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Comment by txsh | Hacker News Reader

Apple systems are great precisely because they’re single platform and closed-source. It would be unfortunate if that changed.

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I don’t see how you arrived at that conclusion. Why is the software not being open source a benefit?

Some people have different tastes. I know a lot of people who drive a Honda because it's easy for them to repair on their own, and parts are cheap. I know others who drive a BMW even though it's difficult and expensive to repair, because they would never repair it themselves so it doesn't matter. They value the experience of driving "the ultimate driving machine" even if it costs more and is harder to repair.

Some people prefer open platforms that they can customize and tinker with. Some people prefer closed platforms where the defaults are good enough and you never have to open the hood. Neither of those preferences are more wrong than the other one. It's just a preference.

The specific issue under discussion has little to nothing to do with user experience though. It wouldn't change the iOS user experience if an iOS dev environment was available for Linux, or if you could test your iOS code on a jenkins server running on an ec2 instance.

Wouldn't it? I'm sure plenty of iOS devs have Macs and understand Apple's ecosystem (since they have to right now), but if they opened that to people who aren't in the ecosystem, would it really have no impact on user experience? Mac and iOS are two different products but they both follow the Apple standard and appeal to Apple people. Limiting iOS development to Mac users means everyone who develops for iOS understands Apple at least enough to use their products for work.

Apple sells a very specific user experience, one they control soup to nuts. It's not for everyone, it's for a specific audience. Luckily we live in a world where there are tons of choices, and by far the more popular choice is "not Apple" according to every statistic I've ever read. They can afford to be picky, they can afford to turn off some customers, because there are a ton of choices that are the opposite of the Apple experience.

If you want a BMW, you want a BMW. If you want a car, you can have any car you want. Including an Audi.

But all things being equal, generally I'd say that software that allows you tinker is probably better. The fact that the freedom exists doesn't mean you have to take advantage of it, but it's nice that it's there.

While I don't agree with the parent's sentiment that iOS is great because it is closed. Neither Android Of Chrome OS is as open as proponents make them out to be. The typical Android distribution on phones have plenty of Google closed sourced parts.

Also most of the drivers are closed sourced.

Interesting. Would say the exact opposite.

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