What I like to compare it to, is cars. If you want to only ever take your Volkswagen to a Volkswagen dealer, buy Volkswagen parts and only carry out service done by Volkswagen engineers - you can absolutely do that and no one will or should ever stop you. But the second Volkswagen says you can't use a 3rd party part in your car that you bought - everyone should be up in their arms about it. There's a line here - and it should end at customers choice, always.
The simplest way to do this would be like on android devices when you want to unlock a bootloader - a one way, single step process, where the phone wipes itself and reboots and is then "unlocked". If you did that on iPhones it would be enough of discouragement to stop all the mums and grandmas from accidentally installing dodgy software off the internet, but it still leaves the final choice to you, the user. You want a bodyguard, not a nanny - there's a difference.
> the second Volkswagen says you can't use a 3rd party part in your car that you bought - everyone should be up in their arms about it.
There's a risk-benefit question to be weighed even with cars; Lots of parts in a Volkswagen are sealed for safety reasons, and (in many countries) your car will get inspected regularly (here in Portugal it's an annual occurrence) to make sure your modifications don't impact the safety of your car and to others you meet on the road.
Having to re-tether your phone periodically to a diagnostic device to rekey and verify the trusted base seems like a reasonable analogue to me and that's largely where unlocking on iPhone is at the moment.
> like on android devices when you want to unlock a bootloader - a one way, single step process
I think "single step" is a bit disingenuous here: It's many little steps that all have to be performed correctly, and that then need to be sealed by relocking the bootloader (wiping the phone again) or you'll end up with a phone that cannot any longer protect your data from physical access, and may have a diminished capability to protect you from remote access.
There's a case to do this in the lab, but I think nobody in their right mind should put their banking details in an unlocked phone -- and yet that's exactly where most guidance about unlocking various Android devices leaves its users...
> There's a line here - and it should end at customers choice, always.
> it still leaves the final choice to you, the user
If I woke up to find my bank account suddenly $100k lighter, I'd want my money back, and giving the bank any opportunity to say well Geo, you made a choice to rip out the trusted base we were relying on would fill me deeply with regret for letting the Internet convince me this was something as simple as choice.
Right now, there are relatively few people in the world who would be confronted with that dilemma -- precisely because iPhones don't make this easy. Do you agree? Or can you explain why you think it would make our society better to have more people face that?
>>Right now, there are relatively few people in the world who would be confronted with that dilemma -- precisely because iPhones don't make this easy. Do you agree? Or can you explain why you think it would make our society better to have more people face that?
Well, I think you grossly overestimate the impact iphones have on financial security of people world wide. iPhones are a minority of all phones, in some countries less than 1% of all, and yet people aren't losing their life savings left and right. Yes it happens, but it also happens to iphone users - they are just targetted in different ways. And I think you are, like many others in this thread, assuming that it's all or nothing - android has a reputation for dodgy security, but I really don't think it's deserved. No bank app will allow installation on android if you have root enabled. None of them allow screen capture or 3rd party text input while the app is running. And yet, you have the freedom - you can choose(important word here) what you want to do with the product that you own.
I just don't think this would be anywhere near as large problem as people think, and I would prefer the personal freedom gained by it. Again, on Android, you can flash custom firmware to your phone, yet how many people(outside of HN) ever do it? In cars, you can absolutely reflash the ECU and break every regulation under the sun, and yet how many people(outside of enthusiast/modding circles) do you know who do so? There is no regulation there, no big brother stopping you from doing that - and yet 99.9999% of people never do it. And yes, I come from a country that has annual inspections too - that has absolutely nothing to do with fitting your own parts to a car. Even if I don't buy the OEM brake pads for my mercedes, it will still pass the annual inspection with flying colours. The whole argument that car manufacturers make of "we seal our parts so we know they are good" has been an utter nonsense repeated for at least 70 years now - most parts are not manufactured by them and can be bought directly(like OEM brake pads for mine are actually made by Brembo, so I can either pay £150 to mercedes for a set, or buy them directly from brembo for £90....exact same product).
> I just don't think this would be anywhere near as large problem as people think,
That's clear, but:
> you have the freedom - you can choose(important word here) what you want to do with the product that you own.
isn't using the definition of "choose" that I'm using, and I'm trying to make a point to you on this that I'm not entirely sure came across, so I'll try another way: Yes, you can choose to run someone over with your car, and it can happen by accident because of drink, but if you choose to install HideRoot, are you really aware of what you're choosing, or is the potential loss merely the same kind of accident?
I think speaking of the population who roots, probably not, and although most of the rooters I've met aren't on HN, I can imagine if you think most of them are, you might have a different perspective on that.
You can similarly think banks are wrong to try and override your "choice" to root things that you own, but they're also making an effort to try and keep their customers safe, and I think this is an important motivation to consider when asking why Apple makes it difficult to replace parts of the trusted base as well.
That being said, I'm not even remotely naive about the fact that the App Store revenue is probably an important factor as well for Apple, I just think that the solution has to be better/more-thought-out than you initially suggested -- for Android as well.
In your example: Volkswagen imposes quality controls on those parts, making sure they're not going to blow up or subvert the car.
As soon as other shops can install 3rd-party parts, you have a race to the bottom for shops, no one's enforcing quality controls, and you wind up with cars that, for example, get better performance by violating emissions standards except when they're actively being tested.
(So, maybe we should be using some manufacturer other than Volkswagen. :-)
I'm not sure I understand what you are trying to say.
>>As soon as other shops can install 3rd-party parts
But....they can. Of course they can. What's more, both EU and US law protects the ability of 3rd parties to make replacement parts, and your ability as the consumer to fit those parts. The law goes so far as forbidding manufactuers from voiding your warranty due to fitting of non-OEM parts unless they can specifically prove that the part that you fitted caused problems.
>>you wind up with cars that, for example, get better performance by violating emissions standards except when they're actively being tested.
Again, that's already a thing and has been a thing since forever. Modding is extremely popular in some circles. Just like flashing your phone with custom FW is popular in certain circles too, but that doesn't mean that once it's allowed everyone and their grandma will suddenly run some HAXXOR build of iOS.
It was, in hindsight, a lame attempt at a joke, based on Volkswagen's history with skirting emissions controls.
More seriously, it's hard to know what all's installed on your phone, and what all it's doing; car parts are intrinsically sandboxed.
It'll be interesting to see what happens when always-connected self-driving cars have enough compute power to run self-driving systems and people are free to install random apps without great security (because car manufacturers seem to be awful at that). I'm predicting cutesy weather apps that quietly mine crypto all night long...
A bad car part can absolutely cause your car to crash, much more than a malicious app on iOS, which may not even be able to access your photos or messages.
> In your example: Volkswagen imposes quality controls on those parts, making sure they're not going to blow up or subvert the car.
And they are free to do it. Have your own set of trusted dealers and vendors. Void warranty for off-branded parts. However, once I buy the car I am also free to go to any shitty unsafe vendor I want. VW can't tell me not to do that, because it's my car not theirs.
Do you think it would be okay if Volkswagen remotely shut down your car because they didn't like the brand of gas you put in it (for your own safety of course)?
But having a system that accepts non-genuine parts leads to a more complicated system. Apple's system is simple. Android's system is more complicated because it has multiple app stores. I don't want that complexity.
That's an interesting way of thinking which I've not really encountered outside of Soviet-style centrally controlled economy advocates and the like.
Do you feel the same way about all other things in life where you are presented with a choice? Would you prefer there to only be a single grocery store you get your groceries from, for example?
I just don't understand. I really try hard to understand, but I physically can't I think.
Let's say that hypothetically, there was another store present on iOS. Does that stop you(or anyone) from only ever using the Apple App Store?? On Android, there are several other stores available, yet I have never felt the need to use any of them - they exist, they have their own customers.....but....that's it.
It's like if you already have one shop in your village, so you prevent others from opening even though literally nothing would force you to go to these other shops and you can still enjoy the original shop as much as you did before. Literally nothing changes in your life, but you want to prevent others from having a choice, even if you yourself don't appreciate the choice. That's mindboggling to me.
Reading through the replies you got for this post is really quite interesting. I feel like what it boils down to is that there are a decent amount of people that prefer life under an authoritarian regime (whether governmental or corporate). A regime where someone they trust decides for them how they should enjoy their life and protects them from bad choices. Merely allowing a different party from offering a competing choice would undermine the whole premise.
It's a bit like the cruise ship industry where you forgo choice (compared to traveling outside of a tour) but gain safety and the benefit of not having to research or make decisions. If anyone could open up a restaurant or organise an outing on a cruise ship, then that perceived safety disappears and the need to make conscious decisions arises.
As this seems to be a reasonably common theme in these posts I wonder if there's a market for more products that follow a similar purchase incentive, like a fridge that only allows you to insert groceries you've bought from the trusted supermarket.
I pay the Apple tax so to say - so that my mobile experience is as hassle free as can be.
And yes, it's worth it. It just works, and i never have to worry about shady apps or wonder too much about the quality of the apps that i download - theres always some lesser than others, but on the whole its all good.
Arguing for other app stores / unsigned apps on the iOS platform is counter intuitive to what made the ecosystem great in the first place.
I had android phones and did all the custom stuff & rooting from the G1 and forwards for many years, in the end i only regret not changing over sooner.
There is nothing great about the "freedom of choice" on the android platform, it all makes for a lesser experience unless you're really into it for other reasons - political/principle.
But....but .....literally no one is forcing you to install and use these other stores. NOTHING about your experience changes at all. Again, I can install the Amazon store in my phone, but.....I just don't. Why is this such a revolutionary idea?
Apple would have to do the work to modify their software to support multiple stores, and they’d have to support the code for that going forward.
They’d be doing that instead of something else productive that I could use.
So it’s a loss to me and other Apple users who appreciate the curated system at the moment.
Your analogy is ‘prevent’ but really it’s ‘not want to do the work to enable’. See how that’s not the same thing? Instead of 'not preventing someone opening a new shop in the village' you're asking them to cut a hole in the side of their store so someone in a greasy food cart can connect up to it and sell smelly burgers with poor food hygiene standards in the middle of their boutique, and then maintain that hole going forward.
They don't want to do that! Many of their customers don't want that! Those customers that do want it can go somewhere else, like Android!
How much work do you really think that it would take them to remove the entitlement on the daemon that installs apps? I have heard that entire App Store frontend was maintained by like a single engineer until like iOS 8. The change would be fairly simple; the amount of time they spend on fighting these things both in court and with technological measure in the OS is many orders of magnitude more than this.
>>If you don’t can’t you go elsewhere? Why impose on people happy minding their own business?
That's the same argument, word for word, that people used to defend businesses not serving coloured folk - after all, can't they just go elsewhere? And we as society decided no, they shouldn't have to go anywhere - if you run a business, you have to serve everyone, end of story. I think it's time to do the same for Apple - if you want to run an app platform, you have to allow choice. And if your choice is to stay with App Store and only install apps curated by apple - that's perfectly valid. No one is taking that away from you.
Again, how exactly does that inconvenience you, personally? No one is forcing you to use these other stores, no one is imposing anything on you. They will just exist somewhere for people who want them. Again, I'm on Android but I don't feel like I'm losing anything by the mere existence of the Amazon App store - it's there if you want it, if you don't then that's cool.
And yes, I absolutely think you are overexaggerating the technical difficulty behind allowing people to do this - all Apple needs to do it allow apps to install other apps from packages. It's hardly a groundbreaking architectural change, come on.
I don't think it's a reasonable argument to put people oppressed due to their race with people who want their smartphone to work a bit differently at the same level.
> if you run a business, you have to serve everyone, end of story
This isn't even true! You can deny service to anyone for any reason as long as it's not a protected characteristic! Apple already cannot deny your app based on your race.
If a restaurant doesn't like your attitude they can ask you to leave. Can't Apple do the same?
> Again, how exactly does that inconvenience you, personally?
Because the smartphone gets worse. Less locked-down, less simple, more complex, more avenues of attack. More expensive to make and maintain.
But why does anyone have to justify why they don't like it? I think 'I don't want to do this' should be reason enough for Apple to not do it. As long as they aren't impacting people who aren't their customers it's their business not yours.
> no one is imposing anything on you
Yes you are you want to impose that Apple change their software to suit you - it's selfish.
You want it your way, I want it my way. Hope can we resolve this? How about we let Apple choose who to market to?
We can't make it a legally protected right to have products designed for people's random whims.
>>I don't think it's a reasonable argument to put people oppressed due to their race with people who want their smartphone to work a bit differently at the same level.
Well, perhaps, my broader point is that the ability of businesses to govern themselves and set their own rules does end somewhere, and that line is decided by societies and can change with time. Things that were acceptable few years ago maybe aren't acceptable now, and vice versa.
>>Because the smartphone gets worse. Less locked-down, less simple, more complex, more avenues of attack
I just don't see that at all, sorry. The experience for 99.99% users won't change at all. Apple could have enabled this last week and you wouldn't have seen any difference at all.
>>We can't make it a legally protected right to have products designed for people's random whims.
Well, but it's not just a random whim, that's the crux of the issue. Once the size of a company and the market it controls gets big enough, it's only natural that they are forced to open to others. It happened to every industry before, why should apple be immune to this? It's the whole epic vs apple discussion again - if two sides want to engage in lawful business contract(sell each other software in this case) why should apple be the arbiter of these transactions? Or rather - why should you, the owner of your smartphone, be forced to use apple as the arbiter.
>>How about we let Apple choose who to market to?
They still can, literally nothing changes on that front. They still market to the same people, they still curate the apps like they used to, they still have 100% control of their app store and the device. The only thing that I would like to change is that ability to say "this is my device apple, I paid for it, let me install software that didn't go through your filter". Again, entirely optional. But we looped back to the first point that we are going to disagree on again - you think that will make the experience worse, I don't think it will.
I think we should agree to part ways on that - the discussion is as always enjoyable, but we might have exhausted the potential here :-)
For what it’s worth, I’m with him, for pretty much the exact same reasons.
You knew what you were getting into when you bought the iPhone. Trying to change it after the fact just seems like trying to profit off other people’s hard work and investments. Screw that.
So....if you buy something, you automatically lose the right to complain about the way it works? Do you apply that rule to the other areas of your life?
Maybe a different example - until very recently, if you bought a BMW, you could only get Apple CarPlay as a subscription, you couldn't just pay upfront to have it. Which is not how this works literally anywhere else, every other brand has it as a one-time unlock and then you have it for life.
Surely, every person buying a brand new BMW knew this, it's clearly advertised. So....should they not have complained about this? After all, they knew what they were buying. But, people have been complaining, and BMW has finally changed it recently. Good riddance I say.
But back to the iphone dillema. The problem with your argument is that this is traditionally not how markets work. If company X wants to sell something to John Smith(let's say an app for their iphone), but cannot without going through some kind of licence holder(Apple in this case) - it's totally a valid question to ask if Apple is stifling competition here or not. In my opinion - they are. Maybe the company X is making a completely legitimate web browser, that John Smith wants to buy and pay money for - but Apple will say nope, you can't buy that, because that would compete with our own product. That's anticompetitive behaviour, and traditionally it does eventually get stopped in court. Like I said in my example several posts ago - volkswagen cannot do anything to stop the company X from selling brake pads to John Smith, yes they fit a car that Volkswagen made but Volkswagen doesn't get to say whether John Smith is allowed to purchase and fit those parts or not. Courts all over the world have decided, many times, that corporations shouldn't have that power. Why do smartphone manufacturers get to keep that power now then? That will change in my opinion, and they will be forced to open up.
Here's the thing: I don't care about BMW. I have a nice situation with Apple holding the keys to the castle, without the horrendous problems that friends of mine have had with Android malware, and you're threatening it. I don't want that.
End of story.
I don't care who makes money and how they do it. I don't care about any wider point. I care that my experience on the phone that I bought for that experience doesn't get worse. I believe that experience would get worse, if there was open-season on the apps that could be installed. Capitalists are going to capitalize. The walled garden comes with restrictions that I signed up for, and I'm happy about that. That was why I signed up in the first place.
So....why are you here at all? Why bother replying to any of these comments, if you're not actually interested in the discussion in the slightest? Like, I get it - you don't care. And? Not caring isn't some new radical stance you know.
But I think I had a very interesting discussion with yourself, you laid out some arguments, I did the same, at the end we disagreed but that's fine, I'm not on some sort of crusade here, it's just a discussion. But then spacedcowboy comes in to basically say "I don't care about any of this or any of your arguments". Ok then, of course they are free to do so, but then why bother commenting? I only continued replying because I hoped we can have explore the topic a bit more but no, spacedcowboy just straight up says he doesn't care about any of it, so I guess that's really, as they put it, "end of story".
I don't care about your arguments because I don't want their expected effects on my life.
I very do much care about the results of your proposals becoming popular, and I don't want what you're proposing to come about. I want it to be known that there are people who oppose your point of view, in case it becomes de-facto the "popular opinion".
It would be a negative for me, because I would need to train my parents to never use this other store. Then their friends will get them to use it, because a sketchy app will be in that store that offers free money, or some other scam. My parents will then breach the secure containment of their phone, without really understanding what they're doing.
It would harm Apple, because when users try the third party app store and have problems, they will expect Apple to support it. If Apple doesn't do the support, it tarnishes their brand to that user.
Well but that's like saying that cars shouldn't allow mods, because someone will convince your parents to install aftermarket mods and they will mod their cars and crash and die.
Like, sure, it can happen. But if your parents can be convinced by someone to install a 3rd party store and download something from it, they can be equally easily convinced to go to a dodgy website that will scam them from something else and their magical iPhone won't save them from it. Besides, the whole idea that adult people should be prevented from having choice for their own good is almost offensive to me, like ....don't we believe in personal freedom and choice? Your parents should be able to choose to lock down your their phones(or you can do it for them) but equally, if they want to unlock it - they should be able to.
Volkswagen should be able to make their cars as difficult to repair or modify as they want. There are so many other options for cars out there, if I care about modifying my car why would I buy a Volkswagen in the first place? I'll just go buy a different car that is more friendly for what I want to do.
Except you'll have the Volkswagon silo, the Ford silo, the GM silo, etc. and they'll all start engaging in monopolistic behavior for servicing because they have a monopoly over repairing your specific brand of car. Call it a tacit collusion monopoly and throw in the sunk cost of a car to make it even worse. If everyone in the market behaves the same, there's no benefit to selling your car and getting another because the service costs won't change.
The best example of this that demonstrates what you'd end up with is the cost of key fob programming. The actual cost of the hardware is trivial but a dealership will charge you $250-500 to program a new one because they have a monopoly on programming the fobs for their brand. Those things should cost $50 max IMO.
The scary thing is the vehicle industry is moving this way for everything and if nothing changes it's eventually going to become extremely difficult / expensive to own a vehicle that's not under warranty. I wouldn't be surprised if they start serializing parts and then sell service plans that increase in price as your car ages. You'll pay forever.
Several modern cars are actually moving in the direction of gaining more and more central control competitively.
Last year we had to remove the fuse in the car battery for maintenance, and also because the battery needed a little cleaning - while we were in a remote village with no access to proper internet connection.
Little did we know that after re-inserting the same fuse back to the battery, the media system would stop working.
The media LCD screen started showing a "Enter the pin to unlock the media system" screen! And we do not have the pin, we were never given a pin.
Hence we lost access to the car GPS and media system altogether in an unknown territory.
We somehow got back to home and had to book an appointment with the car dealership for the technician to unlock our car media system!
He plugged his device and generated the pin that's signed/paired with our specific car and then used it to unlock the media system.
It is indeed scary that even car manufacturers are moving towards central control of every little thing in your car.
The last thing I want to see with all these tech companies following Apple's footsteps in a lot of things, is to see the auto industry becoming like Apple.
I'm sorry, but that's really funny to me - not because I'm laughing at your misfortunes of course, but because of how easily people forget history or are simply unaware of it.
Media systems locking due to the lack of power is not a new problem. I do remember having the exact same problem on my 1994 Passat, where the radio would lock itself and you had to go to the dealer to have it unlocked.
>>And we do not have the pin, we were never given a pin
Literally the same problem, except 25 years later :P Manufacturers almost never issued these special pins to unlock radios.
And like, disconnecting the battery has always been a problem in cars, BMWs, Mercs, Opels, Peugeots, Fiats - I've had them all and they all did something weird if you disconnected the battery - more often than not, a check engine light would pop up and you had to bring it to the dealer to clear it. This is not new.
We were not aware of that and that was definitely a new experience for us.
My father owns a car bought a decade ago and we can easily fix and swap any parts we wish without having to worry about getting sign-off from the car "owners" :D
I don't see why that would happen, and seeing that as a common practice among other car manufacturers does not make it any less annoying.
Yes, they should be able to, of course. But it's enshrined in law, both EU and US, that other manufactuers can make compatible replacement parts for cars. A manufactuer doesn't get to say what parts you can put in your car after you bought it. You don't have to buy genuiene OEM volkswagen brake pads or clutches - you can buy and install 3rd party ones, and legally Volkswagen cannot forbid you from doing so, and neither can they forbid anyone from manufacturing those replacement parts.
Uh, no thanks man. The fact things have gotten worse in some aspects of our lives doesn't mean we need to regress the things that are actually working so well you didn't even know it was an issue. If anything this is an argument for the opposite of what you're suggesting.
What I don't get is why you're advocating for your own freedoms to be taken away. Don't carry water for the car companies, if they want more freedoms they can use their money and lobby for it. You don't need to do their job pro bono, leave that up to Citizens United.
Freedom will come from market choice. I fight for the freedom of car companies to make their own choices on how their products can be used. Let them apply their own restrictions. Thats freedom
Like.....that's an incredibly twisted logic. How is it freedom, when a corporation gets to dictate how you use their product after its bought and paid for?? That's not freedom, not in any sense of the word. Corporations should be free to manufacture any car in any way they like. But they shouldn't be able to tell us what to do with our property, don't you see or appreciate having a freedom to do whatever and however you please with items that you have bought?
It's like arguing that you should be able to enter an employment contract that stipulates physical punishment for making mistakes at work - surely, being able to enter such contract is freedom! If you don't like it, go somewhere else, market forces will sort it out! And yet, we as society have decided that no, physical punishment is not acceptable and you cannot waive your right to be free of it. That's freedom. Not what you are saying.
I feel like I _can_ do whatever I please with items I bought. I see the iPhone as an integrated product. There is no boundary between semiconductor, system board, operating system, application runtime, and the 3rd party app ecosystem. It is all one product. Being able to split this apart so I can tinker at the interfaces is not something I demand from something I pay for. Whatever I try to do outside of their expected use of the product is sort of a crapshoot. It says nothing about freedom.
Physical punishment is just a terrible comparison.
This neither lines up with reality (as in there are defined boundaries as devices are made by people on different teams each operating on their own abstractions) or with the reality we want to see.
Part of the trade-off that large companies accept in being allowed to become mega-players in a space is that to make up for the lack of individual power, the government may step in and make the world better for individuals at the expense of the larger companies by, for instance, mandating freedoms: freedom to repair (especially in the case of cars), freedom to re-sell (that's the first-sale doctrine in case you're curious), and so on.
Again you didn't answer my question. Why are you advocating to have your own rights/freedoms removed for the benefit of the company? Not even the company is asking for that. Why don't you leave advocating for the company to paid advocates of the company?
Let's be super clear, once you purchase the car, it's not their product, it's your car. That's how ownership works. Once it is in your physical lawful possession, it is your to do with as you please. The entire legal system is built around this idea.
For instance, if someone steals my car and wrecks it, does Volkswagen sue the car thief for damages, or do I? If you answered anything other than Volkswagen, it's not "their product" anymore.
I'm not sure they should. One thing is the environmental aspect, we want to avoid unnecessary waste and resource usage since that is one of the things destroying our planet. But another thing is, what happens when the market shifts heavily in a direction that is bad for the consumer?
Sure, you have a lot of good car choices today, but at some point it might be hard to find a car that has your other desirable specs in addition to being repair and modification friendly.
If everyone who bought a car was a well informed with at least a minimum of knowledge of cars, in addition to being able to calculate how repair costs will affect them over the time they own it, then sure. Let the market sort itself out. Since many aren't, let's keep regulations in place to ensure desirable properties.
Heck, imagine what safety features cars would lack if they weren't government mandated requirements...
The simplest way to do this would be like on android devices when you want to unlock a bootloader - a one way, single step process, where the phone wipes itself and reboots and is then "unlocked". If you did that on iPhones it would be enough of discouragement to stop all the mums and grandmas from accidentally installing dodgy software off the internet, but it still leaves the final choice to you, the user. You want a bodyguard, not a nanny - there's a difference.