I'm blind. Apple has explicitly said they wouldn't consider the "bloody ROI" of accessibility (will fund it no matter what). This is important to me. Software freedom is also important to me. What am I to do?
I'm blind. Apple has explicitly said they wouldn't consider the "bloody ROI" of accessibility (will fund it no matter what). This is important to me. Software freedom is also important to me. What am I to do?
> What am I to do?
Pick your priorities. There will never exist enough products to check all of the boxes that all of the people say is important to them. There is someone out there who would much rather have a product cost some amount less at the cost of accessibility features but they think a device that 'just works' is important so they buy the iPhone anyway.
The point is that your conclusion here is both the correct/obvious one, and that it ensures one explicitly cannot vote with their wallet. They have priorities too significant to be able to take part in the protest. They are invisible to the company they WANT to vote for.
The good thing about voting is that not everyone needs to be right. The average vote is always far more accurate than any individual vote.
Perhaps what allows Apple is to be better at certain things like that or security for average consumer is indeed at odds with some aspirations? At least in practice, not utopian dreams, that seems to be the case.
So you vote with your wallet for accessibility despite freedom and the rest of hacker news do the opposite and it all works itself out.
> What am I to do?
Support NGOs fighting for your freedom like https://eff.org.
Choose an alternative. Plenty of non-Apple phones out there.
I stopped buying Apple phones years ago.
You grab an Android phone anyways because Android accessibility is very much on par or even better than whatever slop Apple is putting out with VoiceOver these days, and developers also somewhat care about it more on Android.
You're also going to benefit from European mandates to have accessible mobile apps anyways, it's coming for free to you.
Nope - iPhone accessibility is much better than any alternative.
For how long? I can envision a troop of vibecoders super-charging android accessibility.
Clearly they haven't. I'm going to assume the blind person is the one who's correct about what it's like to use a phone while blind.
Even this long is too long. Apple devices don’t just provide better accessibility, they make lives easier by providing better accessibility, Android lagging behind is not just a matter of feature-parity, it’s an entire ecosystem making it harder for people to engage with itself.
I guess "easily hacked" is more accessible. But maybe prompt your agent better?
> You're also going to benefit from European mandates to have accessible mobile apps anyways, it's coming for free to you.
Not true, the EU tried to become a regulatory superpower and largely failed to export its rules to the rest of the world. Instead, Apple and Google just aren't bringing new features to the EU anymore.
What features are missing in the EU, though?
Encryption comes to mind. That was the UK I think, but the EU isn't far behind.
That was the UK because it was Apple complying with a specific UK law that says the government must be able to access everyone's phones at all times.
The more common one is GDPR. Things like AI features come to Europe late, or don't come at all, because it's illegal to just record everyone all the time and transmit that information back to the mothership, which is what the feature does.
If you know of any company that would bother to spend days making accessibility improvements, yet for some reason decide to not bring those to the US release, they're the dumbest fucking company in existence.
The EU accessibility mandates will be followed by apps, not by platforms. I don't care if Apple Music wants to keep being trash, Spotify, Deezer and Tidal will improve and lift everyone with it.