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on Gopher (inofficial)
URI Visit Hacker News on the Web
COMMENT PAGE FOR:
URI The walls of Apple's garden are tumbling down
nojvek wrote 2 hours 51 min ago:
iMessage gets the attention. In another perspective, I was reading Meta
quarterly earnings and they have 3.5 billion active users on their
family of apps with WhatsApp still growing.
Thatâs almost every internet connected person.
And Meta stock still tanked with that kind of growth.
Meta has far more reach than Apple. Only Google comes close with their
Search and Ads reach.
I am wondering whether Apple is going to grow much. Vision Pro was a
meh launch. Apple Car isnât going anywhere. There is so much they can
juice the App ecosystem.
Is Tim Cook going the same route is Steve Ballmer?
kyletns wrote 7 hours 44 min ago:
For anyone who wants much more detailed coverage of these cases, and
are willing to pay for it, I can't recommend Matt Stoller's Substack
enough. Here's an older article, but he regularly covers developments
in all the anti trust cases:
URI [1]: https://open.substack.com/pub/mattstoller/p/monopoly-round-up-...
mrangle wrote 11 hours 37 min ago:
I like the Walled Garden. I want the Walled Garden. Almost everyone
wants the Walled Garden. Even Android users should want the Walled
Garden, as a true second option. The Walled garden is fantastic. When
everything just works, it's fantastic.
Apple's product quality is without consumer equal. The quality a
bright-light in a world otherwise brimming with hardware junk and a
software wild west market.
The antitrust issues are obviously without basis. This is an
institutional effort to degrade the product line, and the lawsuits and
regulations smell of hidden agenda.
As a longtime Windows user, Windows is a privacy and security clown
show. Linux is a server OS that is unusable for most casual desktop OS
consumers. We're decades into the information age, and embarassingly
there are only two usable desktop operating system ecosystems for the
common person (Why is that, exactly?) aside from ChromeOS. And only one
of the ecosystems, the one being targeted, is marginally acceptable
from a consumer perspective. Given privacy, security, usability, and
quality factors.
A better so called "anti-monopoly" solution would be to build
competitive products. Antitrust law was conceived to open up markets in
the circumstance where the market was actually actively walled off by
the monopolist. It wasn't conceived, for example, to stop car
manufacturers from engineering the cars to accept parts that are only
made for their cars. The last time that I checked, Apple was not
preventing competitive product development. Android has a massive user
base. This State effort to abuse the law so that things are worse
quality has to stop.
takeda wrote 11 hours 15 min ago:
Just because you love walled garden, doesn't mean others think the
same. In fact you are the minority. This is especially visible on
Android, where Google introduced side loading since the beginning and
is struggling how to disable it. For example by blocking it in new
android based products like Android TV.
Or EU ruling that Apple needs to provide side loading, so Apple still
only enables it on EU SIMs, making it hard to still build products
with it.
You mentioning Windows that it's "a privacy and security a clown
show". Yet you are dismissing that Linux is for servers. That still
doesn't change the fact that Linux is even desktop is much more
secure though. Also mobile problems was not solved by mobile phones,
in fact it was much worse, and more recent windows versions
"backported" those ideas.
> It wasn't conceived, for example, to stop car manufacturers from
engineering the cars to accept parts that are only made for their
cars.
That's not what antitrust law supposed to protect. It's clear that
different products will have different parts, what antitrust laws
would do (if they weren't rendered toothless) would punish any
blocking of competitors springing up.
dlubarov wrote 11 hours 17 min ago:
> As a longtime Windows user, Windows is a privacy and security clown
show.
I'd argue this is because it lacks proper sandboxing, not because it
lacks curation.
> A better so called "anti-monopoly" solution would be to build
competitive products.
Even if healthy competition could exist in this space, Apple
(formerly?) barring developers from saying things like "our prices
are 30% higher on iOS due to Apple's tax" gets in the way of
consumers making informed decisions about competing products.
thr0waway001 wrote 12 hours 39 min ago:
I don't think they'll ever hit that low of the mid '90s ever again,
unless maybe Tim Apple leaves, and they get a really incompetent
leader. It happened once, but you'd think at least they'd learn from
the past. I'm betting on them having learned from the past.
But, on the other hand, I think their peak is past them and they can
kinda either do the Microsoft thing and just, stop trying to innovate,
but, buy up and coming companies instead, OR they can just kind of
settle in their niche where they are a big company, selling nice
looking tech to their die-hard patrons, but no longer leading the way,
and no longer being the top dog. Which only lasts for so long.
karlgkk wrote 12 hours 37 min ago:
I donât think theyâve ever cared about being top dog, just the
best. And the best might not be for everyone
thr0waway001 wrote 12 hours 35 min ago:
Whether they cared or not at some point they were the most valuable
company and, therefore, the top dog.
samirillian wrote 13 hours 39 min ago:
I recently bought an iPhone due to peer pressure after using pixel for
years. I think the ux is better on android, every common function takes
more gestures on iPhone. Typing this comment reminds me of how annoying
it is to edit text with an iPhone. I think there was maybe a time when
iPhone ux was better but maybe not. Still I feel better from the
perspective of pure vanity when I pull the iPhone out, or those blue
texts show up. It sucks.
acidburnNSA wrote 11 hours 56 min ago:
What kind of peer pressure did you experience to get an iphone? This
doesn't seem to exist in my circles.
samirillian wrote 10 hours 56 min ago:
For example when you're on a group chat and somebody sends a video
and the quality gets degraded and so somebody makes funny of the
guy who shared the video but the guy is like "somebody on the group
chat has android". and then my pixel was literally being held
together by tape and one of the guys is like, dude, why are you
such a contrarian, just get an iphone, and true detective was good!
but true detective is not good, it's good bad.
xescure wrote 4 hours 1 min ago:
I donât know a single person in real life who uses iMessage.
hollerith wrote 4 hours 0 min ago:
Do you live in the US?
dangus wrote 13 hours 56 min ago:
This article acts like Apple is going to get anything more than a slap
on the wrist anywhere outside of the EU.
Even in the EU, Apple is complying with alternate App Store
requirements as minimally as possible.
Iâll believe that Appleâs walled garden is tumbling down when I see
it. The iPhone is still a money printing machine, and their users
arenât going to go through the hassle of doing a huge cloud data
migration to leave.
Yes, replacement cycles are getting longer, but we are talking about
averaging replacements every 2.5 years to every three years. [1] On top
of that, Appleâs marketshare is increasing in many of its important
markets. The only one that is in some peril IIRC is China.
Finally, Appleâs service revenue is their fastest growing segment,
and they donât need a walled garden to earn that revenue.
URI [1]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/619788/average-smartphone-...
FrostKiwi wrote 15 hours 18 min ago:
Deep into a Mixed Reality project with WebXR right now. So sick of
everything working on Meta Quests and even cheap Android phones, yet
Apple Vision Pro requiring the user to confirm warning messages and
iPhones requiring so many insane workarounds due to no support at all.
Can't wait for other browsers than safari being green lot on iOS.
jen729w wrote 15 hours 46 min ago:
Meanwhile Paul Thurrott loves the MacBook Air and sings the praises of
Appleâs integrated ecosystem. [1] So the truth, as usual, probably
lies in the middle.
URI [1]: https://www.thurrott.com/mobile/mac-and-macos/301371/apple-mac...
tammer wrote 16 hours 40 min ago:
Iâve come full circle on this but I now think native applications on
smartphones was a mistake.
There is no technological reason why applications canât be
distributed as PWA packages similar to the days prior to the App Store.
This would serve two important functions:
1. Remove most if not all distribution monopoly concerns
2. Create application standards that function nearly identically across
the myriad of screen sizes and input types that are now available.
The current status quo of some service that makes my life easier or
better only being available in a browser or only available on one or
two of my devices (or, most often, available in a few ways but only
bug-free or full-featured in only one method of access) isnât the
future I want.
infensus wrote 4 hours 37 min ago:
Battery life?
Repulsion9513 wrote 12 hours 5 min ago:
PWAs are crap, almost as bad as "native" applications that secretly
bundle an entire browser.
chisquared wrote 13 hours 28 min ago:
Steve Jobs would have agreed with you at one point.
I'm not sure what changed his mind (or if he ever even really did),
but he also thought that aside from the native apps that came with
the iPhone, everything else should just be a web app.
Repulsion9513 wrote 12 hours 3 min ago:
Or the app store and libs (and apps) weren't ready yet and they
wanted to get the iPhone out the door to enjoy being first mover.
hn_throwaway_99 wrote 14 hours 14 min ago:
> but I now think native applications on smartphones was a mistake.
That seems a bit like rose-colored glasses. PWAs only really became
viable in the past couple years (especially on iPhones when push
notifications only were made available to PWAs in the last year), and
even if you ignore Apple dragging it's feet, it's hard for me to
imagine another scenario where all the hardware-based APIs (e.g.
access to camera, media streaming, various sensors, in addition to
push) didn't come out in native apps first before they were made
available in the browser.
jayd16 wrote 15 hours 1 min ago:
There are quite few technical reasons people pony up the app store
overhead instead of make a PWA. Performance, UX, lack of standards.
PWAs are popular but how often do you see comments bemoaning the use
of web stacks and pining for native apps?
lolinder wrote 14 hours 20 min ago:
> but how often do you see comments bemoaning the use of web stacks
and pining for native apps
On HN, all the time, but it's not something that regular users
notice or care about. It's not that native apps can't be on some
level superior, but most people can't tell the difference and
frankly, most native apps I've had to use are just as bad on all
performance metrics as Slack and company.
What people are really complaining about is that most apps are made
as quickly and cheaply as possible, and those lazy apps are
disproportionately web apps because web is cheap and easy.
asddubs wrote 16 hours 19 min ago:
my half-hearted counterpoints:
1. what about something like a usb flir heat camera? yes i know
webusb exists, but having to go to a website to use a peripheral (and
give it permissions to that peripheral) is not ideal
2. apps can change on you at any point, potentially maliciously. I'm
not naive enough to think the app store will catch this kind of thing
every time, but at least you have control over updating apps, and
some guarantees that everyone gets the same binary
3. you can kiss any sort of ui-cohesion goodbye
jwells89 wrote 14 hours 8 min ago:
PWAs can also just disappear if devs get tired of running them or
become incapable of maintaining them. In similar situations with
native local-first apps, the binary will at least remain on your
phone and continue to work for several years, offering better a
better opportunity to find and transition to alternatives.
Native apps can also be archived for use with emulators at some
point down the road, as weâre now seeing with efforts to emulate
iOS 2/3 and some of the earliest iOS apps. Had those apps been PWAs
theyâd all be gone for good outside of the tiny handful where the
dev decided to open source them.
_factor wrote 14 hours 42 min ago:
This is when you implement signed local web app components that
cannot change unless authorized.
vexed_vulpine wrote 15 hours 2 min ago:
on item 1 the peripheral itself can be the webserver (although that
does come at a hardware price)
Gigachad wrote 15 hours 53 min ago:
OS cohesion/themes are already kind of a dead idea. These days the
priority is cohesion within the app and platform. When I open
Discord, it looks basically the same on Android, iOS, Mac, Linux,
Windows, and web. If I know where something is on one platform, I
can find it on all the others. I don't care that Discord on Mac
doesn't look like Spotify on Mac.
The others are also kind of mute points, No one is auditing app
updates, and I'm not sure how an app can be more trusted with
access to a usb/bluetooth device than a website. they are both 3rd
party programs doing the same thing.
skydhash wrote 15 hours 11 min ago:
One of the plus of platform cohesion is that you donât have to
learn the same thing twice while youâre on the same platform. I
know that as soon as I press CMD+, I get in the settings of the
app. Option+CMD+T, will toggle the toolbar if they have any, and
you can customize it to your liking. But today, applications
wants you to live in their space, so they make things harder to
switch from it. No one cares that Discord on Windows looks the
same as on macOS, as most people only use one platform, if you
have to hunt for everything as it doesnât want to use the
menubar.
And for app updates, people do. I can hold on on updates until
Iâm sure itâs good to use. You spend a month not using a web
app, and itâs become something alien.
hn_throwaway_99 wrote 18 hours 50 min ago:
I think this article is overstating the effect that Apple's walls have
on lock-in effect.
I'm an Android user, and a little less than a year ago I actually
bought an iPhone, specifically due to Apple's iMessage lock-in (nearly
all of my friends have iPhones, and the especially broken group
messaging between iMessage and Android was the primary driver of my
desire to get an iPhone).
Except the problem was that, after over a decade on Android, I had zero
desire to switch over all of my data and apps over to iPhone. For
better or worse the "Google ecosystem" is where all my stuff lives and
I just didn't have a desire to spend a bunch of effort just to switch.
I ended up giving the iPhone as a gift to an iOS-loving family member.
That's the thing about both iOS and Android platforms - I think you'll
find anyone who has been in those platforms for more than a couple
years will be extremely reluctant to switch just due to the effort. Our
cell phones are often the center of our digital lives now: apps,
headphones, watches, etc. The lock-in I think is more from that
"ecosystem effect" than any amount of particular lock down.
op00to wrote 1 hour 34 min ago:
> broken group messaging between iMessage and Android was the primary
driver of my desire to get an iPhone
I'm not a group messenger, and basically mute any group messages I'm
a part of, so please excuse my ignorance. What's actually broken
between iOS and Android with group messaging? Are Android-only group
messages better? Will RCS improve this at all?
simonask wrote 7 hours 31 min ago:
As a European, it's baffling to me that your friend group wouldn't
simply switch to a messaging app with good group chat support.
WhatsApp, Signal, Messenger (FB) - these are all great alternatives
that are extremely popular, and all have more features than iMessage.
For example, in Scandinavia the current marker leader on all
platforms is Facebook Messenger, despite this also being one of the
only markets where iOS is the dominant platform compared to Android.
Further south on the continent, WhatsApp is the undisputed leader.
People have all of these apps, and it's my impression that using
iMessage exclusively is extremely rare. Cross-platform support is a
feature that impacts which app people use, and they are perfectly
free to use a different messaging app.
mirsadm wrote 9 hours 15 min ago:
All of Google's services are also on iOS, often the apps work better
than on Android. There is no barrier to switching.
hn_throwaway_99 wrote 8 hours 22 min ago:
I realize the apps are all on iOS, but to say "there is no barrier
to switching" is a bit annoying as it pretends my experience, where
I actually got an iPhone but decided not to keep it due to the
barriers to switching, didn't exist.
I'm not saying is impossible or something, but it's just way more
effort than it was worth to me. E.g. so many iOS apps by default
are set to use iCloud. All of my photos for years were in Google
Photos. There is a Google Photos app for iOS, but it is in no way
as seamless an experience as on a Pixel (e.g. camera integration).
And I think a lot of people would say that if you get an iPhone but
specifically avoid Apple's services like iCloud for photos so you
can stay on Google's services, that defeats a huge part of the
value of being on the iOS ecosystem in the first place.
matthewdgreen wrote 17 hours 15 min ago:
You're right that lock-in isn't just about one application. Like a
wall, it's made up of multiple bricks. But different bricks matter
more to different customers: for some people (usually teenagers who
have relatively little data invested in other apps) the blue-bubbles
iMessage is the most important brick, for older users it's usually
the piles of data in cloud services, password manager, photo library
or purchased media. Typically companies use some features to bring
people into their ecosystem, then gradually them in with all the
others.
Unfortunately our anti-trust laws were written in the 19th century,
so they deal with very specific types of anti-competitive behavior.
Modern tech firms basically grew up in an environment where the goal
was to maintain the absolute minimal level of competition and user
choice that stays within the law.
lamontcg wrote 19 hours 7 min ago:
In principle I like Apple being legally forced to crack open all their
walled gardens, and I hate how far they've come from the open and
hackable original Apple computers.
In practice, I worry that they're going to imminently pivot to a more
Google like model of selling their customers out to any third party
with cash. Right now they have the means to do that, but they're
selling privacy as one of their features and they've been largely
benevolent with your data. The end result of opening up the walled
garden could be the rapid Enshittification of Apple.
VelesDude wrote 17 hours 11 min ago:
Jobs always hated that the original Apple 2 had expansion slots. Woz
wanted them because it would allow folks other than Apple to make
things. You know, Woz being Woz.
Those expansion slots allowed Apple 2 to become what it was and
practically made the foundation of Apple.
Jobs ended up tolerating expansion slots but tried to minimize their
availability where ever possible.
idle_zealot wrote 17 hours 41 min ago:
> I worry that they're going to imminently pivot to a more Google
like model of selling their customers out to any third party with
cash
No need to worry about that happening in the future; it's already
happening! iOS collects user data and builds an advertising profile
for each user. This is used to sell ad space in the App Store.
VelesDude wrote 17 hours 9 min ago:
It is only a matter of time until Apple ends up selling this data
to 3rd parties. The quarterly market performance demands endless
growth.
nox101 wrote 20 hours 26 min ago:
IMO most people here seem to be missing the point. The point is not
directly about consumers or the choice between Android and iPhone. The
point is about Apple (and Google's) market power.
Imagine a self driving car that became popular. Imagine that car
manufacture asking stores to sign up for a account to register their
store so the car will know where to drive users. Imagine the experience
using the car is amazing and it's widely successful. Imagine car
company then demanding 30% of all sales any store the store drives
someone, refuse to pay the 30% and the car will stop showing the store
as a destination. Their market is so large, if you refuse to pay you
immediately lose 40-60% of your customers.
This is the power that Apple and Google have. It has nothing to do with
choice in phones. It has to do with no app can escape this 30% tax on
their business because the 2 gatekeepers control the entire market.
There are many similar issues but they all boil down to market power
over hundreds of thousands of companies, not phone choice.
baerrie wrote 20 hours 41 min ago:
I think the iphone becoming a commodity means the apps themselves are
more of the focus. I am surprised Apple never put work into making
killer social media app, a search engine, etc. these things live beyond
the lifecycle of phones
VelesDude wrote 17 hours 14 min ago:
We all forget Ping.
URI [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITunes_Ping
rpdillon wrote 20 hours 5 min ago:
They never developed a search engine because they were getting paid
something like $18 billion a year by Google not to.
ripvanwinkle wrote 22 hours 4 min ago:
As a newish user of Apple (Macbook and the IPad mini) it was not as big
a leap from Android and Windows as I had feared. I still live in Google
services including Gboard on the IPad mini and apart from klutzing
around with system settings occasionally the mini feels "not terribly
different" from the android devices I use. The Macbook is a bigger
challenge though.
I only picked the mini because I couldn't get the same performance with
that form factor in Android.
I only entertained the mini because I was forced to use a Macbook for
work and realized that apart from annoyances with keyboard shortcuts
and system settings I could continue to live in a Firefox + Chrome +
Edge + Google services ecosystem.
I will now definitely consider Apple hardware if I don't find a good
fit in the Android + Windows world
phmqk76 wrote 20 hours 19 min ago:
And yet, in Appleâs preferred world, they suck up 30% of all of the
revenue made by developers who develop for their devices. The Mac
model may not exist in 10 years if Apple can get rid of it and
replace it with a locked down App Store from which they charge rents.
stephc_int13 wrote 22 hours 7 min ago:
Being developer-hostile has always been part of Apple's identity, one
unfortunate side of Steve Jobs's hubris enabled this stance, but it has
worsened considerably under Tim Cook.
The eccentric and slightly authoritarian leader knew how to offer just
enough to sweeten the deal.
Under Cook, on the other hand, Apple has turned tone-deaf and has
continuously played hardball, making numerous faux pas along the way.
I believe that developers good to be considerably worse now, and even
if the numbers don't speak loudly yet, I have no doubt they will.
VelesDude wrote 17 hours 7 min ago:
I always sucks when you have to quote Steve Ballmers but "Developers!
Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers!". At least in
principal Microsoft used to get it.
I think they knew that without developers, Windows would be nowhere.
Apple sort of gets it with the App store but not as deeply.
bozhark wrote 22 hours 28 min ago:
Apple grew from Big Brother into itâs own Big Sister
ChilledTonic wrote 22 hours 37 min ago:
Iâve been a recent convert to the iPhone. It gives me a unique
perspective since Iâve spent almost my entire life in the Android
ecosystem.
I first bought an iPhone 5c on a whim, which is well out of support by
apple, 5 versions behind the modern iOS. If you turn it on, all the
default Apple apps work, in 2024.
You can stream Apple Music and download podcasts with no App Store
whatsoever. Itâs a powerful little device, more then ten years later.
Compare this to the Android system, where google has wholesale
deprecated their podcasts app. Youâll have to find a 3rd party one if
you want to access that functionality.
The point Iâm trying to make is that for Joe Consumer, everything on
an iPhone just works. Modification isnât even something they consider
doing.
In the end, Epic and Spotify get a fat 30% boost in revenue and nobody
notices anything different.
015a wrote 16 hours 51 min ago:
> In the end, Epic and Spotify get a fat 30% boost in revenue and
nobody notices anything different.
Well, let's be clear here: Neither Epic nor Spotify are selling
anything with Apple today. Epic's games are not available on iOS, and
Spotify requires you to make all purchases through their website.
Spotify's motivation for wanting change on the iOS platform is
primarily due to how limiting Apple's profit share and App Store
rules are toward expanding its lines of business. Spotify wants to be
able to sell one-off audiobooks; but the margins are already razor
thin, and would become impossibly thin if Apple had to be paid 30% of
every sale. In the most egregiously and obviously monopolistic thing
Apple has ever done, they also sell audiobooks via the Books app,
where I'm (wink) certain they're paying the 30% fee to (wink)
themselves.
One alternative Spotify hasn't tried is marking audiobooks up 30% to
account for the fees. Maybe this is something that is contractually
extremely difficult to do? Like, authors and publishing agencies
don't assign pricing rights to Spotify, they have to sell the
audiobooks at the same price they're available for sale on
Amazon/Apple Books/etc. I don't know. But, regardless of that, it's a
shit card to deal consumers, anyone with half a brain would just buy
the audiobook from Apple Books where its 30% cheaper, and Spotify is
very reasonably trying to drive traffic to platforms they have higher
agency within.
This isn't really about boosting revenue by 30%. Its about unlocking
fundamentally different business models from Apple's grasp; business
models which Apple has found extremely profitable for itself, yet
refuses anyone else to share in.
sashank_1509 wrote 15 hours 43 min ago:
No one I know uses Apple audiobooks, I thought it was only Audible
in this market.
Spotify is a loss making company finding reasons to blame its
problems. What annoys Spotify is that Apple Music exists, this is
the age old problem between vendors and distributors, where vendors
hate it if Walmart comes out with its own peanut butter jar to
sell. The fundamental problem with the vendor here is their product
is not differentiated, Apple isnât worried if Walmart sells other
smartphones, they donât care but Reeseâs is extremely worried
and will make a huge hula about private labels and such. Spotify as
a technology has nothing unique, their audio isnât even lossless
yet, their music is now available through Apple, Amazon, YouTube,
Tidal and who knows what else. They basically have some network
effects due to social media and are living off a first mover
advantage, meanwhile as their see their dominance erode they are
trying to find boogeymanâs to blame. If Apple removes 30% tax,
Spotify wonât magically become a successful business, Spotify
still needs to find something more differentiated than the sea of
music streaming apps out there. Netflix kind of did it with
originals and superior efficiency, Spotify wonât be able to do
anything until they take a hard look at their business and truly
diagnose why itâs such a trash heap.
015a wrote 8 hours 24 min ago:
> No one I know uses Apple audiobooks, I thought it was only
Audible in this market.
Yes, I'm sure Apple keeps it around out of the goodness of their
heart and not because its used and is profitable.
> Spotify is a loss making company
Spotify is profitable [1].
> as their see their dominance erode they are trying to find
boogeymanâs to blame
19% YoY MAU growth, 14% premium subscriber YoY growth, 20% YoY
revenue growth, 31% YoY profit growth... Spotify is a strong
business, in quite a lead over Apple Music [2].
But, none of that matters to you. You've got your narrative you
need to construct to support your worldview. Before your
misinformation was corrected, it was "Spotify is a trash
business, Apple is a great business, go Apple". Now that you've
learned that Spotify is a strong business, your narrative will
shift: "Spotify pays artists poorly, no wonder their profit is
up, Apple Music pays artists more, go Apple". You struggle to
imagine a world where Apple might not be the good guy. Metaphor,
like mortar on the foundation of your tech worldview.
The Walmart metaphor is interest-- no, I can't even fake
cordiality, as proud as you may be to have came up with it,
you're roughly fifty-ith in line on claiming originality on that
one. My god, Epic sued Apple in 2020, four years ago, your
intuition if its worth anything should be screaming at a hundred
decibels that there have been infinite conversations on this very
site, every argument permuted a thousand times, torn apart,
countered and counter-countered, and you trot out something so
banal as the "well, Walmart has the Great Value brand" line? Wake
me up when Walmart has 60.8% of US citizens exclusively shopping
at their stores, and the remaining 39% exclusively shops at
Kroger, there's zero other places to buy food (by design, its for
Food Security), and as I rub the sleep from my eyes I say "Wow, I
guess that guy on HackerNews was right. I bet the food economy
Walmart and Kroger gatekeep is a super fair and balanced market
which suppliers super-enjoy participating in! Man, I bet there's
so much sick innovation happening!" [1]
URI [1]: https://s29.q4cdn.com/175625835/files/doc_financials/202...
URI [2]: https://9to5mac.com/2023/07/03/apple-music-spotify-us-su...
sashank_1509 wrote 7 hours 13 min ago:
Do you just blatantly lie thinking no one will click on your
links or are you just absolutely ignorant and have no
understanding how to read company financials? Hereâs the net
income on statista : [1] Theyâve lost 532 million in their
most recent year, the lowest theyâve lost is 32 million.
Theyâve not had a single profitable year in their entire
public history and it seems to only be getting worse for them.
I just cursorily follow the stock market and the second you
told me Spotify is profitable all the red flags in my head blew
up, glad that you confirmed my bias, they are even worse than I
thought.
Then you talk about Spotify user metrics, either you are
willfully ignorant with no understanding of how to read metrics
or youâre just hoping I wonât respond? The obvious metric
that you need to judge Spotify by is market share, which
Spotify has been on a slow decline on since at least 2019 where
they went from 34% to 31% according to tech crunch. The
internet is growing, their MAU, revenue etc will all grow, most
internet companies can boast that. I literally donât need to
shift my narrative, I know Spotify pays artists poorly, Apple
Music does too, any system that pays by stream count is a
winner takes all that benefits the biggest artists in my view,
Tidal does a much better job.
Probably the fact that I actually know what Iâm talking
about, and am not falling for your ignorant citations and
stats, might be a crack in your world view, you might have been
under the comfortable delusion that everyone who doesnât
agree with you has not done the research and is not smart when
it turns out that you are actually incredibly ignorant in your
research. In fact if you take this as a learning lesson for
your life and maybe probe further you will find that for most
complex issues, at the highest levels everyone deeply
understands the facts, but still can turn out with radically
different interpretations of them, consensus on anything other
than pure math is hard to achieve. I reckon youâll be stuck
in Platoâs cave forever though, I heard itâs quite
comfortable down there.
URI [1]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/244990/spotifys-re...
015a wrote 51 min ago:
Net income on Statista? You know you don't need to rely on
that shoddy site, right? Spotify is a public company. I
linked their Q1 2024 public disclosure. Did you even click on
it?
shuckles wrote 28 min ago:
Statistia is more accurate in this case. You didnât link
to a public disclosure per se, you linked to an investor
marketing statement formatted like a financial statement.
Spotifyâs 20-F at the SEC shows that any âoperating
incomeâ is more than offset by share-based compensation
expenses which your investor presentation doesnât adjust
for at all. When counting the liquid stock Spotify pays
employees as an expense, they are unprofitable.
phmqk76 wrote 20 hours 21 min ago:
Guess what? Joe Consumer lives in a society that has an economy. And
that economy thrives on open markets and competition. US antitrust
law knew this from Teddy Roosevelt all the way until Ronald Reagan
gutted that notion, and began to focus only on consumer harm. But
consumers arenât the only part of an economy! Theyâre probably
not even the most important part. Open competition is vital for a
diverse and open economy where all sorts of market entrants can
participate, and create companies that pay taxes, and create jobs for
people who are also, in turn, consumers. Sometimes higher prices are
worth it if an economic sector is open and thriving. We know this
intuitively when it comes to trade protections, as countries like
Germany go to great lengths to protect domestic manufacturing at the
expense of cheaper cars.
sashank_1509 wrote 15 hours 52 min ago:
You make no sense. Germany protects domestic manufacturing to keep
their engineers and workers employed, admirable. Who exactly is US
trying to keep employed? Please tell me something concrete, donât
use Orwellian terminology like Open markets when you mean Govt
Regulated markets.
Without Appleâs introduction of the smart-phone, millions of app
development jobs would not exist. Appleâs 30% tax is reducing
profits of some developers, the biggest ones are complaining but
none of it is gutting the economy, app development is not being
shifted overseas because Apple made the cost of development too
high. If anything it is the literal opposite, SWE salaries are
still increasing because the demand for app developers still
outpaces the supply, and people are more than willing to pay 6
figures+ for a good SWE.
The funny thing is your frame has some truth to it, itâs just
your entire thinking is hopelessly muddled that you focus on
everything that doesnât matter. There is case, where the
government can step in, raise the price of the iPhones to employ
more people, cause net consumer harm but still be better for
society. That is in iPhone manufacturing where all the jobs have
been shifted overseas and no trade worker in US gets employed to
make iPhones. This is a real problem, and yet no one in the FTC
cares about this, they may not even know this problem exists in
their desperate bid to grab power and come up on the front page of
NYT with a big win. And what will they achieve? They will let some
other app developers make more money, but no offense to 99% of HN,
you guys are highly paid and a 30% higher potential margin really
doesnât matter. They will dictate design decisions to a company
that is probably 100000x better at design than the FTC is and get
fawning reviews from NYT, get invited to talks at universities,
maybe even get called to a late night show (has happened before)
and that is probably all that matters to them.
jncfhnb wrote 21 hours 31 min ago:
Nobody notices a difference when companies lose 30% of their revenue?
Would anybody notice a difference if they lost 60% of their revenue?
How about 95%? I mean itâs just a third partyâs ledger right, so
who cares?
gamblor956 wrote 21 hours 56 min ago:
Compare this to the Android system, where google has wholesale
deprecated their podcasts app. Youâll have to find a 3rd party one
if you want to access that functionality.
My Galaxy S1 still plays podcasts just fine....I keep it hooked up to
bluetooth speakers just for that.
Google disabled the ability to download new/updated apps that could
run on this phone long ago, but the apps already on the phone still
work. Indeed, it works better than the iPhone 5c, since I can use any
micro usb connector to charge my phone, but the 5c is stuck with a
proprietary connector that isn't made or sold anymore.
The point Iâm trying to make is that for Joe Consumer, everything
on an iPhone just works.
This hasn't been true for years, if it ever was. Siri never worked
properly, and most people complain about the horrible accuracy of the
fingerprint and face unlock. Text messages sent to/by Apple users
frequently disappear into the ether, discovered only when the
communicants physically meet up. The cloud software is prone to
overwriting files or accidentally deleting them. And don't even get
me started about all the people holding their phones the wrong way...
earthling8118 wrote 22 hours 0 min ago:
When my Android phone broke in the past I was lent an iPhone 6s to
use in the meantime. It was absolutely slow and many things didn't
work. I ended up getting rid of it because having no phone was better
than using it.
s1k3s wrote 22 hours 27 min ago:
This has nothing to do with the classic Apple vs Android debate. It's
about Apple's practices of pushing people to purchase the iPhone even
if they might not want to.
op00to wrote 22 hours 2 min ago:
SMS still works fine. No one is forced to purchase an iPhone
because they want to message someone.
s1k3s wrote 18 hours 26 min ago:
The comparison doesn't make any sense, SMS and iMessage are not
the same thing. It's incredible how many people bring it up in
the comments here...
hu3 wrote 21 hours 9 min ago:
In US, green bubble social peer-pressure does force many teens to
buy iPhones.
zer00eyz wrote 16 hours 42 min ago:
By this rational the government should be forcing nike to part
with the Jordan brand so someone can make a discount version
that every one can buy.
Changing the color of the bubbles would just shift the shitty
behavior to another product.
op00to wrote 20 hours 8 min ago:
âForceâ? No one is forced to give in to peer pressure by
buying something.
Itâs one thing to want to fit in, but then we should also
force clothing to not have visible brands so kids canât
compare what clothes they have, and youth sports teams so kids
canât exclude non-sports playing peers.
hu3 wrote 19 hours 49 min ago:
The analogy doesn't hold because Nike shirts looks and
behaves just the same regardless of my jeans brand.
Whereas a green bubble means degraded experience for the
entire messaging group just because of that one guy.
lotsofpulp wrote 11 hours 8 min ago:
Then use the myriad other cross platform apps.
Also, oneâs appearance can also cause a group to be
viewed and treated differently, akin to degrading the
âexperienceâ.
hu3 wrote 37 min ago:
Yes, it would help US teens were convinced to use another
communication app that treated people equally in a group
regardless of their phones. But they are teens and
culture from network effects is hard to change.
Or a much easier approach, Apple could fix that, if they
wanted. But they don't because iPhones would lose their
status symbol (blue bubble) and teens could then buy
other phones without suffering rejection in groups. Apple
can't have that.
If culture among teens is hard to change and Apple values
income above all, it's up to regulators. But US
regulators aren't as active than EU.
ChilledTonic wrote 22 hours 12 min ago:
Right, and Iâm trying to state that those practices are ancillary
at best reasons when the end user just sees a functional phone.
Joe Consumer doesnât even notice the garden has walls.
s1k3s wrote 18 hours 27 min ago:
Joe Consumer doesn't know a lot of things. That doesn't mean the
government should allow them.
layer8 wrote 22 hours 1 min ago:
Just wait a bit, you will encounter lots of stuff that doesnât
work, or that has you jump through hoops or buy a subscription,
soon enough.
nozzlegear wrote 21 hours 50 min ago:
Can you name some examples, instead of being vague?
hu3 wrote 21 hours 3 min ago:
Just an example I had recently, my friend replaced his iPhone
8 because after two years of it functioning perfectly fine,
apps started crashing/closing out of nowhere. Not to mention
he constantly complained about apps being slow.
His Apple maps frequently pointed to slightly wrong places
(like 50 meters off) when given coordinates shared by
messaging apps. Sometimes closing the maps app and reclicking
the link fixed the position. It got to a point that he
started sharing destination coordinates with me so I could
open Google Maps on my phone so we could navigate
confidently.
Also he complained that Canva and Instagram apps were slow or
broken for some operations on the phone. For example trying
to share a longer video in reels resulted in app crashing.
But those are not Apple apps so I'm not even counting all
these third party issues. But it was like death by a
thousand cuts.
Since replacing his iPhone for a newer model, everything was
fixed. For now.
layer8 wrote 21 hours 29 min ago:
HomeKit fails a lot for me, as does Safari syncing of
favorites, including sometimes the wrong icons being shown
for a given favorite. There are bugs in Safari browsing
history, such as when you select some history entry, the
underlying links of other entries sometimes get shifted (with
respect to the displayed labels). Apple Mails takes multiple
minutes to sync read/unread status between devices, and
sometimes doesnât sync at all until you open the app. Even
on the same device, the Mail app badge only updates half a
minute or so after having read an email. When editing text
and cutting and pasting around, the text suggestions tend to
see a different internal state than what is displayed (you
get suggestions for terms you have cut out or deleted
concatenated with words that are still there or that you
pasted). Apple services have regular hickups. Just today we
had [1] . ICloud backup requires a subscription beyond 5 GB,
or else you have to backup via Mac or PC, which at least on
PC Apple doesnât allow you to automate. (You have to
manually authorize each new connection to the PC, even after
a small interruption. There used to be a persistent âtrust
this PCâ, but thatâs gone.) Thatâs from the top of my
head.
URI [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40177617
pfannkuchen wrote 22 hours 51 min ago:
One thing that I havenât seen mentioned in discussions of
communications tech monopoly (or âmonopolyâ in many cases) is the
risk of future political censorship by a hypothetical future evil
Apple. Centralized market power here isnât just about unfair profits
or bad products, itâs also about control of information (and
therefore control of minds).
rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote 7 hours 47 min ago:
> the risk of future political censorship by a hypothetical future
evil Apple
Apple's already exercising a great deal of editorial control over all
political content on Apple TV+, so it's not too hard to imagine them
extending this philosophy to other domains.
Unlike HBO, Netflix, Amazon Prime, etc. if you want to make a TV show
on Apple TV+, you're not allowed to criticize technology or
technology companies too heavily in dystopian fiction. They forced
Jon Stewart to straight-up leave because he wanted to make an episode
critical of China, and also wanted to interview Lina Khan.
beeboobaa3 wrote 22 hours 36 min ago:
Especially considering how these big tech companies seem obsessed
with gobbling up communication, and seem to want all of their users
communication to go through them.
Sure, Apple makes grandiose statements about its security and
privacy. But they are protecting you from others. Apple has the keys
to the kingdom and if they want they can just silently push a
targeted software update to your device.
They can make your phone send messages you never typed. They can make
your phone show you things that never happened. They could trivially
influence an election, and it doesn't even take the entire org being
in on it.
VelesDude wrote 17 hours 26 min ago:
Apple, we "care about privacy". But we will take billions of dollar
every year to keep your data funneled towards Google via the
defaults.
Steve Jobs was barely out the door before Cook ran to allow PRISM
access, something Job's had fought against for years.
r00fus wrote 22 hours 11 min ago:
Everything you said is hypothetically true but fails to withstand
scrutiny.
Apple has a brand of trust and security. If they decided to become
even the tiniest bit evil in that dimension their âsecureâ
brand would evaporate overnight.
Unless you think they control all media and levers to power too?
disgruntledphd2 wrote 20 hours 52 min ago:
What, if they did something like set up a massive ad sales team
after banning FBs competing tools and literally went to all the
gaming advertisers and told them that Apple would still let them
target on payment status?
Something like that, perhaps?
Fortunately we live in a world where corporations are never
hypocrites, so that definitely didn't happen.
r00fus wrote 19 hours 50 min ago:
First off, Iâm far more concerned about end-user security and
privacy than anti-competitive moves.
For the latter Iâm sure the FTC will cover that in their
antitrust suit.
Secondly do you have a link for your targeting claims?
disgruntledphd2 wrote 8 hours 51 min ago:
I hope this does get covered in the suits, but im sceptical.
The targeting stuff was all verbal communication from Apple
sales reps, i dont have a link.
beeboobaa3 wrote 22 hours 8 min ago:
The org has that brand. Could be that a small part of the org
with access to the correct tech has different ideas. Like I said,
the entire org doesn't have to be in on it.
I don't actually believe this is actually happening, but it
could.
rootusrootus wrote 22 hours 14 min ago:
> They can make your phone send messages you never typed. They can
make your phone show you things that never happened.
How many microseconds do you think it'd take before someone noticed
and made it into a huge PR nightmare?
beeboobaa3 wrote 22 hours 10 min ago:
If it was well targeted and thought out? We'd be lucky if someone
even realized it happened. And even then, they'll probably just
blame it on a hack from $OTHERCOUNTRY
sircastor wrote 22 hours 40 min ago:
I think this is because we havenât really seen it. Though there is
a subset of the right wing thatâs been saying exactly this is
happening, to them in the context of Facebook and Twitter. I donât
recall seeing any convincing evidence though.
fsflover wrote 16 hours 47 min ago:
AFAIK we did see how Apple banned political apps in China and
Russia.
sircastor wrote 12 hours 6 min ago:
Yes, but this is not âEvil Appleâ, but the respective
governments of those countries forcing Apple to take the action
on penalty of being ejected from and country. This is abusive
government, not abusive corporation (though itâs arguable that
an appeasing company might as well be evil.)
fsflover wrote 6 hours 53 min ago:
Yes, but it perfectly demonstrates what could happen, and
people affected don't care about the reason. The actual problem
is the monopoly. Also try to force GNU/Linux to remove some
packages.
smokel wrote 22 hours 43 min ago:
There is a lot of discussion going on about this. Most of it is not
very constructive, but "power structure" research is a scientific
thing that might interest you.
fidotron wrote 22 hours 52 min ago:
The thing people love forgetting is a huge part of the iPhone success
is based on the North American cellular comms industry being a
trustless disaster area. The deal Apple did with AT&T opened the
floodgates.
Android was initially designed so that operators could customise it.
The idea was apps were developed (and sold) only by operators, and
everything else would be via the browser. If you had used a Nokia
device in the EU in 2005 and then the exact same model in the
customised form released on a US carrier you'd understand why this was
such a terrible idea. The exclusion of carriers from being able to make
modifications to the phone was, and remains, an active feature for end
users.
People keep having to learn that developers cannot be trusted either,
someone somewhere will always trend towards the very worst thing they
can do, and you need look no further than this forum for the levels of
avarice which have overrun the tech industry. The EU regulators live in
a parallel universe where they're all dependent on WhatsApp as they've
never truly internalised that there is no such thing as a free lunch
and that people see them as easy marks.
Repulsion9513 wrote 12 hours 26 min ago:
> People keep having to learn that developers cannot be trusted
either
Ah yes, but Apple can /s
The real lesson is that Apple can't be trusted either, and the best
thing you can do is allow the user to choose who to trust.
xvilka wrote 12 hours 37 min ago:
OEMs ruined Android with their "improvements". While stock Android
has many issues of its own, the firmware that most users see is
significantly worse.
amadeuspagel wrote 16 hours 23 min ago:
Yes EU regulators are an easy mark that need Apple to protect them
from WhatsApp or something.
hpeter wrote 15 hours 3 min ago:
WhatsApp is on IOS tho, they are hiding from the wolf in the wolf
den.
riffic wrote 16 hours 30 min ago:
yall have to remember, there was a time you couldn't hook up your own
landline telephone without it being one manufactured by Ma Bell
herself (western electric) and rented out through an installment plan
on your bill.
Culturally the phone company (and the descendant cellular operators)
were very much of this philosophical outlook.
This page goes into particulars about the historically closed nature
of the phone system and the cases that led to the eventual opening of
bring your own equipment (Hush-a-phone, Carterfone etc):
URI [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Customer-premises_equipment
kimmeld wrote 11 hours 14 min ago:
Apple wonât let you install software you wrote onto your own
computer. Culturally the same as Ma Bell.
WWLink wrote 16 hours 46 min ago:
> People keep having to learn that developers cannot be trusted
either
The problem with this is that Apple is also a developer trying to
sell you things. I would feel better if Apple's goals and the user's
goals were aligned all the time instead of just some of the time.
Admittedly, Apple's real priority is just to make money on every
transaction that occurs upon an idevice.
notyourwork wrote 16 hours 24 min ago:
Yes businesses are in the business of making money. Apple is a
business. The hope for you (a consumer) is that your needs and
theirs are aligned sufficiently well that they solve problems you
benefit from while minimizing how much they exploit you. Itâs
capitalism.
stale2002 wrote 13 hours 44 min ago:
Oh got it.
So then Apple is just as bad as the other developers, and instead
users should be able to use their own property to bypass any sort
of Apple fees.
Problem solved. Let the user decide if they want to refuse to pay
the Apple fee, and buy on alternative app stores.
leptons wrote 15 hours 1 min ago:
What Apple's done is also violating antitrust laws, which has
gotten them in trouble with the DOJ recently. And it's about
time. They are a business, but an abusive anti-competitive one
that has serious lock-in that bars competitors from their
platform for no good reason other than to make even more money.
They also forbid some apps because Apple releases something
similar, and they don't want any competition. If they did allow
competition they might not have made so much money, but they also
wouldn't be the subject of major lawsuits in the US and in the
EU.
BenFranklin100 wrote 11 hours 16 min ago:
Um, thereâs something called Android. No need to be on the
Apple platform at all. You can switch to it if youâd like.
When I walk into a Tesla dealership I donât expect to be able
to buy a Chevrolet.
leptons wrote 9 hours 32 min ago:
Um, whataboutism isn't a valid defense with the DOJ. Go read
the many counts the DOJ is suing Apple for. It's extensive
and points to a systemic problem at Apple stifling
competition in many ways. Microsoft lost their antitrust case
and they weren't doing 1/2 the shady stuff Apple is doing.
BenFranklin100 wrote 5 hours 20 min ago:
Youâre right. They make Android bubbles green. The
horror.
starttoaster wrote 15 hours 27 min ago:
Accurate. Businesses that show consistent good will towards their
users often just haven't become successful enough to afford to
exploit you yet. Pointing out that Apple only really cares about
extracting your money is mostly an admission that they've found
we will let them do it.
Terretta wrote 2 min ago:
Or, Apple gives you your time back, and for that, you are happy
to trade a bit more money and a lot less time, to be a
customer.
Apple makes hardware enabled platform experiences for end users
who don't want to tweak and people who value their own time
more than money. That's a big reason Apple causes so much
resentment -- not everyone can value time over money.
It's also resented by devs who don't understand or value what a
hardware enabled platform experience for end users can mean to
their income if they grok it.
rezonant wrote 18 hours 44 min ago:
> Android was initially designed so that operators could customise
it. The idea was apps were developed (and sold) only by operators,
and everything else would be via the browser.
I'm not sure where you got this information. The Android Marketplace
arrived with version 1.0 of Android on the T-Mobile G1. Side loading
has been available since the very beginning.
What you describe more closely resembles what iPhone did, except that
it was never a given that Apple's carrier partners were going to be
able to ship their own user facing software on the device.
Operators and OEMs can absolutely customize Android and it was more
allowed in the beginning than now. As a way to reduce fragmentation
and gain more control over the platform, Google started attaching
more and more stipulations to allowing it's suite of software
(including Marketplace, now known as Google Play) to be included on
handsets.
Was there ever a case of a mobile operator launching their own
software store on Android? Certainly OEMs did it, with the Samsung
app store being the most prominent. Genuinely curious here, as others
do note that (see the Japanese handsets post) OEMs have and even
still do a bunch of customization and pre installed apps.
hk1337 wrote 11 hours 54 min ago:
Previous versions Android were nothing like T-Mobileâs G1. It was
more like if Nokia made a BlackBerry device.
Just something else I was thinking about with Android. I love the
Android OS but Googleâs implementation is far and away the best
version and while you could technically run Android with just the
bare necessities and without google apps, it may as well be
unusable. So, google has âtechnicallyâ made it available
without their services but the juice isnât worth the squeeze to
get it working how you want it.
fidotron wrote 18 hours 6 min ago:
> I'm not sure where you got this information.
I was working in mobile games at the time and ended up working with
Google on the Play Store launch, among other things.
But what I mentioned was not some big secret. Everyone knew Android
was supposed to be the response to google having to keep stashes of
j2me devices in drawers, which is ironically what everyone ended up
needing to do with Android devices.
People have memory holed just what a shock the iphone caused, not
just technically but strategically, and how it altered who has the
power over distribution. The whole industry (google included) did
not see this coming because of the power of the carriers.
Andrex wrote 14 hours 59 min ago:
> Everyone knew Android was supposed to be the response to google
having to keep stashes of j2me devices in drawers, which is
ironically what everyone ended up needing to do with Android
devices.
It was still a better situation. An Android app might need tweaks
but at least you're dealing with the same SDK/API (maybe with
proprietary extensions?)
Those J2ME phones felt like you needed to start from basically
scratch for each phone model.
doctorpangloss wrote 17 hours 33 min ago:
Windows Mobile phones had apps distributed by wherever, you could
go get them on a CD from Bestbuy if you wanted.
> I was working in mobile games at the time and ended up working
with Google on the Play Store launch, among other things.
Well, mobile games are distributed via ads, not the "stores."
I don't know. This distribution, network effects story. It's sort
of, whatever. People were using chat apps then, and people are
using chat apps now. The iOS App Store and Google Play are such
shit shows, they are glorified installation wizards for 99.9% of
people. Whether you have to install-wizard via sideloading or via
a deep link or whatever, it's not super material nor
revolutionary. I think this comes from conflating Steam with the
App Store, ultimately Steam is a real, bonafide store, and the
mobile app stores are more like technical restrictions that
someone is using to take a 30% cut of revenues. Which is what
everyone is saying anyway.
cesarb wrote 17 hours 10 min ago:
> Windows Mobile phones had apps distributed by wherever, you
could go get them on a CD from Bestbuy if you wanted.
This was also the case for Palm smartphones. Since they were an
amalgam of a Palm PDA and a cell phone, they kept the app model
of Palm PDAs. IIRC, you could even transfer apps from one Palm
PDA to another through their infrared port, or through
Bluetooth if both were fancy ones.
nerdix wrote 14 hours 30 min ago:
I think a lot of people forget that the iPhone was not the
first smart phone. I was downloading apps, checking email,
and sending IMs over the AIM network with Verichat on my Treo
650 well before the iPhone was a thing.
legends2k wrote 13 hours 6 min ago:
+1. I've done the same with SymbianOS.
cmrdporcupine wrote 13 hours 14 min ago:
The two huge innovations of the iPhone were decent web
browsing (I had a Treo, it sucked for the web) and the
multitouch screen with corresponding gestures. Nobody else
was doing anything like this yet, and I remember this being
the thing that blew everyone away at the keynote.
growse wrote 6 hours 48 min ago:
Multi-touch was such an enabler, because it meant you
could do an on-screen keyboard properly, which meant you
could replace the physical keyboard with more screen.
I remember everyone scoffing at the "lol you can't type
on it" dramatically missing this point.
pxeboot wrote 18 hours 16 min ago:
>Was there ever a case of a mobile operator launching their own
software store on Android?
I believe Verizon launched their own app store at one point. It was
called V Cast.
A quick search led me here:
URI [1]: https://www.pcworld.com/article/498393/verizons_android_ap...
pompino wrote 18 hours 54 min ago:
The only thing Apple cares about is Apple making more money. they
will gladly gouge the end User so that their executives can line
their pockets. there is nobody here you can actually âtrustâ.
BenFranklin100 wrote 11 hours 15 min ago:
/r/chapotraphouse
sashank_1509 wrote 16 hours 21 min ago:
Such a bad take, please go back to Reddit where you might be
congratulated for garden variety âeveryone else is greedy and
evil, but I can see through them and speak truth to powerâ.
People here have higher standards on their takes.
If all Apple cared about is making money, would they have spent
upwards of 10 Billion+ on an Apple Car only to cancel it later. At
its height, Vision Pro R&D cost 2 billion per quarter, yes you read
that correctly, almost 25% of their yearly net profits went into
development of Vision Pro Alone. Does this sound like gouging the
customer to line their executive pockets to you?
If Apple executives had lined their pockets, then why is the top
Apple Executive only worth 2 Billion when Apple is worth close to 3
Trillion, that is less than 0.1% of Appleâs valuation. Appleâs
top executive does not even make it to the worldâs top 100 by
wealth. Does that not make you think?
pompino wrote 16 hours 12 min ago:
No thanks, I don't want your fake "higher standards".
>Does this sound like gouging the customer to line their
executive pockets to you?
Yes, it does, when they lobby to fight against right-to-repair.
Yes, it does, when they price gouge the customer on storage
upgrades. Yes, it does, when they hide defects in their products
and push people to buy new products. Yes, it does, when they use
child labor.
simonh wrote 17 hours 25 min ago:
However for Apple to keep making money they need to satisfy their
users, so as with all commercial relationships there is a direct
commercial incentive that aligns customer and vendor interests. The
interesting question is how and why those interests align, and when
and where they diverge.
The answer to that will be different for different customers, or
potential customers. A lot of iPhone customers like me are quite
happy with the devices more or less as they are. The vast majority
of people complaining about iPhones aren't iPhone customers.
Frankly I don't really see why I should care what they think.
I'm more sympathetic to actual iPhone customers, or former
customers that left, but looking at the numbers satisfaction levels
with iPhones are through the roof. This is a teeny tiny proportion
of customers. The case for Apple harming the interests of customers
directly is super thin.
The other main dimension to this is Apple's commercial relations
with other companies, mainly app store developers. I'm sympathetic
to the idea that such relationships should be regulated to at least
some extent. I'm glad controls on links to external payment options
are being opened up, and there's pressure towards more equitable
revenue structures. I think this is the main area Apple's control
of the platform is open to abuse, but IMHO that doesn't extend to
third party app stores. The current app store should be properly
regulated, I think third party stores are a complete distraction.
They'll never take off, and are probably going to be a worse
experience for users.
Repulsion9513 wrote 12 hours 22 min ago:
Satisfying your users - particularly, satisfying them only enough
that they don't spend significant effort and money to leave - is
an incredibly, laughably low bar.
BenFranklin100 wrote 11 hours 11 min ago:
Itâs dead simple to switch from Apple to Android and vice
versa. Or are you trying to say Android is such a significantly
more difficult platform that Apple users are too stupid to
figure out and thus locked into iOS? Otherwise your argument
applies to Android as easily as it does to iOS.
Repulsion9513 wrote 2 hours 12 min ago:
Dead simple until you consider that you have to (a) buy a new
phone (b) transfer all your passkeys (c) transfer all your
apps (and find replacements for those that don't exist on
both platforms) (d) transfer all your data/log in to all your
accounts... etc.
It's anything but dead simple. (And I went from Android to
Apple back in 2020 and back to Android in 2021. It sucked,
both ways.)
BenFranklin100 wrote 19 min ago:
Most people buy a new phone every few years as it is, app
passwords are the same between platforms, and the average
user only uses about a half dozen apps. No one is locked
into iOS nor Android. We are talking about 2-3 hours of
effort to switch, hardly a âanti-competitiveâ burden.
Get real.
gumby271 wrote 13 hours 28 min ago:
The vast majority of people complaining about Apple aren't Apple
customers because they don't agree with Apple's business
practices or treatment of customers, I don't think that's
surprising or invalidates those opinions.
I tend to agree that the focus on "3rd party app stores" is
stupid, I'd much rather we force computer vendors to have
unlockable bootloader's and focus on consumer rights legislation,
ensuring people can own the things they buy.
simonh wrote 4 hours 37 min ago:
> The vast majority of people complaining about Apple aren't
Apple customers because they don't agree with Apple's business
practices or treatment of customers
Given that a very large number of these people buy Samsung
products of all companies, the idea that theyâre avoiding
Apple on ethical grounds seems somewhat unlikely.
pompino wrote 17 hours 13 min ago:
Just because I bought an iphone, doesn't mean my interests align
with Apple when they price gouge me for extra storage, or when
they use child labor, or when they continue to create products
which fill up landfills due to their anti-repair stance. Apple
will suck up as much money as they can get away with - which is
capitalism. I would argue there is no "alignment" of anything
here. Its up to each individual to examine the facts, and decide
for themselves what their own personal threshold is.
catlikesshrimp wrote 22 hours 20 min ago:
This is neithere nor there. Apple not submitting to US carriers
greedy customizations and Apple allowing users to customize their
devices are two completely different matters. You are throwing
everything in the same bin which is the same Apple wants everyone to
believe
harpiaharpyja wrote 22 hours 22 min ago:
Pretty much. What made the PC era work as well as it did was a strong
base of power users, that could choose what tech to use and what to
sideline.
raincole wrote 14 hours 7 min ago:
Power users like to think so. But it's, at best, a very doubtful
statement.
Rinzler89 wrote 18 hours 23 min ago:
>What made the PC era work as well as it did was a strong base of
power users
No, power users rarely influenced mainstream adoption of any tech.
Apple and the rest didn't become trillion dolar corps by catering
to power users. Power users are niche and very picky market not
worth catering to if you want to make it big.
What made the "WIntel/IBM" PC gain majority mainstream market share
was that is was all open(not to be confused with open source) which
allowed everyone, not just power users, but regular users too, and
also any HW vendor and SW developer to decide what HW and SW they
can develop and sell to users, and what users can install on their
system, without the consent or added 30% tax from the original
vendor or manufacturer of the system.
It was basically an open bazaar and a cost race to the bottom,
where the free market decided the winners and losers based on
consumer preference, but there was no global authority to say "I'm
not gonna allow your SW/HW to run on the platform we developed".
Microsoft or Intel couldn't gatekeep what you installed or ran on
the Intel/Windows platform.
Sure, the PC platform had it's own set of issues due to
overabundance of cheap low quality HW/SW that caused poor UX, and
anti-trust issues from the Windows and Intel monopolies, but it was
overall a net benefit due to the open playing field. Can you
imagine 3dfx, ATI and Nvidia GPUs not being allowed to run on the
PC platform because Intel had a closed PCI standard that only
worked with their own GPUs?
Dalewyn wrote 22 hours 24 min ago:
>Android was initially designed so that operators could customise it.
... The exclusion of carriers from being able to make modifications
to the phone was, and remains, an active feature for end users.
Japanese Android phones bought from carriers are fucking horrible
because they have modifications both from the manufacturer (eg: Sony,
Samsung) and the carrier.
I wonder if this is partially why Japan is among the few markets led
by iOS rather than Android. I hate iOS, but Android from Japanese
carriers is such a hellscape it might just be worth tolerating the
former.
makeitdouble wrote 13 hours 47 min ago:
To add to that, Japan still has that horrible structure where phone
makers sell to carriers, which then sell the phone to customers.
For instance newer Samsung phones can't be bought outside of a
single carrier (docomo/ahamo etc.).
Subsidies are also stil the wild wild west, with the regulators
teppidly trying to do something about it but with no real change in
sight. Buying from a carriers will reduce the real phone price up
to a quarter depending on how you do it, and the carrier will have
buy backs to sweeten the deal further, so you'll be eating what the
carrier feeds you.
And that's all compound with the same phone supporting different
network bands depending on where they're sold, and resale value
plumetting because of that (even if you carrier unlock the phone,
it won't support all of other carriers' network bands)
The iPhone winning so big is in no small part thanks to Apple not
getting in bed with the carriers.
Andrex wrote 14 hours 57 min ago:
Hm, I wonder if that explains the Pixel's huge jump in the last
year. Japan must be hungry for no-bloatware Android phones.
URI [1]: https://9to5google.com/2024/03/06/japan-google-pixel-sales...
Gigachad wrote 15 hours 58 min ago:
I remember it used to be and may still be the case that Android OS
updates would be held up on both the OEM and the carrier. So
Samsung may have finished their version of the update, but your
carrier can't be bothered reapplying their bloatware to it so you
aren't getting the update.
baby wrote 21 hours 44 min ago:
If you think about it, this is one of the reasons I like macOS.
Back then, buying a PC with windows meant having a lot of crap
installed by default. Not sure if it's still the case because I
haven't bought a PC in ages, but I remember that formatting my
computer and reinstalling windows was step 1 when I was buying a
brand new laptop/PC.
etempleton wrote 7 hours 55 min ago:
PCs generally still have a lot of bloatware installed by default
and most Android devices have modified versions of Android. I
wonât buy a pre-built windows PC anymore.
Honestly, I think this situation is worse for consumers than
anything Apple is doing. Technically you have more choice with
Windows and Android but it can be difficult for the average
consumer to make an informed decision because the device
manufacture cram so much stuff onto these devices without your
knowledge.
ksec wrote 9 hours 42 min ago:
PC OEM earn more from those bloatware installation than from
selling the hardware. They have effectively sold PC as a loss
leader.
Don't know if that is still true today.
tcmart14 wrote 9 hours 47 min ago:
Its even worst now. My work PC is unfortunately running Windows
11 Enterprise edition or something like that. Our main product is
still .NET Framework with winforms, so I am rather locked into
Windows on my work machine. I constantly get pop-ups of, 'hey
about you you try using our with co-pilot now!.'
ndiddy wrote 18 hours 6 min ago:
Windows still comes with a lot of crap installed by default, the
difference is that Microsoft has decided to cut out the OEMs and
preload the crap themselves (a clean install of Windows 11
Professional comes with apps for Roblox, TikTok, and Disney Plus
among others) so the "install from retail media" trick no longer
works unless you also pirate the LTSC or Education editions of
Windows.
Dalewyn wrote 14 hours 38 min ago:
>(a clean install of Windows 11 Professional comes with apps
for Roblox, TikTok, and Disney Plus among others)
It does not, I've been working with fresh installs a lot this
year for one reason or another and no fresh Windows 11
Professional installation has had third-party crapware
pre-installed. That includes an install I just did a few days
ago using an ISO downloaded straight from Microsoft.
Windows 11 Home probably does have them, though.
jbr1ckl3y wrote 17 hours 9 min ago:
It's not simple but it is doable:
1. Format a flash drive with two partitions
2. Burn the Windows installer ISO to the first partition
3. Download all the drivers to the second partition
4. Flash the BIOS with the latest version
5. Ensure you are NOT connected to the Internet and boot flash
drive
6. Install Windows, disallow the metrics they let you opt-out
7. Creating a local account works because offline
8. Install drivers avoid add-on software from manufacturer
9. Edit local group policy - enable "Turn off Microsoft
Consumer Experience"
9a. Alternatively, edit the Registry,
DisableWindowsConsumerFeatures in
HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\CloudContent
10. Connect Internet, check for updates reboot a few times
11. Open Microsoft Store and uninstall any junk apps (stubs)
12. Install whatever other software you desire
13. Configure your update settings so it is less annoying
jmholla wrote 16 hours 28 min ago:
Good guide. But holy hell.
TheLegace wrote 12 hours 27 min ago:
This is all you need.
URI [1]: https://windowsxlite.com/win11/
buildbot wrote 12 hours 4 min ago:
Ah yes, install some random (closed source?) software
TheLegace wrote 11 hours 22 min ago:
I agree its a concern. You could argue everything on
XDA forums and any modified Windows should have the
same problems.
Personally I use the community of version of Arch i3,
not going to check the source on that, but will trust
that community might keep an eye on anything nefarious.
Doesn't seem like Linux is completely immune from that
either(i.e. XZ Utils).
But the build is amazingly stable and fast, and I will
have to take it good faith that they didn't do anything
that would harm me.
I can at least track down the author in various
communities and seems to be semi-open about their
identity. There is a forum thread any concerns I can
bring up with the person responsible.
They are also taking donations. I would hope that
exposes them to some liability and financial trail if
they are found doing something illegal.
URI [1]: https://www.teamos.xyz/threads/windows-x-lite-...
Dalewyn wrote 14 hours 19 min ago:
It's a needlessly esoteric, bad guide. The first three
steps can be simplified into "Obtain an installation
media.", and the fourth step of updating your BIOS has
nothing to do with Windows specifically.
Creating a local account is basic sense (no, not common
sense; we aren't common people), and not connecting to the
internet during install is recommended but not a hard
requirement.
Installing drivers while avoiding their bloatware is,
again, basic sense.
Disabling "Microsoft Consumer Experience" does nothing as
far as I've experienced (and it shouldn't, the setting is
only effective on Windows 11 Enterprise and Education); I
never modify that setting myself.
On the other hand, I turn off Automatic Updates (automatic
Windows Update) and Microsoft Store's ability to
automatically download and update programs via the Group
Policies. This is probably what you want if Disney+ keeps
bothering you.
This all said, if you're getting pestered by third-party
crapware you are probably using Windows 11 Home. Just pay
up for a Professional license and save your time and
nerves. The cheaper price of Home licenses is offset by
third-party crapware.
Nullabillity wrote 11 hours 47 min ago:
> Just pay up for a Professional license and save your
time and nerves.
What on earth. This is stockholm syndrome in a nutshell.
Gigablah wrote 11 hours 8 min ago:
Stockholm syndrome is continuing to stay on Windows.
Rinzler89 wrote 18 hours 34 min ago:
>Back then, buying a PC with windows meant having a lot of crap
installed by default.
Maybe in the US/West when you bought prebuilt form the likes of
Dell. But in my home of EE, most PCs we had for sale in shops
were locally assembled with no OS, or just vanilla OEM Windows
installed (sometimes even pirated).
Crap installed by default on PCs is not something I ever
encountered where I live.
vitorgrs wrote 9 hours 24 min ago:
This reminds me of Brazil here! Was pretty common to buy PCs at
the time with Linux. Almost no one obviously were going to use
Linux at the time. Most people I do say, installed later
pirated versions of Windows.
This happened because no OEM license = cheaper. These days I
don't think it matters anymore, because probably the OEM
license is much cheaper than it was back then.
jongle wrote 12 hours 9 min ago:
In west europe PCs were riddled with crapware if you bought a
prebuilt windows machine in the 90s and early 00s. Wipe and
reinstall windows was first thing I would do with a new PC, it
was a necessity.
I don't know about intervening 20 odd years, I used linux, but
I recently installed win 11 home and had zero crapware. Windows
ISO from microsoft, harder to install than garden variety linux
(not hard, just more annoying and takes way longer), but no
tiktok, roblox, disney etc.
Maybe it's an EU thing that stopped all the preloaded crap, no
idea.
nazgulsenpai wrote 20 hours 17 min ago:
What you describe is the main reason I like Linux, but at last
check the reinstall trick doesn't even work anymore because a lot
of the preloaded software can get reinstalled automatically even
if you install from non-OEM media. Its still probably better than
trusting the preinstalled OS in the world of state sponsored
spying and supply chain attacks.
lupusreal wrote 22 hours 31 min ago:
That's a nice history lesson but sideloading alternate appstores
(namely F-Droid) on Android works great and Apple shouldn't be
allowed to forbid the same on iOS. And I don't give a damn about the
"grandma conned into sideloading scam apps" scenario. Grandma is
getting scammed over regular phonecalls already anyway.
fidotron wrote 19 hours 0 min ago:
So what you want is to remove the option of safety from those that
want it because you personally do not see the need for it.
iOS is not close to a monopoly. People are perfectly free to have
Android devices and side load apps on to them. It is curious that
the campaigning focuses so strongly on destroying the high trust
part that exists and not on promoting a trusted setup on Android.
Repulsion9513 wrote 12 hours 19 min ago:
> So what you want is to remove the option of safety from those
that want it because you personally do not see the need for it
Huh? No one's forcing them to install F-Droid for crying out
loud. If you want what Apple does, then use Apple's store.
pessimizer wrote 17 hours 22 min ago:
That's like talking about "removing the option" of slavery.
Nobody is proposing keeping you from working for free, or from
strictly using apps approved by and distributed from Apple.
FireBeyond wrote 17 hours 24 min ago:
Grandma doesn't have to install an alternate app store or
sideload apps, and she can sill rely on the same "high trust"
environment that allows for apps like "LassPass" to scam her in
the Apple App Store.
Hell, when she is scammed, Apple apologists will tell her it's
not really that bad, and to get off Apple's case about it...
Gruber:
> Instead, the scam LassPass app tries to steer you to creating a
âproâ account subscription for $2/month, $10/year, or a $50
lifetime purchase. Those are actually low prices for a scam app
â a lot of scammy apps try to charge like $10/week.
(emphasis mine)
Lucky people, I guess? They could have been scammed for more?
He also claims, without any way to know, that "it doesn't look
like this was made to steal LastPass credentials".
The whole article is very much a "yeah it sucks and shouldn't
happen, but this is no big deal, really, why are you getting all
up in Apple's face about it?" vibe.
fr4nkr wrote 17 hours 32 min ago:
> People are perfectly free to have Android devices and side load
apps on to them.
And people who do not like "unsafe" technology are perfectly free
to not use it at all.
If you make something idiot-proof, they will simply provide a
better idiot.
labcomputer wrote 16 hours 39 min ago:
> And people who do not like "unsafe" technology are perfectly
free to not use it at all.
Not if legislators make it illegal to sell an alternativeâ¦
jonp888 wrote 18 hours 55 min ago:
Erm, what? Your statement makes no sense whatsoever.
It's perfectly reasonable for the default setting of a phone to
forbid sideloading apps. And anyone who doesn't want to can leave
it that way. That's the 'option of safety'.
noodlesUK wrote 17 hours 8 min ago:
Until such time as a big player like Epic or Facebook decides
that the only way youâre getting their apps is by using a
store they control and can bypass all permission controls on.
When that happens itâs going to become 2000âs browser
toolbars all over again
Repulsion9513 wrote 12 hours 17 min ago:
Oh no! People will have to install a store from a developer
they trust which contains products from that developer they
trust in order to install those products from that developer
they trust! How unsafe! This is absolutely removing options
from the user!
Sheesh...
nerdix wrote 14 hours 20 min ago:
You don't have to use their apps. I never understood this
argument. Why would you even want to use the apps of
companies that you don't trust?
bigstrat2003 wrote 16 hours 33 min ago:
That hasn't yet happened on Android. While it might happen on
iOS, it's not reasonable to assume that it will happen.
jwells89 wrote 14 hours 14 min ago:
My hypothesis is that itâll happen to both iOS and
Android once iOS has been forced to allow third party app
stores in most major markets.
Why? Because historically, iOS has been the more profitable
platform for mobile developers by a large margin. The
payoff for building and maintaining an alternative app
store for Android only is questionable, but improves
significantly if the store can exist on iOS too.
noodlesUK wrote 16 hours 13 min ago:
It has already happened on android in the case of Epic.
They require that you side load their launcher/store in
order to play games such as Fortnite. There was a big
lawsuit about googleâs fees which precipitated this.
URI [1]: https://www.fortnite.com/mobile/android/new-device...
glitchcrab wrote 21 hours 9 min ago:
So to extrapolate, you're fine with your grandma being scammed via
a new avenue because she's already being scammed in other ways?
Repulsion9513 wrote 12 hours 16 min ago:
So to extrapolate, you're fine with your grandma being scammed by
Apple so long as she can't (but actually can) be scammed in other
ways?
nerdix wrote 14 hours 10 min ago:
Or I don't think computing freedom has to be completely abandoned
to protect someone's grandma.
Put tight controls in place. You can make it extremely difficult
to bypass. You could have a recovery mode like Android and bury
the setting in there. I think that makes it sufficiently hard
that you don't have to worry about a grandma being tricked into
rebooting her phone while holding down a specific button
combination and then navigating through a bunch of arcane menus
without touch controls to enable side loading. But its enough
that someone that is technically inclined and who wants that
control over their device can have it.
lupusreal wrote 19 hours 21 min ago:
My grandma has an android phone and I'm fine with her having a
phone that could permit her to sideload an app. Having a phone
number at all is a far more serious threat, and I presume you are
fine with your grandmother having one even though a scammer could
talk her into giving up her bank details or buying dozens of gift
cards and reading out the codes.
The solution to the grandmother scenarios is to have a trusted
relative that works closely with them, who they trust to copilot
or handle completely all business dealings. If that's not
possible, then they're at risk whether they have an iphone or
android.
quickslowdown wrote 20 hours 33 min ago:
Sure, if you only focus on that one piece of their comment, but
who wants to be that pedantic?
disgruntledphd2 wrote 20 hours 58 min ago:
I think the GP regards the scams as an acceptable price to pay
for additional user choice, which is a reasonable position.
VelesDude wrote 17 hours 35 min ago:
It is also possible to keep safe guard in. You have to
explicitly enable side loading side loading for instance.
throwaway48476 wrote 18 hours 6 min ago:
Scams exist because the scamming industry is a large fraction
of gdp in some countries and the byzantine financial system
doesn't allow for reversing charges.
api wrote 22 hours 49 min ago:
I summarize the second point as âthe Internet is a dark forest.â
If itâs bad and it can be done it will be done, and at scale.
hn_version_0023 wrote 22 hours 28 min ago:
You have neatly summarized why I feel strongly that the Internet
has become a liability to humanity. I have no illusions that we can
shut it down or walk away⦠but on a personal level I am trying
harder than ever to remove it from my own life. If I can stay off
Reddit, well, I can eventually remove it all I think!
VelesDude wrote 17 hours 39 min ago:
I am down to Hacker news, local weather updates when I remember
and the occasional wiki look up. A few podcasts . The local
library is now more my jam.
I have been tracking my data use and last year it was only 70GB.
And I have trimmed a bit more out of that since, especially on
the podcast side which was the bulk of the data. It is getting to
the point where I might just use my photo data plan which now has
120GB a year as it is more than enough.
api wrote 19 hours 43 min ago:
Use it for the things itâs useful for and avoid the
addictionware, rage bait, gambling, and other trash.
grugagag wrote 19 hours 2 min ago:
Itâs still too much of a time sink and even staying away from
the bad parts brings so much distraction that we forget how to
enjoy the simple things in life that make it worthwhile.
Reading a book or watching a movie offline are cherished
experiences many forgot how to savor in peace. Or leaving some
questions unanswered for a while without wanting instant
responses.
Not to mention many forgo the outdoors entirely just in favor
of time spent doing one thing or another online.
Bjorkbat wrote 22 hours 54 min ago:
Something I keep thinking about is how weâre seeing the end of what I
call the âtech zeitgeistâ.
Started upon realizing that weâve likely seen the end of the social
network era. No new social networking startups have popped-off in a
while, and the recent ones are arguably more about connecting you to
entertainers than friends.
Besides that, a lot of the tech ideas from 2012-2020 have kind of
fizzled out. 3D printing will likely never enter the mainstream.
VR/AR has failed to launch. In broad strokes, everything has either
reached maturity or faded away.
AI is the one exception it seems, and when you realize that you start
to realize that all the hype and money being poured into AI may be more
out of desperation than anything else. Itâs AI or nothing it seems.
And then, you have Apple at what is arguably its most vulnerable, while
many other tech giants go through some kind of enshittification phase.
Canât wait for the end personally.
huytersd wrote 13 hours 44 min ago:
3D printing has plenty of usage. I donât think the âmainstreamâ
has any need for it (atleast until the point where the printers can
print multi material slices to print out entire products) but the
people that use it are still a sizable segment.
015a wrote 16 hours 30 min ago:
I think, at least, Apple has taken multiple losses over the past year
which should concern long-time fans of the company. Vision Pro had
very low expectations, and failed to even meet those, now almost
forgotten by even some people who own one. They invested billions
into developing a car, which never materialized and has now been shut
down. They're pretty far behind in AI? Like, we'll see how far behind
(or not) come WWDC I suspect, but the CEO of the Browser Company is
throwing fighting words like "the situation is ten times worse than
you think" [1]. And AI is damn bubbly anyway; it may be the case that
investments there don't pay off.
I'm not sure I entirely agree that we're coming to the end of the
tech zeitgeist; tech still absolutely runs the markets and world. But
I do believe a part of that, at least, is happening: Apple is losing
control of the marketing narrative for consumer tech. And, its not
obvious that anyone is well positioned right now to pick up their
mantle. The next decade is going to be super exciting; I suspect
we'll continue to see lots of experimentation, devices like the
Humane pin and R1, lots of failures, hopefully some successes, as
companies narrow in on what's next.
URI [1]: https://youtu.be/lvw-85-6-4s?t=284
VelesDude wrote 17 hours 20 min ago:
It was bound to happen. Think about it. What was the last big
application on the Desktop? Chrome in 2008 is probably the last.
The last really big advance in apps? Big new social media as you
said? New communication paradigm.
Heck Smart watches where the real last big technology device and.
Their sales while yes in the hundreds of millions are a shadow
compared with things like smart phones.
I think we are seeing the entire industry calcifying around us. And a
lot of folks know this. Thus the rush from a subset of folks that are
trying to get in on the ground floor of anything tech like that they
can possible pump and dump their way to riches. Crypto, NFS, AI over
hype, VR, AR, Web 3 etc.
Soon we may have to accept that we are going form the fun fresh
upstart stage to mature stable and boring faze. The entire tech
industry will be IBM.
rootusrootus wrote 22 hours 7 min ago:
My non-technical neighbors have 3D printers, so I think it is
definitely heading mainstream. Maybe not for the older generation,
but definitely for young people. And outfits like Bambu Labs are
pushing it even farther that way. Automatic everything, pick models
from your phone, just insert the filament into a hole and you're
done. The real obstacle is the difficulty making your own models,
but many people go quite a while before hitting that limit; you can
get models for a lot of common everyday things without having to
design it yourself.
evilduck wrote 22 hours 11 min ago:
> 3D printing will likely never enter the mainstream.
I'm going to argue that it still might. I've been at it for about 5
years now and when I started printing my local Micro Center didn't
carry anything related to 3D printers. Then they picked up the Ender
3 a few years back as the one printer they offered and they had a
dozen basic color options of filament on the end of one side of an
isle. Today that same store stocks at least 6 different printers on
display and there's one and a half isles of a variety of filament
options and another half isle of parts. And while Micro Center
employees are usually more technically inclined than other retail
employees, they themselves seemed to have gone from wondering what
this odd Maker enthusiast carried up to the register to initiating
conversations about your selections and comparing them to their own
purchases. They wouldn't dedicate the floor space, let alone expand
it continually and invest in larger and more expensive inventory if
it wasn't selling at an increased rate. It's still a niche
maker/techie hobby of course, but it's expanding more rapidly now
than ever before.
VelesDude wrote 17 hours 17 min ago:
I'm not sure that it will ever go 'mainstream' but it looks like it
will have a vibrant and stable future ahead. It is taking the slow
boring but reliable path upwards. Better than crashing and burning.
yinser wrote 22 hours 20 min ago:
âAI is only successful because these other unrelated tech super
cycles are failing (theyâre not)â is an insane argument. No one
researches AI because 3D printing failed. Meta doesnât buy H100s as
a last resort. Itâs a huge opportunity and the start of a an
enormous super cycle that offers new services to customers and
improves existing platforms.
015a wrote 16 hours 25 min ago:
> No one researches AI because 3D printing failed.
Yes you do. Maybe not specifically, but: AI research only happens
because companies and capital firms have invested billions of
dollars into paying the salaries of people who do the research. AI
is the latest category in a string of categories which have
dominated the zeitgeist, to varying degrees of success; crypto was
definitely the most recent prior, and AI definitely seems to be
doing better than that.
AI is only successful because there exists billions of dollars in
undeployed capital looking for returns. That's reality; and it
states something similar enough to "AI is only successful because
the other super-cycles failed" that the statement gets a pass; if
crypto still offered strong ROI, there would be a lot less capital
available for AI, and AI is extremely capital intensive.
yinser wrote 13 hours 46 min ago:
lol
yinser wrote 22 hours 22 min ago:
Why is Apple the most vulnerable? What is the argument? Half the
planet uses their devices and their users see it as a superior
product.
hnfong wrote 22 hours 13 min ago:
I'm guessing GP means the other Big Tech companies have some kind
of rent-seeking operation because they already have a tight grasp
of some big moat. Eg. Google has Search that isn't going anywhere
soon; Meta owns pretty much all the social media platforms that are
making money; Microsoft has inserted itself everywhere; etc...
And the "only" thing that Apple has is just happy users, who aren't
as bound to having to buy or use Apple products and could in theory
switch whenever they wanted. It's much easier to give up using
Apple products than say wean on Google products.
catlikesshrimp wrote 22 hours 15 min ago:
For you, is there nothing on earth beyond US borders? Last I
checked, android was dominant, specially in poor countries
(whereost people live)
rootusrootus wrote 22 hours 10 min ago:
The last thing we need is another race to the bottom. Android
gets new features to be competitive, if they dominate by
basically giving away their product it'll be the end of any
innovation. And we have ample evidence that Google is not even
slightly more altruistic than Apple.
Draiken wrote 14 hours 16 min ago:
How is opening up the Apple ecosystem a race to the bottom?
Aren't they going to continue to produce their amazing products
and apps? Are you implying that if they do open it up, they
won't be as dominant?
I don't understand how "opening up a walled garden" would ever
result in a worse product. If anything, they'll have to compete
and become even better.
smokel wrote 22 hours 34 min ago:
I find this a strange perspective. There are many tech ideas which
have barely even started. Quantum computing, space travel, DNA
modification, climate control, to name a few. These will all affect
a lot of humans in the future, unless we mess something up.
Or perhaps I am misunderstanding your comment, and you focus more on
the media and communication part of tech?
VelesDude wrote 17 hours 14 min ago:
More on localized tech that we use directly day to day. All the
things you mentioned are big scale things that need large economic
inputs, some larger than entire small nations to get off the
ground. While they can impact us, they are things that are much
more nebulous and vague to experience.
qiine wrote 22 hours 40 min ago:
It sure feels like 3D printing especially "desktop" has trouble
improving recently, and is nowhere near democratized like classic
printer, and its not entirely a hardware problem.
sircastor wrote 22 hours 30 min ago:
Part of the trouble with 3D printing is that its utility is limited
if you donât know how to design, and not everyone wants to learn.
If you have no CAD/modeling experience, making something custom is
limited to the simple variation available in the software, or you
just buy off the shelf models. 3D printing skeptics said that 3D
printers were just for making worthless junk.
Thereâs an opportunity coming with an LLM-style text-to-model
generator. I saw one recently and it is pretty exciting.
xyzzy123 wrote 22 hours 14 min ago:
Agree. For me personally, 3d printing has been a "hit" and the
printers keep getting better, cheaper and more reliable. Good bed
levelling, multi-head, failure detection etc are reaching the
mainstream and the printers I have now are amazingly better than
what I started with.
But most people (reasonably) don't seem that interested in making
small plastic things. It's a niche thing to want to do and as you
point out, there's a learning curve. Plus materials and process
limitations mean that a printed item will generally be inferior
to a bought one unless you designed it yourself to meet your
exact use-case.
delfinom wrote 22 hours 44 min ago:
The online tech space is reaching maturity. It went from nothing in
the 90s to the global scale industry we have today. The winners have
been chosen and the reality is infinite growth does not exist,
infinite ideas do not exist.
But for 2 decades it seemed like tech was the be it all path for
infinite growth. VCs pumped in hundreds of billions of dollars into
the industry. Marketing painted everything as the next big thing as
the money flowed and you had 3000 clone startups for every potential
SaaS.
The money tap has run out (interest rates being one factor, but
cracks were showing even before this), the bills are coming due. The
industry is consolidating.
AI however is the last big hurrah for the industry. Investors and
companies see it potentially as a big new exlosive growth space.
Yes, the entire stock market right now in the US is being held up by
all the AI sentiment. Though it's starting to deflate.
xyzzy123 wrote 22 hours 46 min ago:
I notice you didn't mention drones...
pjmlp wrote 22 hours 38 min ago:
They are turning into a military success in Eastern Europe.
swingingFlyFish wrote 22 hours 59 min ago:
I think when companies become a 'necessity' like this, they have to be
regulated or broken up. I'm not a big fan of Apple taking a commission
if you port an app to their phone and I loathe the idea of having to
use iCloud if I want to use Apple Pay, in fact, can't stand the idea of
a phone company being my credit card company/bank either.
And don't get me started on non standard USB...what was that? I applaud
the EU stepping in and quite frankly i'm looking forward to Apple being
broken up. It's that time.
pertymcpert wrote 9 hours 50 min ago:
lmao some strong feelings there. Lightning is a brilliant port.
pmarreck wrote 22 hours 29 min ago:
I disagree. _I_ think that when companies become a "necessity" like
this, they end up resting on their laurels because they won the
economic game. And what happens next will happen regardless of
regulation or not: They will begin their long but steady decline into
irrelevance.
I state this as a huge Apple fan since 1984 when my family bought the
first Mac: The best things to ever happen to Apple were almost dying
in 1997, and (essentially, despite the M chips being fantastic
technologically) losing the PC war (which I will argue was not due to
price, but to 2 things: 1) failure to embrace the AAA gaming market
and thus the mindshare of the next generation, and 2) re-closing the
Mac platform after it was open, which it only did because the news
kept reporting only on the impact to Apple sales and not the overall
Mac market, which was actually growing at the time!)
> And don't get me started on non standard USB
Do you mean Lightning? That was a massive improvement (both
physically in terms of design, by being reversible and supporting
higher voltages as well as being durable) on both mini and micro USB
and came out long before USB-C existed. And to this day, Apple
devices are STILL some of the few devices that fully support the
USB-C spec, as opposed to all the Chinese crapware that uses a USB-C
plug but will fail to charge when plugged into anything but a USB-A
charger because someone picked the cheap way out.
s1k3s wrote 23 hours 0 min ago:
> Apple executive Eddy Cue pushed for an Android iMessage app in 2016,
but Craig Federighi responded in an internal email that âiMessage on
Android would simply serve to remove an obstacle to iPhone families
giving their kids Android phones.â
This conversation happened 8 years ago and it was about a product
released 12 years ago. If anything, this shows how slow regulators are
before they take any action and how they are effectively contributing
to building the garden walls, through inaction.
sonofhans wrote 21 hours 23 min ago:
Iâm struggling to see whatâs wrong with Federighiâs argument.
Why should he not want to protect Appleâs position? Apple has no
monopoly on mobile messaging or hardware, and they didnât 8 years
ago either, so they can do what they like here.
What is Apple supposed to do? Spend time and money on interop to
better the lives of Android users? Thereâs nothing wrong with them
doing so if they like, but I fail to see any obligation they have.
Teever wrote 20 hours 59 min ago:
You're right. They obviously have no motivation to do the correct
thing, so the solution is government regulation.
We live in a world where every landline telephone can dial another
with no trickery or fuckery from your phone manufacturer.
That is a good thing. We should extend that functionally to
smartphones.
sonofhans wrote 20 hours 2 min ago:
Youâre going to have to be much more specific if you want to
make any sense. All cell phones can already call other cell
phones. All cell phones can already message other cell phones.
FireBeyond wrote 17 hours 16 min ago:
You ignore that for a while that actually wasn't the case. If
you left the Apple ecosystem, for multiple years the steps to
get your number/account disassociated from iMessage so your
contacts could reach you by SMS again were not default, not
obvious, and not disclosed.
Teever wrote 17 hours 33 min ago:
Yeah, exactly, and we should continue to see the regulated
implementation of these kinds of interoperability at all levels
of the stack.
INGSOCIALITE wrote 20 hours 38 min ago:
what "correct thing"? i can text people who use android phones
just fine. TBH this all boils down to the ridiculous blue / green
bubble thing. that's the ONLY difference in texting between
devices. i honestly have no clue why apple would be regulated in
any way over this!
Teever wrote 14 hours 38 min ago:
Because theyre soon going to be deemed an illegal monopoly and
regulated as such.
This is probably one of the things the government will be
regulating.
But like you said, if it's a minor thing then Apple will have
no problem complying and it's no big deal.
robocat wrote 18 hours 36 min ago:
Costs me $0.5 to send an image or other MMS locally to Android.
Even a txt costs me if the Android is overseas. I have a cheap
plan in New Zealand.
Blue/green might be irrelevant to you, but it is definitely not
irrelevant to many people.
icehawk wrote 14 hours 53 min ago:
Ok so what is your point? That's the carrier.
simonh wrote 17 hours 44 min ago:
Sorry, you think Apple is charging you these carrier fees?
Hilarious.
robocat wrote 16 hours 52 min ago:
Whats with the false accusation?
gretch wrote 18 hours 20 min ago:
> Costs me $0.5 to send an image or other MMS
> Even a txt costs me if the Android is overseas
Sounds like your telecom sucks. Why are you demanding
something of Apple. Why donât you get your government to
regulate your own telecoms?
robocat wrote 16 hours 53 min ago:
> Why are you demanding something of Apple
Not me. I object to you making up bullshit about me. I just
stated facts - no opinions given.
stuartd wrote 18 hours 55 min ago:
It's not the only difference, at least where I live - I have to
significantly reduce image sizes to send them to Android
users..
simonh wrote 17 hours 40 min ago:
Which is a limitation of the messaging protocol. Apple has
announced they will add support for RCS this year, which
should address these issues.
Teever wrote 17 hours 19 min ago:
And why are they adding RCS?
Because the EU is starting to regulate them so theyve
stopped dragging their ass on this.
throw0101c wrote 15 hours 59 min ago:
> Because the EU is starting to regulate them so theyve
stopped dragging their ass on this.
Or it's China mandating RCS to be able to acquire '5G
certification':
* CN: [1] * EN: [2] > China Mobile, China Telecom and
China Unicom yesterday (8 April) released a 5G messaging
white paper outlining their commitment to mandate all
compatible handsets sold in the country support Rich
Communication Services (RCS).
*
URI [1]: https://www.miit.gov.cn/gzcy/yjzj/art/2023/art_2...
URI [2]: https://old.reddit.com/r/UniversalProfile/commen...
URI [3]: https://www.gsma.com/futurenetworks/latest-news/...
selectodude wrote 16 hours 55 min ago:
It was actually China.
zer00eyz wrote 16 hours 57 min ago:
Because RCS has reached the point where it should be
taken seriously.
The bulk of apples iPhone business is on US carriers.
Who, on a good day, are in the Stone Age.
alternatex wrote 13 hours 4 min ago:
RCS reached that point by being dragged there by
Google.
bigstrat2003 wrote 16 hours 26 min ago:
If you think that Apple supporting RCS has to do with
the tech and not with regulatory pressure, I have a
bridge in Arizona to sell you.
CharlesW wrote 20 hours 44 min ago:
> They obviously have no motivation to do the correct thing, so
the solution is government regulation.
The solution to what? Apple supports SMS/MMS. They've
pre-announced (something they rarely do) RCS support. They
support VoLTE for HD voice calls.
Let's say the federal government eminent-domains iMessage
protocols. Then what? Do you really think Apple's just going to
carry traffic from untrusted devices, and for free?
pmarreck wrote 22 hours 33 min ago:
> âiMessage on Android would simply serve to remove an obstacle to
iPhone families giving their kids Android phones.â
This statement says a few extra things that Craig Federighi probably
didn't realize he was saying.
1) It suggests that the iPhone wouldn't be able to hold its own in a
market where interoperability with Android was easier. That
demonstrates a lack of faith in it.
2) I've noticed that any time a corporation starts to clutch its
fingers around its flagship product and make it less open, it starts
to die. Oh sure, there's an upfront benefit perhaps in sales, but
you're literally selling the future of your thing to profit from it
today, by doing this.
VelesDude wrote 17 hours 31 min ago:
Regarding No 2. That is very true but it is astounding just how
much inertia is in the system that keeps iPhone going.
Turns out that the curated experience of iPhone combined with a lot
of fumbles from various android vendors has kept iPhone image of
being the best and most desirable phone.
It is very vaguely feeling like if another big player was to come
in they could actually make some waves that causes everyone else to
jump. To the benefit of the users. But I doubt that will happen.
0x457 wrote 16 hours 22 min ago:
After 5 years of android, I've never been happier to switch back
to iPhone.
pmarreck wrote 12 hours 30 min ago:
It is the best worst option. ;)
Would love to read a post about it explaining your experiences
(all of the good and bad) and why you returned.
rootusrootus wrote 22 hours 15 min ago:
> It suggests that the iPhone wouldn't be able to hold its own in a
market where interoperability with Android was easier
It is just a statement of the obvious. Price tends to trump every
other consideration, unless the difference is pretty big. See also
airline ticket pricing and the race to the bottom in comfort &
features. If there is no differentiator, a lot of people will just
get Android phones because they cost less. They'll put up with
quite a lot of abuse as long as they save a few bucks. It'd
probably end up like gmail.
pmarreck wrote 12 hours 33 min ago:
But this is just stupidity.
Sorry, let me rephrase: This is appealing to the lowest common
denominator and the most ignorant consumer.
Wowfunhappy wrote 21 hours 3 min ago:
> It is just a statement of the obvious. Price tends to trump
every other consideration, unless the difference is pretty big.
But, huge swaths of the public regularly pay much more than the
minimum required to have better:
⢠Cars
⢠Clothing
⢠Restaurants
⢠Theater seats
These are just the first few that come to mind.
Now, is the difference between high- and low-end clothing "pretty
big"? I guess it depends on what you mean, but both will
fundamentally cover your body.
For airlines, people just want to get from point A to point B,
and nothing else really matters at the end of the day. Even on
higher end airlines, flying is unlikely to be a truly pleasant
experience, unless maybe you pay almost an order of magnitude
more for first class or something. People just want to get it
over with.
I mean, I think we're saying the same thing here. But whereas I
feel you're framing this as a "bug" in how consumers operate, I
think they're behaving quite logically. People will pay more for
things they actually care about. When they don't care, they
choose the cheapest option.
realusername wrote 19 hours 15 min ago:
That's exactly why both Apple and Google needs to be opened up.
Cars, clothing and restaurants do compete on the offering.
aurareturn wrote 22 hours 58 min ago:
The truth is, all businesses do what Craig suggested.
AirBnB isn't opening up their platform to Expedia. Meta isn't
allowing your Instagram data to be accessed by another platform. Your
own company isn't voluntarily making it easier for its customers to
leave.
Repulsion9513 wrote 12 hours 12 min ago:
It's almost like having the rental market controlled by Airbnb
instead of myriad local hotels is a bad thing
(Or to take another example of the
operate-blatantly-illegally-until-you-bribe-your-way-to-legalizatio
n and loss-lead-til-monopoly industry, it's almost like having the
taxi market controlled by Uber and Lyft instead of myriad local cab
companies is a bad thing)
(Or to bring it back to the point of the thread, it's almost like
having the mobile phone app market controlled by Apple and Google
is a bad thing)
asah wrote 16 hours 53 min ago:
bad example? you can book hotels etc on AirBnB and everybody
offers listing services which crosspost across the booking sites.
There are few exclusives in the travel industry.
beeboobaa3 wrote 22 hours 41 min ago:
This is why executives should be tossed in jail instead of a
company being fined.
simonh wrote 17 hours 45 min ago:
If they break the law, sure, if they put features in their
products that are perfectly legal but that you happen to dislike
not so much.
Repulsion9513 wrote 12 hours 6 min ago:
Option 3: just because it is perfectly legal does not mean it
should be.
Of course in most cases like this it's actually been illegal
for over a century.
pessimizer wrote 22 hours 52 min ago:
Companies shouldn't be expected to individually make suboptimal
decisions in order to preserve the health of the market. They
should be regulated by a functioning government.
aurareturn wrote 22 hours 34 min ago:
Let's just say that the government decided in the year 2005 that
no private company can ship something that will replace SMS as
the defacto messaging system because it wants interoperability.
We would have never had iMessage, Whatsapp, Messenger, etc. Other
countries would have far surpassed us in messaging communication
tech.
Regulations are a double edged sword.
nerdix wrote 13 hours 27 min ago:
It doesn't have to be "you can't replace SMS" because that
would be stifling to innovation. It could simply be "messaging
protocols should be open and/or interoperable".
The web is what it is today because its open. The telephone
network is what it is today because its interoperable. Imagine
if the web was bifurcated based on the operating system you
wanted to use (that was Microsoft's vision in the late 90s and
early 00s: to create a large section of the web that required
Windows). Imagine if a Verizon customer had a limited feature
set when calling an AT&T customer (like the inability to leave
a voicemail for instance). No one would tolerate these things.
But yet people will argue in favor of this with messaging (as
long as its Apple doing it)
edanm wrote 7 hours 53 min ago:
> It doesn't have to be "you can't replace SMS" because that
would be stifling to innovation. It could simply be
"messaging protocols should be open and/or interoperable".
It doesn't seem the same, but that's effectively also
stifling to innovation.
For one thing, if the whole reason something like iMessage
got created was to ensure an Apple monopoly, if they couldn't
use it to do that, they just wouldn't build it, not build it
open instead.
For another, what does "open and interoperable" even mean?
There isn't necessarily a defined protocol for these things
already. So who would come up with one? Almost certainly, the
big companies would have to be involved, and they could steer
the standard to benefit themselves, even just by making it
closer to something they've already built (which makes total
technical sense too - of course you want to base the protocol
on existing tech!).
But that means that compliance is much harder for smaller
companies, which would mean you're giving a huge advantage to
a big player anyway.
As opposed to the no-regulation world, in which Whatsapp was
a startup that could do whatever it wanted, and ended up
being the default messaging platform that half the world
uses.
taxikabs wrote 21 hours 57 min ago:
That's a poor option to regulate from. They could just as
easily have required messaging apps to make their protocols
open, allowing for competition in the app space messaging over
them and not facing lock in.
aurareturn wrote 21 hours 54 min ago:
So what's the financial incentive for companies to develop &
maintain open standard messaging protocols? For example, I'm
sure it costs Meta a pretty penny to facilitate messages with
central servers, store historical messages, and pay engineers
to maintain and develop new features. If they have then be
forced to open up Messenger for free, they might not have
started Messenger in the first place.
Also, SMS is the open protocol so we have at least one
interoperable standard for people to choose from.
Repulsion9513 wrote 12 hours 8 min ago:
So... Meta might not choose to develop a messenger? Or
maybe they would choose to use someone else's system (since
again it's open and interoperable)? I'm sorry, where's the
issue here?
Apocryphon wrote 21 hours 30 min ago:
Facebook users needed to be able to communicate with each
other. Thatâs a business requirement no regulation can
deter.
layer8 wrote 22 hours 6 min ago:
We had lots of progress despite regulation of technical
standards in the past. And the regulation doesnât have to
force a particular communication protocol, it could simply be
forcing a separation between hardware and communication
providers.
manquer wrote 22 hours 19 min ago:
SMTP, IMAP and POP did not prevent gmail or outlook from
launching products
2G/3G/4G/5g did not hinder the mobile industry it only fostered
it .
Standard payment interface like UPI did not stop apps for
payments being built , India didnât need a Venmo or WeeChat
to innovate here before standardization
Innovations happen despite or without regulations if there is
market demand for it . FRAND patents exist for a reason.
I canât think of any common example where interoperability
killed innovation
adolph wrote 21 hours 28 min ago:
> SMTP, IMAP and POP did not prevent gmail or outlook from
launching products
. . . and likewise did not require regulation for companies
to be interested in adopting.
aurareturn wrote 21 hours 51 min ago:
Sure, and SMS is the protocol equivalent.
A lot of email protocol communication has been replaced by
private, non-open solutions such as Slack, forums, Whatsapp,
etc.
There should be open and closed protocols. If you want to use
an open one, then go ahead, If a closed one works better for
you, then go ahead.
talldayo wrote 22 hours 55 min ago:
Well, yes. It's a great reason to not let businesses decide on
these things, because their petty interpretation will always
override a communal solution. Once you reach Apple's scale, you
shouldn't expect to start replacing stuff like SMS with a
proprietary alternative and get away with it.
edanm wrote 8 hours 1 min ago:
If you don't "let business decide on these things", the result
isn't better more communal solutions getting made, the result is
no solutions getting made because they're not worth making for
the business.
mopenstein wrote 17 hours 51 min ago:
Why let the businesses create anything at all? Why not regulate
the creation of everything?
talldayo wrote 16 hours 22 min ago:
Better question; why allow them access to the market if their
only intention is to abuse it?
Apple can create whatever they want, but they're going to get
the scrutiny they deserve. iMessage should be an on-ramp to
better communications for everyone; instead it's become the
flaming symbol of Apple's deliberate negligence. This is
absolutely the point regulators should be stepping in and
ensuring Apple isn't headed down an anti-consumer pathway that
ensures market harm.
Jtsummers wrote 21 hours 50 min ago:
Apple didn't replace SMS. It is still there on every iPhone, and
they expanded SMS reach for iPhone users who have other devices
like iPad and macOs systems.
In what universe do you exist where SMS was removed?
talldayo wrote 21 hours 18 min ago:
HN tells me that there's only one more step left after
embracing and extending. Apple didn't make some mistake putting
iMessage and SMS in the same app, they want you reliant on
their service so that SMS seems (rightfully) poor by
comparison.
There would be nothing wrong with that if Apple wasn't equally
as miserly with that power as the carriers they want to
valiantly protest against. I'm no fan of cell carriers either,
but now that we see Apple's end-goal I don't think their cause
is righteous at all. In the friendliest of interpretations,
they are a competing alternative enabled by disproportionate
first-party integration on Apple's behalf. It doesn't take long
to extrapolate their motives for deliberately neglecting
cross-platform interoperability to bolster their market
presence.
If it harms the market, prevents fair competition, and doesn't
benefit the general public, there is no rational reason to let
iMessage persist the way it is today.
lenerdenator wrote 13 hours 35 min ago:
The problem with "prevents fair competition" with regards to
iMessage is that there were plenty of chances for fair
competition and others (particularly Google) kept messing it
up. How many chat platforms did they blow through?
I can absolutely install other messaging apps (WhatsApp,
Signal, Telegram, etc.) on my iPhone and contact other people
on an Android device using that app. The thing that keeps me
from doing so isn't the fact that said applications are
locked out of a decent percentage of the phone market, but
that the network effect helps Apple. Most of my friends don't
know, or care to know, what Signal is, even though it's a
better application re: privacy than iMessage.
Jtsummers wrote 13 hours 12 min ago:
> How many chat platforms did they blow through? [1] Which,
to me, demonstrates the core problem: Apple succeeded by
remaining focused. Google failed because it has some form
of institutional ADHD when it comes to messaging services.
Google even had a six year head start on Apple with Google
Talk, and still managed to fail because they couldn't
remain focused.
People are upset that Apple succeeded, but they aren't even
running the most popular messaging service out there.
URI [1]: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/08/a-decade-a...
zarzavat wrote 7 hours 39 min ago:
It is so funny how differently the Messages app is
viewed.
In NA, Messages is the true source of Appleâs power and
the key to their evil anticompetitive empire, the only
ones who can stop their masterplan are the men in suits
from the DOJ.
Outside of NA, itâs the app you use to get TOTP codes
and phishing attempts.
Youâre right that the real story isnât that Google
missed out competing with iMessage, itâs that they
missed out competing with WhatsApp despite having control
over the OS and being able to bundle their own messaging
app!
Google is not even competitive with third tier apps such
as Viber which is really funny. I read HN compulsively
yet I donât know what the name of Googleâs current
chat app is or even if they have one.
raincole wrote 13 hours 54 min ago:
> HN tells me that there's only one more step left after
embracing and extending.
Perhaps you should read HN less then. Along this line of
thinking, any business adopting any open standard is a bad
thing. Don't you think it's a very weird take?
inkyoto wrote 14 hours 33 min ago:
> HN tells me that there's only one more step left after
embracing and extending.
It is a wild projection, a common one amongst members of this
esteemed congregation.
Removing SMS supports invalidates and revokes the 3G/4G/5G
network compliance with standards and certification, whether
you are Apple or an invisible fifth column. It also voids the
right to display the very same 3G/4G/5G sign in the upper
part of the smartphone screen and opens a very expensive path
to litigation from all sorts of patent holders from the
3/4/5G patent pool.
simonh wrote 17 hours 53 min ago:
I don't see that removing or crippling an option a lot of
users rely on improves the market, or competition.
Doesn't benefit the public? Are happy iPhone users that rely
on iMessage every day including it's SMS integration not
benefited, or not the public?
talldayo wrote 16 hours 7 min ago:
> I don't see that removing or crippling an option a lot of
users rely on improves the market, or competition.
It certainly doesn't need to be removed, just expanded.
Apple can't have their cake and eat it too, you either
replace SMS and the multiplatform commitments that come
with it or you don't. Pretending to hold down a
halfway-house to keep selling iPhones is not only a
bundling tactic, but combined with Apple's negligence
towards alternatives it's genuinely anticompetitive.
> Are happy iPhone users that rely on iMessage every day
including it's SMS integration not benefited, or not the
public?
...no, those are happy iPhone users. The public inherently
means people that are not paying customers of Apple;
regular citizens with no outstanding obligations to any
corporation.
I don't understand how you could possibly interpret "the
public" to mean "satisfied iPhone customers" in this
situation.
Jtsummers wrote 15 hours 54 min ago:
> Apple can't have their cake and eat it too, you either
replace SMS and the multiplatform commitments that come
with it or you don't.
You keep suggesting that Apple replaced SMS. They didn't.
So per this new statement, they have no multi-platform
commitments because they haven't done anything to warrant
it.
nerdix wrote 13 hours 54 min ago:
Is there an example of Microsoft ever actually
"extinguishing" something? The extinguish bit is more
about making the competing services non-viable.
Microsoft's whole strategy was built around making it
so a user on its platform either couldn't or wouldn't
want to use a particular technology without their
proprietary extensions. That perfectly describes
iMessage if we're to believe all the commentary on
social media about how iPhone users get the "ick" from
seeing a green bubble.
In fact, I'd argue that iMessage has been one of the
most successful implementations of EEE ever. Maybe
only behind ActiveX and Microsoft's slow adoption of
web standards in the late 90s - mid 00s (but MS never
actually replaced HTML or JavaScript with its
proprietary stuff).
Jtsummers wrote 13 hours 31 min ago:
> In fact, I'd argue that iMessage has been one of
the most successful implementations of EEE ever.
Maybe only behind ActiveX and Microsoft's slow
adoption of web standards in the late 90s - mid 00s
(but MS never actually replaced HTML or JavaScript
with its proprietary stuff).
Is it? Globally, iMessage is far from the most
popular messaging application. If it's an attempt at
EEE it's not a great one. IE was far more successful
in degree and longevity of impact.
And no, they didn't. They just implemented CSS and
other things exactly counter to the spec in a number
of spots, along with other incompatibilities in order
to make developers have to choose: 80% to 90% of the
market, or conform to standards?
> That perfectly describes iMessage if we're to
believe all the commentary on social media about how
iPhone users get the "ick" from seeing a green
bubble.
The only people who care about that their own
messages on their own phones show up as green bubbles
are children. The rest of the world doesn't give a
shit. They see green bubbles because they use
WhatsApp.
nerdix wrote 12 hours 49 min ago:
> Is it? Globally, iMessage is far from the most
popular messaging application. If it's an attempt
at EEE it's not a great one. IE was far more
successful in degree and longevity of impact.
I basically already said it was second to IE. What
else did MS do that was more successful than
iMessage? There were definitely many attempts by
Microsoft that were not as successful like Visual
J++. They also had a similar strategy to iMessage
with MSN Messenger embracing and extending AIM and
they had a lot of success with that but most of
that success came right before desktop messaging
was superseded by mobile messaging.
> The only people who care about that their own
messages on their own phones show up as green
bubbles are children. The rest of the world doesn't
give a shit. They see green bubbles because they
use WhatsApp.
Thats just just not true in America. There are
literally adult Android users that who post about
how using Android is a barrier to their dating life
because other adult iPhone users (which is the
majority for certain age groups) will just simply
refuse to date someone who doesn't use an iPhone.
[1] [2] And countless reddit threads and twitter
posts: [3] [4] [5] [6] Some people even think the
issue is Android: [7] I've also heard personal
anecdotes from single men that I know who use
Android (it definitely goes other way too but I
know more single men personally than women).
URI [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9FbOf3uew...
URI [2]: https://www.cnet.com/culture/iphone-or-and...
URI [3]: https://www.reddit.com/r/dating/comments/q...
URI [4]: https://www.reddit.com/r/dating_advice/com...
URI [5]: https://twitter.com/ldollaz_/status/178313...
URI [6]: https://twitter.com/tweetsmoe/status/17832...
URI [7]: https://twitter.com/EbonyJHilton_MD/status...
threeseed wrote 19 hours 2 min ago:
Apple never got rid of SMS. And there has been no embrace or
extend.
All they did was put an optional message service in the same
app.
One that isnât even the most popular making it strange to
say there is no competition.
Repulsion9513 wrote 12 hours 11 min ago:
> there has been no embrace or extend
Embrace: include SMS
Extend: add iMessage
threeseed wrote 9 hours 38 min ago:
That's not what the phrase means.
URI [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_a...
Repulsion9513 wrote 2 hours 15 min ago:
Embrace: include HTML
Extend: add ActiveX
Yeah, it is.
FireBeyond wrote 17 hours 18 min ago:
> All they did was put an optional message service in the
same app.
They did a bit more than that. There were the glory days
that if you ever left the Apple ecosystem, but iMessage
ever had an awareness of your number, no other iMessage
users could reach you until or unless you did some
incantations that Apple didn't make obvious, ideally from
an Apple device (that you may not own anymore), to allow
your friends to keep sending you even green bubble
messages?
I know multiple people who had to go to Apple stores to try
to do this process.
tcmart14 wrote 9 hours 41 min ago:
However, the same thing happened to me when I switched
from my pixel 3a to an iPhone. I wasn't able to text from
my iPhone for a week. I ended up contacting Verizon and
they actually had their network engineers investigating.
What they ended up discovering, and sent me a contact
number for it, was that some how Google's RCS was still
holding a lock on my number or something.
So this isn't an exclusive Apple problem.
pixl97 wrote 15 hours 40 min ago:
Ya I got bit switching to android when people started
calling wondering what happened when I wouldn't respond
to their texts.
hyperbovine wrote 22 hours 11 min ago:
Maybe Appleâs âscaleâ is because its users do not enjoy
being shackled to crappy SMS?
mfuzzey wrote 18 hours 50 min ago:
Why shackled to SMS?
I don't have an iPhone don't use iMessager and haven't sent a
SMS in the past 10 years.
Everything these days is What'sApp / Telegram / Signal
pseudalopex wrote 20 hours 22 min ago:
Apple users would be less shackled to crappy SMS if Apple put
iMessage on Android.
talldayo wrote 22 hours 3 min ago:
Maybe so; it doesn't really matter when you're looking at
damages. It's Apple's job to solve interoperability with their
own platform, and not only have they failed to provide
SMS-levels of interop, they actively work against it to promote
ulterior products. It's exactly the sort of anticompetitive
bundling that harms the market without improving competition.
Maybe Ma Bell's success was in-part due to their free
long-distance calls. It's kinda moot speculation when you look
at their top-down business strategy though.
riffic wrote 15 hours 12 min ago:
the only "free long-distance" calling on Ma Bell was with a
blue box.
paulmd wrote 17 hours 49 min ago:
Nobody provides SMS levels of interop on unrestricted
internet messaging platforms because the experience sucks.
Running the IM equivalent of an open SMTP relay is a ghastly
experience for users. You literally have to gatekeep because
the alternative is going back to circa-2000 levels of spam.
Deep down you know exactly what would happen because weâve
all lived it with spam voice calls again recently - weâve
been trying to reach you about your carâs warrantyâ¦
Destroying a working, positive experience on the apple
platform and dragging it down to 2000s level is the explicit
goal for a lot of people. The pain is the point - not to
bring android up but simply to tear things down and walk
away.
talldayo wrote 16 hours 14 min ago:
> Nobody provides SMS levels of interop on unrestricted
internet messaging platforms because the experience sucks.
Maybe Apple should lead the charge on that, or instead
they'll be forced to use something truly godawful like
OMEMO or RCS. I'd prefer they didn't, but it would be
pretty funny if they were forced down that path in the
long-run. It takes a haughty spirit before the fall.
> Destroying a working, positive experience on the apple
platform and dragging it down to 2000s level is the
explicit goal for a lot of people.
A more believable motive than being one of the millions of
non-Apple customers that are subject to using an inferior
messaging standard? Apple made their bed by believing they
could proprietate a public resource; now you've got to lie
in it because you're their customer. Frankly I (and
regulators) could care less what iMessage looks like once
it's all done. It's apparently not our platform.
nerdix wrote 13 hours 38 min ago:
Exactly. Apple has more influence over the cellular
industry in America than any single company including the
carriers themselves.
They could completely design the spec by themselves with
all the pro-consumer features that one could imagine
including things like distributed spam filtering and then
force the carriers to adopt it either by using the stick
(force adoption by X date or lose the iPhone) or the
carrot (shift proprietary iMessage features to the new
standard so that users demand the carrier adopt it --
basically green bubble any carrier that doesn't use the
standard). No other company in the country could do
this.
But of course, complete control over a proprietary
iMessage protocol that they can lock competitors out of
is apart of the business strategy.
doctorpangloss wrote 17 hours 30 min ago:
> You literally have to gatekeep because the alternative
is going back to circa-2000 levels of spam.
The vast majority of spam is explicitly permitted by
Google. What are you talking about? Do you not use e-mail?
They have a Promotions tab, they could make spam - that is,
marketing emails - go away in an afternoon, if they wanted
to. They just don't, because those same companies are
Google Ads customers.
0x457 wrote 16 hours 30 min ago:
Marketing email subscriptions you were tricked into
signing up for isn't what people consider spam. In fact,
Google provides a nice feature to unsubscribe from those
without looking for a link in the email.
Now, the spam argument for iMessage makes little sense
IMO - you're still going to get the same message via SMS.
However, with Apple in charge, there is a chance that
there will be some kind of "report + temporal ban"
feature. Carriers have no incentive to create such
feature.
paulmd wrote 16 hours 49 min ago:
> The vast majority of spam is explicitly permitted by
Google. What are you talking about?
It is certainly not lmao - try sending mail to google
from your own smtp server on your own doma
Seeing some spam occasionally doesnât mean the vast
majority isnât being rej
> They have a Promotions tab, they could make spam - that
is, marketing emails - go away in an afternoon, if they
wanted to.
opting into newsletters is explicitly not spam, so either
you donât understand the basics of being on the
internet or youâre arguing in bad faith.
Which is probably also implied by the âI saw a spam
once therefore google runs an open SMTP relayâ take
honestly. You know thatâs not true either. We both know
you know. Why are you doing this?
again:
Google doesnât provide your desired standard of
openness either, in their own oligopolistic
fiefs/gatekeeper domains like gmail. And everyone
understand why itâs a bad idea. Forced open interop is
an unworkable idea and forcing an unworkable idea on
iMessage is the whole goal. Flooding iMessage with spam
2000s-style by forcing an âopen relayâ into the
system is the whole point, whether you realize it or not.
Just like forcing âchoice of browserâ was never about
giving users freedom either - but about wiping away the
last counterbalance against chromeâs dominance/monopoly
in the browser market. Hence the flood of shit like web
integrity and adtech ever since.
eropple wrote 15 hours 53 min ago:
> opting into newsletters is explicitly not spam
C'mon. Signing up for a store to buy a thing doesn't
grant permission to bother me with a newsletter, you
very frequently just can't opt out until they've sent
you something.
That's the "I'm not touching you" of compliance and
spam-in-spirit should have a mudhole stomped into
it--and yet does not.
s1k3s wrote 22 hours 56 min ago:
Exactly. It should be expected from any company to do this, which
is why I'm blaming the regulatory agencies for being too slow to
act.
cjk2 wrote 23 hours 2 min ago:
Iâve got to be honest while I appreciate the direction they are
forced in, I have yet to find anyone outside the tech industry who
actually knows or gives a crap.
Also the only reason Epic and Spotify are after them is not some
altruistic reason but they want to be the guys charging the 30% margin.
Itâs a bit of a grey victory but Iâll take it.
stale2002 wrote 13 hours 33 min ago:
That sounds horrible.
Maybe Apple should open up their ecosystem, that way multiple other
app stores can compete and drive that percentage price down to zero.
kevingadd wrote 18 hours 15 min ago:
How is it "charging a 30% margin" to keep more of your own revenue?
Epic wants everyone to be able to keep more of their own revenue;
they proved this by rejecting the sweetheart deal Apple offered them.
If a company's revenues are 30% higher they now have the ability to
lower their prices (unless one of the major players demands price
parity to thwart competition, as does happen)
jncfhnb wrote 21 hours 34 min ago:
Spotify does not want to charge a â30% marginâ. Spotify wants to
not give up 30% of their revenue to Apple, who coincidentally had a
competing service effectively free from the 30% tax.
The epic game store charges 12%; against which developers are
partially handcuffed due to steams price matching requirement.
criddell wrote 18 hours 41 min ago:
Small correction: Apple was getting 15% from Spotify, not 30%.
jncfhnb wrote 18 hours 30 min ago:
Yes, but a sweetheart deal to avoid a legal battle for the
greater good with the few entities that have sufficient mass to
potentially win at court is a scummy thing in its own right
shuckles wrote 25 min ago:
There was no sweetheart deal. Spotify pays Apple 0% because
they offer no in-app subscriptions, and any developer with long
term subscribers gets 15% pricing.
redwall_hp wrote 20 hours 18 min ago:
Relevant: Spotify already hands over 70% of their revenue to music
rights holders to cover the various performance and mechanical
royalties. All of their other operating expenses have to fit into
the remaining 30%, meaning they often have quarters that report a
loss.
Apple trying to take 30% of subscriptions while operating a
competing service as a value-add that can afford to be a loss
leader is highly anticompetitive.
kristjansson wrote 18 hours 40 min ago:
Even the most extreme Apple position isnât trying to take 30%
of all of Spotifys revenue, theyâre trying to take 30% of each
subscription originated on-device, for the first year of that
customer. Which is still a huge cut, and still a problem that
doesnât encumber Apple Music, but the business question for
Spotify is âdo the incremental subscribers make sense (in
quality and quantity), not âsell one subscription and Apple
eats our entire operating budgetâ.
A better Apple (with less adversarial partners) might have tried
to structure the commission as a profit share, not a rev share,
to keep high and low margin businesses on the platform, but alas.
toasterlovin wrote 17 hours 44 min ago:
The crazy thing is that Spotify has already proven that in-app
subscription on iOS isnât necessary to their business, since
theyâve already succeeded in becoming the most popular music
service without it!
But of course thatâs not going to keep them from asking their
government to give them more.
stubish wrote 15 hours 24 min ago:
Business is about staying in business, not being popular. A
streaming pricing model, so you lose money on your best
customers streaming 24x7 who get a great deal whilst keeping
mediocre customers on a free tier because it is expensive. An
advertising service where the audience is so tight they won't
pay the price of a coffee for music streaming. Popular but
sustainable? They already can't pay artists enough, only
getting away with that because artists don't have a choice
but to bend over.
jncfhnb wrote 18 hours 33 min ago:
Iâm not sure that needed clarification but sure
jjtheblunt wrote 14 hours 1 min ago:
I found it useful. (Your comments too.)
joecot wrote 22 hours 5 min ago:
> I have yet to find anyone outside the tech industry who actually
knows or gives a crap.
Lots of school kids who get mocked for being "Green Texters" with
crummy images and videos in their group texts. They really want their
parents to shell out for an iPhone so it stops. Just because non-tech
people don't know the cause, doesn't mean it doesn't affect them.
zer00eyz wrote 16 hours 46 min ago:
Because those same kids aren't going to get mocked for the brand of
clothing (or lack there of) that they wear?
Using something as an excuse to be a piece of shit is not the same
as giving a crap. This isnt an example of a good reason to do this.
HDThoreaun wrote 16 hours 43 min ago:
I was a kid not too long ago and no one gave a shit about a
single luxury item other than iPhones. People who had fancy stuff
were generally made fun of, the cool kids all wore stuff from the
thrift store
bigstrat2003 wrote 16 hours 22 min ago:
The point is that there will always be something that kids use
to single out and ostracize others. Kids are little barbarians
who don't know how to be decent human beings yet, it isn't
going to change just because they have to pick on some other
characteristic to mock.
HDThoreaun wrote 15 hours 51 min ago:
Why does apple ahve to encourage that behavior though? Theyve
designed iMessage to make the experience worse with some
people, it absolutely encourages exclusionary behavior among
those who arent inclined to be exclusionary. Obviously some
kids are just assholes, but plenty arent just going around
looking for things to be mean about.
paulmd wrote 17 hours 39 min ago:
> Lots of school kids who get mocked for being "Green Texters"
So, you decided to try solving a social problem with a
technological solution?
Donât make me tap the sign.
Open SMTP relays never made anyone not get bullied in the email
days either. If the apple is a status symbol, then kids will use it
to be cruel regardless of the internals or regardless of the
services it uses on the backend. They will find something else to
ostracize you over.
cjk2 wrote 21 hours 41 min ago:
I'm not in the US but this is not a thing anywhere in the UK at
least. Everyone uses WhatsApp. Same with all my friends in Europe.
Same with my kids and their friends, although they all seem to be
on SnapChat more than anything.
Actually we don't even tend to bother even talking about which
phones you have. It's just meh. My best friend doesn't even know
what iMessage is as an example.
t43562 wrote 16 hours 47 min ago:
It's very much a problem that Whatsapp isn't using an open
protocol IMO. I really want to use Signal for my family and yet
one has to jump from app to app to talk to other people.
It's ridiculous - all I'm asking is for the convenience of email.
hu3 wrote 21 hours 11 min ago:
It's a US problem. First link of a quick search:
URI [1]: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/03/apples-green...
cjk2 wrote 20 hours 35 min ago:
So it's more a problem with the humans than the technology.
HDThoreaun wrote 16 hours 38 min ago:
Texting has always been free so messaging apps never became
popular. Most people have always used whatever came with the
phone.
rpdillon wrote 20 hours 11 min ago:
I think it's economic. The US has free texting these days,
which means SMS has more usage here than in another
countries. This has prevented the entire nation from
coalesing around one chat app, as so many others have.
MindSwipe wrote 16 hours 33 min ago:
I've had unlimited free texting in western Europe for over
a decade now, and so have many other western Europeans.
I've had unlimited free texting for longer than I have had
unlimited mobile data, yet I still use WhatsApp, I even
used WhatsApp back when I didn't have free unlimited mobile
data.
It's not about free texting or not, IMO it's either about
mobile data or laziness.
distances wrote 18 hours 44 min ago:
Every country in Europe I'm familiar with has free texts,
but I think I can count with one hand the SMS I've received
in the last ~10 years from actual people. Absolutely nobody
sends SMS over here.
Might be that US got the free texts first though. Not sure
anymore what was the timeline with that.
imchillyb wrote 10 hours 54 min ago:
When Whatsapp was released, free text messaging was not a
thing for most of europe. The USA had long since ditched
charging for sms messaging by that point, so the
attractiveness of a free communications app wasn't there.
Also, there are carriers in europe that offer bundle
discounts and better data packages for opting out of sms
altogether.
cjk2 wrote 19 hours 22 min ago:
It has been the same here in the UK for longer. I haven't
paid for an SMS for over 20 years.
abaymado wrote 21 hours 45 min ago:
This is an outrageous take. Is iMessage the only group messaging
app? If Apple was gate keeping all group messaging, I could see
your point.
rpdillon wrote 20 hours 13 min ago:
Not really. The Department of Justice cited this exact behavior
in their investigation of Apple.
URI [1]: https://www.npr.org/2024/03/28/1241443505/green-bubble-s...
meowster wrote 20 hours 58 min ago:
It's a very common take that has been around for a very long
time, so not outrageous in my opinion. Unless you mean
outrageous on Apple's part, then I agree with you.
lynndotpy wrote 21 hours 0 min ago:
It's not a take; it's simply a description, and it's accurate.
There is a significant and undeniable social pressure for young
people in the US to have an iPhone.
If you can't use iMessage, you'll simply be excluded from group
chats.
Speaking exclusively from the cross-platform perspective, things
are better nowadays with the expectation of Instagram and
Discord, but you'll still be excluded from group chats for not
having iMessage.
I think this is a pretty big generational difference. I think
most US citizens born after 2000 are well aware of the green
bubble stigma as a simple fact of life.
gretch wrote 18 hours 14 min ago:
I think itâs weird that governments would regulate a company
on behalf of this reason.
A bunch of teens got together and decided that some things were
social stigma arenât.
Iâm sure thereâs some schools where you canât be included
unless you are wearing Abercrombie clothing, or have a MK
purse. Is it time to step in there too?
lynndotpy wrote 17 hours 24 min ago:
> A bunch of teens got together and decided
No, they did not. There is no teenage illuminati pulling the
strings. The green bubble phenomena appeared throughout teen
social life as iPhones became widely adopted.
> Iâm sure thereâs some schools where you canât be
included unless you are wearing Abercrombie clothing, or have
a MK purse.
These are imagined phenomena which don't have bearing on the
real phenomenon in question.
> Is it time to step in there too?
No. If there comes a time where Abercrombie and control
widely used social infrastructure, in a way that prohibits
non-Abercrombie wearers from participating through
technological means, resulting a widely-acknowledged negative
social phenomenon, then that'll be time to step in there.
But the Abercrombie thing is imagined, and the iPhone thing
is real and has been happening for a decade.
gretch wrote 17 hours 19 min ago:
I assure it is not imagined as I attended public high
school in the United States.
lynndotpy wrote 16 hours 15 min ago:
Was I wrong to interpret the phrasing "Iâm sure
thereâs some schools" to imply you were assuming the
existence of these schools?
I'm sorry that was your experience, but it's not a
widespread phenomenon like the green bubble phenomenon
is.
mopenstein wrote 17 hours 43 min ago:
When a person or entity doesn't do what you want, of course
it's time to send in the goons to force them to behave.
What's the point of having the goons if you're not going to
use them?
jpalawaga wrote 21 hours 37 min ago:
no, it's not, but is the default that works well for a large
chunk of people, with an (intentionally) poorly degrading
experience if one person in the group is not with the "in-crowd."
Yes, life would be better if everyone mutually agreed to use
things crossplatform all of the time. but they don't/haven't, so
there is this friction.
jwagenet wrote 21 hours 28 min ago:
Blame the carriers for not implementing rcs and getting stuck
in horrible mms. Then blame Apple if they donât implement it.
hu3 wrote 21 hours 15 min ago:
Fortunately it's up to regulators to decide what favors the
population best.
At least in EU they seem to be active (USB iPhones anyone),
albeit slower than I'd like.
Longhanks wrote 18 hours 49 min ago:
In democracies, usually it's up to the population to decide
what favors the population best.
Also, in democracies with a somewhat free market, you can
simply choose not to buy phones that do not ship the port
you prefer.
stubish wrote 15 hours 11 min ago:
In democracies, the population decides what favors them,
and the government enacts their will via regulation.
Without regulation, some companies will abuse their
customers when profitable to do so, often dominating over
the companies that do not.
ukuina wrote 23 hours 3 min ago:
It was very surprising that Apple did not strong-arm the EU by
threatening to pull out of the area. The short-term loss of revenue
from leaving the EU is nothing compared to the long-term decline this
is going to cause in Apple's services/subscriptions revenue if the
iPhone is commoditized.
kranke155 wrote 22 hours 38 min ago:
Yes they would leave something like 1/3 to 1/5 of the global revenue,
sure that sounds brilliant.
tebbers wrote 22 hours 39 min ago:
I honestly doubt opening up the App Store will cause much of a hit.
Maybe 5% of users will download another App Store.
jncfhnb wrote 21 hours 27 min ago:
And those users will be the whales who are benefiting from lower
prices the most.
jillesvangurp wrote 22 hours 43 min ago:
They tried and lost. They can threaten all they want. The EU would
let them and good riddance as far as we're concerned. But there is
this pesky notion that it's a huge market and Apple earns a lot of
money there. So, they really can't walk away from that. For the same
reason they play by Chinese rules in China. Because it's a big market
and they need to be in on that as well. And if you think the EU is
picky, the Chinese are much worse. And of course there's a whole
world outside the EU and China that is paying attention as well.
Apple's negotiation position simply is not that strong. It has no
real leverage. And Apple as a US only company would not be anywhere
near it's current size and importance. Share holders would revolt.
R&D investment would implode. It has to be an international company
for it to justify its share price. So, it has to adjust and can't
afford to exit markets. It has no choice.
rootusrootus wrote 22 hours 24 min ago:
> The EU would let them and good riddance as far as we're
concerned. But there is this pesky notion that it's a huge market
and Apple earns a lot of money there. So, they really can't walk
away from that.
Does that not seem contradictory to you? If it's a huge market
they make a lot of money in, then there's by definition a lot of
people who don't think "good riddance" if they leave. Apple has
more leverage than you give them credit for.
alangibson wrote 22 hours 10 min ago:
American living in Europe here. in the EU, you can't just apply
economic logic to everything like you can in the US.
Policymakers will absolutely piss off a huge number of people
over some basic principle. Look for instance at Germany's
willingness to burn it's industrial base to the ground over
Ukraine.
t43562 wrote 16 hours 39 min ago:
They only do that because it has worked for them. They've done
it and survived, which makes me think they haven't actually
pissed off that many people.
Longhanks wrote 18 hours 41 min ago:
> Policymakers will absolutely piss off a huge number of people
over some basic principle.
...which is why a lot of countries are shifting to the right,
people are fed up with policymakers ignoring the public will.
(Examples: Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, Italy - next up:
Germany in 2025, maybe France..?)
geoka9 wrote 20 hours 49 min ago:
I would argue it's not (just) over Ukraine that Germany has
finally decided to wean itself off the unrealistically cheap
natural gas from Russia. In fact, the writing has been on the
wall for decades; Russian leadership never made a big secret
out of the fact that they considered their gas industry a
geopolitical weapon. It took a big scare and popular demand to
stop the wholesale selling out of the German political class to
Russia.
pavlov wrote 22 hours 57 min ago:
A quarter of Appleâs revenue is from Europe. (This number includes
the UK and a few other smaller non-EU markets, but itâs close
enough for comparison purposes.)
I donât see what would be âshort-termâ about pulling out of
this market entirely. If they lost 25% of their revenue, theyâd
have to increase revenue in other markets by 33% to make up for it.
Where is that going to come from?
aetherson wrote 22 hours 51 min ago:
From Europe, yes, but less is from the EU. They don't break this
out in public statements so we can only guess at the numbers, but
less than 25%.
cydonian_monk wrote 22 hours 53 min ago:
This depends on how high the operating costs are in Europe. If
their profits are approaching zero in the market, pulling out of it
entirely would have less of an impact. Obviously that isn't the
case, but operating costs for the market also aren't zero.
layer8 wrote 21 hours 52 min ago:
Apple gets 25% of their revenue from Europe, but only 7% of their
app store revenue. This means that most of their Europe revenue
is from hardware and AppleCare/services. Even if they opened up
the app store completely, they would lose much less than when
pulling out entirely. The fact that they work so hard at
complicated solutions in order to open up the app store as little
as possible shows that they think itâs worth it.
seanmcdirmid wrote 21 hours 48 min ago:
A lot of the value proposition of owning an Apple device is
that it doesnât get bogged down by rogue software like other
phones. So that 25% of revenue that doesnât involve App Store
revenue can still go down if they mess up the App Store too
much. But I think as long as rogue apps is something you have
to opt into with full knowledge of the consequences, it should
be fine.
da768 wrote 22 hours 59 min ago:
If Android becomes the only platform with a worldwide reach, no one's
going to bother writing apps for iOS anymore.
robocat wrote 18 hours 17 min ago:
> no one's going to bother writing apps for iOS anymore
Bullshit. By that logic there would be no Mac specific software.
There was Mac software when Macs were 1% or less of computers.
2022:
74% of computers worldwide run on Windows, according to
StatCounter. This dwarfs macOS, which accounts for 15%
4ad wrote 21 hours 50 min ago:
There are plenty iOS-only apps already. Reach is worthless if you
can't monetize it. iOS users simply bring in more money.
beardyw wrote 22 hours 19 min ago:
Yes and no. iPhone only has about 25% of the world market, but
developers are keen to develop for them because users are more
willing to pay for apps. Reach isn't the same as value.
rootusrootus wrote 22 hours 22 min ago:
That's a reach. If you want to make money in mobile apps, you
target the US first. We could cut out the entirety of the rest of
the world and the US market would still be plenty big enough to
drive a lot of developers.
cjk2 wrote 23 hours 1 min ago:
There is no way Apple would consider even suggesting pulling out of
the EU. The shareholders would hang the entire CXO class in a
nanosecond if they even mentioned it.
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