tldr: it will let Apple charge a commission (although at 15%, it's half the normal 30% rate for the app store) on popular web app games embedded in to WeChat for the Chinese market
Mini apps are way more than web games. For a lot of people in China, WeChat is effectively their operating system. The platform hosts _millions_ of mini apps covering a significant percentage of the use cases that a mobile developer elsewhere in the world might build a native app for.
As such, it seems like WeChat has historically gotten away with a lot of stuff kinda sorta on the edge of the policies that Apple enforces on everyone else.
Please don't fulminate on HN. The guidelines are clear that we're aiming for something better than this here. We've had to ask you repeatedly to avoid this style of conduct here. Please take a moment to read the guidelines and make an effort to observe them.
I'll try to keep this in mind. This comment clearly is just frustration (which I believe to be warranted, but still unwelcome here) and I'm sorry for that. Other recent posts related to the Apple ecosystem I think don't fall into this category, since they point out real issues with the systems and inform reader of topics.
I look at mobile devices, especially iOS, as “consoles” akin to a Nintendo Switch. It’s not a “real computer,” the definition of which requires the ability to run any code I want. It does whar it does pretty well and it is what it is.
FWIW this is how most informed consumers think as well. People buy iOS, consoles, etc because they want a walled garden. I think the real way out is getting consumers to see and value the benefits of leaving it.
I doubt most consumers would care if you could sideload apps on their iOS device or play PlayStation and Nintendo games on their Xbox. In fact most consumers would be all for it!
They buy these things because they find there's already enough value there.
I don't think so - the hugely negative perception of virus-laden wildlands on Android (which is somewhat true! most people could be tricked into bypassing the security prompts) makes people choose a safer option time after time.
You could absolutely make the case that users ought to be smarter, use technology as a power user, etc, but that's not the reality at the moment.
> the hugely negative perception of virus-laden wildlands on Android
I... don't see this in real life? There have always been San Bernadino-emboldened Apple customers that love to dunk on Android security, but recently that's gone away. Trojan horses are making it through[0] Apple's manual review, NSO Group has working exploits more often than not, the US government has wiretapped Push Notifications[1] and Apple has seemingly slowed their persecution of organized hacking groups.
iOS is in a post-Pegasus world. Android was perceived to be vulnerable if you downloaded the wrong app; iOS was proven to be vulnerable if you received an SMS payload from any user. And Apple has admitted that they cannot even really detect it[2] anymore. Neither educated users nor common people are associating Apple with security, especially now.
Sorry but comparing NSO Group's state actor malware to the tens of thousands of Android malware campaigns targeting everyone's bank account is so completely bad-faith. Every single thing you point to on iOS is about 10000x worse on Android; even if you look straight to state actors, Cellebrite can crack almost every android ever, whereas iPhones take at least a few years and the latest models are almost always protected.
That's ignoring the fact that literally zero average consumers are even targeted by these groups, nor do they have any perception of it. The average person is worried about exactly one thing: common consumer malware.
Non technical users are absolutely unable to discern security things or keep malware out. They’re sitting ducks.
If our OSes were not polished glorified 1970s Unix and had real security isolation we could allow more freedom, paradoxically. But given that our security is awful, freedom for non technical users means the freedom to get spyware and malware.
And where has such retreat led us? Rootable Androids are vanishing, Google is set to prevent side-loading entirely, and countless apps refuse to work on rooted devices.
You either force the companies to stop, to restore your control over your devices, or be dragged by the uninformed consumer masses into slavery.
> although at 15%, it's half the normal 30% rate for the app store
15% is the normal rate for the App Store. Only developers earning above $1MM/yr through the App Store have to pay 30%, the vast majority of developers only pay 15%.
It's not "normal", you have to "apply" (and get auto-accepted) but won't get the rate if you don't know to do that. You'll also get permanently booted from it if you do some things like transfer ownership of an account (if you want to sell an app you made, IIRC you lose access to this program, even if the app makes under a million).
tldr: it will let Apple charge a commission (although at 15%, it's half the normal 30% rate for the app store) on popular web app games embedded in to WeChat for the Chinese market