If the FOSS universe wants to make web apps, that's great. But they didn't need this law to do that. If they want to make native iOS apps, well now they'll be using Apple's intellectual property, which won't be for free.
What the Epic v. Apple antitrust trial showed was that no one actually got better terms than anyone else. If you have evidence of Microsoft, Amazon, or Netflix getting terms that aren't available to anyone else, please link them.
I definitely agree it's going to be the worst of all worlds. The current model was the most efficient one for Apple and developers. There will be additional costs for everyone involved (great for lawyers and accountants though). The current model was a virtuous cycle that benefited Apple, developers, and users. High trust from users made them amenable to spending money on software, grew the Apple developer ecosystem, and unleashed a wave of innovation which spawned industries since 2008. Importantly, all developers got standard terms which created a level playing field. I suspect we're moving into a world where large developers (Spotify/Netflix/Microsoft) will have much more negotiating leverage than a small developer. But that is the 'business as usual' world, which makes this a reversion to the mean.
The EU is mandating sideloading, it's not mandating Apple do it for free. Until now, developers have been licensing Apple's intellectual property in a bundle through the Developer Program License Agreement. For anyone that goes through the sideloading route, they can expect to enter into a different contractual agreement with Apple to license their technology.
Otherwise they're building a web app, which they've always been able to do!
I certainly understand why developers would prefer that Apple have that business model, but that's not the one they chose for the iPhone. And these laws don't prohibit it.
>To help protect against unsafe apps, Apple is discussing the idea of mandating certain security requirements even if software is distributed outside its store. Such apps also may need to be verified by Apple — a process that could carry a fee.
Developers are about to get a surprise about what they're actually paying for. This is the problem with believing their own talking points about "paying 30% for payment processing."
So now they'll be paying for actual third-party payment processing, as well as lawyers and accountants to ensure they're complying with Apple's royalty agreements to license their technology.
There's no point in marring good PR from the news they announced today with the CSAM tech. When governments pass legislation targeted at E2E they will likely land on Apple's proposed solution as a good compromise, at which point it will be out of Apple's hands and they can just go forward with it.
If Apple wants a cut, they can just change the terms of the developer agreement so they get a cut from advertising revenue. The more Facebook earns, the more Apple would earn.
That really just says it all doesn't it? It's basically an admission that the use of cross-platform frameworks is worse for customers/users, but they're going to ignore that to optimize for their own software engineering org.
Apple really needs to start using the stick more with respect to the inferior-to-native cross-platform frameworks. I hope that's the strategy after SwiftUI matures.
Perhaps that's true for a startup still trying to prove their concept, but it might not for one that has achieved product/market fit. "Hybrid cloud" is starting to get traction for large enterprises adopting the cloud [1]. They're going from on-premise in their own data centers to colocating at internet exchange data centers, which act as on-ramps to the cloud oligopoly.
I couldn't help but laugh out loud when I saw this headline on Twitter. It's just kisses fingers.
So now that everyone knows they are waffling on whether to stay in the business (and have a deadline), Microsoft and Amazon just need to increase the competitive intensity for the next few years to drive Google out and instead of cloud computing being an oligopoly it'll be a duopoly.
If you're a startup you should seriously consider colocation for as many of your workloads as possible, because the long-term future of this market is AWS and Azure being an extremely high margin duopoly with massive barriers to entry. You might see aggressive competition before 2023, but 10 years out it's not going to be that.
The NYT wrote a piece a few days ago about certain startups considering antitrust complaints against AWS, and more of them should consider that [1]. The FTC is investigating AWS [2].
If Netflix doesn't like being dependent on Apple, they should have built the rails. They chose not to, and that's probably the correct move, but I don't see why they'd complain about the 30%. They could have not spun-out Roku and not have to pay for distribution to anyone! They obviously knew that being everywhere would maximize profits in the long run. But it goes hand-in-hand that now they've eliminated the capital expenses of developing a platform, they'd be paying others for distribution.
I mean that's what net neutrality was always about really, not being responsible for the rails but also regulating them to maximize the advantage to themselves (a standard commoditize your complements play). They dropped their net neutrality advocacy after they got big enough and wanted to partner with cable companies and wireless carriers for distribution, which they gladly pay for.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/07/08/sergey-...