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The walls of Apple's garden are tumbling down

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Re: The walls of Apple's garden are tumbling down

#51

Post by catlikesshrimp »

fidotron wrote: post #16

The thing people love forgetting is a huge part of the iPhone success is based on the North American cellular comms industry being a trustless disaster area. The deal Apple did with AT&T opened the floodgates. Android was initially designed so that operators could customise it. The idea was apps were developed (and sold) only by operators, and everything else would be via the browser. If you had used a Nokia device i…

This is neithere nor there. Apple not submitting to US carriers greedy customizations and Apple allowing users to customize their devices are two completely different matters. You are throwing everything in the same bin which is the same Apple wants everyone to believe

Re: The walls of Apple's garden are tumbling down

#52

Post by manquer »

aurareturn wrote: post #34
pessimizer wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies shouldn't be expected to individually make suboptimal decisions in order to preserve the health of the market. They should be regulated by a functioning government.

Let's just say that the government decided in the year 2005 that no private company can ship something that will replace SMS as the defacto messaging system because it wants interoperability. We would have never had iMessage, Whatsapp, Messenger, etc. Other countries would have far surpassed us in messaging communication tech. Regulations are a double edged sword.

SMTP, IMAP and POP did not prevent gmail or outlook from launching products

2G/3G/4G/5g did not hinder the mobile industry it only fostered it .

Standard payment interface like UPI did not stop apps for payments being built , India didn’t need a Venmo or WeeChat to innovate here before standardization

Innovations happen despite or without regulations if there is market demand for it . FRAND patents exist for a reason.

I can’t think of any common example where interoperability killed innovation

Re: The walls of Apple's garden are tumbling down

#53

Post by beardyw »

da768 wrote: post #6
ukuina wrote: post #2

It was very surprising that Apple did not strong-arm the EU by threatening to pull out of the area. The short-term loss of revenue from leaving the EU is nothing compared to the long-term decline this is going to cause in Apple's services/subscriptions revenue if the iPhone is commoditized.

If Android becomes the only platform with a worldwide reach, no one's going to bother writing apps for iOS anymore.

Yes and no. iPhone only has about 25% of the world market, but developers are keen to develop for them because users are more willing to pay for apps. Reach isn't the same as value.

Re: The walls of Apple's garden are tumbling down

#54

Post by Slava_Propanei »

hn_version_0023 wrote: post #43
api wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I summarize the second point as “the Internet is a dark forest.” If it’s bad and it can be done it will be done, and at scale.

You have neatly summarized why I feel strongly that the Internet has become a liability to humanity. I have no illusions that we can shut it down or walk away… but on a personal level I am trying harder than ever to remove it from my own life. If I can stay off Reddit, well, I can eventually remove it all I think!

[dead]

Re: The walls of Apple's garden are tumbling down

#55

Post by rootusrootus »

pmarreck wrote: post #36
s1k3s wrote: post #5

> Apple executive Eddy Cue pushed for an Android iMessage app in 2016, but Craig Federighi responded in an internal email that “iMessage on Android would simply serve to remove an obstacle to iPhone families giving their kids Android phones.” This conversation happened 8 years ago and it was about a product released 12 years ago. If anything, this shows how slow regulators are before they take any action and how they…

> “iMessage on Android would simply serve to remove an obstacle to iPhone families giving their kids Android phones.” This statement says a few extra things that Craig Federighi probably didn't realize he was saying. 1) It suggests that the iPhone wouldn't be able to hold its own in a market where interoperability with Android was easier. That demonstrates a lack of faith in it. 2) I've noticed that any time a corpor…

> It suggests that the iPhone wouldn't be able to hold its own in a market where interoperability with Android was easier

It is just a statement of the obvious. Price tends to trump every other consideration, unless the difference is pretty big. See also airline ticket pricing and the race to the bottom in comfort & features. If there is no differentiator, a lot of people will just get Android phones because they cost less. They'll put up with quite a lot of abuse as long as they save a few bucks. It'd probably end up like gmail.

Re: The walls of Apple's garden are tumbling down

#56

Post by catlikesshrimp »

yinser wrote: post #47
Bjorkbat wrote: post #14

Something I keep thinking about is how we’re seeing the end of what I call the “tech zeitgeist”. Started upon realizing that we‘ve likely seen the end of the social network era. No new social networking startups have popped-off in a while, and the recent ones are arguably more about connecting you to entertainers than friends. Besides that, a lot of the tech ideas from 2012-2020 have kind of fizzled out. 3D printing…

Why is Apple the most vulnerable? What is the argument? Half the planet uses their devices and their users see it as a superior product.

For you, is there nothing on earth beyond US borders? Last I checked, android was dominant, specially in poor countries (whereost people live)

Re: The walls of Apple's garden are tumbling down

#57

Post by xyzzy123 »

sircastor wrote: post #38
qiine wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sure feels like 3D printing especially "desktop" has trouble improving recently, and is nowhere near democratized like classic printer, and its not entirely a hardware problem.

Part of the trouble with 3D printing is that its utility is limited if you don’t know how to design, and not everyone wants to learn. If you have no CAD/modeling experience, making something custom is limited to the simple variation available in the software, or you just buy off the shelf models. 3D printing skeptics said that 3D printers were just for making worthless junk. There’s an opportunity coming with an LLM-…

Agree. For me personally, 3d printing has been a "hit" and the printers keep getting better, cheaper and more reliable. Good bed levelling, multi-head, failure detection etc are reaching the mainstream and the printers I have now are amazingly better than what I started with.

But most people (reasonably) don't seem that interested in making small plastic things. It's a niche thing to want to do and as you point out, there's a learning curve. Plus materials and process limitations mean that a printed item will generally be inferior to a bought one unless you designed it yourself to meet your exact use-case.

Re: The walls of Apple's garden are tumbling down

#58

Post by rootusrootus »

beeboobaa3 wrote: post #33
pfannkuchen wrote: post #18

One thing that I haven’t seen mentioned in discussions of communications tech monopoly (or “monopoly” in many cases) is the risk of future political censorship by a hypothetical future evil Apple. Centralized market power here isn’t just about unfair profits or bad products, it’s also about control of information (and therefore control of minds).

Especially considering how these big tech companies seem obsessed with gobbling up communication, and seem to want all of their users communication to go through them. Sure, Apple makes grandiose statements about its security and privacy. But they are protecting you from others. Apple has the keys to the kingdom and if they want they can just silently push a targeted software update to your device. They can make your…

> They can make your phone send messages you never typed. They can make your phone show you things that never happened.

How many microseconds do you think it'd take before someone noticed and made it into a huge PR nightmare?

Re: The walls of Apple's garden are tumbling down

#59

Post by hnfong »

yinser wrote: post #47
Bjorkbat wrote: post #14

Something I keep thinking about is how we’re seeing the end of what I call the “tech zeitgeist”. Started upon realizing that we‘ve likely seen the end of the social network era. No new social networking startups have popped-off in a while, and the recent ones are arguably more about connecting you to entertainers than friends. Besides that, a lot of the tech ideas from 2012-2020 have kind of fizzled out. 3D printing…

Why is Apple the most vulnerable? What is the argument? Half the planet uses their devices and their users see it as a superior product.

I'm guessing GP means the other Big Tech companies have some kind of rent-seeking operation because they already have a tight grasp of some big moat. Eg. Google has Search that isn't going anywhere soon; Meta owns pretty much all the social media platforms that are making money; Microsoft has inserted itself everywhere; etc...

And the "only" thing that Apple has is just happy users, who aren't as bound to having to buy or use Apple products and could in theory switch whenever they wanted. It's much easier to give up using Apple products than say wean on Google products.

Re: The walls of Apple's garden are tumbling down

#60

Post by ChilledTonic »

s1k3s wrote: post #44
ChilledTonic wrote: post #32

I’ve been a recent convert to the iPhone. It gives me a unique perspective since I’ve spent almost my entire life in the Android ecosystem. I first bought an iPhone 5c on a whim, which is well out of support by apple, 5 versions behind the modern iOS. If you turn it on, all the default Apple apps work, in 2024. You can stream Apple Music and download podcasts with no App Store whatsoever. It’s a powerful little devic…

This has nothing to do with the classic Apple vs Android debate. It's about Apple's practices of pushing people to purchase the iPhone even if they might not want to.

Right, and I’m trying to state that those practices are ancillary at best reasons when the end user just sees a functional phone.

Joe Consumer doesn’t even notice the garden has walls.

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