7 ms·

It's not that they don't value it. It's more like they aren't aware of the risks.

by mh8h 3y ago

Wowfunhappy 3y ago
Maybe that's true, and consumers don't know what's best for them. However, we live in a free society, where consumers are supposed to be able to decide for themselves what they value, and spend their money accordingly. Where we do impose regulations to ensure public safety, they are decided by a democratic process. And as imperfect as that process may be at times, it is better than letting a single for-profit corporation set the terms.
- gms 3y ago
  Consumers are indeed able to decide for themselves: they can buy any number of Android phones from many manufacturers for a different experience.
  - dns_snek 3y ago
    Thankfully the EU regulators have decided otherwise.
  - Nevermark 3y ago
    > Consumers are indeed able to decide for themselves > they can buy any number of Android phones I can imagine a world in which iPhone's and Android phones were drop in replacements for each other. And I can imagine Apple selling many wonderful interoperable products into an open standards ecosystem, with a tiny fraction of its current market cap. But we live in a world with a huge global corporation with a highly knit ecosystem, quietly investing billions of dollars retarding threatening innovation, continually raising switching costs, and the costs of interoperability with alternatives, growing a tax base of third party efforts having little to do with Apple's efforts (streaming media and games, third party stores, creator economy, ...), shifting inconveniences from users to third parties, etc. There are worse forms of coercion, i.e. the systematic privacy violations and manipulative media of the surveillance economy (run in part by Google the major benefactor of Android, and which even Apple dips its toes into). But the choice between iOS and Android ecosystems is anything but a simple easily informed choice, free of supplier leverage, conflicts of interest, with predictable long term implications in cost efficiency and future freedoms of choice for most users.
    - gms 3y ago
      That's clearly not the world most consumers want, otherwise they would have directed their money towards Android in the early days. They didn't. For the minority who do want this world, again, there is a laundry list of Android variants they can buy. Coercion implies the threat of violence due to non-compliance. There is no coercion here. Apple, Google, etc aren't governments.
      - danShumway 3y ago
        Arguably it is clearly the world that most consumers want or they wouldn't have voted for a government that enacted these policies. I think it's a little silly to argue that purchasing decisions for a device are an endorsement of every single aspect of that device. There are features that are desirable on iOS that would be enough to influence a consumer to buy an iOS device that have nothing to do with whether or not the device supports sideloading. But if we are arguing that purchasing decisions are an endorsement of every corporate decision about a device, then it seems silly to argue that voting decisions are not a similar endorsement of government policy. And of course, Apple is not legally obligated to serve the EU, they're one of richest companies on the entire planet so if anyone is equipped to be choosy about the markets they support, it's Apple. However, Apple has freely chosen to do business in the EU, and EU residents have freely chosen to vote for politicians that have imposed regulations on Apple's presence in the market. Of course I don't actually think it's that simple. But ignoring the lock-in present in government policy and market participation is no less silly than ignoring the lock-in on in a device where moving away from the ecosystem can cause your credit card to stop working. A more reasonable take is that consumers make purchasing decisions for complicated reasons, some of them having nothing to do with lock-in (if they are even aware of lock-in or security or user freedom debates to begin with, which is usually not the case), and their preferences about these systems can change wildly depending on the circumstances and affordances and research that they do. As an example, Facebook argued that users were clearly opting in to tracking on iOS by choosing to use the Facebook service instead of the many other available social networks they could sign up for. Thankfully, Apple didn't agree, and when users were offered a more clear choice about whether to share advertising IDs with Facebook, many of them said no. If we took a view that participation in an ecosystem was endorsement of the entire ecosystem, we'd be arguing that Apple adding privacy controls in front of Facebook was somehow circumventing the social-media market. But as it turns out many users did want privacy controls in front of Facebook, just not so much that they were willing to avoid Facebook entirely. When offered the best of both worlds, they were happy to use Facebook while sharing less information with the service.
  - HumblyTossed 3y ago
    So, what other features do you wish to prevent and or remove from iOS/iPhones because you don't have a use for them even though they would not affect you one iota?
    - gms 3y ago
      They do affect me - non-technical members of my family are on iPhones and I’m glad they can’t install malware by accident. More generally, I don’t believe I nor anyone else should mandate anything about a private software company’s product roadmap (least of all spiteful bureaucrats obsessed with targeting American technology companies). The precedent this sets is absurd. The market already provides a solution outside of arbitrary coercion: we all have the freedom to purchase other products.
      - Wowfunhappy 3y ago
        Do non-technical members of your family accidentally disable Gatekeeper on their Macs?
- mrmanner 3y ago
  > we live in a free society, where consumers are supposed to be able to decide for themselves what they value, and spend their money accordingly …except if they value a device that enforces audited software only, because they find it safe and convenient. If they value that they’re wrong, because wanting that is unfair to some businesses who want to sell them things. > it is better than letting a single for-profit corporation set the terms This is sort of true, government regulation is better than a single corporation dictating terms. But it’s not that relevant, is it? There are two major corporations in the mobile OS business. Plus a bunch of open source projects and a few small businesses for the adventurous. And web standards making it reasonably possible to not depend on any one of them, if that’s a priority. Are the big technology companies powerful? Yes. Should they be regulated? Yes. Like this? Probably not.
  - Wowfunhappy 3y ago
    > …except if they value a device that enforces audited software only, because they find it safe and convenient. What is the legitimate reason for tying this to hardware? If you only want to use audited software, then don't install software from outside the official app store. I agree that the iOS App Store is a great service, I just object to it being the only option. Apple locks up the supply chains for the best screens, the best cameras, the most advanced chip fabrication processes, etc etc. Then practically all of the consumers with enough disposable income to care about those things buys iPhones, and Apple turns around and says "clearly, these people buy our hardware because they like being locked into the App Store!" I don't buy it.
  - danShumway 3y ago
    > …except if they value a device that enforces audited software only, because they find it safe and convenient. There's a lot of selective reasoning on both sides of this debate. We both know that consumers don't think about security enough that they would consciously avoid an alternate app store in order to keep themselves safe. We've all worked with tech-illiterate people long enough to know that they don't have survival instincts around security, they will happily walk out of a walled garden at the first opportunity, disable their firewalls, and install malware. But it's also pretty obvious that consumers don't think about security enough that the majority of them are consciously opting into a curated app store as an informed decision. If Apple suddenly decided to throw open the flood gates and became even more open than Android, these users would not switch to Android. I have never heard an ordinary, non-techy, non-HN user tell me that they're buying an iPhone because it doesn't support sideloading. The reality is, consumers don't think about this at all and they probably don't have much of a conscious preference for any outcome. Some tech users do, but the majority of Apple users are neither so security conscious that they would inconvenience themselves in any way to avoid 3rd-party installs, nor so conscious of consumer freedoms that they would inconvenience themselves in order to buy a device that supports sideloading. I do not believe that this is a behavior that the market selects for in either direction. The smartphone market is not a reflection of social preference towards either security or freedom. So I think it's just kind of nonsense to act like this is a question of consumer choice. If Apple is allowed to run a curated store, customers will keep buying Apple products and they'll ignore any apps that they can't install and they'll lose zero sleep about that arrangement. If Apple is forced to run a more open store, customers will keep buying Apple products and they'll install anything they want regardless of the warnings, and they will once again lose zero sleep over it. And of course that's the case because there's no other way to square the idea that people willingly buy into the Apple ecosystem and also that those same people wouldn't avoid sideloaded apps if given the choice. There's no way we can pretend that one of those decisions is a consumer preference and the other one is the opposite and their brains have magically turned off -- the only explanation that explains both behaviors is that consumers are not making either of these decisions based on security/freedom. ---- Most consumers are apathetic to this entire debate. Again, there are some tech users that doesn't apply to. They are an extreme minority, but they exist. Some people use Android out of principle, some people consciously choose to use Apple devices because they don't want sideloading. Most people do not fall into either of those categories, and I just think it's a mistake to interpret consumer buying trends of Android/iOS devices like it's some kind of general expression of customer will about technical issues that they don't even understand in the first place. You have to remember the majority of both Apple and Android customers probably don't even know what sideloading is; they certainly are not making informed decisions about it in any direction. To the extent that they are thinking about privacy or security at all, they are primarily thinking about the number of TV ads that they've seen for each product that used the word "privacy." So when we talk about regulation, it's more valuable to talk about the effects on the overall market for smartphone apps and software innovation, the practical effects on security regardless of people's supposed choices about the risks they want to take, and about whether the market/security benefits outweigh the downsides. "What consumers want" is a misdirection; consumers don't want anything to do with this debate and they couldn't care less about whether or not Apple has an API for 3rd-party web browsers or whether or not the app store allows distributing GPL apps. They don't know or care what those words mean.
HumblyTossed 3y ago
> It's more like they aren't aware of the risks. I doubt that. Decades of having to run malware (removal) software on Windows has pretty much guaranteed everyone knows what a virus is.

It's not that they don't value it. It's more like they aren't aware of the risks.

by mh8h 3y ago

It's not that they don't value it. It's more like they aren't aware of the risks.

Maybe that's true, and consumers don't know what's best for them. However, we live in a free society, where consumers are supposed to be able to decide for themselves what they value, and spend their money accordingly. Where we do impose regulations to ensure public safety, they are decided by a democratic process. And as imperfect as that process may be at times, it is better than letting a single for-profit corporation set the terms.

gms 3y ago
Consumers are indeed able to decide for themselves: they can buy any number of Android phones from many manufacturers for a different experience.
- dns_snek 3y ago
  Thankfully the EU regulators have decided otherwise.
- Nevermark 3y ago
  > Consumers are indeed able to decide for themselves > they can buy any number of Android phones I can imagine a world in which iPhone's and Android phones were drop in replacements for each other. And I can imagine Apple selling many wonderful interoperable products into an open standards ecosystem, with a tiny fraction of its current market cap. But we live in a world with a huge global corporation with a highly knit ecosystem, quietly investing billions of dollars retarding threatening innovation, continually raising switching costs, and the costs of interoperability with alternatives, growing a tax base of third party efforts having little to do with Apple's efforts (streaming media and games, third party stores, creator economy, ...), shifting inconveniences from users to third parties, etc. There are worse forms of coercion, i.e. the systematic privacy violations and manipulative media of the surveillance economy (run in part by Google the major benefactor of Android, and which even Apple dips its toes into). But the choice between iOS and Android ecosystems is anything but a simple easily informed choice, free of supplier leverage, conflicts of interest, with predictable long term implications in cost efficiency and future freedoms of choice for most users.
  - gms 3y ago
    That's clearly not the world most consumers want, otherwise they would have directed their money towards Android in the early days. They didn't. For the minority who do want this world, again, there is a laundry list of Android variants they can buy. Coercion implies the threat of violence due to non-compliance. There is no coercion here. Apple, Google, etc aren't governments.
    - danShumway 3y ago
      Arguably it is clearly the world that most consumers want or they wouldn't have voted for a government that enacted these policies. I think it's a little silly to argue that purchasing decisions for a device are an endorsement of every single aspect of that device. There are features that are desirable on iOS that would be enough to influence a consumer to buy an iOS device that have nothing to do with whether or not the device supports sideloading. But if we are arguing that purchasing decisions are an endorsement of every corporate decision about a device, then it seems silly to argue that voting decisions are not a similar endorsement of government policy. And of course, Apple is not legally obligated to serve the EU, they're one of richest companies on the entire planet so if anyone is equipped to be choosy about the markets they support, it's Apple. However, Apple has freely chosen to do business in the EU, and EU residents have freely chosen to vote for politicians that have imposed regulations on Apple's presence in the market. Of course I don't actually think it's that simple. But ignoring the lock-in present in government policy and market participation is no less silly than ignoring the lock-in on in a device where moving away from the ecosystem can cause your credit card to stop working. A more reasonable take is that consumers make purchasing decisions for complicated reasons, some of them having nothing to do with lock-in (if they are even aware of lock-in or security or user freedom debates to begin with, which is usually not the case), and their preferences about these systems can change wildly depending on the circumstances and affordances and research that they do. As an example, Facebook argued that users were clearly opting in to tracking on iOS by choosing to use the Facebook service instead of the many other available social networks they could sign up for. Thankfully, Apple didn't agree, and when users were offered a more clear choice about whether to share advertising IDs with Facebook, many of them said no. If we took a view that participation in an ecosystem was endorsement of the entire ecosystem, we'd be arguing that Apple adding privacy controls in front of Facebook was somehow circumventing the social-media market. But as it turns out many users did want privacy controls in front of Facebook, just not so much that they were willing to avoid Facebook entirely. When offered the best of both worlds, they were happy to use Facebook while sharing less information with the service.
- HumblyTossed 3y ago
  So, what other features do you wish to prevent and or remove from iOS/iPhones because you don't have a use for them even though they would not affect you one iota?
  - gms 3y ago
    They do affect me - non-technical members of my family are on iPhones and I’m glad they can’t install malware by accident. More generally, I don’t believe I nor anyone else should mandate anything about a private software company’s product roadmap (least of all spiteful bureaucrats obsessed with targeting American technology companies). The precedent this sets is absurd. The market already provides a solution outside of arbitrary coercion: we all have the freedom to purchase other products.
    - Wowfunhappy 3y ago
      Do non-technical members of your family accidentally disable Gatekeeper on their Macs?
mrmanner 3y ago
> we live in a free society, where consumers are supposed to be able to decide for themselves what they value, and spend their money accordingly …except if they value a device that enforces audited software only, because they find it safe and convenient. If they value that they’re wrong, because wanting that is unfair to some businesses who want to sell them things. > it is better than letting a single for-profit corporation set the terms This is sort of true, government regulation is better than a single corporation dictating terms. But it’s not that relevant, is it? There are two major corporations in the mobile OS business. Plus a bunch of open source projects and a few small businesses for the adventurous. And web standards making it reasonably possible to not depend on any one of them, if that’s a priority. Are the big technology companies powerful? Yes. Should they be regulated? Yes. Like this? Probably not.
- Wowfunhappy 3y ago
  > …except if they value a device that enforces audited software only, because they find it safe and convenient. What is the legitimate reason for tying this to hardware? If you only want to use audited software, then don't install software from outside the official app store. I agree that the iOS App Store is a great service, I just object to it being the only option. Apple locks up the supply chains for the best screens, the best cameras, the most advanced chip fabrication processes, etc etc. Then practically all of the consumers with enough disposable income to care about those things buys iPhones, and Apple turns around and says "clearly, these people buy our hardware because they like being locked into the App Store!" I don't buy it.
- danShumway 3y ago
  > …except if they value a device that enforces audited software only, because they find it safe and convenient. There's a lot of selective reasoning on both sides of this debate. We both know that consumers don't think about security enough that they would consciously avoid an alternate app store in order to keep themselves safe. We've all worked with tech-illiterate people long enough to know that they don't have survival instincts around security, they will happily walk out of a walled garden at the first opportunity, disable their firewalls, and install malware. But it's also pretty obvious that consumers don't think about security enough that the majority of them are consciously opting into a curated app store as an informed decision. If Apple suddenly decided to throw open the flood gates and became even more open than Android, these users would not switch to Android. I have never heard an ordinary, non-techy, non-HN user tell me that they're buying an iPhone because it doesn't support sideloading. The reality is, consumers don't think about this at all and they probably don't have much of a conscious preference for any outcome. Some tech users do, but the majority of Apple users are neither so security conscious that they would inconvenience themselves in any way to avoid 3rd-party installs, nor so conscious of consumer freedoms that they would inconvenience themselves in order to buy a device that supports sideloading. I do not believe that this is a behavior that the market selects for in either direction. The smartphone market is not a reflection of social preference towards either security or freedom. So I think it's just kind of nonsense to act like this is a question of consumer choice. If Apple is allowed to run a curated store, customers will keep buying Apple products and they'll ignore any apps that they can't install and they'll lose zero sleep about that arrangement. If Apple is forced to run a more open store, customers will keep buying Apple products and they'll install anything they want regardless of the warnings, and they will once again lose zero sleep over it. And of course that's the case because there's no other way to square the idea that people willingly buy into the Apple ecosystem and also that those same people wouldn't avoid sideloaded apps if given the choice. There's no way we can pretend that one of those decisions is a consumer preference and the other one is the opposite and their brains have magically turned off -- the only explanation that explains both behaviors is that consumers are not making either of these decisions based on security/freedom. ---- Most consumers are apathetic to this entire debate. Again, there are some tech users that doesn't apply to. They are an extreme minority, but they exist. Some people use Android out of principle, some people consciously choose to use Apple devices because they don't want sideloading. Most people do not fall into either of those categories, and I just think it's a mistake to interpret consumer buying trends of Android/iOS devices like it's some kind of general expression of customer will about technical issues that they don't even understand in the first place. You have to remember the majority of both Apple and Android customers probably don't even know what sideloading is; they certainly are not making informed decisions about it in any direction. To the extent that they are thinking about privacy or security at all, they are primarily thinking about the number of TV ads that they've seen for each product that used the word "privacy." So when we talk about regulation, it's more valuable to talk about the effects on the overall market for smartphone apps and software innovation, the practical effects on security regardless of people's supposed choices about the risks they want to take, and about whether the market/security benefits outweigh the downsides. "What consumers want" is a misdirection; consumers don't want anything to do with this debate and they couldn't care less about whether or not Apple has an API for 3rd-party web browsers or whether or not the app store allows distributing GPL apps. They don't know or care what those words mean.

HumblyTossed 3y ago

> It's more like they aren't aware of the risks. I doubt that. Decades of having to run malware (removal) software on Windows has pretty much guaranteed everyone knows what a virus is.