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EU antitrust chief to Tim Cook: Apple must allow third-party app stores (appleinsider.com)

submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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EU antitrust chief to Tim Cook: Apple must allow third-party app stores::The European Union's Margrethe Vestager has met with leaders of US Big Tech firms to discuss their operations in the EU, and with Apple's Tim Cook concentrated on the App Store and Apple Music.

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Software on Windows is still a bit of a mess compared to most other platforms though. The fact that it is normalized to download and install things from the various developer websites, without much verification and without permissions/restrictions on what the apps can do is not a plus in my mind. winget has been helpful in managing the installation and updating of things though.

Everyone having their own launcher is also not great, especially since they are not all created equal with respect to features, stability, and resource consumption. Games have had this problem for some time with EA, Ubisoft, Epic, etc having their own launchers. As like what happened to games, I don't think it will necessarily end up with more freedom to buy the apps from the store you want, but rather you'll be forced to download a store/launcher based on the whims of the app publisher. Some may publish to multiple stores but I don't expect all to.

If the mandate to open the platform up to more stores came with some kind of requirement that apps be available across multiple stores so that the stores actually had to be competitive on their own features, not app exclusivity, I would be more inclined to support having more stores.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago

You can't mandate that until there are multiple storefronts. That should be the next step.

As for everyone making you use their own app store, that will go down just as well as people who make me install their app, I won't.

Multiple storefronts doesn't mean taking a single app away from the app store. It means you can subscribe to Spotify for 30% less by using an alternative. It means developer's can argue for a larger cut of their revenue simply by having alternatives.

As for individual game launchers, steam is far and away the most popular and well liked and it, with the exception of a few of their own titles, a third party launcher.

Competition is good for the consumer.