I for one am excited at the prospect that I might be able to install Firefox with ublock origin on my iPhone.
What, you can't?
All ios browsers are safari reskins
EU tells Apple to open everything up to its rivals
961–970 of 1001 posts
Re: EU tells Apple to open everything up to its rivals
#962Ironically, I believe all this scrutiny on Apple really started with degraded developer relations and their 30% take on in app sales. If they had invested in better dev relations and dropped their 30% take (instead of coming up with all the weird ways you have to qualify for lower rates, which don't cover all scenarios), I don't think there would have been enough noise from below on this.
Apple should follow Google's lead and drop to 15%:
https://techcrunch.com/2021/03/16/google-play-drops-commissi...
Oh wait...
Re: EU tells Apple to open everything up to its rivals
#963Earlier quoted context omitted.
I downvoted this because you're ignoring iMessage. The fact that Apple purposefully not only gives Android users a shitty experience when communicating with iOS users, but also ensures that the presence of an Android user can break the experience for everyone else in a group chat (e.g. degraded videos now for everyone) in iMessage is a blatant attempt to abuse their monopoly power (in the US at least where iMessage d…
I suggest you stop drinking the Google Koolaid, they’re not being honest. > The fact that Apple purposefully not only gives Android users a shitty experience when communicating with iOS users You mean utilizing the standardized SMS and MMS protocols? How is that purposeful? Just because they refuse to rollout iMessage on Android? > but also ensures that the presence of an Android user can break the experience for eve…
This will continue to be a problem as long as infinite throwaway accounts are permissible. "Assume good faith" falls apart when the commenter is so obviously lying for fake internet points. Mods are asleep.
Re: EU tells Apple to open everything up to its rivals
#964Apple should open up the boot loader and let you install an alternate OS. Can’t get any more open than that. But I think we will find people actually want access to Apple’s audience and dev tools for free. I’m loathe to stump for megacorp like Apple, but in the same vein as iMessage, I don’t think we should drag iOS down to Android’s level just because Googles messaging strategy has been a turd for a decade.
> I don’t think we should drag iOS down to Android’s level just because Googles messaging strategy has been a turd for a decade.
Wdym? Google Messages supports RCS, which has been a thing for a while, it's also an open standard. Apple still doesn't support it, they're stuck with SMS.
Re: EU tells Apple to open everything up to its rivals
#965Earlier quoted context omitted.
This reads like a modern retelling of the Stockholm syndrome and I cringe at this prevalent attitude on HN. If you do not have choice on the platform, you are in a prison. That is why it's called jailbreaking .
Are you or folks that take this same tact marching on Microsoft and Sony with pitchforks to open up the OS and hardware for Xbox and PlayStation?
A phone is not a game console, and the opening of the hardware would be good either way.
Re: EU tells Apple to open everything up to its rivals
#966Earlier quoted context omitted.
The "protectionist taxes" are the way the U.E. give a chance to local corps against exported of slave-labor, which two of the world's biggest exporters are quite fond of. It doesn't matter that they don't call it slave labor locally, label don't change the facts. Seems more than justified to me.
I hope you're not referring to the US and H1B workers, because if so, wait until you learn how hard it is to immigrate to the EU and how bad the situation of immigrant workers is here. These people would love to have something like H1B available here in EU. As an EU citizen, I feel very bad about the stuff we do to immigrants, and I hate how there's a class of unequal not-citizens among us, doing the dirtiest jobs th…
I'm talking about 1% of the adult population being in prison, I'm talking about the 13th amendment and slavery, and I'm talking about 'for profit' prisons.
Any country that has incentives (here they are economics and race related) toward increasing prison population is one a citizen should be very wary of.
Depriving someone of their liberties should ALWAYS be a significant cost for the government doing it.
I'd recommend a stop around here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_labor_in_the_United_Stat...
Re: EU tells Apple to open everything up to its rivals
#967Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, as alternate stores will change the experience for everybody. I download 0 new apps per year, but I use WhatsApp, Outlook, and Google Maps. Today, I get them all from one store - one password to remember, one credit card to have, one stupid set of "security questions" to forget the answers. Tomorrow, Facebook AppStore will be the only place to get WhatsApp, Microsoft AppStore will be the only place to get Outlook…
I severely doubt that big corps will force side loading their app in iPhone when the easier experience is the iOS AppStore. Same reason why all those apps you mentioned are in the android store and not just apk downloads from their site.
We don't know how this will play out, and probably instead of sideloading the new stores will be downloaded from the app store.
So say you want WhatsApp on your phone.
Today: AppStore - get WhatsApp.
Tomorrow: AppStore - get Facebook store - start Facebook store - get WhatsApp.
The power Facebook (also, Microsoft and Google) have over the users of their apps may be so great that they could pull it.
Small companies? No chance in hell.
So actually, this move might put Apple (and Apple users) into a weaker situation while empowering FB/MS/GOOG and having no effect whatsoever on small app developers.
Re: EU tells Apple to open everything up to its rivals
#968Re: EU tells Apple to open everything up to its rivals
#969Earlier quoted context omitted.
I just don't really understand how allowing side loading on the platform will "fix" anything for consumers. The thinking seems entirely shallow, there isn't even any consideration for how these 3rd party stores will handle permission bits to protect the user's data. It just seems something that would be really good for large companies like Spotify, and suck for small developers who will still need to rely on the App…
> The thinking seems entirely shallow, there isn't even any consideration for how these 3rd party stores will handle permission bits to protect the user's data. this is a feature for the companies pushing for it - this is literally the entire point, in fact! facebook wants to be able to use sideloading to push this stuff again: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/01/facebook-and-google-... for the consumers pushing…
We keep seeing more and more evidence that even large "trusted" developers and publishers are trying to exploit this market. We saw it with both Meta and Google in the certificates fiasco you linked, but also even in small ways like how news and games publishers aim to improperly charge customers: New York Times and Epic.
Even looking at Spotify, they never once passed on the 15% fee savings that apply after a one-year subscription. Yet they constantly decry these fees as a reason they can't lower prices – and now Spotify is 100% a reader app, and they still can't turn a profit.
Meanwhile at the same time, what have we seen:
1. Apple reduce fees. New developers and developers who receive less than $1M per year are at a 15% rate. Subscriptions that run over a year are also halved to the 15% rate.
2. Apple providing developers more opportunities to challenge rejections.
3. Apple providing developers even the opportunity to challenge the rules themselves.
4. Report after report (E.g. Nokia's annual Threat Intelligence Report) pointing the prevalence of Malware not on security holes, but on side-loading.(1)
More simply if we want to play Occam's razor with this and say it's all about the money: Then Apple's interests lay in protecting and enhancing their platforms because their lion's share of profit comes from device sales, they could reduce app store fees to 0% and while that wouldn't be fair (and likely anti-competitive) it wouldn't destroy Apple's business. While for the majority of the other players have profits come, almost solely, from ads/user data. To such an extent that limiting the flow of this data has had significant effects on their company revenue.
(1) https://www.nokia.com/networks/security-portfolio/threat-int... (see pages 13 and 15 for more detail.)
Re: EU tells Apple to open everything up to its rivals
#970Earlier quoted context omitted.
It won't be an alternative store, the game will get pulled from the app store. Now, despite the fact that I bought an iOS device to avoid having to deal with shitty third parties, I'm forced to use the epic store and whatever else.
yes, zuckerberg is literally holding a gun to you head, "INSTALL META OR ELSE!"
Don't know about elsewhere but in Sweden companies, and what's worse government funded organisations, outsource and demand the use of services by Google, Facebook etc. Otherwise you'll be treated like a second class citizen.