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EU tells Apple to open everything up to its rivals

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Re: EU tells Apple to open everything up to its rivals

#211
post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about personal choices, it's about enabling fair competition. If you sell a general-purpose computing device and market it as one, you should relinquish any control of it once it's sold.

Who decided the iPhone is a general-purpose computing device?

Apple did, with their marketing.

Re: EU tells Apple to open everything up to its rivals

#212
post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about personal choices, it's about enabling fair competition. If you sell a general-purpose computing device and market it as one, you should relinquish any control of it once it's sold.

Who decided the iPhone is a general-purpose computing device?

Apple did for iPads:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3S5BLs51yDQ

https://9to5mac.com/2017/11/16/ipad-pro-whats-a-computer-ad/

Re: EU tells Apple to open everything up to its rivals

#213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't want to download apps from alternative app stores. Then don't. Nobody is forcing you.

Except this is a disingenuous argument. Because there will be many applications you may need to use e.g. banking which will be on an alternative App Store purely so they can skirt Apple's privacy restrictions. Finance is one sector where they would love to siphon all of your user data in order to better promote products and reduce risk. And so I would be forced to use them.

I am much more worried about Apple siphoning my data than my Credit Union. Apple is building an ad mega-empire, in big part via abuse of power on their monopolistic platform.

Re: EU tells Apple to open everything up to its rivals

#214
post #61
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, it will be so great when web developers can just force everyone to use chrome.

The inexplicable need to make the browser a second OS with worse everything boggles my mind. Especially on mobile devices which prize battery life. It won't give users choice because we as an industry have again and again just chosen what's easiest for us instead of best for the customer. We'd 100% still be using Flash if Apple hadn't refused to support it because of the battery and performance issues. This forum spe…

And by "battery and performance issues" you mean "people being able to play an insane number of games in the browser and Apple not getting a cut of the ad money". Flash was running just fine on Android with much humbler specs than then-current iPhone.

Re: EU tells Apple to open everything up to its rivals

#215
post #166

Fucking good. It's bullshit that you can only run Safari on iOS or that the App Store is the only store you can use. Yes, I understand the security implications of a third-party browser having deeper integrations into the OS and potential battery life concerns. I also don't care. I want to run Firefox on my phone. The actual thing. With containers and extensions. Let Safari compete on the merits. I want the choice of…

If only there were phones that did exactly what you wanted

The parent just said the iPhone is what they wanted. Is it hard to believe that someone could both like Apple and look forward to a world with more control over their phone?

Re: EU tells Apple to open everything up to its rivals

#216
post #166

Fucking good. It's bullshit that you can only run Safari on iOS or that the App Store is the only store you can use. Yes, I understand the security implications of a third-party browser having deeper integrations into the OS and potential battery life concerns. I also don't care. I want to run Firefox on my phone. The actual thing. With containers and extensions. Let Safari compete on the merits. I want the choice of…

If only there were phones that did exactly what you wanted

The Pixel 5's security update end of life is in two weeks[0]. This is a phone that launched October 2020.

My iPhone XS which I bought in 2018 just got the iOS 17 update and it's working pretty well.

I want to be able to load whatever I want on my phone, but I also don't want to have to buy a new phone every couple years (or sooner! Looks like the 5a is still in production with security updates ending in 11 months) to get Android updates, or even security updates.

[0]: https://endoflife.date/pixel

Re: EU tells Apple to open everything up to its rivals

#217

It is understandable why Apple wants to keep its current grip on iOS indefinitely. What I don't understand is why some people defend it, on this very forum! One commenter simultaneously defended gay marriages - "if you don't like gay marriages, don't get married to gays" - and defended the Apple's monopoly - "I like that there is only one Appstore and developers won't force me to sideload".

[deleted]

Re: EU tells Apple to open everything up to its rivals

#218
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lesser of two evils principle maybe? I defend apple in this one appstore topic not because I think apple is good, but just better than google and facebook. Of course the longterm solution is to get better legalization on privacy protection etc. But before that, I really prefer apple as a proxy between me and google/facebook/etc.

If you like Apple's policies, just don't sideload and install everything from their official AppStore. Nothing will change for you then. You can do it on MacBooks as well.

That’s stupid. Apps will just not be in the App Store and you’ll have to side load to be able to have them. Which we (at least I) explicitly don’t want to do. And explicitly and even more don’t want my computer illiterate entourage to do!

Re: EU tells Apple to open everything up to its rivals

#219

Will this include the ability to compile apps for iOS without requiring Apple made hardware/software (that specifically must run on MacOS)? Have never understood why developers haven't kicked up more of a fuss over that restriction, but it's why I would never write iOS apps as a hobby.

> Have never understood why developers haven't kicked up more of a fuss over that restriction

It’s an innate limitation, not an arbitrary restriction.

Should Apple really be forced to port their tooling — and the entire, massive software stack it’s based on — to other platforms?

I assume most developers targeting Apple’s platforms don’t kick up a fuss because they’re happy running macOS.

Re: EU tells Apple to open everything up to its rivals

#220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So why is that not happening for android? You don't have to come up with hypothetical scenarios if you already have a real life example to look at.

Because there's no point as they need their apps to be cross platform and so Apple is setting a baseline for what behaviour is allowed. But once Meta, Epic etc can run their own stores on both iOS and Android they will absolutely move their apps to them. Epic has already said how important this is to be able to implement their metaverse strategy.

I really, really don't think it'll be as easy you as say. Neither the audience nor the regulators will let them off easy, and these creaking giants aren't exactly great at launching popular new platforms, these days:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33978081

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30808926

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