I don't think this should be regulated at all. Apple should be able to impose their rules in their systems. Let's be clear about this, if people are choosing to buy these black-box closed handheld computing devices, there are consequences that come with that choice.
I don't agree. Millions (maybe even billions) of people user their devices and the country absolutely should regulate their systems. As an extreme example imagine if Apple tomorrow said that all apps have to pay a 95% cut instead of a 30% cut and all customers have to pay $20/month to use Wifi or internet on their iPhone. Obviously this is unlikely to happen but then I would expect the govt. to intervene.
If Apple want to impose rules without any government oversight, they are free to start their own country with their own government and impose their own rules.
That's a pretty big straw man argument. If Apple said all apps have to pay a 95% cut and all customers have to pay $20/mo to use Internet on their phones then they'd nearly instantly lose massive market share and the backlash would be so severe that they'd never regain that market share. In other words; they'd never do that.
>if Apple tomorrow said that all apps have to pay a 95% cut instead of a 30% cut
But Apple could easily say "no more 3rd party apps" -- again, equally unlikely given the values those apps bring. But zero 3rd party apps is precisely what the iPod was, no?
>As an extreme example imagine if Apple tomorrow said that all apps have to pay a 95% cut instead of a 30% cut and all customers have to pay $20/month to use Wifi or internet on their iPhone.
If they did they did this with the app store as used by existing iphones, then that would probably cause them to get in trouble, but if they made a new app store with these policies that was only used by a new model of iphone, then while extreme, I'd think it's within their rights. It's not that long ago that feature phones with limited app selection and internet browsing as a premium feature were a thing.
Apple is more than welcome to put whatever rules they want on their systems. My phone is not their system though, it’s mine! If I want to run tmux/fetchmail/ocamlc on it then it’s my problem not theirs!
I am not defending closed platforms, but technically, you are free to jailbreak your phone, they're just not obligated to provide any support after that, right?
If Apple provided a way to jailbreak their devices, I'd be more inclined to support this argument. But they try to prevent jailbreaking at every opportunity so, regardless of the legality of it, Apple does not consider the phone your system, they consider it theirs.
No. There's no check for Cydia or other Debian Package frontends that are there to void your warranty or stop you from downloading cracked apps (they very well could do this). They only patch the security vulnerabilities that are actually used to break out of the app sandbox and run arbitrary code, something that, as we can see with Epic's Fortnite app, could be RCE'd into an app without Apple knowing. These vulnerabilities can and have been used by actual malware in the past[0], so Apple fixing them in iOS is a legitimate security measure.
Right, but there’s no non-security-vulnerability way to jailbreak. If jailbreaking was as easy as `adb oem unlock`, no one would need to use any security issues to jailbreak.
They mostly prevent jail breaking because the same processes that jailbreak a phone can often be used to hack peoples phones because they’re security loopholes.
My Samsung A40 has a toggle called "OEM unlocking - Allow the bootloader to be unlocked". That's in the developer options. My previous phone from Sony had the same option. If Apple wanted they could do the same.
They prevent jailbreaking by not providing a way to do it.
They additionally prevent jailbreaking by patching vulnerabilities.
Only one of these things is being called out.
You can get into all sorts of theoretical discussions about how if there was a way to do it, they'd be increasing their attack surface since now they have to make sure this path is locked properly when the user doesn't want it, but people act like the only way for jailbreaking to work is for Apple to stop patching 0 days, which is not the case.
Say you go and buy the latest iPhone, on the latest OS, and wanted to play Fortnite on it. How'd you do it? I don't think it's even possible to jailbreak it at this point.
Agreed it shouldn't be illegal, but Apple (or any hardware / software maker) should be allowed to do everything in their power to make this extremely inconvenient by putting in hardware blocks, bricking logic, updating their software regularly with new obfuscation techniques, etc. and also, voiding the warranty if there is evidence of tampering with hardware or software.
I understand where you’re coming from and would be ok if it were easy (or even possible) for the community to build an alternative device but that doesn’t appear to be the case.
The technical and social reality that giving apple the freedom to configure the majority of devices in the US is extremely unpleasant. Enough that it makes me question the principles driving the philosophy that allowed this (in particular, the legality of closed software.)
> if it were easy (or even possible) for the community to build an alternative device but that doesn’t appear to be the case.
One of the main roadblocks is intellectual property law. If IP didn't exist, there would be all sorts of iPhone clones with modified versions of iOS.
I'm OK with closed source software being legal, prohibiting closed source would be tyrannical. What I'm not OK is with software patents, copyright, anti-hardware-hacking laws, etc.
The same reason you have to have a car pass emissions in some states.
We can't deny the security that apple provides over other providers. Part of that is the closed garden - it SHOULD BE a product. The market should provide alternatives.
The only people that benefit from this are big companies - small software devs will have their apps devalued by this move, and the people will just get ripped off more when Epic wins and raises their dumb scam Vbucks to 10$.
You can easily argue the walled garden is for their user's common good, which it is. Less malware, safer experience, easier to use for less technically savvy people.
> Apple saying that I'm not allowed to step outside their walled garden on a device I own is restricting my freedom.
Only if there is no remediation - there is. Buy an android and quit moaning. "Freedoms." Laughable. Belarus is shooting people and you're mad because you can't force a company to do what you want when the free market can easily solve the problem.
You could argue that Microsoft bundling IE was 'for their user's common good' just the same. It was certainly nice and convenient, and made Windows easier to use. And it wasn't restricting anyone's freedom, because they could just use Unix instead.
Except none of those things are the point of antitrust law. But I guess who cares anyway, when genocide is always worse than these things, so we shouldn't care about them?
This is pretty much the whole legal theory of locked-down devices. Since you own them you're free to whatever you like to the hardware including breaking any locks preventing you from running your own software on them. But the vendor has no obligation to help, or support you in doing this.
This is pretty much the whole reason the GPLv3 exists.
I would install desktop Linux on my iPhone if I could but there are no drivers in mainline and they work hard to lock the bootloader down (and before someone suggests android, the intention there is just as bad but tends to be less well executed and there still aren’t suitable drivers available.)
I mean the Librem 5 "works" in the way you describe.
I don't think you're going to really be able to reliably avoid the problem that very very very few people outside of AOSP are doing any work on OSS for phones.
An argument can be made that it's morally wrong, but if you're going down that road, there's a lot of things should be morally more compelling than Apple's AppStore policies.
People often accept restrictions on their freedom, but that does not mean those limitations aren't harmful.
We should be able to install what we want on a general purpose computing device. You can already see the Apple mentality creeping into other companies like Mozilla, who suddenly find it acceptable to limit user freedom for questionable reasons, and the normalization of stripped user liberties that Apple champions is worrying.
Again, this is just out of touch. Call it what it is - software companies want more money and want to use the market apple created for every last one of them for free.
The current legal position / ambiguity is less interesting than the moral and principled question: do we want to live in a free market captialist society where manufacturers (typically with the upper hand in the retail power imbalance) get to continue to exert control over my property once I've come to own it through a legal transaction?
Either we do, in which case what Apple is doing in perfectly reasonable, as is Walmart selling fridges that explode when you put someone else's milk in them ("It's in the contract!"), or it isn't.
Things like the first sale doctrine give an insight into past legal thinking suggesting the latter. But it's far from simple to discern by just looking at the law.
The music/video industry asserts that you're not allowed to play/show some media item that you've bought. Amazon doesn't allow you to resell or bequeath Kindle books. Caterpillar doesn't let you repair your own tractor.
The first sale doctrine was established in a very different time.
I don't get mad at Casio because I can't hack the circuit board and change the time easily to 24hr - I buy a watch that supports it.
This is a free market solvable problem. The issue is people like the app store. The ones mad about this are software companies - because they want more money for themselves.
The use of the consumer is just appeal to emotion - but it's really about Epic ripping off another kid for vbucks and getting more money.
True, but there are other places to buy things than Walmart.
The internet is reasonably open and accessible on iOS, but utilizing the full capability of an iOS device requires the App Store.
Stallman spent a ton of time crusading about how some things are appliances, and other things are computers; those things that are computers should offer flexibility (and ideally openness) in terms of what software you can run on them. In this case, the largest manufacturer of computing devices and software wants 30% of every transaction from native software run on their devices.
Epic was basically looking for preferential treatment, but now they're stepping up to the plate and saying the App Store is not market-friendly. It seems like they could be right, seeing as large as Apple is, and what role they actually have in computing.
> The internet is reasonably open and accessible on iOS, but utilizing the full capability of an iOS device requires the App Store.
As it should be. If people want open and crazy, then they can flounder around on the web and try to get it to do what native apps do. That's their problem and Apple shouldn't have to bend over backwards to support that route. Developers get to make a choice - make a web app, or make a native app that gets all the benefits of Apple's curated ecosystem. As a consumer and developer, I'll take the latter any day. Others feel differently, and can choose Android.
I agree that you gain a lot from having Apple involved in quality control, but I am not sure I agree that 30% of all in app transactions is fair. Especially when they've already started playing fast and loose with Amazon Prime Video.
Apple's, basically. That's OK. Let Apple screw people. It's a good opportunity for competition to develop. Or we can regulate Apple and competition won't develop.
Exactly. There are pros and cons to this sort of model. The pro is that the security model of an iphone is better than probably anything else one could buy. The con is that apple makes the rules about what goes and stays. Given the popularity of this app, I could see a kid wanting an android instead for this reason. On the other hand, Apple could easily make the case that this is to prevent scams, maintain parental controls, etc.
Regulation often does more harm than good, and I'd agree with you if intellectual property didn't exist. Apple's entire business model rests on copyright and patents which make it impossible for competition to challenge their position. (Think about the products which would emerge if people were free to reverse engineer, modify, and redistribute Apple's technology.) This artificial advantage comes with a price, and that price happens to manifest as regulation by the same entity which enforces its ability to make its insane profits. If the government thinks they've taken their artificial advantage too far, they're ethically free, or even obligated, to artificially limit that advantage.
The model makes sense for a console, as it's a very specialized device. A smartphone or a tablet are much closer to a general computing device. How many times has Apple said the iPad is a laptop replacement?
The difference is the spirit of the purpose they're purchased "for." Which is why (while I hate some of the walled garden) I'm skeptical of arguments to break up Apple or force them to generalize their products. Regulating the relationship between an offering and the supposed intention behind a purchase seems speculative at best, and, again, a win mostly reserved for the lawyers.
I used a phone to call an ambulance, provide the police with video evidence of a crime, navigate when I am lost, file company accounts, banking, and to aid in mapping for architecture and subsequently applying for planning permission.
What do you do on a console that could cost you life and limb or render you bancrupt?
>What do you do on a console that could cost you life and limb or render you bancrupt?
Well my cousin plays ark every single day, all day on his xbox, his health has deteriorated pretty badly because of this, it's bankrupted him as, he doesn't work and spends money on the game, all his friends exist in the game, I will backtread a bit on the lack of work, he does sell creatures or something to get a bit of money, literally his entire life revolves around this game and his console. He doesn't even own a mobile phone, he just uses Xbox live chat to talk to most people and has a landline in his house for the rare times he actually needs to make a phone call.
For all intents and purposes, that console is his general computing device for everything he does or that affects his life.
People use consoles to do all those things. As just one example, Netflix makes and maintains an app for the Playstation platform and it's not because they have nothing else to do.
Please. Whatever strawman you are trying to construct is missing the point.
I do not buy Apple products as a status symbol. I buy them because they work. I won't even say the products are good, there are a lot of things I'd like to see change. But they are the best thing on the market for getting my work done.
My laptop and phone are my hammer and workbench. The iPhone and MacBook are far and away the best product for the work I do, which is not iOS or MacOS development. They're simply the best general computing solution on the market right now.
Firstly, you are not the representative sample, I can testify that in much of russia they are definately a status symbol and most of their customers are not developers. My sample size is still not great, but at least i am not talking about myself.
Secondly, this narrow-minded attitude is reflected in you calling MacBook the best general computing solution. There are a large variety of requirements for general computing solution, the most common ones that macbook can't satisfy are cost and gaming performance. Indeed no one product can satisfy them.
I never said all Apple users don't know what they are getting into. There must be other users who want Apple to have full control over its devices. If it works great for them then there's no issue.
