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Comment by oneplane | Hacker News Reader

Maybe someone will. Either way, such a move would break their business model, and you'd end up with just another android which is not what the market wants (because if they did, Apple would have gone out of business already).

I was looking for an earlier thread (which also involved Nokia and Windows Mobile) which shows the sort of timelines/cascading effects you'd have where vendors generally either become overly generic or just outright fail (i.e. BlackBerry). When I'll find it I'll edit and add it here.

Edit: didn't find it yet, but there are variations on appliance vs. general purpose hardware where things like smart TVs and android phone bootloaders are used as similar examples. I wish I had a better timeline search for threads.

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That is an interesting take, so basically in your opinion the main thing that makes iOS better than Android is that Apple has tighter control over the apps? What I've heard from most iOS users is other things like smoother interface, better battery life, great camera etc. I've never heard "I like iPhone because Apple moderates the App Store" from laymen (i.e. non-HN crowd).

I’ll chime in as one of them (and in every thread about this many more people do as well) - it’s one of the many things I like about an iPhone, the tighter control and gate keeping Apple does on the App Store. I like not having to worry so much on the App Store or wade through scams etc (I know there’s not none but seems less and it’s easy to find the apps I want) and for my parents and less tech savvy friends it’s great

But personally it comes down to it’s a phone not a computer to me and I don’t want to or care if I can run “anything” on it.

I love the tight control Apple keeps on the app store, just last week it forced an app update on me that deleted all my OTP keys, because the OTP app was bought by some malware vendor and I didn't get prompted that this prior personal project was now controlled by a literal scam artist company prior to them pushing an update. Their commitment to safety goes so far I can neither inspect the data saved by the app nor look at the app binary itself, can you help me understand how that makes the iPhone app store secure?

What app was this?

Probably Raivo, but it was acquired a year ago, not a week ago.

The lack of scam apps and crappy clones is the only real advantage that appeals to me. On the Play store you can type in the exact name of an app that someone has told you and it'll show you a whole page of fake and copycat apps.

I've never seen that. can you give me an example search term?

Look up any popular game, although a lot of the bigger ones are good about reporting their clones and getting them removed. An immediate example I can think of is 2048, the original by Gabriele Cirulli, is published by Solebon LLC on the Play store, when you look for 2048 using the search, it's not even the first result that comes up. Although to be fair to them, it's not the first that comes up on the apple store either.

Do you think 4096 is different from 2048? It is not developer friendly if they stop something similar publishing. And it already leck of creative, like just only can use gpt4o on iPhone.

No, I just think that when you search for 2048, you should get the original one that was published first, not one of the many imitation ones.

Its also a myth. Apple has so much trash in app store… including scams and direct decompiled copies of apps. Its probably better than Google Play but lets not pretend they care about the app quality - otherwise they wouldnt be banning and kicking high quality apps left and right.

It’s not a myth. Every week my parents or children request I’d remove malware or adware from their android device that they installed. On my other children’s tablet or family iPhone this has never been a problem once.

Doubt. This sounds like an Apple commercial from the early 00's talking about Windows malware.

iOS frankly has a ton of scam apps that ask for weekly subscriptions to resize a picture or other crap like that.

I love that Apple has a tight control over the App Store, but I would love to just shove whatever I want on a device I own and if it blows up on me, more the fool I.

I think we’d have to ask some non-technical people about this really, but I think there’s a nebulous perception that the Apple App Store is, like, somehow safer and good, while the Google one is somehow less safe and not good. The specific details, not so well understood.

> so basically in your opinion the main thing that makes iOS better than Android is that Apple has tighter control over the apps?

What Apple loves to make us believe is that Vendor, AppStore and ContentFilter are not three entirely orthogonal concepts that can be totaly separated from each other.

You can have:

- Company A be the hardware Vendor

- Company B host the App Store

- Company C be the provider of the ContentFilter

Why do you think the battery life is better?! Do people not get cause and effect? Ability to deny crap apps and ability to control what can run in background surely helps!

I'd argue that your latter point (optimizing background apps) is majority of the improvement and this is something you can do in the OS regardless of where an app comes from (excluding rooted/jailbroken devices from scope). This would've been a reasonable argument if Apple only ever denied apps because they did stupid things, not because they offered a payment gateway that did not pay Apple commission. Lets not pretend that Apple's control is only about curating an experience for the user, it is very significantly about maximizing profit as well.

As a side note, I've always understood that just stock iOS is way more optimized than stock Android simply because of better engineering. However, this is anecdotal and I don't have any references as such.

You say that as if deleting crapware isn't possible on any other platform. We've been doing it for decades.

GMS is most of power waste in android. Deleting it makes the phone borderline useless.

There are other reasons to buy an iPhone. I loathe the App Store’s restrictions, and this is a showstopper for me regarding the iPad, which would’ve been Alan Kay’s Dynabook if it weren’t for being limited to the App Store. However, I’m willing to tolerate a restricted app environment on a phone, though I wouldn’t mind a less restrictive experience. Ignoring the App Store, I find iOS to be more polished than Android, and I also like how Apple provides OS updates for its iPhones for roughly five years. I’m on my third iPhone (a 14 Pro) after using an SE and a 7; I switched to the iPhone SE after two years of using a Google Nexus, which I loved and was disappointed when Google discontinued it.

Tight control isn't the only thing that defines iOS. I hate Google (and on my android phones i don't log in with a Google account). I would go with apple for more privacy. But their strict control of the platform is unacceptable for me.

This is the problem with the current duopoly. Both options are pretty terrible.

I think it's great what the EU is doing though they're leaving too many loopholes for Apple to weasel through. And I think they should be attacking Google much harder.

From my perspective they essentially offer the same product. Would be really nice to get some competition in the game!

Non-technical iOS users probably don't give a flying crap and would not even know if it was possible to download a PC emulator from a third party app store. The iPhone does lots of things right, and having some obscure options which only the technical crowd cares about will not change that.

To become another Android iOS would have to be licensed to other vendors and appear on cheaply made devices dragging its name through the mud.

What's your point? If nobody cares about it then let the app on the app store.

If you want to be able to run your software, on your device, buy an Android or Linux or even Windows device. Anything but Apple. The dollars don't lie: for some reason, people want to be controlled.

Except they don't. Some might and they seem intent on telling everybody else how it's the best option for them. Just let me install whatever I want. My choice if it explodes.

What the hell are you talking about? I buy iPhone despite it being locked-down piece of shit garden, not because of it.

Being a walled garden is the main differentiator between iPhones and every other phone. You chose the walled garden over the non-walled non-garden.

Being fluid device with zero (non-Apple) spyware and sane default with UI/UX that don’t change every major release while providing ecosystem that has literally no competitors in sight, but yeah, it’s definitely walled garden that is a main differentiator. Facepalm

I already bought an iPhone dude. I'm not dishing out another grand just to install Android.

I'm having trouble finding the perfect way to articulate the idea, so here's the half-assed version.

Whatever it is that I, and everyone, likes about iPhones/iPads, it has absolutely nothing to do with Apple deciding that I'm too stupid to get to override what software to install on it.

> which is not what the market wants

I'm sure the market wants more than two providers.

> (because if they did, Apple would have gone out of business already).

The market of "low hanging fruit."

> or just outright fail (i.e. BlackBerry).

AT&T made a deal with Apple which should have been stopped by regulators.

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