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Comment by aresant | Hacker News Reader

In the midst of the world (rightly) turning on big tech's abuses, efforts like these make me optimistic about our industry on a whole and help me recover some of the enthusiasm that led me into tech in the first place.

I love how this effort relies on & amplifies what were before relatively obscure specialties

The mapping wars elevate cartographers, mapping specialists, GIS data nerds, mobile computing / compression phds, GPS parsing engineers, ex-dod intertial navigation specialists, etc.

And rallied them around a massive, insanely big problem of mapping and organizing the entire physical world in real time and relying on consumer grade hardware to drive incredible fidelity.

It's humbling and really cool to see people that have dedicated their lives to these disciplines that were somewhat relegated to specialized use cases enter the "rockstar" stadium to deliver something that legitimately changes the way that billions of humans interact with the world

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As much as I agree with your general sentiment, Apple Maps, like many of Apple's mobile apps, gets a boost from Apple's anti-competitive practices. It's utterly ridiculous that we can remove default apps from iOS, including Maps and Safari, but we can't set new default apps to replace them.

If we ever get serious about increasing competition in the tech sector, an easy place to start is letting users set default browsers, maps, and email clients on their devices.

Isn't that kind of self-defeating, though? Like the ACA without the individual mandate? The only way this works is if people use the apps on the iPhone. There's nothing stopping you from using Google Maps on an iPhone but, in order for the tech to improve while remaining strong with privacy, is for Apple to utilize their existing technology. Also, I disagree that it's anti-competitive. Users are always allowed and able to switch to another device/ecosystem.

It's extremely similar to the microsoft IE issue, users should be able to set a default web browser.

The difference is that Microsoft dominated the market. Apple has a relatively small slice of the smartphone pie.

If Google restricted the user in the same way, that would arguably be closer to the Microsoft situation because their marketshare is 2x Apple's.

I think that depends on how you define "market". Globally, sure, but in the US that's not the case

https://www.statista.com/statistics/620805/smartphone-sales-...

The market is all the places the devices are sold. So global makes sense. If you define the market as San Francisco then Apple might have a monopoly. But that feels a little like market gerrymandering.

Even if you were going to restrict to just the US, Apple still sells fewer than 50% of the phones.

Fewer than 50% is different from "Google sells twice as many"

> The market is all the places the devices are sold.

Certainly US regulators / courts don't purport to have jurisdiction over foreign markets, agreed? The aforementioned EU case against Microsoft was about the EU market alone.

How about we bake in competitive openness regadless of company size? Why is it right to build corrals as long as yours is not the biggest?

Because the user has an easy choice. Monopolies are not a problem in themselves, it’s when that monopoly is leveraged to crush competitors out of the overall market.

I seriously don’t understand why this sentiment(not yours) is so prevalent on HN. If we want competition in the tech sector, it seems to me that government enforcement of modulization would only hinder such competition. Why should a large corp’s web dev team care about mobile safari if they can just write on their page, “it seems you are using safari on mobile, we recommend downloading mobile chrome(AppStore hyperlink) and setting it to default, as of $PREVIOUSYEAR we will no longer support it.”? To me as things currently stand(that is Apple is not a monopoly), Apple’s walled garden approach absolutely embodies the spirit of a free market. Consumers have the choice of products and the defaultness of iPhones is fairly widely understood at the market level, best I can tell. Anecdotally of course, but almost all the l people I’ve talked to who buy an iPhone state that they buy it because they “don’t want to think about their phone” that seems fair to me.

Exactly! And, to my point that's being voted down, it really only works the way it's intended if they have the ability to control each step of the ecosystem. If they allow people to replace experiences at different points then it's not possible to ensure the consistency that Apple's really known for.

I think this is fine, but only if we also bake in all of the things that Apple has achieved using their dominance.

- Strong encryption - Privacy Protections - Not using user data

"Users are always allowed and able to switch to another device/ecosystem."

Google would like you to have a discussion with the EU on their behalf.

Google's market share globally dwarfs Apple's. That comparison isn't the same at all. If Google pushes their own products on consumers using the power it has established in that market, it's a monopoly and the EU is 100% in the right in enforcing restrictions to that. It's exactly the situation Microsoft found itself in during the 90s.

and then, even if we could set the default browser, having a webkit-Chrome is stupid also...

and webkit firefox

One specific thing that bothers me is that Microsoft got in trouble for bundling IE with Windows, but apple doesn't get in trouble when they block all browser apps that don't use Safari under the hood. How is this different? I want Google and Mozilla (and anyone else) to be able to make iOS browser apps from scratch if they want. It wouldn't be an issue if you could sideload apps easily, but the app store is really the only legit way to get apps on your non-jailbroken iPhone.

Apple doesn’t have sufficient market share to be considered a monopoly. That’s generally how they’ve skirted around the issue, and by positioning themselves as a premium brand, they can raise prices on their hardware to the point that market share remains sufficiently small to not be subject to monopoly laws.

At the time of the MS/IE lawsuit (2001), Microsoft Windows had well over 95% of desktop operating system market share.

Fair point.

Apple doesn't have the market share MSFT did back then.

The big differentiator here is that Microsoft had a dominant monopoly on PCs. Apple is a huge huge player in the smartphone space, but they're still in no danger of having a majority of the market.

Because the DOJ suit against MS was misguided and unnecessary. It had little effect on eroding Microsoft's supposed stranglehold on the browser market. When browser monoculture began to really hurt consumers and innovation the market found solutions through improved collaboration (W3C getting its act together, and developers embracing web standards), business model innovation (mozilla foundation embracing open source vs. Netscape charging $40 for a commercial license), and better technology and industry/community collaboration (khtml and webkit). Even some eventual deadends like Flash played a role at the time in routing around the untenable, but very temporary, situation of IE v.4-6 dominance.

Edit: I want to add that during the suit MS reps had a glib but prescient defense: "we think web browsers should be free". They meant as in beer, but they were right in the larger sense, and few would disagree with them today.

Netscape was arguing that their by-then totally crappy commercial browser deserved protection from the state, when their demise had a lot more to do with insane bloat and their embrace of groupware.

The issue with the browser (and sideloading) is security. Browsers by their nature are essentially apps that run arbitrary code from an unknown location. How do you ensure security of the devices if you don’t control the browser?

Safari is great on iOS. I’ve never felt the need to run something different. Same with sideloading apps. I’ve never seen the need for that. Maybe I’m an Apple fanboy but I think they’re doing the right thing in both cases.

Microsoft got in trouble for licensing deals: strong-arming OEMs to force them to bundle Windows. Apple doesn't license iOS.

What's worse for consumers in the end though?

One profession missing in the parent comment are the researchers innovating on differential privacy. Apple has taken great pains to figure out ways to improve their maps without storing massive amounts of private user data, to the extent that they split routes in half, fuzz addresses, and analyze the start and end of trips independently.

There's an argument that Google had such a huge head start on maps, that without Apple having the capacity to set defaults (on a platform that is not even a plurality of users), Apple Maps wouldn't have gotten enough users to justify improvements to where it is now. Apple also didn't get serious about having its own maps until Google attempted to exercise their at-the-time near-monopoly power to jack up licensing costs. Now the mere existence of Apple maps puts pressure on Google to improve the privacy features of its own map products as we've seen recently.

Apple funds map development through device sales, and Google does it through targeted advertising, map services for third parties, and profiling users. Do we value competition only of mapping products, or should we also value a diversity of business models for mapping products? It's no small decision to bring in the Kommissar.

Google didn’t try and raise the price, they demanded user data in exchange for access.

Good correction! Though I recall that negotiations broke down across both factors.

Anyway it was clear that Google got leverage out of the deal, for instance they wouldn’t allow navigation while it was available on Android, no vector maps while they were available on Android etc.

That was never going to work for Apple.

While I sympathize with your viewpoint, you're imposing your personal values on consumers who demonstrate their willingness to exchange personal data for free services every day. You and many HN users may balk at this, but most people are ok with trading privacy for real-time traffic predictions. Apple shouldn't receive an unfair market advantage because they embody the values you hold dear.

Sidenote: I disagree that Apple Maps' success puts pressure on Google to up their privacy game. On the contrary, Google Maps comparative advantage is their data trove, as there are many more users of Google Maps than Apple Maps, so they seem more likely to lean on that to succeed.

I wouldn't look to the market to improve privacy, since as I said above, the market clearly doesn't care about privacy much at all. Without a seismic shift in public attitudes towards privacy, it's up to the government or the companies themselves to adapt.

By this same logic, consumers are willing to exchange their inability to set a default Maps app in exchange for the iPhone bundle, at the price Apple provides (discounted because of the services revenue they can extract.)

iPhones are not the market leader and do not have to follow molopoly based rules. They can allow apple maps only and all is legal.

Press release from google, 2019-10-02:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/blog.google/technology/safety-s...

* Added incognito mode to maps

* Expands auto deletion of old data to include locations, and location searches

Now... this might not be due solely to competitive pressures from Apple, but it was a topic of conversations I had with pro-privacy Android users I know who have been warming up to iOS. Feature introductions like this definitely take the edge off.

calling ignorance a willingness seems a bit much to me.

> you're imposing your personal values on consumers who demonstrate their willingness to exchange personal data for free services every day.

Are they demonstrating their willingness, or do they simply not understand that there is a choice to be made? Considering the trivial difference in mapping performance in most places, I doubt most people would be willing to give up their privacy in exchange for saving a few seconds on their drive to the mall.

> Without a seismic shift in public attitudes towards privacy,

If people were truly aware of how much data is collected on them, how many people would opt in for the marginal benefits you get in return?

There have been so many opportunities for a grassroots pro-privacy movement to develop, and yet there isn't one. Devastating hacks (Target, Yahoo), election interference (CambridgeAnalytica), and yet nothing.

Acting as if people are unaware of data collection is disingenuous. If you told the average facebook user how much facebook and its third-party partners knew about them, I doubt many of them would stop using the platform.

You seem pretty disconnected from what normal people see and experience. Ask some random/ non-tech people about those hacks, data-breaches, and what their privacy expectations are when doing basic things like web searches. I guarantee you most people don't know who Cambridge Analytica is and couldn't tell you which major banks/ retailers have been breached.

It's not just ignorance, but a sense of helplessness. People don't feel in control and don't have any clue how they might reduce what data leaks out in their daily lives. The thing is, they are absolutely right.

I know and understand a lot of this stuff and I don't feel like I'm in control of my data. Even if you take precautions, Google and Facebook track your progress across the web. If you don't use Google Maps, Google still tracks your location using your IP address for network calls (often when you aren't deliberately connecting to Google services) and both Google and Facebook have been slurping up people's purchase history through credit card companies.

How is someone who doesn't have a clue about this stuff supposed to exert any control or choice when the people attacking their privacy out-gun them so thoroughly?

> Apple shouldn't receive an unfair market advantage because they embody the values you hold dear.

Then buy Android if that's a tradeoff you're willing to make.

Are you saying users should give up freedom privacy( even though apple is willing to give up in china ). User choice is still better then corporate handouts.

Apple won't even let you remove the Chess app from macOS without disabling system integrity protection.

> letting users set default browsers, maps, and email clients on their devices.

This is so disingenuous. It's called Android. People hate it. Although the walled garden may offend you personally, the market at large has spoken.

Of all the options to hate Android, having the option to change default clients is probably pretty low...

It's probably enough to make anyone switch to Android, but it can still be a welcome addition to iOS

Are you implying people hate Android and that iOS is way bigger in terms of market share?

You can remove them? Android doesn't allow me to remove them wasting my space.

Not setting a default is bad too. Wish I could get there.

....what are you talking about? This is just an update on yet another closed platform.

If apple cared about elevating the discipline and righting the abuses of big tech with their mapping app they'd partner with OpenStreetMap and make the data public rather than continuing to silo all the data about you and everyone around you.

Instead we're continuing the closed source data gathering land rush and trying to beat google at its own game.

Why do you equate “elevating the discipline” with “give away the data?”.

Are you suggesting Google didnt elevate the discipline of search because their backend is closed?

How do you elevate a discipline by hiding literally everything behind NDAs?

By raising the quality bar of what is expected?

Apple Maps _is_ OpenStreetMap in many countries. In Denmark it's used for turn-by-turn navigation even.

(Source: Talk by Apple employee at the OSM'a 'State of the Map' conference 2018 https://2018.stateofthemap.org/2018/T081-Working_with_the_Co... )

Then why not do it everywhere and upstream the changes?

Why should Apple give away their improvements?

I’m genuinely curious why you think they should do this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Database_License

Because they would be legally obligated to when using OSM as a base for anything.

Also, because it would benefit society.

If Apple was legally obligated to contribute back, they would do so.

They have a good history of community contribution (eg. Darwin, WebKit) so I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, instead of some random anonymous internet commenter angst.

....no they don't. They actively avoid the GPL versions of various things they use so they don't have to give back even though it hurts their users.

I’ve never heard that argument as to why Apple avoids the GPL.

I also don’t see how it is consistent with their behavior. For example, Apple wouldn’t need to change anything to bash to make its latest version run on MacOS. Yet, they don’t ship it.

On the other hand, the argument that they don’t avoid the GPL in general, but specifically GPLv3 because of legal concerns is consistent with their behavior. They shipped the latest GPLv2 licensed bash for years, but avoid any GPLv3 licensed version.

Apple made the MIT-licensed zsh the default shell in macOS over the GPL-licensed bash precisely to avoid the GPL.

https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT208050

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20090193

Apple has historically been hostile to the GPL. Remember when Apple removed the GPLv2-licensed VLC from the App Store in 2011?

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2011/01/vlc-for-ios-vanishes...

VLC didn't return to the App Store until the iOS version was dual-licensed under the MPL 30 months later.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/07/vlc-media-player-ret...

I don't think what you're posting is inconsistent with the observation the person you're replying to made -- Apple is hostile more specifically to GPL 3, which a lot of companies seem to be (rightly or wrongly). IIRC, a lot of GPL-licensed stuff that came with OS X, like bash, just stopped being updated by Apple when it moved from GPL 2 to 3; moving to zsh lets them keep their default shell up to date while also keeping whichever execs/lawyers have decreed "Thou Shalt Not GPL 3" happy.

Also, IIRC, Apple doesn't have a policy of prohibiting GPL-licensed software from being in the App Store, but rather, the FSF's own interpretation of the GPL is that its terms are incompatible with the App Store's terms.

That's absurd. From Licensing WebKit (https://webkit.org/licensing-webkit/):

> WebKit is open source software with portions licensed under the LGPL and BSD licenses available here.

Even though those licenses don't require it, Apple still actively develops and publishes enormous FOSS projects. Here's a page that lists more of them: https://developer.apple.com/opensource/

Apple gives back way more than they're legally required to. They don't like the GPLv3 specifically, but's worlds apart from saying they avoid the GPL or that they don't want to give back.

It’s not that simple. https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Common_licence_interpret...:

”I created a layer on top of an OSM map. What do I have to put under your license?

You have to determine whether what you have created is a Collective Work or a Derivative work, under the terms of the OSM licence.

If what you create is based on OSM data (for example if you create a new layer by looking at the OSM data and refering to locations on it) then it is likely you have created a derivative work.

If you generate a merged work with OSM data and other data (such as a printed map or pdf map) where the non-OSM data can no longer be considered to be separate and independent from the OSM data, is is likely you have created a derivative work.

If you overlay OSM data with your own data created from other sources (for example you going out there with a GPS receiver) and the layers are kept separate and independent, and the OSM layer is unchanged, then you may have created a collective work.

If you have created a derivative work, the work as a whole must be subject to the OSM licence. If you have created a collective work, then only the OSM component of the work must be subject to the OSM licence.”

IANAL, but I think anybody can overlay OSM data with traffic info, satellite photography, layers with names of shops, etc., without creating a derivative work.

Why don’t you work for free? That would also benefit society. Be the change you want to see in the world.

There's a myth that the market offers rewards proportional to value provided.

In reality, the market offers rewards proportional to value that can be withheld, as leverage for price negotiation.

It would be a big deal to create an economic system that reliably measures and rewards benefit to society. I haven't the faintest idea how.

My understanding is that Bing, Apple, and Here have all already been working with Open Street Map for years now.

Yeah so wrong of them to invest millions into their map data and not immediately give it away to their competitors!

> It's humbling and really cool to see [cartographers, mapping specialists, GIS data nerds, mobile computing / compression phds, GPS parsing engineers, ex-dod intertial navigation specialists, etc.] enter the "rockstar" stadium to deliver something that legitimately changes the way that billions of humans interact with the world

The thing is, they did this before. But the interaction just wasn't direct. All of those people were doing important work for government and business organizations wherever getting around and knowing where you and other things are mattered, and improving the quality of services.

Now we get first-hand experience with their work, which is fantastic. Map apps are probably the thing that most enticed me onto a smart phone and the thing I'd have a hardest time giving up.

I just hope that every time we remember the before and after for these amazing conveniences, we remember that all these disciplines and professionals were important beforehand, and that there are others that are woven quietly into public and private life. Because there's a lot of voices right now that seem interested in burning down institutions and not enough curiosity in what those institutions have done for us.

> relatively obscure specialties

This is such a Silicon Valley perspective.

What abuse? how is it right? It's the news industry that is leading and fuling attacks on tech companies for selfish financial reasons, and "big tech" is their term, it's a testament to their efficacy that people in tech drank that kool aid.

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