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> I assert it is trivial to not buy Apple products... Honestly I’m curious - what’s the problem?

Is it trivial to move to alternatives once you've already bought said Apple products?




I bought a pixel and there was a process that transferred everything over. Not sure how much easier it can be.


Can it transfer the photos you have in iCloud? Or the passwords that Apple will “conveniently” store in its internal password manager? Or the bookmarks you have on safari? Or the messages you have on iMessage? Or the notes you have saved in your phone? Or the reminders you have set up? Or the alarms that you have?

I also recently switched from Android to iPhone. There was also an app that automated a lot of it. But there are a ton of tiny things that build up and lock you in to a platform. And they’re all marketed as helpful little addons! Why not backup your pictures to iCloud or get more storage space? It’s great in theory, but it makes that transition so much harder. It’s funny too, I’m actually very unhappy with my iPhone and want to switch back to an android, but I’m waiting. Why? Because it took me like 3 days to fully switch all my stuff over the first time and I don’t feel like going through that again.


> Can it transfer the photos you have in iCloud? Or the passwords that Apple will “conveniently” store in its internal password manager? Or the bookmarks you have on safari? Or the messages you have on iMessage? Or the notes you have saved in your phone? Or the reminders you have set up? Or the alarms that you have?

Just want to comment, some of these (like passwords & bookmarks) are very easily exportable. iMessage is backed by MySQL, exportable in its own. Google can very easily make that integrations seamless if it so wanted.


Now convince a billion people to do the same…

While we’re waiting for that to happen, hopefully this might help explain to you what the lawsuit is actually about. Because it has nothing to do with what you’re arguing

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=A69-8XxLbJ4


Including the apps you paid for on iOS?


There are precisely zero computing platforms in which one may expect to transfer application code to a device running a different operating system. None.


Funny. I use Steam every day. I can buy a game and play it on three different operating systems.

If Apple (and Google) didn't prevent competing stores, Steam would probably do the same -- and this is exactly what Epic wants to do.


I own lots of Steam games including BG3 and can play exactly none of them on the Mac because several years into Apple Silicon, even for universal and Apple Silicon native games, Steam won't release Steam that doesn't require rosetta (which I won't install).

Also, Steam charged those games' developers 30%. Which seems to really upset people when Apple charges that.


> and can play exactly none of them on the Mac because several years into Apple Silicon

You think that's some kind of low blow? This is a problem on the Mac App Store, too; if you buy software Apple depreciates, your Apple hardware won't run it. Don't get mad at Adobe or Steam, get mad at the person depreciating things with wild abandon and expecting everyone to cater their whims. Get mad at yourself for accidentally trusting Apple and updating to their new OS without reading the conditional changes they're introducing to your computer's software. Steam and it's publishing partners have no intrinsic obligation to support software that didn't exist when they wrote their programs.

> Which seems to really upset people when Apple charges that.

The App Store could take a 99% cut, for all most developers care. The point-of-contention is Apple's lack of an alternative, which makes any percentage unsubstantiated because there's no way to deliver software at-cost. Apple isn't charging for convenience, they're commoditizing privlidge.

Nobody cares when Steam takes their 30% because people deliberately install it on their PC. The App Store on MacOS is a great example of what happens when you let an arbitrary payment surcharge meet the free market. It becomes a fucking ghost town.


> The App Store could take a 99% cut, for all most developers care. The point-of-contention is Apple's lack of an alternative, which makes any percentage unsubstantiated because there's no way to deliver software at-cost.

There's a fine alternative I use, called SetApp.

Great deal too.


It's an even better deal if you live in Europe, now: https://www.theverge.com/2024/2/29/24086792/setapp-subscript...


Multi-platform licenses from a single purchase exist, yes.

On Apple platforms as well. For instance, you can buy one license for all Affinity programs and use them on macOS, Windows, and iPadOS. https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/affinity-pricing/

Steam could do the same thing if they wanted.


Windows, Linux, Android. Literally every major computing platform has portable apps except iOS and macOS.


Windows apps work fine on Linux with Wine most of the time.


Huh? There’s no shortage of compatibility layers and cross-platform applications. Outside of mobile devices it’s more like the norm.

Operating system compatibility layers: WINE, Windows Subsystem for Linux, Linuxulator.

Cross-platform runtimes: JVM, Mono, Electron.

Cross-platform applications: Firefox, Chrome, Oracle DB, Postgres, MySQL, Apache, nginx, etc.

Multi-OS software repositories: Homebrew, Steam, Epic, etc.

Clouds even host FOSS-as-a-service.


1. That’s moving goalposts.

2. It is fairly trivial to move, there are dedicated apps for that for iOS->Android and macOS is still kind of BSD so it’s very compatible.




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