The ecosystem Android and iOS came into was that smartphones were tiny computers where you could install programs from anywhere. Just like any other computer.
What they did instead was force all programs to go through one source. Apple especially did not just helpfully provide one reliably safe path to acquire software… they viciously prevent all other means of getting programs on your phone, to this day. Android’s a bit better, but in practice, Google’s store is all that matters, and Google’s store acts just as greedy and demanding as Apple’s tightfisted enforced monopoly. You cannot release an Android device with Google’s store and your store.
The first iPhone did not support external software, period. No less than John Carmack gave Steve Jobs shit for this. Steve insisted “web apps” would suffice, in an era where the video tag barely existed, Javascript was still a hideously slow interpreted language, and everything cool in a browser relied on the Flash plugin that iOS would never support. I don’t know if going from that to ‘we censor everything and you have no choice, give us 30%!’ was a deliberate move to make people want the leash… but it wouldn’t be the first happy accident where Jobs fell ass-backwards into a billion dollars.
Meanwhile, over on PC, anyone can install anything from anywhere, but Steam has the same absurd 30% cut and a clear de-facto monopoly. Everyone else is either managing their own games with no store… or trying to compete with Steam and finding zero traction. When Epic of all companies, an absolute giant with billions of dollars in basically passive revenue, can’t suck off developers and customers hard enough to draw people away from Steam, that is a sign that this style of software repository has immense control, by nature.
You’re describing higher-end feature phones.
The ecosystem Android and iOS came into was that smartphones were tiny computers where you could install programs from anywhere. Just like any other computer.
This is true but those OG smartphones, at least in the US, targeted enterprise business and IT users. What really caused iphone and later android to change the marketspace(other than just right place and the right time for 3g and edge technology) was that they targetted that space that feature phones occupied and hit mainstream consumers. And phones like the sidekick and motorolla razr were technically capable of being smart devices they were just kept back from it because the telecoms didnt want it. In the earlier days the android ecosystem was a bit of a mess and we already have lots of preinstalled apps from telecoms.
Sure there would likely still be higher end (and priced) android devices that would be vanilla or unlocked clean versions, but there would definitely have been a world where there was the verizon app store, T-mobile app store, sprint app store, att store, and of course epic app store, Dont get me wrong a more open platform is nice and Im not saying the monopoly as it stands is a good thing, but other side of history would have been just as bad. And of course android’s branding would be on the locked down devices which would be a problem for google.
As an aside having a primary source for programs to be installed to isnt inherently a bad thing. For example Im a linux user and much prefer the system of installing programs from my distro’s repo, or if it doesnt exist checking flathub’s repo or adding a third party repo and then after all that getting the rpm or deb.
Regarding the iphone, you’re right about that. Everyone remembers the buzz around the iphone launch and the 3gs. They forget about the 2g only web browser only device that first came out. It’s funny people often like to post and make fun of old quotes from the contemporary competition and laugh, but they werent entirely wrong especially with that first model. And the “real internet” as they called it was not as big a strength one might think without a mouse or access to flash in 2007.
Apple had a huge amount of momentum from the ipod and their marketing campaigns were doing a lot to change their perception and win over more and more users. They targeted the masses and mainstream instead of businesses and it worked.
And phones like the sidekick and motorolla razr were technically capable of being smart devices they were just kept back from it because the telecoms didnt want it.
And then Jobs forced through a phone with no telecom rot, and it did even less.
In the earlier days the android ecosystem was a bit of a mess and we already have lots of preinstalled apps from telecoms.
As opposed to when?
Sure there would likely still be higher end (and priced) android devices that would be vanilla or unlocked clean versions
… as opposed to when?
“The other side of history” here is if you could buy phone-OS software at Walmart. Like… any other software, at the time. All “app stores” are bad, actually. All of them are some form of single-vendor walled garden, and their goal is to keep people in so they can keep seeking rent on other people’s software.
Chances are high that everyone in this Lemmy thread is a Linux user, and all of us know that getting software from outside your repository of choice comes with a sense of misery. Money’s not what makes it a problem. Any system designed to be a one-stop solution is not designed for competition. No matter how open it is. Windows, for its innumerable faults, will happily run whatever garbage you got from a brick-and-mortar store, or a skeezy website, or through some networked installer installer installer. make && configure is a prayer. But I can grab any install wizard off a 1990s PC Gamer disc and have better odds it’ll install under Wine.
Android came so close to the right idea, with APKs. Platform-agnostic bytecode with permission-based APIs? Even today, that’s a fantastic goal. And lusers don’t need to know how it works if they just click Okay and watch the progress bar fill up. What we have instead is an ARM monoculture where the allegedly open and free vendor considered locking everything down or buying out another billion-dollar corporation to avoid tolerating software outside their ecosystem.
The most bitter irony is, browsers became the right answer. WebGPU’s gonna do Vulkan things. WASM has probably sorted out its threading. It’s not exactly SPIR-V and Qt, but it’s a thin enough overhead that you might as well ship one version everywhere.
And then Jobs forced through a phone with no telecom rot, and it did even less.
And they very quickly corrected and the 3g had an appstore.
… as opposed to when?
I suppose what my post is getting at is more or less that if android and apple hadnt asserted their marketplace that the result would have been that their devices would be slightly open feature phones. With the Verizon Store and ATT-Store and etc instead where everything costs money even things that would otherwise be free like chat apps.
There might be a higher end unsubsidized market for enthusiasts and enterprise users and of course I imagine on the android end we’d still get the nexus line for vanilla android, but it would be a bit of a mess.
You’re describing higher-end feature phones.
The ecosystem Android and iOS came into was that smartphones were tiny computers where you could install programs from anywhere. Just like any other computer.
What they did instead was force all programs to go through one source. Apple especially did not just helpfully provide one reliably safe path to acquire software… they viciously prevent all other means of getting programs on your phone, to this day. Android’s a bit better, but in practice, Google’s store is all that matters, and Google’s store acts just as greedy and demanding as Apple’s tightfisted enforced monopoly. You cannot release an Android device with Google’s store and your store.
The first iPhone did not support external software, period. No less than John Carmack gave Steve Jobs shit for this. Steve insisted “web apps” would suffice, in an era where the video tag barely existed, Javascript was still a hideously slow interpreted language, and everything cool in a browser relied on the Flash plugin that iOS would never support. I don’t know if going from that to ‘we censor everything and you have no choice, give us 30%!’ was a deliberate move to make people want the leash… but it wouldn’t be the first happy accident where Jobs fell ass-backwards into a billion dollars.
Meanwhile, over on PC, anyone can install anything from anywhere, but Steam has the same absurd 30% cut and a clear de-facto monopoly. Everyone else is either managing their own games with no store… or trying to compete with Steam and finding zero traction. When Epic of all companies, an absolute giant with billions of dollars in basically passive revenue, can’t suck off developers and customers hard enough to draw people away from Steam, that is a sign that this style of software repository has immense control, by nature.
This is true but those OG smartphones, at least in the US, targeted enterprise business and IT users. What really caused iphone and later android to change the marketspace(other than just right place and the right time for 3g and edge technology) was that they targetted that space that feature phones occupied and hit mainstream consumers. And phones like the sidekick and motorolla razr were technically capable of being smart devices they were just kept back from it because the telecoms didnt want it. In the earlier days the android ecosystem was a bit of a mess and we already have lots of preinstalled apps from telecoms.
Sure there would likely still be higher end (and priced) android devices that would be vanilla or unlocked clean versions, but there would definitely have been a world where there was the verizon app store, T-mobile app store, sprint app store, att store, and of course epic app store, Dont get me wrong a more open platform is nice and Im not saying the monopoly as it stands is a good thing, but other side of history would have been just as bad. And of course android’s branding would be on the locked down devices which would be a problem for google.
As an aside having a primary source for programs to be installed to isnt inherently a bad thing. For example Im a linux user and much prefer the system of installing programs from my distro’s repo, or if it doesnt exist checking flathub’s repo or adding a third party repo and then after all that getting the rpm or deb.
Regarding the iphone, you’re right about that. Everyone remembers the buzz around the iphone launch and the 3gs. They forget about the 2g only web browser only device that first came out. It’s funny people often like to post and make fun of old quotes from the contemporary competition and laugh, but they werent entirely wrong especially with that first model. And the “real internet” as they called it was not as big a strength one might think without a mouse or access to flash in 2007.
Apple had a huge amount of momentum from the ipod and their marketing campaigns were doing a lot to change their perception and win over more and more users. They targeted the masses and mainstream instead of businesses and it worked.
And then Jobs forced through a phone with no telecom rot, and it did even less.
As opposed to when?
… as opposed to when?
“The other side of history” here is if you could buy phone-OS software at Walmart. Like… any other software, at the time. All “app stores” are bad, actually. All of them are some form of single-vendor walled garden, and their goal is to keep people in so they can keep seeking rent on other people’s software.
Chances are high that everyone in this Lemmy thread is a Linux user, and all of us know that getting software from outside your repository of choice comes with a sense of misery. Money’s not what makes it a problem. Any system designed to be a one-stop solution is not designed for competition. No matter how open it is. Windows, for its innumerable faults, will happily run whatever garbage you got from a brick-and-mortar store, or a skeezy website, or through some networked installer installer installer. make && configure is a prayer. But I can grab any install wizard off a 1990s PC Gamer disc and have better odds it’ll install under Wine.
Android came so close to the right idea, with APKs. Platform-agnostic bytecode with permission-based APIs? Even today, that’s a fantastic goal. And lusers don’t need to know how it works if they just click Okay and watch the progress bar fill up. What we have instead is an ARM monoculture where the allegedly open and free vendor considered locking everything down or buying out another billion-dollar corporation to avoid tolerating software outside their ecosystem.
The most bitter irony is, browsers became the right answer. WebGPU’s gonna do Vulkan things. WASM has probably sorted out its threading. It’s not exactly SPIR-V and Qt, but it’s a thin enough overhead that you might as well ship one version everywhere.
And they very quickly corrected and the 3g had an appstore.
I suppose what my post is getting at is more or less that if android and apple hadnt asserted their marketplace that the result would have been that their devices would be slightly open feature phones. With the Verizon Store and ATT-Store and etc instead where everything costs money even things that would otherwise be free like chat apps.
There might be a higher end unsubsidized market for enthusiasts and enterprise users and of course I imagine on the android end we’d still get the nexus line for vanilla android, but it would be a bit of a mess.