Ask HN: Why mobile software infrastructure never belongs to its owner?

2 points by rezvovmobile 22 days ago | 6 comments

There’s one question that’s been on my mind lately.

Over the past twenty years, we’ve learnt to take ownership of virtually any digital infrastructure.

But why does mobile software infrastructure still almost never belong to its owner? Is there a fundamental technical reason for this, or is it more a matter of economics, ecosystems and market habits?

I’d be particularly interested to hear the views of engineers who have worked on the architecture of mobile platforms or major mobile products for iOS and Android.

Perhaps I’m simply overlooking some fundamental limitation.

austin-cheney 21 days ago |

Mobile software belongs to the platform because that is where the money is. Apple does not make most of its money from selling phones. It makes money on things like iTunes, AppStore, mobile advertising, and other transactions. Apple is willing to cripple its product to strengthen the reliance of their users on these software platforms.

For example I just wanted a WinAmp like experience to play MP3 files using my phone while doing dishes. These MP3 files are on a home file server. I looked at the applications on the app store and they were all shit, even the ones that cost money. I suspect the reasoning is because these applications are crippled in favor of Apple preferred, or in house, solutions.

So, I wrote my own music app. Its just a web page that I can run in a web browser. This allows me to completely bypass iTunes and the app store. Here are the steps I had to jump through to get this to work:

1. The playlist must be static and assembled in advance. There is a JavaScript file system API to get a file list from a directory. It works in desktop Safari but is disabled in iOS Safari. So, I wrote a Node.js app that does this and outputs a JSON with the necessary data.

2. iOS Safari will not load JSON files beyond a certain trivial size. It claims to be a memory issue, which is stupid, because I can bypass this too by using multiple JSON files each containing only 500 records of data. So, my Node.js app has a "split" option to produce multiple data files and my static webpage app requests the local JSON files one by one.

coreyp_1 22 days ago |

Which part of the mobile software infrastructure are you referring to?

Do you mean, for example, Jellyfin, which reaches out to my home server and is for my personal use? Because that works.

Or do you mean why don't we just write our own apps which talk to our own infrastructure?

Or do you mean that it's just hard to have your own/personal infrastructure? Or that most apps don't support your own infrastructure?

Or are you referring to the fact that the mobile platforms lock down things such as push notifications so that it absoultely must go through them?

Can you be a bit more specific?

LarryMade2 22 days ago |

You don't "own" the hardware or the platform, you may create the code but you depend on the whims of others whether it is deployed and continues to work on such devices.

Best bet is to do mobile web development, most of the parts can be under your control and those that aren't (the phone) are beholding to web standards which can't change too radically.

brudgers 22 days ago |

What are the economics of it for each stakeholder in the existing infrastructure?

How would changes to it comply with regulatory requirements?

Is it as reliable as the existing system?

Those answers are perhaps where the reasons lie.

xp84 22 days ago |

This sounds like an interesting question, but really needs clarification on what you mean by “infrastructure.”

ebcode 22 days ago |

I’d say the problem is that, at least in the US, the government was conceived as a democratic republic, but private enterprise wasn’t required to follow the same conceits, and so all our corporations behaved more like small dictatorships. Now that our corporations are megacorporations, and the government has lost the upper hand, the common people are at the mercy of these dictatorships. There’s no reason for Apple or Google to cede any control that they’ve already established, and we only see them grabbing more and more control as time goes by. Until the government regains the upper-hand, and begins to work again on behalf of actual people (with heartbeats), the firmware in our phones will continue to do the bidding of its true owner. Or if maybe, there’s a revolution or something. Maybe we could take public ownership of the phone lines and cell towers. Fat chance, huh?