5 ms·

Three months ago a commenter here on HN claimed to me that this will be bad for Apple users: > There is simply no good way to make the API public while maintai

by Y-bar 10mo ago

Three months ago a commenter here on HN claimed to me that this will be bad for Apple users: > There is simply no good way to make the API public while maintaining the performance and quality expectations that Apple consumers have. If the third party device doesn’t work people will blame Apple even though it’s not their fault. And, competition probably can’t build for it anyway: > It’s impossible to build Apple Silicon level of quality in power to watt performance or realtime audio apps over public APIs. And: > […] Apple has to sabotage their own devices performance and security to let other people use it. The EU has no business in this. Well, I look forward to next year when we’ll have the receipts and see!

vachina 10mo ago
[flagged]
- x3ro 10mo ago
  You mean it will benefit Apple’s customers, who prefer headphones not made by Apple? If only the incentive for Apple to improve their interface was that its paying customers will have a better interface.
  - stavros 10mo ago
    I really don't understand people who defend Apple on this. The only reason I can imagine is that they're shareholders who don't use any Apple products, or shareholders who use exclusively Apple products and can't understand what sort of poor scrub might want an accessory not made by them.
    - darkwater 10mo ago
      It's the second one, but without being shareholders.
      - tt24 10mo ago
        Strange opinion. Anyone that holds the SP500 (which is probably 99% of HN users between 9am and 5pm PT) are Apple shareholders, and what’s good for Apple is entirely aligned with what’s good for them. Taking a further step back, this same group of HN users probably understands the straightforward idea that what’s good for Bay Area tech companies is beneficial to them in a much broader sense, since they’re generally employed by them or by a very small group of other companies closely related to them. You can accuse them of being greedy, selfish, or whatever, but certainly not that they’re unaware of where their interests lie.
    - blell 10mo ago
      [flagged]
      - stavros 10mo ago
        Because a monopoly extracting 30% of every purchase you make is a dream scenario?
        tt24 10mo ago
        How is Apple a monopoly?
        stavros 10mo ago
        They own the only app store you can use on an iPhone.
        tt24 10mo ago
        Okay, using that definition, Walmart, Target, Dollar Tree, my local regional grocery store, Trader Joe's and Ralph's are monopolies as well. They own their shelves and store space, and are the sole arbiters responsible for deciding what is sold within them.
        stavros 10mo ago
        If you have purchased your own Walmart and corporate still decides what you sell within it, then yes, that is exactly the same.
        tt24 10mo ago
        Okay, so it has to be something you purchase - we're slowly getting closer to the true opinion here. Sony is a monopoly as well then? They decide what gets sold in the Playstation store. Same with Nintendo. Ford and Tesla are monopolies, they solely decide what is software is sold or used in their car's infotainment center stores, despite the fact that I have purchased the car! AWS is a monopoly, despite the fact that I purchase an EC2 instance from them for one year they will not let me run certain kinds of software on it (Parler, some crypto, etc.)
    - hopelite 10mo ago
      [flagged]
      - Y-bar 10mo ago
        > I don’t see it as a matter of defending Apple, it’s really a matter of technical understanding and competence. So do I. And my >20 years in the business gives me the experience and knowledge to see through Apple’s FUD. > […] but also wanting to benefit from all the work and focus that went into creating it, is understandable to me. It is my device. I paid for it. If Apple thinks they deserve more money for what they did they are free to ask me, the customer, for more money. > […] unelected bureaucratic despots Aha, the dog whistle of the AfD brand of conspiratorial bullshit ”unelected” nonsense! Career bureaucracy is supposed to be certified and educated, not elected, because that is the only way they can properly implement the laws of the electorate. Bureaucracy still answers to elected officials, but they are supposed to act without political interference and provide specialist knowledge. For the same reason you do not vote on every captain and colonel in the military hierarchy, or every tax collector/auditor in your IRS equivalent, you do not vote on every bureaucrat in the Commission tasked to execute and implement law.
        hopelite 10mo ago
        You had me convinced that you were a self-absorbed narcissist at “it is my device” without any self-awareness about the fact that it is your device that you purchased as it is, under those conditions; not some fantastical conditions you imagined you should have. But you really just emphasized it with the AfD nonsense, as if everyone in the world cares about your little provincial political obsessions. “Eeek, the eradicated Italian ideology of 80+ years ago that I have been conditioned with basic Pavlovian techniques to hate to control my mind is coming for me”. Ever hear of the book 1984 and the purpose of Emmanuel Goldstein? You seem to have totally missed that they used that very same technique on you, they just templated a different event on your little mind. Are the commission popularly elected? No they are not, child. But do explain your narcissistic rationalization for how being not elected by the relevant populace makes calling them unelected nonsense. You can’t. Why are you so fixated on running interference for what amounts to being a cult? Do you personally benefit financially from it or something? Nothing else makes any rational, sane sense. At least if you financially benefit from your own subjugation to unelected tyrannical despots in the commission and the council, at least you can say you are corrupted, greedy, and unprincipled… if you have the confidence and character to admit it. But you lack the most fundamental understanding of how the EU and government, let alone different systems work or are suppressed to work, so I am not sure that your statements allow for any other conclusion than that you are deluding yourself either intentionally or in some belief that you can fool or gaslight me and others. Besides, let’s have you put on your own thinking cap for a second. Take off the mind control cap for a minute and put your thinking cap on. Ready? Do you think it is smart for the same commission that originates imaginary “legislation” that the parliament votes on like any other dictatorial system’s apparatchiks do, should also be the body overseeing the implementation of that law? It breaks the most fundamental and major human advancement in governance produced by separating powers through the Constitution. You said people should be educated. Forget government education for a second, you seem to lack the ability to think at all. Do you not understand the danger of the legislative also being the executive? It’s basically just a novel form of aristocracy you are defending, a regression, total conflict of interest in abusing power … which they aren’t even elected to. What has been done to your mind and all of Europe is commonly called a bait and switch, also known as coercive control in basic abuse patterns of toxic relationships. You’re quite literally just a textbook abused person rationalizing and excusing the behaviors and actions of your abusers, like someone in any other toxic relationship or a cult. Please reconsider the harm you are doing to the world and yourself too. I get the EU told you there was candy in the windowless panel van, but you have no idea what mistake you are making and are going to make others suffer for.
  - vachina 10mo ago
    non-apple headphones work just fine with Apple products. In fact, Apple's bluetooth stack seem to work best among all the portable devices I come across (no random droppings, connects on first try etc.)
    - geraldwhen 10mo ago
      I was unaware that my headphone experience as impaired in some way. I exclusively use non Apple headphones and I have no issues. I had AirPods for a while and I don’t remember them being better.
      - array_key_first 10mo ago
        They have nifty apple-only features, like you can hold them close to the iPhone and they'll pop up and pair with a neat UI. It's mostly gimicky, but it does give the user the impression that the apple Air pods are higher quality because they have all these things thought out. In actuality, Apple just made it so they're the only ones who can do that.
    - eptcyka 10mo ago
      My iPhone has plenty of trouble connecting to various devices at times. God forbid it has to manage connecting to my car and my headphones at once. It works OK most of the time, but at least once a week it proves to be a problem.
- SvenL 10mo ago
  Based on the latest iOS / MacOS update they don’t want to improve their interfaces anyway.
- latexr 10mo ago
  Apple used to brag that “it just works”. That included peripherals it did not control. Nowadays, it can’t even have its own devices work correctly. Apple has stopped improving long ago, and it’s not regulation that’s at fault.
  - vachina 10mo ago
    I was unconvinced till I switched my devices, one by one, to Apple products a few years ago. They really do just work, especially with specification abiding devices. Everything else feels flakey.
    - ruszki 10mo ago
      Except of course these things: - Reliable internet sharing, especially when connection is spotty, and when your connection switches between operators or countries - Making alarms randomly silent. I missed a flight once because of this. There is no excuse for this. - Randomly not working AirPlay - GPS is terrible compared to any of my previous Androids. Even my first Android in 2010 was better than this. - Finding an operator can take a loooong time after crossing border - Random restrictions in App Store, like no torrent clients - Generally terrible keyboard for my native language (Hungarian). Prediction and basic accent fixing doesn’t work at all. The exception is when I don’t need to change a word with diacritics… when the keyboard’s dictionary clearly contains them - Apple Maps is still a joke. Many times it doesn’t load the underlying map layer at all. I switch to Google Maps search for what I want, finding it, reading some info, looking some images, then switching back to Apple Maps, and it still doesn’t load. Also, navigation and speed limit information are unreliable to say the least. - Heavily underdocumented MacOS virtualization API, and half the features can’t be used in a real environment, but these restrictions are completely undocumented - Wanting to have a running DNS server is a challenge on MacOS - Unusable GPU when no monitor is connected - You basically need to turn off all security features in MacOS to allow some basic automation, like with FaceTime - Generally terrible compatibility with anything non Apple. Do you want to show your photos on your friend’s random TV without hassle? Good luck. - Many built in features (eg SSH, VNC) are heavily restricted, and good luck if you want to replace them cleanly. Most information on internet is “just use the built in solution”. Also they are many times completely insecure. There are hacks for these, but “they just work” is not true at all. On the level of how “they just work”, top level Android and Windows devices are also on that level for more than a decade in case of Android, and at least 20 years for Windows (if not more). Maybe Apple TV is my only device which just works without hitting some quirks. Especially compared to my other TV and TV adjacent devices. But even here its FaceTime solution, let’s say “interesting”.
fabioborellini 10mo ago
Apple can't perform well with audio on Apple Silicon, either. In 2025 macos is the only OS with audio cracking appearing with CPU load. Even Linux is better
- Y-bar 10mo ago
  Personally not experienced this. However, continuity camera seems to have gotten more unstable over the past months for me.
- bdcravens 10mo ago
  I don't think it's CPU-based, but I've always had an issue with my AirPods Max on my iPhone with audio cracking (my AirPods Pro work fine, and the Max works fine with my Mac)
  - codesnik 10mo ago
    I only have it when iphone simulator is running and using the same audio output.
- indemnity 10mo ago
  Yeah, this is a regression since macOS Tahoe. Amazing that it still exists after several patch releases, is audio working not a basic test case for Apple? I’ve found it to be worst when using Xcode / simulator and having headphones on for music. sudo killall coreaudiod seems to fix it for a while.
  - charliebwrites 10mo ago
    > sudo killall coreaudiod seems to fix it for a while For me this fixes it for about 30 minutes then I have to do it again… and again… and again… I wonder why some folks need to do it more than others
  - concinds 10mo ago
    It's ludicrous. I remember when Apple took pride in the audio never stopping. Once a very long time ago my entire Mac froze, even the Force Touch trackpad was unresponsive, but the music kept playing. Now, press Volume Up and the audio stutters. Or AirPods randomly get choppy and then stop playing until you reconnect them. The heck?

by Y-bar 10mo ago

vachina 10mo ago

[flagged]

x3ro 10mo ago
You mean it will benefit Apple’s customers, who prefer headphones not made by Apple? If only the incentive for Apple to improve their interface was that its paying customers will have a better interface.
- stavros 10mo ago
  I really don't understand people who defend Apple on this. The only reason I can imagine is that they're shareholders who don't use any Apple products, or shareholders who use exclusively Apple products and can't understand what sort of poor scrub might want an accessory not made by them.
  - darkwater 10mo ago
    It's the second one, but without being shareholders.
    - tt24 10mo ago
      Strange opinion. Anyone that holds the SP500 (which is probably 99% of HN users between 9am and 5pm PT) are Apple shareholders, and what’s good for Apple is entirely aligned with what’s good for them. Taking a further step back, this same group of HN users probably understands the straightforward idea that what’s good for Bay Area tech companies is beneficial to them in a much broader sense, since they’re generally employed by them or by a very small group of other companies closely related to them. You can accuse them of being greedy, selfish, or whatever, but certainly not that they’re unaware of where their interests lie.
  - blell 10mo ago
    [flagged]
    - stavros 10mo ago
      Because a monopoly extracting 30% of every purchase you make is a dream scenario?
      - tt24 10mo ago
        How is Apple a monopoly?
        stavros 10mo ago
        They own the only app store you can use on an iPhone.
        tt24 10mo ago
        Okay, using that definition, Walmart, Target, Dollar Tree, my local regional grocery store, Trader Joe's and Ralph's are monopolies as well. They own their shelves and store space, and are the sole arbiters responsible for deciding what is sold within them.
        stavros 10mo ago
        If you have purchased your own Walmart and corporate still decides what you sell within it, then yes, that is exactly the same.
        tt24 10mo ago
        Okay, so it has to be something you purchase - we're slowly getting closer to the true opinion here. Sony is a monopoly as well then? They decide what gets sold in the Playstation store. Same with Nintendo. Ford and Tesla are monopolies, they solely decide what is software is sold or used in their car's infotainment center stores, despite the fact that I have purchased the car! AWS is a monopoly, despite the fact that I purchase an EC2 instance from them for one year they will not let me run certain kinds of software on it (Parler, some crypto, etc.)
  - hopelite 10mo ago
    [flagged]
    - Y-bar 10mo ago
      > I don’t see it as a matter of defending Apple, it’s really a matter of technical understanding and competence. So do I. And my >20 years in the business gives me the experience and knowledge to see through Apple’s FUD. > […] but also wanting to benefit from all the work and focus that went into creating it, is understandable to me. It is my device. I paid for it. If Apple thinks they deserve more money for what they did they are free to ask me, the customer, for more money. > […] unelected bureaucratic despots Aha, the dog whistle of the AfD brand of conspiratorial bullshit ”unelected” nonsense! Career bureaucracy is supposed to be certified and educated, not elected, because that is the only way they can properly implement the laws of the electorate. Bureaucracy still answers to elected officials, but they are supposed to act without political interference and provide specialist knowledge. For the same reason you do not vote on every captain and colonel in the military hierarchy, or every tax collector/auditor in your IRS equivalent, you do not vote on every bureaucrat in the Commission tasked to execute and implement law.
      - hopelite 10mo ago
        You had me convinced that you were a self-absorbed narcissist at “it is my device” without any self-awareness about the fact that it is your device that you purchased as it is, under those conditions; not some fantastical conditions you imagined you should have. But you really just emphasized it with the AfD nonsense, as if everyone in the world cares about your little provincial political obsessions. “Eeek, the eradicated Italian ideology of 80+ years ago that I have been conditioned with basic Pavlovian techniques to hate to control my mind is coming for me”. Ever hear of the book 1984 and the purpose of Emmanuel Goldstein? You seem to have totally missed that they used that very same technique on you, they just templated a different event on your little mind. Are the commission popularly elected? No they are not, child. But do explain your narcissistic rationalization for how being not elected by the relevant populace makes calling them unelected nonsense. You can’t. Why are you so fixated on running interference for what amounts to being a cult? Do you personally benefit financially from it or something? Nothing else makes any rational, sane sense. At least if you financially benefit from your own subjugation to unelected tyrannical despots in the commission and the council, at least you can say you are corrupted, greedy, and unprincipled… if you have the confidence and character to admit it. But you lack the most fundamental understanding of how the EU and government, let alone different systems work or are suppressed to work, so I am not sure that your statements allow for any other conclusion than that you are deluding yourself either intentionally or in some belief that you can fool or gaslight me and others. Besides, let’s have you put on your own thinking cap for a second. Take off the mind control cap for a minute and put your thinking cap on. Ready? Do you think it is smart for the same commission that originates imaginary “legislation” that the parliament votes on like any other dictatorial system’s apparatchiks do, should also be the body overseeing the implementation of that law? It breaks the most fundamental and major human advancement in governance produced by separating powers through the Constitution. You said people should be educated. Forget government education for a second, you seem to lack the ability to think at all. Do you not understand the danger of the legislative also being the executive? It’s basically just a novel form of aristocracy you are defending, a regression, total conflict of interest in abusing power … which they aren’t even elected to. What has been done to your mind and all of Europe is commonly called a bait and switch, also known as coercive control in basic abuse patterns of toxic relationships. You’re quite literally just a textbook abused person rationalizing and excusing the behaviors and actions of your abusers, like someone in any other toxic relationship or a cult. Please reconsider the harm you are doing to the world and yourself too. I get the EU told you there was candy in the windowless panel van, but you have no idea what mistake you are making and are going to make others suffer for.
- vachina 10mo ago
  non-apple headphones work just fine with Apple products. In fact, Apple's bluetooth stack seem to work best among all the portable devices I come across (no random droppings, connects on first try etc.)
  - geraldwhen 10mo ago
    I was unaware that my headphone experience as impaired in some way. I exclusively use non Apple headphones and I have no issues. I had AirPods for a while and I don’t remember them being better.
    - array_key_first 10mo ago
      They have nifty apple-only features, like you can hold them close to the iPhone and they'll pop up and pair with a neat UI. It's mostly gimicky, but it does give the user the impression that the apple Air pods are higher quality because they have all these things thought out. In actuality, Apple just made it so they're the only ones who can do that.
  - eptcyka 10mo ago
    My iPhone has plenty of trouble connecting to various devices at times. God forbid it has to manage connecting to my car and my headphones at once. It works OK most of the time, but at least once a week it proves to be a problem.
SvenL 10mo ago
Based on the latest iOS / MacOS update they don’t want to improve their interfaces anyway.
latexr 10mo ago
Apple used to brag that “it just works”. That included peripherals it did not control. Nowadays, it can’t even have its own devices work correctly. Apple has stopped improving long ago, and it’s not regulation that’s at fault.
- vachina 10mo ago
  I was unconvinced till I switched my devices, one by one, to Apple products a few years ago. They really do just work, especially with specification abiding devices. Everything else feels flakey.
  - ruszki 10mo ago
    Except of course these things: - Reliable internet sharing, especially when connection is spotty, and when your connection switches between operators or countries - Making alarms randomly silent. I missed a flight once because of this. There is no excuse for this. - Randomly not working AirPlay - GPS is terrible compared to any of my previous Androids. Even my first Android in 2010 was better than this. - Finding an operator can take a loooong time after crossing border - Random restrictions in App Store, like no torrent clients - Generally terrible keyboard for my native language (Hungarian). Prediction and basic accent fixing doesn’t work at all. The exception is when I don’t need to change a word with diacritics… when the keyboard’s dictionary clearly contains them - Apple Maps is still a joke. Many times it doesn’t load the underlying map layer at all. I switch to Google Maps search for what I want, finding it, reading some info, looking some images, then switching back to Apple Maps, and it still doesn’t load. Also, navigation and speed limit information are unreliable to say the least. - Heavily underdocumented MacOS virtualization API, and half the features can’t be used in a real environment, but these restrictions are completely undocumented - Wanting to have a running DNS server is a challenge on MacOS - Unusable GPU when no monitor is connected - You basically need to turn off all security features in MacOS to allow some basic automation, like with FaceTime - Generally terrible compatibility with anything non Apple. Do you want to show your photos on your friend’s random TV without hassle? Good luck. - Many built in features (eg SSH, VNC) are heavily restricted, and good luck if you want to replace them cleanly. Most information on internet is “just use the built in solution”. Also they are many times completely insecure. There are hacks for these, but “they just work” is not true at all. On the level of how “they just work”, top level Android and Windows devices are also on that level for more than a decade in case of Android, and at least 20 years for Windows (if not more). Maybe Apple TV is my only device which just works without hitting some quirks. Especially compared to my other TV and TV adjacent devices. But even here its FaceTime solution, let’s say “interesting”.

fabioborellini 10mo ago

Apple can't perform well with audio on Apple Silicon, either. In 2025 macos is the only OS with audio cracking appearing with CPU load. Even Linux is better

Y-bar 10mo ago
Personally not experienced this. However, continuity camera seems to have gotten more unstable over the past months for me.
bdcravens 10mo ago
I don't think it's CPU-based, but I've always had an issue with my AirPods Max on my iPhone with audio cracking (my AirPods Pro work fine, and the Max works fine with my Mac)
- codesnik 10mo ago
  I only have it when iphone simulator is running and using the same audio output.
indemnity 10mo ago
Yeah, this is a regression since macOS Tahoe. Amazing that it still exists after several patch releases, is audio working not a basic test case for Apple? I’ve found it to be worst when using Xcode / simulator and having headphones on for music. sudo killall coreaudiod seems to fix it for a while.
- charliebwrites 10mo ago
  > sudo killall coreaudiod seems to fix it for a while For me this fixes it for about 30 minutes then I have to do it again… and again… and again… I wonder why some folks need to do it more than others
- concinds 10mo ago
  It's ludicrous. I remember when Apple took pride in the audio never stopping. Once a very long time ago my entire Mac froze, even the Force Touch trackpad was unresponsive, but the music kept playing. Now, press Volume Up and the audio stutters. Or AirPods randomly get choppy and then stop playing until you reconnect them. The heck?