I don't think stores have an obligation to carry your products, it isn't like supermarkets are breaking the law because they don't have an open-door policy on products. You don't have some intrinsic legal right to use someone else's infrastructure to sell your own stuff, on your terms. Framing this as a legal or ethical issue leaves me cold, when the reality is just... you'd PREFER higher margins. I get it! I'm not saying that's wrong, it just isn't a legally enshrined right.
> I don't think stores have an obligation to carry your products, it isn't like supermarkets are breaking the law because they don't have an open-door policy on products.
I agree. However, consumers have the right to go to a different supermarket, without selling their house.
Speaking as someone who's gotten more than one tech illiterate relative an iPhone and iPad, the walled garden is WHY I bought in. It's literally Apple's biggest selling point, not having to worry about fake apps and malware and scams.
10 years ago that might have been true, but nowadays Apple doesn't give a single flying shit about fake/scammy apps on the iOS app store.
It's to the point where you can't look up local government apps here without getting some advertising garbage in the results first because Apple started selling app space.
And supermarkets have no obligation to build expressways to their competitors!
We can take these analogy absurdities wherever — the harsh reality is that nobody is stopping someone from building an open ecosystem phone. But there isn’t enough demand.
As a consumer, why should I care? As a company, unless I’m building my own walled garden for company phones, why should I care? What’s the market here?
> We can take these analogy absurdities wherever — the harsh reality is that nobody is stopping someone from building an open ecosystem phone. But there isn’t enough demand.
I don't think there's too little demand, I think there's too much profit incentive in the other direction.
Only a tiny number of companies on earth have the resources to build a successful mobile platform. If you are lucky enough to be one of those companies, you're not going to leave money on the table.
> the harsh reality is that nobody is stopping someone from building an open ecosystem phone.
The harsh reality is that manufacturing capacity and network effects actually prevents building an open ecosystem phone. You will never be able to purchase the best chips and displays.
I think we need to stop pretending that regulating competition is a bad thing. Competition is what makes capitalism work as an economic system. Without competition capitalism is inefficient and harmful. If we can inject more competition into the system as a whole, wherever possible, it's going to be good for consumers.
You’d lose that bet handily. People like Apple because of the curation and the ecosystem. A mainstream complaint about Apple is not that they place restrictions, but rather that they let too much low-quality stuff in.
Citation needed. (Citation also would be good for GP's claim, but they did specify "think" and were clearly speculating, whereas you make your assertion with certainty).
There are billions of iphones out there. Unless you're working with data (which you should share) then your anecdotal experience from talking with other tech literate people is so ridiculously non-representative that it's hard to even visualize.
Interesting that you chose to ask for a citation to an anecdote but not to the person who cited a specific percentage. You might want to google “confirmation bias”.
Interesting that you completely overlooked this part of my comment: "(Citation also would be good for GP's claim, but they did specify "think" and were clearly speculating, whereas you make your assertion with certainty)"
Oh, I saw that fig leaf, I just realized that it’s meaningless. Whether or not someone includes the phrase in front of their assumptions makes absolutely no difference. It’s just a Rorschach test.
Edit: I suspect I’m wrong, adding it probably causes their assumptions to be given more weight for no reason, as happened here. Interesting observation, that’s in line with the research that disclosing conflicting interests actually causes people to weight the compromised advice more highly than they otherwise would.
One of the biggest economic theories that has been demonstrably proven wrong is that consumers act perfectly logically and with full information. The opposite is true. I really wish it weren't because economics becomes much simpler and more intuitive when you assume perfect information and logicality, but if wishes were fishes and all that.
The problem is that after a decade, my choices are to continue to spend money at Apple, or spend even more money and time to leave Apple, go somewhere else, and buy all the apps I already own, all over again.
When I first started, I used to think of Apple as the best option available to me. Now I think about it as the least bad option. The cost of leaving involves so much time and money, that it’s not a realistic option.
No you don't, you can buy a VHS player and keep using it without throwing out your TV. Or buy a combined DVD/VHS player. The only reason to buy DVDs is because the quality is better. You're getting additional value for your purchase, beyond the artificial restrictions of a mega corporation.
