A couple of weeks ago, Apple announced that they are going to open up iOS. As somebody who develops apps for iOS this proposition seemed really nice at first glance, but when you dive into what they actually did, things are significantly worse than what they already were.

This post was delayed due to the fact that I had barely any time to do a full write-up on this topic until now.

The changes

Third party app stores will now be admitted to the iOS App Store, and they can bring their own payment methods, if they wish to do so. BUT here comes the caveat: The app stores have to pay a so-called “Core Technology Fee”, which amounts to USD 0.5 for the first install of each user per year. This fee also applies to all apps in third party app stores, but only if they hit more than 1'000'000 downloads. This change makes these changes significantly more expensive than just distributing through the app store. All app developers who choose to stick with the App Store will remain with an unchanged agreement and will continue to pay 30% of their revenue to Apple, or, if you are in the small business program, 15%. Therefore, I will be sticking with distribution of my apps through the App Store.

Other browser engines & PWAs

The DMA (Digital Markets Act) also requires Apple to allow third party rendering engines on iOS. As far as I am aware, these apps can be distributed through the normal iOS App Store, but as these engines are only allowed in the EU, it’s hard to say if Mozilla will be putting in the work to port Gecko to iOS or not.

Additionally, with the latest betas, Apple seems to have partially destroyed PWAs. Apple has turned from a company that doesn’t care about their consumers as long as they pay to an evil mega corporation that actively tries to harm their users.

Whilst I do understand the rationale behind locking down a device and not allowing customization to as high of a degree as Android does, there should be a toggle that allows you to do basically whatever you want with your device, which you paid for. What is even worse, taking away features from users to make their life worse and degrade the overall experience of apps which were written with technologies other than the ones that Apple endorses. This is a clear statement from Apple that they don’t care about their customers at all. This was clear for quite some time now, but I didn’t expect them to go this far with their anti-consumer behaviour.

I did not expect Apple to give up on that revenue without a fight, but they seemed to do so, until they revealed their plans, which are just… insane. The new regulations are actually much worse than the 30% cut on the App Store, so most developers are probably going to choose not to go this route.

My actions as a result of this

For how I distribute my apps, this won’t change. I will stick to distributing through the iOS App Store, at the current rates, which for me were 15% only anyway, because I earn less than USD 1'000'000 a year (well very far from that). I am still pained, that this only applies to the EU. As it looks like though, the US might have something up their sleeves, as they sued Apple. We’ll have to see. I will be updating this post from time to time to add more context.