The solution should be to provide the tools necessary to preserve as much agency using technology to people who want to. You should also keep in mind the middle tier technical people who need a bit of hand holding. But do not waste your time on the general public because they don't share or comprehend your goals.
Google now pulls the rug on Android which is a whole different story because it used to be open. The whole idea of Android was to be open.
This is the narrative for us in developed nations, but the majority of users today are people who were in developing countries and got a mid-tier smartphone to chat with friends and do banking with the same values as Apple users.
Is that really so? Does the average iPhone user actually factor the app store tax into their decision to purchase the device? Or do they just assume that is just how all software works because they have no exposure to software ecosystems outside the iPhone app store
As I'm the IT tech support for some family members, I certainly do. A lot less drama and garbage when using Apple products (generally speaking).
I've sysadmined Linux for a living for many moons now, and used to run Linux and then FreeBSD at home, and I switched to Apple for personal stuff during the PowerPC and early Mac OS 10.x timeframe because I did enough fiddling with tech at work and minimized it at home.
I used Linux desktops at work in the pre-COVID era when we still had offices and such. I now use a Apple laptop as I can get Unix-y tools to admin: I spend >80% of my time in Terminal (the rest in Safari and Mail).
I'm not saying it's not a problem, but I am saying it's not a problem that has caused any problems with any Android user I've ever met.
You are an HN user of some age. You might even be the family IT person. You may well be changing the experience of people in your orbit.
In contrast, my grandfather’s android phone had somehow 3 different SMS apps, all of which must have tried to remove the default app.
I doubt you think some chap living in rural India, has good data hygiene and habits.
With Apple customers, a better argument to make is to say that Apple applies a 30% 'tax' on all activity on their phones. That they are being forced to pay more compared to non Apple users in spite of having bought their device fair and square.
99% of the payment activity I do on my phone (buying retail goods, travel arrangements, paying invoices) has no additional cost.
They really want to though. Maybe consider that.
I do not see any indication that Apple wants to get involved in adjudicating payment disputes for physical goods and services. That is high cost, high liability, low margin work. They seem to be perfectly happy letting the existing banks (aka card issuers) handle that, and getting a 0.15% cut for allowing their credit cards to use Apple Pay.
Apple has restricted themselves to being the payment infrastructure for only digital goods, and I assume that is because that is the cheaper, more scalable option.
As a side note, in the US, the proportion of sellers willing to eat the credit card fees has gone down every year, and seemingly at an accelerating pace. I have winnowed down my credit card usage to retail goods/restaurants/travel, because almost everyone else wants payment via ACH/Debit/Zelle/other option that avoids credit card fees, so I would be surprised if Apple would ever want to enter this market, given that even the 2% credit card fee transactions are not able to compete.
Fair enough. It might not be consequential for you, the fact remains Apple took 30% of every dollar you spent on the app store. This, after you paid a premium for Apple hardware. I'm happy the walled garden with a toll is worth it for you. All I'm saying is, others might not agree with that if they knew. Just look at the push back again tariffs as an example.
I think with Apple in particular, this is the issue. Apple have largely demonstrated that they _do_ often have the users best interests in mind (or at least at some point have had) on the basis that the users are Apple’s primary customers. Yes, Apple lock down iOS functionality but this has often been to deliver innovative features. Users don’t mind that they’re in a walled garden because, they like the walled garden.
This is where Google is a different case. Google’s interests are aligned with mass data collection rather than products people love. Most Google users have experienced how this impacts them negatively at some point, usually with the degradation of their products, and constant advert spam.
Google is an example of a company that the mass majority assumes to be in the wrong. Apple often isn’t.
We understand that, as the saying goes, if you're not paying for something then you are the product.
But less technical people don't consider that, and don't have hoards of technical friends to convince them otherwise. They just think: they using the product, so they're the user, right? We know that's true but it's not the same thing as customer. Most people don't have that distinction in their head.
It's even partially true that Google does want to do things that attracts and retains users, because that's a prerequisite for selling them to advertisers. In my experience, that's an upper bound on the amount of thought most non-technical people would give it.