Anybody (possibly except Epic Games) can develop and publish on the App Store. There's a cost associated with it, which in Apples case is 30% (or whatever you negotiate apparently). If you play by the rules, you can keep doing that as long as you like.
If you rent a shop in a shopping mall, there will be costs associated with that as well, and it's almost guaranteed to be more than 30%.
That is essentially what Apple is providing for those 30%, they provide a shopping mall where you can expose your goods, and people can pay for them. They handle the pesky stuff like refunds, (international) taxes, compliance with various government requirements, EU rules, and everything else. They even handle potential lawsuits for you (provided your app wasn't the one breaking laws).
They also vet (mostly automated) apps to ensure they're not using private APIs. That is for your protection. It's not an evil scheme by Apple to keep competitors out, it's for protecting the end user from bad actors like Meta scooping up all your personal data for "backup purposes" via some internal API.
Here in Europe we've had "alternative app stores" for a year or so, and despite living in a country where ~70% of the population uses iPhones, I don't know a single person that has ever used an alternative App Store, just like I don't actually know anybody that has downloaded an alternative keyboard despite those being available for a decade or more.
There is really very little you cannot do on the App Store in terms of features, so for many end users it is not a problem.
You may not like the price associated with it, which is what most of these complaints are about, the fact that Apple scoops up 30% of recurring subscriptions created through the App Store as well. People tend to forget that running your own infrastructure is also not free, especially when you need to handle refunds, legal matters and international compliance.
And that's the core of the problem, most of these companies complaining wants to use Apples built in App Store tools, but they want to direct them to their own App Store for free, ditching the complicated stuff of dealing with users on Apple. They're more than happy with Apple to handle payments and refunds if they do it for free.
Sideloading is usually a very bad idea in this day and age. In northern europe at least, your phone is quickly becoming your most trusted device in matters concerning anything state or municipality, and here we have a national ID app on our phones, along with social security, healthcare, drivers license, micro payments, taxes, childcare, hell, there's even video conferencing with your GP, in an app that has access to your medical records, including bloodwork and various scans. There's literally no way in hell I'm trading the perfectly walled garden for the Wild West outside.
Anecdotally, where I live, most companies don't allow Android phones as company phones as they're considered insecure, and instead mandate iPhones. The more regulated the industry (medical, banking, power, etc), the more certain it is that you'll be getting an iPhone.
I wrote a comment about that here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44426128#44427725
> You may not like the price associated with it, which is what most of these complaints are about, the fact that Apple scoops up 30% of recurring subscriptions created through the App Store as well. People tend to forget that running your own infrastructure is also not free, especially when you need to handle refunds, legal matters and international compliance.
Simply having a link in my app to a page where someone pays through Stripe instead of through Apple Payments, costs nothing to Apple and creates no obligation for Apple to do anything.
> Sideloading is usually a very bad idea in this day and age.
Then don't do it. Who exactly is forcing you to?
The problem is, when the option exists it opens up an attack vector that I need to defend against, as it will surely be exploited by malware at some point, downloading an app when you visit some scam site, and boom you're now infected.
> Simply having a link in my app to a page where someone pays through Stripe instead of through Apple Payments,
But it hardly stifles competition, except alternative payment methods ?
> costs nothing to Apple and creates no obligation for Apple to do anything.
The problem is, when stuff breaks, people will contact Apple support. Yes, one call is negligible, but Apple has 2.2 billion users, and it all adds up.
Provided you provide your app for free and charge subscriptions, that also has a cost to apple, as they're providing downloads for your app (again, potentially 2.2. billion of them), as well as any legal troubles (app contents excluded).
I guess Apple could enforce a alternate subscription model where they require you to charge for your app and they take their 30% cut off of that, and lets you use whatever payment provider you like for recurring payments.
It would of course either cut into sales, as people aren't as likely to buy an app and then subscribe to it, though something with "first month free" could probably lure some people in. Alternatively a developer would have to develop a free app, and if people want to have the full experience they'd have to purchase the full version.
Except, developers don't want that. They want to be able to give away their app and sell subscriptions, and they expect Apple to foot the bill for the infrastructure required to provide downloads.
There is nothing wrong with sideloading applications. Protection against malicious applications is taken care of by the OS through sandboxing and a granular permission model. Malware scanning and app signing also have no dependency on the App Store.
Really all you are missing out on is the App Store review process, which is not worth much from a security perspective anyways.
You've been tricked into thinking that you're not qualified to select software to run on devices you purchase. I wouldn't hand over control of your digital life to Apple so readily.
