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Comment by 2OEH8eoCRo0 | Hacker News Reader

It's been amazing how fast they can burn so much goodwill.

Up until recently I was on the verge of switching from Pixel to iPhone. There's no way in hell I'm switching now.

How much better is Google? Sure you can buy kindle books on android but they have done many a shady practice. There is always pinephone :)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Google

I can sideload apps and install custom ROMs. They aren't perfect but in terms of freedom they're far better.

Google is no more morally good than Apple, but at least pixels run android and are cheaper than iphones. That's basically why I have a pixel: I have no interest in an iphone (though I admit their cameras are outstanding)

> Google is no more morally good than Apple, but at least pixels run android and are cheaper than iphones. That's basically why I have a pixel: I have no interest in an iphone (though I admit their cameras are outstanding)

Honestly, the main reason I chose and prefer Android is that it's possible to side-load apps. Originally that was because I planned to develop some dumb apps for personal use and didn't want to deal with any corporate bureaucracy. I never did that, but I have no interest in losing the capability.

On iOS you can side-load apps that you build and sign yourself, even without the $99/year membership.

And you have to re build and sign them every 7 days, as opposed to the "install the APK once and it's there forever" of Android

Weird, for me it lasts a year. Maybe because my account used to subscribe?

Isn’t it only for a few weeks or something?

Nothing stops you from developing and installing your own apps on your own iPhone with Xcode. AFAIK you don’t even need to pay for a developer license. You only have to pay if you want to distribute the app to others.

The apps become invalid after about 7 days after compiling them. So for development its fine but if you are building utilities for yourself to use, it could be an issue.

> The apps become invalid after about 7 days after compiling them. So for development its fine but if you are building utilities for yourself to use, it could be an issue.

Exactly, they deliberately crippled the feature to make it too painful to bypass their corporate bureaucracy. It's only useful for the narrow uses that suit Apple. In no way is that ability comparable to side-loading on Android.

To be clear, even if you do pay up, then they still expire on each anniversary of you signing up.

You can use an Android phone without using any of Google services and without a Google account. Can't do that with an iPhone.

Sadly Google doesn’t need to be that much better for a bunch of us. I need Gsuite apps daily. Google Maps is still the better alternative, and we all probably watch Youtube.

Getting rid of Google is not an option. The choice comes down to how much Apple I want in my phone.

An email chain from 2010 has an impact on what phone you want to buy?

They probably mean the last month of shitty behavior that's been getting public attention........

> An email chain from 2010 has an impact on what phone you want to buy?

Why shouldn't it? It could reveal their true colors in starker terms than one has seen before. It's one thing to know, abstractly, that they're an amoral self-serving entity. It's quite another to see it demonstrated so openly.

Well, the commenter was saying how quickly they burned through goodwill, but it seems like it’s taken 11 years (and the death of the major author)

This seems kind of silly. Every CEO of every major company has probably sent a similar if not far, far worse email. You really think Sundar Pichai's emails are all sunshine and flowers? Capitalism rewards ruthlessness.

> This seems kind of silly. Every CEO of every major company has probably sent a similar if not far, far worse email. You really think Sundar Pichai's emails are all sunshine and flowers? Capitalism rewards ruthlessness.

You're missing my point. I'm sure Sundar Pichai has sent similar emails, but that fact is abstract and therefore remote. Jobs/Schiller sent these emails, but that fact isn't abstract, it's right here in our faces.

The difference is that this is "evidence". Legions of Apple lovers in HN kept clamouring that Apple does these things for the "right" reasons only and never to deliberately harm competitors. Straight buy-in into Apple's propaganda.

Now we have utterly clear and factual evidence showing that position is rubbish.

There is a clear and desperate need for anti-trust regulation.

I had fascination for Apple products until I tried to use Xcode for some development. That was back in 2010. I never tried again or bought an Apple product since. The idea of tying users down into a walled garden and control their behaviors through not only software but also hardware that they pay for doesn't sit well with me and this is not how technology should progress.

I haven't really ever used XCode in a serious way nor do I use MacOS currently, but I have to give props to LLDB. It's commands are sometimes a bit clunky, but it is a lot easier to do stuff like setting breakpoints on C++ methods, searching across all loaded symbols, etc. than GDB on Linux. GDB is great so long as your code is C, but debugging C++ or other languages is kind of a mess.

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