Jesper:

iOS and the App Store has not been a truce. It has been a destructive, abusive, lopsided, mistrustful relationship; a relationship that has allowed access to a platform advantageous enough to make you close your eyes and think of multi-touch. It has been an insult to history, an exercise in attempting to redefine away the fundamental facts of the market and of their existing user base and developer ecosystem in a puff of malevolent marketing.

I don’t see governments as the best arbitrators of required features in hardware or software, but they sometimes have a strong connection to what’s fair for the customer, and ain’t nothing about the App Store that’s fair.

I don’t want governments to get involved. Apple should do the right thing and allow the installation of apps from outside of the App Store without the need for any intervention.

Regulations, no matter how well intended, will have unexpected consequences. And in this case, I would guess it would somehow make it more difficult for competitors to get off the ground. But maybe that’s what Apple actually wants. Maybe they know it’s inevitable — they know they’ll be forced to allow installation of apps from elsewhere and their angling for it to be done in such a way that manages to more deeply cement themselves and Google as the only game in town.

➝ Source: take.surf