This is exactly why this legislation is stupid: if you don’t like the way Apple does things just buy an android.
What I don't like is the little digital fiefdom they created. When we buy stuff, we're supposed to own them. The problem is they just refuse to give us the keys to the machines. So we absolutely should make it a matter of law.
The problem is network effects. An app developer cannot just choose to develop for Android, because maybe 90% of their business comes from iOS users. A user cannot just choose to use Android, because half their friends use iOS and cannot have a decent group chat experience outside iMessage. So, choice is illusory.
The point is to make the choice real. In this case "giving you the keys" is really about giving app developers more freedom to choose how to reach users.
Giving Apple users more control over their own freely-chosen devices is more like right-to-repair. Similar, but kinda different.
A solution. The solution is to make them to do what's good for us by force of law. We can't afford to wait a century for some open mobile hardware platform to become available to us. We want good products now. Apple computers are good products and we should have every right to run whatever software we want on them now.
There is no technical impediment to it, the only reason they don't let us do it is it would destroy the little digital fiefdom they have created for themselves. Digital fiefdoms should not be allowed to exist in the first place. Society should actively work to dismantle them. Giving us the keys to the machine will swiftly put an end to them.
> The problem is network effects.
Absolutely. Network effects should work to our advantage, not theirs. Basically anything that lets corporations "own" users should be straight up illegal.
> A user cannot just choose to use Android, because half their friends use iOS and cannot have a decent group chat experience outside iMessage.
We should mandate interoperability there too. Why is it that every corporation gets to have their own messaging system? They should all work with each other via the same protocol. Just make sure that end-to-end encryption is fully supported and there will be no problem.
Actually here's an even better idea. Just make it legal to reverse engineer and interoperate regardless of what contracts say. People will do it adversarially if they need to. Make it so you don't need their permission. Make it illegal for corporations to retaliate against users for using things like an alternative messaging client. Get rid of nonsense like anti-circumvention laws. Then all of this will just happen on its own via market forces with no need to actually regulate anything.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/adversarial-interopera...
> In this case "giving you the keys" is really about giving app developers more freedom to choose how to reach users.
It's really not. Developers can't reach users because Apple owns them. User freedom means developers can bypass Apple and reach them directly.
I have run Linux on my Android phones, and Windows on my computers that came with Linux.
Why should a owner of a piece of hardware be locked into one software stack, just because it's the one the device came with?
No.
> By any reasonable measure, the software is the product, and the hardware enables that product to operate.
That's what they want people to believe. It's actually just a general purpose computer. They put "IP" on it and suddenly they own it forever and control everything people do and if you resist it's felony contempt of business model.