I don't get this logic. I've bought 4 iPhones and the biggest frustration I have is that I can't use real Firefox like I can on Android (particularly my favorite variant, Fennec F-Droid.) Not all iPhone users are the same. I'm not forcing you to side-load apps, or switch off Safari. What about this is so bad?
It does force Apple to change their software and likely hardware to accommodate these things, and the result is likely to be a lower quality product. My experience with Android phones makes me want to avoid that at all costs: I switched to iPhone a few years ago because I was fed up with the garbage quality of the hardware and software even in “top of the line” models. Android phones are inferior in every respect to iPhones. I don’t want iPhones to become like Android phones.
But we're only asking for Apple to do what they do for macOS and Mac computers on iOS, essentially. Hate to seem dismissive but I really don't understand all of the fear, uncertainty and doubt around it.
FUD accusations are just gaslighting at this point. Actual experience with real phones isn’t FUD. Phones are not desktops: they’re appliances. They don’t need the same level of customizability or direct user control, and the quality falls substantially when those anti-features are added.
The reason for a "FUD accusation" is the lack of any reasonable explanation for how the experience would "fall off." The problem with Android would be exactly the same if you were constrained to Google Play Store. The difference between Android and iOS is not that one of them allows sideloading and alternate web browsers.
(And also, I viscerally disagree that a smart phone is in any way, shape or form, an "appliance". Appliances exist to serve a specific purpose. The main differentiation between an appliance containing a computer, and a computer, is that the appliance's computer hardware and software exists to drive the main function of the appliance. Smart phones are being used as pocket computers. That's not an appliance.)
Smart phones are being used as computers in the same sense smart refrigerators are. People don’t “do computing” on smart phones. The apps don’t feel or function the same as a windows or Mac desktop app, they aren’t installed or managed the same way, and people don’t expect them to be similar at all.
What's funny is, knowing some younger folks who are not particularly tech savvy, what you're saying people DON'T do with phones is exactly what they do.
Install and run programs? Yep. Perform productivity tasks, like edit video or even sketch? Yep. Writing blog posts, browsing the internet? Yep. Playing video games, streaming videos? Yep.
My friend. You can fight it, but this is a general purpose mobile computer.
Serious question though: why do you use iPhones if you want to do Android stuff? Why did you switch over in the first place? It's my impression that the hardware for newer android phones is pretty much on par, no?
What is "Android stuff"? 99% of the time, I use my phone pretty much how anyone else uses a smartphone. The status quo today is that on Apple phones, you can't even view a WebM inside of Safari. Do you have any idea how often I'd come across a page that only had WebMs? Safari won't even tell you why it's broken, it will just sit there and not load the video silently.
It's worse optically considering how big of a conflict of interest it is for them, and astounding considering that on macOS, a platform with browser choices, Apple has no issues supporting WebM. No battery life problems or anything.
(On Android, I do definitely take advantage of being able to use Termux, and Yt-dlp, and actually manage files. That said: this is the exception. It's very useful, but not something I'd even consider absolutely necessary.)
>It's my impression that the hardware for newer android phones is pretty much on par, no?
No, it isn't; the iPhones are a dramatically better value provided you're not looking at the high end. The SE 2 and Pixel 6A have as much useful life remaining in them- they'll leave support at the same time and are competitive in terms of performance. The problem, of course, is that the SE 2 is half the price of the Pixel 6A.
At the same price point, you have the SE 3, which is an iPhone 13 inside; Apple just happens to be 2014 Intel compared to the 2014 AMD of Qualcomm/Samsung/Google (yes, they really are that bad at CPU design). 90Hz screens aren't an advantage if the hardware and software can't keep (or stop keeping) up, and Android only has disadvantages in those areas.
The only things I wish my iPhone did was block ads on YouTube (and play videos with the screen off) and not require a hundred dollar subscription fee for the privilege of not arbitrary expiring my applications after 7 days. NewPipe, uBlock Origin, and being able to install whatever I want are massive boons for the way I use my phone; provided iOS had those things, I would likely never consider an Android phone again barring significant hardware changes that Apple intentionally fails to integrate (like the foldable screens).
How is this a meaningful retort to the other commenter? They get to use FF on iOS, you get to keep using Safari and every other stock app. What exactly is the problem there besides what comes across as some weird form of "keep the dirty Android users away from my iPhone"?
>I'm not forcing you to side-load apps,
And no one is forcing you to buy an iPhone. Why don't you buy Android if you want to do all that stuff?
This is turning something that should be a gradient into a zero-sum. Features like side load dot not make existing features stop working. Allowing other browsers doesn't make iPhone just not work.
> they just want something that works.
The reason people are interested in side loading apps and opening up iOS is there are quite a few people like me that drop $1000 on an iPhone, and it does not just work for me when it really should work better than a $100 Android. The only difference seems to be anti-me features that protect Apple's monopoly on the app store.
Whatever changes Apple will have to make to support drop-in replacements for Siri, a complete elimination of certification requirements for Gatekeeper, and so on, as listed in this very thread, will absolutely disrupt the status quo and make things more complex.
I hope that Apple will strive to make it so the defaults match the current reality, but just like soldered-in batteries mean more capacity without the need for connectors, so too do baked-in defaults mean more stability without the need to pluggability.
It may not be the end of the world, but it is a pretty drastic change that people are dismissing as "allow alternate browser engines," when it's so much more than that.
It's true that there is nonzero engineering effort to make some of these things happen, but in my opinion, a lot of the problem is self-inflicted. I mean... Apple also eventually decided to support third-party keyboards. Was it a bit buggy? Absolutely. Did it obliterate quick type and make all typing buggy for all users? No. As far as I can guess, they actually special-cased third party keyboards. Fine by me. Probably fine by regulators as long as there's nothing malicious about it.
Truth be told, I don't care about alternate voice assistants. That said, today, you can get almost all of Google Assistant on an iPhone just fine, the only thing it really can't do is well, respond to your voice passively and do things on the lock screen. Exactly how much power they're willing to expose I'm not sure, but it doesn't really seem like they have to give everyone access to the same internal APIs they use so as long as the APIs they provide give enough feature parity.
Great example: keyboards are definitely more complicated and fiddly since the introduction of multiple keyboards. Absolutely necessary to support multiple countries, but the tradeoff is real.
The sky isn't falling by any means, but iOS is absolutely going to get more complicated as a result of these changes, even for people who stick with the defaults, as I likely will in most or all cases.
And of course I wonder: will Apple be releasing Siri for Android? Presumably Google would be required to allow for it.
There hasn't been anything stopping Apple from releasing Siri on Android. Amazon's Alexa already available on Google Play Store, and Samsung Bixby is on Samsung devices. I'm sure there's plenty of alternatives on Chinese phones that do not have Google too.
> It may not be the end of the world, but it is a pretty drastic change that people are dismissing as "allow alternate browser engines," when it's so much more than that.
It doesn't seem possible that Apple would not have coded Safari up in a way that they would be able to replace the engine. I don't see why they would have couple it so tightly. It seems un-Apple like. What if they wanted to replace the engine?
Why would Apple ever want to replace the engine they develop? I'm not sure that's been considered a priority, or even an option.
However, they do release WebKit for use by others, so in that sense I presume there's a certain looseness in the coupling. Which is not to say there aren't assumptions that will have to be unwound.
Sometimes I don't like democrats. I don't like all policies backed by democratic candidates, and I definitely have problems with the DNC. However, that doesn't mean I want to vote Republican, or Green Party, or Libertarian.
Please don't get caught up in taking the analogy to it's logical extreme (or read it literally, because it's not literal.) The point is that there is no perfect option on the market for me. I don't have a single criteria for the perfect smartphone. I don't just want a device that boots Firefox well.
And in fact, Apple, much to the chagrin of those of us who hate Apple, makes some of the best computer and phone hardware on the planet. It's not even a contest, in some cases.
Do you use a macOS computer by chance? Do you feel like the Asahi Linux effort is harming your ability to use and enjoy the Mac computer? Does it cause problems for you, or make things no longer "just work", when someone is allowed to install Firefox?
> Why don't you buy Android if you want to do all that stuff?
I do. They're not perfect either. Google Pixel phones are pretty good, but I doubt I need to expound upon the problems of them for you. You pretty much seem to get it given the next few lines. (Not trying to be condescending here.)
> Actually most of them are- they don't want to deal managing a device.. they just want something that works.
Most users of all mass-market devices are like this, be it Samsung Galaxy, Google Pixel or iPhone. It's not really to your point, though, because iPhone has bred perhaps one of the most interesting communities through people's sheer desires to break it apart and customize it. I'm sure you're aware of the rich history of jailbreaking iPhones; and while a small percent of users, (just like Android rooting,) those jailbreaks get nontrivial huge amounts of attention. It's basically international news when a new untethered jailbreak kit shows up, and undoubtedly millions of users use them.
Apple may very well not want these users, but Apple wants to make the world's best phone. Well, you may not want the consumer you get, but that's the symmetry of this all. There's a give and a take.
