It is wild that Apple finds it cheaper to build and maintain different App store behaviors than to simplify and make alt app stores available in all markets. Other governments/markets don't care?
It's a very slow process, first there is investigations, then legislation, then enactment, then enforcement which is separately a very slow process. It requires a lot of willpower to get and keep the ball rolling and in fact nobody has even achieved the full extent of what they require yet! The EU may still be years away from meaningful compliance, Japan has only taken baby steps forming a new bureau just to enforce compliance of two companies widely accused of malicious compliance.
And then there is additional discouragement and pressure in the form of sanction and trade deal threats for regulating American tech platforms.
It's vastly more profitable to maintain their monopoly on iOS apps and the 30% cut than to allow users to stop paying apple a cut of their transactions.
The requirements for the third party app-stores are completely ridiculous and unreachable by 99% of the individuals and organisations out there. In practice, only vetted partners with huge resources can operate one.
As someone using AltStore PAL to install some third-party apps that would never be allowed on the App Store (such as emulators and manga readers), I heavily disagree.
Everything that didn’t turn out exactly like some people wanted is useless or the Worst Thing Ever — which is a boring and cringe rule of the internet.
I don’t think the cookie banner is useless. It’s annoying the hell out of everyone which is creating political demand for another round of legislation that should solve the issue properly.
It was a relatively easy fix which didn’t fully solve the issue but made the very real issue of pervasive tracking visible to everyone.
