Because what we really need are less choices to save us right? “Look at all those poor sheeple buying Apple rather than a more open platform, they shouldn’t be making that choice so let’s take it away from them.”
If their bad choices have negative effects on others, for example developers being exploited, then yes the choice should be made for them. It's the same as smoking or drinking. When you smoke, there are harmful effects to third parties so the government limits the use of those products. When millions of people make choices that lead to millions of other people being exploited, governments should get involved. That is the entire point of modern legal systems. Free markets until negative externalities become out of control and then the government steps in.
The idea that iOS has been a negative for developers is a hilarious one. Funny that all those poor developers choose to develop on iOS before android because that’s where the money is.
Is it though? Before the iphone desktops were king. On desktops
- developers could use any programming language and there was a standard language that was well supported on pretty much all systems (C), so no need to learn 4 different language ecosystems to target different platforms if you arent a language nerd.
- you could release your software to users under any licence you see fit.
- Software SDK's billed with flat fee's instead of revenue sharing.
- Developers could develop in any environment and didn't have to depend on heavy, buggy IDE's.
- Cross compilation for other systems was common. You didn't need a system from the target vendor to build and distribute software (although for testing purposes it was still common).
- There weren't arbitrary rules on how you are allowed to monetize your software.
The developer experience since the release of mobile systems has dramatically decreased. To say that is not true is just naive. These electronic markets will form no matter what. If apple and google was wiped of the face of the earth today, new markets will form within months. Apple and Google act like the markets are their God given property but in reality they are piggy backing off their first mover's advantage.
Honestly, i feel sad to see your type of attitude on HackerNews.
Maybe that which is best for a mobile computing platform is different than a desktop one. I like my iOS and macOS each in their respective place today.
