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Comment by SlowRobotAhead | Hacker News Reader

No kidding! Everyone in my immediate circle has iPhone, I get the occasional friend with the “Android better”... but it’s things like this that make me remember Apple is a company that is very clearly for money which means for the most part they really need to deliver to the customer - where google is a company that tries to do everything they can to imply they aren’t about sales they “give away” this and that, it’s a “free and open” ecosystem etc etc.

I’ll take upfront and honest at the issue of more limited and expensive any day.

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Google is very clearly all about the money as well. It's just that they understand there is no money that will come from the "customer". Instead, it will all come from other corporations that are seeking to leverage the relationship Google has established with you. I think it is healthy to remember that companies aren't some do good no matter what it costs them. At the end of the day, all companies are trying to make money the best way possible. Frankly, I am glad that there is both Apple and Google. I think they both do well while making money.

No, it very clearly comes from the customer with Google.

However, with Google, the End User is almost never the customer.

The argument that the user isn’t the customer needs to die please!

It’s a overly simplified statement and misleads any serious conversation on the related topics!

Thank you

Do you pay Google? No? Then you’re not their customer. Yes? Then you are. It isn’t a value judgement.

To be pedantic, even if you paid google, they wouldn't be treating you differently. Prime example is Google apps for your domain customers...

Still, saying you're not the customer but the product is wrong. If you watch TV, you're also not the product. I'd probably classify TV audience as customers of the stations, even if the money is made with advertisement. But viewers are certainly not products.

Google isn't different from a TV station. You as a user are a customer and pay Google by consuming the ads they present you in various products.

To extend that argument: NPR listeners for example are also not the product just because they don't pay NPR (but instead its funded by taxes).

> NPR listeners for example are also not the product just because they don't pay NPR (but instead its funded by taxes).

NPR is mostly not funded (even indirectly) by taxes, and has both actual targeted advertising on their own and platform (for digital properties), and “underwriting spots” from sponsors on its broadcasts, that while regulated more than traditional advertising and are, and have been acknowledged by NPR to be, a form of advertising by the sponsors driven by the same factors and concerns that drive traditional advertising.

Now that you mention it, I wonder whether the security thing plays into the reason why I need to remove and add apps I compile myself every n days? This limit is pretty much my only gripe against Apple at this point but if it is for privacy/security, I don't know what a good balance would be...

Sorry if I sound like a broken record [1]. I don't own an iOS device at the moment. I would love to get an iPad but it kind of sucks that I can't compile and run my own apps.

[1] Previously on HN https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16993157

That one is about platform control. It's one thing to build a platform that only executes signed code--that's good for security--but it's another thing to refuse to give users control over who the trust authority is for their system. Apple still maintains that under lock and key effectively refusing to let you run your own software on your iPhone.

Apple places their customers first and developers second. They build devices for humans, not the mutant lizard people from space who develop software.

I am a human, and I develop software. This is a moronic statement.

Gee, I was going for ironic, missed, and hit moronic. Close enough for horseshoes. :)

I've started referring to software developers (like myself) with intentional irony as "mutant lizard people" after hearing one too many times how a particular OS/tool/programming language needs to be designed "for humans" (i.e, n00bs with no prior exposure to it).

That would be a terrible idea. Isn’t that how JavaScript started?

It's not that clear cut of a tradeoff. If Apple were to allow limitless sideloading of apps and that became the standard way that people installed apps on iOS devices, it would seriously limit their ability to keep the platform secure against malicious apps.

I'm not sure that's a valid concern given that Android has allowed that since its earliest days, and most people are content to just use the market.

But all you need is that one person to side load something malicious and everyone in their contacts may be compromised.

No no. I'm talking about keys to my phone alone. If I choose to trust my own certificate then that only impacts what software I can run on my phone. An app cannot "sideload itself onto all your contacts". This extends to the OS itself. Let me change the certificate governing the OS software. Only once you allow that do I truly own my phone.

2muchcoffeeman doesn’t say apps will migrate to other phones.

(S)he implies that your friend’s phone being compromised will leak data about you (email address, physical address, birth date, mails you sent, etc)

If you give your friend that data, it's out of your hands. If you don't want your email address or birthdate to be known, don't give it to anyone.

I pretty much opertate from the point of view that anything I send in an email or text is public, and temper what I write accordingly.

The problem here is social engineering. If someone says "click these buttons in your phone's settings, sideload our app, and you'll be able to do X" (where X is "pirate movies," "mine bitcoin," etc), a surprising number of people would follow the instructions, ignore any big red warnings, and end up with their device pwned. You'd need a way to make the certificate trust settings accessible only to those who know what they're doing.

Without that time limit, an entire black market of non-app-store software distribution could spring up, and Apple would not be able to protect little Bobby who wants an emulator from bad app actors.

So? The entire promise of computers is programability. If you can't make it do what you want it to do, you might as well just get an old nokia.

The real limitation isn't "seven days", as that's not that annoying: it is that you can have at most three such apps. But frankly, that still doesn't provide much "protection" from bad apps. All it is doing is prevent all of the apps on your phone from being pirated (capping that at three), which bounds the damage from adding this feature.

You can compile and run your own apps though. You would need an apple developer account and pay the fee to be able to side load your own apps. There is a process that allows you to do it if you're serious about it.

Edit: Disregard my comment. I clicked the link and understand the context of your comment now. Still, if you want to code and deploy your own apps you can do it but there are conditions.

> You would need an apple developer account and pay the fee to be able to side load your own apps

You don't need to pay to deploy to your own devices these days.

This is simply not true. You’ve been lied to, and you don’t own an iOS device to check for yourself. I’m pasting something I shared in another thread here. I have no idea where this lie came from but it seems like someone is trying to keep people away from developing apps on iOS.

I’ve written a couple personal apps that sync with health kit data collected from my Apple Watch and nutrition apps to help me track things in a way that is useful for my fitness goals. In 2016-2017 I used these apps to put on 30 lbs and stay relatively lean but I’ve never wanted to publish them in the app store. I don’t pay for any developer program. Just need to download some (free) developer tools / SDK for XCode, build the source, and put it on my phone. The install is tethered, but afterwards it stays there until I delete it. Restarting the phone doesn’t delete the app either. Only time I needed to re-install was when my 5s crapped out and I had to get a new phone.

They're both doing the same thing. Just in Google's case, you and I aren't the customer. We're the user. Not the same thing.

Ok, but, if my buying choices are going to promote one company over another - I think I’ll choose to promote the one I’m the customer of.

Kind of a funny comment given the sibling comment noting that this is Apple catching up to a long-existing Android securitt feature, file transfer over USB requires first unlocking the device.

No, iOS has done that for years, since like iOS 2 or 3 maybe. This is different- it locks itself down completely, even to channels that have previously been granted access, if it hasn't been unlocked for 7 days

My Android phone (and most recent Android phones I know) completely locks USB data, including from devices that had previously been granted access. You have to unlock, touch a notification and enable some file transfer option instead of "charging only". No 7 days limit, the access is denied immediately once it disconnects.

Apple is awful at providing a reasonable spread of devices though. There's no $50 iphone that does everything I need, I'd have to spend at least ten times that. Then I'd have to pay MORE to be able to develop and run my own programs?! At that point, why even have a microprocessor rather than using a simple fixed function ASIC?

Would I be happier if I could get a phone with the equivalent of BIOS and nothing else and vet and install my own software? You bet. If nothing else, I'd not have to install all those Play ____ apps I never use. But given the choices available, Apple is a bad one.

No one would buy or make your low margin low cost phone, that’s why it doesn’t exist.

Almost like Apple has probably evaluated the business case of an open ecosystem low margin low cost phone, and then immediately went back to printing money.

The $50 price point being deliberately chosen seems to be a reference to Android Go, whose USP is that the max price of the phone, new, no subsidy, is $50. (Though in the US, ZTE actually sells them for $80.)

Of course, they're miserable little devices, but they are technically smartphones that technically run android.

and then immediately went back to printing money.

I love the phrase "printing money". It's time proven. But it just occurred to me that it doesn't do Apple justice.

Apple's free cash flow for the trailing 12 months was $44.6 Billion. That's 446 million $100 banknotes. How many printing presses does it take to print that many bills? How many sheets of cotton/linen paper?

Apple's financial numbers are astounding.

$50 is a pretty amazing price point for something as flexible as a smartphone. However, you can get a perfectly usable used 5S for close to that range. Spend $15-40 extra and you can outfit it with new glass, screen, and battery, and it will feel like new, and probably perform at least as well as a brand new $50 Android.

You can get a free developer account that lets you develop and run your own programs since a couple of years.

I don’t know what you’re getting on about with ASICS, but I guess you may just need to accept being in a niche market segment.

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