AltStore for iPhone in EU Will Have Apps Backed By Patreon

[Sophisticatednut]

The EU can’t mandate Apple give away access to competitors and other developers for free. The DMA doesn’t even state that they should and if it did, it wouldn’t hold up in litigation.

4. The gatekeeper shall allow business users, free of charge, to communicate and promote offers, including under different conditions, to end users acquired via its core platform service or through other channels, and to conclude contracts with those end users, regardless of whether, for that purpose, they use the core platform services of the gatekeeper.

 

[ToyoCorollaGR]

"Last week, the European Commission (EC) opened a non-compliance investigation into Apple to determine if the changes that it made are sufficient to meet the demands of the Digital Markets Act. Apple could be forced to change some of its rules or change the Core Technology Fee if the EC decides that Apple's updates do not go far enough."

Blame Apple for this ********, not the EU.

They will never blame Apple even though Apple brought this on themselves.

 

[hans1972]

macOS being more difficult to use is subjective.

Want an app for macOS to do a certain task such as monitor the MacBook's battery/health status?

(1) Check Mac App Store. If it's there, get it. If it's not (and it's not),...

(2) Type "coconut battery" into a search engine. Go to developers website and download it.

(3) Done.


As Phil Schiller might say, "Difficult, my ass!"

On iOS you can skip step 2.

Step is almost always way more complex than what you describe and it's varies slightly from website to website. Also step 2 can involve registering an account, login into the developers website, setting up payment information, entering codes when you launch the application for the first time etc.

And even the install process is more complex. Usually an install wizard og dropping a file onto a folder.

 

[bsolar]

Interesting concept. So they decided on renting apps rather then owning

As opposed to what exactly? Even on Apple's App store you don't own anything except a license.

Maybe you mean they went with a subscription model only instead of allowing one-time payments?

 

[iOS Geek]

4. The gatekeeper shall allow business users, free of charge, to communicate and promote offers, including under different conditions, to end users acquired via its core platform service or through other channels, and to conclude contracts with those end users, regardless of whether, for that purpose, they use the core platform services of the gatekeeper.

And that is absolute overreaching bs. The fact that the EU thinks they have a right to dictate that a company provide THEIR services and work, that they have spent large sums of money and time on...for FREE...is ridiculous. The EU is out of control. Period.

 

[hans1972]

What I assumed was obvious, I meant that users could install applications to their phone outside of the App Store by any means of copying an IPA to the phone. That could be drag-and-drop from a computer, or clicking on the link from a developers web page directly on device.

Nobody but the user should have any say over how or what software gets onto the device.

Hope that clears things up for you.

We understood what you meant, and it's like going 20 years back in time.

No, the user shouldn't be in so much control.

 

[threeseed]

4. The gatekeeper shall allow business users, free of charge, to communicate and promote offers, including under different conditions, to end users acquired via its core platform service or through other channels, and to conclude contracts with those end users, regardless of whether, for that purpose, they use the core platform services of the gatekeeper.

Not sure what the point of posting this was. It is specifically referring to "communicating and promoting offers".

Apple is legally allowed to charge developers a fee to use their SDKs. No different to Nintendo, Epic etc.

 

[Sophisticatednut]

While I agree...unfortunately, it wouldn't help much. The simple fact that this is all in the code, whether you use it or not...is a security risk. The only way to reduce the risk that has been introduced by this forced change to the code...is to undo the changes to the code. But now due to the EU...that genie is out of the bottle and there's no turning back, no matter how bad it gets. Welcome to legislation that completely ignores potential negative outcomes...written by people who will try to push the blame for any negative outcomes, even though it's their fault.

I’m sorry to burst your bubble, but this have existed for almost a decade in the iOS code, the only difference is the signature Apple provides.

All of these apps as how it currently works are signed by a special certificate that Apple provides. It’s essentially just a modified enterprise certification that allows others to access the app without having the same credentials in their device.

 

[bsolar]

It's also noteworthy that different antitrust authorities are similarly taking exception at Apple's conduct. The recently announced US DoJ antitrust lawsuit against Apple actually has potentially far more severe consequences than the DMA.

 

[Sophisticatednut]

Not sure what the point of posting this was. It is specifically referring to "communicating and promoting offers".

Apple is legally allowed to charge developers a fee to use their SDKs. No different to Nintendo, Epic etc.

It also specifies to conclude contracts. There no punctuation between the terms. Only commas “,”

 

[vicviper789]

Ironic how Europe finally has one aspect that is more free than American

 

[Ma2k5]

I’m just looking forward to the day developers can host their own open source applications and I can just download the IPA and drag-and-drop it to my iPhone in Finder, the same way I install applications on my Mac.

Sounds like a good idea until you realise how bad a customer experience the average person has using a computer - be it windows or Mac. I could see why Apple wants to avoid such a world to cater for what I would say is sub 1% of niche/power users.

 

[Hazmat401]

I’ve said it before and i’ll say it again. This CTF is pure extortion and Apple has absolutely no right what so ever to charge devs any money for apps that are not on AppStore. Let alone free ones. “Working on a solution….” Blah blah my butt. Just drop it entirely, what’s there to speculate about?

I hope, really hope, that EU fines Apple so daaaamn hard for this. Tim needs to learn a lesson from this.

I hope Apple grow some balls and just pull out of the EU all together... have fun with just Android for you guys to play with

I sent a letter to my US senator and Representative

 

[BuffaloTF]

"Last week, the European Commission (EC) opened a non-compliance investigation into Apple to determine if the changes that it made are sufficient to meet the demands of the Digital Markets Act. Apple could be forced to change some of its rules or change the Core Technology Fee if the EC decides that Apple's updates do not go far enough."

Blame Apple for this ********, not the EU.

Blame Apple for how someone else is going to monetize their 3rd party store? Makes sense….

 

[Aoligei]

Two real benefits

• Potentially more cut of the app price for the dev itself
• Potentially new types of apps which would not be allowed in the Apple's App Store

I agree the subscription based alt store is nothing to write home about. Hopefully other alt stores will be more interesting than this take.

1. You don't have to download third party App Store, therefore, it doesn't have any impact on you.

2. The saving on commission sometime translate to real savings for consumer. Some subscriptions fees on iOS is more expensive than Android due to the commission on App Store.

 

[threeseed]

It also specifies to conclude contracts. There no punctuation between the terms. Only commas “,”

It is specifically referring to the 22 "core platform services" which is defined here.

That doesn't include any of the platform SDKs.

 

[bsolar]

The EU can’t mandate Apple give away access to competitors and other developers for free. The DMA doesn’t even state that they should and if it did, it wouldn’t hold up in litigation.

The relevant portion of the DMA is this:

6.7. The gatekeeper shall allow providers of services and providers of hardware, free of charge, effective interoperability with, and access for the purposes of interoperability to, the same hardware and software features accessed or controlled via the operating system or virtual assistant listed in the designation decision pursuant to Article 3(9) as are available to services or hardware provided by the gatekeeper.

Basically Apple has a dual role as Gatekeeper provider of platform core services to business users, but also developer of end-user applications and services that also use those core services and compete with the offers that the third-party business users can offer.

Due to this dual role, the DMA recognizes the ability of the Gatekeeper to gain an advantage, so it regulates the way the Gatekeeper has to provide access to third-parties to those platform core services.

 

[spazzcat]

1. You don't have to download third party App Store, therefore, it doesn't have any impact on you.

2. The saving on commission sometime translate to real savings for consumer. Some subscriptions fees on iOS is more expensive than Android due to the commission on App Store.

1. Third-party app stores fail here; if very few people download from them, they fail. They need to make money.
2. Developers are not going to cut their prices. Devs almost always make more money on iOS than on Android.

 

[antnythr]

The catch-22 is protecting users from themselves. Apple had an opportunity to do that from the start with iPhone, and they exploited it very successfully.

Thanks to old coats that can't let go of the past models, Apple is being forced to break that model.

The only thing Apple is attempting to do is to protect their bottom line. Users don’t need to be protected. Apple and their model of profit control can take a hike.

Stop being scared. They’re just computers.

Sounds like a good idea until you realise how bad a customer experience the average person has using a computer - be it windows or Mac. I could see why Apple wants to avoid such a world to cater for what I would say is sub 1% of niche/power users.

Well, you’re just making up numbers on the spot. From my research it’s 99+% of users that feel they should be able to decide what apps get installed on their own phone.

But beside that, the most powerful governments around the world are all looking to dismantle the nonsense that Apple has been getting away with since 2008. This isn’t the result of sub 1% of users. It’s the result of the world collectively saying enough of this garbage.

 

[bsolar]

Apple is legally allowed to charge developers a fee to use their SDKs. No different to Nintendo, Epic etc.

IMHO the interesting question is whether Apple can charge a fee for the SDKs if that is required by Apple to access the core services for which Apple was designated as Gatekeeper.

 

[Sophisticatednut]

And that is absolute overreaching bs. The fact that the EU thinks they have a right to dictate that a company provide THEIR services and work, that they have spent large sums of money and time on...for FREE...is ridiculous. The EU is out of control. Period.

Apple isn’t required to provide their services for free. And developers are free to develop an iOS app, and customers are free to find that app in any non Apple approved way.

Apple isn’t taking a fee for the 12.000+ apps that Bigboss provides to users for a decade. Ore any other of the apps sold outside the AppStore.

Apple is legally allowed to charge developers a fee to use their SDKs. No different to Nintendo, Epic etc.

and you don’t need apples SDK to code for iOS.

 

[magicman32]

Since a lot of people need to understand or have basic business acumen. Most developers will not make more money selling directly or placing their app in a lower volume App Store. Let us look at the numbers: say you sell your app for $5, average about 5,000 downloads a month from the Apple App Store, and pay a 15% commission. So that is a gross of $25,000 and a net of $21,250. Now, let's say you can get about 1,000 monthly sales from a store that only changes 5%. So that is a gross of $5000 and a net of $4,750, which is a difference of $16,500.

Arbitrary numbers in order to “cook the books” so the argument falls in your favor. Classic tactic.

Amazing that Apple has trained its customers to be so opposed to choice they’re willing to accept that, come hell or high water, Apple knows best and that’s all we need.

I cannot fathom a world where I refuse to accept choice.

Wow.

 

[satchmo]

I'm sure there are bad actors already looking at ways to exploit the opening up of third party stores.

 

[3530025]

1. You don't have to download third party App Store, therefore, it doesn't have any impact on you.

2. The saving on commission sometime translate to real savings for consumer. Some subscriptions fees on iOS is more expensive than Android due to the commission on App Store.

as for your point 1 - I don’t understand? I did not write anything it impacting me or that I have to download third party App Store, therefore I really don’t understand your reaction.

as for your point 2 - I totally agree with you.

 

[threeseed]

Gatekeeper has to provide access to third-parties to those platform core services.

Platform Core Services does not include platform SDKs.

The idea that a bunch of people chatting away on a forum know more than Apple's Legal Counsel is laughable.