Japan prepares regulation requiring Apple to allow sideloading::As the Digital Markets Act antitrust law passed in the European Union, Apple has until March 2024 to let users…
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Having app developers be able to avoid Apples forced 30% fee is great. The fee is pure rent seeking masquerading as curation.
30% might be a bit much, but Apple and Google are offering ongoing services for the price you pay as a developer. From hosting, to payment processing and APIs you can use in your apps, I think what they’re offering has some monetary value that would be acceptable if it wasn’t so damn much. I don’t think it’s toxic rent-seeking in and of itself. What’s pretty toxic is that there’s no way around those fees on Apple phones and tablets.
The #1 thing they provide is exposure.
The vast majority of users simply won’t download and install something they find on a website on their phones.
Thankfully, it seems like places like the EU and now Japan are considering ALL use cases, not just the majority of them.
Unless it’s fortnite and has a giant marketing engine behind it
Even I don’t install random apps if they aren’t on the playstore or fdroid
Agreed, If it wasn’t a forced arrangement I wouldn’t necessarily nave a problem with the price
I suspect you’re just repeating arguments you’ve heard, so don’t take this internet rage personally, but that is complete bullshit.
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Hosting costs nothing. Devs will gladly foot the bill for that if given the option. Even if you distribute your apps on AWS (which is notorious for severely overcharging on egress), your expenses will be no where near 15%-30% of your revenue.
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Payment processing is a competitive field outside the appstores. Even 15%-30% is ludicrous when “overpriced” processors like stripe charge 2%-3%
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APIs are not something sold to developers. They build them as part of the operating system because they have to. That’s how it works. They could try selling licenses, but it would result in devs not building on their fancy new features.
(you didn’t mention the ones below, but people with your argument usually do, so I’m adding them for completeness)
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Security is also bullshit. The Appstore and Play store are FILLED with malware. It is not physically possible to manually review the sheer volume of apps published to those stores. They also are not incentivized to improve the process much, because each time your kid or grandma accidentally activates a $40/week subscription, Apple/Google take a 15%-30% cut.
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Curation/promotion is bullshit. Discoverability on these stores has always been bad, but has been particularly awful since both Apple/Google have started selling search ads in the store. The other day I almost accidentally downloaded a fake ChatGPT app because it was the first result when I searched, it had a very similar icon, “ChatGPT” in the name, 5 stars, and millions of downloads.
These stores also heavily incentivize devs to push subscriptions. I suspect (but haven’t confirmed) that the Appstore and Google Play both rank subscription based apps higher than others, and subs tend to pay a lower revshare fee than other monetization types.
I could go on all day about the rotten dumpster fires that are these disgusting stores. The only people who defend them are fanboys and people who have never actually had to deal with them professionally.
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The high price is a result of monopolistic exclusivity.
Their curation is terrible too. The app store has so much shovelware crap
legislation is expected to be sent to parliament next year and focuses on four areas: app stores and payments, search, browsers, and operating systems.
We also get Linux on iPhones??
And the talk is just about sideloading… :-)
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I personally can’t wait for open sourcing of mobile drivers / driver apis. That will finally allow stuff like turning off phone components for Linux mobile system and not have gyro for some specific phones.
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Wouldn’t putting Android on an iPhone be redundant? It would have less features and capability for a higher cost.
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What’s up with the creative commons link? Fair points.
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Are you saying Android has less features and capabilities? Or am I reading it wrong?
You’re indeed reading that incorrectly. You can see clearly that I’m saying the iPhone with Android OS has less features for a higher cost (Compared To an Android Phone).
The reason that’s implied is because I included cost, because comparing an iPhone with Android to an iPhone with iOS the cost wouldn’t change at all.
iPhone has less lenses, lower megapixels, less zoom, and the charging cables are less effective or in many cases use proprietary charger instead of USB-C, among other things.
Ahh I see, thanks!
The reason I was confused is that I was assuming this is about older iPhones, you know, the ones Apple is deliberately slowing down. So installing a lightweight Android ROM could give them a new lease on life.
I would assume it’s to use the chips but that only works if they’re forced to provide proper drivers for the full hardware
Big if true. Apple owners might actually be owners of their devices.
They don’t care.
By and large, probably… But I don’t think it’s true for everyone.
As an iPad owner myself, I would love to ditch the OS! And I suppose alternative OSes would be pretty popular with the people jailbreaking their phones.
I don’t want to impose alternative OSes on others. I would just like the option for me!
Go see all the crazy kids on r/jailbreak asking the same questions over and over
Not true. I’d love to be able to jailbreak again. I’m locked in to the ecosystem by work and a backlog of apps 15 years deep.
Granted I’m on Lemmy so I guess I’m not a normal iOS user
Yeah it’s literally a status symbol amongst kids.
My kid is desperate for one but can’t give me a single compelling reason apart from they’re seen as cool.
I like Apple products because they just work. I have tried Windows, Linux, & Android, but I ultimately decided on just using the Apple Ecosystem (except for my gaming computer) because the products just work well. Sure they cost more and are locked down but I am willing to sacrifice those things for things for the boost in productivity.
Apple isn’t for everybody but their products have upsides.
They just work (usually) if you want to use their products the way they want you to use them.
If you have your own idea how to do something on your own that’s any different, you will slowly go insane.
They just work (usually) if you want to use their products the way they want you to use them.
Well… Yeah? That’s the case for most products.
Why downvotes? They are both right, with an exception of MacBooks. Otherwise, you are limited by use cases predicted by the manufacturer, even if it “just works”.
I use both iPhone and MacBook, with the latter mostly as a Unix that, again, “just works”, but I can even go as far as compile whole GNU userspace natively with Gentoo Prefix (one of many options).
Cuz it makes no sense. You wouldn’t complain that the iPhone doesn’t work as a skateboard because they don’t want you using it as a skateboard. It doesn’t work as a skateboard because it’s not a skateboard. All companies design products to be used the way the company wants you to use them. If op is talking about it being super locked down, that’s also incorrect. I can disable plenty of the security features on Mac and it continues to work just fine, compared to windows where if you disable UAC you literally cannot use your computer the same way and it will bug you constantly. It’s just a trope that isn’t really true at all.
Just give your kid an iPhone from AxiExpress
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lol right
Good luck getting any of the hardware to work properly without Apple’s help.
It’s actually not that hard once you have access. ARM Chips can be difficult to get into, but programming for them is not that hard. The peripherals and other segments might be married components but that should be fine as long as they don’t get swapped out at any point.
Based Japan once again. I would love to see other countries requiring this too, but I’m not going to hold my breath unfortunately.
I mean, the EU has already done this and now Japan is doing the same. So i guess it’s very well possible that other countries besides Japan will also follow suit.
Hehe Brussels effect go brrrr
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I think India and Brazil have also made initial efforts.
I tried to install an old version of San Andreas recently on my phone cause the last update broke controller support (which I actually bought with money).
Apparently we don’t own our Android OBB directories anymore because of “safety”.
So far the “we Android users already have this”…
Yep, it’s unfortunate that manufacturers are taking more and more control away from users. That’s why open-source software like Linux is so important, you can do anything you want to with it.
Back in the old days, Android OS used to be Open Source. You can still get firmware built up from the last release, such as CalyxOS, but in order to install it you have to buy directly from Google with the Bootloader Unlocked as a feature.
Not really. Fairphone also has the Bootloader unlocked.
That’s true.
Are Fairphones feasible right now if one wants to play even intense games like emulating PS2 or Switch?
Idk. Give me your Emulator and i’ll try it for you
No shit, really? You’re the man.
The emulator is called AetherSX2.
Now, for ROMs… I’d gladly share the link for one here on Lemmy, but idk if I’d be violating any rules
I’ m sorry, bu you’re going to have to send me the links for the bios, game etc.
I really don’t think it’s against any rules here.
God I miss the old days of android…the OG droid, everything was unlockable, no fuckery. Google hadn’t yet slowly started adding data collection by ways of slowing moving functionality away from the core AOSP.
It still is open source, btw. But they’re just intentionally choking it to death. They’ve recently announced they’re not going to maintain the open source PHONE APP…FOR THEIR PHONES…for christ sake. They’ve even had a new replacement OS in the works for a couple years.
Embrace, Extend, Extinguish sadly
The old version of Android OS is still open source, but the new versions of Android OS are NOT open source, and I think that’s an important distinction to make because otherwise we might accidentally pander or market to people who put faith in that sort of thing.
Yeah Android is Linux. But Manufactures are limiting it so hard that it is sometimes nearly impossible to get a custom ROM on the phone.
Yes. The openess of the operating system is meaningless if the phone’s firmware isn’t open.
It’s open source so that anyone can manufacture a phone for it (good for business), not so you could install whatever you want on the hardware (bad for business)…
Yeah but unfortunately with Android it’s what Google wants and not what the end-user wants. That’s why Linux itself is very important, the user gets to decide what they want to do with it.
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Now that’s what I’m talking about.
Life finds a way
Great, now force them to open up their NFC, so mobile banking apps can skip Apple Pay for their contactless payment feature
Usb-C, side loading, what’s next? APK or snap packages compatibility?
It’s happening guys, apple is start to a open source platform
