> “Life's most persistent and urgent question is, 'What are you doing for others?'” - MLK
Considering this and the HKmap.live[2] situations, I’d say that in his case the answer to that question is “not much”.
No worries, easy mistake
Belarus’s legal system doesn’t afford them this luxury.
Which is effective primarily because there’s no (practical) way to sideload on iOS!
This is why I’ve always seen the locked-down nature of the iPhone as a threat to free expression first and foremost. Apple is responsible for setting the system up this way.
I agree that we need a solution to monopolistic app stores though.
Isn't Fortnite on Android an example of this? It was in the Play store for a pariod, but IIRC it was not when it was first released and isn't there again after their spat with Google.
Apple is currently literally being a threat to free expression in a situation where it really matters.
You don't need to buy the idea, but they're doing it.
I'd hate it if the big players got to take decisions against human rights under the excuse that an alternative technically exists.
In practice, this can be achieved today for a handful of apps with AltStore.io.
Sideloading does have risks, and so it doesn't need to be too easy. As a point of comparison, I really like how disabling SIP works on the Mac—the user needs to reboot the computer into recovery mode and run a short Terminal command. This process feels dangerous, but it's really quite easy, and it only needs to be done once per machine. I could guide even a very technology-illiterate person through the process, if I absolutely needed to.
These are people trying to save their country, from rigged elections and an oppressive regime. That's what they use communication for, and Apple shutting this down, choosing the side of the party that stole the election through cheating and force.
I'm not a big fan of Google (nor Apple), but I'm having a hard time thinking of something Google did that is so straight up egregious. But maybe there is, and I forgot about it.
And yes, Google has been tightening the noose as well, which many people rightfully criticise, but as of now, you still have options on Android.
Other fanboy examples, Apple does bad thing X, fanboys defends Apple, class action lawsuit forces Apple to stop doing bad thing X , Apple announces that they kindly stopped doing X and fanboys praise Apple for their goodness.
Other example, Apple removes you the choice for alternative payment methods, removes the choice for you to get informed of alternatives and from this articles seems they refuse to inform people where censorship was applied and for some reason fanboys will defend the fact that all users are deprived of mere choices.,
Some other examples is when the fanboys complain about ads, lootboxes and other shitty in app payments but ignroe the fact that Apple gets a cut of the money instead of just banning ads,tracking,lootboxes etc.
Even people here on HN that should be more competent try to push a narrative that a side loaded app is insecure when in fact the same sandbox will protect the user and web notifications seem to be also some extremely hard concept to implement right by Apple engineers, you would think they have competent developers and designers that could find a good UX.
Conclusion, Most Apple users are not fanboys, I seen them on the Apple reddit criticising when Apple does some shit, so when somone uses the word fanboy he means a person that has Apple as part of his identity, criticizing Apple is the same as an attack on him or his mother.
You could simply own neither an Apple nor a Google product and sidestep this whole decision.
edit: oh god look at all these sibling comments, abort, abort!
[0] There is an assumption built in to this that governments censoring their political opponents is bad; I choose not to question it here.
Who do you want to fund? Tim or the Question? Or do you think he should just answer questions if he's paid for it, because Apple has zero responsibility at all...oh right they don't.
Not possible. Exception, don't buy apple products.
I am point to the fact that he lied under oath when he said that no one receives special treatment in the App Store, yet it came out Amazon got special treatment in a "quid pro quo" deal.