Hacker News

Top stories

Live mirror
30 storiesupdated just nowView source snapshot
  1. Bend 2 and the Vibe-Coding Trap(liampwll.com ↗)
    66comments
  2. OpenJev(openjev.com ↗)
    137comments
  3. I don't like passkeys(hawksley.dev ↗)
    97comments
  4. ZCode, the GLM coding agent, silently uploads your Git history(tokenstead.ai ↗)
    34comments
  5. Subnormal floating-point numbers are expensive on Intel processors(lemire.me ↗)
    10comments
  6. Jemalloc 5.4.0(github.com/jemalloc ↗)
    57comments
  7. Microsoft exec called AI scraping 'the largest theft of labor in human history'(techcrunch.com ↗)
    322comments
  8. An Empirical Study of Harness Design for Coding Agents(arxiv.org ↗)
    discuss
  9. Cekura (YC F24) Is Hiring(ycombinator.com ↗)
    discuss
  10. The scourge of x86 emulation(fex-emu.com ↗)
    46comments
  11. Warren Buffett Steps Down as Berkshire Chairman, Names Son to Replace Him(nytimes.com ↗)
    59comments
  12. The Shadows Lurking in the Equations – Underwater Islands(gods.art ↗)
    discuss
  13. Replacing Pull Requests with Delta(zed.dev ↗)
    27comments
  14. Bonsai 2 27B: Near-Lossless Compression in a 9x Smaller Footprint(prismml.com ↗)
    154comments
  15. Astra for Law(openai.com ↗)
    629comments
  16. Bend – A language that blocks AI mistakes via proof, on CPU and GPU(bend-lang.com ↗)
    248comments
  17. Qwen 3.8 Omni Flash(qwen.ai ↗)
    97comments
  18. Hister: A private search engine for the pages you visit and the files you keep(github.com/asciimoo ↗)
    173comments
  19. Wax motor(wikipedia.org ↗)
    78comments
  20. When the fractional part of a float fixes your shader(crocidb.com ↗)
    10comments
  21. Fujitsu launches made-in-Japan next-generation CPU FUJITSU-MONAKA(global.fujitsu ↗)
    239comments
  22. Pre-Greek: The lost language hidden within Ancient Greek(linguisticdiscovery.com ↗)
    51comments
  23. How to Write with an LLM(sockpuppet.org ↗)
    145comments
  24. Dr Julius Neubronner's Miniature Pigeon Camera(publicdomainreview.org ↗)
    discuss
  25. A heap overflow and SSO misconfiguration to compromise OpenAI internal repos(hacktron.ai ↗)
    165comments
  26. Shapelearn Qwen 3.8 27B (13.1 GB VRAM)(byteshape.com ↗)
    20comments
  27. Ask A Monk – A digital wilderness for thoughts with no immediate answer(askamonk.online ↗)
    28comments
  28. Flet 1.0 – Build cross-platform apps in Python(flet.dev ↗)
    72comments
  29. Telstra outage: The night a network decided the year was 2006(netnod.se ↗)
    30comments
  30. Diplodocus, Long Thought Exclusively American, Turns Up in Spain(sci.news ↗)
    48comments

Apple's App Store Polices Mean Xbox Game Streaming Not Allowed

52 pointsby 6y agobusinessinsider.com
24 comments
6y agoHN ↗

What else is new? When you buy an iOS device, Apple only wants you to use software that benefits them. If you want to use and control software of your choice, don't buy mobile devices or computers from Apple, end of story.

6y agoHN ↗

inb4 apple launches their own competing video-game streaming service

6y agoHN ↗

"The App Store was created to be a safe and trusted place for customers to discover and download apps, and a great business opportunity for all developers," an Apple spokesperson told Business Insider. "Before they go on our store, all apps are reviewed against the same set of guidelines that are intended to protect customers and provide a fair and level playing field to developers."

I am pretty skeptical about this being anywhere close to the whole story.

6y agoHN ↗

It isn't. And to be frank, this is getting really old quickly. It's always the same predictable marketing text, with slight variations depending on the current circumstances.

It's absolutely not about the user or the customer here. It's about them, and only them.

6y agoHN ↗

all apps are reviewed against the same set of guidelines

Which we know isn't true. Otherwise apps like Steam Link[1], PS4 Remote Play[2] or Google Stadia[3] wouldn't be on the store. It's hard to take Apple seriously when they pull shit like this. They only handle the app distribution, while all the heavy lifting is done by a third-party infrastructure. I know it's their walled garden, but at some point they'll have to admit they're going too far and they're crippling the market.

[1]: https://apps.apple.com/app/steam-link/id1246969117

[2]: https://apps.apple.com/app/ps4-remote-play/id1436192460

[3]: https://apps.apple.com/app/google-stadia/id1471900213

6y agoHN ↗

Huh, their explanation makes no sense. Do they review every single Spotify song or Netflix movie and show? I don't see how this is any different.

6y agoHN ↗

Apple has never made any claims of being logically consistent in their App Store decisions.

6y agoHN ↗

The article mentions that the difference between movies/songs and games is that the later is interactive while the former aren't.

Movies and songs don't offer (yet?) "in-movie"/"in-song" transactions, therefore they aren't a potential source of revenue.

6y agoHN ↗

So basically, they want a piece of the cake and their argument is pretty much made up?

6y agoHN ↗

I suppose we should think ourselves lucky that Safari doesn't limit us only to websites that have been individually listed, reviewed and rated by Apple.

6y agoHN ↗

Technically no browser is allowed on the app store, just skins around safari.

6y agoHN ↗

I'm surprised the porn industry isn't making a fuss about this.

Apple is basically saying the only way you can access porn is through safari.

No app that accesses porn is allowed on the AppStore.

6y agoHN ↗

Steam Link already exists on the platform and allows streaming arbitrary games from your own Steam library on a desktop, so something seems a bit weird here.

6y agoHN ↗

Sounds like pretty standard Apple App Store “reviewer roulette” to me. Each reviewer seems to read Apple’s rules differently and consistency is not clearly enforced.

6y agoHN ↗

I guess Steam Link is treated more like VNC/RDP client for your gaming PC.

6y agoHN ↗

You don't subscribe to Steam Link, however. It's a "free" service.

I bet if Google or Microsoft were willing to give Apple a cut of the subscription cost for Stadia/GamePass by using IAP, there wouldn't be a story here.

6y agoHN ↗

in an ideal world game steaming would get popular enough to where people switch to buying android phones in order to do it.

but in this scenario apple might actually cave and twist their rules hypocritically

6y agoHN ↗

It sounds to me like they want to limit competition of their arcade.

I understand that in a way this Xbox thing would be like an AppStore within the AppStore and you’d be able to circumvent Apple’s policies as long as you find Microsoft’s more appealing. I can see how that part could be a genuine concern for Apple, but this also being a direct competitor for the arcade just makes it look bad.

6y agoHN ↗

It’s less like an AppStore inside an AppStore and more like a movie inside Netflix or a purchased TV show inside the Amazon app.

6y agoHN ↗

Yes, but also no. It is more like an AppStore because it offers interactive content (games) that is 100% like what the AppStore already offers and wants to audit and control.

I am not saying that Apple should not allow this in the store, I can just see a legitimate angle as well as the more fishy angle that I mentioned.

Also, if Netflix were to start offering porn lets say, I bet Apple would have concerns there too.

6y agoHN ↗

One more data point in the long list of data points supporting the idea that Apple should no longer be allowed to run its App Store however they see fit, as they are clearly doing so in an anti-competitive way.