You mentioned concerns about "watering down" the experience. Could you clarify what exactly is being watered down, and how that supposedly removes user choices? Are you suggesting that introducing these abilities actually reduces options, and if so, how? Specifically, could you address the following potential changes:
- Allowing third-party app stores
- Permitting the direct installation of apps downloaded from the web (like on Android or macOS)
- Letting users set their default apps
- Allowing the deletion of native apps
- Enforcing RCS text messaging for all
- Enabling the use of different JavaScript and HTML rendering engine
From my perspective, as a user of Android, Windows, iPhone, iPad, and macOS devices, these changes seem to increase options for users, not diminish them.
Speaking for myself, my biggest issue is that I don’t think the government should be dictating how a company does business without a very good reason, and “I could get all of this if I bought an Android but I don’t want to” isn’t a good reason, let alone a very good one.
All the government has done with these changes is introduced complexity, reduced privacy and security, and taken valuable engineering resources away from features 98% of users actually care about to appease a tiny minority of users who’d clearly be better served buying an Android device but want to have their cake and eat it too. The Crowdstrike fiasco showed us very clearly what happens the government starts dictating how software works - it’s a shame they haven’t learned their lesson.
To your specific points:
Points 1-2: It reduces the choice for a closed ecosystem, and reduces the privacy and security of all of Apple’s users (There’s a reason virtually all mobile malware impacts Android.) I don’t want to have to hunt through and install multiple app stores, remember where I got this or that app, deal with different privacy terms, etc. If that’s an important option for you, the option with 70+% of the global market allows it. There should be a place for users who want a closed ecosystem to have that option.
Point 3: I don’t have an issue with this, but it absolutely doesn’t rise to the level of something that should be (or needs to be) regulated.
Point 4: Again this is a stupid thing for the government to be mandating, and likely required Apple to spend significant engineering resources that would have been better spent making features that more than 7 people actually care about.
Point 5: No issue here; I actually think the government is on firmer ground to mandate RCS messaging than most of the other mandates given things like texting emergency services are starting to come online.
Point 6: Government shouldn’t be mandating this, and this introduces a significant security issue for almost no tangible benefit for the vast, vast majority of Apple’s users. There’s a reason Apple even disables its own JIT in Safari in Lockdown Mode.
Ultimately, the issue is that, in my opinion, the government shouldn’t be getting involved at all! Apple has <30% of the market, and the market leader allows all of this. I think Apple knows better than regulators how to design their OS, and the free market was working just fine without governments butting in.
