Apple being Apple again. Just why does anyone actually like that company?

  • Tiger Jerusalem@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    Man, they’re seething against the EU, totally pissed that the legislators worked against their abuse over developers and rubbed against their cash cow.

    Apple is all about money and fucking the user, being no different from Meta or Google. All they have is shinier hardware.

  • Tony Bark@pawb.social
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    9 months ago

    Just why does anyone actually like that company?

    I mean, if Google weren’t shit, I’m sure Android would be more viable. They’ve can’t even keep a consistent brand! They’ve gone from Google Play this and that, to migrating everything - including podcasts - to YouTube.

    • Zak@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      migrating everything - including podcasts - to YouTube

      If only there were other apps for podcasts on Android, it would be a viable operating system.

      Google is kind of crap, but Android has a lot more built-in escape hatches than iOS does. People don’t seem to use them as much as I’d hoped, but they’re available.

      • PhreakyByNature@feddit.uk
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        9 months ago

        I’ve been using Podcast Addict for years now. Dunno why people think they are bound to one thing when Android offers so many choices.

        • Prandom_returns@lemm.ee
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          9 months ago

          I think they’re just have choice paralysis. There’s too much stuff on Android, and picking something is really rather anoying.

          Something like a Gallery. There’s probably a 1000 galleries on Play Store, 50% of them are “my first app”, that display a fullscreen ad every other photo.

          You have to know what you want, research it, then get it. Non-nerds don’t really care about that.

          My guess. I’m a nerd who does care about all that.

          • Gunpachi@lemmings.world
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            9 months ago

            You do have a point, but each App’s play store page itself shows whether it has ads or in-app purchases. One can use that as an indicator for selecting an app. So people just need to pay attention to the small text right below the App’s title

            example

            Then there is always f-droid . You can find really good quality software without ads in fdroid. I rarely use the play store these days (except when I have to update whatsapp and banking apps)

            • Prandom_returns@lemm.ee
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              9 months ago

              Again, you’re telling this to an android nerd. I’m aware.

              I’m speaking from a perspective of an average joe, who is 100% not aware of the existance of F-droid or is convinced that it’s malware.

              I’m also don’t expect people sift through hundreds of apps, opening each page and checking permissions/ads/reviews.

              People install apps either because they’ve heard about it on TV/whatever, or a friend told them to install this specific app.

              This is why people rely on default apps, and compare “phones” based on that.

      • RGB3x3@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        Is there a podcast app that automatically plays the next episode of podcasts in the correct order (oldest to newest)?

        I’ve tried a bunch of podcast apps and none of them seem to do that like Google podcasts did, unless I’m using them wrong.

        • webhead@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          Pocketcasts fixed that a while ago. You can set the sorting of episodes for each podcast and then it plays in that order.

      • Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works
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        9 months ago

        That’s google’s strategy though.

        Although they let you have full control and don’t force you to use their apps, it’s setup so the majority just use the defaults and are discouraged to sway away from google’s ways.

        Its fully intentional.

      • Tony Bark@pawb.social
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        9 months ago

        While I totally agree, the average Joe is just going to gravitate to whomever controls the ecosystem. Kinda hard to trust a higher authority when they can’t even get their in-house shit together.

        • SkippingRelax@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          Are you implying that the average user doesn’t know how to install an app? My 80 yo parents do that on their samsung tablet.

          No need to trust any higher authorities, whatever that means

          • BReel@lemmy.one
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            9 months ago

            I think they mean the average person isn’t going to take the time to check 20 different contacts apps in the store to find the perfect one, then do it again with every other basic app on their phone.

            They’re just gonna use the default app 99%

    • Rikudou_Sage@lemmings.worldOP
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      9 months ago

      Android is more popular globally, the only place where it isn’t true (AFAIK) is USA where the colour of the text bubble is important for reasons that defy logic.

      • TimeSquirrel@kbin.social
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        9 months ago

        where the colour of the text bubble is important for reasons that defy logic.

        That’s just a thing tweens and teens do, it’s just like when kids were obsessed with expensive shoes when I was a kid and would ostracize the kids who couldn’t afford them. No sane adult I have ever met gave a shit about my text bubbles.

          • TimeSquirrel@kbin.social
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            9 months ago

            If that company is serious about conducting professional business for any length of time, they’ll learn better soon enough. In my industry, we still use dialup modems to remotely manage some equipment. You’d be fired for telling a customer to fuck off for not having a specific phone.

        • Zak@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          That’s half-true. No adults I voluntarily associate with care what brand of phone anybody else has in theory, but a lot of the iPhone owners are vehemently unwilling to install any third-party messaging apps. That means:

          • Messaging about anything where security is important is a problem. Most people don’t have big secrets, but sending things that could be used for identity theft isn’t terribly rare.
          • Exchanging high-quality media is impossible.
          • People will exclude non-iPhone users from group chats because falling back to MMS is a bad experience for everyone.
      • Harbinger01173430@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        Yeah. We usually mock apple users in my country xd they go in high debt to get one of those candy bricks and can’t even afford a cellular plan afterwards. Lmao

        • SkippingRelax@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          Is that your biggest concern about a tech company? Id be happy for marketing departments to he shut down and the money redirected to make better/cheaper products.

          While Google sucks now and has for a while, in their early days they have demonstrated that marketing is not all it takes to make innovative, successful products.

          On the opposite end of the spectrum, Apple obsession with marketing has created fanboys that spend the night queuing up to be the first to get the latest iPhone, and that don’t question the technology or ethics (or anything) behind the flashing toy that they crave. Good for the executives and the shareholder but as a customer?

  • Kribensis@lemm.ee
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    9 months ago

    This is a Reddit-style circle jerk. A LOT of people like Apple, because even though they’re almost as remorseless as Amazon or Microsoft or Google when it comes to maximizing profits, they build good products, create new product categories, and they’ve been doing both of those things for 40 years.

    Is this a sleazy thing to do? Yup. Is it as sleazy as Meta intentionally allowing its algorithm to push softcore kiddie porn to teen Instagram users? Nope. Not even in the same ballpark.

    • heavy@sh.itjust.works
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      9 months ago

      Ah, sounds like what-about-ism. Metas behavior doesn’t exempt Apple from criticism. That logic tends to drive all of our standards and expectations down.

      Theres room to criticize and expect more from all of these companies who are more than capable of doing better.

      • Kribensis@lemm.ee
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        9 months ago

        That’s fair. It is whataboutism (is that one word or 7?) And, I’m pissed off not only that Apple is messing with basic DMA compliance, but that they literally forked all their software rather than do this in the US.

        At the same time, I hate Apple the least of big tech, since they actually do give a crap about building good products and have done quite a bit of that. One can make the argument that zero other big tech companies do.

        Should we expect more of all of them? I’m not gonna die on that hill! It is way, way too late to stop this corporatocracy, but one can hope.

        • chingadera@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          Apple builds marketing, not good products. There was a time they were innovative, and it is not now. Their price/performance ratio is laughable.

          • Jrockwar@feddit.uk
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            9 months ago

            I have to disagree when it comes to laptops: the gap has closed a bit now, but there’s still no intel- or amd-based alternative that comes close to the MacBook air in terms of performance/battery life at the £1000-£1200 price point. When the M1s first came out, the fanless MacBook air shattered the intel i9 MBP in any conceivable metric other than pure GPU power (which the MacBook Pro could use for about a minute before overheating).

            Even if expensive, the current MacBook lineup is really compelling. If you’re prepared to spend £3000 on a laptop, you just can’t get anything similar in terms of performance, battery life, and noise. You might get a workstation like an HP ZBook with similar oomph but then you’re looking at a beast that weighs 50% more than a comparable MBP, has the fans buzzing all the time at full blast, and lasts a couple hours on a battery charge. I’ve used my work MacBook Pro (M1 Max) for a full Atlantic flight of ≈9 hours and it still had juice to go.

        • vividspecter@lemm.ee
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          9 months ago

          At the same time, I hate Apple the least of big tech, since they actually do give a crap about building good products and have done quite a bit of that.

          That’s an incredibly low bar. There are exceptions of course but I’d argue there really is no need to use “big tech” software much of the time. Smartphones are probably the most challenging, but desktops and laptops? Easy to avoid.

        • Rikudou_Sage@lemmings.worldOP
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          9 months ago

          since they actually do give a crap about building good products and have done quite a bit of that

          That hasn’t been true for quite a few years.

        • abhibeckert@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          is that one word or 7?

          It’s a word, with a formal dictionary definition: “the technique or practice of responding to an accusation or difficult question by making a counter-accusation or raising a different issue”.

          It has it’s origins in politics.

    • Specal@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      They do sell good products… Kinda. But they are professional scalpers and scammers. iPhones get their performance nerfed via software after a few years to force you to upgrade. They charge Quadruple price for ram upgrades in their laptops. Now they’re removing, not dropping support, but actively removing a feature that they themselves do not have to develop to stop you installing a feature on a device that you pay for.

      Apple do not make superior products, apart from the iPad that’s a genuinely superior product. They sell a walled garden that you have to pay continuous subscriptions to stay in. The subscription in this sense is their app store.

      • Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        9 months ago

        My five year old iPhone runs like it did when I first got it, and I’ve never formatted it.

        • BReel@lemmy.one
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          9 months ago

          My dads iPhone 8 is finally starting to lose some of its battery life. But it’s overall performance is totally fine.

          I think a lot of people forget that most humans doesn’t need 100000000000gb of ram and 20trillion gbs of storage.

          I’m using 65gb of storage, including the os… on my baseline 128gb model.

          Most people aren’t editing 8k videos on their iPhones lol. They’re sending a text message.

          • Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            9 months ago

            Yeah seriously. This community hates Apple so much, but so many people here know nothing about their hardware or software. It’s really bizarre. I’m a Windows/Linux user, but I’ve got an iPhone because it’s the absolute best for longevity and privacy if you want a device where you don’t have to fuck about. I’m on my computers all day, I don’t want to have to think about my phone at all.

    • dustyData@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      they build good products

      Which they charge x4 the value, and always underdeveloped one or two key features in order to scalp further inordinate amounts of money from their users to overcome the underperforming feature they neutered intentionally. Anyone buying from Apple is a chump getting taken advantage of and somehow is convinced to be proud of being abused by a corp.

    • abhibeckert@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      Is this a sleazy thing to do? Yup

      That makes it illegal. The DMA explicitly requires gatekeepers be “proactive” (that’s their words) towards opening up their platform. Removing features just in the EU is the opposite of that.

    • bitwolf@lemmy.one
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      9 months ago

      Besides iPod and iPhone. What product category did Apple create that wasn’t there already?

      Imo Apple rolls good solutions, but they very rarely actually innovate.

  • ahnesampo@sopuli.xyz
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    9 months ago

    Third party browser & JavaScript engine + ability to install web apps on the Home screen = third party app store that doesn’t have to pay Apple’s fees.

    When Apple could force everyone to use Apple’s WebKit, web apps didn’t matter as much as Apple could limit WebKit features to push people to the App Store. E.g. it took ages to get push notifications on WebKit. If Google and Mozilla are free to make whatever improvements to their browser engines, the need to have native apps on the phone decreases considerably.

    • bitwolf@lemmy.one
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      9 months ago

      That’s what I really want personally, the mobile web Steve Jobs envisioned. Glorious web apps without flash.

      • RagingRobot@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        He pushed everything into apps though. Getting rid of flash was a big part of that because JavaScript wasn’t capable of all of the same things at that time. The canvas wasn’t fully supported yet. That meant games and anything with crazy animations needed to be an app.

        Killing flash was one of the first steps to where we are now. It may not have been perfect but it did a lot for its time.

  • lovesickoyster@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    I moved from android to iphone 2 years ago. As soon as this piece of crap dies, I’m moving back to android.

  • Eggyhead@kbin.social
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    9 months ago

    Welp, this might be kbin for me. It’s the only circumstance I’ve really found a PWA necessary, although I’ve considered making PWAs of some online shops I frequent.

    I suspect Apple is eliminating PWAs from safari in the EU just because they don’t want to be forced to allow 3rd party browsers to do the same. Let’s go ahead and throw the baby out with the bathwater.

    I’ve actually got a U.S. apple account on an iPhone bought in Japan, and living in the EU temporarily. It’ll be interesting to see how this is going to play out for me.

  • Marthirial@lemmings.world
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    9 months ago

    That shit brand created a cult for dimwits thinking they are better and smarter than everybody else by becoming platform slaves, and thus be exploited, as their only benefit of their deficiencies and dependency is consumism.

    • Tautvydaxx@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      In real life ive never met anyone who thinks owning one brand of things makes you better than anyone else. If you have friends that think that way, maybe dont be friends with them, thats toxic. If it realy annoys you, block them so you dont see them online, lower the negativity impact on your mind. If you dont want to support a brand that has a product you want, buy it used so they dont get any money.

      • dustyData@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        I guess you haven’t met the San Francisco twats that were driving around in Teslas while wearing Vision Pros. Just because you haven’t met one doesn’t mean they don’t exist.

  • Fuzzypyro@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    As a sysadmin and self-hoster this decision will absolutely make me drop Apple 150%. A clean and well implemented pwa was a big reason I have stuck with my iPhone 12 despite buying a pixel 7. I know there are options on Android but they all have issues either in ux or in ui that makes it very obvious I’m using a pwa.

  • DirigibleProtein@aussie.zone
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    9 months ago

    A lot of kerfuffle over not much. If you’re going to release a web app instead of a proper app, then I’m quite happy to have a bookmark to the web page instead of a bullshit fake app wrapping the same bookmark. Don’t clutter my phone with that garbage.

    • QuandaleDingle@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      And you’re right for feeling that way, but having more choices is always better, not less. Apple doesn’t care for how you use their software if it isn’t the way they want it.

    • Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      Most PWAs are trash, but there are some nice ones out there that feel a lot better when you ditch the browser chrome. Voyager for Lemmy is a good one. It feels native.

    • Rikudou_Sage@lemmings.worldOP
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      9 months ago

      Well, I’m definitely not paying Apple $99 a year to be on their shit store, so I’ve opted for PWA. It’s made as an app from the scratch, not really much different from a native app.

    • abhibeckert@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      It’s more than that - for example in Safari after seven days with a bookmark, all data the website stores on device is deleted.

      With a PWA saved to your home screen, your data is kept until you delete the icon from your home screen.

      Also, PWAs don’t have a browser toolbar.

  • KyuubiNoKitsune
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    9 months ago

    Queue the Apple dick riders defending their precious megacorp from being a POS company

  • nyakojiru@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    9 months ago

    Holy shit if this is true it will be a game changer for me . Will be start looking android devices. Such a retrograde movement!

  • TheMurphy@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    The probably couldn’t afford the development /s

    But on the positive side, Apple is now forced to allow other app stores on all phones in the EU.

    So that’s probably a bigger win than this is a loss.

        • Rikudou_Sage@lemmings.worldOP
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          9 months ago

          You can, but then I’d have to pay $99 per year to Apple to have it on the App Store. 3rd party app stores are gonna be a wild west for a while, so not sure it’s viable as an option.

          • Lemmy Reddit That@lemmy.world
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            9 months ago

            I just made my app as a PWA, just few months ago, just to support iOS. F**k them. I’m not making any effort for iOS apps anymore.

            • Rikudou_Sage@lemmings.worldOP
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              9 months ago

              Yep, fuck them. For me it was not the deciding factor in making my app a PWA, but it definitely was one of the reasons I went for it.

              • Lemmy Reddit That@lemmy.world
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                I already had android app written in kotlin, so I didn’t need PWA. I guess it’s cool that I can use this PWA on computer, even if nobody would use my app on computer. When somebody asks me, why my app is not on App Store, I just ask them, would they pay 99$ per year for an app, and they say never. Well, there is your answer.

      • Lemmy Reddit That@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        @rikudou@lemmings.world Just an update for you. I just tried my PWA app on last stable version of iOS 17.4 and it works again. I made a quick google search if it’s just me, or Apple actually reversed they decision and I found this (from https://developer.apple.com/support/dma-and-apps-in-the-eu/#dev-qa ):

        Why don’t users in the EU have access to Home Screen web apps?

        UPDATE: Previously, Apple announced plans to remove the Home Screen web apps capability in the EU as part of our efforts to comply with the DMA. The need to remove the capability was informed by the complex security and privacy concerns associated with web apps to support alternative browser engines that would require building a new integration architecture that does not currently exist in iOS.

        We have received requests to continue to offer support for Home Screen web apps in iOS, therefore we will continue to offer the existing Home Screen web apps capability in the EU. This support means Home Screen web apps continue to be built directly on WebKit and its security architecture, and align with the security and privacy model for native apps on iOS.

        Developers and users who may have been impacted by the removal of Home Screen web apps in the beta release of iOS in the EU can expect the return of the existing functionality for Home Screen web apps with the availability of iOS 17.4 in early March.

        Finally, some good news.