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Comment by endisneigh | Hacker News Reader

I wish all of these folks complaining about Apple would go on strike and stop developing stuff on their hardware instead of whining. Even better if they could make their own hardware without any of the supposed baggage with the software. A lot of these companies whining are worth billions so they can afford it.

Of course, they won’t because they want money just like Apple, but if Spotify, epic etc stopped working on iOS devices Apple would consider changing their behavior.

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IDK about making their own hardware, but it is weird to me that people complain and then continue to buy iPhones and develop for iOS. If developers and users moved to Android, Apple would change. Is Android really so bad that people feel forced to use iOS?

Yes it is.

Smirk aside, yes I have tried Android devices before and I find them basically unusable so iOS it is for me.

Not in the EU so these changes don’t affect me, that may play a role.

Funny. That's how I feel about iOS. I have an issued iOS device that I almost never use because the UI is unintuitive to me.

I guess there are 10 types of people in this world. Those who like the iOS UI and those who don't.

Correct :) it’s definitely a matter of preference. If your preference is shallow enough that you can switch depending on which of the two companies is being more evil today, that’s fine - but for the majority of people, which OS works best for them is a very deeply ingrained preference that’s not so easily tossed aside.

millions of users have iPhones so developers MUST deploy there

therefore competition MUST be forced because (it is actually a deeper question, my microeconomy professor told us monopoly makes profit and it is the potential source of innovation, in perfect competition there is no innovation money)

because it favors us consumers in the long run not just because products become cheaper but monopolies also suppress innovation

I guess Apple was innovative and created monopolies but they should innovate from monopolistic profit and create new monopolies and let old ones gently fade away in competition... plenty of big companies become stagnant

actually Apple is withholding web innovation and plenty of cross platform innovations never were born in the last decade... nowadays even single developers can create great cross platform products via web tech

Apple could have innovated in web instead of withholding it and they would have the best web browser and they could deliver apple products on all OS

strategically it is a very bad decision to try to do the same over and over again (vision pro, closed walled garden)

they misjudged browsers, electric cars

I mean face id and optic id and eye tracking is great but we live in a world with chinese and south koreans who copy like hell or a company that is even called meta... apple is nobody in AI too... no cloud business

what else did they miss that steve has never had?

Your premise is wrong. There are plenty of exclusive apps on both platforms and you can easily make a living only supporting just one.

It's a winner-takes-all market. Nobody is going to buy several pieces of hardware to access several pieces of software. Just like nobody likes to have 5 different subscriptions to access Netflix, HBO, Prime, Disney, Hulu ...

The fact that we have a duopoly instead of a monopoly is already a miracle.

Precisely. Stop supporting iOS and watch their attitude change.

Fact is these companies whine but don’t pull their apps.

Because their hands are pretty much tied. That's called monopoly position.

It’s not a monopoly position by any legal (or really even useful) definition. In the EU they are 24% or so of phone shipments… This is more a “we want money from those users because they’re mostly rich” situations…

I agree that they should make it more of a luxury item in the EU and avoid all of this monopoly talk. If Apple were Bugatti we wouldn't be talking about it.

> If Apple were Bugatti we wouldn't be talking about it.

Yeah, because only 0.001% of people would own one.

Bugatti is orders of magnitude more luxury than Apple, if you look at ownership percentage; also there are many car brands versus very few OS brands; some Samsung flipphones are more expensive and in some ways more luxurious than iPhones; the comparison is silly.

Apple doesn’t have a monopoly position by any base measure. What it has is a monopoly on is high income and wealthy users, and these are the most valuable users for all the companies complaining. They want to have their cake and eat it too.

The majority of people in the world use Android not Apple. The majority of the people in the world are also poor and not good marketing targets. These two groups have a Venn diagram that’s nearly a perfect circle.

Yes, but EU trade committee members are also in that Venn diagram somewhere ;)

it is wishful thinking, if you pull spotify people will use another app on iOS... the way forward is alternative app sotres, the web as an app store etc... competition

more exciting is visionOS, I hope Netflix and co. NEVER make native apps and force Apple to support web browser based solutions

This.

ALL OF THIS IS A NON ISSUE. All. Of. It.

These people won’t take one ounce of responsibility and not buy the damn thing.

It is an issue, there is not enough choice. I don't want apple so I buy an android but android is also flawed in major ways. There is just no winning as a consumer.

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