Facebook says Apple is too powerful – they're right
eff.org
eff.org
But work at a company where you try to build something like new hardware devices or systems without having to resort to building either an iOS app or handing over 30% to Apple and the situation becomes very worrying to dire. Simple things suddenly become impossible or have workarounds piled on top to get their browser to function in the ways their desktop one does or Android's browser does.
You can feel some of their engineering choices are actively hostile against anyone trying to exist outside the App Store ecosystem. Sure I know some advocates push this as a good thing but I think they'll disagree when the endgame plays out.
Because in 10 years, what currently exists as the only option on iPad and iPhone will be the only option on MacBooks too. There is a reason why the last WWDC was all about making the iPad feel more like MacOS and making parts of MacOS feel like iPadOS.
I used to be a huge Apple advocate but I'm really worried with where they're heading as I'm trying to create new technology and Apple causes so much pain when you try to make anything other than an iOS app.
I do love my M1 MBP, have a lot less love for my iPhone these days but I'm worried where the tide is moving. It's all absolutely fine, until it isn't and then the problem is it's completely locked down from the touch screen to the silicon...
I worry about the people living under such digital serf conditions. It was only a matter of time before they started promulgating changes like lords, like the client side scanning "feature" they tried to push. That is absolutely a problem that needs to be addressed and the answer is always computing freedom.
With that said... I shed zero tears when Apple screws over even worse exploitative corporations like Facebook. I simply have no sympathy for advertising giants complaining about being unable to continue their surveillance and exploitation of the most profitable market segment. The only problem is it took an Apple to put a stop to them when simply saying no should have been sufficient.
Social classes already exist in the US. The digital divide in internet access, software availability, and technology literacy between states is stark and almost comical. Software engineers consistently earn more comparatively than almost any other industry or profession. You lot and these monopolistic companies already 'promulgate changes like lord's.' The future is now; awareness just isn't evenly distributed.
Is anyone surprised that the iOS App Store, which makes the bulk of its money from games, operates similarly to other walled garden game stores?
Fortunately I think for both Apple and Microsoft, they still have internal resources in the upper-ranks that truly care about what's best for their customers. If those people end up being the prevailing voices they will succeed. I think a lot depends on whether the CEO has control of the vision, or if they're actually just managing operations. Cracks are shown in the form of who they are able to retain & hire and who is leaving.
https://scottrlarson.com/publications/publication-transition...
It is sort of complicated. I understand why Microsoft and Sony would fight for gaming revenue as the playing field moves to a more “all screens everywhere” platform. At the same time I think: what have these middle men actually done in the past couple of game console cycles to warrant a platform they deserve to defend? They have basically been living off the innovation of x86 and GPUs made by others and packaging it in a power hungry box that plugs into a TV made by someone else. They are living off network effects not innovations. From a hardware standpoint, Apple has earned the right to pull in more of the profits in my view. They innovated across the entire stack to build lower power draw, high graphic intensity, custom silicon, deeper integration etc.
Yet Steam takes the same 30% cut. So far others with money, like Epic have been unable to break Steam's stranglehold, even though they take a much lesser pay cut of the earnings.
Every dev ever who has posted about game sales says that non-Steam merchants are a rounding error in terms of revenue.
In practice, the PC being an open platform has only allowed giants like EA and Epic's Fortine to get around having to pay the 30% to Valve.
I feel like this situation would be similar with Facebook and Apple - if they manage to break Apple's monopoly, still nobody would use a 3rd party app store, save for people forced by giants like Facebook.
This is pure supposition and reasoning with a UI feature that you have to explicitly turn on that helps you manage windows in way that's more like a traditional desktop than ever for the iPad than it is like a tablet for macOS is quite a stretch.
You could have said the same about other features that iOS/macOS got and it would have been just as unconvincing too: Screen Time, Control Center, Focus, Share Play, anything for Messages or Safari, etc.
Fortnite runs on iOS and Fortnite runs on Mac, imagine you're an exec looking at that chart and asking yourself why Fortnite is so unprofitable on Mac and why it's financing whole Apple departments on iOS.
It's hard to imagine any sane executive wouldn't be working towards the future I'm describing. Only an individual with extreme passion to the concept of free computing would do anything else.
People love to say this, but there's no evidence it's true.
Both Windows and MacOS now have features that can limit the sources of software to vendor-approved channels, but they're also very very easy to turn off. You can still run whatever the hell you want on a Mac, and on Windows -- by downloading from vendor sites, or even by building from source.
Neither platform is EVER likely to block this. There's no upside to it. But having the OPTION to lock down either platform is GREAT because, well, we all have an Aunt Millie or whatever who clicks on everything and can't be arsed to learn to use the web safely, etc.
Is iOS locked down? Sure! I love it that way.
Furthermore the Mac's status as Apple's development platform means that locking it down is a non-starter.
For people who want a managed computing experience, Apple already has a solution for them—the iPad. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if we see Apple releasing iPadOS devices in other form factors. An iPad notebook to compete with Chromebooks. An iPad desktop computer for people who want a large screen iPadOS experience. But the Mac will never go away. It's necessary for the iOS/iPadOS app ecosystem to work.
lol welcome to Hacker News.
I sold the iPhone, got back to Android and will never touch an Apple product again. They represent EVERYTHING that's wrong with the tech world nowadays.
I guess it's time other major companies start screwing over Apple as much as they screw over them.
I've had so many MacBooks but only because of the hardware form factor, the moment they wall off the terminal is the moment I would abandon mac forever.
They will also lose all of their corporate customers.
We're already living in a world where most segments of your life are taxed in a way from these 3. In a few years they will cannibalize the rest.
What's the saying? Die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become a villain?
The software experience, on the other hand... it's been slipping downhill for almost a decade now. I haven't been able to "full-time" MacOS since Mojave, and with each update I just find myself using it less and less. I suspect this is mostly driven by their attempts to appease shareholders: changes like the Big Sur UI overhaul, forcing everyone onto Metal, prioritizing SaaS offerings, all of it contributes to the Windows-10-ization of MacOS. Meanwhile, MacOS has major architectural issues they could be fixing, like their increasingly broken BSD compatibility layer or rectifying their licensing woes with GPLv3.
I really wish people luck in bringing Linux to modern Macs, but I'm not very hopeful that it will be a fruitful long-term relationship. Apple has time-and-time-again shown that their bottom line comes first, and if Linux becomes an appealing enough alternative for developers, I suspect they'll cut support for that too. People said the same thing about Nintendo when developing custom firmware for the Switch ("Who would shut down a project used for running Android/Linux on first-party hardware?"), but subsequent models came with extensive homebrew mitigations.
Instead of dealing with these issues, I've just cut Apple out of my life. As a developer, my life has gotten so much easier, and as a user, I've got so much more peace-of-mind. It feels great, but it's not a path everyone can take. Apple (like Microsoft and Google) deserves strict regulation to ensure that their behavior is ethical and doesn't promote harmful lock-in.
What Apple are actually charging for is the first item in your list - access to the users. Apple wired the hardware to make themselves a middleman in every transaction. That's it, that's all it boils down to.
The visibility and access to the user base that the App Store provides is a valid incentive, depending on the product.
"It’s great when Apple chooses to defend your privacy. Indeed, you should demand nothing less. But if Apple chooses not to defend your privacy, you should have the right to override the company’s choice. Facebook spied on iOS users for more than a decade before App Tracking Transparency, after all."
The important thing to appreciate is that App Tracking Transparency isn't something Apple can enforce with code. It's not an API or operating system feature which shields users against tracking. Enforcement is purely the threat of retribution by Apple, made legal by the terms of the agreement which all developers sign. Apple's monopoly on iOS app distribution means that a wilful breach of Apple's privacy policies is a dangerous path for any developer to take.
I cannot see any plausible scenario where an Apple made impotent through legislation could possibly result in a net gain of privacy control for consumers. And even if there is a better way, how about we get that working BEFORE tearing down the current imperfect system?
That paragraph is a layer cake of wishful thinking. How does the EFF propose to enforce a consumer right to override Apple's choices over privacy within iOS? This kind of rhetoric is unhelpful, eliding reality on so many levels. The notion of consumers self-policing their own privacy is a nice sentiment, but as an idea that must be implemented in reality... rather optimistic.
I hate it, but it's the best we have until/unless government improves our terribly weak consumer protection & privacy laws. I really hope the option's not taken away, nor Apple's position as a regulator significantly weakened, until/unless government steps in and solves the problems Apple's currently solving. At that point, sure, break them up, ban app store platform monopolies, whatever, fine, go for it. But please not yet.
Ironically, it's because Apple have kept EFF / Govt OUT and enforced their own rules in this walled garden that we all are rushing into it. We wouldn't need to if EFF / govt / developers did a fairer job outside of Appleworld.
The EFF are a non-profit that has nothing to do with the US or any other government.
They have no power to do a "fairer job", they're an advocacy group, not a regulator. That's like complaining that Greenpeace haven't set decent climate change policy.
Government have the power. But giving government so much power is not something I feel comfortable.
Having one monopoly in each field is, sometimes, better than having a single entity(the government) own limitless power.
There could still be a net benefit while also increasing choice and competition. By allowing 3p app stores.
each app store competitor could create their own privacy policies, quality requirements, or maybe manual curation. whatever differentiation.
Apple would still surely capture a large % of average consumers whose privacy would be protected. But those who care could seek out and customize their experience and chose a different privacy policy.
It's not seeking out and customizing my experience if the only choice is "have my privacy violated, or don't use the service. That's the experience that already exists on platforms with less strict privacy protections.
As others have pointed out, this only works as well as it does for Apple because there isn’t a reasonable way to side load apps. As soon as there is, Facebook will just jingle their large carrot on their own distribution system that lets them do whatever they want.
The only thing other than price is the opportunity to attract less scrupulous developers in a race to the bottom with respect to policy enforcement.
This is precisely how I feel about the situation.
The EFF article doesn't seem to provide a solution that keeps the privacy control still in favor of the user while breaking down Apple's monopoly of an app store. Until there's a proposal that includes incentive for companies to protect their customer's privacy (as you pointed out, this is not something you can just control with code, this is something the company has to actively pursue and enforce) while enforcing the freedom of choice and inability for Apple to force high commissions to make apps available or sell anything, really... then what we have is still going to serve a large part of the market in a net positive way.
Wait - why not? Apple controls iOS, they control the sandbox apps run in. Of all protections, app tracking seems like they aren't really fixing the problem by using monopoly power and threatening to pull apps.
The entitlement is enforced by legal contract. The only thing stopping Meta from blatantly ignoring this policy is the fear of consequences by Apple.
On the other hand, the GDPR gives end users the privilege to engage in a legal fight with a multi-billion dollar app developer, assuming that they can even prove the existence of such tracking in the first place.
Apple should not have this type of power. Maybe they used it for good with Facebook, but I wouldn't count on it always being the case. Apple can kill entire social media platforms if they want to. IMO, it's a matter of time before they start charging an "adult tax" (that just so happens to be barely below the profits a company makes from adult content via Apple users). Maybe the only thing preventing them from doing so is regulatory pressure.
Are these the same safety standards that cause apple predictive text to refuse to recognise the cuss words I a grown adult use and have to go back and fix over and over again. Ducking stupid if you ask me.
[0]: https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/20/18104366/tumblr-ios-app-...
That seems eminently reasonable to me, without being "safety standards".
Yes, modern English is certainly saltier than what people pretended it was for the last century or so, but the line that Apple took seems to be the right line (allow offence without correction, do not suggest offence by default).
There are many things on which I disagree with Apple’s stance (I think that Apple should allow pornographic apps in the store, but that those apps should have tighter controls on them to prevent some of the scammiest behaviours reported against pornographic sites; I also think that Apple should be doing a lot more to prevent abuse of the pricing tools that it does have).
Only related in the sense that Apple takes steps to prevent surprise adult content. Just as porn is obviously trivial to consume with Apple devices, autocomplete can happily suggest your favorite salty language.
https://www.macworld.com/article/673861/how-to-stop-an-iphon...
Sometimes the agenda goes a bit too far.
wait a minute, that's only because Tumblr wanted to be on the App Store. they've could've just as easily provided a web app and easily instructed their users to have a link on the ios home screen. but they wanted to be on the App Store, so of course they had to follow Apple's rules.
Yeah, because the iOS ecosystem is well known for allowing competition, especially competing stores.
Many of the issues that Apple create wouldn't exist if competing stores were allowed to exist.
2. Safari had and still has some pretty gnarly bugs that require special workarounds.
3. You could not put a link to a website on the homescreen of iOS
And what's the new acronym to refer to those companies?
Apple's actual policy for the bog-standard, consenting-adults kind of porn is that you can't put it on the App Store, and if you are a social network you need to filter for it. This isn't a full ban; reddit is able to get away with having an off-app NSFW toggle that turns off filtering on the app.
A better example might be Discord, which also had a spat with Apple over NSFW servers. Apple wanted specific communities banned from the app; the actual guidance[0] provide by Discord is vague as to why they were banned, but suggests that there's an extra level of NSFW-ness to which the "off-app toggle" solution isn't good enough for Apple.
As far as I'm aware there's no appetite at Apple for an "adult tax" - it's specifically that they don't want the brand association[1] that comes with "porn on iPhone". If it was just a matter of the higher chargeback rates of porn, they could have a separate payment processor and commission rate structure for that.
[0] https://i.redd.it/shpi09y71lt61.png
[1] Casual reminder that people are absolutely terrible at separating the product, the OS, and the app vendor from one another when they are very mad at it. Or when a news outfit is trying to sell them anger.
To be honest I think Apple deciding users shouldn't have regular porn on their own iPhone because Apple doesn't want to be associated with it, is plenty reason to be angry at them. Especially because the app store has a monopoly on iOS. If it was like Android there would be no problem.
They're a supplier, not the moral police. And they shouldn't have a say in how we use their products.
"Over the course of the pandemic, Gen Z flocked to Tumblr; as of early 2022, 61% of its new users, and nearly half of its active users, are under 24. Tumblr today has more daily active users than WordPress, its professional sibling, has per month, according to a spokesperson."
https://qz.com/emails/quartz-company/2139456/tumblr-making-c...
If you want access to Apple's user. You have to play by their rules. Remember even if those users are Tumblr's reader or members, they are ultimately accessing it via iPhone, whether that is through Safari or Apps. And Apple dictate the rules.
Since Apple is a force of Good. Apple are righteous. Their fellow evangelist will tell you everything else are by their definition are Evil. Such as Ads. And banning whatever it is, whether that is porn, news that does not adhere to their political views, or music that doesn't fits certain requirement. And they are fighting all these evil for you, an act of love.
This ownership wording is the wrong thinking when it comes to platforms.
Is Twitter powerful enough to stand up to Apple and Tumblr was not?
No idea though if Tumblr had the same option back then.
In 2017, Twitter had dedicated ML resources driving their recommendation engine + human moderators on fallback duty. You need to explicitly opt-in via web app before you can see NSFW using their app.
In comparison, Tumblr struggled with NSFW content as they relied heavily on users to police content.
Without opting-in, pornograhic posts regularly bled into standard content. With the demographics, CSAM content quickly started to do the same.
We've also seen third party Reddit app developers not allowed to feature content that the main Reddit app is despite toggles, and Discord not allowed to feature content that Twitter is.
The policy is badly written and not even Apple's own reviewers understand it, and they overreact to complaints from religious groups.
They also have the opposite - the ability to create entire social media platforms.
> Apple gave tumblr unreasonable "safety standards" that almost single-handedly killed a gigantic site for the vast majority of users.
> Maybe they used it for good with Facebook
Devil's advocate - maybe what you think is good isn't good for the rest of society.
> Maybe the only thing preventing them from doing so is regulatory pressure.
Agreed. So what type for regulations need to be in place?
1) The definition of porn is fluid - adhering to an external third party's guidelines (Apple's) will always mean adopting an overly strict definition to ensure confidence in compliance
2) Moderation is a hard problem - false positives will always happen, and given point (1) above will happen a LOT in the case of Tumblr
That isn’t true. Not allowing the tumblr app doesn’t remove all users.
Apple doesn't.
Those customers were free to use Tumblr on Android, Symbian, whatever.
I don't want to use whatsapp, I could use any other messaging app and I'd rather use something open that is decentralized. But nowadays if you have to work with small business, it is either inconvenient by phone, or text based through whatsapp, many have abandonned the email (I can understand why). If you have kids, all the associative world use whatsapp by default to keep track of all the details about your kids activities/training/competitions. Nobody update their basketball club web page anymore. Heck, they don't even update or post on their facebook page, all his done on messy whatsapp groups these days. If you refuse to use whatsapp you can just tell your kids no more sports in a club for you.
If you have remote friends and you stop using whatsapp, you can still call them once in a while but good luck convincing them to call you on a regular basis. Some may do but most won't. People have forgotten what a written letter or a regular non video phone call was. It is not that you count less than their other relatives, but they will reach other people so easily you will just disappear from their life natuarally and gradually if you are too far away.
It is either you swallow it or you live like with only a tiny and very local social life.
They do, no question, but the overwhelming sentiment is much more single faceted. There's a lot of support for breaking Apple's iron grip on software distribution on iOS for example, but practically none for breaking Google's iron grip on the web, even though the latter is arguably far more dangerous since it's corporate appropriation of critical public infrastructure under a guise of openness.
By all means, force Apple to open things up, but in the same stroke ensure that there's no uneven enforcement that could allow other corporate giants to expand their monopolies where they previously couldn't.
Corps have gotten very good at exploiting the tribal instinct by encouraging people to view their affiliation with a brand as part of their personal identity.
"I'm a New York Yankees guy. If you've got a problem with the Yankees, you've got a problem with me!"
I basically have to use their products and in the case of WhatsApp, my experience is degraded unless I share my full contacts list with them (not going to happen) just to have a decent user experience. Friends names showing up...
Could go on about how I need to use Instagram for various reasons too...
Facebook can die in a fire and the world would be better off. I was barely using my account before and I deleted it 4 years ago after all the Cabridge Analytica stuff came out. I haven't missed it at all. In fact I think my mental health improved.
Sure, Apple have a disproportionally large power that should be acknowledged and stifled sensibly by regulators, but man do they create truly beautiful products that make my life better in myriad ways.
Facebook, on the other hand, maintain a business model that seems to do little but incentivise actions that exhaust ill societal outcomes. It's exhausting (pun intended), and I've certainly felt my mental health crack slightly under the burden of some of their products (not WhatsApp, which is fantastic and I hope isn't integrated further into their ecosystem from a user perspective).
Your claim is that people get little value out of Meta's products? I don't know how it is for the older generation, but people of my age (20s) get a ton of value out of instagram.
I feel like in our critiques of social media people often forget that generally people like to communicate and share with others online.
So I get plenty of positive use from FB.
Users love the product so it grew it’s enormous userbase to what it is today. Companies have to comply to the restrictions that Apple imposes on them, because they can’t miss out on the userbase as their customer.
As a user I can’t really think of any guidelines that I’d want to be changed or doors to be opened, I feel like it’s mostly non-users or companies requesting them.
As a consumer, I like Apple’s App Store. In general I don’t like 3rd party apps and prefer web apps but when I do install a 3rd party app I feel that I am not loading malware. Also, when I buy books, audiobooks, and movies from Google Play I don’t mind buying from a web site and then having the content available from the apps.
I would like to see maximum support for web apps for too many reasons to list here. Apple should do better. I also don’t like Apple not holding themselves to the same privacy standards as other companies and platforms.
One thing that irritates me is not having easy access to books and movies bought from Apple on my Chromebook. I should re-check this, but except for going through the iCloud.com web portal, I am stuck. BTW, there is so much I like about the Chromebook model, especially because of built-in Linux containers.
Apple is definitely a compromise, at least in my opinion.
I am not sure why this is, but I think a large part of it is that it sounds much better to rail against Facebook than to say "I don't like the outcomes when large groups of people are allowed to talk to each other online without intermediaries." But really, the second thing is what you are typically actually saying.
In my opinion facebook is very beneficial to society, so I find it strange that such a strong negative claim, stated as a fact, yet only a matter of personal opinion is left unchallenged.
To be clear, I’d love a less powerful apple, but it has to be a solution that can still lead to users actual wants overriding a behemoth like facebook. I don’t know if that’s asking to have my cake and eat it too.
"Oho!" said the pot to the kettle;
"You are dirty and ugly and black!
Sure no one would think you were metal,
Except when you're given a crack."
"Not so! not so!" kettle said to the pot;
"'Tis your own dirty image you see;
For I am so clean – without blemish or blot –
That your blackness is mirrored in me."- slowing down customer-purchased devices before pushing new devices to the market. Not every Apple user wants, needs or can afford new phone every year or two
- forcing users into SaaS model via secretive security updates. One can't have secure device (well, secured up-to-date, not saying that fully updated iPhone is secure) without Apple gutting existing software, changing UI/UX and doing whatever they please on the device customer has paid for, against the customer
- blocking the possibility to upgrade the OS to previous version. IMO many versions of macOS and iOS were downgrades in comparison to previous ones. We couldn't rollback iPhones and now we can't even install macOS that came with the computer. Just the newest one (at least that's my experience: every installer but the newest one crashes at the very end)
- pushing their agendas by forcing EVERY Apple device to download a shitty U2 album because Tim Cook says so. That's what I will remember Tim Cook for the most.
Jobs was not ideal but he had drive and imagination. The company he largely participated in building was something different than your usual corporation. Cook is just an unimaginative pencil pusher.
Making this point throws the rest of your comment into question. This isn't at all a fair telling of what happened, it was done to prevent phones from shutting off as the battery got older, not some machiavellian plot to get users to upgrade.
> - forcing users into SaaS model via secretive security updates. One can't have secure device (well, secured up-to-date, not saying that fully updated iPhone is secure) without Apple gutting existing software, changing UI/UX and doing whatever they please on the device customer has paid for, against the customer
What are you even talking about here? Please give an example
> - blocking the possibility to upgrade the OS to previous version. IMO many versions of macOS and iOS were downgrades in comparison to previous ones. We couldn't rollback iPhones and now we can't even install macOS that came with the computer. Just the newest one (at least that's my experience: every installer but the newest one crashes at the very end)
I'm fairly certain you can install back to the version a mac was released with, your issues with downgrading sound like a problem on your end, not apple's. As for the phone I'm conflicted. Honestly I think Apple made the right choice is making the updates one-way for security reasons. Maybe now with the secure enclave there is a safe way to allow for "user-approved" downgrades but I don't know enough to say one way or the other. The goal, of course, is to prevent the ability to downgrade a confiscated/stolen device to a version that has a known-exploit to bypass the lockscreen. With how much sensitive data people have on their phones I have a hard time seeing one-way upgrades as anything but a good thing.
> - pushing their agendas by forcing EVERY Apple device to download a shitty U2 album because Tim Cook says so. That's what I will remember Tim Cook for the most.
It was a failed marketing stunt and people get so worked up about it. Did it really impact your life so negatively? This is what you will remember most about Tim Cook? Ok...
> What are you even talking about here? Please give an example
There's been news in the recent week that users will be able to patch security holes in their Apple devices without full update. That's a step forward but I'm yet to see this in action.
But until this very recent announcement, Apple was always hiding the details of security updates and when user got scared into updating due to security bugs, they got auto-shuffling in iTunes, "upgraded" Notes.app, idiotic UI changes and no longer the possibility to turn off tracking. Remember when there were privacy opt-outs in iOS and macOS installers? I do.
> I'm fairly certain you can install back to the version a mac was released with, your issues with downgrading sound like a problem on your end, not apple's.
First of all, please don't call installing faster and less problematic software "downgrading". Update and upgrade are completely different things. With Apple, updates are often downgrades.
Installing older system was possible until recently but now erasing the disk and putting installation USB stick (that worked previously and wasn't erased/reused for something else) ends up showing random errors at the end of installation.
How do you imagine I made this problem on my end by myself? Do you think I somehow broken my MacBook during parts replacement? The only updates that were made, were software updates made by Apple. They renamed and changed OS installers hanging in /Applications/ dir so why wouldn't they screw up USB installer as soon as it's plugged in, too?
> The goal, of course, is to prevent the ability to downgrade a confiscated/stolen device to a version that has a known-exploit to bypass the lockscreen.
Of course!
> It was a failed marketing stunt
And the most Cook thing Apple did since Jobs' death.
> This is what you will remember most about Tim Cook? Ok...
Yup. The man has no taste nor imagination and makes poor choices.
This is wrong. Apple pushed out a fix that when the phone detects it has crashed due to the soc getting undervolted, they would limit the maximum cpu frequency to avoid the phone having future power failures. This is absolutely what the user wants. There is no point getting full cpu speed if it means the phone just reboots when you use it.
Where they failed was in communication. They should have signalled to the user that this has happened and that they should replace the battery. They now do this and have a whole battery health page.
Communication is a massive problem for megacorps because everything (usually rightfully) becomes a huge deal. But id not be so quick to jump to malice as an explanation.
I have a 3 years old iPhone with no 3rd party apps (recently removed Uber.app), unused Safari and few email accounts. Apart from emails, I'm using it as a phone. I'm not a heavy smartphone user and never was.
As far as I'm aware the CPU is not throttled but the phone is so slow (even after factory reset and update to current iOS) that waking screen up takes 4-6 seconds. Buying new device with Apple logo is the last thing on my mind when my "perfectly good" 3yo iPhone is getting artificially aged.
But most users are paying those fuckers just because their "old" iPhone got slow.
I guess highly personalized ads are too scary to see
Give me a break please...
The issue of wether or not tech companies are too powerful should be one of "The People" vs these companies and we collectively decide what should be and should not be allowed.
Facebook's only interest is reducing any competitors power as much as possible and whilst their argument might have a point, they might not have a point.
This discussion needs to happen and if necessary laws changed but I feel Facebook spearheading this weakens the points made due to their clear conflict of interest.
We as a society need to decide if the benefit of these large tech companies in their current state is truly worth the societal cost.
Facebook being involved in such a fundamental discussion dilutes its importance.
Also funny Facebook calling out another company as too powerful when they have one of the largest databases of personal information that has ever existed. Arguably much larger than the personal information Apple has collected on the world’s population.
At the very least make it "Are they right?" so it's a correct sentence.
Their strategy to owning the platform now seems to me not to be “owning” the legislative and political platform through lobbying. If they can’t own the OS/Browser they are running on, then they want to “own” the legislation that governs it.
If your competitors own the platform better to leapfrog them and attempt to gain control though lobbying for legislative limitations.
Having your no2/3 in the company being a former Deputy British Prime Minister, only shows how important the political and legislative situation is to the long term stability of them as a company.
Or, you know, Android.
They're certainly trying their hardest with the Oculus Quest, and they're doing a good job of providing the cheapest headset out there, and arguably the best in some ways. I wouldn't count them out of the picture on that just yet.
However I don’t believe the market in VR/AR is as large as they think it could become. Unless I’m missing something obvious.
THE METAVERSE: A Guide to the Future of Capitalism
It's different for everyone, but for me in order of trust its Apple, Google, and FB is a distant distant last with almost anyone else you throw in there.
For me it boils down to these companies' business models. Google and Facebook make their money by providing a free service and selling access to the data of their users. In that sense, I am not their customer, but rather their product, being sold to advertisers. My use of Google and Facebook services mostly boils down to a lack of viable alternatives, because nobody can really compete with "free" on the scale these players operate at.
Apple's business model is very different. Apple makes their money by selling me hardware, and access to their ecosystem through that hardware. I am the customer, not the product, and that is reflected in how Apple treats their users. Apple are big fans of creating vendor lock-in with a walled-garden approach to their ecosystem, but they also know that they only get away with this as long as their customers are satisfied enough not to look for alternatives. So while I do not find this arrangement ideal, I do find it considerably more honest and palatable than what Facebook is offering.
FB and Google are using my data to sell to advertisers.
With that said, I'm not a Google hater. For my personal ranking Apple > Google >>>>>>>>>>>>>> FB. And following that model I have Apple devices, use Google, and haven't logged into FB in years.
Google is at least clear, that they will suck in any data, they can get. But most of their clients are rather the product and not customers.
And Zuckerberg has literally stated his disrespect for his users from the very beginning. "Dumb fucks to trust him".
What is yours?
It's all a con, to make more apple profits. Its nothing to do with protecting your data, its about storing it with Apple not Facebook.
Some of the things which 3rd party developers complain about Apple requiring are basically "comply with GDPR and no you can’t spam popups to try and bore people into assenting that’s not even allowed by GDPR". Without Apple gatekeeping, I think dark patterns would be the first thing to go wrong.
The "no adult content" rule seems very weird given that web browsers exist, even though I can understand why they would want to project a “family friendly” corporate image. That said, I am aware that my Overton window isn’t going to match America: I live in Berlin, and the spinning billboards here sometimes put erotic massage between family dentists and car repairs. But such things varying by county is still a good reason to have multiple stores with different rules, not just multiple availability zones for the same store.
The encryption rules… well, that’s a USA export requirement, even when neither the developer nor any of the end users is in America, and while I can easily see why the US wants to require it, that’s not going to be acceptable to other governments in the long term. I can easily believe that the EU would demand an EU App Store that has an equivalent requirement but reporting to the EU instead of to the USA, and so on.
That said, the fees structure is likely to be massively complicated by all this. The payment processing fee may be 3% (last time I looked was when Kagi was a payment processor and not a search engine), but the 15/30% that Apple (and on Android, that Google takes even though Android does allow other app stores) charges, also covers free use of iCloud databases, makes Xcode a free download, and likely helps pay for the development of the iOS/iPadOS/watchOS family the same way the same fees on the Play Store probably help develop Android.
There's room to quibble with my 3% number, but it can't stay 30%, that seems obvious at this point. I disagree that the 30% charge is what makes Apple able to provide those free things. I pay for my Apple Developer Account annually, so while XCode is free to download, distributing my app is not. Apple's hundreds of billions in idle cash to the point where they are flirting with becoming a bank also begs to differ that these fees are necessary to keep the App Store affordable. It's a very profitable business, and I don't begrudge them wanting to keep it, but I would support pressure to reduce fees.
If you lose your Facebook account, it's annoying but recoverable.
Apple has control over your phone, your passwords, your photos, your music, your emails, your credit cards/payment methods. And you can backup nothing of it in a usable way. Without a working Apple account any iPhone is as good as a brick.
If FB goes nuclear on me, I will lose the main platform to discover local events (like gigs, festivals, meetups and such), pretty much the only social media for a hobby of mine (photography) and the most popular messenger used by family members (ok, I could probably convince them to move elsewhere) and lots of local group chats (multiple attempts to move those group chats on telegram ultimately failed). Most of it is irreplaceable because FB killed off most of the competition.
Compare it to Apple where you can just use Android and forget Apple exists at all.
Or perhaps we could have a regulatory regime that doesn't press every consumer into becoming an e-peasant of one of five mega corps.
You have to choose among Google or Apple though, and both could just randomly ban you over night and make all your data inaccessible. If Google banned me I wouldn't be able to use my bank account without buying an iPhone/Mac or reinstalling Windows. And at this rate Windows will soon also be only usable with an account.
This kind of limitation is bad and will cause a lot of unnecessary, expensive problems before regulations catch up.
there were quite a few stories about kids being ostracized from groups because they started to bully each other over lack of messaging features. Certainly not the worst thing imaginable but Apple's apps do have network effects.
https://www.theverge.com/2022/1/10/22876067/google-apple-ios...
This doesn't change the reality that Apple has too much power. Just because it's possible to not use Apple doesn't mean we should ignore that one company has nearly complete and unchecked control over the digital lives of more than half of the US population, as well as a massive chunk of the tech industry as a whole.
Green bubble exclusion absolutely, 100% is a real thing.
Facebook’s influence over billions of people’s lives is far more insidious. What that platform peddles influences countries’ political futures. It is absolutely a gatekeeper of ideas to an extent AOL or the proprietary MSN of old could never imagine. Less charitable people could even call it a privately owned memetic weapon.
> Without a working Apple account any iPhone is as good as a brick.
Lots of people have iPhones without Apple accounts — they’re corporate “managed” iPhones. I appreciate the desire to decouple from Apple’s services, but it’s a stretch to say that you’re locked in. In fact, most iPhone users don’t use all of Apple’s services can quite easily move to Android with only a little effort.
If there’s enough consensus though that Apple’s policies are harming users, then I’m sure legislators can require Apple to (say) allow users to decouple from Apple services.
I’m not seeing it though. There are places with Apple goes overboard, eg the “must pay via Apple” is being attacked by legislation already (eg in the Netherlands), and better App Store policies will probably help as well, as long as they don’t open the door to malware. But to say that Apple is worse than Facebook feels like a very skewed perspective.
I'm coming from a Apple HW user perspective. This means that, yes, if Apple locked me out, I would have trouble using my machines. But I'm not an services user (music, TV or iCloud). So nothing would be lost from my digital life and it is elsewhere and well backed up.
On the other hand, I genuinely despair at the amount of public services (at least in Europe), community services and businesses that require me to have a Facebook account to interact with them.
The quickest way to reach a local politician might be leave a message on a local FB group. Some segments of society (and some age groups) just _assume_ _everyone _ is on FB. FB is _not_ a public service.
Can you give examples?
> The quickest way to reach a local politician
Doesn't mean that it is the only one. There are still alternatives. If you feel that using Facebook is wrong, the solution is not to use Facebook and complain about it. The solution is to stay away from it and send a clear signal that Facebook is not the proper channel.
Out of the big tech corporations Apple over all is more trust worthy than google, facebook, amazon. Of course getting LineageOS/Debian on Librium type of phone would be preferable.
Someone getting into your FB account can ruin your complete social life, if you were relying on FB too much. Could also ruin your job perspectives and thus financial security.
Not merely annoying. Self-inflicted mostly, yes, but definitely serious.
What??? Maybe you're referring to one or two countries. Facebook is the gatekeeper for billions of people's (online) lives around the world. With WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, Messenger, etc., the influence that Meta has is huge. It's far larger than Apple in terms of number of people who rely on it.
Maybe OP was referring to https://www.apple.com/apple-card/ ?
> And for photos and music, and even passwords there are alternative services, no one forces you to use Apple provided ones.
Apple has a real tight lockdown on what gets published to iOS devices and ships defaults built to the OS so I don't really buy this argument. Microsoft got punished for way less back in the day (eg. IE bundling vs being forced to use webkit for your rendering engine...)
I kinda think everyone should do this...
- First I got a custom domain email address that I own and control (like name@myname.com).
- Then I set up what's basically a burner account with a popular email service just so I could take advantage of the web UX (it could be gmail or whatever, I don't really care). This email address never gets used or exposed. The account is merely a forwarding bucket that I can use to check my email in a browser.
- My personal email all gets forwarded to the burner address (at the host level). The burner (gmail or whatever) acct is configured to send from my personal address.
- I have the account set up in outlook so I can access/backup emails locally.
I'm not really worried about losing access to my web mail account but I've read horror stories and the cost of that scenario is just intolerable so, if I did, I would just set up another account with the same or a different service, forward my personal email to the new address, add it to outlook, and drag all my existing emails in to the new account. I don't even need to worry about accessing my existing emails because they're all backed up locally.
Sidenote: as part of this process, I quit filing my emails in folders (search is good enough to find any email these days). I just put all my read emails in a single flat folder called archive. This makes it a lot easier to keep my inbox clean (no more meticulous filing) and easier to migrate if I ever need to (different services have different implementations and restrictions around folders - but a bunch of emails in a single folder is universally deal-with-able.).
I haven't noticed any negative impact since giving facebook the boot
Apple goes a long way to sabotage and make sure what you're saying is not the case.
You're not even allowed to use a browser that Apple isn't in control of. You're even forced to use Apple for payments. Apple even dictates what content an app is allowed to contain.
Tell that to the large portion of the world living where government services, clubs, community and social events, second hand markets, contact with family or communication without usurious data charges are unavailable without a facebook or facebook subsidiary account.
At least with apple you can just use a different phone. If all of the social activity in your area operates over facebook you can't get a new social graph that isn't owned by them.
I think Facebook inciting genocide is being more of a literal gatekeeper of lives than Apple allowing porn on their app store. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebo... https://about.fb.com/news/2018/11/myanmar-hria/
This is why no one could ever convince me to buy an Apple product.
This gets repetitive but: only if you let them. I’m not even sure you need an Apple ID to use an iPhone either, although you will for the App Store. Everything else is extra: iCloud, Apple Music, iCloud email, the Apple Wallet. Your Dropbox, Spotify, email host and credit cards don’t just fall into an abyss when you create an Apple ID.
Apple has what you give them. That’s true for every single one of their customers. Contrast that with Facebook that built shadow profiles before people even had accounts because the websites you visited and apps you used were relaying information back to them.
"everything"? why would you lose anything at all?
From my example, you can see that you have a choice about what you want to be controlled by Apple.
People forget about the carrier bit.
Whatever happens on the 'internets', well, carriers can bill for.
If the 'internets' becomes all that more indispensable, your MB/s rate just doubled.
It's not particularly competitive, and those carriers also own content, and other parts of the value chain.
Though their profitability may be lower, their revenues are not, they are just as powerful as Apple.
There needs to be more competition among carriers.
Then we can also apply some rules to Apple and Google about dividing up the value chain so that 'apps' and 'hardware/os' compete on independent layers.
Nobody in the smartphone ecosystem is on your side. They see all your packets, they monitor your web usage, they track your movements, …. Some sell hardware and they all “provide services” that exist to scrape data and sell ads.
All you really need is a web browser and a phone and I thought both could,e with all smartphones?
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-fbi-icloud-exclusiv...
"Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize."
EDIT: looking through older comments, it sounds like it originally had a '?' that they later replaced with a '.' .
> But Apple also sometimes decides to sabotage its encryption, in ways that expose its customers to terrible risk.
Somewhat tangential note but this level of nuance in an article is just confusing. Why are they presenting an entire new argument (in the second quote) to refute the premise of their basis for rejecting the previous one? They dump this argument and move on to a completely unrelated point in the next paragraph, which frustrates me. Also, the second quote has "sabotage its encryption" and "expose its customers to terrible risk" as hyperlinks, meaning they are linking to entire write ups of why they believe this. I'm sure there is merit to the point, but why briefly mention such a bombshell point as an offhand comment in this article? Makes it much harder to read-- I feel like my attention is being pulled in a lot of different directions.
Serious question: What are some of the rivals of FB these days ?
As for Apple, at least there are other, in many cases more powerful, mobile devices available, making the jump to Android from Apple isn't the big learning curve it once was. From a users perspective it's not that big of a deal usually.
From a developers point of view - there is a discussion Apple need to consider around how much they gatekeep developers. Anyone who's developed for the AppStore knows the pain. And to add on top of that extremely high fees, it's a wonder there are any 'indie' / smaller developers at all.
Google, other major ad exchanges.
Consumer facing: Tiktok, Twitter, Snapchat, LinkedIn
Though I totally agree that Apple is not the privacy deity they claim to be, it's funny hearing complaints from Facebook which is far worse. It says several times that Facebook is totally right. Which is true but it ignores the bigger picture here. Facebook is by far the worst actor out of the two and their arguments are total hypocrisy.
I also don't like their approach around do not track which aimed at trying to find a middle ground between us and the advertisers that have been abusing our privacy for years. For me it's gone far beyond collaboration and trust. I don't think anything will come from this.
To everyone pointing out the hypocrisy, please read the whole article. The balance of blame and level of mutual hypocrisy is established pretty early, and reiterated throughout.
Why do you think the '?' would be "inspired by legal"?
Enough said...
"Facebook says x is too powerful"...get out of my face, if FB could've been they would have been the most powerful, unethical company imaginable.
Facebook is winging because they're losing, good.
People choose to buy iPhones, they generally don't choose to be tracked and targeted in a predatory manner online. If people want different app stores (I've almost never heard anyone say they do), they can buy another phone from another vendor.
Facebook should instead spend more money and more effort to entice users to give this data that they used to get for free. To say that Apple has too much power is ridiculous. Apple and Facebook are orthogonal to each other in terms of markets so it's not even an anti-trust issue, it affects all companies that were used to this free data.
Facebook was banning people for suggesting that the "lab leak" COVID theory has merit. It was recently endorsed by the WHO.
A taste of their own medicine. Hopefully they choke and die (the company, not the people).
In my opinion, social networks should only censor what is illegal, where ordered by a judge, and leave everything else alone. Otherwise we have private entities like Facebook making these kinds of decisions for us - why would anyone want that?
If 3rd party app stores are introduced it’ll just create fragmentation, a race to the bottom on App Store commissions, and significantly reduce the quality and quantity of apps available on the 1st party store - which I would very much prefer to stay locked in to.
This scenario creates more problems than it solves.
I've been a "member" myself for over 10 years.
If you want your 'secure' alternative to gain traction, it has to be less work. I agree security is more important than convenience in a moral sense, but not when influencing large bodies of people.
“Nearly all iOS users opted out of tracking”
It’s 86%, not 96% as mentioned in the linked article: https://www.flurry.com/blog/ios-14-5-opt-in-rate-att-restric...
There are also downsides, and pretty much the only reason that it's a serious problem is that Apple's products are so great that there's very little competition. That's about the long and short of it. Apple has no control over which Apps you run. It has total control over which Apps you run on an iPhone. Which you know when you buy the phone. I'm as much of a hostage to Apple as I am a hostage to my local pub in terms of which Beers they have on tap. I knew that when I walked into the pub.
You know what isn't helpful in discussing these issues, framing the entire argument around a malign competitor of Apple. This article does a great job of presenting the arguments against Apple in the least helpful way possible.
This isn't true, because Apple's influence means that developers on other platforms based on Apple's requirements because moderating in different fashions depending on reception device is basically impossible.
Lots of social networks actively discriminate against groups in society due to the Apple App Store terms across the entire service, and have for years.
After apple and google, facebook can be next on the list.
The reason: Apple stopped updating it, a certificate on it had expired making half of websites blocked by Chrome.
The hardware is still working fine, but Apple want to retired it’s own hardware so they can sell more.
True.
Good.
It's called competition and strategic positioning. I'm willing to entertain that Apple have too much power. But to hear this coming from Facebook?
* throws complaint out *
* case dismissed *
I think it is a sensible take. Facebook is basically rotten to the core. Apple engages in lots of not-so-great behavior. If Apple had some non-evil competition, I'm sure we'd be less forgiving of them.
Apple should be given a massive punitive fine for preventing app sideloading. This is disgusting anti-competitive behaviour.
That’s why they have the market dominance across such a broad range of products. No one else come close.
that said, easier said than done... but at least the ideal we should probably be striving for.
That's not a policy intervention, that's a potential goal of a policy intervention.
My criticism isn’t about right or wrong. It’s about priorities and weaponizing the corporations and business practices the EFF should work against.
In 1948, the government brought an antitrust lawsuit to trial against Paramount pictures [1] in order to address vertical integration in the movie distribution system. At the time, theatres were either owned by studios or had to buy "packages" of films. In effect, no theatre could show the best films from multiple studios. They had to choose one production company to buy a package from and that was that. Small studios and independents were effectively blocked from showing their films. The government won, and that's why cinemas can actually show films from multiple studios and independents today.
Apple now owns their platform down to the chipset and CPU. They jealously guard their spare parts supply chain and have tried to muscle out independent repair services, while designing their products with planned obsolescence as a main goal. The same sort of anti-competitive practices that once kept indie films from being shown are now used to stifle competition for Apple's offerings in multiple spaces. They even produce their own films and TV shows now! Want to watch them someplace other than Apple TV? There are no legal alternatives to installing Apple TV. The vertical integration in Apple is just as bad as it was in 1940's hollywood, but movies are just one of the spaces Apple is trying to dominate.
We can argue that users still have choice. They can choose to use alternative streaming services. (They just can't watch anything made by Apple Studios). They can choose alternative hardware or OS's. etc. However, it's clearly not Apple's preference that users have those choices. They just have succeeded in squeezing out the competition yet.
If Microsoft building Internet Explorer into Windows merited an antitrust suit just twenty years ago, why haven't we seen an antitrust suit brought to bear against Apple for doing far worse? Given what companies like Apple and, yes, Facebook have done in recent years, perhaps it's time for governments to, once again, start advocating for the consumers that vote them into power.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor....
[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pic....
As soon as Apple allows / is forced to allow other app stores, if ever, Facebook might tell their users "for the full experience, install Facebook from this alternative app store that allows tracking". It seems to me there's no good ending for this story.
The choice for me is obvious and simple. Avoid both of these companies.
On the other hand we have Apple. A company with a 14% market share in the mobile market that has restricted Facebooks ability to track users outside of Facebook.
For the good of Facebook, Apple must be stopped. -Putin, probably.
When I hear people criticize FB for "destabilizing democracy" or "spreading propaganda" what I generally hear is: "Having ordinary people able to communicate to each other without review by media &/or government is dangerous for our society." Can you distinguish your critique from that?
Facebook is a place for a corporation to decide what you see, regardless of the impact on society. Maximum engagement at all costs.
I would be happy to see Facebook revert to their original feed which only showed you content from your direct friends and in reverse chronological order. Facebook is indistinguishable from opinion journalism but they’re allowed to masquerade as a social media site to avoid being treated as the news publisher they undeniably act as.
A detail I don't find insignificant - they haven't restricted facebook at all. They put the option to the user. I don't see it as Apple's fault that 80-90% of users prefer to opt-out.
physical stores like target and walmart use their pricing power all the time.
the issue seems to be companies like capitalism when its working in their favor but complain and ask for regulation when they dont have the upper hand. the first step would be introduce rules that limits the amount on money going into politics and then change rules that encourages competition and stifle monopolies. which is fundamentally very difficult to do in a globalized free market capitalistic economy.
- US: 51%
- EU: 30%
- Asia: 17%
I suppose that makes sense since it's the main local manufacturer, whereas in Korea that would be Samsung with a whopping share of 65%. Apple would probably be way higher in the US if they didn't make overpriced closed-ecosystem stuff.
I strongly suspect they will buy the cheaper and possibly shittier Android. Even though it won't last as long. Those monthly payments are a drag yo.
Look I'm glad you like the iPhone, but to say its the greatest product in all of human history is a touch hyperbolic. Yes its a great bit of engineering, but its not like it singularly went from 0-100 by it's self.
Let us not forget, the only thing innovative on the original iphone was the large touch screen. Everything else was a compromise. The battery, the CPU, the RAM, the ability to run apps, all of them were no where near as good as the nearest rival.
But Apple managed to catch up enough to appear ahead of the curve, and well done to them. But let us not forget that without android, the iPhone would never have advanced. (Dont read this as me being an android fanboi, I have never owned one...)
But to the point, in terms of greatest product, I suspect its probably either modern farming (and infra, so tractors) or something medical.
...and a full-featured WebKit browser. That was huge.
A friend, or actually a homeless acquaintance, of mine was charged with theft of public utilities because he was caught charging his ancient laptop into a city receptical that was put near the street to electrify Christmas lights.
He was one of the original Programmers of Word Star.
He got zero credit on his contributions though.
He ended up homeless even though he was a decent Programmer.
It always bothered me the way San Rafael Cops would harass him seemingly daily.
It can all go to shit very fast.
Which "products" are you comparing iPhone to that makes you believe it's the greatest product in human history? Granted, human history is not that long in perspective, but I can think of countless of other things that are "greater", so curious what your perspective is on this.
I'm a long term Apple user and but I think this is rather overstating things - do people really feel so strongly attached to what is, after all, a manufacturer of rather nifty gadgets, not a way of life.