> They are examples of how Apple's policy decisions stifle competition and result in a worse product for consumers.
No they aren’t. They are just statements about iOS’s design. You don’t make any case for how they make a anything worse.
> Apple's devices cannot adequately protect my privacy, because of their efforts to prevent competitors from making products in any of the markets that they participate in.
This paragraph is gibberish. You might want to edit it.
> Apple would like to maintain exclusive access to a market segment that values security and privacy above all.
You make it sound like Apple has some kid of unfair advantage over competitors. Or that Apple has monopoly power over the ideas of security and privacy. Bullshit.
> it's a shame about Apple's chosen direction.
I can't believe anyone could say that with a straight face.
>How you can argue for less software freedoms, while paying a 30% tax for any app you distribute, is honestly mind boggling to me.
Why do you care what my preferences are? If you don't care for the iOS model, you should go buy an Android. Apple doesn't have a monopoly.
I prefer the Apple model because I want these restrictions. I want apps to be blocked from cross-app tracking. I want apps to have to explicitly spell out the type of data they collect from me, and how they use it. I don't care that I can't side load apps.
>I specifically bought an iPhone because Apple seems to actively regulate what apps are allowed in the App Store while favoring customer privacy and security.
That is perfectly acceptable. Except when they ban it for competitive advantage. Which is the whole point of the discussion. And Apple even wrote it in their email as such.
> the fact that, in just a few weeks, Apple plans to erase the boundary dividing which devices work for you, and which devices work for them.
A very overdramatic sentence.
It is a bit scary to realise that only now people think that this border is being crossed. It has happened a very long time ago already.
The first years of Android, owners were the product, not the phone. Privacy features in the past years might have improved this a little.
Google’s massive success on many services is based on the fact how phones and their software were collecting data for them. User interfaces are just illusions for non-tech persons. They might give you a sense of control.
Now that Apple does not trust us with CSAM material, the end is near. There are arguments for both sides, and many are taking sides to just get attention.
However, you can only solve this problem with politics.
>My gut tells me Apple are taking this stance because they feel it affects their bottom line
You are absolutely correct, but maybe not in a way you think you are.
I currently whole heartedly believe that while Apple is obviously trying to maximize their profits, they are also in for the long game. They want the company to keep making money for decades to come. This means listening to concerns of your consumers is key.
Some times I get this feeling that Samsung and other smart phone vendors are always trying to one-up their competition. While Apple is trying to just improve on their own shit. Which sometimes means that their product is strictly worse in some aspects, compared to their competition.
Taking security seriously, which Apple has done in past years and now taking privacy seriously puts them in a very good position for the long term. They could have easily started to track their users and sell the data to get some instant boost in profits, but that would not have been good for business in long term.
> Firstly in terms of market and brand perception Apple absolutely leads on privacy. That’s not really credibly contestable.
I'd say it's highly contestable, especially since we have no actual direct proof that they do value privacy. Additionally, I don't care about brand perception, I care about reality.
> Next even if the source was published there’s no way to know of the published source is what is in the phones they sell.
So because they ship a poor OS that doesn't let you manage and control your own system means that there's no way to tell? Interesting, considering that a lot of other hardware works that way....
> This is just as true of an AOSP or any open source phone unless you literally audit the source and compile the whole stack from source yourself.
A) So? What if I want to do that?
B) The point of open-sourcing everything isn't so that everyone can audit everything everytime. It's so that we can audit when we need to. I would never buy a car that doens't let me pop the hood if I wanted to make modifications, why can't the same be true for Apple's products?
> However at least we have Apple on record and accountable, and it seems like their actual commercial interests align with their stated policies.
Their commercial interests actually align to look like they care about privacy, while actually double-dipping. Additionally, they still cater to governments.
> Going with them seems like a reasonable risk to take, especially considering how poor we know for a fact most of their competition is in this regard.
I completely agree that their competition is awful, but that doesn't in any way mean that Apple is good.
In the end, none of what you said refutes my point: You are still reliant on Apple being honest.
> There is nothing terrible about Apple making devices my 80+ year old mother can safely and easily use.
This - this line is the part of your argument I find fairly bullshit.
There is nothing stopping Apple from making the same device, but giving you the keys to install your own software on it. Hell - They can even bury it in the settings, or lock it down through a provisioned profile so you can help your mom by turning it off if you're worried.
Instead - you're arguing that apple should abuse their position to keep other competition locked out. Because you think it makes you "safer". I don't think it makes you safer. I think it makes life easy for you, at the expense of everyone in the long term.
You have fallen - hook, line, and sinker - for the marketing of the richest company in the world, telling you "trust us - we'll keep you safe". You should ask more questions about why they need to do it this way. Why keeping you safe involves abusing their power.
That's the same safety China promises with their great firewall. Trust us - we'll keep you safe, happy, and ignorant.
Maybe that's a good deal to you - I think it's a shitty trade.
> Apple doesn’t even have 50% of the smartphone market.
It looks like they command between 33% and 46% of sales in the US per quarter. [1]
That's a lot of people. Many of them use their iPhone as their only computer.
> It sounds like you’re an App developer so perhaps it would be more honest to just explicitly state that you want to make more money
I want freedom back.
I have projects that make zero money that I want to run. I also don't want to have to have an Apple SDK license or write it in their chosen technology or be required to follow their stringent UI guidelines because my audience is niche and doesn't care about that. My time on this earth is too limited to jump through more hoops.
I also don't want to have my app deleted because I'm protesting them.
Dealing with Apple is like living under an authoritarian regime. We don't have any choice but to deal with them because of the power they wield.
The people building the future that don't happen to work at Apple have to work that much harder. They are less productive because of the toll Apple extracts.
App Store rules, policy conformance, release restrictions, and Apple tax impose a huge overhead on everyone. There are higher order, dynamical impacts that tough even non-Apple users. (Kind of like secondhand smoke!)
Apple users are serving their device by surrendering freedoms to it. It should be the other way around. Apple users pay more, they get less, and the software delivered to them is 15% less good than it could be.
Competition can't get started or survive. The ocean is being over-fished, and natural evolution has been artificially controlled by one entity.
Apple users are worse off than in the parallel universe where App Store didn't happen.
>Apple is a gatekeeper for them, not the other way around.
Given that Android has a 75% share[0] of the mobile OS market, that isn't really true. Apple is a gatekeeper for the 23% or so of mobile devices.
I think that giving end users control over what data about them is exfiltrated from their devices is a good thing. And assuming that applies to Apple apps as well, it sounds like a win for IOS users.
N.B.: I do not currently, nor have I ever owned an Apple device. Even the Apple ][ I built from a kit in high school was a clone and not Apple hardware.
> Apple loves privacy and hates freedom. It sure looks like the only thing they actually care about is their financial interest.
Hates freedome how? This statement is overbroad.
In a nutshell, I would rather support Apple as they're primarily a hardware company that has stated their privacy interests align with mine. As opposed to me supporting an advertising company that happens to sell phones and produce a mobile operating system that seems tailored to do the opposite.
The fact that I can't install my own OS is entirely tangential to the overall company goals of Apple versus Google or even Samsung. Focusing on a phone platform to behave as if it was the PC platform of the 80's reminds me of the for want of a nail proverb.
On the "we con you to buy a new $1000 phone every year by manipulating the CPU/battery so instead you paying $70 for a new battery, we skin you" they did pretty bad and I will never buy another Apple device for that.
On the "we force you to buy our OWN UNIQUE cables because f... the global standards and nature" they are still doing pretty bad
On the "look we are installing NFC on our phones, a true innovation" when other phone makers have been for years, but still don't let you use the device freely" not so good either.
On the "you can only buy (iOS) apps from us and nobody else, yeah!" I don't find that so good either.
So.. .there is a saying, there are two ways to have the tallest tower. Build the tallest tower, OR make sure the competition doesn't build theirs. There is a small(?) chance to try to cripple a lot of the competition's (ad) profits by introducing these controls.
I am pro-privacy and exist outside the FB and Google ecosystems.
Apple is doing that good, but they ain't saints. They still got plenty way to go to sainthood. They need to fix/correct plenty of things, and some are not fixable.
> What software is Apple not allowing? I see competitors’ software available on their platform. The only issue is that these competitors want to avoid paying fees to Apple and argue under the guise of protecting consumer freedom.
Porn apps and hate speech mostly.
They supposedly also bar a lot of outright scams and malware, but a lot also sneaks through.
>This isn’t about the control over users, but the app market.
On the contrary. I, a user, want a phone that is locked down. You are demanding that the government force Apple to stop making that phone. You are demanding that no such phone is allowed to exist: that the government steps in to remove that choice for me.
>I, as a developer, have no control over what phone you, as a user, buy.
No, you don't. And you shouldn't have. But you are trying to make that a moot point by demanding the government prevents me from buying the phone I want. You are trying to assert control over the choice of features of the phones I am allowed to buy.
And your propaganda is that you are all about freedom of choice.
> These companies have repeatedly shown that they don't respect people's privacy
I mean, this is just plainly not true.
Apple has done many things, things they did not at all need to do, in order to protect user's privacy. They have shown, repeatedly, that they do in fact care.
> So, uh, factors that have zero to do with Apple are evidence that it is… abusing… the… market…?
How does this have zero to do with Apple? It has everything to do with Apple, because it’s ultimately their product decisions driving user behavior.
Had they implemented support for RCS by now, this conversation wouldn’t be happening. They made the explicit choice to capitalize on their poor interoperability and decided to claim it’s for security reasons, which is pretty obviously bullshit.
> I do like their pro privacy stance against the big dogs
I do like their pro-privacy stance as well, but I take issue with that sentence in that it makes it sound like Apple is not a "big dog" and taking a stance for you, the little guy. Yes, their policies with regards to your data are easier to stomach than, say, Google's, but they are not on your side against the world, they are on their own side, and have plenty of questionable policies and decisions to show for that.
Foremost of all being that they refuse you the ability to install a different OS on the hardware you own, or even install any application you would like on it. This is not merely an abstract philosophical matter either (though I'd argue it would matter even then): in China, you used to be able to install VPN apps to evade state surveillance, until China made Apple boot them from the App Store. I cannot see any argument that makes this into a win for customers.
No they aren’t. They are just statements about iOS’s design. You don’t make any case for how they make a anything worse.
> Apple's devices cannot adequately protect my privacy, because of their efforts to prevent competitors from making products in any of the markets that they participate in.
This paragraph is gibberish. You might want to edit it.
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