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Apple are experts are experts at creating these patterns that fall just at the edge of being classified as anti-consumer, to the point where you frequently find

• 5350-uiop-1130 3y ago
  also denying full access to pencil api so that 3rd party pencils cannot compete with the official ones. and lack of user profiles on ipads so they cannot be easily shared among family.
  • throwawaymobule 3y ago
    What parts of the API? I've never used a first party one, but the generic $10 one I got on aliexpress worked fine on an ipad6.
    • deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
• codetrotter 3y ago
  Google seems just as bad tbh. The only browser I have installed on my phone is Safari but when I click links in YouTube it always asks which browser I want to open the link in. Safari or Chrome. No I don’t want to install your shit browser on my phone Google. Kindly frick off.
  • Eduard 3y ago
    > Google seems just as bad tbh. It is a difference for Google to advertise their browser on their properties (eg Youtube) versus Apple hijacking the search bar of some other browser, and in general not allowing third parties to provide full browsers in the Apple App Store (and not just a shim which mandatorily has to use Safari behind the curtains)
    • soraminazuki 3y ago
      > versus Apple hijacking the search bar of some other browser A difference that's moot because it never happened.
    • scarface_74 3y ago
      And Google also hijacks its own search bar when all I want is “10 blue links”.
  • Tagbert 3y ago
    And the Gmail app on iOS and iPad will never open in default browser window. It always opens in a capture browser window that defaults to chrome.
  • kernal 3y ago
    I don't want Apple's shitty AppStore on my iPhone. I'd like to replace it, but I can't because Apple doesn't think I should be able to install apps that aren't approved by Apple. They can go fuck off as well.
• flagrant_taco 3y ago
  Many of the Apple-related concerns fall squarely within the definitions of anti-trust laws. The problem isn't that Apple toes the line so much as no one cares to enforce the line.
  • scarface_74 3y ago
    [flagged]
• madars 3y ago
  Don't forget making SMS in unreadable neon green (to the point that it violates Apple's own accessibility guidelines https://archive.is/4nSWV https://archive.is/4nSWV) "iMessage on Android would simply serve to remove [an] obstacle to iPhone families giving their kids Android phones" -- an actual quote from the SVP of Software Engineering in charge of iOS, revealed in Epic Games v Apple court discovery https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.364265/gov.uscourts.cand.364265.407.0.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.36... Of course, if you really cared about green bubbles, you'd switch to Android because there you can adjust outgoing message color to your heart's liking :-)
  • lttlrck 3y ago
    SMS messages have always been green on iOS. Since before iMessage existed. I don't recall ever having trouble reading them.
    • madars 3y ago
      They deliberately reduced the contrast. Compare iOS 5 when iMessage came out: https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/archive/09-27-2011/ios5_imessage_text.jpg https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/archive/09-27... and now: https://images.macworld.co.uk/cmsdata/features/3468389/how_to_send_text_from_iphone_imessage_text_1000.jpg https://images.macworld.co.uk/cmsdata/features/3468389/how_t... This underscores GP's point: Apple is expert at making anti-consumer decisions that fall just inside the Overton window.
      • js2 3y ago
        What am I missing here? In iOS 5, it's black on blue vs black on green. Now it's white on blue vs white on green. Contrast between text and background looks the same to whether green or blue. In general, Apple has lowered contrast throughout the UI over the years. There's an accessibility setting for high contrast if you need it.
        • deleted 3y ago
• vladvasiliu 3y ago
  > The way that regular bluetooth headsets work fine, but AirPods work even better What do you mean by this? I have an iPhone but don't have airpods, just "regular" BT headphones. Under windows, they're hit or miss (sometimes they don't reconnect), but they work pretty well under iOS and mac os. They work best under linux (!), especially since it's the only one to support LDAC (though I understand some non-sony android phones may support this now). So, if somehow apple came out with a way of making BT headphones work even better (what do they do better?), I don't see why you'd hold that against them. Should they not innovate just so that the competition doesn't get upset?
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  • mholm 3y ago
    In terms of unique OS-level integrations: Airpods are not paired with a device: they're paired with your Apple ID. If I pair the airpods with my iPad, I can seamlessly switch them to iphone, to Mac, to my Apple TV. They'll even auto-switch if it detects you've stopped using your current device. Airpods automatically try to pair with a nearby iphone when opened, if one of your own devices isn't around. All of this is through a pretty fancy UI, just for Airpods and Beats
    • vladvasiliu 3y ago
      But is there a way of making this work with regular bluetooth headphones? AFAIK whey you pair them, the HP will remember the device's physical address, so the random apple devices you may have would have to present the same address to the headphones. Hell, this doesn't work on its own, even between a Linux and Windows install on the same PC. You have to manually move some connection information between the two to get e.g. a mouse working in both. So if Apple figured a way of bypassing this limitation, it's really not clear to me why that should be considered "bad", even if it's clearly better than what the competition does. It's on the bluetooth standard to do better. Or is your point that apple should have standardized the protocol they use to make this happen?
• basch 3y ago
  Battery throttling doesn’t fit the rest of these. Preventing a device reboot is pro consumer.
  • 015a 3y ago
    Ah, found that "heated discussion" the OP mentioned.
    • darkhelmet 3y ago
      Heh. I can't blame them for doing this, but not telling people what's happening (and why) was the big mistake. People generally want their gadgets to be as lightweight as possible, cheap as possible, last as long as possible, and be reliable. There's tradeoffs in balancing those. eg: overbuilding the battery to make the device run longer in the face of degradation adds weight, size, and cost. Somebody has to make a call on where the balance should be. What nobody really talks about in the context of device longevity is wear levels in the onboard flash. A battery replacement or three doesn't extend that clock. It's pretty good but it doesn't last forever. This is more of an issue on devices with smaller amounts of flash storage with a lot more storage churn.
    • rootusrootus 3y ago
      One nice thing HN has taught me is that I should be wary of anti-Apple claims like this. Inevitably someone comes along to add context or explain what's actually going on, and 9 times out of 10 it turns out that Apple's solution wasn't unreasonable at all. Which isn't to say that things like the 30% app store cut is entirely defensible, though you can certainly make some halfway plausible claims in that direction (based mostly on how retail works, especially at the time iPhones were invented). Or sideloading. There are legitimate gripes. But a lot of crap spewed regularly on HN turns out to be exactly that, crap.
      • downWidOutaFite 3y ago
        You can always find a reason to defend any feature. In the case of this article you could say it's more seamless to open Outlook links in their browser. And that's exactly what Microsoft's PR says. But for some reason Apple's fans are way more insistent in defending everything and sticking to the PR department's arguments. No criticism is allowed to stand.
• politelemon 3y ago
  > Apple are experts are experts at creating these patterns that fall just at the edge of being classified as anti-consumer, to the point where you frequently find heated discussions about whether they are. I argue that they are blatantly anti-consumer, but have created a brand identity association that causes people to pretend (and argue) they are not. Try using an ipad without handing over your credit card details. Even google is better in this area.
• rootusrootus 3y ago
  > Battery throtteling on the iPhone 6s This is one of the ways I can tell what preconceived opinion someone has. The only problem with the battery throttling was PR. The engineering solution was correct and objectively better than not throttling. Should they have told users their battery was failing? Sure. But keeping the phone from crashing was better than letting it. > unauthorized Apps on MacOS must be opened with a right-click I've never had to do that.
  • FireBeyond 3y ago
    > I've never had to do that. Using OKD (OpenShift Kubernetes Distribution) because I just dealt with this morning: https://github.com/okd-project/okd/releases https://github.com/okd-project/okd/releases - download the MacOS installer and unzip it. Then try to run it from the command line. Be told that it "cannot be opened because the developer cannot be verified". This is NOT the "is an app downloaded from the Internet, do you wish to run it?" dialog. Go to Finder, and double click it. Get the same message. You have to go to Finder, then right click the app, specifically hit Open (which will open a terminal that will immediately exit), and only now can you run this app in your original terminal.
    • sgjohnson 3y ago
      > Then try to run it from the command line. Be told that it "cannot be opened because the developer cannot be verified". This is NOT the "is an app downloaded from the Internet, do you wish to run it?" dialog. Yes, you get the “developer cannot be verified” error if the code isn’t signed. Which is perfectly fine, I don’t see how this is anti-consumer. It’s $99 for a code signing cert (per developer account) on macOS/iOS, which I believe is less than what they cost on Windows.
      • gramie 3y ago
        Yes, but the dialog doesn't tell you what to do if you do want to run the code. Why would I think that clicking "Open" in the popup menu would do anything different from double-clicking? Also, an individual Microsoft Store cert is $19 (one-time, not per year), and a company account is $99.
• ars 3y ago
  Apple stuff is always anti-consumer, it's not an edge thing at all. In the terminal it has a nice "search with Google" option and I can not figure out how to get MacOS to stop opening Safari with that. Every time I use Apple products I get frustrated at how it blocks me from doing what I want to do.
  • babypuncher 3y ago
    This is because the "search with Google" feature is not actually provided by Terminal, it is a service[1] provided by Safari. Other browsers could easily provide their own service, but I haven't seen any that actually do. You can see and configure all available services by going to the app menu in the menu bar and selecting Services -> Services Settings 1. https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/use-services-in-apps-mchlp1012/mac https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/use-services-in-app...
    • ars 3y ago
      Thanks, appreciate the info. Strange though that the services make zero mention of who is providing them. And really Apple should have made a generic service using the default browser, rather than this being a Safari provided thing. I guess the OP's "edge of anti-consumer" theory has some merit.
• lmm 3y ago
  The stuff Apple does is even more blatantly anti-consumer than their competitors. The difference is that Apple have fans who will defend them, in a way that Microsoft, Google or Facebook don't really. It's the reality distortion field, not Apple being better at straddling the line.
  • SebastianKra 3y ago
    I considered that, but no, the discussions in this thread alone should be evidence, that it's not that clear cut.
  • lenkite 3y ago
    This. Observed this so many times here on HN, its not even funny. The restriction on browser engines on the iPhone, the so-called "app-tracking privacy" feature, etc. Apple fans will defend all of this to the death.
    • BizarroLand 3y ago
      They're already crawling out of the woodwork in this very conversation to defend Apple. It's insane.
• RoyGBivCap 3y ago
  > The way that regular bluetooth headsets work fine, but AirPods work even better; I think this is one thing a ton of people don't realize. Apple doesn't want to sell you individual devices. They want you to sell an entire electronic ecosystem that serves all of your technology needs and seamlessly integrates all of it for you. It's why they put effort into things like handoff, copy & paste on iPhone/mac, AirDrop, iCloud photo sharing, et al. Sure there's a profit motive in having you use all their stuff, but they really do make a genuine effort to make things work together better than disparate devices, companies or manufacturers do. I still have to use a private channel in Signal to share things like pics or links from iOS/OSX/Windows because there just isn't a good cross-ecosystem app that I've found. Discord and slack sort of work, but they're not E2E encrypted like Signal is.
  • diffeomorphism 3y ago
    Which would be fine. The annoying thing is making things worse if you don't buy in, e.g. https://9to5mac.com/2023/01/16/apple-tv-iphone-required/ https://9to5mac.com/2023/01/16/apple-tv-iphone-required/ Or sherlocking stuff without acknowledging anyone, e.g. game porting toolkit.
• gerash 3y ago
  Apple gets away with some anti-competitive practices that is mind boggling. On iOS, their own app (Apple Maps) can draw a large custom notification for their turn by turn navigation but no other apps is allowed to do the same.
• shortcake27 3y ago
  > The way that regular bluetooth headsets work fine, but AirPods work even better bluetooth headphones work to the best of their ability on Apple devices. Apple invented a better technology for their own headphones to improve problems inherent with bluetooth. I’m struggling to understand how improving upon a flawed technology is anti-consumer? Apple devices still support bluetooth, and Apple headphones work with non-Apple devices over bluetooth.
• neop1x 3y ago
  Not long ago I couldn't read an SMS message on iPad without enabling iMessage service first. Not sure if that is still the case. But that felt anti-consumer as I didn't want to use iMessage, I just wanted to use SMS reading functionality.
• 9935c101ab17a66 3y ago
  The issue with iPhone batteries was one of communication — what they were doing, they still do, as do all smartphone manufactures, because it’s just a downside of lithium batteries. > the no-iCloud experience What? > The way regular Bluetooth headsets work fine, but AirPods work better. I… I don’t see how this is apple’s fault. Bluetooth, as a standard, is obviously limiting. Apple, making both headphones and the devices that play audio, had an opportunity to offer a better product to their customers if you use other apple devices. That’s fine, and I would argue, eminently reasonable. I just don’t get what you’re driving at here, would love to hear more. The reason I like apple is that, in vague general terms, their interests as a company often align with my interests as a consumer. Yes, you can argue that apple has made changes in safari detrimental to google for business reasons. But shit, I’m happy about that. The less data my phone silently sends off to google, the better. Maybe I’ve just fallen for their ploy, but I do actually really like the apple products I own (and I often try the non-apple alternatives because I love tech). No company is perfect, and I know they aren’t my friend or don’t care about me. But until I feel apples interests diverge from my own significantly, I’ll find alternatives.