I have a different perspective.

Many of my different friend groups use the "group messaging" feature on their phones. If everyone is using an iPhone in that group, it defaults to using iMessage.

I switched to Android about 18 months ago, and it broke all of the group text message chains I had because some of their phones continued to use iMessage even though my phone no longer supported it. Sometimes their messages came through to me, sometimes they didn't. I would see half of a conversation, and many of my messages wouldn't reach members of the group. Eventually, people stopped including me in group text messages because it made the chats unreliable.

After 18 months of being increasingly isolated from all my friends, I switched back to an iPhone. I switched only for the reason that it was difficult to keep in touch with people without it.

One-to-one messaging worked fine, but I was left out of group chats, a critical way my friends and I stay in touch.

I remember early iPhone users complaining here in the EU that their iPhone unpredictably would sent iMessages either for free over wifi or for 50ct/message over sms/text (us EU citizens avoid sms/texting like the plague, allthough unlimited plans are now more commonplace, it's just too late). I recently set Signal to deal with my sms/text messages. Boy was that an expensive mistake when I accidentally texted my friend in Curacao instead of sending a normal Signal message.

You need to specify where in the EU, because it doesn't mirror my experience in France for instance. Data used to be very expensive while there were no shortages of plans with near-unlimited texts. It also isn't the case in many other countries in the world in my experience. AFAIK the advantage of WhatsApp over plain texts isn't that it's cheaper per-se, it's that it works over wi-fi which means that as long as you find a hotspot anywhere in the world you can use it. No need to worry about roaming fees, no need to worry about how many texts or MB of data are in your plan.

Americans mostly talk to other Americans, who also have unlimited texting plans. French people are probably talking to people who live in Belgium, Germany, the UK, Spain, etc. who will all encourage them to use WhatsApp.

International texting is expensive though, while it's free in Whatsapp. Which is why it took off among various diasporas.

In Poland at least, SMS costs 0 in almost all plans.

As for WhatsApp, I try to keep people away from it and show them Signal, as I do not trust Facebook with any of my data.

Imagine if every state in the US was a different country. That's basically Europe. Say you got charged roaming fees every time you traveled from New York to Connecticut. This was true in Europe until they passed regulation that mandated compatibility.

Wi-fi had no roaming upcharge. Hence why texting that works over wi-fi became the default.

And it hadn't exactly "not penetrated" NA, there are probably tens of millions of users. But it's definitely not "the default mode of communication" as in Brazil or India (+ lots of other countries).

In the university i’m affiliated with and the companies i’ve worked with, only IT people use Telegram. Everyone else still defaults to whatsapp.

Everyone of my closest friends use Telegram. I share a number of groups with 300-400 people (family, extended family, organizations I belong to/contribute to etc).

Last time I got a message on WhatsApp was from an ex-colleague 2 years ago or something. With my new phone I didn't even bother installing it.

That said: none of my current colleagues (in tech) uses Telegram or WhatsApp for that matter.

I get people love to use the iMessage groups, but every friend I have on Android create a WhatsApp group, etc. and it’s pretty trivial to use and maintain, especially with close friends.

This greatly underestimates the power of habit and default choice.

I can tell you for sure that if I tried to mount such campaign among my (non-techie) friends, there would be a lot of pushback and annoyance.

Erm, no, no it would not be.

https://selfsolve.apple.com/deregister-imessage/

Should be Job Done.

[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/1xuzif/what_ever_hap... [2]: https://www.engadget.com/2017/10/16/apple-faces-440-million-...

It tough to blame Apple for not open-sourcing a protocol they are sued about by a patent troll. Until resolved properly this would be a toxic code-base anyway.

Of course they could restart from scratch, but I guess they have no incentive to make efforts about that. What will be meaningful however is be what they'll do after patent exhaustion date of infringed VirnetX "patents".

What Apple’s doing should be fucking prosecuted by the FCC or FTC. It’s outrageous.

The last thing it should do is silently send a message to an inactive account such that it looks like I ghosted the person.

"iMessages" sent to your phone number will be translated to SMS.

iMessages sent to your email address will still be delivered to the account associated with that email address. They can be accessed on pretty much any modern apple device associated with that account.

It's rare that people intentionally iMessage an email address, but the interface is opaque enough that it's essentially impossible on an existing text chain to tell that you did (unless you're specifically looking for that information).

The behavior as implemented makes sense provided that every user made an intentional and informed choice when choosing to message a friend via phone number or email. That is, of course, not the case (and is not helped by Siri sometimes silently deciding to use a contact's email over their phone number).

Further, if you are not logged in with the account on at least one device, it will not show as delivered.

Return an error or redirect to SMS, it's not that fucking hard.

The one thing you are right about is that it's an intentional dark pattern on Apple's part to obsfucate Apple IDs and phone numbers. It's an illegal anticompetitve strategy.

It's not a dark pattern. It's not an illegal anti-competitive strategy. It's a successful delivery of a message to the recipient address it was sent to that you're simply misunderstanding.

I don't give a shit what address or phone number people think they're sending to, when they see my name on their iPhone, it's the wrong address.

The only reason my iPad even has iMessage installed is because people were sending me messages that got disappeared by Apple's abysmal policy.

Why is this so hard for you to understand?

Apple is the richest company in the world but for some reason their process for delisting your Apple ID from iMessage is a huge fucking joke.

There's no way this is not an intentional decision on their part.

It's literally impossible to send an SMS message to someone's Apple ID and it's not possible to send an iMessage to a phone number that's been unregistered from iMessage. Just because you don't understand how it works doesn't mean Apple is at fault. You cannot delist an Apple ID from iMessage, you can only sign out of iMessage on a receiving device. That's it. Anything else above that is your fault.

If you don't want to receive iMessages at all and don't want people sending them to you, sign out of iMessage. It's not that hard.

Signal for iOS cannot send or receive ordinary SMS messages. This is a significant impediment to adoption of end-to-end encryption, because checking two applications to receive different kinds of messages is inconvenient, and inconvenience is the death of mobile applications.

And here I note that Apple is effectively punishing users for apostasy. If you leave the Apple ecosystem, you are excommunicated from your former chat contacts. I, having never entered the Apple ecosystem, have no problem being included in group chats with iPhone users. (I occasionally have problems receiving media attachments, though.)

This makes me even more wary of ever buying in, knowing that trying to leave later will cause all manner of problems as I try to reclaim functions that Apple will take over. Entering the walled gardens make me afraid of being locked in.

I'm not sure if that's a Signal issue or an Apple restriction.

That's not an iOS limitation, though. I can send and receive SMS messages through Google Voice on iOS without any issue.

If your want to sell on the east coast (Apple), you need to put your product in wooden boxes no larger than X and documentation must be written in French, and you must have 10 employees that speak French.

If you want to sell to the West coast, you put your product in plastic bags, and everything is in Spanish, and your employees need to speak Spanish.

Yes, you have two competitors, but reach had a unique customer pool, and each had the sole power to let you access them. You must build your product and hope they purchase it (and keep it around), otherwise your business doesn't exist... You can't sell your product to anyone!

You have no negotiation power, if you're not promoted in store you can't leverage your power as a seller (they have all power, as long as they do not violate any actual law)

The issue here is that there's no competition if you want to reach Apple customers.

When you buy a fridge, the manufacturer can't forbid you from buying eggs for it.

You can go to another manufacturer, as a customer, if this really bothers you... But the guy selling eggs has virtually no recourse. In addition, he has no negotiation power. His eggs might only be stored inside that manufacturers fridge, too, so the lock out from that customer market could destroy the business!

As for regulations... Who's regulating internet browser? The only regulation is that your OS can't forbid alternatives or actively block or hamper their installation. That's worked reasonably fine. We don't get that with app stores on Apple (though Android does, for the most part)

A better analogy is I produce aftermarket software/hardware for the refrigerator and want to force them to accommodate it (with the govt stepping in to determine which kinds of features they can and can't add on their own, e.g. browsers) and even sell it to customers for me.

As for your last question, the browser is the regulation. It is a very specific software product. In the case of apps, there is an open-ended range of function. Regulators must determine in detail which of these are to be protected. Presumably they must allow apple to block some apps like (easily-categorized) malware, but what about borderline and controversial decisions based on quality or ethics? Regulators are now deciding the detailed functionality of the product and preventing apple from differentiating their product. Shouldn't consumer choice be the deciding factor instead?

And as for browsers, again Microsoft was supposedly a monopoly. Not just their own niche store, but most of the entire market for OS's.

I am a junior dev looking for experience. I am currently working on building a career in web development. I am already employed, however I do not work as a dev full time (yet).

I'd love to connect if you are still looking for work and to see if we can mutually benefit each other.

email: [email protected]

portfolio: https://jasonscotto.com

Arguably Android is also monopsony.

Companies don't have to literally be the only buyer in a marketplace to wield "monopsony power." If competition isn't perfect — like when there are only a few companies in a market and they aren't undercutting each other's prices — companies gain some ability to lower the price on the stuff they buy. Sellers don't have a lot of other options.

Apple might be profiting from its monopsony power in the app market. In this argument, the company is effectively the sole buyer of Apple-compatible apps and services, which allows them to set their fee as high as they want.

Both of this are new argument from "monopsony" perspective, which is different to all your listed point above are "monopoly" perspective.

Not saying I agree or disagree with his monopsony thing, since it is completely new word to me.

If I tilt my head just right, we could be discussing the way WalMart purchases products. They sell a product in their store, they decide they want a certain margin, and then they tell suppliers to meet a certain price target if they want their products in WalMart.

Apple is the sole buyer of All App Store Products, and you cant buy those products anywhere else. Which as far as I understand it, is what the argument Monopsony is trying to make. Buying Power instead of Market Power.

Edit: After rereading the article, the start of the article also pointed out, it was the developer that set the price of the App, not Apple. Giving them the power to price their product. Even if Apple were in this "Monopsony", it isn't really evident to me how this had harmed consumer.

Also if you think at the clients of store A and B this fake competition costs them more so the only people that benefit are the store owners, free market should always push for competition and consumer good not for making more oney then a nation. If all this crap is legal then laws need to be changed and this would include limitations for Wallmart or physical stores too.

If you believe these are core OS functions, and therefore not subject to competition, Microsoft has a old story to tell you about Internet Explorer web browser and Windows 95 OS.

But yes you can install a third party app like Google Voice with its own phone number and send text messages through it.

You would really trust any third party to intercept your sms messages?

On top of that, the third party dialer integrates with the native dialer and call history.

Not OP but I trust Thunderbird on my PC to access my emails so why I could not also trust a Mozilla or other trustworthy company to access my messages on my phone where in my case the SMS is used by companies to send me notifications about billing , I am the type of person that will call someone(people in my group don't send SMS)

I install any random crap on my phone and tablet because I know they can’t do too much damage between the better permission model and sandboxing.

And how say allowing a reviewed and sandboxed Firefox or a side loaded version that I would enable using some convoluted steps affects you personally? I don't demand Apple to make you less secure just want competition and no restriction, if I need say a power tool like a firewall or to run some custom scripts as root let me as a power user do that in a way you won't be affected - there must be such a solution because I do not see OSX user getting hacked left and right.

There is competition - you can choose the same mobile operating system that 85% of mobile users choose - Android.

there must be such a solution because I do not see OSX user getting hacked left and right.

A company you may have heard of corrupted user’s operating systems if they had system integrity protection turned off....

https://support.google.com/chrome/thread/15235262?hl=en

Or another “trustworthy” company installed a web server surreptitiously on users computers so even when they uninstalled the software, it reinstalled itself.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.zdnet.com/google-amp/articl...

Spotify - was complaining that there was no facility to integrate with Siri - Apple added intents in iOS 13.

Spotify also complained that they couldn’t do music streaming on watchOS - that was also added in the latest version of watchOS.

Spotify got access months alter after complaints to the EU were made so I am not convinced that Apple is still give equal opportunities to all developers especially when better browser engines exist and you can't use them.

Apple has a long history of developing functionality and using it internally before releasing them publicly. The alternative is releasing a half baked API that it has to support forever. It’s a lot easier to change an API that is only used internally than it is to change an API which people depend on.

Yes, Apple produced a better solution than allowing random third parties the ability to record everything you do on your phone. Would you prefer that they never increase privacy and security?

You owe me a new keyboard. Apple puts out half baked APIs constantly, and drops APIs constantly. Like literally, every release they do has APIs in those two camps.

Using this logic you should then ot have the freedom to read your emails outside Apple browser or email client on your computers, the solution is

1 let the user decide if the trusts the third party

2 for sensitive application like mail/sms/browsers review the top 5 alternative browsers/email clients etc and allow only those, I assume Apple has the ability to say discuss with Mozilla about allowing Firefox on iOS, what APIs and what privacy rules need to be respected and then have a team of lawyers ready if Mozilla breaches the contract/promises.

My point there are solutions between the extremes of not allow thrid party access and allow any random app access.

No one considers email to be secure because of if nothing else, the store and forward nature.

IMessage is end to end encrypted. Should Apple also allow third parties the ability to intercept iMessage or should they split iMessage from sms? Who does that benefit?

2. Now some developers are in a privileged position.

A more accurate comparison is a market hall which permit sellers to set up booths in return for a cut of the revenues. As an example I would look at stores around Olympics games, where the organizers holds enormous power in controlling who get to sell what, the price and the cut. The level of control they assert seems pretty similar to that of apple.

It is, in a lot of ways, like the market model you suggest. Not precisely; it is its own thing (and is popular precisely because it's so innovative in its business model, which lowers prices for its customers). So analogies with Walmart are always going to be problematic, but it's worth noting that their model is very different from the simple retail-reseller model.

https://spendmatters.com/2015/09/16/what-the-new-wal-mart-st...

As a customer, I have an account with Apple. When I purchase an app, I pay Apple, and I presume they give 70% of my payment to the developer.

As a customer, it feels like a retail store. I give money to the store, but I end up in a warranty relationship with the manufacturer, much like buying something from a store.

Imagine buying a nice desk to work on, and being told you could only buy paper and pens from the manufacturer of the desk. Maybe other vendors could be considered if 30% of their revenue went to the desk manufacturer. Preposterous, right? That's the world be live in and accepted as the norm for smartphones. Not a monopoly on a market scale, but the notion of selling someone a "platform" couldn't have really been foreseen a century ago. It's a similar idea, but it's more monopolism targeted at the market that surrounds the platform.

One particularly egregious example: Apple should reasonably be allowed to determine which products they sell on the App Store, but by preventing the installation of arbitrary apps from outside of the store, they've created a monopoly that they use for moral policing and anticompetitive practices. Apple not only disallows nudity-centric apps or apps that control nicotine vaporizers on their store, but effectively has banished them from their phones entirely. Which seems very suspect, and arguably they should not have the right to stop people from using what may be their primary computing platform as they see fit.

Then there's the issue of ebooks and music: Apple takes 30% of every in-app purchase, and developers are forbidden from using alternate payment processors to get around that. As such, Amazon can't reasonably sell ebooks in their app (you have to use a web browser and figure out the weird absence of buying capabilities yourself, as a user) since it would soak up the entire margin. Apple, however, competes with Amazon and sells ebooks themselves...which is questionable. Spotify cannot sign people up for their service without giving Apple an ongoing 30% cut of the subscription...meanwhile, Apple competes with them.

To be fair, on Android, you at least have the ability to sideload apps or use different app stores. Of course, not many people do, but the option is there.

How so?

If you want to buy X, and there's only one person selling X, then that person is the monopoly seller of X.

If you want to sell X, and there's only one person buying X, then that person is the monopsony buyer of X.

You can't swap the adjectives around; monopsony buyer is redundant in the same way monopoly seller is. You can think of them as the same word with different agreement forms, much like how "is" in "He is red" is the same word as "am" in "I am purple".

If you swap the logic around it would be like calling Apple a monopoly because they are the only seller of iphones, a contrived market that is actually just a subset of the smartphone market.

> 1. Android sells more, and offers more variety of mobile and wearable devices than Apple. And here’s the data to prove it.

> 2. Apple is a monopoly/monopsony and should be forced to allow more user choice of apps, allow sideloading, lower their prices, lower their app store cut, &c.

> Which one is is?

Well, these aren't mutually exclusive. Apple can sell less variety, and still exert too much control over their platform--in fact, the first is caused by the second. I'd argue that "monopoly" doesn't really apply to the second situation, so that's sloppy use of the English language, but if you try to actually figure out what people are trying to communicate, rather than being pedantic, you'll have a more interesting conversation with those people.

You cannot install a 3rd-party app store on iPhones without resorting to strange hacks (which are likely outside the scope of the EULA and wouldn't be pursued by average users). Developers and users have no alternative but to pay Apple 30%. If you are an open source project, someone has to pay up each year for the privilege of developing software for Apple devices.

Windows, Linux and Android allow 3rd-party appstores. As evil as Google is, they certainly have that feather in their cap.

Apple likely wouldn't have been facing this lawsuit if they hadn't kept pressing their advantage and tightening the noose on developers.

Unlike a Tesla, you don’t lose a lifetime of app purchases, movies, songs and books when switching products; you don’t lose a major set of functionality between other Tesla owners which would hamper your ability to use your product. I think the “monopsony” is an excellent way to frame the problem. There should be regulation requiring companies like Apple to allow users to sell the apps and other digital content they’ve purchased to others, to allow people to set their own default apps on their own devices and to not hamper the efforts of others to provide interoperability with other devices. These should be common sense consumer rights issues, although at present the only consumer rights-focused entity strong enough to make any of this actually happen is the EU, and I hope they manage to do so.

Music - any music you buy from iTunes has been DRM free for over a decade.

Books - if that’s a concern, buy ebooks from Amazon - like everyone else dies.

As far as buying apps, most money people spend on the App Store is either in app consumables for games or subscriptions that work cross platform.

Do you also feel that Nintendo, Microsoft (XBox) and Sony should be equally regulated for controlling distribution over their digital stores? Yes you can but physical discs but even they are digitally signed and have to be approved.

Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony each compete rather vigorously to attract studios to produce games for their platforms. Nintendo classically has ups-and-downs in this arena, given their unconventional hardware choices. The Switch is attracting a lot more devs than the Wii U ever did, for instance. This breaks the theory of monopsony, as there is clearly competition between platforms to acquire games.

Contrast that with the App Stores on phones where everything feels incredibly static. Apple and Google are clearly coasting on the fact that there's only 2 phone OSes and you have to use one of them. Besides first-party apple stuff, there are hardly any exclusives. And you never hear about app devs changing platforms.

So I would conclude that no, Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony don't need to be regulated because they aren't engaging in anti-consumer behavior. They should be subject to the same standards, of course, but they aren't currently in violation of them like Apple.

It's not about what they put in their own store. It's about not allowing competing stores. And game consoles shouldn't be allowed to do it either.

That's a really alarmist (and counterfactual) way of framing this.

Yes, if you change computing platforms, you generally need to replace software. OH NO. I don't see a need for regulatory intervention based on that.

Deciding to ditch the iPhone for an Android has utterly no bearing on your ability to watch TV or movies purchased from the iTunes store. You can still watch those on an AppleTV, on a Samsung TV, or on your laptop. And obviously on your iPad if you have one of those.

Tracks purchased from the iTunes Music Store are yours, period. There's no DRM, so anything that can play AAC will play them fine. You don't lose those if you ditch the iPhone.

However, Apple Music is a distinct thing. It's a subscription service like Spotify. If you stop paying for it, you stop getting access to the music you acquired with it. This is neither nefarious nor exploitative. You need a device supported by Apple Music, but it works on Windows, so not seeing the problem here, either. (Though I should note that I wouldn't see a problem even if Apple Music worked only on Apple devices.)

Apple is a rounding error in digital books, and I know nothing about it (mostly a Kindle guy). However, if I decide to banish Amazon from my life, I'll lose access to Kindle books I "bought" from Amazon. That was part of the bargain at the time.

>There should be regulation requiring companies like Apple to allow users to sell the apps and other digital content they’ve purchased to others, to allow people to set their own default apps on their own devices and to not hamper the efforts of others to provide interoperability with other devices.

How far does that go? Would you insist on the right to do the same to any computer-controlled device you purchase from any vendor?

Because that seems bananas.

If an iPhone user has friends that all use Duo on Android, she can install Duo on her iPhone.

If an Android user has friends that all use iMessage or FaceTime, there is no way for her to participate in group chats or group calls.

N=1 and all that, I can totally believe that there are other social clusters on different ecosystems.

> 2. Apple is a monopoly/monopsony and should be forced to allow more user choice of apps, allow sideloading, lower their prices, lower their app store cut, &c.

> Which one is is?

It's both, because they're two different contexts. There is no monopoly on phones; Android phones are direct competition. But what about app distribution? If you make apps and you want to buy app distribution to reach all customers, who is Apple's real competition for reaching customers on iOS? They haven't any; it's a monopoly. And it's not just like Walmart having a monopoly on shelf space at Walmart, because most Walmart customers will also shop at Target or Amazon, but most iOS customers don't also shop for apps at Google Play or Amazon. Apple is the only path to reach them.

Saying they could just buy an Android phone is like saying that a retailer with a regional monopoly in California doesn't really have a monopoly because all your customers could just move to New York. That's an unreasonable barrier to buy a $1 item, and on top of that it isn't even under the control of the app developer who wants to buy app distribution.

The whole point of a walled garden is that it’s walled, and you don’t have to learn about gardening to enjoy it. Your experience with the garden is to simply walk through it chat with friends, and never think more about it.

Allowing side-loading means suddenly you as the customer have to learn how to identify legitimate visitors to the garden apart from miscreants and pickpockets. How do you know who to trust?

Why are people so keen to remove the gatekeeper from the walled garden?

This is only about forcing Apple to provide a backdoors to their Secure Enclave. I am not falling for it.

Apple recently rejected our app submission as we mention our Android version within our app settings. They don't demand you be iOS exclusive, but they damn well try to make it difficult.

That release was just a minor version with some fixes, the text had been in the app for years.

Antitrust enforcement isn't really about "fault". It's not there to punish, it is there to force markets to be more competitive.

Saying that people can develop for Android, so this isn't monopsony/monopoly is sort of like saying Standard Oil wasn't a monopoly because people still could use coal and steam power rather than Standard Oil's petroleum.

While many things about iPhone and Android phones are similar, there are also a huge amount of differences that put huge barriers to going from one to the other.

Network monopolies are complex things, and they aren't about people being able to charge "whatever they like." They are about significantly reduced competition and significant barriers to competitors. Not everything has to be so black and white.

"Apple is like Tesla."

Not really, particularly not in the respects that this article is about. For a consumer, going from a Tesla to another EV is not a big deal. Also, EV's are in their infancy, and antitrust enforcement tends to cut some slack when that is true. Tesla could (very reasonably) end up being forced to separate their car business from their charging network when they get big enough.

"They aren’t Facebook. Nobody has to buy an iPhone to keep in touch with all their friends who have iPhones."

This isn't what the article is about. This is about the developer side of things, not the consumer side. Developers spend huge amounts of resources writing code that runs on only Apple devices. A very large number of users have iOS devices, not Android devices, and they only way to make apps for them is via the Apple store. Yes you can choose to develop for Android, but aside from the cost of switching, you are now selling to a completely different set of people.

For another analogy, imagine you're a clothing manufacturer, but if you want to sell clothing to women, you have to sell it through a single retail store chain. Saying "you can always make clothing for men" isn't particularly helpful.

I consider Apple's restrictions on monetizing apps to be shenanigans. It feels normal to me for them to insist on a cut from app sales and in-app purchases.

It feels like shenanigans for them to try to block developers having revenue side-channels. I know this is very uneven, for example, I can download an Amazon Prime app and use it, even though I pay for Amazon prime elsewhere.

But in the Amazon app, there are certain things I can't buy in the app, nor is the app allowed to link me to a web page where I can buy it.

But I don't see the alternative from Apple's perspective. If they allowed revenue side-channels, every app would be free, and useless if you didn't purchase an expansion pack from the developer.

Sure, Apple could run the app store at a loss. They could allow side-loading. They could do a lot of things. But I don't fault them for declining to.

The real harm we see Apple doing is that they allow the dominant groups in society to suppress anyone else. This became especially clear during the Hong Kong protests, where they banned apps protestors used after a request from Chinese authorities. Because of the lack of choice in the market, consumers have little choice but to live with whatever is imposed on them.

Come up with whatever theory under existing laws or come up with some new laws, but it seems to me like this is a ridiculous situation that should have a legal remedy.

2. Apple is a monopoly/monopsony and should be forced to allow more user choice of apps, allow sideloading, lower their prices, lower their app store cut, &c.

What about 3?

Apple's products are overpriced and underpowered, locked down devices sold as fashion statements or 'lifestyle' accessories that are more like toys for rich people than the miniature computers they're supposed to be.

As for their computers, similar argument, overpriced, underpowered, locked down hardware.

And then there's the whole culture of snobbery surrounding Apple and their products that has existed since at least the mid-late 90's about how superior Apple products are to everything else always that's just kind of grated on me...well since then.

Apple's products are overpriced and underpowered, locked down devices sold as fashion statements or 'lifestyle' accessories that are more like toys for rich people than the miniature computers they're supposed to be.

There is nothing illegal about selling rich people toys or dumbing down a device to make it appeal to a certain type of customer.

I have never really cared for Apple products in general and also think they are over priced for what you get but for me that just means I don't buy them, I don't really begrudge them making money off a customer base I just don't fit into.

Where in the parent's quote that I was responding to was there anything about laws?

I was specifically responding to:

>Amusingly, there are two sets of people arguing about why Apple is bad,

I see nothing about legality. I see the word bad.

Are you positing that someone manufactures a better and faster SOC for mobile devices?

>Are you positing that someone manufactures a better and faster SOC for mobile devices?

Thanks for proving my point.

Apple has had the best real world performance on mobile for many years running. Their SOCs are years ahead of the competition. Bigger numbers on the spec sheet lack strong correlation to actual performance these days.

Those 2 positions are not mutually-exclusive.

They do force us to build the package on their devices though. Which is a wholly arbitrary demand which is frustrating to map into a build process that is already automated on the cloud. Prior to services that rent out Apple devices its an awkward fit.

They're very aggressive with their posturing and they ruthlessly exploit the power they have. Just reading the dev EULA in full is evidence of that.

So I have to worry about power, about the safety, about hardware, about updates, all because I can't use an arbitrary x86 processor to build an executable targeting an x86 processor. It made me so fucking cross.

Let us not forget that other platforms don't have this mandatory requirement.

And you want to force a company to release a product for other operating systems?

I guess that explains why some companies can finally offer "macs on a rack" because they are literally macs.

The point remains that its a bunch of hoops they force people to jump through, BECAUSE THEY CAN. Not for any good technical reason.

There was no technical reason to have to jump through those hoops beyond the typical Apple "fuck you because I can".

If your business can’t afford a $700 Mac Mini, you’re not running a business.

Besides, are you not doing any local testing in the simulator?

Its not about affording a Mac Mini its about being forced to do IT on some build servers when the rest are visualised in the cloud. Having your cloud servers ping back into your physical office to do the Mac build is stupid. For context, this is an online service where we wanted to build two native apps for Android and IPhone. Android was easy (I didn't need a Google approved device to build it), IPhone was a fucking pain in the ass.

> Besides, are you not doing any local testing in the simulator?

You want to build the product on a dev box? That's not good CI. You want these environments to be clean and preferably spun up fresh each build.

Have you tried building a native or .Net Framework app on a Linux machine? How did that work out?

Its not about affording a Mac Mini its about being forced to do IT on some build servers when the rest are visualised in the cloud. Having your cloud servers ping back into your physical office to do the Mac build is stupid.

Because no one ever pushed code to Github that “pinged” to another server located somewhere else or pulled dependencies from yet another server like Nuget or npm...

I’m all for “the cloud”, but a VM in the cloud is no harder or easier to manage than one in a local server room. Especially since with most build systems, the orchestration is happening on one server with build agents hosted on different servers.

You want to build the product on a dev box? That's not good CI. You want these environments to be clean and preferably spun up fresh each build.

I never said that. But with most build systems it doesn’t matter where the agents are or where the orchestration server is. The agents register with the orchestration server and you can “visualize” where the agents are.

Well now we have .NET core so its fine but previously one can C, one can C++. Its not always ideal but there are options.

This issue is that if my highly public office with full glass windows in a somewhat shady part of town gets a power cut or broken into then I've got to run around to find another mac. Even if the network goes down I have issues that happen WAY less on the cloud. Its annoying.

What's more annoying is that there's no solid technical justification as to why this is. They just want Apple hardware to sign their builds because they want you to buy Apple hardware.

Would you expect the same from the console makers?

> 2. Apple is a monopoly/monopsony and should be forced to allow more user choice of apps, allow sideloading, lower their prices, lower their app store cut, &c.

The three positions suggested here (monopoly and monoposony being very different things) aren't actually incompatible. Android can sell more and Apple can be a monopoly (and even more easily, a monoposony) if there is a discernable market of buyers/sellers for whom price adverse changes in what apple is offering to sell or buy do not induce shifts to Android.

They flat out don't allow bloatware from the vendors on their devices. Android doesn't have that kind of pull, and Verizon won't push updates for my phone until they have tested all their bloatware crap that I can't uninstall.

Additionally, Apple has had many other 'requirements' from vendors to keep selling their phone, things like visual voicemail support, allowing them to use iMessage in place of texting (really goes with the part above), requiring ipv6 support, etc.

But currently the alternatives have many problems that cause people to choose iPhones. When those problems are overcome, the market will swing their way.

Apple is not infallible. It will screw up, or go out of fashion, or fall behind eventually. All companies do. People getting all worked up over this need to see the big picture.

>If you sell too cheaply - antitrust laws break you

>If you sell at the same price as competitors - its a cartel or a deal between vendors

>If you sell at a price too high - its a monopoly

Now the only way that Apple is like Tesla is if Tesla was also a utilities company that managed powerplants, which had a different pricing scheme for it's car customers.

At the end of the day it's about a company's abuse of power against users and smaller competitors, and that's what matters. If you get confused when this begins being called "monopoly" because you have a different idea of what a monopoly is, then stop calling it that.

It's about an abuse of power, pure and simple, and the bigger the company and its stranglehold on its users and developers, the more it can abuse that power. Government, the people's representatives (at least in theory), should have every right to deal with that.

I wish the US Government and regulators were pushing for this as opposed to trying to break encryption or force backdoors.

I don't, and it means 10 percent of the population can't use my free apps that save people time and money.

I suppose that's the cost of Apple being Evil and people buying from such a company.

Apple uses vendor lock-in for software used by one customer across devices, and for software used by multiple users (iMessage)

Plus long term, the technology industry would be healthier to push back against Big Tech keeping an iron grip on these platforms. In the last year that Apple has turned every default app on its phone into a $10 a month optional premium service. This marginal increase in service revenue will starve the news industry, compete unfairly against Netflix and HBO, eviscerate the remaining paid mobile game industry, and scare any fintech start up / vc playing anywhere near apples potential roadmap. And Apple isn’t even doing that good of a job at these new services - they just have the luxury of making the iPhone which is so good that it makes up for them doing everything else mediocrely

GOOD LORD NO.

Apple's curation of the iOS environment is a FEATURE for me, not a bug. It leads to drastically increased stability and security, and means I don't have to sysadmin my telephone.

I'll fight whoever suggests this is a good model for the desktop, but on the phone it's EXACTLY what I want.

>While consumers with money have the choice to leave iPhone and go with Android

Uh, no. Android phones are generally CHEAPER, so why does it take "money" to leave iOS?

That's fine. So why shouldn't it be possible to install apps on iOS via Google Play or Amazon, and if you trust only Apple you could just not use those?

> Uh, no. Android phones are generally CHEAPER, so why does it take "money" to leave iOS?

Because it's not just the price of the phone, it's the cost of transitioning to a different ecosystem, which can easily be more than the entire price of the phone.

But that's the problem. They're forcing you to choose both together when it should be an independent variable.

App developers also don't get to choose which phone their customers have already bought.

Computer developers don't get to choose which computer their customers have, either.

Seriously, I have no idea why people get so salty about this.

Society, as a collective, does reserve that right through anti-trust laws.

> Computer developers don't get to choose which computer their customers have, either.

Both Microsoft, and Steam monopoly powers have been called into question previously. Microsoft was specifically required to unbundle Internet Explorer from Windows.

As has been noted exhaustively, Apple is a MINORITY player in the smartphone market. Antitrust doesn't enter into it.

MSFT, OTOH, absolutely WAS in a monopolistic position when the browser wars were raging, and was found to have abused that monopoly power. Apple isn't even CLOSE to that level of dominance, unless you define the market as "people who use Apple devices," which is transparently risible.

We can have alternate App Stores run by other trusted/neutral entities or app side loading or certificates and tools like gatekeeper for iOS. We can have an App Store where Apple does not censor things that don’t meet its curation preferences (like nudity, vape/weed apps and previously crypto). I don’t even understand consumers who defend apples right to make these choices on our behalf

> I'll fight whoever suggests this is a good model for the desktop, but on the phone it's EXACTLY what I want.

This should apply to mobile too. Keep our phones secure, but give us the freedom to make our own choices

>We can have alternate App Stores run by other trusted/neutral entities or app side loading or certificates and tools like gatekeeper for iOS.

You could, if Apple wanted. Apple doesn't want to. If you want that, use another platform.

I'm 100% fine with the phone being curated by the vendor in this way, largely because I trust Apple and Apple's motivations here. (I wouldn't trust Google in a similar situation, since their revenue is dependent on advertising and monetizing data about their users.)

This is exactly why I've stuck with Apple for my phone. I don't upgrade every year and all that nonsense, but I prefer their ecosystem for just that reason.

I don't want to use my phone that much that I would want to load all kinds of different software onto it, especially if it compromises the privacy and security in any way.

I even consider the limited software a feature in that way.

The simplicity is what I like about it.

I should expect to be able to run Windows on my coffee maker?

That's a bit of an exaggeration of course, but I do not think this is an important "need".

It's Utopian garbage. A top down "simple solution" that is appealing on the surface but deeply flawed in the complex interconnected systems of reality.

You can already buy an Android device if you want more flexibility, and you can even get a developer account with Apple and make your own custom software if you really wanted. But telling everyone that they must have what you have decided is important is a garbage idea.

When Apple gets to decide everything that runs on your device, it’s bad for you in the long term. As an iOS developer who loves my phone, I’ve worked on teams that have dealt with complete bs that I shouldn’t divulge here, trying to get Apple to approve our app. we werent doing onerous data collection. we weren’t writing spam or malware. Just Apple’s bureaucratic and anti-competitive nonsense.

Apples should not have the decision about whether to allow or pull the Hong Kong protesting app. It’s too much power for a private company to make

Yes, of course. To satisfy your pedantry: You should be able to put whatever software you want on your personal property and expect the device to boot it rather than refusing because it isn't signed by the powers that be. It's about freedom, not omnipotence.

> That's a bit of an exaggeration of course, but I do not think this is an important "need".

You do not get to decide what's important to other people. If you don't want care about running custom software, just don't do it.

> You can already buy an Android device if you want more flexibility

If Apple's lock in tactics didn't work. Also it means you have to choose between the things that made you go with Apple to begin with and freedom – even though you could easily have both if not for Apple's artificial restrictions.