Hacker News Reader

> My music is in Spotify and Apple Music, my video is Netflix and Amazon Prime and Apple+

Does Spotify somehow integrate with Apple Music and Netflix with Apple+? Because, if not, your counterargument is just "there's no walled garden because I'm outside it".

Spotify, Netflix, Google, Kindle, etc work on both platforms. Apple stuff doesn't. That's the definition of "walled garden", that you can't use Android and still use any Apple stuff.

FWIW Apple Music does work on android, reasonably well too. I switched to that when it became apparent that Google Play Music is a dead product, soon to be sent to the glue factory.

Why do people use Apple Music over Spotify?

I don't use spotify for a few reasons. Primarily being I can't add my own music to my library and stream it (you kinda can but it's sub-optimal), second being comfort and usability. You can't easily rearrange your play queue in spotify, while apple music and GPM make this quite easy (including "play next" and "play later" for adding to the front and back of the queue). I find radio stations much better on Apple Music and GPM, Spotify's radio stations/algorithm just don't do it for me.

Spotify was a hassle when I tried to sign up for an account (I don't recall exactly, it's been a few months, but some sort of technical glitch), and I didn't have enough desire to chase it down just so I could give them my money. So I've stuck with Apple Music because I can't justify to myself or my wife (we have a family plan) how Spotify would be an improvement. I was willing to try it out because my Tesla has a built-in player for Spotify, but I've just been using the Tesla streaming instead (when not Apple Music) and I'm happy with it.

One reason I use Apple Music over Spotify is that Apple Music is entirely supported by paying customers rather than by ads. This aligns thier incentives more closely to mine.

I was using it because it had voice command support and Spotify didn't. Was pretty important when 100% of my use was while driving. I think that's changed and Spotify has support now but I don't know how smooth that is.

no ads plus much much more music, especially if you’re into subgenres of electronic music. i haven’t found a song yet that i haven’t found on apple music. they were one of the (if not the) original music store after all

Do you know if Apple Music is available on Windows? I know iTunes has been on Windows for years, so I assume it supported Apple Music initially, just like on the Mac?

They currently have a web player beta going, https://beta.music.apple.com/, but personally I use https://vusic.site/ because the apple beta is a little unstable and it suits my needs.

iTunes for windows does support Apple Music, but iTunes is still a pig and best not installed on your PC.

I believe iTunes for windows is still a thing and it supported apple music when I tried it last year.

iTunes as a software is horrible though

AppleTV+ is also available on the web and on Roku and Samsung TVs. So again, not a walled garden even when using their products.

Oh okay, if it's on Samsung TVs that's pretty much FOSS levels of openness, I agree.

Your reply here seems to try to twist the thread to a point where all uses of 'open' or 'non-walled' has to equate FOSS or EFF ideals, while you probably know that is neither feasible nor what is being discussed. It feels like you're intentionally acting obtuse at this point.

how about the $5k or so in media i have in googles ecosystem? their apps are literally garbage on ios and i had to resort to using youtube to watch content i paid for. even this didn’t work after some time as i have so much media even the youtube app started timing out when loading my purchases. there is no compatible format for ios, so you gotta use their garbage apps. it became such a huge problem that i bought everything that moviesanywhere didn’t already give me over again on itunes store just so i could have an actual file and, you know, actually watch the content i bought. google is substantially worse in their walled garden attempts

>how about the $5k or so in media i have in googles ecosystem? their apps are literally garbage on ios

I've never seen any Google app being a problem on iOS, much less garbage. It just doesn't have the native look due to Material theming.

read my post again, you clearly don’t have enough media to be a problem. on all devices both the google play app and youtube timeout or lock the device up due to the amount of media i have. garbage is an understatement considering how much i spent with them and that I can’t even view any of it anymore without watching on a full desktop / laptop

>Does Spotify somehow integrate with Apple Music and Netflix with Apple+? Because, if not, your counterargument is just "there's no walled garden because I'm outside it".

No, my argument is "there's no walled garden because with subscriptions there are no walls to close you in".

Apple Music is a subscription, you move to Spotify or Pandora or Youtube Music or whatever and that's that. You don't have the loss of your music or whatever locking you down to either OSX/iOS or even Apple Music alone as the parent said. That would be an argument back when music was DRM files you have bought and which would have stopped working outside Apple's ecosystem.

Ditto of course for Netflix, Mail, etc.

The closest you can get to the "walled garden" is iBooks -- Kindle wont display books you've bought there. But you can trivially just use Kindle app on macOS/iOS and problem solved. Apple's not forcing you to use iBooks.

> You don't have the loss of your music or whatever

You just lose playlist and ratings

> you can trivially just use Kindle app on macOS/iOS

Except Apple cripples features of the Kindle app (you cannot buy books through the app because if you did, Apple would demand a 30% cut that represents all of the Amazon profits) that are not crippled in Apple's own offering.

>You just lose playlist and ratings

Yes, so peanuts (most people don't even use ratings according to some article I've read - it's for the OCD music nerds, not the millions who just listen to hits and might or might not add some playlists - of which they don't really obsess over).

>Except Apple cripples features of the Kindle app (you cannot buy books through the app because if you did, Apple would demand a 30% cut that represents all of the Amazon profits) that are not crippled in Apple's own offering.

That would be Amazon's crippling it, as it's their choice. They could pay that 30% cut. They themselves demand a 65% cut from authors and publishers at worst case, and 30% (same as Apple) at best.

And again, both very ho-hum example of barriers to move platform.

If stuff like "I'll lose my playlists" is what prevents someone from leaving Apple, then that's the most open walled garden ever...

I feel like reason you can move is because you haven't put all your eggs in their walled garden, not that they don't have one. I know people who either won't or have regretted switching from an iPhone because they have trouble talking to their friend who only use iMessage. I think Apple is only increasing their walled garden into more areas by expanding into music streaming, TV, etc. You can still use their hardware and OS without fully buying into their walled garden though and maintain more freedom, as you seem to do!

edit: I should mention that while I don't like their walled gardens in general, I don't mind them for other people except iMessage. iMessage makes me fairly angry because they're using & dividing people's social connections for profit.

iMessage is backwards compatible with SMS.

Are you talking about the unwillingness of users to migrate their chats to WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, etc? That’s not a walled garden - that’s the natural hesitance to leave any comfortable/familiar system that any social media / network effect site/app has. It’s more like a psychological moat. And even the app you want Apple users to migrate to has it.

He's talking about the fact that iMessage only runs on Apple hardware. That's what a walled garden is.

iMessage with macOS works fine on non-Apple hardware. Perhaps you intended to write iOS and the iOS version of iMessage only runs on Apple hardware? Or was it more a point of legality? Or end-user acceptance? Or availability to the general public?

Is there an iMessage app my mom can install on her Android phone? It feels like you're intentionally acting obtuse at this point.

No, I'm just stating facts. iMessage runs on multiple Apple operating systems, and while you can't run the iOS family reliably on anything but Apple hardware, you can run macOS on non-Apple hardware.

I'm intentionally trying to point out that the generalised statement was wrong without context, while at the same time providing wording that would probably match the intended message instead of the one that ended up getting posted.

No, the statement was plenty right, I just wasn't expecting someone to read it in bad faith and then waste a bunch of time by nitpicking. If you're a mobile app manufacturer who owns a large platform, and your app doesn't run on the other large platform, you're a walled garden.

no it’s wrong and given your precious posts you’re obviously an apple hater. i hope you realize you’re not special and anytime an apple story comes out, your type crawls outta the woodwork to express their jealousy or whatever is the driving force behind your valueless comments. please go back to your android / windows / linux / haiku / whatever world and leave the rest of us in peace

Sure, you can climb in and out of a walled garden with a grappling hook, but that's not really the point.

ok? and googles messaging app only runs on android. the app doesn’t require the recipient to have imessage, however if they do you get benefits (like increased message size) over sms due to limitations in sms.

Which one? Hangouts runs on iOS. The one for SMS and MMS does not but does Apple even allow that?

hangouts is dead, so again can i run googles sms app on an iphone? further google killed xmpp support which would’ve allowed 3rd party clients to use their message services

I admit I haven't checked what Google's messaging offerings are this month.

iMessage is the greatest thing to happen to text messaging since text messaging itself. I refuse to use any Facebook owned product to communicate; so, that pretty much only leaves me SMS and iMessage.

I think you should be pissed at bottom barrel Android manufacturers putting shitty messaging interfaces on Android phones more than Apple for having a good messaging system.

iMessage has done more to hold back messaging in the US than anything else. Even if Google was competent at messaging it wouldn't matter because iOS users wouldn't switch and Apple refuses to open up iMessage to non-Apple devices.

I'm still using SMS for most of my messaging, and I primarily blame Apple for that.

Are you asking for Apple to pay for infrastructure for non-customers to use? Or even further, that Apple design and support an Android iMessage app?

Google's messenger apps work on iOS..

Google makes money from advertising, Apple does not...

Google's incentive is to keep you using their platform across any device; because, that is what is in their best interest, they make their money from billions upon billions of small advertising interactions across a vast ocean of interconnected platforms and devices.

Apple sells physical devices, it's their incentive to make sure the experience is great for whoever bought that device. They make their money from selling billions of devices...

Apple's focus is on the "user," and Google's focus is on the "platform." Both have different types of lock-in, but have different reasons why.

I still lost how it's Apple's problem that the standard interface of SMS/MMS is just totally shitty and not capable of doing what people want. Complain to your telecommunication, handset, and operating system providers/vendors to build or enable a better open standard (like RCS or whatever it is).

Yes, and I am a customer. I own a Macbook, and I would love to use iMessage on it, but doing so would mean losing all of my messages as soon as I pick up a different device. That makes iMessage (and most Apple services) completely useless to me, a paying customer.

Their decision to wall off iMessage actively hurts their own customers by preventing them from seamlessly communicating with the most popular mobile OS using modern technology. They get away with it because they're Apple and they make good products, but that doesn't mean I have to think it's good.

I have Facebook Messenger, Messages (iMessage), WhatsApp, Signal, Hangouts, Slack & Discord all installed on my iPhone. Why hold back?

Every app is another opportunity to get a tracker on your phone. I like to limit how many native apps I have installed whenever possible.

>iMessage makes me fairly angry because they're using & dividing people's social connections for profit.

Can you point me to a company that doesn't do this? I would think "but $hardware to use $network" is preferable to "use $network for free, but sell everything you put on the $network"

If iMessage is a walled garden, then pretty much every other messaging system is also a walled garden since the death of XMPP. Can anyone build a a third party client for WhatsApp or any other popular messaging system in 2020? Im unaware of any. In fact the top result for “third party whatsapp client” is “Use a third party WhatsApp client and be banned for life”. [0] Hardly the behavior of an open system.

What your real complaint is that there isn’t an client for a nonApple operating system. It’s reasonable to not want to switch OSes, but there are many apps that are iOS exclusive, as there are many android exclusive apps, but I wouldn’t call them “walled gardens”.

Also, iMessage doesn’t make money. It an e2e encryption app with sms support. Because it’s provided by Apple, a company that famously makes money on hardware rather than services, there’s no incentive to mine your (and your connections’) data for profit, like say WhatsApp, or the others, so it is incorrect to claim they are “using & dividing people’s social connections for profit”. If anyone is dividing their connections based on iMessage, it’s your friends.

[0] https://www.cultofmac.com/314343/use-a-third-party-whatsapp-...

> If iMessage is a walled garden, then pretty much every other messaging system is also a walled garden since the death of XMPP.

No whataboutism please.

A bit of a late reply, but there were a couple of points that I wanted to respond to. The first is that I'm not holding up WhatsApp as a great example! I use, promote, and have done a bit of development on Matrix, a true open messaging system. If XMPP or IRC floats your boat, I'm all for that as well, and I'll be able to chat with you over the XMPP and IRC Matrix bridges because all 3 are open systems. Second is how high the wall of your walled garden is matters, and matters a lot. Sure I can't write my own WhatsApp client, but I can download the app relatively easily on both Android and iOS. To communicate with people over iMessage I would have to buy a different phone and accept everything that comes with it (including the rest of the walled garden, appwise, oswise, etc). Finally, when I said they were doing it for profit I meant that the fact that iMessage only works with Apple products makes it such that if you want a good communication experience with your Apple-only friends you also have to buy into the ecosystem, and once you have it's hard to get out because you might lose those connections.

Cohesion does not force you to lock your software to a single device. Why can Google Duo be available on iOS and Android, while FaceTime is locked to iOS? You know full well it's to force you and your family to stay inside the garden and stop you from leaving. Has nothing to do with cohesion.

> I'm a close-to-20-years Apple user. The walled garden has never been a problem.

Obviously it's not a problem to people inside the garden, that's the whole point. It's meant to be a problem to people who are outside, to get them to come in.

As someone who has never had any Apple product, every time I come anywhere near anything by Apple, it's nothing but issues. As mentioned above, any time I'm linked an iTunes album page, I can't do shit with it. I'm not going to install iTunes just to listen and purchase the album. Is it cohesion to force me to download and install a program to purchase an album?

I haven’t been able to get any one to use Google Duo. Isn’t it still only 1 on 1? Yes, it’s cross-platform, but if the cross-platform apps aren’t that good (Hangouts feels bulky, some other apps have more hoops to go through), that’s also saying something.

>The walled garden has never been a problem, more of a strength (integration, cohesion, etc).

>My music is in Spotify and Apple Music, my video is Netflix and Amazon Prime and Apple+, my email is Gmail, my eBooks in Kindle for Mac and iOS, I talk with friends with Skype, Facetime, Messenger and Whatsup. Even my iCloud apps (Calendar, email, etc) are available from any browser.

How do you actually benefit from the 'cohesion' in this situation, more say than my KDE/android setup which provides fairly seamless integration between my phone and computer?

One really egregious and incredibly frustrating example of a walled garden by Apple is the fact that I can't accept an invitation to view a shared iPhoto library unless I accept that invitation from Apple Mail. I'm using a Mac, I have iPhoto installed, there's no reason other than consumer-hostile behaviour to not allow me to accept that invite from Gmail in a browser. Hell, make me copy the link and paste it in iPhoto if I need to. Forcing me to use a particular e-mail client is just ridiculous.