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Spotify CEO renews attack on Apple after Musk's salvo

reuters.com

511–520 of 903 posts

Re: Spotify CEO renews attack on Apple after Musk's salvo

#511

Pure and simple jealously about not being able to leech people using Apple devices. Nobody wants to remove the fences protecting sheep more than the wolves.

It's weird how you see being able to run any software as "leeching" as if owning an Apple device makes me belong to Apple.

Re: Spotify CEO renews attack on Apple after Musk's salvo

#512

I want the option to control my devices. I don’t understand the arguments that claim Apple needs to rule the device with an iron fist. What problems does it cause to make the locked down experience the default with the option for me to disable that and take control of the device after I buy it? I want to own my stuff. I want to repair it and I want complete control over it. I think that in 10 years we’ll all have car…

It was never about you (the customer), if you were thinking that. It was always about they keeping the control so that they can monetize every possible part of the ecosystem. Giving you the freedom takes that opportunity away. You see how they kept chanting "privacy" and slowly started tracking every move of yours in the app store and started showing you the ads, and you kept on believing "you're not a product when you buy an Apple device". No one stops to think how they removed the headphone jack because "courage" and chargers from the box because "environment", and customers still have the illusion of choice while they've been milked constantly.

Re: Spotify CEO renews attack on Apple after Musk's salvo

#513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would giving people the ability to opt out of Apple's ultra-managed experience and take more control over their device harm your ability to continue to enjoy those benefits? I heard an argument like this a lot at the start of discussions about whether we should be able to choose to WFH in the longer term. "I don't want to WFH because..." Ok, sure, but nobody is trying to force you to. It might just be me, and I'll de…

> Would giving people the ability to opt out of Apple's ultra-managed experience and take more control over their device harm your ability to continue to enjoy those benefits? You can always Jailbreak your device? I think Apples response to your argument would be that it isn't the technically aware user that is trying to get control over their device that is the problem, its apps being used by those with no technical…

Macs allow installing apps not from the Appstore, and I'm hearing they are quite fine and not a mess.

Re: Spotify CEO renews attack on Apple after Musk's salvo

#514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would giving people the ability to opt out of Apple's ultra-managed experience and take more control over their device harm your ability to continue to enjoy those benefits? I heard an argument like this a lot at the start of discussions about whether we should be able to choose to WFH in the longer term. "I don't want to WFH because..." Ok, sure, but nobody is trying to force you to. It might just be me, and I'll de…

> Would giving people the ability to opt out of Apple's ultra-managed experience and take more control over their device harm your ability to continue to enjoy those benefits? You can always Jailbreak your device? I think Apples response to your argument would be that it isn't the technically aware user that is trying to get control over their device that is the problem, its apps being used by those with no technical…

> You can always Jailbreak your device?

No, you can't and this isn't a serious alternative, especially since Apple goes out of their way to prevent and break jailbreaks.

> Once an App is allowed to break out of the sandbox or be installed away from the AppStore the likelyhood of an average users phone getting into a broken mess at best and becoming infected with a virus at worse goes up my an order of magnitude.

And yet multimillion dollar scams flourish on the App Store[1]:

> That man’s name is Kosta Eleftheriou, and over the past few months, he’s made a convincing case that Apple is either uninterested or incompetent at stopping multimillion-dollar scams in its own App Store. He’s repeatedly found scam apps that prey on ordinary iPhone and iPad owners by luring them into a “free trial” of an app with seemingly thousands of fake 5-star reviews, only to charge them outrageous sums of money for a recurring subscription that many don’t understand how to cancel. “It’s a situation that most communities are blind to because of how Apple is essentially brainwashing people into believing the App Store is a trusted place,” he tells The Verge.

Apple is also responsible for distributing 500 million copies of Xcodeghost to users via the App Store[2].

The App Store model is about profits, and security is an afterthought that makes for good PR.

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/21/22385859/apple-app-store-...

[2] https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7bbmz/the-fortnite-trial-is...

Re: Spotify CEO renews attack on Apple after Musk's salvo

#515

The kind of dark pattern bullshit and anti-usability mess Spotify has become I would rather see Spotify die. Not to mention the “Spotify only” podcasts. While we are at it we should point out Spotify has no clear ways to export your listening history, playlists etc that you can easily recreate on other portals. It’s not a fight for equality. It’s an attempt by Spotify to be more equal than others.

> While we are at it we should point out Spotify has no clear ways to export your listening history, playlists etc that you can easily recreate on other portals.

This is absolutely not true.

You can export all of your data from Account -> Privacy pane, you can also use the public APIs to extract all of your playlists, library, podcasts, etc. data: developer.spotify.net

If you want to develop an app that does the migration for you you're absolutely free to do so, use the other portals/platforms APIs to recreate them.

Re: Spotify CEO renews attack on Apple after Musk's salvo

#516
post #72
post #20

Sharecroppers complaining that the land baron has stacked the deck in his own favour. Spotify and Twitter began life on the web, not in the app store. No feature they offer requires a native app. Hence there was no reason to corral half the US userbase into someone else's pen and leave them there for over a decade. Epic has already gone to court on this matter (re: Fortnite on App Store) and lost. And Fortnite wasn't…

Sharecroppers complaining is part of what created the Russian revolution. And as for Spotify you are factually incorrect. Spotify started its life as a C++ desktop application and back then something similar could not have been built on the web.

Not sure if a literal Spotify could have been built on the web, but I recall using Grooveshark roughly around that timeframe (may have been 2009, 2010 at the latest).

Grooveshark did work for me as fully-featured streaming music player, so I find it reasonable to infer that a Spotify-like service could have worked from a purely technical point of view... though maybe there is a year of two of leeway that makes all the difference.

Re: Spotify CEO renews attack on Apple after Musk's salvo

#517
post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any argument in favour of the iPhone being so locked down needs to contend with the fact that Macs are just as reliable, but far more configurable. All I want is the for the iPhone to be as open as a Mac. Let me run binaries signed by legit devs!

> Macs are just as reliable, but far more configurable Apple has been working tirelessly for years to retrofit the iOS model to Mac. It's probably just a matter of time, unfortunately.

Yes HN chicken littles have been saying that Apple is going to force all apps to go through the Mac App Store since it was introduced in 2010.

Re: Spotify CEO renews attack on Apple after Musk's salvo

#518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I want the option to control my devices. So don’t buy an iPhone. You know that’s not the offer.

There are many regulations already in place to protect consumer rights. The idea that you can influence companies by not buying is an illusion. The only real solution to anti-competitive practices is legislation. It used to be that when you bought a computer you could run any program you wanted. No one thought this needed to be enshrined in law until Apple thought to restrict what you can do with your own devices. We…

I consider it part of Apple's competitive advantage. I bought an iPhone because I want it to just work and for my apps to behave well. I can do the tinkering on my laptop, I don't want every computing device I own to be hackable.

Heck, if I could have a phone with iOS 1 (no third party apps) and the camera and screen of the latest iPhone, I would buy that.

Re: Spotify CEO renews attack on Apple after Musk's salvo

#519

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is odd to me that there are people who eagerly agree that Apple can coerce users into configurations they don't want for lack of better options yet also believe that no other company could make them do that w.r.t. being forced to download alternative app stores, spyware, bloatware, and more. Do you really think the average user won't end up being compelled to download garbage software if it's possible?

On Android, which globally is bigger than iOS, it didn't happen. It's exactly the discussed setup - you can install alternative store, there's just a bit of friction to do that.

It already happened on iOS when both Google and Facebook convinced consumers to install what were suppose to be internal enterprise certificates to spy on you.

Re: Spotify CEO renews attack on Apple after Musk's salvo

#520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand where you are coming from, and support you on that. On the other hand, I'm pretty happy with the default state of an iPhone. It just manages itself, and all that hard problems (backups, updates, ease of use, experience homogenity, etc.) are solved. I manage more than enough servers at work, and I don't want to manage another server in my pocket, do nitty-gritty settings, allow selected apps background ac…

There's no reason you need to stop people from doing what they want with their devices just because you don't want to do it yourself.

Are there any words in my comment stating or implying that such capability should not be included in Apple iOS devices, ever?

I'm all for flexibility, but of the two choices we have today, I prefer Apple's proposition more. If they decide to add more flexibility without compromising their quality, I'd be more than supportive of the feat.

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