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Comment by tmp231 | Hacker News Reader

Of course you own it and should be able to put whatever OS you want on it. But you are confusing that with forcing apple to write their software in a way that suits you.

Antitrust laws _can_ be good, but like I said elsewhere, we are a country swimming neck deep in regulation and seem to like our particular hammer. It has a cooling effect on innovation, and China in some ways has a freer economy than we do.

I think it odd that many people rush to strongarm companies through law when there is a perfectly good alternative in Android. Even Microsoft and Amazon have been in the phone business and could get back in, offering you a phone with multiple app stores. Epic could even do it. There doesn’t seem to be enough people who care. You apparently do, and actually I agree with you that Apple should allow alternative app stores. But voluntarily because the people demand it or are leaving for Android, not because the hammer came down on them.

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> when there is a perfectly good alternative

There is very little cost in simply preventing Apple from taking so many intentionally anti-competitive actions.

It is not about forcing Apple to write software. Instead it is about preventing them from spending so much effort and trying to remove other people's ability to install other app stores.

Allowing other app stores, really would not be a huge burden on Apple, and it would give people a lot of choice.

> should be able to put whatever OS you want on it

That is not really very possible when Apple spends so much effort engaging in illegal anti-competitive practices, to prevent other app stores from being installed.

Finally, even if it were possible/easy to provide jailbreaking software, I think that Apple would almost certainly make serious efforts to prevent people from doing that.

But sure, I agree that game companies, and major tech companies should absolutely take action to provide people with very easy ways of jailbreaking people's phone.

Perhaps if Fortnite was available through Epic provided jailbreaking software, then that would be enough to kickstart things, and cause a bunch of other companies to move off of Apple's app store, and move to the jailbreak only version.

EX: imagine if fortnite provide incentives, like "free vbucks" to a large number of people, in order to get a large amount of people to jailbreak their phone, and then imagine if other companies, like Facebook, worked together on that, until almost everyone had a jailbroken phone.

That could certainly work. But I doubt Apple would just let that happen.

I appreciate the back and forth, I really do.

> Instead it is about preventing them from spending so much effort and trying to remove other people's ability to install other app stores.

I think we are coming at this from 2 separate sets of foundational assumptions. I’m of the camp that companies are free to make devices and we are free to buy or not buy them. If we don’t like how they operate, we buy a competitor who does what we want. Hopefully enough people agree with us that a competitor will cater to us, or we can start our own. I know that some people start from a different set of assumptions that assumes we can just force the seller to sell us what we want. I don’t know that we can bridge that divide easily, but I wish you well. Thanks for the back and forth.

> If we don’t like how they operate, we buy a competitor who does what we want.

I agree that there are some other "free market solutions" that could work.

The example that I gave, which would absolutely be a free market solution, would be if Fortnite, and other major companies, like facebook, banded together to build easy to use jailbreaking software, and to use their companies to try and convince a large critical mass of people to jailbreak their phone.

That could work. But I am worried about the government intervention, that Apple would try to engage in, to stop this free market solution, via lawsuits that they would inevitably use against this free market answer.

But lots of companies, acting together, to help everyone jailbreak their phone, so that, hopely half, or a large amount of users, now are in a position where they can easily install other app stores, would be a reasonably free market way of solving all of this.

When there is enough critical mass of users doing this, those major companies could then remove/ban their app from the Apple app store, so that basically everyone else has to follow along as well, and then basically everyone is outside of Apple's control.

If they would band together, why not just make a new phone? Going after jail breaking apple devices would be fruitless since apple could release a new firmware to block your OS. I wish they wouldn’t, but the market solution would be for people to stop buying apple devices.

> If they would band together, why not just make a new phone?

Because it is much easier to write jailbreaking software, than it is to build an entirely new phone.

> since apple could release a new firmware to block your OS

People have been jailbreaking phones for years. That is always the game of cat and mouse. And people have continue to get around it, even though they don't have large amount of resources, like big companies would.

But, furthermore, if there is a large enough userbase, that is jailbreaking their phone, then it would cause Apple a large amount of economic damage, if they decide to screw over this critical mass of users.

If 30% of Apple's users, would get their phone bricked after an Apple update, then Apple would probably be cautious about doing that.

But I guess it is hypothetically possible that Apple would be willing to brick 30% of their customers phones (if that was the critical mass). That would certainly hurt their customer friendly image though, and it would cause Apple billions of dollars in damages.

> but the market solution would be for people

Putting lots of resources into jailbreaking phones, and convincing a lot of users to do it, such that it would cause Apple a lot of damage, if they stopped it, is also a free market solution.

That is a free market solution that is much easier to do, than building a new phone.

As long as it doesn’t break the contract you signed when buying the device, go for it.

> As long as it doesn’t break the contract

The contract that would be enforced by aggressive government regulation?

Yeah no. I thought you did not like government regulation, and supported people's ability to do what they want with things that they own? And in this case, such a contract, is enforced by government regulation, and we should work to invalidate it, if it prevents people from doing what they want with the phone that they bought.

Thats the point. I support the free market solution here, and apparently you want to use the government, to take away people's ability to do what they want, with their own phone, if you think that such a contract should prevent this.

I want to get rid of Apple's ability to use the government, to stop people from doing what they want with their own phone. The government regulations that prevent people from doing this is the problem.

I certainly support contract law. What I don’t want is coercion. They make a device, offer it to you with a contract, and you can say yes or no.

You make a recommendation for how they run their platform, they can say yes or no. You can go or you can stay.

It’s that simple.

But I think we’ve run this well dry.

> offer it to you with a contract

If I walk in to Best Buy and get an iPhone, I'm not signing any contract with Apple. All I'm agreeing to is "I give Best Buy money, and Best Buy gives me this physical product." The reason we're upset with Apple is that they're imposing terms on us as if we signed a contract with them, but we didn't.

Right. Then you boot it up and have to agree to a bunch of stuff to use iOS. You can bail at that point and not use the device. Or you can know that you’ll have to agree to it later, and that the device is quite difficult to put another OS on, and just not purchase it. Get a librephone or Android or …

You may say that you bought the phone and so you can do with it what you want —- ok. Hack/root it to run another OS. It’s your device in that sense. But they are under no obligation (nor should be forced to be) to make it easy.

I agree with you that I wish they would make it easy, but alas. Buy a librephone.

Ok, but then don't go around pretending like you are someone who opposes government intervention.

Instead, it is other people, who want to get the government out of our phones, and not have the coercive, government force, under threat of violence, preventing us from doing things with phones that we purchased.

If you want to say that you support the government, using force and coercion, and government intervention, into people's lives, fine. But that is your position. And it is extremely anti-free market.

But, if your position, is that you support this government coercion, then I am not sure why you would get upset about other forms for laws, and government coercion, given that you want the government to forcibly prevent other people from doing things with phones.

Because you absolutely support government coercion, that would be government force on people, who are doing things with phones that they own.

> preventing us from doing things with phones that we purchased.

Nobody is preventing you. Who is preventing you? There’s no government action here. You buy the phone or you buy a librephone. Let’s leave the government out altogether.

You’re the one pushing for some kind of regulation against free agents interacting. No need to contact the federals on this.

> Nobody is preventing you

You were advocating in favor of using the government to "enforce a contract" or whatever, on people doing what they want with the phone that they own.

> You buy the phone or you buy a librephone.

And if someone buys an iPhone they should have the full right to do whatever they want with it, and the government should absolutely not be preventing people from doing so.

> Let’s leave the government out altogether.

Yes, lets ensure that the government never prevents anyone from doing what they want with the phone that they purchased.

So if you take back your previous statements, and instead agree with me that the government should not prevent people from doing what they want with their phone, then cool.

But otherwise, if you disagree, then you would be the one advocating in favor of using government coercion here against people.

So it sounds like you don’t agree with contract law. that if you make an agreement with someone or something that you are bound to keep your word. You somehow think that because you agreed to something voluntarily that the government should then act and impose new terms on the parties.

That’s one reason why we are regulation drunk in this country. Instead if having a simple rule that says you live up to contracts that you agree to, now we have to have a million rules for exceptions to contracts people sign.

I do t thing we can get anywhere if you don’t agree with contract law.

> So it sounds like you don’t agree

I am merely commenting on how it sounds like you want to use government coercion to force people to do or not do things with a phone that they own.

You can support government coercion if you want. But that is your position.

Don't go around pretending like you want to get the government out of stuff, when you want the government to come in, and prevent people from doing things with their own property.

> why we are regulation drunk in this country

It seems like you are the person who is pro regulation, as you want the government to come in, and require certain things about a phone that they own.

> I dont thing we can get anywhere

I just want you to stop pretending like you are some anti government regulation and anti coercion person. You support lots of coercion.

You support a pretty darn coercive thing, which is that you government force to be enacted on people, merely because of what they are doing with a phone that they own.

Whatever attack you are making against other people, regarding government coercion, on this issue, you are much worse than those other people, because you are the one who wants to come in, and force people to do things or not do things with their phones.

Whereas, other people, instead want the government to not stop people from doing things with their own phone.

On this specific issue, you are the pro government coercion person, and everyone else, who wants people to control their own phones, are the anti-coercion people.

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