Comment by tokyodude | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tokyodude | Hacker News Reader

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I think Google should yank the app. I think Apple should be forced to carry the app or open their platform. Android users can install whatever they want. Apple should not be in a position to prevent iPhone users from doing the same.

To me if BMW said "You can buy this car but you're not allowed to drive to to Compton Los Angeles". The answer should not be "If you want to drive to Compton buy some other brand". It should be "Those terms are Illegal"

Unlike Google, Apple claims total dominion over what apps you can run on your iOS device. They have that control over 1.3 billion devices. That the largest amount of censorship control ever in the hands of few people. Political apps are blocked. Sex positive porn apps are blocked. I get that Apple shouldn't be forced to carry those apps on their store but until they provide alternatives I think they're in the wrong.

People generally respond to this they want Apple to censor their apps. That's not an argument for not opening the platform. You are always free to install only Apple approved apps regardless of if the platform is open or not.

if BMW decided to limit their cars to roads approved by BMW, that’s their prerogative. Who are you to tell a private company what products they’re allowed to make? The correct solution is for consumers to buy the product that suits their needs.

It’s worth pointing out that the BMW approved roads have much better fatality statistics than the unapproved roads, and there’s almost guaranteed to be an approved road that goes within minutes of where you want to go anyway. Oh and some of those approved roads are exclusive to BMW and they’re really well made.

Or you can get the Jeep Cherokee, which drives really well on that dirt track.

What? If I buy the car, I own the car. BMW has no say in where I drive it.

I could only see this argument if I was borrowing / leasing the car from BMW.

You'd have to change what ownership means for this to make sense.

If you buy a Blu-Ray player it will only play approved disks. Heck, the iPhone can only run iOS.

It depends on what you sign when you buy it. You may very well buy the right to drive the car but not the car itself (like a leasing where you don’t actually own the car until fully paid).

In this hypothetical I'm not saying that you wouldn't have the right to hack your BMW to let it drive on any road, if you are able to. But BMW aren't obliged to make it drive every road by default, nor are they obliged to make it easy to hack.

And lest you think this is an absurd example, we're already heading down this exact path with drones, of which many now default to being geo-fenced from flying in restricted zones. It won't be long before these restrictions become nominally impossible for laypeople to switch off without some kind of security key.

> I think Apple should be forced to carry the app > I get that Apple shouldn't be forced to carry those apps

This is a confusing stance.

It's only confusing if you leave out the context as you did.

The parent's statement was that Apple should be forced to carry the app, unless they're willing to open the platform so people can sideload their own apps without going through Apple's store.

> Apple claims total dominion over what apps you can run on your iOS device

This stopped being true some years ago. You can build any app you wish from source and Xcode will sign it and you can run it on your iOS device—no approval or payment required.

Yupp, because so many apps are open source.

Apple isn’t stopping anyone from open-sourcing their apps.

That's an interesting argument you bring up here. Why aren't more people open-sourcing their apps? Especially with a client-server architecture, you can simply keep the server part closed. I'm an iOS developer, but there's usually not all that much of interest in the iOS client.

> no approval or payment required

If you don't have a paid developer license it will silently be uninstalled after 7 days.

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