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Tbh I feel like the market already has, otherwise the people who buy iPhones would have bought Androids instead. Only here in HN and other Apple enthusiast comm

Tbh I feel like the market already has, otherwise the people who buy iPhones would have bought Androids instead. Only here in HN and other Apple enthusiast comments sections will you see ideas suggesting otherwise, but I’m convinced that they are a very small and inconsequential minority of hobbyists. Anyway, I still think that Apple can benefit from this. An alternate app store paves the way for app developers to build and enforce their own walled gardens which would result in poor user experiences, so if Apple made more of the apps that third-party developers would otherwise do and such apps work seamlessly with each other and the OS, then people will have an incentive to buy into Apple’s own services ecosystem instead of that of some other third-party developer that does not have total control of the OS.

kelnos 3y ago
> otherwise the people who buy iPhones would have bought Androids instead The problem with this sort of reasoning is that the ability to sideload is only one dimension that someone might use to decide which phone to buy. Maybe someone values something else the iPhone offers slightly higher. But they're still not happy they have to make that trade off. And there's no technical reason why this trade off needs to be made, and no reason we (as a society) need to allow a company (a construct that we as a society allow to exist) to restrict our choices. On the other side of the argument, I use Android specifically because I have more control over what I run on the device. But I am constantly uncomfortable that my choice reduces my privacy and security. Why should I have to choose between these two things? Again, there's no reason beyond a company's profit motive. And I don't think we (as a society) should put company profit motives above our own needs. Frankly it does not matter if you are correct that no one cares about this stuff outside of hobbyists.
- rTX5CMRXIfFG 3y ago
  If you’re voting with your money to make the trade offs that come with an iPhone, then what you traded off wasn’t something that you badly wanted anyway and it was an opportunity cost that you were willing to incur. Literally free market economics already at work there, so frankly I don’t see why your point matters either.

kelnos 3y ago

> otherwise the people who buy iPhones would have bought Androids instead The problem with this sort of reasoning is that the ability to sideload is only one dimension that someone might use to decide which phone to buy. Maybe someone values something else the iPhone offers slightly higher. But they're still not happy they have to make that trade off. And there's no technical reason why this trade off needs to be made, and no reason we (as a society) need to allow a company (a construct that we as a society allow to exist) to restrict our choices. On the other side of the argument, I use Android specifically because I have more control over what I run on the device. But I am constantly uncomfortable that my choice reduces my privacy and security. Why should I have to choose between these two things? Again, there's no reason beyond a company's profit motive. And I don't think we (as a society) should put company profit motives above our own needs. Frankly it does not matter if you are correct that no one cares about this stuff outside of hobbyists.

rTX5CMRXIfFG 3y ago
If you’re voting with your money to make the trade offs that come with an iPhone, then what you traded off wasn’t something that you badly wanted anyway and it was an opportunity cost that you were willing to incur. Literally free market economics already at work there, so frankly I don’t see why your point matters either.