On Thu, 2021-02-25 at 08:22 +0100, Harry van der Wolf wrote: > I hate the MacOS > policy and am therefore not a registered developer and certainly not > release via the App Store, so my app has the same issue. (Users have > to accept that or simply not use my app. I support the MacOS users, > not Apple).
Write to your local anti-trust authority / competition commissioner / etc. Anyone has my permission to re-use the text below, on the condition that said anyone does not rely legally on it (I am not anyone's lawyer, and in most cases I cannot be). I am happy to put together a more detailed argument/analysis for anyone to use against Apple and (adapted accordingly) the rest of BigTech. Apple is "lessening or preventing competition" (the legal keyword) and has gone way too long under the radar screen. I recently had to set up an iDevice (school requirement) and it felt worse than being ordered to stay at home under curfew because of the current pandemic. Apple has managed to successfully excercise ownership on users, developers, and government. Anti-trust authorities have given Microsoft users the choice of browser at a time when Microsft's conduct was much less detrimental and offensive to the market than Apple's current conduct is detrimental to the market, no matter how the market is defined (and definition of the market is crucial for an anti-trust case). In your letter, request the following remedies: * Apple to give user a choice of cloud services to connect their iDevice to on initialization of the iDevice. Similar to what Microsoft had to do with the choice of browser. This includes choice of app store; choice of cloud storage provider; choice of account ID provider. * Apple to accept in its stores software built with non-Apple toolchains. * Apple to give app developers (cloud providers!) access to the same API independent of Apple's cloud services that it uses to implement iCloud sync and instant messaging. Right now, Dropbox, Nextcloud, and other competitors are at hard disadvantage because they cannot achieve feature-parity with iCloud. Their workaround is to have their app's sync triggered on GPS-coordinate change, totally inferior, while on Android they have an opportunity to achieve parity with Google's services. * Apple to implement standard Push API in Safari, for the same reason as above. Currently, Apple requires website operator regi$tration, licen$e, and use of an Apple service. I call this unlawful monetization of access to user * Apple to give user the choice to replace Apple's root encryption keys with the user's own; and to disable the features that prevents software unauthorized by the encryption keys owner to run on the iDevice. * Ultimate control must rest with the user, not with Apple, and ultimate control is not the same as dumping the iDevice on the electropile junk. At the moment, the only reasonable way to describe iDevices is a pre- paid lease with an unknown term at the discretion of the landlord on zero-day notice. Unconscionable. Has been unacceptable for centuries in the Western legal systems, and it is time set the record straight that it won't be acceptable in the future either. -- Yuval Levy, JD, MBA, CFA Ontario-licensed lawyer -- A list of frequently asked questions is available at: http://wiki.panotools.org/Hugin_FAQ --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "hugin and other free panoramic software" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/hugin-ptx/54fd888ebf50778c211ae9e36253dd25a20196ff.camel%40levy.ch.
