Hacker News Reader

Comment by simonw | Hacker News Reader

The single worst offense against the usability of Atom/RSS right now comes from Apple and iOS.

If you click a link to an Atom feed in Mobile Safari, iOS will launch the Apple News app. Which will then show you an error message saying the content is unavailable.

As far as I can tell there is no way for an installed reader app to take over handling of feed URLs. It just makes the entire feed ecosystem look broken for anyone using an iPhone or iPad.

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I wonder if the EU could, in theory, take action about this behavior.

Apple is basically monopolizing the whole market for rss readers.

How many EU countries are Apple News available in?

All of them, I guess?

Apple News is not available in Germany. The only thing we get is the non-customisable News-Widget.

Well it might not be available as a service but apple might be handling the RSS URLs anyway.

Which is really awful. Always showing tabloid nonsense that you can't get rid of.

Only the UK.

The UK is not part of the EU anymore.

Thats neither factually nor theoretically correct, as all the EU laws apply until the transition period has expired, which I wouldn't be surprised will be extended given corona has taken so much focus and time away from it.

Officially they are no longer part of the EU. They have agreed to abide by the rules of the EU for now, and the EU has agreed to allow them to trade as though they were part of the EU, but they officially left on Jan 31.

Duck typing says they're currently a member.

It's both factually and theoretically correct - the UK has left the EU, but laws are extended until the transition period is over.

Note the absence of the UK in the below sources:

https://www.gov.uk/eu-eea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Member_state_of_the_European_U...

It is theoretically correct. The factuality is the point under dispute...

Well maybe there’s one way to resolve this dispute?

Did the UK MEPs serve their last day already?

What's your definition of 'in the EU' and 'fact'?

If a nation state doesn't recognise itself being in the EU, and the EU doesn't recognise the nation state being in the EU, It's not in the EU.

https://europa.eu/european-union/about-eu/countries_en#28mem...

After UK exits, none.

Apple News is available in a whopping 4 countries, 4 years after its introduction.

Yeah so the EU can't do much about it.

>Apple is basically monopolizing the whole market for rss readers.

You can't be a monopoly with such a small userbase.

Of course, you can. The company is the monopoly not the userbase.

No you literally can't..one of the legal tests is market share.

Oh so, you meant Apple's userbase not the entirety of RSS users?

i don't know about you how you use your iOS device if you do but after installing an RSS reader (NetNewsWire is an excellent open source app) you can share the webpage/website/blog using the share menu and it will be added to your RSS reader

I dislike a lot Feedly, almost like Inoreader and kinda like bazqux.

Not sure why though.

I used bazqux for a while and paid for the annual subscription. It just ended and I was looking around for free alternatives, and found CommaFeed, which reminds me a lot of Google Reader.

CommaFeed is great ! thanks for sharing this

I really do like CommaFeed, but they seem to limit the amount of feed items.

Inoreader (at least their paid version) supports private rss feeds--that is feeds with HTTP Basic Auth headers for non-public content. Private blogs and private RSS are a space where monetizing your content just isn't important. This is where people can write personal, vulnerable things to share with friends and family without creating a burden of "now I need to visit 50 different friends' websites"

Stop using Apple products. Stop developing for Apple products. Stop treating Apple like they matter.

Your other choice without lots of friction is Google, an advertising company. I hate that this is the world we live in.

At least with Android (not Google) I have a choice on what software I install.

Besides that you can still use a desktop PC. Most people do anyway.

> At least with Android (not Google) I have a choice on what software I install.

I'm have very negative outlook on Apple with their vendor lock-in and walled garden, but how long do you think Google will let you make this choice if they gonna have no competition at all?

Google was slowly making Android less and less open with every release. Now "security" features like SafetyNet decide whatever you're allowed to use software or not.

Think on it! Just look at what Google doing with web because of their monopoly on search and browser markets.

F-Droid exists as an alternative app store or you can distribute APKs. Also running Android from a vendor is a horrible experience. I recommend installing LineageOS or any other alternative ROM.

Google might have a monopoly on the web, but at least they have given us tools to work around it, unlike Apple.

> I have a choice on what software I install

No you don't. Much of the software preinstalled on an Android device is permanent. And you can try stripping out Google Play Services, but good luck having a "smart" phone.

Those services are not whats making a smartphone "smart".

> Stop using Apple products.

Sure.

> Stop developing for Apple products. Stop treating Apple like they matter.

The market, as it actually exists, disagrees (especially in terms of profit, as opposed to number of devices). I understand hating Apple, but if I write software for profit, I care about where the customers/money are and Apple absolutely qualifies. Should you also support other platforms? Absolutely. But removing support for a platform like you're suggesting is at best prioritizing ideology over profit, and even the ideology argument is... not one-sided.

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