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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

#111

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

r00fus wrote: post #62
beeboobaa3 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Everything you said is hypothetically true but fails to withstand scrutiny. Apple has a brand of trust and security. If they decided to become even the tiniest bit evil in that dimension their “secure” brand would evaporate overnight. Unless you think they control all media and levers to power too?

What, if they did something like set up a massive ad sales team after banning FBs competing tools and literally went to all the gaming advertisers and told them that Apple would still let them target on payment status?

Something like that, perhaps?

Fortunately we live in a world where corporations are never hypocrites, so that definitely didn't happen.

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

#112

Post by geoka9 »

alangibson wrote: post #65
rootusrootus wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The EU would let them and good riddance as far as we're concerned. But there is this pesky notion that it's a huge market and Apple earns a lot of money there. So, they really can't walk away from that. Does that not seem contradictory to you? If it's a huge market they make a lot of money in, then there's by definition a lot of people who don't think "good riddance" if they leave. Apple has more leverage than you…

American living in Europe here. in the EU, you can't just apply economic logic to everything like you can in the US. Policymakers will absolutely piss off a huge number of people over some basic principle. Look for instance at Germany's willingness to burn it's industrial base to the ground over Ukraine.

I would argue it's not (just) over Ukraine that Germany has finally decided to wean itself off the unrealistically cheap natural gas from Russia. In fact, the writing has been on the wall for decades; Russian leadership never made a big secret out of the fact that they considered their gas industry a geopolitical weapon. It took a big scare and popular demand to stop the wholesale selling out of the German political class to Russia.

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

#113

Post by CharlesW »

Teever wrote: post #108
sonofhans wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m struggling to see what’s wrong with Federighi’s argument. Why should he not want to protect Apple’s position? Apple has no monopoly on mobile messaging or hardware, and they didn’t 8 years ago either, so they can do what they like here. What is Apple supposed to do? Spend time and money on interop to better the lives of Android users? There’s nothing wrong with them doing so if they like, but I fail to see any ob…

You're right. They obviously have no motivation to do the correct thing, so the solution is government regulation. We live in a world where every landline telephone can dial another with no trickery or fuckery from your phone manufacturer. That is a good thing. We should extend that functionally to smartphones.

> They obviously have no motivation to do the correct thing, so the solution is government regulation.

The solution to what? Apple supports SMS/MMS. They've pre-announced (something they rarely do) RCS support. They support VoLTE for HD voice calls.

Let's say the federal government eminent-domains iMessage protocols. Then what? Do you really think Apple's just going to carry traffic from untrusted devices, and for free?

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

#114

Post by [deleted] »

talldayo wrote: post #100
Jtsummers wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple didn't replace SMS. It is still there on every iPhone, and they expanded SMS reach for iPhone users who have other devices like iPad and macOs systems. In what universe do you exist where SMS was removed?

HN tells me that there's only one more step left after embracing and extending. Apple didn't make some mistake putting iMessage and SMS in the same app, they want you reliant on their service so that SMS seems (rightfully) poor by comparison. There would be nothing wrong with that if Apple wasn't equally as miserly with that power as the carriers they want to valiantly protest against. I'm no fan of cell carriers eit…

[deleted]

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

#116

Post by INGSOCIALITE »

Teever wrote: post #108
sonofhans wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m struggling to see what’s wrong with Federighi’s argument. Why should he not want to protect Apple’s position? Apple has no monopoly on mobile messaging or hardware, and they didn’t 8 years ago either, so they can do what they like here. What is Apple supposed to do? Spend time and money on interop to better the lives of Android users? There’s nothing wrong with them doing so if they like, but I fail to see any ob…

You're right. They obviously have no motivation to do the correct thing, so the solution is government regulation. We live in a world where every landline telephone can dial another with no trickery or fuckery from your phone manufacturer. That is a good thing. We should extend that functionally to smartphones.

what "correct thing"? i can text people who use android phones just fine. TBH this all boils down to the ridiculous blue / green bubble thing. that's the ONLY difference in texting between devices. i honestly have no clue why apple would be regulated in any way over this!

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

#117

Post by cjk2 »

hu3 wrote: post #102
cjk2 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not in the US but this is not a thing anywhere in the UK at least. Everyone uses WhatsApp. Same with all my friends in Europe. Same with my kids and their friends, although they all seem to be on SnapChat more than anything. Actually we don't even tend to bother even talking about which phones you have. It's just meh. My best friend doesn't even know what iMessage is as an example.

It's a US problem. First link of a quick search: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/03/apples-green-bub...

So it's more a problem with the humans than the technology.

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

#118

Post by quickslowdown »

glitchcrab wrote: post #104
lupusreal wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a nice history lesson but sideloading alternate appstores (namely F-Droid) on Android works great and Apple shouldn't be allowed to forbid the same on iOS. And I don't give a damn about the "grandma conned into sideloading scam apps" scenario. Grandma is getting scammed over regular phonecalls already anyway.

So to extrapolate, you're fine with your grandma being scammed via a new avenue because she's already being scammed in other ways?

Sure, if you only focus on that one piece of their comment, but who wants to be that pedantic?

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

#119

Post by nox101 »

IMO most people here seem to be missing the point. The point is not directly about consumers or the choice between Android and iPhone. The point is about Apple (and Google's) market power.

Imagine a self driving car that became popular. Imagine that car manufacture asking stores to sign up for a account to register their store so the car will know where to drive users. Imagine the experience using the car is amazing and it's widely successful. Imagine car company then demanding 30% of all sales any store the store drives someone, refuse to pay the 30% and the car will stop showing the store as a destination. Their market is so large, if you refuse to pay you immediately lose 40-60% of your customers.

This is the power that Apple and Google have. It has nothing to do with choice in phones. It has to do with no app can escape this 30% tax on their business because the 2 gatekeepers control the entire market.

There are many similar issues but they all boil down to market power over hundreds of thousands of companies, not phone choice.

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

#120

Post by pseudalopex »

hyperbovine wrote: post #63
talldayo wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, yes. It's a great reason to not let businesses decide on these things, because their petty interpretation will always override a communal solution. Once you reach Apple's scale, you shouldn't expect to start replacing stuff like SMS with a proprietary alternative and get away with it.

Maybe Apple’s “scale” is because its users do not enjoy being shackled to crappy SMS?

Apple users would be less shackled to crappy SMS if Apple put iMessage on Android.
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