The walls of Apple's garden are tumbling down
theverge.com271 points by thunderbong 14 days ago
271 points by thunderbong 14 days ago
The thing people love forgetting is a huge part of the iPhone success is based on the North American cellular comms industry being a trustless disaster area. The deal Apple did with AT&T opened the floodgates.
Android was initially designed so that operators could customise it. The idea was apps were developed (and sold) only by operators, and everything else would be via the browser. If you had used a Nokia device in the EU in 2005 and then the exact same model in the customised form released on a US carrier you'd understand why this was such a terrible idea. The exclusion of carriers from being able to make modifications to the phone was, and remains, an active feature for end users.
People keep having to learn that developers cannot be trusted either, someone somewhere will always trend towards the very worst thing they can do, and you need look no further than this forum for the levels of avarice which have overrun the tech industry. The EU regulators live in a parallel universe where they're all dependent on WhatsApp as they've never truly internalised that there is no such thing as a free lunch and that people see them as easy marks.
> Android was initially designed so that operators could customise it. The idea was apps were developed (and sold) only by operators, and everything else would be via the browser.
I'm not sure where you got this information. The Android Marketplace arrived with version 1.0 of Android on the T-Mobile G1. Side loading has been available since the very beginning.
What you describe more closely resembles what iPhone did, except that it was never a given that Apple's carrier partners were going to be able to ship their own user facing software on the device.
Operators and OEMs can absolutely customize Android and it was more allowed in the beginning than now. As a way to reduce fragmentation and gain more control over the platform, Google started attaching more and more stipulations to allowing it's suite of software (including Marketplace, now known as Google Play) to be included on handsets.
Was there ever a case of a mobile operator launching their own software store on Android? Certainly OEMs did it, with the Samsung app store being the most prominent. Genuinely curious here, as others do note that (see the Japanese handsets post) OEMs have and even still do a bunch of customization and pre installed apps.
> I'm not sure where you got this information.
I was working in mobile games at the time and ended up working with Google on the Play Store launch, among other things.
But what I mentioned was not some big secret. Everyone knew Android was supposed to be the response to google having to keep stashes of j2me devices in drawers, which is ironically what everyone ended up needing to do with Android devices.
People have memory holed just what a shock the iphone caused, not just technically but strategically, and how it altered who has the power over distribution. The whole industry (google included) did not see this coming because of the power of the carriers.
> Everyone knew Android was supposed to be the response to google having to keep stashes of j2me devices in drawers, which is ironically what everyone ended up needing to do with Android devices.
It was still a better situation. An Android app might need tweaks but at least you're dealing with the same SDK/API (maybe with proprietary extensions?)
Those J2ME phones felt like you needed to start from basically scratch for each phone model.
Windows Mobile phones had apps distributed by wherever, you could go get them on a CD from Bestbuy if you wanted.
> I was working in mobile games at the time and ended up working with Google on the Play Store launch, among other things.
Well, mobile games are distributed via ads, not the "stores."
I don't know. This distribution, network effects story. It's sort of, whatever. People were using chat apps then, and people are using chat apps now. The iOS App Store and Google Play are such shit shows, they are glorified installation wizards for 99.9% of people. Whether you have to install-wizard via sideloading or via a deep link or whatever, it's not super material nor revolutionary. I think this comes from conflating Steam with the App Store, ultimately Steam is a real, bonafide store, and the mobile app stores are more like technical restrictions that someone is using to take a 30% cut of revenues. Which is what everyone is saying anyway.
> Windows Mobile phones had apps distributed by wherever, you could go get them on a CD from Bestbuy if you wanted.
This was also the case for Palm smartphones. Since they were an amalgam of a Palm PDA and a cell phone, they kept the app model of Palm PDAs. IIRC, you could even transfer apps from one Palm PDA to another through their infrared port, or through Bluetooth if both were fancy ones.
I think a lot of people forget that the iPhone was not the first smart phone. I was downloading apps, checking email, and sending IMs over the AIM network with Verichat on my Treo 650 well before the iPhone was a thing.
The two huge innovations of the iPhone were decent web browsing (I had a Treo, it sucked for the web) and the multitouch screen with corresponding gestures. Nobody else was doing anything like this yet, and I remember this being the thing that blew everyone away at the keynote.
Multi-touch was such an enabler, because it meant you could do an on-screen keyboard properly, which meant you could replace the physical keyboard with more screen.
I remember everyone scoffing at the "lol you can't type on it" dramatically missing this point.
Also the keyboard wasn't.stuck with QWERTY! You could swap keyboards. You could have big numbers when typing phone numbers, and letters when texting. You could type Californian street names correctly! Write math! Etc.
Yeah. By our own metrics, the first iPhone wasn’t even a smartphone because it couldn’t load apps.
Even back then, people were exactly clear on those two things being the true revolution of the iPhone.
>Was there ever a case of a mobile operator launching their own software store on Android?
I believe Verizon launched their own app store at one point. It was called V Cast.
A quick search led me here: https://www.pcworld.com/article/498393/verizons_android_app_...
Previous versions Android were nothing like T-Mobile’s G1. It was more like if Nokia made a BlackBerry device.
Just something else I was thinking about with Android. I love the Android OS but Google’s implementation is far and away the best version and while you could technically run Android with just the bare necessities and without google apps, it may as well be unusable. So, google has “technically” made it available without their services but the juice isn’t worth the squeeze to get it working how you want it.
Yes, before it was launched it was a different OS. The iPhone forced a pivot.
Nonetheless, the very first phone that shipped with Android on it was the T-Mobile G1 (also branded as the HTC Dream).
> Just something else I was thinking about with Android. I love the Android OS but Google’s implementation is far and away the best version and while you could technically run Android with just the bare necessities and without google apps, it may as well be unusable. So, google has “technically” made it available without their services but the juice isn’t worth the squeeze to get it working how you want it.
Yes, it's unfortunate that AOSP is a shell that is missing so much-- it's more an OS framework than a complete OS at this point.
> People keep having to learn that developers cannot be trusted either
The problem with this is that Apple is also a developer trying to sell you things. I would feel better if Apple's goals and the user's goals were aligned all the time instead of just some of the time.
Admittedly, Apple's real priority is just to make money on every transaction that occurs upon an idevice.
Yes businesses are in the business of making money. Apple is a business. The hope for you (a consumer) is that your needs and theirs are aligned sufficiently well that they solve problems you benefit from while minimizing how much they exploit you. It’s capitalism.
Accurate. Businesses that show consistent good will towards their users often just haven't become successful enough to afford to exploit you yet. Pointing out that Apple only really cares about extracting your money is mostly an admission that they've found we will let them do it.
Or, Apple gives you your time back, and for that, you are happy to trade a bit more money and a lot less time, to be a customer.
Apple makes hardware enabled platform experiences for end users who don't want to tweak and people who value their own time more than money. That's a big reason Apple causes so much resentment -- not everyone can value time over money.
It's also resented by devs who don't understand or value what a hardware enabled platform experience for end users can mean to their income if they grok it.
> That's a big reason Apple causes so much resentment -- not everyone can value time over money.
Is it? I have been buying apple products for over 20 years now, and like most people here make a lot more money than the people who behold an iPhone as a status symbol lol.
I still see Apple's desire to get a kickback for every transaction on an iPhone nefarious nickel and diming, and I see their "ecosystem" as deliberate vendor lock-in - and I think that "ecosystem" actually holds Apple's OSes back in terms of innovation.
I regularly disagree with Apple's choices. Not all of em? I was ok with the vision pro - not buying one, but sometimes you need to experiment with things like that. Just because I disagree doesn't mean I have to all-or-nothing it.
Per all the smug "just get an android phone" comments, I DID. I have a galaxy fold 4 and an iPhone 13 sitting on my desk. Yea, I can afford to do silly stuff like that, and I'm a goofy nerd that likes trying different things. I don't have a steadfast attachment to one platform - another reason I find the "ecosystem" stuff obnoxious.
Or, the two things we’ve said about Apple aren’t mutually exclusive. I’m talking about how they behave, you’re talking about the philosophy for the products they create. I like and consume Apple products too, and my willingness to buy their updated model every few years is how they know they have me right where they want me.
Oh got it.
So then Apple is just as bad as the other developers, and instead users should be able to use their own property to bypass any sort of Apple fees.
Problem solved. Let the user decide if they want to refuse to pay the Apple fee, and buy on alternative app stores.
What Apple's done is also violating antitrust laws, which has gotten them in trouble with the DOJ recently. And it's about time. They are a business, but an abusive anti-competitive one that has serious lock-in that bars competitors from their platform for no good reason other than to make even more money. They also forbid some apps because Apple releases something similar, and they don't want any competition. If they did allow competition they might not have made so much money, but they also wouldn't be the subject of major lawsuits in the US and in the EU.
Um, there’s something called Android. No need to be on the Apple platform at all. You can switch to it if you’d like. When I walk into a Tesla dealership I don’t expect to be able to buy a Chevrolet.
Um, whataboutism isn't a valid defense with the DOJ. Go read the many counts the DOJ is suing Apple for. It's extensive and points to a systemic problem at Apple stifling competition in many ways. Microsoft lost their antitrust case and they weren't doing 1/2 the shady stuff Apple is doing.
You’re right. They make Android bubbles green. The horror.
They also forbid competition in many ways - forcing Safari browser no matter what browser you install, Chrome is Safari, Firefox is Safari, Opera is Safari. That's far worse than what Microsoft did to get sued by simply bundling IE with Windows. No, Apple forbids any other browser but their browser, and this is done for anti-competitive reasons. That's just one example. It's a lot more than "Android bubbles green". But you're a fanboi and a troll, and you don't really care what the DOJ lawsuit says, that much is clear.
Oh go switch to Android. Until very recently, iOS had a minority share of the market and still does worldwide. It’s in no way comparable to Microsoft 25 years ago which then had an overwhelming market position. Were you one of those guys who spelled Microsoft with a ‘$’ btw?