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

proton.me

311–320 of 665 posts

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

#311

every developer knows safari is the new ie6 but we all just shrug and build native apps anyway because what else are you gonna do. leave 50% of your users on the table. classic embrace extend extinguish but in reverse. embrace web standards then purposely not extend them so you can extinguish competition

> every developer knows safari is the new ie6

Every colleague in my company only targets and tests against Chrome because they honestly considers _everything_ and anything Chrome does as the standard.

As a FF user it hurts me because even if Apple and Mozilla has implemented some feature according to spec these people ignore that in favour of the Chrome way of doing things.

Calling Safari the new ie6 is ignorant of reality.

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

#312
post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. In my opinion it is perfectly fine for society to order a company to hypothetically limit you on this minor thing (and let's be frank: this is super minor), because opening up iOS would benefit companies, countries, economies and other users of phones.

Who are you to claim that my consumer desires are irrelevant?

Your consumer desire ... to impose your own arbitrary wishes on other consumers? Apple opening up their platform would not preclude them from offering users an optional setting that continued to impose the current restrictions. Therefore it does not interfere with your own use of the platform. You have no standing here so to speak.

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

#313

every developer knows safari is the new ie6 but we all just shrug and build native apps anyway because what else are you gonna do. leave 50% of your users on the table. classic embrace extend extinguish but in reverse. embrace web standards then purposely not extend them so you can extinguish competition

Is that so? I develop primarily in Safari and don't have too many complaints.

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

#314
post #47

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.

I am plugged into the Apple ecosystem daily and shamelessly and yeah I think it’s arguably accurate. What makes it so sinister is how benign it seems yet how devastating the consequences have been.

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

#315

I'm not an Apple enthusiast—my rarely used iPad mini is my only Apple device—but let me play devil’s advocate. If a company invests billions in R&D to create hardware and its integrated software, shouldn’t it have the right to control who or what interacts with it? Why should I be forced to open up the carefully designed ecosystem I’ve built? If my pitch is premium, high-speed hardware and intuitive software so user-…

> There are other options out there. This isn't about the a consumer's right to buy a different phone. It's about a business's right to do business with customers without Apple in the middle. And it's specifically about Apple's monopoly power over those businesses. No government is going to accept that some company, Apple, gets that kind of control.

Let's consider cars (or vehicles in general) as another mainstream example of completely vertically integrated products which comprise hardware and – now – software.

Toyota Motor Corp., Volkswagen Group (multiple brands), Hyundai Motor Group, GM and Stellantis N.V. are the top 5 largest automakers in the world whose annual output is comparable with that of largest smartphone makers, including Apple (with the adjustment of the scale).

None of the automakers allow anyone outside the vertical(s) they have built to gain a foothold in the verticals. This includes: replacement parts, mandated regular service at an official, brand-certified dealership as the condition of the warranty (for new vehicles), software updates only from the vehicle manufacturer, probably something else. No outsiders are allowed under any circumstances – if one misses a regular service at an official dealership before the warranty period has lapsed, the warranty is automatically voided. Some even extend to chipped/cracked windshields that, if replaced, will void the vehicle warranty, even though there is nothing special about a windshield today.

Vehicle manufacturers are by all definitions stagegate keepers, and they impose expensive services upon their product users without giving them an alternative.

Why are governments allowing this to happen?[0]

[0] I know that it is because of safety regulations as the manufacturer will claim that they can only guarantee the safety of its own vehicle if it has original parts, but let's pretend for a moment that it is not an issue.

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

#316
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the lawsuit > For example, when a user purchases an iPhone, the user is steered to use Apple’s default email product, Apple Mail. It is only through a complex labyrinth of settings that a user can change her default email application away from the Apple “Mail” application towards an alternative like Gmail (Google) or Proton Mail. > At least for mail a user can in theory modify the default setting. On the calenda…

I mean, does Settings > Apps > Gmail (or whichever other app) > Default Mail App really qualify as “a complex labyrinth”? Sure, it’d be a good thing to add a “Default Apps” section under Settings > General or something, but calling the current route complex almost sounds like an insult to users. EDIT: Actually, there already is a “Default Apps” section right at the top of the page of Settings > Apps. Yeah, if that’s…

I didn't even know you could change the default mail app on iOS and I’ve used it for the better part of a decade now, as a Proton user too. I’ve endured the frustration because I thought it was fixed. Either being allowed to change it is relatively new, region locked, or yeah it’s a labyrinth.

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

#317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you manage to shift the conversation to Google in a thread about Apple?

I think the point was that if Google weren't so inept, iMessage wouldn't be such a monopoly And you know, maybe they have a point. I especially think about Microsoft and MSN Messenger/Skype. How do you fumble away not one but two dominant messaging apps?

OP's point is about Apple intentionally fragmenting communication in social groups as an ecosystem play (trickling down to bullying starting in grade school etc) so Google's messaging marketshare would only be relevant if there was some reason to believe it would have cowed Apple into interoperating.

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

#318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's no technological reason for app developers to be restricted from using other payment processors But there is a customer experience reason. As an iOS user, I very much appreciate that I can ask Apple to cancel some bullshit subscription that used to otherwise try to lock me in behind a labyrinth of added friction and timewasting. Not every problem is technological.

Perhaps then there should be a subscription API, so Apple could make the nice "see all your subscriptions in one place" UI? Or maybe banks could better offer this as part of online banking for credit cards. Not sure the right place to put this. Anyhow I do see your point that narrowing user options can lead to better UX - if you actually like all the tradeoffs they make. The problem is if you don't, your SoL. And in…

Indian banks already allow this for some payment methods.

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

#319
post #74
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, iMessage happily harms apple customers all the time. I know many MANY people who have lost chats with their loved ones (especially deceased ones) because there is no way to export and save their conversations. I think this should be as easy as saving photos, which apple makes (somewhat) easier to export. Back to email, it is pretty horrible to set up my local email server on an apple device. You have to go…

[flagged]

> No dumb hacks to deal with some retarded Cupertino PM's idea of how computing should work

You can't comment like this on Hacker News, no matter how right you are or think you are. It's not what HN is for and it destroys what it is for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#320
post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

WhatsApp gained popularity in Europe when non-early adopters started switching to smartphones (2010-2012 ish). The difference was that, in contrast to iMessage, you could install it on pretty much any smartphone. In the pre-Meta days they even supported many then dying ecosystems like Symbian, Nokia S40, etc.

They had a yearly subscription fee, but most people never got the request to pay it.

Nobody cared that it was incompatible with SMS, because everybody hated SMS because of the insane prices. In 2009 I got an iPhone 3G with an unlimited data plan, but I was still paying something like 0.20 or 0.25 Euro per SMS.

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