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Comment by DavideNL | Hacker News Reader

I agree with you, which is why there are many more viruses/malware in Android vs iOS.

However my issue with iOS is, that people don't have the freedom to choose whether or not they want to be protected by this "walled garden".

Currently, you cannot opt-out, and the side effect is that Apple limits our freedom to choose to, for example, set Firefox as the default browser. Or set startpage.com as the default search engine in Safari. etc. etc.

I don't understand how a single company is allowed to have so much power to decide/enforce upon us what we may and may not do with our devices. And since it's an oligopoly (Apple or Google), we don't have any other alternatives.

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I’ve been both inside and outside that walled garden. I increasingly prefer life inside the wall.

But that’s just me. What concerns me is the tribalism of people. “OMG! You use THAT phone/computer/OS?!?! I would NEVER use that!” Then go on to explain why their buying choices are better than yours. Look at the replies here, they’re rife with it.

> I increasingly prefer life inside the wall.

We can have both: live inside the wall and have the freedom to do with our devices what we want;

For example, in macOS i can disable 'System Integrity Protection' (SIP), make whatever modifications i want to make, and then re-enable SIP. The same thing could be done with iOS.

The real issue is that Apple wants to have control over our devices for economic/financial reasons.

True story: I worked for a mobile app developer that earned a reputation for destroying Android phones.

Logging bugs would trash the flash storage in months or weeks. Other bugs and “features” would drain the battery so aggressively that several phones caught on fire, some injuring customers. We found ways to hide our actual power usage and circumvent protections that would have prevented rapid battery discharge.

In a meeting, it was said, “Stupid Apple won’t let us run background processes.” To which I thought, “Thank God.”

It was Apple’s approval checks and policies that prevented this app maker from potentially physically damaging their customers’ phones with this terrible software. Physical injuries weren’t enough to fix the bugs or stop messing with low level settings. Nope.

There are some “choices” that shouldn’t be put upon consumers. There are some profoundly bad developers out there. Shouldn’t there be protections from app makers that intentionally hide their shady tweaks that disable power protection safety?

Apple’s approval process does indeed root out many of the worst offenders, like my former employer.

> Other bugs and “features” would drain the battery so aggressively that several phones caught on fire, some injuring customers. We found ways to hide our actual power usage and circumvent protections that would have prevented rapid battery discharge.

Was it FIX Health? Their flagship app, The Outbreak[1] is literally the worst app I've ever installed on my phone.

I had to install it as a part of a company health incentive so I could get my HSA bonus, but that app is seriously so bad. If I opened it on my Nexus 5X with 30% battery remaining, the OS would immediately start shutting down. Sometimes it froze my phone at full battery such that I couldn't use it or even reach the lock screen again until I did a hard reset.

[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.FIX.TheOut...

> The real issue is that Apple wants to have control over our devices for economic/financial reasons.

Maybe, maybe not. But I for one like this walled garden because it prevents a lot of stupid people from doing really stupid things. From a computer, infosec security angle.

That's understandable. And those willing to break out will have a price to pay. Like the "your phone is insecure" message on boot after you went to a bunch of complicated steps to unlock your bootloader. That's acceptable. Removing this option entirely is not.

Or, you know, having multiple trust sources installed on your phone. I'd like to download apps by microsoft without having to beg google for permission. Manually adding new stores/etc should come with drawbacks / be unacceptable complicated for average users, of cause.

> But that’s just me. What concerns me is the tribalism of people. “OMG! You use THAT phone/computer/OS?!?! I would NEVER use that!” Then go on to explain why their buying choices are better than yours. Look at the replies here, they’re rife with it.

The thing about being able to install code without permission from a third party is that it's like herd immunity in vaccination - individuals or small groups doing it is not actually very useful in order to ward off harmful effects, it needs to be a widespread, mainstream possibility.

Repressive governments are perfectly fine with draconian restrictions and attacks on minorities using computing platforms if they can succeed in 80% of cases. That means they have a much smaller base to attack with targeted "enforcement". Only mass civil disobedience through installation of prohibit code actually works.

Many of the fundamental freedoms we cherish only exist because of mass permissionless code installation of the 90s to mid-2000.

I wish I could sit there and say you can use whatever you want, I really do. But I think your choices negatively impact me and the rest of society.

Ah, and another one, but with the added BS of “OMG! You’re hurting society!”

Mkay...

We do have the freedom to choose, we pick Google or Apple if it’s an issue we care about. If we don’t care about it, it doesn’t matter which we pick.

It’s like complaining that Toyota gives you the option of reliability but Nissan doesn’t. You pick from the options available.

Like i said, it's an oligopoly. There's only 2 choices which is not enough.

Imagine you could only buy 2 type of cars...

There are Blackberry phones. There are feature phones. It’s your choice to feel you must own a phone from one of the two main ecosystems because “everyone” else does. I know a number of people who either don’t own smartphones or only carry one provided by their company (and use only for work purposes).

Two is not enough? So what are you doing about it? It's not Apple's fault that Google now has pretty much all the rest of the market for smartphone ecosystems.

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