It is ridiculous. From Google's reply (https://blog.google/outreach-initiatives/public-policy/epic-...): "These Epic-requested changes stem from a decision that is completely contrary to another court’s rejection of similar claims Epic made against Apple — even though, unlike iOS, Android is an open platform that has always allowed for choice and flexibility like multiple app stores and sideloading."
If apple literally hadn't won their own case 2 years ago you'd be right.
If the company that literally doesn't allow users to install ANY application, yet alone a whole store, is in the clear, it's mind boggling that Google's situation is the one they took issue with.
Apple literally has a higher market share in the US.
Android has the appearance of an open platform that could accommodate alternate app stores, and so the court comes by with an order to allow alternate app stores. IOS never had the appearance of an open platform, so the court does not have the opportunity to do the same thing.
What's the lesson for future leaders in tech companies?
I’ve been working with React Native and Flutter and every time I have to interact directly with iOS/Android, I find that Android is much easier to work with and feels much better designed from a software/api/config perspective. Where Apple wins,
however, imho is in hardware. The iPhone is a masterpiece and users can tell, even ~16 years in. I feel that when Apple finally chokes on hardware, or some player in the Android spaces releases something incredible, the game will change quickly.
It’s highly unlikely for Apple to choke on hardware given their cash.
And as someone who’s done native for both, Android’s native SDK is a mess that even Android devs actually hate it.
Meanwhile, iOS’ SDK is incredibly exhaustive and coherent. I don’t know what your basis is for “better designed software”, but being able to fork a desktop OS from 20 years prior, make it into a mobile OS, then to a tablet OS, then to a watch and a headset OS, and then have billions of users on it all and make a trillion-dollar company out of it⸺does that not sound like good engineering to you? All while the competition can hardly build anything that actually lasts.
> being able to fork a desktop OS from 20 years prior, make it into a mobile OS, then to a tablet OS, then to a watch and a headset OS, and then have billions of users on it all and make a trillion-dollar company out of it⸺does that not sound like good engineering to you?
Microsoft and Google basically did the same thing, and in neither case it's really a testament to how "good" their respective software is engineered. If the amount of driver cruft on MacOS is anything to go by, the engineering underneath iOS and WatchOS is probably a fucking nightmare in most respects.
I used to be "the Android guy" at a big games publisher. In my time the billing component had to be rewritten three times solely because of Google changes. The Apple one was written once and left alone.
We can't even discuss why those Google changes happened because doing so would get you shot, or worse.
The tech direction that was going on at Apple was enormously better than other companies. It does feel like they've gone off the rails a bit, but things like Swift are underappreciated entirely because they're so successful, just with the wrong sort of developer.
Interesting, I have the exact opposite: I'm also a React Native developer and it's _always_ Android that creates all sorts of problems when developing where iOS is just fine. And it's not me: many devs in my team (and all the teams that I've also worked in the past) think the same way.
Though I'd agree with provisioning+codesigning can be a mess with iOS.
I think that this boils down to people wanting a handheld computer that sometimes can make phone calls (android), or a phone that can do other stuff (apple).
Just compare how android and iOS handle backgrounding.
I think that comparison would need some support. It is exceedingly rare that I hear any normal person mention doing something on Android that they couldn’t do on iOS, and the number of enthusiasts isn’t enough to drive a market that large.
As of today, there is no player in the Smartphone space who has even remotely the amount of secured income to come up with a similarly volume-scaled device, and there is little incentive for anyone to enter this space.
A new entrant would be unable to secure the investment, because even if he would produce the exact same piece of hardware with the same quality, the carrier distribution channels, the brand-image and (walled garden) ecosystem of Apple will prevent users to even notice and adopt the product, and the press would jump onto it and rip it to pieces.
So how would this normally work?
--> You disrupt the market by doing something particularly good, while being average in other areas, succeed, then iterate.
But this doesn't work in the Smartphone space as:
1.) iOS users are unlikely to leave their ecosystem because they can't take _anything_ with them
2.) the Google ecosystem leaves little room to disrupt and secure return-of-investment, and
3.) for Android you need to (re)build your own ecosystem to _match_ Google/Apple from the start.
That's why it's not a competitive market anymore, and needs to be (wait for it:) regulated to restore an even competition field for Hardware, Applications and Services.
What would I take with me? My photos and email will move just fine. The last app I bought was a while ago, and it was an app to block Google AMP. I’m honestly not sure I use any other paid apps.
Also no iTunes, Apple Music, Apple Messages, Apple Pay, Apple Fitness, any kind of native Mac integration (Safari Bookmark sharing, Shared Bluetooth devices, clipboard sharing, Continuity Camera, AirPlay,...)?
No Apple Wireless charger, Apple Watch, Airpods, Apple-specific Accessories, Apple App-based carkeys or Apple CarPlay?
As an experiment I recently switched from iPhone (last 10 years?) to Android. It's been a little painful but:
- nearly all apps support Android as well. The ones I used (navionics, banking apps, WhatsApp) you just log in on Android, no cost involved.
- most Apple first party apps have a Google equivalent (google wallet, google keep notes, google messaging etc.) that is very similar
- my AirPods work equally well with android
Fine - but that took Google billions and a decade of work to reach near-parity. A new entrant will not have any of that. Web apps can do much more than they could 10 or 15 years ago but still takes massive effort.
Google's been ahead of Apple on tons of core user-facing features since the start (widgets, backgrounds, folders). The two platforms have extremely slowly converged to near-total feature parity. The only "advantage" of Apple's total ecosystem lock-in is relative seamlessness due to the vertical integration between their various services.
The thing is, it's barely any harder to set up an equivalent Google/Android ecosystem and has been for well over a decade as well. The real issue on the Google side of things is the renaming/shifting of services. Messages -> Gmail Chat -> Talk -> Duo -> Messages, Google Play Music -> Youtube Music, etc.
Do you use MFA? How about meetings (zoom/teams)? What about MS Office or Google Apps? Is the new email client up to snuff? All of these are much better as apps.
Users do not want to browse the web on mobile for all their activities, when Apps are generally faster, more secure, and has all their prefs recorded EVEN if a webapp is functionally equivalent (and most are only 70-90% equivalent)
So the new entrant has to curry favor with all these large software vendors (some of whom are now competitors) and offer something for some key uses of a smartphone.
You're right that apps can be better, but phone apps seem to always miss functionality compared to desktop web versions of the same thing. Even phone web version of Google doesn't have functional parity with desktop web Google. The phone app for Google is even worse.
There were smartphones before the iPhone. I'm not sure you can label Apple's position as "first mover advantage".
They got where they did by leapfrogging the competition, dominating the supply chain, having incredible customer trust/service (with a sprinkle of Jobs' magic), thus reframing the entire category of smartphone.
It's unclear if anyone has delivered all these together. Google has dominated all other players at the OS level.
Apple isn't usually the first mover, though. It's not like the Mac was the first desktop computer, or the iPhone was the first smartphone, or the Apple Watch was the first smartwatch. Apple usually ends up with their market position whether or not they're the first mover.
gosh, if they hadn't basically created the market for phones like this it's hard to see how they would be dominating the market for phones like this, given their behavior.
because that's what first mover advantage is in this case. They created a market, in hardware - that's pretty difficult.
regarding other posts saying Apple wasn't first mover in smartphones:
Hey, I remember what those old things looked like. There was such a qualitative difference between the iPhone and its competitors at the time that it seemed like a whole new category of product.
I owned one. I barely used the keyboard. I barely used the internet connectivity. I even sat out the first iPhone. But I went into a store and tried one out and I knew I was getting the 3G when it came out. Phones may have had those features before, but they were strictly checkbox exercises. The iPhone was revolutionary.
Only: the iPhone did not have first mover advantages.
There were plenty of mobile phones out there before that could download and run apps, and Apple didn't even have their famous app store at the beginning of the iPhone, either.
They were the first device with a big display and a first-class web browser. That created the smartphone market you now take for granted but was completely revolutionary at the time when most devices had tiny screens and half their physical size was a keyboard.
The other big thing is more subtle: the iPhone was the first major break in the carriers’ value-extraction model. It was common that you’d get phones with half the storage used by promo apps the carrier wouldn’t let you uninstall, and the carrier app stores were both limited and unbelievably expensive. We had multiple clients who were interested in mobile apps but the cost of being in the stores was like $50k per carrier plus half of the proceeds, and that was an improvement over the time Qualcomm demanded to see the balance sheet so they could decide what percentage of their TOTAL revenue was fair – we asked and they confirmed that they expected a cut of every sale, even ones which never involved the mobile app. The energy at WWDC08 was incredible because the app stores were both terms were so much better than anyone had gotten before, and you only had to do it once. I still think it should be better now but it used to be so much worse.
There were high-end WinCE and Symbian devices with large displays and no physical keyboards (or sliders where keyboard doesn't encroach on screen size). To remind, first-gen iPhone was 3.5" @ 320x480 in 2007; for comparison, Dell Axim was 3.7" @ 480x640 in 2005, and by 2007 there were some WinMo handhelds with 480x800.
The thing that really made iPhone different was capacitive touchscreen, and the OS designed around that. WinMo pretty much required the stylus for many things.
Also note “and a first-class web browser” in my compound statement. If you used devices of that era, the browsers sucked at handling most of the web. I knew people who had the previous generation devices (I’m excluding the PalmOS ones I owned since they required a stylus) but nobody used the mobile browser much because it was so unrewarding, and everyone I know replaced them with iPhones due to the web experience.
Opinions varied widely on that - the Flash experience on mobile was horrible enough that it works equally well as an argument that “the web” and Flash were substantially not the same.
It was definitely horrible, but given how pervasive Flash was on the web then, I think a more reasonable takeaway is to say that no mobile device had first-class browser support until HTML5 <video> became prevalent. To me, "first class" implies "I can visit any popular website and expect it to work", which was decidedly not the case for iPhone at introduction.
Everything you say might be true, but I wouldn't necessarily call that first mover advantage.
> [...] when most devices had tiny screens and half their physical size was a keyboard.
Ie Apple introduced a new, arguably better, entrant into an existing market, and managed to grow that market.
But I can see your argument that you can re-interpret being that first to really commit to a big touch-screen only and (almost) no buttons to be a 'first move'. (Though a different comment mentioned that Apple wasn't the first here either?)
Also note the part after “and” - I wrote that as a compound sentence because I saw more people than I expected go from both earlier smartphones or PDAs because the iPhone gave them the web in a way that earlier devices just didn’t. None of my clients had seen much in the way of public mobile web (or WAP) adoption prior to that, but that changed surprisingly quickly when the iPhone launched.
I worked with a number of organizations which built public web apps. Nobody really asked about support for mobile browsers before the iPhone - some people checked that, say, an order form was technically functional but the assumption was that if it was slow or hard to read that was more to be expected than something they were going to pay to improve.
Yes, though touchscreens weren't exactly an Apple invention either.
I seem to dimly remember that they had some early lead on multitouch. But that one specific nifty technology is a far cry from a general 'first mover advantage' in phones with apps.
Apps weren't what drove people to the original iPhone (the original iPhone didn't have an app store). Apple was essentially the first mainstream company to commit fully to the current smartphone design — a flat, rectangular, portrait aspect ratio brick, with a single slab of capacitive multi-touch glass. There were many other competing form factors at the time. Apple correctly deduced that touching your screen is the most intuitive way to interact with smaller devices, and they had a huge first mover advantage by committing to that paradigm early.
They also included WiFi in every model and iOS had transparent prioritization of WiFi over cellular. Apple's deal with Cingular (AT&T) also gave the iPhone plan unlimited data.
That meant the iPhone had a full fledged browser that you could actually use. The browsers on PalmOS and Windows Mobile were jokes compared to Safari and most devices didn't have WiFi so we're always stuck on relatively slow cellular. A lot of smartphone plans also didn't include unlimited data. The BlackBerry plans were equally terrible, tied to BBM accounts, and the browsers were even worse.
The iPhone also had a real e-Mail client that could connect directly to a POP/IMAP server. A lot of competing smartphones only supported e-Mail through gateways run by the carriers or an enterprise connection. Even lacking features early on like BCC early iOS Mail was a lot better than the competition for normal users.
I think these all come down to Apple approaching the iPhone from asking what normal people might want to do with their phones instead of what "corporate" wanted people to do with their smartphones. This was 180° from the design approach of RIM, Microsoft, Palm, and even Nokia.
Nokia did pioneer using the smartphone as a decent digital camera (among other things).
For instance decent enough to take a picture of an A4 page and be able to read it afterwards.
And IMAP support.
And Opera mini was a good enough browser, though mostly for text, as indeed 3G cellular (which the first iPhone didn't have) then cost 1000€/Go (funnily enough, that felt cheap and fast at the time, because it indeed was compared to what came before).
(Also video calls, though those are still niche for phones.)
And I hear Nokias were themselves quite primitive compared to what Japan had ?
> The browsers on PalmOS and Windows Mobile were jokes compared to Safari and most devices didn't have WiFi so we're always stuck on relatively slow cellular.
Again, everything in your comment this seems like Apple made an arguably better offering in an existing market. That's not a first mover advantage.
If anything you can say, Apple was late to the party and learned from the mistakes of others?
> Again, everything in your comment this seems like Apple made an arguably better offering in an existing market. That's not a first mover advantage.
I never claimed Apple had a first mover advantage. They made a smartphone much more aligned to consumer desires than any of the competition. Palm, Microsoft, RIM, and Nokia all approached smartphones from the angle of business/enterprise users.
You can call Apple's approach being late to the party but that presumes that them entering some market is a forgone conclusion. Apple has rarely if ever been truly first to market with a product.
Apple doesn't even have any data plans, do they? I mean Google sometimes plays at being an ISP with projects like Loon or Google Fibre, but Apple has never done that?
It was exclusive to the iPhone, in that the iPhone + ATT plan was the only unlimited data plan you could get at release on a non-carrier controlled general purpose smartphone.
Which is to say, not one that locked away features and functionality (ringtones! games!) to create additional revenue channels for carriers.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but per memory Jobs used iPhone exclusivity to crack carrier "Our pipes" models open.
> in that the iPhone + ATT plan was the only unlimited data plan you could get at release on a non-carrier controlled general purpose smartphone.
I had unlimited data on non-carrier controlled phones pre-iPhone on AT&T, and it was far cheaper than the iPhone data plan. Dumbphone plans had cheap data add-ons in comparison, just take the SIM from the ultra-cheap phone they included in the plan and drop it in whatever unlocked GSM phone you wanted. It supported 3G before the iPhone even launched. You just had to get a 3G-enabled cheap dumbphone with your plan to ensure you got a 3G-activated SIM.
Obviously, they didn't market this so most consumers didn't know this was an option.
Apple wasn't ruled not a monopoly. It was ruled that the evidence Epic brought in the case was insufficient to show Apple was a monopoly, and the court would entertain other arguments in the future.
Apple didn't need to do anything, but they didn't "win" that convincingly.
That’s splitting hairs. By that logic nobody ever wins when they defend a lawsuit, the plaintiffs just fail to prove their point and different plaintiffs and/or different evidence might prevail in the future.
In the coming weeks or months the judge in the Epic case will decide if gacha games can link directly to their own payments without Apple, that threatens 70% of spending on the App Store in Apple's worst-case scenario (per the Epic case it was revealed 10% of users do 70% of spending, in such games). Minus the tens of billions in annual fees on gacha games, and with litigation and regulation around the world I think they will just abandon their most contentious restrictions.
On top of that is the DOJ antitrust case starting next year.
On top of that is the stalled, but not dead, legislation that would bring the US somewhat aligned with the EU in terms of competition.
I don't think Apple weathers all of this without broadly opening-up iOS.
Apple would probably just start charging gigantic fees for apps that meet certain criteria to replace some of the lost revenue or maybe even drive higher and more consistent revenue. If I recall correctly, that’s what they did in the European Union.
I’m not very convinced that “opening up” the Apple App Store will amount to much but
I know this is a contrarian view.
Changing the accounting to decide what split multi-billion dollar company Epic gets versus multi-hundred-billion dollar Apple gets has nothing to do with innovation or competition, and this is particularly true in gaming.
In fact, it seems like these rulings are likely to have the opposite intended effect on new and innovative apps as costs to do business increase and navigating publishing across various app stores will come with their own rules, costs, and headaches all the while establishes firms who already have the resources can create their own app stores and further extract rent.
Epic charges I think 12% or 17% on their store? Maybe the costs are lower than Apple, idk, but now Epic who is your competitor dictates what you publish on their store and you get the privilege of paying them to do so.
I think we’re cutting off the head of a snake and it’s growing 10 more in response.
> Changing the accounting to decide what split multi-billion dollar company Epic gets versus multi-hundred-billion dollar Apple gets has nothing to do with innovation or competition, and this is particularly true in gaming.
I vehemently disagree. When a user buys a game, where does their money go?
On the desktop, their money is sent to the storefront where the game was bought. Their payment is processed, the service's fee is exacted, and the user is given their game while the developer is paid their revenue. This is true even for MacOS, where the Mac App Store offers it's own experience in fair competition with Steam and other third-parties like GOG. iOS is unique in attempting to appear as a multi-purpose computer while also restricting user options to a small subset of profitable selections. That is not fair, to anyone.
> In fact, it seems like these rulings are likely to have the opposite intended effect on new and innovative apps
Pending evidence, you're just wrong. As a user of Android I will tell you from firsthand experience that my absolute favorite apps would not exist without sideloading. MacOS and Windows simply wouldn't have games at all if their distribution terms weren't free enough to attract publishers. And if you sort the iOS app store by top-grossing games, you'll quickly realize that the iPhone doesn't have real games either. Publishers like Nintendo left after their initial experiments - others like Epic and Microsoft were literally forced to leave.
You say that Epic's fee is just as bad as Apple's, but you don't substantiate how that's worse for users. Having two similar fees encourages competition - it creates an incentive to innovate in delivery and provide a superior service to users. Apple can charge twice as much if they want, but they (same as Epic) have to justify their pricing for it to compete fairly. Currently Apple answers to no one, which creates an obvious price fixing incentive on their behalf. This is demonstrably anticompetitive.
> I know this is a contrarian view.
Have you ever considered that it's not contrarian, and just wrong? People are eager to look at this from an "us vs them" perspective rather than an "profitability vs righteousness" one. Apple's stance is literally indefensible. When asked to justify their market position, the absolute best defense HN can present is that Apple abused the market first and never reneged their abuses. It's time for us to stop giving Apple a benefit of the doubt they don't deserve - the iPhone is not an appliance, and can be perfectly profitable without service revenue despite Apple's complaints.
> I vehemently disagree. When a user buys a game, where does their money go?
Microsoft
Sony
Nintendo
Ubisoft
Epic
Valve
Square Enix
etc...
I just don't really care if Apple gets a larger cut of the venue or if these large corporations do. Even on Desktop things aren't that great. My friends and I wanted to play Civ VI recently and they were on the Epic game store and I had purchased the game on Steam and they weren't compatible for cross-platform play. I know that's mostly a one-off, but it's not like I can buy Nintendo's games on Steam, nor can I transfer my license of Elden Ring on Xbox to my Epic Game Store.
None of this helps small developers they just now have to publish their games to multiple app stores which you may or may not have or may or may not want to set up an account for and you're paying Epic 17% instead of Apple.
Of course you can argue (and should, in my view) that those things suck and we shouldn't support those things either and I would agree! But where I disagree is then saying well Apple's the only malicious actor here. They're all in it together.
> Pending evidence, you're just wrong. As a user of Android I will tell you from firsthand experience that my absolute favorite apps would not exist without sideloading. MacOS and Windows simply wouldn't have games at all if their distribution terms weren't free enough to attract publishers. And if you sort the iOS app store by top-grossing games, you'll quickly realize that the iPhone doesn't have real games either. Publishers like Nintendo left after their initial experiments - others like Epic and Microsoft were literally forced to leave.
Well, it is a recent change. So yes it is pending evidence. If Epic and Microsoft left it's because they want to gain control and more of the Apple revenue slice instead of paying out. Neither helps small game developers. Most of the limitation on mobile for gaming is that mobile gaming sucks and always will because the interface is bad compared to keyboard and mouse or a controller.
> You say that Epic's fee is just as bad as Apple's, but you don't substantiate how that's worse for users. Having two similar fees encourages competition - it creates an incentive to innovate in delivery and provide a superior service to users. Apple can charge twice as much if they want, but they (same as Epic) have to justify their pricing for it to compete fairly. Currently Apple answers to no one, which creates an obvious price fixing incentive on their behalf. This is demonstrably anticompetitive.
Well as a user now I have to install yet another app that has my payment information and its own arbitrary rules. I might forget what App Store has what app. Maybe Epic makes me agree to some privacy considerations that Apple didn't in order to play their game and they only publish this "must-have" game on their store so they can collect data on me.
As someone who uses a Mac it's frustrating that not all games work on macOS. Why does Microsoft get to release Age of Empires only on the Windows-only Xbox Game Store (or whatever)? That's ok? There's a lot more of these dark patterns going on than these companies are leading you to believe.
YMMV but stores are incentivized to conduct activities to keep people using their store. Sometimes it's helpful to users and results in lower cost, other times it results in gatekeeping and other things that suck. My point is just that it's not a net moral good, but instead it's neutral and probably worse for developers since they have more bureaucracy to deal with and users since they have to deal with all of these app stores and payment mechanisms and whatnot.
> Have you ever considered that it's not contrarian, and just wrong?
I've considered it, and then considered that it's not wrong and it's just contrarian to what most people here on HN think.
Most people day-to-day don't really care about this and just prefer a single App Store, but then on HN people who like to jailbreak their phones and install and tinker with their phones and want lots of app stores with apps and are over-represented here.
> If apple literally hadn't won their own case 2 years ago you'd be right.
how does some previous judge decision matter for weather you _should_ crack down on a company?
it doesn't, right
the government can change laws, and judges can overrule decisions and as the US supreme court has shown even if there isn't "any new evidence in favor of the new decision but even evidence in favor of the old decision" decisions can be overruled and be done 100% in opposition to precedence of the same court.
yes but that doesn't mean that the us should not crack down on marked power abuse
being atm. in a position where suing you doesn't work well doesn't mean you are not causing harm nor doesn't mean you are not acting outside of the law. It only means that there is currently no effective way to use the law against you. But that can always change. And the US cracking down on them isn't limited to judge orders from cases of 3rd party companies against them. More specifically it's not even part of the state cracking down as that only refers to legislative and executive organs of the state judicial organs are supposed to be neutral.
Apple maintains a fully closed platform, while Google appears open yet is closed in practice. Like how Windows bundled IE, meaning that alternative browsers were never used in practice - the EU made them add a browser selection page.
For years, OEMs were made to install a number of Google apps onto the homescreen at predefined places. One of which is the Play Store. Amazon (for example) absolutely did not have this advantage, despite this kind of thing happening on non-Google hardware.
Or we can look at why Google's Play Store is allowed to auto-update apps without user interaction, and... that's it. That's the only store that's allowed to do that. And while the tech community might like being able to control which apps auto-update, everyone wants some apps to be allowed to update without user interaction.
Speaking of OEMs (and non-Google Android in general), Google has moved some functionality from base Android into Google Play Services so some apps won't work unless you get that installed.
This is easily seen to be false, but I see it repeated often. The functionality in Google Play Services requires a server. If you don't use Google services, you don't need Play Services. https://developers.google.com/android/reference/packages
That functionality was never available in phones with Google builds without Google Play Services, so it doesn't fit GGP's claim. The reason it's not in base AOSP out of the box is that it requires a server, and any carrier can build an implementation for downloading carrier profiles without Google Play Services and any OEM can build an LPA using https://source.android.com/docs/core/connect/esim-overview.
You don’t have GPS satellite data, “location services” without Google Play services. That means a gps lock takes minutes. This data could be stored on the phone, but it’s better for google if you fetch it from them when you need it.
Another example of something that was never in AOSP and so does not fit GGGGP's claim. You can still get your GPS location without Google Play Services exactly the same as you always could.
And Google heavily pushes them to, to the point of (when I last made an android app years ago) automatically adding its libraries to your project every time you open the project, then giving compiler warnings if you use the old ones.
the only thing you miss out on without google play services is the wifi/bluetooth location service
gps satellite data comes from a supl server, and supl support is built in to aosp.
now, unfortunately one of the most reliable supl data sources is google, but it's also trivial to run a proxy to mask where you're requesting the supl data from (neither the request nor payload vary)
> the only thing you miss out on without google play services is the wifi/bluetooth location service
not true. A standalone gps unit can use an almanac to get a gps lock, but supl suppplants using an almanac.
supl is a spec created by the telecom industry[1][2]. I don't think they want people to have good offline gps.
> it's also trivial to run a proxy to mask where you're requesting the supl data from
Lmao. It is definitely not trivial. I have an Android that is running lineage and microG, it's an endeavor for someone who likes tech.
Regardless, according to my understanding of the spec, the supl server authenticates your identity[3] and is already effectively tracking you, so using a proxy would only obfuscate your IP address. As such, I don't think IP alone is enough to maintain privacy from Google. You would need middleware to anonymize your device ID.
But really, I find it egregious that I can't choose to use simple gps almanac data and must instead either use a blind fix on my phone or give my data up to some random server. Standalone GPS units that use almanac data get a lock virtually instantly compared to my Note 10. I'm trying to create a disconnected smartphone for backpacking. It's garbage to have to burn battery needlessly.
eh. you can't provision the esim without google play services today. after the esim is provisioned you can put whatever firmware on the phone you like, and it will just work.
i'm running lineageos with no google play services on a verizon esim as my daily driver
> Amazon (for example) absolutely did not have this advantage
Google incentivized the OEMs to do that. Amazon could have incentivized OEMs to do that also, but the business plan that Amazon pursued did not involve third parties building their own Kindle devices.
> Or we can look at why Google's Play Store is allowed to auto-update apps without user interaction, and... that's it.
This has never been true for Android in general. This hasn't been true for phones that only ship with the Play Store since Android 12, which I credit Epic for.
So, something similar then. OK, not as onerous as removing the whole OS, which they can’t do because Android uses an open license, but the next big thing. No play store, no Google services. May as well remove the OS.
Many of the fundamental apps on Android, and the Play store itself, can only be used under license. Android OSP does not contain many things that you would expect to be part of Android.
Also, most modern devices won't even let you flash your own OS, even a modified copy of Android. It's irrelevant if the source code is available if you can't actually run it anywhere. It's the TeVo case all over again.
You now have a third party app repository on your phone. And actually every Samsung device comes with their own app store installed in addition to Google Play. It's not perfect, Play having the privilege to automatically install updates, but good enough.
Also, AOSP is completely usable even without Google's apps or Play Services, and one proof of that is that Amazon forked it for their Kindle Fire.
No matter how much hackers and activists try to redefine the word "monopoly" to mean what it isn't, the word still will have the same meaning. And being a market leader doesn't mean you are a monopoly. Toyota does not have a monopoly on motorized transportation.
Having two competing companies being tried for the same monopoly is tragicomic, and only to show how rotten the courts have become.
That's not quite a fair comparison. The issue isn't Google v Apple--it's Google/Apple creating vertically integrated software platforms where they have a monopoly on App Stores.
Imo this is more similar to John Deere creating tractor DRM to lock out other entities from repairs. If Toyota came up with a proprietary motor design such that no other repair shop or parts manufacturer could make repairs, it'd be a similar situation. As it stands, there's 3rd party companies making replacement parts and a secondary market with used parts in addition to varying degrees of interoperability with other parts.
There is no secondary market for apps since they're all sold as licenses and never own anything. They also intentionally put restrictions in place to prevent 3rd parties from creating "replacement" apps
To build out this metaphor a little more, John Deere makes the tractor (phone OS) which pulls machinery (apps - plow, fertilizer spreader, harvester, etc). This would be John Deere controlling which equipment the tractor may or may not be allowed to pull, only machinery allowed by John Deere who gets a 30% cut for the privilege. This would be a great deal for Johnny D!
This. I'm so tired of people (and Google/Apple themselves) trying to change the narrative and say that this is about Android and iOS competing. It's not. Both companies are effectively saying you have no right to change the upholstery in your car unless you buy the package from them.
This is about the economic freedoms of end users and app developers within a platform, not whether lock in is a feature for consumer comparison when buying a phone.
> That's not quite a fair comparison. The issue isn't Google v Apple--it's Google/Apple creating vertically integrated software platforms where they have a monopoly on App Stores.
That's the exact reasoning I'm calling tragicomic: They are competitors, neither of them have a monopoly on app stores. If you say that two competitors have a monopoly, then you can say that for example all car manufacturers are in a monopoly on making cars. Sure, then the word monopoly doesn't mean anything, and we have simply removed a word from the vocabulary and made everybody dumber.
Your points and comparisons are valid, but they haven't anything to do with a monopoly.
You are being overly semantic. There is a monopoly and duopoly, and regardless of the number of companies involved, antitrust laws can be used to break up these businesses and prevent anti-competitive practices to encourage market growth.
The e-book pricing scandal is an example of antitrust activity against a number of companies forming a cartel. The US government isn't bringing this case under those laws, but effectively for lay person conversations, using monopoly where more technical terms like duopoly is okay
In your comment above you've suggested two terms that fit better: "Duopoly" and "cartel".
Anti-competitive actions should be combated, but why do people insist that anything has to do with being a "monopoly"?
To draw a comparison, in criminal cases the courts will not determine if an accused is "a bad hombre" – they will determine if he committed the crime or not.
This is like those people (and lawmakers sadly) who try to define any sexual offense as "rape". Thinking that the severity of the crime is only tied to one single word.
You are ignoring the relevant market. Sure, Google and Apple are competitors in the smartphone market (where they have a very dangerous duopoly, but let's leave that aside). But they each have a monopoly in the software distribution market for their respective platforms. Additionally, Google has a monopoly position in the smartphone OS market: if you want to build a smartphone, Google Android is basically the only option in town (Apple doesn't sell or license iOS, so it's not a competitor at all in this market).
Additonally, Google have used their position in the Android software market to cement their position in the smartphone OS market, and vice-versa. For example, they de-list certain apps from Google Play Store is they are offered on certain competitor stores (notably, Amazon's). And they don't allow Google Play to be installed on a phone that doesn't ship with it from the factory. And there are numerous other examples. Plus, they've been foolish enough to discuss a lot of these strategies internally over email as ways of ensuring competitors don't succeed, which came out clearly in the discovery process.
> a "monopolist" is a firm with significant and durable market power. Courts look at the firm's market share, but typically do not find monopoly power if the firm (or a group of firms acting in concert) has less than 50 percent of the sales of a particular product or service within a certain geographic area.
Note the "typically", and other courts never even had this rule of thumb to begin with...
While the term “monopoly” is being misused, it shouldn’t be that difficult to determine, with basic reading comprehension, that the intent is “seemingly anti-competitive behavior”.
Sure, but I would argue that Google's platform was open enough in that it was possible to download and install alternative app stores. They shouldn't need to do most of the things that are being requested here, like distribute play store apps in those alternate stores or change their requirements about what payment systems are used in apps downloaded through their app store. For the most part I think they should still be able to do what they want to do in their own app store, just like Apple.
Why should that matter? If anything, shouldn't that mean that Google doesn't have a monopoly on Android apps in the way that Apple has on iOS apps because the device manufacturer can pre-install their own store on their devices? Like Galaxy Store on Samsung devices
It matters because Google got to the current state (Play Store installed on more devices than it would have been) through anti-competitive behavior.
Ergo, the redress isn't to say "Keep the ill gotten gains, but don't do it any more" -- it's to attempt to return things to the competitive playing field that might have existed if Google hadn't broken the law.
From that perspective, forcing them to use their market share to distribute alternatives makes sense.
It's not a court of public opinion. This isn't a popularity contest; they're not running for public office or something here.
In real court (with real lawyers and real judges), precedent often matters (often, it matters quite a lot).
Informing the court of [what may be] meaningful precedent is important; without this deliberate informative step, the court might not know about it at all. The court cannot take anything into consideration that it has no knowledge of.
(Despite the black robes and literal ban-hammers, judges aren't all-seeing or all-knowing.)
Although Epic appealed to SCOTUS, and SCOTUS rejected their appeal, which makes it seem like SCOTUS is unlikely to rule that app stores have to be open.
In general the judicial system's bizarre treatment of Apple baffles and somewhat infuriates me. If Google has to allow alternative app stores on Android due to monopoly power, and has to allow alternate billing options due to monopoly power, and yet is the smaller of the two in the U.S., how on Earth does the legal system continue to give a free pass to Apple doing the same thing while having more market power in the U.S. than Google? It's obscene and makes me deeply question the integrity of the judicial system in the U.S. as a whole.
Personally I think both Google and Apple should have to open up their app store system and billing systems more broadly, but it's pretty despicable for the judicial system to simply pick winners and losers like this.
The difference is that Apple doesn't try and pretend their platform is open-source, whereas Google wants to have its cake (i.e. impose competitive blockers on their own platform) and eat it too (i.e. benefit from calling their platform open source and having free development fed back into it).
Yeah the code being open-source vs closed-source didn't have anything to do with the legal ruling here. The judge claimed that the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store are not competitors (LMFAO), and therefore Google can be held liable even if Apple wasn't. https://www.theverge.com/23959932/epic-v-google-trial-antitr...
(FWIW, the journalist who wrote both articles is ethically barred from reporting on Apple due to his wife being an Apple employee, but still apparently covers Google/Android, so... Take the slant of his coverage with a grain of salt.)
You have two walled gardens and two monopoly-esque distribution platforms within those walls.
Nobody with an iPhone can use Google Play, and nobody with an Android can use the app store.
Which is why disallowing, or hindering, competing app stores within one walled garden is clearly anti-competitive.
It's not reasonable to expect consumers in one ecosystem to completely leave the ecosystem for one specific app, just like it's not reasonable to expect a homeowner to sell their house and move somewhere just so they can pay a lower utility bill.
Is the utility company serving your house a competitor with the utility company across the street if I have to move houses to switch between them?
Yes, if you look at the market as a whole. Clearly not if you use a reasonable interpretation and consider costs of switching.
If Apple and Google are truly providing unique value to developers and consumers, then they have nothing to fear from alternative app stores. Their profits won't be affected.
Android as a platform is open source. Android does not promise any of Google Services' features.
Meanwhile, Apple literally reinvents apps/features that developers on iOS have made and rolls them into the base OS/you can bet when an API is blocked or deprecated that Apple is just about to release their own version of something.
People like to joke that Google's "don't be evil" is no longer applicable, but they completely ignore just how evil Apple really is. Totally brainwashed.
I can see why they'd want to say "our competitor does it worse but we're the only ones being regulated". Sure, they'd rather not be regulated at all... but, if they are, then they want to be regulated no worse than their competitor.
I liked the absurdity of one of the top comments on the Verge article, which was that under the requirements of this ruling, Apple could open up an app store for Android and Google would be forced to put it on their Play Store.
Is a rendering engine still a web browser if you remove all the chrome and extra features built around the rendering engine?
I would say not.
And it has a rendering engine: the iOS WebKit engine. It’s not Google’s preferred rendering engine and Chrome isn’t my choice of browser well, anywhere at all actually, but it’s still a functional web browser.
> Is a rendering engine still a web browser if you remove all the chrome and extra features built around the rendering engine?
> I would say not.
No, obviously not. If Apple were to allow third-party web rendering engines but disallow third-party web chrome that would be equally ridiculous. But just because one part of a browser is important doesn't mean that other parts of a browser aren't also important.
> And it has a rendering engine: the iOS WebKit engine. It’s not Google’s preferred rendering engine and Chrome isn’t my choice of browser well, anywhere at all actually, but it’s still a functional web browser.
It may be a functional web browser (honestly arguable given how old and buggy the iOS rendering engine is), but it's not "Google's wildly popular web browser".
> But just because one part of a browser is important doesn't mean that other parts of a browser aren't also important.
Sure, but both halves are still there. WebKit is just filling in for Blink.
> but it's not "Google's wildly popular web browser".
You want to know the screwed up part? It actually is. There’s no gun to Google’s head to list any web browser at all for iPhones in the App Store, but they do, and they themselves chose to brand it exactly the same as their desktop and Android browser; and that’s exactly how people perceive it: Google Chrome. It’s also wildly popular. I ask people about it sometimes when I see them using it and all that geeky crap that you and I know about how it’s not the same as Google’s “real” browser is beyond them. They don’t care and it’s just Google Chrome to them.
> It may be a functional web browser (honestly arguable given how old and buggy the iOS rendering engine is)
WebKit is still a top class rendering engine and only about as buggy as any other rendering engine. Blink is of the same lineage given it is a fork of WebKit and Gecko is even older.
No they're not. Google is only being allowed to distribute half their browser, frankensteined together with half of Apple's, because Apple does not allow distributing a complete browser.
> WebKit is still a top class rendering engine and only about as buggy as any other rendering engine. Blink is of the same lineage given it is a fork of WebKit and Gecko is even older.
Mainline WebKit is a fine rendering engine, but the iOS distribution is significantly outdated and buggy. "Safari is the new IE" caught on for a reason.
>WebKit is still a top class rendering engine and only about as buggy as any other rendering engine. Blink is of the same lineage given it is a fork of WebKit and Gecko is even older.
But we should have the option to choose. Apple is very anti-consumer, making all the choices (often bad ones) for us, giving us none. The court should rule to open Apple more. Android is open enough that you can do whatever you want, yet not complicated enough so people get confused with all the options you have.
I agree we should have the option to choose, but I’m not going to consign any statement that it should be done by government force. That’s reckless and unnecessary.
Also Epic lost their case, so “the Court” isn’t in a position to do anything here. Even if they were, there is no law on the books anywhere in the country to serve as the basis for what you want the courts to do and someone new would have to bring a case, with standing.
The Feds are trying, I don’t remember web browsers being part of their filing, but it’s also been a while since I read it so I may have forgotten; but the problem is not only did Epic lose their case, they lost it in a way that thoroughly screwed over the Feds who were trying to build an antitrust case against Apple by getting a Federal district court to rule that Apple isn’t a monopoly, and if they can’t get to a monopoly ruling under a different district court that will stand up to appeal, they’re going to have a hard time getting Apple or a court to force Apple to agree to anything.
>>> Is a web browser still a web browser if you remove the rendering engine?
>> Is a rendering engine still a web browser if you remove all the chrome and extra features built around the rendering engine?
> Is that supposed to be a counterargument?
Only as much as what I was responding to was an argument.
> If you can't replace the rendering engine, then you're not able to install your own web browser.
Except that is literally not true if a rendering engine is available to you to use.
> Which is replacing the one that was removed.
“Removed” would imply there was ever another rendering engine in use on Chrome for iPhones. The Chrome that is in the App Store now is one that Google chose to ship and call Chrome. People like and use it too.
I think we can agree that WebKit is being subbed in over Google’s preferred choice of rendering engines though.
> Only as much as what I was responding to was an argument.
What you said could be the start of a counterargument to someone that says renderer==browser.
But they never said that. Their argument only depends on replacing the renderer being a sometimes-necessary component of installing your own browser. Talking about replacing the renderer but not the UI is a thought experiment that doesn't counter that.
> Except that is literally not true if a rendering engine is available to you to use.
Only if everyone agrees with your personal definition of browser. Many people don't.
> “Removed” would imply there was ever another rendering engine in use on Chrome for iPhones.
No, it just implies their starting point for making their iOS browser included the chrome codebase.
Apple does not compete with Google to distribute apps on Android and Google does not compete with Apple to distribute apps on iOS.
The value (to consumers) of the App Store is not that it is so locked down, but rather that it is the only way for people to put apps on the phones they have already bought.
But wait, you might say, Apple actually can open an app store on Android and compete with Google now!
But c'mon, it'll be a cold day in hell when Apple helps make the case that these rules should also apply to them.
The issue is that the precedent they point to was categorically ruled _not_ an illegal monopoly in a similar court case. I don't disagree that there should be more competition in for platforms, but I also can recognize that the legally binding opinion on that disagrees with mine.
According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_Games_v._Apple, the ruling definitively stated that Apple does not need to add third party app stores to its platform, and the appeal upheld that ruling (with the Supreme Court declining to hear further appeals, meaning the case is finished). The only change Apple had to make is supporting third-party payment platforms.
> Judge Rogers issued her first ruling on September 10, 2021, which was considered a split decision by law professor Mark Lemley.[63] Rogers found in favor of Apple on nine of ten counts brought up against them in the case, including Epic's charges related to Apple's 30% revenue cut and Apple's prohibition against third-party marketplaces on the iOS environment.[64] Rogers did rule against Apple on the final charge related to anti-steering provisions, and issued a permanent injunction that, in 90 days from the ruling, blocked Apple from preventing developers from linking app users to other storefronts from within apps to complete purchases or from collecting information within an app, such as an email, to notify users of these storefronts.
> ...
> The Ninth Circuit issued its opinion on April 24, 2023. The three judge panel all agreed that the lower court ruling should be upheld. However, the Ninth Circuit agreed to stay the injunction requiring Apple to offer third-party payment options in July 2023, allowing time for Apple to submit its appeal to the Supreme Court.[79] Both Apple and Epic Games have appealed this decision to the Supreme Court in July 2023.[80][81] Justice Elena Kagan declined Epic's emergency request to lift the Ninth Circuit's stay in August 2023.[82]
> On January 16, 2024, the Supreme Court declined to hear the appeals from Apple and Epic in the case.
Given that the claim I was responding to implied that it was foolish of Google to cite Apple due to them being a monopoly, can you elaborate on why you think this ruling somehow was an obviously bad idea for them to argue as a precedent? To repeat myself from before, I'm _not_ expressing personal opinion about whether iOS and Android should be allowed to operate the way they do, but asserting that the court ruling does in fact state that the current way Apple handles third-party app stores is legal.
I believe it is too late for that and we are stuck with bad mobile OS. Additional stores don't solve the problem of hardware not being open at all.
People have accepted that either manufacturer or mobile provider owns their phone. You do not have administrative rights and some apps even disallow being run in a more free environment.
They could preinstall a bunch of competitors and you'd choose the ones you keep at first startup (like Microsoft had to do with browser). This would allow fairer competition for competing stores.
Also they need to make sure the playstore is not required for the phone to work correctly which I'm not sure is the case on stock Androids currently.
You can disable them, which is functionally uninstalling. Actually being able to uninstall them isn't technically possible because their base images live on a read-only partition so they survive factory reset (which erases all RW partitions). The OS could _pretend_ they're uninstalled, but that seems strictly worse than the existing presentation which more accurately reflects reality.
Not exactly the same situation, but I keep wondering : is deleting personal data only "pretending", since most of it could potentially be restored for quite some time (especially on transistor storage) ?
Sure, but I think it's fair to say "why are you regulating us significantly more than you are regulating our similar competitor?" Android is already more open than iOS; you can already install third-party app stores, where the only hoop you have to jump is agreeing to a warning about installing things from "unknown sources".
But yeah, Google doesn't allow rival app stores to be distributed through the Play Store, nor does it give access to the full Play Store catalog to third-party app stores. Frankly I'd never even thought of the latter thing as something I or anyone would want, but sure, ok, make them do that.
Meanwhile, Apple gets to keep their App Store monopoly (in the US at least), a situation that is even more locked down than Android's has ever been.
I absolutely agree that Apple's platform needs to be opened up too. And while I'm often not sympathetic toward Google on a lot of things, I can absolutely be sympathetic toward them feeling like they are being treated vastly unequally by the law.
It's simple. There exists a market for app stores on Android, there doesn't exist such a market on iOS. So, Apple can't be said to have a monopoly position in the iOS app distribution market, because, again, such a market doesn't exist, and there is no general obligation to create one (there is a different discussion about the app market, which Epic was attacking and which failed for now).
But on Android, you do have a market for app stores - there is Google, and then there are various bit players (F-Droid, Samsung Store, Amazon Store, and others). And Google is by far the biggest, and using their position to set the rules for all the others, including actively hostile actions like de-listing some apps if they don't offer exclusivity to Google Play, disallowing Google Play installation if the OEM doesn't ship it by default, etc.
The reductio ad absurdum of this style of argument would hold that every retailer is a monopoly, because once you walk into the store, you can only buy things from them.
It has allowed it, but it intentionally cripples alternative markets. For example, I cannot allow F-Droid to autoinstall and autoupdate apps on my phone if I don't have a rooted device.
> Apple's claim is simple: The monopoly was from the very beginning, when the iPhone had 0.0% market share. If it was anti-competitive, the iPhone would have failed. If developers didn't like it, the iPhone would have failed. Has Apple unfairly done anything new now that they have a monopoly? No. Did Apple raise their 30% royalty to 70% when they had a monopoly? No.
The problem is not a monopoly on hardware. The problem is gatekeeping access to software markets.
The logical consequence of this argument is that there is no such thing as a business practice which is illegal for a monopoly, but which is legal for a startup. As long as you start doing it when you're small, it must be OK.
I don't think that holds water. The standards should definitely get higher as you gain more market share.
> The problem is gatekeeping access to software markets
However, it started out this way, from the beginning, and developers accepted it. This is easily demonstrable - customers would not have bought devices without apps, and vice versa. Very hard to show, in a court of law, that the terms which were once acceptable now magically aren't.
The law isn't interested in people who say, "yes, it was a perfectly fine contract, 10 years ago, but now it's a problem even though it hasn't changed." Imagine what would happen to mortgages.
> it started out this way, from the beginning, and developers accepted it.
Developers did not accept it. Some did, but any amount does not constitute complete acceptance. From the very beginning, iOS had people developing alternatives to the App Store a-la Cydia. Apple's terms were always controversial.
Apple's constituent of app developers does not even remotely reflect the attitude (or assent) of the development community as a whole. It certainly doesn't represent a competitive or regulated market of software comparable to the web, the Mac, Android or Windows.
The legal agreement, and the fact developers signed it, even if begrudgingly, back when iOS did not have a monopoly in any way, is the only assent the law needs to consider.
Student loans certainly don't have much assent 5 years after graduation.
Not everyone has student loans. Non-signatory parties aren't beholden to other people's terms, and even then their agreement doesn't inherently prove the legality of a particular loan provider.
Apple's de-facto control of iPhone software can be illegally abusive without violating the terms of their developer agreements. If that wasn't true then I don't know why the FTC would be actively investigating them.
If any of this were remotely true, then I have a contract for you-- it involves a small loan for relocation, no big deal. You'll just have to work for me exclusively for the next 20 years, and if you can't pay it off, no problem, we'll assign the remainder to your kids.
True; except that the iPhone didn't allow apps from anywhere, at all.
Consider damages, from a legal perspective. Can you claim damages, because you can't write apps for your proprietary 3D Printer? Can you claim damages, because you can't write apps for your dishwasher? Can you claim damages, because you can't write apps for an ecosystem which is, and was, always closed?
No, no, and (currently) no.
You absolutely can claim damages though for building up an ecosystem that then turns into a bait-and-switch. Case: Android.
Edit: Also, the commenter below is wrong. Steve Jobs talked about the 30% cut in the very introduction of the App Store. The 30% cut was also required on all in-app purchases, but by a legal agreement instead of an automated collection method.
As someone mentioned, the app store started without a 30% cut so they also baited and switched. The only difference is that Apple won the case because Justice works like that. Different judges and it would have lost too.
Except the App Store was announced 16 years ago and the 30% cut was definitely part of the announcement. There’s a whole slide with Steve Jobs discussing it 3 minutes in. The other commenter was mistaken.
> Apple's claim is simple: The monopoly was from the very beginning, when the iPhone had 0.0% market share. If it was anti-competitive, the iPhone would have failed. If developers didn't like it, the iPhone would have failed. Has Apple unfairly done anything new now that they have a monopoly? No. Did Apple raise their 30% royalty to 70% when they had a monopoly? No.
Apple did not have a 30% cut for in-app purchases when the iPhone was created, just App Store purchases. In-app revenue tax was instituted in 2011
THIS. And this is the main reason why I hate the EU decisions. Apple was always 100% clear on their message. The App Store is a closed ecosystem. You hate it? You don’t have to use it. You can do PWAs.
If they attacked Apple on their PWA support, I’d have backed the case (though nobody cares, obviously). But the case as it is now is dumb.
When it occupies half the market and life is increasingly dependent on your phone it’s no longer “don’t like - don’t buy”. How about “don’t like the changes - stop using Apple”? Huh? What’s stopping you from finding another Apple if there are thousands of alternatives?
There are no closed-ecosystem alternatives!! However there are thousands of alternatives to Apple. It is don’t like don’t buy, as literally NO ONE NOR ANY SITUATION FORCES YOU TO BUY AN iPhone. You need a PHONE, not an iPhone.
Also in what world does Apple have half the market?
They got caught doing the same thing Microsoft got caught doing in the 90s with IE/Netscape -- using their monopoly position on one piece of software (Windows, the Google app suite) to prevent their OEMs from shipping another piece of software by default (Netscape, Epic Games Store) that directly competed with their own offering (Internet Explorer, Google Play Store). Since Google and Microsoft both use OEMs, unlike Apple in their parallel case, there's a clearer line to how Google is being unfair compared to how Apple is being unfair.
In short, Epic sued and won because Google got between them and Samsung.
In general, in the courts, it's a lot easier to ask a judge or jury for someone to stop doing a thing (blocking their software from being pre-installed) vs. forcing someone to do something they're not currently doing (allowing any third-party app stores).
Couldn't you reword that as allowing unsigned and self signed software to be installed? You can push your own apps to your iOS device but iirc Apple artificially limits the number of self signed apps that can be installed
Aside from the EU explicitly mandating it, the developer agreement you sign with Apple in order to ship software on their platform prohibits you from doing so. And while you theoretically can write your own storefront, running self-signed apps isn’t going to be a viable user story with the way Apple’s set it up (intentionally, in my opinion).
