Our freedoms are at stake, and this should be our rallying point.
The iPhone is a general purpose computer (email, photos, dating, payments, reminders, docs, web, games, etc.) and computer manufacturers should not be allowed to control the only means to run software on computers they sell.
This is less drastic than breaking the company up into constituent parts. But honestly we ought to also be asking ourselves why a computer manufacturer gets to be a film studio and distribution chain.
You never seem to explain why that freedom doesn’t suffice.
For example, I recently broke the screen on my iPhone 7 and for this exact reason (not being able to run some Apple unapproved applications on my device) wanted to switch to an Android, but when I tried one out for a couple days
* My BMW would not show music cover art because only Apple had a deal with them in early 2010s
* iMessage no longer worked and I had to maintain an iPad for communicating to friends who only use iMessage and Facetime
* Macbook was suddenly a lot less interoperable with the phone - the easiest way to transfer photos was to push them to Google photos and download them on the mac
* Homepod speaker would no longer be controllable from my phone
* Apple obviously won't publish AppleTV(Remote) or HomeKit apps for android
iMessage is for Apple devices. You are free to choose from SMS, What’s app, and all the others.
You should be able to transfer files by plugging in your Android to the MacBook via USB. Something that you can’t do with an iPhone in the same way.
The rest are all Apple products in Apple’s ecosystem.
I pay to use Apple because the ecosystem is closed.
I'm slowly reducing my reliance on Apple and have already abstained from getting the new watch or adding homepod minis to my current apple tv and homepod setup. And hopefully, as these devices weather out I will definitely make it a priority to not buy into a closed system like this again.
I made the same move away from Google about 5 years ago. It took me a year or so, mostly because it took a while to unthread Gmail from everything.
That we can do this means we do in fact have a choice.
What if some day your account was banned because you said something against the "community guidelines" of Apple? Will your car, phone, TV still work? Will Apple buy them back?
That is a fictional what if.
More importantly, it would be a field day for lawyers.
Don't see any lawyer field day yet.
Can you point to cases where people have been locked out of their Android phones?
If so, I’m surprised lawyers aren’t involved.
It’s not clear though, what this has to do with app stores.
If we think companies shouldn’t be able to lock us out of their products for speech violations, that seems like an important consumer protection that should apply to all companies.
But none of the others are allowed to integrate into the phone the way imessage does.
This "choice" is such a complete lie and I've heard it repeated so many times it's actually starting to make me angry.
- Everyone with an iPhone will have an account (the phone is practically unusable without one.)
- The app is built into the OS, when combined with the previous 2 integrations that makes it the only thing most iphone users are willing to use unless they have a very very good reason not to.
- I think the sharing UI has some special imessage-only shortcuts
The fourth hasn’t been true for a long time.
How is this so hard for you to understand, iMessage gets shoved in people's faces and is activated automatically. It's extremely anticompetitive and isolates people not on apples platform. It's far worse than anything microsoft did in the 90s.
All it does is improve the use experience for people who do use Apple’s platform. They are just as able to communicate with people who have SMS as they were before and vice versa. You are going to need to explain this ‘isolation’.
Literally billions of people use competing messaging apps such as WhatsApp or Facebook messenger.
- Switching operating systems doesn't prevent you from receiving messages in Facebook groups you were in.
I'm not going to respond again because I don't think you're reading my responses. If you can't understand that ask your parents or caretaker for help.
Sorry, but it just doesn't work that way.
I just realized too late, what exactly I paid them for - it wasn't the device - it was the "experience" and I regret spending every penny on this experience because it is essentially a sunk cost now.
Or as a democratic country, we can debate the laws and rules in which we would like businesses to follow for the privilege of selling products in the market and so they do not unhealthily, dominate the market.
Sure - we are debating it here. It just doesn’t seem like there is any real argument being made why people are forced to choose Apple.
Well, turns out that you are telling me that companies with ungodly amounts of power and influence should be allowed to dictate our rights. This is why we desperately need regulation that puts consumers first.
I stopped using Facebook earlier this year, and I am missing out on a bunch of social groups the contain people I know in real life.
What we need to do is build technology that doesn’t these downsides.
The question is literally: 1. Comply fully and lose billions in revenue 2. Figure out a way to continue cheating the system
We have decades of data setting a precedent that this specific company will choose Option 2 unless absolutely forced to fundamentally change.
If Apple made it easy to put custom apps on the device it would mean you could more easily be tricked into installing malware and so reduce the trust in the security.
The iPhone is as popular as it is today due in no small part to how they have policed the App Store.
There we go :)
You can see that the iPhone is still has the largest smartphone market share in the US.
Also, bear in mind that Android phones thrive in less rich countries like Mexico [2] or the Philippines [3]. The price of the iPhone is perhaps the largest burden for these people, but I'm willing to speculate that if given the choice, most would favor iOS over Android.
[1]: https://www.counterpointresearch.com/us-market-smartphone-sh...
[2]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/867948/market-share-smar...
[3]: https://gs.statcounter.com/vendor-market-share/mobile/philip...
Between me and Apple I'm reasonably clear about the business transaction. I pay to buy a high margin device. In turn Apple assures me that they have a vested interest to do what's best for me (i.e., my privacy, no trackers allowed etc.,).
With Android we have bewildering choice of hardware/forked-Android and what not which come with pre-burned apps and app stores that one can't get rid of.
Google Pixel comes closest to iPhone but at that price point I might as well buy iPhone as Apple has better track record of respecting user's privacy.
Most users , even some of us can accidentally break a Linux install. Saving me from myself is what IOS effectively does. Look at the Android fortnite fiasco with users installing the wrong app and getting malware on their phones.
Even open source smart phones exist. Your more than free to custom write your own software on them.
On the other hand I don't feel I have the right to dictate to anyone else what sort of products they may or may not sell, or how they work, beyond health and safety, accessibility, etc. I don't see that I have a right to tell Nintendo that they must write software to support side loading games for my Switch for example, or demand via government regulation that Sony can't charge a fee for developers to create games for the Playstation. As long as I know up front what the features and services are that come with my purchase, I have a free choice whether to accept them or not.
In particular, I certainly don't think I have the right to tell other members of the public that they should not have the option to buy those products on those terms if they wish. What right do I have to interfere in the product design of popular products, used by millions of people that are perfectly happy with them? Especially if that will force the company involved to change it's business practices and charging structure in ways those customers would not be happy with.
You can distribute [macOS] apps directly to customers.
From Apple's site:
"While the Mac App Store is the safest place for users to get software for their Mac, you may choose to distribute your Mac apps in other ways. Gatekeeper on macOS helps protect users from downloading and installing malicious software by checking for a Developer ID certificate. Make sure to test your apps with the latest version of macOS and sign your apps, plug-ins, or installer packages to let Gatekeeper know they’re safe to install. You can also give users even more confidence in your apps by submitting them to Apple to be notarized."
By making it so hard to jailbreak and so hard to install apps not from the App Store, they make jailbreaking not the answer.
Believe it or not, the world doesn't revolve around the software geeks.
After market mods aren't easy to do in any industry. We don't force Ford to support lifted F150s or aftermarket radios.
You're basically saying "This is a dog, and I'm mad its not a cat and it can't be easily changed." When you can just get, you know, a cat.
I wholeheartedly agree with the OP article. You made a device, then you sold it. You shouldn't get to control it after sale because you no longer own it. Plain and simple.
I don't care about manufacturer "supporting" something. I bought it, it's mine now, I'm on my own, and please don't get in my way of modifying the thing I bought because I have the right to do so.
> I wholeheartedly agree with the OP article. You made a device, then you sold it. You shouldn't get to control it after sale because you no longer own it. Plain and simple.
Apple didn't just "make a device" though. They don't make just hardware - they make software w/ hardware. The product is the whole experience. Expecting them to change how they design their product for the masses (that LOVE THEM), because you can't do exactly what you want, is wrong.
> I bought it, it's mine now, I'm on my own, and please don't get in my way of modifying the thing I bought because I have the right to do so.
YOU CAN do what you want with it. If you were perhaps smarter, you could hack into it and make it do whatever you want. You can throw it right off a bridge if you want! Congratulations. But Apple IN NO WAY is required to make it EASIER for you to throw it off a bridge. Sorry.
I'm not renting it. I'm not licensing it. I'm buying it.
> Expecting them to change how they design their product for the masses (that LOVE THEM), because you can't do exactly what you want, is wrong.
That would empower their users. Developers would be actually making MORE apps for the platform because they would have the confidence that they'll be able to get that app into the hands of users one way or another. I've seen some stories of someone doing a lot of work making an app only to have it rejected because its very idea didn't resonate with the review team. There's nothing they can do to bring it into compliance — countless hours of work were wasted.
> I'm not renting it. I'm not licensing it. I'm buying it.
I buy a cat. I can't complain about it not being a dog. I bought it. I didn't "license" the cat, I didn't "rent" the cat. But I still can't make it into a dog, despite the fact that I own it.
Go ahead, hack it, if you can. All the power to you. That's your right. You can't impose your absurd dev geek worldview on everyone else. That's just wrong. If you want, make a competing device. But you won't.
The App store doesn't need more apps. No one complains about lack of apps on the app store. Androids are flooded with crap apps - I'd rather keep it the way it is.
"But people might get scammed by bad actors." They can as well get scammed on the web which Apple devices are capable of accessing. Or over text messages. Or over phone calls. Or in real life.
Your analogy about cats and dogs is wrong, by the way. Being either kind of animal is an intrinsic property of it that can't be changed. You choose one or the other. It's not like someone took an "universal" animal that is initially capable of morphing into a cat or a dog, purposefully locked it into being a cat forever, and then called it an iCat sold it to you for $999.99. On the other hand, an iPhone is inherently a general-purpose computing device, that was purposefully and artificially locked into only running software that was pre-approved by Apple, thus limiting what its user can do with it (without owning an electron microscope, anyway).
Sounds like they already do...
A niggle and not contradicting your main point.
You can run and distribute you own app. You can even share it with a few hundred people (maybe a couple thousand?).
What you can't do is distribute it in the App Store or effectively sell it outside the App Store.
Again, more a niggle and not disputing your point.
> The day where apple stops indies from publishing apps is near.
This point I will dispute. Apple isn't going to stop Indies from publishing apps. Apple loves developers (though sometimes they show it poorly) and knows they are the life-blood of the platform.
Apple loves money, and realises that without developers they won't make as much. A subtle but important difference.
Subtle, different, but irrelevant in this context. Apple needs developers as much as developers need Apple. There will never be a day where Apple boots all Indies from the App Store. They would just as soon change the policies on locking the doors on their retail stores at night.
The harsh truth is that indie devs need access to Apple’s users, not the other way around.
And so you have to play by the policies that attracted those users to Apple in the first place, which includes the App Store with all its glorious kinks.
This is simply not true.
Instagram was the project of indie developers. Likewise many of the big apps which exist on iOS. The vast majority of software on iOS is small niche tools which are either fun to use or useful tools.
Apple knows this and they know they need indie developers supporting their platform.
I realize there are a fair number of situations where it doesn't seem that way. But there are a lot of times such as this where it's more than clear they do.