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Comment by riscy | Hacker News Reader

I agree it’s lossy in some way. Most of the popular apps with purchases are tied to a login, so there’s a step of logging in again but the app is free to download.

Everything else you mention is part of the nature of changing operating systems: software incompatibility / unavailability. That never has and unfortunately never will be solved. It’s hard enough to keep old software working on new releases of the same OS.

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But that's the point - it's not like, say, switching to a different car make. It is, indeed, non-trivial to switch phone platforms. So why shouldn't we recognize this fact and hold the companies in the market to a different standard?

It's "non-trivial" to switch to driving a 18-wheeler truck, or stick-shift transmission, or that funky wheel thing in Teslas, which don't support the same software that other car infotainment systems do.

You can't force everything to be uniform and support all of the same features to make switching between manufacturers of a product-class "trivial". How's that part of a healthy free market? Requirements to that effect kills all creativity and specialization of products for different purposes. Android and iOS are different and that's a good thing!

Apple collecting 30% off all purchases is not a feature, and being prevented from doing that does not make it impossible for them to differentiate otherwise.

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