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Here's Apple's big problem: it's not a replacement for so many alternatives because it isn't supported on all platforms. Safari? Not on Windows. Apple Music?

by cletus 2y ago

Here's Apple's big problem: it's not a replacement for so many alternatives because it isn't supported on all platforms. Safari? Not on Windows. Apple Music? This actually has a Windows client. I'm not sure how good it is. But Spotify supports Windows and even Linux. Apple Password Manager? Will this be tied to iCloud? Will I be able to use it on Android? If I no longer have an iPhone will it be a pain to maintain and use? A dog cannot serve two masters. A company like Apple doesn't see any of these things as a product. They're a means to an end: to push the iPhone platform (and hardware sales). That priority will always trump the interests of a product like this. It's also why I refuse to buy more into Google products: it's too much of a risk to lose access to everything if Google wakes up one day and decides to suspend your account with no recourse other than making enough of a stink on social media such that an employee will actually look into it. People don't want everything tied to one identity, one service, one login.

gumby 2y ago
They have a windows app for it.
- yreg 2y ago
  Windows app will certainly help adoption. An Android app would be nice as well, but I doubt that many people use both iOS and Android devices[1] (or concern themselves whether they will be able to switch platforms easily). [1] Android devices as in devices where password manager is desired, not as in 3 Billion Devices Run Java
  - dhosek 2y ago
    I wonder what the number of people who use Macs and Android is. I would guess that it’s a tiny fraction of the marketplace (and likely entirely populated by people with Kindle Fires, not Android phones).
    - yreg 2y ago
      Actually now I'm thinking that there are probably quite a few developers with Macs + Android phones.
zitterbewegung 2y ago
Apple wants it to be a problem so it incentivizes you to switch over.
- ariuser8434 2y ago
  But Apple knows that there are many reasons why a user who may choose Apple where they make decisions for their dollars, is also a user who is stuck in other ecosystems in other context. Of course, I'm talking about, for example, work environments where you may be stuck with a Windows PC, or have to use a corporate-owned Android device for your phone...
MrDarcy 2y ago
I use Apple Music and Apple Notes every day on my Debian workstation. Works like a charm.
- Scarbutt 2y ago
  Notes web version is pretty limited though, ex: can't attached images.
  - zer0zzz 2y ago
    I use Notion in cases where it's too limited. Unfortunately notion charges for really large attachments. Trick I do do sometimes is, just WhatsApp the files to myself and attach them from my phone
- zer0zzz 2y ago
  Word. I do the same. The web versions aren't perfect but they do the job. There are way too many Android-only users in these comments that don't have a clue what they are talking about.
basisword 2y ago
>> People don't want everything tied to one identity, one service, one login. I think this is exactly what _most_ people want. With password management specifically, Apple has had a Chrome extension available for a while now which has allowed me to use it on other browsers/platforms. Not ideal, but good enough for most. On top of that, they don't lock you in with passwords. You can easily import and export your passwords, just like you can with 1Password. Apple Music has had a web client for a long time. iTunes has been on Windows for 20+ years and Apple Music was supported via that until recently when they built an Apple Music specific app.
- evilduck 2y ago
  Besides the web client, https://cider.sh https://cider.sh exists and is in various distro package managers already too.
  - dxbednarczyk 2y ago
    ...and is miles better than Apple's attempt at providing "support" for other platforms than their own.
- lxgr 2y ago
  > On top of that, they don't lock you in with passwords. Now that many sites are moving to passkeys or TOTPs, it would be great if Apple could not lock users in there as well. > Apple has had a Chrome extension available for a while now which has allowed me to use it on other browsers/platforms That's only on Windows and requires you to install iCloud tools locally, right?
  - 58028641 2y ago
    The Chrome extension also works on macOS.
  - ocodo 2y ago
    > it would be great if Apple could not lock users in there as well. The king of wishful thinking has entered the chat.
WheatMillington 2y ago
>People don't want everything tied to one identity, one service, one login. This is EXACTLY what people want. Please remember that HN is not a cross section of the general public.
- ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
  > Please remember that HN is not a cross section of the general public. Yup. I need to constantly keep that in mind, when I’m designing my software. Very often, the fact that I like it, is a negative.
  - satvikpendem 2y ago
    > Very often, the fact that I like it, is a negative. Incredible insight. Too often I'm building something and it rises in complexity precisely due to me wanting extra features that might be very niche and technical in nature, so I too must remember to not bloat the product and make it much more streamlined.
    - kcplate 2y ago
      SWEs build for maximum tinkerability. General users just want the software to work without having to tinker with it at all.
  - ascagnel_ 2y ago
    What this forum needs is for its members to volunteer their time at their local library doing tech support. It’d be a rude awakening for a lot of folks.
    - appplication 2y ago
      I can’t begin to count how many hours I’ve spent trying to help my mom untangle passwords for all of her accounts. I can’t help but laugh at the indignance over an approach that isn’t fully decentralized/anonymized/self-hostable/brushes-your-teeth-and-makes-you-toast/whatever. I don’t need idealism. I need my mom to be able to figure out how to log into her bank without having to call me every time. The more that’s tied to a single ecosystem the better.
Izikiel43 2y ago
[flagged]
- BenFranklin100 2y ago
  >> Oh sweet summer child I only ever see this expression on nerd sites.
  - jpalawaga 2y ago
    probably because it's was boosted to popularity by game of thrones, a nerd tv show.
Justsignedup 2y ago
Sadly this will take off, and be tied to everything apple. From a tech perspective I would never use their tools even if they are the most convenient. But the reality is most people will see this as the only option for password management, and 1password isn't free, so for them they will see no better way out.
- cletus 2y ago
  I would be happy if more people adopted password managers. We'd all be a lot better off if they did. And personally I don't care which tool they use to get there. But there's still too much friction in using a password manager, not all of which is the fault of the password manager (eg different password requirements, how 2FA verification is handled, the antiquated notion of password expiry, some sites split username and password onto two pages so you have to verify twice, some sites using a third field you have to fill in like surname). So I'm not sure how many people will actually use this just because of this friction. Branding a solution as Apple isn't a guarantee of success. If it were, we'd still have Safari for Windows.
  - Justsignedup 2y ago
    We are not always the target demographic. I know many people who use apps because they were the default. Most people used Internet Explorer because it was, and many still don't know that there's an alternative, or even why use an alternative.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
sgarland 2y ago
> People don't want everything tied to one identity, one service, one login. This is what OAuth attempts to do, and most users and devs I know like it. I'm well aware of the risks of putting all eggs into one basket. I'm already doing it with 1Pass (albeit with external MFA for some sites), so I see no difference with letting Apple manage it.
- tyingq 2y ago
  > This is what OAuth attempts to do, and most users and devs I know like it. Counterpoint from an interesting source: https://gist.github.com/nckroy/dd2d4dfc86f7d13045ad715377b6a48f https://gist.github.com/nckroy/dd2d4dfc86f7d13045ad715377b6a...
shmerl 2y ago
Apple thinks "One Ring to rule them all" will work on mindless enough. But otherwise, yeah. Those who aren't mindless wouldn't want that.
- citizen_friend 2y ago
  People always ignore the simpler explanation: it’s more time and work to make something a second time on a platform you don’t know and control.
  - shmerl 2y ago
    I wouldn't look for any excuses for someone who is as often nasty as Apple is.
    - citizen_friend 2y ago
      Sounds like this is a personal problem.
      - shmerl 2y ago
        The opposite - it would be a personal problem if someone would trust the likes of Apple giving them undeserved benefit of a doubt.
chx 2y ago
It's good that it's not cross platform, we do not need any more product monopolies, we have enough. Still there's a chance this will hurt the password manager market which leads to an even better outcome: we still have a monopoly but it doesn't make the product available on platforms most people use.
zer0zzz 2y ago
> People don't want everything tied to one identity, one service, one login. People literally want everything tied to one identity, service, and login. You are almost totally wrong. People do sometimes want to switch to something new when they feel what they've bought into hasn't met their expectations or has fallen behind in innovation. And guess what? Apple in very limited ways actually locks people into things like passwords, files, photos, notes etc. Their entire ecosystem is pretty easy to migrate away from, I've done it several times. Theres an import/export tool for most everything. After this year you probably can't even say they are locking people into their ecosystem with iMessage.
MrDrMcCoy 2y ago
> It's also why I refuse to buy more into Google products: it's too much of a risk to lose access to everything if Google wakes up one day and decides to suspend your account There's a difference between Google's products and Google's services. You can use either one without the other. I am a happy user of Google hardware, and am even happier to be almost entirely extricated from their services.
- cuu508 2y ago
  Do you mean stuff like Pixel but with a degoogled version of Android?
  - MrDrMcCoy 2y ago
    Even without degoogling, you can refuse to log in to a Google account and disable most of their apps. I rather do like GrapheneOS, though.
johnnyApplePRNG 2y ago
Someday I hope a company might emerge that develops things for the sake of developing things to enhance their popularity.
- Ferret7446 2y ago
  That's contradictory; what you're looking for is a charity. A company does things for the sake of profit.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - johnnyApplePRNG 2y ago
    It can be profitable to be innovative in my opinion.
mirzap 2y ago
How many people use Mac and Windows at the same time? There are some, but I bet most people do not use multiple OS. Usually, people who have a Mac have an iPhone and maybe an iPad. They are entirely in the Apple ecosystem because they see all the benefits when all those devices work seamlessly together.
- eps 2y ago
  Quite a few. Windows desktop/laptop + an iPhone/iPad is a super common combo.
  - Jcowell 2y ago
    Especially for gaming
- neuronic 2y ago
  For me the issue is gaming. It remains a central hobby of mine and while Mac has gotten much deeper into gaming in recent years it's a far cry off from Windows. I use Apple ecosystem otherwise (work, mobile). Also, I have left Linux behind after my academic years and don't miss it. I would immediately leave Windows in the dust if gaming was equally supported on macOS. Maybe in the future, let's see. For enterprise work, MS365 is also really central and it's basically not possible to work without Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Teams even if you personally prefer other software (I don't). They're fine on macOS or the web interface but clearly neutered in comparison to Windows native.
swiftcoder 2y ago
> Apple Music? This actually has a Windows client. I'm not sure how good it is It is absolute garbage, but luckily the legacy integration in iTunes for windows still (sort of) works.
AnonC 2y ago
> Here's Apple's big problem: it's not a replacement for so many alternatives because it isn't supported on all platforms. No, it's not Apple's problem, let alone be a big problem. Apple does not like to provide services for free on other platforms and isn't even very good at doing it for paid services. This passwords app is meant for those who use and depend on Apple's ecosystem, not as a generic competition for other password managers.
efitz 2y ago
The other big problem is that in the case that you get on Apple’s bad side for whatever reason, you now lose your passwords to everything.
- pityJuke 2y ago
  Terrifies me. I can't really piss 1Password off, so that'll never be a worry. My iCloud Email can at least be re-directed to Fastmail as I own the domain (other than Hide My Email, which is a shame).
  - madeofpalk 2y ago
    You can't piss 1Password off, until you do. There's nothing inherit about Agile Bits that shields them from arbitary account closure. You can't piss Apple off, until you do. I personally haven't heard of people's account getting randomly shut down for whatever reason for either company, but I'm sure it happens.
    - pityJuke 2y ago
      It's a matter of surface area to somehow trigger the automated detection that kills an account. With 1Password, I can only really think of payment issues (ultimately, everything within your account is just a matter of sharing a binary blob they can't read - maybe if you try to use it as a file store and the size becomes excessive), whereas with Apple, I'm not entirely certain what they could read on my machine that could trigger them (hopefully with Advanced Data Protection, this is a small surface area). But you are right, both of them could cause headaches.
      - crossroadsguy 2y ago
        Off topic: I just saw your comment and I also used the term "surface area" :D Though, there' a 3 minute gap, I had not seen your comment (hadn't refreshed the page) when I typed mine.
    - crossroadsguy 2y ago
coldtea 2y ago
>People don't want everything tied to one identity, one service, one login. You'd be surprised. People want a neat solution so they don't have to deal with multiple nuissances. They worry less about vendor lock-in (if they even understand the issue unless it's bitten them, and then they can consider the costs of switching as totally normal and expected, similar to how they just go find app replacements for platform-exclusive software).
snapcaster 2y ago
I do, because i don't have any windows or android machines
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
thisarticle 2y ago
They’re releasing an app for Windows that will solve that piece at least. It’ll sync across both.
- cletus 2y ago
  In the same way I don't trust Google not to cancel whatever it is they just announced, I don't trust apple to keep supporting software on platforms that aren't theirs. They just don't have a good track record and no real incentives. The last widespread Apple sosftware on non-Apple platforms was probably iTunes, which was terrible.
fckgw 2y ago
Apple already has an iCloud app for Windows and has had an iCloud Password Chrome extension for years. There is no support for Android.
- lxgr 2y ago
  > has had an iCloud Password Chrome extension for years Which is also only available for Windows, as far as I know.
  - filmgirlcw 2y ago
    It’s also available on macOS.
  - nashashmi 2y ago
    And needs iCloud installed for it to work.
    - gumby 2y ago
      They aren’t preventing you from using 1password which requires their cloud service, or any other. I use third party calendar, address book (contacts), text editor, but use Apple mail and safari. And mostly use Dropbox for file storage. Other people can make different choices. This doesn’t seem like a crisis.
Someone 2y ago
> Here's Apple's big problem: it's not a replacement for so many alternatives because it isn't supported on all platforms. I don’t see why that would be a big problem for Apple. As this article explains, this isn’t new functionality. It’s (mostly) a new UI for existing functionality, to make the hardware they sell and make lots of money on more attractive.
- quitit 2y ago
  Seems to be the case that commenters do not know that Keychain Access exists. Apple has tried various approaches of surfacing this functionality (eg the passwords panel in Safari and again in iOS’s settings app). This just seems to be the app-agnostic way of providing this functionality to everyday users, and probably a good thing as platforms move away from passwords.
  - llamaimperative 2y ago
    No, Keychain Access is just a terrible app. It is sufficiently terrible that I'm 100% aware of its existence and instead choose to pay for a less OS-integrated, but far better app.
    - quitit 2y ago
      > No, bla bla irrelevant comment. No, the commenters I'm referring to are ones that think Apple including a password manager is anticompetitive lock in, and other similar comments that are clearly unaware that this is not new functionality. Your comment has zero bearing on what I posted. Apple themselves use 1PW
    - StressedDev 2y ago
      I am not sure what you mean by it’s “terrible”. It works well for me. It saves my passwords, generates secure passwords for me, works with Safari, and works with apps.
superb_dev 2y ago
Apple Music has a decent web player, so it's technically supported on Linux
ttul 2y ago
If they haven’t already, I won’t be surprised if Apple creates a reasonable password app for Android and Windows specifically to address this concern. Fanning out to other platforms to enable customers to continue using Apple products is a decent strategy that probably does more to retain people within the Apple ecosystem than it does to enable a move away from Apple.
- jurmous 2y ago
  Apple already has a Windows iCloud password app and a Chrome extension https://support.apple.com/guide/icloud-windows/manage-passwords-icwa812f1681/icloud https://support.apple.com/guide/icloud-windows/manage-passwo...
tootie 2y ago
It's more platform lock-in and it leverages their market position. Unabashed monopolism. Completely unchastened by recent lawsuits.
- kstrauser 2y ago
  Except for the fact that you can import from and export to other password managers using built-in functions. That kind of kills the whole lock-in vibe.
- WheatMillington 2y ago
  Literally not a monopoly.

AnthonyMouse 2y ago

> I think this is exactly what _most_ people want. Like seven people replied to say this, but they're all missing the trick. Most people want this because they're guided to want it. If you show people the convenience but not the risk, of course they want something with an advantage and no apparent disadvantage. But the disadvantage exists, it's just not immediately obvious. Then some corporate machine learning algorithm decides that it's your day to have a bad year, or the screws only get tightened after you're already locked in, and the regret comes some time after the decision is made. Whereas the nerds who can see the inside of the machine are aware that this sort of thing happens and their response is no thank you. A starkly different preference from the people paying the most attention is a troubling sign. It's the early stages of this: https://xkcd.com/743/ https://xkcd.com/743/ The thing that gets me is that people then defend the practice because it's likely to be successful. Lots of unsophisticated people are going to put all their eggs in one basket and then have a bad time, which is a result we should be trying to prevent, not defend the people causing it because they're likely to turn a profit. Companies making money on information asymmetries and the misfortune of others is a flaw we should be looking for ways to optimize out.

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 2y ago

Luckily, _most_ people don't buy overpriced and closed Apple devices.

majke 2y ago
> In the US, iPhone has a 58.81% market share There are demographics where Apple has dominance.
MissTake 2y ago
In the desktop world people tend to buy cheaper, yet equally as closed Windows machines.
- tsimionescu 2y ago
  In what ways are desktop Windows boxes as closed as Apple? I would say there are many many things to fault Microsoft for, but closing down the OS has never been one of them (though that is gradually changing outside the EU, to be fair).
  - esskay 2y ago
    Counter point - in what ways is macOS 'closed' and Windows not? And I am specifically talking about macOS, not iOS.
    - Zach_the_Lizard 2y ago
      MacOS is only licensed for use in Apple branded hardware, as I understand it. Even running it in a VM could be problematic if that host isn't running MacOS.
      - MissTake 2y ago
        True. However I can (and have multiple times) migrate from machine to machine without needing to reinstall everything. My work MacBook was pulled from an original Air from something like 2015, to a 2017 Pro and currently my 2019 Pro. So I’ve got apps installed on my Mac that have been installed damn near 10 years ago. Ditto my home 2015 Pro was later on migrated to a M1 Air. Hell, I’ve still some 32 Bit Steam games that still somehow run on my Air (least Steam tells me they’re 32 bit). We could play this game ad-infinitum, each finding a level of supposed “openness” but the basic facts are that neither Windows, nor MacOS are truly open. If you want open, then Linux is always going to be in the answer somewhere. Not MS Windows. And not Apple MacOS.
      - esskay 2y ago
        So your issue isnt the openness in terms of being limited on what you can do on it, and more that you want it to be bloated with drivers for millions of various pieces of hardware like Windows, got it.
        talldayo 2y ago
        > and more that you want it to be bloated with drivers for millions of various pieces of hardware like Windows, got it. MacOS is bloated anyways; they might as well use that bloat for something important like backwards-compatibility and not zombie-code left over from the PowerPC era. That's just an objective failure, on Apple's behalf; they break software support more often than Microsoft and even Linux at this point. A professional OS really has no excuse to break someone's software and leave it broken. Even Microsoft gets that. So... yeah, you know what? I do want it to be bloated with drivers, because whatever they're stuffing it with right now clearly isn't working. I don't trust Apple to write or maintain a long-lived successor, I demand third-party alternatives I can maintain myself. Give me more options for writing and delivering software, or else I am going to continue ignoring MacOS as a build target for the foreseeable future.
  - MissTake 2y ago
    When using the terms “open” and “closed” with operating systems, one is traditionally talking open the source code. As such both Windows and MacOS are closed source. As for “opening up the OS” both are pretty gosh darned flexible and extensible wrt other features. However being based upon a BSD core, MacOS has had access to the Unix command line natively since forever. For Windows one used to have to rely on CgyWin before the virtualized WSL platform came to be. Whilst MacOS has the somewhat opaque ~/Library for storing user settings and data, it pales into comparison to the massively Opaque Windows Registry. I’ve had had very few issues fixing app install issues with my Mac - with Windows I’ve had more than one occasion where I’ve had to do a complete reinstall of the OS due to the Registry being totally hosed to the point I couldn’t reinstall apps again.
    - tim333 2y ago
      You said "equally as closed Windows machines." In terms of the machine Windows is way more open in that you can use what hardware you want. But yeah the software is closed source.
      - MissTake 2y ago
        TBH, the parent also stated “but closing down the OS…” So waters were indeed muddied.
    - nicce 2y ago
      I think the keynote here is the closed/open hardware. You can run Windows almost on any hardware. So it is much more open in general. You can equally run almost any imaginable software on both operating systems (if we ignore the performance), but you have extreme difficulties to run macOS on most hardware.
    - tsimionescu 2y ago
      I don't think when someone is talking about a "closed device" they usually mean "closed source". I at least took it to refer to whether you can run whatever software you want on that device+OS, and how easy it is to do so. I think Windows is up there with the open source OSs (Linux, BSDs, etc) on regular PCs are at the same end of "run anything you want from wherever you want it", iOS devices are at the other extreme of "only run things approved by Apple", Android devices are pretty closer to iOS because they make you jump through hoops and potentially lose access to various functionalities to install certain things or gain root access. Modern macOS, as far as I understand, is somewhere in the middle: you have to jump through quite a few hoops to install certain kinds of software, and a few aren't permitted at all I think (unsigned kernel modules?).
nicce 2y ago
Many could disagree about the pricing of MacBooks, for example. M Pro series are probably the best laptops on the market, and if people keep buying them, is the price too much? MacBook Air is actually quite well priced for what you get.

nottorp 2y ago
Ok so let's assume passkeys are a form of saved generated password. > 1. They are highly phishing resistant. Unlike passwords and popular forms of 2FA (TOTP and SMS), users can’t be tricked into sending their credential to a fake/malicious server. A passkey is bound to the server domain at the time the credential is created, and your OS/browser will simply not send it to the wrong place. So why does my browser or password manager send saved normal passwords to a different domain than the one they were saved for? This is not a limitation of passwords but of the software that encourages saving passwords. It didn't need switching to machine only passwords to fix. > 2. There is no credential for attackers to steal from servers in the case of server breach. This is because only a public key is stored on the server, instead of password hashes (or worse, plaintext, if the app/website developers don’t know what they’re doing). What has stopped developers from using irreversible transformations on stored passwords in the past? The math was there. > 3. Passkeys are guaranteed to be unique and secure. The same cannot be said for passwords. Even a password manager cannot guarantee that every single credential stored in the password manager is both unique and secure. And password complexity requirements often make it a painful game of trial and error to create a secure password, even when using a password manager. If it's generated by software, any software should be able to assure uniqueness. This is again a failure of saved passwords / password managers. > 4. Because of annoying password complexity requirements, the process of creating a new password can be annoying and take up to a minute or two of fiddling around, even when using a password manager. With a passkey, the process takes as long as Face ID or Touch ID (or equivalent on other platforms) every time. Every single credential creation and authentication is a fantastic user experience (both fast and easy). Yes and here we get to the elephant in the room. You become dependent on an easily stolen or destroyed device for authentication. It is a fantastic user experience until you're a plane flight away from home, your phone gets stolen. Your passkeys are safe in the secure enclave. Too bad you can't access them any more. How do you get home? You don't have any other devices to prove your identity, if you even have backup devices, they're at home. The flight options are in an app that you don't have the passkeys any more for. Your flight may get canceled or rescheduled and you have no way of knowing. If you didn't bring any physical credit cards or backup cash, you can't even eat. Passkeys are all fine in your average techie environment, but can be a disaster outside it.
- jesseendahl 2y ago
  > So why does my browser or password manager send saved normal passwords to a different domain than the one they were saved for? This is not a limitation of passwords but of the software that encourages saving passwords. It didn't need switching to machine only passwords to fix. Any kind of authentication method that relies on a string that can possibly be manually typed into a box by an end-user can never be made to be highly resistant to phishing. > What has stopped developers from using irreversible transformations on stored passwords in the past? The math was there. I don’t understand what point you’re making here. Are you saying “why didn’t people create a different standard than WebAuthn?” or are you saying “strong password hashing methods exist, so why do so many websites use bad ones”? Or are you saying something else? > You become dependent on an easily stolen or destroyed device for authentication. No, you don’t, because passkeys on Apple platforms are stored in iCloud Keychain, which syncs across all your devices with end-to-end encryption. They’re not solely on your phone. > It is a fantastic user experience until you're a plane flight away from home, your phone gets stolen. Your passkeys are safe in the secure enclave. They are stored in iCloud Keychain, not the Secure Enclave. And you can recover access to your iCloud Keychain is even if you lose your phone, and even if you lose all of your devices. > The flight options are in an app that you don't have the passkeys any more for. You could just go through the account recovery flow for the airline app to regain access to your account. Whether you use a password or a passkey as your primary credential for logging in has very little to do with account recovery logging into an airline app. The app needs to continue to handle users who get locked out of their airline account for a variety of reasons.
  - nottorp 2y ago
    > You could just go through the account recovery flow for the airline app to regain access to your account. On which device? You can't use a public pc (or a local friend's) because you'd need to get your new passkeys on it and that's not safe. Buy a new laptop/phone on the spot? I'm going to make up a new conspiracy theory that says this push for passkeys is there to sell more devices, because shared devices aren't safe any more.

AnthonyMouse 2y ago

But have you thought to ask why that is? The general mechanism for free software to be developed is for the individual users to make modifications. Not all of them, of course, but the ones who know how to. Someone sees something wrong, fixes it. Apple interferes with this. If you don't like an app on your iPhone, even if it's open source, you can't just make a minor change because for that you have to pay $100/year and buy a Mac and all of this friction that discourages people from doing it. And then upstream doesn't get the little change (times a thousand individual users with an itch to scratch), and the one-time contributor doesn't become a repeat contributor either. Not only that, you can't distribute a half-finished app to the public -- even if it's free -- because it wouldn't pass review. But then you can't get any users who might help you to finish it. So the state of open source software on the iPhone is a shambles, because Apple neutered the primary mechanism for free-as-in-speech software to become any good on their platform. Compare this to Linux on a PC where simple things are about as likely to "just work" as they are on a Mac, more likely to do so than on Windows, and weird and complicated things work better than on either of them because even though they're not always easy they're very nearly always possible. Which is the perpetual sham of "it just works". Simple things are simple everywhere because they're common and well-supported. Complicated things are often difficult, but some platforms make them prohibitively difficult or simply disallowed, and people confuse this with "easy" because you don't remember spending time to make something work when you can't. But that's not actually an advantage, because you're not obligated to spend time on something that doesn't immediately work, but the option to choose to is valuable when sometimes it's worth it.

_as_text 2y ago
Well that's all fun and games until you start putting off paying Internet bill for two weeks because it turns out that you misconfigured your password app and it actually didn't save your password to the utility service provider and you realize you have no internet one day and you have a school assignment ugh and maybe your credit score gets 0.5% lower and yeah it's all very much your fault. "But you can just be more careful! Handle stuff like this as it arises!" Yeah, sure, just like during Communist times you could easily get more than one pound of coffee per half a year if you're just careful and note when it's available in stores as a drop-in I believe this whole Apple vs Linux debate is perfectly analogous to the West vs East Germany debate, to the point that almost all intuitions/arguments for the latter are perfectly reusable in the former
- AnthonyMouse 2y ago
  > Well that's all fun and games until you start putting off paying Internet bill for two weeks because it turns out that you misconfigured your password app and it actually didn't save your password to the utility service provider As opposed to the centralized service that will kindly misconfigure it for you, or just discontinue it out from under you, or ban you because of a false positive, or ban you because of a true positive because you unwittingly violated their broad and ambiguous terms but you're still just as screwed. > I believe this whole Apple vs Linux debate is perfectly analogous to the West vs East Germany debate, to the point that almost all intuitions/arguments for the latter are perfectly reusable in the former The fallacy of Soviet Communism was the fallacy of central planning. The Party decides what's good for you and The Party is infallible so if you try to resist you'll be punished. Freedom of choice is heresy. Divergence is verboten. Does that sound to you like the typical Linux user, or like Apple?
kcplate 2y ago
Not sure of your reality, but my apple ecosystem just works. I spend nearly zero time fiddling with my rig just to get to a point of productivity but see Linux using peers in a constant state of tweaking trying to achieve and failing of what I have by just opening a box.
- sgarland 2y ago
  Same. The only issues I ever have are with non-Apple hardware, like Sony headphones, Acer monitor, etc. Do I wish they worked better? Of course. Have I experienced those same problems with Android / PC? No, but different problems existed.
- AnthonyMouse 2y ago
  A lot of Linux users like fiddling with things, and then purposely choose the things they'll have to fiddle with. This is not actually required. You can buy a device from e.g. System76 and then use the preinstalled OS or something conservative like Debian Stable. It "just works". The people compiling everything from source and messing with kernel modules are doing it because that's their hobby.
kcplate 2y ago
> Not only that, you can't distribute a half-finished app to the public -- even if it's free -- because it wouldn't pass review. Ahhh so you want the public to do your QA for you and don’t mind interfering with their productivity when the first iterations of your software are a buggy mess? I am ok with Apple trying to keep the pests out of their garden, or providing a lockable gate like TestFlight where I can go into a testing situation with my eyes wide open and risks well understood. Your open source devs are not always great at disclosing the fact that their software is half baked and people install expecting a robust app and finding instead…a load of crap
- AnthonyMouse 2y ago
  > Ahhh so you want the public to do your QA for you and don’t mind interfering with their productivity when the first iterations of your software are a buggy mess? "Open source" means developed by the public. The public isn't just doing the QA, they're doing the entire thing from the first line of code. Which is exactly the problem with Apple's interference -- they want you to have a finished app before you can share it with all the people who might have been willing to help you build it. > TestFlight And we're back to intentionally putting up barriers to exactly what open source needs to succeed. Maybe 1% of users are programmers, and 1% of those might be contributors. But that's fine if you have a million users -- less than 0.1% of the world population -- because you could have a hundred contributors, which is enough to get something done. Which in turn allows you to improve and then get ten million users etc. Testflight caps the number of users at 10,000. Now you've got 1 contributor instead of 100 and when that's not enough you're sunk. Meanwhile the "beta" is forced to expire after 90 days which creates friction for the users and makes them more likely to abandon you. > Your open source devs are not always great at disclosing the fact that their software is half baked People will figure this out pretty quickly when they try to use it. But then that's the point -- you try to use it, it sucks, but you can fix it yourself. The intention is to have this happen and then the app improves for everyone.
  - kcplate 2y ago
    > People will figure this out pretty quickly when they try to use it. Then you find that it’s uninstallable and you now have a fooked computer where you have to wipe your whole goddamned system to be rid of the POS you just installed. Hopefully you imaged your system right before you DL’d and installed the offending app…so you’ll only lose a few hours instead of a full day this time for your effort. However, you can feel good that you helped “develop” an open source software that almost no one will ever use like the good little netizen you are. Yeah, no thanks. I’ll take my walled garden and it’s vetted and well behaved apps all day long.