dabluck

It's definitely true that Apple and Google have not allowed enough experimentation here

Yes, it's fine to nudge the world in the direction you want it to be, but it's also worth reconciling yourself to the world as it exists

Yes open source is a whole different animal, I had a paragraph addressing open source but decided it really needs its own essay, so stay tuned for 'open source is a scam'

I don't know what you're referring to but I own a podcast app and have nothing to do with robocalling

That's totally fine, if you want to work on the sun tracking app in your free time and release it, I encourage it. But there's a lot of weird obsessive niches and I don't think you're going to make all of them, so the people who want weird things to exist should probably fund their obsessive niches. Of course, if you aren't interested in that niche, you shouldn't feel any obligation to use it or pay for it.

If you don't like or want any mobile apps whatsoever, I completely agree you should not pay for them.

I do the same. Then when I lose access and I actually care, I know that's something I should support.

Thanks for reading. Totally agree Apple can do more a lot here and it's disappointing they haven't tried.

The cheaper it is then the more people you need to sustain it. If there are only a small number of obsessives who want the sun tracking app, and the sun tracking app is really great and serving their needs, it should probably be more expensive not less. If the sun tracking obsessives want it to exist, they have to pay for it, because nobody else cares.

Can you list any examples of companies that have done this well? The products I have used that tried this either stopped trying it (Ulysses articulated it really well) or devolved into shinier objects. In practice I think it's pretty tough to pull off.

I think broadly your comment is true, and it would be better for the good actors if the bad actors didn't exist. Apple and Google do make it pretty easy to cancel though vs the wild west of the web

In my experience the only genre of HN comments is that subscriptions are evil, so I'm glad to see there are other perspectives. While it's true that software has been around a long time, it's also true that the world changes and building software in 2026 is much different than even in 2012 let alone 1995.