Summary

Gruber argues that MacPaw shutting down its SetApp Mobile marketplace in the EU proves that third-party app stores on iOS were never going to succeed, regardless of Apple's compliance approach. He contends the failure isn't specifically due to Apple's Core Technology Fee or malicious compliance, but because users simply don't want alternative app marketplaces or browser engines. The EU market alone is too small to generate developer interest, and no popular demand exists to push Apple toward more generous compliance. He frames the DMA's app marketplace mandates as bureaucratic idealism disconnected from what actual iPhone owners want, driven instead by Apple's competitors and ideological advocates for open platforms.

Key Insight

Third-party app marketplaces on iOS are failing not because of Apple's hostile compliance but because no meaningful consumer demand for them exists, and regulation cannot manufacture popularity.

Spicy Quotes (click to share)

• 6

  It's the fact that Apple doesn't think app marketplaces are a good idea, users are not clamoring for them, and the EU just isn't a big enough market to matter on its own.

• 7

  The EU can force Apple to enable things like alternative app marketplaces and browser engines on iOS. They can't force Apple to make them available outside the EU. Nor can they somehow force Apple to make them popular even within the EU.

• 5

  Legislation and regulation based on ideals, not practical reality.

• 6

  Users, by and large, not only are not asking for third-party app marketplaces for iOS, they in fact prefer the App Store's role as the exclusive source for third-party software.

• 7

  Apple is getting away with what some describe as 'malicious compliance' because they're under no popular demand from their actual customers to comply in any other way.

• 4

  The only things that register as popular or unpopular are things people care about.

• 8

  Anyone who does care about these things, and wants to see iOS change to enable them to thrive, should focus their efforts on creating popular demand for them. Good luck with that.

Tone

opinionated, dismissive, sardonic