Apple held talks with DuckDuckGo to replace Alphabet's Google as the default search engine for the private mode on Apple's Safari browser, the Bloomberg News reported on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the discussions.
They didn’t switch to USB-C out of the goodness of their hearts. They switched because the EU passed a new law that requires that new smartphones have USB-C ports.
Now that USB-C is the required cable, people can go out and buy any cheap cable they want. The law turned a proprietary cash cow into a low return commodity item.
This argument always cracks me up. I have been able to buy cheap lightning cables effectively since they started making lightning cables lol. It’s not like Apple somehow locks the phone from charging, physics is still a real thing and electricity can still flow through them, even without the MFi aspects.
If you wanna hate Apple for being a massively bloated and money-hungry corporate nightmare, that’s fine, I’m with it, but do we really all think they made it to $3 trillion valuation on… fucking cables??? 😂
No, they made it to 3 trillion with cables, overpriced PCs, overpriced notebooks, overpriced Phones, overpriced watches, and locking software of all these so the easiest way to use different devices together, is to use another apple product.
Oh, and cultivating a fan base of people who uncritically buy anything they make with the notion that it’s “better than anything else” when in reality that could not be further from the truth.
Ok, so you listed basically all of their business strategies, which is exactly my point. It’s not a business built SOLELY on proprietary ports and cables, yet that aspect is what gets the most attention and criticism.
I wouldn’t say that’s really accurate. It is true that it is the aspect that is getting the most attention now, but thats only because its recent, in the news and EU forced their hand upon it.
Apple among regular consumers has been criticised for years, if not decades for its overpriced hardware and among more technical crowd has always been criticised for its closed source and incompatible software.
Of course, people who say their entire empire is built upon a bunch of cables are wrong lol
Yeah but there has to be some reason they were so opposed to this.
Because Lightning came out years before USB-C was ready and is already an established de facto standard. There are well over a billion devices in use right now with Lightning ports on them, and billions of Lightning cables. You’re balancing the advantages of switching to a “standard” against the reality that their customers already have Lightning stuff. I went several years with my Switch as literally the only thing I owned that used USB-C. Even now it’s still common for gadgets to ship with micro-USB. USB-C has taken a long time to reach real ubiquity.
Lightning is also physically smaller and easier to plug in than USB-C.
Anyway, the point is that USB-C was not (and is not) this significantly, obviously superior experience for Apple’s existing customers. There are real, tangible downsides that make it more expensive and more environmentally wasteful for at least hundreds of millions of iPhone users who will be upgrading.
They could have, but I think they saw the demand and speculation of a usb-c phone. Maybe they realized that the bad image it would give them if they held out.
I’ve been waiting for a usb-c phone to upgrade. I’m at a point now that I really can’t wait any longer for a new phone. If they did not release a usb-c phone this year, I would have just bought the cheapest phone they offered.
If the choice is paying unreasonable prices for Apple’s overpriced proprietary nonsense or reducing my yield as another data cow in Alphabet’s surveillance capitalism human farming machine, I begrudgingly pick the former.
I think it’s safe to assume all corporations publicly traded are equally greedy, regardless of how much their marketing department assures us that they exist for altruism.
Shareholders don’t by stock to make the world a better place, they invest in the companies sending the largest dividend checks. Apple and Alphabet are equally covetous of our money (money and data for Alphabet), but I trust the old business model of selling hardware more than giving up my data forever to be used for anything in the future.
GrapheneOS is my true preference currently for personal use and it feels good to leave a corporation in favor of a community, much like my switch from Reddit to Lemmy. As the techie in my family and friend group I’m still going to have to recommend iOS to most people since using GrapheneOS as a daily driver is a big ask for my grandmother.
If you’re a power user there’s a minor learning curve to prevent shit from breaking and some mild inconveniences like being unable to use NFC. Location can also just not work at times. Overall, I’m glad I made the switch.
At least with Android I have options. Do I want USB-C? There’s a phone for that. Do I not want USB-C (for some weird reason)? There’s a phone for that.
Options are definitely nice for those technical enough to understand and use them.
Though personally I am keeping an eye on Linux devices for my next upgrade.
Do I not want USB-C (for some weird reason)?
This is probably temporary until it is time to move past USB-C. Which will be a slower and more difficult process now that there are laws in place requiring it.
Apple will never do anything for any other reasons besides: regulation and profit. They try and foster this image of humanitarianism and ethics, but meanwhile they build everything in sweatshops and make their own “standards” so that their loyal customers can only use the functions they need by purchasing additional dongles.
I’m happy that they were forced into an actual standard, but I’ve already heard at least two apple users IRL claiming that USB-C is inferior for [insert random reasoning here]. Apple has cultivated the idea that they are above standards for a long time and it will take a long time to break.
I used to be a jailbreaker, so I’m not against sideloading apps. However, I can see how if its not properly designed, sideloading could make it easier to trick people into installing dodgy executables and malware on their phone. It’s not just about that sweet 30% cut.
Apple is a corporation with a market cap that rivals the GDP of France and a net income that rivals the GDP of Qatar. That much capital consolidated within a singular private entity doesn’t just make them any other company. Their profit seeking is wildly, wildly different than a vast majority of any other company today.
This is just the “both sides of the same” argument with different dressing.
It’s as false here as it is there. So you’re going to tell me a company like fairphone is as unethical as Apple or Samsung?
Yes of course they work with two completely different yields but that’s really the point The only way you can get to that yield is to be unethical so choose smaller brands choose ones that make decisions you agree with and help them grow.
There is no completely ethical capitalism but there definitely are choices that get us somewhere better.
So you’re going to tell me a company like fairphone is as unethical as Apple or Samsung?
Absolutely. There is no ethical consumption under capitalism and even fair phone is profit driven. Even NPOs are profit driven. No one works for a loss in western society. No one. So literally every company will do everything it does for the sake of profitability. Even fairphone.
You have to realize that fairphone’s whole model is a marketing gimmick. Does it happen to align with some good values? Sure, but it’s still a gimmick to separate you from your money at the end of the day.
This is just false. Fairphone had audits that prove it’s an improvement in both sustainability and worker conditions.
Of course consumerism always negatively impacts the environment but to make it all equivalent is to forsake all nuance. It’s not at all to the same magnitude.
I don’t believe capitalism is the answer to the world’s problems but to not celebrate a positive initiative is throwing the baby out with bath water.
The size, profits, and overall global reach of a company heavily impacts how that company further impacts the world. Do you honestly think that, I don’t know, American Girl dolls have had the same negative impact on the world as the East India Company?
The only reason they pass on an image of ethical environmentaly friendly company is because its good for business. People like that shit the products are good people buy. Its that simple. Companies give no shit about people or the planet.
I know. That’s my point. A great example of this is when they used to brag about how eco-friendly their product were. I remember them bragging about their displays being mercury-free, BFR free, etc and their laptops having totally recyclable aluminum and glass enclosures - only to later deliberately make their laptops nearly impossible to repair and upgrade.
Im not bashing android i have to use one of their devices for work; it’s ok. The users on social media with the vitriol for apple and their need to defend android is really cringe.
I hear ya. To be honest, I don’t really engage in such types of discussions - in terms of phones, gaming, browsers, hell, even movies!
Those kind of vitriolic discussions are led by a minority group who has nothing else to do in life but post stupid comments on the internet.
I could say the same about apple users. But then I go to the real world and notice that the vast majority of people couldn’t care less about such dick- (or pussy-) measuring shenanigans.
Of all of the things that I vastly prefer since moving to Lemmy from reddit, anything related to Apple is not one of them. I’m actually surprised because talking about anything Apple on reddit was always a circlejerk pitchfork parade, but Lemmy still seems to outdo. The “trying to stay relevant comment” is honestly hilarious. Sure, the richest company with more than 50% of the smartphone market, that basically feeds design to the rest of the industry is trying to stay relevant.
And another thing worth addressing, It’s probably 50/50 whether the EU is forcing them to USB-C, or just providing cover for them to move to USB-C. Modern Apple (after 1997) rarely has used proprietary standards for cables/connectors, and when they have it’s pretty obviously because there isn’t a better option, or more likely, there isn’t an option that is suited to their purpose*. Apple is/was largely the reason we’re even talking about USB, being one of the first to really adopt it. Then the dock connector for iPods, which is probably the most major example of them using a proprietary connector. If you read that link (just wiki) you’ll see that the dock connector did things that no other standard connector did at the time, and it did it in a form factor that would work with iPods. Fast forward 10 years and Apple eats shit in the press for changing to Lightning, which pre-dated USB-C and has obvious advantages over one of the worst computer connectors in modern history - micro-USB**. Apple contributed significantly to the USB-C spec, which includes many of the advantages that Lightning had first, built off of the work they did with Intel in creating another standard, Thunderbolt.
And then on to today, where Apple is “forced” to use USB-C. Again, in 2016, Apple moved all of their high end laptops to exclusively USB-C, for which they would again be pilloried. People are still pissed those laptops dropped USB-A and MagSafe in favor of trying to drive adoption of USB-C and a one-connector-rules-them-all world. They also moved their Pro iPads over to C in 2018. Basically, Apple started moving its high-end, less price conscious customers to C long before legislation was a gleam in anyone’s eye. Their cheaper products (base model iPads) and mass-consumer products (iPhones) they moved much slower on, and even then there were a slate of “Apple keeps changing connectors all of the time!” (twice in 20 years) outrage-bait articles.
Yes, Apple was “forced” to use the connector they created the first design references for (Lightning/Thunderbolt, and to a lesser extend Mini-DisplayPort) and then helped design, then moved to before most, in a bid to stay “relevant” in a field they already dominate.
* Also worth noting that Apple was a main driver of adoption of USB-A, and took heat when they converted iMacs to it over PS/2, far before most PC vendors did.
** This alone, the amount of negative press they garnered, meant that there was likely no way Apple was going to move iPhones off of Lightning for 10 years.
Wow, USB-C and DDG in the same year? Look at Apple trying to stay relevant 😉
They didn’t switch to USB-C out of the goodness of their hearts. They switched because the EU passed a new law that requires that new smartphones have USB-C ports.
And they actively fought against it for as long as they could, tooth and nail.
It’s an uphill battle, why would Apple bother when just using USB-C makes sense and saves them their lawyers sanity?
Money.
Now that USB-C is the required cable, people can go out and buy any cheap cable they want. The law turned a proprietary cash cow into a low return commodity item.
This argument always cracks me up. I have been able to buy cheap lightning cables effectively since they started making lightning cables lol. It’s not like Apple somehow locks the phone from charging, physics is still a real thing and electricity can still flow through them, even without the MFi aspects.
If you wanna hate Apple for being a massively bloated and money-hungry corporate nightmare, that’s fine, I’m with it, but do we really all think they made it to $3 trillion valuation on… fucking cables??? 😂
No, they made it to 3 trillion with cables, overpriced PCs, overpriced notebooks, overpriced Phones, overpriced watches, and locking software of all these so the easiest way to use different devices together, is to use another apple product.
Oh, and cultivating a fan base of people who uncritically buy anything they make with the notion that it’s “better than anything else” when in reality that could not be further from the truth.
Ok, so you listed basically all of their business strategies, which is exactly my point. It’s not a business built SOLELY on proprietary ports and cables, yet that aspect is what gets the most attention and criticism.
I wouldn’t say that’s really accurate. It is true that it is the aspect that is getting the most attention now, but thats only because its recent, in the news and EU forced their hand upon it.
Apple among regular consumers has been criticised for years, if not decades for its overpriced hardware and among more technical crowd has always been criticised for its closed source and incompatible software.
Of course, people who say their entire empire is built upon a bunch of cables are wrong lol
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Yeah but there has to be some reason they were so opposed to this. I don’t get it either though.
Because Lightning came out years before USB-C was ready and is already an established de facto standard. There are well over a billion devices in use right now with Lightning ports on them, and billions of Lightning cables. You’re balancing the advantages of switching to a “standard” against the reality that their customers already have Lightning stuff. I went several years with my Switch as literally the only thing I owned that used USB-C. Even now it’s still common for gadgets to ship with micro-USB. USB-C has taken a long time to reach real ubiquity.
Lightning is also physically smaller and easier to plug in than USB-C.
Anyway, the point is that USB-C was not (and is not) this significantly, obviously superior experience for Apple’s existing customers. There are real, tangible downsides that make it more expensive and more environmentally wasteful for at least hundreds of millions of iPhone users who will be upgrading.
Not sure why you are getting downvoted. That’s a pretty good answer.
Apple wants to keep selling overpriced cables to losers.
If they were really fighting it that hard they could’ve stalled till 2025 when the EU law actually takes effect.
Nah, the design specs for phones like this are done years in advance.
So wait…. Are you suggesting they were already planing to switch before the EU law was passed?
They could have, but I think they saw the demand and speculation of a usb-c phone. Maybe they realized that the bad image it would give them if they held out.
I’ve been waiting for a usb-c phone to upgrade. I’m at a point now that I really can’t wait any longer for a new phone. If they did not release a usb-c phone this year, I would have just bought the cheapest phone they offered.
Why keep giving money to Apple if you are already aware of their tactics?
If the choice is paying unreasonable prices for Apple’s overpriced proprietary nonsense or reducing my yield as another data cow in Alphabet’s surveillance capitalism human farming machine, I begrudgingly pick the former.
I think it’s safe to assume all corporations publicly traded are equally greedy, regardless of how much their marketing department assures us that they exist for altruism.
Shareholders don’t by stock to make the world a better place, they invest in the companies sending the largest dividend checks. Apple and Alphabet are equally covetous of our money (money and data for Alphabet), but I trust the old business model of selling hardware more than giving up my data forever to be used for anything in the future.
GrapheneOS is my true preference currently for personal use and it feels good to leave a corporation in favor of a community, much like my switch from Reddit to Lemmy. As the techie in my family and friend group I’m still going to have to recommend iOS to most people since using GrapheneOS as a daily driver is a big ask for my grandmother.
I have to give graphene a try next year.
If you’re a power user there’s a minor learning curve to prevent shit from breaking and some mild inconveniences like being unable to use NFC. Location can also just not work at times. Overall, I’m glad I made the switch.
Same reason that people stick with Google.
After years in the eco-system it is obnoxious to swap, and the other main competitor isn’t any better of a company to deal with.
At least with Android I have options. Do I want USB-C? There’s a phone for that. Do I not want USB-C (for some weird reason)? There’s a phone for that.
Options are definitely nice for those technical enough to understand and use them.
Though personally I am keeping an eye on Linux devices for my next upgrade.
This is probably temporary until it is time to move past USB-C. Which will be a slower and more difficult process now that there are laws in place requiring it.
Apple will never do anything for any other reasons besides: regulation and profit. They try and foster this image of humanitarianism and ethics, but meanwhile they build everything in sweatshops and make their own “standards” so that their loyal customers can only use the functions they need by purchasing additional dongles.
I’m happy that they were forced into an actual standard, but I’ve already heard at least two apple users IRL claiming that USB-C is inferior for [insert random reasoning here]. Apple has cultivated the idea that they are above standards for a long time and it will take a long time to break.
Apple fanboys are the most frustrating people to talk to.
They find any illogical reason to justify what apple does.
Go on. What does Apple do that is uniquely Apple that fanbois justify?
Was that a typo, or did you intentionally spell fanboys with an I?
Please, it’s pronounced ‘fan-bwa’.
Intentionally, because I’m down with the kids, innit?
yea boiiii
You are my example. You see how defensive you got when I criticized apple?
I asked for an example or two. If that’s your best example of frustrating irrationality-pfft. :)
What about having the ability to sideload apps?
So many people are hard against that even though they are not being forced to use it.
I used to be a jailbreaker, so I’m not against sideloading apps. However, I can see how if its not properly designed, sideloading could make it easier to trick people into installing dodgy executables and malware on their phone. It’s not just about that sweet 30% cut.
Pot, meet kettle.
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Apple is a corporation with a market cap that rivals the GDP of France and a net income that rivals the GDP of Qatar. That much capital consolidated within a singular private entity doesn’t just make them any other company. Their profit seeking is wildly, wildly different than a vast majority of any other company today.
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This is just the “both sides of the same” argument with different dressing.
It’s as false here as it is there. So you’re going to tell me a company like fairphone is as unethical as Apple or Samsung?
Yes of course they work with two completely different yields but that’s really the point The only way you can get to that yield is to be unethical so choose smaller brands choose ones that make decisions you agree with and help them grow.
There is no completely ethical capitalism but there definitely are choices that get us somewhere better.
Absolutely. There is no ethical consumption under capitalism and even fair phone is profit driven. Even NPOs are profit driven. No one works for a loss in western society. No one. So literally every company will do everything it does for the sake of profitability. Even fairphone.
You have to realize that fairphone’s whole model is a marketing gimmick. Does it happen to align with some good values? Sure, but it’s still a gimmick to separate you from your money at the end of the day.
This is just false. Fairphone had audits that prove it’s an improvement in both sustainability and worker conditions.
Of course consumerism always negatively impacts the environment but to make it all equivalent is to forsake all nuance. It’s not at all to the same magnitude.
I don’t believe capitalism is the answer to the world’s problems but to not celebrate a positive initiative is throwing the baby out with bath water.
The size, profits, and overall global reach of a company heavily impacts how that company further impacts the world. Do you honestly think that, I don’t know, American Girl dolls have had the same negative impact on the world as the East India Company?
The only reason they pass on an image of ethical environmentaly friendly company is because its good for business. People like that shit the products are good people buy. Its that simple. Companies give no shit about people or the planet.
I know. That’s my point. A great example of this is when they used to brag about how eco-friendly their product were. I remember them bragging about their displays being mercury-free, BFR free, etc and their laptops having totally recyclable aluminum and glass enclosures - only to later deliberately make their laptops nearly impossible to repair and upgrade.
I’m cracking a joke
Ah.
Ah yes, the second largest company in the world “trying to stay relevant”
Im not really brand loyal to a gizmo company but the way android users are so insecure makes me never want to get them.
What is your argument for calling 70% of all phone users insecure?
Like this response is a good example of the insecurity im talking about thanks
This is hilarious because there’s a comment just above yours that’s exactly the same, just turned on its head.
I said it to the android guy and I’m gonna say it to you: pot, meet kettle.
You have truly defended your gizmo company sir, a true white knight of fair google. Not cringe at all
Lmao, I’m an apple user, all in on the ecosystem from phone to smarthome.
Good try though.
How is that a good example of insecurity of any kind?
I see the exact opposite, and you being triggered when no one even mentioned anything you’re so offended about, proves the point.
It’stotally not your insecurity talking, at all… but do go on…
Lol what made you conclude that OP uses Android?
I never mentioned OP
Then why gratuitously bash android for some weird user-related reason?
Im not bashing android i have to use one of their devices for work; it’s ok. The users on social media with the vitriol for apple and their need to defend android is really cringe.
I hear ya. To be honest, I don’t really engage in such types of discussions - in terms of phones, gaming, browsers, hell, even movies!
Those kind of vitriolic discussions are led by a minority group who has nothing else to do in life but post stupid comments on the internet.
I could say the same about apple users. But then I go to the real world and notice that the vast majority of people couldn’t care less about such dick- (or pussy-) measuring shenanigans.
To be honest the only company I see apple users bitch about is apple.
* In terms of profit, after the Saudi Arabian Oil Group. Huh, I had no idea.
Of all of the things that I vastly prefer since moving to Lemmy from reddit, anything related to Apple is not one of them. I’m actually surprised because talking about anything Apple on reddit was always a circlejerk pitchfork parade, but Lemmy still seems to outdo. The “trying to stay relevant comment” is honestly hilarious. Sure, the richest company with more than 50% of the smartphone market, that basically feeds design to the rest of the industry is trying to stay relevant.
And another thing worth addressing, It’s probably 50/50 whether the EU is forcing them to USB-C, or just providing cover for them to move to USB-C. Modern Apple (after 1997) rarely has used proprietary standards for cables/connectors, and when they have it’s pretty obviously because there isn’t a better option, or more likely, there isn’t an option that is suited to their purpose*. Apple is/was largely the reason we’re even talking about USB, being one of the first to really adopt it. Then the dock connector for iPods, which is probably the most major example of them using a proprietary connector. If you read that link (just wiki) you’ll see that the dock connector did things that no other standard connector did at the time, and it did it in a form factor that would work with iPods. Fast forward 10 years and Apple eats shit in the press for changing to Lightning, which pre-dated USB-C and has obvious advantages over one of the worst computer connectors in modern history - micro-USB**. Apple contributed significantly to the USB-C spec, which includes many of the advantages that Lightning had first, built off of the work they did with Intel in creating another standard, Thunderbolt.
And then on to today, where Apple is “forced” to use USB-C. Again, in 2016, Apple moved all of their high end laptops to exclusively USB-C, for which they would again be pilloried. People are still pissed those laptops dropped USB-A and MagSafe in favor of trying to drive adoption of USB-C and a one-connector-rules-them-all world. They also moved their Pro iPads over to C in 2018. Basically, Apple started moving its high-end, less price conscious customers to C long before legislation was a gleam in anyone’s eye. Their cheaper products (base model iPads) and mass-consumer products (iPhones) they moved much slower on, and even then there were a slate of “Apple keeps changing connectors all of the time!” (twice in 20 years) outrage-bait articles.
Yes, Apple was “forced” to use the connector they created the first design references for (Lightning/Thunderbolt, and to a lesser extend Mini-DisplayPort) and then helped design, then moved to before most, in a bid to stay “relevant” in a field they already dominate.
* Also worth noting that Apple was a main driver of adoption of USB-A, and took heat when they converted iMacs to it over PS/2, far before most PC vendors did.
** This alone, the amount of negative press they garnered, meant that there was likely no way Apple was going to move iPhones off of Lightning for 10 years.
I really really don’t think Apple needs to do much to stay relevant.
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Strangely, it kinda was. They helped invent the original specification. Just not so sure they wanted to put it on iphone yet (or ever)
and they only did it because the EU forced them to