> Do you realize that maybe some people desire things that are locked down and curated
I don't think most Apple users desire this when they're making a purchase. It's more that they don't particularly care as long as the device does what they need it to do.
The desire for devices to be open for tinkering is more from technical users who are already used to open platforms.
Apple could just as well make devices to satisfy both groups, but it's not in their financial interest to do so.
> "I don't give a crap about money. I despise intellectual property and proprietary software. I'll never sell a byte."
> "People buy smartphones because you need one to function in the modern society. They choose either Google or Apple. Neither of these corporations deserves all the credit they feel entitled to."
And you can sideload on Android, and they chose not-Android. and you could do so on Blackberry, and WindowsPhone, and Maemo and Symbian, and they all failed for not offering what people want. The only remaining good experience left is Apple, and you want to take that away as well. We know what that world looks like. It's not paradise of free choice, it's this: https://i.imgur.com/Ko5QcQl.jpg
And by "this", that's what an Android phone looks like. If you want to live in that world as a personal choice, you can easily not install the toolbars. But if there is an ecosystem you can buy into which avoids that, that should be an option. You want people who chose a limited experience to have the limits removed - but they chosing the limited experience in the first place, who are you to say that shouldn't be allowed?
> "Apple is successful by building great hardware and mostly good UX. Macs have had no app store for most of their history, and even though presently do have restrictions by default, there's a manual override to allow running unsigned or self-signed code."
Agreed, so people who want unsigned or self-signed code can buy macs, right? Choice. Nobody is forced to buy an iOS device, nobody is surprised when they can't side-load a program, because that has been the same for 10+ years and 10+ major iPhone versions, it's never been an expectation.
> "I'm having issue with there being a gatekeeper AT ALL."
I'm having issue with the idea that people willingly buying into an optional gatekeeper is some problem you think will be improved by forbidding people from having that option. The good it does is removing floods of junk from iOS users attention. It's like saying "My email isn't spam" and ignoring that spam is a huge problem and people willingly subscribe to gatekeepers at massive effort and cost industry-wide to try and protect themselves. So are robocalls, and dredmorbius suggests they might bring down the phone networks entirely[1] in the coming few years from a complete inability and unwillingness to defend itself. "Pay to send me an email or call me" would stop it in its tracks. Buying into a gatekeeper environment is another. "I should be able to bypass your spam filter because my emails aren't spam"?
> Unfortunately you're most likely right here in that Apple does not want to give its customers the freedom to choose to evade its toll booths by choosing free software - they want to remain in control.
Yup. Apple is closed and for profit.
This will eventually even out. Look at the gains of Linux desktop. Once the curve of innovation flattened, open source caught up and now delivers I think a superior product to both Apple and Microsoft.
It took 10 years. But it's happening and I think the future looks bright.
I bet we're about 5-10 years away from a viable competitor in the phone space showing up.
>Apple spent billions of dollars creating an app platform with a clear monetization model
I don't want their platform forced down my throat. On my PC I can download and install software from wherever I see fit. Had I not being a MacBook Pro user for the time being, I would have a chance to upgrade RAM and SSD without paying twice on the damn device.
If anything, I consider Apple being an anti consumer company. What is good for them, is not good for the end user.
That being said, their devices do have some advantages.
Especially if you consider how closed their ecosystem generally is: a large part of their stack is basically completely opaque, closed-source and worst of all, prone to change at the whim of the company.
I've always had a hard time understanding why anyone in the business of building technical infrastructure (other than user-facing retail stuff) would ever consider using their products.
> The problem is that people can easily be induced to install software that negates the benefit of Apple’s hardware. Apple can’t deliver their hardware benefits without also controlling the operating system.
Apple is less concerned about this than profits.
They could make their hardware ecosystem more open, that's easy, but that wouldn't make them a significant amount of extra money, so why would they?
> There are ways to offer predefined paths for those people that don't care about choice without taking away choice from everyone. Apple has completely failed at providing this because they're hungry for control and want to impose their will upon their customers. Ideally all people that use computers.
And their customers are thanking them for it. Apple's control is primarily about improving the overall experience of the user, and secondarily about extracting as much revenue as they can from the platform they created. Seems like a good tradeoff to iOS users (for now).
I completely agree there should be competitive alternatives to Apple's approach. My point is that openness is a feature, and the market should decide the level of openness that matters. So far the market seems to support the theory that a general purpose computing model like the PC world does not suit the mobile device world.
> There's a huge difference between not owning software and still controlling it because it's your machine and not owning software and being out of luck because Apple can remote-delete it.
And if they abuse that trust, they'll lose customers.
> I think this quote illustrates
> Apple users spend more on software because they're just so dumb and don't know how to compile their apps and set up a self-hosted solution
Never meant anything even remotely close to that. Apple users tend to have higher incomes and therefore can afford to spend much more than average (globally) Android users. I see absolutely nothing wrong about people spending money on quality software (the opposite really and I entirely agree with your point about ad supported and OS consumer software).
> they would do the same as Apple
Well yeah, arguably that was one of the main reasons behind their success. However I don’t see how do these things contradict each other, Apple can continue producing great products while being less abusive towards developers who have much more limited bargaining power.
> At that point, there won’t be much reason to buy Apple products. Of course, Apple says they have the best products and ecosystem, blah blah blah. (And it’s an ecosystem I largely like, to be fair.) But Apple should not become so arrogant that they think customers will flock to buy their products based only on the Apple’s own software.
In fact, this exact approach with Safari and Extensions have driven away a lot of users to Firefox and Chrome
> How will it make my everyday experience better as an Apple customer without the integration
Perhaps you should ask the inverse - how good would your experience with Apple be, if there were no open standards paid for by someone else, and fought for by someone else?
You wouldn't even have GPS and navigation. You would not have HTML or the open web. Before we fought for video codecs compatibility you could not even get a video that was recorded on a Device A to reliably play on Device B. The phone would be almost useless.
The people that argue this, they only take from the commons and never give back.
Well, that's the fundamental problem. With open hardware that you fully and completely own when you buy it, such problems are impossible.
The move towards hardware (mostly by Apple but not unique to them) that remains firmly in control of the vendor even after you buy it... is not a good one. It means your ownership is relatively ephemeral, any wrong move (or bug) and it's no longer yours to use.
> If they still get people to buy and developers to develop?
Well they won't get away with that at all, especially not in the long run as people abandon ship to platforms that do allow free development and tinkering. Apple is still a hardware company with hardware sales making up the overwhelming majority of their profits (over 75%). It would be beyond stupid to risk that just so they can live out a control fantasy, especially because they don't need to live out that control fantasy to make good money from the Mac App Store.
> Cool so then it just comes down to leverage. Developers who wants this have almost none and Apple has all of it.
You are definitely right that Apple has a lot of leverage for now. I love my Apple products, as a user I have no intention of switching away from them (I stuck with them through their worst period, '96 - '00, because I was so excited for the coming of Unix). Again as a user I want them to succeed because I love the products.
As a developer though, I want my favorite tools and languages available. And I want to spend the least effort in targeting users...
> It’s about choice. I want a tightly integrated experience on my iPhone and Mac.
If it's about choice, then Apple performs very poorly at it. Apple is great if your requirements are average. A large minority of people still have to look elsewhere.
> I wish people would qualify their “Apple Hate” every time they mention it.
Apple hate? I'm a Mac convert, and I admire most of their hardware and design. But it's no secret they purposely refuse to interoperate with other vendors, and purposely develop proprietary technologies to keep you within their ecosystem. The recent acquisition, and subsequent planned shutdown of Dark Sky is just one recent example.
Part of it is just the business model, I guess. For example, Google's apps are widely available across a variety of devices, since it gives Google the juicy data that they're after. For Apple, which is not an ad company, the incentive might not be there for opening their apps up to a wider audience.
Since I cannot justify a $1k+ phone for myself and my family members (I am content with my $500 S10e), and I have a mix of Mac, Linux, and Windows devices, the Apple applications (however well designed) are sadly out.
> I am entirely done with Apple and will not be buying any more of their products, but I look forward to the competition that AVP will foster.
What is your reason? I am genuinely curious. I used to think that using open devices (Linux, GrapheneOS) gives me the convenience of being able to do everything I want. But over time I came to realize that Apple optimizes their devices for one happy path they envision, and if you don’t stray off that happy path (e.g. on iPhone you cannot sideload, can’t have background jobs), the convenience can be even greater than the possibilities an open design offers (native terminal, root access in Android). It is a local maxima. Thus I own an iPhone. On the computer side I own a PC, but that’s because Linux isn’t yet fully supported on Macs. What is your reasoning?
I would love to see Apple adopt a more open ecosystem, and I could see it happening in the net 5-10 years.
But, nobody cares about this aside from the tech community. The average smartphone user is fine with the status quo.
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