As a developer, it constantly burns my biscuits that Apple software only runs on Apple hardware. The fact that I have no choice but to buy expensive Apple devices to develop for their platform is irritating.

I've never understood this line of thinking.

Maybe it's because I've been selling programs commercially since the 1980's. Back then, if you wanted to develop a program for a Commodore 64, you bought a Commodore 64. If you wanted to port it to a TRS-80, you bought a TRS-80. If you needed an Atari version, you bought Atari gear.

In the mid-80's it was just ordinary business that if you were developing a program, you released it on Commodore, Apple, Texas Instruments, IBM, and a few others. And to achieve that, you bought at least one machine from each of those companies.

The concept of "I want to build an iPhone app on a Windows box" is a strange new phenomenon to me.

To be fair, I can build an android app on a Windows or Mac.

Also you're talking about buying a computer to build on that computer. I think the argument was about needing a particular brand laptop to develop apps for a different device.

I don't think anyone would object of all it took to develop for iOS was the device bring targeted, or even an iOS device. The fact that you have to buy a different piece of Apple hardware is this the issue.

You can build Android apps on an Android device. Optionally, you can use Linux, MacOS, or Windows, instead.

> The concept of "I want to build an iPhone app on a Windows box" is a strange new phenomenon to me.

The iOS situation isn't like “you must buy a PC to build PC software”, but more like “you must buy an IBM mainframe to build PC software”.

So it really is on a different platform already, but one within the walls of the brand.

Sure most bought C64, Spectrum and so forth.

However if you actually wanted to be productive, you would be buying a bigger computer running CP/M, VMS or UNIX variant, cross compile Assembly code and use a transfer cable.

Apple is the lone hold out here.

But they also have no reason to change.

Follow the steps at https://sites.google.com/site/easylinuxtipsproject/oldgrub for a free Windows VM development license.

For Apple, it is an entire hardware platform.

Fighting the customer doesn't usually go well in the long run.

For testing, yes. To protect their sanity, developers of big projects developed their code using rented CPU minutes on a mainframe.

Maybe apple should provide pay-by-the-minute xcode-as-a-service for the real 1980s feeling?

There certainly seem to be enough developers who complain about this. I wonder if there'd be a market for a virtual-iphone-dev-box-thing.

[1] https://www.macstadium.com

This the single biggest reason I abandoned android for iPhone: A premium phone in a reasonable form factor.

http://vbn.aau.dk/files/240065248/Mobile_Phone_Antenna_Perfo...

> This dramatic difference in head SAR levels is mainly because the transmitter is located at the bottom of Samsung phones rather than at the top, also they incorporate an innovative antenna that transmits the highest intensities of microwave radiation from the lower back of their smartphones.

http://weeksmd.com/2016/01/the-new-smart-phones-are-6x-more-...

By the way, Jolla should be installable on it, if I'm not wrong.

You can get Sailfish OS on it for 50€: https://forum.xda-developers.com/x-compact/how-to/sailfish-x...

I currently use an Omni ROM weekly build (Oreo, waiting for Pie). It's so much smoother and less terrible than the stock software.

Sure, this is not "It just works" (and I do like a lot about Apple's design), but I'm also glad it's not "fuck you, we decided this for you, take it".

Considering I disabled all Sony applications because I have no use for them, with the exception of the keyboard because can't be disabled, Omni ROMs are another option that I hadn't considered. I already dumped the TA partition with the DRM keys many moons ago (I only need to find where I stored it), but I suppose they only work with Android.

I'm tempted by Jolla, but I need a banking OTP generator that only exists on Android and iOS (so Android emulator or another phone)...

The open camera drivers bring a great performance increase in shutter response, but a pretty bad decrease in low-light performance.

The build I'm using has some annoying issues like a barely working fingerprint scanner and Bluetooth audio, but even with that it is less irritating than Sony's to me. I assume both are fixable fairly easy (I'm waiting for Pie builds).

The official Sailfish OS builds come with an Android app runtime (Alien Dalvik), I think, but it may be missing some security features.

I'm not sure if it uses the official Sony camera drivers, information about this seems to be conflicting. Maybe both are available, if Sailfish utilizes Android drivers.

About Sony official camera drivers, I checked briefly and it looks like they are available only on Android.

I would just be a little cautious about this. Apple is currently sticking it to Google by making it easy to block ads and by offering appealing privacy features.

But we don't know what Apple will do if everyone switches away from Android. I would guess that the profit stream from selling everyone's data to advertisers when most users are locked into their ecosystem will be very appealing.

Similarly to how Google and Facebook both eschewed ads while drawing people away from other services that were swamped with ads.

I keep wondering why Apple doesn't just build their own search engine and provide unfettered results based entirely on popularity/rank (and other "real" metrics) like how google "used" to be in the beginning. Yes, I know search is hard, but it's not as hard as all of the extra steps Google has been doing the last 15 or so years to manipulate their results higher so they get more $ out of it. Certainly it's not as complicated as building a new mapping system from scratch. That would go a great deal further to "increase Apple users privacy" than anything else I can think of. It would also cause a lot of financial harm to Alphabet if all of the sudden all Apple device owners world-wide suddenly didn't have their data going through Google. And, it would provide top-notch results, which Apple consumers would presumably love. What is the downside to this that I'm (obviously) missing?

Very little risk of that. Our owners also want phones, and for the moment do not mind sharing the brand/models with the 10 or 20% who can afford, and know enough to choose, it.

Anyone is free to modify, build, and distribute their own versions of Android. How else would OEMs ship their own skins? This also means you can audit Android source for vulnerabilities, backdoors, etc.

Every major version ports more functionality from AOSP over to GSF - which is closed source.

I cannot audit GSF and I cannot check for backdoors,, GSF phones home as it legitimate functionality, it is next to possible to verify back-doors don't exist. Location APIs could just be for your location, or google/ three letter agencies could be tracking you .

All the major OEMs include AOSP + GSF and then their custom layers. The only popular OEM using without GSF I know is Amazon with the kindle platform. To get Google certified OEM / use droid trademarks / use GSF you need to jump through hoops and give Google all kinds of access, not remotely same as open source.

edit: This is wrong, I can't find the source for that now but probably it was referring to 20% of services revenue. Its only like 5% of total revenue: http://fortune.com/2018/09/29/google-apple-safari-search-eng...

edit2: This was the source[1], they quoted 24% of services revenue:

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-11-02/apple-...

[1] http://fortune.com/2018/09/29/google-apple-safari-search-eng...

[2] https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/AAPL/apple/revenue