None, except for the fact that the 30% fee will be reduced (not eliminated), has been achieved by the EU ruling.

- Alternative browser engines are useless if the rest of the world doesn't test for them (which they won't because they don't have access)

- You cannot start another marketplace without showing Apple you have the ability to financially support it

- And thanks for the need to support it, 30% surcharge will only be the ceiling

"useful" is too coarse a metric.

It includes the concept of what you can build or create with a device. A personal computer wins that by a long shot.

It includes accessibility- pre-literate and illiterate people can use an iOS device.

It includes the risk. How many iOS users have suffered viruses/malware vs laptop users?

My PC is a single purpose device, and that is for gaming. Which considering I use Steam for many of my games (not all) that 30% commission is already there.

The reality is many people use their PC's far differently than they use their phones. When my PC was my primary computing device many of the things I use and pay for on my phone either simply didn't exist, or I would never dream to pay for them.

Also you are missing the point, my phone becomes less useful because I flat out refuse to hand over access to my phone to a company which wishes to abuse that privilege of an alternative store. If they were going to act the way I want them to act, they would have no reason to use an alternative store.

Why do we keep pretending PCs are comparable with phones? They compute, that's the end of their similarities. They have completely different use cases and are needed for different reasons. Things that are good on a PC might not be good on a phone.

For sure. I agree with their whole post. There isn't any advantage whatsoever as a user to have Steam, Microsoft App Store, Epic Store, etc. All those stores take their pound of flesh and it is up to me to manage them all. It sucks.

That is Netflix's choice, they could allow it they are choosing not too.

And your right, it is hurting users since they loose the protections granted to them by App Store billing.

The solution to that problem is not moving to another store though.

1) As a "technical" user who started using Firefox when it was called Phoenix (then Firebird, then Firefox)—this is of zero value to me. Might be to (frankly, a very few) others, but I will see no personal benefit from this. I have zero need for more browser engines on my phone & tablet.

2) The main market effect is probably gonna be that Google is able to cross-promote and "whoopsie" bugs its way into having even more market share for its engine. Don't love that, but it won't personally harm me unless Safari market share gets low enough that dev shops drop from "test on Chrome and Safari" to "test on Chrome... and that's it".

3) Where this might really, really suck is if they have to permit non-browsers to bundle Web and/or JS engines. I very much do not want that and it's likely to make my experience noticeably worse, if that happens. Dunno if that's required by the changes, though.

I don't know.. what if every app suddenly becomes 200MB bigger and devs throw Chrome instances in just about everything? They could bring electron to iOS and make an app that's not even native. Not to mention it would be objectively worse from a tracking/privacy point of view. Chrome has never been on the side of user privacy and I'm scared that continues with its introduction to iOS.

That one on paper I don't mind, I mean I don't particularly enjoy the idea of Google being able to have even more of a stranglehold on the Browser market by them pushing Chrome heavily on iOS.

But yes, that is a good change that should have happened a long time ago. Same with the game streaming one.