A new lawsuit brought by one of Apple’s oldest foes seeks to force the iPhone maker to allow alternatives to the App Store, the latest in a growing number of cases that aim to curb the tech giant’s power.
The lawsuit was filed on Thursday by the maker of Cydia, a once-popular app store for the iPhone that launched in 2007, before Apple created its own version. The lawsuit alleges that Apple used anti-competitive means to nearly destroy Cydia, clearing the way for the App Store, which Cydia’s attorneys say has a monopoly over software distribution on iOS, Apple’s mobile operating system.
“Were it not for Apple’s anticompetitive acquisition and maintenance of an illegal monopoly over iOS app distribution, users today would actually be able to choose how and where to locate and obtain iOS apps, and developers would be able to use the iOS app distributor of their choice,” the lawsuit alleges.
Apple will fight lawsuits like this all the way to the Supreme Court if it has to, but I think there’s no saving this one. Eventually, somewhere, either in the US, EU, Japan, or even China, some regulator or court will demand the end of the App Store monopoly, and once the wall’s been breached in one jurisdiction, it will benefit the rest of the world.
Some people will have no interest in Cydia’s app store, which is fine. However in a free market each owner needs to be able to make their own choices about what to do with their own property. It’s just the right thing to do.
Interestingly it was cydia that first introduced installable app repos for IOS users even before apple did. Had apple bought them out rather than shut them out they wouldn’t have made enemies of Cydia.
But, using one’s “power” to acquire the competition is still an “anti-trust” violation. But maybe puts the lawsuit in the hands of people that really don’t care.
Given how Apple made silly money with iTunes and never saw the success of iPad coming I wonder if all that money has gone to their head. The claim they sell hardware not software, and are a minority player seems to be breaking down.
One thing I like about these anti-monopoly lawsuits is not just they address the balance of rights but they bring the powerful down a peg or two. I mean that in the sense I think from their lofty hights they can leave planet Earth.
I think it’s worth standing back a bit here and thinking about the larger picture with a degree of common sense.
The very small but noisy constituency of what one might call tech enthusiasts who want to be free to tinker, take apart and generally fiddle around with their tech devices say their freedom is restricted because they can’t install apps on their iOS devices with out going through the Apple App Store (AAS). Quite what they would gain from being able to install apps without using the AAS has never been clear to me. Perhaps there are a handful of apps that Apple have banned for one (possibly bad) reason or another that they can’t get through the AAS, or perhaps they object to Apple’s commission on all transactions and think they could get apps cheaper, perhaps they think some apps are not being made available because some developers won’t work through the AAS, or perhaps they just object in principle to the whole ASS idea and system. The thing is in reality of course there is a vast, gigantic supply of cheap and often free apps available on the AAS and for the life of me I can’t see what would change significantly for the better in the supply of apps to consumers resulting from an ending of the AAP system. Please if anybody is reading this who wants to end the AAS system because of improvements it would bring in the supply of apps to end users please tell me what I am missing, and please be concrete.
Which brings us to the argument around the principle of the thing, which is the argument I sense gets the most traction amongst tech enthusiasts and vocal opponents of the AAS system. They seem to think that it’s wrong in principle for there to be limits on what they can install on their devices (even if there are unofficial work arounds for those willing to make an effort to breach the ASS system). So it’s all about freedom and principle.
Now freedom is a tricky thing, one persons freedom can be another person’s unfreedom. You being free to play very loud music into the small hours means your neighbours is not free to get a good nights sleep. Sometimes the freedom of the few to do what they want has to be restricted for the benefit of the many. The freedom of, say, the drivers who want to drive at a 170kph is frankly way less important than the freedom of all the other drivers to not to be endangered.
Using that principle, that some restrictions are rightfully there to make the most people free even if a minority become less free as result, let’s look at how that applies to the AAS system. Before the AAS system, when software was over 90% for desktop class PCs the essentially unregulated, and hence for tech enthusiasts ‘free’, market for software for the vast majority of PC users was actually really full of unfreedoms and scary, dangerous problems. Getting software onto your PC was complex and unnerving, there was no way of knowing without doing tedious and often inconclusive research to know whether the software you were getting was even safe, or that the credit card transaction was secure and of course perverse human ingenuity meant that there was an army of malicious software writers who came up with endless ways to trick you into installing malicious apps onto your PCs. Just the technical steps required to actually install compatible software was scary and difficult for a significant number of PC users. In reality most PC users hated the worries of installing apps, and the fact that there was a real incentive to be super careful and cautious about installing any apps on your PC except ones from the big name brands (and even those sometimes came carrying bad stuff) meant the software market was small in relation to the PC installed base which meant that software was expensive as developers had fewer sales to cover their costs, plus of course they had to sort and recoup all the costs of distribution and payment receipt. In fact the PC software market was actually designed in a way that actually reduced the freedom of most users. To use an earlier analogy, yeah you were free to play your music loudly but most people just had trouble sleeping because of all that noise.
The AAS, and it’s emulators, changed all that. Now the billion or so users of the AAS are free to install apps willy-nilly because of the highly valued (by the vast majority of users) freedom of knowing that the chance of an app in the AAS being malicious is vanishingly remote. Plus the system led directly to an explosion of choice, a vast sea of apps, mostly free or very, very inexpensive, and a big increase in the amount of income going to software developers. The freedom of knowing that an app on your device is almost certainly not malicious is even more important that in the PC world because the device in your pocket is so much more integrated into your life, it knows where you are, it can listen to what you are doing and who you are talking to, it has all your banking details, so if it’s comprised by a malicious third party the results would be potentially far more serious than on your old PC. So the freedom of the many has been enhanced at the costs of restricting the freedom of the few (actually very few) and that sort of trade off is exactly the right sort of way to run things.
Finally lets for a moment consider what would happen if the AAS system was forcibly dismantled. I can’t believe such a dismantling would involve merely expanding the number of app stores to a few licensed trusted extra ones in addition to the AAS. Who would decide who got a license to run an app store? And even if the number of available app stores were incrementally increased by a few extra ones how would that make the setup any less unfree than now (using the tech enthusiasts definition of unfreedom)? In reality if the AAS store’s gate keeper role were to be legally dismantled then it would it result eventually in people being free to install apps from anywhere on their devices. How would that work in practice for the billion plus users of iOS devices? Any one of them could click on a link on any web page they had stumbled across, say yes to any apparently super offer being pushed at them, just visit some malicious but disguised website, and find their devices were now compromised, devices that they carry with them most of the time, that knows their location, that are technically capable of listening to their calls and conversations, that hold their private photos and bank account details. Would that increase their freedom? Is that a better world?
Remember the Chinese curse “May you get what you wish for”
The global issues of market failure and insecure OS apply whatever system is being used: whether it’s a well resourced vendor like Apple or a bazillion click and install wannabes. Yes, Apple wraps everything up in a single convenient point but don’t let this obscure the underlying issues relating to abuse of market position and generally poor OS security. Yes, some random can push a dodgy executeable or slip a line of bad code into an open source application but then don’t go clicking on everything like a Pavlovian dog when you are running an insecure OS. Install mechanisms and security and consumer rights are multiple subjects all with their own issues and something we can discuss all at the same time. There’s no need for extreme polarised views. For example on the hard left you have the own it all Marxists. On the right you have Darwinian turbo capitalists. In reality most advanced Western states are a mixed economy. State influence is limited while the market is regulated. it’s not perfect but then neither are the extremes.
Strossen,
In a free market you have the right to to whatever store you want to go to. What the hell happened to people that they’re ok with corporations telling them what they can and cannot do with their own property?? We’re raising a new generation of consumers to put up with this corporate control bullshit. It is so extremely disappointing that I should even have to explain this. I would hope the principals of freedoms and opposition of tyrannical controls to be self-explanatory. Owners should always have the right to buy apps, repair parts, etc from whomever they choose and they should not have to explain themselves to you, they shouldn’t have to explain themselves to apple and they shouldn’t need any excuse other than they’re the damn owner and it’s their business what they do with their damn property. I’m so sick of having to explain the importance of freedom to people who should know better!
It’s about damn time these regressions of the free market and owner rights get challenged in court. It can’t come soon enough.
There is also a bit of a problem with government trying things on then corporates who, I’m guessing, are politically sympathetic or who don’t care because it doesn’t effect them creating “corporate made law”. Corporate made law has no force ib law but in a practical sense unofficially strips people of their rights. This creates situations where to assert your rights you have to complain which usually goes nowhere just because, or bring a judicial review. This is expensive which these big corporates know. Then there’s the creep creep effect of brainwashing people into going along with it because it’s the easiest option or thinking it’s okay because that’s how it is.
This isn’t a discussion about dismantling the Apple app store. It’s about allowing other app stores to be installed alongside it. Like what already exists on Android devices, behind a simple button with a simple warning explaining the potential consequences.
The improvement would be competition to the Apple app store. For example, what kinds of apps are allowed, and the cost of publishing.
I have never met any of those “majority of PC users”.
So to sum up the responses to my comment so far:
HollyB – Locked doors don’t keep out all burglars so let’s abolish all locks
Alfman – It’s my right to drive as fast as I want and play my music as loudly as I want because my freedom trumps everything else
drcouzelis – Lets have lots of app stores because this will bring some unspecified benefit to end users. What tangible benefit would that bring? Who would license them? If nobody does then it’s a free for all and there is nothing to stop malicious crap spreading.
jgfenix – Everybody is just like me, and they all love really loud music
Not a single example of what anybody would be able to install on their devices once the Apple App Store gatekeeper role is abolished that they can’t install right now.
Here’s a concrete reply: There are currently no truly 3rd party web browsers on iOS. There are some which skin around Apple’s Webkit engine (this is as far as Apple’s rules allow them to go [1]). So, for example, if there’s a security exploit that affects Webkit but not Blink or Gecko, your browser on iOS will likely be vulnerable. Similarly, if there’s a page that doesn’t render correctly in a Webkit-based browser, then no current iOS browsers will render the page properly.
[1] Read the second sentence on the Firefox for iOS wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox_for_iOS
jasutton,
You are right, and there are certainly cases to be made that apple’s held back things like open codecs for the web by blocking competing web browsers, etc. But I don’t want to delve into these lines of argument because I feel they kind of miss the point: an owner’s right to choose alternative app stores should a protected activity in and of itself and not be contingent on owners providing justification to anybody. When I choose a mechanic I don’t have to provide justification for why. When I choose a hotel I don’t have to provide justification for why. When I pick a bank, I don’t have to provide a justification for why. People can disagree with my choices, that’s fine. Heck they may even be right about some of my choices being poor, but they’re still my choices. The problem with allowing corporations make choices on our behalf is that it’s the antithesis to freedom. As technology becomes more and more important to everyday life, it becomes more and more crucial that our freedoms are respected when it comes to technology.
Yes. This is like Apple having a monopoly of all hotels in a city and being able to set the rpice and determine who can or can’t use their hotels. If for instance they were gouging people or decided, for example, everybody was welcome but not gay people this would be an abuse of peoples rights.
I’m surprised Tim Cook of all people has a blind spot for this but it doesn’t surprise me.
That’s it? Chuck out the security of the gatekeeper system on a billion devices so some people can use a different browser engine. Seems a bit extreme to me 🙂
The issue is will a billion user have a better experience with no gate keeper – and all the problems and dangers that come with that – and the opportunity to use a different browser engine, or will they better off keeping the gatekeeper function. Seems a no brainer to me.
Strossen,
You can’t install any competing stores including the one this article and lawsuit is about.
I find the opinion that the blanket elimination of competing stores on the basis that the authorized store is already good enough is extremely foolish and ignores periods of history when people did not have a right to go to competing stores. Take a look at 1900’s era “company towns” for instance…
https://www.pbs.org/tpt/slavery-by-another-name/themes/company-towns/
Do you think the appropriate reaction to this crap is “who cares that a corporation forces them to use a specific store because they can get everything they need from it”? Are we really at the point of considering this acceptable for digital goods today? Seriously!?
That’s an inaccurate characterization. To continue the analogy what we’re saying isn’t “abolish all locks” but rather let the owner have a stay in who to let in rather than the entity that sold them the house. After the sale is complete, it’s not apple’s house anymore.
Not for nothing, but we are not arguing against your right to continue using apple’s app store. That is your right and I will vocally stand up for your right to make that choice. However this argument keeps coming up that owners should not be allowed to go to alternative app stores become somebody else thinks apple’s store is better, but good grief man their opinion shouldn’t trump other people’s rights.
@Alfman
Yes. It’s an important legal point under the Human Rights act (and European Convention and UN treaties) that the rights of one person may not be used as an excuse to trump the rights of another person. People who don’t read the law properly or who misunderstand it often make mistakes about this.
@strossen
I’ll speak for myself thanks. These issues are very serious and have the attention of heavyweight regulators and lawyers i.e. professionals. I’m not engaging with a yahoo who thinks it’s all a silly little game.
It seems to me that people are here are mostly arguing at an abstract level, about principles, rather than about what scenario brings about the best and safest user experience in an ecosystem of a billion users.
To use my analogies of people claiming they should be free to play loud music when they want or drive as fast as they want in the car they bought and which belongs to them, then yes if you only argue that from some abstract position and talk about freedoms and principles a spurious but apparently coherent position of allowing maximum freedom can be made. But the whole thing collapses when you start looking at what is really at stake, and what can really happen, in the real world of a billion user ecosystem. I am staggered by many people’s apparent inability to see what could go wrong if you open a billion user ecosystem, using devices where every device user has the equivalent of Admin privileges, and remove the checks and gatekeepers. If you give everyone the ‘freedom’ to install stuff on their phone with no prior checks, with no screening from the digital predators what do think is going to happen. After it’s not as if we haven’t been here before.
Ultimately these sort of arguments, ultra prioritising some aspect of personal freedom especially predicated on the notion of total freedom to use personal private property, irrespective of the broader social impact, is just a form of right wing libertarianism.
Stross,
Why won’t you take on the principals? And your analogies are faulty. You make it sound like your neighbor installing an Epic store on his iphone is equivalent to him playing loud music and keeping you up at night or making your daily commute dangerous. If these are the things you are worried about then you should be criticizing those who are actually causing these grievances rather than complaining about what app stores your neighbors are using. It’s just incredulous that you try to make this about yourself in order to deny them a right to make their own decisions.
Again, nobody is telling you that you can’t do what you want on your devices. If you want to remain in apple’s walled garden, good for you. Seriously, that’s your right. However this does not provide a good reason to step on other people’s rights. if they want to leave the walled garden over your objections, frankly your opinion has zero relevance.
There are some personal rights that are really controversial, take gun rights for example. But for crying out loud man we’re talking about people’s right to shop in a different app store. This pretense that your opinion matters more than the owners is autocratic bullshit.
No, we are not arguing ” drive as fast as they want in the car they bought and which belongs to them”. What we are arguing is to be able to use Michelin tires instead of Pirelli.
In Android most of the people don’t install outside the Play Store but they could if they wanted. They can live in a closed system like Apple’s or they can opt to have more control., assuming the risks, of course.
Some of the legit apps in the Android store have been bought out by shady company which then proceeds to fill them with snoopware and adverts and upselling cloud services. The owner of Quickpic sold out but also put the last good version of their app on their own website for download and install. I also have an office suite app where the slightly shady owners removed features you had paid for in later “upgrades”. They sent me a link to download the font pack and install it seperately. MX Player (for the Indian version) turned into adware. Thankfully VCL left beta so I was able to swap to using VCL. A top file browser was bought out then began pinging China so I had to replace this as well. (Not to have a go at China because if any app started doing this it would be a problem.)
I have an old version fo an audio recorder app on one phone which is no longer available in the play Store for my phone as its OS version is out of date. If I couldn’t back this up then reinstall it outside of the play store I would lose it if I reformatted my phone.
So the Play Store isn’t perfect and when it fails sideloading is a security feature.
I am surprised people can’t grasp the dynamic logic of the situation. OK so an Epic App Store night be OK, and maybe other stores from other ‘reputable’ entities. But who get’s to choose who is reputable? Presumably Apple or the courts. And presumably those decisions would be expected to be more than just arbitrary, they would have to be made based on some rules. Once there are rules there will be people who game the rules, it as inevitable as night follows day. Different countries will insist on different rules for app stores based in their country, and we all know that some countries work on the basis of extensive corruption, or a great deal of incompetence, or are politically authoritarian. Inevitably dubious apps store doing dubious things will start appearing.
I honestly can’t see how if the thing slips out of Apple’s control anybody will be able to control it and how we won’t end up with an entirely worse user experience for a billion people. So what’s the point? What’s the great costs of using the Apple model? Does the cost of the Apple model out weight the cost of the bad things that will happen if the Apple model collapses?
Why would the courts or Apple get to determine if an app store is reputable? Let the customers decide. Kind of think that is the point here, customers can’t currently decide on an alternative store.
Strossen,
This is fascinating. Even when contemplating the acceptability of alternative stores you’re still stuck in authoritarianism-based solutions. How do you think people managed to survive capitalism before apple or the the courts got to decide who’s reputable?
What’s the point of giving people free will when you can just make better choices for everybody. This is the mantra for the ideal citizen under every dictatorship ever.
Do you have problems deciding what supermarket is reputable? It’s surprising how some people think that computers are completely different from the rest of the world.
Let me go all devil’s advocate again.
1) anyone can install whatever they want by using a script and enterprise apps.
2) Cydia themselves host dozens of links to alternative app stores that use 1).
3) apps that don’t make it in or get kicked out are problematic in many cases.
Digging into 3 we need only look at MacOS. What is currently banned on but available on MacOS and not easily on iOS?
Deep access utilities that modify the core of the OS.
Direct file access tools. Since the general public has no clue what they’re doing regarding BSD
Epic money grabs. (Pun intended)
One of the leading listed Pros, as reported by users, for the closed iOS is the single payment system.
When you start using other payments options you tilt the responsibility for liability in security.
Any attempt to break the App Store market system on its own is a massive shot between the eyes for the manufacturers and the consumer.
Current federal law regarding warranty puts Apple on the hook for your device. Use it correctly and there’s on problem. What Cydia and epic want is direct outside access. But that still puts Apple on the hook. In the epic case we have a situation where neither Apple or Epic would be the payment processor.
In the Cydia case we have unrestricted low level access. So when Joe Mywifeleftme installs PornMarket and gets ransomware that bricks his phone Apple is still on the hook for warranty work.
An open market ruling MUST be accompanied by federal law modification. Otherwise many users are left open to a world they’re not ready for and manufacturers are on the hook to fix user stupidity at their own cost.
The App Store protects the user.
Mandating the extremes to gain access to alternative app stores is there to protect Apple. If you know enough to install an alt store in the current situation you are more likely to be knowledgeable enough to be doing so and far less likely to brick your phone in using non-approved apps.
lostinlodos,
We need to differentiate between side loading and rooting since installing 3rd party apps is not the same as “rooting”. On android for instance, you can enable sideloading and still not have root access with direct file access. On android an owner can sideload without root keeping the OS sandbox intact. Unless you actually root the device, all 3rd party code continues to run in the security sandbox. Conversely the only way to sideload on IOS would be to use a root exploit, as Cydia has done in the past. While you may argue this is more dangerous, it’s entirely apple’s fault and not Cydia’s or anyone else’s fault that a root exploit is needed to achieve sideloading in IOS.
This argument doesn’t make much sense at least not in terms of the apple v. epic spat. Epic gave consumers the choice: pay for game credits through apple or pay directly minus apple’s tax. Consumers who preferred to pay through apple lost nothing… they could continue to use the IOS single payment system with all of it’s “Pros” just as before. The reason apple hastily shut this down is because apple were (and are) afraid that given the choice, many consumers will choose competing payment systems. Like it or not, what Epic did was good for consumers and good for competition. Their stunt was a real thorn in apple’s side that very publicly highlighted apple’s own money grab.
I’d like to give you the opportunity to cite cases where computer manufacturers are held responsible for 3rd party software & transactions done by the owner, but so far this sounds more like drama than a widespread problem. I think a good rule of thumb would be to follow the auto industry where the manufacturer warranty remains in effect but the manufacturer is not responsible for 3rd party parts and/or damages if those damages were in fact caused by the 3rd party. I think the tech industry can and should take a lot of these common sense approaches.
As has been said repeatedly, people ought to have the right to stick with apple’s app store for any and all the reasons you list. This is fine with the owner’s consent. but it does not not give a reasonable excuse to override the owner’s free will. The owner’s will should be respected for their own devices.
Like I said above, take a look at the differences between sideloading and rooting, sideloaded apps are still sandboxed. With that said, we should encourage manufacturers including apple to have a robust system restore tool to make restoring easy and painless.
Re:The enterprise app system doesn’t require root and remains sandboxed.
Many crypto currency apps and wallets are or were originally enterprise apps. Including Binance and Coinbase.
If, I don’t know personally, epic offered both choices it still involves a third party. Epic isn’t a payment processor. Apple is. Nor does your reply mention the liability issue.
Or the fact that epic is asking Apple to host their app, and transmit it and all updates, for free. Bandwidth costs money.
Or the issue that epic broke the rules. Break the rules and trust is gone. I’d personally have permanently revoked epic’s development credentials.
The problem is the Moss act. As the actual text declares that ambiguity is decided in favour of the buyer, not the manufacture.
And again, you can install apps, including alternative “stores” with an enterprise license.
You could also go the the root system if you are a developer looking to not pay for license.
But when an app store allows for unlicensed apps, the Moss act comes into play. If a rogue cleaning utility deletes the .user folder or a porn app strikes a user with encryption… the act is unclear who holds fault.
Apple already allows for self hosted self distributed apps in the enterprise program. Enterprise apps have none of the payment restrictions. And far fewer requirements. So the great epic could have gone that route. They didn’t.
They could have gone the root route as well and chose not to.
Instead they simply broke the rules they agreed to. It’s that simple on the epic aspect.
Can Apple allow for an alternative app System? Sure.
Should they? Debatable. Very few people actually care. A tiny tiny group before Apple booted contract violating Epic. Now it’s a tiny group and a bunch of Epic fans.
It’s still a fractional minority.
For one thing the legal fees involved in new warranty documentation. The issues of reagreement for prior users. Apple would need to have an entirely new warranty system drawn up. At considerable expense, to protect themselves from potential fault in such a new environment.
I can’t point to a case where it happened; only that it could happen. Nobody thought an old lady could win against McDonald’s because SHE spilled her coffee HERSELF.
Or that shovelling a public sidewalk could result in endangerment charges if you didn’t also salt the sidewalk.
Or that even more bizarre you must salt your walkway on your own property if you shovel it because stupid people could slip while trespassing.
Or that shooting a burglar with a knife at 2:00 am could result in charges against the home owner.
At a time when nobody is at fault for their own actions it makes perfect sense that Apple is fighting this.
Because the first case of alt store ransomware or alt store bricking will definitely go against Apple and not the stupid user.