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Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones

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Re: Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones

#61

Post by diggan »

cm2012 wrote: post #19
josefresco wrote: post #3

I have a very capable smartwatch and it's ridiculously bad how hobbled it is on iOS. I'm glad to see this article specifically highlight the issues, and how it's 100% Apple's intention to make non-Apple wearables on iOS terrible.

This is apple's modus operandi. Hobble competitors even if it's anti-customer. Fill the gap themselves for higher profits.

Don't forget the classic "Oh, that 3rd party app/feature is so popular, I bet we could build a identical/slightly less useful thing ourselves so people don't have to use other things than Apple software ever"

Re: Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones

#62

Post by holmesworcester »

echelon wrote: post #38
josefresco wrote: post #3

I have a very capable smartwatch and it's ridiculously bad how hobbled it is on iOS. I'm glad to see this article specifically highlight the issues, and how it's 100% Apple's intention to make non-Apple wearables on iOS terrible.

The ONLY answer is antitrust action from every major government. The trillion dollar companies are so massive that they are impinging upon every category of business that touches them. And they're so massive that their sinnew and tendrils touch everything under the sun. Mobile computing is de-facto owned by two companies. It's owned, tightly controlled like an authoritarian government, and heavily taxed. Compared wit…

I don't think we need any major government intervention.

What we need is a law that requires companies like Apple to allow their customers to install and run the software they wish, and provide external developers with the same OS features their internal teams have access to.

Europe and Brazil already have such laws, though they could go farther.

In the US we had this bill, which would have covered most of these issues and had bipartisan support: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_App_Markets_Act

Re: Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones

#63

Post by AnthonyMouse »

parsimo2010 wrote: post #33
bearjaws wrote: post #2

It's honestly amazing how Apple managed to dodge anti-trust in the United States. The fact you cannot build a competing watch is unacceptable and the idea that "well go build one for Android" is refusing to acknowledge that Apple is its own market in and of itself. Throw in the fact that even getting an app that isn't a game into the App store is not trivial, especially if it dares include some form of payment proces…

Obviously this is going to be up for debate, but in your comment you acknowledge that "go build one for Android" is an option. This is an indication that your complaint is not in Apple's behavior, but your regret that the competition sucks and it's not Apple's fault. Apple is not a market on their own from the perspective of smart phones and watches, every person making a purchasing decision has options (This is diff…

> It's not like anyone is suing Ford or Dodge for only making accessories that work on their own cars and trucks. It's not like anyone can legitimately complain that Ford is anticompetitive because they aren't making themselves compatible with Dodge oil filters.

You're conflating two different things here.

One is, are their oil filters compatible? That isn't a problem; they can be incompatible. They're often incompatible even with other vehicles from the same manufacturer. Larger engines need larger oil filters etc.

The other is, does the company prohibit compatibility? If a new company wants to make engines but not oil filters, so they make a car engine compatible with existing Ford oil filters, or someone wants to make oil filters for Fords even though they're not Ford, does Ford do anything to inhibit this? In general they do not, and if they did, that very much should be an antitrust violation.

Re: Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones

#64

Post by roamerz »

eddieroger wrote: post #30
roamerz wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With as much functionality as there is on an Apple Watch I can see how that would be huge endeavor to accomplish while maintaining the tight security and privacy model.

I think the devil is in the details of how iOS and watchOS interact. Instead of sending and receiving texts from iOS, watchOS is running messages and only sharing data. I imagine this pattern works a large amount of the time in Apple's benefit. They make a notification API available for anyone to use, they just choose not to do it. They also make it so the watch can use the phone's data, and this they do use, but als…

100% agree with those statements. It would be nice to have a more robust API and this more options but unless forced to I don’t see Apple doing that and honestly rightly so.

Re: Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones

#67

Post by TonyTrapp »

CharlesW wrote: post #24
film42 wrote: post #13

iOS wearable integrations are bad, but somehow Meta Ray-Bans are very good. Voice assist to start a call, send a text, read a notification, etc. Did Meta get special access to do this?

> Did Meta get special access to do this? Apple would never give Meta access to private APIs. Eric has access to everything that the Meta View app is doing.

We have seen competitors (big, well-known apps) do things on iOS that most definitely are not possible with public APIs. Either Apple willingfully provides access to these APIs to a select few companies, or they don't care that they reverse-engineer private APIs and then use them. If it's the latter, the competitor app was probably too big to be banned from the app store for this. Apple was unwilling to comment on the situation when we asked them.

Re: Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones

#68

Post by idle_zealot »

tehjoker wrote: post #44
echelon wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ONLY answer is antitrust action from every major government. The trillion dollar companies are so massive that they are impinging upon every category of business that touches them. And they're so massive that their sinnew and tendrils touch everything under the sun. Mobile computing is de-facto owned by two companies. It's owned, tightly controlled like an authoritarian government, and heavily taxed. Compared wit…

isnt it efficient though for these capabilities to exist? why not nationalize them instead and make them accountable to the public

IMO it makes sense to nationalize things that lend themselves to natural monopolies, or sectors where innovation has mostly dried up on account of maturity, where continued progress is largely driven by tax-funded research grants already. I'm not convinced that "computing" is such an industry, innovation seems dead there because of monopoly. In that case, they should be broken up to drive competition-fueled innovation, with careful supervision to monitor for and punish anti-consumer behavior, abuse of negative externalities, etc.

If it turns out that even then, 10-20 years from now the market is still making mostly glass/metal rectangles with the same feature set of today, then we can consider consolidating that productive capacity for the sake of efficiency.

Re: Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones

#69

Post by tehjoker »

jlkuester7 wrote: post #58
tehjoker wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

isnt it efficient though for these capabilities to exist? why not nationalize them instead and make them accountable to the public

Building and maintaining a functional marketplace (e.g. through common-sense anti-trust enforcement) is about more than just optimizing for a specific outcome...

i just don't get why it has to be a market, we need fairly priced and implemented capabilities not wasteful redundant implementations

Re: Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones

#70

Post by kelnos »

jjtheblunt wrote: post #7
bearjaws wrote: post #2

It's honestly amazing how Apple managed to dodge anti-trust in the United States. The fact you cannot build a competing watch is unacceptable and the idea that "well go build one for Android" is refusing to acknowledge that Apple is its own market in and of itself. Throw in the fact that even getting an app that isn't a game into the App store is not trivial, especially if it dares include some form of payment proces…

I think you’re overlooking Garmin who has a healthy business in smart watches and they’re compatible with Apple devices. Edit : more up to date and useful comments thankfully below

My wife (iPhone user) has a Garmin watch that a friend of ours (Android user) recommended. The friend's experience is much much better, with many more features that work. Apple is definitely intentionally crippling the third-party smartwatch experience.
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