>I see no evidence that this harms consumers at all. Quite the opposite.
Your entire argument is refuted if Apple isn't allowed to abuse it's market position and you're allowed to have "Apple Pay +30% price" "Stripe Payment" "Payment X" - you would quickly see the real value of App Store and Apple Payment processing convenience - that 30% would probably come down to 10% where it provides the convenience value.
If consumers weren't harmed consumer choice would have no effect.
This "users are idiots and they need Apple to tell them what's best for them" is like Stockholm syndrome with Apple fans, it's especially entertaining to hear it so often on a "hacker" newsgroup. Good thing papa Apple decided you can't have that dangerous Fortnite scam tricking you in to using a different payment system, you're better off not wasting time on games anyway - really if you look at it that way they are saving you from bad choices two times - win/win for Apple users I'd say.
It's not Stockholm syndrome, it's familiarity with how things worked on other platform.
Windows/IE literally wasted hundreds of millions of person hours by being leaky, insecure, virus-prone crap. You could - if you chose to - make quite a nice income out of sending out phishing emails on our open email system. Likewise for randomsware, only more so. And so on.
iOS may have other flaws, but worrying that your iPhone is going to be locked by a Bitcoin hacker isn't one of them.
And realistically, users are idiots - at least technically. We've all heard of PC users who click on every random thing and end up with twenty-odd toolbars and almost every possible virus. The only reason phones aren't the same is because security is locked down.
These are consumer devices. They are not hacker devices. If you want an open hacker device, go build one and see if you can persuade people to buy it.
You won't - of course - because in userland locked down security is a feature, not a bug. And users care more about not having to pay a ransom to unlock their own phones than they do about running with root privileges. Not having to think about this is valuable.
Having said all that, there's definitely room to negotiate the costs of all of this, and also to open up selected services that can be proven to be secure. But those costs, the access to useful non-risky APIs for devs, and access for third party service providers, are all different issues to the core validity of the model itself.
>Windows/IE literally wasted hundreds of millions of person hours by being leaky, insecure, virus-prone crap. You could - if you chose to - make quite a nice income out of sending out phishing emails on our open email system. Likewise for randomsware, only more so. And so on.
And so your argument is that Microsoft should have forbidden anyone from using a different browser engine (like Apple does) to make things safer ? What if someone installed Chrome or Firefox - that could have leaks and then you would think less of the platform - right ?
It's that people aren't exactly stretching their imaginations to picture their phone ecosystem going to hell. They've all been there before, and have vivid memories of what they don't want.
They are also not crazy to have different preferences for a phone and for a desktop. Just like you have different preferences when selecting a hotel room vs a house.
The argument is nonsense because Apple decisions are not driven by security but are there to ensure they get a cut of every revenue stream on their platform. If this was just about security there would be a way to verify secure 3rd party payment processing methods - I trust Stripe as much as I trust Apple for example. And you wouldn't be forced to offer the same price on other platforms either.
I don't mind personally I see the value they offer - they make products that are better overall for a large majority of consumers and their ecosystem just works for many use cases - it doesn't fit me particularly well but I see the value proposition.
Pretending that these store policies are driven by security is nonsense, those kinds of arguments tick me off.
Clearly Apple wants to make money. The only argument being made is that some customers choose the walled garden because they want a telephone, not a part-time job keeping the weeds at bay. As you say, that's (a component of) what they are selling, and they do it because it sells (long-term, in their estimation).
The number of customers who chose an iPhone because it only lets them buy apps from Apple is a tiny fraction of the number of people who bought the device as a fashion accessory. What a strange thing to want. It makes little sense to think that Apple is catering to the tiny former group instead of simply extracting as much money as it can out of the latter group.
About a decade ago, I got an iPod Touch, on the basis that it would be a portable computer that I could hack around with. Instead I find that it was entirely locked down, and required permission to install any software. Heck, even the developers kit required a $100 license fee, which was outside of my hobbyist budget at the time. For my own device.
The phone ecosystem has already gone to hell, and Apple paved the way there.
We got a pull request from someone to enable the fonts entitlement, except they couldn't test it because it costed them money to do so. You can see so yourself here: https://help.apple.com/developer-account/#/dev21218dfd6
If Microsoft made the same decisions as Apple did with the XP release (including always running apps in a sandbox), then yes, you wouldn't have to worry about malware at all on Windows. Instead, we have a billion dollar antivirus industry.
> Because of this, any device running iOS 12.1.4 is not only immune to these particular attacks, but it can’t be infected anymore either, due to the reboot when installing 12.1.4 (or later).
iOS certainly has malware and vulnerabilities, like any software, but they end up patched pretty quickly. It's definitely not the malware landscape we had on Windows 2000-2015 (arguably when Windows Defender got good).
> Windows/IE literally wasted hundreds of millions of person hours by being leaky, insecure, virus-prone crap
How do you explain that I've been using mac os for decades, I am able to install third party software, and I have not run into any of the issues you are describing?
> you would quickly see the real value of App Store and Apple Payment processing convenience - that 30% would probably come down to 10% where it provides the convenience value.
That might be good for developers but it does not necessarily also imply that consumers are harmed. You assume that if a store charged a lower rate that the savings would be passed onto the consumer, but this does not reflect the real world where developers might simply choose to pocket the difference instead.
As an example, the Epic Games Store is charging $59.99 for the new release of Cyberpunk 2077. What's the cost on Steam? Also $59.99.
Your entire argument is refuted if Apple isn't allowed to abuse it's market position and you're allowed to have "Apple Pay +30% price" "Stripe Payment" "Payment X" - you would quickly see the real value of App Store and Apple Payment processing convenience - that 30% would probably come down to 10% where it provides the convenience value.
If consumers weren't harmed consumer choice would have no effect.
This "users are idiots and they need Apple to tell them what's best for them" is like Stockholm syndrome with Apple fans, it's especially entertaining to hear it so often on a "hacker" newsgroup. Good thing papa Apple decided you can't have that dangerous Fortnite scam tricking you in to using a different payment system, you're better off not wasting time on games anyway - really if you look at it that way they are saving you from bad choices two times - win/win for Apple users I'd say.