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Comment by smoldesu | Hacker News Reader

> because I know developers have financial or other interests that are sometimes at odds with mine.

Like how Apple's interests can be at-odds with your own. If developers have control over your device, you're not empowered as a user.

> A large portion of users want the protection that the walled garden affords

So, give it to them. Our interests are not mutually exclusive, you can make a device with both a walled garden and a developer mode. It's not rocket science, at least when you have 200 billion dollars in R&D cash sitting in your coffers.

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The trouble is that if large tech companies are given the opportunity, they will force users to use whatever is best for the company, not for the user. The only way to stand up to large tech companies is with another tech company like Apple.

That's bullshit. The only way to stand up to large tech companies is with regulation, which the United States is pathologically opposed to. Foreign countries have to write their own consumer protection laws because US juggernaut tech companies are so ruthless. Shareholders fear nothing as much as regulatory backlash.

You're at least right about one thing. Large tech companies will always exploit opportunities to limit the user, which is a privilege Apple has abused for too long. It's time for computing to be democratized again, even if we need to drag Apple though the mud to get there.

> That's bullshit. The only way to stand up to large tech companies is with regulation

I don't know if you realize this, but OP and you are saying the same thing, they are just saying it slightly different.

You: To stand up to large company bullying you need to regulate them through the government.

OP: To stand up to large company bullying you, you need another large company who has the pockets and sway to bring change through congress because our government is bought and paid for by corporations.

We're strongman-ing two sides of the same coin. They're arguing that the free market will solve this, whereas I'm arguing that proactive measures are required. Apple's business is designed so that it cannot be disrupted without forcing them to abide by a common set of rules. By leaving those rules undefined, we have clearly not encouraged innovation or disruption. Our only option is to define our consumer rights that we should have instated a long time ago.

One of these is a fairy tail though. The free market doesn’t work like that, and that is a nice way to further empower companies.

Isn't this what Apple is kind of doing though?

It's regulating your iPhone so you don't have to?

I really don't want idealists to mess up the iPhone's stability, performance and security so people can use the minecraft app store or whatever.

Apple can still regulate your iPhone if they want. They just have to do so with the option to disable that regulation, which seems like a fair concession to me. Macs pull this off without a problem, even letting you install another OS if you're dissatisfied with MacOS. Apple just needs to bring that same philosophy to iPhone, and developers won't be mad at them.

A difference between governments and corporations are that you can walk away from a corporation for another one or none at all in the extreme case an alternative doesn’t exist.

You can’t walk away from government regulation because there is ultimately a gun at your back. Governments do not give up power once they’ve received it. Governments change hands who may wield that power differently than when it was imagined to be when first received.

People in European countries have had to learn this the hard way many, many times over and yet still don’t get why other cultures might take a different view on it.

Well, governments need the power right now. Letting software go unregulated didn't work, full-stop.

How incredibly myopic. And also wrong. It works just fine for users. Not so much for all the greedy, prima donna developers out there. They and governments don’t need this power, they want it.

Just because smoldesu says “Letting software go unregulated didn't work, full-stop” doesn’t make it so. It doesn’t even make sense–you’re the one fighting for deregulation here.

It must be difficult calling me myopic while also treating Apple as a regulator.

Sling all the mud you want, troll. Just because smoldesu doesn’t like the regulation that Apple enacts, doesn’t mean they are not regulating the apps people try to ship.

I don't sit on Dow's board and have zero say in whether they decide poisoning the environment where I live is a good idea or not. We are not afforded democracy like owners and board members are.

The government is the one institution in most people's lives that they have a real say in, and probably the only one that affords them democracy. I doubt any of us sit on Apple's board.

The problem is that the Apple and Google duopoly is stifling choice and competition such that we can't realistically walk away from those companies. Market forces haven't solved this issue, and this is where antitrust legislation kicks in.

Doesn't that suggest that Apple, a large tech company, will force users to use whatever is best for the company, not the user?

This doesn't happen on Android. Why would it happen in iOS?

Discoverability and the ease of access that the playstore/appstore provides is enough to pretty much always want to have your app up there.

The main difference is that there are a lot of apps that are simply not allowed in the appstore or that you need to change substantially to comply with apple's rules. For example, Telegram has censored content if you download the app from the appstore given Apple's pornography laws. Other apps that might be used to infringe on copyright are outright not allowed (they're also not allowed on the playstore, but you can install them from the apk or a third party store).

Now, maybe you think these restrictions are appropriate and that's fine... for you. Other people might want the freedom of doing more with their devices that they paid hundreds and hundreds of dollars for without having to resort to extreme measures. The argument Apple uses is bullshit and the EU saw through it.

Not even facebook is big enough to make people go way out of their way and install it. The easy way will always be the popular.

You realise that's what Apple has been doing for the past 15 years? Force users to do what's best for them, and only them? Anti-competitive practices do not serve customers, they increase prices and prevent innovation.

Aren't you advocating Apple forcing users to do what is best for Apple? Users benefit on both sides of this coin in different ways.

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