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Comment by dumpsterdiver | Hacker News Reader

Agreed. It's not like there's a shortage of general computing devices. To me the insistence on allowing side loading is akin to walking onto a farm and asking to put a saddle on a pig.

(Farmer) "Uh, sorry we don't do that."

(Person) "Well why not? I want a saddle on a pig."

(Farmer) "Because that's not how we do things around here. You're welcome to buy your own pig and put a saddle on it, but you can't do that here."

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There's definitely a shortage of general computing devices that I can carry in my pocket.

Your (very strange) analogy reminds me of when I was in 3rd grade, and we were having lunch. There was a substitute teacher that day. I had peanut butter and jelly (packed by my mom), and started putting some potato chips inside it. The teacher came over, asked what I was doing, and said "stop; we don't do that here".

It was a dumb thing for her to say then, and it's dumb to tell us what we can and can't do with our devices now.

Ferrari has a list of rules you must follow in order to purchase their cars. If you violate the rules they will try to take back your car and anyway you will be banned for life from purchasing another of their cars.

For example they only allow a certain selection of colours for their cars.

So no, you are not allowed to do whatever you want with your device. That was never something completely true.

If I was working at Apple I would propose this feature: if you see the user changing the OS or modifying it in ways that are not acceptable to Apple then the user will be blacklisted from support and ideally from buying another Apple product. I would probably make some big bucks from bonuses.

Like that time at the Ferrari dealership when some dumb lady wanted a Ferrari in pink and the dealer told her "No" and pointed to the door: "Don't let the door hit you on your way out".

See? The companies are also allowed to tell you "No!". Freedom and all...

There is a shortage of primary driver-ready mobile computing devices which respect the user's privacy. The choices here are Android devices with custom ROMs + microG and daily prayers that Google doesn't go out of their way to break it (which they can very well do since it breaks ToS) or go nuts with SafetyNet or hardware attestation features and lock you out of a lot of (crucial) apps - or worst case just nuke your account if they detect you use such programs. Or alternatively iPhones.

I'm unsure why side loading would break the dynamics of their walled garden either. All that does is give both customers and developers the choice of forfeiting the benefits like discoverability, comfort and likely a bunch of App Store-exclusive APIs like IAPs and in return allow access in cases where Apple doesn't approve. I can already guarantee that most developers won't budge an inch from the App Store as the lack of discoverability and the annoyance of downloading an app file and clicking through Apple's warning popups just to install it would effectively kill their app.

That's the point though. You do buy the pig but they still won't let you saddle it.

Don't buy their pig then.

I mean, how simple is it? You know the deal, everyone knows the deal, and yet you still buy the damned pig and then complain about it afterwards!?

I mean, sure .. advocating for better behavior from major corporations is a fine thing to do, but it's hard not to view that as hypocritical if you still buy their products. If you care, shop elsewhere. That's the only complaining that really works.

Or you could consider the possibility that all available options on the market have downsides worthy of critique, and you're not helping anything (except maybe corporate interests) by painting people in a bad light for choosing one of them and still voicing that criticism. It's the same logic that says "why don't you leave the country and move somewhere else" if someone criticizes a government, or goes "curious, but you still buy food" when people criticize food companies.

Except the criticism here is of Apple, for preventing "side-loading" (and, presumably, for requiring Apple's certification of the installed binary).

For that, there is a clear alternative.

There’s no alternative if you want to keep the ecosystem.

... a "clear alternative" that has downsides too, that someone might very well consider to be equally bad or worse. Which they somehow only could point out as long as they didn't choose it?

I think the thing that irks me about this discussion is mostly the tone. The whiny, entitled, "I demand that Apple makes a device that suits me exactly, and if they don't, they're a bunch of fascist assholes" vibe really annoys me.

There are two things that are genuinely productive: supporting alternative phones (PinePhone, Librem 5, Jolla, OpenMoko, etc) and their software, and lobbying governments to impose regulatory constraints. I'd love to see more people doing them.

> Don't buy their pig then.

There's thread on HN, where father tells a story of child bullied for not having an iPhone and gets bullied himself by HN for being bad father, that doesn't want to buy his son an iPhone.

I don't agree that shopping elsewhere is the only complaining that works. When you publicly complain about a corporate policy, you can raise awareness in others and build a consensus. If enough people agree with you, the company may feel compelled to change course, or sometimes even legislation is enacted. Or a competitor will notice the swell of unmet demand and step in with a better product.

But if all you do is keep to yourself and stop buying, then your protest begins and ends with you. So, certainly not always, but at least sometimes griping and grousing works.

“If you don’t like the country’s politics just move elsewhere”. Switching to another ecosystem is not easy for many very obvious reasons. And honestly this “shop elsewhere” argument reminds me of the early iphone days, when iphones didn’t have i.e. multitasking. There were a lot of the similar “go buy a windows phone then” arguments. iPhones got multitasking at the end of the day, and both groups benefited from it.

How hard is it really to switch from an iPhone to and Android?

I have a couple of iphones, an apple watch, an ipad, 3 macbooks; my wife has a similar set of devices. Quite hard I’d say? Why are you asking?

Did you not know when you bought all of those devices that the Apple ecosystem wasn’t “open”?

I don’t care about openness too much. Though, the ability to side load is nice to have, that’s that. I am not going to swap between ecosystems, I want the ecosystem that I am using to change.

The thing I don’t quite understand - why do you bother? Having the ability to side load doesn’t affect you in any possible way.

As often as I’ve had to clean up my parents Windows computers is why I care.

But the question still is, why buy a device that doesn’t meet your priorities?

Do entertain us with your view of the world of operating systems, please. Windows is not the only OS around, this point is completely irrelevant. Anybody can install anything on Linux/Macos/Android system and the heavens did not fall yet.

> why buy

It does meet my requirements, that’s why. I’ve never said it doesn’t.

Yes, I’m sure my parents would love to use Linux. Did I miss the “year of the Linux desktop”?

You’re not making sense. Have a nice day, I guess.

How hard is it to bring whole Apple ecosystem to Android while keeping the same quality of mobile product?

If you judge “quality” by “the ability to sideload”, an iPhone is not “quality”. I’m sure you also want user replaceable parts. In that case, why spend thousands on products that don’t meet your needs?

Because, obviously, people want to have the best of two worlds in one.

iPhone is a not a pig and doing what you want with your device is not putting a saddle on a pig.

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