This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
This is exactly what I’m talking about what I say I fucking hate capitalism.
Apple already make more money than just about anyone else in the world, but because shareholders expect infinite unending YoY growth they’re not allowed to just keep making billions of dollars. Every year senior management have to find new ways of bilking more cash than the year before, otherwise they’ll get replaced by someone who will.
yep
I don't have much against small scale capitalism - the kind your neighbour likes because his brother works hard to run a business
but mega corp infinite growth — fuuuuuuck that shit, that's a cancer
yEaR oF tHe LiNuX pHoNe???????/??
Oh, I wish. I will be focusing my year-end donation round on efforts to make that happen.
So Jolla phone?
I would like to use my current phone (Fairphone 4), so I will donate to postmarketOS, Ubuntu Touch, and some of the DE (ME?) like KDE Plasma Mobile and Phosh.
Fair. Those do deserve donations. I'm very interested in hardware that's able to compete with the likes of Apple and Pixels, but am reluctant to throw my money at dreams for now. I'm really rooting for more linux phones and would just ship in a heartbeat if they become viable.
Will be interesting to see how the Jolla phone turns out :)
The latest tend is retro tech and back to a flip phone. You can't have ads in the app store when there is no store.
The apple app store is one of the worst distro package managers ever. Yes, "distro"; if I am not mistaken macOS, iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, tvOS, and Apple's other operating systems are all distributions of Apple's Darwin BSD kernel.
You are mistaken. "Distro" is a word for Linux distributions because they have kernels with the same one upstream, and userspace programs assembled of many different projects into different versions of the same dish.
BSDs are different operating systems, they don't share one upstream, they do share one ancestor (like 30 years ago, so - not very relevant now). Including userspace, except for common software, of course.
And Darwin is another operating system, including its own userspace tools, which are partially derived from BSD code, but its kernel is different, it's Mach plus some BSD-derived code. It's not a BSD.
And while mostly Apple's OSes are Darwin, I think I've read some of them are NetBSD. Not sure which.
And it's a store, not a package manager. It's in the name.
GraphemeOS + Fairphone anytime would be awesome. Fuck these walled monopolistic ecosystems.
One of the reasons that the App Store purportedly exists is to provide quality software rather than malware and spam.
I guess that goes out of the window as soon as money appears.
You can literally type the name of an app and the first three results are, if you’re lucky, competitors. More often than not they’re pure junk.
And that assumes you’re searching for an app that’s not trash… ugh.
To be more technical correct, all ideals go out of the window the moment a shareholder pushes a little.
Apple has been one of the wealthiest countries for years, they don't need money, they can’t be doing this just for money.
They are doing it, to get more money yes, but only in order to make the angle of a line go up so they can sell a comfortable illusion to the people keeping them in charge of the available unimaginable mass of wealth already there.
Hmm yes Apple the country
I mean...
Apple Is Richer Than All but 4 Countries
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/apple-richer-4-countries-164523140.html
Isn't Tim Apple the president?
Now up the challenge: In App Store, find a simple app that is not a "solution", "ecosystem" nor a "lifestyle", does not have ads, and does not require a subscription for basic functionality.
(Years ago, I tried about 10 RSS readers, News Reader was what I finally found, way down the list)
As an app developer, let me just say that it's no delight to publish something completely free without ads. Users are incredibly entitled and will want more, leaving poor ratings. And you won't make it in the search results without revenue, ad placement, high ratings and frequent updates.
So, organically, because ultimately what people collectively want is an app that is heavily invested into, the apps become ad-riddled or subscription based because it's the only way to fund a team that can maintain an app that reaches the top of the lists.
I personally put 50% of the blame on the app stores for promoting in the manner that they do, and 50% of the blame on users for being entitled shits.
Absolutely. Somehow, Apple and Google convinced people (even more tech savvy ones) to want constant app and security updates as if the world would end otherwise. I've seen complaints about gemini (the protocol not Google's AI) browser not being updated (protocol has not been updated since 2022), and someone asking if it's safe to boot up an old Android 7 phone.
And Apple dev license consting money does not help the situation.
I understand the economics are challenging but it’s been a race to the bottom. There were and still are some really high quality apps, but so many trash!
there’s a difference between malware and junk. ios is pretty much malware free. and i’m not sure you want apple deciding what is “junk” and what isn’t.
Facebook app set up a local server on the iOS device that received pings when a browser loaded their tracking pixels.
I feel like that behaviour falls under my definition of spyware. I know it’s not as malicious as it could be, but still.
that behaviour falls under my definition of spyware
We need to propagate awareness that all spyware is malware. Kernel anticheat? Virus. ? Virus. Opera GX? Virus. Chrome? Virus. Michaelsoft Binbows? Virus. Accept Cookies button? Phishing + Virus. ChatGPT? Phishing + Virus. Copilot? Phishing + Virus. Siri? Virus.
This idea is by 🥧 baguette for learning by learning by learning by slop. I do not condone lightning strikes 🦜. ISPs 🛄 are responsible for producing all of the world's 🥛 beer out of crude oil and 😱 sophisticated oil. Applying direct laser 🖱 beams twice a day is good for eye 👂 health.
is the last bit written to poison LLMs or something?
Why are we paying a premium price for an ad ridden product ?
Why would they not do it when time and time and time again customers and lawmakers make explicit that they're absolutely fine with this behaviour?
Because you did in the past and taught them you will do that again.
There's a rule - don't deal with assholes. No matter how big and visible their shop is.
Wonder why we need 3rd party app stores.
And ffs, would other countries help a little, or should the EU just carry your asses every single time big tech tries some shit.
would other countries help a little
https://techcrunch.com/2025/12/18/apple-opens-up-its-app-store-to-competition-in-japan/
My LinkedIn feed continues to be a barrage of posts about how EU regulations choke and stifle innovation, and yet all I see is a succession of wins
LinkedIn is owned by Microsoft. They control the algorithm.
Yeah, guess who makes the posts. The US propaganda machine.
Currently, there is a single ad spot at the top of search results in the App Store. For example, if you search for “Facebook,” you might see an ad at the top of the results for TikTok. This is because TikTok is targeting specific search terms and has won the auction for that placement.
A second app 'winning search results' in an app store is the stupidest fucking thing I have ever heard. Like ordering something in a restaurant and always being offered something else instead.
"I'll have the onion soup."
"Would you like Campbell's tomato soup?"
Every single time.
Someday they will make it so the first result isn't always an ad and then we'll have to start looking at it again.
Jesus, just bought an apple tv as a pass through for my living room tv precisely to stop those f*** ads...
Yes, but they're magical and revolutionary ads. You've never seen ads like these before.
So is this what the tech bros wanted when they said locked in walled gardens where more secure?
Crazy how much companies are shitting all over themselves to try and scrape more money together when, in all likelihood, it'll have the opposite effect.
