9 ms·

There's quite a lot of grey area between "legally mandated to make it easy" and "legally mandated to not make it impossibly difficult."

karpierz 6y ago
I agree, but the fundamental question is do you want the government to regulate what kind of OS interface should be legal?
- criddell 6y ago
  When it's good for consumers, sure. At one point AT&T was required to allow consumers to buy and connect their own handsets rather than only allowing them to rent from AT&T. Isn't that similar?
  - M4v3R 6y ago
    > Isn't that similar? No, what you described was a simple change in how the product was distributed. Forcing Apple to engineer a way to add 3rd party app stores on their platform would require significant engineering effort from them and changing their operating system internals significantly.
    - criddell 6y ago
      So to stick with the telecom example, if you want to sell telecom equipment or operate a phone company you must include intercept capability for law enforcement. That involves engineering changes in the hardware and software, business operations changes to manage and execute the intercept requests, etc... Is that a closer example? For Apple it might be less expensive to just make a single policy change - allow apps to use alternate payment providers. That feels somewhat close to forcing AT&T to allow alternate telephone providers.
    - grahamburger 6y ago
      How much engineering does Google do to make sure F-droid or Amazon App Store works android? I would be surprised if it's very much.
- izacus 6y ago
  Sure, but that's not new. Here in our EU country, governmennt dictates the railroad owner to allow other railroad companies to drive freight on it (although it fought tooth and nails to continue fleecing everyone by noncompetitive prices). Competition is the basis of functional free market - and forces which prevent it are driving it to be abusive and not force of progress anymore.

karpierz 6y ago

I agree, but the fundamental question is do you want the government to regulate what kind of OS interface should be legal?

criddell 6y ago
When it's good for consumers, sure. At one point AT&T was required to allow consumers to buy and connect their own handsets rather than only allowing them to rent from AT&T. Isn't that similar?
- M4v3R 6y ago
  > Isn't that similar? No, what you described was a simple change in how the product was distributed. Forcing Apple to engineer a way to add 3rd party app stores on their platform would require significant engineering effort from them and changing their operating system internals significantly.
  - criddell 6y ago
    So to stick with the telecom example, if you want to sell telecom equipment or operate a phone company you must include intercept capability for law enforcement. That involves engineering changes in the hardware and software, business operations changes to manage and execute the intercept requests, etc... Is that a closer example? For Apple it might be less expensive to just make a single policy change - allow apps to use alternate payment providers. That feels somewhat close to forcing AT&T to allow alternate telephone providers.
  - grahamburger 6y ago
    How much engineering does Google do to make sure F-droid or Amazon App Store works android? I would be surprised if it's very much.
izacus 6y ago
Sure, but that's not new. Here in our EU country, governmennt dictates the railroad owner to allow other railroad companies to drive freight on it (although it fought tooth and nails to continue fleecing everyone by noncompetitive prices). Competition is the basis of functional free market - and forces which prevent it are driving it to be abusive and not force of progress anymore.