In antitrust terms, it is a form of Vendor Lock-In[0], and could be seen as a form of Tying[1]:

> Tying is often used when the supplier makes one product that is critical to many customers. By threatening to withhold that key product unless others are also purchased, the supplier can increase sales of less necessary products.

As an example, Apple was sued successfully in the early 200s for selling music in a format that could only be played on iPods. iTunes is a platform Apple controls and invented, yet still it was deemed illegal for them to unfairly lock in customers and prevent them from using competing portable music players.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vendor_lock-in

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tying_(commerce)

But there is a customer experience reason. As an iOS user, I very much appreciate that I can ask Apple to cancel some bullshit subscription that used to otherwise try to lock me in behind a labyrinth of added friction and timewasting.

Not every problem is technological.

Also, thinking that all businesses will lock one in using friction and timewasting is not a rational argument. There are a lot of honest businesses there forced to pay the Apple Mafia's tax.

But for every one of those, there are many who might want to transact with the business directly.

FWIW, I trust Spotify equally as Apple - so if I get a Spotify subscription, I'm more than happy to get a 30% discount and deal with Spotify directly. Heck, I can do that on my MacOS (another fine product the Cupertino company makes) but when it comes to iOS - OMG, virus, malware, user privacy!!

This way, I know if I'm dealing with something on my phone, I have a trusted channel for commerce. I am sophisticated enough that I can probably ascertain what alternative payment schemes are reasonable and which are scams, but Apple's imposed payment monoculture means unsophisticated users are protected as well.

A more permissive payment setup would necessarily mean more scammy apps, or maybe just vendors with gross, dark patterns designed to obfuscate cancellation without quite being fraud. No thanks.

People say this stuff, but recently I re-examined my subscription to a multi-platform VPN service through the App store and found that they priced it cheaper than getting the same package through their website or through their windows client.

No idea why.

Edit: Not sure if up to date but for example: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/pdfs/App-Store-Pricing-Update...

They charge $19.39 for the same subscription if you buy it direct. By the logic of Apple taking a 30% cut thereby pushing up the price of doing business, you'd think they could charge $12.59 to direct customers and take the same profit out.

(This is month by month subscriptions to NordVPN)

I would presume an outlier as it seems to make poor business sense.

Or Apple could do one of those virtual credit card things. Or do they already? So you could use an Apple virtual credit card with any processor.

But then the 30% extra fee would be visible to the user. Apple's whole schtick is making things way more expensive and hiding the competition pricing from the user. If "$10 with Stripe" was placed side by side with "$13 with Apple Pay", Apple would immediately lose all of their payment customers and about $2,000,000,000 in revenue, which is a lot. They can only prevent this by preventing "$10 with Stripe" from being there at all. (And if they did it with virtual credit cards, they'd have to tell users there's a 30% fee on each transaction)

If customers want to pay more for Apple to facilitate, there isn’t an incentive to not keep apps in the App Store too. If a company has other reasons not to be in Apple’s store, why should they be required to?

> That’s an unsupportable claim.

It's supported well enough in my view by a long history of sleaze that apparently people have forgotten.

The problem is they don't allow apps to come from anywhere else, this is the core of the issue and what everything eventually comes down to.

Make it possible for users to control their own app installation sources on the hardware they own, show them what is happening when they do so, that they are replacing Apple as the source of trust with the developers of the app marketplace or app they are installing, but only do it once, it can't become a nag.

If they do that, then whenever anyone complains about App Store rules Apple can just tell them to do everything themselves instead, no APNS, no convenient installation from a pre-installed App Store, no seal of approval from a partner the user trusts, no free hosting, no infrastructure for app updates, etc.

You can get your clothes from Target or Saks Fifth Avenue. For most folks, Target is fine, but there are people that insist on paying $30 for every pair of skivvies. I think that they should have that choice. If they can afford it, then let them eat cake (for the record, I tend to be a Costco type of guy, but have not regretted occasionally getting something from Saks).

Selfishly, I would like them to allow sideloads, because the App Store approval process has slowed to a crawl, lately, as well as APNS calls. I’m certain that’s because of thousands of AI-generated submissions. I think many of those submitters would much rather avoid the hoops they need to jump through, for the store.

But I doubt that Apple sees things that way. The secondary app stores are likely to make a lot of money, which they would miss.

The more damaging thing, however, is that Apple’s brand image could get corroded, and there’s a very good chance that they could be strongarmed into supporting side-loaded crapplets. I’m a bit cynical on this, myself. I feel that Apple has been doing a great job of damaging their own brand, in the past few years. I feel as if the quality of their internal engineering has declined precipitously.

And you will get 20 times telemetry as a bonus: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26639261

Agreed. The quality of Apples own software has declined, as has the outcome of app reviews, there's never been as much crap on the App Store as there is today.

And obviously Apple wants to "have their cake and eat it too", who doesn't? I'm just saying that this is the reason why they're being dragged to court now, because they aren't "playing fair" when they're acting as both store operator and store participant in multiple segments, and are acting as gatekeepers of software for literally hundreds of millions if not billions of devices now (congrats to them).

That said, their argument that the payment policies disproportionately impact apps trying to create sustainable business models that don’t monetize user data is a compelling one that I very much sympathize with.

I’m a Proton subscriber, but I went through their website, just because I tend to do that for any service that isn’t exclusive to Apple or the App Store. The same is true for Kagi, another privacy focused service I subscribe to. I never thought about it, but maybe that’s my way of avoiding lock-in. If I ever leave iOS at some point, I don’t want to have to cancel and resubscribe to something that could cause a service interruption. I also want to make sure that the subscription is everywhere, not just on my Apple devices, and it’s tied to the email I choose.

Also, as a customer, presumably you could choose to use apple's store.

In order for this argument to be true, Apple would need to have market power.

Having market power is the thing that makes tying etc. an antitrust violation.

Because it can be used for more than allowing people to cancel subscriptions. Like charging a 30% margin in a market where it's normally 3%, or excluding apps that compete with Apple software or services, or requiring customers to use a specific combination of hardware, operating system, app store and services, even if the customer only wants one of those things and binding them together then eliminates competition from any company that can't supply all of them. Which are exactly the sort of things that antitrust rules are meant to prevent.

When I hear about a 3% fee, I think of the interchange fees for a credit card. That doesn’t have the same overhead as hosting the software, handling the updates, managing the front end, reviews, etc. I can only assume that 2-3% of the 30% are going to Visa, as I’m sure Apple is paying interchange fees to process the payments.

30% probably still creates a very healthy margin, which could be trimmed (and has been for companies making less than $1m). But it is right in line with the rest of the industry, at least for the other big players.

Having the ability to move out acts as a great check against unreasonable rent-seeking.

You are free to install any game you want through any other different service on the same OS where Steam runs.

Steam doesn't say "oh, for every transaction you make in those other stores on the same OS we'll take the 30% commission anyway"

The outrage against Apple in this regard has never felt consistently applied based.

I'll say the same thing, another way: Apple is the only smartphone manufacturer that forces you to install apps through their services only.

To bring the analogy in line with the App Store, imagine if: (1) Steam was operated by Microsoft, (2) Microsoft only allowed installation of games on Windows through Steam, and (3) Microsoft disallowed installation of alternate OSes on Microsoft PCs.

Valve also makes the Steam Deck. In that case they do own the platform, but if the user wants they can install whatever OS they want… but as designed, and used by most consumers, it’s Valve hardware, running SteamOS from Valve, where people can run games they buy from Steam, Vavle’s game marketplace… where Valve takes 30% of the sales.

The only difference between the Steam Deck and an iPad is that the user can wipe SteamOS off it and use it as a generic system, likely killing most of the reason why they bought the hardware in the first place.

So if the issue is how open the platform is, that seems like an issue for the free market. A lot of people buy Apple stuff because it’s a closed platform that spends a lot of time dialing in the user experience, which is something that often seems lacking on more open platforms, because there are an infinite number of edge cases to cover. If customers want the closed platform, forcing it open end up reducing customer choice, as the closed, tightly knit, ecosystem option no longer exists.

Apple’s business model has also historically been about selling hardware to run their software. “People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware.” Forcing them into a Microsoft-style business model is a fundamental change to their core business. There should be room in the market for different ideas. Microsoft, Apple, and Google all have very different business models which serve different types of customers. This is a good thing. I wish there was room for more business models to let the little guy move up, but forcing Apple to be Microsoft, Google, or whomever else doesn’t seem like a win, and it has little to do with the 30% App Store fee.

No, the issue is that they have both a 30% cut of every software sale and a closed platform. Steam has a 30% cut, but not a closed platform, hence the bad analogy.

Not sure why you're bringing the Steam Deck into this discussion. Is the only way to play Steam games via Deck? No, so it's completely irrelevant.

Apple has more open platforms as well, macOS.

Paying through Apple is also not the only way to pay for Proton. I'm a Proton subscriber, and have an iPhone. I paid for Proton through their website and Apple didn't see a dime, but I still use Proton Mail on my iPhone.

Apple sells a device (iPhone) whose OS it controls (iOS) that is so ubiquitous to the point where most businesses cannot afford to not have a presence on this OS/platform.

But in order to have a presence, businesses must list their app on the App Store. There is no other natively supported mechanism available to allow your users to interact with your business. And absolutely no sideloading is allowed. Apple charges businesses a 30% tax to use the App Store.

The cherry on top is that you as a business are also completely disallowed from accepting payment that doesn’t adhere to this tax. Not just that, but even indirectly linking to such payment mechanisms from within your app is disallowed.

Not going to engage any further here because I have made my points.

Not only that, because there are other ways to install an app than Steam, the 30% paid to Steam is paying for promotion within their system. Which is valuable because not all apps are available there, so paying for it makes you more likely to be noticed over someone who distributes for the same platform using an external means.

If an app store is the only way to install apps on a platform then everybody is paying the fee and therefore nobody is getting promoted over anybody else in exchange for it.

It is one thing to say "listen, people are using our product even though there's another choice" but it is another to say "if we give them a choice, nobody will use us"

if apple was saying you had to support their payment processor alongside others (so you could opt into paying +27% and getting easy cancellations), that would be one thing, but they don't allow you to have any other options available in the app, which i think is where the anticompetitive complaints start to feel more valid.

This makes sense because companies are used to making 70%, so obviously when given the choice to make 30% more overnight they will simply lower prices to avoid having to deal with all that extra revenue

Which means that if you remove 30% of revenue as a cost, one of two things happens. Either the price comes down because the suppliers who lower their price get more business, or the customers aren't very price sensitive in which case developers who use the additional money to improve their apps get more of the market and then users get better apps.

Either of those is better for the customer than having the money go into a megacorp's money bin and have them use it for competition-reducing M&A or unrelated empire-building projects or just have them add it to their cash mountain and have the customer paying that money in exchange for nothing.

I would love to live in the world you're living in where companies have 70% margin on $5 apps and $10/month subscriptions. And where they ever had those margins.

That is bad enough. But here comes the infuriating part. Many app devs don't want their customers to pay extra. But Apple forbids them from providing an alternative payment interface or even informing the customers that such an option exists. And the icing on the cake is that Apple used to forbid the app developers from even providing an alternative, until the courts forced their hand. Is this an anticompetitive practice or just plain extortion?

But if you ask Apple or their fanbase, they would say that it takes resources to review and host the apps. But that rings hollow when you consider all the other ways in which Apple wrings both app developers and customers dry. Then perhaps allow the users to sideload the apps? Oh no! That will break Apple's perfect safety record. How about just making it slightly hard instead? No! The user must be protected at all costs, including by holding them hostage! At this point, I'm convinced that either Apple is astroturfing, or the fans suffer from an extreme form of Stockholm syndrome, or both.

In reality, everyone other than Apple has created as much friction as possible in the cancellation process. With Apple, I simply subscribe and then immediately go and unsubscribe.

This isn't about the a consumer's right to buy a different phone. It's about a business's right to do business with customers without Apple in the middle. And it's specifically about Apple's monopoly power over those businesses. No government is going to accept that some company, Apple, gets that kind of control.

Toyota Motor Corp., Volkswagen Group (multiple brands), Hyundai Motor Group, GM and Stellantis N.V. are the top 5 largest automakers in the world whose annual output is comparable with that of largest smartphone makers, including Apple (with the adjustment of the scale).

None of the automakers allow anyone outside the vertical(s) they have built to gain a foothold in the verticals. This includes: replacement parts, mandated regular service at an official, brand-certified dealership as the condition of the warranty (for new vehicles), software updates only from the vehicle manufacturer, probably something else. No outsiders are allowed under any circumstances – if one misses a regular service at an official dealership before the warranty period has lapsed, the warranty is automatically voided. Some even extend to chipped/cracked windshields that, if replaced, will void the vehicle warranty, even though there is nothing special about a windshield today.

Vehicle manufacturers are by all definitions stagegate keepers, and they impose expensive services upon their product users without giving them an alternative.

Why are governments allowing this to happen?[0]

[0] I know that it is because of safety regulations as the manufacturer will claim that they can only guarantee the safety of its own vehicle if it has original parts, but let's pretend for a moment that it is not an issue.

Even a cursory glance at the world around you quickly proves that what you wrote it just utter crock.

One can't install a Ford made shock absorber on a Honda Civic and vice versa. The time of interchangeable spare parts came to an end some time in 1980-90's where the car manufacturers started actively embracing the vertical integration. If somebody makes compatible, third party parts, it is mostly for a small selection of performance and sports cars and is not mainstream. I just replaced the chipped and cracked windshield last week, and I had to wait for 2 months for the replacement to arrive because only the original glass existed out there, with no cheap Chinese alternatives being available – they don't exist, either.

And I had a continuous problem with spare parts for my previous 20 years old car that was more than 10 years out of production, and the car manufacturer stopping making them after 10 years. Lucky for me it was just zero problems, but lately wear and tear turned every other annual safety inspection into a 1-2 week long wait with the mechanic trying to hunt something down. The last time they just gave up and fudged it.

My new car comes with a non-negotiable condition of first five years of regular service getting done at an authorised dealership as a condition of the car warranty. If I were to do it elsewhere, the warranty would lapse automatically. After the end of the warranty, I can take my car wherever I want.

No, you can't install your own or 3rd party software in a modern car, either. This is well known and is indisputable.

So all of that rings true.

Anyhow, I can't stoop that low to converse with a random lout online hurling insults left and right. Enjoy it elsewhere, bye.

Well, yes.

Not op, but the various "must use our genuine brand printer cartridges!" schemes that printer manufacturers have used over the past, oh, 2 decades might have something to do with it?

edit to clarify: I mean the cartridges with their own chips that HP et al. tried to make happen a while back

For the ink, I just buy it elsewhere online.

Once a company becomes massive enough and displays properties of a monopoly, the rules of free commerce change

(that being said, I agree that Apple largely provides users with a high-quality product)

That’s really the crux of the issue. If I must abide by arbitrary rules to use the package at its full functionality, then I didn’t gain ownership of it, did I?

I don't like this hypothetical (or maybe real) argument from Apple, but can't answer it either.

Update; well, here's the answer to that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44427725

It doesn't matter if your gym includes a clause in their contract stating that they are not liable, even through their neglect. If they cause harm through neglect then they are liable.

But those types of contracts also have obligations on the seller, which is why Apple and similar companies don't want to have to treat their equipment that way and would rather call it "selling" with an asterisk.

My stance and others that align with me are that ownership in trade is an inalienable right and their statement should be challenged.

Why do we oppress any freedom? When doing so protects the society we are trying to build.

You're asking a rhetorical question without providing any argument for why the answer should be yes, which makes it pretty easy to just answer the question with the word no.

> Why should I be forced to open up the carefully designed ecosystem I’ve built?

The premise of this question is that they have the right to interfere with how other people choose to interact with each other.

Meanwhile the premise of the government-granted copyright monopoly they've used to build their lock-in system is that you build something and in exchange you can charge money for it. Leveraging that into control over markets external to the one you developed is a thing that should be expressly prohibited.

Do you think the same about printer ink?

Regardless, we need to look at the law - and interoperability has a long history of legal support. Patents protect the product itself, but allow interoperable products. Trade secrets product the product from theft but not reverse engineering.

Even the DMCA has explicit carve-outs for interoperability, though that doesn't stop copyright-abusers from trying to wield it (and sometimes winning due to the money game).

In their own machines they can do whatever they want.

Once they sell it to you, not anymore.

I think people are conflating ease of modification from legally being able to do so. If it's legal, then Apple retains no control over the device.

The bar isnt whether it is legal or not. You know that no company can create laws, and either you're saying it out of ignorance, or willful ignorance.

When Walmart drives away mom and pop shops, and dominate a certain town and then hikes the prices for groceries, you cant say "but it isnt illegal to go buy groceries from elsewhere, what did we - Walmart - do wrong?"

Say it with me - monopoly rules are about consumer choice.

Apple has no right to piggybacking off of another company's business. Therefore the 30% must go.

Compare Apple with Steam (who also provide the infrastructure, marketplace and platform). Steam don't force developers to use their services. They're still successful, but you can get almost every game on Steam from somewhere else. This is what I'd ideally like Apple to do. It wouldn't make any difference to me, as I haven't owned or developed for Apple devices in many decades, but it would make a huge difference to many developers, and many device owners. I doubt it will actually make that much difference to Apple's profits, but it would make a difference to the rapidly declining good will they have in the developer community, and increasingly in their customers.

Should the construction company that built the grocery store be able to take a cut off grocery profits and have a say in what the store is selling?

> I think it's perfectly fine to prevent you from having this

Yes I can, legally and morally.

You can always just build your own phone network if you don't like it!

You are on the wrong side of history.

How is the data checkout working on iOS to migrate to Android?

I'm sick of people writing off entire classes of problems because "well, it's not illegal". The law doesn't matter until you're actually in court. What matters is practicalities. There are many rights that are impractical to use and there are many laws that are unenforced. Some problems could be solved by law, others probably not. The law is a solution, not a problem. Focus on problems, not solutions.

What Apple is taking away is practical control for owners of a class of device that has become essential to my practical participation in society.

I actually desire my country to intervene and change laws forcing Apple give me that control.

"Vote with your wallet" is a BS argument in such a duopoly, because people care about other stuff.

In my opinion it is perfectly fine for society to order a company to hypothetically limit you on this minor thing (and let's be frank: this is super minor), because opening up iOS would benefit companies, countries, economies and other users of phones.

Especially in the light of the only real complaint being that "there is a possibility of loss of security".

Apple have over a billion iPhones out there I believe, and your phrasing of "it's all of us vs just you" is really inappropriate - both from an argumentation perspective and probably a fact perspective too.

And the fact that people have iPhones doesn't invalidate my assertion, also it doesn't affect my right to an opinion.

No-one's saying you don't have a right to an opinion. Everyone has that right. It's bad faith to try and misrepresent what the person you're talking to is saying.

> No-one's saying you don't have a right to an opinion

Someone said to me “Who are you to claim that my consumer desires are irrelevant?” so you’re wrong.

Why would you make up something like this? What's the benefit to you?

It's legitimately easier to just buy a UMPC with an LTE card and use VOIP than do that. That's how bad the situation is at this point.

I say this as someone who gets paid to work on open source and used PostMarketOS on my primary cell phone for years. Even technical people really only have two options right now.

And of course, recommendations for LTE modules would be appreciated. Ideally built in, but external modules are also good, all they really need is linux support.

What about we meet in the middle and governments force Apple to only open 50% of the phones, for the same price. Would that satisfy you?

And I 100% guarantee that the piece of this 30% pie is way bigger than the effort it would require them to divert their development like you're suggesting.

EDIT: Oh, and I also bet their lawyer bill for fighting this is bigger than that too. :)

And if the argument has become about security, as others have said, Jailbreak has repeatedly relied on security issues, so the security problems have always been there.

But making the argument that Apple is the only company to solve secure payments on the internet is silly.

On one side it's called jailbreaking, on the other it's called rooting. It's really the same thing you're fighting against.

If they wanted that right they shouldn't have sold the computer.

That's the catch-22, said ecosystem is what they want to use because it's considered "secure", but it's only considered secure because it's closed.

It's the same with all the other stuff like frequent locations, photos, etc. It's a walled garden yes, but one that protects your data from bad actors (like Meta heisting whatever they can get their grubby little hands on), and the price is that you can't let others into your garden, or it's no longer walled.

Also, facebook can already be a "bad actor" right now, they just have to pay apple their 30%.

So then we get to like, why do we have laws, what's the goal? And this is where you get down to brass tacks. Almost everyone will agree on three basis vectors in principle:

- aggregate prosperity - broad prosperity and security from want - individual liberty

You've got to grind through a bunch of thought on a spectrum ranging from Das Capital to Atlas Shrugged to make it really tight, but it sort of simplifies down to: pick two. Put differently, for a given raw capability and Gini-like target, you get to allocate so much liberty to which people: if you don't impose punitive taxes on wealth, it centralizes and calcifies into fungibility. Rich people buy laws. This is a super linear process.

So then it becomes about:

- would I want to be rich if it was part of a system that engineers avoidable want

- if yes, could I realistically make it into the rich group

For me the answer to one is no, and so I think we should re-impose the punitive taxes and regulations that break the backs of rich people and megacorps.

But on HN a common if not typical answer to #1 is yes, and so my appeal is: be realistic, you already missed.

And if you pick wrong, you get nothing.

>Rich people buy laws.

A totalitarian government does not need to buy laws. Imposing punitive taxes on wealth - it's like express line to what you want to avoid with it.

Breaking the backs of rich people and megacorporations or not, is not a choice about your chances of being wealthy, it is a choice about will you die from starvation or not.

People choose not to break the backs of megacorporations because they don't want to starve to death in totalitarian regimes, not because they hope to get a corporation of their own some day.

Real wages and purchasing power at the median are so strongly correlated with 90℅ income tax at the top that the causality digression is a waste of time we don't have. Unchecked executive power via a lockstep legislative apparatus and meek courts is not some unprecedented thing, its a totally predictable response to privatizing the commons and selling it off to oligarchs.

It was a fucking disaster in Russia in 1992 and its shaping up no better here now.

Conficistory taxes at the top work, they keep real assets broadly distributed throughout society which gives everyone a stake in democratic institutions which creates stability and growth. That's recent, robustly researched history.

I think general purpose computing devices should be open.

This is a moralistic argument, putting legal and business reasons to the side.

Go ahead and lock down specific purpose computing devices, like ATMs, fridge, mouse firmware.

The practice of setting up fiefdoms to become the landlord is an abhorrent practice.

There are at least a few grey areas of such a carve-out that I'd like to ask about, but I wonder if it's even necessary. What if there simply weren't any exceptions?

The ATM would still be locked down - the owner would possess the keys. Business as usual.

The fridge and mouse either wouldn't be locked down or the keys might be physically present somewhere on them. Probably either neutral or a win for the consumer depending on the specific circumstances.

Something like a fridge should either be running a proper OS (and thus fully under the control of the user) or else shouldn't be connected to the network in the first place. Unpatchable proprietary network connected black boxes expected to have a service life of well over a decade are a recipe for disaster after all.

Because not doing so harms the market and society (the article details how). Governments do not exist solely to enforce contracts and property rights. Ideals (e.g. "a man is entitled to the sweat of his brow") are valuable guides, and worth bearing even significant costs to keep, but they are not to be followed blindly, at any cost.

> There are other options out there.

Law and politics (should) step in when "voting with your feet/wallet" fails. You also ignore Apple's middle-man role - consumers can choose (among the very few) different options, but companies serving Apple's captured market cannot.

And it's a shame

>Law and politics (should) step in when "voting with your feet/wallet" fails.

No, they shouldn't. Such stepping in is always vulnerable for abuse and always leads to results worse than original failing

They invite others to sell on that market, but made themselves gatekeeper and simultaneously a player there, controlling the rules of that market in its favor.

Market forces are unable to flow freely, to the point that it affects the "parent" market (in which the iPhone/iPad competes with others) as well as other markets (where other Hardware and Services are sold).

Their closed market reached a significant size now, so it should be reasonable to step in and ensure fair competition also there.

But thanks to those layers of abstraction, billions of dollar in lobbying and marketing, there is always room to argue that ensuring that free market is unjust, hinders innovation, restricts Apple from competing, etc.

Was that not the sort of rationale Microsoft used to defend its IE shenanigans back in the day?

It was considered to be a violation of antitrust laws then. I don't think Apple would be off the hook now. Especially considering how much more ubiquitous smartphones are in comparison to web browsers back then.

It's whether you are engaging in anticompetitive behavior or not.

I believe that's why they're calling it "a phone", or "a tablet". The computer they actually sell has plenty of shells available, and lets you tinker with whatever you like.

A phone is not simply a computer, it's a regulated piece of hardware that must comply with local laws and regulations regarding radio transmissions and other stuff. You can't just peek and poke around anywhere you like in the system.

Besides that, it must be able to talk to carefully tuned 3G/4G/5G cell towers, which sounds easy in theory, but it's not. When I made mobile phones 20 years ago, we had people driving around all countries where we sold it, with a test setup where the phone connected to every cell tower it could "see", and recorded logs and GPS coordinates, and that work (and that of countless others) is partially what became the beginning of A-GPS (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assisted_GNSS), which allows you to triangulate your phones location purely from the cell towers it can see.

Of course that's not how it works today, as most carriers these days register their cell towers in a central database with GPS coordinates, so A-GPS these days is simply a database dump (and a whole lot of math).

As a "fun" anecdote, when I wrote software for mobile phones, it was the only place I've ever worked that had a bug category for "potential harm to user". I'm certain companies working in Medicare and other critical industries also has that, but it was the first and only time I ever saw it.

No. They're computers with a modem peripheral. This is like saying once you plugged your e machine into the phone line it could interfere with 911 calls so they need to be regulated by the FCC. We settled that one over 50 years ago.

Besides the FDA (and similar international counterparts), you're also using your phone for a bunch of other stuff that you probably don't want anyone having root access to. Wallets are one, banking apps, medical data and devices, password managers, and more.

If you have root access, that means that the apps can also get it, after all the app providing root access is itself an app.

Yes I have my bitcoin-qt wallet, Etrade, my ssh keys, and my password manager on a machine I also have root on. I don't run non-free code on it (and I'm very picky about the open source code I do run.) Also just because I have root access doesn't mean I'm running all my apps as root. That's in insane statement to make. I run administrative tools as root and that's it.

The same thing is happening on your phone, you're just not allowed access to those tools, instead various other companies are and when they do things you don't like your options are: throw out your device and data, or bend over and take it.

Again at the end of the day a computer is a computer regardless of you being administratively locked out of yours.

But in this case, I still think Apple has a point. It is not a lawsuit so that consumers can truly own their device, it is not about opening bootloaders and things like that. It is just about not paying the 30% tax to Apple. And while not an Apple fan myself, I understand the appeal of Apple controlling the ecosystem, and paying 30% more for it is not a big deal. By simply buying an Apple device, you show that you are ready to pay a premium for this, so paying a premium for software too seems fitting.

Proton has a point regarding ads though, but it can be seen the other way: maybe Apple should control the ad delivery service too and take its cut too. If Apple does it right, it could actually be a good thing for privacy.

I repeat that it is not what I want, I like being able to do what I want with my hardware, but I see the value in what Apple offers. In this case, let the courts decide.

People get hung up on absolute 100% pure monopolies and how nothing meets that criterion. Monopoly power is a much better way of looking at things. Controlling 100% of a market with insurmountable barrier to entry of course grants a heaping pile of monopoly power, but any company that can influence the market price has some. Generally the higher the market share, the more monopoly power. UK monopoly regulation starts taking a closer look at companies once they have 25% market share.

Yes, except when they use that control to stifle competition. Competition is good, so we want to promote it.

That is sort of the basis for all anti trust law, to my layman’s understanding at least.

Thomas Edison and Company invented a patent system that separated their inventions from being able to be accessed by indie movie makers, and indie producers. Their lawyers would effectively shut down any such movements. This caused them to go all the way to Los Angeles because it was the furthest from New York and they built a movie studio on poverty row that later became the capital of Hollywood movie making.

Once Hollywood became financially strong enough, the lawyers were sent over to shut it down, but the court sided with Hollywood and killed all of the patents because the courts thought that they had abused the pattern system to only benefit a few, what I would like to call the cartel.

The cartel were chosen movie makers, and producers, who had access to the movie making stuff and cameras and equipment by which they would share a percentage of the revenue of the movie production and the theater income with Thomas Edison and Company. Effectively they had what Apple has currently.

I suppose you have the legal right to do whatever you're able to up until people notice the problems you're causing and pass laws against it (or enforce existing ones, as is being attempted here).

Why should it be legally permissible to "sell" general purpose computing devices that are locked by the manufacturer or vendor? How does such behavior benefit society? Aren't locked down, effectively unauditable devices anathema to a free and open society? Isn't the current situation evidence enough that their existence is damaging to the concept of a free market?

If anything, it's the opposite - the bigger Apple is, the worse is the damage they cause.

Of course not. Companies exist only because it is useful to have that sort of legal entity. They should be regulated to ensure that they remain more useful than harmful to society.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Corp._v_European_Com...

BTW, I wonder have they paid that €860 million in the end - and how can I check this.

> Other companies make stores that deliver application and developers don't get to tell them what to do.

AFAIK Microsoft users can install software not using Microsoft store, however it is called.

sorry for forgetting, I have never used or seen Xbox

I figured it was likely unenforceable if a studio simply released a "steam edition" or whatever artificial version differentiation, but at the same time they can always refuse to do business with you for any reason (or no reason even). So at that point the clause feels like them making a blatant threat.

For just selling the game elsewhere, there is no such clause, and there are games that e.g. are cheaper on Epic and explicitly say that's because Epic takes lower fees. But there are also devs claiming that Valve pressured them in private to not do that, and that's what the lawsuit is about.

Steam is not even controlling PCs as their fief so they cannot do this even if they would want to do it.

I don't own any Apple product, but I do admire occasionally how Apple tries to uphold the quality and security of their ecosystem, even as I principally disagree with the walled garden approach. I certainly hope Apple aspires to keep the quality of their hardware and software high. They should however never control user data or choice of third party services.

These two things are often at odds with each other. If people bought into the Apple ecosystem because of the walled garden, the regulators want to rip down those walls and turn it into a fundamentally different product. Bad 3rd party experiences can break the illusion of the perfect walled garden, which is why Apple has many of its rules. Though, I’d say that illusion has already been broken for many, due to a bunch of apps with timed ad pop-ups and other such nonsense. I won’t allow any of that on my phone, but most people do.

I’ve read articles from developers that say they offer options on iOS to go ad-free, while similar options don’t exist on Android for the same app, since not enough people do it and they can make more on ads (I believe I read this from the Angry Birds devs years ago). I would find this unacceptable as a user. I don’t think this is a rule from Apple, but rather differences in the types of users that gravitate to the various platforms; or maybe it’s simply comfort and trust in Apple to process all the payments. I think it should be a rule that any app with ads has the ability to remove them for a price. For smaller apps, I would have a lot less comfort doing this if it didn’t go through Apple (or some similarly large company). I would be very sad if the monkey paw from this lawsuit was that I end up with apps full of ads that I can’t remove, or don’t feel safe removing. This would fly in the face of Proton’s goals as well.

There is also the registration side of things. Today, I can get an app without an account for it, buy it, delete it, and if I re-download it, I can restore that purchase. Going through the developer means yet another account to manage, track, and entrusting another 3rd party.

I paid $30 a couple weeks ago for lifetime access to the “pro” version of an app I’ve been using. I don’t think I would have done that if I would have had to make an account and all that. It would be too much friction and I don’t know enough about the dev. So the dev got $21-25 from me, instead of the alternative, which would have been 0. And that’s what starts the downward spiral toward ads everywhere, which degrades the whole experience.

"The Sherman Act broadly prohibits 1) anticompetitive agreements and 2) unilateral conduct that monopolizes or attempts to monopolize the relevant market. " source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherman_Antitrust_Act

Because once I buy your phone/tablet/whatever, it stops being yours and starts being mine, so I should be in charge of what software it can run from then on.

For companies, there are civil outcomes. This may be undesirable if you have a large financial interest in the company, but it's a tradeoff for the same legislative body allowing you to create a shield from personal liability and taxation.

If you are able to create an ecosystem on your own, do what you like with it.

Does the manufacturer of your refrigerator have the right to control what food you're allowed to put into it? If not, why do you have different standards for computing devices? Why did it ever become okay for Apple to decide what you do with your device after they've sold it to you?

Anybody (possibly except Epic Games) can develop and publish on the App Store. There's a cost associated with it, which in Apples case is 30% (or whatever you negotiate apparently). If you play by the rules, you can keep doing that as long as you like.

If you rent a shop in a shopping mall, there will be costs associated with that as well, and it's almost guaranteed to be more than 30%.

That is essentially what Apple is providing for those 30%, they provide a shopping mall where you can expose your goods, and people can pay for them. They handle the pesky stuff like refunds, (international) taxes, compliance with various government requirements, EU rules, and everything else. They even handle potential lawsuits for you (provided your app wasn't the one breaking laws).

They also vet (mostly automated) apps to ensure they're not using private APIs. That is for your protection. It's not an evil scheme by Apple to keep competitors out, it's for protecting the end user from bad actors like Meta scooping up all your personal data for "backup purposes" via some internal API.

Here in Europe we've had "alternative app stores" for a year or so, and despite living in a country where ~70% of the population uses iPhones, I don't know a single person that has ever used an alternative App Store, just like I don't actually know anybody that has downloaded an alternative keyboard despite those being available for a decade or more.

There is really very little you cannot do on the App Store in terms of features, so for many end users it is not a problem.

You may not like the price associated with it, which is what most of these complaints are about, the fact that Apple scoops up 30% of recurring subscriptions created through the App Store as well. People tend to forget that running your own infrastructure is also not free, especially when you need to handle refunds, legal matters and international compliance.

And that's the core of the problem, most of these companies complaining wants to use Apples built in App Store tools, but they want to direct them to their own App Store for free, ditching the complicated stuff of dealing with users on Apple. They're more than happy with Apple to handle payments and refunds if they do it for free.

Sideloading is usually a very bad idea in this day and age. In northern europe at least, your phone is quickly becoming your most trusted device in matters concerning anything state or municipality, and here we have a national ID app on our phones, along with social security, healthcare, drivers license, micro payments, taxes, childcare, hell, there's even video conferencing with your GP, in an app that has access to your medical records, including bloodwork and various scans. There's literally no way in hell I'm trading the perfectly walled garden for the Wild West outside.

Anecdotally, where I live, most companies don't allow Android phones as company phones as they're considered insecure, and instead mandate iPhones. The more regulated the industry (medical, banking, power, etc), the more certain it is that you'll be getting an iPhone.

I wrote a comment about that here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44426128#44427725

> You may not like the price associated with it, which is what most of these complaints are about, the fact that Apple scoops up 30% of recurring subscriptions created through the App Store as well. People tend to forget that running your own infrastructure is also not free, especially when you need to handle refunds, legal matters and international compliance.

Simply having a link in my app to a page where someone pays through Stripe instead of through Apple Payments, costs nothing to Apple and creates no obligation for Apple to do anything.

> Sideloading is usually a very bad idea in this day and age.

Then don't do it. Who exactly is forcing you to?

The problem is, when the option exists it opens up an attack vector that I need to defend against, as it will surely be exploited by malware at some point, downloading an app when you visit some scam site, and boom you're now infected.

> Simply having a link in my app to a page where someone pays through Stripe instead of through Apple Payments,

But it hardly stifles competition, except alternative payment methods ?

> costs nothing to Apple and creates no obligation for Apple to do anything.

The problem is, when stuff breaks, people will contact Apple support. Yes, one call is negligible, but Apple has 2.2 billion users, and it all adds up.

Provided you provide your app for free and charge subscriptions, that also has a cost to apple, as they're providing downloads for your app (again, potentially 2.2. billion of them), as well as any legal troubles (app contents excluded).

I guess Apple could enforce a alternate subscription model where they require you to charge for your app and they take their 30% cut off of that, and lets you use whatever payment provider you like for recurring payments.

It would of course either cut into sales, as people aren't as likely to buy an app and then subscribe to it, though something with "first month free" could probably lure some people in. Alternatively a developer would have to develop a free app, and if people want to have the full experience they'd have to purchase the full version.

Except, developers don't want that. They want to be able to give away their app and sell subscriptions, and they expect Apple to foot the bill for the infrastructure required to provide downloads.

This makes no sense. There is no "boom". You can't accidentally do it. There are a series of very deliberate steps, with numerous warning signs. Even on Android I have to specifically enable an option to even be able to install apps from alternate sources, and it is a separate permission per source, and this option can be locked down on a managed device (e.g. a work phone).

By your logic, there should be no web browsers on iOS, since someone might visit a scam website and give away all their money.

> They want to be able to give away their app and sell subscriptions, and they expect Apple to foot the bill for the infrastructure required to provide downloads.

Nobody expects that. What the EU wants is, simply let another app store compete. That new app store will host the downloads.

You keep shedding tears for the costs to Apple's infrastructure, yet as I keep repeating - what many developers really want is to NOT use Apple's infrastructure. NOT use Apple's payment processor. If the problem is that we're being a burden to Apple, well then I'm in full agreement with you, let's stop doing that!

This is completely fabricated. I've been using Android for more than 15 years, and this has never happened, ever. Nothing even close to it. To be clear, you're advocating to take away people's freedom to install software of their choosing in order to mitigate a hypothetical security problem. It's not a good trade.

As per Apple, they rejected 2 million app submissions in 2024 [^2]

So from a birds eye perspective there doesn't appear to be much difference, with iOS even taking the lead, but the key difference is that Kaspersky is not Google, and can only detect malicious software after it has been published. Apple has rejected app submissions over privacy issues, meaning those 2 million apps never made it to the public.

According to Zimperium Global Mobile Threat report [^3], 25% of Android devices have sideloaded apps, and 20% are malware infected (correlatoin is not causation, yet). Zimperium telemetry also reveals that 38% of detected malware attacks could be tracked to sideloaded apps [^4].

So no, it is certainly not some fabricated threat, but a very realistic and probably threat scenario. I'm also not trying to take away anybodys freedom, you're free to install whatever you want, but you don't need root access to do it. Very few use cases on a phone requires the user to have root access.

[^1] : https://securelist.com/mobile-threat-report-2024/115494/

[^2] : https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/05/the-app-store-prevent...

[^3] : https://lp.zimperium.com/hubfs/Reports/2025%20Global%20Mobil...

[^4] : https://zimperium.com/blog/the-hidden-risks-of-sideloading-a...

In any case, generally the threat against most people is fraud, not some technical minutiae.

There is nothing wrong with sideloading applications. Protection against malicious applications is taken care of by the OS through sandboxing and a granular permission model. Malware scanning and app signing also have no dependency on the App Store.

Really all you are missing out on is the App Store review process, which is not worth much from a security perspective anyways.

You've been tricked into thinking that you're not qualified to select software to run on devices you purchase. I wouldn't hand over control of your digital life to Apple so readily.

But I don't see much that's local about Apple vs. Samsung. It's the same phones for sale in the US or in Thailand. Literally as one-size-fits-all global as you can get.

They actually aren't. US iPhones no longer have SIM card slots. Most international phones don't support the same radio bands that US carriers use. This used to be a bigger issue with CDMA, but still an issue with the many 4G/5G bands and VoLTE. That'll be most Xiaomi and Oppo phones in the US. And there's Huawei phones that are banned and not allowed on US carriers; so it makes zero sense to include them into any marketshare calculations for a US consumer.

So even an iPhone 16 Pro has different models: A3293 (International) A3083 (USA) A3292 (Middle East, Canada, Mexico) and A3294 (China, Hong Kong). The A3293 and the A3294 do not support T-mobile's 5G band 71. This isn't uncommon, and Samsung will do similar international vs US models. Samsung is even worse sometimes, having completely different CPUs between regions.

And of course there's software differences too. Chinese iPhones can disable internet permissions for individual apps but not anyone else for some reason. Google Pixel's Gemini isn't available in EU countries. Apple Intelligence did similarly at launch.

While local marketshare isn't the perfect indicator, it's definitely better than using global marketshare.

Competitive markets have enough similar suppliers that they are forced to adapt to customers instead of the other way around.

This happens to be incompatible with capitalism due to phenomena like the tendency of the rate of profit to fall and fascism (as well as other corporativist ideologies). Capitalism survives and reproduces through monopolies and oligopolies, i.e. undemocratic forms of rent seeking and price cartels.

It's one thing to design and built an iKettle in such a way that every aspect from the water filter to the power cord is well thought out but propitiatory. It's another to refuse to plug in to another "inferior" socket because that cuts into your cut of propitiatory cable sales.

If their stuff is so superior, then people will see that and prefer it. They wouldn't need to make it impossible or deliberately painful to use competitors services.

Apple can. They can retain ownership of "their" devices. Instead of selling electronics, they can rent iPhones and iPads to users and thereby retain all control over how/when/if they are used. But good luck pitching that to consumers.

But seriously though: why do people argue that „investing money“ leads to „I can do whatever the hell I want to my client base“? Even if this argument were to hold for all future customers, companies change their TOS all the time. Can I ask for all my money that I paid them back, to exit their ecosystem?..