It baffles the mind that having exactly one marketplace with rent-seeking level fees that neither users nor developers can opt out of doesn't violate some kind of antitrust law in the United States.
Though it looks like the EU iPhone users are only in a marginally better position.
Tell your mind it's an appliance/console.* Still baffled? Because nobody seems baffled they can't run arbitrary software on their Amazon Echo Show, AppleTV, Xbox, Playstation, or Switch.
* If your mind is struggling with this, you might need a bicycle for the mind to help. ;-) But seriously, Apple's brand and value prop since original Mac has been to toasterize compute and make it friendly approachable and non-fiddly for normals. If you're bent about this, it's a values alignment issue. And Apple should have a right to have a brand proposition that sets them apart from the majority of PDAs, STBs, and PCs.
No one cares about these devices. If you care, feel free to lobby for some regulation to address this. I doubt you'll face much opposition from people who want to install arbitrary software on their iPhone.
I do often think people forget that when the iPhone app store was released it was a game changer. The whole idea of a single place to download all apps and games was great for most people. It meant that everything was there, in the one place and managed through that one app.
Now a decade has passed and we're asking for change. That's fine, but we can't forget that when the app store first came out there wasn't this hysteria around the need to sideload. The app store as a place for developers to publish their apps was huge, Apple did the publishing for you. How that we all have more choice, we're expecting Apple to change to provide more choice.
I mean, I don't know if I'd call it "hysteria", but people have been sideloading alternative app stores on the iPhone for about as long as the iPhone has been around haven't they? I remember when I first got an iPod Touch in 2009, the first thing I did was jailbreak it and install Cydia so I could get emulators working on there.
Now I have always been a pretty geeky person, so I'm not claiming that I'm the "norm", but I would argue that there's always been some demand for alternative app stores. There are plenty of apps that people want to install the Apple clutches their pearls at (e.g. nearly anything with adult content).
As I've said in other threads, it's not as horrible as Microsoft in the 90s, because it's not difficult to buy an Android phone, your life won't really be made worse by buying a decent Android phone, but I would still argue that Apple's actions are anti-competitive.
I agree, I had also jailbroken my iPhone back in 2010 with Cydia. However I used that to unlock the springboard and change app icons etc, for me it was a bit of a gimmick with a fair amount of risk involved.
I would say if you looked at it percentage wise, it would be an incredibly small number of iPhone owners that jailbroke their devices to sideload apps. I think you can argue that there might always be some demand, but that doesn't mean it needs to happen.
My point is back when the app store was released developers went wild that there was this publishing place they could put their apps. The iPhone in 2010 was responsible for 99.4% of all mobile app downloads. And by 2010 there were around 30,000 apps & games in the app store.
Going back and reading articles about the app store between 2009 and 2012, there isn't negative discussion around the fees associated with the app store or anti-competitive behavior. There wasn't outrage over only being able to download apps through the iPhone store. There was discussion however about companies building their own Android based app stores, but those failed shortly after.
I don't really know that I agree with the analogy.
Yes, you're kind of right, I don't really have a problem with not being able to easily sideload stuff on my oven or dishwasher, despite the fact that they technically have computers in them. They are highly specific, single-purpose things and sideloading Doom on there doesn't really make sense.
Even a game console is still more or less single purpose (though that line is being blurred). Historically I don't do much on my console other than playing games, though now I'd argue that that's not necessarily true, since people install a lot of apps in the marketplace (e.g. Netflix). I do have a problem with Apple TV's being locked down, which is why I didn't purchase one. I use Nvidia Shield TVs, largely so that I could sideload ScummVM without any kind of jailbreaking nonsense.
However, I'd argue that a smartphone/tablet is different. This isn't the 90's; you use your "phone" for a lot more than taking calls. I have an SSH client, a git client, word processing, web browsing, nearly everything that a 90's-era computer could do on my iPhone; if we're going to say that Microsoft Windows is "general purpose", then iOS/iPadOS qualifies as well. We took Microsoft to court for anticompetitive practices, particularly in regards to the inability to install third-party browsers.
You can't really install third party browsers on iOS either. You can install Firefox or Chrome on there (and I do), but they're just frontends for iOS's internal Webkit engine.
So I don't know that the appliance comparison works. iPhones are (purposefully) not single-purpose. They're computers.
The way that an iPhone is different from a Nintendo Switch is arbitrary though.
If you're talking about changing laws it'd be nice to have more of a defense than "this computer we call a phone should be treated differently than the computer we call a Gameboy".
Without some clear and useable definitions, there's no precedents that can be set and leveraged. You will also, by necessity, require bureaucratic bloat to decide what counts and what doesn't for every device moving forward. At best, this is a slow process that delays innovation and reduces availability for users.
Sure, but we draw distinctions like that all the time. There's generally legal differences between "E-Bikes" and "Motorcycles", despite the fact that they're nominally pretty similar (two wheeled, self-powered transportation). We draw distinctions between "phone lines" and "power lines", despite the fact that both carry electric current. We draw distinctions between "bread" and "alcohol", despite the fact that both are made the same way.
I'd argue that while there isn't a hard line in the sand, we more or less define "computer" as something that's "general purpose". I don't consider my oven a "computer", I don't consider my digital COVID test a computer, I don't consider my key fob a computer. I do consider my Macbook a computer, because I do a lot of dissimilar things with it; I write documents, I watch videos, I listen to music, I play games, I log into servers, I VoIP chat with friends, I edit video, etc. I don't think anyone disputes that a Macbook is a "computer"; if nothing else all of that applies to Linux and Windows as well.
You know what else it applies to? An iPhone. I can do all those things with an iPhone. I really can't do any of those things (besides play games) on a GameBoy.
Of course, admittedly I'm kind of moving the goalpost, because of course the line of "general purpose" is kind of arbitrary; the Gameboy did have a camera, the Gameboy Advance had a TV Tuner and MP3 player, so you're absolutely right that it would require some kind of bureaucratic overhead to define what "general purpose" even means, and moreover the second that they have a definition the companies will use that as a guide to narrowly skirt it and therefore avoid regulation.
I don't know the solution, but I do know that it feels a bit dirty for Apple to feel entitled to so much money when they're not even the ones distributing the apps at that point. People gave so much shit to Unity for their idiotic "install fee", but people have become bizarrely defensive of Apple for doing basically the same thing.
> There's generally legal differences between "E-Bikes" and "Motorcycles", despite the fact that they're nominally pretty similar (two wheeled, self-powered transportation). We draw distinctions between "phone lines" and "power lines", despite the fact that both carry electric current. We draw distinctions between "bread" and "alcohol", despite the fact that both are made the same way.
But there a technical differences between those classes of things, even if the lines are drawn arbitrarily. A motorcycle has more than a certain amount of power. A “power line” carries a voltage which is too high to be considered “intrinsically safe”. Alcohol has intoxicating effects, while bread does not.
What is the difference between an iPhone and a Switch? We call one a phone and the other a game. If I made an Android phone with less computing power than a switch, can I call it a game? Or is it still a phone?
> You know what else it applies to? An iPhone. I can do all those things with an iPhone. I really can't do any of those things (besides play games) on a GameBoy.
But that is only because Nintendo doesn’t allow it. There’s no technical reason a Switch can’t be a phone. Why is ok for Nintendo to do that, but not Apple? Just “dirty vibes”? That’s not how the law is supposed to work.
Nintendo might not be happy about it, but the only person stopping you from using a Switch like a phone is you. You're absolutely correct, besides the lack of WWAN modem the Switch is indeed technically capable of being a phone.
> But there a technical differences between those classes of things, even if the lines are drawn arbitrarily.
Sure, but that's a matter of degree, not kind. We're kind of arbitrarily (as you stated) decided "what horsepower constitutes a motorcyle?"
Similarly, I don't know that there's a definite line of "intrinsically safe" for electricty; I've been shocked by my 120V AC in my house and lived to tell the tale, so does that imply it's safe? I don't think so, people die from 120VAC shocks all the time; It's still a somewhat arbitrary line.
I'll admit that the bread analogy does break down, because bread doesn't make you drunk, there actually is small amounts of alcohol in bread [0], though I'm not sure that you could actually get drunk from it no matter how much you ate.
> But that is only because Nintendo doesn’t allow it. There’s no technical reason a Switch can’t be a phone. Why is ok for Nintendo to do that, but not Apple? Just “dirty vibes”? That’s not how the law is supposed to work.
I did caveat in a previous post that game consoles kind of blur the line for me. You could probably convince me that they should allow alternative app stores. At least with video games, I feel there's a bit more competition than "smartphones", since you have large offerings from around six platforms instead of two (Nintendo, Microsoft Xbox, Microsoft Windows (which requires no license!), Sony PlayStation, iOS, Android (plus all the other rebrands of Android that are independently run)).
We do have legal precedent for this in some capacity [1]. The courts felt that Microsoft was abusing its power by making it difficult/impossible to install alternative browsers inside Microsoft Windows. The initial ruling ended up with Microsoft being ordered to split up, but this was admittedly overturned.
I realize it's not apples to apples; iOS doesn't have the monopoly on the ARM that Windows had on x86 in the 90's (you are, after all, perfectly free to buy an Android phone instead of an iPhone and your life probably won't be appreciably hindered), but it does seem like the courts do have some issues with operating systems companies abusing power.
> We're kind of arbitrarily (as you stated) decided "what horsepower constitutes a motorcyle?"
Ok, let’s apply that definition. Why is an iPhone SE (17 TFLOPS) a general purpose computer, but an PS5 (20 TFLOPS) isn’t?
> Similarly, I don't know that there's a definite line of "intrinsically safe" for electricty
Less than 50 volts in every jurisdiction I’m aware of. Now you do.
> there actually is small amounts of alcohol in bread
Doesn’t matter. You will get sick and puke before you consume enough alcohol from bread to make you drunk. You cannot get drunk from bread.
> You could probably convince me that they should allow alternative app stores. At least with video games, I feel there's a bit more competition than "smartphones
So there’s nothing intrinsic to a switch that makes it a game and not a phone.
> The courts felt that Microsoft was abusing its power
Microsoft had over 90% market share (real, global market share, not bullshit “market share of computers running windows”) when that determination was made. Apple has about 30% in Europe.
Though it looks like the EU iPhone users are only in a marginally better position.