5 ms·

Are we learning the wrong lessons? Integrated always works better than modular components. Here, Apple is being asked to enable their versions of software for t

by ankit219 10mo ago

Are we learning the wrong lessons? Integrated always works better than modular components. Here, Apple is being asked to enable their versions of software for third party devices, which do not have the same hardware assumptions as Apple did. (Apple will not release the exact hardware spec for airpods anyway). This means the newer version will be designed modularly, with some tradeoffs to enable the "same" kind of access to third party. Then there is a caveat that it there is even a bit of experience change from 1st party to third party access, it will be complained about and investigated. so, the way fwd is designing with third party in mind, and that almost always leads to bloat and substandard experience for end user. Probably better would have been just simpler access, even if not the integrated experience like. But that would lead to complains from third party manufacturers.

isodev 10mo ago
The lesson being learned is that Apple could’ve avoided all this trouble if they had used or produced standards for the connection between their components. The whole concept of a gatekeeper was created in response to Apple-likes being difficult and simply hostile to interop opportunities even though they’re defacto the phone company and there is no way around them. So if the solution is not optimal, that circles back to Apple who are responsible for coming up with a solution that works. Then choosing to prioritise platform lock-in is a business strategy, leaving regulation the only recourse.
- ankit219 10mo ago
  A company making an integrated experience would inevitably provide a better experience/performance than a company asked to build for 100s of devices with different spec. That Apple did not want to open it up is a separate discussion. My contention is this: expecting a third party provider to be able to provide the same experience as the first party is an impractical goal. Even pushing companies towards that means a lot of second order effects where everyone ends up like Intel or Windows for that matter. We already have android on that level. You can have a reasonable requirement where Apple should not be able to block other companies from providing similar services based on an iphone. But clearly the directive here is that Apple's competing products should not be better based on better integration, which can only go in one direction. Apple degrades its own products to comply. Yes, competition wins, but consumers lose. In this case specifically - consumers who would want to choose Apple, better experiences would not be able to simply because Apple cannot ensure the level of software/hardware alignment as it works today if the same software is written with modular hardware in mind.
  - avianlyric 10mo ago
    > You can have a reasonable requirement where Apple should not be able to block other companies from providing similar services based on an iphone. This is what the requirement is. The EU isn’t demanding that Apple provide the same experience for 3rd Party and 1st Party products. It only requires that Apple allow 3rd Parties access to the same capabilities as 1st Party products, so 3rd Parties could build 1st Party quality experiences. Nobody is asking Apple to degrade their own products. They’re just demanding that Apple don’t artificially degrade other people’s products. > That Apple did not want to open it up is a separate discussion. This is the only point of discussion here. Because all the EU requires is that Apple open up their internal protocols so others can implement them.
    - ExoticPearTree 10mo ago
      > This is the only point of discussion here. Because all the EU requires is that Apple open up their internal protocols so others can implement them. Apple supports Bluetooth just like Android phones do and does not degrade that. A fair way of dealing with this is to ask Apple to license its technology to third parties, not be forced to give it away for free.
      - avianlyric 10mo ago
        We’re talking about a UI interface here. How exactly would you ask Apple to “license its technology” there? Apple needs tell people how to trigger that interface, and Apple needs to support 3rd parties trigging that interface. Apple could “license its technology”, but what use would that be. Having other phone manufacturers implement the same UI doesn’t change the market distorting effects of the iPhone.
        ExoticPearTree 10mo ago
        Device manufacturers could pay Apple to register their devices to be recognized by the iPhone that they know how to use the advanced features it is capable of, for example. Also, device manufacturers can create apps for their devices and trigger those apps when a device is close by. I am against the idea of having a company spend resources on designing and implementing features for its devices and then being forced to give them away for free.
- raw_anon_1111 10mo ago
  There is no “produced standard” to allow three Bluetooth devices - each headphone and the case - to register as one Bluetooth device or to automatically register a Bluetooth device to all devices using the same cloud account.
jonway 10mo ago
Big disagree that integrated always works better than modular writ large, but in any case maybe they could just hire this guy to do it? https://github.com/kavishdevar/librepods https://github.com/kavishdevar/librepods
- ankit219 10mo ago
  Its mostly true when the integrating company cares for the user experience. Which apple clearly does. The example you shared is the opposite. I am imagining a kernel today written in a manner that airpods would be able to use it to extract the max out of it. Now, it has to support 10 other third party pods, so at the minimum, kernel would be more generalized.
  - ngetchell 10mo ago
    A company that produces a wireless mouse that charges upside down really does not care about user experience.
    - musicale 10mo ago
      Steve Jobs loved the iMac's terrible hockey puck mouse. Jony Ive is probably to blame for the terrible (yet very thin) butterfly keyboard making it into Apple laptops. However, these missteps do not prove that Apple doesn't care about user experience.
      - throwaway314155 10mo ago
        > told disgruntled iPhone 4 users that they were holding their phones wrong That was never proven. Although their PR response was atrocious.
        musicale 10mo ago
        > That was never proven “All phones have sensitive areas,” Jobs wrote. “Just avoid holding it in this way.” https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2010/06/jobs-on-iphone-4-antenna-avoid-holding-it-in-this-way/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2010/06/jobs-on-iphone-4-ant... https://www.macrumors.com/2010/06/24/steve-jobs-describes-iphone-4-signal-strength-a-non-issue/ https://www.macrumors.com/2010/06/24/steve-jobs-describes-ip... Jobs wasn't exactly wrong - bridging the antenna with your finger was not a good way to hold the iPhone 4. What's hilarious is how they "fixed" it in software - by changing the signal bar display curve, and then making the lower bars appear taller. https://9to5mac.com/2025/10/08/a-15-year-mystery-solved-the-20-bytes-of-code-that-fixed-antennagate/ https://9to5mac.com/2025/10/08/a-15-year-mystery-solved-the-...
kmeisthax 10mo ago
The components are modular under the hood, they have to be. Apple just doesn't let you take advantage of it. iOS has a daemon that reads your notifications and ships them to Apple Watch. They have a daemon that scans for AirPods and gives you UI to pair them. But you as an app developer cannot do any of those things. There was no public API for notification stream access, scanning for specific Bluetooth devices, floating UI widgets, or even just persistent daemons. All of those capabilities more or less exist on Android, which is why multiple smartwatch ecosystems have been built on top of it while iOS only supports the first-party option. Back in the 2000s, when Apple was just getting into mobile devices, the app development landscape was far less bleak. iTunes on Windows could happily index your entire music and video collection and sync it to an iPod and there was nothing Microsoft could do to stop them. Everything is just finding the appropriate file and connecting to the appropriate USB device to transfer it. And that's more or less how things still work today, except now on smartphones all of that is put into isolated containers and walled off behind private APIs.
- ankit219 10mo ago
  modular does not mean in terms of how the library is architected, but in terms of how many vendors/customers it needs to support. Airpods' hardware is built and then kernels are written in a way to compliment each other and get the most out of the system. With another set of headphones with a different chip, there is a very good chance that code written today would not be optimal because other builders could manufacture different things based on the same spec. You cannot bring everything to software, nor can you have hardware doing everything. Tradeoffs would be needed. The issue comes in second order effects. If third party headphones are given access and then the experience is not as good, they complain that Apple hasnt open up the spec enough, and it just results in Apple being forced to be modular in their approach.
  - kmeisthax 10mo ago
    > If third party headphones are given access Third-party headphones already have access. Bluetooth audio is a standard that is well-supported both by iOS and headphones of any kind[0]. The problem is that the process for pairing a device on iOS (or, for that matter, Android) is a pain in the ass for knowledgeable users and completely untenable for everyone else. Apple recognized that this was a problem, and made their phone detect if you were trying to pair new headphones and pop up a notification for it. But only for Apple's headphones. Which is stupid. [0] In fact, this is why I use AirPods Pro on an Android phone.
ulrikrasmussen 10mo ago
I disagree with the premise. For me, "works better" means that I can swap out one of the devices in my fleet with a different brand and still have a functioning setup. But even ignoring that, I think your claim can be true while forcing Apple to be compatible is still the right thing to do, because optimizing for personal convenience and user experience only is not the best outcome if it comes at the expense of market failure due to vendor lock-in.

isodev 10mo ago

The lesson being learned is that Apple could’ve avoided all this trouble if they had used or produced standards for the connection between their components. The whole concept of a gatekeeper was created in response to Apple-likes being difficult and simply hostile to interop opportunities even though they’re defacto the phone company and there is no way around them. So if the solution is not optimal, that circles back to Apple who are responsible for coming up with a solution that works. Then choosing to prioritise platform lock-in is a business strategy, leaving regulation the only recourse.

ankit219 10mo ago
A company making an integrated experience would inevitably provide a better experience/performance than a company asked to build for 100s of devices with different spec. That Apple did not want to open it up is a separate discussion. My contention is this: expecting a third party provider to be able to provide the same experience as the first party is an impractical goal. Even pushing companies towards that means a lot of second order effects where everyone ends up like Intel or Windows for that matter. We already have android on that level. You can have a reasonable requirement where Apple should not be able to block other companies from providing similar services based on an iphone. But clearly the directive here is that Apple's competing products should not be better based on better integration, which can only go in one direction. Apple degrades its own products to comply. Yes, competition wins, but consumers lose. In this case specifically - consumers who would want to choose Apple, better experiences would not be able to simply because Apple cannot ensure the level of software/hardware alignment as it works today if the same software is written with modular hardware in mind.
- avianlyric 10mo ago
  > You can have a reasonable requirement where Apple should not be able to block other companies from providing similar services based on an iphone. This is what the requirement is. The EU isn’t demanding that Apple provide the same experience for 3rd Party and 1st Party products. It only requires that Apple allow 3rd Parties access to the same capabilities as 1st Party products, so 3rd Parties could build 1st Party quality experiences. Nobody is asking Apple to degrade their own products. They’re just demanding that Apple don’t artificially degrade other people’s products. > That Apple did not want to open it up is a separate discussion. This is the only point of discussion here. Because all the EU requires is that Apple open up their internal protocols so others can implement them.
  - ExoticPearTree 10mo ago
    > This is the only point of discussion here. Because all the EU requires is that Apple open up their internal protocols so others can implement them. Apple supports Bluetooth just like Android phones do and does not degrade that. A fair way of dealing with this is to ask Apple to license its technology to third parties, not be forced to give it away for free.
    - avianlyric 10mo ago
      We’re talking about a UI interface here. How exactly would you ask Apple to “license its technology” there? Apple needs tell people how to trigger that interface, and Apple needs to support 3rd parties trigging that interface. Apple could “license its technology”, but what use would that be. Having other phone manufacturers implement the same UI doesn’t change the market distorting effects of the iPhone.
      - ExoticPearTree 10mo ago
        Device manufacturers could pay Apple to register their devices to be recognized by the iPhone that they know how to use the advanced features it is capable of, for example. Also, device manufacturers can create apps for their devices and trigger those apps when a device is close by. I am against the idea of having a company spend resources on designing and implementing features for its devices and then being forced to give them away for free.
raw_anon_1111 10mo ago
There is no “produced standard” to allow three Bluetooth devices - each headphone and the case - to register as one Bluetooth device or to automatically register a Bluetooth device to all devices using the same cloud account.

jonway 10mo ago

Big disagree that integrated always works better than modular writ large, but in any case maybe they could just hire this guy to do it? https://github.com/kavishdevar/librepods https://github.com/kavishdevar/librepods

ankit219 10mo ago
Its mostly true when the integrating company cares for the user experience. Which apple clearly does. The example you shared is the opposite. I am imagining a kernel today written in a manner that airpods would be able to use it to extract the max out of it. Now, it has to support 10 other third party pods, so at the minimum, kernel would be more generalized.
- ngetchell 10mo ago
  A company that produces a wireless mouse that charges upside down really does not care about user experience.
  - musicale 10mo ago
    Steve Jobs loved the iMac's terrible hockey puck mouse. Jony Ive is probably to blame for the terrible (yet very thin) butterfly keyboard making it into Apple laptops. However, these missteps do not prove that Apple doesn't care about user experience.
    - throwaway314155 10mo ago
      > told disgruntled iPhone 4 users that they were holding their phones wrong That was never proven. Although their PR response was atrocious.
      - musicale 10mo ago
        > That was never proven “All phones have sensitive areas,” Jobs wrote. “Just avoid holding it in this way.” https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2010/06/jobs-on-iphone-4-antenna-avoid-holding-it-in-this-way/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2010/06/jobs-on-iphone-4-ant... https://www.macrumors.com/2010/06/24/steve-jobs-describes-iphone-4-signal-strength-a-non-issue/ https://www.macrumors.com/2010/06/24/steve-jobs-describes-ip... Jobs wasn't exactly wrong - bridging the antenna with your finger was not a good way to hold the iPhone 4. What's hilarious is how they "fixed" it in software - by changing the signal bar display curve, and then making the lower bars appear taller. https://9to5mac.com/2025/10/08/a-15-year-mystery-solved-the-20-bytes-of-code-that-fixed-antennagate/ https://9to5mac.com/2025/10/08/a-15-year-mystery-solved-the-...

kmeisthax 10mo ago

The components are modular under the hood, they have to be. Apple just doesn't let you take advantage of it. iOS has a daemon that reads your notifications and ships them to Apple Watch. They have a daemon that scans for AirPods and gives you UI to pair them. But you as an app developer cannot do any of those things. There was no public API for notification stream access, scanning for specific Bluetooth devices, floating UI widgets, or even just persistent daemons. All of those capabilities more or less exist on Android, which is why multiple smartwatch ecosystems have been built on top of it while iOS only supports the first-party option. Back in the 2000s, when Apple was just getting into mobile devices, the app development landscape was far less bleak. iTunes on Windows could happily index your entire music and video collection and sync it to an iPod and there was nothing Microsoft could do to stop them. Everything is just finding the appropriate file and connecting to the appropriate USB device to transfer it. And that's more or less how things still work today, except now on smartphones all of that is put into isolated containers and walled off behind private APIs.

ankit219 10mo ago
modular does not mean in terms of how the library is architected, but in terms of how many vendors/customers it needs to support. Airpods' hardware is built and then kernels are written in a way to compliment each other and get the most out of the system. With another set of headphones with a different chip, there is a very good chance that code written today would not be optimal because other builders could manufacture different things based on the same spec. You cannot bring everything to software, nor can you have hardware doing everything. Tradeoffs would be needed. The issue comes in second order effects. If third party headphones are given access and then the experience is not as good, they complain that Apple hasnt open up the spec enough, and it just results in Apple being forced to be modular in their approach.
- kmeisthax 10mo ago
  > If third party headphones are given access Third-party headphones already have access. Bluetooth audio is a standard that is well-supported both by iOS and headphones of any kind[0]. The problem is that the process for pairing a device on iOS (or, for that matter, Android) is a pain in the ass for knowledgeable users and completely untenable for everyone else. Apple recognized that this was a problem, and made their phone detect if you were trying to pair new headphones and pop up a notification for it. But only for Apple's headphones. Which is stupid. [0] In fact, this is why I use AirPods Pro on an Android phone.

ulrikrasmussen 10mo ago

I disagree with the premise. For me, "works better" means that I can swap out one of the devices in my fleet with a different brand and still have a functioning setup. But even ignoring that, I think your claim can be true while forcing Apple to be compatible is still the right thing to do, because optimizing for personal convenience and user experience only is not the best outcome if it comes at the expense of market failure due to vendor lock-in.