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Big tech has always driven me mad with how they leverage their monoplies once they reach a certain size. Why can't I swap cloud backends on the mobile platform

Big tech has always driven me mad with how they leverage their monoplies once they reach a certain size. Why can't I swap cloud backends on the mobile platforms? I shouldnt need a gmail/icloud account to setup an android/ios device. Open those api's and let me use another hosted service or host my own. After a device becomes unsupported release the unlock codes or whatever. At that point it becomes a security hazard anyway. I should be able to create custom roms/software to keep using it if I want.

enriquec 2y ago
"unlock codes or whatever" As an engineer, I can tell you it's not even easy to keep things working internally - let alone support every possible integration. Just because it's easy to say, doesn't mean it's feasible to do. But if you're convinced its what people want, there's nothing preventing you from making it your life - like other people have done with their strategies.
- refulgentis 2y ago
  I appreciate the engineering perspective, and you're right that supporting every integration isn't trivial. Is there a difference between providing an "unlock code" upon deprecation, and requiring "support for every possible integration"(?)? Setting that aside, it seems it not every possible combination needs official support, but rather that providing an open or documented way for motivated users or communities to build upon or repurpose devices would be beneficial. Many projects exist precisely because tech companies allowed or at least tolerated community-driven solutions. It's less about expecting everything to be effortless for the original manufacturer, and more about avoiding deliberate restrictions that prevent the community from extending a device's useful lifespan.
  - GTP 2y ago
    > Is there a difference between providing an "unlock code" upon deprecation, and requiring "support for every possible integration"(?)? As a different engineer than the one you where replying to, I can say that yes, there is a substantial difference between the two. What the original comment was likely referring to with unlock codes, is the ability of unlocking a smartphone's bootloader so that one is able to install custom ROMs. But this is very different from providing support for said ROMs. A company can totally say: "here's the unlock code, but you use this under your sole responsibility, we will void your warranty if you do this". Being able to install custom ROMs at the cost of losing the warranty is a compromise I'm willing to accept: one can still wait for the warranty to expire and then install custom ROMs.
- Teever 2y ago
  Do the tech companies that make the devices that we now require for daily life because they decided to make the world that way release all of the resources necessary for independent people to do what you're suggesting? If not that's something that we need to regulate.
  - enriquec 2y ago
    The regulations stop more people from being able to do this than competition does. "because they decided to make the world that way" Who is "they"? Participants in the free market? I don't think inept politicians should supersede them.
    - closewith 2y ago
      The tech monopolies and oligopolies are not participants in a free market - they are they result of regulation.
      - ethbr1 2y ago
        Massive capital has the same effect. The world learned this circa-1900.
        closewith 2y ago
        To be clear, I am in favour of regulation and taxation that would make these monopolies and their beneficial owners artefacts of the past. Neither the free market nor the current regulation in the US operates in favour of the citizenry.
        mrguyorama 2y ago
        A useful big step would be to just use the exact antitrust regulations and laws we have had on the books since the first time we had to figure this out over a hundred years ago. Teddy Roosevelt helped take care of this, though we definitely didn't wield them against AT&T for too long. They served us okay enough right up until Reagan decided that monopolies would be fine if they "benefited the consumer", as if that isn't a trivially stupid concept to anyone who has dealt with any system ever. Thanks to Reagan's admin, we allowed companies to nakedly take aggressive control of any market they want as long as they pretended they wouldn't raise prices. We need to be less accepting of mergers and acquisitions too. If Google can just throw an absurd amount of money at any startup competitor to kill competition, it doesn't matter that it's not efficient, what human being will turn down $100 million just to stop competing? "Acquihires" are an anti-competitive practice A company just having a lot of cash on hand can purposely pervert markets if you let them. Conservatives complain about "punishing winners" but if you want a market to stay competitive, and therefore allow market forces to actually function, you cannot HAVE a "winner", or at least you can't let someone win so comprehensively that their resources end up warping the market just like a lot of mass warps spacetime. You must ensure that any company can be threatened by upstarts.
- graemep 2y ago
  No one is asking for support for every possible integration. What people are asking for is not actively preventing other integrations. That means through business means and deals as well as technological measures.
  - xxpor 2y ago
    I gotta be honest, I really feel like these comments are completely divorced from reality. No one (p99.99) wants to get rid of Google/Apple on their phones. But "how do I install Play services" is a wildly popular search for people who own Kindle Fires. No one wants to deal with the Windows 98ificaiton of phones.
    - ethbr1 2y ago
      Nobody wants that because there's currently no market for it, so no solutions for it. (And yes, we can quibble about alternate Android app stores in countries that aren't China, but Google's rigged that game heavily in their favor via defaults)
    - LinuxBender 2y ago
      I know this requires changing the SoC to x86_64 or ARM but I want bog standard Linux any distribution to run on the cell phone, at least run in the sense of the kernel. The applications would be up to the distribution maintainers. Talking to the modem should just be a Linux kernel module that has been blessed by Linus Torvalds. The code must be clean enough that at no point is he tempted to raise the middle finger or start writing an email. No obfuscated code, no lawful intercept JTAG debugging code, no dodgy BIOS just bog standard Linux and standard x86_64 or ARM hardware. Maybe something like coreboot as the BIOS. In fairness I also want a goose that lays golden eggs.
      - pdimitar 2y ago
        "What color do you like dragon to be?"
        2y ago
jcoleh 2y ago
Could we apply a progressive tax to large corporations (like big tech monopolies) to force them to figure out what aspects of their own business should be split up and spun out to keep the size of companies roughly equal to "one layer of the stack". Seems like a progressive corporation tax would be an easy way to allow "the market" to naturally limit the size of corporations and find the correct separation points for separate businesses.
- ragebol 2y ago
  Really random thought: the tax you pay on profit is proportional (or even 1:1) to your market share. Become a monopoly? 100% of your profit is now taxed. Nicer to stay at eg. 25% and have competition. Maybe ramp it exponentially (yes, I know there are loopholes in this pie-in-the-sky)
  - JoshTriplett 2y ago
    It's a creative thought. But how do you define "market", and which market applies to which profit? Also, if you invent something so novel it makes a new market, that would imply you are immediately taxed at 100%.
    - ethbr1 2y ago
      It's a good idea and a systemic nudge towards the outcome we want. (Probably minimum 3 large competitors in every market) Market definition should be tied to revenue source. It'd be difficult, but doesn't seem insurmountable. The Android/iPhone problem is somewhat of a unique case, given mobile's size. IMHO "unreasonable to non-monopolize" should be an option... but come with FRAND interconnection requirements as a consequence of designation (e.g. Android/iPhone both have to offer the ability for other apps stores to be implemented, and can only charge those stores FRAND fees) And novelty / new markets could be solved by progressively implementing the tax rate increases as the market matures (e.g. first 5 years).
    - rexpop 2y ago
      North American Industry Classification System (NAICS). NAICS uses a hierarchical structure with sectors represented by 2-digit codes, such as Manufacturing (31-33) or Retail Trade (44-45). In antitrust law, a "market" is defined as an area of effective competition that includes both product (or service) and geographic dimensions. The US Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission use market definitions to evaluate competition under laws like the Clayton Act. Tools like the hypothetical monopolist test are used to determine whether a market is too narrow by assessing if a monopolist could profitably raise prices. > Also, if you invent something so novel it makes a new market, that would imply you are immediately taxed at 100%. Fine, pick some fractional coefficient.
keyringlight 2y ago
Depending on what you want to use it for, the device and the ROM is one aspect, but secondary to that is the online services and apps accepting your device. I think android ROMs are a dead-end now because of aspects like safetynet/play integrity, unless you put the work into countering/spoofing them a lot of the tasks people use phones for now such as online/accounts/payments require the device to appear untampered/modified for security purposes. I have my old 2018 phone on android 14 via an unofficial lineage build because there was the freedom to do that, but I expect a bunch of apps will also make use of their freedom to deny me entry. If you're only using it for on-device tasks then you're probably fine, although at that point the benefits of updating a ROM are probably marginal
- Zak 2y ago
  I haven't had to put much effort into keeping my Play Integrity bypass working. I might touch it once a year. I do fear the day Google starts actively fighting it.
- pbmonster 2y ago
  I'm on grapheneOS on my daily driver, and that ROM officially passes basicIntegrity compliance without spoofing, but it lacks SafetyNet compliance (and fundamentally won't ever be able to get it officially) and the project refuses to fake/spoof it. This is enough for absolutely everything except Google Wallet/Pay. I'm fine with that.
tonyhart7 2y ago
- "Why can't I swap cloud backends on the mobile platforms?" why would I make such system exist in the first place???? no one can stopping you to create such system tbh, but expecting others to follow your ideologies is insane developing android and ios is come with a cost and they need to figure it out earn some of their money back and this is the "moat" that they have
- mrguyorama 2y ago
  Right, which is why we should abolish the FDA, because forcing someone to follow my ideology of "stuff sold as medicine shouldn't kill me (99% of the time) if I follow the directions" is immoral. We should also abolish copyrights, because forcing companies to respect my IP is an ideological stance. Trademarks are gone too, because you can't force a company to not trample my trademark and abuse my brand position without forcing an ideology on them.
  - tonyhart7 2y ago
    nice straw man argument right there
Kon-Peki 2y ago
> Big tech has always driven me mad with how they leverage their monoplies once they reach a certain size. This book explains everything: https://store.hbr.org/product/information-rules-a-strategic-guide-to-the-network-economy/863X https://store.hbr.org/product/information-rules-a-strategic-... I’ve never seen it in a library, but you can occasionally find used copies, if you don’t want to buy a brand-new book that is a roadmap to doing things you disagree with.
- VHRanger 2y ago
  Oh wow, those authors. For those not in the know, Carl Shapiro [1] and Hal Varian [2] are well known economics researchers. Hal Varian ended up working at Google building the AdWords auction after writing this it seems. For anyone wondering, there's this person called *Anna* that has an *archive* where the book can be found. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Shapiro https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Shapiro 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hal_Varian https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hal_Varian
  - Gud 2y ago
    If they were responsible for AdWords, they’ve had a net negative influence on the web.
  - PaulHoule 2y ago
    Somebody was telling me how Hal Varian was "evil" the other night and I added that Vint Cerf was one of the people Upton Sinclair meant when he said “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” [1] [1] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/21810-it-is-difficult-to-get-a-man-to-understand-something https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/21810-it-is-difficult-to-ge...
    - Gud 2y ago
      In what way does that relate to the works of Vint Cerf? Genuinely curious.
    - JadeNB 2y ago
victorbjorklund 2y ago
> Why can't I swap cloud backends on the mobile platforms? Not a mobile dev. Why can't you switch your backend from AWS to Azure or Hetzner?
- Sailemi 2y ago
  They mean cloud backend as in switching one's cloud backup destination from iCloud to a competitor - e.g Onedrive. Not possible on iOS.
cantrecallmypwd 2y ago
You maybe tilting at windmills. The problem is greed-oriented corporations will inevitably find the path of least resistance to more money against the interests of its workers, customers, and even the environment. Only worker-/user-owned co-op organizations have a real chance to break this cycle. We must stop feeding billionaires our time, our money, our labor, and our votes because they will never look out for us.
ttoinou 2y ago
Wouldn’t we loose specific features if a common cloud backup standard is developed ?
- mrguyorama 2y ago
  No? Why would you. "Expandable" open standards are perfectly possible, though they do lead to some market fragmentation, but "market fragmentation" is just another name for "Product differentiation". Early in the 20th century, the telephone network was NOT an open standard. You had to ask AT&T to come to your home and wire a new telephone into THEIR network, and you weren't allowed to do anything else with that network. Opening that network up allowed us to build good modems (instead of relying on acoustic couplers which had abysmally low data rates due to bad quality coupling), build things like fax machines etc. Open standards with open networks is a driving force to innovation. The internet is another one. We should be pushing very hard for basic rights to interact with networks and infrastructure. If the power companies had the kind of control that we've given """Tech"" businesses over their "networks", you wouldn't be allowed to plug anything "unapproved" by a business into the wall. Your local utility could literally extract a tax on any product that needed electricity. Open standards and laws that explicitly allow working in someone else's system for the purpose of Fair Use and interoperability are a requirement for continuous progress. A patent can encourage someone to make an initial investment into improvement, but the very moment they have any advantage the patent system means nobody else will be able to offer that kind of functionality for 20 years or so. Consider how long none of us were able to "Buy now" on any website other than amazon.com because of a stupid patent. The entire PC ecosystem only exists because the law says that there was a way you could, legally protected, interact with someone else's intellectual property. It doesn't have to be easy, just possible. Clean Room reverse engineering is an insane endeavor, but without it, IBM would have strangled PCs as a platform in the crib, because that would be more profitable a business than what we have now. If we want technological advancement and the ability to buy what you want, use what you want, do what you want with what you buy, then we need to forcefully wrest control away from these big companies who would really prefer to maintain tyrannical control over their "platforms" because it's just more profitable. Stuff like the Digital Markets Act does that.
  - 2y ago
wilg 2y ago
> Why can't I swap cloud backends on the mobile platforms? The real answer is because this is a ton of work for very little customer benefit and creates tons of headaches to solve a mostly theoretical problem. It's not worth it to anyone involved.
- hbn 2y ago
  Exactly, Apple will put in all the work to implement cloud features in a way where you can swap out the backend just so Hacker News Guy, as the "techie" guy in the family, can set up his whole family with his own hacked together cloud backend for their phones which will regularly fail and cause people to like their iPhone less, and/or support calls to Apple that will be 100x harder to troubleshoot.

enriquec 2y ago

"unlock codes or whatever" As an engineer, I can tell you it's not even easy to keep things working internally - let alone support every possible integration. Just because it's easy to say, doesn't mean it's feasible to do. But if you're convinced its what people want, there's nothing preventing you from making it your life - like other people have done with their strategies.

refulgentis 2y ago
I appreciate the engineering perspective, and you're right that supporting every integration isn't trivial. Is there a difference between providing an "unlock code" upon deprecation, and requiring "support for every possible integration"(?)? Setting that aside, it seems it not every possible combination needs official support, but rather that providing an open or documented way for motivated users or communities to build upon or repurpose devices would be beneficial. Many projects exist precisely because tech companies allowed or at least tolerated community-driven solutions. It's less about expecting everything to be effortless for the original manufacturer, and more about avoiding deliberate restrictions that prevent the community from extending a device's useful lifespan.
- GTP 2y ago
  > Is there a difference between providing an "unlock code" upon deprecation, and requiring "support for every possible integration"(?)? As a different engineer than the one you where replying to, I can say that yes, there is a substantial difference between the two. What the original comment was likely referring to with unlock codes, is the ability of unlocking a smartphone's bootloader so that one is able to install custom ROMs. But this is very different from providing support for said ROMs. A company can totally say: "here's the unlock code, but you use this under your sole responsibility, we will void your warranty if you do this". Being able to install custom ROMs at the cost of losing the warranty is a compromise I'm willing to accept: one can still wait for the warranty to expire and then install custom ROMs.
Teever 2y ago
Do the tech companies that make the devices that we now require for daily life because they decided to make the world that way release all of the resources necessary for independent people to do what you're suggesting? If not that's something that we need to regulate.
- enriquec 2y ago
  The regulations stop more people from being able to do this than competition does. "because they decided to make the world that way" Who is "they"? Participants in the free market? I don't think inept politicians should supersede them.
  - closewith 2y ago
    The tech monopolies and oligopolies are not participants in a free market - they are they result of regulation.
    - ethbr1 2y ago
      Massive capital has the same effect. The world learned this circa-1900.
      - closewith 2y ago
        To be clear, I am in favour of regulation and taxation that would make these monopolies and their beneficial owners artefacts of the past. Neither the free market nor the current regulation in the US operates in favour of the citizenry.
        mrguyorama 2y ago
        A useful big step would be to just use the exact antitrust regulations and laws we have had on the books since the first time we had to figure this out over a hundred years ago. Teddy Roosevelt helped take care of this, though we definitely didn't wield them against AT&T for too long. They served us okay enough right up until Reagan decided that monopolies would be fine if they "benefited the consumer", as if that isn't a trivially stupid concept to anyone who has dealt with any system ever. Thanks to Reagan's admin, we allowed companies to nakedly take aggressive control of any market they want as long as they pretended they wouldn't raise prices. We need to be less accepting of mergers and acquisitions too. If Google can just throw an absurd amount of money at any startup competitor to kill competition, it doesn't matter that it's not efficient, what human being will turn down $100 million just to stop competing? "Acquihires" are an anti-competitive practice A company just having a lot of cash on hand can purposely pervert markets if you let them. Conservatives complain about "punishing winners" but if you want a market to stay competitive, and therefore allow market forces to actually function, you cannot HAVE a "winner", or at least you can't let someone win so comprehensively that their resources end up warping the market just like a lot of mass warps spacetime. You must ensure that any company can be threatened by upstarts.
graemep 2y ago
No one is asking for support for every possible integration. What people are asking for is not actively preventing other integrations. That means through business means and deals as well as technological measures.
- xxpor 2y ago
  I gotta be honest, I really feel like these comments are completely divorced from reality. No one (p99.99) wants to get rid of Google/Apple on their phones. But "how do I install Play services" is a wildly popular search for people who own Kindle Fires. No one wants to deal with the Windows 98ificaiton of phones.
  - ethbr1 2y ago
    Nobody wants that because there's currently no market for it, so no solutions for it. (And yes, we can quibble about alternate Android app stores in countries that aren't China, but Google's rigged that game heavily in their favor via defaults)
  - LinuxBender 2y ago
    I know this requires changing the SoC to x86_64 or ARM but I want bog standard Linux any distribution to run on the cell phone, at least run in the sense of the kernel. The applications would be up to the distribution maintainers. Talking to the modem should just be a Linux kernel module that has been blessed by Linus Torvalds. The code must be clean enough that at no point is he tempted to raise the middle finger or start writing an email. No obfuscated code, no lawful intercept JTAG debugging code, no dodgy BIOS just bog standard Linux and standard x86_64 or ARM hardware. Maybe something like coreboot as the BIOS. In fairness I also want a goose that lays golden eggs.
    - pdimitar 2y ago
      "What color do you like dragon to be?"
      - 2y ago

jcoleh 2y ago

Could we apply a progressive tax to large corporations (like big tech monopolies) to force them to figure out what aspects of their own business should be split up and spun out to keep the size of companies roughly equal to "one layer of the stack". Seems like a progressive corporation tax would be an easy way to allow "the market" to naturally limit the size of corporations and find the correct separation points for separate businesses.

ragebol 2y ago
Really random thought: the tax you pay on profit is proportional (or even 1:1) to your market share. Become a monopoly? 100% of your profit is now taxed. Nicer to stay at eg. 25% and have competition. Maybe ramp it exponentially (yes, I know there are loopholes in this pie-in-the-sky)
- JoshTriplett 2y ago
  It's a creative thought. But how do you define "market", and which market applies to which profit? Also, if you invent something so novel it makes a new market, that would imply you are immediately taxed at 100%.
  - ethbr1 2y ago
    It's a good idea and a systemic nudge towards the outcome we want. (Probably minimum 3 large competitors in every market) Market definition should be tied to revenue source. It'd be difficult, but doesn't seem insurmountable. The Android/iPhone problem is somewhat of a unique case, given mobile's size. IMHO "unreasonable to non-monopolize" should be an option... but come with FRAND interconnection requirements as a consequence of designation (e.g. Android/iPhone both have to offer the ability for other apps stores to be implemented, and can only charge those stores FRAND fees) And novelty / new markets could be solved by progressively implementing the tax rate increases as the market matures (e.g. first 5 years).
  - rexpop 2y ago
    North American Industry Classification System (NAICS). NAICS uses a hierarchical structure with sectors represented by 2-digit codes, such as Manufacturing (31-33) or Retail Trade (44-45). In antitrust law, a "market" is defined as an area of effective competition that includes both product (or service) and geographic dimensions. The US Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission use market definitions to evaluate competition under laws like the Clayton Act. Tools like the hypothetical monopolist test are used to determine whether a market is too narrow by assessing if a monopolist could profitably raise prices. > Also, if you invent something so novel it makes a new market, that would imply you are immediately taxed at 100%. Fine, pick some fractional coefficient.

keyringlight 2y ago

Depending on what you want to use it for, the device and the ROM is one aspect, but secondary to that is the online services and apps accepting your device. I think android ROMs are a dead-end now because of aspects like safetynet/play integrity, unless you put the work into countering/spoofing them a lot of the tasks people use phones for now such as online/accounts/payments require the device to appear untampered/modified for security purposes. I have my old 2018 phone on android 14 via an unofficial lineage build because there was the freedom to do that, but I expect a bunch of apps will also make use of their freedom to deny me entry. If you're only using it for on-device tasks then you're probably fine, although at that point the benefits of updating a ROM are probably marginal

Zak 2y ago
I haven't had to put much effort into keeping my Play Integrity bypass working. I might touch it once a year. I do fear the day Google starts actively fighting it.
pbmonster 2y ago
I'm on grapheneOS on my daily driver, and that ROM officially passes basicIntegrity compliance without spoofing, but it lacks SafetyNet compliance (and fundamentally won't ever be able to get it officially) and the project refuses to fake/spoof it. This is enough for absolutely everything except Google Wallet/Pay. I'm fine with that.

tonyhart7 2y ago

- "Why can't I swap cloud backends on the mobile platforms?" why would I make such system exist in the first place???? no one can stopping you to create such system tbh, but expecting others to follow your ideologies is insane developing android and ios is come with a cost and they need to figure it out earn some of their money back and this is the "moat" that they have

mrguyorama 2y ago
Right, which is why we should abolish the FDA, because forcing someone to follow my ideology of "stuff sold as medicine shouldn't kill me (99% of the time) if I follow the directions" is immoral. We should also abolish copyrights, because forcing companies to respect my IP is an ideological stance. Trademarks are gone too, because you can't force a company to not trample my trademark and abuse my brand position without forcing an ideology on them.
- tonyhart7 2y ago
  nice straw man argument right there

Kon-Peki 2y ago

> Big tech has always driven me mad with how they leverage their monoplies once they reach a certain size. This book explains everything: https://store.hbr.org/product/information-rules-a-strategic-guide-to-the-network-economy/863X https://store.hbr.org/product/information-rules-a-strategic-... I’ve never seen it in a library, but you can occasionally find used copies, if you don’t want to buy a brand-new book that is a roadmap to doing things you disagree with.

VHRanger 2y ago
Oh wow, those authors. For those not in the know, Carl Shapiro [1] and Hal Varian [2] are well known economics researchers. Hal Varian ended up working at Google building the AdWords auction after writing this it seems. For anyone wondering, there's this person called *Anna* that has an *archive* where the book can be found. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Shapiro https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Shapiro 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hal_Varian https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hal_Varian
- Gud 2y ago
  If they were responsible for AdWords, they’ve had a net negative influence on the web.
- PaulHoule 2y ago
  Somebody was telling me how Hal Varian was "evil" the other night and I added that Vint Cerf was one of the people Upton Sinclair meant when he said “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” [1] [1] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/21810-it-is-difficult-to-get-a-man-to-understand-something https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/21810-it-is-difficult-to-ge...
  - Gud 2y ago
    In what way does that relate to the works of Vint Cerf? Genuinely curious.
  - JadeNB 2y ago

victorbjorklund 2y ago

> Why can't I swap cloud backends on the mobile platforms? Not a mobile dev. Why can't you switch your backend from AWS to Azure or Hetzner?

Sailemi 2y ago
They mean cloud backend as in switching one's cloud backup destination from iCloud to a competitor - e.g Onedrive. Not possible on iOS.

cantrecallmypwd 2y ago

You maybe tilting at windmills. The problem is greed-oriented corporations will inevitably find the path of least resistance to more money against the interests of its workers, customers, and even the environment. Only worker-/user-owned co-op organizations have a real chance to break this cycle. We must stop feeding billionaires our time, our money, our labor, and our votes because they will never look out for us.

ttoinou 2y ago

Wouldn’t we loose specific features if a common cloud backup standard is developed ?

mrguyorama 2y ago
No? Why would you. "Expandable" open standards are perfectly possible, though they do lead to some market fragmentation, but "market fragmentation" is just another name for "Product differentiation". Early in the 20th century, the telephone network was NOT an open standard. You had to ask AT&T to come to your home and wire a new telephone into THEIR network, and you weren't allowed to do anything else with that network. Opening that network up allowed us to build good modems (instead of relying on acoustic couplers which had abysmally low data rates due to bad quality coupling), build things like fax machines etc. Open standards with open networks is a driving force to innovation. The internet is another one. We should be pushing very hard for basic rights to interact with networks and infrastructure. If the power companies had the kind of control that we've given """Tech"" businesses over their "networks", you wouldn't be allowed to plug anything "unapproved" by a business into the wall. Your local utility could literally extract a tax on any product that needed electricity. Open standards and laws that explicitly allow working in someone else's system for the purpose of Fair Use and interoperability are a requirement for continuous progress. A patent can encourage someone to make an initial investment into improvement, but the very moment they have any advantage the patent system means nobody else will be able to offer that kind of functionality for 20 years or so. Consider how long none of us were able to "Buy now" on any website other than amazon.com because of a stupid patent. The entire PC ecosystem only exists because the law says that there was a way you could, legally protected, interact with someone else's intellectual property. It doesn't have to be easy, just possible. Clean Room reverse engineering is an insane endeavor, but without it, IBM would have strangled PCs as a platform in the crib, because that would be more profitable a business than what we have now. If we want technological advancement and the ability to buy what you want, use what you want, do what you want with what you buy, then we need to forcefully wrest control away from these big companies who would really prefer to maintain tyrannical control over their "platforms" because it's just more profitable. Stuff like the Digital Markets Act does that.
- 2y ago

wilg 2y ago

> Why can't I swap cloud backends on the mobile platforms? The real answer is because this is a ton of work for very little customer benefit and creates tons of headaches to solve a mostly theoretical problem. It's not worth it to anyone involved.

hbn 2y ago
Exactly, Apple will put in all the work to implement cloud features in a way where you can swap out the backend just so Hacker News Guy, as the "techie" guy in the family, can set up his whole family with his own hacked together cloud backend for their phones which will regularly fail and cause people to like their iPhone less, and/or support calls to Apple that will be 100x harder to troubleshoot.