Senators introduce bipartisan antitrust bill to promote app store competition
I love this idea - I paid a grand for this thing, I should be able to run whatever I like on it.<p>However, this does make it significantly more difficult for Apple to dictate terms to every random app that your network of friends and colleagues makes you download, and makes it more likely that those apps will be a regression in terms of actual consumer experience.<p><i>Regulation</i> of access to  your camera roll and contact list is a terrible idea, so I don’t see a solution.<p>Apple is the only thing stopping WhatsApp (let’s face it, an essential app in 2021) from demanding your location at all times. We don’t notice this on the web, because Mozilla and Google (!) enforce terms for us (and most desktops don’t have GPS receivers).<p>Take out the gatekeeper on mobile and we might find that the benevolent dictatorship wasn’t so bad after all.<p>Edit: want to add that replacing Apple’s consumer protection gatekeeper role with a government agency is a non starter. Apple (and to give them credit, Google) know that the data available to the gatekeeper role is toxic and dangerous. Government thinks it’s a big bowl of lollies.