Soon we'll have the Verizon Appstore and the Spotify Appstore and the Zoom Appstore, the exclusive home for each app and their partners, each with it's own overlapping user tracking libraries and insecure payment methods, and no one can even tell them to do otherwise. Coming soon to iOS, too!
This is exactly the situation for desktop games right now, something Epic is profiting immensely from. It's an extremely annoying situation for users, having a dozen launcher/store apps around contributing to bloat.
That's exactly the competition that keeps PC from having the hiked prices the likes of Switch/XBox/PS5 stores and having to pay $15/mo to play games with your friends online.
I'll happily have to deal with a few extra launchers on PC in comparison to what the alternative is.
The future where this "extremely annoying" situation is fully solved is Xbox XXX being un removable and the only Game Store allowed on any PC sold, with legal threats to anyone jailbreaking.
As long as user have a choice and control on their device, and competition is alive, we'll hopefuly have different stores with different rules and you'll be extremely annoyed I think.
Is it? I regularly use Steam, Epic and XBox and occasionally Ubi, Larian and whatever the GoG one is called... and it's fine. It's just another program.
Yeah, it is. I don't use anything except Steam. If it's not on Steam I'm not buying or playing it. Making your game exclusive to one distribution channel is stupid.
That's not really a valid comparison because the Microsoft Store and the macOS App Store don't allow third party stores on them. You have to "sideload" any alternative stores/apps you want. To be clear I doubt the hellscape described by OP will come to fruition but still.
Yep. Then consumers can decide which one is best for them. Then they can compete. Then the best features with the best pricing, no only for customers, but the cut for developers, can be discovered.
You pay such a high price for living in the walled garden. I honestly can't imagine why you would _want_ it.
How can I decide which store is best for me when the only store I can get Spotify from is the Spotify store? And the only store with Instagram is the Meta store?
If every store had to make every app available, then sure I'd have choice and maybe that could be super cool.
But nobody's talking about that. We're talking about a world where major corporations will make their apps available only through their own stores and can refuse to do refunds and make canceling subscriptions a nightmare.
I don't see any increased choice at all. All I see is corporations forcing their own stores, that will probably be far less consumer-friendly, and users won't have any increased choice at all.
I can definitely see that happening, but there have been examples of where large companies support broader market access over exclusivity.
For example, Google Maps isn't limited to Android, even though it could drive more Android sales. Instead, it's available on iOS because the potential market loss outweighs the benefits of exclusivity.
Companies are unlikely to limit apps to their own stores if the cost of shrinking their user base is too high. The key factor will be whether consumers are willing to switch platforms for specific apps.
But Google Maps is on iOS because there's hundreds of dollars worth of friction in buying a new phone. Google knows people won't leave iOS just to use Google Maps.
In contrast, installing another app store is just a few taps. Consumers want the app, and then will be forced into a situation where they've got 10 or 15 different app stores installed to support the 20 apps they use, because no corporation wants another corporation taking a percentage of payments or controlling app review.
The reason that isn't too much of a problem is that if an app is only available on one store, a significant fraction of people will simply not install it. Businesses don't want to lose customers like that, but the mere fact that they could will force Monopoly App Store to act more reasonably.
We'll probably see 3-4 major stores that manage to get enough mindshare for people to actually install them, and a lot of apps available on a 2-ish-store subset of them.
okay, so I assume those who jailbreak don't live rent free in your head? That's all that's happening on a technical level. Making it easier to have other Cydia stores.
Yes, they are. This competition means an enormous boom in quality content has been produced that would have never existed otherwise because of the competition.
Choices are great and have resulted in far better services.
I don't agree. TV/movie programming, and the services they run on, are not fungible. If I have a show that I like that's only on a certain platform, it doesn't matter how good or bad that platform is, I need a subscription.
The problem is tying the content to the platform. All studios should be required to license their content under RAND terms to all other streaming platforms. Then the streaming platforms can actually compete on objective measures like price, reliability, video quality, offline watching, etc.
In this case I don't think we've gotten better services. I still believe that the gold standard for a streaming app has been Netflix (well, at least until a few years ago; it's started going downhill IMO). All the others have significant problems, whether with reliability or quality, or with UX. They've certainly gotten better over time, but I don't think I'd consider any of them pleasant to use.
For the longest time, legally, movie studios could not own movie theaters. We correctly recognized that the studios should not have a monopoly on where and how their content is distributed. Unfortunately I believe that law has expired or been repealed recently. We're going in the wrong direction. We need more laws like that, and we need them to apply to streaming platforms too.
>it doesn't matter how good or bad that platform is, I need a subscription.
cool. and Netflix's binge culture works against them for subscribers who only want one show. A new season hits and I can spend $10-20 to watch it and leave.
It will depend on your perspective. If you watch a bunch of TV and movies everyday then you got a worse deal. But it also makes sense you'd pay more than me, who's last venture was 1 month of Paramount for the Knuckles Show (and I didn't even pay. I went to a friend's place).
>We correctly recognized that the studios should not have a monopoly on where and how their content is distributed. Unfortunately I believe that law has expired or been repealed recently. We're going in the wrong direction.
I mean, it's not like the current endgame of AMC or Cinemark has turned out better. I paid $14 for the saddest hot dog I had ever eaten earlier in the year. someone will always try to fleece you if they have the chance.
> an enormous boom in quality content has been produced
Hard disagree. The rate of quality content that I actually want to watch is no higher than it was back when I could view it all on Netflix, but the difference now is that in order to watch it all I'd have to have four different subscription channels.
I'm honestly not even sure the content quality isn't lower now that everyone is producing it with the idea of selling their still-unprofitable streaming platform. Amazon sinks a billion dollars per season into Rings of Power and it shows—the showrunners are visibly torn between trying to tell a compelling story and trying to meet executives' demands that they compete with HBO and milk the Peter Jackson connections for all they're worth.
yeah. If I want to watch a show, I pay the $10-12, immediately not renew, and watch the show and maybe a few other things. And repeat if anything interesting comes on.
I don't need everything all in one place. Piracy was always the cheapest option if you wanted to spend time fiddling, but the current official means is much more convenient than the cable contract lock-in days.
can't stop business. I just want Steam to not get in my way outside of giving their share and giving clear feedback on their reviews and what is wrong with my releases. Open Source isn't mainstream, but I don't care about that.
That’s only because you can’t understand that I don’t want a package manager for my package managers. I just want to install the damn software and be done with it; and I’m pretty happy with the way Apple runs the App Store as an iPhone customer, even though I think some of the restrictions are also senseless as viewed through that prism and their developer relations has been a dumpster fire for close to 10 years now. None of that is enough to get me excited about some future great App Store competition.
If every App I currently use and will want to use in the future continues to be found in the App Store, that’s the plan.
The possible future where that plan goes off the rails is if developers start pulling their software off the App Store and stop following Apple’s rules because they can. Right now they can’t while remaining iPhone developers.
Like I said, there’s a lot that’s a dumpster fire with developer relations between Apple and App Store developers, but you always know where Apple stands:
1. Apple
2. Apple’s Customers
3. Developers
Yeah I’d like them to loosen up some of the restrictions, but it’s still to my advantage as an iPhone customer that developers who choose to develop for iPhones from the smallest to the very largest to even the government are forced to deal with Apple on Apple’s terms to distribute software.
Apple’s dumpster fire in developer relations is also only half the story over the last decade; a lot of the largest developers of the most popular apps on the App Store have also been at the forefront of innovating new and creative ways to try and circumvent even the smallest limitations on iPhones leading to Apple spending the better part of the decade coming up with new APIs, new entitlements and new legal contracts walking this tightrope between enabling or keeping enabled useful APIs while also protecting user privacy and security. It’s not an easy task they’ve taken up, and short of the government literally outlawing most of the surveillance-oriented business practices a lot of Apple’s peers engage in (practices which the government also benefits from), this is basically the next best thing.
Do you have anything to prove your claim? Any precedent?
Epic could already to their own Play Store, but they didn't/couldn't.
Freaking Amazon had their app store and they failed. Samsung also has their own App Store and how many non-Samsung phones run it?
What users wanted: One streaming service from where you can stream or rent any movie or show available in the world.
What users got: 1000 streaming services each with their app and UX that is shitty in a slightly different way from the other, and with a catalog that keeps changing unpredictably.
users wants are company wants. one X is how you end up with a monopoly and an endgame where they enshittify the platform to cost as much as Cable back in the day.
I'm a bit surprised a community as tech savvy as this has frustrations over the idea of using multiple platforms. decentralization by its nature means you'll have fragmentation of content. But it protects against the worse ending of Youtube price hiking mulitple times a year and doubling down on adblock users.
The clusterfuck of the media universe is actually _because_ of monopoly. But it's not monopoly on UX, it is monopoly on the content.
If you want to watch the Lion King, Disney has your balls in a vice grip.
I would be perfectly fine with a hundred different UXes, if they could all serve me Lion King and I had an option to pay for it. Then it would be an actual decentralization. A syndicated system where I can access a movie or song on any platform (of my choice), and the copyright holder gets paid appropriately would be an approach most people in the tech savvy community would be happy with.
For all the noise journalists and the justice department make about big tech, there is basically ZERO action taken about the monopolization of IP that media houses indulge in.
That can only happen if Apple's first-party distribution terms aren't attractive. If the App Store is capable of standing on it's own, then third parties shouldn't pose a threat to it. Something tells me the lower prices and free software on alternative stores will drive adoption though.
I see where it says Google isn't allowed to do this kind of thing. I hope they were forward thinking enough to ban exclusivity deals across the board, or this is going to turn into a total goat rodeo.
The EU has a lot of well-meaning laws, but create quite the mess of unintended consequences.
okay. Then I just use APK pure and find the APKs there. See what freedom does?
Realistically, this never happens. making a platform isn't some cheap endeavor like a landing page for a website. Most people will stay on the play store and use play services. Those with more skin will consider alternative stores, and then lastly some will make their own platforms.
that's the funny thing. I think they still will, but the people up in Google apparently don't even want to risk the chance of losing any marketshare. That's why they spend millions to Apple to keep Google as the default search, even though many consumer's first instinct is to go to Google as is.
It's a strange strategy to me, but I guess I may underestimate however many people will just stick to whatever pops up first.
