Technology

Tell your rep(s) you're in favor of it, and if you have a time, visit in person.

But… something something security and something something not a monopoly… am I doing this anti-consumer white knight thing right?

Except breaking end-to-end encrypted messaging. That’s the one sore spot.

Yeah, but I still feel like the majority of people are stupid. That's kind of how apple got such a huge market share to begin with. People just happily locked themselves in to a closed garden with shit for options.

Same. I agree that people are too stupid to know what apps they should use. But that also includes those using some of apples closed down, limited apps and features haha

jmp.chat

I used this service breifly a while ago. Not enough to say whether it's good or not, but I remember it working just fine.

Yeah, it's a messed up position. It's made more complicated by then being half right. People do often like having fewer choices. Making a streamlined OS that doesn't allow them access to the kernel or crucial components, that they literally can't break by accident, that is indeed an appealing feature to many. But it's not appealing because they're stupid, it's appealing they're rational.

This has always been Apple's method, make everything intuitive, easy to use for anyone and their mother. And a big part of that is removing all the extra clutter from the interface, all the options users would rarely if ever use. This is also the contentious part, removing the advanced options that power users might want access to.

But at least initially, they understood that the reason for doing all this, their goal, was to make their products better. These days it seems like they're less clear on that goal. The idea that they're "dumbing down" their products and controlling everything because their users are too stupid, this is a new attitude, and it shows a misunderstanding of the principals their company was built on. Apple was only successful because they made very good products which were comfortable to use. They certainly never won popularity through competitive pricing or having the most powerful machines...

Personally, I think it's a foolish move to be this controlling over their iOS ecosystem. This is really making the product inferior. Sideloading apps will not destroy their walled garden, it just gives power users the options they want. Apple should be afraid of losing more market share, they don't have all that much to lose...

Their reasons for not opening the App Store aren’t even good logical reasons like it would make the platform unsafe but then they claim the Mac is a safe platform. That’s what makes it so insulting.

I’d be less frustrated with them if they were just honest and said it’s about the money.

Happy cake day!

I'd be happy for the Australian government to take them to task over this one. But I'm afraid you've fallen for Murdoch propaganda with the journalism thing.

They weren't "using our journalism". They provide a direct benefit to the news organisations. It's a mostly symbiotic relationship, with people going to Google and Facebook because it's a good way to find news that interests them, and news organisations being funnelled traffic directly to them for free. But honestly, if money should be flowing in any direction, it's to Google and Meta. The financial benefit for news organisations of the existing relationship is far greater for news organisations than it is for Google and Meta. People would still be Googling things and sharing on Facebook even if news didn't make up part of that.

Jeff Jarvis is a great thinker and communicator in this space, and he moderates a great discussion on the topic here. About 34 minutes into the video they hear from a QUT professor who is pretty scathing towards the NMBC.

It's the "Apple Way"