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

by prox 4y ago

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.

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

by prox 4y ago

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

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.