Hacker News Reader

> If you want to stay with cars, it’s like Google saying when you buy their car, you are only allowed to go to 6 pre determined destinations in their vehicles.

It's more like, when you buy a car, you are only allowed to go to Google-approved destinations. You are allowed to submit a new destination for consideration, but ultimately google can decide if you are allowed to go there or not.

View on HN

In this analogy it sounds like google is a bus, which is... fine? Maybe not for you but what’s wrong with busses for those who don’t care about flexibility?

And there are only two bus companies, most consumers have never seen a car, and the two bus companies have a lock on the technology and supply chain and aren't interested in promoting cars because cars would jeopardize their business models.

People buy busses because they're busses.

Almost noone buys a phone because it's super locked down and some company decides when it's too old and can't install apps from the app store anymore.

FWIW Apple devices can still download apps from multiple versions back (my ipad mini can download apps on ios 9), developers might just set a minimum OS requirement if they use certain new APIs.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com