Choose Android, get actual access to your device and install what you want but have your privacy completely trampled upon by Google
Choose Apple, get marginally better privacy but no ownership of your phone and no possibility to install what you want.
I wish we had a reasonable alternative, it's so frustrating to have to choose between two bad alternatives and the behavior of those companies that completely disrespect and tramples their customer right makes my blood boil.
I just want both the right to use my phone fully and the right to my privacy.
(then take a look at youtube vanced)
I'm able to use all the standard apps (Uber, games, etc) without a Google account. I use Aurora instead of the Google Play Store, local maps as my GPS back-end, and my phone only contains the apps I actually used instead of pre-baked vendor bullshit. It's all super smooth and completely stable. I really can't say enough nice things about it.
If you're looking for the third option, I would really give aftermarket android roms a try.
Pretty sure that's a non-starter for anyone who needs to use their phone for work, which is more people than you would think now that so many office workers are remote.
Now we're all crying for a third platform because Apple is too restrictive and Google, surprise (to no one least of all WP users), turned out to be evil and I feel absolutely no sympathy for the tech community, particularly developers who decry the current paradigm. We chose this.
I don't disagree that having a third player in the space would improve things, but it is just weird how the perception of some companies change.
I support the EFF, but that’s basically all I know how to do. Imagine if Google’s software developers went on strike every time they tried to pull another AMP on the open web?
On Android it is locked down in an inaccessible /data partition, unless rooted. (Ignoring /sdcard and the iOS equivalent Files app)
On iOS you can access almost the entire filesystem via extracting iTunes backups. You can freely dig into app internal database, files, message history, etc. You can even edit these backups and restore them, allowing full write access
You know... since 2017 when I started getting wary of Apple due to Qualcomm, IMG and Services Strategy. I sometimes wish Microsoft are still in the Mobile race. Trying find some synergy between Desktop PC gaming, Xbox and Mobile. Surface Phone. Porting some of their work from Xbox.
But unlike Microsoft and Google. Apple has no inherent weakness in their business and strategy. They also have an extremely strong cult following both online and offline.
So unless government managed to do something about it ( which I seriously doubt ), the future will be as frustrating as it is now.
> Choose Apple, get marginally better privacy
I disagree with the word “marginally” here. Compared to Android, it’s far better and keeps staying ahead (while Android may try to catch up for certain features and controls).
The problem is, that some important (e.g. banking) apps are missing and cannot be installed/run with the Android emulator. Another problem is, that Sailfish is available only in very few countries, e.g. not in the US.
The fastest of the open source phones right now has the same processor as the Pixel 2. IIRC it might even be another libhybris implementation (glibc/mesa/gbm userspace on an Android kernel and driver stack).
It's highly likely that even if there's an commercial alternative which gains significant market share to compete with duopoly in the future, they will have to do so by either compromising privacy or ownership of the device.
Solution right now is to make difficult lifestyle choice by using passion or idealistic projects. LineageOS + Fdroid can get things done for those who use their smartphone as an tool and ready to sacrifice a bit of social conformity(which can be a privilege at current times).
There are more extreme alternatives like Linux phones which I hope becomes less extreme in years to come.
The other caveat being that there are still many apps that are not designed for mobile form factor, and while there is strong work on libhandy and many apps use it for responsive GTK apps, there are many great apps were work hasn’t yet started for mobile sizing/touch input/virtual keyboard
There's the PinePhone. I'm posting from one right now. It's still not super easy to use and non-voip calls/mms are still a bit of a mess.
Here is a "radical" idea: what if we had an Apple users union? What if Apple had to justify their app censorship to that union? What if the union could vote that censorship out?
Our current capitalistic model assumes that competition is the solution for the consumer, but the Apple/Google stranglehold is essentially indisruptable.
Of course, the only way we could really get this union model would be to have it forced by the same government which has repeatedly and increasingly failed to protect the consumer from these bloated monopolistic corporations. I guess we'll have to settle for some optimistic SciFi porn. Paging Cory Doctorow: https://pluralistic.net/
When the union says "Ok, Apple isn't cooperating, so everyone... " ...actually, what would you have the members do? Turn off icloud? Stop buying new airpods? You will never get all the "users union" members to give up one atom of convenience.
I wish it could be optional.
lol, not sure which android you are talking about... probably the one where you need to find an exploit to be able to root it (I guess even HN forgot that you are supposed to be administrator on your own computer)
This post seems to mischaracterize what is going on and seems to be pre-prepared sentiment that has nothing to do with what actually is happening or going to happen
Apple users can still file share dos games, if they download that app now. Not clear what level of device control you are reacting to, without agreeing or disagreeing with your sentiment.
Since this is really intended to make developing iOS apps more accessible, it requires resigning or rebuilding apps. Since iDOS is open source, that should be no problem here - you can compile and install your own copy, likely just by loading the upstream project in Xcode and deploying it your iDevice like app developers do. A usability problem is that apps installed this way are only runnable for a week [0], at which point the signature must be refreshed or iOS will refuse to open the app.
AltStore [1] is a project that streamlines this ordeal as much as possible. It’s an alternate app store that allows you to install a bunch of open source apps not allowed in the app store (e.g. apps using permissions that would be rejected, or game console emulators). It also comes with a server component that uses Apple’s frameworks on Mac/Windows to refresh those apps’ validity on iDevices on the same network. If you regularly connect your iDevice to a network with an AltServer of your own, the apps should continue to work.
It’s certainly not pretty, and very far removed from fare more open Android devices, but workarounds to run your own software on iDevices do exist. There’s an entire subreddit, r/sideloaded, dedicated to this apparently mostly for piracy purposes.
[0]: Unless you pay for the Apple Developer Program, which has much longer limits. This limit is for free accounts.
[1]: https://altstore.io/
Lately Apple started mandating that apps like telegram or discord must make it impossible for iPhone users to see nsfw content, which has tipped the balance towards android for me. For the first time in many years I'm using an Android phone. But as I said, one of all the factors to consider.
The largest loophole still is probably Enterprise Distribution, which allows high-limits (long time, many devices) signing associated with an Enterprise account.
Some of them are children. Some need or prefer Apple's locked in stuff (iMessage.) Not to mention Android is a slow burning trash fire.
I've seen so many ignorant comments like this about iOS lately I'm on the fence about deleting my HN account. I think I'd be happier, and all the people here who keep defending Apple's abuse would be happier.
There are also people offering to sign you app with an enterprise certificate for a fee in the more dodgy corners of the internet but Apple is known to crack down on those once in a while as this obviously goes outside their ToS.
If the app isn't open-source, you don't have any great options. Hypothetically, compiled apps from other developers can be re-signed just like apps you build yourself (see AltStore [1], which uses this technique), but those apps are still time-bombed and have to be periodically refreshed. The barrier to entry means you don't see a ton of apps around that do this; if something can't be compliant with App Store rules, it generally doesn't get made on iOS.
(There's also jailbreaking, and there used to be a decently-large community of developers building applications and tweaks for jailbroken iOS devices. That's gotten smaller both as Apple's made jailbreaking more difficult to maintain, and as new features in iOS have made much of the functionality people used to jailbreak for redundant.)
All of the "alternative" stores and distribution methods work with this mechanism, there is no better way and it is completely at Apple's whims.
Really, most interested users probably gave up at this point, looking at the decaying Jailbreak ecosystem.
IMO this shouldn't be legal.
Even just for coding, that sounds awful to me. iOS users bought a mobile device, and particularly if they're on an iPad Pro, a mobile device with a really good processor. For me, part of that would be being able to treat it like a mobile device, that it should keep working if I drive through a tunnel, that I should be able to use it on the go.
Hard for me to wrap my head around people being satisfied with "ignore that you have a well-built device with interesting sensors in front of you, and instead just use it as a thin client to another functioning computer."
There are cheaper thin clients out there than an iOS device if someone is OK ignoring their native hardware, doing all of their programming through a terminal, and having functionality break if their device goes offline.
I got an iPhone because it does what it does well, and doesn't do other things at all.
iPhones are slick, costly and secure, at the cost of not being malleable.
It's a trade-off I made at purchase time and I know most users of both iPhone and Android never considered that tradeoff.
My windows phone would get unplugged at 9am, and I’d party until the sun came up. Pretty much everything was disabled by then (by the battery saver), but I could still call a cab. Everyone’s iPhone was an expensive paperweight until someone located a charger.
I do agree with your statement today. iPhones have gotten markedly better at being a phone first and computing device second. It’s still got a ways to go, but my phone isn’t dead at 2am with battery saver on.
Think about it this way: A chair supplier telling Apple to only allow it's employees to sit a certain way. Or architects telling it to only build their HQ's a certain way. Not as an advice, but, enforced.
How ridiculous is that!
Not as ridiculous as being well aware of the limitations of iPhones wrt to installing applications outside of App Store and still buying one. People should vote with their wallets. Me personally I do not mind the limitations, but if you do - don't buy it.
That only works in efficient markets, which, obviously phones are not. An oligopoly where the barrier of entry requires like a billion dollars to spin up new phone hardware, a new OS, and an app ecosystem is not a place where effective competition is going to occur.
Do you know what the tool for doing that is called? Government. Vote with your actual votes.
Give other company your money.
Chair suppliers don't have a history of decreeing sitting posture. The iPhone OTOH has been locked down from day 1.
Look also at Pythonista and a-shell for useful, if limited, programming environments. Both work by translating code into JS or wasm.
May or may not be pedantry, but it’s not allowing the UIKit APIs, only SwiftUI. Still possible to make a full app, but on top of the IDE features that it lacks from Xcode, it’s specifically shutting out important parts of current iOS app development in 2021.
That’s not to say there’s not good reasons for it too, but it’s worth pointing out.
It'd also allow apps to dynamically load external software, which could be used as a bypass for Apple's stringent app store requirements.
If there were no legal restrictions with what you're doing with you're phone, Apple would have a very hard time preventing you from doing what you want. Anyone could buy an exploit for iOS for a million and sell unlocks for 50$.
There is force and coercion involved, so a governmental intervention is much more necessary.
It would also make it way easier to transfer your apps from platform to platform and to switch OSes.
Everyone is paying a lot of money for a system they basically own nothing about. You keep paying, for apps, for hardware, that’s forever tied up to the whims of that platform’s owner (not you).
Not in favour of more laws, but forcing the hands of these platforms so they provide more control to their customers is not a bad thing.
At the moment none of them have any incentive to do it.
On Android the Play Store is a major distributor of malware [1]. I would like to avoid that, which comes with trade-offs, which I accept. Is it perfect? No. But it works.
I do wonder if there is a path where iOS can be completely replaced by a third party OS, so iPhones can be used in a way to allow you to install anything you want, but it is no longer Apple's 'responsibility'. However, that also comes with its own set of problems.
[1] https://www.zdnet.com/article/play-store-identified-as-main-...
there is a lot of pressure to buy either an iPhone or an official (GooglePlay) Android phone. Most (all) services only support these two options. Also true for public/governmental institutions.
I mainly use Linux but was looking for a secondary laptop/tablet hybrid for my office needs. I considered getting an iPad but ultimately went for a Surface Pro, which was the right choice I think. The device and UI (just Windows 10) is not nearly as polished as iPadOS, but at least I can just install normal FOSS software like KeepassXC instead of downloading some proprietary app from the store, hoping it won't exfiltrate my data. I can even play the occasional round of SimCity 2000 in DOSBox. iOS & iPadOS devices are great for media consumption, but I would never consider them for any type of "serious" office work.
Also there are lots of old apps that have found homes on Linux (like gEDA) that don't run on iOS because Apple makes things so hard.
What do you mean? Unlike Android, most apps on iPhone are native code.
For many, many people, the iPad absolutely DOES replace having a traditional computer. The prediction came true.
I rarely bother traveling with a laptop anymore unless I need to present or run demos. My iPad pro + the fancy keyboard case gives me insane portability and battery life plus access to all my files (via Dropbox), native Office, etc.
Whining that "you can't do anything but game and consume in iOS" in 2021 is just hilariously wrong.
So selling a blown-up iPhone for $500 to that market made more sense than what Android OEMs did, which was advertise Flash compatibility.
That being said, I have only ever owned Android tablets. I dip my toe into iOS and iPadOS every now and then but it always feels too locked down compared to what I'm used to.
Tablet is literally everywhere for those on the Field. From Engineers on site, to Sales going to visit client doing presentation.
The way we should think about it is that Tablet didn't replace PC as "the" computing platform, as the platform itself, the pie grow a lot bigger. There are close to 300M iPad user. That is not a bad figure.
Plus the new feature of creating and packaging your iOS / iPadOS app + uploading it, directly on the iPad.
Apple seems to contradict its own rules since a few years now.
How does this solve the problem of letting customers run a fat app without forking over for the corresponding server horsepower to run it? I know that JS is high performance when written well, but it takes time and money to do it right.
Consider contacting your state's Attorney General office, and the US Attorney General office. Many states' AG offices have antitrust divisions[1].
The US Dept. of Justice also has an Antitrust Division[2], along with a page that details how and why[3] to get in touch with them:
> Information from the public is vital to the work of the Antitrust Division. Your e-mails, letters, and phone calls could be our first alert to a possible violation of antitrust laws and may provide the initial evidence needed to begin an investigation.
The FTC has the Bureau of Competition[4], as well.
[1] https://www.naag.org/issues/antitrust/
[2] https://www.justice.gov/atr
[3] https://www.justice.gov/atr/report-violations
[4] https://www.ftc.gov/about-ftc/bureaus-offices/bureau-competi...
Not to mention the effect on intellectually curious users (and learning). These computers bundled with phones are crippled, tinker-proof, and there is no way to extend or improve them after purchase except as according to the seller's business model. Un-tethering from the seller and opting not to use their servers is effectively discouraged or prevented. "Protecting you" is a suspect justification for all the hoops one must jump through to "accept the risk". There is no anticipation of user autonomy. The world according to the seller is divided into "developers" and "users". Anyone in both categories is intended to pay Apple twice. First for the hardware, then again for the "developer certificate" and a percentage of any licensing revenue.
Maybe that is what the market is demanding. Or maybe the market does not have full information and thus does not understand the full spectrum of possible choices. As long as the cartel persists we will never know.
Name email and phone number would be great for us to see and share
The State of California will do precisely nothing about the abuses of the largest company on the planet, domiciled in their state, employing tens of thousands of the most well-paid and politically-connected taxpayers of their State, whose primary competitor in this space is doing exactly the same thing to their users, is also domiciled in the State, and is also pissing firehoses of money into its budgetary coffers.
Your call will be politely received, and the regulator on the line will duly note your concerns. After the call concludes, the regulator's office will promptly file your concerns under L, for "LOL @ this fucking nerd".
Vote with your money and don't buy an iPhone.
As Rand would put it:
> “Free competition enforced by law” is a grotesque contradiction in terms.
A side aspect is running afoul of copyright and that is likely the other significant money spinner / target.
As users, we only have any visibility into three numbers:
A. The number of good apps that make it through the filter. (True positives.)
B. The number of good apps that are caught by it. (False positives.)
C. The number of fraudulent apps that make it through the filter. (False negatives.)
B may be larger than C, leading to the perception that the filter does more harm than ngood. But we are getting caught in a base rate fallacy. To really understand the filter, we need one more number:
D. The number of fraudulent apps caught by the filter. (True negatives.)
My impression is that average people have no idea what a huge sea of garbage, fraud, and bad actors is swirling out there on the Internet. The number of bad people is relatively small, but the volume of malicious hot garbage they are able to spew out is incredibly large. I wouldn't be surprised if every false positive (a good app like the one here getting caught) was balanced by a thousand true negatives (bad apps being filtered out).
With rates like that, the filter is clearly vital. But we don't see the full picture, so we never really know.
One piece of anecdata we do have is what unfiltered ecosystems look like. And they seem to universally descend into roiling cesspits of porn, hate speech, warez, etc.
So while it's very important to continue being critical of gatekeepers because they wield disproportionate social power, it's also good to be mindful that they aren't all bad. Notice how these days hacking always seems to be about phishing or email attachments? Everyone seems to have forgotten the days when worms in executables downloaded from the web were a major attack vector. That dwindled because the major OSes put these filters in place.
As usual, when something is working like it's supposed to, people incorrectly think it's doing nothing at all.
Stores and platforms can and should keep all their sophisticated fraud-detection tools, hardened runtime environment, etc. and continue to guard against untold numbers of awful apps.
The human review is supposed to take over where the mechanics fail. Yet we know (from Epic trial, etc.) that Apple has a comically small number of people assigned to this, relative to the millions of apps in existence. We can extrapolate how little time must be spent on each human review.
We also know that people outside of Apple were able to dig up scams pretty easily, without even having access to all the tools/data that Apple must have. Apple clearly could have invested more in this, and did not.
So we know (1) the Apple review team is limited, (2) serious problems can still be found with relatively little effort, and (3) they nonetheless choose to spend their limited resources chasing minor violations of App Store Rule of the Week.
We also know from the Epic trial that, despite what they say, Apple certainly will give some developers special treatment. This means leniency or rule-bending was an option for them here, and who better to work with than a developer like this, who has spent years writing software for Apple platforms, clearly increasing the value of Apple devices in the process? Apple looked at that years-long relationship and said: “get out of our store”.
I spent a lot of time cleaning computers for friends and family, and often times they would have viruses because users were looking at porn or downloading games.
Well, it turns out most users like looking at porn and downloading games. Most users want to play indie games (that may be garbage) or read not-licensed foreign comics. Users enjoy being able to boot up old programs and play with fan made mods.
Let's not pretend cracking down on all of this is for the user. Honest computer security would give the user a clear and readable label ("hey, this free game is going to send off your personal data including browser history") and let them make the choice. Users are not farm animals to be kept in neat little pens.
Apple can't just impose to user what basically boils down to a fee to use your own hardware as you want, while at the same time preventing their competitors from competing at par with their services. Their draconian policies have been getting harsher and more drastic over time, it almost feels like they are really trying to get the EU Commission to punish them somehow.
With that being said, your analogies don't actually hold up at all.
> People paid good money for their phones, and so they must be free to use them as they see fit.
Apple doesn't hide its policies from its customers and while some people may be ignorant to them, it doesn't change the fact that it's not hidden away. You're not tricked into buying an iPhone thinking you'll be able to install any software you want on it. Anyone that cares enough to want to do so is also fully capable of looking this information up and understanding that they can't (even if they really want to).
> To me this sounds like buying a car that's restricted from entering Germany
It's more like you buy a car knowing fully well that it doesn't run Spotify on its computer then buying it anyway, then being upset that it doesn't run spotify. I get that your point is more that a car's purpose to drive places and an iPhone is a computer so its purpose is to compute things, but even a car imposes restrictions on its use with things like a governor to prevent you going over a certain speed. If you want a car without that restriction you buy one without it.
> or buying a fruit processor that forbids you to blend fruit
If anyone bought a fruit processor that doesn't blend fruit, that's kind of on them. But given that this were hypothetically possible, the person wouldn't have to buy that fruit processor because they should know before hand that that particular one doesn't blend fruit.
I don't see why the option to sideload stuff onto the iPhone you've bought would make the platform less secure, especially if it is disabled by default and requires explicit user consent to be turned on.
Also, their focus on "security" has always felt very phony to me, as much as their focus on "standards" always basically meant they only evangelized for interoperability when it suited their interests. What they have been doing with iMessage in the USA is the epitome of abusing your market position, but I guess the FTC doesn't really care about that.
It's not the same on MacOS because users aren't going around looking for new apps to install. People install their core programs (e.g. Office, maybe some games), and they get everything else on the web.
Yes. That's part of their profit margin. Just as how the PS5 literally sells for less than it costs to make the console[0], Apple doesn't realize all of their profits from iPhone sales until after purchase where they expect a certain dollar figure from their customers to be spend on either their subscription services or via the 30% app store cut.
This is also happening in VR, by the way - the Valve Index is still the top but the Oculus Quest 2 is insanely close to matching the Index in experience, and that's all thanks to how Facebook literally sells that at a loss of $400, since they want $800 for a version without (1) Ads and (2) their cut from Oculus store sales[1].
> It's not the same on MacOS
Exactly, and I think the pricing difference of these devices reflects that (despite the main cost centers, being manufacturing tooling and labor, having largely similar costs for both). If the iOS landscape turned into the MacOS landscape overnight, we'd see a similar jump in cost for the phone thanks to the lost post-sale revenue.
0: https://www.gamesradar.com/ps5-is-being-sold-at-a-loss-but-h...
1: https://i.judge.sh/imperturbable/Mint/TuPfZ65njJ.png ( https://business.oculus.com/products/#:~:text=Oculus%20for%2... )
The thing is iPads offer good experience as a tablet but when you want from it a bit more Apple doesn’t allow it because of their Apps Store policies.
Personally I think iPad could be a great device for coding on the go. But the fact that we can’t install anything outside of apple’s control blocks this option.
RDP or SSH is nice but it relies on internet connection. I’d like to use the native power of the device. With M1 there’s no reason it wouldn’t be able to do so.
Their arguments about security to sounds more like bunch of excuses.
Surface Pros are about as good as you can get right now for a general purpose computer that is also a tablet and also are not incredibly expensive.
Also in the future Steam Deck might actually fit the category! Like if you don't mind the extra knobs and controls it's basically a fully supported Linux tablet! :)
Consumers would benefit from real competition and disruption in this space, as competition increases efficiency and lowers costs.
Definitely have a cloud backup of your device enabled in case you need to ever reset your device so that you don't lose the app.
If you want to install it on another device things become more complex...
Any web browser based app runs executable code ffs.
Apple since 2008: Tells people that they can't install programs on their own devices. Any mention of asking the government to force them to stop this is met by Hacker News users vehemently defending their right to let Apple (and only Apple, at all times, with no off switch) decide everything.
I don't buy it. Something stinks here. This is nothing short of a digital new world order and obviously the current status quo is very, very valuable to the companies who run these platforms but I believe it's also very valuable to the entire power matrix that holds us all in check.
> For example, iSH was once rejected with the rationale that “During review, your app installed or launched executable code, which is not permitted on the App Store.” The template itself clearly outlines the case it is meant to apply—an app that is installing code by itself, to bypass review—but in the case of iSH the reviewer chose to install code and then complained that the app did what they told it to do.
I can see the arguments from https://saagarjha.com/blog/2020/11/08/fixing-section-2-5-2/ applying here.
The popularity of these articles and podcast may have shined a light on this bit of hackery. It sucks it is getting booted, but it’s largely interesting because it allowed you to do the thing Apple doesn’t want you to do.
[0] https://www.howtogeek.com/739100/how-to-install-windows-31-o...
> allows for downloading of content without licensing.
But that's messed up if you did that.
I think I'll stick with running DOSBox in a browser.
This just opens opportunity for “makers” devices (you can do something uniq) and companies. Ie some cheap phones with OS targeting market in Africa. This also means a new type of VCs / ycombinators.
