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Comment by allenrb | Hacker News Reader

How hard is it to understand that Apple is offering a closed ecosystem, with all of the pluses and minuses that implies? If that isn’t what you want, just don’t buy it. Vote with your $CURRENCY.

Personally, the last thing I’ve got time to worry about is what’s going on in my phone. So I’ve got an iPhone and use basic common sense when choosing what to run on it.

Yes, this is HN but it sure does get old seeing the inevitable complaints about Apple. I’ve been around long enough to know what happens to Apple when they aren’t selling what people want. That isn’t the case today. Maybe get over it?

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Congratulations on your "common sense", but several highly publicized and actively exploited recent exploits against iOS required no user interaction:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/12/iphone-zero-click-wi...

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/12/zero-...

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/07/clickless-exploits-f...

etc., etc.

Are there none for Android?

Exploits for Android do not negate exploits for iOS

That's whataboutism. Unless there are many more exploits for Android, more than the increase in marketshare warrants, there is no reason to think a closed ecosystem is more secure than an open one.

It is hard to speak about the exploits we don’t know about, but for the ones we do: There are vastly more exploits on Android, evidenced by for no other reason than because handset manufacturers refuse to upgrade.

Asking questions about the only competitor is valid

If thats a whataboutism then whataboutisms were always valid and accurate forms of introspection

> tere is no reason to think a closed ecosystem is more secure than an open one

Fragmentation of Android is a thing.

It is a thing, yes, but it is avoidable nowadays. If it weren't already a thing Google could force Project Treble onto everyone and strong-arm the carriers from the beginning and it would not be an issue.

There isn't any commercial or open-source mobile without security flaws. Given the importance of iOS it's no wonder it's under scrutiny by attackers, just like Windows was (is) while Apple was memeing a virus free Mac OS. That wasn't the case, it's just MacOS was a mostly irrelevant target.

I'm not so sure it's accurate to describe macOS as being an irrelevant target. MacBooks in particular have had a not-insignificant market share among many valuable targets for hackers (software developers, the affluent etc) for at least ten if not fifteen years now.

Also, it I think meming is a bit of a stretch. Of all the desktop operating systems (macOS, Linux, Windows), macOS has had the strongest security push. E.g. integration of the secure enclave throughout the system for protecting secrets, read-only system volume, mandatory sandboxing for App Store apps, and requiring applications to request use of screen capture/camera/mic/address book, etc.

Sure, holes are found. Strong security is a long process of adding more and more boundaries (while giving the ecosystem some time to adapt to those boundaries) and fixing more and more logic/memory errors.

Regardless, macOS is probably the most secure desktop operating system out-of-the-box.

>Also, it I think meming is a bit of a stretch.

It kinda was, imo. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eF7habaTvAY

Apple is voting their $CURRENCY in federal congress, and state congress, and city council meetings every day. They actively try to change the law in their favor, and curtail regulations that make them play fair by bribing senators. They cannibalize companies that try to compete by immense political (money) market power. There is no such thing as a "free market" here.

I'm required to use the devices Apple creates, because work. Once your product is required to be in the hands of many people the idea of "Vote with Money!" is objectively, demonstrably, false. You might as well tell working class people to just walk to work. It affects me. So when someone supports a company like Apple, against all evidence, I'm inclined to further critisize Apple and its users whom advocate against themselves. I'm even more open to harsher regulations on Apple, even. Similiar to how regulations on Gambling are a necessity to prevent heavily negative socioeconomic effects.

This seems reasonable on the surface but it's really not. You're basically arguing that nobody should criticize anything that costs money - that is not a world I want to live in as a consumer.

It also ignores the tragedy of the commons aspect; real world evidence of it is abundant at this point. At the end of the day we need legislation similar to right-to-repair that covers device ownership and control.

You might enjoy my favorite HN comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23003595

haha.. my favorite part is the bit about android vs iphone support

Caring about how the devices that the majority of the population use (not just iPhones--all/both major mobile OSes) and how they work or don't work is very much in the HN ballpark.

Because it’s a duopoly and both are increasingly unsavoury. That’s why. Now what? Feature phones? Or phone free?

> How hard is it to understand that Apple is offering a closed ecosystem, with all of the pluses and minuses that implies? If that isn’t what you want, just don’t buy it.

Unfortunately, all my friends and family use iMessage and Facetime, and Apple makes that impossible to access on an Android phone.

Also, Apple buys up huge amounts of the supply chain such that their screens, cameras, etc are better than basically anyone else's, and if I were to switch I'd loose access to every app I've bought over the past decade. (If not for Requiem and TunesKit, I'd loose access to all my movies and TV shows too.)

> Also, Apple buys up huge amounts of the supply chain such that their screens, cameras, etc are better than basically anyone else's,

Care to provide a source? Last I heard, their screens are made by Samsung and LG, and the camera (sensors) by Sony and Omnivision. None of these companies are owned by Apple.

The GP said that they buy up these other vendor's supply chain making where other device manufactures cannot use them. So if you want the specific features in Apple devices, you have to get the Apple device. I can't imagine this is done by accident by Apple.

That's all true, and at the same time does not invalidate the OPs argument.

You get to choose your phone platform. The implications there include whether or not you get exclusive access to Apple specific features like iMessage and FaceTime. They also include the cost of your existing collection of purchased apps and some DRMed media. You also have to pick your phone from the choices and features of the chosen platform's available devices.

You still have to choose "what you want" and then "Vote with your $CURRENCY." Your "wants" obviously include not just the OS/ecosystem design choices, but your financial investment into your incumbent platform, the convenience of sticking with what you know, your desires/requirements around screens and cameras.

You can totally trade off some of those other requirement over "platform security" or any other differences between iOS and Android. But don't fool yourself that you consider privacy to be critically important, if you're willing to forego it in favour of keeping your hundred or so bucks worth of Android apps or video subscriptions...

>Also, Apple buys up huge amounts of the supply chain such that their screens, cameras, etc are better than basically anyone else's

Apple has never been known to have the fastest/best devices on a feature-comparison point by point. There are better screens, cameras, speakers in many many Android devices.

Best is relative. Fastest, however, is usually accurate. Ever since they started designing their own chips.

If no one complained about this I wouldn't know about it. Should they receive no scrutiny?

> If no one complained about this I wouldn't know about it.

For real?

I mean, it’s right in their name.

Well, yeah. I'm not sure how you'd find out about this otherwise? Unless you think there's some arbitrary line where "proper journalists" are allowed to talk about things, but regular people aren't.

If the only information I could ever get about products was positive marketing from the creators of said products I don't understand how I could possibly navigate purchasing decisions as a consumer. Open public discourse about the pros and cons of various products is crucial to a functioning market.

Obviously if you already own an Apple device maybe you read announcements on their support portal, but that doesn't really help (it is great that Apple announce this stuff though).

I meant this specific thing. And many other specific things. Not that their ecosystem is closed.

> I’ve been around long enough to know what happens to Apple when they aren’t selling what people want.

This doesn't mean much. Other companies go through tough periods too, Windows Me, AMD *dozer, etc..

When you try to be currency-neutral by using a variable, but the variable naming forces you to use $.

Probably should be “Vote with your ${CURRENCY:-USD}”.

There's no need to bash his comment

TIL: ¤ is the "generic currency sign" Vote with your ¤CURRENCY!

Edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Currency_sign_(typography)

BRB making a programming language in which this is one of the sigils.

probably already exists in APL

can I suggest the name "peril" ;-)

Wow. Kind of assumed you made that up, but it’s totally legit.

See, even Groundhog Day-esque arguments about Apple can turn up hidden gems. Let’s do this every day!

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