I will never understand people's desire to be handcuffed by Apple. Give me control over my own device god damn it.
I use macOS instead of Linux for this reason: last time I tried updating the production packages on a Linux box it took me hours to clean up the mess that X11 left behind.
Don’t criticise my walled garden just because you want to experiment with weed salad in your community garden.
Its reasonable to ask for both.
If you give apps the right not to do things like AppleID they’ll take it and the App Store would be a highly inconsistent experience for people who want to do no thinking about how their device works. There ought to be some middle ground but consumers are the ones who will have their boundaries encroached unless an entity ruthlessly minds the border...
For the degree of opening you leave companies will extract that much concession from your users.
I can just hope that the EU is successful in stopping all of Apple's trickeries ranging from 2.5mm headset jacks, ports, OS slow downs, mysterious battery underperformance, app store, the list just goes on.
You want the EU to regulate whether a company wants to put a headphone jack in their devices?
> OS slow downs
iOS has gotten faster over time [1].
> mysterious battery underperformance
It's common knowledge that this was an honest engineering mistake because as a phone ages, the battery cannot support the max voltage of the processor. Apple now lets you enable full performance with the understanding that your phone might shut down on you when you need it most.
> app store
Which we've determined not to be a monopoly as Apple is a minority player in the mobile device space.
> the list just goes on.
So you've suggested 4 things, 3 of which don't apply and 1 of which (headphone jacks) would be gross governmental overreach.
It seems to me that you just want the company to burn and you want the EU to regulate the hell out of everything in your life.
For example, deciding whether I want to put a headphone jack on my next device is my choice, not the EU's choice, and it would be tyrannical and innovation-stifling to let them have a say over something like that.
It is very reasonable for you to just buy something else if you don't like an Apple device, since Apple is not a monopoly in the mobile space. However, neither you nor the government should have the right to force Apple to develop a product you like. Apple does not exist to satisfy your whims.
[1]: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/09/ios-13-the-ars-techn...
However, I’m not really sure that other companies are contextually more honest to consumers in their advertising, or that such standards in communication even exist for the American marketplace. It’s hard to criticize Apple for the details when the bigger story is their great relationship with customers.
I never said so. In any case, I don't need you to tell me what to do.
I vote with my wallet and I don't buy Apple products anymore.
The government does not need to regulate it, the market itself will do it just like it did with Microsoft. On the meantime, I'll let you keep finding excuses for Apple's shady practices.
> So you've suggested 4 things, 3 of which don't apply and 1 of which (headphone jacks) would be gross governmental overreach.
There is precedence for the EU mandating Apple change their hardware practices:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidphelan/2020/02/11/apple-ch...
> So you've suggested 4 things, 3 of which don't apply and 1 of which (headphone jacks) would be gross governmental overreach.
Here's a 5th one:
https://www.macrumors.com/2020/05/29/tile-writes-to-eu-accus...
The second source is Tile complaining about the privacy warnings in iOS 13. It’s laughable. Customers are turning off abusive always-on surveillance thanks to iOS 13 notifications and this is hurting Tile. Working as intended.
The Tile situation is TBD, pending Apple's release of AirTags. Will iOS user location notifications pop up as frequently in Apple's first party Find My app as it does in Tile's app? Stay tuned!
Also, the letter mentions the matter of Apple removing their previous Tile store presence (presumably in favor of AirTags), which is within their power but brings up the matter of Sherlocking. Sure, Sherlocking is legal- but is it ethical? Is it right when Facebook scouts other apps to duplicate it in their app? Is it right when Apple does the same to preexisting apps in its App Store? At the very least, these legal cases- whether you think them prudent or not- bring them before the public for examination and discussion.
Entirely unrelated, and it's 3.5 mm by the way.
Personally I've only encountered them on a pair of headphones where they're a step up from a soldered on cable, but more annoying than a standard jack would be. It's also recessed really far in with a very narrow twist-lock connector, so isn't compatible with any cables except the special one it comes with.
Yes you can avoid the giant mess of 3rd party launchers on Mac, but only by writing off huge swaths of the software market. Want to run Photoshop? You get to have the Creative Cloud client.
The current state of iOS software is that I never have to go into Task Manager and see what junk has inserted itself as a startup item, whether anything will break if I don't want its update/license client running in the background, or worry about whether it really quits when I quit it or tries to stay resident in the system tray.
You can always buy a device that allows you to do those things, after all. It's not like Apple is the only device vendor out there, or even a majority device vendor.
See: a user in China owns the iPhone and wants to run the app.
Apps developer wants a user to run the app.
And only Apple doesn't let it happen, on the device that it doesn't own anymore.
Regarding your argument, "do not buy it", of course I don't buy it! But that doesn't make this position of Apple right, and I'm glad that lawmakers might put an end to this malicious practice.
Returning your argument, if Apple wants to control what users do with the iPhones, perhaps they shouldn't give up their ownership of devices and shouldn't sell them.
Like that time when Epic Games said "We don't want to use the Google Play Store, so if you want to play Fortnite you have to install it from the Fortnite Installer". And then we immediately had this: https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/112630336?pli=1
> This vulnerability allows an app on the device to hijack the Fortnite Installer to instead install a fake APK with any permissions that would normally require user disclosure.
If they could switch to Fortnite Installer on iOS I assume they would. Would it have security holes? Would it do other annoying things that the App Store doesn't let them do?
Repeat those questions for a hypothetical Microsoft iOS Store, Google iOS Store, Amazon iOS Store, Steam iOS Store, Ubisoft iOS Store, EA iOS Store, Pokemon GO Installer, Nintendo iOS Store, iOS Minecraft Launcher, and I'd expect to see more security vulnerabilities and/or hostile behaviors that Apple doesn't allow.
It's a tradeoff. I know the current system isn't perfect, but I worry that forcing Apple to allow other stores to do their own thing will be worse in a variety of ways.
Believe it or not I had an Android phone before and decided I like Apple's system better.
If it were my only computing device and I needed to run a bittorrent client I acknowledge it would be a problem, but like I said elsewhere in the comments, it's a trade-off.
I view the dismissals of "secondary app markets will just be like insecure shoddy secondary Android app stores" to be both pessimistic and lacking in imagination at the potential for new businesses and innovation to be created if Apple just gives up a little bit of its dominating power.
Obligatory glance over at Steam goes here.
Apple’s App Store policies also limit 3rd party software’s ability to fuck up my devices in a myriad of ways.
It would be a much safer solution if Apple's operating system limited 3rd party software's ability to do things it shouldn't. Trying to filter malware at the app store level might improve your odds, but it's not a robust, scalable solution to malware and it never has been.
• Steam (Valve)
• Uplay (Ubisoft)
• Origin (EA)
• Epic (Epic)
• Galaxy (CDProjekt)
• LoL Launcher (Riot)
• Battle.net (Blizzard)
• Twitch (Amazon)
• Minecraft Launcher (Mojang)
Probably others I'm missing.
Can't wait to have a whole home screen dedicated to different app stores because each one has a single exclusive game that I wanted to play
I don't want to download a game and find out that it's secretly spinning up a background spyware process to monitor the screenbuffer and sending the screenshots off to god knows where.
Once again, trying to filter malware at the app store level is not a viable strategy for robust, reliable security, and it never has been.
And also makes apps like Tasker impossible, which from my side of the table is too much.
There should be a button somewhere in iOS called "safety belts off" and I should be able to do anything to a device I bought.
If they’re forced to open up to 3rd party stores, I hope they can do it in a way that prevents Adobe from running 8 background processes to make sure my license is current and there aren’t any font updates to download and to make Reader launch faster by keeping it in memory all the time, or whatever it is they do with their Creative Cloud client stuff.