Apple’s Plan to Allow Sideloading on the iPhone Doesn’t Address the 1 Thing Anyone Cares About

On Tuesday, Apple rolled out an update to its plans to comply with the Digital Markets Act in the European Union. There are several notable changes, the most significant being that the company will now allow approved developers to offer their apps directly from their website — known as sideloading — without going through Apple’s, or anyone’s, app store.

According to Apple, in order to distribute apps this way, a developer must:

• Be enrolled in the Apple Developer Program as an organization incorporated, domiciled, and/or registered in the EU (or have a subsidiary legal entity incorporated, domiciled, and/or registered in the EU that’s listed in App Store Connect). The location associated with your legal entity is listed in your Apple Developer account.
• Be a member of good standing in the Apple Developer Program for two continuous years or more, and have an app that had more than 1 million first annual installs on iOS in the EU in the prior calendar year.

This means that in order to take advantage of the ability to distribute your apps via your own website, you have to have had more than 1 million app installs in the previous year. That means you have to have acquired more than 1 million new customers for your app. So, you’ll have to have built an audience for your app using the App Store before you can start offering your app to customers outside the App Store. 

That requirement of 1 million new app installs has another important meaning, which is that any developer opting for web installs will have to pay Apple the .50 Euro Core Technology Fee. That piece is really the only thing you need to know. Apple is making it financially untenable for most developers to distribute apps through their website or through third-party app stores. 

Despite the fact that everyone makes a big deal about users, the thing developers really care about is paying Apple less money. Meanwhile, the only thing it seems Apple cares about is making sure developers pay it all the money to which it thinks it’s entitled. 

Look, developers don’t really want sideloading or alternate app stores — they want to give less money to Apple. The reason they have pushed for those two changes is in hopes that they could get away from Apple’s commissions. Seriously, if Apple just lowered the commission of the App Store to, say, 10 percent, it would be unimaginable that developers would choose any other option. The benefits of being in the App Store would far outweigh any benefit of not being there at that price. 

The main reason developers aren’t happy with the amount of money they pay Apple is because of how they feel they are treated by Apple. I guess some developers also want more freedom in terms of the types of apps they’re allowed to build — or the types of business model they can use — but the latter is really just another way of saying they’d like to pay Apple less money. 

Users don’t care about sideloading either, by the way. OK, maybe a few of them like the idea, at least as a technical curiosity. But even on Android — where sideloading is a thing — it’s not really a thing, at least not practically. Very few people actually sideload apps. For that matter, most people don’t use third-party app stores either. 

On the other hand, do you know what users would like? To be able to sign up for Spotify with one tap in the app. They’d like to pay less money for subscriptions and purchases, and they’d like for developers to be able to tell them where and how they can pay less money. The fact that Apple and Spotify are so at odds that the experience is worse for users should be a massive warning to Apple that it has a very real problem. 

To be fair, all of Apple’s arguments about privacy and user security are legitimate. One of the great benefits of using an iPhone is that you can be reasonably assured that you’re not going to accidentally install rogue apps that infect your device with malware or siphon off your credit card information. But that isn’t the only thing users care about. 

So far, every proposed change to the App Store seems designed to offer developers alternatives that result in Apple making the same — if not more — money than before. If you’re wondering why developers aren’t satisfied, it’s because it was never about third-party app stores or sideloading. It is, and has always been, about the fact that they want to pay Apple less. 

Instead of trying to figure out how to keep making the same amount of money off developers, even when the experience is worse for users, Apple should be trying to figure out how to make everyone happy. The fact that it isn’t doing that seems like the real problem.