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Comment by overfeed | Hacker News Reader

> It's only a matter of time until it becomes too confusing and problematic to try and run the same system relatively openly in one country and walled in another

They will continue to do so for as long as it remains profitable. Navigating the complexities of multiple jurisdictions is the bread and butter of MNCs - it's the price of admission into the multinational club. Apple is guaranteed to have lawyers, admins, and executives already on the payroll for this task.

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Or until they’ve successfully “demonstrated” that it always was impossible.

> Apple is guaranteed to have lawyers, admins, and executives already on the payroll for this task.

As both a shareholder and user, I really wish they’d invest their resources into feature development instead of manufacturing obstacles.

Lawyers, admins, and executives, sure. But what about the complexity on the engineers who now have to maintain an exploding matrix of modes? I can definitely see that becoming burdensome.

$500k+ TC makes many burdens worth shouldering

Engineers say they want to work on hard problems then complain that they can’t solve something because it’s too complex

The difference is this isn't an inherently hard problem. It's just stupidity. The difficulty is not inherently interesting, because it's all made up.

Seconded, compliance-induced complexity is the most asinine and tedious possible application of programming skills.

sounds like a problem for claude to worry about

much has been written about the deteriorating quality of iOS.

There's bluntly not strong external evidence that software quality is a driving priority at Apple in recent years, so it most probably follows that concerns about maintainability aren't either.

they make $1b in revenue and $300mm a day in profit

You’re not wrong, it is burdensome but the sheer volume of money they secure primarily because of their license to rent-seek mercilessly (in the US especially because it’s the market they dominate most and with the weakest regulators) makes even a hilarious amount of complexity supportable. Besides, it’s mainly the users who suffer from the codebase falling apart, not Apple decision makers.

And since billions of dollars are on the line it will remain profitable for a long time.

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