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Proton joins suit against Apple for practices that harm developers and consumers

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Re: Proton joins suit against Apple for practices that harm developers and consumers

#191

Post by Workaccount2 »

BowBun wrote: post #47
Workaccount2 wrote: post #39

I don't think any big tech company has ever done anything as evil and predatory as Apple walling off iMessage, giving the impression that Apple phones were high technology, and interacting with peasant androids is what made group chats fragment and pictures and videos look like trash. Few things are more enraging than people being left out of chats with friends and family because they didn't bend over for Apple. Even…

> I don't think any big tech company has ever done anything as evil and predatory Don't you think this is _maybe_ an overstatement? I was annoyed about this for years but reading your take is borderline satirical.

No, I don't think it's an understatement at all....

In the difficulty of non-iMessage compatibility, I have had people close to me say "Why don't you just get an iPhone?" with an incredulous tone.

Perhaps tech companies have had more evil things happen on their platforms, that for whatever reason they were slow to react to.

But

"Why don't you just get an iPhone" was a precisely and meticulously engineered line, pure social manipulation, that was intentionally orchestrated to be delivered to me through the mouths of the people I trust most in my life turned unknowing pawns.

That is why I consider it the most evil. Apple is by design purposely exploiting a core human function, close social circle communication, to trap people in their garden.

Re: Proton joins suit against Apple for practices that harm developers and consumers

#192

Post by cosmic_cheese »

bigyabai wrote: post #188
cosmic_cheese wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That only works if competitors aren’t doing the same exact thing. There’s also situations where you don’t have a choice. In many parts of the US the only reasonably accessible store (and sometimes grocery store) is a Walmart.

HN's time-honored scapegoat. "Corporations can't be trusted - that's why I trust Apple to fight them" is a ridiculous pretense to support consolidation. If Apple uses their de-facto position of privilege to demand people use their products as a solution, then they have become the problem. The exact same problem as Wal-mart insisting you download their wallet app. There is a real solution to this, where we codify our…

Legislation would be better, no question. Have you seen US politics, though? Not just lately, but for the past couple of decades. Electing knowledgable politicians who are willing to stay properly abreast of technology and work for the interests of their constituents is nigh impossible.

The ones that get into office are most often out of touch and in someone’s pocket because they grandstand on polarizing topics that information-deficient and single-issue voters flock to. I try to vote for candidates who I think will do good that way, and it makes some impact on the micro scale, but on the national scale it’s like trying to drain the Pacific Ocean with a thimble.

Re: Proton joins suit against Apple for practices that harm developers and consumers

#193

Post by whstl »

ghusto wrote: post #183
_benton wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly backwards. I have no desire to limit the types of phones you can purchase, and you have an enormous amount of choices in phones outside Apple that provide essentially the same functionality, and can be as open as you wish. You wish to limit my ability to access a device that I want. I want a locked down phone, and third parties wish to intervene on a transaction between me and Apple so they can illegit…

How about people who want a Mac (which is still "open" to the extent that it makes a difference), and therefore would also like an iPhone because of the propitiatory APIs Apple makes available solely to the iPhone? I don't particularly like my iPhone, in fact I see as a worse device in many ways to my old Android phone, but the interoperability with my Mac makes the trade-off worth it. So ironically, the only reason…

Same. Considering the Mac is my work device, it's not even out of principle but purely because it would be a useless brick.

Re: Proton joins suit against Apple for practices that harm developers and consumers

#194

Post by gundmc »

alexjplant wrote: post #171
Workaccount2 wrote: post #39

I don't think any big tech company has ever done anything as evil and predatory as Apple walling off iMessage, giving the impression that Apple phones were high technology, and interacting with peasant androids is what made group chats fragment and pictures and videos look like trash. Few things are more enraging than people being left out of chats with friends and family because they didn't bend over for Apple. Even…

> Even worse being a teenager and having to endure social shaming for it. It wasn't until the EU signaled it was going to bring down then axe that Apple capitulated to RCS. Regardless of the merits of Apple's actions as regards technical interoperability I feel compelled to point out that this in particular is a cultural problem, not technical malfeasance. RCS users still appear as green bubbles and even if the lack…

Yes, but this is precisely the point isn't it? It's blatantly enabling and embracing "othering" for no technical reason as an explicit strategy to exploit social pressures to maximize profit.

Re: Proton joins suit against Apple for practices that harm developers and consumers

#195

Post by wilsonnb3 »

8fingerlouie wrote: post #169
wavemode wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Samsung is using their market position to stifle competitors, then by all means yes.

Explain stifle, or more specifically how Apple is doing that ? Anybody (possibly except Epic Games) can develop and publish on the App Store. There's a cost associated with it, which in Apples case is 30% (or whatever you negotiate apparently). If you play by the rules, you can keep doing that as long as you like. If you rent a shop in a shopping mall, there will be costs associated with that as well, and it's almost…

> Sideloading is usually a very bad idea in this day and age.

There is nothing wrong with sideloading applications. Protection against malicious applications is taken care of by the OS through sandboxing and a granular permission model. Malware scanning and app signing also have no dependency on the App Store.

Really all you are missing out on is the App Store review process, which is not worth much from a security perspective anyways.

Re: Proton joins suit against Apple for practices that harm developers and consumers

#196

Post by ribosometronome »

palata wrote: post #149
ronsor wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - Yes, I know no one outside the US uses iMessage. Yes, people in the EU use WhatsApp, by Meta & Zuckerberg , and from what I've seen, often act as if that is some sort of mark of superiority.

> and from what I've seen, often act as if that is some sort of mark of superiority. Feels like you weren't able to have a proper discussion with those people. In many EU countries, using SMS made/makes no sense because SMS was/is super expensive as compared to WhatsApp. And using iMessage makes no sense because most people don't have an iPhone. From their point of view, it actually makes no sense . Now if you tell t…

>because it was free SMS, really.

Since when can WhatsApp interact with SMS users? They're so evil and predatory that they have entirely walled themselves off from that method of communication entirely.

Re: Proton joins suit against Apple for practices that harm developers and consumers

#197

Post by wilsonnb3 »

hbn wrote: post #151
McDyver wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not controversial, you can still have your walled garden as-is. The point of this is so that there is the possibility of escaping that walled garden, arguably welcoming more users into the ecosystem. Nothing would change for you. Just like android users can keep using all things Google, they have the possibility of installing apps from other sources.

> Nothing would change for you. If my apps are changing, yes it is changing for me. Right now I can manage all of my app subscriptions from the Subscriptions screen in the Settings app of my devices. If they open up to other payment methods, my subscriptions are no longer centralized, I have to give my credit card information to more parties of variable trustworthiness, I have to worry about subscription renewal poli…

I think those problems are largely also due to anti competitive and anti consumer behaviors.

We need to craft legislation saying software vendors have to support some kind of standardized payment system with easy cancellation built in to it rather than relying on Apples good will.

Re: Proton joins suit against Apple for practices that harm developers and consumers

#198

Post by wilsonnb3 »

criddell wrote: post #110
TulliusCicero wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're free to keep your own device locked down yourself and to only use Apple's own app store if you want.

Until your employer or government requires a side-loaded app for you to do something that you need to do.

Your employer can already require you install an app that isn’t from the App Store, through the enterprise developer program.

Re: Proton joins suit against Apple for practices that harm developers and consumers

#199

Post by Workaccount2 »

energywut wrote: post #134
foobarian wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think you might be living in a bubble, if this is the "most evil" thing you have heard of a big tech company doing. Go read up on IBM's history, especially in the 30s and 40s. Or a more contemporary example, read up on Embrace, Extend, Extinguish. Or Amazon's mistreatment of workers in both corporate and warehouse settings. Or Meta scraping data off your devices without permission to train AI. I wouldn't count th…

Oh, Roblox by far and away is worse than Apple. But also, Facebook is pretty clearly implicated in a genocide in Myanmar. It's difficult for me to put any genocide in a bucket less important than some kids being put into out-groups.

The difference is that those evil things are second order effects. Nobody in the executive suite at FB was saying "Damn, this genocide is super profitable, let's stole the flames".

Nobody at Roblox is saying "We want to have children do nothing else except play Roblox from dawn to dusk, we lobby against schooling and extra-curiculars to increase Roblox time"

Apple however very intentionally made messaging people not on iPhones painful, and purposely made it out like androids were inferior. They purposely make it so you lose your group chats if you leave iPhone.

Thats why it's the most evil. It's a planned system to use peoples social connections as pawns to rope people into Apples ecosystem. This isn't hypothetical, or "C'mon of course they are saying that!". There are court documents that show it.

Re: Proton joins suit against Apple for practices that harm developers and consumers

#200

Post by wilsonnb3 »

zaphar wrote: post #42
amelius wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But the core of my contention is that: if you make the platform that others run on and which creates entirely new economies and allows businesses to thrive, don’t you get to define the constraints that you want since it’s _your_ platform? What’s effectively happening here is that companies are using the courts to force the design of OSes in a certain way: That only open OSes can ever be made, not closed ones. Huh,…

The user can hack the product, install a different OS, Strike it with a hammer, or throw it away. Apple hasn't violated their rights in any way. Sure hacking it or installing a different OS are hard but rights are not meant to guarantee something is easy. I never bought the argument that user rights should dictate how a product hardware or software should be manufactured.

In some philosophical views, rights are meant to guarantee that things are easy. You can see that exact dynamic play out in US states regarding voter ID laws.
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