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

Apple vs the Law

formularsumo.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

441–450 of 450 posts

Re: Apple vs the Law

#441

Post by alt227 »

const_cast wrote: post #330
alt227 wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO Apple have started to do the same. Their software is consistently getting buggier with worse user experiences, along with their reputation. Tech savy windows users that are trying out Apple are finding that it very much doesnt 'Just Work' anymore, and that sentiment is starting to creep out more and more. Take a look at Linuses recent evaluation of macOS by using only a Mac for a solid 2 months. His conclusion is…

To be fair to us, Linus is wildly incompetent when it comes to operating systems and software as a whole. His metric for "just works", like many users, is "works like Windows". Such a metric is inherently flawed because any piece of software will always come up second-best to Windows. When he did his Linux experiment stuff, he approached everything with a Windows context. And, when things didn't work the same, he did…

You should probably have watched the video if you were going to comment about it.

Re: Apple vs the Law

#442

Post by alt227 »

827a wrote: post #369
alt227 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More people are getting annoyed with Apple over these issues, and they are bleeding into the mainstream media more frequently. I have a few die hard Apple friends (Non-professionals) that have recently got so frustrated with being pushed into corners that they have given up the fruity ecosystem altogether. In no way am I suggesting that Apple are on the way out, but they have definitely started to turn the same corne…

I know two extremely rural, middle of nowhere, normie people who switched from the iPhone to Android after Joe Rogan's interview with Zuckerberg. And, more in my tech circles, I've seen someone switch over to Android about once a year now for two or three years. In the other direction, my brother keeps saying "yeah maybe I'll switch the family over to iPhones [from Samsung]. I guess they're more secure". He's been sa…

Unfortunately your link is broken, which is a shame as I was interested in reading it.

Re: Apple vs the Law

#443

Post by tempodox »

msgodel wrote: post #434
tempodox wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's really funny is that I'm getting a working BT connection between Debian and the headset, but there's still no audio. Presumably I'm missing some driver, but I don't know which.

I think rather pulseaudio either isn't configured correctly or you haven't authorized the connection (Bluetooth devices will pair, then connect, then you have to authorize them. In bluetoothctl you get an asynchronous yes/no prompt, I don't know what this looks like in the GUI bluetooth management tools.) Generally drivers on Linux are all kind of shipped together. Unless you have some really niche device that's so r…

Thanks for that tip, I'll look into it!

Re: Apple vs the Law

#444

Post by troupo »

FinnLobsien wrote: post #106
Y-bar wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EU has basically said that it's better to have a handful medium-sized companies in competition for customers than one or two mega-corps owning and dictating the market. And to resolve that they employ two things, one is the DMA/DSA and similar laws which mostly takes effect when your company reaches a certain large market penetration, the other is standardisations such as the Radio Equipment Directive (think "USB…

> The EU has basically said that it's better to have a handful medium-sized companies in competition for customers than one or two mega-corps owning and dictating the market. And to resolve that they employ two things, one is the DMA/DSA and similar laws which mostly takes effect when your company reaches a certain large market penetration, the other is standardisations such as the Radio Equipment Directive (think "U…

> The problem is that you pass DMA,

Doesn't apply to your medium-sized company

> DSA,

Basically says "customers have the right to not be profiled and are entitled to not be shown algorithmic feeds"

> GDPR

Costs about 0 to implement as long as you only user data as intended, and not sending it off to 2763 "partners" who "respect your privacy".

What "insane regulatory burden" are you talking about?

> can fight for years in court and if they have to pay a few billion, so be it.

The only reason these poor poor innocent trillion-dollar supranational corporations fight these laws in court is because they really don't want anyone competing with them, or to respect such minor things as user privacy. Not because the laws are somehow bad or complicated.

Even DMA, the most complex of them all, can be understood by anyone.

Re: Apple vs the Law

#445

Post by interpol_p »

msgodel wrote: post #439
interpol_p wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, who knows if the EU would see it that way. They may require Apple to provide first-party APIs that are equivalent in power to what they offer developers who submit via the App Store. Either way, my post was pointing out that it is non-trivial engineering effort to do this, and I think that's still the case. Hell, just releasing my own personal code as open source — auditing it, decoupling libraries, removing in…

Yeah I just have a hard time feeling sympathetic for Apple. They played the game pathologically and these are the consequences. If they wanted sympathy they should have tried to get along with everyone else.

I don't have sympathy for them. I just happen to agree that it's a lot of engineering work to comply now.

Perhaps if they had opened parts of their infrastructure much earlier, they wouldn't be legally compelled to do it now, and have to invest significant resources to do so.

Re: Apple vs the Law

#446

Post by troupo »

jjaksic wrote: post #310
Tainnor wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These companies may be smaller than FAANG, but I also feel that if BASF disappeared overnight it would have a larger impact on the world than if Facebook disappeared. HN is sometimes incredibly biased towards consumer tech.

Define "impact on the world". Facebook has massive impact (arguably net-negative). I haven't heard of BASF since 5.25 floppies, though I'm sure they produce some very important things. Did you mean positive impact? Physical impact?

> I haven't heard of BASF since 5.25 floppies

Oh, you know, it's only largest chemical producer in the world. Oh, I'm sure they produce some very important things, but it can't hold a candle to Facebook.

Re: Apple vs the Law

#447

Post by moontear »

oaiey wrote: post #172
moontear wrote: post #111

I get the spirit of the DMA. I get the whole designation of gatekeepers and do agree Apple is a closed ecosystem. What I don't understand are the implementation details and I always hear "it is complex". Let's stick with earbuds or watches, where the argument (e.g. Garmin) is that they can't create functionally equal devices to AirPod / Apple Watch, because not all APIs are open. I understand this point, since yes, A…

> Assume everything is open now - wouldn't that create chaos? Yeah, but equal chaos to all. In the end the achievable experience for Samsung and Apple earbuds need to be the same. It does not need to be the best one. If Apple wants to have the best experience, they should create for each improvement a new API version and tell it in reasonable advance to their competitors to allow them to equal the playing field.

That's a valid point. Equal chaos to all I haven't thought about. It would still mean that Apple would dictate the terms of any changes, but it would open up the possibility to implement changes for everyone.

Re: Apple vs the Law

#448

Post by moontear »

twoodfin wrote: post #155
moontear wrote: post #111

I get the spirit of the DMA. I get the whole designation of gatekeepers and do agree Apple is a closed ecosystem. What I don't understand are the implementation details and I always hear "it is complex". Let's stick with earbuds or watches, where the argument (e.g. Garmin) is that they can't create functionally equal devices to AirPod / Apple Watch, because not all APIs are open. I understand this point, since yes, A…

You put your finger on it. And Apple is responding by not shipping features into the EU that it believes it will be forced to “standardize” and document for others’ use, like iPhone mirroring to Mac.

"forced to standardize" - I really haven't thought about it this way, but then it totally makes sense for Apple to cripple their products in the EU (and other markets with similar requirements) making it in turn a worse experience for all consumers.

Not what the EU intended, since this is supposed to be pro-consumer. Ultimately may lead to less sales since the products maybe be worse without all features.

Re: Apple vs the Law

#449

Post by dan-robertson »

NotPractical wrote: post #430
dan-robertson wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iPhones are a much more juicy target compared to macs.

No they aren't. They sync almost all of your data across the both of them; that's touted as a benefit of the Apple Ecosystem. Your juicy iPhone data is directly accessible via the linked Mac. A better argument is that Macs are less popular and thus less targeted.

I dispute the data syncing somewhat: I think my phone somehow ‘knows’ more eg online banking credentials than my Mac. But also the different population sizes is the main reason that iPhones are juicier targets. I don’t think you’re really disagreeing with me. Perhaps I should have said that iPhone exploits are more valuable than Mac exploits.

Re: Apple vs the Law

#450

Post by sorrythanks »

gausswho wrote: post #342
sorrythanks wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you hold down the space bar you can use that to slide the cursor around :)

Thank you, I had no idea. When did this feature land?

I don't know! I remember where I was standing when i realized you could do it, by accident! so i know it's been there since at least 2018, because the building whose smoking area i was standing in got knocked down the next year ^^
Post reply on HN