Spotify CEO renews attack on Apple after Musk's salvo | Hacker News Reader

Spotify CEO renews attack on Apple after Musk's salvo

reuters.com

496 pointsnixcraft876 comments

I want the option to control my devices. I don’t understand the arguments that claim Apple needs to rule the device with an iron fist. What problems does it cause to make the locked down experience the default with the option for me to disable that and take control of the device after I buy it?

I want to own my stuff. I want to repair it and I want complete control over it. I think that in 10 years we’ll all have cars with a half dozen subscriptions forced on us and the apologists will still be here telling us how 10 companies all doing the exact same thing to deprive us of true ownership is a healthy, competitive market.

The car industry already has subscription services; Volvo, Porsche, Jaguar/Land Rover, Genesis, Nissan, all have subscription plans. Don't like those? Go down to most car dealers and you can get a short term subscription called a lease...

Funny how the world hasn't ended because of this. Just go buy an Android phone if you don't like Apple's walled garden.

The issue is when you buy an apple phone you're not leasing it.

The car industry is going to change drastically in the next decade and it's going to result in much higher ownership costs, especially for used car buyers. The schemes that are going to ruin ownership for a lot of people are just starting.

The manufacturers are all going to start locking features behind subscriptions. Things like heated seats, navigation, phone integration, performance, etc. will be premium features with a monthly fee. You may even pay extra for better audio or things like that. If enough people tolerate it, you may even end up with subscriptions for things like the sunroof.

Once all of that is in place, they'll include X years of subscriptions in a new vehicle, so the first owner doesn't really notice the increased cost if they get another new vehicle after X years.

As a secondhand buyer, I have to pay a non-discounted subscription for (ex) heated seats if I want that feature. The value of the heated seats won't depreciate alongside the car like it does now. If anything, the cost will go up.

That means the resale value of the car for the original owner is lower. They're selling something closer to a base model, even if they had all the premium features unlocked while they owned the car.

On the dealer side, they'll make it attractive for the original owner to trade in for a new car and it'll likely be by adding some incentives that revolve around the subscriptions because they don't really cost anything to activate, but they have a lot of value to the vehicle owner.

That will have the effect of consolidating used car sales to major dealers who can offer better value with less cost than 3rd party or private (used) sellers because they can add value via subscription incentives with (near) $0 cost.

The total cost of owning a vehicle is going to increase significantly in the next decade and a huge part of that is going to be done by leveraging post-sales subscriptions to damage / monopolize the secondhand market.

You are absolutely correct, and I have no intention of abiding by this new way of vehicle ownership.

You can pry my carburetor from my cold, dead hands!

Carburetors are awful. Stop blasting fuel into the air.

It was a joke, but my carb'd car probably blasts less fuel into the air in one year than your fuel injected car.

Why? Because it's always broken down.

Added to that, wait until all cars are electric, and they filter down the secondhand market.

The average price of a 10-year old car in the UK, as of Sept 2022, is £6100 - pretty much the same as a replacement battery pack, which will be due after 8-10 years.

That’s going to have quite an effect on 3rd owners of cars, who buy 8-10 year old cars, especially if they have the added costs of subscriptions to deal with.

It’s already environmentally worse to buy a newly built electric car than it is to keep your current gas one (or buy a used one).

The battery wear problem only makes this worse.

The real solution is of course to heavily reduce our reliance on cars but highways and stroads keep being built.

Seems like they might not do it in unison.

Probably a big prize to defect once people start to catch on that it sucks.

(I will certainly shop pretty aggressively if they do shit as stupid as you describe there)

> What problems does it cause to make the locked down experience the default with the option for me to disable that and take control of the device after I buy it?

Facebook will demand you use FacebookStore, which will NOT force apps transparency. THAT is the issue!

And you'd still have the choice to install it or not. Android still allows their users to sideload apps, and it hasn't been the apocalypse.

The core idea is choice.

> Android still allows their users to sideload apps, and it hasn't been the apocalypse.

"Not being the apocalypse" is a pretty low bar. Is it not the case that Android has a much worse history of problems with third-party software, including security, privacy, battery life, etc.?

Indeed, it is not the case. Android has far more apps that respect privacy than iOS has, and (unlike iOS) it lets you set them as defaults.

I don't really see the difference between Facebook leveraging their social network platform to strong arm users into using a Facebook store and Apple leveraging their hardware platform to strong arm users into using the Apple app store. Both of them are bad for users.

I think the way things would shake out is that most app developers would want to have their app in as many stores as possible. Combine that with stores competing to have the largest app selection and you have a much healthier market. Having app stores compete for developers and users would be amazing for everyone except the current app store owners.

I don't think we should avoid demanding a better market for developers and users just because there are a couple of companies like Facebook that might try to abuse their market position to popularize their own app store.

The difference is that Facebook is in the market of mining your soul so whatever store they would create it would be targeted to that and the rules and policies will make sure that they are able to reach that goal.

Apple is in the business of selling phones and has decided that a good strategy for them is to protect the privacy of users against data miners. So their store and payment system by default protect users against practices of data collections.

> Having app stores compete for developers and users would be amazing for everyone except the current app store owners

It would be good for developers, not for users. I don’t think a single non-developer user is grasping for having multiple ways to download and install an app, and having to search for multiple stores with multiple payment systems to get one software. For users, the “iPhone” allows to download apps; none of them gives a thought to the fact that it happens via a single “store”.

Apple is in the business of selling your eyes. They just also happen to sell the glasses, too.

I don't think Apple's strong arming me into using their store. I understand the deal, and I'm happy with it!

I struggle to see how a free market for stores would improve my situation. Clearly the big software vendors won't pay someone a cut unless they have to. So they would either need their own stores, or they'd need an alternative store that didn't take a cut. But if the alternative store doesn't take a cut, how do they afford to moderate the content? It would clearly be a race to the bottom.

Has that happened on Android?

Why does Google Play charge 30% and why are the apps there?

This does not happen on Android. 3 eryine uses Google play store or the phone manufacturer one that gets pre-installed.

Making Apple the cop to fight your fights is not going to solve anything, nor teach anyone anything about privacy. Its the milk bottle that will keep people pacified sucking at the teat of a corporation, while the executives line their pockets setting up a toll booth on the app store.

No one is stopping you from buying a Linux based phone?

I'm an avid Linux user and an avid Apple user, and I think both systems have their merits.

If I had to have only one it would be Linux.

>No one is stopping you from buying a Linux based phone?

What is this supposed to be an argument for? Do you think this is an own? Is this statement made in good faith? Did you really let your 10th grade economics teacher tell you what a "monopoly" was and then never question either the usefulness or the validity of the definition?

You can't argue for a particular feature then when someone offers you a device that has that feature argue that they are acting in bad faith.

There is a difference between an monopoly and a moat. I think the previous statement is saying that if you want to own your phone you can choose a different path and apple probably isn't the phone you should choose.

Yes, quite simple isn't it?

What the parent is likely trying to point out is that Apple has no obligation to give you the feature the way you want it (in fact, Apple seems to view not providing flexibility as the feature). If you feel this strongly about the feature, then using a different phone (which there are many) is available.

> that Apple has no obligation to give you

> If you feel this strongly about the feature, then using a different phone

Actually, instead of that, citizens of a nation are free to vote for anti-trust, and pro competition laws that force Apple, under threat of government force, to stop engaging in certain actions.

We did it for the railway monopolies a century ago, and we can do it again, by updating our anti trust laws to new era.

It's been a century. It is about time that our existing and uncontroversial anti monopoly laws got updated.

Some laws have already been past, in the EU, for example, that do this. In the EU, because of the digital markets act, people will be able to bypass the Apple app store in less than a year.

Cool, so break one of the only stable, reliable, useful and mostly secure devices people have in their life by "forcing" a company to do things against their will?

Why not just throw our the US government and install the CCP too?

We did it for the railway monopolies a century ago, and we can do it again, by updating our anti trust laws to new era.

There are very few places in the world with good trains, unless you're referring to one of them, your argument is pretty weak. Especially if you're in the USA. The trains suck and I hope my devices don't go the same way.

...This again is coming from someone who works with and on open source software, is an avid long term Linux user and owns many "open" hardware devices...

> so break one of the only stable, reliable, useful

No, people would be free to use the Apple App store if they want.

Apple simply wouldn't be able force the world to pay them 30% of everything anymore. Theyd have to compete on their merits, and people would now have full ownership of their own phone.

> The trains suck and I hope my devices don't go the same way.

So, what, you just support the railway monopoly and oppose the Sherman antitrust act? Please explicitly say whether or not you think the Sherman anti trust act, should be repealed, and all monopolies in the world, and anti competitive behavior, should be legal.

But let's try a different example, since apparently you support the railway monopoly.

I would hope, that you would oppose it Microsoft put a 30% fee on every online transaction, and kicked off all competing web browsers that tried to get around it.

Imagine if every computer in the world, you could only use internet explorer, and they forced you to pay them 30%, and use IE.

Surely you'd have to admit that this should be illegal, for such a monopoly to be enforced like that?

> Why not just throw our the US government and install the CCP too?

The Sherman anti-trust act is a pretty uncontroversial law. Surely you can't be saying that our existing uncontroversial anti trust laws, that have been around for a century, are the same as laws in China?

> This again is coming from someone who works with and on open source software

Then you should support people being allowed to do what they want, with their own phone.

You are the one who supports authoritarianism, if you oppose people being able to control their own device, that they purchased.

> Imagine if every computer in the world, you could only use internet explorer, and they forced you to pay them 30%, and use IE.

Absolutely nothing like this is happening though, so what's your point? I run Firefox on my iPhone, it's free?

> But let's try a different example, since apparently you support the railway monopoly.

I don't support the railway monopoly you're putting words in my mouth. I'm saying that breaking it up did nothing really useful. Shit trains still exist.

> Absolutely nothing like this is happening though, so what's your point?

I am saying that the fact that this is illegal, because of the sherman anti-trust act, is a good thing. Anti-trust laws are not some crazy, extreme example of authoritarianism.

Therefore, because I hope you can agree that it is good that we use government force, to prevent this, you cannot act in fake shock outrage, at the idea of using uncontroversial, and obviously good laws, such as the sherman anti-trust act.

> I run Firefox on my iPhone, it's free?

Apple prevents you from using your own phone to pay for apps that do not give them the 30% fee.

So, because Apple, in an authoritarian way, does not let you use your own property in this way, without a 30% fee paid to them, this is similar to another example of Microsoft not allowing you to install anything at all on your home PC, without paying them a 30% fee.

You seem to be trying very hard to convince me Apple truly is an evil company and without the government, it won't be. This is why I'm not keen to continue this thread.

This type of hyperbolic sentence: So, because Apple, in an authoritarian way, does not let you use your own property in this way, doesn't strengthen your argument, it weakens it.

Don't get my wrong, I understand it, Apple phones aren't an open source utopia where you can do whatever you like with it, you know as good as me that it's peoples choice to participate in that type of system and many choose to own a locked down device as a trade off for security, stability and convenience. People aren't rioting in the streets over this.

_People are choosing to enter the Apple eco-system for various reasons, there's no "Authoritarian regime" forcing you to use an iPhone._

Apple is popular because they make good products as far as I'm concerned and that's part of living in a free society. That someone can start a company that is successful like Apple and that people are allowed to buy Apple products, or not buy them.

> I run Firefox on my iPhone, it's free?

Actually, you run Safari. Firefox and Chrome on iOS are just Safari with some different browser chrome. This happens because Apple has banned all other browser and JavaScript engines on iOS other than their own. Gecko, SpiderMonkey, Blink, etc are all banned on iOS.

Mozilla isn't able to actually bring real Firefox to iOS because of this, and has to settle with a reskinned Safari parading around as Firefox in order to stay relevant. Same thing goes for Google and Chrome, it's just browser chrome on top of Safari's browser engine.

It's a good point, but I feel ok with it at the moment.

I don't know that I agree because for things like railways there were real physical limitations and privatization led to real restriction on commerce. There was literally no other way to compete with rail at the time.

Today, there is, in my own opinion, plenty of ways to compete with Apple's ecosystem. Android is the most obvious, but we also have the ability to build much better web and mobile web experiences to compete with apps. To quote another commenter, "it isn't Apple's fault the competition is not any good"

To be clear, I don't agree with Apple's honestly draconian cut on payments and app revenue, but I also don't think it is illegal. I think the competition needs to step up OR companies need to reconsider how much they are attaching their revenue stream to Apple's world. I see this as clear business maneuvering by companies who can't/don't see an easier way to grow than to attack the rails upon which they built their products (and the rules were clear when they started!! -- this isn't a surprise fee...)

Standard Oil has no obligation to give you oil the way you want it. If you feel this strongly about oil, then using a different oil provider (which there are many) is available.

Is there not an alternative to buying an iPhone? 80% of the phone market is non iOS.

And what is that 80% comprised of? It's not much of an alternative when both parties are squeezing 30% out of those of us who do mobile development.

You can sideload on Android devices

It's not Apple's problem the competition is mediocre, you advocating for the tearing up of Apple means we are left with only mediocre options, is that what you want?

Yes, that's what I want. I don't understand how there are so many Apple apologists on a hacker forum where ostensibly I'd have expected people would want to, you know, control their devices.

You want to control your device, others don't care for it. Live with it?

This is actually why people who are absolutists (you), scare me, because in a way, you're advocating for free an open devices, and asking for the government to step in to ensure this happens while actually acting like the authoritarian you claim to hate by forcing your beliefs onto others.

People should be free to choose what type of device they have without you telling people that shouldn't be allowed to choose.

I believe my argument is better than yours because I'm advocating for a balance. You can have free, open devices if you want, and if you don't want that you can use more locked down devices that IMO are just fully managed by Apple.Both options has their advantages and disadvantages, so what's the problem?

First, you and I don't ever deal with Standard Oil directly in our day to day lives so this isn't a great example. Perhaps filling gasoline or diesel into our vehicles would be a better comparison and you DO have many choices available there. Don't like the loud ads playing while filling gas... you can choose a different station to fill up.

Yes, it is an argument, if you don't like Apple, if you don't want to be part of their ecosystem, do not fund it. Buy something else. It's your choice as a consumer.

It's especially rich you're against Apple here considering Spotify is also a scourge on many musicians and audiophiles lives too ha.

Spotify wants you to fight against Apple so they can have a nice monopoly on the music industry.

This is the same way Elon wants you to fight for "free speech" so he gets a bigger market share of social media. It's not really about "free speech", it's about Elon getting what he wants.

Wake up to yourself.

I think this is the best long-term solution, but support should also come from Spotify. When Valve saw Windows going in this direction a decade ago, they decided to officially support Linux. And even though the Linux market share is still quite low, it lowered the barrier to switching by quite a lot, essentially acting as a loaded gun forcing Microsoft to behave.

Imagine if Spotify started officially supporting the PinePhone and started advertising that. It wouldn't get many people to switch, but it would start putting pressure on Apple/Google to be a bit less evil.

What really gets me is that even those few people who are in high enough positions in big enough companies to have material benefits from "capturing" customers and making everything "sticky" and as pushy as possible... all of them in turn are customers of dozens, hundreds, thousands of other companies that make their life more complicated than it would need to be, with the same motivation. I would say people, all of us, are having a way worse time than we even know, because we don't have a somewhat sane world to compare to.

IMO there should be a way to allow power users such as yourself to customize your phone, such as how Google allows side-loading. But we can see that based on how niche side loading is that mass-users oriented businesses like Spotify and Twitter would not be happy.

As for users like myself, I'm very happy that Apple intermediates my relationship with big businesses, because in the sphere of negotiation and leverage, big businesses like Walmart or Amazon would win every time for people in my family. They will auto-accept all terms.

Any user should be able to walk away from the original hardware vendor, never contacting them again, and still be able to use the product in a normal way. Otherwise you bought a service, not a product.

Sure, if that's what you actually paid for.

Sure you can walk away from Apple completely like 80% of the world does.

The way I see it the users have two crappy options based on business model:

1) Apple's freedom from inspection: they control your device and their ecosystem because they make money off the ecosystem. The take a cut of the phone/computer/watch you buy then anything you buy in their ecosystem because the ecosystem is their product. Your data is (mostly) safe from advertisers because that's not their business.

2) Google's device freedom: you can do whatever you want with your device because your are the product. Sure you can load a complete separate system of mail and chat clients and not sign into google, but really, will you?

Of course there's option 3, linux. Neither the ecosystem or you is the product, but where's the money in that. No one is going to spend billions of dollars to get you to buy Linux.

Whether Apple or Google (or MS or w/e) is the arch villain is really just a matter of perspective. Is two or three options a great place for consumers? No, of course not, it all sucks. I think a system built around who-gets-the-most-money-wins is the real problem.

Android is Linux.

Android is Linux w/ Malware … omegalol

Android is linux as much as iOS is BSD

What you are referring to isn't Linux. It's Linux + a free desktop compliant userspace. Linux is just a kernel which is in fact shared between both. I'm not sure why the community hasn't come up with a better name to help disambiguate the two.

People talk about the Linux kernel vs linux (the complete system).

I’m not sure why nerds are still litigating this sort of thing years after the who gnu linux thing.

> linux (the complete system)

Like Android?

>I’m not sure why nerds are still litigating this sort of thing years after the who gnu linux thing.

Because most Linux users are no longer interacting with GNU/Linux.

How do you mean? The "Android kernel" is not meaningfully different from the Linux kernel.

4.4BSD however was released in 1993, so iOS would've had decades to diverge from it.

But we'll not know unless they open source it. chuckle

Darwin is open source. Here's the repo for their kernel: https://github.com/apple-oss-distributions/xnu/tree/main. The userspace stuff can be found here: https://github.com/apple-oss-distributions/distribution-macO.... Some stuff that's missing from those links, such as launchd, can be found here: https://github.com/apple-opensource?tab=repositories

With a license that prohibits OEMs from distributing forked versions.

Sure, in the way orcs were elves once.

That's a ridiculous comparison, the Android kernel patchset is tiny https://android.googlesource.com/kernel/common-patches/

It consists of "massive" changes such as:

> Enable writable clock debugfs files which are required for debugging and testing

and

> Allow drivers to register hooks when IPIs are sent and handled. The statistics of these IPIs are helpful in predicting CPU idle states

I suppose any distro backporting fixes is also not Linux? RHEL definitely can't be Linux if Android isn't.

This disagreement is purely about semantics.

In case its not clear, Linux the operating system typically means the Linux kernel plus a set of unix-inspired GPL-licenced userspace tools. Some (still) call this GNU/Linux, although that is a bit of a mouthful.

Android has a completely different userspace to "Linux". The kernel is not the issue.

Well that's silly, the userspace you are talking about is strictly useless on phones. Every single attempt at building a reasonable mobile userspace for GNU/Linux has been a complete failure. What would that even look like? Almost all graphical GNU/Linux tools depend on X11, which is completely unsuited for phones.

But if you want, you can totally install all the GNU userspace tools on Android. Nothing is stopping you from doing that.

Nevertheless, there is something people call "Linux" that is a full OS (rather than just a kernel). Android differs substantially from that.

Just semantics.

Yes, but that is fundamentally incompatible with phones! It's an oxymoron, like a Windows 2000 phone.

Marricks's comment simply does not make any sense if we're to use that definition of "Linux".

Marrick's comment makes even less sense using a definition of Linux that includes Android, since they lists three different options: iOS, Android and Linux.

"No one is going to spend billions of dollars to get you to buy Linux.", Marrick said. Perhaps they were including the resources required to make something that is recognisably Linux that is compatible with phones, and polished enough to be appealing to the average consumer?

>Marrick's comment makes even less sense using a definition of Linux that includes Android, since they lists three different options: iOS, Android and Linux.

They could just have not known this, it's not obvious if you've never tried to open a terminal on an Android phone.

But how is Android not recognisably Linux? You can natively run all the Linux stuff you'd like on Android.

This is false. Sent from my Pinephone with Mobian.

> Your data is (mostly) safe from advertisers because that's not their business.

I think with Apple this ship is slowly sailing, and the tracking will soon be just as bad as Google.

How so? I think their strides in fields like differential privacy show how willing they are to protect their end users.

I personally think their migration to subscription based revenue and advertising says differently (just personal opinion). Were now the product with Apple too, not the customer. We used to pay more to not deal with that.

It seems that advertisers can outbid users to the point that nobody is willing to pay enough to be the customer.

The amount of money in advertising is staggering. Can it actually work that well? Or is this a category of spending that just tends to be greenlit in big companies?

There’s a huge difference, including from a privacy perspective, between subscriptions and internet targeted advertising.

How are you the product, when you’re giving money? That’s like saying, when you buy a ticket to Black Panther, you are the product Hollywood is selling, not the movie.

> How are you the product, when you’re giving money?

Why can't you be both? After all, an advertiser's best target is someone who already has a propensity to spend. Companies can and do sell you stuff then also target you for ads.

I shouldn’t have to say this, but those are two different things, and just because you on tape them together doesn’t mean they’re identical.

I don't understand what you're saying. Why can't a company sell you something then also advertise to you?

And with Apple you are not the product? You're being tracked and shown ads on Apple devices too, it's just that you have even less control and Apple has a "worked" on their image in that regard.

Are you honestly suggesting that Google and Apple are the same in this regards?

Apart from App Store recommendations, where are you seeing Apple-originated ads on an iPhone?

News, Stocks, Apple Music are all big sources of ad junk. That's without mentioning all of the iCloud/service nags like AppleTV.

So just long tap and uninstall them? It’s not analogous to the Windows Start Menu showing ads you can’t turn off.

What are the nags? I also don’t use Apple TV and don’t recall being nagged to use it.

The only thing that annoys me is the prompt to “finish setting up” my phone when I don’t want to turn on Siri. I get the prompt a few times and then it gives up trying to get me to turn on Siri and stays happily disabled.

I mean, I can also click the little 'x' button on YouTube banner ads, but that doesn't make them any less annoying. Apple's promotion of their own services in MacOS makes it impossible to live in for me in the same way I can't browse the web without uBlock Origin. Blocking out nagware helps me focus.

I would totally agree but isn’t the uninstall a one time thing and then you never deal with again?

If Apple News keeps advertising to you after you uninstall News then Apple has overstepped and should be held to account. I don’t hold it against them showing Apple News content on the Home Screen / Notification Tray iff Apple News is actually installed.

>So just long tap and uninstall them? It’s not analogous to the Windows Start Menu showing ads you can’t turn off.

On the contrary, it's exactly analogous to Windows start menu ads as they are just icons that you can tap/right-click and uninstall, exactly like on Apple.

But I do love the HN double standards here:

Apple ads: "Pfff, just tap and uninstall, nothing newsworthy here."

Windows ads that you can also right-click and uninstall: "OMG, the audacity from Microsoft, let's up-vote every single FUD blog post about this while frothing at the mouth."

If that’s the case for Windows ads (I don’t actually know) then I totally agree the response is highly overblown there too!

Oh, I don't use those things. But that's good to know.

Me neither, but every time I put on my Sony XM4s Apple Music gives me a nice modal asking me to pay for their service. It's really lovely UX.

Well, that's a little bit different from an ad, but I take your point.

That doesn't happen to me when I use the cheap earbud things that Apple sells (I use a Subsonic client app for music); do you have any idea what triggers it?

Probably not being logged into iCloud.

Curious which subsonic client? I’ve been using play:sun for a few years and sometimes AVSub. These clients are okay, but I do get some weird issues with them sometimes.

Having said that, I love subserver more than any other media server options.

I currently use iSub, but I’m in the same position: occasional weird issues, some that I think are compounded by my use patterns (I tend to listen on the subway, so the frequent network disconnects seem to break the cache.)

What ad junk? Can you give an example? Do you mean notifications?

I wouod sqy you werent the product originally but apple figured out they were leaving money on the table and quickly converted to adding that business model on top of overcharging for devices over the last decade. Nowbitvis atleast as bad as android if nit worse

Great to see Apple users are still deluding themselves into thinking they're not the product despite constant reports of Apple spying on them just like everyone else

The extent really matters. I don't care if Apple tracks App Store clicks or what I (don't) read on Apple News. I would care, a lot, if they tracked my browser history, chats, and email.

Could Apple conceivably be spying on my every move? Well... they really don't need to to make App Store recommendations so I doubt it.

When, and if, ever launches its own web advertising client which they bill as "privacy focused" I'll start being skeptical but until then there's way better things to throw tin foil at.

The big competitor to Apple is Samsung, and Samsung devices tend to be just as locked down as Apple devices (though the prevalence of jailbreaks has been higher, and of course you can sideload apps). Those two companies make up over 75% of smartphones in the US, and neither of their next competitors down (OnePlus and Lenovo) are Google.

People talk about Android like it is the "do anything you want device marketed at end users", but it is the "do anything you want operating system marketed at device manufacturers". One of the many things you can do with such a device is lock it down, and that's what companies who make devices that run Android, like quite-notably Samsung, have largely decided to do.

Google's first-party devices are often quite open, and that's cool and all, but they do not have much marketshare because, in the end, they kind of suck with the various limited hardware tradeoffs they make. Users, generally, are unable to provide a very strong purchasing signal preference on "is an open device" because they are too busy optimizing for having good cameras or screens or whatever it is that they consider the primary point of owning the phone in the first place is.

At the end of the day, Android then become more of a coalition of brands herded by Google--but led by Samsung, whom at least used to make the vast majority of the actual profit, disproportionate even to their marketshare--in attempts to reign them in on what crazy changes they make, but those limitations do not enforce the device to be open... far from it, really! And so we have seen Google also the target of lawsuits for anti-competitive behavior with their store (including by Epic, whose argument almost made more sense against Google than Apple).

I have owned many Samsung android devices over the years and have always been able to install fdroid and other alternate app stores as well as "side load" applications from apk files. Is there a new thing where Samsung have removed this feature in recent (last two years or so) devices?

The bootloader in on Samsung Android devices is extremely locked down to prevent rooting. Sideloading is a basic android feature.

Ability to root and sideloading are two different but similar issues on the topic of freedom.

That's sorta the status-quo. But I'd fully support any legislation that mandates open bootloaders on all devices, definitely would help save the iPad from obscurity.

> help save the iPad from obscurity.

wait what? It's basically the most used/desired tablet, afaik, at least in Canada/US

My experience is that Samsung devices are quite easy to root. There is that e-fuse thing that disable some features permanently, but to my knowledge, these are mostly intended for corporate devices and you can ignore them for personal use.

With Galaxy phones they are extremely hostile to unsigned flashes to the device. You essentially need to exploit a zero day in the stock rom to get temporary root and then while you have temporary root you flash a new recovery. And then you gotta make sure it doesn't flash the stock recovery back in the next boot by making sure your next reboot goes into the recovery. And then you can flash your custom ROM. I skipped some steps too.

Having to jump through so many hoops is why I never bothered to root my phones. It sounds like 90% chance to brick it.

It doesn't matter anyway. Thanks to Google pushing remote attestation, all you can expect from a custom ROM is the actually important apps (like bank) no longer working.

I think you mean hardware attestation. And yes, it is the biggest problem I have. I can do without KNOX, but it is becoming harder to do without these locked down apps (ex: bank), and workarounds are harder to get by, no matter the manufacturer.

And of course forget about anything that isn't iOS or Android. I don't expect banks to support alternative OSes anytime soon.

I probably won't root my next phone, not worth the hassle for a daily driver.

What could be nice is if phones could run VMs, so you have your stock ROM with all your "important" apps, and a VM where you can run anything you want: hacked Android, Linux, maybe even a desktop OS. Modern phone hardware should be more than powerful enough to do that.

The only two apps that are affected by Knox is Samsung Pay and Samsung Health. And that is only an issue if you decide to flash the stock rom back on the device. If you use custom roms they typically have a workaround to get both of those apps working with the Knox fuse tripped.

The easiest daily driver to root is Sony and Google phones. You simply unlock the bootloader and flash. There's no nonsense to deal with.

It's not possible to hard brick. Only soft brick. You can always recover back to stock if you mess up using the official flasher with the stock rom.

After looking a bit into it, it looks like most US/Canada models have a locked bootloader. Other models, including mine (Europe) don't and it only needs booting into download mode using a key combination and flashing a custom recovery using Odin.

Typically, no, Samsung are one of the few manufacturers who consistently don't lock bootloaders. I've been flashing Samsung Android phones for over 10 years: https://github.com/Benjamin-Dobell/Heimdall

That said, they have locked bootloaders on some devices. Predominantly in the US market, I believe at the request of carriers. However, it's traditionally been the minority of devices.

What? Samsung is the most hostile of manufacturers in this regard. Unlocking the bootloader, installing another bootloader, or running a different kernel burns fuses permanently in the device and renders it unable to use their version of hardware-secured storage, aka "Knox."

Kiss some multimedia apps, payment apps, and enterprise security features goodbye...along with a bunch of random features like private mode in their browser.

Flashing an unsigned (or potentially differently signed) bootloader burns fuses. Sure. However, other manufacturers don't just burn fuses, you specifically need to apply for permission to flash your bootloader e.g. https://www.oneplus.com/support/answer/detail/op588

Samsung at least don't require personal details for you to take control of your device. Sure, you lose access to some multimedia, but don't blame Samsung for that, blame Widevine DRM certification. Knox goes out the window, but the entire point of Knox is to (try) guarantee a device isn't tampered with. At least you can remove it!

What does “tampered with” mean? Particularly in the context of a device you own?

I would consider a device tampered with if someone besides me (the owner) did something with it, without my authorization. But anything short of that is surely just me using the device. I mean, I have physical possession after all.

Signing images and requiring that the bootloader can't flash anything else is just vendor lock in / ceding your power as an end user. It doesn't make you more secure in any way since a bad actor will figure out a way to bypass making writes to the system partition.

Umm I remember ordering Chinese phones way back when (think android 4) with unlocked boot loaders - both had some random junk installed via custom ROM and you couldn't uninstall it.

It's a good thing they had unlocked boot loaders then, or you would not have had any option to remove the malware.

well, Miami and one plus requires you to provide phone number etc., so that seller and other people don't sell you malicious second hand phone or tampered phone. However, there are no fuses, so your phone will still be on warranty if you unroot it.

I'll stick to Sony where I don't have to tell them anything. OnePlus can fuck off.

Why would Samsung allow its proprietary 'Knox' to work with other bootloaded OS? They have every right to not support any other OS other than their own.

Knox is actually irrelevant as most custom roms just fake whatever value is needed to get certain apps going and it's really just Samsung pay I believe.

They aren't "not supporting any other OS", they're causing the hardware to damage itself to prevent that software from working.

It's like your laptop's motherboard detected you installed another OS in place of the OEM-provided Windows installation, and overvoltaged your NVidia GPU to burn it out. "We have every right to not support high-performance graphics on any other OS other than our own - if you want to install your own OS, you can still use the integrated Intel GPU".

Damaging the hardware is a bit of an overstatement. What people are calling fuses isn't really a fuse in the traditional sense. An eFuse usually is just write once memory. All the limiting features are implemented in software which reads out the state of this memory.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but once the eFuse is triggered (which, if it's write-only memory, still involves a physical change that could be interpreted as damage), it's effectively unfixable without replacing the whole motherboard, reflashing it with your original serial number, IMEI, etc. At least that's what I recall from reading about it - Samsung service can "reset" the Knox lock-out, but they do it by replacing the whole board.

In other words: there's no way for me to just take the phone to my workshop / local hackerspace, and fix it with a soldering iron. Even if I could source the right parts, it's going to be a PITA to make them work. I didn't investigate it further, but I assume that these days, cryptography is used for critical parts to attest each other as genuine (similar to what new iPhones do, which is why you can't just replace the "home" button if it breaks).

Additionally, since I haven't heard of people doing software workarounds, whatever in Knox is reading the state of the eFuse, cannot be trivially patched. I recall reading somewhere that triggering the eFuse somehow overwrites Knox itself - if that's correct, then they may not even be anything left to enable afterwards.

----

I'm going to concede here that my example was somewhat hyperbolic - burning a single eFuse isn't the same as overvolting the whole GPU. But only somewhat - the reasoning/intent behind the two cases is the same. Additionally, cryptography blurs the line between what's hardware damage and what's a software limitation. Take, for example, secure erasure of data: you can smash a hard drive with a sledgehammer and then microwave the remains to slag, but you can get the same result by keeping the data encrypted, and then... losing the keys.

This entire comment is irrelevant. The Knox fuse only matters if you're flashing the stock rom back. Only the stock rom actually cares about Knox. The custom roms all ignore the value from Knox or simply spoof it. In other words it's just punishing you for daring to flash a custom ROM.

If someone goes to the trouble of implementing an efuse, they will also implement the check in the hardware so it can't be bypassed. An easy example is optical drives with fixed numbers of region switches that refuse at the hardware level to read discs from the wrong region and also refuse at the hardware level to switch regions once all the fuses have been blown.

Well my experiences with the galaxy S10+ was horrible trying to get an unsigned rom to stick. I personally prefer Sony devices now.

But as an app developer Samsung doesn't claim a cut out of my sales. That's where you start to see the difference.

He might be talking about the fact that the moment you unlock the phone the e-fuse is tripped and a bunch of features get downgraded permanently on their devices. I think they're generally good devices, but they have a nightmare support system and this e-fuse thing is just a major turn off to a lot of people.

yeah but you're also knowledgeable about all that shit and 99% of people with Android devices won't use alternate app stores. they'll download apps from the google play store, use google services, stream on google chromecast, watch things on youtube tv. google and/or samsung will get all that data and that's how they make money.

Just desparate apple apologists equating installing your own OS to installing an app.

Would I like to have an unlocked bootloader? Sure. Is having a locked bootloader equivalent to only being allowed to install Apple approved apps? Of course not.

> The big competitor to Apple is Samsung, and Samsung devices tend to be just as locked down as Apple devices

Please, you can sideload apps by selecting a single option... Not to mention you have all the options to make alternative apps default like any Google device.

That alone is significantly more open than Apple devices...

Apple already implements a solution on the Mac.

The Mac defaults to signed apps. And you need to change a setting to allow unsigned apps.

iOS could easily default to what we have today, but allow the installation of non App Store apps after users change a setting and confirm after reading a scary warning pop up, that tells users they may be exposing themselves to data theft, hacking, viruses and money theft.

I really want this to happen, and I hope Apple is forced to make it happen — a fairly likely scenario in the EU I think — but if they do allow side-loading I fear they will disable all sorts of Apple services when you flip that switch.

No more Apple Pay, for starters. Maybe no iMessage. Things where they can argue they have to turn them off to protect the user, and/or themselves, from rogue apps.

And then you could have a kind of freedom, but it wouldn’t be a very useful one. You can already load whatever you want on your own phone if you have the source and do the build yourself. I can pretty easily imagine Apple making it so you can side load closed apps but almost nobody ever does.

Yes, if you disable SIP on ARM Macs, apple already disables Apple Pay and running iOS apps as I found out the hard way.

Agreed. The real reason is the inevitable avalanche of support requests that hit when some popular side loaded app introduces a 0-day. No one at the Genius Bar is going to touch your toxic device. That means no Apple Care or iCloud backups either.

Support is expensive. Apple spends a lot of money to provide what is generally very excellent support. It’s a huge component of the overall brand for many users that stay in their ecosystem.

Apple wouldn't want that in the first place because a customer who's angry at a 0-day (even if it wasn't caused by Apple) still hurts Apple's brand image.

Apple has gone a long way by sticking to the safest paths, meaning they do things that cause the most customer satisfaction, and don't do anything that can go wrong. That's why Apple abandoned the iCar project because while many would like the concept, a car experience is not something that Apple can have control over; if users get into car accidents, for example, that hurts Apple's brand no matter the cause of the incident. In comparison, making phones, Macs, tablets, etc. is fairly safe as long as Apple retains its full control over the experience (which must be perfect for most consumers).

Because of this, I don't really see Apple allowing app sideloading, even though I personally like it. I think the more pressing issue right now is the 30% cut on AppStore.

Hear these excuses time and time again that it’s impossible for them to do this when they ship an entire product line and have for decades that does exactly what people claim is impossible for them to support.

> Your data is (mostly) safe from advertisers because that's not their business.

I beg to differ.

Apple is becoming an ad company despite privacy claims

https://proton.me/blog/apple-ad-company

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33736259

Both your links go to the same Proton article and the heart of it seems to be this:

> Apple monitors your every move in the App Store and its News and Stocks apps and then uses that data to sell ads targeting you in those same apps. To meet its growth forecasts, experts expect Apple to start selling ads in its Maps, Podcast, and Books apps, meaning it could replicate this model across more of its services. Much more of your activity could be monitored in the future.

Tracking every click in the App Store/News/Stocks is not great but it is in NO WAY similar to tracking every website I view and reading every email I send.

Why do you assume Apple doesn't also track every website and email you read (especially if you use the default Apple-made apps)? After all, they make the OS, they can track whatever they want.

Nobody's reported seeing that sort of network traffic sent off of iOS devices. It's trivially easy to spot it, and it's well documented, going to Google and others across the web, though.

On my iPhone, Safari browser history synchronization to iCloud was enabled by default.

According to Apple, Safari history and bookmarks are end-to-end encrypted and Apple cannot read them:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202303

Is there any evidence that Apple is lying, and is actually decrypting them somehow and using them for advertising purposes, rather than for the "coherence" feature?

I don't actually want browsing sessions to be unified across devices, so I do wish that it was turned off by default. (Though being able to close tabs remotely is a sort of interesting capability.) However, it doesn't seem to be actual spyware used for advertising or tracking purposes.

That’s not what your link says. The link says browsing history is end-to-end encrypted, but Bookmarks are not.

Safari on iOS is auto-completing stuff as you type. The option to search with google comes up if you get far enough.

And it’s not going to google first. If you type an address the “link” at the top is to Apple Maps. They seem to do a similar thing with place names. I’m not sure but one can be fairly certain they’re using the phones location to help….

You will have no idea what is being carried via encrypted channels to Apple's opaque backend servers.

> " It's trivially easy to spot"

Is it? How exactly are encrypted payloads to a secure, opaque and generic endpoint easy to distinguish?

It's trivially easy to spot it going to Google/FB/whoever if you visit a page with a GA or FB or whatever pixel. That's part of the second sentence, not the first.

For spotting it going to Apple you'd have to do more fancy correlation over time and such, but you can find people out there who are researching this stuff... so that's who I'm waiting for to hear more from.

Burden of proof fallacy

People keep saying Google reads your emails (even when Google explicitly says otherwise), but have no proof, and trust Apple's words as the gospel of truth - how strange. It's almost as if it's fashionable to criticize them.

This is on Gmail's homepage:

"We never use your Gmail content for any ads purposes. Gmail uses industry-leading encryption for all messages you receive and send. We never use your Gmail content to personalize ads."

Interesting.. I just saw an add in my Apple Maps yesterday and I was really confused at first. Had no idea they are considering moving in this direction and must already be testing it.

On a different note I attended an apple event for IT Government and Education in Chicago. Eye opening.. Apple's "privacy" stance is all just a horse and pony show for marketing. Unbelievable how open they were about tracking everything at the event.

My understanding around how this works (and I might be wrong!) is that Apple tracks a variety of usage on device and your device itself knows which ad to serve, versus say Google or Facebook collating your data on their own servers.

I'd not be surprised to learn there was some level of phoning home though.

I have no idea if this is true, but let's say it is.

The ad still has to come from a server, unless the phone downloads all possible ads the person might be interested in (which I doubt).

The transfer would at a minimum include the IP address of the phone.

Use a shuffler.

There’s a common misconception that ad tracking is all about targeting ads. That’s part of it, but the truth is that tracking conversions is a more important differentiator for advertising platforms. A conversion is where the user clicks on the ad and then makes a purchase. The top digital ad companies (Apple, Google, Meta, Amazon) all charge for conversions. There is no way to charge for conversions without sending data about the user’s behavior off the device (which ads they saw, and which purchases they made).

That’s not true. They could use differentially private on-device joins using anonymously downloaded ad data. Or they could securely aggregate the results. Or both.

Can you elaborate? I see an ad in the News app, then click on it and make a purchase from Clash of Clans in the App Store. Apple needs to charge Clash of Clans for the conversion. How do they do it?

Apple knows that I bought the app (they charged me for it).

In order to charge Clash of Clans for the conversion, my phone needs to connect to Apple and send them a record of the ad click. What if clicking on that ad and buying the app are the only thing I ever did on the phone? There’s nothing to aggregate locally, and Apple knows they got the conversion data from me.

Perhaps the claim is that my phone is going to send all these records to Apple, and Apple is just going to do the right thing and run programs that do the business without letting any of their people look at anything they aren’t supposed to look at (they could internally accomplish this by differential privacy, rigorous internal controls, etc). That’s the same claim Google and everyone else is going to make.

Check out secure aggregation protocols: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_multi-party_computation, https://research.google/pubs/pub45808/, also https://arxiv.org/pdf/1708.01884.pdf.

That's not at all how adtech works. You cannot download all activity between ad supply (website/app/etc) and advertisers and every vendor in the middle onto your device for some joins.

You misunderstand, completely. A device needn't download all activity, or indeed download anything additional at all. It knows which ads it clicked on and it knows the conversion signal for each ad the user saw. It can thus easily count the user's conversions on the device, then privately aggregate the result with its peers using secure multi-party computation (or a secure enclave).

Even the ads can be anonymously downloaded using a shuffler/mixer, such that nobody knows which ads out of the universe of ads the device chose to target the user with.

This just has all of the negative privacy implications FLoC does[1], which is also something pushed by Google that was heavily criticized. I guess now that Apple is doing it, it's okay.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federated_Learning_of_Cohorts

Similar! The biggest difference in my mind is that any website using FLoC would be able to know what cohort I belonged to.

FLoC is definitely more anonymous than "davidlumley visited nytimes.com twice on December 1st 2022". However, that particular usage information was previously only available to nytimes.com, any ad/data vendor using third party tracking cookies that were present on nytimes.com at the time of my visit, and finally any company that purchased data from the ad/data vendor.

My FLoC was theoretically available to any website and had much of the same intent data that intent ad/data vendors were/are selling.

If my understanding of Apple's ad platform is correct, advertisers don't know which cohort the user davidlumley belongs to, or that their ads are being served to me because that's all handled on device.

is that Apple tracks a variety of usage on device and your device itself knows which ad to serve

This is a distinction without a difference. Do you regularly share your phone with other people, to the extent that "device data" can not be correlated back to you?

RIM had a chance, I think. They had cool devices, could have forked Android and owned enterprise/privacy focused buyers. Maybe Nokia can come back.

> 2) Google's device freedom: you can do whatever you want with your device because your are the product. Sure you can load a complete separate system of mail and chat clients and not sign into google, but really, will you?

Typing this from a Pixel running GrapheneOS, and it's a great experience.

So, yeah, I did.

Back in the PC days I posed the question: What if Apple sold its computers with options for the OS, e.g., [ ] Apple-provided [ ] User-provided. In other words, what if one could buy just the Apple hardware, without a pre-installed OS. I used to run NetBSD on the Mac. I did not care about getting 100% support for every feature of the hardware, I just wanted a working computer. It is funny because today iOS is the mandatory Apple-installed OS and it borrows heavily from BSD. The old AirPort Extreme even ran a NetBSD 6.1 kernel. If there is line somewhere between "convenience", e.g., supply of a pre-installed OS, and "loss of meaningful ownership", e.g., ceding control to a seller even after purchase, it seems to me that Apple is way over that line on the side of denying meaningful ownership. If iOS is truly valuable, and I have no reason to believe otherwise, then sell it separately and let purchasers decide if and when to purchase, install or uninstall it. If the buyer does not want to use iOS then why should they have to pay for it. This question, as boring as it is, still triggers HN commenters, so there is obviously something coveted about the obligatory bundling of consumer hardware with proprietary OS, in spite of all the non-proprietary options.

Don't some people run Linux on Mac hardware? How would your proposal change anything?

They do (and Windows on the older x86 based devices), but since the move to Apple Silicon, combined with a lack of availability of the specs, it becomes harder and harder. But OP is talking primarily about iOS, where it is impossible to run Linux (or any other OS)

What becomes harder and harder?

Asahi seems to do just fine and has good pace with adding feature support. https://asahilinux.org/

M2 is similar to M1 so it is easier as there is less HW combinations in the wild.

It becomes harder every time apple makes a change to something. GPU, bootloader, some secondary processor in charge or some obscure but surprisingly important thing. The whole thing is dependent on Apple deciding not to disallow it for now.

Apple is leveraging their success in the operating system space to control competition in other markets and to limit options available to consumers. This is classic anti competitive behaviour and has nothing to do with whether the OS is sold separately or is bundled with the phone. There are very few hardware advantages of iphones vs. equivalently priced (say) pixel phones, especially not ones that don't rely heavily on software support (eg cameras). So in practice we already are in the reality you imagine anyways.

Same should be said for Nintendo or Sony, who assert the same control. Most of the money made is on games.

Not saying you’re wrong or anything, if anything I agree, and think it should apply to all my hardware I buy.

Indeed - a Nintendo Switch would be a perfect remote controller for robots if only Nintendo let you actually write code for the device you own!

Well, Nvidia just went ahead and gave everyone permission to do just that :^)

In principle I like the idea of non-locked down game systems, regardless of whether they're made by Apple or Nintendo. I find it appealing that the Steam Deck isn't locked down and can run non-Steam games as well as Steam games.

However, the killer app for jailbreaking locked down game systems does seem to be running unlicensed copies of commercial games.

Comparing a niche entertainment gaming device to a general computing device isn't very fair, is it?

Well they did ship out official Linux discs for the PS2 and PS3.

Linux for the PS4 and PS5 is just a normal x64 Linux binary. The 2 and 3 had very exotic architectures.

For a while, you could get the most FLOPS/$ by networking PS3s together instead of buying commercial computing hardware.

Apple is still on the hook for support if you disable that option, either because that's what you wanted, or because someone from Microsoft Support called you and told you that you needed to disable it so he could remove the virus.

I want Apple to maintain a consistent set of rules that app developers need to follow. I have no power to dictate my desirable terms to Facebook, Twitter, etc, but Apple does. I'm willing to give up some flexibility with my device for that. No matter what, I'm a tiny player with no power against globally powerful tech companies, but I'll take Apple's conditions vs 1) conditions set out by other companies that I trust less, and 2) having different conditions for every company I deal with.

or apple could just develop an os such that if an app doesnt respect your settings it just flat out doesnt work. this would force facebook to at least make concessions on their app.

There is no reason for walled garden. people can control the system themselves if setup.

Why do Spotify, facebook, and Twitter need anything beyond a web app these days? What does a native app get that helps them monetize? Access to contacts maybe?

The twitter web app is what I use on a daily basis and it’s absolutely terrible. The app experience is vastly superior.

Probably for stuff they shouldn't be accessing. But also IIRC iOS doesn't support PWAs so installing any webapp they would provide in any meaningful way isn't possible there

That and I want to give my not so technologically literate parents an iPhone and I want it to just work. I want a consistent experience that’ll let me debug their problems from around the world or just feel confident sending them to the Apple store.

Even for a power user like me, I’d rather have an ultra reliable device with amazing manufacturer warranty than something I can hack on.

> I’d rather have an ultra reliable device with amazing manufacturer warranty than something I can hack on.

You can have all three, though. Apple simply stops you from harnessing the true potential of your device because it threatens their bottom line. This is immediately apparent when you realize that any form of sideloading requires a $99/year subscription fee. Absolutely bonkers that they get away with this and people defend them anyways.

AFAIK that hasn't been true for a very long time. You can install apps via xcode for your own phone for free for a while: https://developer.apple.com/support/compare-memberships/

It's distribution that costs money, which makes sense because humans review that you're following their privacy polices etc.

Not all of us are "not so technologically literate parents". Why are we treated that way?

To be honest, I'd be fine with Apple putting an 'unlocked' mode behind a massive warning screen that doing so removes the ability of Apple to protect them from bad actors (with an optional notification system so I know if my parents have been coerced into doing this).

However let's be honest, that wouldn't satisfy Facebook, Spotify, Epic et al because most people wouldn't do this so it wouldn't really help them. Facebook, Spotify & Epic don't care about user freedom, they just want to get the 30% cut back and to track you more than they're currently allowed.

The rules they do have are already inconsistently applied. And the rules they do have don't prevent a whole lot. Most of them are about protecting their moat, keeping people and governments from being offended and them safe from lawsuits. So what's the point?

I like being able to trust my device and my kids device, if you wan't something to hack on get a pinephone or something

the reality is that billions of people need to trust their phones with their most personal information, fininaces and lives and apple's policies while sometimes annoying do a lot to build that trust

they aren't a big secret and if you don't like it you're free to not buy their products

How does the option of openness interrupt your curated lifecycle?

for me personally I don't care about it on my phone either way, I do on my laptop/desktop

If you have no personal objection to Apple making their products more open, why defend their 'privacy' facade? Have you missed the last major iPhone exploits?

So again, how does an option to open the device affect you in any way?

A big part of what makes the Apple ecosystem so compelling is the consistency and coherence.

Nothing would change for you though, if someone wanted to sideload something they would just have the option to do so.

That's just not true. Making some things impossible by a company with Apple's clout prevents the exploitation of people who will click "next, next" to disable protections without really understanding the implications.

If you're truly a developer, you can add whatever apps you want to your phone from source via xcode, free now, so what's the issue?

Not having the option forces companies like Facebook to play by some simple rules.

Having the option would mean that many apps that are currently available through the App Store, and therefore broadly trustworthy, would suddenly become side-load-only and follow basically no rules at all.

Apple could still have a "developer" mode you have to jump through a complicated technical process to enable...just like MacOS let's you disable system integrity protection by running a terminal command and rebooting into a boot disk then running another terminal command. It could void support plans so it's not Apple's problem.

That wouldn't affect your kids and telling Grandma how to do that over the phone is very difficult. And at that point she could be handing over her credit card anyway.

It’d be easy to gate this: require that the iOS device be connected to a Mac and a special app used to change “advanced” settings. These could include side loading, the ability to install alternate app stores, and low level OS access of various kinds.

It would be very helpful to developers and debugging too.

So why do you think Apple doesn't want that to happen?

Surely a developer or ten has suggested the same thing by now?

My guess is focus: they are 100% focused on being the best closed platform that is easy to use and everything is handled for the user. A lively sideloading and 3rd party homebrew scene would be a massive distraction for the Dev team and most importantly the support side with little direct business ROI (indirect could be big but a harder sell).

Possibly harming brand reputation showing people what they could have absent the paid wall. When the alternative exposes people to risk, and they'd rather not have to explain themselves?

> So why do you think Apple doesn't want that to happen?

lol i can think of a few billion other reasons why they don't want it to happen.

Such as...

I think he means dollars.

Revenue. Plain and simple. Everything you mention is the way they use to protect that revenue.

That's like say "why does cancer happen?" "because your cells will die"

Well obviously that's the most basic reason why but that doesn't help us solve the problem.

How exactly does it cause a loss in revenue? It's very possible the benefits that come from being more open improve the platform for everyone and increase sales. So it's valuable to be very specific on where the costs are.

I think the issue with that scenario is that some hack of a Mac in developer mode will get reported in the media in big scary headlines as "All Macs finally hackable" - (which would technically be true but it'd be missing the fact that developer mode would have needed to be enabled). And then the flood of Grandma voicemail messages would startg.

A single news cycle of a story full of misinformation would dissuade them? Sorry it has to be a far bigger problem than that. A very complicated easily communicated opt-in hacking risk is very very low on the totem pole.

Ok. But now imagine that using Facebook or TikTok in the browser on your Mac is a terrible, pared down experience, full of banners pushing you to get the app. But the app isn’t on the App Store, where there are rules, it’s on their website. Just follow these steps! Do you not think people can’t follow step by step instructions to do something like that, if they had a very strong reward at the end?

It’s not just little Billy and Grandma who shouldn’t be turning that mode on, it’s most people.

I'm sorry... You think Facebook would start a mass campaign to disable the warranty/support contracts of millions of their iPhone users by walking them through a very complicated technical process... To achieve what exactly? Download an app the same person could get using the app store?

The media would have a field day at Facebooks expense. Why would Apple even let them on the app store if they did something so stupid?

Facebook already abused the limited side loading available on iPhones to trick teenagers into installing spyware. The media did have a field day, and Apple pulled their enterprise certificate.

https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/30/18203551/apple-facebook-b...

This isn’t even a hypothetical, it really happened. And yet people still have a hard time believing Facebook (and other companies) would abuse iPhone side loading if given a chance. Of course they would!

They could do that, but then would need to also immediately require a big [X] next to "the instant you do this you forfeit any and all support for any hardware or software issues on your device".

Apple doesn't want to deal with a million hackers screwing with their devices and clogging up their support system, and also then having to deal with endless reports of terrible customer service because someone paid 1000$ for an iPhone and then Apple won't help them out when they brick it with the latest flashware they downloaded from usenet. Followed by the inevitable complaints that "Apple Customer Care is terrible". Easier just to control the entire ecosystem, and tell folks who don't like it, "cool, cya".

I've told this story here before, but "we don't support that" doesn't go nearly as far as you think. When they released the intel macs and boot camp, boot camp came with explicit "we don't support this or problems you have with it". At the time I worked for Apple retail and one of my most memorable customers came in steaming mad. She wanted to return her brand new macbook because it was having all sorts of problems. The sort of problems that shouldn't even be possible on a mac, and the sort of problems that were addressed by a firmware update 6 months earlier. I managed to get her to agree to demonstrate what was going on for me before we did the return and as soon as she booted the computer, it booted right into Windows. It turns out she'd bought her new mac and given it to her "computer guy" nephew to help get it set up. Nephew apparently thought that what she really needed was not a mac, but an expensive windows computer instead. So he installed boot camp, shrunk the mac partition to it's smallest size and then configured the system to boot into Windows by default. As a result, she had a macbook that had been without any recent firmware updates to solve some issues (because firmware updates run through the OS update software, and not in windows) and hadn't even installed an anti-virus software (because "macs don't need it") and so had a number of malware infections going too. From Apple's written perspective, we would have been absolutely within our rights to say "well you've installed boot camp, we don't support that and you need to use macOS instead" and sent the customer on her way and denied the return... and that would have been a shitty customer experience. So we spent some time getting the customer's computer re-configured, moving some of their important info to the mac partition, showing them the new OS, explaining what the heck happened in the first place (which involved explaining to someone who barely knew how to use email what bootcamp was and why a mac running windows isn't really "a mac" in the colloquial sense) and convincing them to give it a try for a while before deciding they wanted to do the return. Now that experience in the end turned that customer into a very good and reliable customer, but it also meant that "we don't support that" was a meaningless boundary. It also meant that the issue wasn't that the customer did this to themselves. They didn't. Someone who understands the implications of developer mode isn't what Apple is concerned with. It's the people who don't understand that, who will never see the "here be dragons" warning because they didn't enter developer mode, their "computer guy" nephew did.

Also, people already gripe about the fact that to "fully unlock" your mac these days, you need to disable SIP, and how that disables some things (but at least not your warranty). Do you really think the same people would be happy with "developer mode but no more warranty" on iPhones? Especially if someone like Epic or Facebook or Google insist that their apps need this unlocked mode and so the only way to use them is to void your warranty?

Did your kids also have a free choice to get another device instead?

Sure, if they're buying...

You seem to be arguing that only apple (or google) has the ability to protect your device.

Honestly, the best protection would be the ability to control your own device, and make apple just one of many ways to help you secure it.

I would love to be able to firewall my device. To see what apps are doing and to prevent them from doing things you don't like. Then you can trust but verify.

By the way, apple does TONS of stuff behind your back - rapant telemetry, allowing and even helping with tracking, and doing its own advertising. Look at deep linking, iBeacon, and lots of other silly things.

One of the problems with giving users access means that they can forward such access to malicious actors. It's a tough choice and perhaps not the right one for some, but I think preventing people from shooting themselves in the foot is the right call for many. Many do not understand the consequences of their actions and will readily grant access incorrectly.

While I agree that a single company shouldn't be unilaterally in charge of controlling access on behalf of users, I would say the industry doesn't do a good job of coming together to produce an option that works. Look at the software supply chain as an example of what tends to happen. The Linux distros do a pretty good job, but they maintain far fewer packages and getting your application into a distros repos isn't trivial.

> Look at deep linking, iBeacon, and lots of other silly things.

iBeacon is 1-way read-only. Deep Linking is an app url scheme. Not much to look at.

you don't know what they do because apple does not allow introspection into the device you own.

afaict ibeacon allows apps to locate bluetooth beacons. think department store beacons and department store app. deep linking allows apps to (silently) intercept email/browsing/messages with specific urls. all of them and other schemes let apps wake up in the background.

> You seem to be arguing that only apple (or google) has the ability to protect your device.

Hey yeah, let’s all return to the golden era where everyone installed Symantec Norton Utilities and AVG antivirus on their computers and hoped for the best.

I’m aware about all of the known telemetry on iPhone and literally none of it is an issue for me. Collecting data is not an issue, especially when such collection can help make a product or service better. How data is used is the issue, and in this respect I’m unaware of any major tech companies whose hands are cleaner than Apple’s.

> You seem to be arguing that only apple has the ability to protect your device.

Erm. They make the hardware, so any bugs they put in there are what they are.

I don't see any reason to let more people put bugs in there.

You can have all your devices locked.

I want the option to unlock my device and use it as I see fit.

So use Android? One of the things I don't understand about this whole argument is the choice people want is already there. Why does Apple also need to provide that option? Yes I've heard the argument over the "cost of re-buying all of your apps" to switch, but is there seriously anyone out there who really cares about this that didn't already know about the restrictions and still bought into the iPhone ecosystem? If so, why? Why if freedom to install any software you want on your phone was a priority for you would you ever have bought an iPhone in the first place? It's not like they started wide open and got locked down.

> the reality is that billions of people need to trust their phones with their most personal information

Does this apply to Macs as well? Why can't iPhones be at least as open as a Mac?

> I want the option to control my devices.

Why is that you'd demand this of _Apple_? Doesn't Linux and the plethora of devices it supports give you this already?

I ask as a willful customer who prefers the complete control Apple provides. I never have to think about "porn" or "bitcoin scam" or "upsells from parent's bank" or any other crap from being easily accessible on my kids' or elderly parent's devices. Even Steam has some arcane filters that eventually allow porn content to be visible in the store. Honestly, outsourcing the basic policing of content to a company like Apple is a feature; not a bug.

Besides, there's so many competing devices that give you all the freedom + control you want out there already. Right? What am I missing?

Now, I admit, this means I'm under the mercy of what _Apple_ thinks is "right" or "wrong". As an extreme example, I'd also like to disable _all_ non-vegetarian content from my kids' or parent's phones; to appeal to their "religious"/"moral" beliefs. But obviously that's a not a PoV upheld by the App Store. Similarly, I can empathize there are many other viewpoints people hold that may or may not be aligned with App Store guidelines.

But despite all that, why can't Linux devices serve the "control my devices" need.

> Now, I admit, this means I'm under the mercy of what _Apple_ thinks is "right" or "wrong".

Only to the extent that you're "locked in" to the Apple ecosystem. I'm entirely in the Apple ecosystem as well (at least for smartphone/tablet/PC hardware, and lesser so for online services) but it wouldn't be a threat to my identity to switch if I was sufficiently upset of Apple's choices (and there were viable alternatives). Personally I don't feel like there's much lock in. It would be a bit of a hassle to move some things over, sure, and a bit of a learning curve, but I really don't think it would be a big deal.

Google, by virtue of owning my email for nearly 15 years, has me much more locked in and I don’t own a single Android or Google device.

Here's a quick breakdown: Linux is not an iPhone. One is hardware, and another is software.

Apple has every right to build a hardware product with a software platform, but controlling the distribution of software is an immediate red flag. Conflating security and limitation is meaningless since iOS already has the means to isolate software a-la MacOS. Worst-case scenario, Apple can add a "Christian helicopter parent" toggle for you in the Settings app and let you opt-in to whatever you're enjoying now.

> Even Steam has some arcane filters that eventually allow porn content to be visible in the store.

Porn doesn't violate Steam's TOS. As long as your account is registered as under-18, it won't even be possible to see it.

> But despite all that, why can't Linux devices serve the "control my devices" need.

It can. On the newest Apple Silicon machines, I even hear it's excellent. That being said, Apple needs to unlock the bootloader of the iPhone/iPad to give us that option, so as-is our only choice is paying them 30% every time we make a transaction. It's so nefarious that I won't let anyone say it's 'serendipitous with moderation' or whatever you're trying to argue here. It's bad-faith and disregards the reason why we're talking about locked-down platforms in the first place.

I bought it. I own it. That’s why I demand it.

> Why is that you'd demand this of _Apple_?

We demand this of almost all non-phone appliances. Why should phones get an exemption?

No, seriously, why are car manufacturers forced to allow owners the option of non-manufacturer fuel, non-manufacturer tires, non-manufacturer oil and so on, but when it comes to phones, suddenly "the consumers are making an informed choice"?

We regulate this shit for a reason, and that reason is that market forces alone are not enough to protect the consumer.

Your thoughts on it are irrelevant.

>We demand this of almost all non-phone appliances. Why should phones get an exemption?

Do we really? By law you can't install your own software or ECU in your car and use it legally on the roads. I don't see many people pushing to be able to install BSD on their refrigerator. I think most people would be a lot happier if their TVs didn't come with a full OS. Game consoles have been locked down forever. While re-flashing my router is fun and nice to do, I would wager the absolute vast majority of people both never do it and certainly don't actually care if they can or not. ESPHome is a thing, but most people are buying IOT devices they don't have the ability to run anything they want on.

In fact, other than a personal computer, I'd wager most of the devices most people use in their day to day life with the ability to run software do not have – nor do people "demand" they have – the ability to run any arbitrary piece of software they want on it.

> By law you can't install your own software or ECU in your car and use it legally on the roads.

Who told you this? As long as the ECU you install meet the requirements, feel free. There's even a few open source ones. See https://megasquirt.info/

You are displaying the problem with allowing Apple special exemption to flout the rules - eventually people start believing that it must be against the law ... just like you did.

Better nip this nonsense while we can instead of everyone starting to believe that they may not modify the devices they purchased and own simply because the manufacturer said so.

I am well aware of the megasquirt project and others like speeduino. The existence and popularity of that product no more speaks to its legality anymore than the existence and popularity of illegal drugs speaks to theirs. Federal law prohibits tampering with any part of your vehicles emissions control systems, which includes the ECU and any aftermarket parts must comply to all relevant epa standards and almost always requires EPA or CARB certification [1]. In theory it might be possible to get that certification or get and exemption even without it, but it is notable that no CARB or EPA approved after market forced induction systems allow end user modification of the fueling control. Additionally no complete ECU replacements that I’m aware of will pass OBD II emissions tests or even report the relevant data.

Additionally megaquirt themselves repeatedly remind you their products are not legal for road use [2]:

> MegaSquirt® and MicroSquirt® controllers are experimental devices intended for educational purposes. MegaSquirt® and MicroSquirt® controllers are not for sale or use on pollution controlled vehicles. Check the applicable laws in your locality to determine if using MegaSquirt is legal for your application. For more information, see: www.megamanual.com/tamp.htm

> No. MegaSquirt® EFI controllers DO NOT have exemption orders, and thus are NOT emissions legal for sale or use on any on-road pollution controlled vehicles in the U.S.A. or Canada. Competition vehicles that are never operated on public roads may be able to use MegaSquirt® EFI controllers, and some older 'non-emissions' on-road vehicles might be able to use MegaSquirt® EFI controllers as well. For other regions, please check your local regulations to see if a MegaSquirt® EFI controller is legal for your application. There is more information here: www.megamanual.com/tamp.htm

Or just http://www.megamanual.com/tamp.htm

[1]: https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2020-12/documents/ep... [2]: http://www.megamanual.com/MSFAQ.htm#whatis

So, according to your argument, which you've stated twice now[1], it's okay for regulation of consumer devices.

Once again, I have to ask, why do you feel that phones should be exempt from regulation?

> Additionally megaquirt themselves repeatedly remind you their products are not legal for road use [2]:

Yeah, but they're perfectly legal for owners of the cars to use, as long as they stay on the track. You're arguing for not modifying the device at all, regardless of where it is going to be used.

[1] Thanks, by the way. It's awfully hard to get iPhone supporters to agree that regulation is a good thing once, nevermind twice.

> So, according to your argument, which you've stated twice now[1], it's okay for regulation of consumer devices.

I have said no such thing. I was challenging the assertion that we “demand [the option to control our devices] of almost all non-phone appliances”. I said nothing at all about the “good” or “badness” of regulation. The rest of your comment continues this bad faith interpretation of my argument and puts words in my mouth, so we’re done here.

Stop being silly! It's not your device! You don't own stuff anymore. You've just got a license to use it. Soon you will pay a monthly subscription for using it (like it or not)

I really hope that in 10 years we don't all have cars, that'll be a mega failing

98% of people don’t care. But they will be scammed by bad actors who push them to install bespoke AppStores.

This is just like Elon “free speech” - astroturf from companies who want to usher in the equivalent of scammy browser bars.

Then why buy Apple devices? Do you also buy Teslas and wonder why you can’t use gas?

Why would that be relevant? Buying a product doesn't mean I like everything about it, just that overall, it was the least bad option available to me at the time.

If the most important thing I care about is sideloading, why would I buy an iPhone?

I'll contrast this with my TV. I want a TV that works and displays pictures & sound. Instead my TV is an Android hub with dozens of random apps installed. What it doesn't do half the time is work. Sure, I have "control" but I'd rather have "functional devices!"

I'm dreading the day my 4K "dumb" LCD TV dies. It's now basically impossible to replace.

You can replace it with a monitor + a pair of stereo speakers.

I like this option, though I have noticed that monitors seem to be more expensive and are not always available in the TV size you might want.

I recommend this as well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33813255

You’re right though. My 44” monitor for my living room was $550, but that only seems expensive compared to the ad-subsidized smart TVs.

Eh. Get an Apple TV. HDMI CEC means you never have to interact with the default UI.

I have one! That’s the plan currently. But you can’t avoid it entirely, it’s why TVs are so slow to turn on, they still try to collect data and so on.

Odd. I have two TVs. Neither of them have this issue.

don't some TVs actually listen in on what you're watching to figure out your viewing habits regardless?

Nothing stops you from hooking an Apple TV up to it.

I'm not sure you do have "control" if your complaint is that there are dozens of random apps installed.

If you're able to uninstall those apps then, yes, you have (some amount of) control.

This 100x.

End of the day, there are two markets for two different needs.

I replaced my TV with a large monitor and a mac mini. My remote is a wireless apple mouse and keyboard which we leave on a cutting board on the couch.

The benefit of streaming shows in a browser is that I can slow down all shows for my kids to 85% so they are slightly less stimulating and i NEVER get ads.

The computer also serves as a hub for music, it’s connected to some wireless speakers we can move to another room when playing music.

LG TVs have WebOS, it's pretty good at staying away. But the trick is to never use the actual TV software for anything, get an Apple TV / Fire Stick / Google TV / Nvidia Shield and use that for everything.

We should have the option of buying 50"++ TVs with no software or speakers, just a power button and a bunch of HDMI connections.

You obviously bought a device incompatible with your requirements and preferences. You say so yourself: "Instead my TV is an Android hub....".

> I want to own my stuff. I want to repair it and I want complete control over it

Then dont buy an iphone.

Apple's market is not people who want to "own" a phone. It is people who want a phone that works no fuss.

You're basically asking - why did apple take the option to make money hand over fist? The answer should be pretty self-obvious.

Back in the day we laughed about software inevitably including a poor implementation of lisp, or an email client.

What we are seeing now is the inevitable convergence of tech into advertising and engineering is giving way to marketing, and we’re not building product anymore, we’re building analytics.

> I want the option to control my devices.

So don’t buy an iPhone. You know that’s not the offer.

Better: We (the people) ban you from selling phones in our rich and prosperous land if you don’t comply.

Signed: Everyone

Why do you need to ban other people from buying them? You can already just opt to not buy them yourself. Why do you care if others still want to?

Clearly not signed everyone - I don’t sign it.

Lol we’re well past that.

If you’re willing to ban the NFA/legalize probate nuclear weapons we might be able to talk.

In the mean time I suspect you support at least some level of collective restriction, and that means banning companies from selling locked hardware is fair game.

> I suspect you support at least some level of collective restriction

Locked mobile phones don’t hurt people other than the people who choose to use them. That’s different to for example a gun.

The only reason to ban iPhones is because you know other people like them as they are and you’re in a minority! You want to enforce a minority opinion on others. That’s morally wrong.

Your comment still doesn't answer the question "Why do you need to ban other people from buying them?"

I think it's a good question that deserves an answer.

Because it's anti-competitive. Society is advanced when companies have to compete and not just collect taxes from other companies who are trying to do something.

The Apple tax is not advancing anything. It's just a stranglehold on innovation promoted with FUD about how running programs is insecure despite the fact that this isn't applied to desktop/laptop computers.

Apple developing a more secure platform is an innovation and advancement. If the iPhone isn’t the right choice for you buy one of the other thousand phones on the market, and leave other people alone.

If it's such a stranglehold on innovation, Android will out-innovate and outcompete iOS.

Or maybe Apple provides a platform that some users and businesses still find it worth paying for.

You're arguing for the government to ban products you don't like when you can just buy something else.

If you seriously think is a majority opinion you need to get out more. The average person wants strong device security, look at the press and angst attracted by cybercrime in recent times.

The discussion is about control. No one is saying devices should be less secure.

If you ask people "should you be able to run any program you want on your devices?" I doubt people would answer "yes, on computers, but on phones I should only be able to run what Tim Apple allows me to".

Most people would answer ‘I’m happy with what’s on the App Store thanks I have no desire to use anything else’.

There are many regulations already in place to protect consumer rights. The idea that you can influence companies by not buying is an illusion. The only real solution to anti-competitive practices is legislation.

It used to be that when you bought a computer you could run any program you wanted. No one thought this needed to be enshrined in law until Apple thought to restrict what you can do with your own devices.

We do need legislation to ban devices which don't allow running general programs.

I consider it part of Apple's competitive advantage. I bought an iPhone because I want it to just work and for my apps to behave well. I can do the tinkering on my laptop, I don't want every computing device I own to be hackable.

Heck, if I could have a phone with iOS 1 (no third party apps) and the camera and screen of the latest iPhone, I would buy that.

> Heck, if I could have a phone with iOS 1 (no third party apps) and the camera and screen of the latest iPhone, I would buy that.

Well, you can - just don't install any 3rd party apps?

And people who want a hackable iPhone can jailbreak it or whip out the microscopic soldering iron. I basically don't install 3rd party apps but I want it enforced at the OS level. If even 5% of iPhone users were unable to install apps companies would think twice about ruining their website in order to force their mobile app on users.

Would appreciate if the drive-by downvoters actually left a comment. It's a discussion, not an "I don't like your opinion" button.

> The idea that you can influence companies by not buying is an illusion.

People didn’t buy New Coke so it went away.

If people didn’t buy the iPhone you can be certain Apple would change.

Apple employees have the freedom to create without coercion. You would need to lobby to change law, not preach to the choir here.

That’s what Spotify and Musk are doing; trying to manipulate public perception to influence politicians.

The problem they have is Apple is the crown jewel of US tech corps. Spotify is not and politicians are well aware Musk is a poser with money. Epic, Spotify, like Jobs once said, sell features not products.

Gabe Newell has called generative content “an extinction level event” for traditional media producers and distributors. Epic and Spotify are an AI breakthrough away from irrelevance. Why listen to them except as anything but an appeal to rapidly outdated economic traditions?

They can join the protest rotary phone makers, and horse and buggy businesses are pulling together.

Don’t buy Apple products. You can safely self-curate on Android.

I think the iron fist is partly about Apple protecting the iPhone’s image. If you allow users to sideload garbage onto their phone, some of their phones will work like crap. When they’re out on the town with friends and their phone’s battery dies after an hour, the perception (shared with those friends / potential future iPhone customers) is that the iPhone has terrible battery life—not that they loaded free apps that mined cryptocurrency in the background.

You (and anyone reading this comment) are a rare exception. Users of this site are interested in how tech works. You spend time to understand what it’s doing and make things work for you.

And that’s awesome! Personally I’m the same way.

But an overwhelming majority of people do not want to fight with or customize their tech. Opening the tech actually tricks them into causing more problems by clicking random pop up’s on websites that look like system updates or other malware / advert tricks.

A recent discussion on this problem is here [1]. I’m not sure how to solve this. Maybe we need an actually viable Linux phone for tinkerers, while also having a locked down iPhone for the less tech literate? Maybe Apple can introduce a less locked down version of iOS for power users?

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33314291

> Maybe we need an actually viable Linux phone for tinkerers, while also having a locked down iPhone for the less tech literate? Maybe Apple can introduce a less locked down version of iOS for power users?

A key problem with this is volume.

Most people fall into the "less tech literate" group, which means that the devices made for that market will be better (more capable and/or less expensive).

Maybe there's a solution (I'm think about "developer mode" and "linux development environment" in Chrome OS); but I think it'll always be not so great in the best of cases.

> Maybe we need an actually viable Linux phone for tinkerers

Like this https://store.google.com/product/pixel_7_pro?

You can do almost anything with the unlocked phones from Google. They are great!

No, like Pinephone and Librem 5.

> an overwhelming majority of people do not want to fight with or customize their tech

> while also having a locked down iPhone for the less tech literate?

Your post comes across as snobby. Not to mention demonstrably inaccurate. Someone who doesn't want their phone to be a tinkering device may be the most tech literate person on Hacker News. Not everyone wants every piece of tech they own to require tinkering, they just want it to work and get out of their way, so they can focus their tinkering on something else.

Dude then build your own phone lol.

Apple wants to control your device because if you have too much control, you could create a situation that makes you, a government, Apple as a business, application developers, or other users feel that Apple did something wrong.

Whenever there is a centralized entity with the power to change things, people will eventually treat it as though it is responsible to change them. This is why we need decentralized systems. Freedom, choice, and efficiency for users comes from using decentralized systems — like the web + browsers.

I don't think the argument is good enough to justify their behavior. But it is why they do it.

Subscription fatigue. I am tired of having to pay every month for everything. I actively avoid buying subscription based services and products now. Even simple programs and services want me to pay every month. Nope. Not doing that.

What does this have to do with the topic of the 30%  tax?

Your iDevice being jailbroken makes my iDevice less secure.

The vulnerabilities in Apple’s code that jailbreaks exploit make your iOS device less secure.

Then don’t buy Apple. I want what Apple offers. I want a walled garden. And I am willing to pay for it.

You use your propaganda about freedom of choice to demand that I not be allowed to choose. You demand that no device can function the way I want it to because ALL of them must function the way YOU want them to.

I understand where you are coming from, and support you on that. On the other hand, I'm pretty happy with the default state of an iPhone. It just manages itself, and all that hard problems (backups, updates, ease of use, experience homogenity, etc.) are solved.

I manage more than enough servers at work, and I don't want to manage another server in my pocket, do nitty-gritty settings, allow selected apps background access, try to find what changed and what broke every update.

I'm using Linux for 20 years, and I'm not going to change that, however Android is not Linux and settings persistence on Android is just not present.

My parents use Samsung A9s, and I help them configure theirs from time to time, and seems like every important setting is either buried six levels deep or is not guaranteed to stick after an arbitrary time.

While iPhone's (or Apple's) ecosystem lacks control, it promises dependability, and this is huge in removing obstacles from your productivity. I can just get things done in my iPhone and never touch settings app ever, except the occasional "is my battery doing good" checks.

Exactly the same sentiment for me. I use both devices and I couldn't be more happy with the freedom this allows me.

I own everything about the critical devices I work on, Linux. I have a magical device which "just works" in my Apple products.

If someone breaks this, I'll be sad.

The "it just works" argument is what keeps me using an iPhone, even though my computers and servers all run Linux.

Years ago, I replaced my trusty Nokia 6310 with an O2 XDA phone. It ran Windows CE, routinely crashed or froze and would be unable to make or receive calls. Since then, I've always wanted a phone that just works. The iPhone is the nearest thing to that for me.

I "rooted" my Android once, it was a nightmare. Never doing that again...on my primary phone at least.

I think it is about having an ADDITIONAL option to access things not about taking the "Lock me down, I don't care"-status away.

The unforeseen consequences of the former will break the latter. Schools, Test Proctoring companies, Game companies will "force" users to install the ADDITIONAL option to run whatever is required and then simply extend their reach beyond what is appropriate.

I find the "Apple's engineers aren't capable of doing this in a safe way" argument a bit hollow, because the option basically already exists in iOS. All people want is the option to jailbreak iOS in an official way rather than some sketchy hack.

As for services that 'demand' you install something, the option exists on Android and no one demands people install things on their Android devices. Why would iOS be different?

> As for services that 'demand' you install something, the option exists on Android and no one demands people install things on their Android devices. Why would iOS be different?

https://www.epicgames.com/fortnite/en-US/mobile/android

1. It is used now. 2. Google is a lot less aggressive than apple (see meta vs ATT).

I don't see where Epic is forcing anyone to do anything.

If you want to play Fortnite - one of the most popular games for a generation of people- you can’t use the play store. You need to side load or use a supported store.

Sure it’s not “forced” like you go to jail or your phone doesn’t work, but you can’t use the way 99% of people will get their games.

Yes, Epic has an app store on Android. So does Amazon. So do a few others. If anything that just proves the point that third party app integrations can work in a mobile OS without the world ending.

It's anecdotal, but I don't see this happening in the Android ecosystem.

It is odd to me that there are people who eagerly agree that Apple can coerce users into configurations they don't want for lack of better options yet also believe that no other company could make them do that w.r.t. being forced to download alternative app stores, spyware, bloatware, and more. Do you really think the average user won't end up being compelled to download garbage software if it's possible?

On Android, which globally is bigger than iOS, it didn't happen. It's exactly the discussed setup - you can install alternative store, there's just a bit of friction to do that.

It already happened on iOS when both Google and Facebook convinced consumers to install what were suppose to be internal enterprise certificates to spy on you.

This is totally false. When I used Android, finding a phone maker and carrier who sold “pure” or “stock” Android without pre-installed garbage was the first step to buying a phone!

>without pre-installed garbage

Like Apple Music?

Each phone vendor including Apple does this to some extent. On Android you at least have some options (I had a few of them all were very close to stock), and usually you can disable these apps if there are any.

Comparing the system Music app which has existed since iOS 1.0 with an optional music streaming service that can be disabled as “equivalently bad” as carrier bloatware pretty much undermines your point entirely.

Honestly where I live, we usually don't buy phones from carriers(as far as I know it's not that common outside US - you guys seem to have outrageously expensive plans due to that), so I'm comparing to what manufacturers install.

Worst I had to deal with was shortcut to OnePlus community forum, which is arguably less offensive than Apple Music, which is often reported to bind to the Bluetooth play button.

>settings persistence on Android is just not present

As opposed to Apple quietly changing airdrop behavior based on what opinions the CCP has on freedom of speech?

I get why you like Apple and voluntarily submit yourself and all your private data to the comfort of the JustWorks (TM) ecosystem, but after their whole "we're gonna keep scanning pics on your device (actually our device) for CP", there's no way I'm trading my freedom and privacy for the sake of a little bit of comfort Apple's ecosystem offers.

Also, If Apple would open up their OS/ecosystem more, it means other SW vendors could offer the same quality of life of Apple's own apps, such as easy backups, photos and music, etc. but since Apple has everything locked down in their favor, of course only their apps work the best on iOS and alternative are always second class. Microsoft was sued for this in the past for monopolizing certain app segments by shipping them as default with Windows (Internet Explorer, Media Player, etc).

In the end, I trust no billion dollar publicly listed mega-corp to own my data and lease it back to me for a monthly fee, as they're beholden to their shareholders who demand constant revenue growth, and once they capture the majority market share (they already have in the US) and the users are locked in to their comfy ecosystem, there's nothing stopping them from selling users out to advertisers to generate the revenue growth demanded by the shareholders. What are their users gonna do, leave the ecosystem and 10+ years of purchases and backups behind and move to Android lol?

Not being part of "The Ecosystem (TM)" in the first place, means I'm free to walk away to a competitor whenever I sense the vendor is shifting its behavior in ways that are not in my best interest, at the cost of more time and effort to manage my services individually. Basically don't put all your eggs in one basket should be the possibility on mobile devices.

I think the “too many eggs in one basket” is really the only thing that persuades me.

I don’t care that random developers have to workaround annoying restrictions and pay 30% to apple because it means it does just work and I don’t have to think — no one is trying to persuade me to do anything non Standard because there is no wiggle room. That’s a good thing.

But it is a risk — I don’t like what apple is doing in China, and we are not that far away from that in the us and uk. If apple does start behaving poorly here I will be SOOL.

> I don’t care that random developers have to workaround annoying restrictions and pay 30% to apple because it means it does just work and I don’t have to think — no one is trying to persuade me to do anything non Standard because there is no wiggle room. That’s a good thing.

Remember this in 10 years or so when Apple will do things you won't like and you'll have no way out.

I've bookmarked your comment to have it handy in a few years when people are gonna start complaining once Apple acts against their interests.

Remember, you (plural) voluntarily asked for this. "Lock me down Apple, I love it."

But I do have a way out, android.

Im returning to this late but I think the comment is disingenuous. My post made it clear that this is an uneasy compromise. I’m not sure what the solution is, but -a the moment- apple seems more aligned with my interests than google or the myriad of fraudsters who would love to abuse an open platform.

I’ll be interested to return to this conversation in 10 years because as a priviledged, not-politically-radical (or at least not activist) person my hunch is that apple will still be a reasonable home for me. What I worry about is that it won’t be so comfortable for people who want to protest, or are in the margins in some other way.

I do care about this and would love another solution that worked.

Similarly I’d love not to use WhatsApp/fb and avoid as far as I can, but I want to play tennis or meet friends for bike rides and there is just no way of avoiding it right now without making substantial personal sacrifices.

I think the only solution long term is more regulation of large tech companies so that they act in the common good. That’s a hard problem though.

Any argument in favour of the iPhone being so locked down needs to contend with the fact that Macs are just as reliable, but far more configurable. All I want is the for the iPhone to be as open as a Mac. Let me run binaries signed by legit devs!

> Macs are just as reliable, but far more configurable

Apple has been working tirelessly for years to retrofit the iOS model to Mac. It's probably just a matter of time, unfortunately.

True, they make it harder for the average Joe, but you can still do anything on macOS, even install 3rd party kernel extensions. But yes, it's quite clear they want you to use an iPad instead of a MacBook :).

Yes HN chicken littles have been saying that Apple is going to force all apps to go through the Mac App Store since it was introduced in 2010.

We "HN chicken littles" were also saying that Microsoft is gonna force Secure Boot harder and harder to close the hardware ecosystem for Linux, and we're almost there.

Being skeptical, and critical is important. This skepticism, criticizing and warning caused Apple to at least postpone their CSAM scan and reconsider their algorithms.

We need to talk, and talk indeed openly about the things we don't like. Otherwise we'll be the real chickens at the end of the day.

Microsoft is not Apple. Their corporate culture is different, their revenue sources are different, and their incentives and motivations are different.

"But we said Microsoft would do this bad thing, and then they did it!" is not a valid argument for why we should believe "But we've been saying for 12 years that Apple will do this bad thing Any Day Now™! They haven't yet, but it'll definitely happen Very Soon, just you wait!"

I can find you a dozen comments rehashing "The New Microsoft (TM)" which allegedly won't do such thing as forcing Secure Boot further because they have changed, the culture have changed, they now "Love Linux (TM)" and whatnot.

Companies are companies. I'd love the future to sucker punch me and prove completely otherwise.

You mean like the lock downed Xbox where even physical games have to pay a license fee and you have to buy digital games through the store?

> and we're almost there.

Meanwhile the only PC I own is a Steam Deck.

Macs are a much smaller target though

iOS would instantly be the biggest target for crapware ever. Enough companies want out from under apple that you’d be almost forced to use sideloading to install mainstream apps (Facebook, Fortnite, Spotify, etc), so users would expose themselves to all sorts of scams very quickly.

At work I need to sign executables with a very expensive code signing certificate. I can sign anything with it though. I still have no idea how that makes the executables more legit :).

You seem to be a power user, and I get what you want, but pleeeease no signed binaries! :D For me a setting "I know what I'm doing" would be good enough :) (like on Android smartphones). That way I can install anything I want, and you can install only signed binaries.

No but isn’t this a case of “more eyes + more gates” , by making the system more complex in number of passing checks, you also make it more robust.

Perhaps some middle ground can be achieved.

> I still have no idea how that makes the executables more legit :)

I think the idea is that if Apple finds you signing software with malware, they can invalidate your certificate, and then your software won't run anymore on anyone's mac. And you know that you will lose your certificate and have a hard time creating a new one if you sign malware, so you probably won't do it. You also know that by default, your users won't be able to run malicious versions of your software, so your reputation won't be damaged by stories of "I installed the Schipplock Frobnicator App and my machine got infected".

In effect, it's a decent system to allow other distribution methods than the App Store without opening the flood-gates for malware and trojans. I 100% agree though that there should be some obscure option to run unsigned software, it should be a system acting on behalf of the user to protect the user, not a system acting on behalf of Apple to control the user.

> Macs are just as reliable, but far more configurable.

As a user of portable Macs, I concur. I use Linux desktops, Mac laptops and iOS mobile devices.

> All I want is the for the iPhone to be as open as a Mac. Let me run binaries signed by legit devs!

That should be nice, indeed. It'll take us to the good old PalmOS days.

My parents use a Mac, it’s still occasionally a hostile environment for them. The iPhone has vastly more users, who are installing many more apps. People put all of their digital lives into these devices. I really don’t want iPhones to be as a open as a Mac!

>People put all of their digital lives into these devices. I really don’t want iPhones to be as a open as a Mac!

Maybe users should be more mindful and more educated on the pros and cons of dumping their entire private lives in the devices they don't control and are instead controlled by publicly listed trillion dollar corporations who's sole purpose is revenue growth and shareholder ROI.

Just a thought.

I don't like this argument. It's like saying everyone should be a race car driver because they drive to the grocery store. Tech for most people is like the sidewalk, it's just a means to an end. Also, the more control you have, the more dangerous the device. i.e. a race car. An iPhone is a Honda Civic and I hope it stays that way.

Yes exactly. If I thought Apple was trying to lock down the Mac in the same way, or shift away from the Mac I'd feel differently. But I see no evidence of that. I'm quite happy for my phone to remain an appliance.

But like... none of that is related to the App Store lock in! It's also not related to the 30% cut.

Apple's OS and the API it provides for developing apps is what gets us here. Lord knows there are some real busted apps out there, but your system doesn't fall apart.

Let's not even get into the fact that Apple itself was doing OS X stuff, which was able to have a high bar for software quality, and no "don't install random binaries" stuff to be seen.

> But like... none of that is related to the App Store lock in! It's also not related to the 30% cut.

It’s related to the “one app source”. See…

> no "don't install random binaries" stuff to be seen.

Because it was a lot smaller target than windows in terms of uses and impact. Maybe you forget, but there was certainly crapware that would bog your system down.

Meanwhile iOS is probably the single greatest target today. Statistically rich users, extremely important device to the user, and lots of users.

Regardless of your view on if apple should open it up, if it were to happen, it would instantly be a massive target. Companies would flee the 30% fee (@epic/fortnight) or the privacy policies (@meta) and maybe even employers buying some Oracle/SAP junk for their employees and quickly bring legitimacy to sideloading.

Everywhere would then fill with more of those “your Java is out of date plz download” sites, but instead it’d be apps. Now, for better or worse, no one has to question what they download (too much).

If you could side-load then you’d soon almost be forced to side load and it would be heavily exploited.

It isn't 2003 anymore, operating system vendors have been taking security seriously for a while now. Abuse and malware are not a problem on macOS despite barely anyone using the Mac App Store to install apps. Same goes for Windows, it isn't Windows XP anymore, and despite nobody using the Microsoft Store, abuse and malware are much less of a problem than they were in the past.

Billions of machines use software distributed via package managers like Apt that have existed for decades, yet there is no epidemic of rampant malware proliferation via Linux package repositories despite trillions of dollars worth of assets being managed by Linux machines.

This argument is typical FUD, and it's very common for App Store apologists to not argue based on what's happening today with other app distribution methods, but via Y2K-era fear and the classic "but what about Facebook!" refrain.

> This argument is typical FUD

Yea, most of the argument is “I fear that there will be generated uncertainty in how trustworthy apps will be. I doubt that most people can make smart decisions.

> it's very common for App Store apologists to not argue based on what's happening today with other app distribution methods

I’m not an App Store apologist, but also APT is hardly a fair comparison For many obvious reasons, not the least of which is that no actually relevant volume of humans use Linux. Servers aren’t people and don’t download random plugins and “Java updates” from their browser.

Drive by browser downloads and scams are the real threat vector. They’re still a thing in 2022. Just because your DNS based ad-blocked Linux desktop with a JavaScript free Firefox installed from the command line doesn’t see them, doesn’t mean they’re not there.

Maybe you don’t think they’re as important as “freedom to install what I want” but you can’t dismiss it as y2k fud.

That’s the core of most “app store apologist” arguments. That the control and peace that comes from the App Store is worth the loss of freedom. If you wanted freedom, there are alternatives.

You can disagree with the trade off, but that’s the trade off and other people prefer the other thing.

Personally, I want the pretty and powerful hardware of the iPhone and the freedom but I’m glad I don’t have to explain to my mother why her iPhone doesn’t need new Java.

I don't buy the privacy policy stuff, using the ATT prompt to access IDFA can still require user consent.

Exactly. I want my phone to be closer to a gaming console, not a full personal computer.

I want all my problems on it to be solved by rebooting and I want it to just work and all the apps be safe by default.

> or is not guaranteed to stick after an arbitrary time

I have never experienced this. What settings?

Apps background execution and battery use permissions get revoked randomly. It's generally confined to the Tasker and other tools which interface with Tasker, tho.

However, as a result, the backup tasks I created my parents keep stopping randomly, and I don't like that.

Would giving people the ability to opt out of Apple's ultra-managed experience and take more control over their device harm your ability to continue to enjoy those benefits?

I heard an argument like this a lot at the start of discussions about whether we should be able to choose to WFH in the longer term. "I don't want to WFH because..." Ok, sure, but nobody is trying to force you to.

It might just be me, and I'll definitely fret about whether I'm being unreasonable for at least the next couple of hours, but this kinda frustrates me.

I'm supportive of your choice, but you already get to do the thing you want, and nobody is trying to take that away.

Expressing that you wouldn't behave any differently given more options is a distraction in a discussion about whether other people should be allowed to make a different choice.

> Would giving people the ability to opt out of Apple's ultra-managed experience and take more control over their device harm your ability to continue to enjoy those benefits?

You can always Jailbreak your device?

I think Apples response to your argument would be that it isn't the technically aware user that is trying to get control over their device that is the problem, its apps being used by those with no technical ability. Once an App is allowed to break out of the sandbox or be installed away from the AppStore the likelyhood of an average users phone getting into a broken mess at best and becoming infected with a virus at worse goes up my an order of magnitude.

Macs allow installing apps not from the Appstore, and I'm hearing they are quite fine and not a mess.

AppStore apps are sandboxed almost the same as on iOS.

> You can always Jailbreak your device?

No, you can't and this isn't a serious alternative, especially since Apple goes out of their way to prevent and break jailbreaks.

> Once an App is allowed to break out of the sandbox or be installed away from the AppStore the likelyhood of an average users phone getting into a broken mess at best and becoming infected with a virus at worse goes up my an order of magnitude.

And yet multimillion dollar scams flourish on the App Store[1]:

> That man’s name is Kosta Eleftheriou, and over the past few months, he’s made a convincing case that Apple is either uninterested or incompetent at stopping multimillion-dollar scams in its own App Store. He’s repeatedly found scam apps that prey on ordinary iPhone and iPad owners by luring them into a “free trial” of an app with seemingly thousands of fake 5-star reviews, only to charge them outrageous sums of money for a recurring subscription that many don’t understand how to cancel. “It’s a situation that most communities are blind to because of how Apple is essentially brainwashing people into believing the App Store is a trusted place,” he tells The Verge.

Apple is also responsible for distributing 500 million copies of Xcodeghost to users via the App Store[2].

The App Store model is about profits, and security is an afterthought that makes for good PR.

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/21/22385859/apple-app-store-...

[2] https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7bbmz/the-fortnite-trial-is...

I'm not sure what your point is - both of those articles are making the case that Apple should be doing more rather than less. If users don't understand how to cancel an App subscription from their phone how much fun will they have when the same apps and more have tied their credit cards into recurring payments.

Apple is clearly incapable of securing their own App Store and consumers should have the option of using app distribution methods run by more competent engineers with better track records.

> You can always Jailbreak your device?

No, you can’t. Apple has tight control over what gets installed on the iPhone, all the way throughout the boot chain.

Jailbreaking is about finding vulnerabilities to somehow acquire root, and many times exploits are not persistent after a reboot. The keyword here is “vulnerability”, something that Apple is eager to patch using security as an excuse, which is hard to argue against. But Apple could provide its users the ability to flash their devices with a warning that if they do, they’re on their own, but Apple wont do that for the aforementioned reasons by countless people in this thread! They are locking down the platform on purpose, and neither privacy nor security are adequate excuses.

Jailbreaking shouldn’t be a thing, because users shouldn’t be living in jails, they should live in fortresses.

Jailbreaking is incredibly bad UX. You are forced to use closed source software to “jailbreak” your phone, a jailbreak which may or may not be persistent after reboot. And only if you have the right iOS versions. So users are forced to stay on vulnerable iOS versions and not upgrade and pray to God that a new exploit is made for their version. Because if they upgrade, Apple wont let them downgrade again, which makes the users miss the opportunity of using a newly created exploit. It’s a cat and mouse game, and it makes users more vulnerable to malware.

> You can always Jailbreak your device?

Jailbreak use security exploits. I guess I want them fixed.

So make it difficult to do. Add a bunch of warnings.

This option lets hackers into yr phone to steal yr nudes click OK to continue. Are you SURE? Check this box if you're sure. Check this box if you're just clicking every box to get through this to cancel, or wait thirty minutes to continue. Type "I GET IT MR APPLE BRING ON THE VIRII" and tap continue to continue. Get any Gold badge on HackerRank to continue. Put your phone in the microwave on HIGH for 30 minutes to continue.

...

Good. If you are reading this, it means you did not microwave your phone. You have passed the test. A fully clothed Apple representative is waiting for you in your car. Do not look directly into his eyes. Follow his directions to travel to our Appcave. After performing a gravity search for security reasons, he will grant you control over your device.

Something like that.

Johnny Tech-No might be able to navigate the checkboxes, he might even get through the trick one where you have to wait 30 minutes. There's no way he's getting Gold on HackerRank without having the know how to safely use a rooted phone. Surely.

You can’t jailbreak the last two iOSes. It’s possible full jailbreaking is a thing of the past. This is the longest time it has taken to get a jailbreak for new iOS versions (for the one from last year)

Couldn't someone just release their app on github, and the user could install it via xcode for free?

> Would giving people the ability to opt out of Apple's ultra-managed experience and take more control over their device harm your ability to continue to enjoy those benefits?

No.

> It might just be me, and I'll definitely fret about whether I'm being unreasonable for at least the next couple of hours, but this kinda frustrates me.

The thing is, I'm stating my position and not telling that just because I choose something, everybody should be happy with that. I have only stated that Apple's proposition is better suited to my mindset and current preferences, given the choices are Android and iOS.

> I'm supportive of your choice, but you already get to do the thing you want, and nobody is trying to take that away.

I expressed no such fear or concern as far as I'm aware?

> Expressing that you wouldn't behave any differently given more options is a distraction in a discussion about whether other people should be allowed to make a different choice.

I don't think so. I skimmed the discussion and didn't see the position I have expressed here, and the parent asked for a counter-opinion, and I presented mine in a concise and polite manner. I guess we're discussing by expressing our opinions here, what am I missing?

I think the point is that the benefits you list can continue if Apple adopts a Google model of allowing power users to add additional stores. You seemed to be presenting them as reasons why that shouldn't happen.

To be clear: I'm mostly complaining about the general concept of people giving "I like A" answers to "should we allow people to choose B over A" questions.

Your comment was an example of that, if not a particularly egregious one. We're not about to sway Apple in a HN comment thread. Specific reference to your comment was intended only to use it as an example to illustrate the point.

> I expressed no such fear or concern as far as I'm aware?

Nor did I claim that you did. While it is not your position that allowing others a choice would harm you, explicitly mentioning that you don't stand to lose anything by allowing that choice is supportive of the main point in the next sentence.

> the parent asked for a counter-opinion

They didn't.

> Would giving people the ability to opt out of Apple's ultra-managed experience and take more control over their device harm your ability to continue to enjoy those benefits?

Next thing that would happen is that every major "can't miss out" app will walk its users through the process to disable safe management features, all to fulfill the promise of showing cute cat gifs. You know that's how it is.

Android has had this from day one(?) and it has never been an issue.

Except the velvet lined iron fist called Google Play Services which gatekeeps the apps from having nice things or not.

Android lets you easily side-load apps. You are not required to get your apps from Google.

As an example, I tend to look for apps on f-droid before google play.

Why is here consistently in any Apple discussion exactly this reaction? Locked down is good for you, you don't want freedom, we know better. On hacker forum.

Seriously, basically any other topic we can discuss like adults here but when it comes to Apple and their restrictions/bad behavior it feels like the most upvoted posts are paid ones (not stating they are, but it certainly would look like that on more generic forums)

> Why is here consistently in any Apple discussion exactly this reaction?

Because the only mobile OS provider which allows blinding tracking frameworks with a single click is Apple currently, and every software vendor will want its telemetry and ads for their "monies".

The application model evolved from "pay this to get that" to "train this AI implicitly which we gonna use against you, and ah, we also sell your every aspect of you" to see cute cat GIFs.

Some of us are seriously against this and Android doesn't provide that. Maybe it's because Google is an advertisement company which provides nice looking (free-ish) utilities which also acts as nice data funnels (incl. Android).

True, but Google's own implementation of Android in the Pixel does allow you to re sign the bootloader so you can install your own OS and securely boot to it. And "Android" isn't all the same. It's a broad and shared ecosystem.

However, doing this and using a custom ROM will flat out disable SIM services menu and related functionality, which I need for my embedded e-Signature in my SIM card.

Also, we have a gatekeeper called Google Play Services. In other words, even if you have a custom ROM, you need that all-encompassing framework to have nice things.

Clients may differ, but the cloud platform and the connector which enables all these "Android" things is closed source, and controlled by Google.

Or you could have the open source microG and miss out only on Google Pay (and some bank apps that wanna validate SafetyNet for some reason). If you disable FCM / push notification support, your phone won't even need to interact with Google servers at all.

How do I install that microG thing in a Huawei Mate 50? Oh wait, I can't.

Tough luck! That said, Huawei phones don't siphon your information to Google (of course they leak it to Huawei instead :-)

---

If you want to install microG super easy and are still choosing your next phone, get one supported by LineageOS: https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/

Then instead of the official LineageOS build, get one from here with microG preinstalled: https://download.lineage.microg.org/

For low budget folks, a lot of Xiaomi phones are supported. You'll have to sign up for their account and wait for a few days, but otherwise the process is pretty straightforward. E. g. this is for my current phone: https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/ginkgo/install

If you mean browsing web, the freedom I talk about allows you on Android to install Firefox and ublock origin (and other plugins), which is more privacy friendly solution in-the-box than Apple will ever allow to be installed on any Apple device. If you mean apps installed its your choice what you put on your device.

Lets not forget the stuff you (and most of us) so loathe is direction Apple is actively heading for few years via their own ad-space. Truly surreal discussion.

You can install Firefox on an iPhone

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/add-ons-firefox-ios

Firefox on iOS is just browser chrome on top of Safari's browser engine because Apple bans all other browser and JavaScript engines on iOS.

Then make it a contact that can be opened by removing a screw behind a "non reversible loss of warranty" sticker so that only users who know what they're doing would be motivated to proceed.

>>removing a screw behind a "non reversible loss of warranty" sticker

Well that would be in violation of existing US Federal Law

I'm not familiar with those laws, do you mean the protection screw or the loss of warranty? I think many devices implement the latter in their EULAs, in case of tampering, use of non original parts etc, and the former as a protection is commonly used for example in some Chromebox PCs models to prevent flashing other operating systems. I think many tinkerers, including myself, would be more than happy to surrender any warranty, support, etc, if that was the only price to pay to be able to install what we want on our devices.

Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act ban such stickers as the manufacture has to prove a modification directly led to the failure before denying a warrany claim. the FTC sent out in 2018[1][2] a letter to several manufacturers, including Apple I believe, that deployed such stickers on their products

The common example I give is that if you replace the radio in your car, and then the water pump fails the manufacturer of the car can not refuse the warranty because you change the radio

Similarly, if in this instance you remove the sticker to turn on Dev Mode and then the Screen fails it would be incumbent on Apple to prove some software or something you did directly cause the screen failure before voiding the warranty claim, they can not simply relay on a sticker

[1] https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/ftc-warranty-sticker... [2] https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2018/04/...

We don't have to guess. Android app store is clear example that gives power users choice, while at the same time being able to hold onto most of the users.

The Google play store is heavily censored and moderated and most users don’t know about side loading.

Are you trying to argue that it would be different if Apple allowed side loading? (Not the current 7 day crap)

Do you expect most users would know about side loading in Apple's case?

A sibling argument is saying that if side-loading were opt in, major apps would move to require it from users.

This has never happened on Android.

Epic's enormously popular game Fortnite was removed from the Google Play store in 2020 for violating their in-app purchase policies, so they publish it in their own sideloaded app store.[0]

[0] https://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/fortnite-removed-from-g...

> This has never happened on Android.

>When Fortnite launched on mobile in 2018, Epic Games very notably sidestepped the Google Play Store and pushed users to download the title directly from their website, an effort made to avoid the substantial revenue cuts that Google takes from in-app purchases of Play Store downloads. At the time, the move was understandable for Epic, which was sitting on the hottest free-to-play game of the year that was pulling in substantial revenues from in-app purchases.

Google proceeded to try to scare users away from sideloading Epic's app, and Epic sued.

>“Google puts software downloadable outside of Google Play at a disadvantage, through technical and business measures such as scary, repetitive security pop-ups for downloaded and updated software, restrictive manufacturer and carrier agreements and dealings, Google public relations characterizing third party software sources as malware, and new efforts such as Google Play Protect to outright block software obtained outside the Google Play store,” an Epic Games spokesperson said in a statement. “Because of this, we’ve launched Fortnite for Android on the Google Play Store.”

https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/21/epic-games-launches-fortni...

>> A sibling argument is saying that if side-loading were opt in, major apps would move to require it from users.

>> This has never happened on Android.

> When Fortnite launched on mobile in 2018, Epic Games very notably sidestepped the Google Play Store and pushed users to download the title directly from their website...

Though that's the exception that proves the rule. Besides Fortnite, who else has pushed users into side-loading? It's not at all common, which weighs strongly against the scare-mongering that it would somehow cause their platform security to collapse if Apple allowed it.

It also seems like it would be the case if your app is big enough to get people to side-load it, it's probably also big enough to get some security/privacy of its own to keep its practices in check.

>Besides Fortnite, who else has pushed users into side-loading?

Amazon did the same with its app store (one they tried to push when they first released their tablet)

We know from discovery in the various Google antitrust cases that Google has a pattern of behavior where they place barriers against others who attempted to offer their own app store. They talk a good game about allowing it, but their conduct is a different story.

>The lawsuit is effectively claiming that this openness is a facade, because while customers technically have the choice of where to get their apps from, Google’s business practices have prevented a viable app store competitor from emerging.

https://www.theverge.com/2021/7/8/22568111/google-play-andro...

>Google has struck at least 24 deals with big app developers to stop them from competing with its Play Store, including an agreement to pay Activision Blizzard Inc about $360 million over three years

https://www.reuters.com/technology/google-agreed-pay-360-mln...

>Epic reached an agreement with OnePlus to preload Epic Games on the company’s smartphones. As part of the agreement, Epic says it developed a version of Fortnite specifically for OnePlus devices to take advantage of the OnePlus phones’ high-refresh-rate screens...

Google demanded OnePlus not implement the agreement outside of India, where the company allowed OnePlus to move forward with the deal.

OnePlus reportedly informed Epic that Google was “concerned that the Epic Games app would have the ability to potentially install and update multiple games with a silent install bypassing the Google Play Store.”

https://mobilesyrup.com/2020/08/14/epic-google-oneplus-prelo...

WeChat won’t start on Android if you didn’t give access to your contact list, this is not the case on iPhone as Apple wouldn’t allow that crippled user experience. Android already allows shenanigans so the incentives for more stores aren’t that big. I had Samsung store on my last Android phone also.

For me, it's not about companies right but individuals rights. If I paid money for a device and if I am willing to let go of warranty and updates, I should be free to do whatever I wish with it. I don't think this statement should be as controversial as people make it to be.

You're free to jailbreak

No I am not, unless someone finds a bug in their code. In contrast, android allows rooting for someone willing to forgo their warranty.

Facebook claims to have lost $10 billion due to a single iOS prompt giving users the option of blocking tracking. If side-loading were allowed on iOS, Facebook would have 10 billion reasons to push users to side-load their app, a pressure that doesn't exist at all on Android, which is tracking-happy.

Since Google lets most apps do what they want in most ways, there's not much motivation for bypassing the App Store--unless you're greedy like Epic. Since Apple restricts apps more with each passing year, the motivation is much higher, in addition to the identical 30% fees.

> Would giving people the ability to opt out of Apple's ultra-managed experience and take more control over their device harm your ability to continue to enjoy those benefits?

Not OP but yeah, I think it would. Im currently an android user because I thought it wouldn't, but in practice it does.

The most explicit example is that despite owning a flagship phone from a flagship manufacturer, the Google suite of apps don't integrate properly with the hardware. I have a Z flip 3, and I need to use Samsung Pay (over google wallet) with the phone to use it while folded. Because Samsung Pay doesn't integrate with my Google account, I'm forced to use both services in praxtice.

These sorts of niggley incompatibilities are _everywhere_ on android.

The other point is what epic has done is going to spread (side note: I used to work for Epic, this is my take on their move, not speaking on their behalf). If I want to play the Fortnite right now, I am forced to download an extra launcher on my device that interacts differently to the play store and Samsung store, doesn't support the integrations with the rest of my apps. I can only guarantee that as other apps grow we'll end up with storefronts for X, Y and Z (see uplay, battle.net, origin, epic launcher, ms store) so that those apps can either take a bigger cut or skirt around the requirements the platform holder has - on iOS it will make it so that sign in with apple isn't a requirement on third party stores.

The fact is that people who do want to sideload have the option to right now - use android. The people who want to live in a walled garden also have an option. By forcing apple to be more open you remove that option from the people who want it.

As with it OP, I'm not saying everyone should feel this way.

That's interesting. Is that incompatibility specific to the Flip 3? I have a Fold 4, and Google Wallet works for me.

Absolutely no idea, sorry. I don't have other devices to verify on. But, if I set my default payment app to Google Wallet, when I try to activate a payment the phone says "open your phone and set the default payment app to Samsung Wallet"

To be fair it's also impossible to use Apple Pay on a foldable iPhone

Is that a challenge?

I'm sure I have a couple of vice grips around here somewhere. I wonder how far an iPhone will fold before Apple Pay stops working. Surely some YouTuber has tested this already...

> The most explicit example is that despite owning a flagship phone from a flagship manufacturer, the Google suite of apps don't integrate properly with the hardware.

I personally have never used a Samsung device, but from I've read, I feel like Samsung phones are trying to be their own OS and do as much as they can to hide the fact that they're running Google's Android OS.

It's similar to the same way MacOS tries to hide the fact that it's Unix under the hood and hides all the Unix directories (/usr, /bin, etc.) in the Finder by default.

> Would giving people the ability to opt out of Apple's ultra-managed experience and take more control over their device harm your ability to continue to enjoy those benefits?

Yes, it would, because <insert your giant corporation here> will require you to opt-out of Apple's ultra-managed experience to use their app.

Then don't install it or only install it if its worth the trade off. The only real reason for 99.9% of apps to want to do that is to prevent Apple from taking a huge portion of the revenue. Decrease the tax and this problem virtually goes away.

Not OP, but the thing which bothers me about this is that it’s not a real choice from an end user perspective. So many employers quasi-require people to use their phones as part of their work. I can just see something like Microsoft teams becoming a wedge that pushes people to disable lockdowns from apple that, in their personal lives, they’d rather keep.

I do think that could be solvable. Something like different personas on the phone could be the next step for the new “focus” features on the iPhone— maybe if you could disable App Store lockdowns but only for isolated profiles on your phone?

> I can just see something like Microsoft teams becoming a wedge that pushes people to disable lockdowns from apple that, in their personal lives, they’d rather keep.

Exactly. Not just employers, but also Facebook, TikTok, and whatever new and worse invasive tech that is enabled by the lack of Apple's restrictions.

> I do think that could be solvable.

I agree. And it should be solved. But, those who are asking for less restrictions won't be happy, because what they are looking for is better tracking tools.

Motorola makes a decent android phone for $170. Buy for work and only use for work.

> Decrease the tax and this problem virtually goes away.

Why are these companies not happy with the current commissions structure? What guarantee is there that they'll be happy with a new one? Corporations are greedy. They will ask more of whatever their bottom line needs, including users' attention, privacy, etc.

> Then don't install it or only install it if its worth the trade off.

And get excluded from online circles that everyone in the world uses? Or, find a different job, because my employer wants to install their surveillance app outside Apple's sandbox? I prefer not having to do the trade off at all.

> Yes, it would, because <insert your giant corporation here> will require you to opt-out of Apple's ultra-managed experience to use their app.

So, which "<insert your giant corporation here>" is making you do this on android, where you can actually sideload apps?

I don't know. What's your point?

that it does not happen on Android, as far as I know, and likely it would not be a big problem on iPhone

Maybe because Android just allows the privacy invading stuff iOS tries to limit?

Fortnite was removed from the Google Play store in 2020 for violating the in-app purchase policies, so Epic publishes it in their own sideloaded app store.[0]

[0] https://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/fortnite-removed-from-g...

Is this really such a bad thing? Following technical walk throughs are the sort of thing that get people interested in the kind of education that is more likely to protect them and even make them someone who “knows what they’re doing.” Most of the people I know who got interested in tech didn’t do so from some Apple approved stem app, it was from this sort of independent exploration to get something they want. These arguments start to feel like prohibition over education, and in a lot of ways just plain technocratic.

Apple has a brand to protect so letting people fiddle too much then possibly complain about it can hurt that

> * "I don't want to WFH because..." Ok, sure, but nobody is trying to force you to.*

When I was last looking for a job, I clearly stated that I did not want to work from home and that I was only interested in onsite. Out of dozens of recruiters contacting me, only 1 respected that desire.

I share a house with my sister and she has terrible boundary issues (the places she socialized with others closed and went out of business from the Covid shutdowns). Her refusal to stop "visiting" during working hours cost me 2 jobs.

> "I don't want to WFH because..." Ok, sure, but nobody is trying to force you to.

The correct phrasing is probably "I would rather not work with a mix of remote co-workers". Which is very different, though I'd argue still a perfectly reasonable preference!

Sure, and I suspect in the case of WFH that is what some of those people really meant.

I'm not sure I'd agree on the reasonableness point.

It's definitely a reasonable preference to have (although this is true of all preferences). To me, the reasonableness ends at trying to make anyone else satisfy that preference.

Tangential...

World of Warcraft has a day/night cycle, but it runs in a full 24-hour cycle just like the real world. This meant that if you were like me and mostly played at night, you mostly only ever saw the game world at night, and rarely saw the beautiful daytime colors.

I found forum threads of people asking for the option to either disable the day/night cycle entirely (it was 100% cosmetic and had no effect on anything in the game), or perhaps change it to something shorter like a 6-hour cycle.

And in every one of them, there were people arguing against having it as an option because they wouldn't use it. It seems people struggle to understand what "optional" means.

It's a mindset that I just absolutely don't understand. I could maybe see someone coming at it from the standpoint of "I don't think devs should spend the time on implementing an option I won't use when there are so many other things to work on", but in the specific case of WoW's day/night cycle, I can't imagine it would be much of an effort.

> Would giving people the ability to opt out of Apple's ultra-managed experience and take more control over their device harm your ability to continue to enjoy those benefits?

I remember back to when Apple allowed apps to set location privacy options. They could make it so ‘only while using the app’ wasn’t an option. So uber only let you have it always on or always off. It took Apple unilaterally enforcing an opinionated stance on what apps are allowed to do before companies stopped being anti-user in that particular way. When Apple allowed more flexibility, app makers didn’t.

>Would giving people the ability to opt out of Apple's ultra-managed experience and take more control over their device harm your ability to continue to enjoy those benefits?

I don’t want Apple to allow app-makers the freedom to provide apps that are anti-user. In practice, it seems to bethe lesser evil.

I remember when Apple allowed Uber to give users the location preferences of “always” and “never,” before they required apps to offer “only when using the app.” I guess I just tend to like what apple’s tight restrictions do to the entire ecosystem.

I'm not suggesting giving app developers greater control, but users. I agree that letting app developers demand whatever permissions they want will lead to stopwatch apps which always require precise location.

If I want the option to shut off Apple's controls and sideload a bunch of malware, that doesn't have to affect users who don't want to do that (assuming this option is gated behind some sufficiently stern warnings about the consequences). That Apple doesn't allow that has far less to do with protecting users than it does protecting their bottom line.

Having said that, Apple making these kinds of decisions for business reasons is (IMHO) a perfectly valid and logical way to operate. I'd just prefer we didn't pretend they're making this decision because allowing users to take more control over their devices is necessarily dangerous. That excuse has more holes than a slice of this fine Gorgombert.

Nothing of this would change if iPhones had a simple 'unlock' setting with an 'at your own risk' disclaimer. People who are happy with the default just keep the phone locked, others can trade Apple's "warm embrace" against the freedom to install any software they want on their own device. Tech companies really should stop treating their users like idiots who can't think for themselves. It's all about the sweet app store profits, nothing else.

Sure it would - apps with enough clout will do this: https://www.epicgames.com/fortnite/en-US/mobile/android

And tell you the only way for experience X is to follow these safe steps to unlock your phone and use their launcher.

And if you don't like it, don't do it.

I don't like that argument at all. I can just as easily day if you don't like it, buy an android and use F-droid, but I won't because it's a lazy argument.

A freedom of choice has to be a freedom to choose. As I said farther you the thread, this immediately becomes an "and" rather than an "or".

"I can install this app via my preferred storefront" is a fine choice - but "I have to use all of the services that every third party wants to bundle in to use their specific service" isn't a choice, it's forced upon you and is no better than the situation we have now. We've seen this on android - try and install the Google camera app on a Huawei device and let me know how that goes for you, or use the Samsung app store on your Google device.

...and there's really nothing wrong with that. If it would, then PC gaming would have collapsed a long time ago.

Sure there is. It's fragmentation, and it's not a choice. I can't buy my favourite Unisoft game and play it with my friends in steam, instead I'm forced to download uplay or the epic launcher.

That's not a choice, and it's no better than being forced to use steam in the first place.

These are all business decisions by Valve, Ubisoft, Epic, etc... if it's too much of a hassle for me to play Ubisoft games, then Ubisoft has lost me as a customer, it's very simple (apart from that, Ubisoft has returned to Steam a long time ago: https://store.steampowered.com/publisher/Ubisoft)

But none of this is Microsoft's business. That's the important part.

So it's ok for it to be one companies choice but not another company? As a consumer it's not a meaningful choice if I have to use their platform, and I'd rather have the situation where the platform holder enforces consistency - they're not perfect but I know that having a Google account with Google Pay is enough to get me into 98+% of applications on android, and I'm not worried about having to _phone_ someone to cancel a subscription (looking at you NY times)

Again, if you're happy with one app store there's no reason for you to use other app stores (eg I barely use other app stores than Steam, but I don't complain that there's EGS too). Other users may be just as happy with EGS and not use Steam at all. Maybe other stores focus on different product types (like retro games) or are generally better curated. yet other users might want to support a developer by buying directly from the developer without 30% going to a completely unrelated 3rd party. I really don't understand how this sort of choice can be considered a bad thing for users.

> I really don't understand how this sort of choice can be considered a bad thing for users.

Because it's not user choice, it's publisher or developer choice. If I want to play Fortnite, I don't have a choice to play it on steam or EGS, and similarly if I want to play league of legends,I can't play it on steam. This sort of "choice" isn't a choice for the user, it forces them to be subject to the data protection and whims of every publisher whether they want to or not.

There's no reason you need to stop people from doing what they want with their devices just because you don't want to do it yourself.

Are there any words in my comment stating or implying that such capability should not be included in Apple iOS devices, ever?

I'm all for flexibility, but of the two choices we have today, I prefer Apple's proposition more. If they decide to add more flexibility without compromising their quality, I'd be more than supportive of the feat.

I agree.

As my business become more complicated and I become less a tech oriented student and more a "have to get the paperwork done for legal reasons" type person I went back to iPhone and never looked back.

I noticed many people I know running very time consuming business to be iPhone users too, not having the time to tinker with Android.

I notice my tech friends working in support love android, as their job doesn't really let them tinker. How we for those running's servers and dealing with backend stuff I see iPhone ownership is about 50/50, far higher than in support.

And most people I know that own their own business like I do are almost always iPhone users.

We just do not have time to dig deep into our phones and tinker, we have too much work to do and we are already stretched for time with our families, why waste that on configuring yet another Android ?

That's a lot of stereotyping. Has it occurred to you that not every Android user wastes time to "tinker" with their phone and they're just normal people who use it like you do your iPhone?

Android is not like Linux were it's exclusive to developers, geeks and tinkerers. The market share also exemplifies that it's just as much for average joes as iOS.

I have a hard time with threads like this because it feels like half the comments are straight out of an Apple ad. "It's simple", "It just works", "PC is some nerd twiddling bits but Mac is cool and gets things done". It feels like a cheap shot, but when "the nerds" are proclaiming Apple the one true OS the hacker ethic is really suffering.

My wife switched from Android to Apple, then Apple back to Android a couple times. Turns out they're really not that different, and the "simple" one is the one you're used to (noting in the Android ecosystem companies like Samsung really do a disservice by trying to stand out from stock in a different-but-no-better way).

Ok then, for you, do not enable that option. What am I missing?

> What am I missing?

The part that I'm not telling that my choice shall be default for everyone, which I repeated numerous times in this thread.

Apple decides to add a switch to convert iOS to macOS levels of freedom? Fine. Apple enables sideloading? Fine, I'll applaud even.

The thing is I'm not pro-"Apple's current stance". I'm pro-choice, but what I get today is satisfying my needs. If we can satisfy more users' need with one device (regardless of manufacturer), we should do that, and I support that.

Sidenote: Backup is not solved at all.

Neither my iphone 12 Pro max nor my new one have made a successful backup yet. Tried all the things and contacted support nothing so far, but no chance. Always stuck at "Estimating .. "

Can't agree on this. Also on Samsung, S22 ultra, I can't be bothered with any deep app settings because why would I do that? Device runs flawlessly, doesn't bother me with anything, has great battery life (and photos).

On the other hand, my wife bought iphone 13 mini after being whole life on android and its a proper shitfest form her point of view - basic settings simply NOT possible by OS because Apple decided they know better than users what users want and users have no say in this apart form losing warranty via jailbreak, basic convenient features missing. The whole device can be summarized as 'basic for very premium price' - it looks very cheap, works cheap, not a single fancy or cool thing on it.

Was about to give a chance to Apple myself but quickly rolled back after what I've seen. Plus all the scandals that show Apple is just another amoral non-privacy corporation just like the rest of bunch, despite their hard efforts at marketing. My wife will be probably rolling back to Android soon since its pretty bad experience overall. So completely opposite experience.

Well, if the Android ecosystem is serving you well, and the devices you have are functioning the way you expect, more power to you. I'm not a person who takes hard sides, but support whatever works for people. There's plenty of evidence that Android fulfills needs of a lot of people, so let it be (except they're trying to replace Linux with Fuchsia in a relatively unethical way to lock down the devices even more than Apple, but let's not digress).

> ...its a proper shitfest form her point of view

You know what? That's perfectly OK in my book. Android and iOS are backwards with respect to each other, and they are built on different default modes of operation. However, I'll never call Android like that as an iOS user.

> basic settings simply NOT possible by OS because Apple decided they know better than users what users want and users have no say

Well, again this is a subjective view. I used many things before an iPhone. Android, Palm, Windows CE Casiopeia, Windows Mobile to name a few.

People think PalmOS is dead, but it's very well alive and its name is iOS. Basic iOS mode of operation is a direct descendant of PalmOS, and evolved from there. When looked from that point of view, it's a perfectly capable device which provides all the settings I want. Again, it might not be providing what you or your wife's expecting, and that's OK. This is why we have choices, and I support that.

> The whole device can be summarized as 'basic for very premium price' - it looks very cheap, works cheap, not a single fancy or cool thing on it.

Well, again it depends on your view. Considering I can do anything I need on it, short of conquering the world (which I'm gonna publish an app for that), I don't call it a basic tool. It might not be as open as an Android system (for things which I call fancy, you need to root that system too), but seriously, calling it "incapable and basic" is inaccurate and laughable.

> Apple is just another amoral non-privacy corporation just like the rest of bunch despite their hard efforts at marketing...

Apple is just another company, which earns money in different ways. Just to be clear, I don't see them anything extraordinary.

What part of non-default optional customization for others changes anything for you?

Nothing. I've elaborated on other replies. Please take peek at them. I don't want to re-hash everything I've written here.

> Android is not Linux

It most certainly is linux. You probably mean it's not a GNU operating system.

> You probably mean it's not a GNU operating system.

He more likely means you don't manage it as a linux system.

A lot of linux systems don't use GNU, especially embedded ones, or containers. Busybox is very common. But you don't really treat these systems any differently from GNU/linux other than some relatively mundane command differences.

> It just manages itself, and all that hard problems (backups, updates, ease of use, experience homogenity, etc.) are solved.

My wife switched away from an iPhone an an Android device less than a year ago exactly because this _wasn't_ the case.

- Restore from backup failed... pretty much impossible to solve as far as we could tell

- Tell iTunes what songs you want loaded onto your phone and sync. Then leave the house and it downloads some of the songs off the internet, because it _didn't_ actually sync them to the phone. It just loads a placeholder. Pretty severe impact for someone not on an unlimited plan.

- Ran into a problem and had to get the music library from itunes/phone. I don't recall the exact details (it was years ago), but every song had been renamed to some random alphanumeric string. It took a long time to fix them.

Honestly, it was one long series of the system doing something that clearly wasn't what she, as the user, would expect (or exactly _not_ what she told it to do).

To be fair, most people using an iPhone don't download music onto their phones but instead just use Spotify/Apple Music/whatever other music service is hot at the moment. It still sucks, but this is a fairly specific usecase imo.

For anyone that isn't on an unlimited data plan, being able to play music located on the device is critical.

All of the major streaming apps let you download songs for offline playback

It seems that for Spotify it's only premium that allows for download for offline playback.

You list several fairly serious failures that are absolutely not typical.

I have had to restore my iDevices from backups several times. It has worked flawlessly every time.

I have been syncing my music library from iTunes to my iDevices since well before the iPhone existed. The only times I have ever had a problem with songs not being on the iPhone are when a) I wasn't actually syncing my whole library, but a subset, and I had forgotten which songs I hadn't synced, or b) the songs failed to sync, and iTunes/Finder gave me a big dialog box saying so, with a message explaining why for each individual song that didn't sync. This is true for songs I bought through the iTunes Store as well as those from other sources.

Does this mean I expect these things to work perfectly for everyone, every time? No, of course not. I've had my share of problems with all my Apple devices.

But it does mean that either because of user error or unusually bad products (ie, you got a lemon), your experience is not typical.

> The only times I have ever had a problem with songs not being on the iPhone are when

But would you even notice if the song showed up in your itunes list "as if" it was on the phone but, when you played it, it grabbed it off the internet (with not delay, because it streams it). I expect most people wouldn't notice this at all.

> But it does mean that either because of user error or unusually bad products

- The issue with it loading songs (that you have told it to put on the phone) from the internet is, as far as I was able to determine, intended behavior.

- The issue with it renaming every song to a "random" alphanumeric string is, also as far as I was able to determine, intended behavior. Although needing to get the songs "back out of itunes" is, I imagine, an edge case.

- The failed backup restore, I have nothing on. It didn't work, but it was long enough ago that I don't recall why. I do not think it was faulty hardware. It could have been user error... but the entire point of the iphone argument is "it just works"; "you didn't do it right" isn't really a reasonable response in that context. Especially when you consider we really couldn't find a way to recover from it.

I don't want to manage my iPhone like I do a Linux server. But I would like the ability to sign up for Netflix or other streaming services when I first launch the app. Or, failing that, I'd like a message on that app telling me where I have to go to sign-up. I'd like to be able to buy Kindle books directly on my phone and start reading them. I'd like to use a different web browser engine at times.

All of those things have been taken out of my hands, the first two because those of ludicrous App Store rules and policies.

Interesting that you mention the kindle - wouldn't it also be nice to be able to buy Apple Books on your Kindle hardware? You also can't do that. You can root some Kindles and install other software, but is more or less like jailbreaking an iPhone.

The issue I have with people going after Apple is that _everyone_ does this more or less.

Broadly, I have the fewest complaints about the restrictions in Apple's ecosystem as a user.

The Kindle is not sold or marketed as a general purpose computing device with a robust third party app marketplace. That's the key difference here.

It does have a robust 3rd party app marketplace... with fees.

Amazon could sell books if they wanted to, they would just have to pay Apple.

> all that hard problems (backups, updates, ease of use, experience homogenity, etc.) are solved

This is a bit funny to me. I'll give you the homogeneity argument, but as for the rest, as someone who has owned both iPhone and Android since 2008 or so, it took Apple a long, long time to catch up to Android in the backup/update department. Remember having to do everything via iTunes? I remember.

Now, they're essentially the same in that regard.

You can still have those while opening up the device a bit more for enthusiasts. For example, Apple currently limit the number of sideloaded app to 3 apps total as well as 10 apps/week limit, and you'll have to re-sign the app after a week too. Relaxing that rule alone will greatly open up the device.

Fundamentally the argument for “i want to fully control my device” is flawed (actually it’s naive). We do not fully control our devices and haven’t for quite a long time. Especially so for devices that interact with other devices, or rely on integrations that lapse over time (eg 2G networks.)

This type of person is just drawing a line in the sand then falsely labelling it as “full control”, then adding on the rather dangerous commandment: “…and everyone must have it this way because ‘slippery slope and apologists’”

The fact is choice exists and consumer purchasing behaviours are also a demonstration of choice. The successful penetration of these smartphone/ similar devices relies on having different levels of control hard baked into the system - otherwise we are fracturing the ability to have something like the smartphone as a universal minimum.

How many of you folks out there have parents that don’t really use their computer but carry their smartphone everywhere? That’s something to think about.

I want to own nowthihg. And while that obviously doesn’t preclude anyone else owning something, I’m pretty sure the Apple ecosystem for non-owner users could shrink in case there is an option to leave it.

That said, I’m completely with the service/content companies when it comes to subscriptions for content.

And I won’t buy a car needing a “subscription” to use physical features.

I think this is less about control, and more about avoiding the 15-30% fee charged for selling through the App Store

As a user, I have always been able to run what I want on Apple devices. Most recently I found my kids were seeing bad recommendations on the YouTube app on Apple TV. I did not like the recommendations, or the adverts. I was able to clone Yattee[1] from Github and build it to the Apple TV from my laptop on the couch

Not as easy as side-loading, but also not difficult. Now when you want to _sell_ something like this, you can't. I'm fine with that. Freedom to run code is different from the freedom to package it up and sell it on a platform you don't own

Google makes side-loading hard[2] on Android for exactly the same reasons. They give preferential treatment[3] to big apps to prevent them from starting competing stores

I have the level of control that I like over my devices. I can't install my own OS on an iPhone, but there's great developments on Mac[4]. Given the hardware is now basically identical, this seems OK

[1] https://github.com/yattee/yattee

[2] https://www.androidauthority.com/fortnite-android-sideloadin...

[3] https://www.androidpolice.com/2021/08/30/google-allegedly-of...

[4] https://asahilinux.org

If you want to own stuff and are not a fan of subscriptions, Spotify is probably not the company to root for.

I do not want to control or micromanage my devices. I like someone to take care of all the little details that I am not an expert in but would like to be served with good taste. I would pay good money for such a device/service. Apple fits the bill. I believe there are other phones for perennial tinkerers. (I once was)

> What problems does it cause to make the locked down experience the default with the option for me to disable that and take control of the device after I buy it?

Apple is like Disney in that regard: they want absolute control over their brand and the associated experience. They don't want to get caught in shitstorms or legal trouble over stuff they cannot control such as covid misinformation, Nazi violence or pedophiles, so they require content moderation from apps that allow UGC. They don't want to deal with people complaining that they don't get their money back, so they require using their payment gateway where they can control the payment flow. They don't want applications to send marketing email spam to users' email addresses, so they require "Sign in with Apple", where they can supply a virtual email address.

It's not my world, but I do understand that this demand is a core part of their user experience they sell to their customers.

It was never about you (the customer), if you were thinking that. It was always about they keeping the control so that they can monetize every possible part of the ecosystem. Giving you the freedom takes that opportunity away. You see how they kept chanting "privacy" and slowly started tracking every move of yours in the app store and started showing you the ads, and you kept on believing "you're not a product when you buy an Apple device". No one stops to think how they removed the headphone jack because "courage" and chargers from the box because "environment", and customers still have the illusion of choice while they've been milked constantly.

The steam deck has really been a breath of fresh air to me. To have a company release a device in 2022 with a full linux distro with root access telling you that it's yours and that you can do anything you want with it and also releasing all the parts you might need alongside guides and stuff is really amazing.

Of course it's too big to whipe it out like a phone and too small to comfortably replace a laptop but their philosophy is great.

There should be an option for users to opt out of the walled garden.

For the record:

- "Mercedes-Benz to introduce acceleration subscription fee" [0]

- "BMW starts selling heated seat subscriptions for $18 a month" [1]

[0] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-63743597

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2022/7/12/23204950/bmw-subscription...

While I completely agree with your sentiment, the problem is that of normalisation otherwise. If it's not such a big ask to require of you, that you accept side loading of apps for instance, then my efforts to keep making a stand on privacy grounds will increase exponentially.

I.e.: if it's normal to do side loading, then I become the odd man out for not wanting that on my device.

I'll have to tell my boss that, no, it's to do with security concerns in general that I don't accept HR:s fine app.

The car industry still will have some competition going on so there is a good chance you will be able to avoid subscription (traditional aftersales excluded). Big tech? not so much.

We're sorry, but you don't have a choice. You will own nothing, and you will be happy.

You'll own nothing and be happy.

> I don’t understand the arguments that claim Apple needs to rule the device with an iron fist.

Yes. And it's easy to think that for a single issue like this it's a minor problem. Just don't buy Apple products. But there's a larger issue.

> in 10 years we’ll all have cars with a half dozen subscriptions forced on us

Right. I want to opt out of that. I also want to opt out of the corporate oversight of my property or tools in general. And while we're at it, I want to opt out of the inflationary debt driven monetary policy. And I want to opt out of vehicle-centric neighbourhood planning. Also proxy wars propagated by my government. The list goes on. And there's a burden to all of this that I'm not sure how to deal with. Happily embrace the illusion of choice, I guess? I don't use Apple products, never have.

I technically agree with you, and I'm not saying you were currently doing what I'm about to complain about; but I find very annoying the fact that a lot of people seem to use this line of thinking to justify more or less every shitty decision made by these huge corporations.

This topic usually seems to miss some pragmatism. Regardless of whether or not Apple's approach is _good_ (and it most certainly isnt, except for Apple), they can do it. We can stop pontificating on whether their official position makes sense. It doesnt matter - they are doing it.

The real questions are whether buying Apple is worth it. And if there are any roadblocks for the competition that could be removed.

> I want the option to control my devices. ... I want complete control over it.

Learn!

I can install my own software on my iPhone, and I can install software people have shared with me that I can inspect. I can affect the repairs I have the tools to make.

You don't need anything but a brain to learn how to do these things, but you'll definitely need a brain to understand why (or when) you shouldn't:

> I don’t understand the arguments that claim Apple needs to rule the device with an iron fist

> What problems does it cause to make the locked down experience the default with the option for me to disable that and take control of the device after I buy it?

What people like Elon Musk and Daniel Ek are asking for the ability to install software on my phone that allows them to install more software that I cannot inspect.

Now to be clear: I have the ability to do this thing to my device, but I don't think I should do it for the same reason I don't want to give any application on my computer my root password -- I understand one application needs to know it, but as soon as there's two that means there are two single-points-of-failure, and that's worse; a mistake in either program could reveal all of the secrets my phone has, or trick me into giving away ones that are only in my head.

I am also glad it is a little difficult because it means my friends and family cannot be easily tricked into doing it.

> What problems does it cause to make the locked down experience the default with the option for me to disable that and take control of the device after I buy it?

Apple can legitimately be worried that possible subpar/bad experiences with an Apple device (caused by user choices) will damage their brand and what the name is supposed to stand for in consumer space. It is fair to assume that normal people will not pay attention to details such as 'I disabled the walled garden'. So I'm pretty sure their position is 'Sure, your device but we're certainly not going to help you damage our brand's reputation'. They may have a point since your device at most costs $2k. Their reputation cost Apple billions of dollars to acquire.

Agree completely. Just simply a money issue. Apple likes to retain full control of its device almost like its a console. This enables maximum profit.

I want to point out the cognitive dissonance here. Spotify is a subscription based product that completely removes your ability to own and control your music (I lose songs all the time super frustrating because of whatever deals spotify has in the background with the record labels).

Your comment while valid doesn't really work with the example Spotify CEO railing against Apple. That said your frustrating is valid and there are many good points here as to why that model is no longer in vogue and you might be the minority in the public (I sympathize with you).

If you had the option to sideload apps, Facebook might have pressured you to do that (and leave them free from Apple’s oversight) or lose your friends. Because you can’t, Apple was able to have privacy controls imposed upon them kicking and screaming.

You may argue this argument is wrong, but it’s not like it is totally incomprehensible.

If Apple did not require all apps to come through the App Store, and enforce some version of the current rules on such apps, it would not be long at all before, for instance, Facebook pulled their app from the App Store and released a new version that required changing those settings in order to sideload it (and had detailed instructions on how to do so)...and made sure that app could gather as much information as possible about your phone and everything you do on it. Up to and including silently recording you with the microphone, depending on just how well Apple has access to that locked down in the OS.

Is this a certainty? No. But it's much too high a probability for my comfort.

Furthermore, there would be a large number of developers who would just say "screw the App Store, screw Apple's frameworks, screw their rules" and similarly release their apps for sideloading only. Many of these would also have unacceptable levels of malware, spyware, terrible bugs, or just plain godawful design. Yes, the App Store has its problems, but it absolutely has value.

When advocating for a change in a major system, it is both foolish and irresponsible not to consider how those changes would be abused by people with bad intentions. Just because you and people like you would only use the extra freedom for good does not mean that no one would use it for evil.

That doesn't mean you should never make a change that can be used for evil, or course. It means you need to be aware of the tradeoffs, take them into account, and be open about your willingness to accept the bad along with the good.

Nein, nein, nein! You will own nothing, and you will be happy now.

Please be happy now!

Yet I guarantee you in ten years there will be a market for the exact thing you're asking for, there will be a car maker who makes, "cars". Not subscriptions. Some people will buy those and some people won't.

Wouldn't it be only be a problem if you were forced against your will to drive a subscription model based car?

> What problems does it cause to make the locked down experience the default with the option for me to disable that and take control of the device after I buy it?

Thats literally what we have. What are you complaining about? For obvious reasons Apple is t going to support you if you jailbreak it, but that is absolutely reasonable of them.

Stop buying Apple if you don't like it. Seriously. At the end of the day all of these companies would do the exact same thing as Apple if they were in Apple's position.

The real solution to this is improved functionality of web apps and complete migration to those, then you can be free of the duopoly. Other than using phone specific features, why can't all apps run on your desktop, laptop or elsewhere?

I'll never get why Apple makes their rules very clear, and people buy Apple and then complain it's restricted. By people purchasing non-Apple phones you incentivize the production of non-Apple phones, helping break their hold on things.

Customers (and developers) could move to Android. They have a vibrant market for manufacturers and less vibrant but much more flexible app market. They just don't want to. Apple makes good products but their forte has always been marketing. Users think Android is for poor people.

> The real solution to this is improved functionality of web apps and complete migration to those

Progress on that front is hampered because fruit company only allows their own browser and puts just enough effort into it to keep it relevant as a web browser.

But I see way too many people using Chrome on iOS or the Google App as their main web browser. If it was really about the underlying technology then nobody would download alternative web browsers, but they do, so surely people decide to use these browser apps based on their features like password support, tab design and functionality, etc.

I don't understand your point. All browsers on iOS use the same underlying technology (Webkit) so the only relevant features between iOS browsers is those other features like password support, tab design, etc.

This is good. Chrome is the new IE. we are repeating history with Google now controlling the web. Except no one seems to care cos it’s not Microsoft.

i submit bug reports to Chromium all the time and - wait for it - they actually get addressed! check this one i reported back in March: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=130534...

triaged & root-caused quickly, then sat around for a while until what looks like an [MS Edge!] dev picked it up and fixed it 2 days ago (merged 4 hours ago).

IE this is not.

if anything is like IE(6), it's Safari and iOS Safari, where standardized APIs go unimplemented and bugs go unfixed for years with radio silence. and when bugs do get fixed, it requires a full OS update, just like IE.

No, Safari is the new IE. There are better browsers but due to it's market share (forced by Apple) developers are forced to limit themselves to it's feature set.

And the reasons are the same as well: Microsoft saw the browser as competition to their OS and Apple sees it the same way. So they both limited development of their browser to keep their platform supremacy. The situation is not the same with Google -- the web is their platform. This has it's own issues but it's not history repeating itself.

People used to build websites for IE.

Now people build websites for chrome.

Firefox is a better browser but people are stuck with chrome cos everything works in chrome. Google controls chromium.

Its absolutely history repeating when Google adds is own standards.

People whine about iOS Safari but the reality is it works really well and most of the complaints are “it works in chrome but not safari and I don’t want to spend any amount of time looking at it so I won’t support it”

Two different points in IE’s history.

Chrome is like IE in the IE5 era when it was totally dominant and the best browser around.

Safari is like IE in the IE7-8 era when it was the worst browser and actively holding back everything else.

That's a load of crap. I use safari for all my browsing with the one exception of using Firefox for read.amazon.com. It's perfectly fine. I'm never working on my computer an thinking, "damnit safari, why can't you just be like chrome/firefox." That never happens. I vastly prefer safari to chrome or Firefox.

At work I'll use chrome because some of our web apps only support chrome for whatever reason. But they're garbage IBM puts out, not something you'd use by choice.

Developers make sure their sites work in Safari. Just like developers made sure that their sites still worked in IE11 for almost a decade. Because it works for you is exactly why it's holding back development.

If developers made sure their sites worked in Safari we wouldn't have submissions to HN for sites that only work in Chrome with "oh yeah it doesn't work in Firefox or Safari because I didn't test it".

The number of developers who do their work on Chrome and call it a job done and never test in another browser, far outweight the number of developers who do test cross-browser.

The reason people tested in IE11 and less was because they were forced to. They liked Chrome but the users were using the shitty browsers, and older OS didn't yet support Edge.

Now the majority use Chrome and the devs no longer care.

We need more competition in the browser space, Safari and Firefox provide that. And neither are holding web development back.

Developers are.

Apple actively cripples Safari so that developers are forced to make apps for the App Store and give them a cut of all revenues. Safari is an extremely cynical product, much more than Chrome. Developers should not support Safari. Let the sites break.

What does Twitter do that requires an app that doesn’t work on safari? What did Reddit do that requires an app that safari can’t do? LinkedIn? Steam? EBay. Amazon. Google maps. Discord. Slack. What do these do that can’t be done on safari on iOS?

Web push notifications is the big one, though I suppose it's coming. I'll believe it when I see it.

> If developers made sure their sites worked in Safari we wouldn't have submissions to HN for sites that only work in Chrome

You're replying to me replying to the guy who says every site he goes to works fine in Safari.

I can't think of any websites that don't work with Firefox. It was hell back in the IE days because a lot of sites required ActiveX or whatever that nonsense was.

I encountered a lot of them. Especially ones that use recaptcha, a lot of times hidden recaptcha and you just get enigmatic error messages.

That's entirely my point. People don't use Chrome on desktop because it uses Blink and V8 - they use it because of the UX and UI decisions, and the same goes for Chrome on iOS.

People use chrome because it works. In some hypothetical future where many sites are broken with chrome for some reason, some other browser will take over. On iOS that can’t happen.

I use Firefox on the desktop and Safari on iOS. One of the reasons is because I prefer the UX/UI.

If a hypothetical real Chrome for iOS existed that -- like this thread is about -- let you run native quality apps with access to features that Safari doesn't allow then people would switch over. Imagine actually getting notifications from your apps!

If they don't like the UI/UX, I'm sure they'd find hypothetical Chromium variant that suits their needs. Eventually browsers without better underlying technology would just cease to exist.

I use Firefox myself but if it stopped keeping up with modern web standards eventually I'd have give it up.

Chrome on iOS basically has to suffer almost all the same bugs and issues as Safari on iOS because only one underlying browser engine is allowed by Apple on their iOS devices (Webkit, which is maintained by Apple).

In this case the window-dressing is different but the technology underneath is largely the same.

Is it really all Apple? Sites like Reddit hammer you with “it’s better on the app!” spam so they can force you to see ads and whatever else they want you to see.

Don’t forget tracking and data collection. Apps like Reddit’s have at least two motives.

It’s bullshit and I hate it. Really hoping that the era of free money ending reigns in these tech companies to being forced to do things in the customer’s interests.

I recommend Apollo instead of Reddit to browse Reddit:)

Reddit has ads in the browser. They can't send you notifications, though. At least for now. If the experience is better in the app (for you or for them) then clearly the browser is the limiting factor.

Well, given how much their mobile web experience sucks, even disregarding the pop-ups, I can't say that makes me want to download the app

Most companies have a website, an Android App and an iPhone app. If Apple is the only thing that is keeping great PWAs off the market, why are companies bothering to create Android apps instead of telling Android users just to use their website?

> I'll never get why Apple makes their rules very clear

Do they? They prevent app developers from explaining the rules to users.

All the iOS developers I follow complain that the rules and logic of app store reviewers are arcane and vague

Using the logic of the herd here those developers shouldn’t target iOS. It’s their choice after all. /s

Yeah, it's interesting. Who are the loudest voices here? Customers of Apple or the the companies deciding to play by Apple's rules to access Apple's customer base?

It's going to be a lopsided discussion on HN because of the biases of the users here versus the average non-HN member. What does the average customer want?

> Who are the loudest voices here? Customers of Apple or the the companies deciding to play by Apple's rules to access Apple's customer base?

Why does it matter? It could be either of them, and the two loudest groups would be 'Apple' and 'users'. Trying to paint adversarial lines here is genuinely pointless.

The title of this post contains the words "attack" and "salvo", aren't such adversarial lines being painted?

> Apple's customer base

Interesting way to frame it. The customer belongs to Apple. Far be it for the customer to decide what they want or like, they belong to Apple after all, and if those corporations want access to what's Apple's, they need to pay up.

You're not wrong, but imagine a world where the customer didn't actually belong to Apple and the users could decide to play Fornite or shitpost on Twitter if that was something they wanted to do. I think that's an obviously better world, even if they end up on twitter as a result.

I don't understand how the customer wouldn't belong to Apple.

I can't go into McDonald's and order a Whopper. McDonald's owns me, so long as I'm in their store. If I want a Whopper, I have to go to Burger King.

"But Burger King is farther away, and thus, McDonald's has a monopoly on that customer" is a weird argument.

That analogy makes no sense. An iPhone isn't a restaurant. If Apple is McDonalds and Google is Burger King, who does Epic, Spotify, or Twitter correspond to in the analogy?

Make it literally any store, then. Target, Costco, Walmart, etc.

You can't walk into Target, demand they carry your product, refuse to pay them a fee for doing so, while claiming Target has a "monopoly" on their customer because the customer isn't likely to drive across town to another store that does carry your product.

This is more like target locking in half of all customers unless they pay a big fee and give up everything they ever bought there. After gaining control of all customers they take huge chunks of all product revenues. See, you can go to Walmart over the street and sell your product there. It‘s the same situation with them by the way.

Apple has always taken the exact same percentage from developers, since the launch of the App Store, and long before the iPhone was one of the dominant phones purchased.

Poor analogy

The Coca-Cola Company complains about 30% cut from Coke sales...

What a terrible analogy. Sure, you can't go in to McDonald's and buy a whopper but you can certainly buy a big mac and then you can do with it whatever you want since it belongs to you and not to McDonald's.

Another solution is to pass legislation making Apple's business model illegal.

> Stop buying Apple if you don't like it.

I personally don't like it and will not stop buying apple phones. The CPU's on an iPhone are far ahead of Android. I could buy either the Pixel 4 or the iPhone 11 for the same $450 price a month after launch from my carrier.

single-thread geekbench: iPhone 11 (September 2019): 1311 Pixel 4 (October 2019): 662 Pixel 7 (October 2022): 1058

The geekbench for the Pixel 7 is 1051 single thread... still slower than my three year old phone.

Android needs to have better CPU's for me to consider it.

And also an iPhone has at least 5 years of guaranteed updates

This is the reason I always suggest my relatives buy the latest iPhone SE. It'll be cheaper than a comparable Android device in the long run.

5 years of full updates, not just "important security updates", is a pretty good deal. And you can _still_ sell them for a hundred or so euros after the 5 years.

> I personally don't like it and will not stop buying apple phones. The CPU's on an iPhone are far ahead of Android. I could buy either the Pixel 4 or the iPhone 11 for the same $450 price a month after launch from my carrier.

Sounds like you like it to me. You are directly funding whatever you think you "don't like" Apple is doing.

What are you doing on a phone where CPU speed matters? Mine scores 364 and I've never felt like performance was a problem.

"Stop buying Apple if you don't like it"

I'm afraid this is not an option most app devs can even entertain

Don’t buy Apple to consume as a user if you don’t like it.

If you’re an app developer then pay by the rules…

It absolutely is an option.

I guess it's technically an option to go out of business by removing your app from the Apple App Store.

if your business is that fragile, maybe you should change your business.

That statement practically applies to every internet business. What would happen if they all left the App Store?

What would happen if Roblox, Spotify, Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, Tinder, TikTok, etc. pulled their apps from Apple's platform?

I imagine they'd all take a grave hit to revenue but Apple users would be furious.

>"If your business is that fragile, maybe you should change your business. "

Alternatively, if that other business is that strong, maybe we should regulate their anti-competitive practices.

You can't make your end-users switch off Apple...

But I also don’t want to incentivize the production of android phones, at least not until they respect my privacy.

There are two bad choices, not exactly a thriving free market.

>At the end of the day all of these companies would do the exact same thing as Apple

and with that sentence you've just described the exact reason precisely why antitrust legislation is long overdue and whyy your solution doesn't work. Running to an alternative will, in due time, just reproduce the same result. In fact Spotify is itself a walled garden for artists suffering from the same dynamics.

That would probably require redefining antitrust, yes? Neither Apple nor Google hold a monopoly in the phone space. Are they colluding, or just making similar business decisions. Is there a requirement that we subsidize a market entrant that is all about open fields instead of walled gardens?

It's been done before with the Hollywood Anti-trust case of 1948 [0]. Studios were neither colluding nor holding a monopoly. But it was an oligopoly building walled gardens by not allowing theaters to carry their movies without a lot of restrictions.

Also anti-trust doesn't require a literal monopoly, just a company "with significant and durable market power" [1]. I think Apple fits into that definition easily.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_Anti-trust_Case_of_1...

[1] https://www.ftc.gov/advice-guidance/competition-guidance/gui...

Oh Spotify, the company that is eating the podcast distribution market.

Buying Apple? Musk and Ek are tired of playing Apple's stupid game to be on their platform because if they aren't on their platform they might as well not exist.

> if they aren't on their platform they might as well not exist.

That's a roundabout way of saying that customers have clearly expressed a preference. Especially ones that spend money.

I have, however if you are a business you can not avoid apple if you want to access the most lucrative markets. An iOS version of your app is a must.

Yes and I’m sure if Apple allowed side loading those side loaded apps would be successful. Just look at all of the popular profitable mainstream apps for Android that are not on the Google Play store.

But it came out in the Epic Trial that 80% of App Store revenue came from pay to win games. Most of the other big none game money makers stopped supporting in app purchases years ago - like Netflix and Spotify.

FWIW, HBO Max, Hulu, Paramount, Criterion, and probably others offer subscriptions in app. What else doesn’t? Amazon, maybe?

Hulu only allows in app subscriptions for the streaming video on demand level. They don’t allow in app purchases of the much more expensive Hulu Live offering.

As far as I know, you can’t subscribe to any of the cable alternative streaming services via in app purchases (Hulu Live, YouTube Live, Sling or DirecTV).

New subscribers to Netflix haven’t been able to sign up through the App Store for ages.

It’s very much a business decision whether they allow in app purchases.

Even Spotify’s web app on mobile is severely limited..by themselves. You can’t even view your Library and one of the navigation items is Get App.

https://open.spotify.com/

Governments have a responsibility to protect consumers from anti-competitive practices. Saying "just don't buy it" isn't enough, in fact if governments only protected people from things that nobody bought, that would be quite pointless.

I do like it and I'm tired of tech-brained dorks trying to turn iOS into Linux.

Yeah, same. The walled garden is a feature for me. I like having apps forced to use a single payment processor with a consistent and easy sub/unsubscribe interface. It's not perfect, obviously, but I think it also results in fewer obviously scummy apps. I understand if others don't feel this way, but I do. I would be sad to lose it.

It‘s good. The fees are just too high because they abuse their market power.

> if you don't like it

Disapproving Apple's monopolistic behavior does not imply disliking their products.

>"Stop buying Apple if you don't like it. Seriously."

Easy to say, but this isn't going to work. This kind of "just don't buy it" maxim grossly oversimplifies the situation and gets used post-facto to rationalize that the problem in question wasn't actually a problem because Apple is still around.

It's pretty obvious that legislation or anti-trust action will come that opens up mobile computing platforms.

Considering the whole of a large market share mobile computing OS a private market, and not subject to competitive pressures, leads to monopolistic capture similar to what utilities could achieve without regulation. Why not just move to another neighborhood if you don't like your electric bill? Well then you're subject to the monopoly on that side of the fence just the same. Illusion of choice/competition

Competitive markets are what drive down margins, thus feed those margin savings back into consumer's pockets. Cheaper goods+services are what enriches broader society and are a net positive in my view.

Some states solve the natural monopoly problem with utilities by allowing consumers to choose the energy provider separately from the utility itself. e.g making the power provider a competitive market.

If Apple's app store and browser are the best, and people prefer them, they can continue to use them. But they will have other choices in the future

I'm less optimistic about the inevitability of this in the United States. We haven't been able to maintain competition in any utility spaces I can think of -- internet, cable, gas, electricity, etc. There's no freedom of choice in the healthcare industry either. In many parts of the country, almost all grocery stores are part of the same massive conglomerate. The FCC is completely captured by the ISPs, and currently missing a chair, IIRC.

So what makes you so optimistic about regulation in the tech space breaking up these monopolies?

The consequences of the lack of competition are borne by a huge number of other wealthy companies/people.

Affecting pretty much anybody that builds a product that spans across mobile devices.

Spotify and Netflix pay Apple a huge percentage of their subscription revenue, for example... simply because the consumer signed up via iPhone. This is not a chorus of small time devs, these are huge companies

Netflix pays reduced percentages to Apple. Been this way for a long time from what I recall. Other big companies negotiate the percentage as well.

Netflix removed In-App Subscriptions on iOS years ago: https://www.macrumors.com/2018/12/28/netflix-no-more-itunes-... .

Now that Apple is under anti-trust scrutiny, Netflix recently added a link to their website just a few months ago: https://techcrunch.com/2022/07/25/netflixs-ios-app-now-has-a...

Doesn’t matter if they get a better rate than market.

The precise number doesn’t change the stated dynamics or situation at all.

That there are app developers that get preferential treatment just demonstrates the arbitrary power Apple has over choosing winners and losers

But big companies love these kind of barriers, it prevents small competitors from being able to exist. Besides, Google takes a cut of things in their store, Epic from theirs, and if facebook made the metaverse work, you can bet your ass they'd try and take a thirty percent cut. They would never fight against that, it's literally free money.

30% is for amateurs. Meta is taking 48%: https://www.engadget.com/meta-metaverse-virtual-good-sales-c...

I guess you have to claw back those billions you are lighting on fire somehow. Solid business plan. What could go wrong.

Funny that the monopolies you mention are all highly regulated industries with government-granted monopolies.

The restricted App Store does add customer value, and that customer value is degraded if there are other App Stores available.

Namely - if a user buys Apple products because they want the security/curation/whatever that comes with Apple's walled garden, that advantage is broken by forcing Apple to have other app stores on their platform because now that user cannot get all the content through their trusted source as they could before.

So having more than one app store degrades the experience of people who choose to use Apple's app store like having more than one newspaper degrades the experience of people who read the New York Post.

That's exactly true. Right now, app megacorporations are only using Apple's App Store (with the protections like Ask Not To Track) because they are forced to. The moment those corporations aren't forced to, they will turn around and force whatever consumers to use the app store that the corporations prefer.

The choice of app store isn't ever in the consumer's hands, its in the corporations hands (Apple or otherwise).

If that were the true reason that Apple is forcing Appstore, and that's a big if, then Apple could still offer this "amazing service to customers", by contractually forcing companies to always also offer payments via Apple if payments are accepted elsewhere.

If I can think of that in 30 seconds, then so can Apple. I'll let you draw your own conclusion.

If the app is distributed via a non-Apple app store, then there is no contract between the app developer and Apple. What mechanism would Apple have to enforce that policy?

Apple famously have total control over their vertically integrated platform. It's called a 'walled garden' for a reason.

They could trivially do this because as it is, they require that all apps are signed. Irrespective of the distribution method. To sign an app, currently, you need a contract with Apple.

They just need a one line clause stating that you can distribute on other platforms if the app also appears in their store.

No one is forcing you to use a third party App Store. Any app with enough popularity on a third party store will be cloned on the first party one.

I don't think anyone is going to be cloning Netflix or Fortnite. Not just because it's hard, but also because they'd get sued out of existence.

I don't think netflix or fortnite would force you to use a third party app. Too much negative press and loss of customers.

Epic games has done exactly that with Fortnite on Android, which is only available in the Epic Store or Samsung Galaxy Store.

> customer value is degraded if there are other App Stores available.

This doesn't compute. Does your home cooking tastes worse because restaurants exist?

Supposing some users get maximum value from the App Store exactly as it is now, with all its quirks and limitations: you'll understand that other users get less value from the App Store, and are still stuck there because Google is also not willing to provide them with an App Store that helps them.

On one hand you have some happy users and a happy Apple, on the other hand a flurry of penalized users with nowhere to go (we should coin a phrase, like "the year of --linux-- alternative stores on smartphones") and angry service providers.

Up until now US regulators sided with Apple to protect its money, I don't expect EU regulators to be as kind.

So long as Android exists and users aren't strictly locked to the Play Store, I don't think an antitrust case would succeed.

Competitors to utilities exist too.

Anti-trust is more nuanced than whether there’s a single party monopoly. And it certainly will apply here

People are digressing into all kinds of matters unrelated to the article and issue.

The heart of the matter is not control of the device, it's about the Apple tax, and how it makes no sense in particular scenarios, such as subscriptions.

Sure enough, the app store services are worth something. Real labor, infra and costs go into it. Although Apple could very well subsidize it, it's not 100% unfair to ask for some kind of fee, such as the fee to set up a developer account.

This fairness argument goes completely out the window in the case of Spotify or Twitter subscriptions, it no longer is related to any real costs made. When you pay 10$ to stream from Spotify, it's absurd to have to pay $3 to Apple for this "privilege". Nothing about the streaming or value delivered is in any way related to the App store. They leech enormous sums of money from creators, companies and consumers.

The argument that they're a private company that can do whatever they want is moot. They're an unavoidable ecosystem middleman that affects the entire digital industry. It is insanely hostile to every player except Apple.

The fact that you can't even MENTION an alternative payment in your app should tell you how draconian and power hungry Apple is. You shouldn't cloud your judgement by liking Apple in general or disliking Spotify.

I think your point is valid. However, I am wondering what is the alternative? Other paid apps developers will make their apps free and charge subscription fee instead to avoid paying any Apple tax.

The fee to set up a developer account is $99/year. The biggest apps on the store and the smallest pay the same fee. A fixed fee helps to equalize the barrier to entry, and everyone likes that. On the other hand, App Store's cost structure is not fixed. Spotify costs Apple vastly more than an app with 1000 installs. This needs to be accounted for.

> Nothing about the streaming or value delivered is in any way related to the App Store.

Entirely incorrect. By taking a percentage of transactions, App Store is incentivized to help apps grow. From day one, getting featured on App Store has driven serious business outcomes for developers. This has only grown over the years, especially after Apple started to focus on marketing apps more deliberately with the "For You" tab.

That's a service that they provide "for free". You get an email from Apple saying that they'd like to feature your app, send over some creative assets, they write an article, and suddenly you're getting a lot of "free" installs. This is only one example of the value that apps get "for free" from Apple and the App Store. And again, this levels the playing field between big and small developers.

Of course, nothing is actually free. Apple is a business and not only needs to be compensated for the value that they provide, but they also need to make a profit. That's why they take a cut of transactions.

An alternative model would be to charge for all of this à la carte. All promotion would be paid for directly. Bandwidth would be metered and invoiced. WWDC sessions locked behind a paywall. Maybe that would even add up to be less than 30% of revenue. Certainly big developers would like it -- up and coming competitors would have a much tougher time competing than today.

> App Store's cost structure is not fixed

Looks like Apple's taxes generate around $85b/year. I'm not sure what it costs them to develop the App Store software and host some downloads, but surely it couldn't be even 1% of that?

Elon just tweeted from Apple HQ and is meeting with Tim Cook. Elon also deleted the tweet meme that he's going to war over the 30%.

All talk and no substance, this thing won't go anywhere. Elon probably got what he wanted from Apple and everything else is just fud for the masses. Elon does not care the 30% or what Apple does in China. He wants Twitter to stay in the app store and Apple to pay for advertising on Twitter.

> Apple to pay for advertising on Twitter

You can’t win a fight with Tim. E-lawn should have consulted with Zuck first. He did something similar and we all know how it ended for Meta.

Most probably Elon is getting schooled, spanked, and hopefully not dragged around in that beautiful Apple park.

I hope he is getting schooled but he always seems to luck out somehow.

Hard to fall on your face when you have ARMIES of normal people all jockeying to put the pillow under you for free

Are you certain we can call them normal?

Zealots are a normal feature of human society, so yes.

There are a lot of people who spend a significant part of their day posting over and over again about Elon Musk, and congratulating each other for it. I assume that's not being a zealot. It's like the people posting about "Putin's cock" 100 times a day who think that it's actually the other people who are obsessed with him.

Correct. Anti-zealotry is another form of zealotry; like atheists who are militantly atheist rather than just chill about it, but all of that too is just normal people being normal.

I'm certainly not normal, but for all of Elon's eccentricities I'm thankful for jumpstarting the EV industry and revamping the space launch industry. He gets a lot of rope for those endeavours, no matter if he uses it to bind Cook's hands or hang his own neck.

> Elon probably got what he wanted from Apple and everything else is just fud for the masses

I feel like Elon going Apple HQ is not a sign that he got what he wanted, it's a sign that he was summoned there to be disciplined. If he had some form of leverage over Tim Cook, it would be Cook that would be doing the traveling.

At that level, any kind of in-person visit is a sign of mutual good will. Traveling to see someone is an act of respect, and opening your doors to someone honors that person. Not every interaction is zero-sum.

Musk posted news of his visit there by showing a video clip of the pool on the Apple campus. No evidence of the two even meeting in person as peers. I get the sense that if this was a friendly visit there would've been a shot of the two CEOs together. It makes me wonder if he even got into the same room with Cook.

Cook made no mention at all of meeting with the CEO of the fifteenth-largest social network.

https://nitter.net/elonmusk/status/1598090996281413638#m

He thanked Cook for "taking him around" the campus, that sounds like in person to me.

Seems to me the reason there's no picture is that the visit wasn't for us, it was for them.

Apple is too powerful if you need to visit Apple's HQ and kiss the king's ring to stay on their store.

I would look for better examples than Twitter to base that claim on. The primary lesson to draw there is that you’ll have a harder time running a business if you act like a coked-up frat boy, which is … not a surprise?

The point is that at even the slightest hint that Apple might compromise Twitter's iPhone App or advertising, Musk has to visit and smooth things over. Have you heard that actions speak louder than words?

If Apple didn't have too much power why would this occur?

Because Elon is a nut and likes stirring up drama? For real, who was the first person to tell Elon that twitter was going to be banned? Was it Tim Cook? Or was it catturd?

Attack ideas, not people. What does Elon's actions have to do with Apple's anti-competitive behavior?

We don't reliably know that this was anti-competitive, or even what the meeting was about. It could have been related to Apple pulling advertising — since they're reportedly the largest single advertiser that'd get an HQ visit on its own — or simply that communications had broken down due to all of the fired people not being replaced. That's the larger point here: he's making pointless, stupid mistakes and that means that a lot of things are happening which technically could be part of some big conspiracy but might also be Musk shooting himself in the foot again and then blaming anyone but himself.

> Elon probably got what he wanted from Apple

Yup - the attention that he met people at Apple HQ.

If I have learned anything about Elon, he is a bully and is currently using freedom of speech to get what he wants. He has an army of fans which include opportunistic powerful politicians and he is threatening to let them loose on anyone that doesn’t do his bidding. He doesn’t have any principles and won’t stick to any unwritten rules of decorum either.

Elon Musk has no principles? I find it strange how you could come to such a conclusion. These issues he engages in nowadays are exactly in line with what he cared about many years ago. For instance, around 2016 he shared his thoughts on building a tool to measure the credibility of journalists, which he wanted to call Pravda. What is his purchase of Twitter if not the culmination of this idea, rooted in the very same principle?

Kettle. Pot. Black.

Monopolistic practices is what Spotify is, not just something it does.

Recently they went about buying podcasts. The idea was/is to kill off the free protocol and centralise podcasts under their control... That way, listeners, advertisers and podcasters would all have to live by spotify's rules. Like streaming music.

Sure. Apple give themselves every advantage, cream the market, etc. They have a monopoly. So does Spotify!

What happens when an artist doesn't like Spotify's take-it-or-leave-it terms? Why should apple treat you better then you treat others? Cry me a river.

I feel like Apple is a much stronger offender than Spotify. You can literally not use billions of devices on this planet for your app* if you don't send something like a 25-50% cut of all your possible profits (15-30% of revenue(!)) to them. That makes apple effectively (in monetary terms) an owner of many businesses they shouldn't own.

* no, not any application can run fine in safari

Apple is a much bigger company than Spotify. In. fact, it's quite impressive how monopolistic they managed to become for their size. There are a lot of monopolies and wanna be monopolies about. That's why big tech profit margins are so high.

All I am saying is that if your business model is entirely based on market monopolisation, to the extent that spotify's model is... go f##$ yourself. Yes, Apple charges you a take-it-or-leave-it fee. Does that "makes apple effectively an owner of many businesses they shouldn't own?" Maybe. But if it does, then Spotify is an effective owner of Black Sabbath. Should Spotify own Black Sabbath?

In many industries, Google & FB are "effectively an owner." Without their advertising, many businesses can't function. Lots of startups, even established businesses have to advertise on adwords. Google can also takes a massive* cut.

Apple has all the best customers. You can't have a great online business without apple users. That's why Google pay Apple >$100bn pa to be their default search engine. Apple also do this to spotify. Spotify do it to music artists. They want to do it to podcasters.

> That's why Google pay Apple >$100bn pa to be their default search engine.

In case anyone is curious, reports of Google's payments to Apple have been in the range 8--20 billion dollars/year. The highest estimates appear to be $8--12 billion in 2020, $15 billion in 2021, and $18--20 billion in 2022. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/25/technology/apple-google-s... https://archive.ph/loAMx

My estimates from the information I have found suggest that the amount Google has paid to Apple for being the default search engine (on Macs, iPhones, etc) to be less than 65 billion nominal dollars total for all time, or less than 80 billion present value (ie, CPI-adjusted) dollars total for all time.

It's not technically a monopoly, but in so far as it might become one, it is someone else's responsibility to tweet and complain about it.

And there is a difference in scale between Apple's control and everyone else's.

In the case of Apple I think if you look at the mobile phone usage of people in the top 25% of incomes in America you would find that they are well over 80% market share. While this is a somewhat contrived segmentation, it is also most important segment for a lot of businesses. Monopoly power is typically assessed by the doj at a regional level so it is not unprecedented to arrive at monopoly issues on the basis of a portion of a larger market. The novelty here is about switching costs and bundling.

It's inexact, but not contrived at all. If you've ever worked in online advertising, you'll know to treat apple users as a distinct segmentat without worrying to much about why exactly.

There's a reason Google pays Apple so 15 billion pa for search defaults. Adwords would be deeply hurt if Apple decided to withhold its users.

You can't cherry-pick a market segment like that. Each successful product has a niche somewhere.

Dominant market share is not the same thing as a monopoly, because the existence of competitive alternatives is a check on the behavior of the market leader. Also, it is tough to ignore the fact that any customer can buy a Samsung phone with largely the same capabilities at a similar price point to the iPhone.

Not all monopolies are unlawful in the US. There is a need to prove that practices are anticompetitive, such as by unfair pricing or exclusive dealing. If Apple is expected to curate and support an App Store with non-malicious apps and reviews thereof, used on a platform for which they provide an ecosystem of developer tools, they are entitled to charge a fee for that.

>> It's not technically a monopoly

What is the technicality? It's certainly a monopoly in layman's terms.

Is the technicality monopsony? IE, the fact that Spotify have more power over artists than consumers? Is it the fact that there are other streaming services in existence, and spotify has <100%.

I feel like people can specify "textbook-monopoly," if they need to use a hyper-strict definition of one kind or another. For regular conversation, the common definition of the term works fine.

There are many alternatives to Spotify.

That's not the definition of a monopoly, unless we're describing some sort of textbook/theoretical concept. Spotify are certainly a monopsony in their relationship to artists/studios. The whole business model depends on and assumes market power. They're absolutely a monopoly in normal language.

https://twitter.com/dada_drummer/status/1598051231817433088?...

Two wrongs don't make a right. Spotify and Musk's conduct have no bearing on the validity of their arguments. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.

Well, I've never been a monopoly so... thump.

I wish this guy would take some of his ample spare time and get his engineers working on the support for HomeKit devices that customers have been demanding for years now[1].

[1] https://community.spotify.com/t5/Live-Ideas/iOS-Implement-Na...

Spotify corporate seems to be actively hostile toward their community. I see post after post with user questions that just get left unanswered.

Unanswered != hostile

It's hard to take Spotify's call for openness seriously when they're just as controlling as Apple is when it comes to how it allows its users to use its product.

Most egregiously, they never delivered the promised playback-capable replacement for libspotify, probably because they want to keep their users in their little walled garden where Spotify can subject them to incessant A/B test tweaks to the UI designed to herd them towards the most profitable content. Third party clients that just act like normal music players and don't change constantly would be an affront to that.

As you've pointed out, when Apple has made affordances to allow better support for third party services, Spotify has been slow to take advantage of them. HomePods have had APIs that third party music streaming services can hook as well as the capability to set your default streaming service to things that aren't Apple Music for a year and a half now, and as of this writing Spotify has not used them, despite smaller streaming services like Deezer and Pandora having implemented support months ago. Why? I can only guess because HomePods aren't Spotify Connect devices and thus aren't under the control of Spotify the way that Spotify Connect devices are.

Spotify isn't upset by the lack of openness, they're upset that Apple won't give them the same VIP treatment that they've gotten from other platform/device vendors (including Microsoft, with Spotify being bundled with Windows 11).

You can take him completely seriously: he just wants to be able to sign up paying users on iPhone without handing 30% to Apple. I don’t think that’s particularly opaque.

This is essentially just the typical corporate aversion to taxation. They want to benefit from the infrastructure, but don't want to pay for it.

Nothing new here, other than the weird tech bros leaping to defend the behaviour...

The situation where you can purchase a service for 30% less elsewhere but not on the iPhone is pretty insane. And on top of that, you are not allowed to tell your users how to get a better deal.

Regardless of his reasoning, Apple and some others have too much power.

How can Apple have "too much power" here, when there is a clear alternative where it is cheaper?

It's not a "clear alternative" when Apple doesn't even allow you to mention that. There are other reasonable alternatives such as letting developers mention the alternative payment methods as long as they explain what the benefits of Apple payment ecosystem.

I read a lot of people writing comments like "I prefer to go through Apple because of the ease of unsubscription." If the benefits are so clear, why are developers not even allowed to mention the alternative?

Android is a very real and clear alternative. Android dominates market share. How you can say there isn't a clear alternative, I don't know.

Given the vendor lock-in and Apple's 50% market share, it's not much of an alternative.

That doesn't justify your argument. 50% is not a dominant position.

> They want to benefit from the infrastructure, but don't want to pay for it.

The infrastructure is already paid for. I paid for it when I bought my $1000 iPhone.

That would be a valid point if the phone wasn't vertically integrated with cloud services and ongoing support from the manufacturer.

The terms for access to the app store are based on licensing for the software that's part of the device. I could see a reasonable compromise where you can wipe the iPhone and start from scratch with your own OS/drivers/etc, waive your warranty, and then be free to go nuts installing anything you want from any app store. I just can't imagine anyone being happy spending the thousand bucks purely for the hardware.

My last iPhone before this one was also $1000. Oh, also, I pay for iCloud storage. I think I’ve covered the ongoing support and cloud costs as well.

Why should Apple be allowed to have a competitor in the same space without paying the 30% Apple tax on top then?

That's anti-trust 101.

So should we also stop console makers from having first party games? Stop stores from selling store brands?

I'd say yes if console makers would force all 3rd parties to not directly advertise how to create an account with them and pay through their own means for a subscription when needed instead of the console game store.

I'd say yes if stores with their own store brands would force producers of 3rd party products to always pay a 30% cut and disallow the consumers from being able to purchase the product at a different place of their choosing.

Consoles have forced third party game makers to pay a license fee for every physical game sold since the 80s no matter where you sold the game.

My example was about subscriptions, no console maker takes a cut of a subscription to a game done through the game publisher's own servers/service. No console maker takes a cut from sales of digital items done through the game's platform.

You are moving the goalposts, licencing is a well established practice and only interferes with the sale of the initial product: the game, not subsequent upsales where the console maker has absolutely no interaction with, just like royalties for IP and so on, it's another broken analogy...

Which console makers allow you to have subscriptions that you pay for outside of the game?

Final Fantasy XIV for example.

Actually, maybe yeah!

Whataboutism doesn't solve anything. Two wrongs doesn't make a right. Etc.

Not only whataboutism but also broken analogies. I can't think of a proper analogy to the market power that Apple holds by having the whole platform coupled with devices that people don't have that many other choices (Android vs iOS, that's basically it). I can always try to twist the analogy to bring it closer to the actual reality of the issue at hand but it's always an uphill battle to dismember it and re-create the analogy more similarly to what's actually the problem.

Sometimes I wonder if it's really other's ignorance about the reductionist analogy being broken or if they're maliciously using it to misrepresent the point made.

> can't think of a proper analogy to the market power that Apple holds by having the whole platform coupled with devices that people don't have that many other choices

There are three console makers as opposed to two major phone manufacturers. How is that different?

You can release your games for PCs and have enough market share to be sustainable. You can't just release your app on the web and have the exact same experience as a native application, there's no alternative with enough market share for mobile platforms.

Do you really not see a difference between these worlds or are you being purposefully obtuse and ignoring reality to try to push your point?

It's again an example from HN threads/commenters completely ignoring degree and level of issues and instead forcing a black-and-white view with broken analogies...

The PC game market is a nothingburger compared to console.

So the same people who aren’t willing to walk away from ios with 50% market share are going to suggest walking away from all consoles which combined have a much larger than 50% market share in the games market?

People have been complaining for years that Apple is holding the PWA market back. Where are all of the companies that are releasing iOS + web only and telling Android users to use the web app?

Would it be ok for you then if Apple took a 30% cut of every sale made through an app distributed by their App Store? Like Amazon, or food delivery, or grocery apps, and any other app that sells something through the app?

No I wouldn’t. But software has a zero marginal cost and even server costs are minuscule on a per user basis.

80% of all Apple revenue from the App Store comes from pay to win games (came out in the Epic trial)

What does it matter if software has marginal costs or not?

The principle is the same, it's a product being sold by a 3rd party which Apple has no involvement at all in its production costs being distributed by the App Store which Apple takes a fee of 30% off.

The costs of software services are part of the cost of a subscription, as the cost of production of something Amazon is selling is part of its cost. Streaming services have ongoing costs for development, maintenance, etc. that physical goods don't have after they're sold. You are just paying one upfront and the other one is ongoing.

> 80% of all Apple revenue from the App Store comes from pay to win games (came out in the Epic trial)

And what's the argument here? That those are easier to produce they deserve to get taken a 30% cut because marginal costs are near zero?

Netflix and other streaming services have much higher costs than these P2W games if that's your argument; costs for licencing content, maintaining infrastructure, paying for development. Nothing of that is cheap, what is the big difference between a product such as a streaming service and physical goods sold by Amazon that makes you not support Apple taking 30% from Amazon per purchase?

Do you think it'd be fair if every Netflix subscriber using Android devices had to share a slice of the 30% Apple takes if Netflix allowed subscriptions through their iOS app and Apple took a cut? Because it's either that or Netflix having different subscription prices between iOS and Android, both are bad for Netflix and good for Apple. All while Apple also produces a competitor.

In what world is this a fair market practice when you have so much power over a platform? And even directly competes with some companies that you are putting in a natural disadvantage?

Why is Netflix even relevant to the discussion? Netflix hasn’t allowed in app subscription prices for years

They don't allow it exactly because they have to pay the 30% on top, the same with Kindle books, etc. that's exactly why it's relevant in this discussion, mate... Not sure how to be clearer, I've been playing around with your analogies and get just a brick wall in return, exhausting.

The whole argument is that they didn’t have a choice but to pay the fee when they in fact chose not to go through in app purchasing. They were not forced to pay Apple to be on iOS

You can and in fact Spotify hasn’t allowed in app purchases for years.

Plenty of other threads about the fees but you feel the need to come comment this in a chain about Spotify neglecting to build for and support their customers. Your reply (and mine) are so incredibly unrelated to this comment thread.

He can. Users can go to Spotify.com in any browser and they can even make it easy by supporting Apple Pay.

Apple Pay charges standard credit card processing fees of around 2% as opposed to in all purchases.

Until very recently, when courts forced Apple to allow it, Apple prevent developers from event mentioning that a website exists where there's a cheaper option to sign up.

Apple has rules, and that's "fine". But they also have rules about the rules that disallow developers from explaining the rules to users. That doesn't sit right with me.

Spotify stopped allowing in app purchases years ago before any Court said anything.

Because, rightly or wrongly, they didn’t want to have 30% more expensive plan on iPhone.

How is that different than any other product where you can sell cheaper through your own website than on a third party platform?

Spotify also holds on to about 30% of their subscription revenue. He should drop Spotify to 5% and demand Apple do the same.

Surely Spotify has reasons related to music licensing that makes them enforce strict control of playback interfaces? I remember the days of libre Spotify clients, but that was during the days of Spotify still being a relatively small service compared to the iTunes' of the world. Spotify won the battle for 2010s music and that made record companies more eager to control the distribution of their IP.

Hi originalvichy, I was lurking through old threads about devops and came across one of your comments about how you and your company were bundling common devops tooling in a bundle and serving that as a product. I'm new to hackernews and recently found out you can't DM, so I'm replying to this message in hopes of kicking of a conversation around that original message. I'd love to learn more about that specific solution - is it alright if I pick your brain on the topic? Thanks!

Can someone explain why Apple is always the target for these complaints regarding fees? Is it just shorthand for both companies or a target people rally against? As Android has the same 30% fees for in-app billing, it's not like it's cheaper for Spotify on Google's platform. I get there's theoretically F-Droid and sideloading, but I don't see Spotify on fdroid so presumably there's not enough users to make it worth it.

Android allows 3rd party app stores, you can side load apps, and you can install a different OS.

Is Spotify on any of those 3rd party app stores other than Amazon's (which also has a fee)?

They could be if they wanted, is the point. So it's harder to go after them for the fee.

Why aren’t they if they’re so upset about fees?

Are they actually so upset about fees?

Its only really in there to cover googles ass in a situation like this, it's not practical to get users to download your app elsewhere. Even fortnite couldn't really get people to do it.

Why does it matter? Spotify wants the freedom to set their own margins. Compensating artists fairly starts by kicking out useless middlemen, and Apple plays that role in this instance. Every developer deserves the right to distribute software on their own terms, that's not some extremist or abhorrent ideal to advocate for.

> Compensating artists fairly starts by kicking out useless middlemen, and Apple plays that role in this instance.

Spotify needs the cooperation of the major record labels to operate and they have no interest in compensating artists fairly or kicking middlemen out of the process.

Hard to say, Apple never gave them a chance.

Do they do it on Android or desktops? They’d have a much stronger moral case if they said that on every other platform they take the cut they’d give Apple and forward it to the artist instead.

And it isn’t like Apple hasn’t tried using their weight before to fix market prices in their favor. See the debacle with eBooks.

I agree Spotify wants more revenue but I seriously doubt compensating artists is top of mind despite what their CEO says

Isn't the fact that Google Play charges 30% even when Android allows 3rd party app stores an indication that the 30% fee is not caused by a lack of competition in app stores?

Perhaps, or maybe the revenue generated by Android is so small that it isn’t worth the effort to change app stores.

You overestimate the size of the app store. It is big, but that doesn't mean the remaining 37% of app economy is small.

> iOS was responsible for 63% of total app revenue in 2021

Those numbers are global. In certain markets, like the U.S., that number is likely to be very much skewed towards iOS. Even if you look at the global numbers, iOS was responsible for 75% of app revenue once games are excluded, and 78% of subscription revenue in 2021.

https://www.businessofapps.com/data/app-revenues/

I think you could say the same thing with Steam. Developers are incentivized to publish on Steam because this is where they can reach the most players, even though they'll have to take a big cut for it.

It’s also apparently the same ballpark for video game consoles (which are also general-purpose computers that are similarly locked down to restrict third-party software).

Trying to get a discount, not news.

Because Google will negotiate and Apple will not.

For example, Google and Spotify have an arrangement termed User Choice Billing wherein users can choose whether to pay Spotify directly or through Google's payment rails.

That, and iPhone users may have higher average LTV.

Apple Music is their biggest competitor and they are very close in terms of userbase size. Apple Music is also (along with Tidal) one of the top places people go when they leave Spotify (for the various good reasons one might leave Spotify). Not much business point in trying to go after Google. The 30% cut IS a big deal but that's not the primary reason.

As for why so many companies target Apple's level of control over their ecosystem (even if they don't directly compete on a service) ... well ... there's the whole data privacy and anti-ad-tracking thing they have been doing. Nearly all SaaS businesses are also ad or surveillance businesses either primarily or on the side. Most of the press and legal challenges mounted against Apple are attempting to remove Apple's policy-level control over what is deployed on devices.

There is so much more than just the 30% cut.

Tracking and data based companies crying about lost revenue is one of the big reasons I'm fully in the Apple ecosystem.

Good news, Apple is also becoming a tracking and data company.

The only reason Apple went after Google and Facebook with the new privacy feature is so they can swoop in and take some of that money for themselves. Hence why you are seeing them pushing ads left and right across their platforms.

MacOS will soon be as filled with ads as Windows.

It's complicated. Yes, Apple is creating an advertising monopoly for themselves (obviously only for folks within their ecosystem). No I don't like that personally.

Are they replicating the no-rules surveillance systems of the existing ad market? I have no evidence for that. I've been looking but I haven't seen it.

Saying "the only reason" Apple is countering Google and Facebook here is ad revenue completely ignores what horribly dishonest and harmful stewards of the ads ecosystem these two companies have been. Both companies have knowingly broken the rules of every platform they exist on (not just Apple platform) to work around device permissions to scoop up personal data they have been EXPLICITLY told by the user not to take. Google just had to pay several hundred million dollars for lying to customers about data capture opt-in. Facebook has settled many times as well, and has repeatedly used private APIs and exploits to gather contact info and messaging data. They have also shown no principle whatsoever about who can use that data and for what purpose. Facebook goes so far as to claim in public hearings (and in court) they don't even know how much data they gather or where it is or who can access it.

As tracking grows its access to more devices and more personal data, and as ads appear on more and more surfaces (Google and FB stated goal is every surface btw), the negative effects of this abusive behavior have become visible after decades of relative invisibility to consumers. "Why is my music app giving me podcasts about pregnancy while I'm in the car?", "Amazon shopping (which my partner can see) is showing pregnancy test promotions", etc. And still invisible, down the rabbit hole, very harmful uses of this information for individuals, businesses, and entire geopolitical regimes. I used the pregnancy example for a very pointed reason if you have been following tech concerns in USA related to political rights.

When you push the idea that Apple's product moves are just as bad as our current status quo, I cannot agree. I think you will be proven wrong about Apple's endgame (for at least the next decade, all corporate cultures change). At the very least we can be happy for a time spiting the existing tracking monopoly - who have been hurting us for a long time with no challenge. They are losing a ton of money. May it continue.

I am hopeful seeing an existential threat to healthy society being trimmed down, even if the people doing the cutting (Apple) refuse to pull it out at the root.

> As Android has the same 30% fees for in-app billing

is this true if you publish your app on a different app store app? On iPhone you're not allowed to create your own app store app

You can use other payment methods in android apps without any issues.

Sharecroppers complaining that the land baron has stacked the deck in his own favour.

Spotify and Twitter began life on the web, not in the app store. No feature they offer requires a native app. Hence there was no reason to corral half the US userbase into someone else's pen and leave them there for over a decade.

Epic has already gone to court on this matter (re: Fortnite on App Store) and lost. And Fortnite wasn't even web-first!

> No feature they offer requires a native app.

Maybe not Twitter, but I don't see how Spotify's offline downloads would work through the iOS browser. Also, Spotify started as a native desktop app. The web player and full transition to electron wasn't until a couple of years later.

There's possibly smarter ways to handle this with Service Workers, CacheStorage, or other APIs. But with Indexeddb you could store blobs or array buffers up to 512MB on some mobile devices, 2GB on others. So there's like 100 songs offline.

I won't pretend to understand the limits of Safari on iOS, but having the storage amount be based on the capabilities of one's device and not on the amount of actual storage available on it is a poor user experience, especially so if 512MB-2GB is the actual limit. In that sense, I would consider the ability to download as many songs for offline use as my phone's actual storage allows to be the feature, not necessarily simply being able to download a song for offline use.

Sure, there's arguments to be made both ways. But it's a far cry from "there must be a native app because 100 offline songs isn't enough."

This is kind of funny because you're describing the opposite of a ridiculously painful issue I've been dealing with: Signal on iOS eating up and refusing to free 20GB. I wish I could limit how much space an app is allowed to use.

Furthermore, this is actually kind of proving the point: Apple is the one who picked the limit for their browser. Probably because they don't want you just using web apps. They want you thinking blissfully that the browser is inferior and you must go get native apps.

To be fair, browser should be inferior to native apps. Browser is a virtual machine running a clumsy and severely limited operating system, executing all software via interpreted programming language. Either there shouldn't be other OS than Firefox OS, or browsers shouldn't be used as a replacement for your OS at all. I'm personally leaning towards the latter, and consider modern browsers to be a horrible atrocity, a fatal mistake that shouldn't be made, but couldn't be avoided. I hate web-browsers.

That being said, it is just silly to equate native apps to centralized proprietary app-markets. I cannot even truly empathize to all these complaints, because to someone who uses Linux with all its packet managers like pacman/snap/F-Droid it's actually hilarious how people voluntarily buy iPhones and even overpay for them!

>I would consider the ability to download as many songs for offline use as my phone's actual storage allows to be the feature,

Last I knew you are hard limited to 3,333 songs on device, for licensing reasons.

I have over 14,000 songs in iTunes on my Mac, iPod Touch and Galaxy 10e.

They're referring to streaming subscription licensing. Not applicable if you buy songs individually

https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/spotifys-333...

Apple has had poor support for PWA's for a very long time - the CacheStorage was limited to a useless size, still no Web Push Notifications, just generally broken and noncomplaint.

Sharecroppers complaining is part of what created the Russian revolution.

And as for Spotify you are factually incorrect. Spotify started its life as a C++ desktop application and back then something similar could not have been built on the web.

In 2006? Why not? YouTube existed in 2006 as a website, so I’d think Spotify could have.

And look where all the places it took Russia and where it is today.

Not sure if a literal Spotify could have been built on the web, but I recall using Grooveshark roughly around that timeframe (may have been 2009, 2010 at the latest).

Grooveshark did work for me as fully-featured streaming music player, so I find it reasonable to infer that a Spotify-like service could have worked from a purely technical point of view... though maybe there is a year of two of leeway that makes all the difference.

Is it possible to do notifications without a native app?

Yes.

https://w3c.github.io/push-api/

https://developer.apple.com/notifications/safari-push-notifi...

No, not on iOS safari.

Spotify's web version came long after its desktop and mobile apps.

Epic hasn't lost. The case remains ongoing as far as I know.

Epic’s case is being appealed, so they haven't lost yet. Lower court judges don’t get the final say

This is minor - but Spotify doesn't support Apple's home pod/home pod minis Siri integration...

This is especially disappointing as this (Siri integration) is one of the few areas Apple has opened up to 3rd party platforms!

Practically it's annoying, I can't `hey Siri play ...` and instead always have to start a song through my phone or computer and then airplay it over.

This has been ongoing for years now [0].

It's only Spotify that hasn't supported this. Apple Music of course, Pandora, and a host of other 3rd party apps support this but not Spotify!

[0]https://community.spotify.com/t5/Live-Ideas/iOS-Implement-Na...

I believe they were citing apple not allowing them to do so as the cause, but it’s been years now that they’ve been able at this point, and others already have brought integration.

It's a bit ridiculous to see people – who I believe to be tech literate – argue how Apple allowing more access to the device is going to be the end of the world.

In my opinion, Apple could very well give a special entitlement to developers who want full system access, maybe even by requiring to register the UDID somewhere on Apple's website for that entitlement to be valid, whatever. Any apps signed with that entitlement can do whatever they want for the given UDID.

Why they don't do it is pretty clear. But sure, it must be because they care about us :)

That covers the technical side of why they could do it, but it doesn’t provide a legal or ethical reason why Apple must open up their walled garden more. Everyone agrees they have the right to control their ecosystem to a great extent. This is just the free market fighting out how far that limit is. It’s ultra wealthy companies using their leverage to limit their costs and improve their margins… same as it ever was.

No substance, same arguments repeated from both sides all the time. Seems like a stalemate.

I see to ways out for a company that feels it’s getting ripped of by Apple:

1. Don’t publish in App Store, do a web app or encourage your customers to get a different platform device. Not sure which one since Google Play Store AFAIK has the same rules.

2. Charge users +30% more when buying through IAP if same is offered any place else and eat this as a cost of doing business.

Apple owns the platform. Apple sets the rules.

That doesn't work when you're preventing competition. Look at when movie studios used to set a ton of rules for their movies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_Anti-trust_Case_of_1...

Nothing about that article actually describes any harm done. It's often called the Golden Age of Hollywood, and many of the greatest movies of all time were made under the studio system. It's not even clear that the collusion increased ticket prices.

Recently, in fact, the decrees have been reversed. Studios are allowed to own movie theaters again.

I'm just curious why you picked that one. There are many better cases illustrating the dangers of monopolies.

I pick that one because there's always arguments that Apple is not a monopoly (just switch to Android) therefore other examples of dangers of monopolies don't apply. The studio system was multiple oligopolies and not a monopoly. I think it parallels the current smartphone app market more.

The decrees were reversed because they served their purpose and studios no longer have oligopolies, not because there were new findings or research that suggested the decrees were not worth doing.

I see, but what were the harms of that oligopoly?

The case documented that they violated the law, to be sure. There was certainly the potential for harm. But how much harm was actually done?

As far as I can tell the ones who objected most to the studio system were the actors, not the audiences. It's why the Screen Actors Guild was created; the abuses were well documented.

This case illustrates that an oligopoly can be broken up if it acts as a cartel. Do Apple and Google do that?

Sorry; I don't mean to sound like I'm "Just Asking Questions". I'm not a lawyer, but I am an actor with a bit of understanding of the studio system history so I'm interested in the lessons.

I’m old enough to remember the Microsoft monopoly. 2022 Apple isn’t like that at all.

Back in the 90s, telling someone to just buy a Mac, was a joke. No one had macs, besides schools, but even those went away. Apps simply didn’t exist on Mac. Files couldn’t even be transferred between machines because the floppies were formatted differently. To not use a windows PC, was an actual burden.

Now let’s compare to 2022 Apple. You don’t want an iPhone, get an android. They’re literally everywhere phones are sold, and you can even egg them for free with a service contract. So what do you lose if switch to it? FaceTime? Um… okay. What popular apps aren’t on android? I honestly don’t know. Even the built in iOS apps, have equivalents that are often even installed on iPhones. Everything else is the web.

There’s no lock in.

I'll go with EU's ruling when they ruled that Apple App Store didn't compete with Google's Play Store. They'll explain it better than I can.

https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_18_...

Files were able to be exchanged between Macs and Windows PCs as far back as 1990. The Mac came with an extension to read DOS formatted disk.

Technically correct, but no one had these things

The extension to read PC formatted disks came with System 7.

lol. Obviously there’s no monopoly power when the small company has to support the big company, but can’t actually format disks for the big company.

That’s still not true. System 7 that came out in 1991 could in fact format FAT disks out of the box.

3. Put the app in SetApp program:

https://setapp.com

(This is awesome, btw, like Apple Arcade or Apple Music but for indie Apps crafted with care.)

4. Sell accounts outside the app.

> Apple owns the platform. Apple sets the rules

They do until we force them, via government action to change them.

It's already happening in the EU with the digital markets act soon.

Maybe this new controversy will finally convince the US to pass the open app market act that is under consideration.

Option 1 is made more difficult by the fact that Apple prevents alternative web browser engines on iOS and does not implement modern PWA features in the one they do allow (their own)

It absolutely undermines the credibility of that argument

“Over and over again @Apple gives itself every advantage while at the same time stifling innovation and hurting consumers.”

That’s funny Ek. Seems like Spotify gives itself every advantage while at the same time stifling innovation and hurting musicians.

It hurts because all the companies attacking Apple are just the best examples of "The worst guy you know just made a great point". Epic Games, Spotify, Elon/Twitter 2.0 have their own exploitative practices that I can't help but revel in some schadenfreude.

So we are defending the $2T market cap company in the room.

I don’t think that’s a great argument. Just because a company is large doesn’t mean they’re ethically in the wrong on every possible accusation.

How do they hurt musicians? Google says they pay at least a third of a cent per stream. How much should they pay?

Wow so you just need to have around million streams a month to get livable* salary!

The biggest hurting in my view is them still sharing subscription revenue of all people to the biggest artists.

I never listen to the taylorswifts and other really big names. But when I used to pay for premium most of my monies went there anyway.

I wish so much that my subscription fee would have gone pro-rata to the actual artists who I streamed. Alas out of the lets say 10 bucks only cents were left for the artists who I really liked-listened.

I ended cancelling spotify with the joe rogan saga, I am not paying for fucktards destroying our society.

> stifling innovation and hurting musicians

Have you looked into music labels yet? Or just generally into the music industry, have you tried to release your music and chatted with some larger label on what kind of deal they could offer? Music labels are the main culprit of pain in the music industry, for streaming companies, for artists, for performers.

Music labels now got into forcing their signed artists to market themselves their new productions, wanting them to go viral before they even authorise the artist to release new albums. That would be most of the job of a label: marketing, and now they try to force artists to do the deed for them, while still extracting their 50-80% cut of royalties (and only sharing with artists after they cover their costs of recording and marketing).

It's a very exploitative industry, like most passion industries are.

Three labels control some 50+% of all music catalogue in the world, they strong-arm deals with artists (taking their cuts before paying artists) and forcing royalties deal that are more advantageous to them than to artists. If you don't play by their rules they simply take their IP away.

If you really wish to see artists being better paid it's better to focus the hatred on this kind of behaviour, it's not like Spotify can dictate the terms when a few massive companies have this amount of leverage.

He takes 30% for his platform, what's the issue with Apple taking 30% for their own platform? Quit the platform if you want. If consumers value Spotify enough they will leave Apple for it (spoiler: They won't)

Apple can ask 30% all they want IMO, as long as they allow side loading.

Don't use their app distribution platform? Don't pay their fee. That is how it should work, which is how it does work on android (and yes most companies still use the play store, because it is hard to convince consumers to use another store, but at least the option is there. Also you can not auto update apps installed from outside the play store which also sucks).

My device so I and I alone should determine which software I want to run

1. Don't buy Apple.

2. What does that have to do with Spotify not wanting to pay IAP fees?

3. Should Spotify also allow you to "sideload" the mp3s you bought from bandcamp into their player?

You can 'sideload' DRM-free MP3s into Spotify on iOS, Android, and desktop: https://support.spotify.com/us/article/local-files/

"Don't buy Apple" is not actionable advice in a duopoly.

Except that it isn't a duopoly.

There are hundreds of phones available and most have different variations of Android with their own features and restrictions.

100 copies of the same two choices is not competition.

So since all computers are Unix* or Windows, there's no competition? Ridiculous.

If state governments and agencies offer essential software for only two platforms and the most "open" one is restricted of most useful stuff because Google doesn't like it, no, there isn't enough competition.

It's a really basic point and I have no idea what's so hard to understand.

It's literally the same thing with Unix and PCs. AOSP is completely open source just like Unix, likewise MacOS and Google Android are restricted.

There is no single human being that can use AOSP as a daily driver given that even government apps use Play Services.

An academic exercise of open source isn't an excuse for an actually functional and useful daily driver. We've come as a society to the point where the absence of a cell phone makes you a second-class citizen.

If every single windows computer required you to pay them 30% for every transaction from those computers, yeah that would be an anti trust violation as well.

Microsoft got in trouble for the much less bad act of merely bundling a browser with the OS.

Imagine how much worse it would be if they took 30% of every transaction on every computer in the world.

Imagine all Windows computers required you to use the Microsoft Store to download any piece of software, and you had to pay 30% for that privilege. Oh, and if every browser on the store was just another version of Internet Explorer (which Microsoft already got in trouble for around 20 years ago for just this one issue, much less all the others).

And on the Unix side it's slightly better where you can download apps outside of the Unix Store but they don't autoupdate while easily having the ability to, and that any OEM that doesn't install Unix Store Services gets their Android license removed or severely limited.

That's basically how it's like.

Which apps require you giving 30% to apple or Google?

Why are we talking about government apps?

Apologies. Wrong comment.

Sure it is. You're asking for sideloading apps. Guess what, that exists. The choice is there for what you're complaining about.

Apple’s non-hardware expenses aren’t limited to the distribution platform… They make the OS, the libraries, the APIs, the development tools and continue to maintain those even after the hardware is sold… Why should third parties get to free ride on that? I don’t see why we should compel software authors to add hooks and features and provide tools for non-paying third parties.

> They make the OS, the libraries, the APIs, the development tools… Why should third parties get to free ride on that?

I hear this argument all the time. But what do you think was done before iOS?

When will they have finally gotten paid for all that and don't need to take any more money from you?

Before iOS (and for the early years of iOS) people paid out of pocket for software updates. Now it’s an ongoing cost instead, imposed as a tax on software transactions. This is not an unusual arrangement - people rent things in perpetuity all the time, like EC2 instances and water heaters.

The fact that it's a tax on software transactions and not simply something rented/charged monthly is kind of the point.

And, no, not all software updates were uncommon or charged for before iOS. Windows Update predates iOS by many years. People did pay for development tools but then so do iOS developers for $100 a year. I've personally only paid for dev tools a few times in my life. Developers add value to an ecosystem.

Patches for Windows predate iOS. Free upgrades to major versions do not.

I’m not entirely sure it’s worth it but it sure seems like most people accept this bargain since it’s become standard on the most used devices.

They don't have a choice. And most people don't realize that 1/3 of every purchase they make goes directly to Apple.

Because I paid for all that — paid in full - upfront - paid a lot! Maybe 2x or hell 3-5x of what it should actually cost.

So it’s my device. I want Spotify to be able to side load on my device.

And you can contact an actual human when discussing about App Store things.

With Google it's just some fucked up AI trying to pretend to be a human. And you can't complain about its decisions.

Because I already gave them $1000 for the device...

And if you don't want to partake in the walled garden distribution then your side-loaded apps will be walled off from latest iOS API and capabilities, and they will be unable to impact the core UX. Sounds fine to me.

a) It's 15% for businesses making under $1m and those on long term subscriptions.

b) Spotify takes a cut from the payment between consumer and musician so I assume they have no issue with it.

> If consumers value Spotify enough they will leave Apple for it (spoiler: They won't)

It should be illegal for apple to force such a choice to begin with.

> If consumers value Spotify enough they will leave Apple for it (spoiler: They won't)

That's not how reality works at all and you are very aware of it. You are trying to force an equivalence between a device ecosystem which has massive network effects once you are in it, a device most people use everyday in 2022 for most of their lives needs: maps, communication, banking, government interactions, entertainment and so on, and pitting it against a simple music/audio service.

What makes Apple behaviour even more egregious isn't only the 30% cut, it's that they provide a competitor that doesn't have to care about this overhead cost, it's undercutting the competition because they control the whole platform. If this doesn't sound anti-competitive to you then I believe you are deep into a hole.

For those debating privacy here, we are still waiting for the year of Linux on desktop what makes you think that a fully featured smartphone with true privacy control is possible? Good luck staying away from Google on Android, it is a matter of choosing the less evil, and in my opinion Google is worse than Apple. Not only their entire business model is ads, they also run hardware divisions to get more ads revenue. Sure, Apple will never pass on the opportunity for some extra ads revenue but might have less pressure from its board and stakeholder to squeeze every single penny given the argument that this would impact the main revenue stream. Google does not have this luxory

>"So how much longer will we look away from this threat to the future of the internet? How many more consumers will be denied choice? There's been a lot of talk. Talk is helpful but we need action," Ek wrote."

This from a man who built a company that has forced most of the artists on its platform to give away their work for pennies. This man has no problem with the "threat" to their livelihoods. And who can forget this quote from him:

"You Can’t Record Music Every Three Or Four Years And Think That’s Going To Be Enough" [1]

He also has no problem propping up the the oligopoly that is "record industry" where only three record companies control 70 percent of the market.

And he has no problem with Spotify having exclusives on things like podcast that were once open to all.

Daniel Ek is a hypocrite and an ass. He is best ignored.

[1] https://www.stereogum.com/2093393/spotify-ceo-daniel-ek-stre...

>Daniel Ek is a hypocrite and an ass. He is best ignored.

Do you think arguments from hypocrites and asses should be ignored?

Honestly tech folks need to accept that everyone except them likes what Apple does. There is literally no other phone than an iPhone that I'd be comfortable to give my non technical mother or my underage children. They would get scammed, hacked or exploited and the tech companies behind those "you can do what you want with your phone" devices would hold up their hands and say we can't do anything about it, just like Instagram, Facebook or TikTok say now they can't protect our children from seeing harmful content or self harm material. I am so tired and sick of some privileged rich CEOs who campaign so hard to make the Apple ecosystem as toxic as their own platforms so they can get even richer. If you don't want to pay Apple 30% then don't put your stuff in the App Store. You don't like what Apple does, then don't do business with them. Stop whining. Consumers love Apple, young folks feel comfortable to install an online banking app on their grandparents iPhones and parents feel comfortable to give their teenagers an iPhone. I feel like every time some rich AF CEO complains about Apple's 30% Apple should increase it by 1% until they all shut their mouth.

Brought to you by the same company that delivered us amazing innovations like the “exclusive podcast”.

I am constantly amazed how Apple continuously keeps getting defended online, even on HN, one would assume that you got paid for it, not that someone is spending their free time defending them.

I always love reading the arguments in the comments. "Apple's platform, Apple's rules".

I just want to know what would those same comments say if it was Microsoft who came out and said that any app on Windows 11 must pay a 30% "tax" and that you have no freedom to install the apps you wish.

It doesn't matter if you like the current status of the Apple platform, if it breaks the law, it must be stopped, the same way Microsoft was stopped 20 years ago.

I’m super surprised that people here are taking these corporations’ cries about “freedom” and “choice” at face value. This isn’t about the security checks of the App Store. It’s about the 30% cut, but not just the vig. It also about the privacy protections.

Zuck is now complaining about the app store[0]. Why? They can’t track users on iOS. That’s it. They want the freedom to exploit you.

[0] https://stocks.apple.com/A0-hW1tGKRs6TFkPCyFVJ8w

Spotify is 100% right about Apple's fees being extortionate. On the other hand, Elon is such a loathsome human being that I can't respect anyone signal-boosting him. Stop giving him attention, he is absolutely addicted to it.

Spotify hasn’t allowed in app purchases on iOS for years.

That makes this doubly obnoxious on Spotify’s part, then. The media needs to stop giving Elon so much neutral/positive coverage, but someone as rich as Elon is surely paying for a lot of favorable coverage…

When tesla open up their touchscreen to 3rd party apps then musk can throw stones.

Hmm, plenty of "thoughts and prayers" as I browse on my OpenBSD laptop, listening to DRM-free music I bought on Bandcamp... I used to be a Spotify subscriber, and I used to buy Apple products... both companies have treated me (and the rest of their customers) worse and worse over time, and I take my money elsewhere.

I’d be more sympathetic to this if the Spotify interface wasn’t just so terrible on all platforms. There’s not much innovation at Spotify, except perhaps in the legal department.

Given that there is tremendous code sharing of Apple's OS+AppStore software on the laptop and phone, I have not understood how both hardware products are not subject to the same rules. Phones are basically micro-laptops and should have similar platform expectations, legally.

The sheer audacity of these (tech) CEOs is always mind blowing. They really have absolutely no sense of shame and morality.

> "So how much longer will we look away from this threat to the future of the internet? How many more consumers will be denied choice?"

The future of the internet? Really? Spotify is as much of treat to "the future of the internet" than any other of these very profitable tech corps...

The argument that users should have the option to control their own phone (which perhaps only a small fraction of users would select) seems pretty reasonable, but what if it less about Apple execs being control freaks, and more about support costs. I can certainly imagine that if even less than 1% of Apple users exercised the option to escape from Apple control, that small fraction could have support costs that quickly matched the support costs of the 99% that stayed in the garden. So perhaps Apple could a more-unlocked iPhone that enabled more user control, but cost 2 - 3X as much as the "locked" version. My guess is that even with a 50% surcharge, which would be unlikely to cover additional costs, it probably would not sell.

In the windows world I download the installer for whatever software I need, click next->next->next (or choose where I want my stuff in my filesystem, add it to the path, opt in or out of stuff) and it works out of the box. No stores. (Well there is one, but I guess no one uses that)

In the linux world, I mostly look for package managers, or if not, its mostly just ./configure -> make -> make install (or choose my own defaults at configure stage). (There are some app stores like canonical, but I guess no one uses that)

Haven't used modern apple computers much, but I suppose its a mix of dragging and dropping dmg files, installers and package mangers (brew) or compile it yourself stuff.

Why do any phones not do installation like this? Its simple and you get what you want?

Does software distribution on Windows really "work" for most people though? At best, you've given unlimited, unsandboxed access to everything on your computer to the author of whatever piece of software you've just installed. If you're unsophisticated or unlucky, you've also gotten some spyware or a virus along for a ride.

There's a reason why ransomware exists on desktop and server OSes, but not on iOS, and it's because of Apple's app store model.

> At best, you've given unlimited, unsandboxed access to everything on your computer to the author of whatever piece of software you've just installed.

That's the risk I take for very good returns and very high quality software. My stack is Visual Studio, Julia, Wolfram Suit, Emacs, Blender, MSYS2, some great video games, compilers for various languages, Firefox, Spotify, SumatraPDF.. I see no reason not to trust any of the authors of these software. And it is logically my decision to trust or distrust, not some helicopter parent company. Right?

Musk now says that Tim Cook and Apple never threatened Twitter.

Has Musk again violated SEC rules (market manipulation)?

SEC rules don't apply here given there's no market to manipulate given Twitter is private.

He derided AAPL, which is public, and very clearly tried to foment a bandwagon of discontent against AAPL, which could easily bring SEC attention.

He made no mention of the stock. And attacking and criticizing a company in public is not forbidden. In fact individuals have done it directly to Tesla in the past and made large sums of money on it with no repercussions.

You're free to buy an Android device if Apple devices don't suit your needs.

And if you don't want to pay the fee required to sell in this specific appstore, make it a website.

After all, you don't get to sell your Etsy products in the shelves of local supermarkets for free either.

Not every app works as a website and even when they do, they aren’t as good as a native app. They use more CPU, memory, and network bandwidth.

The point stands that no one forced that developer or team to build a product on a platform that requires a 30% fee.

The problem here is that there are competing wrongs.

1) apple taking 30% of everything is just plain greed.

2) Musk is being a prick.

It's possible to have a subscription on the iphone and not pay 30%. It requires extra steps.

The other issue is that musk almost certainly wants to do dodgy stuff with the payment processor because he's been stung hard by chargebacks from the Blue cockup.

The best outcome for me personally is that apple boots them off the store, musk takes them to court and goes bankrupt in the process. By whichtime Apple (and google) will be balls deep in an anti-trust suit for the appstore/advertising power grab. (bonus points for the EU nailing them for hoovering up personal data like 2013 facebook)

Shouldn't this provide even more motivation for companies like Spotify to invest in a high quality Progressive Web App that can be installed to phones, bypassing the app store entirely?

PWAs on iOS have certain limitations. I am not sure if Spotify could fully recreate their app. Even if they could, it isn't really the easiest thing for the average person. Everybody knows how to install an app. How many people know how to install a PWA on their phone?

Isn't the argument to add sideloading / other stores to ios? How does installing an alternate store to get a cheaper spotify app compare to installing a PWA?

>Isn't the argument to add sideloading / other stores to ios?

Yes, but the person I was responding to was talking about PWAs.

>How does installing an alternate store to get a cheaper spotify app compare to installing a PWA?

If you can install an alternative app store through Apple's app store the learning curve might be lower, but I'm not sure. Ultimately none of this would be an easy thing for most users.

I think the best solution would be to require Apple to allow repositories (like Fdroid and Linux have) to their store. The end user wouldn't have to learn anything new since the app store would be the same.

The same PWAs which Apple restricts on iOS because they know it would cut into their App Store cashflow? If it were an equal market, I'd agree with you, but the OS makers also make and prioritize their own application stores too, so of course they'd want to cut down other competitive avenues.

I keep hearing this very bad excuse. If that’s the only reason that developers make iOS apps, where are the developers who are making iOS apps and just telling Android users to go to the web?

How is it a "bad excuse?" it's literally true that Apple hobble PWAs compared to other platforms.

Then why aren’t developers eschewing the Google Play Store and just telling users to use their website?

Some revenue is better than no revenue. Doesn't mean some people can't be annoyed at what's basically a startup tax levied on them.

What do you mean “some revenue”? The question is if PWAs are good enough on every other platform, why spend the development time and money to create apps?

And most startups are creating B2B services where you pay for the service outside of the App Store.

Actually you might be right, PWAs are insufficient on every platform, at least the major ones I've tried.

How are PWAs restricted/limited on iOS, outside of the current limitations of PWAs themselves? Genuinely curious.

He makes a good case.

Apple and Google have an oligarchy in mobile and Google has a monopoly in search.

The amount of self-dealing is overwhelming. Google consistently prefers their own experiences to those of other companies.

Apple does as well, in addition they lock out apps from the platform.

This is 100% an anti-competitive situation the fact there is no competition in a situation that should not otherwise have natural monopolies is the primary evidence of this.

I suggest that Google needs to be broken up and that it cannot defer search results to it's other lines of businesses.

Apple must not be able to compete with services offered in the App Store, or, the App Store needs to be a separate business.

Alternative app stores must be allowed on mobile platforms.

While I'm on the anti-trust bandwagon - the money that AWS pours into Amazon retail, and their subsequent tax advantages are a form of economic dumping. Amazon is washing through retail with 'tech money' putting a lot of competition out of business, after which they will raise prices. A strong argument could be made for breaking up AWS from Amazon Retail.

Finally, throw in some basic privacy rules and 'right to repair' etc. and then you have some semblance of basic governance.

That there is no discussion about this whatsoever tells you who has power.

Traditional media (even ostensibly Left Wing) outlets won't spend much time talking about it ... because money.

If a 'Great Leader' emerged and did those things, I think we would look back upon it as a 'total no brainer' in hindsight. Much like whenever we provide Ukraine some new gear after months of fretting about 'upsetting Putin', we never regret it at all, ergo the question begs asking: why not sooner?

This discussion needs to be had on a national scale, and though I'm generally not a huge fan of the EU, this is one area they could actually be useful.

I will never understand the argument that "consumers are making the wrong choice and I want the government to force companies to take that choice away from them. It hurts my business. Force them to make different choices, specifically these choices which help me make money. That's freedom!"

This coming from a company that decimates its long-standing developer ecosystem at every available opportunity under the guise of security and licensing restrictions.

At least Apple lets people build apps for its platform in a relatively open way whilst also allowing for monetisation. Reap what you sow.

If Apple stopped taking 30%, does anybody believe Spotify will lower their prices by even 10%?

As an aside, it occurs to me that if I did have an iPhone, in-so much as Apple is able to realistically control, I'm not allowed to watch porn or download torrents on my own damn device. Obviously that's not broadly true because of the web and esoteric workarounds, but because the one true app store is the only one, and Apple is the arbiter of what goes in there, I would have Ned Flanders staring in my window at all times. The main difference on Android for these specific cases, is that the Play store doesn't ban torrent clients, and I can install any apk I want. The OS enforces a certain amount of security granularity, and I hope that improves, but I'm not subject to Google's opinion if I don't want to be. Does this not seem ridiculous to people who go with iOS?

Edit: To be clear, I'm not complaining about my real constraints, because I've already and always voted with my wallet and not bought an iPhone. They're very nice hardware though.

I'm wondering if VR is going to be a repeat of VHS vs Betamax.

Like … did everybody forget what the App Store/Play Store used to look like with little to no moderations. It’s not something you want to go back to. Take my 30% and keep the ecosystem clean. People like Elon Musk are just real life versions of malware who want to dictate the narrative to further satisfy their own personal superiority complex. Like, yawn… give me a break.

With iStuff and generally Apple things, I keep getting the feeling that I don't actually own and control the device, I rent it, and it is Apple who ultimately controls it.

Is it possible to subscribe Spotify via iOS app? I can't find that option. It says "You can't upgrade to Premium in the app. We know, it's not ideal."

There isn't a good guy here, they are all just blaming each other and trying to take the moral high ground in order to make more profits for themselves.

Allow me to play the world's smallest Violin, its like not Spotify is going to use that increased cash flow to actually pay the artist a meaningful cut of the reveune

If ever there was a valid application of monopoly abuse laws, it is Apple's extortion for no value provided. Saying that as a blue blooded iFan who owns one of nearly every Apple product and service out there including the Apple Cloth. It is disgusting what Apple is doing. And it makes no sense that it is getting away with it. And if Google is doing the same, well then both need to be set right.

Looking forward to the Digital Markets Act.

Sucks that things only change when it affects big companies' profits, though.

Go to war? How? I don’t see what leverage Musk would have over Apple.

Pay your artists something meaningful on your own platform first!

Tesla phone by 2025 running a custom android version.

Internet companies should boycott the App Store and pull their apps at the same time.

Can you please further describe what an internet company is? I haven't heard the term internet company since the late 90s (for all tech) except recently when referring to Comcast, AT&T which I don't think is what you are referring to.

I'm thinking companies that don't really have physical presence like TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Roblox, Spotify, etc.

Companies that if kicked off the App store would face an existential crisis.

So you want them to operate like a cartel? I guess they aren't price setting but they are flexing together.

No. They aren't fixing prices or reducing competition.

I'm just here demoting the upvote/comment ratio.

The price of a new iPhone 14 Pro Max[1] or 12.9" iPad Pro[2] is ~45% component/part costs, on top of which there is all of Apple's R&D costs including the cost of developing iOS and integrating it with new hardware, amongst many other costs to Apple of bringing a new product to market.

I couldn't find public information for Apple or Google on the amount spent on R&D for iOS and Android, hence I'm not sure what the cost to Apple is of maintaining iOS and all the APIs that application developers can use to build their applications. There are some attempts on the Internet of people attempting to estimate iOS/Android R&D costs from LinkedIn data, open jobs data, other public records of revenue from app stores, etc but nothing much I can see being of use to generating a useful estimate.

It appears that in 2021, Apple received somewhere between USD$10-25 billion[3] (likely on the high end of this range) from app store sales (after paying developers) which for the 235 million iPhones[4], 58 million iPads[5] and 29 million macOS devices[6] sold in 2021 equates to about USD$77 per device sold. I'll just assume watches and TV app store sales don't make much of a difference so USD$77 may be slightly on the high side of an estimate.

Apple could perhaps increase the price of all their iPhone, iPad and MacBook models by USD$77 and do away with collecting revenue through the app store, but would consumers still buy these devices at the higher price points?

[1] https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:AwEUXo...

[2] https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:vDm8GL...

[3] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/10/apple-implies-it-generated-r...

[4] https://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS48830822

[5] https://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS48826122

[6] https://www.canalys.com/newsroom/global-pc-market-Q4-2021

if i build a store and allow companies to sell to my customers...i get to dictate the price. if you don't like it then innovate and build your own store or develop a direct relationship with the customer. spotify should team up with elon to build a competitor to apple just like epic decided to compete against steam. this is how free market capitalism works...if they decide apple is doing something monopolistic then the federal courts give spotify an avenue to pursue that. build your case and sue apple

The issue is that there's no option to use an alternative store. They're also able to extract a % from companies like Netflix just because the person happens to use an ios device. It's like if Microsoft were able to extract 30% of Netflix's subscription service because a person signed up via a Windows device, it's untenable and wrong.

Netflix hasn’t allowed in app purchases of subscriptions for years

Pure and simple jealously about not being able to leech people using Apple devices.

Nobody wants to remove the fences protecting sheep more than the wolves.

It's weird how you see being able to run any software as "leeching" as if owning an Apple device makes me belong to Apple.

Not talking about end users wanting to run "any software" (which you can if you really wanted to), but do you really think that the companies and devs who want to force Apple to "open up" are fighting for your sake?

> Tim Sweeney, the CEO of "Fortnite" maker Epic Games, tweeted on Wednesday that fighting Apple's "monopoly" was "an American issue transcending party politics".

Forget fixing healthcare, reducing gun crime or the opioid epidemic. This is the real issue.

The kind of dark pattern bullshit and anti-usability mess Spotify has become I would rather see Spotify die. Not to mention the “Spotify only” podcasts.

While we are at it we should point out Spotify has no clear ways to export your listening history, playlists etc that you can easily recreate on other portals.

It’s not a fight for equality. It’s an attempt by Spotify to be more equal than others.

I don't think any major streaming platform has a way to export your playlists without some kind of 3rd party tool

I tried leaving spotify and am happily paying them again. I also noticed their recommendation quality improved.

Well… Yeah, admittedly, “Spotify only” podcasts are fair and established business-practice, like "XBox only games", rock-bands signed up to a specific label, writers having a contract with a publisher and all. But let's remind ourselves what the word "podcast" used to mean. These were literally just RSS feeds with audio-files. A completely decentralized system by nature (ironically, unlike some modern decentralized systems like Mastodon, etc., that try to replace an established centralized system), monetized independently via adds or donations. Now it means just random long-winded badly produced talking-shows (in video format!) on YouTube and Spotify, mostly restricted to one publisher, copying being considered a pirate activity. So, while it's no different than Netflix-shows, really, it somehow makes me more bitter.

> While we are at it we should point out Spotify has no clear ways to export your listening history, playlists etc that you can easily recreate on other portals.

This is absolutely not true.

You can export all of your data from Account -> Privacy pane, you can also use the public APIs to extract all of your playlists, library, podcasts, etc. data: developer.spotify.net

If you want to develop an app that does the migration for you you're absolutely free to do so, use the other portals/platforms APIs to recreate them.

> "So how much longer will we look away from this threat to the future of the internet? How many more consumers will be denied choice? There's been a lot of talk. Talk is helpful but we need action

Jesus, laying it on a bit thick, don't you think? Spotify, Twitter, Facebook, Epic, Apple and their asshat CEOs could all disappear tomorrow and the future of the Internet would not suffer one single iota.

> Musk is expected to talk with European Commissioner Thierry Breton via videocall on Wednesday afternoon, though the agenda was unknown.

And why is an EU Commissioner having one-on-ones with Musk? Last time I heard of this it was another Commissioner talking with Ashton Kutcher about his pet project of saving the children by eradicating online privacy.

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