I think Google really made a strategic mistake by copying Apple on the payment restrictions. It kills me to see Apple and Google lumped together as "monopolies" when Google's policy is IMHO 100x less monopolistic than Apple's given you can sideload and use completely different app stores, and enable "developer mode" without paying a subscription fee just to run your own app on your own device. But the payment restrictions are definitely monopolistic-style abuse. Had they not have copied that, I don't think they'd be under this microscope and losing lawsuits and what not.
It does still blow my mind that Apple won their lawsuit from Epic, yet Google lost, when Google is far less restrictive. IANAL but from what I've understood it mainly came down to the fact that G execs put the stuff in writing whereas Apple did not, so with G there was some real damning evidence of the anti-competitive behavior. But ironically, the reason G execs were in the position of having to buy off people and make deals to stifle competition is because of their looser reins over the platform. If they'd been draconian and hyper-controlling from the start, refusing side-loading and similar like Apple does, they wouldn't have had to pay people off and make deals to crush competition as that competition couldn't have even gotten off the ground in the first place.
stratechery has a reasonable explanation in one of the recent articles :
"That last point may seem odd in light of Apple’s victory, but again, Apple was offering an integrated product that it fully controlled and customers were fully aware of, and is thus, under U.S. antitrust law, free to set the price of entry however it chooses. Google, on the other hand, “entered into one or more agreements that unreasonably restrained trade” — that quote is from the jury instructions, and is taken directly from the Sherman Act — by which the jurors mean basically all of them: the Google Play Developer Distribution Agreement, investment agreements under the Games Velocity Program (i.e. Project Hug), and Android’s mobile application distribution agreement and revenue share agreements with OEMs, were all ruled illegal.
This goes back to the point I made above: Google’s fundamental legal challenge with Android is that it sought to have its cake and eat it too: it wanted all of the shine of open source and all of the reach and network effects of being a horizontal operating system provider and all of the control and profits of Apple, but the only way to do that was to pretty clearly (in my opinion) violate antitrust law."
The key is 'unreasonably restrained trade' - Any OEM was eligible to use Android, but what google did was restrict competition by 'entered into one or more agreements that unreasonably restrained trade'
I think even this is a little unfair. Almost no one buys Android because they are a horizontal operating systems provider, and OEMs don't use it because of same, because the former don't care and the latter already know the reality. People use it because it's their best option, and not due to any monopolistic practices excluding alternatives. It's just the best option.
This answer is unsatisfying to me because "not allowing trade with 3rd parties" could be seen as a version of "unreasonably restrained trade".
In general I think it's incorrect to try to divine a consistent legal principle from these two cases. Trials have an element of randomness so either case could have gone the other way under different judges and lawyers.
> Apple was offering an integrated product that it fully controlled and customers were fully aware of, and is thus, under U.S. antitrust law, free to set the price of entry however it chooses.
I'm no expert in US antitrust laws, but this statement makes no sense to me.
So I can basically establish an absolute monopoly by creating a product that I control entirely, with no support for 3rd-party providers for software, payments etc., which only supports hardware that is manufactured and certified by myself, and I can establish whatever entry price I want for it, as long as I'm very explicit that I'm selling a closed and monopolist product, and customers are aware of it?
If that's indeed the case, then the US antitrust laws are quite broken.
> It does still blow my mind that Apple won their lawsuit from Epic, yet Google lost
When Google chose to open the Android OS, it created a marketplace for Android devices which it attempted to control by the use of anticompetitive contracts and actions.
The parallels with Microsoft and Windows are obvious. Microsoft has been found guilty of anticompetitive actions in the Windows PC marketplace it created by opening up Windows.
Yet Microsoft also has the XBox, which it did not open up to other hardware makers and which is just as much of a walled garden as iOS.
There have been no legal ramifications of Microsoft choosing to be the sole maker it's own product, nor of having it's product be a walled garden.
It's not illegal to have a monopoly over your own product and it's not illegal to have a walled garden.
> It's not illegal to have a monopoly over your own product and it's not illegal to have a walled garden.
The larger point being made is that once your product has a commanding share of the market, it should be illegal, as it's clearly anticompetitive by that point.
> IANAL but from what I've understood it mainly came down to the fact that G execs put the stuff in writing whereas Apple did not, so with G there was some real damning evidence of the anti-competitive behavior.
It mainly came down to the fact that they were in different courtrooms and the higher-level appellate courts haven't yet decided how they're going to reconcile the results (possibly by overturning one of them).
It's kind of an interesting case study in the arbitrariness of the law. The most important question in either case is if excluding competing app stores is permissible. It's obviously anti-competitive, but doing anti-competitive things is sometimes allowed if you have a legitimate justification. Apple's argument is presumably that they need to for security. This is, of course, BS, because a user who wanted Apple to vet all of their apps could still choose not to install any from outside of Apple's store even if Apple didn't prohibit them from doing so.
Google could make the same claim -- they have to discourage these filthy competitors because some of them might not be selective enough in what they include, so suppressing them improves security -- and it would be equally BS. But then you uncover some emails that make them look unsympathetic, or admitting that the pretext is a farce, and now it's less likely they get away with the charade.
The root of the problem here is that the rule that you can do something anti-competitive if you have an excuse has the potential to swallow the entire law. "Our competitors are smelly and vile and we have to protect our customers from interacting with them even if the customer explicitly wants to do that" is a generic excuse that could be used to justify any anti-competitive behavior. That's easier to see if you can read some emails conceding the underlying motive, but it's true in either case. Hopefully the higher courts will be able to see that in both cases once they've seen it in one of them.
The jury found that Google created a market of Android app distribution, and then they squashed competition in that market.
No just market exists for Apple (it's an entirely closed and self-contained ecosystem) so there was no need to 'squash competition' - it just doesn't exist!
> enable "developer mode" without paying a subscription fee just to run your own app on your own device
Apple actually doesn’t charge a fee for this. You can build an app in Xcode and install it on your own device. You can’t distribute that app publicly though.
> G execs were in the position of having to buy off people
There’s your answer - having a monopoly is not problem, abusing it is.
> If they'd been draconian and hyper-controlling from the start, refusing side-loading and similar like Apple does, they wouldn't have had to pay people off and make deals to crush competition as that competition couldn't have even gotten off the ground in the first place.
Difference here is that Apple manufactures and controls all the devices but Google does not.
When Google’s decisions impact other manufactures or they even are dependent on it, it becomes monopoly problem. But Apple does not impact anybody else.
Google couldn't have been restrictive from the start because of how Android came and solidified itself. Google tapped and profitted heavily on opensource, whereas apple had not only their OS but all the hardware developed in-house, without external collaboration for the most part.
The scenario surrounding iOS history lends itself pretty well for solid walled gardens
I don't understand why anyone uses Apple. I feel like they've all been brainwashed. Ubuntu is way better, especially for tech-savvy users.
Only times I used Apple was at work because I was forced to. I was forced to use Apple by 3 different companies. It's essentially a cult. I hated using it and it slowed me down significantly.
The tech industry is essentially a giant PsyOp and only brainwashed, highly suggestible people can participate. I think governments should treat these megacorps as what they are; foreign intelligence operations to gain power over citizens.
Could not have said it better, I have found the same experience myself in the tech realm, I much prefer Linux to any other operating system for obvious reasons.
Apple has convinced a large amount of the population that they need to be locked into a walled garden to be 'safe' which is a) a lie, b) hugely anti-competitive and c) has made Apple more money than they know what to do with. They repeatedly have the most cash on hand of any company in the world. Apple pays 0 tax every year in the US due to loopholes and is a large drag on the economy for this reason, they are cash hoarders. Kids in school are brainwashed to think they need some shiny new apple phone to be part of the cool crowd. It's just a status symbol more than anything at this point even though it's an objectively worse system than the alternatives in many ways. IMO they are selling the smug attitude and talking points more than any new features. It's all marketing gimmicks every step of the way. Apple stores and their techs being called 'geniuses'? Everything down to the design of the store makes you feel like you are in some kind of tech dystopian nightmare, it's all image. The lock-in to the OS and App store should be enough for an antitrust case in the US IMO, but the US cares more about corporate money than protecting its people.
Additionally they have been found to slow down old devices purposefully, the right to repair is non-existent (good luck with this Apple!), not to consider the environmental impact on creating all these phones that are worthless if you want to run something different than apple iOS, and the fact that privacy is not valued nearly as much as Apple leads you to believe. There is still data harvesting going on at Apple, it's a revenue stream that is too tempting to large companies. They can access any of your iCloud data at any time unless you opt-in to ADP. There have been many times Apple was found to be lying, or not telling the whole truth about the privacy of users using their platform, like the location data issues in 2019, there have been privacy/tracking lawsuits in 2022, 2023, etc. There have been many security issues found with apple products that have never had a CVE, the proper security response, so as to obscure proof of the flaw, without proper disclosure. Security fixes are hidden many times and the end users not made aware of the issues. I have met many uninformed professionals in my space unaware of this due to drinking the apple Koolaid. Or they commonly don't care because family uses them, etc.
Now that the platform is as far-reaching, we are starting to see many exploits for Apple products, including ransomware, malware, etc so their remaining time that many people unrealistically regard them as the 'most secure platform' is limited. We are starting to see safari/webkit 1 click and 0click exploits very commonly. There are probably millions of other security holes to be found in their platform, just like any other. ML and great minds will help us find them over time.
I'm not saying that Android doesn't have any issues, etc. The difference is that one platform pretends to be better than the others and has been found to have been lying or not telling the whole truth in the past, many times. They are a shady company as well, and the whole market needs much more regulation. The EU seems to be leading the way on this.
> enable "developer mode" without paying a subscription fee just to run your own app on your own device
That's a great way to fail hardware attestation. It makes my bank's app assume I'm a fraudster and refuse me service.
Google absolutely deserves to be lumped in with the likes of Apple because of stuff like this. They sell people "open" systems and then they punish them when they "tamper" with the system.
I can only hope some government out there will put an end to their little digital fiefdoms.
I have never had a device fail attestation because of developer mode being enabled. Not even bank or Nintendo apps. Are you thinking of unlocking the bootloader? That is different than just enabling developer mode so you can adb install apps and other things on the device.
The difference is that apple is and always was, explicitly a closed platform. Take it or leave it.
Google on the other hand, tried to market android as an open platform with eg many OEMs producing hardware for it, but the reality is that they are anything but.
I mean you said it: Google sold Android has one thing but secretly stifled it from actually being that thing. Apple doesn't even offer iOS as a product, it's an integrated product component developed in-house just like their A-series chips. They don't offer the App Store as a product, it's an integrated product-component just like the Camera.
Apple took the console approach and Google took the Wintel-ish approach, and that led to a different series of business decisions that created a different set of market conditions involving a different set of business partners that created a different set of facts and a different set of case records when Epic sued them both. It's not like Apple didn't put anything in writing, but the stuff that made them look bad only made them look bad in the PR sense, not a legal sense. Apple's restrictions on the iPhone are technologically and contractually enforced through a standard agreement that every developer agrees to, whereas Android doesn't have any technological restrictions, just Google's lawyers going around paying off would-be competitors to not compete with Google Play which is a huge difference given that Android is supposedly open and that was one of its original selling points. Personally I still don't think Google should have lost their case with Epic at the District level, maybe hammered a bit under State antitrust law enforcement for the payoffs to not compete with them, but not lost to Epic; but they did lose their case at the District level to Epic so that's completely on them.
I read that apple case was heard by a judge and Google case by a jury. Apparently a jury tends to be less rigorous at interpretation of laws than a judge?! Not surprising (I saw the movie 8 (or 12) angry men).
I have a web application with a lot of users. My users are happy to use the web. But because of better monetization options, I sometimes dabble with the idea to build a native mobile app.
Some years ago, I tried to build an Android app. It required an insane amount of tooling. Hundreds and hundreds of megabytes of stuff. GUI applications you have to use etc. I didn't even try to build an iOS app because that probably means you have to own a mac.
Is this still the same?
Or are there some linux command line tools these days I can use to convert a web app into an app that I can put on the Android/iOS app stores?
There are things like Cordova that make it a bit easier, but yes you need hundreds of MBs of stuff to compile and test. Debugging was a bit of a nightmare, though.
It is also possible to deploy to Apple with things like Github Actions without personally owning a Mac (and it can publish to Google too, naturally), but then testing is not trivial.
I know 90% of HN will disagree but there is a market opportunity here to make this better.
I’ll be honest, if you don’t own or regularly use a Mac or an iPhone, the odds that you are going to make compelling software for either of those platforms is effectively zero.
The web and app stores are littered with the corpses of failed, poorly-ported iOS and macOS utilities written by developers who didn’t fully understand that those systems have their own design language, cultural norms, and feature sets. They chew through battery, perform poorly, confuse users, look like shit, and feel completely alien.
Should that totally stop you from porting some useful tool? Maybe not. But the chance that it will see any sort of use outside of an extremely niche set of users is slim and it’s worth accepting that upfront if you’re going to spend your time and effort on it.
I know you can't port a web app to it easily. But Expo, wrapper around React Native, does do a great job at handling that. It also comes with a build in ci/cd and over the air bug fixes (alternative to codepush)
I've set up a custom flow with Fastlane with React Native. Works pretty well, but Major Version, OS and architecture update are a huge pain.
I don't understand why this was getting downvoted? The parent commenter is right. You can build on the command line with gradle. It will still download hundreds of megabytes worth of dependencies (the Android SDK etc). But at least you don't need any GUI tools.
I've downloaded just the command-line tools before and used 'sdkmanager' to list and download sdk versions and virtual machines, so it is definitely doable without Android Studio, although it isn't obvious (or at least it wasn't to me).
I have done this, but for some reason Android SDK has to be weird, so you have to download the SDK seperately and then create a properties file in to root of the project with the path to the Android SDK. Everyone then also has to have their own version of this file, since the path is likely different. You also have to make sure that everyone downloads the same version of the SDK. (also the path to the SDK cannot have any spaces)
Why can it not be like other Gradle dependencies, where Gradle will just download the files automatically?
I tried to build an Android app. It required an insane amount of tooling. Hundreds and hundreds of megabytes of stuff. GUI applications you have to use etc.
FPGA developers snicker under their breath, but if you look closely you can see the tears welling up in their eyes...
I've had success with react native for deploying web type apps onto both ios and android. Expo really flattens the learning curve, it's something to grow out of for sure. I look at it like having an app vs wanting to have an app.
What do you use for front end for your web app? If you use React or Vue or something that does client-side rendering, you can often turn your app into a PWA fairly trivially by just adding a manifest. That is IMHO definitely the way to go as long as you don't need to use native functionality/APIs.
PWAs are still a little tougher on Apple since Apple holds the reins to their platform very tightly and doesn't want apps getting to users without going through "curation," so if iOS is an important market for you and your users will find you through the app store (rather than looking for you in the app store after finding you elsewhere), then a PWA may not be the best choice.
If you use server-side rendering, then it will of course be more work, but I'd still probably go the PWA route and write it in React or Vue. You already know JS so there's much less learning, and it's the most "write once run anywhere" that there is. You'll likely have to buy a mac though, although there are services you can "rent" one for building/signing/submitting to Apple.
React Native can be a good option as well, especially if you need to call native APIs or must be in the Apple store (Google Play Store can take you as a PWA). Most of your code can be js/ts so less learning curve, and you can generate a submittable app package that can go in the Apple store (and of course Google).
If you need to make extensive use of native APIs though, then a real native app may be better, though of course you will need a separate one for ios and android, and there's a lot of learning to do. And you'll definitely have to buy a mac.
Try to create a app like behavior in javascript and use a webview in android and ios to wrap your app. We do it like that. You will still have some native parts like push notifications, ads, social logins etc. But your ui render is web. Just make sure you have an app like experience. Doable these days.
The all the extra tooling makes it easier to make Android apps. Nothing is stopping you from downloading the Java JDK and Android SDK and running javac, d8, aapt2, zipalign, and apksigner yourself.
Can you imagine that we, Software Engineers in Kyrgyzstan, cannot publish apps on Google Play?! Google is blocking whole countries from publishing apps. This is not just about missing out on business opportunities; it's about being denied the basic platform to share our creativity and hard work with others! Unfair discrimination!
I am deeply frustrated by this situation. Even more so because I know there are Kyrgyz people working at Google, and one confided that the developers had made plans to include Kyrgyzstan in the list of allowed countries. However, these plans were inexplicably rolled back on orders from another department. This isn't just a technical hurdle; it feels like a deliberate sidelining of our nation and our talents.
I urge you to consider the struggles of smaller nations like ours. We don't ask for special treatment, just a fair chance to participate on the global stage.
1) not being a general purpose OS. Sony actually took at away that ability in the PS3 so they aren't trying to pretend they do more than play media
2) the hardware and software is ephemeral. In 10 years IOS and Android will exist. We will likely be on the PS6 and 2 more generations of Nintendo in that time. There's less incentive to bother opening up an OS that is abandoned every generation.
3) due to the model of consoles, most of them lose money on sales so they can invoke more software sales. And on top of that, larger studios get direct support from Nintendo/Sony. There is negative incentive for a studio to ruin this relationship unless more companies start making consoles themselves.
> not being a general purpose OS. Sony actually took at away that ability in the PS3 so they aren't trying to pretend they do more than play media
This is just assuming the conclusion. They're general purpose computers that could run arbitrary custom code if their owners weren't locked out of them.
And so are appliances and HVAC systems and so on, which is exactly why the owners shouldn't be locked out of them -- this has significant implications for the entire concept of ownership, right to repair and environmentalism etc. They're all general purpose computers, and they should be.
> the hardware and software is ephemeral. In 10 years IOS and Android will exist. We will likely be on the PS6 and 2 more generations of Nintendo in that time. There's less incentive to bother opening up an OS that is abandoned every generation.
But this is making exactly the opposite argument -- it should be opened up because otherwise it will be abandoned and no one else can support it. Likewise, the newer system should be opened up so people can make it run the older games, or the games from other systems from other vendors, whenever possible.
> due to the model of consoles, most of them lose money on sales so they can invoke more software sales. And on top of that, larger studios get direct support from Nintendo/Sony. There is negative incentive for a studio to ruin this relationship unless more companies start making consoles themselves.
This is called a predatory business model, the equivalent of printer makers selling the printer below cost so they can stick you for the ink. There is a serious argument for banning it outright; it's certainly nothing we need to worry about protecting.
Your second point is why the stores need to be opened up.
Nintendo breaks compatibility almost every generation, so if you want to replay old games you already purchased on a previous console, you have to repurchase the ported versions or buy Nintendo’s subscription service. I’ve dropped hundreds in the eShop but worry I’ll lose access one day, when the Switch is EOL.
In comparison, I’ve been able to run my Steam games on multiple devices through the years because PC is a much more open platform. There are multiple shops, so Steam has incentive to keep games forward compatible.
Agreed, mostly, as Id like to point out that the iOS software is abandoned/shut down at approximately the same cadence as new consoles are launched. Rare’s the still-available app that was last updated pre-iOS 10…let alone iOS 5 or pre-retina iOS.
I don't think iOS and Android are general purpose either. Phones and tablets are used for games as much as the consoles if not more in certain demographic
I'd posit that modern consoles are MORE general computing devices than mobile phones.
For example the Apple M-series SOC only exists in Apple phones and tablets.
Meanwhile the PS5, Xbox Series S/X, Steam Deck all use the AMD Zen 2 series CPUs. It's basically off-the shelf hardware with generic well-documented interfaces.
The only reason we're not using the Xbox as a cheap Linux gaming machine is because it's absolutely closed up for all hacking.
This switch is only useful when it can be hacked. It’s SO much better when you can run whatever you want to run like emulators and other tooling. Or even crazy things, like backing up your saves!
Sony and Nintendo are Japanese companies. From the article:
> Japanese companies would be able to run dedicated game stores on iOS devices, as well as use payment systems with lower fees from Japanese fintech companies.
It’s not hard to read between the lines. This is all about letting domestic gaming companies like Nintendo and Sony make more money from those mobile platforms.
The techie demographic likes to get lost into arguments about the technology and philosophy of computing platforms, but as far as the EU and Japan are concerned it’s just realpolitik to give their domestic companies a leg up.
You left out any companies selling a service on their iOS app which wouldn't normally require a middleman like Apple supplying (and taxing) payment services.
Or selling an app who would like to pay less than 30%.
So, basically everyone who's customers are willing, or can be guided, to use another app store.
Even developers who needed to also be on Apple's store for visibility or cred, would love to be in other popular stores with better terms.
Likely Apple would suddenly lower their 30% and other restrictions as fast as they needed to, to keep most potential deserters in the fold. But that doesn't change the point.
They should. But, more people have phones than consoles. It is not even that shocking for a phone to be somebody’s only computing device. It is more important, and governments need to prioritize.
Never going to happen. Nobody has any interest in going after the gaming market (1), and the EU DMA was carefully written to not affect game console stores (2).
(1) If “phones” are a category in most people’s minds, it’s a two horse race. Most people, however, think of “gaming devices” as the category, not “game consoles” like techies do - in which case, it’s like an eight horse race between PC, PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo, Steam Deck, smartphones themselves, GeForce Now, etc.
Unlike smartphones, where if 2 companies decide to not service you, you’re screwed; you’ve got tons of alternative ways to play, even within most households. Much harder to show anticompetitive interests.
(2) One of the provisions of the DMA is that there must be over 10,000 titles for sale. Needless to say, even the prolific Nintendo Switch is under 5,000.
Edit: And before anyone objects to me considering PC and game consoles in the same market; think like a lawyer. The very fact that people ask daily, “console or PC?” shows they are in the same market.
Those are not big enough to bother about and the power dynamic between the platform and its publishers is more even than those App Store/Play Store. Remember, regulation takes lots of resources.
All of the recent legislation on this topic, including the EU Digital Markets Act, has a numerical unit cutoff which basically exempts all video game consoles.
Consoles ship at a hardware loss, iPhones don't. The business comparison has always been a tough stretch, and the functional comparison of an iPhone to an Xbox/Keurig/dishwasher has always been absurd. Apple's service revenue channel is unprecedented, and so far unchallenged. In cases like Apple Music and the App Store, it is unquestionably at-odds with fair competition. Now, countries like Europe and Japan are using their markets as collateral at the negotiation table. Seems fair to me, given that Apple and Google are comfortable treating their userbases the same way.
There is an order of magnitude difference in number of devices there, smaller brands that ship an order of magnitude less devices isn't a target for legislative action. Legislation might cover them but there is no reason to target them specifically since they are too small to matter.
Why would that make any difference, unless we want the government to punish success? And if ~140 million Switch consoles sold doesn’t constitute “success”, where is that line?
> And although Google permits third-party app distribution platforms, it still requires apps to use its billing system.
Can someone explain this line? If you publish an app on an alternative app store and someone downloads it on their de-googled phone, how in the world would Google prevent it from making a few API calls to Paypal?
This is incorrect, if you distribute an app outside the play store you do not need to use their payment system, even by the letter of the law. The rule specifically applies to play store apps. It's common for developers of more technical apps (like VPN apps) to publish two nearly identical versions - one to the play store that doesn't support iap and one to f-droid/their website that takes payment via credit card.
It's possible the people writing this complaint may be referring to the fact that you can't link to or reference those options from the play store edition of the app, but I think they might just be misinformed.
There is a compounding effect of this though, the fact that the Play Store doesn't allow this greatly dampens development of libraries that would make it much easier for developers to add this functionality to their apps, making people more likely to rely on the Google's payments and just dealing with its cut.
I would assume that it means that if you're publishing an app on both the Play Store and alternative stores, and your alternative-store versions of the app offer alternative payment methods, then Google will shut down Play Store distribution of your app as punishment for that.
Apple (briefly) tried to do something like this previously, where they tried to force apps that offered no free-to-paid conversion through the mobile app, only through the web, to pay the "Apple tax" on the subscriptions made through the web, because they were for a backing service that had value for customers almost exclusively due to its use through the mobile app. Nobody was willing to put up with this, though, and they quickly walked it back.
It’s a commercial/legal requirement imposed on developers, not directly enforced through the technology. It comes down to the review process in practice. At some point a human reviewer will need to detect the app is allowing the user to pay with PayPal and therefore block it from distribution.
They’ll probably have some technology to help prioritise apps for review if they’re likely to be violating (by scanning the APK statically for PayPal SDKs or running robot scripts to see if they can be presented with a PayPal form).
I took it to be a subtle (but important) grammatical error. I figure it meant "although you CAN use another store on Google, if you use Google play you need to use it's billing system".
But maybe Google has something much more insidious than I expected
I remember whent the DMCA was being proposed, there were arguments that the anti-circumvention protections would basically allow copyright holders to rewrite copyright law however they saw fit, with no regards to fair use.
With or without the DMCA, that's proven prophetic. Between cryptographic protections and server-based architecture, we're into an era where "owning" things now means whatever the seller wants it to mean.
I'm curious how much apple and Google will be allowed to charge for alternative payment methods. In Korea, google and apple (iirc) still can charge 26% of the transaction as their fee, making the change fairly moot (and even counter productive).
when sideloading is finally available I don't see how Apple (or Google) would receive any share of developer profits since they can't see or control 3rd party payment api calls made by devs
The vast majority of users probably would never side load. The App Store and Play Store is more of a discovery and acquisition channel than anything else.
All of the DIY monopoly stuff which tech giants has invented will fall apart once one large country starts poking holes in it. It doesn't even has to be US (variant: specific states).
From right to repair to app store monopolies, they have invested in this walled garden, but they forgot to get permit to erect those walls in the first place.
Why can’t they make carveouts on a country by country basis? So they lose in the EU and Japan, but they could still maintain their profits in the US.
Look at the world of pharmaceuticals. Drugs are way more expensive in the US than most other countries. Big pharma companies make nearly all of their profits in the US.
> Drugs are way more expensive in the US than most other countries. Big pharma companies make nearly all of their profits in the US.
I wonder how sustainable this is. If the US imposed the same regulations on drug makers that the EU does, would there be a material effect on quantity or quality of drugs available across the entire globe? To what extent is the US subsidizing the low cost other countries like to brag about?
I think people are generally more wary of importing drugs than electronics, and it is really easy to import bits from other countries.
Tech companies can definitely put up lots of hurdles here and might even manage to defeat their customers. But at least there will be some possibility to work around it…
> Why can’t they make carveouts on a country by country basis? So they lose in the EU and Japan, but they could still maintain their profits in the US.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they do so just to spite.
not to mention hardcore regulation on technical interop, with actually simple and cheap to implement alternatives (reuse what's there already), that stable in time.
For instance, most online services can be reasonably provided to noscript/basic (x)html browsers.
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It does still blow my mind that Apple won their lawsuit from Epic, yet Google lost, when Google is far less restrictive. IANAL but from what I've understood it mainly came down to the fact that G execs put the stuff in writing whereas Apple did not, so with G there was some real damning evidence of the anti-competitive behavior. But ironically, the reason G execs were in the position of having to buy off people and make deals to stifle competition is because of their looser reins over the platform. If they'd been draconian and hyper-controlling from the start, refusing side-loading and similar like Apple does, they wouldn't have had to pay people off and make deals to crush competition as that competition couldn't have even gotten off the ground in the first place.
"That last point may seem odd in light of Apple’s victory, but again, Apple was offering an integrated product that it fully controlled and customers were fully aware of, and is thus, under U.S. antitrust law, free to set the price of entry however it chooses. Google, on the other hand, “entered into one or more agreements that unreasonably restrained trade” — that quote is from the jury instructions, and is taken directly from the Sherman Act — by which the jurors mean basically all of them: the Google Play Developer Distribution Agreement, investment agreements under the Games Velocity Program (i.e. Project Hug), and Android’s mobile application distribution agreement and revenue share agreements with OEMs, were all ruled illegal.
This goes back to the point I made above: Google’s fundamental legal challenge with Android is that it sought to have its cake and eat it too: it wanted all of the shine of open source and all of the reach and network effects of being a horizontal operating system provider and all of the control and profits of Apple, but the only way to do that was to pretty clearly (in my opinion) violate antitrust law."
The key is 'unreasonably restrained trade' - Any OEM was eligible to use Android, but what google did was restrict competition by 'entered into one or more agreements that unreasonably restrained trade'
https://stratechery.com/2023/googles-true-moonshot/
In general I think it's incorrect to try to divine a consistent legal principle from these two cases. Trials have an element of randomness so either case could have gone the other way under different judges and lawyers.
No my experience, there are plenty of these techy customers online but I have yet to meet such Apple user IRL
I'm no expert in US antitrust laws, but this statement makes no sense to me.
So I can basically establish an absolute monopoly by creating a product that I control entirely, with no support for 3rd-party providers for software, payments etc., which only supports hardware that is manufactured and certified by myself, and I can establish whatever entry price I want for it, as long as I'm very explicit that I'm selling a closed and monopolist product, and customers are aware of it?
If that's indeed the case, then the US antitrust laws are quite broken.
When Google chose to open the Android OS, it created a marketplace for Android devices which it attempted to control by the use of anticompetitive contracts and actions.
The parallels with Microsoft and Windows are obvious. Microsoft has been found guilty of anticompetitive actions in the Windows PC marketplace it created by opening up Windows.
Yet Microsoft also has the XBox, which it did not open up to other hardware makers and which is just as much of a walled garden as iOS.
There have been no legal ramifications of Microsoft choosing to be the sole maker it's own product, nor of having it's product be a walled garden.
It's not illegal to have a monopoly over your own product and it's not illegal to have a walled garden.
The larger point being made is that once your product has a commanding share of the market, it should be illegal, as it's clearly anticompetitive by that point.
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It mainly came down to the fact that they were in different courtrooms and the higher-level appellate courts haven't yet decided how they're going to reconcile the results (possibly by overturning one of them).
It's kind of an interesting case study in the arbitrariness of the law. The most important question in either case is if excluding competing app stores is permissible. It's obviously anti-competitive, but doing anti-competitive things is sometimes allowed if you have a legitimate justification. Apple's argument is presumably that they need to for security. This is, of course, BS, because a user who wanted Apple to vet all of their apps could still choose not to install any from outside of Apple's store even if Apple didn't prohibit them from doing so.
Google could make the same claim -- they have to discourage these filthy competitors because some of them might not be selective enough in what they include, so suppressing them improves security -- and it would be equally BS. But then you uncover some emails that make them look unsympathetic, or admitting that the pretext is a farce, and now it's less likely they get away with the charade.
The root of the problem here is that the rule that you can do something anti-competitive if you have an excuse has the potential to swallow the entire law. "Our competitors are smelly and vile and we have to protect our customers from interacting with them even if the customer explicitly wants to do that" is a generic excuse that could be used to justify any anti-competitive behavior. That's easier to see if you can read some emails conceding the underlying motive, but it's true in either case. Hopefully the higher courts will be able to see that in both cases once they've seen it in one of them.
there are many areas of the law that don't set precedent and don't need reconciliation
No just market exists for Apple (it's an entirely closed and self-contained ecosystem) so there was no need to 'squash competition' - it just doesn't exist!
https://www.theverge.com/24003500/epic-v-google-loss-apple-w...
Apple actually doesn’t charge a fee for this. You can build an app in Xcode and install it on your own device. You can’t distribute that app publicly though.
> G execs were in the position of having to buy off people
There’s your answer - having a monopoly is not problem, abusing it is.
But tying (e.g. of an app store to a platform) is classic monopoly abuse.
Having a monopoly should be case enough.
Difference here is that Apple manufactures and controls all the devices but Google does not.
When Google’s decisions impact other manufactures or they even are dependent on it, it becomes monopoly problem. But Apple does not impact anybody else.
The scenario surrounding iOS history lends itself pretty well for solid walled gardens
Only times I used Apple was at work because I was forced to. I was forced to use Apple by 3 different companies. It's essentially a cult. I hated using it and it slowed me down significantly.
The tech industry is essentially a giant PsyOp and only brainwashed, highly suggestible people can participate. I think governments should treat these megacorps as what they are; foreign intelligence operations to gain power over citizens.
Apple has convinced a large amount of the population that they need to be locked into a walled garden to be 'safe' which is a) a lie, b) hugely anti-competitive and c) has made Apple more money than they know what to do with. They repeatedly have the most cash on hand of any company in the world. Apple pays 0 tax every year in the US due to loopholes and is a large drag on the economy for this reason, they are cash hoarders. Kids in school are brainwashed to think they need some shiny new apple phone to be part of the cool crowd. It's just a status symbol more than anything at this point even though it's an objectively worse system than the alternatives in many ways. IMO they are selling the smug attitude and talking points more than any new features. It's all marketing gimmicks every step of the way. Apple stores and their techs being called 'geniuses'? Everything down to the design of the store makes you feel like you are in some kind of tech dystopian nightmare, it's all image. The lock-in to the OS and App store should be enough for an antitrust case in the US IMO, but the US cares more about corporate money than protecting its people.
Additionally they have been found to slow down old devices purposefully, the right to repair is non-existent (good luck with this Apple!), not to consider the environmental impact on creating all these phones that are worthless if you want to run something different than apple iOS, and the fact that privacy is not valued nearly as much as Apple leads you to believe. There is still data harvesting going on at Apple, it's a revenue stream that is too tempting to large companies. They can access any of your iCloud data at any time unless you opt-in to ADP. There have been many times Apple was found to be lying, or not telling the whole truth about the privacy of users using their platform, like the location data issues in 2019, there have been privacy/tracking lawsuits in 2022, 2023, etc. There have been many security issues found with apple products that have never had a CVE, the proper security response, so as to obscure proof of the flaw, without proper disclosure. Security fixes are hidden many times and the end users not made aware of the issues. I have met many uninformed professionals in my space unaware of this due to drinking the apple Koolaid. Or they commonly don't care because family uses them, etc.
Now that the platform is as far-reaching, we are starting to see many exploits for Apple products, including ransomware, malware, etc so their remaining time that many people unrealistically regard them as the 'most secure platform' is limited. We are starting to see safari/webkit 1 click and 0click exploits very commonly. There are probably millions of other security holes to be found in their platform, just like any other. ML and great minds will help us find them over time.
I'm not saying that Android doesn't have any issues, etc. The difference is that one platform pretends to be better than the others and has been found to have been lying or not telling the whole truth in the past, many times. They are a shady company as well, and the whole market needs much more regulation. The EU seems to be leading the way on this.
That's a great way to fail hardware attestation. It makes my bank's app assume I'm a fraudster and refuse me service.
Google absolutely deserves to be lumped in with the likes of Apple because of stuff like this. They sell people "open" systems and then they punish them when they "tamper" with the system.
I can only hope some government out there will put an end to their little digital fiefdoms.
Google on the other hand, tried to market android as an open platform with eg many OEMs producing hardware for it, but the reality is that they are anything but.
Apple took the console approach and Google took the Wintel-ish approach, and that led to a different series of business decisions that created a different set of market conditions involving a different set of business partners that created a different set of facts and a different set of case records when Epic sued them both. It's not like Apple didn't put anything in writing, but the stuff that made them look bad only made them look bad in the PR sense, not a legal sense. Apple's restrictions on the iPhone are technologically and contractually enforced through a standard agreement that every developer agrees to, whereas Android doesn't have any technological restrictions, just Google's lawyers going around paying off would-be competitors to not compete with Google Play which is a huge difference given that Android is supposedly open and that was one of its original selling points. Personally I still don't think Google should have lost their case with Epic at the District level, maybe hammered a bit under State antitrust law enforcement for the payoffs to not compete with them, but not lost to Epic; but they did lose their case at the District level to Epic so that's completely on them.
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Some years ago, I tried to build an Android app. It required an insane amount of tooling. Hundreds and hundreds of megabytes of stuff. GUI applications you have to use etc. I didn't even try to build an iOS app because that probably means you have to own a mac.
Is this still the same?
Or are there some linux command line tools these days I can use to convert a web app into an app that I can put on the Android/iOS app stores?
It is also possible to deploy to Apple with things like Github Actions without personally owning a Mac (and it can publish to Google too, naturally), but then testing is not trivial.
I know 90% of HN will disagree but there is a market opportunity here to make this better.
The web and app stores are littered with the corpses of failed, poorly-ported iOS and macOS utilities written by developers who didn’t fully understand that those systems have their own design language, cultural norms, and feature sets. They chew through battery, perform poorly, confuse users, look like shit, and feel completely alien.
Should that totally stop you from porting some useful tool? Maybe not. But the chance that it will see any sort of use outside of an extremely niche set of users is slim and it’s worth accepting that upfront if you’re going to spend your time and effort on it.
I've set up a custom flow with Fastlane with React Native. Works pretty well, but Major Version, OS and architecture update are a huge pain.
Debug in Android Studio, connect phone on USB, enable USB debugging, hit play button
Debug in Xcode, connect iphone (wireless), hit play button
Tutorial here: https://developers.google.com/codelabs/pwa-in-play
I did end up installing Android Studio for the sdk and virtual machine installation, but I'd assume it could be done on the command line as well.
Why can it not be like other Gradle dependencies, where Gradle will just download the files automatically?
i'm not doing that.
FPGA developers snicker under their breath, but if you look closely you can see the tears welling up in their eyes...
There are tools like that for iOS too, but you absolutely have to have a Mac.
PWAs are still a little tougher on Apple since Apple holds the reins to their platform very tightly and doesn't want apps getting to users without going through "curation," so if iOS is an important market for you and your users will find you through the app store (rather than looking for you in the app store after finding you elsewhere), then a PWA may not be the best choice.
If you use server-side rendering, then it will of course be more work, but I'd still probably go the PWA route and write it in React or Vue. You already know JS so there's much less learning, and it's the most "write once run anywhere" that there is. You'll likely have to buy a mac though, although there are services you can "rent" one for building/signing/submitting to Apple.
React Native can be a good option as well, especially if you need to call native APIs or must be in the Apple store (Google Play Store can take you as a PWA). Most of your code can be js/ts so less learning curve, and you can generate a submittable app package that can go in the Apple store (and of course Google).
If you need to make extensive use of native APIs though, then a real native app may be better, though of course you will need a separate one for ios and android, and there's a lot of learning to do. And you'll definitely have to buy a mac.
tldr: a PWA is (probably) the way to go
Likely not in this case.
The all the extra tooling makes it easier to make Android apps. Nothing is stopping you from downloading the Java JDK and Android SDK and running javac, d8, aapt2, zipalign, and apksigner yourself.
That is the tooling that OP is talking about.
The horror.
I am deeply frustrated by this situation. Even more so because I know there are Kyrgyz people working at Google, and one confided that the developers had made plans to include Kyrgyzstan in the list of allowed countries. However, these plans were inexplicably rolled back on orders from another department. This isn't just a technical hurdle; it feels like a deliberate sidelining of our nation and our talents.
I urge you to consider the struggles of smaller nations like ours. We don't ask for special treatment, just a fair chance to participate on the global stage.
1) not being a general purpose OS. Sony actually took at away that ability in the PS3 so they aren't trying to pretend they do more than play media
2) the hardware and software is ephemeral. In 10 years IOS and Android will exist. We will likely be on the PS6 and 2 more generations of Nintendo in that time. There's less incentive to bother opening up an OS that is abandoned every generation.
3) due to the model of consoles, most of them lose money on sales so they can invoke more software sales. And on top of that, larger studios get direct support from Nintendo/Sony. There is negative incentive for a studio to ruin this relationship unless more companies start making consoles themselves.
This is just assuming the conclusion. They're general purpose computers that could run arbitrary custom code if their owners weren't locked out of them.
And so are appliances and HVAC systems and so on, which is exactly why the owners shouldn't be locked out of them -- this has significant implications for the entire concept of ownership, right to repair and environmentalism etc. They're all general purpose computers, and they should be.
> the hardware and software is ephemeral. In 10 years IOS and Android will exist. We will likely be on the PS6 and 2 more generations of Nintendo in that time. There's less incentive to bother opening up an OS that is abandoned every generation.
But this is making exactly the opposite argument -- it should be opened up because otherwise it will be abandoned and no one else can support it. Likewise, the newer system should be opened up so people can make it run the older games, or the games from other systems from other vendors, whenever possible.
> due to the model of consoles, most of them lose money on sales so they can invoke more software sales. And on top of that, larger studios get direct support from Nintendo/Sony. There is negative incentive for a studio to ruin this relationship unless more companies start making consoles themselves.
This is called a predatory business model, the equivalent of printer makers selling the printer below cost so they can stick you for the ink. There is a serious argument for banning it outright; it's certainly nothing we need to worry about protecting.
Nintendo breaks compatibility almost every generation, so if you want to replay old games you already purchased on a previous console, you have to repurchase the ported versions or buy Nintendo’s subscription service. I’ve dropped hundreds in the eShop but worry I’ll lose access one day, when the Switch is EOL.
In comparison, I’ve been able to run my Steam games on multiple devices through the years because PC is a much more open platform. There are multiple shops, so Steam has incentive to keep games forward compatible.
I don't think iOS and Android are general purpose either. Phones and tablets are used for games as much as the consoles if not more in certain demographic
For example the Apple M-series SOC only exists in Apple phones and tablets.
Meanwhile the PS5, Xbox Series S/X, Steam Deck all use the AMD Zen 2 series CPUs. It's basically off-the shelf hardware with generic well-documented interfaces.
The only reason we're not using the Xbox as a cheap Linux gaming machine is because it's absolutely closed up for all hacking.
> Japanese companies would be able to run dedicated game stores on iOS devices, as well as use payment systems with lower fees from Japanese fintech companies.
It’s not hard to read between the lines. This is all about letting domestic gaming companies like Nintendo and Sony make more money from those mobile platforms.
The techie demographic likes to get lost into arguments about the technology and philosophy of computing platforms, but as far as the EU and Japan are concerned it’s just realpolitik to give their domestic companies a leg up.
Or selling an app who would like to pay less than 30%.
So, basically everyone who's customers are willing, or can be guided, to use another app store.
Even developers who needed to also be on Apple's store for visibility or cred, would love to be in other popular stores with better terms.
Likely Apple would suddenly lower their 30% and other restrictions as fast as they needed to, to keep most potential deserters in the fold. But that doesn't change the point.
(1) If “phones” are a category in most people’s minds, it’s a two horse race. Most people, however, think of “gaming devices” as the category, not “game consoles” like techies do - in which case, it’s like an eight horse race between PC, PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo, Steam Deck, smartphones themselves, GeForce Now, etc.
Unlike smartphones, where if 2 companies decide to not service you, you’re screwed; you’ve got tons of alternative ways to play, even within most households. Much harder to show anticompetitive interests.
(2) One of the provisions of the DMA is that there must be over 10,000 titles for sale. Needless to say, even the prolific Nintendo Switch is under 5,000.
Edit: And before anyone objects to me considering PC and game consoles in the same market; think like a lawyer. The very fact that people ask daily, “console or PC?” shows they are in the same market.
If we're opening them up, then let's open them all up.
The idea that video games or stores below a certain mega size should be exempt is absurd.
What will happen to Apple Retail, 7-11, Costco and Walmart?
Can someone explain this line? If you publish an app on an alternative app store and someone downloads it on their de-googled phone, how in the world would Google prevent it from making a few API calls to Paypal?
It's possible the people writing this complaint may be referring to the fact that you can't link to or reference those options from the play store edition of the app, but I think they might just be misinformed.
See "Alternative billing systems for users" on https://support.google.com/googleplay/answer/11174377?hl=en-...
Apple (briefly) tried to do something like this previously, where they tried to force apps that offered no free-to-paid conversion through the mobile app, only through the web, to pay the "Apple tax" on the subscriptions made through the web, because they were for a backing service that had value for customers almost exclusively due to its use through the mobile app. Nobody was willing to put up with this, though, and they quickly walked it back.
They’ll probably have some technology to help prioritise apps for review if they’re likely to be violating (by scanning the APK statically for PayPal SDKs or running robot scripts to see if they can be presented with a PayPal form).
But on Android I can just release the .apk or publish to Fdroid app store, etc. I don't think Google would be reviewing the app at all.
But maybe Google has something much more insidious than I expected
With or without the DMCA, that's proven prophetic. Between cryptographic protections and server-based architecture, we're into an era where "owning" things now means whatever the seller wants it to mean.
But I doubt they’d bother.
I am mostly thinking the medium term with alternative billing + existing store.
From right to repair to app store monopolies, they have invested in this walled garden, but they forgot to get permit to erect those walls in the first place.
Look at the world of pharmaceuticals. Drugs are way more expensive in the US than most other countries. Big pharma companies make nearly all of their profits in the US.
I wonder how sustainable this is. If the US imposed the same regulations on drug makers that the EU does, would there be a material effect on quantity or quality of drugs available across the entire globe? To what extent is the US subsidizing the low cost other countries like to brag about?
Tech companies can definitely put up lots of hurdles here and might even manage to defeat their customers. But at least there will be some possibility to work around it…
I wouldn’t be surprised if they do so just to spite.
For instance, most online services can be reasonably provided to noscript/basic (x)html browsers.
There are no permits for colonization.