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It's also important to remember that Apple doesn't want to be like a PC or Android phone. They've said so in court filings. They view themselves as separate, and they also say that if you want sideloading, you have that choice by joining the other side.

In Apple's view, they are encouraging customer choice because customers have the ability to choose an open experience, or a closed experience, and the desire to force all experiences to be open removes choice. It's an argument very contrary to us on Hacker News but that's what Apple tries to get at.

That argument would work a little better if they did not market their phones as a computer replacement in the first place...

Apart from that, I think with only two companies on the mobile market, even them can't really argue against the obvious lack of competition.

> That argument would work a little better if they did not market their phones as a computer replacement in the first place...

It's a very effective alternative model. Steve jobs said no stylus and no separate keyboard and it did quite effectively replace PCs at a lot of boring office tasks that any manager would need.

I believe many people use a smartphone as their only computer.

Smartphones have useful features that many laptops don't have, including: subsidized pricing, long battery life, small size that fits in your pocket, mobile data, and the ability to make phone calls.

I’ve seen the iPad marketed as such but never the iPhone.

Just have a look at the difference between an Iphone ad and a PS4 ad. On one side you have screen, processor, new apps & all the productive things you can do with the phone, on the PS4 side you have games games and more games. The marketing difference is obvious.

Sure but that doesn’t mean that Apple markets the iPhone explicitly as one and it’s not like Apple is shy to not market one of their devices as such i.e the iPad. I think everyone is trying to fit these items in categories when they already have categories they’re marketed in. The iPhone is a Smartphone and has always (as far as I’m aware) has been marketed as a Smartphone. Just as the PS4 is market as a Game console because it IS a game console.

In the end what separates these are not by what they can do , cause in reality if someone really really really wanted to ALL these devices can run a OS that makes it function like a desktop/laptop. It’s about what they’re meant to do. We’ve seen Apple market something as a computer before and it was never the iPhone.

What separates them is how they are used in practice and they are used in practice as computer replacement (it's especially visible in developing countries). Apple themselves marketing them as multi-purpose computers in their ads is further proof but not needed for my argument.

And I’m telling you that’s not the case since we have an actual case of Apple marketing one of their products as computer replacements and it was never the iPhone. The iPhone was always market as “An iPod, a phone, an internet mobile communicator... these are NOT three separate devices” m. There’s a difference between a computing device and a computer. All devices with a chip are computing devices hut jot all computing devices are computers.

To each their own, I don't see a big difference between the marketing of an Iphone and the marketing of any laptop out there. Apple might claim whatever suits them for their defense but even themselves have realized internally how their product is used.

There's an app for that.

This is subtle, but they’re not advertising the iPad as a replacement for a PC or Mac.

They’re advertising an iPad as a replacement for the things most people use a PC or Mac for.

An iPad is certainly not a viable PC replacement for me, nor most of HN I would guess. But for a lot of “casual users,” who really just surf the web, watch videos, etc, it’s great.

What’s way more interesting is how iPad has become appealing to a lot of “semi-power users,” like photographers and videographers. These are people who, twenty years ago, really needed to be computer savvy to do their work, but didn’t (and still don’t) think of themselves as “computer people.” Or to put that a different way, they “use a computer for work,” but they don’t “work on computers.” That audience has been greatly expanded as iOS devices have lowered the cost and skill barriers to entry making a lot of content creation possible.

For those of us who actually “work on computers,” I don’t see iOS devices ever being a great fit… or at least not any time soon. But for others, an iPad might do everything the user wants from a computer, and maybe do it faster and easier as well. That’s what Apple is advertising.

> This is subtle, but they’re not advertising the iPad as a replacement for a PC or Mac.

> They’re advertising an iPad as a replacement for the things most people use a PC or Mac for.

To me that sounds pretty similar, they advertise it with similar features, functions and in practice it's also used similarly.

I kind of like how Apple's advertising went from "the computer for the rest of us" to "what's a computer?"

Well, uh, kid, it's a bit like that iPad you're using, but you can run any software you want on it.

> they also say that if you want sideloading, you have that choice by joining the other side.

That's a bit of a stretch of what they said - they were specifically referring to iOS there, and pointing out that there are other choices (including macOS) that offer side-loading or direct installs.

Taking that one comment to imply that Apple doesn't want to build any platforms that aren't completely locked down is, imho, a step too far.

I have been an Apple ecosystem developer for the past 19 years and this is the best, most succinct explanation of Apple’s outlook re: openness for the HN crowd that I’ve seen. I don’t always agree with the stance, more so in recent years, but understanding that it is what governs things, not a nascent PC market world view, is important to factor in when making hardware, lifestyle, and career choices.

Thanks for that comment, it’s very kind. :)

> Apple thinks of it’s products like game consoles.

And at the same time Apple expects me to build my business on those products.

Plenty of games run on multiple consoles, despite having completely different operating systems, graphics APIs, etc.

It's certainly a pain, but cross-platform development has always been a thing so it's not a unique pain to Apple platforms.

It's not just the development. It's the fact the Apple takes control over the distribution of software on their platform.

“Expects” is a stretch. “Encourages”, “wants”, “likes to” more like.

They call their products "Pro".

This is mostly true but it is also almost entirely irrelevant to answering the specific question. The actual answer is “it’s pretty much standard 64-bit ARM”.

Haha fair enough, I was just trying to point out that the question itself (IMO) is not really how Apple thinks of things.

Linux devs giving money to Apple instead of GNU/Linux OEMs are the ones that got mixed up what Apple eco-system is supposed to be.

Most of them never used the old Mac OS, GUI based, with Object Pascal/C++ tooling, and zero POSIX.

>We don’t get mad at Sony that PlayStation games don’t run on Windows…

Actually there was much rejoicing when the Playstation moved to x86_64.

That was due to how horrible it was to program an app for the cell processor.

> Apple doesn’t care about making products for everyone

Can you give me a quote from the company or an otherwise official statement that supports this?

https://youtu.be/gnU9Vgt8Hmg?t=9

It doesn't require a statement from Apple for someone to ascribe intent from a company's actions. It's of course just speculation and may not align with what the company officially states or what the intent is internally. It's simply an opinion.

They’ve certainly said on multiple occasions they won’t make cheap computers, which by definition excludes a big percentage of the potential market.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/apple-ceo-tim-cook-expensive-...

Anyone that has been around long enough to remember the days of Atari, Amiga, PC, Archimedes, PC.

This isn’t the kind of thing a company generally externalises in quotes and official statements. This comment is pushing the HN “provide sources” meme to it’s limits.