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Comment by doctorpangloss | Hacker News Reader

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> AKA there would be a way to choose backends.

I think the percentage of iPhone users for who this would matter is very small. It's similar to how many people care about using a different browser than Safari on iOS (or Chrome on Google): in the US at least, those two browsers have ~95% market share.

> I think the percentage of iPhone users for who this would matter is very small.

Oh yeah? Then why don't they permit you to choose an App Store, a browser, a messenger, a blah blah blah...

I don’t follow. If the percentage of people who care about non Apple software is low then it totally makes sense that Apple wouldn’t care about opening their platform for 3rd party software. People didn’t jump ship to Android after all. Apple allow alternate app store in Europe because of regulation, not users revolting

You can set the default browser.

And there are plenty of messaging apps on iOS.

App store, sure, they don't allow sideloading, but that's a different matter (and the number of users, not devs, who care about that is even smaller)

You can only change your browser in the EU, since three months ago, because of their consumer protection laws.

In all other countries, the "browsers" on the App Store are only skins on top of a crippled version of Safari.

I'm in the US. I can set the default browser on my iPhone to Chrome, right in the Safari settings.

> I can set the default browser on my iPhone to Chrome, right in the Safari settings.

You can set your browser to a Chrome UI wrapper around a Safari Webview. You can do this with any [browser] UI wrapper around a Safari Webview, as long as [browser] has received the relevant entitlement from Apple.[0]

Outside of the EU, all browser apps on iOS must run Safari's engine.[1]

[0]: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/Xcode/preparing-yo...

> Request the default browser entitlement by filling out the Default browser entitlement request form. If your request is accepted you get both the default browser entitlement, and the com.apple.developer.browser.app-installation entitlement. If you have the default browser entitlement, fill out this form to receive the app-installation entitlement for your browser app.

[1]: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/browserenginekit

> Important: To distribute an app that uses an alternative browser engine, you need to request the relevant entitlements for your developer account. For more information and to request the entitlements, see Using alternative browser engines in the European Union.

I don't comprehend why people feel like being a Safari wrapper is sufficient.

How do people imagine ad blockers get implemented? Why do they assume ad blockers will be supported by Apple, which once ran an ad network and runs an ad network in Apple News, forever?

If publishers wanted to support only ad-block-blocking browsers, that's their prerogative too! I don't either think Apple should get to decide that ads are protected if you appear in Apple News, but ads are not protected if you appear in Mobile Safari.

People opposing choice: it never ceases to surprise me.

I understand the X wrapper on Safari engine, and I don't believe most people care about the underlying engine. Just like Microsoft Edge just being a Chromium browser, most people don't seem to care.

People care about the effects. For example, you can install adblockers on every version of Firefox except for the one on iOS.

I agree with you on this. People that care about adblockers (or something else) care about whether they can do that or not. A minority of people care about the non-default Safari web experience.

Those aren’t anywhere near the same from a technical point of view.

Seems like a silly gripe - why not buy android and have it all?

But...I can't have Safari on Android!

You can set any browser you want as long as it’s a skin on top of safari.

The browser thing is meant for security and privacy, why do you think they allow alternatives to all their other default apps expect for browsers?

But more than that, why are your arbitrary expectations any more important than their arbitrary requirements?

Because it's my device.

To me, everything about how it's been presented so far says the point of how it's set up is that they don't want to use backends. They want everything to happen on device. Even having ChatGPT for expanded queries is an unfortunate necessity driven by the hardware not being powerful enough yet.

How much is run entirely on device so far is unclear, but the sessions later in the day should expand on that.

On device or in an Apple owned DC. It sounds like they have aspirations for their own Apple owned LLM. ChatGPT seems like it's there until they can get something good enough to generally replace it for cases where their in-house solution isn't capable enough yet. They likely continue to invest heavily on big capable LLMs as well as ones that are small enough to run on device (while working on the hardware side to ensure they have the device capabilities to run more powerful models on the device).

The benefit of owning the last mile to the customer is that you can choose when you want to replace default Maps, or not.

So, the company that brought us Siri is going to build something better than ChatGPT... something that will run on-device no less. It's just not quite ready yet. Got it.

Siri was quite impressive when it came out. I just felt it never got significantly better until it became an embarrassment

It never was impressive. It only made cool demos and Apple aficionado worked the reality distortion field like crazy since then. It's actually embarrassing how bad it has always been compared to the Google stuff announced later with less fanfare.

I don't even care much because I don't think "assistants" are good for much of anything, but if I have to use one, Siri is not the one I would like.

Yeah, by having literally a shitton of cash, and having bought multiple ML startups over the years. Plus it’s not like they couldn’t make Siri better, multiple projects had internal problems with Siri and were trying to get it replaced, but none went anywhere, possibly because higher ups planning ahead with this.

I don’t follow your second to last paragraph. It’s called Apple Intelligence. If you want to use something else do so but don’t expect Apple to build its own product and let you use whatever you want for it. Clearly the goal for Apple is to eventually use its own models and be an entirely in house product.

I see the goal as a setup to pit LLM providers against each other to pay 10B a year to be the 2nd tap default.

Oh, yeah that is a possibility. I think though long term they are going to have Siri be a search engine that actually works in the way Google once did.

> Clearly the goal for Apple is to eventually use its own models and be an entirely in house product.

If that turns out anything like Siri, then surely you would understand why people want a bring-your-own-model framework.

If it's bad enough that you need to bring your own model, (a) Apple is toast, because this is, to some extent, the future; (b) you're hosed, because you can't optimize for battery life as well as Apple can.

Their desires may or may not be rational in this but clearly Apple isn’t going to allow it. They have a history of doing their own thing.

Their desires are expressly illegal, in many countries. We're past the whole antitrust stuff now, we are in a post-FAANG society and Apple doesn't just get away with that stuff for free anymore. I'm not crazy for expecting competition.

This is also coincidentally the reason I got rid of my Apple products. The experience fucking sucks! The only way things get better is if you buy more hardware, which probably makes the average mall-addicted American smile but makes me want to vomit. Everything is upsell, and not just upsell where you can improve the experience. No, you have to buy Apple's solution because every third-party is wrong and can't be trusted. They will gimp anyone that does not compensate them handsomely and rob the only people brave enough to offer their users an improved experience. The devil takes notes during Tim Cook's business meetings. They deserve everything coming to them, and they know it too.

So try it. Watch them go along, "doing their own thing", and then watch them come back limping and bruised after the FTC gives them a worse beating than Microsoft got in the 90s. We know why Apple is mad about this, it doesn't matter. They can go quietly or we can make this a long, protracted process. Microsoft got away lucky when you think about it, still all in one piece.

The funniest thing about current Apple is that they don't just upsell you on more hardware (that would be relatively fine) but they also hardcore upsell you on their "services" that are too often lackluster and fucked up in some bizarre way. To the point where they make using their devices without this service upsell and much less desirable experience.

It makes the whole point of paying more for better hardware completely moot, because if you going to need to rely on cloud "service" stuff, you might as well get cheaper hardware from the other companies who do that much better than Apple ever did.

I like their stuff (well the hardware at least) but I also don't want to buy more stuff from them, it's just not sustainable and they already make too much money anyway.

Can you replace the camera firmware in any of your devices? That’s the same category, I don’t think laws tell you anything about that.

Sure. I’m agnostic in all this but I do think Apple prefers to build their own AI and worry about anti-trust later.

How can you "worry about anti-trust later" when you are under active anticompetitive inquiry from three of your largest markets?

Because they want to build a better product for users rather than one that's been gimped by regulators?

In the same way a person or entity does anything. Just do it.

I don't comprehend how people are not more angry about how utterly shitty the Apple coerced apps are.

What is an example of utterly shitty app from Apple and which alternative is miles better?

Podcasts. Any other podcast app.

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