[pmarreck]

> Prior to the iPhone / iOS, Apple would have happily built in support for something like Google Cast

I really don't think you can assume this. For example, a long time ago in computer years, Apple rolled out "Yellow Box for Windows" which was a way to get NeXTStep apps running on Windows http://www.shawcomputing.net/resources/apple/os_pictures/ybn... as part of Rhapsody Developer Release 2 (this was a prerelease OS X)... and then promptly ditched it.

Being able to develop once and then deploy to both OS X and Windows sounds great to developers, but think about this: If you had access to Mac apps from a Windows machine, then why would you buy a Mac, when Apple is competing on quality and not price? It'd be a win for app developers but a big "lose" for Apple.

So why would Apple have ever built a way to cast to Google Cast if they already had an AppleTV product that wasn't competing on price with Google Cast? (AppleTV's are great, btw)

[jorvi]

> So why would Apple have ever built a way to cast to Google Cast if they already had an AppleTV product that wasn't competing on price with Google Cast? (AppleTV's are great, btw)

Because it makes iPhone and Mac users their (digital) life better?

Let me give you a different example: you visit a hotel. They have Cast-enabled TV’s, but those do not support AirPlay. Anyone with an iPhone or Mac is SoL. It literally goes against Apple’s old “It Just Works” adage, when they probably would have looked at Cast as just another protocol to support. The only reason to do that is if you think the net decrease in usability will increase the company’s profitability via lock-in.

To be clear, it is not just Apple doing this. A different vector is a product like YouTube: often when I’m scrolling the comments after a video ends, an ad will play that extends down vertically, making me tap it. If I swipe it away, the entire screen shifts again, but now there is an ad strip at the bottom, that I accidentally tap again, taking me out of the app. This is obviously horrid UX, but Google doesn’t care because the only thing Google wants from you is eyes on ads. They don’t have to deliver a good product (users first), they just have to make the product barely not-shitty-enough that you won’t leave.

A great counter-example is 1Password: they support numerous ways to export their own or import other services their vaults. If you have a running subscription with a competitor, they will credit you the remainder of your bill if you switch. If you asks customer support for help if you are switching to, say, Bitwarden, they’ll help you. They believe in their product and that you’ll either come back or stick with them because it is the best on the market. Which frankly, for now, it is. Due to user-first perspective :)

[NickFanion]

You’re making a good point, but I don’t think this is fair to AirPlay. You don’t need an Apple TV to use AirPlay. My LG TV supports AirPlay. I recently stayed at an Airbnb with a TV running Roku OS. It supported AirPlay as well. Sonos and various other speakers and AV equipment support audio-only AirPlay.

When AirPlay launched in 2010, Google Cast didn’t exist. EDIT: TV manufacturers only started adding AirPlay (now “AirPlay 2”) in 2019. Still, I think it’s reasonable to expect a modern device, without extra hardware, to support AirPlay.

[jorvi]

Ideally of course Apple would bake in Cast and Google would bake in AirPlay 2. Best case for users, worst case for them.

Much more tangential but AirPlay (even AirPlay 2) is hot garbage for music due to the gigantic audio buffers. When I press “play/pause/next”, I want my command to process immediately, not after 2-3 seconds.

[soperj]

> Because it makes iPhone and Mac users their (digital) life better?

They have never cared about this.

[jorvi]

You should really watch a bunch of the old Jobs videos.

A prime example is price. Jobs’ was asked why they didn’t make a competing MacBook at the $600 Windows laptop price point (I think this was the mid 2000s?). He said that it might have sold really well but that they would have to severely degrade the user experience to hit that price point, and he refused to do that because he wanted to make great devices.

Back in those days you could plug any non-exotic device into a Mac, and it would mostly just work instantly, which was paradise compared to XP and 7’s driver and .dll hell. These days, I’d expect Apple to do stuff like patch the AirPods Max firmware to break the Android apps that enable all the cool non-basic features.

[pmarreck]

That's literally bullshit. They literally wrote the book on human interface guidelines

https://andymatuschak.org/files/papers/Apple%20Human%20Inter...

[bloppe]

Google can and has done the same thing. They stopped supporting YouTube on FireTV because Amazon refused to sell ChromeCast devices on their website. All these competitors have options to force you to buy their hardware just to use their services and vice versa. Google could start slowly degrading all their services for users without Chromebooks. Microsoft could force you to buy a Windows phone just to use ChatGPT.

Clearly, all of this is bad for users across the board. Apple is by far the most aggressive when it comes to this kind of anticompetitive bundling. You can't just say "of course they want to be anticompetitive, that's just business!". You're supposed to not let them pull this shit.