4 ms·

Maybe it would have been better to allow alternative OSes rather that alternative appstores? The OS is something that gets actively managed by Apple. So they c

by TekMol 3y ago

Maybe it would have been better to allow alternative OSes rather that alternative appstores? The OS is something that gets actively managed by Apple. So they can argue that interacting with it has to follow certain rules. Independent OSes would just use the hardware, which is fully paid by the user and does not change.

nixpulvis 3y ago
Yes! Or how about we go a step further and demand Apple open source everything so we can tweak just the parts that we want of our own phones?
- 7e 3y ago
  From each according to their ability, to each according to their need.
dns_snek 3y ago
I'm all for alternative operating systems, but do I take strong issue with the framing of this situation. Apple can "argue" all it wants, but at the end of they day they operate in our countries with our laws, and will be forced to behave the way we allow them to behave. They enjoy access to millions of customers in the EU because we let them, subject to very specific terms. The overton window has shifted so far to the extreme, we're legitimately discussing whether laws still apply to them or whether the drivel that comes out of their lawyers' mouths will be allowed to just stand uncontested.
- paulmd 3y ago
  This has been the obvious end-goal for the users who constantly demand the EU regulate this or that. People want a legislative solution to the iPhone vs android dilemma: just ban iPhone already. That’s what they want, they’re just boiling the frog to get there. Rip the bandaid off and just ban apple from the market entirely. I’ve said all along, people are offended that apple is allowed to operate on a different business model from android. That’s the core thing, they don’t want to have a choice between open and walled-garden options, moreover they are annoyed that walled-garden continues to exist and be sustainable and people choose it. Therefore they have to remove that choice from the market so nobody can choose it. This isn’t an exaggeration or misrepresentation - it comes down to people thinking that walled-gardens need to be regulated out of existence, the people in question would agree with that and think it’s a social good. The same also applies to the debate between OEM-sourced first party parts and “Amazon bazaar” parts distribution, serialization, etc. It’s not enough that android provides the model you want - you have to eliminate the other model from the market, nobody else can be allowed to choose a product with a reliable first-party parts chain and optimize repairs (including third party) around that. A model that probably results in higher rates of repair and reuse than on android! The option needs to be removed from the market. It’s a legislative solution to the android vs iOS debate. Just ban apple. Get the EU to do it for you.
  - dns_snek 3y ago
    Sorry but you're completely off base, this isn't an Android vs iOS debate but a megacorporations vs the citizens debate. I want the regulators to bust open Google, Apple, and every other tech monopoly you can think of. You're also falling into the trap of only considering the end-user choice, but completely disregarding the other half of the equation, i.e. businesses that NEED to reach people who happen to be using Apple devices. They don't get a choice other than ceasing to exist, which obviously stifles competition and innovation. This is a problem which EU wants to fix. From the DMA: > Gatekeepers have a significant impact on the internal market, providing gateways for a large number of business users to reach end users everywhere in the Union and on different markets. The adverse impact of unfair practices on the internal market and the particularly weak contestability of core platform services, including the negative societal and economic implications of such unfair practices, have led national legislators and sectoral regulators to act. In other words, the EU won't allow Apple (and other gatekeepers) to hold the rest of the industry hostage. > it comes down to people thinking that walled-gardens need to be regulated out of existence, the people in question would agree with that and think it’s a social good. No, what I (and I think most people) are asking for is that Apple adds the equivalent of exit doors to their walled garden so that when there's a fire, we don't all burn to death.
    - paulmd 3y ago
      > Sorry but you're completely off base, this isn't an Android vs iOS debate but a megacorporations vs the citizens debate. I want the regulators to bust open Google, Apple, and every other tech monopoly you can think of. Do you think walled gardens should be illegal? That is the only question that is necessary for me to be on-base. It seems like your answer is clearly yes just from the lede. Again, this is very obviously not a misrepresentation of the position, it is a steelman - taking the idea to its logical conclusion. I am happy to cite the rest of your post as supporting evidence: > You're also falling into the trap of only considering the end-user choice, but completely disregarding the other half of the equation, i.e. businesses that NEED to reach people who happen to be using Apple devices. They don't get a choice other than ceasing to exist, which obviously stifles competition and innovation. This is a problem which EU wants to fix. From the DMA: > In other words, the EU won't allow Apple (and other gatekeepers) to hold the rest of the industry hostage. This is pretty obviously in favor outlawing the walled-garden model - there's already a gate and that's not enough. It's not walled if there's a section knocked out of the wall, at that point it's just a folly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folly Again, this is about the right of companies like Sony and Microsoft to exist within their own current business models - Epic has conspicuously avoided answering the question of how apple's walled garden is really different from any of the others. And the answer is that it is not, this is a thrust against that whole business model, and MS and Sony are just allies of convenience. The point is outlawing walled gardens, by which I mean cracking them open using legal means such that third-parties are allowed to set up their own platforms outside the app store system and processes. And people (such as yourself) clearly believe this is a social good. That's fine, don't hide from your position, you should own it. Just don't have any misapprehensions about what Meta and Google want to crack it open for, and what they will do with it. They're not on your side here, they want to crack it open so they can use network effect to bypass the app-review process. We're degrading and discontinuing our website for mobile users, either give our app full permissions or else you don't get to use facebook. You want to talk to your friends, don't you? https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/01/facebook-and-google-offered-gift-cards-for-root-level-access-to-ios-users-data/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/01/facebook-and-google-... Similarly, if consoles are cracked open, you will likely see console players' experiences degrade due to hackers/etc. Cracking open iMessage and bypassing device attestation will result in massive increases of spam for most users. These things do have consequences, they aren't just a knob labeled "freedom" that developers are just refusing to turn. And that is something that is continuously denied by the "open at all costs" faction - there are real downsides to having completely open systems, just like you can see from email/SMTP. Gatekeeping is actually good sometimes. -- Intellectually everyone understands and agrees with the idea that systems are always a tradeoff between security and freedom. With apologies to Robert Morris: the most secure system is the one where users are not allowed to log in, and certainly not allowed to run anything, let alone run something that isn't approved by the sys-op. It is self-evidently riskier to have to defend a full compiler/code ABI than a limited, secured userland (this is literally the entire reason SELinux exists - because a limited and secured experience is safer and more secure). Similarly, everyone in the defense community understands that the idea of Adverse Information or leverage/blackmail exist, and can get people to take actions that are against their normal interests. But when the rubber meets the road everyone acts like sandboxing should obviously be infallible and network-effect cannot be used to pressure people into agreeing to subvert the permissions. https://www.webdevelopersnotes.com/ensure-security-dont-own-a-computer https://www.webdevelopersnotes.com/ensure-security-dont-own-... Analogous to the defense community, this is already a solved problem: the answer is a third-party authority which makes sure users don't get tempted. You'll go to jail and lose your clearance, so you better not. Except in this case it has to be the devs who are responsible, and Apple and Google's review processes are that certification authority. Nor can you outsource this - it doesn't work if I am allowed to start my own Clearance Authority to approve myself, obviously that doesn't accomplish the purpose. Similarly, letting developers start their own app stores and "review themselves" is blatantly missing the point. Apple and Google have to be the review authority even for third-party stores. And that is what people want to outlaw, the walled-garden itself. People fundamentally disagree with the idea that it should be legal to build a system without those escape-valves, because systems should be open. And that's fine but it's not self-evidently a better social balance. There are always consequences - "self-certified" security clearance is a misnomer and a joke, it's literally an "evil bit" level oversimplification and mockery of security processes. It's literally a "not-evil" bit, I signed that it's not evil, what more do you want? There literally already are multiple such escape valves built into the system for small-time users to have freedoms on their own devices without enabling big abuses by commercial operators, and it's never enough. You can run whatever you want on a self-signed cert, or buy a developer license to get longer timeframes. Not good enough. But that's the last stop before you open up a big enough security hole for Facebook to drive a truck through. Which has been the point all along, and they've literally already been nabbed doing it before. (In the bigger picture though it speaks to how much copyleft has actually won. People literally mentally operate in terms of open-by-default now and actually get angry and suspicious over things like "why are you not letting me run CUDA or imessage on my device". And the answer is "because that's a proprietary system they paid to build and/or operate themselves", obviously everyone wants free stuff but it's a little baffling on a startup incubator internet forum that people are so openly hostile to business-models that don't exactly align with a single "approved" formula. And that's the core of the problem: they want to outlaw anything that's not that formula, "because everything should be open". But that's the email model, and email is way worse than iMessage precisely because of the lack of gatekeeping.) Again, dress it up however you like, but that's the core of the issue. You think the android business model is the only allowable one and any walled-garden alternatives should be outlawed, and that it's a social good to do so. That is not a misrepresentation and it's frankly a little tedious and disrespectful for you to pretend that it is. I'm not framing it the way you want it to be framed, but I haven't represented you as supporting anything you don't actually support either. That's actually mildly intellectually disrespectful to throw around false accusations so casually. Have the courage to own your own position. And try to understand that people can see your points differently without it being intellectual dishonesty - it's called a disagreement, not misrepresentation. The real disagreement is, as is usually the case, a values disagreement. Freedom vs quality-of-experience. Apple is a great experience, but it's limited and constrained. And I think that's fine in a phone, I have PCs for tinkering. You'd rather be able to flash anything. I see consequences in that that will reduce my quality-of-experience. And there are very good reasons to believe this - SELinux exists for a reason. But the underlying problem is - I am comfortable to let you have your own experience, while the reciprocal is not true. You are not ok with letting me have my experience, you think it should be taken away legislatively. That's not a misrepresentation - you should own it.
- simondotau 3y ago
  If the EU starts making similar noises in the direction of Sony, Nintendo, and the makers of most TVs and car infotainment systems, then I might start taking the EU seriously. Until then it's objectively correct to say that they're arbitrarily singling out one multinational corporation as a direct result of lobbying from other multinational corporations. (If they really wanted to be taken seriously I'd insist they apologise and rescind their Luddite foolishness around cookie notices.)
  - dns_snek 3y ago
    The regulation only affects businesses past a certain size and market share. They're not singling out Apple, they're regulating all of these under the DMA: Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, ByteDance, Meta, Microsoft https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_23_4328 https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_23_...
1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago
Long have I wished for Apple hardware that came with Apple-provided OS optional. Well before iOS. I started to want this with the arrival of OSX. (It's possible to boot into a non-Apple OS, but one cannot completely uninstall the Apple OS.) Whenever I mentioned this online over the years no one else seemed interested. Perhaps Apple's now more visible stanglehold on the hardware after purchase is a critical part of its "business strategy". Apple has always had nice hardware. It's all the other nonsense that has become too much to bear. Wish there was company that made Apple-quality hardware without bundling it with pretentious, presumptuous BS. Apple once sold a computer that ran a NetBSD 6.1 kernel. People used it as a router and I never read any bad reviews of it. It shows what is possible.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

by TekMol 3y ago

nixpulvis 3y ago

Yes! Or how about we go a step further and demand Apple open source everything so we can tweak just the parts that we want of our own phones?

7e 3y ago
From each according to their ability, to each according to their need.

dns_snek 3y ago

I'm all for alternative operating systems, but do I take strong issue with the framing of this situation. Apple can "argue" all it wants, but at the end of they day they operate in our countries with our laws, and will be forced to behave the way we allow them to behave. They enjoy access to millions of customers in the EU because we let them, subject to very specific terms. The overton window has shifted so far to the extreme, we're legitimately discussing whether laws still apply to them or whether the drivel that comes out of their lawyers' mouths will be allowed to just stand uncontested.

paulmd 3y ago
This has been the obvious end-goal for the users who constantly demand the EU regulate this or that. People want a legislative solution to the iPhone vs android dilemma: just ban iPhone already. That’s what they want, they’re just boiling the frog to get there. Rip the bandaid off and just ban apple from the market entirely. I’ve said all along, people are offended that apple is allowed to operate on a different business model from android. That’s the core thing, they don’t want to have a choice between open and walled-garden options, moreover they are annoyed that walled-garden continues to exist and be sustainable and people choose it. Therefore they have to remove that choice from the market so nobody can choose it. This isn’t an exaggeration or misrepresentation - it comes down to people thinking that walled-gardens need to be regulated out of existence, the people in question would agree with that and think it’s a social good. The same also applies to the debate between OEM-sourced first party parts and “Amazon bazaar” parts distribution, serialization, etc. It’s not enough that android provides the model you want - you have to eliminate the other model from the market, nobody else can be allowed to choose a product with a reliable first-party parts chain and optimize repairs (including third party) around that. A model that probably results in higher rates of repair and reuse than on android! The option needs to be removed from the market. It’s a legislative solution to the android vs iOS debate. Just ban apple. Get the EU to do it for you.
- dns_snek 3y ago
  Sorry but you're completely off base, this isn't an Android vs iOS debate but a megacorporations vs the citizens debate. I want the regulators to bust open Google, Apple, and every other tech monopoly you can think of. You're also falling into the trap of only considering the end-user choice, but completely disregarding the other half of the equation, i.e. businesses that NEED to reach people who happen to be using Apple devices. They don't get a choice other than ceasing to exist, which obviously stifles competition and innovation. This is a problem which EU wants to fix. From the DMA: > Gatekeepers have a significant impact on the internal market, providing gateways for a large number of business users to reach end users everywhere in the Union and on different markets. The adverse impact of unfair practices on the internal market and the particularly weak contestability of core platform services, including the negative societal and economic implications of such unfair practices, have led national legislators and sectoral regulators to act. In other words, the EU won't allow Apple (and other gatekeepers) to hold the rest of the industry hostage. > it comes down to people thinking that walled-gardens need to be regulated out of existence, the people in question would agree with that and think it’s a social good. No, what I (and I think most people) are asking for is that Apple adds the equivalent of exit doors to their walled garden so that when there's a fire, we don't all burn to death.
  - paulmd 3y ago
    > Sorry but you're completely off base, this isn't an Android vs iOS debate but a megacorporations vs the citizens debate. I want the regulators to bust open Google, Apple, and every other tech monopoly you can think of. Do you think walled gardens should be illegal? That is the only question that is necessary for me to be on-base. It seems like your answer is clearly yes just from the lede. Again, this is very obviously not a misrepresentation of the position, it is a steelman - taking the idea to its logical conclusion. I am happy to cite the rest of your post as supporting evidence: > You're also falling into the trap of only considering the end-user choice, but completely disregarding the other half of the equation, i.e. businesses that NEED to reach people who happen to be using Apple devices. They don't get a choice other than ceasing to exist, which obviously stifles competition and innovation. This is a problem which EU wants to fix. From the DMA: > In other words, the EU won't allow Apple (and other gatekeepers) to hold the rest of the industry hostage. This is pretty obviously in favor outlawing the walled-garden model - there's already a gate and that's not enough. It's not walled if there's a section knocked out of the wall, at that point it's just a folly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folly Again, this is about the right of companies like Sony and Microsoft to exist within their own current business models - Epic has conspicuously avoided answering the question of how apple's walled garden is really different from any of the others. And the answer is that it is not, this is a thrust against that whole business model, and MS and Sony are just allies of convenience. The point is outlawing walled gardens, by which I mean cracking them open using legal means such that third-parties are allowed to set up their own platforms outside the app store system and processes. And people (such as yourself) clearly believe this is a social good. That's fine, don't hide from your position, you should own it. Just don't have any misapprehensions about what Meta and Google want to crack it open for, and what they will do with it. They're not on your side here, they want to crack it open so they can use network effect to bypass the app-review process. We're degrading and discontinuing our website for mobile users, either give our app full permissions or else you don't get to use facebook. You want to talk to your friends, don't you? https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/01/facebook-and-google-offered-gift-cards-for-root-level-access-to-ios-users-data/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/01/facebook-and-google-... Similarly, if consoles are cracked open, you will likely see console players' experiences degrade due to hackers/etc. Cracking open iMessage and bypassing device attestation will result in massive increases of spam for most users. These things do have consequences, they aren't just a knob labeled "freedom" that developers are just refusing to turn. And that is something that is continuously denied by the "open at all costs" faction - there are real downsides to having completely open systems, just like you can see from email/SMTP. Gatekeeping is actually good sometimes. -- Intellectually everyone understands and agrees with the idea that systems are always a tradeoff between security and freedom. With apologies to Robert Morris: the most secure system is the one where users are not allowed to log in, and certainly not allowed to run anything, let alone run something that isn't approved by the sys-op. It is self-evidently riskier to have to defend a full compiler/code ABI than a limited, secured userland (this is literally the entire reason SELinux exists - because a limited and secured experience is safer and more secure). Similarly, everyone in the defense community understands that the idea of Adverse Information or leverage/blackmail exist, and can get people to take actions that are against their normal interests. But when the rubber meets the road everyone acts like sandboxing should obviously be infallible and network-effect cannot be used to pressure people into agreeing to subvert the permissions. https://www.webdevelopersnotes.com/ensure-security-dont-own-a-computer https://www.webdevelopersnotes.com/ensure-security-dont-own-... Analogous to the defense community, this is already a solved problem: the answer is a third-party authority which makes sure users don't get tempted. You'll go to jail and lose your clearance, so you better not. Except in this case it has to be the devs who are responsible, and Apple and Google's review processes are that certification authority. Nor can you outsource this - it doesn't work if I am allowed to start my own Clearance Authority to approve myself, obviously that doesn't accomplish the purpose. Similarly, letting developers start their own app stores and "review themselves" is blatantly missing the point. Apple and Google have to be the review authority even for third-party stores. And that is what people want to outlaw, the walled-garden itself. People fundamentally disagree with the idea that it should be legal to build a system without those escape-valves, because systems should be open. And that's fine but it's not self-evidently a better social balance. There are always consequences - "self-certified" security clearance is a misnomer and a joke, it's literally an "evil bit" level oversimplification and mockery of security processes. It's literally a "not-evil" bit, I signed that it's not evil, what more do you want? There literally already are multiple such escape valves built into the system for small-time users to have freedoms on their own devices without enabling big abuses by commercial operators, and it's never enough. You can run whatever you want on a self-signed cert, or buy a developer license to get longer timeframes. Not good enough. But that's the last stop before you open up a big enough security hole for Facebook to drive a truck through. Which has been the point all along, and they've literally already been nabbed doing it before. (In the bigger picture though it speaks to how much copyleft has actually won. People literally mentally operate in terms of open-by-default now and actually get angry and suspicious over things like "why are you not letting me run CUDA or imessage on my device". And the answer is "because that's a proprietary system they paid to build and/or operate themselves", obviously everyone wants free stuff but it's a little baffling on a startup incubator internet forum that people are so openly hostile to business-models that don't exactly align with a single "approved" formula. And that's the core of the problem: they want to outlaw anything that's not that formula, "because everything should be open". But that's the email model, and email is way worse than iMessage precisely because of the lack of gatekeeping.) Again, dress it up however you like, but that's the core of the issue. You think the android business model is the only allowable one and any walled-garden alternatives should be outlawed, and that it's a social good to do so. That is not a misrepresentation and it's frankly a little tedious and disrespectful for you to pretend that it is. I'm not framing it the way you want it to be framed, but I haven't represented you as supporting anything you don't actually support either. That's actually mildly intellectually disrespectful to throw around false accusations so casually. Have the courage to own your own position. And try to understand that people can see your points differently without it being intellectual dishonesty - it's called a disagreement, not misrepresentation. The real disagreement is, as is usually the case, a values disagreement. Freedom vs quality-of-experience. Apple is a great experience, but it's limited and constrained. And I think that's fine in a phone, I have PCs for tinkering. You'd rather be able to flash anything. I see consequences in that that will reduce my quality-of-experience. And there are very good reasons to believe this - SELinux exists for a reason. But the underlying problem is - I am comfortable to let you have your own experience, while the reciprocal is not true. You are not ok with letting me have my experience, you think it should be taken away legislatively. That's not a misrepresentation - you should own it.
simondotau 3y ago
If the EU starts making similar noises in the direction of Sony, Nintendo, and the makers of most TVs and car infotainment systems, then I might start taking the EU seriously. Until then it's objectively correct to say that they're arbitrarily singling out one multinational corporation as a direct result of lobbying from other multinational corporations. (If they really wanted to be taken seriously I'd insist they apologise and rescind their Luddite foolishness around cookie notices.)
- dns_snek 3y ago
  The regulation only affects businesses past a certain size and market share. They're not singling out Apple, they're regulating all of these under the DMA: Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, ByteDance, Meta, Microsoft https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_23_4328 https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_23_...

1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago

Long have I wished for Apple hardware that came with Apple-provided OS optional. Well before iOS. I started to want this with the arrival of OSX. (It's possible to boot into a non-Apple OS, but one cannot completely uninstall the Apple OS.) Whenever I mentioned this online over the years no one else seemed interested. Perhaps Apple's now more visible stanglehold on the hardware after purchase is a critical part of its "business strategy". Apple has always had nice hardware. It's all the other nonsense that has become too much to bear. Wish there was company that made Apple-quality hardware without bundling it with pretentious, presumptuous BS. Apple once sold a computer that ran a NetBSD 6.1 kernel. People used it as a router and I never read any bad reviews of it. It shows what is possible.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]