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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

#161

Post by kevingadd »

cjk2 wrote: post #3

I’ve got to be honest while I appreciate the direction they are forced in, I have yet to find anyone outside the tech industry who actually knows or gives a crap. Also the only reason Epic and Spotify are after them is not some altruistic reason but they want to be the guys charging the 30% margin. It’s a bit of a grey victory but I’ll take it.

How is it "charging a 30% margin" to keep more of your own revenue? Epic wants everyone to be able to keep more of their own revenue; they proved this by rejecting the sweetheart deal Apple offered them. If a company's revenues are 30% higher they now have the ability to lower their prices (unless one of the major players demands price parity to thwart competition, as does happen)

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

#162

Post by gretch »

lynndotpy wrote: post #107
abaymado wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an outrageous take. Is iMessage the only group messaging app? If Apple was gate keeping all group messaging, I could see your point.

It's not a take; it's simply a description, and it's accurate. There is a significant and undeniable social pressure for young people in the US to have an iPhone. If you can't use iMessage, you'll simply be excluded from group chats. Speaking exclusively from the cross-platform perspective, things are better nowadays with the expectation of Instagram and Discord, but you'll still be excluded from group chats for not…

I think it’s weird that governments would regulate a company on behalf of this reason.

A bunch of teens got together and decided that some things were social stigma aren’t.

I’m sure there’s some schools where you can’t be included unless you are wearing Abercrombie clothing, or have a MK purse. Is it time to step in there too?

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

#163

Post by fidotron »

rezonant wrote: post #147
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…

> 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. I'm not sure where you got this information. The Android Marketplace arrived with version 1.0 of Android on the T-Mobile G1. Side loading has been available since the very beginning. What you describe more closely resembles what iPhone did,…

> I'm not sure where you got this information.

I was working in mobile games at the time and ended up working with Google on the Play Store launch, among other things.

But what I mentioned was not some big secret. Everyone knew Android was supposed to be the response to google having to keep stashes of j2me devices in drawers, which is ironically what everyone ended up needing to do with Android devices.

People have memory holed just what a shock the iphone caused, not just technically but strategically, and how it altered who has the power over distribution. The whole industry (google included) did not see this coming because of the power of the carriers.

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

#164

Post by ndiddy »

baby wrote: post #89
Dalewyn wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Android was initially designed so that operators could customise it. ... The exclusion of carriers from being able to make modifications to the phone was, and remains, an active feature for end users. Japanese Android phones bought from carriers are fucking horrible because they have modifications both from the manufacturer (eg: Sony, Samsung) and the carrier . I wonder if this is partially why Japan is among the fe…

If you think about it, this is one of the reasons I like macOS. Back then, buying a PC with windows meant having a lot of crap installed by default. Not sure if it's still the case because I haven't bought a PC in ages, but I remember that formatting my computer and reinstalling windows was step 1 when I was buying a brand new laptop/PC.

Windows still comes with a lot of crap installed by default, the difference is that Microsoft has decided to cut out the OEMs and preload the crap themselves (a clean install of Windows 11 Professional comes with apps for Roblox, TikTok, and Disney Plus among others) so the "install from retail media" trick no longer works unless you also pirate the LTSC or Education editions of Windows.

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

#165

Post by throwaway48476 »

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #109
glitchcrab wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I think the GP regards the scams as an acceptable price to pay for additional user choice, which is a reasonable position.

Scams exist because the scamming industry is a large fraction of gdp in some countries and the byzantine financial system doesn't allow for reversing charges.

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

#166

Post by simonh »

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…

I don't see that removing or crippling an option a lot of users rely on improves the market, or competition.

Doesn't benefit the public? Are happy iPhone users that rely on iMessage every day including it's SMS integration not benefited, or not the public?

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

#167

Post by mopenstein »

talldayo wrote: post #12
aurareturn wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The truth is, all businesses do what Craig suggested. AirBnB isn't opening up their platform to Expedia. Meta isn't allowing your Instagram data to be accessed by another platform. Your own company isn't voluntarily making it easier for its customers to leave.

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.

Why let the businesses create anything at all? Why not regulate the creation of everything?

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

#168

Post by paulmd »

talldayo wrote: post #75
hyperbovine wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Maybe so; it doesn't really matter when you're looking at damages. It's Apple's job to solve interoperability with their own platform, and not only have they failed to provide SMS-levels of interop, they actively work against it to promote ulterior products. It's exactly the sort of anticompetitive bundling that harms the market without improving competition. Maybe Ma Bell's success was in-part due to their free long…

Nobody provides SMS levels of interop on unrestricted internet messaging platforms because the experience sucks.

Running the IM equivalent of an open SMTP relay is a ghastly experience for users. You literally have to gatekeep because the alternative is going back to circa-2000 levels of spam.

Deep down you know exactly what would happen because we’ve all lived it with spam voice calls again recently - we’ve been trying to reach you about your car’s warranty…

Destroying a working, positive experience on the apple platform and dragging it down to 2000s level is the explicit goal for a lot of people. The pain is the point - not to bring android up but simply to tear things down and walk away.

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

#169

Post by simonh »

beeboobaa3 wrote: post #26
aurareturn wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The truth is, all businesses do what Craig suggested. AirBnB isn't opening up their platform to Expedia. Meta isn't allowing your Instagram data to be accessed by another platform. Your own company isn't voluntarily making it easier for its customers to leave.

This is why executives should be tossed in jail instead of a company being fined.

If they break the law, sure, if they put features in their products that are perfectly legal but that you happen to dislike not so much.

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

#170

Post by wannacboatmovie »

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…

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