Apple is planning to add new fees and restrictions when it begins allowing third-party app downloads outside its App Store in response to a new European Union law intended to tear down its walled garden.
Aaron Tilley, Salvador Rodriguez, Sam Schechner, and Kim Mackrael for The Wall Street Journal:
The company’s plan, which would only apply in Europe, will allow users to download software onto the iPhone for the first time without using the App Store.
Apple’s approach to the EU law will help ensure the company maintains close oversight of apps downloaded outside the App Store, a process known as sideloading. The company will give itself the ability to review each app downloaded outside of its App Store. Apple also plans to collect fees from developers that offer downloads outside of the App Store, said people familiar with the company’s plans. The company hasn’t yet announced its plans and they could change.
Apple has been working on its solution for more than a year now to meet the March deadline for complying with the EU law, the people said.
Officials from the European Commission, the EU’s executive body, have been holding meetings in recent months with Apple and other tech companies to discuss the new rules. Apple hasn’t provided a final package describing its solution to the commission or tested its plans with market participants.
Once it does, the commission will review the full package to look at whether it will make the market more open and contestable, and whether the company’s plans meet all the individual provisions of the law, according to a person familiar with its plans.
MacDailyNews Take: In November 2023, Bloomberg News reported that iPhone and iPad users in the European Union will be able to install apps hosted outside of Apple’s App Store to comply with the EU’s Digital Markets Act regulations.
The issue of whether or not choice is increased, decreased, or stays the same with sideloading is an open question. Security is certainly a major concern.
As for Apple’s App Store commissions:
How much did it cost developers to have their apps burned onto CDs, boxed, shipped, displayed on store shelves prior to Apple remaking the world for the better for umpteenth time? Apple incurs costs to store, review, organize, surface, and distribute apps to over one billion users. — MacDailyNews, June 10, 2022
That said, as we wrote in December 2022:
Those who want safety, security, and privacy will stick to Apple’s App Store, but a single point of control is always a danger, especially when it comes to capricious censorship (see: pre-Musk Twitter, Apple’s App Store in China, etc.).
iPhone and iPad users must, like Mac users, have the ability to install third-party apps; even if they never do, for it will keep Apple honest. The ability to ban an app loses all power when it’s simply available in another App Store.
These moves, including removing the mandate to use WebKit, Apple’s Safari browsing engine, in third-party browsers, will greatly reduce, if not eliminate, the threat of anti-trust actions against Apple for the foreseeable future.
Also, expect Gatekeeper to come to iOS and iPadOS from macOS.
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