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Comment by noprocrasted | Hacker News Reader

> let any device use AirDrop and AirPlay

What's the problem with that? That's a win for everyone involved. Maybe finally we'll have an open, universal file transfer and proximity screen casting protocol, thanks to it already having a critical mass of compatible devices.

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When the incentive is that when you develop features to distinguish yourself from the competition that stand out and make your own product better, but then the government comes along and tells you that you have to give that away, the value of developing new features for your own products starts to diminish and you start looking at different business opportunities instead. It actually undermines Apple as a competitor to Android, in a market where they are far from a dominant force, and the way the EU is doing it looks completely arbitrary.

> When the incentive is that when you develop features to distinguish yourself from the competition

The value of a networked feature goes up with the number of nodes implementing it. A product that is able to send files/stream media to all products is more valuable than one limited to sending to products of its own brand.

What you’re describing is true, but the iPhone runs general purpose software. They don’t have to give away their own features to their competitors and people who aren’t their customers, and it’s more valuable to them as something they took the time to develop as a point of differentiation to give their customers a better experience than they would otherwise have.

An iPhone can already send files or stream media to all products provided you negotiate the protocol by which you do it and the software is available or you write it yourself. YouTube has Google Cast built into it, which you don’t have to use with an Apple TV because AirPlay will work, but if you say wanted to put video from your phone up on a Samsung smart TV, it’s an option. If you want to transfer files from an iPhone, you are not lacking in options, but if it’s to another iPhone or a Mac, AirDrop is just one of those options.

If this was true in general all social networks would be interoperable.

You may value a product like that more but imo it’s not the way it works in practice.

It is true in general but for users, not for corporations that profit from walled gardens.

Correlation != causation. Furthermore, the business models of a phone manufacturer are much different from a social media platform. Most phone manufacturers still make the bulk of their money directly from the end-user paying them cash (either for the device itself, or associated services), where as social media platforms primarily make their money from renting access to their captive audience to advertisers.

iPhone market share is above 80% in my country (Denmark), and smartphone ownership among adults is close to 100%. At that point, you're infrastructure.

If that's how the Danish feel, it makes more sense for Denmark to pass its own laws than rather than the EU, but I would posit that even at 80% marketshare, that's not enough to warrant the level of demands even from the Government of Denmark alone that the EU is imposing on Apple because in all the ways that matter for public purposes, the iPhone is already open enough: telephony, message exchange, open standards on the web, Bluetooth, I mean you name it, and if it's not a QoL thing like AirPlay or AirDrop, it's already there.

> telephony, message exchange, open standards on the web, Bluetooth

Things that existed before iPhones and that Apple cannot lock down? I'm glad they're open, but I won't give Apple credit. Particularly when they gently slid people out of SMS and into iMessage, for example. (Google did this less too but less successfully and are also at fault.)

Yes, the things that matter to a phone as far as the essentials go. I’m not saying give them credit, I’m saying that in every way that matters, the iPhone is already open, and the rest is Apple’s platform.

> Particularly when they gently slid people out of SMS and into iMessage, for example.

Or put another way, certainly the way it was perceived of at the time by their customers then and now: gave their customers a superior messaging experience over what was typically available to cell phones at the time that they wouldn’t be charged for. RIM also did this with BlackBerry Messenger. Then and now iMessage is a selling point for their phones, not the future of mobile messaging out of some misguided noblesse oblige or something that they owe the world (and by world I mean their competitors and non-iPhone customers) simply because they made it and people like it because it’s actually good–and for a long time it had its hiccups, but better than SMS was a low bar.

I disagree; 80% is plenty.

Elaborate if you’re going to disagree on why 80% is the magic number that means a supposedly liberal society should govern the QoL features of a foreign corporation’s product that already adheres to open standards on the communications hardware and software.

> when you develop features to distinguish yourself from the competition that stand out and make your own product better, but then the government comes along and tells you that you have to give that away,

Crippling a standard to reduce interoperability is not making a product better.

And what exactly did they cripple to reduce interoperability?

Tell me this -- whatever the next technology is, why would a business spend the time or money to develop it?

Why would Apple, Google, or any of the EU Phone OS developers bother creating a new feature that they will immediately be forced to allow everyone to use?

> Why would Apple, Google, or any of the EU Phone OS developers bother creating a new feature that they will immediately be forced to allow everyone to use?

Because new hardware/interoperability features are an opportunity to sell more hardware. Apple still gets to make and sell accessories, their product just has to compete on the merits with other products in the segment. People will keep buying Airpods even if Sony's can hand-off between Apple hardware because Airpods are a great product that can stand on their own.

Or they could do nothing, wait for others to make features, and leech. It incentives parasitic behavior in the long run.

So what? This idea that every feature or protocol needs to be owned, with allowed uses dictated by some corporation is gross.

The idea doesn't matter, only the effect. If the net change is less innovation for temporary benefit, then it is a failure.

There is value in being able to lead the direction of the tech with new features. Look at how many companies bother contributing to Linux even though all their competitors get access.

Alternatively, look at Google trying to take control of the web/HTML with their Web Environment Integrity API proposal. If the web was a "Google Protocol" rather than a W3C one, they would have been able to add it despite the negative feedback.

Because there are still market advantages to creating and maintaining protocols that you are required to license to others.

Making everything proprietary and exclusive is not the only way to make money. And even if you can make more money that way, I don't care: corporations exist at the pleasure of the people, and we should feel free to demand whatever we want from them.

AirDrop and AirPlay are 13 and 14 years old — an eternity in software development.

Even full patents only last for 20, and the "utility model" (AKA minor patent*) last 6-15 years depending on jurisdiction.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_model

I'm sure e.g Jolla would be happy to develop a new feature that helps them become big enough that politicians feel like they need to regulate them

There are those of us that don’t see government forcing people to act a certain way as always a “win for everyone involved”

Just like the horrible government banning leaded fuel. I'm not joking, a stronger argument is needed about regulation than "any gubernatorial directive is bad". Apple isn't a person with natural rights. What are the actual drawbacks of this? Are we stifling innovation by forcing interop of the disruptive technology of "wireless filesharing"? It's infrared media transfer, but with 2.4GHz.

I specifically said that it isn’t always a win to address this. But yes, creating a strawman certainly makes arguments easier.

You say that government intervention is not always a win. Sure, totally true, also it isn't always Sunday. I'm was asking for concrete arguments or reasons, vaguely gesturing at regulation having drawbacks isn't one. And calling it out isn't a strawman.

The parent articulated pros, you responded with a truism instead of cons or refuting his points, which certainly makes arguments easier.

Then your post upthread was content-free and pointless. It's not news that government intervention sometimes goes badly.

Maybe explain why you think a specific instance of government intervention is bad. That would actually be interesting and lead to discussion.

Apple is not "people". It's a trillion dollar corporation. I'd rather see it forced to open up all of its "value add" nonsense so that we can have interoperabiliry and truly own our devices.

The zealots think Apple is a person with rights. Look at how they talk about the company. It’s not exclusive to this thread and is apart of the Apple faith.

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