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Comment by greggman3 | Hacker News Reader

What other things in your life would you accept similar limitation?

Would you accept a house that only allowed furniture, food, books, electronics, devices from the company that built the house? Do you think it should be legal for a company to make a house with those conditions?

Would accept a car that could only take gas, tires, oil, electricity from the company that built the car? Should it be legal to offer such a vehicle?

You used to be able to buy a VCR and choose only to rent videos from Blockbuster video if you wanted "safe and clean". That didn't require any company making the VCR to force people to only to go their "safe and clean store". Apple doesn't need to force everyone on iOS to go to their store for you personally to continue to only get apps from their store.

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The only digital device that allows you to run anything you want on it is a pc.

Consoles? Only allows you to run code they allow, since forever.

CD/DVD Players? Only runs the code which gets flashed during manufacturing.

TVs? Can’t run your own code.

The list goes on, Apple was actually the first company which made a marketplace on a non PC device which had a overly cheap way to get your software on it and they even made it super easy and cheap for developers to get updates for their code on it, that was during a time where consoles where limited to physical media to ship your code to customers. Microsoft made you pay 5 digits or something similar outraging to release updates on Xbox once they had a digital store on it.

Is Apples model outdated by now? Maybe. Should a court force them to practically change their model to the one of their competition? Well, why should anyone buy their stuff then anymore? It would practically made their brand worthless to me, they’d just become another pc shop, the last time they tried that it nearly made them bankrupt.

That time made Apple what it is today, it’s in their DNA. They’ll fight anyone which tries to change that.

Those are not the same class of products as modern smartphones.

Whut is a console not the same class? Modern consoles are locked down pc's.

I would argue that they are not, as far as the typical consumer is concerned. Consoles have historically been single-purpose devices, that purpose being to play games. Whilst there have been varying moves across the three big manufacturers to include additional functionality, game-playing is still the single most important feature - you probably wouldn't even call it a console if it didn't play games.

Are cars and houses though?

Cars are houses without the "stationary property" DRM.

> Apple was actually the first company which made a marketplace on a non PC device which had a overly cheap way to get your software on it

There were companies before Apple with non-PC software marketplaces, such as Handango.

The PC will never die as it cannot be replaced by locked-down ‘content consumption devices’.

If we want the phone or tablet to become a real alternative to the PC, they need to open up. It’s not just about devs being gouged for 30%, it’s also about the outright ban on some types of app, from cryptocurrency to BitTorrent to pornography.

Actually it is already dying, the classical PC is only used in a couple of places that still need desktops with replacement parts.

Most consumer shops now only sell tablets and laptops, and if desktops are in display they tend to be some variation of NUCs, which are basically laptops in a desktop case.

> The only digital device that allows you to run anything you want on it is a pc.

Apple Macintosh?

> CD/DVD Players? Only runs the code which gets flashed during manufacturing.

> TVs? Can’t run your own code.

CD/DVD players don't demand a cut of music and movies. TVs don't demand a cut of TV shows. These devices work on a standardized, non-propriety format. You can even burn a CD at home. So in a sense, you can run your own code. You can play home movies on your TV too.

It's too narrow to think of freedom only in terms of "code".

> Apple Macintosh?

PC as in Personal Computer, which includes Macs, but even if one were to take the strict interpretation of "IBM Compatible PC", that also includes the current x86 Macs, at least until the first Apple Silicon models appear.

I'm pretty sure you know this all :)

Here's what I was replying to:

"Is Apples model outdated by now? Maybe. Should a court force them to practically change their model to the one of their competition? Well, why should anyone buy their stuff then anymore? It would practically made their brand worthless to me, they’d just become another pc shop, the last time they tried that it nearly made them bankrupt.

That time made Apple what it is today, it’s in their DNA. They’ll fight anyone which tries to change that."

This is a very distorted telling of history, and trying to equate Apple with iPhone. Desktop computing has been in Apple's "DNA" since 1976 and continues to be today. Mac sales were $7 billion last quarter. Apple had financial trouble in the mid-90s, but they were doing well in the 2000s even before iPhone came along. There's nothing about the App Store that's essential to Apple as a company.

> What other things in your life would you accept similar limitation?

I have a Playstation that only allows me to play games that comply with DRM, unless I root the Playstation (if that's even possible). I have a coffee machine, that only accepts cups from a specific manufacturer, because they own the patent. I own a car that only allows me to run maps supplied by the manufacturer and the updates are expensive.

I knew all of this when I bought this stuff. Complaining about the app store when you buy an iPhone is like complaining about the airplanes after you bought a house near an airport.

I think there’s a line that needs to be drawn between ‘general purpose computing device’ and ‘content consumption device’

One of these is OK to be all locked down and centered around a monopolistic content store. The other one really isn’t.

Smartphones and tablets have been trying to move from one category to the other, and this is where the problem lies.

The problem is that the difference between those two devices boils down ENTIRELY to the addition of DRM. The only thing stopping a game console from being a general purpose computer are the platform creators preventing you from running the code of your choice on hardware you own.

This distinction is purely arbitrary, user-hostile, and monopolistic, and so it is not worth respecting.

Also, consoles are sold at a loss. Would be happier with Apple if they too sell at a loss.

Another point - Kindles are also content consumption (and sold at a loss or were) but they still allow me to load any book that I have.

> Also, consoles are sold at a loss.

Which means they're to cheap. Customers need accurate price information or they will buy things that were more expensive to produce than they're worth.

Why should corporations be allowed to trample all over our freedoms just because the devices can be classified as primarily being for consuming content? Should we have no agency in how we choose to consume content?

"Complaining about the airplaines after you bought a house near an airport."

Someone in my grandparent's neighborhood brought that suit and the airport had to pay to install soundproof windows in everyone's houses.

I'd totally pay like, maybe $100 for a smartphone that only allowed Apple approved apps. Maybe $150 if it came bedazzled.

But you don't need to pay for such feature. It's called approved software, with signatures from multiple authorities you can get all sort of filtering you want. That's just not what the manufacturer wants, they want to be the sole authority, treating us like kids with restriction and cows at the same time with this 30% cut.

That is the argument that slaves cannot assert their freedom, they can only become recalcitrant slaves because they at one moment in time accepted their slavery.

It's a great analogy, that's why we banned slavery altogether and allowed personal declaration of bankruptcy, we learned from history and it took us centuries to get the slave drivers to comply.

Have we? Gig economy and offshoring practices are mostly disguised slavery.

I don’t think this comparison is apt. At least in regards to slavery in America. Weren’t many slaves forcibly taken from Africa (either by force or by purchasing from parents (and then using force))?

Well I was thinking of King Agrippa counselling the Jews prior to their rebellion against the Romans:

"However, as to the desire of recovering your liberty, it is unseasonable to indulge it so late; whereas you ought to have labored earnestly in old time that you might never have lost it; for the first experience of slavery was hard to be endured, and the struggle that you might never have been subject to it would have been just; but that slave who hath been once brought into subjection, and then runs away, is rather a refractory slave than a lover of liberty; "

So yes a fairly different context.

Just because we are forced to accept such limitations on some devices, that does not mean that it is necessarily acceptable. I own a PlayStation because I want to partake in entertainment exclusively available on the system. That does not mean that I don't get to hate the fact that it's a locked-down piece of crap. I really think they should be forced to open up the platform and not have any barriers for people who want to execute arbitrary code on hardware they paid for. The same should also be true for all computing devices - why should you not be able to change the software in your fridge? It's yours, and the manufacturer should be forced to respect that or very explicitly state that you are actually renting it and do not own it if they don't want to open up the hardware to its owner.

> Would you accept a house that only allowed furniture, food, books, electronics, devices from the company that built the house? Do you think it should be legal for a company to make a house with those conditions?

Would I personally buy one? No. That doesn't mean it should be illegal to offer such a bundle. You can simply choose not to buy it.

And guess what? According to current US law, as long as those limitations are disclosed to the buyer at the time of purchase, it is in fact, not illegal to offer such a bundle.

Maybe cars can provide a useful comparison. Car manufacturers can't prevent you from using aftermarket parts or different brands of gasoline on a car, and they can't deny warranty coverage because you had your car serviced somewhere else. Phones are becoming even more ubiquitous and essential than cars, so it makes sense to start looking at them from a similar perspective.

They cannot deny warranty coverage, but are not prevented from arbitrary hurdles that make it hard to create a compatible aftermarket part. They don't have to make that particularly easy.

Incidentally, Apple tries to treat phones this way and periodically ends up in legal battles over it - get your phone repaired by a third party instead of an Apple store? Have fun with features being disabled by anti-tamper mechanisms, etc. Obviously there are arguments to be made for it but it sure is unpleasant and shows you how they view their customers' freedoms.

Source?

Louis Rossmann has a good number of videos on that topic on YouTube - reviews, repair stories, court testimonies, etc.

Installing aftermarket parts always voids warranty. Also, more and more manufacturers are creating sealed off engine bays to make working on them harder. It's just physically impossible to block someone to tinker with that type of hardware. If they could find a way, car manufacturers would love to block you from modifying your car.

Come to think of it, Teslas are pretty much impossible to modify, because they're more comparable to the iPhone, a fully integrated hardware and software stack. However, to continue on cars in general, I cannot load my own maps into my car navigation. I cannot load 3rd party maps into the navigation. If I want to upgrade the maps, I need to go to the dealership and pay them an ungodly amount to upgrade them for me.

That is not true, there are many car parts I can replace without voiding the warranty. Tires, oil, windscreen wipers, seats, car stereo, the exhaust, the battery, the list goes on. You are perhaps focusing on engine parts only. Apple is not so lenient.

> more and more manufacturers are creating sealed off engine bays to make working on them harder. It's just physically impossible to block someone to tinker with that type of hardware. If they could find a way, car manufacturers would love to block you from modifying your car.

It's not impossible, it's just not cost effective for them to do so. The cost of sealing the engine bay to such an extent that the end user cannot modify the hardware, while the garage can, adds more cost than the value gained to the manufacturer can justify.

If they could do it in a way that was cost effective for them, there is little reason to believe that they wouldn't be doing it already.

It’s not easy to distinguish between legal and illegal tying, but that doesn’t mean that disclosure to the buyer is an adequate defence. More commonly, the seller would argue that they lack the market power of which tying is said to be an abuse. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tying_(commerce)

Yes I should have added the caveat "in an otherwise competitive market". If there was only one seller of houses then the tying would indeed be a problem.

> That doesn't mean it should be illegal to offer such a bundle. You can simply choose not to buy it.

Be careful with that. Consider how prevalent HOAs are (In most areas, you can not buy a house that's not covered by one), despite how much people hate them.

Consider the market pressures that resulted in that state of affairs. Everyone who wants to own a home has to make a bargain with the devil, despite few homeowners actually wanting to do that. It's quite possible that those market pressures will lead to a situation where the choice will be made for you.

People buy homes where homeowners associations dictate what goes in the yard. They pick schools where children are told how to dress and what they can say. There are whole cities who have kicked out strip joints. Those sorts of choices are made all the time and people should be allowed to live in a safe walled garden if they want to. The instant you let a porn shop open next to your school there are going to be issues that most would prefer to have prevented in the first place.

> The instant you let a porn shop open next to your school there are going to be issues that most would prefer to have prevented in the first place.

I think it's less that "there are going to be issues" and more that people fear that there will be issues, and vote to remove what they think of as a threat.

The instant you let someone plant azaleas instead of tulips there are going to be issues that most would prefer to have prevented in the first place.

You could still live in your walled garden if Epic wins. You would just get an additional option of using another garden if you prefer. This is unlike your examples where choices made (strip joints, what goes into the yard etc.) influence surroundings and life quality of others.

I imagine people that want only the walled garden prefer their isn’t an alternative because chances are some publishers will just stop publishing within the walled garden.

Well exactly! And the people who would complain the loudest are the ones here saying they like Apple's curation, want the 30% Apple tax and if developers don't want to pay it can go elsewhere. Then the developers could say, if you want our content come and get it, otherwise stop your compaining, if there were enough of you without apple forcing it, we'd pay the tax to reach you.

Isn't that exactly what's going on already though? There is an alternative, it's called android. Epic has their software on many other platforms, but apparently there are enough people choosing to buy iOS that they felt it was worth paying the "tax" to reach them. Now they're complaining that they're paying the tax to reach the people they wanted to reach. After all, it's not like Apple is forcibly cramming iPhones into consumers hands and preventing them from going anywhere else. iPhones are as or more expensive than high end android devices, they come with well known limitations. Any price sensitive consumer should be (all else being equal) buying android devices where they could play all the fortnite they wanted and Epic could sell without paying any Apple "tax". And yet here we are. Apparently enough consumers prefer the Apple way that despite the abundance of lower cost options, they're still buying iPhones. So what is the fundamental difference between paying the tax because users have chosen iPhones and paying the tax because users have chosen the "Official iPhone Store" in some alternate reality?

> They pick schools where children are told how to dress and what they can say.

I don't see how the schools are relevant, because parents tell children how to dress and what they can say too. Children have very limited legal rights. But we're not children, and I'm tired of Apple treating us like children.

As for homeowners associations and cities, it's important to note that the residents of those have a vote, whereas Apple users have no vote over how their devices work. (Only Apple shareholders have a vote.) Someone is going to respond "you vote with your wallet", but that's not the same. With Apple, your only choice is "love it or leave it". Whereas in a democratic organization with voting, you have the option to stay and still change how the system works.

Let Apple users vote! I'm all for that.

Easy, don't buy Apple.

If enough Apple users get upset online, that's valid feedback the company should listen to, or risk losing money. I think the numbers are too small though.

Being an informal process that they are not bound to listen to, "online outrage" isn't exactly the best solution. A vote is much more powerful than a voice.

You're describing a horrible, terrifying but very likely future. We should fight against it as hard as we can.

If that house or car provides sufficiently compelling features or other benefits then, yeah, I would totally buy one.

Should it be legal? I mean, why not? If you don’t want one, just don’t buy one. There are plenty of other houses and cars out there!

Sounds like a similar situation to buying a house that belongs to a HOA. You pay extra to give up freedoms, but have the peace of mind that you won't have obnoxious neighbors that make your house difficult to sell.

The difference being that (in all cases I'm aware of) you get some sort of representation in the HOA (ie voting on things). Also there are almost certainly limits in any given jurisdiction on the sort of rules an HOA can impose.

One reason for this difference is that HOAs are kind-of eternal. They need some way to adapt to changing circumstances. Whereas things you will only use for a few years, you get to vote with your wallet. (As you do when booking a hotel, or renting an apartment.)

Are you serious? HOAs not only do not prevent obnoxious neighbors, they virtually guarantee it.

So when I buy an iPhone I get a seat on Apple's board like I do when I join an HOA, right? I can vote on whether they should change these policies?

In practice, it doesn't matter. Your share would be so tiny that voting with your wallet is equivalent. After all, people usually renew their phones every few years.

By that logic let's get back to monarchy.

HOAs are becoming ubiquitous. In my area, nearly every home built in the past 20 years is under a HOA, and of course there are older HOAs too. They're generally created by the home builder, not the home buyer.

When I was buying a house, I didn't want an HOA. I hate them. But the options were extremely limited, and it was a seller's market.

I think local governments like HOAs because they pay to maintain certain common areas, so the cities don't have to spend tax money on that. Also, local politicians are all on the take with... surprise, surprise... the home builders.

So now all housing companies start doing that, and we’re living in some unauthorized bread dystopia. That doesn’t sound like a world I want to live in.

Not necessarily - ideally if you don’t want to live in that kind of a house then someone will want your business and cater to you.

I don't want Apple's dictatorial control or Google's privacy invasion. Yet the market is not catering to me.

Or more accurately: the market is reacting to what consumers want. Librem phones exist; they’re just not popular because most people don’t care about privacy.

> Librem phones exist; they’re just not popular because

What's the marketing budget of Purism? What's the total budget of Purism? In which stores are these phones available?

Consumers can't buy what they don't even know about. Popularity requires availability. It requires awareness. These things are very costly. There are huge barriers to entry, especially in the smartphone market.

Marketing budgets are a function of sales too. If even the people that know about them (such as yourself) aren't buying them, they're not going to have a lot of money to pour into marketing.

Exactly. Folks are acting as if the iPhone is the only phone.

>Should it be legal? I mean, why not? If you don’t want one, just don’t buy one. There are plenty of other houses and cars out there!

Easy to say as an end-user, but what if you were a furniture maker by trade? You've been selling furniture for years and then houses start being built that can't use your furniture. Eventually these houses become the largest segment of the house market. Your furniture business goes bust.

>What other things in your life would you accept similar limitation?

You probably have access to only one power company. A small handful of internet providers. And your car example is quickly becoming the reality as well.

> Would accept a car that could only take gas, tires, oil, electricity from the company that built the car?

No. But for some reason I do pay for Spotify, Neflix, Disney and some others and for a bunch of media I never would have before. I can’t use the media from one service in the player from another. Even the Apple TV app doesn’t work that way: it takes you to the DRM holder’s player. Trade-offs.

> Should it be legal to offer such a vehicle?

Yes, til we discover the extent of impact of such a model.

The house example is very interesting. Currently, no, I wouldn’t buy into that ecosystem. However, I am going through a process of updating my views on land and building ownership. I’m tending towards personal home ownership (and land) being anathema to stable society. Call me a communist in this area. So, if houses had “compatible” power and furniture, AND they were owned by commons, I might accept it. We already have standardised power outlets.

The financial markets? Game consoles? Televisions?

What a silly question. You accept limitations on how plumbing, electrical and other matters operate because there is code. You accept limitations because sometimes the environment is a bit of a Wild West, and it’s nice to have someone making sure the software I’m running on the most important device in my life isn’t malicious.

Bad example. Codes mandate how things should be done, not by whom.

If Apple currently sells you a house and you aren't permitted to put non-Apple electrical or furniture in, building codes are the framework by which third parties could be permitted to do so. We're already in the locked down house. Building codes are exactly what we need.

What would that look like? How could Apple ensure that subscriptions made through a third party payment processor are cancelable without dark patterns?

I could say that we’re very often in situations like this.

I buy gym membership but it’s not for me to decide who is the staff or what kind of equipment is there.

I buy a car but I can’t drive anywhere but places I’m either legally allowed or where land owner lets me.

I pay for the medical insurance and I don’t get to choose exact procedures I’m going to be signed to.

I’d say that “I pay but I don’t have control” is common theme. Sure I can switch to other service provider but no perfect providers for any service exists. There are other mobile systems as well.

One interesting thought behind what you wrote is that you compared software ecosystem to utility. I wouldn’t go as far. OS is OS and if you don’t like it you legally can jailbreak device albeit the provider in this case can choose not to support it, which it does.

> I buy a car but I can’t drive anywhere but places I’m either legally allowed or where land owner lets me.

Note that you are not allowed to drive everywhere. You can absolutely drive your car anywhere you want. Including off a cliff if you are so inclined.

This is more akin to shutting off the engine if you are not driving on an Toyota approved road.

And in iOS perspective that's jailbreak. You can have not-supported ecosystem and it's completely legal.

You probably don't know this, but current car manufacturers can stop car from starting if a) maintenance isn't done in a way it should be (see AdBlue) b) maintenance is done with non-original parts

Sure - b) is the premium and luxury segment, but you don't see people raging about this. Because - as with smartphone - it's a choice that they made. iPhone isn't a necessity. It's a choice. If you don't like it you can choose one of many other mobile systems or opt for a dumb phone.

> b) is the premium and luxury segment, but you don't see people raging about this. Because - as with smartphone - it's a choice that they made.

I saw people complaining at HN.

"You can choose other than iPhone" is invalid because it's iPhone/Android duopoly market.

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