[gigatexal]

It is owned by Apple in that they own the OS. If I wanted full autonomy I’d root my phone. The whole appeal of the phone is the secure cohesive experience not the hodge-podge setup of the PC for example. It’s much more of a console in that sense.

[realusername]

> The whole appeal of the phone is the secure cohesive experience not the hodge-podge setup of the PC for example

I doubt non-tech people even know about the walled-garden or the anti-competitive practices of both companies, they just buy their device based on features, screen and camera and that's it. Just have a look at a mainstream phone review video on YouTube, only those points will be detailed.

To consumers it's clearly the next area of computing. Smartphones are even fully replacing computers in developing markets. To developers however, it's an unhealthy market owned by two uncountable companies where they could be banned from at any point very easily.

There's multiple angles where the current situation is an issue, there's the anti competitive nature of the market where an increasing chunk of the economy is based on but there's also the limited propriety rights of the owners of the phone.

[gigatexal]

I’m no iOS dev but I work in the tech field and am well into the ecosystem of Apple but also follow the company both in podcasts and online and am fully aware of the walled garden and it’s a feature for me it a bug.

Also, I get the sense that people are trying to impose OSS-isms on Apple when they both have no power to and also Apple has no reason to abide.

[realusername]

But non-developers have no idea about that, let's be honest. Just open-up a mainstream Youtube video about the latest iphone and check whenever they talk about the app review process (hint: never).

> Also, I get the sense that people are trying to impose OSS-isms on Apple when they both have no power to and also Apple has no reason to abide.

That's why we need anti-trust investigations to both Google and Apple, having a good chunk of the modern economy relying on just two companies which don't even appear to have any competition pressure is just unacceptable.

[gigatexal]

Sounds like tyranny to me. All of this imposition to force the market leaders to change instead of championing other champions. Nobody was giving mind to Apple when Rim and Nokia and Sony were the big players. Apple just made a better device that the market liked more. There will be a new better thing to come along it just needs to be invented.

[throwaway34241]

There are network effects with software platforms that give the established players an advantage. Modern smartphones are more like PCs than feature phones where people generally don't care much about the third party software ecosystem.

If Microsoft had as much power over software distribution in the nineties as Apple does now, they would probably have (smartly for them) severely limited or eliminated web browsers, and forced developers to write their internet applications as Microsoft-specific native software instead (or some other proprietary technology). We take the cross-platform internet for granted now but earlier it was not a sure thing.

If many of (what are now) web services only worked on the Microsoft ecosystem, this would have not only deeply entrenched their position in the PC market but also given them a huge advantage in mobile (if Apple even survived long enough to compete there). One of the early iPhone's biggest strengths was having a full web browser (especially since there was no app store initially). If the real draw was MicrosoftNetwork and not the open web, this wouldn't have been a big selling point for the iPhone and it would have been much harder for them to get the ball rolling. Microsoft would have had an enormous amount of time to come out with a phone that can access the MicrosoftNetwork that everyone wants.

And this is all assuming that anti-trust is still enforced enough that Microsoft can't just demand exclusivity from everyone else, or that companies aren't afraid to associate with competitors since they live or die by subjective Microsoft processes.

[gigatexal]

Throwaway account ... hmm. Is that you Tim Sweeney? ;)