This is the same developer whose Apollo app got screwed by Reddit. They seem to have a talent for finding simple ways to improve things in new contexts. Unfortunately, their improvements are typically of benefit to _actual users_, and the services in question would rather treat users as grist for the mill.
A similar sequence of events happened to Jase Morrissey, who developed Alien Blue for Reddit in 2010, although in that case Reddit was more gracious and acquired the app in before killing it in favor of their own: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_Blue
He then made Jasmine, a YouTube client which was an order of magnitude better than the official YouTube app...which was then killed for the same reasons as Juno.
Tech's really shifted from the days where an idea like Juno would get your app acquired, and possibly get you hired under their wing to help improve the base product. That's when you can really tell the hacker mentality left big tech.
He's suggesting that acquisitions aren't happening because of antitrust enforcement. I'm pretty sure that has no bearing on the type of tiny acquisition we're talking about here but then again I don't actually know what I'm talking about.
I still don't understand the Apollo collapse. The creator seemed to have convinced themselves that their users would not be willing to pay to continue using the app - despite the outpouring of love Apollo enjoyed. It all seemed very short sighted and emotional.
Apollo had a yearly subscription while switching over to the new Reddit API structure would require a monthly fee. That puts you in a spot where you may have users that are still on a yearly plan and not paying in while incurring massive monthly API costs. It was the sudden short notice of API costs increases that caused the whole thing to collapse
"One option many have suggested is to simply increase the price of Apollo to offset costs. The issue here is that Apollo has approximately 50,000 yearly subscribers at the moment. On average they paid $10/year many months ago, a price I chose based on operating costs I had at the time (server fees, icon design, having a part-time server engineer). Those users are owed service as they already prepaid for a year, but starting July 1st will (in the best case scenario) cost an additional $1/month each in Reddit fees. That's $50,000 in sudden monthly fee that will start incurring in 30 days.
So you see, even if I increase the price for new subscribers, I still have those many users to contend with. If I wait until their subscription expires, slowly month after month there will be less of them. First month $50,000, second month maybe $45,000, then $40,000, etc. until everything has expired, amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars. It would be cheaper to simply refund users."
Refund at a pro-rated rate, be frank with users and tell them the situation and why you have to raise prices - then raise prices.
I doubt users would have revolted had the subscription gone up to $19.95 or even $29.95 a year. Heck, my hiking app is more than that annually, and I barely use it.
I remain convinced Apollo had options, but the creator was convinced it was an impossible situation. It was not. There was an outpouring of support and people willing to spend money on an app they saw immense personal value in.
> I doubt users would have revolted had the subscription gone up
I don't doubt this, actually. I was a user of Apollo. I purchased the Pro Unlock for $5, and I did this only because it was a 1 time purchase. If it were a $5/mo subscription, I would have never used the app. Sure, I'm just one person and maybe many others don't feel the same way, but I have a hunch many do. Especially with the amount of subscriptions flying around these days, many people are getting frustrated by constantly having to subscribe.
Even if 80% of users stopped using Apollo, the rest could have still been sustainable and/or profitable.
50,000 paying users. That's incredible. Apollo could have even gotten loans to cover the interim if needed. There were many options to continue forward. The creator took none of them.
My guess is the creator was emotionally exhausted by the ordeal and was not in the head-space to deal with such a disruptive change. Unfortunately, brilliant creators/engineers are not always the best suited to operate the business, especially during troubled times.
Reddit designed this pricing change specifically to kill off 3rd party apps. If Apollo jumped through this hoop, there would be another in the future. There wouldn't be any winning this game.
Maybe, maybe not. It's unreasonable to expect a company to offer free services that make you money. Therefore it's not unreasonable to pay something for access to the content that makes your app successful.
No matter what the API fees are - if Apollo provided value to it's users, it would have users willing to pay for it. Like I previously said - many apps cost $30-50+ annually to use - and the users are happy to pay. Apollo users probably on-average used the app daily.
So refund in full and do the rest? That's what happened anyway, isn't it (the refund)?
The point was there were options, but the creator didn't seek them. So many people wanted that app to continue living - I find it impossible to believe the creator couldn't get an extra $1 a month (or even a lot more!) from those users.
How many apps can boast they have 50,000 paying customers? People need to appreciate just how difficult of an accomplishment that already is. The paying users loved the app, and would have paid more to continue using it - especially in light of the available information at the time.
A massive proportion of us didn't request a refund. I don't know the percentage, but I would not be surprised is most users didn't ask for a refund of $10.
You're probably right that there was some way for Christian to navigate this and keep Apollo up. But I also don't blame him one bit for throwing his hands up after how that whole API debacle went down. Must've been pretty stressful.
I believe Apollo was open sourced after it's demise. You could run it yourself but then you'd have to contend with the intentionally difficulty of installing software on the iphone.
Ok, but it was inevitable Reddit wouldn't offer free services to businesses making profit off of their content forever. The creator must have wondered at some point how long the free gravy was going to continue flowing? Why no exit plan of any kind, or even an attempt?
> it was inevitable Reddit wouldn't offer free services to businesses making profit off of their content forever
Their content. The audacity. Reddit is built on users' content and on free moderation. Sure it was inevitable that Reddit would lock things down for profit. But lets not pretend that this is Reddit's content.
For the 3rd time you are entirely incorrect. I won't quote the TOS again for you, as I have done twice already.
The moment you post to reddit, they can do anything they want with the content. It is now theirs.
It's also naïve to say reddit was built upon users' content. Yes the content is the most important bit and the reasons users are there today - but that ignores all of the software and infrastructure that made it all possible. There's a reason reddit is what it is today, and it was not an accident.
I never understood why Reddit couldn’t just have kept the API free, and embedded ads in the feed directly. They would get their ad revenue, and third party developers would actually help them make money.
Probably because it would be easy to filter those ads from the feeds.
The facts were businesses like Apollo built themselves upon Reddit's value-proposition. The content is what the users wanted - and Reddit had the content. Apollo's value-add was making that content more accessible to users - at Reddit's expense.
We can debate how Reddit handled the rollout - but the facts are businesses like Apollo offered little to Reddit in exchange for Reddit's content.
People operating businesses based on someone else's data (moat) should have an exit plan for when the free ride ends.
From a legal point-of-view, yes, Reddit had control of the data and chose to alter the deal. And the app developer did have an exit plan: shutting down the app and refunding subscribers. The developer appears to have weighed his options, considered the strategy Reddit was communicating with the rollout of their API changes, and concluded that this was no longer a viable market.
Many people expressed strong opinions about what the developer should do, but he appears to have remained calm and rational throughout the experience, and chose to walk away when it made sense.
However:
> The content is what the users wanted - and Reddit had the content...
> ...in exchange for Reddit's content...
> ...operating businesses based on someone else's data (moat)...
Let's not fool ourselves: the data was created by and for the users, and it never belonged to Reddit in any moral sense. It's a regrettable externality of our legal framework that Reddit was able to withdraw their free API and prevent the community from accessing its own data how it saw fit.
> The Services may contain information, text, links, graphics, photos, videos, audio, streams, software, tools, or other materials (“Content”), including Content created with or submitted to the Services by you or through your Account (“Your Content”). We take no responsibility for and we do not expressly or implicitly endorse, support, or guarantee the completeness, truthfulness, accuracy, or reliability of any of Your Content.
> By submitting Your Content to the Services, you represent and warrant that you have all rights, power, and authority necessary to grant the rights to Your Content contained within these Terms. Because you alone are responsible for Your Content, you may expose yourself to liability if you post or share Content without all necessary rights.
> You retain any ownership rights you have in Your Content, but you grant Reddit the following license to use that Content:
Twice you have deliberately left out literally the most important bit. I'll quote it for you:
> When Your Content is created with or submitted to the Services, you grant us a worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, transferable, and sublicensable license to use, copy, modify, adapt, prepare derivative works of, distribute, store, perform, and display Your Content and any name, username, voice, or likeness provided in connection with Your Content in all media formats and channels now known or later developed anywhere in the world. This license includes the right for us to make Your Content available for syndication, broadcast, distribution, or publication by other companies, organizations, or individuals who partner with Reddit. You also agree that we may remove metadata associated with Your Content, and you irrevocably waive any claims and assertions of moral rights or attribution with respect to Your Content.
It's theirs the moment you click post - and there's nothing you can do about it.
The content wasn't Reddit's, it was simply hosted on Reddit. It was actually owned by the users, many of whom were using apps to benefit Reddit via additional content and moderation.
I have actually. The way it's always worked for Reddit (and social media in general) is that you provide them a license to do things with the content, but the site doesn't take ownership of the content. This isn't a meaningless distinction either. It's a key part of Reddit's legal shield from all the illegal content they unknowingly host, via things like section 230.
> The Services may contain information, text, links, graphics, photos, videos, audio, streams, software, tools, or other materials (“Content”), including Content created with or submitted to the Services by you or through your Account (“Your Content”). We take no responsibility for and we do not expressly or implicitly endorse, support, or guarantee the completeness, truthfulness, accuracy, or reliability of any of Your Content.
> By submitting Your Content to the Services, you represent and warrant that you have all rights, power, and authority necessary to grant the rights to Your Content contained within these Terms. Because you alone are responsible for Your Content, you may expose yourself to liability if you post or share Content without all necessary rights.
> You retain any ownership rights you have in Your Content, but you grant Reddit the following license to use that Content:
I think focusing on the timeline is correct though. There is such a thing as pro-social greed, which is to say: a desire for a product/service/company to be long lived through sustainability of their business model. The problem, I think, stems largely from “shareholder value” theories which force executives to operate solely on a quarterly mindset. When all low hanging fruit in a market has been harvested, those held accountable for value extraction are pushed into short term, unsustainable tactics so that every quarter key metrics can go up regardless of the underlying reality. Hence: layoffs and enshittification.
I find it funny that at the time of this comment this Submission and this one.
>Don't build your castle in other people's kingdoms (2021)
Are both on the top 10 of the frontpage of HN.
Also thx for apollo but it wouldn't have mattered if it stayed active since reddit has plummeted in usefulness since the time of its removal anyway. I don't see reddits direction changing ever at this point.
I haven't read that article yet. But it has become extremely hard not to build in someone else's kingdom. Just ask Facebook or Uber or various other unicorns.
Oh, man, Christian, are you going to do Discord next? Because it’d fit the pattern to a T.
(This is a joke)
I was a huge fan of Apollo and genuinely appreciate your UX design and aesthetic chops. Please make something 100% your own next time! You have the name recognition and development experience to pull it off.
I can’t wait to see what you do next. Just… please not another client for someone else’s service.
I mean I don't think Apple wanted to do this, it was a great value add for Vision Pro. I'm pretty sure Apple has directly promoted Juno, I thought I remember seeing it in an Apple live event? Apollo certainly was - Craig Federighi mentioned it by name shortly before Reddit killed it.
I'm surprised that this app was actually allowed and approved in the first place.
Apple has an App Store rule against allowing apps or wrappers using an API or third party content without the express permission of the content owner.
Juno was likely given a pass by Apple due to the dearth of native Vision Pro video players. For instance, both YouTube and Netflix didn't have native apps available.
Perhaps Apple was a bit more lenient on Juno initially as it provided their own platform with some credibility at a critical launch stage.
5.2.2 Third-Party Sites/Services: If your app uses, accesses, monetizes access to, or displays content from a third-party service, ensure that you are specifically permitted to do so under the service’s terms of use. Authorization must be provided upon request.
So, reading from the above, if Apple thinks you are doing the dodgy then they may request specific authorization proof from you which shows that the third party is ok with what you are doing. If you can't provide it, then they will likely not approve your app submission.
This highlights the reason why side-loading should be a right for users on the device they bought. Users get to control what gets installed on the device.
I don't get it: this seems to be an issue where YouTube is blocking 3rd-party client access from datacenter IPs. Why would you want to do that in the first place? Wouldn't you normally run a YouTube client from home (or wherever you happen to be at the moment, which for most people isn't a datacenter)?
FWIW, SmartTube works just fine for me. Of course, I'm running it on my TV at home, not in a datacenter...
This less an iOS App Store dispute so much as a YouTube dispute. Selig's post makes it clear there was a process, started by YouTube, that took time, and the disagreement wasn't resolved between them.
I'm going to quote here so what happened is part of the commenting narrative:
For those not aware, a few months ago after reaching out to me, YouTube contacted the App Store stating that Juno does not adhere to YouTube guidelines and modifies the website in a way they don’t approve of, and alludes to their trademarks and iconography.
I don’t agree ... Juno is just a web view ... that modifies CSS to make the website and video player look more “visionOS” like... Juno also doesn’t block ads in any capacity...
I stated as much to YouTube, they wouldn’t really clarify or budge any, and as a result of both parties not being able to come to a conclusion I received an email a few minutes ago from Apple that Juno has been removed from the App Store.
It's worth noting that the YouTubes of the world get self-hosters to take things down too.
This will continue to happen as long as the incentives of the platform are misaligned with the incentives of the user.
For ad-supported sites, the customer is the advertiser, not the viewer. The site will optimize the experience for the customer. 3rd party apps simply don't provide a way to control ad delivery, so there's an incentive for the platform to shut them down.
It's why I've been pushing for/working on a paid social sharing site, since at that point the customer is the user. It means the incentives are aligned, and 3rd party apps are a boon not an anathema.
The floodgates is slowly stating to crack, fortunately. But it'll still be some years before the US wisens up to what the EU has been doing for the past few years.
More justification for anti trust action against Google. You can’t modify your browser’s view of your own client side data? They have absolutely no right to encroach on that, and they know it. This is just them throwing their weight around because no one can do anything about their bullying.
"More justification for anti trust action against Google."
Antitrust is the RICO of HN, as far as i can tell.
"They have absolutely no right to encroach on that, and they know it."
Based on what, exactly? Other than your assertion, can you actually cite any cases/law that says this?
Most caselaw i'm aware of says the exact opposite - they can in fact control it, legally.
At a very base level, it's a derivative work - they have the literal right to decide which derivative works they approve of and don't.
Caselaw has been clear on this since the days of duke nukem levels.
Heck, even time-shifting (IE not even changing the content or presentation) only survives under fair use - it is otherwise a copyright violation. Courts really haven't accepted presentation or content changes except when being done for parody or satire reasons, and are very careful not to destroy the derivative work and public performance rights.
Courts are in fact, much more accepting of very transformative use than this kind of use.
You may not like this - I don't actually like it, mind you, but that's different from "are they within their rights".
I assume next you will discover you also can't just take signals going through the air around you (satellite TV, cellular, etc) and just do whatever you want with them either.
Third party clients that exist solely to display a certain site in a slightly different way are definitely derivative works of that site. That's not really an "if" question. I'm not aware of any disagreement by any court on this front, but feel free to cite cases if you've got them.
This was even settled back in the days of iframing/etc.
As for the rest, it turns out this particular argument has also already played out many times and reached what appears to be a fixed point - there is actually lots of caselaw on the snippets they use and how far they can/can't go, and for what purposes, before they would have to license them.
This is also, to be quite honest, not a great legal argument. It helps a lot to realize the law is not logical, it just is. Particularly when it comes to copyright, which is a very weird bundle of rights applied in sometimes very specific and odd ways to different mediums.
Things like copyright and how it applies end up very much the sum of the n thousand cases that apply it.
While sometimes you get principles out of appeals courts or the supreme court, it's relatively rare in the scheme of things (IE happens once every 10000 cases or whatever), and it's even more rare that you get generally applicable principles that you can easily apply to a new situation.
This is very different than lots of other areas of law.
Some of this is an artifact of the fact that current copyright law was still mostly built for literary works and music, and concepts don't always have an easy/obvious translation to other kinds of works (so it took hundreds of cases for courts to reach a fixed point)
> Antitrust is the RICO of HN, as far as i can tell.
Not sure what you mean. But I’ll be specific - big companies are abusive because they have too much capital, too many resources (like legal teams), too much protection from competition - basically too much power. YouTube would not need to be the only place for online video content except that it benefits from network effects (creators and users are stuck), bundling (with Google’s ad business), and other anti competitive aspects. I’m sure you can construct the antitrust arguments against the iOS-Android duopoly trivially as well.
So yes, the need for fairness and competition is plenty of justification for antitrust action against Google (and Apple and Amazon and Microsoft). I hope that takes the form of new legislation to make it much easier to do something to fix these problems, unlike current antitrust law which just results in performative lawsuits that drag out for years only to result in a minor fine that achieves nothing.
> Based on what, exactly? Other than your assertion, can you actually cite any cases/law that says this?
I said they have no right in the casual sense, which has a broader meaning to most people. It’s obvious they shouldn’t have a right to control what you do client side. I don’t care what the law says, or what the technicalities are. There’s absolutely no reason to limit discourse on HN, or the outrage this deserves, to only what the law currently is.
> At a very base level, it's a derivative work - they have the literal right to decide which derivative works they approve of and don't.
Is me tuning the color balance on my TV a “derivative work”? Obviously changing client side code is not a derivative work.
> I assume next you will discover you also can't just take signals going through the air around you (satellite TV, cellular, etc) and just do whatever you want with them either.
Why not? I’m allowed to collect information from the air and do whatever I want with it, since it is just data, which I’m allowed to record in public spaces, and data is speech.
Putting ethical concerns aside (I'm definitely not on Big Tech's side on this), it just makes business sense to not piss off one of your biggest app developers in favor of someone making an unofficial client.
We absolutely need more regulation for these big platforms, but until then it's difficult to blame Apple for acting rationally business-wise.
Why do I need permission from my city council to build a bakery in a residential neighborhood? I shouldn't need it, it's all red tape like Apple's policies.
My analogy is poor but we're arguing for the same thing. Apple's App Store policies are arbitrary red tape¹ and we should be able to choose different stores.
It’s a fair question IMO. The YouTube APIs presumable come with “terms of service” for use, or some such. What exactly, legally speaking, can they specify? Can it be enforced (by Google lawyers and courts) to the point where Apple would be compelled to do things to force users to comply, like removing this App?
I think the answer _should_ be no, but that’s different to asking what is your actual rights on your device vs their “right” to control use of their system.
He isn't even using YouTube's APIs. From the dev himself:
> I’ve said from the initial launch, Juno is built as a web-wrapper for YouTube, akin to a browser extension, and purposefully built with full respect for the YouTube website and experience, and as a result does not block ads in any capacity, nor does it introduce extra functionality like downloading videos offline that could facilitate that. Further, Juno doesn’t even use any YouTube APIs, as it has no need to: it just wraps the website, and uses CSS and JavaScript to style the website and functionality more in line with visionOS. This is in contrast to other third-party tools that for instance scrape the YouTube website for applicable video URLs and use those directly, or those that integrate ad-blocking functionality.
If you separate out "how should things be" from "how things are", then from duke-nukem levels to you name it, caselaw is very clear that they can control this through fairly simple copyright law principles (derivative works, etc), without even having to resort to more complex theories.
Your best argument is fair use, but it's not a particularly good fair use argument in this case.
This isn't even a close case.
Your only secondary argument is antitrust but it seems like a really weak one in this case as well.
Not that you're under any obligation to suffer the peanut gallery, but I'm curious as to how it is that Micro Star v. FormGen (which I assume is your Duke Nukem reference) obviously applies more readily here than Galoob v. Nintendo and Sega v. Accolade. As far as I can tell, the key distinctions are in how permanent the derivative works are and to what extent the erstwhile infringement is forced by the platform owner as a condition of interoperability, which seem like they're debatable questions for third-party client apps.
Granted, maybe the DMCA makes these distinctions practically moot because a service can get away with just applying arbitrary restrictions via a "technological measure" now.
The bigger problem here is Apple and the App Store. Google is run by user-hostile goons, but if there was a way to sideload apps on iOS/iPadOS/VisionOS/EIEIOS there’d still be a way for power users to use the app.
Case in point: I use FreeTube on all my computers, which works just fine regardless of what Apple or Google would prefer.
Google isn't great by any means, but at least Android OS (maintained by Google) lets you sideload apps all you want. So my TV running Android lets me sideload SmartTube so I can watch YouTube without ads.
The root problem here isn't Google, it's Apple. Of course Google wants you to view their horrible ads, and isn't going to make it extremely easy to avoid this (which is why SmartTube isn't available on the Play Store and must be sideloaded), but they're not the ones with the super-locked-down platform. If you want some kind of freedom, stop buying Apple junk.
Put YouTube's website in a slightly-modified web view.
There currently is no YouTube app for visionOS. If you want to watch YouTube you have to open a web browser with all the restrictions and incompatibilities Apple does to the web. Juno makes that mildly more convenient.
I love my MacBook, but this kind of App Store nonsense is exactly why you won't find me using any other Apple products. At least with MacOS I can install whatever software I want without Apple's approval, and I can write Mac OS programs and Apple doesn't get to decide if my users are allowed to run them on their machines.
But iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, and visionOS are awful wall-garden hellscapes that force me to use Apple's store, or pound sand. This is a great example where a developer created a useful app in good faith, following all of the rules laid out by YouTube and Apple, and because Google didn't like it (despite it not breaking any rules or laws), the project has been killed with no recourse for the developer or the users. There's no alternative option to acquire this app, it's Apple's way, or the highway.
Let me write the software I want to write, and use the software I want to use, and get the hell out of my way.
It’s made pretty clear by the post that YouTube is to blame. Considering the poor developer adoption of the Vision Pro, I very much doubt Apple is happy about losing a popular app.
Look, I’m not defending Apple here, I have my fair share of gripes with them (especially under Tim Cook), but let’s not assume to know what went into this decision. If YouTube is throwing copyright law and other shit at you, even if you think they’re wrong it’s probably not worth it (in terms of cost and broken relationships) to fight it. For all we know they could’ve threatened to removed the official app on iOS, which will undoubtedly have more users.
This is the same developer whose Apollo app got screwed by Reddit. They seem to have a talent for finding simple ways to improve things in new contexts. Unfortunately, their improvements are typically of benefit to _actual users_, and the services in question would rather treat users as grist for the mill.
It’s unjust, and I believe it’s short-sighted.
A similar sequence of events happened to Jase Morrissey, who developed Alien Blue for Reddit in 2010, although in that case Reddit was more gracious and acquired the app in before killing it in favor of their own: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_Blue
He then made Jasmine, a YouTube client which was an order of magnitude better than the official YouTube app...which was then killed for the same reasons as Juno.
Funny enough, still have alienblue on my phone and still use. The app still works and everything.
I am sensing a pattern.
The pattern is that companies make APIs so they can control things. (never at the start)
Web scraping types of apps are more democratic.
The history of Apple store abuse goes back far as well. For their own gain and others.
Tech's really shifted from the days where an idea like Juno would get your app acquired, and possibly get you hired under their wing to help improve the base product. That's when you can really tell the hacker mentality left big tech.
It’s been said before on here that the MBAs have won in big tech and I think that’s fair.
This sort of tribalism is utterly insufferable. “The good decisions? They were us! And the bad ones? They were made by those idiots over there!”
When the zero interest rates left, at least.
And Lina Kahn came in
Are you suggesting Lina is on the side of big Tech?
He's suggesting that acquisitions aren't happening because of antitrust enforcement. I'm pretty sure that has no bearing on the type of tiny acquisition we're talking about here but then again I don't actually know what I'm talking about.
May I recommend watching: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWcoZVSx1T8, by Thomas Laffont who runs an investment fund.
The FTC is blocking acquisitions, which is one major exit strategy for startups.
I still don't understand the Apollo collapse. The creator seemed to have convinced themselves that their users would not be willing to pay to continue using the app - despite the outpouring of love Apollo enjoyed. It all seemed very short sighted and emotional.
Apollo had a yearly subscription while switching over to the new Reddit API structure would require a monthly fee. That puts you in a spot where you may have users that are still on a yearly plan and not paying in while incurring massive monthly API costs. It was the sudden short notice of API costs increases that caused the whole thing to collapse
"One option many have suggested is to simply increase the price of Apollo to offset costs. The issue here is that Apollo has approximately 50,000 yearly subscribers at the moment. On average they paid $10/year many months ago, a price I chose based on operating costs I had at the time (server fees, icon design, having a part-time server engineer). Those users are owed service as they already prepaid for a year, but starting July 1st will (in the best case scenario) cost an additional $1/month each in Reddit fees. That's $50,000 in sudden monthly fee that will start incurring in 30 days.
So you see, even if I increase the price for new subscribers, I still have those many users to contend with. If I wait until their subscription expires, slowly month after month there will be less of them. First month $50,000, second month maybe $45,000, then $40,000, etc. until everything has expired, amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars. It would be cheaper to simply refund users."
From: https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/144f6xm/apollo_w...
Refund at a pro-rated rate, be frank with users and tell them the situation and why you have to raise prices - then raise prices.
I doubt users would have revolted had the subscription gone up to $19.95 or even $29.95 a year. Heck, my hiking app is more than that annually, and I barely use it.
I remain convinced Apollo had options, but the creator was convinced it was an impossible situation. It was not. There was an outpouring of support and people willing to spend money on an app they saw immense personal value in.
> I doubt users would have revolted had the subscription gone up
I don't doubt this, actually. I was a user of Apollo. I purchased the Pro Unlock for $5, and I did this only because it was a 1 time purchase. If it were a $5/mo subscription, I would have never used the app. Sure, I'm just one person and maybe many others don't feel the same way, but I have a hunch many do. Especially with the amount of subscriptions flying around these days, many people are getting frustrated by constantly having to subscribe.
Even if 80% of users stopped using Apollo, the rest could have still been sustainable and/or profitable.
50,000 paying users. That's incredible. Apollo could have even gotten loans to cover the interim if needed. There were many options to continue forward. The creator took none of them.
My guess is the creator was emotionally exhausted by the ordeal and was not in the head-space to deal with such a disruptive change. Unfortunately, brilliant creators/engineers are not always the best suited to operate the business, especially during troubled times.
Reddit designed this pricing change specifically to kill off 3rd party apps. If Apollo jumped through this hoop, there would be another in the future. There wouldn't be any winning this game.
Maybe, maybe not. It's unreasonable to expect a company to offer free services that make you money. Therefore it's not unreasonable to pay something for access to the content that makes your app successful.
No matter what the API fees are - if Apollo provided value to it's users, it would have users willing to pay for it. Like I previously said - many apps cost $30-50+ annually to use - and the users are happy to pay. Apollo users probably on-average used the app daily.
Are there any 3rd party apps that did not come to the same conclusion that the fees and restrictions made their continued development untenable?
Narwhal transitioned to a 3rd party, paid subscription app. It's been around for over a year in this form.
https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/29/23777992/reddit-third-par...
> Refund at a pro-rated rate, be frank with users and tell them the situation and why you have to raise prices - then raise prices.
I don't think the app store provides a mechanism to do this.
So refund in full and do the rest? That's what happened anyway, isn't it (the refund)?
The point was there were options, but the creator didn't seek them. So many people wanted that app to continue living - I find it impossible to believe the creator couldn't get an extra $1 a month (or even a lot more!) from those users.
How many apps can boast they have 50,000 paying customers? People need to appreciate just how difficult of an accomplishment that already is. The paying users loved the app, and would have paid more to continue using it - especially in light of the available information at the time.
A massive proportion of us didn't request a refund. I don't know the percentage, but I would not be surprised is most users didn't ask for a refund of $10.
You're probably right that there was some way for Christian to navigate this and keep Apollo up. But I also don't blame him one bit for throwing his hands up after how that whole API debacle went down. Must've been pretty stressful.
I believe Apollo was open sourced after it's demise. You could run it yourself but then you'd have to contend with the intentionally difficulty of installing software on the iphone.
When things turn sour, sometimes you have to see the writing on the wall and think years in the future. It may not be something you signed up for.
There is also a limit to which people are willing to put themselves through.
Ok, but it was inevitable Reddit wouldn't offer free services to businesses making profit off of their content forever. The creator must have wondered at some point how long the free gravy was going to continue flowing? Why no exit plan of any kind, or even an attempt?
> it was inevitable Reddit wouldn't offer free services to businesses making profit off of their content forever
Their content. The audacity. Reddit is built on users' content and on free moderation. Sure it was inevitable that Reddit would lock things down for profit. But lets not pretend that this is Reddit's content.
For the 3rd time you are entirely incorrect. I won't quote the TOS again for you, as I have done twice already.
The moment you post to reddit, they can do anything they want with the content. It is now theirs.
It's also naïve to say reddit was built upon users' content. Yes the content is the most important bit and the reasons users are there today - but that ignores all of the software and infrastructure that made it all possible. There's a reason reddit is what it is today, and it was not an accident.
I never understood why Reddit couldn’t just have kept the API free, and embedded ads in the feed directly. They would get their ad revenue, and third party developers would actually help them make money.
Probably because it would be easy to filter those ads from the feeds.
The facts were businesses like Apollo built themselves upon Reddit's value-proposition. The content is what the users wanted - and Reddit had the content. Apollo's value-add was making that content more accessible to users - at Reddit's expense.
We can debate how Reddit handled the rollout - but the facts are businesses like Apollo offered little to Reddit in exchange for Reddit's content.
People operating businesses based on someone else's data (moat) should have an exit plan for when the free ride ends.
From a legal point-of-view, yes, Reddit had control of the data and chose to alter the deal. And the app developer did have an exit plan: shutting down the app and refunding subscribers. The developer appears to have weighed his options, considered the strategy Reddit was communicating with the rollout of their API changes, and concluded that this was no longer a viable market.
Many people expressed strong opinions about what the developer should do, but he appears to have remained calm and rational throughout the experience, and chose to walk away when it made sense.
However:
> The content is what the users wanted - and Reddit had the content...
> ...in exchange for Reddit's content...
> ...operating businesses based on someone else's data (moat)...
Let's not fool ourselves: the data was created by and for the users, and it never belonged to Reddit in any moral sense. It's a regrettable externality of our legal framework that Reddit was able to withdraw their free API and prevent the community from accessing its own data how it saw fit.
In no way can we consider the content on reddit to be owned by the users.
By using reddit and posting, you agree to their terms - the content belongs to them.
It's unreasonable to believe Reddit should continue offering free services to businesses that were making money off of Reddit's content.
From the Reddit TOS:
> 5. Your Content
> The Services may contain information, text, links, graphics, photos, videos, audio, streams, software, tools, or other materials (“Content”), including Content created with or submitted to the Services by you or through your Account (“Your Content”). We take no responsibility for and we do not expressly or implicitly endorse, support, or guarantee the completeness, truthfulness, accuracy, or reliability of any of Your Content.
> By submitting Your Content to the Services, you represent and warrant that you have all rights, power, and authority necessary to grant the rights to Your Content contained within these Terms. Because you alone are responsible for Your Content, you may expose yourself to liability if you post or share Content without all necessary rights.
> You retain any ownership rights you have in Your Content, but you grant Reddit the following license to use that Content:
https://redditinc.com/policies/user-agreement-september-25-2...
Twice you have deliberately left out literally the most important bit. I'll quote it for you:
> When Your Content is created with or submitted to the Services, you grant us a worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, transferable, and sublicensable license to use, copy, modify, adapt, prepare derivative works of, distribute, store, perform, and display Your Content and any name, username, voice, or likeness provided in connection with Your Content in all media formats and channels now known or later developed anywhere in the world. This license includes the right for us to make Your Content available for syndication, broadcast, distribution, or publication by other companies, organizations, or individuals who partner with Reddit. You also agree that we may remove metadata associated with Your Content, and you irrevocably waive any claims and assertions of moral rights or attribution with respect to Your Content.
It's theirs the moment you click post - and there's nothing you can do about it.
The content wasn't Reddit's, it was simply hosted on Reddit. It was actually owned by the users, many of whom were using apps to benefit Reddit via additional content and moderation.
Someone didn't read the TOS.
I have actually. The way it's always worked for Reddit (and social media in general) is that you provide them a license to do things with the content, but the site doesn't take ownership of the content. This isn't a meaningless distinction either. It's a key part of Reddit's legal shield from all the illegal content they unknowingly host, via things like section 230.
From the TOS:
> 5. Your Content
> The Services may contain information, text, links, graphics, photos, videos, audio, streams, software, tools, or other materials (“Content”), including Content created with or submitted to the Services by you or through your Account (“Your Content”). We take no responsibility for and we do not expressly or implicitly endorse, support, or guarantee the completeness, truthfulness, accuracy, or reliability of any of Your Content.
> By submitting Your Content to the Services, you represent and warrant that you have all rights, power, and authority necessary to grant the rights to Your Content contained within these Terms. Because you alone are responsible for Your Content, you may expose yourself to liability if you post or share Content without all necessary rights.
> You retain any ownership rights you have in Your Content, but you grant Reddit the following license to use that Content:
https://redditinc.com/policies/user-agreement-september-25-2...
> but you grant Reddit the following license to use that Content
The most important bits you left out. You grant them a license to do anything they want with the data, including sell, use, etc. ie. it's theirs now.
I'm pretty sure even the paid Reddit API had some ridiculous stipulations, like you couldn't view NSFW content.
As recently as a few months ago you could see NSFW content in Narwhal 2 on iOS. Not sure if it has since changed.
I do remember hearing they were planning that change, though.
NSFW is not available via API.
"short-sighted" is a euphemism used a lot to describe company behavior. We should just call it what it is, anti-social greed.
I think focusing on the timeline is correct though. There is such a thing as pro-social greed, which is to say: a desire for a product/service/company to be long lived through sustainability of their business model. The problem, I think, stems largely from “shareholder value” theories which force executives to operate solely on a quarterly mindset. When all low hanging fruit in a market has been harvested, those held accountable for value extraction are pushed into short term, unsustainable tactics so that every quarter key metrics can go up regardless of the underlying reality. Hence: layoffs and enshittification.
Platforms exist for the benefit of platforms, not users.
I find it funny that at the time of this comment this Submission and this one.
>Don't build your castle in other people's kingdoms (2021)
Are both on the top 10 of the frontpage of HN.
Also thx for apollo but it wouldn't have mattered if it stayed active since reddit has plummeted in usefulness since the time of its removal anyway. I don't see reddits direction changing ever at this point.
I haven't read that article yet. But it has become extremely hard not to build in someone else's kingdom. Just ask Facebook or Uber or various other unicorns.
And now our own phones are "someone else's kingdom". The corporate noose gets tighter by the day.
They've already pulled the lever, the neck just hasn't snapped yet.
Oh, man, Christian, are you going to do Discord next? Because it’d fit the pattern to a T.
(This is a joke)
I was a huge fan of Apollo and genuinely appreciate your UX design and aesthetic chops. Please make something 100% your own next time! You have the name recognition and development experience to pull it off.
I can’t wait to see what you do next. Just… please not another client for someone else’s service.
A 15 year old bully reaches out to the other 15 year old bully and decide to take the lunch of a 4 year old kid.
I mean I don't think Apple wanted to do this, it was a great value add for Vision Pro. I'm pretty sure Apple has directly promoted Juno, I thought I remember seeing it in an Apple live event? Apollo certainly was - Craig Federighi mentioned it by name shortly before Reddit killed it.
Let's not pretend Apple hasn't become a bully.
I respect Jobs, his brilliance and legacy. But Apple has never been farther away from what he stood for when he started it.
I'm surprised that this app was actually allowed and approved in the first place.
Apple has an App Store rule against allowing apps or wrappers using an API or third party content without the express permission of the content owner.
Juno was likely given a pass by Apple due to the dearth of native Vision Pro video players. For instance, both YouTube and Netflix didn't have native apps available.
Perhaps Apple was a bit more lenient on Juno initially as it provided their own platform with some credibility at a critical launch stage.
You don’t need explicit specific permission. You just can’t backdoor an API. A public facing API is enough, and why so many Reddit apps used to exist.
The guideline is:
5.2.2 Third-Party Sites/Services: If your app uses, accesses, monetizes access to, or displays content from a third-party service, ensure that you are specifically permitted to do so under the service’s terms of use. Authorization must be provided upon request.
So, reading from the above, if Apple thinks you are doing the dodgy then they may request specific authorization proof from you which shows that the third party is ok with what you are doing. If you can't provide it, then they will likely not approve your app submission.
Yes, if the site doesn’t have a public API, then you might have to prove specific authorization.
But if a site does, like YouTube allows for embeds, then it falls under the “services terms of use”
This highlights the reason why side-loading should be a right for users on the device they bought. Users get to control what gets installed on the device.
Christian, you really don't get a break do you :( Thanks for the great apps you have made.
First Reddit now YouTube. Christian is a talented developer, but his efforts are wasted building applications for closed social media.
Yattee will always work because it's using Invidious or Piped as a backend that you can even self-host
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/yattee/id1595136629
https://github.com/yattee/yattee
https://old.reddit.com/r/Yattee/comments/13d3lj7/how_to_set_...
Invidious is in a precarious position right now: https://github.com/iv-org/invidious/issues/4734#issuecomment...
Yep. The Kodi/LibreElec client stopped working some days ago. FreeTube (and NewPipe on mobile) still rock, but for how long?
I don't get it: this seems to be an issue where YouTube is blocking 3rd-party client access from datacenter IPs. Why would you want to do that in the first place? Wouldn't you normally run a YouTube client from home (or wherever you happen to be at the moment, which for most people isn't a datacenter)?
FWIW, SmartTube works just fine for me. Of course, I'm running it on my TV at home, not in a datacenter...
The YouTube client forces users to identify themselves by creating personalized API keys.
Christian, if you are reading this...maybe a nice HN app as the next fun project?
Hack (https://apps.apple.com/us/app/hack-for-yc-hacker-news-reader...) is absolutely amazing, but competition is always a good thing.
Alternatively, creating a good Fediverse (aka Mastodon) client would also be great!
The website is perfectly functional on mobile though. And fast. And the data is the latest.
I use Harmonic on android for HN and can highly recommend it
Ice Cubes is OSS and it’s amazing. Alternatively, I hear that Ivory rocks too.
Octal is another great ios app
there are like 12 of those already.
But most of them look like they were designed by a developer. Apollo & Juno are both well designed apps.
And for the Android users out there, I highly recommend Glider: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=nl.viter.glide...
That will not bring him significant income.
It was an app for the Vision Pro for $5. I’m pretty sure that’s not a big money maker either.
This less an iOS App Store dispute so much as a YouTube dispute. Selig's post makes it clear there was a process, started by YouTube, that took time, and the disagreement wasn't resolved between them.
I'm going to quote here so what happened is part of the commenting narrative:
For those not aware, a few months ago after reaching out to me, YouTube contacted the App Store stating that Juno does not adhere to YouTube guidelines and modifies the website in a way they don’t approve of, and alludes to their trademarks and iconography.
I don’t agree ... Juno is just a web view ... that modifies CSS to make the website and video player look more “visionOS” like... Juno also doesn’t block ads in any capacity...
I stated as much to YouTube, they wouldn’t really clarify or budge any, and as a result of both parties not being able to come to a conclusion I received an email a few minutes ago from Apple that Juno has been removed from the App Store.
It's worth noting that the YouTubes of the world get self-hosters to take things down too.
This will continue to happen as long as the incentives of the platform are misaligned with the incentives of the user.
For ad-supported sites, the customer is the advertiser, not the viewer. The site will optimize the experience for the customer. 3rd party apps simply don't provide a way to control ad delivery, so there's an incentive for the platform to shut them down.
It's why I've been pushing for/working on a paid social sharing site, since at that point the customer is the user. It means the incentives are aligned, and 3rd party apps are a boon not an anathema.
This is one of many reasons why we need alternative app stores.
The floodgates is slowly stating to crack, fortunately. But it'll still be some years before the US wisens up to what the EU has been doing for the past few years.
Put the code on GitHub and make it open. It’s a shame, and yet you can ensure it a I’ll get used
Maybe not github and someplace that doesn't remove repos at corps' whims.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41711709
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/software/youtube-dl-re...
https://reclaimthenet.org/crunchyroll-downloaded-github-copy...
https://techdator.net/github-removed-mediabox-hd-for-streami...
and so on
github is fine to start with imo, that's what forks are for (proper forks).
Bah! Humbug!
I use this all the time. Thanks for making it.
The risks of a derivative business.
Derivative of Apple, or Google? Given the circumstances of App Store removal only, I don't know if it's very clear.
More justification for anti trust action against Google. You can’t modify your browser’s view of your own client side data? They have absolutely no right to encroach on that, and they know it. This is just them throwing their weight around because no one can do anything about their bullying.
"More justification for anti trust action against Google."
Antitrust is the RICO of HN, as far as i can tell.
"They have absolutely no right to encroach on that, and they know it."
Based on what, exactly? Other than your assertion, can you actually cite any cases/law that says this?
Most caselaw i'm aware of says the exact opposite - they can in fact control it, legally.
At a very base level, it's a derivative work - they have the literal right to decide which derivative works they approve of and don't.
Caselaw has been clear on this since the days of duke nukem levels.
Heck, even time-shifting (IE not even changing the content or presentation) only survives under fair use - it is otherwise a copyright violation. Courts really haven't accepted presentation or content changes except when being done for parody or satire reasons, and are very careful not to destroy the derivative work and public performance rights.
Courts are in fact, much more accepting of very transformative use than this kind of use.
You may not like this - I don't actually like it, mind you, but that's different from "are they within their rights".
I assume next you will discover you also can't just take signals going through the air around you (satellite TV, cellular, etc) and just do whatever you want with them either.
If third-party clients are derivative works then Google should have to negotiate a license with royalties for every search result they provide.
Third party clients that exist solely to display a certain site in a slightly different way are definitely derivative works of that site. That's not really an "if" question. I'm not aware of any disagreement by any court on this front, but feel free to cite cases if you've got them.
This was even settled back in the days of iframing/etc.
As for the rest, it turns out this particular argument has also already played out many times and reached what appears to be a fixed point - there is actually lots of caselaw on the snippets they use and how far they can/can't go, and for what purposes, before they would have to license them.
This is also, to be quite honest, not a great legal argument. It helps a lot to realize the law is not logical, it just is. Particularly when it comes to copyright, which is a very weird bundle of rights applied in sometimes very specific and odd ways to different mediums. Things like copyright and how it applies end up very much the sum of the n thousand cases that apply it.
While sometimes you get principles out of appeals courts or the supreme court, it's relatively rare in the scheme of things (IE happens once every 10000 cases or whatever), and it's even more rare that you get generally applicable principles that you can easily apply to a new situation.
This is very different than lots of other areas of law.
Some of this is an artifact of the fact that current copyright law was still mostly built for literary works and music, and concepts don't always have an easy/obvious translation to other kinds of works (so it took hundreds of cases for courts to reach a fixed point)
That's exactly the battle they fought with news publishers.
> Antitrust is the RICO of HN, as far as i can tell.
Not sure what you mean. But I’ll be specific - big companies are abusive because they have too much capital, too many resources (like legal teams), too much protection from competition - basically too much power. YouTube would not need to be the only place for online video content except that it benefits from network effects (creators and users are stuck), bundling (with Google’s ad business), and other anti competitive aspects. I’m sure you can construct the antitrust arguments against the iOS-Android duopoly trivially as well.
So yes, the need for fairness and competition is plenty of justification for antitrust action against Google (and Apple and Amazon and Microsoft). I hope that takes the form of new legislation to make it much easier to do something to fix these problems, unlike current antitrust law which just results in performative lawsuits that drag out for years only to result in a minor fine that achieves nothing.
> Based on what, exactly? Other than your assertion, can you actually cite any cases/law that says this?
I said they have no right in the casual sense, which has a broader meaning to most people. It’s obvious they shouldn’t have a right to control what you do client side. I don’t care what the law says, or what the technicalities are. There’s absolutely no reason to limit discourse on HN, or the outrage this deserves, to only what the law currently is.
> At a very base level, it's a derivative work - they have the literal right to decide which derivative works they approve of and don't.
Is me tuning the color balance on my TV a “derivative work”? Obviously changing client side code is not a derivative work.
> I assume next you will discover you also can't just take signals going through the air around you (satellite TV, cellular, etc) and just do whatever you want with them either.
Why not? I’m allowed to collect information from the air and do whatever I want with it, since it is just data, which I’m allowed to record in public spaces, and data is speech.
Seems like a criticism of apple too. Why does this developer need permission from Apple to change some css?
Putting ethical concerns aside (I'm definitely not on Big Tech's side on this), it just makes business sense to not piss off one of your biggest app developers in favor of someone making an unofficial client.
We absolutely need more regulation for these big platforms, but until then it's difficult to blame Apple for acting rationally business-wise.
Why do I need permission from my city council to build a bakery in a residential neighborhood? I shouldn't need it, it's all red tape like Apple's policies.
This is such whataboutism. You might as well have asked why the state doesn't allow you to kill people. Why is there any rule at all ever?
Clearly apple has a divine right to prevent you from changing CSS and it has equal legitimacy to the state.
My analogy is poor but we're arguing for the same thing. Apple's App Store policies are arbitrary red tape¹ and we should be able to choose different stores.
¹ like zoning laws :p
Can't wait next election year to vote for my Apple representatives
The good news is you can vote with your wallet, right now!
> You can’t modify your browser’s view of your own client side data? They have absolutely no right to encroach on that
Is that true? Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely believe we should have that right but is it actually specified anywhere?
You're questioning whether it's your right to run the code you want to, instead of the code they want you to?
It’s a fair question IMO. The YouTube APIs presumable come with “terms of service” for use, or some such. What exactly, legally speaking, can they specify? Can it be enforced (by Google lawyers and courts) to the point where Apple would be compelled to do things to force users to comply, like removing this App?
I think the answer _should_ be no, but that’s different to asking what is your actual rights on your device vs their “right” to control use of their system.
He isn't even using YouTube's APIs. From the dev himself:
> I’ve said from the initial launch, Juno is built as a web-wrapper for YouTube, akin to a browser extension, and purposefully built with full respect for the YouTube website and experience, and as a result does not block ads in any capacity, nor does it introduce extra functionality like downloading videos offline that could facilitate that. Further, Juno doesn’t even use any YouTube APIs, as it has no need to: it just wraps the website, and uses CSS and JavaScript to style the website and functionality more in line with visionOS. This is in contrast to other third-party tools that for instance scrape the YouTube website for applicable video URLs and use those directly, or those that integrate ad-blocking functionality.
https://christianselig.com/2024/06/announcing-juno-2/#lastly...
Yes.
If you separate out "how should things be" from "how things are", then from duke-nukem levels to you name it, caselaw is very clear that they can control this through fairly simple copyright law principles (derivative works, etc), without even having to resort to more complex theories.
Your best argument is fair use, but it's not a particularly good fair use argument in this case.
This isn't even a close case.
Your only secondary argument is antitrust but it seems like a really weak one in this case as well.
Not that you're under any obligation to suffer the peanut gallery, but I'm curious as to how it is that Micro Star v. FormGen (which I assume is your Duke Nukem reference) obviously applies more readily here than Galoob v. Nintendo and Sega v. Accolade. As far as I can tell, the key distinctions are in how permanent the derivative works are and to what extent the erstwhile infringement is forced by the platform owner as a condition of interoperability, which seem like they're debatable questions for third-party client apps.
Granted, maybe the DMCA makes these distinctions practically moot because a service can get away with just applying arbitrary restrictions via a "technological measure" now.
The bigger problem here is Apple and the App Store. Google is run by user-hostile goons, but if there was a way to sideload apps on iOS/iPadOS/VisionOS/EIEIOS there’d still be a way for power users to use the app.
Case in point: I use FreeTube on all my computers, which works just fine regardless of what Apple or Google would prefer.
Google isn't great by any means, but at least Android OS (maintained by Google) lets you sideload apps all you want. So my TV running Android lets me sideload SmartTube so I can watch YouTube without ads.
The root problem here isn't Google, it's Apple. Of course Google wants you to view their horrible ads, and isn't going to make it extremely easy to avoid this (which is why SmartTube isn't available on the Play Store and must be sideloaded), but they're not the ones with the super-locked-down platform. If you want some kind of freedom, stop buying Apple junk.
What does this app do?
Put YouTube's website in a slightly-modified web view.
There currently is no YouTube app for visionOS. If you want to watch YouTube you have to open a web browser with all the restrictions and incompatibilities Apple does to the web. Juno makes that mildly more convenient.
release the code then
Probably the same will happen to Reeder.
Fuck you YouTube to make a worse UI & UX.
Time for Selig to build some original ideas instead of yet another wrapper around a popular service.
I love my MacBook, but this kind of App Store nonsense is exactly why you won't find me using any other Apple products. At least with MacOS I can install whatever software I want without Apple's approval, and I can write Mac OS programs and Apple doesn't get to decide if my users are allowed to run them on their machines.
But iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, and visionOS are awful wall-garden hellscapes that force me to use Apple's store, or pound sand. This is a great example where a developer created a useful app in good faith, following all of the rules laid out by YouTube and Apple, and because Google didn't like it (despite it not breaking any rules or laws), the project has been killed with no recourse for the developer or the users. There's no alternative option to acquire this app, it's Apple's way, or the highway.
Let me write the software I want to write, and use the software I want to use, and get the hell out of my way.
Is this for Apple's VR thingy?
I take it this is for Apple's app store and Apple removed it.
I thought Youtube removed it from Play store or something, so Apple is the bad guy here.
It’s made pretty clear by the post that YouTube is to blame. Considering the poor developer adoption of the Vision Pro, I very much doubt Apple is happy about losing a popular app.
No one forced Apple to remove it. Google just asked and Apple happily complied. By all accounts, the app didn't break any laws or even any TOS.
> happily
Citation needed.
Look, I’m not defending Apple here, I have my fair share of gripes with them (especially under Tim Cook), but let’s not assume to know what went into this decision. If YouTube is throwing copyright law and other shit at you, even if you think they’re wrong it’s probably not worth it (in terms of cost and broken relationships) to fight it. For all we know they could’ve threatened to removed the official app on iOS, which will undoubtedly have more users.
Armchair criticism is easy.
Apple really dug their own grave with the "zero sideloading" policy here, huh?
That is a bad policy, yes. It’s also orthogonal to the matter.