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Comment by redundantly | Hacker News Reader

> For your safety, of course.

I know they have ulterior motives for their walled garden, but this is a product of said garden. The App Store is by far much safer to use than Google's Play Store. Plus the parental controls on android are essentially non-existent.

I'm happy in this walled garden.

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The premise of a walled garden is to keep unwanted things out, not to imprison you inside. Apple maintaining a store where they've vetted everything in it is fine, and if you like you can refuse to install anything from outside of it.

That doesn't justify them prohibiting you from installing anything from outside of it. It should be up to you.

If you wanted to, you could even configure your phone to not add any new stores without a factory wipe. But maybe first you want to add in the repositories that have only free and open source software, or the stores of some respected game publishers who offer lower prices if you use their own stores for their games. And maybe the existence of these stores would encourage Apple to charge lower fees, and then you benefit from the lower fees even if you choose never to install anything from those stores, since your option to exerts competitive pressure on the stores(s) you are willing to use.

A better metaphor would be the shops at an airport. The monopoly airport fleece the shops with high rent and in turn the shops fleece their customers with high prices.

A better metaphor would be the shops anywhere in your country. Governments and banks charge taxes and fees and in turn, through an elaborate architecture of laws and consequences, their customers don't have to wonder if their glass of water contains rotaviruses, or if the silverware has high levels of lead, or if 0.000014 BTC is gross overpayment for a hamburger, or if people in the next town will decide to rape and pillage sometime in the next hour.

For-profit corporations aren't governments. Something something America.

Something something there's no such thing as a perfect analogy

The distinction kind of matters though. Monopolies are terrible and to be avoided but if you're going to have one, e.g. because roads are a natural monopoly, then you damn well want it to be an elected body and not a for-profit corporation that will do everything it can to extract monopoly rents from everybody in its fiefdom.

If you ever incorporate a town, you could choose to attract citizens with robust transparency laws and mandated regular elections.

Yes they are, this is literally the definition of a corporation. A group of people wanted to form a government to run their "for profit endeavor" so they incorporated, that is, they received a license from their parent public interest corporation(aka "The Government") that allows them to operate under rule of law.

It's corporations all the way down. corporation is really just another word for government.

So in your twisted world view, who are a corporation's citizens? The customers? The surely we should demand that they get democratic voting rights, no?

For the record, my analogy was to describe Apple as a government, not to describe government as a private corporation. I don't think it's in any way "twisted" to describe Apple as the government of the landscape it birthed. And of course people don't get voting rights. It's a benevolent dictatorship open to anyone who considers the terms acceptable. Wouldn't imply otherwise.

I think it's absolutely the case that Sony "governs" the PlayStation ecosystem. That town is way more restrictive than Appletown, but plenty of happy people live there too.

That is basically the definition of communism. communism is one answer to the question "Democracy is supposed to be a good thing for our public governments, why do our for for-profit endeavors not run under democratic means?"

So the communist answer is "fold the manufacturing government into the rest of the government"

Communism has many problems, for one they never actually restore democratic means, to the point that "peoples republic" is sort a joke term for dictatorship. but the one in scope is that running an operation from a large central government will remove the focus a business needs to work well. self-interest is a powerful force multiplier.

In a for profit cooperation the voting rights holders are usually those who have invested in the operation, or them who have bought these voting rights from others. They are usually run as a sort of dictatorship, which does dis-enfranchise the workers, but works very well with small groups.

But the main point was if you want to operate your endeavor as a government instead of as an individual person than it needs to incorporate. The government does not need to be democratic, and it usually is not.

And consider towns, they use the same vocabulary "incorporate" when they want to form a local government.

I'm not arguing that it shouldn't be opened up. I'm just stating that by being a walled garden it is safer.

When things eventually open up, when Apple is finally forced to permit other app stores on their mobile devices, I'll take a hard pass on them.

"Walled garden" does not mean "safe system". And it is not a prerequisite for a safe system, or vice versa.

You are saying you are happy in a "safe secure system".

In contrast, a "walled garden" is a prohibition on alternatives, not a source of safety. The prohibition of alternatives does not make the App Store safer.

If anything, it protects Apple from competing with safter alternatives! Like an app store only for children. Or an app store of formally verified apps.

Please correct me if I am somehow missing something...

But it is not safer: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39685272

There are still scam apps on Apple and apparently they don't get removed promptly either. This one was reported 12 days before the post was made.

Many of the comments in the thread are telling the poster that he "should have verified the app"

>It's possible that it's just because it was literally called "Bitcoin Wallet", >an exact match for your search, or boosted by fake reviews, or it was actually >an ad that you didn't notice. Though it shouldn't have gotten past review at >all >But I don't really understand why you'd blindly trust some random app?

So not safer, just more restrictive.

Consider these two statements:

1) I happy having a walled garden, I feel safe

2) I am happy being imprisoned in a walled garden with no door, I feel safe

Consider these two scenarios:

1. I choose to buy Apple products because I enjoy the security and features of them, and can leave the ecosystem anytime I choose to.

2. I'm indentured to Apple, Tim Cook owns my soul and the souls of my children, and we can never escape.

Those who like AppStore actually benefit from it being the only store. It means that almost all developers will bend under Apple rules and users will get their apps.

These users can do the same thing by refusing to use any other store even if they are allowed to, and if there are many of them they'll have leverage. But what they want is to force other users, who would willingly use other stores, to also use only the same one as them. They have no right to force others to do that any more than Apple does.

Have you tried parental controls on Android or are you just taking out of the side of your mouth? I have parental controls for my kids android devices and it works exceptionally well. I am not dissing the apple version because I have not used it, and based on your comment I have to assume you have not used the android parent controls and are just needing to convince yourself that apple are better and the apple premium you are paying is worth it.

Spoiler: it isn't.

I have tried it. More than one phone from different carriers. The parental controls are lacking.

It's been a couple of years since I've last tried, but given Google's history regarding subpar controls I doubt it has gotten appreciably better.

What were the subpar controls? I use it daily for my kids so would genuinely like to know what you feel didn't/doesn't work because for the last 4 or 5 years I have never had one issue using it.

> More than one phone from different carriers.

I'm confused by this. Did it come to play regarding parental controls ? Like an extra layer from the carrier ?

Yeah seems to detract from the Google angle if it's carrier related

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39685272

So safe in this walled garden where Apple reviews all apps for user safety and security.

I didn't claim that it's perfect, just that it's safer.

Regarding smartphone safety, the only truly safe thing to do is not not use one at all.

Everybody who lives dies, so to avoid dying just dont ever live.

Solid workable solution you have proposed there.

Based on something "real" like scam/fraud metrics, or just "this is what Tim Cook wants me to think"?

Both stores are walled gardens.

One onboarding experience: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39685272 :-D

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