[echelon]

Next up for Apple: making you sign over rights to your source code.

I'm only half kidding.

This is egregious and exactly what Stallman warned us about. (I know he's done some terrible things that make him no longer worthy of being our role model, but he was exactly right about this.)

Pretty soon we won't own any of our devices. We'll rent them.

We won't own our data. We'll license it.

We won't be free to conduct business. We'll be given a revocable visa.

[Yetanfou]

You don't need to add a disclaimer on Stallman having said bad things on a totally different subject to be allowed to mention him. People quote Mahatma Gandhi all the time without mentioning that is had some problematic views when it comes to black people, they quote MLK without adding something about his attitude towards women, etc. Stallman is no saint [1], neither are those who denunciate him. He said many things which ring true when it comes to data freedom and should be seen in that light, not in the light of his more disputable utterings. Cardinal Richelieu had it right when he stated that he'd find something to hang the most virtuous of men within reading 6 sentences written by him.

[1] https://stallman.org/saint.html

[scarface74]

My phone number and email address is not your data. I don’t want every random developer to have my email address. SIWA, gives me control over who has my email address and I can block developers who either spam me or sell the anonymized email address that I give them.

[echelon]

Do you block Apple marketing emails?

It seems like you can sign up with a fake email or simply block the emails you don't like. This is such a non-issue. Yet what Apple has done poses an existential threat to many small operations.

Apple has a kill switch on small companies' customer lists. They're inserting themselves into every transaction as a middle man.

Do something Apple doesn't like? You just lost all of your customers. You no longer own that relationship anymore. Apple turned you into a sharecropper.

Congress and the DOJ need to do the following to counteract this obscene anticompetitive behavior:

1. Pass legislation describing "generic purpose computers" and require that they allow installation of any software by the user.

2. Break up Apple into hardware and software+services divisions and prevent them from dealing exclusively with one another.

[mcphage]

> They're inserting themselves into every transaction as a middle man.

They’re not inserting themselves into every transaction. Instead, they’re allowing users who don’t want to have a direct relationship with every app on their phone, to substitute their pre-existing relationship with Apple instead.

[echelon]

While protecting consumers is noble, Apple isn't the company to do this. They're strong-arming every "business partner" on the app store while simultaneously strangling them for 30% of their income and forcing them to dance to the fiddle. To top it off, they cut off the business relationship these companies have with customers.

Apple is evil.

[scarface74]

If users want a “relationship” with you, as part of SIWA they have the option to give you their real address. If they didn’t, obviously they didn’t want you to have their real email address.

Your other option is not to have any social login and use your own sign up process.

Apple is no more your partner than the wolf is partnering with the sheep.

“Strangling them with 30%”? Did you ever try to get a physical product in retail?

[scarface74]

You can’t sign up with a fake email if they force you to do an email confirmation. But that also means that I need to keep up with a separate email for each service.

I don’t want a relationship with every company. I don’t have a “relationship” with the company when I buy their products in a physical store.

You really trust Congress to be technical enough to describe “a general purpose computer”? Did you see the hearings two weeks ago?

Are you also proposing that Apple licenses their operating system to other vendors? Which company owns the OS? The processor division? The IDE?

[echelon]

> You can’t sign up with a fake email if they force you to do an email confirmation. But that also means that I need to keep up with a separate email for each service.

> I don’t want a relationship with every company. I don’t have a “relationship” with the company when I buy their products in a physical store.

That's your prerogative. Apple doesn't need to step in and do this for everyone. They're knee capping everyone just because they can.

When Apple refuses to send marketing emails or promotions, then I'll think this is fair. But they won't subject themselves to the same punishment they dole out.

> Did you see the hearings two weeks ago?

I watched it twice. Lucy McBath is my representative. It was a highlight of 2020.

> Are you also proposing that Apple licenses their operating system to other vendors?

They'll probably have to if they're split into two companies. I don't see any problem with that. Microsoft is doing an amazing job right now doing just that.

> Which company owns the OS? The processor division? The IDE?

Software+Services, Hardware, Software+Services ... these are easy questions. If the DOJ hands down this ruling, Apple probably gets to decide for itself.

[scarface74]

> They'll probably have to if they're split into two companies. I don't see any problem with that. Microsoft is doing an amazing job right now.

Microsoft did great with phones didn’t they? So this Apple company that is going to have to license its OS - is the government going to also tell them how to design their OS and for what hardware? Is this mythical company going to have five different licensing programs? One each for watches, phones, tablets, computers, and set top boxes? Are they going to also split up the processor division?

While the government is at it are they going to force both Google and Microsoft to divest their hardware business?

As far as your Senator. She asked why Apple removed apps that were spyware and recorded everything kids did on their phone. Yeah she’s bright.

[echelon]

> Microsoft did great with phones didn’t they?

Ballmer missed the boat, but Nadella is launching a new line of Android phones. I don't have a high degree of confidence in their venture, but time will tell. I really don't get this criticism, though. Microsoft has a market cap with the same order of magnitude as Apple. They're far from a bad tech company.

> is the government going to also tell them how to design their OS and for what hardware?

No. The government is going to split Apple into smaller companies. Apple will be told not to collude or do business exclusively with its old business units. They'll be free to do whatever they want from that point.

> While the government is at it are they going to force both Google and Microsoft to divest their hardware business?

Google will be split up as well. They're extremely anti-competitive. Every single company that went before congress is under incredible scrutiny right now, and rightly so.

Microsoft has been playing nicely and isn't behaving anti-competitively. They learned their lesson in the 00's.