Apple plans to charge fees for sideloading

I don't pay anything to side load apps on my phone.

Probably bc I switched to Android.:-)

And I am never ever going back!

It's not the users they're charging, it's the developers. Instead of having to pay 30%, they're asking for 27% if they're selling their app side loaded.

Defeating the whole purpose.

This was how it worked for years for developers. First step of testing your app on an iOS device you have is to pay Apple a developer fee. This has been a thing even back in iOS 3 times.

But not at all surprising.

They've been doing that since the beginning. You need a "developer license" in order to publish an app. Back in the day it was like $50 a year I think, but I haven't done ios dev in about a decade so I don't know if that's changed.

App developers add value to their platform, any wall erected there would be torn down in moments. It would be biting the hand that feeds

There is this god-tier unofficial store called f-droid. Installing app from there is always a joy

There is one aspect people don't really talk about yet, because it is not just about "allowing sideloading". The law says "no self-preferencing". That means that installing an app from for example F-Droid has to take the exact same amount of taps with the exact same UX as installing something from Google Play. Same goes for the App Store. The point is not to allow sideloading, but to erase the word sideloading from the vocabulary of the platform and make it just like Windows in that regard.

This is not just bringing iOS to where Android is, Android is still not compliant yet either. Neither is Windows by the way, because of how they treat Edge.

Not even just that, you have to have at least 7.5B EUR turnover or 75B EUR market cap, AND 45M end users AND 10k business users AND keep this up for 3 years.

And even then it's not automatic, you get nominated and get arguments, and only then you have to follow it.

I mentioned the six companies because they are the only ones that this currently applies to, and that will be the case for the foreseeable future as well. And even from them, it's specific products. MacOS is not in scope for example, despite iOS being scoped in.

Least neoliberal new urbanist

It's brain dead because it's a kneejerk response without anything backing it up.

EU regulations have a massive positive day-to-day effect on my life. It's not like they get everything right, but on the grand scale, it's working better than any other regulatory system I know.

Nope. I'm an android user.

I've had one iPhone once and that was back in 2016.had if for a couple of months and it made me hate life and got rid of it and got me a pixel 6p. I've always been an android and Linux person. So, yeah, I hate apple with a passion

Apple has made a lot of anti-consumer decisions. And since Apple is a big market force, other companies follow suite when they pull off shit like that. There is a legitimate reason to not like Apple.

It’s not that simple.

Blue chat boxes affect everyone. RCS is a stepping stone but my daughter wouldn’t be caught dead with a green chat box. Tell me how that isn’t Apple using their dominance to prevent other players?

FaceTime (which they PROMISED to open up but never did) affects everyone.

What makes you think I buy their garbage? Literal garbage.

Does that doll have a wallet?

I don't get many of the English jokes/sarcasm, so not sure what to answer you. I just don't buy their garbage.

Unfortunately, Apple has the resources, both legal and financial, to tie that up in the EU courts for decades.

Yup. If the only penalty is a fine, and that fine doesn’t scale to the business’ profits? A profitable enough business could simply factor in the fines as a cost of doing business.

Imagine you could make $1000 and only get fined $200 after the fact. No extra penalties. Just a flat $200 fine for every time you violate it. So as long as you expect to be able to top that $200 fine, a business will elect to just pay the fine and continue doing the illegal thing.

The EU court is a Roman court, not an Anglo Saxon court. The spirit of the law is what matters, not the technicalities.

Second, the EU can change the laws that create the outcome they don’t like. By the people, for the people. Apple will play within the EU’s rules or Apple won’t play in the EU.

...true

But the article of the DMA says that the gatekeeper shall not prevent the business user to serve their product using other conditions than those of the gatekeeper's platform. I think that would include Apple's publishing guidelines.

Your description matches my understanding of the process (as someone who left iOS development a few years ago).

I don’t think that the DMA is technical enough to differentiate in this precise manner. Keep in mind that it was written by lawmakers and politicians who mostly don’t know how to even use a smartphone. They'd think that a certificate is a piece of paper with fancy signatures on it.

I could be wrong on this, and don’t know all the details in the case, but EU-law is often interpreted teleologically, meaning in a way that is the most in accordance with the objectives and goals of the legislation. So in this case, if Apple is in violation of the spirit of the law, the EU Courts would likely rule against Apple. (source: 1st year law student)

Steam Deck is pretty awesome in the offline gaming regard, if that's what you might be looking for.

I remember way back when I had my iPod Touch 4 (haven't touched Apple since then) that I (intentionally) jailbroke it simply by tapping a button on a website in Safari. It was an exploit that used a bug in iOS's PDF software, I believe.

Honestly? Nothing. People just say this kind of thing because we like to tinker with our devices. If what you bought satisfies your needs and you don't need more, that's just ok. Android/windows/linux has a lot more conveniences for my use, so that's what I go for, but not everyone is the same

A MacBook is the only Apple product I'm happy with cause it's actually open in terms of being able to install any app I want and modify some things like how windows are managed.

Come back when you have a problem with your keyboard*, or your drive, or charging issue. Repairability is downright bad now.

I like OSX well enough.* I like the form factor of the MacBooks now that they have escape keys again. It's been 9 years since they made a MacBook that was reasonably decent to work on from the inside though. Even swapping a broken screen out is* like 3 hours now.

There are 3 kind of people when talking about Apple: 1- fanatics who support Apple, 2-fanatics who hate Apple and think you cannot like it, 3- and finally those who just look at the product without thinking about the brand but what you can do with the product (if it suits your needs or not). It seems like you are that third kind of person.

You're supporting manipulative evil business practices.

Familiar only if you worked with it before.

Easy... fair enough.

Pretty... debatable.

Apple established itself as a luxury brand. So it gives customers this "prestige feeling". That's at least my take.

It's cool because it is expensive so it is a status symbol. Just like wearing expensive jewelry is cool.

I don't need people to think I'm cook if that is their criteria.

I just can't not have a back button that's always in the same place!

iOS always felt slower tbh. Like it takes an extra step or two to do similar tasks. That and I love sideloading, rooting, and putting my homescreen apps towards the bottom too much to ever fully switch over.

I chose Apple for my work phone for only one reason: battery life. It is a wildly inferior experience for anyone who wants or needs more than just a phone. The way I have to send photos and documents through other services just to get them to my computer, the utter lack of control of the phone's file system, no sideloading...

If for any reason what you need can't or won't work through the Apple ecosystem, iPhones go from feeling pretty smooth to being an obstacle, and I'm not paying $1000+ for an obstacle.

I use iOS every day.

It SUCKS.

If all you want to do are the things Apple decides you can do, and want to do things only Apple's way, it's great.

I choose Apple phones for my work phone, since it's managed by the company anyway, so even an Android would be locked down. And it's not like I would use a corp phone for the things I do with my personal phone - there's too much risk in that.

Apple won't even allow apps to sync photos automatically. I don't want to use their cloud, at all. I just want photos I take synced between my devices using a single tool. No reason for those photos to go anywhere else.

Currently I sync files, automatically, between a dozen devices. All my photos from every laptop and Android phone go to the same folder on one machine. Anything I download with any device is available, almost immediately, for all other devices.

Except for my iOS devices. They can't play in this game, even though the same apps are available on iOS.

Closed source software can't be audited, so it can't be secure. If software isn't secure, the exploits rid it of any privacy.

See: The bimonthly remote takeover bugs that keep getting found. Like this one: https://citizenlab.ca/2023/09/blastpass-nso-group-iphone-zero-click-zero-day-exploit-captured-in-the-wild/

"Oh whoopsy doopsy, looks like your iPhone, camera, files, GPS and more were accessible to someone who sent you an iMessage.. for the third time this year"

Think you might have confused iOS and MacOS

These are fascinating requirements. Mind explaining?

I’m an Apple laptop user with a Linux server. I love Linux and have thought about switching many times, but I don’t for the following reasons:

My Apple computers have lasted me twice as long as any other brand I’ve owned, and they don’t really die—they just get so old that I want a new one.

I never have to worry about incompatible hardware at any time, nor do I have to check for compatibility before upgrading my OS.

They never charge for a new OS, all of their basic software is free, and in some cases better than Microsoft Office.

Whatever product I use from them, it is definitely going to feel high quality.

The screens are always really nice, and everything is guaranteed to look crisp and clear.

They cost more money, but it isn’t like they give you nothing for it. If Linux isn’t a great option for some reason, an Apple device is going to be much less exploitative with advertising and spyware than Windows is.

I understand where the hate comes from, but I wish some Apple haters would back up for a minute and realize that there are power users who have perfectly good reasons to like that hardware.

People like being fucked

Just like when google silently removed their slogan “don’t be evil”.

They didn't just remove it, they changed it to "do good". I'm not sure what that means to Google but it sort of looks like "implement the neoliberal cyberpunk hellscape no one asked for"

The fanboys make me angrier than Apple. It’s so frustrating to discuss something with someone who is so brainwashed.

Yep, its a better AltStore so only 3 apps unless you are vunerable to MDC. For those without a pc, paying for a signing service like maplesign is an option too.

I use the fingerprint sensor. Don't get a Librem, it's a scam and security on it is a disaster. Stick with GrapheneOS. Heck, stock is more secure than the Librem, believe it or not. I wouldn't touch that thing with a 10ft pole.

Via Chromecast if the speaker supports it yeah

I know Apple hate party in here but as a person with a bunch of self built PCs couple Linux boxes…

iPhones are great. No messing around, way more private than stock Google, and they work for… well, I’m on five years with mine. Still gets updates too!

They have great build quality and software, it's a shame Apple has some terrible policies about their ecosystem and repairabilty of their devices, wasting the hard work of so many if their brilliant engineers by being greedy.

Yeah, the first operation of every jailbreak was to disable this protection.

Well they would have to allow unsigned code to run under the DMA, wouldn't they?

The texting thing seems to be something real in the USA.

What purpose would there be in gaslighting something like this out of nowhere? Genuine question.
If you want to see examples of baseless vitriol directed at apple users, just keep reading the rest of the replies to OP's post.

The reality is that these Apple fanboys with values antithetical to software freedom exist,

Sure, just like anywhere else. You can't point your finger exclusively at the apple camp for that.

and want walled gardens everywhere.

Speaking of staw men...
Some apple users prefer apple's walled garden, sure, but they're not going around saying Google, Windows or Linux must be walled as well.

FWIW, I would prefer to use iOS, but instead use GrapheneOS (ungoogled android) specifically because I want sideloading.

The point I’m going for is that I never see such levels of spite and toxicity directed at users of other platforms, be it Android, windows, Linux or whatever.

(Which is good, because that would be just as absurd as it is when directed at Apple users.)

No

Makes sense