I’m trying to communicate with relatives of my partner while on holiday. We have iPhones, they all have Androids. We asked them to install “ChatGPT” because its voice mode is shockingly good at near-real-time translation.
When I type “ChatGPT” into the Apple App Store, the top hit is… drumroll… the very same, by OpenAI.
My uncle in law was struggling a bit on his phone and showed me what came up: a wall of fakes. Scam app after scam app, all with similar icons and similar names “GPT Talk”, “Chatty GTP”, and garbage like that.
Why would anyone want this?
Why would I prefer this?
Why would you… unless you’re an “app developer” working for… not the company that ought to be getting the first and only search result.
The problem here — specifically here on Hacker News — is that a lot of you work for those companies. Startups faking till they make it, engaging in guerrilla marketing, less then perfectly legal practices… hoping to be the next Uber or AirBnB by emulating them.
Politely, and with all due respect: Bugger off.
Your arguments come from unclean hands.
Most of the world likes the authority of the App Store.
If you don’t, if you’re vocal about “rules are bad!” it says volumes about you, not the rules and the people that enforce them.
- The Play Store being bad does not mean the App Store is not also bad
- How do you know most of the world likes the authority of the App Store? Is it not more likely that most of the world are ignorant of its rules, and assumes a free and open marketplace?
> The Play Store being bad
The Play Store is actually merely “slightly worse” than the App Store. The problem was that my uncle in law was using some other “alternative app store” because Android allows this and then … inevitably … some lazy or corrupt app vendors encourage their use or outright require it. Or a phone manufacturer will try to make an extra 50c per device by inserting themselves (or a “valued partner”) between users and legitimate providers.
You’ll see arguments for this, right here, espoused vehemently by people that must really, desperately get away from oversight.
> free and open marketplace
That’s not a good thing.