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Comment by fsflover | Hacker News Reader

All devices you listed, including iPhones, would have no downsides from being open. Quality of software has nothing to do with user restrictions. Even the opposite: the more open a platform is, the easier users can improve it and find/fix bugs. It's security through obscurity versus openness all over again. I would gladly hack my microwave to get rid of a stupid, long, loud sound at the end of its work.

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What about following counter-example. There're many tiny apps that are next-to-required. E.g. mass transit tickets, paying for parking, banking apps. With the walled garden, they've to stick to at least some standards. Now if we open up the platform, what stops them from making shitty malware-ridden apps offered on scammy 3rd party stores? I won't move my mortgage to another bank because my bank app now requires me to install a weird-looking altstore... Or would I?

Where are the malware-ridden apps in F-Droid? In Linux repositories? Why those next-to-required apps can't be provided as web apps?

> With the walled garden, they've to stick to at least some standards.

This is a bad incentive to obey the standards. And I don't see how it prevents from developing a malware obeying those standards, too.

Traditional "linux repositories" are kind of walled gardens though. I mean, the software is vetted and controlled by the bistro's maintainer, is it not? Isn't it also true that sensible advice is to not add repo's from unknown sources?

But you can add other repos or install software through other means so it is not a walled garden.

My buddy had to install an (android) app for his boiler control few years ago and the first thing it did was to demand access to AB and SMS and later sent an actual SMS to an unknown number. This boiler company doesn’t even want to screw you directly, they just slap a partner library on top of their app that does what a third party decides to.

It wasn’t F-Droid, but that’s because PlayStore already allows that behavior. AppStore doesn’t.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28677950

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30211038

I find it incredibly hard to believe that customer satisfaction would not go down if Apple were forced to, for example, allow third-party app stores onto iOS. It’s easy to say “customer choice is the top concern, and if customers install bad app stores or bad apps that’s on them,” but the important question to me (and probably to Apple) is whether in practice customers are more or less satisfied.

Android is the perfect example. As far as I can tell, the horrible evils of sideloading everyone keeps talking about have SIMPLY NOT HAPPENED.

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