6 ms·

I strongly disagree. This is just big companies artificially separating their market segments to argue against too large of a market, and preserve their enormou

by rnk 3y ago

I strongly disagree. This is just big companies artificially separating their market segments to argue against too large of a market, and preserve their enormous profits with their huge percentage take. The world would be much better off with multiple stores. It will take legal action by the eu, and it will be hard, these rich companies are very influential. In the us we have too much capture of federal politicans, I only hope the eu can push it.

nextos 3y ago
I hope multiple stores shake a bit the iPad ecosystem. It's a great device and, unlike in mobile, there's no competition. Android tablets are pretty bad. Google dropped the ball, although they seem to be coming back. iPads could be fantastic devices to program in, but they are quite crippled by limitations. Boutique software companies, such as Panic or Omni Group, plus other developers could really extend the ecosystem beyond content consumption and simple document creation tasks.
- shagie 3y ago
  I believe that Google's ball drop with tablets has to do with that the phone manufacturers that Google partners with for Android are not as interested in tablets (likely using wifi) as they are with phones. Combine that with a lack of standardization and lack of focus for the tablet form factor... and that's what you've got. The iPad, on the other hand was the original "this is what we want". The iPad was the first thing that Apple was trying to make. > Work on the iPad itself actually traces back to 2004, when designer Jonathan Ive and others crafted a new tablet prototype. The product was originally supposed to ship before the iPhone, but the company came to decide the latter was more important, premiering it in 2007 using similar technologies. ( https://appleinsider.com/articles/18/04/03/a-brief-history-of-the-ipad-apples-once-and-future-tablet https://appleinsider.com/articles/18/04/03/a-brief-history-o... ) So from the very beginning with the iDevice, the idea of different form factors and sizes was part of how it was written rather than as a phone that grew bigger.
  - derefr 3y ago
    They've been trying to make the iPad since the Apple Newton. The tech to do it just wasn't there.
  - bhawks 3y ago
    The desktop OEMs lament their inability to differentiate their hardware offerings. I had always wondered why some of them didn't see the opportunity to enter the tablet space on Android as a path to differentiation. The only risk I would imagine would be the potential cannibalization of their laptop lines, but that really shouldn't stop them.
    - shagie 3y ago
      The cannibalization is one part of it (compare Apple - https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-on-cannibalization-2015-12 https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-on-cannibalization-201... and https://www.imd.org/research-knowledge/articles/apples-dwindling-sales-show-importance-of-self-cannibalization/ https://www.imd.org/research-knowledge/articles/apples-dwind... -- Jobs reportedly said “If you don’t cannibalize yourself, someone else will.”) The other part of it is that android has been poorly designed for the tablet interface. For an OEM to try to make a tablet out of android they would have to invest significant software development resources into what would amount to be a fork of android (compare Amazon Fire tablets). While they likely have some software developers, they probably don't have enough to maintain that amount of development on android (and always being behind with Google preferring phones). ... and even if they were close to parity with Android (and the challenge that would imply at trying to keep their devices up to date - with the largest investment customers would expect them to last longer) you would still have difficulties with the developers for Android aren't making things that fit well in the tablet form factor (Amazon was trying to bribe/incentivize developers to write for its form factor - https://readwrite.com/amazon-give-developers-rewards-build-for-kindle-fire/ https://readwrite.com/amazon-give-developers-rewards-build-f... ). All that means that unless Google wants to do it and you're willing to go head to head with Amazon its probably not that good of an investment of time, reputation, and resources.
- daydream 3y ago
  > Boutique software companies, such as Panic or Omni Group, plus other developers could really extend the ecosystem beyond content consumption and simple document creation tasks. If that’s the case why hasn’t Omni or Panic written these apps already? The 30% cut Apple takes is indeed large. But any new store will likely attract only a small fraction of all App Store customers. Can you help me understand this better?
  - derefr 3y ago
    Owning an iPad, there's one thing I know it's missing that makes me feel that I can't really use it seriously for development. And that thing is that you can't publish an iPadOS app on the App Store that allows you to compile and run native code within the app. So while there are "cloud IDEs" for iPadOS; and there are local IDEs for interpreted languages (or which do sandboxed interpretation of otherwise-compiled languages, like the Swift Playground) for iPadOS; there are no local IDEs for iPadOS that actually compile and execute native code. AFAICT, this restriction (and the one where no app but Safari can use use the Webkit JavaScriptCore JIT) is in place, because the alternative — allowing arbitrarily-badly-coded apps to do "dynamic native code injection" — would be a near-infinite wellspring of jailbreak exploit vectors. But, insofar as Apple's own semi-manual QA process is required to preventing the publication of apps that include this kind of "dynamic native code injection", a third-party App Store would presumably not inherently have this same restriction (although individual third-party App Stores might.)

by rnk 3y ago

nextos 3y ago

I hope multiple stores shake a bit the iPad ecosystem. It's a great device and, unlike in mobile, there's no competition. Android tablets are pretty bad. Google dropped the ball, although they seem to be coming back. iPads could be fantastic devices to program in, but they are quite crippled by limitations. Boutique software companies, such as Panic or Omni Group, plus other developers could really extend the ecosystem beyond content consumption and simple document creation tasks.

shagie 3y ago
I believe that Google's ball drop with tablets has to do with that the phone manufacturers that Google partners with for Android are not as interested in tablets (likely using wifi) as they are with phones. Combine that with a lack of standardization and lack of focus for the tablet form factor... and that's what you've got. The iPad, on the other hand was the original "this is what we want". The iPad was the first thing that Apple was trying to make. > Work on the iPad itself actually traces back to 2004, when designer Jonathan Ive and others crafted a new tablet prototype. The product was originally supposed to ship before the iPhone, but the company came to decide the latter was more important, premiering it in 2007 using similar technologies. ( https://appleinsider.com/articles/18/04/03/a-brief-history-of-the-ipad-apples-once-and-future-tablet https://appleinsider.com/articles/18/04/03/a-brief-history-o... ) So from the very beginning with the iDevice, the idea of different form factors and sizes was part of how it was written rather than as a phone that grew bigger.
- derefr 3y ago
  They've been trying to make the iPad since the Apple Newton. The tech to do it just wasn't there.
- bhawks 3y ago
  The desktop OEMs lament their inability to differentiate their hardware offerings. I had always wondered why some of them didn't see the opportunity to enter the tablet space on Android as a path to differentiation. The only risk I would imagine would be the potential cannibalization of their laptop lines, but that really shouldn't stop them.
  - shagie 3y ago
    The cannibalization is one part of it (compare Apple - https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-on-cannibalization-2015-12 https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-on-cannibalization-201... and https://www.imd.org/research-knowledge/articles/apples-dwindling-sales-show-importance-of-self-cannibalization/ https://www.imd.org/research-knowledge/articles/apples-dwind... -- Jobs reportedly said “If you don’t cannibalize yourself, someone else will.”) The other part of it is that android has been poorly designed for the tablet interface. For an OEM to try to make a tablet out of android they would have to invest significant software development resources into what would amount to be a fork of android (compare Amazon Fire tablets). While they likely have some software developers, they probably don't have enough to maintain that amount of development on android (and always being behind with Google preferring phones). ... and even if they were close to parity with Android (and the challenge that would imply at trying to keep their devices up to date - with the largest investment customers would expect them to last longer) you would still have difficulties with the developers for Android aren't making things that fit well in the tablet form factor (Amazon was trying to bribe/incentivize developers to write for its form factor - https://readwrite.com/amazon-give-developers-rewards-build-for-kindle-fire/ https://readwrite.com/amazon-give-developers-rewards-build-f... ). All that means that unless Google wants to do it and you're willing to go head to head with Amazon its probably not that good of an investment of time, reputation, and resources.
daydream 3y ago
> Boutique software companies, such as Panic or Omni Group, plus other developers could really extend the ecosystem beyond content consumption and simple document creation tasks. If that’s the case why hasn’t Omni or Panic written these apps already? The 30% cut Apple takes is indeed large. But any new store will likely attract only a small fraction of all App Store customers. Can you help me understand this better?
- derefr 3y ago
  Owning an iPad, there's one thing I know it's missing that makes me feel that I can't really use it seriously for development. And that thing is that you can't publish an iPadOS app on the App Store that allows you to compile and run native code within the app. So while there are "cloud IDEs" for iPadOS; and there are local IDEs for interpreted languages (or which do sandboxed interpretation of otherwise-compiled languages, like the Swift Playground) for iPadOS; there are no local IDEs for iPadOS that actually compile and execute native code. AFAICT, this restriction (and the one where no app but Safari can use use the Webkit JavaScriptCore JIT) is in place, because the alternative — allowing arbitrarily-badly-coded apps to do "dynamic native code injection" — would be a near-infinite wellspring of jailbreak exploit vectors. But, insofar as Apple's own semi-manual QA process is required to preventing the publication of apps that include this kind of "dynamic native code injection", a third-party App Store would presumably not inherently have this same restriction (although individual third-party App Stores might.)