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A lot of the anti-Apple arguments I see here seem to have an element of ideological fixation. IMO the practicalities of the real world are always more involved
by SZJX 6y ago
A lot of the anti-Apple arguments I see here seem to have an element of ideological fixation. IMO the practicalities of the real world are always more involved than an ideological black/white distinction, and just as you said here there are always tradeoffs on different fronts. Openness instead of a walled garden is nice, but how far can you go with it? If you think about it, every company is essentially a plutocratic organization or even somehow military-like, where most important decisions are made by the few elites at the top and passed down, and people are quite fine with it.
Of course the argument here seems to be that Apple is gradually becoming an almost "public good", while if you're unhappy with a company you're working at, you can switch. But then again if there are better alternatives to Apple, nothing theoretically prevents the users from switching. I have been using Android since forever but this year I'm switching to iPhone. The touted "freedom" simply is not evident in most scenarios during my daily phone usage, and I'm fed up with a lot of downsides of Android (ironically, it's hard to think that being tracked by countless potentially malicious apps offers you more "freedom" than living in Apple's ecosystem), also Google is not known to be exactly friendly to developers either and it can be even more Kafka-esque to appeal a ban, apparently.
To maintain the standards of a system, sometimes the maintainer has to get hard, and this would result in them occasionally cracking down on false positives. Still, it's similar to how a society cannot function without an actual enforcer of rules, which is the police. As long as there is a mechanism/will to redress the false positives, it's much better than a system where there's no control at all. Of course, if you say you're a hardcore libertarian and are fine with living in a society without any policing and would rather protect your own interests yourself, no problem and you can always go with the most liberal phone OS out there. But most societies can't realistically function that way nor do most people wish it that way. The app ecosystem is similar in this sense.
- kaba0 6y agoThere is a misunderstanding of market will choose the best competitor. A competition in of itself is not fair, it needs heavy regulation to become fair - like a running contest could be won by anyone if they were to shoot the other contenders. And this is what happens in unregulated markets - we’ve got an oligopoly, with a really high bar to enter - basically impossible for a newcomer (note that even Microsoft failed to enter it). So there should absolutely be some government regulation to make it fair - and it is not overreach. It is simply no longer Apple’s decision, since it is practically a public service in part, as you noted.
- zepto 6y agoThis is simply false. Newcomers enter the phone market all the time. What we don’t have is an adequately developed alternative OS that can appeal to regular users yet. Microsoft failed because they have their own legacy to protect. Google is compromised by their need to maintain their position in search. There are plenty of Linux phone projects. The only reason none of these are a good replacement yet is a lack of time and investment. iOS didn’t just appear out of thin air - it took more than a decade to develop. It’s easier than ever now to develop an alternative. People who are focussing on forcing Apple to install alternative stores are by definition not interested in an alternative platform. If they were, they would be investing in building one. They just want access to Apple’s customer base. That’s all there is to this.
- kaba0 6y agoYou forget about the splitting of developers were a new project to emerge. Microsoft failed, partly because it was as of yet not a big enough platform to target by other developers - they have enought things to do with android and apple. A new platform can’t emerge unless there is some incentive for developers to target it. Linux phones are in a special circumstance, because apps are developer for them out of a hobby. But phones are a main social device, you can’t have one that doesn’t have your bank’s app on it for example. Linux phones must emulate android (and it is sort of working, fortunately) to remain afloat.
- zepto 6y agoMost online banking can be done just fine via a browser. But ultimately you are right - there does have to be some incentive for people to support the platform. People here are claiming that freedom from Apple is a huge incentive for developers. Is that not correct?