7 ms·
There’s one issue, which is that of “Sherlocking” a third-party solution with a first-party implementation. Then there’s another, which is having an open enough
by mortenjorck 6y ago
There’s one issue, which is that of “Sherlocking” a third-party solution with a first-party implementation. Then there’s another, which is having an open enough system to support such innovations in the first place.
Something like Growl, or f.lux (mentioned down-thread) could never have come about if macOS had been as restrictive as iOS. I have little doubt that we’ve missed at least a few such innovations over past decade, especially on the iPad, due to this.
While the Mac will likely never, despite some tireless predictions, go fully locked-down, little things like the deprecation of kernel extensions will chip away at this from the Mac side as well. Market-driven innovation and platform control are a difficult balance, but they are ultimately a zero-sum game.
- endgame 6y agoWell, yeah. Important things like tethering would never have made it into iOS if Apple hadn't been dragged there by the jailbreakers.
- cortesoft 6y agoOh, it would have made it, they just needed to figure out the best way to charge for it.
- vosper 6y agoWas it ever Apple who charged for tethering? I always thought it was in the hands of the networks and their various plans. Today it seems like it's not even a feature anymore, just something you can do with your phone (or, at least for me it is: I'm on one of the cheapest cellphone plans in my country and tethering just works)
- m463 6y agoIn the US tethering is fundamentally different (or at least the carriers want you to think that so they can upcharge it)
- cortesoft 6y agoYes, it is the networks that demand extra payment for tethering. That is still a thing in the US; you have to pay extra for a plan that includes tethering.
- usr1106 6y agoSurprising from a European perspective. I have used tethering since before phones had a HTTP/HTML browser (~ 2001, remember WAP?). The question has always been do you have packet data or not, what is your bandwidth and volume. Nothing else is the operator's business.
- vladvasiliu 6y agoNot really. They still separate on-device use from modem use. At least Bouygues Telecom in France does. See my other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25243710 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25243710
- usr1106 6y agohors modem, you are right. So France is different. I'm 100% sure that has never existed in Finland (well, the most common packages are unlimited anyway) and 90% sure it's not common in Germany either (they use throttling after you reach the limit) So technically, how do they differentiate the traffic?
- vladvasiliu 6y agoMost of the time, tethering is allowed in the base package. What happens afterwards depends. They can either cut you off or throttle. The only experience I have with this is Orange, and they throttle to the point where you basically have no connection (SSH is unusable). Not sure though how they differentiate the traffic. There are "access points" set up which I presume are used for either connection. In my case they are the same but I seem to remember on an older phone they used to be different. It was also a different provider. I'm also not sure how they would detect that they're changed. Screenshot of my setup: https://imgur.com/a/xH88Itp https://imgur.com/a/xH88Itp
- spullara 6y agoThis has always been the domain of the carriers, not Apple.
- nsomaru 6y agoI’m not from the US, could you explain this perspective to me? You give me internet on device X. How is it up to you how I use it?
- gear54rus 6y agoSame way it is up to me how you use books you bought (kindle) or songs you bought (any streaming crap nowadays). If you're shitty enough person (good businessman) you can profit off of anything.
- jolux 6y agoDRM on books is about the rights holder, not the person selling it. I can assure you that Amazon doesn’t actually give a shit what you do with your books outside of having an obligation to the rights holders.
- coddle-hark 6y agoEasy access to a huge library of books is one of the main selling points of the Kindle. DRM is good for Amazon.
- jolux 6y agoYeah, because they wouldn’t be able to offer it otherwise. If they could offer the same content without DRM at the same price, I’m certain they would do it. Apple did with the iTunes Store.
- toyg 6y agoThey wouldn’t, simply because their position as the dominant player in ePublishing gives them a massive incentive to lock-in users. Which is what their DRM does: you cannot move books to non-Amazon devices, so you’re stuck on Kindle forever. That this also satisfies publishers is something of a side-effect. They did the opposite with music (they actually sold simple standard mp3s, unlike what you get from iTunes) because they were challengers, not incumbents, so the priority was to attract users.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- nyreed 6y agoActually the same thing did happen on iOS with jailbreak tweaks being copied by Apple devs. (E.g. wifi sync, quick reply, predictive keyboard...). Admittedly the pool of developers was restricted to those who were able and cared to jailbreak...
- dochtman 6y agoIt's interesting to think about the fact that, now that Macs are starting to be differentiated more by hardware (again, due to Apple Silicon) than software, Apple might actually allow more tweaking/low-level access to do interesting stuff.
- pornel 6y agoPerformance of A14X is almost the same as M1, but it only became a sensation when the CPU was allowed to run macOS. Think about it: Apple already had an awesome CPU, but hardly anybody noticed, because iPad OS is so limited.
- sgerenser 6y agoNot true, there is no A14X (yet). Closest thing would be the A12Z in the 2020 iPad Pros which are impressive but ~25% slower than the M1.