811–820 of 1001 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What about Steam, and why not? What if I don’t want to instal Epic’s store but still play Fortnite? Where is my “user choice”?
Buy a different game from another developer.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The wider context around the specific issues can still be useful in deciding what's "best" (distinct from "right"). EG: look at the antitrust case Apple lost over eBook pricing. The rules said they should lose in order to ensure a fair market for eBooks, a minute's consideration of the wider context said that if they lost Amazon would suck up the entire market. Which it did. The net result, even if narrowly within th…
No, the rules say organizing a price fixing ring is illegal. The result of which was literally to simultaneously raise prices for consumers across all platforms. It's particularly ironic in this case because the whole point of the exercise for Apple was to increase prices so they could still charge their extortionate 30%. Amazon wasn't remotely that greedy.
Apple had only a a small market share at the time. Publishers could have said, nah, we are happy with Amazon, and refused to agree to Apple’s terms. This is about as clear a free market as one gets, that it became an antitrust issue shows how crazytown antitrust law has become.
This was attractive to Publishers because they were terrified of an Amazon monopoly. Amazon selling ebooks at cost did nothing for Publishers long term because it was killing other ebook competitors. This offered a viable competitor to be an ebook outlet.
Instead the misguided Justice department and a judge made Apple back down and what do we have now? Exactly what publishers feared, an Amazon monopoly.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you think of what a bad application can do to a user when side loading but is impossible to do when Apple reviews it, If I am a bad actor I can submit an app for review and activate an evil mode after the application is approved. Maybe we can stop pretending that the lock is in place to protect the users, most Android users do not root their devices or install random evil applications and then complain to Google…
Sure totally! With sideloading allowed, an application/appstore that is actually a trojan horse could request permissions once to "download X" where X is innocuous. Later the trojan auto-downloads other applications to your phone to mine bitcoin, run a bot net, etc. Basically selling your hardware, bandwidth and battery life to the highest bidder. With sideloading, alternate APIs could be scraped together into a "new…
The thing is nobody would force the normal users to side load things, the number of applications for Android that are not in the store is small and I think only Fortnite was one with popularity and the number of people sideloading it was not that big.
Device freedom is a must. Any device should be completely controllable by the end user. There's two parts to this to me: app stores and the data collected by the devices. Users should have the freedom to install any software on their devices, period. Users should also have the freedom to stop all data collection by these devices. This applies to all electronics--video game consoles, TVs, printers, who knows what else…
> Device freedom is a must. Any device should be completely controllable by the end user. I have the choice of buying a completely controllable android device if I want to install mystery apps willy-nilly. I'm not interested in that, and there are millions like me. I want a locked-down device that keeps developers in check. This situation is much like the browser nightmares of the past, where Firefox users complained…
Not really relevant to your point, but Chrome was legitimately faster than Firefox for a long time. It wasn't just extension bloat, V8 was a huge leap in JS speed and Chrome optimized the hell out of rendering. Firefox wasn't able to bridge that gap until their recent Quantum initiative.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're right! I disagree that the perfectly balanced system is OSX but overall I agree iPhones should have better "hack-ability". As I've posted elsewhere: I agree, Apple should make it easier to boot non-iOS iPhones. Even provide some tools to write custom OSes for the iPhone hardware. However, Apple should only provide that service to the registered adult owner of the device, in person at an Apple store after deliv…
> I agree, Apple should make it easier to boot non-iOS iPhones. Even provide some tools to write custom OSes for the iPhone hardware. However, Apple should only provide that service to the registered adult owner of the device, in person at an Apple store after delivering the caveats that the device will no longer be supported by Apple (regardless of resale) and any warranty is void. this kinda misses the point. I don…
If you want to keep iOS as well... at that point, I do feel Apple is also in its right to remove all trademarked content from the phone running an iOS-like OS. AppStore, applications, remove all reference to words like "iPhone". So it would be a very bare-bones iOS-like.
Because otherwise it could negatively impact their brand. Their brand is built on the premise they build amazing products for customers who want those products. If someone looks at your "modified, uncurated iPhone" and thinks it "feels janky" or "poor UX" or "bad battery life" or ..."" that could result in that person not buying/recommending an iPhone.
Apple clearly values its brand highly and I can see why they would want their brand to be distanced from the type of device you would like.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The question from a principle standpoint is - can a company create an area where trust / safety / security are prioritized. T Developers no doubt disagree with this, they have created a web that is filled with crap. Let's be 100% clear about that. Spam calls via voip, spam into email, ddos floods of every sort imaginable, impossible to unsubscribe, cramming and slamming on subscription renewals and the list goes on.…
To keep the continuity of discussion, I assume that this comment was posted here because my top level comment was in part a reply to your (temp667's) comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24579860 I appreciate the attempt to connect this to the anti-trust suit, but I don't see this as a good justification for why your original critique is relevant for a few reasons: - Many of the practices in your origin…
There is a simple solution, and it’s not misguided delusional antitrust talk. It’s buying the other type of smartphone that is 85% of unit sales world wide.
All the arguments about what company is most evil entirely miss the point. You don't make a decision on a specific issue based on what company you like more, you base it on who is right on the specific issue. From an ethical perspective that's what having a codified rule of laws is all about. Everyone get's the same rules no matter how much you like them. You don't arbitrarily punish people for doing things you don't…
The question from a principle standpoint is - can a company create an area where trust / safety / security are prioritized. T Developers no doubt disagree with this, they have created a web that is filled with crap. Let's be 100% clear about that. Spam calls via voip, spam into email, ddos floods of every sort imaginable, impossible to unsubscribe, cramming and slamming on subscription renewals and the list goes on.…
Other than anti-trust and similar laws, there is nothing stopping Apple from eventually creeping it onto the web. It's "their" device after all.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
My comment was not about a particular company, nor was it advocating for any specific policy. It was merely illustrating why equating smartphones with consoles is foolish and lazy. >Basing policy on the current ephemeral norms rather than consistently applied principles seems ill-advised. I agree. What "consistently applied principle" did you interpret my comment to be against?
> I agree. What "consistently applied principle" did you interpret my comment to be against? The principle that would be applied when considering game consoles. In other words, it's not "foolish" or "lazy", rather it is what consistently applying a principle looks like in practice. The perceived difference between user behavior or criticality on big glass app-based smartphones vs consoles is ephemeral.
What "principle" is that, specifically? I genuinely don't understand.
Is it my usage of disparaging terms? If so, that's fair. If not, can you articulate why the idea put forth that it's useless to compare consoles and smartphones is somehow violating a "first principle".
What first principle does that idea violate?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"They want to be part of a small exclusive group of store owners who get to share in the benefits of Apple’s investments" False. Epic made very clear, early on, IN THEIR COURT FILING that their case was an attempt to legally force Apple and Google to allow for third party app stores to exist equitably on iOS and Android. Does that benefit Epic substantially? Of course it does. They want a mobile Epic Games Store on b…
Nothing I said is false. Third party stores will not exist equitably on iOS and Android because there don’t exist equitably anywhere else. I said a small group, not just Epic. That group would be made up of the usual suspects - Epic, Amazon, Google, Facebook, various other TenCent properties etc. Nothing about it would make it either developer friendly, nor consumer friendly.
That doesn't sound too bad to me from either side TBH. As a developer, it would be useful to have a choice between multiple publishers with the advantage of only needing to deal with one at a time instead of three. I also think competition in app stores would spur a bunch of innovation.
As a consumer with an Android phone, a Windows PC, and an iPad as a tablet, the idea of buying all my stuff from one company's app store and having the licensing work across all 3 devices is extremely appealing.
I think one of the biggest fears of Apple, Google, etc. is that it's very possible someone will come along and build a better app store with better policies for both developers and consumers.
Here's a concrete example of "better". Judging by this [1] apps in iOS 14 can specify a DoH resolver to use for DNS.
> Apps will be able to specify a DoH resolver that will override the DNS resolver set by DHCP or RA for queries made from their app.
Guess what that means? Apple is going to let developers override MY choice as a network admin and DoH is going to be used for un-blockable ads. Why should they be able to do that? I would absolutely buy into an app store that forbid that behavior and forced apps to observe DHCP settings over app settings.
I'd also be fine with an app store that didn't force the use of sign in with Apple or Apple Pay. And that's where the problem is for Apple. Forcing developers to use Apple technologies isn't benefitting anyone but Apple. You might argue that it's better for consumers, but if those are features wanted by developers' customers, developers will add them without being forced to.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do their motivations invalidate the argument?
Absolutely. I like the status quo and I'm not eager to find out what my new world will be like when the companies signaling that they don't really care about consumers have the power instead of Apple.