Walled Gardens Can Kill

I'm an Apple ecosystem user, owning an iPhone ever since a past employer got it for me to test our company app some 8 years ago. Over time, as I've upgraded, I've also incrementally moved over my family to the ecosystem, replacing our hp/dell laptops with macbooks and Samsung Galaxy phones with Apple iPhones. Apple's application ecosystem is pretty famously locked down. You cannot side load applications onto your iPhone, quite as easily as you can with an Android. There has been some legislative push to change this (with the EU enacting the Digital Markets Acts or DMA) but the sentiments among lawmakers and users are still divided. I didn't feel strongly about this, one way or the other until the experiences of last week. My wife suddenly fell ill and we had to figure out which hospital to go to, we were ill-prepared for this situation as we hadn't installed the insurance providers' application to check the in-network hospitals. Unfortunately for us, the insurance app is geo-restric ... Read full article.