Google is not charity, it's always good to remember that.
Google is not giving away the source code of Android for philanthropic reasons, it's just part of the business model, i.e. the process of money making to pay the employees and the shareholders.
Oh and Apple is definitely not putting arbitrary restrictions to anything, all the restrictions have a reason - that you might or might not agree to but definitely not random. In case you want to bypass Apple and run a code on your iPhone, you can do it by compiling it and installing it personally.
I think EU will investigate the companies that have large enough marketshare that they can abuse their position.
They're also "giving away" a smaller and smaller fraction of Android with each release. This article is four years old, but quite relevant: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/10/googles-iron-grip-on... A non-exclusive list of Android apps that are no longer open source: Camera, Gallery, Keyboard, Music.
In order to include any Google apps or use the Android trademark, you are required to include almost all Google apps and make no other apps default. Further, Google makes it substantially easier to license their apps if you join the Open Handset Alliance (OHA), which contractually prohibits you from building non-Google approved devices.
I definitely agree with you that Google isn't giving away the code for philanthropic reasons, though. I can't really feel bad for them for having to incentivize handset makers to do things that make Google even more money.
While this was true in the past, this hasn't been the case for a while if you want to build and run on your own personal device. There are some minor caveats, but if you want to compile and run an app locally on your device you don't need to pay Apple the $99 any more.
The idea that the version of Android that most people actually use is "open" is arguably a myth - when you look at what the "closed" parts of Android now include, it's a large amount of the feature set that actually matters to most ordinary consumers, and is often the "stick" Google uses to get OEM partners to follow the overarching vision for the platform.
One of the "minor caveats" is that the app only runs on your own device for max 1 week, after which it will have to be reinstalled via Xcode.
Which basically makes this useless even if all you wanted to do was run your own code on your own device. I have tried this for small apps I made for myself, but after re-installing 2-3 times, the annoyance was too high for me to continue.
In contrast, and while I am way more experienced and comfortable with the Apple SDKs/dev environment, deploying a small app that I built for my wife was ridiculously easy, and continues to run fine without me touching it for more than a year now.
My paid developer subscription expired two years ago. I suffer from all restrictions of the free tier (can't publish to App Store, can't use StoreKit, SiriKit, etc) except for the need to re-install the app every week.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Yes. And you have to own one of their overpriced computers too.
I have no interest in Mac hardware, it is stupidly overpriced for what it offers and what I need it to; and what I need it for it's bad at: Running Linux well.
Why would you be 'really tired of this argument'? It is a verifiable _fact_ that Apple requires you to own one of _their_ PCs in order to develop IOS apps. I can't use a Lenovo. I can't use a Dell. I can't use an iBuyPower gaming laptop that blows the specs of their shiny Macbook Pro out of the water. You see the problem? You have no actual _choice_ with your development machine when developing IOS apps.
There is no 'argument'. That is just how it is. And it keeps vast quantities of people that _might_ develop quality IOS apps out of their ecosystem.
For example, I use Ubuntu instead of eg Windows; someone as simple-minded as you could make the exact same complaint: "why don't you go compile Linux from scratch and leave the normal people alone".
But this would be missing the part of the picture where eg I chose Ubuntu over Debian because the small extra hassle of Debian's extra commitment to free software means not being able to do things out of the box like use certain codecs.
People are capable of choosing different points on the spectrum of convenience vs controlled solutions, and those of us who aren't incredibly immature are able to discuss their pros and cons without turning everything into a holy war.
> What the heck did Apple ever do to you?
Jeez, this part is just embarrassing.
Your comment is stronger without this.
But if my comment was simply "here's why you're technically not correct, easy mistake to make", it wouldn't quite be communicating the same thing. Namely, what a low opinion I have of turning every discussion into a fight, and how damaging I think it is to discourse of any kind (and without even including the actual rebuttal! The comment was 100% insults). I appreciate the feedback, but I'm not sure I agree that my comment would be stronger. If anything, it would be legitimizing ss part of the conversation a comment with no substance except broad, irrelevant insults.
If Apple computers were overpriced, they wouldn’t sell. Why is it strange that you’d need and Apple device running Apple software to develop software for other Apple devices? Isn’t that sort of expected? Should Apple be required by law or even moral imperative to port all their development tools, libraries and services to other operating systems? Why? Yet it’s somehow a terrible injustice that you can’t write iOS apps on Windows it Linux it Solaris or VMS or whatever.
It’s just funny how someone can look at the millions of happy Apple users and successful app developers and lose their shit over it. Move on with your life. Other people being happy and enjoying and thriving on something shouldn’t take away any of your fun.
That hasn't been the case for a number of years. As long as you have a Mac, you can download Xcode for free, compile an app, and sync it over to your iOS device.
I'm sure if they believed they would get more & higher quality developers to build apps by doing so, they already would have.
Makes since, especially since Windows historically hasn't done the same for Visual Studio / C# (I know they're supposedly trying now or planning to but I confess I haven't followed along closely enough to determine if it's cancelled, delayed, or the scope was actually smaller than full dot net + c# support).
Yes. This is why, every morning, I first get my news from trusted sources.
Their App Store is a monopoly, but I have friends who use iPhones and use Google's Inbox, Google's search app, Chrome browser, Google Maps and Waze etc and don't use the built-in defaults. I guess they like the hardware. So maybe I'm not interpreting "completely closed" correctly.
> ... In the name of user centricity, their platform places arbitrary restrictions on code execution and access.
As a software but non-iOS developer I like these restrictions. Yes they can be annoying (you can't use your iPhone as certain kinds of portable network scanner because they restrict access to the MAC) but they also stop shitty and malign developers from screwing me in certain ways (jerks were using the MAC as an illicit user tracking device).
I see it like various sorts of regulation: everyone us better off if the paint factory can't simply dump its waste into the river, even the paint company.
The only real annoyance with iOS is you can't set Chrome nor Maps as default applications.
I have an iPhone now (because work), and it took a few months to stop grumbling, but I definitely appreciated the overall better hardware compared to my friend's Android phones, most significantly the excellent (and immediately available!) camera.
One universal fallacy I've noted since the beginning of Android and iOS is seeing people compare $30 Android phones with iPhones, which target only the premium part of the market. I've used primarily the Galaxy S line but my friends have had Nexuses etc, and the hardware quality (screen, camera, compute speed,build quality) has been about as good (with variance in both directions) as contemporary iPhones for many years now (helped along by the fact that the galaxy S6 aped iPhone's design pretty aggressively).
It's called the Pixel 2.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kpD3XCp49o
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2G669OgskM0
Let's see how that A11 is on battery efficiency:
- The displays will be drawing a huge majority of the power—diminishing the effect of the processors.
- The batteries have massively different capacities.
The ability to ramp up your speed at the cost of higher power consumption is a feature, not a bug. You finish the workload faster and therefore the total energy consumed will be lower.
It's funny that no serious person from Qualcomm who works on Snapdragon will with straight face support your point of view about the processor comparison. In fact, they would shit their pants looking at A9 in 2017, let alone A11. I know cause I have talked to a couple. :)
As for Qualcomm, they're really not an innovator in the SoC space as they just take whatever ARM gives them and add their modifications. The ARM A75 cores in the new Q1 2018 SoC's will exceed the multicore of the A11 and be about 25% slower in single core I predict.
Android is a giant tracking/ad/malware machine. It’s far too permissive to applications you install on it. My most recent negative experience were pop up ads that the Peel Remote started showing on my home screen. Peel remote is one of the force installed applications that Samsung’s touchwiz installs. It’s like Windows 95 with OEM bloatware, but worse.
No one familiar with the impressive lead in mobile CPU design Apple has carved the past few years would ever make this claim. It's far more than just iOS making Apple's iOS devices great today.
You're wish for a better display is definitely valid though, and arguably gets granted at the end of this month.
And are the cameras really inferior?
> The only real annoyance with
> iOS is you can't set Chrome nor
> Maps as default applications.
It's really Safari, but with Google services. Apple forbids other HTML rendering engines.
> Their App Store is a monopoly
That word gets thrown around too liberally. Does anyone expect the Apple App Store to be able to serve apps to the Android, Windows, or Linux ecosystems? Arguing that "Apple's App Store is a monopoly" is like arguing that "JCPenny is a monopoly of all goods sold at JCPenny stores". If you want to sell goods in a store, you must abide by the stipulations of a contract with that company.
Yup. I will only do tech supp (for friends, family) for macOS, iOS. Bought both gf and mom Apple gear. My life is now much easier.
This is a very innocent view of Google's business practices in this area. Google has a tight hold over most device makers through anti-fragmentation agreements and other contracts if they want GMS and want early access to the non-public AOSP tree, which is a practical necessity to ship cutting-edge Android devices. Aside from hard legal power, Google also projects soft power through their control of the ecosystem and device makers wanting to maintain good relations. As a result, Android-derived innovation in the ecosystem is highly constrained even if AOSP is open source licensed since device makers and manufacturers cannot ship devices with Android-derived operating systems in device categories enumerated by the AFAs unless the devices pass CTS (which prevents most kinds of serious divergence from Android).
It's obvious that Android has enabled and continues to enable an ecosystem of hardware companies to thrive. These companies have tried repeatedly to build their own software, but with NO commercial success. Imagine a world with an Apple like Android, Google owning the software, closed sourced, walled, yada yada ... That's still a possibility if the ludicrous EU actions on Android don't stop. Google makes about 1/10th the revenue and 1/100th the profit off Android as Apple makes off the iOS product lines.
Android's ecosystem gets a LOT more out of Google than Google gets out of Android
EDIT: Samsung, LG, Huawei, ... they're even relevant in phones because of Google. I doubt it's the other way around. Samsung is SO scared of Google cutting it off that it tries repeatedly with alternate OS-es --> everything from Tizen to windows phones. Nothing sticks
Google doesn't need to make money off hardware or software, it's an ad company. Yeah sure they'll just go and remove themselves from mobile ads market because laughable penalties EU apply on them.
If the EU's fines are laughable, I think the status quo will persist. But if Google is beholden to Apple & phone makers who use the very OS it provides & builds, cutting others off and owning the hardware isn't far fetched. Why do you think HTC was acquired?
Notgoogle sells Notgoogle phones with Google Android. Futzing with what another company does with it's product can get you anticompetitive interest.
If you want to talk about Apple being anticompetetive talk about how you can't buy/rent movies on Google Play, Amazon, etc. apps on iOS. Even so, Apple has a much better legal stance for curating it's own market than Google (Alphabet?) has for manipulating other companies' products.
Isn't that a choice Google and Amazon make because they don't want to pay Apple's fees for sales going through their marketplace? If that's the case, it doesn't seem anticompetitive, since everyone is charged the same fees no matter what. Google and Amazon just don't want to pay it.
Same thing as the Kindle Store, you can't buy Kindle books through the Amazon app but you can buy them through the browser. Because if you buy them through the app, Apple takes a cut, but they don't through the browser. So Amazon made the choice to not sell books through their app, even though many other merchants sell digital goods through their apps and pay Apple the fee.
Apple doesn't pay them. Anyone who wants to sell media on iOS has to compete with iTunes while subject to a 30% price handicap. If that's not anticompetitive I don't know what is.
Imagine that you paid $1000 for a 1 year CostCo (iOS) membership which gives you access to CostCo but only on the condition that you live in CostCo Village, where you can only buy Certified Approved™ products from CostCo (which have a 30% markup) and if you choose to leave, you'll lose everything you bought while you were there. Home, furniture, electronics, everything. CostCo Village is a nice place to live and the products sure are nice but imagine 50% of the population living like this. From a consumer perspective it's shitty because you have no choice and from a vendor perspective it's shitty because you either play ball or lose out on half the population.
Sure there are Sam's Club (Android) Villages where you can still buy from other chains or independent grocers but it's just stupid that you have to make this choice.
Another thought...we live in a capitalist society (assuming you live in the US). With the customer base that Costco has, you can’t realistically expect them to give away the most valuable thing they have to vendors, can you? Sure if you run a single convenience store you can’t charge for shelf space, but if you run 1000 of them you probably can. So if you’re Microsoft for example, you need to beg developers to build apps for your mobile OS because the value proposition i.e. paying users just aren’t there. Flip that story on its head and you have Apple.
Also, I don’t quite understand what you mean in your last point....
Realistically there’s no way to buy digital video without also fucking yourself into a walled garden that restricts your use of your own licensed content. There is no real competition there for the experience people want—video they can play on whatever they want to, whenever.
And yea, a DVD is in the dame league, but it’s a format that deteriorates with age. Not exactly an investment format like vinyl. At least you can back up MP3s and play them with any software you like.
It's like a slippery slope. If you enforce rules that say Apple must allow side-loading of software, doesn't that mean any computer should provide that facility? What if that opens up real security risks, is it really regulator's jobs to open up vulnerabilities like that? It's a massive, horrible can of worms. At the end of the day, if you want an open platform like that you can build or buy one. There's really no benefit to the market to mandate that all platforms must be like that though. If open really is better, then it should win on it's own terms not through regulatory fiat.
Otherwise, Google wasn't found guilty of anything to do with software or apps. It was found guilty of abusing its monopoly market power by promoting its own shopping comparison service at the expense of rivals.
I think we all expect Google to deliver honest and fair search results. When it delivers results that favor its own properties, users are being cheated.
Same as Google's, so it seems standard.
>non-negotiable at 30%
Reduces for certain types of apps, given specific conditions, but yes for 99.99% it's non-negotiable. Still, it's their platform.
>arbitrary at best
I'd wager most rejections follow very clear rules. There are some head scratchers, but those aren't the norm, so "at best" is wrong.
>Who'd you think the EU would investigate for monopolistic practices?
Gotta have a monopoly in order to be investigated for it.
That implies that anyone investigated for being a monopoly already is one so why investigate at all if you already know the outcome?
Hence, you can only be investigated for anti-competitive practices when you have a monopoly because without a monopoly the free market provides sufficient remedies for such practices.
We can appreciate open source software while still being aware of why it is happening. We shouldn't just be blindly grateful. That can end up biting us.
The fee Google's paying is for these established phone makers to distribute Google apps to a large market. The deal Google made with these companies is probably not as simple as "I open source Android <--> You distribute my apps for free" although these two things seem like a trade-off from a developer perspective. It seems, to distinguish itself from Apple's ecosystem, Android advocates for fair competition and its "openness". Google will get unfair advantage to all the other Android app developers if they get to distribute their app for free across Android devices.
The truth is, unless they are all Richard Stallman, all these companies open source stuff as a business strategy rather than from a pure good will.
While Apple's practices have been worrying me for some time, they are in no way mutually exclusive with Google's ones.
http://uk.kantar.com/tech/mobile/2017/april-great-britain-sm...
On the contrary, Apple's ecosystem is completely closed, app cut fairly high and non-negotiable at 30% and app store rejections arbitrary at best and blatantly anti competitive at worst. In the name of user centricity, their platform places arbitrary restrictions on code execution and access.
Who'd you think the EU would investigate for monopolistic practices?