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.
If you don't like Bosch, there's hundreds of other manufacturer, if you don't like a restaurant, there's hundreds of other ones you can pick, if you don't like Android and iOS, well, you're screwed.
That's the market analogy, secondly, those monopolies are essential in today's computing world and currently power a great part of the tech industry, easy to see some issues there.
> That argument would be fine if we had plenty of mobile OS providers
So your problem is Apple solved the customer problem so well with “an Apple experience” that all other phone OSes were abandoned.
And as a result Apple should be forced to ruin that experience beloved by their customers, so that the relatively small number of software developers make a little more money?
As an Apple customer, I’m glad your software is being gated from me. I don’t trust your judgement.
I don't really care how and why those two companies got their monopoly, that's beside the point.
> And as a result Apple should be forced to ruin that experience beloved by their customers, so that the relatively small number of software developers make a little more money?
There's hundreds of thousands of developers on mobile platforms and juste two single companies on the other side with blatant anti-trust issues, that's an easy argument here.
> As an Apple customer, I’m glad your software is being gated from me. I don’t trust your judgement.
I really don't care if you use my software or not either. I'm currently forced to use one of those two mobile platform for my daily use and both choices are terrible in their own way due to anti-trust issues. You have absolutely zero power over Apple which owns your device anyway so I'm not sure why you would say that, it's not like your opinion would matter to them.
It isn't; over the past decade the tech world has shifted more and more towards telemetry, advertising, and low quality user experience. Popular sites like Instagram, Reddit, Facebook, YouTube have added more and more adverts and less and less social connection, become more centralized (Microsoft buying LinkedIn and GitHub, Facebook buying WhatsApp and Instagram), Windows has added more advertisements and telemetry, and iOS has held out as a comparatively stable, predictable, clean, low-ad, low-telemetry, user focused platform through all of this.
> "blatant anti-trust issues"
Allowing my proverbial elderly mother to buy a device which cannot, in any way, be the subject of a scam like this:
https://old.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/comments/mfy1sw/my_...
by having someone talk her through disabling the sideload protection and installing a malware, is not "anti-trust", it's "pro-trust". And yes I do understand that I'm swapping the meaning of "trust" here between your use and mine, and that's deliberate. Look at the comments in that thread:
"Sounds dumb, but my 79 year old dad fell for it completely. Something like $100 and they got him to install remote control software while they ran a virus scan. Of course that was just what was on the screen, who knows what they were really doing."
"My parents were scammed in a very similar way out of $50,000 about a month ago."
"This happened to a relative of mine, but for $80K. Though the thieves claimed they were working with the Shanghai police. The thieves were brazen enough to get her to not only transfer everything she had in her bank account, but to also cash in her 401K"
"I know somebody who fell for something similar about two years ago. Also out about $20k"
"My SO was inches away from walking through the finale of the scam, I caught it before we lost money"
The argument "nobody should be able to buy a system which has some protections in the design, because I want {geek code} on every device" just isn't good enough. And neither is the tech-world answer "they're dumb and deserve it". Buy an iPad and someone can maybe be conned into setting up a bank transfer, but not into side-loading a crypto coin ransomware, it's one level of defense in depth.
> "I'm currently forced to use one of those two mobile platform for my daily use"
And your solution is to drag iOS down to the level of Android or Windows? Who is forcing you? Why can't you use a dumbphone? Is this a "forced because I don't want to change jobs" thing?
> "and both choices are terrible in their own way due to anti-trust issues. You have absolutely zero power over Apple which owns your device anyway so I'm not sure why you would say that"
Apple owns your device is a lie, you bought it, you own it. Take it apart, take the LCD out and plug it into something else, see if Apple comes at you for breaking "their" device. They won't, because they don't own it. Turning "they didn't build it so I can run Linux on it" is not the same thing as them owning it, any more than Bosch not building a washing machine to let you run Linux on the controller does not imply Bosch own your washing machine in perpetuity.
By the way, in terms of security, the iPhone isn't even the most secure platform right now, you still have tons of private apis, privacy issues and ways to snoop data back, that's exactly why companies ask you to install their app instead of directly going to their website because on the web they can't do any of that...
> And your solution is to drag iOS down to the level of Android or Windows? Who is forcing you? Why can't you use a dumbphone? Is this a "forced because I don't want to change jobs" thing?
Because even banks and government apps are locked down to these two monopolies, that's enough proof as it is.
> Apple owns your device is a lie, you bought it, you own it. Take it apart, take the LCD out and plug it into something else, see if Apple comes at you for breaking "their" device. They won't, because they don't own it. Turning "they didn't build it so I can run Linux on it" is not the same thing as them owning it, any more than Bosch not building a washing machine to let you run Linux on the controller does not imply Bosch own your washing machine in perpetuity.
You don't own your device because Apple can decide to remove everything from it remotely, can decide that you can no longer can switch it on if they wanted to and actively prevents you to see what it does, that's why you don't own it. You should treat Apple's device as Apple's property that could vanish at any point.
Only if you completely ignore all the things I've been writing. The appstore has restrictions. Those are useful. They are a layer of defense in depth, user protection.
> "By the way, in terms of security, the iPhone isn't even the most secure platform right now, you still have tons of private apis, privacy issues and ways to snoop data back, that's exactly why companies ask you to install their app instead of directly going to their website because on the web they can't do any of that..."
Then Apple should close those gaps. "It has flaws" is not a reason to turn it into a wide-open free-for-all, that would be worse, not better.
> "You don't own your device because Apple can decide to remove everything from it remotely"
That's like saying you don't own a TV because the TV station can stop broadcasting and then the device is useless. You can throw it in the trash without telling anyone, and nobody will care. You can sell it. You can smash it with a hammer. You own it. What the software and online service licenses are, is a different matter. That you can see a processor inside it and wish it could run Linux and wish Apple had built it differently, is irrelevant to whether you own it.
That's outside of the point of antitrust issues we were talking about but I personally think they're not as effective as the marketing claims.
> Then Apple should close those gaps. "It has flaws" is not a reason to turn it into a wide-open free-for-all, that would be worse, not better.
The most technically secure platform is currently the web (yes, far above iOS sandboxing), there's no relation between openness and security.
> That's like saying you don't own a TV because the TV station can stop broadcasting and then the device is useless. You can throw it in the trash without telling anyone, and nobody will care
Except the TV station doesn't manufacture the TV, and the TV manufacturer does not control TV stations... It's like every single example you pick reinforce the fact that there's anti trust issues.
Sky, the satellite TV company, made Sky boxes and satellite receivers, which tuned into the Sky service, and sold Sky TV channels.
> "The most technically secure platform is currently the web (yes, far above iOS sandboxing), there's no relation between openness and security."
Security is improved enormously by shrinking attack surface area and closing off entire areas of attack. Not being able to be talked into sideloading a program is obviously more secure than being able to be. "Technically secure" is a different matter, and not relevant to the point I was making - which is that restrictions have benefits, and restrictions are part of the reason iOS is great and all the competitors are terrible, competitors that you variously claim are part of a dominant duopoly and also don't exist.
> "It's like every single example you pick reinforce the fact that there's anti trust issues
It's like every single comment you make ignores the fact that you aren't forced into iOS, that you have alternatives, and pretend you don't.