EU approves legislation to regulate Apple, Google, Meta, and other tech firms

> While I love the idea of being able to finally install SNES emulators and the like, many malicious actors will now pray on unsuspecting iOS users to install spyware, malware, and other crap via third-party app stores. Not everyone is as sophisticated as the typical Hacker News reader; younger and more naive users will be taken in as victims of various types of fraud.

Think of the naive users argument has never made sense to me, just allow someone to flip a switch in settings that says “do not flip or your phone could be taken over by hostile viruses” or something to that effect. If someone is going to flip that switch and then install what someone tells them over the phone, why wouldn’t the attacker just ask for them to log into a fake bank site at that point? How much is the App Store saving them?

> First there is way more money to be made on iOS users and secondly sometimes you wait to strike until you can knock down all the pins, not just half.

iOS users do spend more money on App Store purchases than Android. But if Meta's whole intention to build a 3rd party App Store is to mine them for data, why didn't they try that on Android- shouldn't the data of Android users be just as good, especially when they have a significantly larger user pool to do that with? Why would iOS users' data be more lucrative? Spending money on the App Store is orthogonal to having more desirable data to sell.

> It will start innocent enough, they will add 1-2 features only available in "Facebook Pro/Full/Unleashed/etc" via their own app store/sideloading but over time they will sneak more and more sinister things into their app.

Easy to conceive, difficult to execute. This scenario might have been feasible a decade ago, when Facebook was younger, their brand was fresher, and customers less jaded. If they were to do that today, they would immediately face friction from users who do not care for more fragmentation of services, and aren't even as engaged with the product as they used to. Maybe they could try to segment off a more popular product, say Instagram, but that would also cause blowback.

> Google will use the full weight of their ecosystem to try to get you to download Chrome or their other apps anytime you touch one of their sites in Safari (it's bad enough now even with them using webkit for their "browser").

And why wouldn't EU/US courts apply antitrust laws against them? Why is antitrust law assumed to be only used against Apple, when legislators/regulators are miffed at all the large tech companies?

I find the whole hypothetical of third party iOS app stores fascinating, because any examination into the landscape of app ecosystems show that they are bloody difficult to build. Ask Microsoft with the Windows Phone Store, or RIM with the BlackBerry Marketplace. Or just Amazon and Samsung with their third party Android app stores, which seem to exist mostly to service users on their own OEM Fire or Galaxy devices.

The idea that Facebook or Google can just make third party app stores and everyone will flock to them is just a questionable, reductionist scenario that flies in the face of creeping consumer burnout in the present day, those companies' continued difficulties in creating new compelling products to woo consumers, and all of the failed app stores of the past. (As Ballmer said, it's all about the developers.) They would have to be cleverer about it. So far, I've yet to see any comprehensive hypotheticals that really deal with past and present realities about the difficulties in setting up such rival ecosystems.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31989720

One thing I hope for is that API access comes with the following agreement:

1) Use of APIs means an App must be listed on the App Store or be used the regular way. You want location data? Sure but in exchange, I want to see an App Store listing along with the Data Privacy Report. You want access to NFC but you’re a bank? Sure but your cards must also be available to be added directly without an app. You’re free to create another version of your app and list that on another App Store , but I want a version that adheres to the App Store rules.

Was expecting big fall in share price for Apple but this new didn't even registered anything in share price. Any idea why 10s of billions of dollars of pure competition free predictable profit is not a big thing?

To be perfectly fair here, you're responding as if "productivity" means "Code" and that's not exactly true.

For the overwhelming majority of people: coding is not productivity.

What is? Checking email, jotting down notes, recording meetings and transcribing/dictating them, joining meetings and having reliable video/audio.

Being able to respond to an email with a little drawing is _absolutely_ a killer feature for productivity, having a little 10" portable device which can perch on a desk and allow you the full gammut of features for a _good_ meeting is also pretty damn awesome.

One could argue that these have some moderate competence at artistic creation machines (photos, videos, drawing, some combination), but I'm not creative so I'm not sure how competent these devices realistically are.

I wont comment much on the statement you can't actually code on an iPad, technically you can; gitpods, code-server, coder.com, (and if you work at google CitC) means you already have everything you need. These work with safari; because those features Chrome demands we have are not actually needed for such tasks.