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Juno YouTube App for Vision Pro Removed From App Store
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I’m so sick of Googles behavior at this point. I really miss the era when if a company didn’t care to support a platform, they would just let developers with passion sort it out. Everybody really wins in that situation, it’s purely pettiness to be so intent on killing such projects. (I still wish so badly for an Apple Watch app that let you listen to YouTube videos audio only… Google will never make this but I bet a third party dev would if allowed!) In this situation, it didn’t effect Google’s monetization strategy, so what’s even the problem? Everyone should be pleased here.
Reddit, Twitter, etc have a similar problem but it’s much easier to just ignore Reddit/Twitter than it is to ignore Google.
Reddit, Twitter, etc have a similar problem but it’s much easier to just ignore Reddit/Twitter than it is to ignore Google.
I bet you will have a different view if your country only has one electricity provider and they regularly cut power just for the spite but you can’t choose another electricity provider because no one else owns the infrastructure. You May argue “but I can migrate”, well good for you I guess.
Maybe Christian can find piece in EU Hopefully?Hey EU look youtube is locking down their platform for third party
Not sure how the argument is "morphing". Third party apps have been "stealing" from corporations. Corporations put a stop to free access, so essentially to stop the "steal". If you don't like these new policies, you can stop using their services if yo don't like it.
Great. Exactly what should be done.
I literally have only one electricity provider in my area and they recently cut power suddenly to do 2 day "unplanned maintenance". I threw out all of my food in my fridge. If electricity problem was a such a terribly big issue, I'd install battery power + solar or move.
My argument still stands.
Hmm, maybe ALL third party apps should leave iOS and Android because they are also “stealing“ from Apple and Google, such as storage space and bandwidth, oh and also user base. Let Apple and Google develop their own first party apps to match current third party apps offer. Wonder how that will pan out. After all corporations have unlimited resources.
Great to see that you uphold Your value even if a different corporation is screwing you over mildly.
so far iOS has not changed the policies of allowing up to 1 Petabyte of storage for apps for free or Google's firebase/google maps charges.
if they did and if developers don't like the new policies, they should leave, yes.
that's what being objective means. even if something bad happened to me, my stance on the issue doesn't change because I know what is right or wrong.
putting your own experiences above others is a terrible way of deciding what is right or wrong.
In other scenarios, I’d agree with what you say. But in this case, I can only see YouTube shutting down that vision pro app out of spite, not because of the app “stealing user from YouTube“ as users are still watching YouTube videos, just via another shell. It’s like saying people using Firefox are ”stealing from the internet“ because they didn’t use google chrome.
As for the “objectivity”, everyone will have their own internal bias towards something, subconsciously or not. Defining what is “right“ or “wrong” is already showing a bias towards a particular issue. But that’s the discussion for another time.
I think it’s worth drilling in on this because this is almost literally the case of what is going on right now. The Juno app mostly is just a wrapper around the YouTube website loaded in a webview, to comply with Google’s terms of use. If Firefox wanted to inject some custom CSS into YouTube to make it operate a little better, it’s ridiculous to act like Firefox is suddenly “stealing“ from YouTube.
You don’t see why not? Are you some kind of anti law rebel? The legal system works on the principle of private property. You can’t go to Walmart and setup a shop in their space, and provide a better “user experience” as justification. That’s not how the legal system works. Sure you’ll get away with it for a couple of days, eventually Walmart finds out and kick you out. But now you’ve sold subscriptions to you toothbrush service for a year and users aren’t getting refunds. You think this is ok how? I would love to hear the argument.
Christian's gift is to make others' online lives better. Don't be so bitter..
The legal system works on protecting the powerful people, regardless of its principle. Money talks.
I see you sort of despise the whole “platform“ idea and believe people using those platforms are ”stealing”. Then why not we go all the way back to the time when we had like 10 different incompatible computers? Or let Walmart provide their own product catalogue, from produce to snacks, to electronics and electrical appliances, all produced and sold by Walmart. No other brand will be allowed to be sold on Walmart anywhere. Let’s go even further, Walmart computers, Walmart Internet, Walmart phone and so on.
Relevance
“complains when other companies want to control their own service.”
This is the relevance. He made no complaint. He just provided an explanation for anybody interested in the development of Juno on his personal blog. Stating he wouldn’t fight Google on this.
Admittance
“The short of it is that, while no issues with ad-blocking were presented, they did take issue with a few areas, firstly that Juno is in violation of the YouTube API Terms of Service, and secondly that Juno alludes to YouTube trademarks and iconography. Both of these issues were very puzzling.
For the first issue, as I mentioned, Juno makes no use of the YouTube API so it’s unclear to me how it could be in violation of it. Juno operates in much the same way a browser extension would through CSS and JavaScript. Google’s own Chrome both has native support for browser extensions, and even has native features that customize the styling and experience of webpages. They also mentioned they did not like that Juno uses the embed player, despite Google themselves having a library showing this as the preferred way to integrate YouTube videos into apps.“
He made no admittance of violating terms of service. As I said Google didn’t like his implementation. He didn’t believe he was in violation of their terms and tried to make changes to satisfy the big G.
Random Guess
“I suspect Christian knew this was going to get shutdown”
Allowed/Relevance again
The relevance is that your point in the debate centre's around the argument that third parties shouldn’t run on the success of another company. Whether it’s sensible to build your business around the success of a different company is a separate question. But Apollo was and is allowed (but can no longer afford to operate). And taken at face value, per YouTube‘s own technical guidelines, Juno is seemingly operating in line with them. Google however believe otherwise. Christian tried to work with them to resolve their differences but it hasn’t worked out. That’s unfortunate.
The way I look at this is that Christian built his app, apparently in good faith based on the technical guidelines that are published in the YouTube API terms. Neither of us can know his intention of course. But by definition using the YouTube API is also “allowed” and he built an app around it. It’s a far cry from malicious and intentional breaches of developer guidelines. For instance Epic surreptitiously installing third party payment processing within Fortnite was knowing and malicious. That was a clear ploy to bait Apple so that Epic could file its lawsuit.
Right to charge
I actually don’t disagree with you on Reddit‘s right to charge and to charge whatever the hell they want. It’s their business. But it’s unfortunate that they chose to introduce such high pricing at such a late stage in the game. Because it was users who lost out in the end.
Imagine a world where Apple didn’t charge a commission at the launch of the App Store in 2008; then suddenly decided to introduce a 27% commission in 2024. It would fundamentally break the business models of tons of apps that we know and love today. But fortunately those commissions were priced in from day 1 and consumers and developers were able to decide if they should go into business and buy from Apple or not. Reddit did the reverse of that as was their right. But it doesn’t alter the reality that users are the ones who lost out. Purely because a sole trader built something in good faith and got priced out.
AI on pricing
You may be right on AI scraping being priced in. Who knows what the exact impact of data scraping is on Reddit’s bottom line. If that was or is the case, it would have been helpful if Reddit was transparent about that at the time. At least then the pricing would have genuinely seemed understandable. And I think that would have assuaged most of the backlash to be honest. Or at least re-directed it to Open AI, Meta, Google and co.
No he won’t. There’s no 3rd party service to leech of from in that case.
If Walmart so chooses to make a dumb business decision to only sell Walmart goods then
- They have every legal right to do so
- it doesn’t give you a right to setup your own shop selling in there
- other businesses will out compete Walmartl and if they don’t, that means Walmart got something really valuable in there that is irreplaceable
Reddit shows me ads. Like most "free" services, that's how they pay the bills. Twitter and Reddit clients hide the ads. So how is Twitter/Reddit supposed to pay the bills?
I don’t get the hate for the Juno dev myself. YouTube called that hand and he bowed out. Me personally , I take a more aggressive approach to my online existence. I use AdGuard and so as a result, I haven’t seen a web ad in years. I also pay for Prime yet I have a Jellyfin server so I’m not harangued by ads when I want to watch content I’m entitled to via subscription - I just earmark it and it’s waiting for me ad free, highest quality. I’ll continue to spread this system to family and friends and redouble my efforts when I see corporate greed on full display. I’m the one that wants to see the world burn.
You're framing "stealing" in a different angle I never made the assertion of. I never said Christian is stealing users away from YouTube.
There are many possible reasons why YouTube doesn't want users to be watching on Vision Pro.