| ▲ | lapcat 10 hours ago |
| > there's no way to signal to Apple that you have opted out of using their SDK How do you not use their SDK? |
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| ▲ | burnte 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| > How do you not use their SDK? The first third party iPhone apps existed before the SDK existed. iPhone OS was jailbroken pretty quickly and apps emerged fast. SDKs are nice references and tools but the're not the only way to skin a cat. |
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| ▲ | lapcat 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | This is not a useful distinction. The API existed and was used by Apple apps and by jailbreak apps. In fact Scott Forstall intentionally prepared iOS to have third-party apps. The API was just not public yet. If you think the header files are the thing that Apple thinks is worth of a cut of app revenue, I think you're way off base. It's the technology, whether you access it with permission or not. | | |
| ▲ | EMIRELADERO 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Right, and my point is that the technology is already fully paid for by the user. By "the SDK" I meant the dev environment stuff, not the API base on the phone. | | |
| ▲ | stouset 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > the technology is already fully paid for by the user This seems like a very large and unfounded assumption on your part, particularly in a world where we no longer pay for Apple operating systems or their updates. | |
| ▲ | lapcat an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | > Right, and my point is that the technology is already fully paid for by the user. That's your claim. Neither Apple nor the EU appear to agree. Nor do US courts appear to agree in the Epic v. Apple trial. Apple itself has to pay license fees for some technologies in iPhone, and those licenses do not automatically extend to third-party developers via the consumer. It's not a license agreement with the consumer. When you said, "there's no way to signal to Apple that you have opted out of using their SDK and have the fee waived", which fee did you mean exactly? The quote in your comment refers to the Core Technology Commission, which is a percentage of app revenue. There's also the $99 developer program fee, which all App Store developers pay. I know that some developers are annoyed by the $99 fee, but for professional iOS developers, $99 is a drop in the bucket, and the revenue % cut is the vastly larger and more important thing. So if by "the SDK" you mean only the header files and such, that seems like mostly a red herring to me, and if you were allowed to use the technology for free, then there wouldn't be much reason for Apple to charge for the SDK. And indeed, Xcode has always been available for free. https://apps.apple.com/app/xcode/id497799835?mt=12 | | |
| ▲ | EMIRELADERO an hour ago | parent [-] | | > That's your claim. Neither Apple nor the EU appear to agree. Nor do US courts appear to agree in the Epic v. Apple trial. This point was never raised in any of those cases. Apple just did aome hand-waving "IP compensation" justification and everyone just went along with it, because the case wasn't about that particular point. > Apple itself has to pay license fees for some technologies in iPhone And such costs are more than made up for by hardware sales. The only reason this persists is because of greed, not because it's essential to profitability. > and those licenses do not automatically extend to third-party developers via the consumer. It's not a license agreement with the consumer. They don't need to extend them because the consumer is already entitled to use those technologies merely by having purchased the device. That entitlement comes from the fact that they get legal copies of the technologies when they take posession of the hardware. IP rights regulate distribution, not consumption. As for the rest of your comment, the overall problem is the requiremet to deal with Apple at all, the $99 fee and the 5% commission are just the cherry on top. | | |
| ▲ | lapcat 7 minutes ago | parent [-] | | > This point was never raised in any of those cases. Apple just did aome hand-waving "IP compensation" justification and everyone just went along with it, because the case wasn't about that particular point. I strongly disagree with your interpretation. IP compensation was essential in both of these cases, and everyone went along with it because they didn't dispute Apple's rights. > IP rights regulate distribution, not consumption. It's all about distribution. A consumer can download Xcode, build their own app, install the app on their own device, and use Apple API, all for free. What they can't do is distribute that app to other consumers. The developer tools are relatively unimportant, which is why Apple gives them away. Distribution is everything. > As for the rest of your comment, the overall problem is the requiremet to deal with Apple at all, the $99 fee and the 5% commission are just the cherry on top. This doesn't answer my question. I asked which fee needed to be waived. There is no fee to get Xcode, so there's nothing to be waived by opting out. |
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| ▲ | EMIRELADERO 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Nowadays with LLMs people could probably patch up some FOSS SDK that perfectly replicates the original's functionality without infringing Apple's copyrights. If the DMA was enforced correctly this would have already happened. |
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| ▲ | lapcat 10 hours ago | parent [-] | | > Nowadays with LLMs people could probably patch up some FOSS SDK that perfectly replicates the original's functionality without infringing Apple's copyrights. I don't intend to insult you, but as an iOS developer myself I have serious doubts about whether you have any expertise in the subject you're talking about here. | | |
| ▲ | yjftsjthsd-h 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | If you don't intend it as an insult, you might try providing literally any substance to your argument rather than just lobbing ad hominems. | |
| ▲ | EMIRELADERO 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I didn't mean to imply that this would be a vibe-coded slop project. I'm no LLM evangelizer and hate the hype train as much as any competent dev. The truth is though that LLMs are uniquely suited for work of this kind, and a team that knows what they're doing could make short work of the whole thing much faster. | | |
| ▲ | lapcat 10 hours ago | parent [-] | | > I didn't mean to imply that this would be a vibe-coded slop project. That's not really the issue. LLM participation is a red herring. The issue is "replicates the original's functionality". | | |
| ▲ | EMIRELADERO 9 hours ago | parent [-] | | What would be so outlandish about that? | | |
| ▲ | lapcat 9 hours ago | parent [-] | | I'm not going to argue with you, because I continue to suspect that you have no iOS development experience and are just making hand-wavy claims with no empirical basis. | | |
| ▲ | EMIRELADERO 9 hours ago | parent [-] | | ? It's you who has started to argue by replying to my comment in the first place. | | |
| ▲ | lapcat 9 hours ago | parent [-] | | I asked a question: "How do you not use their SDK?" Your answer seemed nonsensical to me. What I meant, though, is that I'm not going to argue about a specific point, the viability of "some FOSS SDK that perfectly replicates the original's functionality." If you don't even have any experience with iOS development, then you have no basis for making any claims about that subject, and thus I'm not going to bother explaining "What would be so outlandish about that?" In any case, most iOS devs don't want to opt out of using the SDK. That would not be a particularly attractive route for making iOS apps. What I want as an iOS dev is the same freedom of software distribution that we have on macOS. | | |
| ▲ | EMIRELADERO 9 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > If you don't even have any experience with iOS development, then you have no basis for making any claims about that subject, and thus I'm not going to bother explaining "What would be so outlandish about that?" The basis for my claims about the subject is my knowledge of computing and development in general. I dipped my toes into iOS dev a few times and there's nothing that seemed to set it apart from any other SDK situation beyond Apple's restrictions, at least nothing that would make my claim outlandish. | |
| ▲ | toukale 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | That is never going to happen. We will never get the same freedom we enjoy on pc's again for the simple fact it benefits both the platform owners and governments to have a simple centralize company in this case (Apple & Google) to go to get what they want. The freedom we have on pc's is too much of a wild west and not enough control that both governments and platform owners like. As much as we may want to it will never happen for those reasons. | |
| ▲ | chichichi 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I think if you adjusted his statement to be - not use apple’s “everything” software ecosystem - it would be possible. Core device apis yes, everything else, maybe not? I think we could roll our own UI - I think we can roll our own payment systems - I think we could roll our own media display. For the primary iOS app I work on I need vulkan, gps, touches camera, sound, and phone rotation. (And standard os services) I don’t need anything else. |
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| ▲ | realusername 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Personnally I use Flutter which has a very minimal use of their SDK. Basically enough to render inputs to a gpu accelerated surface. And I'd argue that this is a core OS feature that you expect on any modern OS. |
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| ▲ | Someone 9 hours ago | parent [-] | | > Flutter which has a very minimal use of their SDK. > Basically enough to render inputs to a gpu accelerated surface. I suspect it uses much more so that it can support - audio - file I/O - accessibility - … | | |
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