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EU tells Apple to open everything up to its rivals

appleinsider.com

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

#461

Post by catiopatio »

wizofaus wrote: post #432
catiopatio wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That information is already available, and much of the implementation (if not all) is open source. You’re free to produce your own toolchain, developer tools, IDE, etc. This generally isn’t done because it’s a significant amount of work, and you’ll always be playing catch-up to Apple’s comprehensive integrated development stack.

The fact that you need a MacOS machine even to build Xamarin or React native apps always struck me as bizarre though - I assumed there was some proprietary component that Apple wouldn't publish the details for.

My assumption is that the development/maintenance/support costs aren’t worth the bump in adoption/sales they’d see from doing it.

It’s a large amount of expensive, ongoing work, and leveraging Apple’s native toolchain will invariably provide a better user experience.

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

#462

Post by jonhohle »

hexis wrote: post #390
no_wizard wrote: post #298

Ironically, I believe all this scrutiny on Apple really started with degraded developer relations and their 30% take on in app sales. If they had invested in better dev relations and dropped their 30% take (instead of coming up with all the weird ways you have to qualify for lower rates, which don't cover all scenarios), I don't think there would have been enough noise from below on this.

One of the biggest own-goals I've ever seen, really breathtaking how Apple botched this.

I mean, the original intention was that developers would just write web apps for the phone. It seems like they really scrambled at the beginning to right the ship. That being said, it’s been 14 years.

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

#463

Post by Kinrany »

JoshuaRogers wrote: post #356
kibwen wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Fucking good. Seconded. Perpetually baffled by the so-called hackers in all of these threads arguing vociferously against user freedom.

I think it comes down to what we expect the second order effects to be. Those who argue that forcing Apple to open up their ecosystem is a good thing appear to believe that increased user freedom will lead to more option for all and increase freedom further. Those of us who argue that being forced to open their ecosystem is a bad thing believe (speaking personally) that any user freedom added would quickly be lost an…

So less freedom is good because freedom is good but any extra freedom will be stolen anyway? This is an idiotic take.

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

#464

Post by jonhohle »

awesomeMilou wrote: post #421
nickvanw wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What monopoly? Android has a larger market share than Apple by quite a large factor in the European Union. Saying that Apple does not provide value is laughable - saying that it isn't worth 30% of the transaction value might be one thing, but they provide the R&D to create the device, the platform, the review infrastructure, update infrastructure, development environment, etc. I'm not even sure I disagree with you, b…

> Saying that Apple does not provide value is laughable - saying that it isn't worth 30% of the transaction value might be one thing, but they provide the R&D to create the device, the platform, the review infrastructure, update infrastructure, development environment, etc. By that same measure I should be allowed to ask how this R&D benefits the majority of app developers on the app store. Honestly, when it comes to…

> Can I make use of the iPhones SOS feature for my emergency service?

I’m not sure if this is a joke or not.

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

#465

Post by orangecat »

JoshuaRogers wrote: post #356
kibwen wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Fucking good. Seconded. Perpetually baffled by the so-called hackers in all of these threads arguing vociferously against user freedom.

I think it comes down to what we expect the second order effects to be. Those who argue that forcing Apple to open up their ecosystem is a good thing appear to believe that increased user freedom will lead to more option for all and increase freedom further. Those of us who argue that being forced to open their ecosystem is a bad thing believe (speaking personally) that any user freedom added would quickly be lost an…

I think it comes down to what we expect the second order effects to be.

Yes, and when the first order effect is that a giant corporation gets total control over how you use "your" property, you need to be very confident in your predictions to outweigh that.

Personally I think we all want to see long-term user freedom

Apple certainly doesn't.

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

#466

Post by intrasight »

smithcoin wrote: post #5

I for one am excited at the prospect that I might be able to install Firefox with ublock origin on my iPhone.

I am too. But what makes me laugh, and respond to your comment is the idea that perhaps half of the opposition to Apple's walled garden among the HN crowd would go away if they just allowed ublock origin.

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

#467

Post by threeseed »

hocuspocus wrote: post #254
threeseed wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Except this is a disingenuous argument. And yours is truly insane. How many people would install a banking app from a third party app store on Android? Let's be real, zero. Why would it be different on iOS?

If the third party App Store is owned and operated by the bank then there would be no choice.

And given that the benefit of doing so is unlimited access to user data and the capabilities of the hardware then it would be hard for many companies to not consider it.

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

#468

Post by indigo0086 »

kibwen wrote: post #318
nunez wrote: 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…

> Fucking good. Seconded. Perpetually baffled by the so-called hackers in all of these threads arguing vociferously against user freedom.

User has the freedom to buy or not. Any other expectations the user has can't be regulated into existence and be called "freedom". So-called hackers constantly begging for regulation without thinking one step ahead of the consequences of increased tech regulation is more baffling.

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

#469

Post by HJain13 »

sircastor wrote: post #392
jkaplowitz wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rumors are that the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro will launch with a promise of 7 years of updates, including not only security fixes and bug fixes but also feature drops. We’ll see what’s announces next month, but Google might be about to jump ahead of even the iPhone on this point. Disclosure: although I have worked for Google in the past, I haven’t worked for them in more than 8 years, never worked on Android or Pix…

Yeah, my wife’s Pixel 3 came with unlimited photo storage too. It was a selling point… of course, that went away when it became inconvenient for Google.

It was supported for exactly the amount of time promised; I don't see your point here?

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

#470

Post by indigo0086 »

diego_sandoval wrote: post #410
Daishiman wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Users in a duopoly are getting coerced to a degree far more important to individual freedoms than the largest publicly traded corporation.

Users are not being coerced. Not being offered the products you want is not coercion.

You're leaning many HN dwellers are communists
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