A federal judge in the United States has ordered tech giant Google to open its Android smartphones to rival app stores. The order comes after an antitrust case in which a jury decided Google had illegal…
Security, data harvesting transparency (I wouldn’t go so far as calling it privacy lol), predictability, hardware longevity (though this gap is shrinking now), and inter-product integration. Also vendor lock-in lol.
No it isn’t. Apple is still going to only be allowing approved apps/app stores and taking a cut off any sales over a million downloads.
You still won’t be able to just download an ipa file and install it without jailbreaking or using a workaround like AltStore where you have to resign the app using an Apple developer account every week.
I’m on iOS right now. I wanted to check out the iPhone 16 Pro, especially since I have a lot of friends and family on iPhones. I’m switching back to my Pixel 7 Pro tomorrow, as soon as Verizon customer service comes back to work since the stupid AI activation failed. On that note, why TF doesn’t Verizon have 24 hour customer service? T-Mobile did. We’re super disappointed with Verizon as a company after switching last year. They run their shit like an old school Ma Bell company.
Yeah Verizon is trash. I was a loyal customer of theirs for many years and then they literally ruined my credit over $40 after claiming to have fixed the billing error literally 3 times. On principal I will never go back to Verizon.
There are a lot of reasons why I’m switching back, but the main one is that the on-device closed captioning doesn’t really work. It’ll work for a sentence or two and then stop. I have to turn it off and on 1-3 times and then it’ll work again for a sentence or two. Some other reasons are that Siri doesn’t respond half the time. It’ll listen to what I say and then shut off. The text selection is still bad, and how you move the cursor around is clunky. Videos on the steam website won’t play. They start playing and then go black. There are a bunch of other small reasons too, but those are the main ones. One issue would be annoying, but I’d be willing to troubleshoot it. But all these issues? I didn’t spend $1200 on a flagship phone to constantly troubleshoot problems. Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of nice things about the phone too. I want to like it. It feels nice, the screen is great, and the camera is too. But all-in-all it’s too glitchy for what I paid for it. It’s going back tomorrow.
Thanks for the response! I find it fascinating that video problems were some of your issues, because I have had to support a video player for a website for years now, which has always been horrendously difficult in Safari. Specifically on Safari iOS, caption issues have plagued me for weeks at a time. It’s rare I’ve ever spoken to anyone who cites those kinds of issues as a point of frustration, but I have always known they’re there firsthand. And because it’s apple, people can’t just try another browser. Every other browser is just Safari with a skin.
The black video issue was only on the Steam website. But if I can’t even watch game previews on a $1200 device, that’s a problem. Captions are a major issue for the hearing impaired, so that was a huge consideration. The only reason I was willing to go back to iOS is because they claimed they had all of these AI powered accessibility features, but they were glitchy at best.
It wouldn’t be such a problem if it was just about quality control. But the app stores pocket big bucks from the apps you download, including a large cut of subscriptions to services entirely unrelated to the store just because you downloaded the app through them. If I recall, Google takes something like 20 percent and some takes something like 30 (I can’t recall the exact numbers, just that Apple is marginally worse about it).
For example, I love Dropout, a comedy media platform from the former people at College Humor. They offer a $5.99/month subscription for access to their entire catalog. If I went to their website, created an account and bought a subscription, that is $5.99 directly into the hands of the creators I wish to support. I can also then go download the app and enjoy the same service throught that account on my phone or other devices.
However, if I go to the app store, download the app, and buy my subscription in it, Dropout now has to pay Google or Apple a sizable chunk of that $5.99. And not just for that month. For every month that follows for the life of that subscription. Just for the benefit of having an app available to users on devices that hold monopolies on these services.
You might be thinking, well, they could just raise the price for the subscriptions when you sign up through the app to offset the extra fees. You would think that, but no. If I recall correctly, Apple and Google both also require apps to sell subscriptions at the same price as they would be sold outside the apps. If you don’t comply with that, they’ll drop your app altogether. That means that everyone has to pay more, whether you got your subscription through the app or not, to offset those extra costs.
There are many other problems, including anti-competitive/antitrust practices, and ironically, shitty quality control. But such things are inevitable with monopolies.
It’s worse than that. Apple charges application developers just to put their apps on the app store. This is a big contributor as to why there are so few OSS iOS projects: I’m happy to share, for free, the app I wrote for myself, but I’m not going to pay someone money to do it.
Apple can take action and remove apps that are malicious, and they’re really good at it. Of course you won’t hear those people on facebook worrying about app permissions because there usually isn’t anything to worry about.
Adding a new app store is a HUGE attack surface that requires a ton of resources, and im getting the feeling that people aren’t understanding the effort Apple takes to keep their app store nice.
Oooo! Oooo! Do Apple next!
Holy shit do I just want to be able to sideload my own personal apps on my device without Apple’s approval
Why buy a device where you couldn’t?
Security, data harvesting transparency (I wouldn’t go so far as calling it privacy lol), predictability, hardware longevity (though this gap is shrinking now), and inter-product integration. Also vendor lock-in lol.
That’s coming soon, but only in the EU.
No it isn’t. Apple is still going to only be allowing approved apps/app stores and taking a cut off any sales over a million downloads.
You still won’t be able to just download an ipa file and install it without jailbreaking or using a workaround like AltStore where you have to resign the app using an Apple developer account every week.
Be apple is run by ruthless assholes. Google is a piece of shit too but my God how can people stand iOS?
I’m on iOS right now. I wanted to check out the iPhone 16 Pro, especially since I have a lot of friends and family on iPhones. I’m switching back to my Pixel 7 Pro tomorrow, as soon as Verizon customer service comes back to work since the stupid AI activation failed. On that note, why TF doesn’t Verizon have 24 hour customer service? T-Mobile did. We’re super disappointed with Verizon as a company after switching last year. They run their shit like an old school Ma Bell company.
Curious what made you switch back to Android?
Yeah Verizon is trash. I was a loyal customer of theirs for many years and then they literally ruined my credit over $40 after claiming to have fixed the billing error literally 3 times. On principal I will never go back to Verizon.
There are a lot of reasons why I’m switching back, but the main one is that the on-device closed captioning doesn’t really work. It’ll work for a sentence or two and then stop. I have to turn it off and on 1-3 times and then it’ll work again for a sentence or two. Some other reasons are that Siri doesn’t respond half the time. It’ll listen to what I say and then shut off. The text selection is still bad, and how you move the cursor around is clunky. Videos on the steam website won’t play. They start playing and then go black. There are a bunch of other small reasons too, but those are the main ones. One issue would be annoying, but I’d be willing to troubleshoot it. But all these issues? I didn’t spend $1200 on a flagship phone to constantly troubleshoot problems. Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of nice things about the phone too. I want to like it. It feels nice, the screen is great, and the camera is too. But all-in-all it’s too glitchy for what I paid for it. It’s going back tomorrow.
Thanks for the response! I find it fascinating that video problems were some of your issues, because I have had to support a video player for a website for years now, which has always been horrendously difficult in Safari. Specifically on Safari iOS, caption issues have plagued me for weeks at a time. It’s rare I’ve ever spoken to anyone who cites those kinds of issues as a point of frustration, but I have always known they’re there firsthand. And because it’s apple, people can’t just try another browser. Every other browser is just Safari with a skin.
The black video issue was only on the Steam website. But if I can’t even watch game previews on a $1200 device, that’s a problem. Captions are a major issue for the hearing impaired, so that was a huge consideration. The only reason I was willing to go back to iOS is because they claimed they had all of these AI powered accessibility features, but they were glitchy at best.
All I can see is the big giant security hole this opens up for both platforms.
Text messages, photos, contacts, sleep patterns, bank information, heart rates, stocks, phone calls, menstrual cycles, voice memos, 2 factor authentication apps, password managers, medications, blood oxygen levels, baby monitors, cameras, wifi lights, internal home network servers, hotel rooms, emails, etc harvested, sold, and exploited all because [email protected] wants his iPhone 13 to be able to install fornite aim bot mods.
It wouldn’t be such a problem if it was just about quality control. But the app stores pocket big bucks from the apps you download, including a large cut of subscriptions to services entirely unrelated to the store just because you downloaded the app through them. If I recall, Google takes something like 20 percent and some takes something like 30 (I can’t recall the exact numbers, just that Apple is marginally worse about it).
For example, I love Dropout, a comedy media platform from the former people at College Humor. They offer a $5.99/month subscription for access to their entire catalog. If I went to their website, created an account and bought a subscription, that is $5.99 directly into the hands of the creators I wish to support. I can also then go download the app and enjoy the same service throught that account on my phone or other devices.
However, if I go to the app store, download the app, and buy my subscription in it, Dropout now has to pay Google or Apple a sizable chunk of that $5.99. And not just for that month. For every month that follows for the life of that subscription. Just for the benefit of having an app available to users on devices that hold monopolies on these services.
You might be thinking, well, they could just raise the price for the subscriptions when you sign up through the app to offset the extra fees. You would think that, but no. If I recall correctly, Apple and Google both also require apps to sell subscriptions at the same price as they would be sold outside the apps. If you don’t comply with that, they’ll drop your app altogether. That means that everyone has to pay more, whether you got your subscription through the app or not, to offset those extra costs.
There are many other problems, including anti-competitive/antitrust practices, and ironically, shitty quality control. But such things are inevitable with monopolies.
It’s worse than that. Apple charges application developers just to put their apps on the app store. This is a big contributor as to why there are so few OSS iOS projects: I’m happy to share, for free, the app I wrote for myself, but I’m not going to pay someone money to do it.
“Is there any reason why this calculator needs permissions for my camera, microphone, contacts, and files?”
—said no one ever who posts on facebook that their account was hacked
Apple can take action and remove apps that are malicious, and they’re really good at it. Of course you won’t hear those people on facebook worrying about app permissions because there usually isn’t anything to worry about.
Adding a new app store is a HUGE attack surface that requires a ton of resources, and im getting the feeling that people aren’t understanding the effort Apple takes to keep their app store nice.