Open App Markets Act (H.R. 5017, S. 2710)

That is probably true…but irrelevant. If users want to switch…they can switch because they have other options. Since that is true…Apple has zero responsibility to do it their way unless Apple chooses to change their business model.

Let’s be honest Apple have pretty much brought this on themselves by making such a pigs ear of the App Store, that almost every developer has a gripe about it.

If that 30%: stopped copycat apps; made the approval process understandable and fair; stopped blaming developers for Apples bugs; gave upgrade paths; limited ripoff subscriptions; fixed cloudKit and Game Centre, indeed any of the other things that drive otherwise happy and profitable developers nuts.

That there are so many issues in so many areas that are unaddressed only confirms that Apple is abusing a Market dominant position.


Yes I’m aware that the App Store monopoly was initially implemented to ensure that loaded apps play nicely with the telephony system. But Apple haven’t used this in their defence as they fixed it at a system level, but have continued to enjoy the revenue benefits.

I’m also aware that regulation is a fundamental part of capitalism, and that the government as regulator is the expression of the people that voted for it.

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There are other app stores out there, and if they want, consumers can side load apps. Does Spotify or Tidal or Amazon promote their paid programming in their apps?

Does Apple prevent iOS and Mac users from using any other browser than Safari?

Does the Super Bowl charge more for advertising time than its competitors?

Remember the pre App Store days when Apple and other developers, big and small, used to charge every year for upgrades, including system upgrades? And how prevalent buggy and insecure apps thrived and prospered out in the market?

The app stores of plaintiffs of the recent Epic Games lawsuit charge about the same as Apple’s App Store that they are whining about. And Epic lost nearly everything it was suing Apple about in that lawsuit.

While, as a native of Massachusetts, I can appreciate the remote start feature, it’s not that big a deal — car interiors warm up pretty quickly these days. As for the other remote “features,” I bought a VW (gas) Beetle in 2015 with similar telemetrics, used them briefly, and then discontinued them, before I’d have to start paying for a subscription. The idea of paying for a “feature” that allowed the manufacturer to track me (when I was on or near my car), read out my driving habits, and use them commercially without my specific permission, seemed a little much to me. Add in the “free” feature of potential exploits and remote takeover of the car, and it appeared to be a package they couldn’t have paid me to accept. (And an added “feature” I learned of a couple of years later was VW management’s morality when it came to software design and employment.)

As for “We can locate you and send help when you’re stuck,” the wireless connection in the car was no better than that in my iPhone, on which I can use the AAA app, something I’m happy to pay for, based on experience.

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Let them. If we truly believe most iOS users are on the platform because they prefer security and walled garden, they will not be blackmailed into swapping one non-choice for another non-choice at the expense of their security.

I personally believe a large share of iOS users actually values their security over saving a few cents here and there. I’m not afraid of a few devs who try to force people’s hand. OTOH I also realize that if Apple is faced with no “corrective” they also will exploit it. Case in point: unequal application of rules, poor scrutiny, shady attempts to make a buck, etc. Which is why I favor them now being forced to change their ways. I would have preferred their experts do it instead of politicians/bureaucrats, but Apple has had more than enough time and yet all they did was double down and dig in. Well, so be it.

The risk isn’t in the small stuff - it’s in the big stuff that people insist on and the security that Apple have been giving us but not making a clear enough issue.

Take for example - Facebook. For their losses of $10bn it would be worth setting up separately and going back to an embedded ID for tracking. Then every app that uses their tracking tech will need to shift as well. So now as well as losing a top 10 app, the AppStore now loses a lot of free apps who need the adverts and tracking for their business model, then you lose everyone who has a storefront app as to prove the ad worked you need to link it to a sale.

That fills up the FB store quite quickly.

Even simpler if you Chrome and YouTube take the lead - they also have billions at stake, surprisingly have maintained a trusted brand, plus distribute existing app tracking modules that are widely used across a large number of independent apps.

Will everyone stop using Facebook and YouTube, Gmail etc if they shift to their own appstores populated with other friendly apps? What benefit would they have from remaining on the App Store.

Provided all the apps on your phone don’t have adverts, or rely on adverts to encourage you to use them, and want to continue paying apples charges: then you probably won’t notice a difference. The majority of us may find that there is no choice.

That’s why I previously lamented Apples poor treatment of small developers, and charging as likely to throw the privacy baby out with the bath water.

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We don’t need to be hypothetical.

Google has allowed third-party app stores for Android for quite some time. It hasn’t killed the Play Store. If you ask a dozen Android users, I’m willing to bet that most of them (outside of hardcore enthusiasts) probably don’t know or care about them, or if they do, they probably only know about the Amazon app store.

I’m sure it will work out the same for iOS. Most users will stick with the Apple app store because it’s built-in to the phone and is easy to use. Some people may use third-party stores, but it’s doubtful that more than a handful of activists will use them to the exclusion of Apple’s store.

If some major apps (e.g. Fortnite) choose to be sold exclusively through a third-party store, then yes, users who want that app will go there. But they’re not likely to switch to that store for all their purchases - they will just use it for the title they want.

Most app developers will probably list their products on multiple stores. In the Android world, most apps on Amazon’s store are also listed on the Google Play store. The overlap isn’t 100%, but it’s pretty substantial.

Ironically, it is Google that forces some users to make a “swap one non-choice for another non-choice” decision here. If you ship an Android device that isn’t using official Google code (e.g. Kindle Fire devices), then you are prohibited from accessing the Google Play store - which is one of the key reasons why Amazon’s app store exists.

As long as users need to take explicit action (e.g. via a security control panel) in order to authorize third-party app stores, it shouldn’t impact overall system security very much.

Allowing third-party app stores is not the same as, for instance, automatically installing software via web links. You’re still going to have to launch the store and go through its purchase procedure.

Yes, there will be some rogue app stores and some users will use them and end up with a trashed device, and when it happens, Apple will say “this is why we need total control”, but this won’t happen to most people. Not at this point in time, where people have mostly learned (often the hard way) not to do that on their Windows PCs.

Most people will stick with the Apple store or will use it alongside one or two high-profile trusted stores (like Amazon and probably Epic Games), and the rest will just be footnotes that might make interesting blog posts but will otherwise be irrelevant.

But Google compared to Apple is permissive about what apps it will sell. So there is less value to developers in choosing to go elsewhere.

Will Apple choose to go down a more inclusive route thereby protecting most users from the worst scams but at the loss of many of the privacy restrictions they currently implement, or will they double down and take the hit to the bottom line?

It’s also out of character for me, but in my view, this is a clear “Let the market decide” situation and should not be regulated by the government.

The government only needs to mandate that Apple open the platform, then indeed the market can decide. We’ll soon see whether users prefer to stick to only buying from Apple’s store.

Also, I had lunch at McDonald’s yesterday and not only do they not have Whopper hamburgers, they also refused to show me the menu of Burger King or give me directions to the nearest one. That’s clearly monopolistic. :slight_smile:

This is not even remotely the same thing. But now if the one prohibited me from eating at the other because they wanted to decide what food I put in my mouth that would a more appropriate analogy.

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You’re arguing let the market decide AFTER the government intervenes. That’s a step too far, the market will decide without any action from politicians.

McDonald’s is not forcing you to eat at McDonald’s. Likewise, Apple is not forcing you to use an Apple product. Therefore, my analogy is perfect. And consistent with “let the market decide.”

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There is a flaw in that cunning plan. Assuming Apple opened the platform to other payment methods and app stores…since Apple’s hardware and software have consistently been rated as more secure over time this opening would reduce the security on Apple devices should a user choose to use another store/payment plan…but whether security is reduced or not is actually irrelevant. If a user using say PayPal’s payment system or Epic’s store…if the user has a problem on an Apple device guess who’s going to get the blame. It isn’t going be PayPal or Epic…it’s going to be Apple getting the blame and the bad press articles and it’s neither fair or logical for that to happen. Assuming Apple gets told to open the problem…they have a right to protect their interests while doing so. I haven’t thought this completely through and obviously Apple has a lot of engineers and lawyers that in toto are smarter than I am…but if Apple opened the system to alternate payments and stores then I would think that instead of “any payment system or store” it might be a “choose one” option instead. You can either have Apple’s store or Epic’s…and the user needs to be multi informed just like they are now for various things that this is a choice the user is making and that Apple is specifically not responsible for security if they make this choice…and this choice gets reported back to Apple’s computer so that Apple knows that Joe Shmoe’s iPhone is now using Epic store and/or PayPal payment system. I would even if I were them give the user a choice to switch back with a couple of caveats. One…all other payment systems will get summarily nuked if the user chooses to change systems…you can have ApplePay or GooglePay or PayPal or whatever. Same with app stores…on your device you get Apple’s default apps and a choice to replace them with another mail or browser app…and you can even uninstall Apple’s apps if you want. You can then install apps from either Apple’s store…or Epic’s or whoever…but by making that choice you can only have apps from that store and making the choice to change stores means that all Apple App Store apps get removed (although technically I would allow Apple’s store apps to remain installed unless that presented a legal, technical, or security problem since Apple has reviewed and approved those. However…if you were to choose Epic and then change your mind and choose Apple’s store…again with all the warnings and report back to Cupertino…then Epic store apps would be summarily nuked along with all of their data. I see no other obvious way for Apple to protect their legitimate interests by allowing stores and/or payments systems they have no control over onto their platform.

Android does this differently…but Apple and Android are two different beasts and what one does is irrelevant.

I’m also not in favor of the mandatory USB-C connector the EU wants to impose…seems to me that requiring that is too much government interfering with private/publicly owned business…and if I were Apple I would put a dongle in the box with iPhones before I redesigned them to use a different connector unless they were going that way anyway (which seems to be what is happening and my guess is that either this year or next the iPhone will go USB-C or portliest and include a wireless charing device in the box similar to what the watch uses.

I understand the EU’s motivation on both of these issues…I just don’t agree that either of them is the government’s business…but the EU is formed of countries in Europe and historically they tend to be a lot more socialist like or cumbaya like than the US is. Nothing wrong with that as their citizens voted the politicians in…but the US doesn’t work that way. And the US and Apple’s way seems to be the leader here…before the iPhone we had flip phones and Blackberries and an internet capable touch screen all in one device didn’t exist. Apple essentially invented the smartphone as we know it today…when the iPhone was introduced there (as far as I remember) was nothing like it before Steve walked out onto the stage. Same with the MacBook Air and iMac, and iPad…Apple essentially invented all of those markets. Pundits and phone company people and other computer companies said their new designs were doomed to failure as I recall…but eh, not so much I guess.

An interesting theory, but one that can’t possibly work.

Why?

Do you seriously think Epic is going to run an app store populated with every app people will want to run? They certainly won’t be able to just copy Apple’s database of apps, and how many app publishers will want to list on Epic’s store - they would have to be some very attractive terms.

It is more likely that Epic will only be selling Epic’s software through their store, and maybe a few closely-related vendors’ products.

If forced to make a choice, how many users will say “I’m willing to give up Google and Microsoft apps in order to install Fortnight”? I doubt there will be many.

Any alternative app store will have to be in addition to Apple’s store. Any other option would be unacceptable to users, and I’m certain also to regulators.

And you’re right, Apple will get the blame for other people’s problems. But this is nothing new for Apple - it happens in the Mac world all the time, and happened with alarming frequency back in the Classic Mac OS days, when people typically installed dozens of system extensions from dozens of vendors, and a bug in any one would destabilize the entire system.

If Apple is forced to go down this path, I think all they will be able to do is to create enough of an audit trail so any complaints that go as far as legal action can be tossed. For instance, storing as a part of an installation, information about the app store it came from, including user ID, date/time, IP address and other forensic data, and store that data in crash reports. So if someone complains, Apple can look at the data and say “the problem app didn’t come from us - go complain to Epic” and be able to back up their statement.

Well…if Apple doesn’t want to get the blame…which they shouldn’t…then they need to something to stop it or else they need to just accept blame. I would think that getting blamed for a financial loss or privacy loss that they have nothing to do with would be a big deal to them. I’m sure that Epic won’t offer that many apps…but trying to keep blame for the inevitable privacy and financial losses where it belongs instead of being dumped on Apple seems like a good idea to me. I’m sure they’re thinking about it and perhaps have come up with a better option…some sort of additional silo-ization or isolation of foreign App Store or foreign payment options to keep an issue there from getting into the rest of the iOS. The trouble is that bad software in the Epic store has the possibility to compromise the entire phone…and it’s certainly not in Apple’s interest to have that happen…which means either they roll over and let the EU potentially cost them business and reputation and money or they figure out a way to keep that from happening.

For the record…I think the EU is completely out to lunch with this potential demand…because it is Apple’s ecosystem, there is another option that user’s can choose, and it’s just none of their damn business. They don’t force McDonalds to show me the Wendy’s menu or sell me a Whopper…so why do they think they have the right to tell Apple how to run their financial business…it’s just nuts.

I’m sure that users who want to use Epic’s store would like to have both…but where’s the protection for Apple’s legitimate interests if they’re forced into what seems to be an untenable position to me. They gotta do something…

Personally…I think that setting a line that the user has to choose which side to be on is just fine…as long as there’s another option besides Apple. Like it or not…Apple is not a monopoly since Android exists. Yes…they are the only place to get Apple products but it’s their ecosystem just like BMW and Ferrari and Renault and GM…and appliance vendors and camera vendors and fast food places and every other business does. You can’t go into BMW and demand that they run Ford software on your car because you like it better…and the EU has no right to force BMW to do that because there’s plenty of other cars and BMW is an independent company. I see no reason that phones should be any different…and if I was Apple and this law was enacted I would do as little as possible to comply that met the standards of the law because Apple gets to run Apple, not the EU.

Tencent owns a 40% stake in Epic Games, and Sony, Lego and other companies have smaller, but still significant stakes. They all sell stuff on Apple’s and Android App Stores as well. And Sony has steadily invested in Epic during the last few years:

“ Let’s do the math: Across its three investments over the past three years ($250m in 2020; $200m in 2021; $1bn in 2022), Sony has spent $1.45 billion buying equity in Epic Games.

As a result, today Sony owns approximately 5.4% in the interactive entertainment firm.”

Like Apple, Sony has been very successful in focusing on services, and is reaping bigger profits in this space than in their hardware sales. Disney recently announced a big push forward on the Metaverse:

I strongly suspect that Apple will make a big Metaverse pitch to developers at its upcoming big annual developers’ shebang.

That argument doesn’t apply at all in this case. In this case there are only two restaurants in the entire world: McD and BK. If you don’t eat at McD, you’re at BK and vice versa. But if you like Idaho potatoes for your fries, McD forces you to go to BK because they refuse to serve them. And you can bet if that were the case in this world there would be plenty regulation on those two that we don’t see today because in the real world there’s millions of restaurants. Phone OSes, not so much. There’s really only two that matter. In the EU at least, that translates to massively more regulation since both of them together present a duopoly with two market dominating gatekeepers. That’s not the broad consumer choice we expect from market based capitalism, that’s the choice between two cartel players. Good for corps, bad for consumers. And about as far from the millions of restaurants scenario as you can get. So the EU will regulate that. And we will see the fallout of that here in the US, just like CA emission standards led to changes for all cars sold in the US.

The irony is, Apple really has only itself to blame here. This is what Apple gets for years of stubbornly refusing to listen to everyone asking them to open up a small bit to hold back the floodgates. But noooooo. They thought they knew better and could play one system against the other. That didn’t work so guess what? They like to point out how they follow the law in a dictatorship like China, so they damn well better follow it in the democratically legitimated EU. Either way, the end result of lots of regulation by beaurocrats will likely be worse for Apple, developers, and consumers. Many users called for something rather basic, Epic pushed for something else, and now we’re most likely getting Epic’s way. Good job, Tim!

Ridiculous.

Let’s presume that you’re argument is correct and that McD and BK are the only two restaurants in the entire world. There might be…or might not be…additional regulations placed on them because of that…but whether there are or are not is irrelevant to this issue. Even if there are such regulations…I can almost guarantee that the regulations would NOT include a requirement that McD provide you the BK menu and serve you a Whopper and BK would not be required to show you the McD menu and serve you a Filet o’ Fish or McD fries which are by far superior (the fries, no opinion on BK’s fish option) than BK’s offering. These regulations would not exist because if they did there would by definition be only one restaurant to eat at…and that would be stupid and reduce competition to zero…and we know governments would never be so stupid as to reduce competition to zero…although actually we really don’t know that governments wouldn’t be that stupid as evidenced by just about every government ever.

And…as has been repeatedly said…Apple is not a monopoly and they do have a competitor which is the Android market. The fact that the Apple market has only 1 supplier and the Android one has dozens to hundreds of suppliers doesn’t change that fact. Personally I would seriously consider calling their bluff if such a law takes effect and threaten to leave the market…but I guess it will really depend on whether Apple wants to follow their longstanding beliefs in privacy and our way is better and we just out-innovate them or whether they want to follow the cash. Apple could design phones that will work on any telephone system anywhere and simply not have a retail or business presence in the EU for instance…but provide a US based story that would provide the identical iPhone sold in America to anybody in the world who orders one and provides a credit card number and shipping address…thus the iPhone would still be generally available in the EU…and they would have a valid case that they don’t have an EU presence, don’t make any money there, and therefore the EU rules don’t apply to them. Will they do that? Who knows…but as I said before their legal, engineering, and management team is collectively far smarter than any of us here…and I just can’t see them willingly giving up on their longhand ideals, principles, and intellectual property.

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Here’s the hard facts:

“Android maintained its position as the leading mobile operating system worldwide in January 2022, controlling the mobile OS market with a close to 70 percent share, while iOS accounted for around 25 percent of the mobile operating system market.”

In the US, iOS’ market share is very slightly larger than Android’s. Apple clearly worked hard to achieve it:

“Apple iOS continues to hold down the largest share of the smartphone operating systems’ market in the United States, claiming more than half of the market as of January 2022. Apple’s share of smartphone users has risen around 23 percent since early 2012. Their sustained growth in the United States is not always reflected in all markets, [market share of iOS smartphone shipments globally]

(• Apple iOS market share 2021 | Statista) stood at 23.4 percent in the fourth quarter of 2021. However, Apple’s sales tend to be cyclical with a peak in the fourth quarter each year.”

Fast food retailers are solidly grounded on “eat and run.” They are businesses that aim at 100% different market segments than Apple or Android hardware and services. There are other restaurant businesses then fast foods in the market, as well as cooking at home. The vast % of the top fast food stores are owned by franchises. Very few, if any, are owned and operated by the parent companies.

When it comes to desktops and laptops, Mac’s market share is miniscule. In the 4th quarter of 2001, Mac’s teensy tiny market market share grew to 7.2%

Your analogy is faulty. Apple is forcing me to buy my applications from them. It is completely irrelevant who made the hardware or the operating system. Now give me an example of a food seller that demands I buy all my food from them. That would be a proper analogy.

So yes, let’s allow the market to decide where they want to buy their iOS, iPadOS and tvOS applications.

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They are a monopoly for iOS, iPadOS and tvOS applications. The existence of Android is not even relevant to the discussion of whether there is an open market for applications for Apple’s operating systems.

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There’s no way that the Federal Court system in the US will allow a market to be defined so discretely. Apple will be very successful I think if they challenge that definition in court. The relevant markets are likely smartphone devices, tablet computers (which Apple may successfully argue that Windows touch screen laptops are included), and media streaming appliances (and there is not a shred of evidence that Apple dominates that market.)

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