Poll: How much do you care about platform interoperability? | Hacker News Reader

Poll: How much do you care about platform interoperability?

11 pointsSushiHippie15 comments

With the recent news about apple being forced to open up their eco system, and more sites being login walled, alternative frontends/clients getting "killed", I wondered how much HN really cares/wants Interoperability.

Some examples, to get a grasp what I'm talking about:

- being able to use the OS and messenger of your choice, without being "left out"

- being able to install any software/app you want to

- using alternative clients to access for example social media like reddit or twitter

- not being forced to use another browser

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This isn't a very useful poll bc it doesn't compare with anything else. Everyone is going to vote "very much" but 90% of those people have had iPhones for the last ten years. If you asked people to prioritize interoperability against best hardware, best selection of apps, etc I think you'd get answers that are closer to choices people make in the real world.

I've never had an iphone. You very much overestimate how popular they are outside of US and few other rich places.

I think you are focusing on the wrong part of their argument. Whether or not a user has an iphone is pretty much irrelevant. The point is what they prioritize above or below interoperability.

For zero downside, everyone prefers more interoperability over less interoperability. But if you ask people to actually give something up for interoperability (usually by requiring them to pay for it, but sometimes it is less obvious) then you rapidly discover that most people don't care very much. The same thing is true for managers and "performance". Everyone will say they want more performance, but almost nobody is willing to sacrifice even a single tracking library for it.

Not only is what you say true, but interoperability isn't even a nice linear spectrum to compare across. For instance, I own a PinePhone, which can run mainline GNU/Linux rather than Android. That ranks highly for 'interoperability': almost complete freedom to change any part of the software stack. Yet for the same reason, it has less interoperability with the very proprietary apps that are necessary to access banks, tickets and various communication services online - these deliberately or incidentally block you from accessing their services from such a 'free' device.

I don't regret my purchase, as it's still an affordable, capable handset, but I have had to compromise and get an Android device as well. Interoperability can't exist in a vacuum and still be desirable. The EU's DMA should hopefully improve interoperability in addition to the existing conveniences of the Apple/Google duopoly - that's the exciting thing about it.

I have an android phone and a linux laptop!

But i hear you, you raised a valid point

This may be intentional, but I just want to note that the way you phrase the question is going to mean that the numbers will correlate better with the choices that people make for their own tech than with their opinions on whether companies should be required to interop.

For example: I personally value being able to install any software I want, use alternative clients, and having a choice of browsers.

However, I also recognize that a lot of the appeal of the Apple ecosystem is that apps have predictable behavior, integrate tightly with the underlying platform, and all use the same consumer-first interface for payments.

This means that I personally choose to have an Android phone and install almost all of my apps through F-Droid, but I do not support efforts to force Apple to open up their ecosystem. Consumers deserve to be able to choose tight integration over interop.

Ah dang, you are right. Wasn't intentional, I wanted to hear more about the second way, that everything should open up, and not the personal way.

> Consumers deserve to be able to choose tight integration over interop.

I want to be able to agree with you on this, but the reality of vendor-lock in means that it's a slippery slope towards having no choice.

This is proved time and time again: it's just more convenient for service providers (banks, shops, transport companies etc.) to support only the Apple platform. The EU's DMA doesn't address this aspect of interoperability; it doesn't say that shopkeepers or bus operators have to accept other payment methods, for instance.

Is it Apple's fault that their constrained but well-curated platform causes other people to neglect interoperability? Maybe not directly - but they have a massive financial incentive not to help fix the situation!

> This is proved time and time again: it's just more convenient for service providers (banks, shops, transport companies etc.) to support only the Apple platform.

Is this really true, though? I'm in the US, where Apple is strongest, and I have never seen a payment terminal that accepted Apple Pay and didn't accept alternative NFC-based payment methods like Google Wallet. On the face of it I'd be shocked if any substantial number of payment terminal manufacturers decided that it was worth it to add the hardware to do NFC payments but not the software required to reach the ~40% of the USA that uses Android phones.

Nor have I ever seen a service that I was locked out of because they only provided an iOS app (no Android or web app).

Neutral, since I do care about DESKTOP computing, meaning the classic Xerox model of internet as a vast network of interconnected desktops, not a vast network of thing client specced as desktops connected to few mainframes (or cloud data services in their datacenters)...

I do not care about walled garden no matter if their walls are thin or thick, I want IT freedom, so I want emails not proprietary messaging services no matter if they feature a webui and some open clients.

I go further, for the me modern web should just be a classic web, interactive stuff must expose APIs and offer cross-platforms libs to let anyone craft their own INTEGRATION not just mere client to interact with the third party service. For instance a bank must expose OpenBank/OFX APIs not specifically for a bank-specific client but to INTEGRATE this bank services in a personal accounting software of it's customers, along with all other banks, sims and so on.

Things must be local-first and able to operate as much as possible on locally available data and tools. For resilience, safety, ownership, availability and so on. Hybrid things to keep up the cloud model MUST DIE with the harmful model behind them.

Hard to say. As a hobbyist with access to several OSes and hardware platforms, I appreciate the differences between each and enjoy the process of finding the right tool for the job (or building new ones where they don't exist yet). Interoperability doesn't necessarily benefit me. But most people aren't me and don't share those interests, so interoperability helps enable equal access to software, content, communication, etc.

I have no personal issue with being "left out", being unable to install specific software on specific systems, and so on, and thus no personal issue with Apple (or others) enforcing barriers in those areas. However, interoperability of major OSes and platforms would provide the greatest benefit to the largest number of people, so it just seems logical to me.

I don't "care" about interoperability, but I agree with it.

This question to me is whether computing & tool-making is something the species is involved with, or whether a few technocratic autocrats are the only ones with the power to see, learn, and shape the world around them.

I would not have the 21st century be the one where we turn back and decide 99.99999% of humanity can no longer be toolmakers in the world, can no longer have access, instruments & observations.

I mean, platform interoperability has also enabled a great deal of 21st century advancements. The internet, telecommunications, commercial aviation, standardized power and serial data delivery et. al have all pushed their prior iterations past proprietary concepts into neatly operating standards.

It's a sentiment as old as time; order and chaos exist within one another. A constantly changing ecosystem will reward anyone that introduces standards, and a fully-standardized system needs change to progress. Both sentiments serve their purpose, but many modern amenities are better off partially regulated than left entirely unchecked. Good examples include medicine and copyright.

Why would I not care about being able to do what I want, instead of what Apple lets me?

I want "messages" to not be a part of platform at all.

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