> Apple isn’t perfect. The App Store isn’t perfect. Developers aren’t perfect. The App Store review team isn’t perfect. Everything isn’t perfect.
This is key: because individual centralized actors are imperfect and even corruptible--whether due to intrinsic motivations or extrinsic application of force--it isn't acceptable to concentrate so much power onto them; in a talk I gave at Mozilla Privacy Lab a few years back, I covered a lot of these failure cases throughout our industry with real-world "this actually happened" examples, including (as this would of course be one of my focuses) looking at numerous ways in which Apple's App Store moderation has been the problem instead of the solution.
The Safari team is asking for feedback, after "Safari is the new IE"[1] is getting steam again as an idea. This idea that they want to do better is good, but your arguments really cut into the heart of it.
Even if Safari turns the ship around & decides to support fun & interesting new platform capabilities that make the web interesting, like WebMIDI, WebUSB, the mere fact that Safari is the gauntlet for innovation, that Apple & Apple alone gets to say what parts of the web will work, is highly poisonous to the web. iOS users having no choice, having a centralized actor now & forever gating progress is untennable, is wrong, prevents healthy emergence & discovery. However good they are today, they may drift tomorrow, and having no fallback, no options is a technocratic fascism that society should recognize as structurally sick.
just want to thank you for everything you've done for the iOS user community these last 15 years. I left the platform when Apple's success in fighting its own users became too much of a pain point, but before that your work helped enable developers to do some utterly fantastic stuff.
But as long as we have fairly effective enforcement of IP law, so that e.g. only the publisher of a popular video game can get away with distributing that video game to smartphone users, don't you still have largely the same issue with concentration of power? You still won't have different parties able to compete in how Fortnite is distributed. The publisher of Fortnite can choose how to distribute Fortnite, but that power is still concentrated with the publisher, and arguably even more concentrated since the publisher would not be subject to power from any particular app store.
So you’re suggesting a blanket right to redistribution to all property? It feels pretty generally accepted (and non contentious) that the creator of a product has a monopoly on its distribution and can chose to distribute in as many or as few places as they like. Otherwise I’d be well within my rights to ask you to give me the contents of your hard drive at my convenience as you would not be permitted to control the distribution.
It turns out that with the current rules around monopoly rights of creators, many rights holders actually prefer to widely distribute, so I wouldn’t say that this makes it “even more concentrated” as the majority of content would be.
Some content will probably only be available in a first party store, but just the fact that there are competing stores is good for the consumer.
No, I absolutely did not suggest that. What I suggested is that the creator’s monopoly on distribution is inherent concentration of power and thus you don’t solve problems with concentrations of power if you force Apple to allow sideloading on iPhones.
A) We do not have effectively enforcement of IP law, and to the extent we do it is only because you already helped usher in a dystopia by centralizing power with entities such as Apple.
B) That laws are different in different places and that even in the US there are exemptions to laws should not be casually ignored by assuming one narrow interpretation of a set of laws as you have: Apple controlling the distribution model with cryptographic locks hard-codes in a subset of American IP preferences around the world.
C) Even if we ignore these details and take your argument at the face of it and accept that for "choose how to distribute Fortnite" you merely are deciding between one of two centralized actors, you seem to be carefully trying to perform not one but two sleight of hands on the moral discussion at play.
It isn't like Epic doesn't have legal control over how Fortnite is distributed regardless: if Epic doesn't like Apple's terms for their App Store in the current model, they can choose to just not give you the software at all. You are just hoping to play a super dangerous game by assigning a single negotiator between your community of users and Epic in order to try to convince them to develop their software differently, for which you are apparently willing to pay 36% more for your software (which means you must value it a lot: like, for whatever benefit you think Apple is getting you here you are willing to dig into your own pocketbook and pay multiple extra dollars you otherwise wouldn't have to pay on every purchase or subscription) and--and this is where the tradeoff is unacceptable and the subject of the following #2--give Apple a large amount of control over all software in all jurisdictions... control which they lie about the benefits of, which they have routinely abused, and which can and is take advantage of by external actors.
And really, that is the most important thing in all of this and what I'd hope you would appreciate if you watch my talk: by giving Apple control over all software on the App Store you give them the power to affect what kinds of software is allowed to be built by anyone anywhere while creating a centralized chokepoint for the enforcement of whatever rules that bad actors want (such as the inclusion of end-to-end encryption carbon-copy features in applications or whatever). Giving Epic control over the distribution of Fortnite can't usher in a dystopia.
X) BTW: note that Fortnite is attempting to be some kind of massive metaverse service with a centralized set of servers attempting to provide an ecosystem of content that they would then have centralized control over. If the issues with Apple weren't so dominating and glaringly dangerous today maybe we could be having an argument about whether what Epic is building is moral and whether laws need to exist to stop it (and instead force--either directly or indirectly--such technology to come into existence in a way that is itself decentralized).
> It isn't like Epic doesn't have legal control over how Fortnite is distributed regardless: if Epic doesn't like Apple's terms for their App Store in the current model, they can choose to just not give you the software at all. You are just hoping to play a super dangerous game by assigning a single negotiator between your community of users and Epic in order to try to convince them to develop their software differently
Not exactly. I'm hoping that at least one popular smartphone platform exists that exerts some leverage against software developers on behalf of users, so that users who value that feature can choose that platform. But it's also crucial for customers to be able to choose that platform (in this case, iPhone) for that reason, and to also have viable alternatives if they're not interested in this feature of a smartphone platform. I don't want Apple to do monopolistic things, and I absolutely wish there were more viable smartphone platforms, and I condemn Apple for the things it does to attempt to lock people in to the iPhone platform.
This is key: because individual centralized actors are imperfect and even corruptible--whether due to intrinsic motivations or extrinsic application of force--it isn't acceptable to concentrate so much power onto them; in a talk I gave at Mozilla Privacy Lab a few years back, I covered a lot of these failure cases throughout our industry with real-world "this actually happened" examples, including (as this would of course be one of my focuses) looking at numerous ways in which Apple's App Store moderation has been the problem instead of the solution.
https://youtu.be/vsazo-Gs7ms