This is a false choice - there's no reason the iPhone can't be both a walled garden-type device and support alternative OSes/software, just like a computer.
We know because this exact strategy works just fine on Apple's other computer platform, the Mac. Personally, I hate that our phones, which increasingly are our personal computer, are often no longer just a general purpose compute device to use how I want, if i want.
The walled garden also relies enormously on Apple - a publicly traded for profit enterprise - being a benign benefactor, which to date has been (relatively) true. The future on a long timescale may not be so nice. Were this to change, you don't easily have a say in alternative software.
Why shouldn't you be able to install a linux distro and turn your old iPhone or iPad into a really power-efficient home server-type appliance, if you want to? My old MacBook is doing exactly this.
I'm not saying that Steve Jobs wasn't successful, or wasn't a visionary, or didn't save Apple. I'm just saying, the Apple II shipped with AppleSoft Basic. The Mac had no such language or built in compiler.
I remember my friend back in college had an Apple IIc, and someone actually wrote a C compiler for it. He used it AFAIK all the way through college until the mid nineties, 12 years after it's original release date roughly in 1984.
What I miss about computers from this time is that the Apple IIc had a joystick port. When I was like 12 (1985ish) I discovered I could get a DB9 connector and got a CDs cell which acted like a light sensitive resistor. This allowed me to play games that needed only a X or Y axis movement just by hovering my hand over the sensor.
Edited to add:
To this day, I don't own an Apple computer. The mac's were just waaay too expensive. Around 1996/1997 after college, I enjoyed Unix style operating systems more than windows or mac, and promptly got a PC and ran linux on it when I got a full time job out of college. And linux back then installed a C compiler typically too!! Windows and mac did not.
Love that you are linking to a piece of fiction, at literal dramatisation of events that almost likely never happened to illustrate a point that has no real foundation in fact. Every version of macOS that shipped with a CD had either PBX (Project Builder X) or Xcode, and the associated tooling, without forgetting that until recently, every Mac came pre-installed with Perl, Python and Ruby. I will concede that Objective-C is not AppleSoft Basic, but how useful is that now? And aren’t the previously listed languages a more powerful version in many ways? Also didn’t all Macs after 1986 come with HyperCard? I know NeXT machines all shipped with Project Builder.
My point, your link is, like your theory, fiction.
> Love that you are linking to a piece of fiction, at literal dramatisation of events that almost likely never happened to illustrate a point that has no real foundation in fact. Every version of macOS that shipped with a CD had either PBX (Project Builder X) or Xcode,
Fact: When the Macintosh came out in 1984 it came with no programming environment, in a time where every other personal computer had one built-in. As a matter of fact the only way to develop software for the Macintosh was to drop $10,000 on a Lisa
Also a fact: Steve Jobs spent the first half of the 90's trying to sell NeXT machines specifically on their dev tools for quickly making custom applications. From the late 1980's on, whenever he spoke of his visits to Xerox PARC he would mention the GUI, networking, and object-oriented programming as the three equally world-changing technologies shown to him.
Side note: For some reason Jobs insisted it only have an optical drive instead of a hard drive. Which I'm sure many engineers advised against. Hard drive was like 2.5k extra. What a decision.
Fact: the link the OP provided was from a Hollywood movie, a know reliable source of historical accuracy. /s
That there was no dev environment on release demonstrates precisely nothing, certainly not the fact that programmable personal computers were so vehemently "despised by Steve Jobs."
Edit: Last time I checked, the Mac that shipped in 1984 didn't have a CD drive, and the original Mac OS that shipped with the system was a ROM, so no CD was shipped with it...
"Every version of macOS that shipped with a CD had either PBX (Project Builder X) or Xcode..."
when he pointed out that the mac DIDN'T come with CD or any dev environment. you responded with "That there was no dev environment on release demonstrates precisely nothing"
The OP point was that Jobs hated users having access to programming tools and not wanting to ship them with his computers.
The original 1984 Mac on release not having a dev environment was just an example he used to make his point.
But the example can be correct, without making the point valid (as numerous people have answered here).
Especially since the same Jobs had shipped tons of computers with development environments, including things like PBX, XCode, all kinds of scripting languages, the whole NeXT suite of dev tools (that were one of its strong points, and became the later basis for OS X dev tools), and so on.
If the parents point was "at the point of the release of the original Mac in 1984, and only then, Jobs didn't want to give users development environment" he might have a point. But Jobs of the subsequent 20+ years agreeing to ship development tools just fine, makes the point moot.
can't you see how wrong his point is and how irrelevant the example?
I did point out that "Every version of macOS that shipped with a CD had either PBX (Project Builder X) or Xcode...", and in the same post pointed out that "Last time I checked, the Mac that shipped in 1984 didn't have a CD drive, and the original Mac OS that shipped with the system was a ROM, so no CD was shipped with it..."
So you're annoyed that I pointed out that every version of Mac OS (including System 7.5, 8 and 9) all shipped with some kind of dev environment (and I concede that Hypercard is applying that loosely) and pointed out that the 128K Mac did not have an OS shipped on a CD or a method for reading the CDs at the time (were CD-ROMs even a thing in 1984 - I can't remember)?
I tell you what it doesn't prove either way; programable computer were "despised by Steve Jobs". That is what I was taking umbrage with.
> Last time I checked, the Mac that shipped in 1984 didn't have a CD drive, and the original Mac OS that shipped with the system was a ROM, so no CD was shipped with it...
Right. No python. No C. No Perl. No Pascal. No Ruby. No C++. No Basic. Even the Apple IIc with it's puny 64k of ram had a decent Basic in it for the time. Talk about a feat of engineering from Microsoft!
One thing I was able to do with my AppleIIc was control the serial port through Basic (1984 ish). Hypertalk released support for doing that in 1992 -- a full 8 years (!) after the original mac was released.
Not really a surprise there was no Python (1991), Perl (1987), Ruby (1993), or C++ (public-ish in 1985) on a computer released in 1984.
Apple had a basic Pascal compiler on the Apple II/III, but it would have been an unbelievable feat to stretch that into a product with solid links to the System 1 OS, including the new GUI API, on the first few Macs.
Sample applies to BASIC. It would have been possible to squeeze the old MS Basic into the Mac but it would have had to run in some kind of Apple II emulation mode - not the point of the exercise. If you wanted BASIC you could buy an Apple II and carry right on.
Your point is clearly wrong. It took a few years to develop good tools for the original Mac because it was - you know - actually quite hard.
But when Jobs returned good, or at least adequate, free dev tools for MacOS were included almost immediately. And have been included ever since.
I don't know what you're trying to prove. Your original point, which you laughably attempted to prove with a clip from a movie, was that Jobs "despised" programable computers. This is demonstrably false.
I, and several others have done precisely that in this thread.
Next time, don't use a Hollywood dramatisation to back up your stories. They aren't real! Woz is on record as saying that the conversation never happened. Fundamentally, you're making things up to reflect your own biases and doubling down on them. It's clear that Apple, the business, doesn't see iPhone and iPad a general computing devices. That, though, is a very different point to the one you have failed to make.
> Fact: When the Macintosh came out in 1984 it came with no programming environment
The programming environment for the Mac was a total shitshow in 1984, and continued to be so for a couple of versions after. You needed a 128k Mac, a Lisa, *and* an Apple II to make it work *at all*.
You're absolutely right, how could I miss it! Steve Jobs hated the thought of programmable computers so much that he stopped these languages being included a full 3 years before any of them existed! /s
What you think you've "proved", you haven't. I'll repeat myself; that there was no dev environment on release demonstrates precisely nothing, certainly not the fact that programmable personal computers were so vehemently "despised by Steve Jobs."
Maybe you're angry or maybe you're pissed at being called out on this. I don't know.
But there were two issues with the Mac release in 1984.
1. The price.
2. It was a computer that was not programmable out of the box by the user.
In fact it was such a complete flop, it forced out Jobs by 1985.
The other competitors in the area around that time were the C64, Apple IIc/e, Vic 20, Atari 400/800, MS Dos PCs, TI 99/4a, TRS/80. All had a form of basic.
Yeah, I was there. At the time, Apple was making a ton of money selling the bit, 6502 based computers.
These machines were a completely open book, featured slots to plug anything you could imagine into (and people did, using those computers as quite capable 8 bit workstations: test and measure, cross dev, business, publishing, and so many more...)
I will stop there as the story of the 8 bit Apple computers is well known.
I will say Jobs hobbled the 16 bit machine so it would not spank the Mac silly.
Delivering serious use value to users is what funded the Mac and then some.
The only people I knew who wanted a Mac back then were ones that would never write a program.
Funny enough, many of those went on to use the crap out of HyperCard.
> It was a computer that was not programmable out of the box by the user.
That depends on what you mean by "out of the box." It's true that no development tools were included, but they were available from third parties. I wrote the code for my masters thesis in 1986 using Coral Common Lisp on a Mac Plus, so if you wanted to program a Mac you certainly could.
Not angry about anything my friend, just incredulous that you seemingly cannot separate Hollywood from what is front of you. Your definitions, as demonstrated by lisper, are at best debatable.
> The other competitors in the area around that time were the C64, Apple IIc/e, Vic 20, Atari 400/800, MS Dos PCs, TI 99/4a, TRS/80. All had a form of basic.
Interesting. Where are they now? It's as if in 1984 a paradigm shift happened. /s
Also, DOS didn't ship with basic. Some vendors may have bundled it, but DOS never had it built in.
> "Some vendors may have bundled it, but DOS never had it built in."
I'm partially incorrect. It clearly was bundled, and not as I said may have been bundled. The OP was alluding that it was built in like it was for the CBM64, ZX81 etc. Being bundled and installing it as a separate process is subtly different IMHO. But I will concede that I was wrong to say otherwise.
It's complicated, not only by the fact of BASIC being available in ROM originally, but by the fact that there were OEM versions of MS-DOS that didn't come with BASIC. The DOS that came with one's PC was rarely vanilla MS-DOS. I had a couple of PCs where the only programming tools that came in the box were EDLIN and DEBUG.
I may very well be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that was a Compaq thing. I certainly don't remember BASIC coming with any version of DOS or Windows out of the box in 1984. May be later on in the decade.
Best I watch 'Pirates of Silicon Valley' to check a reliable source... /s
> Also Fact: The original 1984 Mac did come not pre-installed with Perl, Python, nor Ruby.
It would have been quite extraordinary, considering that none of these languages existed. Also fact: it did not come with Go or Rust built in, and did not have a CUDA-compatible GPU.
That’s a really strange hill to die on. I know I learnt Pascal as a teenager on a Mac Plus. It had several third party development environments and there was a thriving shareware/freeware scene, developer tools were there. In the end what harmed the Mac was that it was much more expensive than PC clones.
Even when a BASIC implementation was built in, getting a better one from third parties was very common on all platforms. You can look at magazines from the time if you don’t believe it. The Mac was by design more of an appliance than the Apple ][, but it was not the black box some people here seem to think it was. This whole thread is full of assertions that are demonstrably false in about 10s worth of Google search.
Up until the 1984 Macintosh every "home computer" came with a BASIC interpreter and could be programmed out of the box. It was quite a while before dev tools were out for the Mac (I think you were expected to use a Lisa to do development for the Mac) and people found it very hard to write GUI applications at first because it was different from anything anyone had ever seen before.
That's scary. This post illustrates where we're headed with 'facts' and 'fact checking'.
A false statement (Jobs despising programmability) being backed up by a media clip that shows a made up account of events (according to Woz) based on aforementioned false statement.
A lot of small computers during the early days were seen as programmable things. Then it became a user interactive interface more than something to hack on. Maybe the shift of influence between Wozniak and Jobs explains that.
early 80s machines were what I had in mind, I remember my aunt having bought a tiny tiny amstrad niche typewriter and the manual was 50% BASIC programming which surprised me a lot. Only later, when GUIs started to pop, the spirit changed into a user friendly app platform and not something to hack.
We want a simplistic, managed, fuss-free device that isn't another source of malware, viruses, dark patterns e.g. unsubscribing and where basic things like uninstalling requires a Terminal.
If you want a computer then there are plenty of companies that satisfy your requirements. So why not encourage and support them instead of trying to turn the iPhone into something a lot of people don't want.
Like the GP said, this is a false dichotomy. Something as simple as accessible sideloading or a "let me do unsafe things" switch buried deep in the preferences app can give people who want it greater control and let those who prefer the walled garden keep the benefits.
I'm torn on this, on the one hand I would love to be able to hack on iPhone hardware.
However, we have Epic. No matter how deep the option is buried, they will try to get people to enable it so they can install their games without going through the app store.
I wish I could agree with you, but the bad actors here are large corporations who are incentivised to make even those who want to be safe, unsafe.
My point being, that some companies will try to convince you to enable side loading and Epic is an example. They do it on Android now.
I don't mind having a hackable system, I think it should just be a little more complex than a hidden setting that Epic will try and get you to switch.
Perhaps a ROM which you have to download and wipe/reload your phone with, maybe it also removes the App Store so that it's obvious that you are moving to an unsupported model. I'm not sure, but just having a side loading toggle will lead to Epic abusing the matter.
If Epic wants to sell you a piece of software to run on your computer, and in order to do so you need to perform special actions (special with regards to all the other software you use on that computer), and you decide that the software is worth it so you perform those special actions, this is somehow a worse scenario than if nothing else changes but you're not able to perform those special actions because the computer doesn't allow you? How is Epic a bad actor? They're selling you a piece of software that (presumably) performs as advertised. If there's a bad actor, I'd think it's the manufacturer of the computer that doesn't let you use it however you prefer.
The point is that my parents have an iPhone because they are idiot proof.
Yes, they had the tool bars in Internet Explorer. Yes they had viruses.
I do not want a situation where I now have to support their phone because they followed some instructions to unlock side loading and installed Bonzai Buddy.
I suggested an alternative, something that would be just a bit too technical for idiots. A switch in iOS will generate support requests to Apple as the average user is an idiot.
> I'd think it's the manufacturer of the computer that doesn't let you use it however you prefer.
Are you this vocal on Sony for not letting you install your own homebrew on a Playstation or Nintendo on the Switch?
I still don't see the problem. So you enable side loading, install the apps you want, and then what's the problem? It's not like other apps will start installing themselves now. I think some people are working under the mistaken belief that a side loaded APK can bypass the OS permissions system, which is not true. Enabling sideloading is a far cry from rooting or a custom ROM
It’s that some companies will force most people into enabling sideloading to turn the phone into something useful, until the field is level again - effectively getting rid of the walled garden.
If every app you need requires sideloading; you’re going to enable it or be left in the dark.
And yet we don't see that happening on Android at all, where companies have literally all incentive to convince people to sideload their apps instead of getting them from the Play store. And yet....it just doesn't happen. There is literally zero reason to believe that this would happen on iOS either. Epic might want to try it with Fortnite because of its popularity, but anything else? No, far too much hassle and you know 99% of users wouldn't bother.
Google is more permissive in their app store (e.g. with tracking users or accepting out of band payments), Google developer accounts are a one time payment, etc., etc. Overall there's less incentive to push a separate app store on Android than there is on iOS.
There is the only incentive that matters - google, just like apple, takes 30% cut off every transaction in your app. Everything else is secondary. And yet even though pushing custom APKs would get you your 30% back, companies aren't doing this(with the exception of Epic). So no, it's not about permissions or tracking users. Even Amazon had to stop offering sales for their digital content in the app because Google is actually and in fact strict about this.
And also - as a simple matter of fact, alternative app stores do exist and they haven't caused the collapse of the ecosystem. You can still stay in your walled garden if you wish.
So no, it's not about permissions or tracking users
Based on what?
And also - as a simple matter of fact, alternative app stores do exist
and they haven't caused the collapse of the ecosystem.
Sure, because the Play Store is already a colossal mess. Not even two weeks ago there was another high profile malware incident (SpinOk) with something like 30 million installs. I begrudgingly use an iPhone but I don't want the Google experience in any way shape or form.
Based on the simple fact that nearly all companies care about the money first and foremost. 30% of your sales is a larger motivator than being or not being able to track your users(and I'm not even sure that argument even holds with Android 12 and beyond, it's been really reined in). Or would you disagree?
>>Sure, because the Play Store is already a colossal mess.
I'm not sure I understand how that's related to what I said. Again, corporation like Amazon has all the incentive to push you towards their own app store, yet it just simply doesn't happen at all. If they don't do it, why would smaller companies do it?
>>I begrudgingly use an iPhone but I don't want the Google experience in any way shape or form.
I get the impression reading these comments that people seem to think that if you are on android you just randomly go on the Play Store and install stuff almost without thinking? Yes it's a problem that malware sometimes slips through. But 30 million installs is nothing compared to the userbase. And most people just get a phone, download the regular set of apps they use every day, and then they never ever open the play store again - why would they? The existence(or lack of) of 3rd party stores doesn't matter to majority of people on the platform, because they just never install any extra apps at all.
Yes, fortnite is the only exception of a major product. Amazon was forced by Google to halt the sales of any and all digital products through Android apps because they didn't want to give Google their 30% cut and I'm yet to see any push from them to install Kindle or Prime apps through a direct APK.
It seems to me that it can't both be true that (a) the appeal of the walled garden is wide and (b) sideloading or other uncurated channels are an irresistible force that will inevitably obliterate the walled garden. If people find value in it, they will not migrate to uncurated channels, so there will remain a population that's only reachable via the garden, so developers will have an incentive to continue to sell there.
And as far as I can tell, this is what's borne out by observable results in places where there are options. macOS has preferences which let you choose between (a) app store only and (b) app store + signed apps from other channels -- and lets you override both choices if you really really want (as well as having a unix command line from which you can run arbitrary things and the ability to acquire dev tools by which you can build and run untrusted source). Some people take safety into their own hands and use those things. Some people don't. This hasn't eliminated the Mac App Store as an option for people who want to rely on Apple's curation. It exists side-by-side with independent but still signed/trusted distribution, and both exist side-by-side with free-for-all. You can walk freely between the well-patrolled walls of the fortified city, the ring of civilization just outside it, and the wild west outside that. None of them stops the other from existing.
Are there any platforms where that's happened? If macOS isn't a place where that's happened, why would it happen to iOS?
I don’t want Apple to allow sideloading, that would be harmful to all the kids and grandmas. But allow booting another OS, there’s no way kids or grandma will want to flash Linux into their iPhone. I guess they just don’t want competition, maybe because some gaming company will make a gaming-OS for them.
> No matter how deep the option is buried, they will try to get people to enable it so they can install their games without going through the app store.
So you think the bad part is people being able to control their devices if they want to?
IMO, there isn't much importance to sideloading at personal levels. It's necessary for open and democratic society. I'm not realistically auditing the whole Debian package repository, and that makes it almost indistinguishable from App Store walled garden if viewed in a strictly personal scope, despite the reality being almost a polar opposite.
> IMO, there isn't much importance to sideloading at personal levels.
As someone who has jailbroken iOS devices in the distant past, the conveniences and user interactions supported by Activator and SBSettings more than a decade ago are still not on iOS yet (and will likely never be). I believe there is a lot of value to have sideloading while also recognizing that there could be a higher chance of malware and the lost.
Ah yes, "instead of getting a feature added for free that I won't need, and the presence of which would not impact me or anyone like me in any way, shape, or form, how about everyone just buys another $1500 phone?"
Maybe because getting a feature added for free that you won't need, and the presence of which would not impact you or anyone like you in any way, shape, or form, won't impact you or anyone like you in any way, shape, or form.
Just go "I'd never need that, but power to you if Apple ever adds it. Which we can be pretty sure of they won't". Don't hate on folks for wanting things that you don't want, but also won't affect your life in any way if they got it.
> Maybe because getting a feature added for free that you won't need, and the presence of which would not impact you or anyone like you in any way, shape, or form, won't impact you or anyone like you in any way, shape, or form.
How do you know that allowing sideloading does’t effectively mean opening a bunch of backdoors on the device? What if the the tight grip over the hardware + software is the best way to ensure that millions of users stay reasonably safe? Isn’t this basically a way to prevent supply chain attacks? I don’t know… do you know? How can you say such things with so much confidence?
Sideloading means that apps can (and will) migrate from appstore to other store with relaxed taxes, privacy and security, and all users will face app serp hijacking and permission extortion. Not only those who want their android experience on iphone for some bizarre reason.
It is entirely plausible that iOS cannot remove all the security restrictions that would be necessary for a useful sideloading, without exposing attack vectors.
I would love to hear some ideas about how it could be implemented without jeopardizing the security. A technical analysis, without words like "probably", "maybe". I'm fairly technical and ready to be enlightened.
Allowing sideloading means allowing third party developers and large corporations to make their app force sideloading. If large companies like Uber, Facebook, et al require sideloading it will make it more acceptable for smaller companies and developers to do so. Pretty soon everyone would just say "sideload", including unscrupulous smaller developers. At that point since everyone is sideloading, no one would bat an eye to yet another sideloaded app. Not to mention why would anyone not choose to sideload to avoid the Apple tax?
But there's something to be said of getting a phone that specifically can't do certain things, whether that be for privacy (Facebook says: download the FB App Store to get Instagram!), security (evil maid attacks), or giving it to my great grandparent who just needs to use some social media apps and the phone app.
No, this doesn't enable evil maid attacks. If your evil maid has the means to unlock your phone in order to enable sideloading, then it's already game over, because with that same access they can get your passwords and your 2FA second factor. Please stop trying to suggest that evil maid attacks are a concern here.
One time opportunistic and potentially brief access to the phone is different to installing spyware (during that brief access) which reports all activity forever more or allows Mitm on your data.
An APK is an APK. It's beholden to the same mandatory permissions system and has no extra abilities whether sideloaded or from the Play store. Sideloading != rooting
Since about iOS 6, iOS exploits have started with a sandbox escape exploit, since the attack surface is so large with native code running on the device (only one since then, the Checkm8 exploit, used a USB exploit instead). Getting native code on a user's device for "free fortnite vbucks" is step one to silently jailbreaking phones and running adware/malware/spyware.
We’re over a decade into having smart phones. At this point, you’re going to have to weigh up what your priorities are and get the phone that does what you want.
Not argue on the internet about the way things should be.
I want a phone that is as fast as a flagship phone like an iPhone, with a keyboard, daylong or better battery life running fullblown Debian. What shall I buy? It doesn’t exist. Nor can I put Debian on most flagship phones; takes time for them to get rooted if they ever do. And then they don’t support half of the hardware. So best option is Android. Or anything, including iOS, with vnc. Now that 5g is everywhere here and I have fiber to my house, I opt for VNC; ideal, it is not.
>I want a phone that is as fast as a flagship phone like an iPhone, with a keyboard, daylong or better battery life running fullblown Debian. What shall I buy? It doesn’t exist.
Have you ever paused to consider why your mobile unicorn doesn't exist?
You’ll find that virtually everything you buy does not meet your exact specifications. If you are not filthy rich your home will not be to your exact specifications, your furniture, your clothes, your car, your luggage, your kitchen.
What most people do is work out what they can afford, prioritise features, and try to buy they can afford and maximises the features they want the most. Maybe they decide, it’s not worth it and get nothing at all.
Same thing with your phone, you may be forced to buy something, but you can get the minimum thing to get by. Maybe you are a rich tech worker and you can run a separate phone that aligns best with your needs and wants.
What will 100% not get you what you want, is complaining, giving the company you don’t like $1500, and then giving the company that might one day live up to your dreams $0.
Yes, I am in the waiting list. It does come close. I have the previous version which is a great keyboard, but just not there yet in the mix between phone and ultra-portable. I have high hopes.
Don’t make it sound that Android is “iOS without walled garden”. I want ecosystem without bloat, that doesn’t spy on me and where I’m not the product that’s not the state of Android at the moment (unless you’re willing to bother with custom ROMs).
I’ve paid 1,5k for this thing and have every right to complain.
But the companies involved show no signs of changing, and you keep handing them money and your complaints are toothless. And you won’t support a project that is more aligned with your goals.
> I’ve paid 1,5k for this thing and have every right to complain
I agree that removing freedoms from the users is unethical and counterproductive. But at this point the only reasonable action is to give money to companies intentionally respecting your freedom.
Apple has no incentive to listen to anything at all at this point. The only reasonable action is to give money to those who do, i.e., support good alternatives.
Oh dear, heaven forbid we keep wanting features that should have been there from day one after the ten year cutoff! Good thing you reminded us of that expiration date.
People are happy with the way things are. Why are you trying to mess with their things? If they want to use a phone that’s restricted to a walled garden App Store, that’s none of your business.
Will you be taking responsibility if there are unforeseen consequences to side loading?
There plenty of other phones out there that allow side loading. Go use one of those if it’s that important to you.
P.S. My pet theory why Apple is so controlling about what kind of apps are allowed is to prevent “embrace, extend, extinguish” tactics. Imagine if MS created dev tools for iOS that produce apps that use a specific runtime and it gets super popular. Now MS has a say in iOS’s ecosystem, Apple has to maintain compatibility with that runtime (and will need MS’s cooperation) and if MS decides to cripple support for those dev tools it will impact iOS app creation.
That explains the JIT ban and not much else. It doesn't explain the obnoxious morality clause, the ban on entire classes of applications, and so forth.
What part of the phrase “unforeseen consequences” did you fail to understand?
I really don’t get it. So this particular product doesn’t meet your wants. Big deal. They are millions of products that don’t mean my wants, you don’t see me crusading on the bloody internet asking for them all to be changed. I just don’t buy them.
> What part of the phrase “unforeseen consequences” did you fail to understand?
Sorry, I didn’t see need to address paranoid fears.
> I really don’t get it. So this particular product doesn’t meet your wants. Big deal. They are millions of products that don’t mean my wants, you don’t see me crusading on the bloody internet asking for them all to be changed. I just don’t buy them.
I really don’t get why me wanting product improved mobilizes internet on a crusade against my valid complaints about absurd limitations of platform.
Except, of course, there aren't millions of phones. There are two. So yeah, complaining that there are features missing for a large part of the target audience is rather perfectly rational behaviour for a customer base.
Honestly, if you think this is in any way a reasonable response to the layers of commentary above elaborating on why this isn't a zero-sum game and doesn't have to take anything from you, maybe someone should take your iPhone.
The exact reason being unable to do something you weren't going to do anyway, rendering the difference moot? You're not required to leave the garden because the wall has been removed. How is an extra option harming you?
> If such a switch exists, EVERYTHING will use it.
The switch exists on macOS already, and this is not true. Software is available from the app store. People can and do choose it. Signed software is available outside the app store. People can and do choose that. And those who want to ignore warnings or flip the switch can install unsigned software and it doesn't take any option away from those who prefer not to.
These options exist alongside one another on macOS. There's no reason to believe that iOS wouldn't remain the same, and good reason to believe that via force of habit the dominant "culture"/practice around iOS apps would remain much like it is today.
There is not literally zero software on the macOS app store, but it's pretty close. I don't think I've ever installed a non-Apple program via it, and I would do so if given the option. The iOS app store being reduced to the state of the macOS app store would make the iPhone significantly worse.
All the teenagers will be doing it. They'll say you get the first hit of sideloading for free... It starts just playing a simple game. Next thing you know you'll be mapping pages as writable and executable.
You'll think you can just use a little JIT at a party and it's no harm, but you won't be able to stop.
The scene: street corner. "Hey kid, you want to load some third party code?" Just say no!!
Thankfully Apple only sends tasteful ads, like the pop-up Apple Music modal when you put on headphones or that friendly perennial reminder to Try The New Safari. Then there's the total non-advertisement at the top of Settings encouraging you to try iCloud, along with the native and beautiful builtins like Apple News and TV+ that totally don't exist to upsell you on more services.
> Because for Meta at least it literally cost them $10b in revenue each year.
Is there any reason to believe Apple cannot stop them at an OS-level rather than a store-level?
> Then there's the total non-advertisement at the top of Settings encouraging you to try iCloud.
Just looked at the settings on my phone, can’t see any ‘ads’ for iCloud at all. Am I doing something wrong? And since I had to open the settings app to check, if there are ads, are they modal and stopping me doing what I wanted to do? Do they force some kind of call to action to get past? A action blocking modal? I’m genuinely asking because I have literally never seen what you are describing.
> …along with the native and beautiful builtins like Apple News and TV+ that totally don't exist to upsell you on more services.
Never knowingly opened them so I can’t comment, but what is wrong with upselling services? Is it any different to YouTube being native on Android devices? I mean, if I use YouTube in my browser, iPhone or otherwise, I literally get a modal on any new tab I open with YouTube pushing me to subscribe to the premium feature - even with an ad blocker. Does this happen on Google’s own devices or platforms? Again, I genuinely don’t know.
The thing that I see everytime this comes up is that “advertising bad m’kay, silly little Apple user”, which was never the argument. User tracking and identification is what is bad. Targeting ads based on this in places like the settings app would be bad. Is there any evidence that this is happening? The same goes for telemetry from apps. I have no problem with Apple, Google or anybody else gathering telemetry about how an app is used, just so long as they don’t identify me based on it and use the data to sell me shit. There is nothing inherently wrong with advertising services, what is wrong is the how, when and where that takes place, and what the advertisers are basing it on. The condescending tone that is employed by the anti-lobby here doesn’t help the discussion either, but that is the whole “I know better” Orange Site phenomenon.
> Just looked at the settings on my phone, can’t see any ‘ads’ for iCloud at all. Am I doing something wrong?
For one, it's on macOS and shows up for anyone who doesn't log into the App Store with an Apple ID. It will be a red notification badge in Settings that does not go away unless you log in.
> if there are ads, are they modal and stopping me doing what I wanted to do?
I mean, yeah. This is the default behavior for Apple Music on Mac - when you put on your headphones, it auto-launches Apple Music with a modal blocking the app and asking you to try subscribing to Apple Music. I haven't seen default system behavior this sycophantic or contrived since Windows 8 came out.
> but what is wrong with upselling services? Is it any different to YouTube being native on Android devices?
No, it's not. Both fucking suck.
When people pay for a device (especially a premium experience) they expect that cost to get recouped somehow. I used to daily-drive Mac because I expected a premium experience, but you cannot look at the past decade of Mac releases and say there have been less advertisements. The desire for you to pay for more services is now an intrinsic part of MacOS like it is on Windows, and honestly that's the worst.
> what is wrong is the how, when and where that takes place, and what the advertisers are basing it on.
What a shockingly vague and nonspecific example of what "wrong" looks like.
Hitchen's Razor. If we cannot hold either company accountable for their data usage (we cannot), then we're fighting over which fairytale we like better.
Only a fraction as much malware on the iOS App Store, where xcodeghost infected hundreds of millions of users out of a smaller number of total devices.
This makes sense because the Play Store applies the same review that the App Store does and has additional automated checks on top. Meanwhile, no devices have been infected with malware from F-droid, which Apple will not let you use.
No it hasn't. Play store is still utterly dominant, and very very very few apps are only available through other channels (I couldn't name any, but there probably are some open-source ones on F-Droid that didn't want to bother with the Google processes, and maybe some vendor has some exclusive apps on their store?). Side-loading is very much a niche thing.
There used to be a significant enterprise "Bespoke iOS app for inventory management/POS" market but I think that pretty much all migrated to Android in the past few years.
> It is not a false dichotomy, it's called herd immunity.
> If such a switch exists, EVERYTHING will use it. Absolutely everything. There will be some "cool thing you can do" that requires sideloading, like pirating games, and at that point every fucking teenager on the planet will be sideloading. At that point it's not the "weird minority usage"; it's the real API everyone uses.
> This is exactly how you get a tragedy of the commons.
> Your decisions do affect me, and I hold you in hostility for the same reason anti-vaxxers get held in hostility. I have had family members get hacked and have their drives ransomwared because they're on an insecure-by-default platform, and using the equivalent of root access is the default way to do anything (windows + run as admin). Those who consistently advocated for "libertarian computing" brought this tragedy on me by proxy. It doesn't matter how careful I am, and how disciplined I keep my own stuff — other people I care about exist and I cannot protect them from what SHOULD be harmless actions.
I hate the logical end state that such a decision ends up at, as it demonizes the exploration of a device THAT YOU OWN. I SHOULD be able to learn how my devices work. I SHOULD be able to repair it by my own efforts. I SHOULDN'T have to rely on the manufacturer as the sole source for repairs & maintenance of something that I SHOULD OWN.
Just like how you demonize that my stances on "libertarian computing" brought this tragedy onto you by proxy, your stances on walling off such access brought upon me the tragedy of the manufacturer being the ONLY WAY that I could fix something THAT I OWN. Your stances against self-repairability, *as a consequence of wanting such access walled off*, contributed to the unrepairability of modern appliances & the tech landfills that have ballooned from such a decision.
> Network. Effects. MATTER.
Yes, they do matter. Including yours. What's being signaled from your network is that you don't want repairability, even if you say otherwise.
Why are you so desperate to break the iPhone experience? Because you can have that. You can have a Pine phone, you can have an Android device, you can have Sailfin. Why are you unhappy with all the choices for phones that provide everything you say you want?
Except every large player in the space is then incentivised to drag their audience out of the walled garden.
"Want the Facebook app? Follow these three easy steps to sideload our app." -> Now the rest of the iOS users lose the nice payment rails that Apple setup which result in higher privacy and lower fraud.
"Want to play Fortnite or any other Epic game? Get it in 3 simple steps."
>Facebook doesn't use sideloading on the android platform, neither does any of the other big companies.
1. Epic.
2. Unlike Google, Apple each year pours thousands of hours of developer effort into making it harder for Facebook to track users without their consent. The difference between "what is allowed in the store" and "what is possible on the device" is greater on iOS.
In the case of epic it was not about the privacy settings but about the percentage they had to pay for on every transaction which is a different issue.
I do think that it is a rare case that a company decides to not use the official appstore and the risk of all companies switching to their own appstore is minor.
Android does restrict more and more things you can do and there seems to be no strong movement to alternative appstores, which makes it difficult to know what impact the strong privacy settings on ios would be with an alternative appstore.
I kind of agree that less privacy protection this is a concern, but I think that should be solved by additional privacy laws.
>In the case of epic it was not about the privacy settings but about the percentage they had to pay for on every transaction which is a different issue.
The claim wasn't that nobody was sideloading for privacy settings. The claim was "Facebook doesn't use sideloading on the android platform, neither does any of the other big companies."
>I kind of agree that less privacy protection this is a concern, but I think that should be solved by additional privacy laws.
Oh, that's a great idea. We should definitely rely on laws alone for this. VC-backed technology firms are well-known for willingly abiding by the spirit of laws—especially privacy laws. They definitely aren't filled with people whose entire job is finding the slimist things they can get away with.
Or—and I'm just spitballing here—we could have both the additional privacy laws and also a competitive marketplace where at least one vendor decides to use privacy as a market differentiator while leaving people free to choose to buy from other vendors with other priorities.
You should have multiple options, but third parties should not be required to provide you with an option that gives you 100% of what you'd like to have.
"I get to choose" does not mean "I get to have a bespoke solution."
Epic miserably failed on Android and you think they will somehow succeed on iPhone? Are you out of your mind? If it’s not in AppStore it might as well not exist.
> Except every large player in the space is then incentivised to drag their audience out of the walled garden.
That's an interesting point. I wonder what other levers Apple would then adjust to keep them in? Maybe lower the Apple tax a bit, maybe something else. Probably a few possibilities that we haven't thought of too. :)
Allowing sideloading increases the potential for exploits in IOS to be found, that could then exploit other IOS users.
If I had a well designed bank vault I still wouldn't want would-be burglars unrestricted access to probe the lock design which could then be used to exploit other vaults of the same design. In this model, I would put a cage or bars or say, a walled garden around the lock mechanism to prevent unwanted hacking or characterization.
With nukes I don't have the device in my hand, or a hotline on which to try every possible launch code.
I can purchase an iPhone and a developer account and find the same exploits I could if sideloading was enabled. The "obscurity" doesn't exist to begin with.
> I can purchase an iPhone and a developer account and find the same exploits I could if sideloading was enabled. The "obscurity" doesn't exist to begin with.
Obscurity DID exist - you said yourself that you have to get a developer account. That's a barrier to entry, which is defense in depth. Dev accounts are a tiny proportion of iOS users.
Also, if alternate app stores were permitted, any exploits discovered via sideload could be deployed at scale. By not having alternate app stores the risk is reduced.
As well, assuming no alternate app stores exist and you managed to deploy your 0-day in an app on the original App store, Apple could discover it and have the means to remove the app quickly to mitigate damage. If alternate app stores existed, it adds additional red tape to get the exploit app removed and potentially allowing more damage to occur.
While I personally agree that defensive in depth does have it's real world uses, I'd be really surprised if having an Apple dev account is a real world barrier for anyone doing iOS exploit development.
Maybe script kiddies wouldn't, but they're not the kind of thing to be worried about anyway.
Ahhh. Sounds like it's mostly fear of potential loss rather than something easy to pin down and fix.
Yeah, I'm not aware of any good way to counter that kind of fear unless Apple wants to do so.
Unfortunately, countering that fear is 100% the opposite of what Apple want, so they're likely going to try and amplify it to the maximum extent instead.
My business depends on my phone. If I can’t call clients or pull google maps up, I’m screwed. I have both an iPhone and an Android. I’ve never had an iPhone die for no good reason. Every single android phone I’ve owned prior to my OP 8T has died in under a year. I got hit with the LG bootloop bug on my first android phone and it just went from there.
And that’s just hardware. The other day I realized my 8T had bricked itself. I hadn’t used it in a few days, and an OTA update broke something. Wouldn’t flash back the normal way either, I had to go and dig up specialized software and a copy of the ROM from XDA. I’ve never had an iPhone have a bug that a simple reboot wouldn’t fix.
The same thing extends to computers too. I think macOS is an abomination, but the hardware they put out it leaps and bounds ahead of pretty much every other manufacturer. In comparison, my surface book 2 has been a steaming pile of shit from day 1. I built my desktop, but my laptop is a MBP. I’d get 3-4 hours of battery on the SB2 with brightness all the way down. The MBP will literally last all day unless I’m running Thinkorswim. Whoever thought that its performance was acceptable should be shot. Even on my desktop it will routinely use 5gb+ RAM alone.
This started with my LG g3. That was a flagship when I got it. My HTC M8 also died. I had a galaxy s3, s4, s6, and a note. The note 8 was the only one that survived longer than a year.
Meanwhile, my iPhone 7+ was in service for 6 years. I owned it until I upgraded to an XS, and a family member used it up until last year. I used the XS until I got a free upgrade to the 13.
I wasn’t sure if your comment meant that you look forward to owning it or you look forward to Lenovo making one but there is already an ARM thinkpad, the x13s
A couple years back, my $3000 MBP randomly died. It was around a year old. I had to take it to the Apple Store. They couldn't fix it. They had to ship it some place else for repair. I was out $600 and a week with no work computer. If you depend on a computer for work and can't afford to be without for extended periods of time, it seems to me that you'd want one that was actually repairable.
Nobody knows how to build a non-computer that does what people expect phones to do. It's going to have to be a computer or nothing. The only question is whether it's your computer or someone else's.
Yea. That's the problem all along with walled gardens. Twenty years will go by and you'll find yourself unable to do the most basic thing becaused corporate control over an environment is a slow creep.
>To get a blue bubble you must give up control over your mobile life to Apple.
As someone who has never used Apple products (well, except for the OS on an Apple II I built from a kit as a high school project in 1983), I don't understand why a "blue bubble" is important.
Would you mind explaining that to me? Not being snarky here, I just really don't understand what value there is in a "blue bubble."
It is a huge status symbol among the youth. Kids will discriminate against and even sometimes bully people for not having it. And there are certain features that only apple users can use over messaging that has no reasonable excuse for not allowing other mobile platforms to participate in other than to push kids into buying iphones so they aren't excluded. Effectively pushing kids into buying devices far more expensive and powerful than they actually have any usage for. And for kids of poorer families buying an iphone is a fairly large financial burden.
Wow. I never knew as the rest of the world uses WhatsApp. That's the most stupid thing I've heard in a while, I can't believe people give it any kind of importance. I've never owned an iPhone, stuff like this makes me even less likely to.
They will find another status symbol, like e.g. does their prey’s phone have an actual apple logo on it. Or see it on a screenshot, in clothing, accessories. This blue bubble argument is utter nonsense, fix your youth, not the phone.
To a first approximation, no one pays full price for a phone up front. They buy it through a carrier.
Even the low end carriers like Metro give you a “free” iPhone with a contract. Even if that’s not the case, the price of a iPhone SE over two years is not that much higher than an Android.
You can get a perfectly functional used iPhone that runs the current OS for under $200. One only has to spend a lot if one wants the latest and greatest.
That still doesn't solve the issue that to get a blue bubble you must give up control over your mobile life to Apple. Almost nobody carries around two phones.
Why is it important? The world communicates through whatsapp, signal, telegram and some other stuff in China. The blue bubble argument is a red herring.
It's not the color of the message bubble, that's just a shorthand for the actual problem: it's that iMessage has more functionality than SMS, and inviting a SMS user to a iMessage chat works but degrades the experience for all participants.
It is both awkward (for instance, using a reaction generates a "so and so liked your thing" message) and insecure (now every word in a chat gets blasted out over the known-insecure medium).
Those reactions seem to work for me in Aus., on Android.
And as for group chats, you should understand that if you start one on iMessage, you shouldn't be surprised that it doesn't work cross-platform. It could, but Apple deliberately doesn't want to make an iMessage app for Android.
Understand the implications of using a proprietary system.
Its getting to the point now where I'm never going to buy an iPhone simply because getting excluded over a green bubble seems like a good way to filter stupid people out of your life.
> This is a false choice - there's no reason the iPhone can't be both a walled garden-type device and support alternative OSes/software, just like a computer.
Biggest difference between iPhone and Android is this; I can put any .apk file on my android phone that I want; the ability to do so is just turned off by default; it's a walled-garden out-of-the-box, but the hurdles for "opening the gate" are relatively minor.
> We know because this exact strategy works just fine on Apple's other computer platform, the Mac. Personally, I hate that our phones, which increasingly are our personal computer, are often no longer just a general purpose compute device to use how I want, if i want.
I think this is the heart of the disagreement between people who like the iPhone walled garden (I’m one of them) and people who agree with you. I think it’s where reasonable people can disagree (except of course when it comes to broad legislation protecting or prohibiting such walled gardens).
I don’t think the iPhone is comparable to a personal computer like a Mac, even though of course the hardware and software architecture is very similar (and increasingly so). I still think that smartphones are, for most people (especially people who are aware of the key differences between iOS and Android and still make an informed choice to use iOS), much more like “integrated consumer electronics devices” like gaming consoles, or car infotainment systems, or heck even a microwave (your microwave probably also contains at least one Turing-complete stored-program architecture computer).
All devices you listed, including iPhones, would have no downsides from being open. Quality of software has nothing to do with user restrictions. Even the opposite: the more open a platform is, the easier users can improve it and find/fix bugs. It's security through obscurity versus openness all over again. I would gladly hack my microwave to get rid of a stupid, long, loud sound at the end of its work.
What about following counter-example. There're many tiny apps that are next-to-required. E.g. mass transit tickets, paying for parking, banking apps. With the walled garden, they've to stick to at least some standards. Now if we open up the platform, what stops them from making shitty malware-ridden apps offered on scammy 3rd party stores? I won't move my mortgage to another bank because my bank app now requires me to install a weird-looking altstore... Or would I?
My buddy had to install an (android) app for his boiler control few years ago and the first thing it did was to demand access to AB and SMS and later sent an actual SMS to an unknown number. This boiler company doesn’t even want to screw you directly, they just slap a partner library on top of their app that does what a third party decides to.
It wasn’t F-Droid, but that’s because PlayStore already allows that behavior. AppStore doesn’t.
Traditional "linux repositories" are kind of walled gardens though. I mean, the software is vetted and controlled by the bistro's maintainer, is it not? Isn't it also true that sensible advice is to not add repo's from unknown sources?
I find it incredibly hard to believe that customer satisfaction would not go down if Apple were forced to, for example, allow third-party app stores onto iOS. It’s easy to say “customer choice is the top concern, and if customers install bad app stores or bad apps that’s on them,” but the important question to me (and probably to Apple) is whether in practice customers are more or less satisfied.
I have to disagree. I moved from Android to an iPhone because I WANT a walled garden.
I need you to understand that I build my own PCs/gaming rig, have been in IT for years, and I've been a full time developer for decades.
The thing about the iPhone is that I DON'T have to think about it. Malware is VERY rare, MUCH more rare than Android, and I DON'T have to worry about...basically anything.
This is coming from a guy running 2 desktops and a laptop. A Windows desktop for gaming, a Linux Desktop for productivity, and a Macbook Pro for the day gig. Oh and I also have a Windows laptop for a mix of everything on the go.
You disagree that users should have a choice? The comment you replied to didn’t say the walled garden shouldn’t exist, or that it’s bad, just that people who own the device should have a choice, i.e. you can stay on iOS with the walled garden, or you can flash it with whatever the hell else you want. The second choice doesn’t invalidate the first.
>Good, switch to it for a couple of years, use multiple vendors and then let everyone know how Android is a viable alternative to iOS.
"I want Apple to be forced into making the same choices that its competitors made because those competitors' devices are, collectively, a miserable hellscape," isn't the winning argument you seem to think it is.
>Completely missing point of what I said and making a straw man out of it isn’t the gotcha moment you seem to think it is.
Okay, so what's the point of what you said? For reference, you said:
>Good, switch to it for a couple of years, use multiple vendors and then let everyone know how Android is a viable alternative to iOS.
What, then, is the point of what you said? You seem to believe that Android is not a viable alternative to iOS. What specific actions do you believe Apple should be required to take here?
I've been using it for years. It has its issues, but also has its strengths. The biggest issue these days is that Apple has built a walled garden around their messaging system. I can't fault Android for that.
Yes, I do. There is literally no choice for people who can't afford Apple or for any reason don't like it. In this sense Android is almost a monopoly, which allows it to stay popular and terrible. This is classic duopoly.
If you think Android is "almost a monopoly" then how do you figure that Apple is responsible for breaking that monopoly? Surely it's Microsoft's responsibility. Or perhaps Blackberry's. Or is it Nokia's?
If Android really is a monopoly, perhaps the solution is to break up Google — not to force someone other than Google to turn their product into an Android clone.
In a duopoly, it's the fault of both sides, isn't it? They both misbehave, even though in different ways. I would be happy to break up Google and also (at user's choice) remove the Apple's walled garden.
Between android and ios you have choice between $50 and over $2k of phone prices. You have quite a big choice in terms of smartphone prices/capabilities.
One of iOS key features is it's walled garden. If you don't want that don't buy it. It's like complaining that Ferrari doesn't make Corrolla priced cars. They just... don't. They also don't make 3 cylinder cars making less than 200hp. Buy what fits your needs don't ask Ferrari to make a Camri competitor.
Maybe you could be less cryptic? You could start by describing what you'd hope we'd imagine when you said "Imagine there was only Ferrari and Corrolla..."? Because I imagined that and you told me I imagined the wrong thing. That's not how it works. I did exactly what you asked. If you wanted me to imagine something else, you would need to tell me what I should have imagined. Be less cryptic if you want to be understood.
> I'm asking them not to prohibit me to replace the engine after the warranty is over.
Wait, all you want is for Apple to not stand in your way when installing a different operating system on your iPhone? Sure, I'm all for that. I wouldn't expect Apple to be obligated to document the hardware or write drivers for you. You're probably not going to get Apple to give you the source code for Face ID or the secure enclave. But I agree that there's no reason why Apple should make it difficult to install an entirely different operating system.
That's got nothing to do with what you've being saying though.
yes, because that option will be exploited. most of the people are not tech savy, if some app tells them to change a config, they will do it without any afterthought. i don't have to support the ipad i gave to my father, which is not the case with his android phone, that has a lot of crap/adware/malware installed.
why do you guys deny so much that this happens? i am happy that andoid exists, but i just want the ios experience to continue to exist, we all have a choice.
Have you ever unlocked the bootloader and installed a custom rooted ROM on Android, which is what the original author requires?
I have. For most vendors, it involves putzing around with adb commands in a terminal and copying image files around. GrapheneOS is the most user-friendly, thanks to a WebUSB installer that holds your hand - but it still involves hitting key combinations in the recovery screen and other scary stuff.
Even for that best-case scenario, unlocking your phone always involves a factory reset, which wipes all your apps and data.
The idea that Epic and Meta will quit the official store and ask their users to go through that process is hilarious.
> Malware is VERY rare, MUCH more rare than Android,
Until your phone stops getting security updates. Then what? You toss it in the trash? Can you jail break it? Can you run something like postmarketOS on it?
Isn't that kinda the point of the original article? To get off the cycle of buying a phone every few years just because Apple decides it belongs in the trash? And to prevent e-waste from going in the landfills?
I love when people say that and apparently think it's admirable/amazing that a device would still work 6 years after its release.
But most devices used to work a lifetime. My motorcycle was made in 2009 (14 years ago) and is in pristine condition. The previous one was over 25 years old when it got stolen (by someone, presumably, who thought it was worth the risk). Blenders from the 40s still work. Not to mention non-electrical tools like hammers and such, which last for generations.
Parts of my home desktop computer are over 15 years old; the case itself was made in the 1990s.
It's one thing to get newer devices that do new things, and quite another to have to throw away old ones that should still be working fine.
Phones have no moving parts, there's no good reason they should become obsolete.
Well, the iPhone from 2009 was an iPhone 3GS, it had a 320x480 screen, 256MB of RAM and only supported 3G - a networking standard that has been turned off by the major carriers.
If your motorcycle only supported leaded gas could you use it?
> Phones have no moving parts, there's no good reason they should become obsolete.
You’re right, Apple should have made it so the cell radio supported wireless standards that didn’t even exist at the time.
>only supported 3G - a networking standard that has been turned off by the major carriers.
Remember, the US is not the world. What major carriers do in the US is not necessarily a global fact. Where I live 2G and 3G is still a fallback if 4G or 5G doesn't work. It will continue to be that way until 2025.
>If your motorcycle only supported leaded gas could you use it?
Google lead replacement additive or think about whether the engine could be rebuilt/replaced on a motorcycle. I certainly would prefer an engine rebuild/replace over replacing a modem in an iPhone 3GS.
>the iPhone from 2009 was an iPhone 3GS, it had a 320x480 screen, 256MB of RAM
The iPhone from 2009 wasn't that impressive in specs compared to other phones at the time. My even older 2.5G dumbphone had higher PPI on the screen and could run useful j2me apps. In 2010, the iPhone 4 came, had a 640x960 screen and 512MB of RAM. The fact that the specs could be doubled within a year shows that the earlier 3GS wasn't pushing anything spec wise.
> Remember, the US is not the world. What major carriers do in the US is not necessarily a global fact. Where I live 2G and 3G is still a fallback if 4G or 5G doesn't work. It will continue to be that way until 2025.
And it’s two largest markets - the US and China don’t support 3G GSM. What’s the market share of iPhones in your country?
> even older 2.5G dumbphone had higher PPI on the screen and could run useful j2me apps
J2ME games weren’t nearly as advanced as App Store games. The App Store was introduced a year before the iPhone 3GS came out.
> If your motorcycle only supported leaded gas could you use it?
Yes! It was the case with the previous one (the one that got stolen); all I had to do was add a few drops of a special liquid every time I filled her up. No problem at all.
That graph shows iPhone sales year on year. I’d be interested to see recycling stats as I know Apple will recycle iPhones for free but I couldn’t find much with a quick search.
How many Android devices are still in use after 7 years? And receiving updates?
I suspect these are generating e waste at a much higher rate than iPhones but would love to see some comparable figures
I'm in complete agreement here. All phone makers should make their devices last for a minimum of 10 years after purchase. Not just Apple. But Google too.
I too would like to know those stats for both Apple and Android. I suspect it's rather low though. I'm pretty sure e-waste just gets sent to China these days.
This is a shame because there are a lot of old tablets and phones that would be useful as general computing devices.
> All phone makers should make their devices last for a minimum of 10 years after purchase.
I don't think it's necessary. They should just allow full user ownership and let the community use the phones as they wish. Including the Android's closed drivers, which should become FLOSS after 10 years or so.
I have sent at least 8 Android phones to the landfill over the years. They either lost support and had no alternate path to a new OS or a catastrophic hardware failure that made them a paperweight.
I'm on year 2.5 with iOS and all three of our phones are as smooth as the day we bought them and I expect to receive at least another 2.5 years of support.
Well, the iPhone 5s from 2013 got a security update earlier this year. It’s the first iPhone that supports LTE and the older networks are being turned off.
My 14+-year-old laptop not just receives security updates. It runs the latest Debian without any problem and I see no end to this. What's the problem with phones?
My understanding is the chip makers, not just Apple but for Android that's Qualcomm, Samsung, etc.
Apparently only the chip makers have the necessary info to release the drivers for the latest Linux kernel, unlike your laptop where newer versions of Linux can always be recompiled for your hardware without help from Intel or AMD.
This is also why 3rd party Android distribution have to provide separate images for each device, while Debian can distribute a single image that works on any x86 machine.
You are not wrong, but the phone manufacturer could search for chips respecting the users if they really wanted. My GNU/Linux smartphones (Librem 5 and Pinephone) will work just like my laptop, with indefinite software updates.
Apple intentionally chooses proprietary chip designers not respecting users' freedom. It forces users to regularly buy new devices and brings a lot of profit to Apple. (Apple doesn't care about the respective damage to the environment.)
My phone is a general-purpose computer, which can be used to communicate without a mobile carrier if necessary. Also it allows to replace the modem with another one: it's on an M.2 card.
Who else are they suppose to choose that can make a performant 5G chip?
And users don’t “regularly” have to buy new devices. The 2013 iPhone 5s is the first iPhone that supports LTE and it just got a security update this year.
And how much larger and less battery efficient would a phone with a card be? What about the surrounding hardware? Could you just throw a 5G chip in a 2009 iPhone 3G?
Most people don't run 14+ year-old laptops. The market share of those people is too small to care about. You are just lucky somebody still writes drivers for your outdated tech. I wouldn't use a laptop older than 5 years if you paid me.
Why the hell would I torture myself with a laptop from before 2010? The screen quality must be horrendeous. Speakers absolute trash. Battery life also garbage. What is the point of doing this to yourself? Just to be able to show off on HN and other nerd sites where everybody still uses cassette players because they were "tOtAllY cOoL BrO".
This is a strawman. It's not your business why I need an old laptop. This is wrong to prevent me from using it on the grounds of my own (dis)comfort. Did you hear about thin clients or security through isolation? I don't want to throw away a working device if I can find a use for it. Unlike Apple, I care for the environment.
No one is preventing you from using it. Let me put it the other way: why should people work to support your old device? You are causing discomfort for others by forcing devs to pollute their codebase with code to support your obsolete technology.
What if after a number of years (<= 10 years) you would have to pay devs to support your hardware? That seems more fair to me than simply expecting your stuff to still be supported for free. Except I'll tell you what will happen: you will buy a newer device. Because it's cheaper than paying devs' salaries.
I fully expect after a number of years of using a device to receive a message: "Your device is unsupported as of now. Buy a newer one. We won't waste our lives supporting your stuff for free. Sorry, but not sorry."
How much wasted time is there in the linux kernel supporting old devices I wonder? At some point they will surely go for a great purge in the kernel to get rid of the old stuff. The thing is just getting more and more bloated.
Yea. But it still requires carrier support and often carriers won’t allow you to connect a phone to their network if it doesn’t support a compatible standard. I guess you could use Google Voice over wifi.
Apple creates and sells a catalog of products. They choose to tightly couple their hardware to specific operating systems and software.
Lots of others have tried to copy Apple's hardware approach, but leave their hardware uncoupled. Some have done a great job, and in some generations surpassed the quality of the macbooks etc.
Similarly, some of Samsung, OnePlus, and others' phones are great bits of hardware and are open. Some have better cameras, better overall specs.
There's plenty of choice, and no reason for Apple to have to open up and support the complexity cost of any operating system on their platform, just because some of us passionate tech folks want Apple's specific design language in our pocket but running idk Arch.
I've already read the same fallacy in several replies. Why would Apple have to supoort the (supposed, not true in my opinion) complexity of any operating system on their platform? They wouldn't!!! It would be Arch's job to be able to work properly on the hardware.
I don't understand why everybody is assuming that Apple leaving the door open for people with advanced tech knowledge to install alternative software, would mean that Apple has to provide supoort for that software to run properly.
I actually agree with this. This is the status quo on Silicon Macs. But let's not pretend that there will be untold levels of caterwauling when Apple choose not to document any of it. Also, in my experience, the majority of people with "advanced tech knowledge" (that is as iky as the phrase "power user") are exactly those who I'd want to keep out. They'd likely be the ones doing stupid things for their friends and family to make the device "better" (read "work how they want it to).
If you look around a bit, it’s not their users who are making noise about wanting it. Why should they care about a competitor’s users?
As one of their actual users, I’ll tell you this. I am sick and tired of all these loud mouths being outraged on my behalf. I made a rational decision to buy an iPhone, knowing full well what it means. In the end all that matters is that it works well, and most likely will for a long time, as for now I’ve my successive iPhones have been used for at least 5 years (apart from the 3G which was unbearably slow after 3). I don’t hate openness, customisation and tinkering, which is why my main desktops run Linux. I just don’t want to be a sysadmin for my phone, which is something you really often see actual iPhone users say, including in this thread.
Because the scale of these companies gives them immense power and control over people's devices and (digital) lives. The size of the corporation leads to a geometric increase of power through network effects.
Now that you have an answer, what are you actually trying to ask? Do you have an issue with megacorps providing more control to users?
I have a problem with any kind of absolutes. I also have a problem with a self-appointed tech commenters deciding what is best for everyone else due to their own biases. There is essentially a Google/Apple duopololy, but let's not pretend there are no other choices. Neither company is stopping anyone buying Fairphones, Pinephone, or whatever other libre devices exist on the market if that's what the individual wants.
> "I also have a problem with a self-appointed tech commenters deciding what is best for everyone else due to their own biases."
This sounds like you.
> "but let's not pretend there are no other choices."
Nobody is confused by the current choices. Saying that the iPhone can't do the thing today that we want it to do in the future is just repeating a fact that is literally the reason for the discussion in the first place.
And yes it's strange to take the side of a trillion-dollar megacorp instead of users, especially considering the size and power of such a company.
"Trillion dollar corporations should give their users all the choice and flexibility they want, not the other way around." is an absolute.
> "This sounds like you."
My 5 year old would respond with a better comeback than "I know you are, but what am I?"
> "Saying that the iPhone can't do the thing today that we want it to do in the future is just repeating a fact that is literally the reason for the discussion in the first place."
Who the fuck are we?! Have you asked iPhone users? Or just your immediate circle? No. We is the arrogant, opinionated "power users" and tech-commenters that think that the know what is best for everyone else.
> "And yes it's strange to take the side of a trillion-dollar megacorp instead of users, especially considering the size and power of such a company."
I'm not. I'm siding with the status quo, which is a considerably safer environment for the vast majority of iPhone users (yes, including me, a actual user of the software and hardware made by the megacorp) than that of what your are espousing.
At least I know not to invest in your fund, especially given your aversion to businesses that make money.
> "My 5 year old would respond with a better comeback""No. We is the arrogant, opinionated "power users" and tech-commenters that think that the know what is best for everyone else."
What are you doing? Why is this discussion so triggering for you? You made the initial accusation and failed to see that it describes you.
The "we" is the commenters here talking about features they want, representing themselves and others, just like millions of other users who also have their own specific needs. The discussion is about why these features should exist, the benefits they bring, and the effects they might have.
Do we need to poll a billion users to discuss any functionality? Isn't Apple itself also just a few people deciding on changes that affect billions, while adding features that might only support a small minority? If someone says they want bigger buttons or slower animations, is that invalid because they're saying "what is best for everyone else" or are they just talking about what they want and why?
> "I'm siding with the status quo"
Cool, so just say that and make your argument. Many others have said similar things and there's been plenty of discussion about how this would affect the vast majority. But why get upset and call everyone arrogant because they have a different need or opinion? That's neither helpful nor productive.
> "At least I know not to invest in your fund, especially given your aversion to businesses that make money."
This is juvenile. Maybe take a break from the internet if you need to make personal attacks over this. We're also not open to outside money, perhaps if you weren't anonymous we can help you with investments more fit for you.
> The "we" is the commenters here talking about features they want, representing themselves and others...
That's not the case here, and never has been. "Others"? Please. Were that actually the case, I have less of a problem, but it isn't.
> "Do we need to poll a billion users to discuss any functionality?"
Not at all. Never suggested we did. The issue at hand is speaking on behalf of "everyone".
> Isn't Apple itself also just a few people deciding on changes that affect billions, while adding features that might only support a small minority?
They're the ones making the device in a free market. They get to choose what goes into the product. They offer it for sale in an open market, selling at the price point they have set. If people didn't want the devices as they are, they wouldn't be a "Trillion dollar mega corporation". So there is clearly a market for this small group of people to sell product into. Given the price point of iPhone's, I'd strongly argue they are a deliberate choice, much like any "flagship" device. It has been ever thus from Apple, and they have done rather well off the back of it. For those that want other features, as we've established, other options exist, one is significantly more successful. After all, the more open Android handsets outsell Apple 4:1 or 5:1, depending on the quarter.
Here is where I take umbrage with your assertion. Clearly, there is a choice. In fact the individual that you replied to made this point eloquently, but here you are essentially demanding that this trillion dollar megacorp be forced to bow to these requests by people that clearly don't use the devices, and that already have a choice not to use the devices. The issue as fas as I see it, is that you seem to want to punish a company that is successful because you don't like what they offer, and that they should offer whatever you (disguised as "users") want, despite being catered to by a segment of the overall market that is 4-5 times larger, that offers significantly more choice. When there is push back, the retort is always along the lines of thinking of the children.
> If someone says they want bigger buttons or slower animations, is that invalid because they're saying "what is best for everyone else" or are they just talking about what they want and why?
Absolutely not, but that is very different from "Trillion dollar mega corporations should give their users all the choice and flexibility they want..." and is not what is being discussed. No business, trillion dollar valuation or otherwise, can cater to, or indeed please all the people all the time. It's a pointless endeavour to pursue. Neither should any business be forced to produce products to cater to everyone.
The argument made here, as illustrated by the start of this particular thread, is that the "walled garden" is bad for those whom are choosing it and it's a false choice anyway, because "walled garden", lock in, etc. This comes across to me as arrogant. The tone is very much "I know best", and the reasons of dubious benefit. It almost alway boils down to "because that's what I want", which inevitably circles back to the choice discussion.
> "This is juvenile."
You are, of course, absolutely right. Genuinely, I can only apologise.
> This is a false choice - there's no reason the iPhone can't be both a walled garden-type device and support alternative OSes/software, just like a computer.
I actually just had this discussion yesterday at length, en-mass, most day-to-day regular users will not focus on their apps, or even care to check the update status of the OS, in the regard iOS offers more 'out of the box' security and thus overall is a better option.
If you allow any other OS for example, you can't manage the security of that device anymore. So no it's not a false choice. It's just a choice.
> If you allow any other OS for example, you can't manage the security of that device anymore.
Sure, the original manufacturer can't manage the security anymore, but that's kinda the point. As an Android user, when my manufacturer stops shipping security updates I can switch to a custom rom that is still updated.
An android is famously more secure and suffers from less malwares / viruses / ... than iOS due to custom ROM, sideloading etc being available on the device.
These people are perfectly able to do it right now, just by buying another device. If you don’t like that something lacks features you think are important, you just don’t buy it. How does it matter to you what other people do with their phone? It’s not like Android is in danger of disappearing or anything
If you’re upset that something you bought does not do something that it was never advertised it could do, and in fact is notorious for not doing, then the problem is squarely on your side. Plenty of people did know what they were buying into.
Complaining is one thing, saying that their users, overall, are unhappy with the product requires at least some serious references and a good narrative.
Nobody here is confused. We know what devices we bought, and we know what they do and don't support today. That's the point. Otherwise there wouldn't be a discussion in the first place to talk about what they can, and likely should do.
And that's what this is - a discussion (on a discussion forum). If you're upset that you people don't share your views, the problem is squarely on your side. Plenty of people can understand and discuss the topic though.
Using vague terms like "the platform" are not useful. What does an operating system like "iOS/iPad OS" have to do with the "iOS/iPad ecosystem"? You're not clear even in your own reply. Please try to be more precise.
I'll assume what you're really asking is from the perspective of Apple since the benefit for users is clear - it'll help make more apps available which has network effects of more Apple devices and usage.
This is part of why they are being forced to allow sideloading in the EU. As it turns out in the real world, the interests of corporations are often at odds with the interests of every day people.
I’m not so sure that “I can choose” to stay in the walled garden, if, for example, Spotify decides to only be available through another App Store that I don’t consider trustworthy.
>I’m not so sure that “I can choose” to stay in the walled garden, if, for example, Spotify decides to only be available through another App Store that I don’t consider trustworthy.
Sure you can. You can decide which is more important to you: "Having an iPhone" or "Using Spotify on my mobile phone."
> The walled garden also relies enormously on Apple - a publicly traded for profit enterprise - being a benign benefactor, which to date has been (relatively) true.
Only outside China. In China, you'll find protest apps banned [1], websites blocked at the system level [2], VPN apps banned, and more [3]. One could say they're just complying with Chinese law, like any other company doing business in China would be forced to. But that's misleading - other companies have not put themselves in the position of jailers of their users, so when they are forced to follow the law, their users are much less harmed.
Opening the walled garden doesn't simply add more choice. Here's one example, the Mac App Store. It's a ghost town. Even probably the most downloaded app ever, Chrome, isn't on it. If the iPhone allowed non-App-Store apps, you'd soon find yourself required to download each app from a random website. Which is fine on a Mac but not necessarily what people want on iPhones.
That’s not the argument you think it is. Chrome isn’t on the Mac App Store because it’s not compatible with Apple’s walled garden. So while you might need to go to a separate page to get Chrome on Mac, it can’t exist at all on iOS, and would have never had the opportunity to thrive in the first place if macOS originally started out as locked down as iOS.
I can personally guarantee you that people download Chrome because they want the sync, the UI, they have to in order to access work documents, etc. Not because it's running blink.
Play store is more permissive than App Store, so there's less reason for publishers to leave, but there's also more junk on it as a result. They can't act strict like Apple without fragmenting it.
Still, it's starting to. There are already multiple stores, Google Play and Samsung Galaxy at least. Fortnite for a while was only standalone from Epic's website (but is now on Samsung too).
More junk is fine. Here we are having a great discussion on the most permissive platform of all time. In spite of the amount of junk on the web, I wouldn't trade it for anything else. Sifting through "junk" is just a search and curation problem, and those problems have been solved for decades. Using multiple stores is no worse than using 15 different messaging apps, which we all seem to have no problem with, in spite of the walled garden utopian paradise imagined by some folks.
I'm guessing you're typing this on a PC. iPhones are all about quickness, not having the kitchen sink with you. Idk if most Android users care about the openness, but they have it.
It's all-around, but the ones I can name... Apple has some very particular rules about how you can direct users to external places to purchase things, which I don't think are present on Play Store. Also more strict about apps requesting permissions they don't make a strong case for needing. And rules about offensive content, and restrictions against apps they believe there are too many of. No game emulators allowed either. The ban on third-party iaps was pretty recent on Android, like 2022.
For instance:
- I made a simple news-sharing app. App Store pushed back against me a few times about the offensive content policy and reporting mechanism not being up to their standards. I never heard back from the Play Store, they just OK'd it the first time.
- I made a college-only dating app. App Store said they won't allow any more dating apps that aren't different enough (mine wasn't), Play Store said ok.
- A startup I knew was making an NFT app with a beginner-friendly way to purchase using USD. Apple objected to purchases not going through IAPs. They escalated a bunch of times and eventually got it through. Play Store didn't care at all.
Apple enforces the rules that applications must only harvest data in the ways that they describe. That's behind Facebook's tantrum about the App Store.
Google said it would introduce an equivalent policy, but then backed off, and does not enforce it.
How exactly would allowing a third party operating system on the device negatively impact your user experience?
Can you explain why you believe that allowing access to the hardware, only after explicitly and deliberately enabling access via some sort of hardware switch or whatnot, in a way that does not alter the default experience in any measurable way, conflicts with your preferences?
I can understand liking the software that it comes with by default, I just don't understand how allowing a different OS to be installed, if you choose to install it, conflicts with anything.
> How exactly would allowing a third party operating system on the device negatively impact your user experience?
I'm all for Apple allowing third party operating systems. If some world government wants to force Apple to allow users to install Debian, Android or whatever onto their iPhone hardware, that's great. No downsides. Write the referendum and I'll vote in favour.
As for the more common refrain that developers should be allowed to distribute apps outside Apple's walled garden, that does negatively affect me in three ways:
1. Unless Apple is allowed to make side-loading at least as unfriendly as it is on Android, many apps I use today will stop being distributed through the App Store. Want the Gmail app? Download Play Store for iOS. Want Lightroom? Download Creative Cloud Store for iOS. And suddenly all of these apps are no longer subject to Apple's strict privacy/tracking policies. That sucks.
2. I provide tech help to a dozen family members. I can't control what they do. I've had enough of dealing with Windows XP machines with Comet Cursor and a dozen other bits of malware on them. These days I've moved the worst offenders to iPads and providing them with tech support is no longer a source of tension headaches. No fucking way I'm supporting anything that has even the slightest chance of kinking that armour. It doesn't matter what I say. These people will follow any instruction provided by Google or Epic to install whatever app they've heard about.
3. Maybe I want to develop my own device and I want to write libraries for others to write apps for the device. Why should I support governments forcing device makers to give those libraries away to others and not respect license terms? I'm all for people hacking into devices they own, but if I distribute something with a license, I want my license terms to be respected - just as someone releasing under AGPL wants that license respected.
> 1. Unless Apple is allowed to make side-loading at least as unfriendly as it is on Android, many apps I use today will stop being distributed through the App Store. Want the Gmail app? Download Play Store for iOS. Want Lightroom? Download Creative Cloud Store for iOS. And suddenly all of these apps are no longer subject to Apple's strict privacy/tracking policies. That sucks.
That’s a lot of speculation without any data behind it.
We have the biggest OS in history of the world and what you’re describing is absolutely not the case there.
One of the biggest game developers with arguably the most popular game at the time tried to push for it and eventually returned back with tail between its legs.
Epic had their tail between their legs because the law wasn't on their side. The whole point is that if the law is modified, and these aspects of Apple's operating systems are designed by legislation, Epic would prevail in court. And there's no reason to think Apple could make side-loading onerous, because Epic will complain to the courts about anything that stands in the way of a seamless install of the Epic Games Store on an iPhone.
That's not equivalent to the status quo on Android.
1. You are right that it probably won't happen if Apple is only required to make side-loading technically possible but not seamless. But somehow I doubt that if Governments force Apple to permit side-loading by law, entities like Epic won't repeatedly abuse the courts to ensure Apple makes side-loading as seamless as possible. This is OS design by legislation and court order. Therefore the analogy to Android is obviously absurd and irrelevant.
2. Your lack of empathy is noted. But thanks for acknowledging that what I described is a real problem.
3. There are government regulations, therefore there should be more government regulations. Is that an argument?
I never said that. But if we are already discussing this. How do you know that opening the hardware doesn’t mean significantly dropping iPhone security stance? I don’t know, I’m asking. I’m fine to be convinced it’s possible but that would require a real technical analysis how such hardware switch can be implemented, without words like “maybe” or “possibly”.
Because through experiance I've never heard of anyone or been myself ever hacked by a third party through the internet using an Android phone over my entire tech career. I've been using Android since 1.0.
But I have personally hacked Android phones before by exploiting a zero day on an early firmware of my device that has since been patched and it was a huge pain requiring physical access to the device and a computer with a USB cable.
And I know that iPhones still have the exact same flaw because Cydia still exists.
So why do you believe you are secure if someone comes into physical posession of your phone?
Cydia mostly only exists for devices before the iPhone X that are susceptible to the Checkra1n USB exploit. Past that, jailbreaks are few and far between, with the latest A12+ jailbreak being Dopamine for iOS 15 - 15.4.1, and that was only released in May of this year. There is no iOS 16 jailbreak except for on those iPhone X or earlier devices.
I agree, and I find it frustrating that people assume that the only way you can make an argument in favour of Apple's walled garden is ignorance. No. I'm a software programmer by trade. I use Linux extensively. I automate my home with Home Assistant and micro-controllers running Arduino and ESPHome. I'm not an idiot who doesn't understand the "but you can just choose to stay in the walled garden" argument. I understand the argument. I think it's naive, overly simplistic and fundamentally wrong.
I like my iPhone the way it is.
If you don't like it, don't choose it. Surely Android isn't so terrible that you're having difficulty deciding between it and Apple's walled garden? Surely it's not THAT bad.
> If you don't like it, don't choose it. Surely Android isn't so terrible that you're having difficulty deciding between it and Apple's walled garden? Surely it's not THAT bad.
Let’s make deal, shall we? You’ll use Android for a year and at end of 2024 you’ll let me know?
We use iPhone for corporate business. There are obvious advantages of locked phones as there are with standardized OS compared to customized linux system. Sensible arguments that make a lot of stuff much easier. But none of these arguments apply to private usage, it applies to a third party wanting to configure the phone for you.
Can you elaborate what you find naive, simplistic and fundamentally wrong? I just want to understand some of the considerations. Is it because you would use the unlocked features and ruin the ease of use for yourself?
The walled garden forces app developers to comply with Apple’s consumer-friendly privacy restrictions. Many larger developers absolutely detest these, not least of which is Epic, whose campaign against Apple started months after Apple announced their crackdown on tracking. A crackdown which, if you recall, was universally commended by the Hacker News community.
If the iOS walled garden is torn down by legislation, the result won’t be akin to Android. It will break down the status quo that any app I want is available from the App Store, and subject to Apple’s rules.
The status quo with Android is Google wanting the appearance of being open, but without being a commercially viable channel. This is because it was their choice, not dictated to them by legislation.
If company makes a widget which doesn't perfectly align with your opinion about how widgets should work, I think it's selfish to think you are entitled to force them to change their widget to suit you.
True, if Apple gets to decide how inconvenient sideloading is. They'd make it as seamless as it is on Android. In which case the outcome would be similar to Android.
False, if we're talking about Apple's hands being forced by legislation and court order. Epic will sue Apple repeatedly until anything standing in the way of a seamless install of Epic Game Store is stripped from the process. A seamless sideloading/alt-store experience means apps I use today stop being distributed in the App Store. Why would Google distribute the gmail app in the App Store where they're unable to track user activity, when they could distribute it in the Play Store For iOS and not have to comply with Apple's pro-consumer privacy policies?
> In which case the outcome would be similar to Android.
And what’s that?
> False, if we're talking about Apple's hands being forced by legislation and court order. Epic will sue Apple repeatedly until anything standing in the way of a seamless install of Epic Game Store is stripped from the process. A seamless sideloading/alt-store experience means apps I use today stop being distributed in the App Store.
Absolutely, we’ll end up a situation where checks notes Epic returned with tail between its legs to Play Store, despite your absurd claims.
> Why would Google distribute the gmail app in the App Store where they're unable to track user activity, when they could distribute it in the Play Store For iOS and not have to comply with Apple's pro-consumer privacy policies?
This is the reason Google pays 15 billion to be default search engine on iPhone, so that they’ll remove their already marginal apps (expect for maybe maps) from dominant store on absolutely fanatical ecosystem.
>This is a false choice - there's no reason the iPhone can't be both a walled garden-type device and support alternative OSes/software, just like a computer.
There are a few reasons.
E.g. allowing sideloading amounts to basically allowing any third party with clout whose apps users want to use (Microsoft, Facebook, Google, etc) to mandate the use of their own apps bypassing all related protections and integrations.
It also enables smaller malicious third parties to demand the same (but at least there the user has to be duped into installing them. Whereas with big-name apps, even users who know what they're doing could have a legitimate need to run those apps).
So, what about supporting alternative OSes/software? So basically, Apple not to sell a phone (with OS and everything), but a generic target phone hardware, that comes with their iOS preinstalled? Isn't that a quite different demand?
>The future on a long timescale may not be so nice.
On a long timescale you can change devices. It's not like something you buy now you'll have to run in 10 years.
> our phones, which increasingly are our personal computer
To me a phone can never be a personal computer because it serves a different master. My computers (so far anyway) do what I want the way I want it. On a phone I'm a mere untrusted user, not the owner of the device (even though I have to pay for it).
> This is a false choice - there's no reason the iPhone can't be both a walled garden-type device and support alternative OSes/software, just like a computer.
In theory... but in practice if you allow it to not be a walled garden, then it will tip one way over the other. You suddenly give companies the ability to say "bring down your walls or don't use our app." While you technically still have a choice, it's not much of a choice if you depend on a certain app. The fact is we are all subject to the choices of other companies, developers, users, etc, so for those of us who prefer the walls it won't do us much good if everyone is living outside of the walls.
>This is a false choice - there's no reason the iPhone can't be both a walled garden-type device and support alternative OSes/software, just like a computer.
Correct. There is no reason the iPhone cannot be both.
There is also no reason why Apple should be required to make it both simply because that's what a vanishingly small number of vocal malcontents wish for.
> We know because this exact strategy works just fine on Apple's other computer platform, the Mac
And Apple sells around 20 million Macs a year and 250 Million+ iPhones/iPads. It’s not exactly a mass market product with around 10% market share or less.
> The future on a long timescale may not be so nice. Were this to change, you don't easily have a say in alternative software.
In the long term your phone will be useless as a phone. Right now, the 2012 iPhone is the oldest phone that you can connect to modern cell phone networks as older protocols get turned off.
How much software do you really have that’s iOS only or that you would have to buy again if you wanted to choose Android.
But the answer is really not that hard. If you don’t like Apple’s “walled garden”, buy an Android like 85% of the world.
In 2007, the iPhone multitasked with the built in apps - the only ones available - until the App Store in 2008. It was 2010 when Apple introduced multitasking for third party apps.
The feature phones definitely didn’t multitask J2ME apps.
> Why shouldn't you be able to install a linux distro and turn your old iPhone or iPad into a really power-efficient home server-type appliance, if you want to?
Why didn't you buy a phone that allowed you to do this?
This sort of argument seems to me to be fundamentally inconsistent. The only reason to pass a law which will force Apple to do something is if there is a "Moloch trap" [1], in which Apple can take advantage of crowd dynamics to do force the crowd into doing something which most people in the crowd don't actually want to do.
But the argument for a walled garden on phones is precisely the same: The argument is that without a walled garden, you get a "Moloch trap": because they can't collect the Apple Tax, the only way for them to make money is to spy on you and sell your data -- something you as the consumer don't want, and that maybe Apple doesn't want either.
(And before you say, that Apple can simply treat the phones like they treat their computers, where they simply sell the hardware and don't make extra money either from the Apple Tax or from spying on you -- there's another "Moloch Trap" with shares and capitalism: If Apple's phones are significantly less profitable than Google's, then shareholder will rebel and replace the CEO with someone who will be as profitable as Google. If you forbid Apple from collecting the Apple Tax, then Moloch will force them to spy on you -- unless you manage to forbid anyone from spying.)
If Moloch Traps don't exist, then there's no reason to force Apple to open up their phones, because the Market will provide you with a good alternative. If Moloch Traps do exist, then there's a reason not to force Apple to open up their phones, as the walled garden helps them prevent a different kind of trap.
Comparing an iPhone to a Mac is a false comparison.
Mac is a development machine for some and I want to do things on it that I do NOT want to do on my phone.
Also, my phone is more important than my Mac. It has most of my personal info and I can call emergency services and others can call me during an emergency.
So I really like Apple's thinking on this. Lock down the phone but give enough controls on the Mac to enable development.
> Why shouldn't you be able to install a linux distro and turn your old iPhone or iPad into a really power-efficient home server-type appliance, if you want to? My old MacBook is doing exactly this.
I don't wholly disagree, but there are good reasons.
1. Warranty and repair:
I once went to the Genius Bar because the speakers on my iPhone 6 were crackling and popping. I expected them to do an in-warranty repair or swap. Nope. They told me that they couldn't help because I had a developer beta of iOS installed. They recommended I go home and downgrade to a GA build and see if the problem persists. It was very wise of them not to help me do that, because I had compatibility issues with my backups and lost a bunch of data, but lo and behold, the downgrade fixed my speaker problem.
Software updates can brick phones, such as in Apple's own [Error 53](https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205628). This is actually really prevalent in home-brew/jailbreak installs. I'd bricked a couple Xboxen myself, and didn't dare seek help via Microsoft, but others surely have.
Keeping a lithium-ion battery at 100% is not the best for it's health, so now most Apple OSs will try reach a peak battery charge just as you will likely begin using it, and normally holds at 3/4 capacity or so.
Software can cause permanent hardware problems, or ones that neither you nor support are equipped to fix. It can exponentially increase complexity on support staff to try. Replacement would affect their bottom line, so they need to then find a way to see if you tampered with the software and deny support or replacement, but what if you did this and then sold it? This all gets complicated, unfriendly, and costly quick.
2. "It just works"
This idea that Apple products "Just Work" is core to their marketing. I've used hackintoshes for years, and know there are many, many things that "Just Won't Work" (one of those things is power management). Maybe you're willing to take a chance on a linux distro anyway. There is still an outward impression others can glean while noticing you using a product. This is why franchises have standards. They want to maintain a level of quality for those that may patronize or even glance at the product.
To Apple, the business works better if they force a single, well supported experience.
We know because this exact strategy works just fine on Apple's other computer platform, the Mac. Personally, I hate that our phones, which increasingly are our personal computer, are often no longer just a general purpose compute device to use how I want, if i want.
The walled garden also relies enormously on Apple - a publicly traded for profit enterprise - being a benign benefactor, which to date has been (relatively) true. The future on a long timescale may not be so nice. Were this to change, you don't easily have a say in alternative software.
Why shouldn't you be able to install a linux distro and turn your old iPhone or iPad into a really power-efficient home server-type appliance, if you want to? My old MacBook is doing exactly this.