@ravipatel I have been pretty crazy busy at work this week so still catching up.
I still dont think 3rd party stores/sideloading are a good solution for iOS. Given it doesnt seem to help much on android and introduces lots of risks for users when they allow sideloading I really dont see a big gain but huge risks. I dont want to play the whole “piracy” card for games as a pirated copy != a lost sale but one of the reasons people on android end up getting their phones loaded with crap is the idea that they can get X game from Y site for free by enabling sideloading and a whole lot of bad crap happens because of that, the same will happen on iOS with sideloading etc and remember android has been trying to harden the OS against these types of things for a while now and it still keeps happening.
I think 3rd party payment processors too are potentially problematic, if apple had been proactive and had done deals with say stripe to allow it to be integrated into the SDK in a managed manor then it could work, a dev can use stripe but apple gets a smaller slice and the dev takes all of the risk of refunds etc but its managed by apple/os level for account/card security like IAP does right now.
I know of several dev’s that say 15% would be pretty fair for IAP via apple given the lack of hassle dev’s have to deal with rather than the 30% and 15% should be workable given the largeness of the market for apple but it will still be 15% too high for epic. Also I know dev’s would like to offer version upgrades for a cost as well, its possible to do that on iOS but messy and several have said it would get around the whole subscription approach to fund app development. Case and point look at an app called Infuse where they have several version’s of Infuse listed, you can buy outright each major version which live on their own listing or the sub version which gets upgraded to each major version each time.
Spotify against itunes is a lot more complex than epic tbh as I see spotify’s point about the 30% being hard for them to swallow and I also see why apple dont allow you to push people to buy using an external site, spotify would effectively get all the benefits of the app store while covering none of the costs.
Although these costs may not seem a lot I dont doubt they are minor given the huge install base, updates bandwidth, app store approval process and SDK development and tooling so if you allow people to bypass all of the returns for apple on mass the app store would suffer for it. I really like how apple manage everything and its all done with decent privacy controls and if it turned into an android mess I am not sure what I would do. Spotify cries about the rules but it has not stopped them getting to where they are either.
Then you got to the whole apple pay problem, banks want NFC access to bypass apple pay and have pleeped about it, apple pay is brilliant though, its private and works very very well, if I had to use several banking apps and open them each time to use each card it would be a huge PITA or worse if one bank insisted on taking control preventing apple pay. Android I believe is seeing some of this pain where banks are not integrating with google pay to avoid a processing cut and expect you to use their app each time you want to pay. You even get the whole samsung pay problem which causes pain for users as well.
I dont know a solution to keep all parties happy there but I prefer things as they are right now over the potential for mess and issues with everyone trying to take control of NFC payments on my phone.
iMessage, I can see why apple didnt port it, its one of the better secure messaging apps out and like many I am put off whatsapp after facebook bought it, I would also have been put off if google bought it as I dont find either great with privacy. I am slowly moving people over to Signal and when whatsapp had the whole terms change mess a few months ago a large amount of my phonebook moved over (20-30 odd anyway)
I dont have any issues with iMessage other than the lack of desktop app on Windows, if that was added I would use it all the time but sadly thats exclusively on Mac.
One thing, if google had bought it they would have no doubt destroyed it as they cant seem to run a proper messaging service to save themselves.
So to sum up, epic/spotify I think apple should partner with several 3rd party payment providers to integrate control and privacy into the OS directly where apple gets a cut but it is a much smaller cut because they have none of the hassle but ideally I think apple should probably cut IAP to 15% and it would stave off a lot of these problems. Spotify still wouldnt be happy as they want to distribute their app without costs but there has to be a compromise and its not like it has truly stopped spotify on iOS as things stand.
Maybe apple could allow direct competitor categories to open up sites/direct people to a site to sign up as a workaround as long as using apple pay is an option (much lower cut) so they make a little off to cover the infrastructure costs.
One thing I dont want and dont see a gain with is 3rd party stores or sideloading, if you want that stuff buy android! You have a choice! Samsung and Google phones are pretty decent and you will get all the flexibility you miss on iOS. Yeah I prefer apples hardware but if those things were an issue for me I would buy android and be happy.
Apple needs to work on the app store rules and allow a better appeals process with multiple tiers of appeal to work through issues some apps like Hey etc have when they are denied. I think if dev’s feel there is a proper appeals process with multiple tiers to get issues listened to and worked on it would be a big help rather than right now where some feel its very adversarial and ignored.
No matter what, politicians getting involved will cause issues for everyone involved as they almost never understand technology and legislate based on what gets votes and not what is in the interest of all. When the whole browser selection screen was added it didnt make a difference in browser adoption when the EU attempted to regulate, the thing that changed the browser was MS stagnating on development and google getting aggressive across their sites pushing people to use chrome, a one time screen did not tilt it in a huge manor.
Sorry about the huge post