> Ok, what do you think they should do if China starts to interrupt their manufacturing there?
Choose another manufacturer in a different nation? China is not the only one on the market. Saving up enough monety to create a new one from scratch instead of finding a new one "just in case" is ridiculous. That's like you renting and saving up enough money to buy a house "just in case" your landlord evicts you, even though you're perfectly happy renting. There are better uses for that money than sitting as a contingency plan you're better off not doing anyway even if that case happens.
> The rest of your argument is based on the idea that the only way to compete with Apple is by using either their software, or their hardware.
No, my argument is based on the fact the only way to compete with Apple is on the whole platform level, because they've erected barriers to make it impossible to do otherwise.
You can't create better hardware for Apple OS software. You can't create a better OS for Apple hardware. You can't create a new App store for their OS, and you can't even compete on a specific App they don't want you to. You can compete on these specific items of their stack only if they allow you to, and at this point that means you can create apps. Usually. Hopefully.
> Generally modularity is possible when the components are commodities. People agree on standards and then innovate in other areas.
It doesn't take modularity to allow competition. I can buy a Ford automobile and put another engine in it. Because I can do that, I can sell engines that work in Fords. I can also buy Fords and alter them with new engines, and any other new parts I want, and then re-sell them. This is how Shelby American created the first Shelby Mustangs.
If Ford were to take a page from Apple's book, they would both create custom screw and bolt sets for all items in the car, and only sell under a contract that says you aren't allowed to disassemble any parts they don't give explicit permission to, and you're only allowed to use certified Ford parts, except they can't because those are consumer rights protected under law.
> One way to attempt a modular environment would be to seize control of apple and have a committee dictate how they open up parts of their system to competition.
> This is what you are proposing.
No, I'm really just proposing that consumers have more rights over the devices and software they buy. That gets tricky because we don't "buy" our software anymore, we lease it, but we sure as hell buy our hardware, so why is it okay for the manufacturer to use a technical block to thwart a right we are already guaranteed under law?
> I agree with you that a modular landscape might potentially be better, but I believe that we can only know if it is by building a modular platform that produces better consumer experiences than the integrated ones.
Every one of these platforms is already modular, because that's the only way we know how to build software this large and complex. Modularity is not the problem, it's the coordinating updates between components and explaining of the interfaces Apple doesn't want to deal with, because it allows them to provide a smoother user experience. That's nice, but Apple wanting something does not, IMO, excuse the anti-competitive practices used to achieve it. They could easily sign all the components they provide and always show whether you're running official or non-official components not care at all about third parties knowing how to interface with them, and as long as they didn't actively prevent third parties, we'd still be a thousand times better off than we are with regards to choice and user control.
> I see no reason why for example, WASM couldn’t be a vehicle for a more modern, modular approach to software creation.
WASM runs in the browser, iOS only allows for one browser runtime, so they control what capabilities are allowed from WASM code. Again, everything is locked down from Apple as much as they want. They could, arbitrarily, decide tomorrow that only WASM signed by an Apple Developer account and certified by them would run in Safari, and nobody could do a thing about it. Will they? Very unlikely, but the fact there's absolutely no user recourse in that case means WASM fundamentally is no different than something from the App store, even if right now it seems less constrained in some ways and more constrained in others.
> But if we just dismantle Apple by force, it will not.
Nobody is saying dismantle Apple. They would survive just fine if they were forces to provide a mechanism to allow a different App store, or a new OS on their hardware. Since only a very small amount of people would do so, the only difference is they would be slightly less profitable, which is still immensely profitable.
Ok, what do you think they should do if China starts to interrupt their manufacturing there?
I’m saying the risk is obviously real, and that it’s obviously reasonable for them to make contingencies.
What would you do in their situation, and how much would it cost?
The rest of your argument is based on the idea that the only way to compete with Apple is by using either their software, or their hardware.
That seems like an extraordinarily claim, which you need to justify.
At face value it is obviously false given that most phones do not use Apple’s software or hardware.
As for the comment about VC. I didn’t just say VC. I listed a range of people who might be interested in investing in competitors to Apple.
It seems like a weird argument to suggest here on Hacker news, that competing with the world’s largest corporations shouldn’t require investment.
This is a very bizarre assertion.
I’d seriously like to live in a world where it was true - e.g. where we had UBI and hackers could get together to collaborate on an open solution without having to make a living. I’m not saying this as a rhetorical maneuver. I am quite serious.
However, solving that problem has nothing to do with Apple.
As for the ‘model’ question. What you are talking about - where there is competition at every level of the stack, is known as a modular approach.
Generally modularity is possible when the components are commodities. People agree on standards and then innovate in other areas.
If we want the competitive environment you are proposing, what we are talking about is a modular approach to personal computing.
Apple’s approach is an integrated one, where modularity is not part of their offering. M
One way to attempt a modular environment would be to seize control of apple and have a committee dictate how they open up parts of their system to competition.
This is what you are proposing.
Another way would be for a group of people who believe that a modular approach would yield better consumer products to create a modular platform.
I believe that this is what Google originally wanted to do with Android.
The reason they failed and reversed course towards an integrated approach is that we simply are not at the stage where software can be treated as a commodity.
The pace of change in how we build software is still rapid.
I agree with you that a modular landscape might potentially be better, but I believe that we can only know if it is by building a modular platform that produces better consumer experiences than the integrated ones.
Again, I don’t think this has anything to do with Apple.
I see no reason why for example, WASM couldn’t be a vehicle for a more modern, modular approach to software creation.
Of course you can argue that Apple will hobble it, but that doesn’t matter over time. Their platform will become expensive to develop for compared to the others, and stop being people’s first choice.
If it yields a faster path to better software, the open platform will win. We just need to build it.
But if we just dismantle Apple by force, it will not.