Except Apple did exactly what you just said Microsoft did to third party devs, and then also banned their apps off the appstore to boot because they do what their OS now does out of the box, like the famous keyboard for the Apple Watch.[1]
At least Microsoft can't ever ban you from selling Windows apps since you're not forced to use their store to sell to Windows users. Apple's grip of the iOS AppStore can be a poison pill for many devs who's livelyhood depends on Apple's automatic ML ban hammer and arbitrary rules which can change as they see fit with no warning.
> At least Microsoft can't ever ban you from selling Windows apps
True; but that also means third parties can lose even more when MS pulls the rug out from under them. The developer of the third party keyboard app you refer to said, according to the article you referenced, that they lost a year of revenue. Some third party Windows devs were forced into bankruptcy.
So according to you, Apple's copying an app then banning that developer's app off the Appstore is better than Microsoft's copying an app's features while still allowing it to be sold, because in Apple's documented case one developer lost "only" a year of revenue, while in your imaginary Microsoft example, a company we don't know of went bankrupt?
You're just a gift that keeps on giving. How do you come up with this reasoning?
> copying an app then banning that developer's app off the Appstore is better than copying an app's features while allowing it to be sold?
I said no such thing. I said, by implication, that losing a year's revenue, but still having a functioning company, is better than being forced into bankruptcy.
Also, that in no way means that causing a third party app developer to lose a year's revenue is not a bad thing to do. Of course it is.
However, in both cases, the root cause is that the owner of the platform wants to run their platform in a way that third party devs don't like. And ultimately, unless the users of the platform care enough to force the platform owner to change, third party devs are simply going to be out of luck. It sucks, but that's the fact. Third party Windows apps today are for things that MS doesn't care enough about to implement themselves, because Windows users don't care that third party devs get a raw deal. Third party iOS apps are going to end up the same way, unless iOS users start to care about the sucky position third party devs are in. Which, as far as I can tell, they don't.
Who was force into bankruptcy? You're just making stuff up at this point for a strawman argument.
Apple's walled garden can more easily force you into bankruptcy though since you have no alternative way to distribute iOS apps to customers, therefore your revenue stream can be cut off without warning. Just because that one dev in that example didn't go bankrupt, doesn't prove your argument.
Meanwhile, Microsoft can't stop you from distributing apps on Windows, even though you're clawing to some made up strawman that they can make you bankrupt. You can still sell your apps just fine on your own website and people can easily pay you, download it and install it without Microsoft's permission since you can do whatever you want with that os, just like on MacOS.
I have no idea how you can argue the latter app distribution model is worse than the walled garden one, just through two anecdotal examples.
This guy is unreal. Apple "fan users" in general are something else, it's like their logic (or lack thereof) got stuck at the elementary level or something.
To be clear I have been an Apple customer since way before the iPhone, but I really feel bad about the new breed of Apple fanatics.
To be honest, I have the feeling that some cognitive limitation is part of the reason for being such a loyal customer.
At least Microsoft can't ever ban you from selling Windows apps since you're not forced to use their store to sell to Windows users. Apple's grip of the iOS AppStore can be a poison pill for many devs who's livelyhood depends on Apple's automatic ML ban hammer and arbitrary rules which can change as they see fit with no warning.
https://www.verdict.co.uk/apple-watch-keyboard-app-store/?cf...