that's particularly relevant because there's the additional contrast where Apps on the App Store now pay a per-item licensing fee to Apple, while other apps sold direct to customers via the internet don't.

If that's what you're saying, then yeah, that's a good point.

Lack of licensing enforcement is better for some than the presence of it.

Let me rephrase/limit my statement, then:

"*if we're going to assume the platform maker wants the ability to collect software license fees/royalties*, then it's a very good system for distribution, revenue, and license/fee collection".

Too good of a system for some folks, perhaps.

@Plume, Michael,

I think I finally see why we're even talking about Mac development being free:

I wrote > Apple created a new way of charging developers — through the the distribution network, AKA, the app store. That's pretty clever for when it was created. Still is, I'd say. Way better for everyone than any other licensing enforcement technique that I can think of.

You're taking issue with my saying it's a license enforcement technique that's better for everyone...

But you think that 'no development license enforcement or fees' is superior to the App Store, and that's what the Mac/PC had prior to the App Store.

If that's what you're saying, then I think we're talking past each other.

Let me be super clear about what I wrote:

I compared Apple's App Store license enforcement to *other* license enforcement techniques

The *absence* of license enforcement as seen on old (and current) Macs and PCs is not an "enforcement technique".

I'm not comparing "enforced dev licenses" to the null set. I'm comparing them to other licensing enforcement regimes.

Regimes like hardware chips (SNES), audits, sending counts of sales back and forth between companies that are later disputed, accounting tricks (movie/music industry). FairPlay for media/videos/apps in iTunes Music Store. The paper manuals that used to come with video games that you had to find a word on a page when requested.

So I think you're saying: It was better for devs in the old days when there were no dev licenses to enforce (or that they existed but weren't enforced or were easy to circumvent).

And I say: Sure! Why not. But that's really not what I was comparing the App Store to.

Ah, double-post. I thought the one above didn't go through. "Anonymous" above is me.

@Someone else I don’t see how you even got on the topic of FairPlay and licensing enforcement, as in verifying that the customer has purchased the app. That’s not what this whole debate has been about. “Licensing” was in reference to Apple’s IP, not the apps being sold.

The part about charging to use APIs is from Apple’s legal filings. You seemed to be endorsing that because you said that developers were “demanding work [from Apple] without compensation.”

To me, the relevant comparison is vs. the previous regime (directly downloadable apps). Why would we compare vs. pre-Internet or the iPod app store that used a totally different operating system and never had more than a double-digit number of titles?

@Michael, Why do I mention FairPlay? Because it’s connected to licensing.

But really because Plume challenged me on Apple’s history of licensing things.

But that’s fine . It turns out FairPlay is a good example of them licensing IP on an online store with good enforcement of those licenses. Perhaps their first big example.

I’d argue that iPod/iTMS’s internet-requiring FairPlay licensing enforcement led directly to the ability of Apple to license and collect fees for their software and build the App Store into a closed licensing ecosystem, evolving from the pre-internet PC wars old days.

It, and its cryptographic siblings, enabled Apple’s current IP licensing. Something that Apple (and others) couldn’t do reliably before. (Speaking as someone who used shared pirated application unlock codes in the past)

It locked music to users at first — iTunes Music Store used the internet —and now the same type of crypto locks users to their purchases, and developers to distribution. All things impossible when the Mac got popular.

I think it’s actually a great example of how IP licensing and enforcement changes over the decades as new techniques and the internet become widespread.

So if this debate is about licensing, let’s talk about that:

Tim Cook, IIRC, testified in court that the App Store is how it collects its licensing fee.

So if we now sidestep the App Store, Apple still can collect its licensing fee, no? Legally, they’re allowed to, I think we can both agree.

Do we actually agree about that? I don’t want to assume.

Let’s say you agree:

Well, if you remove the “mandatory App Store” from Apple’s license fee collection mechanism by law, as the EU, some devs, and Plume would have it… Apple has the right to shift that collection mechanism elsewhere, doesn’t it? (Plume might disagree about that last part)

Apple has the right to license its IP or software, just like we do for our — your and my — apps or work.

So another way to look at it is that these “free-riding” devs want to shift costs onto Apple itself (getting “free” work from Apple for their constant work on a “free” platform… free-riding for devs is great for devs in this case)… OR… Apple will probably shift those licensing fees/ costs onto consumers via higher retail prices (and maybe annual upgrade fees again?)

Devs are happy in this case because they’ve externalized their expenses onto others. At the expense of others.

Apple might already build these costs into the Mac in the past and today (since software can be installed via direct distribution via web downloads, though I admit I often buy on the Mac App Store for convenience), and Apple may someday build those fees into the iPhone’s price, and charge for annual updates, etc, but I, as a customer, would prefer someone else pay for Apple’s work and get a cheaper base device. Lots of users never pay anything for their apps… shifting costs from devs would raise fees on them.

(or really, I’d prefer that devs share in the cost with progressive “taxation”/fees. The bigger the profit from app sales, the more they should pay. The usual loss-leaders (reader apps, for example) and uncontested market segments notwithstanding. Also, if we care about reducing eWaste and keeping devices up-to-date, then dev-pays is better than consumer-pays.)

@Plume
"it is a business decision for Apple to make."

No, it's a decision for society to make.

"it simply prevents EU citizens from having, in Europe, a platform with a curated store that tries to avoid viruses, scams, pornography, and similar risks."

No, it doesn't. The App Store still exists.

"In a free market"

We have two different definitions of “free market.”

For me, a free market is one where decisions about what to produce and at what price are made by the producer. In this case, Apple produces the core tools developers use to build iOS apps (the APIs), and Apple decides how to monetize that work and at what price. This is still legal even in Europe, and the DMA allows it. There is no EU law that forbids Apple from charging for access to its APIs. In the US, a judge even ruled that monetization of Apple’s work is Apple’s decision (ironically, in a case involving the same company that pushed for the DMA in Europe).

For you, a free market seems to mean that producers can sell their products using other people’s tools and stores without paying—like walking into a supermarket and placing your products on the shelves for free, occupying space without paying the store owner. That is not how our current society works, and it is not allowed under current laws. Even communist countries didn’t allow that: under classic communism, the state decided what to produce and at what price, but retail space still had a cost.

You’re right that the App Store still exists. However, the idea behind alternative stores—especially “cheaper” distribution for developers—was that competition would lead to lower prices. But an uncurated store doesn’t necessarily cost less than a curated one, so the real goal was to weaken Apple’s App Store and turn iOS into a Windows-like mess.

That is not happening because EU citizens don’t want uncurated app stores. The market is rejecting a law that goes against citizens’ preferences—and laws like this tend not to survive in the long run.

@Someone else:

"Also, I never claimed Apple charged to use their APIs. I didn't say anything about APIs at all. I'm not sure where you're getting that from"

APIs are the only "intellectual property" that Mac developers use. If you're not talking about developers using Apple's APIs, then what "Apple IP" are they using?

"Apple has the right to license its IP or software, just like we do for our — your and my — apps or work."

You're assuming the conclusion. Apple has whichever rights society grants it. You can't just say "Apple has the right" if the debate is about whether Apple should have that right.

"Devs are happy in this case because they’ve externalized their expenses onto others"

What expenses exactly?

@Joe:

"For me, a free market is one where decisions about what to produce and at what price are made by the producer"

Now apply this to software developers. They can't decide what to produce, because Apple restricts them,a nd they can't decide at what price, because Apple requires a cut.

"For you, a free market seems to mean that producers can sell their products using other people’s tools and stores without paying"

No. It's a place where people are not forced to use a specific toolset and store.

@Plume
“Now apply this to software developers. They can’t decide what to produce, because Apple restricts them, and they can’t decide at what price, because Apple requires a cut.”

Actually, developers do have a choice about what they want to produce. They can decide whether to build an iPhone app or not. If they do, they pay Apple for access to the APIs, because Apple wants to be paid. It is Apple’s right to charge: building and maintaining APIs has a cost. There is no free lunch—someone has to pay, and deciding who pays is Apple’s choice.

If developers don’t like that model, they can choose not to build for iOS and focus on Android instead. That is how the market works: they send a clear signal to Apple—“we don’t accept your pricing model.” And that kind of market pressure is what can push Apple to change its policies, or to offer different terms for specific categories of apps it doesn’t want to lose.

Second, developers can freely decide the final price. Apple’s cut is simply part of their costs, but the price charged to the end user is still the developer’s decision. They cannot have zero costs, because they are using someone else’s work (the APIs), and work must be paid for.

“No. It’s a place where people are not forced to use a specific toolset and store.”
No—you can’t build an iOS app without using Apple’s work. You are not forced to build iOS apps; that’s your choice. But if you choose to do so, and you use someone else’s work, you have to pay for it. There is no market where other people’s work must be free. The creator is the one who decides whether to give it away for free or not.

"Actually, developers do have a choice about what they want to produce. They can decide whether to build an iPhone app or not"

Then you agree that it is fine to regulate Apple because they have that same choice: they can just stop making hardware and software.

"It is Apple’s right to charge"

Apple's rights are whatever societies grant it.

"But if you choose to do so, and you use someone else’s work, you have to pay for it"

You are assuming the conclusion. The question is how Apple should be allowed to use its monopoly to extract value. Your answer can't just be "you have to pay Apple."

Not sure this thread has been long enough.

If I may pile on more against Someone and Joe's arguments (among others), what Apple is doing also impacts end users. By extracting much more value from developers than what Apple offer is worth, and by restricting what apps can do, users are left with less apps, and lower-quality apps. And the incentive for developers is getting lower and lower.

At this stage, the market for smart phones is quite entrenched (correct word??). Users do not have much of a choice. Yes, not quite a monopoly technically, but a duopoly if you want. Apple has too much power. You absolutely need a phone to live in our modern society. And it's either iOS or Android. You choose one based on the number of characteristics, and app offering is just one criteria. And those phones could offer much more and bring more benefits to users, if Apple was not so stuck on getting as much money from developers as they can, for which they have in fact little pressure not to.

Reducing the restrictions on how an app can be monetized would improve the user experience, the developer's life, benefit society and maybe would even ultimately benefit Apple. That's my opinion and that of others in this thread, given the current situation and how things are organized.

And yes, there is no reason it could not be changed by proper regulatory pressure. Not sure the DMA is the correct approach in this case, but if you look into what is happening in other countries, there are different approaches, and Apple is fighting them all.

@Charles
I agree with you—it’s the same idea I have. What I was trying to convey is that the DMA is not the right way forward. It’s an extremely cumbersome law and it deserves no respect.

Japan, for example, has a law that tries to achieve what you suggest, but it is completely different from the DMA and much better at reaching that goal. Apple complied more gracefully there, and even thanked the lawmakers.

In the EU, instead, Apple raised its shields against a law that tries to extract proprietary technology and give it away for free to others (for example, Apple Watch features or Bluetooth integrations), for reasons that do not benefit EU citizens or Apple customers.

Apple’s resistance in the EU is largely about protecting its customers—a kind of defense that was not necessary in Japan, because that law does not work against them in the same way.

@Plume
The law you seem to be arguing for would be something like: no platform should make developers pay.

But what is a platform? A platform is software used to build other software—for example, the APIs used to build apps.

In the beginning, the iPhone platform was closed: no third-party apps could be made, and there was no store. With the second iPhone, the platform opened and the App Store was born—together with a cost for developers.

Is Apple unique in charging that cost? Not at all. Sony (PlayStation), Microsoft (Xbox), and Meta (its metaverse platforms) are all examples of platforms that require developers to pay to access their ecosystems. Android is closer to Linux: you don’t pay to use the APIs, but you still pay—through a similar revenue cut—when you rely on Google services. In practice, the outcome is comparable to Apple’s model.

So a law based on your argument would have to force all platform owners to provide their platforms for free. It would not be legal to target only Apple. The result would be that platform builders could no longer sustain their business model, and fewer companies would build new platforms or continue maintaining and improving existing ones. That would harm citizens, and the law would be ineffective at achieving its stated goal of “more apps.”

At the next election, a new government would likely restore the previous framework.

Again, keep in mind that the DMA does not say what you are describing: it does not ask Apple to give away API access for free. It only mandates that alternative app stores must be allowed.

I would argue simply that a law that requires Apple to allow third party apps to run without verification by Apple would be a nice first step.

I actually think there should be a government owned corporation with a neutrality mandate that handles code-signing and notarization. Take away Apple's power to control the software I run on the device I purchase. If Apple wants to charge for API access those APIs are going to have to be removed from the OS itself and put in a bundle that gets installed whenever an Apple App is installed. If the bundle is on the phone when I buy it, there is no reason to pay any more money to Apple for a developer to access it. It's part of what my purchase. Unless of course Apple wants to return all the money they earned from people buying iPhones with the expectation that they can run third party apps...

Under a law that supported this all platform creators would be required to embed a check that the app is signed/notarized but they would be required to check not with Apple but with this other entity. Apple would then not be permitted to scan apps beyond that.

If you want to live in techno feudalism that's fine but I don't.

@Charles
I agree with you—it’s the same idea I have. What I was trying to convey is that how to achieve it should align with Apple’s interests and, above all, with the interests of Apple’s customers—and that the DMA is not the right way forward. It’s an extremely cumbersome law that goes against Apple customers’ interests, and it deserves no respect.

Japan, for example, has a law that tries to achieve what you suggest, but it is completely different from the DMA and much better at reaching that goal. Apple complied more gracefully there, and even thanked the lawmakers.

In the EU, instead, Apple raised its shields against a law that tries to extract proprietary technology and give it away for free to others (for example, Apple Watch features or Bluetooth integrations), for reasons that do not benefit EU citizens or Apple customers.

Apple’s resistance in the EU is largely about protecting its customers—a kind of defense that was not necessary in Japan, because that law does not work against them in the same way.

Just a chatGPT recap of diffrences between Japan Law and DMA:
• Scope and approach: Japan’s law is more targeted and pragmatic, focusing on specific competitive behaviors; the EU DMA is broad and prescriptive, with many fixed obligations.
• Core obligations: Japan mainly pushes for fairer access/terms and transparency in app distribution and payments; the DMA explicitly mandates alternative app stores and sideloading options for gatekeepers.
• Impact on user experience/security: Japan’s framework is easier to implement while keeping a more curated, controlled model; the DMA forces structural changes that can weaken the “single curated store” model in the EU.
• Compliance dynamic: Apple could comply in Japan with limited disruption, while in the EU the DMA is seen as requiring deeper platform-level changes and exposure of more internal mechanisms.

@Benjamin
That’s not how a platform works. Creating a set of APIs for apps to use is a highly complex task: APIs must be complete, robust, and continuously maintained to remain compatible across OS versions. An app cannot be built without using public APIs.

Sure, you could use undocumented private APIs, but the next OS version could change them and your app would stop working (not to mention the legal issues).

No government could issue and maintain a set of public APIs for an OS developed by a private company—it simply wouldn’t work.

Apple builds the software, so it has the right to decide how it works and how much it costs. It’s that simple.

@Benjamin
“I would argue simply that a law that requires Apple to allow third-party apps to run without verification by Apple would be a nice first step.”

Why? More choice for end users can be a good thing, but it’s already available: if you want unverified apps, buy an Android. If you want a more secure environment—where users without a technical background, and children, can install apps without hassle and with fewer risks (scams, pornography, malware, etc.)—buy an iPhone with a curated App Store.

Why should privacy and security be forbidden by law?

@Benjamin
“I would argue simply that a law that requires Apple to allow third-party apps to run without verification by Apple would be a nice first step.”

Why? More choice for end users can be a good thing, but it’s already available: if you want unverified apps, buy an Android. If you want a more secure environment—where users without a technical background, and children, can install apps without hassle and with fewer risks (scams, pornography, malware, etc.)—buy an iPhone with a curated App Store.

Why should privacy and security be forbidden by law?

@Someone else I don’t think FairPlay is really what enables Apple IP licensing. The real blocker is that iOS won’t run code that isn’t signed by Apple, and so Apple can make sure that any apps that are installed go through their approved channel/tollbooth.

I’m not a lawyer, but I do not think that Apple has a right to collect a licensing fee when users install software on devices that they’ve purchased. The latest US court only seemed to approve a “reasonable fee” based on Apple’s “actual costs to ensure user security and privacy.” In other words, not based on IP licensing, although I don’t think the court was very clear on this.

I don’t think there are any significant actual costs to be shifted or built in. It’s really more about the opportunity cost of the rents that could be charged to a captive audience.

@Joe If Apple is the only producer, that is not a free market; it’s a monopoly. There’s no competition or price discovery or other such mechanisms that allow for the benefits that markets can provide. Apple’s argument is that the market should be defined as the entire software world so, e.g., the App Store is facing competition from Web apps running in Internet Explorer on old versions of Windows. That’s not how I see it. If you build an iOS app, you can’t deploy that code on another platform. And the end user only has one phone and isn’t able to easily switch platforms. Nor do they have many realistic options to choose from. I think this is somewhat akin to the auto market, where society has decided that once a customer has paid a large fixed cost, they can’t be held hostage by the manufacturer. Toyota can’t “protect their IP” by forcing you to buy OEM oil or tires or to only use their dealers for repairs.

None of the alternative EU marketplaces are uncurated. Apple is very good at selling FUD.

In the beginning, the iPhone platform was closed: no third-party apps could be made, and there was no store. With the second iPhone, the platform opened and the App Store was born—together with a cost for developers.

I’ve written about this recently, but that’s not exactly the case. Apple changed the rules over time so that many apps that initially had no cost to developers were later required to pay Apple. I’ve also long been of the opinion that the fee is really the least of the problems for developers with the App Store model. The review process and restrictions on what your code is allowed to do cause more harm. And it’s not just a developer issue (I’m not an iOS developer) because it affects which apps are available and what features they can have.

I also think the public vs. private API distinction is kind of a red herring. I’ve used private APIs that were way more stable and reliable than the corresponding public ones. Most of the bug reports are ignored.

"The law you seem to be arguing for would be something like: no platform should make developers pay."

No, it's not.

"So a law based on your argument would have to force all platform owners to provide their platforms for free"

No, it doesn't.

"At the next election, a new government would likely restore the previous framework."

No, it wouldn't.

"Again, keep in mind that the DMA does not say what you are describing"

I don't care.

Your assertions are so absurd that it feels pointless to rebuke them. Anyone reading your comments will already realize that. They will also realize that the current situation sucks for users and developers and that regulation is required to improve it.

So I will end with this:

"Apple builds the software, so it has the right to decide how it works and how much it costs. It’s that simple."

Governments make the laws within which corporations exist, so they have the right to regulate them. It's that simple.

@Tsai
The DMA says Apple is a gatekeeper. You can’t call it a monopolist, because legally that means something else. A monopolist is the only vendor of a product (for example, if all phones sold were iPhones). A “gatekeeper” is closer to your definition of a monopolist—sort of—because the DMA is a poorly written law and does not clearly define what a gatekeeper is. In theory, it should be a vendor that exceeds a predefined threshold, but even the iPad—whose sales are below that threshold—has been brought under the DMA. In practice, EU lawmakers seem to be saying: you are a gatekeeper if we say you are.

Now that the terminology is clearer, what problem is the DMA trying to solve? The control over which apps can be on the platform—i.e., control over the store.

That was a fundamental decision made by Steve Jobs when the iPhone was created. He didn’t want such a personal and ubiquitous device to become “Windows-like.” He wanted it to be more like a console: curated software only, so it could be used safely by non-expert users. That is Apple’s key differentiation versus Android phones—and that difference is exactly what the DMA is attacking.

I believe EU citizens have the right to access a safe platform, and I don’t think the real problem for developers is not being able to sell porn apps on the iPhone, or having to pay a fee to access the platform.

In fact, most software companies develop for iPhone first, and only later—if the product succeeds—port it to Android. That is the market speaking: clearly, developers don’t have such a big issue with Apple’s policies. I do think many things could be improved in Apple’s developer policies, but not at the cost of losing platform safety, as the DMA effectively mandates.

Here's the DMA's definition of what a gatekeeper is:
https://www.eu-digital-markets-act.com/Digital_Markets_Act_Article_3.html

I'll leave it up to the reader to determine whether that is "not clearly defined."

Here are detailed notes on why iPadOS was classified as a gatekeeper OS:
https://digital-markets-act-cases.ec.europa.eu/cases/DMA.100047

"I believe EU citizens have the right to access a safe platform"

The DMA did not make iOS an unsafe platform.

@Plume
Here is the Commission’s opening statement from the market investigation into whether Apple should be designated as a gatekeeper for iPadOS, since iPadOS does not meet the DMA thresholds:

“The Commission opened a market investigation to assess whether Apple’s iPadOS, despite not meeting the quantitative thresholds laid down in the DMA, constitutes an important gateway for business users to reach end users and therefore should be designated as a gatekeeper.”

So, you become a gatekeeper if you meet the thresholds. iPadOS doesn’t—but because it is considered an “important gateway,” you are a gatekeeper anyway.

Don’t you hear the creaking in this argument?

The DMA mandates multiple app stores. Now think about a non-technical, non-expert end user who bought an Apple device for security (that’s how Apple markets it: a secure and controlled device—this is in the company’s DNA, and users see it that way). That user will assume that installing other stores is safe, and that installing apps from those stores goes through the same kind of review and control as Apple’s.

Under the DMA, the device becomes less secure.

Yes, iPadOS was designated a gatekeeper under the law's qualitative rules. That's what the linked document says, and it explains the reasoning - which, by the way, is absolutely correct - in detail.

"That user will assume that installing other stores is safe"

It is. In fact, as of right now, using third-party stores is safer than using Apple's store. iPhones could be made safer if it were possible to remove Apple's own App Store. If I could give my dad an iPhone running only a third-party store and not the Apple store, I would, because the App Store is a cesspool of scams, gambling, and garbage.

It is, in fact, currently the only iOS store that is not properly curated.

"that installing apps from those stores goes through the same kind of review and control as Apple’s."

That's where they are mistaken, of course, because third-party stores have a much better review process.

Also, please note that these apps all still have to go through Apple's notarization. They should not, in my opinion, but they do.

Finally, I find it funny that you're both arguing that "the market is rejecting a law that goes against citizens’ preferences" and that they're all suddenly installing all the third-party stores in the world because they're so confused about what's happening.

"Under the DMA, the device becomes less secure."

In summary, that's a lie.

@Joe I think the legal understanding of monopolies hasn’t yet caught up with the technology. But if you prefer to use the DMA gatekeeper term, that’s fine. What you call it doesn’t change what’s going on. I think the platform safety narrative is mostly marketing, not reality. If anything, the EU third-party marketplace are probably more curated than the App Store. There could be an interesting debate here if Apple’s narrative about how the App Store works actually matched reality, but it’s now been almost 20 years and the gulf between them is obvious.

@Tsai
With multiple app stores, the key point is that users would need to understand how each store operator curates and secures their store. Users would have to research, evaluate, and decide which store operators to trust.

In practice, almost no one will do that. Either alternative stores won’t be trusted (which is what seems to be happening), making the DMA ineffective and therefore a useless burden for everyone—or they will be trusted as much as Apple, without users actually verifying whether that trust is justified.

You say they are secure. I haven’t researched the details, but the problem is that an insecure store could still be used—with the same level of trust users currently give Apple—because the necessary research and due diligence won’t be done.

This is essentially a statistical argument: having a single trusted source to control and review apps is more secure than having many.

"I haven’t researched the details"

Why do you have such a strong opinion on something you apparently know very little about?

@Joe First off, I think Apple’s store is trusted way more than it should be. Second, do you apply this same reasoning in other areas of life? Should we switch to having a single supermarket or hospital or airline? Then no one would have to evaluate which one is better. With only one choice they would be guaranteed to always be using the safest.

@Plume
Trust is difficult to earn. I’m monitoring Apple to decide whether I can continue to trust them. I’m convinced that a major shift in their policies couldn’t happen without damaging the company—but things change, and people change, so trust must be continuously verified. And Apple is no saint either: they have been caught collecting Siri audio recordings without user consent. Trust is hard to maintain.

Doing that kind of research for every alternative app store operator? No chance.

And I don’t expect the security situation to remain the same over time. Many companies that would run alternative stores have a history of questionable behavior. The pattern is predictable: “We’ll behave well at the beginning because we need credibility, but as soon as the market allows it, we’ll monetize every possible angle.”

Am I expecting iPhone users to continuously monitor store operators’ behavior over time? No, I’m not. That’s why I’m confident the DMA makes the iOS platform less secure. Apple has a strong incentive to remain trusted, because it sells devices marketed as secure and curated. Alternative store operators don’t have the same obligation—or the same incentive—toward their users.

@Tsai
This is not a “single supermarket” situation. It’s a situation with many different supermarkets, but with one chain that has more stores than a specified threshold—or, even if it doesn’t, it can still be declared “important” and therefore becomes a supermarket gatekeeper.

Once it is designated as a gatekeeper, it can no longer decide which products go on its shelves. It must allow other companies to occupy part of its floor space to sell their products. The chain cannot object to what is being sold, and it cannot charge for the floor space, nor for heating or electricity consumption—it simply has to allow it.

That is the DMA.

Now think about the chain’s customers: they enter the supermarket expecting the same level of curation and quality control as before the gatekeeper designation—the very curation that made the chain successful. But that is no longer true, because now they can find anything inside.

In fact, the “gatekeeper” concept has been tailored to target digital markets—and Apple in particular—because applying the same logic to supermarkets, hospitals, and other physical businesses would be absurd.

But in my view, laws should be based on principles. And principles should apply to every market and every company, and they should reflect what the majority of citizens want—not be crafted to target one actor in order to satisfy someone else.

You say it’s a single-supermarket case because an iOS developer can only use the Apple App Store. But first, developers have a choice of platform. Android has far more devices than Apple. You cannot claim developers are forced to choose iOS: they prefer it because developing for iOS is easier than for Android (one platform versus many device variants), and because the return can be higher—users are more willing to download and try apps on iOS than on Android, because they trust the ecosystem more. But developers are not forced.

It is precisely iOS’s market position (security and curation) that makes iPhone development more attractive. If the DMA causes Apple to lose that position, developers may earn less, not more.

And if developers truly started shifting to Android in large numbers, Apple would change its policies. If developers keep choosing Apple anyway, then why are we even discussing this as a “problem” for them?

@Joe I see it the other way—the alternative stores are only in one business so it’s existential for them if they get a bad reputation for security. Apple already has a lot of brand equity, and they have a huge budget for marketing and FUD, so can they (and do) make all sorts of curation mistakes without ever really paying a price. They just have to do the minimum to not be obviously worse than the Google Play Store. I think it’s a mistake for any user to blindly download an app and trust that Apple’s curation will protect them.

Anecdotally, none of the Android users I know are concerned about the safety of apps on that platform. The higher per-user sales on iOS may be due to the demographics of the user base rather than trust of the store.

"I’m monitoring Apple to decide whether I can continue to trust them"

You already can not trust Apple. The App Store is full of gambling apps aimed at children; how is that trustworthy? Malware is regularly allowed into the store. The idea that the App Store is protecting people from bad actors is false.

In fact, having a single blessed store that is ostensibly curated makes the situation worse. It gives people a false sense of security and leads them to install software without thinking about the repercussions, trusting that Apple is keeping them safe.

The whole premise of your argument is therefore false.

I'm pretty sure the lack of app installation options outside the App Store is a major reason why the App Store is such an untrustworthy malware vector. Since there is no other way to install apps on iOS, Apple has to be quite permissive in what it accepts, and has to deal with a large number of app submissions. This makes it impossible to properly vet what is being offered.

If it were possible for people to install apps directly from developers, the pressure to be permissive in what is allowed into the store would disappear, and Apple could offer a properly curated store.

(Assuming that is what they want, which I'm increasingly sure they don't, given how much money they make with in-app purchases for gambling apps).

"Once it is designated as a gatekeeper, it can no longer decide which products go on its shelves. It must allow other companies to occupy part of its floor space to sell their products"

You know what, that actually sounds like a good idea, given how harmful stores like Walmart have been. A law like this might help lessen that harm. Stores like Walmart often cause smaller stores to go out of business, reducing the choices people have. Regulating that would be very welcome indeed.

"You cannot claim developers are forced to choose iOS"

Of course you can. Do you think you can run a bank or a social network or any large product or project while excluding half of your target audience? Developers are literally forced to support iOS.

"If developers keep choosing Apple anyway, then why are we even discussing this as a “problem” for them?"

If developers tell you that it is a problem for them, why do you not believe them?

The only argument you have made is that you believe that iOS would become less secure if users could install programs outside of the App Store. I'm going to ignore your claim that third-party stores do that, because it's false, but I don't think third-party stores go far enough, so the point is moot. I think that iOS users should be allowed to install unsigned apps directly from third-party devs.

And in that case, you are right: that would make iOS less secure. But not by much; it's not like there's a huge malware problem on MacOS or Android, and installing third-party apps directly from developers is possible on those systems.

Furthermore, that's a trade-off that must be made, because the harm caused by preventing people from installing apps directly from developers is much larger than the harm caused by a few of them using that power to install malware on their devices.

@Michael, re: you question whether FairPlay actually manages the ability to run only signed apps on the iPhone: Yes, that’s why I mentioned FairPlay’s cryptographic siblings. It’s basically the same principle of signing something and granting or denying ability to use something, I think you’ll agree.

My point is for your car parts and for iOS (and for inkjet cartridges, etc.): companies started locking down access to their stuff when it became technologically and economically feasible. It wasn’t in the old days, but now it is. And Apple was part of that evolution. Perhaps a leader.

Software is licensed — even open source software — so I don’t find it surprising Apple charges to use its software.

Something something right-to-repair.

@Plume, yes, society writes the rules. Here’s the thing: we already wrote them. They’re our laws. They’re not perfect but those are the rules we’re playing by.

If you want to change those laws, then I hope you’re working on changing them beyond this single forum. Perhaps join the free software foundation, writing your own software or operating system and give it away, build your own hardware, contribute to open source like some of us do, amass like-minded people and lead a rebellion to overthrow the WTO and install your preferred global solution.

.

Re: third party app stores being trustworthy: I think it’s telling that the first EU app store — the Alt Store — was really about buying piracy apps and apps to run pirated games (we all know that folks don’t own the carts/discs/licenses for the ROMs they’re emulating). Oh and Fortnite, I guess.

I don’t have access to an alt store but personally, I might want to install a BitTorrent client, but I’m not sure I’d trust a store that sells piracy equipment. It’d be a balance of ‘Yes, I want this thing but don’t trust the vendor’.

So, I’d love to know if anyone here has bought something on an alt store (if they have access to one), why, what they bought, and their thoughts and experiences with it — do you trust it/them with your payment info, trust in their longevity for upgrades, etc.? And if not, why not?

@Tsai
The ratio of Android users to iPhone users is more than three to one, yet store statistics strongly favor Apple users. The App Store generates more than double the revenue of the Google Play Store, and free app downloads are higher on the App Store than on Google Play. These are approximate numbers, but they still tell a clear story.

You say it’s only demographics. I think it’s also about perceived trust from users. It’s not that higher-spending users care less about security and safety—if anything, they care more, because they have more to lose.

Apple has built this demographic advantage through its policies and products. That’s not easy to achieve, and as Asymco says, it has value. That value is what justifies the 15%/30% cut for Apple even more than for Android: it’s the cost of accessing the higher-spending segment of smartphone users.

Think of Apple telling developers: “We have the highest-spending slice of the market. Do you want to do business with our customers?”

Isn’t that more of an opportunity than an obstacle for developers?

You say Apple risks nothing by allowing multiple stores. If that were true, it would be even better for Apple. But Apple clearly thinks otherwise—and is fighting it. Go figure.

Don’t you think that risking the loss of their demographic advantage is reason enough for Apple to want to preserve the policies that created it?
And if users have preferred Apple products because of these policies, don’t they want those policies preserved? Are they installing alternative stores and downloading apps from them? No, they aren’t. The DMA goes against users’ preferences: it is a law not made for the people, but for a few lobbying companies.

The DMA is an example of the regulatory frenzy that has plagued the EU and that Draghi said must be dismantled. EU countries are currently discussing how to reduce this burden.

@Joe I don’t think trust is even a consideration for most users—they’re not worried about this stuff. Most of the top-grossing apps are multi-platform. I think if most users switched platforms they would just buy the same apps on the other platform. They wouldn’t suddenly distrust Monopoly Go because they’re buying it through Google instead of Apple.

You say Apple risks nothing by allowing multiple stores.

I never said that. I do think it’s a risk for Apple in that users might see that the emperor has no clothes.

"Here’s the thing: we already wrote them. They’re our laws. They’re not perfect but those are the rules we’re playing by."

We introduce new laws or change them constantly as new issues arise.

"really about buying piracy apps"

Just to be clear, you're talking about torrent apps and emulators, which are a perfect example of why third-party stores are necessary due to Apple's erratic behavior.

"I might want to install a BitTorrent client, but I’m not sure I’d trust a store that sells piracy equipment"

So you want a BitTorrent client, but not from a store that has BitTorrent clients? Good, then you agree that we should be able to install apps outside of stores.

"We have the highest-spending slice of the market. Do you want to do business with our customers?"

How does Apple "have" anything? Does Apple own me when I buy an iPhone? If so, why should I be happy with being used as a bargaining chip to hurt developers? Isn't that exactly the argument for regulation?

Also, I dispute the claim that the restrictive nature of the App Store is what created Apple's demographic advantage in the US. If it is a factor at all (which I doubt), it's a minor one. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if it did more harm than good.

@Tsai @Plume
Both of you seem to treat the fact that Apple has the highest-spending customers in the smartphone market as something that happened by chance—“has” in the sense that they are loyal customers who keep buying Apple phones, with loyalty rates reported as high as 99%.

@Plume: “I dispute the claim that the restrictive nature of the App Store is what created Apple’s demographic advantage in the US.”
@Tsai: “I don’t think trust is even a consideration,” or “The higher per-user sales on iOS may be due to the demographics of the user base rather than trust of the store.”

But this is a genuinely surprising phenomenon—highly unusual at the scale of billions of users. The real question is why it happened: what is the “magic source” Apple discovered?

I don’t think a single factor explains it. There are probably many. But trust is one of them—and it’s like a recipe: remove one key ingredient, and the dish stops tasting the same.

Consider this: Apple created a product with privacy and security at its core, anticipating that such a personal and ubiquitous device would require trust, a curated store, and strong protection against malware from the very beginning. Within three years, almost every phone on the market had become “iPhone-like,” and even companies built on extracting user data started talking about privacy.

Today, the iPhone is still the only mainstream smartphone platform with a strongly curated store and privacy at its core. I believe this is a fundamental part of the demographic advantage Apple has built.

@Joe Not by chance. I just think it has to do with the premium hardware and the OS itself (and integration with the Mac platform, which also has different demographics than Windows), rather than the App Store. iOS users spend more on apps, but Android users install more apps. So I don’t think this behavior shows that the increased revenue is based on trust. And, like I said earlier, if most of the revenue on each platform is coming from people purchasing the same apps, how can you ascribe that to curation? If two users have downloaded the same app, and both are spending money it but one is spending more, to me the obvious conclusion is not that one trusts it more but that one has more money to spend.

@Tsai
I don’t think there is a single factor. And to understand why it happened, you should focus on the differences between the platforms, not on what they have in common.

Premium hardware? Both platforms offer premium and non-premium devices. OS differences? How many of Apple’s billion-plus users actually understand OS or hardware differences? That’s mostly “nerd stuff.”

Also, users’ perceptions of these factors are shaped by marketing: companies promote certain differences and make them salient. Apple’s most prominent iOS/iPhone marketing points are (from ChatGPT):

Most used Apple marketing points for iOS / iPhone:
1. Privacy & security
2. Ecosystem integration (iPhone + Mac + iPad + Watch + AirPods)
3. Camera & video quality (“Shot on iPhone”)
4. Performance & efficiency (A-series chips, battery life)
5. Safety features (Emergency SOS, Crash Detection)
6. Smooth user experience + long software support (updates, reliability)
7. Premium hardware build (durability, design)

Privacy and security are in first place, with Apple’s curated App Store marketed as a pillar of platform security. Obviously, this kind of differentiation from competitors must be part of Apple’s demographic advantage and success.

Apple earned its customer base. It had the right ideas and made the sustained effort needed to build that level of loyalty and demographic profile. And, like it or not, the curated App Store is an essential part of that effort—one that is costly and difficult to maintain, but that Apple clearly considers indispensable.

@Joe The demographics difference was present before the App Store existed and before Apple started marketing privacy and security.

@Tsai
“The demographic difference was present before the App Store existed and before Apple started marketing privacy and security.”

No, that’s not true. Before the iPhone, high-spending phone users were using other devices—BlackBerry was a top choice at the time, for example.

Privacy and security were core to Apple’s iPhone project from the start. For instance, no mainstream phone had encrypted storage in the way the iPhone introduced it.

The App Store arrived relatively early, when Apple still didn’t have a significant share of the market. The market position Apple has today was built over many years of sustained effort to earn it.

Wait, you're telling me that before the iPhone, people did not use iPhones? Amazing.

Apple always had that demo. Before the iPhone, before the iPod, probably even before the Mac. The Apple ][ was no C64.

@Michael,

“@Joe I don’t think trust is even a consideration for most users—they’re not worried about this stuff.”

I disagree, but more importantly, Apple seems to disagree. They have a ton of ads about it, and I don’t think they’d do that if their research showed folks didn’t care.

It also talks privacy up all the time for Safari, the ‘do not track’, won’t train AI using their user’s data unlike others, etc. So at the very least, Apple cares, and cares enough to put money and effort into privacy, and they usually care about things that make them money (though I also hope it’s a principle not only because of profit margins)

It’s a legitimate differentiator that some people care about. The ads do an okay job of turning an abstract concept into concrete things, but it is indeed a hard concept to convey.

Also, Apple — and specifically Jobs — talked about privacy very early on in very easy to understand language. We’re all familiar with this clip from 2010. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39iKLwlUqBo.

I don’t think it’s a new thing for the iPhone, and I think Apple was pretty out front about the increased privacy risks that the smartphone created. Helps that their competition was Google and FaceBook.

Is it the most important thing? Maybe not, but when do any of us make a $1000 decision based on a single criterium? It’s a piece of the decision for many folks.

@Joe, Michael,

The iPhone’s higher-spending users can also be explained by the historically higher prices for Apple devices and their customer’s willingness to spend for a superior / more enjoyable / trendy experience. (An experience that others were quick to copy)

More disposable income often/usually translates to more purchases. Rich people often also tend to have higher security than the masses.

Also, ironically, I think that the iPhone brought more people into the Mac fold than would happen had it not existed.

@Plume,
“So you want a BitTorrent client, but not from a store that has BitTorrent clients? Good, then you agree that we should be able to install apps outside of stores.”

No, actually I don’t. Why would you assume that?

Folks want a lot of things. Not all of those things are legal or good for the world.

@Anonymous You’re talking about something different. Apple does care about privacy and does market it, and the perceived advantage (real or not) likely informs people’s decisions to buy iPhones and to feel good about having done so. What Joe is arguing is that the people who were not swayed by this, and chose Android instead, and purchase mostly the same apps as their iPhone-using counterparts, spend less within those apps because they don’t trust Google’s store. That’s the part that I don’t think makes sense. I think the natural assumption is instead that they spend less on their phone for the same reasons they spend less in other areas.

I’m “Anonymous” above

@Michael,

You above: “What Joe is arguing is that the people who were not swayed by this, and chose Android instead, and purchase mostly the same apps as their iPhone-using counterparts, spend less within those apps because they don’t trust Google’s store. That’s the part that I don’t think makes sense.”

Is that what Joe is saying, though? Also, why do people trust Apple? Apple came off a huge upswell of positive brand sentiment because of the huge success of the iPod. The iPod drove Mac sales.

I won’t speak for Joe but trust in Apple is not just about digital or app store security: it’s about trusting that Apple will give you a good user experience overall — an expectation that the experience will be good as iPod, maybe as revolutionary as the Mac.

And I’d agree with him — Apple is fighting for trust from their customers.

If a third-party app store gets big, has a huge malware scandal or fraud event, then who will also get the blowback? Apple. Your normal consumer doesn’t know or care about the inside baseball that we’re talking about.

People literally think — thanks to headlines and cursory reporting — that Apple’s recent settling the Siri ‘eavesdropping’ lawsuit meant that the accusations that it used recordings to sell ads, when that’s absolutely not true. That’s a trust issue, and trust is easily lost.

Some quickly-googled examples of third-party stores on Android, if we want to see a preview of what Apple’s ecosystem could be:

I personally think multiple stores with uneven, redundant distribution, with old versions of software on som, make for a poor, untrustworthy experience. (Why don’t they just have Google Play? Because it doesn’t exist in China.. )
Reddit: What Android app store do you use for Chinese apps?

Straight-up piracy — from the user’s perspective and from the developer’s perspective:
Android games piracy 101?
Reddit: 3+ Chinese App Stores Have Pirated Copies of My App Noded (Piracy = 2K Downloads to 31K in a week) - Thinking I'm SOL (from 12 years ago)

@Someone else I don’t disagree with your more general points about trusting Apple, but I’m not sure it really relates to the third-party store issue. I think Apple would love for there to be a scandal with one of those stores, so that it could make a big marketing push and be sure everyone knew it wasn’t the App Store and that they shouldn’t be forced to allow such stores. There’s a whole string of recent statements to the press where you can tell they’re chomping at the bit.

Apple made multiple anti-privacy decisions with the Siri recordings stuff. They also had the opportunity to go to court and prove the advertising allegations false but chose not to. Since we know they could afford the lawyers, the implication is that there was something they wanted to hide. So I think any lack of trust on that front is deserved.

Both duplicate/old apps and pirated/scam apps also happen on the App Store. Some have even been editorially featured.

"No, actually I don’t. Why would you assume that?"

I'm not assuming anything; that's literally what you said.

"Not all of those things are legal or good for the world"

I'm certainly glad we have multinational corporations to make sure I can't download the comic books I bought on Humble Bundle using BitTorrent on my iPhone. Truly saving the world here with their dedication to humanity.

Or maybe it should not be up to them.

"If a third-party app store gets big, has a huge malware scandal or fraud event, then who will also get the blowback? Apple."

If they're so afraid of that, why don't they start properly curating their own App Store? Why are apps that literally create a market for child labor and connect predators to minors (like Roblox) still available? Apps that contain nonconsensual porn like X? Why are gambling apps like DraftKings Casino in the App Store? How did XcodeGhost apps make it into the App Store? What about the AppAspect Technologies ad fraud? What about the crypto wallet scanners? What about all the easily identified clones of real apps (like all the ChatGPT clones)? How the hell did they get in?

Apple already has huge malware and fraud scandals all the time. If that was what they actually cared about, rather than making as much money as possible, they would fix the problem on their end before whining about users being able to install apps outside of the App Store.

@Plume, reread what I actually wrote. You’re ascribing things to me that I don’t say, then arguing against that. Please stop. That goes beyond rhetoric.

@Michael,

“ Apple made multiple anti-privacy decisions with the Siri recordings stuff. They also had the opportunity to go to court and prove the advertising allegations false but chose not to. Since we know they could afford the lawyers, the implication is that there was something they wanted to hide. So I think any lack of trust on that front is deserved.”

This is exactly what I’m referring to.

I think it’s absurd that Apple would be selling profiling data or audio clips to marketing companies or using it themselves for marketing (at the very least, there’s evidence they do this but also their are generally antithetical to that. Also? how would they make money?)…

…but that’s what they were accused of. And you’re saying you believe those accusations? And that you trust Apple less because you think they did so?

Or are you saying they flubbed the communications big time, causing a trust crisis, and didn’t realize until too late that they didn’t share important privacy info with their customers, and give them a choice to participate or not (like they do now)?

I’d love to know where you fall on the trust line here. Conspiracy and you believe the accusations with no evidence hold water or an Apple screw up.

Also, my feeling is that they settled before state attorney generals sued them for eavesdropping, which comes with huge penalties… And also because Apple themselves realized they screwed up.

@Someone else I stand by what I wrote at the time. I think it’s very unlikely that the advertising allegations are true. More likely, the plaintiffs and courts are confused. But if you look at the larger picture of Siri and privacy (not disclosing what happened with recordings, sending them to contractors, not asking for consent, not honoring opt-outs, hiding settings, dark patterns, etc.) I think it’s absurd to use Siri as example to show that Apple cares about privacy or deserve more trust.

"@Plume, reread what I actually wrote."

Sure. Here it is:

"I might want to install a BitTorrent client, but I’m not sure I’d trust a store that sells piracy equipment"

ChatGPT, what does that mean?

"I might want to install a BitTorrent client” → The speaker is considering installing software used for torrent downloads.

“but I’m not sure I’d trust a store that sells piracy equipment” → The speaker doubts the reliability or honesty of a shop that sells tools associated with illegal downloading.

I have no idea what you actually meant to say, but whatever it was, you didn't say it. Now let's go back to responding to actual points instead of claiming that you didn't say the things you said.

Related:

"This fun app is available, free of charge, on the App Store, which means you know it’s safe and approved by Apple. Get it today."

https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/27/what-its-like-to-get-undressed-by-grok

@Michael, I think that’s fine — Apple, and really, anyone (US Government, for a current example) falls into the ‘Trust is hard earned and easily lost’ paradigm.

I do think that Apple does have a higher ‘privacy’ ranking in people’s minds than its peers. Is it perfect? Absolutely not. It hands over data based on subpoenas, and in prior years, sometimes without a warrant. But I think it tries harder than most. Helps that it doesn’t make money from stepping on people’s privacy, right?

But back to the main point: Trust is important to consumers. Same with companies like Disney, for Whole Foods. I did a research project and consumers trust Whole Foods to make good choices on the shopper’s behalf for things like environment. Is that trust warranted? Maybe not — or more accurately, it really depends on what your lines are for ‘better for the environment’ lay.

But what Joe and others have said is true: Trust is a big part of consuming. And third party app stores really are a risk for Apple. Big risk or small risk depends on one’s perspective, but it’s not a zero risk.

@Plume, “ I have no idea what you actually meant to say ”

Yes, that’s self-evident.

Please rely on your own brain, not ChatGPT, a brainless autocomplete search engine that mimics human language. You also wasted probably the amount of energy needed to boil a liter of water in the process.

I have other ways to install BitTorrent clients on my own Apple devices. You and ChatGPT perhaps don’t know how that works, but I said exactly what I meant to say. It’s not my problem if you don’t understand it, but please don’t assume things or put things in my mouth.

.

For both of you — considering the current issue around non-consensual ‘undressing’ apps. I was going to bring it up myself.

How do you propose an open ecosystem of direct downloads from websites and alternative app stores would handle this?

In a world of non-corporate/government-regulated stores — what would the options be? Pursue and prosecute each individual who downloads and uses these apps? Has that ever worked in the past?

Currently, Apple can (and I think probably should) block these apps from sale, and next step: they could block them from running at all even if installed previously. (there are certainly consequences to this method that I personally might not be happy with but it definitely is a solution to this problem)

All this is back to the main point: While third-party app stores are interesting, that solution doesn’t alleviate what seems to be the main issue that developers who complain about this have: That Apple expects and has the right to collect a licensing fee.

That’s the economics issue that the OP seems to be about.

Trust is a part of what makes Apple successful, but for developers, I think they’re asking for something that our system of laws doesn’t support without actively shifting their costs onto consumers. As a consumer myself, I don’t much appreciate or ‘trust’ attempts at cost shifting their expenses onto me.

The fact that ChatGPT is brainless autocomplete is the point. It provides the most likely interpretation of your words.

"It’s not my problem if you don’t understand it"

Then let it go.

"Yes, that’s self-evident."

If it's self-evident that I did not understand what you meant to say, why did you aggressively accuse me of misrepresenting you and "put[ting] things in [your] mouth"?

I can't read your mind. Kindly tell me what you wanted to say or let it go. Continually being an ass but refusing to explain what you actually meant is just odd.

"How do you propose an open ecosystem of direct downloads from websites and alternative app stores would handle this?"

It doesn't have to handle anything. This is only an Apple problem because Apple made it one.

PS:

"hat makes Apple successful, but for developers, I think they’re asking for something that our system of laws doesn’t support without actively shifting their costs onto consumers"

WTF are you talking about. Apple is creating a cost that did not exist before.

"Apple has set a new deadline of November 1, 2026 for all Patreon creators to switch from Patreon's legacy billing system to the App Store's in-app purchase system in the Patreon app on the iPhone and iPad (...) Patreon gives creators the option to either increase their prices in the iOS app only, or absorb the fee themselves, keeping prices the same across platforms."

https://www.macrumors.com/2026/01/28/patreon-apple-tax/

I'm sure glad they're not shifting these costs onto consumers.