[immibis]

You chose to buy a platform with severe restrictions. It's not like we can blame monopoly power, because Android phones are easy to get. It was legitimately your choice - it seems like for some reason you wanted the restrictions.

[usr1106]

Choice seems to be an euphemism for everything related to private IT: For PCs there is Microsoft vs Apple. (I use Linux, but that's not for the broad masses currently.) For phones you either pay a premium to enter the Apple walled garden or you prostitute your digital life and get spied on by Google and its advertising cancer.

What would we say if there were only 2 car makers, 2 grocery chains, 2 companies building houses?

[paulryanrogers]

> What would we say if there were only 2 car makers, 2 grocery chains, 2 companies building houses?

We'd argue endlessly because of pedantry over 'monopoly', whilst the oligopolists sell us down the river.

[plausibility]

Look no further for evidence than New Zealand. There are two major grocery store chains (Foodstuffs, who own New World, Four Square, and Pak n Save) and Woolworths Group -- obviously we have the smaller Asian marts and produce stores too, but most people only have one of the big stores nearby to their towns.

There are two major building materials suppliers (Carters and Fletchers). There's one manufacturer of drywall (Gib) that is easier to get council plan approval for than any other cheaper manufacturers of drywall because they provide some material strength documents that saves the councils some engineering review time and effort.

We technically have 4 major banks, but 3 of them are just offshoots of big Australian banks and siphon the insane profits offshore.

The government keeps making investigation commissions into breaking these up, but doesn't do anything. The companies just point fingers back and forth at each other blaming "the competition" for price gouging. Meanwhile the recommendation from the politicians is we cut back on avocado toast, lattes, and our Netflix subscription.

[usr1106]

Finland is nearly as bad. 20 years ago there were only 3 food chains. All domestic and playing the rules "no price competition". So food prices were about 30% higher than in Germany for example (these a very different countries so lack of competition is only one reason). Then Lidl (discounter of German origin) entered the market. The first years the incumbents fought it with unfair practices, but in the end it led to more price competition with everybody having to offer cheaper choices. 2 of the incumbents have since merged (with some regulatory limitations) so we are back to 3 players, 2 playing "according to the oligopoly book" and one doing things different, at least offering some choice.

Banks are not much better. There are a couple of small players additionally to the 3 big ones, but competition is limited to very few products. If you are interested in something else, choices are very poor.

[immibis]

If the choices are substantially different, you have a choice. Windows or Linux or Mac is a real choice - just because you'd prefer Haiku doesn't mean you don't have a choice. There's a huge range of android phones, and many of them have been reverse engineered enough to run non-google versions of Android (find out before buying). I have a PinePhone, but I don't use it regularly. It runs nearly-mainline Linux. Even things like Apache and X11 if I want it to.

[usr1106]

I am typing this on a phone running SailfishOS. Still that's hardly a real choice for me who has worked 20 years as a phone or Linux developer. No banks, no public transit tickets, no city bike, no you name it.

Not an option for the wide public.

[immibis]

So the actual lack of choice here is not the phone, but the apps. No different from having to install Windows to run your apps in 2003.

[fsflover]

> For phones you either pay a premium to enter the Apple walled garden or you prostitute your digital life and get spied on by Google

There is also a GNU/Linux option here. Sent from my Librem 5.

> I use Linux, but that's not for the broad masses currently

Unless "broad massses" require some unique MS Office or Photoshop functionality, they can easily switch to Linux. My relatives did and are happy.

[LoganDark]

> Sent from my Librem 5.

How well is that holding up nowadays, as a phone?

[fsflover]

Calls a texts work fine. I didn't try MMS, but on the forums people managed to make it work. Battery life is not very long, 4-5 hours of use or 20 hours of suspend.

I'm really happy to be able to run desktop apps (also on a big screen!) and have full control over my phone.

[idle_zealot]

Compromise on your computing freedom, compromise on your attention and privacy, when both providers are out to fuck you it doesn't really feel like you have a meaningful choice to make. Asking for an environment where fucking your customers isn't allowed feels like the only option.

[immibis]

Many Android devices can be de-Googled. Also, let's not pretend Apple isn't spying on your iCloud account to protect the children.

[idle_zealot]

I have a Pixel with Graphene on it. It's not de-Googled though, because Google successfully entrenched their services as a dependency of the majority of apps on the platform. Graphene makes yet another compromise by installing Play Services in a sandbox, which still lets it spy on you (but less) in exchange for enabling most (not all) Android apps to run. You can't really escape the compromises if you want a capable pocket computer. Compromises borne not of technical requirements or limitations, but of decisions that some of the largest companies in human history have made to fuck you.

[jlkuester7]

Big fan of Graphene! The balance I personally prefer is to use Shelter to create a "work profile" and install Play Services in there along with any apps that must have Play Services. Then, I only enable the work profile when I need to use those apps.

[callalex]

Which store can I buy these de-google’d phones at with support? Also your second statement is just factually incorrect.

[mmh0000]

I don't know about "factually incorrect" I believe this[1] is what the OP was vaguely referring to.

Apple says they're not doing CSAM scanning anymore, but there's no way to verify they're being truthful. And given everything known about corporate America, it would be foolish to believe them.

[1] https://www.apple.com/child-safety/pdf/Expanded_Protections_...

[immibis]

I can think of one way to test if Apple is scanning for CSAM, but I wouldn't recommend it.

[fsflover]

> your second statement is just factually incorrect

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25074959

https://sneak.berlin/20231005/apple-operating-system-surveil...

[bshacklett]

Unfortunately, you lose a significant amount of functionality by degoogling. Any app which relies on Google services, which is a large number, will be broken.

[malfist]

That's the power of monopoly, or in this case duopoly. You don't get to choose to not buy into the platform

[immibis]

But you do. You get to choose to buy into the other platform, which is significantly more open. If for some reason you choose not to, then you obviously don't value openness very much.

[dangus]

In what sane healthy market is two choices enough?

Imagine saying that about everything else in your life. Don't want to buy a Ford car? You can buy a Toyota. There are no other car brands in the entire world. IHG, Hyatt, Choice Hotels, Best Western, Wyndham, Radisson, they don't exit.

Don't want to stay at the Hilton? You're in luck, you can go to the Mariott, that's it.

Don't want to buy a t-shirt at Target? Well, Walmart sells t-shirts, and nobody else sells any t-shirts.

This would be astoundingly ridiculous anywhere else but technoloy. Even credit card processing networks have four options (Visa, MasterCard, Discover, and American Express).

As an example of how this works in other industries, US antitrust regulators automatically decline any merger/acquisition US airlines that would put their marketshare above 20%. And that's after deregulation!

IMO any market that has less than ~3-5 viable purchase options for customers needs to have extensive government intervention to keep the market fair and innovative.

[stubish]

If only the world was so simple and one dimensional and we never needed to compromise. Lets have 5 phones, each representing the pinnacle of a single attribute I care about, none of them actually meeting my needs.

[redserk]

Have you been paying attention to Google’s moves the last few years or are you just here to blast Apple?

They’re not the forever-open platform you’re purporting them to be.

Look at the increasing push for device attestation via SafetyNet or whatever it is called now.

[malfist]

I use Google because they're more open, but I agree with you, I am under no pretense that it's open. Just more open than the alternative, barely.

[kaba0]

Yay, capitalism working as intended. The rational buyer can choose to get kicked in the head or in the groin! Vote with your money!

That’s why even Adam Smith himself said that it only works in well-defined markets! It’s the job of governments to define these, and phones are so essential to our lives that they should be thought of as roads, instead of as an average private company.

[heavyset_go]

Apple and Google have a duopoly in the mobile OS markets and mobile app markets. The fig-leaf of choice is between two duopolists. That's not healthy competition or an actual choice.

[datavirtue]

Burn