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The App Store was always authoritarian

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Re: The App Store was always authoritarian

#91

Post by lioeters »

ffsm8 wrote: post #77
nozzlegear wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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? This is exactly what Apple did when they stood their ground against the FBI in the case of the San Bernardino shooter though. Of cou…

From a spectators perspective I'd say they called the presidents bluff back then - but it's not bluffing right now... So if they try that attitude with Trump, there is going to be catastrophic fallout. Hence their compliance.

It was made clear to the public in that dinner with tech CEOs, how they bent the knee, spoke sweet flattering words, and gave gifts to the naked king. That was some medieval theater, and they all knew if they upset the king, he will crush their wealth like a tower made of Lego bricks.

Re: The App Store was always authoritarian

#92

Post by NaomiLehman »

fnwbr wrote: post #88
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…

> Because many people hold Apple to higher standards, that is why. Not really; I'd have the same expectation of any other individual or company of the given size.

Right, but you wouldn't realistically expect any opposition from most companies. Apple sometimes opposed.

Re: The App Store was always authoritarian

#93

Post by cloverich »

mycocola wrote: post #58
dewey wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Just as a thought experiment: Governments could mandate banks to prevent their customers from spending beyond what'll go to rent/mortgage. It'd certainly prevent overdue or missed payments. Would that be a net positive, or would that prevent or slow people from learning fiscal responsibility and the benefits that go along with that?

I don't think it's a compelling example, because fiscal responsibility requires very little education. Detecting malware by comparison requires literal experts. I think a better comparison might be requiring regulation around investment vehicles to eg root out ponzi schemes. Whatever our success there is definite buy in for that.

Re: The App Store was always authoritarian

#94

Post by clutter55561 »

lioeters wrote: post #91
ffsm8 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a spectators perspective I'd say they called the presidents bluff back then - but it's not bluffing right now... So if they try that attitude with Trump, there is going to be catastrophic fallout. Hence their compliance.

It was made clear to the public in that dinner with tech CEOs, how they bent the knee, spoke sweet flattering words, and gave gifts to the naked king. That was some medieval theater, and they all knew if they upset the king, he will crush their wealth like a tower made of Lego bricks.

That, for me, was a turning point in the western society as well knew it.

Re: The App Store was always authoritarian

#95

Post by john01dav »

victorbjorklund wrote: post #38
john01dav wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not "their devices". I recently bought a house and the previous owner kept trying to influence what I did with it, and everyone -- even those in government who ultimately had to help enforce my ownership rights -- agreed with me that that was ridiculous and intolerable. When Apple, Samsung, or whoever else sells something it isn't their's anymore! They have no right to continued involvement in it! That's how sel…

Do they have any continued responsibility for it to not explode or break in other ways?

They have a responsibility to engineer it properly and to fix consequences of poor engineering, since they are selling something as capable of various features and presumably safe.

Re: The App Store was always authoritarian

#96

Post by noman-land »

jauntywundrkind wrote: post #89
willtemperley wrote: post #34

> Google is not creating moral distance between itself and Apple I laughed out loud at this. Google lost two antitrust lawsuits this year alone.

One of which only existed because Android was open source in the first place (but the app store was not). Something far more generous than most companies.

It's not generous, it's a calculated business decision no different than a drug dealer giving out hits for free.

Re: The App Store was always authoritarian

#98

Post by slightlyoff »

troupo wrote: post #81
slightlyoff wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Yes, you post this every time as if that absolves Chrome, or you, of shipping "standards" against objections from both Mozilla and Apple, or before consensus on APIs and capabilities, or before even having a spec that others can implement. To quote your article: "every vendor always ships "whatever it wants." Indeed, and Chrome ships constantly, recklessly and with hardly a lip service to the standards process. Your…

Let's try this again: was Apple wrong to ship Storage Access ahead of everyone else?

https://caniuse.com/mdn-api_document_requeststorageaccess

In the world you want, how should leadership in designs manifest when there isn't consensus? Should nothing ship? And who does that help?

Re: The App Store was always authoritarian

#99

Post by fsflover »

dewey wrote: post #75
brazukadev wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are not smart enough and need a big tech company to lead your life you can do it by yourself without thinking it's okay to subject the whole world to this duopoly.

You can very easily turn that argument around and say: if you are smart enough, use an operating system that doesn't babysit you and switch to Linux which is a very valid option.

I did switch to a GNU/Linux phone as a daily driver, but pressure from the duopoly still troubles me a lot.

Re: The App Store was always authoritarian

#100

Post by troupo »

slightlyoff wrote: post #98
troupo wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, you post this every time as if that absolves Chrome, or you, of shipping "standards" against objections from both Mozilla and Apple, or before consensus on APIs and capabilities, or before even having a spec that others can implement. To quote your article: "every vendor always ships "whatever it wants." Indeed, and Chrome ships constantly, recklessly and with hardly a lip service to the standards process. Your…

Let's try this again: was Apple wrong to ship Storage Access ahead of everyone else? https://caniuse.com/mdn-api_document_requeststorageaccess In the world you want, how should leadership in designs manifest when there isn't consensus? Should nothing ship? And who does that help?

Let's try this again:

Chrome ships dozens of APIs that it then advertises as fait accompli standards. Often when there's even no consensus on the shape of an API. Or worse (see WebHID which Chrome shipped literally without an actionable spec).

Did Safari ship requestStorageAccess in the same manner? If yes, yes it was wrong. It's not a trick question though you somehow think it is.

Again, and it's insane that I have to explain it to you, of all people: once something is shipped in the browser, it stays there forever because people end up using and depending on that feature. And for the past decade that is exponentially "whatever Chrome ships".

It's funny how you lament that Safari is somehow sabotaging standards processes when your former employer literally shits on the whole standards processes and just ships whatever it desires. Oh wait, in your mind it's good because "Blink has a rigorous process" (aka ship whatever our internal company turf wars need right now) and "Blink is a democratic process" (aka whatever Google decides ends up in the browser).

> In the world you want, how should leadership in designs manifest when there isn't consensus?

Ah yes. "Leadership". Justin Fangnani said it was "courage" when they shipped Constructible Stylesheets with no consensus on APIs and a trivially reproducible race condition in the spec just because Google-developed lit needed it. And then tried to gaslight everyone who didn't agree.

It's not leadership. It's a monopoly (or near-monopoly) browser doing whatever the hell it wants with utter disregard to anything or anyone.

Edit

> Should nothing ship? And who does that help?

Literally everyone. Many, many, many people have pointed it out on many occasions that just adding hundreds of new APIs per year to the platform doesn't much benefit the platform. Often you end up with badly designed badly specced APIs that need dozens of workarounds to fix while making the platform itself incomprehensibly complex.

Quirks Blog said it better than me: https://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2015/07/stop_pushin... and https://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2021/08/breaking_th...

In your world "leadership" somehow means "ship whatever whenever at neck breaking pace ä, who cares about consequences".

To quote Steve Jobs (whom you probably hate): "It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully... Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.".

Chrome's mottos seems to be "we don't take no for an answer, ship it"

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