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Comment by jabbany | Hacker News Reader

Except there are alternatives for all of these, you just have to use a different operating system.

Interoperability has never been legally mandated in the past, but for most of history it has just "happened" because people could get around hostile designs (IBM PC clones anyone?).

The problem with the complexity of today's technology is that, it's no longer feasible for an upstart to make a "compatible" device. You can't engineer an "iOS capable" non Apple device or an Apple-compatible non-Apple OS, not because it is not legal but because it is not feasible technologically. There are ways to do legally clean reverse engineering (ReactOS anyone?) but you cannot get around chip level signature checks nor can you fab your own state-of-the-art chips.

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Yep, regulation is way behind. None of this lockdown is for the public good and thus it should not exist. The demand side of the market doesn't seem to be able to balance this out (i.e. vote with your wallet, stop buying the products, they hurt all of us long term). You would need another global level actor building the replacement, in the fair, for public good manner. However due to these global corporations essentially being close to global states in power, there is very little any one nation state can do comparatively. The level of investment would be worth it, for the world, but not for any single state.

> Interoperability has never been legally mandated in the past

This is pretty similar domain where it's happened:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On-board_diagnostics

"You just have to use a different operating system"

No. This can't help the customer who already bought a device, because Apple can (and does) change the terms on which the device is used. It would be more fair to use the word 'rent' when you buy Apple's devices, because you don't truly own them, Apple does: It decides which apps you can run, and it can pull off the apps you need from the Appstore, and so on.

When Apple alters the deal, all their customers can do is pray Apple doesn't alter them any further. This IS a monopoly, and you can't use a different operating system on your iPhone if it would be rendered useless to you by Apple.

You could say the same for game consoles and yet people are okay with those being closed systems because you can choose between different brands.

I don't like Apple's business practices either, but labels like monopoly and "rent"ing a device have clear definitions and Apple doesn't hit them. If anything this is a failure of regulations to catch up to the reality of technology.

The focus in the future should be mandating things like repair and interoperability.

> You can't use a different operating system on your iPhone if it would be rendered useless to you by Apple.

This is not true. First, all apps already installed are not automatically uninstalled just because they've been pulled from the store, you just stop getting updates. Secondly, even if Apple completely drops all app support for your phone, it does not make it "useless". The phone still does all of the basic functions it was advertised to do. Having a device get new features in the form of apps is not required, it's a nice to have. At best you maybe could make an argument for misleading advertising if any launch features were gone (see PlayStation otheros) but Apple have been very diligent to make sure that's not the case.

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