Apple pushes back harder. I fully support industry-wide regulation of software distribution and app storefronts, none of FAANG should be passed-over here. Google also deserves to be hit equally as hard as Apple, but it probably won't hurt as much since the Play Store does not monopolize software distribution on Android.
- Apple is 50% of the US smartphone market, and what this means in factual terms is that they're the gateway to computing, communication, banking, and more for these folks.
- Apple doesn't allow side loading of apps. You have to go through their store with their rules.
- You have to pay Apple 15% of all commerce originated on your idea or platform.
- You have to integrate with Apple login and Apple payments, which reduces your relationship with your customer to a smidge.
- Apple cripples its web browser, encouraging app distribution of your software.
- Apple allows competitors to place ads on its App Store in your app's name or brand, making it an uphill battle to keep growing.
- Apple doesn't allow you to deploy at your own cadence. If you need an emergency bug fix, you're out of luck.
- Apple forces you to follow their app development guidelines. These are capracious moving targets and you're forced to follow on Apple's schedule, despite whatever costs and labor needs your business has.
- Apple can remove your app at any time for any reason with completely asymmetric power.
- Apple forces you to build on their hardware despite software being limitless.
- Apple frequently brings out competing apps.
Once a person is in the Apple ecosystem, it's very difficult to reach them without paying Apple somehow.
- On the flip side, Android has _88%_ of the global market share. Arguably (and quite clearly) the bigger gateway. By a country mile.
- What average user side loads apps? That would be like asking to sideload apps on your microwave -- it's just impractical and not the commonplace behavior. I understand this is HN, but still. Sideloading apps is a minor complaint for a minority: Google report recently showed 0.06 of users sideload apps, globally. Paltry.
- Both Apple AND Google have to pay 15% for all commerce originated on the idea or platform at the end of the day.
- If your idea of maximizing "relationship" involves maximizing the companies profits first, then I disagree with the premise. Having a partnership with Apple is a good thing. You'll be associated with quality build and security. If you want to go your own way, then do what, say, Patreon does or OnlyFans does and do your own thing. No need to have Apple or Google for that matter hold you back.
- If you don't like the Apple browser (Safari) you're more than welcome to use Firefox and Chrome if you'd like and make adjustments to make it the default browser.
- Apple is doing what Amazon did/does best...is this so bad for every business as a whole? If we can all do better, why not? This will lift up profits for _everyone_.
- "Deploying at your own cadence" could lead to security bedlam if improperly executed. Not to mention the deployment monitoring on Google/Android is quite outdated.
- I'm sorry, but you're developing for their phone. It's not public. It's not a non-profit. It's like developing for Nintendo Switch -- of course you have to follow their development guidelines, procedures and recommendations to reach the level of quality they need. It's a two-way street. You're entering into their territory. You're brash for assuming you can just walk in and do whatever you want.
- Of course they should be able to have that right especially if malevelont actors are in play, which they are en masse and global at times. They need this right to protect users.
- Again, I bring up Nintendo here, but they forced developers to develop on the Wii and Switch using their odd hardware and software. Was that a sin? I think no. Odd hardware is only odd and cumbersome if you can't handle the technological "challenge." Which some like Capcom were able to handle with ease.
- They should be allowed to expand on their own OS. Claiming they can't because it "competes" with other apps is just not true, frankly. I think of the recent medications app. Does what most other junk medication apps do in the app store but 100X. Now I don't have to pay $19.99 for a "good" app (which frankly, sucks) I can just use the app Apple has.
- Let them go into the 88% Android ecosystem. Apple is for those of us users who want it to work, cleanly without headache. If it requires a "Tax" and pain for up-and-comer-developers so be it. If you want a perfect product, expect the imperfect to get weeded out.
I only want the cream of the crop in the app store, and I'm an average user. I don't want spyware/malware/bloatware and I want that weeded out for me beforehand. I don't want to step into a jungle. I want order and I want quality. That's just how I see it.
> - What average user side loads apps? That would be like asking to sideload apps on your microwave -- it's just impractical and not the commonplace behavior. I understand this is HN, but still. Sideloading apps is a minor complaint for a minority: Google report recently showed 0.06 of users sideload apps, globally. Paltry.
Does it matter? The capability exists. I can and have downloaded F-Droid and can easily download open-source free-from-Google apps without ever interacting with the Play Store. That's impossible on iPhone. If side-loading doesn't matter, then why doesn't Apple just allow it? Why the big hoopla?
> - If you don't like the Apple browser (Safari) you're more than welcome to use Firefox and Chrome if you'd like and make adjustments to make it the default browser.
Except you can't. Apple forces you to use Safari even if you install Firefox, Chrome etc. It's just reskins, not the actual browser. Safari is the new IE. An old, aging, out-of-date browser existing only so Apple can force their users into the prison of the App Store.
> - They should be allowed to expand on their own OS. Claiming they can't because it "competes" with other apps is just not true, frankly. I think of the recent medications app. Does what most other junk medication apps do in the app store but 100X. Now I don't have to pay $19.99 for a "good" app (which frankly, sucks) I can just use the app Apple has.
In other words, the big mega-corp can destroy competition as long as you don't have to pay $20 and can keep feeding the beast. Apple has stolen the concepts, ideas of apps that are well-loved by consumers, pretending that it's just apps that suck is disingenuous. Apple is not some saviour coming in to create better apps. They're stealing from competition and forcing them out of business.
It's a trillion dollar business, they should not be allowed to constantly destroy perfectly fine businesses. It leads to a crappy, non-competitive market.
We're talking about America and how the DOJ needs to disrupt domestic corporate abuses.
> What average user side loads apps?
Kind of my point. Google makes it scary. Apple prevents it outright. In reality, everything should be distributed over the web.
> Both Apple AND Google have to pay 15% for all commerce originated
No they do not. They pay peanuts to maintain the biggest and most profitable walled gardens in the world. Adding little to the world while taxing the up and coming innovators.
> Apple is doing what Amazon did/does best
Amazon deserves the same treatment.
> could lead to security bedlam if improperly executed
This describes everything ever. Software isn't too dangerous to use.
> you're more than welcome to use Firefox and Chrome
Reskinned Safari. Woefully out of date with standards.
> Having a partnership with Apple is a good thing. You'll be associated with quality build and security.
I'll get billed margins that I need to pay my employees. I just want to write software, not pay the mafia boss that built an empire.
> you're developing for their phone
It's not their phone anymore - it's society's gateway to the Internet and ecommerce. The DOJ needs to catch up. Break up Apple and Google or put them into straightjackets.
> bring up Nintendo here
A kid toy, a sliver of the economy, replete with dozens of alternatives. You don't do banking, physical commerce, architectural design, or meet strangers to fuck with your Wii.
> I don't want to step into a jungle.
The world doesn't need kid gloves. Every time you step into a car you face death.
It's time to make competition from the bottom healthy again.
On the topic of whatever percentage of people are on Platform X and Y: I really wish devs would look at things in absolute terms sometimes
I used to be a huge Windows Phone fan. During its heyday, it wasn't far behind Android or iOS in features, and it was in a really sweet spot where it was almost as open as Android to hacking without being hideously primitive and janky like Android was at the time. (Talking ancient Android, before the anti-jank project) Windows Phone had something like 50+ million users. Nobody would port any apps to it though, even "apps" that were just tracking code bundled around a website.
It was so damn frustrating that companies would come out with apps for set top boxes and game consoles that had total install bases a fraction the size of the Windows Phone market, but they'd completely ignore that phone platform since it was a smaller percentage of the overall phone market. What was even more bizarre is that they'd usually launch on iOS first despite its tiny install base relative to Android at the time, since the execs personally liked iPhones better.
Somehow the path of every big business and VC required an "app" on iOS first, then eventually adding half-assed Android support, and not only did they not support other platforms, they'd actively block users from hacking together their own open source clients for linux, Windows Phone, etc.
There can be a serious argument made for getting chromebooks out to the 3rd/2nd world. Honestly, we don't _need_ to "do more" (as the article plainly points out) and can get people connected and productive in no time. Sure, it has its drawbacks (crapware/spyware/bloatware) but if that offsets the cost of production and profits then basically...why not?
The best analogy I've seen is imagine our universe as the surface of a balloon. Only the surface, we can't see or touch anything else.
If you inflate the balloon, our universe expands. Points get farther away from each other, proportionally to how far away they started. In this analogy, we're not expanding into anything we can see or feel or know anything about, the only real difference is that points are a bit farther apart.
This explains why there is no "epicenter to speak of", but why is that expansion faster than the speed of light? How could it be? And is the evidence for that expansion really that solid?
I find this to be the crux of the issue. To be exempt from the rules that material things must follow, you simply need to designate it as space.
If space is what fills an area between object A and object B and that space grows or expands. This is no different than object A moving away from object B. What's the difference? There seems to be none.
Spacetime is a thing, they are intertwined. That's like asking where does time flow to, infinity just like space. I think of reality as a superset of spacetime, matter,energy,etc... could there be other things or universes in reality? I don't know but put simply I understand it to mean the distance relative to a refernce frame expands.
My question to people who actually know this subject: has 'c' been proven to be constant, resisting expansion? The speed of light/causality might be affected if time also expanded along with space? Or how can space expand without time expanding given its relationship with time?
Some day we might create the necessary mathematics to explore the answer space of these questions (and related ones). We don't yet have the technology, so to speak, to "think" of this.
> It doesn't expand into anything. Spacetime is all there is. As it expands, there's just more of it.
But what if it isn't, and everything except for space is actually shrinking, galaxies, nebula, stars, planets, are actually getting smaller at a fantastic rate?
So radical that playing alexis weissenberg's rendition of Morceaux de fantaisie, Op. 3: No. 2, Prélude in C-Sharp Minor leaves chills down my spine to this day.
Not to be deliberately difficult but surely "I like Rachmaninoff very much" is a different statement than "Rachmaninoff is a radical"? There's surely plenty of pieces where nobody would even begin to argue that they were radical (even in their time) that can send chills down one's spine.
(The counter-argument might easily descend into "all great art is radical" I suppose the article itself touches on this: "At these colloquies, someone inevitably proposes that Composer X is more of a modernist than had hitherto been suspected." As a huge fan of the Vaughan Williams symphonies, I'm rather familiar with this trope)
A common story about the piece is that Rachmaninoff took inspiration from a dream he had. The dream was set in a funeral (hence the bell-like tolling at the beginning of the piece). As the dream progresses, Rachmaninoff walks toward the central coffin, and the piece builds suspense as Rachmaninoff continues to get closer. When he finally gets there, he opens the coffin only to find himself inside, coinciding with the beginning of the climax of the piece (marked "agitato" on the score). Whether or not this story is true, or painted on to the piece at a later date, the story seems to match the progression of the piece.
(copy pasted from Wikipedia but very interesting nonetheless)
Piano Concerto 2. It's long but at least listen to the first 30 seconds, up until the point when the orchestra comes in. This is (in my opinion) one of the greatest moments in all of Western art music.
Agreed, concerto 2 is (in my opinion) of the most beautiful and epic music pieces ever.
Interesting fact: Carmen's (C. Dion's) All By Myself is largely based on this concerto's 2nd movement. IIRC Rachmaninov is even listed as a coauthor because of a copyright lawsuit.
Heidegger was a Nazi, besides, and Being And Time and the concept of Dasein are rubbish -- he was a circular reasoner and a poor communicator -- and B&T really doesn't purport any new claim that hasn't already been made in some form or fashion since Socrates. 200 pages of Aristotle makes more sense. I would just watch Sugrue's Princeton lecture https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaobMHescwg&t=476s if you're interested in getting the gist of Heidegger without having to slog through his nonsense. It all goes back to the Overman in some form or fashion. I'm rambling now.
I remember I read one book when I was a child that promised to raise your IQ by reading pages of a book within seconds like you're looking at an autostereogram. LMAO! These crooks, I tell yah.
The Chinese room never made sense to me because, even though the person passing the arcane symbols through the door doesn't _understand_ what is being communicated doesn't mean that's not how it works in _our_ brain. Our individual neurons (or aggregate neurons depending on how they're working and firing based on symbol triggering) don't know what symbols they're processing either. So unless Searle is saying humans don't know any languages on some fundamental level, it's kind of useless because then we'd just end up admitting (something unsavory) that nobody knows anything barring some homunculus in our brains or even worse, we can never truly have free will. Those are scary implications.
To me, having part of the chinese-speaking-ability be in an almighty dictionary always looked like a sleight of hand; surely if you’re talking to the whole system that is the room, the person, and the dictionary, it is the system as a whole that has intelligence and knows how to speak chinese? It takes advantage of our identification with just the person to distract from that.
Wow. I never thought of it from that light. Honestly, that is a problem. You're smuggling in pre-formed language into the thought experiment with its own rich meaning.
If think the risk is there only in a somewhat-functioning system that can afford sustaining the minimum material requirements of its people... once that is gone and there is no welfare (via government or family), then the NEETs of the world simply will have to provide for themselves... or starve.
Why pick on Apple?