Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program

My question: what is stopping us from demanding a legislative solution that requires Apple to open up the iOS platform to allow installation of apps outside its sanctioned ecosystem?

With ARM Macs now on the market, the hardware architecture / software differences between their mobile and desktop platforms is becoming smaller and smaller. The argument that mobile devices should be treated differently from any other general computing device has always been weird. But now the disparity is now ever more glaring given how similar iPhones, iPads, and Macs have become. We should be demanding openness and the right to modify software as the end user sees fit. This does not preclude users looking for a more secure experience to continue exclusively loading apps from the App Store.

Apple is already tying two products together (App Store commissions and iOS). I think the answer is to have a court opinion declare that app store commissions are not naturally related to iOS. It shouldn't be too hard to prove this given that third-party developers are not the same developers that created iOS and that iOS is a fully-featured enough to be considered a general computing device.

There's already legal precedence for this with United Sates v. Microsoft where Microsoft tried to ban Netscape and Java from being installed on Windows [1]. Epic could/should be using that in their lawsuit in order to be allowed to run on iOS. The App Store is Apple's territory, and that's fine. iOS isn't the App Store and the user should have the right in deciding what code runs on the device they purchased.

> Tying is the practice of selling one product or service (ie: commissions from App Store) as a mandatory addition to the purchase of a different product or service (ie: iPhone). In legal terms, a tying sale makes the sale of one good (the tying good) to the de facto customer (or de jure customer) conditional on the purchase of a second distinctive good (the tied good). Tying is often illegal when the products are not naturally related. In the United States, most states have laws against tying, which are enforced by state governments. In addition, the U.S. Department of Justice enforces federal laws against tying through its Antitrust Division. [2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor.... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tying_(commerce)

And it's completely unrelated to any commissions from the App store.

If you read more of the wikipedia article, you'll see Apple and Microsoft come up - but either entirely different issues that are wholly unrelated to their App Store pricing.