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Comment by old-gregg | Hacker News Reader

Let's see... you're proposing that a company should just hand out their competitive advantage just because some parents are unable to curb their consumerism / keeping up with the Jonesses an dealing with "psychology in teens"?

Nobody forces you to use iMessage. Use Snap, Whatsapp, Telegram, FB messenger, whatever. You don't need to be upgrading with every cycle (or even every other cycle) either. I am on my 4th smartphone since 2008, replacing a battery is cheaper that replacing phones. And if your teen insists on the latest&greatest instead, that should be your problem, not Apple's.

Without their walled garden Apple is nothing but a commodity hardware maker and those do not survive for long on this side of the Pacific.

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>Nobody forces you to use iMessage. Use Snap, Whatsapp, Telegram, FB messenger, whatever.

This isn't a case of fair play among competitors. iMessage, unlike the other options here, is baked-into the iOS SMS client, and it's not obvious to a non-technical use how to opt-out of using iMessage services. It's akin to if Android, as a default, inspected your contacts list and hijacked outgoing SMS messages for delivery via Hangouts.

Apple isn't a commodity hardware maker, as the software isn't sufficiently distinctive vs Android. Their hardware is what makes them so hot.

Also, integrating SMS with online messaging and giving people free chatting are Very Standard terms of competition for the hot and overcrowded chat app market, and it's precisely this which has gotten some people so bothered.

More to the point, Apple is not responsible for the visibly poisonous affects of classism on children, and Apple is not morally culpable merely because they indicated to you what's free and what's not. The families whose children are hurting each other should gather as a community, look each other in the eye and ask what's happening.

Nike also serves as a symbol of class — should we blame Nike when kids laugh at no-brand shoes?

In rural places you only have SMS. The walled garden is where all the communication is happening.

The opposite is true. In rural places, you often only have Wi-Fi by way of AT&T DSL or WildBlue/HughesNet satellite broadband. Your iMessage messages always deliver instantly. Meanwhile, the SS7 SMS messages always fail to send, because you have 0 bars of cellular service. Even in cases where there is cellular service, iMessage and other IP-based messaging is far more reliable.

I guess not all rural places are the same.

iMessage is years behind any of those other chat clients. It’s their competitive advantage and yet it’s atrocious. There’s still no unsend feature ffs.

Someone just needs to meme us teenagers to switch to a better chat client.

I still use iMessage if someone send it to me, but I’m glad to have switched to other chat clients because I have far more affinity toward my friends than I do this half-forgotten messaging service.

Why should we pander to the needs of Apple, a corporation making a few people wealthy beyond all imagination, but not much else?

We shouldn't. Buying Apple products is not mandatory.

Also, apologies for getting a bit political, but I came from a country that got screwed up for 100 years because a small group of people who loved "corporation making a few people wealthy beyond all imagination" language got into power in 1917, so I'm quite sensitive to it, so what if instead we say:

"a group of 47,000 Americans who make anyone a little bit wealthier if they buy a bit of AAPL"?

We call them public companies for a reason

Regulating monopolies is not full communism. One of the problems with soviet immigrants like yourself is the tendency to have extremist radical capitalist views, the most famous example being Ayn Rand. But history has shown extreme unregulated capitalism doesn't work either, the best system is a well regulated capitalism with democratic oversight of the regulators.

But then what about capitalism and muh free market? obviously /s

Don’t buy Apple products?

Not much else? Other than consistently building some of the best consumer tech products in history that are widely used and loved as evidenced by this thread?

"Pandering to Apple" on the matter of whether your messaging is free and colored blue or green? As opposed to the fundamental moral question of how families and children treat each other in poisonous, classist ways?

Next we'll say that accepting Nike's swoosh is pandering to Nike, and look at all the poisonous affects Nike's swoosh is having on kids with no-brand shoes.

Apple paid $35B to developers last year.

It pays around $12B a year to shareholders, which today comprise a large percentage of the US population.

It has 137,000 employees making an average comp north of $200,000 a year.

It’s the world leader in consumer computer products and leads its markets in customer satisfaction measures.

What is this not much else you speak of?

> Apple paid $35B to developers last year.

Paid is very strange term to use to describe it. They sold 3rd party software to users, while taking 30% cut.

They hosted, vetted, distributed public, provided support and developer services including a single easy to use and safe purchase system that built that market over a decade. They have been so successful that iOS developers make nine times as Android developers per device solid.

> per device solid.

Why is this always added as if it's relevant? If I'm selling an app on both stores I care about how much money I can make in total, how many Android phones have been sold globally is just trivia.

Because it directly reflects how successful the walled garden Apple has built is for developers. It’s attracted great customers, and made them feel very safe and comfortable with purchasing apps.

If you don’t like the ratio, just say App Store sales are 50% higher than Android.

That $35B didn’t exist until Apple created the iPhone and built its walled garden.

Walmart build, vetted, distributed and provided support to Procter & Gamble products over many decades. But saying that Walmart is paying to Procter & Gamble would be also gross mischaracterization.

Appstore model is as old as civilization - middle man reselling stuff. Some middle mans are more effective than others, and true, Apple is one of them. But that doesn't change characterization of the relationship. They don't pay developers for their service, they resell their stuff, while keeping hefty profit margins.

Grocery stores were an enormous business before Walmart, it just made them more efficient. And it opened doors for lots of smaller products to reach far more customers.

The entire mobile app market was not even one hundredth the size of the App Store before it was created.

The walled garden Apple created made safest and easiest app purchase environment ever, which is why it attracts the highest spending by app customers and highest spending app customers.

If Apple had taken the Google play route that $35B a year would be closer to $4B a year.

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