I never really got into "phone" progrmaming, always waiting for the shenanigans to die down. But somehow the shanigans have gotten worse and for a significant chunk of the world population, the phone is the only computation device they have at all.
I never got into it because I was convinced developers would refuse to give up control over distribution when Apple started doing it. I wish I was right, but here we are.
Developers sometimes seem to be as in control as farmers are of the distribution of their produce. There's no absolute rule that gives the owners of large scale distribution networks power over both producer and consumer. It's just laws of convenience. It's easier for everyone to go through a few or just a single common broker.
There's no law against a more democratic way to implement the broker either but it requires interesting methods of coordination and/or decision making that doesn't seem to exist yet?
It limits choice. I don’t have any experience building mobile apps because I didn’t want to buy into an unfair ecosystem. That means fewer mobile apps even if distribution networks change tomorrow.
> I don’t have any experience building mobile apps because I didn’t want to buy into an unfair ecosystem
Seems like it wouldn't be much of a stretch to compare that statement to not starting a business because the economy is unfair. People indeed don't start businesses when the bureaucratic or tax overhead outweighs the financial benefit, but nobody loses sleep over an individual's hypothetical missed opportunity to learn a new skill but them. Doesn't matter to the platform owners unless it also stops being profitable, so it's their job to maintain the profitability for their ecosystem despite whatever barriers they put up.
> There's no law against a more democratic way to implement the broker either but it requires interesting methods of coordination and/or decision making that doesn't seem to exist yet?
It's not enough to not have a law against it, we need to have and enforce laws requiring it.
I'm not so sure that we can even rely on legislation for this. I think we need new ways or new technology for collective decision making that doesn't rely on a pre existing healthy legislative environment.
Some developers did. Others, who didn't care so much, got into the app store instead, and got rich off it. Users didn't care about such principles and mobile-first has been a viable strategy for a long time now. Not having something of an app is a problem if you want to stay in many markets.
Developers want a stable, secure platform where they can reach customers that trust the platform and are willing to transact. Everything is downstream of that, including any philosophy around control.
Developers are businesses and the economics need to work. For that, safety and security is much more important than openness.
Oh! Classic Survivorship bias. You're only looking at the devs who went into business in the phone ecosystem in the first place. I'm thinking that they're there despite the barriers to entry ('shenanigans'), and the ones you encounter happen to be those who happen to place a higher value on 'other values'. As the ecosystem gets locked down more, this effect becomes stronger.
Meanwhile, you're not looking at those who left, or those who decided to never enter a broken market dominated by players convicted of monopolistic practices.
This seems much more intuitive than a hypothesis where somehow people would prefer to enter a closed market over a fair and open market with no barriers to entry.
Remember, monopolists succeed because they are distorting the market, not because they are in fact the most efficient competitor.
I'm actually quite familiar with the history of app stores and getting people to pay for software on the internet. I grew up in this timeline so I have first-hand experience too.
Before the App Store, the picture was mostly a disaster of security, reliability and quality. There was no trust and so people didn't bother parting with their credit card information to buy software...especially not on their phone.
Apple's App Store model dramatically grew the pie because it was one of the few platforms that people were willing to actually transact confidently on and trusted. This is why millions of developers flocked to the platform. This is also why Apple has traditionally maintained an iron grip on it; it was beneficial for everyone involved.
Over time, they are being proven right as more open platforms realize that openness at the expense of trust doesn't work for the masses.
You now need to have an online account to setup and login on a Windows desktop. It's obvious what the trend is and it's not allowing consumers control over their stuff.
Just look up how to skip the "OOTB (out of the box) experience" and you can still bypass having to set up a cloud account on Windows 11 and can just set up a local account like normal. :)
I have been a computer user, developer and a system administrator for longer than I care to recount. I don't like Windows and I don't use it at work or home. But I do encounter it from time to time, and the experience is worse each time. The last time it happened, I couldn't figure out the way to skip/bypass the cloud account set up. Would it have been possible if I tried harder, starting with a web search? Perhaps. But there is no way an average system user is going to have the patience or often the skill necessary to do it. I'm not challenging their intelligence. But people have other priorities than to jump through a dozen hoops just to preserve privacy. I would do the same if I had to set up a Windows system for urgent work.
These sorts of hurdles exist to push more and more users to their favorite workflow until the dissenting voice is too feeble to notice when they finally pull the plug on the straightforward method. The intent is certainly there, since they are quite evidently boiling the frog. Just wait for the fine day when you wake up in the morning to see an HN story just like this one about Windows login as well.
I was using Linux for 10+ years consistently before starting my current role, which is for a Windows-only business. And my god, the first few months was super annoying. ctrl+alt+t doesn't open a terminal?! click, click, click. No Vim. Wtf.
Setting things up was much more complicated as well. But I stuck it out, still hate Windows, but I've gotten a bit used to it.
> But there is no way an average system user is going to have the patience or often the skill necessary to do it.
> But I stuck it out, still hate Windows, but I've gotten a bit used to it.
So you tolerate it. Matches what I felt. But it was more the stuff I couldn't control - like the timing of the updates and the incessant ads.
> It's like two commands. Super easy.
For you, yes. But problem for the average user is the patience required to figure it out. Also, I think the edition I used didn't have that option at all. Because I vaguely remember searching for a solution and not finding one that worked for me. Whatever it was, it will soon be like that for more or less everyone.
That's why most people are not on Linux. I'm not talking about people who can search the internet or kids who just keep at it till they figure out the registry in two days. I'm talking about people who have absolutely no interest in the machine other than to browse the internet or use the office suite. Surprisingly, there are far more of such people than you'd imagine.
With how much worse the experience of using Windows has gotten, why wait? Many hills have already come and gone. This is the hill you're willing to die on?
Personally: the idea that a "slippery slope" is a logical fallacy has always seemed like bulllshit to me. The vast majority of reasoning for why the judiciary makes the decisions it does is because of "precedent". Slippery slope is how the world operates. It surfaces everywhere, and when the slope we're sliding down matters, like this one, we have to fight back with fervor. Google isn't doing this in a vacuum; they're doing this because there's precedent for it, and because all they want is to assert more power over the world.
Google's behavior is utterly and entirely disgusting, unacceptable, despicable, and dishonorable. Everyone who even glances near this decision should feel overwhelming shame. If you have a shred of political power to fight this internally, you are a failure to yourself, your customers, and the world if you choose to stay silent. They'll read comments like these and think "we're right, we're being brave", because they have convinced themselves that there is bravery in wielding overwhelming power against their users.
> Personally: the idea that a "slippery slope" is a logical fallacy has always seemed like bulllshit to me.
I don't know if I got this wrong, but the 'slippery slope' argument by itself never appeared to be a logical fallacy to me. There are numerous valid examples of it, and that's the context of its use in my previous reply. There certainly is a 'slippery slope' logical fallacy, but I thought it meant that you are misapplying/misusing the slippery slope argument where it isn't valid or doesn't apply.
> Google's behavior is utterly and entirely disgusting, unacceptable, despicable, and dishonorable.
I was going to apply the Nazi label on them everyone else who use such sleazy tactics. I hesitated because a lot of people are still emotional about the holocaust (it has been 80 years) and object to equating anything with Nazism. But I sometimes wonder if the objection is meant only to silence the critics. While their actions haven't yet reached the magnitude of atrocities committed by the Nazis, their actions certainly are consistent with the Nazi tactics. Besides, it's not as if they had any qualms labeling ordinary people 'Pirates' for sharing media. Therefore I feel it's quite appropriate to apply to them and promote the label of 'Supply Side Nazis'.
While what the Nazis did was extremely barbaric, I feel that people gate keep their references too much - especially when talking about their tactics and methods, rather than the magnitude of their cruelty. For example, you don't have to be Joseph Goebbels or someone as vicious as him to follow his tactics. And I don't find an issue in invoking his reference if someone does this.
Please don't comment like this on HN, no matter how right you are or feel you are. We need everyone to observe the guidelines even if others are posting comments that are understandably upsetting. Please try to be one of the ones who makes things better not worse.
i made and released some apps in the early days. Got tired of it and got tired of the reminders from google to add banners, screenshots, submitting icons to support multiple resolutions.. notifications that apps i haven't touched in decade are no longer compatible etc.
so much extra work involved that isn't building the app.
Got tired of this with a few extensions I made too. It felt like every year or so they'd completely break some API and I'd have to go switch to the new one, then they wanted a privacy policy, then justification for permissions, etc etc. Wasn't worth the trouble eventually and I just let them die.
