How is having control over what you can install on your own PC and being in a position to actually choose from where to install it a nightmare?
Is being in control and having choice a nightmare?
Is being in control and having choice a nightmare?
Meanwhile the city dweller chooses the opposite for many reasons and makes different concessions, but it suits them.
Neither is these are strictly wrong but to claim one is better than the other _for everyone_ is misguided and is essentially what this argument is here. Pick your own path but don’t presume it’s the right one for everybody and don’t destroy the other’s ecosystem such that they can no longer choose it.
The choice for others to have no choice is not really much of a choice - not only i want to have a choice in what i install on iOS devices but i also want the ability to have a choice available in all of the devices i paid for, especially in an environment where other companies see Apple's success and become too thirsty for it and try to copy them (see Microsoft as an example).
I don't think it's Apple's fault if other companies try to copy them poorly. I'm very familiar with what you mean and it bothers me too, but I don't think that means Apple needs to change.
Like others,I prefer Apple to have a tightly controlled App Store and believe that the benefits far outweigh the ability to install software from a 3rd party App Store.
For example, Apple requiring Sign In with Apple (when signin with Google/Facebook are implemented) where you can hide your email address. That’s not possible with multiple app stores. Apple helps lead the way with privacy.
If you want multiple app stores and all that, just buy an Android phone. iPhone is for people like me who want a tightly controlled experience. That’s the way it’s designed. You don’t buy a Corolla and get mad that you can’t off road with it, do you?
Most ship with maleware that can’t be removed (or can’t be removed without giving up on updating the OS.)
Android still doesn’t let you run a lot of 3rd party software (the latest version breaks Termux for example.)
Apple’s anticompetitive behavior also ties people to the platform (iMessage is a great example of this. My family won’t use any other IM app so even if I buy another phone (which I have, it’s supposed to arrive in September) I’ll have to keep my iPhone just to talk to them.)
Finally the hardware is just bad. Qualcomm does not make nice SOCs (IMO) but it could be just because the software they provide with them is complete garbage. There’s no alternative in the US either.
That would happen if apple allowed other organizations to customize the OS which is a different discussion.
What you describe is possible with multiple app stores and allowing 3rd party apps - you just do not use those other stores and apps. Nobody is forcing you to use a 3rd party app store, but Apple is forcing everyone to go through their store.
You can keep your tightly controlled experience by not using anything else than Apple - but that doesn't mean everyone has to be forced to do the same thing.
> You don’t buy a Corolla and get mad that you can’t off road with it, do you?
99.9% of the time such comparisons ignore details and derail discussion, so they aren't very helpful.
Allowing 3rd-party app stores has predictable negative externalities (privacy, security, etc.). Which is why I and others are not interested in that development. Apple is able to make developers engage in less shitty business practices precisely because they can control the distribution of software through the App Store . It’s no surprise that as Apple has increasingly focused on privacy and removing tracking capabilities and other dark patterns that developers are trying to find a way around Apple’s restrictions. It’s not like they all of a sudden implemented a new fee. It’s been there for years.
> 99.9%....
I guess this is the .1%? You don’t buy something expecting it to do something completely different. You don’t buy an iPhone expecting to install whatever you want. You don’t buy a Corolla expecting to off-road with it.
No.
> You don’t buy something expecting it to do something completely different. You don’t buy an iPhone expecting to install whatever you want. You don’t buy a Corolla expecting to off-road with it.
Apple's current behavior isn't written in stone and dictated by God, it can change.
Being able to have multiple app stores on android is also pretty good. I have an iPhone for work, and it's fine, but I don't know how people live with one. Everything wants to have ads or wants me to pay for it.
I specifically bought an iPhone to facetime my family from another country. I'd love to be able to have my apps from my old android. Or, use facetime from an android...
But yeah, I'd love to install whatever I want and that's what I'd expect instead of having to buy everything twice when I switched OSes.
There's nothing unique about Facetime, except it's Apple exclusive.
That does indeed offer a solution, but I think the result is a fractured ecosystem where eventually apps end up on the "other " app store for one reason or another (They want a feature they can't get on the official one etc.).
With apple, devlopers have to bend over backwards to fit the ecosystem. That's both good and bad of course, but it keeps the ecosystem in one place with all apps being in the "safe" app store. I don't have to wonder whether that one app I want is safe to sideload/get from a third party store etc.
What I think is hard to understand is that I really really don't assign any value to being able to "do what I want" with my device. I absolutely don't want it to be anything like a PC and I don't mind being told what I can and can't do, for very little benefit, such as a tiny bit of security or a tiny bit of simplicity. It doesn't even have to be a lot.
Many employers do that very thing. How many people have been compelled by employment circumstances to install Zoom despite its dubious pedigree? What happens when a corporate timecard app exists only in a 3rd party app store?
Well, in that case, if employers force you to install something then just tell them give you a work phone. Or talk to them, you are adults.
And if that doesn't work, well, tough luck. This sounds like trying to solve a malfunctioning workplace problem by making everyone else suffer - it isn't my or Apple's or anyone else's problem that your boss forces you to install shady apps.
And besides, what different organizations exploring what different tradeoffs? Right now the only practical options are Apple and Android, there aren't really that many options as to have a healthy environment and Google isn't immune to making decisions that can have an overall negative impact to the control that people have over the stuff they buy (see their Stadia console as an example and how it completely and absolutely removes any notion of control from people buying games - not even consoles, let alone PCs, feature such loss of control).
I know people who break from what you call the practical options in both directions -- some who reject smartphones altogether and live their lives without them, doing all their digital work on computers that they have full control over -- and some who use only the stock apps on their phone and wish that app stores were not a thing. They want an entirely managed experience.
Neal Stephenson's essay In the Beginning was the Command Line gets at some of this nicely. Some people are, as he says, Eloi and some Morlocks. That's OK.
Having a choice is better than not having one, all around.
You can argue the changing employers is hard. I can also argue that 50% of my customers use iPhones and so I have to use one and know how they work. I literally cannot have an app business without dealing with Apple. That’s why this is an anti-trust situation.
Having choice about some things is better than not having one, all around. But some people choose (!) to delegate their choosing to others in certain fields. For example, the choice of whether to purchase safe meat or unsafe meat is a bad choice to have. It's doubly bad if you aren't skilled at determining the safety quality of meat. That's a choice I'm happy to outsource to a third party. Similarly, I'm happy to outsource a variety of choices about app terms of use to Apple.
Did you miss the part where I said that 50% of my customers use an iPhone? To be clear: 50% of the general population in the United States uses an iPhone. 90% of the youth market uses an iPhone. That doesn't leave much of a choice for developers at all.
You simply cannot have a successful app business in the US without being on Apple's app store.
Meanwhile, there are millions of potential employers in the United States.
And no harm would come to consumers by giving them that choice.
With a law that requires Apple to open their platform to allow actually usable sideloading and/or competing app stores, we'd have removed more harm than we've added.
[0] Me, for example since I can't even comfortably put a program, that I wrote, onto my own device without paying Apple $100 a year.
[1] Every one of my business customers who wants a native app for their customers who they already had a relationship with before Apple came along and stuck their nose in to say what we could and could not do with our customers customers devices.
There's a spectrum of what you're allowed to do software-wise with various computing devices you purchase.
One the one extreme, you have something like a washing machine. It's a computing device running a particular suite of software that is essentially impossible for the end user to modify or replace. Many (most?) embedded systems are like this.
On the other extreme, you've got open hardware platforms like the Arduino where you can do whatever you want with the software for a very large value of "whatever you want".
The Raspberry Pi is in the middle, but very close to the Arduino. A Nintendo is somewhere in the middle but close do the dishwasher. Android devices are somewhere in the middle, but closer to the Arduino than the dishwasher (though this varies between devices and manufacturers). iOS devices are, again, somewhere in the middle. Much is allowed. Some things are not. OS X devices are closer to the Arduino than iOS devices are. That's also an intentional choice by Apple.
The placement of iOS along that spectrum is an intentional choice by Apple that customers have proven to support by buying iOS devices in prodigious quantity.
It's not obvious to me that taking a market leading choice in that spectrum and removing it produces less harm in the balance. It might, but it also might not. I'd be inclined to let people vote with their wallet as long as viable alternatives abound, which they do.
Not really, because there is no balance. Way more harm is done in the name of protecting people than is done by allowing freedoms.
The rest of your argument is predicated upon there being some kind of balance. There isn't one.
You don't need to look any further than The War on Drugs to see this. It's already been scientifically proven that letting people do what they want is far better for society. The only people who work to keep drugs illegal are those who benefit from them being illegal. Same thing here.
There's not much more to say about this. You're never going to convince me that removing freedom is better for society when people will always have the choice to remove it for themselves by making the right choices about who to associate with or who to do business with.
They're free to try. There's more of us than them though and we're also free to continue enforcing our existing anti-trust laws and make new ones for important digital platforms.
I advocate for freedom for the common man. What are you doing here?
And the "more of us than them" suggests that rather than any principled approach, you advocate something like the mob rule that the Athenians described to the Melians: the strong do what they will and the weak suffer what they must. Fair enough. That position has been common enough throughout history. Right now lots of people appear to like the way Apple is running their company. Does that make it right? You seem to think no, but are articulating reasons why you should think yes. That's perplexing to me.
I'm trying to make sense of what I think about the disagreement between Apple and Epic. I'm not sure. The arguments people are making against Apple so far seem unsuccessful and problematic to me. I think the collective bargaining argument I've cautiously advanced might make some sense.
If you couldn’t tell that I completely disagree with your backwards notion of what’s right and good by now and that nothing you’ll say will convince me that less freedom for common folks is somehow better...even after I’ve told you this directly...yet you keep responding to me, I guess you just need to have the last word?
Have at it!
Off topic rant: I was going to get her Dell. I had forgotten how bad the consumer Dells were. By the time you get a decent one, you might as well get a MacBook Air.
There's a $20 billion/year cryptlocker industry that excludes iPhones thanks to the difference.
No, but I would get mad if the manufacturer told me what brand of gas I could buy and what roads I could drive on.
That is not an artificial restriction. If you take it off road, it will perform as car not designed to be taking off road does. It won't refuse to leave the road to protect Toyota's brand.
Most of my problems have been with restrictions that Apple has put on me in their Mac and iOS product lines.
> Apple requiring Sign In with Apple (when signin with Google/Facebook are implemented) where you can hide your email address. That’s not possible with multiple app stores.
Yes it is. You, as a consumer can choose to stay in the Apple app store where developers have to follow that rule. If a particular developer is only publishing in the non-Apple app store, you can simply use a competing app that is in Apple’s app store. This is the same advice you’d give to someone who doesn’t like Apple products at all... you’d say “Go buy an Android”. In the future though, you’ll only have to say “Go use a non-Apple app store”.
For example, if the only way to fill out my employer's timecard is via an iOS app, should they be compelled to offer the app in all the available app stores?
This is about giving users and developers a choice outside of Apple's app store. If you like freedom and choices, you should get on the right side of this debate.
If some relatively small group of users had a choice, they would always be able to choose Apple's protection.
If you're depending on Apple to stop you from making bad decisions about what kinds of employers to work for, I think you've got bigger problems than what might happen if there were an alternate iPhone app store.
Are you saying that viruses, malware, ransomware, keyloggers, multiple toolbars have not been a problem in general over two decades?
You remember when “reputable” sites like SourceForge were bundling adware?
Not for me.
> You remember when “reputable” sites like SourceForge were bundling adware?
Sure. What's your point?
I think I know: You would gladly trade the freedom of the general population for security.
If so - I'm sorry to hear that. If not, maybe you should think about what you're saying because you're on the wrong side of the debate.
So would Apple be better off serving you or the general population? I think the numbers speak for themselves.
> I think I know: You would gladly trade the freedom of the general population for security. If so - I'm sorry to hear that. If not, maybe you should think about what you're saying because you're on the wrong side of the debate.
Yes because when the founding fathers came up with the phrase they were referring to the “freedom” to save a little money buying virtual currency to buy the Carlton dance in Fortnite.
You are perfectly free to buy an Android device. Most people would gladly choose some type of assurance that they could install video conferencing software and not have a secret web server installed that they don’t know to delete (ie Zoom)
Seems like a better option than just letting big corps do whatever they want. There's more of us than them.
Even in California where they passed laws that were suppose to “help” Uber and Lyft drivers had the effect of making it harder for truck drivers who wanted to contract to do so.
Let’s just come up with “Five Year Plans”, because feels cant fathom that 50% of the US willingly made a choice to be in the “walled gardened”. Just like after everything that happened with the Microsoft and the Justice Department, “the Year of Linux on the Desktop” never happened and everyone is not compiling their own operating system.
If you wanted to download software, why wouldn’t you go to “download.com” (owned by CNET who is owned by CBS) and you see the software you want from a reputable source that is still bundled with crapware.
Let’s not forget that Chrome became popular originally because it was also bundled with third party software.
Are you saying a grandma starts a PC and immediately knows about SourceForge?
So which search engine do you suggest? What if there were a secondary App Store on phones? Selling a “free” version of some popular app?
Why would the same issue of slimy developers who game the system on PCs not do the same on phones?
On the other hand, isn’t that exactly what users are doing? They are purposefully avoiding a Google product - Android - with all of its “openness” to buy an iPhone. Tell me again why we need the government involved?
Your answer wasn't about PCs, it was about flaws in other products/services.
>So which search engine do you suggest? What if there were a secondary App Store on phones? Selling a “free” version of some popular app?
I would suggest them to not install apps unless it was recommended by someone they trust and they were confident that it wasn't junk. This would apply to PC software, smartphone apps and everything else. Its no different than how you go about finding a trusted mechanic, or a pest control service or a trusted handyman or whatever.
Curation can happen in many ways. Apple could recommend it, your friend who knows about "computers" could, maybe its a magazine/website you trust, etc, etc. The point is about choice and freedom.
We get to make the rules of the economy we want to operate in. The entire purpose of the government is to serve our needs, and if its not doing that we should change the rules. Both sides can make their cases. I am happy to oppose Apples oppressive policies (in this case).
You mean like friends recommending Firefox and someone naturally going to Google to search for “Firefox” and the top link being malware? If someone recommended an app and they found a fake version on the third party App Store how would they know the difference?
How has that worked out for the past 30 years on computers where we are always hearing about yet another ransomware attack?
The point is about choice and freedom.
You mean like “freedom” to choose an Android over an iPhone?
We get to make the rules of the economy we want to operate in. The entire purpose of the government is to serve our needs
Actually you don’t. The executive branch is not chosen by “the people” it’s chosen by the Electoral College which has gone against the popular vote twice in the last 20 years.
The Senate is chosen by the states where each state regardless of population gets two Senators. 46% of the Senators represent around 25% of the population.
The judicial branch is chosen by the two least representatives parts of the government - the executive branch and the Senate.
If you think not being able to sideload apps on a device you didn’t have to buy is, I wonder how you feel about the “War on Drugs”, “War on Crime”, civil forfeiture, imminent domain used to take property and give it to more profitable businesses and the President unilaterally telling a business it has to sell to another company? Is this the government you want to give more power too?
Again, if they are not sure how to discern the difference because of flaws in Google, they should not be using Google. Their friend or maybe a curation website or whatever should give them a direct link. Why are you assuming that this is not possible? People share direct links to websites and videos and other things all the time.
>You mean like “freedom” to choose an Android over an iPhone?
No, that is not freedom. When every company is in on the scam, you need government intervention. When all companies are abusing your privacy, you need new laws. The existing laws were made for non-digital marketplaces. You can setup a lemonade stand without Apple robbing 30% of your sales, but if you try to make an app you first need to beg apple for permission to write software, then apple will rob you of 30% of your sales. Sorry, that is not morally acceptable to me, and I don't even work in the software industry anymore. I work in vaccines. We need new laws as goods and services transition over to digital-markets. Modern problems need modern solutions.
>Is this the government you want to give more power too?
By setting the rules of the economy as such, the government already gave too much power to corporations. Its time to change the balance of power to what we think is morally acceptable. I'm not even saying everything has always sucked. Maybe the existing laws did work fairly well for a while, but I don't believe they have any magical power that we can't amend them as we see fit.
Now normally I would say that as a company you have the right to legally abuse your userbase however you want, but when you get this big that your profit margin exceeds that of several democratic countries and your particular flavor of abuse is inspiration for product development in general, than I'm going to support you losing that particular privilege.
As somebody who's been looking and working in it for decades, I don't see it?
To me the actual nightmare are closed walled gardens giving users a false sense of security about the software they offer on their services as supposedly all being "vetted".
And because by now the mobile space is the biggest target there is, malicious actors have shifted their attack vectors accordingly [0].
Even with these walled gardens in place, we've reached a point where the mobile app ecosystem is going trough its own phase of "You need this Norton/McAfee/blah product to keep your device secure/optimized!" just like the PC ecosystem did and still does.
As such the "gatekeepers" have effectively failed at gatekeeping anything that ain't explicit sexual content.
[0] https://www.zdnet.com/article/warning-over-hidden-apps-as-mo...
The apple iOS model seems to be the most promising here. It comes with huge tradeoffs in user control but for a large part of the worlds population I think its the right choice.
As for the PC, i think what Apple was doing with macOS until recently (allowing you to run unsigned software you downloaded from the Internet by doing the "right click dance") was a perfectly fine compromise between security for computer illiterate people and still being in control for people who know what they are doing.
Nothing about Apple's model requires Apple to be the only one who can say what you can do with your own device - you can still have Apple be in control by default but also provide a way to take control yourself if you know what you are doing.
But in this case you dont lose any level of control, since the appstore itself there isnt limited. The only thing not allowed is unsecure apps. Thats all.
Yes the iOS idea is great, but there is no need to impose arbitrary restrictions.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/08/fortnites-android-vu...