I download the Netflix app for $0 and my business with Netflix is done directly with them after that. And Netflix can pay Apple some reasonable fee for hosting and reviewing the apps themselves. Apple have already lost the AppStore they just haven’t realized it yet. They should try to rescue the 1 good store before the app market is fractured with side markets. Eventually it’ll affect the perception of their hardware and that’s a worse place for Apple than just losing the entire app tax.
I do wish progressive web apps were improved a bit.
I assume that means you currently don't subscribe to anything Amazon provides, nor Netflix, nor game services, nor newsletters, nor coffee subscriptions etc.
A few more subscription mechanisms appearing in the world would not make a difference, do they ? I anything you'd have more option to choose which basket you put all your eggs in.
Presumably if they decided to move that app to a 3rd party store exclusively, that goes away
I subscribe to all of these through apple and that means I can cancel them in the settings app on my phone instantly.
If they truly have a stellar experience, people would want to pay a premium for that even, and choose this option.
What need is there, for you, that requires Apple to then hold on to their monopoly?
Also, this whole "fractured with side markets" sounds massively overblown. On the android side other app stores are allowed. Yet, almost nobody goes out of their way to add any app store that was not preinstalled. And those preinstalled at most include one by the phone manufacturer, i.e. apple in this case.
When you look up a program on Google search, you pretty much always get the right result. When you search for something on an app store, you get a bunch of spam mixed in. It's a worse experience.
This is dangerously untrue for many categories of app. Google plays a game of whack-a-mole trying to stop the worst malware but it’s far from perfect and once you’re in more dubious categories like adware they pretty don’t bother.
That’s the problem here: it’d be nice to be able to install Netflix from Netflix.com but making it that easy means that millions of people will get something with bundled adware, spyware, etc. because they didn’t realize what they were installing - or because it wasn’t installed by them but their controlling spouse, kid who likes games, etc. The long-term answer for this will involve better OS sandboxes but as we’ve seen that’s a tough thing to get right and will inevitably limit what people can do or be abused (e.g. taking away direct access to other applications means attackers now try to convince people to enable assistive features).
Now, maybe that freedom is worth the risk. Personally I think it is but I also know that statistically the rate of people I know/support getting their credit cards stolen, being used in a botnet, or having their PC become unusable dropped to zero when those people switched to iOS or ChromeOS so I certainly can’t say there isn’t a solid argument that the general public cannot use general purpose computers safely.
Well, this is exactly it. iOS should have redundant security policies that don't take fallible App Store reviews for granted anyways. Apple didn't really account for this, presumably to hedge the validity of a single App Store. Now they're acting like the victim when they gave up proactive solutions to chase more money. I can't empathize with that logic, even if they drag users into the regulatory bear trap with them.
Apple has every opportunity to make things right. Sideloading works fine on Android (or, Mac); getting it "right" is eminently an implementation problem. It would be incredibly sad for Apple to fight down this legislation through bad faith compliance and self-sabotage. Not unexpected or poor entertainment, but very sad and unnecessary.
