Ios 26.2 to Allow Third-Party App Stores in Japan Ahead of Regulatory Deadline
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Apple is set to allow third-party app stores in Japan with iOS 26.2, sparking debate about the implications of this change and whether it will be adopted globally, with some users expressing concerns about security and others welcoming the increased openness.
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I've considered an iPhone due to the recent Google announcement w.r.t. code signing but it's still too walled off for me. They need to open up access to third party stores and third party browser engines.
EDIT: yes I understand that we live in a capitalist system that is maximizing profit. My argument is that long term they're going to lose this battle seeing as the EU and Japan have already forced them to play ball. There are two options: remain stagnant and collect app store rent as long as possible or learn to be competitive in this new environment.
That’s not the argument at all. I don’t understand the point of your response, it has nothing to do with the points made in my comment. I’m not defending Apple, I’m doing the opposite.
Perhaps you haven’t been following Apple for long? There was definitely a period, not that long ago, where they had a lot of goodwill from third-party developers, especially indies, and that has steadily been eroded under Tim Cook.
They also took stances that were (or appeared to be) principled, which again placed them at a high degree of trust and goodwill (deserved or not isn’t the point, they had it) when compared to competitors.
> And if people started having issues with their phones because of side loading
I’m not talking about or suggesting side loading at all. That’s an entirely orthogonal matter.
> Vision Pro as a test of hardware capabilities seems to be going as one would expect at the current price points.
Vision Pro is not a “a test of hardware capabilities”. It’s not an SDK, it’s a product marketed and sold at regular people, it’s described by Apple as a product you can use for enterntainment and work, not an experiment. And it had essentially no adherence from companies and developers, there’s not even an official YouTube app, for a device where one of the major use cases is watching video.
The enshittification ceiling is pretty damn high but I get the intuitive sense the profit at all cost model's long term downsides are going to start showing up for dinner soon.
For me personally, it is mostly an escape hatch for developers and users. It will keep Apple honest, because if they really mess up the platform, people have the possibility to go elsewhere.
I think the bigger risk for Apple is allowing other payment options within apps that are distributed through the App Store (which I believe is now allowed in the EU among other places)? I think the app store is very sticky, but a lot of people would pick another payment option if is ~30% cheaper.
You can set a different email client globally, but a different default Messages or Maps app? That only works in some regions. In-App payments? You can now basically do whatever you want in the US, in the EU you can opt-in into a different regime, in other regions it's staying the same but who knows for how long.
By fighting this everywhere they're basically losing control over the outcomes and will end up with lot's of different regulations everywhere. Instead of doing the sensible thing and opening up their platform before they're being forced to do so.
1. Apple potentially loses giving ground to regulators before the regulators ask for something. They don't want to allow alternative app stores and then have a regulator say they are also not allowed to mandate royalties for digital good/service sales in their own store. Apple is likely nudging regulators to go a particular way, but is effectively trying to barter.
2. Likewise, individual regulatory bodies solving the issues they see in different ways has and will continue to create complexity in app developers, in some cases meaning their app needs different business models in different countries to take advantage of the individual regulated changes. That is a consequence of regulators pushing Apple to themselves have different business models to fund the App Store in different countries.
3. If Apple doesn't want a feature to be used or thinks the feature is actively harmful, they aren't going to encourage its use by making it available in jurisdictions where it isn't required.
4. Some of these features (such as default maps app) are semi-baked and without industry consensus, but rolled out because they were required for regulatory timelines. I can emphasize with not wanting to roll out broken features where you aren't being required to.
Apple can fix this issue without excess complexity. They are the ones demanding fragmentation and disparity as a result, allowing alternative app storefronts has always been a one-size-fits-all solution.
Here in EU they did allow third party stores and all we got were shovelware sites with subscriptions. It added even more friction an shadiness to acquiring apps.
We need to sop pretending iOS third party stores are anything like what we envisioned them to be. They are not f-droid or anything even half as good. Apple complies with this impotent law because the law changes absolutely nothing for end user.
Hardly. They did everything they could to make it completely pointless. Your apps still need to be blessed by apple and you still need to pay them. It's embarrassing the EU is allowing this sham.
Is Apple going to kill the golden goose unless it is literally forced to? Of course not.
Apple, together with Google, get a cut of 15% to 30% of all mobile app revenue. They have the entire market captured. They will only give that up when they're forced to.
Alternate app stores are 2nd class citizens on Android, and gated behind several scary warnings and layers of settings pages.
Then there's the fact that the biggest alternative app store on Android is about to be made defunct by Google's new policy.
I make apps both as an indie and during my day job. The App Store review doesn’t do anything to protect the privacy or security of iPhone users. Most of the review is focused on ensuring Apple doesn’t get sued and that you as a developer don’t try to advertise something Apple doesn’t like. The whole idea that the App Store is safer is a marketing thing.
While not perfect, they claim to do security checks and verify some privacy choices. So they do something at least.
As a consumer I can see value in Apple forcing itself in an arbiter role for app payments so they can step in when I have a conflict with an app developer.
Every technical safeguard is part of the operating system anyway, so that’s what’s really protecting you and it will still protect you when you install an app from another source. Just like computers have worked since forever.
I agree with this assuming what Epic Games wants is to be able to distribute their software themselves without Apple being in the loop
As they should be. iOS was already paid for when the user bought their device. Mandating a 30% cut on all in-app purchases is double-billing.
Tim Kulak[0] calls this "forcing Apple to give away its technology for free", which is asshole logic. In no sane world would a court consider application developers to be making a derivative work of the OS they port to, so the OS vendor has no legal entitlement to application developers' revenue. The only world in which this stupid 30% cut was even tolerated was, ironically for Epic, games development.
As for privacy and security concerns, I would like to note that Apple has very specific definitions of those words that only marginally interact with your own understanding. To be clear, if you were to modify an iOS app to, say, remove tracking code from it, Apple would consider that a security breach. Even though this is a common thing that we do in web browsers all the time. Because users have their hands tied on iOS in ways that they don't on macOS, they can't fight back against tracking on their phones like they can on their computers.
[0] Term used by the Soviet government to refer to "any rural landowner that didn't cooperate with their disastrous attempts at land collectivization". I'm using it here mainly because it almost-rhymes.
You might want to get informed about the hurdles Apple puts in your way first.
By this point it seems pretty clear that they will, at least while Tim Cook is in charge. Other higher ups, specifically Phil Schiller, knew this was a bad idea but were overruled.
https://www.macrumors.com/2025/02/25/apples-phil-schiller-co...
And they’re just the most visible
Everything banned in the US is still offered as soon as you step across a border, every gross visual warning mandated in those countries is not implemented in the US
But the issue with the app stores is the app fees. Those must be lucrative enough to want to keep that gate for themselves.
That doesn't make much sense, XNU and the layers above it are very portable, they went PowerPC -> x86 -> x86_64 -> ARM64 after all. They also supported multiple different GPUs in the Intel era.
If the entire OS stack was open sourced today, we would have forks running on standard Intel/AMD CPUs in a week. They wouldn't have the same optimized power management, etc. But I think it would have a good chance of wiping out desktop Linux within a brief period.
macOS/iOS are part of the moat.
I'm still hoping some other integrated software/hardware company will stand up and offer the same attention to detail as Apple did. Instead of that everybody's actively enshittifying their own products and complaining Apple is earning so much...
I doubt a knockoff MBP would happen initially but it would absolutely encroach on the Mac Mini.
https://youtu.be/P7vvdXzcrFM
Doubt. I couldn't figure out how to do windows management under macOS to save my life. This is so needlessly obscure and inconsistent.
(I wouldn't call it obscure though, it's pretty much standard WIMP with some differences compared to Windows.)
[1]: https://github.com/nikitabobko/AeroSpace
¹: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/253594264
Given how polished the Linux desktop experience has become and how much software is available (gaming on Proton in particular), I don't think this is true.
They don’t even have to put in the effort of making it.
Essentially the same as giving alcohol to kids at home. That's the parents fault first and foremost.
Is it? A bottle of vodka, rum, wine, beer, is very obviously what it is.
A lot of these gambling games are disguised as games, that just happen to have elements that are heavily disguised to not be obviously and immediately shown to be gambling.
You and I both know what loot boxes are, but does everyone? There's nothing obviously gambling about a loot box, until you dig into it.
Have you never searched for a credit card detail generator? Browsed the dark web for stolen card details? Used e-sims?
A common misconception that people have is that age is not a limiting barrier to a great mind and doesn't require enabling by others to achieve the goals they set out.
The original article is about the third-party stores, which is essentially removes the Apples's veto.
iPhones are not, and in fact your child will eventually need a smartphone for legitimate reasons. Currently isn't not possible to buy a smartphone that can be used legitimately but doesn't come bundled with gambling and pornography.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45764986
And how does that freedom help anyone? If your grandparent just uses their phone to make calls, texts and playing Candy Crush then how is software freedom making their experience better? Or are we just imprinting our priorities and desires onto others?
For one, it prevents criminal companies like Google and Facebook from exfiltrating massive amounts of usage data from grandpa. This includes, but is not limited to, places the phone has been, what networks it interacts with, DNS lookups, phone numbers called, etc. That's on top of the tracking done by third-party apps like Whatsapp, that share with the mothership absolutely everything except perhaps the content of messages (they claim it's encrypted, but the client is almost certainly backdoored).
Their genuine services, other than maybe iCloud storage, are small businesses. Consider this: Apple reports $28.7B in quarterly services revenue. Spotify reported $3.8B in quarterly revenue directly from their 281M premium subscribers ($4.3B total) (AM has no free tier). Spotify is, in all likelihood, quite far ahead of AM in subscriber counts; estimates put AM at ~100M. AM also gives away a ton of subscriptions likely at a bulk discount (its included with some Chase credit cards, Verizon Wireless plans, etc); it would surprise me if total AM revenue is higher than $1.5B/q.
This goes against the spirit of the DMA, which was supposed to 'open up' 3rd party stores.
The European Commission does not seem to care atm that Apple is still the gatekeeper.
I think the European Commission is threading the needle, trying to find a path to uphold the DMA/DSA while not provoking another tariff war.
The EC is also under a lot of internal pressure from member states to calm down on the regulation, as it's considered one reason why Europe is such a bad place to do a tech startup right now.
Turns out then using private data for ads (Google) and acting like a middleman (Apple) are apparently lucrative and worth money?
(This isn't a critique to you OP or your comment, but rather a commentary on the 21st century.)
(You could maybe make a _vague_ argument based on podcast exclusives, but it seems like pushing it a bit.)
The really puzzling one to me is TikTok, which is included but feels like it barely meets the criteria.
Spotify has a much larger market share in streaming music than Apple has in smartphones in Europe.
Can I side load my own music in my Spotify library like I can with Apple Music? (True you either have to either use your computer or the iOS GarageBand hack)
That would only matter, if the device wouldn't allow to play music in another application.
I was in Seattle a couple of years ago walking around and someone was selling CDs of their music on the street like it was the early 2000s. WTF am I going to do with a CD?
Do people carry around CD Walkman’s anymore? But you’re not going to be a major artist and get wide appeal or even gain an audience without being on Spotify - more so in Europe than in the US where Apple Music has a larger market share.
Your start-up also won't get acquired by anyone "with a market cap >75bn EUR, or turnover in the EU >7.5bn EUR/annum." That may be fine with some folks. But it's an obvious downside if you're a start-up or backer thereof.
No. Nobody claimed that. Because it's a straw man.
"Your startup will be __fine__" implies there is no effect on a start-up. That's not true when one considers ecosystem effects.
China went the opposite route and while far from ideal due to rather obvious reasons at least they have their own tech companies which is that keeping that money in the Chinese economy.
As a user I like Apple’s App Store for security personally, but I wonder how multiple app stores turn out in other regions. I see the EU already allows alternative app marketplaces — has anyone used one and can share their experience?
> Apple’s App Store for security
The App Store doesn’t do anything to protect you in that sense. It’s easy to circumvent and these days it’s cheaper to just buy an iOS exploit than go through the trouble of making a shady app.
Interesting, their marketing has customers believe otherwise, so I wouldn't have thought that as a noob in cybersecurity.
I've submitted an app to the iOS App Store in the past, and the process is tedious and doesn't seem superficial (unlike the Play Store process, which was completely autonomous at the time), so that's another reason why I wouldn't have thought it.
The protection is in the permission system and sandboxing, which is active regardless of the source of the code.
I know of multiple apps that have malicious ad networks in them, don’t disclose their ad networks, and have no mechanisms to report the ads inside the ad networks or any of the content to them, they just say the ads are “served by one of our partners”.
And then repeat that every few months.
The marketing is a lie, Apple's manual review process has failed to catch extremely high-profile trojan horse attacks: https://blog.lastpass.com/posts/warning-fraudulent-app-imper...
That's the point of marketing. Making yourself look good, not stating facts.
Different threat models. If you're the mossad and want to go after someone in particular, yes the exploit is the way to go, but if you're running some run of the mill scam, you're certainly not going to spend 6+ figures on a ios 0day that'll get patched within days.
is this any different from Macs also prompting the user when a downloaded binary is suspicious/not signed properly? or windows when installing it'd flash a screen about trusting what you're installing?
"Look, you do not need a front door, and definitely not one with a lock on it. After all anybody could machine-gun you down through your windows."
Even for web distribution in the EU (which they allowed some time ago) they require you to have had an Apple Developer account for at least 2 years and at least one App with more than 1m annunal downloads in the App Store.
So they're forcing you to have a very successful app in their own store before you can distribute yourself, basically making this impossible to actually use. It's such a blatant case of malicious compliance, it's insane.
But why is that easier? And is it inevitably so or a result of the fact that the boundaries of the one place to install apps from is aggressively policed?
Basically the market is still in an alpha stage. My next app will be on Alt just because I want to support the idea. Hopefully more apps gets on these stores, for now it's mostly nice to have for games, emulators, and some dev tools.
Apple didn't make it friction-free either, but it seems the issue is lack of user demand and/or lack of supply.
I should try Alt out again with you reminding me.
Requires an EU apple account, a faraday bag, two esp32 boards (or other way to spoof hotspots), a VPN with an endpoint in the EU, and an iOS device with a supported OS version.
Tell MacRumors it's Tim Cook's boot.
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/ios-26-2-to-allow-third...
Can’t even scroll right in the text editor. Trillion-dollar company.
It's really hard to be a publicly-traded corporation and user-first. Those goals are often at odds with each other.
You aren’t wrong, but I hate that you aren’t. It’s a shame there is so little regulation and that things are getting more and more expensive and complex to initially develop, that there just isn’t really a free market anymore for many important things.
Particularly since the 1980s, I feel like we've veered too far toward obtaining maximum profit at the expense of true innovation and developing products that truly serve the customer.
That said, there's a very concerted, even at times gamified, effort against making it easy for consumers to do this. Nonetheless, consumers do have that choice.
Not being on the stock exchange, a company like Apple could be like, you know what, we make enough money from our hardware and services to both grow and pay our people well, so we will remove the 30% fee on apps and keep our developers happy and loyal, increase the cloud storage capacity for our customers, etc. But they simply can't do that, because it's all about YoY revenue growth to keep the shareholders happy.
1. Have Bluetooth on.
2. Turn it off from the menu option, but don’t close the menu.
3. The shortcut to lock the computer don’t work.
It’s been like this for 5+ years.
Funniest thing is if you’re quick enough it’s possible to close the menu using a Bluetooth mouse after BT has been turned off. It’s my daily challenge to pull that off.
Ended up having to install a 3rd party mouse scroll reverser to get the behavior I want.
Has nothing to do with reality and more just a bunch of young kids who found another tech forum to perform their political whining on.
Eternal September wherever you go.
Especially in the context of idioms such as "boot licker" (which doesn't describe a person literally licking someone's boot! I know, shocking, right?)
I mean I didn't click on the linked thread, because frankly: who the hell cares what people on a forum called "Mac rumors" say... Even as a frequent apple user myself i wouldn't take anything seriously there. But the way you two addressed his sarcasm was just underwhelming.
Take a joke for what it is. Downvote if you don't see value in it - but if you're going to address it - do it properly and not by "misunderstanding" things on purpose.
Then that floor will be so clean you could do open heart surgery on it.
I just want to take the iOS equivalent of an EXE or APK, load it onto the phone, and be done with it. I don't want fucking stores all over the place.
You couldn't install it at all on iOS for 4 years.
To your point, you were fine with that, you'll be fine with forgoing anything that's not in Apple's AppStore.
[1] https://developer.apple.com/support/web-distribution-eu/
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