Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Apple must open iPadOS to sideloading within 6 months, EU says

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

331–340 of 373 posts

Re: Apple must open iPadOS to sideloading within 6 months, EU says

#331

Post by trogdor »

shepherdjerred wrote: post #323
DCKing wrote: post #67

The iPad App Store is perhaps an even more dysfunctional place than the iPhone in how much it holds hardware and use cases hostage to the manufacturer's vision. Just imagine how much more versatile the iPad Pro would be if only you could run Linux VMs on it in the moments you want to do anything remotely tinkery on an iPad. Apple's hardware since the 2021 iPad Pro (with M1) has had the ability to do this. The iPads h…

I've been so confused about Apple advertising the capabilities of the M1 iPad -- it's got a _real_ processor, it's so fast! ...but nothing on the iPad can _really_ use it.

That’s simply not true. For example, Final Cut Pro, Davinci Resolve and Logic Pro all exist as iPad apps.

Re: Apple must open iPadOS to sideloading within 6 months, EU says

#332

Post by shepherdjerred »

trogdor wrote: post #331
shepherdjerred wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been so confused about Apple advertising the capabilities of the M1 iPad -- it's got a _real_ processor, it's so fast! ...but nothing on the iPad can _really_ use it.

That’s simply not true. For example, Final Cut Pro, Davinci Resolve and Logic Pro all exist as iPad apps.

Eh, what I mean is it's a very constrained set. I would like to see emulators, _real_ games, VMs, dev environments, etc.

Re: Apple must open iPadOS to sideloading within 6 months, EU says

#333

Post by trogdor »

vundercind wrote: post #195
sharpshadow wrote: post #144

Does this mean we finally get Adblock on iOS devices?

I’ve had ad blocking on my iPhone for years. No I didn’t “hack” the device or anything, the last thing I want to do is tinker with my single most important computing device, I need it to work all the time and work well. It’s been possible for years, officially.

How?

Re: Apple must open iPadOS to sideloading within 6 months, EU says

#334

Post by skydhash »

trogdor wrote: post #329
skydhash wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree with your use case, doing nothing most of the time is how those devices last day long on a battery and can run without a fan. My MBA get toasty when I OCR a pdf, I cannot imagine a phone on a sustained load.

>My MBA get toasty when I OCR a pdf Apple silicon?

Yes. M1.

Re: Apple must open iPadOS to sideloading within 6 months, EU says

#335

Post by rickdeckard »

Kirby64 wrote: post #327
rickdeckard wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the technical reason why the Pencil doesn't work is beside the point here. Apple is building the hardware, and they decide that the Pencil use-case a iPhone user may have shall not be covered by buying an Apple Pencil, but by buying an iPad (and a Apple Pencil)

The technical reason is important, though. If it was totally free I suspect they’d allow it to function, but it doesn’t… so burdening the 200M iPhones with the additional cost of the pencil hardware is a trade off not worth taking. Just like Samsung not “allowing” S-pen to work on most of the phones since adding the digitizer element would be a silly cost adder, especially for their super cheap phones.

It's a decision of product proposition, and Apple decided that the Pencil use-case shall support iPad sales and not be cannibalized by the iPhone.

They also decided for a while that all their premium iPhones shall have "Force Touch", an entirely unique display technology only for iPhones to sense pressure without the potential of additional accessory sales.

These are all valid decisions. They are not a charity, they operate to maximize the profit they can gain from each customer.

The iPad has the big "issue" of barely needing to be replaced with new models, as most use-cases are consumption-oriented and there are no real disrupting sales-driving requirements for iPad media consumption.

So the Pencil was created to drive the proposition towards Media CREATION, because people would buy a new, more-expensive iPad then and requirements for that segment are constantly increasing (better pencils, lower latency, more-demanding apps).

Also in the past year: iPhone increases focus on Media recording with more-complex video features, iPad is tagging along with demanding Media processing use-cases

Re: Apple must open iPadOS to sideloading within 6 months, EU says

#336

Post by skydhash »

Rinzler89 wrote: post #280
skydhash wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree with your use case, doing nothing most of the time is how those devices last day long on a battery and can run without a fan. My MBA get toasty when I OCR a pdf, I cannot imagine a phone on a sustained load.

>doing nothing most of the time is how those devices last day long on a battery But It will run down the battery only for me, not for you. Why do you care about how I want use my battery life? You don't have to do what I do, with your own phone. You can just keep using like a regular phone if that's all you want. Me having more freedom with my own device, does not reduce your freedoms you have with your own device. I…

> You can just keep using like a regular phone if that's all you want. Me having more freedom with my own device, does not reduce your freedoms you have with your own device.

I was just pointing at an aspect of how these devices are engineered. In fact, I jailbroke my first iPhone and spent years running with a rooted and modded Android device. So, be my guest...

> Otherwise what's the point of all that technological progress of M* chips

Showing that ARM is a viable computation platform? I'm not particularly enamored of the Apple ecosystem. It's great for what I use them for and awful for anything else. Reverse-engineering is an option, but I prefer focusing my efforts on more hackable platforms for my tinkering. Unless the law mandates openness, I'm not seeing Apple's stance changing.

Re: Apple must open iPadOS to sideloading within 6 months, EU says

#337

Post by immibis »

chongli wrote: post #301
immibis wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What can it do that other ones can't? Integration with Apple's walled garden is the most common complaint.

It's the UI. It is designed from the ground up for touch. People who like iPadOS do not like Windows Surface tablets for that exact reason. A desktop UI that's been shoehorned into a tablet is not as good as a purpose-built touch UI.

The two tablet genders: iPad, and Windows Surface. It's a shame no other giant tech company ever created one that has exactly the combination of attributes you asked for.

Re: Apple must open iPadOS to sideloading within 6 months, EU says

#338

Post by talldayo »

troupo wrote: post #285
nla wrote: post #238

Apple should walk away from the communism of the EU.

EU: Hey, competition is good for capitalism actually. Randos on the internet: EU is communism

Look at all the wonderful ways American citizens flourish now that basic public systems and protocols have been privatized! Life is great here, provided you're paid well.

Wait, you're not paid well and got laid off by hand-wringing executives that went cagey when SVB collapsed? C-clearly the problem is not enough investment in Big-Tech then! How will anyone be able to meaningfully disrupt other businesses now that basic consumer protections exist?!

So on and so forth until the $AAPL in your 401k shrinks to a size that you no longer feel embarrassed calling them out.

Re: Apple must open iPadOS to sideloading within 6 months, EU says

#339

Post by fingerlocks »

rcarmo wrote: post #330
fingerlocks wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably you work in tech. Every employer I’ve ever had will reimburse my personal dev account fee as an educational expense. Have you tried asking?

I work at Microsoft. Next question :)

Then you definitely get a free apple developer account.

Re: Apple must open iPadOS to sideloading within 6 months, EU says

#340

Post by walterbell »

rickdeckard wrote: post #210
walterbell wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just imagine how much more versatile the iPad Pro would be if only you could run Linux VMs on it After installing https://ish.app for Alpine Linux emulation on iPad, one immediately comes up with use cases, even though it's excruciatingly slow. Hopefully Apple opens up the imminent M3 iPad Pros to allow macOS and Linux VMs, even if the feature is initially price segmented to devices with extra RAM. The iPad 4:3 hig…

As long as the majority of the target group keeps buying MacBooks AND iPads, I doubt that Apple has an incentive to cannibalize its own product line. They are well-aware of this, visible from the fact that they never bothered to add a touch panel or Pen-support to any MacBook, or make the Watch a standalone device: Customers wanting this either buy the devices individually anyway, or wouldn't be willing to hand over…

> Just imagine that Apple's view of the "iPad Pro with MacOS" demographic are customers who purchased a 1600 USD MacBook and a 1000 USD iPad. Is the "iPad with MacOS" able to replace either of those? Would they be able to charge 2600 USD for that device and sell comparable volumes?

"iPad with MacOS VM" is technically adjacent to "iPad with Linux VM", since both make use of hardware nested virtualization support that is present on Apple M* processors. Good performance/watt Linux on Arm will launch in a month on Microsoft/HP/Dell/Lenovo/etc laptops and tablets with Qualcomm-Nuvia (ex-Apple) Snapdragon Elite X.

If Apple opens up Linux VMs on iPad (as a side effect of opening MacOS VMs), they can keep some users entirely within the Apple walled garden, similar to Microsoft's introduction of WSL on Windows. If they allow defections to Nuvia hardware, it can expand to Macbooks Pros, given the Qualcomm roadmap for AI silicon on laptops, co-funded by billions of automotive pipeline.

Those who already purchased two Apple devices have already given their money to Apple. They won't do it again, since iPads are already overpowered for the artificially constrained use cases. If new iPads with extra memory/storage allow VMs, that's net new revenue above the $1500 price point. We'll find out next week.

Post reply on HN