I'm actually a bit more worried about the reverse: software that only works on iPhones.
This is already a problem to some degree with software that only works on iPhone and Android; today I got a PCR test and the hospital apparently only sends the results over WhatsApp. I don't have WhatsApp. They looked at me as if I'm crazy when I asked if they could just email me the results; it was all a bit difficult (although they said they would; we'll see what happens, otherwise I'll just pick it up tomorrow morning before flight I guess).
If you want to use iPhones or WhatsApp or whatever: great! Your device, your life, your choice, I'm not bothered by it. But I don't like it when I'm more or less forced to use the same things, even if I don't want to. It really reminds me of the "you need Windows"-days.
The article says "the device held 90% of smartphone activations in the week after Christmas 2020", but this does not mean that the iPhone has 90% market share.
Apple's US market share is currently 55% of the smartphone market, down from 65% a year ago.
I'd wager iMessage and Snapchat are big reasons why iPhone is huge with young Americans. Snapchat's Android version is considered to be significantly worse than Apple's. Not sure if that is still the case now, but bad first impressions persist for a long time.
In the rest of the world, Whatsapp and FB Messenger appear to be the dominant messaging apps (outside China of course).
Really? That’s almost too huge to be true. A 10% decrease in one year? Do you have a source on this or an explanation? A cursory Google gives me a current 43% US market share figure.
>it would be prudent to force Apple to allow other software to run on the device if the user so desires.
>[...]
>E.g. Imagine how fast a zero day zero click iOS worm could brick every device and cause a huge disruption to daily life.
how would a 0click iOS worm be mitigated by allowing users to run whatever apps they want? You can run whatever apps on windows, but that didn't stop eternalblue from ravaging corporate networks.
edit: it seems like I misinterpreted what "other software" meant. my reply to swiley takes this into account.
I think the "other software" in question here must refer to alternative operating systems, not merely other apps. Though even allowing alternative browsers with their own engines could possibly reduce the monoculture risks associated with that portion of the attack surface.
While that would change the status quo of "iPhone == iOS", running a different OS is not what most people would do, so it really wouldn't move the needle on how much harm is possible with a potential widely-deployed 0-click exploit.
People generally buy iPhone for the no-nonsense (or low-nonsense) UX provided by iOS compared to Android - as in, they want to purchase iOS, but obviously it's only compatible and available on certain hardware. An extremely, extremely small majority would install an alternative OS on their phone unless that OS is something like "iOS but with built-in hacks for mobile games", or "iOS but paid app store apps can be sideloaded for free".
So not whatever apps you want, but rather whatever operating systems you want? That makes more sense, but I'm skeptical that'd materialize to everything. On android phones with unlocked bootloaders (ie. "allow other software to run on the device if the user so desires"), and the only "other software" that's available are... AOSP forks. There are forks with better mitigations (eg. grapheneos), but they're still by and large, android.
This is mostly because making a different OS is insanely hard, at least if you want to support the many different pieces of hardware your OS might run on. Project Sandcastle is different and making progress[0], likely because Apple mobile hardware uses vastly similar components and suppliers.
Who are you imagining would desire, apart from you?
Who would pay more for an iPhone they didn't want, gambling on future regulation forcing Apple to let them run Android [LineageOS, etc] at some point, when they could have bought a cheaper phone running what they wanted in the first place?
I want an iPhone because I like the OS and the integration with my iPad. This doesn’t mean that I want to be prevented from installing a 3rd party YouTube app.
This same fallacy gets used for political parties as well. Just because someone picked an option, doesn’t mean that they approve of every single thing that comes with it. Only that they found overall that the package was preferable.
That's different, we weren't talking about agreeing with everything or third party apps, this was about third party operating systems. The comparison would be like voting Party1 while hoping someone would legislate that they must behave like Party2, when you could have voted Party2 in the first place.
You like the OS and its integration, so it wouldn't be you buying it in the hope that you could replace the OS, right?
(1) "Competing with the house" - Apple should remove all iAP requirements for apps it competes with. Spotify, Fastmail (because iCloud+ Mail supports custom domains), Kindle/Audible, etc.
(2) Supra-competitive take rates - Google Play Store has moved to 15% across the board. Apple should do the same.
(3) Unnecessary restrictions that are not related to device performance or user safety, and solely related to Apple's revenue streams -- for example, cloud gaming.
The main issue is the lack of sideloading, and stemming from it is how Apple tries very hard to convince everyone that it owns all the relationships between app developers and their users.
As macOS shows, when the use of the app store is optional, most developers would rather pretend it doesn't exist.
> Apple tries very hard to convince everyone that it owns all the relationships between app developers and their users
That's the critical issue. Why should Apple be able to own users? It's such an offensive idea. If I buy an iPhone then I'm actually a product that gets sold to software developers. Imagine paying to be the product. At least other companies give out stuff for free when they do that.
As a buyer of software, it's not that Apple 'owns' the relationship, it's that Apple protects me from unscrupulous sellers. Take NYT subscriptions as an example: prior to the app store it was notoriously difficult to cancel. That's a common dark pattern that Apple wiped out, and as a user I appreciate some adult supervision over those types of practices. If developers don't like it they can make their sideloading Android app and see how that works out for them.
As a maker of software - I have no problem with Apple providing that type of protection as an opt-in value add for their users.
I do mind (quite a fucking bit) when
- I don't do the abusive shit and Apple still keeps all my customers
- I'm forced to give 30% of my operating revenue to apple for this "favor"
- Apple is not neutral: they will happily monitor items that sell well on their store, release a shoddy half-baked internal version, bump it right to the top of the store, and eat all my revenue.
----
The first two I could maybe stomach - The third is entirely bullshit, particularly in combination with the first two.
It's ok though, We're watching Apple lose this fight (correctly, IMO) in every jurisdiction that's not the US.
Also: different countries have different cultures. Not every country shares the Silicon Valley prudishness. Not every country shares the overwhelming respect for copyright either. Yet, Apple not only reviews apps on technical merits, they also review the service itself, if your app is for a service. If the service allows something Apple doesn't like (for example NSFW content, or pirated music), Apple will reject your perfectly fine app and force you to change your terms of service if you want any iOS presence at all. That's absolutely bonkers.
I'm Russian. We're fine with porn on the internet and we pirate everything. The company I worked at had these problems incessantly. They once rejected our app saying, I'm not kidding, "we opened the video section, typed 'porn' into the search field, and naked people came up, this is not allowed under App Store Review Guidelines™". You typed "porn" into search. What did you expect, Karen? Cat videos?
Yeah, it sucks. Why must they force their prudishness on the whole world? Such a pain. They force copyright as well via US government and its trade agreements. It's like they won't rest until the entire world becomes America.
> Apple is not neutral: they will happily monitor items that sell well on their store, release a shoddy half-baked internal version, bump it right to the top of the store, and eat all my revenue.
It's great that Apple is using their power for good. Doesn't change the fact they have power over you. They decide what software you're allowed to run. You have no freedom.
On the device I happily bought from them, knowing how they operate. There are tons of other high quality devices of the same variety that I can buy and use to run whatever I want. I don't see the problem with this arrangement, nobody is deceived about how this works when they decide to buy Apple's devices, yet they stubbornly insist on buying them.
Lots of things are 'entirely possible,' it's also entirely possible that Apple decide that sideloading is totally fine. It's entirely possible Google will ban sideloading. What's plausible is that the device you purchased will operate in roughly the same way over the lifetime of the device.
Thing is, Apple would deserve at least some of that if people installed apps thanks to the app store influence alone. But that's not the case. Most developers do their own marketing, with Apple forcibly inserting itself in between. Many would distribute their apps from their own websites given the option. Apple and its infamous app review process is just an additional annoyance to deal with because that's your only way to get your app to your users.
I think some restrictions are good, actually. Side-loading is not optional if your school, employer, or government distributes apps (that spy on you to prevent you from cheating on tests, say) that way.
> As macOS shows, when the use of the app store is optional, most developers would rather pretend it doesn't exist.
Okay, wow. Have you used an Adobe Creative product on macOS recently? It comes with so many junk processes constantly running in the background 24/7, I wish Apple could step in on my behalf.
I've spent a few hours today looking at ways to block ads on youtube. I'm sick of ads on my tv and my iphone. Found a few interesting apps but I have no chance of installing them on my iphone.
Meanwhile in Android it seems I can install any .apk I wish by just downloading the .apk file.
I'm selling my iphone and getting an android this black friday. What phone is the most "open" and functional?
Exactly, I don't want to pay for their crappy abusive service. Imagine paying so you can watch "ad free" content with sponsors and product placement, and be surveilled by Google on top of it too. Yeah, that's a level of indignity I won't tolerate. I encourage everyone here to do the same: don't support these companies and their abuse. Remember, Firefox with uBlock Origin and SponsorBlock all cost $0.
> What does that leave?
It leaves the people who create because they have something to say rather than a desire to make money. The internet used to have a lot more of those before these advertisers came and corrupted everything. I don't understand why people assume nothing will be created if there's no money in it despite mountains of evidence to the contrary, including free software. I suppose it's due to copyright monopolist propaganda.
It's not about having none of them. It's about, pick one. If I'm paying you it's so that I don't have to see ads, so there better not be any ads.
But also, there was actually quite a lot of quality content on the internet before there was any monetization at all. People like to hear themselves talk and some subset of them are worth listening to.
100%, Corporations have done a really good job of brainwashing consumers into thinking that everything must make large amounts of money for shareholders to be worthwhile.
It's never been easier for an independent writer/vlogger to get their content out there without having to get it past a focus group committee.
I only pay $10 because I was an early subscriber, but I would still pay $12. I spend more time on YouTube than any other service so it's worth it for me. It also includes YouTube Music which means I don't have to pay for a Spotify or similar service separately.
Not my problem. Fuck them if they want to force me to consume. Remember that they want you to pay them to play content in the background , something every general-purpose multitasking computer could do before.
> Something has to pay for that insane amount of storage and bandwidth
This is my hill to die on: we already do. I bought a computer and pay an ISP for bandwidth, back when audio and video was just pirated there was no one to demand we watch ads in return for a few pennies of remote storage.
Well, video streaming, in particular, picked up in the mid-00s. But audio streaming predated it (slightly), as internet radio. It, very often, had ads. Pandora, circa 2005, also had ads (or a paid service). Advertisement in exchange for free access to media is not a novel thing.
Your ISP doesn't cover the storage cost or outbound bandwidth of YouTube's servers. How is YouTube supposed to pay for that without ads or subscriptions?
If you're willing to pay the performance cost and the extra expense, the Fairphone is the most open smartphone running Android I know. There are some Linux phones, but app support is severely limited as is performance. It's repairable too, with guaranteed access to replacement parts for at predetermined amount of years through official channels.
You could also go with a device that runs the most popular custom ROM, LineageOS. An example would be a flag ship phone from last year that received official LOS support. Installing LOS requires some messing around with an installation guide, but it's one of the easiest methods to de-google and de-apple yourself. I suppose you could also achieve that by buying Huawei, but I'm not sure if that would be a good idea.
Here's a list of devices with official LineageOS support, which means that your experience should be pretty close to clean Android: https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/ I run the nightlies on my Oneplus One from a few years back and I don't have any problems with the software at all.
Here's a list of device code names that have a prebuilt LineageOS ROM with MicroG support. MicroG allows you to run apps that depend on Google's APIs without installing Google Play. Do note that compatibility is not perfect, though it works well for most use cases. The code names are the same as the LineageOS ones (if you click the link above) so if you've found a nice LineageOS device, you can use that to check for a MicroG ROM if you prefer that https://download.lineage.microg.org/ Installing it should work the same way installing LineageOS works, so you can usually follow the official LOS guide with the MicroG ROM files to get started.
If you're willing to go the extra extra mile, you can root your phone through Magisk and install all kinds of things to customize and alter your phone. I use it for enabling clipboard access to KDE connect from the background despite Android's limitations, and to install YouTube Vanced, a nodded YouTube app with all the premium features and no ads.
I agree with you in general except the fair phone isn’t particularly open, it’s only got a 1080p LCD screen for the cost and no headphone jack (not open imo). The Samsung s10e has good specs, good hardware and headphones. In magisk I have force enable dark mode to save power on oled. https://www.xda-developers.com/android-q-dark-mode-toggle-pe...
I think the Fairphone is the most open Android device out there, which is kind of sad really. And yes you definitely overpay for the privilege of buying a phone with replaceable parts from a small manufacturer.
If you're going for open hardware, Samsung is a rather odd choice. Then again, any Android phone is more open than iPhones are.
Software support is more important rather than open design, like the market for aftermarket for iPhone batteries is going to be much cheaper for them, so maintenance is cheaper, and because of project treble all newer Android phones will have mainline linux kernel support and have updated kernels, I don't see how Fairphone is more "open" compared to the alternatives or what you can do better when the volume of developers will matter for support more.
>MicroG allows you to run apps that depend on Google's APIs without installing Google Play. Do note that compatibility is not perfect, though it works well for most use cases.
Anything safety net-related, for one. When I tried it last (years ago), WhatsApp didn't work reliably. I think Signal worked well enough though. Anything using Google's (and Apple's) private COVID contact tracing API also won't work. There's also the obvious compatibility bugs (because even Google themselves can't get their own software 100% compatible reliably), often related to the Google maps API from what I can tell from stories online.
There's an extensive list here [0] on the /e/ forum, though I'm not sure how up to date it is. The comments seem to go on for up to quite recently, however.
Not sure why you're getting downvoted. I'm sick of ads too. I simply can't fathom how anyone could possibly tolerate ads.
> What phone is the most "open" and functional?
Android is not truly open. Google is closing it little by little. Soon rooted phones with custom software will start failing hardware attestation and Android apps will refuse to work.
I seriously hope the pinephone takes off. We need some serious alternatives to this Google garden.
Then they’ll just spoof it like they do now. I’ll never happen. Fuchsia might change it by being a different OS though.
The pinephone will never be more than a Linux enthusiast or developer device who doesn’t need their phone to properly function. It’s just a developer’s test device that will eventually make a version of mobile GNU/Linux that works better on newest more powerful formerly android devices (probably Qualcomm) that get mainline support in kernel.
The type of person in the future who will buy a $150 phone that was underpowered at launch in 2014 or one that wants a $400 720p LCD phone with a stronger 2018 chip that runs mobile Linux is a niche even now.
I'd go with a Pixel phone. Samsung phones are great too but a bit of extra software you probably don't need that takes up space.
Any Android phone is 'mostly open' in the sense you can sideload apps super easily. Google apps are functional. There's some 'truly open' options out there but they're typically expensive for the specs and the included apps are less useful than Google apps.
Ad blocking on iPhone/Safari has been around now for 6 years. Blocking ads from the YouTube app itself or your TV is a little tricker and would need something like a Pihole to serve as a local DNS server.
If you have some time on your hands it’s not too difficult to setup a cloud based Wireguard VPN + Pihole to blocks ads. Oracle has a free tier with a generous bandwidth cap.
Youtube vanced on android has changed my life. No ads, even within videos! If Linus starts talking about how great dbrand skins are, it auto-skips that part of the video. Really amazing. You cannot get such a great experience even if you pay for youtube red.
I installed it on my family's s21 and pixel 4. Easy install, no need for root. Vanced comes with adblock and sponsorblock, this is exactly what I was looking for thanks! Now I need an android device...
Inferior to newpipe+sponsorblock (auto skip you mentioned) which can download as video or MP3, and also plays in background. https://github.com/polymorphicshade/NewPipe/releases/ it doesn’t rely on installing a special google play or google play services either
Vanced actually has SponsorBlock too. Inferior depends on what you consider as useful features. For me, having the same UI as YouTube with all my subscriptions and being able to find new content on the home page are of great importance. NewPipe doesn't exactly have the same thing. I never download videos or listen in the background (as I have Spotify which you can also get adfree via a nodded apk) so those aren't that useful for me.
It’s not clear which iPhone/iOS version you’re using and where you’re looking to block YouTube ads, whether it’s on a browser or in the YouTube app. Magic Lasso is an app that blocks YouTube ads on Safari, but it’s a paid subscription. I use YouTube rarely, and the $30 or so annual subscription for Magic Lasso seems a bit too high for that.
My biggest YT gripe on the iPhone is that they break picture-in-picture unless you fork over money. I'd like to know just what kind of js they use to accomplish that so I can then figure out how to break it.
With Firefox on Android and uBlock origin I can watch youtube videos without ads. There's another extension whoch lets videos play in the background too. It's awesome!
I think termux is the most exciting "app" I have seen yet for a "smartphone". Is there anything similar for iPhone.
I finally have a server with a monitor that fits in the palm of my hand running a C compiler. Enough storage space to store all the zone files for the entire www. This is more like the future I envisioned than what Apple has been working on.
Note the word "like". The future I envision has palmtop servers with monitors that boot UNIX-like OS written by computer enthusiast volunteers, not staff at a trillion dollar advertising company. Virtual machines, subsystems, Cygwin/MSYS, or whatever, are no substitute for the real thing.
I would like to see a more "general purpose", wifi-only version without cellular baseband and other advanced features that effectively restrict the OS options to Linux kernel only. Same small form factor, battery and screen. Boot from SD card, external storage or network.
It's emulated, not virtualized, so there might be situations where the programs you copy over encounter issues[0]. It's also focused on console applications, so no GUI app support anytime soon.
The conversion often centres around money, but very little about power.
And also quoting Steve from 2011. I mean iPhone was in an existential threat in 2011 and could repeat the same mistake with Mac in the 80/90s. I dont blame Steve for his ecosystem lock in thinking.
But we are in 2021, the tides have turned. Google is no longer a threat. As a matter of fact there are no threat from market competitors. iPhone user are growing in every single operating countries. Mac has performance, quality and soon even BOM cost advantage. Arguably the same on Smartphone as well.
Judging from the fanfare I wont be surprised if Mac user jump to 200M user within this decade.
The only threat is regulatory and government. And it is kind of sad Apple is now in this place. But there are few signs Tim Cook's Apple is changing. At least Tim Cook's PR response is changing for whatever reason.
This should have been fixed with anti-trust laws, if they would have worked as intended. Apple shouldn't be allowed to use anti-competitive practices like not allowing other stores on their system, or stuff like banning competing browser engines and such. All this has a significant negative effect on progress and competition.
Combined with their sick lock-in mentality especially, Apple's influence on the market and industry is very damaging.
TL;DR: Apple should be blasted with competition laws to reduce the damage they are causing. So I hope all these anti-trust cases against them succeed.
I love the App Store on the iPhone. I realize it comes with Apple's oversight and values, but I generally feel pretty safe with what I get there. I don't feel the same way about Google Play Store. Maybe my views are irrational, but my experience has been incredibly positive.
The strongest argument really isn't that the App Store isn't good for consumers. There are examples where it very clearly isn't (cloud game streaming is a great one), but by and large it is positive for consumers.
The issue is for developers. The duopoly means developers who demand a first-class mobile presence are forced to abide by Apple's rules.
Would Spotify exist today if Apple disallowed its presence in the App Store? That's 60%+ of US mobile subscribers only reachable via the "open web"; a poor experience for a mobile music player. Its likely they would not exist; but Apple Music would.
This may sound like a theoretical argument; a problem that isn't a problem because obviously Apple allows Spotify. But consider cloud game streaming services; these compete directly with Apple's mobile gaming revenue. Apple won't allow them on the store. When you get right down to it, their only sin is that, unlike Netflix, Spotify, and Kindle; cloud game streaming apps do not pre-date the App Store. That's the only reason these other cloud media streaming apps are allowed; consumers adopted the iPhone with expectations concerning the nature of their existence. Apple got there first on gaming, then shut the door.
Thus, the greatest sin of the iPhone is its behavior toward destroying true innovation. Not a slightly better note-taker or a prettier weather forecast; the App Store is great at distributing that. But, rather, applications Apple hasn't foreseen, now hampered by both the App Store's distribution rules, financial rules, and more fundamentally, the intentionally limited operating system.
This is not a situation where these innovations can't exist on the iPhone, but will flourish elsewhere; Apple's stranglehold on the consumer US smartphone market, the primary means of computing for many, many people, means these innovations may never exist at all. Possibly because they can't find a market. Or, more disturbingly; because they would have been invented by our next generation's Steve Wozniak or John Carmack, but instead of growing up with a computing environment which (safely!) nurtures creation, they grew up with the iPhone. And maybe an iPad.
iOS Safari has been years behind Chrome and/or Firefox on graphics, compute (WASM, threading), user input, etc for a long time. If you're trying to ship a PWA there is also a lot of stuff for that use case which is either missing or intentionally busted.
A really obvious example: Fullscreen for webpages and PWAs on iOS is broken on purpose - the browser can do it, but won't allow you to stay in full-screen for anything except a <video> tag. Apparently they changed this on iPad? In any case, fullscreen is an absolutely ancient, uncontroversial web API they've chosen not to support that is essential for things like games and multimedia. There are other browser APIs that require fullscreen too, like pointer lock (if for some reason you've plugged a mouse into your iDevice... maybe that's why fullscreen is enabled on iPad.)
So in practice, if you want to watch videos or play a game fullscreen on your iPhone, you have to go to the app store. Which is an intentional choice, because Apple gets to siphon 30% of all game transactions over there.
Apple intentionally drags their feet on implementing browser standards. Stuff like WebGL (it's 'implemented' but doesn't really work), PWAs, fullscreen, etc... Conveniently all the bits that would allow browser apps to behave more like native apps.
Its hard to know for sure; as they say, if you had asked Ford's customers what they wanted, they'd have asked for a faster horse. Its also a question that's complicated by another duopoly; the real question is, what kind of innovation are we missing out on due to both Google Chrome and Safari stifling creation by exerting corporate interests over a billion+ users of the open web?
I have two ideas:
For starters; Their, and Mozilla's, tracker obfuscation technology is something I'd label as an innovation for the web, and I'm happy that they've taken a stance toward privacy and not against it. Its easy to imagine a parallel reality where they didn't adopt such a strong stance, and iOS users have less of a recourse for a privacy-respecting web browsers.
Additionally; I'd say, micropayments. Now, you can interpret that as crypto-based, or traditional card based, and both have issues beyond just innovation in web standards and browser implementation. But: I strongly believe that some kind of web-native micropayment framework would fundamentally reshape the landscape of the web for the better. There are so many news articles behind paywalls I would have gladly given $0.50 to read; but with the requirement to create an account, dig out my credit card, and agree to pay $10/month (which they make hell to cancel); I click away. Or, supporting a creator; even a commentator here on Hacker News for an especially insightful comment. Not everything is worth $5.
But hasn't this been the case sine iPhone 1? Apple rejected flash because of the poor impact it would have battery life among other things. As consumers we're better off because of that choice.
Apple wants users of their iPhone device, the thing that they actually sell, to have a phenomenal experience. And they're going enforce rules across the ecosystem to make sure that experience remains solid.
You know, the funny thing is; phones got better. Apple's most of all. Batteries got bigger, processors got more powerful. Flash would have sucked on the iPhone 3G; I'd bet it'd be a perfectly pleasant experience on the iPhone 13.
Flash was a fantastic technology. It gave birth to an entire generation of game developers, software engineers, and content creators, and certainly gave many young people plenty of hours of entertainment.
Are we actually better off because Apple killed Flash? Or, is it just that Apple is better off, having killed literally the only web-based gaming technology to ever see mainstream success and secured the gate for the App Store to remain the single source for gaming content on iOS?
iOS isn't even the most popular OS in the world. Flash died because other people chose to let it, not Apple. Desktop OSes supported Flash through 2020 when it was end of lifed. Android is the most popular worldwide mobile OS, and Apple has no direct influence on what it runs.
And if Adobe had cared enough, they had enough clout to push Apple sometime in the past 5-10 years when the battery and CPU and GPU on iPhones/iPads hit the threshold that it made sense to return Flash to it.
But browser plugins like Flash and ActiveX were doomed once people started caring about the security of browsers, and once Google (via Chrome) and others started investing heavily in JS performance bring it closer to parity with Flash and removing features (like video playback) from Flash's ___domain and making it native to the browser.
It's also worth noting, that while Flash was barred from the browser, it wasn't barred from iOS once Apple opened up 3rd party development tools including Flash, which happened in 2010.
> As consumers we're better off because of that choice.
Consumers are not an undifferentiated mass. There are people who would have been better off with Flash support. Certainly at the time there were -- it was a hardship back when there were still many Flash sites.
And customers don't need Apple for this. If you dislike Flash enough to endure the hardship of not having access to Flash sites when they're still popular, don't install it. If many other people feel the same, Flash will go away. If hardly anyone feels the same then it's Apple doing it for their own benefit and against the will of most of their customers.
The way to settle this is to allow multiple app stores. If customers really want only the Apple one, that's what they'll choose. If that's not what they want and they're only after the operating system or the hardware, how can you claim that Apple is doing what the customers want?
Apple's trade-offs, their sensibilities, took us from phones that looked and worked like BlackBerry, and Moto Q, to phones that look and work like the iPhone. They set a new high bar. The iPhone had better capabilities and superior user experience. So yes, Apple has improved the general smart phone experience for all consumers.
Apple achieves this sensibility by making choices on behalf of their customers that they feel leads to a superior user experience. They don't present the user with pedantic choices. Instead they allow users to select only choices that they feel will lead to a great experience.
This is similar to other purveyors of premium and luxury goods. For example, a 5-star restaurant won't present you with (in their opinion) a shitty choice of meal. Tesla won't sell you a car with steering wheel--only a yolk. LV won't sell you a basic plastic purse. And BestBuy won't sell you just any old shit off of Alibaba.
Discerning consumers look to these companies to make these choices for them. To make the experience of owning those the products wonderful. And Apple's customers look to Apple to do the same thing with their phone.
Now, not all customers want or can afford these choices. So, there are competitors that see it differently.
If you really want flash, buy Android. Flash available from several publishers in the the Android app store.
I'm aligned that developers are the ones who pay the price. Apple gets consumers on their side and can turn that into leverage against developers. This is where regulation and litigation are going to be key going forward.
I don't completely agree on innovation. While they are limiting, developers can always launch on Android which has a massive, if less affluent, marketshare and leverage that against Apple's ecosystem. Clearly it isn't a perfect solve. I'm still happier to not have my kids downloading bloatware, spyware, and battery killers on their Apple devices.
you're allowed whatever your preference. but let's not pretending: you're expressing preference for a system which happens to not inconvenience you but which constraints many folks's choices & desires. i for one think there would be zero real tradeoff permitting others a little of their own preference too.
the bigger view is that this is horrific. it's ghastly. it's a prison of thought/control imposed on most people.
I would have much stronger opinions about this if Android wasn't such a strong competitor. As it stands, it is very easy for people with those "choices and desires" to stick with Android and sideload to their heart's content.
The bigger issue with Apple is their 30% cut on nearly all transactions that happen on apps acquired through the App Store.
I said "nearly", because there are exceptions. I really don't think it's fair that Spotify or Disney+ has to sacrifice 30% of their subscription revenue coming from iOS users considering Apple shoulders almost none of the burdern of hosting that content.
I think a fair compromise might be 30% on the first month of a new subscription, followed by 2.5% on subsequent months. That way Apple gets their initial cut for providing the ecosystem and app store exposure, followed by a very small cut on top of the usual payment processing fees.
> it's a prison of thought/control imposed on most people
Having just moved from android to iphone, what a load of horse shit. I willingly choose to be in Apple's ecosystem. That control is not imposed, it is given (and can be taken away at any moment by me simply turning off my iphone and not using it again).
I have thoughts about the restricted nature of the hardware, but that's a different discussion to the openness of the software ecosystem.
apple is the only "general purpose computing" system on the planet that allows apps but only their approved apps, approve connectivity. this this is, as you say, a load of horse shit. i reassert:
> it's a prison of thought/control imposed on most people
as I said I think freedom costs nothing. what you say offers no counter, no reposte, no reply to this.
you can defend the jailers but I'm not sure why you would? why benefit do you see in keeping such immense gates? why raise the drawbridge so high? why the desire to tell people to buzz off, get the frag out if they don't like it? i don't get any of this attitude, this corporate-punk anti-individual spirit. why must this be zero-sum, you and apple teaming up versus choice, freedom, & capability? you're not the only one- there's an active, hating, negative crowd, booing & downvoting capability & choice. in this one circumstance. it's a wild call, such a call to prevent. unfathomable to me.
everything about this yearn to control & reduce & assert authority feels like manufacturing consent. for control. for fascism. it's hard to figure out what genuine earnest positive intent it could have.
Won’t mention my employer but we track malicious activity across the app ecosystem. Android has a higher rate of fraud and malevolent actors - specific to ads and app inventory.
Apple has already made it clear that there is only one user base they are interested in supporting. They've made a huge business out of supporting only the Apple way. It can certainly be frustrating in some cases, but that is the choice you make joining their ecosystem.
It’s a bit of a question what you mean then by “Apple interested folk.” By large, Apple customers value the company’s emphasis on privacy, data control, and quality control of their ecosystem. I suppose you might mean the physical quality of the hardware which is also quite nice, but I think to be an Apple “fan” means also being a fan of the software too. Not every last decision mind you, but the control of the App Store and the Apple platform is pretty central to the brand identity.
TL;DR: We are very unhappy that Apple treats their handheld game system like a handheld game system.
That being said, I could imagine Apple classifying apps into game and non-game apps. For game apps, they could have terms similar to the Nintendo eShop, and for non-game apps they could have terms similar to the Mac App store.
Otherwise we have systemic risk associated with a digital monoculture.
E.g. Imagine how fast a zero day zero click iOS worm could brick every device and cause a huge disruption to daily life.