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Only if Apple can have two versions of iOS on offer: one that is locked down and possibly/putatively safe; the other that is wild-west, Android-like in quality

Only if Apple can have two versions of iOS on offer: one that is locked down and possibly/putatively safe; the other that is wild-west, Android-like in quality of store offerings, with all the tracking issues that goes with that. I know which one I'd choose, and it isn't the latter; my suspicion is that the market would make the same decision.

toyg 6y ago
That's a false dichotomy. Apple itself is famous for picking good defaults, I'm sure they can implement a decent compromise that simply moves the needle a bit more towards consumers. Free browsers and a simple option to allow 3rd party appstores, set to off by default and somewhat bothersome to switch (i.e. buried into iTunes account screens, behind password, possibly with a periodic reminder every few months) would be more than enough. People who want to stay safe in the Appstore garden have nothing to do, and everyone else can go the extra mile if they want to. Anything else, like two iOS versions, is simply a provocation on the level of "we cannot unbundle IE".
- zepto 6y ago
  “People who want to stay safe in the Appstore garden have nothing to do, and everyone else can go the extra mile if they want to.“ This is where this line of reasoning goes wrong. People will be persuaded to go out of the App Store ecosystem regardless of whether it is good for them or not. Tens of billions of dollars and the most valuable advertising real estate on Facebook, Amazon, and the front page of Google, not to mention Epic and the other TenCent owned games companies will all be used to convince users to install alternative App Store. Facebook and Amazon will presumably bundle stores directly into their apps. Why wouldn’t many other companies do this. Presumably TikTok would.
  - tekknik 6y ago
    > People will be persuaded to go out of the App Store ecosystem regardless of whether it is good for them or not. This. We devs do a great/horrible enough job of this already being lazy with implementations and saying “Chrome is the only supported browser”
  - toyg 6y ago
    This reasoning presumes that consumers will see no advantage at all in staying in the Apple Appstore. If true, this would simply prove that the Apple Appstore is effectively uncompetitive in the market, and can only profit in a situation of monopoly. But it doesn’t matter, because all this is effectively false in practice. The overwhelming majority of people can barely be bothered to change their desktop browser, and even then they mostly do it only when directed (by their IT or their power-user of reference). This idea that they will all suddenly go tweak-crazy and install every appstore under the sun is simply an exaggeration, a strawman propped up to defend Apple’s utterly anticompetitive practices.
    - zepto 6y ago
      “This reasoning presumes that consumers will see no advantage at all” You’re going to need to explain this. I don’t see anything in what I wrote that leads to the conclusions in your first paragraph. 1. Users may not understand the security/privacy benefits until after they have sacrificed them. 2. There will be very large competitors trying to persuade them that there are no benefits. E.g. https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/16/22178068/facebook-apple-newspaper-ads-ios-privacy-changes https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/16/22178068/facebook-apple-... 3. Alternate stores will pay for exclusives and users will be forced to use them or lose important apps. 4. Key apps such as Facebook itself will just build stores into their apps. As to your second paragraph: “The overwhelming majority of people can barely be bothered to change their desktop browser, and even then they mostly do it only when directed..” This is true, which is precisely why only Facebook and Google plus Amazon and a few others, E.g. Epic, will have the resources to persuade users to establish large alternative stores. Google advertised Chrome on the front page, and on TV. This is exactly what would happen with alternative stores. “This idea that they will all suddenly go tweak-crazy and install every appstore under the sun is simply an exaggeration..” A strawman is when you present a deliberately weak version of another person’s argument, and then attack it. This paragraph of yours is a strawman. Nobody alluded to anyone going tweak crazy etc. Nobody defended Apple. My comment was a response to this: “People who want to stay safe in the Appstore garden have nothing to do, and everyone else can go the extra mile if they want to.“ Which is clearly an unrealistic depiction of how things would be.

toyg 6y ago

That's a false dichotomy. Apple itself is famous for picking good defaults, I'm sure they can implement a decent compromise that simply moves the needle a bit more towards consumers. Free browsers and a simple option to allow 3rd party appstores, set to off by default and somewhat bothersome to switch (i.e. buried into iTunes account screens, behind password, possibly with a periodic reminder every few months) would be more than enough. People who want to stay safe in the Appstore garden have nothing to do, and everyone else can go the extra mile if they want to. Anything else, like two iOS versions, is simply a provocation on the level of "we cannot unbundle IE".

zepto 6y ago
“People who want to stay safe in the Appstore garden have nothing to do, and everyone else can go the extra mile if they want to.“ This is where this line of reasoning goes wrong. People will be persuaded to go out of the App Store ecosystem regardless of whether it is good for them or not. Tens of billions of dollars and the most valuable advertising real estate on Facebook, Amazon, and the front page of Google, not to mention Epic and the other TenCent owned games companies will all be used to convince users to install alternative App Store. Facebook and Amazon will presumably bundle stores directly into their apps. Why wouldn’t many other companies do this. Presumably TikTok would.
- tekknik 6y ago
  > People will be persuaded to go out of the App Store ecosystem regardless of whether it is good for them or not. This. We devs do a great/horrible enough job of this already being lazy with implementations and saying “Chrome is the only supported browser”
- toyg 6y ago
  This reasoning presumes that consumers will see no advantage at all in staying in the Apple Appstore. If true, this would simply prove that the Apple Appstore is effectively uncompetitive in the market, and can only profit in a situation of monopoly. But it doesn’t matter, because all this is effectively false in practice. The overwhelming majority of people can barely be bothered to change their desktop browser, and even then they mostly do it only when directed (by their IT or their power-user of reference). This idea that they will all suddenly go tweak-crazy and install every appstore under the sun is simply an exaggeration, a strawman propped up to defend Apple’s utterly anticompetitive practices.
  - zepto 6y ago
    “This reasoning presumes that consumers will see no advantage at all” You’re going to need to explain this. I don’t see anything in what I wrote that leads to the conclusions in your first paragraph. 1. Users may not understand the security/privacy benefits until after they have sacrificed them. 2. There will be very large competitors trying to persuade them that there are no benefits. E.g. https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/16/22178068/facebook-apple-newspaper-ads-ios-privacy-changes https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/16/22178068/facebook-apple-... 3. Alternate stores will pay for exclusives and users will be forced to use them or lose important apps. 4. Key apps such as Facebook itself will just build stores into their apps. As to your second paragraph: “The overwhelming majority of people can barely be bothered to change their desktop browser, and even then they mostly do it only when directed..” This is true, which is precisely why only Facebook and Google plus Amazon and a few others, E.g. Epic, will have the resources to persuade users to establish large alternative stores. Google advertised Chrome on the front page, and on TV. This is exactly what would happen with alternative stores. “This idea that they will all suddenly go tweak-crazy and install every appstore under the sun is simply an exaggeration..” A strawman is when you present a deliberately weak version of another person’s argument, and then attack it. This paragraph of yours is a strawman. Nobody alluded to anyone going tweak crazy etc. Nobody defended Apple. My comment was a response to this: “People who want to stay safe in the Appstore garden have nothing to do, and everyone else can go the extra mile if they want to.“ Which is clearly an unrealistic depiction of how things would be.