5 ms·

This is exactly why I'm hesitant about going back to Apple ecosystem. I like the M1 stuff and the recent hardware changes - but the walled garden and the Appsto

This is exactly why I'm hesitant about going back to Apple ecosystem. I like the M1 stuff and the recent hardware changes - but the walled garden and the Appstore lockdown to protect their cash cow are coming at the expense of functionality and I just can't get behind that. Hoping the next gen of x86 chips finally hit that sweet spot of performance/low power/heat.

prox 4y ago
The cash cow is also what keeps the quality and user experience high.
- peoplefromibiza 4y ago
  but the walled garden and the Appstore lockdown [...] are coming at the expense of functionality I guess this comment says that the user experience is going down, because of the cash cow and despite it's generating a huge amount of money.
  - prox 4y ago
    Not my experience. Maybe for specific stuff for HN type users, but in general the functionality (aka options) in recent years have gone up, not down. Most apps are very high quality compared to Android especially (and yes I use both ecosystems) There is a reason it is a cash cow. People like buying it.
    - peoplefromibiza 4y ago
      Sorry if this sound dismissal, but Ferraris are a cash cow too. People like to buy them. Research shows that there are 80+ apps installed on the average smartphone. But with that said, people aren't using all of those apps. The average person uses 9 mobile apps per day and 30 apps per month. Most of them are games, the apps people can't live without are ~15 and are made by largest brands of social media platforms and e-commerce They have the resources to make the same high quality apps on every platform. In my view Apple users will keep using Apple by the force of habit, Apple users will perceive lower quality in Android ecosystem, because there's more choice. Also, on Android there are a lot of open source apps that are uglier but work exactly as intended, no ads, no phone home etc If you go to a Bang & Olufsen shop and then to RadioShack the perception is of a lower quality, which is probably true, but who needs bang & olufsen headphones to listen to a 64kbs podcast while driving to work?
- FpUser 4y ago
  My "user experience" includes using hardware / software to it's potential extent. If I am limited to a kindergarten state for marketing reasons I simply do not join the ecosystem.
- usrn 4y ago
  No. The user experience on iOS when you want to use any kind of FOSS (xmpp and irc clients, compilers, git without some closed wrapper etc) is shit. You're often stuck without notifications and you might even have to use iSH which is ~1/10th-1/100th speed of the original Pinephone. It also doesn't stop malware since the contractors doing app reviews don't instrument the apps, they just play with them for a few minutes to see if something looks wrong. The App Store is full of malware but it makes you feel safe.
  - zaik 4y ago
    Monal seems to be a kind of okay XMPP client for iOS.
    - usrn 4y ago
      Exactly. It's all "kind of okay" at best. OSX used to have the best XMPP and IRC clients and some were ported to iOS; it's not a lack of effort on the part of the developers it's a critical problem with the platform.
  - HidyBush 4y ago
    FOSS on Apple products that only have an app store is doomed because it costs money to have a developer account. FOSS activists always claim that it's free as in free speech and not free beer, but somehow these FOSS apps everyone claims to need can't even reach the $100/y necessary to keep them on the app store.
    - usrn 4y ago
      Not just the developer account, the developers are required to maintain app specific infrastructure to do things like push notifications. That's why FOSS apps rarely have them. All of this on top of the the hardware cost and having someone run the iOS API treadmill and deal with app store reviews makes FOSS on iOS prohibitively expensive for everyone but the most committed. It pretty much filters out everyone that isn't a corporation or irrationally passionate.
rollcat 4y ago
> Hoping the next gen of x86 chips finally hit that sweet spot of performance/low power/heat. Well I'm hoping we're finally getting the shove to move off x86, there's nothing particularly exciting about the architecture itself, and we're finally getting a tangible proof that the compatibility layer has a huge price tag. I'm excited because displacing x86 is also a stepping stone for RISC-V, and might push various vendors to consider making their software more portable - which would be a win for literally everyone. > [...] the walled garden and the Appstore lockdown to protect their cash cow are coming at the expense of functionality [...] Emphasis mine - what is the functionality trade-off that you're referring to? The App Store has never stopped me from running any app from outside the App Store. I would agree that macOS is continuously getting a bit less hackable over time (how do you authorise cron to access the downloads folder...), but this has very clearly everything to do with the half-assed attempts at making the system more secure (a very noble and respectable goal), and nothing to do with restricting user freedom (after you factor in incompetence, carelessness, and ignorance). OpenBSD has always been making broadly similar moves: securelevel, signing packages, pledge/unveil, removing support for loadable kernel modules, removing unmaintained/insecure subsystems (Linux emulation, Bluetooth). Some of these have been a bit annoying, but reading this as removing user freedom seems like mis-interpreting the intent.
- smoldesu 4y ago
  > Well I'm hoping we're finally getting the shove to move off x86, there's nothing particularly exciting about the architecture itself... I actually largely agree with you here. We need to be transitioning to open ISAs, so getting off x86 isn't something I disagree with. However, jumping from one proprietary ISA to another, slower one doesn't exactly make sense to me. No matter how you frame it, x86 is still the performance and compatibility king. I'd love a RISC-V laptop as much as the next guy, I think this is more about Apple increasing their profit margins by re-using their ISA licensing from their phones/tablets. > Emphasis mine - what is the functionality trade-off that you're referring to? The App Store has never stopped me from running any app from outside the App Store. Well, the discussion is the Apple ecosystem, not just Mac, and in that sense the App Store does prevent you from ingesting third-party software or running arbitrary code on your own device. I also don't think this is about security as much as it's about control. Apple now directly competes with companies like Spotify, Netflix, Hulu, Microsoft, Meta, the list goes on for days. If they control their hardware and software experience end-to-end, then they control the users too. > ...and nothing to do with restricting user freedom But how exactly can we prove that? Apple says one thing and does another. They say they're protecting user privacy by hashing your cloud photos with a neural network. They say they've built the fastest GPU and then backpedal when it gets benchmarked. If they give you less capabilities with each update and say it's making you safer, I don't think I'd take their word entirely at face value; maybe security is part of the motivation, but almost certainly not the entire story. As for OpenBSD? I actually like their approach for the most part, but there's a reason it's still a fairly niche OS. People like having options, and taking away your Linuxulator and Bluetooth modules doesn't make for a super enticing desktop experience. MacOS suffers the same issue, but more for the development crowd. There are so many footguns in MacOS for developing standard *NIX software that it makes my head spin. Want the standard GNU coreutils? Of course they're not built in, go grab a package manager and download them posthaste! Want to use Git? Here, download 750mb of random utilities onto your system so the 20mb program can execute. Oh, you wanted Bash to be up-to-date? We sorta forgot about that one... ...but their MacOS, iPad and iPhone development tools get fixed just fine. Gotta tend to the breadwinners before you take care of the intrinsic issues in your OS, I guess. In closing, I don't actually disagree with a lot of your rhetoric, but I don't think you're addressing the parent's statement. Apple is flighty, they do crazy things in the blink of an eye and everyone else is forced to just go along. What happens if I go back to the Apple ecosystem and they remove all the iPhone and Macbook ports? There could be so many "gotchas" that many people simply don't feel safe going back to that lifestyle anymore. There is no roadmap, and that scares people who rely on stable software for a living. It's why I end up developing more on Linux than I do on Mac.

prox 4y ago

The cash cow is also what keeps the quality and user experience high.

peoplefromibiza 4y ago
but the walled garden and the Appstore lockdown [...] are coming at the expense of functionality I guess this comment says that the user experience is going down, because of the cash cow and despite it's generating a huge amount of money.
- prox 4y ago
  Not my experience. Maybe for specific stuff for HN type users, but in general the functionality (aka options) in recent years have gone up, not down. Most apps are very high quality compared to Android especially (and yes I use both ecosystems) There is a reason it is a cash cow. People like buying it.
  - peoplefromibiza 4y ago
    Sorry if this sound dismissal, but Ferraris are a cash cow too. People like to buy them. Research shows that there are 80+ apps installed on the average smartphone. But with that said, people aren't using all of those apps. The average person uses 9 mobile apps per day and 30 apps per month. Most of them are games, the apps people can't live without are ~15 and are made by largest brands of social media platforms and e-commerce They have the resources to make the same high quality apps on every platform. In my view Apple users will keep using Apple by the force of habit, Apple users will perceive lower quality in Android ecosystem, because there's more choice. Also, on Android there are a lot of open source apps that are uglier but work exactly as intended, no ads, no phone home etc If you go to a Bang & Olufsen shop and then to RadioShack the perception is of a lower quality, which is probably true, but who needs bang & olufsen headphones to listen to a 64kbs podcast while driving to work?
FpUser 4y ago
My "user experience" includes using hardware / software to it's potential extent. If I am limited to a kindergarten state for marketing reasons I simply do not join the ecosystem.
usrn 4y ago
No. The user experience on iOS when you want to use any kind of FOSS (xmpp and irc clients, compilers, git without some closed wrapper etc) is shit. You're often stuck without notifications and you might even have to use iSH which is ~1/10th-1/100th speed of the original Pinephone. It also doesn't stop malware since the contractors doing app reviews don't instrument the apps, they just play with them for a few minutes to see if something looks wrong. The App Store is full of malware but it makes you feel safe.
- zaik 4y ago
  Monal seems to be a kind of okay XMPP client for iOS.
  - usrn 4y ago
    Exactly. It's all "kind of okay" at best. OSX used to have the best XMPP and IRC clients and some were ported to iOS; it's not a lack of effort on the part of the developers it's a critical problem with the platform.
- HidyBush 4y ago
  FOSS on Apple products that only have an app store is doomed because it costs money to have a developer account. FOSS activists always claim that it's free as in free speech and not free beer, but somehow these FOSS apps everyone claims to need can't even reach the $100/y necessary to keep them on the app store.
  - usrn 4y ago
    Not just the developer account, the developers are required to maintain app specific infrastructure to do things like push notifications. That's why FOSS apps rarely have them. All of this on top of the the hardware cost and having someone run the iOS API treadmill and deal with app store reviews makes FOSS on iOS prohibitively expensive for everyone but the most committed. It pretty much filters out everyone that isn't a corporation or irrationally passionate.

rollcat 4y ago

> Hoping the next gen of x86 chips finally hit that sweet spot of performance/low power/heat. Well I'm hoping we're finally getting the shove to move off x86, there's nothing particularly exciting about the architecture itself, and we're finally getting a tangible proof that the compatibility layer has a huge price tag. I'm excited because displacing x86 is also a stepping stone for RISC-V, and might push various vendors to consider making their software more portable - which would be a win for literally everyone. > [...] the walled garden and the Appstore lockdown to protect their cash cow are coming at the expense of functionality [...] Emphasis mine - what is the functionality trade-off that you're referring to? The App Store has never stopped me from running any app from outside the App Store. I would agree that macOS is continuously getting a bit less hackable over time (how do you authorise cron to access the downloads folder...), but this has very clearly everything to do with the half-assed attempts at making the system more secure (a very noble and respectable goal), and nothing to do with restricting user freedom (after you factor in incompetence, carelessness, and ignorance). OpenBSD has always been making broadly similar moves: securelevel, signing packages, pledge/unveil, removing support for loadable kernel modules, removing unmaintained/insecure subsystems (Linux emulation, Bluetooth). Some of these have been a bit annoying, but reading this as removing user freedom seems like mis-interpreting the intent.

smoldesu 4y ago
> Well I'm hoping we're finally getting the shove to move off x86, there's nothing particularly exciting about the architecture itself... I actually largely agree with you here. We need to be transitioning to open ISAs, so getting off x86 isn't something I disagree with. However, jumping from one proprietary ISA to another, slower one doesn't exactly make sense to me. No matter how you frame it, x86 is still the performance and compatibility king. I'd love a RISC-V laptop as much as the next guy, I think this is more about Apple increasing their profit margins by re-using their ISA licensing from their phones/tablets. > Emphasis mine - what is the functionality trade-off that you're referring to? The App Store has never stopped me from running any app from outside the App Store. Well, the discussion is the Apple ecosystem, not just Mac, and in that sense the App Store does prevent you from ingesting third-party software or running arbitrary code on your own device. I also don't think this is about security as much as it's about control. Apple now directly competes with companies like Spotify, Netflix, Hulu, Microsoft, Meta, the list goes on for days. If they control their hardware and software experience end-to-end, then they control the users too. > ...and nothing to do with restricting user freedom But how exactly can we prove that? Apple says one thing and does another. They say they're protecting user privacy by hashing your cloud photos with a neural network. They say they've built the fastest GPU and then backpedal when it gets benchmarked. If they give you less capabilities with each update and say it's making you safer, I don't think I'd take their word entirely at face value; maybe security is part of the motivation, but almost certainly not the entire story. As for OpenBSD? I actually like their approach for the most part, but there's a reason it's still a fairly niche OS. People like having options, and taking away your Linuxulator and Bluetooth modules doesn't make for a super enticing desktop experience. MacOS suffers the same issue, but more for the development crowd. There are so many footguns in MacOS for developing standard *NIX software that it makes my head spin. Want the standard GNU coreutils? Of course they're not built in, go grab a package manager and download them posthaste! Want to use Git? Here, download 750mb of random utilities onto your system so the 20mb program can execute. Oh, you wanted Bash to be up-to-date? We sorta forgot about that one... ...but their MacOS, iPad and iPhone development tools get fixed just fine. Gotta tend to the breadwinners before you take care of the intrinsic issues in your OS, I guess. In closing, I don't actually disagree with a lot of your rhetoric, but I don't think you're addressing the parent's statement. Apple is flighty, they do crazy things in the blink of an eye and everyone else is forced to just go along. What happens if I go back to the Apple ecosystem and they remove all the iPhone and Macbook ports? There could be so many "gotchas" that many people simply don't feel safe going back to that lifestyle anymore. There is no roadmap, and that scares people who rely on stable software for a living. It's why I end up developing more on Linux than I do on Mac.