fpgeek

According to https://twitter.com/alexstamos/status/1336163726345441280 it appears to be fixed now.

It's not just just Verizon. AT&T, in particular, has a habit of locking important features (VoLTE, Wi-Fi Calling) to phones running AT&T-branded and certified software. So unless the device you want is sold by AT&T and you get the AT&T-branded version, you're SoL. They even do IMEI blocking, so even if your device could otherwise work...

I've seen plenty of devices implement this. Of course, they were all ones I'd flashed with CyanogenMod...

As a practical matter, I don't think either the phone manufacturer or the phone company want to be in the position of certifying that every replacement dialer meets regulatory requirements (911, for example). If customers can always roll back to the preinstalled one, they don't need to.

> - Someone else pointed out that the article isn't about a choice, the dialer was forced on the user.

If you want the phone to come with a dialer (I think most people do), then some dialer will inevitably be forced on people. And unless you think phone calls are an optional feature, it makes perfect sense that the dialer cannot be deleted.

The only complaint I can see here is that phone manufacturers can make bad choices for their default, undeleteable dialers. Well, yes, just like they can make bad choices for other software on the phone. The only reasonable remedy for that is to buy a phone from a manufacturer that makes software choices you like.

That phone manufacturers can make bad software choices is not an argument against having replaceable dialers. Quite the opposite. A manufacturer can make the exact same bad dialer choice if the dialer isn't replaceable. The only difference is that if the dialer is replaceable you might be able to do something about their bad choice some of the time.

So when Google updated the Nexus dialer to include search-based "Caller ID" that was a bad thing? Or when Google upgraded Messenger to include RCS support?

I think you're missing large parts of Amazon's consumer-facing value.

First and foremost, they have Kindle. To a first approximation this means that "everyone" who reads ebooks uses part of their ecosystem (even people who mostly read on other platforms use Kindle for exclusives, past purchases, etc.). And that fortress has only grown with Comixology and Audible. All of which are still DRMed, so the platform lock-in is huge.

Second, I think you've missed the unique selling point of Prime Video. It's not just a crappy Netflix ripoff or an iTunes ripoff, it is the only platform that seamlessly integrates subscribed videos and purchased videos. So, for example, done with the free Season 1, but Season 2 is in the middle of its initial broadcast? You can catch up by buying the episodes you missed. Grumpy that something dropped out of Prime Video lineup? You can buy that too. And so on. My understanding is that this partially extends to add-on cable channels, but I haven't actually tried that.

Third, they have the same seamless subscription and purchased mix with digital music. That isn't as special as Prime Video because Google and Apple have that mix too and the triumph of DRM-free music makes platform-switching much less painful. To the extent that Amazon has a special advantage here (AutoRip), that does depend on the retail core.

I think you dramatically underestimate the advantages Amazon has. If Walmart et al go in for the kill, I would not like their odds.

This is shortsighted attitude that, in the long run, will be toxic for Apple. It's one thing to not give developers what they want because you can't ( doesn't fit the technology or the product, don't have the resources or whatever). It is quite another to do that simply because you won't (e.g. for strategic lock-in reasons).

Yes, the iPhone gives them all the market power they need with some developers, even many devlopers. But others don't care about the iPhone for various reasons. Those developers, grumble, moan and eventually buy computers that aren't Macs. And when those developers make great things they're outside of Apple's ecosystem, encouraging other developers and customers to leave it as well...

Makes me wonder if this is at least partially intended to create a reason to roll back common carrier status.

Yet

It's been good enough to support their Kindle Fire ecosystem without using Google Play (I don't think anyone else has succeeded with something like that outside China), but they're still propping it up on non-Amazon devices by tying Amazon Video to it, so...

> Desktop app stores never really took off with steam being the only exception. And steam isn't for apps.

Mobile app stores aren't for apps (or at least paid apps) either. If you filter out all the games, the frontends for external services and all the other free apps, how much is left? How significant is it?

As long as you get your mutable code right. If there are any unintentional holes in your instantiate/operate/consume box...

Except, in the general case, that isn't true. Many of the Park Service social media accounts that were shut down do disseminate emergency information.

That part of the "shutdown" was rolled back once the issues were understood, but in the interim those kinds of Twitter feeds were pointing people to their Facebook page for up-to-date information. I guess we're lucky that no one included Facebook in the shutdown order and even luckier that there was no relevant emergency while the social media policy was being clarified.

Well, teacher salaries are lower in other parts of the country (though it is also true that salary vs cost of living is less out of whack in most of them).

I'm not saying the permission request isn't overbroad, but "manage downloads" seems potentially reasonable. I'd imagine that some permission along those lines would be required for a PDF viewer to start displaying a document before it is completely downloaded.

Now I don't know that that is what they were using it for, whether they could have made a narrower permission request, and so on, but permissions are permissions because we want to permit them some of the time. I think it is counterproductive to dismiss requests before evaluating them. That's the kind of behavior that leads to kitchen-sink permission requests from the start (when users are most motivated to try something) because a developer doesn't trust that they'll get a reasonable targeted request tomorrow.

Or it may just mean that the brain drain won't have a direct day-to-day impact, just an indirect, growing decay in capacity and capability as people leave and the team struggles to replace them.

Choosing to take (or not take) a position on protecting people's rights is part of running a public company. This sort of thing shapes Apple's brand, makes a difference in recruiting, makes some employees feel more valued (and others less so) and so on in all sorts of other little ways. Tim Cook may be doing this well or badly, but either way making these choices is absolutely part of his job.

May? What kind of crazy optimist are you?

Personally, I'd bet on will.

> Even the richest persons on this world would not be "allowed" to "buy" their freedom from the "social contract".

What do you mean by buying your freedom from the social contract? The US, at least, allows people to renounce their citizenship after paying exit taxes and then they're free to choose citizenship in any country that will have them (and abide by that social contract instead).

Other than it not being practical to choose statelessness (so you have to find some country's social contract you're happy with), I don't see what is missing. It's true that you still have to follow US laws (and pay US taxes) if you want to conduct business in the US (and similarly for other countries), but those are voluntary choices, at the gain or cost of some business opportunities.

I'd say the goodness of Boston's public transit depends on your comparison set. If you compare to the rest of the US, there aren't many cities with better public transit. If you compare to the rest of the world, it's another story.

> Assuming that the equity packages of both companies is $0 throws away useful information.

Well, no one said that all the $0 equity is valued at the same zero. There's nothing wrong with comparing those zeroes, but that's not the mistake most people make. Too many people use one of those zeroes to offset something that is nonzero (cash compensation differences, public company equity, quality of working environment and so on). Encouraging people to "value it at $0" is about making sure that they don't make that mistake.

People? So Apple isn't interested in selling to families and couples anymore?

I don't know that they will. If the first recall had been enough - that they'd really found the problem, fixed it and made things up to their customers, I think they could have done well. Taking decisive, painful and effective action would have demonstrated their commitment to their customers.

But they didn't solve the problem, gave people replacement devices they said were safe and were wrong about that again. I'm not suggesting malice here. I think that it is perfectly plausible (even likely) that they thought they had found and fixed the problem and were just wrong. But that doesn't really matter. They may not be malicious, but they are demonstrably incompetent when it comes to safety. That's probably worse.

Yes, that's exactly what is going on. Apple has market power from the lock-in they've established. Apple is abusing their market power to force customers on their platform to use their browser engine (and no others). Whether or not Apple has a monopoly is beside the point. This is anti-competitive behavior and if it is having a significant impact, it should be scrutinized and regulated.

I agree that Apple's management of their platform is the underlying problem, but there's no compelled speech here.

Writing code to provide better HTML5 support is only one of the ways Apple could satisfy this complaint. Lifting the developer agreement / Apple App Store restrictions that prevent third-party developers from writing browsers with better HTML5 support is another.

You're comparing apples and oranges. Apple doesn't provide anything like YouTube. If they did, they would have similar issues - there are all sorts of legal and business constraints associated with that kind of service.

A more appropriate comparison would be comparing the iTunes movie and TV store with Google's equivalent (Google Play Movies & TV):

* Both have movie purchases in over 100 countries. Apple has TV purchases in 6 countries [1]. Google has them in 8 [2]

* Both allow offline download of purchased videos. Google also allows downloading purchases to SD cards (less relevant for Apple).

* Google has a web-based player for purchased videos. Apple doesn't, AFAIK.

* Apple has carrier billing in 6 countries [3]. Google has it in 45 [4]. Google also allows you to use PayPal in a number of countries.

[1] https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204411

[2] https://support.google.com/googleplay/answer/2843119?hl=en

[3] https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205102

[4] https://support.google.com/googleplay/answer/2651410?hl=en

I could be wrong, but my impression is kovrik wants to back up the iPod to the Time Capsule directly. In other words, the backup shouldn't go through the MacBook at all (or, speculating based on my experience, kovrik wants to avoid storing the entire iPod backup on the MacBook as a step in the process).

1. Search for x (or y).

2. Ask for directions

3. Replace your location with y (or x).

4. Reverse start and end if necessary.

Personally I think is flow is better than directly entering start and end for two reasons:

- The common case (go from where I am to somewhere else) is faster.

- I don't have to think about how to enter "my location", which isn't obvious (over the years I've seen - typing "my location", searching with the start box empty, pressing a special button for the purpose, and others).