If it was as limited as you say, I would agree, just use a different product. That's what I've done for years by using Android.
However this philosophy is being extended to nearly everything nowadays. Apple is a leader and has proven that extreme authoritarian and lockdown works and few people will complain. As a result, nearly every company that makes mainstream products just follows their lead. For example the removal of a headphone jack, after which basically all Android makers (even OnePlus) followed suit.
Despite the much held opinion on HN of the lockdown beinga feature rather than a bug, the vast majority of people I talk to just use apple because the hardware is nice and everyone else uses them and there is social stigma around being a "green bubble". I don't think Apple's success is because of the draconian policies.
The reason why I care so much and think this ideology is harmful is not because I want to side load an iphone. If apple were just a niche product maker, then I couldn't care less what they do. Unfortunately that is not the case. What apple does directly affects me even though I don't buy apple products.
You're making it seem like it's a travesty that Apple doesn't allow you to do whatever you want with your phone, but you're dodging everyone who correctly points out that Apple is far and away in the minority of smartphones in the world. People who want to run whatever they want on a mobile device have their choice: they can buy Android phones and sideload APKs, or buy experimental cutting edge devices running Linux. If anything, the example you cite - that of Apple removing apps in Russia or China - should be in your favour: if people in Russia and China want to run apps without their Government's approval, they should not buy iPhones, thereby hurting Apple's position in the market. Those who don't clearly don't care, and who are you to decide what they should care about?
That is just the reason, why I restrain to use Apple hardware.
Apple products are really very good and they have invented the smartphone it it's current functionality. But Apple has a very restrictive mindset. I as user, feel that it is like being in a nanny-state, where everything is controlled, what I am allowed to do.
I want to decide myself and not let Apple decide for me, what is good for me.
Personally, I agree that it has negative impact for global business strategies, if everyone follows it. If Apple success, why not them? But then choices are reduced and global state is getting worse.
But I also understand very well, why Apple has made changes.
> Apple is a leader and has proven that extreme authoritarian and lockdown works and few people will complain.
This is the major reason. We are in minority here in the HN. The most of the world is happily using their phones, and for that the business is based on.
It is not that exploitative as it could be, but there is danger for that.
If the App store fulfills their needs and payment is easy, people are happy. Only tech people care something more.
> For example the removal of a headphone jack, after which basically all Android makers (even OnePlus) followed suit.
This is quite natural evolution. If you look at the size from the chip this jack requires, it is natural thing to remove, at least if you want to make phone thinner and replace that portion from the chip with something else.
You can use adapter anyway to continue using the jack. Charging is the only problem, unless you buy adapter which allows plugging the charger at the same time.
> apple because the hardware is nice
Until Apple made its in-house chips, it was far away from Android hardware, in terms of chips and screens. People used to select iPhone for the software and usability alone.
Okay, don’t use iOS. It’s very easy to just not engage with Apple entirely. Why do you even care? Money? Illusion of choice? The status quo should remain and you should find a different product to use with less restrictive rules.
You're factually and practically correct but the problem here is that you seem to be operating under the assumption that your preferences are shared by everyone else or should be shared by everyone else and that's where I think you're wrong. Apple has made a decision to operate in a locked-down way so they can control the experience. And as much as people want to say its some evil plan to make a bajillion dollars the simpler and more plausible answer is because being in control of the experience actually makes the platform better for its users and the monopoly is just aside effect of that.
People buy iDevices because they work well for them, not because they lack the freedom to choose something else and certainly not because of lock-in as many would have us believe. Yeah, it takes effort to jailbreak your device but so what? It's not meant to be jail broken. Your prison analogy is not a good one at all. It's more like the freedom to work on your car. It's like a person who really likes Volkswagen Jettas and buys one but wants a spoiler, racing stripes, and a V8 engine. Volkswagen isn't going to promote you doing that nor will they help you but you're still free to do it if you want to put in the effort. And if not, then choose another car.
Apple does things a certain way and there are pros and cons to it. Google and others do things differently and they have their pros and cons. But in the end no one has taken your freedom away. You may want an iDevice with the benefits of Android "freedom" (freedom is in quotes because in this context it's subjective) but if you got that then it would no longer be an Apple product because you've taken away the very thing that makes Apple's iStuff, iStuff.
All of these arguments just smack of "I think I know what's best for everyone"-ism and "I'm entitled to XYZ and I don't get it then that means I have no freedom"-ism. Right now youve got the freedom to choose between Android, Windows Phone, and iOS (I know there are others but let's not be pedantic about it). You're free to choose any one of them or none of them. If you want to mishmash features of all three then you'll have to do that itself because no one is obligated to create a piece of technology that exactly suits your every desire. You pick what suits you best and one thing you are entitled to do is complain about it. But if the market as a whole doesn't agree then you probably won't get it.
What I'm really saying is that you can criticize and complain and lobby for the things that you want all day long and that's fine but don't exaggerate and start saying you've lost your freedom because you haven't. This is the real world where the only way to even be able to obtain a thing that does most of what you want is for the company making it to be able to profit off of it and that means trade offs and decisions that you may not agree with but are nonetheless best for a certain demographic for which the thing is made for.
My philosophy is that Apple can do whatever they want (as long as legal and ethical).
They made a thing, and you bought it.
Why would anyone with a bent on free computing walk into what they know to be a closed ecosystem. Just buy an Android phone. It’s like flying to a foreign country and expecting everyone to English to you imo…
Consumers have a choice, though, and that trumps most other considerations. With Android, they receive an alternative set of constraints. Do I think Apple is wise to be as restrictive as they are? No. Is it within their bounds to do so? Absolutely.
As a consumer, I can be disgruntled that my chosen platform is not as flexible as I wish. I can either throw a fit and lobby congress to force Apple to open its gates, or wait a year or two for my phone to slow down and pick up an Android device. In fact, this kind of migration occurs in both directions on a regular basis. Only religious loyalists stick with a single ecosystem without examining the tradeoffs they're making, as a general rule.
The problem is a lack of detailed choice. I use a lot of Apple’s products because I think they’re generally decent, but it seems like right now I can only make one choice with my phone - Apple or Google. But buying an iPhone not an android phone doesn’t mean I want Apple to control my life.
Some examples: I hate it how there’s no adult content allowed in the App Store. Or how if I build my own version of Signal, I have to disable push notifications and things because I haven’t paid apple enough money or something. I hate that last I checked, I can’t buy books in the audible app. If my camera breaks, I apparently can’t get it fixed by anyone except Apple. I hate how Apple charges my bank for the privilege of using the NFC chip in my phone, which I paid for.
It’s ridiculous to demand that Epic games makes their own phone if they want to sell me their game. Ideologically, this is capitalism. But capitalism works best for everyone when there’s healthy competition. Wielding their superior phones to enforce a monopoly in other parts of the ecosystem is anticompetitive and anti consumer. And I’m glad someone is finally standing up to them.
Let's start with the obvious issue: Apple does not sell the most phones. It does not have the most phones on offer. It is not a majority, let alone a monopoly.
Now the less obvious issue: I like what apple does and I am prepared to pay for it.
I agree with those arguing for consumer choice, but I come to the exact opposite conclusion, and find those others hypocritical. I want an option to have a locked down environment. I want to have the choice to buy an Apple product. Given the choice between the Android system or the Apple system, I choose Apple. More people choose Android.
The argument that we should use "consumer choice" to remove this choice from me, and instead to demand that every business must make the world look like Android users want, is not logical.
Just refuse to buy an IPhone and buy only android phones. It is not like you don't have an option.
But for me and a lot of people, apple's walled garden is a feature, not a bug. I don't see why apple should be forced to change it just because YOU don't like it, when it is not like you're forced to have an iOS device.
The problem with that logic is that it doesn’t address how this situation came to be. Apple has been consistent about their product vision since basically day one, and on day one they were the underdog... a drop in the pond. The thing is that over YEARS the market (people) consistently voted with their wallets to validate this vision. That’s why they are what they are now.
This has two implications: 1) The reason it’s happening is due to long term choice in the market, i.e. this ecosystem is filling a need that whiners are ignoring, and 2) It ignores the fact that if your stated hopes actually came to pass, someone else would just execute on good hardware with a walled garden (with the resulting more consistent and reliable experience) and become popular AGAIN... after all, that’s what just happened this time.
People will answer this post saying “that’s not true, you can totally have the iOS experience with side-loading/whatever”. Those people also likely believe that the “right communism” just hasn’t been tried yet. If one could actually do this then likely someone would have tried it and succeeded already. Another way to realize that is to understand you are just describing Android, and a perfectly valid existing choice (actually, several choices in a family). Additionally, those people are ignoring the fact that the security/convenience/consistency trade-offs made in any ecosystem do have consequences (positive and negative from varying perspectives).
Which leads us back to the parent: If one wants a different trade-off (which is totally valid and I have happily owned and developed for both systems in the past) then pick a different ecosystem and buy into it. MY personal pie in the sky wish is that people would quit pissing on other people who don’t want to be forced to make THEIR choice. Please take your choices and stop advocating to take MINE away.
I sorely wish you were right, but the success of companies like Apple seem to indicate otherwise. I won't buy a locked-down device, but for every person like me there are thousands who don't care.
Or, again, many people have made that choice and are fine with the situation. If you don't want the locked down device you can just not buy an Apple device?
Thanks for the advice. I don't agree with Apple, and don't buy their hardware or software.
When I'm buying a general purpose computing device (which is what smartphones have become), I expect a significant degree of flexibility in how I can use it, and don't need the vendor to arbitrarily start placing limits on that flexibility to "protect" me. Especially when those limits happen to coincide with the financial goals of the vendor.
I'm sympathetic to the idea that users should be able to choose to remain within a walled garden if that's what they actually want. There are benefits to Apple being able to use their market position to enforce certain rules on behalf of their customers.
The problem is that same leverage can just as easily be used to enforce rules that benefit Apple at the expense of their customers. In theory competition from other platforms limits the extent Apple can abuse their position in that manner. But there's only one other major platform in the mobile space. That's not a lot of options for the market to optimise around.
Further, Apple is a large, vertically integrated company which does a lot to try to lock consumers into their ecosystem. If I'd like to chose a more open mobile phone operating system but feel like I can't because Android isn't allowed to interoperate with iMessage or AirPlay or AirDrop or AirTags or Apple Watch or iCloud and I like those products and want to continue using them... well, that's a problem.
There's also the software freedom issue. As a consumer, once Apple sells me a piece of physical hardware it should no longer be their place to dictate what software I'm allowed to run on that device. If I want to install an app that's not on Apple's App Store but Apple doesn't want me to, there's no question in my mind as to whose rights should win out in that scenario.
Overall, my take is that Apple should be allowed to offer a closed ecosystem to users who want that, but they shouldn't be allowed use technical measures or anti-competitive bundling to force or coerce consumers into remaining inside that ecosystem. If consumers want to buy their apps exclusively from Apple's app store because they see a benefit from that, then they should be allowed to. But if they don't, Apple shouldn't be able to hold their entire ecosystem hostage from the consumer as leverage to prevent them from leaving.
I realize this gives Apple a bit less leverage in their ability to advocate on behalf of their customers when dictating the terms under which companies can sell products within their walled garden, since those companies will now have the option of going over Apple's head and selling their product directly to consumers, sans Apple's rules. But that's how free markets work, in contrast to the monopoly-like situation we're currently in. If enough consumers see the value in Apple's rules to avoid other app stores with less restrictive policies, companies will still have to comply with them to access those consumers. (I'll note this is basically how things already work on Android. Google still operates the most popular app store on Android despite competition being allowed, and they're still able to dictate the terms under which apps are allowed in that store.) But if those terms are so egregious that consumers start to prefer alternative app stores instead, that's a good thing too.
No. You said "just don't buy it" if you don't like it. But I need a smartphone. So I'm going to buy one. My point is if they all have different drawbacks (this one is better for "openness", that one is better for privacy, this one is better for security) then saying people should just not buy Apple to protest one decision isn't helpful. Because by doing that I would probably end up needing to buy an Android phone which means I would give up other things like privacy. And then if I mention that you'll say we should have just not bought Google phones.
Well yeah. But yeah they control the market. So you buy the least evil product you can that is fairly priced and works with all your other stuff.
Or just blame the consumer cause they didn't choose the mythical Linux phone with great battery life and no spyware.
Sure, it is a trade off and you misunderstand me if you think I'm attacking Apple because of some "be free or die" mentality. I'm not attacking anyone. I'm typing this on a Mac and actually own an iPhone, even if I use a HTC Desire instead. But that doesn't make caring about freedom "thoughtless spin". Using words like that doesn't do justice to a legitimate concern. Getting locked into a platform is a serious pain. I also don't agree with the idea that you can do pretty much whatever you want on Android as it comes pre-installed on your phone, which is how most regular people use their phones (just like the fact that they don't jailbreak their iPhones). That argument seems like the same black and white "free" vs. "draconian lock down" comparison that you disagree with.
Apple knows that mainstream consumers don't care about freedom, just like most citizens don't really care about limitations to their civil rights until it gets to the point where they are groped by the TSA on the airport (i.e. the "if you've got nothing to hide..." mentality). Living in a country like Singapore definitely has its benefits, just as closed computer platforms do. If you're not a power user your data usually doesn't matter that much, anyway, so losing it if you switch to another system doesn't seem like such a big deal when you're deciding about what product to buy. This is exactly the reason why people buy a new version of Microsoft Office every two years. To me, however, my data matters and I get frustrated when I can't synch my iPhone from my GNU/Linux box without jumping through all sorts of hoops. I might not be the typical user, but I still want free platforms to disrupt closed ones (note that disrupt doesn't mean that I don't want them to coexist; choice is good). Just like I want (old versions of) Internet Explorer to die in favor of more open alternatives.
Just to clarify: this is not a black and white position and I don't have anything against Apple, or even Microsoft (in fact, I think Microsoft is more open than Apple these days). My main point was that having more features doesn't make or break a product, but that being said the side-note about freedom was a serious concern that I deeply care about when it comes to investing time and data into a platform.
I think you have to acknowledge that you're part of a very specialized user group, and that your goals and requirements are very different from the general population.
Is Apple to sell phones to you, or to the general population? Answer is obvious, isn't it?
For the general population, making a tightly controlled (and simple) hardware and software environment makes more things possible -- overall -- to the users than absolute freedom does. It's a paradox -- by controlling things, they set the market for this product loose.
You can see how it is a hard thing to manage to, and leads to users like you being unhappy. Linux gives incredible freedom to users, yet has very little market penetration.
Not everyone wants to be able to side load apps, tweak their battery charging settings, and have their phone die because they did something wrong to it.
However this philosophy is being extended to nearly everything nowadays. Apple is a leader and has proven that extreme authoritarian and lockdown works and few people will complain. As a result, nearly every company that makes mainstream products just follows their lead. For example the removal of a headphone jack, after which basically all Android makers (even OnePlus) followed suit.
Despite the much held opinion on HN of the lockdown beinga feature rather than a bug, the vast majority of people I talk to just use apple because the hardware is nice and everyone else uses them and there is social stigma around being a "green bubble". I don't think Apple's success is because of the draconian policies.
The reason why I care so much and think this ideology is harmful is not because I want to side load an iphone. If apple were just a niche product maker, then I couldn't care less what they do. Unfortunately that is not the case. What apple does directly affects me even though I don't buy apple products.
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