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Comment by foxfluff | Hacker News Reader

I would allow fair competition and let the user choose.

You don't need a monopoly to have curated storefronts. For example, GOG is curated and if I don't like their curation, I can look at Steam or a plethora of other stores.

F-Droid has its own kind of curation, which I prefer to Google's curation; it gives me a decent guarantee that I'm looking at free software, and antifeatures are usually hilighted. However, I don't have to use F-Droid if I don't want to.

So maybe another entity can provide better curation that Google does. And maybe another entity can offer an uncurated store; if users prefer that, it's their choice.

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Users are consistently choosing locked down Apple ecosystem over more open Android. How are you going to explain this?

You also need to realise that you’re not an average user. You’re in 0.0001% of the population when it comes to use of technology and your preferences might not reflect the average Joe.

Most phones would quickly fill up with apps doing malware, phishing, spam, crypto mining and DDoS attacks.

> Users are consistently choosing locked down Apple ecosystem over more open Android. How are you going to explain this?

Not true in my part of the world. I don't know, maybe people over there see iPhone as a status symbol? Or just think it's the best phone? Or maybe they trust Apple more than they trust G. I'm glad they can make the choice!

> You also need to realise that you’re not an average user. You’re in 0.0001% of the population when it comes to use of technology and your preferences might not reflect the average Joe.

I fail to see how this is relevant to the discussion.

> Most phones would quickly fill up with apps doing malware, phishing, spam, crypto mining and DDoS attacks.

I disagree. Most users would consistently choose to stick to a locked down store they trust; in your part of the world, perhaps that'd be the Apple store if they trust locked down ecosystems as much as you think. But in a world where the platform's blessed app store isn't a monopoly, they'd have other alternatives to choose from.

A small fraction of users would be tricked into installing malware, but it's not as if they were immune to that right now.

> Users are consistently choosing locked down Apple ecosystem over more open Android. How are you going to explain this?

Anecdata, but of the couple dozen people I know well, 18 or so choose Apple, 1 does so because her husband is an iOS dev and it's the only thing she knows, and only 1 does so (at least he claims) because he likes the locked down nature of it. I usually point out that he doesn't really, because he uses his developer to account to sideload apps onto his device, but for some reason that argument gets nowhere with him. 6 or so of the others do so because that's what their company gave them (either now or in the past). Nearly all of them stay with Apple because they have a big investment now in apps and purchases that they lose if they move. And of course iOS is what they know, and most people stick with the devil you know over the devil you don't know.

But how do I explain this? I think it's a multi variable equation. No doubt Apple is known for quality and deserves this reputation (although the last few years they've been losing this on the software side). There's also no doubt a lot of people who view it as a status symbol. My son wants an iPhone so bad because he doesn't want to be a "green bubble" anymore. He's never even used one, it's purely social pressure. I doubt adults are immune to this stuff either. There's also a pool of people that truly prefer to be powerless over what they run on their device. I guess they are afraid that if sideloading is an option, they will decide to sideload apps from sketchy sources and get themselves infected with malware.

> Users are consistently choosing locked down Apple ecosystem over more open Android. How are you going to explain this?

The choice is not only based on the app ecosystem. I started with Android phones because why pay the Apple tax? They had so many problems I eventually bought an iPhone and never looked back.

As for the "ecosystem", I'm probably an outlier but I'm so disgusted by all the IAP crap available in both "ecosystems" that my phone is basically an expensive portable chat terminal. I have almost no other apps on it.

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