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Well, it's come to pass, at least in the EU. Some committee there has decided that For The Good Of The People, Apple needs to allow the presence of alternate "app stores" on the devices they make.
I've got a few things to say about this!
So. Arrrr! Hello me swarthy crew, and welcome to the rant. Before we get fully under sail, I need to pause at the edge of the harbor and ask all hands a question:
Do any of you remember when software was sold in cardboard boxes on shelves? Or maybe as chonky plastic cartridges that you needed to plug in? There must be some of you. How about in the early days of the Web, when it was sold through countless random web portals, owned by giant companies or individual people, and you needed to carefully vet each of them, or just blindly trust that the thing you installed did what they claimed with no weird side effects? Ahh, those were the days. A true pirate's dream. Arr.
Recall those memories, if you have them, and as this rant drifts out of the harbor and we start to catch the wind, I want you to ponder this: The very idea of an "app store," as we understand it now, was basically created by Apple in 2008 and grew as they went along.
15+ years later, it provides quite a few things, probably more than most of us expect: It does the hosting and the payment processing and the delivery and the installation, it vets for security holes and trojans, imposes disclosure practices and security standards, pushes back against data mining and piracy and fakes, and of course provides the platform and the APIs, along with patches and documentation. Most of that is only possible because of the very close integration of hardware and software and services that the company performs, as is their obsessive custom.
From the start, Apple tried to trademark the name "app store", claiming that the thing they offered was unique and deserved unique protection, but that was eventually shot down in court. The concept rapidly spread and generalized, and now there are many instances of "app stores" for many platforms. For example, Nintendo and Sony and Microsoft make game consoles, and each provides exactly one way to distribute content, under the complete control of the company making the hardware, and each with a different mixture of restrictions and support. They are all "app stores."
With those platforms, you play their way, or you don't play at all. Developers grumble about it, but in the end they run the numbers and decide whether to accept the entire package based on whether there's profit to be made. They could try to make a case that the "marketplace" within a Playstation is an independent thing from the Playstation, and therefore something that should be wrested from the control of Sony, but that case just doesn't get any traction. And that is a direct consequence of the fact that these are all gaming platforms: No one takes gaming platforms seriously. They are toys.
Apple, meanwhile, makes a smartphone, and applies the same rule: It's their way or the highway. If you want to make the iPhone do a new trick, it needs to be vetted by Apple, for which they take a cut. But the thing is, with a smartphone, the stakes are higher. Smartphones are not toys. There are reasons for strictly vetting and controlling the software that goes onto phones, beyond the scope of game consoles, or even home computers.
People use their smartphone to do banking, to make payments out in the world, to have countless extremely private conversations, to store passwords, to unlock their car, to find each other on a map, to get into their house, to document and discuss their family lives, et cetera. You don't do that on a Playstation or a Switch.
Also, these aren't technical people. You could do this all on a laptop but you're likely to have at least a reasonable amount of technical knowledge. You are expected to know how to use a firewall, and how to decide when someone is subjecting you to a phishing attack or trying to clickbait you into installing a trojan, and you're very parsimonious with giving out your password when you install new software or copy files or even plug something in.
And if you're not, well, that's your problem. At least, that's the public perception. It's a technical device and you should know better!
People who use smartphones are generally not like that. We all have enough trouble keeping up with what the device CAN do, and we barely have time left for understanding the HOW, and the dangers that come with it. I consider myself very technical indeed, having spent a lifetime learning constantly about hardware and software, and there are large realms of functionality inside the smartphone that I simply do not understand on a technical level. For example, just about everything having to do with antennas.
We computer expert types may prefer an unrestricted machine with a high hackability factor, but on the other hand, even we are not unlocking our car doors with our laptops, or whipping out our laptops out to pay for snacks at a corner store, or showing law enforcement our laptops when they pull us over and ask for ID. We do all that with a smartphone and accept the risks, but doing the same thing with a laptop would make us all nervous. We'd be watching the process tree and the logs, every time, just in case. We are not immune from the double standard, or from the higher stakes.
People trust the smartphone to mediate and preserve their social, financial, private, and even political lives, and Apple has led the charge directly into this state of affairs over the last decade-plus, by aggressively building privacy and security protections into their platform, including at the "app store" level. If there was no Apple in this space, those privacy protections would be swiss cheese, because they would be implemented to Google's standard, which means you accept being aggressively data-mined at every turn, generally without your knowledge, and you accept the use of a hardware platform that supports this for other parties, and gives lip service to all forms of security that could interfere with data-mining. ... Or they would be implemented to Microsoft's standard, where the software does its best but the hardware is a labyrinth of broken firmware and drivers and you could find your device backdoored and bricked simply by drifting past a random payment sensor at a gas station.
I exaggerate, but only a bit. Do you remember what smartphones were like before the iPhone? Do you know what Google does with the information you give it, even on-device in terms of end-to-end encrypted messaging?
So now we come to the "alternate app store" thing. We've heard from a gang of large software companies that being "forced" to adhere to Apple's app store rules is crime against humanity. That jumping through all those regulatory hoops was an affront to justice. Really, it's an affront to them taking a larger cut of the money to be made selling software to iPhone owners through iPhones, and nothing more. That became clear when Apple released updated software and guidelines that made alternate app stores available, but also imposed pricing rules for those stores that ensured Apple would get a comparable cut of the profits, and the same gang of companies screamed to the heavens that nothing of substance had changed. The money is the only thing that matters to them.
And you know what? Screw them.
I think the idea that software makers are getting swindled by app store regulations is absurd.
And for that I give you exhibit A: Apple sells you a device, for which you pay one price. You pay that money once, and then you use Apple's software services perpetually, for no additional money, for the entire lifetime of that device, including a run of OS updates to add new features and patch holes. You can also buy a used iPhone for a hundred bucks and use their services just the same, and in that case Apple gets none of your money.
Meanwhile, software developers are charging you a monthly fee just to have their software installed on that device. Regardless of whether you even use it. And they are getting away with this. You can call that "what the market will bear", yes. Go ahead. But I call that a bloated piece-of-garbage market that is already too cozy for software makers.
Are consumers really clamoring for an "alternate" app store? Or is it just developers? If it's consumers, then the ideal solution is to give us an "alternative" app store that has a gray market, and re-packages ripped off and cracked applications. I mean, it will save us the most money. It will absolutely hobble small-time software developers - sending them back to the dark ages of web distribution in the 1990's - but from a consumer point of view, there's no downside to installing the Cydia App Store 2.0 and then installing DuoLingo [Cracked By Mr Krak-Man of Black Bag]. That's exactly what people did when you could jailbreak an iPhone, and Apple turned a blind eye to it until hackers started doing things like messing with telecom firmware and overwhelming the cloud service components of legit software. And hey, if this fancy cracked DuoLingo exploits some security hole to wake your phone up at 2:00am and tell your banking app to do a wire-transfer of your entire savings account to some military base in Iran, well, too bad. You stepped out of the walled garden and right into the fire. That's the "alternative" part of a truly alternative app store.
It seems to be just developers making this noise though. Basically, they want to be free to deceive and exploit customers for their money without the meddling of a damned platform provider. And that's generally what they got, except the monetary strings are still attached. It's only a matter of time before Facebook re-architects their own app so that it is actually an app store. Everyone who wants to be on Facebook will just authenticate it without thinking ... and from that point on, unless Apple attached some monetary strings, they would not only be cut out of the revenue stream for Facebook, but potentially the revenue stream for every other non-Apple app you use, as Facebook recruits them into their store with the promise of no developer fees as long as they sign an exclusivity agreement and give Facebook dispensation to data-mine their users. And it's the Flash Plugin scenario all over again: Apple loses control over their own ecosystem. They provide the R&D, the hardware, the support, the APIs, and... Whoops, Facebook is suddenly calling the shots about what can and can't be installed there, and turning their privacy protections into hash. Meanwhile, Epic Games is busily doing the same thing. And so on. And that's where the whole point about risk comes in. This is not just a gaming rig like the Playstation we're talking about here. This is the core of people's digital lives.
Take another look at the fee structure Apple released for "alternative app stores." If you do the math on the userbase of Facebook under the new regulations (as someone eventually did), and it comes up to 11 million dollars a month, well, that's a large amount, but ... is that actually a problem?
So now we have alternate app stores, and now the argument over money picks up right where it left off. As that happens, we need to be careful what we wish for. As far as I can tell, Apple is the only giant tech company that gives a tin shit about consumer privacy. And yeah, it's made of tin, but all the other giant tech companies are consumer privacy hostile. With the qualified exception of Microsoft. If you're crusading on the side of Epic Games and Facebook you may not be keeping the right ....... company. Pun intended.
Hyarrrr!!! And that be me rant. Opinions subject to change with impassioned argument. Or perhaps just loot.
I've got a few things to say about this!
So. Arrrr! Hello me swarthy crew, and welcome to the rant. Before we get fully under sail, I need to pause at the edge of the harbor and ask all hands a question:Do any of you remember when software was sold in cardboard boxes on shelves? Or maybe as chonky plastic cartridges that you needed to plug in? There must be some of you. How about in the early days of the Web, when it was sold through countless random web portals, owned by giant companies or individual people, and you needed to carefully vet each of them, or just blindly trust that the thing you installed did what they claimed with no weird side effects? Ahh, those were the days. A true pirate's dream. Arr.
Recall those memories, if you have them, and as this rant drifts out of the harbor and we start to catch the wind, I want you to ponder this: The very idea of an "app store," as we understand it now, was basically created by Apple in 2008 and grew as they went along.
15+ years later, it provides quite a few things, probably more than most of us expect: It does the hosting and the payment processing and the delivery and the installation, it vets for security holes and trojans, imposes disclosure practices and security standards, pushes back against data mining and piracy and fakes, and of course provides the platform and the APIs, along with patches and documentation. Most of that is only possible because of the very close integration of hardware and software and services that the company performs, as is their obsessive custom.
From the start, Apple tried to trademark the name "app store", claiming that the thing they offered was unique and deserved unique protection, but that was eventually shot down in court. The concept rapidly spread and generalized, and now there are many instances of "app stores" for many platforms. For example, Nintendo and Sony and Microsoft make game consoles, and each provides exactly one way to distribute content, under the complete control of the company making the hardware, and each with a different mixture of restrictions and support. They are all "app stores."
With those platforms, you play their way, or you don't play at all. Developers grumble about it, but in the end they run the numbers and decide whether to accept the entire package based on whether there's profit to be made. They could try to make a case that the "marketplace" within a Playstation is an independent thing from the Playstation, and therefore something that should be wrested from the control of Sony, but that case just doesn't get any traction. And that is a direct consequence of the fact that these are all gaming platforms: No one takes gaming platforms seriously. They are toys.
Apple, meanwhile, makes a smartphone, and applies the same rule: It's their way or the highway. If you want to make the iPhone do a new trick, it needs to be vetted by Apple, for which they take a cut. But the thing is, with a smartphone, the stakes are higher. Smartphones are not toys. There are reasons for strictly vetting and controlling the software that goes onto phones, beyond the scope of game consoles, or even home computers.
People use their smartphone to do banking, to make payments out in the world, to have countless extremely private conversations, to store passwords, to unlock their car, to find each other on a map, to get into their house, to document and discuss their family lives, et cetera. You don't do that on a Playstation or a Switch.
Also, these aren't technical people. You could do this all on a laptop but you're likely to have at least a reasonable amount of technical knowledge. You are expected to know how to use a firewall, and how to decide when someone is subjecting you to a phishing attack or trying to clickbait you into installing a trojan, and you're very parsimonious with giving out your password when you install new software or copy files or even plug something in.
And if you're not, well, that's your problem. At least, that's the public perception. It's a technical device and you should know better!
People who use smartphones are generally not like that. We all have enough trouble keeping up with what the device CAN do, and we barely have time left for understanding the HOW, and the dangers that come with it. I consider myself very technical indeed, having spent a lifetime learning constantly about hardware and software, and there are large realms of functionality inside the smartphone that I simply do not understand on a technical level. For example, just about everything having to do with antennas.
We computer expert types may prefer an unrestricted machine with a high hackability factor, but on the other hand, even we are not unlocking our car doors with our laptops, or whipping out our laptops out to pay for snacks at a corner store, or showing law enforcement our laptops when they pull us over and ask for ID. We do all that with a smartphone and accept the risks, but doing the same thing with a laptop would make us all nervous. We'd be watching the process tree and the logs, every time, just in case. We are not immune from the double standard, or from the higher stakes.
People trust the smartphone to mediate and preserve their social, financial, private, and even political lives, and Apple has led the charge directly into this state of affairs over the last decade-plus, by aggressively building privacy and security protections into their platform, including at the "app store" level. If there was no Apple in this space, those privacy protections would be swiss cheese, because they would be implemented to Google's standard, which means you accept being aggressively data-mined at every turn, generally without your knowledge, and you accept the use of a hardware platform that supports this for other parties, and gives lip service to all forms of security that could interfere with data-mining. ... Or they would be implemented to Microsoft's standard, where the software does its best but the hardware is a labyrinth of broken firmware and drivers and you could find your device backdoored and bricked simply by drifting past a random payment sensor at a gas station.
I exaggerate, but only a bit. Do you remember what smartphones were like before the iPhone? Do you know what Google does with the information you give it, even on-device in terms of end-to-end encrypted messaging?
So now we come to the "alternate app store" thing. We've heard from a gang of large software companies that being "forced" to adhere to Apple's app store rules is crime against humanity. That jumping through all those regulatory hoops was an affront to justice. Really, it's an affront to them taking a larger cut of the money to be made selling software to iPhone owners through iPhones, and nothing more. That became clear when Apple released updated software and guidelines that made alternate app stores available, but also imposed pricing rules for those stores that ensured Apple would get a comparable cut of the profits, and the same gang of companies screamed to the heavens that nothing of substance had changed. The money is the only thing that matters to them.
And you know what? Screw them.
I think the idea that software makers are getting swindled by app store regulations is absurd.
And for that I give you exhibit A: Apple sells you a device, for which you pay one price. You pay that money once, and then you use Apple's software services perpetually, for no additional money, for the entire lifetime of that device, including a run of OS updates to add new features and patch holes. You can also buy a used iPhone for a hundred bucks and use their services just the same, and in that case Apple gets none of your money.
Meanwhile, software developers are charging you a monthly fee just to have their software installed on that device. Regardless of whether you even use it. And they are getting away with this. You can call that "what the market will bear", yes. Go ahead. But I call that a bloated piece-of-garbage market that is already too cozy for software makers.Are consumers really clamoring for an "alternate" app store? Or is it just developers? If it's consumers, then the ideal solution is to give us an "alternative" app store that has a gray market, and re-packages ripped off and cracked applications. I mean, it will save us the most money. It will absolutely hobble small-time software developers - sending them back to the dark ages of web distribution in the 1990's - but from a consumer point of view, there's no downside to installing the Cydia App Store 2.0 and then installing DuoLingo [Cracked By Mr Krak-Man of Black Bag]. That's exactly what people did when you could jailbreak an iPhone, and Apple turned a blind eye to it until hackers started doing things like messing with telecom firmware and overwhelming the cloud service components of legit software. And hey, if this fancy cracked DuoLingo exploits some security hole to wake your phone up at 2:00am and tell your banking app to do a wire-transfer of your entire savings account to some military base in Iran, well, too bad. You stepped out of the walled garden and right into the fire. That's the "alternative" part of a truly alternative app store.
It seems to be just developers making this noise though. Basically, they want to be free to deceive and exploit customers for their money without the meddling of a damned platform provider. And that's generally what they got, except the monetary strings are still attached. It's only a matter of time before Facebook re-architects their own app so that it is actually an app store. Everyone who wants to be on Facebook will just authenticate it without thinking ... and from that point on, unless Apple attached some monetary strings, they would not only be cut out of the revenue stream for Facebook, but potentially the revenue stream for every other non-Apple app you use, as Facebook recruits them into their store with the promise of no developer fees as long as they sign an exclusivity agreement and give Facebook dispensation to data-mine their users. And it's the Flash Plugin scenario all over again: Apple loses control over their own ecosystem. They provide the R&D, the hardware, the support, the APIs, and... Whoops, Facebook is suddenly calling the shots about what can and can't be installed there, and turning their privacy protections into hash. Meanwhile, Epic Games is busily doing the same thing. And so on. And that's where the whole point about risk comes in. This is not just a gaming rig like the Playstation we're talking about here. This is the core of people's digital lives.
Take another look at the fee structure Apple released for "alternative app stores." If you do the math on the userbase of Facebook under the new regulations (as someone eventually did), and it comes up to 11 million dollars a month, well, that's a large amount, but ... is that actually a problem?
So now we have alternate app stores, and now the argument over money picks up right where it left off. As that happens, we need to be careful what we wish for. As far as I can tell, Apple is the only giant tech company that gives a tin shit about consumer privacy. And yeah, it's made of tin, but all the other giant tech companies are consumer privacy hostile. With the qualified exception of Microsoft. If you're crusading on the side of Epic Games and Facebook you may not be keeping the right ....... company. Pun intended.
Hyarrrr!!! And that be me rant. Opinions subject to change with impassioned argument. Or perhaps just loot.
