Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program

Unless you're competing with something Apple is planning to bring out (parental control apps before screen time stats, etc).

I don't think I'm competing with Apple at all today, but who knows what they're planning for their next features?

Exactly, nothing stops them to pull "Amazon", that is once they see your app is successful, they could request all data they need and either buy it off the company that developed it for you or commission their own app based on the documentation you had to provide and then block you. There is currently nothing you could do about it.

Surely this is true for all developers, at any size? And also just about any product, or service, in any industry?

As counterexamples: Apple sell Logic, yet it has numerous competitors, also all fairly successful: ProTools, Live, Cubase, Reaper, Ardour, FruityLoops. Apple give their customers Notes, Reminders and Mail for free, on all their devices (i.e. you don't even need to get hold of apps for these functions), and yet we also have Evernote, Notion, Airmail, Spark etc etc.

Does the App Store monopoly significantly change the nature of app competition? I'm not convinced, but I'm open to learning about it.

Surely the fundamental difference here is whether "the market" decides, giving you a fighting chance, or whether the Deity decides, with no recourse but supplication?

When Apple added Screen Time, they banned other competing apps.

I see how that does affect the competition. Fair point.

Didn't those apps get around lack of OS integration by essentially installing an always-on VPN ... something that could be a huge privacy issue?

>Surely this is true for all developers, at any size? And also just about any product, or service, in any industry?

No, this is very unique to Apple, and only on iOS. Its the reason why iPhone web browsers have to use Safari under the hood.

If I recall correctly, the apps they banned were doing things like abusing the VPN function to capture all traffic from the phone, and using that as their mechanism for blocking certain websites (or maybe it was MDM they were abusing...?).

It wasn't a simple matter of "Apple releases product that does X, then bans all products that do X from the App Store;" the products they banned had to use some seriously sketchy tactics to monitor and restrict other apps on the iPhone without system-level access.

And, instead of providing APIs to help make those apps less sketchy... Apple decided it would be easier to just ban them.

Apple clearly thought they were valuable enough to customers to keep around before the release of Screen Time, even with the sketchy method they had to use.

Because those APIs can be used for extremely sketchy activity.

Many APIs can be used for sketchy things. Supposedly, that’s one thing the App Store review process is meant to catch.

But it’s not possible to replicate Screen Time without using VPNs.

You can't detect everything in review.

iOS has always been designed as not to offer APIs that can be used for particularly harmful purposes.

I agree completely.

I'm still not a fan of Apple sherlocking popular apps and then proceeding to ban those apps that carved out the market for them... that's a very anticompetitive move.

Years ago, Apple banned Camera+ for allowing to take a photo with the volume switch (instead of using an onscreen button). It was "too confusing" and against their Human Interface Guidelines. Then they added that exact feature to the default iOS camera app.

That particular case sees Apple setting the rules of the market, not acting anti-competitively.

All the browser-makers successfully compete on features, as proved by the continued existence of multiple browsers on the App Store. Hell, Firefox can even afford to cannibalise its own market with two versions of Firefox (FF, and FF Focus).

Furthermore all the big name browser makers sell their offering at "free". In my view, this makes browsers an outlier in any discussion of Apple's anti-competitive behaviour. It doesn't shut down the conversation, just takes browsers out of it.