adesanmi

why is there need for an emotional reaction? It's just a tool. Philosophically, it's no different than using photoshop to touch up old photos. It's just a more "high-tech" version.

These companies charge money for their services and have competitors. AWS’ entire business models is providing developer services, and if I don’t like their offerings I can go elsewhere.

Discord, Twitter, Reddit, etc. that have become hostile to third parties have free APIs to reel in developers to make their platform more attractive to users, and once they’ve reached critical mass, they turn around and fuck over those developers. This is because their primary business model is serving their users, and developers eventually “get in the way”.

So the person you’re replying to should add an addendum: never build your app/business on top of third parties IF their primary business models aren’t providing services to developers.

Thank you! And not just any website, a good mobile website, too.

Same here: the default option is not to put your website on the App Store, I’m sorry but it isn’t. It’s 2024 and there have been so many advancements in web technology, I’m tired of people arguing that the web isn’t even an option for the vast majority of websites out there.

I get that some apps need the computing power and unique APIs that you can only get via building a native app, but Patreon should not be an app. And the crazy thing is they already have a great website that works really well on mobile. What do you need the App Store for?! Just leave Apple to their practices that you disagree with and focus on yourself, making the best possible product for your users that is distributed via the open web.

because Patreon.com is not just a website, it is a complex web app

I don’t agree with this as someone who uses Patreon relatively frequently. It’s actually quite a simple website, and the main thing I care about is the ability to manage my subscriptions, which I can do on the mobile website today.

Maybe there’s an argument for the creator posts being a bit more complex, but nothing a non PWA shouldn’t be able to handle well.

Also with Patreon specifically, the creators tend to tell users how to support them, so it’s trivial to include “make sure to visit the website, it works on mobile too!” When they call out.

No, you just don’t have an argument. Patreon has a perfectly working mobile application called Patreon.com that doesn’t have any gatekeepers. It’s fully mobile, responsive, and allows me to do everything I want to do right now.

If the article they wrote had said “We’re leaving the App Store because we don’t agree with Apple’s fees” then people who want to support creators will continue to use their excellent mobile site.

Apple’s App Store is NOT the only distribution platform that exists for iPhones, so please stop pretending that it is. The web is a thing.

Again: you can literally go on Patreon.com on your iPhone right now and subscribe to any creator you want without paying Apple’s fees. The mobile web is literally a suitable alternative and competitor right now, but for some reason people on HN have given up on this concept and think every website needs an app. Patreon should just leave the App Store and invest in their already great multi platform website with no gatekeeping of distribution.

But they’re not stopping me from supporting creators. I can go to Patreon.com on my iPhone right now and subscribe to any creator without Apple’s fees. If they took their app off the App Store tomorrow I will continue to be able to have all of the functionality because they have a functioning mobile website that allows me to do everything I want to do. The web is a perfectly suitable alternative here and it’s working, so why exactly do they need to be on a store with rules they don’t agree with?

If Patreon doesn’t like Apple’s rules, they should just take their app off the App Store.

All these companies moaning about Apple yet aren’t doing the one thing they have the power to do which is just leave.

If they refuse to leave, then they’re admitting that Apple’s platform is providing value to them and they should pay what Apple wants. I support creators on Patreon, what exactly is wrong with just doing everything via their website? The mobile web is a thing, what more do they need for their glorified payments processing platform?

There are also users who want to take the responsibility on themselves. They want the ability to host their own apps for free (or lower costs), faster update cycles, and just overall freedom. Those people don't want a highly curated app store (or rather, they want a co-existing alternative to the highly curated app store).

Why force Apple to make that App Store? This is what every argument like this boils down to. Apple are free to have their own opinion of what they want their product to be, and a tightly integrated experience is that opinion.

If users want something else, they can go elsewhere. If there is enough market demand for this, a company will exist and provide a product for it because that’s what companies do. But there isn’t, so they don’t.

Ctrl+click. I find it more intuitive than right clicking personally.

Unlike Reddit, Apollo was stopping users from seeing ads and Reddit gaining ad revenue from them, so they went to charge the Reddit app devs for this loss in revenue.

The YouTube embed API supports ads, and works perfectly with Premium so Google are not losing any potential revenue with this app existing.

Sounds like Christian learned his lesson with his experience with Reddit: "don't get in the way of the company's ad revenue".

Your statement still stands though, you are ultimately correct.

Everyone who makes this kind of comment must not play video games online.

The "money play" is a cut on digital sales, and balancing subscription fees with the cost of services rendered. I can't imagine how little they make on accessories/certification to be the reason behind this move. I think this is the start of set of changes that culminates in hardware verification for the (leaked) revision of the console.

because XIM has an excellent history of spoofing a controllers input to the console

That it does now, but Microsoft can upload firmware to their devices and have full control of the software it runs on.

Call of Duty is one of their biggest games, and I think being a platform that nullfies Xim and Cronus will convince people to play those games on that platform, especially with Crossplay off and the games being free on Game Pass. This makes more sense as a "money maker" to me (i.e. fuelling Game Pass subs).

Look up Xim, it gives an unfair advantage to console players by allowing a mouse and keyboard input when the developer hasn’t intended so (official APIs exist if they do). Cronus is also especially bad.

It also allows you to effectively nullify recoil through custom scripts uploaded to it. It’s everywhere in multiplayer PvP games on console.

Xim users destroying the integrity of multiplayer FPS causes this, unfortunately.

The fact of the matter is if you’re allowed to plug in any peripheral into a game console, you can and will get prolific cheaters in a multiplayer environment.

Maybe only bring in this check if your console is not in offline mode? And please make it cheap to actually get certified.

Regular accessories that don’t alter gameplay can and should always be an option for a user. If a certification process has to happen to use the accessory online, so be it, but I hope this doesn’t hurt the market too much.

Edit: I’m aware that Xim currently uses controller authentication to work and therefore this specific change may not affect it. I wasn’t claiming that this would get rid of Xim, but arguing that a huge reason for this change is to begin the process of cracking down on rampant cheating in online multiplayer games (shooters in particular).

So you go to purchase a device from a company who has been doing this since their very existence, is known for doing this, and has never pretended or tricked consumers into thinking they don’t do this. A closed ecosystem is Apple’s M.O. - and I can’t think of any sane person who cares about repairability who goes to them. They all own open phones such as the Fairphone. I love mine.

And a business has freedom to restrict their products to prevent what they believe isn’t the use case they want. And users have the freedom to put their money where their mouth is by purchasing alternatives on the market.

She does replace it every couple of years (well, I do anyway) and she loves that fact.

What confuses me about all this is the fact that anyone who wants an easily repairable phone has access to them on the market, as I’ve been saying, I support companies who make this stuff because I like tinkering with hardware.

I think Apple should continue to be a company that biases towards design - trading off repairability if it comes to that. That’s ok because if I don’t like it I can buy a different phone.

My mum just wants a phone with the feature she cares about, and when it gets slow or bad, she rings me up to upgrade.

FairPhone exists and is great, I recommend!

I think inventing a new screw would be a design thing? In a perfect world a screw that is easily replaced and allows them the design they want would be used.

However if that doesn’t exist, as an engineer, I am aware of the concept of tradeoffs and ever since that company has existed they’ve always biased towards design.

They would rather 1mm of thinness or an angle a specific shape and if that means that this normally standard screw won’t fit, then “oh well”. Like I said above, it’s an opinion. My FairPhone has the opposite opinion where everything in the design was made around repairability.

Both of them have different, diverse, opinions on what design is. Neither are right or wrong, per se. That’s why the market is so awesome, go to the stall that fits your need, don’t try to make all the stalls make the same thing.

The “security” feature is the serialisation of said screws, no? Even if they were standard and freely available, the serialisation would still cause this issue. Unless it’s somehow not possible to serialise a standard screw but I don’t know how that would differ from the process of doing it to custom screws.

Why would a consumer like my mum care about opening the phone up?

You still haven’t explained how choosing to tradeoff design over repairability is anti-consumer when the consumer can buy a FairPhone right now (who, I can tell you, have a significantly worse experience and design than my iPhone, but I don’t care because I can tinker with it!)

I think you just don’t like the company and are looking for silly reasons to bash them.

I assumed the reason Apple’s phones are stolen for parts are that, unlike a lot of Android counterparts that can be reset, Find My is so bulletproof that (without phishing) iPhones are essentially expensive paperweights in terms of reselling whole. So people started getting creative and selling the parts, so Apple started to serialise those too.

Either way, I don’t think Apple set out to make the iPhone unrepairable just because. There just weren’t letting repairability getting in the way of the design and aesthetic they want, and I think it’s fine for them to have this opinion. They couldn’t achieve both so they biased towards design, and look to slowly iterate towards repairability compromising as little on design as possible.

Sounds like a sensible strategy.

I don’t understand how this is Anti Consumer in any way? I have an iPhone and a FairPhone. One’s niche is that it’s repairable, and the other is that it’s not. A consumer who wants a repairable would buy something like a FairPhone (modular parts!!!) and someone like my mum can get her all-in-one “nice” experience.

They’re allowed to have an opinion, and with engineering there are tradeoffs. They tradeoff design with repairability and have the opinion that it is a good tradeoff. They want to test that opinion with the market and it resonated. What’s wrong with this?

I genuinely am confused as to the anti-consumer moniker when the consumer has never had more choice?

Regarding your second point, I agree with the Find My praise, however Find My itself illustrates why every little thing done to make it “more of a ballache” to steal an iPhone, more costly for the thieves, is reducing the demand and these “papercuts” can add up in a sizeable way.

But your point is valid, and I can understand why you hold that opinion.

I don’t know if there’s data to back this up. I’m simply assuming based on what I know. What I know comes from people I went to school with who have stolen phones before telling me at the pub. There is a price for the type of device you bring in. The ones on the bikes or mugging people actually drop it off to the people who send stuff off to China. Those people give a standard price for the type of phone, he quoted £100 for an iPhone 11 and £120 for a Samsung Galaxy.

He corroborates your point regarding not discriminating the phone he stole, to be fair.

It’s an important conversation to have. My mums phone got stolen with Find My active. The police refused to do anything about it, they tried to phish her details, failed and I followed it to Shenzen.

I’m not saying these changes would prevent occurrences, but if they couldn’t even strip parts from a phone, it makes it a less enticing target for thieves.

I do think that a version of the iPhone without these restrictions should be available for purchase for customers who know that’s exactly what they want, not this convoluted system.

When people stop robbing phones for them to end up in Shenzen and stripped for parts, this will stop. This is a deterrent to make stealing iPhones less convenient and I’m all for it.

People already have to try to phish people’s iCloud details after stealing their devices to resell, costing them time and money and making it more annoying to try and steal.

I do think people who want to repair their phone should have access to a version without this stuff and deal with the consequences themselves.

For everyone else, including myself, please continue to make it annoying for thieves to target iPhones.

That's a very accurate representation of the battery life, however the reality is that it has the best battery life of any phone with that size + performance combo on the market for my usage - its just that more "regular" sized phones blow it out of the water.

Edit: I negate this somewhat with a Magsafe magnetic wireless battery.

Best phone I ever owned. A small phone with a great camera, all the modern niceties (Face ID, fast processor), and a beautiful design. I'll keep this baby until its final legs.

My understanding is that it’s the preferred way for a lot of frontend engineers to build their experiences. It gives a lot of freedom and reduces entire classes of bugs due to the type system.

Edit: to elaborate; “a lot of freedom” means an entire schema instead of pre-negotiated contracts, potentially reducing back and forth between frontend and backend.