5 ms·

You must be new to the Apple developer ecosystem? It'll take an anti-trust judgement to get them to allow development on non-Apple platforms.

ChuckNorris89 3y ago
Yeah, I'd love to see the day when I could build iOS apps on Windows and on Linux, just like I can for Android.
scarface_74 3y ago
Yes, the government should force Apple to release an SDK for other platforms.
- ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
  I'm assuming that this was </s>? Releasing supported SDKs is expensive as hell. If anyone insists on forcing me to run myself into penury and put myself in legal jeopardy, just to support my competitors, then I would close up shop. However, Apple has a wee bit more clout than I do. I suspect that it would not happen.
  - scarface_74 3y ago
    Of course it was sarcasm. It surprises me how willing much of the technical HN crowd is wanting the government to have more power.
    - Eisenstein 3y ago
      > It surprises me how willing much of the technical HN crowd is wanting the government to have more power. They already have a monopoly on use of physical force and detention. There is no 'more power' to give them. You are confusing 'enacting legislation' with 'giving power'. And anti-trust regulation would cover anti-competitive behavior (if we ever enforced it), so no legislation has to be enacted. It is only a matter of determining if it anti-competitive, which it appears not to be. Rest easy, there are more impactful things to worry about than government overreach into the practices of huge society-shaping entities which are larger than most other nation's governments. Note: When will a corporation become big enough that we concede that without the monopoly on force and detention it is a de-facto government? At that point can the libertarians give up the 'hands off corporate affairs' schtick?
      - scarface_74 3y ago
        There is nothing more dangerous than government power. The government has a monopoly on legalized violence. > Note: When will a corporation become big enough that we concede that without the monopoly on force and detention it is a de-facto government? At that point can the libertarians give up the 'hands off corporate affairs' schtick There is absolutely no BigTech company that I can’t use my own free will not to use.
        candiddevmike 3y ago
        The cool thing about BigTech these days is even if you don't use them, they still know about you, or you use them indirectly via other products and cloud services. They have their fingers in every proverbial pie.
        scarface_74 3y ago
        What does Apple or Amazon know about non users? My ad blocker blocks analytics on mobile and desktop that takes care of Google and Facebook. Whose left?
        Eisenstein 3y ago
        Of course there isn't anything more dangerous than the government. That is the whole point of a monopoly on force and detention. If done properly it is used to keep people from harming others. Also, the cell phone in your pocket broadcasts your location a few times a second, and the corporations with that data love working with the government.
        scarface_74 3y ago
        So tell me how BigTech has personally hurt you? Did they come in your home and force you to use their products?
        3y ago
    - photonerd 3y ago
      A lot of HN skews quite shockingly authoritarian, tho usually in a “no MY authority is the best, not <insert major one>” contraryism, and you’ll see a TON of alt-right talking points pop up. Shouldn’t be a shock tho: HN skews American-style “libertarian” (just look how gooey it went over Andrew Yang & his nonsense) which is “very right wing but also likes weed” in practice. You’ll also see a lot of semi-disguised Andrew Tate & Jordan Peterson nonsense if you spend enough time in the comments Not everyone is like that of course, but it’s there. Very there.
      - scarface_74 3y ago
        Isn’t libertarian about smaller government and trusting adults to make their own decisions?
        photonerd 3y ago
        In the US? No. Hah, no, not at all. I mean, that’s their bumper sticker pitch, sure. But it breaks down real fast when you actually look at the policies they push. There are some true believer libertarians out there tho! They do things like take over towns & run them into the ground. Libertarianism is a failed ideology in the USA. You can argue it was co-opted, etc, which is fair… but that’s where it is.
        MrOwnPut 3y ago
        That's complete bullshit. OP stated correctly an honest belief of limited government that people hold and your response was just a misguided political rant. Each of your misguided points could be torn apart, but this isn't a political thread. It's a thread about Apple VisionOS ffs.
        photonerd 3y ago
        Good luck at tearing apart things I can point to VOLUMINOUS real world examples of. Because, while Libertarians can talk a good game, their actual actions demonstrate what they are very clearly. Your denial of reality to defend your ideology being one example itself. Face it: you’re just feeling emotional that your pet faith isn’t respected.
    - apatheticonion 3y ago
      As an engineer; I want homogeneity, interoperability and lower cost/effort to ship features. We can see that the market also wants this and that's probably why everything is now an Electron app. As a consumer; I want an affordable, high quality product that supports all of the software/games I like to use. The task of getting my MacBook to run Linux and play video games is massive on the part of Apple. I understand that interplay is intricate, complex and expensive to implement so it's not fair to force Apple to implement anything they don't want to - for instance have the government declare Vulcan a mandatory standard for all OSes. As someone who values the freedom we have to innovate, I don't know what the right way to convince everyone to play nicely together is but ultimately it's about stimulating competition to drive innovation. The current environment stifles innovation, either through ring fencing developers/users or adding a storefront/marketplace tax to distributing a product, killing new products before they get off the ground. The Apple Silicon hardware is remarkable, but outside of web browsing, basic web development and video editing - it's artificially limited in it's capabilities. Windows is a dumpster fire, holding onto market share due to its mammoth support for software and Microsoft won't improve Windows unless there is competition. Perhaps the solution is not to force "platform" companies to build anything, but instead think of software like we did old school repairable hardware and implement regulations that require vendors to offer the equivalent of schematics. Perhaps regulations that require platform developers to distribute their software/drivers under permissive open source licenses such that people can implement competing platforms. That way no one is compelled to do anything but if a disruptor (like say, SteamOS or Asahi) wants to compete, they can freely build a better product without needing to reverse engineer APIs and worry about getting sued. Perhaps OS vendors be regulated such that they must offer a means for third party software to be run. That way developers could distribute for platforms through their own marketing efforts and the value proposition for OS marketplaces/app stores is a better ROI - rather than being "the only option" Perhaps hardware should be regulated such that it's "jail-breakable". That way disruptors could offer competing platforms that are compatible with the original (like the ROMs available on some Android devices, or Ubuntu OS or something). ...Or maybe that would disincentivize the giants from building anything because there's nothing other than investing in innovation that would protect them from losing market share I'm not advocating to open source all the things under GPL or something - feel free to keep Photoshop, Word and The Witcher 3 closed source - we just need some kind of balance that lets me, as a consumer, have choices so that the giants can fight it out and build the best products.
  - candiddevmike 3y ago
    Apple's setup is basically "you can only cook pancakes made in an Apple mixing bowl on an Apple skillet" and Apple controls 63% of the skillet market in America. I have other mixing bowls that work perfectly fine for making pancakes, Apple is using its monopoly power to force people into buying their mixing bowls.
    - photonerd 3y ago
      Macs account for 31.34% of US desktop operating systems. Desktops are where app development happens. If your contention is that 31% is a monopoly then… you’re incorrect. Their mobile OS share is 57.28% in the US btw, tho it’s barely 32% globally.
- giantrobot 3y ago
  That sounds like compelling speech. That is a very slippery slope.

ChuckNorris89 3y ago

Yeah, I'd love to see the day when I could build iOS apps on Windows and on Linux, just like I can for Android.

scarface_74 3y ago

Yes, the government should force Apple to release an SDK for other platforms.

ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
I'm assuming that this was </s>? Releasing supported SDKs is expensive as hell. If anyone insists on forcing me to run myself into penury and put myself in legal jeopardy, just to support my competitors, then I would close up shop. However, Apple has a wee bit more clout than I do. I suspect that it would not happen.
- scarface_74 3y ago
  Of course it was sarcasm. It surprises me how willing much of the technical HN crowd is wanting the government to have more power.
  - Eisenstein 3y ago
    > It surprises me how willing much of the technical HN crowd is wanting the government to have more power. They already have a monopoly on use of physical force and detention. There is no 'more power' to give them. You are confusing 'enacting legislation' with 'giving power'. And anti-trust regulation would cover anti-competitive behavior (if we ever enforced it), so no legislation has to be enacted. It is only a matter of determining if it anti-competitive, which it appears not to be. Rest easy, there are more impactful things to worry about than government overreach into the practices of huge society-shaping entities which are larger than most other nation's governments. Note: When will a corporation become big enough that we concede that without the monopoly on force and detention it is a de-facto government? At that point can the libertarians give up the 'hands off corporate affairs' schtick?
    - scarface_74 3y ago
      There is nothing more dangerous than government power. The government has a monopoly on legalized violence. > Note: When will a corporation become big enough that we concede that without the monopoly on force and detention it is a de-facto government? At that point can the libertarians give up the 'hands off corporate affairs' schtick There is absolutely no BigTech company that I can’t use my own free will not to use.
      - candiddevmike 3y ago
        The cool thing about BigTech these days is even if you don't use them, they still know about you, or you use them indirectly via other products and cloud services. They have their fingers in every proverbial pie.
        scarface_74 3y ago
        What does Apple or Amazon know about non users? My ad blocker blocks analytics on mobile and desktop that takes care of Google and Facebook. Whose left?
        Eisenstein 3y ago
        Of course there isn't anything more dangerous than the government. That is the whole point of a monopoly on force and detention. If done properly it is used to keep people from harming others. Also, the cell phone in your pocket broadcasts your location a few times a second, and the corporations with that data love working with the government.
        scarface_74 3y ago
        So tell me how BigTech has personally hurt you? Did they come in your home and force you to use their products?
        3y ago
  - photonerd 3y ago
    A lot of HN skews quite shockingly authoritarian, tho usually in a “no MY authority is the best, not <insert major one>” contraryism, and you’ll see a TON of alt-right talking points pop up. Shouldn’t be a shock tho: HN skews American-style “libertarian” (just look how gooey it went over Andrew Yang & his nonsense) which is “very right wing but also likes weed” in practice. You’ll also see a lot of semi-disguised Andrew Tate & Jordan Peterson nonsense if you spend enough time in the comments Not everyone is like that of course, but it’s there. Very there.
    - scarface_74 3y ago
      Isn’t libertarian about smaller government and trusting adults to make their own decisions?
      - photonerd 3y ago
        In the US? No. Hah, no, not at all. I mean, that’s their bumper sticker pitch, sure. But it breaks down real fast when you actually look at the policies they push. There are some true believer libertarians out there tho! They do things like take over towns & run them into the ground. Libertarianism is a failed ideology in the USA. You can argue it was co-opted, etc, which is fair… but that’s where it is.
        MrOwnPut 3y ago
        That's complete bullshit. OP stated correctly an honest belief of limited government that people hold and your response was just a misguided political rant. Each of your misguided points could be torn apart, but this isn't a political thread. It's a thread about Apple VisionOS ffs.
        photonerd 3y ago
        Good luck at tearing apart things I can point to VOLUMINOUS real world examples of. Because, while Libertarians can talk a good game, their actual actions demonstrate what they are very clearly. Your denial of reality to defend your ideology being one example itself. Face it: you’re just feeling emotional that your pet faith isn’t respected.
  - apatheticonion 3y ago
    As an engineer; I want homogeneity, interoperability and lower cost/effort to ship features. We can see that the market also wants this and that's probably why everything is now an Electron app. As a consumer; I want an affordable, high quality product that supports all of the software/games I like to use. The task of getting my MacBook to run Linux and play video games is massive on the part of Apple. I understand that interplay is intricate, complex and expensive to implement so it's not fair to force Apple to implement anything they don't want to - for instance have the government declare Vulcan a mandatory standard for all OSes. As someone who values the freedom we have to innovate, I don't know what the right way to convince everyone to play nicely together is but ultimately it's about stimulating competition to drive innovation. The current environment stifles innovation, either through ring fencing developers/users or adding a storefront/marketplace tax to distributing a product, killing new products before they get off the ground. The Apple Silicon hardware is remarkable, but outside of web browsing, basic web development and video editing - it's artificially limited in it's capabilities. Windows is a dumpster fire, holding onto market share due to its mammoth support for software and Microsoft won't improve Windows unless there is competition. Perhaps the solution is not to force "platform" companies to build anything, but instead think of software like we did old school repairable hardware and implement regulations that require vendors to offer the equivalent of schematics. Perhaps regulations that require platform developers to distribute their software/drivers under permissive open source licenses such that people can implement competing platforms. That way no one is compelled to do anything but if a disruptor (like say, SteamOS or Asahi) wants to compete, they can freely build a better product without needing to reverse engineer APIs and worry about getting sued. Perhaps OS vendors be regulated such that they must offer a means for third party software to be run. That way developers could distribute for platforms through their own marketing efforts and the value proposition for OS marketplaces/app stores is a better ROI - rather than being "the only option" Perhaps hardware should be regulated such that it's "jail-breakable". That way disruptors could offer competing platforms that are compatible with the original (like the ROMs available on some Android devices, or Ubuntu OS or something). ...Or maybe that would disincentivize the giants from building anything because there's nothing other than investing in innovation that would protect them from losing market share I'm not advocating to open source all the things under GPL or something - feel free to keep Photoshop, Word and The Witcher 3 closed source - we just need some kind of balance that lets me, as a consumer, have choices so that the giants can fight it out and build the best products.
- candiddevmike 3y ago
  Apple's setup is basically "you can only cook pancakes made in an Apple mixing bowl on an Apple skillet" and Apple controls 63% of the skillet market in America. I have other mixing bowls that work perfectly fine for making pancakes, Apple is using its monopoly power to force people into buying their mixing bowls.
  - photonerd 3y ago
    Macs account for 31.34% of US desktop operating systems. Desktops are where app development happens. If your contention is that 31% is a monopoly then… you’re incorrect. Their mobile OS share is 57.28% in the US btw, tho it’s barely 32% globally.
giantrobot 3y ago
That sounds like compelling speech. That is a very slippery slope.