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The App Store was always authoritarian

infrequently.org

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Re: The App Store was always authoritarian

#41

Post by clutter55561 »

Well written, but its starting point seems to be “Apple used to be force for good”. — It is a corporation. It wants your money. This is not new. This is not any different from Lilly (Mounjaro), or Google, or any other, er… corporation.

The idea that a CEO will stand up to his democratically elected dictator is absurd. Why should he, when the dictator is merely implementing the policies he said he would during the campaign and still got elected? Why should he make himself and his company and his shareholders martyrs?

Because many people hold Apple to higher standards, that is why.

Re: The App Store was always authoritarian

#42

Post by parlortricks »

jiggawatts wrote: post #35

I just want to remind people that the alternative to authority is anarchy. No, not the utopian kind, Star Trek style. Think: Mad Max. I’m trying to communicate with relatives of my partner while on holiday. We have iPhones, they all have Androids. We asked them to install “ChatGPT” because its voice mode is shockingly good at near-real-time translation. When I type “ChatGPT” into the Apple App Store, the top hit is……

Seems like the app stores could just seperate into App Store Recommended and Community apps. Then you keep both but the app store vetted ones are top always.

Re: The App Store was always authoritarian

#44

Post by dewey »

mycocola wrote: post #32

Maybe it's not a great idea to allow a company to decide what software users can run, and I am inclined to believe that Murphy's Law will apply. Ultimately, software is freedom of speech.

I get that point as a person who frequents HN, but for many regular people that’s probably a net positive. People would install random apps or browser extensions just to gain an advantage in some Facebook click came.

Having some kind of hidden “I know what I’m doing” mode would make sense, but would probably defeated the same way as “I’ll teach you how to open browser console” to paste some command exploits.

Re: The App Store was always authoritarian

#45

Post by schoen »

shafiemoji wrote: post #40
mycocola wrote: post #32

Maybe it's not a great idea to allow a company to decide what software users can run, and I am inclined to believe that Murphy's Law will apply. Ultimately, software is freedom of speech.

I never thought about this topic to have an opinion on this, but this is the best take for sure!

The "software is speech" idea was popularized partly by being used (successfully) as an argument in litigation about U.S. software export controls.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_as_speech

(It was later partly rejected by other courts in the DMCA anticircumvention context.)

This argument doesn't imply that companies have to help you publish your software, because they might be entitled to some kind of editorial control over which speech they do or don't distribute. But it does at least imply that the stakes of such control are very high and that free speech norms may be implicated by them!

Re: The App Store was always authoritarian

#46

Post by slightlyoff »

clutter55561 wrote: post #41

Well written, but its starting point seems to be “Apple used to be force for good”. — It is a corporation. It wants your money. This is not new. This is not any different from Lilly (Mounjaro), or Google, or any other, er… corporation. The idea that a CEO will stand up to his democratically elected dictator is absurd. Why should he, when the dictator is merely implementing the policies he said he would during the cam…

Author here. You seem to have missed the bleedingly obvious point that responsibilities are a function of scale.

Nothing you allege was missed, and indeed it was considered at length in the longer series on these topics:

https://infrequently.org/series/browser-choice-must-matter/

Re: The App Store was always authoritarian

#47

Post by panstromek »

jiggawatts wrote: post #35

I just want to remind people that the alternative to authority is anarchy. No, not the utopian kind, Star Trek style. Think: Mad Max. I’m trying to communicate with relatives of my partner while on holiday. We have iPhones, they all have Androids. We asked them to install “ChatGPT” because its voice mode is shockingly good at near-real-time translation. When I type “ChatGPT” into the Apple App Store, the top hit is……

I partially agree that the authority has its use and that restricting the freedom to publish apps in some way is reasonable to prevent problems.

The problem with Apple (and to a lesser extent Google) is that it goes way further than that. It dictates what technologies you can use, it dictates a ton of specific rules for how your app should behave, it gatekeeps your bug fixes, it takes an absolutely obnoxious share of your revenue while providing just bare minimum service, with decades old bugs you have to workaround. Many of those things also makes the service worse for their users - it really feels like as a developer for their platform, you're in a hostile relationship with them, and pay for it.

Re: The App Store was always authoritarian

#48

Post by mycocola »

jiggawatts wrote: post #35

I just want to remind people that the alternative to authority is anarchy. No, not the utopian kind, Star Trek style. Think: Mad Max. I’m trying to communicate with relatives of my partner while on holiday. We have iPhones, they all have Androids. We asked them to install “ChatGPT” because its voice mode is shockingly good at near-real-time translation. When I type “ChatGPT” into the Apple App Store, the top hit is……

- Mad Max is not a great example of anarchy, as the last couple of movies featured a government led by an autocrat (haven't seen the other ones)

- The Play Store being bad does not mean the App Store is not also bad

- How do you know most of the world likes the authority of the App Store? Is it not more likely that most of the world are ignorant of its rules, and assumes a free and open marketplace?

Re: The App Store was always authoritarian

#49

Post by [deleted] »

jiggawatts wrote: post #35

I just want to remind people that the alternative to authority is anarchy. No, not the utopian kind, Star Trek style. Think: Mad Max. I’m trying to communicate with relatives of my partner while on holiday. We have iPhones, they all have Androids. We asked them to install “ChatGPT” because its voice mode is shockingly good at near-real-time translation. When I type “ChatGPT” into the Apple App Store, the top hit is……

[deleted]

Re: The App Store was always authoritarian

#50

Post by slightlyoff »

troupo wrote: post #37
slightlyoff wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> It's something we create organically inside communities of shared democratic commitments (e.g., Blink) Blink is bot a "shared democratic community". As evidenced by the amount of Chrome-only APIs pushed into it. And you were very okay and completely silent about it while you worked there, and likely pushed quite a few of your own. Well, you're still fine with it as you call it "a community of democratic commitments…

[flagged]
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