Comment by expensive_news | Hacker News Reader

Comment by expensive_news | Hacker News Reader

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Frankly I don’t see how this legislation could possibly bring massive good. For one I like my iPhone how it is and don’t see how I could possibly benefit from this passing.

As an American I think regulation should only be enacted when absolutely necessary, and these laws seem anything but necessary. I’ve rarely seen convincing cases of innovation being stifled or people being harmed by Apple’s walled garden approach. It’s clearly not a market failure because (1) it is extremely profitable and (2) it is not a monopoly. As you can see in this thread, tons of people prefer differently, and those people can buy Androids. I also don’t like how this EU legislation mainly targets American companies.

Forcing Apple to allow other voice assistants will only strengthen Google and Amazons dominance in the voice assistant ecosystem.

Forcing messaging apps to allow cross compatibility only will give them more of my unencrypted messages.

I could go on, but I’m very curious what all of these “massive goods” that I’m not seeing are.

It cost me ~$600 in app purchases to switch from Android to Apple. So “just buy a different OS if you don’t like it” is not a reasonable solution unless you only have free software and it is also free on your target OS. The fact that these licenses can’t be transferred is part of the problem (though I’m not sure that is even addressed in this legislation).

You don’t personally have to benefit from this legislation, you can stay in an “official” configuration until the day you die. For some of us, this opens the door to have a FOSS App Store, or custom apps without having to rebuild them once a week.

I bet you would have said the same thing when Microsoft killed browser competition decades ago using its Windows dominance. Fortunately, the govt acted against Microsoft.

If Microsoft continued its monopolistic practices, it's very likely that the iPhone that you like so much now won't be existing today.

Apple, Google, Microsoft, constantly buy, "sponsor" or sue competitors (whatever is cheapest) in order to keep their monopoly. All innovation is killed or at best assimilated (Star Trek Borg style). It's a bit funny that we ended up with two major platforms for smartphones... Microsoft did have a good grip on the smartphone market before Apple and Google entered, but they couldn't simply buy Apple or Google in order to keep their monopoly, nor can Google buy Apple or vice versa. But they can kill anyone else that tries to innovate.

> Forcing Apple to allow other voice assistants will only strengthen Google and Amazons dominance in the voice assistant ecosystem.

I don't even know what to say to this. Backwards thinking? Apple employee speaking? I seriously wonder why you would use this argument.

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