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Comment by jasode | Hacker News Reader

>Smartphones are now pretty essential.

If you didn't notice, you switched the conversation from "Apple iPhone" to "smartphone".

In any case, I didn't get an iPhone until 2012 and for the entire 7+ years of ownership, I have never installed a single app on it. I just use the plain vanilla functionality. An Apple product like the iPhone and the Apple curated App Store is not essential to life.

About 90% of my friends & family use Android (the more popular smartphones) because they cost less than Apple.

EDIT to downvoters:

- gp comment (rahkiin) of Walmart-restrictions analogy is about Apple (not "smartphones" in general)

- followup comment (jfk13) is also about Apple iPhone and not smartphones

- pentae's comment that switches the subject from "iPhone" to "smartphones" ... to try an win an argument just confuses the thread

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You are just being pedantic now. It was pretty clear what he/she meant. Smartphones are a necessity now.

>You are just being pedantic now. It was pretty clear what he/she meant. Smartphones are a necessity now.

It's not pedantic in this case because the raison d'etre of this thread is Apple's restrictions (including sideloading).

With that specific context, an "Apple iPhone" is not equivalent to "smartphone" and pentae's comment that mixes up the 2 is muddying up the discussion. The ability for 3rd party devs to sideload apps on my Apple iPhone is not essential to life.

It is essential to liberty, which is why the Library of Congress has made exemptions to DMCA for jailbreaking. It’s not a question of life, but of the quality thereof. People fully control devices they own.

Automobiles have plenty of restrictions on how they can be built, marketed and sold even though no single brand is essential to every single person.

If enough people want changes around how smartphones and smartphone platforms operate, we'll get new legislation for it, if it doesn't already exist.

So could you tell us how an iPhone is not a smartphone?

Yes, the iPhone _is_ a "smartphone" but that's not the point for this particular thread. Yes, sometimes we do treat "Apple_iPhone"==synonym=="smartphone" for simplified discussion but sometimes we do not. This thread is one of those cases where we do not.

To recap the context ...

- thread article title: "Dear _Apple_: Here’s How to Stop the Antitrust..."

The title is "Dear Apple", not "Dear all _smartphone_ manufacturers". The reason for this thread's existence is making a distinction between Apple vs smartphones. From the very beginning, our comments and replies have to continue that distinction for this particular thread.

- gp comment (rahkiin) continued that distinction of iPhone-vs-smartphones with the Walmart-restrictions analogy. I.e. "Walmart"="Apple" and presumably "Target/Amazon/GooglePixel/etc"="other non-Apple smartphones"

- followup comment (jfk13) continued that distinction of iPhone-vs-smartphones

- your reply (pentae) comment that switches the subject from "iPhone" to "smartphones" ... is a non-sequitur. It looks like you're trying to win an argument instead of replying to their specific point about Apple restrictions and developers having the ability to choose a different marketplace (e.g. the Android marketplace). The thread+rahkiin+jfk13 were talking about Apple iPhone and not all smartphones in general. You don't have to agree with rahkiin+jfk13 but your comment's switch to generalized "smartphone" isn't engaging with what they actually wrote.

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