I like the app store, I like the restrictions, I don't want apple to change anything about it. I sort of think apple shouldn't try to comply with these sorts of potential lawsuits by making their app store worse, they should just let people jail break the phone and offer zero support for it.
If people want to buy an iphone and shit it up, let them do it.
I want iOS to be like macOS in that there's one "blessed" store, but I can sell, distribute, and install apps outside of it without giving Apple a cut.
macOS has proven for decades that a reasonably proprietary OS can be distributed and kept reasonably secure when apps are installed on it outside of an App Store. There's even third-party App Stores on macOS like Steam, Homebrew, and a few more that Indie developers use to distribute apps.
> , but I can sell, distribute, and install apps outside of it without giving Apple a cut.
I want this personally for me. But I paid extra money to get my mom an iPhone exactly because she won't be able to stuff like this.
I used to regularly have to fix her android phone and the last time she was trying to download an app for tracking hours at work, and somehow downloaded the wrong app with a similar name, this app loaded with 3 different pop ups telling her to install other ad filled apps with generic names like "PDF reader".
OP is right, it should be an explicit jailbreaking process that has a technical barrier to entry where my mom can't be talked into doing it over the phone but an enterprising young person could figure it out.
Apple has a setting in macOS that disables installing apps outside of the App Store. This would be a completely reasonable setting for iOS for less tech savvy people.
They'll lock it down like an iPhone soon enough. The writing has been on the wall for years. Apple and Microsoft are frothing at the mouth to do this. But they have to do slowly boil the frog, because they know it's the only way people will accept these kind of changes.
People have been saying this for more than a decade, but it still hasn’t happened; there are still zero restrictions about what you can and can’t install on macOS.
There are plenty of junk apps in the App Store now. Apple does a good job marketing trustworthiness, but having competing app stores may at least get them to put more effort into backing it up.
As a heavy Linux user for most things I feel the same.
I love that I have all non tech savvy people in my life are using. Devices that just work, they all seem happy too. I get the idealistic nature of these lawsuits but people buy these phones for the fact they work and for the protected App Store. Including myself.
I used to regard myself highly as somewhat of an expert in tech, with my relatives and friends as a reference. I would spend days (cumulatively, weeks) customizing and locking down my Windows and Linux machines. I could not imagine paying for a closed product if an open alternative was available, even if it meant more ongoing hassle.
At first I got into Apple’s ecosystem because it ticked the boxes of being Unix-compatible yet very capable (perhaps rivaling Windows) of working with multimedia, which I did and do.
However, the older I get and the more I lurk here and elsewhere, the more I realize there is another reason: I am not an expert, the aforementioned weeks spent on securing my device are not substantially benefitting my life and are better spent on something else, and while no one should completely give up on keeping up-to-date with modern attack vectors paying someone to do that work more competently is worthwhile.
I still go to crazy lengths to avoid closed products in actual work I do, but I consider a base system that is maybe proprietary but just works, and securely enough, to be providing value in that way and enabling me to provide more value in turn.
And I still consider myself more knowledgeable than 95% of my friends and relatives, so there’s them to think about.
Are you suggesting your Mom has/would have the same experience on macOS? For whatever reason it doesn't seem to be as much of an issue.
It probably doesn't need to be as cumbersome as a jailbreak. Maybe it's just a "Allow apps not approved by Apple" toggle hidden deep in the settings. I actually would love the ability to set "IT administrator account" on device setup. Then mom can't even change the setting without notifying "dmix" :)
Now, everyone bow to dmix'es preferences about his mom.
If you want to child-lock you mom's phone, you should have the ability to do so. Default for adults getting any sort of hardware should be that they are in charge, and any nanny should be opt-in.
Imagine a car manufacturer (say Tesla, who has an edge over others much like Apple) could decide where you can go and who your passengers could be?
It's much safer! Just think what could happen to you in some ghetto! And that guy is completely creepy anyway.
That's pretty much what your argument sounds like to me. Hardware vendors (perhaps other than hardware preconfigured for a particular purpose, i.e. picture frame) should have no say in what runs on that hardware, full stop.
> Imagine a car manufacturer (say Tesla, who has an edge over others much like Apple) could decide where you can go and who your passengers could be?
I assume it is legally possibly to sell a car under those conditions, so I don’t even have to imagine. Nobody does it because it would be unpopular and serve no benefit to anyone, not because it’s illegal.
If the first manufacturer to offer decent cars did that and captured the market, it's quite possible that many would put up with it, just as they put up with iphones today.
Oh, and pay a 30% tax on all petrol purchases straight to Mr Ford, how's that?
It’s awful twisted that the people trying to use government fiat to reduce consumer choice and narrow the range of acceptable business models try to cloak themselves in the language of rights and freedoms.
Just not the freedom to choose a walled garden (with its own set of - yes - positives). That choice needs to be taken away. For your freedom.
Should this be judged against Apple, nothing prevents Apple from maintaining their walled garden, and nothing prevents you from staying in it. It's more freedom, not less.
If nothing would prevent Apple from doing what they're doing today, then what is this case all about? Apple's value proposition with iOS isn't just the app store. It's that the app store IS the only way to get something on to iOS. It has to go through them and their review process first. Their value claim is that if you can install it on an iPhone, then you can be assured that it goes through some review process that Apple controls and has been checked against some set of restrictions Apple has, and complies with various things Apple demands. Whether that value is sufficient for any individual consumer is up to them, but very clearly they can't make that same claim if they're required by law to allow apps to come from outside sources and bypass those restrictions.
"If you check the box 'only allow Apple store' on first startup and never uncheck it, you get only apps reviewed by Apple and giving up 30% of revenue".
Remind me again why "buy any other phone in the world" isn't sufficient for everyone else if this check box is supposed to be sufficient for current iPhone customers? If the only viable smart phone in the world was Apple's, there might be a point to all of this. But the market is almost exactly split right in half and there is nothing at all that you can't do in an Android phone that you would suddenly be able to do if only Apple allowed side loading on the iPhone. So why does Apple and their customer base have to give up things they seemingly want for the minority of people who want to install apks from websites?
> So why does Apple and their customer base have to give up things they seemingly want
Wrong, they are not giving anything up. They gain an option and lose nothing. Gaining a new opt-in feature is not a loss and is in fact the opposite. Nobody has to "give up" anything.
You appear to have decidedly ignored the key of the comment you replied to:
> Remind me again why "buy any other phone in the world" isn't sufficient for everyone else if this check box is supposed to be sufficient for current iPhone customers?
Also - whilst you're correct in spirit - people are giving up an element of safety. The concept of being able to install anything I want on my iPhone is appealing to me, but not to when I support the technology my 90 year old grandmother uses. Having a locked down device is appealing to me and a complete non-issue to her.
We (in my country, I assume yours has similar rules) don't allow children to buy alcohol, cigarettes, knives or spraypaint, don't allow people to drive without seatbelts, don't allow guns without a license, don't allow cars to be sold without minimal safety ratings etc. These restrictions are annoying for a few but are a positive for most of society.
And unlike most of the above examples, you can easily and legally purchase another smart phone without the guard rails in place. This is for sure a loss for the consumer market as a whole.
Your grandma being scammed is not dependent on being able to install software. The vast majority of phone scams are reliant on browser-based phishing pages, convincing the victim to send a bank transfer, or getting a gift card code from the victim. If you believe it is an issue regardless then safeguards can be implemented such as child safety features or simply allowing you to opt-out (or even not opt-in) when you're setting up your grandma's iPhone for her or whatever.
Yes, you can buy a different phone, but Apple still has a serious hold on the market that affects its competitors, especially when it acts in a way that is anti-competitive. If Apple locking down their store in a way that is extremely user-hostile makes them a billion dollars and they walk away unpunished, how long will its competitors refrain from doing the same for? Apple is large enough that they affect me personally even if I do not use their products.
> Your grandma being scammed is not dependent on being able to install software.
Agreed. But just because there are multiple potential vectors doesn't mean we should ignore them.
> If you believe it is an issue regardless then safeguards can be implemented such as child safety features or simply allowing you to opt-out (or even not opt-in) when you're setting up your grandma's iPhone for her or whatever.
You can MDM lock an iPhone (and I assume Android), but only from initial setup. This also requires a technical skillset and a backend or paid subscription. I agree opt-in safeguards are more appropriate. However until those are a simple option, taking away the alternative is not great.
> If Apple locking down their store in a way that is extremely user-hostile makes them a billion dollars and they walk away unpunished, how long will its competitors refrain from doing the same for?
> Apple is large enough that they affect me personally even if I do not use their products.
How? I genuinely don't understand this rationale, it always seems so vague.
If a vendor acts in a way you don't like, you purchase from elsewhere. If an Android vendor decided to follow suit, another would choose not to and you could stick with them.
If bizarrely they all chose to, ColourOS, Graphine etc are all options, significantly easier than in the past.
Even Linux phones and KaiOS are potentially viable alternative to fill the needs of the average user.
How does Apple having a walled garden have any impact on you at all, aside from a theoretical house of cards that consumers wouldn't tolerate?
Your mom would have to go out of her way to find and install a separate app store. You could make it give all sorts of warnings that would scare off a non-tech user like your mom.
Agreed. I primarily work as a sysadmin and the amount of people in my organization that fall for phishing is alarming. It’d be incredibly easy to get someone to turn on the “Allow third party apps” setting and install malicious software. People don’t read warnings, they’ll just click “ok” as many times as they need without reading.
That being said I don’t think that’s necessarily a valid reason to completely lock things down, but it definitely should be prohibitively difficult for a vulnerable-to-phishing person to enable.
I urge you to ask anyone who provides technical support to the elderly or tech inept what the split is iOS to Android RE scams,
malware etc. Nobody's arguing the app store is perfect, but "the exact same problems" is absolutely an incorrect statement.
To me, for the problem to be "exactly" the same, it would need to occur at a similar level. I do not believe (based on my personal or professional experience) that this is occuring at a similar level on iOS or Android.
You're right the same specific style of problem happens at both, but if it's significantly more on one than the other then it's hard to honestly say they're the same.
This seems reasonable and I like the idea of unlocking the capabilities the hardware already has. What makes iPhone different from Xbox, Playstation, Nintendo Switch?
This is mostly as simple as striking out DMCA 1201. The device maker need not bless the activity so long as they do not have a cudgel with which to threaten users from modifying their own devices they bought.
I agree we should force platforms to be more.open and interoperable, but we can get at least part way there by not allowing them to sue innovators.
> macOS has proven for decades that a reasonably proprietary OS can be distributed and kept reasonably secure when apps are installed on it outside of an App Store.
That’s not really true. Despite the dangers of centralized app censorship, the state of security on iOS is far beyond that of macOS.
The thing is, Zoom was not being malicious, and weren’t any exploits hypothetical? That server was a good idea, because it allowed launching Zoom calls without the constant warning popups that Apple injected into the process of launching of a custom URI scheme, which was what it used before and after that era. With the local server it was one click to join. Calling it “a web server” was a scare tactic to get people to think Zoom was serving a site to the public, or hosting your public files.
No, I don’t want Apple to set the precedent that they will delete your whole business if you make an architecture choice they feel is not perfect.
This would be lovely. As far as I know, right now its entirely possible for an app developer to show clean, trustworthy code on github. And then ship an app bundle on the app store which contains malware.
I'd love it if Apple provided a way to protect against this sort of thing.
I am very pro-users-owning-their-computers, which makes me highly critical of Apple's behavior. However, these sorts of lawsuits or regulations that seek to force Apple to change App Store policies feel so wrong-headed and out of touch. The problem with Apple is not that they take a 30% cut of app sales in their store, or that they don't allow alternative browser engines or wallets apps or superapps or whatever in their store. It's their store and they ought to be able to curate it however they like. The problem is that users cannot reasonably install software through any means other than that single store. The problem is that Apple reserves special permissions and system integrations for their own apps and denies them to anyone else. That is not an acceptable way for a computer to work.
> Luckily, you have a choice. Other companies make handheld computers that align better with your definition of ownership.
The issue is that your choice is constrained by vertical integration. If you like Apple's hardware, or iOS, or iMessage, or any number of other things, these are all tied together with Apple's app store when they should not be. It's like encountering a retail monopoly in California and someone tells you that you're lucky because you can shop at another store and all you have to do is move to Florida, which also has a retail monopoly, but a different one.
Obviously this is not the same thing, and does not have the same benefits, as multiple stores being right next to each other and allowing you to choose the one you want on a per-purchase basis.
The opposing view, in this retail metaphor, is that they like living in a state with this retail monopoly, because the store will not sell them or anyone else... say, bacon. And they find bacon distasteful and like being able to live in a community where nobody eats it. If the retail monopoly were broken, then their neighbors would be able to purchase bacon, and some would have cookouts and they would have to smell it. Perhaps their favorite snack would discontinue its regional bacon-free variant and sell its normal variant in another store now that it is able to. Don't you know that bacon is bad for you?
The counterpoint is: if bacon is so bad awful and bad for you we should probably regulate its sale, rather than leave that up to a company bullying other companies.
> The issue is that your choice is constrained by vertical integration.
No it’s not. It’s constrained by one’s preferences as a consumer. If I am concerned about vertical integration, I will not choose an Apple device. Personally, I am not concerned about vertical integration. It seems to make my devices work better.
> If you like Apple's hardware, or iOS, or iMessage, or any number of other thing, these are all tied together with Apple's app store when they should not be.
Why not? Because you say so? Or because it harms consumers? Can you describe how it harms consumers? Smartphones are cheap and plentiful. Cloud-based apps and services are too.
Yes, I might have to make some tough choices as a consumer. Maybe no company makes the perfect device for me. I might really like iMessage, but hate iPhone hardware. But there are lots of viable competitors to iMessage and plenty of viable mobile devices on which to run them. “I don’t get to use iMessage on my Pixel phone” is not evidence of harm.
> It's like encountering a retail monopoly in California and someone tells you that you're lucky because you can shop at another store and all you have to do is move to Florida, which also has a retail monopoly, but a different one.
No, it’s not. Switching mobile platforms is nothing like migrating 2000+ miles in terms of difficulty or expense. If you want to use a retail analogy, it’s like complaining that you can’t buy Kirkland-branded products at Wal-Mart.
I am quite aware of the landscape. I use a Pixel phone with GrapheneOS and an iPhone. I prefer many aspects of my iPhone, and can understand why many people choose one as their primary or sole mobile computer. A phone is a very special product category, it's where most users keep their digital lives. As such switching costs are quite high, and user agency is quite important. In general software introduces some very odd dynamics into ownership. If you buy a vacuum cleaner you can take it home, plug it in, and vacuum every room in your house; the vacuum cleaner is yours. If you buy a Roomba and take it home, it demands that you sign a unilateral EULA, then install an app on your phone, and then informs you that it will only clean one room unless you sign up for Roomba Pro for $20/mo[0]. So clearly Roomba still owns the vacuum cleaner they just sold you; they have the final say in what it does or doesn't do. That's ownership. Now, technically, you can legally disassemble your Roomba, and if you manage to dump, modify, and reflash its control software, then you'd be allowed to use your product to clean multiple rooms without paying monthly for the privilege. That would require a lot of effort and specialized skills and tooling, and you would then not be allowed to share your modifications with less skilled Roomba owners because doing so would almost certainly involve trafficking DRM circumvention technology, which is a crime. So in practical terms you only own the Roomba as an inanimate plastic puck.
This whole situation maps to iPhones as well. As things stand when you purchase an iPhone you own a glass brick, and Apple owns the phone part. They graciously allow you to use their phone to perform a certain limited set of activities. I am fundamentally opposed to this sort of non-ownership. Whether the buyer had an option to purchase a roughly-equivalent item with different terms is irrelevant; selling someone a product while retaining ownership of it is a mockery of property rights. Some rights are too important to allow people to sign them away with the tap of a button. When the market missteps by rewarding bad behavior like this it is the job of our democratic governments to step in and mandate good behavior.
[0]: this is made up to illustrate a point, I don't actually know how Roomba service works
This is all so exhausting and goes in circles over and over. I honestly can not believe that there are people on HackerNews of all places that want two companies to control pocket computers and just because one is only marginally better it's totally okay that the first one is draconian.
I feel like someone who woke up in the middle ages with a fever and they are trying to cure me with leeches. Yes yes. No need to worry. Let the leech do it's work and you too will be secure from the plague.
Does anyone actually know anyone that has gotten hacked on their Android phone?
Great news! I don’t see many people on HN getting mad when you point out that Apple isn’t the best for everyone. I’m not saying you made it up. Maybe I just don’t read enough comments.
I do see people saying they like how Apple devices work, and that they consciously choose Apple devices over devices from other manufacturers. Those are informed consumers making a choice you wouldn’t make. It’s not sad. Some people won’t agree with you in life. That’s normal.
Choice does exist in the market. There are far more than 2 manufacturers, and some of them focus on more HN-ish people who have more principles than I do.
I don’t really want the government to limit my smartphone choices in this way, but I also realize that Apple devices will continue to exist and will mostly work the way they do today, so it’s not that big a deal to me.
There are 2 parts to this argument, first being people are justifying their iPhone ownership,(and cult membership) with "Apple should do exactly what they are doing" because I like what I get, and I don't want the other folks in my cult ;).
Point 2 being the H in HN stands for Hacker defined as: "a person who uses computers to gain unauthorized access to data." Then the argument becomes why are people who are reading HN and, presumably, calling themselves hackers so interested in keeping status quo and letting Apple control everything? I think we go back to argument 1 and excluding others, green bubbles and such making a subset "better" than others. Elitist as F and some folks, like myself cannot stand for this and take time to explain the failure to others.
> There are 2 parts to this argument, first being people are justifying their iPhone ownership,(and cult membership) with "Apple should do exactly what they are doing" because I like what I get, and I don't want the other folks in my cult ;).
It sounds like you’re assuming that people are in a “cult” because they don’t share some of your opinions. I’m sure that’s not what you’re doing, because you are a rational person engaging in a rational discussion. Can you help me understand what you really meant?
> Then the argument becomes why are people who are reading HN and, presumably, calling themselves hackers so interested in keeping status quo and letting Apple control everything?
Because they like Apple devices. Next question.
> I think we go back to argument 1 and excluding others, green bubbles and such making a subset "better" than others. Elitist as F and some folks, like myself cannot stand for this and take time to explain the failure to others.
It sounds like you’re upset because some people who buy Apple devices make jokes about “green bubbles” and “blue bubbles”. I’m sorry that happened to you. Nobody likes getting their feelings hurt.
I’m generally opposed to snobbery, but I don’t think it’s illegal.
The reply was mostly tongue in cheek via elaboration...
The point about hackers wanting to change their devices still stands though and as one of other replies noted there is no reason both cannot coexist, some use their iPhone as Apple wants and some don't, if Apple doesn't want to relinquish control, we'll make them, just like MSFT was made to do things it didn't want to.
I don't even use an iPhone, I do use some Apple hardware as well as my household, but still stand for openness and am not in favor of walled gardens.
Snobbery is mostly about people trying to explain their usage of devices that break core tenements of open [internet, hardware, software ...] with poor arguments of "I like what I get" or simply "I got mine" and you can't for reasons.
No… I like my iPhone and get mad when people want the government to force Apple to change how it works. I like how it works now, which is why I bought it.
And you could continue to enjoy that experience by only using Apple's own app store, while everyone else would also be free to use other app stores to install apps they want which Apple does not like. See how this still works? You don't lose here, you win freedom even if you don't want to take advantage of it. You might even win financially because competition from other app stores might force Apple to lower their fees.
Phones are unique in the consumer space because of how thoroughly they can restrict end user usage. Once you buy an iPhone you can use it physically as a hammer if you wish, but if you want to digitally use a non-Apple wallet then you are restricted. Most consumer goods don't behave this way; my TV lets me watch anything I input into it, my bike lets me ride to wherever a pedal to, my vacuum lets me clean my counter if I want it to. Consumers are choosing a desirable physical good with undesirable digital restrictions. Apple is flexing its hardware power to its advantage and end user's disadvantage in software.
> Consumers are choosing a desirable physical good with undesirable digital restrictions.
So long as it is the customers making that choice, and they have access to alternatives, then it's not really a problem. If apple were advertising the iphone as a consumer product that had no such digital restrictions in an effort to hoodwink people into buying them, or if iphone were the only serious game in town, then those restrictions would be an issue, but right now iphones are advertised as being worth more than their competitors specifically because of those restrictions, and people are willing to pay such premiums. That you personally would not make the same decision does not mean they've been manipulated by anti-competitive measures into making theirs.
If someone were to make a consumer product that worked better for my use cases at the expense of being worse at or even incapable of doing things I don't intend to use it for, I should have the option to buy it. If you don't like the restrictions, buy something else. That's not anti-competitive, that is exactly how competition is supposed to work.
There is literally only one other competitor. That is not flourishing, competitive market when consumers can make many different choices. There are two companies that control nearly the entirety of the mobile software market, how can you expect that there would be no oversight to make sure they don't advantage their own software offerings?
Samsung, Sony, Google, LG, Xiaomi, Motorola, Nokia, TCL, Kyocera, Fairphone, Pine64, Purism, and many others are more than "literally only one other competitor". And even if your complaint is that the only other option is "Android", there's no reason why those manufacturers couldn't make their own OS if they wanted to. There's no reason why even if they didn't want to, they couldn't make their own custom Android distribution.
If the linux community as small as it is can produce multiple varied and unique linux distributions largely on the backs of volunteers, there's no reason why these manufacturers (especially some of the bigger names) couldn't do the same with Android / Linux and their own hardware. And whatever reason is behind the failure of literally the entire cellphone industry to do what they were doing before the advent of iOS and Android, it isn't because Apple is somehow stopping them from making their own OS, and SDKs and app stores.
But the reason is there only one other competitor isn't at all because of Apple or the competitor and doesn't have anything to do with their practices. The reason for it is because it's incredibly difficult and complex to put together a device like that and only certain types of companies have the resources and funds to create a product like that.
> Phones are unique in the consumer space because of how—
—they were marketed as phones that can compute, instead of as computers that can phone.
That's the crux: people would never have accepted the restrictions on computers like the iPhone, if that thing were instead sold as a general computer called the iPalm or similar. But since it's sold as a phone, any thing else it can do is more easily perceived as a bonus, and we hardly feel the restrictions at the beginning.
Only people who see smartphones for what they really are, general purpose palmtops that can make phone calls, can really perceive the egregiousness of those restrictions. The first step then, is generalising this understanding to everyone.
A good first step, I think, would be to start naming those things more accurately. I'd personally suggest "palmtop".
It isn't a general purpose computer. The form factor is compromised to make it work as a phone and it doesn't matter how good the CPU is.
A general purpose computer would be hard to use if it had an OOM killer instead of swap and if running the CPU full speed shut it off because it got too hot inside. (Using it too hard can also drain the battery even if it's on a full strength charger.)
>Happens to some crappy laptops. These are basically irrelevant details.
Don't most modern (>2010) CPU's thermal throttle until they are back within operating temps? You'd have to stuff a laptop inside a backpack while maxing it to get it to overheat to the point of resetting
At this point, most people likely associated the word "phone" with something closer to a modern smartphone than a landline. Language can change. From my point of view, the problem is more that Apple set a precedent of these restrictions due to them being the first mover, and few mainstream phone companies have tried to break out of this idea (even though other phones are technically more flexible if you try hard enough).
> From my point of view, the problem is more that Apple set a precedent of these restrictions due to them being the first mover, and few mainstream phone companies have tried to break out of this idea
It's even worse than that: though I stand by what I said, you're correct, people are gradually realising that the difference between their smartphone and laptop/desktop (if any), is one of degree, not kind. But we don't see the push back we would have seen if they had realised right away. Instead, as you rightly point out, companies are building on Apple's precedent to try and expand their model to our good old laptops and desktops.
And it looks like they're succeeding. It would seem one has to pay Apple to even get the right to distribute a regular MacOS program regular users can actually execute (no Apple developer plan, no code signing). And newer versions of Windows are displaying increasingly scary warnings for programs telling you they "protected" your computer, which are bad enough that we get tutorials about how to get past them.
Surely first-mover for smartphones is palm or blackberry or even Windows Mobile.
Yes, apple has about half the market today, that’s not the same thing as being first-mover. In fact it’s actually completely different because people had to make the choice to move away from the first-movers to apple.
People literally did give up their blackberries and palms and Jornadas for iPhone, consciously and deliberately, because it was a better product. And now you want to change the product and erode the benefits back to the minimum standard defined by android. That’s a taking.
It was a better product. But it would be quite a take to say their tolling & gate keeping was a significant contributor.
It was a better product because of its capacitive multi-touch screen and its overall speed (which I must insist depends more on what apps are installed by default than on the restrictions on third party apps).
> But it would be quite a take to say their tolling & gate keeping was a significant contributor.
Do you remember the first iPhone? Or for that matter what "mobile development" looked like before the iPhone? The first iPhone was more "tolled" and "gate kept" than any iPhone we have today. There was NO app store. To get an app on the iPhone, Apple had to make it, which meant you had to be big enough for Apple to care. Google got a Youtube app because they were that big. At some point Facebook had a built in integration (though I don't remember if it was a full fledged app). That was it. Development for the phone was going to be "web apps" only, without the biggest "web app" framework at the time, Flash. Compared to the first iPhones, a modern iPhone is wide open to all sorts of developers.
But perhaps more than that, even that first iPhone was leaps and bounds for most people over what prior devices were (save perhaps Palm Treos) in terms of "openness". Before the iPhone, the carriers decided what your phone could and couldn't do. A Razr phone from AT&T could send and receive data over bluetooth (like contacts and ring tones). That same exact phone from Verizon could only use bluetooth for headsets. Data transfer was locked down to vVrizon's own service (with a fee of course). Mobile app development was a crap shoot of different sdks and licensing costs per device, and then a hope that each carrier would allow your bejeweled clone, and served up through their services, of which they took HUGE cuts of the revenue. The 30/70 split of the iPhone app store was quite literally "revolutionary" in the cell phone space.
Which leads one to wonder if the tolling and gate keeping is such a hinderance, why is it that the iPhone remains so successful despite their largest competitor having none of those restrictions, pretty much from the get go. It's not like Apple was open and suddenly slammed the gates down on apps and iPhone development. And it's not like Android's openness is brand new. So the question that has to be asked is why does Apple continue to sell so well despite the restrictions? Why hasn't Android eaten all of Apple's market share as a massive open platform where anyone can do anything?
> Which leads one to wonder if the tolling and gate keeping is such a hinderance
I don't know, perhaps you should ask that to someone who actually made that argument? If I recall, people are still buying cigarettes, are they not? Stuff doesn't have to be good for you to sell good.
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I don't dispute the facts you lay out here. I'll even cite game console as other general purpose computers that were (and still are) quite heavily locked down too. Apple however made one step further, and managed to sell a locked down general purpose computer for purposes other than gaming.
At the root of it all, I think, is how hardware vendors got away with selling their stuff without the full manual. Some instead provide a proprietary Windows driver. Others hide keys in them, don't tell users what they are, and then lobby to send heroic reverse engineers to jail. If I was the regulator I would probably start there.
Luckily, we have anti-trust and other forms of law and regulation specifically because assuming markets will alway provide meaningful choices has historically proven a bad assumption.
We only have to assume that our legal system will do it's job.
Personally, I think the government has a weak case. No customers are being harmed by Apple's restrictions and there is certainly no monopoly.
It would be fine if companies were extremely clear about it, saying “the car is $30k, but the average customer ends up paying an additional $2k in subscriptions for basic features”. Or “the phone is $1000, but most software will be more expensive due to our 30% tax”. Of course they’re not that clear, and I would argue these business models only make sense when there’s deception involved.
Just because you aren’t being harmed doesn’t mean you can’t think it’s wrong or try to prevent it. There are lots of things people fight against that doesn’t directly impact them (yet).
One good reason in this particular examples is I don’t want subscription based heated seats to become popular, because then I won’t have a choice anymore.
No, the part that's really bad is that they lock up features behind software locks, but these aren't that hard to break for hackers. But then they get laws passed which make it illegal to change these features on your car, or even to tell other people how to do so.
How the DMCA hasn't been struck down by the Supreme Court as an abridgment of the 1st Amendment, I really don't know.
But these computers are so different… But if Apple does that it would be differently different… /s
I mean, what gp wants is literally just there on the shelves and they don’t want it. But they also want it, but in Apple, because it’s nicer when Apple does[n’t] it. Why would they want it after Apple does it?
Surprise, people want more than one thing out of a product.
Voting with your wallet works very badly when there are two main options. Which anti-consumer behaviors do you pick? When something is bad enough, it's better to make it illegal for all options.
I’m all for your device = your control, and I mean your.
But allowing software vendors to ignore AppStore will eventually lead to my bank apps, local maps apps, delivery apps etc to go non-AppStore-only route and do whatever they want on my phone, because I have no alternative (except for not using my phone). The first thing one of my bank apps did on my android phone was to install some sort of an “antivirus firewall” which abused every access and semi-exploit to make sure I’m “safe”.
Your ideas will affect me, and I can’t see why your (and my) inconvenience is more important than my security. It’s not just “better”. I’m asking to consider this perspective as well.
Whatever an "antivirus firewall" does, it sounds like something that should be tied to permissions or not have an API for it, either way easy to stop all apps from doing.
And I'm skeptical that governments would stop Apple from enforcing a rule that says apps have to let you refuse permissions.
By definition apple can’t do anything in that situation, because people don’t want third-party app stores and sideloading to be managed or notarized by apple at all.
This is the very definition of bad-faith motte-and-bailey argumentation, and it’s logically incoherent to boot. Get apple out of regulating apps and App Stores, no more telling developers what they can do! Oh and i guess they can tell developers to do one thing…
These apps usually simply refuse to work without permissions, so this is not a solution. Empty/fake permissions are easily detectable too. Someone will make a “framework” for that and we’ll see it in most important apps.
Sort of. My reading of the DMA is basically what you're saying; Apple has to let people install what they want on their phones, Apple cannot self-preference with app capabilities. Apple is planning to comply not by allowing users to install what they want on their devices, but instead by offering companies an avenue to enter a business relationship with Apple through which Apple will allow users install that company's applications, provided that Apple has vetted and signed them. That is, all told Apple still has final say over what apps are allowed on peoples' phones. It sounds like the EC is going to nix those app-signing requirements, but the rest of the scheme may or may not be deemed acceptable.
So the question remains whether the spirit of the DMA is "users should be able to install the software they want on their computers" or "businesses offering apps and services should be able to compete with Apple on the iPhone". Is this a fundamentally a pro-user law or a pro-business law? There may be overlap, but they are not the same.
The preferred alternatives seems to be to charge 30% more when buying things through the app rather than the website or not doing in app purchases at all. Presumably the restrictions or the not user friendly experience Google enforces for users makes it not worth doing it on Android, so the other options are better.
It is not a “mobile computer”. The fact that it has a CPU and other computer parts is an implementation detail (your dishwasher also probably has a CPU). If you want a mobile computer then buy one, don’t buy an iPhone, and don’t advocate for the government to force Apple to change how iPhones work for those of us who like them.
> The problem with Apple is not that they take a 30% cut of app sales in their store, or that they don't allow alternative browser engines or wallets apps or superapps or whatever in their store.
Nope, the problem very much is that they won't allow alternative browser engines, specifically so that they can force a crippled Safari browser with limited APIs to force people to write apps instead of web apps, forcing more traffic to their store. It's explicitly anti-competitive behavior.
>It's their store and they ought to be able to curate it however they like.
It's kind of forced fraud to call Chrome in iOS as "Chrome". It's like trying to sell someone a Ferrari that's just a facade bolted onto 2010 Honda. It's not Chrome, it's actually Safari - and its seems like people are finally starting to wake up to this abusive behavior that Apple has been getting away with for far too long.
Microsoft had a famous anti-trust case against them for simply bundling IE with Windows - not from forcing their engine on every other "browser" that gets installed. Apple is doing far worse than that and getting away with it for far too long.
>The problem is that users cannot reasonably install software through any means other than that single store.
That's one of the many other problems outlined by the DOJ today.
>The problem is that Apple reserves special permissions and system integrations for their own apps and denies them to anyone else.
Also another problem.
>However, these sorts of lawsuits or regulations that seek to force Apple to change App Store policies feel so wrong-headed and out of touch.
I was clapped out loud when I watched the DOJ announcement today. I cheered. They actually mentioned "Developers", which is a group I am part of, and I feel the pain that dealing with Apple and Safari is. Apple absolutely deserves this, and it's about time.
Sony and Microsoft obviously don’t benefit from opening up the platforms, it’s not just something they don’t care about but something they actively oppose, and they specifically ensured they got legislative exceptions to ensure they would never have to reciprocate under the DMA.
Your goals aren’t aligned, you’re just a useful idiot to them and they’ll cast you aside as soon as they no longer need you. The end result of the push isn’t going to be “free as in freedom” for everybody here, just Microsoft capturing 90% of a revenue stream instead of 70%.
Classic populism moment - but of course it’s “populism, but on the computer”.
Freedoms for users and freedom for business are two fundamentally opposed and conflicting goals, see: GPL vs MIT/BSD. And in their moment of victory, businesses will just steamroll right over you - just like they literally already did with consoles.
It’s just crazy that they have these exceptions when their own hardware is very much general-purpose on a technical level, and when they’re actively pushing to use that general-purpose capability to ensnare users with AI features and other crap.
Sony and Microsoft are two of the platforms that stand to gain the most from AI adoption literally purely on the basis of being closed platforms with proprietary APIs (plus a minimal amount of interop for embrace-extend-extinguish) with millions of active users and a captive audience of dev studios who have no choice but to use Sony and Microsoft’s closed, gatekept platforms.
Somehow the plight of poor little Larian being stepped on by Sony and Microsoft and Epic just doesn’t make the front page of HN like apple hate.
The game console exception in the DMA is very disappointing, but phones are the largest gaming platform regardless. As hardware improves and ownership becomes even more obligatory I suspect we will see more development effort focused there. I can only hope that F2P/Gacha game culture on mobile is destroyed by that point. Perhaps by anti-gambling laws?
> If people want to buy an iphone and shit it up, let them do it.
The next generation isn't necessarily choosing, though.
Their parents are giving into their demands for *an iPhone due to social pressures entirely originated by Apple's monopolistic behavior (iMessage green bubbles).
Then, when they're locked into the Apple ecosystem from the start, it's almost impossible to break out -- even if you grow up into a mature adult that doesn't give a shit about bubble colors.
Interoperability (being able to exit an ecosystem without massive downsides, specifically) between the only two parties in a de facto duopoly is absolutely necessary and morally right, and it's a shame market failures force the judiciary to intervene. But we are where we are and there's no use putting lipstick on a pig -- the system as it stands is broken, and if left alone will feed on itself and become even more broken.
> Their parents are giving into their demands for *an iPhone due to social pressures entirely originated by Apple's monopolistic behavior (iMessage green bubbles).
First of all, we don't have that problem here in europe. People just use cross-platform messengers.
Secondly, I don't understand why a company should be forced to bring its service to a platform it doesn't care about. Apple supports the default carrier messaging standards (SMS/MMS). It's not Apple's fault that they suck. In fact Apple explicitely created iMessage because SMS/MMS were absolutely terrible.
If RCS is considered a standard (is it?), then Apple should absolutely support it and apparently they plan to do so. Seems fine to me.
While I personally don't use iMessage I'd prefer it if the service was available everywhere, but I don't see why Apple should be forced to support other platforms. Just because iMessage is popular? Imagine a world where WhatsApp was either an iOS- or Android-exclusive app. Should they be forced to develop for a platform they don't care about too? What about popular iOS-exclusive apps like Things? What about Garageband or Logic? Or Super Mario games on Nintendo?
> Their parents are giving into their demands for *an iPhone due to social pressures entirely originated by Apple's monopolistic behavior (iMessage green bubbles).
First of all, we don't have that problem here in europe
We also have a smaller percentage of iPhone users here in Europe.
Apple could have open up their API. Or not try to shut it down so hard when someone finds a way around to use their API
> Or not try to shut it down so hard when someone finds a way around to use their API
Find me any other service that would ok with this? Beeper wanted to piggyback on Apple's network _and_ charge users for using Apple's servers for free. Are we going to force companies to provide an open API for all their services _and_ offer them at a reasonable cost? We saw what happened with Reddit and I have no doubt Apple would similarly charge high fees. I'm not saying I think this would be bad thing (forcing open APIs) but it better be a wide sweeping change not something targeted at a single company.
Lastly what are the rules around spam? Where is the line where Apple can tell a client or a company they refuse to do business with them due to the spam/malicious messages they send. Say what you will about iMessage being locked down but I can count on 2 hands max the number of spam iMessage messages I've recieved. On the other hand I get multiple SMS spam messages every day that I cannot unsubscribe from or block (they change numbers with every message). Aside from TOTP (which I wish they'd just let me use my own client instead of sending them) I could block pretty much all SMS and be happier for it.
> I like the app store, I like the restrictions, I don't want apple to change anything about it.
This is basically saying you only use TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Spotify, Tinder, Gmail, Google Maps, and play zero to some handful of mega huge F2P games.
Why have an App Store at all then? You don't use it. It's an installation wizard for you, not a store.
Don't you see? This stuff doesn't interact with restrictions at all. The problem with the App Store is that it sucks, not that it's restricted.
> making their app store worse
I've heard this take from so many people. It is already as bad as it gets. The App Store is an utter disaster. They have failed in every aspect to make a thriving ecosystem. It is just the absolute largest, hugest, best capitalized, least innovative apps and games.
This doesn't have to be the case at all. Look at Steam. Even Linux package managers have more diversity with more apps that thrive.
For your first point that is a fairly wild accusation of that user.
For me, one of the features of a centralised app store is that I buy and subscribe to apps through the app store, which centralises my app subscriptions within my Apple account. I wouldn't have this functionality if I was pulling in apps outside of the app store.
I can go into my Apple account and see every subscription I have and cancel it from within. No shoddy dark website behavior that makes it hard to unsubscribe, I can do it all there.
This just one feature that I find handy in having a single store.
If Apple had your best interests in mind they would provide a way to integrate third party payment systems into their management interface so all apps could expose their subscriptions to the user in a consistent way regardless of payment backend. Instead they will keep it as an exclusive feature and point to other processors' lack of compatibility as a harm to end-users inflicted by the DMA. They would rather have a talking point in their ongoing temper tantrum than provide a good experience for their users.
I actively don't want third-party payment systems on my phone. I also actively don't want the ability to load and run arbitrary third-party applications on my phone. Adding these things would make my user experience worse, not better.
My phone isn't a general-purpose computer in the way that my laptop is. My phone is an appliance. When I use my phone, I'm not actually using the phone itself, I'm using the email app to manage my emails, or the web browser to look at some news website, or Instagram to watch some reels, or Slack to communicate with my colleagues, or etc. The phone is just a conduit for apps/workflows.
Same here. I use linux VMs and containers for all my "hacking" where I need total control and customizability of the OS. On my workstation and phone, where I do my banking and read emails, I'm willing to trade control and customizability for an extremely locked down high trust operating environment. I feel like Apple's closed ecosystem, despite all its flaws, gets this compromise right.
> I use linux VMs and containers for all my "hacking" where I need total control and customizability of the OS
> On my workstation and phone, where I do my banking and read emails, I'm willing to trade control and customizability for an extremely locked down high trust operating environment.
Excuse my French, but uh what? A browser accessing a bank in a Linux virtual machine running on bare metal is by far more secure than desktop MacOS running on bare metal.
At the end of the day, for the activity you described (browsing), what you must be able to defend against is the inherent insecurity of the browser. Linux provides all manners of process, network, etc isolation via CGroups and can be enhanced by SecComp to limit the usage of typical exotic syscalls used in kernel exploits.
MacOS has what for that? The best opportunity you have for defense is to run qemu so that you can run... Linux. The corporation you work for doesn't use Apple because of their stellar security posture, it uses Apple because they can buy mobile devices (phones, laptops) preconfigured with MDM which saves a lot of money.
> Excuse my French, but uh what? A browser accessing a bank in a Linux virtual machine running on bare metal is by far more secure than desktop MacOS running on bare metal.
Facts are most definitely not in evidence for this claim.
I'd kill for an Apple-sanctioned way to load Linux VMs on my iPad and have them run at full speed. It's got an M1 in it, the virtualization hardware is there, Apple just doesn't want me using it.
As it currently stands, the options for Linux VMs on an iPad are:
- iSH, a Linux kernel ABI compatible user-mode x86 emulator that uses threaded code (ROP chains) as a substitute for a proper JIT, but doesn't support all x86 applications[0].
- UTM, a port of QEMU that requires JIT (and thus, either an external debugger or a jailbreak) to run a full x86 or ARM OS.
- UTM SE (Slow Edition), which is UTM but using the threaded code technique from iSH, which is not only slower than iSH because it runs both kernel and user mode, but also got banned from TestFlight before they could even make an App Store submission (probably because it can get to a desktop while iSH can't).
All of these suck in different ways.
[0] Notably, rustc gives an illegal instruction error and mysql crashes trying to do unaligned atomics
I don't buy into this narrative. I have a Pixel phone, you can do quite a lot of privacy "hardening" just by going over the Google settings and turning off a lot of tracking (which they were probably forced to put in by regulators).
The rest you can achieve by using Firefox instead of Chrome and choose a different search engine.
I get a lot of hard to solve Google CAPTCHA on many websites I visit so I know Google is having a hard time tracking me :-)
In terms of security, I don't think Pixel is less secure than the iPhone. It gets security updates regularly, Google invests a lot in security and I don't think the Pixel has more zero days than the iPhone...
So all in all, I don't buy into the "iPhone is more secure and handles your privacy better than Android" narrative
Nerd here who started on MS-DOS and later spent nearly a decade running Linux on a laptop as my main computing device. Gentoo, for about half that time. Various other stuff in between, developed software targeting probably a seven or eight different operating systems and/or platforms, et c., et c. I've got a reasonable amount of computer-dork cred, is the point, though around these parts, nothing all that remarkable.
Very nearly every halfway serious computer-involved activity I do these days (=last seven or eight years) that matters in my actual, real life takes place on my phone, including approximately all banking. All the other computers—even the "real" ones—in my life are basically toys. 90% of my real-life important or meaningful stuff I do with computers happens on my phone, 9% on a tablet, and at-most 1% on everything else.
(in my personal life, I mean—unfortunately I still have to try to use "real" computers to accomplish allegedly-important things at work)
Exclusively, yes. Except for that second factor authentication they forced me to install on my phone (without which doing online payments would be a pain). I like and trust my Ubuntu laptop.
Is Macbook less secure because I can install whatever app I want, even my own app? No, it's not. I want to be able to do the same with my iPhone. It's as simple as that.
And yet no one would ever want or think of locking down MacOS like they have locked down iOS. Turns out that grown ups don't need Apple to babysit them for additional "security" when everybody knows that Apple's real reason is just money+greed and the "security" talking point is just a convenient smokescreen.
>And yet no one would ever want or think of locking down MacOS like they have locked down iOS.
https://www.qubes-os.org/intro/, snapd and BSD jails are all forms of locking down a general computer OS ways similar to the way iOS is locked down, and things that individual users choose to do on their own computers. Sure those users can install anything else they want as well, but then there's also a reason why these things are niche, even within the nice of *nix users. Because the administration and management is a headache and people don't generally want to do that.
>Turns out that grown ups don't need Apple to babysit them for additional "security"
I think you have an over estimation of the average "grown ups" ability to judge the safety and security of their computer or the software they run on it. There are plenty of people out there who do not want or need to understand system security and administration and are much better served by having someone else manage that for them. There's a reason why Windows and MacOS are still more popular than Linux, and there's a reason why in the Linux world, Red Hat, CentOS, Debian and Ubuntu are more popular than Arch. People only have a limited amount of time and energy to dedicate to things and not everyone wants to dedicate theirs to our shared hobby.
You forgot to mention that all those Operating Systems you mentioned allow the user to break free from restrictions if they desire to do so because the machine is their property after all. Mechanisms for "Security" only become a jail if there is absolutely no way to break free.
And having certain restrictions to hide complexity from users to hide complexity is by no means comparable to "security" whose only purpose is to shackle users so they can never escape obscene fees because Apple uses the same strategy as the mafia: "pay us for protection".
If it's not voluntary, what's the difference between Apple's behavior and Tony Soprano's behavior?
>You forgot to mention that all those Operating Systems you mentioned allow the user to break free from restrictions if they desire to do so because the machine is their property after all.
If you read past the first sentence, you would discover I wrote more than just that one. In fact, the second sentence which starts with:
>Sure those users can install anything else they want as well
and then goes on to explain why super hardened security OSs aren't even mainstream among tech people who should in theory be all about super hardened security in their OS.
>If it's not voluntary, what's the difference between Apple's behavior and Tony Soprano's behavior?
Except it is voluntary. Apple didn't force anyone to buy an iPhone. They didn't walk into people's homes with a baseball bat in hand commenting on the "nice general purpose computers you've got here". They didn't promise free computing and the ability to install anything from anywhere and then suddenly switch away locking people in after investing in a huge open system where none of their apps are available anywhere else. Any user can walk away from the iPhone simply by buying a device from any one of a number of other sellers, all of which offer Android OSes with all the freedoms they could possibly want, and Apple can't do anything about it, nor will Apple show up at their house in the middle of the night to leave a headless server in their bed sheets.
>>Sure those users can install anything else they want as well
>and then goes on to explain why super hardened security OSs aren't even mainstream among tech people who should in theory be all about super hardened security in their OS.
You are intentionally arguing in bad faith, the point is and was that Apple's intention is not restriction for the sake of "security" but for the sake of funneling everything through their gate so they can impose a tax on everybody. It's the same with their sanctimonious "privacy" arguments, it's all BS and the DOJ realized this too. [0]
>>If it's not voluntary, what's the difference between Apple's behavior and Tony Soprano's behavior?
>Except it is voluntary. Apple didn't force anyone to buy an iPhone.
That's a bullshit framing that's a bait and switch in level, which is similar to saying "well the rail barons didnt force you to use their railroads, just use other railroads LOL". If a product or service becomes so prevalent in society then certain rules and regulations apply in a fair market and the EU commission has recognized that and finally the U.S has recognized that as well. By making that argument you also implicitly admit that the "security" argument is actually bogus and not really for the user's protection otherwise they would see no problem in granting an escape hatch for power users, but they don't do that because it's not about security an it never was.
Security is a consideration, but ultimately it's a design decision for the product. Companies can generally make design decisions for their products as they see fit. Apple is no more obliged to provide the escape hatch you describe for the iPhone, than Zojirushi is obliged to let me to change the song that plays when I press the start button.
> Companies can generally make design decisions for their products as they see fit. Apple is no more obliged to provide the escape hatch you describe for the iPhone, than Zojirushi is obliged to let me to change the song that plays when I press the start button.
That's not true, if those "design decisions" are anti-competitive in nature then they are absolutely not allowed to do that, that's what the EU commission is fixing with the DMA and now the U.S. is suing Apple too.
That's a completely different scenario and those IT departments already have their own mechanisms of enforcing lockdowns, they wouldn't want others to impose lockdowns on them (the administrators) too. For devs, such an Apple imposed lockdown on MacOS would destroy the Macbook's popularity, since it would regress and turn into a glorified ipad.
A locked-down MacOS would be awful but at least you’d still have Linux (thanks Asahi).
With an iPhone you are stuck with whatever new decision from Apple with no opt-out. That’s abnormal.
See, I’d be ok to say that Apple can do whatever they want with iOS the day they give me the keys to the boot loader. Until then, they’ll have to assume their role of gatekeeper.
I have no issues with walled gardens as long as you’ve got the key to leave. Here the key to leave is called "throw your $1000 phone to buy another".
For some people in the world the iphone is the only general purpose computing device they own, so it is even more important that they aren't artificially constrained so Apple can milk users with absurd fees while citing bogus reasons as justification.
Just look at cases where governments abuse Apple's power over users to squash protests and delete important Apps from the Appstore. Without competing Appstores users are left at the mercy of a trillion dollar company which cares about profits and profits only. Not being able to freely install apps from any source the owner of the computing device prefers is outrageous and we can only thank the EU commission for recognizing that.
And one of the main reasons why people feel the need to upgrade their device to a "real computer" is when the users hit those artificial boundaries which they are not allowed to bypass.
Which iPad owner ever thinks "oh I wish my iPad were even less capable"? Most people are annoyed by its limitations but they accept it as a trade off. I personally would use my iPad much more if it were as capable & open as a Mac.
> Which iPad owner ever thinks "oh I wish my iPad were even less capable"?
Me, kinda. I've disliked most of the moves to make it more like a general purpose computing platform and less like a slab of glass that becomes different tools (but mostly one at a time!). I have other options for that other crap, the iPad was (still is... barely) a distinct different category that I liked also having. iOS 6 is peak-iOS to me.
the delightful irony is you’re literally so wrong they put it right in the name. Security Enhanced.
The military knows damn well that limiting unprivileged users to running a limited selection of vetted and approved apps and restricting their ability to make tools that might aid their ability to jump the sandbox increases security. They literally built the canonical OS extension to do it. It’s not sufficient for security by itself, but it does additively increase security vs a non-policy-enforced environment with higher freedom.
It is, however, necessary for security. Literally every enterprise sysadmin, every single one, windows or Linux or otherwise, knows that letting users set policies on their own devices decreases security. And in the real world, those policies/access control are either: (a) mandatory, or (b) ineffective. If you allow a mechanism for users to opt out - they will opt out 100% of the time, and it’s ineffective. There is no middle ground, if there is a way to go around then users will do it, it's either a matter of policy or it functionally doesn't exist.
Facebook et al will certainly exploit their network power to push users to do that, just like any other attacker. No different than Chinese agents going after a debt-laden private. They literally already got caught using their dev credentials trying to pull a sneaky and tunnel users data via a VPN for data mining purposes.
But I’m sure you know infosec better than the NSA. This is HN after all.
And again - such escape valves already exist. You can sideload apps on an iphone without paying any extra money. Altstore/Appstore++ exist to refresh your app notarization automatically etc.
Almost as if this is really all about the transaction fees and apple's cut of money that tim sweeney sees as rightfully his, and not user freedom at all... but I'm sure there's a very good, very pro-consumer reason Sony and Microsoft exempted themselves from the DMA?
it's amusing how you can miss his point so badly and still think that's he is wrong and not you for applying a false analogy and making the false conclusion.
The example you mentioned is fundamentally different, why? The owner has the option to completely disable anything they dislike or install a different OS, especially on linux which prides itself on maximum user choice. And even then it's asinine to compare features that are for enhanced security and Apple's version of "security" which just limits user choice to products that have to pass Apple's gate so they have to pay a tax to enrich Apple.
I don't even let my users have browser extensions without them going through the formal review process. Managing the proliferation of PWAs (potentially unwanted apps) is one of the most unsolvable issues in security. iOS is the gold standard for secure mobile computing due to inability to support alot of these risky use causes.
Exactly, this is marketing talk. Pixel is secure, get regular updates, lesser target than iphone and in terms of privacy can be "hardened" just by going over the Google services setting menu and opting out of everything. Rest can be achieved by using Firefox (which actually runs on Android not like FF on iOS which is a shell) with ad blockers and choosing a different search engine.
I would argue it's much more secure and more private this way
or you could enable ios lockdown mode in one click if you feel like going full "im a targeted individual". I'm more talking appsec here. Even from the personal non-enterprise security angle android has the sideloaded boyfriend stalkerware issue and the flavor of the week banking Trojan PDF readers on google play issue. Apple just seems to stay out the news on the app store security front.
i wouldn't put much stake a zerodium numbers as the benchmark of platform security. People who sell these kind of gray market mobile zero days for big bucks aren't going public about it. Mostly because the only buyers that aren't the OEM are nation states, maybe the top end of criminal land and of course the NSO group. Plus android's at least 10x the market when you start talking IOT and point sale etc.
Wouldn't the value of a zero day be the expected return on what you can get from it? So a lower cost on iOS zero days means less buyers want them, presumably because they're less capable than a zero day on Android?
It’s definitely less secure. IMO that’s an acceptable tradeoff but it’s still true that MacOS allows you to install potentially harmful software in a way that an iPhone doesn’t. With great power comes great responsibility and all.
The problem is that "less secure" is not exactly meaningful without a lot of clarifications.
I'm no security expert, but I know that security is certainly not a linear, at the very least it's some multi-dimensional thing that's exceptionally hard to generalize.
One system can be more or less secure than another for some party or parties, for some particular threat models if you can or cannot install certain apps, etc etc. Skipping all those bits makes the statement vague, increasing the risk of misunderstanding of the implied conditions.
Just a quick example. Installing an app could paradoxically make the device simultaneously more and less secure for the owner. Let's say it's an advanced firewall app. On the one hand it improves the network hygiene, improving the device security against its network peers. On the other hand, it may help in compromising the device, if someone gains access to its control interface and exploits it for nefarious purposes.
If you want to treat your phone like a general-purpose computer, that's fine, but the iPhone doesn't work that way, very much by design. I understand that you want a different user experience, but them's the breaks.
That's the biggest thing, allowing sideloading is 100% optional and lets people stay in the walled garden if they want. Apple not allowing it is absolutely about suppressing competition, which given their >50% market share is a blatant abuse of their monopoly.
I can’t wait for every data hoarding app (Facebook, Reddit, Google) to require sideloading so now we’ll have the choice to either use Android or Apple when being tracked down to granular details.
I want it to be semi onerous to enable apps outside the App Store, for this reason.
Sideloading is already a thing on Android, and I am not forced to use these apps to use the Android ecosystem. Mind you there are certain phone manufacturers who pack their phone full of crap, but I have a large selection of Android phones to choose from to avoid that. Even Google doesn't force me to use their app store.
The real question is : is it Apple’s role to protect people against Facebook or Google ? I mean, if you want to be protected against Facebook, just delete the app.
It’s the role of regulators to stop data hoarding.
Also this narrative is complete bullshit from Apple since those protections never came from App Store’s policies enforcement but from iOS sandboxing mechanisms which are not going to disappear for sideloaded apps.
I’m pretty amazed that on HN, of all the places, people still believe the narrative that the Apple reviewing process can enforce app behavior while all they’ve got to review is a binary. The App Store reviewing is just there to check if you are loyal into Apple.
> It’s the role of regulators to stop data hoarding.
Okay well they can stop Apple's enforcement of their tracking policies after they make regulations against data hoarding. Not beforehand leaving us with the only choices of be tracked or give up on the app entirely when we currently have a third option to use apps without accurate tracking.
> I’m pretty amazed that on HN, of all the places, people still believe the narrative that the Apple reviewing process can enforce app behavior while all they’ve got to review is a binary.
You don't need to believe Apple. You can believe all the ad companies revenue dropping by 30% for mobile users the quarter after Apple rolled out the tracking changes. There's a reason all these apps began you to click yes before showing the iOS system popup for tracking permissions.
The great thing about allowing sideloading is that it enables the community to build 3rd party apps for accessing services like Facebook, even though doing so violates the service's ToS. You can't put a lightweight and tracking-resistant FB client in the App Store.
I don't that's a problem of distribution but rather getting the data in the first place. Why wouldn't Facebook prevent those services from accessing the data? Ask the developer of Apollo, the Reddit client, how well relying on a third-party works.
How much does Apple's privacy restrictions affect a company the size of Meta ?
Sure, there was the direct commercial impact the moment the changes were implemented. But Meta is still doing the same business, it still keeps track of a tremendous amount of user data, and it's revenue is back to where it was before Apple's changes.
Same for Google or Reddit, they are in a position where Apple limiting their tracking range seem to have little to no impact on their whole business.
I still think some limitation is better than none, but it also doesn't look like a huge deal for any of them. At least not enough to force all users to go through sideloading just to get that extra bit of data.
If you're so scared of Facebook, don't use it. Trotting it out as a scare tactic is just whataboutism, considering the scenario you're paranoid about hasn't happened on Android, macOS, etc.
Doubtful, Google got dinged pretty hard in part because there were too many steps to allow other app stores to exist, and becsuse app stores couldn't auto-update apps like Google Play could.
And all that is way easier than rooting/jailbreaking. I doubt that will be enough of a deterrent considering the anti-trust angle being that you can't compete with apple's native software
When friends with iPhones send me images or videos using iMessage, they are very low-quality compared to what iPhone users receive. But when Android users send me the same, they are higher quality.
So I think the specific answer to your question is "iMessage and its lack of support for <protocol (RCS?)>".
Cause it would be better for Apple's customers. This one doesn't even have the "my parents security" defense like installing non app store apples does. Do you honestly think any costumer WANTS iPhone to be shitty at sending images?
Why do you have to defend every little thing that Apple does as if you were their lawyer? I get that you like some parts of their walled garden, but why do Apple stans behave as if Apple was a sacred company that could do no wrong, when there examples like this that they are literally harming their own customers to protect their moat. I get why Apple does it, I don't get why anyone here would side with Apple.
imessage (the protocol) doesn't. iPhones should, because it's a common way for people to communicate. It was fine for us to start laissez faire but now that we see Apple abusing things by not interoperating -- deliberately in order to sell more phones [1], the people should intervene.
> imessage (the protocol) doesn't. iPhones should, because it's a common way for people to communicate.
iPhones are fully capable of transmitting images (and even other types of files--what an amazing world we live in). Feel free to install any of the numerous apps available that allow you to do this.
I never said iMessage needs to support anything, I was merely answering a question that I thought was asked in good faith.
The US government claims that Apple is engaging in anticompetitive practices by degrading the behavior of iMessage when communicating to non-Apple devices.
Your stance seems to be, this should not be something for the government to be involved in, let the market decide.
This is ambiguous. Perhaps you believe that US antitrust laws shouldn't exist, or should be changed so they don't apply to this case, or actually don't apply to this case (ie the government is wrong that Apple's behavior violates the law).
Those are all coherent stances you could have, though I think it would be helpful if you identified which of them you hold if you want to engage in meaningful discourse with others.
My understanding is that Apple wont add RCS support until end-to-end encryption is part of the RCS standard, which it currently isn't. And they wont use property add-ons such as what Google use for encryption.
Competitors stuffed around trying to build a competitor for over a decade and failed. Is that Apple's fault?
> By default was missing from the sentence. You can do it with Whatsapp etc, but both you and the other party need to download a 3rd party app to do so.
It's an obvious abuse of their monopoly to suppress competition. Most kids use iPhone and for the general public in the US iPhone has >50% market share, so to expect most people to stop using iMessage to get better support with Android users is not happening, and it's silly to think that will change without a change in laws, so most kids end up getting iPhones so they're not left out.
Remember, this is all a very arbitrary restriction by Apple that lets them take advantage of their monopoly to suppress sales of competitive products. That's the illegal part.
You ever notice you can
-use tires from arbitrary manufacturers
-use oil from arbitrary manufacturers
-drive to arbitrary locations (even offroad in your Corvette)
-use nearly arbitrary accessories
-use a universal port to get error codes (OBD-II)
-make modifications and keep your warranty on unrelated parts
Ask yourself, would MacOs have all of the restrictions an iPhone has? If not even Macbooks block installation of 3rd party applications, why does it change when you add a cell radio?
Honestly,if someone were being paid to change public opinion around the case, this is what i would expect to read. Don't fall for Apple's marketing
Just like I can put cases from arbitrary manufacturers on my iPhone.
> -use oil from arbitrary manufacturers
Just like I can use chargers from arbitrary manufacturers.
> -drive to arbitrary locations
Visit arbitrary websites...
> -use a universal port to get error codes (OBD-II)
OBD-II is actually a good analogy because it exposes only a small set of standardized data, but the more interesting data (and ability to run diagnostics) is sometimes behind a manufacturer proprietary protocol and requires something more than just the standard OBD-II interface. Similarly Apple can choose what standard interfaces and protocols to implement and which proprietary ones they would like to create.
> why does it change when you add a cell radio?
Because that's what Apple chose to build and sell. You're free to build your own phone with your own feature set and sell that.
> Don't fall for Apple's marketing
Fortunately I'm capable of my own rational thought.
Nobody uses iMessage outside the US, by choice, even in iPhone-dominated markets. So clearly it's possible to avoid it. US iPhone users have the same choice.
Do you have an example of a place that has a similar rate of usage for iPhones but primarily uses WhatsApp for texting? In the US the rate is 87% for teenagers, I'm surprised it's that high elsewhere.
iPhone has 51% market share in Japan across all age group[1] (and even as high as 84.8% in some demographic[2]). From my 5 years of living here, I’ve never seen anyone use iMessage even once. The dominant messaging app is LINE.
Seems like LINE became the predominant app way back in 2012 (it released even before iMessage did in 2011), so my guess is that it took hold before iMessage ever had a chance, unlike in the US where texting was always the main way to communicate on phones up until iMessage integrated texting to absorb all those users.
I think the point is that it's kind not entirely accurate to say that Apple doesn't allow messaging interoperability with Android. They in-fact do through dozens of available third party apps. They don't allow non-apple devices to implement the iMessage protocol, which could be argued to be anti-consumer but it's not really evidence of apple being a monopoly.
Edit: Just realized that you I misread your comment and you and I agree
I guess there’s WhatsApp etc, but it’s not a great experience. And that’s in part due to the ecosystem. I can swipe 200 photos and send them to my wife - it shares them on my iCloud behind the scenes, and sends a link. Messages makes it seem like I’ve sent 200 full quality photos in an instant.
That’s hard to do without the vertical integration.
That argument would make sense of iPhone couldn't send any messages at all to Android or call Android phones.
There's a reason Apple hasn't taken their garden wall that far, lmao. Same as being able to use "non Apple WiFi and Bluetooth devices".
Half the replies in this thread make me think they'd be happy if Apple restricted iPhone WiFi to only connecting to Apple APs becuz muh security, muh feature ecosystem
Note there could easily be even more obstacles than there are. Third party apps like banking apps actually have extra jailbreaking checks; first party apps don't, you can still watch DRM movies, and afaik it doesn't void the warranty. At least not if nobody notices.
If they would only verify quality and provide safe APIs and paths to safely integrate they can have their platform. The issue is that they are both managing the plantform and (unfairly) participating themselves.
If they had one set of APIs for smartwatches that can be used by them for the apple watch and everyone else for their smartwatches they wouldn’t get sued. But instead they give themselves deep integration into the OS and limit everyone elses access. When you are one of the only available platforms thats not okay.
You and I will do this. So will anyone else on HN.
My grandma won’t understand the difference. So when she gets a text saying, hey install this cool new thing, and then gets hacked, these changes will be to blame.
Why can’t we have a close ecosystem and an open ecosystem? If you want to side load, Android is right there ready for you.
I've told this story before, but I'll tell it again. Years ago I worked for Apple retail when Bootcamp was a thing and it was "unsupported" and not only was it behind security switches, but you had to go out of your way to download and set it up.
I had a customer come in one morning steaming mad and demanding a refund for her new macbook. She was mad because (to paraphrase) she has been told that she wouldn't have all the problems and crashes her windows machine had and wouldn't have to deal with viruses and a host of other windows specific issues if she used a mac. But after a few weeks she was still having all of the same problems. The more she described the issue, the more it sounded like she'd never even bought a mac, but here she was with a 3 week old macbook in a box. And beyond that, she described having some hardware issues that had been corrected with a firmware update months earlier. The first boot and software update should have corrected all of that.
So I asked her to show me some of what it was doing. She took it out of the box, switched it on and it booted right into windows. And then proceeded to dump a ton of malware popups all over the screen just as she'd said. It turns out, she did indeed buy the macbook 3 weeks earlier, and then gave it to her "computer smart nephew" to setup for her. Well Mr. Nephew apparently decided in his infinite wisdom that is aunt didn't need macOS, she just needed an expensive windows machine. And so he'd downloaded bootcamp, shrunk the macOS partition to the smallest size it could be, and then installed windows and configured the machine to boot into windows by default. She'd never used macOS and didn't even know it was there, and so had never gotten the firmware updates for the hardware, and was of course having all the same problems she had in windows normally, because she was still using windows, only this time without any malware software because "macs don't need Norton".
The end result is I showed the customer what had happened, got them squared away with the mac OS side an asked them to give it a try for a few weeks with a personal guarantee we'd return it if she still didn't like it. She became one of our best customers. But the moral of the story is twofold:
1) Not everyone who uses tech makes the decisions for how that tech is configured
2) "no support" is a good way to ensure that those #1 people hate your product
What a great story.
I wonder at what stage of Idiocracy lore we’re at, to require locked down software to “protect” people from “smart nephews”.
The more I read from you people, the more I get amazed. I can’t believe how somebody would use such anecdotes with serious face against software freedom.
Who's "requiring" anything? Android is there if you want open smart phone computing. iOS is there if you don't. And at a near 50/50 split, that means both are about as close to continuously feature parity as you could hope for. Listening to all arguments over why iOS should open itself up when Android is right there for anyone that wants that sort of freedom feels like listening to a bunch of C programmers bitch about Rust's borrow checker or Java's Garbage Collector. Your "software freedom" goal is already here in the world's most popular smart phone OS and supported on more devices from more vendors than even the most "open" iOS version will ever be. But not everyone wants or needs to write code in C and not everyone wants or needs the sort of "software freedom" that Android is giving.
Ok, it's great that you want that, Apple clearly doesn't want to provide that for you any more than they want to provide you with Intel based macs, watches that run Linux, or touch screen laptops. No one has explained yet why Apple should be legally obligated to provide that for you. There's a lot of hand waving towards Apple having a monopoly on their own products, which is something of a tautology, but notably no one claims they have a smart phone monopoly or a smart phone OS monopoly because that's patently absurd given the sheer magnitude of the non-iphone smartphone market. Nor has anyone explained why they're not satisfied with getting those things from that non-iphone market.
This isn't like the late 90's computer era. Apple doesn't fine BestBuy and AT&T for carrying non-apple smart phones. They don't obligate Samsung and Sony to buy licenses to iOS for every phone they ship, regardless of whether iOS is installed on it. Heck, even though they're bundling the web browser with the OS you can't even reasonably make the argument doing so is giving them a monopoly in the web browser space.
Yes, and? The question asked was "how would a person [wind up with sketchy software installed] if it is behind a security toggle?". The answer I gave was that not every person that uses tech makes the decisions about setting it up, and that officially sanctioned routes imply support costs regardless of any disclaimers. Are you saying that if Apple had an official ability to root the OS that the number of people who wind up with unknowingly rooted would be the exact same as there are now when the only way to do that is with a jailbreak?
She'll change the toggle and then install it. It's obvious that a lot of HN users didn't live through the period of time where IE was overrun with toolbars for nearly every user because websites would walk people through how to override their security settings so that they could install all kinds of shit. BonzaiBuddy, Yahoo Toolbar, MacKeeper, etc... they all walk people through how to turn off the security settings needed to get themselves installed.
That's the whole problem. People don't know any better so they follow the instructions to get what they think they want. They don't know what they don't know.
Banks can and will block transfers that they believe are fraudulent. They specifically train their customer facing employees to stop customers when they feel like the customer is being scammed. And people have been demanding that banks do even more to help prevent fraud. And if you think Apple's restrictions are invasive and overbearing ... banking regulations and restrictions make Apple look like a freedom loving hippy.
You can definitely tell who has and has not done some for of tech support sort of job interacting with the general public, in these kinds of discussions. "But the user would NEVER do..." oh my god, not only would they, they would in large numbers, it wouldn't even be some super-rare occurrence. Nobody who's done that kind of work would type those words in that order.
I was in such a role in the exact time period you're writing about. At the time, most computer users were still at least kinda enthusiasts, if not particularly well-educated on their new toy. It's no accident that ordinary people got seriously interested using computers for important things in their lives when smartphones came around, and especially the iPhone—phones are like computers that are 80% less rage-inducing utter shit, as far as normal folks are concerned. "Real" computers are horrible for a majority of people. Notoriously horrible, like, listen to people talk about how they interact with "real" computers and their attitudes toward them; they don't trust them at all and often hate them, to them they're like expensive bulky frustration-machines that barely make any sense, don't do very much (the pieces of crap can't even replace a pocket camera, what a joke), and break entirely at random and frequently.
And I don’t give a crap. If it’s so bothersome for you - don’t do it. Just say no.
People complain about shit all the time, shall we now remove all advances of humanity?
I like the iPhone in general but there’s a ton of things I need to keep an old Android around for, because of functionality apple blocks for no good reason: connecting to many non approved bluetooth devices, vehicle gauges and other useful driving data in carplay, etc.
Does this chain of thought apply to any company or just to Apple? At what market share does this become a problem in your opinion? Or are we assuming that the market is ‘free’ and people wouldn’t buy such a device/service because of these ‘restrictions’?
The suit is not about user choice between iPhone and Android. The suit is about control 60% of the digital market. Sure, a user can go buy a different phone. But, an App developer can not reasonable not support iPhone given it has 60% of the market and apple requires 30% of all digital transactions on that market.
I agree people should be able to choose different things. But I also agree with the suit, that once someone gets in the position to control the market of 1000s and 1000s of companies, it's not longer just about user choice in phones. It's about the digital goods (apps/subscribtions/IaP) market itself.
None of these require allowing alternative app stores. Just allowing more apps in. You don’t have to use these apps, and theres nothing inherently insecure about it.
I agree with this take. My one concern is it has the potential to diminish the entire brand. Even with giant warnings about losing warranty/support when installing 3rd party app stores or side loading apps, at the end of the day the back of the phone has a big Apple logo on it. So when the customer fucks it up and Apple refuses to fix it, they’ll still blame Apple.
I think plenty of software development companies quite like to keep that 30% to themselves. I could imagine Microsoft, Adobe and others refusing to ship their software on the app store at all if using their own store let them keep more of the purchase price.
Apple's hardware house of cards might come down if developers are allowed to push the devices past what Apple allows due to form-over-function design decisions they make, and I'm okay with that.
Yeah exactly, for some of us this is a feature not a bug. And I say this as a customer that also supports open source software. Yes it's possible to support both.
Like damn, what if I intend to build this ecosystem from the outset, does that mean as soon as it reaches critical mass the government is going to come in and dismantle it? It's bullshit. This is essentially saying you're not allowed to build ecosystems.
Consumer products don't demand the same flexibility in this regard that enterprise products do. This is just other companies crying that they want a slice of the pie.
Companies are not allowed to leverage their dominant market position in one market in order to gain an advantage in other markets. If you dislike monopoly and antitrust laws, go vote against them.
Mostly agree with this except for "... and offer zero support for it."
Nope, that's covered by basic consumer protections. Apple still has to offer support if the user has issues that weren't likely to have been caused by the modifications.
Your car maker doesn't get to refuse to honor your powertrain warranty just because you put in a custom stereo.
I'm sure this comment will get downvoted and dunked on, but I agree and I would be that if Apple is forced to make changes like these, many peoples' only experience of it would be their iPhone/Apple Watch/etc getting worse.
Some examples:
- A lot of these changes are like mandating that cars have a manual transmission option. Sure, there are plenty of people that love the control, but there are many, many more that appreciate not having to deal with it.
- Every dollar and engineering hour that Apple spends complying with these new requirements is time they won't spend on things people actually want, as well as increasing the surface area for bugs and security holes.
- Apple is the intermediary between other companies like FB, Google, ad networks, data harvesting, government apps, etc. They can't do things on my phone because Apple forbids it. The more Apple is forced to open up, the less protection I have from other powerful players in the tech market.
- Every place where Apple is forced to open up is a place where there's a choice that many users didn't ask for but will have to make (e.g. default browser).
- I've never had to help a relative with their phone. I've had many of them come to me for help with their computers. Their and my experience with computing platforms is worse without the guardrails
I think many computer savvy people don't realize how freeing and liberating it is for normal people to have an "appliance" computer.
- A lot of these changes are like mandating that cars have a manual transmission option. Sure, there are plenty of people that love the control, but there are many, many more that appreciate not having to deal with it.
Please let governments pass legislation which mandate a manual trasmission model. I will never buy an auto!
- Every dollar and engineering hour that Apple spends complying with these new requirements is time they won't spend on things people actually want, as well as increasing the surface area for bugs and security holes.
Except that Apple are literally the richest company in America. They could hire a thousand new programmers in a team to work 24 hours a day on these requirements and it wouldn't even tickle their profits, let alone revenue.
- Apple is the intermediary between other companies like FB, Google, ad networks, data harvesting, government apps, etc. They can't do things on my phone because Apple forbids it. The more Apple is forced to open up, the less protection I have from other powerful players in the tech market.
If apple is forced to open up, it creates a market for more security products, meaning healthier competition and more transparent security.
- Every place where Apple is forced to open up is a place where there's a choice that many users didn't ask for but will have to make (e.g. default browser).
Not really, safari is the only browser which is installed on a iphone by default, so normal users just use it like they did before and dont need to do anything. However other people that do want to use something different are free to.
- I've never had to help a relative with their phone. I've had many of them come to me for help with their computers. Their and my experience with computing platforms is worse without the guardrails
Nobody is suggesting making the iphone harder to use, just allowing additional choices if thats what the user wants. The choices can be hidden away from normal users and grandma, but why cant they be there in the background for people that want them?
> If apple is forced to open up, it creates a market for more security products, meaning healthier competition and more transparent security.
Have you not had to use a third party security product on your work computer? All third party security products for computers are scams and inefficient
Because if you allow apps that haven't been vetted by Apple to be downloaded and executed via the app store, then grandma is inevitably going to run some malware that drains her 401k to a teenager in Russia.
> - Every dollar and engineering hour that Apple spends complying with these new requirements is time they won't spend on things people actually want, as well as increasing the surface area for bugs and security holes.
nothing changes for you, keep living in apple prison. how does other people having more choice make your experience worse? all arguments I heard so far are completely far fetched and contrived scenarios that dont amount to anything but fear mongering.
Every time I refresh you keep adding more contrived BS excuses to allow the trillion dollar company to keep extorting devs and users with obscene fees.
" - A lot of these changes are like mandating that cars have a manual transmission option. Sure, there are plenty of people that love the control, but there are many, many more that appreciate not having to deal with it."
Nonsense analogy. Computers are General Purpose Computing Devices which people increasingly depend on in their lives where single point of control from Apple makes their lives artificially more difficult solely for the purpose of being able to squeeze out profits. It increases prices for consumers and allows oppressive dictatorships to demand certain apps to be removed and Apple always complies, leaving users without alternatives.
" - Every dollar and engineering hour that Apple spends complying with these new requirements is time they won't spend on things people actually want, as well as increasing the surface area for bugs and security holes."
Boohoo, the trillion dollar company has to do a little more work. They could just stop putting so much work into anti-consumer propaganda so they would have more time for actual work.
"- Apple is the intermediary between other companies like FB, Google, ad networks, data harvesting, government apps, etc. They can't do things on my phone because Apple forbids it. The more Apple is forced to open up, the less protection I have from other powerful players in the tech market."
This is exactly the kind of exaggerated, fear mongering narrative I've expected.
Increased competition and openness could also lead to better privacy and security solutions as companies would need to compete on these features to win over users. Also, despite Apple's policies and safeguards, there have been instances where apps have found ways around these limitations or have used data in ways that are not transparent to users, because Apple only cares about Privacy as far as it benefits their bottom line, that why Apple also started to work on an advertising platform. They care about "Privacy" because now they can exclusively monetize user data.[Apple is becoming an ad company despite privacy claims - https://proton.me/blog/apple-ad-company]
" - Every place where Apple is forced to open up is a place where there's a choice that many users didn't ask for but will have to make (e.g. default browser)."
Nonsense, the only thing that changes is that other people can change the default app, so when they don't care nothing changes for them, they don't have to do anything. this argument of yours is the kind of absurd reach that makes your overall position look absurd.
" - I've never had to help a relative with their phone. I've had many of them come to me for help with their computers. Their and my experience with computing platforms is worse without the guardrails"
I've read this meme so many times and every time I read it I doubt that it's an actual thing instead it's something you desperately need to say in order to uphold your indefensible position of defending Apple's anti-competitive practices. It's not a good argument either, just because your relatives are incompetent we all should suffer under that?
" I think many computer savvy people don't realize how freeing and liberating it is for normal people to have an "appliance" computer."
Ah yes, less choice is actually more choice, slavery is freedom and war is peace.
It doesn't matter if you like it. It doesn't matter if you don't like it. What matters is their actions and behavior are against the law. It can be proven,/according to the US Gov.
>If people want to buy an iphone and shit it up, let them do it.
Those choices also affect me, though. Any shared albums, messages or other data I transmit with these users has a higher risk of being leaked.
There's some security in knowing almost all phones are not jailbroken and thanks to regular os upgrades, have a pretty solid security floor.
One way to handle this would be to decorate the comms ID, email / phone name whatever to show they aren't running a standard iOS. But I would want to know as easily as I do that messages I exchange with someone are going to an android device.
>One way to handle this would be to decorate the comms ID, email / phone name whatever to show they aren't running a standard iOS.
I shudder to imagine the headlines complaining about the "scarlet bubbles apple is using to shame freedom loving users" or whatever nonsense the media would scare up if they tried to do something like that.
if you like your prison, that's your thing, you have the right to stay in it, just don't force other people to live in misery under your preferences when they'd rather live in freedom. we also have rules and regulations which decide if something is lawful or not, so it's not just about what you personally like or not.
> they should just let people jail break the phone and offer zero support for it.
Just let people wipe the phone completely - no drivers, no kernel, nothing, and bring their own. That's the proper solution to people wanting to own their hardware and do whatever they want with it. Want to install a different app store/browser/etc? Go for it, start by installing the new kernel and drivers.
Almost none of the "free" apps are actually free. However, the App store makes it impossible to find this out without first supplying credit card information and installing the app, and possibly setting up an account with an app.
If people want to buy an iphone and shit it up, let them do it.