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Comment by thisislife2 | Hacker News Reader

I call this the Apple "idiot tax" - 'cos you have to be an idiot in letting Apple exploit you (the developer and the user) this brazenly.

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This is counterproductive. The only alternative to letting Apple exploit you is letting Google exploit you. There are differences, Google is somewhat better on this specific point, but there's enough things Google is worse at (such as privacy) that choosing Google isn't exactly without downsides.

Your mindset results in Apple users thinking "the problem is those stupid Android idiots who accept being in an ad tech company's spyware garden" and Android users thinking "the problem is those stupid Apple idiots who accept that 30% of literally everything they do goes to Apple". In reality, we have a common enemy in the big tech duopoly and extremely lacklustre regulation which lets them keep doing this shit. You calling me an idiot for making a different shitty trade-off than you helps nobody.

You do have an alternative to both Google and Apple, which gives you the best of both worlds - it's called the Sailfish mobile OS - https://sailfishos.org/ . (As for my snarky post, read my other comment in this same thread to understand why I posted what I posted.)

I don't think I can send or receive money to and from my friends or pay my public transport fare from Sailfish.

If there's an Android app for it, it should run on Sailfish OS too. They are working hard to make more and more apps compatible with it as this old discussion highlights - https://forum.sailfishos.org/t/banking-apps-on-sailfish-os/1...

These days, Google has foolproof ways for an app to query and check if it's running on a "genuine" (read: Google-controlled, locked down) system.

I'm not switching to Sailfish.

Who am I to tell you how to spend your money? The point is, there are alternative unlike what you claimed. There is currently no foolproof way yet for Google to block apps. Also, it doesn't matter, in the long run - once the adoption of Sailfish OS picks up and it reaches critical mass, developers will switch to building apps for it. The "digital sovereignty movement" also helps. Russia has already bought and forked the source code of Sailfish OS and adopted it as its "national" state-sanctioned mobile operating system. This has had a ripple effect where many Russian apps have now been ported to it. China too has already forked Android to create its own "official" OS and most Chinese apps now also work on it. Similar attempts are going on with other countries too, who don't wish to be trapped in the duopoly that is Apple and Google in the mobile phone industry.

I would like nothing more than for a third viable competitor to show up.

I don't think you calling me an idiot will make that happen faster, is the point.

> This is counterproductive. The only alternative to letting Apple exploit you is letting Google exploit you.

Or allowing users to control their hardware and software and give them the freedom to install the hell they want on it?

We've been using computers for eternities where we still have the possibility, yet, as soon as it is about phones then "no way, we protecting you from bad actors".

Give me a break, you want to help protect me from bad actors implement proper software/hardware jails/containers for third party software and that's it.

As a user, I can not allow users to control their hardware. It is not up to me. I get to choose between Apple and Google, and neither is in the business of allowing users to control their hardware.

Victim blaming

Every time you spend money, you are casting a vote for the kind of world you want. - Don't most of you here tell me that corporates don't need regulations as smart people "vote with their wallet"? If this is what some want to spend money on, the term "idiot" sounds justified ... anyway, the point was not to offend; just to embarrass some mildly to introspect their purchasing decision.

Oh, now ios users are an oppressed group. How cute.

Being a victim and being an oppressed group are not the same thing...

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