Why are you advocating for the lowest common denominator among humans? Are you sure you really want to be doing that?
If that's the case, take away all the knives, require people to get a license to have kids, don't let them drive cars, take away all of the dangerous things in life so that everybody can be secure. It's just a ridiculous argument to say that we must have only this one particular app store to keep everybody safe. There are a lot of solutions to this. I don't care if I have to sign a written agreement to allow me to sideload things, just give me a way to do it.
People who trade liberty for security are absolutely one of the biggest problems in this world. You should be advocating for people to smarten up instead. Otherwise you're going to wake up one day and you're not going to be able to make a move without asking for big brothers permission.
And, if you say that people have a choice to go on Android well, then they have a choice already don't they? Did the existence of that choice automatically screw the entirety of society? No it did not. So there's no problem with also giving them a choice to sideload.
You're acting like everybody will immediately flip the switch to sideload things. They already made a good choice by going on an iPhone, why are you discounting that people won't also make other good choices? You want people to throw out the baby with the bathwater. If I want to sideload one damn thing that doesn't mean I want to give up the comfort and security of the rest of my iPhone ecosystem.
>Why are you advocating for the lowest common denominator among humans?
That's awfully reductionist of you and absolutely not what I'm doing. I'm simply arguing that people saying "no one wants this" are wrong because I am a person that wants this. I do not want my family or friends, who reach out to me for support with their computers and phones, to be able to install and sideload apps.
I've been through these situations already and, yes, while a lot of people will be fine and can sideload without issues, there are just as many who mess everything up and waste my time when I have to restore everything without losing their data. These are not tech savvy people and they don't understand the risks.
Additionally, yes... people have the choice to go Android where they can sideload. That's the choice. Apple or Android. There is no other choice and I'm fine with that and actively support it.
That's rich, considering that you're arguing that offering people an option will somehow ruin the entire ecosystem for you and make your support job more difficult.
> I do not want my family or friends, who reach out to me for support with their computers and phones, to be able to install and sideload apps.
So, tell them not to. Done. If they listen to you - no problem. If they don't and you continue to waste your time helping them, that's completely on you.
If a man fails to learn from you how to fish, it's not very wise to prevent everybody else from fishing.
> That's the choice. Apple or Android. There is no other choice...
There will be, so don't get too comfortable with the status quo. Apple's control is so tight right now that there's only one direction that things can go and I'm looking forward to that as an iPhone user and a developer who would like to simply put some custom programs onto a device that I own without a major hassle.
Currently, my best option is https://altstore.io/ and as you can see from that, people are working on this outside of Apple so even if Apple isn't forced to open up like I am betting, we'll get there eventually.
What are you gonna do if someone in your family installs AltStore? You'll tell them not to or you can't support them - same with sideloading. So, I'm sorry, but your argument really holds no weight with me.
It doesn't need to. I'm not trying to change your mind. I'm explaining to you why some people prefer the option to use an ecosystem that has a walled garden vs. one that doesn't. Unfortunately for you, the majority of people must agree and be ok with the walled gardens provided by Apple because they continue to buy the products.
If people wanted the freedom you're describing, they'd buy an Android phone. If they by an Apple phone, it's because they're ok with that not being an option and some, like me, not only don't mind but actively prefer that.
> Unfortunately for you, the majority of people must agree and be ok with the walled gardens
I am sure that many people would be fine with being given the voluntary option of turning the switch on, to side load if they choose to do so though.
And you have no significant evidence that if many people were given the option to buy a perfectly identical Iphone, that simply was easier to jailbreak, that people would automatically choose the locked down version.
You have evidence of people prefering iphones over android. But you have no evidence about if someone was offered two otherwise identical Iphone, that people would always choose to not even have the option of switching the jail break switch if it were easy.
The obvious solution would be to give people the option of getting access to the easy to jailbrake iphones and seeing what they would prefer.
> Apple doesn't offer that option so discussing something that doesn't exist right now makes no sense
It is relevant because I think that a lot of people would want this option, and this would solve the issue by allowing people to voluntarily choose this.
You entered a lot of comments in this thread when one comment could have sufficed to get your message across. So you'll have to excuse me if I remain unconvinced of your motivation.
> Unfortunately for you, the majority of people must agree and be ok with the walled gardens provided by Apple because they continue to buy the products.
That's patently false. As I mentioned earlier, I myself buy iPhones and iPads despite the fact that I'm not okay with the walled garden as the sole method of loading software. I've also seen many, many people in this thread and in threads past express my same views. Heck, you can see it everywhere even among non-programming hangouts like reddit, 9gag, etc. There's a difference between begrudgingly accepting some sad state of affairs and actively pursuing it.
> If people wanted the freedom you're describing, they'd buy an Android phone.
That's better stated as "If the only thing people wanted was freedom of software sources, they'd buy a particular Android model and brand of phone that allows them that freedom." In other words, you're grossly oversimplifying the problem. As with all things, there's usually a multitude of competing desires driving someones choices. For the masses, software freedom doesn't even enter their minds. Instead, they decide based on their susceptibility to marketing, their financial means (price), what their friends are using, what they're used to and so on.
Luckily for me, the masses don't decide on this. Just like in Banking, Finance, Health and other industries that widely affect the common man - the common man doesn't decide the rules for those industries either. The people working in it do - and I'm one of the people working in it. Do you think common people cared that Microsoft was bundling Internet Explorer with Windows? Not really, not outside of Slashdot in that day - Netscape, Oracle and other affected companies got the ball rolling on that one. Even a small group of Linux users were able to push for getting refunds from OEMs on Windows bundled with their PCs.
With iPhones approaching 50% general market share in the US and 80-90% of the youth market in the US gravitating towards iPhones (which will cause the general market share to keep rising) - the writing is on the wall. They're going to be forced to open up somehow. The only question is what form that is going to take and where (EU/US/Asia). Apple will follow the laws of the land and the law is a constantly changing battleground, especially for a new-ish field such as ours.
If that's the case, take away all the knives, require people to get a license to have kids, don't let them drive cars, take away all of the dangerous things in life so that everybody can be secure. It's just a ridiculous argument to say that we must have only this one particular app store to keep everybody safe. There are a lot of solutions to this. I don't care if I have to sign a written agreement to allow me to sideload things, just give me a way to do it.
People who trade liberty for security are absolutely one of the biggest problems in this world. You should be advocating for people to smarten up instead. Otherwise you're going to wake up one day and you're not going to be able to make a move without asking for big brothers permission.
And, if you say that people have a choice to go on Android well, then they have a choice already don't they? Did the existence of that choice automatically screw the entirety of society? No it did not. So there's no problem with also giving them a choice to sideload.
You're acting like everybody will immediately flip the switch to sideload things. They already made a good choice by going on an iPhone, why are you discounting that people won't also make other good choices? You want people to throw out the baby with the bathwater. If I want to sideload one damn thing that doesn't mean I want to give up the comfort and security of the rest of my iPhone ecosystem.