Apple undoubtedly added Wi-Fi Aware support to iOS https://developer.apple.com/documentation/WiFiAware, but its not clear whether iOS actually supports AirDrop over Wi-Fi Aware. Apple clearly hasn't completely dropped AWDL for AirDrop, because you can still AirDrop from iOS 26 to earlier devices.
Note that the Ars Technica article never directly makes the claim that Apple supports Airdrop over Wi-Fi Aware. The title is two independent statements - "The EU made Apple adopt new Wi-Fi standards, and now Android can support AirDrop" - that's true.
> Google doesn’t mention it in either Quick Share post, but if you’re wondering why it’s suddenly possible for Quick Share to work with AirDrop, it can almost certainly be credited to European Union regulations imposed under the Digital Markets Act (DMA).
Again, they're just theorising. They never directly make the claim. Would love on Hacker News for someone to do some Hacking and actually figure it out for real!
For example, someone found strings in Google's implementation that mentioned AWDL: https://social.treehouse.systems/@nicolas17/1155847323390351...
Also people have mentioned having success Airdropping to macOS devices, which are not listed as being supported on the Wi-Fi Aware page.
Not listed, but shipped with some Wifi Aware library
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/DeviceToDeviceManager.framework/Plugins/WiFiAwareD2DPlugin.bundle
Another fun thing to do: `ping6 ff02::1%awdl0`. Pings all nearby Apple devices with AWDL active. Including things like your neighbor's phone that's not even on your local network. (but addresses rotate I believe so can't track persistently)
and when there is, its talked about as American tech companies bowing to an authoritarian regime as opposed to fighting a burgeoning market force acting on behalf of consumers and the American tech companies losing that fight
the latter is how the EU work is syndicated
in between is that there likely is no fight with Chinese regulators alongside an unwillingness to alter access to that market
I want it to happen with a thousand times more intensity for Apple and Google.
We should own these devices. We shouldn't be subsistence farmers on the most important device category in the world.
They need to be opened up to competition, standards, right to repair, privacy, web app installs, browser choice, messaging, etc. etc.
They shouldn't be strong arming tiny developers or the entire automotive industry. It's vastly unfair. And this strip mining impacts us as consumers.
Yes they should, the automotive industry is much shittier. I have a 23 Chevy Bolt EUV with wireless CarPlay. Chevy/GM have been emailing and snail mailing me relentlessly trying to get me to pay for their $150 update to my car's navigation maps, which no longer work in my vehicle (presumably because they're out of date). This is quite the deal, according to their marketing materials, but I won't be paying for it because I've never used those maps thanks to CarPlay.
With all this emphasis they're putting on upselling these $150 map updates, it doesn't take a genius to understand why GM is no longer making vehicles with CarPlay or Android Auto.
Because cars are a low margin, high capital business with ruthless competition.
Because a trillion dollar duopoly gets to spend a billion dollars on mapping software and give it away completely for free as part of an ecosystem / platform play, which they then use to strong arm automotive manufacturers. If you had to bear the true cost, it would be $150. More car companies should ban Apple and Google.
Fuck Apple and Google. They are not the heroes in this story. They're not Robin Hood here, even if that's what they're masquerading as. They're the child-enslaving "Land of Toys" from Pinocchio - they're using you and lured you in with a promise of freedom, but they have an ulterior motive.
All of that "freedom" just gets added to the purchase price of your car, and you don't even realize it. You also get Google ads for McDonalds and shit.
> If you had to bear the true cost, it would be $150.
That might be true, but it probably isn't. A larger company can spread the cost out over a larger number of customers, meaning the cost per customer is lower.
Then why are they making such terrible carplay systems?
Big tech is literally a machine putting a ceiling on your ability to build.
They tax and control everything, lock down distribution, prevent you from operating without rules.
If you get big enough, they self-fund an internal team to compete with you. Or they offer to buy you for less than you're worth. If you don't accept, they buy your competitor.
Capitalism should be brutal. Giant lions that can't compete should starve and give way to nimble new competition.
You shouldn't be able to use your 100+ business units to subsidize the takeover of an entirely unrelated market.
They are an invasive species and are growing into everything they can without antitrust hedge trimming. Instead of lean, starving lions, they're lion fish infesting the Gulf of Mexico. They're feasting upon the entire ecosystem and putting pressure on healthy competition.
Your own capital rewards are cut short because of their scale.
Do you like not being able to write apps and distribute them to customers? It's okay to pay their fee, jump through their hoops, be locked to release trains, pay 30%, forced to lose your customer relationship, forced to use their payment and user rails, forced to update on their whim to meet their new standards - on their cadence and not yours?
Do you like having competitors able to pay money to put themselves in front of customers searching for your brand name? On the web and in the app stores? So you have to pay to even enjoy the name recognition you earned? On top of the 30% gross sales tax you already pay? And those draconian rules?
That's fucking bullshit.
We need more competition, not less.
Winning should not be reaching scale and squatting forever. You should be forced to run on the treadmill constantly until someone nibbles away at your market. That's healthy.
Competition from smaller players should be brutal and unending.
That is how we build robust, anti-fragile markets that maximally benefit consumers. That is how we ensure capital rewards accrue to the active innovators.
Apple and Google are lion fish. It's time for the DOJ, FTC, and every sovereign nation to cull them back so that the ecosystem can thrive once more.
Nothing in GP's comment gave any indication that they were a "hyper capitalist". You're just being emotionally manipulative, disingenuous, and acting in bad faith. This is categorically inappropriate for HN.
Not quite as strong as the headline makes the case sound.
Do you also think Apple was forced to use USB-C on the iPad and MacBook?
The EU “forced them” to switch to the standard they helped develop (USB C) on the 11th year after developing lighting. I’m sure it was all the EUs doing.
I wonder when the Europe is going to open up European companies like ASML, who are pretty much the de facto monopolies in their field. I believe the Nexperia incident showed that there's also a lot of political and national reasons behind such decisions, not just creating open and fair markets.
Let’s force ASML to open up its manufacturing line and cancel their patents for squandering innovation, but wait they’re an incredible company that dominated the field with their hard work and diligence, so it’s not fair for them.
Similarly, the open markets should apply to everyone, not just dominant American firms.
Though, I’m not saying they’re innocent and I think they have to be even broken up due to their monopolistic behaviors.
To be clear, Apple had already moved their laptops and computers to USB-C -- long in advance of almost any one else -- and had moved their iPad Pros and Air to USB-C, building out the accessory set supporting the same, years before the EU decree. Pretty convenient when they get to blame the EU for their smartphones making the utterly inevitable move.
Apple came under fire when they moved from 30-pin connectors to Lightning because people wanted to keep their 30-pin connectors. At the time, Apple said that they wouldn’t make people switch for another decade. They switched to USB-C eleven years later.
Seems like it's more a matter of conveniently waiting until it's clearly some kind of explicit competitive disadvantage not to switch, or otherwise have their hand forced, rather than making their products worse.
That said, Apple makes their products worse all the time for a variety of reasons, it shouldn't be so hard to believe, and they also let their products stagnate until they may as well be discontinued, like someone who stops engaging in a relationship until you eventually break up with them.
> How much profit do you think they can possibly make with those cables?
A lot. I'd wager somewhere in the realm of a % of hundreds of billions
Uh yes, of course they would. They happily would do that.
And as far as USB C on Macs, are you complaining that Apple used an industry standard port?
Strange, then, that Apple already moved the iPad Pro and iPad Air to USB-C, right? Didn't they get the memo about "cable fees and control"? It's almost like they were incrementally moving all their platforms over.
The cable fees conspiracy has always been a weird one. At the absolute highest, MFi fees were estimated at some $80M per year. Do you know how utterly irrelevant that number is to Apple? It's like 0.02% of their revenue. Far more logically they literally intended it as a quality assurance given that the company was very focused on user satisfaction.
Look, Apple is a predatory, extraordinarily greedy company, but these sorts of "thanks EU!" discussions are a riot. Thanks EU, for making Apple support a clone of an Apple feature that didn't exist until Apple made it, and for "forcing" Apple to transition their line to USB-C, which they were already almost completely done doing.
The GP is suggesting that Apple was more than happy to have this mandate. I tend to agree: they wanted to switch the iPhone to USB-C anyway, but there’s always people who are going to be upset that their Lightning accessories no longer work or need an adapter. But this way they can say that the EU forced their hand. They get what they wanted all along, but they also get a scapegoat who can take the blame for the remaining downsides.
EU regulation stopped this from happening, and now once they added USB-C it's difficult to take this feature away. I predict we'll be stuck with the USB-C port and form factor on most phones for the next decade.
And for what?
> Apple designers eventually hope to remove most of the external ports and buttons on the iPhone, including the charger, according to people familiar with the company’s work. During the development of the iPhone X, Apple weighed removing the wired charging system entirely. That wasn’t feasible at the time because wireless charging was still slower than traditional methods. [0]
Actual rumors include a prototype of said phone making rounds around the office.
And again, Mark Gurman from 2025:
> "But all of these changes were supposed to be just the tip of the iceberg: Apple had originally hoped to get ever more ambitious with this model... An even bigger idea was to make the Air device Apple’s first completely port-free iPhone. That would mean losing the USB-C connector and going all-in on wireless charging and syncing data with the cloud."
> "But Apple ultimately decided not to adopt a port-free design with the new iPhone, which will still have a USB-C connector. One major reason: There were concerns that removing USB-C would upset European Union regulators, who mandated the iPhone switch to USB-C and are scrutinizing the company’s business practices." [1]
[0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-21/why-apple...
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2025-03-16/apple-...
And when you view what Apple is doing from their long-term vision of the iPhone becoming a transparent piece of glass, it starts making sense.
Honest question - why did they stick with lighting on iphones for so long, given that usb-c has been ubiquitus on phones for years before that point. I mean we can sit here and say "duh apple was going to do it anyway" but like.....why didn't they? Why did samsung have usb-c phones long before apple?
Outside of America this has been obvious since the mid 2000s when people complained about a proliferation of chargers with phones because pre-iPhone the non US cellphone market was far more advanced.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyTA33HQZLA&t=19s
and then they went all-USBC on the MBP before the ecosystem was ready, got absolutely slammed for it, and went back (on magsafe). 4 times bitten, once shy. I'm sure the cynical money reason played a role too, of course, but nobody else is mentioning the 4 times bitten so I felt obliged.
I upgraded my iPad to a USB-C version and discovered I couldn't use my 1st-gen (Lightning) Apple Pencil with it even though it's compatible -- because I first had to buy a special female-female USB-C<->Lightning dongle just to be able to plug it in to pair it. (Even though I can keep using my Lightning charger to charge it separately from my iPad.)
Moving from Lightning to USB-C hasn't been too bad for me since I use wireless charging with e.g. my Lightning AirPods. But the transition is a huge pain. Because of weird cases like the Pencil, it's not even enough to just have a USB-C charging cable and a Lightning charging cable.
The Pencil situation is a disaster. There are at least 3 first party versions plus the 3rd party ones. And when version X + 1 comes out they don’t drop support for version X, they use it in a different product for some stupid reason. Probably because the tooling already exists.
So you can find entire matrices online attempting to explain which iPads support which pencils.
It’s horrible. The Lightning -> USB-C transition is probably one of least objectionable parts of pencil history.
Apple has had MfI certification on Apple compatible products for decades & has actively wanted to protect that revenue stream & domain of control. If folks could just plug in devices & have them just work, that would erode their ownership.
And just as bad, it would raise all sorts of questions like "why does this mouse not do anything on my iPhone" and obscure the careful market delineations Apple vigorously has established between its products (which makes people buy more products than they need). Apple never wanted to be a good guy, Apple never wanted to lower itself to the common market of peripherals and standards. Their involvement with USB-C was likely far far far before it was apparent their device teams would have to give up MfI controls.
And let's be real about Samsung et al -- before USB-C, they were using the utter dogshit micro USB connector (funfact -- this terrible connector became prevalent because the EU made a voluntary commitment with manufacturers to adopt it). micro-USB is a horrible connector from a user-experience and reliability perspective. USB-C was a massive, massive upgrade for those users.
In Apple land, everyone already had a bidirectional, reliable connector. Even today to most Apple users the switch from lightning to USB-C was just a sideways move.
Wait, I thought the Apple 30-pin connector was not reversible?
USB-C has been out for over a decade now. There was only a small window of about two years where iphones had lightning and other phones did not yet have usb-c.
You are correct, the dock connector for was not.
And they couldn’t go to USB-C instead of Lightning initially as Lightning came out first.
A couple of devices like the Pixel (4 years after lightning - 2012 vs 2016) got it a bit earlier, but no, it wasn't two years.
The iPhone rocking a massively better connector half a decade earlier than the vast majority of the competition is legitimately a thing.
They did not like each others standards. I know Apple engineers working on the phone who dislike the change even up to this day…
USB-C connectors are usually rated for 10k cycles. Do you have any evidence that lighting connectors are rated for more cycles than that?
> The female port of a USB-C connector has a relatively fragile center blade. Lightning's layout was the opposite which makes it more robust and easier to clean.
This is very weak a priori arguing. I could just as well argue that USB-C has the center blade shielded instead of exposed and so is more durable.
Unless you have some empirical evidence on this I don't see a strong argument for better durability from either connector.
The unshielded Lightning center blade is on a $5 connector. If it breaks, I'm out $5 and it's reasonable to have spares.
The shielded USB-C center blade is part of an expensive device. If it breaks....
This speculation is just as weak without any evidence.
Now, admittedly, "being yanked by a robot vacuum and falling on the ground" is outside the design parameters for a port; but I absolutely had USB-C ports fail in a way that Lightning would have not.
(Not the person you're replying to, but also a "Lightning was a better physical connector than USB-C" weirdo.)
And for what it's worth, damage to the center blade does seem to be a common failure mode for USB-C and mini-usb connectors. Less frequent for something like HDMI but it does seem to happen from time to time. Lightning never felt like it locked in as securely as USB connectors do, but at the same time, every time I saw a damaged lightning connector it was always on the male (and therefore usually cheaper accessory) side.
There's always outliers, of course, but I had this issue with USB Micro-B on at least one other device and never saw it with a Lightning connector.
Fortunately MagSafe works fine!
A small amount of lint gets into the hole. You pack it in when you plug in the cable. Repeat a thousand times and now you have a stiff “plug” of lint that prevents the connector from fully entering your device.
To be fair, Lightning ports were prone to being clogged with lint, but that was fixable in twenty seconds with a safety pin.
USB-C center tongue female design means that the port will break before the cable. With lightning, the cable plug takes all the stress.
Apple doesn’t publish insertion cycles rating for Lightning connectors, so it’s impossible to provide empirical evidence of that.
In my personal experience, I’ve had two USB-C ports go bad on two MacBooks. I’ve yet to own a USB-C-charging phone, but I’ve never had a Lightning port fail.
I agree and that's par for the course for any standard, they have to limit the requirements to something that is economically manufacutrable and testable.
Meanwhile, lightning connectors have no public standard to speak of so this is a mute point.
> USB-C center tongue female design means that the port will break before the cable. With lightning, the cable plug takes all the stress.
This is another a priori armchair expert argument which I just put very little weight on without data to back it up.
> Apple doesn’t publish insertion cycles rating for Lightning connectors, so it’s impossible to provide empirical evidence of that.
That conclusion does not follow. We can still obtain empirical evidence through direct testing without Apple publishing anything.
> In my personal experience, I’ve had two USB-C ports go bad on two MacBooks. I’ve yet to own a USB-C-charging phone, but I’ve never had a Lightning port fail.
That's fair, everyone has different anecdotal experiences as a foundation for their opinion here. The problem is that anecdotal data is just not very informative to others, that's all.
My phone is now 6 years old, zero problems on usb-c connector
Groan. Come on. Cite one. A single "Apple engineer" to support this ridiculous claim of insider knowledge. What year do you think it is?
You understand that the SoC and I/O blocks are largely shared between the Mac and the iPad / iPhone now, right? This invention of some big bifurcation is not reality based. The A14 SoC (which became the foundation for the Mac's M1) had I/O hardware to support USB-C all the ways back to the iPhone 12. Which makes sense as this chipset was used in iPads that came with USB-C.
Pretty weird for hardware that is largely the same to "not like each others standards".
They're different even between A19 Pro in an iPhone Air and the one in 17 Pros! The Air one doesn't support 10Gbps USB-C.
didn't work, apple still did their own thing so EU went "ok, fuck you, usb-c"
I'd wait to blame the EU also.
There is no reason to believe this at all given how hard Apple fought the EU on this.
It’d also a benefit for Apple, since once upstreamed it shares the maintenance burden across all participants.
The whole selling point of Apple was that as long as you're inside the ecosystem, you'll get the smoothest experience. Well, now the law says that devices, apps and products from third parties should be able to be used on an iPhone as seamlessly as Apple's own products, of course they wouldn't have given that up willingly.
It’s fascinating seeing all the anti-EU Apple fanbois when arguably Apple’s most successful iPhone change in the last half decade, the switch to USB-C, was an EU decision.
If "think of the children" feels like manufactured consent for the erosion of rights, spending money supporting Tim "Client Side Scanning" Cook isn't going to yield some moral reprisal from Apple. Emotionally manipulating you into accepting conditional surveillance is part of Apple's security model. They're the "good guys" and they don't need to prove it.
This is what "interoperability" actually looks like in practice: nobody forces Apple to ship AirDrop-for-Android, they just force them off a proprietary stack and onto a public standard, and suddenly Google can meet them on neutral ground. The EU didn’t create a feature, it removed Apple’s ability to say "we technically can’t."
Also notice the asymmetry: once both sides sit on Wi-Fi Aware, Apple gets basically nothing by embracing Quick Share, but Google and users get a ton from being able to talk to AirDrop. So the market on its own would never converge on this, because the only player who could unlock the value had the least reason to. You need a regulator to make the defection from proprietary to standard mandatory, then "open" just looks like someone finally flipping a bit that was always there.
It can't reliably work between two adjacent rooms in my home without arm-waving.
A hundred or thousand mile trip through iCloud works tons better.
"Contacts only mode" will always be a challenge, but at least the "I just want to share a file without Google watching me" use case is now resolved by Google implementing a standard that doesn't involve them.
Unfortunately, this is Pixel 10 exclusive for now, for some reason. I expect Samsung to pick this up eventually as well, but I'm not sure if Google will be able to backport this tech through Google Play Services the way they did with Nearby Share on older phones.
[0] https://www.notebookcheck.net/Qualcomm-confirms-Quick-Share-...
[1]: https://github.com/seemoo-lab/owl?tab=readme-ov-file#require...
The account requirement for nearby share never made sense yet they still did it the way...
btw safari is a fine browser but on iOS it seems crippled a bit.
we are already getting there with support for web-gpu.
This is telling a lot about US companies complaining about EU laws.
The USB-C thing just made everything better. It cost Apple basically nothing---maybe a few million/year of profit, which for a company that's worth $3 trillion is nothing, and it made my and many other people's lives quite a bit more convenient.
Same with this Airdrop thing, and same with RCS (although there's some reporting that RCS had more to do with China than the EU).
Eventually, someone is going to break open iMessage, and poor Apple will actually have to compete again for customers. Maybe they'll innovate something more interesting than Airpods Ultra Mega Pro Max or a thinner phone.
However I would preferred a backwards compatibility lightning 2.0 upgrade. Cleaning a usb-c port is a huge pain and they are more prone to pocket lint clogging than lightning.
It happened to me at least.
It made all the iPhone docks/speakers/etc. obsolete. The last time that happened, when Apple swapped the old 30 pin connector for lightning, it pissed off a fair number of customers.
This time they could blame the EU which was likely a huge plus.
Not sure why that is, but something to ponder.
Basically, libertarian on social issues paired with a preference for a decentralized economy, as opposed to a "tankie" (Stalinist) style centrally planned economy.
But apparently unless you're a suckup to the authoritarian entity that you like is now a LINO.
My point was just that Apple is such an outrageously bad actor (and the USB-C and Airdrop rules so beneficial) that these rules were getting even a very pro-market person like me to at least be open to the idea of regulating some of these out-of-control giants.
If Apple says sure, implement this FaceTime spec. Facebook does the same thing, go ahead and implement Messenger video chat.
Now you have the Android NewVideoChat app which supports its own protocol, Facebook's and Apple's. A user with NewVideoChat tries to invite a NewVideoChat user, an Apple user and a Facebook user to a video chat.
Except Facebook Messenger's app doesn't support Apple's Facetime app doesn't support Facebook Messenger, so you run into some issues. Something needs to dupe the stream out to all three services which use radically different payloads and encryption methods - and they have to do it without breaking end-to-end encryption. Do it at the client-side and the Android app users will need to dupe their own streams three times and at least one user will need to relay the other two other streams, with all the bandwidth and latency issues that entails. Do it on the server side and you somehow need to translate between protocols (and possibly codecs!) without decrypting them.
And if your video group chat supports private messaging between a subset of participants, you can end up in a situation where a Facebook user wants to send something to a Facetime user without the NewVideoChat user seeing it.. which is a bit of a problem.
Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45994854
> Cross-Platform P2P Wi-Fi: How the EU Killed AWDL
https://www.ditto.com/blog/cross-platform-p2p-wi-fi-how-the-...
On the paper it looks great, but the problem is the EU is not necessarily representing its citizens. It’s great for my Apple products, but I’m also paying for an entire lavish class of superior citizen in Brussels who implement laws written by lobbies.
Yes, EU citizens probably absolutely love not being able to conveniently share files between Android and iOS.
> I’m also paying for an entire lavish class of superior citizen in Brussels who implement laws written by lobbies.
What lobbies, in this particular case? Google? Samsung?
Whatever gave you this impression? That’s not what the story is saying at all.
> the EU is not necessarily representing its citizens
It is not supposed to. The EU is a group of states, not citizens. If you want your voice to really count, lobby your national government, which has more say in the councils of ministers or the council of Europe than the MEPs have.
> I’m also paying for an entire lavish class of superior citizen in Brussels who implement laws written by lobbies.
How big is that "entire lavish class"? Just to know how upset I need to be. Also, which law was "written by lobbies"?
That said, they are setting a good example of legislating for tech. We should be doing a lot of that here in the US. I don't need a bulletproof, ultra-secure, end-to-end encrypted, formally verified phone (although that would be nice). As a boring regular person, I want to not have to need all of that because my government will imprison people that violate my rights. But more on-topic, the FTC (EDIT: FCC) exists to regulate among other things, wireless comms, so this would be something they should be legislating.
Although, putting on my tech hat, I need to re-state that I disagree with this move. I want tech companies to experiment and use faster, more secure, more reliable comms tech without having to worry about compatibility. It is in my interest as a consumer.
Lightning was a superior technology to USB-C, we don't have it now because the EU forced apple's hands. I don't want to lose out on good tech. The EU should have instead forced everyone else to use lightning if they want things simpler.
Why is the EU intent on having inferior tech, inferior capability, inferior pay, inferior innovation-friendly environment. They have the power to demand better things and provide them for their people. The compromise isn't needed. At the risk of offending the HN crowd, I'll even say that the EU shouldn't support open-source things unless they are actually the superior tech. You can't eat or pay your bills with ideals. If commercial/properietary tech is better for europeans, that is what the EU should focus on.
I will drive European or Japanese cars that are better than American cars, I don't mind doing the same with tech, except with Europe that's getting more and more rare. What happened to Nokia and Ericsson. NL has ASML, wouldn't it be nice if we had a TSMC competitor in Europe as well? I don't want to keep going on, but I hope my point is clear.
Competition is good, Android shouldn't need to support AirDrop, it should come up with a better alternative and leave iPhone users wondering why Android's solution is faster and works at greater distances. Same with iMessage compatibility.
Instead competition, the EU is wanting forced mediocrity. They are within their rights for sure, but it isn't the best thing to do.
I only wish they did the same thing with electrical outlets and forced the world to use one mediocre standard :)
Okay, so, why don't we see competition in places where it matters, like Airdrop, iMessage and the App Store?
The answer seems to be pretty simple, to me; Apple considers themselves above competition. It doesn't matter if a superior system exists, they ultimately decide what is righteous and anyone who disagrees buys a different phone. It's a lose/lose situation between consumers and the economy, who neither get superior software solutions nor cheaper products.
> Apple considers themselves above competition
In literally every market apple is in, they have intense competition!?
> they ultimately decide what is righteous and anyone who disagrees buys a different phone
Ugh.. yeah.. shouldn't they be allowed to sell things that they believe will sell well? I mean on one hand people complain about cheap devices engineered with planned obsolescence, and then you complain about what.. better quality? If they believe it is a superior system, then certain, I want that as a consumer. Why don't you? And I also thing being able to buy a different phone is great, that means no monopolies, that's what we all want right?
> neither get superior software solutions nor cheaper products.
I am getting a superior hardware and software for apple. What his happening now is, for no amount of money I could possibly earn can I get a good quality product, I have to settle with EU's forced mediocrity even though I don't live in the EU. People who can't afford apple products have alternatives, but that isn't enough for you, you want everyone to get participation trophies? that's what it sounds like, i could be wrong, it sounds like you don't want to feel envious of people who get superior products? Even though there are many android phones more expensive than iPhones, so it isn't even a question of affordability. it's just forced mediocrity. With no upsides to anyone other than people who feel great about "america bad" "middle finger to apple".
Apple giving equal footing to competitors changes nothing about the products you love. I don't care if you think Apple's brand appeal is diminished by prosecuting their anticompetitive zeal. That's not my problem. You will have to "settle" for it anywhere iPhones are sold, because when you buy an iPhone you don't get to choose things like your charging cable. Unfortunately, we haven't seen a mass wave of iPhone defectors after they ruined the thing with USB-C.
Whatsapp, Signal, Viber, etc.. they're all threats to iMessage. These apps even make themselves the default SMS handler so that the only thing iMessage is good for is native iMessage messages. It isn't distributed outside of Apple ecosystem either unlike its competition, Apple is doing the opposite of dominating the market there.
How is Safari segregated? Most Mac users (including me) install Firefox or Chrome typically. Are you saying Apple doesn't face competition, or are you saying Apple doesn't compete enough (which I don't see how that's a fault?)
I don't think the appstore is particularly more competitive than android's.
The appstore is the only area where there might be legitimate antitrust allegations. Even then, I'm with apple there because it is in the interest of their consumers. You already have the bland and mediocre android, don't ruin apple for the rest of us. Monopoly is exactly what you're advocating for, monopoly of the mediocre and bland. There is absolutley no service or product apple makes where there aren't enough alternatives, or where apple has created an anti-competitive dependency.
> Apple giving equal footing to competitors changes nothing about the products you love
Yes it does. Give me back my lightning charger. Now I have USB-C where male port is on the phone and the connector is exposed to wear and tear. Apple did it the opposite way, because they make products that last and are durable! with lightning the wear and tear impacts the cable (male) end the most, so it's a matter of replacing cables. with USB-C, the device end needs repair and replacement. Now i'm stuck with your bland mediocre thing. Why am i paying the price for android users' envy?? Same with app store, I don't want b.s. crap android apps, i used android long enough and i hated it, i don't poor quality crap.
Why don't you get that freedom means everyone gets an option, everyone gets to do what they want without harming others. Apple users love apple products. Even when you tell us how android phones have better specs, better hardware, more up to date, we still like apple precisely because of Apple's business practcies that improve the user experience for us. And now you want it to be just like android, why? You have the choice to use android already, why do you need to take away my freedom to use the kind of products apple creates?
I want an extremely closed and gated app store. I want background checks on app developers, forget just ID'ing them. I want it to be a costly endeavor to write iOS apps. I liked lightning, I love iMessage, I recommend it over Signal. I used signal and I have lost a LOT due to it's backup/recovery mess, I've suffered a lot under crappy android apps. airdrop works prefectly, I don't want someone with a buggy/malwared android phone sending airdrops to me, I don't want shoddy android messaging clients sending me imessage messages. Apple is doing what we as its users want. You the majority android users are taking away the choice of the minority apple users.
> because when you buy an iPhone you don't get to choose things like your charging cable. Unfortunately, we haven't seen a mass wave of iPhone defectors after they ruined the thing with USB-C.
Of course not, but you were hoping for a mass defection. Apple still makes superior products and we get that it is crappy EU law making that is forcing this. What would I defect to if I didn't like USB-C? You took away the one choice I had. Every android device uses USB-C. Your entire platform here is taking away people's choices and freedoms.
You're not helping anyone get on an equal footing, because by your own admission, they were unequal before right? All you've done is take away the choice of apple's users. Did android messages gain anything with iMessage compatiblity? Did android phones gain anything by apple using usb-c? Do android phones benefit from apple allowing more app stores? No, the only people that benefit are crappy developers that spread their mediocrity everywhere. No apple competitor is gaining a competitive advantage by these measures.
There have always been third party lightning cable makers, I can't think of any major app that isn't available on the app store. Consumers aren't complaining about this. I'll concede that having to store both lightning and usb-c is annoying, but hey.. don't buy apple and avoid USB-C!!?? You literally don't have to use apple products. If product design was considered freedom of speech (is it?) you'd be coercing speech and banning speech you disagree with because it annoys you.
This is weaponized enshittification!
I have one of every Apple device category except the HomePod. But this is a horrible take. I can now use my same USB C cables everywhere.
But more importantly, I can use standard USB C peripherals from network adapters USB C external monitors, standard USB C to HDMI cords, plug a USB C storage device in etc
I don't care if apple required manually splicing wires to charge your phones (safely), how is it the government's right to force them to not do that? The whole point of having a free society is small things like this. I keep posting long posts on HN, so let me cut it short and say that lots of freedoms can be taken away in the name of convenience to others. Companies should be punished for monopolistic practices, but they shouldn't be punished for imagining alternative ways of doing things and succeeding with that. I've had android phones where the USB connector on the phone end broke or degraded, you can hopefully see my perspective as well? How can we have a free society like this if we can't even resolve and tolerate very small differences of opinion like this?
Even before the EU mandate lightning was showing its age and they started replacing it with USB C on the iPads.
You’ve had cheap Android phones if you had that problem. Have you heard reports of that being a problem with iPhones?
As far as compatibility, I carry around an external USB C powered external monitor for my laptop. It gets power and video from one cord on a computer.
I can take that same monitor and that same USB C cord and plug it up to my iPhone.
This is me sitting at a Delta lounge watching either Breaking Bad or Better Caul Saul with my phone connected to my second monitor
The iPhone by itself can only power it to 50% brightness. But there you see if I plug in a battery to the second USB C port, it can power the monitor at full brightness and charge my phone.
USB C is better in every way.