Funny how the world hasn't ended because of this. Just go buy an Android phone if you don't like Apple's walled garden.

The manufacturers are all going to start locking features behind subscriptions. Things like heated seats, navigation, phone integration, performance, etc. will be premium features with a monthly fee. You may even pay extra for better audio or things like that. If enough people tolerate it, you may even end up with subscriptions for things like the sunroof.

Once all of that is in place, they'll include X years of subscriptions in a new vehicle, so the first owner doesn't really notice the increased cost if they get another new vehicle after X years.

As a secondhand buyer, I have to pay a non-discounted subscription for (ex) heated seats if I want that feature. The value of the heated seats won't depreciate alongside the car like it does now. If anything, the cost will go up.

That means the resale value of the car for the original owner is lower. They're selling something closer to a base model, even if they had all the premium features unlocked while they owned the car.

On the dealer side, they'll make it attractive for the original owner to trade in for a new car and it'll likely be by adding some incentives that revolve around the subscriptions because they don't really cost anything to activate, but they have a lot of value to the vehicle owner.

That will have the effect of consolidating used car sales to major dealers who can offer better value with less cost than 3rd party or private (used) sellers because they can add value via subscription incentives with (near) $0 cost.

The total cost of owning a vehicle is going to increase significantly in the next decade and a huge part of that is going to be done by leveraging post-sales subscriptions to damage / monopolize the secondhand market.

Why? Because it's always broken down.

They will either have to pay thousands to replace the batteries before selling, or sell it with old batteries with the new owner knowing they’ll need replacing.

(Average 10 year old car as of Sept 2022 in the UK is £6100 - pretty much the same as a replacement battery pack.)

The whole secondhand car market will be fucked.

The battery wear problem only makes this worse.

The real solution is of course to heavily reduce our reliance on cars but highways and stroads keep being built.

Probably a big prize to defect once people start to catch on that it sucks.

(I will certainly shop pretty aggressively if they do shit as stupid as you describe there)

Facebook will demand you use FacebookStore, which will NOT force apps transparency. THAT is the issue!

The core idea is choice.

Apple isn't some altruist protecting you from Facebook. The most likely scenario is that Apple wants to be the sole owner of your data so they can sell it instead of Facebook selling it. I bet Apple's ad business grows substantially over the next 5 years.

If you don't want to use the app or the website, don't use facebook.

They made it so you have to use an app to use facebook messenger even though before you didn't have to, so I stopped using it and let everyone know you can't find me on facebook messenger.

Problem solved.

"Not being the apocalypse" is a pretty low bar. Is it not the case that Android has a much worse history of problems with third-party software, including security, privacy, battery life, etc.?

I think the way things would shake out is that most app developers would want to have their app in as many stores as possible. Combine that with stores competing to have the largest app selection and you have a much healthier market. Having app stores compete for developers and users would be amazing for everyone except the current app store owners.

I don't think we should avoid demanding a better market for developers and users just because there are a couple of companies like Facebook that might try to abuse their market position to popularize their own app store.

Apple is in the business of selling phones and has decided that a good strategy for them is to protect the privacy of users against data miners. So their store and payment system by default protect users against practices of data collections.

> Having app stores compete for developers and users would be amazing for everyone except the current app store owners

It would be good for developers, not for users. I don’t think a single non-developer user is grasping for having multiple ways to download and install an app, and having to search for multiple stores with multiple payment systems to get one software. For users, the “iPhone” allows to download apps; none of them gives a thought to the fact that it happens via a single “store”.

I struggle to see how a free market for stores would improve my situation. Clearly the big software vendors won't pay someone a cut unless they have to. So they would either need their own stores, or they'd need an alternative store that didn't take a cut. But if the alternative store doesn't take a cut, how do they afford to moderate the content? It would clearly be a race to the bottom.

I'm an avid Linux user and an avid Apple user, and I think both systems have their merits.

If I had to have only one it would be Linux.

What is this supposed to be an argument for? Do you think this is an own? Is this statement made in good faith? Did you really let your 10th grade economics teacher tell you what a "monopoly" was and then never question either the usefulness or the validity of the definition?

> If you feel this strongly about the feature, then using a different phone

Actually, instead of that, citizens of a nation are free to vote for anti-trust, and pro competition laws that force Apple, under threat of government force, to stop engaging in certain actions.

We did it for the railway monopolies a century ago, and we can do it again, by updating our anti trust laws to new era.

It's been a century. It is about time that our existing and uncontroversial anti monopoly laws got updated.

Some laws have already been past, in the EU, for example, that do this. In the EU, because of the digital markets act, people will be able to bypass the Apple app store in less than a year.

Why not just throw our the US government and install the CCP too?

We did it for the railway monopolies a century ago, and we can do it again, by updating our anti trust laws to new era.

There are very few places in the world with good trains, unless you're referring to one of them, your argument is pretty weak. Especially if you're in the USA. The trains suck and I hope my devices don't go the same way.

...This again is coming from someone who works with and on open source software, is an avid long term Linux user and owns many "open" hardware devices...

No, people would be free to use the Apple App store if they want.

Apple simply wouldn't be able force the world to pay them 30% of everything anymore. Theyd have to compete on their merits, and people would now have full ownership of their own phone.

> The trains suck and I hope my devices don't go the same way.

So, what, you just support the railway monopoly and oppose the Sherman antitrust act? Please explicitly say whether or not you think the Sherman anti trust act, should be repealed, and all monopolies in the world, and anti competitive behavior, should be legal.

But let's try a different example, since apparently you support the railway monopoly.

I would hope, that you would oppose it Microsoft put a 30% fee on every online transaction, and kicked off all competing web browsers that tried to get around it.

Imagine if every computer in the world, you could only use internet explorer, and they forced you to pay them 30%, and use IE.

Surely you'd have to admit that this should be illegal, for such a monopoly to be enforced like that?

> Why not just throw our the US government and install the CCP too?

The Sherman anti-trust act is a pretty uncontroversial law. Surely you can't be saying that our existing uncontroversial anti trust laws, that have been around for a century, are the same as laws in China?

> This again is coming from someone who works with and on open source software

Then you should support people being allowed to do what they want, with their own phone.

You are the one who supports authoritarianism, if you oppose people being able to control their own device, that they purchased.

Absolutely nothing like this is happening though, so what's your point? I run Firefox on my iPhone, it's free?

> But let's try a different example, since apparently you support the railway monopoly.

I don't support the railway monopoly you're putting words in my mouth. I'm saying that breaking it up did nothing really useful. Shit trains still exist.

I am saying that the fact that this is illegal, because of the sherman anti-trust act, is a good thing. Anti-trust laws are not some crazy, extreme example of authoritarianism.

Therefore, because I hope you can agree that it is good that we use government force, to prevent this, you cannot act in fake shock outrage, at the idea of using uncontroversial, and obviously good laws, such as the sherman anti-trust act.

> I run Firefox on my iPhone, it's free?

Apple prevents you from using your own phone to pay for apps that do not give them the 30% fee.

So, because Apple, in an authoritarian way, does not let you use your own property in this way, without a 30% fee paid to them, this is similar to another example of Microsoft not allowing you to install anything at all on your home PC, without paying them a 30% fee.

This type of hyperbolic sentence: So, because Apple, in an authoritarian way, does not let you use your own property in this way, doesn't strengthen your argument, it weakens it.

Don't get my wrong, I understand it, Apple phones aren't an open source utopia where you can do whatever you like with it, you know as good as me that it's peoples choice to participate in that type of system and many choose to own a locked down device as a trade off for security, stability and convenience. People aren't rioting in the streets over this.

_People are choosing to enter the Apple eco-system for various reasons, there's no "Authoritarian regime" forcing you to use an iPhone._

Apple is popular because they make good products as far as I'm concerned and that's part of living in a free society. That someone can start a company that is successful like Apple and that people are allowed to buy Apple products, or not buy them.

Actually, you run Safari. Firefox and Chrome on iOS are just Safari with some different browser chrome. This happens because Apple has banned all other browser and JavaScript engines on iOS other than their own. Gecko, SpiderMonkey, Blink, etc are all banned on iOS.

Mozilla isn't able to actually bring real Firefox to iOS because of this, and has to settle with a reskinned Safari parading around as Firefox in order to stay relevant. Same thing goes for Google and Chrome, it's just browser chrome on top of Safari's browser engine.

Today, there is, in my own opinion, plenty of ways to compete with Apple's ecosystem. Android is the most obvious, but we also have the ability to build much better web and mobile web experiences to compete with apps. To quote another commenter, "it isn't Apple's fault the competition is not any good"

To be clear, I don't agree with Apple's honestly draconian cut on payments and app revenue, but I also don't think it is illegal. I think the competition needs to step up OR companies need to reconsider how much they are attaching their revenue stream to Apple's world. I see this as clear business maneuvering by companies who can't/don't see an easier way to grow than to attack the rails upon which they built their products (and the rules were clear when they started!! -- this isn't a surprise fee...)

This is actually why people who are absolutists (you), scare me, because in a way, you're advocating for free an open devices, and asking for the government to step in to ensure this happens while actually acting like the authoritarian you claim to hate by forcing your beliefs onto others.

People should be free to choose what type of device they have without you telling people that shouldn't be allowed to choose.

I believe my argument is better than yours because I'm advocating for a balance. You can have free, open devices if you want, and if you don't want that you can use more locked down devices that IMO are just fully managed by Apple.Both options has their advantages and disadvantages, so what's the problem?

It's especially rich you're against Apple here considering Spotify is also a scourge on many musicians and audiophiles lives too ha.

Spotify wants you to fight against Apple so they can have a nice monopoly on the music industry.

This is the same way Elon wants you to fight for "free speech" so he gets a bigger market share of social media. It's not really about "free speech", it's about Elon getting what he wants.

Wake up to yourself.

Imagine if Spotify started officially supporting the PinePhone and started advertising that. It wouldn't get many people to switch, but it would start putting pressure on Apple/Google to be a bit less evil.

As for users like myself, I'm very happy that Apple intermediates my relationship with big businesses, because in the sphere of negotiation and leverage, big businesses like Walmart or Amazon would win every time for people in my family. They will auto-accept all terms.

The problem is that a phone which doesn't receive regular security updates is unsafe in the modern age. People use this device to deal with their bank and make payments. So instead of talking about how the user can or can't walk away from Google, I'd talk about how there ought be policy which prohibits Google from walking away from you.

In a sense internet security is a service and not a product because your phone isn't secure without updates.

1) Apple's freedom from inspection: they control your device and their ecosystem because they make money off the ecosystem. The take a cut of the phone/computer/watch you buy then anything you buy in their ecosystem because the ecosystem is their production. Your data is (mostly) safe from advertisers because that's not their business.

2) Google's device freedom: you can do whatever you want with your device because your are the product. Sure you can load a complete separate system of mail and chat clients and not sign into google, but really, will you?

Of course there's option 3, linux. Neither the ecosystem or you is the product, but where's the money in that. No one is going to spend billions of dollars to get you to buy Linux.

Whether Apple or Google (or MS or w/e) is the arch villain is really just a matter of perspective. Is two or three options a great place for consumers? No, of course not it all sucks, I think a system built around who-gets-the-most-money-wins is the real problem.

What are the nags? I also don’t use Apple TV and don’t recall being nagged to use it.

The only thing that annoys me is the prompt to “finish setting up” my phone when I don’t want to turn on Siri. I get the prompt a few times and then it gives up trying to get me to turn on Siri and stays happily disabled.

If Apple News keeps advertising to you after you uninstall News then Apple has overstepped and should be held to account. I don’t hold it against them showing Apple News content on the Home Screen / Notification Tray iff Apple News is actually installed.

On the contrary, it's exactly analogous to Windows start menu ads as they are just icons that you can tap/right-click and uninstall, exactly like on Apple.

But I do love the HN double standards here:

Apple ads: "Pfff, just tap and uninstall, nothing newsworthy here."

Windows ads that you can also right-click and uninstall: "OMG, the audacity from Microsoft, let's up-vote every single FUD blog post about this while frothing at the mouth."

That doesn't happen to me when I use the cheap earbud things that Apple sells (I use a Subsonic client app for music); do you have any idea what triggers it?

Having said that, I love subserver more than any other media server options.

I think with Apple this ship is slowly sailing, and the tracking will soon be just as bad as Google.

The amount of money in advertising is staggering. Can it actually work that well? Or is this a category of spending that just tends to be greenlit in big companies?

How are you the product, when you’re giving money? That’s like saying, when you buy a ticket to Black Panther, you are the product Hollywood is selling, not the movie.

Why can't you be both? After all, an advertiser's best target is someone who already has a propensity to spend. Companies can and do sell you stuff then also target you for ads.

I’m not sure why nerds are still litigating this sort of thing years after the who gnu linux thing.

Like Android?

>I’m not sure why nerds are still litigating this sort of thing years after the who gnu linux thing.

Because most Linux users are no longer interacting with GNU/Linux.

4.4BSD however was released in 1993, so iOS would've had decades to diverge from it.

It consists of "massive" changes such as:

> Enable writable clock debugfs files which are required for debugging and testing

and

> Allow drivers to register hooks when IPIs are sent and handled. The statistics of these IPIs are helpful in predicting CPU idle states

In case its not clear, Linux the operating system typically means the Linux kernel plus a set of unix-inspired GPL-licenced userspace tools. Some (still) call this GNU/Linux, although that is a bit of a mouthful.

Android has a completely different userspace to "Linux". The kernel is not the issue.

But if you want, you can totally install all the GNU userspace tools on Android. Nothing is stopping you from doing that.

Just semantics.

Marricks's comment simply does not make any sense if we're to use that definition of "Linux".

"No one is going to spend billions of dollars to get you to buy Linux.", Marrick said. Perhaps they were including the resources required to make something that is recognisably Linux that is compatible with phones, and polished enough to be appealing to the average consumer?

They could just have not known this, it's not obvious if you've never tried to open a terminal on an Android phone.

But how is Android not recognisably Linux? You can natively run all the Linux stuff you'd like on Android.

Could Apple conceivably be spying on my every move? Well... they really don't need to to make App Store recommendations so I doubt it.

When, and if, ever launches its own web advertising client which they bill as "privacy focused" I'll start being skeptical but until then there's way better things to throw tin foil at.

People talk about Android like it is the "do anything you want device marketed at end users", but it is the "do anything you want operating system marketed at device manufacturers". One of the many things you can do with such a device is lock it down, and that's what companies who make devices that run Android, like quite-notably Samsung, have largely decided to do.

Google's first-party devices are often quite open, and that's cool and all, but they do not have much marketshare because, in the end, they kind of suck with the various limited hardware tradeoffs they make. Users, generally, are unable to provide a very strong purchasing signal preference on "is an open device" because they are too busy optimizing for having good cameras or screens or whatever it is that they consider the primary point of owning the phone in the first place is.

At the end of the day, Android then become more of a coalition of brands herded by Google--but led by Samsung, whom at least used to make the vast majority of the actual profit, disproportionate even to their marketshare--in attempts to reign them in on what crazy changes they make, but those limitations do not enforce the device to be open... far from it, really! And so we have seen Google also the target of lawsuits for anti-competitive behavior with their store (including by Epic, whose argument almost made more sense against Google than Apple).

Ability to root and sideloading are two different but similar issues on the topic of freedom.

wait what? It's basically the most used/desired tablet, afaik, at least in Canada/US

And of course forget about anything that isn't iOS or Android. I don't expect banks to support alternative OSes anytime soon.

I probably won't root my next phone, not worth the hassle for a daily driver.

What could be nice is if phones could run VMs, so you have your stock ROM with all your "important" apps, and a VM where you can run anything you want: hacked Android, Linux, maybe even a desktop OS. Modern phone hardware should be more than powerful enough to do that.

The easiest daily driver to root is Sony and Google phones. You simply unlock the bootloader and flash. There's no nonsense to deal with.

That said, they have locked bootloaders on some devices. Predominantly in the US market, I believe at the request of carriers. However, it's traditionally been the minority of devices.

Kiss some multimedia apps, payment apps, and enterprise security features goodbye...along with a bunch of random features like private mode in their browser.

Samsung at least don't require personal details for you to take control of your device. Sure, you lose access to some multimedia, but don't blame Samsung for that, blame Widevine DRM certification. Knox goes out the window, but the entire point of Knox is to (try) guarantee a device isn't tampered with. At least you can remove it!

I would consider a device tampered with if someone besides me (the owner) did something with it, without my authorization. But anything short of that is surely just me using the device. I mean, I have physical possession after all.

It's like your laptop's motherboard detected you installed another OS in place of the OEM-provided Windows installation, and overvoltaged your NVidia GPU to burn it out. "We have every right to not support high-performance graphics on any other OS other than our own - if you want to install your own OS, you can still use the integrated Intel GPU".

In other words: there's no way for me to just take the phone to my workshop / local hackerspace, and fix it with a soldering iron. Even if I could source the right parts, it's going to be a PITA to make them work. I didn't investigate it further, but I assume that these days, cryptography is used for critical parts to attest each other as genuine (similar to what new iPhones do, which is why you can't just replace the "home" button if it breaks).

Additionally, since I haven't heard of people doing software workarounds, whatever in Knox is reading the state of the eFuse, cannot be trivially patched. I recall reading somewhere that triggering the eFuse somehow overwrites Knox itself - if that's correct, then they may not even be anything left to enable afterwards.

----

I'm going to concede here that my example was somewhat hyperbolic - burning a single eFuse isn't the same as overvolting the whole GPU. But only somewhat - the reasoning/intent behind the two cases is the same. Additionally, cryptography blurs the line between what's hardware damage and what's a software limitation. Take, for example, secure erasure of data: you can smash a hard drive with a sledgehammer and then microwave the remains to slag, but you can get the same result by keeping the data encrypted, and then... losing the keys.

Would I like to have an unlocked bootloader? Sure. Is having a locked bootloader equivalent to only being allowed to install Apple approved apps? Of course not.

Please, you can sideload apps by selecting a single option... Not to mention you have all the options to make alternative apps default like any Google device.

That alone is significantly more open than Apple devices...

The Mac defaults to signed apps. And you need to change a setting to allow unsigned apps.

iOS could easily default to what we have today, but allow the installation of non App Store app after users change a setting and confirm after reading a scary earning pop up, that tells users they may be exposing themselves to data theft, hacking, viruses and money theft.

No more Apple Pay, for starters. Maybe no iMessage. Things where they can argue they have to turn them off to protect the user, and/or themselves, from rogue apps.

And then you could have a kind of freedom, but it wouldn’t be a very useful one. You can already load whatever you want on your own phone if you have the source and do the build yourself. I can pretty easily imagine Apple making it so you can side load closed apps but almost nobody ever does.

Support is expensive. Apple spends a lot of money to provide what is generally very excellent support. It’s a huge component of the overall brand for many users that stay in their ecosystem.

Apple has gone a long way by sticking to the safest paths, meaning they do things that cause the most customer satisfaction, and don't do anything that can go wrong. That's why Apple abandoned the iCar project because while many would like the concept, a car experience is not something that Apple can have control over; if users get into car accidents, for example, that hurts Apple's brand no matter the cause of the incident. In comparison, making phones, Macs, tablets, etc. is fairly safe as long as Apple retains its full control over the experience (which must be perfect for most consumers).

Because of this, I don't really see Apple allowing app sideloading, even though I personally like it. I think the more pressing issue right now is the 30% cut on AppStore.

I beg to differ.

Apple is becoming an ad company despite privacy claims

https://proton.me/blog/apple-ad-company

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33736259

> Apple monitors your every move in the App Store and its News and Stocks apps and then uses that data to sell ads targeting you in those same apps. To meet its growth forecasts, experts expect Apple to start selling ads in its Maps, Podcast, and Books apps, meaning it could replicate this model across more of its services. Much more of your activity could be monitored in the future.

Tracking every click in the App Store/News/Stocks is not great but it is in NO WAY similar to tracking every website I view and reading every email I send.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202303

Is there any evidence that Apple is lying, and is actually decrypting them and using them for advertising purposes, rather than for the "coherence" feature?

I don't actually want browsing sessions to be unified across devices, so I do wish that it was turned off by default. (Though being able to close tabs remotely is a sort of interesting capability.) However, it doesn't seem to be actual spyware used for advertising or tracking purposes.

And it’s not going to google first. If you type an address the “link” at the top is to Apple Maps. They seem to do a similar thing with place names. I’m not sure but one can be fairly certain they’re using the phones location to help….

Is it? How exactly are encrypted payloads to a secure, opaque and generic endpoint easy to distinguish?

For spotting it going to Apple you'd have to do more fancy correlation over time and such, but you can find people out there who are researching this stuff... so that's who I'm waiting for to hear more from.

This's on Gmail's homepage:

"We never use your Gmail content for any ads purposes. Gmail uses industry-leading encryption for all messages you receive and send. We never use your Gmail content to personalize ads."

On a different note I attended an apple event for IT Government and Education in Chicago. Eye opening.. Apple's "privacy" stance is all just a horse and pony show for marketing. Unbelievable how open they were about tracking everything at the event.

I'd not be surprised to learn there was some level of phoning home though.

Apple knows that I bought the app (they charged me for it).

In order to charge Clash of Clans for the conversion, my phone needs to connect to Apple and send them a record of the ad click. What if clicking on that ad and buying the app are the only thing I ever did on the phone? There’s nothing to aggregate locally, and Apple knows they got the conversion data from me.

Perhaps the claim is that my phone is going to send all these records to Apple, and Apple is just going to do the right thing and run programs that do the business without letting any of their people look at anything they aren’t supposed to look at (they could internally accomplish this by differential privacy, rigorous internal controls, etc). That’s the same claim Google and everyone else is going to make.

Even the ads can be anonymously downloaded using a shuffler/mixer, such that nobody knows which ads out of the universe of ads the device chose to target the user with.

The ad still has to come from a server, unless the phone downloads all possible ads the person might be interested in (which I doubt).

The transfer would at a minimum include the IP address of the phone.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federated_Learning_of_Cohorts

FLoC is definitely more anonymous than "davidlumley visited nytimes.com twice on December 1st 2022". However, that particular usage information was previously only available to nytimes.com, any ad/data vendor using third party tracking cookies that were present on nytimes.com at the time of my visit, and finally any company that purchased data from the ad/data vendor.

My FLoC was theoretically available to any website and had much of the same intent data that intent ad/data vendors were/are selling.

If my understanding of Apple's ad platform is correct, advertisers don't know which cohort the user davidlumley belongs to, or that their ads are being served to me because that's all handled on device.

This is a distinction without a difference. Do you regularly share your phone with other people, to the extent that "device data" can not be correlated back to you?

Typing this from a Pixel running GrapheneOS, and it's a great experience.

So, yeah, I did.

Asahi seems to do just fine and has good pace with adding feature support. https://asahilinux.org/

M2 is similar to M1 so it is easier as there is less HW combinations in the wild.

Not saying you’re wrong or anything, if anything I agree, and think it should apply to all my hardware I buy.

However, the killer app for jailbreaking locked down game systems does seem to be running unlicensed copies of commercial games.

For a while, you could get the most FLOPS/$ by networking PS3s together instead of buying commercial computing hardware.

There is no reason for walled garden. people can control the system themselves if setup.

Even for a power user like me, I’d rather have an ultra reliable device with amazing manufacturer warranty than something I can hack on.

You can have all three, though. Apple simply stops you from harnessing the true potential of your device because it threatens their bottom line. This is immediately apparent when you realize that any form of sideloading requires a $99/year subscription fee. Absolutely bonkers that they get away with this and people defend them anyways.

It's distribution that costs money, which makes sense because humans review that you're following their privacy polices etc.

However let's be honest, that wouldn't satisfy Facebook, Spotify, Epic et al because most people wouldn't do this so it wouldn't really help them. Facebook, Spotify & Epic don't care about user freedom, they just want to get the 30% cut back and to track you more than they're currently allowed.

the reality is that billions of people need to trust their phones with their most personal information, fininaces and lives and apple's policies while sometimes annoying do a lot to build that trust

they aren't a big secret and if you don't like it you're free to not buy their products

That wouldn't affect your kids and telling Grandma how to do that over the phone is very difficult. And at that point she could be handing over her credit card anyway.

It would be very helpful to developers and debugging too.

Surely a developer or ten has suggested the same thing by now?

My guess is focus: they are 100% focused on being the best closed platform that is easy to use and everything is handled for the user. A lively sideloading and 3rd party homebrew scene would be a massive distraction for the Dev team and most importantly the support side with little direct business ROI (indirect could be big but a harder sell).

Possibly harming brand reputation showing people what they could have absent the paid wall. When the alternative exposes people to risk, and they'd rather not have to explain themselves?

lol i can think of a few billion other reasons why they don't want it to happen.

Well obviously that's the most basic reason why. But how does it cause a loss in revenue?

It’s not just little Billy and Grandma who shouldn’t be turning that mode on, it’s most people.

The media would have a field day at Facebooks expense. Why would Apple even let them on the app store if they did something so stupid?

https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/30/18203551/apple-facebook-b...

This isn’t even a hypothetical, it really happened. And yet people still have a hard time believing Facebook (and other companies) would abuse iPhone side loading if given a chance. Of course they would!

Apple doesn't want to deal with a million hackers screwing with their devices and clogging up their support system, and also then having to deal with endless reports of terrible customer service because someone paid 1000$ for an iPhone and then Apple won't help them out when they brick it with the latest flashware they downloaded from usenet. Followed by the inevitable complaints that "Apple Customer Care is terrible". Easier just to control the entire ecosystem, and tell folks who don't like it, "cool, cya".

Also, people already gripe about the fact that to "fully unlock" your mac these days, you need to disable SIP, and how that disables some things (but at least not your warranty). Do you really think the same people would be happy with "developer mode but no more warranty" on iPhones? Especially if someone like Epic or Facebook or Google insist that their apps need this unlocked mode and so the only way to use them is to void your warranty?

If you're truly a developer, you can add whatever apps you want to your phone from source via xcode, free now, so what's the issue?

Having the option would mean that many apps that are currently available through the App Store, and therefore broadly trustworthy, would suddenly become side-load-only and follow basically no rules at all.

Honestly, the best protection would be the ability to control your own device, and make apple just one of many ways to help you secure it.

I would love to be able to firewall my device. To see what apps are doing and to prevent them from doing things you don't like. Then you can trust but verify.

By the way, apple does TONS of stuff behind your back - rapant telemetry, allowing and even helping with tracking, and doing its own advertising. Look at deep linking, iBeacon, and lots of other silly things.

While I agree that a single company shouldn't be unilaterally in charge of controlling access on behalf of users, I would say the industry doesn't do a good job of coming together to produce an option that works. Look at the software supply chain as an example of what tends to happen. The Linux distros do a pretty good job, but they maintain far fewer packages and getting your application into a distros repos isn't trivial.

iBeacon is 1-way read-only. Deep Linking is an app url scheme. Not much to look at.

afaict ibeacon allows apps to locate bluetooth beacons. think department store beacons and department store app. deep linking allows apps to (silently) intercept email/browsing/messages with specific urls. all of them and other schemes let apps wake up in the background.

Hey yeah, let’s all return to the golden era where everyone installed Symantec Norton Utilities and AVG antivirus on their computers and hoped for the best.

I’m aware about all of the known telemetry on iPhone and literally none of it is an issue for me. Collecting data is not an issue, especially when such collection can help make a product or service better. How data is used is the issue, and in this respect I’m unaware of any major tech companies whose hands are cleaner than Apple’s.

Erm. They make the hardware, so any bugs they put in there are what they are.

I don't see any reason to let more people put bugs in there.

I want the option to unlock my device and use it as I see fit.

Does this apply to Macs as well? Why can't iPhones be at least as open as a Mac?

Why is that you'd demand this of _Apple_? Doesn't Linux and the plethora of devices it supports give you this already?

I ask as a willful customer who prefers the complete control Apple provides. I never have to think about "porn" or "bitcoin scam" or "upsells from parent's bank" or any other crap from being easily accessible on my kids' or elderly parent's devices. Even Steam has some arcane filters that eventually allow porn content to be visible in the store. Honestly, outsourcing the basic policing of content to a company like Apple is a feature; not a bug.

Besides, there's so many competing devices that give you all the freedom + control you want out there already. Right? What am I missing?

Now, I admit, this means I'm under the mercy of what _Apple_ thinks is "right" or "wrong". As an extreme example, I'd also like to disable _all_ non-vegetarian content from my kids' or parent's phones; to appeal to their "religious"/"moral" beliefs. But obviously that's a not a PoV upheld by the App Store. Similarly, I can empathize there are many other viewpoints people hold that may or may not be aligned with App Store guidelines.

But despite all that, why can't Linux devices serve the "control my devices" need.

Apple has every right to build a hardware product with a software platform, but controlling the distribution of software is an immediate red flag. Conflating security and limitation is meaningless since iOS already has the means to isolate software a-la MacOS. Worst-case scenario, Apple can add a "Christian helicopter parent" toggle for you in the Settings app and let you opt-in to whatever you're enjoying now.

> Even Steam has some arcane filters that eventually allow porn content to be visible in the store.

Porn doesn't violate Steam's TOS. As long as your account is registered as under-18, it won't even be possible to see it.

> But despite all that, why can't Linux devices serve the "control my devices" need.

It can. On the newest Apple Silicon machines, I even hear it's excellent. That being said, Apple needs to unlock the bootloader of the iPhone/iPad to give us that option, so as-is our only choice is paying them 30% every time we make a transaction. It's so nefarious that I won't let anyone say it's 'serendipitous with moderation' or whatever you're trying to argue here. It's bad-faith and disregards the reason why we're talking about locked-down platforms in the first place.

Only to the extent that you're "locked in" to the Apple ecosystem. I'm entirely in the Apple ecosystem as well (at least for smartphone/tablet/PC hardware, and lesser so for online services) but it wouldn't be a threat to my identity to switch if I was sufficiently upset of Apple's choices (and there were viable alternatives). Personally I don't feel like there's much lock in. It would be a bit of a hassle to move some things over, sure, and a bit of a learning curve, but I really don't think it would be a big deal.

We demand this of almost all non-phone appliances. Why should phones get an exemption?

No, seriously, why are car manufacturers forced to allow owners the option of non-manufacturer fuel, non-manufacturer tires, non-manufacturer oil and so on, but when it comes to phones, suddenly "the consumers are making an informed choice"?

We regulate this shit for a reason, and that reason is that market forces alone are not enough to protect the consumer.

Your thoughts on it are irrelevant.

Do we really? By law you can't install your own software or ECU in your car and use it legally on the roads. I don't see many people pushing to be able to install BSD on their refrigerator. I think most people would be a lot happier if their TVs didn't come with a full OS. Game consoles have been locked down forever. While re-flashing my router is fun and nice to do, I would wager the absolute vast majority of people both never do it and certainly don't actually care if they can or not. ESPHome is a thing, but most people are buying IOT devices they don't have the ability to run anything they want on.

In fact, other than a personal computer, I'd wager most of the devices most people use in their day to day life with the ability to run software do not have – nor do people "demand" they have – the ability to run any arbitrary piece of software they want on it.

Who told you this? As long as the ECU you install meet the requirements, feel free. There's even a few open source ones. See https://megasquirt.info/

You are displaying the problem with allowing Apple special exemption to flout the rules - eventually people start believing that it must be against the law ... just like you did.

Better nip this nonsense while we can instead of everyone starting to believe that they may not modify the devices they purchased and own simply because the manufacturer said so.

Additionally megaquirt themselves repeatedly remind you their products are not legal for road use [2]:

> MegaSquirt® and MicroSquirt® controllers are experimental devices intended for educational purposes. MegaSquirt® and MicroSquirt® controllers are not for sale or use on pollution controlled vehicles. Check the applicable laws in your locality to determine if using MegaSquirt is legal for your application. For more information, see: www.megamanual.com/tamp.htm

Or

> No. MegaSquirt® EFI controllers DO NOT have exemption orders, and thus are NOT emissions legal for sale or use on any on-road pollution controlled vehicles in the U.S.A. or Canada. Competition vehicles that are never operated on public roads may be able to use MegaSquirt® EFI controllers, and some older 'non-emissions' on-road vehicles might be able to use MegaSquirt® EFI controllers as well. For other regions, please check your local regulations to see if a MegaSquirt® EFI controller is legal for your application. There is more information here: www.megamanual.com/tamp.htm

Or just http://www.megamanual.com/tamp.htm

[1]: https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2020-12/documents/ep... [2]: http://www.megamanual.com/MSFAQ.htm#whatis

Once again, I have to ask, why do you feel that phones should be exempt from regulation?

> Additionally megaquirt themselves repeatedly remind you their products are not legal for road use [2]:

Yeah, but they're perfectly legal for owners of the cars to use, as long as they stay on the track. You're arguing for not modifying the device at all, regardless of where it is going to be used.

[1] Thanks, by the way. It's awfully hard to get iPhone supporters to agree that regulation is a good thing once, nevermind twice.

I have said no such thing. I was challenging the assertion that we “demand [the option to control our devices] of almost all non-phone appliances”. I said nothing at all about the “good” or “badness” of regulation. The rest of your comment continues this bad faith interpretation of my argument and puts words in my mouth, so we’re done here.

This is just like Elon “free speech” - astroturf from companies who want to usher in the equivalent of scammy browser bars.

If you're able to uninstall those apps then, yes, you have (some amount of) control.

You’re right though. My 44” monitor for my living room was $550, but that only seems expensive compared to the ad-subsidized smart TVs.

End of the day, there are two markets for two different needs.

The benefit of streaming shows in a browser is that I can slow down all shows for my kids to 85% so they are slightly less stimulating and i NEVER get ads.

The computer also serves as a hub for music, it’s connected to some wireless speakers we can move to another room when playing music.

We should have the option of buying 50"++ TVs with no software or speakers, just a power button and a bunch of HDMI connections.

Then dont buy an iphone.

Apple's market is not people who want to "own" a phone. It is people who want a phone that works no fuss.

You're basically asking - why did apple take the option to make money hand over fist? The answer should be pretty self-obvious.

What we are seeing now is the inevitable convergence of tech into advertising and engineering is giving way to marketing, and we’re not building product anymore, we’re building analytics.

So don’t buy an iPhone. You know that’s not the offer.

Signed: Everyone

Clearly not signed everyone - I don’t sign it.

If you’re willing to ban the NFA/legalize probate nuclear weapons we might be able to talk.

In the mean time I suspect you support at least some level of collective restriction, and that means banning companies from selling locked hardware is fair game.

Locked mobile phones don’t hurt people other than the people who choose to use them. That’s different to for example a gun.

The only reason to ban iPhones is because you know other people like them as they are and you’re in a minority! You want to enforce a minority opinion on others. That’s morally wrong.

I think it's a good question that deserves an answer.

The Apple tax is not advancing anything. It's just a stranglehold on innovation promoted with FUD about how running programs is insecure despite the fact that this isn't applied to desktop/laptop computers.

Or maybe Apple provides a platform that some users and businesses still find it worth paying for.

You're arguing for the government to ban products you don't like when you can just buy something else.

If you ask people "should you be able to run any program you want on your devices?" I doubt people would answer "yes, on computers, but on phones I should only be able to run what Tim Apple allows me to".

I can only assume it’s rooted in profit motive. Pure and simple greed.

It used to be that when you bought a computer you could run any program you wanted. No one thought this needed to be enshrined in law until Apple thought to restrict what you can do with your own devices.

We do need legislation to ban devices which don't allow running general programs.

Heck, if I could have a phone with iOS 1 (no third party apps) and the camera and screen of the latest iPhone, I would buy that.

Well, you can - just don't install any 3rd party apps?

People didn’t buy New Coke so it went away.

That’s what Spotify and Musk are doing; trying to manipulate public perception to influence politicians.

The problem they have is Apple is the crown jewel of US tech corps. Spotify is not and politicians are well aware Musk is a poser with money. Epic, Spotify, like Jobs once said, sell features not products.

Gabe Newell has called generative content “an extinction level event” for traditional media producers and distributors. Epic and Spotify are an AI breakthrough away from irrelevance. Why listen to them except as anything but an appeal to rapidly outdated economic traditions?

They can join the protest rotary phone makers, and horse and buggy businesses are pulling together.

And that’s awesome! Personally I’m the same way.

But an overwhelming majority of people do not want to fight with or customize their tech. Opening the tech actually tricks them into causing more problems by clicking random pop up’s on websites that look like system updates or other malware / advert tricks.

A recent discussion on this problem is here [1]. I’m not sure how to solve this. Maybe we need an actually viable Linux phone for tinkerers, while also having a locked down iPhone for the less tech literate? Maybe Apple can introduce a less locked down version of iOS for power users?

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33314291

A key problem with this is volume.

Most people fall into the "less tech literate" group, which means that the devices made for that market will be better (more capable and/or less expensive).

Maybe there's a solution (I'm think about "developer mode" and "linux development environment" in Chrome OS); but I think it'll always be not so great in the best of cases.

Like this https://store.google.com/product/pixel_7_pro?

> while also having a locked down iPhone for the less tech literate?

Your post comes across as snobby. Not to mention demonstrably inaccurate. Someone who doesn't want their phone to be a tinkering device may be the most tech literate person on Hacker News. Not everyone wants every piece of tech they own to require tinkering, they just want it to work and get out of their way, so they can focus their tinkering on something else.

Whenever there is a centralized entity with the power to change things, people will eventually treat it as though it is responsible to change them. This is why we need decentralized systems. Freedom, choice, and efficiency for users comes from using decentralized systems — like the web + browsers.

I don't think the argument is good enough to justify their behavior. But it is why they do it.

That aside, the vulnerabilities (made by Apple) are what make your iOS device insecure— not the jailbreakers who use them.

You use your propaganda about freedom of choice to demand that I not be allowed to choose. You demand that no device can function the way I want it to because ALL of them must function the way YOU want them to.

I manage more than enough servers at work, and I don't want to manage another server in my pocket, do nitty-gritty settings, allow selected apps background access, try to find what changed and what broke every update.

I'm using Linux for 20 years, and I'm not going to change that, however Android is not Linux and settings persistence on Android is just is not present.

My parents use Samsung A9s, and I help them configure theirs from time to time, and seems like every important setting is either buried six levels deep or is not guaranteed to stick after an arbitrary time.

While iPhone's (or Apple's) ecosystem lacks control, it promises dependability, and this is huge in removing obstacles from your productivity. I can just get things done in my iPhone and never touch settings app ever, except the occasional "is my battery doing good" checks.

I own everything about the critical devices I work on, Linux. I have a magical device which "just works" in my Apple products.

If someone breaks this, I'll be sad.

Years ago, I replaced my trusty Nokia 6310 with an O2 XDA phone. It ran Windows CE, routinely crashed or froze and would be unable to make or receive calls. Since then, I've always wanted a phone that just works. The iPhone is the nearest thing to that for me.

Like Apple Music?

Each phone vendor including Apple does this to some extent. On Android you at least have some options (I had a few of them all were very close to stock), and usually you can disable these apps if there are any.

Worst I had to deal with was shortcut to OnePlus community forum, which is arguably less offensive than Apple Music, which is often reported to bind to the Bluetooth play button.

As for services that 'demand' you install something, the option exists on Android and no one demands people install things on their Android devices. Why would iOS be different?

https://www.epicgames.com/fortnite/en-US/mobile/android

1. It is used now. 2. Google is a lot less aggressive than apple (see meta vs ATT).

Sure it’s not “forced” like you go to jail or your phone doesn’t work, but you can’t use the way 99% of people will get their games.

As opposed to Apple quietly changing airdrop behavior based on what opinions the CCP has on freedom of speech?

I get why you like Apple and voluntarily submit yourself and all your private data to the comfort of the JustWorks (TM) ecosystem, but after their whole "we're gonna keep scanning pics on your device (actually our device) for CP", there's no way I'm trading my freedom and privacy for the sake of a little bit of comfort Apple's ecosystem offers.

Also, If Apple would open up their OS/ecosystem more, it means other SW vendors could offer the same quality of life of Apple's own apps, such as easy backups, photos and music, etc. but since Apple has everything locked down in their favor, of course only their apps work the best on iOS and alternative are always second class. Microsoft was sued for this in the past for monopolizing certain app segments by shipping them as default with Windows (Internet Explorer, Media Player, etc).

In the end, I trust no billion dollar publicly listed mega-corp to own my data and lease it back to me for a monthly fee, as they're beholden to their shareholders who demand constant revenue growth, and once they capture the majority market share (they already have in the US) and the users are locked in to their comfy ecosystem, there's nothing stopping them from selling users out to advertisers to generate the revenue growth demanded by the shareholders. What are their users gonna do, leave the ecosystem and 10+ years of purchases and backups behind and move to Android lol?

Not being part of "The Ecosystem (TM)" in the first place, means I'm free to walk away to a competitor whenever I sense the vendor is shifting its behavior in ways that are not in my best interest, at the cost of more time and effort to manage my services individually. Basically don't put all your eggs in one basket should be the possibility on mobile devices.

I don’t care that random developers have to workaround annoying restrictions and pay 30% to apple because it means it does just work and I don’t have to think — no one is trying to persuade me to do anything non Standard because there is no wiggle room. That’s a good thing.

But it is a risk — I don’t like what apple is doing in China, and we are not that far away from that in the us and uk. If apple does start behaving poorly here I will be SOOL.

Remember this in 10 years or so when Apple will do things you won't like and you'll have no way out.

I've bookmarked your comment to have it handy in a few years when people are gonna start complaining once Apple acts against their interests.

Remember, you (plural) voluntarily asked for this. "Lock me down Apple, I love it."

I’ll be interested to return to this conversation in 10 years because as a priviledged, not-politically-radical (or at least not activist) person my hunch is that apple will still be a reasonable home for me. What I worry about is that it won’t be so comfortable for people who want to protest, or are in the margins in some other way.

I do care about this and would love another solution that worked.

Similarly I’d love not to use WhatsApp/fb and avoid as far as I can, but I want to play tennis or meet friends for bike rides and there is just no way of avoiding it right now without making substantial personal sacrifices.

I think the only solution long term is more regulation of large tech companies so that they act in the common good. That’s a hard problem though.

Apple has been working tirelessly for years to retrofit the iOS model to Mac. It's probably just a matter of time, unfortunately.

Being skeptical, and critical is important. This skepticism, criticizing and warning caused Apple to at least postpone their CSAM scan and reconsider their algorithms.

We need to talk, and talk indeed openly about the things we don't like. Otherwise we'll be the real chickens at the end of the day.

"But we said Microsoft would do this bad thing, and then they did it!" is not a valid argument for why we should believe "But we've been saying for 12 years that Apple will do this bad thing Any Day Now™! They haven't yet, but it'll definitely happen Very Soon, just you wait!"

Companies are companies. I'd love the future to sucker punch me and prove completely otherwise.

Meanwhile the only PC I own is a Steam Deck.

iOS would instantly be the biggest target for crapware ever. Enough companies want out from under apple that you’d be almost forced to use sideloading to install mainstream apps (Facebook, Fortnite, Spotify, etc), so users would expose themselves to all sorts of scams very quickly.

You seem to be a power user, and I get what you want, but pleeeease no signed binaries! :D For me a setting "I know what I'm doing" would be good enough :) (like on Android smartphones). That way I can install anything I want, and you can install only signed binaries.

Perhaps some middle ground can be achieved.

I think the idea is that if Apple finds you signing software with malware, they can invalidate your certificate, and then your software won't run anymore on anyone's mac. And you know that you will lose your certificate and have a hard time creating a new one if you sign malware, so you probably won't do it. You also know that by default, your users won't be able to run malicious versions of your software, so your reputation won't be damaged by stories of "I installed the Schipplock Frobnicator App and my machine got infected".

In effect, it's a decent system to allow other distribution methods than the App Store without opening the flood-gates for malware and trojans. I 100% agree though that there should be some obscure option to run unsigned software, it should be a system acting on behalf of the user to protect the user, not a system acting on behalf of Apple to control the user.

As a user of portable Macs, I concur. I use Linux desktops, Mac laptops and iOS mobile devices.

> All I want is the for the iPhone to be as open as a Mac. Let me run binaries signed by legit devs!

That should be nice, indeed. It'll take us to the good old PalmOS days.

Maybe users should be more mindful and more educated on the pros and cons of dumping their entire private lives in the devices they don't control and are instead controlled by publicly listed trillion dollar corporations who's sole purpose is revenue growth and shareholder ROI.

Just a thought.

Apple's OS and the API it provides for developing apps is what gets us here. Lord knows there are some real busted apps out there, but your system doesn't fall apart.

Let's not even get into the fact that Apple itself was doing OS X stuff, which was able to have a high bar for software quality, and no "don't install random binaries" stuff to be seen.

It’s related to the “one app source”. See…

> no "don't install random binaries" stuff to be seen.

Because it was a lot smaller target than windows in terms of uses and impact. Maybe you forget, but there was certainly crapware that would bog your system down.

Meanwhile iOS is probably the single greatest target today. Statistically rich users, extremely important device to the user, and lots of users.

Regardless of your view on if apple should open it up, if it were to happen, it would instantly be a massive target. Companies would flee the 30% fee (@epic/fortnight) or the privacy policies (@meta) and maybe even employers buying some Oracle/SAP junk for their employees and quickly bring legitimacy to sideloading.

Everywhere would then fill with more of those “your Java is out of date plz download” sites, but instead it’d be apps. Now, for better or worse, no one has to question what they download (too much).

If you could side-load then you’d soon almost be forced to side load and it would be heavily exploited.

Billions of machines use software distributed via package managers like Apt that have existed for decades, yet there is no epidemic of rampant malware proliferation via Linux package repositories despite trillions of dollars worth of assets being managed by Linux machines.

This argument is typical FUD, and it's very common for App Store apologists to not argue based on what's happening today with other app distribution methods, but via Y2K-era fear and the classic "but what about Facebook!" refrain.

Yea, most of the argument is “I fear that there will be generated uncertainty in how trustworthy apps will be. I doubt that most people can make smart decisions.

> it's very common for App Store apologists to not argue based on what's happening today with other app distribution methods

I’m not an App Store apologist, but also APT is hardly a fair comparison For many obvious reasons, not the least of which is that no actually relevant volume of humans use Linux. Servers aren’t people and don’t download random plugins and “Java updates” from their browser.

Drive by browser downloads and scams are the real threat vector. They’re still a thing in 2022. Just because your DNS based ad-blocked Linux desktop with a JavaScript free Firefox installed from the command line doesn’t see them, doesn’t mean they’re not there.

Maybe you don’t think they’re as important as “freedom to install what I want” but you can’t dismiss it as y2k fud.

That’s the core of most “app store apologist” arguments. That the control and peace that comes from the App Store is worth the loss of freedom. If you wanted freedom, there are alternatives.

You can disagree with the trade off, but that’s the trade off and other people prefer the other thing.

Personally, I want the pretty and powerful hardware of the iPhone and the freedom but I’m glad I don’t have to explain to my mother why her iPhone doesn’t need new Java.

I want all my problems on it to be solved by rebooting and I want it to just work and all the apps be safe by default.

I have never experienced this. What settings?

However, as a result, the backup tasks I created my parents keep stopping randomly, and I don't like that.

I heard an argument like this a lot at the start of discussions about whether we should be able to choose to WFH in the longer term. "I don't want to WFH because..." Ok, sure, but nobody is trying to force you to.

It might just be me, and I'll definitely fret about whether I'm being unreasonable for at least the next couple of hours, but this kinda frustrates me.

I'm supportive of your choice, but you already get to do the thing you want, and nobody is trying to take that away.

Expressing that you wouldn't behave any differently given more options is a distraction in a discussion about whether other people should be allowed to make a different choice.

You can always Jailbreak your device?

I think Apples response to your argument would be that it isn't the technically aware user that is trying to get control over their device that is the problem, its apps being used by those with no technical ability. Once an App is allowed to break out of the sandbox or be installed away from the AppStore the likelyhood of an average users phone getting into a broken mess at best and becoming infected with a virus at worse goes up my an order of magnitude.

No, you can't and this isn't a serious alternative, especially since Apple goes out of their way to prevent and break jailbreaks.

> Once an App is allowed to break out of the sandbox or be installed away from the AppStore the likelyhood of an average users phone getting into a broken mess at best and becoming infected with a virus at worse goes up my an order of magnitude.

And yet multimillion dollar scams flourish on the App Store[1]:

> That man’s name is Kosta Eleftheriou, and over the past few months, he’s made a convincing case that Apple is either uninterested or incompetent at stopping multimillion-dollar scams in its own App Store. He’s repeatedly found scam apps that prey on ordinary iPhone and iPad owners by luring them into a “free trial” of an app with seemingly thousands of fake 5-star reviews, only to charge them outrageous sums of money for a recurring subscription that many don’t understand how to cancel. “It’s a situation that most communities are blind to because of how Apple is essentially brainwashing people into believing the App Store is a trusted place,” he tells The Verge.

Apple is also responsible for distributing 500 million copies of Xcodeghost to users via the App Store[2].

The App Store model is about profits, and security is an afterthought that makes for good PR.

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/21/22385859/apple-app-store-...

[2] https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7bbmz/the-fortnite-trial-is...

No, you can’t. Apple has tight control over what gets installed on the iPhone, all the way throughout the boot chain.

Jailbreaking is about finding vulnerabilities to somehow acquire root, and many times exploits are not persistent after a reboot. The keyword here is “vulnerability”, something that Apple is eager to patch using security as an excuse, which is hard to argue against. But Apple could provide its users the ability to flash their devices with a warning that if they do, they’re on their own, but Apple wont do that for the aforementioned reasons by countless people in this thread! They are locking down the platform on purpose, and neither privacy nor security are adequate excuses.

Jailbreaking shouldn’t be a thing, because users shouldn’t be living in jails, they should live in fortresses.

Jailbreaking is incredibly bad UX. You are forced to use closed source software to “jailbreak” your phone, a jailbreak which may or may not be persistent after reboot. And only if you have the right iOS versions. So users are forced to stay on vulnerable iOS versions and not upgrade and pray to God that a new exploit is made for their version. Because if they upgrade, Apple wont let them downgrade again, which makes the users miss the opportunity of using a newly created exploit. It’s a cat and mouse game, and it makes users more vulnerable to malware.

Jailbreak use security exploits. I guess I want them fixed.

This option lets hackers into yr phone to steal yr nudes click OK to continue. Are you SURE? Check this box if you're sure. Check this box if you're just clicking every box to get through this to cancel, or wait thirty minutes to continue. Type "I GET IT MR APPLE BRING ON THE VIRII" and tap continue to continue. Get any Gold badge on HackerRank to continue. Put your phone in the microwave on HIGH for 30 minutes to continue.

...

...

Good. If you are reading this, it means you did not microwave your phone. You have passed the test. A fully clothed Apple representative is waiting for you in your car. Do not look directly into his eyes. Follow his directions to travel to our Appcave. After performing a gravity search for security reasons, he will grant you control over your device.

Something like that.

Johnny Tech-No might be able to navigate the checkboxes, he might even get through the trick one where you have to wait 30 minutes. There's no way he's getting Gold on HackerRank without having the know how to safely use a rooted phone. Surely.

No.

> It might just be me, and I'll definitely fret about whether I'm being unreasonable for at least the next couple of hours, but this kinda frustrates me.

The thing is, I'm stating my position and not telling that just because I choose something, everybody should be happy with that. I have only stated that Apple's proposition is better suited to my mindset and current preferences, given the choices are Android and iOS.

> I'm supportive of your choice, but you already get to do the thing you want, and nobody is trying to take that away.

I expressed no such fear or concern as far as I'm aware?

> Expressing that you wouldn't behave any differently given more options is a distraction in a discussion about whether other people should be allowed to make a different choice.

I don't think so. I skimmed the discussion and didn't see the position I have expressed here, and the parent asked for a counter-opinion, and I presented mine in a concise and polite manner. I guess we're discussing by expressing our opinions here, what am I missing?

Your comment was an example of that, if not a particularly egregious one. We're not about to sway Apple in a HN comment thread. Specific reference to your comment was intended only to use it as an example to illustrate the point.

> I expressed no such fear or concern as far as I'm aware?

Nor did I claim that you did. While it is not your position that allowing others a choice would harm you, explicitly mentioning that you don't stand to lose anything by allowing that choice is supportive of the main point in the next sentence.

> the parent asked for a counter-opinion

They didn't.

Next thing that would happen is that every major "can't miss out" app will walk its users through the process to disable safe management features, all to fulfill the promise of showing cute cat gifs. You know that's how it is.

Seriously, basically any other topic we can discuss like adults here but when it comes to Apple and their restrictions/bad behavior it feels like the most upvoted posts are paid ones (not stating they are, but it certainly would look like that on more generic forums)

Because the only mobile OS provider which allows blinding tracking frameworks with a single click is Apple currently, and every software vendor will want its telemetry and ads for their "monies".

The application model evolved from "pay this to get that" to "train this AI implicitly which we gonna use against you, and ah, we also sell your every aspect of you" to see cute cat GIFs.

Some of us are seriously against this and Android doesn't provide that. Maybe it's because Google is an advertisement company which provides nice looking (free-ish) utilities which also acts as nice data funnels (incl. Android).

Also, we have a gatekeeper called Google Play Services. In other words, even if you have a custom ROM, you need that all-encompassing framework to have nice things.

Clients may differ, but the cloud platform and the connector which enables all these "Android" things is closed source, and controlled by Google.

---

If you want to install microG super easy and are still choosing your next phone, get one supported by LineageOS: https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/

Then instead of the official LineageOS build, get one from here with microG preinstalled: https://download.lineage.microg.org/

For low budget folks, a lot of Xiaomi phones are supported. You'll have to sign up for their account and wait for a few days, but otherwise the process is pretty straightforward. E. g. this is for my current phone: https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/ginkgo/install

Lets not forget the stuff you (and most of us) so loathe is direction Apple is actively heading for few years via their own ad-space. Truly surreal discussion.

Well that would be in violation of existing US Federal Law

The common example I give is that if you replace the radio in your car, and then the water pump fails the manufacturer of the car can not refuse the warranty because you change the care

Similarly, if in this instance you remove the sticker to turn on Dev Mode and then the Screen fails it would be incumbent on Apple to prove some software or something you did directly cause the screen failure before voiding the warranty claim, they can not simply relay on a sticker

[1] https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/ftc-warranty-sticker... [2] https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2018/04/...

Do you expect most users would know about side loading in Apple's case?

This has never happened on Android.

[0] https://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/fortnite-removed-from-g...

>When Fortnite launched on mobile in 2018, Epic Games very notably sidestepped the Google Play Store and pushed users to download the title directly from their website, an effort made to avoid the substantial revenue cuts that Google takes from in-app purchases of Play Store downloads. At the time, the move was understandable for Epic, which was sitting on the hottest free-to-play game of the year that was pulling in substantial revenues from in-app purchases.

Google proceeded to try to scare users away from sideloading Epic's app, and Epic sued.

>“Google puts software downloadable outside of Google Play at a disadvantage, through technical and business measures such as scary, repetitive security pop-ups for downloaded and updated software, restrictive manufacturer and carrier agreements and dealings, Google public relations characterizing third party software sources as malware, and new efforts such as Google Play Protect to outright block software obtained outside the Google Play store,” an Epic Games spokesperson said in a statement. “Because of this, we’ve launched Fortnite for Android on the Google Play Store.”

https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/21/epic-games-launches-fortni...

>> This has never happened on Android.

> When Fortnite launched on mobile in 2018, Epic Games very notably sidestepped the Google Play Store and pushed users to download the title directly from their website...

Though that's the exception that proves the rule. Besides Fortnite, who else has pushed users into side-loading? It's not at all common, which weighs strongly against the scare-mongering that it would somehow cause their platform security to collapse if Apple allowed it.

It also seems like it would be the case if your app is big enough to get people to side-load it, it's probably also big enough to get some security/privacy of its own to keep its practices in check.

Amazon did the same with its app store (one they tried to push when they first released their tablet)

>The lawsuit is effectively claiming that this openness is a facade, because while customers technically have the choice of where to get their apps from, Google’s business practices have prevented a viable app store competitor from emerging.

https://www.theverge.com/2021/7/8/22568111/google-play-andro...

>Google has struck at least 24 deals with big app developers to stop them from competing with its Play Store, including an agreement to pay Activision Blizzard Inc about $360 million over three years

https://www.reuters.com/technology/google-agreed-pay-360-mln...

>Epic reached an agreement with OnePlus to preload Epic Games on the company’s smartphones. As part of the agreement, Epic says it developed a version of Fortnite specifically for OnePlus devices to take advantage of the OnePlus phones’ high-refresh-rate screens...

Google demanded OnePlus not implement the agreement outside of India, where the company allowed OnePlus to move forward with the deal.

OnePlus reportedly informed Epic that Google was “concerned that the Epic Games app would have the ability to potentially install and update multiple games with a silent install bypassing the Google Play Store.”

https://mobilesyrup.com/2020/08/14/epic-google-oneplus-prelo...

Since Google lets most apps do what they want in most ways, there's not much motivation for bypassing the App Store--unless you're greedy like Epic. Since Apple restricts apps more with each passing year, the motivation is much higher, in addition to the identical 30% fees.

Not OP but yeah, I think it would. Im currently an android user because I thought it wouldn't, but in practice it does.

The most explicit example is that despite owning a flagship phone from a flagship manufacturer, the Google suite of apps don't integrate properly with the hardware. I have a Z flip 3, and I need to use Samsung Pay (over google wallet) with the phone to use it while folded. Because Samsung Pay doesn't integrate with my Google account, I'm forced to use both services in praxtice.

These sorts of niggley incompatibilities are _everywhere_ on android.

The other point is what epic has done is going to spread (side note: I used to work for Epic, this is my take on their move, not speaking on their behalf). If I want to play the Fortnite right now, I am forced to download an extra launcher on my device that interacts differently to the play store and Samsung store, doesn't support the integrations with the rest of my apps. I can only guarantee that as other apps grow we'll end up with storefronts for X, Y and Z (see uplay, battle.net, origin, epic launcher, ms store) so that those apps can either take a bigger cut or skirt around the requirements the platform holder has - on iOS it will make it so that sign in with apple isn't a requirement on third party stores.

The fact is that people who do want to sideload have the option to right now - use android. The people who want to live in a walled garden also have an option. By forcing apple to be more open you remove that option from the people who want it.

As with it OP, I'm not saying everyone should feel this way.

I'm sure I have a couple of vice grips around here somewhere. I wonder how far an iPhone will fold before Apple Pay stops working. Surely some YouTuber has tested this already...

I personally have never used a Samsung device, but from I've read, I feel like Samsung phones are trying to be their own OS and do as much as they can to hide the fact that they're running Google's Android OS.

It's similar to the same way MacOS tries to hide the fact that it's Unix under the hood and hides all the Unix directories (/usr, /bin, etc.) in the Finder by default.

Yes, it would, because <insert your giant corporation here> will require you to opt-out of Apple's ultra-managed experience to use their app.

I do think that could be solvable. Something like different personas on the phone could be the next step for the new “focus” features on the iPhone— maybe if you could disable App Store lockdowns but only for isolated profiles on your phone?

Exactly. Not just employers, but also Facebook, TikTok, and whatever new and worse invasive tech that is enabled by the lack of Apple's restrictions.

> I do think that could be solvable.

I agree. And it should be solved. But, those who are asking for less restrictions won't be happy, because what they are looking for is better tracking tools.

Why are these companies not happy with the current commissions structure? What guarantee is there that they'll be happy with a new one? Corporations are greedy. They will ask more of whatever their bottom line needs, including users' attention, privacy, etc.

> Then don't install it or only install it if its worth the trade off.

And get excluded from online circles that everyone in the world uses? Or, find a different job, because my employer wants to install their surveillance app outside Apple's sandbox? I prefer not having to do the trade off at all.

So, which "<insert your giant corporation here>" is making you do this on android, where you can actually sideload apps?

[0] https://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/fortnite-removed-from-g...

When I was last looking for a job, I clearly stated that I did not want to work from home and that I was only interested in onsite. Out of dozens of recruiters contacting me, only 1 respected that desire.

I share a house with my sister and she has terrible boundary issues (the places she socialized with others closed and went out of business from the Covid shutdowns). Her refusal to stop "visiting" during working hours cost me 2 jobs.

The correct phrasing is probably "I would rather not work with a mix of remote co-workers". Which is very different, though I'd argue still a perfectly reasonable preference!

I'm not sure I'd agree on the reasonableness point.

It's definitely a reasonable preference to have (although this is true of all preferences). To me, the reasonableness ends at trying to make anyone else satisfy that preference.

World of Warcraft has a day/night cycle, but it runs in a full 24-hour cycle just like the real world. This meant that if you were like me and mostly played at night, you mostly only ever saw the game world at night, and rarely saw the beautiful daytime colors.

I found forum threads of people asking for the option to either disable the day/night cycle entirely (it was 100% cosmetic and had no effect on anything in the game), or perhaps change it to something shorter like a 6-hour cycle.

And in every one of them, there were people arguing against having it as an option because they wouldn't use it. It seems people struggle to understand what "optional" means.

It's a mindset that I just absolutely don't understand. I could maybe see someone coming at it from the standpoint of "I don't think devs should spend the time on implementing an option I won't use when there are so many other things to work on", but in the specific case of WoW's day/night cycle, I can't imagine it would be much of an effort.

I remember back to when Apple allowed apps to set location privacy options. They could make it so ‘only while using the app’ wasn’t an option. So uber only let you have it always on or always off. It took Apple unilaterally enforcing an opinionated stance on what apps are allowed to do before companies stopped being anti-user in that particular way. When Apple allowed more flexibility, app makers didn’t.

I don’t want Apple to allow app-makers the freedom to provide apps that are anti-user. In practice, it seems to bethe lesser evil.

I remember when Apple allowed Uber to give users the location preferences of “always” and “never,” before they required apps to offer “only when using the app.” I guess I just tend to like what apple’s tight restrictions do to the entire ecosystem.

If I want the option to shut off Apple's controls and sideload a bunch of malware, that doesn't have to affect users who don't want to do that (assuming this option is gated behind some sufficiently stern warnings about the consequences). That Apple doesn't allow that has far less to do with protecting users than it does protecting their bottom line.

Having said that, Apple making these kinds of decisions for business reasons is (IMHO) a perfectly valid and logical way to operate. I'd just prefer we didn't pretend they're making this decision because allowing users to take more control over their devices is necessarily dangerous. That excuse has more holes than a slice of this fine Gorgombert.

And tell you the only way for experience X is to follow these safe steps to unlock your phone and use their launcher.

A freedom of choice has to be a freedom to choose. As I said farther you the thread, this immediately becomes an "and" rather than an "or".

"I can install this app via my preferred storefront" is a fine choice - but "I have to use all of the services that every third party wants to bundle in to use their specific service" isn't a choice, it's forced upon you and is no better than the situation we have now. We've seen this on android - try and install the Google camera app on a Huawei device and let me know how that goes for you, or use the Samsung app store on your Google device.

That's not a choice, and it's no better than being forced to use steam in the first place.

But none of this is Microsoft's business. That's the important part.

Because it's not user choice, it's publisher or developer choice. If I want to play Fortnite, I don't have a choice to play it on steam or EGS, and similarly if I want to play league of legends,I can't play it on steam. This sort of "choice" isn't a choice for the user, it forces them to be subject to the data protection and whims of every publisher whether they want to or not.

I'm all for flexibility, but of the two choices we have today, I prefer Apple's proposition more. If they decide to add more flexibility without compromising their quality, I'd be more than supportive of the feat.

As my business become more complicated and I become less a tech oriented student and more a "have to get the paperwork done for legal reasons" type person I went back to iPhone and never looked back.

I noticed many people I know running very time consuming business to be iPhone users too, not having the time to tinker with Android.

I notice my tech friends working in support love android, as their job doesn't really let them tinker. How we for those running's servers and dealing with backend stuff I see iPhone ownership is about 50/50, far higher than in support.

And most people I know that own their own business like I do are almost always iPhone users.

We just do not have time to dig deep into our phones and tinker, we have too much work to do and we are already stretched for time with our families, why waste that on configuring yet another Android ?

Android is not Linux and is not exclusive to geeks and tinkerers. The market share also exemplifies this.

My wife switched from Android to Apple, then Apple back to Android a couple times. Turns out they're really not that different, and the "simple" one is the one you're used to (noting in the Android ecosystem companies like Samsung really do a disservice by trying to stand out from stock in a different-but-no-better way).

The part that I'm not telling that my choice shall be default for everyone, which I repeated numerous times in this thread.

Apple decides to add a switch to convert iOS to macOS levels of freedom? Fine. Apple enables sideloading? Fine, I'll applaud even.

The thing is I'm not pro-"Apple's current stance". I'm pro-choice, but what I get today is satisfying my needs. If we can satisfy more users' need with one device (regardless of manufacturer), we should do that, and I support that.

Neither my iphone 12 Pro max nor my new one have made a successful backup yet. Tried all the things and contacted support nothing so far, but no chance. Always stuck at "Estimating .. "

On the other hand, my wife bought iphone 13 mini after being whole life on android and its a proper shitfest form her point of view - basic settings simply NOT possible by OS because Apple decided they know better than users what users want and users have no say in this apart form losing warranty via jailbreak, basic convenient features missing. The whole device can be summarized as 'basic for very premium price' - it looks very cheap, works cheap, not a single fancy or cool thing on it.

Was about to give a chance to Apple myself but quickly rolled back after what I've seen. Plus all the scandals that show Apple is just another amoral non-privacy corporation just like the rest of bunch, despite their hard efforts at marketing. My wife will be probably rolling back to Android soon since its pretty bad experience overall. So completely opposite experience.

> ...its a proper shitfest form her point of view

You know what? That's perfectly OK in my book. Android and iOS are backwards with respect to each other, and they are built on different default modes of operation. However, I'll never call Android like that as an iOS user.

> basic settings simply NOT possible by OS because Apple decided they know better than users what users want and users have no say

Well, again this is a subjective view. I used many things before an iPhone. Android, Palm, Windows CE Casiopeia, Windows Mobile to name a few.

People think PalmOS is dead, but it's very well alive and its name is iOS. Basic iOS mode of operation is a direct descendant of PalmOS, and evolved from there. When looked from that point of view, it's a perfectly capable device which provides all the settings I want. Again, it might not be providing what you or your wife's expecting, and that's OK. This is why we have choices, and I support that.

> The whole device can be summarized as 'basic for very premium price' - it looks very cheap, works cheap, not a single fancy or cool thing on it.

Well, again it depends on your view. Considering I can do anything I need on it, short of conquering the world (which I'm gonna publish an app for that), I don't call it a basic tool. It might not be as open as an Android system (for things which I call fancy, you need to root that system too), but seriously, calling it "incapable and basic" is inaccurate and laughable.

> Apple is just another amoral non-privacy corporation just like the rest of bunch despite their hard efforts at marketing...

Apple is just another company, which earns money in different ways. Just to be clear, I don't see them anything extraordinary.

It most certainly is linux. You probably mean it's not a GNU operating system.

He more likely means you don't manage it as a linux system.

A lot of linux systems don't use GNU, especially embedded ones, or containers. Busybox is very common. But you don't really treat these systems any differently from GNU/linux other than some relatively mundane command differences.

My wife switched away from an iPhone an an Android device less than a year ago exactly because this _wasn't_ the case.

- Restore from backup failed... pretty much impossible to solve as far as we could tell

- Tell iTunes what songs you want loaded onto your phone and sync. Then leave the house and it downloads some of the songs off the internet, because it _didn't_ actually sync them to the phone. It just loads a placeholder. Pretty severe impact for someone not on an unlimited plan.

- Ran into a problem and had to get the music library from itunes/phone. I don't recall the exact details (it was years ago), but every song had been renamed to some random alphanumeric string. It took a long time to fix them.

Honestly, it was one long series of the system doing something that clearly wasn't what she, as the user, would expect (or exactly _not_ what she told it to do).

I have had to restore my iDevices from backups several times. It has worked flawlessly every time.

I have been syncing my music library from iTunes to my iDevices since well before the iPhone existed. The only times I have ever had a problem with songs not being on the iPhone are when a) I wasn't actually syncing my whole library, but a subset, and I had forgotten which songs I hadn't synced, or b) the songs failed to sync, and iTunes/Finder gave me a big dialog box saying so, with a message explaining why for each individual song that didn't sync. This is true for songs I bought through the iTunes Store as well as those from other sources.

Does this mean I expect these things to work perfectly for everyone, every time? No, of course not. I've had my share of problems with all my Apple devices.

But it does mean that either because of user error or unusually bad products (ie, you got a lemon), your experience is not typical.

But would you even notice if the song showed up in your itunes list "as if" it was on the phone but, when you played it, it grabbed it off the internet (with not delay, because it streams it). I expect most people wouldn't notice this at all.

> But it does mean that either because of user error or unusually bad products

- The issue with it loading songs (that you have told it to put on the phone) from the internet is, as far as I was able to determine, intended behavior.

- The issue with it renaming every song to a "random" alphanumeric string is, also as far as I was able to determine, intended behavior. Although needing to get the songs "back out of itunes" is, I imagine, an edge case.

- The failed backup restore, I have nothing on. It didn't work, but it was long enough ago that I don't recall why. I do not think it was faulty hardware. It could have been user error... but the entire point of the iphone argument is "it just works"; "you didn't do it right" isn't really a reasonable response in that context. Especially when you consider we really couldn't find a way to recover from it.

All of those things have been taken out of my hands, the first two because those of ludicrous App Store rules and policies.

The issue I have with people going after Apple is that _everyone_ does this more or less.

Amazon could sell books if they wanted to, they would just have to pay Apple.

This is a bit funny to me. I'll give you the homogeneity argument, but as for the rest, as someone who has owned both iPhone and Android since 2008 or so, it took Apple a long, long time to catch up to Android in the backup/update department. Remember having to do everything via iTunes? I remember.

Now, they're essentially the same in that regard.

This type of person is just drawing a line in the sand then falsely labelling it as “full control”, then adding on the rather dangerous commandment: “…and everyone must have it this way because ‘slippery slope and apologists’”

The fact is choice exists and consumer purchasing behaviours are also a demonstration of choice. The successful penetration of these smartphone/ similar devices relies on having different levels of control hard baked into the system - otherwise we are fracturing the ability to have something like the smartphone as a universal minimum.

How many of you folks out there have parents that don’t really use their computer but carry their smartphone everywhere? That’s something to think about.

That said, I’m completely with the service/content companies when it comes to subscriptions for content.

And I won’t buy a car needing a “subscription” to use physical features.

As a user, I have always been able to run what I want on Apple devices. Most recently I found my kids were seeing bad recommendations on the YouTube app on Apple TV. I did not like the recommendations, or the adverts. I was able to clone Yattee[1] from Github and build it to the Apple TV from my laptop on the couch

Not as easy as side-loading, but also not difficult. Now when you want to _sell_ something like this, you can't. I'm fine with that. Freedom to run code is different from the freedom to package it up and sell it on a platform you don't own

Google makes side-loading hard[2] on Android for exactly the same reasons. They give preferential treatment[3] to big apps to prevent them from starting competing stores

I have the level of control that I like over my devices. I can't install my own OS on an iPhone, but there's great developments on Mac[4]. Given the hardware is now basically identical, this seems OK

[1] https://github.com/yattee/yattee

[2] https://www.androidauthority.com/fortnite-android-sideloadin...

[3] https://www.androidpolice.com/2021/08/30/google-allegedly-of...

[4] https://asahilinux.org

Apple is like Disney in that regard: they want absolute control over their brand and the associated experience. They don't want to get caught in shitstorms or legal trouble over stuff they cannot control such as covid misinformation, Nazi violence or pedophiles, so they require content moderation from apps that allow UGC. They don't want to deal with people complaining that they don't get their money back, so they require using their payment gateway where they can control the payment flow. They don't want applications to send marketing email spam to users' email addresses, so they require "Sign in with Apple", where they can supply a virtual email address.

It's not my world, but I do understand that this demand is a core part of their user experience they sell to their customers.

Of course it's too big to whipe it out like a phone and too small to comfortably replace a laptop but their philosophy is great.

- "Mercedes-Benz to introduce acceleration subscription fee" [0]

- "BMW starts selling heated seat subscriptions for $18 a month" [1]

[0] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-63743597

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2022/7/12/23204950/bmw-subscription...

I.e.: if it's normal to do side loading, then I become the odd man out for not wanting that on my device.

I'll have to tell my boss that, no, it's to do with security concerns in general that I don't accept HR:s fine app.

Yes. And it's easy to think that for a single issue like this it's a minor problem. Just don't buy Apple products. But there's a larger issue.

> in 10 years we’ll all have cars with a half dozen subscriptions forced on us

Right. I want to opt out of that. I also want to opt out of the corporate oversight of my property or tools in general. And while we're at it, I want to opt out of the inflationary debt driven monetary policy. And I want to opt out of vehicle-centric neighbourhood planning. Also proxy wars propagated by my government. The list goes on. And there's a burden to all of this that I'm not sure how to deal with. Happily accept the illusion of choice though, I guess? I don't use Apple products, never have.

The real questions are whether buying Apple is worth it. And if there are any roadblocks for the competition that could be removed.

Learn!

I can install my own software on my iPhone, and I can install software people have shared with me that I can inspect. I can affect the repairs I have the tools to make.

You don't need anything but a brain to learn how to do these things, but you'll definitely need a brain to understand why (or when) you shouldn't:

> I don’t understand the arguments that claim Apple needs to rule the device with an iron fist

> What problems does it cause to make the locked down experience the default with the option for me to disable that and take control of the device after I buy it?

What people like Elon Musk and Daniel Ek are asking for the ability to install software on my phone that allows them to install more software that I cannot inspect.

Now to be clear: I have the ability to do this thing to my device, but I don't think I should do it for the same reason I don't want to give any application on my computer my root password -- I understand one application needs to know it, but as soon as there's two that means there are two single-points-of-failure, and that's worse; a mistake in either program could reveal all of the secrets my phone has, or trick me into giving away ones that are only in my head.

I am also glad it is a little difficult because it means my friends and family cannot be easily tricked into doing it.

Apple can legitimately be worried that possible subpar/bad experiences with an Apple device (caused by user choices) will damage their brand and what the name is supposed to stand for in consumer space. It is fair to assume that normal people will not pay attention to details such as 'I disabled the walled garden'. So I'm pretty sure their position is 'Sure, your device but we're certainly not going to help you damage our brand's reputation'. They may have a point since your device at most costs $2k. Their reputation cost Apple billions of dollars to acquire.

Your comment while valid doesn't really work with the example Spotify CEO railing against Apple. That said your frustrating is valid and there are many good points here as to why that model is no longer in vogue and you might be the minority in the public (I sympathize with you).

You may argue this argument is wrong, but it’s not like it is totally incomprehensible.

Is this a certainty? No. But it's much too high a probability for my comfort.

Furthermore, there would be a large number of developers who would just say "screw the App Store, screw Apple's frameworks, screw their rules" and similarly release their apps for sideloading only. Many of these would also have unacceptable levels of malware, spyware, terrible bugs, or just plain godawful design. Yes, the App Store has its problems, but it absolutely has value.

When advocating for a change in a major system, it is both foolish and irresponsible not to consider how those changes would be abused by people with bad intentions. Just because you and people like you would only use the extra freedom for good does not mean that no one would use it for evil.

That doesn't mean you should never make a change that can be used for evil, or course. It means you need to be aware of the tradeoffs, take them into account, and be open about your willingness to accept the bad along with the good.

Please be happy now!

Wouldn't it be only be a problem if you were forced against your will to drive a subscription model based car?

Thats literally what we have. What are you complaining about? For obvious reasons Apple is t going to support you if you jailbreak it, but that is absolutely reasonable of them.