This is a beautiful quote because it is an example of one industry's bad behavior leading to another industry's bad behavior, upon which the first industry then users the second's similarity to justify themselves. Cars only started doing this because phones made it normal. It's wrong in both cases.
It's similar to when Apple defended it's 30% store cut by claiming it's an "industry standard"... specifically, an industry standard that Apple established.
On the other hand, you can't sideload apps onto iOS devices. You HAVE to go through Apple. You either publish on the app store, or you don't have an iOS app. That's different. That's very different. That's antitrust-can't-happen-sooner different.
> "That's different. That's very different
Is it? Why is it? You can't sell software to run on Kindle Paperwhite even though it's a full computer inside. What's the specific difference between that and iOS, other than "Apple's ecosystem and customers are desirable, so I want to use it" and "I don't want to pay for it"?
You aren't making much sense. You won't have any semblance of adoption if you don't have presence on iOS. Except maybe in India where iOS market share is tiny.
> You can't sell software to run on Kindle Paperwhite even though it's a full computer inside.
It's an appliance. It's marketed as a device to serve one purpose — read books. Amazon isn't making apps for it either, as far as the user is concerned, there's no notion of application software on these things.
By the way, washing machines and microwaves also have a full computer in them — there's CPU, RAM, and ROM. Yes, tiny and underpowered. Probably not quite powerful enough to run Doom. Computers nonetheless, technically.
Yet no one raises any objections about not being able to run arbitrary code on them. Precisely because of the marketing and expectations.
> What's the specific difference between that and iOS
iPhones and iPads are marketed as general-purpose computing devices. They are not appliances by any stretch of imagination. Yet they are crippled because Apple has knowingly and deliberately put in a limitation so they only run code that was signed by Apple. This limits their general-purposefulness. This forces developers who don't want or need the hosting and listing still go through the app store.
This is like a restaurant demanding smart shoes for customers, and you complaining that it's anti-competitively hurting your sneaker business and the restaurant should be forced to change. Customers going there are going there knowing the dress code applies to them and others, forcibly blocking that removes part of their reason for going there at all.
> "You aren't making much sense. You won't have any semblance of adoption if you don't have presence on iOS."
That is the sense, you aren't required to have any semblance of adoption. Apple is successful by building a curated, restricted, "exclusive" (by perception if not fact) experience. You want access to the customers and their money, without upholding the reasons the customers are using that platform.
> "Yet no one raises any objections about not being able to run arbitrary code on them. Precisely because of the marketing and expectations."
Now you aren't making sense. Apple never marketed or set expectations that you could sideload apps on iPhone or iOS, did they?
> "By the way, washing machines and microwaves also have a full computer in them — there's CPU, RAM, and ROM. Yes, tiny and underpowered. Probably not quite powerful enough to run Doom. Computers nonetheless, technically."
So you're going after Bosch for anti-competitively not allowing you to sell software that runs on their washing machines, and not allowing owners to sideload? Because this is all about anti-competitive, you said? No obviously you aren't doing that, which calls into question your claimed reasons. You can easily list your app on Apple's store and compete, what it's about is you want more money. Which is fine in its own way, until you try to get some legal mandate for Apple to force me to worse platform so you can avoid paying Apple money for using Apple's platform and reputation.
Once you bought a thing, you own it. That's it. It's cool to have a curated app store for those developers who want it. It's uncool for Apple to retain control of devices after they've been sold.
> This is like a restaurant demanding smart shoes for customers
You can't make this comparison. You don't get to choose what kind of mobile device other people use. You do get to choose which restaurant you visit.
> Apple is successful by building a curated, restricted, "exclusive" (by perception if not fact) experience.
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.
> You want access to the customers and their money, without upholding the reasons the customers are using that platform.
I'm having issue with there being a gatekeeper AT ALL. I don't give a crap about "their customers" and "their money". I just want to make an app and distribute it straight to my users. That's it. Apple forcibly inserting itself in between me and my users doesn't do any good to either side. Especially if it's a free app and I'm doing my own marketing. It's simply a rent-seeking prude intermediary that creates more problems than it solves.
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.
> Apple never marketed or set expectations that you could sideload apps on iPhone or iOS, did they?
Apple set expectations that you can do pretty much anything on an iOS device.
> You can easily list your app on Apple's store and compete, what it's about is you want more money.
I don't give a crap about money. I despise intellectual property and proprietary software. I'll never sell a byte.
I'm simply sick and tired of how relentlessly Apple wants to eradicate sex and piracy form the internet, for example. Even if you have a free app, Apple literally dictates you how you should change your ToS to be approved on the app store. Is that acceptable? I don't think so. No one should have this kind of power. If the web was invented today, a web browser would be rejected from the app store for allowing the user to view any content without restrictions.
Meanwhile they approve all sorts of scam apps, like a bunch of wallpapers with a $20/week subscription on it. Because they take a 30% cut on those. This is hypocrisy.
> "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"?
> And you can sideload on Android, and they chose not-Android.
How many people actually know anything about what it takes to publish to the app store? Developers literally aren't allowed to tell them. If you write the very sensible "this content is not available on this device due to Apple App Store policies", you app will be rejected. Almost no one says bad things about Apple because of the fear that they might be denied presence on iOS. This is a very large power imbalance, and this absolutely needs to be dealt with. I'm so looking forward to those antitrust cases.
> and you could do so on Blackberry, and WindowsPhone, and Maemo and Symbian, and they all failed for not offering what people want.
"I wish my phone didn't allow me to install on it what I want" said no one ever. They failed for other reasons.
It's okay to have an app store as a default way of installing apps. What's not okay is making it THE ONLY way of installing apps, thus robbing people of choice.
> Agreed, so people who want unsigned or self-signed code can buy macs, right? Choice. Nobody is forced to buy an iOS device
Computers and phones aren't the same thing, you can't compare them like that. I use a Mac precisely because it's great experience AND it allows me to run whatever the hell I tell it to. I use Android for the same reason.
> 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.
Calling things "spam" or "not spam" is users' own choice. You as an email user always have the last word in whether something is spam. You don't have this as an iOS user. If Apple says something isn't good for you, this decision is final. You just aren't getting that app no matter how much you want it.
By the way, if Google says something isn't good for you, the developer can still distribute an apk from their website. Yes, it won't be as prominent, and it won't have a listing page, but the users would still have the option to install it if they want it.
I said that. Implicitly, when I said "I want to use iOS and I'm willing to accept the tradeoffs that come with that". I have plenty of devices I can install random software on. including previous Android tablet and phone, I don't need or want yet another ARM/Linux device, what I need and want is a trustworthy phone that works well, and Apple appears to be the closest thing to that, by a long long way.
> "Computers and phones aren't the same thing, you can't compare them like that. I use a Mac precisely because it's great experience AND it allows me to run whatever the hell I tell it to. I use Android for the same reason."
One moment you're "robbed of choice", the next moment you're explaining how you chose a thing which does what you want. While still denying and ignoring that other people might want and choose something different. The same way I don't want my dishwasher to run an IRC client, I would prefer one that cannot do so, as it's simpler and less complex and has less to go wrong and has smaller security boundaries, I want a smartphone that I can trust. Should I want a device I can "install whatever" on, there are tons and tons and tons and tons of Android devices to choose from along with many non-Android devices such as Debian Cosmo Communicator, Linux running Pinephones, Librems, small Linux and Windows tablets, and all kinds of other things approximately nobody uses because they don't work very well.
> "You don't have this as an iOS user. If Apple says something isn't good for you, this decision is final. You just aren't getting that app no matter how much you want it."
I'm OK with this. This is a choice. The same way I'm OK with the government saying I cannot have an asbestos roof. I can have that app if I want it, by using a device where the app runs. If I want it enough, I can go where it is.
> "Almost no one says bad things about Apple because of the fear that they might be denied presence on iOS."
Citation needed; the tech internet is full of criticisms about Apple, like this thread and their appstore cut, or Airpod batteries that wear out too quickly, or Airpod sound quality, or dongle-gate, or lack of ports on laptops, or macOS phoning home to launch binaries, or worsening UX on macOS, or ever-increasing price of flagship phones, or lack of an iPhone SE (until recently), or "so brave" headphone socket, or no 3rd-party repairs and Luis Rossman's outspoken rants on that. It absolutely isn't the case that "nobody says bad things about Apple".
> "This is a very large power imbalance, and this absolutely needs to be dealt with."
It is a large power imbalance. It does not need to be dealt with. The day the Apple AppStore looks like the old Cydia app store will be a terrible day. The app store is already full of junk clones, I would rather it very very much more strictly curated, honestly.
It's like the comment I've linked elsewhere recently about the early days of search engines, narrowing down "all web pages" to "1 million results" does absolutely nothing useful for me. Providing me with "choice" of 100 apps to do a thing is way more than I can usefully vet for basic functionality, let alone signups, hidden fees, telemetry, dark patterns, reliability. "Nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded" used to be a joke, now it's a description of Amazon - by adding more and more third party sellers and more "choice" at the low end, it's far harder to find anything and the experience of shopping for "a thing to do X" has got significantly worse.
> "Calling things "spam" or "not spam" is users' own choice. You as an email user always have the last word in whether something is spam. You don't have this as an iOS user."
For the severalth time, you /don't have to be an iOS user/. iOS makes up less than one third of the smartphone market. If I outsource my spam filtering to a paid service, it's because I choose to give up that option to save time and effort.
