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Comment by endisneigh | Hacker News Reader

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.

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> 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?

> 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.

> 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

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.

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.

>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...

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.

Another solution is to pass legislation making Apple's business model illegal.

>"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.

> if you don't like it

Disapproving Apple's monopolistic behavior does not imply disliking their products.

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.

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.

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.

"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...

Oh Spotify, the company that is eating the podcast distribution market.

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.

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