Posted by nobody9999 12/12/2025
I mean, it's certainly not for lack of business insight. And you don't need the internet to sell applications.
But it took until 93-94 for Windows to actually become dominant enough to have such leverage, some argue that this only really happened with Windows 95. Since it was an open ecosystem for almost a decade at that point, changing was hard.
The Apple AppStore was different, it was launched after the iPhone shipped 13 million units and "only allowed web apps".
Apple really pioneered the walled garden (which I would assume was previously taken to be shooting yourself in the foot), and it's proven to resonate with the wider less tech-savvy population.
Could you elaborate on what you mean by this? I don't know how you'd sell them otherwise. How do you do you process a payment without a network connection? The only thing I can think of is offering a catalog in the OS which users could browse and physically order stuff from, but I wouldn't call that a store.
In some cases, some console manufacturers even handled the manufacturing of cartridges/CDs and the distribution side too.
> How did the users view products, how did they purchase them, and how did they receive them?
For the specific case of games, it was mainly via physical stores but I'm sure there were other methods such as catalogs, especially internationally.
EDIT: Remember GP is talking about the 90s and without internet, so it doesn't mean an app store where the app is instantly in your possession after clicking a button.
Right, but how is that an app store and not just a catalog?
…am I fully misunderstanding and they just meant a physical store?
Not GP but, processing payments absolutely does not require a network connection. Doing so is absolutely not nearly as convenient, but in my adult lifetime it was pretty normal for retailers to pick up a phone, give a customer service rep and/or automated call handler CC info and dollar amounts and get appropriate confirmations.
As for a business without an OS interface not being a "store," that's ridiculous on its face. If that were true, we'd have to call 7/11 or any similar place (like those at most gas stations) convenience "locations with items for sale but not a store, because stores are only places with catalogs in my OS," and "places which sell stuff but aren't stores because rimunroe says they can't be a 'store' without a catalog in their OS."
Touch grass, friend.
I forgot about phone payments, but that doesn't change my argument. If it's a built in listing of products, it presumably needs to be updated occasionally too, which I'm not sure how you'd do without mailing disks if you didn't have a network connection. I also don't know how you'd make room for the bundled software. My memory of my Windows 3.1 machine involves a lot of wishing I had more space on my HDD.
> As for a business without an OS interface not being a "store," that's ridiculous on its face.
That indeed would be absurd. Fortunately, I never argued this. I argued that without taking payments or distributing the software through the "store", I don't think it would qualify as a store but would qualify as a catalog. I think of a store as somewhere you go to exchange money for goods/services. If it's doing neither of those things is it still a store?
> Touch grass, friend.
I don't know why you felt this hostility was warranted. Did I slight you in some way?
I can understand how someone under, say, 30, might not know how commerce happened before the Internet. My 13 year old can't believe there was even once a world without the Internet.
I remember those days, but I think most people would call something where you viewed a list of products and then called or mailed to order and received the product elsewhere a catalog, not a store. As for over-the-phone payments, I forgot about that method for a moment but don't think it meaningfully affects my argument. It's just as out-of-band as the mail order example I included.
- Apple shouldn't be able to charge for external payments, come on.
- Force prominent disclosure of refund policies. Epic Games doesn't allow them for IAP. Apple does. Epic knows exactly how predatory that is, betting some kids will find ways to spend thousands and the parents will be helpless. Ideally you'd have a law mandating refunds, but without that, there should be mandatory disclosure on the IAP screen, at least for microtransaction games. You can't have fair "competition" when you have an information asymmetry, and if these rulings don't mandate that, you'll open the floodgate for these gaming companies to screw over parents.
The courts can only enforce the laws on the books. Congress needs to update the laws, but they won't because they are hopelessly corrupt :(
Courts don't allow you to submit false evidence yet somehow they need to update their produces to handle AI generated false submissions?
The issue is enforcement. Plain and simple. The anti-trust on the books are fine; no more amount of written laws will make regulators regulate.
100% agree Apple should be forced to have a big banner on explicitly stating they have no refund policy and it's all whatever they feel like this week. Which funny enough is also basically their app approval process.
Apple has no official App Store refund policy, either for IAP or for upfront paid apps. I've already looked for one. There's of course a form to request a refund, but refunds are entirely at Apple's discretion, for any reason or no reason, and Apple often exercises its discretion to refuse refunds.
Good for you, but you're only one user out of more than a billion.
> I’ve had an iTunes account since 2003
I'm not sure how that's relevant, because the App Store opened in 2008. Also, Apple had a different CEO at the time.
Have you heard reports of Apple not granting refunds?
I'm not talking about the technical process. Like I already said, "There's of course a form to request a refund".
> Have you heard reports of Apple not granting refunds?
Yes, many. Indeed, I've heard it from my own customers, as I'm an App Store developer myself.
How is the iPhone different from the Macs? I can install anything I want from any source on the Mac, but I can't do that on the iPhone. Doesn't make any sense.
Nobody is getting forced to use the Apple platform.
This goes both ways - when Apple produces a phone, they own it and they're also free to load whatever software they want onto it. They then enter into voluntary transactions with others, in which the ownership of the phone is transferred along with the right to load whatever software is desired.
If you can't figure out how to load your desired software onto an iPhone, don't buy one. But it's certainly not Apples problem at that point since, as you said, they no longer have a right to any say in how that device is used, and thus also give up any responsibilities you seem to desire.
Apple is actively preventing competition for app stores on the iPhone. And in other countries they’ve already lost the battle.
Walmart is actively preventing competition for grocery stores inside Walmarts.
Not everything is a monopoly and not everything needs to be totally competitive....
Different from gacha at least.
Small developers/business won't benefit from this change.
End-users COULD benefit from this change but the skeptic in me knows Epic won't adjust their prices to reflect the smaller cut they have to pay now.
https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answ...
It's incredibly similar to what Apple had before.
Thats another industry that needs more competition.