Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Apple will never be the same….”.
Apple to allow third-party app stores and side loading in Europe due to digital markets act. We talked about this a little bit last week, but it hadn’t been fleshed out in the dock because of a miscommunication, so we’re going to get into in a little bit more detail. One really quick thing: Dan. Are you on merch messages? Now I’m trying my best got it.
If you guys can help that’d be great. Okay Apple has signaled that it will abide the eu’s digital markets act and allow third-party app stores and side loading on I devices. This is exciting. The dma is intended to prevent abuse of Market power and allow new players to enter digital markets. Basically, leveling the playing field against big Tech, it was signed into law in September, came into effect in November, and active enforcement will begin in May. That is a fast timeline for such a such an earth-shaking change, to the way that these digital markets have worked up until now.
Apple’S objections to date have been numerous. It will be confusing for users, it will be a gold rush for the malware industry and a cyber criminal’s best friend. This would destroy the security of the iPhone I’ll, be very interested to see uh Apple’s marketing around the security of the iPhone changes. I’M willing to bet they don’t say the iPhone is not secure yeah. So maybe they can overcome this after all interesting and they said Android experiences, 5 million attacks per month, okay, yeah um – and how many do they yeah? Incidentally, the news triggered a stock surge for dating services and apps. Oh wow you’ll finally be able to have like say, for example, a pornography app on on the on the App Store. Yeah, like apple, has long taken a a moral High Ground against certain types of content. Interesting well, unless it’s in Safari web browser, nobody can use Apple software and Hardware to view such things get real, guys um. While this is broadly seen as a victory for consumers.
Some are less sure, Sami fathe. A writer for Mac rumor says that many questions remain on how Apple might implement this and suggests that it might in effect force people to sideload. Um apps must be able to access services and sensors and side loading could offer greater control for apps than the app store’s restrictions allow. I have no idea of what sami’s point is right.
Now. Companies like meta and Spotify are incentivized to leave as they’re in direct competition with apple and apple and chafe under app store’s rules, um yeah, so no what’s actually going to happen is in order for apple to maintain any kind of revenue from the app store they’re Going to have to take a less abusive cut and they’re going to have to relax their their policies. It’S good. This is good for consumers. All you’re doing is yeah Sammy.
All you’re doing is reiterating why this is good for consumers, um, okay, A bit odd! This is a problem. This is a really good point, making sure that people are running the latest app revision. This way is going to be a major issue for developers versus just having the App Store manage this um. That’S going to be messy, and then this third Point. Basically it’s a mess all around.
I I I disagree. Um Android already allows side loading. No, it is not a mess all around most users. I promise you don’t sideload.
Anything and it’ll probably be the same way, but if Apple has major Cash, Cow apps come to them one after another after another after another. This is finally a way for partners to put pressure on Apple to actually be Partners rather than Servants of Apple, rather than just being grateful that Apple gives them the privilege of being part of their their fiefdom or whatever um limited side. Loading is already a thing on iOS, so yeah things might not change that much, but right now it’s very restrictive. Users have to import a certificate to do so.
It has to be refreshed weekly to function. If you aren’t a developer, there’s an app limit of three um alt store I’ve. Never even heard of this is apparently a third-party App Store that automatically refreshes the certificates. Now this discussion question who’s right here and why I think I’ve made my position pretty clear.
This is a win for Consumer choice and again this is one of those things where, if you’re an Apple user, who wants to only use the app store, then by all means, you should have no objection to this for everyone else, because you can keep just using The App Store go for it, I don’t want to, and I don’t like Apple’s monopolistic Behavior, so I might choose to do something else. It’S called consumer choice. You have the choice to do it that way, and this is effectively a legislative body stepping in and saying, yeah apple has not in good faith provided consumer Choice has not, in good faith, put themselves on a Level Playing Field with their competitors on their ecosystem and Has behaved in a monopolistic way if they had if they had acted in good faith. This probably wouldn’t have come to bite them, but they didn’t, and so it has too bad.
I don’t feel bad for them. I just can’t they’ve been just arseholes to deal with yeah, absolutely not like every turn. They’Ve made their bed now they sleep in it yeah I’m glad the EU actually has the stones to do this now. The next discussion question is: what would a more open iPhone? Look like, would you be more or less likely to buy one if it supported third-party app stores and side loading, because man with side loading I’m imagining anyway, a lot more functionality that I just can’t get. Unless I want to jailbreak this stupid thing yeah, I think it really depends. It depends what services start putting themselves up to be side loaded. It depends if, if users really start actually doing it at all, uh, because if users don’t do it, then companies aren’t going to bother running that setup anyways like there’s a lot of variables there. I think it’s one of those things where, like first generation of it, might not necessarily matter too much but it’ll be interesting to see how it evolves over time.
I have another discussion: question would flow plane just immediately, go the side loading route or would we try and stay on the App Store because I know which way I lean right now, but let’s have executive dialogue here. Let’S talk about synergies. What uh one problem with side loading? One of the reasons are: we’ve avoided sending out packages like that in the past updates yeah, absolutely we don’t have an in-app updater. That is something that is possible, but that is a tool that we would have to make which costs money yeah um.
So I don’t know it really depends. I I could definitely see someone making like some open source uh like package updater for iPhones or something yeah or an alternate app store, or that might have their own updater yeah, something like so so. If I mean there’s a lot of potential there, um there’s. Definitely a lot more, we could do with the app if we, if we could just let it get sideloaded um, there’s there’s a lot of things that we’ve been stopped from doing like we’ll get we’ll get complaints, people will email, customer support and they’re like hey. This isn’t very intuitive.
It’S like you are 100 correct. I completely agree with you and I apologize that there’s nothing we can do about it. Yeah because, like we can’t they’re like it would be really great.
If, when I go to try to do this thing, it could tell me that, like I have to do it on the website and it’s like yep, that would be awesome, but we can’t we can’t send you to our website. Sorry, it is what it is ridiculous. It’S just and they’ve gotten a little bit better with it over time, but like it’s still far from what I would consider acceptable. .