I know many people on HN are rooting for walled gardens to fail (App Store) and for openness to triumph. Do these same people willingly use Steam and think it's great? Isn't Steam's delivery platform for games and the App Store's delivery platform for iOS apps pretty much the same concept? If someone is against the App Store on principle, shouldn't they also be against Steam and not use it?
Steam is a content delivery system. It does not prevent me from adminning my own computer or 'sideloading' other programs. It doesn't tell me that I don't need -foo-, only to tell me that I do need -foo- once it's implemented there. It doesn't force me to use certain hardware. Steam doesn't even dictate what major consumer OS I should use. Steam is a content delivery system, and apart from license control for the content that I purchase through it (and only that), Steam does not mandate my user experience to behave in any particular way.
There isn't much of a wall around the Steam garden.
While I also dislike the walled garden approach of the IOS App Store I feel I should point out that it's only a monopoly if you define a monopoly narrowly. E.G it's only a monopoly on the iOS family of devices which is hardly a monopoly on installing apps on mobile devices. It may be a large chunk of the market but there are still competitors with a sizeable chunk themselves.
You also aren't locked into iOS for all mobile app purchases. My point is that this debate is usually really about whether you do or don't want to participate in a walled garden and less about whether you want to participate in a monopoly.
Using the loaded term monopoly feels like an attempt to use emotional persuasion rather than debate on the merits. Which is a shame because I think the walled garden deserves some good criticism in a lot of ways.
The barrier to buying a game off Steam given that you own a PC/Mac is much lower than the barrier to buying an app off the App Store given that you own an iOS device (ignoring jailbreaking as usual). These sorts of barriers are characteristic of monopolies.
I don't know how much is "openness" and how much is "good PR".* Every other week you have another post on HN about how Apple's booted something from the app store with no posted reason; I have yet to hear a story about a game being booted from Steam.
*I'm fully aware that there are a lot of people who say that yes, they want it to be open, but I'd be curious in seeing how much zealous anti-app-store sentiment there would be if Apple was more consistent with their policies and verbose about why one app or another was rejected.
Garry's mod is probably he most popular success story of a game made by a user of Steam that saw enough success that steam came to him with a mutually beneficial plan, and he went for it. Now I don't have the full details of the GM9 acquisition, but from the way he told the story when it happened, he was exceptionally pleased and satisfied with the way it turned out.
That's not a bad thing. The Steam quality control isn't perfect--a lot of more established developers seem to be able to get games through fairly easily, but, and given my tastes in games I consider this more important, there is a remarkable lack of indie shovelware all over the place.
Let's say I have an iOS device and wish to install a non-App Store app using it. Setting aside jailbreaking for the moment, what is the barrier to doing so? $500 or so for a new Android phone + all the time spent looking for replacements etc. The iOS platform is bundled with the App Store and there isn't much you can do about it.
Now let's say I have a Windows or Mac PC and I'd like to install a non-Steam game on it. What is the barrier to doing so? Pretty much zero, since there are a ton of other digital and retail options. Steam isn't the only way of downloading PC games, so there's plenty you can do about it.
I know many people on HN are rooting for walled gardens to fail (App Store) and for openness to triumph. Do these same people willingly use Steam and think it's great? Isn't Steam's delivery platform for games and the App Store's delivery platform for iOS apps pretty much the same concept? If someone is against the App Store on principle, shouldn't they also be against Steam and not use it?