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How you can argue for less software freedoms, while paying a 30% tax for any app you distribute, is honestly mind boggling to me. >On the one hand, Apple is ac

How you can argue for less software freedoms, while paying a 30% tax for any app you distribute, is honestly mind boggling to me. >On the one hand, Apple is acting as a store curator and demanding that its customers be made aware of tracking software. This sounds like marketing. Apple is limiting what apps their customers have access to. I wonder if you would make the same argument if Apple starts blocking websites?

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
nickysielicki 6y ago
It’s not about the outcome, it’s about reasoning from first principles and going where ever that leads you, regardless of how much you dislike the outcome. Nobody has to buy an iPhone, iPad, or MacBook. Apple has the right to create the software ecosystem they want to create. Their success in mobile computing is arguably a direct result of their closed ecosystem.
- kevingadd 6y ago
  In the past US regulators have not agreed with your reasoning here. They broke up the original big telephone companies, for example.
  - zepto 6y ago
    Those had an actual monopoly - literally no alternative service provider.
    - kevingadd 6y ago
      If I want to use FaceTime to talk to my mother, the only way I can do that is by purchasing an iPhone. What's the difference? Do I have to buy my mom a new Android phone and repurchase all her apps and digital content to exercise my Consumer Freedom?
      - toomuchtodo 6y ago
        You can use any number of other chat or video communications apps available on both iOS and Android to chat with your mother (I recommend Signal, but FlownScepter's list is good as well). Your desire to specifically use FaceTime does not make it a monopoly.
      - FlownScepter 6y ago
        A nonexhaustive list of FaceTime alternatives: Skype, Facebook Messenger, Discord, Zoom, GoToMeeting, Google Hangouts, Cisco Webex, Microsoft Teams, Spike, ICQ, Tox, Viber, WhatsApp, Line, WeChat, Wire.
        dleslie 6y ago
        None of those are FaceTime, which is what OP's mother uses.
        FlownScepter 6y ago
        That would be the meaning of "alternatives," yes.
        dleslie 6y ago
        It's not an alternative if it does not meet the necessary conditions for use.
        dodobirdlord 6y ago
        Companies have exclusive control of their own products basically by definition. Claiming that there's some sort of monopolistic behavior inherent in a company deciding where and how you can buy their product is absolute shark-jumping.
        dleslie 6y ago
        That's a poor definition. Many companies are regulated in a manner where their services must be open to competition to access and use.
    - leothecool 6y ago
      Not true. MCI predates the break-up of ma bell.
      - zepto 6y ago
        It wasn’t available to everyone.
    - kbenson 6y ago
      Anti-competitive behavior does not require a Monopoly. A monopoly is just a specific type of situation which makes anti-competitive behavior easy and incentivized. Anti-competitive behavior that harms consumers is the problem (and question). Whether Apple is a monopoly or not is really besides the point.
      - jevgeni 6y ago
        It’s still difficult to argue that Apple refusing to subsidize Epic store is anti competitive
        kbenson 6y ago
        In isolation, maybe. When you consider that they control the whole stack, and you can't run other operating system software on their phones and nor can you run their software on other hardware, and that the operating system is what's ensuring that only their store is allowed, that given them full control of hardware, operating system, store, (and because of store) third party software that runs on it. There is no competition in hardware for their operating system because of them locking it down. There is no competition in operating systems for their hardware because of them locking it down. There is no competition in application delivery for their systems because of locking it down. There is no competition in some applications and/or functionality (webview/safari) for their systems because of them locking it down. Each of these rely on and in turn reinforce the others. Taken together they all Apple to control absolutely all competition to do with their devices. Some aspects of this are fairly normalized and we're used to, but others less so (the complete hardware/OS lockdown, which in turn feeds into problems with repair). Whether some aspects seem normal or not, they all deserve a look with fresh eyes, as the world and how we use devices like this is changing, and old models of thinking may or may not work best for us. The bottom line is whether consumers are harmed by their actions or not, and that's what we should use to measure this, not whether it seems okay, or matches our way of thinking about what a company should be able to control. At the base level, I think a useful question to ask is "why is the store cut for managing and distributing apps 30%, and why hasn't it changed with the emergence of other stores?" One answer might be that it really takes about 30% of revenues to provide store functionality. Common public sources seem to indicate this is not the case. Another answer might be that for some reason, the market is resistant to change. I think this is because one large market member, Apple, is insulated from competition to a large degree, and didn't feel any pressure to change. Other market members match this number because the market is distorted by Apple's resistance to change. I think the fact that as soon as congress started making noises about investigating app market pricing Apple was able to immediately drop their cut for certain store items significantly points towards them knowing this, and wanting to get ahead of the problem so the status quo isn't changed too much to their detriment.
  - FlownScepter 6y ago
    A quick Google says iOS' market share is 14%. I don't understand this position at all. Google is by far and away the market leader. Their ecosystem is free and you can do just about anything in it. Their Play store's standards are utterly bare bones. The devices are cheaper. If what you want is an open source (ish) platform that you can hack on, modify, install software yourself, whatever, all of that is available to you, at a lower price, over there. This feels to be the ultimate first world problem, to pay a handsome premium for a top-tier device, then to complain about it's shortcomings. So take it back! Nobody made you buy one. It's not like there aren't Android handsets that do all the stuff iOS ones do, occasionally even better, for similar prices. The main reason I stick to iOS is precisely for the locked down OS, and the curated App Store, so to see so many people complaining that they purchased the device when those things are like, the most obvious part of what comprises an iOS device, then complain about those things, is utter madness to me. Why the fuck must Apple also do that, with a higher priced device, that everyone claims is inferior to Android handsets with their quad core processors and is "just a fashion item?" Android users seem unhealthily obsessed with turning iOS into Android. Just let us do our own thing over here for fuck's sake. Yet again and again on here and elsewhere, iOS is constantly positioned as this MONOLITH of anti-consumer anti-developer DOOM, absolutely RUINING the mobile market. Again, FOUR. TEEN. PERCENT.
    - HideousKojima 6y ago
      14% is worldwide, in the US it's roughly 50%
      - FlownScepter 6y ago
        That's still nothing close to a monopoly.
        stale2002 6y ago
        Anti trust law does not require a monopoly.
        6y ago
- leothecool 6y ago
  Its not exactly a good thing that they leveraged itunes library vendor lock-in to drive market share early on. The anti-consumer aspects of their closed ecosystem directly resulted in their success. There's no doubt about it.
  - dijit 6y ago
    Sorry, I don't buy this at all. iTunes library (at least for Books and Music) is DRM-free and has been from an early stage (though _did_ launch with DRM). I've had great success in migrating my purchased items back and forth from linux with absolutely no issue. However now they're using streaming and I'm unable to easily "own" any music anymore... or at the very least it takes you off of the easy path.
    - Wowfunhappy 6y ago
      Are iBooks DRM-Free now? That's exciting, do you know when that happened?
    - aardvarkr 6y ago
      Yeah, apple was one of the first to go DRM free for music. That was a big deal and a bold move by apple.
    - leothecool 6y ago
      Right. At launch, leveraging ipod marketshare was key. After those same users got locked in to the app-store, the music library lock in became less important. So they started out by letting you pay extra money to break out of their walled garden. I'm pretty sure purchases made in the ipod era are still drm encumbered today.
    - dkonofalski 6y ago
      Apple wanted to launch iTunes as DRM-free but wasn't able to negotiate the licensing for it. The content providers were the ones that made the DRM a requirement.
      - 6y ago
- chc 6y ago
  It's true that nobody has to buy an iPhone, in that they can choose any of the one competing platform. "There's literally a single competitor" isn't a very strong argument against regulation, though.
  - JakeTheAndroid 6y ago
    I don't know that it's entirely fair to say there is literally a single competitor. While Android is a single platform, you're free to get it from a range of vendors that all add their own flavor to Android. Some are really locked down, some are root by default. So you actually have a range of competing platforms even if they are powered by only 2 OSes. And in the case of both devices (Apple and Android) you can still flash your own "competing" OS on the hardware. It's far easier to do this on an Android device than an Apple one, but the hardware is separate from the software you're running. But there are multiple mobile OSes not named Android or iOS. What qualifies as a competitor, and what responsibility does Apple or Android have at creating new competitors? What actions are Google or Apple taking to actively stomp out mobile based OSes? Didn't Mozilla give it a shot? Didn't Ubunutu put out a mobile version of their OS? The lack of competitor for OSes seems like an odd argument to make. They exist even if they don't have marketshare, and there is no requisite business structure behind an OS in order for it to be a competing software. There are options. They may not be the single most accessible, and they may not meet your needs, but they exist.
    - chc 6y ago
      This argument doesn't pass the "Would it work just as well as a defense of late-'90s Microsoft?" test. I would be willing to concede most of the facts you brought up, but none of that in any way mitigates the amount of control Apple holds. Nobody's saying it's Apple's fault that they're in a duopoly position in the phone space, but that doesn't absolve them of the responsibility that position holds either. What is Apple's fault is that they're using their position in one market to force out potential competitors in other markets (e.g. in-app payments, and app distribution in general).
      - zepto 6y ago
- ClumsyPilot 6y ago
  "it’s about reasoning from first principles and going where ever that leads you, regardless of how much you dislike the outcome" This sounds an awfull lot like the though process of religious zealots and extremists. Ignore the real world, consequences be damned, ideology comes first. There is no way we could make an error of judgement. Thats how you get a famine and 50 million dead in China. "Apple has the right to create the software ecosystem they want to create." There is absolutely no such right, neither morally nor legally
  - insert_coin 6y ago
    The right to one's own work, to one's own mind outcome is arguably the only real right we can even pretend to have. What there is none is the "right" for governments to claim ownership to other's work and dictate you must do what your own free will tells you is not on your best interest, that is why they use force.
    - ClumsyPilot 6y ago
      My work and private data is stored on apples's systems, so either it's my rights to do as I please or their's.
      - filoleg 6y ago
        Your work data is not something within your own rights to do as you please with it, it is that of your employer. Your private data is something within your own rights to do as you please with it, which gives you a choice of whether you want to store it on apple's systems or on someone else's systems or on the local systems that you personally own.
        ClumsyPilot 6y ago
        'My work' is a collective term for all products of my efforts, from official employment to sex tapes. Apple is not privy to the various rights and claims on it. Now, what are you even arguing? Once i out data on an apple computer they can do whatever they want? If I but an iPhone is it still not a 'local system I personally own'? Do they have to respect my data, or do they not have to follow the law?
- fouric 6y ago
  > Apple has the right to create the software ecosystem they want to create. So say you. I say that consumers have the right to run whatever software they want on the hardware that they have purchased. Apple can create whatever software platform they want, but it seems pretty bad that they don't allow you to use whatever software platform you want on the hardware that you paid them for.
  - suifbwish 6y ago
    There is nothing stopping you from rooting your iPhone and installing android on it. Problem solved. Now you can add all the spammerware you like.
    - adambyrtek 6y ago
      Classic false dichotomy. Do you really think that any software not blessed by Apple must be necessarily malware?
      - paulmd 6y ago
        A significant amount of it is, yes.
    - saagarjha 6y ago
      Nothing except a hardware root of trust sealed by keys owned by Apple?
      - suifbwish 6y ago
        I suppose you want the raw source for all the proprietary software you buy as well?
        saagarjha 6y ago
        That would certainly be nice.
  - 6y ago
cmdli 6y ago
As a user, I'm free to buy Android if I want to. I buy iPhones specifically because software developers are forced to go through Apple's more strict guidelines (see the Apple/Facebook fight for a recent example of why I personally like it). I can trust the software I use much more on Apple's platform. I want to have the freedom to buy and use such a platform, and Apple wants the freedom to sell and maintain such a platform. The entire process falls apart if Apple is forced to allow other App Stores. Why should the court restrict those freedoms and break this consumer benefit?
- Dma54rhs 6y ago
  I'm sure many preferred internet provider and railway cartels too because they didn't want other people to fiddle with the system. When sideloading will be enabled you're more than welcome to stay in the walled garden, but you can't dictate how other people want to use their devices.
- ThreeOne 6y ago
  By that logic, you would want MacOS to be the same, apps only available via the store? It would give you all the same benefits, why is MacOS still 'open'? Why is there a terminal?
- ThatPlayer 6y ago
  > The entire process falls apart if Apple is forced to allow other App Stores. Why? You have the choice of not using other App Stores. Just like you have the choice to not use Android, so therefore it doesn't effect you.
  - cmdli 6y ago
    But it does affect me. Apple's "walled garden" approach only works if they are able to actually have walls and force companies to abide by their rules. Removing those restrictions removes any leverage Apple (and by extension consumers like me) have over other large companies. For example, Netflix could say "you have to use this other App Store" and many people would convert. It's essentially a tragedy of the commons. Sure, it may not be fair to these large corporations, but it's currently a great situation for consumers. Everybody is free to either go more laissez-faire (Android) or more walled garden (iOS). I don't think the courts should ruin that.
cwhiz 6y ago
>How you can argue for less software freedoms, while paying a 30% tax for any app you distribute, is honestly mind boggling to me. Why do you care what my preferences are? If you don't care for the iOS model, you should go buy an Android. Apple doesn't have a monopoly. I prefer the Apple model because I want these restrictions. I want apps to be blocked from cross-app tracking. I want apps to have to explicitly spell out the type of data they collect from me, and how they use it. I don't care that I can't side load apps. If you want a spyware phone, go get an Android.
- kaba0 6y ago
  I’m sorry but it an astonishingly stupid take. Apple and android DO have a duopoly, and it is bad for every phone owner. Also, allowing me to install whatever app I want with eg a hidden setting like enable developer mode will not hinder your walled garden at all. It won’t case the Apple Store to disappear, simply other alternatives will have a place. And yes your last point: there is no good choice. So that’s your solution, to let it be bad for everyone?
  - cwhiz 6y ago
    >I’m sorry but it an astonishingly stupid take. To you. >Apple and android DO have a duopoly, and it is bad for every phone owner. Google owns over 85% of the worldwide smartphone market. I agree that we need more competition. This competition should come from breaking Google/Android into 4 pieces, and then we'll have 5 companies with 15-25% market.
    - kaba0 6y ago
      That would be great, but it will not happen. There is an optimal number for phone platforms that can exist at the same time and for which companies will develop apps for. And that number seems to be 2. I really hope linux phones can provide an alternative but their only chance for even a most minimal success is perfect interop with existing Android applications.
    - heavyset_go 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

nickysielicki 6y ago

It’s not about the outcome, it’s about reasoning from first principles and going where ever that leads you, regardless of how much you dislike the outcome. Nobody has to buy an iPhone, iPad, or MacBook. Apple has the right to create the software ecosystem they want to create. Their success in mobile computing is arguably a direct result of their closed ecosystem.

kevingadd 6y ago
In the past US regulators have not agreed with your reasoning here. They broke up the original big telephone companies, for example.
- zepto 6y ago
  Those had an actual monopoly - literally no alternative service provider.
  - kevingadd 6y ago
    If I want to use FaceTime to talk to my mother, the only way I can do that is by purchasing an iPhone. What's the difference? Do I have to buy my mom a new Android phone and repurchase all her apps and digital content to exercise my Consumer Freedom?
    - toomuchtodo 6y ago
      You can use any number of other chat or video communications apps available on both iOS and Android to chat with your mother (I recommend Signal, but FlownScepter's list is good as well). Your desire to specifically use FaceTime does not make it a monopoly.
    - FlownScepter 6y ago
      A nonexhaustive list of FaceTime alternatives: Skype, Facebook Messenger, Discord, Zoom, GoToMeeting, Google Hangouts, Cisco Webex, Microsoft Teams, Spike, ICQ, Tox, Viber, WhatsApp, Line, WeChat, Wire.
      - dleslie 6y ago
        None of those are FaceTime, which is what OP's mother uses.
        FlownScepter 6y ago
        That would be the meaning of "alternatives," yes.
        dleslie 6y ago
        It's not an alternative if it does not meet the necessary conditions for use.
        dodobirdlord 6y ago
        Companies have exclusive control of their own products basically by definition. Claiming that there's some sort of monopolistic behavior inherent in a company deciding where and how you can buy their product is absolute shark-jumping.
        dleslie 6y ago
        That's a poor definition. Many companies are regulated in a manner where their services must be open to competition to access and use.
  - leothecool 6y ago
    Not true. MCI predates the break-up of ma bell.
    - zepto 6y ago
      It wasn’t available to everyone.
  - kbenson 6y ago
    Anti-competitive behavior does not require a Monopoly. A monopoly is just a specific type of situation which makes anti-competitive behavior easy and incentivized. Anti-competitive behavior that harms consumers is the problem (and question). Whether Apple is a monopoly or not is really besides the point.
    - jevgeni 6y ago
      It’s still difficult to argue that Apple refusing to subsidize Epic store is anti competitive
      - kbenson 6y ago
        In isolation, maybe. When you consider that they control the whole stack, and you can't run other operating system software on their phones and nor can you run their software on other hardware, and that the operating system is what's ensuring that only their store is allowed, that given them full control of hardware, operating system, store, (and because of store) third party software that runs on it. There is no competition in hardware for their operating system because of them locking it down. There is no competition in operating systems for their hardware because of them locking it down. There is no competition in application delivery for their systems because of locking it down. There is no competition in some applications and/or functionality (webview/safari) for their systems because of them locking it down. Each of these rely on and in turn reinforce the others. Taken together they all Apple to control absolutely all competition to do with their devices. Some aspects of this are fairly normalized and we're used to, but others less so (the complete hardware/OS lockdown, which in turn feeds into problems with repair). Whether some aspects seem normal or not, they all deserve a look with fresh eyes, as the world and how we use devices like this is changing, and old models of thinking may or may not work best for us. The bottom line is whether consumers are harmed by their actions or not, and that's what we should use to measure this, not whether it seems okay, or matches our way of thinking about what a company should be able to control. At the base level, I think a useful question to ask is "why is the store cut for managing and distributing apps 30%, and why hasn't it changed with the emergence of other stores?" One answer might be that it really takes about 30% of revenues to provide store functionality. Common public sources seem to indicate this is not the case. Another answer might be that for some reason, the market is resistant to change. I think this is because one large market member, Apple, is insulated from competition to a large degree, and didn't feel any pressure to change. Other market members match this number because the market is distorted by Apple's resistance to change. I think the fact that as soon as congress started making noises about investigating app market pricing Apple was able to immediately drop their cut for certain store items significantly points towards them knowing this, and wanting to get ahead of the problem so the status quo isn't changed too much to their detriment.
- FlownScepter 6y ago
  A quick Google says iOS' market share is 14%. I don't understand this position at all. Google is by far and away the market leader. Their ecosystem is free and you can do just about anything in it. Their Play store's standards are utterly bare bones. The devices are cheaper. If what you want is an open source (ish) platform that you can hack on, modify, install software yourself, whatever, all of that is available to you, at a lower price, over there. This feels to be the ultimate first world problem, to pay a handsome premium for a top-tier device, then to complain about it's shortcomings. So take it back! Nobody made you buy one. It's not like there aren't Android handsets that do all the stuff iOS ones do, occasionally even better, for similar prices. The main reason I stick to iOS is precisely for the locked down OS, and the curated App Store, so to see so many people complaining that they purchased the device when those things are like, the most obvious part of what comprises an iOS device, then complain about those things, is utter madness to me. Why the fuck must Apple also do that, with a higher priced device, that everyone claims is inferior to Android handsets with their quad core processors and is "just a fashion item?" Android users seem unhealthily obsessed with turning iOS into Android. Just let us do our own thing over here for fuck's sake. Yet again and again on here and elsewhere, iOS is constantly positioned as this MONOLITH of anti-consumer anti-developer DOOM, absolutely RUINING the mobile market. Again, FOUR. TEEN. PERCENT.
  - HideousKojima 6y ago
    14% is worldwide, in the US it's roughly 50%
    - FlownScepter 6y ago
      That's still nothing close to a monopoly.
      - stale2002 6y ago
        Anti trust law does not require a monopoly.
        6y ago
leothecool 6y ago
Its not exactly a good thing that they leveraged itunes library vendor lock-in to drive market share early on. The anti-consumer aspects of their closed ecosystem directly resulted in their success. There's no doubt about it.
- dijit 6y ago
  Sorry, I don't buy this at all. iTunes library (at least for Books and Music) is DRM-free and has been from an early stage (though _did_ launch with DRM). I've had great success in migrating my purchased items back and forth from linux with absolutely no issue. However now they're using streaming and I'm unable to easily "own" any music anymore... or at the very least it takes you off of the easy path.
  - Wowfunhappy 6y ago
    Are iBooks DRM-Free now? That's exciting, do you know when that happened?
  - aardvarkr 6y ago
    Yeah, apple was one of the first to go DRM free for music. That was a big deal and a bold move by apple.
  - leothecool 6y ago
    Right. At launch, leveraging ipod marketshare was key. After those same users got locked in to the app-store, the music library lock in became less important. So they started out by letting you pay extra money to break out of their walled garden. I'm pretty sure purchases made in the ipod era are still drm encumbered today.
  - dkonofalski 6y ago
    Apple wanted to launch iTunes as DRM-free but wasn't able to negotiate the licensing for it. The content providers were the ones that made the DRM a requirement.
    - 6y ago
chc 6y ago
It's true that nobody has to buy an iPhone, in that they can choose any of the one competing platform. "There's literally a single competitor" isn't a very strong argument against regulation, though.
- JakeTheAndroid 6y ago
  I don't know that it's entirely fair to say there is literally a single competitor. While Android is a single platform, you're free to get it from a range of vendors that all add their own flavor to Android. Some are really locked down, some are root by default. So you actually have a range of competing platforms even if they are powered by only 2 OSes. And in the case of both devices (Apple and Android) you can still flash your own "competing" OS on the hardware. It's far easier to do this on an Android device than an Apple one, but the hardware is separate from the software you're running. But there are multiple mobile OSes not named Android or iOS. What qualifies as a competitor, and what responsibility does Apple or Android have at creating new competitors? What actions are Google or Apple taking to actively stomp out mobile based OSes? Didn't Mozilla give it a shot? Didn't Ubunutu put out a mobile version of their OS? The lack of competitor for OSes seems like an odd argument to make. They exist even if they don't have marketshare, and there is no requisite business structure behind an OS in order for it to be a competing software. There are options. They may not be the single most accessible, and they may not meet your needs, but they exist.
  - chc 6y ago
    This argument doesn't pass the "Would it work just as well as a defense of late-'90s Microsoft?" test. I would be willing to concede most of the facts you brought up, but none of that in any way mitigates the amount of control Apple holds. Nobody's saying it's Apple's fault that they're in a duopoly position in the phone space, but that doesn't absolve them of the responsibility that position holds either. What is Apple's fault is that they're using their position in one market to force out potential competitors in other markets (e.g. in-app payments, and app distribution in general).
    - zepto 6y ago
ClumsyPilot 6y ago
"it’s about reasoning from first principles and going where ever that leads you, regardless of how much you dislike the outcome" This sounds an awfull lot like the though process of religious zealots and extremists. Ignore the real world, consequences be damned, ideology comes first. There is no way we could make an error of judgement. Thats how you get a famine and 50 million dead in China. "Apple has the right to create the software ecosystem they want to create." There is absolutely no such right, neither morally nor legally
- insert_coin 6y ago
  The right to one's own work, to one's own mind outcome is arguably the only real right we can even pretend to have. What there is none is the "right" for governments to claim ownership to other's work and dictate you must do what your own free will tells you is not on your best interest, that is why they use force.
  - ClumsyPilot 6y ago
    My work and private data is stored on apples's systems, so either it's my rights to do as I please or their's.
    - filoleg 6y ago
      Your work data is not something within your own rights to do as you please with it, it is that of your employer. Your private data is something within your own rights to do as you please with it, which gives you a choice of whether you want to store it on apple's systems or on someone else's systems or on the local systems that you personally own.
      - ClumsyPilot 6y ago
        'My work' is a collective term for all products of my efforts, from official employment to sex tapes. Apple is not privy to the various rights and claims on it. Now, what are you even arguing? Once i out data on an apple computer they can do whatever they want? If I but an iPhone is it still not a 'local system I personally own'? Do they have to respect my data, or do they not have to follow the law?
fouric 6y ago
> Apple has the right to create the software ecosystem they want to create. So say you. I say that consumers have the right to run whatever software they want on the hardware that they have purchased. Apple can create whatever software platform they want, but it seems pretty bad that they don't allow you to use whatever software platform you want on the hardware that you paid them for.
- suifbwish 6y ago
  There is nothing stopping you from rooting your iPhone and installing android on it. Problem solved. Now you can add all the spammerware you like.
  - adambyrtek 6y ago
    Classic false dichotomy. Do you really think that any software not blessed by Apple must be necessarily malware?
    - paulmd 6y ago
      A significant amount of it is, yes.
  - saagarjha 6y ago
    Nothing except a hardware root of trust sealed by keys owned by Apple?
    - suifbwish 6y ago
      I suppose you want the raw source for all the proprietary software you buy as well?
      - saagarjha 6y ago
        That would certainly be nice.
- 6y ago

cmdli 6y ago

As a user, I'm free to buy Android if I want to. I buy iPhones specifically because software developers are forced to go through Apple's more strict guidelines (see the Apple/Facebook fight for a recent example of why I personally like it). I can trust the software I use much more on Apple's platform. I want to have the freedom to buy and use such a platform, and Apple wants the freedom to sell and maintain such a platform. The entire process falls apart if Apple is forced to allow other App Stores. Why should the court restrict those freedoms and break this consumer benefit?

Dma54rhs 6y ago
I'm sure many preferred internet provider and railway cartels too because they didn't want other people to fiddle with the system. When sideloading will be enabled you're more than welcome to stay in the walled garden, but you can't dictate how other people want to use their devices.
ThreeOne 6y ago
By that logic, you would want MacOS to be the same, apps only available via the store? It would give you all the same benefits, why is MacOS still 'open'? Why is there a terminal?
ThatPlayer 6y ago
> The entire process falls apart if Apple is forced to allow other App Stores. Why? You have the choice of not using other App Stores. Just like you have the choice to not use Android, so therefore it doesn't effect you.
- cmdli 6y ago
  But it does affect me. Apple's "walled garden" approach only works if they are able to actually have walls and force companies to abide by their rules. Removing those restrictions removes any leverage Apple (and by extension consumers like me) have over other large companies. For example, Netflix could say "you have to use this other App Store" and many people would convert. It's essentially a tragedy of the commons. Sure, it may not be fair to these large corporations, but it's currently a great situation for consumers. Everybody is free to either go more laissez-faire (Android) or more walled garden (iOS). I don't think the courts should ruin that.

cwhiz 6y ago

>How you can argue for less software freedoms, while paying a 30% tax for any app you distribute, is honestly mind boggling to me. Why do you care what my preferences are? If you don't care for the iOS model, you should go buy an Android. Apple doesn't have a monopoly. I prefer the Apple model because I want these restrictions. I want apps to be blocked from cross-app tracking. I want apps to have to explicitly spell out the type of data they collect from me, and how they use it. I don't care that I can't side load apps. If you want a spyware phone, go get an Android.

kaba0 6y ago
I’m sorry but it an astonishingly stupid take. Apple and android DO have a duopoly, and it is bad for every phone owner. Also, allowing me to install whatever app I want with eg a hidden setting like enable developer mode will not hinder your walled garden at all. It won’t case the Apple Store to disappear, simply other alternatives will have a place. And yes your last point: there is no good choice. So that’s your solution, to let it be bad for everyone?
- cwhiz 6y ago
  >I’m sorry but it an astonishingly stupid take. To you. >Apple and android DO have a duopoly, and it is bad for every phone owner. Google owns over 85% of the worldwide smartphone market. I agree that we need more competition. This competition should come from breaking Google/Android into 4 pieces, and then we'll have 5 companies with 15-25% market.
  - kaba0 6y ago
    That would be great, but it will not happen. There is an optimal number for phone platforms that can exist at the same time and for which companies will develop apps for. And that number seems to be 2. I really hope linux phones can provide an alternative but their only chance for even a most minimal success is perfect interop with existing Android applications.
  - heavyset_go 6y ago