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Comment by Benjamin_Dobell | Hacker News Reader

Do you feel the same about the Internet? Just not worth it, cause there's a heap of junk you can access if you go out of your way to access it?

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Pretty much. I don’t really “surf the Internet” like I did when I was younger. The web was ruined by ads long ago, and there’s very little content worth engaging in, especially without the curation that sites like HN provide.

The difference is you're choosing your curators (e.g. Hacker News) independent of other choices you've made i.e. your hardware provider.

Would you just go along with it happily if Apple (or any other company for that matter) blocked access to Hacker News because it didn't meet their standards? Or vice versa, if Hacker News refused to serve you simply because you're using an Apple device?

Apples standards are my standards. If that stops being the case, I’ll stop being a customer.

Sure. I’m smart enough to dig through the bargain bin of Google Play apps to find the ones that work with my device, don’t have ads, and have the appropriate level of functionality and polish. I just don’t want to. I’d rather pay a premium for a company to do it for me.

Same goes for the Internet.

> Apples standards are my standards.

Indeed. If you want to use their hardware, then you've no choice in the matter.

To be clear, I have absolutely zero issue with you choosing to be their customer. They make fantastic hardware, there are an enormous amount of pros to being an Apple customer. It's perfectly reasonable to look at these pros and cons and choose to be an Apple customer.

However, taking one of those cons and trying to sell it as a pro requires a fair bit of doublethink.

You could be using an Apple device and choosing Apple as your app curator. Lack of choice is not a feature.

>You could be using an Apple device and choosing Apple as your app curator. Lack of choice is not a feature.

Some people want to make as few choices as possible. That’s me. I don’t want to look at two or more app stores to find what I want. The lack of choice, for me, is a feature.

I understand that I’m a special type of narrow minded on this point. And I’m glad Android exists — I have a few Android devices myself, for hobbies and such - they’re just not what I would use for my daily driver.

I think the point is that Apple could still run their own App Store, which meets all of your requirements, without excluding all alternatives, which others might find valuable even if you choose not to use them yourself.

I do not agree that Apple can maintain the same high quality App Store while not excluding alternatives. Alternative App Store will invite developers to put in less effort to reach the same audience. I do not want this.

Surely that would just mean that application developers unwilling to comply with Apple's standards and pay its price of admission would be excluded from its App Store? Isn't that what you want, by your own arguments?

>You could be using an Apple device and choosing Apple as your app curator. Lack of choice is not a feature.

It absolutely is. Choice is happiness poison.

It's arguable that the Internet has gotten worse not because there's too many inconsistent, uncurated websites (analogous to the apps on the Google Play store, but because there's too many sites that have been siloed into standard formats maximizing SEO and ad revenue conforming to the expectations laid out by the major ad networks. There's fewer spontaneous websites with content people put up just for the sake of sharing or expressing. Instead sites are created with the goal of profit maximization. In other words, it's gotten worse because it's become more like the App Store.

> I don’t really “surf the Internet” like I did when I was younger.

omg i miss that term so much!

a few days ago, i looked up hamburger buns recipe in google search and got very frustrated by the websites i got back.

one page immediately triggered my laptop fan and pushed my CPU to the max. it was playing a video completely unrelated to the recipe i came for. one page showed so much ads that there was a tiny little space left for the recipe. one another page, scrolling was broken by an ad and i had to turn off javascript and images to make that page function at all.

all that time, i was thinking about the non tech-savvy person who was just looking for a recipe. these shenanigans are extreme against that group of people because we hackers would immediately raise strong voices.

that, made me feel bad.

correct response for people like the above. the internet has weird shit, no gatekeeper. yet folks never stop using it. n apple is busy stifling web apps by only allowing one browser engine. I will only buy another iOS device again when I can run gecko | firefox on it

I also appreciate the gate keeping on iOS, but that doesn’t mean I think the entire internet needs to be locked down.

It’s very nice that I can hand a device to my non tech literate relatives and have it just work. I can also like an open Internet for my own purposes.

The internet also doesn't force your app into a singular marketplace

"Singular marketplace" – there's your problem.

With Android, at least you can download an APK.

And likewise, make an APK on your choice of device (Windows, Mac, Linux), with no recurring or one time costs (minus hardware).

I've got half a dozen personal apps on my old phone and a couple more on my new one.

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