Japan to crack down on Apple and Google app store monopolies

I have a web application with a lot of users. My users are happy to use the web. But because of better monetization options, I sometimes dabble with the idea to build a native mobile app.

Some years ago, I tried to build an Android app. It required an insane amount of tooling. Hundreds and hundreds of megabytes of stuff. GUI applications you have to use etc. I didn't even try to build an iOS app because that probably means you have to own a mac.

Is this still the same?

Or are there some linux command line tools these days I can use to convert a web app into an app that I can put on the Android/iOS app stores?

There are things like Cordova that make it a bit easier, but yes you need hundreds of MBs of stuff to compile and test. Debugging was a bit of a nightmare, though.

It is also possible to deploy to Apple with things like Github Actions without personally owning a Mac (and it can publish to Google too, naturally), but then testing is not trivial.

I know 90% of HN will disagree but there is a market opportunity here to make this better.

I’ll be honest, if you don’t own or regularly use a Mac or an iPhone, the odds that you are going to make compelling software for either of those platforms is effectively zero.

The web and app stores are littered with the corpses of failed, poorly-ported iOS and macOS utilities written by developers who didn’t fully understand that those systems have their own design language, cultural norms, and feature sets. They chew through battery, perform poorly, confuse users, look like shit, and feel completely alien.

Should that totally stop you from porting some useful tool? Maybe not. But the chance that it will see any sort of use outside of an extremely niche set of users is slim and it’s worth accepting that upfront if you’re going to spend your time and effort on it.

While I agree that the app will likely feel off, that doesn't mean it won't work, depending on what it does.

I have an iPhone, and even though the number of non-default apps I use is quite small, I get the feeling that every other app is just a web view wrapper or whatever that just doesn't care about iOS standards. The examples that come to mind are: Uber, Teams and Philips Hue. The latter is a laggy mess for some reason, that behaves the same on an iphone 14 pro as on a 7. Teams also is a shitshow, but who does that actually surprise?

Huh, surprised by this because the Hue app runs great for me, don’t think I’ve ever seen it lag as a daily user for a couple years. Honestly kind of blown away but how well it (and the Hue platform as a whole) works coming from a company that I don’t usually associate with tech.

Goes to show that experience doesn’t always generalize, and I’m curious what’s different in our cases to cause that (since I’m also using on a iPhone 14 Pro).

I'm generally very happy with how my Hue setup works, but for some reason the Hue app sometimes lags on the simpler screens, like the settings tab and configuring the remotes' buttons. The Home tab where you set the scenes / brightness and such usually works fine.

sometimes lags on the simpler screens, like the settings tab and configuring the remotes' buttons

That's because there is no cloud storage or place to store those settings other than the devices (or the bridge) themselves.

You are not waiting on the app. You are waiting on a request and response to the device over Zigbee to save the settings, which is not an instant action.

Maybe they could just close the screen and finish the work in the background, but I like knowing it completed successfully.

I hear this refrain a lot, but the reasons I've gotten for native apps vs webapps were not very compelling to me. I'd be interested in a detailed comparison of some real examples of native and web (or react native-like or webview wrapper) apps and the practical differences (excluding obvious ones like hardware access.)

Oh, I'm not saying it can't be done, and if it could, I'd be happy.

It of course depends on what somebody deems "compelling". What comes to mind is, mostly, behavior that feels off when any sort of animation is involved. Mostly the "rubber-band effect" when scrolling past the first / last element of a list as well as the scrolling action itself. This is surprising to me, since I'd expect ios' web view, being safari, to behave the right way. But I wouldn't be surprised for these sites to hijack scrolling, as many sites do on the desktop.

Then there are the expected gestures which don't always work. Take the uber app and the "back" gesture: they sometimes do, but sometimes they don't, even when there's a back arrow present. And when they do, they feel off. The current image doesn't begin sliding smoothly from the edge, it waits a bit and then it "jumps" to some distance. Also, in Uber, for some reason, just scrolling up and down for example in my past trips stutters. Yeah, I know it loads those as it goes, but even after the list is populated, it keeps stuttering. After a while, if I stay on that page, it seems to be smooth, though.

Then there's the typography, which is often weird.

Now I guess you could always have those issues even with full-on native apps, especially the last point. And I doubt it's impossible to go out of your way to mess up scrolling, as some devs do that for the browser.

But mostly, native apps behave a certain way which some people may come to expect from their devices. To me, it's compelling enough that, given the choice, I'll pick the "native" app over the weird one. I also don't care the least bit about "brand experience" or whatever it's called, so not having your weird font is actually a feature for me. I also only have an iphone, so don't care about the app behaving the same on multiple platforms (though I can see the value in that for support).

Also, I don't care that the app is actually native, what I care about is its behavior. So, if an app is able to have the same behaviors while actually being a bunch of JS inside a web view, I don't really have a problem with that.

Teams also is a shitshow

I heard it works wonderful if you use Microsoft Surface Duo devices

This is very funny/sad because Uber has one of the biggest iOS teams in the world.

Games are the main appstore revenue driver, and I don't think that game ports have much to do with iOs standards. It isn't like Fortnite or Genshin Impact on iPhone is significantly different than on Android.

No, but it doesn’t sound like GP was talking about games. Yes, games are a completely different animal.

I assume "games" here means gambling? Or something that is not legally gambling, but effectively is.

Apple cracked down on traditional gaming on iOS, and as an unforseen side effect, yes, "mobile gaming" means suggestive gambling apps that are eating the world.

It means video games. And even amongst the most predatory mobile games, not all of them use gambling-adjacent "gacha" mechanics, plenty just have mountains of microtransactions.

True, but there is also a business opportunity for dramatically simplifying game deployment, not only web apps.

Unity has tools that can partially help with that but their execution also sucks. You still need some half-working script downloaded from Github or some random site to deploy to Apple/Google if you don't want the hassle of using the default tools.

It's the same for consoles. It's an ungodly pain in the ass even with Unity. Godot makes some of its money by porting to consoles, for example. But I don't know if there's any money there for a scalable solution.

Genshin Impact is (potentially) an interesting case - the iOS version has supported game controllers for almost 3 years now, but there's been no hint of support coming for Android. There's definitely some suspicion in the Genshin community that Apple has an understanding or agreement with Hoyoverse to keep iOS the premier mobile platform.

Would it be legal under US law for Apple to make payments to Genshin to keep iOS as the premier mobile platform? Related: Similar question if Sony wanted to guarantee Final Fantasy was always better on their platforms.

What is "compelling software"?

Say there exists a single-page, single-view form-based web utility (e.g. a tax calculator for some niche.) Does the job. Efficient UX. Solves a need rather than a want, so it doesn't need to be pretty.

Only problem is that it's hosted on some old website, meaning:

1. you have to bookmark it (and the bookmark probably doesn't come with a nice icon, and you could lose track of it in the future because it's not part of some "store download history" list);

2. you can't access the calculator when offline;

3. the site's server could go down tomorrow, and then "your" calculator wouldn't be there any more.

AFAICT, from the perspective of a mobile user, the only thing that could possibly be improved about this experience, would be the very fact of it being hosted on the web. As long as it's made into a client-local installable package, registered in an app store with a name and icon, all the above problems are solved. And you get those key advantages, just by saving the webpage .html to a file, wrapping it in Cordova or whatever, and submitting that as your app.

(You also get almost these advantages using Progressive Web Apps that use offline capabilities — all except for discoverability and esp. re-discoverability through a unified app-store UX. If the app stores allowed the submission of PWAs, such that they appeared in the store listings and download history right alongside native apps, I think a lot of use-cases for Cordova et al would be moot.)

What is "compelling software"?

"Compelling" software in the one you are compelled to use, for example you go to a techy-utopia-restaurant and want to order order your food, but then are compelled to install their app because their system is automated /s

I'll be more descriptive:

Applications (not games) developed and published for macOS and iOS by lone developers with little to no experience on those platforms is overwhelmingly unlikely to be used by enough people to reasonably justify its development.

There are exceptions to this for specific niche use-cases. There are situations where this has not ended up being true. There are times where one might want to write such an application to scratch their own itches with no real need or desire to gain a critical mass of users. None of these invalidates my general point.

In theory I agree with you.

In practice, poorly ported web apps often fail in various ways. Things like content covered by the keyboard, or the layout breaking when you rotate the device, or random other stuff that results from a lack of testing. It's what happens when developers don't use the device they're targeting.

Isnt this what style guides and, like, profiling are for? Which we should be using anyway right?

I don't understand this fundamentally epistemological point. I thought in some part my skill as a programmer is being able make things not necessarily for me. Or at least, as a (maybe kind of niche) frontend dev, I don't think I would have ever gotten a job without some semblance of that skill.

I feel like if I relied on my own experience instead of agreed upon standards I would be much more a designer who makes bad code than a coder who maybe just needs a little design/ux direction.

ps: Is this not a sufficient resource?

https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guideline...

That is absolutely a useful resource, maybe even a necessary one, but I personally doubt it’s sufficient.

It’d be like trying to learn a foreign language entirely off something like Duolingo. At some point the only way for you to communicate like a native is going to be to embed yourself in the language and culture, otherwise you’ll never quite express things like a native.

Steve jobs once said that great software has 1:50 ratio. Meaning for every 50 poorly designed apps there is 1 very well designed app. He said that in the 90s, I think it’s still true to this day.

Sounds like Sturgeon's law.

I agree in principle, however IMO there is room for much simpler apps that don't necessarily follow the UI conventions of the platform and still provide a magical experience. The keyword here being "simple".

The app of my Bank (Commerzbank) looks the same in both platforms (despite being native, last time I asked), and IMO provides a much better experience than lots of native Apple or Google tools. And IMO a better UI/UX too. Same with Monobank from Ukraine, astonishing app that doesn't really care about the platform and gets things done in IMO a better way than native-inspired apps.

I would prefer for most apps to move into the Commerzbank direction than in the... I don't know, Pixelmator? Which is 100% native but still feels very unintuitive sometimes ("Save as" for example) despite being my daily pic editor for 15 years...

  confuse users, look like shit, and feel completely alien.

Developers eyes glaze over when you start talking about users.

Yes, ports where each platform is treated as a checkbox to be ticked are practically always poor, with little to no testing. The dev dumps a cross-compiled binary they may not even be capable of running themselves and that’s the end of it. Sometimes they happen to work passably but that’s not a given.

Debugging was a bit of a nightmare

Debug in Android Studio, connect phone on USB, enable USB debugging, hit play button

Debug in Xcode, connect iphone (wireless), hit play button

Exactly. You need Android Studio or Xcode. Fucking pain in the ass.

You don't need them, but they do make things easier for a lot of people. With Android, at least, you can do plenty from the command line if that's your jam.

My problem with them is not so much that they are GUI tools. It's more that they are bloated, low-quality and a bit unpredictable. IMO and IME, of course. They do get the job done, and people can get used to them if they use daily. But if using them is not your daily job (and Stockholm Syndrome hasn't set in), they make for a terrible developer experience. They take a lot of time to setup and there's often various problems with versioning, for example. All IMO and IME, of course.

I used to work in a Cordova/PhoneGap/Ionic/[whatever the name is today] app I had to make those bi-monthly excursions to the codebase that would always take a couple days because of Android Studio or Xcode. Setting the tooling in a new computer or teaching this to a new developer would require a lot of fiddling with version for half a day or more until it worked properly.

Sure, if you work on it everyday it doesn't suck, but working with multiple apps or working with different things was always a terrible experience.

I only used Android Studio when it was in beta so can't say much about that. But XCode is honestly quite good, not perfect by any means, but especially with Swift and SwiftUI it has some really good features (to wit: live previews).

Provisioning and testing purchases is always a mess, but that's mostly because the code world meets politics there.

Again, they're fine for development as a daily driver. For casual use (occasional maintenance/debugging, publishing), not so much.

But that sounds like a function of the complexity involved with mobile development and those tools being a do it everything tool for their development (with Android especially, all the different os versions you can target, the different form factors). What would you like for casual use?

The problem is not the form factors or the depth of the tooling. I'm not even going into different form factors.

The major issue here is how the default experience is unpredictable and messy, and restoring/kickstarting a proper development environment takes hours/days instead of minutes, and it breaks quite often if you're

What I would like is predictable builds and isolation. Packaged, versioned and rollback-able development dependencies, like we have with backend/frontend web tools.

Things like Cordova's CLI and Unity's Build Server help halfway with this, but there's more work to be done.

What I'm suggesting is that some company steps up and handles this, like someone mentioned above that Expo does for React Native.

I know you can't port a web app to it easily. But Expo, wrapper around React Native, does do a great job at handling that. It also comes with a build in ci/cd and over the air bug fixes (alternative to codepush)

I've set up a custom flow with Fastlane with React Native. Works pretty well, but Major Version, OS and architecture update are a huge pain.

Interesting. I haven't worked with React Native or Expo, but that sounds exactly like what I was suggesting.

It's YC funded: https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/expo

for a small window of time, there was an alternative... https://creolabs.com/ but this is gone now.

Not if you use Flutter

Does anyone use that in production for large B2C applications?

https://flutter.dev/showcase has many high profile examples

Yeah this answers the question pretty much

Google pay is written in Flutter

The French railway ticket website, sncf-connect.com is in Flutter.

Largest e-commerce service in France.

Flutter is pretty nice, but I have a really hard time trusting Google to continue supporting it.

One of the Flutter primary devs just left Google and is still working on Flutter at his new gig.

That's a good sign that it's getting some momentum outside fo Google.

(I agree with you, though. Sadly, the Flutter management team seems to be where Google sends shitty managers for punishment.)

Is it https://shorebird.dev?

You can build on the command line with gradle.

I did end up installing Android Studio for the sdk and virtual machine installation, but I'd assume it could be done on the command line as well.

I don't understand why this was getting downvoted? The parent commenter is right. You can build on the command line with gradle. It will still download hundreds of megabytes worth of dependencies (the Android SDK etc). But at least you don't need any GUI tools.

It's an SDK for an entire OS, plus the emulator (basically the whole OS in a VM), developer tools and more. It's not much different in size than the SDKs for macOS or Windows and it's much more cohesive.

I have done this, but for some reason Android SDK has to be weird, so you have to download the SDK seperately and then create a properties file in to root of the project with the path to the Android SDK. Everyone then also has to have their own version of this file, since the path is likely different. You also have to make sure that everyone downloads the same version of the SDK. (also the path to the SDK cannot have any spaces)

Why can it not be like other Gradle dependencies, where Gradle will just download the files automatically?

I've downloaded just the command-line tools before and used 'sdkmanager' to list and download sdk versions and virtual machines, so it is definitely doable without Android Studio, although it isn't obvious (or at least it wasn't to me).

just porting a basic chrome web extension, like 2 js files to safari requires something like 10 GB of Xcode downloads and various other crap.

i'm not doing that.

Why not if I may ask? Vim only user? Its possible to build ios and android apps with your own build tools. Its a lot true.

i believe apple intentionally makes it difficult. especially in the case of safari web apps because of their app store monopolies.

so i just dont want to support their web browser or their platform in general. as a personal choice.

i build some tools for work colleagues using web extensions and i refused to port it to safari. someone else can take that task if they wish.

It required an insane amount of tooling.

The all the extra tooling makes it easier to make Android apps. Nothing is stopping you from downloading the Java JDK and Android SDK and running javac, d8, aapt2, zipalign, and apksigner yourself.

Nothing is stopping you from downloading the Java JDK and Android SDK and running javac, d8, aapt2, zipalign, and apksigner yourself.

That is the tooling that OP is talking about.

It sounded to me that they thought they had to use Android Studio as they were complaining about a GUI.

What do you use for front end for your web app? If you use React or Vue or something that does client-side rendering, you can often turn your app into a PWA fairly trivially by just adding a manifest. That is IMHO definitely the way to go as long as you don't need to use native functionality/APIs.

PWAs are still a little tougher on Apple since Apple holds the reins to their platform very tightly and doesn't want apps getting to users without going through "curation," so if iOS is an important market for you and your users will find you through the app store (rather than looking for you in the app store after finding you elsewhere), then a PWA may not be the best choice.

If you use server-side rendering, then it will of course be more work, but I'd still probably go the PWA route and write it in React or Vue. You already know JS so there's much less learning, and it's the most "write once run anywhere" that there is. You'll likely have to buy a mac though, although there are services you can "rent" one for building/signing/submitting to Apple.

React Native can be a good option as well, especially if you need to call native APIs or must be in the Apple store (Google Play Store can take you as a PWA). Most of your code can be js/ts so less learning curve, and you can generate a submittable app package that can go in the Apple store (and of course Google).

If you need to make extensive use of native APIs though, then a real native app may be better, though of course you will need a separate one for ios and android, and there's a lot of learning to do. And you'll definitely have to buy a mac.

tldr: a PWA is (probably) the way to go

But because of better monetization options, I sometimes dabble with the idea to build a native mobile app.

Likely not in this case.

Google has a CLI tool for producing an APK bundle: https://github.com/GoogleChromeLabs/bubblewrap

Tutorial here: https://developers.google.com/codelabs/pwa-in-play

Perhaps a progressive web app will work for you

It’s still the same. You can rent a Mac in the cloud for iOS development though.

So the size of the tooling was about the same size as the your web app pushes on every user?

The horror.

Try to create a app like behavior in javascript and use a webview in android and ios to wrap your app. We do it like that. You will still have some native parts like push notifications, ads, social logins etc. But your ui render is web. Just make sure you have an app like experience. Doable these days.

Google has Bubblwrap, which will take any PWA and create an Android wrapper for you: https://developers.google.com/codelabs/pwa-in-play#0

There are tools like that for iOS too, but you absolutely have to have a Mac.

I've had success with react native for deploying web type apps onto both ios and android. Expo really flattens the learning curve, it's something to grow out of for sure. I look at it like having an app vs wanting to have an app.

Yes.

Look into PWA.

The irony is that most people who think they want an app would not see the difference between that and a shortcut to your webpage.

I tried to build an Android app. It required an insane amount of tooling. Hundreds and hundreds of megabytes of stuff. GUI applications you have to use etc.

FPGA developers snicker under their breath, but if you look closely you can see the tears welling up in their eyes...

Great, but don't forget to open up the Nintendo eShop and the PlayStation store as well.

There is an order of magnitude difference in number of devices there, smaller brands that ship an order of magnitude less devices isn't a target for legislative action. Legislation might cover them but there is no reason to target them specifically since they are too small to matter.

Why would that make any difference, unless we want the government to punish success? And if ~140 million Switch consoles sold doesn’t constitute “success”, where is that line?

In order to get to a monopoly position, quite a bit of success is generally required. Given that, anti-monopoly laws are by their very nature, punishing “success”.

That kind of “success” for an individual company doesn’t necessarily lead to the best outcomes for the customer.

This category of law is broadly referred to as competition law, because that's what it's concerned with.

If you had five "competitors" but they all conspire to divide up the market between them so they don't have to compete with each other, this is problematic in the same way as a monopoly. But that's exactly what the game consoles do. Alice has a PlayStation, Bob has an Xbox, Carol has a Switch. If you want to sell your game to Alice, Bob and Carol you can't just strike an agreement with one of the console makers because that only allows you to reach a third of the market. You can't play Sony and Microsoft against each other to get the lowest fees because you need both of them rather than being able to choose the one offering the best deal.

The best argument for why game consoles aren't like phones is that a non-trivial number of people have multiple game consoles, whereas hardly anyone carries two phones in their pocket. But even then, there are a large number of people who only have one console -- large enough that game developers still can't ignore them -- and few people who have all of them.

Likewise, there are companies other than console makers who might like to make a game store, or make one that services all types of devices. Those companies are locked out of the market, even though their presence would be likely to drive down margins.

So competition law should be concerned with this, because it's limiting competition.

there are a large number of people who only have one console

Iphone or Android, yeah. Basically nobody only have a Playstation or a Nintendo.

There are definitely people who only have one console. Consoles cost money. Some people aren't rich.

Phones are game consoles, people who only have one game console today have a phone.

Phones are power-constrained devices with small screens. Consoles consume >100 watts under load with correspondingly higher performance and are connected to televisions. These are not the same market. They don't play the same games.

Arguably gaming PCs (i.e. fast PCs with a suitable GPU) are in the same market, but this hasn't really added a competitor because Xbox and gaming PCs are both Microsoft, and most people don't have gaming PCs either.

Consoles consume >100 watts under load with correspondingly higher performance and are connected to televisions

Not handheld consoles. And you can connect phones to large screens if you want.

They don't play the same games.

Genshin impact and fortninte? They could play the same kind of games, they have weaker hardware so graphics wont be there true but they are still devices people play all kinds of games on.

These are not the same market

Why not? Wasn't the original argument that these things are the same and therefore should be regulated the same? How do you differentiate "gaming console" from other computers?

People will only buy gaming consoles as long as they are better for gaming than phones are, since people already have smartphones. That means that game consoles always face heavy competition from phones and need to stay ahead of them to sell anything at all.

Not handheld consoles.

Which is why handheld consoles are not in the same market either.

And you can connect phones to large screens if you want.

Neither the user interface nor the input method is designed for this.

Genshin impact and fortninte? They could play the same kind of games, they have weaker hardware so graphics wont be there true but they are still devices people play all kinds of games on.

There are kinds of games you can't play on a phone. Phones aren't part of the market for those kinds of games, and you can't get out of that by finding some different games that can run on a phone.

Wasn't the original argument that these things are the same and therefore should be regulated the same? How do you differentiate "gaming console" from other computers?

They should be regulated the same because it's the same anti-competitive business practice -- tying app distribution to the platform and preventing third party competitors.

Far from contradicting the claim, being separate markets is the entire problem -- instead of having a common market for console games or apps in general where anyone can be a distributor for any platform, each platform is segmented into a separate market with only a single distributor.

What makes things be in the same market is the ability to substitute them for one another. If you need a wrench and they're sold at both Amazon and Walmart, you can substitute one store for the other. But if you need a wrench for your Xbox and only Amazon has wrenches that work on an Xbox whereas Walmart only has wrenches that work on PlayStations, you can't get what you need from Walmart anymore so Walmart is out of the market.

People will only buy gaming consoles as long as they are better for gaming than phones are, since people already have smartphones. That means that game consoles always face heavy competition from phones and need to stay ahead of them to sell anything at all.

But it's trivial for them to do this because they have different design constraints. A phone runs on battery and has to fit in your pocket, so it can't use or dissipate >100 watts and it's easy to make a console that can which is significantly faster. Then all of the games requiring that level of performance are exclusive to the devices with that level of power consumption.

There are kinds of games you can't play on a phone

Actually, I'm curious; what are those games?

I guess "GTA 5" is an acceptable answer. But if you're satisfied with 2fps, even that should run through Rosetta/Box86 and GPT/Proton. Both modern Android and modern iOS devices should have the API coverage to enable DirectX12 via-translation, even if their hardware isn't particularly amicable to it.

You can play Resident Evil 4 natively on an iPhone. You can play Half Life and Fallout: New Vegas locally on Android. It's not really a contradiction of your claim, but I don't think anything really stops iPhones and Android phones from providing PC or console-quality game APIs anymore.

But if you're satisfied with 2fps

This is not "runs" in a practical sense. It has to be a reasonable substitute for the console.

Here's the money question: If you're the developer of this game, can you reasonably stop selling it for consoles and paying the vig to the console makers by telling people to play it on their phone instead?

can you reasonably stop selling it for consoles and paying the vig to the console makers by telling people to play it on their phone instead?

Didn't people do this a ton? It started with a trickle of poor but sellable ports of stuff like Call of Duty to the Wii and Grand Theft Auto for iPhone. All of that stuff was signed-off by publishers. The ports came through even faster on Nintendo Switch, despite it being both less powerful than most phones and a different architecture from most consoles at the time. Then there's even the Steam Deck, which crossed the rubicon of running Windows games without Windows. At no point during any of that history did publishers tell people to stop playing the "inferior" ported version. Some might even say they didn't care, as long as you bought a full-price copy of the game and enjoyed it.

So... yeah. Consoles will exist, and people will port games to them because gamers will buy and own them. But smartphones are simply more popular, and the software pipeline required to get PC games running on the hardware you already own and use exists and is usable today. Console releases haven't correlated with quality since forever, the majority of people I know would rather play Fallout: New Vegas on a phone than Fallout: 76 on a PS5.

Old or low-resource games are a different market, which phones can participate in. But if there wasn't a separate market for console games then consoles wouldn't exist -- people would just use their phones instead of paying hundreds of dollars for a separate device. That people will pay money for a console when they already have a phone is a simple proof that the phone can't replace the console.

If consoles were required to be open then they'd likely merge with PCs, since a console is basically a PC but closed. This is another aspect of the anti-competitive nature of the industry -- if consoles were "basically a PC" and open then a non-Microsoft console would be a Linux PC sitting in a hundred million living rooms, which is a threat to Microsoft's desktop monopoly, and a major reason they created the Xbox. By subsidizing the sale price of the Xbox and making it back by shaking down game developers, they make an open console an uphill battle because it would have to charge more for hardware and less for games, which reduces initial adoption and the network effect, pressuring its primary competitors to do the same thing and be closed.

And then you get game developers targeting PlayStation instead of SteamOS, the latter of which would have made the games also run on any other desktop Linux, and general purpose software developers targeting Windows but not Linux because there aren't a hundred million general purpose Linux "consoles" in living rooms.

Apart from being an atrocious experience, in an interface and usage context that is wildly different from the UX “hot oaths” our phones are (rightfully) designed for.

I want a different experience when I sit down to my big PC or a PS5. I want to play the games designed for that device and that experience (at the desk, back on the couch). With enough finagling, you can replicate a shallow version of this experience on a phone, but it sucks, the things runs out of power and/or gets super hot, and if push comes to shove, the games are the first thing getting ejected from my phone if I need to make space.

I can play games on my phone, but the whole experience is nowhere near replacing what I get on, say, Steam.

Sure, I agree. It's the old "watching movies on your iPhone isn't watching movies at the theater" argument again, I get it.

From a technical perspective though, disregarding the UX side (because frankly that's a personal decision), phones can game. Not just some games either, most modern Android phones will support Vulkan 1.2 which will run a whole host of DXVK games. The limit is how fast you can translate x86 code into ARM, really.

So... in the interest of hacking (fancy that), I want to enable people to do the "movie night on iPhone" equivalent for PC games. The limitations of phone gaming will be subjective just like the limitations of console gaming are, but at this point it's an inevitability.

You're making stuff up. I only have one console because the majority of games outside of Nintendo first party games do not interest me. My cousin has one console because his parents told him he could only get one. My friend only has a PS5 because he does most of his gaming on the computer and wanted a similar experience when he feels like sitting on his couch. My coworker only owns a switch because she grew up wanting to play Mario and Zelda and her parents refused to let her ever get any video or PC games.

Not every single person who plays video games is so hardcore about it that they must own the entire generation of consoles.

You and your friends don't have smartphones? If you don't consider consoles a different kind of device then you shouldn't say you have just one if you have a smartphone as well.

None of my friends who have PC’s or consoles consider phone (games) a “console” platform worth considering. There’s been no games on phones that have made me consider upgrading or switching. That the phone has games is incidental to its existence, not central.

It's not a punishment of "success", it's a restriction on monopolistic control of everyday devices which at this point are a basic utility.

Game consoles are not ubiquitous devices, and certainly aren't a basic utility of modern day living.

If you had to classify the iPhone as either a console or a general-purpose computer, I think the answer is obvious. (For good reason: A relatively safe app store is a feature, not a bug, for average users.)

Apple doesn't have monopolistic control over anything. The smartphone marketplace is full of competition, so consumers have lots of choices in every segment.

If you had to classify the iPhone as either a console or a general-purpose computer, I think the answer is obvious.

Sure, it's obviously a computer.

Apple doesn't have monopolistic control over anything. The smartphone marketplace is full of competition, so consumers have lots of choices in every segment.

How do you figure? If you want a phone, you're getting Android or iOS. In practice it is at best a duopoly.

Yup it's a duopoly when it comes to marketplaces, and there's a strong argument to be made that Apple is a monopoly on the phone market as a whole. In many countries iPhones account for 50% or more of the phone market. Where as no company making Android devices controls 50% of the phone market, at least not in the west.

We want governments to prevent dominant players from cornering the market. Android has billions of active devices, the Switch is a tiny system in comparison so it isn't a dominant player.

Or are you trying to say that consoles are a separate category of devices and shouldn't be compared to number of phones? Then why are you even arguing here, they are separate! So either these consoles are too tiny to be dominant players and therefore doesn't need to be regulated like dominant players, or they are a separate category and shouldn't be regulated with the same laws as phones.

Android has billions of active devices, the Switch is a tiny system in comparison so it isn't a dominant player.

But it is in console gaming. Even if you include Xbox and PS5, the Switch's market share of consoles is far higher than Apple's of smartphones. And of course, Switch absolutely dominates if we're specifically talking about the handheld game console market.

So what I'm asking is: How is Apple a monopoly in a market where they don't dominate and there's lots of choice, while Nintendo is not in a market where there are 3 vendors that matter, and they completely dominate the handheld segment?

How do you define "console gaming" that doesn't include smart phones? That was the whole point of this sub thread, arguing that consoles are just another general computing device.

If you say they are different in a significant way then why would they have the same regulations?

It's punishing success like cutting the grass or trimming the bushes is punishing success.

I think they aren't targets due to

1) not being a general purpose OS. Sony actually took at away that ability in the PS3 so they aren't trying to pretend they do more than play media

2) the hardware and software is ephemeral. In 10 years IOS and Android will exist. We will likely be on the PS6 and 2 more generations of Nintendo in that time. There's less incentive to bother opening up an OS that is abandoned every generation.

3) due to the model of consoles, most of them lose money on sales so they can invoke more software sales. And on top of that, larger studios get direct support from Nintendo/Sony. There is negative incentive for a studio to ruin this relationship unless more companies start making consoles themselves.

not being a general purpose OS. Sony actually took at away that ability in the PS3 so they aren't trying to pretend they do more than play media

This is just assuming the conclusion. They're general purpose computers that could run arbitrary custom code if their owners weren't locked out of them.

And so are appliances and HVAC systems and so on, which is exactly why the owners shouldn't be locked out of them -- this has significant implications for the entire concept of ownership, right to repair and environmentalism etc. They're all general purpose computers, and they should be.

the hardware and software is ephemeral. In 10 years IOS and Android will exist. We will likely be on the PS6 and 2 more generations of Nintendo in that time. There's less incentive to bother opening up an OS that is abandoned every generation.

But this is making exactly the opposite argument -- it should be opened up because otherwise it will be abandoned and no one else can support it. Likewise, the newer system should be opened up so people can make it run the older games, or the games from other systems from other vendors, whenever possible.

due to the model of consoles, most of them lose money on sales so they can invoke more software sales. And on top of that, larger studios get direct support from Nintendo/Sony. There is negative incentive for a studio to ruin this relationship unless more companies start making consoles themselves.

This is called a predatory business model, the equivalent of printer makers selling the printer below cost so they can stick you for the ink. There is a serious argument for banning it outright; it's certainly nothing we need to worry about protecting.

By that definition every single model that includes software will need to be opened up.

By that definition every single model that includes software will need to be opened up.

Sounds good.

I agree, good luck convincing the FCC.

FCC commissioners are political appointments. If they're reasonable they can be convinced, if they're unreasonable they can be replaced.

I don't disagree with your arguments, but this story doesn't seem to be about forcing an os nor even store to open up. It's more about the 30% revenue sharing and how these stores can't force studios to submit to it if they are interested in using alternative vendors. That's why Google is involved even if you can technically install a dozen other stores (or sideload everything).

This won't really benefit anyone but the largest studios, even if they open it up to game consoles. But it could be a first step. But a step with a lot less support.

Nobody really cares what one company allows in their store if there is a competitive market for alternate stores with low barriers to entry.

Allowing competing stores is a major component of opening up the OS. The competing stores would be able to install and run code on the device, with the permission of the owner rather than the OEM. And suffocating alternatives to paying them the vig is a major reason they close the device to begin with, so without that they'd be less likely to stand in your way anymore.

if there is a competitive market for alternate stores with low barriers to entry.

But that's what the story is about, even with Google:

And although Google permits third-party app distribution platforms, it still generally requires apps to use its billing system.

These effective monopolies on in-app payments can lead to users paying more for the same content or services on mobile devices than on personal computers.

Alternate app stores and Android essentially being an "open OS" (with forced Google installation on many devices) outside the store wasn't enough to protect Google from being involved. And the focus of the rationale is focused on the app purchase and their control over suspected price hikes.

Your second point is why the stores need to be opened up.

Nintendo breaks compatibility almost every generation, so if you want to replay old games you already purchased on a previous console, you have to repurchase the ported versions or buy Nintendo’s subscription service. I’ve dropped hundreds in the eShop but worry I’ll lose access one day, when the Switch is EOL.

In comparison, I’ve been able to run my Steam games on multiple devices through the years because PC is a much more open platform. There are multiple shops, so Steam has incentive to keep games forward compatible.

That seems like a very uniquely Nintendo problem rather than a modern console problem.

Yeah, PS3 was from the era of consoles where backwards compatibility wasn’t as heavily demanded (given that Steam was in its infancy too), so they went with a notoriously and uniquely overcomplicated making games for it (and, by extension, compatibility). But PS4 era and onwards, any digital purchase you made back then for PS4 is accessible on PS5 as well.

And hell, even for PS3 digital purchases it is still kind of true. Unfortunately, PS4/5 cannot play PS3 games natively, but if you purchased a digital PS3 game back then, you are able to stream it using PS Remote Play on your PS4/5.

As far as I am aware, a similar thing happened in the Xbox space as well. Xbox One generation and onwards, any digital purchases you made back then are available on the most recent Xbox consoles. And for older games that aren’t natively compatible (and even a bunch of those that are compatible), they provide streaming too (through xCloud). Though don’t quote me on the exact details about how it works for Xbox consoles, as I haven’t used one since the Xbox360 days.

Meanwhile, Nintendo resells SNES era games in their “virtual console” section of Switch eShop at a pretty significant premium.

PS3 was from the era of consoles where backwards compatibility wasn’t as heavily demanded

I don't think so for PlayStaion. PS3 and PS2 had compatibility to older PS by implement old chip. I think why there's no PS3 compatibility is because PS3 unique Cell architecture was dead end.

Past the edit cutoff, so here is an important edit.

In the 2nd paragraph, i missed a word and meant to say “[…] they went with a Cell chip, making gamedev experience for it notoriously and uniquely overcomplicated.”

so if you want to replay old games you already purchased on a previous console,

I assume you can turn on your old console and replay those games right?

Why does the next generation console has to guarantee to work with older games?

1) not being a general purpose OS.

I don't think iOS and Android are general purpose either. Phones and tablets are used for games as much as the consoles if not more in certain demographic

I believe they are definitely general purpose. You can browse the web, do professional work in several industries (spreadsheets for business, media editing programs, tax software, etc), play soke fairly intensive games, and track all kinds of parts of your life. And then you can dock all this to a monitor and use a KB&M and treat it like a ultrathin workstation.

I'm struggling to think of something you can't do on a phone/tablet these days. Dual monitor support seems to be beyond most devices I tried it with. Maybe some government applications for security purposes.

You can do all of those things on a PS5 or Xbox, Sony and Microsoft just don't let developers publish apps that let you do that.

Nor were those products introduced as a “breakthrough internet communicator”.

I'd posit that modern consoles are MORE general computing devices than mobile phones.

For example the Apple M-series SOC only exists in Apple phones and tablets.

Meanwhile the PS5, Xbox Series S/X, Steam Deck all use the AMD Zen 2 series CPUs. It's basically off-the shelf hardware with generic well-documented interfaces.

The only reason we're not using the Xbox as a cheap Linux gaming machine is because it's absolutely closed up for all hacking.

Another discussion: Its hardware is almost a PC, so there's less reason to force it open, because we can just buy a PC.

But it's cheaper to get a console than a PC. That's why the PS2 Linux version was so popular.

I can get a Series X for less than the price of a decent GPU. During the GPU price boom I actually got a PS5 _and_ a Series X for less :)

Agreed, mostly, as Id like to point out that the iOS software is abandoned/shut down at approximately the same cadence as new consoles are launched. Rare’s the still-available app that was last updated pre-iOS 10…let alone iOS 5 or pre-retina iOS.

This switch is only useful when it can be hacked. It’s SO much better when you can run whatever you want to run like emulators and other tooling. Or even crazy things, like backing up your saves!

Yup, this is what bothers me the most. Either there's a principle here behind opening app stores or there isn't.

If we're opening them up, then let's open them all up.

The idea that video games or stores below a certain mega size should be exempt is absurd.

Consoles ship at a hardware loss, iPhones don't. The business comparison has always been a tough stretch, and the functional comparison of an iPhone to an Xbox/Keurig/dishwasher has always been absurd. Apple's service revenue channel is unprecedented, and so far unchallenged. In cases like Apple Music and the App Store, it is unquestionably at-odds with fair competition. Now, countries like Europe and Japan are using their markets as collateral at the negotiation table. Seems fair to me, given that Apple and Google are comfortable treating their userbases the same way.

Consoles ship at a hardware loss, iPhones don't.

This isn't true anymore. Consoles don't follow the razor-and-blades business model anymore -- that's long since gone.

Sometimes they don't make a profit at launch, but they do soon after in the hardware cycle, which is fine because they sell for years and years. Nor are things like extra controllers or headsets subsidized either.

So the idea that consoles need to make up losses via a cut of game sales isn't true, and hasn't been true for at least a couple of decades.

And so there's no good reason to treat them differently from smartphone app stores.

(The idea comes from the 80's and 90's, back when it was widely understood to be the business model.)

It's true. Name me an iPhone model that shipped at a hardware loss, then name me a modern console that hit shelves making a profit. You can't; iPhones don't ship at a loss. Not on day one, not on day one-hundred, not ever. It's not necessarily a knock against Apple's business model, but it is a fact of the modern market; iPhone hardware margins are extreme. They do not correlate with the profit margins of modern consoles, even later-on in their lifespan.

Despite being someone who wants consoles to be a more open platform, it's trivial to see why they have an argument and Apple doesn't. Apple is a hardware company using their de-facto software control to bolster profits and prevent competition. Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo are essentially software companies, selling DRM-enabled clients to ensure their continued profitability. It's up to the court to make a ruling, but I have a hard time believing consoles are any more relevant than Blu-Ray players or Nespresso machines.

I will eat a hat if XSX or PS5 made money at launch.

Consoles ship at a hardware loss

First, it might not be true (because all console contains is a PCB and several chips). Second, if you sell something cheaper than you could it doesn't mean you get some kind of privilege and exception from the law.

There are definitely cases where console hardware does sell at a profit, but even late in a console's lifecycle it probably won't make half the hardware margins of an Apple product at launch. They're different markets, and while they do have overlapping jurisdiction it doesn't contradict legislation like the EU's DMA.

I don't see why selling at a loss would warrant exclusion. If anything, that just grants these companies the power to undercut incentives for competition that would allow fair competition.

Apple treats their iPhones like Microsoft and Sony treat their consoles: some kind of brand experience that makes you part of a distinguished group of Brand Name customers who enjoy their Brand Name lifestyle. If we're preventing Apple and Google from pulling this bullshit, we should take on consoles too.

It doesn't really matter what functionality consoles offer or not. These things could run Windows if it weren't for the DRM that locks them down, and some Chinese stores will sell you boards using the same CPU/GPU but running Windows instead. They have HDMI, USB ports, ethernet, and all the hardware to be used as a serious device. Their OS and APIs are a bit weird but I can't see a reason why you couldn't used them as a basic home PC if you install a browser and an office suite, other than that their vendors won't let you download software outside of their walled gardens.

If we're opening them up, then let's open them all up.

What will happen to Apple Retail, 7-11, Costco and Walmart?

I'm pretty sure the principle is favoring Japanese businesses.

All of the recent legislation on this topic, including the EU Digital Markets Act, has a numerical unit cutoff which basically exempts all video game consoles.

Absolutely unfair.

If you view EU regulation as essentially a tax on US dominance of tech, it makes perfect sense.

Those are not big enough to bother about and the power dynamic between the platform and its publishers is more even than those App Store/Play Store. Remember, regulation takes lots of resources.

Wow that’s a heck of a flimsy excuse, whenever this topic comes up

You can buy multiple consoles. You can't practically carry and use multiple phones as they will have different phone numbers.

Have you tried signing into 5 consoles with one PSN/XBL login? You'll quickly run into issues.

It isn't compelling to say that all these competing app stores form a monopoly. You have single someone out or the argument becomes weak.

As soon as Switch or Playstation are used by >40% of the adult population for multiple hours a day every day on average, sure!

Sony and Nintendo are Japanese companies. From the article:

> Japanese companies would be able to run dedicated game stores on iOS devices, as well as use payment systems with lower fees from Japanese fintech companies.

It’s not hard to read between the lines. This is all about letting domestic gaming companies like Nintendo and Sony make more money from those mobile platforms.

The techie demographic likes to get lost into arguments about the technology and philosophy of computing platforms, but as far as the EU and Japan are concerned it’s just realpolitik to give their domestic companies a leg up.

Never going to happen. Nobody has any interest in going after the gaming market (1), and the EU DMA was carefully written to not affect game console stores (2).

(1) If “phones” are a category in most people’s minds, it’s a two horse race. Most people, however, think of “gaming devices” as the category, not “game consoles” like techies do - in which case, it’s like an eight horse race between PC, PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo, Steam Deck, smartphones themselves, GeForce Now, etc.

Unlike smartphones, where if 2 companies decide to not service you, you’re screwed; you’ve got tons of alternative ways to play, even within most households. Much harder to show anticompetitive interests.

(2) One of the provisions of the DMA is that there must be over 10,000 titles for sale. Needless to say, even the prolific Nintendo Switch is under 5,000.

Edit: And before anyone objects to me considering PC and game consoles in the same market; think like a lawyer. The very fact that people ask daily, “console or PC?” shows they are in the same market.

They should. But, more people have phones than consoles. It is not even that shocking for a phone to be somebody’s only computing device. It is more important, and governments need to prioritize.

I think Google really made a strategic mistake by copying Apple on the payment restrictions. It kills me to see Apple and Google lumped together as "monopolies" when Google's policy is IMHO 100x less monopolistic than Apple's given you can sideload and use completely different app stores, and enable "developer mode" without paying a subscription fee just to run your own app on your own device. But the payment restrictions are definitely monopolistic-style abuse. Had they not have copied that, I don't think they'd be under this microscope and losing lawsuits and what not.

It does still blow my mind that Apple won their lawsuit from Epic, yet Google lost, when Google is far less restrictive. IANAL but from what I've understood it mainly came down to the fact that G execs put the stuff in writing whereas Apple did not, so with G there was some real damning evidence of the anti-competitive behavior. But ironically, the reason G execs were in the position of having to buy off people and make deals to stifle competition is because of their looser reins over the platform. If they'd been draconian and hyper-controlling from the start, refusing side-loading and similar like Apple does, they wouldn't have had to pay people off and make deals to crush competition as that competition couldn't have even gotten off the ground in the first place.

stratechery has a reasonable explanation in one of the recent articles :

"That last point may seem odd in light of Apple’s victory, but again, Apple was offering an integrated product that it fully controlled and customers were fully aware of, and is thus, under U.S. antitrust law, free to set the price of entry however it chooses. Google, on the other hand, “entered into one or more agreements that unreasonably restrained trade” — that quote is from the jury instructions, and is taken directly from the Sherman Act — by which the jurors mean basically all of them: the Google Play Developer Distribution Agreement, investment agreements under the Games Velocity Program (i.e. Project Hug), and Android’s mobile application distribution agreement and revenue share agreements with OEMs, were all ruled illegal.

This goes back to the point I made above: Google’s fundamental legal challenge with Android is that it sought to have its cake and eat it too: it wanted all of the shine of open source and all of the reach and network effects of being a horizontal operating system provider and all of the control and profits of Apple, but the only way to do that was to pretty clearly (in my opinion) violate antitrust law."

The key is 'unreasonably restrained trade' - Any OEM was eligible to use Android, but what google did was restrict competition by 'entered into one or more agreements that unreasonably restrained trade'

https://stratechery.com/2023/googles-true-moonshot/

I think even this is a little unfair. Almost no one buys Android because they are a horizontal operating systems provider, and OEMs don't use it because of same, because the former don't care and the latter already know the reality. People use it because it's their best option, and not due to any monopolistic practices excluding alternatives. It's just the best option.

Agreed. If Google locked down their app store more aggressively they'd be legally in the clear. They played nice, just not nice enough, so they got anti-trusted.

They didn’t play nice. They made back channel deals with privileged partners. Love or hate the Apple arrangement, but they seem consistent on giving everyone the same terms. That’s what makes one anti-competitive and the other not.

Love or hate the Apple arrangement, but they seem consistent on giving everyone the same terms.

They can do that, because there's no other choice. If a company wants to offer their apps to iOS users, they have to go through the App Store, so they're in no position to bargain for better terms.

Indeed. And if a company wants to deal with US consumers, they need to comply with US law. That’s reasonable. And if/when some companies get referential treatment, you get (justified) uproar.

Apple has received preferential treatment from US lawmakers, for almost a decade now. One could argue that's why the DMA and Japanese legislation exists in the first place.

Apple is known to have shared even secret APIs with companies like Uber. I am guessing they didn't share this with other companies in the same industry vertical as Uber. That would definitely constitute an unfair advantage to Uber.

https://www.entrepreneur.com/business-news/apple-gave-ubers-...

Love or hate the Apple arrangement, but they seem consistent on giving everyone the same terms.

Previously on hacker news: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36882467

From the article:

Today, there are more than 2.4 million mini-programs that can be run within WeChat. If this trend continues, there will come a time when developers will concentrate on developing new useful mini-programs to run on WeChat instead of stand-alone apps which have to abide by certain rules before it becomes available on the App Store.

If Apple cracks down on WeChat’s practices, Chinese customers will have little reason to ever buy an iPhone.

So, if Apple wants the Chinese to continue to buy iPhones, they have to let WeChat – one of the most privacy-invasive and censorship driven apps on the planet, continue to ignore its App Store rules.

back home [uber] skirts the boundaries of the law if not outright crosses it several times and it is still available on the app store. Not that any of this excuses anything Google does but just wanted to point out that Apple most definitely does NOT give everyone the same terms.

[uber] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14178397 https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/23/technology/travis-kalanic... https://archive.ph/uJ0vm

One was a jury trial, the other was not.

Apple's overall behavior is worse and far more anti-competitive.

There's no reason Apple should tax dating, yet they do for over 50% of Americans who date online. They tax all communication and commerce by dictatorially controlling the most essential device of our century and being one of only two primary vendors.

I'd say I'm glad Apple and Google don't control the Internet, but they kind of de-facto do control it for most people.

Umm, some people like Samsung phones and some people like Pixels and there are lots of other popular handset makers.

A small number of purchasers want to side load and therefore exclude Apple as an option.

I think it’s not right to say the horizontal ecosystem isn’t a reason for Android’s commercial success. In reality it is a driving reason why Android succeeded over (and completely obliterated) Nokia/Microsoft/RIM - the variety of OEMs innovating rapidly meant they just couldn’t keep up. In the early days people frequently upgraded their Android phone with a better one, often from another Android manufacturer.

So, Google knowingly created an open market and now is (or at least appears to be) abusing it.

A small number of purchasers want to side load and therefore exclude Apple as an option.

An overwhelming majority of consumers don't even know what side loading is. These decisions are not things lay consumers think about at all.

The fact is that both Apple and Google set too many rules on a platform that is now essential for operating in modern society. These devices and platforms need to be opened up to competition. These companies are collecting tax on all innovation happening because of their gatekeeper positions.

product that it fully controlled and customers were fully aware of

No my experience, there are plenty of these techy customers online but I have yet to meet such Apple user IRL

> product that it fully controlled and customers were fully aware of

No my experience, there are plenty of these techy customers online but I have yet to meet such Apple user IRL

The entire premise and point of the Apple experience is not having to be fully aware of the tech. At all. Ever.

For most Apple users, the tech is just not the point. It's that it is air. Don't think about it unless it's missing or stinks.

The entire premise and point of the Apple experience is not having to be fully aware of the tech. At all. Ever.

This couldn't be further from the truth. They change the tech every year. The Apple experience is being distinctly aware of all the new tech available every year because of Apple's sheer force of marketing and FOMO.

The average consumer isn’t paying attention to this stuff.

Literally: as long as it’s faster, longer battery life, and better camera, they will buy it or upgrade to it. It’s a status symbol.

This. I left Android because they were slowly becoming a more rigid company and everything I had loved and valued were gone and Apple slowly started adding them to their OS. I was fully aware what I was buying into and what I was losing but I no longer cared because it felt only a matter of time before Android is the same. Though I've gotten less use out of my Apple phone, I don't really care because I've given up on the idea that a phone is an uncompromised computer.

This answer is unsatisfying to me because "not allowing trade with 3rd parties" could be seen as a version of "unreasonably restrained trade".

In general I think it's incorrect to try to divine a consistent legal principle from these two cases. Trials have an element of randomness so either case could have gone the other way under different judges and lawyers.

IIRC the Apple case went differently because

* it has always been locked down, from the get go, so it has never misrepresented itself to consumers or the people participating in its ecosystem

* it gained marketshare despite this very limitation, indicating that to some extent that is what consumers were expecting to purchase. Apple had zero marketshare in phones before iPhone. And many attempts have been made before and since, like Windows Phone, Fire Phone from Amazon, the Facebook phone, etc.

* they hadn’t, at the time, told anyone else not to participate in other stores or on other platforms

it gained marketshare despite this very limitation, indicating that to some extent that is what consumers were expecting to purchase.

Have you ever watched the iPhone keynote? Either way I suggest you watch or rewatch, because it was marketed as a computer.

The reason people didn't care about the restrictions (compared to a general purpose computer) at the time was because it was such a leap forward in mobile devices.

The iPhone was marketed as "an iPod, a phone, and an internet communicator."

Apple was offering an integrated product that it fully controlled and customers were fully aware of, and is thus, under U.S. antitrust law, free to set the price of entry however it chooses.

I'm no expert in US antitrust laws, but this statement makes no sense to me.

So I can basically establish an absolute monopoly by creating a product that I control entirely, with no support for 3rd-party providers for software, payments etc., which only supports hardware that is manufactured and certified by myself, and I can establish whatever entry price I want for it, as long as I'm very explicit that I'm selling a closed and monopolist product, and customers are aware of it?

If that's indeed the case, then the US antitrust laws are quite broken.

It does still blow my mind that Apple won their lawsuit from Epic, yet Google lost

When Google chose to open the Android OS, it created a marketplace for Android devices which it attempted to control by the use of anticompetitive contracts and actions.

The parallels with Microsoft and Windows are obvious. Microsoft has been found guilty of anticompetitive actions in the Windows PC marketplace it created by opening up Windows.

Yet Microsoft also has the XBox, which it did not open up to other hardware makers and which is just as much of a walled garden as iOS.

There have been no legal ramifications of Microsoft choosing to be the sole maker it's own product, nor of having it's product be a walled garden.

It's not illegal to have a monopoly over your own product and it's not illegal to have a walled garden.

It's not illegal to have a monopoly over your own product and it's not illegal to have a walled garden.

The larger point being made is that once your product has a commanding share of the market, it should be illegal, as it's clearly anticompetitive by that point.

Then you will have to make it illegal for Microsoft to have products like Microsoft Office or XBox that it has not opened up.

I don't think anyone would be against breaking up M$ a bit. Why wouldn't you want some proper M$ Office alternatives?

Xbox is a bit trickier presumably because of PC gaming and Sony/Nintendo, though considering it's M$ I say fuck it and force them to open it up anyways.

Breaking up Microsoft wouldn't necessarily produce more proper Office alternatives. And we already have multiple alternatives from Apple, Google, and LibreOffice. Those don't have all the same features but they're good enough for basic tasks.

What alternatives for MS Office exist from Apple? Also, I will get lots of hate here: If you are a regular MS Office user, LibreOffice is just terrible. Try to use it for a few weeks... ugh.

Apple gives away Pages, Numbers, and Keynote as free MacOS applications. As for LibreOffice being "terrible", that may be true for some users but it hardly implies that Microsoft has a monopoly on productivity software.

I much prefer Apple Pages, Numbers, Keynote to MS Office -- even after years of first using MS Office and being highly fluent in it

Breaking up Microsoft wouldn't necessarily produce more proper Office alternatives.

Oh, it absolutely would.

Break Microsoft into the "Office Apps" and "Office EMail" and "Public Email" pieces and prevent them from talking to one another by backdoor APIs. You will get all manner of competitors popping up once the APIs required to do what is needed are all public.

The biggest problem in competing with Microsoft is the integration. If you force Microsoft, itself, to have to use the same public integration as everybody else, screaming will ensue.

Which backdoor APIs are you referring to? I have done extensive Office scripting and everything you can do through the UI can also be done through the public COM API. I've never found anything missing.

If you accept the argument that companies "with a commanding share of the market" should be forced to open up their products, then you can emulate the antitrust remedy the EU put into place for Microsoft in the Windows client/server market (for example, products like Novell Netware or Samba).

Microsoft was required to open up the algorithms and APIs required to become a Windows Server, Domain Controller, file server, print server, group policy object Server... everything.

That's how Samba on Linux became a completely compatible Windows domain controller. Microsoft was required to share all the information and APIs Samba required.

Do the same thing with Office software. Don't just claim the file formats are open, force the release of the algorithms needed to interpret the data in those files to allow opening modifying and saving changes in a completely compatible manner.

Microsoft has given up its nine-year fight against antitrust regulators in Europe, saying yesterday that it would not challenge a court judgment from last month and would share technical information with rivals on terms the software giant had long resisted.

European regulators and some software groups in Europe hailed the deal as a breakthrough that should open the door to freer competition, especially in the market for the server software that powers corporate data centers and the Internet.

https://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/23/technology/23soft.html

What specifically do you think is missing in the file format documentation? Several competing products have already implemented it. The algorithms seem pretty simple, at least much simpler than emulating a domain controller.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Open_XML?wprov=sfla1

I would understand the argument that the office doc file format should be public and understandable, but I don't see an argument that the program itself should be open.

I believe the argument that grandparent comment made was that "once your product has a commanding share of the market, it should be illegal, as it's clearly anticompetitive by that point"

Microsoft Office so obviously is not like the only way to install software on a computer that I can't help but think this isn't entirely good faith.

The Office document file format is public and understandable. Many other products have implemented the standard.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Open_XML?wprov=sfla1

At what level should that commanding share be? Microsoft wasn’t found guilty of anti-competitive behavior because Windows was on 98% of PCs sold, it was because they used that position to ensure that no other businesses could compete. A company owning their product end to end isn’t an issue. It’s using that position to manipulate pricing in a market (the definition of anti-competitive behavior).

At what level should that commanding share be?

Whatever the courts in each jurisdiction decide. Also, actions by the corporations are considered during the judgement.

enable "developer mode" without paying a subscription fee just to run your own app on your own device

Apple actually doesn’t charge a fee for this. You can build an app in Xcode and install it on your own device. You can’t distribute that app publicly though.

G execs were in the position of having to buy off people

There’s your answer - having a monopoly is not problem, abusing it is.

There’s your answer - having a monopoly is not problem, abusing it is.

But tying (e.g. of an app store to a platform) is classic monopoly abuse.

Tying means forcing people to buy an undesired good when they buy a desired good. Is anybody buying an iPhone who doesn’t want the App Store?

https://www.justice.gov/archives/atr/competition-and-monopol...

Your interpretation on tying is not well aligned with usual legal interpretation. Unless the App Store is considered not to be a separate product (which had been Apple's argument for a long time on App Store and Safari by designating them as "system services of iOS"), this is clearly tying. The question is if Apple's current practice is illegal tying or not. Whether the customer wants it or not is not important here; you can give them freely to gain market dominance then reap profits later on whenever the competitors are all gone.

On that note, how is Microsoft getting away with it with respect to the office apps which use to be available independently but now can only be purchased in bundles; adding Teams on top of that?

Of course there are. There are people who like the hardware, or the OS, or don't want a green bubble, but would be happy to have F-Droid or Steam on iOS, or get a discount on existing apps by buying them through someone who charges a lower fee. Or just have the competition to Apple's store which could cause Apple to charge a lower fee themselves.

As if Apple was some government provided service that you are entitled to because you pay taxes. It's not. It's a for-profit company of which you are not a board member. If you want F-droid, use Android. If you want App Store, use iPhone. If you want both at the same time, well, buy both phones then. People who want a Ferrari and a minivan don't ask Ferrari to make minivans, they buy both, because both together is ridiculous.

It only works for around 10 days…

1 year if you have a developer account, otherwise yeah 7 days?

There are also entitlements you still can’t use and a 3 app limit with a free account, at the very least.

That’s true!

having a monopoly is not problem, abusing it is.

Having a monopoly should be case enough.

Maybe, but that's not US law.

If they'd been draconian and hyper-controlling from the start, refusing side-loading and similar like Apple does, they wouldn't have had to pay people off and make deals to crush competition as that competition couldn't have even gotten off the ground in the first place.

Difference here is that Apple manufactures and controls all the devices but Google does not.

When Google’s decisions impact other manufactures or they even are dependent on it, it becomes monopoly problem. But Apple does not impact anybody else.

It doesn't impact anyone? Including the 1.46 billion iPhone users?

In the context of monopoly, it does not, at least yet.

1. Apple does not have monopoly position in phone market. People can still choose good alternative products. Current users have chosen the iPhone.

2. Since Apple does not intentionally make deals or hinder competition among other companies, no monopoly problem for that reason either.

IANAL but from what I've understood it mainly came down to the fact that G execs put the stuff in writing whereas Apple did not, so with G there was some real damning evidence of the anti-competitive behavior.

It mainly came down to the fact that they were in different courtrooms and the higher-level appellate courts haven't yet decided how they're going to reconcile the results (possibly by overturning one of them).

It's kind of an interesting case study in the arbitrariness of the law. The most important question in either case is if excluding competing app stores is permissible. It's obviously anti-competitive, but doing anti-competitive things is sometimes allowed if you have a legitimate justification. Apple's argument is presumably that they need to for security. This is, of course, BS, because a user who wanted Apple to vet all of their apps could still choose not to install any from outside of Apple's store even if Apple didn't prohibit them from doing so.

Google could make the same claim -- they have to discourage these filthy competitors because some of them might not be selective enough in what they include, so suppressing them improves security -- and it would be equally BS. But then you uncover some emails that make them look unsympathetic, or admitting that the pretext is a farce, and now it's less likely they get away with the charade.

The root of the problem here is that the rule that you can do something anti-competitive if you have an excuse has the potential to swallow the entire law. "Our competitors are smelly and vile and we have to protect our customers from interacting with them even if the customer explicitly wants to do that" is a generic excuse that could be used to justify any anti-competitive behavior. That's easier to see if you can read some emails conceding the underlying motive, but it's true in either case. Hopefully the higher courts will be able to see that in both cases once they've seen it in one of them.

higher-level appellate courts haven't yet decided how they're going to reconcile the results

there are many areas of the law that don't set precedent and don't need reconciliation

Both of the cases have been appealed. Appellate court decisions set precedent within their jurisdiction. If the Supreme Court takes the case (not unreasonable that the two could be heard together), they'll issue an opinion and create a national precedent.

I don't understand why anyone uses Apple. I feel like they've all been brainwashed. Ubuntu is way better, especially for tech-savvy users.

Only times I used Apple was at work because I was forced to. I was forced to use Apple by 3 different companies. It's essentially a cult. I hated using it and it slowed me down significantly.

The tech industry is essentially a giant PsyOp and only brainwashed, highly suggestible people can participate. I think governments should treat these megacorps as what they are; foreign intelligence operations to gain power over citizens.

Could not have said it better, I have found the same experience myself in the tech realm, I much prefer Linux to any other operating system for obvious reasons.

Apple has convinced a large amount of the population that they need to be locked into a walled garden to be 'safe' which is a) a lie, b) hugely anti-competitive and c) has made Apple more money than they know what to do with. They repeatedly have the most cash on hand of any company in the world. Apple pays 0 tax every year in the US due to loopholes and is a large drag on the economy for this reason, they are cash hoarders. Kids in school are brainwashed to think they need some shiny new apple phone to be part of the cool crowd. It's just a status symbol more than anything at this point even though it's an objectively worse system than the alternatives in many ways. IMO they are selling the smug attitude and talking points more than any new features. It's all marketing gimmicks every step of the way. Apple stores and their techs being called 'geniuses'? Everything down to the design of the store makes you feel like you are in some kind of tech dystopian nightmare, it's all image. The lock-in to the OS and App store should be enough for an antitrust case in the US IMO, but the US cares more about corporate money than protecting its people.

Additionally they have been found to slow down old devices purposefully, the right to repair is non-existent (good luck with this Apple!), not to consider the environmental impact on creating all these phones that are worthless if you want to run something different than apple iOS, and the fact that privacy is not valued nearly as much as Apple leads you to believe. There is still data harvesting going on at Apple, it's a revenue stream that is too tempting to large companies. They can access any of your iCloud data at any time unless you opt-in to ADP. There have been many times Apple was found to be lying, or not telling the whole truth about the privacy of users using their platform, like the location data issues in 2019, there have been privacy/tracking lawsuits in 2022, 2023, etc. There have been many security issues found with apple products that have never had a CVE, the proper security response, so as to obscure proof of the flaw, without proper disclosure. Security fixes are hidden many times and the end users not made aware of the issues. I have met many uninformed professionals in my space unaware of this due to drinking the apple Koolaid. Or they commonly don't care because family uses them, etc.

Now that the platform is as far-reaching, we are starting to see many exploits for Apple products, including ransomware, malware, etc so their remaining time that many people unrealistically regard them as the 'most secure platform' is limited. We are starting to see safari/webkit 1 click and 0click exploits very commonly. There are probably millions of other security holes to be found in their platform, just like any other. ML and great minds will help us find them over time.

I'm not saying that Android doesn't have any issues, etc. The difference is that one platform pretends to be better than the others and has been found to have been lying or not telling the whole truth in the past, many times. They are a shady company as well, and the whole market needs much more regulation. The EU seems to be leading the way on this.

Let alone you have to pay a subscription fee for Apple.

The difference is that apple is and always was, explicitly a closed platform. Take it or leave it.

Google on the other hand, tried to market android as an open platform with eg many OEMs producing hardware for it, but the reality is that they are anything but.

I agree, Google is wayyyy less monopolistic than Apple. And it's absolutely hilarious that Google lost while Apple won.

enable "developer mode" without paying a subscription fee just to run your own app on your own device

That's a great way to fail hardware attestation. It makes my bank's app assume I'm a fraudster and refuse me service.

Google absolutely deserves to be lumped in with the likes of Apple because of stuff like this. They sell people "open" systems and then they punish them when they "tamper" with the system.

I can only hope some government out there will put an end to their little digital fiefdoms.

The jury found that Google created a market of Android app distribution, and then they squashed competition in that market.

No just market exists for Apple (it's an entirely closed and self-contained ecosystem) so there was no need to 'squash competition' - it just doesn't exist!

https://www.theverge.com/24003500/epic-v-google-loss-apple-w...

Google couldn't have been restrictive from the start because of how Android came and solidified itself. Google tapped and profitted heavily on opensource, whereas apple had not only their OS but all the hardware developed in-house, without external collaboration for the most part.

The scenario surrounding iOS history lends itself pretty well for solid walled gardens

I read that apple case was heard by a judge and Google case by a jury. Apparently a jury tends to be less rigorous at interpretation of laws than a judge?! Not surprising (I saw the movie 8 (or 12) angry men).

I mean you said it: Google sold Android has one thing but secretly stifled it from actually being that thing. Apple doesn't even offer iOS as a product, it's an integrated product component developed in-house just like their A-series chips. They don't offer the App Store as a product, it's an integrated product-component just like the Camera.

Apple took the console approach and Google took the Wintel-ish approach, and that led to a different series of business decisions that created a different set of market conditions involving a different set of business partners that created a different set of facts and a different set of case records when Epic sued them both. It's not like Apple didn't put anything in writing, but the stuff that made them look bad only made them look bad in the PR sense, not a legal sense. Apple's restrictions on the iPhone are technologically and contractually enforced through a standard agreement that every developer agrees to, whereas Android doesn't have any technological restrictions, just Google's lawyers going around paying off would-be competitors to not compete with Google Play which is a huge difference given that Android is supposedly open and that was one of its original selling points. Personally I still don't think Google should have lost their case with Epic at the District level, maybe hammered a bit under State antitrust law enforcement for the payoffs to not compete with them, but not lost to Epic; but they did lose their case at the District level to Epic so that's completely on them.

And although Google permits third-party app distribution platforms, it still requires apps to use its billing system.

Can someone explain this line? If you publish an app on an alternative app store and someone downloads it on their de-googled phone, how in the world would Google prevent it from making a few API calls to Paypal?

This is incorrect, if you distribute an app outside the play store you do not need to use their payment system, even by the letter of the law. The rule specifically applies to play store apps. It's common for developers of more technical apps (like VPN apps) to publish two nearly identical versions - one to the play store that doesn't support iap and one to f-droid/their website that takes payment via credit card.

It's possible the people writing this complaint may be referring to the fact that you can't link to or reference those options from the play store edition of the app, but I think they might just be misinformed.

There is a compounding effect of this though, the fact that the Play Store doesn't allow this greatly dampens development of libraries that would make it much easier for developers to add this functionality to their apps, making people more likely to rely on the Google's payments and just dealing with its cut.

I believe it's fair:

* Unlike Apple App Store on iOS, you are under no obligation to sell on Google Play Store on Android.

* If you choose to sell on Google Play Store, it's reasonable to "pay rent" so to speak.

If you don't want to accept payments through Google Play Store, you simply don't sell through Google Play Store.

You can believe it's fair, what you can't do is claim they support aftermarket app stores while they also take actions to stamp them out. You have to acknowledge that the situation Google has created conveniently and heavily discourages aftermarket app stores on multiple levels. You are effectively obligated to publish on the Play Store, and in doing so you face increased maintenance burden for creating non-Play versions.

Google doesn't "stamp out" side-loading. They don't make it immediately obvious (and they don't have to), a user so concerned needs to dive a little into the operating system and permit them, but the option is there for anyone interested.

This is in stark contrast to Apple where you may not do anything outside of the One Apple Way(tm), which in this case means you will go through the Apple App Store or pound sand.

Google knows that they just have to make it inconvenient enough that 99% of people won’t do it (or really even know it’s an option). So yes, if you squint really hard you can kind of make it look like Google is a good guy here. But if we’re talking about how it actually pans out in reality, Google is no better than Apple.

They have deliberately and knowingly made it difficult by showing warnings and making users jump through hoops. I think evidence that it was deliberate and intentional was revealed in one of the many lawsuits in the form of meeting notes and reported speech, if I remember right.

https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/6/23948990/and-were-on-to-s...

Not stamping out side-loading, although that is heavily impacted by many of the same issues, but stamping out aftermarket software stores.

Apps installed from aftermarket stores:

- Cannot auto-update themselves, it requires user intervention for every individual app for every individual update.

- Cannot update at all if they were initially installed from the Play Store without uninstalling and losing all data in the process.

- Require multiple hoops and scary messages for the average user.

- Require extra maintenance burdens for the developer who essentially has to maintain two forks of the same application, further complicated by point 2.

- The payment issues mentioned upthread.

All of this makes aftermarket stores second-class citizens, all the while Google claims it welcomes them with open arms. Aftermarket stores aren't the only area where Google does this, either. Plenty of Android-of-yesteryear's customizability and openness has atrophied heavily while Google continues to profit off the bitrotting scraps that are left.

It’s a commercial/legal requirement imposed on developers, not directly enforced through the technology. It comes down to the review process in practice. At some point a human reviewer will need to detect the app is allowing the user to pay with PayPal and therefore block it from distribution.

They’ll probably have some technology to help prioritise apps for review if they’re likely to be violating (by scanning the APK statically for PayPal SDKs or running robot scripts to see if they can be presented with a PayPal form).

At some point a human reviewer will need to detect the app is allowing the user to pay with PayPal and therefore block it from distribution.

But on Android I can just release the .apk or publish to Fdroid app store, etc. I don't think Google would be reviewing the app at all.

You can and correct Google won’t review it - that’s why Android shows a warning when you enable sideloading about only using APKs from trusted sources (to my recollection).

Those alternative channels typically provide a tiny percentage of active installs compared to Google Play installs, however.

I took it to be a subtle (but important) grammatical error. I figure it meant "although you CAN use another store on Google, if you use Google play you need to use it's billing system".

But maybe Google has something much more insidious than I expected

No, you are correct

I would assume that it means that if you're publishing an app on both the Play Store and alternative stores, and your alternative-store versions of the app offer alternative payment methods, then Google will shut down Play Store distribution of your app as punishment for that.

Apple (briefly) tried to do something like this previously, where they tried to force apps that offered no free-to-paid conversion through the mobile app, only through the web, to pay the "Apple tax" on the subscriptions made through the web, because they were for a backing service that had value for customers almost exclusively due to its use through the mobile app. Nobody was willing to put up with this, though, and they quickly walked it back.

This appears to be factually incorrect both for apps installed from third-party app stores and from Google Play itself.

See "Alternative billing systems for users" on https://support.google.com/googleplay/answer/11174377?hl=en-...

All of the DIY monopoly stuff which tech giants has invented will fall apart once one large country starts poking holes in it. It doesn't even has to be US (variant: specific states).

From right to repair to app store monopolies, they have invested in this walled garden, but they forgot to get permit to erect those walls in the first place.

Why can’t they make carveouts on a country by country basis? So they lose in the EU and Japan, but they could still maintain their profits in the US.

Look at the world of pharmaceuticals. Drugs are way more expensive in the US than most other countries. Big pharma companies make nearly all of their profits in the US.

Drugs are way more expensive in the US than most other countries. Big pharma companies make nearly all of their profits in the US.

I wonder how sustainable this is. If the US imposed the same regulations on drug makers that the EU does, would there be a material effect on quantity or quality of drugs available across the entire globe? To what extent is the US subsidizing the low cost other countries like to brag about?

Most of the work of drug discovery is not done by the pharma companies, it's done by publicly-funded research labs. What big pharma pays for is the elaborate (and very large) clinical trials which are required by the FDA before a drug can be sold.

One simple change the US could make is to direct the FDA to fast-track approval for drugs that have been approved in other countries the US considers to have high enough standards of rigour, such as the EU or Canada.

To what extent is the US subsidizing the low cost other countries like to brag about?

None whatsoever. It's preposterous to even consider it in a serious manner.

I think people are generally more wary of importing drugs than electronics, and it is really easy to import bits from other countries.

Tech companies can definitely put up lots of hurdles here and might even manage to defeat their customers. But at least there will be some possibility to work around it…

I’m not sure how you could work around it. If you wanted to, say, import an iPhone from Europe then Apple could gate access to the App Store based on your IMSI. Then you’d need a European SIM with your imported phone, so you’d be roaming all the time. And presumably Apple could detect that you’re roaming and just redirect you to the US store anyway, disabling any 3rd party app stores anyway.

Why can’t they make carveouts on a country by country basis? So they lose in the EU and Japan, but they could still maintain their profits in the US.

I wouldn’t be surprised if they do so just to spite.

So you run a Japanese VPN, install all the apps you want from App Store alternative, and turn off the VPN.

That would still matter quite a lot. Imagine a world where every country on earth would pay drugs as much as the US does.

not to mention hardcore regulation on technical interop, with actually simple and cheap to implement alternatives (reuse what's there already), that stable in time.

For instance, most online services can be reasonably provided to noscript/basic (x)html browsers.

They haven't invented anything. They merely implemented colonialism on the web.

There are no permits for colonization.

I am puzzled as to how Apple -- or especially Google -- are supposed to run their business given this: "The legislation aims to force them to allow third-party app stores and payment systems as long as they are secure and protect user privacy."

At present, Apple's model is based on a certain expected revenue per device that is a combination of some profit on the device and some profit due to apps. If the profit due to apps is reduced somehow, it stands to reason that profit on the device must go up -- in other words, the device must be sold for a higher price.

Google does not always even sell the device and Android is open source -- the only revenue Google gets from many devices, apparently, is app sales.

Maybe the margins of free-and-clear profit for Apple and Google are high enough that this really doesn't matter -- they'll still be able to cover whatever costs they formerly had with plenty left over to spare -- but even given that, I do wonder what the regulators think Apple and Google are going to do about a change like this.

EDIT

It seems like many people are taking the lead sentence ("I am puzzled as to how...") as expressing sympathy for Apple, Google and other large monopolies (one commenter writes "We shouldn't weep for monopolies."). This is not the focus I wanted to bring to the topic -- really it is more about how they will change, given that the old way of running their business will not work at the same rate of profit anymore. Maybe many commenters think that the rate of profit is high enough that nothing will change, &c. One commenter writes "Maybe by selling hardware?", but then I wonder, will Apple adjust prices upward? Maybe only in Japan?

One commenter asks "Why should anyone be concerned with the well-being of Apple or Google?" and I would say, I'm not sure they should be; but it's worthwhile to be concerned about how they respond to this situation. I also wonder what the regulators thought about this problem -- how they modeled the tech giants' response.

I mean, when I was buying something on Windows, it won't forced me to use Microsoft App Store. So why Google and Apple should be an exception?

And when you were at Walmart, I’m sure you were also puzzled why there wasn’t a rent free Target store within the Walmart. Or when you were on the Xbox store, etc etc.

The difference is Apple makes and spend all the R&D to make the hardware and the software. M$ just makes the toy OS and terrible laptops.

Bad analogy, because I can either be at Walmart (App store) or not exist at all (no sideloading, other stores) in case of Apple

If this would be the case in the real world, FTC would be tearing such Walmart apart.

I am puzzled as to how Apple -- or especially Google -- are supposed to run their business given this

Maybe by selling hardware? Maybe by offering a better set of platform services than everyone else? Proper competition in a market full of alternatives.

We shouldn't weep for monopolies. Especially given the smartphone is the most important invention and device of the century. They've managed to become central to every type of communication and commerce, and they're dominated by two companies. There should be intense competition for this space, not a steady state between two giants.

These companies are obscene with the control they wield. They tax 30% of revenue, force you to use their payment and login rails, prevent you from having any sort of customer relationship of your own, let competitors place ads against your product (forcing you to pay even more), and don't even let you make your own technology choices or deploy when you want.

They're not customer friendly either. They give children psychological issues about having the latest device and right color text bubbles. They don't let you self service, replace the battery, and brick themselves when you use third party components.

These devices are essential for navigation, dating, hailing a ride, delivering food or items, ordering at or reserving a restaurant, performing many types of jobs, finding work, scheduling events, etc. etc. etc. It's almost impossible to live without one. And every action gets taxed and controlled by two companies.

These two companies are heinous and this needs to immediately be opened up for competition from all sides. This is broader than Standard Oil even dreamed.

Feels like a corporate clean up crew comes by these posts. I had a lot of upvotes, but now this has been downvoted below zero.

Apple can suck on the fact that software distribution is something that ought to be perfect competition with basically no profit margin and take the L.

It's better for the consumer when businesses aren't near monopolies. Why should anyone be concerned with the well-being of Apple or Google? They have had a lot of time running their anti-competitive companies. I think they will be fine. Not to mention the US is incapable of enacting anti-trust laws the way it should so there will always be at least one country that will get exploited.

Apple having a market cap of 3 trillion dollars… I mean, I think they’ll be ok. This is, in fact, a strong indicator that they do not need the protection of app store exclusivity.

(Ignoring the fact that both companies are ridiculously huge before the first penny of app store revenue)

- Apple makes a tremendous profit off of device sales.

- While Android is free, Google charges licensing fees for Google Mobile Services (which includes Play Store, so perhaps companies could omit that, but I don't think that'll happen anytime soon)

I'm curious how much apple and Google will be allowed to charge for alternative payment methods. In Korea, google and apple (iirc) still can charge 26% of the transaction as their fee, making the change fairly moot (and even counter productive).

when sideloading is finally available I don't see how Apple (or Google) would receive any share of developer profits since they can't see or control 3rd party payment api calls made by devs

right, when another app store takes off on the platform then their rules would apply.

I am mostly thinking the medium term with alternative billing + existing store.

They could possibly do what Epic do where it’s somewhat honor system and you’re subject to audits if you use their libraries/sdks.

But I doubt they’d bother.

The vast majority of users probably would never side load. The App Store and Play Store is more of a discovery and acquisition channel than anything else.

Sideloading is available now on android.

Web platform is already pretty secure/privacy oriented (maybe more than the phone apps).

But web apps are impossible to install on the phones, because apple/google love and push their native apps (love their 30% cut).

oh, people would say "but what is about resources?"... - many apps are just web-view anyway.

How are web apps impossible to install?

You have to use browser on mobile to enter them (no way to add an icon for them). + there are some other limitations. There was an article about that.

Web platform is pretty capable to be used for app development, it would save a lot of developer hours to not develop for 3 platforms.

You can definitely add an icon for them, in both Android and iOS. I'm not sure about mobile Linux, as Firefox has dropped any interest in PWAs on desktop style browsers for some reason, but the most common operating systems let you install web apps straight from the browser.

This is a problem that PWAs address

Web apps are easy to install on phones[1].

[1]: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Progressive_web...

I'm curious to see how this shakes out. Will there be viable third-party app stores? Will we find that the gatekeepers added value in controlling quality? How many viable apps did they keep of the market for anticompetitive reasons? What does a more fair revenue cut look like?

we are not going to uncharted territory. this has been the standard way to install applications since the beginning of time, it is only in the past 15 years that the general publi has been deemed "too dumb to save themselves"

Ignore that *nix distros have had package management for a long time. Those platforms are too niche to draw conclusions from.

I used to fix computers as a side hustle from ~2000-~2006. There was a lot of shit software on the market, no one knew what was good, and the public really was "too dumb to save themselves." Back then, just look at antivirus software. These days, look at VPN snake oil. What's different now is apps are more sandboxed, but new apps are just a few taps away.

And that's a small cost to pay to make sure market competition still exists in the future and that the corporations in the west are forced to innovate instead of killing economy by stagnation and walled gardens.

I'm not sure how you define "viable" but Amazon has their own app store for Android. I recall that some years ago I installed it because they gave away paid apps every so often. Looks like its still a thing: https://www.amazon.com/gp/mas/get/amazonapp

I don’t want to sift through garbage and spyware on my phone, so I’ve always been a bit, “why is this a problem” about this whole situation, but recently had the thought, “I sure would like to not have to but the Civ VI expansions through both Steam and the App Store.”

It makes me wonder, if Apple and/or Google partnered with Valve if that would be enough good will, or if nobody will be happy until every device is a market for lemons.

It wouldn’t be a problem if Apple only checked for malware, scams, age restrictions, and illegal content. But they are excluding emulators, browser engines, certain programming and app creation tools, all kind of contents that they think doesn’t fit their desired public image, in-app content purchases not subject to the Apple tax (e.g. Kindle purchases), etc.

Which is exactly the same for Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo… No one is forcing you to buy an iPhone, just like nothing is stopping Epic/tencent from developing a phone of there own. It’s just cheaper to leach off other R&D efforts.

“It’s not a problem that they illegally stifle completion on their platform because you can just use the other platform that also stifles competiton”

For context, the Japanese market is as favorable to Apple as America is. Japan has a lot of very specific features that phones need to support[0] and Apple is usually ahead of Google on implementing them. This is in contrast to the EU where Android dominates because they used to be the only 'cheap' option.

[0] Most notably, Felica, the protocol used by all the contactless payment cards Japan's transit systems use. If you've ever been to Japan, you probably have a PASMO or Suica card[1] knocking around somewhere in your drawer. Japanese flipphones have supported that protocol since right when it came out. Apple added it at the same time they added Apple Pay and NFC support in the states.

Also, emoji used to be a Japan-only thing that required an NTT or AU SIM until westerners started noticing the funny faces and started writing copy-paste apps to get around the missing keyboard.

[1] Suica game but it's transit cards instead of watermelons

Japan has a lot of very specific features that phones need to support[0] and Apple is usually ahead of Google on implementing them.

It hadn't been true until iPhone 7. There were features lacked on iPhone but available on JDM Android phones: Felica, IrDA, TV tuner. Thankfully both supports emoji from early. In 2016, Felica was implemented on iPhone (in far more elegant way than legacy Android Felica). Rest of the features were no longer wanted by people.

iPhone had been loved even before iPhone 7 because it works well than many crappy Android phones. Galaxy phones are tend to non-crappy but Korean brand was unpopular in Japan. After iPhone 7, iPhone officially become the national loved phone.

Shouldn't this apply to Japanese game consoles as well? Why American companies must allow third-party stores, but consoles must not?

Comment above said that it's because consoles are not general purpose computing devices.

Good. Apple should be punished for banning competing browsers.

https://archive.ph/KUyIW

Can you imagine that we, Software Engineers in Kyrgyzstan, cannot publish apps on Google Play?! Google is blocking whole countries from publishing apps. This is not just about missing out on business opportunities; it's about being denied the basic platform to share our creativity and hard work with others! Unfair discrimination!

I am deeply frustrated by this situation. Even more so because I know there are Kyrgyz people working at Google, and one confided that the developers had made plans to include Kyrgyzstan in the list of allowed countries. However, these plans were inexplicably rolled back on orders from another department. This isn't just a technical hurdle; it feels like a deliberate sidelining of our nation and our talents.

I urge you to consider the struggles of smaller nations like ours. We don't ask for special treatment, just a fair chance to participate on the global stage.

I wonder how hard Apple is going to fight this. When laws start rolling out and iOS supports 3rd party stores and sideloading, will they region-lock it to just phones purchased in the EU and Japan? Will they tie it to Apple accounts somehow? I guess what I'm really wondering is what hoops I'll have to jump through as a US-located user to be able to sideload on my phone next year.

I am excited for app store gachas

*to katana slice

Ridiculous protectionism. Expected from the EU, but disappointing from Japan. People seemingly want their cake and to eat it too. If you don't like the locked down nature of the Apple ecosystem, buy a different product.

I remember whent the DMCA was being proposed, there were arguments that the anti-circumvention protections would basically allow copyright holders to rewrite copyright law however they saw fit, with no regards to fair use.

With or without the DMCA, that's proven prophetic. Between cryptographic protections and server-based architecture, we're into an era where "owning" things now means whatever the seller wants it to mean.