Comment by hellisothers | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hellisothers | Hacker News Reader

I find a lot of the comments here split down “I want app regulation because I feel it provides a layer of safety and safety is good for the consumer” vs “I want more freedom and choice because choice is good and is better for the consumer”. Which brings to mind two things

This sounds similar to the current brouhaha happening in the US over America’s inclination towards personal freedom at all cost even when govt regulation could/should step in the make things better.

A concern that once “freedom of choice of App Store” is provided, where does it stop because ultimately those demanding choice will keep demanding aspects be “open up” “for fairness” until iOS isn’t special anymore. Part of what makes it special _is_ it’s regulation, if you don’t want that then “choose” elsewhere. This aspect feels like the problem in the US of big business battling for deregulation which... isn’t always so great.

I’m not saying “Apple is doing it for the people!”, necessarily but Apple is doing it to be Apple, let’s not make everything the same.

“Apple is doing it to be Apple” is my understanding as well. As a developer, I understand the terms before making business decisions. As a consumer, I buy a product as advertised. What I hope for in both cases is consistency. I want Apple to keep being Apple, for better or for worse, because my decisions were based on that constant. Epic wants Apple to not be Apple. I’m not sure if I want Epic’s Apple.

There's only two choices, which means the market is monopalized. If apple had been reasonable we wouldn't be having this discussion. Apple has shown it can no longer reasonably regulate its own market and will not be the Shepard. Their significant efforts of verticle integration from hardware to software shows their inclination to creating walled garden markets that compete at the economy of scale and are designed to eliminate competition.

No company is allowed to control a market of other companies without oversight. Given that oversight from apple is corrupted it must be provided in other means.

> There's only two choices, which means the market is monopalized.

Literally not what monopolized means.

Duopolized. The rest of the argument still holds, and a weaker form of it holds for Google as well, since stores like F-Droid can't do everything that Google Play can.

Please steelman the arguments you disagree with.

> This aspect feels like the problem in the US of big business battling for deregulation which... isn’t always so great.

Big businesses actually battle for narrow carveouts of existing regulations along with the addition of more regulations that are easy for them to handle but hard for newer entrants to handle. Big businesses actually like regulations as long as they're carefully crafted to already match whatever outdated practices they're already following, to hamper competition. Most of this has already happened in the past which is why we have companies like Boeing now who cannot innovate anymore.

Part of the problem is that Apple makes a number of choices in its approval process that are either 1. arbitrary, 2. preferential, or 3. actively counterproductive to security/privacy. And when asked about it, they lie in front of Congress. So perhaps this would be less of an issue if they didn't do that?

I agree. So far I"m still leaning towards "more freedom" part so I'm using Android...but in terms of security Apple does provide an added layer.

The current level of "regulation" in iOS is very bad for society, so of course I want it to not be "special" any more. When you have the level of power that Apple does in society, different rules apply.

Well if you ask a smart person to rationalize their relationship with a drug, their smart phone, they will say something logical and positivist, in a world where your opinion about how a giant corporation screws another doesn't really matter.

So it's not really comparable to partisan politics in the US. You could be right that people are conditioned to talk about things a certain way due to partisanship, but I really doubt that's why there's so many people out their taking Apple's side in a contract spat.

Nonetheless some people have this drug relationship with Fox News. But while very few people on HN may even use Android phones, 100% of congress probably uses an iPhone. They probably use their iPhone ~4 hours a day. 0% use Fortnite (the average congressman probably plays less than 1 minute of Fortnite on average a day).

Nobody's going to come out against their drug.

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